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.

12. 10 Call me Texas Red

Chapter 10: Call me Texas Red

Tensions had been running high amongst Mantle's troops ever since Specialist Frost disappeared after the Grimm Wanderer's capture. The loss of a very vocal, very well known figure amongst the troops stationed in Vacuo had not gone unnoticed once news of an attack on the compound where the Grimm Wanderer was being held had spread faster than the rumors could be acknowledged by Mantle's leadership. The Major's explosive temper had only worsened his troops morale which attracted even more Grimm to the city of Vacuo, forcing even more troops to be sent to deal with the growing hordes and worsening the morale of everyone involved. Overall, the past 12 hours had not been kind to Mantle's forces.

Nowhere had this been more apparent than within the embassy that Mantle had established for purposes they had kept quiet from the public. Only a few of the higher ranking officers knew what discussions went on behind closed doors, and even fewer dared to discuss them on the streets where a keen eared faunus could overhear their plans for the city's inhabitants and act accordingly. The Grimm Wanderer's initial rampage had sent most of Mantle's command structure into complete disarray as their leadership cowered behind whatever men they could gather until he had been captured and sent to The Camp for interrogation.

Once the rumors of his escape after the attack on The Camp spread despite Mantle's attempts to refute such claims, the same terror that had permeated the Mantle's higher ranks flourished stronger than ever before. By the time the first few rays of sunlight started to crest over the desert horizon and brought with them a heat that no Mantlesian enjoyed, only one man with the power to oversee his kingdom's operations in Vacuo had attempted to flee from the Grimm Wanderer's ensuing wrath.

Only Major Dick Ironwood remained, and he was furious with the events that had left him as the only thing standing between his kingdom and the vengeance he had fully expected from the Grimm Wanderer. To say he was upset was an understatement. One only needed to look at him and the Scroll that had been crushed underneath his pistol to see just how upset he was given the series of failures that threatened everything he had worked for over the past several years.

The few remaining guards that patrolled the embassy and the walls surrounding it couldn't care less about how The Major felt. So long as he remained inside his office and the next person to die was either the Grimm Wanderer or another suicidal fool that barged into his room they were all content to let him brood as long as he wanted to. Of the several dozen troops that were still stationed at the embassy, almost none of them thought that they were at risk.

Almost none of them.

"We are all going to die! The Grimm Wanderer is going to come for us all! We are all going to DIEEEEEEEE!" Cried a guard as he finally cracked under the stress that had been mounting over him over the past several days.

The soldier beside him, a woman fortunate enough to only hear of the rumors surrounding the Grimm Wanderer without seeing the carnage first hand unlike the wailing man- no, boy she scowled at. "Pull yourself together rookie. Only an idiot would try attacking this place. Don't make me report this to The Major." She yelled at him.

"Hey, take it easy on the lad." Called out another guard who was watching the door separating them from the streets outside the embassy. "The guy lost his entire squad last night. Poor kid hasn't even been in Vacuo for more than a month and he has already lost every friend he had here."

"We've all lost people to those animals. So what if a few idiots couldn't protect themselves against a couple of rabid faunus? The quicker he learns that it isn't worth crying over a few fools who died fighting against some stupid animals, the better." The woman said as she slapped the boy in front of her as he continued to lay down on the ground, frozen in grief and terror.

"Gloria. Knock. It. OFF." The door guard said as he pulled her away from her the boy on the ground.

"What's wrong? You're not one of those animal lovers too, are you Kye?" She asked him.

Kye recoiled at her accusation before finding the words to respond. "Fuck no. I don't even want to get near one of those flea ridden bastards." He said.

"Then what's your problem?"

"My problem is that you're not taking this seriously!" He shouted. "Open your fucking eyes and take a look around you! We're out here on our who fighting against Brothers know what, everyone in charge has either bailed or is shooting everyone that even thinks about asking The Major for orders, and the animals are taking advantage of us now while we can't do anything to fight back against them! We are so FUBAR that I can't believe you of all people are acting like those idiots that think we should be taking the city by force when we can barely keep our patrols from being ambushed every damn day!"

A sudden franticness soon edged into his voice. "And now, to top it all off, some random jackass that's dressing up like a fucking Grimm has been killing every one of us he can find! The kid you're yelling at is the only person I know that has seen the Grimm Wanderer in person and survived! Just look at him!"

To prove his point, Kye pointed at the rookie between him and Gloria who continued to lay down sobbing on the ground between them. "He's losing his shit just thinking about whatever the hell that monster did to the rest of his team! If we weren't screwed before, then we damn well are now!" Kye shouted.

By now, a small crowd had gathered around the three to see what all of their commotion was about. Some of the faces spread throughout mirrored the same concerns that Kye had voiced, while others looked as indifferent and confident as Gloria who could only laugh at what she was hearing.

As much as she tried to mask her own growing worry by discrediting Kye's attempt to make her recognize just how badly things were going for Mantle, the unease building inside of her was something that no amount of laughter could hide. "What are you talking about? The Grimm Wanderer is just a filthy animal. Do you really believe the rumors we've been telling the rookies?" She asked him.

"I haven't been telling the rookies jack shit. Besides, you haven't seen the Grimm Wanderer for yourself, have you? He's not faunus, human… or anything else that we'd want to fight against." Kye said.

A chorus of agreement echoed throughout the gathered guards, some in agreement to what he had said while others were just thankful for not having ended up like the rookie who was still bawling his eyes out between them.

"Kye, don't try to scare me. It won't work." Gloria said, unable to put any conviction behind her words.

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

"I'm not trying to scare you. I've seen the Grimm Wanderer in action through a few of the cameras while on break. Whatever he is, it isn't capable of anything other than killing. And those eyes…"

"What about his eyes?"

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

"They were red, glowing, filled with hate." He told her, letting the words hang in the air and letting her come to the same conclusion he did earlier.

"Just like the Grimm?" She asked horrified disbelief.

"Exactly. I'm not saying that this freak really is one of those beasts, but he wouldn't be the first humanoid Grimm to terrorize a city on his own."

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

"Son of a- hold on a moment Gloria." Kye said as he finally turned his attention to whoever was banging on the door he was meant to stand guard over, forcing his way through the crowd around him to do so.

"Calm down asshole! I'm on my way, just stop banging on the damn door already!" He shouted as he made his way over to his post.

"It's about fucking time. I've got a delivery for The Major and I'd rather not keep him waiting any longer than I have to." The man on the other end growled.

"We'll just see about that." Kye said as he pulled the eyehole available so he could get a look at this supposed delivery man.

He didn't recall hearing about any deliveries this early in the morning, but then again, the few officers that possessed the knowledge of such deliveries neglected to inform him about much as they all fled for the nearest bullhead out of Vacuo. He had been expecting to see many things waiting for him on the other side of the door; another soldier like him trying to make the best of a bad situation, a hired courier ready to give him hell for delaying whatever special delivery he had for The Major, or even a disgruntled faunus trying to waste his time and end up in The Camp for their troubles.

The one thing he had not been expecting was what was glaring back at him, The Grimm Wanderer rearing his hand back and ready to punch him in the face with all of his might. Before Kye could close the metal strip that he had foolishly opened wide enough for someone's fist to slide through or call for whatever allies could hear him, he was knocked flat on his back by a quick left hook that almost knocked him out through his aura.

He could feel a warm splatter of blood against his face from his ruined nose and saw the corners of his vision growing dark as he struggled to make sense of what happened to him. He fell to the ground hard and felt something else land on top of him as the world almost faded into complete darkness and his aura burned as it tried to repair whatever damage had been done to him. Gloria's shouts were little more than muffled cries beyond recognition as she realized what happened to him, as were the other shouts that started to fill the air as the others nearby noticed too.

The only thing he could do was try to stand back up as the crowd drew in around him with their weapons drawn, ready to kill whoever had injured one of their own. Kye would have joined him the moment his vision cleared, but for some reason he had a nagging feeling that whatever landed on his chest earlier was far more important.

It took him a moment to make sense of what the small round object sitting on his chest was, but rather than relief he instead had a streak of bone chilling terror course through him as the realization hit him with almost as much force as the punch that had knocked him on his back.

"Oh." He groaned, staring in absolute defeat at the gleaming grenade sitting on his chest.

"Fuck."

*KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

---

"What the hell did you do?" Julia shouted at me as debris from the Holy Hand Grenade going off continued to rain down around us.

I don't know why she bothered asking me a stupid question like that since I thought the answer was pretty fucking obvious. I had a fantastic idea and it went just about as well as it could have considering it involved one of the few weapons I deemed too dangerous to use. I've used grenades as lockpicks a few times in the past, but never something with as much kick to it as a mini-nuke before.

As much as I hate to admit it, what I did was pretty goddamn stupid if I do say so myself.

There was a reason I put my last Holy Hand Grenade under the 'DON'T EVER TOUCH THESE YOU FUCKING IDIOT' tab I made for myself instead of grouping it with the rest of my inventory. Watching gecko sized chunks of concrete raining down from the sky leaves quite the impression on ya, and apparently Julia agreed that what I did was incredibly stupid by the sounds of things. We really got lucky that there was a dumpster nearby to take shelter behind or else we would have been in a whole world of hurt thanks to the stunt I pulled.

I blame the chems I took for what happened. I can hardly focus at all because of them, been getting lost in my own thoughts and thinking about all sorts of shit that doesn't have a damn thing to do with anything important. The only other cause was old age, so I was really hoping the most recent reason I nearly killed myself was because I'm too chemed out to think straight because I can fix that real easy when I get my hands on some Fixer. There's only one cure for old age, and I'd rather not get an upgrade from almost dead to definitely dead.

I'm not even going to entertain the idea of becoming a Think Tank like those fucking crazy doctors.

"Dammit Six!" Julia shouted as she punched in my right arm, pulling me out of my own head. "What were you thinking?"

She didn't manage to hurt me, although that was probably thanks to the repairs I made to my armor because she damn near knocked me off my feet with that hit. "What am I thinking? What am I thinking? I'll tell you what I'm thinking!" I shouted back at her.

As I started racking my mind for exactly what it was that I had been thinking when I pulled that damn grenade out, a giant chunk of shrapnel landed a few inches in front of us both and buried itself deep into the sidewalk. Needless to say that I was glad I hadn't had anything to eat or drink recently, because I'd be needing a fresh pair of pants otherwise.

A closer inspection of the slab of metal I conducted immediately after nearly shitting myself revealed that the thing that came dangerously close to killing me was the iron door that I shoved the grenade through earlier. I don't know why the hell it rained down from the sky instead of getting blown forward, but then again that wasn't the craziest bit of bullshit I've seen recently. I didn't see much point of giving the door any more thought than necessary, but I also couldn't help but to get one last jab in at Antlers before we entered the embassy.

"I'm thinking that the negotiations were successful." I told her.

The gal was practically fuming with anger, but I didn't care. The rain of killer rocks had finally ended when that door landed far too close for comfort and since nothing else was falling from the sky I got up from our hiding place and strolled over to the Mantlesian embassy's gates to see exactly how much damage I did to them. Sure enough, there was a hole big enough for a pair of Deathclaws to walk through shoulder to shoulder and a sea of rubble where the sidewalk in front of the gates had been.

God bless you, Ambassador Pineapple. May your thirst for destruction never quench, may the people you kill never include me, and may I never see or hear from you ever again.

"Holy shit. That wall was supposed to even hold back the Grimm." Julia gasped as she came up beside me to witness the carnage for herself.

Well I don't know what exactly "Grimm" are, but if they couldn't knock down a stone wall that was a couple feet thick then they didn't have shit on an angry pack of Deathclaws… or brahmin, for that matter. Still bugs me knowing that Tabitha was right about them all along...

Damn it, focus Six. Get your head in the fucking zone!

"That might be true, but there's a reason I kept on telling you to call that name Mantle has given me. I ain't no damned Grimm Wanderer, I'm a whole hell of a lot worse." I told her. "Now enough sitting around, there's no way that these Mantle fucks didn't notice that so let's start kicking gum and chewing ass before we are up to our necks in shit."

"Yes, lets…" She said, brushing off my threat surprisingly well until something crossed her mind. "What did you just say?"

"Let's move Antlers. You're sounding a lot more dumb than deaf right about now, lass." I said as I navigated the crater the HHG left behind as best I could.

Julia practically flew over the damn thing with how far and fast she jumped over it, probably more of that psyker bullshit making life easy for her like it made everyone in Vacuo so hard to kill. Fuck me, I need to figure out how the hell these people do that soon and fast. Life would be so much easier if I could stop bullets and anything else from trying to kill me whenever I felt like it.

"You said that we were going to start kicking gum and chewing ass." She told me as I nearly stumbled face first into a pile of rubble that had been obscuring a hole my recently mended leg was unfortunate enough to find.

"Yeah, what about it? You never heard that saying before?" I asked her.

"No, I have heard that saying before."

"Then what's your problem?"

For a moment she looked hesitant to speak her mind and looked completely dumbfounded. I could hardly believe it. Antlers, a woman that talked shit to me immediately after I took out a car by jumping at it, had something she didn't feel like she could say to me. As much as I wanted to ignore her, I was genuinely looking forward to what my apparent fuck up was in her eyes.

"You… didn't say it right." She told me.

That's… that's it? Wow, and here I thought you couldn't set the bar any lower than you already had Antlers. Good job setting a new low for yourself.

I don't know why the hell she was so sheepish about telling me that, but I guess it must be some sort of local or European thing. They must have remembered the saying wrong because I am 100% confident that what I said was right. Raul told me it was right when he taught it to me, and none of my other companions said anything about it being wrong when I shouted it before a big fight either.

"Must be a Mojave thing then if you don't get it. Probably something about the sayings being different because we are from different places or some shit." I compromised.

"Right… this 'Mojave thing' won't be a problem when you try to hack Mantle's systems, will it?" She asked me all of a sudden.

"What the hell are you talking about? Of course it won't! Do you think I'm fucking stupid?" I asked her.

"No, not all." She told me, sounding about as convincing as Santiago did when he tried to sell me a secret password that one time.

"Right…" I said, deciding to leave things there so I could focus on not fucking up my plan to sabotage everything Mantle had control over.

While I was waiting for the Monocyte Breeder to finish replacing the stitched up wound on my leg with a healthier bit of flesh, I cobbled together a little 'present' that would keep Mantle busy for a least a couple of hours without me needing to constantly keep messing with them. I took inspiration from a bunch of files I found all over terminals in the Mojave, apparently some sort of trojan horse if the varying files all carry the same video and song were anything to go by.

Luckily for me, I never was able to infect my Pipboy with the virus. Guess some nerd somewhere managed to find a way to defeat the virus just before the Great War started and was never able to credit for it. Well, his loss was my gain because now I had that song ready to play on loop on whatever devices I wanted it to at the push of a finger. It was with great satisfaction that I uploaded the program to their system and imagined the look on their faces when the song of some long dead singer from the Old World started blasting in their ears.

What made it even more satisfying was that Antlers wouldn't have a fucking clue what was going on until she heard that song too. She was going to be pissed and I can't wait until I hear her start freaking out at me… so long as she keeps it reasonable. I'd rather not have to answer any more stupid questions if I have to.

"That's that taken care of." I said as I checked to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass.

Sure enough, a quick inspection of the radio channels my Pipboy was picking up all played that damn song directly through the internal speakers of my helmet and damn near deafened me before I killed the connection. With victory already firmly in my grasp I tabbed over to the 'Aid' section of my Pipboy's inventory and materialized a bottle of Battle Brew in my pocket and pulled it free in one smooth gesture so it didn't look like I materialized it out of nothing. Julia didn't seem to know what a Pipboy was, only something like it. I wasn't about to risk my only means of smuggling weapons in and out of her people's hideout if I could help it.

Anyways, the drink wasn't just for an early celebration, but to give me that extra edge in battle without killing the chems I had no foreseeable means of replenishing in the immediate future. Battle Brew was a bit special since it managed to make me stronger, tougher, faster, and overall better after I downed a bottle full of the stuff. Might not be enough to cancel out all the chems that were fucking with my body, but it would sure as hell do more for me than another shot of Rebound could.

..and yes, I also wanted a fucking drink, okay? After getting shot too many times to count and all the shit I went through talking to that prick leading the Spirit of Vacuo, I deserved a little something to take the edge off of… however long it had been since I crawled out of the dumpster.

