[IC] Fallout: New Vegas - The Slayers

[Robeatics]

The group walked along the road for a little while, eventually reaching the first, smaller craters of the blast zone caused by shrapnel that had been launched for miles. As they travelled there, Jordan said, “Damn, three of each? That’ll be more than enough to work with. As for the radio tower, I’ve been examining samples and taking notes on any new specimens. I’ve heard a lot of rumors that a lot of them are some real mean bastards, which just screams predator. So if there’s smaller little guys around a radio tower, probably near a water source, then there’s bound to be bigger critters drawn there too.” She thought of all the Deathclaws she’s observed from far off before, how she’d seen them decimate a herd of wild Bighorns in seconds, and silently prayed that the bigger critters weren’t, uh, that big.

She began scaling a crater’s lip to hop down inside and go offroad, struggling with all her junk until finally disappearing behind the dirt and sand. “The guy I talked to said to find a crater with a, uh, L-shaped hunk of metal in it, and to go northeast from there!” She dusted off the knees of her pants upon standing upright in the crater, and yelped when she felt something tug at her ankle when she began to walk. There, off-center in the crater, sat a little curved bone, something she recognized as a rib. It had gotten hooked in the fabric from where it stuck up from the sand, and as she wiggled to untangle it, she realized it was attached to something. “Shit.” She knelt, pulled her pant leg away from the bone, and kicked at the sand until the half-decomposed chest of a corpse was made evident. Through the sand, red, bloody flesh rose up, evidently gnawed upon by vermin until the wasteland winds buried it. The body had a strip of leather running across its chest, and as she cautiously pushed away more of the earth, an animal skull that had been attached to its rotten head was made clear. There was a gaping burn mark that drilled right through the corpse’s skull, a few stray maggots poking around the area but generally staying clear.

She frowned, scrunching her nose, and looked up at any of her companions whom had climbed the crater to investigate. “A Fiend, I think. Shit, I better hope this is just the work of some caravan guards.” She stood and turned her back to the corpse, beginning to climb out of the crater and look for the one that held the hunk of metal she was searching for. Just then, as her foot landed down on the slope of a crater, a bolt of red-hot laser whizzed by her left shoulder. “Shit! SHIT!” She slid down into the nearest crater, now nervously tugging out her rifle and waiting for the laser fire to die down before she rose her head to peek at her attackers. Where had the bolts come from? She heard her companions moving, but distantly, and sweat began to gather at her palms as she fumbled with her weapon. She hadn’t faced many people before, only once or twice, a long while ago. As a precaution, she shouted, “WE’RE NOT FIENDS! I’M WITH THE FOLLOWERS!” She could see, about ten craters down, someone’s helmet hovering by the lip of a crater before he darted up, raised his laser pistol and began firing again, forcing her to duck down. She could only make out about five helmets, from her quick glance, and flinched as a few conventional bullets, with a much louder mode of transportation, rang out over her head.

She heard the pop of a clip, and a lull in fire, so darted up, rested her elbow in the sand, and leveled her rifle at a crater. She gave a few off-target shots at anything that moved, hearing a curse from one of her assailants before he stood up to return fire. Her vision was cut out as she narrowly avoided a blast to the cheek, sinking lower into the crater to do so. Shit, this was bad. Who were these guys? Scavengers? Gang members? They looked like they were wearing NCR helmets, but she couldn't tell if they were stolen or if they were some misled patrol. Either way, they didn't seem to give a damn about the Followers.

[Bweoti]

From the first sign of relatively fresh remains, Dylan scouted back a crater, and popped himself onto the edge of the crater once he reached it. He didn't see the gaping burn through the corpse's skull, just fresh remains. And fresh remains mean nearby predators. By the time he reached the lip of the crater, he heard laser blasts, light fwip-fwips from a laser pistol. GREAT, Bandits, raiders, or some stupid pricks thinking that we're easy prey he thought to himself as he brought his rifle up to his shoulder.

