(OOC: I do not own Fallout, just the ideas around this. For a friend. Do enjoy.)
March 21st 2284.
Colorado Wasteland.
As the dark menacing clouds did their level best to block out the early morning sun Aeneas tried to slink a little further under the pine tree his captors had left him under and cursed the entire pantheon of the Gods for the rotten luck that had landed him in this predicament. Yesterday he had assumed, rightly or wrongly, that with his entire legion following so close behind that there was not a group of individuals within a hundred miles who would be foolish enough to attack a forward scouting party, and with that in mind he had rode ahead with three of his men to see what the next several miles held while the rest of the troop stayed back and set up the night camp.
Their little expedition traveled down what the pre-war world had called interstate seventy and at first it had gone well, but when they had come to a spot where a small rockslide covered the decrepit asphalt and were preparing to turn around they had been viciously set upon by slavers. His three comrades in arms had died within minutes of the first rifle shot ringing out, and when he had felt something impact the side of his helmet and his vision began to darken he had assumed that he too would be joining them in the world beyond. He had come to half an hour after the small battle, and by that point he had been stripped of anything of value and his arms and legs had been placed in iron chains. After that it had been a long evening of being marched south down twisting mountain trails to their hideout in a small clearing at the base of a steep rocky hill, and an uncomfortable night shivering beneath an unforgiving sky.
"I swear," he growled to the half dozen slavers who sat round a campfire cooking their breakfast, "When I get out of this-"
"Oh pipe down maggot," one of his tormentors spat. "You high and mighty ones get on my nerves."
A rather portly one nodded in agreement, "You heard 'im. 'Sides, you keep runnin' yo' mouth and we'll have to teach ya a lesson."
Another who looked like he had his hair cut by placing a bowl on his head and cutting anything that hung down beneath the rim whack the portly slaver on the back of the head. "You'll do no fucking thing Bruno. Our tin soldier over there is good stock, and I won't have you lowering the price we can get for him because he hurt you God damn feelings."
"A mouthy slave ain't no good though," Bruno snapped as he rubbed the back his skull. "They come across as incontinent."
"In cont a what?" A woman without a nose and pink hair blurted out.
"Incontinent. Means unruly."
The Legionary cringed, "You mean insolent. Your word mea-"
"Shut up!" Bruno roared. "I know what my word means!"
"No," bowl haircut laughed. "Our meal ticket is right. Your word means you can't control when you take a shit."
As the others laughed at his expense Bruno glared at bowl haircut and scowled, "How can I be sure you ain't lyin' boss? You might just be tryin' to make me look bad."
"One, because I read books so I actually know what big words mean, and two because I'm not a moron who spends his free time driving nails with his forehead."
"He's got you there Bruny!" A wiry little slaver chuckled as he slapped his knee; an action which caused his tin plate of food to fall from his lap to the ground.
"At least the radroaches won't get my food though," the portly man fired back.
"Oh I'll just give this to-" the wiry one began before a crack of thunder boomed and he jumped up not only from his seat, but a full four feet into the air.
This time it proved to be Bruno's turn to laugh. "What's the matter Mel? Think the Pistolier was takin' a shot at ya?"
"I thought no such thing!"
"Sure you didn't." The woman without a nose smirked.
"I'm tellin' you I didn't!"
As this small scene transpired Aeneas wracked his brain and tried to figure out who, or what this Pistolier could be. Coming up with nothing he fixed his eyes on the one with the bowl cut and said, "Can I ask you something?"
"If it's when you are getting fed it's if there is anything left when we're done," the leader of the slavers responded coldly.
"No. Who's this Pistolier Bruno invoked?"
"Don't play games with me meathead," bowl cut snorted. "You can't spend more than a month in this part of the wasteland without hearing about him."
"Honestly I don't know."
The lead slavers got up from his place by the cook fire, walked over to Aeneas, and got down on one knee to look him in the eye when he was just far enough away the Legionary couldn't try anything. "You aren't shitting me are you?"
"No."
Bowl cut flashed him a menacing broken toothed smile, "Well let me tell you a story then. The Pistolier is a gunslinger. Best in the Rocky Mountains. Hell maybe the best in the whole damn world considering he can do things with a forty five an expert can't do with the best sniper rifles. He's a little guy, about five three or so, slim frame, always dressed in black dungarees and a matching vest, and he has a red bandana pulled up over his nose and a black hat pulled down so low you can only see his cold, cold eyes." For a moment the other man stopped and thought a bit before adding, "And I guess I should say he wears a black coat in bad or cold weather."
