Ulysses had put up with Courier Six's bullshit for the last twelve years now. So much so that when he was told about Six's recent disappearance, he just sighed through his rebreather, "It's a habit of his." Was the usual answer, the people asking him would be sceptical but they never tried to ask again.
Courier Six likes to go on strange adventures now and then, sometimes disappearing for months on end with no contact back with the Strip or his friends or Ulysses. He'd travel across America, to the capitol and back just because he wanted to see what was there. Rarely took any companions with him, except for that one time he went South with Raul to the ghoul's home.
Ulysses stood in front of Mobius and the… teleporter, which had an Auto-Doc strangely placed at the centre of it, "Well, he used it and poof! Gone in a flash just like that!" Mobius exclaimed, the brain's monitors moving to emphasize each word, "The Sink hasn't reported anything back yet, so he probably didn't use the Transportalponder still on him to get back!"
"Hmm," Ulysses hummed through his rebreather, "What are the chances that he was… teleported to another place outside of the Mojave?"
"I wouldn't know that!" Mobius hovered over to the teleporter, "This thing's been collecting dust for science knows how long!"
"How do you know that Courier Six isn't dead?"
"We have backups of him, er… he has told you about the implants and prosthetics right?" Ulysses nodded, while he didn't approve of Courier Six cramming his body with foreign technology, he accepted it anyways, it's not like Ulysses can control someone like him, "Right, well since they're prosthetics and implants, we can replicate them surprisingly easily! Follow me to the Replication Labs!"
Ulysses followed the brain to a backroom of sorts, Mobius spun around and flicked a light switch, revealing rows upon rows of artificial hearts, brains, and spines all lined up neatly on a wall, "In the back there is our data banks! That's where all of his memories get stored!" Ulysses walked past the artificial organs, following Mobius as the brain gives him a tour.
"Over there is a box full of heads, cryogenically frozen and kept fresh so that the Courier can pick and choose which one he wants to replace his own!" Ulysses peered at the box, seeing a bunch of heads all placed haphazardly and crammed into the tight space, "They were all handpicked by him too! He also personally put two bullets in them to replicate his iconic scar!"
Ulysses sighed and shook his head; looks like Six's obsession with himself have reached an all-time high, "We have a bunch of other body parts as well, arms, legs, torsos, pelvises, all of them," Mobius' monitors all extended towards a different box, "In the situation that he dies without anyone around to restart his heart, it'd immediately go into a countdown where every implant inside his body explodes!" Mobius' shook his monitors up and down, like nodding, "After that, we pick a new head, torso, arms, and legs from the box and implant the same implants that he had before he died into them!"
Mobius stopped in front of the data bank, "After that, we cram all the memory recorded in these data banks into the new brain, and since they're constantly receiving information live from the brain before it got destroyed, he wouldn't forget anything important!"
Ulysses sighed heavily under his rebreather, so Courier Six has developed himself a form of immortality… He doesn't know if he can deal with Six for another year, let alone forever.
"The data banks are actually still running! I take the pleasure of looking through them every once in a while, see what adventures he gets up to and whatnot," Mobius chuckled nervously, "There was a moment about a week ago where it stopped suddenly, but it recently just kicked back up, apparently, the Courier's playing card games with some kind of family right now."
"If these banks show what Courier Six is seeing, then how come you haven't located him yet?" Ulysses cocked his head to the side.
"Ah, well, we don't know where he is," Mobius turned to the banks, "The prosthetics and implants don't show up on our sensors, nor do I know where he is based on visuals alone."
"Fortunately, these banks are connected to every satellite RobCo and Vault-Tec ever launched! So given enough time, we might be able to locate his… location!"
"How long would that take?"
"Depends, some of the satellites are seriously far away!" Mobius hovered over to a terminal next to the banks, "I'll take a look at the ones still orbiting the planet first! If he's not there then maybe he got teleported to another planet completely!"
Ulysses found that to be absurd but then again, speaking to brains in jars with monitors for arms is absurd enough.
On the moon of Remnant, behind a piece of celestial debris, lay a lodged RobCo satellite, silently transmitting signals down to and from the Courier's Pip-Boy. Looks like Remnant's not so far away from Earth after all… or it really was far away, seeing how this satellite had two hundred years to travel to Remnant and be lodged behind a chunk of the moon, still, what luck for it to precisely travel past other planets and be stopped on Remnant of all places!
If the Courier knew about this, he'd be surprised… and that's about it. It's not like one measly satellite will surprise him here! The Courier laid back on his bedroll, it was night time now, and Lavs got the bed, much to Johan and Mint's dissatisfaction… well it was mostly Johan, while Mint accepted the bedroll gingerly…
Johan was passed out on the bedroll, she complained about how it wasn't as soft as the bed but shut up quickly the moment her head touched the pillow. Mint was snoring quietly, while Lavs laid in bed stock still, not even daring to move.
The Courier thought back to his conversation with Qrow and the Xiao Long people, both father and daughter, and maybe Ruby too but she didn't say anything that he hasn't already know. He smirked; Qrow looked worried when he revealed his secret to eternal youth, as if he's scared that someone's gonna kill him by destroying his body entirely, hah! Like that's ever gonna happen!
