Chapter 1 - The Wanderer
"I'm the type of guy who will never settle down
Where pretty girls are, you know that I'm around
I kiss 'em and I love 'em
'Cause to me they're all the same
I hug 'em and I squeeze 'em
They don't even know my name
They call me the Wanderer
Yeah, the Wanderer
I roam around, around, around."
My singalong was interrupted by the snickering of my squadmates. The one thing that made trekking across the Capital Wasteland bearable. Ruined.
"Oh, well there's Sarah on my left..." sang Paladin Glade.
"Shut up." I snapped, glad that my T-60A power helmet hid my blushing face.
Even the mighty Brotherhood of Steel wasn't above its immature gossip. A few months ago, the Lone Wanderer set off on a glorified suicide mission to singlehandedly infiltrate Adam's Air Force Base and hijack the Enclave's orbital strike platform.
"You know, you should never be afraid to admit you care, Sarah." teased Paladin Kodiak. I woke up from a three week long coma during the attack, and I didn't take the news well. Against the wishes, but not orders, of my father, Elder Lyons, I commandeered the Lone Wanderer's abandoned suit of T-60A Tesla power armor and set off in a vertibird to rescue him.
"Passion motivates, but lasers get the job done." said Paladin Commander Vargas. We found the Lone Wanderer pinned down without power armor by a squad of Enclave soldiers on the launch platform. With only minutes before four missiles would level the entire structure, we swooped in, saved the Lone Wanderer, and stopped to watch the fireworks before returning triumphantly to the Citadel.
The end of war celebrations began with the Lone Wanderer's promotion to the rank of Star Paladin. In a somewhat rushed ceremony, he shook hands with Paladin Commander Tristan, Head Scribe Rothchild, me, and finally, Dad. The party stretched late into the night, but took an unfortunate turn when after a few too many drinks, I invited the Lone Wanderer back to my personal quarters, eliciting cheers from the eavesdropping crowd. I think we were both disappointed by his awkward, "No thanks."
"Maybe Three-Dog has some news about your boyfriend." said Glade.
"I doubt it." The morning after, he had seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth, or at least from the Capital Wasteland. If it had been anyone else, we'd be out looking for him. He was a member of my squad.
"He can't disappear forever. Nobody's that good." said the ever skeptical Knight Captain Gallows.
Aside from Gallows, the rest of Lyon's Pride hadn't shut up about "us" for months. I bet Enclave officers didn't have to deal with that bullshit. The Brotherhood was a military order, but it was first and foremost a family. Still, with the defeat of the Enclave and the disappearance of the Supermutants from the D.C. ruins, maybe we'd gone soft.
"Let's all just focus on the task at hand."
"Come on, Sarah. Lighten up a little. Listen to the music." said Knight Captain Colvin.
"Radio. Off."
He sighed. "Yes, Sentinel."
With the flick of a switch Dion's voice was replaced with the all too familiar, desolate silence of the Capital Wasteland. Combined with the blistering heat, it was enough to drive a man mad, fortunately not as quickly as my squad probably could. At least now I could get some peace and quiet. The D.C. ruins were never quiet.
Two shotgun blasts, a scream of pain, and the frightened moo of a brahmin broke the silence. Tactics ran through my head. Was it raiders? Supermutants? Enclave? Talon Company? But when I turned my head I saw the one thing that couldn't be planned for: A twelve foot tall deathclaw alpha male, feeding on the brahmin corpse as if we were mere ants spectating a human picnic.
"Shit." I whispered, clearly speaking for the group. "Everyone stay calm." As I rarely left the D.C. ruins, it had been years since the last time I'd seen a deathclaw. I was only a young knight when I witnessed the slaughter of an entire squad by just one of them. The soldiers' bulletproof power armor had been torn from their bodies and shredded by the beast's namesake claws.
I began to back away slowly. Unfortunately, the hydraulics irritated the deathclaw, as they didn't seem to be designed with stealth in mind. Lyon's Pride unloaded into the monster. Deathclaw hide was practically bulletproof, but luckily, I was armed with a plasma rifle. At the very least, I had a weapon that could penetrate it. I could work with that.
Irritated by our retaliation, the deathclaw discarded his meal and charged directly at his most immediate threat: me. I fired three bolts of green plasma at his legs, but hit only once. He continued his charge, completely unfazed. I drew a frag mine from my belt, but didn't need it.
With an earsplitting crack the deathclaw's neck jerked sharply to his right and a wicked gash opened in his forehead. A brown and black, humanoid figure materialized in mid air just above the deathclaw. The figure caught the deathclaw's face with a claw much like his own, drew a ripper in its left hand, and proceeded to saw off his right horn. He thrashed and screamed with pain as the Pride stared in awe at our savior.
A German shepherd with a robotic leg foreleg charged in to aid his master. With the strength of a yao guai he locked onto the thrashing deathclaw's left wrist, restraining it.
When the horn had been significantly weakened, the stranger sheathed their ripper, broke off the horn with one hand, swung around the deathclaw's neck, and drove it through the open head wound. The stranger slid down the spasming body and met our gaze, before turning back to end the defeated creature's misery with a plasma pistol shot to the head.
"This is why I travel with the radio off." lectured a muffled, male voice.
Colvin laughed. "I guess he didn't share Three-Dog's taste!"
The stranger wore a ratty, brown cloak over his lightly armored, black jumpsuit, which clung tightly to his noticeably slavic hips. He threw back his hood and took off his black and orange helmet, revealing the dark hair and mismatched, blue and brown eyes of the Lone Wanderer. They looked into and past each of us, clearly aware of everything around us, and I suspected some things that weren't.
Glade elbowed me. "Speak of the devil, eh?"
I removed my helmet and cautiously approached the Lone Wanderer. His hair was unkempt and longer than usual, and he had grown a survivalist's beard, but something more was off about him, even if I couldn't put my finger on it. I began to speak, with a simple thank you in mind, but all I managed was, "How?"
He turned to me. "Thanks for the distraction."
"Uh huh." I couldn't tear my eyes from the pile of green goo that was the deathclaw's head, "What are you doing out here?"
"Hunting." he answered, checking his pip-boy and patting Dogmeat's head. "What are you doing out here?"
"Escorting Doc Hoff's water caravan to Canterbury Commons." I gestured to our two remaining pack brahmin.
He cracked a smile. "They send Lyon's Pride for that?"
"We're the only ones father trusts to go this far north." I said through gritted teeth.
He glanced at the headless deathclaw corpse. "I can see why."
I turned to Vargas. "What did we lose?"
"One of the Rivet City guards and one pack brahmin, but the water didn't spill."
This wasn't good. I'd never spoken to either of the two Rivet City guards accompanying us. Lepelletier was likely to complain, even though she was the one who insisted at least one accompany every water caravan. She said it "Kept us honest".
The brahmin was the bigger concern. The two-headed bovines carry much, but even they had a limit. "Split the water sacks between the brahmin and have someone carry the body. We'll bring him back to Rivet City."
Vargas saluted. "Yes, Sentinel!"
I turned back to the Lone Wanderer. "Star Pala-..." He was gone without so much as a footprint left behind.
"Where the hell did he go?!" I demanded.
"He just, well, vanished." said Colvin.
"He probably used a stealthboy." said Knight Captain Dusk skeptically. "His idea of a dramatic exit." She never liked the Lone Wanderer. She seemed to think they had some kind of rivalry, but anyone who saw them both shoot knew it was no contest.
There was a distinctive flicker to a stealth field. In darkness, it was nearly undetectable, but in broad daylight, he might as well have lit up like a Glowing One.
"His dog is right over there." said Gallows, startling us all.
