Fallout 1. Chapter 1

_**Chapter 1**_

_**The Rise and Fall of a Vault**_

I am Alexandros, I was given the title Deadshot by my father when I was 10 after I took out a bandit with a single shot from half a mile away with his M24. He knew I would make a reputation for myself.

I may not have been born in a vault but I was raised in a similar manner, mainly due to my parents' vault opening a year before my birth. They always told me about how similar life in Vault 50 was to the surface. I found it strange that their vault was the only one of its kind, prepared as though it was going to open in the middle of a massive war, it was heavily connected to famous mythologies, and it was able to manufacture it's own weapons and ammo. I guess one could say that Vault 50 was the only truly successful vault ever made.

Sure the super mutants and the Enclave have gotten in...they didn't last long. The entrance room was the size of a small apartment complex, the walls covered in holes for the citizens to shoot through, catwalks with armor plating, and a pit of fluorosulfuric acid for quick and clean body disposal.

The original purpose of Vault 50 was "Create and maintain a protective civilization to distribute to other Vault populations that were forced to fail." We have been able to maintain that purpose with a minute amount of change to the ideology, instead of distributing our forces we took in settlers who wished to have protection and semi-peaceful lives.

I was lucky enough to start a kind of government for the town that grew around the entrance to the vault. There were 10 men and women on the council, 5 Vault Citizens and 5 Settlers, all of which were highly skilled in many fields. There was Leroy Krow, an ex-Brotherhood Outcast that lost a good portion of men trying to move west, he came here with Akiba Cerus a skilled mechanic, Celina Adams one of the best medical personnel we have now, and Clark "Wrath" Green best damn soldier I've met that wasn't from the vault so far. The fifth settler was Sarah Paxton, a 224 year old ghoul strategist, she was stationed in Anchorage when the bombs fell.

The five Vault Citizens were Durante, Celestina, Akantha, my wife Kyra, and my best friend, Farrell. I was deemed Protector. The system was made to keep order among both the citizens and settlers, citizens are punished severely if caught antagonizing settlers, this can't be said the other way around though, the citizens know they are superior to the settlers. The matter has come to the council and we all agreed that we needed to erase the line between Citizen and Settler.

The following morning I had announced that all Citizens should learn from the Settlers about life in the wastes, sure we had good experience from the vault but we needed to know from other sources, we needed to know the dangers. I saw many agree that day, but I saw many more disagree, I was even questioned by my own officers about the decision...I gave them the option to either take lashes for insubordination or brave the wasteland for a few years without their preferred weapons and armor. They chose the whip. "You were supposed to be officers of the peace, for the people, not just those you know, but those that live under your protection." I looked down on them as I said the words that stung worse than the whip. "You're all being demoted."

That was the first time I sub-consciously thought of self-induced exile, how that would fix anything, I had no idea.

3 weeks after my officers were replaced I had to do a public execution of a guard that went one step too far, he had been caught interrogating an innocent Settler for no reason other than to have a laugh. The execution occurred the day after he was caught. It seemed like everything that we had worked so hard for was falling apart, why were the Citizen guards doing this? Are they scared that the Settlers will take their jobs? Are they mad at me for some reason? I wouldn't find out until after I left, I shall save that little story for later, I'm telling the story of the years after I exiled myself, sure I had a wife, a son and daughter, but in order to protect them I had to leave and they knew that.

When I left I took my trusty Barrett .50 Cal; modified with a lighter, stronger stock, a detachable silencer, and reduced recoil; my AK-74U, a few boxes of ammo for both, some food, a few bottles of water, and medical supplies.

Two years after I had left a massive super mutant army came from the southwest and destroyed the town, the survivors were only those smart enough to know that the concrete walls couldn't stand against the mutants, the citizens tried in vain to combat the army. It was a 15 minute war, they may have had an excessive amount of firepower, but they didn't have nearly enough soldiers.

I should've known that nothing lasts forever, I was naive...but, at least, now I can start anew, learn from what I did wrong, stop dwelling on the past and look to the future.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Chapter 2**_

_**The First Month**_

The first few days in exile was rough considering the limited amount of clean food and water. Damn, how I wished there were settlements closer to the vault, but, from the map my pipboy pulled up on the surrounding area, it seemed as though there was a small town 10 klicks south east of my position. Somehow, the thing had even been able to give me the name and state, Elko, Nevada.

