Disclaimer: I do not own Fallout: New Vegas.
-o-
Beer pong is a drinking game in which players throw a ping pong ball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in a cup of beer on the other end. The game typically consists of opposing teams of two or more players per side with 6 or 10 cups set up in a triangle formation on each side. Each team then takes turns attempting to shoot ping pong balls into the opponent's cups. If a ball lands in a cup, an event known as a "make," the contents of that cup are consumed by the other team and the cup is removed from the table. The first team to eliminate all of the opponent's cups is the winner.
While originally an Old World game, some of the more modern societies of post-apocalyptic America have adopted the game. Whether this was through Pre-War information or just ignorantly thinking they'd come up with an old game depended on the group. For the Kings, the local gang in Freeside of the Mojave Wasteland, they'd found old records of the game at their very base, a religious institution (or so they thought) known as The King's School of Impersonation. When not harassing NCR squatters, charging money for use of the water pump, or trying to do what they could to help the locals, the Kings enjoyed playing the game to amuse themselves and pass the time.
Contrary to popular belief, beer pong was not about simply throwing the ball under influence of alcohol and just hoping it landed in the cup. There was actual technique, skill, and talent involved. When you played it as much as the Kings you quickly realized that relying on luck would lead to a very big loss. As a favorite game of the Kings there was also the matter that just plain playing for fun got boring but they were too poor to bet currency on the game. Which unfortunately meant that punishments were often associated to losing, rather than prizes for victory.
"Sorry, Blue. You lost the game of beer pong, now you reap the consequences," a rather tall, physically fit member of the Kings gang, dressed in a plain white T shirt, said. A dramatically grim expression was on his face, though the fact that he was one of the few Kings who wore glasses meant that he wasn't as intimidating as he could've been. Most of the Kings called him, well... Glasses.
"Sorry, man. I should've worked on my technique more." That was Blue's team mate for this game. With his tall, thin frame, pale skin, and shaved head, most of the Kings called him Scream. He was dressed in a black and white striped shirt and black jacket.
A smack on Scream's back nearly knocked him over. "Ha ha! With my skill? No technique in the world would have helped Blue!" That was Wizard. Why Wizard? He had a sweet beard. What other reason would he need to be called Wizard?
Growling to himself, Blue turned and headed for the door, grabbing his leather jacket off the nearby chair. "Fine. How many?" He called over his shoulder.
"Enough to last us another game and make it snappy!" Glasses called out after him.
Grumbling all the while, Blue left the room dedicated to beer pong in the King's School of Impersonation, making his way downstairs and passing several of his fellow Kings. Ugh, how could he lose that game? Now he had to go on a beer run for his buddies.
Blue adjusted his ever-present sunglasses as he stepped outside into the bright light of Fremont Street. It was broad daylight but the fact he was still a bit tipsy from beer pong only served to intensify the desert sunlight. Sticking his hands in his jacket's pockets, Blue pressed on towards the Atomic Wrangler just down the street.
As he walked, his shades-covered eyes flicked here and there. When you grew up in Freeside, you learned to keep an eye, an ear, even a nose out for danger. Well, it would be inaccurate to say Blue grew up in Freeside. Six or seven years ago the place was still just Fremont Street and little more than ruins populated by tribals and scavengers. It was only when Mr. House's robots emerged from the Lucky 38 and started pushing anyone who wouldn't join him off the Strip that Freeside began to take form. Blue, like many people, decided to make the best of a bad situation. They wanted a place to call their own and they didn't want to go someplace else to do it. Thus Freeside was formed, home to the dregs of the burning torch that was New Vegas.
There were two types of people in Freeside. The locals who'd lived there their entire lives and the NCR squatters who came hoping to get into the Strip but fell short due to lack of funds or lack of connections. Since the Kings ruled Freeside with their own brand of controlled chaos the squatters usually stuck to the farthest corners of Freeside, far-reaching corners that the Kings didn't feel were worth checking.
