Jonah Wick was use to weird things happening to him. In the short year he stepped out of vault 101, he's fought giant fire breathing ants, super mutants, fought along side a communist hating giant robot, killed hundreds of raiders and slavers, lead a slave revolt, ended the remains of the American government for good, annnd countless other nonsense he dealt with on a daily basis. Not to mention that one time he was abducted by aliens.

Aliens. As in little green men. He fought them. In a giant space ship...and if they didn't have a home planet somewhere, he might have committed genocide on accident.

Which was why he simply yawned in response to waking up in a foreign location instead of the two-hundred-year-old bed in some dilapidated building.

He pushed himself off the cobble stone road, awakened by the noise around him. After giving his eyes a good rub to get rid of the sleep, he looked up and saw something that shouldn't be possible.

The world around him was alive. Dozens walked through the streets. Almost all of them were filthy, something Jonah didn't consider foreign, however, their clothing was odd. Rough with cotton and flax; most sported plenty of old stains but Jonah saw others that looked...clean. Like bathing daily kind of clean and washed their clothes more than once a week clean.

They were sending him odd looks as they passed but Jonah didn't mind. He was sending them right back. As he examined their faces, he noticed that almost everyone had a tattoo on their cheek but they weren't all the same. Some had tear drops while others had hammers. It varied from person to person while others didn't have a tattoo at all.

It didn't slip Jonah's notice that the ones without the tattoo were the ones that were dressed nicely.

What's more, he seemed to be in some kind of marketplace since people were shoving food in his face. Not only did he not recognize any of it, the coins that he saw others bargaining with looked like copper instead of bottle caps.

Then he turned his attention to what was around him and saw that everything was white. The buildings were made of what looked like marble instead of the usual grayish black of concrete. They also didn't look like they had endured nuclear fire two centuries ago, so the buildings must have been made after the world ended. Which was puzzling because concrete was a lot easier to make than cut and shape marble. Even using rusted sheet metal made more sense that using marble.

That didn't confuse him; well, it did, but he was use to waking up in odd places after drinking enough that he blacked out. Usually surrounded by trouble because Drunk!Jonah seemed to make it his personal mission to get involved in every little dispute in the wasteland and leave the clean up for Sober!Jonah.

What really confused him was how the buildings looked. Their color aside, they didn't look like buildings that belonged in the Old World or the wasteland. The windows were smaller, if they had any at all, and all the doors were painted wood. What he didn't see was just as important.

There was no neon signs, pieces of scrap metal didn't makeup anything and he couldn't see a single lamppost. There was nothing that hinted at the Old World but there was also nothing that indicated that he was anywhere near D.C. Everything around him seemed...archaic, though not in a bad way.

There was more life in this city than everywhere else in Capital Wasteland put together. The city was packed with people, hundreds instead of dozens. While the people were still a little dirty, they didn't look sick from radiation or whatever mutated virus was going around. The only thing they had in common with a wastelander was the sense of hopelessness some of them carried themselves with.

That just begged the question of where he was and how he got here.

Jonah sucked in a breath before he let out a long sigh. He didn't know. He couldn't figure out how he managed to land from point A to point B. He couldn't think of a single reason why he would suddenly be transported to a different location.

"I'll figure it out later," Jonah said to himself. He would. What he needed was more information and he wasn't going to gain it by standing around and racking his brain. If he did do something to trigger his teleportation then he wasn't going to remember it in the black nothingness that was his drunken memory.

The fact that he was suddenly teleported without any warning or even his consent didn't bother him too much. What bothered him was how little he actually cared about going back to where he was from.

There was very little holding him down; they called him wanderer for a reason. He stayed in Capital Wasteland for...no reason really. He didn't have any family, all of that was taken from him. He had no real friends; only those that he thought were a little less likely to stab him in the back or those that worshiped the ground he walked on. The few friends he did have, and the woman he had loved, were sealed in an underground bunker; forever cut off from him.

There was nothing that truly tied him to Capital Wasteland. Only fading memories and a misplaced sense of duty to do good in an evil world.

And he had done good. In a single year, he turned Capital Wasteland into an unlivable hell into one of the safest places in the American wasteland. He killed the threats, helped those that deserved help and lead them to a better life.

There were talks of a nation forming. Uniting Capital Wasteland, maybe even the east coast. They had the fire power between his cashes and the Brotherhood. The leaders all had his stamp of approval, and the idea had the support of the people.