It took me the good part of a day to walk there, when I got within sight, I ran a threat analysis to find that the town is of moderate but no immediate threat. I was able to spot a few decently armed guards on the wall around the place, 3 of 'em held AK-112 assault rifles, 2 held DKS-501 sniper rifles, and 2 on mounted M60s with ammo crates sitting nearby. "Moderate threat, my ass. This place is nearly a fuckin' fortress."

As I made my way to the front gate one of the snipers held a hand up signaling me to stop. "State your business here, stranger." he commanded with an authoritative voice . "Just a traveler," I answered, "I'm just looking to resupply after a long journey."

"Just a traveler? Well, if that's the case, might I ask what someone like yourself is doing with a rifle so rare that the only known to still exist are in the hands of very few high ranking soldiers in the NCR?"

I glanced at my Barrett before answering. "This came from my vault. I customized it myself."

"You expect me to believe you're from a vault? Ok, where's your blue jumpsuit with the number of your vault on it?"

"My vault wasn't typical, it was literally one of a kind, vault 50's jumpsuits are black with the numbers in red." I turned around to show him the red 50 on my back. "Oh, and they have heavy armor plating sewn into them, capable of stopping a point blank blast from one of your AK-112s."

"Is that so? Well, you are certainly going to draw quite a bit of attention." He looked to someone on the other side of the wall, "Open the gate, we've got a new guy in town." He looked back at me, "Try not to start any fights with the drunks if you go to Jack's Bar, I'd hate to see what would happen to the guards if you got pissed off."

I put a small smile on, "You don't have to worry, I don't get drunk easily and I always respect laws, but someone might have to drag them out if they decide to try and start something." He just shook his head not trying to hid a smile. "What's your name, traveler?"

"Deadshot. You."

"Nathan Graham. We'll have to talk more another time."

I'd decided that I would resupply the next day, and that I would just relax and have a drink at Jack's. It was around an hour and three bottles of good whisky before Graham walked in.

"You drunk yet?" he asked, but was taken back by the way I looked at him and answered with a slight chuckle, "It takes far more than just three bottles of whisky to do me in."

"Yeah, I can see that. Anyways, let's get to the questions I wanted to ask. Deadshot isn't your real name, so what is it?"

"Well, Deadshot was a title given to me by my father and pretty much everybody else from the vault, as to what my name is, it's Alexandros...it's Ancient Greek and translates to 'Defender of Mankind' if you were wondering."

"Well, that answers my question, I guess. So, why did you leave the vault?"

"Let's just say that it was a...personal vendetta and leave it at that. Oh, and I'm not really from the vault, I was born in the village that was budding up around the entrance to the vault."

"Sounds like Vault City in California, they started by using a G.E.C.K. I heard what they were like and I agree that they were some stuck up bastards, if you had the least bit of radiation poisoning, you weren't welcome there. I'm glad somebody went in and tainted their water supply and disabled their water chip."

"Sounds like they got what they deserved."

"Yeah. Hey, you wouldn't mind helping out with a small raider problem, would you?"

"If it involves raiders, yeah, I'm in, tell me the general direction and I can pick 'em off from here."

"What's the range on that thing?" He said, motioning to the rifle.

"Well, it has a max effective range of just over a mile and a half, but if I can get a headshot on a bloatfly over a mile away from the wall of my town, I think I can hit something like a bandit from farther. Does that give you an idea on why I was called Deadshot?"

"I've got to see this." He said and other people around the room agreed.

"Alright, if someone could set up targets at varying distances, I'll give you all a show!" I announced, to be answered with a resounding cheer.

"You plan on making yourself known, aren't you?" Both Jack and Nathan asked, I could only shrug. "Well, it's better than doing nothing with my life, isn't it? Besides, I kinda wanna leave my mark wherever I go from now on, be it on the people I interact with or the creatures I wipe out to make a route safer for travel."

