NOTE (Feb. 11, 2018): Well. I think I started something. Crap. More family than humour. Probably more adventure, too. I dunno.
"I don't know what to do with them," Six groused, hunched over his seat and sloshing around a half-empty bottle of home-brewed tequila.
A ghoulified hand tapped the shoulder pads on his duster. "You haven't ditched them yet, boss."
"What are you going on about?"
Raul leaned back on his lawn chair as the embers flickered out of the fire pit in front of his shack, feeling more relaxed than sardonic today. "If you really hate them that much, why haven't you kicked them to the curb already?"
"I don't hate the little brats," the Courier corrected. "They're just costing me a fortune."
"Is that so?" The ghoul took a swig of Sunset Sarsaparilla while thick smoke continued to rise from the pile-up of military supply trucks smoldering in the middle of the battered interstate highway. He gestured at the wreckage. "How much did you pay the NCR for that now?"
"Enough to buy out a whole trading outfit."
Raul chuckled. "Well, you are pretty well off."
"You know I always keep a contingency fund. And these goddamn brats are draining it." Six took a long swig and sighed. "Been going out more so I wouldn't dry up. Have to lug them around with me, too, 'cause they might burn down the Strip if I left 'em there."
The ghoul raised a brow. "They can't be that bad."
"They collapsed the Freeside sign."
"That thing was going to come down anyway."
"They publicly humiliated an NCR brahmin baron."
"You expect me to think he was innocent?"
"They broke into the casino vaults 'by accident.'"
"Huh. How'd they do that? Wait. Vaults? As in not just one casino?"
"Goddamn it, Raul! They're fucking me over," the Courier sneered. "I'm loosing caps just on hush money and don't get me started on the bullshit I had to pull just to keep them from starting another goddamn riot."
Raul raised a brow. "And you're doing all this...why?"
"Because they don't know how to cover their asses! They need someone to to do that for them! 'Cause they don't belong here, for fuck's sake!"
The ghoul laughed. "Boss, admit it. You like having them around."
Six gave his old friend a long hard glare. "... Have you ever had kids, Raul?"
Raul Tejada leaned back in thought. "You know me, boss. Had a large family. I used to take care of my cousins whenever they visited the ranch. The little diablos would run around, stir some trouble, get themselves hurt from some putos in the neighborhood."
"Must've been nice."
A warm smile stretched over what was left of his face. "Si, si. Those were the days."
The Courier dipped his head. "Well good for you then."
"Boss, I don't have the best advice for you when it comes to this but I have to say that you should trust those hijas and hijos. Unlike the both of us, they are blessed with still being in their youth."
"I get it. We're old, our bodies ain't what they used to be—"
"You know what I mean," chided the ghoul. "They still got that starry-eyed mindset that's inspired a lot of those people you and I used to work with. These kids have that drive to do some good in the world what with their unique, eh, 'innocence' that you and I both know should not exist in a place like this. How old is the youngest?"
"Hyper is a goddamn child. For a fifteen-year-old, though, she can swing that oversized garden tool of hers better than a professional baseball pitcher. The rest are about sixteen, seventeen, I don't know."
"That young, eh. You have to admit: they're acrobatic, skilled, and unbelievable."
The Courier nodded. With their 'it's-not-magic' shit, they really are unbelievable. "I've seen them move. They have their own little squads, too. RWBY and JNPR. Pretty dumb names but I guess I could see how that works in a pickle."
"I suppose you weren't their instructor on squad tactics because they seemed pretty efficient from the get-go."
He didn't realize it but a small smirk curved on the edge of his lips. "Yeah, they're sure are efficient. Keepin' a solid eye on each other and moving like a well-oiled machine way before I jumped in to haul their asses out of trouble. Hell, what I walked into...gotta say that was some of the best teamwork I've seen in a long while..."
"Teamwork, eh? You know, boss, that sort of reminds me of—"
The smile was suddenly replaced by a sharp scowl and a pointed finger. "Don't bring it up."
The ghoul snickered. He turned on his waist and called out to the shadows stretching out from behind the rocks east of his shack. "You can come out now, little diablos!"
Silence.
"Raul is cooking!" Six hollered.
At that, the brats slowly drew themselves out. Seeing them looking all sheepish made him suspicious of something potentially expensively stupid that they should not have yet somehow done. So he ran a quick headcount...
"Shaolin, where's Pancake?"
"We thought she was here," Ren replied uneasily.
"We've been looking all over for her but can't find her," Ruby added.
You lost your own fucking teammate? "Where'd you last see her?" he demanded.
"We got split up while foraging," Jaune explained.
The way the Courier bore into the blond team leader almost made the boy melt into the ground. "And?"
"Well, uh, she s-sort of...d-disappeared?"
Six growled. Goddamn it. "Where was this?"
Jaune raised his arm to point to the expanse of rolling desert behind them when a familiar pink blob hopped out of the rocks with something in her hands.
"Heya, everybody!"
"Nora! Where have you been? We were looking all over you!" screamed pretty much the rest of the brats.
Raul chuckled. "Quite the lot, eh, boss? I told you: trust them. They'll prove themselves when you're not always around breathing down their necks like a hungry death...claw..."
