A Stark Revival [Slow]

"Where the fuck have I been? If you hadn't noticed, I was disarming those fucking mines before these idiots decided to go blowing themselves up. Then after you decided to run off after the fuckin corpse over there, one of your psychotic shit for brains decided they wanted to try killing me. These Fiends are all fucking idiots." Bullseye was dripping fresh blood from his latest kill, and when Roxie started up about talking to Mandy that way, he had a pistol up and at her face in the time it took her to blink. "Just don't. Just fuckin' don't."

Roxie nodded her head, and he spun the pistol back into his holster, leaving Rex to chuckle in his chair. Bullseye looked to the Ranger, shaking his head in disgust. "Christ, do you raiders always have to kill them first, ask questions later?" His slur had slipped, and he was no longer referring to himself as a raider, but Bullseye was too agitated to notice.

"These are NCR Rangers you keep deciding to shoot with that fancy gun of yours Mandy. That one in the arena was a NCR Ranger. These Fiends you decided to take over? They're fuckin' idiots. You capture a Ranger, the others will come for you. I hadn't just killed the man because I couldn't, I wanted him alive. Before you showed up, that fucker was my ticket out of here. Now the cavalry's finally alive, and you've managed to kill both our bargaining chips. I bet this fucker was a scout," Bullseye continued, moving into the bathroom, kicking the corpse of the Ranger.

"Likely, they've got a whole squad ready to come down on us and clear this vault out again. Mines were meant to cause panic and disorder. I'd say it worked pretty damn well."

He looked over to the girl Mandy had struck down, studying her for a moment as a few of the fresher drops of blood dripped to the ground from his hair. "As for this bitch? No fuckin' idea, but I'll be surprised if any of us live long enough to find out." He laughed at that, then kicked her in the ribs. "Yeah, we're dead. We're all fuckin' dead. That's what's going on."

Danielle thought she could talk her way out of here, but all thought of that was eliminated by the laser rifle hitting her face, which sent her back down from a sitting position. She wiped her bloody nose, and grunted through the pain.

"What do you want me for? Who are you?" Danielle braced herself against a toilet stand, and looked at the Ranger. A corpse. She vomited at the sight, and looked back at the mean raider.

Mandy had been seeing red before Bullseye had begun talking. He wasn't exactly being respectful, but she didn't care. He had answers, and that was good. That was good. That was great, actually. It calmed her down, knowing that she wasn't completely in the dark. She mostly ignored his comments about the Fiends being idiots. She had known they were idiots. Almost all raiders these days were idiots. Just a bunch of druggies who wanted to stir up trouble for fun. They never really understood the true purpose of raiding. It was about planning and hitting hard and taking everything. Not attacking wildly and randomly and then living slovenly around decomposing bodies.

"A bargaining chip, huh?" Mandy said, casually looking at the Ranger she'd chopped up. "Well...he's not dead, just a little fucked up at the moment. But, you see...the NCR doesn't KNOW that their Scout is a little shorter now. And as long as they don't know that, then as far as bargaining chips go, this guy is just peachy."

Mandy smiled at Bullseye. "And, we don't just have one bargaining chip. Oh no, we have two!" She reached down and grabbed Danielle, and held her up in front of Bullseye, looking at the man from behind the woman's head. Stark affectionately stroked Danielle's hair. "We have a poor lost little Civillian who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Not just a Civilian, a citizen of the Republic. They'll care more if they think it's one of their own. We have other hostages too, but we give them this guy's dog tags as proof that we have him. We give him this little girl and one of the Fiends, dressed nicely of course, but he'll have a few bombs stuck to him and blow them up! And while they're back pedaling we run in! Our old base had some tear gas, so we could use some of those, along with the last of the Stun Grenades and make sure that they can't see us to snipe us!"

Mandy's smile widened. It was a rather charming and sane smile.

(If Spook could run into Nash, that'd be helpful.)

