Hey hey hey, chapter 3! Don't want to take up too much time, so I'll just address the reviews.
To John Seed: I do plan on writing the Far Cry 5 story at some point, but I have absolutely zero clue as to how I would do a crossover. Far Cry 5 characters crossing over into RWBY would be a pointless endeavor since the Deputy has fuck all for a personality, and I don't really have an idea for as to how I would implement the RWBY characters into it. I'd like it to be a lot more serious than Grimm Retreat, since the content of Far Cry 5 is inherently edgier than that of RWBY, and I just don't think a crossover would work.
To the random guest who didn't put a name: I don't get the reference, is it a reference to Shub-Niggurath or something?
To Ediros: Aye, fair enough. In my canon, T-57c isn't actually better than T-51b despite the mod statistically listing it as better, because there's no reason for the air force to have a stronger version of T-51b that is heavier, when it should be weaker and lighter because the fucking air force would likely drop those shits out of planes. As for your comment about T-60, I'm actually in the same camp as you! I fucking hated that T-60 was somehow better than T-51b, and I installed a mod so that T-51b was the top of the pre-war armors again, because what the T-60 to me is effectively a suit of retrofitted T-45d that, while better than the original suit of T-45d, isn't as good as an actual suit of T-51b. There was no logical reason for the pre-war US to go from the bulky and clunky looking T-45d suits, to the T-51b, only to go right back to a slightly different looking T-45d that is somehow stronger than T-51b. In fact, here's a power scale for the power armor in my canon, in order of best to worst:
Advanced Power Armor Variants T-51b T-60 T-57c T-45d Salvaged Power Armor
To ptl: I'm not saying anything, but I focused so much on the K98k in the last chapter for a very specific reason, you'll just have to wait. No snarky teenage girls to be found here, though. I have something objectively cooler in mind for the K98. As for your comment on the Pip-Boy, I've toyed with the idea in both this version and the original Grimm Retreat of having the Pip-Boy do that, since when I first started writing Grimm Retreat I had just read some of another RWBY/Fallout fic where that was exactly what was done, where the Pip-Boy would digitize stuff and everyone was confused as to how that was possible, until Blake realized it was the property of matter, where it cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. I forget the name, but I know that specific fic named its Courier as Yuri Lowenthal, after the male voice actor for the Courier. I'm assuming that's where you got the idea from? Either way, I'm not having the Pip-Boy do that, Six has to carry his shit like a normal human being.
Also, I partially rewrote Chapter 2. I basically just added the Pip-Boy 2500 to the mods list and changed the positions of Sweet Revenge and Hanlon's Sequoia, so Sweet Revenge is what Six's preferred sidearm is, not the Sequoia. Why? Because I think the Sequoia looks like shit. Not the engravings or anything, the actual gun. That's fucking ugly as shit and is the reason why I never use the Hunting Revolver, ever. Sweet Revenge looks infinitely superior.
Also, you guys get a long chapter today. On with the show, though.
Six let out a sigh of relief, as he was finally done cleaning his guns. It took him a bit longer than it should have, as somehow, despite being in an underground bunker, mud somehow got into the chamber of the Survivalist's Rifle and solidified, which was a pain to clean out. Six got up, and moved towards his suit of Elite Riot Gear. He was going to need a disguise, otherwise he would be instantly recognized, plus, the armor commanded attention and authority, and since the only suits of that specific armor came from the Divide, the Cult may want a bonafide badass with that armor in their ranks, or someone who was rich enough to buy the armor. Either worked, honestly, as long as Six got into the cult.
Six began to take his vest off, and thought back to the day he killed House.
LATE 2281
LUCKY 38 CONTROL ROOM
"Why have you... done this?... centuries of preparation... so much good, undone..." House wheezed out.
