Author's Note:
Chapter 2: In the Head
An ocean of grass, vibrant and blooming with life stretched on before the Courier.
She blinked with her mouth agape locked in a stunned silence.
"Am I dead?" The question lingered in the air.
Looking to her hand she was still holding the Transportalponder Mk. III so she doubted as much, the thing was untested so it wasn't like there weren't kinks to work out, but this seemed like more than just a kink in a rail.
Another thing she noted beyond the flourishing flora of wherever she'd ended up was that it was midday and there were any animal sounds, not even crows or hawks making a fuss in the distance like she was used to.
It took some time to recover mentally from the whole ordeal especially when she attempted to fire the Transportalponder Mk. III and it just made a sad whirring noise.
Grumbling about faulty tech and Caesar being right she sighed and put the tool away before retrieving her preferred weapon from the Pip-Boy and setting off, said weapon being Elijah's advanced LAER as it was one of the few guns she didn't need to alter to use in Power Armour making it ideal for when she was wearing it.
Leveling the rifle at her surroundings as she walked, cautious footsteps thunking loudly as she moved.
The more she saw on her walk through the woods she'd appeared before the more she questioned whether or not this place was an Eden like Zion had been, a refuge almost untouched by man and radiation.
The Courier also found herself bored with the radio silence and looked through her Pip-Boy's inventory for the holotapes she had made with random assortments of music she found and got from her favourite Disk Jockey. Pulling out the orange disc she opened the player on the wrist device and pressed play to gently fill in the sound between the clunking and thunking of the armour.
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down~" Bobbing her head to the tune that played inside her helmet Arielle wondered what else this place had in store for her.
Humming along to the song the Daughter of Minerva soon noticed she was being followed by something.
Now, she would be the first to admit she wasn't especially observant and most of her ability in the matter came down to being an Early Bird, although this also contributed along with being a Solar Powered woman to her exceptional strength and such as well, but that lessened her point.
Anyway she was being stalked, the heads-up display in the Power Armour showed a few red dots in its scanner, they were following just behind her through the thin darkness cast by the canopy of the trees.
Running forward she watched the dots give chase as she hurtled through the brush cutting a path for nearly a hundred metres before turning on a dime and whipping the LAER around and pulling the trigger-
Blue arcing energy lanced across a short distance driving straight into the white and red striped bone face of a black furred monster that resembled a wolf in the most sparing way possible, especially after the energy turned its head to mush and the monster ploughed into the ground dead as three more lunged at her.
Being one of the Luckiest women alive reared its head as she wildly fired off five shots and four of them connected, killing the monsters with ease as they melted into goo leaving behind only white bone masks that resembled lupine skulls.
Frowning, she inspected the masks finding they were actually made from bone but also that their durability was very high taking quite a lot of pressure from the Power Armour's grip to break one.
Though she'd only really had a short moment to inspect them as they attacked her before they were vaporised she hazard a guess they were about eight to ten feet long not including the tail standing six feet tall at the shoulder.
Very large to say the least, she certainly didn't want to tangle with them physically-
'I doubt what the Praetorians taught me would be much use against these things.' She thought while sucking in a breath as adrenaline fled her system.
Unsure what to make of them Arielle wondered if she'd been sent to Europe or Australia or something like that as she picked up the last bone mask and stored it in her Pip-Boy, the device logging it as [?] which left a lot of questions to be answered as she continued onward again.
[1]
"I've a puppet, a pauper, a pirate and a King-" The Courier sang along as she broke free of the forest to a large overlook that showed a rolling plain with a sparse splatter of trees around and a large mountain in the background that rocketed into the clouds like some kind of god. The mountain had the sort of presence the Ivory tower of Vegas wished it had, however most pressing to her-
"A settlement!" She just about shouted, her lips drawing into a big smile.
It had been nearly four hours since she arrived and seen nothing but forest and some more of those black monsters with bone masks, it had started to wear down on her that she might have ended up somewhere unsettled or at least mostly empty of life if the creatures were anything to go by.
Still very little wild life as well, making her conclude the monsters had crushed much of the ecosystem in the forest or at least driven most of it away.
The settlement itself looked fairly well kept, a wooden palisade encompassed it with metal plating on the exterior presumably to prevent creatures from climbing over, the buildings resembled old colonial houses she'd seen in the Capital what felt like a century ago at this point.
