Author's Notes:
As you can imagine, the moment New Vegas came out I was all over it and played it to death. Naturally, i've gone way off the mark with this story, however the whole idea right from the start was to offer a different universe with several parallel similiarities.
Oh, and the inconsistency with the way people name Vegas is on purpose. Some call it Las Vegas, some call it New Vegas.
Have fun, and any feedback would be awesome


Wiping the sand from his goggles, Wreythe brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes and peered through, adjusting the focus as he saw fit. Almost five-hundred and fifty yards away a caravan was passing through the Mojave Wasteland; it's Brahmin plodding along as the guards comfortably led, cocksure in their own abilities to fight off any danger. He had been lying in a dune of sand, waiting for almost eight hours for the caravan to come by. Taking a closer look at the caravan, Wreythe noticed the name of the trading company sprayed onto the side of the cart being pulled by the lead Brahmin. The lead guard was sporting a sniper rifle slung over his leather armor and this was bad news to Wreythe. The other small arms being carried by the other three guards comprised of a few pistols and shotguns were easy enough to deal with from a distance, but that sniper would provide a bit of difficulty.

The Dear Johns, Tandi had explained two days earlier, were a trading company which dealt primarily with the sales of weapons and armor, often putting it at odds with the Gun Runners. Grown from a small marketplace booth back west in the ruins of New Orleans, now commonly known more simply as 'New O', the Johns had begun trading where most others traders wouldn't dare to cross; the dens and lairs of the various gangs spread across the country. They profited immensely from their vile clients, and began spreading east.

Crossing into Fairland, the Johns moved into a ruined shop and began to seek the undesirables of the town, offering jobs and power if they joined the Dear Johns. Soon word spread in the east about a company that would hire anyone, regardless of their present or past employment. Entire tribes of men and women joined the Dear Johns, all hoping to get a piece of the action and claim dominance over the wasteland.

However, now they were moving supplies somewhere into the Mojave, making the NCR rightfully nervous. The NCR were still recovering after their war with the Legion; the decades had taken a lot out of them, and now they had ex-legionnaires to worry about including roving warbands wielding weaponry and exhibiting training that could easily overwhelm green troops.

Unable to simply just fire upon the caravans, therefore losing creditability amongst the other trading corporations, Tandi had hired Wreythe to go and investigate where the Dear Johns were moving supplies and for what purpose.

"Da bleedin' sun is gonna have me bones," moaned the ex-Legionnarie lying beside Wreythe while holding both Wreythe's scoped Remington 700 and his own beaten-up M16 assault rifle. Both men were dressed in long robes with the cowl pulled down.

"Better your bones than your brain, we've got people who'd love a real human brain to play with."
Sitting at the bottom of the dune was Lance-Corporal Rain Munroe, her reddish-brown hair tied into a ponytail and a pair of aviators shielding her eyes from the harsh sun. Unlike the two men, she was dressed in a mercenary's standard garb; dark leather armor, a helmet with adjustable goggles and carried a customized M3 submachine gun that sported a drum magazine and an adjustable stock.

"What's wit' all da hostility, Lance-Corporal? Can't us all jus' get along?" mocked Contra, smiling widely. The three of them had been barely able to keep things civil over the past two deals, all three of their bickering at the smallest problem. Wreythe thought Contra was too lazy and Rain too uptight, Contra thought Wreythe couldn't 'chill' and Rain was a bitch of the NCR, while Rain thought of both men as being wandering vagabonds who believed they owned everything. Only after Rain had jumped and almost choked Contra to death after he called her a whore, but Wreythe had come between them and pulled Rain off, making them promise to keep things more or less peaceful.

"Shut up, I'm trying to think," snarled Wreythe, putting his binoculars down. A difficult choice faced him. On one hand, he could just stroll right up to the caravan and ask if they could travel together, under the guise of two cultists with their bodyguard. On the other hand, simply killing everyone and checking the shipping manifest would also provide details. Wreythe was no murderer, but these were bad people who were putting weapons into the wrong hands. He asked the pair for their opinion.

"Do it man, why da fuck would we wanna even talk t' assholes like dat?"

"Like you can talk, you were in Caesar's Legion! He probably even had dealings with these people. I say we talk to them like the original plan. That's why we're disguised, right?"

"Yeah," Wreythe agreed, "but that all hinged on them not having enough firepower to send up to Hell and back in a split second. If they can tell we're not some fanatic cultists but spies from the NCR, we're dead." And it's not uncommon for cultists and fanatics to be fired upon on sight, people preaching religion and peace don't often go down well with munitions traders.