How long has it been since then anyway? Pretty sure it almost dawn when I first woke up, then dusk when I left that freaky sex dungeon/ torture room, and now it's still looking like its in the nighttime again. Huh, Pipboy still ain't picking up a signal. Guess I'll need to see how long since I had contact with one of RobCo's satellites then.

Let's see here… it's been four days, three hours, twenty two minutes, and the rest can fuck right off. Damn, it hasn't even been a whole day yet and I'm still kicking ass like there's no tomorrow. This might be a new record for me. If not, then it probably will be once I get a much needed drink in me.

"Here's to one hell of a good time!" I shouted as I uncorked the bottle and prepared to dump the whole thing down my gas mask instead of wasting time removing it.

Instead of the always refreshing taste of cheap vodka, liquid grass, and hint of Glowing One all running down my throat, I was instead left holding onto empty air when I tried pouring myself a well deserved drink. I didn't even have to think twice about who stole my fucking chem, I mean, drink to know that Julia was the culprit.

I turned my head to look at her and sure enough, there she was looking at me like I did something wrong when she stole my chem!

I mean drink.

Fuck.

"If you wanted a sip, all you had to do was ask." I told her as calmly as I could despite wanting to ram the empty bottle down her throat once I was finished with it.

"You are not getting drunk before we change the fate of Vacuo... hell, maybe the entire world!" She said, sounding all preachy all of a sudden.

"What the fuck are you on about? Of course I am! How else do you think I'm going to get out of this unscathed?" I asked her.

"How is alcohol supposed to help you fight?" She asked me.

Oh, so that's what is wrong. She thought I was going to get drunk off my ass before I started cracking skulls and ripping off limbs. While stopping a passionate moment between Mr Booze and someone else might help them out, I could hold my liquor unlike most of the other lightweight pussies you could find hanging around a bar. I could drink a whole gallon of vodka, beer, scotch, and even something as disgusting as whiskey and still feel fine.

Of course, since I never told Antlers that she was right to assume I couldn't hold my drink. Once again she was proving her to be smarter than most while still being just as gullible.

"It's not just alcohol, it's Battle Brew. It's… medicine." I said, deciding now would not be the best time to admit to using chems.

Not that Battle Brew is a chem, which it isn't, but the stuff it takes to make it definitely muddies the lines a bit.

"Medicine?" She asked me in clear disbelief.

"Yeah, medicine. Now hand it over to me before anyone gets hurt." I growled at her.

She looked reluctant to hand the bottle over, but common sense won her over when she realized she was facing a guy with a whole hell of a lot more muscle than her and she threw the bottle over to me without a fight. I barely caught the damn thing on account of still feeling like shit from all the chems I've yet to get out of my system, but luckily a shot of Battle Brew could help me out with that. Drinking the whole bottle might even make me feel like my usual self if I was lucky… which I'm not. The only thing it couldn't do for me was make it easier to think about anything other than killing, but I rarely ever had to do anything other than that if Battle Brew was somehow involved. It's a shame it didn't put me into a killing mood like some of my other chems did, but I wasn't in a position to complain.

I savored that bottle to the last drop before throwing it into the crater behind me so I could finally get to work. The only thing between me, Antlers, and whatever was waiting for us inside the embassy were a pair of double doors that looked surprisingly sturdy. A quick inspection was all it took to see that I had no chances of prying them off their hinges, but apparently Antlers thought I should have known that just by looking at them. I could hear her complain about me being a, and I quote, 'crazy drunk psychotic murderer' as if that was somehow going to help us.

All her complaining did was give me a moment to hear some of the surprised shouts over the faint trill of music coming from behind the double doors in front of me. There were people there, a lot of people. Good. I appreciate them saving me the trouble of tracking them all down and killing them one by one on my way to The Major. How thoughtful of them.

The only thing I had to do now was burst through that door and show Mantle what happens to everyone else that's pissed me off. They were going to all the trouble to prepare a welcome party for me, and it would be a shame to let their work go to waste.

But first…

***********************************
* BIG IRON
* _ Reach The Major's office
* _ Kill Dick Ironcock
* _ Escape the Mantlesian Embassy Alive
* _ Keep Julia alive (Optional)
***********************************

---

"How much longer is it going to take before you finish breaking into Mantle's systems or whatever the hell you said you're going to do?" Julia asked her companion as he continued to slowly type away at the device on the wrist.

"Oh, I finished that before I downed that bottle of Battle Brew." The Courier answered as he continued typing away. "You sure you don't want any for yourself? It'll put hair on your chest and make you feel fucking bullet proof until we finish up here."

"No, I'd rather rip off my antlers than drink that." She said, disgusted at the very prospect of drinking whatever foul smelling liquid the Courier drank that she could still smell on his breath.

It was only once she was finished brushing off Six's offer and managing not to gag that she realized what else he had mentioned. "Wait, you already hacked Mantle's security?" She suddenly shouted.

"Yep."

"Then why the hell are we wasting time outside the embassy when The Major is probably barricading himself in his office right now?" She asked him.

Although she felt like strangling her companion for not taking their mission seriously, Julia held back from making her annoyance go beyond her audible contempt for Six. Her tone did not go unnoticed by her companion, but he ignored her anger all the same when he explained himself.

"Because I'm busy trying to do something else right now." He said, still typing away at the device on his wrist.

Julia was about to chastise his continued disregard for their mission, until a sudden thought crossed her mind. A look of bitter understanding crossed her face when she said, "Oh, so that's what you're doing."

Six, quite disturbed with the sudden change in the dynamic between them, quickly turned to her with barely concealed panic in his every movement. After having successfully kept her in the dark about what he was doing ever since arriving in the Spirit of Vacuo's headquarters, the very idea that she was the one playing him for a fool set Six on edge, potentially discovering just how terrible he was at reading and writing even more so.

"Uhh… you know what I'm doing? I thought you didn't know anything about computers, radios… hell, just technology in general." He admitted, trying not to reveal anything that wasn't already exposed.

"Why would you think that?" She asked him suddenly.

"Well, for starters you don't even have a password on that 'Scroll' or whatever that thing in your pocket is called. Hell, even after I hacked into it through Mantle's systems you still haven't done jack shit to try and keep me out. You do know how that thing works, right?" He asked her.

"I know enough about my Scroll to make it work." She answered, avoiding the question as best she could. "Alex said that he took care of everything so that no one could listen in on our communications after he managed to retrieve a few from those human bastards."

"Yeah, Alex really has been doing a fantastic job of keeping things from falling apart." Six joked, earning a glare from Julia in return.

He just shrugged off her look the same way he did several times earlier, the act now starting to become strangely enjoyable. "Oh come on, don't look at me like that. I wouldn't be here helping you people if you weren't desperate."

"We're not-"

"You don't even know what I fucking look like under this mask. I could be anyone, human, faunus, even one of these Grimm everyone hates so much and neither you nor Alex would be able to spot me in a crowd if I ever decided to take my helmet off and start working for Mantle after all of this is over." He told her.

Julia wanted to believe that he was just trying to scare her into submission, but she couldn't help but to grow pale upon realizing that it wasn't just Six's looks that were the only things she didn't know about him. The only thing she knew about the Grimm Wanderer, other than his hatred for Mantle he shared with her, was his supposed name and even she knew just how likely it was that he had forgotten his name. The only thing she felt certain about him was that he truly didn't know much about himself or the world around him after Alex had to remind him what the faunus were.

Allegiances, morality, race… everything about the Grimm Wanderer she had been tracking for the past several days was known only to him and even she doubted that. While this was not the point Six had been wanting to prove to her, it was the one that she had picked up on regardless. Alex's insistence on securing his allegiance to the Spirit of Vacuo seemed a lot more reasonable now that she started to see that the only reason Six was helping him was for the sake of revenge. Without having proof of his cooperation moving forward, there was no telling if he would someday turn his fury against his current allies.

"Oh, don't look at me like that." Six said, snapping Julia out of her thoughts. "So long as nobody tries something stupid, I'll keep on helping out your little faction so long as you keep the jobs coming and don't try to screw me over when its time to pay up."

"Lighten up a bit." He said, chuckling as he gave her a playful tap on the shoulder. "Shit's about to go down hard and fast, so unless you want to feel like absolute shit from here on out you had better loosen up and start enjoying yourself a bit."

