If Goodsprings was the oasis flourishing in the Clark County desert, then Bonnie Springs was the one that dried up a long time ago. Half the buildings in the ghost town were rubble under the sand with the other half either boarded up or barely standing. Also, more cazadores.
Team JNPR-S now understood why team RWBY-V hated the oversized wasps with a passion. The four girls (sans Velvet) viciously took up four hours back in the shower last night, using up three bars of soap and overflowing the bathtub that even Pyrrha and Nora had to use force to get them to stop wasting all that clean, mountain spring water.
Now they were here, over half a day later, in the middle of Bonnie Springs, north of Goodsprings and south of Red Rock Canyon. Around them lay the cadavers of the massive mutated wasps that had traumatized four Huntresses-in-training. And on the walls, on the gutters, on the roofs, and in the heaps of rubble sprouted over a dozen cazador nests that team RWBY vehemently insisted on blowing up with whatever explosives they had on hand.
In fact, it was probably the only time since ever knowing the little red reaper that anyone outside of the Xiao-Long family had heard Ruby swear.
"F-f-f-fuck that shit," she squeaked.
"I know, r-r-right?" squealed Yang.
"Whoa," Jaune echoed. "That bad, huh."
Pyrrha hummed along, herself keeping a full spear's length away from the cocoon built on the ashes of a burned down house. "I, uh, can understand why."
"I got an idea," Nora chirped.
Ren narrowed his eyes immediately. That glint in her eyes meant something potentially dangerous. "Nora, what are you planning?"
"Oh, a little something I picked up from an old magazine. I'm going to need an egg timer, some electronic scraps, and a roll of duct tape," the Valkyrie declared enthusiastically. A little too enthusiastically. "Do we have any? Anybody brought any?"
The blond team leader waved at them all to gather by the dried up fire pit cobbled together in the plaza. "Guys, how about we take a breather, have something to eat, and then be on our way? If we hurry, we might make it to Vegas by sundown."
"We're camping outdoors," Blake argued.
"I'm in favor of sleeping under the stars," Weiss added.
"Vomit Boy, we are blowing up these fuckers if it's the last thing we do," hissed Yang.
Ruby nodded her head, staring with an unnervingly haunted look at something indiscernible in the distance. "Cazadores must not exist..."
"We could just leave them alone," Jaune argued.
"And let them repopulate to terrorize and devour poor, innocent travelers braving these roads to ply their trade in the Mojave!?" Weiss nearly shrieked. "Have you gone mad, scion of the Arc family!?"
Okay, one: 'poor, innocent travelers?' and two: Jaune was mortified at how dangerously close the heiress got into his face to scream her hysterics at him.
"They will inevitably become fodder for other predators in the region," Ren interjected diplomatically. "Perhaps we should allow nature to take its course."
"Nature's crazy," Yang threw in. "We can't leave 'em alone. They'll follow us and try to sting us so they can eat us and, and drown us in a s-sea of, of, of icky, gooey, white stuff..."
"Extermination is better than tolerance," Blake chimed with a glare that never left the colony of cazadores infesting Bonnie Springs.
"That's...something I thought I would never hear from you of all people, Blake," Pyrrha intoned uncomfortably.
Velvet, already seeing that this was getting them nowhere, exercised her seniority and called in a vote. The consensus remained at a stalemate with the two teams arguing over flattening the town or moving on. That stalemate lasted until Syrup tore into a nest after sniffing out some grub. A blanket of abnormally large cazador larvae spilled out all across the rubble with the deathclaw lapping it all up like the hungry predator that it was. Jaune went green, Pyrrha squealed, Nora screeched, Ren paled, and team RWBY scampered away vindicated.
The previous votes were rescinded and a new consensus was reached.
It took an hour of careful scavenging around Bonnie Springs to find the closest junk to what Nora needed to make whatever it was she wanted to make...which happened to be a ticking time-bomb. Except, there was no timer, it was held together with rope and the strips of dirty cloth, and the primer that was supposed to trigger the detonation fizzled out which meant it had to be manually activated via a well-placed bullet from twenty yards away.
