Notes From New Vegas 62
Apr. 21st, 2015 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynNotes From New Vegas 62: Ring-A-Ding-DING, Evil Chandler Bing
When last we saw our heroine, Janice had just had another Wizard of Oz experience thanks to the Floating Head of Howard Stark. Well, not really- Mr. House didn't want to achieve immortality through his reputation or his kid, he wanted to achieve it through not dying- but close enough. It was now time for Janice to go and see about having a little word with Evil Chandler Bing.
I don't know how long the New Vegas Strip is supposed to be physically. Not very big compared to the real thing, but big enough that for coding purposes the folks at Obsidian and/or Bethesda split it up into three segments so only part of it would have to be loaded at a time. The Lucky 38 and the House of Skank across the street are separated from the rest of the Strip by a sheet-metal fence with barbed wire on the top, which gave Janice a little bit of unease, but there were no robots demanding credit checks and no sign of any Homicidal Stupids lying around. Just a fence and a sliding gate. Maybe that made it easier in-universe to contain potential problematic patrons or wall off areas in the event of tribal assaults or Fiend rampages or something. I don't know. I AM TRYING TO BE WATSONIAN HERE AND IT IS NOT WORKING. I'm going to go with the wall being up because the Omertas at the House of Skank got tired of their hookers trying to escape to somewhere that let them wear more clothes.
(I wish I could say that was just a joke, but there's a plot later- well, we'll leave off on that until Janice gets to it.)
There wasn't really anything all that unusual about the next part of the strip- casino on one side, casino on the other, monorail track up near some building Janice didn't recognize, and a lot more people in NCR uniforms, not just tourists. The Tops had a number of bigshouldered men in pre-War suits standing around outside, and even more of them when she stepped in; turned out they were the Chairmen, which is to say the former tribe turned Family (in the Mafia sense) that ran the place. Benny's particular Family, according to House.
And, like Benny, they all talked like they'd just escaped from a Frank Sinatra movie.
No, seriously. The one at the front desk called her 'doll' when he asked her to leave her weapons in the lockup at the front desk, they referred to themselves as the coolest cats on the Strip, and the words 'swingin' good time' and 'ring-a-ding-ding' came up more than once when she asked about the place. It was weird. The only other person who'd thrown around that kind of slang had been, you know, the guy who shot her in the head. That's probably why she was rattled enough to just ask directions to Benny without going into detail; she might've been the Chosen of Ferris Bueller, God of Liars, but somehow it didn't strike her as the greatest idea to try to talk one of her attempted murderer's close buddies into letting her walk around with actual weapons on her person just in case she felt like stabbin' his boss.
(This is not to say that she couldn't have done that. You can present the guys at the front desk with evidence that Benny a) tried to kill you and b) is a dirty rat-fink and they'll let you have your weapons if your scores are high enough. I don't think Janice had the evidence objects on her at the time, though, so it seemed like trying to make the speech checks wouldn't be quite enough.)
Anyway, Swank (the most talkative of the Chairmen up front) sent her off to the main casino floor and wished her a good time. Benny was down there, with a bunch of bodyguards, and I really kind of wish he'd been drinking something because the spit-take would've been pretty epic. Alas, it was not to be; he just made some shocked squeaky noises about Janice being alive and asked what was going to happen next. She started prodding him about the Platinum Chip; he offered to discuss it with her somewhere other than, y'know, the main floor of a casino crawling with opportunistic patrons. Which... made sense, actually, so Janice agreed, but insisted he leave the bodyguards somewhere else.
(Alas, "you put down your Follower with the plasma pistol and I'll put down my Rat Packish thugs and we'll try to kill each other in private like civilized people" did not appear in the dialog.)
'Somewhere else' turned out to be the Presidential Suite up on the thirteenth floor, a fairly nice set of rooms complete with decent furniture (including two pool tables!) and pre-War books and some booze and fruit. Benny was already there, which is more than Janice expected. I couldn't really picture Benny being willing to get on the same elevator as the person he'd, yanno, shot in the head. Meet up on his own territory, sure, but get into a small enclosed metal room with, not so much. This was about the point when he asked why the hell she wasn't dead, which I can't blame him for, since generally people who get two bullets put into their head directly in front of you and then get buried in a shallow grave with no coffin don't come back any time soon. The facial animations weren't great, but I like to think his expression went slump as soon as Janice told him a Securitron dug her up, because that's when he started muttering about how House was on to him and how he thought he'd been clever about covering up his tracks. It just got worse when she told him she managed to track him down through sheer persistence and stubbornness. Seriously, he looked like somebody'd cut a couple of his sinews and left him to slump on the room's bar.
Naturally Janice figured, hey, question time. What was the big deal with the chip thing, anyway. Benny, thankfully, was more talkative than Mr. House. The Platinum Chip was apparently a data storage device of some kind. Not one that fit any computer Benny had ever seen yet, but it was still a data storage device. The chip wasn't made of platinum metal- the data it contained was the really platinum stuff.