_Day 4_

With a loud crack, my rifle went off, and one of the bottles placed at 2500 meters exploded a second later. Those that wanted to try to out snipe me were watching through their scopes, most stood silent, some couldn't believe what happened, Nathan was the only one to say anything. "Well, looks like we have our winner in this little contest!" he announced. There was a resounding cheer that went on for about 15 minutes and quickly died away.

"Well, Deadshot," Nathan said, "looks like you found something this town could use to attract more people, thanks. It might not look it but this town was getting close to becoming another ghost town."

"Really now, well you're welcome. Hey, what was it you said about a raider problem last night?"

"Oh, yeah, you see, there's a rather large group of raiders, at least 30 strong, about 2 miles to the south..."

"I'll take care of it." I cut him off. "I'll leave in an hour. Get a bottle of whisky ready for my return would you?"

He chuckled at that. "You and your whisky, 4 days away from home and you're addicted to the stuff."

"Well, back home we didn't have as big a supply of it, plus it would've been a bad image if the townspeople saw me drinking a lot."

"How high of a ranking officer were you?"

"I wasn't an officer, it would've been more of a problem with 'family honor'."

"Hmm, well, judging from what you've told me about Vault 50, that makes sense."

"Yeah...well, I think I should go get my pack ready to take care of the raider problem."

After that I made my way to my rented room in Jack's to get my shit together, though I did take out my loading equipment and made a few special rounds for the raiders, and gave my AK and Barrett a good cleaning.

I looked at my pipboy for the time, it read 2:43 p.m. I should be back before 6, I thought. I made my way downstairs, told Jack where I'm going and bought a round of drinks for everyone.

"You know you're gonna make yourself go broke by doing this, right?"

"Nah, I'll be fine, especially after I come back from taking care of these raiders."

"You are an odd one." I barely heard him as I walked toward the door. "See ya, I'll be back before nightfall." and left. I made one last stop at Casey's General Goods for some 5.45 rounds for my AK and a few snacks for the long walk.

I'm sitting crouched atop a hill observing the raider encampment, at least 17 tents situated around a larger one. "This looks more like a small army encampment. Oh well, shouldn't be that much of a problem...time to attach the silencer." It was on in seconds and I laid prone and focused on a guard at the farthest end.

After the first raider went down, an alarm raised and everyone went to that side of camp...perfect. One by one they fell, and before they even thought about where the bullets were coming from, more than half of them were dead so I decided to finish the rest off in person.

I concealed my bag and rifle next to the shriveled husk tree under some dead bushes, it's times like that that I'm glad that both of which were mottled with varying shades of brown for easy camouflage in these parts of the wastes.

I picked up my AK and silently made my way behind most of 'em, "Hey, bitches! Lookin' for me?" I shouted from 5 feet away, opened fire, dropping 5 before the rest could react, and jumped behind a large log for cover as they fired back. "Holy shit, you guys suck. I'm only one man and damn near all of you are already dead because of me." I taunted and laughed. "Fuck you, asshole!" one of 'em shouted back

Ok, at least 12 left. I reloaded my mag and waited to hear them do the same, then opened fire again, with more precision this time, dropping another 8. 4 left. "One of you idiots go around the other side..." I heard one say. "Oh, I wouldn't try that, especially if your leader says it loud enough for me to hear."

"You're dead!" another shouted back. "Alright...hey, here's a present!" I shouted and picked up a grenade sized rock and chucked it back. I heard 'em shout in terror before realizing it was a trick and looked back to me only to see the bullets flying already and tearing into them.

I searched them to find out what caused them to amass this close to Elko. I found a bounty poster among the leaders belongings, it depicted Nathan for 10000 caps, alive. "Well Nathan, it looks like we have something to talk about."

It was just getting dark when I made it back to town, I still couldn't believe that fight only lasted 5 minutes, oh well, it was fun though. I stopped by Casey's to sell the pieced together weapons and armor I took from the raiders and got a handsome amount of caps from it, no need for a reward I guess, 1379 caps is definitely enough for provisions I'll be needing when I decide to leave.

I saw Nathan exit the bar, my guess was that he was looking for me, I was right. "Deadshot, you're back, so I take it they're gone?"

"Yeah, but I want to talk to you about something I found on 'em."

By the worried look on his face, I knew it was something he didn't want to hear.

