this is 100% self indulgent and just for fun and very weird. just a warning.

10/4/2284 Post-Atomic Mojave Desert

Six could see the New Vegas strip from where he was kneeling on the ground, it and the full moon where the only sources of light in the desert night. It still seemed too bright to Six, as his sunglasses had been lost in the scuffle when he was jumped. He returned his attention to his muggers, two punks in leather jackets and a surprisingly neat man in a checkered suit, he was definitely from the strip. The man examined the silver poker chip they had stolen from him, holding it up to the moonlight with one hand. The other held a shoddy looking pipe pistol, the kind of disposable weapon that junkies and wannabe raiders used. Or hitmen looking for a burner weapon. He couldn't believe that he was going to die like this, one month into living in the post apocalypse only to die at the hands of a badly dressed casino employee? Stupid. He could hear Dog shuffling around in the shallow grave they had dug for both of them, poor thing, it was only a puppy, it didn't deserve to die like this, hog tied and buried alive.

"You know," the man said, "it must feel like you've hit a run of bad luck," he raised the gun, and pressed the barrel against Six's forehead, right between his eyebrows, "but really, the cards were stacked from the start" he pulled the trigger.

7/20/2037 Providence

Nine months. Six and Rex had been gone for nine months. Six and Rex had been trapped in a different dimension for nine months. In that nine months she and Ceazar had worked around the clock to get to them again and when they finally, finally, had what they needed to get to them, White Knight was denying the mission.

"We have everything set up, we just need your approval and we could be in and out of this dimension with Six and Rex with two trips within the week." Holiday argued

"Or you could die, you know the information you got back from your probe better than I do, I'm sure you noticed the high radiation, I'm not sending a team of my men to their death for the sake of one agent and an obsolete weapon." White argued back, his expression was carefully schooled into a dull blank look, his voice held no emotion. Holiday knew he wanted Six and Rex back too, how could he not? After all the time they spent together fighting Black Knight's Providence. But as the leader of providence he also had other things to worry about.

"Then I'll go alone," Holiday offered "I have a hazmat suit, I can start on with Six's location, there's almost no radiation there, once we have Six we have someone who knows how the world works over there, which will make finding Rex much easier. Besides, they're more than just agents at this point, they're icons, and the fact that they've disappeared is making the public antsy."

"Regardless, you're assuming either of them is even alive, you said yourself that their trackers aren't showing any movement,"

"We're tracking across an entire dimension, we can really only approximate a twenty-mile radius, it wouldn't be that unusual for them to stay within the area, that would make it seem like they weren't moving"

"It's a suicide mission," White said frankly, then, with a little bit of emotion creeping into his voice "I would rather not lose my top scientist."

"You'll lose me either way, I won't work for an organization that won't help its own." There is a tense silence, then Knight sighs.

"You have one week to produce results, start with Six, if you don't call in requesting pickup by then end of the week, we'll pull you out regardless of where you are, and if you don't have Six we won't be sending you in for Rex. I expect you to be ready for deployment by tomorrow, 07:00." Dr. Holiday tries to hide her relief, she hadn't really thought her bluff would work, but, well, White Knight still had a heart under all the politics.

7/21/2037 06:45 Providence

It was just her and Ceazar in his lab, prepping for the mission. Ceazar was adjusting his modified null-void generator while Dr. Holiday double and triple checked her supplies, she had a week and a half worth of rations, some water, all the supplies she should need for making more clean water, filters for her hazmat suit, along with backup supplies for repairs if she needed them, a journal and pencils, for keeping track of her findings, and of course, two Providence issued automatic pistols and ammunition. As much as White Knight claimed that he didn't support the mission, he was lenient with supplies. The most important things she had, however, where a tracker and a transmitter. If all went well, she could follow the tracker right to Six and use the transmitter to signal Ceazar to get them out of there.

"So just remember that it's an area of effect kind of thing, so be careful that you and Six are the only animals in a three-foot radius, or else you'll bring whatever else is around with you." Ceazar said,

"Ceazar, I know, I helped build it" she said

"I know, just trying to help,"

"Are you two ready?" White Knight asked, appearing on screen, ready for them to get started five minutes early. Holiday hefted her supplies onto her back and gave a nod.

"Ready whenever Ceazar is" she confirmed, as Ceazar checked all his readings again.

"We should be ready, I found a good entry point, so I can drop you in whenever you want, just stand in the clear area and we can start."

Holiday nodded, adjusted her mask, and stood where she was directed to. It was unsettling to have what appeared to be a giant gun pointed at her, but she took a deep breath and gave Ceazar a thumbs up. White Knight kept his stoic expression but just before Ceazar pulled the trigger he said probably the nicest thing he had ever said to her.