When there was a lull in the firing, Dylan arose from his crouched position, the lip of the crater came up to his chest, and leveled his .50 caliber rifle on the ground. Jordan's head popped up with her rifle at the same time, right in his line of fire. "Damn," he cursed, but looked through his scope anyways, waiting for her to move. A shot nearly took her head off, which made her get lower into the crater. As soon as she cleared his optics, he gently exhaled and squeezed the trigger. A loud boom occurred, and the laser pistol wielding shithead crumpled to the ground, a gaping wound where his heart should have been.

Annoyed at this intrusion, Dylan shouted out as he slid the bolt action back and rechambered a round, "Hey, shitheads. Stop wasting my ammunition. Just kill yourselves so we can loot your bodies and get this over with." He sighted down his scope again, looking for another target to pop his head up. As he gauged his opponents, the hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle. Was that a clicking noise? A slight shuffle? Oh no. THEM too? Damnit. He dropped his grip on his rifle, turned and crouched while he drew his laser pistol, and looked for the approaching Radscorpion. "Guys! Radscorps from behind! Don't see it yet!"

[Frizan]

Raphael hit the dirt as soon as he heard the first shot ring out across the wastes. He had ducked into a crater a little bit to the left of Jordan, and already had his recharger rifle out. "Well, shit! So much for a stroll in the backwoods!" He peeked his head over the top of his crater to get a view of his assailants, and nearly took a bullet for his trouble. "FUCKING HELL!" What assholes! They almost took Raphael's head off. Raphael, still ducked into the crater, rested his rifle on the top of it and let out a hail of plasma. Raphael felt a wave of satisfaction as one of the bandits yelped in surprise, one of Raphael's bolts hitting just a few inches from his foot. Raphael yelled out with glee, "I can stay here ALL day! This little boomstick of mine doesn't NEED ammo!", and waited for the whirring of his rifle to tell him it's charged up.

The recharger rifle's cell fully recharged, Raphael got ready to send down another volley of plasma when he heard Dylan shout out something about radscorpions. "Scorps!? Fuck!" He sweeped his his eyes across the landscape for stingers, rifle ready to fire. "This is just god damn GREAT" Raphael thought to himself. "First these raider asshats, and now radscorpions. What next? A deathclaw pack?" While keeping an eye out for the scorpions, Raphael focused on the sounds around him, trying to detect any scuffling, footsteps, or gunshots.

[Robeatics]

Jordan flinched as the tell-tale explosion of a massive rifle sent a shudder down into the pit of her stomach. A soft, sudden gargle was the response, as far as she could hear, and risked climbing again to the lip of the crater to peer at her assailants. She narrowly missed getting clipped by a bullet flying to her right, leaning into her cover and lifting her rifle to the ready. The ominous scuffling of many legs across the dusty landscape echoed in her ringing ears, faintly, and her heart dropped. She could hear Dylan shouting about them, and her hand moved to the bottle of pills at her hip. Her mouth a thin line, she popped open the top, shook a few precious doses into her sweaty palm, and brought them to her mouth. They went down like dollops of ice water. Bullets and blasts rang out over her head, and, with renewed boldness, she looked to the sky, dared to level her rifle at the sound of a clip being shoved into its slot, and fired. A glob of plasma hit the nearest attacker on the non-dominant shoulder, wounding him, but not incapacitating. As the plasma bubbled into his flesh, he screamed and raised his rifle one-handed.

