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! Also, I cribbed Veronica's dialogue directly from the game.

Saeko's feet had begun to blister as the small party continued their march. Boulder City was out of sight, hidden behind a hill, and the Courier was leading her followers along a cracked asphalt road that looked neigh identical to every other stretch of desert road Saeko had previously encountered on this trek. The leather armor wasn't breathing particularly easily, and already Saeko could feel rivulets of sweat making their way down her back and legs, staining the t-shirt and shorts that she wore underneath the creaking Brahmin hide. The swordswoman was used to physical exertion, to long hours of tiresome work and weary muscles straining against cooperation during kendo practice, but the very air of the desert seemed determined to suck the life and energy out of her.

Beside her, Boone kept pace with no sign of tiring. If he was sweating at all, it was evaporating before Saeko could notice it. His emotionless face betrayed no strain, nor any emotions whatsoever. The Courier, Saeko's sworn liege-lady, walked ahead of her followers, long legs eating up the distance in determined strides. Min's speed and energy were understandable – after the little showdown back in Boulder City, Min Farshaw could barely eat or sit down for her excitement over the destruction of the Khans. For the first time since her quest for vengeance had begun, tangible progress had been achieved.

Despite her discomfort and weariness, Saeko was feeling satisfied with her current lot in life. This world suited her; when her sword had slashed across the Khan's gut, easily parting his leather vest and skin alike, splitting organs and eventually embedding its tip in the man's spine, there'd been no look of condemnation from the Courier. Min had clapped her on the shoulder for a job well done, and Trooper Kowalski had nodded respectfully to her when the pair of women had emerged from the ramshackle building. The thankfulness of the liberated hostages had ignited a warm buzz deep inside Saeko's core, which had blended with the arousal that had budded in her erogenous zones at the sight of her victim trying to pack his disemboweled organs back into his skin into a lovely emotional cocktail that still lingered. That was what being a warrior was about! Protecting the weak, destroying the evil, all at the beck and call of her mistress! That said, Saeko would have been just as happy with a significantly shortened journey – the sun was really brutal, and skin had begun to peel across her nose and cheeks.

The trio continued to progress along the old highway away from Boulder, stopping for a water break at the 188 Trading Post. Boone bought some ammunition from the ex-NCR arms dealer, who gave him a pretty reasonable discount after noticing his beret, and Min took the opportunity to sell a 9 mm pistol that she'd looted from one of the Khans back at Boulder City to Michelle Kerr, gaining a handful of caps and four bottles of purified water from the exchange. As Saeko and her companions prepared to leave, a person dressed in a peculiar brown robe rose from where she'd been sitting at a nearby picnic table and sauntered over to Saeko.

"Hey, purple! Haven't seen that hair color anywhere outside a bottle before!" The stranger came to a stop beside the bench where Saeko had been resting and made a dramatic waving gesture towards the long strands of hair that had escaped the ponytail Saeko had pulled her hair back into.

As Saeko puzzled out how to respond to this observation, the stranger stepped back and took a long look at the Japanese swordswoman, eyes seeming to devour her long legs, athletic lines, and dignified face, before noticing the sunburns, the battered and worn state of the leather armor Saeko wore, and the stoic expression on her face. "No offense, but you look like you've traveled a long way down some bad roads. Where'd you come from?"

Saeko paused, trying to figure out an answer to that. Tokonosu City was years and miles away, and she was an ocean separated from her native islands. If she said Novac, this woman might ask more questions that she didn't know the answer to – and a purpleheaded Asian wandering the atomically scarred Southwest probably didn't need any more suspicion. It might bring trouble to her liege-lady if the locals became wary of the group. So, Saeko truthfully replied "I'm not entirely sure."

The strange woman's face took on an expression of amusement. "Yeah, guess the roads must've been long, then, if you forgot where you started from."

Saeko struggled for a response, floundering in the ambiguity of conversing in a second language. After a few seconds of watching Saeko trying and failing to find her words, the other woman laughed with amusement. "Well, welcome, then. I'm Veronica. I live in a hole in the ground."

