I met Boone by chance. I had left the Doc and Goodsprings behind me but not before confronting both the robot and the towns problems. They were under constant threat of attack from Powder Gangers and I'd be damned if their town would meet the same fate as mine. Content that they were safe I'd struck up a conversation with my own metal saviour. He'd informed me that someone named House was looking out for me and that I should visit him when I'd found Benny.
Benny, so that was the name of the checker suited man. So far this week I'd been shot in the head, rescued by a robot sent by a mysterious guardian angel named House, helped a town earn their freedom and now I was about to scour the Mojave for a man named Benny. I was told to head to Novac via Nipton, in the hope that the people there would have seen him and his party. It was more than I'd had to go on previously so armed to the teeth with dead Powder Ganger weapons I set off.
The Mojave desert is no easy place to navigate and the conditions are less than hospitable, at any given opportunity a radscorpion or bloatfly will try to take you down. And to add insult to injury, Ceasars Legion had taken over Nipton. I met a hysterically ecstatic man who had won "The Lottery". I'd heard of this lottery, I didn't need his garbled explanation, that he'd got the winning ticket that guaranteed his life and that every other unlucky soul had been slaughtered. Some instantly, if they had got a "decent" ticket. Others slowly and then the last unlucky losers were strung up on crosses in the distance. I felt sick to the stomach, I knew this was the fate that had awaited my town, had we not all fled before they got there. I also knew the people in my town well enough to know they would not have given the Legion the satisfaction of going through their sick lottery. But this man, he had. And he cared not one bit for his dead comrades. It took 5 seconds for me to think all of this through and as he ran off happily away from me I pointed my .44 at him and shot him clean through the skull. He fell to the ground with a thud and I smiled. Served him right.
Whatever they were doing there, the Legion had no qualms with me, in fact my passing was deemed suitable as I could pass on the message to others about Niptons fate. My hand was twitching to deliver the same message I had to the lottery bastard, but I figured there was no way I was going to take on a whole battalion of the Legion. So I simply nodded and held my breath until they became dots in the distance. Then, without looking back I ran until my legs were screaming in protest. I'd had my first encounter with the Legion, and I'd lived. I didn't feel the happiness the lottery winner had, just a sickening rage and fury that they could treat people the way they did. And fear. Let us not forget fear. For despite my anger, I knew what they could do. The bodies on the crosses were a harsh reminder of that.
My next destination was Novac, and it's here I met Boone. I was to question a man named Manny Vargas, but it wasn't him I found in the Dinosaurs mouth guarding the town. It was Boone. He had surveyed me through those cold dead eyes and for a fearful second I was reminded of the Legionnaire I'd just encountered. But this was different. These eyes were dead not because they didn't care but because life had taken everything out of them. He looked defeated, but there was a flicker of something familiar there. Something I recognised, something I felt myself. He questioned me on what I was doing, why was I disturbing him? Then and I don't know how, but he was asking me for help. And then I realised what the thing I recognised was. Revenge. I softened as he told me the story of his wife's disappearance and how he knew she was dead, that she hadn't run away as everyone said and that he knew someone in this town was responsible. He didn't soften towards me, not even when I agreed to dig around for him. He simply turned back to his post and left me staring at the back of his red beret.