It is a surreal experience when the shark jumps you.
Especially when the shark jumped out of the waters of Lake Mead, in the Northwest of the Mojave Wasteland. As far as everyone was concerned, the only fauna on Lake Mead were some common fishes and lakelurks, not a half a ton three meters long tiger shark. Of course, if that was not insanity enough, the moment that the shark attacked, it was blatantly clear that the beast was a zombie.
There were entirely chunks of flesh taken out of the shark, along a good quarter of its face rotten to the bone, and putrid patches all over the body of the sea predator. On the other hand, it had a very dark sense, it would be impossible for a sea predator to swim around, so freely, on the waters of Lake Mead.
Now, everyone would admit that after a while, weird things became a common thing around the Mojave Wasteland. It was a Wild Wasteland after all. But even taking into consideration all the weird things that took place on the Mojave Wasteland, a zombie shark was one for the books. However, for the victim of the attack, who cursed loudly at being bitten by the bloody thing and thrashed around until he tore the rotting thing apart, it was not even in his top hundred of weird things.
Consequences of a long and very strange life.
Anyhow, the zombie shark was not the first undead strange thing that happened around, and that was more than enough to make the local predator worry a bit about what the heck was going on and to seek out the source of the undead rumors and wacky shenanigans that were taking place. Enough had the Mojave Wastelanders on their plates, with the pissing contests between the NCR and the Legion. New Vegas and the surrounding lands were a powder keg bathed in gasoline, and the place have pyromaniacs in spades. The Fiends, the Great Khans, the Vipers, the Powder Gangers, and several others would be happy to see the world on fire.
On the other hand, the bounty hunters' business is booming on the Mojave.
Since the first battle of Hoover Damn, the criminal rates outside of the "safe" heaven that is New Vegas, have gone through the roof. Violence and harsh living conditions were an everyday occurrence in the Mojave Wasteland, but with the arrival of the Legion all bets were off, and brutality became the new norm. The Legion was an expert in shocking and terror tactics, especially with their crucifixion fetish, and the inhumane tales of what the Legate Lanius did to its own troops.
Law and order were difficult to maintain on the best of days, and even the NCR, with their usual control freak pencil pusher empty speeches, had to admit that freelancers and independents are necessary to hunt down people like Cook Cook, Viola, Red Bear, and a long list of psychos that roamed the Mojave Wasteland.
Randall&Associates was one of the local bounty hunter businesses of the Mojave, and thanks to their latest employ, a man called Toro, the bounty hunter firm was earning quite the reputation and fame.
The shack where Steve Randall, the head of the firm, usually dealt with the petitions and prospective clients, was outside of Primm, not very far from the NCR outpost that set up shop at the side of Primm after the disastrous revolt of the Powder Gangers. The shack was the average shoddy building that one can expect all over the Wasteland. An emplacement that was unusual, even so, with the Mister Gutsy robot model that patrolled the shack surroundings, a place that had a nasty infestation of feral ghouls during especially hot days.
The robot was a military model, patched up pretty well, and left at the shack by Toro, as an additional security measure. Toro liked his actual job as a bounty hunter, and the last thing that he wanted is to get back to cash in a bounty, and found his new boss reduced to mulch for a pack of feral ghouls. Randall, good as he was with a six-shooter, could be overrun by a pack of feral ghouls like everybody else.
Such generosity was extraordinary on the Mojave, and one of the reasons why most of the biggest settlements of the Mojave welcome Toro whenever he drove in with his transformed small truck.
The rusty, but very armored, truck of Toro was a distinctive beast.
It was the living quarters of the bounty hunter, that drove the thing up and down the Mojave, much to the amazement of the locals, that would have sworn that such a glaring target would have become the target of a raider with a half-broken grenade launcher as soon as it appears down the road, in fact, even with the thick wheels of the trucks, the roads would have made it impossible for the truck to drive around, yet, there it was, safe and dandy, albeit, more than one battle scars could be seen on the truck.
Bullets marks, scorch spots, scrapes, and claw marks.