Saeko blinked, wondering if she'd misheard. "You… You live in a hole in the ground?" The stranger laughed good-naturedly at the confusion on the other woman's face. "Well, a bunker, if you want to get more technical." With a puckish smile, the stranger continued "I think that it sounds more interesting my way."

Saeko smiled at the joke. "I cannot disagree with your assessment, Stranger." She almost had to bite her tongue to keep the honorific off the placeholder. No need to sound more foreign than was necessary.

The Stranger smiled back at the sword-wielding lady. "Hey, thanks! Good to know that someone around here has a sense of humor!" The smile shrank to a more business-oriented expression as the Stranger continued to speak. "Hey, can I ask you something on the level?"

"Go ahead," Saeko continued, eyeing the her companions. Boone looked just as bluntly stoic and opaque as he always did, while Min had an amused smile playing across her face – a smile, Saeko noticed, that didn't extend quite all the way to her eyes. Was that – jealousy? – in her liegelady's eyes? Did Saeko want to be the object of her lady's jealousy? Why was this so important?

Saeko suddenly realized that the stranger was still talking, and snapped her attention back to her words.

"…Brotherhood of Steel. Pretty strange bunch. Do you know anything about them?" The stranger stopped, a questioning look lingering in the twist of her mouth and the curious cast of her eyes.

Saeko pulled her head away from pondering a certain Courier, and focused on the question at hand. "Not really, sorry, I have never heard of the Brotherhood of Steel before."

The other woman visibly relaxed, tension flowing out of her shoulders. With her warrior's eye, Saeko noticed the relaxation of other muscles, those that might have involved themselves in throwing a solid first punch. "That's okay, I wouldn't expect anybody to. I think they tend to keep to themselves." The other woman replied, before continuing. "Hey, so where are you headed anyway?"

At this point, Min stood up from where she'd been squatting nearby on the dusty pavement, and knocked the dust off her jeans with brusque swiping. She ambled over to where Saeko's interrogation was proceeding, and gently leaned on her sworn sword's shoulder. "We're going to see an old friend of mine, Stranger."

The Stranger blinked briefly at the sudden intrusion, before smiling again, this time meeting the Courier's eyes. "This is quite a journey you're going on, then. Must be an interesting relationship to have brought you all this way."

Min Farshaw stood from her lean, and dropped a hand to rest atop her hatchet. The humor and lazy smile that Saeko had noticed earlier were gone, replaced with a focused and somewhat detached gaze. "What's it to you, Stranger?" Mimicking her liege, Saeko lightly gripped her sword, and began tensing herself in anticipation.

The Stranger waved her hand in a vaguely pacifying manner. "I'll be honest. You're the first people that I've run across out here that looks like they can really handle themselves." Realizing that her audience hadn't loosened in the least, the Stranger continued at a somewhat hurried pace. "There are places I've never been to that'd be too dangerous for just me. What do you think? Maybe we could travel together, help each other out."

Saeko and Min exchanged looks, before turning back to the Stranger. "Where do you want to go, Stranger?"

The Stranger's eyes took on an enthusiastic new shine. "I want to see how different groups have adapted to survive in the Mojave - see if there's something I can learn from!"

Saeko looked towards Min again. This young woman's desire to explore and to learn was admirable, but the decision would fall to her lord, as it should for any daughter of the Busujima dojo. Fortunately, Min seemed to agree, and nodded almost imperceptibly to Saeko.

Saeko turned back to the Stranger. "We'd be happy to have you accompany us, Stranger."

The young woman stuck her hand out. "Well, don't call me that if I'm traveling with you! I'm Veronica!" A shadow of hesitancy seemed to pass over her face. "Wait, one last thing – the reason why I was asking about the Brotherhood is, because, well, I'm one of them. Are you still okay with me traveling with you?"

Min stepped forward, slightly in front of Saeko. "I'm actually happier knowing that you have some combat training." The Courier explained. "Everything that I've heard suggests that the Brotherhood are great fighters – we're happy to have you, Veronica."

