"So, Nora," Ruby started uncomfortably. "Any reason why you, uh, bought that?"
Nora tilted her head as she cradled her most prized purchase from Miguel's Pawn Shop. "I think it looks cool."
Yang coughed into her palm while Blake did her best to subvert her unusually rapt attention to the pickled...member...floating in a large formaldehyde jar. Weiss, on the other hand, busied herself with practicing her miniature summoning in the far corner of the parlor of the Casa Madrid which, after several tries, proved useful in minutely combating the draining Mojave heat.
"Is there any reason when it comes to Nora?" drawled Jaune, running a whetstone over the shaft of Crocea Mors.
"I mean," Velvet quipped uneasily. "There has to be a reason, right?"
"If you mean a comprehensible reason, then you would need to reconsider a lot of things," Ren said as he held the reins to Syrup's leash while the infant deathclaw continued sniffing at and licking up some of the suspect stains on the hostel carpet.
The bubbly ginger blew air through her lips and dismissed them all with a wave of her hand. "Come on. You all know that I got the best souvenir out of Miguel's Pawn Shop for a steal!"
The sound of glyphs shattering like porcelain echoed off the walls as the heiress almost choked on her own spittle. "Excuse me... Souvenir?"
"Yeah! Way better than the jar of dirt Jaune bought."
The blond in particular sighed. "Yes, Nora. I know."
"To be fair," Pyrrha remarked. "Miguel mentioned something hidden underneath all the dirt."
"He said that there was something valuable in it," Jaune continued. "Said it was an artifact that belonged to some seaman named Johnny Davis or something and that it was worth enough for the guy to build a floating island on Fort Mead so he could hide it there."
"I thought he said that Johnny Davis was a squid-man sailor spirit who haunted Lake Mead in his submersible frigate and couldn't set foot on land so the jar of dirt was supposed to be some kind of ward against him?" Nora prattled. "And that a sassy pirate named Jackson Birdie made a deal with him but wouldn't cash in because he was Jackson Birdie, the best of the worst that nobody's ever heard of."
Everyone else stared back at her, plunging room in relative silence...save for the noises coming from the rooms upstairs where the Casa Madrid's usual clientele were loudly making the best of their meager lives with the people they paid for.
"... Miguel sounded convincing," admitted the swordsman.
"And you believed him," Yang droned. "So you bought it, opened it up, emptied all the sand, and got zilch."
Team JNPR-S nodded.
"Told you he was shady," Blake remarked, flipping through the pages of another book she picked up.
"Says the girl who thought he was selling, ah, what was it?"
The cat faunus suddenly narrowed her eyes at her partner. "Yang—"
The brawler simpered. "It was a smut book, right?"
"It's not smut!"
Blake received a flat look from everyone else in the parlor. Including Syrup, the infant deathclaw who somehow managed to look disappointed with its half-lidded, reptilian eyes and budding crocodilian maw.
"It's not smut."
"Sure, Kit. Keep tellin' yourself that." Heads turned towards Six tapping the doorframe with his knuckles, himself kitted up with his gun, his bullets, and his field pack readily strapped, locked, and loaded. "Alright, kids. Off your asses, we're heading out now."
He paused, looking at Nora and her package.
"... Um, Pancake?"
"Yeah?"
"Wrap that up. Seriously. Cover it with tarp or something. Wouldn't want people looking at some hyperactive kid hauling around a massive horse di—"
"No problem!"
Without any more complaints—and after Ren helped Nora to properly conceal her purchase in layers of ripped canvas—teams RWBY-V and JNPR-S mustered out the Casa Madrid, ready to for another day-and-a-half of painful walking under the dry, desert sun. What they found when they got out into the streets of Westside at the early dawn hour was the Courier paying two members of the Westside militia to stand guard around an open manhole.
"Um, Six?" Ruby prodded. "Are we...?"
"Safer down here," Six grunted, sliding down the hole in the ground.
The teens crowded around, gaping incredulously into the darkness.
"So...y'all just gon' stand there or y'all gettin' in?" asked one of Westside guards. "We don' got a lotta time here, y'know. Damn NCR's got eyes everywhere an' they gon' be lookin' here pretty quick."
Needless to say, the Vegas Wonder Kids whined, whinnied, and wept as they squeezed themselves into the putrid pits of the New Vegas underground, shit-filled sewage and all.
"Ugh, it reeks in here!"
