"Alright VICE, bring it in. Lets get to work on the replacement windows." Caine called, making Tanner groan, for she knew he meant for her to help him as well. She got out of the car and looked around the shop. To her amazement, the shop looked fully stocked and almost untouched by the devastation. She noticed a few panes of glass in the corner which looked like they would fit into the doors and windscreen hole in the highwayman, and had all it would take to make the repairs.

After taking in the sight of the pristine garage, she asked, "When did we become a group? I thought I was just an employee."

"You are my employee, but you've shown your usefulness, so I trust we can work on the windows without incident." Caine replied.

Tanner couldn't figure out why sometimes it seemed Caine hated her, and sometimes he liked her. Sometimes he was a jerk and other times he was nice, and it confused her. After a bit of instruction, she and caine pulled the doors apart and replaced the windows, then replaced the windscreen. After they finished that, Caine began working with VICE to build the visor, which gave Tanner some time to herself. She used the time to clean her well worn rifle, which she could tell was in need of a good cleaning because it belched a lot of smoke after every shot, kind of like the muskets people used 500 years before.

She carefully disassembled the rifle, worried about having parts fly off of it because of it's mistreatment. She slowly, almost lovingly, cleaned and oiled everything every piece, careful not to leave any fouling anywhere. She used up the entire rest of the bottle of gunpowder solvent cleaning it, although there hadn't been much to begin with. Testing the action, she still found it stiff and clunky, something she hadn't been worried about because she attributed it to the fowling that was bound to have accumulated inside the gun. She pulled the bolt back out and filed a little bit off the sides, careful not to file the ejector. After an hour of filing, fitting and retesting, she got the bolt down to where she wanted.

Caine finished working on the visor long before she finished cleaning her gun, but chose to clean his guns instead of bothering her. His were in considerably better condition than he expected her rifle to be, but he still felt like he had let them sit a little to long without a good cleaning. The handgun was actually in the worst condition, even though he rarely used it and always cleaned all of his guns together. Having had experience cleaning all three (four if the Varmint rifle hadn't have been eaten by that deathclaw) of his firearms, he finished with the MP-9, by far in the best condition and so the last one he cleaned, just as Tanner finished with her modifications.

He picked up the visor and put it on Tanner's head, showing her how to fit it to her, use it and take it off. He explained all of it's features, and how to enable each of them. On the side were three switches, one which controlled the power for it, the second controlled the vision enhancement modes, and the third controlled the geomapper module's power. Then he showed her how to install a weapons module in the rifle, which popped up onto both their HUD's and slid to the lower right corner, although slightly smaller and above his own gun on caine's HUD.

The 'visor' was actually just a single eyepiece, earpiece and microphone that were mounted inside a combat helmet, with the eyepiece sitting over her non-dominant eye, which she could see through via a camera in the front of the eyepiece. She found it slightly disorienting at first, the camera giving her left eye a slightly lower contrast image, and she hoped she would quickly get used to the feeling of it.

She gasped "This, this is amazing! How does it work?"

Caine replied "I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that, but I should know better, shouldn't I?", picking up a foot wide grey cube.

VICE said, "You never do learn, don't you?" causing Tanner to blink in pain as the earpiece adjusted it's volume, starting off much to loud for her comfort.

Caine responded "Apparently not. Before you ask, VICE didn't even know what this was when we first found it, but it's apparently a prototype miniature manufacturing plant, of sorts. The army was doing research into micro-computing for it's NBC bunkers, and had gotten as far as building something that could make this thing, but couldn't get the chips to work in most things. They had gotten enough to work in the helmet, but VICE couldn't work at his full potential and wasn't really sentient when I first found him. He could think, but not functionally until I did some modifications to the helmet, made most of the chips work in tandem."

Tanner didn't quite believe that Caine was that smart, but she wanted to get to canterbury and be rid of him, so she focused on getting comfortable with the visor instead. Once she was, and Caine finished checking all the lines under the car and buffing out the road scratches, they got into Serenity and drove towards a small town that the locals called Megaton, since it was built around an undetonated but defused Chinese nuclear bomb, Tanner guiding the vehicle's digital driver to it.

After only a few minutes, VICE worriedly said "Sergeant, I think we have a problem."

Caine hissed "What is it, VICE? Let me guess, more gunfire."

"Yes, but only from the town that was speaking of. They seem to be firing on what looks like a piece of armour, with five foot-soldiers."

"How big is it?" Caine asked, starting to become worried.