You can imagine then why Blue would be surprised to see a squatter hanging out in plain view of the Atomic Wrangler, Freeside's hottest bar. He could tell she was a squatter. When you'd lived on Fremont Street your whole life, you knew everyone's face and Blue didn't recognize this one's. While ghouls were common among the locals of Freeside and many looked quite similar to each other, Blue had interacted with all the ghouls of Freeside enough that he could tell subtle differences in their facial structures and body types. There was only so much necrosis and hair loss could do to make ghouls look similar to one another. What few wisps of hair the ghoul had were blonde but her eyes had turned that faded gray color that ghoul eyes tended to turn. She had a somewhat plumper figure than usual, further supporting she was a well-fed NCR citizen as opposed to a scraping-to-get-by local. She was dressed in a pink spring dress that actually looked fairly clean, something many locals wouldn't think to wear nor had the money or tech to keep properly stainless. Her gray eyes gazed to and fro, seeming to be searching for something. When they landed on Blue, she notably perked up, raising a nectrotic arm to wave at him.
"Hey! You! The King guy!" She called in the scratchy, hoarse voice that seemed to develop with necrosis of the vocal chords. "Over here!"
Oh, great, was she propositioning him? Grimacing to himself, Blue reached deeper into his pockets and grasped his spiked knuckles, just in case this was some kind of mugger trap. He also gave a quick glance around to make sure no other Kings were around. If they saw him talking to an NCR squatter, he'd have hell to pay.
"Yeah, what?" Blue asked, his eyes narrowing at her through his sunglasses.
Ugh, that smell... Contrary to popular belief, ghouls didn't actually smell like rotting flesh. Ghouls stinking was mostly just a misconception perpetrated by bigots who'd never actually met a ghoul. If anything, they smelled faintly of dry leather if left to their natural musk, but Blue was used to that from talking to Rotface, Beatrix Russel, Grecks, and the other ghoul locals of Freeside. No, this girl just wore too much perfume and it was murder on his senses.
More important than her aroma, what could this girl want? Blue didn't know everything about ghouls, but he'd heard rumors that they didn't need food so long as they had sufficient radiation. While radiation wasn't as much of a danger in the Mojave Wasteland as other parts of post-apocalyptic America, she looked pretty well-fed.
"Hi there! I'm Scratch." Scratch? Some name she had there. And my god, that hoarse voice was chipper. He really didn't need this when he was halfway drunk. "Can you help me with something?"
The dark-skinned King groaned. "I'm not a ghoul fetishist, but I'll bet the Atomic Wranger would love to hire y-"
A light, airy giggle reached his ears. "Oh, no, no! I was just wondering if you were any good with machines."
That caused Blue to quirk a raven eyebrow. Machines? "Uh, well... I'm handy with tools, but I dunno what you-"
He was interrupted when the girl grabbed his arm and started dragging him into a nearby ruined building, just between the Atomic Wrangler and Silver Rush. Blue glanced at Simon guarding the door of the latter, praying that the man wouldn't tell anyone that a squatter was dragging him away like this. In fact, his first instinct was to slip his hand into his spiked knuckles and clock her one, but something about her touch... it was gentle. A kind of gentle he just wasn't used to.
He was honestly expecting something like a rape dungeon in the ruined building. The last thing he expected was a powered down robot. It looked to be a Mr. Handy model, the pride of General Atomics before the Great War. From a glance, he could tell that it was in a shut down state to prevent catastrophic failure from running on damaged systems. Stepping closer, Blue could see that it had sustained several blunt impact blows to its chassis, causing several dents and even a hole.
"Can you help Sebastian?" The girl asked, her hands clasped as if to beg.
Blue crossed his arms, giving a flat look at the squatter. "Sebastian?"
"Yeah, my Mr. Handy. He's hurt and I don't know how to fix him..." She continued, gazing forlornly at the fallen butler-bot.
Well, this was odd. Robots were a rare thing in Freeside. Most locals were just too poor to properly take care of one. Outside of the Securitrons at the gate to the Strip and Cerulean Robotics, they were also downright hard to find. No one would dare attack one of Mr. House's Securitrons while Cerulean Robotics was a death trap. If this girl had a robot of her own, why couldn't she afford to pass the credit check or get a passport for the Strip?
"Look, girly, I don't know what to tell you. I don't see what's in it for me to fix your-" Blue was interrupted when two nearly skinless but admittedly warm hands grabbed his own, milky eyes gazing into his sunglasses with a downright pitiful expression.
"Please! Sebastian is all I have right now... He's my best friend! I need him..." She pleaded, looking close to tears.
Blue grimaced. Ugh, ghoul or not, squatter or not, the last thing he could handle right now was knowing he'd made a girl cry. Extracting his hands from her own, Blue took a step back, clearing his throat to compose himself.
