I lay no claim to Bethesda's Fallout Universe, including characters and locations. I only wish to claim my own original characters that I will not have used without my permission. The following is rated M for harsh language, references to violence, and anything else I may have missed.

Prologue- Freedom's First Steps

"You die now human!" The super mutant roared as its minigun barrels started rotating, the start of a maelstrom of lead that would continue on for some time unless something was done by the two humans pinned down about fifteen meters away.

The two humans, both male and both requiring a change in pants, we're yelling useless conversation at one another, most of it was an unintelligible string of curses. The two were on opposite sides of a trash and debris filled corridor, backs to the large and useful pillars that lined the complex but are slowly eroding under the lead waves that buffeted them. The only exit was forty five meters behind the massive humanoid figure, a T section splitting behind him.

The corridor ended in a large rusted metal door, which was locked tightly lead rounds impacting it to no avail either, the rounds falling uselessly to the floor. The console to unlock it well within sight of the super mutant that was currently raining hell on them. One of the men shouted about the roar of bullets,

"Any bright ideas?"

"Fuckin, no..." came the reply.

The minigun's deadly barrage neared the pillar of the second man who had spoken. The man got as far away from the open hallway as he could. His partner had pulled out his 9mm pistol, taking the opportunity to peek around the corner and fire off five rounds at the mutant.

Three of the shots hitting the metal armor on its midriff, one clipping its arm, and the last missing entirely. Roaring in response to this resistance, the super mutant swing his massive weapon towards the attacker. The second man saw this opening and swung his .32 caliber revolver around the corner and got two shots off before mutant turned back to him. Both rounds missed by inches in the man's panic to return to the haven of the corner, his trigger discipline forgotten.

The mutant now turned its attention to the second man again, and the first fired again, a burst of four shots this time, each one connecting higher up the super mutant's burlesque body, but only two shots connected to flesh, and even then the wounds were shallow due to the unnatural thickness of the mutant's body. Once again, the mutant screamed and the cornea of death the minigun covered switched to the first man's pillar.

Not two heartbeats after the mutant had its attention transfixed on the pillar did the second human pop out again, discharging the last three rounds in his revolver. The first round bounced harmlessly off the mini gun's frame, the second connected into the center of the right elbow joint, stopping at the bone. The final round rammed into the second, and shattered the right arm of the mutant. A crippling blow.

The mutant's right arm stopped carrying the heavy weapon and dropped it onto the floor. Operating off of sheer muscle, it picked the end back up, now aiming at the first human that had turned the corner to fire at the mutant again. The machine rotated, but the mini gun stopped spitting death. The mutant had fired for too long and had to reload. It had not realized this as it started shaking its weapon.

The human fired the last two shots from his last clip into the mutants throat. The sheer thickness of the mutant's neck stopped these from being kill shots. It roared back in defiance, tossing the mini gun to the ground and started a head-on charge. The first human was caught by surprise and chose to go back into the corner, out of sight.

The mutant closed the fifteen meters quickly in a mad dash, too quickly in fact. The human in which he had charged at head on swung a hefty plank of wood at ankle level to the mutant before it could stop completely, breaking the impacting edge into a rain of splinters. It continued moving, rolling onto the floor gracelessly and slamming it's back into the metal door. The second human jumped atop the mutant, using his fists to pound into the super mutant's face. Blows connected with enough force to cause the mutant's head to snap back into the tile and turn different shades of green with each hit. Unfortunately, the mutant was still wide awake and decked the human who had the nerve to punch it in the face.

As the second human flew away from the crippled mutant and the door, the first human approached brandishing the same hunk of wood, the end of it now splintered into a very deadly stabbing utensil. The human managed to lodge this end into the mutants chest, while it tried to avoid the blow. The human continued to drive the board in, his right hand pushing the board back even deeper, dark blood started pouring out of the wound as the long splinters reached around the ribcage into the lungs and heart. A spike of adrenaline caused the mutant to throw the board out of its chest, the end of the improvised weapon popping against the man's face and sending him to join his partner on the floor.

The mutant stood up out of sheer will, blood pooling around it, as it started coughing up large gobs of blood. Splinters poked out of its chest where blood ran in fountains.

"Will kill you.." and a few steps was all it managed as it threw up a full pint of blood, staggered to its right, and collapsed onto its face, audible cracking could be heard, either from the wood in its chest breaking, or its nose. Perhaps both.

The two humans stared at the dead mutant for a few seconds longer, then the first man finally spoke up.

"You pissed your pants too, right?"

