It is 2285, eight years after Project Purity was completed, raising the total amount of clean water in America by 2%, Canada by .8%, and Mexico by .2%. The success of the project has inspired most of the large factions in North America to start their own purification enterprises. This story tells about the start of one particular project near the town of Eufaula, by the Oklahoma Vanguard the largest group in the Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas region. The group is similar to the NCR but with a few small differences starting with it being run by a group of seven people known as the Supreme Court the name coming from a group who used to "run" America. This story will begin in a bar in the town of Blancc, population fifty-seven (gunshot followed by a scream)… make that fifty-six.

5/23/2323

The bar was relatively quiet at that point of the day, with most of its usual patrons out working the fields. There were only seven people in the bar: two sitting at the counter, one wearing leather armor, while the other wore blue coveralls. They were talking with the owner of the establishment. Another sat in a dark corner by himself. He looked to be in his late fifties and wore a heavy overcoat with some sort of armor underneath it. He was nursing a bottle of whiskey. The remaining three customers sported a mix of armor and clothes, and were sitting at a table in the middle of the room playing Texas hold' em. After about twenty minutes, one of the men glanced over to the older gentleman in the corner.

"Hey Paul, who's the old man?" James, the one wearing coveralls, asked the barkeep.

The bartender frowned and sent a stream of chewing tobacco into a flower pot he used as a spittoon. "Hell if I know," he grunted in response. "He just comes in and sits in the corner, asks for a whiskey, drinks, then leaves without a word."

"Hey old man, why don't you talk? You think that just cuz you reached old age, you're better than us?" James said, taunting the older guy.

The old man looked up at James from underneath a curtain of bushy, gray eyebrows. He casually set down his whiskey and continued to study him. Then, with speed that no one ever thought possible for a man his age, he drew the biggest revolver any of them had ever seen and shot the stool out from under James. While James struggled to get back up, the others just stared at the old man who was now laughing.

"No, I know I'm better than you," he said, then continued to laugh.

"Who the hell are you?" This query came from one of the men that was playing cards. The old man stopped laughing and looked around the room with a slight smile on his face.

"That would be a long story," was his reply.

The man at the bar wearing leather armor spoke up. "We got time stranger. I wouldn't mind a good story. Ain't like we got much else to listen to around here, boys."

The other patrons and the barkeep nodded in agreement. Even James. A man that old and that good with a gun had to be just as quick with a turn of phrase, he reasoned. Plus, while he's yakking, it'll give me enough time to get my damn foot out of my mouth.

"Ha!" the stranger laughed heartily. "Well then Paul, give me another whiskey. We're gonna' be here awhile."

Once his spontaneous audience had made themselves comfortable, the old man began.

"Let's start at the beginning, shall we…"

7/2/2285, 38 years ago

12:03 pm

The Talon Company camp was destroyed, everyone dead except for one poor soul who was quickly trying to get away before he was killed too. Still running when he reached the end of the camp, Jason risked a look behind to see if the thing was chasing him – and consequently didn't see the side of the wrecked truck looming in front of him until it was too late. He turned around just in time to have the trailer's cold steel smash into his face, the impact bouncing him backwards and leaving him lying in a stunned heap on the ground.

Jason muttered a slurred curse, the hit having jarred something loose upstairs momentarily. He willed the fog to leave his mind. He knew that if didn't keep moving, he was going to be just as dead as his friends in the camp. He had just started to get up, when the biggest boot he had ever seen in his life came down and smashed him back into the dirt.

"Oh hell," was all he could whimper.

Jason's day had started out as normal as any day for greenhorn mercenary could. This was his first posting with the Talons; he didn't even know what they were going to have him do yet. All Jason knew was that with the Talons, there was the promise of easy caps, food, and shelter. And all he had to do was shoot a gun. He could do that. He'd had to shoot his way out of Tulsa just to avoid being killed by some hired goons, courtesy of a disgruntled former employer.

After bumping into a very persuasive Talon Company recruiter in a pub on the outskirts of Bixby, he'd hoofed it all the previous night to arrive at this camp. There, after a quick power nap, he and nine other recruits were told to form up in front of the captain's quarters. They waited there for about half an hour before the captain finally came out. After the commanding officer had stepped out of the makeshift building he'd walked over to the sergeant that had been watching the recruits and asked if they were the new whelps. Even though the captain seemed quite intimidating, Jason had been excited. At that point, anything would have been preferable to his former life in the Tulsa ruins.

