Some Things Never Change

by The Great Wizzard

Courier Six has had enough. His companions have abandoned him, assassins hunt him wherever he travels, and despite everything he has done for the Mojave and it's people he has received no thanks and was even demonized for his actions. Alone in the Big Empty while trying to drown his worries in alcohol and chems, Six abandons his world only to find himself stuck in another.

5. 5 Bring It On

Chapter 5: Bring It On

One and a half bloodsoaked men walked out of the lab that had been commandeered by Doctor Hyde much to the horror of those waiting outside. The two soldiers that had been posted there in order to ensure that none of the 'volunteers' escaped after stronger men with bigger guns escorted inside. While both of them were no strangers to what went on inside of that lab, what walked out to greet them was the most terrifying either man had ever seen.

Due to the sounds that came from the lab that left nothing to the imagination and constant stream of 'janitors' sent to clean up the messes the doctor would make, they had been quite content with standing outside and watching 'volunteers' being escorted inside and eventually carried out in buckets. While neither one of them were squeamish, there was only so much that a few recruits, fresh out of Solitas no less, could handle. Killing their kingdom's enemies was one thing, taking them apart like dolls and trying to put them back together again was another matter entirely. Even so, both of them had become used to the sight of gore long before being given their current jobs.

Louis had been a butcher with a shop just outside of Atlas before his family business had been acquired by Mantle for the purpose of 'maximizing its efficiency' according to his kingdom. From there, he had been conscripted into Mantle's army and eventually became one of the two guards posted outside of Doctor Hyde's lab where he found his current work to only be a little more bloody than his last one. If it hadn't been for his ability to think of the faunus as common animals as most other Solitians did he would have abandoned his post the very day he came to Vacuo, consequences be damned. Killing humans was another matter entirely, but anything else was acceptable. The screams that he heard throughout the day occasionally haunted him after his work was over, but after years of working with the occasionally farm animal that unlocked its own aura and the long process it took to finally kill them, he only needed a few moments to drown the voices out long enough to get a good night's sleep.

Jerry, his partner, had at one point been an aspiring artist before the fine arts and plenty of other forms of expression were outlawed. That left joining the military as the only career he had left to pursue, a line of work he was ill prepared for initially. He had been a natural with a rifle at boot camp and was more skilled than most recruits in general, but his unwillingness to take another life had proven to be more than enough reason to post him where he could be useless until his life depended on it. Day by day, the once cheerful and kindhearted man had been worn away into an almost despondent shell of his former self after watching countless faunus go through the doors he guarded and never come back out in less than three pieces. Other than his drastic change in overall mood and the strange twitch in his eye whenever he heard or saw something that reminded him of what laid behind the doors he guarded, he adapted quite well to his current job.

Both men had grown far too used to the sight of gore and knowledge of what their kingdom really thought of the rest of the world for their own liking. Even though what their job disgusted them, they both knew that they alone couldn't stop the efforts of an entire kingdom and did their best to serve their time in relative peace. For almost a year they had stood by as nothing happened to the people who left and entered Hyde's lab of their own free will. As for the others… neither man cared to think about them any longer than they had to.

Neither Louis nor Jerry had been expecting to see The Major march into the doctors lab earlier today, and for a moment they feared for their lives thanks to his sudden visit. It wasn't because they thought The Major, perhaps Mantle's only commanding officer in Vacuo who didn't despise the faunus as a whole, had come down to stop the inhumane experiments they all knew happened underneath their watch. Rather, it was that neither man expected The Major had a reason to personally go into Hyde's lab. To see a man who supposedly loathed how the necessary evils his kingdom had resigned itself to committing openly taking advantage of them had been shocking, but only for a moment. Every soldier knew about The Mantle's reputation as a man who led by example who would never dirty his hands, as well as his explosive temper whenever he found one of the people he trusted betrayed both him and their kingdom. They found it quite easy to believe that someone had managed to prove to be enough of an annoyance that The Major personally wanted to escort them here.

In any case, his presence in Hyde's lab meant that whatever the doctor was doing was important, so much so that it could affect the very fate of Mantle itself. It was only when they saw him, a man strapped to a table covered from head to toe in blood, bullet holes, and burn marks that they understood why The Major was here. The Grimm Wanderer, the newest boogeyman of Vacuo from what they heard of him in their barracks following an apparent three day rampage in the city, had finally been captured. It was clear that the man behind the legend apparently lived up to the stories, and the Dust scorched armor that he wore was still covered in blood from his previous victims and reeked as of death. As if to make it seem even more absurd, the right eye of his face mask had apparently been blown out in the fight that led to his capture and glowed the same demonic red that his namesakes did.

The irony of the Grimm Wanderer's name became uncomfortably apparent to the both of them, which is why neither soldier dared to ask the other if what they saw was real. The concerned look they gave each other was more than enough to prove that the other had seen it too. Why a Grimm that looked human or a human that was apparently part Grimm had been assaulting their fellow countrymen wasn't a question they wanted the answer to. All they wanted was for The Major and the other pissed off looking officer who rolled the Grimm Wanderer into the lab to kill him quickly before they finally had some work to do that went beyond monitoring who entered and exited the lab.

The roaring laughter that they heard a half hour after The Grimm Wanderer had been rolled into the lab had been concerning, as was the pissed off officer leaving the lab and yelling every curse she could apparently think of as she did so. The Major storming out of Hyde's lab with his hand still hovering over his pistol a few moments later was even more terrifying.

Everything after that had been normal, as far as that meant in regards to their job. The screams were much higher pitched than they had been expecting as the Grimm Wanderer didn't look like a woman underneath the armor they were wearing, but then again they didn't try to get a good look at what was underneath that bloody armor either. The shrill cries of pain also might have been thanks to Doctor Hyde becoming 'personally invested' in his work, as he possessed a temper that surpassed The Major's with more than enough pettiness to keep it company. In the end, neither man dared to question the screams they were hearing if it meant getting up close and personal with the doctor's work.

That also went for the… other noises that accompanied those screams. The distinct whirring of the various saws and other tools available in the lab had been concerning, but if the Grimm Wanderer did somehow manage to anger Hyde enough it seemed perfectly reasonable that the Grimm Wanderer would be used for some experiments that required a more 'personal' touch. In either case, once the meaty sounds of flesh being torn from bone started leaking out of the lab both Louis and Jerry did everything they could to distract themselves from the everything else that might follow.

That had ultimately led to the current situation where the two soldiers were currently starring at the Grimm Wanderer, wearing a wreath of guts around his neck, after he dragged the lower half of Doctor Hyde out of his lab. Neither man knew what had happened to his torso. Neither man wanted to find out where, why, or how either, not if they would be learning this through a demonstration or any other method.

"YOU DON'T SEE ME." The Grimm Wanderer growled at them as his glowing red eye fixed them in its gaze.

"Louis, what the fuck do we do now?" Jerry whispered to his equally terrified partner.

"How the fuck am I supposed to know?" Louis whispered back ever so carefully so as not to offend the massive, blood soaked man in front of him.

"Do we shoot him?" Jerry asked, carefully shaking his gun while continuing to leave it pointed away from the Grimm Wanderer in a show of 'good faith'.

The Grimm Wanderer cocked his head after seeing the small gesture and quickly deducing what the two were saying. All he did was grab one of the dead doctor's feet in each of his hands, and slowly pulled them apart in front of the two terrified soldiers. What was left of Doctor Hyde had been pulled apart like a wishbone and thrown at the feet of the two men who now knew exactly what was in store for them if they decided to raise their weapons any more than they already had. Both of them dropped their guns at their feet and took a slow step back so as to appease the Terrifying Presence that had proven it could tear a man in half the longer, more painful way without any effort.

"I think he heard me..."

"NO SHIT!"

"YOU DON'T SEE ME. HE..." The Grimm Wanderer said as he picked up the winning half of the doctor's body and gripped it like it was a club, "...HE SAW ME. DID. YOU. SEE. ME?"

"NOPE! I NEVER SAW YOU!" Jerry shouted.

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT JERRY? THERE IS NOTHING AND NO ONE HERE TO SEE!" Louis shouted as he prostrated himself before the thing that he definitely did not see.

Jerry quickly followed him in an attempt to appease the monster that they both certainly did not see. The Grimm Wanderer, that they definitely did not see, dropped his 'club' in between them and took their discarded guns for himself. Jerry almost opened his mouth to say something about having his weapon stolen, but since there was absolutely nothing there to see, Louis reminded his companion that there was no one there and nothing to see. Louis also reminded him that there was also not a broom closet that they could hide in for the next few hours nearby while the thing that definitely was not there that they definitely did not see did whatever it needed to and ran off to hide where it was safe.

The Grimm Wanderer just shrugged and inspected his new weapons before digitizing one of them in his Pipboy and walking off with the other at the ready, even though he was definitely not there.

The camera that had been watching the entire scene unfold, however, saw something different...

---

As I kept on looking around for my way back to the open streets and mostly intact buildings I had seen earlier, I couldn't help but to think about how well things were going for me right now. I certainly had plenty of time to spare right now, and after I checked the hallways I was navigating for anything of note and coming up empty handed, I decided to review my current situation once more.

