Updates may get a little sporadic, becoming pretty preoccupied with other things. Sorry about the longer wait. I've just been really out of it the past few weeks or so, can't seem to write all that well.

Chapter 10:

The camouflaged barrel of the Gobi Campaign Scout Rifle glared at Six's unseen disruption with baring teeth, just ready to spit out a bullet and turn whomever it was aimed at into a pile of lifeless flesh on the floor.

"Stand. Still." The Courier hissed, "Who is it?" He was still on edge ever since he reflected on how the wasteland had degraded him. His rifle veered to the right slightly before throwing out a silenced bullet, the projectile digging a small hole in the shadowed wall beside where the imposter stood. He could see a shadowed female form jerk about in the darkness quickly before settling down, hoping to remain unseen.

He growled. The shadow stepped into the moonlight.

The girl in black – Blake Belladonna. The Courier wondered what she thought of him.

The people of the wastes called him a messiah, the 'Hero of Vegas'. He ran around doing chores for people, but that didn't make him good by any means that he found important. A title was just a title, never gave any true insight for an outsider looking in. But for someone who didn't know his title, hadn't even heard the stories…

This person barely knew him, and that jogged his mind, made him think.

"Why are you here?" The Courier pressed, holding his gun rigid and ready.

"Why are you here?" The girl had retorted, mimicking his question exactly

"Answer my question dammit!" His finger tensed on the trigger yet ceased to pull it back, despite his mind whispering murderous thoughts to his conscience.

"Put your gun down first." Blake calmly replied as she edged forward ever so slightly

"Who are you, hmm…? Yeah…" A small, muffled chuckle escaped his helmet-enclosed lips, "You're one of them, aren't you?" The Courier began walking circles around Blake.

"Yeah… The outfit says it all. Little red's getup… No, wait." He halted mid-rotation. His silence remained eerily long, an unnerving air settling about the wasteland legend.

"No…" He chuckled, "Who sent you?" He shook his head as if trying to dislodge something from it.

"I wasn't sent." She replied, keeping her gaze closed in on the Courier.

The Courier let his finger slip from the trigger for a moment before quickly tensing it back on the trigger of the scout rifle. He held the rifle aimed dead-centre of the girl's head.

He threw a hand against his helmet in an attempt to clear his mind, only managing to elicit a low growl from himself. Something about this place messed with his mind. For some reason, all the death he had caused seem to play with his mind. Perhaps it was just the overly-peaceful setting, maybe the lack of death. Whatever it was, he felt as if he were addicted to the death the wasteland had constantly supplied him with.

He felt his body turn numb and his legs buckle, only just managing to catch his strength before completely losing his balance. He stumbled to the side for a moment before finding his gun trailed on the girl again.

He let out a sputtering cough and shook his head.

'What the hell is wrong with me?' The Courier thought to himself

"Are you okay?" Blake asked, showing only a slight hint of concern in her voice

"The fuck do you care!?" he retorted, still attempting to regain his mindset. He managed to gain control again, finally lowering the rifle and letting it hang limply in his hand down by his side. He ended up shuffling slowly to the edge of the rooftop, his whole body quaking with the fear of himself.

"God dammit." He muttered to himself. What the hell was he doing? What was wrong with him? What happened to the survivor inside him that had brought him all this way?

'Go on. DO IT.' His conscience commanded, prompting Six to readjust the rifle's scope and aim it towards Blake, yet the girl remained calm and steady as anything, still refusing to speak any more words.

'Satisfy your hunger, Courier.' Six swore he could see his own conscience take a human form behind the girl who opposed him.

"Go away…" The Courier muttered, more hissed to what he saw. The aggravated hisses were only barely audible to Blake.

'Why?'

"Just fuck off." The Courier growled

'Ah, but think of the possibilities, Six. What happens when you pull that trigger? Does she die? Probably not. You read the books, you would know. Would you be ridiculed, driven from this place? That is most likely so.'

"I don't need you telling me what to do."

'I am not telling you what to do, merely guiding you through the process of deciding what to do… So, pull that trigger and you leave. Don't pull that trigger, perhaps you could redeem yourself, no?'

"I told you to leave."

'And just why exactly would I leave? Go on, do what you have done your entire life.'

The Courier stood motionless, gun still aimed at the girl ahead of him.

'What about the NCR? They were craving, demanding the attention and biased support of their public, even though their citizens lived a life of pain and cruelty. You put a bullet in the Bear's head. You saw what you wanted to see in them, when in reality, they were doing their best to scrape by and rid the world of Caesar and his dreaded Legion of slavers.'

