I’ve known Courier Six for a while now, since she asked me to travel with her at the 188 trading post. The courier is pretty short-spoken, but she’s sharp and funny when she does talk, and there’s nobody better to have at your side in a scuffle. She still won’t tell me her real name, but she’s good company, so I don’t really mind.
But there is one particular thing she does that’s rather… Strange.
The first time I ever went to New Vegas, we didn’t do much gambling. The courier told me to wait for her outside a casino called the Tops, came back an hour or so later with the scent of copper on her hands and a satisfied glint in her eye, and then went right into the big tower across the street - the one that’s been locked up for years. I don’t know what she did in there, but when she came out again, we had the key to the place’s presidential suite.
I sure don’t mind staying at the Lucky 38, when I’m not out and about with the courier. It’s as close to the lap of luxury as you can get these days, and the view is great. There's even a proper casino floor, if I could muster up enough of the courier’s other friends for a game of blackjack!
But when we first moved in, I came down from the suite to find the courier systematically searching the casino floor for anything but a game.
She was over by the cashiers, and as I watched from next to the elevator, she pulled a drawer open, peering inside. Looking for money? No, she had plenty of caps to her name, and there wasn’t that much scattered around a tower that’d been locked for two hundred years.
The courier stooped and picked something up, examining it and then twisting around to drop it into her rucksack. Something white and ceramic.
A coffee mug?
Next to me, Victor hummed, seemingly unbothered by the courier’s odd behavior. And he kept humming, and I kept standing there in abject confusion, until she had cleared out every cabinet, drawer, and box on the casino floor - passing over stray caps, ashtrays, and normal cups in favor of just the junk that could hold your morning caffeinated pick-me-up.
“Um, hi,” I said, as she dusted off her hands after closing up the last box.
She looked up and nodded a greeting at me, like there was nothing strange about shoving thirty dirty coffee mugs into your rucksack.
“I - I’m ready to go?” I said, for lack of ability to formulate a better question.
The courier stood up and strode over towards the door, offering no explanation but a grunt.
And that was just the beginning of it.
I understood packing the essentials when you’re travelling. And the courier was pretty simple for the most part - food, bedroll, caps, stimpaks, a power fist and a Gauss rifle. She saved most of the space in her pack for loot we took off legionnaires and bandits, to sell later.
So I couldn’t figure out why she was hauling forty pounds of coffee mugs around the Mojave Wasteland.
She’d started picking up coffee pots, too - whenever we found another abandoned town or office building, she searched every single desk for the stuff. All that weight - she was a strong woman, broad and brawny, with a powerhouse of hard muscles shifting smoothly underneath her skin and the loping grace of a lone wolf ranging familiar territory, okay, I might be a little bit of a lesbian. Anyway. The courier was strong, sure, but I couldn’t understand why she would want to load up her pack with coffee equipment on the same day that she spent a solid ten minutes pondering whether she could afford to haul off a dead legionnaire’s eight-pound plasma rifle without overencumbering herself.
One night, when we’d spread out our bedrolls under the desert stars and our dinner fire was dying down, I finally ventured, “You’re a fan of coffee, aren’t you?”
“Uh, I don’t really drink it,” the courier answered from the other side of the campfire. “Never took to the taste.”
“What the fuck,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” She doesn’t even DRINK coffee?
The courier turned over on her bedroll to shoot me a glance, firelight glowing in her eyes. “Do you need it in the morning? I don’t carry any, but they sell it, around.”
“No,” I sighed, “I’m fine.”
By the time we got back to the Lucky 38, things were getting ridiculous.
The courier’s pack had gotten so overstuffed - and mine, too! - that she could only pick up the most valuable and lightest loot from legionnaires. And she still wouldn’t put down a single mug. We’d found a merchant to sell off our loot, but even then, the mugs clanked in her pack. She didn’t even take them out to display.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take the curiosity anymore. So when the courier left for “an errand” that afternoon, packful of mugs on her back… I snuck out after her, following at a safe distance.
But she didn’t go any further than the outer gate of the Strip, stopping just out of sight of the securitrons (I hid myself inconspicuously behind a garbage can). I perked up when she slung off her pack and dug into it - but no mugs appeared. Instead, the courier took out a weapon I’d never seen before.