However, as the roads got safer, as raiders and monsters learned that they weren't welcomed, Jonah became less necessary. Weeks passed and he was running into less and less trouble. The ruins of DC were running out of surprises and good loot. He felt like he helped everyone in Capital Wasteland and their mother, so there were few urgent request for him to deal with.

Some said he should take it as a sign and settle down. Plant roots in a settlement and help guide the nation that he planted the seeds too.

However, Jonah couldn't. Not after everything. A single year, three hundred and sixty-five days...it didn't sound like a lot of time but it was enough. He saw too much, did too much and had too much done to him in that year. He wasn't even remotely the same person as he was before he stepped out of vault 101.

The thought of settling down, of laying down his guns and becoming just another wastelander was impossible for him now.

Thoughts of moving on began cropped up slowly. To find another battle, some other hellhole that he could save but he was waiting to see if the fledgling nation called upon him before he set out. He would be really annoyed if he left Capital Wasteland only for it to fall apart at the seams and plunge into chaos the moment he took his eyes off it.

It seems that choice was made for him.

Jonah picked up his duffel bag and peered into it, making sure nothing was missing. Nothing was; he still had his unholy amounts of explosives, enough ammo to start, and finish, WWIV, spare parts for his pistol, Chinese assault rifle, shotgun, hunting rifle, anti-matter rifle and a whet stone for the sword of that Chinese general he got when he completed that simulation.

His medicine was also untouched, though he noticed he was running a little low on stimpacks. Plenty of Buffout and Med-X for when the occasion called for it. He also had some sugar bombs and spare clothes, but those were rather low on the priority list.

After glancing around, he decided to take out the sword and put it on his belt next to his pistol. He hadn't seen a gun, so they might be rare here and he didn't feel like broadcasting that he had plenty. With that done, he figured he should do a little exploring for some answers and scanned for any sign of the best way to get answers in a city. After all, if a town of twelve had a bar then there was no way a city of hundreds wouldn't.

Jonah wasn't sure if he found it, but he saw a couple of men standing outside of a building with drinks in their hands. Based on how they were acting, his bet was on alcohol. Picking up his bag full of fuck you levels of firepower, Jonah walked towards the bar through an actual crowd of people. It was a new experience for him and he didn't like it.

After a year in the wasteland, Jonah's instincts were honed to a razor edge and the crowd was playing havoc on them, especially considering it was his first time in anything that could be called a crowd. Every time someone bumped into him, it was a struggle to not react. Which would make things complicated real quick because his knee jerk reaction was to take out his gun and fire until he ran out of bullets or the problem went away.

However, he made it through, and he checked his pockets to make sure nothing was missing. Nothing was was, so he pushed open the door to the bar and he realized that it wasn't just a bar. That was made abundantly apparent when the stench of sex and alcohol hit him like a brick.

The bar-slash-brothel's inhabitants glanced up at him as he entered but most were quick to return to their fun. They laughed and chatted with each other or the whores. The ones that weren't were watching him with suspicion, sizing him up for a fight. Again, Jonah didn't mind because he was doing the same to them.

What stood out the most was that they were their weapons. They had swords or daggers and one guy had a mace. Jonah didn't see a single gun on one of them, not even in the places where people try to conceal their holdout weapons. That didn't make much sense because they were killers. Either they were mercenaries, guards of some sort or just straight up murders but they were killers. Jonah could recognize them instantly courtesy of being one himself.

"Retro," Jonah commented to himself, B-lining for the bar. That raised a lot of questions and the few answers he could think of didn't make much sense. Maybe he was in some place that rejected technology because of that whole apocalypse thing? That didn't make much sense since it was just-...ah, he was applying common sense to wastelanders again. That was a bad habit he never managed to break.

And that was the only theory that made any reasonable kind of sense.

'So I might have the only gun in a knife fight," Jonah mused to himself, getting the barkeeps attention. It was too early to tell if they rejected all technology or just the weapons, but that didn't sound like the worst thing in the world. This place seemed nice but he had a sneaking suspicion about the locals so having the only gun could prove handy.

The barkeep walked over to him and promptly spat in the cup in his hand before 'cleaning' it with a rag on his belt...which also was soaked with spit, by the looks of it. Just like that, Jonah's urge to drink vanished like smoke and he was too busy sighing in disappointment to bother with the barkeep when he began speaking utter gibberish at him. Great. Not only as he in a wasteland that forgot proper hygiene but they don't speak English. Why couldn't anything ever be simple for him?

