When we last left our brave hero, he was on his way to the town of Primm.
Why? Well, because that is the nearest city, and the men who had capped me and left me for dead in the desert were said to have passed through there.
Upon arriving in Primm, it was pretty clear that the city had seen better days. By that I mean that things seem a little more crappy than usual for a post-apocalyptic wasteland town. The city was divided in two by a highway which was serving as a kind of natural border for the two opposing forces in the town.
On one side of the highway the NCR, the "good guys", and on the other side (the bigger side) were some random bandit buttholes. Being the fine upstanding hero of the people that I am, I quite naturally decided to offer my not insubstantial services to the NCR.
The NCR are clearly the good guys, but in the wasteland nothing is perfect. From what I've heard of them, while they have good democratic intentions sometimes things get sloppy and bureaucratic. And in the end, like all good strong nations, it comes down to join us or die for them too. But they try, and that's more than you can say for most of the political forces out here.
I walked into the tent of the leader of the NCR outpost here in Primm. He must have some lousy soldiers, since they let a random stranger, armed to the teeth, wander into their commander's tent with nary a word of protest or alarm.
The commander gave me a quick and grim rundown of what has been going on in Primm. Basically, the local prison was overrun by our old friends the Powder Gangers and that destabilized the region, allowing Primm to fall into random rear-oriented bandit hands.
The short and long of it: It is up to me to 1) find a new sheriff to instill law and order in Primm and 2) go to the prison, talk it out with the Gangers, and see what I can do about settling that situation down.
Those were my official orders, but I made it my first order of business to clean up the streets of Primm, brutal wasteland justice style. While the NCR were willing to help out when the time was right, I knew that the people of Primm needed more immediate relief. And so, like an Aleve liquid gel-cap of justice, I set out to relieve the aching back of the Primm citizenry from the oppressive joint pain of the arthritice-like anal cavity bandits.
That analogy stretched paper thin, I set out into the night towards the crazy bandit side of town. Right at the border, an NCR trooper stood watch. I told him I was crossing over, and he wished me good luck. I thanked him and set out.
Two feet from his guard station, a heard that awful beeping noise under my feet. I closed my eyes tightly and braced myself for the impact, which easily put me on my back and hamburgerized my legs all over again.
Discouraged, and more than a little annoyed, I crawled over to the guard.
"What the crap?" I asked, bluntly. He just stared blankly at me and shrugged his shoulders. "Why wouldn't you tell me about that mine that you set up? For that matter, why even set up a mine there? Who is that going to hit, just three feet from your damn guard post?" I further implored, but there would be no answer. He was clearly too busy standing around and doing nothing.
Luckily, I had a doctor's bag that I had stolen from the good Doc back in Goodsprings. I used that to put my legs back in legging shape, and, with one last nasty look shot towards the stupid NCR guard, I set back out across the borderline.
This time I made it ten feet before I heard that all too familiar beeping noise. I let out a curse almost as loud as the ensuing explosion and crawled my way back over to the guard, rage in my eyes.
"DUDE!?" I asked, somewhat annoyed at this point in all honesty.
Still that same blank stare, and this time he added another good luck about crossing the border, for flavor.
I pulled out a single barrel shotgun I had scavenged off of a dead Powder Ganger earlier and used it to perform surprise dental surgery on the guard. That task done, and another doctor's bag (my last) applied, I once more went back over the borderline.
Success! This time there were no beeps.
By this time it was the dead of night, and darker than a black bear's tympanic membrane (I grew up in the Southwest and I'm also a scientist, so my similes get to be as nonsensical as they are technical). I was able to use the cover of darkness to easily get the jump on my bandit foes and dispatch them as easily and brutally as could be.
I also bumped my head a lot and walked full force into a couple of brick walls. The wasteland in the dark is a harsh mistress indeed.
At the center of town was a casino/hotel thing, serving as the bandit's base of operation. I steeled myself, made like a whale and breached the doors to the building, guns at the ready. As I had expected, the inside was full of butthole bandits. What I hadn't expected was to find that the defining characteristic of the hemorrhoidal-hollow bandits is a near total blindness. Even as my armor clanked away, I easily got the sneak on the bandits inside and dispatched them one by one, either through gun fire or the sudden donation of live dynamite to their pockets.
I also stole everything in sight, including the things secured by lock-safes and computers, but that goes without saying at this point. The hero needs to get paid, after all.
In the kitchen of the joint I came across a man bound and gagged (in the hostage sense, not the sexy sense). Naturally, I untied him and talked him up a bit. He was, apparently, the former deputy of the town, and he would help me get a sheriff. Great! I needed one of those.
"But," he quickly added, sensing my happiness, "first you have to get me out of here."
While I was a little annoyed at his holding out on me like this, I could also see how he'd want to get free from his hostage takers as soon as possible. So I told him to stay put, and went into the main room of the building to confront the bandit boss. Confront him I did, from across the room, with a little greeting I like to call "live dynamite". A fight broke out instantly, but in short order I emerged victorious.
Unfortunately, space in my pockets was getting extremely tight, and I had to start leaving the spoils of my victories behind. This will not due for long.
At any rate, I went back to Deputy Beagle (for that was his name) and escorted him out of the building. Once outside, he took on the queerest attitude and insisted that he had actually helped me fend off the bandits and that I owed him some gratitude. Furthermore, rather than actually help me find a sheriff, he actually gave me ANOTHER task to do for him before he would help.
My vision turned red, bile started rising in my throat, and my eyes began to twitch involuntarily. In the dead of the dark Primm night I let out a primal scream right in Deputy Beagle's stupid face. He just stared blankly until I finished, then turned and went off on his own way into the night. I made sure to pick his pockets clean the moment his back was turned.
I was tired of this place, tired of this town, oh my my, oh hell yes, you've got to put on that party... Where was I?
Ah yes... I needed a pack mule. One of Beagle's friends in a casino told me about a broken robot he had in his house that I could have if I could fix it. Me, being the super scientist that I am, did just that.
Meet ED-E. Deadly, sexy, and can carry my stuff all day long.
With my inventory squared away, I set out towards the prison. No doubt I would get there, some douche in charge would give me a bunch of stuff to do before he would decide to cooperate with me, and eventually everything would sort itself out.
I waved as I approached the gate guard to the prison. He stepped forward to talk to me, but before he got a word out ED-E whirred into life and put a hot laser blast right into his mouth.
"WTF, ED-E!?!" I yelled out, taken aback by my new companion's unprompted murder.
But there was no time for ED-E to beep out an answer, as the prison instantly exploded into activity. Alarms went off, guards climbed towers, men came charging out of buildings carrying guns and knives. We had kicked a hornets nest.
I sighed, grabbed a set of prison keys off of the newly ashified guard, and entered the prison proper. As I opened the gate, I shook my head towards ED-E.
"We are going to talk about this later."
