Vera wasn't one for weakness.

When she had been shot in the head she bounced back instead of dying like the perpetrator intended, with a vengeance to boot. When a deathclaw had nearly tore her arm right out of socket, it had taken Arcade, Raul, and Veronica's power-fist to keep her from confronting Benny the next day out of sheer drive. When she had been punched in the face by a Super-Mutant and cracked her back molar, she somewhat recalled spitting the remains of it in the monster's face.

So she supposed it upset the man before her when she didn't break down and sob when he had struck her across the cheek with the handle of his riding crop.

Vulpes Inculta sighed almost impatiently, his frosty irises studying the Courier that knelt in front of him. "You are a rather persistent little worm, aren't you?"

"Not trying to be." Vera gave a shrug as she spat out the metallic liquid staining her tongue. "I'm only upholding my side of the deal."

"Deal?" He bent down to look into her dark eyes. "The deal was, Courier, that if you lose against me in the arena then I will teach you your place in this world."

She matched his stare with steadiness if not intensity, licking a drop of escaped blood from the corner of her mouth. Vulpes eyed the subconscious act for the briefest of seconds before drinking in her solid expression with hooded eyes.

"Yes, and here I am, on my knees." She replied with a tug of a smile. "Isn't that the point?"

"Hm." He returned her smile with a twitch in his lips, amusement that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Of course. Yet you resist your fear, your loathing of me... Is it to prove yourself as something more then a common slave?"

The Courier tested the ropes around her wrists in experimentation, wincing when the bristled rope rubbed at the raw ring surrounding her wrists.

She could admit to herself if not anyone else that agreeing to fight Vulpes Inculta in the arena was not very wise. Sure, she had her skills, but primarily in long-distance rifles. Vera hadn't been prepared for the man's skills in sword-play. She should've guessed... He handled a Ripper, after all.

"Its just my nature," She answered, her non-committal tone making Vulpes' jaw strain. "Tell me, am I your slave? The details of my punishment are a bit muggy."

The man cocked his head to the side in thought, his face betraying no true emotion besides... well, satisfaction. But that was a given, the Courier assumed.

He circled her in a painfully slow manner, gliding his riding crop lightly along her collar-bone before tracing her shoulders, causing her left shirt-sleeve to sag dangerously down her bare chest. "I suppose so, seeing as you are willing to uphold your agreement..."

It was silent then, his presence behind her seeming to vanish in his stillness, as if he had left the tent. She knew better though... He wasn't done with her...

This was the one moment, for the smallest fraction of a second, that the Courier finally let her fear flush over her. The goose-bumps flushed over her in a chain reaction as she realized that she could feel his gaze freeze bluntly into the back of her skull.

Vera wasn't foolish, she didn't want to die, especially not at the hands of a man so vacant of conscience. She would much rather die from a bullet to the head over a slow, terrifyingly painful death.

Her self-pity was suddenly jerked from thought when she realized the hotness against her ear was not the smoldering breeze of summer in the Mojave. Rather something much more deadly was whispering in her ear, his breath moist and crawling along her eardrum and puffing down her neck.

"Either way, Courier, I will teach you your place."