"Fine. I'll pop into the Atomic Wrangler and ask if they have a toolbox I can borrow. I'll see what I can do," he explained.
The girl's face lit up like a little girl who'd just been given a puppy. "Really? You mean it? Promise you'll come back?"
The Kings member turned around, waving over his shoulder. "Yeah, yeah. I'll be right back. Promise."
As Blue headed into the Atomic Wrangler, he sighed, wondering just what he was getting into.
-o-
Luckily, being a member of the closest thing to order this town had, it didn't take much convincing for Francine Garret to lend him a toolbox. He returned to find the girl... Scratch, she said her name was? Standing vigil over her broken robot.
Kneeling next to the butler robot, Blue opened his chassis to take a look inside. Giving it a look over, he turned to the toolbox and began rummaging for a screwdriver.
"So what happened to your robot?" The Kings member asked the girl as he worked.
Scratch fidgeted with the hem of her skirt, gazing down at the ground sadly. "Well, I arrived here in the Mojave from the NCR, hoping to get into the Strip. Unfortunately I was robbed almost as soon as I set foot in Freeside. I really should've took Sebastian's advice to hire a bodyguard, but I figured he could fight off any muggers. A gang of three of them came at me just as I was passing the Old Mormon Fort. Sebastian got hit with a pipe and I threw the muggers all the money and supplies I had just to get them to leave us alone. I managed to drag Sebastian to this building and I've been staying here, watching over him ever since. That was about a week ago... No one seems to want to help me because I'm not a local." She visibly perked up there, turning and smiling rows of yellow, but fairly straight, teeth at him. "But then you showed up! Thank you so much! I'm sorry, sir, but I don't even know your name!"
A small blush came to Blue's dark brown skin. He wasn't used to gratitude, let alone from a girl. "Uh... The gang calls me Blue."
Scratch crossed her arms, bringing her right hand up to tap her chin as she gazed upward in thought. "Blue, huh? That's an odd name."
Blue growled, trying to use the screw he was tightening to work out his annoyance. "It's just a gang nickname. Besides, you're one to talk, Scratch. Why is it that so many ghouls have such weird names? Do you change your names after you becomes ghouls as some sort of mark of your new identity?"
The girl's smile visibly faltered and for a second Blue was worried he might have hurt her feelings. She bounced back quick, though. "Hey! You wouldn't believe it listening to me, but my voice used to be my best feature!... After my tits."
She reached up and cupped her breasts through her dress, lifting their weight up. The sight of the action caused Blue to lose his grip on the screwdriver he'd been using and fumble with it, dropping it between his feet. He turned to glare at the woman, seeing her laughing so hard her hand was on her knee.
"You should've seen the look on your face, Bluey!" She crowed between laughs.
Picking the screwdriver back up, the Kings member only managed to mutter out a quick "Don't call me Bluey."
"Shouldn't have told me that!" She replied, wagging her finger at him and winking. Ugh, this girl's cheeriness was going to give him diabetes.
Closing the panel, Blue placed the screwdriver back in the toolbox and sat up. "Okay, that should do it. He'll need a few minutes to reboot his systems but assuming I did this right he should be functioning just fine."
"Yay!" Scratch cheered, literally jumping for joy. She ran up to Kings member and grasped his hands again, gazing into his sunglasses with a soft, warm look that he honestly wasn't used to. "I don't have much, but... if there's anything I can do for you, please! Just let me know!"
Blue's eyes flicked downwards, looking at the girl's bustline. Dammit, her teasing earlier was getting to him. Either that or it was the alcohol from that beer pong. Shaking his head, he pulled his arms out of hers, spinning around to rub at the back of his head.
"I-It's fine. Just don't mention this to anyone. I have a reputation to uphold," he explained.
The girl tilted her head to the side a little, like a cat who'd just spotted something interesting. "Really? That's weird, but if you insist." She slipped around back to his front with surprising grace, reaching up to tap him on the nose with a necrotic finger. "Just remember that I owe you one, Bluey."
The Kings member backed away, rubbing at his nose and grumbling incoherently to himself. Turning, he walked out of the ruining building to head back to the King's School of Impersonation. Skidding to a halt though, he remembered the beer run he was on and about-faced back to the Atomic Wrangler.
As he walked in and ordered a few rounds to go, The Kings member known as Blue looked down at his hands. He could still feel it...
The warmth of Scratch's hands.