Akira, Sunny, Cheyenne and the courier got off the beaten path. The earth was mostly barren, aside from the occasional patches of dry grass, prickly bushes, and some solitary trees with tufts of bladed leaves growing from the tops of each branch, the few of them that they had.
"Don't you have Joshua trees where you're from?" Sunny asked, noticing Akira staring at one of said trees, curious.
"They don't really grow outside of the Mojave," the courier pointed out.
"Huh. Didn't know that."
In the distance, Akira was able to spot a windmill towering over what looked like a large water valve sticking out of a thoroughly rusted tank. There was an improvised trough made out of concrete barriers. Some small bushes dotted with yellow flowers were growing around it. Scattered around the well were a few metal buckets.
But more importantly, there were a few geckos in the vicinity. They were large bipedal lizards with long tails, a meter or so tall, covered with grayish scales, their eyes uniformly reddish-orange. Even with their mouths closed, Akira was able to spot small sharp teeth lining up their mouths. Most importantly, they haven't noticed him and his little entourage approach them just yet.
They got within a few dozen meters and stood behind a large rock, out of the creatures' sights. "Okay, kid, you're on," Sunny proclaimed. "Go give 'em hell."
"We've got your back if they overwhelm you," the courier added, holding his pistol at the ready.
Akira stepped out of cover, crouched on one knee, and took aim with his varmint rifle. There were three geckos in front of him. He picked one at random, lined up the sights with its head, and fired.
There was a bang, and the lizard collapsed where it stood, like a puppet with its strings cut. Akira found that image somewhat uncomfortable – all his fighting experience beforehand boiled down to battling Shadows in a vastly different environment, and they had the dignity to dissolve into nothingness on defeat. In comparison to that, the gecko's death was unsettling.
The other two geckos turned in the direction of the bang, noticed him, and ran towards him with an angry snarl. He chambered another round and put it in the skull of the second gecko. The third one hit the remaining lizard in the torso, stopping him for long enough for Akira to put the fourth bullet right between his eyes.
"Nice," Sunny remarked, genuinely impressed. "Guess fighting these Shadow thingies you mentioned translated well to gecko hunting."
"Not… quite…" Akira said, removing the magazine from the rifle. He put his weapon away and reached into the pocket with the .22s in it. "The Shadows and us were taking turns, as silly as that sounds."
The courier watched him load the cartridges, a bit more mechanically than previously. "Are there any more geckos in the area?" he asked Sunny.
"There could be. There are two more wells I wanted to check on." She pointed at some half-destroyed windmill peeking from behind a small hill. "They're only a few minutes away."
"Great." The courier turned to Akira. "I can't make your enemies take turns, but the Pip-Boy comes with a little program that'll get somewhat close to that."
"Ooh, tell me more," Akira asked, curious.
"I need to activate it first, give me the device."
Akira outstretched his hand towards him and the courier started fiddling with it.
"The program's called Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. V.A.T.S. for short," the courier explained. "From your point of view, it'll slow down time, assist your aiming to a degree, and tell you how likely you are to hit a specific body part. You can even target grenades tossed at you, and blast someone's weapon out of their hands. You might get some use out of that last one with your thou-shalt-not-kill attitude."
"And how does it work?"
The courier grinned. "Magic." Noticing Akira's discomfort, he added: "I don't know the details, it's some pre-War technology nobody could reproduce. But it's harmless – I've seen a ton of vault dwellers over the years and none of them talked about any side effects of it." The courier released his wrist. "There, all set up. Press this button to activate it. You wanna go to the other well and give it a spin?"
Akira put the magazine back in his rifle. "Let's do this."
The courier glanced at Sunny. "Lead the way."
She moved on, and the other two followed. "You seem to know how to use these Pip-Boy things," Sunny said to the courier. "Did you use to have one?"
"Yep," he replied, as a subtle scowl manifested on his face. "The fuckin' Khans stole mine. It was one of the East Coast models too, I paid good money for it."
"East Coast?" Sunny asked, curious.
"Like, the other side of the continent. What used to be Massachusetts. They use caps there too, for some reason."
"And you have a reason to use it?" Akira asked.
"Yeah, they're backed by the water merchants in the Hub," the courier explained. "Like, you walk up to them, you give them caps, they give you water. NCR dollar was like that with gold, but the Brotherhood of Steel then destroyed their reserves and moved to fiat currency."