"Tell me about it."
"I seriously need a nose peg."
"Ew, ew, ew!"
Six tuned out the complaints of his little motley crew as they trudged through knee-high sewage flowing through the northwestern tunnels of the Vegas underground. At least the water here was not too dirty...in terms of radioactivity. The tearjerking sludge of piss, shit, and puke was better than an odorless pond brimming with cancerous isotopes.
"Look, I get why we're going through the sewers but, uh..."
"I don't think complaining's going to get us anywhere, Yang."
"Crap. I think I stepped on something."
"Is that a dead rat—oh gods, it's huge!"
"Nora, don't touch it."
"Ugh, I can smell that thing from here."
The Courier pretended that the kids were not gagging as he checked the localized map on his Pip-boy; he scowled at the screen displaying the path he planned on taking through the underground maze. A fresh telemetry scan revealed some frustrating developments; notably, the canals he intended to pass through had been clogged up by heaps of debris displaced there. Either someone had been manning the switches in the sewage maintenance rooms recently or Red Lucy had her boys shift the flow of waste so as to force him to pass through the Thorn.
The latter theory seemed the most likely.
Because the only clear detour he could take at this junction took him (and everyone else) straight through New Vegas's underground citadel. And goodness knows, that horny bitch was waiting for him. It had been over a week now since he convinced her to 'lose' some of her 'pets' up on the surface to keep the NCR busy. He just hoped that all these mutant eggs he and the kids harvested would be enough to placate her.
Or maybe not.
Six grit his teeth; there was no way in hell he was going to be able to sneak the kids past her nose this time. And, knowing her, Red Lucy was hell bent on seeing them in action.
"Couldn't we have just, y'know, bribed the NCR to let us through?" whined Jaune. "I mean, they practically know we're in New Vegas proper already."
"And the patrols seemed very sparse along North Vegas," added Pyrrha.
"I think there's going to be some issues that would arise should we take the surface route," Weiss argued coolly. "Given the recent developments we've heard about, a chance meeting with an NCR patrol would undoubtedly result in us getting railroaded straight to McCarran Headquarters, bribery notwithstanding."
"Not to mention the NCR spotters on the rooftops," Blake added.
"You saw them too, huh," remarked Velvet.
"Sunlight reflecting off binocs, scopes," Ruby explained, hobbling over to the Courier, the sewage having seeped through her boots. "Six? Are we there yet?"
"We're almost there," he replied evenly. "Just follow my lead. Do not talk to anyone, understand? Do not engage with anyone unless I already have."
"We get it," Yang groaned. "We just wanna know how long we'll be down here."
"Not for too long." Damn it. This corridor is a one-way street to the Thorn. Damn you, Red Lucy. "Now shut up and fall in, kids. Single file. This is a tight corridor."
"Is it...dry?" Weiss all but pleaded.
"You'll get your fuckin' bath when we get there," Six growled. Seriously, what's so wrong with getting a little shit on your boots? This is a cakewalk compared to swimmin' in toxic, radioactive coolant to keep a shot-up nuclear reactor from melting down.
Qrow snuggled closer to the cell where Sergeant Daniel Contreras had been pacing around in for the past several hours. Either his Semblance screwed things up for them or Contreras's luck had run out. Though, according to the NCR grapevine, this was not the first time in the slammer for one of the most notoriously corrupt Californian officers this side of the Mojave.
While security here at McCarran Headquarters was as tight as Atlas Academy during a simulated breach, the veteran Huntsman noted the same oversight shared by all these heavily-armed guards in their bulky salvaged power armor and reinforced combat cuirasses: these troops were on the lookout for a human intruder. Not a black corvid that had somehow flown through one of the shattered windows hugging the ceiling of the former airport terminal building. Said corvid hopped from rusty beam to rusty beam until it reached the brig.
From there, it was a matter of waiting for the jailor to fall asleep on his desk before Qrow was able to safely shift into a more recognizable form. Then he rounded the corner, walked right up to the iron bars, and smirked as Contreras literally jumped three feet back the moment he turned around.
"Fucking hell, how'd you get through?" he hissed.
The veteran Huntsman shrugged. "I have my ways."
The sergeant hugged the bars. "We're both lucky that they haven't fixed the security cameras in here yet."
"And you're louder than I am," Qrow returned with a subtle gesture to the corner behind which the jailor shuffled in his chair between snores. "Is this going to be a problem?"
