we're all out of agave sauce

[starsandgauntlets]

Alright, I'll do it for a pair of zap gloves and matching earrings, that's my final offer.

Hey! I drive a very hard bargain, just ask any of the other Scribes. Or, uh, don't, I'm pretty sure they're doing the thing where they pretend I don't exist again. But shows what they know, I'm the only one who can make a half decent Brahmin burger around here. That's a highly valued skill in our neck of the woods. No, really, it's in the Codex, right next to the part about pretending the last two hundred years haven't happened.

But I've been told I have an unorthodox interpretation there.

Comments

[the_price_of_freedom]

A well-made Brahmin burger is nothing to sneeze at, true.

[starsandgauntlets]

Hey, you think that's impressive, you should hear about how hard it is to get home with the groceries. There's something in the mesquite pods that makes the radscorpions extra stingy.

[the_price_of_freedom]

I will take a queen radscorpion over a Cazador nest any day.

[starsandgauntlets]

Are they that bad? I wouldn't know, I usually end up sitting in the dirt for awhile until the wooziness goes away, and then when I look up again, they've all mysteriously died from bullets. Mostly bullets. Sometimes we mix it up and there's lasers, instead.

[the_price_of_freedom]

The wooziness sucks in a group, but I'm a pathfinder. The biggest teams we usually operate in are pairs, so cazadors can be a real threat. Then there was the time I met some asshole who'd read one too many books on genetics trying to make a deathclawzador.

[starsandgauntlets]

And that's when you found him killed by a huge stinger in his own lab, right?

[the_price_of_freedom]

And two prototypes that I had to deal with. I fired off so many shots with my modified plasma defender that I burned out the emitter coils. Had to rebuild the top half of the gun with salvaged units. Also went through nine fragmentation grenades, twenty-six ten gauge shells, and a stop sign.

[starsandgauntlets]

Ooh, you modify 'em? Did you just add a scope or did you go for something with a bit more oomph?

[the_price_of_freedom]

I reinforced the emitter coils normally with a better palladium alloy. It's the same one used in the power regulators for Advanced Powered Armor, especially Tesla Armor. I also tightened the discharge node and increased the draw from the energy cell. I get half the shots, but they're compact, burn hotter, and travel about forty percent faster, putting their speeds closer to laser weapons than before. Downside is what burns hot burns bright, so stealth goes right out the damn window when you fire one of those bad boys.

[starsandgauntlets]

Jeez, seems like you can just waltz into a store and pick up some power armor, these days. You ask, hey, where are the mini-nukes and the shopkeeper says oh, in the fridge, next to the beer.

[the_price_of_freedom]

Not quite. Let's just say that for a while, we had more armor than bodies where I'm from.

[starsandgauntlets]

Yeah, we could do with about, oh, say, a dozen recruitment drives around here. Too bad we've decided on the classic hide in a hole in the ground strategy instead.

[the_price_of_freedom]

Join the club! We hid in an Air Force Base in the remains of old Washington State. Not lacking for Vertibirds, either.

[starsandgauntlets]

I wish we got an Air Force Base, but the only one around here's Nellis, and they've got enough howitzers in there to level the map. Sounds like you're really old school to me, though.

[the_price_of_freedom]

Down in the Mojave? I've been there before, and I do not envy you. Between the Fiends, the Legion, the NCR... It's a crappy place to be walking around in a T-51b or the like.

[starsandgauntlets]

Hah! That's what you get for rolling with power armor out there. Everybody knows potato sacks are the fashion of the future.

[the_price_of_freedom]

No thanks, I don't think I can rock the burlap like you. I like my riot armor.

[starsandgauntlets]

Even when you can fry an egg on it in the shade?

[the_price_of_freedom]

Merc outfits, then! Besides, it's hard to look good in a potato sack.

[starsandgauntlets]

You can't go anywhere on the Strip without turning heads in this getup. So, I guess you could call that a kind of perk.

[the_price_of_freedom]

Okay, it is a bit of an attention grabber. Couldn't you also get that from a really cute dress?

[dontdewitt]

Two hundred years is a long time to try an' ignore.

[starsandgauntlets]

It's easier when ignoring the situation lets you keep doing what you always have and pretend it works. Otherwise we might have to, I don't know, adapt or something. And that's waaaay too difficult, so it's stay in the bunker day for the next... hundred years, or until we're either destroyed or forgotten about completely.

But don't worry, the lack of sunlight does wonders for the complexion! It helps with the whole hooded mysterious wanderer look.

[dontdewitt]

Right. Sounds like that life's really been working out for you.

[starsandgauntlets]

Hoarding energy weapons is what all the kids are doing, these days. Well, no, not really, but if they were, we wouldn't be closed off from the rest of the Mojave. Society's reorganizing around us, and if we don't do something soon, we're going to get left in the dust. Or... maybe it's already too late for that.

[dontdewitt]

Might be. I really wouldn't know. But your chances are always gonna be better if you try to catch up.

[starsandgauntlets]

Now I just need to hypnotize the Elder so he'd listen to me, then we'd be in business. You don't, uh, happen to know if anything does that, right? Just asking, for a friend.

[dontdewitt]

... Maybe if you got 'em drunk enough.

[starsandgauntlets]

I don't know, I think he'd start to get suspicious around the fifth whiskey bottle.

[dontdewitt]

You think he'd survive five bottles?

[starsandgauntlets]

Well, he might not remember his name in the morning.

[dontdewitt]

Or what you suggested to him and he agreed to? Might not be playing fair, but you wouldn't be the first person who's done it.

[starsandgauntlets]

Just gotta hide a few memos from him and we'd be in the clear.

[dontdewitt]

Now you've got a plan. What's the first thing that's gotta change, you think?

[starsandgauntlets]

Hmm, well, we could do with a new wardrobe. But... really, I think we've got to start at the beginning. We can't just take dangerous technology away from people, that's clearly not going to cut it anymore. Our mission has to evolve or we... we just won't. What's the point of coming out of the bunker if we keep making the same mistakes that got us stuck there?

[dontdewitt]

Sounds to me like you've got some good ideas. ... You think if you just got the go-ahead from this Elder, everyone else would follow along?

[starsandgauntlets]

Just getting one of them to listen is gonna be the challenge of a lifetime, I'd have to count on a miracle to go for the sweep.

[dontdewitt]

You don't figure you'd be better off walking away?

[starsandgauntlets]

...Sometimes, I admit. But... they're my family, so I can't just leave them like this, even if all we do is argue.

[dontdewitt]

Family, huh. Yeah, I get that.

[starsandgauntlets]

Bunch of chuckleheads, you know?

[dontdewitt]

Yeah, I hear that's how it is.

[exuberancies]

Why would they pretend you don't exist?

You seem like fun!

[starsandgauntlets]

See, turns out 'fun' isn't written in the Codex, so they wouldn't know it if it wore neon tubing and danced the hula.