It only took 20 years to write!

Chapter 20: Dance With the Devil

"I'm sure you really wanna kill everything, but can we maybe do that another time?" She put a hand on her hip and did that thing that girls would do where she kind of pushed her hip to one side slightly. Six hated that.

"Huh?" Six pocketed Chance's Knife, "Oh, right. I guess I could use some rest." He looked at his limp arm.

'That's broken. Definitely broken.'

Six retrieved the Survivalist's Rifle and the Mysterious Magnum from the ground with his working arm whilst his other just flopped around whenever he bent down. It was annoying.

"Where are we headed then?" the Courier asked, "We should probably leave before big dude comes back, wherever the hell it went."

"Well," the green-haired girl started, "I know a few people who would like to have a word or two with you… let's just say that you've piqued their interest."

'Yeah, that happens a lot.' Six thought. The NCR, Legion, Mr House, all those other big important people whose names Six never really remembered, they all came calling for the legendary Courier the moment the news spread through the shit-riddled wastelands! It was more annoying if anything.

Another ungodly loud screech broke the air once more and Six soon found his legs crumbling under the sheer power of the sound. He had never felt this weak before.

One thing that Six noticed quite clearly was just how hard these Grimm things hit. That Ursa had hit him like a damn cannon; the power of three Yao Guai. Nothing in the Wastes hit that hard (except Deathclaws, they hurt a lot) and Six found himself crumbling over the sudden damage that had befell his body – he wasn't even aware of when his arm had been broken.

This whole situation reminded him of when he had rushed head-first into a Deathclaw nest, only this time he was less prepared and certainly not dosed up on Psycho.

The newfound pair quickly scrabbled off into the undergrowth upon the return of Six's new best friend, Six muttering profanities and curses beneath his breath, silently berating himself for almost dying. It was a common event, but this one just seemed pretty stupid.

The girl headed and Six couldn't keep his eyes from constantly drifting slightly downwards, despite his best efforts to keep his head clear and eyes focused on scanning for potential threats. HE was a man, what else could he do?

The female populace that Six had encountered were certainly something on a completely new level compared to the women back west, in the wastes; although most of them did seem to dress quite… whore-ish?

Whore-ish was the right made-up term to describe them.

So very revealing.

Any sane man would have trouble keeping their hands off. Luckily for Six, he wasn't really all that sane. Idiotic decisions often befell him and he apparently liked to get shot at a lot. The occasional dose of psycho would do that to you.

Soon enough – after nearly twenty minutes of running limply through a forest and Six constantly looking back over his shoulder in mild paranoia – the pair had reached what seemed to be the outskirts of the forest, where the scenery became less 'lots of trees' and more 'lots of dirt with a fine topping of trees'. Nevertheless, they had reached the end of the forest and before them lay…

A huge fucking wall.

"Alright," Six started, "I'm all for having a little help surviving right now, but I am not climbing a fucking wall, especially not with that big bastard flapping around somewhere."

The girl just tilted her head and gave an innocent smile with closed eyes. Six grumbled and his hand subconsciously sat on the handle of the Mysterious Magnum in its holster as she turned and bobbed off down the small hill that led to the base of the thirty foot wall – a rough estimate of size by the Courier.

He almost lost his footing sliding down the small slope – it was surprisingly muddy – and thankfully the girl didn't seem to notice. The last thing he needed was critique and jest from commoners; people with 'normal' lives – basically pre-war. They weren't survivors and he was – it was a clear divide.

"Hey," Six called ahead to green hair, who simply turned her head very slightly to acknowledge him, "Looks like we'll be going at this for a bit, so I gotta know your name!"

She seemed to ponder it for a while, but she eventually replied with, "Name's Emerald."

Wow. Everybody had weird-ass names, didn't they? Oh well, at least he could talk to her properly when he eventually decided to stick her up. She had led him to a city; that was good enough.

They walked for another thirty minutes, Six jabbing himself with a few stimpacks to null the pain. He was beginning to feel the exhaustion creep into his legs; he didn't have the adequate equipment to mend his arm which made the walking even more taxing with a throbbing appendage. He was pretty damn durable and his stamina was certainly impressive compared to other Wastelanders, but this just seemed ridiculously tiring.

The girl, Emerald, soon came to a stop and waited for the Wastelander to catch up, Six lagging behind a few meters. She used her foot to wipe away a thin layer of dried dirt on the floor right at the foot of the wall, revealing a metal hatch, sizeable for maybe two average men to fit down at once. She opened the hatch and the damn thing sounded like a vault door. It seemed to suck in air as the hatch lifted to reveal a ladder.

"Service tunnel." Emerald said blankly, answering Six's unforetold question of 'What's that?' Six just shrugged to himself and gestured for her to lead, to which she seemed to adopt an odd-looking face – some sort of strange concoction between annoyance and frustration. He followed her into the service tunnel.

The tunnel was devoid of any light – save that coming from the hatch, though that was soon to diminish as Six pulled the hatch shut above him and lowered himself onto the floor from the ladder – and Six knocked the side of his helmet with his palm in an attempt to get his night vision to work. Surprisingly, it did, but he was quick to yelp in pain as Emerald clicked a flashlight on.