"Brothers above, this is all a joke to you, isn't it?" Julia asked him.

"No, it's just…" Six seemed to consider his next few words before turning his back and dismissing her entirely. "Forget it. You just ain't seen as much shit as I have yet to understand how important a good laugh is every now and then."

As much as he would have liked for their conversation to end there, Julia was not one to be dismissed so easily, least of all by someone that annoyed her as much as the man in front of her.

"The only thing I can understand is that it is taking you too long to spy on the guards waiting for us inside of the embassy." She told him.

"What the hell are you on about now?" He asked her.

"You said you already hacked into Mantle's security and shut everything of theirs down, right?"

"I took away control of their own systems and can do whatever the hell I want instead of them, but I suppose what you said was one way of looking at things." Six conceded, not wanting to explain a network to someone who appeared to be illiterate towards computers in general. "Why the hell are you talking about spying on Mantle for all of a sudden?"

"That's what you were doing before I 'interrupted' you, right?" She asked him.

"Uhh… yeah. Yeah! That's right!" Six shouted as he pounced at the easy out she presented to him. "You definitely got me there."

"Nice try, but you can't keep me in the dark forever Six." She said with no small sense of satisfaction.

"Yeah, I was definitely doing something smart like looking to see how many people are on the other door waiting to shoot us to hell in back and not struggling to do something anyone with half a brain could do." Courier grumbled, before silently adding. "I really need to get my hands on some Fixer soon, I can't be letting Antlers be thinking of stuff like this before I do."

"What the hell did you just say about me?" She asked him.

"I said that I can't believe you figured out what I was doing this whole time, just like how I can't believe you're not shutting up yet and letting me get to work!" He shouted back at her.

Not wanting to waste any more time or get caught in a lie, Six quickly closed the Quest tab of his Pipboy and pulled up the relevant camera feeds to the building in front of him. It only took him a few seconds to find the particular one he was looking for, and what he saw did not fill him with any more confidence than he already had.

Waiting for him and Julia on the other side of the doors a fair distance away was a firing line four rows deep with five Mantlesian soldiers in each row. Unlike the uncertain and undisciplined men and women he could remember seeing in Vacuo, Six could recognize that they were all trained killers from the way they carried themselves. He could already tell that his initial plan of 'run in guns blazing and shoot everyone dead' clearly wouldn't work, but that didn't mean he was out of ideas yet.

"Hey, Julia. How thick do you think these doors are?" He suddenly asked as he drew the anti-materiel rifle-esque sniper off of his back.

"What kind of a question is that?" She fired back at him, annoyed at being asked something that seemed pointless to her.

"Antlers, I can see twenty people on the other side of that door right now and each one of them is waiting to rip us a new asshole with those fancy rifles of theirs'. Unless you want to get shot to hell and back the moment we go through the doors, answer the goddamn question." Six growled at her.

"I don't know, maybe a couple of inches thick." She answered him. She would have left things there but her curiosity got the better of her instead, as did the sneaking suspicion that there was a more sinister reason behind the question in the first place. "Why do you need to know?"

"Oh, no reason." He answered far too quickly for her liking.

"You wouldn't happen to know what wall-banging is, would you?" He suddenly asked.

"Wall-banging? What the hell is that?" Julia asked, somewhat dreading what that might be.

"Watch and learn girl." Six said as he aimed his anti-materiel rifle towards the door, checking his Pipboy a few times as he did so and readjusting appropriately each time. "Watch and learn."

Before she could ask him what he thought he was doing, Six fired off a shot that penetrated through the door and chambered another round just as the first startled shouts reached him from the other end of the door. He fired one more shot through the doors in a seemingly random direction before taking cover beside the doors and pulled Julia beside him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" She shouted at his sudden, uncomfortable closeness.

"Thinning the herd." Six shouted back as a hail of gunfire rattled against the door before quickly melting a hole through the metal doors.

"Yep, definitely don't want to be on the receiving end of that again." He mumbled to himself.

"Are you trying to get us killed?" Julia shouted as she pulled herself away from him, careful to not accidentally stumble towards the hole in the doors afterwards.

"Nope, just trying to even the odds a bit." He said as he checked his Pipboy.

The same camera that had shown him twenty troops waiting to kill him earlier showed only seventeen of them able to fight, three of them laying dead after his 'warning' shots proved that waiting for him to act any longer would prove to be hazardous to their health. Of those seventeen scattered survivors, the majority of them were taking cover on the other side of various doorways and other furniture now providing cover for them as they in turn kept their rifles trained on the two luckless soldiers making their way to the doors he and Julia were hiding behind.

"How good are you in a fist fight?" Six asked his companion as he holstered his rifle, pulling out his pipe pistol in its place and extending the sharpened prongs of his ramshackle bladed gauntlet.

"Better than you." She answered, getting ready to pounce knowing that there had to be a behind Six's sudden question.

"We'll see about that. We got two Mantle fucks too curious for their own good." He said, not giving into her half hearted taunt entirely.

"I'll take the first one that comes close enough for me to get my hands on, the other one is all yours." He told her.

Julia nodded her consent to his plan, and the two waited in breathless anticipation as they heard the hesitant steps of the two soldiers tasked with checking the doors to the embassy for any sign of their attackers. They walked side by side, vigilantly checking for any potential threats that were waiting to leap out of them. It was only when the one on the right unwisely leaned his head out of the door for a better look outside that Six pulled him through the doors and tackled him to the ground.

In an attempt to save his comrade's life, the other soldier followed after Six with his rifle drawn in the Courier's direction leaving him completely unprepared to defend himself against Julia who raked her sword against the man's back, his aura just barely able to protect him and instead knocking him to the ground beside Six. The Grimm Wanderer hardly noticed another body falling to the ground beside him, instead he was more focused on trying to pull his bladed gauntlet free from his newest victim's shoulder as he desperately fought back against his attacker.

It was with no small amount of annoyance that Six pulled out his pipe pistol and watched every shot he fired from it hit the man in the chest and stop just before they could tear through his uniform. Believing that another approach was necessary to dispose of his opponent and recalling the Way of the Canaanite for the first time in months now that he had a pistol he was willing to abuse, Six pounded the butt of the makeshift firearm against the head of his opponent. The pathetic little firearm pounded against the Mantlesian soldier's skull again, and again, and again, before finally being forced through both brain and bone and putting the futile resistance the soldier offered to a swift end.

The soldier that Julia was facing was too distracted with the faunus trying to cut him to pieces with her sword to worry about his comrade. He was barely holding off her assault by using his rifle to defend himself but a quick sweep of his legs courtesy of the Grimm Wanderer quickly changed that. Six's small contribution to the fight left the lone soldier lying on his back, completely defenseless and unable to stop Julia from breaking his aura and impaling him with her sword in one final motion.

"I told you I know what I was doing." Courier Six said, as he struggled to free his pipe pistol from the corpse it was stuck in.

"Shut up already." Julia shot back at him as she cleaned off the blade of her sword on her pants. "Now tell me; how many more troops are we going to have to deal with before we are able to reach Ironwood?"

"Fifteen." He answered, his companion looking just as irritated with him as ever as he checked his Pipboy. "Maybe sixteen if I got the angle wrong on that first shot."

"Great, we just need to hope that they can't hit us now that they know we are coming for them."

"I think I can arrange that." Six said as he opened up yet another tab in his Pipboy.

Julia was about to ask him what he was planning, but the sudden flickering of the lights outside of the embassy and those that had been coming from the hole in the door answered her question. It was only after another volley said behind them that the lights were cut out permanently.

"How much do you want to bet these guys can't hit what they can't see?" Six asked her.

"I don't know, but I'm not going in there first." She answered.

"Fair enough."

Julia stepped aside as Six walked past her, waving his hand in front of the hole in the door quickly and recoiling back in anticipation of the violent reaction that never came. Stepping in front of the door for a moment didn't earn him a few bullets to the chest either, leaving him smugly satisfied with his latest bit of sabotage.

"Hah, and you were too scared to go first." Six taunted.

He ignored the eye roll that Julia directed his way for his valiant show of bravery and stupidity and ducked his head through the hole that was just big enough for him to step through. Seeing nothing but the darkness of the hallway before him, he turned to his companion in the hopes that she would not be sharing his misery.

