Notes From New Vegas 49

[camwyn]

Notes From New Vegas 49: Good Lord, I Never Thought I'd Be Carrying On About This Game For This Long

Okay, so.

Those of you who have been following this feature for some time know where the story stands at the moment, or at least I imagine you do. It's been a while since I began and there was that hiatus in the middle before I started on Dead Money. Those of you who only started reading recently might or might not want to go back and have a look at the earlier parts of Janice's odyssey through Fallout New Vegas- admittedly, the first few entries are more concerned with game mechanics and graphics than with the storyline, since I was just getting used to FNV and its differences from FO3, but still. In that spirit, and the spirit of not making you use the journal tag feature, here are links to parts one through forty-eight of Notes From New Vegas, and then part 49 proper.

Note 1: OW OW OW MY HEAD OW
Note 2: Stitch, Noooo
Note 3: Pants 'Em If They Can't Take A Joke
Note 4: Anywhere But Primm
Note 5: Mr. Scary Dog Hat Man, Also, Bugs
Note 6: OH GOD WHERE DID THE BLUE THING COME FROM
Note 7: AUGH ROBOT WTF
Note 8: Come Fly With Me
Note 9: The *Other* New Vegas, Only... Not
Note 10: I Really Wish I Had A Title I Could Put Here
Note 11: Horrible Solar Burny Death? Woo!
Note 12: YAY PUNCHINGS
Note 13: The Terrible Secret Of Vault OH HELL NO
Note 14: Okay, Okay, I'm Doing The Main Plot Now
Note 15: Wait, No, I Lied, Sorry
Note 16: QUESTS QUESTS QUESTS YAY QUESTS
Note 17: I Swear, If We Find Orks Down Here...
Note 18: Possibly Not The Best Overlap Ever
Note 19: Is One Sane Technology Company Too Much To Ask
Note 20: Jamie Want Big Boom
Note 21: ARRRRGH HATE THIS VAULT HATE HATE HATE
Note 22: Okay, Now You're Just Being A Jerk
Note 23: AGAIN? What, AGAIN?
Note 24: I Knew The Reavers, The Reavers Were Enemies Of Mine... You, Sir, Are No Reaver
Note 25: Welcome Back, We're Going To Hell
Note 26: SHUT UP, GOD, JUST SHUT UP
Note 27: O Hai, Fellow Screwed People
Note 28: Look At Your Life, Look At Your Choices
Note 29: I'm Gonna Have A Heart Attack And Die From That Surprise
Note 30: Gary Oldman Couldn't Play This Kind Of Crazy
Note 31: Eeeeeeew
Note 32: Okay, I Get It< Letting Go Is Important
Note 33: Well, That Was... Something
Note 34: UTAH. WHAT.
Note 35: Yes Sir, Okay Sir, Please Don't Look At Me Like That Sir
Note 36: The Terminal Man
Note 37: BEARS BEARS BEARS AUGH BEARS
Note 38: Goodbye To Utah And The MORMON OF DOOM

(Please note that notes 40-44 or so all carry warnings for involuntary surgical procedures and nasty violations of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions.)

Note 39: I Hate My Life, Now Why Does My Head Go 'Clonk'?
Note 40: There's No Place Like Home, There's No Place Like Home- DAMMIT SHOES COOPERATE ALREADY
Note 41: Never Mind Gary Oldman, Garry BUSEY Couldn't Play This Kind Of Crazy
Note 42: No, Seriously, What The Hell Is Wrong With You People
Note 43: Even The Other Brains Think You're Crazy, Borous
Note 44: I Hate My Species
Note 45: Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, And AUGH ROBOT SCORPIONS
Note 46: The Brain Behind The Curtain
Note 47: Make Your Own Damn Brain Puns Here, Okay?
Note 48: Well, That Went More Smoothly Than Expected

