Chapter 55 - Divide Drama


Pyrrha was certain that she'd run out of tears, over the past ten days' course of events.

She'd wept that first night, when she'd belatedly realized that she'd chased Jaune away, and a small voice in her head had taunted her that she'd never see him again, either because he'd never return from Zion (he may have been a good swordsman and a decent shot with a pistol, but this was a White Legs war band), or because he'd finally grown tired of her abrasive nature (despite what he'd said to her, in Vault 21).

She'd wept when she'd first stepped through the pass West of Primm, and beheld the canyon of wreckage, barely hidden beneath the raging sandstorm.

She'd wept when she'd finally left the familiar missile silo, and got her first look at what had once been the Pre-War town of Hopeville... and was now little more than a pile of irradiated rubble.

She'd wept when she'd found out that there were survivors, of the cataclysm that had claimed the Divide... ghouls, whose skin had been flayed off by the sandstorms of the Divide, and kept alive and in pain by the sheer amount of radiation in the area. Not feral, though; they still knew how to use weapons, and set traps. Some had still even been dressed in odd facsimiles of NCR or Legion uniforms... but they couldn't be reasoned with by her, no matter how much she'd tried. Not like the Bright Brotherhood...

She'd wept when she'd pulled a lever, in trying to gain access to the bunker that led to Ashton, and accidentally launched a nuclear missile at the ruins of Hopeville... the place she'd once known intimately.

She'd wept as she'd finally made her way through Ashton, fighting her way through the secondary explosions and the weird green reptilian-humanoid tunnelers infesting the bunker and the wounds that kept on racking up, determined to finally get some answers... and finally seen the gaping wounds in the earth, massive fissures in the land that had once her home, and the twisted skeletons of once-proud builds, now claimed to the ghouls, while Deathclaws stalked the streets, and tunnelers claimed the sewers. There, beset on all sides, from above and below, she'd been reduced to little more than a hunted rat, scavenging through the buildings, looking for supplies, anything to help her continue on her journey...

In the end, though, she was the Pyrrha Nikos, former prodigy of the Branwen Tribe, former champion of the Divide, and current Courier and employee of House. She'd sworn to return, to help House turn New Vegas into what the Divide could have been, and to apologize to Jaune. And even a rat could be vicious when cornered.

When her guns had run empty, she'd simply begun scavenging more from slain ghouls, and the bodies of the fallen NCR and Legion who'd been in the Divide. When her knives had blunted or snapped, she'd punched and kicked, gouged out eyes with her thumbs, driven armored elbows and knees into bone to fracture them. When cornered and pursued, she'd led them into traps and ambushes, before brutally dispatching the survivors, and taking anything of use from the corpses. By the end of it, she'd sawn off a Deathclaw's arm with a sharp rock, before using it like a spiked club to cut a path through the hordes of tunnelers that had tried to chew through the elite riot gear she'd looted from some NCR Ranger's body.

But she'd survived, as she always had. She was exhausted, battered and bruised beyond even the miraculous wonders of a Pre-War stimpak, dragging a Deathclaw's severed arm and a collection of scavenged guns and ammunition of dubious qualities (and the 5.56mm pistol; she'd never let go of it), and she didn't know how much of the blood on her armor was hers and how much belonged to the various ghouls she'd been forced to slaughter... but she'd been alive, when she'd finally reached the end of the road.

A sealed Pre-War command bunker lay in front of her, filled with dormant missiles. She'd never entered it before, but she was familiar with it, if only because even the hardy locals of the Divide hadn't wanted to enter it.

With a determined grimace, she opened the doors, and made her way through the linear corridors, following the arrows left behind for her, ignoring the locked doors, before finally reaching an elevator.

Without a hint of hesitation, she stepped onto the Pre-War lift , and hit a button.

The ancient platform under her trembled, and rusty gears rumbled, before she began ascending.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the lift ground to a halt, and the massive blast doors in front of her opened.

Her jaw almost dropped, as it revealed a massive room in front of her, with multiple nuclear missiles lining the sides.

That wasn't the biggest shocker, though.

As eyebots flew past her, and the silo doors slowly opened, illuminating the room, her eyes were drawn to the middle of the room.

Directly across from her, at the far end of the room, behind a flag of Pre-War America hanging from two support beams like a banner, a missile slowly began rising. And in front of both was a dark-skinned man with dreadlocks in a gas mask, sitting on a crate, tending to a massive rifle as he watched the emerging WMD.

"So, you came." Courier Five growled as she stepped forward, not looking away. "Your city, Vegas, lies in the other direction... with the rest of its slaves. Or is it just, you, Courier?"