"You wouldn't happen to have any night vision goggles or anything like that, would you?" He asked her.

Julia laughed at his question. "Why would I need something like that when I can already see in the dark just fine?"

"Wait, you have night vision?"

"Of course I do, all faunus do." She said as if she was stating the obvious. "Do you really not know something that obvious?"

Luckily for Six, he had just enough presence of mind to realize his mistake and recall that he had a decent excuse to fall back on. "Oh… damn. Guess I forgot more than I thought I did." He shrugged.

Even though he was lacking the common sense most people on Remnant possessed, Six had seen Julia navigate through the sewers underneath Vacuo twice in near pitch black darkness. In retrospect, Six felt that was fairly obvious. He once again blamed his chems for his not realizing something so useful about his partner earlier, an excuse that was far more accurate than the one he had given her and far more likely to lose what little allies he had. Unfortunately for him, his antlered companion wasn't buying his excuse this time.

"You can't be serious. You're a fucking faunus for Brothers' sake! Are you blind?" Julia asked him, not daring to raise her voice above a whisper in case of attracting any unwanted attention.

"Hey, let's see you get cut up into a dozen different pieces and have most of them replaced by whatever the docs around here decide to patch you up with, then we'll see just how you like it when you get treated like an idiot for not knowing what the hell is going on anymore." Six grumbled.

Not wanting to waste any more time on a pointless argument or allow his enemies more time to recover their senses after attempting to make them night blind with his earlier light show, Six dashed through the door with his anti-materiel rifle in hand until firing at the first vaguely person shaped object he saw. He hastily fired at what he believed to be his target's chest, earning an agonized scream from them with the shot itself illuminating the room for a brief moment and exposing several other targets nearby that had yet to raise their weapons towards him. It was only through sheer luck and the Mantlesian's hesitation to start shooting towards what might have been one of their own people in the darkness.

Knowing that it was only a matter of time before every single gun in sight would be pointed at him, Six slung his rifle across his back and rushed towards the nearest group of Mantlesian soldiers that had been illuminated by his muzzle flash. He hoped that the other soldiers nearby would be unwilling or at least unable to shoot him due to being in the middle of their allies. Regardless of whether or not Julia followed him inside or was able to hold her own against the remainder of the troops inside the embassy, Six focused on the group of seven he had rushed in between and readied his bladed gauntlet and bowie knife for a bloody battle.

Rather than letting out a viscous roar to let the group know that death was approaching them, he let the soldier he leapt towards announce his presence. The luckless soldier that found herself staring into the dark green lenses of his helmet let out a desperate cry for help before being silenced by the knife in her throat. His knife pierced through her aura just as easily as it did her neck, and the sound of her body collapsing to the floor the only warning that she was able to give her allies

The Courier executed her no differently than he had so many others and with just as silently, but what little noise his victim did make was more than enough to catch her allies attention in case his previous act of violence hadn't already. The Mantlesian soldiers surrounding him quickly aimed their weapons towards the menace that butchered one of their own from only a few feet away, most of them grabbing a knife of their own while only two willing to risk harming their own allies to put down the threat that had barged into the embassy.

The first soldier to lunge at the threat in their midst was brushed aside as Six simply sidestepped them and kicked the back of their leg, knocking them down and blocking a few more his attackers as one of their own tumbled into them. This act left one soldier separated from their allies and he immediately tried to bring his knife around to slash at the Courier's chest to stall his attacker as his allies recovered. Six easily evaded the wild slash of his opponent, instead catching his arm in between the metal prongs of the jagged metal gauntlet with ease. With his opponent held in place and frozen in relief at having narrowly avoided a painful injury, Six punched the soldier's immobilized arm and broke it just above the elbow before silencing his victim's howls of pain with a swift elbow to the head, all delivered in one fluid motion.

Unsatisfied with only disabling his opponent, the Courier let his opponent break free from his grasp so he could skewer his victim's head with his bladed gauntlet. The recently recovered soldiers that saw his brutality took a step back away from the carnage they had witnessed, giving the two riflemen behind them a clear shot on the Courier. Lacking any real options to avoid getting shot and unable to remove the corpse stuck to his right hand, Six turned the freshly made cadaver into a meat shield that was barely able to hide him from the brief hail of gunfire that came flying towards him.

Lacking confidence in his makeshift cover and desperate to put the ranged threat to an end, Six let out a savage roar and charged the two soldiers shooting him with his meat shield held out safely in front of him. Screams and the sound of fighting elsewhere were starting to reach his ears as he ran forwards, but he wasn't worried about what kind of trouble Julia was running into. His blood was pumping fast and everything outside of the five remaining opponents around him was a distant blur, an unfortunate side effect of the chem he had taken earlier that allowed him to ignore the chems that had slowed him down earlier.

"SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM!" Cried one of the soldiers as Six continued his relentless charge despite the resistance they offered him. Their shots did nothing but earn the Courier's wrath now that they had run out of ammo they were beginning to lose the confidence they had started the fight with.

Even if their allies had been careless enough to fire at the madman rushing towards the two riflemen as he charged them, they never would have been able to get a shot off before Six ran past them to ensure no one else could take potshots at him.

Safe from any ranged interference for the time being Six ripped his bladed gauntlet out of his battered meat shield, the body keeping two of the three pronged blades for itself when he pulled his weapon free. If the Courier noticed, then he was too eager to kill the two men in front of him to care. He slashed at one rifleman closest to him with his liberated gauntlet, the ramshackle weapon barely deflected by the aura of its owner and allowing the other rifleman a chance to reload as the Courier caught himself after failing to kill his target.

A spray of bullets pelted his back, but other than a slight chill that racked his core he hardly noticed he had been hit. The repairs he made on his armor proved to be more than enough to protect him from the worst that a couple of dust rounds could do to him, allowing him to try disemboweling the rifleman he was focused on one more time. This time his bladed gauntlet pierced through both aura and flesh, earning a cry of pain as the soldier fell to his knees clutching his bleeding stomach and allowing the Courier to focus on the idiot that shot him instead of running for his life.

Six ate volley of shots that were aimed at his torso before reaching out and wrenching the other rifleman's gun from his hands. Unarmed and now seeing the wisdom in living to fight another day, the Mantlesian soldier turned around to make a run for it in a futile attempt to save his life. He only managed to make it a couple of steps before being gunned down by his own weapon when the Courier emptied the remainder of the magazine into his chest. As poor of a shot as he was with an automatic firearm, even he found it impossible to miss his target when they were barely out of arm's reach.

The small feeling of satisfaction he had at the ironic death he had caused was cut short when he felt a familiar stabbing pain in his side. Six whipped around to see one of the soldiers he had sprinted past earlier looking triumphant at having wounded him and blissfully unaware of just how screwed she truly was. His opponent's look of triumph soon turned to one of horror as the Courier ripped the knife that had been thrust into his side free like it was little more than a thorn in his side and twirled it around his fingers with ease. Considering some of the previous wounds he had endured, a simple knife thrust between the metal plating wrapped around his chest was nothing more than a thorn to him, but that would not have been of any comfort to the woman who realized that she was unable to unholster her only other weapon to defend herself against the menace before her.

Her fears were soon laid to rest along with her as the Courier buried her knife through the bottom of her jaw and knocked her away with a quick jab from his bladed gauntlet's recently disarmed side. Six would have delivered one final blow to her as she staggered to the ground if it hadn't been for her last two allies coming at him with knives raised and a feral look in their eyes.

Six brushed aside the first knife to come at him with the remaining prong of his bladed gauntlet and lurched his head backwards to avoid the other one that soon followed it. He tried to chase the attacker that failed to tear out his throat with his own knife, but instead parried the serrated blade of the first knife that had nearly tore through his long coat once more. Not wanting to see what his two remaining opponents might follow up with, Six quickly backpedaled away from them to create some distance between them and pulled out his pipe pistol in the hopes of dropping at least one of them.

While his short time in Vacuo had already shown him that a bullet that wasn't capable of punching through a Deathclaw's armored hide was practically useless so long as his opponents had enough strength to defend themselves, he also knew they weren't bullet proof. Not only had the anti-materiel rifle he had killed four Mantlesians with already proven that, but the assassins from earlier and even one of his most recent kills were able to repel melee attacks too. Six was unsure of how exactly his opponents' powers worked, but he was willing to bet his life on the likelihood that there were limits to how much punishment they could resist before that threshold was broken and they were unable to stop even his shitty little pipe pistol from killing them.

