"In other news, eyewitness accounts report increasing NCR presence near Mojave Outpost and I-15. Whether they're here for the gambling or for other political reasons entirely is anyone's guess at this point. Experts are advising prospective travelers to steer clear of confrontations between NCR and Vegas forces, as tensions remain high."

The sound of a high-powered rifle pierced the quiet of the desert, and a distant unsuspecting giant gecko slumped against the dry cracked earth, its head an unrecognizable mass. The two other accompanying geckos swiveled their heads around, searching for the source of the gunshot.

"Aaand that's all she wrote, folks. This is Mr. New Vegas, reminding you that you're nobody until somebody loves you. And that somebody is me. I love you."

"Love you too, Vegas."

I lined up my iron sights. Two more shots rang out and consecutively pierced the skulls of the remaining geckos just as they turned their overgrown heads in the direction of my voice. Satisfied and seeing no other geckos in the vicinity, I stood up from my crouching position behind a large stone and slung This Machine over my back.

The locals were complaining about elevated numbers of geckos nearby so I figured I may as well do them a small service. It wouldn't do if Nipton were to be overrun again just as they were rebuilding.

At least it was just geckos this time, not Legion.

I briefly pondered the idea of skinning my quarries and taking the meat with me to cook later, eventually deciding against it. I was carrying enough weight on me after my visit to the Big Empty; if I needed food, I had a more than reasonable supply of Salient Green to tide me over. Not to mention I would pass by Novac on my way to the Strip and could get some grub there. I looked forward to trying out the new eateries in the growing town.

With that in mind, I continued my brisk pace north, with the unforgiving sun bearing down on the sandy road.

"Got some new sounds for you, imported straight from the warzones of DC. Give it up for 'Dear Hearts and Gentle People'. The best match for the best-lookin' audience around, if you ask me."

I perked up at the new song, and despite having never heard it before, found myself trying to hum along with the upbeat tune with mixed results.

Catchy. It was well-worth the caps I forked over for the new holotapes supposedly straight from the DC ruins, even if I ended up donating the holotapes to Mr. New Vegas. Good music should be shared, damn it. What good was there in hoarding it, like some musical Brotherhood of Steel?

Sorry, Veronica. I know they're your family but it's true.

I continued on my merry way with the power of music, a pep in my step. It was only on trips like these that I could go for any appreciable amount of time before being accosted by somebody who needs help, or raiders, or some faction or another trying to kill each other. Once upon a time, I'd have been wary of traveling alone in the Mojave Wasteland because of the Legion and its love for sending me assassins to keep me company. Thankfully, with the Legion all but eradicated in Nevada as a whole, the only encounters I'd had were the odd group of Frumentarii looking to prove themselves against the man who personally killed Legate Lanius.

They proved themselves to be right fools, they did.

It was a mixed blessing, however. Legion raiding parties sent to take me out were usually equipped with only the best gear the Legion could pilfer, so their gear was something of a primary source of income during those times.

Well, it wasn't like I was hurting for caps nowadays. It was an acceptable loss, not having to deal with some Roman wannabe's bullshit. But as for the NCR…

I grimaced. If relations with NCR continued to deteriorate, I'd have a whole other faction after my head. I'd rather not have to kill NCR assassins – after all, NCR's generally got good people. It was my hope that Chief Hanlon and other NCR officials of similar mindset could successfully dissuade the war-hungry top brass to abandon the lost cause of an idea that was the annexation of New Vegas.

Most likely it was only due to their humiliating loss of Hoover Dam that the NCR couldn't garner enough support for a full-blown invasion of New Vegas. President Kimball and General Oliver ended up taking much of the flak for Hoover Dam, but I couldn't count on their unpopularity as an effective deterrent. No doubt they were scrambling to find or manufacture a reason to try and annex the territory to try and salvage their careers.

I wasn't about to hand them their reason either; I'd been encouraging nothing but diplomacy and fair trade with NCR whenever I had to play politician.

I really hope they change their minds, or else I'll have to go to California personally to "persuade" them to quit.

I sighed. Deathclaws? Easy pickings. Cazadors? Slippery bastards but their venom didn't mean much to me anymore. But politics? That shit was absolutely exhausting.

I continued my brisk pace northward, all too eager to shift my focus back on the music rather than running a nation.

Then I saw her.