"I'm here, just like you asked." Pyrrha growled back. "Now give me some answers!"

"Ask away." Courier Five allowed magnanimously, finally turning to her. "You came all this way for answers. Only currency I have."

Pyrrha blinked, not having expected it to be that easy, but began: "Who are you?"

"You can call me Ulysses." Ulysses introduced himself, before conceding: "Not my given name, but close enough. Took it from history, found it in a book. It's an Old World name. Ulysses lived a long time ago, long before the Old World set fire to itself. He made a mark without being myth. Had to fight during a time when his world had two flags, and he had to make them one."

"Ulysses. Not the myth." Pyrrha breathed quietly, recalling the old history books. "You're honoring history, not stories."

"History." Ulysses mused, as he finally racked the slide of his anti-material rifle, and nodded in satisfaction. "Yes. Ulysses walked a hard road. A general, like Caesar and Oliver. He was Brahmin-stubborn, gave him strength on the battlefield. He led his side to victory, turned two flags into one. That's when he lost - when the fighting was done, the sickness took hold. Lesson there, if history's to be believed."

Pyrrha didn't see it, didn't see what Ulysses had to do with the Civil War general, and she didn't care. Instead, she changed the subject, and continued her questions: "Why did you call me here? Did we have some history or something?"

"Who are you, that you do not even know your own history?" Ulysses scoffed, glaring at her. "No, we've never spoken before now. But I knew of you, your name. Your road, to and from the Divide, what that meant for the Legion. Knew you through your actions. Knew you'd walked the West as I'd walked the East. Learned different lessons. And I would never have discovered the Divide without you."

"You... you're the one who brought the Legion here?" Pyrrha gasped. She'd always thought that the Legion had just followed the NCR in, as they'd followed her. To finally have someone to blame...

"Yes." Ulysses uttered bluntly, before nostalgia entered his voice: "But... when I followed your road to the Divide those years ago, I saw the symbol I wore all around me. An Old World symbol. The symbol of America. Strong, to survive here - its people, strong. Seeing it... changed me, just as seeing Hoover Dam changed Caesar and the NCR."

"... you believed in it too, didn't you?" Pyrrha asked sadly, remembering the fledgling community that had once been here. A pang of sympathy shot up, for another courier who'd found a home here. "Or what it once was?"

"There was hope here, another chance." Ulysses reminisced sorrowfully. "A new nation, stirring to life. A place I could have set my flag. Not the America of old. But something larger than the tribes of the East, something larger than the houses of the West. Something better. The Divide... could have bridged both, like Hoover Dam. Now like the Dam, it's too covered in blood to see what it could have been. You gave life to this place. I followed your road here, saw the Divide. You led me here, so that I could see. Then, you brought it to an end."

"Me?" Pyrrha blinked, as the small voice that had always blamed her for being a curse grew louder. Then she shook her head, remembering Jaune's words. "I didn't blow up the Divide! I didn't cause the NCR and the Legion to fight over it!"

"But you did." Ulysses stated simply, venom filling his voice, replacing any trace of sadness. "You delivered a package. Had markings that matched those in the Divide. Not all... but enough. Military markings, from some place the Bear had savaged in the West."

"Navarro..." Pyrrha breathed, remembering that last delivery. Then she shook her head, and defended herself: "What does that have to do with anything? That was two whole weeks before it's destruction!"

"It took them two weeks, to open the package." Ulysses snarled. "It was a device, a detonator. One I'd never seen before - or heard before. And when the device opened, started to speak. When it did, the Divide answered back. Those missiles you've seen, buried in their silos. They exploded beneath the ground, cracked the landscape. Only takes a few of them, locked below ground, to tear apart the earth... and cast dust, sand... ash... into the skies above. Sand, ash... the dead... the Divide skies became a graveyard."

"No..." Pyrrha couldn't help but pray that he was wrong, as she connected the dots in her head. She did remember the last delivery; a package from the NCR, taken from their old war with the Enclave. The Enclave could definitely have pulled something like this off...

And the area. It looked like it'd been hit with earthquakes, particularly bad ones... or underground detonations.

"Yes." Ulysses growled. "You carried that thing to the Divide. I know because I followed you as you walked the road, watched you do it... watched what happened next..."

"How did you survive, if you saw what happened?" Pyrrha asked weakly, desperately, wondering if there could be any other survivors...

"Should've died there..." Ulysses admitted. "The machines here... saved me. I was the only survivor... or thought I was. Your package, the message inside, awoke medical machines... began to build themselves, then others. They only take what parts they find in the Divide, never roam beyond it - can't even leave the silos without a human to shadow, like hounds."