Was it even a weapon? The thing was shaped like a gun, sure. But it looked like it could be a toy, bulbous and orange-
The courier pulled the trigger, and - like the air was folding around her - disappeared.
I startled back from the garbage can. Blinked. Blinked again, rubbed my eyes til I saw colors.
No courier.
Had she darted off somewhere? No, she’d been right out in the open. It must’ve been a mirage, that’s it. Desert sun and all. Your eyes get tricky, sometimes.
Wherever she had gone, when the courier stumped back into the Lucky 38, just before dinner, her pack looked suspiciously light… and it wasn’t clanking like it had been before. And when she was dead asleep in the master bedroom that night, with Rex curled up at her side, I snuck a peek.
Sure enough, the ceramic hoard had disappeared.
Bingo, I thought to myself.
But it felt hollow. I’d managed to raise more questions than I’d answered.
Where was she taking all the mugs?
“Arcade!”
That was Lily’s voice, rough and deep. I looked up from my diary, surprised at the shout - it was early, I’d only just finished breakfast, and even Lily knew that Arcade Gannon slept til noon given half the chance. “What’s going on?”
Cass, who was sprawled out on the kitchen chair across from me and picking at her teeth with a butter knife, shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe she got a splinter again.”
But then we heard Raul’s low, horrified gasp from the main hallway, and both of us bolted up from our chairs at the same time.
The courier was home.
She hadn’t been back in a month. None of us knew where she’d gone. It wasn’t uncommon, but this was the first time it’d been quite so long.
And now here she was, on her knees in the hallway of the presidential suite, rucksack bulging with loot.
Dripping blood onto the Lucky 38’s five-star carpets from a ripped wound in the side of her combat armor.
Boone’s face was stony, and Raul emerged from the bedroom with a blinking, pajama-clad Arcade in tow. Cass was already kneeling in front of the courier and reaching out. “Six?” she said, cupping the courier’s face in her hands and then giving her a hearty smack across the cheek. “Six, talk to me-”
“She won’t need stitches,” Arcade’s voice interrupted, “I can glue it shut - grab me some glue, quick-”
I dashed into the kitchen, snatching up a bottle of Wonderglue from the row of them on the shelf - had we always had this much Wonderglue around? - and brought it back to the doctor, who was already unbuckling the courier’s combat armor.
“So,” said Raul. “The Sierra Madre.”
The group of us were gathered around the master bed, where the courier was propped up on a mound of pillows - Rex glued to her side, the rest of us perched or standing around her. Arcade had given her strict orders to rest for three weeks, which meant she’d probably be up and out on another adventure in a couple of days.
Her story had taken almost an hour to tell in full.
The courier nodded. “Goddamn horrid place.”
“And there were thirty bars of gold.”
“Uh huh.”
Cass, who had been staring, barked out a delighted laugh. “So - we’re rich now? Haha, Six, you glorious bastard-”
“No, no,” the courier interrupted. “Gold’s fucking heavy. Couldn’t get the stuff out - could barely get myself out-”
“You must’ve been able to carry at least a few bars!” I hopped up from my stool and darted over to the courier’s rucksack - and then faltered as I stared down at its contents.
Cass raised an eyebrow over at me. “What’s in there, Santangelo?”
“Mugs.”
“What? No way.” Cass scooted over to peer into the bag, and then turned to look back at the Courier with an icy stare. “Alright. Okay. Let me get this straight.”
The courier shifted uncomfortably, looking down at her hands. Cass was the only person who could do that to her, which had always impressed and mildly frightened me.
“You went to a mystical poison death casino, got enslaved by some Brotherhood fascist, and found a hoard of gold bars that could buy out the Strip with leftovers for some Fancy Lads Snacks.”
A nod.
“And what you brought back was mugs.”
The courier looked up from her hands, face lined with leathery tan wrinkles and exhaustion, and said, “Don’t worry about it.”
a/n: anyone else wrapped around that stupid fucking robot’s little metal finger or
#art
#critical role
#artists on tumblr
#the amazing digital circus
#paige bueckers