"Don't play coy with me, House, you know exactly why I'm doing this. I don't know how you old-world types work, but I understand a little thing called loyalty. I built a friendship and mutual trust with Veronica, one that we bled for each other over, she was loyal to me, I was loyal to her, understand? Now, how do you think I felt when my "employer" told me to betray and kill her, destroy her entire way of life, and genocide the only family she's ever known, with no questions asked? An employer, who, keep in mind, I had only seen through a computer monitor and the screens of his robots, an employer who I never actually built the same relationship with, that I did with Veronica." Six said, pacing back and forth, rubbing Lucky.
House hacked and coughed, before wheezing out again. "Fool! Are you… really throwing away… humanity's future… over a friendship!?"
Six stopped dead, before turning to face House. "You keep talking about "humanity's future" this and "humanity's future" that, but if I remember correctly, you megalomaniacal business mogul type fucks were one of the causes for the war that fucked everything up for everyone. You're a relic of the Old World, and not even a good one. You're like a nymphomaniac brain tumor, ready to fuck up someone else's life, because you didn't climax hard enough the last time you did 200 years ago." Lucky was now level with House's face.
House opened his mouth to start talking again, but before any words could come out of his mouth, a shot rang out, and House fell limp in his seat.
"You're a brain tumor, and I'm the brain surgeon, motherfucker." Six said, holding a still smoking Lucky.
Russell sighed in disappointment. "Six, that was the worst fucking one liner I have ever heard in my entire god-damned life. Please, for the love of fuck, never ever do that again."
Veronica nodded in agreement. "That was pretty bad, I'm not gonna lie. I'll give it an A for effort, and a C for execution. Work on your delivery next time."
Six flipped them both off. "Fuck you guys. Let's head to the Tops, I need to take care of so mething, 'cause Benny left us a little gift we can use."
LUCKY 38 ARMORY
2284
Six put on his helmet, and there was an audible squeeee sound, the sound of the armor sealing itself from outside agents. That wasn't a stock part on the armor, but rather something Six added himself with some help from Arcade.
Six had been knocked out and kidnapped with several varieties of gas grenades too many times during his bounty hunts, so he adapted by giving every form of knockout gas the finger. The suit already had a gas mask built into the helmet, so all he really needed was an environment seal. The thing that pushed the Courier over the edge and made him spring for the seal finally, was Brookshire fucking him twice, once with a flashbang, and then with the gas grenade. He also had Arcade and Veronica help install a way for the visor in the helmet to block out flashes that were too bright, again, thanks to Brookshire, so flashbangs could go take Driver Nephi's advice as well. All in all, these were very nice changes, since it meant that Six wouldn't be able to get buttfucked by any mongoloid with a flashbang or gas grenade anymore, or both.
"Helmet, on." Six stated simply.
No response.
"Helmet, on." He repeated.
Still nothing.
"Fuck it." Was all he muttered before he punched the helmet, and the internal display lit up like a Christmas tree. Whatever Christmas was, anyways. All Six knew about it was that people put up some funky looking trees with lights on them and gave each other gifts, usually guns.
Six sighed in relief. "There we go, fuck's sake. Looks like I won't need to have Arcade look at it just yet."
He pulled out his Pip-Boy 2500, which was kind of a hybrid between the Pip-Boy 2000, and the 3000 Mark IV variants, in the sense that it was basically a miniaturized 2000 with the Mark IV's plug. Six plugged it into the suit to run a system diagnostic. Six's suit of Elite Riot Gear obviously wasn't what it was when he pulled it out of the Divide, no, Six had made many custom modifications to it. Aside from the visor being flashbang proofed and the suit being sealed to unwanted chemicals, Six additionally had the Stealth Suit Mark 2 he got from the Big MT taken apart and combined with the Elite Riot Gear, into what was effectively a new suit.
