Courier Six followed the blood trail up until to the last drop. From there, it was a no brainer as to where the kids had gone off to. There was only end for this road. And like a bloodhound, he tracked them through the canyon all the way to the blast doors of what Ulysses had once dubbed his own 'temple.'

There was sand freshly displaced all over the floor of the antechamber and deathclaw marks on the walls. And then there were the expended casings. None of the kids were issued guns chambered in forty-five ACP because the NCR stocked their armories with the cheaper five-fifty-sixes. Bunny-girl was catching up to her Remnant buddies.

Deluded idiots, the whole lot of them. You should'a done just left 'em to rot. Should'a shot 'em when you had the chance.

Warning shots. Those kids don't belong here.

Oh, they ain't don' belong here, you say? Then send 'em back to where they came from or put 'em in the ground. Either way, they wouldn't be a right problem anymore.

Shut up, me. I'm not drunk enough to deal with your shit today.

His footsteps echoed across the derelict halls of the largest dormant nuclear missile silo in the Mojave. The countless motion sensors he had scattered throughout the Divide constantly sent him constant alerts that he had to shut them off to keep his Pip-boy from vibrating so much. He stopped in front of the command center where the map displayed the targets he had set for each missile.

So far, there was nothing else beyond showing the same fluctuating numbers. Give or take a quarter of the arsenal in the silo and the NCR would be back to the irradiated craters it was born in. It would take a bit less to do the same to the Imperium Americana, backwards as they were. The rest would cover the hot spots he was getting from Boston in Massachusetts all the way to Washington D.C. of the so-called 'Capital Wasteland.' Enough to erase those Enclave and Brotherhood strongholds as well as a bunch of other rising offshoots.

Not that he intended for it. But just in case.

Just in case. As your Old World philosophy dictates.

As necessity dictates.

Sure. You just keep tellin' yourself that.

Six took deep breaths to clear his mind before returning to the console. Looks clean. Other than triggering the mainframe, no clear evidence of anything else they tampered with. He bit his lip. Given how those kids could achieve the impossible, they could either screw up the systems of the entire facility or worse...

"Really, Velvet!? Seriously?"

"K-keep it down, Ruby! I-it's n-not what it sounds like, okay?"

That came from the silo itself. The Courier crossed the nerve center to the catwalk overlooking the sacrificial floor where he and Ulysses had gutted each other in the presence of sleeping atomic titans. And down below on that same floor were his kids and Bunny-girl. Beaten, bruised, tired, but otherwise okay. Chatting. Catching up. Checking on Sparta's heel and gawking at the ICBMs in their launchers. Nine brats. Nine of them and a pet. Full on squadron with a mascot. Just like...

Syrup started growling. And the two teams looked back up to the catwalk. Back at him.

"You like what you see, kids?"

"You're insane," Snowball hissed, drawing her revolver-rapier.

"You're idiots." He gestured at the rows of missiles lining both flanks. "This...this is power."

Hyper detached herself from Bunny-girl and redeployed her scythe. "This has to stop. Why are you doing this?"

Good question. "You're too young to understand. And drinking milk doesn't make you more mature."

"Why?" Blake demanded. "Why do you want to destroy civilization all over again?"

Old Green Eyes gripped the railing as he bellowed, "Necessity, Cat-girl! The situation demands it."

Why'd you have to explain yourself to these brats? Just kill them an' be done with it already.

Shut up, goddamn it.

Weiss and Blake both shared an affinity for reading and that hobby had blossomed the moment they could understand the language written on every publication they came across in the Wasteland. Should one of them fail to understand a text, she would refer to the other and vice versa. Together, they pieced together much of the world around them and shared what they learned with their friends.

Old World history books, encyclopedias, manuals, ripped magazines, tattered journals. Every piece described or at least referenced the bombs that burned Earth on that fateful day two hundred years ago. Millions dead in an instant. All with the push of a button or the flip of a switch. And there would be nothing to stop these death machines from soaring through the atmosphere to rain consuming hellfire down on the unsuspecting populace.