"Four to five metres long, two to three wide. I'd guess four or five closely packed mutants, maybe 10 if they're humans, if it is an Infantry Fighting Vehicle, or even a standard APC." VICE replied.

"Oh no, it's much worse..." Tanner said

Caine exclaimed "What could be worse than an IFV!", cutting off Tanner.

"First of all, a Tank. Second, If you'd let me finish I could have already told you. It's a mutant, Pa called 'em Behemoths, but he also said that the wanderer killed all of 'em. They're fifty foot tall, fire-hydrant mace carrying brutes with the brains of squirrels and hides of stone. Small arms don't do much damage to them, It took a squad of paladins using Fat Men to kill one. " Tanner said

"Well, our friendly neighborhood wanderer found a away to kill not just one, but almost all of them, apparently. We'll just have to find the weak spot." Caine said, issuing a challenge to himself.

He pulled the car to the side of the road, putting a large boulder between it and the car, grabbed a frag mine and jumped out. The Behemoth was armoured in scraps of old cars and other things. Luckily for Caine, the armour for it's legs was branched from the extendable ladders from firetrucks, with doors metal plates and shopping carts making up the rest of it's armour.

Caine ran up behind it, closely following but not being detected by the five other mutants currently engaged in charging the gate, and began to climb up it's leg. The Behemoth apparently noticed the little man on the ladder, and tried to shake him off of it's leg. Caine wrapped his arms into the ladder, hanging on for dear life. Eventually, the mutant either began to believe it was just feeling non-existant things, or gave up on the futile endeavor, for the leg stopped moving, and Caine started his ascent again. He quickly got up the leg and found his way up to the base of the mutant's neck, then pulled out his combat knife, a 9 inch monstrosity, and jammed it into the thing' s hide. Then, using the blade, he cut a swath out of the back of the thing's neck, which began to emit a viscous black liquid and a foul odor. Cringing, he pulled the mine off his of the belt, jammed it shoulder deep into the behemoth's neck wound and armed it. As soon as he let it go, it began to beep, so he pulled his arm out quickly, sending a rope of black blood flying, and climbed down to the middle of it's back. Just as he got a good hold the mine blew, sending nick meat flying in an almost perfect ring, making the head of the thing pop up then come to a rest in roughly the same spot. Then, the corpse's knees buckled, sending it's top half, and caine, straight towards the ground. First, it landed on it's knees, causing the ground to quake, but not enough to make him lose his hold, then it began to pivot forward, smashing into the ground face first, surely breaking more than a few of it's facial bones, and causing Caine to bounce around on it's back. This bouncing caused him to hit his chest into the edges between two doors.

"What. The. Fuck! First the raiders, then regular mutants, and now a Behemoth! Somebody upstairs must really not like you."Tanner said as he rolled off of the the behemoth, which he quickly regretted.

Caine coughed, spat up some blood, then said, "Maybe, but at least I'm good at not dieing. It's a shame that I had to use my last frag mine." then he groaned and said, "Damn, that hurts.I must have broken some ribs in that fall."

"I'm a little amazed that you actually did all that. It... It was pretty awesome seeing it go down like that." Tanner said.

"Let's go meet the sheriff. Hopefully I don't have to shoot at him." Caine said, readying up the FAL on his less painful side, the left one this time. Then he shuffled in his belt pouch, pulled out his ranger's star and pinned it to his chest.

Some metallic grinding came from behind the huge gate and it began to rise, the blades inside a jet engine set above the gate whirring. A man in a brown duster and sheriff's hat, carrying an R-91, ducked under said rising gate and came over to greet them.

"That's some mighty fine handiwork you did over there, son. Please, come on into town, our doc'll patch y'all up free a' charge. I imagine that you're definitely in a world of hurt from that rodeo." Said the man in the duster, lowering his assault rifle.

Caine lowered his rifle and stuck out his left hand, saying "Thanks. Sergeant Richard Caine, Sheriff ...?"

The man returned the hand shake and replied, "Simms. Lucas Simms, Sheriff and sometimes Mayor of Megaton."

"It's good to finally meet another man of the law out here. I was starting to think the whole Capitoline area was uncivilised." Caine said, beginning to waver slightly.

"Yes sir. Civilisation is hard to come by around these parts, just us and Rivet -" He stopped and put his arms out to catch Caine, who had fallen unconscious and falling towards him, then said "Whoa, we'd better get you to the doc right away!"

