"Nervous?" a voice from the right asked. Ash turned and found his partner and sponsor, Yuri, crouched next to him. Ash sighed.
"Yeah." He mumbled.
"It's okay. Everyone's nervous on their first op." She said. Ash nodded slowly and began to fidget with his assault rifle. Yuri sat down against wall and looked up at Ash. They were both Enclave Initiates on their Qualifying mission.
Simply put, in order to qualify to apply for the training to become an Enclave Trooper, one must wipe out a super mutant camp and bring back the heads of each mutant to headquarters. While strangely specific and quite grotesque, this test is not to test an initiate's skill or experience but rather, their courage.
"Do I really have to do it alone?" Ash asked as he watched one of the mutants through his scope. "I've never fought alone. Especially never a super mutant." Yuri laughed softly and drew her combat knife it was different because it was slightly rusted and in pretty poor condition. Ash frowned and struggled to comprehend why she wouldn't just replace it if it were in such poor condition.
"They used to send initiates in fireteams of four to eliminate super mutant camps." Yuri began. She began to rub the knife and press the rips of her fingers against the blade. Ash felt a bit uneasy to her strange handling of the knife. It was as if it were an item of great sorrow and pain for Yuri.
"They sent us to the Mall." Yuri said softly. "They told us kill eight and run." Yuri twirled the knife with her fingers.
"What happened?"
"We didn't even kill one." She said. "Talon Company got there first, gunned down every single thing that moved. Charon Holdings took cover on the other side. Fired back. Squad got caught in the middle. We took cover in an old abandoned Brotherhood safehouse." Yuri stopped messing with the knife and she held the blade in her gloved hand. She stared coldly at her knife. On the handle was a gold inscription that read 'Milo'. She looked back at Ash. "Infested with Supermutants. I was lucky to make it out alive." Ash nodded and struggled to come up with a response. He thought back to his own upbringing in the Commonwealth. Struggling to survive with his father. Escaping from the Gunners. Hiding from raidiers, deathclaws and who knows what else? Then his father got taken by the Gunners while he was forced to join their ranks. Ash shook his head. That's all over now.
"Okay. It's only eight of them, right?" Ash asked. Yuri twirled her knife and looked at Ash with a surprised look. Almost as if she were surprised that he would even dare to want to go alone.
"Yeah. Only eight. Good luck." Yuri smiled. Ash nodded and took aim with his rifle.
"Don't need it."
James stopped himself from smashing in the face of the feral ghoul just before his power armored fist came into contact with the mutate's skull. It was already dead. He dropped it and flexed his fingers. The new armor was light. Too light to be comfortable.
"Like it?" Arcade asked from a modified version of James's old armor.
"No." James responded. "It's too light." Arcade shook his head and took off the command helmet.
"You know, most soldiers look for light when they go on different operations." Arcade chuckled.
"I'm not just a soldier." James curtly replied.
"Well, be grateful we had the schematics for the Command Armor prototype." Arcade said as he flexed his fingers and inspected the armor. "It moves like it wasn't even power armor."
"Explains why Autumn was so easy to kill at Jefferson." James grunted as he drew his machete from a feral ghoul's body. Arcade and James stood in the center of Cambridge Police Station, an old abandoned Brotherhood outpost. Kodiak gathered the surviving members of the Brotherhood on the roof to be shipped off to the Mobile Carrier for interrogation. James waved as the Vertibird took off.
"So you're the one who killed the notorious Colonel Autumn." Arcade said as he inspected a couple dead ferals. The Enclave had taken the site two hours earlier but the Brotherhood had taken defensive positions within the building. The attention was drawing feral hordes in.
"That's me." James responded. He picked up his combat shotgun and loaded a few shells in.
"Was he wearing this when you killed him?" Arcade asked as he looked at the armor. James looked over at him and realized that with the faded trench coat that Arcade wore over the command armor caused Arcade to resemble Autumn.
"No." James muttered. "I don't know what the outcome would have been if he did."
"I wonder why he didn't wear it." Arcade surmised. "This suit works like an undersuit. It's almost perfect compared the design specs that some Enclave techies drew up."
"That's the strongest suit I've ever worn." James commented. "If there's something stronger, I want it." Arcade eyed James carefully.
"Why the sudden change in wanting stronger suits of armor?" Arcade asked.
"Because right after I'm finished with the Brotherhood," James began before he withdrew a folder that Deacon had given him from his ammo pouch. "I'm going to destroy the Insitute."
Arcade grabbed the folder and saw what had aggravated James. A single photograph stacked above the rest of the contents of the folder. On the rooftop of the C.I.T. ruins stood Katherine and a man notoriously known as The Director.