Like most people who had been ghoulified during the Great War and survived this long, Raul had thought he had seen it all. The best, the worst, and the weirdest fell in with his storied years of wandering the wastes. To think nothing else could surprise him to such a degree, here comes Courier Six; a bitter boozehound of a man polishing a hidden arsenal of undetonated nuclear warheads.
The ghoul had been tempted then and there to shoot the messenger. Yet he understood that there was more to the message. That message sank in deeper and deeper that it nagged on him every couple hours. It made it difficult to concentrate on what he was doing.
Raul leaned back to clear his head so he could focus. And maybe mutter an agnostic prayer to Jesu Cristo if only to feel little better. Before him, in his own garage out in the middle of the arid Clark County desert, sat the unfinished motorcycle that had been his newest side project. No doubt the chopper Boss hijacked was gone to the wastes. The other one—his own personal machine that Velvet photocopied with her mind-blowing thingamajig—sat in his garage after a thorough routine maintenance check. This new one that he had started piecing together had been not been too difficult. However, the weight of over a dozen live nukes sitting in the Divide made his dirty, ghoulified hands tremble.
"Focus, cabron," he commanded himself.
He turned on the engine. And there it was. That annoying buzzing sound. It had to be the battery; there seemed to be no other source. Either he had to recharge it or he had to find a new one. The latter option was realistically the most feasible at this point.
"Puta..."
Raul was not in the mood to trek miles across the arid wastes for a new motorcycle battery. He decided to check his cabinets for paint instead.
What was it that hija Yang said about her own chopper? 'Bumblebee,' she named it. The ghoul sighed; he hoped the girl was smart enough to know that a healthy engine revved more like a chainsaw than a hornet. Also, was it yellow or black? He could barely remember the details. Besides, whatever paint he had stored up had either dried up from years of disuse or used up on some other forgotten project. Instead, what he could scrounge up was a can of tarnish, some lacquer, home-made solvents, kerosene, gasoline—paint thinners, basically.
Raul shrugged to himself. Might as well. Better no rust than no paint.
Maybe he should ring Boss up. Ask for a fee. After all, if he wanted to go all the way for a surprise apology gift, he might as well chip in. Not like he was poor. If the man had the means and the resources to refurbish an entire nuclear arsenal, then he could spare a couple grand for a paint job, extra parts, and maybe a new battery too.
Or perhaps he should just suck up his pride and say sorry to the little diablos. Goodness knows the Courier really meant it.
The vast New Vegas underground was an odorous maze that Six was no stranger to. It was a second world to him, albeit without the searing heat, the occasional dust devil, or the near infinite amount of open space that was his element. He entered through the often ignored sewer grate behind the Atomic Wrangler and navigated the sewage-ridden labyrinth towards one of the major canals snaking through the city's underbelly.
It was via this route that he evaded the ever-growing NCR presence on his way back to the Strip. Or rather, the cavernous basement that the late Robert Edwin House had constructed underneath the Lucky 38 to coordinate his robot army. Now that robot army was sitting in its underground depots; upgraded, polished, rearmed, and recalibrated to respond to the commands of someone else.
How fortunate that the NCR was still ignorant of them all this time. Well, up until recently that is. Ever since annexation, the Republic had maintained only a single squadron in the entirety of the New Vegas underground: nine soldiers forced to sit in a fortified culvert under a manhole outside the main gates of McCarran Headquarters. The privates and their grumpy sergeant were too indignant to expand their patrol routes further into the sewers. If they did, they could have discovered the handful of maintenance rooms that had been around since the Old World.
Six had been in one of these rooms, reversing the flow of waste in one of the tunnel systems running directly under the Strip. The first lever pulled down to block a vein in one place, a second lever dragged sideways to open up another elsewhere. He waited for an hour. By then, the water level in the tunnel he needed access to had dropped to knee level.
Obviously, the NCR squad under McCarran had been hit by the overwhelming stench of a thousand people's piss and shit flowing their way and they scrambled to the surface for respite. They blamed it on a bad day and waited out the odor until sundown. No one suspected anything else. No one ever thought of thoroughly checking how the waste disposal system worked in New Vegas and hence no one had discovered the tunnel that led to a set of hydraulic doors blocking access to the cavernous basement of the Lucky 38.
And since yesterday, this was where the Courier had spent most of his time. Doing equipment maintenance on his vast arsenal, watching numbers run on the holographic screens arrayed on the massive wall spanning half a casino parlor, and working on the scientific chamber-pod that had been his side project since reactivating Samson and recalibrating Delilah. After all,it wasn't everyday that he had days off like this.