I should note that if you think I'm padding this entry out, yes, you're absolutely right. I know that when last we saw our heroine Janice had just talked the floating brains of Big Mountain into working for her and giving up on the idea of ever getting loose in the Mojave. I know that I said I'd have an entry where Janice went back to the Mojave and dealt with her shiny new issues, or possibly not. But the fact is that when the Big Mountain Transportalponder sent her back to the drive-in theater just outside what remained of Nipton, Janice didn't really know what to do with herself. Going off to Vegas itself would bring her within range of Benny and the Platinum Chip, and even if all she did was hang out in Freeside and help the Followers of the Apocalypse, sooner or later word would get out and it would be Ugly. If she went to Primm there would be questions about whether she ever found the guy who took her package from her, not to mention snotty comments from Deputy Beagle. If she went to Novac...

Actually, in Novac they didn't ask a whole lot of questions. Seriously, the town hotel owner got killed in the middle of the night and despite Janice's worrying nobody had ever really bothered her about it. Maybe she could make a pitstop there. Heck, maybe she could talk to Boone, the sniper. He seemed like the kind of guy who understood about having things you didn't want to talk about, and she'd helped him, after all. So, yeah, Novac. That sounded good. She'd just head up the railroad tracks from Nipton- WITHOUT looking at what had been left by Mr. Scary Dog Hat Man way back when- and see about cutting across to Novac as soon as she could find a reasonable pass through the local hills. There were Viper gang members in the area and she didn't really feel like fighting through them. The most dangerous stuff she could think of on the railroad line was bark scorpions. Vastly preferable.

We will now pause for hysterical laughter, because Janice did in fact eventually find a pass up through the hills. It's just that it had a deathclaw living in it. The game said it was blind, but given how well it tracked Janice ANYWAY I'm pretty sure it was the deathclaw equivalent of Matt Murdock. Janice managed to kill it- thank you, Mr. Holorifle, you're my only friend- and came out the other side panting and sweating and AUGH VIPERS; there was a gang encampment not far from the shack where the pass gave out. And these were the kind of gang members or raiders or whatever you wanted to call them who could look at somebody in a suit of body armor and carrying a scoped energy rifle and think "Hey! I'm wearing a Brahmin-hide dress and wielding a lead pipe! I can TOTALLY take her on!", so the whole thing ended in little heaps of blood and ash.

Which, really not what Janice had been wanting to deal with today, at all. She figured a quick trip up one of the local taller hills, to get a view of the area would give her a better idea of whether anyone was lying in wait to kill her, and so she headed towards that hill, and then AUGH DEATHCLAWS SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HELL SO MANY DEATHCLAWS ARE YOU SURE THESE THINGS DIDN'T COME OUT OF BIG MOUNTAIN WHOEVER ENGINEERED THESE GODDAMN THINGS SHOULD DIE.

Now, understand, Janice really didn't like killing people at this point. She'd gotten very tired of killing people and wanted to avoid it where she could. And there was the whole appreciation for her own survival and well-being that came from her conversation with her brain, which was now firmly in charge of her body. But Janice had a lot of issues right now, the old ones from the Sierra Madre and the new ones from having her goddamn brain scooped out and eventually reinstalled. And deathclaws, while they were alive and breathing, were anything but people.

To borrow a line I have previously borrowed for my girl, her name is Janice Furious and her power is fueled by her BOUNDLESS RAGE.

I'm not really sure when the red haze faded, but when it did every single goddamn deathclaw outside was dead and she was hot on the tail of another one. Which might not have been so bad if the cave didn't smell like all the deathclaw in the world, ever, and if she wasn't hearing the sound of roaring and claws on stone. She managed to bring down the one she'd pursued into the tunnels, and then she turned a corner and found herself staring at a goddamn predatory dinosaur, because this was Dead Wind Cavern and Dead Wind Cavern is home to a momma deathclaw and momma deathclaws are pretty close to twice the regular kind's height and vaguely resemble Emmerich Godzilla and also they are the most hateful things in the history of ever. Also they go berserk if you hurt or kill one of the babies, which Janice found out the hard way. Also also they are not the baddest thing around, which Janice found out to her absolute horror when she finally brought the huge grey thing down and heard MORE roaring. Because you know what you need for a breeding population besides a momma? A papa. And the papa in this case was a thing called the Legendary Deathclaw, which did not so much look like Gojira's idiot cousin as it looked like Diablo.

