Boone could learn to understand the constant chatter. Hell, he could even learn to respond to it in good faith once in a while. He could toughen himself up to walk long distances without a water break. He'd already accepted the utter lack of direction the kid seemed to have - hell, he'd fought for the NCR, the definition of disorganized, for years. The alcohol was tolerable, especially if the kid was as useless with a long-range weapon as he boasted, since his alertness would not really matter. He could even learn to ignore the Courier's general twitchiness and behavioral oddities.

The worst part, though, was how utterly helpful the Courier seemed to be. He looked at the contraption on his wrist a lot, and then the three of them would run to an unknown location, leaving Boone to shoot at whatever monsters or people were waiting for them there. Everyone he talked to he seemed to want to help, even if he insulted them to begin with.

It had started when they left Goodsprings. The Courier carefully packed up his dinosaur figurine in his backpack and led the robot - ED-E, he called it - and Boone to the general store, where they'd spent a good fifteen minutes bargaining for cheaper ammunition. Then they'd doubled back, past the Powder Gangers' massacred camp, where the Courier pointed out his signature knife and showed Boone exactly where he'd fended off two of them at once. Then they ran through Primm, where the Courier stopped in to talk to the new robotic sheriff and play a few games on the slot machine. Then they ran around Nipton, but Boone's eyes were too sharp, and the Courier admitted that the Legion had completely destroyed the town, but he reasoned that it was just Powder Gangers they obliterated, so it was probably fine.

(It was not fine. Boone knew they were NCR citizens.)

And then they circled back to Novac. By then, it was noon, and the sun beat down on Boone, causing him to sweat a damp patch down the front of his shirt and to swallow from his canteen hungrily. He idly wondered if the Courier was getting rid of him, dropping him back off in that hellhole to rot away and really answer his question as to whether fate existed.

But they navigated right past, not even stopping in. Instead, they slipped past the town and followed the road to the REPCONN test site they'd visited just yesterday.

"We're back?" Boone asked, removing his rifle from his back and taking down an unsuspecting wandering feral ghoul. That attracted two of its friends, though, and ED-E hovered forward, playing a triumphant song from its speakers as it zapped at one of them, letting the other pursue the Courier with ghoulish abandon. Boone raised the muzzle of his rifle and took aim, but the Courier was already on it, as the thing had gotten far too close to it.

"Haha!" the Courier said triumphantly as he sunk a machete into the neck of a ghoul, kicking it to retrieve his weapon. "Gotcha."

"Is this fun to you?" Boone grunted.

"No, but I am happy to be alive," the kid declared. "Because it was him or me. The only joy in the world is to end, Boone."

They ascended the stairs, offing a few more feral ghouls effortlessly in the process, and pushed into the door. But they were interrupted by the intercom, which was apparently still working.

"Hey! Over here! Are you listening?"

"Nope," the Courier sniped back, continuing to walk past the voice. But then the mysterious voice barked directions on where to go. He turned and made a surprised face at Boone, a grin slowly spreading on his face.

"Think they're listening?" the boy said, smacking at the intercom. "Hey! You wanna let us up? Buy me dinner before you let these ghouls fuck my rotting corpse?"

"How old are you, anyway?" Boone growled, averting his gaze and scanning the room for more ghouls. "You act like you're a teenager."

"I'm twenty," the Courier said indignantly.

"Seriously?"

"Sure," the Courier said, equipping his knife. "Let's fuck these things up, tough guy."

The journey upstairs to meet the mysterious voice was a lot of Boone shooting before the kid could even see anyone. If it wasn't Boone, it was ED-E, who was surprisingly good at vaporizing things with its little laser. If one got remotely close, the Courier had his knife halfway buried into its skull before it had the opportunity to emit its deathly garble.

Before they knew it, they got to the door the mysterious voice had informed them of and pushed inside. Immediately, Boone aimed and fired at the ghoul standing at the stairs, but the Courier smacked the rifle out of Boone's hands, the round disappearing into the wall and leaving an explosive hole.

"What the fuck?"

The Courier shook his head, his brows furrowed. "They're not feral. They helped us downstairs."

"You call that helping?" Boone growled, crouching down to retrieve his fallen weapon.

Rolling his eyes, the boy started to ascend the stairs, not bothering to wait for Boone to catch up. ED-E beeped sympathetically before following, leaving Boone with his vindictive thoughts and his gun.

He hung back as the boy talked to the ghouls. The one he talked to was half glowing a sickly green, talking in a self-important voice. Boone tuned him out, his hands still on his rifle, waiting for one of the ghouls to make a wrong move so he could empty his magazine into one of them.

