Chapter 2

The horrible thing we saw in the last chapter was a group of the Midwestern Brotherhood Of Steel, and Andrew was willing to bet that even though they had long since abandoned many of the Brotherhood's principles, they would still be intensely hostile. While none of the soldiers liked, or even respected the Brotherhood much, the one thing they respected was that they tried to follow their principles, no matter what they were, but this splinter group had abandoned all of their founding principles, letting in unqualified locals, deathclaws, even SUPER MUTANTS AND GHOULS! These men were unruly, foolish, and very dangerous, one could only hope... "Hey! Someone there?!" Too late, one of those blasted super mutants had spotted them, there was little room for error, as those who abandon their ideals can hardly be well trusted to do anything, least of all fight, honorably. All too soon they were seeing a whole squad jump out at them, them being the Enclave, one of the most hated groups in the whole wasteland, would hardly help to resolve the situation at all peacefully, but they tried.

"Hello, may we kindly ask that you go back where you came from?" Andrew heard the colonel ask, while he secretly had his own thoughts about the situation "colonel Autumn might be a good tactician, and he may have been a good ambassador to the late president John Henry Eden, but he is a horrible negotiator to these fools." His thoughts were interrupted by the super mutant (who was obviously the leader) demanding their immediate and unconditional surrender, despite the fact that it was almost 40 BoS to 200 Enclave. While the Enclave had been training for some time, they did not have a particularly perfect training, as many were still training when all the events had happened and witnessed first hand what just one completely trained soldier could do as the lone wanderer tore hopes and dreams apart like old cloth. Andrew could see that the battle was beginning, so he drew his plasma weapon, and waited for the moment. As the heat of the battle drew near, Andrew hoped the innocent part of the group was safely behind the main army, but had no idea what would happen.

All too soon the battle was on, the Brotherhood had planned their ground carefully, and Andrew knew that they would likely be a hard enemy to beat. Seeing as he was one of the more trained soldiers, Andrew got quite a bit of the fire, which meant that he was protecting more of the innocents, which gave him much more of the strength needed to continue. He ploughed into a super mutant, firing constantly with his plasma rifle until he had to reload, then with his melee weapon, until the super mutant was dead, then he turned to the others. Andrew used his old sabre, an heirloom, passed down through his family since the civil war, where his ancestor fought as an officer. He could do many things with his sabre that had all but been forgotten, and he was well rewarded by his knowledge, quickly rising through the ranks. He quickly rushed to the back of the ranks to protect the innocents.

Andrew got to the back of the army just in time, he had enough time to reload his plasma rifle and clean his sabre, he called for some help, but it was unlikely that they would come, given that they were in battle. Eight or nine soldiers came to the rear to join him, then they came, the enemy, Andrew felt guilt, knowing that he was about to kill humans, it was simply not the same to be killing humans. Super mutants were one thing, they had long since forfeited their humanity, not humans, humans had a life, hopes, dreams, like his friend Jacob Martin, who the lone wanderer must have just seen as "Enclave Soldier" when he shot him through the face point-blank, after having shot him in all four other limbs and listening to his screams. Andrew swallowed his thoughts and charged, the four soldiers they were attacking were firing on the innocents. They likely did not know they were shooting innocents, nor did they realize, like Andrew had, that the person in particular they were aiming at was Andrew's wife, which made him very angry. Anger does nothing if you do not know how to channel it, Andrew did, he used all the experience he had, he shot two enemies down, put the plasma rifle away, and used the sabre. One of the BoS initiates had very little combat experience, but that did not save him, the other, who had some combat experience as well as some sword training tried to put up a fight, he would have been the next victim of Andrew had he not remembered to check his wife, he quickly asked the initiate to surrender, the poor man simply said "yes" and ran off at a speed rivaling that of an atomic missile.

On the other front, the battle was slowing down, three Enclave soldiers died putting down the other thirty members of the BoS (the other two ran off.) Six soldiers had been wounded severely and one more had slight injuries, they spent the night there.