Part 12: City of Tight Asses
Update 12: City of Tight AssesAlright folks, first update with our new avatar. Thanks go to Tlarn for the suggestion.

On the short walk to Vault City we saw something that, if we'd understood it then, probably would have saved us a lot of confusion. An armor clad giant and a couple of thugs massacred a family of farmers right in front of us, then just walked away. We buried them, but couldn't really think of much else to do at the time.

A few days later we arrived in Vault City around sunset.

It was kind of impressive, in a heavily armed prison camp kind of way. The turrets were pointed outside, but the looked like they could swivel a full 180 degrees so I couldn't exactly say it wasn't.





He probably should have just sent anybody who came in the door over to Melinda. I don't think the boy was likely to find anyone dumb enough that they wouldn't ask a question that wasn't in his brochure. Then again, I have some faith in human nature even after everything I've seen.

Melinda was barely more helpful, but she at least seemed to know what she was doing. Vault City in those days was a divided city with non-citizens relegated to the outer courtyard while Citizens lived inside the walls along with the Vault. The key to getting inside was a Customs Official named Wallace.

It was a bit late to hit the customs office, so we were left to wander and talk to the people who were likewise stuck outside. I had no idea what a Mr. Nixon doll looked like, but I figured I'd keep an eye out.

Inside a nearby tent a woman who I correctly presumed to be the kid's mother was crying about the Citizens having someone. I didn't think she was talking about Mr. Nixon.








They weren't even the worst off. One poor bastard was just lying in a tent dying of radiation poisoning while everybody else tried to pretend they couldn't hear him.

I had about four or five packs of RadAway on me, so I slipped him one. He couldn't pay me, but I didn't really care at that point.

I found the Mr. Nixon Doll about thirty or forty feet away from the kid. If the little bugger had actually looked around for five minutes he could have found it himself, but a deal was a deal.

I could have been a pretty monstrous dick about the whole thing, but I just handed him back over. The kid had enough problems with his dad being locked up in the city.

It paid off pretty quickly, since he started talking to his friend about how mad Joshua would be when he got back and found out that the wrench he thought he'd lost was actually under a pile of rocks. I solved the entire problem by taking the wrench for myself.

The next stop was the bar, which would have been our first stop if we hadn't gotten distracted just inside the gate. You'll never know how thirsty you can be until you've tramped through the wastes on foot for a couple of weeks.























Since Cassidy was coming with us, I went ahead and helped myself to his porn and gun magazine collection. Share and share alike, I always said.

Vic damn near started jumping up and down with excitement as we crossed the street. Evidently the place where he'd bought my flask was right there by the brahmin.









Ed declined, so we continued working our way down the street. The next stop was the local clinic, which was one of the biggest buildings in the courtyard. The fact that they were using queen sized beds for patients probably accounted for some of that.





That didn't sound so good, so I took Vic back there to take a look at it.









After leaving the Doc with a warning about being such a shithead we found a family of farmers living out back right behind the clinic. The poor bastards were trying to till their field without a plow, if you can believe that. I still remember that their name was Smith, which was probably part of the reason I felt an urge to help them.

The only other building we hadn't visited was Happy Marty's Beer and Firearms store. I could see why Marty was so happy.

I tried to talk him down from $800 to $600 for a plow, but he wasn't buying it. I had the cash, so I had him drop it off with the Smiths.


They gave me a Desert Eagle .44 as thanks for the plow, which was actually worth a bit more than I spent. Then again, I guess at the time they needed the plow a lot more than they needed a pistol. If I could have gotten the plow at a discount I'd have made a tidy profit on the deal.



Happy Marty had some really exotic things in stock other than the plow, but I was more interested in recouping my money and dumping some of the heavy crap I'd been carrying around. I ended up with some more .44 ammo and all of the cash he had on hand and counted myself satisfied.

After that we headed to the gate to the Inner Courtyard, only to find out it was closed for the day. We ended up having to camp out in Cassidy's bar for the night until the Customs Office opened up.