She was perhaps one of the strangest sights I had ever seen, and I'd seen strange, like waking up without your brain, heart, and spine strange. Standing on a rocky edifice overlooking the desert expanse was a woman with an almost ethereal quality to her, with long, flowing pale blue hair interlaced with pink. Floating atop her head was a halo that periodically phased in and out of existence, kind of like how a fuzzy tv screen would. She wore a white uniform, seemingly military, of an organization I didn't recognize. She was such a sharp contrast with the rest of the drab Wasteland that I had to make sure I wasn't looking at a mirage.

Perhaps it was an illusion. Wouldn't look too out of place in those visions that the Sorrows made me see that one time.

Nah, couldn't have been. I hadn't shot up Jet in years.

I walked closer to the figure, turning off my Pip-Boy radio as I did. As I approached and saw her at a better angle, I noticed that her uniform was stained red on almost her entire left side. Blood.

"Hey, are you alright?" I called out.

The woman tensed upon hearing my words, and slowly turned around, as if only somewhat surprised to see me. Her lips coalesced into a gentle smile, one reminiscent of meeting an old friend.

She opened her mouth, as if to speak, yet no sound exited her lips.

Now that I was closer and she was facing me, my eyes were drawn to her side. Blood perforated her formerly immaculate uniform and seeped into her sleeves from her torso. Wasn't she worried? Was she delirious due to blood loss?

No, her posture and clear, expressive eyes indicated otherwise.

Expressive eyes, indicating… happiness? Or was that sadness? Regret? A combination?

Her eyes, together with her delicate features, gave me an impression of something that didn't originate from the wasteland. A kind of beauty untouched by rads or contamination or any of the horrifying monstrosities the Wasteland could cook up.

I turned my eyes back to her wound. She was losing a lot of blood, but I would need to get closer to determine whether her life was in immediate danger.

I briefly scanned the surrounding areas to ensure it wasn't some kind of trap. It wouldn't have been the first Legion trap that utilized an injured hostage.

Seeing nothing else in the vicinity, I approached again, preparing to retrieve a Stimpak from the auto-inject system embedded in my armor.

Injuries were nothing new to me and were common in the Wasteland among travelers, but I wasn't about to let an innocent (as far as I knew, anyway) person bleed out if I could help it.

"Don't worry, I'm gonna help you," I said in a tone that was hopefully reassuring. The helmet tended to intimidate people more often than not.

As I stood just a few feet away from her, she tilted her head and spoke again.

This time, however, was different. There was still no sound, but rather, a creeping pain in my head not unlike that of a migraine. Hallucinations of places I had never seen before assaulted my vision. People I had never met. It was bright, idyllic. Almost nauseatingly so.

And then...destruction. A sky of red, not unlike that of the Sierra Madre. The familiar sight of death. Anything after that was too brief and fragmented for me to pick out any useful details, especially amidst the growing pain in my skull.

"What… the hell?" I grunted, clutching my head in one hand. While my mind was fluctuating between reality and the uncanny hallucinations, I saw the woman look at me in concern.

Who...?

As the pain elevated to excruciating levels beyond what my Nociception Regulator implant was designed to handle, my vision was engulfed in a flash of blinding light.

As I lost consciousness and the pain subsided, I could have sworn I heard a girl's voice.

We thirst for the seven wailings.

We bear the Koan of Jericho.

…sei.

Please, Sensei…

…

I'm sorry.

With a sharp intake of breath, I awoke, my head aching, the feeling of waking from a strange dream prevalent in my mind.

I put a gloved hand to my head. The last thing I remembered was… leaving Nipton and continuing north to New Vegas. And then… here? My eyes darted around as I lifted my head off the floor, my augmented eyes registering an unfamiliar environment.

Definitely not the Mojave.

"Not again," I groused, sluggishly sitting up. For some reason I was unable to get my bearings.

Judging by the uncomfortable yet reassuring feeling of metal against my back while I was on the floor, I still had my weapons and armor on me. Well, at least it wasn't another Sierra Madre experience.

I hoped.

I tentatively took in my surroundings. I was in what seemed to be an office, and an extravagant one at that. Clean furnishings, a window allowing one to see the bright blue sky as well as the rooftops of some city buildings, and a long desk akin to the types I've seen CEOs of major pre-war companies use. A strange skinny terminal of a make I couldn't recognize rested on top of the desk along with several neatly arranged documents.

I shakily stood up and held up my left arm to access my Pip-Boy.

Physicals were unchanged, no chems in my system. That made sense – it would have taken a ludicrous amount of drugs to sedate me due to the changes to my heart, courtesy of the Big Empty. But if it wasn't chems, what the hell happened to me? I switched tabs to access my map.