"Gee, I don't know. What the fuck d'you think?"
"I thought you can still pull some strings while in there."
"I'm flattered by your praise but as you can see, I'm flat broke right now. Thorough confiscation."
"They fingered you good, huh."
"Oh, ha-ha, prick. You know how to put together a thermic lance?"
"I've read enough manuals."
Contreras frowned. "Sure. But d'you know that those manuals weren't talking about the ones we've been, ahem, moving around for awhile. Or maybe you didn't notice the differences between the standard models we use and the prototypes that haven't even seen much sunlight."
The Huntsman shrugged. "Just tell me what I need to do to keep this thing afloat."
The sergeant huffed and allowed a small smirk. "Either you get me out of here or you're going to have to steal the rest of the lances—crates and all—yourself. And move them, yourself, to wherever it is you move 'em to."
Qrow matched him with a wider smirk. Inwardly, he was not liking where this was going. "Getting you out is easier. How 'bout we do that instead."
"Sounds like a better option," sniggered the quartermaster. "Things have gotten tighter right now, though. It ain't just Boyd on my ass this time."
"I heard. Old Jimmy's got a foot up your ass, huh."
"Uh-huh. Wait. You know the general?"
Shrug. "I know a Jimmy. Just not this Jimmy but he kinda acts like him sometimes. Damn, I'm seeing a pattern. Can't really trust a guys named Jimmy, huh."
Eyes rolled. "Right, right. Look, I know you're slick. But are you careful?"
"Just tell me what needs to be done."
"Just like Charlie-Sierra," sniggered Contreras. "Listen up. Here's the plan..."
It was good to be king.
Or god.
Or demigod...something.
Whatever. There was really no distinction because he was treated like the center of the world regardless. Or the center of these idiots' world. Or maybe he really was the center of the world...wherever this world was. Because this sure as fuck wasn't Remnant.
"Ave Mercurius!" declared the high priest, some wacko decked out in white robes and polished carbon fiber padding named Pontifex Maximus.
Mercury Black didn't really know. Nor did he care. He simply did his thing and raised his hands. That got the whole crowd assembled out in this searing desert heat to let out a fanatical cheer. Because they legitimately believed he was a god. A living god. A reincarnation of some ancient deity from whatever the fuck it was these backwater crazies believed in. Because they were actually, quite honestly, very crazy.
So crazy that it scared him. So while he enjoyed the special treatment, he was also playing along for the sake of self-preservation. Because there was only so much a single man with weaponized prosthetic legs like him could do against an entire legion of these...legionaries. But hey; better to be worshiped than to whipped.
"Subjects!" Mercury said, his voice booming over the open field—a massive parking lot that was revamped into some kind of temple forum complete with statues, colonnades, an altar, and a bunch of other fancy looking buildings that were supposed to look ancient but came off as more a reconstruction of a modern-day commercial center—where his 'worshippers' had gathered.
Now what could he make these gullible idiots do for his entertainment? He already had a harem of slave girls 'eager' to please him and a massive army of fanatical machete-wielding, gun-toting, dress-wearing, weird-speaking, muscled-up freaks eager to die for him in pitched gladiatorial combat. He even had final say in who lived and who died. He was literally living like a god in a literal desert paradise amid the ruins of some 'ancient' civilization that looked kind of like downtown Vale. Or more like what Vale would look like a hundred years after what he and his...associates...did to it.
Then again, he wasn't in Vale anymore. Hell, he wasn't even in Remnant anymore. Fuck, he probably wasn't even alive anymore. For all he knew, he must be in some twisted version of the afterlife that he grew up learning from the countless mystics and wacko ministers going around evangelizing about the return of the Two Brothers and the end of the world as they knew it at the time.
Well, as far as Mercury knew, the world he knew ended. And he woke up in another one where people like him were gods, people who weren't were crazy, and everything else was fucked.
But it wasn't all so bad.
Really.
Pontifex Maximus here was going on his usual spiel or sermon or whatever in his indiscernible language—Mercury heard it was called Latin or pidgin Latin. Something about the god of wealth and commerce demanding total obeisance from the populace in exchange for economic and military success. Sure. Whatever. Might as well go with that then. Made him richer than he already was with all the gold coins and fancy stuff piling up in his 'temple treasury.'
