The Red Rocket station meant that finally, at eleven o'clock at night, they were almost there. When Arcade had heard from travellers about a group in the north east who stood for people, and all people, he had to take the chance.

Six's dual reign of terror with the Legion over the Mojave got crazier and deadlier with every passing day. Even after Six had convinced them all to fight with her for the Legion, the Remnants agreed that, given the chance, they wouldn't have done so a second time.

He wasn't surprised that there were guards stationed outside of the settlement, especially since he was outfitted in the Gannon Tesla armor. They hadn't yet taken a group to Sanctuary Hills; Johnson had taken his group to a place called Sunshine Co-Op, and Orion's group went even further north than Sanctuary.

He twisted off his helmet and held it with his hands in the air, until the guards put their rifles down and someone stepped through the gate. He looked back at his six wastelanders and nodded to them, hoping to ease their nerves. Not that he could ease his own as who he assumed to be Sanctuary's representative walked up to them.

The man had a laser musket, and a folded hat on his head. He wasn't really threatening, but he wasn't welcoming either. Probably just for security. "Brotherhood or salvage?" He asked, motioning to Arcade with his musket.

"Excuse me?"

"Your power armor. Are you with the Brotherhood or did you salvage it?"

"Oh." How was he supposed to answer? The Enclave didn't really have a good reputation, anywhere. "Uh, I'm not with the Brotherhood. The armor was my father's. He wasn't Brotherhood, either. He, uh, he never told me where he got it." It wasn't a total lie. The rep looked him over once more, then at the settlers behind him.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you all. Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen. We're not usually so hostile with newcomers, but we've been having a serious problem with the Brotherhood lately, and your armor's not far off from theirs." Preston Garvey. Arcade recognized the name, probably from the same travellers who he overheard talking about the Minutemen to begin with.

"What's the problem? Do you need shelter for the night? Whatever it is, the Minutemen are happy to help." He stepped aside and gestured to the gate, and the six settlers eagerly ran inside. For the first time since leaving Zion, they all felt relatively safe.

"It's a bit more complicated than just shelter." Arcade put his hands down and held out his free hand to Preston to shake. "I'm Arcade Gannon. These people are looking for permanent refuge. Is that something you're able to offer? If there's not a lot of room here, we'd appreciate directions to a settlement that does."

Preston took his hand and shook it firmly, then smiled. An actual warm and inviting smile, another thing he hadn't seen in awhile. "We have plenty of room. You picked a good time to come, the General's here from the castle checking in on things. If you've got complications, she's the one you'll wanna talk to." Preston turned toward the gate and Arcade followed until Preston circled back to lock everything back up again.

The whole settlement was an impressive feat considering it's size. Most of the buildings were pre-war houses with other rooms and structures built on top of or around them. There was a quaintly decorated diner, an inn, and an armory among other things. He walked a little slower behind Preston to give himself time to take it all in under the warm, limited lighting.

Arcade's six settlers had already split up and taken to either speaking with other residents who were still awake or going straight to the inn. Already they seemed happy with their destination, so in turn, Arcade was pleased. He waved to them and they all waved back, like an unofficial goodbye and thanks. Preston led him to one of the better pre-war houses, one that didn't have a whole lot of extra structures around it. "I'll take you to General Hochberg tomorrow. She's already asleep, and we should be too. You can stay here for the night, Sturges and I share this house, so you're safest here with that armor and all."

He'd expected Preston's reasoning for keeping him close by were negative, and was pleasantly surprised that the man was only looking out for him considering their apparent relationship with the Brotherhood.

"Thanks." He didn't know what else to say. People hadn't ever really been his specialty, except for the other Followers, and Six. Preston had put down a bed roll for him while he shed his power armor, and there was even something resembling a pillow for him. How thoughtful. He was aware of faint snoring down the hall, so he assumed that the one named Sturges was already asleep. He didn't bother saying goodnight to Preston, as he wasn't really sure where he'd went. Either to his own room or out to the gate again. He really didn't care a whole lot.

