Chapter Two: Bargaining

Jack checked the time. He had woken up around noon and a couple of hours had passed since, so he figured he should get going soon. He went over to the store next to the saloon and talked to Chet.

"Hey, Jack. How are you doing? I heard you were shot in the head, guess it takes more than that to keep you down."

"Yeah, Chet, I heard the same thing. Doc patched me up and I'm back on my feet, but I seam to have lost a few marbles that he can't put back. At least the ones that had memory in them."

At first Chet smiled at the joke, but then his eyebrows furrowed and he said, "Wait, what? Are you pulling my leg?"

"No, not really. I remember walking through that door behind me before and now that I'm here I remember that this is the place to buy stuff, but looking at you I have no idea who you are. Trudy told me your name but other than that, I'm drawing a blank."

"Ah, um, wow." Chet was dumbfounded for a second, then said, "You know if you didn't have such a reputation as an honest person I'd think this was a joke, but judging by that big-ass bandage over your ear your probably telling the truth. Well, I'm sorry for your head there, but unless there is something I can do to jog you memory your probably here to turn in some loot. What do you have for me this time?"

The ensuing battle of prices and promises was one that should have been written in epic poems for future generations. Chet was a tightwad and Jack had no money, but using his reputation, a few owed favors and the promise of a large discount on the next trip's loot Jack was able to acquire what he needed. There where only about two dozen rounds of .45-70 Gov't, so he also got a cheap varmint rifle with a few score bullets, a satchel to carry things in and he finished it off with a very bad condition set of leather armor. In short, Jack walked in dirt poor and walked out with enough to get by on.

He went back to the saloon to change, and when he was done he asked Trudy, "So what did Sunny mean by 'girls want my caps?' Also, I just talked to Chet and he expected a hefty profit of loot when I walked in the door, why?" Sunny wasn't at the bar, a drunk in the corner said something about her chasing geckos.

"Well, your job as a courier gets you paid enough to get by on. On top of that when you run into trouble on the road you loot everything valuable from the people that messed with you and that means you have more than average when it comes to caps. That is what she meant by, 'girls want your caps,' though like she said, before that, you youth, looks and reputation around here "

"Oh, well I didn't know I had it made." Trudy shot him a look and he corrected himself. "Money-wise, that is. Not, um, with girls or anything."

She nodded and then continued, "Yeah, that is if you survive. Usually you walk out of here with top shelf armor, packing a hundred or so bullets and with a head screwed on straight. You be careful out there until you get back into the swing of things."

Figuring it was time to get going, he bid goodbye and started south. He passed Sunny cooking half a gecko over a campfire and waved, heading down the rutted and decaying road toward a town in the distance.

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Primm held few answers. The director at the Mojave outpost, a man who named Johnson, gave him details about the delivery, the most important being it was supposed to be delivered to The Strip's North Gate. Unfortunately, the old man could not help with a direction on the Checkered Suit Man. Being inquisitive, Jack also asked about a strange broken robot that was in the building and the director, knowing he was good with electronics, said it was a botched delivery with no papers to go on, so he could have it if he could fix it. An hour later he started heading out with a creepy looking floating robot with the designated code ED-E in tow.

Jack was going to follow the lead towards The Strip when the newly installed sheriff of Primm conversely told him the men were seen going farther south, possibly through Mojave Outpost and into NCR territory. This led to a violent trip down the I-15, in which two separate Viper Gang groups that passing merchants warned him of were ambushed from cover and easily taken out. One of the leaders was wearing a trashed set of reinforced leather armor, so he cannibalized his own to repair it. He made it to the well-monitored Outpost just to find that the trail went cold; no one had seen the conspicuous men. He stocked himself with .45-70 Gov't ammo, a good portion of it hollow point and the rest he disassembled and reloaded by hand for maximum anti-armor capabilities, by trading the varmint rifle and it's ammo along with weapons and ammo from the Viper Gangers.