The sheriff said a few other things, and Caine felt himself being carried by two people somewhere, but he was to close to a total black out to know what was happening. When he did wake back up, the first thing he saw was Madison sitting in a chair in the corner with her rifle on her lap, asleep.

Softly and gruffly, caine said "Hey Tanner, Wake up! I'm the one who's supposed to be unconscious, not you."

"Huh..? Oh! Doc, he's awake, come in quick!" Tanner said, rousing from her nap. Then, gently she said, "Oh, you get a pass this time, but Tanner is my father, I'm Madison." then poked him softly in his left side, making him cringe.

"Ow, hey! You're just lucky that side's only bruised, my offer to feed you to cannibals still stands." Caine said, with all the power it had before drained of it because of his current condition.

'You're lying. We're too good of a team to get split up. You fight and get hurt, I offer combat support and keep you from pissing off the wrong people." She said, chuckling.

The doctor rushed in just as she said that, but before he could say anything Caine asked him "Seems to me that I've been given the short end of the stick, what do you think Doc?"

"Well, you're pretty lucky didn't break any of those ribs. You'll be healed up enough to leave in a few days, if you stay here and rest. She didn't get hurt, so if that's what you meant, then yeah, you got the short end." the doc said, sternly.

"Let me guess, I can't do any heavy lifting, no strenuous activities, but I'm good to walk around, yes?" Caine asked.

"Yeah. Just keep pressure off those ribs and you'll be fine. And before you get any ideas, spending the night with your lady friend or nova counts as strenuous." The doc said, smirking.

"Thanks for ruining my evening, Doc. Hey Madison, could you run up to the car and grab me a shirt? It's a little cold to run around without one. and the only purpose of doing so is already dashed." Caine asked, pouting.

"Yeah, stop your pouting. I'll be right back." Tanner said, walking towards the door, then called back "Oh, and I'm staying in the next room, so your plans for tonight were screwed from the start."

As the door closed, the Doc asked, "So, are you two...?" rolling his hands in the air.

"No, no. She's my guide, nothing more." Caine replied flatly.

"I only ask 'cause she was a little too concerned about you to be 'just a friend', if you catch my drift. I offered to let her sleep in the next room, wake her up when you did, but she didn't want to move. She was really worried about you, much more than simple travelling companions should be." The doc said.

"Are you implying that you think she fancies me? 'Cause that's what it sounds like." Caine asked, even though he already knew the answer.

"Well, I ain't necessarily sayin' that, just that she was really worried about you. I mean real worried, not 'Oh god, my boss is going to die' worried, I mean family member or lifetime friend worried." Doc said, choosing his words carefully.

"Well, that's ...interesting. I'll have to figure out where this grand adventure is going to take us, now won't I? Thanks, Doc." replied Caine.

Madison came back in with a folded black shirt over her arm, without her hunting rifle. She had changed out of her bloodstained armour and into a tight fitting tee shirt and skinny jeans. She revealed the shirt on her arm to be the Lucky 38 complementary one, then gave it to Caine.

"You seemed to take a great interest in it, so I thought you'd want it." Madison said, deadpan.

"Thanks, I have been wanting a reason to wear this." Caine said, rolling his legs off of the bed and sliding on the shirt, causing him to wince as he brought his arms upward in an attempt to keep his body straight. Both sides ached dully, although his right side, with the cracked ribs, hurt a bit more than his left, bruised side.

Then he stood up, sending a bolt of pain up his side, but not enough pain to make him sit again. After a few minutes he had gotten used to moving to minimize the pain he went outside. The first person he ran into was none other than Lucas Simms.

"Hey Sergeant! How're ya doing? Not gonna collapse on me again, I hope?" Simms said, raising his arms slightly and smirking.

"Nope, but I am stuck here for the next couple of days, thanks to the doc. Anything I can do to help out around town?" Caine wondered.

"Well, I don't have anything, but you might speak with Moira, she did get a shipment in recently. A word of warning though; She's a little ... odd." said Simms , pointing towards a building with a commuter jet's wing on top.

"Thanks Sheriff, I'll go talk to her." Caine said, beginning to walk up the ramp towards the second tier of the town.

Luckily for him, the ramp wasn't very steep, since it would have been painful to walk up otherwise. He went inside the shop, which was called Craterside supply, judging by the sign over the door.

Almost as soon as his foot hit the floor the red haired woman behind the counter said, "Welcome to Craterside Supply!" sounding very jovial, almost childishly so.

"I'm looking for a way to be useful around town. I'm going to be stuck here for a few days and didn't want to be a drain." Caine said.

