It's been over half a year since I last wrote a fanfiction. I found the inspiration to at least start this fanfiction after I replayed all four main games, and wanted to put elements of them all together at once. I doubt I'll be able to regularly update, but I'd like to commit to this. Right now, I probably need to work on adding dialogue into my story, as it feels forced.
A unanimous opinion throughout the Mojave Desert was that the Second Battle of Hoover Dam had undoubtedly changed the Mojave forever, whether the person saying that was a regular citizen or one of the families behind Vegas' newfound success. But it wasn't long before the Courier who had ended that five-year stalemate between the Legion and NCR mysteriously disappeared. The Lucky 38 closed its doors once more and again reverted to its derelict, pre-war state.
In the Courier's place was the unique Securitron, Yes-Man. It was widely known that Yes-Man was unable to deny a request, but even if a prospective wastelander with high hopes managed to make it into the Lucky 38, the Courier had made sure that all Securitrons were fully upgraded before she left New Vegas. Some resented her for leaving them in the hands of robot, and the fact she would rather spend money on security for an uninhabited building, but life still continued, as it always had. Vegas remained a relic of the Old World within the Wasteland surrounding it.
While no one was ever sure why the Courier had left the life of luxury she had been granted, or where she had left for, one thing was for certain: wherever the Courier went, trouble would never be too far behind.
Evelyn stared at her reflection in the grimy mirror of the latest bar she had wound up in. It was cleaner than most of the other bars she had visited since leaving New Vegas, but it was still a dump. Paint and wallpaper were peeling off of the walls, the locks had been removed from the bathroom stalls, and water was leaking onto the floor from a broken sink. The only thing missing was someone so drunk that the line between unconscious and dead was blurred.
Over the sound of a bar fight an NCR radio station played from an old radio. Despite the political arguments and fighting going on in the very foundation of the NCR, the radio station was still encouraging citizens to support their troops and invest. The words reminded her of the pre-war posters of a blonde woman with a strange hat and dress, telling the reader to buy war bonds. Whatever a war bond was, she doubted anyone cared to know anymore.
As she walked out of the bathrooms and into the main room, the bartender smiled at her. No matter how rowdy she became, the he never seemed to complain unless she was driving off other customers. He had given her a bottle of whiskey on the house after she expressed a desire to leave the town and carry on her travels. She didn't care for the gesture; the bottle had simply been stored in her pack for later. Though until the dust storm that raged outside calmed down, Evelyn would be stuck in the bar.
Her fellow patrons were becoming increasingly agitated, as being stuck in a bar that smelt like vodka and vomit wasn't somewhere anyone wanted to be.
"How about you down your anger with something? Smithy has a wide selection," a waitress smiled. Evelyn shook her head and turned away in response. Rifling through her bag, she pulled out three full bottles of whiskey and kept them there until the woman left.
Under her breath, Evelyn muttered, "Smithy can shove his watered down piss up his ass," as she put the whiskey back. She checked her Pip-Boy and grimaced – The Hub was still thirty miles away. If she were able to travel as fast as she could, it would still take her at least four days to get to The Hub.
She turned off her Pip-Boy and dragged herself to the room she had rented. The moment she was rid of this town and back into the wastes would be a blessing. Townies were too self-absorbed in their safety to give a shit about the rest of the world. Evelyn shoved her backpack underneath the bed and bolted the door shut tight, before lying down on the lumpy mattress and quickly falling to sleep.
Sunlight streamed through the unwashed windows in spots where there was not enough dust to make it completely opaque. The sound of wind that had rattled the bar for the past three days had completely disappeared, leaving blissful silence in its place. It was certainly welcome; her head felt like someone had hit it with a hammer.
According to her Pip-Boy, the time was 6:32 in the morning. She picked up her leather armour from the side table and quickly changed.
The jukebox that had been happily playing music for three nights prior was flickering on and off in a last attempt to stay alive. One of the barmaids was kneeling beside it, trying to hook the exposed wire ends to a fission battery. Evelyn turned away and headed out the door to the desolate street.
NCR taxes had hit towns like this one hard. Some people had taken to living together to limit the tax charged for basic living, shops were running out of stock due to the caravans being killed by raiders due to the lack of security along highways. The government had all but forgotten about its people between the First and Second battles of Hoover Dam, and now it was feeling the consequences.
By all accounts, the lands once controlled by Caesar's Legion weren't faring better either. Like they NCR, the Legion hadn't lost many of its main figures, but there were reports of a fragile state from the caravaneers. Many feared that America was once again going to crumble and fall back into the dark days that had come after the Great War. With nowhere else to turn, it seemed that they were right.
In the end the Wasteland would come back from it. To Evelyn, old men in suits who thought they had the right to dictate what people could and couldn't do would get what was coming to them. They threw words at each other in an empty room in Shady Sands, but in the end it didn't matter. People were right when he said the only difference between Caesar's Legion and the NCR was the fact that the NCR weren't dressing up as Romans.