Basically, the Stealth Suit, or at least the skinsuit part of it, served as a basic framework for the electronics suite inside of the suit, and was made to be able to interface with the helmet easily, and to provide a HUD that would display important readouts and whatnot. The environment seal went on top of the skinsuit, and then layered on top of that was the original Elite Riot Gear parts, like the armor, shoulderpads, and duster. There was even a cloaking device attached to the armor that was somehow salvaged from a suit of Chinese Stealth Armor and restored to working condition. Unfortunately, the problem with using the Stealth Suit Mark II as the base for the electronics suite was that Six also had the Suit AI, since it was an integral part of the Stealth Suit that couldn't be removed.
"Hello, Nax!" the cheery, synthesized voice said to Six.
Six groaned rather loudly. "Allie, come on, how many times do I have to tell you? I'm not Nax anymore. That was a name I picked because I felt like I needed one. It's just an alias to me."
Allie started again, faking hurt. "But Naaax! You're so similar! Why would I call you anything else?"
Six responded with a sigh. "Look, I understand that Nax Strag is a bounty hunter in a sci-fi universe filled with aliens and freakish abominations, and I'm a bounty hunter in a post-nuclear hellhole filled with what may as well be aliens and freakish abominations. The resemblance is un-fucking-canny, I get it, really, I do. That doesn't mean you get to call me Nax, I only called myself that because I needed an alias, something to go by other than Courier Six so I wouldn't draw attention when I didn't want or need it, so please, for the love of fuck, stop."
A rather young looking pale girl in her mid 20s, with a red beret and red scarf, a blue and white dress, with long white hair, blue eyes, wearing a pear of Oakley tactical gloves, and wielding some sort of Russian carbine, had now appeared on Six's visor, sitting down, and was pouting.
The figure got up, before yawning and giving in to Six's demands. "Fine, fine, I won't call you Nax anymore, you're no fun." She yawned again, and then clapped her hands together, as if she was expecting a sound to be made. "So, what's the occasion? You haven't taken me out in a few months. Are we going on a date?" She teased.
"Depends, do you consider tearing apart a cult a date?" Six asked, grabbing his duffel bag and heading outside of his special room.
Allie's face lit up in pure excitement. "Ooh, absolutely! I haven't had a chance to see a cult yet, let alone tear one down from the inside! I wonder how different they are now from what my internal user guide says about them?"
Six was putting 12.7 magazines, .44 speed loaders, 8mm Mauser stripper clips, boxes of 12 gauge shells, and medical supplies into his duffel bag when he took a second to process what Allie just said. "You have an internal user guide? Since when?"
"Since always, you oaf! I just never mentioned it because it required a helmet to show up on the HUD, and I didn't have one initially, and by the time I did get a helmet, you didn't really need the guide anymore." She replied, as if Six was expected to know this information. "Here, I'll show you." She said, before pulling up the user guide onto the HUD.
"Huh, well fuck me, I thought you were screwing with me. I'll look through it later." Six said, and Allie pulled the guide from the visor. Six tossed several frag grenades into the duffel bag, and then zipped it up, before slinging it over his shoulder. He almost forgot the Transportalponder, and grabbed it, putting it inside of his duster, which has several holsters inside of it.
"I've got my shit, let's get the fuck out of here." Six said, before moving back into the garage.
When Six got into the garage, he immediately noticed the lack of power tools being used, which meant that Raul was done doing whatever it was that he was doing. Six took a quick stroll around his huge fleet of vehicles, until he found it, the Shitbox Supreme.
Well, technically it wasn't a shitbox, it was a Toyota from the 1980s, likely imported from Japan, as evidenced by the position of the driver's seat. Six didn't know what kind of Toyota it was exactly, but he did find a vintage car magazine from the 1980s with a picture of what it would have looked like back in the day, so he did know it was from the 80s at least. On the left side of the trunk there was a faded APEX, and above where the license plate should be, was a much less faded TRUENO. Six bought her off of some guy in Chinatown, out in San Francisco, but when Six bought her, she was basically just a frame with all of the body, the doors, and most of the seats, and absolutely no engine, transmission, or anything. It took Six a good two years of work to even scrounge together the money to get replacement parts and put her in working order. Bulletproof tires and glass had to be purchased, as well as a new tachometer, a replacement engine, battery, and transmission from a Highwayman, additional seats and replacement seats, plus the electrical wiring, basically everything needed to be replaced, bought, or fixed, but the end result was worth it. Six pulled the trunk open to check his fuel supplies.