The fact that the soldiers he was fighting against all carried rifles proved that for as common as the 'psyker bullshit' he had seen earlier had been, bullets were still effective against them. There wouldn't have been much point of them using rifles to begin with if that wasn't the case. The only thing he was uncertain of was how their strange bullets might have enhanced the 'psyker bullshit' ignoring properties in the same way his Piercing Strikes did, but without a supply of Dust available to him he was no closer to discovering the answer now than when he crawled out of a dumpster last night.

It was with the thought that his bullets would at least do something that he quickly emptied every 9mm round inside of his worthless pipe pistol and hoped that blocking each shot hurt them as much as it hurt him watching his bullets fail to injure their targets. The token attempts his opponents made at shielding their faces from every shot fired from his pathetic pipe pistol only encouraged the idea that his opponents powers had a set limit, as did their groans of pain with every lethal impact they defended against. Six was only able to get off ten shots before lady luck decided to rear her ugly head and try to kill him once more.

His pipe pistol jammed before he was able to run out of ammo, the combined result of the weapon's hasty construction and his usual luck, but Six did not curse his bad luck as he usually did. Even as his opponents noticed him beating on his weapon to unjam it and started running towards him with renewed vigor he didn't have anything to say about the sudden turn of events in their favor. Instead, he made his own luck once again and chucked the weapon straight at one of his opponents who collapsed to his knees after having a few pounds of scrap metal thrown towards his mouth. The man in question was too surprised by the Courier throwing his weapon at him to notice anything other than how many teeth had been broken by a sad yet deceptively sturdy pistol.

Six paid little attention to the stream of blood pouring out of the man's mouth from between the fingers covering his ruined teeth as his partner continued his charge without him. All he cared about was how the lone soldier rushing at him who no longer had the annoying back up that had made a quick kill against him impossible and how much easier it would be to handle him now. The lone soldier came towards him with a wild swing of his bowie knife that the Courier blocked with his own knife before doing the same with his bladed gauntlet which was blocked by his opponent's arm in the same manner.

With both of their arms restrained and neither man willing to pull away and give the initiative to the other, there were few options either of them had to continue their fight. Six took a moment to consider his options but his opponent was already prepared to end their momentary stalemate himself. The lone soldier reared his head back and delivered an aura infused headbutt against the Courier's skull, but instead of dropping to the floor in agony the Courier stayed still as if nothing happened.

"That was fucking pathetic." Six grumbled at his opponent's attempt to drive him back.

"What?" The lone soldier gasped.

"That wasn't a fucking headbutt." Six growled as he reared his head back. "THIS IS A HEADBUTT!" He shouted as he drove his helmet covered skull into his opponent's unarmored head and nearly knocked him out with a single hit.

The lone soldier was left seeing stars from the blow, but was unable to back away lest the bladed gauntlet he blocked come any closer to killing him in the same way that it did his other comrades. That left him unable to move as the Courier continued to bash his head against his opponent's until the lone soldier was left dazed and disoriented after his aura had broken at some point during the seemingly endless barrage. With his opponent off balance, Six stabbed his knife towards the lone soldier's neck to end their fight then and there.

The lone soldier was barely able to pull back far enough to save his own life, but not far enough to prevent the knife from being buried in his shoulder. The sudden flash of pain filled him with a renewed strength that he used to force the Courier away from him and give him one last attempt to kill the terror that had already slaughtered so many of his allies. The lone soldier's knife never came close to reaching his opponent. Instead, the Courier ran what was left of the broken bladed gauntlet through the soldier's chest until the final prong popped out of his back.

Six watched the life drain from the lone soldier's eyes before pulling what was left of his bladed gauntlet free of the lone soldier's chest, deliberately breaking off the final prong inside of him to ensure he wouldn't be getting back up despite the gaping hole in his chest. The lone soldier's death left only one last Mantlesian alive, the soldier that he had taken down with his pipe pistol. Even as Six drew closer to his final victim he couldn't help but to laugh at how he managed to come so close to killing someone with the pathetic little firearm in such an unorthodox way.

"NWO! NWO! GEB DAWAAY!" The last man sputtered as best as he could through his ruined teeth.

His pleas fell on deaf ears, but the Courier did allow him at least some mercy now that he was no longer trying to fight back. The Courier simply wrapped his arm around the cowering man and pulled as hard as he could until he heard the man's spine snap and his frenzied pleas for mercy ended with a sickening crunch. It wasn't the most impressive way to kill someone, but breaking his neck ended the fight all the same.

Seven soldiers, all killed in under a minute laid before Six on the ground. In addition to the three he had killed by announcing his presence outside the embassy earlier and the three that had been killed by him and Julia before his brief brawl with one group of the former survivors, there were only seven more bodies left unaccounted for. The steady sound of fighting off in the darkness beyond his sight but not beyond his range of hearing would surely lead him to the remainder of his enemies and his companion who was still fighting them.

But before he checked to see if Julia was handling things well enough on her own, firmly believing that any help he could offer her would be worthless in one way or another, there was another matter that required his attention first. The psykers he had faced earlier were tough, far tougher than the usual bandits, mutants, and other threats he was more accustomed to. While he felt confident that none of the men and women he fought would ever get back up to fight him again, a hint of doubt flashed through his mind after seeing them all sprawled out on the floor.

To crush whatever lingering doubts he held about his opponents after breaking them, he approached the corpses he had made and drove the heel of his boot through each of their skulls. It was slow, messy work but even so Six felt some satisfaction well up inside of him with every body he 'checked'.

To some, what he was doing appeared to be nothing more than a petty act of revenge being carried out by a madman too far gone to respect the dead. To Six, it was an old habit he had grown into after finding it necessary to ensure that whatever he killed stayed dead, so long as he had time to spare for it. He always found it reassuring that whatever looked dead was truly dead after a fateful trip to the Sierra Madre, and if the soldiers whose skulls he had crushed underfoot hadn't been earlier then they certainly were now. While he would have admitted that it was paranoia driving him to make sure of his foes' demise, that same paranoia had also been the only thing to keep him alive when everyone around him died on more than one occasion.

By the time he was finished 'checking' the last body, he knew that there would be no one left who could take him by surprise until another patrol or other reinforcements came for him before he reached The Major. It was with this thought in mind that he strolled towards Julia, lighting the way with his Pipboy despite the risk of attracting unwanted attention to himself.

The faint green light from his Pipboy barely illuminated the hallway he was walking through, but what it lacked in power it made up for in distance. From just at the edge of his sight he could see several soldiers lying on the floor, some of them moving while others were not. Two silhouettes shifted beyond them, trading blows with each other in a dance of death that Six was all too familiar with. One of the figures was holding a sword while the other fended them off the best they could with the rifle in their hands, occasionally attempting to swing it at the sword wielder like a club.

Not wanting to waste any more time than he already had by sparing himself a few more rads after refusing to clear out the embassy with a mini-nuke, Six drew his anti-materiel rifle and fired it towards the silhouette he hoped wasn't his only ally in the embassy. The girlish yelp that came from the sword wielding silhouette across from his target whose head exploded didn't fill him with confidence, and he kept his rifle trained on the only other person left standing in the room as he came close enough to prove who they were.

"What were you thinking? That could have hit me!" An all too familiar voice to the Courier screeched in disapproval of his most recent action.

Apparently he hadn't hit Julia. Whether or not that was something he was supposed to be happy about wasn't sure of yet.

"Well it didn't, so quit your bitching." He fired back at her.

Rather than listen to the tirade that was sure to follow him dismissing her concern for her safety, Six tuned Julia out and checked how many shots he had left in his magazine before reaching into his pocket and carefully refilling it and reinserting it into his weapon as if it wasn't the first time he ever done so. His practice going through the same motions in the past helped, and even with a brand new weapon in his arms it still felt no different than any other firearm he had wielded in the past. Once again his expertise with firearms of all shapes, sizes, and calibers proved useful in unexpected ways.