Out of all of the abominations Boone had seen in his time roaming with the NCR, the ghouls had to be his least favorite. Even the ones that weren't feral. Their smell was the biggest deterrent. The image of peeling flesh was another, evoking a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

As the boy reached out to the glowing ghoul and contacted hands with him, Boone forced down a wave of nausea at the thought of touching one of them.

"Alright," the Courier said, shaking hands with the half-glowing mess of a man. "We'll clear it out."

As he retreated, Boone hissed, "Clear what out?"

"The basement."

And in confusion, Boone followed the kid downstairs, venturing away from the earth and into a metal cage below. He babbled an explanation, something about monsters in the basement stopping them from their great journey, but Boone didn't really listen, since he found most of the Courier's drivel worthless to giving him any valuable information. The ghouls were monsters. How much worse could the basement be?

Downstairs, the air was hot and stagnant, and, as Boone expected, he saw no monsters. But something did not seem right. The three of them descended further down into the earth. The metallic hallways creaked, and Boone could hear banging coming from a room around them. They were not alone.

"I think we need to leave," Boone whispered. He had a very bad feeling about the basement.

The Courier raised a finger to his lips, signaling Boone to be quiet. The group of them approached the room slowly, creeping along the hallway, until they happened upon an open door with light emanating from it. Boone watched as the boy crept in, and Boone followed closely, scanning the room quickly for any movement. He saw nothing. The Courier agreed, standing up.

Boone followed suit. The room was somewhat small, surrounded by lockers, and a table in the middle, covered in boxes and odd-looking meat.

Squinting, Boone saw one of the lockers shimmer. His eyes focused a little more in the low light, and suddenly the shimmer moved, getting bigger and bigger and -

"Stealth boys!" Boone shouted, but it came out more like stealth bo- because he was interrupted by an invisible rebar to the side of his face. He lost his vision for a second, blinking to try to regain it, and he was grateful it did not take its time to return because the massive blue beast was towering above him, preparing to bring the club down on him again.

Boone rolled out from under it and desperately grasped at the gun strapped to his back, but the beast was too fast. It brought the club down on his leg and Boone swore he heard something crack. But he got his gun ready and started emptying his magazine into the thing's skull. Yes, he might be useless at close contact, but he could still shoot a gun. There were three of the beasts in the room, so Boone knew he had no backup. He also knew his companions needed backup. One was a tiny floating robot, after all, and the other one was worthless at shooting, and Boone knew by his now useless leg that he would not want to be caught up close to one of those things.

The unfortunate thing, though, was that this thing absorbed more bullets than Boone thought was possible. As he fumbled to reload his rifle, it was already on top of him, slamming its foot down on him so he could not move and raising its club above its head.

Although Boone had imagined the end many times, it had certainly never gone like this, in a mildewy basement surrounded by a brain-damaged kid and a flying eyebot with his brains splattered by a massive blue monster's makeshift club.

Right as the monster was about to end Boone's life, a flying projectile leapt at it and slammed his knife through its skull. The monster's grunt came out half formed as it fell backwards, bringing the Courier along with it.

The kid tore the knife out of its skull with a sickening slick and he walked over to Boone, triumphant for just a moment. When he saw Boone's ambulatory predicament, though, his face fell and he rushed over.

"What happened?" the boy questioned, crouching down in front of him.

"One of… one of them got me with their club," Boone said, grimacing as the Courier palpated it with his fingers. "What were those things?"

"C'mere," the boy said, yanking Boone's leg roughly to free it from his pant leg. Boone's head swam and he saw stars at the sudden sensation of his leg screaming at both of them to stop, but he chewed his lip to stop from shouting. There had to be more of the invisible blue monsters around there.

Once Boone's leg was exposed, he surveyed the damage to his limb. It was bleeding, but not a lot. The redness underneath the skin was the more alarming piece, as well as how his foot hung uselessly to the side. He tried to move his toes, and he could, but God, it hurt.

He watched as the boy surveyed the limb almost clinically, deep in thought as he palpated the painful flesh up and down his shin, starting at his ankle and ascending to right below the knee. The examination hurt so much Boone idly wondered if the Courier was doing it on purpose.

"Am I gonna lose it, doc?" Boone asked sardonically, grimacing at a particularly painful jab to the bony prominence of his shin.

The Courier shook his head, quickly digging in his bag and withdrawing a familiar brown container with a white staff on the front. "Nah. I just need to fix you up with one of these."

The bag was familiar to Boone. He'd only seen it used once or twice during his time in the NCR, usually on limbs that were truly and utterly fucked. More often than not, the doctors would just amputate the leg or arm, especially when the bags simply weren't available. The medical supplies necessary were simply hard to find, or overlooked on scavenging expeditions as the case may be.

Boone also knew that the kid could sell it for a pretty penny at the nearest NCR station, and probably to a more worthy cause.