Bullseye checked the Ranger as Mandy told him the poor man wasn't yet dead. 'Not yet' was certainly the correct term to use. Bullseye almost felt bad for the man. He'd seem those cages. If the ranger survived this, it'd likely just mean an even worse fate for him. With that in mind, Bullseye decided against giving the man a stimpak. The ranger had just been doing his job, against raiders at that. He didn't deserve to be tortured, even if he had shot at Bullseye.

He calmed himself, reacquainting his raider accent. If Mandy thought that the NCR was going to just fall for such a trap. As soon as the handoff was completed, there would be sniper fire taking out whatever idiot was stupid enough to poke his head out. Why he agreed to help this psycho, he'd never know. Idly he wondered if his debt was repaid for disarming his mines. He was way over his head in his mess. The worst part was, Mandy actually looked sane for once, and Bullseye wasn't sure how to deal with that.

"Alright well, fuck. If you think those fuckers will fall for it." Carefully, he removed the rangers helmet from his head, putting it over his own. It was clear the man was unconscious, so he wouldn't be needing it for the moment at least. While Bullseye went about figuring out the helmets interface, Roxie pulled out some metal wire, tying it around the girls hands and pulling her to her feet. "Better hope the NCR cares more about a little civvy then they do about us," the raider hissed, bringing more laughter from Rex.

Finally Bullseye figured out the comm system for the helmet, and activated it, taking a deep breath. "To you Ranger Fuckheads, we've got your scout and some NCR citizen held hostage. I'd suggest you meet our demands, or we'll blow their fuckin' brains out. Choice is yours assholes."

There was silence on the line for nearly a minute, and Bullseye began to wonder if his assumption had been wrong. The line went clear, and he sighed in relief as a voice came across.

"This is Sergeant Hatfield of the NCR. We're listening."

Quickly, he pulled off the helmet and handed it to Mandy. This was her ridiculous plan, and he didn't want any more of a part in it then he had to take.

"Happy Birthday!"

Ned hit the deck like a bucket of cold water as the raider’s bullets screamed down the hallway. The Jet canister on his utility build (saved for later) smashed upon impact with the ground, and the rose pink chem with in was now mingling with the dead raider’s blood. Biting his lip with self-destructive fury, the chemmed up Vault Boy look-a-like used the raider’s cadaver as a human shield, burying his snarling face in a large bulletwound as the gunshots reached their crescendo.

Mrs Haberdasher was not so lucky. Two bullets winged him – one in kissed the flesh above his elbow, instantly flowering a gushing wound. The second pierced a crudely made Molotov on Haberdasher’s backpack, which crashed to the ground like a phoenix. The flames on the White Leg’s back were easily extinguished with a stop, drop and roll, but the point of origin (the shattered Molotov bottle was now blazing merrily away in the middle of the floor, using the raider’s body as fuel. Nash lashed his body away from the burning human shield, and dived behind a wall. Not that it was necessary. The fire a thousand times the cover a body could ever be, even someone as plump as the raider. Obviously these boys did well out of the Mojave.

Fire was seen as a sign of calm and pacification in White Leg culture, as it usually signified the end of a battle. Haberdasher decided that using flame in its traditional sense in this situation would be a prudent call indeed.

“No shootay! Frens! Frens! Fren trade? No shootay!”

Whilst talking the raider down seemed an unlikely proposition, it was certainly a logical one. The offer of trade was unlikely to be met with much enthusiasm, but maybe the masked maniac would think twice about a further bullet storm for fear of damaging the gear. This spirit of logic and negotiation, wise as it may have been, was never going to be a sentiment shared by one Nedward J. Nash.

“YOU ARROGANT PRICK! YOU VAULT-SHOOTING GASMASK MACHINE GUN MOTHERFUCKER! GEE WHIZ, I’M GONNA FLASH-FRY THE INSIDE OF YOUR HEAD UNTIL YOU THINK SLICING YOUR DICK TO RIBBONS WAS THE BEST IDEA YOU EVER HAD!”

