Chapter Two, Part Five: On His Way to a Reunion

At an unknown time, and an unknown place...

"You can't do this, Josh!" The man in leather armor screamed, tied up in the back seat of the car. He and this Josh, who was no doubt the driver, could hear the bouncing of the third person that he had sort of captured. Josh was simply speeding around the wide empty open plains of dirt for the hell of it, maybe to mess with his passengers.

"Like hell I can't. I got this car working again, I fucking built our god damned raiding group the fuck up, and you'll never fucking forget it after I'm done with you." Josh growled, suddenly causing the car to do a power slide which sent the backseat captives flying to the opposite side.

"God damn it! What are you going to do, kill everyone who doesn't listen to you? Or disagrees about something?" The man screamed.

"If I was, I wouldn't have grabbed you three. No, see, I'm going to kill the ones that are the most annoying to send a message, and then kill your fuckface leader who put me out of power. What was his name again? Seriously, this is like the third time this has happened, each time they died, why do they continue to keep trying? I mean I know they're raiders, but seriously." Josh complained.

Suddenly gunshots were heard, and Josh knew it was hitting the car. Luckily, he was smart enough to put metal over where the glass windows used to be, except for the driver, passenger, and the back window so he could see behind him and to the sides. Now he thought about it, it was a stupid idea to not do the back one as well, visibility be damned, as someone could just aim right through and shoot him.

There were four or so raiders riding motorcycles that HE fixed up, firing at him, and they weren't even aiming for the back window, but the car itself.

"...I honestly don't even know why I continue to lead these assholes. If they're going to try to take me out, then do it right, damn it." Josh complained, doing another power slide and grabbing his submachine gun that was at his side, and he fired out of the open driver window at the raiders on motorcycles. One of them was hit directly and fell off of his bike, the second one's tires were blown out, and the third one was hit right in the face, but more came, and Josh quickly accelerated again, and the chase was on once again.

Suddenly a vertibird hovered above, and launched a missile right in front of Josh's car.

"Of fucking course, how could I have forgotten the Vertibir—wait, but I didn't teach anyone else how to fly it..." Josh said, a few seconds before the explosion happened. He tried to quickly stop the car, but it was too late, and the car did several fiery flips before finally landing. His passengers were obviously by now all pretty dead, but at least he upgraded the driver portion of the car to withstand a lot of punishment...of course, obviously he was still pretty injured. He crawled out of the fiery wreckage, via the driver's window, and he was greeted by several raiders who had now gotten off of their motorcycles, and held their guns up towards him, and not to mention the vertibird still hovered directly above him.

"This was your plan? Really? Just try to drive away with hostages?" One of the raiders barked.

"It wasn't hard to know the speeding vehicle was you, considering who the hell else has a car these days?" Another raider yelled.

"That wasn't my whole plan, morons." Josh laughed, suddenly reaching into his pocket and feeling the device he had stashed there, discreetly. He took a step back, and pushed the button that was on it, and suddenly the motorcycles behind them exploded and sent them all tumbling down, and set one or two of them on fire. Mechanical parts were everywhere, along with flames.

"God damn it! You would put explosives to your own machines?" One of the surviving raiders said, as he tried to get back up.

They hadn't even noticed that the Vertibird had also exploded, and was now spiraling down out of control.

"Ya see, there's one thing that none of you raiders will ever have, that I own. Or that you can even take from me. You want to know what it is?" Josh mocked, taking several steps back, as the vertibird went through the air, only barely over himself, and right into the raiders, resulting in another explosion along with fatalities.

...Luck.

"Well... I guess, considering they don't love me anymore, I'm going to go catch up with an old relative... I haven't seen him in years, not since that night." Josh said.

Josh looked down at his necklace... his mother's necklace.

"Mom always did favor me...but you never liked that...did you Jericho? Granted, we didn't know her for long...but she always loved us. When you were taken by the raiders, her heart was broken. Shattered. All that remained was her little boy...her oldest, was gone, and she had no way of getting him back without trying to go against all of the raiders herself. She wasn't even surprised that they took you rather than her...hurt her emotionally, and it'll hurt that much worse. They almost got me, but the robot I had tinkered with suddenly turned on, and killed them. I was just a little boy, but I was capable of fixing up a hulking sentry bot. Then...years later, what happened? Jericho happened. THE Jericho, I should say. Not my brother...not anymore." Josh said, taking off the necklace and holding it in the palm of his hands.

"Drenched in blood, the monster...his target was clear. He didn't care anymore about the people he used to know...not at all. Our mom told us that our father was a past raider as well, and that he even formed a huge group of raiders in the Capital Wasteland, but she had left them many years ago after she was pregnant with me, and as Jericho grew up. Apparently right before she left, our father kicked the bucket. She did say he was pretty old...and that he had literally been almost everywhere. But he had a new father...a hulking fucking monster. I'll never forget his name. Sav. He cheered him on, as Jericho did what he did. Maybe he just forgot who we were. Maybe he was just brainwashed so much by those raiders that he was nothing more than another one of them now. Maybe...just maybe..." Josh squeezed the necklace in his hand so tight that it left a mark in the middle of it.

"...he enjoyed it. He threw me into the wall, into one of my robots. One of the other ones held me down, forced me to see it. Forced me to see him... kill her. He didn't care that it was his own mother...he was heartless. Brutal...he left her in pieces. Blood was everywhere, tears running from my face. He looked right into my eyes, and simply said...I'll never forget it. He said, "We will meet again." They left me alive. Why. Why would they? I knew Jericho wanted to toy with me, he was already insane. I left, and some would say I followed in his footsteps, but I didn't. I became a raider for a simple reason really. Training, to become skillful. Skillful enough to challenge and even beat the monster that my brother has became. I was disgusted, I'm still disgusted by them. But of course, it wore me down, innocence is gone, and now...all I want is to reunite with my brother...and say hello." Josh said, releasing the pressure he had on the necklace, and putting it back on. He salvaged his bag from the trunk of the car, and got out his pre-war map, and began to take routes and roads...

To the Capital Wasteland...

End of Chapter Two, Part Five: On His Way to a Family Reunion

Jericho has family? Hoooooooooly sheeeeeeeeet. Actually, I got the idea of this chapter because of changing AODoH into AND, which I've already explained is a mixture of all my stories. I never got to it, but I planned making Jericho's life before the Lone Wanderer it's own story, and that included Josh. So now here he is. I bet the reunion won't be a happy one.

Adios.

~TGG333