2:12 PM
August 21st, 2286
Mojave Wasteland
Joseph stared out at the expansive sea of sand that stretched out miles before him, beyond the cliff he was looking from and the flat rock slab on which he sat. Far away, in the distance and just to the left of the New Vegas skyline, he could make out a very faint snow-topped mountain. The view reminded him of home. Of the rolling Montana hills and forests, where he had grown up constantly fighting for his life.
And above all, it reminded him of Kassandra.
The man scoffed to himself and wiped the thoughts from his head. She mattered to him no longer. Not even wanting to think about her anymore, Joseph tried to ponder something else but was met with failure, every stream of thought leading back to Kassandra, so it was a great help when a second person spoke from behind him.
"Mind making room? Wasn't exactly expecting a visitor in my sulkin' spot today." Joseph's head whipped around, seeing a figure in a brown trenchcoat, a beaten old cowboy hat, and wearing black leather gloves and boots.
"Uh…Sure." Joseph scooted over to the left side of the rock, and the new person sat on the right, the natural formation just barely big enough to seat the two of them. "You come here often?"
"Shh, I'm sulking."
"…Right."
"Okay, I'm done. Yeah, I come here whenever I feel the urge to shoot one or more of my problems to death. So, pretty often. Name's Taylor."
Taylor. Joseph paused, his eyes growing somewhat wider. Was this Shelley's friend? Surely it had to be, right? "Joseph. Good to meet you, Taylor."
"Likewise. Joseph, that's…Jesus' father, right?" Taylor asked, recalling the role that Joseph's namesake played in the good book.
"Mary's wife." He answered with a slight shake of his head. "Joseph was more of a stepfather to Jesus than anything. Though I guess to Jesus, he was like a real father." The man thought aloud, and realized he needed to get back to the situation at hand. "This is a bit of a weird question. Do you know anybody," Joseph paused, realizing that if this was the wrong Taylor then the group's cover would be decimated. He had to go about this carefully. "From Goodsprings?"
"Depends on who's asking." Taylor arched an eyebrow.
"A friend of a friend." Joseph considered things for a moment, and decided that this was definitely the Taylor. "The name Shelley ring a bell?"
The person sighed, a faint smile on the lips. "You're not great at being discreet, are you?"
"I suppose not."
"Alright. So, you're a friend of Shelley's? What'd she get into this time?"
"Nothing. Well, it's complicated. She's in town right now. But we were looking for you. Ever since we…knocked on your door and no one answered." Joseph caught himself.
"Huh. Well, ya found me. Oh, and, you ain't a Legionnaire or anything, right?" The disguised elder leaned in and asked, and Joseph got a better look at her. She was old, her hair beginning to grow gray and either wrinkles or scars over her face. Joseph couldn't tell which, so he settled on both. He noted how she dressed and had cut her hair, and realized that she was probably where Shelley had learned to disguise her nature as a woman.
"No." Joseph answered shortly and succinctly, and it seemed to be enough for Taylor, who leaned back again, satisfied.
"Good. Then call me Tristyn. Taylor's a fake name. So, what were you looking for me for exactly?"
"We're trying to find a man named Paul. Leader of a gang in Goodsprings…Or, at least, he was. Ran away here instead of going down with his gang. We're trying to find him."
Tristyn sighed. "Wish I could help you there. But I can't. Don't know any Pauls, and nobody of interest has passed through recently." Her entire attitude and posture changed with these words. Her face grew stone cold, and her back straight. Suddenly, Joseph remembered the letter they had seen in her room, and the threat contained within. Getting information from her would be harder than he thought.
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. Listen, I gotta get back to town. Would you mind letting me, or are you gonna keep bothering me?" Tristyn stood and turned, walking away from the slab hastily.
"Come on, Tristyn, please. We can't let a man like him stay out in the Wastes, doing God knows what!"
"Nope, sorry. Now stop talking to me." She called out, growing further away from Joseph with her back turned to him.
"I thought this was your spot!"
"You can keep it."
Joseph sighed. He needed to say something to stop her, and he needed to say it now.
"I know you're scared of "You-Know-Who", but you can't let fear get in the way of doing what's right!" He called out, a brief wave of nostalgia washing over him as he said those words the same way he had said them to somebody else, many years ago. It was a long, long, long shot, but it stopped Tristyn in her tracks. As she turned to face him, a furious scowl plastered itself onto her now beet red face.
