Author's Note:
Chapter 10 - A walk in the Woods
Arielle exhaled a sigh of relief as the outer city of Vale came into view along with the eastern coastline she'd been told about, a gorgeous cerulean spectacle that easily outdid the one time she'd seen the Californian coast.
Maybe it was the skyline of undestroyed Old World monuments, or maybe it was just that she'd barely remembered the coast to begin with.
It had been a pleasantly dull few days walking alone, she'd set off after a couple nights of rest and maintenance where she used a few of her Denarius to buy fresh supplies, because silver and gold were universal currencies the people didn't care who was printed on the coins.
She stayed out of her Power Armour for the journey as the damage required a finer touch than she felt comfortable doing without her own resources and more time, it was always too time consuming to repair actual damages to it anyway.
So for now she walked in the altered Desert Ranger outfit with her beloved Sequoia and Trench Shotgun at her hip and over her shoulder respectively.
Something she'd noticed as she got closer to the city was how much faster and stronger the connection to the Vytal-Net became to a point of near instantaneous access to any and all questions she had for it where before she was waiting nearly two minutes between searches.
This filled out a great deal of her time looking up things she'd heard about until then- along with a handful more attempts to fire the Transportalponder MK III finding it to be inert still.
Dust, she had learned, filled the role of many things in the world from supplying electricity, heat and generally was referred to as a 'Propellant' whatever that actually meant within the context though she supposed in the literal sense Dust was a solid, liquid and gas or powder? She wasn't entirely sure of the final stage the compound took as a lot of the information she found conflicted and seemed to be some sort of secrecy thing to keep people from knowing all the ways about it.
In any case Arielle wondered about how much money had been in that mine she cleared with all the unmined Dust crystals, not that she had the means or understanding to collect any of them at the time without blowing herself up.
Huntsman was another thing she'd started learning about, children who sold themselves in becoming soldiers to fight against the Grimm. Of course the children would grow up, but they were child soldiers fighting against monsters that ruined entire towns with the bare minimum input from bandits or whatever degenerates hated their fellow men enough to attack them.
It wasn't right.
Another thing was the monopoly on the Huntsman protecting people and one super conglomerate in the Kingdom of Atlas that owned a great deal of the companies and most importantly was monopolizing the Dust trade and mining operations.
The Schnee Dust Company, she was fairly certain schnee was german for white which had begun to bare on her that many of the names she'd read or seen in her searches were colour related or evoked colours in some way- which tied to a piece of history she learned a Great War and 'Colour Revolution' that took place in the not so distant past at this point.
Apparently the Faunus she'd met were a part of some oppressed class due to the events of the Wars and had an ongoing hostility with many of the officials of the Kingdoms.
It was a lot of information to take in, but it further cemented the fact that this wasn't Europe or Australia like she could have originally wished.
[1]
The wide paved streets of tall brick buildings full of homes and businesses did everything to inspire awe and intrigue in Arielle as she slowly made her way through the mid-afternoon streets of the bustling outer city while she headed to the enormous walls that surrounded the Capital proper.
The walls were nearly seventy feet tall from what she could see, she had been able to see them from almost all the way around the outer city.
Despite the defense of the walls themselves it seemed the rest of the city was left to make do for itself as she hadn't met any form of identification or vetting process that she had in literally any other place in the Wasteland. She wasn't exactly expecting The Strip levels of security but at least someone to stop her to get a name and ask why she was in the city- but there hadn't been anything, it was lazy and uncaring.
'Aren't these people under threat of monsters that are attracted to emotions? How are they supposed to take care of their own if there isn't even anyone to keep bad things from happening?'
How rampant was crime? Who was policing it? What-
"Woah watch out!" A voice yelled barely reaching Arielle as she was lost in thoughts narrowly catching her in time to dodge out of the way.
A blur of red and black zoomed past her so fast she almost hadn't been able to tell it was a person if not for the shortly followed golden mane of hair and short apology as a girl sprinted by her after the red blur.
