NOTE: Graphic warning.

Director's Cut: Bedtime Story

Courier Six and team RWBY come across a grisly sight...

Sometime ago, early on in their adventure...

Courier Six raised his brow as he surveyed the rather macabre surprise they had stumbled upon in the middle of the raider den recently cropped up on the outskirts of the Vegas ruins. He had to admit that it was a long time since he last saw something like this but...well... Some people and their preferences. Could be worse, anyway.

With a click of his tongue and a readjustment of the filters on his gas mask, he began sifting through the carnage only to be interrupted by the disgusted shrieks of the kids trailing after him, their hands covering their lower faces.

"How are you not at all bothered by this, this...s-s-sacrilege!?" Snowball hollered.

"Oh hell no, I'm not digging through all that crap!" carped Blondie.

"I...I think I'm gonna be sick," Cat-girl mewled.

Hyper shuffled inch by inch, wincing harder the closer she got. "Six, are you...? Are we supposed to...?"

"Just another day in Vegas, kids," the Courier dismissed, coming away with smaller bits of passable loot, some covered in blood and viscera. "Now get over here and help me sort through all this stuff."

Weiss scoffed. "You can't be serious! Just look at that...this, this...wretched carnal display!"

Prissy little snowflake. "It ain't a problem unless you actually eat the meat, Snowball. Geckos eating off a deathclaw's ass beats a guy fuckin' a brahmin any day."

Blink, blink, blink.

Hyper was the first to scream. "You ate the meat!?"

Meat wasn't bad, to be honest. Add a bit of wine and some extra seasoning and you got your typical Wasteland gourmet. "I was probably drunk at the time."

Cat-girl sighed audibly. "Of course. You were drunk. You're almost always drunk. When are you never even drunk?"

Another shrug and Six checked his Pip-Boy for the time. They still had a few hours of daylight left which meant they still got room to sort through this whole mess before the first mutants would show up sniffing for grub. Or they could just leave it; let someone else do the honor of cleaning the place up. Not like anyone would appreciate being spared the sight. Besides, the Wasteland cleans up after itself and the maggots were starting to crawl out of the holes in some of the older cadavers scattered around. Bloatflies were starting to fester inside the bodies hanging off the makeshift meathooks hanging off the ceiling in one of the bombed out concrete apartments nearby.

Fuck it. Got pretty much what we need anyway. "Come on, kids. Let's go."

Snowball's jaw was hanging in shock. "We're...leaving? We are leaving this...?"

"You want to clean it up yourself? Go ahead."

Team RWBY were about to heave at the thought of so much as touching the dirty, naked, dead man with a gaping hole in his chest whose member was still lodged deep inside the large two-headed bovine...which was also dead. Then again, that meant they had to do something about the bodies, honor and dignity to the dead after all. Still, after everything that they had seen and done in the Wasteland up to this point, none of the girls felt prepared to manhandle something like this, gloves and gas masks not withstanding.

Maybe the other kids wouldn't be as picky. Ah, who am I kidding? Knight-boy would probably be the first to heave. Seeing nothing else of value to take, the Courier heaved his duffel bag over his shoulder and started walking.

The kids though...

"You girls coming or what?"

Six rolled his eyes behind his visor when team RWBY caught up to him faster than Hyper on her Semblance.

"Say kids, did I ever tell you the story of the time I took down Cook-Cook?"

Team RWBY eyed the Courier wearily over the campfire they made on the side of the road, their slightly-mutated-squirrels-on-sticks cooking over a makeshift grill. He could hardly blame them since he realized that most of the stories he had to share tended to get a little extreme. But they did help toughen them up somewhat. Better than a boring classroom lecture in his opinion.

"Who's Cook-Cook?" Hyper asked hesitantly.

"He was one mean Fiend."

Cat-girl furrowed her brow. "Fiend? As in...the Fiends?"

"Yep. Raiders, frankly. Some the meanest, craziest, freakiest, god-awful bastards to ever terrorize New Vegas since the NCR came marching in a decade ago. Amazing that they got organized real quick and even had some basic tactical know-how. Well-supplied too. They raked up a body-count so big, you'd think the numbers were from a pitched battle between the NCR and the Legion."

The girls gulped.

Blondie twiddled her thumbs. "This Cook-Cook guy... Was he that bad?"

"Well, he wasn't made a Fiend 'captain' for nothing," droned Six. "That fucked-up piece of shit was a cracked-out arsonist, a sadistic rapist, and a damn good chef with a five-star menu to boot."

Snowball blinked. "I never thought I'd hear such a combination of descriptors for a single man."

Just 'cause he's a predacious serial killer doesn't mean he doesn't know how to fillet a whole arm better than the chefs at the Ultra-Luxe. "Well, NCR was paying good money for his head. So I followed this one lead I got from this little birdie, tracked the son of a bitch down to this little kitchenette-sex-dungeon-brahmin-farm he got on the edges of West Vegas right along the old beltway. In fact, it's not too far from here. Can even smell it from miles away on a good day."