What I saw unnerved me.

[NO DATA AVAILABLE]

Impossible. Did whatever happened to me affect my Pip-Boy? The mapping system uses pre-war satellite imagery to map out locations. Either the Pip-Boy was malfunctioning, or the satellite was offline… or I was out of range of the satellite.

I shuddered and changed tabs to radio. Predictably, it displayed the same message. That made sense – being able to reach Mr. New Vegas but not the satellite would have been preposterous.

Didn't make it any less unnerving, though.

I navigated to apparel and items, scrolling through all of my gear to make sure everything is accounted for. Everything seems to be in order-

Wait.

"Adult Card?"

What the fuck?

I didn't remember putting something like this in my inventory. How did this end up in here? Did someone plant it?

I frantically felt around my neck for anything resembling a bomb collar, and, finding nothing but armor, sighed in relief.

I examined the item in the Pip-Boy interface. A small, rectangular item with lines on it, made of what I hypothesized to be plastic, based on its weight. Seemed innocuous, so what does it do? Why is it here?

After all, it seemed innocuous, but then again, so did the package that I carried to the Divide.

I did not need another Ulysses after my ass.

Before I could ponder on the matter further, my helmet-aided hearing picked up distant footsteps in this direction. The footwear definitely did not sound like any kind of combat-ready apparel. My eyes shot to the source, an advanced-looking sliding door.

Company, eh?

Could be a hostile or a source of information, or both, I reasoned. There's no law saying they should be mutually exclusive.

It's a tad optimistic, but who knows? They could even be an ally.

And so I located the darkest corner in the room, walked to it, and crouched down, stilling my body's movements and my breathing to the absolute minimum.

The door slid open and through it walked a young woman. Straight black hair, blue eyes with glasses, and buxom, a more primal part of me noted. She wore a clean, pressed white and blue uniform that exuded a sense of formality that would make a White Glove Society member feel inadequate. Something about that outfit struck me as familiar despite having never seen it before, but I couldn't place it. Her extravagant clothing and appealing "features" aside, certain other characteristics caught my eye.

Floating atop her head was what seemed to be a halo. This immediately made me consider whether the Think Tank had anything to do with my displacement, since valence-radii accentuators resembled halos by design. They conferred increased durability and health regeneration to the wearer, and I idly wondered if this person's different-looking halo would do the same.

The other thing was her ears. They were pointed, like an elf from some pre-war fantasy setting. They didn't look like plastic surgery, nor did they look like accessories, but I could've been wrong.

My eyes strayed to her hip, where a pistol rested in an intricately designed holster. If I didn't play this right, it would probably devolve into a gunfight. I was assured of my victory should the worst happen, but I'd rather not kill a person if I didn't have to, not to mention gain the ire of potentially everybody here.

I continued to watch from the corner, unnoticed, as she carried a stack of papers into the room and deposited them onto the desk. She took one look at the daunting stack of papers, sighed while rubbing her eyes under her glasses, then sat down on the opposite side of the desk and began sorting the documents out, looking plenty overworked.

As the sole administrator of New Vegas, I feel your pain, halo elf person. The amount of paperwork I had to deal with whenever I returned to the Strip… I wouldn't have wished it upon my worst enemy, not that I had one anymore.

Then again, I suppose it was my fault for being gone from the Strip for days at a time. Work piles up, and there were always some things that needed my approval before Yes Man could enact them.

I watched her work in frustration for some time, and I began to doubt that such a kindred spirit could possibly be hostile. I checked my weapons and, finding everything satisfactory, chose to reveal myself.

I walked over to the sofa against the wall and reclined into it, my back and the guns on my back sinking into it slightly.

Damn, that's comfy. I think I want one for the Lucky 38.

I waited for her to notice my presence, but the poor gal looked so dead set on completing her work that she didn't notice the suspicious helmeted stranger making himself at home.

I found the whole situation amusing, but I didn't have all day, and I reckoned she didn't either.

"Howdy," I said after a moment.

She yelped and jumped in her chair, and upon seeing me, stood up out of her chair, eyes wide.

"どこから来たの?!" she… asked?

I stared at her, absolutely puzzled. Was that… Japanese?

Well shit. There went my plan of using my Courier-patented [Speech] to charm her into telling me where the hell I was.

She repeated the question, and I sighed, bringing up my Pip-Boy and accessing my brain implant interface. I scrolled through until I found what I was looking for, and confirmed the option, waiting for it to take effect.