The sergeant had been about to answer the captain's question, when there was a loud bang followed by the captain collapsing to the ground. In his abdomen, a hole the size of a human head was now gushing out a fountain of crimson. Everyone, including the sergeant, had just stared at the body in shock, still trying to figure out what had just happened when there was another report and the recruit next to Jason flew forward without a head.

Less than an hour later, everyone was dead. Save Jason. And the owner of the boot now standing on top of him.

When he looked up, Jason saw the boot was sheathing the foot of an absolute giant of a man. He was easily seven feet tall, full of muscle, and had a trimmed beard as well as longish brown hair. He also had a hand cannon of a revolver hanging from his side, its size so immense, it looked as if a baby could easily put its arm up the barrel and still have room to wiggle it around. On his back, he had a machete – that looked like an oversized dagger next to the man – in a sheath. He didn't seem to notice that he had stepped on Jason.

"Who the hell are you?" Jason asked the human skyscraper, who was busy lighting a cigar with the coals of a nearby fire. After he lit the cigar he looked down at Jason.

"Oh, almost forgot you were there," was his reply. Then he laughed and said, "The name's Sue…and I need a hand."

"What was your name and why do you need a ha–" Whatever Jason was going to say was lost to his shrieks of agony. The big man had taken out his machete and in one deft move, cut his hand clean off.

Elsewhere… 12:03 pm

Bang

"Holy crap, woman! I said wait until I covered my ears before firing that thing!" Tom yelled rubbing his right ear, which was probably deaf by now from Lana firing the anti-material rifle while using his shoulder to stabilize it.

"Stop whining. If I'd waited for you, then we would have missed our shot," Lana replied, putting the rifle back in its case. "And we can't afford to lose another job; we need the caps if we're goin' to survive out here."

"She's right you know. I wouldn't be happy if you died on me. What would I do without you two?" cooed a soft feminine voice in his head.

"Shut the hell up, Helen. I know, and either way, you'd be dead too if I died!"

"No, not really. I wasn't dead when you found me, and when I tricked you into putting me in your head," Helen replied in a matter-of-fact way.

"Do you have to remind me of that every single day?"

"Helen, leave Tom alone, we have to get goin'." Lana sometimes wished that she hadn't given the "healing anti-bodies" to Tom. The damn AI had placed itself into some experimental healing device that she'd found in the ruins of a high security lab. Tom had been shot and was dying so she'd injected it into him. Of course it worked, but Helen was also in it and as a result, Tom had become her host body. "Either way you tricked both of us."

With that, Lana jumped down from the large rock they had been standing on and started towards their trailer. The trailer was one of the big old camping rigs. They'd managed to find eight tires that weren't destroyed and put four on the already existing wheels. They had then attached two more axels and placed the remaining four on them. Along with some old crates for storage, they'd welded some old lockers by the vehicle's four side windows so that they could be used to house their weapons and ammo. After that, they'd started to weld metal plates all over the trailer to give it more protection from bullets…and worse. Originally, Tom and Lana we're going to buy some Brahman to haul the fortress on wheels around, but then Tom had gotten tricked into inserting Helen into his head, whereupon she'd shown them how to make an engine to hook up to the wheels, as well as a steering wheel to turn the thing. Tom felt it would have been nice if Helen had told them about the steering wheel part before he'd spent three days attaching the front axels on to the trailer. After fixing the steering issue though, they were able to turn it relatively well. All they needed to run the contraption were six fission batteries and some oil. It only went twenty-five miles per hour, and it wasn't much to look at, but at least it allowed them to rest anywhere in relative safety and get from point A to point B much faster than most.

They were only about a mile away from the town of Leguire, and nine miles from the city of McCertain. They had been waiting on a rocky outcropping for a group of raiders who possessed the item Tom and Lana had been ordered to retrieve. They thought that they would have to shoot all four of them, but the raider band in question ended up being attacked by a giant radscorpion, leaving only one survivor. So, after shooting said survivor, all they'd had to do was retrieve the item and get back. Which to Tom, was a good thing. Besides the possibility of going deaf in one ear, they would only have to buy one more shot for the AM rifle. The bullets for the weapon were expensive in these parts, and there was only one place to legally get them, that being the Den.

"Hey come on, we need to get goin', Tom." With that, Lana hopped up into the trailer and started the engine.

With a sigh of relief, Tom slung the rifle onto his back and followed after her.

Elsewhere… 6:12 pm

How did I end up here? Why did this happen to me? What will happen to me now? Chloe had asked these same questions of herself every day since her enslavement had begun two years before. She had been taken to some place called Paradise Falls down near D.C. when she was sixteen and stayed there for about three weeks before a merchant had bought her. He was looking for a couple slaves to help carry his supplies west. They'd travelled for about three months before arriving at a small town where she was sold to some slavers, her services no longer needed, she'd been told.