They never left the area that day. Instead, teams RWBY-V and JNPR-S camped out on the rugged outskirts north of the ghost town. They had picked an ideal spot on the other side of the dried up creek that had given the place its name, surrounded by honey mesquite pods and barrel cacti, which attracted the largely docile bighorner herds. Thankfully, Syrup had had its fill from all the cazadores and cazador larvae that it ignored its evolutionary victims—the bighorners—in favor of a long rest until morning.
Besides, the sounds of the conflagration before them and the cooing and mooing of the mutated bovines lulled a lot of them to sleep. It was a pretty sight to cap off the day, to be honest. Nora's 'Bonnie Springs Bonfire' lit up the night and reduced what was left of the accursed ghost town to ashes.
Burn, cazadores, burn!
It had been awhile since the Courier was last in the throes of the legendary New Vegas underground death battle tournament. Then again, other than the odor, he hated the noise of the Thorn—primarily because all these hooting and cheering and screeching worsened his hangovers and gave him migraines.
"Welcome back, my hunter," cooed the venomous vixen that was Red Lucy.
Six neutrally nodded his greeting. "Hello again, Red."
The woman smirked as she sized him up from her makeshift throne. Built on a reinforced catwalk, the view from this bird's nest was unrestricted. The matron of the Thorn could oversee the entire arena that had borne witness to more duels than the violence the NCR had seen since entering the Mojave.
"What brings you back to the Thorn?"
"A favor."
Red Lucy's smile darkened. "Of course. Another favor. Your debt—"
"Still rings, I know." The Courier respected the woman but he was not in a mood to be any more courteous. "I'm here to settle it first."
"I see. I need eggs. New specimens to replace the ones I released to the Republic."
"Is that all?"
The vixen sized him up. Sharp eyes, a subtle lick of her tongue, that slight tilt of her chin. "A shame you are committed to the past."
You horny bitch. Six held himself down. He was off the market since Arizona twenty years ago. He tolerated having this woman know too much, all the way up to the disastrous Battle of Flagstaff—disastrous for the Desert Rangers, that is—but it pissed him off every time she dredged up what he had lost there. His stare transformed into a glower, much to Red Lucy's amusement.
"Or I must have mistook you when we first had our dealings." She snickered. "Eight children. Or was it nine?"
The Courier found it harder to suppress his rising anger. "Just rumors."
"More than that, it seems." Red Lucy stood from her throne and had one of her many sycophant guards bring her a RobCo tablet. The faces of his kids appeared on the screen, captured on tourist cameras and hacked NCR security feeds. "Quite dissimilar in appearance yet bonded together by camaraderie seen only among those with strong familial ties."
He held his tongue.
"I've heard tales of their...wonders. The 'Wonder Kids' of New Vegas." Red Lucy sauntered over to where he stood, rigidly planted onto the carpeted floor of her domain while two wasteland predators tore at each other down below to the merriment of the impoverished crowds. "Such wonders, I'm curious myself."
Vickers folded his arms. Better than showing clenched fists to this lioness.
She was close now. Close enough to smell her dizzying perfume, for her warm breath to lick his ear. "A match against one of my chosen champions."
"You know I'll make the match quick—"
"Not you." She pointed to the screen on her tablet. "One of yours against one of mine."
His heart skipped a beat. I'll kill you, you fucking whore. "... Deal."
Red Lucy purred.
The Courier watched her saunter back to her throne as the fights below ramped up in intensity. A chance glance revealed a mature deathclaw ripping apart the last of a quartet of drugged up Fiends to the roaring climax of the crowd. For a second, he mistook the wide spray of blood on the arena floor for Ruby's cape.
I'm sorry, kids. He turned away to see one of the guards grumble a curse while passing a bundle of caps to another. Dad has to do some gambling. Daddy needs to win...
Goddamn it, he needed a drink right now.
The Courier stayed with Red Lucy for the next several hours, some of which were spent touring the cages where the deadliest predators of the Mojave Wasteland thrashed about. Eventually, they monitored the release of over a dozen of her largest cazadores unto the surface through a tunnel system that exited through a drain pipe close to the crucial highway east of McCarran Headquarters.
The matron of the Thorn assured him that more would follow in the coming days, hitting random points in the Mojave across random intervals. By next week, she expected his best 'offspring' to square off against her mightiest beast.
Six knew that he had used up his last grant of leniency from Red Lucy. From now on, he had to deliver on his end else risk a loosing an important card in his hand. As he made his way back to the surface in the western ruins of Vegas, his Pip-boy had already picked up the first confirmed reports of NCR forces being diverted to clear the roads of wasteland predators.
