War. War never changes.

The methods by which war was waged have changed over the course of human history, but it was always waged for the same reasons. Whether for religion, freedom, anger, land, surivival, fear, or some other reason, the reasons behind war were

never new. While the reasons for the Great War in 2077 were lost, one of these factors pushed the world over the edge and brought about the Nuclear Holocaust that wiped the Earth of most of its life.

However, the species of Earth are both resilient and stubborn. From the ashes of the destruction, new species began to emerge from pre-war equivalents. The Yao Guai, Radscopions, and Deathclaws being among the many that threatened the

remnants of humanity. Humanity itself split into large numbers of different species, each attempting to adapt to the world they now found themselves. However, despite the vast changes, there were several patterns.

Governments began to rise from the ashes of the old world, many bringing back ideals from the old world. Not always were these from the same point. Twenty-nine years ago, the Second Battle of the Hoover Dam occured between several

factions, each holding a thought from the old world. When the dust cleared, the New California Republic was the victorious survivor. Most were able to trace this back to the actions of a single man, Mojave Delivery Service Courier Six.

This lone warrior had shaped the Wasteland in the days leading up to the conflict by assassinating major leaders, gathering allies, and even launching lost nuclear weapons to annihilate the power base of one of the foes of the side he had chosen.

After his contributions, he was given the status of one of the NCR's rangers and served intermittedly for twenty-seven years. At the end of his service, the man simply disappeared from the wastelands. No one is clear what precisely what happened, with exception to a select few.

These individuals were the members of the Think Tank of the Big MT facility. The Courier had been brought back by an emergency function on the Transportalponder that activated when his reinforced heart had failed during a fight against a set of

Deathclaws. The lobotomites had taken him to the Auto-Doc and had the organ replaced, but when revived, the Courier decided not to return to the Rangers and to remain at the Big MT.

However, despite his effective retirement, there was still one final trip for this aged warrior to undertake...

The Courier awoke within the Big MT facility late in the day. In prior years he could be found at the facility, he would have been awake long ago, possibly not having actually fallen asleep the previous day. Now, all of the wounds that he had suffered through the long years had brought him to the current state of suffering jolts of pain across his entire body as he rose from the bed. It settled into a dull throbbing as he staggered over to the Sink Auto-Doc and had it run a diagnostic of his body.

It applied some Med-X for the pain after it finished and reported upon his current health in an upload to his Pipboy. A short run through of the results showed nothing really had changed drastically from the prior check. 'Still a bit over 4 years left,' the Courier thought as he looked over his life expectancy. 'Might wind up making it past fifty if that holds out a bit longer.'

Out of the corner of his eye, the Courier caught a glance of himself in a mirror and thought he noticed something. As he went over to the mirror to double check, he gave a passing glance at the scars from the twin bullets that obliterated his memory and the massive scars that crossed the entirety of the right side of his face from his fight with Rawr. That particular blow during that fight that had cost him his right eye until he had gotten it replaced with replaced by the Sink Auto-Doc with what was basically a camera in his eye socket that was rigged to feed information to his brain. That was not the only thing he had lost during that fight, his right forearm had been removed when a reflexive attempt to block had been sheared away by the force of the blow from the deathclaw. After a very narrow victory and having found his original forearm crushed, the Courier had removed the right forelimb of the deathclaw and attempted to attach it as a replacement. It somewhat worked, the abuse of Stimpaks to force the connection managed to provide him enough dexterity to survive to the point where he got back into range to have the Sink Auto-Doc grant full functionality and not be killing him from its demands. He did have to go through quite a bit of effort to effectively use guns with his left hands, though.

Shaking the rambling thoughts away, the Courier checked over his appearance for what he had thought he had seen. 'Yep,' the Courier thought as he looked over his hair. 'Gray hairs are finally starting to overtake the black.'

Turning away from the mirror, he continued on towards where he stored his armor and weapons. From the store, he grabbed the outfit collectively referred to as the Courier's Duster, the two-headed bear worn down with time, but still partially evident. He holstered Lil' Devil on his left hip out of habit and headed down to the Think Tank. For some reason, they had asked to speak with him about something of great importance. Considering the prior things they had referred to as being of great importance, he was a bit skeptical about their claim, until his own brain had also stated that there was actual importance this time.

Wasting no time, the Courier spoke as he entered, "So what is this item of great importance you wanted me to know about?"

"AH, COURIER, YOU HAVE ARRIVED," Dr. Klein spoke up, the rest of the Think Tank working on some problem or another. Despite every effort he had made over the years, he had proven unable to fix the volume control on Dr. Klein's think tank.

In fact, the Courier half believed that the volume actually increased. He pushed aside continued thoughts on the topic as Dr. Klein continued. "AS FOR WHAT IT IS, I BELIEVE YOU WILL FIND THE TOPIC TO BE VERY INTERESTING."

"What precisely is it?" the Courier responded.

