Warning: brief sexual violence

October 23rd, 2281, 3:25 p.m. Camp McCarran, 6 miles South of New Vegas

His hands were rough as he ripped against the Private's uniform. The young man desperately tried to push the Fiend away, but the drugged-up raider behind him refused to be dissuaded. With a loud tear, the last of the soldier's protection was ripped from his body.

"No… please…" the Private whispered, trying to find the leverage to pull himself out from under the larger man.

"That's right," the raider leered, "squeal for me you little pig. I love it when th-"

The sound of something heavy sailing through the air was interrupted by the metallic reverberation of whatever it was slamming into the Fiend's skull. The man fell limp, covering the small Private below him. The soldier glanced behind him, and saw a small syringe appear and be pressed into the large man's neck by an olive-skinned hand.

"It's gonna' be uncomfortable down there," a voice said quietly, its accent hard and foreign but the timbre comforting, "but it'd be best if you stayed put. He'll be out for the rest of the day. Don't draw attention to yourself, alright?"

The private nodded, still not sure who was talking to him. He heard footsteps moving away, and did his best to calm down, covered by his gently snoring assailant.

.

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One Mile East of McCarran

The Courier sat on his heels with his palms resting on his thighs. His breathing was even and controlled while his head stayed bowed forward, the cold rebreather resting against his chest.

"Still trying to make meditation work?" a voice asked from behind him.

Denn sighed, pulling his Pip-Boy up and checking the screen. "Trying and failing," he said dejectedly. "I can't even go a minute without breaking concentration."

"It's all about the breathing," the voice said, and a hand appeared in front of the Courier. Denn took it, and with its help, stood to face the man that had joined him.

"Good work at Camp Golf, Boone," the Courier said, continuing the embrace that had helped him up as a firm handshake. "From what I could tell, the NCR suffered no loses."

"Despite their insistence otherwise, they were surprisingly well trained," Boone replied, raising his eyebrow and looking Denn warily. "Seems like someone who was forbidden from working with the NCR paid them a visit a few weeks ago, or at least that's what Hanlon said happened."

"All I did was point them in the right direction."

"Well, whatever you did, it worked. Hanlon told me to thank you personally, both for the training and deploying me to help him out."

"It's where you could do the most good, that's all."

"That's what I told him. What's the situation here?"

The Courier glanced at McCarran, shaking his head worriedly. "I know there are Fiends in the towers, but my Securitrons can't get a clear shot off, and all the buildings nearby are too low to give anybody eyes on them. I could just destroy a wall or two, but that completely negates the camp's value. I can't readily replace the Securitrons, and I won't waste them on a frontal assault when the Fiends are entrenched like this."

"So what's the plan?"

"We have to wait until nightfall."

"You're just going to let the NCR in there get tortured while you sit out here and wait?" Boone asked angrily.

"I told them this attack was coming! I'm not going to waste my resources when it was their own incompetence that let this happen. There will be some casualties, but I made a deal with the Great Khans beforehand. They're supplying the Fiends with enough drugs to knock out half the Legion and doing their best to keep as many as the NCR safe as possible. It's the best I can do."

Boone's lips pressed against one another tightly for a moment. "How did you get them to agree to that?" he asked, his voice quiet.

"Promises," Denn answered, grimacing sympathetically under his rebreather. This would be the first time Boone would be forced to interact with the Great Khans in years, and the last time had left scars that had yet to fully heal. "They are free to operate within the Mojave – as long as they stop raiding, the Omerta family will be allowed to purchase their drugs, and they have sovereignty over Red Rock Canyon."

Boone nodded, turning to face the distant camp. "What can I do to help?" he asked.

"The corner tower on this side of the wall is your best bet – there's a building nearby you can hide in until it gets dark. Once the Sun sets, use your climbing gear to make your way up and take out its sentries – the positioning of the tower should keep the other Fiends from spotting you. From there, use your silenced rifle to neutralize the rest of the Fiends on the wall and page us in. The Securitrons will break through the main gate and subdue the rest of the raiders."

"Simple enough… What's the catch?"

