#some thoughts while I was leaving the strip with the girls and the omertas found us

[chiledelquenopica]

Headcannon that every successful speech check in fallout involving a change of outfit is like the character twirling their hair, adjusting their clothing to reveal more skin, just overall teasing in order to get information because why else would changing from riot gear to naughty nightwear would guarantee a convincing talking point?

[callsignbaphomet]

OC Interview

1. What is your name? “Jelani Haakonson.”

2. How old are you? "20."

3. What do you look like? "Long hair, blue eyes, black, according to somebody way too tall."

4. Where are you from? Where do you live now? "Originally from Capital Wasteland. Now I'm kind of nowhere really. I mean, we took a bunker we found and cleaned it out and now we're holed up there but we move around a lot and honestly, once we get tired of Boston we're shipping out to whoever the fuck knows."

5. What was your childhood like? "Bittersweet I guess. It wasn't exactly charming or easy. Eh, not something I revisit often."

6. What groups are you friendly with? Are you allied with any factions? "Ok, so I may or may not have gotten on Preston's bad side--not that I give a shit. Probably not on best terms with those railroad quacks after I insulted them. I mean, it wasn't an insult I was just being honest that they took it as an insult is a them problem. I don't think the 'Institute' is real so obviously not allied to them or whatever. I kinda stay away from the BoS in the area and apparently Nisha wants to and I quote stab me in the throat, pull out the knife and make Angelus choke on my blood and it sounds kinky as fuck but I'm still waiting for that stabbing.

Think the only people we actually get along with is The Pack and The Operators. Oh, and those really sweet ghouls up in that farm and Varg from that group of ghouls that live on that ship.”

7. Tell me about your best friend. "He's an idiot, way too loud, way too hyper, wastes far too many bullets and barely hits anything, skinny, little pale twink that I loved enough to marry. He's still an idiot though."

8. Do you have a family? Tell me about them! "Ja, I have an older brother. He taught me everything our parents taught him. I was too little to remember a lot of it so after they died he picked up where they left off. Basically raised me. He's nice, a little too nice for his own good but he means well. He'll help anyone no matter what."

9. What about a partner or partners? "Yeah, husband. Talked about him earlier."

10. Who are your enemies? And why? Aside from Nisha I might sorta, kinda be wanted by the NCR and it's probably a good idea to never go back to New Vegas.

Thing with Nisha is because she found out I was talking trash about her and her little group. At least The Pack surprisingly has a clear view of what they want, Operators obviously know what they want and what to do. Nisha and those rabid little assholes just wanna kill everything and ok in a way I can admire that but there’s no pay off to it, there’s no point. And I just don’t like the bitch and she needs to live with it. Still waiting for that stabbing, Nisha. Need my address?

NCR is a huge mess. I don’t even remember why we were fighting but this asshole named Lucien just started shit with my brother so obviously I wasn’t having any of it so I stepped in. Shit escalated and we shot ‘em and took their coats because...fuck them all. NCR found out and of course now we’re on bad terms with them to the point where it’s kill on sight."

11. Have you ever heard of the Brotherhood of Steel? What do you think about them? "Ok with all due respect to my mother I think they're just glorified raiders who come to places they're not wanted and like locusts take what they want and use people only to then move on and leave the area all the worse. I get why my mother joined but I'm glad she went awol."

12. What about The Enclave? "I don't know that much, I don't even think they're around anymore. All I know is my maternal grandmother was in The Enclave."

13. How do you feel about Super Mutants? "Annoyed. Trigger happy freaks who just never calm the fuck down."

14. What's the craziest fight you ever been in? "This was back in New Vegas and we were in the strip. So a couple of us were at Gomorrah, there was a lot of drinking. So after some fucking around on the courtyard we all head up to one of the suites and we're passing around more drinks, chems of all kinds and prostitutes. So there was this one prostitute I can't even remember what the fuck he looked like but he was crazy for jet and guess what I had plenty of. Later that night someone comes to the fucking door asking for a Jake. None of us really know each other, we were all just a bunch of mercs fucking around. So everybody starts asking for a Jake and who was it? The guy who I was balls deep in. Great. Turns out that bitch was that guy's favorite but I'm an asshole about it, I'm drunk and high off everything you can imagine. I walk up to the guy at the door and tell him that he can have him back once I'm done with him and close the door and we get back to it. Guy doesn't like that but walks away.