"Wait just a second, you're the guy who killed that behemoth, aren't you! The doc specifically told me that you were to do nothing strenuous." said the woman, still extremely jovial.

Caine, now slightly worried about her mental capacity because of her attitude, said "I know what the doctor said. Do you have any work or am I wasting my time?"

"I'm not sure I should be doing this, but yes, I do. I just got a shipment of 10 mil pistols in from a raider base that was cleared out, and I haven't even had time to unpack them, never mind check their condition, although I'm guessing they're in bad condition. I know some of them came from an army base, and the racks were still in the crates, so I was planning to use those for display stands."

After a few minutes of her incessant, senseless rambling, Caine asked, "So, how much am I getting paid to do this?"

Seemingly snapping back into focus, Moira responded "20% of the profits from the sale."

"20? I'm not some dumb hick from the bad part of New Orleans, I do my work well, and I'd expect no less than 60%" Caine said, trying to bait her into haggling to a good deal.

After a few minutes of their haggling, they both set on a 40/60 split in her favor, or 50/50 if most were in good condition or better when he finished, and he got to work on the crates. He pulled out the top rack in one of the crates and tore the N99's down three at a time, finding the best parts for two of the pistols and having one with bad parts, removing handguns that were entirely unsafe to fire. A little bit later, he ended up with a handful of spare parts and 10 N-99's in good to perfect condition, another 43 in moderate to good condition, and 6 in bad but workable condition, having only 5 that couldn't be rebuilt to a safe standard, and so needed to be removed from circulation and broken down into components for resale. The ratio of good condition to bad, although great when compared to the original condition of most of the guns and the norm for the capital wasteland, still seemed atrocious to Caine. After he got all the guns cobbled back together, he set to cleaning the guns and spare parts, hoping to get the handguns to work as smoothly as possible.

After a bit more time he finished cleaning the guns and signalled Moira, saying "Done. What else can I do?"

Amazed, she replied "Seriously? There's no way in heck you checked, repaired and cleaned a full crate of 10 mils in 3 and a half hours!"

"I have had some special military training. One of the big parts was firearms knowledge and use, including stripping and refitting. To be honest, that was actually slow compared to my average qualification times. I used to be able to field strip and reassemble my guns in 90 seconds, a good clean would take about 3 minutes. Caine said with an air of accomplishment, but also slight disappointment.

"I... I don't think I have anything else for you to do, unless you want to sweep the floor. You should go talk to Gob, over at Moriarty's, he'll have heard of something for you to do." Moira said, trying to get her mind off of his speed.

"Bar work, eh? Seems like a way to get trapped if the boss is unscrupulous." Caine said, making Moira frown.

"Well, that's how the poor thing got stuck here in the first place." Moira said

"So, who is he anyway? How will I know who to talk to?" Caine asked.

Moira responded, "He's a very unfortunate ghoul. He came here to make a little cash, maybe explore a little but. But Moriarty tricked him, got him to accrue a large debt, then forced him to work at the bar to pay it off. But, Moriarty also charged him room and board, so he wasn't making any progress on the the wanderer came by, asking for info about his father. I didn't have anything for him, but he did help me write my book." Moira said, starting to trail off about her book.

Caine said, "Wait, what about Gob?"

Snapping back to reality again, Moira said, "Oh, right! So anyways, the wanderer wanted info from Moriarty, but the bastard wouldn't give it to him, wanted him to pay for it. So, the wanderer shot him square in the head, and got the information he was looking for from Moriarty's room, I guess. After that, Gob took over the bar, since Nova does not have any business sense at all."

"Well then, I guess I'll have to go talk to him then." Caine said, opening the door.


The entire process that Caine did, the retrofitting of the guns and cleaning of them, had been almost ingrained into his soul, as the Rangers trained endlessly with every weapon available to them, which included the N-99 as it was being phased in as the US Army's service sidearm around the time of the great war.

One of the achievements in Fallout 3 was to find and kill all of the Super Mutant Behemoths, but the Broken Steel add-on adds in Super Mutant Overlords, who look like they're growing into Behemoths, so it's not impossible that there could be new ones if they kept getting into the FEV, or Forced Evolutionary Virus, serum.

One of the quests in the game is to help Moira write her Wasteland Survival Guide, through getting limbs broken and body irradiated, scavenging for food and supplies, and other things. This guide apparently sells insanely well, for it is seen in limited numbers in the Mojave Wasteland in Fallout:New Vegas, travelling cross-country in less then four years.