Chapter 2, cool, cool. Just wanna get something out of the way, I'm not going to update this rewrite on a consistent basis, I'll work on chapters as I please and publish them when I'm happy enough, primarily so we don't end up with another equivalent of that dumb exposition wall in chapter 6 or 7 from the original story before I started the rewrite. That was fucking stupid.

To ODSTFRymann, holy shit you practically already predicted what Six will use and I haven't even fully revealed his gear, only Six's tastes in guns reflect my own instead of just the vanilla guns.

I still need reviews from people who have read the original Grimm Retreat, by the way, so I know what they think of the rewrite. On with the show, though,

NOTE AS OF 6/15/2018: IN THE EVENT THAT THIS UPDATE GETS PUSHED TO PEOPLE FOLLOWING THE STORY, THIS ISN'T A NEW CHAPTER OR SIGNIFICANT REWRITE OF CHAPTER 2, I'M JUST CHANGING CHIEF HANLON'S SEQUOIA INTO SWEET REVENGE AND ALSO UPDATING THE CANON MODS LIST

The elevator doors to the basement hadn't even opened, and Six's ears were already being assaulted by the sound of power tools, and someone doing maintenance in the basement.

When the doors opened, Six barely had to look around to find Raul working on one of the vehicles in the basement. Normally, there wouldn't be any vehicles in the basement, because there was no entrance or exit to the surface for vehicles to access, at least initially, but after the Battle of Hoover Dam three years ago, Yes Man and the Courier came into possession of a rather large fleet of vehicles, which were mostly functional, and there were even a few armored vehicles in the mix. Since the Dam was still being cleared at the time, and the NCR was…less than friendly, the Courier decided the safest place for the vehicles would be on the Strip, specifically, under the Lucky 38, so he gave the order to construct an underground parking garage under the Lucky 38 that would convert the basement into a dual parking garage and armory, specifically to store the wealth of equipment they had recovered.

"Hey, Raul, come out for a sec, I need to ask you something." Six said, rapping a few times on the hood of the vehicle to get Raul's attention.

"Yeah, sure thing boss, let me just leave this untightened engine block completely alone and without any support, that'll surely end fine." The ghoul replied sarcastically.

"Yeah, yeah, screw you too, Raul. Look, you were around before the Great War, what do you know about cults?" Six asked. Raul stopped for a moment.

"What do you mean, "what do I know about cults"? What do you mean by cult? Are we talking death cults, cults that just make weapons and stuff and follow a leader blindly, what?" Raul asked, slowing down on his work.

"Let's assume death cult. How did the police bring them down before the war?" Six asked, like it was some question every ghoul from before the war would know.

"From what I can remember, boss, most cults were brought down from the inside by moles. They would usually either feed intel directly to the cops, set the cults up to fail by screwing them, or sowing infighting. I know a couple of Mexican cults that got brought down this way once they got too uppity for the government." Raul said simply, trying to focus on his work.

"Alright, thanks. By the way, Raul, is my car fixed?" Six asked.

"Yea, boss, she's all ready to go, try not to ding her up too bad, alright? I nearly broke my arm trying to buff out those dents you put in her last time." Raul said, half sarcastic, half serious.
"By the way, boss, why do you want to know about cults before the war? Most people just shoot them if they see them nowadays." Raul asked.

"Oh, a cult's popped up in Freeside. They shot some Kings, and I'm on my way to go talk to the King and try and bring them down. I THINK they're screwing with the water supply there, and in Westside, too." Six replied, nonchalantly, as if cults were a frequent sight in New Vegas.

Raul sighed. "Great, good job letting a cult get in under our noses, boss, and you did a very good job letting them poison the water in our residential areas." He said sarcastically, rolling his eyes, even though the Courier couldn't see him doing it.

Six just flipped him the bird, before heading to the armory. On his way there, Six started thinking back about him working with Mr. House, and what led him to betray House for an Independent Vegas.

THE LUCKY 38 PRESIDENTIAL SUITE
LATE 2281

Six was incredibly frustrated. When Six was frustrated, he fiddled with his guns. He took them apart, cleaned them, put them back together, whatever, as long as he was doing something with his fingers and his guns. Right now, he was repeatedly working the bolt on his Kar98k. Six took a minute to look at his rifle.

She was old. Older than most guns in his possession, with the only ones he could think of that were as old as, or older, than his Kar98 were This Machine, all of his lever action shotguns and rifles, his BAR, and Sweet Revenge. Judging by the few remaining serial numbers and identification on her parts, she was made in 1939, making her over 342 years old. When Six first found her, he would have normally ignored her. She was in shit condition, worn and dried out stock, damaged scope, missing trigger guard, a bolt that stuck, the whole nine yards, practically unusable. Yet, something was different about her previous owner, a Viper Leader, and Six tried to remember what it was like fighting her.

When Six came across said owner just outside of Nipton, he pumped round after round of 5.56 full metal jackets into her, and she would just not go down. He went through at least four magazines of FMJ trying to take down a single Viper leader, and when she finally did go down, her arms exploded in a shower of gore, sending her rifle flying towards Six, and it landed at his feet. Six took one look at the rifle, saw its state, and walked away, ignoring it, instead opting to go for the Viper leader's body, primarily for ammunition concerns, and also because he wanted to know what the leader was on. When he got to her body, he looked for signs of addiction. Six saw none, and his jaw dropped. In fact, now that he thought about it, all of the Vipers in her gang were fighting harder than what he was used to, and none of them were addicted. Something had to have changed. Six felt an odd presence, and turned to the beat up rifle, and felt as if it was calling out to him, like it wanted to be fixed and given a proper owner. Six quickly changed his tune, and grabbed the rifle, intending to restore it.