He mumbled softly. "20 full packs of microfusion cells, looks like I won't need to resupply any time soon, toolkit, check, spare tire, check, ammo for the '60, check…"
Oh yeah, Six also mounted an M60 to the passenger door, purely to prove a point to Arcade that if it was stupid enough, and cool enough, he would do it.
Allie broke the near total silence. "What are you doing?"
"Huh? Oh, right, I'm uhh, checking the supplies in the trunk. Don't want the car to be out of fuel, or to blow a tire or anything." Six stumbled out. He finished checking the gear and shut the trunk, before hopping in the driver's seat, and turning the key, and driving out of the garage.
The first thing that Six noticed when he left the garage was the storm clouds, and how dark it was. Six wasn't a stranger to rain, after all, it rained on him several times both in Zion Canyon, and during his trek to kill Marko, but in his nearly four years in the Mojave, it had never rained, let alone stormed.
Six pulled his Pip-Boy out of the duster, checked the clock.
11:37 AM.
It was nearly noon, but it looked like sundown. Something was up, and Six had a gut feeling it had something to do with Big MT. He gently applied pressure to the accelerator, and drove through the Strip gate to Freeside, on his way to see the King.
FREESIDE
Freeside had changed significantly since the Battle of Hoover Dam. When news of the battle breaking out reached Freeside, the place went tits up. Most of the anarchists, bandits, and the troublemakers made a break for the Strip, and all were immediately gunned down by the Securitron Mark IIs with absolutely no mercy. The others started attacking everyone and everything in sight, but were easily killed by the patrolling Kings. At the end of the day, the damage and loss of life was quite minimal, everything was over and done with in around an hour, plus, there was the net benefit of the thugs being killed off, which meant Freeside was effectively just a slum without the thugs and hoodlums everywhere. Around a month after the battle, the Courier started pouring excess caps made from the Strip's casinos into developing Freeside by clearing rubble, building homes, repairing the roads and pavement, et cetera. Around a year later, Freeside wasn't known as Vegas' steaming pile of shit, vomit, violence, and disease, where gamblers would be booted to if they lost enough, but rather as one of the few truly safe places in the Mojave. The Kings were better armed and armored than they were before, thanks to Mick partnering with the Gun Runners to provide additional gear to the Kings, paid for by the Courier, naturally, and the Kings acted in a local police capacity. Securitrons were a nonessential part of Freeside law enforcement, and were only a necessity in cases like this, where a King is killed, and heavier guns were needed. By the time Six had stopped thinking of how Freeside had changed so much over the years, he was already outside the School of Impersonation.
Six had barely stepped out of the Shitbox Supreme when his ears were assaulted by what sounded like an incredibly deep bass boost of what may as well have been some unknown creature, and the feeling that the ground itself was shaking. Instinctively, he held on to the roof of the Shitbox, and braced himself until it was over.
When the bass boosted noise was done, and the ground was done shaking, Six let go, and caught his breath, before speaking. "Allie, what the fuck was that?"
Allie appeared on Six's visor again. "I wish I knew. The ground was shaking, but it wasn't an earthquake. I detected a significant surge of electromagnetic activity far to the northeast of here, shortly before the noise started, but I have no way of knowing if they're related." Allie pulled up an overhead view from a satellite of an area northeast of Vegas. "This is the area, specifically." The overhead view was of a big crater, with multiple large buildings inside of it.
Big Mountain.
"Oh, fuck. We need to move, before they fuck something up big-time." Six said, before getting up and making a mad dash for the door to the School of Impersonation.
"King! King, where the fuck are you!?" Six shouted, running madly through the halls of the School.