Of all the useless upgrades that came with the package deal that was the additional technology fused to my brain, I didn't expect the language processor to come in handy one day. I mean, it was a neat party trick, being able to speak Chinese on a whim. It also made talking with Raul much more entertaining now that I could understand the expletives he commonly uttered. But I can't say I ever expected having to use it for Japanese of all things.

Does that mean I'm in Japan? If that's the case, I should have map data.

The pointy-eared woman, looking very angry, chose to speak just as my brain's language processor completed the transition to Japanese.

"Who are you? How did you get in here? This building is secure!" she said exasperatedly, as she hadn't received a response to her earlier questions.

Secure? Evidently not. I fought the urge to respond with something snarky.

She glanced at the guns on my back, and back at me, her hand edging toward her own firearm. Despite sitting down, my own hand twitched, and I had to fight my own urge to reach toward my sidearm.

You don't wanna do this, sister. Even if you were, by some miracle, a faster draw than me, you aren't penetrating this many layers of ballistic fibers in the time it takes me to draw my gun. And that fancy uniform of yours doesn't look like it'd hold up all that well against .45 auto.

My mind raced toward other possibilities. If it really came down to it, I could dive behind the opposing side of that desk to use it as cover. I also was wearing my Power Fist, and I could probably count on my gear to block a few shots from a low-caliber weapon so I could have a chance to close in.

But… no matter how you look at it, I was the trespasser in this situation, even if unwillingly so. I couldn't guarantee I would have been as patient as her if someone were to, say, trespass into my office in the Lucky 38.

Thus, I chose the response that was less likely to involve bloodshed.

"Where am I?" I managed to put together in the language I had never spoken before.

She raised an eyebrow, perhaps at my unfamiliar accent. "HQ of the General Student Council. Now, answer me!" she ordered, narrowing her eyes at me.

General Student Council? Where and what the hell is that? Sounded like one of Doctor Borous's bizarre high school fantasies.

I decided that disarming the situation was more appropriate at the moment than actually attempting making sense of things.

I crossed one leg over the other and put my hands into a shrug, doing my best to appear unthreatening. "I'm just a courier. I don't know how I got in here, I literally woke up on the floor."

She seemed to relax a little at that.

"Hmm… We had been expecting for a teacher to arrive, but we weren't sure if or when they would come. And you said… a courier?" I nodded.

She put a hand to her chin, contemplating. "Courier…" she muttered.

"Did the president send you?" she asked.

President? As in, President Kimball? No, couldn't be. NCR barely had enough manpower to maintain a presence in New Vegas, what more whisk away its administrator without his knowing?

"Can't say. As far as I know, I was just minding my own business and found myself here." I frowned. There was clearly a gap in my memory, but how? It shouldn't be possible for me to forget something so easily due to all the cybernetics jammed into my head.

"Yet you found yourself here? Normally I'd doubt the authenticity of what you're saying as well as your intentions, but circumstances being what they are, I must ask…"

She looked me dead in the visor. "You wouldn't happen to be that teacher, would you?" she asked, with a tone that barely hid underlying desperation.

Teacher? Just why did they need a teacher, and so badly that this lady would dismiss the fact that I woke up in her office to ask me if I was the one they were looking for?

"What kind of teacher were you expecting?" I asked. For all I knew, she was only cordial because she was under the impression that I was this teacher. I wasn't in any hurry to correct her.

She sighed in apparent frustration. "We weren't given a name, only told that we were to expect an adult, and were given only a single identifier: a number, six."

That got my attention, a fact that did not escape her gaze.

"Does that number mean anything to you?" she asked with some degree of urgency.

Internally, I was nonplussed. That was too specific to be a coincidence, what with my spontaneous appearance here and all. That meant that whoever, or whatever, brought me here did so for a reason. And, as far as I know, sought me out specifically. Just what did they gain by bringing me here, as someone who can "make or break nations"?

My thoughts strayed to Ulysses. He was the only person I knew of that openly called me Courier Six. Could this have been his doing?

Though I couldn't discount the possibility of this being some elaborate prank by the most stoic man I know, the idea was just so outlandish that I almost laughed out loud.

"I guess you can say that it's a part of my name," I ended up saying.

Relief spread across her features, apparently taking that as an affirmative.

"Wonderful. Then, Six Sensei, we have much to do-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I never agreed to be this 'Sensei' of yours," I said, trying not to smirk at her expression of befuddlement.

"I see. I suppose you must have questions, yes?" she asked.

Sure, let's go with that.