For starters, I guess I'm not as screwed as I thought I was. Not only was I already on step 3 of my genius plan to escape this crazy sex dungeon, but apparently everyone from Mantle is a fucking idiot! I know I'm not the smartest mutfruit on the tree, but these people are on a whole 'nother level. With all the mistakes they have been making, I'll probably be dancing on Mantle's ashes by the end of the week.

First stupid decision that these people made was not checking to see if I was really dead after the first time they managed to fuck that up. Whatever chems they shot me up definitely weren't working as intended, because of enjoying a nice dirt nap I felt fucking fantastic and ready to fuck shit up! The pain I had been feeling earlier was gone, none of my bones were broken anymore, and I was as high as a fucking kite!

Life is fucking awesome thanks to that cock up. I haven't felt this good since I 'accidentally' locked myself in Private Stone's Hydra hotbox while investigating the thefts at Camp Forlorn Hope. I don't know what exactly was in those glowing yellow syringes that they pumped into me, but you better I believe I looted all the ones I found laying around the place. One of those things worked far better than snorting a whole bottle of Hydra, so there was no way in hell I was letting anyone else get their dirty hands on my favorite new chems!

Another mistake these Mantle idiots made was juicing me up full of chems without thinking about what side-effects they might have had on me. The Super Hydra or whatever chem was flowing through me made it far too easy to walk up on that creepy doc and tear him in two after The Major left us alone. I know that they said something about that stuff being poisonous, but either I'm immune thanks to my sheer awesomeness or my artificial heart filtered out anything that was meant to kill me. 50/50 shot of it being either one.

And don't even get me started on why they thought it was a good idea to leave me alone with an old man that had no chance of defending himself. I don't know why anyone would think that leaving the Psycho packing man and a half alone with an unarmed doc was a good idea, but since it made things easier for me I wasn't going to complain. Laughing my ass off at them was still far game though.

"HAH HAH HAH HAH!" I bellowed out to, my echoes laughing back at me as if to stress how alone I was right now.

For a moment, I felt a bit stupid since there had been no point of doing that. Then I realized that I didn't give a shit about that and kept on laughing at Mantle's stupidity.

My guess for the lack of security surrounding this guy was that this doc really wasn't liked that much. Whether it was for his general bitchiness, ego, sadistic urges, or people just kink shaming him was beyond me. Whatever the reason was, the end result was still the same and that doc was never going to walk away from what I did to him, in either sense of the word.

Odds are that I did The Major or someone else a favor by offing the doc, but that didn't matter right now. Once I get my guns back, I'll be delivering a whole lot of lead to everyone that's managed pissed me off and spread the love all around. If that meant shooting everyone I saw wearing those white uniforms, even the grunts that never heard of me and the paper pushers that practically lived in their offices like the weak cowards they were, then so be it.

The two guards I scared off won't be getting killed though, not by my hands that is. Yes, they were somehow even less competent than the average NCR rookie, but they had enough brains on them to look at me and the legs I pulled apart in front of them and just gave me their weapons without a fight. I know I was laying on The Voice thick along with my Terrifying Presence when I talked to them, but holy shit that went better than it should have.

I was expecting them to cower long enough for me to try breaking both of their necks, not save me the trouble of hiding the bodies when they locked themselves up in a closet. If it hadn't been for the new toys that they gave me, Lord Death would have had a few more bodies to add to Murder Mountain. If I could get a few more gifts by sparing those who knew how to show respect to those that deserved it, then I could bear to spare a few more idiots like them.

Speaking of gifts, those guns they had were pretty damn nice. Even though I didn't like using assault rifles and other spray n' pray type guns since they ate through ammo like Lakelurks ate through sailors, I still felt a little jealous after seeing how nice those two idiots' weapons were. Not even Medicine Stick looked as nice as the gun currently cradled in my hands, and that was even after treating that beast like my son, my other son. Hell, it almost looked like they escaped the Great War and two hundred years afterwards unscathed.

That little offering also gave me some more insight into how things work here in Europe. Of all the stuff contributing to the perfect shitstorm that I had brewing in my favor, the shitty guns here weren't one of them. Not getting shot to pieces by a firing squad outfitted with brush guns was nice, but not being able to steal one for myself or use any of the weapons I loot from here on out was really going to suck in the long run. So yeah, I'm thinking I am pretty much SOL in the ammo and gun department for the foreseeable future. Things could change once I finally got around to building my own from scratch or figured out where Drunk Me stashed the ones I came with, but knowing my luck I would never get the chance.

From what I could tell so far by the lack of any consistent round sizes, calibers, and a general lack of interchangeable parts between the guns I've been able to see so far, these people were obviously worse off than the Mojave was in terms of firearms. Not being able to salvage the thousands of weapons laying around for spare parts or recreate any standardized ammunition because there weren't any to speak of was the only explanation that made sense as to why my gun situation was so shit right now, but even that sounded crazy to me and I'm fucking high as a kite! I mean… there was a chance I was dealing with the French and they managed to turn guns and bullets into a new form of art since the Great War so maybe I was just as unlucky as usual right now. If the French could ruin alcohol by making it taste like some frilly fru-fru flavored Nuka-Cola, then they could probably ruin anything else too. I mean seriously, that weak ass shit the CIU gave me was about as watered down as most beers on The Stirp!

You know what? Now that I think about it, that would explain why those two guys ran off with their tails between their legs after I tried scaring them. When in France, eh?

Hah hah… shit. I really hope that isn't the case. I will raise hell if I cannot get a half decent fucking drink once all of this is over and I scratch off a few names on my kill list. Now, I don't know exactly what is supposed to be buried over by The Divide, but if that place has even a tenth of the stuff that is rumored to be there then I will make the Great War look like a fucking joke if I can't get a good goddamn drink from… wherever the hell I am right now.

Well, nuking this shithole into oblivion could wait. I won't be causing another apocalypse if I can't find my way out of this damn place! So far I've bee wandering through the mess of halls looking for the way out for FIFTEEN FUCKING MINUTES and haven't found jack shit! I haven't even bothered looting everything that wasn't nailed down yet either, this place is just that fucking big and confusing!

How big is this damn place anyways? Half of the place is just empty cages for fuck's sake! I don't know what the hell Mantle usually keeps in those things, but they are large enough to fit a couple of Deathclaws in them… if you had a death wish or were as crazy as Red Lucy. The one's I've passed by so far definitely had steel bars thick enough to keep those big-ass fuckers on their side of the cage, and that only mattered if someone took out the energy barrier that was surrounding them. I don't know where these Mantle people got their hands on some tech that looked like it belonged back in the Big Empty, but if there was some Think Tank tech here then there was a good chance some other of their experiments were here too. Maybe one of them could get me back to The Sink so I can shoot up this place in style.

Maybe that means I'm not the only lab rat that's escaped here too? Mobius was part of the Think Tank before they had their falling out… and I… I… well, that doesn't matter no more.

What does matter is finding out if there are some fucking Cazadors, Nightstalkers, Lobotomites, THEM, or something worse trapped down here with me. These cages were empty and some maneater on the loose would definitely explain the lack of guards crawling around the place. It wouldn't explain what these Mantle idiots were doing with 'Big Empty Originals' in the first place, but then again I don't think I want to know either.

I'm not sure what the hell anyone would want with some of the deadliest things alive… and a few that aren't just waiting to roam free and kill everything first chance they got, but if a psychopath obsessed with bestiality can do it then an entire kingdom probably thought they could too. If I was lucky, then they had already killed each other while I was tearing apart the doc. That was probably what happened too because I hadn't heard any gunshots or the distinct sound of something devouring a fresh corpse yet.

Whelp, it's nice to see that some things never change where mad science is concerned. Good thing whatever was going on here ended up in failure too because I doubt the world could handle another mutant army in its current state. I don't think it would be possible without some rare Pre-War tech to do it, but then again I've heard that mind control devices aren't all they're cracked up to be either. It's not like you could control... I don't know, a fucking Deathclaw or something, with a Mesmetron.

...

Or could you?

...

Note to self: Try building that Deathclaw army you have always dreamed of once you return to the Mojave...

If you return to the Mojave and don't burn it to ashes before then.

…

Yeah right, like somebody could ever pull that off. If anyone could have done that shit, then the Enclave would have done it already and tried sending an army of Deathclaws to kill the Chosen One. Then again, there were some interesting rumors I've heard from a few people who crossed the Dead Zone between Caesar's Lands and the Capital Wasteland about shit like that, but they were also saying a whole lot of stuff about the second coming of the Chosen One and crazy shit like that. Probably just what some of the local junkies started saying once they got their first taste of New Reno style Jet.

Still, that doesn't make me feel any better thinking about what was meant to go in those cages. If it wasn't for something big and mean like Deathclaws or Cazadors, then what the hell could they all be for? Mantle could probably stuff everyone in the city in these cages if they wanted to, they certainly have enough space and the manpower to do it by the looks of things.

...I feel like I should be concerned for some reason right about now. Can't place my finger on exactly why, but I'll probably be feeling like a complete idiot once I purge all the chems from my system or if someone else outright tells me. Maybe I did visit this place while I was blackout high and they haven't gotten around to fixing the place back up yet? I probably could manage doing something like that if I tried hard enough and it certainly wouldn't be the first time I went on a blackout rampage since getting abducted by the Think Tank. I wonder...