Your move, James.
When their tour of duty came to an end in the months following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, the Misfits contemplated either reenlisting together or going their separate ways. Mags wanted to pursue her dream of becoming an NCR ranger, O'Hanrahan yearned to go back to his family's farm in California, Poindexter pondered an offer to work for some start-up tech office, and Razz had a mind to drift to Baja to see the beaches there. The four of them had every right and every reason to leave this chapter of their lives behind.
Instead, they met-up again not too long after at the same recruitment office with their papers filled out and their bags packed. Maybe it was because of that fateful week at Camp Golf years ago, or their galvanization in battle, or the fact that Ninth Platoon was spared disbandment and rotated around Clark County to ensure total annexation. For some reason or another, they could not find it in their hearts to let go of what they had going for them.
So here they were, three years after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. Still called the Misfits but revered throughout the military, and even back home, for their gallantry and heroism. Sure, they still had their moments but they were seen as among the most determined in the core army of the NCR. Hell, they reached a point where command sent them on missions that were normally undertaken by either the vaunted rangers or the heavy shock troops.
This newest mission in particular was to investigate the thick smoke rising from the desert plain south of Red Rock Canyon. There were three landmarks charted in that particular area: Vault Nineteen, Bonnie Springs, and Spring Mountain Ranch. Normally, a ranger squad would have been the logical choice given the presence of some of the wasteland's deadliest predators making that region their home.
Then again, they had heard the reports of deadly wasteland creatures popping out of nowhere across the highways inside NCR borders. That meant sending the elites to fend them off and eventually assist hunter teams in tracking down the source. Compounding the issue was the confirmed sightings of even more wasteland hostilities moving around further east, leading to many of the regional troops being concentrated on potential hotspots up and down the Colorado River.
"Man, what a stroke of bad luck," snorted Corporal Razz. He wiped the sweat from his brow while fiddling with the cards on his hand. It was humid in their tent up here in Fort Mead which was not doing miracles for his mohawk which, thankfully, the NCR military didn't try to shave off this time.
"It's Vegas," huffed the bespectacled technical Specialist Poindexter who had up to this point won two out of their three poker games today. "Wouldn't be Vegas without bad luck."
Corporal O'Hanrahan shuffled into their tent, caring to avoid hitting his head on the beam because of his height. "So y'all ready to go?"
"Where's sarge?"
On cue, Master Sergeant Mags walked in with her face alight. "You guys ready to hunt cazadores?"
Razz dipped his head in his hands. "Oh shit."
Poindexter took off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Really?"
"Not really," O'Hanrahan said modestly. "Hopefully not."
"Pray that we don't," Razz grunted, throwing down his cards. "I hate those fuckers."
"Man, I was really liking the view up here, too," Poindexter whinnied.
Mags folded her arms. "I thought you hated the view."
"That was the desert, sarge. I meant the lake. The lake's beautiful. And it's clean, too."
"Uh-huh. Did you pack up your clean Lake Mead water?"
"Oh ha-ha. Did you say goodbye to your best friend with the collar?"
O'Hanrahan glanced to his superior who was hiding back a flush. "Sarge, I thought we weren't supposed to fraternize with the civilians."
"It doesn't count as fraternization when the civvies started it, right?" snickered Poindexter. "'Sides. Who gives a shit? Not like command's doing anything about game night over by the bunkhouse every Friday."
Mags frowned. "Winter is a disciplined lady! She acted defensively in response to verbal provocation as is her prerogative as an officer, herself."
"'Officer.' Sure. From At-las? Like I believe that crap." Razz threw up his hands and dropped his voice in mocking mimicry. "'A city in the sky, high above the clouds...' Pfft. Yeah, right. How the fuck can a city be floating up in the stratosphere? We can't even shoot a satellite up there yet."
"Can you swing a sword?" challenged their sergeant.
"Do I need one?" sneered the reformed Fiend raider. "Sarge, we have guns. With armor-piercing bullets. And grenades. Fuck, our combat knives are better than that sword or whatever the fuck you call that shit she swings around."
"Twin sabers," Mags corrected.
Poindexter snorted. "She'll get shot before she gets close. And she's got more reach than that psycho dominatrix with the riding crop."