"Why you?" Pyrrha demanded. "Why not anyone else?!"

"Maybe they saw the flag on my jacket, thought I was of America." Ulysses shrugged. "If so, history saved me. A sign. But no. None of the people that lived here survived..."

Pyrrha couldn't help but grimace at the irony. The only survivors of the Divide... two couriers from the outside, who'd called it home.

More importantly, the two couriers who'd inadvertently doomed it, by bringing in the the NCR, the Legion, and that final package...

Jaune had been wrong.

The Divide was her fault.

As it turned out, she still had some tears left in her.

Even as she wept, though, she couldn't understand one thing.

"Why... why go through all of this trouble?" Pyrrha couldn't help but ask. "Why bring me back here?! Revenge?"

"Not the name I'd give it. Not the name the dead would give it." Ulysses scoffed. "Revenge isn't the message I have for you. More than that... Courier. I learned from you. Both the weapon to kill a nation, and the strength to do it. You showed me a road, a way to carry my message. You've already answered for what you've done. Now the flag you follow will answer for it."

As if to punctuate his words, alarms and sirens began blaring out throughout the silo.

"Ulysses... what the fuck have you done?" A horrified Pyrrha asked, as she felt rumbling beneath her feet.

"The Divide is awakening - the package, and the message within, have come full circle." Ulysses declared fervently. "The sequence has begun, just as before. Except this time, the missiles will touch the sky instead of being locked beneath the ground."

"You're going to nuke the Mojave?!" Pyrrha exclaimed in shock.

"I'll turn the Long 15 into miles of fire, cut off the Mojave." Ulysses corrected her. "NCR will fall back, and without NCR to support it, Vegas will fall to the Legion. That grave of lights, back to dust and ghosts, as was meant. After this, only one flag will remain over the Mojave. Let that one fly, or destroy itself."

"Are you mad?" Pyrrha tried reasoning with him, though she could hear the conviction in his words. "You've seen what happened here! if you want to blame me, go ahead, but why are you trying to recreate what happened here all over again! I don't understand!"

"You don't see, listen - even when it's all around you, no matter if I nailed it into your head like a gift from Caesar." Ulysses sounded disgusted by her ignorance. "You brought the Divide to life, Courier. You walked the road. Brought the Bear, then the Bull, brought me, following your tracks. And when I saw the Divide you made, I saw a second chance, a new way of thinking. My world - no longer the East.

"Then you brought the West in that package. Destroyed it all. Nearly killed me, flesh and spirit. You destroyed something larger than the Bear, greater than the Bull. And even when you could have turned away, you came back. You destroyed a nation taking its first breath. A place that could have been my home. Now, I'll destroy yours."

"House can make New Vegas what the Divide could always have been!" Pyrrha pleaded. "Please, it's people don't deserve this!"

"No... your answer is not enough." Ulysses shook his head. "They deserve what comes. Vegas is born of the corrupt, the blind, lost, that gather to it. Without them... it would fall dark. I will turn it into another Divide."

Pyrrha winced, remembering her words to Jaune, and Freeside. She couldn't truly deny it. But even so... she couldn't do this to them. To him. "I can change things! Jaune can change things! The Vegas of the past doesn't have to be the Vegas of the future!"

"Your future with House has two roads." Ulysses retorted. "The road the tribals in Vegas walked... their spirits crushed... or your face on a robot servant, smiling forever in a dead casino. There's future in neither. You believe. Yet... you have been blinded by the wrong symbol. Let its light give you what strength it can... today marks its end."

"I won't fucking let you." Pyrrha snarled, drawing a ghoul's 12.7mm submachine gun. She had caused the cataclysm that had claimed the Divide... and she would be damned if she allowed it to happen again. "This is madness!"

"No, now there is purpose!" Ulysses declared fervently, eyes glinting with certainty. "What I do is an act of conviction! I'll finish history's work. If the Divide couldn't kill you... perhaps these spears of the Old World can. Let's end this, Courier, you and I. Here, with the Old World flag as witness."

Pyrrha quickly raised the gun, and squeezed the trigger, firing in his general direction.

Ulysses was faster, and he leapt to his feet and ducked behind the crate he'd been sitting on, as bullets flew threw the air, harmlessly bouncing off the ICBM.

As Pyrrha emptied her magazine, the barrel of Ulysses's anti-material rifle poked out from the side of the crate, and he fired a shot.

The round, meant to smash through power armor and tanks, blew through her scavenged weapon before smashing into her chest, the elite riot gear successfully absorbing the diminished blow as she was knocked to her feet.

