Author's Note: I needed a subject for NaNo. This ended up being my attempt, if you like it, any cheering on is appreciated. Part of this does feature some of the game's plot, though a lot of the little side stuff I skipped (because we all don't need to go through that again, and this is a fic, not a game guide). I tried to make it as interesting as possible anyways (I mean, since it's fan fiction, and we are here for fun, right?). But there were certain things I wanted to set up that just didn't work unless I backtracked a bit. And this is slightly AU as a result…I guess? (If AU means 'not making this fic boring' and 'differs from game plot after a while'). Finally, remember critiques are always welcome (I write faster if you tell me honestly what you think, good or bad, or even if you just read it and want me to keep going, or hate it and feel it needs stopping).

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Literally, nothing (well, I probably own a bagel, but that's it). That said, I own nothing to do with the Fallout franchise, Bethesda, Obsidian or Interplay. I own nothing to do with even the stupid 'cover' ff forces us to put on our stories now. As I said, literally, nothing. This is a parody, conducted under fair copyright law, in accordance with a whole lotta other laws nobody here will be reading (unless you are a lawyer, then you have too much time on your hands and should be reading more, not thinking about suing me).

Book I: The Road to Gehenna

I. The Catalyst

Where can we go

When will we find that we know

To let go

Begin, begin again tonight

-Vera Keyes

There is a tale told in the Mojave desert, and on the streets of New Reno and as far away as the mongrel-filled lands of Denver and D.C. It is the tale of a single Mojave Express courier, little more than a girl, barely a woman. A story divided into a thousand different parts and all of them leading to a road that none but the courier's chosen have ever walked.

This is the road that she traveled, the story of a woman without a past and a land without a future; a tale that takes many nights to chase itself to its end. Perhaps, if one is lucky, they may hear all of it from a single voice. Perhaps, if one is also open to the lessons that it shares, they may live long enough as well. It is a yarn, so they say, worth telling. But then, is that not up to the listeners of all campfire tales? Perhaps…

The doctor standing in front of the table looked bored, or disgruntled, or both. He gave the woman next to him a petulant look and then turned toward the girl sitting on the makeshift examining table, holding her right arm tightly to her chest as if it pained her greatly to let it move at all.

"You know I don't handle this side of things, Julie. I have important research-"

"That can wait," the woman said, her smile slightly forced. "I'm short-handed enough as it is tonight Gannon, and this is a special case. Just look at the poor girl's wounds and give her Med-X for the pain? The new shipment of stimpaks just came in and I have supplies to organize and you are more than capable."

The girl looked up at the man standing before her, trying to read his expression. He seemed weary, and slightly irritated, but also like he was trying to hide all this behind genuine concern when his eyes glanced back at the way she was sitting, hunched, upon the table.

"Very well," he said with a sigh, "it's not as if I joined the Followers to blatantly ignore where I'm needed."

"Of course," Julie answered through her smile, squeezing his hand and retreating out of the tent without another glance back.

"Sooo, I'm Arcade Gannon, and," the man said as he turned back toward his new patient, surveying the damage, "what have we here? Been to Freeside recently…at all? First time in the Old Mormon Fort? I don't think I've ever seen you-"

"I've-" the girl answered with hesitation, as if it were difficult forming her thoughts into words. "I got…there was this really angry brahmin…cow…um, and then those big bug things? Cazadores? Then a couple members of…some gang or something? Had flamers, I think. Maybe that's where the burns-"

Arcade eased her arm away from her chest, and she winced, hissing out her breath between her teeth as he unwrapped the dirty rags she had tied around it. He then turned her mangled arm slightly to inspect the mass of lacerations and second degree burns running up her fingers and forearm.

"Hmm, never been here before, I take it? Those might have been Fiends. And...Wow. That's some infection you have there. And it's broken too. Why you incapable Wastelanders don't just decide to stay somewhere without murderous chem addicts and crazed wildlife I will never-"

He tugged on her arm a little too forcefully, and she cried out, causing something furry and metallic to leap up from under the shadows of the table. It was a cyberdog; to Arcade, a very familiar cyberdog.

The dog growled at him, pushing its warm, wet nose close to his leg, golden eyes following his hands as if daring him to make another move.

"Hey there Rex," Arcade quickly countered, "you're looking lovely today, very…alive. Which your compadre here isn't. And though I get your little 'cave canem' routine, it clearly isn't helpful here, so if you wouldn't mind."