The Vault Boy shot the Mesmertron blindly and indiscriminately through the flame. BRZWAP. BRZWAP. BRZWAP. Balls of swirling neural disruptor buzzed towards the raider like bubbles in a bottle. So many shots were fired, that the device shook and bucked in Ned's hand, giving Nash's screams of rage a metallic, automaton quality.

“F-F-F-F-F-F-U-U-U-U-U-C-C-C-C-C-K-K-K-K-K-K-K!”

Haberdasher took exception to the Mesmertron madness and tried to wrestle the gun from Ned's grip - he'd been in the man's pay long enough to have seen rages like this before. However, with his weeping armwound, the tribal struggled to get the super-pissed and tripping balls Mister Nash Esquire under control. As their shadows danced upon the Vault wall, the flames climbed higher...

Bullseye was inspecting the Ranger further while looking for anything of value. His weapon was mostly worthless to Bullseye, as was the ammo, and aside from a single stimpak, he didn't see anything of use. There was a golden looking belt buckle however, a symbol of the Rangers that Bullseye recognized, but it held no value to him. He wasn't large on material possessions, and most likely it would just lead to someone thinking he'd taken it from a Ranger he had killed. He used the Rangers own stimpak on him while Mandy dealt with the announcement of another threat, deciding we wouldn't want to be caught dead with such a trinket.

His attention returned at the mention of the slavers gun, and he left the stimpak to do its work on the ranger.

Mandy took the headset from Bullseye and put it on.

"Alright, listen up, Sergeant," She said rather pleasantly. "As you just heard, I've got your one of your soldiers and one of your civvies in here. Here's the deal: We..."

She stopped when a Coalition came running into the room. "Stark! There's more people in the Vault!"

"What!?" Mandy cried, bewildered. "Who is it now?"

"We don't know!" The Coalitioner replied. "Some weirdo in a Vault Suit and some gang of freaks. Don't know what they're doing in here, or how they even fucking got in. That creep who talks to his Wrench is fighting them, and the Vault Suit guy is shooting one of those Slaver Gun things. I don't know if they're working with the NCR or if they're mercenaries or if they're just fucking nuts and..."

"Wait...back up," Mandy said, carefully making sure her hand was coving the mic so the Sergeant couldn't hear. "Did you just say someone has a 'Slaver Gun'." The Stark Coalition had had some interaction with Slavers in the past, and Mandy knew a thing or two about them. Including that a number of them carried a very, VERY nifty type of gun...

"Yeah, one of those things they use to catch people with."

Bullseye watched Stark smile, and he made sure to keep his mouth shut. He knew what a mesmetron was, and of all the things in the wasteland, it was one of the few he was against. A man should have his own mind, even if he was too much of a coward to die with his own freedom. At least you had your free will. That was something that no one should be able to take away. The mesmetron was not something he could let Stark have. Not with that look in her eye. Not after seeing her torture chamber.

"I don't care how." She said. "Get me that fucking gun. And it better fucking work."

--------------------

"Sorry, Sargey. Brief interruption."

"Right," Sergeant Hatfield returned over the radio, with such venom you could hear the scowl on his face.

"Anyway, the deal is this: We give you the hostages and even leave the Mojave and give you the stupid Vault as well; and in exchange, you let us leave. It's as simple as that. I'm sure you'll want to verify that the hostages are okay. We can meet you in the entrance of the Vault if you want. You're going to have to come in, I'm not stepping out. I know what your Rangers are capable of..."

Sergeant Hatfield looked over the rest of the Rangers. It was obviously a trap, and each one of them could hear her words over the comm. but they were all duty bound to go get them. Still, it was better not to walk in openly to a trap. They all new that well enough, and he watched as one of the newer rangers stepped forward. She hadn't been with them long, and this was only her second mission.

"I'll make the exchange sir. If they double-cross us, you come in hard."

Hatfield nodded, and flipped his radio back on. "Fair enough. We'll send in someone to make the exchange. But you get out of NCR territory completely. Don't go back west. You go east and you keep going. And if you try anything... You know what we Rangers are capable of."