"There doesn't always have to be a catch…"

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4:36 p.m.

"There's always a catch," Boone said under his breath as he unsheathed a knife and pressed himself as close to the wall behind him as he could. He had entered the building easily enough, but once inside, had discovered that giant fire ants had recently made the structure the entrance to their nest.

He had tried to make his way out as quickly as possible, but a pair of ants now stood between him and the exit. He could kill them, but that would antagonize the nest, and the increased activity might alert the Fiends to his presence.

Glancing around the corner he was pressed against, Boone made sure the insects weren't headed his way. There was a staircase he could double back to – wait things out on the second floor – but that wasn't ideal. If the nest below him detected his presence…

Not seeing another option, Boone made his way to the second floor.

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6:17 p.m.

Darkness had finally settled over the Mojave. The lights of New Vegas shone across the sky above McCarran's walls, giving the former NCR fortress a subtle and eerie glow. Boone checked his watch, decided it was time, and pulled a hood low over his shaven head.

Stepping out of the second story window, he landed lightly and moved towards the distant wall at a measured sprint. Despite his speed, his footsteps made almost no sound and his dark clothing made him little more than a shadow making its way across the dry earth.

As he reached the base of the wall, Boone slowed and reached into a pouch on his belt. From it, he retrieved a set of hardened-plastic climbing hooks and a pair of folded gloves. Attaching the hooks to his boots, he carefully slipped on the gloves and placed them experimentally against the concrete. The gloves set themselves solidly into the uneven surface when pulled down but when lifted up, were easily removed and readjusted.

Boone shook his head, still not entirely willing to trust the technology the Courier and Ganon had developed. If they worked as the two had assured him they would, the gloves would make ascending stone man-made walls a relatively simple affair. However, the Courier had reluctantly admitted the equipment had yet to be field-tested.

Once again not seeing another option, Boone started to carefully ascend McCarran's walls.

As he neared the top of the fortification, he began to make out a hushed conversation. There were two distinct voices – one male and one female, and they seemed to be arguing about something important.

Getting into position so that he could leap over the wall with a single movement, he hesitantly pulled the glove off of his left hand with his teeth, taking care to keep its palm as far away from his face as possible – Denn had been very clear the effect the micro-hooks would have on exposed skin.

He let the glove fall to the ground and pulled out a small baton. Holding the weapon close to his chest, he kept his hooded-head bowed against the wall and tapped the baton lightly against it.

The conversation above him stopped, and Boone heard somebody shuffling their way over to the side of the tower.

"What do you think that was?" the female voice asked.

"Was'h it a Byrd?"

"A metal bird? I knew you had more than your share. Next time, I'm splitting the stuff. Here, I'll take a look."

Boone tensed, closing his eyes and doing his best to focus on the sounds of the Fiend rising to a standing position on the other side of the wall. He felt more than heard the raider lean down to get a better look at his shadowed frame.

"Hey, something's stuck on the wall… It looks like a-"

Boone unfurled in a single fluid movement and stabbed his baton straight up to strike against the woman's forehead. As the metal connected with the Fiend's skull, it erupted in a burst of electricity and the raider immediately fell unconscious.

Pushing himself up, Boone dropped his baton and used his freed hand to grip the lip of the fortification and lift himself over it; letting the Fiend fall limp onto the top of the wall as he did. Rolling over the edge, he fell lightly and turned his attention to the remaining raider.

Raiders, as it turned out. Two men sat next to each other at the far end of the small tower. One was dozing solidly, while the other blinked his eyes repeatedly, as if expecting Boone to disappear once he closed and opened them enough times.

Finding the deadly shadow not vanishing like a drug-induced hallucination should, the Fiend held one arm out to keep the assailant at bay while frantically trying to remember how the makeshift radio he had been given worked.

A fire ant scuttled through the darkness on the ground below. Curiously, it picked up the glove that Boone had discarded earlier and seemed to study it for a moment. The insect lost interest almost immediately, but was shocked to find that the glove impossible to let go. Shaking its head furiously, the fire ant clicked pleadingly at the empty wasteland, but the creature's consternation with this sudden predicament was ended prematurely, as the sniper's discarded baton fell from the sky and smacked onto the top its head, stunning it with a sharp jolt of electricity.