"Anything else?" hummed the ever disturbingly chipper voice of Yes Man, the semi-sentient AI he had 'requisitioned' from Benny.
Vickers turned to the bright, white cartoonish face staring at him from one of the massive terminals built into the walls. "Estimated total of NCR forces in the whole of Clark County by next week?"
Yes Man responded instantly. "That'll be between thirty to thirty-five thousand personnel including vehicles, technical crews, and civilian contractors. That's assuming redeployment continues as smoothly as it is going now."
That's an entire corps concentrated here on the southern tip of Nevada. "NCR military spending?"
"Lots and lots of money! The numbers are doubling. It looks like they're preparing for a fight."
James is. "Their economy?"
"Based on the limited statistical data I could recover from our entire network so far, it'll put a dent. A really painful dent. If they're going to start another war, they better end it quicker than the one they had with the Imperium Americana."
Or else the Republic is going to sink into its worse recession since its founding. Six returned to the map. So far, the NCR remained ignorant of the time bombs they were sitting on top of. They managed to screw up one. The thought of the kids getting so involved with it made his blood boil.
"You look distressed," Yes Man chirped joyously.
"That obvious?"
"Your facial features have adopted an uncommon pattern that my sensors have detected to be similar to the one you had on when you were going to kill Mister House."
Of course, this damn AI can see that. "Sure. Whatever. What about RWBY and JNPR?"
"Telemetry scans confirm they're still in Goodsprings."
Good. "Keep tracking them. Alert me as soon as they start moving."
"You got it! What about the NCR?"
"Keep an eye on the NCR, too."
"You can count on it!"
Six made a mental note to meet with Red Lucy at the Thorn. He hoped he was still in her good graces; that woman was not keen on losing any more of her precious cage fighters to 'vex the surface.' Bribing her would be a downright insult so he had to be creative.
"Is there anything else?" Yes Man prodded.
"That's all for now."
The Courier crossed the underground nerve center, rode the elevator up to the main casino floor of the Lucky 38, and headed straight for the bar. He needed a good buzz and right now he preferred to drink in a place away from the city lights. Goodness knows the NCR MPs on the Strip were keeping an eye on the tower, checking to see if there was any activity.
I can't blame Hyper for this. I pushed James too far. And the kids showed up at the wrong time. But I still kept pushing. This is all on me. I'm fixing this...
Much like the Nash residence in Primm, Doctor Mitchell's humble abode provided clean water, good plumbing, and soap. Much unlike the Nash residence, however, Doctor Mitchell only had one bathroom. Such amenities that were commonplace on Remnant were prized luxuries out here in the wasteland and teams RWBY-V and JNPR-S began to value them greatly.
This was manifested when tensions ran high during the line that had formed that warm, early morning when they all came out underdressed to take a long overdue bath.
Because they all stank. It was a nightmare sleeping in the same room as each other with how rancid they were. Sure, moving around for days in the arid, radioactive Mojave wilderness and fighting the horrors of the wasteland left little room for proper hygiene, let alone provide them with the means to even exercise basic hygiene.
Perhaps it had been the sandstorms masking their scent all this time or their noses had dulled during their extended forays into the outdoors. Or maybe because they had idled indoors long enough that they began to pick up on the smell that had always been there since the beginning.
"Hurry up, Weiss Cream!" Yang yelled, nearly banging her fist on the wooden door. "My hair's getting sticky!"
Two paces behind her, Blake huffed while holding up another new book she had picked up from the shelf in the parlor. She was followed by Pyrrha—also keeping a distance of two paces—whose toiletries were draped over her arm. Yet even the slightest twitch was starting to crack her morning smile. Nora gracelessly lounged in the rear, trying to stay awake while standing up.
Ruby and Velvet had gotten lucky, their dry pine scent replacing the stench that had lingered in the parlor for far too long. Ruby, amazingly, woke the earliest. Or she didn't sleep at all last night. The rings around her eyes were clear as the burning Mojave sun even as she tried to shrug it off.
Given that the girls decided now of all times to take a bath—and they were very cranky because of it—Jaune and Ren wisely decided to postpone their own much needed bath times. They stomached each other's natural fragrance as they watched over Syrup outside in the back garden...and keep the deathclaw from eating Doctor Mitchell's produce.
