Author Notes: As before, I have no claim to either Fallout: New Vegas, or High School of the Dead. As before, a big thanks to Drgyen and Inconspicuous Llama for their beta work!
Min watched the door close behind the purple-haired swordswoman as she left once more, heading back to the gift shop. Glancing up at the clock and noting the hour, Min was unsurprised to see that Saya had joined Alice on the bed. It was almost cute how the young girl had curled into the older girl's belly, while the pink-haired teen had unconsciously embraced the child. The only flaw that marred the tranquil picture was the appalling naiveté of both children. Neither Alice, nor, more unforgivably, Saya, had thought to post any sort of guard or take any other sort of precaution against attack. Saya hadn't even checked the location of her pistol; it was all the way on the other side of the room! If someone chose to attack she'd be overwhelmed before she could even reach it. No, both sleepers had completely neglected their own defense, and relied entirely on her skill and desire to protect them.
"Saeko wouldn't have been so stupid." Min muttered as she headed towards the door. Despite the fact that the sword-wielding teenager was almost the same age as the girl curled up on the bed, the difference in maturity was unmistakable, making one a woman, and the other a child.
Another horrible refrain sliced through the primitive soundproofing Min had erected around the bathroom door. "Speaking of children… That blonde is the least mature of all…" Min licked her lips. The Wasteland didn't coddle weakness; if Shizuka didn't learn that fundamental lesson soon, she'd be snapped up like a molerat in the path of a pack of hunting deathclaws. Briefly, Min wondered how much she could make if she sold Shizuka to the Legion, before shoving the thought out of mind.
"Still, I wonder what she'd sound like if she screamed. I bet it'd sound prettier than her singing." As the leather-clad woman closed the door and walked down the motel's staircase, she amused herself with happy thoughts of Shizuka writhing under bloody hands.
As she reached the courtyard Min regretfully returned her attention to the business at hand. Crossing the cracked asphalt, Min made her way along the side of the motel to the room reserved for Manny. Stepping over the remnants of the curb, the Courier knocked on the weather-beaten door as loudly as possible, in case the ex-soldier had already gone to bed. He hadn't, and promptly answered the door.
"You know, there really isn't any need to break my door down." Vargas said mildly, with a faint tone of amusement.
"Oh, shut it. You might've been asleep, and I didn't feel like waiting for your tired bones." Min bantered back. "In any case, I need to talk to you. I have whiskey, if you're in need of an incentive."
"Well, in that case, come right on in! I'll get some cups." The soldier walked towards the table near the bed where several empty cups of various sizes stood guard over the mattresses that covered the floor.
"Are you hosting a sleepover party, Manny? Why wasn't I invited?" Min asked, as she nearly tripped over one of the pieces of soiled bedding that filled much of the unoccupied space.
"A few of my old gang were coming through town a week and a half ago, and needed a place to crash. And while none were as pretty as you, they were much quieter."
Min made a mock offended face and punched Manny in the arm. The preliminaries settled, she removed the whiskey from her backpack, and poured a generous amount into each cup. Both drinkers settled back and enjoyed the fiery liquid.
As Manny savored the alcohol, Min wondered how best to describe the bizarre events that had occurred at the test site. Briefly, she considered concocting an elaborate tale that explained the sudden appearance of seven strangers, five of whom couldn't speak English, before deciding that the absolute, unvarnished truth would have to satisfy Vargas.
If it didn't, she'd have to get what she wanted some other way...
"So, do you know of anybody who has a working prewar auto engine?" Min casually asked, as she refilled the cups with amber fluid.
With the air of one indulging a child, Manny shook his head. "Old Lady Gibson might have some idea, or even a complete engine hidden in that junkyard of hers. Why do you want to know, Mini?"
In one smooth movement, the Courier drew her hatchet, and hurled it through the air. As the melee weapon bounced off the wall behind Manny, leaving a noticeable dent, Min fumed. "I hate that nickname! Don't you dare call me Mini! It's 'Min', or 'Farshaw', or 'Courier' if you must! Call me Mini again, and I'll make sure you never eat anything again but soup!"
Manny barely blinked as the weapon soared past his left ear. "Temper, temper!" He shook his head, amused at the Courier's childish hatred for the nickname he'd given her. "Anyway, why do you want to know? You find something interesting up at the test site?"
Like a lightning bolt from the clear blue sky, Min's sudden fit of rage passed. As she took another sip of whiskey, a grin crept over her face. "To say the least, Manny, I did. Also, your ghoul problem should be solved."
