Just as the sun inexorably set dawn inexorably crested over the curve of the globe and sent night speeding to some other part of the world, just as it had when the Earth formed in the dense dust around the sun and when man in his hubris had bought the sun to earth and scorched the land, it had happened countless times before and it would happen countless times more, all that changed was the objects that cast the shadows.
The amber beams crept in through the gap between the curtain and the windowsill, April awoke to find the room much more ordered than before, the dust had been swept away, the discarded scrap neatly placed in spare dresser space and a suitcase that had been there was gone, Yorick's bandolier and utility belt remained on the top of it along with a box of fancy lad snack cakes with "APRIL" clearly written on it though he himself was gone.
In a panic she sprung to her feet and nearly toppled over, leaning against the bed she gradually made her way to the exit when she spied a note stuck to the door with strange squiggles of black running across it, she remembered how to read just about from Mother, fortunately Yorick had taken the time to write it in block capitals for simplicity's sake the letter read "GONE TO TRADE. BACK SOON. YORICK."
Outside Yorick had walked into the Dino-Bite Gift Shop to trade as he had for the past four years to earn a meagre living, today was no different, Cliff Briscoe was an honest trader, a bit obsessed with those little dinosaurs but in a universe populated by giant scorpions, psychopathic immortal mutants and glowing zombies a touch of eccentricity was quite expected. "Heh-Hey, Yorick!" he said with an enthusiastic welcome. "So what can I do for ya today?" he continued, unflagging in his exuberance. "Same old same old got some things to trade if you've got the caps." He said as he hefted the suitcase onto the table the result of a few months of scavenging. Various boxes of physical ammo, a couple of sensor modules, a conductor, a few laser pistols, a pulse grenade and various computer components. "I'll give you six hundred caps." Cliff said passively. "Seven hundred ." Yorick replied, displaying his unfathomable knowledge of bartery. "six hundred and fifty, final offer." Cliff said with a warm, practiced smile. "Yeah sure." he said as they confirmed the deal with a handshake.
As Cliff was placing his new items on shelves around his store and his storage room he was interrupted by a question. "Why is there a bloodstained rock outside town?" "A guy from a vault rolled into town, helped find out who abducted Boone's wife turned out it was Jeannie May Crawford…nice guy actually helped with the Repcon problem as well." Cliff explained with alarming neutrality. "Never bought a dinosaur though." He muttered bitterly. "How's Craig holding up?" "Left with the guy, said they were looking for a man in a daisy suit."
'These people wear clothes out of plants now?' shock briefly played on Yorick's face but voicing such a question would only cast suspicion on him, the last thing he needs if Vargas was still around, he might not be first recon anymore but he was still NCR to the bones.
Returning to his home he was stopped short by Ranger Andy, an affable man if ever there was one. "Couldn't't help but notice you staggering in with a 'lady of the evening' didn't't figure you as the type." He said in the slow amiable manner of someone who knew they had nowhere to go and nothing to do. "She's not a whore and we weren't't staggering I was helping her walk." "So she's a crippled slut? Still good for you, bout time you got a girlfriend." "She's not a girlfriend either." "Boyfriend? I remember seeing this one 'girl' in Gomorrah, boy was I surprised." Andy said as he wistfully remembered his first trip to that city of lights and it's peculiar sights. "We're not a couple, we're…we're…I don't quite know actually." Yorick said his voice filled with naked confusion. "Well it's just good you have some company." Andy replied supportively. "By the way next time you call someone a slutty cripple" Yorick said with a hint of ire in his voice. "remember I can hear what you do with that quack doctor." He said as he brushed past the dumbfounded ex-ranger before he could muster a response.
As he stepped back inside, his boots one again covered in the dust of the Mojave and his jaw dropped as he saw the strange scene in the room, a trail of crumbs and some form of sticky red cream led to and onto April, sat cross legged on the bed greedily shovelling snack cakes into her mouth. She waved a sticky hand at him and flashed a closed lipped smile as he looked at her in bemusement.
"We'll need to be heading out soon, best prepare." He said as he plucked a small device from his belt, a sonic sanitizer another little artefact of his old life that allowed him to clean himself and his attire without using up precious water. "Her this'll clean you." he said as he demonstrated by causing a glob of jelly on his finger tips to slough away from his skin. "Th-thank you." she said as she took the strange device from him and marvelled as it caused the grime on her clothes and the mess of her meal to come loose from her.
"Oh that reminds me I forgot to give you something…" Yorick said as he drew Eight eyed Jake's pistol from one of his many deep pockets. April yelped and closed her eyes fearing the worst. "If we're going to travel you should carry some protection." He said as he clicked the safety on and handed the weapon to her hilt first. "Th-thank you." she replied honestly. Less than a week ago April's first reaction if she'd been handed such a weapon would be to turn it upon herself…but now, now there was some reason to stay, her noble little protector and this big beautiful world she was free to experience them both. Free, another word she was getting used to.