"I'm detecting a large heat signature in the seating area. Did you look there?" Allie asked.
"Where do you think I'm headed?!" Six shouted back.
Six practically kicked the door to the seating area off of its hinges, or at least one of them, and frantically looked around for the King, until he spotted him, and rushed over to his table.
"King! Shit, look, I'd love to chat, but something important has come up. I'm here about the cult. When your guy got shot, did you have any of your men tail the cultist?" Six asked, obviously in a hurry.
"Yes, I did, but what in the blazes is going on with you? I've never seen one man in such a rush in my entire life." The King responded.
"I'd love to explain, really, I would, and I will once I take care of something incredibly important. Where are the cult held up?" Six asked again.
"They're held up at that place those NCR folks were handing out food at back in '81, out by the old train station. They've renovated the place a considerable amount, added a basement I believe." The King said, obviously trying to keep up with the Courier's frantic attitude.
"Great, thanks, you're a godsend. I'll be back in a bit to explain everything." Six said, before rushing outside and back into his car.
OUTSIDE THE FREESIDE TRAIN STATION
Six was frantically looking for the old building where the NCR was giving handouts, the landscape had changed quite a bit from when he was last looking for this building in '81, making the job a bit tougher, but he eventually found it, and there was a door guard.
"Hold, stranger. What business do you have here?" The man asked.
Six took a moment to compose himself, before responding. "I'd like to join the congregation, if at all possible."
The man took a moment, before responding again. "What do you have to offer us, and why do you seek us out?"
"I'm incredibly rich, so I can satisfy the congregation's material needs easily. I come here seeking a belief. I've always felt hollow in regards to my faith, I've always been searching for a purpose, something to believe in, and I want to find out if this is my purpose in life, to serve the congregation." Six responded, trying to appease the door guard.
The guard whispered something into his radio, before asking another question. "Name and occupation?"
"Nax Strag, Bounty Hunter."
The man looked hesitant, but whispered something into the radio again. "You're clear. Allow me to get the door for you. The Flock is gathered right now, they're in the room directly below the stairs. Please, take a seat." He said, opening the door.
"Thank you." Was all Six said before proceeding.
When the door shut behind him, Six could clearly hear the cult leader speaking.
"…And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals…"
Six was at the base of the steps now.
"…and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see…"
Six opened the door.
"And I saw, and behold, a white horse…" All eyes were on Six.
"Oh, fuck." Six said to himself mentally.
"You there, bounty hunter. Step forward."
Six stepped forward.
Now that Six could get a close look at the cult leader, he realized he was one ugly motherfucker. Guy had a fuck-ugly man bun, a shit beard, stupid tinted aviators, and was shirtless, and he had all these tattoos on his body, plus several marks that listed the deadly sins, most notably, Lust.
"Behold, followers, the White Horse has come to take me from you, to prevent the spread of our Gospel. He thinks of himself as the Savior, but he is not, he is the Deceiver." The leader said, and the crowd started getting riled up.
"Six, EM readings are spiking again, might want to hurry this up." Allie said to him.
"I will surrender willingly to you, Bounty Hunter, but know that God will not let you take me. Flock, leave us." The man signaled for the crowd to leave, and they did, except three people, two men and a lady. The lady was in one of those pre-war spring outfits, one of the men was in dirty NCR fatigues, and the other was in a nice looking suit.
"Well, Nax Strag? Or, rather, Courier 6?" the leader said, holding out his hands, expecting him to be cuffed.
Six started to giggle, and then laugh.
"What's so funny, Courier 6?" The leader asked, trying his hardest to be intimidating.
"I dunno, the fact that you think you're intimidating as shit. 'Oh no, big scary cult man thinks he's hot shit and can intimidate the Courier', yeah, newsflash, you aren't DICK to me. Tell me, have you heard of The Man in Black, better known as Marko?" Six asked, wiping fake tears from his helmet.
"Six, we really don't have time for this, please wrap this up."