With a look first of relief, then confusion, ending in disbelief, Manny Vargas listened to the Courier recount the bizarre episode that had resulted in seven Japanese apocalypse survivors, their dog, and a damaged military-grade vehicle entering the Mojave, decimating a horde of feral ghouls and four Legion assassins in the process.
"So, whatcha think? I bet you never thought that dimension hopping schoolchildren could be a force to be reckoned with, didja?" Min offered the bewildered man her cutest smile.
For a moment, Manny just stared at her, silently questioning her sanity. Then, surprisingly, he shrugged. "Got any more whiskey? I'm going to need to drink a lot more before you start making sense."
An hour later, as the minute hand on Manny's abused wall clock crept towards 10:15, Min made her way around mattresses and debris towards the illuminated terminal on the back desk. Behind her, sprawled across his bed where she'd deposited him, Manny snored loudly as he slept, drunk to insensibility. While Min hadn't come with the intention of scouting Manny's room for information, the opportunity was far too good to pass up. If he had any information on her attackers, it was almost certainly stored on the terminal; there was no other reason why Vargas would have gone to the trouble of fixing a terminal besides wanting it for an info-dump.
The terminal had no password, and had only one entry stored. "Khan Hospitality" Min whispered to herself. The men who'd assisted the prick in the checkered suit had worn Khan leathers, and the Khans frequently hired themselves out as mercenaries. "So, you hosted my killers, did you, Manny?"
Making her way back over to the slumped Vargas and retrieving her hatchet from the floor, Min weighed her options. On one hand, she had a legitimate cause against Manny Vargas; he'd sheltered the men who'd tried to murder her – on the other, he hadn't known anything about the job from which they were returning, nor had he been party to the actual attempt. All he'd done was help some of his extended family on their long trip north. She could understand the desire to help family, and she understood loyalty.
She shoved the haft of her hatchet back through her belt, and left the room.
Walking out under the night sky, Min was surprised to see Saeko sitting on the stairs leading up to the room she'd rented. The younger woman was idly playing with a bright red beret, spinning it back and forth on her fingers while staring out towards the horizon, dead to the world.
Min stepped from the shadow of the motel's overhanging balcony. "How was your shopping trip, Saeko?" Hopefully the girl hadn't snapped from previously suppressed stress or similar.
Saeko jerked to her feet, and had halfway drawn her sword before apparently recognizing Min. As she sheathed her blade she let out a bit of a nervous giggle, rather incongruous with her generally stoic personality. A slight smile played over lips as she looked down at the Courier, who stood at the foot of the stairs. Min wondered if she'd been the only one to go drinking tonight.
"I'm sorry, Min-san. You surprised me; I thought that you were still in the room, asleep by now." Saeko's elegant lips, already smiling, curved up a bit more. "I wonder, did you leave just to avoid Shizuka's singing? If so, I sympathize; I never could find a kind way to convey my feelings about her music."
The Courier laughed as she began climbing the stairs, keeping a hand on the rusted rail for balance. "It's pretty awful, isn't it? Anyway, I had to go talk to the guy who'd hired me to kill the ghouls up at the test site. We both started drinking, and… Well, anyway, how did your little shopping trip go? I'm surprised to see you out so late!" Min reached the same level as Saeko, and sat down. After waiting a moment, she pulled at the other woman's arm, encouraging her to sit. The two women relaxed on the stairs, and looked out over the wall that surrounded Novac, across the desert.
"The pistol sold well. I got four hundred and eighty caps for it, and another six for the bullets. I decided not to buy anything; I'm no munitions expert, so I'm passing the job on to Kohta. He will know what we need better than I." Saeko continued to look out towards the horizon as she spoke. "On a different topic, Min-san, could you tell me a bit more about the Legion? I would like to know a bit more about the new enemies that I've earned."
Saeko's biting tone indicated substantial annoyance with someone or something. Min wondered if she was peeved at being conscripted into her struggle with the Legion, before deciding that it didn't particularly matter.
"They're the only power worth talking about east of the Colorado. The Legion is the product of a decade and a half of constant intertribal warfare, which resulted in the forced assimilation of eighty-six tribes into a single entity led by a warlord named Caesar. According to the Followers out of the Boneyard, Caesar was once a Follower of the Apocalypse, who went east to explore and help primitive tribes."
"Pardon me, Min-san," Saeko interrupted. "But what is a 'Follower of the Apocalypse?'"