Whenever the bounty hunter was not inside, the truck was patrolled by a Senty bot with a very big Gatling laser, and, much to the crude amusement of most people, an upper chest armor made as if the robot was female. Toro called the Senty bot Vera, and the robot seemed way more intelligent than one would assume of the other examples roaming parts of the Mojave Wasteland.
Anyone stupid enough to try to loot the van, be it when Toro was around or not, usually ended up as decoration for the front armor of the truck. So far, only a skull with a centurion helmet has survived for two months, and the fellow Bounty Hunters at the Short Stick Saloon; the usual watering hole for the Mojave bounty hunters; had a running pool about what skull would be added next, or, how much more is going to last the centurion skull.
The usual route of Toro was Jacobstown, Goodsprings, Primm, the Mojave Outpost, Novac, or, more concretely the Short Stick Saloon near the settlement, Boulder City, Gunrunners or Crimson Caravan, Freeside, maybe New Vegas, the Thorn, and back to Jacobstown. The route varies depending on the bounty, or any possible job that he could have taken along the route.
On his way to hunt down a nasty bandito called Pancho Cortina, Toro decided to run up Boulder city, to the campground nearby, and take some time to run maintenance of his truck. Refilling the water reservoir of the truck, cleaning it up, and patching up the latest badges of honor that the violent Wasteland has delivered to his mobile home.
What Toro did not expect was for a zombie shark to jump out of the water and try to chew him, when he dragged the hose from the truck to the water.
The beast bite him, but even with the unholy strength that the zombie shark had, the teeth did not penetrate the rust black colored combat armor that Toro wore, heck, not even the, supposedly, leather coat that had over the armor, revealing that the materials were beyond the mundane.
The shark tried to drag Toro, but the man, buried to the waist inside of the putrid mouth of the shark, did not budge at all, instead, and with a long and loud series of profanities, Toro grabbed the sides of the jaws of the zombie fish and ripped the beast in two with impossible strength.
Covered head to toe on the gruesome remains of the zombie that he has just torn in half, still with the hands on the halves of the zombie shark, Toro spitted something that he hoped was just the black blood of the undead monster and proceed to toss the two halves several meters to the side, far from the resting spot of his truck.
Not even half a second later, a very distressed ED-E, or Eddy, as the machine has taken a liking to be called, floated down the truck, whistling and booming in alarm and distress, calmly rolling behind the floating eyebrow, came the intimidating form of Vera, the Senty bot that had the chest armor crafted as female. Toro could feel amusement of Vera at his situation, being one of his oldest companions, the intelligence inhabiting the custom Sentry Bot knew that the shark pose nothing but an annoyance to her master.
Eddy, on the other hand, was a wonderful, but a recent, companion, and it was not accustomed to the impossible feats that Toro could pull. Although Toro was operating at its weakest in the Mojave Wasteland, a far cry from where he fought against gods for the fate of entire worlds, alas, the Mojave Wastelands was a mostly humane environment, and Toro had to, at a lack of a better term, play human.
His actual body was human, although, heavily enhanced. All the enhancements of Toro's body were local, Toro reduced himself to a human state; prime beefcake, Vera's words; and then augment himself with this world's available upgrades.
Adamantium skeleton, cybernetic implants, soft genetic therapy, the entire package, that was utterly expensive, by the way, but the myriad of bounties all over the Mojave Wasteland happily footed the bill, one bloody finger at a time.
Oh, and the Sierra Madre gold stash, nightmare as it was the entire fucking debacle.
Of course, even with all the enhancements, it still was a very dangerous profession, and that was kind of the point. The thrill of the hunt and the trial by combat at the end of said hunts was a siren song for Toro. All his life, Toro has sought out challenges, and if to seek out challenges it was necessary to lower himself, then weakness was welcome, alas, hubris was not among his imperfections.
Reduce his own power, but upgrade himself with local augmentations to challenge the peak of the world?. Aye, that is the point.
Reduce himself to the average Joe level and challenge the peak of the world?. Nay, thanks, that's pure stupidity and hubris.
