#Considering she survived a bullet to the noggin

[blushing-badger]

Yeehawgust Day 4: "Hold Your Horses"

[monochromemedic]

Stuck with Ben-man

So being stuck in a sandstorm with Benny sucked.  Benny cropped up to try to ‘face me’ aka antagonize me and my friend when a sandstorm popped up, a real bad one.  One that made the winds whip and our vision fade until we were yelling at each other  and trying to hold hands. I managed to hold on to someone as we tried to hunk down, only for the sand to overcome us and nearly bury us. I woke up slumped against a rock with sand covering me from the waist down. I looked to the friend I had held on to, only to see the familiar checkered suit and dusty smug face slowly coming too. No chairmen, no lackies, no followers, no friends. Just me, and Benny. The sound of Benny taking his shoe off and dumping sand back on to the desert and beginning to walk again was constant, as was the grumbles and sighs. “You know I use to be.... good at this stuff. Use to own this place like I was a king. Course when House came around, I had the chance to be better instead of fighting over roach meat, I took it. Now i’m back and I hate it. All grody and dusty. I feel like i’m back in that time. I hate it.” “Well sorry someone got a taste of champagne and now can’t stand to be in the real world for 5 seconds. Oh boo hoo, survival for the big boss man.” I sarcastically cried, my hands making a fake crying motion. Benny gritted his teeth, stomping up closer to me, placing a hand on my shoulder which made me recoil away instinctively.  “Oh and you wig out everytime i’m round you. What a little lead in the noggin hurt you that bad? Listen I’m 18 karat, i’m a real swell guy. I won’t turn on you less you turn on me so let’s just keep it smooth until we find our people again, and we’ll be golden.” I paused, trying to deduce what the hell we was saying to me before continuing to walk. “Yeah course that’s what you always say and then I end up getting crossed. For all I know you got that dumb gun of your pressed against my back-” “Her names Maria and she’s twice the gal you’ll ever be, babe!” He barked, kicking a little sand as we walked “Oh did I cut a little deep there lover boy? Insult your girlfriend? You like to put your peepee in the gun hole to make you feel good?” “Get bent you nasty broad, I only stick my dick in class acts unlike yourself. You’re lucky im still hanging around, I could hightail it out of here and leave you all alone but since i’m such a swell guy i’m HELPING you out.” “Yeah i’ve survived out here for years, I don’t think some douche in a checker print suit with a pea shooter will make much of a difference.” I could practically feel the hissy fit he was having behind me the way he was  stomping around in the sand. “GOD I JUST WANNA STRANGLE YOU! I TRY TO BE NICE, I TRY TO BE A REAL GENT, A REAL STAND UP GUY AND YOU STILL GIVE ME THE SHAFT.” I turned around, raising my arms sarcastically. “OH GEE I WONDER WHY, MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE OF ALL THE SHAFTS YOU GIVE ME TIME AFTER TIME. LITTLE GEEK er-er... FINK CAN’T HANDLE A LITTLE PLAYFUL BANTER CAN HE? WHAT A FRAGILE LITTLE EGO-” I was cut off by him tackling me to the ground, arms trying to wrap around my neck as he screeched angrily. I thrashed back, fingers scratching his face which only made him angrier. “YOU LEAVE THE MUG ALONE, OFF LIMITS, YOU GANK ME YOU KEEP IT BELOW THE DO-” “FUNNY WORDS FOR A MAN WHO SHOT ME IN THE MUG-” Benny’s hand flew in the air as he quickly got up, walking away and screaming into his own hands while I still thrashed in the dust angrily, yelling as well before we both started to chill out, getting the lust for each others blood on our hands. I stared at Benny, who tried to smooth his hair back, only failing for the lack of gel that was in his hair. “Alright i’m chill, i’m chill. My nest look like death but i’m chill. Let’s just... let’s just get going.” I glared back at him, slowly getting up and giving a final scream before nodding. “Yeah ok i’m... i’m good.” As we turned around and went to take the first step, we saw that our little spat attracted the attention of a couple of geckos, staring with wide eyes. Benny muttered a little swear under his breath as he reached for Maria and pointing it at the biggest gecko. “Dibs.”  A familiar sound echoed in the air as the gecko’s head turned into a red paste as he turned to the next one that began to charge at us. I quickly grabbed my own pistol and began to put rounds  into any gecko that began to come close to the both of us. As we began to  finish off the rest of them a larger, fire gecko came charging from the side, knocking Benny down and beginning to swipe at his chest, his blood splattering against the dusty ground. I aimed at the gecko, pausing for a moment to consider the fact that ‘Benny Gecko’ dying by a gecko would be funny at take out the entire situation of the bastard lingering around before sighing and beginning to lace the creature with bullets. It fell over with a slump, a little burst of flame exiting it’s mouth, showing how close Benny was to getting singed. I glared at Benny who wheezed and slowly began to get up, hand on his slashed chest.  “I’d say i’d owe you but, Ben-man don’t owe nothing to no one-” “I heard you that if you get the fire sack out of a fire gecko you can squeeze it and make flames come out. Now if you keep talking I might just do that to you and finish the job that gecko was gonna do before I saved your ass.” Benny was quiet, hair hanging in his face as he eyed me up, and began to walk again. “Do you at least got a stimpak on you?” “I mean... I do. But you gotta say the magic word.” His stare intensified, before he rolled his eyes and began to give me puppy dog eyes. “May I... please have a stimpak?” I dug in my bag, throwing out a stimpak to him as we continued to walk wishing we were with anyone but each other.

