Author's Note:
Chapter 6: Stay and Drown part 1
Arielle watched the rolling plain beneath the base of the mountain with a yawn escaping her.
It had been two hours since she left the other hunters of the group and she'd seen nothing, well nothing alive that weren't just birds or insects.
Though there also weren't any rivers around that the town could turn into hatcheries or just fish from so she was limited for options on helping them beyond making things clear enough for them to get their farms back up and flowing.
She sat quietly with her suppressed PTR-91 in her lap and binoculars in hand as she looked through them at the landscape, she had no idea why they were hunting in the afternoon instead of later in the day- she'd honestly been surprised she managed to get anything when she went out in the morning before.
Giving up on spotting anything she set the binoculars down and pulled her helmet back on.
Her only disappointment about the ranger armour was the lack of extra functions like a zoom in feature, it had a black and white thermal vision and night vision but they were sparingly useful outside of work she did what just involved killing.
The thermal being especially useful for that, but she hadn't done any work like that since she returned to the Big Empty.
Her finger itched at the idea of shooting NCR officials, it had been a long time since she helped put a bullet through Kimballs head.
A sick and twisted part of her drew her lips into a wide grin at the memory, she had used the Hecate II, it being the gun's first kill.
The Stealth-Boy get away might just have been the most thrilling part of the whole assassination, she didn't enjoy the death itself however.
Maybe it was the chaos? Or even Khaos depending on the situation.
She could remember Doc Mitchell telling her she might have a few screws loose because of which part of head caught the bullet, but a lot of those first few weeks were a bit hard to piece together- especially after she woke up.
It was hard to call herself and the woman who woke up from the bullet quite the same person, but she didn't really know where the line for the Lucky Courier ended and the line for Arielle started.
To that effect she didn't know how much Rhea affected her, were they names or were they personalities? How much of her was real?
The brain in the jar spoke with a voice not of her own.
"Tch" Arielle struck her thigh breaking the chain of thoughts.
'I'm not going to think myself into a hole again, let's just bag some non-irradiated animals and get this over with.' Sneering at herself she clutched the rifle tighter and decided to take a more active approach standing up.
As it turned out the active approach was the right way to go about things as The Courier ended up finding three Does and a Buck, with the assistance of V.A.T.S she put down the Buck and two of the Doe with the third one getting away though that was by intent.
There wasn't much reason to take more than she needed, especially considering she'd managed to get the 'ideal world' amount Alban had mentioned.
Although she thought about it for a while she decided against butchering it in the field because it would take too long and among other reasons wouldn't want to put it in her Pip-Boy because of all the blood and juices that would spill everywhere when she pulled it out later.
For now she was just glad this wasn't all hers seeing as she'd ended up passing out more than half the meat on her own Deer to everyone she could earlier in the week. She'd massively underestimated the amount of meat one animal could provide her and realised she had nowhere to store most of it either so it got handed out to the families on the street she'd taken residence on.
The townspeople had been very appreciative at least.
The words of a friend coming to her at the thought. 'You've been a good neighbour to us, we all go through periods of darkness. In such times we can turn to the Lord, but it's good to have friends.'
Though she wasn't sure if that was quite right it had been a long time since she'd spoken with him let alone had the conversation.
In the end she held the same sentiment either way, she wanted to be the friend they could rely on- or was it another reason?
'Why am I doing this?' The tall woman stopped dead in her tracks, the weight of the Buck on her shoulders almost completely free from her mind as she dropped the two Doe.
'I need to help them'
'I need to ingratiate myself'
'I need to indebt them'
'I want to control them?'
'Who am I turning them into soldiers for?'
A deep frown set into her face beneath the gas mask of her helmet.
'I want to help them'
'Ingratiating myself is a side effect'
'There isn't anything they're indebted to me for, it's just work.'
'Something's not right…' Her head began to ache.
Letting out a frustrated noise she knelt back down and picked up the carcasses and hauled them off toward the meeting point unable to shake the uncertainty following her every step nor the headache of confusion about her actions.
[1]
The surprise and good mood of the Hunters was short lived as they arrived back to the walls and gate of Viviane, smoke billowed up out of the town and fire raged as it consumed a large portion of the wall and several buildings.
Dropping the animal's tension filled Arielle as she looked at the scene stoically taking the torched wall and dead guardsmen into account as she unslung the PTR-91 and flicked the selector switch next to the pistol grip.
"Bandits or Grimm?" She questioned getting the attention of her compatriots.
"Bandits" Orion was quick to reply as he dropped his own catch and drew his bow, setting an arrow ready to knock it at a given moment.
"Anything I should know?"
"If they're well off they'll have Dust, but anyone attacking Vivi probably isn't doing that hot." The man answered.
'Fuck I don't have time to change' She cursed when she realised she couldn't waste time changing into something a little more bullet proof.
"I'm going, either come or don't." She stated flatly and ran toward the half blown down gate noticing how it looked like someone had placed a shaped charge of some kind on it.
'Fuckers came to the wrong town' Swapping the half spent magazine out for a full one she double checked there was a round in the chamber and started Hunting.
Running full speed through the streets she came across death, murdered townsfolk pinned to the ground or buildings by makeshift and repurposed metal blades with their cold expressions tightening the grip she had on the rifle.
Turning a corner as he heard shuffling around a corner she saw a man carrying an appliance under his left arm and a gun carelessly in the other, his description failed to even register in her mind as she whipped the rifle up and squeezed the trigger-
Thwip!
The suppressed sound of the bullet was overshadowed by a confused scream as the wet sound of his grey matter painting the wall behind him and the thump of his corpse hitting the ground barely fished before she fired off another two shots-
"Ahhh!" A cry left the lips of a faunus man as a bullet ripped the floppy dog like ear from his skull zipping over and cracking as it hit the stone of a building behind him.