It's the way of the desert; you take a risk and place your bets, then see if you jackpot or flunk out. Sometimes you just had to jump in.

"Alright, here's the deal; Contra and I will go down there and speak to the assholes. If we look like we're in trouble, blow out their brains," explained Wreythe as he took his rifle from Contra and handed it to Rain. The young soldier's eyes opened as if surprised before she feigned calm.

"You want me to use your gun? At this range?"

"Of course, it isn't like we're going to be four miles away or anything."

Wreythe could see the panic in Rain's eyes. While he was sure as hell that the NCR soldier didn't care about either one of them personally, failing this mission would look bad to her superiors. There was something about her that really appealed to Wreythe; it wasn't just her looks, there was a spark to her. Never had he been taken unawares before, yet she had.

"Come on girl, just take the gun."

Rain's eyes narrowed. "Don't call me girl; either call me by my name or by my rank." But she still took the gun and checked the sights while Wreythe and Contra stood up and ran to the roadside, screaming their heads off.

The caravan guards quickly responded to the stimuli and shouted out to each other, checking their firearms against the approaching duo. The sniper pulled the rifle off his back and crouched, panning the horizon behind Wreythe and Contra while the others moved forward.

When they got within a hundred-and-fifty yards the guards shouted out for the duo to halt and be recognized. Wreythe shouted back that they were on their way to Vegas and a radscorpion was chasing them. Gesturing them forward, the guards swept the land thoroughly and indeed found a radscorpion behind a pair of craggy rocks. It was amazing what a vial of female-radscorpion pheromones could do on a blistering hot day.

Upon closer inspection, Wreythe was rather glad he didn't attempt to just kill the lot of them. Each was wearing a suit of high-grade steel-reinforced combat armor, its polymer and ceramic construction offering high levels of protection to the user, and if that wasn't enough at their belt was a folded-up SUB-2000. All four guards now had their firearms trained on Wreythe and Contra, trigger-fingers itching to just mow that the travelers and take everything they have, which didn't look like much.

"We're from the Followers of the Apocalypse, please, we're in dire need of aid. Bandits have stolen our supplies and that radscorpion has been hounding us for the past two hours. If we could just travel with you to Vegas, even part of the way I'd be grateful."

Followers of the Apocalypse didn't usually wear long robes such as this; they were a secular cult rather than a religious one, so practical outfits depending on their work was usually worn. Wreythe simply hoped that none of these guards had ever met any other Followers. It wasn't his idea to say they were Followers, but it was the most plausible plan that the three of them could think up.

The sniper, who turned out to be the leader, had an angry expression on his pock-marked face. "We're not fucking heading to New Vegas. What're you carrying?"

Wreythe pulled out the pockets of his robe and revealed they were empty, but Contra's yielded a small red ruby. The leader snatched the ruby out of his hand peered at it, holding it high against the sky. He scratched his rough beard and peered at the travelers thoughtfully. "Back east, men of the cloth usually give back to the community, not take trinkets such as these."

Wreythe's mind raced quickly, shooting off several possible explanations before choosing a likely one. "Well, not everyone takes regular currency, do they? The NCR have their own gold-backed notes which most people are happy to trade with, the old Legions had their gold and silver coins, you've got the majority of people using bottle caps again but we've found that the one thing that guarantees you of the right to purchase is the real deal itself. Take that ruby, but could you please escort us to Primm?"

"What's stopping us from killing you and taking the ruby?"

"Because then we won't hand over another ruby of equal size that we have kept in Primm. Escort us and you get the other ruby."

Wreythe once more marveled at the way greed tugged at the heartstrings of the common man. The caravan leader agreed and soon the two were walking with the Brahmin, both Wreythe and Contra telling the guards the most fictitious stories they could think of. In between stories of giant man-eating snakes and frogs that could swallow you whole, Wreythe questioned and prodded at the guards carefully. One of them, Lucas, was an oddly pious man and desperately wanted to be on God's good side. He was a tall man and very lean, and with his over-sized glasses he looked almost comical. Lucas had joined the Dear Johns as a means to help out his struggling family, but now he seemed more than a little interested in the Followers of the Apocalypse. Wreythe, knowing very little of the Follower's recruitment methods promised Lucas he would contact his superiors for him.