Yorick stood on the old wing backed chair in the corner of the room and lifted up a ceiling pannel before taking a large suitcase out, hefting the weighty container over his head. He hopped down and deposited the suitcase on the chair. He pulled his key ring out of the jumpsuit and unlocked it with a pleasing click. He pulled out a large sack, filled with more caps, stim-packs, and rations though strangely missing straps, he picked up it's significant weight and clipped it into the back of his bandolier and strapped it in before placing the entire harness on as well as his utility belt.
"We'd best get moving." he stated as he saw the last visible flecks of dirt come loose from her. "He-help me up p-please." she said as she stuck both hands in the air. "I gotcha." Yorick said as he took her delicate hands and pulled her up from the bed.
Back at the scene of the super mutant's death a singular man was the first on the scene, a frightful spectre his muscular visage loomed over the felled beast. He knelt down by the creature's corpse, a massive greyish blue carcass that sank slightly into the ground. He walked on his long athletic legs to examine the carcass and those that surrounded it, he studied the bodies each in turn with an equally passive gaze, the nearly bisected man elicited little more than a curious tilt of the head as he studiously looked over it careful not to let any of the gore on his black pinstriped suit.
The 'mercenaries' were brave legionnaires told to pretend they were slavers to lure someone out…someone who's very name is taboo, instead they we're killed by some random mutation. He was prepared to set off and return to the Fort when his cyberneticaly enhanced eyes picked up something of interest. First of all the concubine that had been sent with them was gone, considering the way their legs we're damaged from childhood she shouldn't have made it more than a mile on her own, a distance he could easily see to and found no one matching her description, nor did his collar tracker detect her. Second there was a set of human sized foot prints leading away from the scene. His cold and calculating brain assisted by a logic co processor already came up with a series of exacting simulations.
The mutation was the burned man's accomplice or simply a hireling and attacked the slaver party either as a distraction or as backup for the burned man it was killed, obviously though it may have killed the guards before succumbing to it's wounds or the burned man finished them off, either way the trail on a slaver hunter was hot and dragging any of them back to face their punishment would be a massive boon for everyone, well everyone but them.
Whilst the Legion couldn't care less if a few slaves we're freed during transit, even a fertile concubine the knowledge of a single emancipator defying Caesar and surviving was beginning to spread to towns it was aiming to annex and slaves that had heard it from new…additions, this combined with Caesar's recent and mysterious and sudden assassination right before the second battle for the Hoover Dam led many to hope that he'd won. The only way to ensure that the Legion wasn't crippled by lost morale and frequent slave uprisings was to drag the Malpais Legate back home in chains and leave him broken and bleeding at the top of the fort.
This was his big chance to jump from the already prestigious ranks of the Frumentarii to Legate in the new power vacuum. The first task was obvious, follow the footsteps. He thought as he walked over the scene of death and destruction and felt the crunch of loose pebbles under his leather shoes. He clambered over the rocky ledges his inhuman eyes able to pick out and recognise the imprints of two pairs of feet.
He made his way up the ridge following the trail with trivial ease, the only sign of exertion being a slightly wonky tie. He reached the end of the footprints as they led onto a patch of cement underneath an old disused road. There was an old bench with little traces of dust leading up to it. There was a collar on the table. Someone had definitely taken the concubine with them and they had the knowledge to disable their collars. If word got out that the slave could be truly free a major uprising was quite possible. The Legion might be able to put them down with significant loss of both citizens and thralls. Unless they got organised, in which case the entire legion would be ripe for conquest by the NCR.
A trail of footprints seemed evident now leading from this table off into the direction of Novac, a dangerous place for a lone Frumentarii if intelligence is to be believed, former first recon watchmen an NCR ranger guarding the town and a few cases of mysterious disappearances in the area, never mind the discovery and assassination of a freelance slave dealer. His best bet would be to wander into town, tell them he's a tourist from the bone yard and hope they leave him alone long enough to pick up the trail.
He removed the silenced twelve millimetre pistol from the concealed holster his jacket and quickly checked that the weapon was in working order before quickly yet precisely placing it back in his pocket.
From a rocky outcropping high above
The journey was probably a half a day's walk, he'd been walking for two already, a normal human would most likely be at death's door. He was not a normal human, a combination of his nociception regulator and Legionary training would most likely allow him to remain alert and active for another day and a half.
As he left a man in an old-world police sniper's uniform, 'To protect and serve' was still stitched onto his tattered sleeve in faded letters. After two hundred and twenty years with the Las Vegas Police Department he was probably pretty close to retirement. A shame his retirement money was ash or toilet paper. Nonetheless he'd taken an oath and he was sworn to protect the inhabitants of the Mojave and he would do so to his dying breath. He'd learnt a hundred years ago that people we' rent fond of Ghouls and he'd generally just put his helmet and face mask on to visit towns and tell them he'd been burnt.
A few years ago when he tried the tactic whilst taking an escaped slave to a place where he could find a home a local nut job had shrieked and called him 'the burnt man' apparently a destructive figure to those people. He eventually learned of the meaning behind the title, he'd seen this area rebuild itself from the ruins of the war and he wasn't about to allow some idiots in man-skirts tear the world apart.
