A New Eden

The Sorrow of a Thousand Bullets

A/N: So, I usually don't put these at the front, but it seemed that people liked this so I'm trying to kinda boot this out but also make it good. If this one seems to bad I will unpublish it and redo it, just hang with me.

     Splayed out like an Iguana on a stick, a dark fate for a hero, a courier, stuck in the wastes, trapped like a molerat, dehydrated to the end. A dead man is a dead man, no matter how dead. Four limbs sprawled across an uncomfortable wasteland desert, backpack half a mile from these dry, dry hands. I looked down at the grooves and cuts and calluses from almost a year of fighting. Of no end to the sorrow of a thousand bullets. 

     I slowly hoisted my body of the dry ground, paying no attention to the bleeding on my hands and knees. I didn't remember much, blasts of yellow light, supermutants with slave collars on. Even Courier 6 wasn't invincible. I reached out into my backpack for the lifeline of fear. The NCR radio I was given when I was still gullible. It was a fear of absolute destruction that let them keep a man on the line, listening for the signal.

     "C-courier 6 to command. I'm down in sector E. N-need assistance. Over." I slipped out. The screen of the radio sprung to life as a transmission was found.

     "Command Tango, copy. A vertibird is being sent to your C.L.. Mind telling us what unit?" The radio replied. My eyelids were heavy as I tried to remember that blasted map. So complicated.

     I thought for a moment, of that map. I had no idea where I was. "Unit E9 or E8, just check there. I-I-I'll be there."

     I allowed my eyelids to slide down my eyes until I drifted off into space. Rescue will come. I knew it, they had to. They had to. Those last whispers echoed into my mind until the sound of propellers awoke my brain. The dust from that wind was so unbearable, I might've needed a whole new water bottle for my eyes. They touched down and two medics rushed to me. I remember feeling their tacky plastic gloves before my mind finally gave out and my vision flooded with memories of better times. Before I knew what a gunshot felt like, before I didn't even have time to trim my beard before I was berated with more mission from the small dwellers of the wastes.

     My senses were flooded. I was cold, and overheated, and my face was wet. There was beeping in my ears, but it was from my pip-boy, and so far away. I couldn't open my eyes up, because they were open, and I could see. Nothing smelled different. Nothing ever does. A stale taste of iron in my mouth, a dry tongue. A deflated spirit. Screaming was stopped, the world was spinning, and now I was grounded. I touched the face of someone, a doctor. My vision cleared up from it's haze. I sprung up and searched for my Big Iron, but it wasn't there.

     "Sir, uh, whatever your name is, Courier. You're with the Followers. Old Mormon Fort. You were uh... you were dehydrated. We got you some water and wrapped up some of those cu-" the medical overseer was swiftly cut off as I planted my hands on his cheek and stood up, realizing my full height above him. I wasn't actually terribly tall, it's just that this man in particular was very short. I am 5'11, and he seemed to be about 5'7. I reached back to the bedframe and grabbed my gold duster. I was given this duster around a month ago, and it's travelled with me ever since. I looked through the tent door and cursed under my breath.

     "Sandstorms are usually tame in Freeside, and especially in the Fort, but this one's pretty vile. I'd stay here if I were you. But I know you're not going to listen, are you?" the doctor said. I whipped my head around at him in a sly scowl as I finished draping my duster over my left shoulder. I slipped my feet into my boots and looked around. I hadn't brought my hat, because of course I didn't. I logged into my pip-boy and discarded it from the list.

     I felt my muscles strain from overwork as I lifted my arms up to grab an old cowboy hat from the shelf. Guessing by the dust it accumulated it was a piece of scrap picked up off the road that never got used, still a footprint on the side. No matter, I took a step into the beyond with an old leather mantelpiece upon my head. The gritty sand that pestered the land pelted my face like the water on a hot-hot rockface. My tired knees worked their hardest until I reached the gates, my securitrons opened the gate for me, and I was in the wonderfully preserved world of New Vegas. I had some human security guards escort me to the thirty-eight, which was coincidentally the amount of times the guards had to pick me up of the spit stained concrete. The steps were the hardest, my will wavered with every muscle that contracted. Luckily the high walls of Vegas protected us partly from the sandstorm, but the sand fell off the walls like a thin layer of dust on the antique hat I plucked off the shelf.

     I indulged myself in some tequila and sugar bombs as I watched the sandstorm settle down and the gamblers and drinkers of my fine oasis respire in the worldly pleasures of the prime establishments I so prided myself on. I had ousted all of the major baddies. The White Gloves were purged of their cannibalistic habits while the other fine establishments were pushed into being more... fine. I made sure Benny's cur were ousted from the Tops. Now New Vegas was safe and equal.

     I allowed the Followers of The Apocalypse to shack up in the old NCR Embassy, but they're pushing for the Ultra-Luxe. I might break, too. The White Gloves have given me a lot of sass as of late.

     But a recliner is a recliner, and a Sarsaparilla after Tequila is just that. A sunrise over Vegas, however, is a sight from the 38.

     But soon an old obligation will get in the way of this paradise.