"We'll be staying in Bonnie Springs so send a letter down when you get confirmation," Lucas told Wreythe as they turned right onto highway leading up to Primm and Vegas beyond it. "I'll be staying in the Oakfield Hotel with the others-"

Movement alerted Wreythe and he ignored whatever else Lucas had to stay. Wreythe dropped his hand to his thigh before remembering that Almost out of his line of sight to the left was Rain, less than two-hundred yards away. For someone not trained in stealth, she was taking a real risk but had many broken down cars and trucks to duck behind. Wreythe made no indication of seeing her and put both hands to his head and kneaded his temples as if fighting off a headache.

"Something wrong?" The leader turned around and stopped walking upon hearing Lucas' loud question and watched Wreythe.

"I sometimes get these really bad headaches," Wreythe explained, "Rubbing your temples is an easy way of massaging the blood vessels."

"I met a man once who would do the same thing. Turned out he had a tumor in his brain," the leader said, turning away. "He died, but not from the cancer." He jogged to catch up to the other guards, leaving Lucas with the duo and the Brahmin.

They were barely five minutes from Primm when the leader whirled around, his SUB-2000 unfolded and pointing straight as Wreythe's head while the other guards pulled their own firearms on Contra. Lucas looked confused for a moment, but a barked order from the leader made him take out his own handgun and aimed it at Contra, who was smiling idiotically and darting his eyes at Wreythe and the guns trained on them. Nothing came between the disguised spies and the four caravan guards, surrounded in a ring of piled-up cars.

"It's been fun, but the game is now over boys. Lucas, remove the big guy's robe."

Lucas obeyed, and ripped a hole in the robe. Pulling it down, he revealed a set of dark leather armor and Contra's M16 strapped to his chest. Lucas looked back to the leader, who simply swung his carbine and fired almost-point blank at Contra.

Everything slowed down at that point; Contra fell, blood spraying from his chest while another shot rang out and tore a chunk out of Lucas' head. The three remaining guards shouted in anger and turned their sights to Wreythe, but he had already unclipped a grenade from underneath his robe and thrown it over his shoulder while jumping into a broken-down car. The resulting explosion rocked the car onto two wheels before it fell again, Wreythe's head smacking into the roof hard. His ears were ringing and head felt like it would burst, but Wreythe took out the 1911 he had kept under the robe and lay still, waiting for the slightest noise. A Brahmin was groaning in pain, but Wreythe heard the distinct sound of metal briefly tapping against metal.

Carefully edging out of the passenger seat of the car, Wreythe crouched and waited.

Another two shots rang out, and Wreythe heard a body fall to the floor. Sliding towards the front of the car, Wreythe peered around and saw Lucas' corpse, his head looking like a cracked egg. Shrapnel had bit into the already dead man's body. Beyond him, Wreythe saw a disembodied leg lying on a car bonnet, the flies already beginning to settle. Standing up, Wreythe took a few tentative steps into the bloodied and burnt clearing, his handgun ready to fire at the slightest movement. As he came closer to the spot where the caravan guards at stood, he found the missing member. The leader had unslung his sniper rifle and had laid down his carbine, using a dead guard's corpse as cover, but that was as far as he had gotten. His rifle had been hit, the broken metal tearing into his face and eyes. The leader was lying down, mewling and tearing at his bloodied face. A large chunk of metal from the scope had lodged itself in his throat, so Wreythe took his knife and finished the job cleanly.

Standing up, Wreythe walked back and found Rain standing over Contra, desperately ripping bandages from a small pouch she had carried on her belt. Kneeling down, Wreythe saw the oozing wound in his side, and some shrapnel from the grenade had lodged itself into his knee.

"We've got to get him to a doctor," Rain said, her cool demeanor vanishing with every second. "He'd going to die!"

"There's no doctors close by as far as I can remember. Primm is more a tourist trap; they send all their wounded and sick up to Goodsprings."

Rain unclipped a map from her belt and looked at it carefully while Wreythe tied a tourniquet and wrapped Contra's bleeding chest, who moaned as he did so, but seemed to be more-or-less unconscious. Goodsprings wasn't too far away, but there was no way Contra could walk; they would have to carry him the whole way. Wreythe had been to Goodsprings once before while hunting down a rumor, and had found the town rather pleasant. The doctor there at the time wasn't even a properly trained professional, just a combat medic from the NCR who had retired and settled down. Rain put away her map and bit her bottom lip while Wreythe picked up Contra and threw him over his shoulder.

"Let's get going."

"What about the caravan? Did you get the shipping manifest?"

Wreythe grinned. "I got something alright, they were heading to Bonnie Springs."