"I don't wanna talk about it." Came the curt reply, his attention trying not to fall to his sodden trousers. "Can you get that door open before more show up? This guy's bound to have buddies nearby."

"Yeah, sure." The first of the two moved slowly to the console and pulled a slip of paper from one of the various pockets of his clothes consisting of brown pre-war boots, dark jeans with a pair of extra sewed in pockets and pistol holster on his belt, a navy blue undershirt that was tight against his tall and fit physique. This along with an unzipped leather vest with clip holders sewn in that hosted nothing at the moment, his 9mm ammunition depleted in this last firefight.

This six foot-five inch man with black hair that dropped just above his eyes was known as Leon Durant, usually allowing himself to be called 'Leo' by those who know him. He's inexperienced in the ways of the world outside of the town he grew up in, a small, almost tribal village south of the Mojave outpost that guards the way to New Vegas. He takes pride in his hardy nature and can prove charismatic when if he wanted to talk to you. The only thing he never seemed to have on his side was luck. He stood out in his community, quite literally because he was adopted and did not inherit the town of Ira's average height of five feet, ten inches. Instead he stood at Six feet and five.

The second man, taking this opportunity to take all of the mutant's 5mm ammunition and scour the floor for the cases, was known as Rhoke Griddly, but he goes by Durant now a days. Standing at exactly six feet and dressed in NCR combat boots, brown jeans, and a white T-shirt now specked with blood. The heavy handed, stout young man with slicked back brown hair contained an intelligence and endurance that came with success, this had eventually landed him the job of working the ammo presses for the town. His father was a drunk that had constantly beaten him. After enduring years after years this abuse from his father, he snapped, killing his birth-parent with a single round to the temple followed by a many more rounds to the chest. After this incident, he was disowned by his family's oldest sibling and adopted by the Durants at the ripe age of sixteen due to his ability to bring in caps but the Durant father and son grew on him and he became comfortable with his new family. Three years later, the father of the Durant household died, leaving his massive debt to his eldest son, Leon at the age of 20.

The two grew up together, both of them barely out of adulthood and were now being forced to raid the underground vault of a nearby Wes-Tek Research Facility to get the family out of debt. Super Mutants armed to the teeth were not expected, let alone prepared for.

"Shit, Rhoke come 'ere for a second." Leon was frowning at the piece of paper that contained the code for the door. The town had an NCR outpost on its northwestern border that saw a lot of traffic, and the town's inhabitants were more then happy to pay the tax for protection to get income from its soldiers. A young ranger by the name of Leroy had found the two boys at the local bar in town and had caught wind of their plight. He told them of a facility to the south he was ordered to travel to and obtain a pre-war schematic in its vault. Hiding behind the disguise of a lazy bastard, the half-assed ranger gave them the password to the vault door and promised a thousand caps for bringing back what he needed. It was a shit job that was looking more impossible by the second.

Done scouring the floor for cases, Rhoke walked up to Leon to see what the trouble was. The parchment was now smeared with mutant blood and most of its letters were now illegible. The only legible bit was the first and last letters, T and E respectively, out of the seven letter code.

"I'm gonna try hacking it, maybe this'll be enough to get us through." Leon pulled up the assorted code screen that comes with trying to access the computer manually, and started sorting through the unintelligible bits of code. Muttering to himself. He hated word puzzles.

Rhoke decided to take a look at the Super Mutant's mini gun. Like most of the weapons in the Western Wasteland, it was in crap condition and barely functioning. Miniguns themselves though, were rare and could probably be sold for a nice price on the market... if only for scrap. Rhoke took the duffel bag he had over his shoulder off, and moved some of the goods in it around until he felt sufficient room had been made for the machine. He stuffed it in, ripping his bag at the top of the seam, but that could be fixed when he got back.

He slung the hefty machine over his back, trying to adjust to its weight. As he tightened the shoulder strap, he saw a humanoid shape cross the hallway in front of them and disappear again.

"Leon, trouble!" Rhoke whispered harshly. The typing continued for a second, followed by a clicking sound from the monitor.

"Holy shit, that actually worked!" Leon shouted with glee. "How'd you know the password was trouble?"

"It was?- Thats not the point! Just saw something go through the-" The figure was back in the middle of the hallway now, squinting at them and moving forward. All hope of not being sighted was lost.

"Open the door Leon!" Rhoke shouted as he fired his revolver at the figure. A tight arc of five in the chest area, it was too far away to shoot in the head effectively. The figure was startled by the rounds, and pulled out a large rectangular box from its back. A missile launcher caused both of the brothers looking at it to run cold. They had maybe five seconds.