Evelyn looked up from her pondering and began heading towards the town gate. The two men guarding the entrance didn't give her a second look as she adjusted her backpack and left the town behind. Before she knew it the town had been swallowed up by the never ending desert. She prepared herself to be attacked by the horrors that lurked in the wastes.
The peak of the California sun scorched the leather armour that was now painfully stuck to Evelyn's skin. Beads of sweat rolled down her face, and she had decided to pull on a bandana to keep her hair from sticking to her forehead and making her even more uncomfortable. The radio on her Pip-Boy could only just catch the signal of a nearby radio station, but she could only just make out the songs attempting to be heard over the static.
The sound of a gun cocking behind her brought her to a dead halt. Two raiders appeared from her left, both with their weapons aimed at her.
A female raider approached her and gave her a simple demand, "Hand over whatever you've got in the bag, and I won't blow your fucking brains out"
Evelyn grimaced in disgust at the woman's face. She couldn't have been older than twenty, yet her face was already scarred from countless fights and years of chem usage. A gash on her arm was a putrid green from a festering infection. Very few raiders knew how to perform even the basics of medicine, so most turned to using more chems to alleviate the pain. This woman was no exception.
"Are you deaf? I don't care if I shoot you or not, I'm getting that backpack," she jerked her arm and moved the gun closer to Evelyn's head.
"Calm down, at least give me a second to actually get it off," Evelyn snapped back. The raider was taken aback from her sudden response. Seizing her chance, Evelyn grabbed the raider by the neck and twisted it with all the force she could. A sickening crunch followed, and she crumpled to the floor in a heap.
Her male accomplice was quick to shoot at Evelyn. He screamed in a fit of rage, followed by words that she couldn't make out. Evelyn jumped to cover behind a rusted car as her attacker attempted to shoot her from the front of the car. She sharply inhaled through her teeth when one of the bullets pierced her arm and blood quickly began to spurt from the wound.
The click of his gun signalled that the raider had used his supply of bullets. While fazed from the shot, Evelyn jumped to her feet and drew a 9mm from her holster. She was not a good aim, but the raider was preoccupied with attempting to find another gun to use and was desperately scrambling on the floor. She used the chance to send a bullet straight into his head.
Chunks of bone splattered to the floor first, followed by blood and brain. The man jerked for several seconds before finally falling to the ground, leaving blood to pour from his head and onto the old tarmac. Evelyn sat behind the car in the shade and began to pull the shards of the bullet from her arm out with a pair of tweezers. A quick burst of flame from her lighter gave enough time to cauterise the wound and pull as much as she could out.
At times like these, she wished she had a companion to follow her into the wastes and help her when she got into predicaments that ended up with her pulling lead out of her arm. Any who were once willing to help her remained in the Mojave Desert. She would have taken someone along, but everyone had their own goals, and no one planned to enter NCR territory anytime soon. Especially not Veronica.
Evelyn chastised herself for thinking about Veronica. To her, the Brotherhood of Steel was her family, she had every right to wish to stay in the Mojave, even if they didn't accept her. It wasn't as if they were going to be seeing each other anytime soon. There was no point dwelling on something that didn't matter anymore.
Satisfied with the treatment of her arm, Evelyn pulled the body of the nearest raider to her and began to search his pockets. Both of them had little more than a small pouches of caps attached to their belts. She fumbled through her bag to find her own bag of caps and threw the caps in.
She got to her feet and steadied herself on the car. A relic of Pre-War times. Sometimes Evelyn wished to find someone who had lived before the Great War, just so she could punch them in the face for not appreciating what they had while it was there.
The sound of boots crunching against the desert rick made her head instinctively jerk up. A woman, laser rifle in hand, was slowly approaching her. The combat armour she wore had likely been green before it had been plastered with mud, blood, and dirt. Her thick-rimmed glasses were the only things that weren't dirty.
Evelyn tentatively headed towards her. If the woman hadn't shot her by now, there was a chance that she didn't want to attack her straight away.
An interrogative tone dominated her tone as Evelyn confronted the woman from afar, "Where the hell did you come from?"
"Over there," she responded, pointing down the road and towards where Evelyn had come from, "You're headed to The Hub?"
"What's it to you?" She demanded, "I don't even know your name."
"Adela. Adela Connolly. I overheard you talking about going to The Hub a few days ago. After your scuffle with those raiders I thought that you would like some company," she sheathed her laser rifle and resumed walking towards her, "Two's a company."
"Evelyn Miller. If we're going to travel together, I'd like to get to The Hub before Tuesday,"
Even with company, Evelyn could still retreat to her own thoughts. They were an uneasy duo, certainly, but something was making Evelyn fond of Adela already. With the harshness of the Wastes, the respite of a companion was something she had been craving for weeks. She briefly looked to the floor and smiled. Maybe this one wouldn't end so bad.
It will definitely be a challenge to update this fanfiction regularly. Like everyone else on this site, I have commitments. However since I've finally gotten over an awful case of writer's block that plagued me for months, I think I can have a chapter every month or so. I do have the basic outline for this, so hopefully I will be able to finish.
Until next time!