Pyrrha hissed in pain, already weakened by the exertions of the past week, but forced herself to roll out of the way, as another shot rang out, and a small crater appeared where she'd been just a moment ago.

Gritting her teeth, she threw the ruined gun as hard as she could, even as she pushed herself off of the floor, and sprinted in the opposite direction, hoping to jump behind a nearby console.

Her eyes widened, as she heard a beeping noise, but it was too late.

The satchel charge hidden behind the console blew up as she'd reached it, sending the wrecked metal flying into her legs.

Pyrrha stumbled, but managed to turn her fall into an awkward dive, bringing her into a lowered platform, providing her with some small measure cover.

Pyrrha took the brief spell to raise her top and roughly jab a stimpak into her leg, ignoring the pain, before pulling out an assault carbine and an NCR service rifle.

Before she could get up to lay some suppressing fire, however, a primed plasma grenade fell down next to her.

Pyrrha kicked it away, and jumped up, before spotting another primed grenade being thrown at her.

She tossed her guns at it, and make a break for the side, before the fragmentation grenade went off, knocking her into a nearby metal beam.

"Worthy of Hanlon." Ulysses spat in self-deprecation, as he approached her prone form. He loathed Hanlon for his cowardly tricks, but grudgingly respected the old ranger chief for still succeeding nonetheless.

Then he spotted the barest hint of movement, and ducked behind a pillar he knew was safe as two 5.56mm rounds flew through where he'd been a moment ago, as Pyrrha pointed her 5.56mm pistol at the pillar, breathing heavily.

Even though her armor had successfully absorbed most of the blast from the explosion, it had still probably ruptured something inside her, and hitting the metal beam had fractured her already-injured shin.

Probably.

She was too hopped up on adrenaline and the stimpak's mild painkillers to really give a fuck about the pain.

She coughed and spat out a glob of bloody phlegm.

She didn't care about that either.

After everything she'd learned, about what her role in the Divide really had been... she didn't know if she deserved a second chance. Didn't know if she deserved to live.

But even if she hadn't deserved it... she'd still been given a second chance.

She didn't know if House truly was the best option for the Mojave... but she couldn't reconcile Ulysses's words about him with the stern-but-fair man who'd ultimately given Jaune a chance to prove himself, despite his reservations, his plans, and had ended up keeping his word when Jaune had succeeded.

And most of all...

She couldn't let him do to the Mojave what she'd done to the Divide.

Not to all the innocent people in the Mojave, the ones who'd helped her in her travels.

Not to Jaune.

She forced herself to her feet, ignoring the feeling of two ragged edges of bone grinding against each other as she gingerly took weight off of her injured leg, keeping her gun trained on his location the whole time.

Ulysses burst out of the pillar, keeping his profile low.

Pyrrha only managed to squeeze off a single shot, that barely grazed his cheek, before he was upon her, and she was forced to toss her gun aside and pull the Deathclaw arm from her back as his flag pole descended upon her.

She was furious, and with strength only pain and conviction could give, but Ulysses was well-rested, equally furious and assured in his convictions, and he had a proper weapon in his hand.

The gilded eagle that capped the maple wood of Old Glory was strong, like America had once been, and as he dodged and weaved between the claws, the weight of his staff, of his convictions, shattered the bones of the Deathclaw's arm, each blow reducing the effectiveness of the crude cudgel.

Even so, even when the Deathclaw arm had the structural integrity of jelly, it was still a heavy slab of meat, being wielded by the Pyrrha Nikos, and so Ulysses gave it the respect it deserved, patiently biding his time, as he always had.

Finally, as he feinted and withdrew, Pyrrha overswung, and the battered arm flopped forward, forcing her to take a step forward to compensate for the uncontrollable weight.

Ulysses pounced on the moment of weakness in an instant, stepping to the side, avoiding the makeshift weapon even as he charged forward, breaking her knuckles with his staff while he kicked her in the injured shin.

As she dropped to one knee, gasping in pain, Ulysses twirled Old Glory once overhead, before swinging the flag pole with his shoulders and upper torso in one fluid motion, smashing it into her forehead.

Pyrrha fell to the ground, but before she could get up, a heavy boot planted itself on her sternum, and the tip of the pole planted itself on her shin, right where the bone had been fractured.

Ulysses took a moment to look down at the Courier, feeling a grim sense of satisfaction and disappointment for what was to come. After all this time, he hadn't expected it to truly be that easy... to walk out of the silo alive, despite all of his convictions.

He'd even programmed the machines to blare out alarms and sirens throughout the entire Divide as soon as the elevator had first ascended, knowing that it would lure the Marked Men to his temple... in case he could not kill her, the Divide ghosts would flood the bunker, cut off her escape.

