I knew it.
"I was hoping I wouldn't see that glint in your eye again, boss," Raul quipped.
The Courier kneaded the strip of rubber he picked up from the ghoul's worktable until he felt comfortable enough to keep from sounding any more pissed than he already was. "You don't have to worry about me." All this damn time... We were being played. I was being played. Again.
The ghoul leaned back on his chair, clearly unconvinced. "If you ask me, this job has got 'bogus' written all over it. You know I could go out there and 'investigate these anomalies' in your place. I'm just concerned about what exactly you'd be doing in the meantime."
Sorry, Raul, but you'd kill me if I told you. "Something personal."
"Boss, those 'U.S. Army prototypes' you discovered in that mine not too long ago... The way you described them...sounded a lot like what I saw over at Fort Mead. Pristine condition. Commonwealth stripes on the arms and legs like what you said. Nothing like anything I've ever seen before and you know me; been in more than enough bunkers to know what fits in this place and what doesn't."
I trust your judgment on that. "Someone was in that cave before we went in. Fresh oil on one of the tables. Warm casings. I brought the kids with me and they knew I'd be bringing the kids." I was too obvious, too reckless to show them that.
"Probably engineers went in to make the set-up look more convincing, keep the rigs well-oiled for you." The ghoul ran his fingers through the strips of hair that still remained above his lip. "You really think it was an assassination attempt?"
Maybe. "Nah. Hsu's too smart for that. It was probably some kind of distraction or a test or something." Or trying to gauge that the kids really are the Remnant wonders they've been suspecting all this damn time. Six peaked over his shoulder. Velvet's curved form lay huddled over the mattress by the corner of the shack, wrapped in a warm blanket, the steady rise and fall of her sides as she slept.
"So the NCR basically sent you on some wild goose chase to check up on something they planted in a mine that they knew was going to cave in sooner or later. Sounds like an assassination attempt."
The Courier shook his head. "'Happy little accident,' more like it. Had to have been Moore before she got recalled. Crocker's too chicken-shit to step on my toes and Hsu knows that directly killing me would make things worse around here."
"Gee, what a high opinion you have of yourself."
"Your opinion is highly valued," Six grunted. "I get snuffed and shit's going to go down so hard the NCR will have their hands fuller than when I got shot in the head."
"What makes you say that?"
"Trust me. I wrapped those bastards in enough chains to make him second-guess the keys to the padlock." But they still wriggle around to pull a Houdini on me. Well, there's always a limit to playing with the Republic's own bureaucracy.
"And the little diablos?"
Six remained silent, staring at the shadows inhabiting the corner of the ghouls' meager living space. He kneaded the rubber harder until it bent and snapped between his calloused fingers. "They're my responsibility. First things first, I'll check up on 'em."
"Boss, I told you: the general commissioned them on something. That something is over west."
"I know, I know. Thanks for the info." The Courier stood.
"Boss?"
"I'll check up on the kids, make sure they don't shoot themselves in the foot. Take care of Bunny-girl for me. Don't let her out of your sight."
Raul got to his feet only to meet his palm.
"I don't want to burden you with this one. Just keep that rabbit safe. It's all I'm asking."
"Boss. Knowing what you saw there, I can only hope my intel is off."
Six smirked. "All the more reason for me to get them out of trouble before it finds them." He slung his carbine over his shoulder on his way out.
"... Don't get yourself killed, amigo."
With how my luck's going so far? I can't guarantee that. "See you soon, buddy."
Meanwhile, in the back of the room, Velvet's ears relaxed against her head, her gaze cemented on the sheet metal in front of her face. Teams RWBY and JNPR were dispatched west on a mission for the NCR while the Courier was ordered to go east on a separate mission for the NCR. Why? Was something big going on? Were her only Remnant friends whom she had yet to be reunited with in danger? She could not risk it. She can't.
It was bad enough seeing Remnant burn before her eyes while she sat helpless and let herself be wrenched away to this new world, away from friends and family. She could not afford to see another disaster befall the only people she valued at this point.
Velvet relaxed on her side, sleep avoiding her well after she heard Mister Tejada's snores from his worktable on the other side of the shack.
All the information the NCR could provide did little to prepare them for what they had wandered into. Even to the most literate of them, there were little words to accurately describe the Divide. The whole region was a twisted canyon of bent steel and broken concrete shrouded in an almost endless storm of shearing sand and dirt. It was a place where, in Ruby's mind, Goliath Grimm would go to die. The air was dry, odorless, and restless.
"This," Weiss breathed, "This...is where Samson is kept?"