Akira found himself thinking about how every sentence from their mouth meant five more questions he had about the world he ended up in. "You're really educated about how it all works," he commented.
"You meet a lot of people when you travel," the courier shrugged. "Talk to enough folks and you'll pick up all sorts of knowledge."
The second well looked almost like the first one, complete with a few geckos around them not noticing their presence.
"Just get one of them with V.A.T.S. and we'll deal with the rest," the courier proclaimed.
Akira pressed the button on the device and felt the world around him slow down to a standstill. He took aim with some difficulty – it felt like he tried to move his rifle through water surrounding him. A bunch of rectangles appeared on the gecko nearest to him – one for each limb, one for the torso, and one for the head. The text in that last one read '60%' – Akira deemed that good enough and tried to fire as many rounds as the system would allow. The third one connected, killing the creature on the spot.
The world returned to normal speed, and the other two creatures turned towards him. One of them then had its skull ventilated by Sunny, the other tanked a few bullets from the courier's pistol before collapsing in a heap.
"Well, well," the courier quipped. "You're really quick on the upta-"
"Shh!" Akira butted in. "I think I heard something."
With everyone quiet, they have managed to hear a faint scream in the distance:
"Get off me!"
Without a word, Akira broke into a trot towards the source of the scream – faster than a walk, but not too fast to stop and duck behind a piece of cover if need be.
"Kid, wait!" Sunny shouted.
Akira wasn't listening. He ran up to a small cliff, only a few meters tall, that turned out to overlook the final water well. Below him, a settler was backing away from three geckos, trying to fend them off with a meat cleaver. She wasn't wounded yet, but she was visibly overwhelmed by the critters.
"Help!" she shouted, desperate.
A plan formed in Akira's head. It wasn't a complex or foolproof or smart plan, but with two armed adults and an attack dog about to catch up with him, it didn't have to be. With a battle cry of "Showtime!", he leaped off the cliff, and as he descended, he swung his left hand downwards so that the frame of the Pip-Boy connected with the top of the skull of one of the geckos. Boosted by gravity, the blow was strong enough to crack the gecko's skull with a crunch certain types of people would find satisfying.
Akira landed on the ground in front of the remaining two geckos. They correctly identified him as a bigger threat, and one of them took a swipe at him. Akira tried to block it with his left arm, and the claws left gashes on the uncovered skin. He hissed through his teeth, recoiling away. He let go of the rifle, letting it drop to the ground, and pulled out the Tokarev. At point-blank range he didn't even have to aim – the closer gecko got three bullets to the face and dropped dead, and the last one standing got the remaining five, just to be sure.
Sunny and the courier ran to the edge of the cliff with their firearms at the ready. "Who do we shoot?" the courier asked.
"At this point, nobody," Akira said, holstering the handgun. "The geckos attacked the lady here, but I… got them before they could hurt her."
Sunny shot the settler a glance – unlike the kid in front of her, she wasn't wounded, just shaken. "How many times did I tell you to not go to the wells alone and unarmed?" she said, with obvious disappointment in her voice.
"My- my revolver broke," she explained. "I wanted to borrow a gun from Chet, but he was having none of it."
Sunny sighed. "Just go back to the town. The road should be safe now that we cleared it out."
The settler turned around, about to leave, before she reached into the pockets of her apron and pulled out three soda bottles filled with water. "Here, kid. For the trouble."
She then marched away towards Goodsprings, ashamed. Akira put the water in some pouches for later. The courier jumped off the small cliff and approached him. "Lemme look at that arm."
"Should we go back to Doc Mitchell with this?" Akira asked
"Nah, it's just a flesh wound," the courier proclaimed, reaching into some pouch on his belt and pulling out a small sack. "Open wide," he ordered.
"Uh…" Akira recoiled away from it.
"It's medicine," the courier reassured him, lifting whatever that was up to his mouth. "Dried broc flower and crushed xander root. The same stuff they put in post-War stimpaks."
Akira was unconvinced. "I don't know what any of these things are."
"They're local plants." Sunny and her dog have caught up with the other two. "They'll make your vision a bit less sharp for a moment, but the wound will disappear before your eyes. More convenient than a bandage."