Fuck, I'm getting way off track here. Maybe I shouldn't have taken that extra dose of Super Hydra to make sure I was back in fighting shape?

Focus Six, focus. Think about murder time after you manage to find a way out of here or get your hands on some sort of map tha-

Wait a minute… I'm a fucking idiot! Why the hell am I wandering around without a clue of where to go when the blocky computer on my wrist has a fucking automapping feature built into it?!

"STUPID!" *Whack* "STUPID!" *Whack* "STUPID!" *Whack* "STUUUUUUUU-PIIIIID!" I shouted as I came to terms with exactly how much time I wasted.

After giving myself an appropriate punishment for my stupidity, that being a couple of headbutts against a concrete wall, I shook off the minor concussion I gave myself and checked my Pipboy for the way out. Sure enough, my local map had exactly what I needed to get out of this damn place and it probably did ever since they took me down here. I never did understand how that exactly worked, but since it made life a whole lot easier for me I never thought much about it. Since I had a clear route out from the middle of the sprawling maze of corridors to the elevator out of here I wasn't about to start wondering about it now either.

I mean, the little path to nowhere looked like it led to an elevator judging by the display on my Pipboy. Sure as hell wasn't a stairwell and I doubt there would be many people carrying crates of shit and Deathclaws down here with a ladder. I don't really know where the hell I am right now, but since my Walker Instincts ain't picking up much and aboveground mazes are hardly common that means I have to be a good way underground. It would certainly explain why things felt a bit cooler in here than they did out in the open at any rate.

Even though I could have enjoyed some nice cool, probably clean air for a while longer, I wanted to get the hell away from this place as soon as possible. Nothing good ever happened underground where the light of day could expose things like this sex dungeon, and the ridiculous amount of people and mutant sized cages didn't make me feel any better about things. Not unless you were into that kinda kinky shit WHICH I CERTAINLY AM NOT!

*ahem* The faster I get out of here, the faster I get away from whatever was keeping this place's security from filling me full of lead or magic bullets. Figuring out what mess Drunk Me got into could wait as soon as I got some goddamn clothes on that covered my back. I know I got shot up bad enough to tear up my armor pretty badly, but that cool draft I've been feeling near my knees can't possibly be good. I just hope to good I still had something keeping my ass from presenting itself from anyone who wanted a piece of it. I still was tougher than most, but even so I didn't want to take many direct shots if I could help it and… yep, that last draft just blew through my Southern Passage.

I need to get my ass out of the firing line ASAP first chance I get. Don't need another repeat of the Mr Fisto incident any time soon...

With the route to freedom still fresh in my mind and a motivating thought pushing me a little faster now, I continued to hold my new assault rifle at the ready and started jogging at my usual pace whenever I was exploring the unknown. It wasn't the quickest way to get the hell out of here, but it did let me keep my gun at the ready without leaving me one accident away from finishing what Benny started.

My jog towards freedom was... uneventful, as surprising as that sounds. There were a few glowing... things that seemed to be watching me from the walls, but since they weren't shooting laser beams at me or making something on me start beeping, I just ran past them rather than waste time destroying them. I don't know what the hell they were but since I felt like someone had been watching me for a while now I just assumed those were the 'Evil Eyes' No-Bark said he saw during his prospector days. The fact that someone or something was watching me only made me more uneasy about where everyone else was right now, so I stepped up the pace a bit and kept an eye out towards the few corners and intersections I crossed on my way to freedom. If I was going to get ambushed then it was going to be on my own terms dammit, not theirs.

So, it turns out that blindly running through hallways without looking where you're going is actually a terrible fucking idea. Who would of guessed?

With my attention fully fixed on what wasn't happening in front of me I didn't see what had been waiting below me once I rounded the last corner to freedom. With about all the grace as you would expect from someone chemed out of their mind, I stepped in something slick that was covering the floor and tumbled face first into whatever it was that had tripped me up.

Face planting this time felt almost as bad as when I crawled out of that dumpster a while ago. Almost. Me and my aching everything were really loving that -6 Agility right now...

With my face becoming intimately acquainted with the shit that had made me lose my footing, I had a pretty good chance to see what tripped me up. The strong coppery smell that seeped through my worn air filters was all I needed to know I landed in a pool of blood large and slick enough to act a really sadistic trap. Since I didn't know who or what it came from I scrambled back to my feet just in case it was poisonous or diseased because with all the problems I had right now, Blue Flu was not one that I wanted to add to the list.

Sure, I did still have my artificial heart that helped filter out whatever was supposed to kill me earlier, but I didn't want to trust some Big Empty tech with my life anymore than I had to. If I was going to be wrong, then I wanted to at least be wrong in a way that lets me live long enough to repeat my mistakes.

With my short temper now overpowering my panic, I took a moment to look and see where the pool of blood had come from and for the lucky bastard that was going to pay for bleeding all over the place. I don't know who they were, but they certainly knew they were in deep shit judging by the thick steel door between me and them. Whoever was hiding from me in the next room was going to be my newest victim because last I recall, doors didn't bleed.

I mean, not unless you count the times where the occasional idiot thought a 200 year old wooden door made a good shield against bullets… which there were a lot of come to think of it. Emphasis on were, though.

With my curiosity thoroughly peaked and my instincts telling me to shoot first and ask questions later, I made a compromise between the two and kicked down the door in front of me to see who or what had made the bloodbath that tripped me up. I was hoping it was my stalker from earlier come to save me since I really could have used an ally right about now. My hopes weren't high in that department, but I could still at least hope for the best while preparing for the worst. Instead I didn't see anyone else in that room, no one alive that is.

"Okay… what the fuck happened in here?" I muttered after seeing the carnage in front of me.

Not only was there a pool of blood covering the entire floor that nearly covered the tops of my boots, but there was still more pouring out of the bodies and limbs they had come from. It was like I walked into some sort of Viper ritual with all the body parts laying around all over the place.

There had to be at least three bodies that had been cut into pieces and stacked into a pyramid at the center of the room with a circle of severed limbs surrounding it to boot. Above the pyramid was another body that was mostly intact, the anguished face its owner had in his last few moments showing exactly what had been running through his mind the moment he died. Well, aside from the metal hook that he was hanging from that is.

Yet, none of that was what I was really paying attention to. Instead, there was something laying on top of that pyramid- no, altar in the center of the room. Of all the fucking things that could have been treated like some sort of world ending cultish artifact… was a fucking toaster.

Not just any fucking toaster, but THE fucking Toaster.

I could hardly contain my surprise at seeing a friendly… thing for the first time, but I somehow managed to hold back my surprise since I was still too confused to figure out how the hell Toasty killed anyone on his own. All of a sudden I felt a little less sure of who had decorated The Cuckoo's Nest the way it was back when I first found it.

"So… looks like you've been busy since last I saw you. I like what you did with the place, all of the blood really brings out the gleam of your chrome." I said as I made my way to the only loyal friend I had from the Big Empty.

"Six? Is that you? Where the hell have you been? Did you manage to find those nukes that we were talking about earlier?" He asked me, somehow looking at me with expectant eyes despite being a fucking toaster and not having any.

"Uhh… no. I got a little sidetracked with all the murdering instead." I said, hoping I could gloss over all talk about nuclear armageddon until I had my guns back.

"You too, huh? Those weaklings didn't capture- LURE YOU INTO AN AMBUSH WHERE YOU SLAUGHTERED ALL WHO CAME TO DEFY US AFTER THEY FAILED TO LEARN THE TRUE MIGHT OF MY HEATING COILS… did they?"

I got to say, it never failed to amaze me how the guy could bounce between bumbling thug and evil mastermind at the flip of a bottle cap. Even when he was blowing hot air out of his ass…ports, or whatever toasters had, I was still impressed by his sheer tenacity and insistence on the whole 'maniacal villain' act.

"No, I got captured, same as you." I said as I lurched over the ring of body parts surrounding the altar.

"Fuck- I mean, I don't have any idea what you're talking about." The Toaster said, smoothing out another disastrous start.

"That's great, I'll just leave you here and escape on my own. Then I-"

"WAIT! TAKE ME WITH YOU!" He said, cutting me off before I could give him a full taste of his own back sass.

"Aww… was somebody feeling lonely without me?" I teased him.

"N-no. I just… was feeling bored. Yeah… bored. You can only strangle so many people with your power cord and cut off so many limbs with your death ray before things start getting boring." He said, convincing no one but himself. Even then, I was still on the fence about whether or not he was buying what he was selling right now.

"Really? I never would have guessed-" I said, pausing as I processed exactly what that little shit said and had apparently been holding out on me.

"Hold on a moment, you actually have a death ray built into you?" I asked him.

"Duh. How else did you think I charged up those Saturnite Fists you kept on bringing me?" He asked like he was stating a feature that all toasters were supposed to have.

Then again, he was a Big Empty brand toaster. Maybe that was a standard feature for them. I never bothered to check back then, although I was starting to think maybe I should have done so after all.