"Ok, let's take this inside, someplace private."

I agreed and we both went back to Jack's and up to my room.

"Ok, so, what did you find?"

Pulling out the bounty poster, I said, "This, why are you wanted for 10000 caps? Who the hell did you piss off that badly?" I asked chuckling.

He noticeably loosened up at that. "Well, I use to set slaves free. One night I got caught, but when they put the bomb collar on me I easily got out when they turned their backs, so the second I got the chance, I stole a combat knife out of a slavers pocket and stabbed him in the heart. I made my way to 'Big Man Sal', the head of that particular group of slavers, and stabbed him in the spine while he slept, crippling him, and left."

"So, they'll keep coming after you until either you die, turn yourself in, or he dies?"

"Yeah, why, you wanna go kill him?"

"I'm thinking about it now."

He shook his head at me. "You're asking for a death sentence, but after you came back from killing 30 of his men, you can pretty much handle yourself."

"Of course I can handle myself, I was a little disappointed in them though."

"Why's that?"

"Let's go downstairs, I'm sure everyone would get a kick out of this short story."

I had decided to stay in Elko for at least a month before moving on, Nathan decided that the best thing to do to get rid of the bounty was to kill Sal so he decided to join me in my travels. I had also helped create a trade route between Elko and Vault 50, the council agreed to the arrangement when they heard it was me that wanted to set it up. I had offered to get Nathan some armor like mine but he rejected the offer, saying that it would slow him down. At least I was able to get him to get a new gun. He got an M4A1 with detachable silencer, ACOG scope, and foregrip. When we were finally ready, we said our goodbyes, Kyra and Farrell even came out with one of the supply wagons to see how I was doing, I could see it in their eye that they wanted to knock me out and drag me back with them but decided not to...it would've been sad if I had known that this was the last time I'd ever see them.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Chapter 3_**

**_The Long Road_**

It's been a week since we left Elko, walking the crumbling highway heading south west. We've come across an abandoned town, my pipboy couldn't name it but we were able to find some food in the stores. For some reason though the wildlife was ignoring us, we've walked past a dozen molerats and not a single one tried to attack, I even tried shouting at one and poked it with a stick, but the thing just waddled past as if I wasn't even there. We quickly left after that, not wanting to figure out what the fuck was going on, though, to my embarrassment now, I learned years later that the cause of the molerats' ignorance of us was caused by a little perk called Animal Friend, I had forgotten about all it due to it being common sense to shoot the wild creatures that came too close to the vault.

...

*Transmission_Error* 16:34 p.m.

*Autocannon_02_Disabled_As of_March_23, 2298*

Son of a bitch, those armor clad assholes just took down one of my damn turrets. Systems AI 01, Alexis, raise back-up auto-turrets, four through six.

*Back-up Auto-turrets_04 Through 6_Enabled_and_Engaged*

Fuck, it's too early in the story for this...Systems AI 03, Casey, disable speech-to-text function.

*Transmission_End* 16:36 p.m.

...

...

*Transmission-Begin* 21:47 p.m.

...

Where was I...oh yes, walking that long fucking road towards Battle Mountain, or should I call it Raiders Hellhole since the place is basically...well, let's just say that we kinda remotely detonated a radiation bomb that we found in the little town of raiders, setting their nerves on fire and spiked in pain whenever they touched something, most died, the rest turned into ghouls, making their pain everlasting. For anyone that has ever traveled near the place, they heard pained screams from within that never ceased. Nobody ever found out why, never wanted to, only me and Nathan knew the reasons behind the screaming town.

"What did we do?" Nathan asked. It had been a few days since we left Battle Mountain, and I was glad to see that he started talking again. "Well," I answered. "we just made over 100 raiders suffer for the rest of their unnatural lives. Why do you ask, not used to making that many people suffer?"

"You could say."

"Well, I honestly don't know what to say that'll help other than this, kill raiders to save those more deserving of life...we may not have killed them, but they still won't be able to do anything to harm anyone else ever again."

"You're right...let's never speak of what happened there."

"Agreed."

We continued on in silence until nightfall where we set up camp, had a small diner of heated cram and some whisky I scavenged from the molerat town. I know I'm an alcoholic but I cut back on it later on.