"Am I even in America anymore," Jonah asked himself, shrugging at the barkeep as he asked him question in a language he didn't understand. It seems the expression 'I can't understand you' was universal because the barkeep pointed over his shoulder and barked something. Based on the tone of his voice, it sounded like an order.

Frowning, Jonah turned around and came face to face with one of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He might have a thing for latinos, if his long standing crush on Amata was anything to go by, because his heart was in danger of skipping a beat.

Her skin was a golden brown and there was a lot of it exposed. Her dress was barely fit to be called as such since it was basically a vaguely see through sheet that was tied together at the waist with a string, showing off her legs that went on for absolute miles and her sides. What really caught his attention were her tattoos.

They were small but they caught the eye, which drew them to her hips and breasts because they continued beneath her 'dress.' On her thighs were intricate designs that almost looked like a dragon but where the head would be was hidden hear her groin while her shoulders almost looked like tribal tattoos that vanished towards her breasts. They weren't overly large or unreasonably flashy. They were there to...enhance her already natural beauty.

And, boy, did beautiful describe her perfectly. High cheekbones, squarish jaw with a stubborn chin, lips that were made for kissing and eyes so blue they looked like the ocean before all the nuclear fire and centuries of pollution, The only imperfection he saw was the teardrop tattooed near one of her eyes.

Then she smiled at him, like she knew she was a knock out, which she probably did, and strutted towards him. Taking a seat next to him, she propped her head up on the counter with an elbow and gave him a well practiced, but fake, flirtatious smile.

"Hello handsome," she greeted in a sly tone, earning a sharp look from Jonah. So, wherever here was, English was a common enough of a language that the help learned it. That cut down the list a fair bit of possible wastelands but not much. "In search for some...company?" She asked, earning a crooked grin.

"Afraid not, but I am looking for information," he said and saw something flash in her eyes.

"Ah, I may have it but information is worth more than a tumble with a whore," she informed, dragging her eyes over the length of him and rose a single eyebrow. Jonah thought that was fair. He wasn't exactly dressed to impress.

He wore century old blue jeans that had some wear and tear long before he walked across the Capital Wasteland a couple dozen times. His boots were of decent quality at least, but that was because he found them in a sealed military bunker along side his sword. His white button down was more brown at this point from dirt and blood stains. On top of it, he wore kevlar body armor that he picked up in vault 101 over a year ago. It was more for style at this point because it, and he, had been shot an unreasonable number of times since he stepped out of the vault.

Jonah imagined that he looked more than a little odd in this crowd.

"Fair enough, but my questions are simple. For starters, have you ever seen one of these before?" Jonah asked as he pulled his pistol from it's holster. The woman looked at it with interest, pursing her lips in thought as she ran a finger over the stylized etching in the barrel of the gun. When she looked back at Jonah, confusion and interest were clear as day on her face.

"I haven't," she admitted and Jonah had a sinking feeling in his gut that his one reasonable theory might be wrong. "What is it," she asked and Jonah just smiled away as his mind raced.

"Nothing to worry about," Jonah said, doubting that would put her at ease or satisfy her curiosity. "For question number two, where am I?"

"You're in Averis's brothel," she said, gesturing to the barkeep as the other lazily rubbed his arm. With a wink, she grabbed his biceps and made a show of being impressed when nothing gave way. Not even when she gripped harder and harder and kept squeezing until her knuckles were turning white. Thank you, ant DNA and mad scientists, you were useful for something after all.

"No, I need the city. Country too," he added with a smirk. She stared at him for a couple of seconds, opening her mouth but closing it a moment later. Eventually, she let out a breath and Jonah could see her mentally shove her questions to the side.

"You're in the city of Myr...which is in Essos?" She asked cautiously, not exactly sure if her answer was the one he wanted. It was clear that she thought he was crazy he could tell she was waiting to see what kind of crazy he was.

Myr in Essos….yeah, no, those words meant nothing to him. Why was the continent called Essos? Was that a really weird way of saying he was in Europe? England, maybe?

Jonah let out a breath, knowing he was reaching. It was already clear that he wasn't in Capital Wasteland anymore but it was starting to look like he was a lot further away than he imagined. The picture that was being painted wasn't a pretty one and, if he was right, then this might take the place of the weirdest thing that has ever happened to him.