Arcade put out the flame in the lantern by his bed roll, and lied down. He couldn't really sleep, but at least he tried.

"Preston mentioned complications. What's the matter, raiders? Super mutants? Whatever it is, we'll handle it. I promise."

General Nora Hochberg of the Commonwealth Minutemen was the last person Arcade expected her to be. She was decently built and scarred, but her face had so much more humanity than a lot of people he'd come to know in his life. Like she was really real. She wore the uniform and the hat with pride, but humble pride. She knew that she was helping people and she wanted nothing more.

They were all seated at a small table in the armory, himself, the General, and Preston. Arcade had requested his presence after how he'd helped the night before, and General Hochberg was more than happy to invite him to the table. However, the conversation was going a very different direction than Arcade had hoped.

"It's.. Um, I'm sorry if you got the impression that we came to ask for help. That wasn't the intention. My job here was to get this particular group to east coast safety, then go back for another group. There's really nothing you can do as far as the source problem." Nora frowned, and rapped her fingers against the tabletop. "I do need to let you know that these people have seen more than you can imagine. That's why we're evacuating them. It's the safest and surest solution."

"Arcade." She looked right into his soul and seemed to pick it apart with just her eyes. "I'd feel guilty if I let you go back to wherever you're from without helping. We've got more men than we need here, the majority of Boston flies our flag. Whatever it is, we've got the manpower and the resources to help." She sighed, and crossed her arms. "I'd never forgive myself if I just let you go back to wherever."

There were pros and cons to telling the Minutemen about Six and the Legion. If what Hochberg said was true, and they had the manpower to not only hold their positions here in Boston and aid him in the Mojave, it would probably make transporting Freesiders and wastelanders a lot safer and easier. But on the flip side, the Legion could prove to be too much. He'd have their lives on his hands, along with so many others.

"Alright." Arcade took a deep breath, and closed his eyes for a few moments. He could still see Six's face the day they met. Scar on her forehead, eyes wide and almost afraid of Freeside. She was young and inexperienced, and desperately needed help. Her eyebot never ceased to creep him out, but he dealt with it if it meant keeping this girl out of too much trouble. Then she'd met someone on the way. Then Six was gone.

"This group, I, uh… We're from the Mojave. Southwest, trip takes about three months considering the safest route is a bit out of the way. These people are from Freeside, it's a little district off the New Vegas Strip. They're-"

"You're from the Las Vegas area?" Hochberg cut him off. She tilted her head to the side a bit, and her lip twitched. Intrigue mixed with disgust. "I never liked Vegas. Nate wanted to go with me once, but we decided on Gettysburg instead. Much safer, less… influences. Sorry, go on."

She called it Las Vegas. No one called it that anymore, not even in his father's time. "Yeah. My father's friends and I took this on about a year ago. We've saved almost fifty people so far, but we have to keep going. There's… Uh, let me start from the beginning I guess. You need to know about Six."

Preston and Hochberg inquired as to 'six of what?', and Arcade almost laughed for a moment. But he didn't. Six wasn't a laughing matter anymore.

"No, that's… that's her name. Her name's Six." Blonde, brown eyes, decent looking, even if he didn't swing that way. "So, about six years ago, uh, no relation to her name… Six years ago, back around Vegas, in this little trading town called Goodsprings, there was this courier. She had a really important package but she didn't realize it, and she got shot in the head for it. The doctor in Goodsprings was really quite skilled, and he managed to save her, and it helped that Benny's a terrible shot. That's the one who shot her." He didn't talk about Benny Gecko much. Wasn't about to start.

"She woke up with no memory of before she got shot, so everyone just started calling her Six, in reference to the fact that she was the sixth courier on this delivery for Robert House. She turned into some sort of wasteland messiah, anywhere she went, she helped out. In return, all she asked for was any information on Benny. Where he'd gone, what he was doing, how long ago they'd seen him, anything to piece together how to get to Vegas. Then we met in Freeside."