"I'm fine, Eddy", Toro waved his hands, tossing putrid blood around, calming Eddy with a soft smile. "Annoyed as hell, and with some bruises, but my Monocyte Breeder is already on it".
Concerned whistles.
"Do not worry, Eddy", the attractive voice of Vera came from the speakers of the Sentry bot. "Our boy is a tough boy, and this, shocking as it may appear from the outside, would be considered nothing but a hilariously surreal anecdote".
Vera's voice was identical to the voice of Vera Keyes, the pre-war world singer from whom the Sierra Madre was built.
During the nightmarish debacle, Toro uploaded holotapes with the songs of Vera Keyes to his pip-boy, and Vera, whose name was already Vera long before Toro put a foot on the Mojave, loved the voice of the starlet and decided to use it as her own from then on.
If we go by the Wasteland criteria, Vera could be considered artificial intelligence, but the truth is way more esoteric than that.
Vera was a pokegirl, one of the digital breeds created by a man called Sukebe on alternate earth that was a mixture of a grim post-apocalyptic world and a lewd version of pokemon.
Vera's human appearance was of a six feet tall voluptuous woman with magnificent curves, purple hair, red eyes, and cybernetic lines on her limbs, however, her true form was a CD-Rom disk, called Life Disk, residing inside Toro's truck, safely stored in a repurposed mainframe. A CPU that Toro ripped from Vault 34, and repurposed to serve Vera's mainframe. With Vera being a digital existence, Vera's mind was a miracle of multitasking, so it was easy for her to run the CPU, the Sentry bot, and be constantly connected to Toro through the latter`s pip-boy. For a digital being like Vera, the pip-boy, permanently connected to Toro's vitals, offered an intimate connection that was only surpassed when she took physical form, and Toro made her lose her mind through intense and passionate sex.
Pokegirls need sex, literally, unless they got "tamed"; a euphemism to make love; their minds started to deteriorate. Hence the previous comment for a grim apocalypse lewd version of Pokemon is an apt description of Vera's original world.
With a huff, but a smile on his lips, Toro walked into the waters, cleaning himself, his gear included, and putting the hose into the lake, so the water tank of the truck could be refilled. Bathing with clothes was hardly a problem with the heat of the Mojave Wasteland, as the patrols tend to repeat like parrots, the Mojave makes you wish for nuclear winter.
All in all, the worst of the nasty surprise of the undead shark, was how the bastard has cracked Toro's glasses. He really liked his sunglasses, which were a pair of authority glasses that Toro took from the cooling corpse of a renegade ranger during his early career. Fortunately, he had a couple more on the truck's armor locker.
Curious whistles and beeps.
"What have you found, Eddy?", asked Toro exiting the lake.
Vera has already moved the Sentry bot into a patrol routine and was taking care of the water refilling and running maintenance on the inside of the truck, calculating a quick route to the latest known spot of Pancho Cortina.
Toro shake like a wet dog, sending water from the lake all over the coastal lines, and walked to where Eddy was floating. The Eyebot has been upgraded a lot since the cheerful robot became a companion of Toro and Vera, and among that upgrades, including a very advanced scan. The scan was reporting the presence of very low life signals from the left half of the carcass of the zombie that Toro has torn apart.
"Yimir's balls", swore Toro, taking a combat knife from the storage space of his pip-boy, before dismantling a good chunk of the inner organs of the shark.
The data of the scan of Eddy imposed over a corner of the eyes of Toro, sharing space with the HUD and data display that all pìp-boys provide, the scan of Eddy had found someone, human, alive inside of the bloody zombie, something twice impossible, but the data were clear.
With the expertise of someone that has done the deed a million times, Toro dismantled the carcass of the shark, revealing a humane form cocooned inside of a disgusting parody of a necrotic placenta.
With a snarl, for Toro recognized the thing as a very obscure necromancer ritual that he has only seen once, Toro cut open the undead placenta, making the individual preserved inside fall to the ground of Lake Mead's coast with a low thud.
Whistle the fuck?