It was during my shift at watch, dawn was just an hour away when a deathclaw walked out from the shadows of the forest, looked at me briefly and walked past me, through our camp and left. I nearly shat myself. I ran over to wake Nathan up. "C-c-come on buddy, t-time to wake up!" I said hurriedly. "What's happening!?" He shouted, jumping up. "N-nothing right now, it's j-j-just that...itsnotsafehere, not anymore. W-we need to get moving NOW!" He looked at me strangely. "What the hell has you so scared right now?" And, as if on cue, another deathclaw stalked out of the shadows, and looked at us for a minute before leaving in the same fashion as the first one, but this time, it came a little bit closer and bumped me and Nathan aside. I shat myself that time, and I do believe Nathan did as well.

In mere seconds we were packed and sprinting down the road again and didn't stop until sometime in the afternoon.

"Note to self." Nathan said breathlessly when we finally stopped. "Whenever you're scared like that, it's time for me to be scared shitless."

"Hey, be glad I was the one carrying the heavy shit the entire time."

"We need to find a water source to wash this shit out." My belief was confirmed.

We spent the next few hours looking for a stream and found a good sized creek, where we set up a camp and waited while our pants dried enough to be worn comfortably.

"So, how far did we run?"

"Well...we ran for most of the day, and it's 7:37 now, so I'd say that we ran about 24-25 klicks."

"And how close are we to the next town?"

"I don't know, all this thing is showing me is that we are east of some mountain peak and there doesn't appear to be anything else for miles."

We were ready to move by mid-afternoon the next day, and we decided to make camp during the day instead of the night, so that we'll be able to see possible threats before they scare the shit out of us again. Went back to the road and continued on.

It wasn't long after nightfall when we saw campfires begin ignite and light up the road farther away. I pulled my rifle up to see who was lighting them, it was traders, I even used V.A.T.S. to confirm it, finally some friendly faces after the hell we went through. After a short introduction of pointing our guns at each other and talking, the traders allowed us to sit at their camp. I took the time to tell them about the non-hostile deathclaw encounter we had, sparing ourselves the embarrassment of what we did after the second one left by not saying anything about it.

I asked one of them where the nearest town down the road they came from was, they said that the city of New Reno was 5 days down the road and the ruins of Old Reno were another 10 days away.

Nothing really important happened between then and Reno other than a pathetic fight with 3 raiders that ran out of ammo 5 seconds into the fight, they tried to hit us but we just brushed their swings aside. All-in-all the trip was boring as hell after we met those traders.

*You should leave a footnote on what level you were, Deadshot.*

Dammit...fine, Ellen.

Footnote: By best guess from 5 AI units, level 27 reached. New perk, Night Vision lv. 1. Effect; reduces the overall darkness level by 10% per level, increases ranged accuracy by 15% to 30%.

Whoever reads this, you can guess what type of AI Ellen is.

Systems AI 03, Casey, power down terminal 016328.

*Transmission_End* 22:53 p.m.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Chapter 4**_

_**New Reno**_

*Transmission_Begin* 08:45 a.m.

2 weeks after we arrived in New Reno.

"So, what's the plan now, Drake?" I asked.

"Well, you could always SHUT UP! It's not my fault you're here, I told you it wasn't any of your business in the first place."

"Yeah, well, you could've told us why you were being looked for, we could've helped you out." Nathan commented.

"I did tell you."

"After we woke up from being knocked out." I chided.

"Oh shut up. Besides, where's that friend of yours?" Drake asked.

"Who?" I feigned the question.

"I think he's talking about our friend that just absolutely loves explosives." Nathan chimed in.

"Oh, that friend. Well, Drake, maybe you should ask Nathan here where he is instead of me."

"Fine. Nathan, where is your demoman?"

Nathan pulled out a small cylinder, half an inch in diameter with a small red button on top. "Does this answer your question?" he said with a growing smile.

Drake's eyes widen in terror. "You guys are fuckin' crazy!" He shouted. "Somebody, get me away from these psychos!"

"Oh, don't be like that." I told him. "Hey, if you let us go, my friend here won't blow up your building with most of you inside." I said with a devilish smile.