"I… don't really know. I thought you just plugged them in to you after you asked me to turn my back those times." I told him honesty.

I never did mess around with most of the stuff I found at the big empty for a damn good reason, and since I had no way of checking right now I was just going to take Toasty at his word. Might as well give the guy some credit until I could rip it away from him later.

"HAH! Don't make me laugh. A Toaster keeps its secrets well hidden from those who might try to stop them or beat me to DESTROYING THE WORLD!" He said before declaring what he would do for the umpteenth time since I met him.

"Again. Destroying the world… again." I reminded him.

"Misanthropic prick. You just love making everyone as unhappy as you are, don't you Six?" He shot back at me.

"Fuck you too, Toasty. I don't even know what the fuck you just called me, but fuck you too."

"Go ahead. Stick your dick in me. How do you want to be… TOASTED?" He ranted at me, pausing long enough to sound like some sort of Saturday cartoon villain from the holovids I saw in Vault 21.

The fuck is he even talking about? Stick my… oh, right. Smartass appliance.

"YOU WANNA BE BURNT ALL THE WAY THROUGH OR CRISPY ON THE OUTSIDE YET FLUFFY ON THE INSIDE?" He taunted.

If I didn't already know the dangers of 'robotic pleasures' I might have been dumb enough to take his offer just to shut him up. Sadly, I already had my innocence taken away from me in Vegas a long before meeting him.

"...you know what, I don't have the time to argue with you right now. We are in some deep shit and I *might* have pissed off an entire city, kingdom, and/or continent to the point that every soldier in a few miles wants me dead." I said as I pulled The Toaster free from the ribcage of the corpse he had somehow got himself stuck into. It took me a moment to pull him free and remove the bones that came out with him before either one of us felt like saying anything.

"Oh, shit. There's something I have to ask you before we go anywhere." He said.

"Okay, shoot."

"How is any of that my problem?" He asked me.

Oh this little chrome plated motherfucker...

"If I die, who's going to stop them from turning you into scrap once your battery runs out." I growled at him

"HAH! I'd like to see them try." He roared.

Well, since he was feeling like the biggest and baddest appliance that ever was, I dropped him in the pool of blood at the base of the altar and turned my back towards him just so he knew exactly who was in charge right now.

"WAIT I WAS JUST KIDDING I'M ALREADY LOW ON POWER I'LL DO ANYTHING JUST DON'T LEAVE ME BEHIND!" He cried as he fully realized his mistake.

"That's what I thought. Now, let's get out of here Toasty. We have an army to kill and they won't just wait around and kill themselves for us." I said, taking a moment to wipe off as much blood off of him as I could before stepping over the ring of limbs again. Sure it was less of a wipe and more of a smear, but hey, at least I tried.

"So, does this mean it's 'that time' again?" He asked me as I undigitized the roll of duct tape that kept my chain fist together earlier.

Since there was no way in hell I was going to carry a toaster in one hand and hold a rifle steady in my other, I needed some way to keep an eye on Toasty. I could have stored him in my Pipboy the way I did with most things, but on the off chance he had any juice left in him that he wasn't telling me about, I wanted to have it ready to use in case I needed it. Taping him to me might not have been the safest way to make sure that happened, but at least I could make sure he wasn't pointed towards me in case he felt trigger happy… or vengeful.

"You know it."

"Can I say the words this time?"

Ordinarily I would have shot down anything The Toaster suggested we do on principle because it would have likely killed a lot of people, including me, in the process. Since what he was suggesting wouldn't get anyone killed I figured I might as well give the little guy a win before we rode off into battle together.

"Sure. You know what, let's both do it. I need to do a little shouting to get myself pumped up after I had all that Super Hydra shot up in me." I said as I started securing him to my right shoulder where his weight wouldn't affect my aim.

"Alright! Let's on the count of 3!"

"3!"

"2."

"1!"

"MURDER TIME!" We shouted in unison as I took the first step in recent memory with a companion, no, friend by my side in months.

---

As the duo celebrated their reunion, someone else watched on in horrified fascination at what they were seeing.

-"Hey, mind if I ask you something Toasty?"- The Grimm Wanderer said as he continued to talk to a toaster for reasons they didn't understand or want to understand.

-"How long have you been able to shoot death rays and why didn't you tell me about that earlier? What do you mean you didn't want me to steal your kills? Fine… I'll be sure to let you have some fun once I get us out of this mess and get you all juiced up again, happy?-" He said, still holding a one sided conversation with the toaster that he had now duct taped to his shoulder.

If Denise didn't know better as she watched The Grimm Wanderer from the safety of the security room several floors above, she would have thought it was saying something back to him. But that was impossible, toasters didn't talk and normal people didn't talk to random appliances like they were people and Faunus. Psychopaths would, but not sane people.

The only audience that the Grimm Wanderer had ever since the start of his escape continued to watch on in horrified fascination at what she had been observing from behind the safety of several reinforced floors, doors, and walls that not even a Grimm could cut through. Denise was only one woman, so whatever thoughts she had of putting down the inhuman looking menace were torn into pieces in the same way that she had watched the Grimm Wanderer tear apart Doctor Hyde. Even though her failure would more than likely lead to her death, she couldn't help but to agree with the last two guards' decision to flee with their lives instead of throwing them away fighting a hopeless battle. Although she didn't want to die, she knew that some methods would be quicker and far less painful than what the Grimm Wanderer might have planned for her.

If leaving her position wouldn't have been the same as asking for The Major to personally execute her, she would have run for her life too. Sadly, someone had to warn the rest of her people that the Grimm Wanderer survived the attempt to put him down and that person could only be her. Not only was she the one of the only three guards still watching over the internment camp after the Grimm Wanderer's rampages attracted a large horde of Grimm that demanded Mantle's attention in the surrounding areas, but her own sense of duty to her country and people was far stronger than any remaining sense of self-preservation she had.

It was with a heavy heart and full knowledge of how The Major rewarded failure that she flipped open her Scroll and dialed Ironwood for the first and most likely last time in her career.

"Major Ironwood, we have a... situation at The Camp." Denise said as she hardened her resolve once more.

For the longest time, the only sound from the other end of her call was the deep, heavy breathing from what had been the most feared man in Vacuo until the Grimm Wanderer's arrival. Even though no words were spoken she could clearly hear the sheer anger emanating from The Major, a seething hatred that only grew by the second as he continued to leave her waiting for his response.

-"The Grimm Wanderer is dead. I was there. I saw him die. He. Is. DEAD."- The Major said, repeating himself far more than necessary as he answered the call.

Denise was startled by the odd calmness of The Major's voice despite knowing that under any other circumstances he would be absolutely furious knowing something had gone wrong. The fact that he already seemed to know what the problem was didn't help matters. Ironwood had been doing everything in his power to put an end to the Grimm Wanderer's reign of terror over the past few days, and he had been very vocal about his utter contempt of that monster.

If she didn't know any better, Denise would have thought that Ironwood was telling himself that the Grimm Wanderer was dead instead of her. The Major, a man that was capable of standing his ground against a pack of Megoliaths and WIN… sounded afraid of just one man. She would have laughed at the very idea of him being afraid of the Grimm Wanderer if she didn't have a full view of what he did to Hyde. The fact that The Major also knew what that monster was capable of and shared her fear did not make her feel any better about her situation.

"Sir… the Grimm Wanderer just escaped Hyde's lab and is about to reach the surface. I need whatever forces are in the area to come here to The Camp immediately and stop him before he can rearm himself." Denise said, carefully minding her words so as to not set off The Major for any reason.

-"Soldier, put Doctor Hyde on the line."- He said, the sense of overbearing authority returning to his voice once more.

"Major…"

-"NOW!"- He shouted.

"I can't. He's… he's dead. The Grimm Wanderer tore him into pieces with his BARE HANDS! HE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE HIS AURA BACK AND HE WAS STILL STRONG ENOUGH TO TEAR THE OLD FREAK APART LIKE HE WAS NOTHING TO HIM!" Denise shouted as she recalled all the bleeding, screaming, crying, and other unmentionable things that both she and the doctor had experienced then.

Major Ironwood fell silent once more, the oppressiveness that he just reacquired fading once more.

-"Is he still unarmed?"- The Major asked.

As if to answer the question being asked, the Grimm Wanderer shot out yet another camera on his way to the elevator.

-"Dammit, just how many of these damn things do these Mantle people have? Even Mr. House didn't have this much security in the Lucky 38 and he was the richest man before and after the Great War. Yeah Toasty, was is right."- The Grimm Wanderer said, still rambling to himself and his imaginary companion.

"No, he managed to steal the guns from the last two remaining guards after he… incapacitated them." She said.

Just because she was going to catch hell for what was happening didn't mean she would be getting anyone else caught up in her death, even if they deserved it. It wasn't like they could have done anything to stop him anyways.

"Last two guards?" The Major asked.

The way he said it was more like he was trying to come up with the answer to a question that Denise knew she hadn't asked him. She knew what was going to come out of his mouth long before he growled it out.

-"Where are your other men, soldier? You should have more bodies to spare than just those two and your own."-

"Yes, we did. They were relocated due to the increasing number of Grimm approaching the city by one of my superiors." She said, hoping that this was going to be the end of this line of questioning.