From that day on he'd learned to the live with the title, and in a way it was appropriate he'd been burned by man's hatred once before and survived.
This figure at the other end of the scope seemed strange, completely intent on gathering information as opposed to mere survival suggesting he was working for a higher organisation. This bared investigation, he'd been alerted to the scene to see that man carrying the women away from the super mutant perhaps this man was friend of theirs, certainly men worth meeting, or perhaps they represented a larger organisation of slave hunters. Or perhaps the outcome would be less optimistic, maybe this man was part of the organisation that had been running the slavers and was sent to investigate, couldn't risk that.
The route to the town was quiet, most likely that raiders had heard of the fight back to the south and had decided not to risk an encounter with such a hard target. There seemed to have been some sort of battle on the route however, he quickly scanned the area but he seemed to be out of sight for the sniper's nest reported by Legion infiltrators, the ominous 'hydra' as it had been incorrectly called by some of the local troops was out of his rather impressive line of sight.
There were two corpses and a pile of destabilised matter suggesting that whoever had fired upon them had access to advanced weaponry, as one might expect from someone with the technical background to pick a slave collar. This confirmed that he was on the right case, a second hint was the pair of foot prints in the ground marked by flecks of dried blood, one set seemed to be two people walking very close together, probably the person who liberated the concubine.
He remembered back to the previous scene, the footprints that had lead him to this road were uneven, one side seemed to be weighed down much more than the other. As was to be expected the slave was slowing them down, from previous hunts he could tell that they would most likely have made it to town some time around dusk yesterday. It was probable that they were heading up to the Strip or one of it's outlying slums. In the city proper, according to Inculta they could find well paying work as strippers and servants and the towns surrounding it were filled with other opportunities. The most prudent course of action would be to try and gather information from the kings and the Followers of the Apocalypse, the only two groups in the area likely to have the resources and the motives to help an emancipator.
The town sat in a large and desolate area, to most people that would be considered exposed, to anyone who knew about the first-recon snipers that guarded it that understood they just had a really massive kill zone.
A middle aged man in full NCR ranger armour was making his way here with a limp. Even with all of his cybernetics and the rangers evident injuries that man had twenty pounds and twenty years over him, never mind his armour, never mind his backup, never mind the fact that he needed information not resources. "Awfully sharp for a wanderer my friend, what brings ya here?" Andy said as a greeting and a question both. "Wandered in from Primm on my way to The Strip, I heard there's a guy here, good with machines hoped he could help me out with something." The infiltrator replied in a soft almost detached voice implying a deep calm unfortunately uncommon in these times. "Ya mean Yorick, came in with some girl yesterday night, headed out Vegas way, you can probably catch up with 'em she weren't walking right probably slowed 'em down." "Excellent, I and the Crimson Caravan have a rather pressing business proposition for him." The infiltrator said nonchalantly lest he arouse suspicion. "Oh, well you give him my best." Andy said as he ambled back to his room.
The man walked out of town as quickly as he could without standing out, the snipers Belvedere may have been behind him but that was hardly enough to stop a good sniper from simply getting up onto the roof of that thing. The thought pressed on his mind as he wandered along the winding road towards New Vegas.
Yorick and April had made good progress all things considered, April's limp had obviously hampered the matter but by this time they'd figured out a decent rhythm to their movements. In order to keep himself from going insane from the tedium of walking Yorick would often busy his powerful mind by studying objects of interest. In this case he'd been 'studying' April, her features were still oddly untarnished, her lipstick heavy eyeliner and it's accompanying eye shadow remained strangely untarnished, despite her rather dubious eating habits and the harsh milieu. Then he looked very closely at her, the marking's seemed very close to the skin and too well done to have been readily applied by herself.
That was when he remembered apprentice Santangelo pestering him to help her code a permanent makeup module for an auto-doc , the effects probably would've been something similar, due to the Legion's backwards view on technology they were unfortunately without such helpful measures as an auto-doc's dexterity… or anaesthetic.
She noticed his gaze. "I-Is there some-th-thing on my face." she said as she prodded her face with a long delicate finger. "No, no it's just that when I get bored I look at interesting things…and your interesting." "Ah." she said with a smile in the way all females do when they believe something to be cute. Normally Yorick found it grating when he was called cute. But there was something about April that made all the little annoyances of most people he found so irritating seem so abstract and unimportant. "Re-Really me?" she said in astonishment. No one had ever actually found her interesting, nor had she ever considered herself, or anything around her even anyone around her interesting for a long while much of life in the slave camps was the same day in and day out, a constant misery terrible but in a way that dulls you to the world as opposed to leaving you sharp and focussed. Her slave collar was always just tight enough that she could never quite forget it was there, never quite forget what she was to the lecherous soldiers.
"Well of course your interesting, I've barely ever left my base and you've seen the entire southwest." He said with a hint of childish curiosity. "I-I'm not that int-interesting." she said as she shyly looked away. "Nonsense you're a human being with all your hopes and dreams and little quirks…and such." he said as he trailed off, not thinking of how to actually end the sentence. April simply smiled back lost for words.