Travel from then on was easy. His armor wasn't very good, but it was light and had enough chunks of bulletproof parts sewn into it that it got the job done. He kept a few grenades on hand because he found they scared away any animals that he didn't feel like wasting ammo on. The humans were a bit more stubborn, and their items were cashed in at towns along the way for caps. Now Jack knew what Chet had first been talking about, he made a good hundred caps every week or so, and then spent about half to refill his water bottles and buy medicine before moving on. The profits were quite good.

A few weeks later on his way to The Strip Jack found himself helping a group of NCR farmers. Their fresh water supply was being irradiated somehow and they were willing to pay a large sum of caps to anyone who could solve their problem. Though he wanted to get to find the man that had shot him, as time went on he knew his chances of catching him were quickly dwindling, and since the pay was very good he decided to try his hand at it. The farmers suggested looking in a nearby pump station. There he found a terminal that told him that pipes running close to a nearby Vault were being irradiated, so he went back and said he could fix the problem if he had a radiation suit to keep him safe. One of the NCR soldiers had a connection in the science department at Camp MaCarran, which he re-learned was the main base for the NCR in the area, and the next day an Advanced Radiation Suit was delivered by a squad with other supplies like medicine and farm tools. He traded for a a dozen anti-radiation chems and, now fully equipped, went to search the Vault.

The exterior was inhabited by geckos, as well as a portion of caves, but the Vault itself, was bathed in low-level radiation and had several feral ghouls wandering aimlessly. Though they seamed to lack any human sense of pain, they were still no match for the powerful rifle and the extra damage done by the bullets that exploded on impact. The suit's clear plastic visor impaired his aim slightly, but he didn't have a problem because ED-E's laser took care of any ghouls he missed. He had felt safer ever since the robot joined him simply because it's sensors could detect anything that was trying to sneak up on him.

After breaking into several locked doors he eventually got to the Overseer's office. From there he was able to get a floor plan and find the reactor, as well as unlock a door to the armory that he thought would be worth raiding. When he got to a terminal that allowed him to shut down the reactor that was radiating the area, he found a two hundred year old help message say that some residents were stuck in the reactor room and to let them out. He knew that there was no way in hell they could still be alive and for a second wondered how horrible it would be to be in that situation, but pushed it out of his mind and shut off the reactor.

Then he went to the armory and found it was still stocked with weapons, armor and ammo; the prospector's dream come true. He slung several high-end weapons, such as a few assault and marksman carbines and a sniper rifle, from the shelves over his shoulder, leaving the heavier things like the minigun and the missile launcher (why would they need a missile launcher underground?). There were several suits of lightweight security armor that looked like a slimmed Vault version of police riot armor. They were made of a material on par with the few combat armors he had seen, so he took as many of them as he could, almost overburdening ED-E. There was a box with the mother of all locks on it at the back, but he could not spend the time picking it while standing in radiation so he tilted the box until it was standing on it's narrow side. He heard it's contents slide to the bottom, so he quickly grabbed a riot shotgun from a nearby shelf, loaded it from a nearby ammo cache and then fired it into the empty end of the box. Using this method he was able to extract a small, strange looking energy weapon from the mangled box. Noticing he was starting to feel a bit queasy from the radiation he injected the needle end of a rad away into his arm and let it drip into his blood as he went back to the surface.

He returned the Radiation Suit and refused the reward, informing the farmers that the loot from the Vault would more than pay for his services. The Vault armor was perfect; strong and hard as steel, but lighter than combat armor. After removing the cloth Vault suits from the inside, he stripped his normal leather armor of the shoulder and chest reinforcements and sowed them onto the arms and legs, then slipped the vest of armor over the whole thing before putting it on.

Heading north to Vegas, he stopped by a store that he vaguely remembered as the place where he had bought his rifle from and unloaded his expensive loot for a total of four thousand caps. Taking his newfound wealth into the gate of Freeside, he entered New Vegas.