Back on the wall, a small radio sparked angrily against the concrete it had been smashed against. Boone was calmly reassembling his sniper rifle, taking care not to disrupt the snoozing Fiend as the raider gently nestled his head upon the shoulder of his other, now also unconscious, compatriot. The woman still lying on the edge of the tower was a snorer, and Boone smiled, her vocalizations reminding him of one of his companions.

His smile faded quickly, as his thoughts turned to the Courier's reluctance in assaulting the camp. The Fiends in the towers were easily dispatched, and even if they had been outfitted with heavy weapons, the Securitrons would have been able to reach the main gates with little difficulty.

A wild roar of humanity suddenly erupted from inside the wall. Boone lifted his head to look into the camp proper, and he discovered the source of Denn's caution.

The airfield in front of the camp's main building was a sea of writhing bodies. The bellow from moments before had signified the beginning of the chaos, and hundreds if not thousands of Fiends were now dancing and charging their way across the beaten ground. A huge bonfire burst to life the middle of the primal celebration, and the cascading flames magnified the raider's movements – every action creating a myriad of sputtering shadows across the walls of the former NCR stronghold.

Boone sat back down and frowned. Regardless of the martial power of the Securitrons, Denn had been the first to tell him their greatest strength was the effect they had on their adversaries. Against a fighting force used to facing other human beings, the wanton destruction and sheer relentlessness of the robot soldiers would cause chaos in even the most hardened soldiers. The Securitrons were shock-troopers to a fault, and the Courier exploited that fact as much as possible.

There was a kink in the Securitron's tactics when it came to raiders like the Fiends, Boone realized. Shock-and-awe would have little to no effect on a fighting force that engaged in combat while out of their skulls on anything from psycho to excessive amounts of mentants. If the Securitrons incinerated the man to a Fiend's left, he probably wouldn't notice. If they shot a laser through his thigh, it would take him until after he had finished slamming his weapon into a robot's faceplate to remember he was supposed to be in pain.

That wasn't to say the robot forcers were powerless. On an open field, the Securitrons would make short work of any Fiends, even as sizeable a force as the one now howling inside the walls of McCarran. When on the offensive, and when forced into a bottleneck like the one at the camp's main gate, however, it would be impossible for the Fiends to not inflict losses on the attackers. In fact, even with the Fiends being taken by surprise it would be hard to press through the relatively small entryway…

But at the moment, that wasn't his problem. Denn would have to deal with getting his forces through the gate, and it was his job to make sure they could get to the entryway without being detected. Slowly, he rose to a kneeling position and turned his weapon against the towers overlooking the main gate at the opposite side of the camp.

Each tower only contained three sentries. On one, the three Fiends were dancing wildly with their arms waving senselessly in the air. On the other tower, one raider was actually focusing on the wasteland outside of the gate, but that was only because the other two sentries behind him were openly exploring each other's bodies.

Deciding to take out the dancers first, Boone waited for the crowd below to again unleash a primal roar, and when they did, shot the slowest of the dancers through the neck.

The man fell without a sound, and caused one of the other dancers to stare at him curiously, before falling dead himself as a second shot burst through the back of his skull. The third sentry was completely lost to the world. His frantic movements meant that Boone actually missed once before changing his target from the man's head to his chest.

With the third sentry down, Boone turned his attention to the second tower. Exhaling, he ended the two intertwined raider's carnal explorations with a single shot through the center of their chests. To his surprise, the other sentry snapped his attention behind him to the two dying lovers, and as Boone trained his scope up to line up a shot, immediately jumped over the wall to the ground outside of the camp.

Boone blinked, stunned at the raider's reaction time. Either the drugs the Fiend was on made him excessively twitchy, and it was an accident he had saved himself from the sniper, or in the instant after his comrades had been hit, the raider had worked out where the shot had come from and that he was likely to be next. If the sentry survived the fall and got the attention of the Fiends inside the camp, all of Boone's efforts would have been wasted.