Toro blinked in unison with his robotic companion at the fallen human that has been trapped inside the shark. Both, Toro and Eddy scanned the unconscious, barely living; although it seemed a sort of preserving coma more than barely hanging to life; body that the undead shark carried around in a very disgusting parody of an undead pregnancy. The data that came from the scans were curioser and curioser.
Human. Female. 1.7 meters in height. Asian, with pretty tanned skin. Purple hair, just like Vera, albeit a shade darker than the pokegirl. Malnourished. Low rad poisoning, and several concussions and bruises all over her body. Nothing lethal, but enough to tell Toro that the girl has been beaten, quite thoroughly, before being encapsulated inside the shark.
Taking the woman out of the shark, Toro noticed that she was wearing a white shirt, black combat pants, boots, and a choker.
The moment that Toro saw the choker, Toro frowned. That piece of clothing, by itself, was not worrying, the problem was that Toro was feeling something odd from the choker, a familiar sensation that he did not like at all. It reminded him of darker times. Toro hoped, it will not be what he was fearing, but just in case, Toro grabbed the choker and snapped it out of the woman's neck. It cracked easily, tearing apart without all that much resistance.
With a deep sigh of relief, Toro stored the choker in a pocket, taking mental note of making a new one for the woman if it was of value to her, and after cleaning the woman from the worst of the gruesome remains of the placenta where she has been trapped, carried her bridal style to his truck.
Vera had already folded the table and chairs inside of the truck to create a comfortable bed, where Toro deposited the unconscious female. Opening one of the medical boxes at the walls behind the driver's seat, Toro picked up some medical supplies and performed good enough triage on the woman to take her out of any danger zone and on her road to full recovery.
In the meantime, Eddy went to his charger station, located at the side of the fuel depot, once there, Eddy connected himself to the GPS of the truck, and beeped for a set of coordinates. Vera's Sentry bot reeled in the water hose, and after securing it, the robot folded itself onto a metal case; that Toro pick with easiness back into the truck after leaving the mysterious woman on the bed; and Vera submerged herself into the mainframe, connecting with Vault-Tec satellites and any and all databases accessible to run a complete background check of the mysterious woman.
Vera was the one that gave Eddy a set of coordinates, the very discrete, private, and humble wooden shack that Toro crafted in the mountains near Jacobstown. The shack was a small, rustic, and very simple wood house. A complete off-the-gird dugout, that has come quite handy to excuse the absences of Toro from the Mojave from time to time.
Eddy ignited the truck's motor and happily drive out of the Boulder city Campground and onto the mountains west of New Vegas.
The reason why no one batted an eye at the truck, is because once the truck was in motion, it was automatically surrounded by a SEP field that made it practically invisible. A SEP field, a "Somebody's Else Problem" field, was a psyker trick that Toro picked up on the same world as Vera. Only strong wills would be able to notice that something was wrong, but by that time, the truck would be long gone.
The travel was a long one, and Toro had all the time in the world to attend to the medical needs of the tanned Asian woman, all of it with Eddy playing soft music in the background.
Inside the spacious living quarters of the truck, Toro has installed anything that he could need. A workbench, an armory with lockers, a small kitchenette with a Nuka-Cola freezer, a small bathroom, and even a mainframe from Vera.
In the driver's cabin, although the driver's seat was empty, there was a GPS, a display for all the snowglobes that Toro has found, the depot for the fuel, a second chair, and Eddy's recharging station. Originally there was a radio above the middle of the driver's cabin, but Eddy felt that it was redundant with Vera's mainframe, Toro's pip-boy, and Eddy's himself, so it was taken down, and the space used for all the wiring that the autonomous systems of the truck needed.
Once Toro ended the medical check-up of the woman, he left her rest and moved to the armor locker at the left of the bathroom, quickly disrobing himself, Toro stored the armor and coat in the locker. The metallic locker was a completely standard one, yet, there were enough clothes and armor inside to fit an army, the same went for all the storage containers all over the truck. They look normal, and even when opened, they will look normal, but they will contain an infinite number of items.