That's about as poetic as things got. Benny had that aggravating Rat Pack slang thing going on, but unlike Ulysses, he didn't let his vocal tic interfere with actually explaining things. As far as he knew, the data on the chip upgraded Securitron hitting power somehow and made them capable of defending against the Legion, the NCR, or both. He wanted to ring in a change of management in New Vegas and put himself at the top of the heap, and while yeah, it was kinda scummy of him to attempt to murder Janice to make it happen, she was only fooling herself if she didn't think the NCR or the Legion wouldn't get just as much blood on their hands to control a place like Vegas. Despite all that, he'd be willing to cut her a deal, maybe hire her going forward to do special missions for him, maybe more...
That was about the point when Janice realized just how tired she was of all this crap in her life. She'd been buried alive, she'd had the Sierra Madre inflicted on her when all she wanted was a vacation, she'd had that whole thing with the floating brains in Big Mountain, she'd had to deal with the MORMON OF DOOM, she'd gone through all that bilge with Ulysses and his weird aversion to proper nouns... and here she was in front of some yoyo in a checkered jacket who was basically trying to buy her off because he was afraid she'd take horrible bloody vengeance on him for possibly the least worst thing that had happened to her in recent memory. Maybe she could snap his neck if she tried hard enough, but frankly, if he just went away and left her alone forever she'd be fine. Just- just as long as she didn't have to talk to him any more. So before he could make her any more offers she stopped him, and said it was fine, it was over- she forgave him.
And he smiled, and he thanked her, and he called her eighteen-karat classy all the way, and he bolted for the elevator faster than Janice had run from the Legendary Deathclaw, leaving Janice alone and theoretically unarmed in the suite with the four Chairman thugs who had come up in the elevator while they were talking and had been leaning on the CLOSE DOORS button until that very specific moment.
The Tops Casino, I think, must surely be the most incredibly amazing and entertaining casino in the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD. Why do I say this? Well, I don't know about you, but if I were playing roulette or poker or blackjack or the slots or- or whatever game of chance was on offer, I'm pretty sure that unless I'd been forced to bet the house, the Brahmin, and at least one of my more redundant internal organs, and an elevator opened onto the casino floor and discharged a woman in a bright red military beret and a full set of casino-issued body armor and more blood all over her than Carrie White at the prom, waving an even bloodier pool cue and screaming "BENNY, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!" as she ran through the room... well, I don't know about you, but yeah, I'd probably look up.
Nobody at the Tops did.
Must be a hell of a fun place.
When last we saw our heroine, Janice had just had another Wizard of Oz experience thanks to the Floating Head of Howard Stark. Well, not really- Mr. House didn't want to achieve immortality through his reputation or his kid, he wanted to achieve it through not dying- but close enough. It was now time for Janice to go and see about having a little word with Evil Chandler Bing.
I don't know how long the New Vegas Strip is supposed to be physically. Not very big compared to the real thing, but big enough that for coding purposes the folks at Obsidian and/or Bethesda split it up into three segments so only part of it would have to be loaded at a time. The Lucky 38 and the House of Skank across the street are separated from the rest of the Strip by a sheet-metal fence with barbed wire on the top, which gave Janice a little bit of unease, but there were no robots demanding credit checks and no sign of any Homicidal Stupids lying around. Just a fence and a sliding gate. Maybe that made it easier in-universe to contain potential problematic patrons or wall off areas in the event of tribal assaults or Fiend rampages or something. I don't know. I AM TRYING TO BE WATSONIAN HERE AND IT IS NOT WORKING. I'm going to go with the wall being up because the Omertas at the House of Skank got tired of their hookers trying to escape to somewhere that let them wear more clothes.
(I wish I could say that was just a joke, but there's a plot later- well, we'll leave off on that until Janice gets to it.)
There wasn't really anything all that unusual about the next part of the strip- casino on one side, casino on the other, monorail track up near some building Janice didn't recognize, and a lot more people in NCR uniforms, not just tourists. The Tops had a number of bigshouldered men in pre-War suits standing around outside, and even more of them when she stepped in; turned out they were the Chairmen, which is to say the former tribe turned Family (in the Mafia sense) that ran the place. Benny's particular Family, according to House.
And, like Benny, they all talked like they'd just escaped from a Frank Sinatra movie.
No, seriously. The one at the front desk called her 'doll' when he asked her to leave her weapons in the lockup at the front desk, they referred to themselves as the coolest cats on the Strip, and the words 'swingin' good time' and 'ring-a-ding-ding' came up more than once when she asked about the place. It was weird. The only other person who'd thrown around that kind of slang had been, you know, the guy who shot her in the head. That's probably why she was rattled enough to just ask directions to Benny without going into detail; she might've been the Chosen of Ferris Bueller, God of Liars, but somehow it didn't strike her as the greatest idea to try to talk one of her attempted murderer's close buddies into letting her walk around with actual weapons on her person just in case she felt like stabbin' his boss.