"ONE OF THE MANY PROBES WE SENT OUT AN EARLY ATTEMPT AT THE TRANSPORTALPONDER HAS RETURNED FROM ITS DESTINATION THROUGH USE OF ITS EMERGENCY RETURN TRANSPORTALPONDER."

"Thus far, I do not entirely see the precise reason why you would need to bring me down here to inform me of this," the Courier responded. "Unless there is something more to this, I don't see why you couldn't have just told me this through the Pipboy."

"Simple," a nearby eyebot spoke. "The transmitter was not captured by any of the satellites accessible from Big MT before it had returned."

The Courier faced the eyebot that contained either his robotic brain or organic brain. After a short period where they swapped out repeatedly, neither him nor Six knew which copy of the brain either one had. Really did wonders for the temporary identity crisis that had worked through both of them for a time. He pushed away these thoughts as well, responding with, "You want me to go through and find out where exactly it ended up."

"PRECISELY," interjected Dr. Klein.

"Do you have a way for me to get back?"

"Right here," responded Six, guiding the Courier over to a terminal, Klein moving over to one of his projects as they left. Sitting upon it was a pistol that held an appearance of being a crossbreed between the standard Laser Pistol and the Big Mountain Transportalponder.

"Tad on the bulkier side," the Courier commented, picking up the device and inspecting it.

"Beyond the slighly larger mechanism, I had made sure it was highly durable and had an adequately large power source. Don't want to lose contact due to the universe deciding to act as it usually does when life gets exciting," the eyebot responded.

"How's the location data set?" the Courier questioned.

"The prior location the Transportalponder was fired off from is stored in a heavily shielded data storage," Six replied.

"Differences in design from the regular version of the Transportalponder?"

"Larger, higher durability components and greater power supply."

"Manage to get any information off the probe?"

"Two primary items. First, the passage of time was identical, so if the possibility it proves to be a separate reality things we will not have to deal with the trouble of synchronizing between realities. The soil that was located upon the probe had concentrations of a unknown substance that is still being analyzed, but has proven to be inert in the areas we have thus far tested it under," Six detailed. "Hasn't proven to deal any damage to biological structures or common materials."

'Really says something about MT tech if the first focus is on the possibility of another reality,' The Courier thought as he took the information in and finished his inspection. "I'll be back in three months."

As the Courier turned away and headed towards the Sink to gather his supplies for the journey, he heard Six 'shout' to him, "If you run across any civilization, at least try to keep as low a profile as you can. I'd rather not hear you obliterated the first civilization you came across."

The Courier grabbed an old duffel bag he had picked up a fair distance in the past as he entered the Sink. He changed over to his Elite Riot Gear armor and tossed the Courier's Duster into the bag. If he landed in an inhabited area, then his appearance may not garner the best of attention, but wilderness was a far more likely scenario. Besides the duster, he also tossed in the US Army General Outfit he had found within the Divide, as well as an old trenchcoat and hat that reminded him of the Mysterious Stranger he had seen from time to time during his travels. All had been partially modified to allow his deathclaw arm to be able to fit through them with only a minor degree of difficulty.

His next consideration was of which weapons to equip himself with. For the pistols, he kept the Lil' Devil and equipped his modified Sequoia. There were two changes from the standard that applied to his weapon. First, it's grip and trigger were both rebuilt to allow for his deathclaw arm to fire the weapon. The increased weight of the weapon from the prior modification and a couple other additions to rebalance the weapon, as well as the durability provided by the Deathclaw forearm, allowed for the second modification, upscaling to use .50MG ammunition. The recoil from the weapon was not totally abated, causing the Courier to suffer from a measure of damage each time he fired the gun, which limited his use of it. As the primary use of the weapon was for intimidation and emergencies, this was not too concerning of an effect.

The other weapons he grabbed for the journey were his 12.7mm SMG he bought from the Gun Runners, a Survivalist's Rifle he had gotten from Zion and later repaired to prime condition, and the Hectre II Anti-Material Rifle. All three had been modified to be able to grip the weapons with his deathclaw arm without interference in weapon operation. When neccessary, some parts were reworked so they could be used lefthanded with comfort. The last two of the three weapons were temporarily broken down to fit in the duffel for transport. The Courier also picked up a small gunbox to put the Transportalponder to limit the ability for damage to be done to the device.

As for the rest of his supplies, he tossed in a good measure of food, ammo, cartridges, and stimpaks to last him for a fair amount of time, luck holding. A few chems, a Stealth-Boy and couple nuka-gernades were carefully added to the supply count with a few flashbangs and couple bars of gold he had managed to salvage. These bars were not from the Sierra Madre. Those he wasn't going to let go of at all. After putting a couple throwing knives in the lining of his coat, the Courier slung the duffel over his back and the 12.7mm SMG in a position it could be easily drawn.

With his supplies sorted out, the Courier activated the Transportalponder and began mentally counting the seconds til it activated. When his count reached thirty, he felt the device activate and send him to the probe's unknown landing site.

Here's the first chapter of the rewrite of the Aged Warrior. Better? Worse? Screw something up severely? Please inform me if the answer to any of these questions is yes.