Yang's voice rumbled across the house. "Weiss Cream!"
"Have some patience!" Weiss shrieked back.
"You're wasting ours!" Blake hollered. "Hurry up!"
Finally, the door creaked open and out walked an irate Weiss Schnee, her long snowy hair wrapped up in a turban while a longer towel graced the rest of her bare form. "If you'll excuse me..."
"Ugh. You take forever!"
"Says the girl who takes twice as long with just her hair!"
"Will you two shut up and go already?"
In the medical wing of the house, Ruby and Velvet vehemently apologized to Doctor Mitchell on their behalf.
"Ah, it's nothing to fret over," he replied. "My wife had worse days."
"Your wife?" Velvet raised.
A soft chuckle. "Yes. Like her, like every woman, they have their moments. I guess you could say my wife was the hurricane that comes in the desert."
The reaper twiddled her thumbs. "Um, Doc? I hope you don't mind me asking but... Did Six have...or ever tell you about...his family?"
The physician rubbed his chin in thought. "He never spoke much of it. I knew he had one but I never pushed beyond what the paperwork asked for. Not my business to pry unless I needed something for profiling."
"May we see his profile?" requested the rabbit faunus.
"Pardon me, young lady, but for what reason?"
"It's okay," Ruby said. "We're only curious. Mister Nash said Six had a wife and child back in Aree-zoh-nah?"
"He did now? I see." Doctor Mitchell hobbled over to one of the boxes on the shelf. In it was a selection of folders that he rifled through until he withdrew one with the name 'Courier' written on the top corner. "I suppose if Johnson trusts you with that information, then I guess I'm obligated to fill in some of the blanks."
"We don't mean to intrude," Velvet said. "It's just that...we're concerned for Six."
The physician set down the folder on the gurney and spread out the dated forms within. "I can see where you're coming from with that. Hmm. Yeah, Johnson's not wrong on that one. Mister Vickers had a daughter, to be precise."
The two girls hovered over the documents. Most of the details were sparse and some of the answers were vague. No names, no specific dates, the word 'deceased' written beside the status of family... Other than alcoholism and liver failure being listed as recurring in his family history, there was nothing else that seemed out of place save for...
"The daughter was born sick?" mouthed the reaper.
"Wife had an 'unknown debilitating medical condition?'" Velvet read aloud. "Gave birth to a daughter with 'similar debilitating medical condition.'"
"He never elaborated on it," the physician admitted. "I remember he did ask me once if heterochromia was a symptom of something serious to which I answered none to my knowledge."
Ruby furrowed her brow. "He-te-ro-chro—?"
"OH COME ON!"
The reaper leapt to her feet and rushed over to the line in front of the bathroom which was now ajar with Yang fuming over an unresponsive shower head. In fact, the faucet in the sink had been twisted all the way and was coming up dry. The other girls peeked in, now finding out why Yang was so infuriated that she had not even bother cover herself up, let alone dry herself.
"No water!?" Nora gasped.
"That's...unfortunate," Pyrrha intoned with an edge to her voice.
Blake sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
Doctor Mitchell trailed over with his cane. "Alright, what's the matter?"
This time, Yang grabbed her towel and wrapped it around herself. "Sorry for flying off the handle, Doc. But the water's gone."
The physician worked the shower tap and the faucet, equally perplexed that nothing was coming through. "Hmm, that's odd."
"Is there something we can do?" Ruby proposed.
"Maybe you could check the back garden. There's a water valve over by the corn stalks. Something probably clogged it up and it might take a monkey wrench to fix it. Don't worry, ladies. This happens sometimes—"
"Wait," Blake interjected. "Aren't the boys out in the backyard with Syrup?"
The girls eyed each other. Nora was the first to frown; she stomped over to the back door, leading the pack. Lo and behold, in the back garden, Jaune and Ren were hovering awkwardly over the water valve. The former was holding the dislocated valve in his grip while the latter had his hands on the knob where the valve was supposed to have been fastened to. Said knob was twisted out of place with the connecting pipe bent upwards and spewing clean water all over the dirt. Meanwhile, Syrup was fastened to a post looking...smug?
"Uh, look we can explain!"
"We're fixing it!"
It took some effort—and Ruby pointing out the incriminating bite marks—to convince Yang, Blake, Pyrrha, and Nora that Syrup had bitten off the valve thinking it was a bright red fruit because the boys had been keeping it from devouring the corn stalks and the other plants growing in Doctor Mitchell's garden. On the bright side, they were all still able to bathe...at a neighbor's house half a block down the road.
