January 1st, 2279


Frank said nothing to his fellow raider as he relieved him of bridge duty. The raider had a name—Mags, or something like that—but Frank didn't much care. Neither did Mags, or whatever his name was, because he let his cigarette fall to the gangplank and left with a noncommittal grunt. Frank put out the light with the heel of his boot.

Frank is perhaps the most dangerous man of his generation. He doesn't look it, striking somewhat malnourished build and only slightly above average height, but he was. When he won his freedom in The Pitt, he'd shot the gun out of his last opponent's hands, and in the ensuing fistfight, opened his opponent's neck with just his teeth. His skin was sallow where it wasn't sunburnt, which gave it a patchwork quality that complimented his one radioactive green eye unnervingly. This is Frank Armstrong, the Lone Wanderer.

A stupid name, Frank had remarked on more than one occasion. He wasn't alone and he didn't wander so much as he got lost. His pre-war maps were only useful as things to be painted over with the new markers and notes, and he'd gotten himself turned around in the smallest of Vault 101's lower levels, so it was a sure thing that the Capitol's featureless nothing and the DC ruins especially had rendered him one very lost trout indeed. In a place so replete with dangers and a dearth of anything that didn't want him dead, Three Dog's nickname wasn't something Frank harbored any fondness for.

It was one of the few things Frank appreciated about The Pitt—that everyone who knew him as the Lone Wanderer was dead. Only Werner had, of course, but he wasn't here to throw it around anymore. He tried to, in his final moments; thrown it in Frank's face as if it were a talisman, something to save him, turn Frank's heart. It didn't.

Frank watched over the bridge with quiet disdain. He hated bridge duty: for the most part, nothing happened, but every once and a while some slave would come scurrying along in yet another vain attempt at escape. Incredibly depressing, watching them try and die and try and die, and seeing as he wasn't a sadist like some of his compatriots, he couldn't exactly find entertainment in it, nor in putting down those few that did cross the bridge unscathed. But such was life, right?

Frank would, of course, loot the bodies after his shift. Occasionally, he would clear out the Wildman camp that had a habit of repopulating itself, somehow, every few days. He could sell what he didn't want and keep what he did, but for the most part, he sold it all (aside from the occasional teddy bear, those were worth ten caps a pop from Ashur, and Frank wasn't stupid enough to turn down easy money).

Bridge duty was so depressing as to render the view—what harsh, smog-choked beauty one could find it—depressing as well. The bridge into The Pitt was doll, brown and bloody. The river flowing under it was radioactive and polluted Frank hated all of it, but this was his lot. He knew what is like for slaves, at any rate, so he reminded himself that he could be in much worse places. Instead of thinking about what he could've done or should've done, he began to take apart and clean his hunting rifle, carefully unwrapping the weathered scrap of an American flag he tied around the butt and placing it at his feet.

After a few hours, Frank heard one of the mines go off. His hunting rifle long since thoroughly cleaned, he shouldered it and scanned the bridge, only to see a slave crawl atop one of the cars, sans one leg. Frank trained his rifle on him, and after taking a moment to consider it, he put the man out of his misery. One shot, clean through the back of the man's head; painless. It was the least Frank could do before relaxing back into his seat, sighing as the polluted river flowed beneath him.