mad cow (incomplete)
Jan. 17th, 2016 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysTitle: Mad Cow (Incomplete)
Rating: G
Series: Fallout: New Vegas (original characters)
Wordcount: 595
Summary: It was said a charging brahmin bull could hit seventeen miles an hour at full stride. By Larkin’s estimation, that rumour came in a few miles short of the truth.
Remarks: Silly misadventures - technically a pre-adventure to All's Unfair. The other characters referenced belong to friends.
It was said a charging brahmin bull could hit seventeen miles an hour at full stride. By Larkin’s estimation, that rumour came in a few miles short of the truth.
She hit the fence so hard she bounced off it again, bones rattling as hard as the rusty wire links, but her fingers found a hooked grasp and she didn’t waste it, pulling herself upwards with a speed to put all past clambering to shame. It swayed a little under her weight and no more; someone had built the barrier to last and one skinny wastelander wasn’t enough to uproot it.
Two seconds later, the full force of an enraged mutant bovine made a better attempt.
Larkin’s grab for the top of the ten-foot fence missed as her foot slipped, and she hugged herself tight against the structure as it jolted back and forth, tucking her chin to her chest so that the brim of her cap took the brunt of the whiplash wire. The roaring, snorting breathing from somewhere just below her narrowly uncrushed ankles steeled her for a second try despite the continued jerking of the fence, and this time she managed a firm enough grip to haul herself up another foot. With the toes of her boots jammed securely into the links, Larkin risked twisting to look down below.
“Goddamn,” she said with feeling.
The brahmin was fighting to untangle itself from its headlong run into the fence, shaking its heads with the kind of confused rage better associated with feral ghouls or Ryker after an interrupted nap. Her sudden ascension seemed to have thrown it, the tiny brains struggling to make sense of an outcome where there was no fleeing prey in sight but also no bloody pulp smeared under its hooves. Hoping it’d go for out of sight, out of mind was too much of a stretch to really bank on, but Larkin puffed out her cheeks all the same, trying to slow her breathing into something more subtle, lifting her eyes to the courtyard beyond.
She had enough of a view of the enclosed yard to tell her partner in crime was nowhere in easy reach, and figured he was probably still somewhere behind the thick brick walls of the factory. Larkin couldn’t remember if she’d yelled out a caution upon coming nose-to-nose with the brahmin, and without it there wasn’t much reason for Elbow Grease to suppose she was in strife, competent professional that she was.
More fool them both, she thought sourly, them and their assumption that there’d be no more to deal with than some lonely protectron who believed that communists were after the secrets to the perfect combustion engine. The hell kind of reason did a mad old cow have for hanging around a place like this anyway, a taste for battery acid and blood?
The mad old cow had pulled itself free by this point, and Larkin watched it with a careful eye as it shuffled a few paces back. She wasn’t ashamed to admit that being caught holed up a fence by someone’s runaway lunch would go against the kind of impression she hoped to walk away with by the end of this jaunt, and if it could just kindly wander out into the wider wastes she was willing to dust her hands and call this a minor misadventure to laugh with Rye about on some sandblown night.
Last time she left her sawn-off behind. A weapon she could pull and aim with one hand would make this situation a whole lot simpler.
Rating: G
Series: Fallout: New Vegas (original characters)
Wordcount: 595
Summary: It was said a charging brahmin bull could hit seventeen miles an hour at full stride. By Larkin’s estimation, that rumour came in a few miles short of the truth.
Remarks: Silly misadventures - technically a pre-adventure to All's Unfair. The other characters referenced belong to friends.
It was said a charging brahmin bull could hit seventeen miles an hour at full stride. By Larkin’s estimation, that rumour came in a few miles short of the truth.
She hit the fence so hard she bounced off it again, bones rattling as hard as the rusty wire links, but her fingers found a hooked grasp and she didn’t waste it, pulling herself upwards with a speed to put all past clambering to shame. It swayed a little under her weight and no more; someone had built the barrier to last and one skinny wastelander wasn’t enough to uproot it.
Two seconds later, the full force of an enraged mutant bovine made a better attempt.
Larkin’s grab for the top of the ten-foot fence missed as her foot slipped, and she hugged herself tight against the structure as it jolted back and forth, tucking her chin to her chest so that the brim of her cap took the brunt of the whiplash wire. The roaring, snorting breathing from somewhere just below her narrowly uncrushed ankles steeled her for a second try despite the continued jerking of the fence, and this time she managed a firm enough grip to haul herself up another foot. With the toes of her boots jammed securely into the links, Larkin risked twisting to look down below.
“Goddamn,” she said with feeling.
The brahmin was fighting to untangle itself from its headlong run into the fence, shaking its heads with the kind of confused rage better associated with feral ghouls or Ryker after an interrupted nap. Her sudden ascension seemed to have thrown it, the tiny brains struggling to make sense of an outcome where there was no fleeing prey in sight but also no bloody pulp smeared under its hooves. Hoping it’d go for out of sight, out of mind was too much of a stretch to really bank on, but Larkin puffed out her cheeks all the same, trying to slow her breathing into something more subtle, lifting her eyes to the courtyard beyond.
She had enough of a view of the enclosed yard to tell her partner in crime was nowhere in easy reach, and figured he was probably still somewhere behind the thick brick walls of the factory. Larkin couldn’t remember if she’d yelled out a caution upon coming nose-to-nose with the brahmin, and without it there wasn’t much reason for Elbow Grease to suppose she was in strife, competent professional that she was.
More fool them both, she thought sourly, them and their assumption that there’d be no more to deal with than some lonely protectron who believed that communists were after the secrets to the perfect combustion engine. The hell kind of reason did a mad old cow have for hanging around a place like this anyway, a taste for battery acid and blood?
The mad old cow had pulled itself free by this point, and Larkin watched it with a careful eye as it shuffled a few paces back. She wasn’t ashamed to admit that being caught holed up a fence by someone’s runaway lunch would go against the kind of impression she hoped to walk away with by the end of this jaunt, and if it could just kindly wander out into the wider wastes she was willing to dust her hands and call this a minor misadventure to laugh with Rye about on some sandblown night.
Last time she left her sawn-off behind. A weapon she could pull and aim with one hand would make this situation a whole lot simpler.