So we're all still drinking and fucking and suddenly we hear gunshots down the hall and the same dude from before yelling for Jake to come out. He kicks down the door, fights his way through the group and pulls out a knife while he yells that that's his bitch I was fucking. I don't even know why but I just put my hand up, I guess I was trying to grab his hand but ended up putting my palm in front of me and he just stabs my hand. At that moment I didn't feel a thing. The whole room just stopped and we're all looking at my hand and that psycho. I shake my hand to get it off but all I'm really doing is spraying blood everywhere and we all start laughing but that guy wasn't laughing so he yells and goes to shoot but two other guys this one prostitute push the guy and they wrestle the gun from him somehow. I'm still laughing really loud and I don't know why but I grabbed him and stood him up and I pushed him. Pushed him hard enough that he went through the window and the last thing we heard was this really nasty splat.

We all looking at the dead guy and then at each other and the girl that got the gun off him just yells out this really slurred bye and we lose our shit. We're laughing hard and making a bigger raucous and just then some Omerta assholes walk in with guns drawn and shit. She was the only one who wasn't drunk or high so she tells 'em what the fuck just happened and they just give us a generic warning and we keep going till we blackout. I woke up two days later near Novac and Loke looking at me like a disappointed dad and talks my ear off for an hour. I don't remember what the fuck he said I was hungover and my hand hurt like a bitch. No regrets that was a hell of a fun night."

15. Have you ever fought a deathclaw? "...I have and on several occasions but one sticks out and it's probably the worst moment of my life. When Loke and I realized we were wanted by the NCR he goes up to me and says, 'Lillebror, we need to get the fuck outta here. Now.' So he's panicking and he never panics so I'm panicking. Long story short we go with this caravan who's moving to Boston because you know there's safety in numbers and they have a map and they've used that same route dozens of times.

Turns out there was a really bad storm and the usual route was blocked off by this massive tree and if we didn’t have some brahmin with us and there wasn’t a caravan we could have climbed over it. So we’re looking at the map and I notice this route through what I’m guessing used to be some mines that led back to the main route. That route was the fastest but hadn’t been used for a long time but I keep insisting it’s better than going through the other one which would cost us about 3 days. So we go and we literally walk into a goddamn deathclaw nest. We manage to kill one since it was already wounded but then the other one shows up and Loke tries to lure it away from the group while I get everyone to a safe distance. Once I do I go back for my brother and I try to get that thing’s attention so Lo can hide. Didn’t exactly go as planned and I watched Lo and the deathclaw fall.

I thought he’d died and I don’t know I stayed at the nest just waiting. I don’t know those few days after are a blur and the only reason I snapped out of it was because Dagny was injured and she was hungry and I knew she wouldn’t be able to survive on her own. So I finally got up and walked to Boston because of her.

Luckily Lo made it and we eventually found each other again but that was the worst deathclaw encounter I’ve ever had.”

16. Do you like fighting? “Not particularly, I mean, if I have to I will but I don’t actively try to look for fights.”

17. What's your weapon of choice? “Antimaterial sniper rifle that used to belong to my mom. I can pretty much use anything but that’s my go to.”

18. How do you survive? Your wits, your charm, your skills, brute force, some combination? (a.k.a. what’s your S.P.E.C.I.A.L?) Combination of skills. I was basically trained since I was a kid to use most any weapon and how to survive out there. Also picked up how to hack into any terminal I come across. I leave the charm and manipulation and lockpicking to Angelus and any and all robot know how to Lo.”

19. Have you ever been in a vault? What do you think of them? “Yeah, we actually went looking for a violin for this old lady, it was inside a vault. I don’t really know what to think of them aside from the fact that they’re really creepy.”

20. How do you beat all the radiation around here? Has it affected you? “Look I have a lot of specific things I take with me whenever I go out there and a metric fuck ton of Rad Away is one of them. I never eat anything that’s raw and I spend a long time washing food before I cook it. I’ve barely had to deal with that shit and I intend to keep it that way.”

21. What's your favorite wasteland critter? “Fine, I might be a bit biased but night stalkers and dogs. Dagny’s been an amazing pet and Maya’s an absolute sweetheart.”

22. What's your least favorite wasteland critter? “Deathclaws. Hate them to death. I don’t like admitting to it but they scare the fuck out of me and whenever I run into one I’m scared to death that it’ll hurt or kill someone I care about and I get into this weird fight or flight state where I’m either gonna run the fuck away as fast as I can or I fight till I run out of bullets or it kills me.”