For what reason? War. That was what all those faded books said. War over principles. War over resources. War over territory. War over food and basic necessities.

War for the sake of war.

Yet, such a catastrophe had long since come and gone with the bombs themselves expended or disabled to the point of utter uselessness. It stunned them that it could happen again. It mortified them that it was going to happen sooner than they thought.

"What precedent could you possibly have to pursue this madness!?" the heiress screamed back up at Major Vickers.

He only shook his head on his way down the stairs. "Haven't you all been paying attention to the world around you? No. You were too busy being vigilantes to even notice."

Weiss found herself cautiously stepping back with Myrtenaster on guard. In her peripheries, the rest of her team covered her flanks. She could hear Pyrrha's pained mewls as she tried to contribute to the situation despite Jaune urging her to stay behind cover and rest.

"The NCR is the leadin' powerhouse in this goddamn hellhole," Six began. "Legion's split and bitin' its own tail. No Enclave to worry about, no paranoid Brotherhood, no Fiends cannibalizin' travelers on the roads. You'd think things'll finally be lookin' up."

He laughed bitterly.

"I done thought that after Oliver, things'd be different. Never expected it to get any better or any worse."

"Six. What happened to General Lee Oliver?" Blake interrogated.

He shrugged and shook his head insincerely. "He slipped and fell. Tragic. Accidents happen to the best of us."

"What really happened, Major?" Weiss grounded.

The Courier raised his hands in mock innocence while the words came deliberately slow and patronizing. "Accident. He happened to step on a faulty section o' the Dam. His bodyguards were unable to save him. What can you do."

Pyrrha spoke up, having to sheepishly hang off of Jaune's shoulder. "Oliver had many friends in high places. And just as many enemies everywhere else. Even in the NCR. Don't you agree, Major?"

Six tittered. "Loyalty has a price. Funny who'd actually turn up for the highest bidder. Funnier still when they don' give a rat's ass who the target is. Hilarious that they knew him as much as they hated him."

Amber irises narrowed. "I knew it."

"Oliver assassinated, Moore incarcerated, Hsu promoted," the heiress listed. "And scandals rocking both the Republic's leadership and the Three Families. Why am I not surprised."

Slow. Loud. Claps. Major Vickers was sniggering now.

"You should've been a detective instead of a Huntress," he barked. "I s'ppose you read 'bout the part where I took up arms in Mexico with the old breed. Tied down the NCR's best for years. Tier One groups 'chasing ghosts in Baja,' they said. Then retreated east to Sonora and back up through Texas, silencin' marks around Arizona while runnin' jobs for the Mojave Express under false identities. Heh, kudos to them Californians; they got all that right. It was fun bein' a fugitive."

Slack-jawed, Weiss could only blink. The man before her continued to unashamedly admit to more of what the NCR suspected him to be guilty of.

"And you slept with Velvet!" Ruby hollered.

…

Wait, what!?

"Wait, what!?"

"Oh, son of a bitch," Six groaned.

At Ruby's shocking accusation, the rest of the other two teams stared in disbelief at the older faunus who had understandably gone full scarlet. To punctuate her embarrassment, her ears instinctively folded inward. That and she tried to shrink deeper into her clothes while her face disappeared behind her shawl.

Despite having overheard their conversation prior, Blake was still as surprised as everyone else. "Y-you're not serious...were you, Velvet?"

"N-no! N-not in that w-way! I-it's not w-what you think!" veiled Velvet protested.

The little reaper stood by her side, clasping her arm tight with a rigid and confident expression. "But you said he forced himself into your room and—"

"Yes! No! But- Wait, hold on! That's not—"

"If Coco was here, you'd be so dead," Yang crowed towards the Courier, imagining how stupefied he must be behind his intimidating headgear.

