FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS
CHAPTER FOUR: BY A CAMPFIRE ON THE TRAIL
Evidently, hobbling back to town was slightly harder than I thought it would be. I mean, the sun was glaring, and the wind blew sand in my eyes – aw, screw it, I got lost. So, instead of heading towards Goodsprings, I ended up going the opposite direction. Maybe I was distracted by the breathing noises, I forget.
I walk a little further. And a little further than that. And then further still. I was beginning to lose hope when I heard a loud cry. "Help me!" The voice sounded feminine, and was in distress. Well, I thought, I guess this should make up for my lack of Gecko-killing skills. So I ran in the general direction of the voice.
This person sounds like she's in real trouble! I need to hurry up! I need to-
Wahohahohahahahohoh.
You know, she doesn't sound that distressed…
I pushed down the cowardly voice and headed of to save this woman from what I assumed were Geckos. And I was right. Three of them. Surrounding a woman in a nice red dress. The woman had a meat cleaver for protection, but she wasn't doing so well. I could see she was bleeding with bite wounds to her arms and her left leg.
So I did what Sunny taught me. I knelt down, looked down the sights, and aimed at a Gecko.
BANG! The Gecko fell, a bullet wound in its right eye. The other Geckos stopped attacking the girl and looked in my direction. One of them, who looked slightly bigger, charged at me, while the smaller one continued attacking the girl.
Crap crap crap crap crap!
The Gecko was close enough to leap at me, and so it did. It opened its large mouth as it sailed through the air…
I held my Varmint Rifle in front of my face as a form of defense…
I felt an impact…
I stood there for a few seconds, eyes closed. I could feel the Geckos hot breath on my face, but it wasn't biting me. I dared to open one eye. What I saw amazed and confused my.
When I had held up my Varmint Rifle to protect myself, it had been just the right length to jam itself into the Geckos mouth. It was stuck there, trying to free itself from its little predicament, making that weird Gecko noise the whole time.
At which point, I noticed my gun had the barrel pointed right at the roof of the Geckos mouth.
An evil little grin appeared on my face as I pulled the trigger, covering myself with hot red Gecko blood. The Gecko went limp, and I pried the dead lizard off of my gun, and went off to find the girl and the other Gecko.
As it turns out, the girl killed the Gecko with her meat cleaver, as she was covered in her blood and Gecko blood herself, her meat cleaver was dark red, and the Gecko in question was nowhere to be found.
"Hey!" I yelled to get her attention. She seemed a little…out of it. Maybe that was her first kill. She looked at me, her eyes void of emotion. Then, she seemed to tilt her head slightly, before her eyes opened wide and she rushed over to me.
I was expecting a few words of thanks, but I was pulled into a hug instead. A bear hug. My thoughts at the time were something along the lines of HELP CAN'T BREATHE.
She finally let go, and let out a breath of relief. As did I, but for different reasons. "Holy moly! If you hadn't come here like you done, I'd be a goner for sure." She said, and then looked up to the sky and made a symbol of the cross over her chest. I so badly wanted to correct her grammar, but I kept my mouth shut out of politeness. She then looked back at me. "I came up here to draw water," she said, motioning back to the well she was standing in front of, "but you can have what I got." She paused for a second. "You look thirsty." She said finally.
Handing me a bottle of water, she turned and left with a final "Thank you." I felt strangely…happy. It seems being nice has that effect. I tried to be even nicer by offering to help her back to Goodsprings, but she seemed fine, despite the several Gecko bites on her limbs. As she hobbled back to town, Sunny came rushing up to me.
"Now that was some good work. Even got a little exciting there at the end." Sunny smiled at me, and I truly felt on top of the world. I heard my Pip-Boy give off a little noise, but I ignored it for the moment, instead focusing on my new friend (I hoped).
"Here's a little spending money for the trouble." Sunny handed me a small brown pouch, and I gladly accepted it, taking off my backpack as I listened to Sunny talking, and placing the pouch inside. "Now there's something else I wanted to show you. Thought I might teach you how to live off of the land, and make useful things for yourself. Interested?"
I thought it over for a few seconds, and came to the conclusion that these people did save my life. I should do whatever they say. I sniffed, and said, "Couldn't hurt."