"Oh no"

"The door won't open, the computer can't connect to it!"

"Open that damn door!" Rhoke was looking around for something, anything to give them sanctuary from a missile explosion.

"Fuck you door!" Leon drove his fist through the monitor, shattering the screen and causing the lock to disengage on the heavy door. Leon got up and started pushing the metal obstacle open, straining the rusted bolts and his arms. He looked back to see that the mutant had fired, they were as good as dead now. He kept pushing anyway.

Rhoke grabbed an open barrel or a trash can, what ever it was that had been left in the corner of the building, and threw it open side forward at the missile in a last ditch effort to save their lives. The missile entered the trash can and exploded, while the concussion had been mitigated by distance, the metal trash bin was turned into red hot shrapnel and mostly impacted Rhoke, who flew into Leon who had finally opened the door into the vault.

The explosion was too much for the pillars weakened by minigun fire to handle, they toppled, causing the upper floor to collapse a large slab of floor between the humans and the mutant.


"Don't you dare die on me now!" Rhoke woke to a bloody version of his brother-in-law standing over him, his face twisted in a scowl of grief. He couldn't see straight, his vision was blurry and it felt like his head had been hit by a sledgehammer. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, but something was obscuring his sight right below his nose. He blinked some more, blood was starting to pool below his eyes, he was propped up on a wall. Splayed out like a corpse.

"Speak to me Rhoke! Please!" Leon stopped shaking his shoulder as he noticed Rhoke's eyes opening.

"..." Rhoke's vision suddenly cleared up, and he figured out what happened. A piece of the trash can had lodged itself into his face, an inch below his eyes, from the middle of his left eye to the cheekbone of his right was obscured by the shining metal. He couldn't even see what the rest of him looked like. This will take some getting used to.

"I got med-x in the duffel bag." He started, "Two doses and a handful of stimpacks in the pocket left of the zipper." He couldn't feel anything except inflammation now, but when the pain set in it would stop him in his tracks.

Leon dug through the duffel and his brother the dose of med-x via his forearm, then administering it to himself in the same fashion, to the relief of both. He also dug out two stimpacks for each of them, a fifth was present that would be saved for future injury. After that had been applied, Rhoke could feel that the rest of his body had been wracked, his forearms resembled cut meat from trying to protect his face, which obviously failed. Bits of metal stuck out of his torso. Everything below the waist was unharmed though, thats a good thing.

Rhoke then took a look at Leon, who had fared better. The only crippling injury was a long gash along the back of his right leg. He had his back turned when the missile went off. Leon was now scouring the room for their objectives, a set of blue schematics for pre-war power armor so that the entire trip wasn't for nothing. Rhoke had managed to prop himself against the wall, testing the bit of metal lodged in his face.

I'm no medical expert, but head wounds bleed a LOT. If I pulled this out now, I might bleed out before we even leave the complex.

His vision blurred again, bringing with it a pallet of sensory fuzz and a headache. Trying not to move until it passed, Leon announced that he found it, holding the schematics in the air like a trophy. Then turning his attention to Rhoke, who had finally got his bearings.

"You holding together? We're not going anywhere until you're up to it." Leon declared. He was always looking out for his little brother.

"I'm gonna need to see serious medical aid and a strong drink, but until then I think I can walk out of here." For someone who didn't like talking about how he felt, that said a lot. But first Leon wanted to scour the room for other goodies to find.

Rhoke started looking around the room as well, trying to find valuables and came across another schematic for the power armor they were looking for.

"Leon, I found another one." He stated

"Hold on to it, maybe we can sell it to someone whose interested in that crap once we get out of here."

It was a good point, and Rhoke threw it in the duffel along with the minigun. The hefty bag and his injuries working in tangent to slow him down.

Leon procured a 10mm pistol from one of the shelves with a small sound of accomplishment. He had a backpack on him that he used to start shoving in all the ammunition that dotted the shelves. At least 100 rounds of 10mm, twenty-four .308 rounds still new in the box, a crate filled with 5mm cartridges that all together were too heavy for him to carry all together, so he grabbed three and asked Rhoke to carry whatever he could. Four 40mm grenades were left all alone, grabbed those and a number of boxes filled with 5.56. Finally, a bandoleer of grenades he took but kept in the box, not willing to have the pins exposed along with the rest of his gear. There was plenty of other goodies to find, but not today. Leon wanted to live to see another day.

