The Ranger wipes his brow of dust as he throws the final shovelful back, planting the end of the spade in the dirt with satisfaction. He can see the body now, curled up on its side, having fallen ungracefully when it took a shot to the head. The wound is still bleeding, seeping blood into the dry Mojave sediment, making the earth come alive again. Elliott leaves the shovel impaled in the ground as he crouches down, then sinks to his knees, reaching out and feeling around. 

He's not a grave robber. 

Not usually, anyways, but — well, this was too interesting to pass up. 

What kind of bullshit did this poor soul get himself into to end up dead like this, in an unmarked grave, in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, NUSA?

It had to be good, so here Elliott was, taking a fistful of fabric and yanking hard enough to pull the corpse to a seated position. A fresh cloud of dust flies up and the Ranger coughs, swatting it out of his face with a gloved hand, only to find his eyes fixating on the still-warm body he's presently manhandling. There’s a 9mm shaped hole in it’s forehead, though its eyes are shut and jaw clamped shut, the faint hum of radioactivity beneath its thin skin. Sunken cheeks, vivid veins and arteries pumping black blood, barely weighs anything at all -- it’s a ghoul. Not just any ghoul, no, the uniform he’s wearing bears the badge of the Mojave Express Postal Service (underneath a patch for some place called the Sierra Madre, but Elliott doesn’t recognize it.) 

A ghoul courier.

You see something new every day in the Mojave.

“Sorry, pal -- I’m fuckin’ bored out here.” Elliott murmurs as he hefts the nearly skeletal corpse up and over, onto solid ground, before leaning down to sift through the remaining dirt pile. He barely gets through one handful before he hears a low rumble, hand fumbling for his trusted hunting revolver (a Ranger Sequoia, to be exact, and his mother’s no less) with an unpracticed set of movements. Training in a safe, enclosed environment does little for actual reaction time, he has found. He knows that he had to avoid the I-15 because of a little Deathclaw infestation, but they shouldn’t come this far South, should they? Every survival instinct in his brain tells him that he needs to start running, because he doesn’t think he even remotely stands a chance against an infant, let alone a full grown one, but his gumption takes precedence over his flight response. One hand slams the hammer back and the other holds his aiming arm steady, body instinctively bracing as he barks a reply into the night air.

“Hey, fucker -- I’m armed an-and I’m not afraid to shoot!” He sounds like he’s afraid to. 

“Fuck me, man…” A voice, crackly and seemingly disembodied, mumbles. Did Deathclaws gain the power of mimicry? Was it recalling the voice of the last person it mauled to death, a whisper of a long-dead wasteland wanderer? Elliott swivels around in search of the source, finding no apparent explanation other than… 

Nope!

No, no way, no fucking how did that body just…talk. 

His mind rejects the very concept even as he watches the ghoul sit up and rub its forehead, smearing around black blood with a dissatisfied look on its face as it inspects its hand. Frowning with damn near every muscle that remains on his face, then wiping the blood smear off onto the rough fabric of his headscarf. For a brief moment, still too long for Elliott’s liking, the ghoul doesn’t seem to notice the gun pointed at his head. When he does, it’s a full startle reaction, its small frame skittering backwards across the dirt as it looks up at the Ranger with terror in its glassy eyes. 

“That’s not going to--”

“Stop doing that!”

The ghoul looks the Ranger up and down. “...doing what?”

“Talking. You were dead, dead things don’t…talk.”

“I wasn’t dead, I was just out -- off, maybe? Like a terminal switch?” 

What to do?

The moral quandary of grave robbing has become infinitely less important now that the victim is talking to him, but this begs about a million other questions that Elliott doesn’t have the time to rightfully process. He’s too baffled to even really lower his revolver, holding it in front of himself with far more hesitation, a furrow to his brow. The ghoul, practically glowing now that he’s sat upright again, wipes his face with his headscarf, seemingly unfazed by Elliott’s reaction. Upon closer inspection, he seems to be missing his nose, a bandage wrapped over the wound, blood and radiation seeping through in the thinnest spots. His sclera are stained a deep, muddy red, like terracotta soaked in pomegranate juice, the iris’ glowing a bright white that pierces through the darkness just like the moon above. Everything about his body language screams that he isn’t a threat, especially the way he dusts himself off and stands up on shaky legs, trousers held up by a belt with too many extra holes poked into it and a little bit of hopes and prayers. 

Sierra Madre. Where do we know that name from?

“We got off on the wrong foot, I think.” The ghoul has a slight smile on his face, though maybe that’s just from the damage to his maxillofacial muscles. “Thanks for, um…digging me out of there. Would’a taken all night, otherwise.”

“Right.” Elliott nods idly, carefully replacing his revolver in the holster that rests on his hip. His hand still lingers over it, but his curiosity is undeniably piqued. “Mind answering a few questions for me?”

“Are you a fed?”

“...yeah, actually.” Elliott turns his bicep slightly and the stark yellow and black of his NCR Ranger badge flashes in the moonlight like gold in the pan. 

“Then I’m definitely not answering your questions without my legal team’s approval.” It crosses its arms over its (his?) chest. Elliott isn’t sure. His mind fluctuates between humanizing the thing and not. 

“Not even one?”

“...What's in it for me?"

"I dug you out of your grave?"

"Fine. But you tell me what you saw before I was in the grave, deal, Mr. Ranger?" He sticks a bony hand out, fingerless gloves not doing much for the emaciated limb. Elliott grimaces slightly before he sticks his hand out, too, giving it a firm (but not too firm) shake.

"Ranger Bates."

"Ghost."

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