"That's right. Who in the right mind would accept a job without knowing the details?" I asked rhetorically.

Wait. I was the one who accepted the contract to carry the Platinum Chip all that time ago. Shit. Well, not like she would have been able to call me out on my hypocrisy.

"Very well," she said, gesturing for me to continue.

There were many things on my mind at that moment, so best start with the fundamentals.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Ah, of course. Pardon my haste. I am Nanagami Rin, Chief Administrative Officer and vice president of the General Student Council. It is a pleasure to meet you, Six Sensei," she said politely as she gave a bow.

The unfamiliar moniker made me slightly uncomfortable, but I suppressed the feeling. Vice president, huh? Guess that ruled out NCR from the equation.

Though… General Student Council. If this organization had any real authority…

"Likewise," I nodded. "Tell me about the General Student Council," I asked after a brief pause.

She nodded. "The General Student Council is the central governing body that presides over the Academy City, Kivotos. We are responsible for administrative tasks above the purview of individual academies, as well as the enactment and enforcement of laws. We also oversee the organization of events and club formation, among other things."

"Well, normally that's what we do," she finished.

Kivotos, I mouthed the name. Greek for "ark", I noted. This GSC consisted of a couple of big shots, then. Law enforcement is no joke; you'd need significant firepower and manpower to successfully uphold laws, after all.

As for how well these laws were upheld relative to Kivotos' size? That remained to be seen. She did just mention a caveat.

"Normally?" I asked.

She looked as if she had fully expected the question but dreaded the prospect of answering it.

"Recently we've run into something of a crisis and, as such, were counting on the arrival of a teacher to regain control of the situation," Rin gave a disgruntled look to no one in particular, averting her eyes.

"What do you mean by a crisis?"

As Rin opened her mouth to respond, some very familiar sounds reached my ears, making me tense up. Gunshots and explosions. Didn't sound like small-time weaponry like the Powder Gangers' and their dynamite.

I stood up and strode to the window. I almost couldn't believe my eyes.

We stood several stories above ground, overlooking a shining city that easily matched, no, surpassed New Vegas in splendor, as much as it pained me to admit. Even the cities of Old America, from what I had seen in pictures and holotapes, for all their technological and architectural superiority, could not hold a candle to the myriad skyscrapers and clean urban infrastructure. Numerous flying vehicles of types I did and did not recognize busily zipped across the daytime sky. A gleaming tower loomed in the distance, its apex apparently a flagrant dismissal of the laws of physics. A pillar of light stretched from the apex of the tower to as far up as I could see. Concentric rings resembling halos stretched outward from the tower and overlapped with several other ring formations above various other buildings.

"What in the goddamn…" I finally said under my breath.

The language Rin spoke suggested that this was Japan, but Japan was bombed the hell out of like the rest of the world during the Great War. How could they have recovered and built a techno utopia while the rest of the world was still eating mutated roaches? I shook my head. No, this couldn't have been Japan.

Wherever I am, it's not any of the Wastelands out there.

As I marveled at the sight I didn't even register as Rin took a position at my side. Upon closer inspection, billows of smoke arose from sporadic locations in the city, and I tensed again as another series of explosions went off in the distance.

Rin chose that moment to speak up. "Ever since the disappearance of the General Student Council president, the GSC's control over the city has wavered. Vital processes have been shutting down one after another in nearly every district, and, as you can see, several groups have been taking advantage of the chaos to sow even more chaos. Our forces are doing what we can, but it's an uphill battle until we regain administrative control," she said grimly.

The president disappeared? That was the cause of all this chaos?

It seemed highly inefficient, investing all authority into a single person without any contingencies. Hell, even Caesar knew the value in establishing a line of succession.

"What do you need me to do?" I asked almost immediately, sweeping aside my concerns pertaining to governance.

"You have no more questions? You'll accept your new position?" she asked, somewhat surprised at the speed of my apparent change of heart.

"I'm iffy on the whole Sensei business, but I can't let a situation like this continue if I can help it. The questions can wait," I said, eyeing the carnage. I didn't know who lived in this city, but nevertheless I hoped the loss of life wasn't too great. Killing armed combatants was one thing and I'd long come to accept that, but if these were innocent lives…

Rin smiled slightly at that and beckoned for me to follow her. "This way, then," she said, walking through the automated door out of the office.

Guess I really am just a bleeding heart. You were right, Veronica.

And so I followed Rin through the automated door, heading toward yet another conflict I had absolutely no personal stake in.