[asthora]

The Last Dance

The Courier and Benny have their final face off and there’s only so much room for ambition in New Vegas.  Eventual Courier x Benny.

Crazy.

Goddamn mother-fucking crazy.

Benny doesn’t know if he means himself or the broad bathed in blood who’s just smashed in a Legionnaire's head with the heel of her boot.  God, he thinks he fucking loves her.  

Ha, love!

He’s confusing love for lust.  He does that often.  Once, he thought he loved a hooker but when he realized he remembered every detail about her tits, but not her name, he threw the notion of love out the window.  This is similar.  He knows the courier’s tits too.  Saw them a couple of nights ago in his suite.  Thought he would never see them again but hey, he’s thinking he might have a chance at round two if she decides to let his mangy ass go free.

A fucking pipe dream.

The courier empties a clip then uses the butt of her rifle to break one guy’s jaw then another poor soul’s nose.  Her companion, a man with a buzz cut who screams NCR even without the stupid beret, finishes them off with a few efficient shots to the gut.  Benny has never seen so much blood in his life.  Something about it is arousing.  Or rather, watching the courier do her dance of death is arousing.  The bodies, the blood, the severed limbs, it’s somehow just the right background for this celestial wasteland bitch.

How can this be the same gal he ravaged in his bed a few nights ago?  He wonders if he made it up.  A dream he conjured.  No, he couldn’t have.  The image of the courier laid out across his bed like a four course meal has been the only way he’s been able to survive the fucking nightmare he’s endured in this camp.  That night was real, just like this impossible slaughter is real.

He’s wandered into the world’s best show.  A front row seat to the showdown of the century.  She unceremoniously beheads Caesar.  Takes a fucking baseball bat to his head like it’s 2077.  A home fucking run.  Then his goddamn lapdog, Vulpes, the most evil son of a bitch from here to New Vegas and back, is just laid out like a nice steak, butchered and bloodied and fucked over until he’s ground brahmin and the courier is standing over his body triumphantly.

Benny can’t believe he bagged this broad.  

She’s a nightmare.  A daydream.  A scourge on this earth and she isn’t finished purifying the desert just yet.

The courier moves on, leaving the confines of the tent while he stays put on his knees, tied up like slaughterhouse brahmin waiting for the send off.

“Christ,” he says under his breath.

Off to the side, the severed head of Caesar is looking back at him with wide, startled eyes.  What a sight.  Any other day he would rejoice, the great Caesar is dead!  But he’d like to rejoice in the comfort of The Tops or at least somewhere that isn’t the dying black heart of the Legion.

He waits patiently, because that’s all he can do.  He listens to the sound of bullets flying and grown men screaming.  He wonders about the logistics of taking out the entire Legion camp, something the NCR has been wanting to do since the skirt wearing assholes plopped down across the Colorado.  He guesses it all came down to the fact that she had the balls where the NCR’s turned blue.   Then it helped that she had the jump on them.  She had Caesar's trust.  Never did the wrinkly old bastard think that a woman could send him flying from his pedestal.  Maybe that was all she needed.