Min groaned, and rubbed her eyes. "Sorry Saeko, I forget that you're not from around here. The Followers of the Apocalypse are a faction committed to preventing another apocalypse from occurring. To achieve this, they use their scientific and medical knowledge and pre-war technologies to support and educate societies. They're big champions of the little people, of the tribals and the poor. They're good people, which makes it all the more surprising that a shithead like Caesar would have once been a Follower. But I suppose the Followers would know their own…"
Min paused, and removed a cigarette from the crumpled pack crammed in her side pouch, and lit up. Saeko waited patiently as Min puffed once, then twice, before resuming the story.
"So, the Legion is an awful institution. All women are chattel, slaves and property of either their husbands or owners, and any sickly or weak child is killed in infancy. Any tribe annexed into the Legion is broken apart; the women are collared as slaves while the men are broken again and again, brainwashed into becoming faceless legionnaires. The only good thing I can say about the Legion is that they bring order. Any raiders they capture, any drug smugglers they find, are crucified on telephone poles. While they're incredibly barbaric, Arizona is safe."
Min paused again and finished her cigarette, before grinding the butt against the cement stair.
"Regardless of this one redeemable aspect, I hate the Legion. My father was a New Canaanite missionary who settled in Klamath, where I'm from. The only time I ever saw him weep was when he heard the news that New Canaan had fallen to Legion-allied tribes. We all knew what had happened when the city walls were breached."
Min got a distant look on her face as she stared out across the desert towards the far-away glow of the New Vegas lights, glittering on the horizon.
"I saw what it must've been like a few days ago. There used to be a town named Nipton about thirty miles south of here. It wasn't a nice town – I hated making deliveries there. The Mayor was a pimp, and most of the clientele were raiders. The entire town was a festering sore on the Mojave. Regardless, they didn't deserve what the Legion did to them; nobody does. I came through on my way here, and the entire town had been put to the sword. The only survivors were two raiders who had been intentionally left alive; even so, one of them will never walk again. The luckier citizens were butchered where they stood, while the least lucky were burnt alive on pyres, or nailed to crosses. A few were hauled off in slave chains, but those I count as worse than dead."
The Courier shook her head, trying to clear the whimpers of the crucified soldiers from her ears, and the smells of burnt hair and flesh from her nose. The pain on her face faded to a harsh scowl. At this point Min barely even remembered her audience, or the question that had prompted this little moment: She just felt the need to unburden the painful memories from her soul. Saeko sat and watched the Courier revisit a painful memory, watched her suffering through shadowed and unreadable eyes.
"The Legion hadn't left yet; I saw them standing in front of the old town hall, an officer and the contubernum under his command. I also saw that the people of the crosses were still alive, still writhing on their nails. I walked down the center of the road, repeater in hand, and gave what help I could to each of the victims. There was no way they could survive, not with their wounds and the amount of blood they'd lost. I thought that they'd prefer a quick bullet rather than a drawn-out death on a telephone pole. The Legionnaires just watched me as I came closer and closer, not saying a word."
Min's face twisted, as she tried to contain the torrent of primal emotion the memory of the soldiers of the Crimson King evoked. When a measure of tranquility had returned to her visage, the Courier continued her story.
"When I finally reached the square when the barbarians stood, the officer explained that this was Legion justice, that these people had brought their punishment down on themselves for their sins. He told me to spread word of the fate of Nipton, and warned me to leave the Mojave before he put a slave collar on me himself. Then, he and his men turned and walked away, as if nothing of any importance had happened. Maybe, to them, nothing of importance had, and this was just a day in the life. I couldn't stand for it. As they left, I followed them to the edge of town. Their leader turned and began to speak, perhaps to make some pithy insult. I put three bullets into him and another two into the only other legionnaire with a firearm. I ran back through Nipton, the other seven legionnaires close behind me. I lost them out on the dried lake west of town, when a troop of giant ants attacked the legionnaires. I hid out in the desert and waited until the legion-men had given up and left. The assassins probably left Caesar's camp as soon as the surviving legionnaires reported back."
An uneasy silence fell over the two women. Finally, Min looked back at Saeko, her tanned face twisted into a wan smile. "Does that answer your question, Saeko?"
Stoic as ever, Saeko nodded. "I had another motive beside curiosity, Min-san. When I was at Barscoe-san's shop I encountered a man who wore this beret, carried a rifle, and had eyes similar to Kohta-kun's in the midst of combat. I followed him upstairs, and found a vantage point over the desert, where he apparently keeps watch. He was surprised to see me there but calmed down once he realized that I couldn't be a member of the Legion. He asked me to do him a favor."
Saeko waited a moment to see if Min would say anything. When the Courier indicated that she should continue, Saeko resumed.
"Recently his wife had been kidnapped by the Legion, and sold into slavery. According to the man, someone in Novac helped them, and sold his wife. He wants revenge, and asked me to help. He said that if I found the person who had betrayed his wife I should have them follow me in front of the dinosaur while he's on duty, wearing his beret."