Rhoke grabbed two more boxes of 5mm, that along with the mini gun was all he was willing to carry. Moving to the door where rubble had blocked the original entrance, he noticed that the floor above them had fallen at an angle. The tile would be slick, but it was broken and perhaps offered escape. Rhoke yelled for Leon to come over and take a look at the wreckage, weighing their options.

"I think we need to climb up this crap," Rhoke started, "I don't see any other options anyway. The only problem we'll run into would be the mutants. We might be able to sneak past them in our condition, but not run away." He looked towards Leon's leg, which had stopped bleeding but was starting to swell along its cut.

"We can't sit here forever either, you don't look like you'll last a day." Leon chipped in, noticing the pale pallor of his brother's face. "Running out of options and time here, lets get moving. Things'll get more simple once we do."

Leon took the lead, climbing along the debris and boosting himself up to the second floor. After peeking down the hallway, and seeing that it was clear, Leon bent onto his stomach pulled himself up, rotated himself a hundred n' eighty degrees and put out his hand, which Rhoke accepted, and used his legs to climb himself up the tiled rocks. Two slips were made but Rhoke managed to get above the makeshift ramp.

"Where do we start?"

"If I remember right, the staircase was on the west side of the building, correct?" Leon looked out the window at the end of the T intersection, which looked exactly like to the floor below them.

"The suns setting now, so its gotta be to the right." Leon stated after a few seconds gazing out the window.

"...Wait, I thought the sun sets in the West, not the East." Rhoke replied.

"Hold on... Are you sure? I could've sworn it set in the East."

"But when we left this morning it was rising from the direction of the desert, the East."

"... Where the hells the compass? I'll feel stupid if I get this wrong." Leon pulled out the compass from his back pocket, and stared at it as one would watch paint dry.

"You can read the compass-"

"I can read the goddamn compass!" Came a quick retort. "Its broken. Piece of shrapnel went right through the middle." He pulled it up for Rhoke to see, the hole evident, the dial in the middle lying at the bottom of the case along with small blotches of blood where the shrapnel continued into him.

"You know what this means right?" Leon said ominously.

"You've got a piece of shrapnel in your ass?"

"No no no, besides that... We don't know the way out."

"Sure we do, we just have to retrace our steps, and the second floor is almost exactly the same as the first." Rhoke started. "We came in through the side door to the West, took a left, then the second right we saw, and then another right and ran into the vault. We passed the stairs somewhere along that trek. If I'm right we'll see the other two mutants we blew up on the way in."

Leon hugged his brother then and there. "I'll take you over a compass any day, lead us home brother!" He turned Rhoke around and starting pushing him down the corridor.

"Hang on, my head's fuzzin up again." A few seconds ticked by as he tried to clear his head. "Okay, lets go. Quietly this time." The two continued down this path, trying to be quiet about it, and found the staircase along the way, no living mutants got in their way as they staggered through the exit, a setting sun and the desert wastes greeting them with a harsh familiarity. Three mutant corpses met them, one missing the top of its skull, another both of its legs and littered with shrapnel. The final one pocked with bullet holes from a 9mm gun farther from the building.

"Alright, back north, to Ira." Leon commanded, "You can make it half-a-mile. You're built tougher then that you invincible bastard." Trying to get Rhoke's spirits up. The brothers took each other, shoulder in shoulder and began the short-yet painful trek home.


The trek proved uneventful, Leon stabbing Rhoke with the last stimpack to keep his face wound from opening again and blood dripping behind the two as the journey continued, the trail dissipating as the winds picked up along with the night that neared. As the pair approached the gate, a NCR guard spotted the two and sent word down the line to open the gate.

Wooden doors creaked an a pair of troopers came out to meet them, rifles in their hands per standard greeting to Ira. The two young men were soon rushed to Doctor Garrett's home as the severity of their condition was finally noticed. As the two were carried by soldiers to the doctor's home, something occurred to Leon.

"Hey Rhoke..." His leg wound had opened up again and a small stream of liquid followed the group. He let the soldiers carry him at this point, not wanting to agitate the wound more. He had been injured plenty of times and knew not to move it anymore then he had to.

"Yeah?" Rhoke replied, his head rolling along his shoulders, trying to keep steady and failing miserably.

"You were kidding when you said I had a piece of shrapnel in my ass, right?"

And so ends the prologue of Rhoke and Leon and their amazing quest of... I don't really know yet! Next chapter is still the introductory plot so it brings them ever closer to the conflict brewing in their own backyard while I try to get a friend to help me co-author. Shit will hit the fan right quick! So stay tuned for the next exciting installment, and feel free to rate and review!