Next to the faunus another man dropped to his knees onto his face as blood pooled under him, a round claiming his heart.
"W-w-what the fuc-" Barely able to respond the injured Faunus went silent when a round of God's Calibre ripped the side of his head in half rocking his body back collapsing it to the ground.
Fluidly stowing her handgun the Courier felt her anger rise as she looked at the men she'd killed, they wore fairly uninteresting clothing with a consistent factor of boiled leather or metal armour across their bodies.
What stood out was that they all had tattoos on their necks depicting a Snake biting a rat.
'Gang of degenerates' She spat in disgust as her fingers flexed with anticipation around the foregrip of the rifle.
"Azazel pour Wine- what the fuck happened?!" A voice cursed from behind her.
The name of the Angel of Death in the town's religion being invoked went over the Couriers head as she replied in a monotone voice.
"Degenerates, ones which need to be cleansed from the Earth." With little indication more she pushed further into the town gunning down four more men before reaching the town centre.
Green lenses glinted in the afternoon - early evening light as she found a handful of familiar dead faces, the children of the Shalott and a few others staring fish eyed into the air.
Growling a low guttural tone the Courier quickly swapped her rifle out for her Calico M960A and the Blade of Minerva, taking the sword in her right hand and the SMG in her left, racking the bolt and stalking past the corpses.
Not far from them she saw and heard grumbling and sniffing, a tall wolf Grimm feeding? On the remains of a bandit.
"Tch." Lead sprayed out of her gun ripping through the monster and the street around it as 9mm shredded it at impossible speeds.
Black goo and bone fragments went everywhere, not even hitting the ground before she moved on heading toward the church where she heard screams and yelling, then gunshots as she came across a group outside the holy building.
At the head of the group was a pair, a man and a woman, they had slick black hair, fair skin and yellow eyes with slit pupils. They were both slender and unassuming, but it didn't take a genius to figure they likely had something the rest of the group didn't, considering the impression the Courier got of the pair from the way their followers scurried like rats out of the way when they turned around.
Including the leaders, there were twelve people in front of her that had been yelling into the Church.
She had purposefully scuffed the ground to get their attention.
"The shit you want?" The woman asked glaring at the lenses of the ranger helmet.
Wordlessly the Lord of Death, swapped the strange magazine of her sub-machine gun for another- instead of the standard 50 rounds, this new one was larger holding 100.
"You lookn' to fucking die bitch?! This is our score- these pissants didn't pay up! We told em' we'd be back if they didn't give us our protection lien- why don't you trot along now and go back to whatever pit you crawled out o-"
The Couriers voice dropped low as she cut the male twin off.
"Your ride's over Mutie- Time to Die." Raining a hail of bullets she dashed forward watching fear and surprise take the Bandits faces, well on those whose faces weren't ripped apart.
The audible crack of The Courtiers knuckles as she clenched the Blade of Minerva with all her violent temper was almost lost amongst the cacophony of screaming as she laid waste to those in front of her.
Its purpose fulfilled she tossed the Calico and drew A Light Shining in Darkness in a fluid motion as her sword carved up through the shoulder of a man and wrenched down through the throat of another, hollow points sung as they dropped a man trying to tackle her backwards only causing the attacker to slump dead.
"What the-"
"YOU FUCKING WHORE" The twins raised strange mechanical weapons.
The male twin's looked like an AR-18 with butt-stock that turned into axe head as he swung it around and fired off several bullets that missed whizzing right by the Couriers head before he ran at her.
The female twin had a shield that deployed a chain-link and more importantly blades from the dome of its design as she drew a revolver from its back. She stood afar as her brother rushed to the Courier.
Arrows and bullets flew in from behind the Courier as she met the axe-AR wielding Faunus half way and used V.A.T.S to slow down her perception of time to a crawl, she aimed and fired off three hollow-points into the unprotected knees and gut of the man-
"NOOOO!" The woman screamed as her brother fell to his knees, his head was torn from his shoulders as the Blade of Minerva sundered it glistening crimson in the sunset.
Quick loading the handgun she leapt out of the way as the woman threw the shield at her, an engine revving as she did so that made the blades roar to life spinning around the shield as it went past the Courier before quickly redirecting her way.
The Courier hissed as the tip from one of the blades lacerated the back of her left calf.
Her pain threshold might have been much higher than most peoples but it didn't stop her reflexively reacting to the pain even as her implant began slowly, if poorly, mending the wound as she kept moving firing off two more shots that caught the heart and lungs of another thug lunging after her as he crawled up from under the bodies.
"Stay still and fucking die already!" The Faunus yelled, wrenching the chain back, whipping the shield around and swinging it above her head like a lasso while firing off two shots from her revolver.
Rolling to the side of the bullets the Courier noticed how much slower they were than her own, she shouldn't have been able to avoid them but they were perceptible to the naked eye.
It also allowed her to rush the woman firing her handgun, hollow points ripped through flesh and bone as a scream echoed out, the bullets tore through the bandits left knee and her right shoulder dropping her to the ground just in time for the tall Courier to descend on her failing form with the Blade of Minerva.
The sword sunk deep into the collar of the bandit going down into her chest piercing her heart as the Courier ripped it out before kicking the body aside and turning to the other bodies that dropped momentarily after that- hit by bullets and arrows.
"Guess we know how you took down those Grimm." Orion commented as he stepped toward the carnage, disgust in his eyes as he looked at the dead bandits and his fellow townsfolk. "Kristina's got a lot to answer for." he spat kicking the decapitated head of the bandit.
"Let's check that no stray shots hit anyone" The Courier said as she moved to do so heading straight to the large doors of the church and opening them.
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading the chapter, I hope you have a good rest of your day.