A risky move, one Benny isn’t sure he would make, but he trusts the courier to do things right.  She has more luck than Lady Luck herself.  She’s also batshit crazy.

He’s beginning to wonder if the crazy broad is ever coming back when a weird silence settles over the camp.  There isn’t even any pathetic moaning of survivors.  The bitch killed them all.  He laughs into the void.

Dead!

The flap of the tent rustles and Benny straightens and lifts his chin, as if that’s going to help him look any more authoritative while he’s down on his knees like a New Vegas tramp.  He supposes he should have taken this time to think of how he could convince her to let him live.  But, the time has passed, and he blames dehydration and an empty stomach for the poor judgement call.

He’s as good as dead.

The courier walks towards him.  She takes big strides, walks with shoulders thrown back and her chin held high as if she’s going somewhere important.  She crouches right in front of him, so close he could count the freckles that pepper the bridge of her nose if he was so inclined.

“So pussycat,” he says.  “What’s next?”

She cocks her head  and gives him a shit-eating grin.  If he was nervous before, he’s sweating bullets now.  To think just seconds ago he was pondering walking out of this camp a free man.  The look in the courier’s eyes is downright devilish.

“I didn’t really plan this far,” she answers.  A lie.   Of course she did.  She’s like him, she sees all the angles and plans appropriately.  She knows exactly what she’s going to do and she’s gonna let him sweat over it for a few minutes.

“Time keeps on ticking, babydoll.  If you don’t make up your mind soon, we’ll be dancing in the dark.”  He laughs, but it sounds brittle and forced.  Fuck.  Charming his way out of this one is out of the question.

She laughs too.  “I like the dark.”

The courier stands up and puts a hand on her hip.  She’s wearing next to nothing, ripped jeans and a white tank top that has a few holes and more than one blood stain.  How is she not dead?  Maybe it’s all the crazy in her that keeps her kicking.  If two bullets to the noggin can’t send her off, the Legion can’t touch her.  She’s goddamn immortal and he doesn’t have a chance up against her.

“I get it pussycat.  Fair is fair.   And eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  I deserve the worst,” he says.  Trying to woo her cold cold heart with pitiful moaning isn’t his best card, but doesn’t have the ideal hand to work with.  He’s going to count his blessings and remember she didn’t stick him with that switchblade she had stuffed in her bra the other night.  She’s had the chance to kill him.  Or maybe she was just waiting for this moment.

She raises an eyebrow.  “So you’re ready to die?”

“Well,” he gives her his slickest smile, the one that makes broads collapse into his arms.  “I wouldn’t say ready.  Just accepting and  thanking god above that a barn-burner like yourself is the one to bump me off and not some common wasteland fink.”

“You know how to charm a girl, Benny.” She deadpans.

“It’s a talent, what can I say?”

She lets out a long sigh.  He can tell she’s thinking, but he isn’t sure about what.  Which way to kill him perhaps?  Is she considering crucifixion?  He wouldn’t put it past her.  But maybe, the cross isn’t her style.  A good throat slash perhaps, or maybe she wants to send him out the same way he tried to kill her.  Bam bam.  

He wishes she would just do it so he wouldn’t have to keep waiting.  He’s been on his knees for so long that his legs have gone numb.  The first few hours were torture.  He felt every grain of Mojave sand through his slacks, biting his skin and eventually making him bleed.  He doesn’t feel anything anymore, wishes that the feeling would extend to his racing heart and sweaty armpits.  He wishes she would just kill him so the fear would go away.  He hates fear.

But she doesn’t seem to want to get the show on the road because she just stands there.  She looks at him for awhile.  She chews on her lip.  Circles him, running a hand through his greasy hair.  He would like it if she wasn’t tearing at the roots.  At one point she stops and starts cleaning the blood from her fingernails with water from her canteen and a decently clean portion of his dusty checkered coat.  Benny wants to fucking scream.

“Pussycat-”

“No,” she says.  “Don’t speak.  I’m enjoying the silence.”