The slavers had a camp on the edge of town. They treated her like an animal. If she was too slow, they would beat her. If she cried, they would beat her. If she talked without being spoken to, they would beat her even more. This had continued for the next two years or at least she thought it was about two years.

Today, she was receiving punishment for accidently tripping over a slaver's outstretched leg. Though, as he informed her, this particular beating was for tripping without being told to trip first. The abuse lasted for about ten minutes before he stopped and walked away. Chloe was so focused on trying to make her battered legs hold her malnourished weight, it took her a few moments before she noticed the man. He was standing outside of the camp's fence, staring at her. Trying not to look him in the eye, she got back up and finished what she had been doing before. She was later beaten by the same slaver for being a minute late on completing her task.

The next day, she was taken from her bed and placed in a line. She was confused, as the slaver who fetched her was not the one who continually beat her, but one of the guards who patrolled the camp. After she was lined up with a few of the other slaves, four men – one was clearly the slave master who ran the camp; the others must have been the buyers – walked down the row, looking at each of them. They stopped twice and pulled out two slaves who were taken to the entrance. Then, they reached her.

"Her," one of the men said. She didn't know which one though, because she had her head down to avoid being hit for making eye contact.

"Are you sure? She isn't the greatest of the slaves here. We have much better stock," said the slave master. His voice, she recognized.

"Yes I'm sure." It was the same voice as before. Its user did not sound very old at all, maybe early twenties.

"Are you? She doesn't look very strong or even all that healthy. How old is she?" asked another buyer.

"I'm not sure. We have had her for about a year and a half now."

"I'm eighteen," she mumbled, just loud enough for them to hear her.

She than was slapped hard across the face and collapsed to the ground.

"Were we talking to you?," the slave master yelled. "You do not speak unless spoken to! Who's her handler?" he yelled to a nearby slaver.

"Frank is, sir."

"Well, where is he?"

"I don't know, sir," answered the slaver. "He never came back from town."

"I don't care how old she is, she will get stronger," the first buyer stated.

"Fine, you can have her for twelve hundred and fifty-six caps," the slave master conceded. "That includes her clothes. I could just keep the clothes and take fifty-six caps off the price if you want," he added coldly.

Chloe held her breath. She had seen many slaves leave naked because their owner chose to take the deal.

"No, I can pay for the clothes too." the man said in an irritated tone.

"Fine with me," the slave master said, turning to a pair of slavers. "You two, take her to registration."

Chloe was relieved that they dragged her to registration instead of beating her for not standing on her own. When she was placed in registration, she saw that the other two, a young man and a young woman, both of whom looked to be a few years older than her, were being bought by the buyer who hadn't said anything. After about ten minutes, she was brought up to the desk by the door. The man behind the desk asked her for her hand. When she held it out, he quickly grabbed it and held on to her thumb. Then he took out a knife and cut a gash across her thumb then jammed it down onto a piece of paper. A slaver came up behind her and took off her slave collar and replaced it with a different, smaller one. She was sent out the door were she was directed to go to the slave master. He was talking to one of the buyers, whose face she couldn't see as he had his back to her. Once she was about ten feet from the two, the man turned around. Chloe stopped in mild surprise when she saw his face; it was the man who had watched the slaver beat her the day before.

"This is your new owner," the slave master announced in a harsh tone. "You do everything he tells you to do from now on. Do you understand?"

Chloe just nodded and looked at the ground.

When the two had gotten about halfway through the town, a man wearing a long trench coat stepped into view. Chloe didn't think anything of it until he raised a scoped magnum and pointed it straight at her. She froze with fear but her new master didn't move. It was almost as if knew this going to happen. Then she heard the man start to mumble.

"Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teaches my hands to the war, and my fingers to fight. My goodness and my fortress. My high tower and my Deliverer. My shield, and He in whom I trust." His hand moved slightly to the left, then he pulled the trigger.

The bullet flew past her head, missing by a mere centimeter, and continued down the crowded street. It hit a prostitute and two men in the head but, it still kept going, through a closing gate, through a slaver, but still, it did not slow down. The projectile passed through the crack of a closing door and entered and exited the slave master's head before it embedded itself in the opposite wall.

People started to scream when the bodies hit the ground. Chloe looked up at the man who just mumbled something else, but found that he had disappeared into the crowd.

Fallout Revolution