Chapter Text
Chapter One: Introduction To Despair
The job was simple; a trip to New Vegas to deliver some box. Vai didn’t ask what was in it. Vai didn’t care. The contents of their package was none of their concern, as stated by themselves and the Mojave Express courier company they worked for, on behalf of the client. They did not know, they did not care, they only wished to get this job done so they could get paid and rest a while.
It ended halfway through the trip, intercepted by some Fancy-Dan wannabe in a horrible tiled coat shooting them in the face so he could take the box and flee. What a coward. What an ignorant coward. But cowards rarely are intelligent.
The man in the checked coat had assumed he had killed them, just as he assumed he had killed all the other couriers. More accurately, the man had assumed that Vai would succumb to their wounds after being buried alive. A sick way to die. But it seemed that fate had other plans.
Some strange, obscured figure had pulled them from their early grave and seen to it that they were brought to a doctor. Whether that figure was man, beast, or robotic companion, Vai could not clearly remember. All they could remember was a sharp pain and a strange leaking sensation as they were drug partway through the desert by their ankle.
After time untold, consciousness invaded them again, bringing life to the eyes that had remained shut so long they had forgotten what it was to be in the light. To the gentle prattle of Doc Mitchell’s well-meaning scoldings, Vai’s mind slowly recalibrated to the human language once more, and the look of confusion and terror fled from their face as they began to understand that they were no longer in danger.
Finally reaching an equilibrium in their brain between memory and current, fantasy and reality, Vai began to respond to the doctor’s prompting of actions. With each little movement, Vai’s greasy black hair worked its way further into their face, giving them a somewhat reckless-Elvis-like look as it obstructed their hazel eyes. It took a moment for them to realize, but the shot to the head had left them with an unusually wide part in their hair. Could have been worse, they supposed. Could’ve left them dead. Could’ve left them seriously wounded beyond repair.
In the Mojave, that would be as good as dead.
“Someone shot you”, they were pretty sure they heard Doc Mitchell say, along with something about being patched up. Soon after came some admission of a securitron digging them out of the pit they’d been buried in. And something about a man in a checkered coat.
A violent memory flashed through their mind, a memory that brought great physical pain, a memory that stoked the anger of a thousand betrayed warriors from somewhere deep in their dainty chest. This would not stand. No one was going to shoot them in the face, bury them alive, and leave them for dead without finishing the job.
The look on Vai’s face after being told this, though still in the processes of figuring out whether or not they were totally vegetated was enough to convince Doc Mitchell that they were probably more or less okay. Stewing in their anger a moment, trying to find the right wire to plug in to regain their ability to speak, the expression of murder that painted once delicate features gave a sinister quality to the fairylike face unlike any other.
And then, it happened:
“Where…” Vai grumbled, reaching up to touch the freshly healed wound on their head. When Mitchell hesitated, they demanded again: “ Where. Is. He? ”
Be it by pity, fear, or perhaps some want to see justice done for this kid, the answer was eventually given to them. With the much appreciated help of the doctor and a few supplies, Vai was ready to begin their journey, and not without expressing their thanks.
With an expression of sentimentality, perhaps, or maybe simply needing to see for themselves the hole which they had somehow been freed from after what was intended to be their final rest, Vai headed for the graveyard. It was an eerie feeling, and they could feel what felt like so many others egging them on; asking from beyond to right the wrongs that had been so rampant in the Mojave, asking that they step up and take on the role of the Angel to the man in the checked coat’s Badman… If only they knew what truths laid beyond this short-sighted goal.
There was something more to this strangely elaborate plan. No one would just shoot a courier in the face after spending what felt like hours of monologuing just for shits and giggles. Vai knew that much. Whatever had been stolen from them, whatever had gotten them killed, it was important , and Vai was intent on finding out what it was, what it did, and how it could be used against the man who shot them… Tomorrow, perhaps, as before they had realized, the sun had begun to set in the west, and the beckoning lights of New Vegas pierced the horizon like a well-lit sabre’s blade. They had their mind set now, and there was no changing it. They were going to find this poorly dressed jerk, and they were going to drop him in a deathclaw pit if it could be managed. If not, Cazadors would do just fine.