"Sorry 'bout that! Ruby, wait up!" The golden haired girl yelled as she gave chase down the path while the red blur disappeared down an alley.
The Courier heard people around her that had almost been knocked down complain about 'Huntsmen Kids' which gave her something to chew on having seen two victims of the child soldier program- even if she didn't exactly make out what the first one looked like. The second dressed fairly scantily to her eye, low cut top and pants excusing everyone from stealing a glance at her chest and legs from every angle, the girl also hadn't had any visible scarring and otherwise looked like what she imagined a pre-war teenager was supposed to look like- not at all like a soldier.
'Was it Aura?' She wondered, the word coming to mind as she remembered being asked if she had it. 'Was it some kind of protective layer?'
Another question for the Vytal-Net, or… maybe she ought to start digging for information elsewhere?
She would want work to give her something to do while she learned more about how things worked anyway, so that left looking for a place that wanted mercenaries in the city.
This changing her initial direction as to what she was going to do once in the city, for now she still headed to the large gateway of the city proper and hoped they had better security than the outer city.
It was a question she hoped the answer was yes to, not to mention she hoped that the trade part of the port was within the walls and not outside them as well otherwise the Kingdom- or country or whatever Vale was meant to be was asking for trouble.
"Name, Occupation, reason for being here and your Huntsman ID." A guardsman asked when Arielle finally got through a half hour long line of people trying to get into the walls.
She felt like she was being faced with the walls of Jericho or the Antonine Walls as she looked up at them. The man in front of her wasn't very impressed with her attitude, his bored green eyes wishing to be anywhere but stood there in the navy blue outfit that had a grey emblem of a pair of axes embroidered on the right breast.
Figuring she ought to stick to the name she'd been using, the Courier offered the same she'd given the Viviane people.
"Rhea, Courier and work- I don't have an ID." The man gave her an irritated look.
Cursing under his breath the man rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Fucking frontier"
"Alright well I can't let you in till you've got one- there's a place down Vimana street on 7th where you can get one made, it's got a sign out the front. If that's all please get out of the line." The man dismissed her.
Shrugging, she turned away from the checkpoint and was at least glad there was better security than the rest of the outer city she'd seen.
Taking the man's word she looked for this Vimana street which wasn't very difficult and just became a matter of finding the sign she was supposed to know was the building, she probably could have asked for better directions but her Pip-Boy had been mapping where she walked anyway so it wasn't too hard.
It took her about an hour to find the right place having thought she missed it twice and having to double back finally realising which building was the one she wanted, the 'Office of Immigration and Faunus Rights' was a tiny maybe seven or eight foot wide building sandwiched tightly between two other businesses, its sign was faded and looked about ready to fall off- not to mention the window the looked into the business from the street was blocked over by wood or something similar from the inside.
Arching a brow Arielle opened the door and a bell chimed as she stepped in.
"W-welcome! Sorry about the mess we're- we're moving!" A middle aged Faunus woman with a comely and gentle look about her stared back as the Courier stepped into the business.
The woman was dressed in a white blouse with a pair of high waist dark blue trousers, giving a somewhat casual edge to her look.
"I was told I could get an ID here?" She asked, cutting straight to the point.
"Oh! W-why of course! W-come here, take a seat and we can get started right away!" The woman's nervousness failed to mar her inviting presence.
Kind and natural as it seemed, something about it put Arielle on edge though it might have just been how small the building was.
There was only enough room for a couch under the window by the door, a separating panel in the middle of the room with a desk and a pair of chairs facing it on the otherside. Behind the desk being some cabinets and a large machine she wasn't familiar with- although there was a door behind the desk as well, though she obviously wasn't sure where it led.
Everything had a very homey if disorganised nature to it, though a far sight better than any blown out Old World home that she'd traipsed through for food.
Taking a seat across from the soft-pink haired woman with tall pointed Canine ears who sat back in her chair at the desk she found the chair was fairly comfortable, almost as much as those in the Lucky 38.
