Two of Spades: by thepkrmgc
"From where you're standing, all this must have seemed like an 18 karat run of bad luck. But this is Vegas: the game was rigged from the start."
They call me Six: it's how deep below the dusty sands you'll find the ones who pissed me off. You see, this wasted world's fairly simple: you pay your debts with blood or die. There's a lot of people trying to get rich quickly: you need to make it clear you're not some easy mark. But to make it here in Vegas: you've got to go through life with Style.
Doc saves my life: I'll save his whole damn town. A bunch of gangers tried to rob me: I wiped them off the fucking map. But you shoot me in the head not only once but twice? That's when shit gets personal. I climbed out of my fucking grave just to see that bastard Benny dead, any less than that would mean to lose my pride.
I walked the desert sands as if I owned them. I strode through war-zones as if they were a long lost home. And If I followed Benny by his cigarettes: you could have trailed me by the corpses that I left behind me. All a thing of justice I assure you, I make a point to shoot not first but last. And of course I looted everything of value from the bodies and the homes I passed along my way. This is Vegas, when you go bust you lose it all. I came, I saw, I made it mine by right of conquest: that what the ancient Caesars liked to say.
Everybody loves a scoundrel, see, everybody's gotta cheat to prosper. A savvy man can rob the the world blind with nothing but a smile on his face and a glimmer in his eye. The simplest way to steal a wallet is give someone a helping hand: the simplest way to kill them's to replace it with a ticking bomb. Pat them on the back and urge them ever forward: they won't ever know you've got your sights trained on their back for when their plans go wrong.
The Khans stood by and watched that checkered bastard shoot me: It's only fair for me to let the NCR just blow them all away. So what I promised them safe passage? Anyone who's never lied has never spoke: and this affair was one of honor after all. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and silence for silence. The world's better off without those filthy tribals anyway: it was just another Bitter Springs.
It was old Bobby House who commissioned the delivery, he knew that Benny'd hunt it down. He may not have pulled the trigger, but he damn well put me in it's sights. I don't like to be set up, I prefer to be the framer than the framed. House always was a man of old world business, his explanation cleared things up so I could make amends and my many debts could be repaid. Afterwards, well I suppose you could say that we got on like a House on fire. But that was just the soup and salad, the taste of vengeance barely even wet my thirst or my ambitions. Benny stood across the street, it'd be impolite to keep him waiting. How could I call myself a gentleman if I didn't send him my regards...
I could have strode in there with guns blazing, but butchery is really quite uncouth. No, in everything there is a balance: I'm a poet of proportionality i'd say. A pair of beanbag shells into his forehead and some rope with which to tie him tight. Unlike him I'd never give someone the insult of a shallow grave. Professionals have standards after all, I dug his hole a full six feet...
"This is for my face you son of a bitch!" I told him as I started filling in the hole with him inside. I'm afraid he was too busy screaming to respond. But then, once a tribal makes a man a tribal always: and blood will tell I always say...
And I could have walked away, I could have cashed my chips and walked away with quite the little fortune. But have you ever met a gambler who was happy with some petty profit? You don't come to Vegas if your happy just to work and sweat to earn an honest wage. There's not a man alive who wouldn't kill to win the jackpot, and I've always been the greatest killer of them all they say. Vegas was my town and so I'd rule it: all I had to do was win against a pair of armies all on my lonesome own. Good thing I knew just where to find some missiles...
I sat atop the 38 and watched the bull and bear rip out each others throats, sipping whisky as the sounds of bloodshed echoed off the canyon walls. I waited for the battle to reach its height to make my move, for good drama's all about the timing. Flicking my cigarette off of the building, I pulled the trigger and put on my lucky shades: as atom woke and bathed the dam in fire. As I, Lord Death, looked down from up atop my shining throne.
From where they stood it must have seemed like an 18 karat run of bad luck. But this is Vegas: the game was rigged from the start.
There was a stirring in the crowd: a ghoulish man in tattered armor surged to the fore. A pair of shots: then darkness.
"This is for my face you son of a bitch!"
Fin
-If you embark upon a journey of revenge, then dig two graves.