It mattered not. He had prevailed against the Courier, proven the strength of his ideals.

And now, it was time to deliver his message to the rest of the Mojave as well.

"End of the road, Courier." Ulysses growled, ignoring the distant sounds of the elevator as he raised Old Glory overhead. "The Divide'll be your grave."

"Fuck you." Pyrrha just glared at him defiantly, before looking away.

Even as the sirens blared, and the ground rumbled, her gaze was drawn only to the 5.56mm pistol.

She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, unable to clench her broken fist, refusing to give Ulysses the satisfaction of see her tears.

I deserve this...

I should have listened...

I'm sorry for failing, again...

I'm sorry, Jaune.

"GET AWAY FROM HER!"

Pyrrha's eyes snapped open, and both her head and Ulysses's spun as they turned to face the unexpected newcomer.

No way.

It couldn't be.

There was no way it could be him.

Pyrrha ignored those thoughts, as the two couriers both just stared at the sudden arrival of Jaune Arc.


Author's Note: And here we go, with a chapter to start the week... as Jaune skips through the entire Lonesome Road DLC to arrive right at Ulysses's temple-silo-bunker, just in time to see Pyrrha about to die.

Also, apparently, we hit 1k followers. When? How? I've got no idea.

Yes, I'm aware that ED-E was originally pivotal to the Lonesome Road DLC... but here, I'm not using him in the story. Instead, Pyrrha never gets any messages from Ulysses, until their final confrontation, and Ulysses has had to resort to other means, in order to be able to lay the path and activate the missiles. Why? Well, besides the fact that Jaune probably wouldn't react well to meeting an Enclave eyebot... there's the fact that I haven't even touched ED-E's presence at all in this story, and so I didn't want to just suddenly introduce a new character just to kill it off.

But then again, given the way the war went, it also wouldn't make sense for ED-E to have survived. Originally, Colonel Autumn ordered that the Duraframe model of eyebots be scrapped because the war with the Brotherhood was going poorly, and they needed to build more Hellfire armor. But in this story? The Enclave were pushing back the Brotherhood on all fronts, until Jaune suddenly showed up at Site R. And, less than a day after that, as Autumn was rushing to activate the purifier to recruit Wastelanders to bury the Brotherhood in, Liberty Prime marched on Project Purity, and Ruby killed him. The swift and utter decapitation of Enclave leadership here means there's no one to order the Duraframe robots to be scrapped for more Hellfire armor, meaning that ED-E is never sent away from Adams AFB... and we all know what happened at Adams AFB.

In a similar vein, she never gets the remote detonator, and doesn't blow up scattered warheads to proceed. Because why would she blow up bits of her old home, when she can just walk around the rubble, or climb it, or find other paths? The Divide has multiple beautiful set pieces and lovely loot... but there's a world of a difference between players, bound by the limitations of the game engine, exploring every square inch for hidden treasure before progressing and how people on a mission would actually act (or be able to act). For example, the main reason for a player to enter the Cave of Abaddon and fight the Deathclaw Rawr is for the achievement, the thrill of the fight, and the promise of sweet sweet overpowered rewards. Pyrrha, and any sane person who encountered such a cave in the middle of Deathclaw territory in reality, would probably just stay the fuck out of it unless they had a really good reason.

As for Ulysses's character... honestly, it's hard for me to peg him down. Basically all the dialogue I use for him comes from his actual lines, and based on what I can tell... he's a man who saw the Divide die, and was both horrified by the destruction of his home... and inspired by the impact a single individual could have on history, and is determined to recreate the cataclysm that shaped it. Except that, instead of killing the Divide, he wants to kill all the false nations of the Wasteland. If his America cannot exist, he will not abide any other nation to exist in what once was America. He doesn't care that Pyrrha is trying to recreate what the Divide could have been... she hasn't convinced him that it would be his Divide, and so he will emulate the Courier, and recreate the Divide, in all its terrible glory.

And I felt this was a good way to contrast Pyrrha and Ulysses in battle. Pyrrha is a vicious pragmatist, but the mighty champion is exhausted, weakened physically and mentally by the exertions and revelations of the Lonesome Road. Ulysses, meanwhile, would have been able to go toe-to-toe with her in her prime, and he's had time to study her, and make preparations. He's taken the time to set up booby traps, even if he dislikes the tactic, and memorize the layout of his "temple". And so, when they fight... the results are obvious.

Also, you know... I realized I never did mention what happened to Raven Branwen from Skyrim... hmmm, I wonder who formed the Branwen tribe in the Fallout world.

Just a thought.

I'm sure nothing will come of it.