"It would make a lot of sense," Blake said, herself gawking in frightful awe at the sight of the 'valley.' "No one would want to come here unless they're either desperate or..."
"They've got something to hide," Yang completed.
Jaune wiped the sweat off his face, letting the muffler around his neck soak up most of the residue while he dusted dirt and sand off his clothes. He sat on a boulder as did the rest of his team and began massaging his legs which were sore from walking miles over desert rock and Old World rubble.
"We're already here," he breathed. "I say we rest for a bit."
Ren set down his backpack, laden with supplies and half of the their dynamite supply, and stretched his arms. "This is a nice overwatch position."
Ruby nodded. The deathly wind drafting up the cliff face towards their perch rippled through her cloak, sending a shiver down her spine despite the bravest facade she could put up. She bent down to heap a pile of stones into a mound to sufficiently steady the rifle barrel of Crescent Rose—a karmic tic knowing that Six taught her to do it at Cottonwood.
"I'll keep watch."
Pyrrha motioned at her. "I'll switch with you in thirty minutes. I suspect we won't be safer here any longer than an hour."
The reaper nodded, her carbine slung off to her side while she lay prone against the jagged gravel to shoulder Crescent Rose. Limited on Dust rounds as they were, she was willing to expend half her irreplaceable supply for this leg of their mission. Then again, given how serious this mission was, she expected to use up all of her remaining Dust. If only to protect the Mojave from whatever secret weapon was hiding down there.
Overwatch had never felt so tense.
The only way down to the valley from where they were was through an abandoned United States Army bunker built into the mountainside. Walking through it was haunting to say the least.
Cold, dimly-lit, steel floors. Cold, dimly-lit, steel walls. Broken pipes, dislocated catwalks, and machinery that somehow still functioned after years of misuse thanks to some nigh inexhaustible power source rendered inaccessible by debris. And then the trails of blood. Dried blood. Mixed with oil, the stains and foul odors were faint but telling. The countless bullet holes narrated the rest of the story.
Whoever had been here were dispatched rather brutally, their remains disposed of, and the blood sloppily mopped or scrubbed.
"This place is giving the creeps," Yang muttered.
"I still think there's something crawling in the walls," Nora added.
"Gotta be the ventilation system," Jaune said.
"Not just that," Blake countered. "I don't think whatever else is in the walls is alive though."
"What's alive?" Weiss asked.
"Whatever got stuck in the walls and is causing the uneven noises I'm picking up," the faunus among them answered.
Pyrrha approached Ruby who had wandered through an open doorway. A half hour later, team RWBY were gathered around the desk of the late United States Army General Martin Retslaf, deciphering the unfortunate events here at the Hopeville Missile Silo Bunker up until the final hours of the Great War. Team JNPR-S, on the other hand, opted to search the other rooms.
"This whole place was supposed to protect a nation," Weiss mouthed somberly. "This is...difficult to stomach."
"With you on that one, Ice Queen," Yang assuaged somberly, herself digesting the despondence in Retslaf's final entries. "Skim through and see if it mentions anything useful."
The heiress paused to gather her thoughts. It was going to take a while to file away some of the more depressing sections of the records she combed through. "Here. There are mentions of something about...repositories stocked with supplies to last several years."
"What kind of supplies?"
"Food. Though they're undoubtedly expired by now."
"What else?" Ruby interjected.
Clack, clack, clack. The screen refreshed with a digital manifest. "Ah, here we are. Hmm... Weapons, ammunition, heavy ordnance, body armor, and a range of assorted auxiliary equipment. And a lot of this is still in storage. Unused and somewhat accessible."
"If it were guns, chances are they'd be rusted up," mused the reaper. "I don't think we'll need extra body armor for now. What about ammunition stores? If the bullets won't work then maybe we could find some extra explosives that we might be able to use."
"Assuming we could carry that extra," her sister countered. "Look, we're already hefting around a lot of stuff and going through this place is tiring."
Ruby sighed. "Yeah, I guess. Blake?"
Blake waved them over to a console housed in an alcove outside the office. "I think I found a way to directly access the repositories but..."
Sparks flew out of the keypad.
Yang grimaced. "Is this like...a slot machine?"
Ruby rubbed some of the grime off the panel. "'United States Military Commissary Terminal,' huh."
A bit of careful tinkering showed that indeed the supplies were obtainable with most still useable. More tinkering revealed that this particular console was useless despite still being powered by whatever energy source still kept this whole place up and running after all these years. They were later joined by JNPR-S who informed them of another commissary terminal installed on the oher side of the facility. Unfortunately, said terminal had long ago been eviscerated by a hail of bullets.