"Alright then." Sunny said, a little more serious this time. "We'll need a couple of ingredients to get started. Going to want some Xander Root and a Broc Flower." She stared at me for a while, just thinking. I could see she wasn't actually focusing on me, just looking my direction. I waited for a while longer until she finally spoke.
"Lemme think now…" she said, because I wasn't doing that for the past thirty seconds. "I know I've see some Broc Flowers growing up at the graveyard, and I seem to recall some Xander Root growing over by the schoolhouse. Bring those on back to me," she said, smiling at me again, "and we'll get cooking."
Sunny walked off towards a small campfire, Cheyenne following her loyally, tail wagging. I set off towards town, where I believed the schoolhouse would be.
/
I was tired. I was panting nearly as much as Cheyenne. I decided to take a little rest under a shady rock. Placing my back against the stone, I slid down until I was sitting in a semi-comfortable position. Sighing, I sat there for at least ten minutes, admiring the broken landscape, eyeing the town in the distance. I seemed to remember something about my Pip-Boy, which was the only thing keeping me awake.
So, I looked at the thing, to find a message on the screen.
Goodsprings Reputation: Accepted
Well, that's a start.
I sat there, baking in the sun, thinking over what had happened this past day. Waking up, Doc Mitchell, being half blinded, the pill bottle, the Pip-Boy, Sunny and Cheyenne, the Geckos, the girl…Huh, I never caught her name. I also thought back worriedly to how much I enjoyed killing that one Gecko.
I don't think it's normal to like killing something so much. I mean, it can't compare to how nice it felt saving that poor girl, but still…
I checked my Pip-Boy clock, and noticed with alarm that almost a whole hour had gone by! Come on Sarah, you have to get up, I thought to myself. You aren't supposed to get a reply when you think to yourself. So you can understand my reaction when I got a reply!
But Mommy, I don't wanna!
Sweety, you have to. We're moving out today! Your father finally found the radio signal!
*gasp* Really? Wow, Mommy! We get to go to the place with all that treasure?
That's right Sarah. Now up you hop. We got a long day ahead of us.
Hey Mommy?
Yes, sweety?
What's the place we're going to go to called?
It's a place that lots of people don't think is real! They call it the Sierra Madre Casino!
"Sssssssss…cccccccccc…ssssssssss…cccccccccc"
MOMMY!
/
I bolted upright, screaming. Breathing in and out rapidly, I looked around. I'm near Goodsprings, not anywhere dangerous. Calm down, girl. I slowed my breathing, stood, and continued my walk into town.
Evidently, I wasn't the only one to hear my scream, because a few steps into town, I was greeted by a big blue hunk of steel on one wheel. I assumed correctly that this was Victor, the robot that had dug me up. I hate robots.
"Well, howdy partner! Might I say you're lookin' fit as a fiddle!" Victor greeted me. I would say that it greeted me warmly, but robots can't feel emotion. I stared at it, a dust-covered screen in the middle of the robots body my point of focus. The screen had a picture of a cowboys face on it. It stared at me, unmoving. I stared at it, equally unmoving.
Finally, I spoke. "How did you happen to find me?" I stared at it, waiting for it to answer me, though I didn't really want to hear it. Victor obliged. "I was out for a stroll that night when I heard a commotion up at the old bone orchard." I assumed it meant the graveyard. "Saw what looked like a bunch of bad eggs, so I laid low."
"You could have saved me!" I yelled, losing my temper at the machine. "I was shot in the head, and you don't even try to save me? 'A bunch of bad eggs?' What the hell does that even mean? Damn robot!" I kicked Victors wheel. In response, its right hand opened up to reveal the barrel of some sort of gun. The face on the screen changed to one of an angry cowboy.
"Don't try that again, little lady. Just warning you."
The gun retracted, and the screen turned to normal. Victor stared at me, and it was making a few mechanical noises. "What was I sayin'? Oh yeah, once they'd run off, I dug you up to see if you was still kickin'. Turns out you were, so I hauled you off to the Doc right quick."
I simply glared at the machine. It had shown some sort of programmed defense system, but not emotion. If Victor was an AI, then I could handle that. I can deal with them. Not robots. I frowned. Where did those thoughts come from? I shook my head and walked away, ignoring Victor's farewell of "Be seein' you."
I arrived at the schoolhouse and picked three Xander Roots from outside, and left to walk up to the graveyard. As I made my way up the hill, I heard a slight rustling. I stopped and looked around. It can't be Geckos, this is too close to town, I thought. Nothing showed up, though, so I kept walking up the hill.
