Be careful- it's going to get all transhumanist up in here! Please read and review. I have great ideas for where this is going to go.
ALL THE TERRIFYING TRUTHS
You know her. You might not see her in person, but she'll see you just the same. Are you up to no good? Thinking you can slide in through the New Vegas and start up a little kidnapping operation, a little smuggling ring? Well, she'll be there to catch you, and the results will not be pretty. Or maybe she'll be away on one of her little sabbaticals and you'll get away with it. Hard to say. But knowing what happens when she gets unhappy... Do you want to risk it?
Who is she? That's a fine question. One that we can maybe begin to approach answering if we take a moment, step back from the issue, and at least try to act like real scholars, instead of terrified little rats cringing in the dark corners of the wasteland.
The Courier. You've heard that name. She decided not long ago that it wasn't what she'd prefer to be called, but a few people with a death wish still called her that. Some people passed some other titles around- Savior, Messiah... Last Best Hope For Humanity. Red Lucy calls her "My Hunter", in hushed tones, and Caesar, well... Caesar called her a cunt, right before she put a bullet through his eye. Her name is Elizabeth.
I call her Lizzy Blue.
She doesn't mind- in fact, it was her who told me she liked the name. Not hard to see why it would fit- it's anyone's guess where she found that much hair color, but she used it, and her hair was an eye-catching shade of vivid purple-blue. "Round Midnight," she said, when I asked what that shade was called. Conspicuous- sure. But you knew when you saw that blue coming your way, it was time to make nice. Problem was, would that hair be tucked under a fearsome red 1st Recon beret, or would it be falling to her shoulders above the straps of a prewar gown? Maybe you wouldn't see the hair at all, and all you'd see would be the glowing orange lenses of a power armor helmet.
Not that she needed power armor- but sometimes you just don't want the annoyance of bullets hitting you, I suppose. She could be stark naked and unarmed and still the deadliest thing around. Lizzy Blue could jump down a near-fatal height and barely be staggered. Lizzy Blue could take take two 9mm slugs to the head and crawl back out of her grave. Lizzy Blue could be across the room when you lobbed a molotov cocktail at her, and then all of a sudden, zip- she would be right next to you, on fire, lashing out in some brutal dance step with a fistful of industrial buzzsaw. Lizzy Blue could kill a deathclaw. Two deathclaws. Three.
How could anything- anyone- be that fast? There was word that she was a mutant- not the big green kind, mind you, but some product of radiation or prewar biological tinkering, and that was true. There was also word that she was a cyborg- implanted with devices that granted her strange abilities. That her bones were metal, her skin hard as stone, even the sultry tone of her voice augmented with a tiny computer that calculated what you wanted to hear. All those were true as well.
They say that she rained atomic fire down on a Legion encampment, just because.
They say that she traveled to the devastated site of her nuclear bombardment, her 1st Recon bullyboy in tow, and killed off the survivors, every single one of those poor irradiated bastards.
True also. There are more true facts about the Courier- about Lizzy Blue- going around, than there are tall tales. Even though it might strain credulity. I can attest to it. And who am I, you may be asking, to know so much about her comings and goings? Who am I, to be privy to these details?
My name is Sword-Of-Heroes. That Sword is the pen that scratches this page now. It's the blinking green cursor on the terminals I use. Some tribes have shaman. Some have priests, or sineaters, or skinwalkers. My tribe has me. We have always tread the jungles of concrete and steel, hunting our quarry of rare books and cloistered secrets. We count coup with words, and when it was time to send the Sword-Of-Heroes forth, our greatest young scholar- me- gave up his old name and went in search of the Courier. In search of Lizzy Blue, to offer her my services as chronicler. As amanuensis. The scribe of her deeds.
The Sword-Of-Heroes does not tarry long upon the stories of those who will pass from this world peacefully in their sleep, at a ripe old age, or those who would find contentment in the arms of a stable partner, lving a life of quiet comfort. Heroes- real heroes- drown in their own blood. They find their end shivering and broken at the bottom of a ravine, spending their last moments cursing the fathers that sired them and crying out for the mothers that birthed them. Heroes die in fire. In frost.
Lizzy Blue does not think that this rule applies to her, and she seems to think the whole thing a grand flattering joke. Not having someone around to be her Boswell, so to speak- no, the thing that sends her into those spasms of breathy laughter is the idea of her dying. Understandable, I suppose, for someone who's sent so many others to their own end. For someone whose wounds knit themselves closed within a few minutes. Whatever respect she has for my scholarly office, whatever jolly she gets from the situation- she treats me like a dog. A well-kept dog.
Perhaps she does so to defy her own mortality. If that is true- that she could still feel fear- then perhaps there is some hope to be found in my efforts. Or perhaps that, of all things, is my own tall tale. For someone who could resurrect the grim shade of nuclear apocalypse- out of pique- why then, what would that person be motivated to do out of fear of oblivion?
It's already happening. New Vegas is changing, its ghosts exorcised. No gods, no masters. New ghosts come creeping down from the Big Empty, on chrome legs and Saturnite wings. At her bidding.
I will here until the end, Sword at the ready. And for all the things that I have seen come to pass so far- all the terrifying truths- none of them are what really scare me.
What really scares me is what she is going to do.