Teams RWBY-V and JNPR-S spent the rest of the day in the same way they did in Primm: helping around as much as they could. Except, instead of water runs and catching highwaymen down the road, they opted to take on the more dangerous tasks that Trudy and Sunny often deferred to experienced mercenary teams (because the NCR had more important missions for their inexperienced, unmotivated, under-equipped conscripts).
Ruby put on her most mature face and took on the task of clearing the highway north of cazadores while Jaune spearheaded the operation to exterminate the large radscorpion colony in the rugged valley between Goodsprings and Sloan. With their Semblances and their skills, they were confident they could get it done before sundown.
Trudy and Sunny begged to differ. Then again, the teens weren't called the 'Vegas Wonder Kids' for nothing. So off they went. Though, Jaune and Ren pounced on Nora before she could finish saying the dreaded phrase: 'what could possibly go wrong?'
Given how similar the giant mutated insects were to the Grimm Deathstalker they had faced during Beacon's initiation, it seemed like the same tactics applied to kill that massive Grimm would apply to these bugs.
Not exactly.
Especially when there were a lot of them. And they came in swarms. Like bugs naturally did. Except the radscorpions were, on average, bigger than humans...and faster...and severely more venomous than their bark-skin cousins. Also, their carapaces were tougher than Atlesian body armor. It was like fighting a colony of smaller but more coordinated Deathstalkers.
Needless to say, team JNPR-S used up their entire dynamite stash clearing out the nests and in the process reshaping portions of the valley. Not that the residents of Goodsprings complained at the end of the day.
"You know, Six said something about insects and tribal wisdom," Jaune remarked absently.
Nora frowned. "Jaune-Jaune. No."
"Hey, just saying. I just remembered that he kept going on about how some tribes across the wasteland developed these techniques that made these bugs edible somehow."
"Can we not discuss this?" Ren pleaded.
Pyrrha nodded hastily. "Jaune, I think it's best if we head back now. I'm sure Velvet and team RWBY are worried about us."
"Alright. Man, what a day." Jaune whistled over his shoulder. "Syrup, buddy! Where are you?"
Across the valley, the infant deathclaw perked its head up from behind a rock. A dislocated radscorpion stinger hung from its maw. It regarded their masters with a mewl before bending back down to devour the rest of the massive arthropod.
The blond team leader shrugged. "Wow, he's really hungry. Maybe we should let him eat first?"
"Syrup!" Nora barked. "What did I say? I told you to stop eating these disgusting bugs! It's bad for you! Let mama feed you the right food!"
Ren tugged her arm. "Nora, it's part of his natural diet. Let him be."
"But Re~en..."
"Think of it this way," Pyrrha interjected diplomatically. "We'll save time, energy, and money on caring for him. Syrup needs to grow and I'm sure this is how his, uh, species learn how to survive. As a predator, I think it's natural for him to devour whatever he wishes."
Nora folded her arms with a pout. Then she lit up with a query. "Including dead people?"
Her teammates fell silent. The sound of their pet deathclaw's jagged teeth ripping through the exoskeleton on a radscorpion carapace echoed off the cliff sides.
Crunch, crunch, squish, crunch...
"O~okay," Jaune drawled. "Ren, how 'bout you and Nora go on ahead. Pyrrha and I will watch over him 'til he finishes. We'll meet you back at the saloon later."
"Sounds good."
The blond mustered over to where their team mascot was happily gorging on another cadaver. "Wait. Guys, ammo check."
Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren ruffled through their pockets, satchels, and bandoliers. They came up with an alarmingly low amount of bullets for their respective firearms.
Jaune tapped his chin. "Say, do we still need more dynamite?"
"What do you mean?" asked his partner.
"Y'know? Just in case we might need them for, say, clearing up a blockade or blowing up a massive wasp den or something?"
"Come to think of it," Ren said. "Didn't Sunny advise us to share some of our ordnance with team RWBY?"
"I...don't recall."
"Eh, it's RWBY," Nora waved off. "They don't have to blow stuff up to fix something. Besides, there's Yang. She'll burn through anything and that's as good as getting rid of something, right?"
"You're not wrong," Pyrrha admitted.
"Not really wise to always rely on a Semblance like hers," Ren intoned.
"Well, I hope they're doing fine. Those cazadores sure looked really dangerous," Jaune mused.
