So another shorter chapter in the interim. Bear with me while I try to set up the characters and scene. This one is an original character. As always, feedback is welcome. Also, the rating may be increased to M in the coming days, as the language is going to get saltier and there'll be a lot more violence.
Emily McPherson began stripping off her dusty clothes as soon as her door closed behind her. For two months she had been on the Mexican side of the old border, traveling small border towns and investigating the reports she had received about areas where life continued as it had before the war. She would have to begin writing a report on her findings almost immediately, but she at least had time to indulge in a hot shower before beginning. Bathing in the middle of nowhere for her consisted of jumping in any non-irradiated body of water and washing as much of the grime off of herself as possible. She had been fantasizing about a proper shower, with hot water and soap, on her entire trip back to Shady Sands. It was one of the benefits of living in the largest city in, and capital of, the New California Republic. A stable government that provided basic services was more than most of the post-war Wasteland, she had found. She turned her water on and, stripping off the rest of her clothes, stood under the water. In that moment she couldn't remember a better feeling. After peacefully enjoying the hot water rinsing away the dust and grime of the road for several minutes, she began to turn her thoughts to the project ahead of her. The Followers of the Apocalypse had a rather loose hierarchy, but there were certain members, those who possessed a unique sort of genius or who had acquired massive amounts of wisdom over a lengthy career, that helped guide and disseminate the policies of the organization for the betterment of all mankind. Emily was one of the preeminent historians in the organization; with particular knowledge in pre-war societies, economics, and technology. She had acquired her knowledge of history and economics through a voracious appetite for reading; and was more or less born with her knowledge of technology. That knowledge had been forged through 18 years in the Brotherhood of Steel before she finally broke from them, unable to see eye-to-eye anymore with the Elders in Lost Hills on the direction of the order. Her parents had been Brotherhood; her father a Paladin and her mother a scribe, but they had left her when she was 11 in the care of the Lost Hills Chapter to accompany Paladin Owyn Lyons on his journey east, taking her younger brother, Liam, with them. As far as she knew, she was alone in the world; with only her adopted family in the Followers there to turn to. And they would be anxious to hear what she had found in Mexico.
The trip to Mexico had been anything but pleasant. Extreme caution had to be used traveling there, especially in the vicinity of the Mojave Desert, as it had become the front line of the imperialist war the NCR was fighting with Caesar's Legion over control of the Hoover Dam and the city of New Vegas. Whoever controlled the Dam would ultimately control the Mojave Wasteland, and the conflict was becoming increasingly desperate for the NCR. Though the front lines were largely stabilized, the NCR was stretched too thin to effectively patrol their territory, and there was a very real risk of being captured and sold into Legion slavery. Emily swore she would die before being forced into servitude as some legionary's plaything. The fact that Caesar had started off as Edward Sallow, a Follower of the Apocalypse, was something she felt acutely ashamed of. While she was hardly a pacifist, she couldn't understand how a man who had once dedicated his life to helping others could so easily become a violent warlord. On the other hand, every report from traders who had been east, into Caesar's territory, said the same thing: they could travel the roads in Legion territory without fear of being raided, that there was no infighting or tribal war within Legion territory. He was the undisputed master of the lands he conquered. While Emily found the man and his actions utterly abhorrent, she had to grudgingly admit that in some ways he was doing what the Followers set out to do; namely, bring peace into the post-war world and do their best to make sure such an event never happened again.
Emily had made it to Mexico without being enslaved, thankfully, and once across the former border she and her companions had traveled through the small towns and villages that bordered the old states of California and Arizona. There, hundreds of miles from anything that had ever been a major city, she found people living as they had in the 21st Century. For the first time in her life she saw animals that hadn't been affected by the radiation. Cattle, sans the extra head that a Brahmin possessed, were still ranched in those isolated areas. Donkeys and even horses still existed. The water was free from radiation. While it was hardly a paradise, and the residents of the region struggled to eke out even a basic existence, it was largely unchanged from the way life had been lived for hundreds of years there. The soil there wouldn't support large scale agricultural productions, but the existence of mutation-free wildlife alone had made her trip a wild success. Her Spanish had been severely lacking, but she had begun to learn while she had been there, enough to hold basic conversations without having to call for their translator. It was the sort of journey she couldn't have imagined as a child growing up in Lost Hills, surrounded by the ideology of the Brotherhood of Steel.