Freeside had always been rough, Six would've never really been able to change that. What she contributed was kind at the time, though. "Being a sort-of amnesiac with little to no remaining knowledge of the tribes and factions of the area, I decided I'd tag along with her. We travelled the Mojave together for two years. We did a lot of good, hurt a lot of bad people, and she was very concerned with making sure every medical station we came across was properly equipped. The more memory she got back from her previous life, the more she remembered that she actually had extensive medical training. It was a blessing to my own faction, the Followers of the Apocalypse."

Julie was so thankful for everything Six had done. Set up a proper supply line, donated any chems she had on her at any given time. "She was my closest friend. But then she got this message, something intended only for her. She was supposed to meet someone in the wreckage of the Canyon. Alone. It was weird, because up until that point, we'd gone everywhere together. She got fed up with the factions of New Vegas trying to get her on their side, so we up and left for Zion valley for a few weeks. But when she left for the Canyon, she told me and her eyebot to stay behind. It was almost a year before I ever saw her after that. And when I finally found her again, she was roaming around the south cistern, and all she would say was that Ulysses had saved her life."

Ulysses was a known name in the wasteland. Most people assumed he was dead, but then again, most everyone had assumed Joshua Graham was dead also, but they'd met him and fought with him in Zion valley. "Ulysses was an ex-frumentarii, of Caesar's Legion. Have you heard of them?"

Hochberg and Preston looked at each other for a moment. "No, I haven't. Preston?" Preston thought for a moment, but couldn't confirm if he had or not. Arcade wasn't really expecting either of them to know, but he had to be sure.

"Right. Other side of the country. Caesar's Legion is a group of terrible people under a semi-decent man with skewed ideals. Well, it was just under him. Now Six is second in command. The Legion kills and tortures without question. Their favourite way of making an example of their enemies and heretics is crucifixion. Women are either slaves or toys to them, except for Six. The Legion wouldn't have had a chance at Hoover Dam without her. The NCR would've driven them out, possibly forever. But Ulysses did something to Six, something I still haven't been able to figure out. She helped them, she did Caesar's dirty work, she took out an entire bunker of Brotherhood soldiers and paladins on her own with no outside help. She assassinated President Kimball of the NCR. She killed Robert House. She tried to kill me.

The Legion won the dam because of her. Caesar had never taken a woman into his ranks before, and it seemed like she was the only exception. They won, Caesar took the Mojave. Raiding parties or simple patrols guard everything, take out random people for no reason in the middle of the day. All the surrounding independent tribes- the Khans, the Vipers, Jackals, even the majority of the Fiends, Caesar took them all and added them to his army. He stripped them of their cultural identity, turned them into Legionaries like the rest of his men. The entire Mojave is in complete chaos because of who she chose to side with."

He could still see her face in his mind down in that bunker with the rest of the Enclave remnants. When she started talking about Ulysses, he was sure that it meant she was even more opposed to the Legion then she had been. "She had asked the Remnants to fight for Caesar. I didn't know what to do after that, I couldn't speak to her. I just left. I went back to the Followers until the battle for the Dam. After the Legion won, the remnants came back to me and told me they'd never fight for Six again. It was then we decided we were going to have to do something about the people. Caesar would enslave or kill the majority of them for opposing the Legion, or, like we already saw before leaving Freeside, he crucified some just for the entertainment. A few merchants staying at the Followers' fort in Freeside overheard and mentioned you guys, the Minutemen who stand for everyone. Seeing as you were on the east coast as well, it seemed like the safest place to take these people. It's far from Caesar, far from Six, and your reputation for helping the needy precedes you."

He decided to finish his narrative there, to let the two of them process everything. To someone who hadn't been there, it was a lot to take in. A lot of names and places, factions and their doings. Six had turned into a monster, and he wasn't sure his retelling of her had really emphasized that. "I do want to reiterate that we didn't come to ask for help, only for refuge for these people."