Mercury reclined back on his throne, crossing his mechanical legs—that he initially used to kill scores of legionaries and later convince the rest of their friends that he was a god because 'Mercurius' was some kind of ancient deity with magic legs or something—and letting the whole charade play out. Goodness knows he was bored with the theatrics and was more eager to get back inside his 'desert palace' and be pampered by his harem of slave girls...
...which was kind of difficult to stomach given that they were actually slaves. Literally. Mercury had his limits but, well, he can't really fret over some random chick plucked out of butt-fuck nowhere. What was it that Pontifex said?
'Slavery was the only salvation for these profligates.'
Yeah. There was seriously something wrong with that. But, hey, play along. Not his fault those ladies let themselves get caught by the Legion. Definitely not his problem if one of them starts having a mental breakdown in the middle of feeding him grapes. Sure as hell isn't his problem if they get dragged off by the Legion to be 'punished' for 'inconveniencing' the 'god of commerce.'
Speaking of girls... Come to think of it, even if he hated thinking of it, what were Emerald and Cinder up to? Wherever they were, of course.
For all he fucking cared, they were dead. Deader than him. Deadest? Was that a word? Eh, maybe not. Who knew? Who cares? Not like he missed them or anything. Emerald was a bitch and Cinder scared the shit out of him. But it wasn't like he cherished their company, right? Not like he missed getting on his whiny partner's nerves or checking out his crazy boss's ass.
Not like he missed their company, no sirree. Nope. Nada. Nuh-uh.
Damn it, something got in his eye.
Mercury Black was a god now. He didn't need friends. He didn't need more 'friends.' He was a being on a higher plane of existence. He could make his own happiness with the snap of his fingers. He had everything he needed. Everything he wanted. Everything he...hoped would make him happy. He didn't need that little piece of shit to keep him company. Not that he wanted her to stay. But it was her choice to leave. And she did. And he let her...sort of...
Maybe it was a bad idea to let her loose and...
No. No, that ungrateful bitch could go wither up and die in the fucking desert for all he cared. He gave her everything (or had his servants give her everything) and she still up and left, almost killing off an entire cohort of his troops on her way out. Leaving him alone...
...all alone at the top.
Fucking hell, he just wanted company. Was it so hard to ask?
He wasn't even touching her anyway. Hell, like he ever wanted to! She wasn't his type. Too crazy, too annoying. Besides, she would chop his dick off anyway. Yet even if they never got along, even if he called her a bitch to her face, even if they got into some pretty destructive fights and almost killed each other, she was at least better than a whole empire of religious sycophants.
Goddamn it, he really needed to find another living god to chat with.
The Thorn was a scary place.
So much so that it scared even those in the group who steeled themselves the most. Still, Yang, Nora, Velvet, Ren, and Pyrrha put on a brave face towards the bloodstained arena that hosted at least a dozen death battles per day, the last one having been a match between a group of narcotically frenzied raiders and a pair of giant radscorpions. The radscorpions wouldn't need to be fed for awhile.
"Who's the creepy lady?" whispered Pancake, eyeing the woman in the trench coat overseeing the whole spectacle from her decorated booth.
"Dunno. Kinda reminds me of that one transfer student from Haven though," hoarsely replied Blondie.
"You mean the one who looked way too old to be a sophomore?" quipped Knight-boy.
Cottontail, for some reason, let a low grumble, never once letting go of that hostile mien that suddenly appeared when they caught sight of Red Lucy sitting on her throne.
"Shut up, all y'all," Six growled. "Stay close."
He stuck to walking close to the walls, chancing glances over his shoulder to make sure that none of the kids were in too close proximity to the squatters crowding in here. It did not take long for a pair of armed guards to stop them in their tracks. One of them thumbed his communicator. This was followed by Red Lucy craning her head, her eyes sweeping across the massive cavern, and landing on the group of new entrants into the Thorn. From several yards away, she gave them a welcoming smile.
It was not so welcoming to any of them.
"Welcome to the Thorn, honored guests," greeted the matron of New Vegas's underbelly in a manner that reminded them of a certain transfer student from Haven Academy back on Remnant. She then sauntered over to Six, matching his scowl with a leer. "Welcome back, my hunter."