"I don't mean to be rude, but I'll have to ask you to remove your helmet for our interview." The pale woman's demeanor lost all the nervousness the moment her opal blue eyes met the rusty-bronze of the Courier.
"It's fine, I'm not that attached to it." The Courier shrugged as she set the riot helmet down on the chair next to hers.
She found however eye eyes couldn't take themselves away from the colour of her hair, she hadn't really thought about it much before sitting down but the puce like colour was so unnatural and yet it seemed all natural to the woman across from Arielle- though she was one to talk the bloody red colour her hair became at its ends was as unnatural as it got.
"My! You're far younger than you sounded!" The woman said in surprise upon seeing her face. "I- uh goodness I'm sorry for that-" She laughed awkwardly. "-I'm getting all befuddled, my name is Nina Liška, it's great to make your acquaintance-"
"Arielle, no family name." The Courier replied though she thought about calling herself Caesar jokingly implying her status as successor to the man himself.
She was content to use her real name here though, it would be nice to be herself again leaving behind her many names for when she found less reputable work.
"That's a wonderful name," Nina said with a warm smile before she reached into a drawer on the desk and retrieved a small chip of some kind and slotted it into something on the desk and a large translucent screen came out of the wood with a matching keyboard.
The design of the terminal throwing the Courier for a loop immediately.
"Sorry I just need to make sure I record the details we discuss… ah there, done!" The canine eared woman said with a little cheer before the screen shifted to the side of the desk just out of the way so she could still type on it as they spoke.
"How do we go about this exactly?" Arielle asked hoping that things weren't as simple as just saying who she was and where she was from.
"Hm? Oh it's fairly straightforward if you were born in a frontier town we take their birth certificate and use it as a proof of identity, if you don't have one due to some unfortunate event then we make a new one that will take roughly a month or two to be verified in Vales system after which you'll be given an ID but things can be sped along if there's a way to call anyone from your town or village that can confirm you were born and raised there."
"Okay, sounds simple enough." It wasn't exactly bullet proof or anything, but Arielle figured if what happened to Viviane was common enough they couldn't deny people getting IDs just because the town they came from was now a ruin.
If anything she supposed it was better to make an entry that identified someone in their system so they could match their face at a later date if it turned out they were lying or otherwise.
At the end of the day she doubted she could come up with anything better anyway, there had been a lot of trust put in your fellow Wastelander to be telling the truth or at least enough of it whenever she interacted with them that she guessed was similar here. You just hope they're being truthful, if not they had photos of people so they couldn't get away with it.
"If you're ready then we can begin right away Arielle," Nina looked at her expectantly and the Courier nodded her head. "Right so you have no surname, is that because you're an orphan or was it a theme in your home town?"
"Theme?" She asked back reflexively, confused by the idea.
"Yes, a lot of smaller frontier settlements take on a theme for their family names to provide a consistent mark as to who they are to avoid everyone taking the name of the settlement itself as was common for quite some time."
"I see…" She didn't, but Arielle realised she likely have to come up with a more concrete backstory that still held true to her own to avoid forgetting it. "I am an orphan anyway, I was kidnapped by bandits when I was a younger."
The Faunus woman's face dropped, gentle eyes dipping as a knowing sombreness took hold of the older woman.
"I'm sorry to hear that, do you know how old you are or was that lost when you were taken?" While the Courier appreciated the sentiment the woman offered, she didn't want pity for what happened to her.
"Almost twenty? I was with them for about a decade and I've spent the last few years travelling on my own after I escaped." It was close enough to the truth in any case, she knew her age, but the woman figured she was young so she gave a number she assumed the woman would believe.
Since there weren't very many questions she could answer to begin with it didn't take long for them to finish at the end of which the woman gave Arielle a number for her to contact her on through the Scroll should she need any help around outer Vale while she waited to hear back about her ID.
With that in mind it would be a month at best before the Courier could legally enter the city proper, because of this she headed out to find someone who dealt in information so she could find some work until then.
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading, I hope you have a good rest of your day.