Her memories of that time were hazy at best, being shot in the head pretty much ruined any chance at remembering what happened back then- but it couldn't scrub certain things from her memory.
In any case she descended the slope and found her way to the road leading up to the town, approaching it slowly and making it clear she had no intent to start trouble having dematerialised her LAER. She also turned the music she'd been listening to off as she arrived before the gates of the town where she stopped at the sound of someone calling out to her.
"Stop! What brings you to Viviane? You a Huntsman?" A man stood on the palisade looking down at her, his face was lightly tanned and slightly gaunt with a thick dark beard on his chin and bright green eyes that watched her cautiously.
The Courier figured there was probably a lack of food going by the fact that there weren't farms outside the walls, even Vegas had farms, but this place didn't seem to have any obvious food source from where she was.
'Huntsman?'
"Courier?" She replied to a strained confused look from the man.
"Bit heavily armoured for a Courier ain't you?" He asked back.
"Keeps me safe." Arielle shrugged. "I do other work too if you'd appreciate something killed or cleared out before trusting me?"
"Hmm…" The green eyed man hummed for a moment. "Well we do got a Grimm problem… alright OPEN UP THE GATE!"
A second later the large metal plated doors creaked as they were pulled open and she walked through the gatehouse into the walls finding cobblestone streets and the man from the top of the wall descending a stair set to her.
He was dressed in blue jeans, a black shirt and boots with some kind of composite armour over his chest, forearms, legs and a helmet that was strapped to his hip. On his back a rifle of some kind she didn't recognise as well as a short sword on his right side.
"Sebastian Gaspar, just call me Sebas." The man introduced himself and Arielle stuttered a moment unsure how to introduce herself.
"A- Rhea." She said, fumbling her words.
"Aria?"
"Rhea, sorry it's been a while since I spoke to someone." She brushed her flub off and the man nodded his head.
"So what'd you have to do to get armour like that? Rob Atlas?" He asked, staring up at her.
The suit gave her just over another foot in height making her almost eight feet tall in it.
"Something like that, so what was this problem I can help with?" She asked moving the conversation along and the man nodded motioning for her to follow him further into the town as he spoke.
"We've been getting attacked by a lot of Grimm recently, the deaths and grief have been putting us in a loop of attack-grieve the dead-attack- we lost our farms to insects a few years ago so we've been on our last legs for a while know and with no money coming in from crops-"
"You can't pay for the help you really need?" Arielle finished for him and he nodded.
"Tale as old as the Brothers themselves." Sebastian sighed, shaking his head. "We'll get you caught up with Kristina and see how she feels about this."
Walking through the streets to a large town square Arielle was impressed with the construction of it and the church directly across from the road they approached from, a large fountain sat in the middle depicting a man holding a sword by the pommel as he drove it down into a large snake head- at first she thought the head was a rock like a sword in the stone sort of deal, but instead she realised it was a giant snake skull and not just one carved from stone-
It was real.
'What in the goddamn…?' She looked on in intrigued and confused horror as she realised this was going to be a very different kind of rodeo.
Her awe of the statue didn't go unnoticed as an older woman commented somehow noting it despite her armoured appearance, something she would owe to experience reading peoples body language.
"Gives you hope don't it?" The woman's voice was husky and strained.
Turning to the source of the voice Arielle found a fifty to sixty something woman with greying dark brown hair, blue eyes and fair skin dressed up in a tan coat, grey shirt and brown pants. She used a cane that had a distinctly sword-like hilt to it with a trigger on the guard.
"Yeah, I guess it does." She replied somewhat unsure of what to say, it wasn't quite the statues of Caesar that were on the Strip when she left- but this was so much more at the same time.
"What're they feedn' you to get that big girlie?" The older woman asked with an arched brow and a grin.
"Bighorners and radroaches" The Courier joked back but just got a confused laugh from the woman before she was introduced by Sebas.
"Kristina this is Rhea, said she'd give us a hand with the Grimm in exchange for a place to stay a while." The man explained, the middle aged woman nodded her head looking at the armoured figure.
Arielle kept her mouth shut, a place to stay while she figured out where she was didn't sound too bad.
"Well if you reckon that armours good for anything other than making thunderstorms seem quiet then go ahead, we'll find some place you can loiter." The blue eyed woman replied with a dismissive shrug. "Can't really tell you not to deal with them, we'd be in your debt either way not much we can do about it on our own."