"Three months, you said?" Hochberg rose from the table and walked off to another room of the armory, leaving Arcade and Preston to stare at each other. He could tell Preston was itching to ask a few more questions, but he was refraining for some reason. A moment later he opened his mouth to likely ask one of his questions, but Hochberg returned to the room with a map under her arm. She stretched it out over the table top, and grabbed a pebble off the ground to mark Boston. "This is us. Vegas, the Mojave, they're over here right?" She placed another pebble on the large text reading LAS VEGAS. "Here," she handed him a worn down pencil from her pocket, "can you draw the route you took? You said three months considering safety."

"Oh, yeah. Sure." He looked over the map for a moment, then started X-ing seemingly random locations and cities up through Utah, Idaho, Montana and the Dakotas. "We have a friend in Zion valley. Considering the Legion operates mostly out of Arizona, we agreed that going the straight line from there to here was too dangerous. We went up through Zion, hit Boise for shelter and supplies for a few nights, then went north through Helena and kept about a day away from the original States border." Then he drew a line between all the X's, and then from the final X's to the pebbles. "That's the way."

Hochberg studied the map for a good, long while. She nudged Preston in the arm as she pointed out some of Arcade's X's, and they whispered to themselves. It made him a little nervous, but she was the general of the Mintutemen. He didn't want to so easily trust her and Preston, but it felt like he already did.

"Would you be completely opposed to me and a group of close, skilled friends going back to Vegas with you?" She looked right into his eyes with no hesitation, and it felt like she was looking somewhere deeper. He so desperately wanted to say yes, but on the contrary, if it failed… If they died, it'd be on him. If any more people died because of the Legion, it'd be on him. He should've went with Six. He should've convinced her to stay with the Followers. He should've-

"Arcade?"

He'd zoned out, completely. It wasn't uncommon. "Sorry. Train of thought." She'd offered assistance. If she was General, she was probably highly skilled herself, and people like that generally have hand picked, equally skilled friends. At least, in his experience. "Who are your friends?"

She scoffed and shook her head. "I figured you'd ask. There's MacCready, he's generally a gun for hire, but he's been working exclusively with me for awhile. Then there's Paladin Danse, except, he's not really a paladin anymore. Brotherhood problems. And Hancock, he'd probably want to come. I bet Nick'll come along, he's a detective and he's a pretty good shot. I know Piper would want to come too, but she has Nat to take care of. Curie would be a good help, but I worry about her sometimes. Preston, I'll need you to stay with Shaw as placeholder generals. That alright?"

"Yes ma'am, fine by me."

Brotherhood paladin, guns for hire, detectives, and someone sharing the name of a founding father. Her friends seemed like an interesting bunch. "You're sure you'll all be able to handle yourselves? I really don't think you understand how dangerous the Legion is. I can read to you an itemized list of crimes against humanity in general that they've committed in the past decade, and I still don't think that would even begin to truly scrape the surface of their evils."

"I'm sure. Honestly, we might've handled worse in the past. I'll round them up tonight, and we'll leave at dawn. I'll send someone to get you up."

Before he could counter anything, she picked up and left the armory. Preston lingered in the doorway for a moment to wave, but he followed after her eventually.

Dear Six,

I hope you haven't come to think of me any differently than you did before all this mess. I may have said some things about you that I wouldn't really be comfortable saying to you in person, but unfortunately, most of them are true. I trusted you more than I trusted anyone, and you stabbed me in the back. Doesn't mean I'm not still hoping for you, though. Maybe this is all just an elaborate trial. If only Joshua were here to listen to me quote his book: as it says in First Peter, "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you." After all this is done, maybe you'll come back. Maybe you won't. Maybe my only reward for finally fighting back will be your final disappearance. Regretfully, that wouldn't be a bad thing.

Sincerely, your dearest friend,

Arcade Gannon