"Ah! Fuck..." The words slipped from his mouth as the artificial light near blinded him through his helmet's night vision capacities. He raised a hand naturally to block the light and quickly shut off the night vision. Emerald seemed to pay his pain no notice and simply strode on.

Pipes ran down the walls every which way like a nest of snakes was slithering down the walls and Six got an unnerving sense of claustrophobia, something he had never experienced before in his entire life. Six assumed the pipes were for transporting gasses or liquids around – he had seen pipes for such purposes back in the Wastes, old pre-war buildings mostly but some newer ones too. Dead lights lay dormant on the walls without power, completely intact and present yet Six still had a feeling that there were no lights in existence at all in the tunnel despite Emerald's torch illuminating things quite nicely, including the excess amount of rubble that was scattered on the ground, chipped concrete from the walls that had no doubt eroded from age.

One question Six asked himself was why the maintenance shaft ran without power and why there seemed to be no signs of any human life being there… well, ever since he set foot in it himself. It certainly didn't look new and from what Six had gathered from his time around Beacon everything seemed relatively new and expensive. Sure it was a maintenance tunnel, but it wasn't an excuse for why it seemed as though it had barely been touched.

The tunnel ended on a subterranean train line, equally as dark and brooding as the tunnel was. Six sighed, to which Emerald replied, "Just another hour, c'mon." To which Six groaned heavily and groggily. He was beginning to feel slightly woozy.

The remainder of the walk was long and arduous and the Courier felt as though he was ready to amputate his legs no more than ten minutes after entering the train line. Thankfully he didn't have the tools or energy to do so (though he wasn't thankful in his mind), so he just ended up recounting old memories in his head.

Like that time he went to that big place with all the robots and that stuff happened and he talked to his brain and killed a bunch of robots and saw some lobotomised dudes and killed them too and then shouted at a few robots and shot at the sky a bit before engaging in sexual relations with a light switch and throwing mugs at a small little robot dude thingy and then got a bunch of cool robot shit and became a cyborg.

Fun times those were.

Oh, oh, and there was also that time where he went to some casino place and there were ghosts and-

"Hey!"

"Wha-?"

"We're here."

"Uh… yeah. Where exactly is 'here' exactly?" The Courier looked out over the expansive cavern he had now found himself in. A train was lined up on one of the tracks and it looked to be in bad shape, battered and dented with many carriages badly damaged or just reduced to piles of metal. Scattered all across the expanse was a cascade of crumbling buildings, seemingly abandoned for decades and crumbling to piles of rubble though many still stood, broken and incomplete. The cavern was huge; it had to be at least a hundred feet tall, if not more.

"Welcome to Mountain Glenn."

"Mountain Glenn?" The Courier feigned surprise, hoping to coax a little information out of the girl, "It was abandoned a while back, right?" It was a guess, and a hazardous one at that.

"That's right." All in all, it was a brilliant guess, "Could you stay here for maybe a day or two? You see, my boss is running… a little late…"

"Ha!" The Courier chuckled, "A couple days? You told me that a few people might want to speak to me, so if there's no one who's going to speak to me then I'll be quite contempt in finding the door." Six smiled beneath his helmet and was about to turn heel before a new voice joined the fray.

"Now there's no need for that." That voice was… sly, seductive in a way, and Six blankly refused to turn his head to face the new female behind him – he just didn't feel like it would be a good idea for some reason, some overwhelming feeling. His hand rested on his sidearm, ready to draw as always.

"Oh?" Christ that voice seemed damn mischievous, "I was expecting you to try and shoot me." The damn woman sounded like she had a constant fucking smile plastered across her face.

"Yeah, that has gotten me places before." He could feel her smile, it was just so apparent. Emerald also seemed quite unnerved and Six stifled a shudder as she ran a finger over his armour, stepping graciously and eventually sliding into his view. Ashen black hair and (almost) glowing amber eyes screamed trouble for Six. She wore an off-the-shoulders crimson red dress with gold designs running down the sleeves. Quite the spectacle.

"You honestly don't know how tempting it is for me to shoot you." He grinned beneath his helmet and relaxed slightly, though his brain still remained alert, "So are you going to tell me why I'm here?"

She smirked and replied, "I'm looking for somebody who can help me with a little… project."

"Elaborate."

"Very well. I need somebody to handle my transport situation…" She cast a gaze over to the decaying train, "and maybe a little more after that… It all depends." That voice was beginning to piss him off.

"Get me a place to stay, some guns, some ammo, a steady supply of materials and food, and a few extra pairs of hands and you got yourself a deal."

At this point, Emerald interjected.

"You don't even want to know why you're doing this?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Meet my requirements plus any further requests and we'll be right as rain. I won't go poking around."

The woman smiled a menacing grin, "You have a deal, then."

Situations couldn't play out better! A residence, a steady supply of materials of his choosing plus all the time in the world, as well as some extra hands. The next step…

The next step was science. A lot of science, and a lot of robots.

He was probably going to need a few books…