She goes back to her circling.  This time she has a knife.  Sometimes she pokes him with it.  Gentle, not hard, just enough to sting but not enough to draw blood.  He knows he’s being teased.  Oh, she is a nasty one.  Every single jab chips away at his oh so holy pride, his carefully crafted cool cat image.  The bitch knows where to hit him where it hurts and he isn’t sure if he should applaud her or fucking lunge and try to rip her throat out with his teeth.

Woah.  Slow down there Benny-boy.

What a thought.  What a very tribal thought.  

Goddamnit, she’s wearing him down.  He has to focus.

But he’s tired, dehydrated, and he’s pretty sure he has a concussion from all those beatings the Legion so kindly gave him.  And she keeps going and going and going.  When he think she’s going to stop, she doesn’t.  He’s a doormat.  The courier wipes her boots on his slacks, spits in his hair, prods his bruises until he makes unholy noises.

Fuck he hates her.  He loves her.

At one point, her companion, the NCR fuck with the stupid hat, comes in to check on her but she waves him away and keeps up her torture.  Isn’t she afraid of Legion reinforcements?  Doesn’t she want to get out of here?  Move on with her life and leave him bleeding into the desert like the rest of her enemies?

Benny tries to think of it in a good light.  He’s the worst of the worst.  Her number one bad guy.  He’s getting the star treatment.  Caesar wasn’t important enough for her to kick and toss around in the dirt.  He should feel flattered.  That helps prop up his ailing ego a bit.  He holds onto that as she slaps him.  Once, twice, ow.

She crouches in front of him again.  She’s even closer this time.  Like really close, like oh boy, he can smell her.  Fuck.  Her baby blues are shining like neons.  She smells like sweat and blood and gunpowder.  A heady blend of the wasteland’s choice aromas.  She smells like Boot Rider, looks like New Vegas.

“I think I’m done,” she says.  “I’m getting bored.  You aren’t mouthy today, Benny.  I’m disappointed.”

He gives a tired smile.  “Sorry, honeybaby.  You caught me on a bad day.  Blame the concussion and the broken ribs.”

The courier pats him on the shoulder.  “You’ve been a good sport, Benny.  The best out of this whole goddamn game.”

“Well now I’m flattered, baby.  You’ve been 18 karat yourself, a real gasser.” He says.

“Ready for the send out?” She whispers.

“Endsville, next stop.”

The courier smiles and runs her finger along the rusted blade of her knife.  So she’s going with the classic hack and slash.  Here she is again, catching him off guard.  What a broad.

He thinks about closing his eyes but he ain’t a fink.  He squints a little instead.  He doesn’t want to seem too eager to meet the executioner’s axe.  She leans in closer, closer, closer.  The edge of the blade is up against his throat.  It’s warm like it’s sucked up some of the Legion blood and now has a dark heart of its own.

He waits.

Any minute now.

Tick tock.

Why the fuck is she taking so long?

The courier lowers her blade and the rope around his wrists suddenly falls into the dirt.  Is this a joke?  He looks down at his bleeding wrists and flexes his fingers.  They’re stiff.  The blood rushing back into his hands is painful and his vision goes blurry for half a second.  He isn’t sure if he should rejoice just yet.  What if this is a trick?  Another cruel torture device?  He watches her carefully as she reaches behind her and pulls out Maria.

Fuck.  Maria.

His number one broad.  His companion.  His first love.

She sets it before him gently as if she were setting down a puppy.  The courier looks up at him.

“I can’t fucking kill you.  I would like to but it just doesn’t feel right.  You deserve worse than death.  Life will fuck you over more than I can.” She says.

“You letting your number one most wanted walk free?”  He can’t believe it.  He just can’t.  The bitch is crazier than he thought!  He was ready to die and now he gets to live?  No, this isn’t how this works.  This isn’t how the law of the wasteland goes.  Like he said, and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  That’s how it goes here, that’s how it’s always been.  Even in Vegas.

The courier smiles.  “You’re a fucking prick and I hate you with every fiber of my being.  I’ll kill you one day but it isn’t today.”  She throws her canteen at his feet and stands.

“So this is it?  You just gonna let me go free?” He says, clumsily grabbing Maria and checking the clip.  One bullet.