Arielle hummed understanding where the woman was coming from, they didn't have any money from crops, didn't have enough food to feed people to keep them happy in spite of the deaths going on from attacks so it all just came down to 'yea sure go kill yourself, whatever works'.
Maybe not quite as apathetic as that, but it was the truth of the matter.
"Sounds good to me, just tell me where they are and what I'm dealing with- exterminations always go a lot faster when you have an idea of what to use."
"You're pretty quick to fight Grimm for a Courier." Sebastian commented with a raised brow causing Arielle to just shrug.
"I said I did other work too, deliveries is just the main work I handle."
[2]
About half an hour to-forty-five minutes after setting off from Viviane the Courier found her way to the supposed Grimm Nest, she still wasn't sure what a Grimm was but she gave an educated guess they were the bone mask monsters.
She wasn't sure how they were attracted to emotions, but that sounded just like the kind of painfully cunty thing the Think Tank would think to do to an animal's senses.
The Courier was a little concerned about her performance with it being so late in the day now, but had faith in the armour and LAER to do the work, paraphrasing what a friend of hers once said-
'Killing is a chore like any other.' Reloading the weapon in her hands she rolled her shoulders and stalked toward where she'd been told the Grimm congregated.
There were apparently large tunnels running under the area from some kind of mine that they had taken over, She was also warned about something called a Naga in it, but that's what the demolition charges were for- it was a Mine after all.
The quarry the mine was in wasn't anything like the ones she'd visited before aside from large machinery and flimsy looking buildings that looked like they'd fall over in a gentle breeze. Around the site was a tall metal wall with a gate that had its doors smashed right off the hinges lying flat on the ground inside where she could see big trucks for hauling out materials stamped with caution stickers and warning logos, making it clear what they were for even with shattered fronts dipped into the earth or steel ripped outward from some creature trying to get in.
Rails ran around the yard and buildings leading into them and then out over into the entry of the Mine that tunneled into the side of the base of the mountain.
First Arielle did her diligence and began looking around the vehicles and buildings for any bodies that she could bring somewhere to make them easier for transporting back to Viviane or burying them here, instead of bodies she found rotted almost fleshless incomplete skeletons with chewing marks on the remaining bones causing her to frown letting out a breath as she kneeled down to see if there was anything identifiable lying about.
But she found nothing but dust and echoes.
Even the electronics- weird as they were- that she found were destroyed like someone had smashed them making her wonder if the place had been attacked before these Grimm things showed up.
'A rival company maybe?' She wondered with a shake of her head.
With nothing to take away from her search she saw that the sun was setting by the time she finished rummaging through the buildings and ended her day by setting up a handful of landmines outside the Mine entrance after a tripwire with a plasma grenade in it.
Then she changed out of her Remnants Power Armour and went to sleep in a cordoned off part of an administrator building, like always she slept with her Winchester 1897 in her lap loaded and ready.
Author's Note:
So there were a few things I didn't go over because of how much I covered in the first chapters notes and I didn't want to make too large of one.
Firstly, was Arielles height, she is a very tall woman. I don't have a particularly interesting story for this, I had a mod that lets you select the height of your character when I was doing a playthrough for her and I literally rolled a dice and it landed her on being 6'8"/203cm, so if your into knowing how tall characters are there you have it.
Secondly, her age is fairly vague at this point. Initially I envisioned her as being in her late twenties-early thirties, but I'm considering making her younger depending on how I want certain arcs to play out.
Thirdly, I realised after the fact that what I said about the Pip-Boy just described how it worked in the game so it was a redundant statement to make but oh well. As well I altered the MP7 she had in the first chapter to be a Calico m960, the chapter should reflect this change now and going forward she'll be using it.
Fourth, while her preferred armour is the Remnants power armour our dear Courier will probably keep it in storage for a fair amount of the story once she's settled in. There isn't much subtlety in a hulking suit of armour after all- unless your a Spartan in Halo I guess.
Fifth, The Lion on her armour, I don't want to explain too many things but this felt like one that might go over some peoples heads, but the Lion she has as her Legion symbol is the lion of the Legio XIII Gemina who crossed the Rubicon with Julius Caesar. Which is part of her veneration for her participation in subjugation of the Mojave and onwards.
Sixth, all the chapters will be either titled after songs, their lyrics or references to them such as this and the first chapter being clearly named after the Dean Martin song, the songs won't be limited to those in that appear in the Fallout radios though.
Lastly-
Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and if things haven't been good I hope they get better for you.