With the minor bit of maintenance out of the way and his partner's words still falling on deaf ears, Six made his way to the soldiers that Julia had taken care of and began the grisly work of ensuring their demise in the same way he had done with the seven he had taken down himself. Only two of them offered anything resembling resistance to him, but a practiced heel to the back of their heads took care of them no differently than it had the others. Five out of the six soldiers Julia had taken care of were 'checked' this way, and it was only by the timely appearance of a hand on the Courier's shoulder that kept the last soldier laying on the ground from enduring the same fate.

"Dammit Six!" Julia shouted at him, her partner unable to ignore her any longer. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Making sure we don't have any interruptions when we have a little chat with The Major." Six said, his voice completely devoid of emotion answering what he believed to be yet another stupid question with an obvious answer.

"We already did that, there's no one left to stop us from killing that human bastard when we finally reach his office." Julia fired back, attempting to drag Six away from the soldier in front of him who had just begun to stir.

Despite her aura enhanced strength helping her, she could not force the Courier to budge an inch. Even so, she did not stop trying to pull him away from the man in front of them both.

"He's still alive." Six said.

"Look at him. He can't even get to his feet!" She pointed out as the last surviving soldier writhed on the floor in agony. "You don't have to kill him."

"You cannot be fucking serious right now." Six said, breaking away from her grasp with ease.

"What's wrong, Antlers? Feeling a little shy about killing a couple of humans all of a sudden?" Six taunted. "I thought you were all gung-ho about killing these Mantle fucks earlier? Feeling a little squeamish now that you're the one getting your hands dirty instead of watching from the sidelines? Is that why you were fucking around when I was dealing with Frost, huh? Are you really afraid to kill someone that's standing in between you and what you want?"

"No, of course not!" She shouted back, although the way she shied away from her partner ever so slightly suggested the opposite. "Killing a random human won't change anything..."

"But killing The Major will." Six said, finishing her thoughts for her.

For a moment, he looked lost in before speaking his mind once more. "You know, I'm pretty sure this guy right here would have a lot to say about that since he's the one that's about to die. I'm sure he'd have a lot to say about not wanting to die right now if he was in any position to speak." Six said as he pressed his foot down on the man's head, just enough to squeeze a groan of pain out of him.

"Don't do it." Julia growled at him.

"Or FUCKING what?" Six shouted at her. "Go ahead, tell me what the hell you're going to do if I kill one of the Mantle fucks that you told me you hated so much! I told you that we were going to kill everyone in here when we came for The Major and you agreed! What the hell are you changing your mind for all of a sudden?"

"This isn't right." She said, leaving Six at a complete loss of words at her unexpected response.

"You have to be either the biggest idiot I've ever met or the most naive." He finally said after an uncomfortably long moment of silence. "Do you really think that any of these shitheads would have given a damn if they killed you or not?"

"I'm not a monster." Julia spat out at Six.

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" He asked her, an aura of overwhelming hatred pouring from him the instant he spoke.

Shaken, but not deterred, she answered him. "Unlike you, I have morals."

Six gave her words a moment of thought, a small gesture of genuine acknowledgement, before stomping down on the head of the last remaining Mantlesian soldier and putting him out of his misery.

"NO!" Julia shouted as she drew her sword and pointed the point towards his face.

"You might be right about me not having morals, but unlike you, I have STANDARDS." He said, before grabbing hold of her sword with a bloody hand. "Now go ahead and put that thing down before you get yourself hurt. You can do whatever the hell you want to me after we kill The Major but until then, anyone that gets in between me and him is going to die. End. Of. Story."

On that last note, Six ripped the sword out of his partners hands with more strength than she thought he possessed and held her still with his other one, leaving her terrified as to what he intended to do next. Instead of continuing to prove that he was the monster she believed him to be, he turned her blade around towards her and handed it back to her and she quickly reclaimed her weapon before he could take it away from her again. Julia made no further attempts talking to the terrifying presence she had agreed to work with as they walked past the fresh corpses they had left behind on the first floor of the Mantlesian embassy. An uneasy silence spread between them as they made their way further into the darkness beyond the light coming from Six's Pipboy.

Although he had given her weapon back, he had made one thing clear when he did so. If he wanted to, he could have stabbed her with her own weapon then and there. He chose not to, and that action said more than he ever could.

---

This is exactly why I prefer working alone these days, ED-E excluded. Some people just aren't willing to get their hands dirty the moment they realize that they have to go against their morals the moment things get tough. Sure, they'll do as much killing as they want to and not think about it twice so long as they are killing someone they hate, but the moment they have to think about what they are really doing they freeze up just like Antlers did.

PATHETIC!

So what if I sprayed some poor saps' brains all over the floor with the heel of my boot when they couldn't fight back? Who gives a shit? I don't! That bastard and all the other ones had it coming for not having enough sense to haul ass when they had the chance.

Of course Antlers didn't agree with me, but I suppose that's the problem with people who think that they can change the world by killing a couple asshats and calling it a day. As someone who has done the same a dozen times over, I know just how important some people are and aren't. She might think that killing The Major will do whatever it is she thinks will happen once the shitbag is dead but I'd say she would have better odds of making something meaningful happen by shoving her head up her ass.

Nobody gives a shit about who's right and who's wrong once the dust finally settles and the dead are either buried or left out for the geckos to tear apart. I know for a fact that morals like hers come a denarius a dozen. I'll stick to my standards over the morals that Antlers and her little faction are spewing any day. There's a reason I haven't ended up in a shallow grave again, and I ain't going to risk getting buried in another one anytime soon just because some gal felt like she had something to prove to me. Fuck that shit.

What the hell did she fucking expect anyway? This is a fucking war, and in war people DIE! BIGGEST FUCKING SURPRISE SINCE THE GREAT FUCKING WAR! It's because of people like her that the world is as fucked as it is and why people like me can't get a moment of peace after taking a much needed hit of Med-X and downing a couple bottles of scotch! Fucking idealist bullshit!

Well, that's enough of that. I can bitch and moan all I want as soon as I kill The Major and manage to get my hands on enough alcohol and chems to forget that any of this ever happened. Hopefully I won't have to get blackout high again to not feel like something a Deathclaw chewed up, but if that's what it takes then so be it. I deserve a moment of fucking peace, dammit.

What I didn't deserve was having Antler's staring me down like I was going to pounce on her at any moment and tear her apart like a feral ghoul. It's not my fault she was expecting us to hold hands and sing kumbaya with everyone after making our way into the Mantlesian embassy, but I guess that just goes to show why Alex didn't try to stop her from joining me on this job.

Then again, maybe not. Who knows at this fucking point. The guy's a selfish prick and people like him rarely ever make sense. I know he's full of shit, but I don't have a damn clue about what it is that he's hiding.

The sooner I kill The Major and find a way out of Vacuo, the city and the kingdom, the better. I've had my fill of this shit in the Mojave already. I will NOT go through this again on the other side of the fucking planet!

"How much closer until we reach Ironwood's office?" Antlers asked me, finally breaking the silence between us.

Sure she had to speak up just to voice a shitty question like that, but at least she was talking to me. That meant she was less likely to stab me in the back all of a sudden, and I would take whatever cooperation I could get out of her after that little show of hers earlier.

"How the hell am I supposed to know?" I fired back at her.

"You're the one with the Scroll on their wrist that can control all of the cameras and computers here, right? Can't you find some sort of map or something to take us straight to his office." She said in as snidely a way as possible to piss me off.

Scroll on my wrist? What the hell is she talking abo… oh, my Pipboy. Right. Didn't recognize the fancy European lingo for a moment.

Well, now I just feel plain stupid. I completely forgot I could be messing around with that instead of figuring out how the hell I am going to do now without any of my good weapons. All I have is a nice anti-materiel rifle that is useless in close range and my… and my… where the hell did I leave my other...

Fuck.

Now that I think about, I'm pretty sure I left the knife I had on me in somebody's neck and that shitty pistol somewhere too. Damn, that means I've only got the extra large anti-materiel rifle and my bare fists to kill The Major with. Both of them are lethal weapons in their own right, but not exactly what I would have liked to have with me fighting someone that seems to have their shit together like that guy did.

Ah well, it's too late to turn back for them now. Me and Antlers already climbed up about six flights of stairs already and I'll be damned if I have to make a round trip up six floors just for a knife and a pistol that works better as a bludgeon than a gun. At least I can see exactly what kind of gear The Major has on him once I pull up a few cameras on him so I know exactly how hard of a time I'll have killing him.