"Everyone has heard of Marko. What are you getting at?" The leader responded.
Six continued giggling. "I killed Marko and his bitch-ass brother three years ago, in their own fucking towns. You and your stupid little fucking cult are NOTHING compared to Marko and his gang. While I normally wouldn't give a shit about any cult activity in my city, your cult had to kill a Kings member, which means the King gets involved, and since the King is involved, and your cult is involved, I get involved by the chain of command, and by priority. Freeside is my turf, fucko, and you fucked with the bull, so you're getting the horns."
The leader dropped his hands in shock. He'd heard that Marko died peacefully, but then again he heard he was also killed by a courier. He turned around, and motioned for the woman to begin something.
The woman pulled out a remote, and pressed a button, and gas immediately started flowing into the room.
Six laughed even harder. "Oh, look, you know you're beaten, so now you're trying to bitch out of dying by knocking me out. Newsflash, dipshit, I HAVE AN ENVIRONMENT SEAL, A BRAIN, AND A GAS MASK, I'M FUCKING IMMUNE TO YOUR BULLSHIT."
"SIX!" Allie shouted.
Six sighed, and pulled out Sweet Revenge. "Look, I'd like to monologue longer, but I've got some important bullshit to stop. It was fun chatting, bye fuckwits." Six fired four consecutive shots, right into the domes of the woman and the three men.
Just as the leader hit the floor, the bass boosted sound started up again, along with the sound of…air raid sirens? There was the sound of thunder, too. Six immediately rushed outside to see what was going on.
Six expected the outside to be dark, like it was earlier, but the sky was now lit up with an orange-red glow coming from the northeast, right in the direction of the Big MT. Lightning bolts were visibly striking all over the place, indiscriminately, and there was a big wave of…something, coming right toward Vegas.
"Shit, shit, shit!" Six yelled out, trying to grab the Transportalponder.
"Fuck, this isn't good, ohhh fuck, come on come on!" Six yelled again.
He fumbled with the Transportalponder in its holster, and finally got it out of the holster, and switched it on.
"I'm gonna kick those brains so hard in the ass!" was all he yelled, before he pulled the trigger, right as a lightning bolt struck where he was standing, and the wave of energy came over his spot.
In that moment, Courier 6 was gone from reality.
HOLY
FUCKING
S H I T
That took quite a while to write out, like, seriously. Like, a full day and half of a night long.
So, to clear some things up: Allie doesn't exactly sound like the Stealth Suit voice, she sounds a bit more like a mix of Cortana and the Stealth Suit.
If you need help visualizing what Allie's avatar looks like, google "9a-91 girls frontline", that's what I imagine the stealth suit AI would look like if it had some sort of avatar, in fact, I basically just ripped the design because I'm an unoriginal cunt. As for why it's some cute looking anime girl, Six is a dude, he likes cute girls, giving her an avatar of a cute girl is a natural thing he would do. If your issue is that this is lorebreaking, I point you towards the fact that this is a crossover between an edgy post-nuclear series of games, and a western anime. I'm bending the lore considerably already, yes, but I wanted Allie to have an avatar and 9A-91 was the first thing I thought of. As for how I'll write her into the story, I'm going to attempt to have a kind of Master Chief/Cortana or Lo Wang/Hoji dynamic, where one is doing all the legwork and the other feeds them information and such. Also, ptl, you get your sassy teenage girl, only she's not a teenager, she's an AI.
For those who didn't pick up on it immediately, Nax Strag (as in the comic book) is a reference to Star Wars. Nax Strag was a randomly generated Mandalorian name I picked up and used for my New Vegas Bounties character, whom Grimm Retreat's Courier 6 is heavily based upon.
Yes, the cult is very obviously the Seed family, what are you going to do about it?
Six's car is an AE86, which is objectively less lorebreaking than the old DMC-12. You can fight me on this.
Big MT's fuckup was basically a blowout from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. I'll leave it at that.
'Till next time.
