Midnight in the Mojave...lovely and lonely time. That different world were you can poke your head out of your shack or hovel and stare and that nice bright full moon over your head. Or maybe the brilliant and simultaneously distant lights of Vegas. Or in this case...the barrel of a 9mm pointed at your head. That is what the one and only courier 6 thought in the fleeting seconds before they met their destiny at the hands of Benny. But this is not the the couriers's story. This isn't even when this should begin. Lets role back the clock an hour and a half just to get this right.
Several Great Khans and a man in a checkered suit sat scattered around the Prospectors Saloon. Benny and Jessup were at a table conversing quietly. The other khans were quickly getting both louder and more drunk by the minute. Except for one. Then again she wasn't a great khan. Nor was her name Emilia even though that was what she went by. Emilia the khan had walked out of Red Rock canyon a week before going to deliver a suitcase full of psycho. The person wearing her cloths had ran across her, and after figuring what was in the case had promptly killed her. This person then took the dead khan's cloths and wandered over to Westside were she sold the chems for a significantly lower price then the Khans had intended. It didn't matter, she was 2,000 caps richer for it. She by the way went by the name Svetlana when she wasn't wearing the identity of a person she had recently murdered (this tended to be a semi-regular thing). Svetlana wondering how far Great Khan hospitality went then walked her way back to Red Rock without thinking to much about the consequences of doing that. She showed up at Red Rock several days later then spent a day and a night wandering around the encampment as well as buying a hunting shotgun from their armory with her caps. When people started looking for Emilia Svetlana knew it was time to go. She noticed a group of Khans leaving the canyon at that time, so she quietly walked up to them and folded herself into their ranks (with no complaints from the others). Now she was here. The road to this little shithole town in the middle of nowhere had been plagued with violence. Some crazy khan had blundered them all into a fight with a pack of fiends. Not that Svet minded terribly. She enjoyed the sport of killing some tribals, not that they put up much of a fight. Not to mention that most of the accompanying Khans had died. If she was getting payed for this then she imagined that she would get a larger share now. So she waited. Waited at the dirty bar, waited while drinking two hundred year old beer. Giving a considerable amount of thought as to why this man...Benny had laid out this whole assault just for one person. Just a courier with the Mojave express. There was to much...certainty. She knew to much, and there was also the glaring fact that this was just to easy. It was just one man...one rich prick from Vegas who was alone. No way to slip away after the job was done. Svetlana mulled about this more than anyone else, and thus that was why she was sitting alone at the bar while everyone else was by the jukebox. In fact that was why she hadn't really talked with or gotten to know anyone since she had quietly slipped in with these people. Not that some of them...Benny included hadn't tried to hook up with her, with varying degrees of failure. The cloths she had snagged off of Emilia were made for a much shorter person then her. After all Svetlana was a towering six foot five, while the dead khan barely managed to reach five foot seven. The cloths were revealing enough to distract people from her features. Such as pale skin,unnaturally black hair, an impassive face that always looked like it was ready for a scowl, and of course her trademark eyes. They were a red shade of amber. They seemed like the color of coagulated blood, and gave of the (rather right) impression that this was not a creature you could reach out and touch without expecting to loose a limb in the process. Whatever happened next she decided she would not run or slink off. Svetlana would see this thorough. And if any more Khans ended up dead then she would trade cloths with them the moment she got the chance. Or...she could take the nice looking duster off of the odd looking stranger that just slipped into the saloon.
It has been a long couple of weeks. The not particularly mysterious stranger had escaped into the Mojave after busting out of the NCR correctional facility with the other convicts. He had been shipped there all the way from California. More specifically the Hub. He had attempted to sell a large cache of jet that he had "appropriated" with some difficulty from New Reno. Someone had ratted him out, and now the stranger...a man who went by the name James had been slapped with a 50 year sentence. After being marched and dragged all the way to the frontier James had been forced to help build the NCR's railroad. All the while sadistic inmates and cruel guards had taken hits at him. Finally when the riot happened James knew well enough to slip away instead of joining up with the now infamous "Powder Gangers". Of all the crappy bits of bad luck James had been through, one thing had worked out. A new officer shipped out to help keep the inmates in line while they worked outside the prison had taken the expensive weapons and duster that James had had on his person during his arrest. Both of them had been transported to the same place. And only one walked out alive with their cloths and guns. James was never a wanderer, and he never strove to be. He was a city boy. With golden blonde hair, and happy looking blue eyes he looked the part of a well to do, naive merchant. Of course that just hid the fact that he was a cutthroat chem dealer (in the literal sense). Now though his duster that was only supposed to make him look well traveled was...well...traveled. His hair had turned browner from all the time in the sun, and he had grown quite a bit of stubble on that face on his. His eyes were still bright but he had dropped the happy act he put them through. They held some happy energy, but the cruelty that was usually behind them was more obvious then usual. James had walked through the wasteland looking like a wanderer with his very wide brimmed black hat, and his telltale duster. Honestly though he felt he was going to die of thirst. He had just about given up when he saw the lights of Goodsprings ahead of him. He took off toward the town like it was the gates of heaven. And before he sprinting into the saloon like an idiot, he calmed himself down, dusted himself off and sauntered in without even encoring the attention of Easy Pete who seemed to live by the door to that saloon. It was nice to feel some cool air coming down from a lazy half broken fan overhead. And he noticed to some delight that this place had enough people packed into it to make it feel safe. What really go Jame's attention though...was the great khan with the body of an amazon staring directly at him. And for the first time since getting his cloths back James smiled.
Alright I admit I could have written more, but I lost my patience and gave you this opening scene instead. I have written several Fallout stories now. Most of them pretty much the same. I'll see how far I actually take myself with this one. Any comments or criticism are welcome (even though I know no one will really lend any).