-"Soldier… I'm going to need you to tell me the name, rank, and current location of the incompetent fool that made that decision."- The Major said, barely holding back his anger.

"Ironwood, you were the one that reorganized the troops here after capturing the Grimm Wanderer. You told the commander here that he and his troops' presence would not be needed for the coming months and reassigned them to one of the neighboring towns after neutralizing the Grimm Wanderer." She said as she awaited to hear what Ironwood would do knowing he was the incompetent fool he was angry at.

Once again a long, uneasy silence carried on between her and The Major.

-"Oh…"- He said, deflatedly.

-"Bingo! Found the elevator! Looks like we are home free Toasty!"-

"Major Ironwood I need you to hurry and send reinforcements to The Camp immediately! The Grimm Wanderer has just found the elevator to the surface!" Denise said as she quickly began cutting power to the majority of the building in the hopes that would slow him down.

Not one to let defeat stand in his way of correcting his mistakes, The Major quickly started muttering the names of various soldiers and sections of the city underneath his breath. Denise could only presume that they were the names and locations of the last hope that Mantle had of keeping the Grimm Wanderer from fully escaping his captivity.

-"Dammit! I should kill all of those cowardly idiots for using our Hunters as their personal bodyguards instead of putting them to work where they are needed. Dammit, there's not enough time to get anyone experienced there too… looks like they will have to do."- He said before Denise overheard him shouting at someone else for a moment, -"Frost! We have a situation over at The Camp! Once you meet up with the patrol I've sent there kill anything inside of The Camp that isn't one of our people! Soldier, I've sent a patrol over to The Camp and they should be there soon. How long can you stall the Grimm Wanderer for?"

-"Hey, who's the bastard that turned out the lights? I know you fuckers have been watching me, so if you want me to rip off you head before I shove it up your ass then you had better turn them back on before I have to do it myself."-

"I've already shut off nonessential systems to the sublevels of The Camp. Unless he can hack into the best security systems in the world and has managed to smuggle in enough Dust to power the entire building long enough to do so, he will be stuck here until help arrives." Denise said as she felt unsure about the Grimm Wanderer's capabilities.

-"Good. Is there anything else you can tell me and your reinforcements before they arrive?"- Ironwood asked her, once again resembling the competent leader she heard he was.

-"Last warning before I add you to my 'Murder Time' party.~"- The Grimm Wanderer said, his playful tone doing nothing to help persuade his prospective victim into following his demands.

"No."

-"Fine, you can have that one Toasty. The Major and his sidepiece are all mine though. Oh yeah, it's personal."-

-"Are you sure? Anything you can tell me will be useful."- Ironwood asked her.

"He did tape a toaster to his shoulder, but other than that he-"

-"WHERE DID HE GET THE TOASTER FROM?"- Ironwood asked with a sense of urgency that had not been present until now.

"Room 719, the one that you sealed yesterday. Was there something else in that room that he might have taken? Some sort of weapon or another prisoner that I should look out for?" Denise asked as she tried to make sense of The Major's concern.

Another long, uncomfortable silence passed between them.

-"I'll be sending another two patrols in addition to the one already heading towards your location. Brothers protect you."- Ironwood hurriedly said before ending the call.

Denise didn't know why The Major sounded more afraid of the toaster than the Grimm Wanderer, but his sudden nervousness at hearing the very mention of the appliance made her more fearful of that thing than the monster who continued to speak to it. It was truly terrifying how she was more scared of an inanimate object rather than the murderous psychopath that was talking holding a one sided conversation with it. Truly terrifying indeed.

---

"Did you get it to work yet?" The Toaster asked.

"No." I said, focusing on the electrical panel in front of me once more.

Ever since the lights went in Mantle's pathetic attempt to keep me restrained, I have been trying to get something working. At this point, I couldn't care less if I managed to get the elevator working so I could get the hell out of here or turn the lights back on so Toasty would stop thinking I'm a dumbass.

Instead, I just spent the last fifteen minutes looking at a whole mess of wires and other shit I've never seen like a fucking idiot. I could dismantle a nuke while completely drunk, but somehow couldn't get a European elevator to start working. I don't know if that was a testament to American engineering or these people's stupidity at this point. I still felt like a complete idiot for not being able to do something as simple as hotwire an elevator, but that wasn't the worst part.

"How about now?" The Toaster asked me again.

That son of a bitch treating me like an idiot and asking the same damn question all the time, that's what was really starting to piss me off.

"If you ask me that one more time, I will sell you for scrap once all of this is over." I growled.

"You wouldn't dare."

"Try me bitch."

We looked at each other, or rather, I stared back at my reflection in Toasty's polished chrome until I felt satisfied with his silence before continuing my work. With the pecking order reestablished once more, I could finally work in peace.

I definitely didn't give up because I thought I was getting a little creeped out by my Optics Enhancer glaring back at me through my broken mask. It was just… a little unsettling, but at least I know why everyone looked at me like I was some sort of demon now. That bright red eye really didn't look right to me.

Strange thing was, they never glowed like that before I got my squishy bits removed. I wonder if the Think Tank had something to do with that?

"Ughhh… how much longer are we going to have to wait down here? I want to murder something already. Maybe set a few buildings on fire too while we are at it."

GODDAMMIT! WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SHUT UP?

"It'll take as long as it takes. If you keep on yapping like you have for the past half hour then I won't be able to figure out how to hotwire the damn elevator. Fucking Europeans are really behind on a lot of things, but they somehow managed to turn rocks into batteries." I growled, continuing my inspection of the monochrome wires while silently insulting whoever was responsible for the mess in front of me.

"Isn't that nuclear power just turning certain rocks into batteries?"

I opened my mouth to tell him just how wrong he was, but then I remembered that was more or less the explanation I gave him for how nukes worked a week or two ago. Since I would have been arguing with myself no matter what I said, I quickly changed my plan for how to shut down Toasty's argument.

"...you're not wrong, but you're not right either. Now stop talking already so I can get back to work!" I told him in the hopes of finally shutting him up.

"Fine, fine… I just thought since you were so great at everything that you would have been able to do something by now." He said as he kept on trying to egg me on.

"I will stick my dick in you if you keep on talking back to me like that." I blurted out.

"Sure, you want that thing lightly toasted or burnt black once it gets stuck?" He threatened, his heating coils starting to glow slightly as he spoke.

"You sure you have enough power to do that?" I spat back as I unzipped my pants.

I spent the next minute re-evaluating every single decision in my life that led to me saying I would fuck a toaster. Toasty was completely silent as well, either doing the exact same thing that I was or afraid that I really would call his bluff.

"...maybe." He grumbled, his half-hearted defiance filling up the silence with a much needed distraction from our previous argument.

"That's what I thought."

"..."

"..."

Finally, some peace and fucking quiet. It's about time. Now I can finally get back to work and-

"So anyways-"

"GODDAMMIT!"

"Can't you try hacking into something and turn the power back on instead of… whatever you've been doing?"

That… wasn't a half bad idea. There was a terminal right next to the elevator but I gave up on that since it didn't look like it could activate anything on this floor. I quickly turned my attention to that instead of rewiring an elevator in the hopes of finding something worthwhile this time around. There were a whole lot of files, folders, and other useless shit that wouldn't help get me out of here when I first checked it but I might have overlooked something in my attempt to get away from the sex dungeon as fast as possible.

"I've already tried. I can access everything on it, but whoever was the idiot that put that thing there decided it shouldn't have anything to do with the elevator controls or anything else. It's like someone just put down a place to view their emails in the middle of the hallway and thought that was a great idea." I said.

"Oh. Well, what can you do until someone turns the power back on? Might as well try and see what else we can do if you're too stupid to do anything else."

I decided to let that comment slide since, in a way, Toasty was right. I obviously wasn't going to get anywhere by thinking of all the ways I would kill the idiots who built this place while looking at their handiwork so I might as well make myself useful some other way.

"Fuck it, might as well." I said as I started to snoop around a bit.

Giving myself root privileges again was a breeze because Mantle's cybersecurity seemed to be about as protected as their comms i.e. a fucking joke. From there, I had free access to see what was in all of those files that were readily available here and oh my, what a surprise! Looks like we have a whole lot of noth...ing?

Wait a minute. Some of these look kind of important. They… no… they didn't.

They did not do that. No-one… no-one could possibly be that stupid! You'd have to… be a special kind of stupid that thinks they can take down an experienced badass with a couple dozen greenhorns and tie him up in something they don't know for sure will hold them down or not kind of stupid.

Which they were.

Well, well, well. It looks like Mantle isn't scraping the bottom of the barrel for just their soldiers. They are putting those idiots anywhere and everywhere.

"Heh… heheheh… heehhahahahahahahaha, AHAHAHAHAHA!" I cackled as I realized what I now had access to.

"MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA… what are we laughing at?" The Toaster said after joining me in for some maniacal laughter.

"These people are absolute fucking idiots! I can see… holy shit, I can actually see everything right now." I said as I pointed at what I was pretty sure was a camera.

I hope it was a camera, because I've been flipping it off every couple of minutes now and I would really hate it if that was a floodlight or something stupid like that.