"Bullshit!" A voice boomed out over an intercom. "You wouldn't risk killing yourselves just to get me and my men."

"Oh, wouldn't I? You see, unlike you, I don't really have anything left to live for, I lost my home and family to raiders." I partially lied. "And my friend here is on the run from his own home because he was framed by someone that blew up their school. So let us go if you want to live, and don't think of running, he's set enough explosives up to wipe this warehouse and 10 city blocks clean off the face of the earth."

A long, drawn out silence commenced. The door on the other side of the room opened and 3 men with all of our equipment came in, set it next to us and set us free before leaving.

"Ok, you're free, now please leave."

We gathered our things and began to leave. We didn't take more than 2 steps before Drake shouted, "Hey! You're just gonna leave me here!? I thought you said you guys would help me!?" I looked back to him for a moment then went back and knelt down next to him and whispered, "Don't worry, this isn't the last you've seen of us." Then said loudly, "Shut up, Drake. We never promised you jack-shit." I looked through my bags and put on a look that would scare a deathclaw.

"Nathan, arm the bombs." I said quietly, and he did so. "I had 5 bottles of whisky, so tell me, WHY DO I ONLY HAVE 3!" I shouted at the men that captured us. I heard a bottle break on the floor of the upper section of the building accompanied by someone screaming "YOU FUCKING IDIOT! He's gonna kill us all now!"

"You fucked up!" I shouted, and, with speed I didn't even know was possible, drew my AK, broke down the door that the men had come through, and started gunning them down.

Within the span of minutes everyone within the warehouse was dead, except the one that stole my whisky, he was laying unconscious with a broken spine, shattered arms and legs, more than half of his ribs broken, and suffering from a concussion. I was surprised that he didn't die instantly from all that, guess that, somehow, none of the ribs punctured a lung.

"Wasn't that a little extreme?" Drake asked.

"Nobody messes with Deadshot's whisky." Nathan said grimly.

"Damn right." I said, kicking the unconscious man one last time. "Alright, I feel much better. Let's loot these assholes and get out of here. Oh, Drake I feel like I've gotta tell ya, that detonator isn't connected to anything, it was just a ruse to scare assholes that think they can get the better of us." The look on his face was priceless.

There was a crowd gathering outside, wondering who was shooting up a gang warehouse. They quickly parted as we made our way out, each of us weighed down by packs that were overloaded with weapons.

Word quickly spread throughout the city to not fuck with a man in a jet black trenchcoat with a big, red 50 on the back, or his two friends. Some gangs apparently didn't get the memo, because three more groups of thugs tried to mug me when I was alone. I may be deadliest when I have a gun in hand, but my hand-to-hand skills are not something to be underestimated, especially for those that can't handle a weapon to begin with.

I might want to add that I got the coat shortly after entering the city, there was a tailor that just so happened to have a black trenchcoat and I asked him to make a few modifications, cutting the metal plates from my jumpsuit and sewing them into the coat was one of 'em.

We made a really good amount of caps from the gangs that thought they were tougher than us. 23895 in total. Many casinos tried to make me gamble, greedy bastards. Some even tried to force me to by sending their goons to make me 'reconsider'...they returned to their bosses with nothing but broken arms, a few broken ribs, and several missing teeth. I even had to shoot some of 'em. Damn, now that I look back on it, that city was just full of idiots, wasn't it? And those little events happened within the span of a week.

I can't say they were all idiots, though. One of 'em gave me some much needed information, the location of the slaver that was after Nathan. Yeah, I think I scared everyone at Psyches Casino, the bouncers at the door opened it as soon as they noticed me wanting to go in, much to the displeasure of the people waiting to be let in, until they noticed the red 50 on my back, to which they shut up pretty quickly. I let one of Psyches guards inside know that I wanted to speak with him, he quickly led me up to his office and I waited patiently for Psyche to get his composure together for this unexpected visit.

"Psyche is ready to see you now." The guard said and opened the door to let me in.

"Thank you." I handed him a few caps. "Here's a tip for being so helpful. By the way, how are the teeth I left you with, still hanging in there I hope." I said with pleasurable satisfaction.