"Hold up. Kitchenette?"

"Sex dungeon?"

"Brahmin farm?"

"Here in West Vegas?"

He took another swig from his canteen. Pay attention, damn it. I'm telling you all a bedtime story. "Anyway, I spent a day doing reconnaissance 'til I finally got my window. Good clean shot—clear sky, a little wind, out in the open, had most of his armor off—wouldn't get another chance like it for a while. So I took it. Bang. Right in the nutter. Went in, cleared out the stragglers, and goddamn. The fucking bastard was still alive and wouldn't stop screaming."

"Yeah, because you shot him in the—"

"Let me finish, Blondie." He started flipping over the skewered squirrels on the grill. "Anyway, so I went to work cutting off his head—"

"After you put him out of his misery, right?"

"Cat-girl, he was already bleeding out. Besides, that Goddamn waste of space had no remorse, no shame, and not the tiniest mite of decency to wash himself after six months. Why should I spare him any? Didn't I tell you he was a freaky-ass rapist to boot? Some good people I know had to suffer that from him. That made it kind of personal."

"Okay, okay," snapped Snowball. "Revenge. You cut off his head while he was still breathing."

"Yep. Took a bit of effort because it turned out my machete was as jagged as a handsaw from the constant usage. Forgot to whet the damn thing." Like, really. Hacking isn't easy when you're cleaver is so serrated, it's got crocodile teeth.

The girls stared wide-eyed.

Good. You're all paying attention. "See, what you're supposed to do is one, two, three, or maybe even five solid swings right around the jugular and the whole head comes off. But because the blade was so dull and cracked, it got stuck on the first chop and I had to yank and push. You know, like a saw. You know what a saw is, right?"

Slow, mortified nods.

Note to self: whet machete later tonight. Or install a new blade. "Good, you must've had shop class or something. Anyway, the bastard was still screaming 'til I got to his windpipe. Eventually managed to cut through all the sinew, get down to the bone, had to wiggle around a bit until I finally snapped his damn skull off his spine with a solid crack."

He mimicked the action with a click of his tongue to match.

"Just like that. Wrapped it up in a bag, air-tight because of the heat and all that. Then I started cleaning up the place."

Blondie coughed. "Y-you, uh, 'cleaned up' his evil lair?"

"Looting. I looted."

"Of course, you did," mumbled Cat-girl who was a little paler than usual.

"You could of just spared us some of the details, you know," Snowball muttered.

Hyper settled for hugging her knees close to her chest while staring deep into the fire.

"Oh, I forgot to mention," Six continued. "That little birdie over at McCarran told me that Cook-Cook had a favorite brahmin he called 'Queenie.'"

"I dread to find out why Queenie was his favorite."

'Favorite' is one way of putting it. "Heh, yeah. Queenie was the biggest brahmin in the herd. All fattened up too so I was wondering why the bastard kept her alive for so long and treated her like a literal queen while he roasted all the others in the pen. Then it hit me after I started cutting her up for some grub. In particular, the thighs and the rear felt a little too tender and the udders looked like they've been squeezed to Hell and back."

The girls quickly went green.

"Oh gods... I think I figured out why..."

"Six, no, please, no..."

"Brothers, I think I'm going to be sick..."

"Wh-wh-why?"

"Yeah," the Courier drawled, pulling the five thoroughly cooked squirrels off the grill. "This is the stuff you usually don't hear about. Or read about. I mean it ain't everyday that you take down a guy right after he went ham on his beloved beeves for the hundredth time, you know. Alright, kids, dinner time."

Team RWBY puked into the nearby ditch.

"Man, that is messed-up," remarked Jaune.

"Rather disturbing," Pyrrha added.

"Hey, at least you didn't, like, sample the meat or anything," Nora intoned. "Did you?"

Team RWBY groaned with their heads planted on the long dining table in the communal kitchen of the presidential suite at the Lucky Thirty-Eight. Ren was cooking them a late breakfast while Syrup munched on some leftover scraps from last night courtesy of the Courier who was currently out. As usual.

"He has some...really messed-up stories," Yang muttered. "Like...what-the-fuck-holy-shit kind of messed-up, you know?"

Team JNPR eyed each other.

"Not all of them were that bad," croaked Jaune. "Remember that one where he lectured us on some survival techniques that he learned from a bunch of tribespeople he met up in a place called Zion? I don't think you guys were around when he went on a whole tangent about that but it was like a saga of him ending up stranded during an expedition and getting caught up in a tribal war up in the Yoo-tah territory."

Ruby angled her head from the table to give him a very, very flat look. "Jaune, we're about to have breakfast."

"No, no! It's not that kind of story. It's, um... Pyr, what was it again?"

"He has a repository of anecdotes from that place," Pyrrha said. "Which one exactly?"

"You know, the one where he was tripping out or something."

"Oh, you mean the one where he fought a giant flaming bear?"

"Ooh! I remember that one!" chirped Nora. "There were actually three of them. Or was it four?"

Team RWBY as a whole finally raised their heads in disbelief.