The reaper huffed. "This one's still powered powered but the slots are jammed and the buttons are useless."
"Well, if we can't find anything else in here, might as well keep moving?" Jaune suggested.
Ruby sighed. At least they tried to access the bunker's armory. Then again, the manifest could have been dated over a hundred years ago and Six or someone else could have looted the repository dry. However, aside from the list, there was another detail that she and her teammates salvaged from Retslaf's office: a detailed printed map of the Divide complete with locations that even the NCR was completely unaware of.
Save for a few straggling mutated bugs, the pit of the canyon itself was desolate. Even then, the only traversable roads winding through them were broken up by whatever devastation had occurred here. Single paths led to dead-ends; massive holes pockmarked the highway; their Geiger counters registered countless hotspots that complicated moving around.
Even then, most of their trek had been uneventful and with Retslaf's map, they navigated easily through the rubble. Still, the journey ate at them.
Never had they been witness to such desolation. Long abandoned cars dotted the interstate alongside derelict military trucks loaded with supply crates that had long since been picked apart. Their exhaustion grew the more they pushed their feet forward and their worries compounded every time they checked their supplies. Frustrations nearly reached their boiling point when the few commissary terminals they came across had their access ports destroyed or their caches emptied.
And then there was that uncomfortable feeling that lingered in the back of their minds. Over the miles they walked since their arrival, everyone in both teams RWBY and JNPR-S shared the nagging feeling of being watched. Throughout their journey, they found several huts and igloos assembled from concrete and debris, riddled with garbage and decayed offal, along with dried up fire pits and broken storage containers. A lot of somethings (or someones) had lived here. And it felt a lot like they had their eyes on the two teams the whole time.
Like they sensed they were coming and deserted their homes to spy at them from afar.
Someone in the buildings? Just rebar. Figure on the highway? Rotting carcass. Shadows up ahead? Remains of an encounter between NCR and Legion forces.
Wait.
NCR troops? Legionaries?
The teens scattered behind cover while they checked to make sure none among the things they saw were moving.
"We clear?" Jaune whispered.
"I think so," Ruby hissed.
"You should go first."
Slowly, RWBY and JNPR-S crept to the junction, their weapons at the ready. Bodies lay scattered over the asphalt. Tattered NCR fatigues, broken cuirasses, cracked legionary kits, makeshift armor padding dented and destroyed. Except the dead men themselves were...
"Oh my..." Weiss cupped her mouth in horror.
The bodies were all flayed. Dried, exposed muscle. The teams did not know which was more horrifying: that these soldiers were skinned alive or were skinned after they died. What sadistic bastard would go so far as to tear the flesh off human beings whole? Sure, they had heard stories of psychotic raiders and desperate cannibalistic survivalists but who else could be inhabiting the Divide to even bother with this?
"Look at the bodies," suggested Pyrrha.
"What else is there to look at?" whined Jaune.
The redhead shook her head. "Look at how they're arranged. Their bodies... They're all facing east. The direction of their attacks were...where we came from."
Blake tracked the bullet casings scattered about, even noticing what looked like either a camera or a motion sensor installed high up on the edge of one of the multi-story buildings. "They...weren't fighting each other. They were being tracked too... Who were they up against then?"
"Six," Yang echoed, her nails digging into her palms. "Who else? He's hiding something here. These guys got in the way and he didn't want to leave witnesses behind. And he clearly left a message to anyone who was pushing too deep."
Nora hummed in thought, conveniently having turned away from the grisly sight to concentrate. "So...what were the NCR and the Legion doing here in the first place?"
"My guess? Since the Divide used to be a part of the Republic, this was either a patrol or a scouting party that ran into these Legion guerrillas and they formed a truce in the face of something more dangerous," Blake hypothesized. "Odd though how the Legion got this many men this far west..."
Weiss waved dismissively. "Another mystery for another day."
On the edge of the intersection, Ruby surveyed the distant ruins of Hopeville. The eerie silence emanating from the twisted concrete towers was enough to put her on edge. If there were any Grimm on Earth, this would be the perfect place for them to nest. She shuddered at the memories of the Breach—come to think of it, Mountain Glenn in all its haunting glory was much more soothing compared to this place.
"We should be on our guard," Ren reminded them. "Mutants might be hiding in the cracks."
The two teams collected themselves.
"Watch for traps too," Jaune added, having finally steeled his nerves. "Keep an eye out for any blinking lights or weird mounds. They could be mines."
Ruby nodded. "The sooner we get to Samson, the closer we'll be to some answers."
Some of those answers came in the form of an ambush. By the flayed men.