Cursing quietly, Boone unhooked a small radio from his belt and clicked its communication switch three times, then twice. Returning his eyes to the scope, he tried to make out if there were any guards standing on the inside of the gate.

Suddenly, an ear-shattering drone burst through the air from behind him. He turned his head in response and saw dozens of missiles race into the sky. Had Denn decided to bombard the camp? It was still full of NCR captives. What could…

Boone smiled as he saw the projectiles continue to rise and group together. "You didn't even need me to take out the sentries," he whispered quietly. Turning his eyes back to the gate, the sniper relaxed and braced himself for what was coming next.

In the air, the barrage of missiles exploded as one, filling the sky with a huge fireball. The explosion created a shockwave that roared to the ground, reverberating across McCarran's walls and causing unprepared raiders to cry out in fear. Silence fell upon the camp, as the horde within stared up at the airborne Armageddon with awe, apprehension, and in most cases dimmed joy at the pretty colors.

More drones sounded from outside the wall. Individual missiles began to arc into the sky and explode at random intervals, filling the night with blooms of smoke and flame.

Boone took no notice of the display, his attention focused on the far side of the camp as the outer gates to McCarran lifted up and the main force of Securitrons began to file into the fortress. Immediately taking a sharp right, the machines streamed across the edge of the camp, their screens completely dark so their forms looked like no more than additional dancing shadows created by the huge bonfire.

By the time the more lucid of the Fiends turned their attention back to the gates, it was too late. Heavy thuds reverberated across the camp as the Securitron's launcher systems sent grenades filled with noxious gas billowing through the air. The raider's nearest the robot forces charged with mindless abandon, but were cut down systematically by laser fire. Those in the center of the mass of people screamed, fell to the ground frantically rubbing their eyes, attacked each other mindlessly, or all three at once.

As he lifted his eyes from his rifle, Boone saw a door on the back of the main McCarran building slam open and a stream of people pour out of it. Returning his gaze to his scope, he noticed the bulk of the individuals running out of the doorway wore tattered variations of NCR uniforms. The few who didn't wore sleeveless jackets with a skull-face oriental soldier embroidered on the back.

Denn was right; the Great Khans were helping the NCR. The sound of a gunshot broke Boone out of his momentary stupor, and as the last of the NCR personal streamed out of the door, the first of the Fiends emerged in hot pursuit.

A single Great Khan stopped and took a stand as the others continued to escort the ragged personnel. Armed with a curved machete similar to that used by the Courier, she stood with practiced calm as the group of seven Fiends charged her wildly.

Boone turned that number into six, then five, and as the raider's charge faltered under the barrage, the Khan counterattacked with a charge of her own. She dodged the nearest Fiend's wild strike and drew a scarlet line across his chest, roughly shoving her shoulder into him and forcing the man to the ground as she passed to avoid another attack from a different raider. Stabbing her weapon out, she embedded the machete into her most recent attacker's sternum. The female Fiend twisted in agony, and the blade was ripped out of the Khan's grasp. As she turned towards her next adversary, the raider tackled the woman at the waist, forcing her to the ground and straddling her.

As the larger man prepared to bombard her prone form, the Khan reached out and locked up his arms with practiced fluidity. Pulling his body down, she slammed her forehead against the bridge of his nose, breaking it. The woman took advantage of her stunned adversary by reaching to a knife in her belt and embedding it into the side of the raider's chest. Rolling the screaming Fiend off of her body, the Khan lifted her legs above her head and snapped them back, bringing herself to a standing position.

The rest of the raider's lay on the ground, either dead or coughing their last into the bloodstained dirt. The Khan retrieved her machete and looked around at the towers along the wall, searching for her capable assistant. Not finding him, the Khan raised her machete up in a duelist's salute and trotted away, sheathing her weapons in a single movement as she did.

"She fights like Denn," Boone said under his breath, his mind still trying to wrap around what had just happened. He began to wonder just how close the Courier had gotten to the Great Khans.

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.