"I will never regret my decisions." The Courier growled

'And you don't need to regret your decisions, just need to see what you see for it to be okay. It's like when you found that a gun the desert. There are an infinite amount of ways that gun could've gotten to that desert, yet you choose to favour one over the other when there are so many reasons as to why that gun may have found itself in that desert. You thought an ant had regurgitated the damned gun because that was the first thing that crossed your mind.'

"This has nothing to do with the situation at hand." The Courier began to grow angry at the voice

'And I don't care about the situation at hand. I am proving a point… You didn't see what was, you saw what you wanted to see.'

"Fuck You."

'So go ahead and take your contract. Do what comes natural. Kill this girl, or leave her to bleed.'

And so he shot. No consideration, no doubt. He just shot her, plain in the stomach, and left her to drown in a puddle of her own blood, just as he had done with so many others, all subconsciously. This one wasn't any different, just driven by the lack of death in the Courier's recent life.

Slowly, he drifted off, back down the stairs from which he had ascended to the rooftops from, his head starting to ache and his thoughts muddling.

The confusion was almost too much as his vision blurred and his mind began to muddle its commands to his body, commanding left when right should have been sent, often sending him into multiple walls. With much falter, he eventually stumbled his way back to his dorm, jostling with the door handle and battling the door for entrance.

Once he made it inside, there was no other noise to be heard and he knelt with his hands clasped around his helmet, tearing the headwear off violently and desperately clutching his head. He quickly browsed through his Pip Boy inventory for something, anything to calm his body and ease his mind. He stuck the first needle he found into his arm and almost immediately felt a surge in his veins, his mind calming down to its normal state.

He let the syringe fall lazily to the floor beside him and he rested his arms by his side as he rested his body against one of the empty walls. He breathed strongly, trying to catch as much air as he could. His eyes shut and he finally rested, feeling a sudden warmth rush over his body as the fog continued clearing in his mind, his memories rearranging themselves back into order.

Steadily, he got to his feet, using several objects around him as support and eventually sliding his helmet back on. He still had an initiation ceremony to attend. He had ten minutes.

The Courier took a moment to regain his head and gain a steady balance. He turned his head up. He wasn't followed. Just a shifted air hanging about the open doorway. The Courier sighed, shaking himself off and making an unnerved trek towards Beacon's main hall.

"Courier." Ulysses acknowledged the Courier's presence as he joined up with Ulysses and Joshua Graham in the main hall, just off to the side of the stage.

"I… yeah." Six shook himself off, taking a position with his comrades.

"Are you okay?" Joshua Graham asked, noting the Courier's unnerved actions.

"I'm… fine. Initiation ceremony, right?" The Courier replied, attempting to dismiss Joshua's suspicions.

"Are you certain? You seem-"

"I'm fine," Six cut Joshua off before he could say any more, "Let's just get this crap over with."

A round of applause summoned itself from the crowd seated in the auditorium as Ozpin concluded a short speech on stage. The Wastelanders joined the headmaster on stage as the man began to speak once more.

Six couldn't help but feel unnerved by the stares of the multiple Beacon students that were currently seated ahead of the stage, each glaring at the trio with either curiosity or hurtful intent, as if they didn't want the newcomers here.

"Courier Six, Joshua Graham, and Ulysses. I'm afraid we currently have no designation for this group, so I have decided to compose Beacon's second official Overwatch Group." Another round of applause sounded from the crowd, yet they did not peel their icy stares from the three as they and Ozpin exited the stage. Joshua stayed back to converse with Ozpin once Six had managed to nab one of his spare pistols. Joshua hadn't bothered to question the Courier as to why he needed a gun, or where Ulysses was disappearing too.

"Overwatch Group?" Joshua asked the headmaster as he took a sip from his trademarked coffee mug.

"Mmm," Ozpin started, "Simply watching over lessons, mostly combat routines that you will be watching over."

"I can understand as to why you have designated us as a separate group from your students, yet I am still confused as to why you accepted us so easily." Joshua said, questioning Ozpin's decision to simply let three random people into his school. A hint of a smile crossed Ozpin's face.

"You seemed like you needed help, the condition your clothing and yourselves were in. But I have noticed that your appearance has not changed since you arrived."

"Yes," Joshua started, "I was beginning to wonder when we would cross this topic. I presume you have questions?"

"Many." The headmaster responded simply

"Then I suppose I should answer them, then. But forgive me for sparing the acute details; I am already slightly uncomfortable discussing my life with a man I barely know."

Once again, so sorry about the length of this chapter and the delays it went through, just had a hard time writing for a couple weeks. As I mentioned before, updates may become weekly (hopefully not longer than that though, no promises.)

Had some trouble wrapping my head around Six's part, but I guess I got there in the end.

Don't forget to review and leave your thoughts and potential improvements (Fuel to the fire!)