"Anyway he showed up in these parts about six or seven years ago and started killing. Not what you'd call good people mind you. Folks like me and my friends, brhamin rustlers, rapists, and the like. Legionaries like you too when they strayed into this part of the country. That crazy cowboy hates anyone who isn't on the straight and narrow, but folks claim he's got heart for the little guys. Gives 'em caps, food, medicine, and the like. The damndest thing is though almost no one claims to have heard him talk. Some people think that's cause he's some kind of ghost or demon, and with the kind of shot he is they may be onto something."
"This sounds too farfetched to be true," Aenaes retorted.
"You better believe in him meathead. He's real, and when he catches wind of some of Caesar's boys being in town you're going to be on his shit list."
"I'll believe in him when I have some proof, and if he is real and insists on a one man war with my men and women-"
"Your men and women? In case you haven't noticed you're all-" Before the leader of the slaver band could get any further there came the sharp crack of a pistol and the left side of his face exploded into a horrific mess of blood, brains and bone. Through years of ingrained military instinct the Legionary threw himself flat on his stomach and crawled behind the tree to take cover, and as he did so he heard more gunfire along with screams of pain from the slavers who had been hit and survived.
Only once an ancient gnarled pine tree was between him and the murderous exchange Aeneas awkwardly got to his feet and then, exposing as little of himself as he possibly could, leaned to his right to take in the situation. Counting bowl cut he could see that three of the slavers were dead, the woman with no nose soon would be, and that Bruno and Mel had managed to take cover behind a fallen log at the edge of the clearing and were firing at someone up the rocky hill. Following their line of fire with his eyes the Legionary shifted his gaze only for the blood in his veins to turn to ice as a character he had just dismissed as fiction jumped up from behind a rock and squeezed off a shot at the two remaining slavers.
Shifting back to the slavers he watched in morbid fascination as Bruno stumbled backwards and clutched at the space where his lower jaw had once been. Suddenly their came another shot and the big man tumbled to ground and out of his line of sight. Obviously panicked Mel worked the bolt on his rifle and returned fire, and then let out a whoop that caused Aeneas's head to dart back in the direction of the Pistolier just in time to watch the little man fall.
"Can you believe that!" Mel shouted. "I got him! Me. I did it. I took down the best gunslinger in the mountains!"
Completely indifferent to everything around him the wiry slaver got up and strutted into the middle of the body strewn clearing like a peacock, his back turned to where Aeneas was hiding. "I guess that makes me the best." He crowed.
Disgusted the Legionary let his eyes drop away from Mel and down to the body of bowl cut in the vain hope he might either be able to get the key to his manacles and escape or find some kind of weapon to kill the slaver before he came down from his ego trip. Almost instantly he spied the handle of a throwing knife just barely poking out from under the body, and in a series of short jerky steps Aeneas bolted forwards and only at the last moment fell to his knees and skidded to a stop just beside the dead man. As he wrested the blade free Mel turned around to see what was causing the commotion, and just as he began to raise his rifle back to his shoulder the Legionary tossed the blade as best as his bound hands would allow him and prayed.
Like a snowflake from Hades the piece of metal twirled through the air and before the final slaver could do anything the knife embedded itself in his left eye. Mel stood in place for a moment after that, his body trembling more violently witch each passing instant, and then collapsed into a heap on the ground. His life draining from him almost as rapidly as the Pistoliers bullets had done in his fellow travelers.
Once he was sure the last of his captors would not rise again Aeneas searched the body of their former leader and eventually found the key to his manacles in the man's back pocket. Wasting no time he undid the ties the literally bound him and then took several long strides just to enjoy the feel of them. Once he had finished humoring himself he made his way over to the pile of supplies the slavers had packed in with them and rooted through it until he found a shovel. Satisfied he then made his way to the rocky hill and began to ascend to where the Pistolier had once stood. As far as he was concerned the slavers could have their bodies torn apart by the local wildlife, but in his opinion the man who had tried to save him, even if he later would have tried to kill him, and who in their own way had tried to do right in the wasteland deserved a proper burial.
It didn't take long to find the fallen gunslinger, and as Aeneas knelt down to pick up the body he noticed that his savior's chest was still rising and falling. Quickly he grabbed a wrist, which seemed oddly slender, found a strong pulse, and after looking the Pistolier up and down noticed the only wound he seemed to have was a place where the bullet lightly grazed him on his upper left arm. Without even thinking about it he removed the man's bandana to make an impromptu bandage, but when he got his first look at the individual he had been told was a living legend his heart skipped a beat. He was in fact a she, and a very attractive one at that.
XXX.