Together with Veronica, the trio headed north, turning west at the Gulp n' Go. Boone's experience with the NCR, and the gossip passed down the grapevine from Ranger Station Charlie via Ranger Andy suggested that the only way to get onto the Strip without paying for an exorbenantly expensive passport was from Camp McCarren, via their metro connection. Despite the bulk of the travel being through fiend territory, the path was quiet and the group arrived at the gate of Camp McCarren unmolested by anything except a handful of unlucky mole rats. Arriving late in the day after a long, hard day of travel, the group bivouacked in an abandoned shell of a shopfront nearby, keeping a rotating shift through the night.

Saeko woke early, rising with the five o'clock sun to greet the new day. Veronica was still rolled up in her blanket – she'd had the second to the last shift the previous night, and was no doubt desperately trying to grab any shred of rest that she could – and Boone was still recumbent, and to Saeko's quiet amusement, with the same stoic expression on his face that he always wore when awake. Min, who'd been awake for her shift, the last of the night, was bent over her pack, from which she was removing the fixings for a cold and quick breakfast: Brahmin jerky, a handful of mesquite beans, and an ear of maize apiece. Enough to provide energy to move, provided that you were able to force the food down with liberal gulps of water.

Saeko near silently made her way through the wreckage of the shop within which they were squatting, carefully giving Boone, who still had an air of tension about him despite his apparent lack of consciousness, a wide berth as she made her way to the side of her liege-lady.

"Good morning, Farshaw-sama. I hope that your watch was quiet." Saeko whispered quietly. Min, who apparently hadn't noticed the purplehead approaching, jumped slightly before turning and smiling at her companion.

"Good morning to you too, Saeko. It was pretty quiet, unsurprisingly, what with Camp McCarran right across the road." Min paused briefly, rubbing at her eyes to clear away the early morning fatigue. "And please, just call me Min."

"Alright, I will do so." Saeko promised, mentally kicking herself for forgetting that Americans didn't tend to use honorifics.

"Don't worry about it." Min clapped the younger woman on the shoulder, and then took a closer look at Saeko. "You look… discomforted about something. What's up?"

"What's… Oh. I'm concerned for my friends, Min." Saeko replied, momentarily confused by the colloquialism. "I noticed a plume of smoke on the horizon, and I think that it's coming from Novac."

Min's face tightened, with a shadow of something that looked to Saeko like remembered pain tracing across her features. "I understand how you feel, Saeko." The usual humor was gone from her whispering voice, replaced with a deep, raw sense of pain and an almost overbearing sense of concern. "I understand how it feels to be too far away to help. Let's just pray that your friends are as capable as you, and were able to make it through." The Courier sighed, exhaling heavily, breath laden with tension. "It's all that we can do, after all."

Uncomfortable with her liege-lady, her …friend? …'s discomfort and with the heavy pressure of her hand on her shoulder, Saeko seized hold of the first thought that she could to distract Min. "Out of curiosity, Min, why didn't you call me by my name at the power plant, when speaking to the garrison officer?"

Min blinked at the change in conversation, before softly laughing and returning to preparing a quick breakfast for the group. "In English, your name sounds quite similar to a word used by raiders to describe themselves – psycho. The last thing that I wanted the officer to believe was that you were, or had been, a raider. So, I figured that Keiko worked better than Saeko – similar in sound, but without the unfortunate double meaning." She looked over her shoulder, up at Saeko. "I hope that I didn't cause any offense."

"No, none!" Protested Saeko. "I was simply curious."

Behind the pair, Veronica yawned loudly and sat up, stretching. "My, but you're a sight to wake up to!" She exclaimed through her yawn, looking at Saeko and Min. "Is that breakfast I see?"

Standing up and stepping aside, Min chuckled. "Help yourself, Veronica."

Boone stood up, seemingly going from dead sleep to full alertness in an eyeblink, without going through any intervening stages. He quickly rolled up his bedroll, and tied it to the top of his pack before joining the other three group members around the table.