He nodded to Ranger Holly, and she left their hill and started walking toward the vault. He hoped to hell he knew what he was doing

-----------------------

Percy was nursing where the Stark bitch had cut him with the chainsaw, though it had already been healed over with a stimpak. A dwarf stood on the other side of the room, looking out the window of a broken concrete building while a Lone Ranger walked down the path to the vault entrance.

"I didn't expect you'd come this close. That's for pulling me out of there," Percy said gratefully.

The dwarf looked over his shoulder, frowning. "Thank Mr. Kintile. It was his work with the frag mines that made the distraction you needed for him to get you out of that cage." To Percy's left, the black haired assassin pushed a lock away from his eyes and shrugged, turning back to the stealth boy on the desk in front of him.

Percy checked the pistol he'd been given, making sure it was loaded and flipping off the safety. "So, what do you need to know? You still haven't told me the end game."

The dwarf sighed as the ranger disappeared from his sight, stepping down from the crate he had been on. "And I don't plan to. Not that you divulged anything. Sniveling Coward? Not an act I expected you to take."

Percy shrugged and grinned, spinning a silencer into the pistols threaded barrel. "They bought it well enough."

"Whatever you think is best. Our Khanite friend is delivering an unfortunate death of a Khan drug dealer?"

Percy looked confused, continuing with the equipment on the table. He checked a series of grenades, while he posed his question. "Floyd? What happened."

The Dwarf grinned, sitting down on the crate by the window. "He met an unfortunate end. Now, I need to know what's happening. A rundown. Did you find anything useful out while you were in there?"

Percy picked up an assault rifle, loading in a clip and chambering a round. "I found out I'm going to spit on the Stark bitches corpse by the time this is over. Your mercenary, Bullseye, I'm not sure what he's doing being still in there. Definitely not the job he was assigned to. Still no word on your courier of course, otherwise Bullseye'd probably be long gone by now. Seemed to actually be trying to keep Stark alive, which I can't fathom in the slightest."

The Dwarf nodded, folding his arms "You said he was stuck in a pit. You did a shit job of getting him out, and he has a weird notion when it comes to blood debts. He'll do what he can to protect her without fucking up his job, so long as she doesn't piss him off to much."

Percy looked surprise as he began pulling on new boots, their metal greaves rough against his legs. "Didn't know you knew him on a personal basis."

"Well enough Percy. Try not to kill him. He's useful. Even if he is a bit off in the head. Well. Extremely off in the head."

Percy rolled his eyes. He'd watched the man in the pit. There wasn't much more then a raider to Bullseye in his opinion. "Fine. You still haven't told me what the end game is."

"And you still haven't found the water chip that was headed this way. The Khans are going to be extremely displeased if this goes south."

Percy turned around, crossing his arms over the metal chest plate, it was old and worn, and he had pulled a duster over it. "I don't care about the Khans. I don't care about the Fiends. I don't care about Bullseye. I don't care about you. I'm doing my job, you fucking dwarf, and I've been around these raiders for too long. Whatever deal you have with your superiors, leave me out of it. I just want them all to kill each other. I've held up my end of the bargain, and lost one - maybe two good men in the process."

Percy pulled on the riot helmet, grabbing the Ranger Sequoia from the desk and spinning it into its holster. He picked up the assault rifle in one hand, pointing a finger at the dwarf. "You get the Khans here. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a squad to take command of before they all get themselves killed."

"Fine fine," the dwarf said, waving him away. "Mr. Kintile will be at your disposal from here on out. I know the Coalition has complicated things, but trust it will all still work out according to plan... And, Ranger Percy. Thank you for your cooperation."

The armored Ranger flipped the dwarf off as he walked down the stairs, and the dwarf let out a quiet chuckle. All the pieces were falling into place.

((Oh hey guys, There wasn't much interacting with with Ms. Strife, pls skip pls))