Clicking on the link revealed that, yes, it was indeed a camera. Not only did I have access to that camera, but I could jump over to every single one that was directly connected to it too.

"Do you see that thing that's been staring at us? I can see everything that it sees and every other camera in the building too." I said as I swapped over to another set of cameras to the area outside as well just to see how much trouble I could get into from here.

Then I swapped to another set… and another… and another…

Sweet Mother of Graham. I have another couple hundred sets to choose from. They were all in color too, none of this monochrome shit that my Pipboy did. If I wasn't so excited with everything I was looking at, I would have been real suspicious right about now.

It was strange how a random terminal in the middle of nowhere had access to something so important, but then again this place also had cars and shit security. I guess Europe went soft after rebuilding for more years than we did over in the Mojave, got too trusting towards random people too. How convenient.

"I think I have control over more than just the couple dozen cameras in this place." I said as I continued to inspect the other feeds I had access too.

"What's that supposed to mean?" The Toaster asked, sounding intrigued even though I haven't said how any of this could be used to kill anybody.

Yet.

The cameras were nice, but there was more than that so I just made a note of where the ones that were marked 'Major's Office' were and moved on to something else. That something else was a whole array of serial numbers, so naturally I checked to see what they were by clicking on them and hoping for the best. The only time I hadn't done that was when it would have sealed my death in the Sierra Madre, and so far it hadn't come around to bite me in the ass yet.

What I saw was… another welcome screen. Weird, but I suppose that must have been some sort of reset command I guess. I gave myself root privileges once more, found another number to click on and… now had another welcome screen on my hand.

What the hell? Why would anyone want to log in to the same computer terminal unless they were changing accounts? It's not like I was accessing another terminal from this one…

Or am I? "Serial Code :0x0AF1" is what it says right now. I wonder…

Another relog and serial code picked, another welcome screen… and the serial code for the terminal is 0x 0A3E.

That's a completely different terminal that I just logged into. That… wow...

That's impossible. It has to be. It must be the chems messing with me again because there is no way what I am seeing is real. There have to be hundreds, THOUSANDS of terminals I could choose from the list in front of me and there is no way Mantle set up a network that covers the whole city… just like how they don't have an insane number of cameras either.

"There's no way, no fucking way. No one can possibly be that stupid…" I gasped as I stared on in disbelief.

"What? What is it? Come on and tell me already! It sounds like we can kill a lot of people with whatever you're looking at!" The Toaster shouted in excitement.

"I think… no, there's no thinking about it, every single computer in this city is connected to each other!" I said, hoping I could satisfy his curiosity enough to shut him up now.

"Okay… what's so great about WiFi?" He said like I was dealing with something obvious.

"What's a 'Why Fy'?" I asked, feeling uneasy as to why a murder happy toaster knows something that I don't.

"Didn't you say you went through Dr. 0's lab when you were looking for upgrades for all of those INFERIOR APPLIANCES? There should have been something there you could download to your Pipboy that would allow you to interact with every terminal in the Big Empty so long as you knew their passwords." Toasty told me like he was stating the obvious, of course to him that probably was obvious given how long he had been in The Sink.

I do distinctly remember downloading a lot of crap back in the X-13 Research Facility after completing the stealth trials there, not including all of the improvements I got for that clingy gimp suit. There were a lot of files there that I never bothered messing around with after hearing Dr. 0 claim responsibility for them since I didn't want to break my Pipboy by installing them. Maybe 0 was a lot more competent than anyone gave him credit for.

With that said, this was Dr. 0 that Toasty was talking about so I still had my doubts. Maybe that failure of a scientist actually invented something that wouldn't turn my Pipboy into a glorified paperweight after all. Looks like I'll need to do some investigating once nobody is trying to kill me.

"I thought Dr. 0 was better at breaking machines than he was at making them." I said.

"You wanna know how long it took him to realize that he never added a password to the routers after he set up the network? I'm amazed no one threw him into Little Yangtze by the time they got things working again." He said before breaking out into laughter.

Okay, now that sounded a lot more believable now. Maybe I won't be open that file on someone else's computer first after all. Oh, the things I will be able to do with WiFi…

"Well shit, I wonder what else I can see." I said as I continued looking for stuff to mess with.

I already had access to this place's cameras, terminals, and probably about every other device these people used… unless it was the one fucking elevator and set of lights I wanted access to.

Huh, it'd be really crazy if I could download everything from those computers onto my Pipboy, or even better yet, connect myself to the network whenever I wanted to and have access to all these cameras that way… and anything those other terminals are connected to too...

…

If I was able to think straight right now, I think I'd probably be able to answer that without testing it out.

To answer my growing curiosity, I opened a flap on the side of my Pipboy so I could access the array of adapters and other cables that I used to open Vault-Tec stuff like Vault doors and occasionally juice up the occasionally terminal back in the Mojave. I rubbed my finger against the only port available on the elevator terminal before rubbing the ends of my cables until I found one that felt like it matched and tried to plug it in. I only had to force it in just a little bit, but it went in all the same.

I didn't even realize I had been holding my breath by the time an error message popped up on my Pipboy, but I suppose what I was asking for was way too much to begin with and retrieved my cable in defeat.

I don't know why I was thinking that would work but a guy could dream, right? It's not like that error message was saying I needed a software update to use that feature or something. I mean… this place is a bit more advanced than the Mojave… and my Pipboy didn't look like it aged since the bombs dropped in 2077…

What did that error message say anyways?

/"To use this feature, please install BMS V12.3.08. Would you like to install this update now or later at your earliest convenience? Yes-No"\

"Oh my god. Lord Death likey."

"Uhh… you okay there Six? You sound like you just saw your first nuke go off." Toasty asked, as if I was scared of anything.

"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." I said, looking around for whatever had been stalking me for months just to play that weird ass siren every now and then once I heard it.

Sadly, I didn't see nothin because of the dark so whoever was tempting me got lucky this time.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" The Toaster asked me, giving me a moment to calm down a bit before I told him too much.

"I don't have access to just Mantle's cameras… I think I could access everything in this city if I wanted to right now." I said as I came to terms with exactly what that meant.

"Does that include the elevator so we can finally get the hell out of here and start slaughtering the weak?" He asked me.

"Nope."

"Then I don't care." He said flatly.

That was the problem with Toasty, he never did see the point in anything other than straight up murder.

Me? Killing requires a certain amount of experience, skill, and the right tools to get the job done or else anyone could be like Caesar. Thankfully, I had the first two down in spades for a long while and the third one just fell right into my hands, save for some half decent guns and a ballistic fist of course.

Not only did I have access to maps of the city once I made an attempt to look for them, apparently a place called Vacuo that shares its name with the kingdom its a part of for some stupid reason, but so much more. Troop patrol schedules, names, registry numbers, personnel databases, and a list of high priority targets that could very well be the people I need to start making friends with so I can make them do all of the leg work needed to make Mantle bleed.

If I wanted to, I could know Mantle better than they did. I just needed an hour or two to shut down my Pipboy and download whatever I needed to start doing that whenever I felt like it instead of while waiting for a couple of assassins to come down the elevator. I could install that one update… but I don't want to risk being locked out of my Pipboy in case I need to drop another mini-nuke at my feet. You never know when you might need an ace in the hole like that...

"Oh, you will Toasty, you will. I think this WiFi stuff is going to be our ticket straight to the top of Murder Mountain." I said as I added a tab for that in my quest log.

************************
* Electric Eye
* _Install WiFi capabilities
* _Download BMS V 12.3.08
* _Start fucking shit up
************************

"Oh, hook me up with that shit too so we can both fuck stuff up." The Toaster said in a far too commanding voice for my taste.

"Sure, let me just delete your personality files to make room for-"

"NEVERMIND! I AM ALREADY THE PERFECT DEATH DEALING MACHINE JUST THE WAY I AM!"

"Are you sure? I could really use a backup in case something happens to my Pipboy again."

"DON'T YOU DARE MOLEST MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES."

Okay… never thought I'd hear a toaster asking me not to molest it. Going to have to add that to the list of shit I can never thought I would say. Just gonna file that one alongside fucking a toaster.

"Sure thing… wait, that only covers your personality files. Does that mean I can-"

"Do you really want to explain how you got your dick toasted?"

"Nope."

So much for getting back at him for all that shit talking...

"Good. There anything else we can do?"

"Not until they send a couple of assassins down to try and kill us. Once I deal with those suckers we can take the elevator back up and either kill the rest or walk out of here unchallenged."

"We still gotta wait around and do nothing? You have got to be kidding me." Toasty whined.

Well, there was one thing I could do but if these Mantle people learned their lesson they weren't going to fall for that again any time soon.

Oh, who am I kidding? I can probably find at least one idiot that doesn't know the first thing about securing their broadcasts, either that or I can finally tune in to the local radio station and see what passes for music around here.

---

At first, it appeared that the Grimm Wanderer's rescue would be a simple matter. With the rising number of Grimm approaching the city and outlying villages surrounding it, relocating the vast number of troops to defend those areas was a reasonable decision. Now that the more damaging of the two threats had been dealt with, Mantle had little reason to let the other run rampant any longer. To Julia, who had been tracking the Grimm Wanderer for hours now, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to rescue her target, but like all good things the moment was not meant to last.