The deadly gargantuan wasps had repopulated in droves and were now threatening to spill out of their nests in the mountains. From previous observations (with a few bits of Six's occasional advice), team RWBY-V learned that cazadores were fast, poisonous, and deadly. They quickly found out the hard way just exactly how fast, poisonous, and deadly they were.
They also discovered—to their horror—just how dependent they were on the synergy between their Semblances, their custom-built weapons, and the crucial Dust supplies needed to make them effective. Ruby tripped more than she needed to because she miscalculated her speed in conjunction to the NCR rifle she had been issued. Yang had to be pulled out of danger because she had expended her entire buckshot during an induced fiery rage. Blake almost lost her own NCR-manufactured guns because she thought they were as durable as Gambol Shroud. And Weiss...well, she practically ditched all forms of grace after she ended up exhausting herself with her glyphs to save the other three from being swarmed.
Velvet, surprisingly, proved the most levelheaded and effective. Her still-healing ribcage locked her in a static position throughout the job—perched on a rocky outcrop with a forty-four magnum trail carbine overseeing the section of the highway where the cazadores were scurrying around. Not only was she far enough away from the bugs to be attacked but she had an unimpeded view of this section of the highway. She may not have been the best marksman in her class but that did not mean she was not good with a rifle.
Ruby stumbled and was about to stung. Bang!
Yang stunned a wasp with a solid straight. Bang!
Blake confused a bug with her shadow clone. Bang!
Weiss ensnared three cazadores with her glyphs. Bang-bang-bang!
This went far longer than they planned on it, leaving them sweating and panting and scrambling for their water canteens. To their credit, by the mid-afternoon hour, they practically painted the road with cazador guts. They had done it. They killed all the big, damn wasps.
Now, all that was left was to destroy the nests built into the rock faces and bury the rest sprouting out of the ground. Except...team JNPR-S had all the dynamite and explosives. And they were on a different job. And Nora probably used it all up.
This left them in a position they rarely considered even back on Remnant.
Despite being Huntresses-in-training who had faced down Grimm larger and more numerous than them on many occasions, the task of manhandling insect domiciles such as these oversized cazador nests bigger than a Freeside shanty was no different than clearing out normal-sized beehives hanging off the gutter of someone's house. It would have been left up to people like 'best dad' Taiyang Xiao-Long or 'best butler' Klein Sieben or that unfortunate White Fang neophyte Perry to do the job. Unfortunately, none of them were here and the girls were on their own.
But hey, Ruby argued. This was part of the job of being Huntresses; exterminating Grimm and clearing out their nests. What was the difference?
Ruby looked to Yang who turned to Blake who glanced to Weiss who turned around towards Velvet sitting on the outcrop on the other side of the highway. The rabbit faunus shouldered her carbine and shrugged.
Team RWBY craned their heads up at the massive cazador cocoons the size of small caves complete with gaping holes where they could see something moving inside. Shooting them off was out of the question; they were low on bullets and even then, the nests themselves were sturdy enough to resist their high-caliber rounds. Not to mention, they left all their remaining Dust reserves back in Goodsprings. Then again, they had Semblances so they used those instead.
It ended up being an interesting, if not unforgettably cringeworthy, hands-on learning experience for team RWBY sans Velvet because she was on the other side of the highway watching it all happen.
The rabbit faunus would later swear up, down, and sideways that she felt very, very genuinely sorry for team RWBY. She really did! Her laughing was just a normal reaction. Between her cackles, she did cringe on their behalf. Also, because they screamed so loud that it hurt both pairs of her ears. Besides, it was not like she was the one who was bathed in layers upon layers of cazador larvae when the oversized nest burst directly over their heads.
Well, one nest down. Five more to go.
ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: January, 2019
LAST EDITED: April 15, 2020
INITIALLY UPLOADED: April 13, 2020
NOTE: As someone who works from home, I feel blessed that I can continue to rake in an income when a lot of people around me are budgeting hard until quarantine is lifted. Still, that doesn't mean I can focus more on fan fiction and stories like this. Work takes time, effort, brain power, and sometimes my lower back as well.
Anyway, I can't reply to everyone so I'll address responses in these post-notes from now on. It's nice to know that people are continuously entertained by this story and I do hope I can keep delivering the laughs and the drama and stuff. I try not to be too grand with my stories and I limit exposition as much as I can so I hope I did it right this chapter.
Stay safe, stay clean, and stay healthy, folks!