"You…Were in my room?" In less than the amount of time it took for Joseph to blink, a revolver had been taken from inside of the coat and pointed at Joseph, in the woman's hands.
"We wanted to make sure you were oka-"
"Oh, don't give me that bullshit. What else did you do while you turned my room inside out? You sleep in my bed, Goldilocks? Eat my porridge?" The woman advanced towards Joseph, the man backing up as she pressed the barrel against his chest. "What else did you take?"
"Didn't take anything. Look, I'm sorry that we broke in, but-"
"You didn't happen to see any of my old documents from the NCR?"
"No. Would you listen to me, please?"
"Then I guess you don't know that I used to be a Vet Ranger, and I know exactly how to make sure that you die the absolute most painful, longest, and bloodiest death possible." She continued to push Joseph backward, and just as she finished the sentence he lost his footing as a result of being backed to the cliff's edge, entirely forgetting that it was there. He slipped backwards, but just before he could fall to his doom the woman's hand reached out and grasped his collar, keeping him from going over the edge but ensuring that at any moment she could let go and he'd be dead. "Now I'll listen."
"I'm sorry that I was in your room, but we needed to find Paul, before he could leave. That man has made hell out of lives in Goodsprings, and I don't know if the name means anything to you, but he killed a man. Doctor Mitchell. He was a good man, and Paul shot him. He needs to die." Joseph was surprised at himself as the words came from his lips. The revelation came to him, and he knew now why he had gone after Paul. It wasn't some sort of misplaced sense of Wasteland protection, but was vengeance on the account of others. Vengeance, which he had always been taught should be left in the hands of the Lord and none other. For a brief moment he considered stopping his search here and now, and continuing on his with original mission to return home, but…He couldn't. Something about this felt raw. It felt right.
Tristyn's face went blank. "He…Killed Andre?" She was familiar with Doc Mitchell it seemed, which could only serve to help Joseph's case.
"You get it now?"
"I grew up with Andy. We…We would always play "soldier" as kids." The older woman reminisced aloud to herself, gazing off into the wastes beyond Joseph, before her eyes returned to his and she pulled him back and onto stable ground, letting go afterwards. "You're right. Paul needs to die, Belitos be damned." She nodded and looked back at the town of Novac, where the speech continued faintly in the distance with the occasional round of applause. "I know where he is, but if you want to reach him, we need to hurry." She mentioned "Belitos", the name being vaguely familiar to Joseph, but for now he paid it no mind.
"Shit. Okay, Shelley and Michael are in Novac somewhere, we got any time to find them and bring 'em along?"
"Nope. It's the opposite direction." Tristyn lifted her finger and pointed far off into the distance where, because of the cliff's being a vantage point, Joseph could see a small wooden structure or two. A farm, perhaps, though of what variety remained to be seen. "We should get goin'. I'll explain more on the way."
7:06 PM
August 21st, 2286
East of El Paso, Texas
A squad of Legionaries roamed these wastes. The Chihuahua winds blew across a desert functionally similar to the Mojave, but unique in a myriad of other ways. Still, it had found itself under Caesar's thumb. The city of El Paso served as the easternmost settlement in the Legion, but there were a number of outposts and encampments further into the state, located in the wastes and forming a solid border. Recently though, some of these outposts had gone silent, giving the Legion forces in the east some cause for concern. A messenger had been sent to Caesar to ask for extra reinforcements and protection, but that was only a few days ago and he had likely not yet gotten the news.
For now, they could only continue ahead like normal, although keeping more men posted as guards than usual and better armed scouts. This party in particular had about five men, wherein four of them held melee objects such as a combat knife, a barbed wooden baseball bat, a box cutter, and a machete. The leader, a Prime Decanus, was armed with a rusty old 9mm submachine gun. They wandered across the desert sands with El Paso in the distance behind them, looking ahead at a new and audible vehicle approaching them alarmingly fast. It was a blue truck, likely one of the ones that ran on nuclear energy from before the Great War, and the men snapped from their brief amazement that somebody had managed to fix one up to discuss amongst eachother their next course of action.
When the truck came close enough that an old country ballad about a Mexican girl named Feleena could be heard blaring from within, the squadron had come to a decision. While the two holding a baseball bat and a machete walked in opposite directions, the other two and the decanus stood together side by side, the leader lifting his hand and signaling for the truck to stop.
It did not.
