Writing chapters in advance doo-dee-doo... And if anyone's wondering, there's really no reason for the courier to skip Nipton and head straight to Novac. I just thought it worked out better.
Why am I writing these things as short as I am? I really don't know.
Nipton
"I'm going to wear your head like you wear that dog's."
An hour after the fact and Boone still couldn't believe she'd actually said it.
Nipton was a ruin a long time before they'd actually reached the town. Li talked to the raving Powder Ganger who had fled it in a screaming panic. Boone couldn't make heads or tails of his story, but apparently Li had talked to No-Bark back in Novac and was some kind of lunatic linguist. He didn't ask after she'd confirmed that Vulpes Inculta was involved. Any kind of Latin was a warning bell.
He didn't ask a lot of things when the Legion was involved.
"Who is this guy, anyway?" she'd asked while looking the robot—ED-E, whatever—over for damage. They were going to head into Nipton anyway, though she had seemed edgy about doing so with a known First Recon sniper at her side. Something about instant hostility and too much shooting. Like that mattered.
"He's the Legion's head spy." Boone had replied, likewise checking his rifle for any possible problems. Granted, it probably needed a new stock, but it wasn't like they exactly had access to materials or the knowledge to swap out parts with unfamiliar rifle models. So far, anyway. "Sneaks into places, screws up NCR lines and generally is a waste of air. He'll be dead by the end of today."
"...You know, I think you'll need to hang back for this first part," she'd said, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. "I'm going to see what I can do, first."
"What?" Stupid, stupid. What the hell was she thinking? "You'll end up dead, or worse."
"Only if I don't make the right call." Li had argued. "And you'll just be far enough behind that you're the surprise backup."
Spotters do not work like that. "And if you screw up?"
"Then I raise my arm, you get to pick his eyeballs out from a hundred yards and behind cover, and he gets to wonder how I did that as I beat his men to death with a baseball bat. Or not."
This was a really stupid plan. She wasn't stupid. She was too good with locks for that. At least, he'd thought so. Now he wasn't sure. "You're crazy."
"I'm keeping my options open." Li had replied. "Me, you, and ED-E are going to get killed if we all bunch up down there together. Better just one than everyone."
Fucking hell no. The day he let a woman walk straight into their arms and didn't say a word against it was the day put away his beret and joined the Fiends. "No."
Li frowned. But it wasn't out of anger—dammit, she was recalculating, again. Which meant she wasn't going to listen to a damn word he said. "How quietly can you pick them off?"
Oh, hell. Not again. "Where are you going with this?"
"…I'm still going to talk to Vulpes. I need to know what the Legion's planning, and you can't interrogate a corpse." Her mouth quirked oddly. "But if you're so worried, pick them off while I talk to him. There's no way he'd let all of his men listen in, and that's where you and ED-E can destroy them. As for Vulpes…I can put down someone like him."
Nothing he said would get her to just drop the whole idea. While he could have, say, knocked her out and carried her back to Novac to join her fellow crazy person, it would have probably killed them both more certainly than the Legion ever could. So, eventually, he relented.
She went into Nipton, apparently alone. The eyebot didn't count. But all the while, Boone slunk from house to house and shredded the Legionnaires with a hunting knife.
Still, at least a third of the group stuck around while she talked to Vulpes. It brought Boone closer by necessity—he was running out of targets and patience in equal measure.
He got to witness it, then.
"Don't worry, I won't have you lashed to a cross like the rest of these degenerates. It's useful that you happened by." For a Legion thug, the guy was a twig. And had a voice like a snake.
"I want you to witness the fate of Nipton, to memorize every detail. And then, when you move on?" Boone's trigger finger itched just at the memory. He hadn't blown a Legionnaire's head off in a while and it was starting to get really annoying. "I want you to teach everyone you meet the lesson that Caesar's Legion taught here, especially any NCR troops you run across."
"And these would be…?" Li had prompted, with a tone dripping sarcasm.
"Where to begin?" Vulpes had murmured. "That they are weak, and we are strong? That much was known already." His stance shifted. "But the depths of their moral sickness, their dissolution? Nipton serves as the perfect object lesson."
"Really." Not cowed in the slightest. So, on top of having nerves of steel, her head was full of rocks.
"Nipton was a wicked place, debased and corrupt. It served all comers, as long as they paid." Boone had used every ounce of his self-control to not shoot him right then. "Profligate troops, Powder Gangers, men of the Legion such as myself—the people here didn't care. It was a town of whores."
Twitch. Twitch.
"For a pittance, the town agreed to lead those it had sheltered into a trap." Here, Vulpes smirked. "Only when I sprang it did they realize that they were trapped inside it, too."
"You captured everyone." Not a question so much as a statement. She didn't approve.
He never noticed. "Yes, and herded them into the center of town. I told them their sins, the foremost being disloyalty. I told them that Legionaries are disloyal, some are punished, the others made to watch. And I announced the lottery."
A drop of ice seemed to make its way down Boone's spine. He'd known, of course, but this guy…
"Each clutched his ticket, hoping it would set him free. Each did nothing, even when 'loved ones' were dragged away to be killed." That sick fuck.
"You killed innocent people." Li knew it, too, but her voice didn't change. It had gone flat.
Vulpes laughed. Laughed, like it was some kind of game. "Innocent? Hardly. Cowardly, though. They outnumbered us, yet not once did they try to resist. They stood and watched as their fellows were butchered, crucified, and burned, one by one."
Li didn't move then. ED-E had bumped into Boone's knee and beeped anxiously.
"They stood and hoped their turn would not come. Each cared only for himself."
Boone, remembering a certain hut with bark scorpions and bear traps everywhere that he had completely avoided (particularly after seeing the disintegrated remains of someone), disagreed.
"It's interesting that you say that." Li had said, looking all around her. "But, you see, I don't agree with your last point." Her eyes narrowed a little and she glanced pointedly at the dog-skin hood he wore. "And I don't like you. Therefore… I'm going to wear your head like you wear that dog's."
Something in her stance shifted. By then, Boone had already drawn a bead on Vulpes' forehead and obligingly blew his eyeballs out the back of his head. ED-E charged, playing his little battle tune, and Li damn near disappeared.
He found out that day that she was very good with a machete.
And she did get that hat, though she immediately tossed it into the pile of burning tires to join Vulpes' victims.
Nipton wasn't a nice, safe town. It wasn't Novac or Goodsprings. But no matter how terrible the people had been, no one deserved that.
She walked up to him after they'd finished cutting down what…remained of the crucifixion victims. Most times, there wasn't anything left to save. She looked tired. "Hey, Boone."
"What is it?"
"We should have gone with your plan." What plan? Guns a-blazing was pretty much all he ever used regarding the Legion anyway. No sniper's nest here.
Still, he let her talk. Sometimes people like her just needed to.
"I don't really think I needed to hear Vulpes talk."
Could have told you that.
"But at least I'm sure now." Li went on, looking at him again.
"Of what?" Boone prompted.
She looked him straight in the eye. "I'm never showing mercy to one of them again. They need to die."
Could have told you that, too. But at least you're listening now.
"But…" Oh hell. "…if I can destroy them all by turning every ally against them…or even carve Caesar's heart out myself after everything I know about the Legion…well, that would certainly mean karmic justice."
Uh, what?
She smiled, but it was bitter. "Don't worry about it."
