Chapter One
It all began on a nice and cloudless afternoon, with pale blue skies and a wispy golden sun, if you can believe that. Although it ain’t like one of those cool pre-war days, it was blazing hot outside. Not so good when you had a raging hangover like me. I was sitting on the curb outside of our hangout, an abandoned casino on the outskirts of our turf, taking a long drag from my cigarette. Although it was hot outside, the smoke helped keep me calm and un-aware of the fact that my head was seemingly splitting open. Yeah, I remember that day pretty well. My mind was someplace else, thinking about those pretty local girls we passed the night before on our way to the bash, and those sweet looking coats we spotted at Mick & Ralph’s at 3:00 AM, when we were stumbling around like a bunch of schmucks along with two other party girls in skimpy dresses. The funny thing is, no one was gonna mess with us. Freeside’s a scary place at night, but no one dares to mug or even lay so much as a hand on any big gang member. It’s just not smart. They know what happens if they do.
Anyway, my best buddy, Will Clarke, had an armful of booze that he “acquired” from old Dixon at the East Gate. We’re really not supposed to go there because it’s Kings territory, but the Kingies haven’t exactly been watchful lately. They’re too awestruck by their new crime front, Gomorrah, to be keeping men in Freeside to protect their turf. That’s why we were going to raid them today.
After we dropped those girls off at the old Mormon Fort, we made our way back into our turf. Once we were able to work over a local resident into letting us crash at his place, we settled down in his cramped living room and formed a good plan. Well, it seemed like a good one at the time, although when we were able to get a hold of reality the next morning, we realized our plot was a slur of drunken bickering and curses. That gave us a good laugh over the coffee the settler gave us when we left his home, but we still needed to come up with something real good in order to send a nice, bloody message to the Kingies. We left most of the thinking to Joey Bags. Weird name, yes, but he’s the big brains of our gang. He runs the business side of it, while I make important decisions and lead our guys into a street war, and so on. Joey just doesn’t see much fun in fighting, though. He likes the calculative side of it all, if there really is any.
The guy doesn’t drink, smoke, nothin’. He just gambles. He gambles like crazy, because it’s a game of numbers and skills to him; not luck like it is to me and Will and the other members of the Hellboys. So yeah, we all got our little hobbies, you could say. I’m a jack of all trades in those kinds of things. I party, drink, smoke, gamble, the whole bit. But I don’t do chems…although I know all that other stuff is bad, chems mess you the hell up. I’m just not into it, you dig?
So as me, Will, and a couple other prominent lieutenants dueled with some old pool cues, Joey was drawing out a perfect outline for our offensive against the Kings. After being promptly thwacked to death due to my tripping over a splintered coffee table, however, I quit and went outside for a smoke; and now here I am. As I snapped out of my day dream, I glanced around at my surroundings. It was undoubtedly a wasteland, but it was also my home. I loved it here. Within thirty seconds of pondering all this, Will was already out the door and yelling war cries along with several other heavily-armed Hellboys, all sporting their signature jet black leather jackets with the gang’s blood red vault boy emblem. They all wore the same expression as the devilish-looking face on the back of their jackets, fiddling with their submachine guns and baseball bats with a feeling of intense pride for their host crew. I myself wore a similar gittup of blue jeans, scuffed black shoes, and a custom jacket with racing stripes on the shoulders so as to represent my leadership status with the Hellboys. I smiled arrogantly. It matched great with my heavily-oiled, black pompadour style haircut.
Will looked much different than the rest of the Harvey Street Hellboys. He was a handsome, mature-looking and fiery red headed young man with a deceivingly childish personality. His skin was quite flushed, but worked well with his suave, greased-up haircut that swerved slightly to the left. He had a strong, broad-shouldered build, more so than mine that popped right through his clothes. He was definitely the brawn of the group, although he was quite smart despite his lack of education.
Once I had borrowed a 9mm from one of the guys and fished my switchblade out from another pair of jeans, we moved on into the Kings’ turf. At this time of the day, the people of Freeside were out and about, and they all knew what was coming when they saw us swaggering down the faded and cracked main streets. It was at the exact moment when we reached the outside of the King’s School of Impersonation when we saw a whole horde of black and white clothes surround us, their expressions all remaining the same look of hatred and blood lust that the Courier had when he was exiled from his prized New Vegas.