"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our program. This is Mr. New Vegas, and each and every one of you is wonderful in your own special way."
Sunlight streamed into the dirty room through the boards over the window. Myina groaned and rubbed her eyes. What the hell time was it anyway? Or day for that matter?
She rolled out of bed and stretched her aching muscles, grabbing her one and only towel, a lucky find out here in the wastes, and heading for the bathroom. ED-E trilled a good morning tune softly from his post by the bed and Myina hummed in response.
"It's just about time to get you some news." Mr. New Vegas' voice was a strangely welcoming sound. Myina turned up the volume on her radio so that she could her his fatherly voice over the rush of water she ran in the tub.
"NCR officials at Camp McCarran were relieved when technical difficulties with its monorail line to the New Vegas Strip proved easy to fix. One anonymous official told us a serious mechanical failure would have been a disaster because of the age of the train and the scarcity of the replacement parts."
The monorail. She'd always wanted to ride on that. She still had dull memories of her first visit to New Vegas. As always she had approached in the dark of the night; the monorail had passed and Myina had been somewhat hypnotized by the sight of these lights racing their way through the desert. It had been the first time she'd seen anything like it. Artificial light wasn't a terribly common thing in the Mojave, except in more established settlements. Things Myina tended avoid. Even New Vegas was but a an oddity. Something to marvel at for a short time, and then happily leave be.
The warm water did wonders for Myina and she was soon feeling more refreshed. She dressed in her simple clothes, not feeling a need to wear her armor; her faded jeans, a somewhat large but light-materialed black shirt, and her skull bandana wrapped over her head. Her hair was starting to really grow back where it had needed to be shaved by Doc, but it was still very uneven, and the scar seemed to make more peaceful folk nervous, so she wasn't too keen on letting it show.
Myina scarfed down a modest meal of Cram before shouldering hers and ED-E packs, telling him she'd be back. The sun was already setting as she made her way to Dinky. She must have slept through the day. Myina wasn't surprised. She'd been utterly exhausted by the time she'd returned to her room, and she'd only had mere moments to crawl out of her armor and underclothes before collapsing in bed.
She'd all but forgotten her encounter with the stone-walled sniper named Boone until she'd taken a few minutes to soak in the bath. She couldn't deny that the man's story tugged at her heartstrings, but it was nothing she hadn't encountered before. All the travelling she did meant she tended to come across quite a few people with their own heart-wrenching tales, usually told to her by some lonely man who was several whiskeys ahead of her at whatever local bar she'd decided to occupy for the day. And of course, her bounties. They almost always had some reason for doing the things they did. Most of them tried to use their bad luck as an excuse, hoping to appeal to her humanity to somehow let them walk free. It never worked. Well, except once.
It was only her third job, shortly after finding employment with Randall & Associates. She'd been tracking some dip named Cavendoh near Utah who'd beaten a local farmer to a pulp and was wanted, dead or alive, by the town council of Rounding. This was just before Caesar's Legion had swept in and shit all over everything, so a renegade town drunk was still pretty high on their priorities list. Myina had managed to track him to a cave several miles outside of the town. Cavendoh had given her a story dripping with sorrow about how the farmer had raped his wife years ago and then killed her so he'd spent months drinking away his pain until he finally snapped and taken his revenge. Myina had taken pity on him and decided that, since it seemed there were no further injustices to settle, the matter would be over. She'd foolishly let him go and decided to tell Randall he'd given her the slip.
A week later, Myina was horrified to discover that the man had killed two more in the town, one of the victims was a seventeen year-old kid who'd just started making his was in the world. That's when she learned the truth of the matter. Cavendoh had been a drunk for years before his wife's death; she was desperately unhappy in her marriage and had started a series of affairs around the town. The young boy, by all accounts, had merely had a crush on her. Giving her the attention she had so desperately wanted. But this still made him a target in Cavendoh's eyes, along with the two others she'd slept with. As for her death, it turned out she'd committed suicide. Left a note and everything.