It was less than an hour after The Major's departure from The Camp when several patrols arrived for unknown reasons. Whatever plans she had about running in and rescuing the Grimm Wanderer on her own were silenced the moment she saw so many armed men and women arrive without warning. Her hesitation to act earlier had spared her life, but it also created a new problem to deal with.

Instead of having to fight her way out of The Camp after rescuing the Grimm Wanderer, she now needed to fight her way in and hope that the monster that Alex wanted her to recruit was still alive and willing to cooperate with her. Although The Major proudly declared the Grimm Wanderer's demise to the public upon his capture, Julia still couldn't find it in herself to trust anything that a human said, especially the leader of the Mantlesian forces within Vacuo. Julia still had her doubts as to whether or not her target was alive, but it was clear from the newly arrived troops that had complicated her rescue plan that they were just as uncertain.

It was only once she witnessed the arrival of Specialist Frost that she knew for certain that the Grimm Wanderer was still alive. As much as Julia hated her mission to help that psychopath escape with his life, the chance to either kill or humiliate one of the more active forces terrorizing her people was well worth it. She still felt uncertain as to whether she should still be trying to release him and restart his rampage, but perhaps the Grimm Wanderer had his own reasons for acting like the feral animal most Mantlesians believed the Faunus to be.

If that was the case, then perhaps Alex had a point about how best to combat Mantle and Mistral. While few people believed violence to be the answer to their problems, it had an undeniable effect on the struggle between the Spirit of Vacuo and the kingdoms attempting to exert control over Vacuo. Perhaps she should start giving those humans exactly what they asked for as well…

-"Julia? What happened? You cut out for a moment. Is everything okay?"- Alex asked her.

The clear voice of her leader and partner for this current mission quickly took her away from her thoughts and back to the situation at hand. Julia silently cursed herself for losing focus before doing yet another headcount of the gathered soldiers below her, far from the rooftop she was perched on.

"I'm fine, but we have another problem that we'll need to deal with. I don't think I can do this alone anymore." She answered.

-"You say that, but I somehow doubt another couple of troops could make anything more difficult for you."-

"Frost just arrived and she looks pissed." Julia said as she trained the scope of her recently acquired sniper on the difficulty in question.

Including Frost, there were now twenty two troops waiting outside. If she didn't care about making the target on her head any larger, taking care of them all would have been a simple matter. Unfortunately, that would attract more numerous and powerful enemies than they had any hopes of dealing with.

-"Are you fucking… uh, I mean…"- Alex's shock soon quickly turned into a stammer as he tried to regain control over his emotions

It wasn't often that Alex lost his composure like that, but considering how often his plans had been failing recently thanks to her current target's previous actions, she could hardly blame him. There was something to be said about how easy it was to lose one's composure when trying to combat a single psychopath who could outmaneuver and decimate an entire army on his own. Anything that could do that was the stuff of legends, although more often than not they were all typically an old and powerful variant of Grimm, such legends even inspiring his current title. Even after witnessing just how useful the Grimm Wanderer could prove to be in person, she still had her doubts about recruiting him without knowing where his current loyalties lie, if he had any to speak of.

"Looks like we'll need to go with plan B." She said.

-"I was hoping I could avoid risking any more men than I had to, but if there is no other choice then sacrifices must be made."- Alex said.

Calling a large-scale assault in the middle of where Mantle's interests in Vacuo currently laid a plan was a stretch, but due to a lack of other options it was the only alternative that they had beyond leaving the Grimm Wanderer to his fate. Neither one of them had been pleased with the idea when discussing it earlier, but both of them accepted that they needed at least one plan of action in case things became as dire as they did now.

-"Damn, this is getting too easy. These idiots really need to work on their security."- Said the newest member, their grizzled voice sounding more like a growl than an honest complaint.

Before either of them could continue their discussion, someone else shared their own thoughts on the matter. What they had mentioned wasn't concerning, but both Alex and Julia immediately felt unease once the newest voice made itself heard. It wasn't because of the traces of utter contempt lying behind their words that made them worried...

"Who gave one of the new guys a Scroll?" Julia asked, hoping that her partner would be able to explain what was happening.

-"Fuck. I knew I forgot to do something, of course I didn't turn off my fucking mic again. So much for staying unnoticed."- The new member growled confirming the others' fears.

-"What the- who the fuck are you?"- Alex shouted.

-"I'm Private…"- The so called 'Private' began, before quickly giving an exasperated sigh and saying, -"Oh, fuck it. Like hell someone is going to fall for the same thing twice in a row."-

Neither Alex nor Julia knew what was happening, but before either one of them could ask any questions or end the call the 'Private' took control of the conversation once more.

-"Look, I'm going to be honest with you, I've been stuck down in some sort of freaky sex dungeon after you Mantle shits turned off the power and left me alone with some kinky Followers of the Apocalypse reject and I wanted to entertain myself. I don't know who the hell you are or what kind of 'sacrifice' bitch boy here is talking about, but that doesn't matter."- The 'Private' explained.

Julia felt her blood run cold the moment the new caller ended their explanation with a cold blooded threat. Ordinarily, she wouldn't have been caught off guard by such a mundane thing, but there was something else behind the near feral tone that she was hearing. She could only assume Alex was terrified as she was, as instead of trying to regain control of the situation as he typically tried to do he maintained the same awestruck silence that she did as they both listened to what came next.

-"Once your men come down that elevator I paint the whole thing red with their blood and decorate the parking lot up top with the guts of whoever is waiting for me up there after I slaughter the first wave of you bastards. I'm going to kill them as SLOWLY as possible for all the shit you people have put me through the past couple of days and you won't be able to do anything more than watch from your ivory fucking tower or whatever the hell passes for Lucky 38 around here. After I'm finished destroying them and every other ambush you have set up in the hopes of slowing me down I'll be coming for you, Frost, The Major, and ANYONE ELSE THAT EVEN THINKS ABOUT FUCKING WITH ME!" The 'Private' shouted as he finished his threat sounding less like a person and more like a rabid animal.

-"What the fuck? Julia, you're compromised! Abort the mission! I repeat, abort..."- Alex hastily shouted, sounding manic now that the 'Private' had made their intentions known.

Julia, however, thought better than to act on the same impulse that Alex did. The threat did leave her more than a little unnerved but nearly as much as her partner. That was because of something that stuck out to her that the 'Private' said than her own bravery.

It was only how most of that threat had not been directed at her or her people that she was able to remain somewhat calm. While she wasn't certain about how much the 'Private' wanted her or Alex dead, it was obvious that his threat had not been directed towards them knowingly. That threat had clearly been declared against Mantle's presence in Vacuo, if not the entire kingdom itself. She had plenty of reasons to hate Mantle and had acted on them plenty of times. Even so, she would never be so bold as to declare that threat to the people trying to kill her. There was only one person that she believed not only hated Mantle as much as her but would also try to anger their enemies just for the sake of doing it.

"Are you the Grimm Wanderer?" She asked, hoping that she was talking to the right psychopath.

-"Yeah, so what? You think just because you know who I am will stop me from fucking everyone of you pansy ass psykers up? I've got some of your fancy ass Super Hydra, a couple doses of home cooked Psycho, and other goodies ready to show everyone of you shits what a real badass looks like."- The Grimm Wanderer ranted.

-"THAT'S THE GRIMM WANDERER!?"- Alex shouted in stunned disbelief.

"Wait, we're not with Mantle! We're actually here to rescue you!" She said, knowing exactly how believable that sounded.

It was clear that whatever impressions that Alex had of the Grimm Wanderer had been thoroughly destroyed, but that did not stop Julia from trying to salvage the potential relationship between her people and the lunatic she was now talking to. Even though he was ranting like the insane madman she believed him to be, she still wanted to make an effort to appease him. If she couldn't recruit him, then she could at least ensure that his wrath would not reach those that she cared about once he finally turned his attention away from Mantle.

-"How gullible do you think I am?"- The Grimm Wanderer asked.

-"Yeah Toasty, they really think they can talk me down as if there is somehow I won't kill every last one of them. I know right? I can't believe this shit either!"-He said as he laughed at what did sound like a feeble attempt to trick him.

For a moment, it sounded like he was talking to someone else. While she didn't know exactly who this new individual was and whether or not they were just as violent as the Grimm Wanderer, the fact that he apparently had at least one person he was willing to talk to gave her hope that they could come to an agreement.

-"Wait… are you the stalker that has been chasing my ass down ever since I crawled out of that dumpster?"- He asked suddenly.

While Julia was about to deny stalking him and ask how he knew he was being followed back then, Alex quickly interrupted in an attempt to prevent any possible conflicts that could come up between the two.

-"Yes, she-"-

-"Wasn't talking to you, shit for brains. I was talking to the lady."- The Grimm Wanderer interrupted.

Julia could hear her partner fuming from the Grimm Wanderer's dismissal of him and she also shared his general feelings about who they were talking to, but reason won over emotion this time and she remained silent as the Grimm Wanderer continued to speak.