Yang blinked. "Six...went hunting for a what now?"

Weiss groaned against the table. "Oh Brothers..."

Ruby nodded. "Sounds kinda cool, though."

Blake sighed. "A flaming bear? Really?"

Jaune and Pyrrha shrugged and let Nora regale them a tale of another one of the Courier's many exploits across the Wasteland. Thankfully, this one was not as grisly or stomach-churning as they dreaded. Though it did involve Six imbibing some kind of herbal tea brewed from a plant called 'datura' and a subsequently 'colorful' hunting trip across a lush, riverine valley...which was apparently a paradise compared to the Strip or even anywhere in New California (or possibly even the Imperium).

Crystalline rivers, lush forests, clean food, rain...

Then again, since it was Nora who was narrating, some things might have been exaggerated like the lack of radiation or how unpolluted this place called Zion Canyon was or that the people there had regressed to a sort-of 'uncivilized' state compared to the 'civilized lands' of New California and the Imperium. A lot of wild and wacky stuff really that sounded like something Nora's brain would contribute to what the Courier actually went through.

Hence, later that afternoon, when the Six returned, Ruby asked him about it. To which he made a face and mumbled something about 'never trying datura root ever again' before shooing her away and locking the door to the penthouse workshop so he could focus on doing equipment maintenance.

"So, girls, Pancake told me that y'all wanted to hear some more bedtime stories."

"NO!" chorused a mortified team RWBY.

The Courier picked some wax out of his ear. "Christ, don't have to be so loud about it. Fine. Your loss. Thought you could use some extra tips when out on an excursion."

Snowball furrowed her brow. "I thought you were going to tell us another 'bedtime story?'"

"Yeah. About how I was holding my own out in the desert. Your sister team learned a lot from stories more than lectures so I thought you could too."

Blondie tilted her head. "Learned what exactly?"

"I thought you were as sharp as they come," Six grumbled.

He slouched against one of the couches in his master bedroom where the four girls in their pajamas were huddled onto his bed. Not that he slept there anymore, or anywhere here in the tower, or much less slept as often as he probably should. He could feel some of the veins in his temple throbbing from the come down from munching on a bag of coyote tobacco leaves.

"We can handle ourselves out in the wilds," Snowball said.

"Really now. Do you all at least know what's edible and what's not when you're out in the wastes?"

"Well, yeah," Hyper replied, "We know what banana yucca looks like. And prickly pear and barrel cacti and coyote tobacco and—"

"What about the different critters that you can munch on?"

The girls stared back.

Cat-girl shrugged. "Geckos, coyotes, and giant mantises?"

"Wild brahmin and bighorners, too, don't forget about them," the Courier said. "Look, since you're all not interested in story time, let me at least drop the nuggets for you. For one, when you're far out in a place you're unfamiliar with and you meet with the locals—the friendly ones, at least—run with them. Don't insult 'em, don't be a dick to them, 'cause they might save your life. More importantly, because they know the land better than you so get on their good side, alright?"

Nods.

"Good. Now, in some cases, you may have to say 'yes' to a bunch of weird shit. But that don't mean you can't say 'no' either."

More nods.

"And while we're on that account, here's one thing that you should get it straight to your heads: watch out whenever the locals give you anything, okay? It could be herbs, it could be hookah." He leaned in close, face fiercely stern. "Trust your gut. If the locals give you something funky, and you're gut screams its funky, you should never, ever try it unless it's an emergency. Got it?"

Hesitant nods.

Then Hyper spoked up. "Are you...talking about that 'datura root?' You know, that...the plant that Nora said made you go out hunting for, um, giant bears on fire?"

Six grimaced and coughed into his hand. "Uh, like I said, just...just be careful when accepting gifts from locals, alright?"

"Like datura root?"

"Datura tea. Bitter as all-loving hell and, uh, really potent. Really, really potent." He stood and abruptly headed out the door. "At least you won't find any datura growing here in Nevada. Now goodnight and get some shut eye."

Five minutes after the Courier left, Yang turned to her teammates. Before she could open her mouth however, she got three solid glares essentially telling her to shut up and never even consider the idea of phoning in the Crimson Caravan to ask if they had some special herbal stock from Utah.

ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: December 16, 2018

LAST EDITED: July 2, 2023

INITIALLY UPLOADED: July 6, 2022

NOTE (July 6, 2022): Thought I'd drop this as a little breather before the next serious chapter. Again, this is one of those many scenarios that I drafted way back but got lost during the flow and I couldn't really find a good spot in the main plot to slot this in so here it is as a Director's Cut.

I was doing the Three-Card Bounty quest during my last playthrough and it dawned on me as to why Cook-cook had a special brahmin named Queenie that he obsessively protects from everyone else. I ended up pausing the game and sitting back to think about the explanations my brain came up with.

I've long been planning on delving into the other DLCs and have the cast and crew visit Zion Canyon and the Big MT. But that's going to be a ways down the line.

Anyway, the next chapter will be back to your regularly scheduled programming.