Akira sighed and took the baggie from the Courier's hand. "Fine. Down the hatch." He tipped it over and poured the contents into his mouth. It tasted bland, and texturally it felt like an undercooked carrot, ground together with too many dried herbs – not quite a powder, but it was loose enough to go down his throat without issue. "[Jeez…]" He reached for one of the water bottles with his off-hand and as he unscrewed the cap, he noticed the wound on his arm beginning to heal, as advertised. "Cool," he said, then drank the whole bottle – the heat of the Mojave was getting to him.
"That's the last of the wells, by the way," Sunny proclaimed, pulling out a cap purse. "You did good, kid, so I'm paying extra." She tossed it at Akira. "By the way, both ingredients for that healing powder grow nearby, so I could show you how to make a batch before you go along."
"I say let 'er," the courier added. "It's a useful skill for the road."
Having seen for himself how effective it is, Akira wasn't exactly opposed to the idea. "I will still reach Primm before sundown though?"
"Of course," Sunny reassured him. "The ingredients are on that hill over there, and there's a campfire… spot…"
Sunny trailed off, and the courier and Akira turned towards where she was looking. There was a campfire spot alright: a bunch of singed bits of wood, surrounded by cinder blocks so the fire wouldn't spread. Around the spot were six irregularly arranged planks, so people didn't have to sit on the ground. And there was someone sitting on one of the planks - a middle-aged tanned male with a buzzcut and mustache, dressed in black pinstripe pants and a blue jacket over a white shirt. A patch above his breast pocket read "NCRCF".
"What does the CF in NCRCF stand for?" Akira asked.
"Correctional Facility," the courier explained. "That's the name of that prison that they broke out of."
"He's a con," Sunny muttered, her rifle at the ready. "One of the Powder Gangers. Hey, you!"
The convict was, surprisingly, startled a bit. He turned towards the three plus dog. "Y-yes?"
"Why won't ya git?" Sunny barked. "I've already put a few of your cellmates in the grave, one more won't make no difference."
"Git?" Akira asked.
"Like, git along," she explained. "Get lost. Skedaddle."
"There is no need for tension, strangers," the convict proclaimed, with less confidence than everyone expected. "I'm not with the Powder Gangers, and I know what happened to Cobb's group. I'm not repeating their mistakes."
Gears started turning in Akira's head. This could've been a trap, there were enough cover spots for hypothetical gang-mates to strike. On the other hand, if it had been a trap, it hinged on using a guy wearing baddie colors as bait, making that rather unlikely. Akira decided to try turning on the charm. "We've started off on the wrong foot, sir" he announced, approaching him. "Let's try again." He got close and outstretched his hand. "I'm Akira, and you?"
The convict gave him a confused stare, then glanced at the adults behind him – they held their weapons at the ready, but weren't pointing them at him specifically. They didn't trust him, but they wouldn't fire without a good reason, and he wasn't going to give them one. "Name's Whitmeyer," he said. "Not that it matters."
"If it didn't matter, I wouldn't ask." Akira put on a subtle, non-threatening smile before sitting down. "And why are you here?"
Whitmeyer glanced at him with a blank expression. "Why do you care about a lonely con?"
"I'm just a caring guy." Akira decided a bunch of half-truths might work here. "And, well, while I'm not a convict, I was sentenced by the court, and I know how a criminal record messes with your life."
Sunny and the courier carefully approached the campfire spot and sat next to the two, curious where this all would go.
"Hm," Whitmeyer muttered. "And what did you do to get in trouble?"
"I," Akira made air quotes, "'beat up' a member of Parliament because he was getting handsy with some random woman, and I got put on probation for a year. I didn't even lay a hand on him, the asshole was too drunk to stand and tripped."
Whitmeyer was a bit confused. "Member of Parliament? Like, a senator or a councilor?"
"Councilor, right," Akira 'corrected' himself. "I was raised in a Vault, and the people in it used English as a second language. I get some words wrong sometimes."
"And what were you in for, Whitmeyer?" the courier asked.
"I ran with a gang back west," he replied. "One day we came across some NCR boys, fresh from a tour out here. We thought ourselves badass enough to take them on." He lowered his head and stared at the bits of charred wood. "We were so stupid…" he muttered, disappointed with himself.
"And you're the only survivor of that incident, aren't you?" Sunny asked.
"There were a few others," he corrected her. "But we all got separated and sent to different facilities, and I ended up here. In the same place these soldiers were coming back from. I kept my head down, did the work the guards told me to do, but then the others broke out, and you know the rest."