Feeling like a deathclaw was pounding on her body Helen McCorkle worked her right arm out from under the blanket and rubbed her throbbing head with her hand. As she did so she replayed inside her mind her last conscious memories and tried to figure out what had happened to put her in the position she now found herself in. The first thing that returned to her was blowing the one slaver's head off, and how their captive had immediately gone for cover behind a tree thereafter. That in turn was followed by the memory of gunning down of four more of them before it finally dawned on her. "The little guy got me," she groaned. "He got me and I lost my balance and hit my head."
For a few seconds that was enough for her frazzled mind and Helen was content to embrace the warm grasp of the covering she had cocooned herself in, but then another thought forced its way into her mind and she muttered, "Who covered me up then?"
"I did," a rather pleasant male baritone responded.
In an instant those two words sent a bolt of adrenalin coursing through her and she, with more effort than it should have taken, forced herself into a sitting position and laid eyes on a Legionary. Instinctively she reached down for her revolvers but to her horror found they, along with her gun belt, were missing from her waist. Deprived of her weapons she spat out, "And who the hell are you?"
"Aeneas," he replied calmly from the other side of a cook fire that separated them. "And you?"
"A nightmare as far as you should be concerned," she growled in return.
"A pretty brunette who fell from a rock and got knocked unconscious isn't my idea of a nightmare," Aeneas chuckled before taking a bite of pancakes he'd been eating while she slept. "Heck it might even be a good dream. It isn't often I get to play the white knight and save the fair maiden's life. Want some?" The last two words came as he pointed at his food with his fork.
"Saved… my life?"
"Yep. I killed Mel. He was the quote unquote little guy who got you in the arm and caused you to fall."
"Leave it to one of Caesar's fucking goons to be the one to bail me out when someone finally pulled off a lucky shot."
"So I take it you are in fact the Pistolier then?" The Legionary smiled.
"The one and only."
"I was expecting-"
"A man, I know. Everyone expects the mysterious masked gun slinging hero to be a man."
"And how did a woman end up the mysterious hero? No wait, back to my last question, are you hungry?"
"None of your business," she quipped as her gaze drifted down to his plate. "And yes."
Smiling Aeneas picked up bowl filled with batter and poured its contents into a cast iron skillet. "So will you at least tell me your name?"
"No." Helen replied in a harsh monotone.
"Won't tell me your name, won't tell me about yourself, hell I bet you wouldn't tell me the sky was blue if I asked. I'm guessing you have a reputation as quite the pill."
"I don't see any reason to give an inch to a man I'll kill the next time I meet him."
"Next time?" Her male companion responded with a little bit of genuine astonishment. "If you intend to kill me why not just do it now?"
"You saved my life and didn't kill me yourself," she responded. "And given that I normally murder you wanna be Romans on sight I think a life for a life is a fair trade."
"And let me guess, you hate the Legion and its members because they're basically an over grown group of raiders bent on raping, murdering, and pillaging their way across the continent."
"Bingo. And like any pricks of that stripe I am the judge, jury, and executioner."
"Who gave you those jobs?"
"I did. Until there is law and order outside of the towns again someone has to keep the people of these mountains safe, and damn it I'm going to do it until the law comes back or someone who is a better shot ends me."
Aeneas prodded at the edge of her pancake with a spatula, "And if I told you I want to help do just that? Restore law and order that is."
"I'd call you a miserable God damn liar."
"What if I told you there was a way to prove I'm on the level?"
"Again, a liar."
"What if I said then you won't leave this clearing alive if you don't agree to give me a chance?"
For the first time since she had woken up Helen's lips quirked into something other than a scowl, "Now I'd say you're finally being honest. What is it you think I should do?"
"Well before I say what, you do know there is scores of people moving with my branch of the Legion down old I seventy right?"
"Hard not to know that. News of that type of thing travels fast in these parts."
"Good. Now what I want you to do then is go down the old interstate into a few of the towns west of here and talk to the locals. You'll find almost all of us have been on our best behavior, and those few who haven't have been punished according to their crimes. We've paid for everything, helped those we could, and done all the things good little boys and girls should."
"So basically you're telling me that while you, the other legionaries, and your commander are wrapped up in the same package, you aren't following Caesar's playbook anymore. Right?"
"Exactly," Aeneas responded, his grin for some reason she couldn't grasp growing bigger as he did so. "So will you give me… no, will you give us a chance?"
As she watched him flip her pancake Helen thought things over. Finally she continued with, "I'll agree to humor you and check this out, and if, and only if, you are on the level I will give you a single chance, and only the one."
"Supposing we don't live up to your exacting standards?"
"Then I will go to any lengths I must to take as many of you as possible to hell with me," Helen responded with absolute conviction. "And I don't say that as a timid little human, I say it as the Pistolier."