Ghost Town Gunfight

Fallout: New Vegas

Four federal agents stood on the eastern side of Rogers Dry Lake, shivering in the freezing cold of the Mojave night. Agent Smith doled out freshly milled bullets of nickel and iron, a crude imitation of the “sky metal” their quarry was weak to. Allegedly. 

Agent Deacon memorised the antiquated Japanese needed to summon the entity to their location, from wherever it was currently hunting hapless Californians. Meanwhile, Agent Thorn busied herself with a hastily assembled binding ritual, greedily hoping to establish control over whatever her coworker manifested from beyond the veil.

Finally, Agent Leon dug an entrenched position for the conspirators’ insurance policy - an M2 Browning he’d liberated from the base armory with bogus paperwork. As far as Edwards AFB knew, this was all just a live-fire exercise on the lakebed that they weren’t cleared for.

With all the pieces on the board, Deacon stubbed out his cheap cigarette and enunciated the summoning ritual. Nothing happened. He cleared his cancer-ridden throat nervously, unsure whether his learnt-by-rote phonetic pronunciation had been sufficient. Then there was a burst of Cherenkov radiation above a stretch of desert barely two dozen yards away.

The thing was huge; a slab of crimson flesh clutching a wooden bludgeon in clawed hands. And it was fast - faster than any of them. Its cinder-block feet crunched through dried earth, easily dodging fire from Leon’s machine gun, and was upon Deacon in an instant. The panicked G-man raised his shotgun, revealing a tree-branch-like symbol he’d affixed below the barrel. 

The ogre glanced at the sigil. It laughed.

Katsushika Hokusai

Deacon fired at it. His gun exploded. The poorly made nickel-iron slug had destroyed the barrel. He cursed Smith and his stupid fucking plan as the monster’s kanabō came down, sending a tangled mess of broken bones flying into a sandbank.

Thorn desperately shrieked out the lengthy binding ritual, but was barely through a tenth of it by the time Deacon was struck down. Ignoring its would-be-master, the oni charged down Agent Smith as the terrified ranger’s shots went wide. Before it had the chance to sunder his skull, Leon released another frantic burst of 50. BMG.

A spray of aerosolized blood and fleshy chunks filled the air. It wasn’t the demon’s - it was barely staggered by the bullets ricocheting off its skin. Agent Smith, hit by a stray round to the centre mass, had been torn in half. His bisected body thudded to the blood-soaked sand.

Leon couldn’t take it. The green-on-green incident cracked his already damaged mind, so he fired ineffectually until his barrel melted off and then fled screaming into the night.

Forgoing hypergeometry in favour of her rifle, Thorn abandoned the binding ritual and put a nickel-iron .308 round into the beast’s shoulder. The impact threw it off balance, giving her space to avoid the next swing of its terrifying war club. As the ranger attempted to cycle her weapon and fend off the ogre, Deacon struggled to his feet in spite of his shattered ribs.

Their greed had screwed them. Binding the murderous horror was no longer an option, it needed to go. Deacon staggered over to the ruined body of Smith, the mortally wounded agent seconds away from expiration. With a gurgled apology, Deacon drew a boot knife and hastened his end. Smearing the dead man’s blood into bizarre patterns, the half-mad FBI agent used his human sacrifice to fuel a brute-force banishment. What they should’ve done to begin with.

The oni roared in anger, but another slug of bootleg meteor from Thorn sent it staggering. Before it could regain its footing, it was grabbed by some unseen force and pulled through a pin-sized hole in reality. Deacon promptly collapsed comatose onto Smith’s ritually mutilated body.

He woke up hours later in the back seat of a Chevy Tahoe, lying in a mixture of sand, torn clothing and someone else's blood. Thorn was driving, but Leon was nowhere to be seen (he was busy being manhandled into a Edwards AFB police cruiser by a squad of blue berets). Deacon winced, but not because of his missing teammate or his three broken ribs. 

He’d lost his fucking smokes.

This is a partial after-action report of a N@TO game. I didn't run it, I was playing under #Misfit138. I just wanted to write up the finale of the session, as it was a great little clusterfuck. I was playing as Special Agent Deacon.