"And what do you plan now?" Sunny asked. "Pick off travelers on the I-15?"
Whitmeyer scoffed in response. "No. I'm not going to wait for the NCR, bounty hunters," he glanced at Sunny, "or the locals to get mad enough to fight back." He pointed at a small shack in the distance. "There's a bunch of cons there, trying to get some less corrupt folks to join some kinda militia in Westside, but I'm not interested. I just want out of here. Find some small town in California and lay low." He turned to Akira. "You asked me why I'm here. This is a good place to stock up before I head south – plenty of rad-free water, meat from geckos, and far away from townies with a chip on their shoulder. No offense, miss."
"None taken," Sunny said.
"You said 'south'," the courier pointed out. "You wanna go through the Mojave outpost dressed in prison garb?"
"I… was thinking of scavenging armor from some dead man on my way there," Whitmeyer admitted.
"Wow," Akira reacted, shocked and repulsed.
"I-I am not going to kill a man for their clothes or anything," Whitmeyer reassured him. "People just… die here." He winced. "Especially with all my cellmates running around. And it's not like I can go and buy myself a set of civilian clothes dressed like this."
"…I could go buy some for you."
Sunny, the courier, Whitmeyer, and even Cheyenne stared at Akira like he grew a third arm.
"What?" he reacted.
"Why on earth…" the first three words came out of Whitmeyer's mouth with some difficulty; he wasn't sure he hadn't misheard, "why would you help out a criminal like me?"
"Well," he replied, "putting aside that I'm a criminal too as far as the world cares, I just… empathize with a man that's alone in this hostile world. I might as well do my part to make it less shit."
"By letting a convict run away from his punishment?" Sunny pointed out.
"I mean," the courier butted in, "based on what we see of the man, he's already remorseful of what he did, so there's no point in the NCR running him ragged anymore. And if you wanna be cynical, it's one less convict in the area for the five caps you'll spend on a new set of clothes."
Sunny mulled it over for a moment. Just because she was willing to defend her hometown didn't mean she was petty or bloodthirsty. She had to admit the two had a point. "Yeah, fair enough. But he's paying these five caps."
"Of course." Whitmeyer pulled out a few caps from the breast pocket of his jacket. "Thank you, strangers."
"Don't mention it." Sunny turned to the courier. "I'm gonna go back to the town with Akira. Chet will be less difficult with me. Can you wait here with the guy?"
By the side of the road going south from Primm was a small building.
Before the War, it was a highway patrol station. The derelict police cars 'parked' in front of it were the only reminder of its past function. Now, it was a hideout for a few raiders, belonging to the Jackal tribe. The post-War environment had allowed certain raider tribes to flourish and prosper, but Jackals were not one of them. Compared to the other organized ne'er-do-wells, they were focused on short-term survival and thrills, preying on single travelers in small bands away from encroaching civilization.
Technically, that'd make them highwaymen, but language changed a bit over the past two hundred years.
Two Jackals were standing over a pair of some freshly murdered travellers in front of the building, checking their pockets for anything valuable. Predictably, there was little – a bottle of beer, a knife and pistol for some self-defense, less than ten caps between the two.
"Fucking garbage," growled the first one, kicking the corpse. "Why don't they have anything good on 'em?" she asked.
"Fucked if I know," the other replied. None of them followed the local news – or were bright enough to figure out to move to greener pastures.
"Shee-gah!"
The first raider clutched her head. There was something embedded in her skull now. The other turned towards the bang she heard in the distance.
She managed to see a bunch of folks standing on a small cliff in front of the Primm water tower. They must've spotted them standing over the corpses and (correctly) assumed they're dangerous. They also had rifles, and stood far enough that she couldn't even try to fire back and get-
That last thought was interrupted by a .22 between her eyes.
"Tch," one of the convicts departing Primm scoffed. "Let's clean up and move on before the carrion eaters show up."
I felt that slowing time FO4-style works better than the complete timestop of FNV for a story like this. I did not find a mod that'd make New Vegas' VATS operate this way, but I have Just Assorted Mods installed and it comes with a bullet time functionality. It's also available as a standalone mod, Just Bullet Time.
Whitmeyer's from Working on the Chain Gang. I really like that mod. I'm playing fast and loose with the details for story purposes though.