The shot struck her right arm, piercing the leather bracer there and making her jolt and fall off-balance. She stumbled back into cover and leaned against it hard, all but dropping her rifle to cradle her wounded forearm. Her head lifted shakily at the sound of skittering carapace, and found two small Radscorpions a few feet away, crawling toward the scent of blood, their black bodies gleaming in the scorching sun. One of them made a snapping motion for her right leg, and she kicked wildly, grimly jamming the heel of her boot into its face, smashing a few of its eyes and making it weakly pinch at her calf, damaging her leather guards but not yet slicing through. The other narrowly missed stabbing her in the face with its stinger, lodging it in the dirt inches away. With a rushed shove, it was sent on its back, sprawling in the crater and far enough away for Jordan to grab for her rifle. While one rose up, the one she was currently kicking was no longer being kicked, and instead was being melted. She stopped firing when its head had been worn away sufficiently, and before the second scorpion could go for another attack, its tail, followed by its thorax, was coated with molten plasma. Each kickback of her rifle sent an acute agony shooting from her right arm straight to her brain, a volatile cocktail of adrenaline and shock numbing it just enough to let her keep fighting for a few minutes more. Blood dripped into the sand and trickled down the slope of the crater as she shifted to again face her enemies.

A sort of buzz had hit. Her vision grew sharper, colors were clearer, and each bullet that whizzed by above brought with it a cutting stream of rainbows. She glanced over the lip of the crater. The man she’d wounded seemed to have stayed put in cover, and his companions continued to fervently use up their ammo. She could hear them shout among each other at a lull in fire, closer than Dylan or Raphael as she was, but could only make out the sound, and not the content. She let off a few rounds at a promising target, missing but discouraging him from getting out of cover. Her bullet wound was entirely numb now, a spike of unfeeling the only thing she received in response to her rifle’s kick. Two down, and it looked like only three to go.

[Bweoti]

A very large tail began to creep over the lip of the crater Dylan was in. Ready for it, Dylan pushed his laser pistol out at the scorpion's tail and started firing. One, two, three, four shots, all hit the target, and the tail shuddered and went limp. As soon as the fourth shot hit the tail, the tail turned and rapidly fled from his vision. "Got a big RadScorp running," he shouted to his companions. With the scorpion running, Dylan felt it was safe-ish, to head back into the firefight.

Dylan holstered his laser pistol and stood up, turning towards the rifle and firefight. He shouldered the .50 caliber rifle, took aim again, and searched for another target. He saw movement near the crater that his companions were in and aimed his rifle a bit to the right. After a few moments, a bit of dust jumped up as an elbow inched its way up, then another elbow, rather stealthily. Next, he saw an armored head as the man continued to crawl, elbow over elbow, towards the group's crater. "Not this time, pal," he mumbled under his breath. He took a deep breath and held it, aimed at the man, and waited for a fatal shot not through an armored head.

Then man suddenly popped up, aimed a shotgun at someone in the crater that Dylan couldn't see, and went, "AH HAAA!!" At that moment, Dylan had followed his quick rise, he let out his breath slowly and squeezed his trigger. The bullet flew through the air, found a soft spot known as his eye, swam through the cornea and into the brain, and exploded out the back of his head and into the helmet. The man dropped to his knees still clutching his shotgun, then tipped over and into the crater where Dylan's compatriots were at.

Dylan had not seen the man fall because he was sure of his shots and where they would go. He began to search again for another target, waiting for one to pop more than a head out of its hiding spot.

[Frizan]

People started dropping, fortunately nobody from Raphael's party. One of the bastards fell into Raphael's crater after getting popped by Dylan. "Serves you right, ya fuckin' asshole!" Just then, he heard clicking. VERY close clicking to his right. Without thinking, Raphael swerved around and let out a volley, and then heard the screeching of a radscorpion immediately after. There it was, twitching as the last of its life left its body, a radscorpion no more than two feet away. "Fuck! That was close..." Raphael whispered to himself. His recharger rifle whirred up again as he peeked over the lip of his crater. One of the bastards was distracted, looking for Dylan in a panicked way. The perfect target.

Fixing his sights on the man, Raphael prepared to fire off straight into his chest. Holding his breath and steadying his aim, Raphael fired his rifle three times. One went into the man's right leg, one missed entirely, and the last bolt hit him in the arm he aimed his weapon with. He may not be dead, but he's extremely wounded, and Raphael considered that a win. As long as the guy was out of the fight, it was one less asshole for Raphael to worry about.