The tightlipped Vegas Wonder Kids nervously glanced around. Surrounding them were an entire coterie of hardened gunslingers—more imposing than the other guards in the Thorn, better-equipped than the Westside militia, and undoubtedly better-trained and more experienced than most NCR grunts. To Six, it was obvious that half the men making up Red Lucy's elite guard were former Tier One groups left to hang out here. It made one of the Thorn's more luxurious visitor lounges a lot less hospitable.
Growl.
Nora uneasily tried to pacify the infant deathclaw.
"Impressive," the older woman remarked. "Not many can say they could tame such a fearsome beast at such a young age."
Ruby cleared her throat. "N-nice to meet you, ma'am."
"Polite, too. I am Red Lucy and I oversee this paradise of blood that you now set foot on. It is a pleasure to finally be acquainted with the famed 'prodigy heroes' of New Vegas."
The teenagers would have preened if they were not so heavily scrutinized by a dozen or so armed veterans and the Courier.
"We've got the eggs," he started, startling the two teams. Without breaking eye contact with Red Lucy, he snapped his fingers and gestured at a wide table pushed up to the wall. "Kids, drop 'em there."
One by one, the nine Remnant teens deposited their meticulously wrapped sacks of mutant eggs before returning to their spot behind the Courier.
Red Lucy pursed her lips. "You've brought more than you needed to. You never cease to please me."
"No charge," Six said.
"Wait! I thought there was pay—"
He flashed a quick, fiery glare at Weiss. The heiress clammed up, wide-eyed like her teammates.
The matron snickered. "Strict and domineering. I always knew you had a penchant for discipline."
"I believe we're done here."
Several guns clicked. Team RWBY-V whirled around to see the only exit blocked by a quarter of the guards present, their trigger hands hovering inches from their guns.
Red Lucy shook her head. "On the contrary, my hunter, I don't think we are. While you have gone above and beyond to deliver, I must still hold true to our more pressing bargain. It should only be fair, don't you think so?"
Six could feel the eyes of his kids staring back at him, nervously darting back and forth, some trying to match the intimidation, fingers itching over their own weapons. As absurd as it sounded, he could smell their fear. And he did not like it one bit.
"Did you forget, my hunter?"
"I'm a busy man."
"Of course, you are," she cooed. "So busy that you tend to forget important details such as our...previous agreed upon compromise."
The Courier held out his hand. "I want my kids to be accommodated."
Red Lucy simpered and snapped her fingers. "Already done."
Immediately, the guards parted before the Vegas Wonder Kids, one of them opening the hydraulic door and the rest subtly nudging the confused and, frankly, unnerved teens outside.
Six turned to see Ruby silently pleading for clarity.
"Get yourselves comfy, kids," he told her, tapping her shoulder and lightly shoving her out. "We're gon' to be here for a while."
"But..."
"Not now, Hyper. Us adults gotta talk so y'all just mosey on over to the lounge an' kick up yer' heels with some drinks," his gravelly voice echoed back. "Everythin's gon' be alright, kid."
For a moment, the little tyke froze up. Like she saw a ghost or something. But then, one of the overhead fluorescent lights flickered and he caught the bare glimpse of his reflection in her glistening silver orbs. And Courier Six turned away.
Ruby Rose was not talking to Theodore Vickers anymore; she was now talking to Old Green Eyes.
What the hell was this place?
A dream? She'd been beaten, cut, starved, and shot at more times than she could count to know that this was real. Illusion? No. Emerald couldn't fuck with someone's brain to this extent for this long. Delusion? She drank enough water to stay hydrated. Hallucination? Maybe the damn heat was finally getting to her.
Or maybe, just maybe... Was she really dead? If so, maybe she could find him here. Or find someone who understood her or, at least, wouldn't want to kill her on sight.
After all, she had all the time in the world to do what she wanted. Now that she was free of that damn 'empire.' Yes, she loved the thrill of killing but after doing so much of it non-stop, day in and day out, being chased by assassins that would never get the hint... She was done cleaving through these fanatics who kept coming at her with machetes while crying out something about their god or their nation or something. And while she had no qualms about massacring even more of them, to be frank, she was tired.
So, so tired.
She just wanted to get away. To get away from these people who...who...who were making her anxious, uneasy, paranoid...afraid. Why?
It was like she knew them. Knew them from as far back as she could remember, from as far back as when she was... How old was she back then? She really couldn't recall all the way but she knew deep in her gut that these were the nightmares that kept her awake at night, her own personal Grimm that she couldn't kill. The Legion, the Imperium, the men of Caesar...she swore she legitimately grew up fearing something like that a long time ago...