23. How do you feel about robots? “To be honest they kind of used to freak me out a little especially robobrains but watching Loki put ‘em together and fix ‘em is actually pretty interesting and Kat’s fun. She’s bitchy in a fun way.”

24. How many caps do you have on you right now? “I never leave without at least 400 caps, you never know what the fuck’s gonna happen out there. There’s also several stashes with at least 200 caps in them that Angelus and I have hidden in areas we frequent.”

25. Nuka Cola or Sunset Sarsaparilla? “Fuck, man, Nuka always, especially Nuka Cherry. When I saw the damn bottling plant over at Nuka world I nearly cried.”

26. Do you do chems? “Uh...not really anymore. Ok, as a teenager I was drinking a lot and basically trying every chem anybody would offer. I didn’t keep any with me because I knew my brother would kick the shit out of me. I didn’t use frequently because I was afraid Loki would find out and I was really cautious about addiction. Now skip forward to Boston and this was after the deathclaw incident and I thought Loki was dead and I blamed myself for what happened and I wasn’t in a good place at all I’ll admit it. Met Angelus and some of his friends and they were getting high and/or drunk all the goddamn time we went to Nuka World and it got to a point where I thought that it would be better if I just died so I took to jet because it was the only thing that would numb me enough to stop feeling anything especially the guilt. On one particularly shitty day I was drunk and that exacerbated that guilty feeling so I hid and took one hit after another until I blacked out and next thing I know Angelus was pumping me full of Addictol while this other Operator helped him. Apparently I was declared dead for two minutes and when I came to I was fucking pissed off at him. That was the point and he fucked it up for me but I’m actually grateful for it and after that I stopped taking any of it and he actually slowed down on using any of them. He occasionally still used but not as much as before and he’s kinda stopped ever since we got married so win-win I guess.”

27. Do you ever think about the Pre-War world? “No, I don’t actually. That time is long gone and it’s never coming back so there’s no point in wasting time and energy into thinking about it. I’ve read up on it several times and while it sounds practical it also sounds utterly boring and I don’t know if society as it is now could possibly go back to it, not when we’ve lived this way for this long.”

28. What's your deepest regret? What would you do differently? “I have plenty of regrets but there are some I regret more than others. I regret suggesting that route that led to that nest, I regret getting addicted to jet and overdosing on it but I especially regret the one time I was brave enough to kill myself. This was obviously before I found out that Loke was still alive, this was after the overdose and way before we got married. I told Angelus to look after Dagny while I went out to do a favor for someone. I just kept walking and walking until I ran into this small abandoned bunker and I broke in and just dropped on the floor and just stayed there for days. I was choking on this guilt and I didn’t know how to make it stop. So I grabbed the knife I always carry with me and I just cut as deep as I could and waited. Few minutes later I could hear barking and in rushes Dagny followed by Maya, Angelus, Ginger, and Abigail. Spent a few weeks at their place. Didn’t eat, didn’t talk, barely moved, three of them watched me like a hawk. I’d made up my mind to eat a bullet as soon as they let their guard down but Angelus got pissed the fuck off at me and he started yelling at me. Told me I was acting like an asshole and being selfish. I finally spoke up and told him that I should’ve died with Lo and he actually pushed me and told me that Lo didn’t sacrifice himself only for me to go and kill myself and that by doing that I was spitting in his face and it made sense. We just stayed in bed for a few days, cried more than I ever did in my entire life and I don’t know it just made a bit of sense.

If I knew that I would eventually run into Loke and find out that he was still alive I would have never done any of that especially after Lo saw the scars and asked and I didn’t lie. I should’ve but I didn’t wanna lie to him and he was crying and I was crying and it was a bit of a mess. He told me that he thought about doing it too when he wasn’t able to find me and thought that maybe I’d died. That’s my biggest regret.”

29. What's your biggest achievement? Or what do you hope to achieve? “Look in this day and age I’ll consider growing old and dying of natural causes like the ultimate achievement.”

30. What do you want for the future? For yourself? Your friends? The world? “Don’t really have a plan, I mean, I’m just kind of winging it. For now we’re here in Boston but who knows, if there’s some other place we could run off to we’ll go and take it from there.”

Tagged by @wild-w4steland-snip3r (thank you, dear, this was super fun!)

Tagging @spiderkingtony and anyone else who actually read through and wanna do it.