"What the hell, Bunny-girl!"

"What the hell, Six!"

"I didn't touch her!"

"You're a war criminal and now you're a- you're a- you..." stuttered a flabbergasted Weiss.

Six flailed his arms in exasperation. "Goddamn it, I didn't touch her! You kids are gettin' the wrong idea here."

"Well, to be fair, Velvet is cute and really adorable," Nora piped distractedly, rushing over to pinch the elder girl's cheeks. "Pretty sure a lot of people would want to hit on her."

Cue stolid Ren. "People already have."

And gauche Jaune. "Yeah, heh, she is kinda pretty."

Pyrrha too. Distantly. "Yes... Pretty."

Meanwhile, Syrup was confused between growling at the man with the glowing green eyes or nuzzling the leg of the strange rabbit person.

"Oh, come the fuck on!" the Courier howled. "You kids can't be that gullible!"

Weiss hummed in thought and gave him a quick one-over before mouthing, "Hmm, Major Vickers technically is without a partner."

"Probably sexually frustrated," mumbled Blake.

Six threw his arms in the air. "This is too stupid to be real."

"We didn't do it!" Velvet finally screeched, her eyes flaring with an almost complete loss of sanity. "... We did not. Have. An affair!"

In the deafening silence, the two faunus could have sworn they heard a tumbleweed bouncing around outside the silo's antechamber.

The Courier cleared his throat. "Thank you for clarifying that."

Ruby was more puzzled than provoked. Befogged, she poked Velvet in the arm. "But you told me you two slept together."

"He was drunk. I was tired," the sophomore explained as coolly as she could. "He barged into my room, complaining about taking care of you guys. Then he fell onto my bed, vomited onto my floor, and went to sleep. That's it. That was all. Nothing else, nothing untoward, nothing involving...you-know-what."

Velvet was unaware that her panicked and very animated hand gestures almost killed her argument. She just wanted to get the point across that she was neither taken advantage of nor did she take advantage of anyone because frankly she was not into smelly, drunk, recalcitrant old men. Ew.

Jaune raised his hand with a thumb craned towards the dormant missiles. "Um, don't you guys think we have a bigger problem to deal with other than arguing over whoever Six likes to sleep with?"

"Would you please stop sayin' shit like that?" Six barked. "I got drunk and I forgot what happened but I didn't damn touch her."

"You 'forgot' what happened but you insist you did nothing to her," Weiss outlined.

"Not the best argument if you're trying to plead innocence," Blake included analytically.

"I mean, if I were a guy, I'd definitely tap that," Yang mulled.

"So you didn't try to make a baby with him? Like make a baby-baby?" Ruby prodded the twitching rabbit faunus. "You know, like when a man and a woman really love each other and they get together and they—"

"I did not have sexual relations with that cottontail, goddamn it!" decried the Courier. "Where the fuck are you kids getting these damn ideas!?"

"I know, right?" hissed Velvet who had resorted to pulling her appendages down to wrap them around her already covered face.

"Hey, Velvet's old enough, right? So there's nothing wrong her with hooking up with a guy who, well, you know, could be old enough to be her dad...I think," Nora remarked to which Yang and Ruby choked, Weiss went green, and Blake nearly gagged.

"It is unfortunate that people still think we're his offspring," Pyrrha said.

Ren nodded. "It has become quite problematic. Rumors abound that we are either adopted or borne from several mistresses."

The heiress dropped her face into her palm. "Not just problematic. Very troublesome now that we are even being suspected of"—she shuddered—"incestuous behavior!"

Again, Jaune tossed his hands in the air and started waving with sword and shield while gesturing at the pods. "Guys! Bigger problem here!"

Six let out a very audible, very exasperated sigh. "Alright, this has dragged on for too long." He pulled out his revolver. "I'm haulin' all y'all kids back to the Strip if it's the last thing I do."

And just like that, they reassumed their battle stances. Typical.