She bites her lip.  “Free is a relative term.  I have one rule.  You can’t come to Vegas.  You step one goddamn foot across the line and I’ll blow you sky high.”

His heart drops to his stomach.  His golden city gone.  His goddamn home snatched away like a child’s toy.  Benny grinds his teeth together.  Would it be a waste to put this one bullet in her head?

Yes.

There isn’t going back to Vegas, something told him that the moment he left the courier naked and asleep in his bed.  Once he crossed into Legion territory, once his plans reached the ear of the Chairman via the courier, there was no way he could walk back into The Tops without one of his boys blowing his brains out.  He went behind their backs, lied to them.  He broke rule number one of the Boot Rider code, a code that still hadn’t faded no matter how hard he tried to scrub it out.  He’s back to being a wastelander.  A wanderer.  A nobody.  And Vegas?  Well, he trusts the courier enough to do the right thing.

“Alright,” he says.  “You’ll never see me again.  Scramsville here I come.”

“Great!  Then we’re finished here.  Time to cash out.”

He can tell it gives her great pleasure to say that.  The courier slings her rifle over her shoulder, sticks her knife in her boot, and leaves Caesar's tent for the last time.  He doesn’t move.  He doesn’t know what to do next.  All he’s got is a checkered coat, one bullet, a half empty canteen, and the memory of a golden city in the middle of the desert.  The courier has taken it all from him.  Every moment of pain, every trial, every move he’s ever made has been for nothing.

If Benny were a man of superstition, which is isn’t of course, he would maybe chalk it all up to fate.  But fate ain’t a thing.  There’s the doing and the done and the rise and the fall and this here is the fall and he’s got no one to blame but himself.  A plan ain’t perfect when you fuck up murdering the one person who needed killing the most.  So this right here, this whole fucked up situation, the reason he’s on his knees beside Caesar's detached head, is because he couldn’t do it right.

No more blaming the Courier for his mistakes.  Time to own up, stop being a fink.  Benny knows he could keep crying in the rain over spilled brahmin milk but that’s not the Vegas thing to do, that ain’t the Boot Rider code.   So he stands, shakily at first, his knees wobbling like an old man’s and when the world stops jumping and jiving he puts one foot in front of the other, unsure of where he’s going for the first time in his life.  Benny walks, his city’s lights forever behind him.

Note: This is the first part of a longer story I’m trying out. There is more just not sure when I’ll post the rest.

[desaeviio]

How did Banner survive an arrow to the head? Fun story.

 Most cases, an arrow to the noggin will kill you, and technically, here, it had done just that.  However, even after a year of suppressing Hulk and ‘curing’ herself, Banner failed there. Failed in accounting for the fact Hulk didn’t like taking death sitting down. Or ever frankly. So, through an extreme amount of Hulk Stubbornness, the arrow didn’t kill Banner, however, there wasn’t some grand transformation to shake it off, heal, anything like that.

Rather, there lay the “Dead” body Banner, in a field of heroes watching blood pool out of a head wound.  In shock, quiet and extreme levels of guilt. 

Under the surface of the evidently dead body in front of them was really, the absolute bare minimum of function running to keep alive. And Healing was slow, not terribly slow, but not immediately there. All advanced brain functions dropped off entirely, all power to heal a broken brain. Quite luckily, though Hawkeye doesn’t miss, he missed the brainstem. Almost apparently on purpose. By all measures of scanning, the heart rate was so low, Banner may have well been dead, but also quite luckily since the Avengers didn’t quite listen to how she chose to be handled in death should it come, steps like embalming were and cremating were skipped.

In fact, it was written that there was a preference to be buried, unaltered, left to rot. Another will at some point probably cited cremation, though if only to ensure the body would never be recoverable. This note thankfully got missed, but they didn’t do an open casket obviously. So thanks to that blunder in burial, they buried a technically alive person.

Technically alive. There wasn’t much ‘person’ rattling around that skull for a good week.IT was nothing more but Hulk’s pure determination to heal and keep alive that drove healing from another brain wound in the past five years in a slow manner that didn’t drain the weak body of all resources (however any weight put on by her wife’s carb-heavy cooking was used up in this process).