(This is not to say that she couldn't have done that. You can present the guys at the front desk with evidence that Benny a) tried to kill you and b) is a dirty rat-fink and they'll let you have your weapons if your scores are high enough. I don't think Janice had the evidence objects on her at the time, though, so it seemed like trying to make the speech checks wouldn't be quite enough.)
Anyway, Swank (the most talkative of the Chairmen up front) sent her off to the main casino floor and wished her a good time. Benny was down there, with a bunch of bodyguards, and I really kind of wish he'd been drinking something because the spit-take would've been pretty epic. Alas, it was not to be; he just made some shocked squeaky noises about Janice being alive and asked what was going to happen next. She started prodding him about the Platinum Chip; he offered to discuss it with her somewhere other than, y'know, the main floor of a casino crawling with opportunistic patrons. Which... made sense, actually, so Janice agreed, but insisted he leave the bodyguards somewhere else.
(Alas, "you put down your Follower with the plasma pistol and I'll put down my Rat Packish thugs and we'll try to kill each other in private like civilized people" did not appear in the dialog.)
'Somewhere else' turned out to be the Presidential Suite up on the thirteenth floor, a fairly nice set of rooms complete with decent furniture (including two pool tables!) and pre-War books and some booze and fruit. Benny was already there, which is more than Janice expected. I couldn't really picture Benny being willing to get on the same elevator as the person he'd, yanno, shot in the head. Meet up on his own territory, sure, but get into a small enclosed metal room with, not so much. This was about the point when he asked why the hell she wasn't dead, which I can't blame him for, since generally people who get two bullets put into their head directly in front of you and then get buried in a shallow grave with no coffin don't come back any time soon. The facial animations weren't great, but I like to think his expression went slump as soon as Janice told him a Securitron dug her up, because that's when he started muttering about how House was on to him and how he thought he'd been clever about covering up his tracks. It just got worse when she told him she managed to track him down through sheer persistence and stubbornness. Seriously, he looked like somebody'd cut a couple of his sinews and left him to slump on the room's bar.
Naturally Janice figured, hey, question time. What was the big deal with the chip thing, anyway. Benny, thankfully, was more talkative than Mr. House. The Platinum Chip was apparently a data storage device of some kind. Not one that fit any computer Benny had ever seen yet, but it was still a data storage device. The chip wasn't made of platinum metal- the data it contained was the really platinum stuff.
That's about as poetic as things got. Benny had that aggravating Rat Pack slang thing going on, but unlike Ulysses, he didn't let his vocal tic interfere with actually explaining things. As far as he knew, the data on the chip upgraded Securitron hitting power somehow and made them capable of defending against the Legion, the NCR, or both. He wanted to ring in a change of management in New Vegas and put himself at the top of the heap, and while yeah, it was kinda scummy of him to attempt to murder Janice to make it happen, she was only fooling herself if she didn't think the NCR or the Legion wouldn't get just as much blood on their hands to control a place like Vegas. Despite all that, he'd be willing to cut her a deal, maybe hire her going forward to do special missions for him, maybe more...
That was about the point when Janice realized just how tired she was of all this crap in her life. She'd been buried alive, she'd had the Sierra Madre inflicted on her when all she wanted was a vacation, she'd had that whole thing with the floating brains in Big Mountain, she'd had to deal with the MORMON OF DOOM, she'd gone through all that bilge with Ulysses and his weird aversion to proper nouns... and here she was in front of some yoyo in a checkered jacket who was basically trying to buy her off because he was afraid she'd take horrible bloody vengeance on him for possibly the least worst thing that had happened to her in recent memory. Maybe she could snap his neck if she tried hard enough, but frankly, if he just went away and left her alone forever she'd be fine. Just- just as long as she didn't have to talk to him any more. So before he could make her any more offers she stopped him, and said it was fine, it was over- she forgave him.
And he smiled, and he thanked her, and he called her eighteen-karat classy all the way, and he bolted for the elevator faster than Janice had run from the Legendary Deathclaw, leaving Janice alone and theoretically unarmed in the suite with the four Chairman thugs who had come up in the elevator while they were talking and had been leaning on the CLOSE DOORS button until that very specific moment.
The Tops Casino, I think, must surely be the most incredibly amazing and entertaining casino in the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD. Why do I say this? Well, I don't know about you, but if I were playing roulette or poker or blackjack or the slots or- or whatever game of chance was on offer, I'm pretty sure that unless I'd been forced to bet the house, the Brahmin, and at least one of my more redundant internal organs, and an elevator opened onto the casino floor and discharged a woman in a bright red military beret and a full set of casino-issued body armor and more blood all over her than Carrie White at the prom, waving an even bloodier pool cue and screaming "BENNY, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!" as she ran through the room... well, I don't know about you, but yeah, I'd probably look up.
Nobody at the Tops did.
Must be a hell of a fun place.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-22 03:07 am (UTC)My courier actually ended up killing off evil Chandler in his sleep. And no matter what you might think, she didn't have a single regret.