Cavendoh was gunned down several days later by another bounty hunter, and Myina would have to live with the guilt for the rest of her life.
She always suspected that Randall knew the truth of what she'd done, but never said anything, until one day when she'd called in the completion of another bounty. He'd paid her, and with his usual masked expression and heavy drawl, told her "Yer startin' to learn this job isn't just trackin' the target, but learnin' the truth of the matter. The whole truth."
Myina never let herself forget that. The whole truth. Everyone had their own truths to life. But sometimes, they just didn't line up with others. Usually her jobs were cut and dry. Jackass knocked over a few stores. Now they're a locked up jackass. But sometimes, just sometimes, things got a little more complicated. She knew Boone was going to be one of those jobs.
The bell on the door tinkled as she stepped into the musty shop. Cliff leaned against the wall behind the counter and smiled as she stepped in.
"Well I'll be. It's been a drip since I've seen you. Was beginning to think you'd moved on." Myina gave a polite smile.
"Not yet. Just running some work. Got some salvage for you too." She dropped her bags on the floor and Cliff laughed. Today was his lucky day.
An hour later Myina had managed to sell all of the salvage to Cliff and had bought up his stock of .308's, 10mm's and 5.56's. She'd also grabbed the rest of his Stimpacks, Radaways and Rad-X's, always preferring to be on the safe side. She even bought a dinosaur, just to make his day.
About the time they were wrapping up, Manny trotted down the stairs of the sniper's nest. "Well, hey hey! There she is. You take care of the ghoul problem we've been having?"
Myina nodded. "That I did." She smiled again. "It quite a long story, and kind of an interesting one. But I'll spare you the details. It's all cleared. Should be safe for the salvage groups to head back in there again."
Manny grinned, the relief on his face almost infectious. "That's good news! Now about my end of the bargain-" The door to the shop opened swiftly and Boone stepped in, on his way to take up his post.
The sudden tension between Boone and Manny was practically suffocating. Even Cliff seemed to step back in anticipation of trouble. Myina could see Boone's eyes lock steely hard onto Manny for a brief moment, before flicking toward her, as if trying to decide how he felt about the two of them interacting. Then he merely nodded his head in greeting to Cliff, and swept sternly past the group, up to the sniper's nest. Manny's mood seemed to drop significantly.
Myina looked curiously between the two, then cleared her throat softly. "I hear there's something you guys call a bar just outside the gates. Let's grab a drink and you can tell me all about this checkered suit."
Boone closed the door to the shop behind him, and stared out over the darkening Mojave landscape. His jaw was clenched and he was gripping his rifle tight enough to turn his knuckles white.
If she was on friendly terms with Manny, would she give him a proper look? Would she actually do as he'd asked and find the person responsible? Or would Manny just tell her that his wife didn't deserve the justice? If Manny got to her first, if he warped her mind and she came back and told him she'd gotten nothing, then he'd have to . . .
It suddenly occurred to Boone that he had no idea what her name was. His grip loosened as he looked back on their conversation the night before. The woman had been obviously distressed, physically at least. Her hair had been rumpled and her armor torn in some places. He realized that she'd even had blood stains on her, and that she'd been holding her arm up to her chest, as if she'd injured it. And yet he had been so absorbed in his own thoughts, he hadn't even asked her name, let alone if she was going to be okay.
Weariness overtook him. Boone sighed deeply and slumped down on the stool near the opening of the dinosaur. A light wind caressed his ragged face as he looked out to the horizon where a slip of a moon was beginning to rise.
He should give her the benefit of the doubt. When he was honest with himself, his overbearing distrust for everyone in the town after Carla had disappeared, the way he'd treated them all with accusation and anger, it was no surprise none of them wanted anything to do with him.
He had to call upon what little patience he had left, or else he'd lose the help of the one person left who might be willing to help him.