She had been born in Lost Hills in 2243. She had a hard time believing she was actually 38 sometimes. When thinking back on her life, she found it convenient to divide it into two chapters: Brotherhood and Followers. She had spent the first 18 years of her life with the Brotherhood, growing up in the organization and eventually beginning training herself. She was still a child, just beginning an apprenticeship, when her family left her in the care of the Elders and the rest of the Brotherhood. Although she was taught that the entire Brotherhood was her family, she couldn't help feeling abandoned and alone. It had driven her onward in her training, and she had been 16 when she entered the Knight ranks. Two years later, after seeing the reality of life in the Wastes, she had broken with the Brotherhood and left of her own free will. Emily could never quite put a finger on why that was, exactly. But somewhere, deep inside her heart, she was appalled at the utter disdain the Brotherhood treated outsiders with. Instead of using their knowledge of technology to help restore something akin to order and society to the Wasteland, they hoarded it and left the rest of the world to fend for itself. One day Emily had finally decided she wouldn't be part of it anymore. There wasn't any particular event that spurred it, but the decision had not been one she had pondered very deeply. It simply seemed to occur to her one day. After that she had wandered for a year before eventually meeting the Followers. After hearing their outlook and goals she knew that it was what she wanted to do with her life. She had been with them for close to 19 years, doing the best she could to help make people's lives a bit easier.
The water running cold was Emily's signal that it was time to finally get on with the rest of her day. She stepped out and, after quickly toweling herself off, put on a fresh set of clothes, khaki pants and a black t-shirt. Tying her boots back on, she walked out of her room and back toward the main entrance to the Followers facility. A trader was in the lobby, talking with a group of Followers who were intently listening to what she had to say. She knew this particular trader, a woman with a strange name who ran her own caravan business, making runs out to the Mojave and back. She was about the same age as Emily and, while totally without manners or respect for any sort of social norms, was a good source of information on the happenings in other parts of the NCR and the Mojave.
"Dr. McPherson! I have a book that may interest you," the trader said in greeting. No time for small talk, apparently.
"And how much will you be wanting for this book?" Emily replied. She couldn't imagine a merchant would be giving her a book as a public service.
"Say 10 NCR dollars. You're not going to believe this book," the woman replied.
"And what makes this book so unbelievable?"
"Well, for one, I bought it off an honest-to-God super-mutant. I shit you not, he was guarding one of the caravans heading down towards the Mojave. And it's about life on the other side of the country. The book calls it the 'Capital Wasteland'." Emily's heart skipped a beat at that. The D.C. ruins were where her family had been sent, nearly…30 years ago? Was that possible?
"And what does it have to say about D.C.? Is the United States reborn?" The trader snorted dismissively at that.
"Not hardly. I flipped through it a bit. Place sounds like a total shithole. But it has some pretty good information that I thought you guys might be able to use to help people out in the Wastelands," the trader replied. Emily took her in. The woman was reasonably attractive for their age, her red hair pulled back in a bun under a large Western hat. Not failing to notice Emily silently staring at her, the woman continued.
"Look, I may be a functionally alcoholic trader, but I still respect what you all do. It's a shitty world out there, and at least someone is trying to make things a bit better." Emily couldn't help but twitch into half a smile at that. The moment passed quickly. She knew these traders. If she made it obvious how valuable that book would be to the Followers, she would get taken to the cleaners.
"$10 NCR?" Emily confirmed.
"$10 NCR. Take it or leave it. I could sell it for at least double that somewhere else," the trader replied. Emily didn't want to risk losing out on the book, and she could see the woman was firmly set on her price.
"We'll take it, then," Emily replied, reaching into her pocket to pull out her wallet. She counted out the money and forked it over to the woman, taking the book in exchange. She looked down at the cover of it, feeling the weight in her hands. The Wasteland Survival Guide, it said. Lead Author and Subject Matter Expert: John Thompson. Assistant Author: Moira Brown. She hoped that John Thompson and Moira Brown were as competent as this trader was making them out to be.
"Well, it's been a pleasure doing business with you, Dr. McPherson," the trader said, preparing to leave.
"Please, I'm not a doctor. Just call me Emily. And you'll have to forgive me, but I've forgotten your name. You are…"
"Rose of Sharon Cassidy, but most people just call me Cass. Or Whiskey Rose, when they're looking for a beating," she responded. Nothing in her tone indicated she was joking about the beating part, so Emily made a mental note to not call the woman Whiskey Rose. The woman, Cass, nodded at the assembled Followers and took her leave, walking back out the front door and onto the streets of Shady Sands. Emily noticed the other Followers looking at her. Technically she did have a report to begin, but this book didn't look like it would be that time consuming. And it could be potentially invaluable to the Followers. Looking back to her colleagues, she held the book up.
"Well, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to see if Mr. Thompson and Ms. Brown have anything interesting to say," she said, turning to walk out the front door. Her favorite open-space in the city was only a few blocks away, and she always seemed to have an easier time reading there than in her room. Hopefully Ms. Cassidy wasn't bullshitting us, she thought as she walked down the crowded streets of the city.