...boogeymen in red who burned everything to the ground...
...boogeymen who did horrible things to those she cared about...
...boogeymen who feared other boogeymen...
...boogeymen who waited until their boogeyman went hunting somewhere else...
...so they could sweep down from the hills and destroy everything that she cherished.
Neopolitan shook her head. What was wrong with her? Where was all this coming from? And why the hell was this janky old meter strapped to her hip constantly ticking like there was no tomorrow? It was always doing that wherever she went!
She looked up to the sky and almost thought they genuinely looked green. But that must have been her exhaustion. Or something in the water. Goodness knows she had been lying on this raft for hours, drifting afloat along this river running through this dry gorge, encountering messed-up wildlife—mutants, she corrected herself—and ultimately coming across this twisted hell-scape that looked like an entire cache of volatile Fire Dust had gone off in there all at once.
Not that it was a bad thing. Like hell was she going back to 'His Divine Righteousness' Mercury Black and plead for the 'living god's' forgiveness. Fuck him. He can rot on his scrap metal throne in his scrap metal palace for all she fucking cared. No. She was not going back to the Imperium Americana. She was not going to live another day in a despotic theocracy where women, no matter what they did, were nothing above donkeys or those two-headed cows—brahmin, she remembered they were called.
All those days, the bullshit she tolerated, searching for Roman Torchwick in a 'Roman' Empire...
Eventually, she had enough.
Eventually, she headed west.
To an oasis in the desert called New Vegas.
And maybe head even further to New California, too. All those New Californian slave girls told her that their republic, for all its faults, was heaven compared to the hell that was the Imperium.
Neo digressed. Atlas was touted as the same thing; a floating paradise in the sky where the people who lived there pretended that Mantle, the massive shit-hole underneath it, did not exist.
She blinked out of her reverie to shield her eyes from the wind blowing sand taken off the roofs of the concrete ruins she was looking at. She then picked up the oar and rowed closer, ignoring the ticking on her Geiger counter. By the time she got her feet on dry ground, she was met by the smell of burnt flesh.
It wasn't something she wasn't used to, being who she was. But the more she got closer, the more she got deeper into these ruins, the more the odor compounded. The stench of a hundred rotting cadavers burnt to varying degrees assaulted her nostrils and Neo had to backpedal just to keep her breakfast from coming back up.
Fighting the nausea, she scrambled to higher ground until she clamored onto a ramshackle tower cobbled together from metal sheets, rebar, rubble, and various scraps. Someone even took the time to stack sandbags around the perimeter. In fact, from what she could tell, this used to be some kind of watchtower if the shell casings scattered all over the floor were any indication. That and she could pick out faded smears of dry blood spattered almost everywhere.
Tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic—
Neo almost hurled the damn thing over the edge.
Then she remembered why she always carried it around on her person: to track radiation.
Radiation.
Something so foreign yet so familiar. Something she felt vehemently averse to from the start, even before it was explained why everyone feared it. This...poisonous air that could rot a person from the inside out.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Neo gathered her bearings and surveyed the area where she had washed up. The best description she could give this place was if someone had set off a massive cache of explosives—maybe Fire Dust and more—in the middle of a busy urban district. And for all she knew, that might have been what had happened here. At least she was far enough away from the smell...and high up enough to see where it was coming from.
Bodies. Most were reduced to bones, a few others with some meat still stuck to them, dried up to black ugly jerky. The fleshiest one she could pick out was sinking in a pool of maggots.
The young woman sunk back behind the sandbags and pulled out an old map she had pilfered from one of the dead legionaries pursuing her. She traced the markings, running her finger over the blue trail that was the Colorado River, and ultimately pinpointing where she had ended up:
Dry Wells.
ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: October 30, 2020
LAST EDITED: February 22, 2021
NOTE: A lot of you saw that coming which means that I did a decent job of building it up. Hopefully, I delivered.
To think the NCR and the Vegas proxies were going to be a handful, here comes the 'other group from the East.'
Sorry it took a while to get this out. This whole chapter was already drafted from start to finish as far back as December of last year but languished in the proofreading stage for so long that I did total rewrites to some parts.
With regards to the Director's Cuts, I did consider making them omakes. But then they ended up becoming so long as to become independent chapters in themselves (1,000+ words) so I felt the need to segment them as separate chapters instead.