Both veteran wastelanders felt their jaws go slack when they saw the massive egg Nora was snuggling against her chest.
Weiss popped the question for them. "Nora, where did you get that?"
"Oh, there was this abandoned train yard near the lake," Pancake said with a dismissal wave. "Could you believe? The mutants there couldn't even see me! I think they're blind."
"Ay Dios mio, hija..."
You have got to be fucking kidding me, woman! Six could tell that even Raul, with his two hundred years of experience, was as stupefied as he was at this. He paced over to her. "Pancake, how the hell did—"
The egg, which had been trembling, began to furiously shake and Nora held it out for the whole group to see. Cracks began to form until the top flaked off and an infant deathclaw reared its head into the world with a soft cry. Predictably, Blondie, Hyper, and Pancake started fawning over the newborn monstrosity.
"Ah, shit," was all the Courier had to say when the roars of several adult deathclaws echoed less than twenty yards away.
"I swear to God, if I find a gateway to Remnant, I'm kicking you all back in," Six grumbled over his glass of whiskey in the corner of the shack.
It would not be long before the NCR would start asking him about how an entire colony of deathclaws somehow fell from the sky and landed (in pieces) outside the walls of McCarran Headquarters. For now, he could only grimace at his misfortune while teams RWBY and JNPR relished Raul's vegetable stew (after they politely and meticulously confirmed that the stew was made with only the vegetables that were grown from the ghoul's modest yet bountiful garden patch outside).
Trust them, my ass. The Courier looked to the group huddled in the middle of the shack, the brats clearly enraptured by Raul's lighthearted stories of the Old World. Well, they did a good number on those deathclaws. Granted, those fuckers were blind and the kids had some slip-ups and some scrapes but at the end of the day, we're all in one piece. Maybe... Maybe, they deserve a bit more credit.
Six turned away to hide the prideful smile forming on his lips. Damn kids. Damn good kids.
Meanwhile, Pancake's baby deathclaw nuzzled its sleepy head against the side of his boot.
The Courier was still awake when he caught her slowly tiptoeing over her sleeping friends towards him with a determined look on her face. "What are you going to ask me this time, Hyper?"
"I'm asleep!" Ruby squeaked, frozen as a statue.
"Don't expect me to hold your hand while you pee."
"It's not that," she hissed back. "It's just something...important."
He sighed, sat up on his mat, and flashed the light of his Pip-boy against the vacant space beside him. He waited until the pipsqueak plopped down next to him, her curious eyes refusing to meet his. "What is it?"
"If you don't mind me asking. I...I'm just curious... Well, actually, we all were so...I mean...i-it's not my place to ask... But if you're comfortable with it, you know... We just wanted to know, you know..." Hyper took in some deep breaths before throwing him her most determined look. "Were you part of a team? Y'know, with Raul? Did you have a team? Like us?"
Goddamn it, Raul. Six held a frown before shifting his attention to the wall.
"I'm sorry. I was just...I couldn't sleep and I—"
"Ruby, I'll tell you another time. For now, get some rest."
The girl blinked. "You will?"
"Yeah. But not tonight. Go to sleep," came the somber response as he turned off his Pip-boy light.
"Okay. Goodnight, Six," she mumbled with a solemn nod then carefully inched her way back to her cot next to her snoring half-sister. Six caught her parting glance before she turned onto her side.
Goodnight, Ruby.
ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: February 1, 2018
LAST EDITED: June 18, 2022
INITIALLY UPLOADED: February 11, 2018
NOTE (Feb. 11, 2018): So...trouble. So much for slice of life chapters. This one has gotten rather...deep during the course of writing. Couldn't help it. The ideas just flowed.
Selected review responses (Feb. 11, 2018):
Review dude: That's interesting, actually. The way I see it though is that Pyrrha is very heavily Greek (hoplite; spear; phalanx) than Roman (legionary; sword; maniple) but knowing how Edward Sallow is himself an intellectual and modelled his empire after the Ancient Romans, he would know full well that the Ancient Romans adopted much from the Ancient Greeks. So he'd see Pyrrha as a tool for exerting influence, enforcing authority, and perhaps even as a tool of propaganda to psychologically affect other tribes and enemy powerhouses like the NCR (which probably would not sit well with Pyrrha given her history as an unwilling poster girl). He probably dictates the legion's history and most likely controls their education. Still, thanks for giving me the image of Pyrrha disarming an entire cohort of legionaries with her Semblance. I might work on that some time. :)
Blinded in a bolthole: Interesting perspectives you've brought up. Come to think of it, Qrow would kick the Courier's ass in a straight up fight with his Aura and Semblance. Take them away and they *might* have a stalemate. Or I could "tweak" the Courier... (I might straight-up OP him if I'm just mentally tired.) For Glynda, yeah, she might lose it a bit. Cinder, though... You're right. She might just chip a nail. In the meantime, I developed a scenario where Glynda and Cinder are stuck together somewhere in the Mojave. ;)
Anyway, thanks again for giving this an eye. Hopefully, I can continue to entertain...before my mind frizzles out again.