It all happened so fast that instinct kicked in. Ruby and Jaune coordinated their movements while they themselves maneuvered around the fissured intersection, deflecting strikes and dodging bullets. Their individual Semblances meshed effectively with their developing Huntsman skills and crude Wasteland gunpowder technology, stopping short of expending their irreplaceable Dust supply. There was a lot of gunfire, a lot of close calls, but the young Huntsmen- and Huntresses-in-training dominated the fight.
Until Yang, fueled by the raging fire of her Semblance, threw a haymaker at the head of the last standing enemy, the combined force of both her punch and the discharge of the Dust-filled buckshot in her ballistic gauntlet causing his neck to snap back, his skull to crack and shatter, and the rest of his head to disappear in a puffy crimson cloud of bone and membrane that splattered against the concrete. His limp body dropped in front of the now mortified blonde.
Teams RWBY and JNPR-S screeched to a halt in dumbfounded silence, panting and sweating until after the adrenaline subsided.
Nora, coming down from her combat high, slowly and fearfully gawked down at the body below her heel, his chest unmoving and his whole arm gone. Pyrrha nearly dropped her Garand while Weiss stumbled back onto her rear. Out of the dozen or so flayed men who emerged out of the rubble to murder them, nine were clearly dead, perforated and eviscerated. By their hands. Their first true kills in the month that they had been here. The reality was suffocating, emerging finally from the back of their minds. It didn't help that Syrup had begun ripping and tearing at the corpses, the grisly sound of bone and flesh crunching in its jaw echoing off the rubble.
The numbing stillness lasted three seconds.
Then it all came crashing down.
The NCR First Recon unit reported back to Fort Mead late in the evening following a week-long excursion into western Arizona, a pre-war Commonwealth state now forming a core province of the Imperium Americana. To the surprise of the entire garrison, the ragged eight-man squadron was followed by a ragtag bunch of 'freed Legion slaves.' The irony sank in, alluding to the fact that Fortification Hill was rechristened Fort Mead after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam to rewrite the stronghold's legacy as a paragon for slavery.
Most of the poor bunch were confused and wondering where they were. It was not uncommon to the medical staff who diagnosed them with shock and provided adequate treatment with generous NCR rations. That was when they noticed the odd natural hair colors, the unusual 'mutations' such as animal horns, an extra pair of ears, and even a tail. Then there were the questions.
Questions that dumbfounded the NCR garrison and ultimately led them to the two people among the refugees who apparently instigated the slave revolt that figuratively broke their Legion chains. Figuratively in the sense that they were still unable to break their strangely unbreakable slave collars which, for some alarming reason, was made of some kind of alloy that ranked beyond the ballistic levels scaled by the NCR.
The two individuals, colorful as they appeared, were segregated from the bunch while the base commander contacted the military leadership at McCarran Headquarters. Six hours later, Major General James Hsu stood before the odd pair inside the fort's administration building, reconstructed out of the Legion command tent that once housed the late Imperium founder Edward 'Caesar' Sallow.
"Those are some durable slave collars," Hsu remarked.
"You are astute, general," one of them replied with a salvaged air of formality.
"Before we continue any more attempts to get those devices off of you, I feel it pertinent that I personally brief you on the context of where you are right now."
"What prompted that if you don't mind us asking?" the other inquired.
"It's the only option I have that would not compromise your origins."
"Pardon, sir. Origins?"
"You're neither the first nor last people to come from Remnant." Hsu skillfully concealed his mirth at their reactions. "Welcome to Nevada."
ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: March 24, 2018
LAST EDITED: July 7, 2023
INITIALLY UPLOADED: May 2, 2018
NOTE (May 2, 2018): Time to get serious, folks. There's a time to laugh and a time to cry as the Good Book says.
-~oOo~-
(May 2, 2018)
Review dude: Thanks! So far, I got a ribbing and a nut-kicking but my paper and my academic creative output is still somewhat solid. Hope I graduate, heh.
As for the kids' reactions to Raul and ghouls in general, I decided to skip it. It has been written before in other fics by other authors and I simply cannot see how to make it anymore unique from those. However, I haven't really abandoned the idea. I'm still juggling their reactions to super-mutants and feral ghouls in my head so rest assured and it may not be necessarily RWBY, JNPR, or V freaking out over 200-year-old "dead men walking." So it might come up sooner or later, probably an omake if I can't make it work.
-~oOo~-
I have a few other omakes not related to this plot but set in the same universe with the same crass Six in center. I'm holding off on those for now.
Anyway, once again, hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. Let me know what you think. I may have missed something or gotten something wrong or maybe gotten off track so, yeah, call me out on it. :)