The man, panicking, reached for the submachine gun hanging from a sling around his neck. He only managed to fire a few shots off at the truck, bullets bouncing off of the reinforced steel and thick windows, before it plowed through him and the two beside him. While the man to his right went under the truck and the man to his left was dragged to the side, he went flying above it, landing on his stomach. After hitting the ground, the Prime Decanus crawled for the submachine gun that had been flung from his hand while the truck turned by about ninety degrees and screeched to a stop behind him and the driver's door was thrown open.
From within walked a man, an easy six and a half foot giant. He wore thick padded armor, though not quite power armor. In his hands was a half drank bottle of tequila that he gingerly set down upon the sand, not a drop falling from the glass. The Legionary wielding the baseball bat ran towards him, and in response he reached into the middle console of the truck, grabbing a cigar and a match. The interloper completed the process lighting it in the time it took for the soldier to close the distance between either of them, tossing the lit match to the side while he held the cigar between his teeth. The Legionary lifted the bat overhead and tried to slam it down onto the profligate, but could only watch in horror as the man lifted his steel-clad forearm, the bat splintering in half the moment it collided. The man lowered his arm, grabbing the side of the recruit's head.
"Damn. Looked like a nice bat." He spoke through the cigar, before slamming the foe's head against his truck and watching as he slid against the truck and to the ground, wiping blood all over his ride. From behind came footsteps, and again the man reached into the truck, this time grabbing a pump-action shotgun from next to the driver's seat. He whirled around and held it in one hand, pointing it in the general direction of the machete-carrying soldier and watching with a smile as his scattered upper half painted the sand red. The man took a puff of the cigar, stepping over the disembodied legs as he took quick aim beyond the car, pumped the shotgun, and fired at another legionary holding a knife. His left arm went flying from his destroyed torso, the target tumbling to the ground.
Before he had a chance to rest, however, the unmistakable sound of a submachine gun cut through the air, and the combatant ducked behind the truck as bullets pinged off of the other side of the vehicle. He waited, enjoying the cigar, making almost no movement until he heard the click signaling that the unseen enemy was reloading the weapon. The man stood from behind the truck, stepping out and visually sweeping the wasteland until he saw the shooter, a Decanus on his stomach with both legs horrifically broken and twisted. The injured soldier looked up at the encroaching mountain of a man and panicked, accidentally dropping the magazine of his gun in his fear. He reached out for it but by that point the man was already there, placing the sole of his combat boot onto the mag and sliding it away. He bent over and with one hand grabbed onto the legionnaire's clothes, lifting the thrashing soldier into the air and lumbering over back to the truck. He set the man down on his back beside the driver's door, in the puddle of his second kill's blood. The brute reached for the bloody bottle of booze and lifted it to the injured decanus' lips, who refused to take even a sip of it. The man shrugged.
"Fine. Your choice." He set the glass bottle down where he had picked it up. "So. You boys…You own this shit, huh? El Paso to…What was the newest one you guys took from the NCR? The Hub?"
"Fuck…You." The dying soldier managed to groan out, but the man took a seat beside him, continuing on and ignoring this insult.
"Not that I mind, you know. They deserve it, if you ask me. Though that doesn't mean I like you guys, either. El Paso belongs to the Brotherhood, not a bunch of Ancient Rome LARPers."
"Brotherhood..? You're…Technophile." On death's door the man laid, yet he mustered a final, mocking laugh.
The towering mass of muscle only smiled. He took a last drag of the cigar then flicked it behind behind him, repositioning himself so that he knelt on the Decanus' chest, and lifted a single fist into the air. Wordlessly he drove it down into the soldier's skull, rearranging his face faster than any plastic surgeon ever could, and repeating the process with his opposite arm. Again and again he did this, hunks of steel and muscle slamming down into and through the Decanus' head until nothing remained of the man's skull for him to beat save for a patch of red dirt and scattered brain matter.
"Oh, yeah!!" He roared, jumping up and spreading his arms as he looked to the orange and violet sky. "Goddamn I'm ruthless!" He stumbled backwards a few steps, shaking his head and moving forwards again as he kicked the body out of the way and climbed into the truck. It started after a few attempts, and drove a good few feet away, stopped, and reversed back to where it had been parked. The door opened as the man from Vault 101's arm swung out and grabbed the tequila, taking it back into the truck and driving into the distance to the west Texas town of El Paso, radio bumping Marty Robbins all the way.