The picture being he had either time traveled or found himself in some alternate dimension or whatever. Jonah had the entirety of the Library of Congress on his Pip-boy, and he spent his downtime reading for anything he thought would be useful. The architecture, the clothing, the arms and armor? It was an awful lot like the Medieval times if what he saw was anything to go by. Hopefully, he was just in a place that was trying very hard to recreate them, God knows why, but wastelanders did stupid crap like that all the time. However, he had to hope for the best while planning for the worst.

Still, the idea belonged in a science fiction novel, and it was weird even for him. Going back in time? Alternate dimensions? It seemed so impossible, but most of the things that happened to him once seemed impossible. Before he exited vault 101 never did he think he was going to take a life but it was practically the first thing he did once he set foot in the wasteland. Not to mention all the weird crap that radiation did.

The word impossible just didn't carry the same weight that it once did for Jonah.

"How do you not know what city you're in? What country you're in," the woman blurted after a moment, breaking Jonah from his thoughts. Her flirtatious smile gave way to open bafflement. She was almost eager to hear his answer but she made sure to dial it back out of nervousness. She was smart too. Jonah knew what kind of guy he seemed like because he made an effort to look like an unstoppable baddass.

Jonah gave her a kind smile to put her at ease before saying, "because my trip here wasn't planned. But," he continued, waggling a finger, "I'm asking the questions here," he teased and, slowly, the flirtatious smile returned.

"Ask away, though you had better be able to pay," she said, her confidence returning once she realized that he wasn't that kind of customer.

"That teardrop," he said, watching the confidence vanish and her expression went blank, "what does it mean." He kept his tone neutral, neither judging nor friendly. She was the equivalent of a radstag at the moment, too much of either and she would start running in the opposite direction.

However, a few moments passed and she collected herself. Sticking out her chin with an expression of defiance, she said, "it marks me as a pleasure slave." Her tone just dared him to belittle her for it but Jonah saw the deep seeded fear in her eyes because he was looking for it. Once upon a time, he had that same fear in his eyes.

"I believe I've answered enough of your questions," she said, standing abruptly. "You can keep your coin, though I suspect you don't have any," she added, sending Jonah a condemning look. Jonah just signed in response, realizing that he pressed too hard in the wrong place.

"If you were given your freedom, what would you do with it," he asked suddenly, making the woman freeze. She looked at him a blank expression but a storm was brewing beneath the facade.

"What does it matter? I am a slave," she said simply, staying but not sitting back down. She crossed her arms, standing tall despite her lot in life. Jonah liked that, respected it even. In the Pitt, there had only been despair and hopelessness because they thought the only way to escape was death...and, until he arrived, they had been right.

"Because it will. Now, what would you do if you were free," he asked again and she shifted from foot to foot, debating to answer. She stared at him, looking for something and she must have found it because she let out a soft sigh.

"I would buy a ship and I would travel the world to see everything it had to offer. I want to see everything; great battles between armies, places of great beauty, and I want to see all the cultures and peoples in the world. Then, I would paint all that I have seen," she said, her eyes far away and her arms shifted from stubborn defiance to almost as if she were hugging herself in reassurance.

Jonah smiled widely, "you don't dream small." He commended, breaking her away from her thoughts. When she looked at him with a softer gaze but she sighed again.

"Why do you ask me these questions? I will never be free. I make my Master too much money to ever buy my freedom and I will die of disease long before my beauty fades," she said, turning her gaze to the floor.

"I'm asking because it matters," Jonah repeated, earning a look from her. He looked right back and saw the question she wanted to ask but couldn't bring herself to. So, with a shrug, he answered.

"Growing up, I wasn't a slave but I wasn't free. I lived in a place where everything was controlled. When we ate, slept and even had free time. What I could become was determined by a test and who I could marry was determined by eugenics. I hated every second of it. I hated never having a choice in what I wanted," Jonah began, recalling his time in vault 101. Back then, he thought the Overseer was the worst person in the world and that hole in the ground was hell.

It was an honest wonder why he hadn't suffered an 'accident' in the vault long before he left. He always chafed underneath all the rules and it didn't help that he had always been a black sheep for reasons he hadn't known at the time.