The scary part was what happened next. 

Banner, effectively dead to the world and herself, woke up in the grave, buried, with little other impulses and instruction she could think of other than ‘escape’ and ‘panic’ and ‘oh god’. Also waking up from your last memory being attacked and ganged up by the Avengers and then an arrow in your head is terrifying.  Somehow, though it’s beyond the zombie-like memory of the time, she got out. Hands dirty, nails long and disgusting. She dug her way out. She remembers none of this and is grateful. But the waking up, oh, that is remembered.

And from there on, there was an ashy, pale zombie-like woman about, heading a direction, unable to speak, somehow knowing what direction home was. Who knows how many miles away it was. That memory is a haze. Home wasn’t so much a place, but a person, and even with a brain still trying to formulate what season it was or time of day or that it was alive and kicking just... managed to find it. Hulk internal compass, bird-like in nature-- didn’t die out in Banner, especially to obscure things like homing into birthplaces and towards people evidently. And boy, did she give her wife the scare of the goddamn millennia.

An ashy ghost of a dead wife oat the door at midnight, dirty, skinny walking for days it seems splinters and dirt under the nails. Ross almost didn’t answer the door, and when Banner eventually put a word together in an incredibly parched mouth, it barely came out, hoarse, a ‘hi’ nearly mouthed.

But shit, Ross let her in. Screamed. Died a little, but let her in. Not before shutting the door on her.  It’s understandable.

Almost immediately thereafter, questions flooded a panicked wife obviously, shouldn’t you be dead? They buried you? But Banner had no response. Words were beyond saying. They weren’t happening. There wasn’t a single solid sentence spoken for at least a week. Banner slept on the couch after the first night, sleeping for two straight nights. Then, refusing to sleep for days in a row after. Waking up in your own coffin will do that to you. She ate everything offered by the fourth day, but getting any food int her took the force of an army. Banner was fucked up. Spacing out. Just trying to put things back in some working order in that cranium. Things didn’t ... click yet.

About a month in, there were sentences again, two weeks in, some very light explanation of how survival was even a thing. Banner didn’t know much about how either, and if she did, there weren’t words rummaging through that damaged brain enough to describe it.

Hulk took advantage of Banner’s inability to say no, or anything, and how frequently the poor brought-to-life scientist never really said or did anything at all while recovering beside sleeping and zoning out for hours at a time. So, Hulk got out and took adventures. Hulk earned it frankly. Fixing up a brain on the near-dead out of survival takes a toll on you. However, a fun side effect was that the transformations encouraged better healing, so each outing seemed to improve things. The first day Ross washed her recently alive wife. By the end of the month Banner could successfully stand in the shower too long and stare but nonetheless clean herself. It improved speech. It improved appetite. It worked.

As of now, Banner is still largely fucked up, and still isn’t saying no to Hulk so instead is laying low and putting pieces back together.

One of the scarier things that isn't a comforting thought frankly, is discovered later. While they removed what they could of the arrow from Banner’s skull and brain... They couldn’t get everything. Why try so hard for a dead person. Any more digging and you ruin what’s left of the face. So, apparently, something that keeps Banner up at night other than horrible flashbacks, is the fact in an extremely creative effort to pull from any resource as needed, Hulk... kinda... broke it down. What remained. In the brain. That arrow fractures left in the brain just got... absorbed. Eaten. That’s fucking miraculous, but the thought kept Banner up all night one night considering how that was possible, but Hulk made do.

Banner hides from the world still, slowly getting out there, but not announcing being alive just yet. However, it’s growing more apparent that’s the case, just coming back from the dead is hard on anyone.

So, Banner and The Hulk live. Goes to show, despite getting messed up in the process, it’s impossible to really kill the goddamn Hulk. The upside if that rather than the first fatal headshot to the back of the head prior, this front arrow shot did not result in infantilization of the brain. Banner didn’t lose intelligence temporarily out of it, not like that. 

Rather, there were two stages, Zombie trying to work with fragments coming at them, and genius, The genius was just flaked over with zombie-brain and came back relatively quickly, just a good month of not a  lot of genius going on. Rather than a bullet splattering everything and starting over, an arrow just sliced a little, an easier mend. but some severed connections initially for sure.