Well, that explained the beret at least. "Have you got any idea how you're going to find your target? Are you going to try to find the mark at all?" Min inquired.
Saeko nodded. "It'd be the honorable thing to hunt down such a traitor. Plus, having a sniper in my debt might help the chances of my group's survival. As to how, I was hoping to enlist your services."
Well, there went tomorrow's gecko hunt. "What services would those be?"
Saeko gave Min a mildly feral smile. "Lock picking and interrogation. I want your help getting into the safe in the motel's front office, and I want you to ask around town on my behalf. I don't want our target to become suspicious of me."
Min smiled back. It was good to see that Saeko could plan as well as kill. "It seems to me that I'm doing all of the legwork; what would I get in exchange?"
Saeko paused. "I can't pay you; all the money I have is because of you. I'm already deep in your debt, so I cannot promise a further favor. I have nothing of value but my sword to my name, and my blade is too valuable for such a small bargain. However, consider this offer: In exchange for your help unmasking the traitor, the money you have already given me, the medical care and shelter you've provided for Rei and the rest of my group, and the help you gave us with the ghouls, I will swear myself to your service."
That was not what Min had been expecting. "What about the rest of your group? What if they chose to go elsewhere?"
Saeko gave the older woman a level look. "Then we shall part ways, though I doubt that they'd voluntarily leave me behind. However, I intend to propose a further bargain with the town: Several members of my group, especially Shizuka and Alice, are not combatants, and don't deserve to be dragged across the wastes; further, Rei needs time to recuperate from her injuries. Saya and Kohta will want to stay here with Alice, and Takeshi will want to stay with Rei. If Novac agrees to shelter and feed my group, Takeshi, Rei, and Kohta can help with the defenses, and Shizuka can help the doctor. Everyone benefits, and I'll be free to accompany you."
Min paused, and thought for a moment. Then, with a slow cadence, each word heavily weighted, Min asked "Saeko Busujima, do you understand what you are promising? If you swear yourself to me, and break your oath, there will be a reckoning. I ask once more: Are you willing to follow me to the ends of the wastes, no matter what? Can you forsake all for me?"
The last scion of the ancient Busujima clan met Min's eyes. Of the calm, aloof personality of Saeko, there was no trace; staring back at the Courier was a line of warriors stretching a thousand years back, all of whom had sworn themselves to long-vanished emperors, all of whom had fought and died loyally at their liege-lord's command. "By the honor of my name, and the honor of my house, I understand the burden I take upon myself voluntarily, and commit myself fully towards carrying it. So long as you draw breath and desire my service, Min Farshaw, I shall follow you and serve you. My sword for you; my life for you."
Both women shivered briefly, as though a tangible weight had fallen across their shoulders with the power of their words, though neither broke eye contact.
Min paused, toeing the Rubicon, before coming to a decision. With an impish smile, the tension of the moment disappeared. "Deal! Oh Saeko, the places we'll go and the things you'll have to carry! I'll take a look at the hotel safe before going to bed. If I don't find anything, we'll start working tomorrow; if I do, we'll make an end to this tonight. Wait for me in the room."
In the mouth of the slowly crumbling dinosaur, Boone counted the bullets and hours, and looked across the wastes, hunting for crimson.
At a ruined gas station north of Novac, a second band of Legion Assassins checked their weapons, preparing for tomorrow's assault on the Profligate and her allies.
The old REPCONN test site turned into a war zone once again, as a party of Nightkin searching for Stealthboys battled the Bright Brotherhood through the dark halls, neither side willing to retreat.
Lying on a cot, Rei slept the dreamless sleep of the anesthetized, free for the night from pain. Sleepless, Takeshi kept guard over her, as Kohta sat beside the door, ready for any sort of attack.
In the ruins of Boulder City, the Khan-NCR stalemate dragged on, as both sides waited for the other to make a move.
And in New Vegas, after a long trip through the sewers beneath the Outer Vegas ruins and Freeside, an exhausted Benny collapsed on the bed in his suite, dreaming that he'd just come into power.
Over it all, the stars and moon stared down at the ruined earth below, as they had for years uncountable.
Author Notes: Fun stuff so far? Is my work pleasing to the audience? Glad to hear. Anyway, Drgyen pointed out that Min's story might cause a small bit of confusion, specifically where she describes the clients of Nipton as raiders and soldiers. The raiders she's referring to are the Powder Gangers; Min, who has good karma, has no truck with the ex-cons, and views them as simple raiders, not a true faction.
That's all!