He glared at me, then remembered who he was dealing with, and shied away like a dog with his tail between his legs.

"Well, if it isn't Deadshot, my favorite smoothskin in this shithole." The ghoul said. "So, what can old Psyche do for ya?"

"I want Information," I said, cutting to the chase. "On a slaver. Big Man Sal, ever heard of him?"

"Heard of 'im? He's the biggest slaver in this region, hence the name. That can't be good news for him if you're looking for info on 'im. I'm bettin' you want his location, well, his base of operations is south west in Carson City. You might want to avoid Old Reno though, so when you reach the settlement of Fernley get off the highway and follow the main road south, when you reach the ruins of Silver Springs, head west following the California Emigrant Trail."

"That...was more info than I thought I'd get." I said, slightly surprised. "But why just give it to me, I had expected you to ask for payment first."

"Well, unlike the rest of the imbeciles in this dump, I know who not to piss off. Sure, you don't seem like the kind of guy that would kill a man just because he asked for a small payment for information, but I didn't really feel like taking the chance, especially since what you did to that one guy that stole your booze."

"Ok, but how do I know you wouldn't send someone ahead of time to warn Sal that someone is looking for him, or that the info you gave wasn't a lie?

"Because of two things, smoothskin. One, I hate that guy, I want to see him die, you and your buddy aren't the only ones. And two, I would never lie to someone I know that could rip through my guards like they were nothing. I don't know about the other casino bosses, but I prefer to not be on the bad side of a man like you, hence the reason why I only sent two guys to ask you as nicely as they could if you would like to gamble here."

"And that's the reason why I came here first, you don't persist when dealing with someone that can destroy everything you have worked so hard to build for yourself. I think we can be friends, as long as none of the guards that know what I am willing to do decide to try to get the better of me." I pulled a half bottle of whisky out of a pocket in my coat. "Now, wanna have a drink on this deal?"

"It may be a cheap drink, but I'm not about to turn down an offer from a new friend. What are you going to do now, though?" He asked as he got up to get some glasses from a shelf behind him.

"Well, that depends. Is there any chance that Sal will move anytime soon?"

"Nah, that fat bastard won't move to a new location for about another 5 months. You've got plenty o' time to get there and give his guys a good ass kicking." He paused to take a drink before continuing. "Could you do me one favor though, kick him extra hard for me, that bastard took someone dear to one of my bartenders."

"I'm starting to feel a little sorry for the guy, he's in for a _lot_ of pain. Tell ya what, I'll make him watch as his slaving business crumbles, then I'll torture him for a few days, and then kill him. Sound good?"

He looked at me wide eyed. "Damn, you certainly don't act like anybody from a vault of any kind, even if you weren't born in your vault."

"I've always been a little bloodthirsty," I explained. "My parents saw it as an improvement on people from vaults, especially if they were taught to quench the thirst with killing raiders, slavers, junkies, wild animals, and hostile mutants."

"Well, if there's anything you think you need, just ask and I'll see what I can do."

And with that, I left. I'd take him up on that offer later.

...

_Deadshot, Omega Pack is retreating. How do you want to proceed?_

What part of 'don't disturb me' didn't any of you guys understand, I'm trying to leave my story for anyone that wants something to read in this post-apocalyptic hell that humanity has made of Earth, it's also going to be my metaphorical tombstone, containing what I did for this world to try and make it a better place.

_Sorry, man, but Colonel Phoenix wanted your word before issuing a command, after all this is the first time they've retreated since starting this damned war._

Maybe after losing almost half of their men, they've decided to reconsider, they didn't really have that much after my raid on their HQ in...

*Deadshot, the speech-to-text function is still enabled. Do you wish to disable it?*

...No, Ellen, whoever reads this thing will want to know a little about what's going on, besides it's not like they won't find out anyways, I'm going to have to go into more detail later.

Now to the matter at hand. Tank, tell Phoenix to build up the defences while Omega Pack is retreating. I'll help out if absolutely necessary. You're dismissed unless you have something else to say.

You know what, I think I'll just go help 'em, I'll be back to finish this chapter later. Ellen, end transmission.

*Transmission_End* 9:37 a.m.


End file.

Fallout, Adventure