"I expect to see you again before the end of the week"

There was nothing in between the dimensions, no crash or bright light. It was just, one minute she was in the lab, and the next she was in the middle of the desert. She wondered if that was what it had been like for her boys, that would have been jarring.

She carefully took stock of her surroundings and was reminded of the time when she was a teenager and her family visited her grandma in Arizona. The landscape was hot, dry and boring. Rocks and sand and a few spiny cacti, it was, at least hilly, so she could count on shade if she walked in the valleys, not that it was too concerning right now, it was morning here too, and the sun was still low in the sky. The scientist part of her knew that she was probably in an ecologically rich and unique environment, but the part of her that had grown up on sci-fi movies and books and, heck even podcasts, couldn't help but to be disappointed.

There wasn't really time for disappointment though, the faster she could find Six, the more likely it would be that she would find him alive. So, she pulled out her tracker and headed east, further into the desert.

There was little to observe on the walk, the cacti looked just like the kind her grandma used to keep in her yard, which at least pushed Holiday to believe that this dimension wasn't totally different from her own. It was hot, but it was a desert. She saw what looked like a large lizard in the distance, but it wasn't in her way and she didn't want to try to get a closer look, so she simply let it be. It was almost half an hour of walking before she saw anything manmade.

It was a small, half buried air plane and a shack, both looked well over a hundred years old. Holiday had been worried just from the radiation that they had detected that this world was some kind of post-apocalyptic waste, and the sight of the rotting plane made her feel no better. She approached with caution, as, while the shack was missing a part of its southern wall, the plane looked like a good hideout. she heard something shuffling under the half-buried wing and pulled her gun. She was maybe five feet from the plane, when something charged her.

It barked and snapped but didn't come more than a foot from the plane, a coyote, just a coyote. It stood, apparently protecting its den, barking and howling, but unwilling to fight her. She quickly moved on.

There was a road not far from the abandoned plane and shack, and if those two things hadn't made her feel like she was the last person on earth, then the road did. It looked like it was once an expressway, two thick roads with a concrete divider in the middle, but what was left was mostly rubble, more markers of a road once having been there than anything functional. The street sign a little way down the road, however, was a relief, a sign of recent human habitation. There were three arrows, north, south, and down, which she took to be referring to the eastern dirt path that it faced. The sign was clearly being upkept, with the names of locations and the arrows having the appearance of being repainted several times, in a few colors that shown a bit from where the paint was wearing thin, the most recent being a sunny yellow, which looked silly where the last coat, a bright red, was starting to show through. It stated that to the south was Primm, the east Good Springs, and the north New Vegas. New Vegas, not Los Vegas. That was odd, but the sign had been repainted so many times, it only made sense that some things would be lost in translation.

Regardless, she was happy to see that her tracker was leading her towards a town, it made her feel like that made it a bit more likely that Six was still alive, even if should couldn't quite reason why.

The walk into town was largely uneventful, other than the dog sized lizard that hissed at her when she came a little to close. The town itself, in fact, was largely uneventful. It was clear that the town was inhabited, there where some oversized goats huddled under a pavilion in a livestock pen, there were crops that Dr. Holiday didn't really recognize in neat rows, there were houses and shops cobbled together from old buildings and recycled supplies where upkeep was clearly being done, but there were no people. To be fair, Dr. Holiday wouldn't have blamed them, in the time that it took her to walk here, the sun had come up fully, and she could feel it heating up. If she lived in a place like this she probably wouldn't come out during the day either. She would have stopped at the saloon (really a saloon like in a western), but her tracker said that she was almost to Six, so she decided to come back after she found him. She trekked past the giant goats, and the shops and the crops and the houses, past one particularly large house, and out past the small town.

The tracker lead her up a steep hill, then past a sign for a cemetery, she quickened her pace hoping that Six was just visiting someone. She jogged up the hill, the tiny cemetery came into view as she came to the top, and she broke into a run as she saw it was empty, she ran past the gate, glancing at all the barely marked graves. Then at something else. There was an empty one. A hole, maybe three feet deep at a maximum, when she looked down at her tracker, that was where it was pointed, she felt tentative hope as she hopped into the shallow grave, her tracker showing that she should be right on top of Six. She dropped to her knees and started groping around in the sand, hoping that she would find what she was looking for.

And she did. Under a layer of lose sand and pebbles there it was, Six's tracker, but no sign of Six. So, he could still be alive, but she would have to find him the hard way.