"Goodbitch?" hooted Razz. "Yeah, what the fuck's up with her? Always got a stick up her ass or something. Acting like a fucking drill sergeant."
"Have some respect, you two," barked their sergeant.
"They didn't respect me, sarge."
"You weren't inviting any."
"Oh sue me."
"Um, I think we should start packing up," O'Hanrahan said diplomatically. "Captain McCredie wants us at command for a last briefing. Just the four of us, by the way."
With that, the Misfits mustered out of their tent, past the rows of others and occasionally bouncing back greetings and raps with the other troops of Ninth Platoon. Their route had them walking the path that snaked between their barracks and the refugee quarter. A chainlink fence separated the two but that did not stop some of the troops from crossing over and chatting up the weird-looking folks with the fantastical tales of a shattered moon, shadowy-like creatures that preyed on emotion, and some kind of soul-like energy that had half the officers here lose their minds.
It was an open secret to everyone here that something weird was going on with these people and not even the eggheads and college degree contractors had a suitable explanation for. At first they thought Lake Mead had been contaminated this whole time. Then word got around that their rations were spoiled or spiked with LSD or something. Eventually, the concept of Aura and Semblances came to be accepted as a facet of the wasteland that would forever remain a mystery, granted only to these refugees.
As far as Ninth Platoon knew, these civilians were supposed to have been transferred to the Aerotech Rehabilitation Camp in the Vegas suburbs east of McCarran Headquarters but something (unspecified but apparently really concerning) happened there that made command change their minds and transform half of Fort Mead into a tent city for the civilians. Not that the soldiers here were complaining. Much.
"Hey. That bird. It's eyeballing me again," Razz whispered, pointing at a curious looking black corvid perched on top of one of the tents.
"You're loosing it, man," Poindexter snorted.
"No, for real! I swear it's the same one. You know the one that keeps flying over the Fort?"
"Like a bad omen? Seriously? Come on, Razz. If you weren't sober, I'd say you smoked something strong."
"Look, I'm just saying it's weird, alright?"
"Whatever."
Razz kept his eye on the damn thing, even narrowing his eyes when it tilted its head at him. It eventually flew off over towards the refugee quarter. Particularly, it landed close to the one thing that got Mags giddier than the day Courier Six walked into Camp Golf.
And, of course, Mags just had to stop in the middle of the damn way, causing O'Hanrahan to freeze up so he wouldn't bump into her. Which meant Poindexter bumped into him. And Razz bumped into Poindexter. All because their hyperactive squad leader was grinning wider than a kid on Christmas. Like an excited schoolgirl, she waved across the yard at Winter Schnee, white hair tied up in a bun and dressed up in the NCR's surplus army garb as she set up a quintain for practice. All the while, the ugly metallic collar on her neck continued to blink its ominous red light.
Winter didn't notice any of them at first. Instead, she had that trademark frown of hers directed at the same bird of all things. Huh, that little shit was getting on her nerves too.
Mags kept waving until Winter looked their way. And the Ice Queen smiled, posture prim with back straight, and waved back. O'Hanrahan smiled and waved as well. Razz and Poindexter rolled their eyes. If Winter Schnee—or even Glynda Goodwitch for that matter—ever smiled, it sure as hell wasn't at them.
All the while, that lone black bird flew to a higher perch to continue its lonely vigil over the entire camp.
ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: April 10, 2020
LAST EDITED: July 5, 2020
INITIALLY UPLOADED: May 2, 2020
NOTE: I will argue that cazadores are one of the most difficult enemies in Fallout: New Vegas. Throw in the DLCs (especially Honest Hearts) and even at level 50, with high-tech gear, I'm still dying from them. I both hate and love those bugs because of how much of a challenge they are and the relief that washes over you when you actually manage to survive an encounter without save scumming (or the game crashing mid-battle). Yes, deathclaws are the apex predators of the Mojave but the cazador is the queen of the predators and in chess, the queen is rightly feared.
Of course, this is from my personal gaming experience and I understand everyone has their own way of experiencing the game. I'm basing this story partially from my own playthroughs of the game so it won't match with how others would imagine things going down. In the end, I do hope I'm delivering an entertaining read, be it funny or frustrating and I'm grateful you're all continuing to invest in this work.
Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay clean, everyone!