"The hell are they doing here?!" Motor-Runner asked, desperately trying to pull up his pants. "Weren't the Courier supposed to be fighting the Legion and all? How the hell did they… why the fuck did they… Duke! Where the fuck is everybody!"

"Uh… almost everybody is too fucked up to fight… I mean… the Khans gave us a lot of drugs…"

"God-damn it! We're getting the fuck out of here! Where do you think-"

The Fiend leader was interrupted by a series of yelps followed by two heavy thuds. A moment later, the doorway to the room opened and Denn strolled in, casually brushing dirt off of the shoulder of his duster.

"The fuck did you do to my dogs?" Motor-Runner asked. His fear at the arrival of the assassin who had killed most of his captains was overwhelmed by his indignation that the man had come alone. Duke, however, was not as distracted, and stepped away from the Courier cautiously.

Denn, for his part, stopped once he reached the center of the room and put his arms behind his back. He didn't respond to the Fiend leader's question, electing to stand in silence instead.

"You cocky fuck," Motor-Runner hissed. Suddenly, he dashed to the side and pulled a vicious looking chainsaw off of the ground. Yanking on the weapon's starter cord, the Fiend caused the machine to roar to life and turned towards the Courier, grinning manically. He glanced at his comrade on the other side of the room and gestured with his head towards their unmoving opponent.

Duke just stared blankly back at him, a dull, happy smile plastered onto his face. Without changing his expression, he fell forward with his body as stiff as a board. His fall reveled the demure Great Khan that had snuck up behind him. Diana stared down at the now unconscious Fiend, frowning slightly and dropping an empty syringe.

Motor-Runner's eyes closed to furious slits at his wife's betrayal. "You bitch," he roared, his voice unheard over the deafening chainsaw. He raised the weapon above his head and charged at the small woman.

Denn intercepted him, jabbing his fingers up into the Fiend leader's left armpit and causing the raider's arm to fall completely numb. The heavy chainsaw threw Motor-Runner off-balance, and as the Fiend twisted desperately to try and regain control of the weapon, the Courier stepped in front of him and slammed his fist directly into the man's chest.

Motor-Runner fell back awkwardly, throwing his chainsaw to the side to keep his own weapon from cutting himself to pieces. Denn followed after, lifting up his leg to bring the heel of his right foot slamming into his stumbling adversary's chest. The leader of the Fiends was lifted bodily through the air by the boot's displacer emitter and slammed against the wall behind him, his head smacking against the concrete with a sharp retort.

The raider was still standing, albeit shakily, and lurched back towards the Courier with his arms swinging wildly. Denn dodged to the side to trip his flailing opponent, and as he fell, wrapped an arm around the Fiend's neck. Locking the hold with his other arm, the Courier shook off his opponent's weaking attempts to break free.

Diana casually strolled over to the bed and began to slip back into her clothing. By the time she was relatively modest, Motor-Runner was unconscious with the Courier at his side carefully injecting a small needle into the raider's neck.

"You should kill him and be done with it," Diana said coldly, reaching down to slip on a thigh-high stocking.

"He still has a purpose to serve," the Courier replied, carefully turning the leader of the Fiends onto his side. Standing up, Denn turned and bowed deferentially to the Great Khan. "I'm sorry you had to go through this."

"I never let him lay his hands on me," Diana replied, ignoring the Courier's bow as she walked towards him. Denn straightened as the woman reached out to grab his rebreather and physically forced the man to look into her eyes. "Whatever your plans for him... what I saw him do… he deserves to die."

"He's the worst this world has to offer," Denn replied, his voice quiet. "I'm not done with him yet."

"Vengeance then? You don't seem the vindictive type."

"There's a future to be made with the wasteland, and if I can't change the worst of it... let's just say I'd like to stay ahead of things."

Diana scoffed, letting go of the Courier and frowning at him. "You're going to try and reform him?"

"Not exactly..."

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A borrowed keyboard helped me get this done before the end of the month! Managed to get three chapters out in August, which is two more than I was expecting. I hope this update finds you well, and as always, thank you for reading. No ETA on next update, still figuring life out.