Rex gave him a warning glare and then retreated back under the table, resting his twitching black nose on his paws, looking slightly mournful.

"I wasn't trying to get injured," the girl said, filling the silence after several moments. "I was trying to find a new brain for Rex. He's really sick."

Arcade gently let her fold her arm back to her body and then fished around in a cabinet next to the table, pulling out a shot of Med-X, several stimpaks, assorted gauze, and finally bandages with some red paste. He laid these all out on a metal tray atop the cabinet and after administering the shot of Med-X along with the stims, directed his attention to cleaning off the arm and applying the paste.

"Yes, and he's a dog. You're a human. There is a big difference. He can be replaced, you-"

The girl suddenly affixed him with a glare that was both focused and determined, her gaze no longer wandering with the pain. "Seriously? Rex is my friend! He understands me and has my back, which is better than pretty much anyone I've met out in the Wasteland. Why would he be any less-"

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Arcade said, placing his hands consolingly between them. "I'm-I didn't mean it quite like that. Okay? Good. Be careful. You're obviously still in shock, raise your blood pressure too much and it won't be of benefit to either you or Rex. Which, speaking of Rex, I thought he belonged to the King? Why do you have the King's dog?"

"The King said he needed fixing. So I told him I would help, because that's what we should be doing, helping people. I need to get into The Strip too, um, and he knows some people...uh. I haven't been in Freeside for very long, but I saw the King throwing this ball for Rex in the street, and then Rex fell over…oww…my head hurts."

"Maybe you shouldn't go diving into cazador nests next time, eh?"

Arcade reached into the drawer again and brought forth a corked clay bottle, pulling the stopper out and sniffing it with a grimace before handing it to her.

"Now drink this and no complaining about how it tastes."

The girl took it gingerly with her good arm and sipped it before making a face he saw all too often when someone downed a dose of antivenom.

"This stuff tastes awful, like, worse than the smell of an entire nest of rained-on nightstalkers."

"ALL of it," Arcade elaborated sternly. "Who are you anyway? Probably won't be walking out of here for a bit anyways, and I can't just make you up a new file with 'Jane Doe' on the label. I mean, I think we already have ten of those and you really don't look like a 'Jane'. Not that Jane is a bad name but, well-"

"I, um," the girl said, finishing the concoction and setting the bottle down before moving her hand back to cradle her broken arm. "I really- Uh, it's a long story. The best I have is that I'm a courier, or WAS a courier for the Mojave Express. Most people just call me the Courier now, though I'm not too sure I like that either. Having a 'the' in your name is a little weird, if you can even call that a name. I don't have anything else, so, well, after getting shot in the head I guess it's better than something I could come up with off the top of my brain. Well, what might be left of my brain."

Arcade gave her an appraising look. "That...that was you? You're that courier who came back from the dead in Goodsprings? The one that helped out at Camp McCarran? Several NCR refugees and soldiers who've come by for help have mentioned some sort of Republic 'savior'. That...is you?"

He seemed to be unable to come to terms with the fact that the young woman before him and the already outlandish stories concerning the 'Mojave Legend' were one in the same. This girl wasn't even- She couldn't be more than a teenager, surely?

"How old are you?" Arcade said before he had time to stop himself. "You don't look a day over fifteen."

"Wow," she answered, "some bedside manner. But I'm starting to feel better, so you aren't a total failure. I'm seventeen, actually. And I guess I did a few things that, um, might have gotten me mentioned ? I'm unsure why they're making such a big deal about it. I just helped them find a bomb on their monorail system and then catch a traitor who was radioing co-ordinates to Caesar's Legion. I don't understand why they couldn't have done it themselves, they're so incompetent sometimes."

Arcade couldn't help himself, he chuckled and started to unroll the gauze, having finished applying the paste to her arm.

"Well, I can see why the Mojave hasn't spit you out yet, you've got a bit of a bite."

"Shouldn't I?" she answered, glancing down at her feet. "I've got burns on my legs too, not as bad as the arm though. I guess I should probably tell you about that."

"So I noticed," he said, eyeing the huge holes in her tan-toned cargo pants. "We'll get to those too. Let me get this arm in a sling and then I'll take a look. Seriously? The Mojave Legend is a barely a woman, and she has hardened New California Republic officers gushing over her like she's the next 'Goddess of the Wasteland'. This makes my day, hell, this actually makes my year."