There are things in this world you do not want to see jumping at you with their claws spread out in every direction and that goddamn lizard was one of them. Janice did a lot of running backwards and screaming incoherently and swapping microfusion cells out as fast as her fingers would let her, and much to my surprise at no point did her intestines make an appearance. Seriously, that thing had claws made for gutting. Thank God for energy weapons, that's all I have to say. Once Janice was absolutely sure it was dead she ran up to the corpse and started kicking it and screaming, because when you have had the kind of day she had-

Oh, right, I almost forgot to mention. The day? December 25, 2281. Janice checked her Pip-Boy when she set off for Novac and saw that it was in the early hours of the morning, but definitely December 25. So, yeah. Merry Christmas, Janice.

Anyway, big damn lizard was dead as were all the little lizards, and when Janice got through with screaming and abusing the corpse and then with the crying fit (because damn it, she was entitled), she went through the cavern looking for any other lizards. Didn't find any. Found a bunch of eggs. Bashed 'em all open so there wouldn't be another deathclaw generation. Found a Brotherhood paladin's corpse in its power armor. The Paladin had been carrying something called Mercy, which turned out to be a machine gun that shot grenades. Well, THAT would've been useful at the start of the freakin' cavern. Or maybe not, because Janice wasn't really good with heavy weapons. The holorifle had done fine, anyway, so she left the corpse and the big heavy gun where they were, took what few useful things the Paladin had had on her, and headed back into the Christmas morning daylight smelling like hell on Earth.

That would be when the radio message reached her Pip-Boy. The one that consisted almost entirely of a set of geographical coordinates somewhere west of Primm, and the words "Courier Six", and the name "Ulysses".

There weren't that many people in the world who knew that Janice had been a courier before being shot in the head. And only the old man in the Mojave Express office knew she'd been one of six, so far as Janice knew- and that wasn't his voice. That was, in fact, the voice of the fellow on the holotapes Janice had found in the Big Empty, the courier who'd rescued Christine....

Hm. Hm.

Well, she'd heard what the guy'd had to say to Christine, and she'd wondered why he'd turned down the platinum chip job in Primm just because he saw her name. And now she had an idea of where he was- and it wasn't in an area full of gangsters with guns or razor clawed murder lizards. It might be worth tracking him down, just to see if she could get a few answers about the chip and the mission and everything else that had led up to her being shot in the head...

So, yeah, that was pretty much it. A quick jaunt up the road to Novac, where nobody asked her so much as a single question about where she'd been or what had happened. A quick chat with Cliff in the Dinky the Dinosaur statue, verifying that she still had her long-term room in the local hotel, and letting her sell off a bunch of the crap she was carrying in favor of better survival supplies. And then, because it was infinitely better than the alternatives, Janice once again gave the A-plot the finger and set off in pursuit of her own damn goals, thank you very much.

Thank you for sticking with Notes From New Vegas 1-49. Tune in next week for episode fifty, in which Janice finds out that she probably should've stuck with the razor clawed murder death lizards in the first place. It's just going to be that kind of a day.

Comments

[lienne]

<3

[amrin_20012002]

Poor, poor Janice. From the frying pan of the Big Empty into the fires of the Divide.

[hinterland]

Pardon the random drive-by comment, but I've been reading your Notes From New Vegas posts recently, and from one courier to another I just wanted to say I love them. F:NV is one of my favourite games, and boy have your posts been fun to read. So great!

[camwyn]

Thank you! Glad you approve.