Survival pro-tip! Lie as much as you can, but reveal some truths here and there to get people to trust you. The Courier held back a snicker; he's been hanging around Veronica too long, her and her weird new obsession with playing games on the RobCo terminals. Apparently she was given some holotapes by a Brotherhood of Steel member that used to serve in the capitol, and the holotapes had games in them?
The Courier was sceptical at these games at first, thinking that they'll never reach the intellectual prowess needed to play his favourite card game of Caravan, but Veronica swayed him the moment he saw them running on the terminals.
Surprisingly fun, they even had manuals to read through whenever you're bored of the game or running caravans, boy wouldn't the Courier know all about that.
He thought about all of his friends back in the Mojave, how they've all gone off on their own adventures but occasionally coming back to the Strip for a little get-together now and then. Raul stayed in the Lucky 38, Arcade stayed with the Followers in the Old Mormon Fort, Veronica staying with the Brotherhood after the Elder allowed them to go on the surface, while Boone and Cass went off to do their own things.
Cass usually stayed in the rebuilt Westside and Freeside, heard that she's running a bar now with Boone's help. Lily stayed in Jacobstown, guiding the Super Mutants with Doc Henry; ED-E's travelling to Navarro, and Rex living out his life in Big MT with the other Robodogs. Ulysses still in the Divide, fending off Marked Men and tunnelers, making sure they don't spill into the Mojave.
All of these people, they have their own goals and places to call home. What does the Courier have? Nothing, he's been travelling aimlessly for the past twelve fucking years! Doing nothing but constantly getting himself involved with situations that he's not supposed to, what goal does he have? What overarching mission is he doing now?
Back then, he had a goal, hunting down Benny. That then became running the Strip, until Yes Man came by and did a better job for him. Now? Now he has a lot of free time on his hands. Arcade's helping people; Raul's helping Yes Man; Veronica's helping the Brotherhood; Cass and Boone are helping the people of Westside and Freeside; Lily's helping the Super Mutants; and Ulysses' helping the Mojave in general.
ED-E's going off to Navarro, and Rex is living with others like him. What is the Courier doing? Who is he helping?
Twelve years after the battle of Hoover Dam, two of which he spent with Yes Man helping the Strip, until the robot figured everything out for himself. Eleven years after the Sierra Madre, reuniting Christine and Veronica gave him some joy, but nothing other than that. Zion, seeing Joshua be redeemed, reading through the Survivalist's story. Then there's the Divide, with Ulysses answering questions about himself, letting the Courier know about the old him, who might as well be a stranger now.
And what is he doing right now? Was he doing anything important like Ulysses or Lily? Was he living his life happily like Boone, Cass, or Veronica? Or was he just travelling for the sake of it, because there's nothing left for him to do back in the Strip? All the executive and moderating stuff is left to Yes Man, while Raul dealt with the more human and hands-on stuff.
What does the Courier do then?
…
What the fuck is he doing with his life?
All this time in the world and he spent it travelling around America just to kill, loot, and steal? Maybe sightsee here and there?
Damn, he's directionless, both in the Mojave and here.
…
Maybe his goal here is to teach Lavs into someone like him? Maybe help out the people here with their Grimm crisis? Solve Faunus-Human racism? How was he supposed to do that when back in the Mojave, ghouls are still treated as subhuman?!
Heh, at least there aren't any Feral Faunus, imagine that.
Although Adam before the Courier met him might count for one. The kid was seriously unhinged, thankfully he's all mellowed out now. The Mentats definitely helped him.
The Courier shook his head, no use thinking about all this shit when it's time to go to sleep. And he'd rather have a full eight hours this time instead of the one hour naps he used to take back then.
Cinder's eyes snapped open in the dead of night.
She slowly sat upwards, looking down at her hands under the moonlight. Then she remembered what happened back in Beacon, against HIM.
She gritted her teeth, clenching her fist as the flames came back, covering up her right side again. She breathed in softly before breathing out, calming her nerves, and extinguishing the flames that ignited on her skin.
So this was the Maiden's power. It was… intoxicating. So much so that she felt like she could take on the world and her Mistress at the same time. She looked around where she woke up, an abandoned warehouse, probably somewhere in Vale's docks. She must've run here when that girl jumped at her with that scythe.
She reached a hand up to her left eye, realizing that she can no longer see anything through it anymore. Cinder furrowed her brows; she's going to kill that bastard, sooner or later. Now all that matters is getting out of here and finding Emerald and Mercury, if those two haven't perished yet that is.
She walked out of the warehouse and into the empty streets of Vale, rubble was still on the road but it seemed like reconstruction efforts were going swimmingly, much to Cinder's disdain. So the attack hadn't worked, must be because of that bastard Courrier.
Cinder made the plans in her head, gather Mercury and Emerald, go to Haven, kill everyone there and make her Mistress proud. She grinned, simple as that.
Some downtime between Volume 3 and 4.
Sorry for the shorter chapters recently, I've been too busy playing games lol.
Thanks for reading though! And thanks for the reviews! Keep them coming! PLEASE.