"So, Mr. Laughs-at-Wounded-Girls, what do you do around here anyway with such a lovely wit? Surely not reassuring the ill? You mentioned you had other work to do when that doctor, Julie, made you stay."

Arcade looked away, shrugging slightly.

"I'm really rather boring. You'd get better stories from a Freeside junkie. Honestly, I just had a few skills, met up with Julie when I was younger and realized I could use them to help people as a member of the Followers. I'm-," he said with hesitation, as if trying to find the right words, "-not really a people person, even if the Followers trained me as a doctor. I prefer wasting my time pathetically attempting to concoct natural substitutes for synthesized medications used in the Fort. Stimpaks especially, though so far most of these worthless mutated excuses for Wasteland vegetation aren't helping."

The Courier nodded, and then started laughing when Rex began to lick the bottom of one of her feet through a hole in her boot, completely ruining any thoughts of further conversation.

.o.O.o.

The Courier lay curled on her left side, cocooned in blankets and nestled down on an old mattress in one of the Fort's recovery tents, the only patient currently too ill to have left hours ago. Rex rested at her feet, his muzzle propped on one of her ankles, his eyes watching the darkness. His tail thumped lightly against the bed as a figure entered, holding a lantern before it in the pitch-black of the tent. The sudden light threw the interloper's shadow long against the wall, the spikes of their dark Mohawk rising up like the needle-tops of alien mountains against the thick canvas of the tent.

"How are you doing?"

The Courier pulled the blankets down from her face with her good arm. The daytime temperature may have approached seventy degrees, but it was late spring in the irradiated desert, and the night was still far more frigid. She gazed up at Julie, and tried to recall how to fit words together.

"Okay I guess. I've been worse. Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"I'm pulling a double shift tonight, issues with scheduling. We're short-handed this time of year, it's pretty standard."

She took a seat on the empty bunk across from the Courier and the girl watched her for a moment, trying to size up the woman in front of her. The Courier had heard tales about the Followers of the Apocalypse, some good, some mixed. They had no formal hierarchy, something she couldn't really see working in the long run, but the fact that they would help her without expecting anything in return, was different. She wasn't sure quite what to think of that, or whether to be grateful or sad that she lived in a world where honest help was so rare that she doubted its authenticity.

As she watched Julie the things that struck her most about the woman were unconventional. Her kind blue-grey eyes were almost the color of a sky about to storm, and the faint lines around her mouth and on her forehead spoke of a harder life at one point than that which she lived now. Julie seemed to study her also, and hesitated before finally speaking again.

"I hate to ask you at a time like this; I mean, sleep is your utmost priority. But you can't really leave tomorrow and expect to go back to protecting yourself with an arm like that right away. And staying here after tomorrow would be useless to all of us, unless you have some variety of medical skills. So I'd like you to consider the many positions our group, the Followers of the Apocalypse, have open around Freeside. We're trying to clean this place up, provide food and medicine. Arcade told me who you were, that apparently you're starting to get a pretty favorable reputation around here and with the NCR."

"But I have to save Rex. And then the King said if I proved myself he might be able to help me get into The Strip after that. I need to talk to the man that supposedly shot me in the head. I need answers."

Julie hesitated, reached out to pat Rex on the head and he licked her hand gently. The Courier suddenly had the strangest feeling that the cybernetic German Shepherd and the doctor knew each other.

"The King trusted you with Rex, and he really loves that dog. I remember when he first bought him, all mangled up, barely alive, and asked if the Followers could help restore him. He wouldn't loan that dog to just anyone, especially if he thinks Rex is hurt, unless he knows you have a good chance of helping him. But you can't help him until you get better. And though the NCR boys may be all about marching on with the mission until you're dead, I'm the supervising physician here, and I think you need some sleep. We'll talk more-"

She stopped, smiled, and gently patted Rex on the head one more time. The Courier's eyes were closed, her breathing the even rhythm of one exploring the lands of deeper sleep. She had broached the subject, and that would be enough for now, tomorrow was another day.

A/N: Well heck that was a lot of dialogue! Don't worry, action starts soon enough, I just wanted a fairly different way of introducing the Courier. After all, Fallout is all about the characters anyway, isn't it? Maybe? And guns?