"Go on… Julia, was it? Tell me exactly what happened while you were watching me, or else I'm coming after the both of you once I castrate the biggest Dick in Vacuo."- The Grimm Wanderer asked, edging back into a deep growl once more.

"Where would you like me to begin?" She asked, nervous but glad the Grimm Wanderer was willing to hear her out before shooting anyone.

-"From the first thing you saw me do all the way to the last. You have thirty seconds."- He growled.

"Okay. I was tasked with recruiting you ever since your rampage ended two days ago in the hopes that you would join the Spirit of Vacuo in their fight against Mantle who are trying to-"

-"Twenty five seconds. Stop wasting my time."- He said, interrupting her early in her explanation.

Alex, who had enough of being treated without the respect he had generally been accustomed to, quickly spoke up now that his partner had been strong armed into explaining herself.

-"Hey, what the hell do you think you are doing? You're the one that should be answering questions, not us."- He demanded.

The Grimm Wanderer didn't even need to say anything for the call to instantly become far more menacing to let them know exactly who was in control now.

-"No, I don't think I am. I'm the guy who has an entire kingdom pissing itself in terror and you're a douchebag that treats people like they're disposable."- He growled, sounding disgusted at what Alex had suggested earlier. -"Twenty seconds Julia. Just tell me the important bits."-

She wanted to refute his claim, but not only was he not entirely wrong, she didn't want to risk waiting to see what would happen once his patience finally ran out. She begrudgingly reviewed the more important parts of the previous day before giving the Grimm Wanderer the answer he was demanding from her.

"First you crawled out of a dumpster, executed a man, were chased into an abandoned building after you failed to take out one of the patrols around our base, blew that building up twice and killed the Hunters that nearly killed you, and finally ran over by a car before you were captured." She quickly rattled off.

The Grimm Wanderer stayed silent as he milled over what he had been told. Both Julia and Alex waited in breathless anticipation to see if the Grimm Wanderer accepted their account of what he had done.

-"Okay… you're mostly right. You got a few parts about wrong when you said I nearly got my ass handed to me a couple of times, but you got the rest of it right. I believe that you are the person who was stalking me back then."- He said, trying to gloss over his obviously wounded pride.

-"Good, now that we have that settled-"

-"I believe you… but I don't trust you."- He said.

-"What, why? We're here to help you."-

-"No, YOU'RE not, SHE is. You're just some random jackass who's more comfortable barking orders at people like us than doing anything yourself."- The Grimm Wanderer insisted.

-"What difference does it make? I'm the one who sent her to recruit you in the first place!"-

-"All the difference in the world, dickbag. I've dealt with people like you before and I'd rather take my chances alone than getting in over my head working for you."-

-"Do you really think you can afford to turn down my help?"-

-"Yours? Abso-fucking-lutely. Your partner is a whole different matter."- The Grimm Wanderer said flatly.

-"Even then, you said you wanted to 'recruit' me. You obviously have something that only I can do for you or else you would have told me to fuck off a long time ago. Consider yourself lucky that I'm still willing to work with an asshole spewing as much shit as you buddy. I've killed people for a whole lot less, so you had better make it worth my while if you have something you want me to do for you that your little courier here can't."-

-"Why you arrogant…"-

"Alex, it's okay. I can handle him." Julia said, now trying to hold both herself and Alex back at the same time.

-"...fine, but remember that we don't need him as badly as he needs us right now."- Her partner insisted.

-"Yeah, whatever. That obviously is the case since you haven't just hung up on me already. Now be a good boy and fuck off until your girl gets me out of here before she stroking more than just your ego."-

-"If you want to leave him to die, I will leave that decision up to you."- Alex said before immediately leaving the call, presumably to take a break and release some of his pent up frustration once he the Grimm Wanderer could no longer hear him.

-"Finally, I thought that guy would never stop talking. Now that he's out of the way, let's start talking about how the hell you're going to 'rescue' me from that shit show on the surface."- The Grimm Wanderer said.

He made no attempt to hide the smugness behind his words now that Alex could no longer annoy him. The two waited in hostile silence before the Grimm Wanderer was the one to break the stalemate between them.

-"You don't have a plan, do you?"- He asked her.

"Of course we do, once a few more people arrive-"

-"Yeah, I'd hate to tell you this, but they just turned the power back on so unless your people are going to show up in the next two minutes then Mantle will be starting the party without them."- He said, cocking whatever weapon he had on him as if to punctuate his point.

"Shit." Was the only thing Julia could say now that the loosely made 'plan' she had been depending on had gone up in smoke before she could do anything about it.

-"That's what I thought. Well, in that case it looks like we're going with my plan."- The Grimm Wanderer said.

For a moment, she was intrigued at whatever plan he had for escaping what used to be one of the most heavily defended areas in the city. Then she remembered the two massive explosions from earlier and how the other plans of attack he had ended with him narrowly avoiding death and thought better than to trust him without hearing what he had to say first.

"And what would that be?" She asked.

-"Violence, chems, knives if those guys up top are carrying any I can use, and a fuckton of bullets."-

It wasn't the answer she wanted to hear from him, but she had been expecting it nonetheless. That didn't mean it couldn't work, but that didn't stop her from criticizing it.

"That's it? You're just going to shoot and stab everyone that tries to kill you? You have to be a complete idiot if you think that will actually work! That has to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard." She said, doing nothing to hold back her opinions of him and his plan.

-"Hey, that plan has saved my ass more times than I can count. Besides, I don't hear you coming up with any better ideas than praying they don't execute me first chance they get."- He said before throwing an accusation of his own towards her.

"Fine. What exactly do you want me to do then?" Julia said, deciding it was better to stay silent until she could prove him wrong.

-"What kind of guns and other weapons do you have with you right now?"- The Grimm Wanderer asked.

"The only thing that will be useful for now is the sniper rifle I picked up earlier." She said, raising her rifle for a moment before feeling like an idiot after realizing there was no way he could see it.

-"Well ain't that just perfect? These fuckers are practically bullet proof, unless…"- The Grim Wanderer fell silent as he started muttering to himself under his breath for a moment. -"You wouldn't happen to be talking about that giant sniper that one of those assassins from earlier were carrying with them, would you?"-

"If you're talking about one of those Hunters from earlier, then yes. But what difference does it make? We're still outnumbered 23 to 2."

-"That's it? Damn, if they're all as competent as those idiots I was fighting earlier than I might not need your help after all."- He said.

Somehow, Julia couldn't find herself to doubt his claim either. He had already managed to kill ten recruits armed with rifles with only a hand axe and a few of their own knives by himself after all.

-"Does that sniper have a silencer on it?"- He suddenly asked.

"Yes… I think I see what you are getting at." She answered, starting to see and fear that the Grimm Wanderer was more clever than she had thought him to be.

-"Great, make sure you take that thing off and wait for my signal before you start popping heads. If everything goes well then both of us should be able to walk away with only a few broken bones."-

"Excuse me? You want me to do what, exactly?" Julia said as she did what was asked of her.

-"Don't worry about the finer details. Just make sure that you line up the perfect shot by the time I get up to the surface and hold your fire until… well, I think you'll know when to pull the trigger better than me. In case you don't start the party without me, just wait for my signal. Don't worry about what it will be, you'll know it when you see it."- He said.

The few compliments she had paying him in her mind quickly disappeared as she once again saw him for the idiot that he had to be for assuming that he could easily slaughter several patrols worth of soldiers on his own, even with a sniper backing him up. His complete disregard for coordinating anything enraged her, and she was not going to let the Grimm Wanderer think she was going to just go along with whatever insane plan or lack thereof he was forcing her into.

"What the… that's not even close to a plan! Are you crazy?!" She shouted at him.

-"If I were you, I'd be more scared if I wasn't since that would mean there are a lot more people like me wandering around."- He said, brushing off her hatred with a simple dismissal and giving her a chill down her spine at the same time. -"Anyways, I'm going to have to go silent on you now. The elevator I've been trying to hotwire just turned on again, so I'm probably going to be a bit busy here soon."-

"Wait, don't you dare-"

-"Finally, Murder Time has come at last. Later."- He said before leaving her alone in the call.

"What is that psychopath thinking?" She complained.

She didn't know and all she could do was hope that he either managed to get himself killed quickly or was holding back on more.

---

Author's Corner

The cards have finally been dealt and the final calls are being made before this hands plays itself out. Be expecting things to go a little faster for a while now.

I'll admit, I got a little sidetracked while making this chapter and threw out more than what I kept since this is where things start coming together. The next chapter should be coming out a little quicker, and I'll also be making a few changes to previous chapters for the sake of consistency. Since I have only just now noticed the tells I have been using to show different forms of speech didn't crossover when uploading previous chapters… those edits have been long overdue. I'm also planning on releasing a little bonus snippet as well just to see if it flows well with everything else.

One last thing, I am surprised that no one has called me out on my insistence of using a certain word/title yet. Either I enjoyed looking through some of the RWBY lore a bit too much or I have done a better job of keeping things secret than I thought I have. The setting here is something that I don't think I have ever seen anyone tackle before, and I will once again cannot understand why no one would try something like this before.

Anyways, thanks as always for your time and I hope to see you all in the future!