Coming back to the present, Six turned the rifle so her right side was facing him. Inscribed just below the receiver were the words "Jäger der Männer". Six barely knew German, but he did know that Jäger meant Hunter, and any fuckwit with two braincells and the ability to read could tell that Männer meant Man, so Six knew that it roughly meant "Hunter of Men". Right next to that inscription were several rows of tally marks, with different symbols above each row. Some had the old American flag before it was turned into the 13 Commonwealths, some had the Union Jack, and others had the Hammer & Sickle, and since Six knew vaguely of world history, he assumed that the original owner was a German Sniper who was deployed to the Western Front of the Second World War, before being transferred to the Eastern front, since the Soviet tallies came after the American and British tallies. He didn't know what happened to the original owner, but he assumed he was killed and his rifle was taken as a war trophy, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten to America. Six began fiddling with the bolt again, but just as he started, Veronica came in.

"Ah, shit, hey V." Six waved to his companion.

"Hey, Six, what's up? Cass said you were acting weird, so I wanted to check up on you." She told him.

Six sighed, and got up, slapping the bolt on his Kar98 shut. "Right, fuck, I've got something important to tell you. Not here, though." he said, eyeing the nearby camera. Six motioned for Veronica to follow him, and she did.

LUCKY 38 ARMORY AND GARAGE
2284

Six strode past his big fuck-off vault door and into his gigantic armory. Lined up on the left side of the wall was every gun in his possession on either a rack or inside of a case. Some of the more notable ones he owned were the Walther WA2000, what was likely the only fully functional Pancor Jackhammer left in the world, an XM8, an actual, proper AK-47, and an H&K G11, and in a case directly below those weapons was Chief Hanlon's Ranger Sequoia. Those weren't his prized possessions, though, those were at the end of the hall. On the right wall were his rare armors, for example, every piece of power armor he could get his hands on, which means all of them. Significant examples include Arcade's father's power armor, an unmodified suit of Advanced Power Armor, a set of T-51b, and a suit of T-57c Air Force Power Armor he got as a gift from the Boomers. Six even had a set of T-60 somebody brought in from the East Coast. Six moved towards the end of the hall, unlocked a door that led into a special locked room that had a mannequin wearing his treasured Elite Riot Gear, a table with four display cases on it, a chair, a cabinet, and a workbench. Six re-locked the door and sat down, pulling out a key for the display cases. He opened all of them, and pulled out his favorite guns.

The first gun was his treasured Kar98k, in significantly better condition than when he found it three years ago. Six remembered how painful of a process it was restoring her, he had to make a lot of the parts himself since there wasn't exactly an abundance of American made reproductions of the Kar98k in Nevada. Six's second gun was the Survivalist's Rifle. When he stumbled across the body of Randall Clark, he was busy destroying White Leg camps near the Red Gate, and went for higher ground to find more of the camps. The rifle was in pretty good condition despite basically being left in a bag in the sun for a hundred and fifty seven years, and Clark even had the decency to leave behind fifteen 12.7 magazines. His third gun was his personalized Ithaca 37 that he'd had since he was a teenager. It was a gift from his father, and while he didn't really remember much of what his family was like, he remembered his father being a good man, although Six left home for a reason that he vaguely remembered being on bad terms. He briefly smiled at it, before setting it with the rest of his guns, and pulled out Sweet Revenge, a gift from Steven Randall, his late mentor. It was an old Remington, easily the oldest gun in his collection. Looking at the gun, he briefly remembered the events that transpired at Frosthill, and Six felt a phantom pain in his hands. He briefly looked at them, only to remember that his hands were cybernetic. Marko cut up his original hands so bad that he wouldn't have been able to continue living the way he did. The first thing Six did when he got his gear back was grab the Transportaponder and head to the Big MT's Autodoc for a new set of hands. He sat Sweet Revenge aside, got up, and went to the cabinet to get a brush, a cleaning rod, some bottles of liquid, a cotton swab, and several other things, before sitting back down at the table. Six picked his K98 up, and began to strip it of its parts for cleaning, whistling Big Iron the whole time.

"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day, whooooo..."

Boom, done.

You may be asking yourself "Why is he focusing so much on the gun in the flashback?"

You'll just have to wait and see, lad.

Also, I've obviously finally decided my stance on mods; The Pip-Boy 2500, New Vegas Bounties 1-3, Russell, and the Equipment and Cybernetics portions of Project Nevada are canon to Grimm Retreat. I may make the Interesting NPCs mods canon as well, but haven't fully decided.

Before anyone asks "how did he get all these rare guns lol", your answer is Fallout 1 and 2 where these guns were available.

Also, my headcanon regarding firearm and vehicle development in Fallout, as it pertains to Grimm Retreat, is that firearm and vehicle development more or less continues as it does in real-life, at least with firearms, with vehicles getting a bit chunkier the further into the timeline it gets, starting around 2005 or so.

Furthermore, if you want a rough idea of what the Armory looks like, google "gun closet" and look at the biggest one you can find, that is basically what the Armory looks like.

Leave a review, by the way, so I know how I'm doing.

'Till next time.

-Tweak