Quickly dressed with some khaki pants, Toro opened the freezer, took a Nuka-cola out, ice cold, as it should be, and after opening the cabinet over the kitchenette, Toro picked an MRE package. On the Divide, there were entire pallets of these, and it was easy to store them into Toro's pip-boy, and later, his truck. Taking a seat on a wheeled chair, Toro demolished the Nuka-cola and the MRE. The empty packages of the MRE went to a bin at the right of the bathroom, and the empty bottle to the cabinet over the kitchenette, recycling was paramount in the Wasteland, and the resilient material of the soda bottle was perfect for later refilling it with other concoctions, like cactus juice, or directly, purified water from the truck reservoir.
Sitting on the chair again, Toro picked up a cigar from a box at the corner of the workplace and started to smoke in peace, twirling the broken choker that he has taken from the unconscious woman. In the background, the accords of Radio New Vegas songs echoed softly, adding entertainment to the long voyage, but Toro was not paying the most famous radio of the Mojave any attention.
After a bit, Vera manifested her human form and snuggled herself into Toro's lap, that smiled and hugged her back. The couple has been together for a long time, and their bond had long ago hit the Delta-bond state, there is no need for words most of the time. For a bit, they just enjoyed each other company, the warm presence of your best half on your arms, and let the silence stretch for a bit longer.
Just enough time for Toro to end his cigar.
Sadly, duty calls.
"I have nothing about her", broke Vera the silence, after Toro had put the remnants of his cigar on the ashtray at the corner of the workbench. "Her face does not appear on Vault-tec databases, neither any of the Vault bases that we cracked, not even House's databases had anything on her".
Toro did not worry about Vera's infiltration of House systems. As intelligent as House is, and Toro recognized that House is one of the most brilliant minds that he has ever met, he is of flesh and bone, not a creature of the digital realm. In essence, House is a professional diver, and Vera is a great white. Both can swim and dive, but your money will always be on the apex sea predator. Vera's presence on the systems of House was, for the moment, completely camouflaged.
"I expected that much", Toro raised the broken choker, so Vera could see it.
Vera's expression darkened at the visage of the broken choker.
"Them". Hissed with enough venom on her tongue to drown a nest of Cazadores.
"Maybe, but the choker broke way too easily if it was the case". Informed Toro. "I could snap the thing with easiness, and she did not react at all".
"Oh", blinked Vera.
"Then the master is dead", soon followed with the next logical step, "although that hardly explained how in the blazes did she end on the placenta of an undead shark".
"Someone is sniffing around our neighborhood", quickly deducted Vera, "a new player with those nasty buggers' support, or, someone screwed the pooch royally, and their slaves is now dispersed to the winds".
"My money is one the second", nodded Toro, who has taken a liking to make small, inconsequential gambles during his stay in New Vegas.
Thanks to Vera, Toro was banned from all Casinos in New Vegas due to breaking the bank several times in a row. Those caps footed the bill for some pretty guns from the Gunrunners, and a couple of upgrades to their truck and Sentry bot.
"Let's assume that's the case", Vera rubbed his muscular chest, as she pondered the idea and how it could come to be. "It is not that rare, more often than not, the masters tend to screw up with the wrong crew and suffer fates worse than death".
Vera loved the rugged and hardened appearance of Toro. It amused Vera greatly, that Toro was the auburn-haired, ripped, doppelganger of a young Clint Eastwood. Vera chuckled at the memory of Toro watching "For a fistful of dollars", and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".
"So, judging from the shark, they went against a necromancer, and failed". Resumed Vera to the bare bones.
"A powerful necromancer", added Toro in all seriousness. "The grotesque placenta-like container was an obscure ritual of Necrotech, we are talking Void Circle of Necromancy here".
"Oh", stiffened Vera.
Way back, Toro, albeit he was call by another name at the time, had to duke it out with the supernaturally enhanced humans called Exalted, the kind of powers that the Exalted of all kinds could pull out of their sleeves begged disbelief.
Beep, Beep.
"Thanks, Eddy", replied Vera and Toro to the beeps of Eddy.
The truck had reached the private hideout of Toro in the middle of nowhere, there, they could tend the lass, and with any luck, get some very needed answers.