It only took a couple of swipes and the press of a single button to restore power in the Mantlesian embassy after I killed it throughout the entire building earlier. Once again, the dumbass that did all the wiring and networking for Mantle, or maybe Vacuo in general, seemed to have a thing for shitty security and keeping all their eggs in one basket. That is the only explanation I could come up with for why turning the power for a building on and off at a whim was just as easy as it was giving myself complete control of every terminal on the network. Sure as hell wasn't Lady Luck giving me a break. The only breaks that she gives me are the ones that make it a pain in the ass to keep on fighting.

Me and Antlers hit the eighth floor just as I was finally able to restore power to the entire building. The lights were the first things to come on, allowing me to finally see beyond the light of my Pipboy and nearly blinding Antlers too. Guess she wasn't used to the joys of night vision quite yet, although since I don't use Cateye anymore for the same reason I couldn't blame her. Getting light flashed in your eyes with night vision hurts like you wouldn't believe.

The next thing to turn on were the speakers and they wasted no time blaring that damn song that I used to jam all of Mantle's communications the moment they had power. That… wasn't supposed to be playing here. The only places that should be playing that stupid song I hacked into their communications are whatever radio frequencies they are control of, but considering how much of a mess everything from Mantle is I shouldn't be surprised that it turns out the embassy's PA system is somehow connected to the rest of their communications. It's a dumb explanation, but at least it lines up with everything else I've seen.

Then the cameras came online and I was quickly decided to not do a single fucking thing with them afterwards because fuck that. I had a couple hundred cameras to look through in the embassy alone and there was no fucking way in hell I was going to bother checking each and every one of them when I had a better way of scoping things out. Sure, my alternative method wouldn't give me eyes on the man but at least I'd know which room I could find him in.

Probably.

My local map on my Pipboy, as reliable as it always was even if I never did quite understand how it automatically kept track of my immediate area, was showing a room far larger than the others coming up on the next floor. I had no idea of what was inside but since I was no stranger to how things worked in a 'civilized' world, I was certain that Ironcock, or whatever the hell his name was, had that room all to himself in order to compensate for his namesake.

The Brotherhood of Steel did it, Caesar's Legion did it, the fucking savages in Zion did it, Bunny Boy did it, and I had no doubt that Mantle would be any different than all of them. There was apparently something irresistible in having a giant room to wave their massive egos around that I could never wrap my head around. That of course didn't mean that I never caught on to how they liked doing that.

"The Major's office should be up on the next floor, first door on the right." I told Julia once I finished checking my Pipboy and tuning out the song playing in the background as best I could.

["We are no strangers to love~"]

"Are you sure?" She asked me, still not trusting me yet.

["You know the rules and so do I~"]

"Yep." I told her.

["A full commitments what I'm thinking of~"]

Like hell I was going to tell her I didn't have a clue what the hell I was doing. What the hell was I supposed to do? Say I was an idiot that was walking around blindly just waiting to be shot the moment I stumbled into The Major's office?

["You wouldn't get this from any other guy~"]

"So, this is finally it." She mumbled to herself.

["I just want to tell you how I'm feeling~"]

I could barely hear her over the song I had playing on an endless loop, but even if I didn't, the look on her face made it painfully obvious that she had been waiting for this moment for a long time. Whatever doubts she had about coming along with me had been wiped away along with that stupid concern that she had about me suddenly turning on her for no good reason. Now she actually looked serious and had a smile that showed exactly how virtuous she was after that little speech of hers earlier.

I had no doubt in my mind that killing some guy that got pissed off at his pet psycho the moment she referred to faunus with the local slur wouldn't change a damn thing in Vacuo. Sure, maybe it might shake things up for a bit while Bunny Boy enjoys his moment of glory, but that moment would only last as long as Mantle let it last. The guy in charge of things from Mantle is only a major fuck's sake!

What the hell happens when Mantle gets their shit together and decides to send in a general and troops that know which end of the gun the bullets come out of? Exactly what would have happened if Caesar's boys ever managed to conquer the Mojave and get the NCR's full attention, that's what.

But enough about that, I waste time thinking about what's going on in Vacuo when I am in the next country over sipping on some Sunset Sarsaparilla and watching the fireworks through my Pipboy. Right now, Ironcock was going down and I was going to be the one to castrate the son of a bitch.

How'd that one song Mr New Vegas always played go again?

Twenty men had tried to take him, twenty men had made a slip. Twenty-one would be the ranger with the big iron on his hip.

I'm pretty sure that's what it was. Well, people around here might as well call me Texas Red because I've already taken down the twenty fucks he had guarding him on the first floor and there was nothing between him and me to stop me from making him number twenty-one.

Wait a minute. Didn't Texas Red die at the end?

…

["Gotta make you understand~"]

…

Fuck it. I've been winning shootouts across the Mojave ever since I left Primm. There ain't no way this texas ranger is getting that big iron off his hip before I blow out his brains with a .50 caliber round.

"Alright, we're here." I announced as we reached a set of double doors that just screamed 'compensating for something' to anyone that saw them.

Although I might not be able to focus all to well thanks to all the chems in my system and have been getting lost in my own thoughts every now and then, even I knew just how stupid of an idea it would be to open the doors on my own and let The Major get off a shot on me as I walked into his office. That's exactly why I gave that honor to Julia, and not just because I was still fed up with her from earlier. Everyone in Vacuo seemed to have some sort of psyker bullshit protecting them, so why wouldn't I let her eat a face full of lead for me since she could spit it right back at him afterwards?

At least, I hope she can do that. If not, I am going to have a lot of explaining to do when I hand her corpse over to Alex along with The Major's head.

Just as I was wondering exactly how powerful of a pistol Ironcock was carrying, Julia proved that I had nothing to worry about when she tried pulling the doors open and failed miserably. I mean come on! Why the hell would you try opening like you actually cared what the guy you're trying to kill thinks of you instead of breaking the damn doors down girl?

"I can't get the door open." She grumbled, as if it wasn't obvious enough as to what the fucking problem was.

I shoved her aside as she pulled something out of her back pocket, probably a bobby pin or some shit, and prepared to take care of things for her. "That's because you have to do it like THIS!" I shouted as I prepared to kick the doors down with a well placed boot at the place that they locked at.

I had to lower the anti-materiel rifle I was carrying in order to put enough weight behind my kick for it to break the doors open and not make me look like a complete idiot. One mighty boot was all it took to make those doors practically fly off their hinges into The Major's office.

It was as the doors flung open and I got a good look at the Major that I realized that I fucked up.

Three things became immediately obvious once nothing was hiding me and The Major from each other. First was that he wasn't cowering behind the lone desk in his room like most people in his position would have been. Next was that I didn't have my only weapon already pointing towards him the moment I could see him. Last and most damning of all, the barrel of his gun looked absolutely spotless from across the room where I was staring down the inside of it.

Fuck.

This is gonna hu-

*BANG*

*Ka-thump*

["Never gonna say goodbye~"]

---

Author's Corner:

Did this chapter at one point start off as an excuse to include a rick roll when it was first conceived almost a year ago? Yes, yes it did. I do not regret what I have done either.

I will also mention this one final time in case anyone here did not realize it earlier: COURIER SIX IS NOT A HERO. Anyone surprised or disgusted by what he has done so far in the story might want to rethink reading any further if they don't think someone willing to step into the middle of a war just to track down and kill the guy that shot them in the head is a nice person, or capable of doing something downright horrible.

Now, in all seriousness, this story's beginning is finally approaching its end. I originally intended to finish up with the first arc of this story at the end of March. As everyone clearly knows now… it is not the end of March anymore.

I got lazy, plain and simple. Now that things are heating up I am finally able to kick things into full gear and not spend more time on edits than I am on making actual progress which has also helped out a bit. The story will finally be going places once this arc wraps up, and I cannot wait until that finally happens. Remnant is a big place, and I am eager to take my own spin on a criminally underexplored setting.

That's it for me. If anyone feels like lighting me up for the sudden tone whiplash here or talk about what they liked, then you know where to do it. I always enjoy looking at what everyone has to say! All I ask is for some form of civility in the comments, unless whatever insults you have for me are really good because even vulgarity can be turned into a form of art with enough effort.

As always, thank you all for sticking around as long as you have and I hope to see you all in the long journey ahead!