Raul Tejada amplified the magnification on his binoculars.

Within the walls of Fort Mead, through the open garage door of the large workshop converted from the old Legion arena, three crews of engineers in jumpsuits set to work stenciling the colors of the United States Commonwealth onto the mechanical ligaments of two more oddly-designed battle-robots. Where they got those war machines was a mystery—the most advanced technology to come out of the NCR were the scraps salvaged from the Enclave and the Brotherhood of Steel—but the fact that they were making them appear old and retrieved from some abandoned U.S. Army depot was enough to convince him of another planned NCR operation.

Or something involving bipedal, semi-humanoid battle robots thrice the size of Securitrons and fielding about as much firepower.

The ghoul shifted slightly on his perch, a tiny cavern carved into the side of a seemingly unassailable cliffside, and shifted his attention all the way across the cantonment on the hill where three rows of wide tents had been recently pitched.

This was interesting. The occupants all appeared to be non-combatants. So those must be the 'liberated Legion slaves' people were talking about. With every head of hair dyed to match almost every color on the rainbow. Odd. And slave collars still locked around their necks. Why was that? Shouldn't those have been taken off by now? Unless the NCR wanted to keep them collared for some reason?

Raul zoomed in closer. There was something different about those collars. They were bulkier and appeared to have been designed with chambers to hold something. Batteries? Additional explosives? Some kind of augmentative technology? Too distant to know for sure.

He adjusted the magnification. There. Two figures addressing the whole group. Most likely their leaders or representatives. There was an air of authority to them despite the glaring collars wrapped around their own necks. At least they were no longer in rags. In fact, they were dressed in garb that seemed to match their desired color scheme despite the clothes provided by the NCR.

There was no mistaking it. That pair was from Remnant. Which meant some or perhaps all of those slaves were from Remnant. NCR radio chatter later confirmed that they had been personally briefed by General Hsu and most probably going to be held there until they would be relocated to either McCarran Headquarters or the Aerotech Rehabilitation Park to be properly 'accommodated.'

The ghoul continued observing them until they retired for the night to which he descended off his perch with an entire log of data recorded on both paper and holo-tape. A handful of advanced battle robots, around two dozen Remnant refugees, and NCR military build-up in and around Fort Mead?

Not to mention the 'hot spot' Boss was supposed to 'investigate.' Raul was starting to assume why General Hsu chose that sinkhole Devil's Throat all the way east as the location for the bogus job. The place was a hornet's nest complete with a highly radioactive reservoir. While the Courier was careful enough to skirt severe irradiation, even with treatment, the isotopes on the edges alone would keep him out of action for a good week to a month at least. For a ghoul like him, though, it was nothing. He had been there before and he was not expecting much when he would visit the place again even if the NCR somehow managed to plant something all the way out there.

Boss was definitely not going to like this. And honestly, neither did Raul.

ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: May 19, 2018

LAST EDITED: July 10, 2023

INITIALLY UPLOADED: May 23, 2018

NOTE (May 23, 2018): I thought I'd inject some extra dialogue before the climax. I'm surprised at how quick I got this up as usually it takes me at least a week to churn a chapter. I'm satisfied though with how this one came out. Hope you guys like it.

-~oOo~-

(May 23, 2018)

Guest [May 19]: Soon.

Guest 1 [May 20]: Good call on the plot armor. And I didn't notice the thought-and-speech reversal until you mentioned it. Also, thanks for bringing up the issues with RWBY and JNPR's gullibility towards the NCR so I made a few adjustments to the previous chapter to rectify some of that. Blake, out of all people, should know better. Weiss, Pyrrha, and Ren as well; they're also similarly levelheaded.

Ty: Grey area. :D

Guest 2 [May 20]: I remember the perks and stats and some them are in play but I don't want to Gary Stu/OP the Courier.

-~oOo~-

Next couple chapters will be an eye-opener for teams RWBY and JNPR.