"Those are extremely expensive," Boone protested. "I'm fine. I can walk."

But as he tried to shamble to his feet, he felt the limb give out and landed him back on the ground, squarely on his ass, in more pain than before.

"Just don't lose another leg and we won't have a problem," the Courier said, busying himself with the work of fixing Boone's crippled leg.

It took just a few minutes for the drugs to kick in and the aching to subside. While he waited, the Courier scrambled over the bodies of the three monsters and dug around their clothes, withdrawing a case of bullets from one of them and tossing it over to Boone.

"Some .308s for you," he explained, withdrawing a piece of rotting meat from another blue corpse. He made a face at it and threw it on the floor behind him with a sickening splat.

"Why? We're leaving," Boone declared.

"No, we aren't," the Courier countered. "We have to clear out the rest of these things."

"Did you not just see how I almost died?" Boone protested.

"We just have to be better," the Courier said. Like it was so simple. "Now that we know they're invisible, we can work with that. You can shoot them before they even see us."

"Oh, I can just shoot them?"

"Keep your voice down!" the Courier whispered, looking around nervously. "They can hear you!"

"THEY can hear me?"

"The nightkin."

Boone balled up his fist and slammed it into his pocket to avoid planting it straight in the kid's mouth. "We are going to get ourselves killed. I didn't sign up to sacrifice my life fighting abominations for the sake of other abominations."

"We aren't going to die," the Courier insisted. "You saw the stealth boys. Show me how you pointed it out and I can help you find them."

"With what, your useless eye?"

Boone slammed his fist into the leg of the table he rested against, and something fell onto his head, causing his head to spin once again. When he recovered his bearings, he glared back at the Courier. But the boy was no longer fighting. He sat back and stared at Boone in awe.

"So that's what it looks like?"

"What what looks like?"

Then Boone looked down and saw his legs were no longer visible. The object that assailed his head turned out to be a Stealth Boy and had turned him invisible.

With that information, it was easy to navigate through the halls and clear out the invisible monsters. Both of them worked in a team, the Courier pointing out shimmering areas and Boone executing them effectively with a bullet through the temple. It was easy - it was what Boone was trained for. See it, shoot it. Rinse, repeat. Honestly, it felt like his time on the front lines.

Finally, they got to the jail and found the visible jailer monster, holding a massive flamer in his massive hands. Boone took a breath and aimed, the thing's head clearly visible. Although the thing was across the bridge, he had a clear eye line. It would be an easy shot.

Boone squeezed the trigger.

And he missed.

He fucking missed.

It ran at them in a rage and went after the Courier first. Boone shot a few more times, sinking bullets into the monster's torso, but that didn't slow it down. ED-E played its insipid tune as it shot lasers at the thing.

Boone withdrew his machete from his waistband and approached it, but it turned and slammed his head with the flamer, knocking him to the ground. His ears rang, the blow antagonizing the rebar hit from earlier. Then, he felt his arm burning. In horror, he realized the beast was indeed flaming his arm. He rolled over on his side to get out of the way and watched as the Courier sunk his knife into the nightkin's head, withdrawing a bright red blade which he wiped on its shirt. Then he dug in the monster's pockets and found a ring of some sort, which he fastened to his belt.

"Got the key," the Courier said. "I'll be right back."

He was gone for only a second and returned with another ghoul in tow, following him and ED-E closely. The Courier knelt down next to Boone. "Alright. You ready to go back?"

"Okay," Boone panted, wiping blood from his swimming head, "can you tell me why in God's good name we just almost died to kill all of these… things?"

"Jason Bright asked me to," the Courier said carefully, dropping to his knees to withdraw some Stimpaks. "C'mere. Give me your arm."

"Why are you answering to a fucking ghoul?

The Courier set three of his Stimpaks on the ground next to two Sunset Sarsparillas and palmed the knees of his pants. "Well…"

"Well?"

"Well," the boy repeated, not breaking eye contact with Boone but looking at him through his eyelashes, almost sheepishly, "I may have been asked by Manny to check it out."

Anger swirled in the pit of Boone's stomach, dynamic and red hot and threatening to burst over the top. But Boone was NCR. He knew how to hide his emotions, his anger, any display aside from obedience. Besides, stone-faced silence was far scarier than someone ranting and raving in the first place.

Boone knelt down in front of the boy and got so close to him their foreheads were almost touching. He could clearly see the kid's massively dilated pupil, unresponsive to light, or the change in light, as it may be, by Boone's sudden approach. He saw the Courier's busted lip, and he watched as the kid's tongue darted out to lick at the wound.

"You got me ripped to shreds for fucking Manny?" Boone roared.

That was the first time Boone launched himself at the Courier, and it would not be the last.