I stopped. There it is again, I thought. I looked behind me to see if I was being followed, and sure enough, a large brown scorpion was following me. It made a hissing sound, and ran full speed towards me. Granted this wasn't very fast, so I took out my gun and shot it straight in the face.
I was about to walk away when I remembered something Sunny had said about living off of the land. Should I?...I decided it to be fine, and went back to the scorpions corpse. I used my bare hands to crack the shell around its tail, and took the gland containing its poison. Placing it in my backpack, I continued up the hill, to the graveyard.
Several large Bloatflies, something else I knew about, but was unable to explain how, greeted me. They didn't seem to care about me, and just buzzed around. If they weren't hostile to me, I wouldn't be to them. My search in the graveyard gave me three points of interest.
Interesting point one was the Broc Flower, which I picked. Interesting point number two was the grave next to it. It was fresh, and was dug up recently. It was my grave.
Somehow, the realization that it was my grave didn't seem all that relevant. I did, however, have an uncontrollable urge to look for anything interesting around the shallow grave. My results were successful; I found seven cigarette butts of a distinct brand. The smell of those cigarettes came back to me as I remembered the night I was shot.
The third interesting point was something I spotted at the last second. It was a small Snow globe, the light of the sun shining off the glass into my eyes. I walked over to pick it up, but stopped myself when I noticed that it was on top of a grave. Not really caring at this point, I took it anyway. It said:
Limited Edition Vault-Tec Collectable Snow globe: Goodsprings
Deciding that it was worth keeping, I placed it in my pack, and made the long trip back to Sunny. By now it was sunset, and Sunny was not to pleased by how long I took. She calmed down when I showed her the ingredients.
"Lemme see what you got. Yeah, these'll do just fine. Just fine." Sunny then sat down near the campfire, and after lighting a match, started a fire. "Alright now. We're going to be making something folks out on the trail call Healing Powder," she said. Sunny then motioned to the campfire. "Go on. Give it a try."
She took a few minutes to explain how to make it properly. Honestly, it wasn't so bad. Just grind up the flower into a fine powder, then cook the Xander Root for about half an hour and grind that up too. Then place them in a pouch, and place that pouch over the fire enough so that it won't burn for about twenty minutes. Then, bam! Healing Powder.
"Hey, that's not bad! See? All it takes to make a good recipe is the right ingredients and the right know-how." Sunny then stood, and began to speak some more. "But, sometimes it won't be a campfire you need. Maybe you need some work on your guns and ammo. It's all the same idea, really. You just need to know where to set up shop. Work bench or…reloading bench, whatever."
Sunny stretched her arms out above her head, and smiled, saying, "Well, I hope that's enough to get you started." She then started to walk away, motioning Cheyenne to follow. "I'm heading back now. Hope I didn't miss anything on the jukebox." She chuckled slightly. "Cheyenne would never forgive me." Cheyenne barked I agreement, then began panting happily as she followed Sunny back to town.
I put the Healing Powder into my backpack, and I followed, although I stayed back to keep some space between her and I. I'd had enough of her overly cheery attitude.
And so, I walked back to town, back up to Doc Mitchells place, for some long deserved rest.
/
Hey, Daddy?
Yes Sarah?
How long until we get there? The red cloud makes my eyes sting.
Don't worry, Sarah. We'll be out of it soon. We just need to find a way into the Casino.
Alan, are you sure about this? I think we're being followed.
Nonsense, Menka. We are alone. No-one knows where this place really is. We are the only-
"Sssssssss…cccccccccc…ssssssssss…cccccccccc"
Daddy…what was that?
/
So, Sarah is a little freaked out by how much she enjoyed murdering that Gecko, but she liked the feeling of helping people more. That's always a good sign.
Now, I will be delving into Old World Blues in a few chapters, because I want to get it out of the way, and I also want to have an explanation as to how the character can tell how much ammo they have, how much health and action points they have, and all that, and so we can have a better explanation than "game mechanic." That never really settled with me. I also want to showcase the Think Tank soon. They are an…interesting bunch.
Also, I will bring along a companion or two to the Big Empty, even though you can't in-game.
The game was made by Bethesda, not me. If I'd made it, it wouldn't be half as good and Cazadors would cease to exist.
I HATE CAZADORS!
Chris The Cat