"Eventually, my father left but the man who ruled wanted to torture and kill me for what he did. I didn't fancy that, so I escaped. I got my freedom and I stepped out into the real world." The first time he saw the wasteland was an experience he would never forget. He had been both amazed and utterly terrified by the sheer immensity of it all. Until that point, his entire world had been dull gray corridors and artificial sun lamps. Nothing could prepare him for the sky or the landscape that stretched for as far as the eye could see.

"However, the outside world fucking sucked. Everything wanted to kill you or enslave you and the few bastions of humanity were hanging on by a frayed thread. Everyone was out for themselves and you could find yourself with a knife in your gut for a couple of caps or you looked at someone funny, or because they thought it would be funny. All depends on what kind of place you were in at the moment." Jonah said and he had her rapt attention.

"I didn't react well to the change. I wasn't prepared for just how brutal it all was. People were murdered over dirty puddles of water, raiders used mutilated corpses as decorations and slavery was everywhere. I had some bad experiences and some worse ones, but I survived. Soon, I thrived but I had been afraid of what I was becoming. So, I developed a little code to keep myself on the straight and narrow. It's real simple," Jonah said before he smiled and little smile. It was a lot like a scimitar; curved and sharp.

"Raiders, rapists and slavers die. No exceptions," he said before he pulled out his gun.

The woman's eyes went wide, understanding what he was saying instantly. She opened her mouth to say something but she closed it. Only she opened it again a second later just so she could close it again. She floundered like a fish before her eyes drifted to the gun in his hand.

"That is a weapon," she realized, looking at him with half terrified half hopeful eyes.

"Yeah," he admitted, flicking the safety off. "I'm guessing you have a place that all of you go to when there's trouble. I'd advise you to go there now," he said,nodding at her. She stared at him at him in disbelief and Jonah almost thought she was going into shock but she slowly nodded her head.

"You're going to die," she said bluntly. It seems like he's going to have to work on his reputation as an unkillable god among men again.

"They keep telling me that but I'm not sure I believe them at this point," he said with, just smiling away. She didn't believe him, didn't believe that he would free her or that he would survive, but she did believe him that he was about to start a fight. Slowly, she turned away from him and brushed past another slave. She must have whispered something in her ear because the other slave gave him a sharp look.

Jonah watched the girls work their magic and in minutes, just about every girl looked at him with cautiously guarded hope. Judging by the lack of any guards or the killers in the building confronting him, they only told the ones that were willing to seize their freedom. Then the woman from before approached him again.

She gripped his hand a pressed a gentle kiss on his cheek before squeezing his hand. "Who are you," she asked, pulling away.

"Jonah Wick, but most know me as the Lone Wander or Messiah." He answered easily, "what's your name, doll?"

"Charlotte. My name is Charlotte," Charlotte answered, giving him a smile. It wasn't the well practiced fake one from before and it was enough to light up a room. Once upon a time, if she aimed a smile like that at him then he would have fallen head over heels and blushed red enough a tato would be jealous. Now, however, he just nodded, a sign telling her to get to safety.

Charlotte gave him another peck on the cheek before she turned away from him, walking away with a sense of urgency that wasn't missed by the bartender. He called out to her in their language and quickly grew frustrated when she ignored him. However, his shouts of annoyance were quickly drowned out when the other slaves began pulling away from their customers. Most managed to placate them with a smile and showing a bit of leg, but it was impossible to miss that every slave was leaving.

With a perfect distraction, Jonah stood up and pointed his gun at the bartender, making him turn his annoyed shouts in his direction.

Jonah just smiled his wicked smile. His shit list was getting long again and he couldn't wait to start crossing out names.

There were better ways of doing this, Jonah knew that. He didn't know what these people were packing or even how many of them there were. He knew nothing about the layout of the city nor did he know the factions that ran it. He didn't know and the best thing he could do was wait until he did. Do a little reconnaissance; map out the city, establish fall back positions and find allies in this foreign city. There was always the malcontent slaves just waiting for a chance to rebel and there were always going to be sympathetic slavers willing help them.

If he waited about a week then he would be in a much better position to do this.

However, what would happen in that week? How many pleasure slaves would be raped? How many men, women and children would be sold? How many families would be broken up? How many would be worked to death? How many would be killed because their Master willed it?

How many, how many, how many?

Jonah didn't know but the answer was too fucking many. And, as the Messiah, he wasn't going to turn a blind eye to rape and slavery just to make things a little bit easier on himself.

So, without any hesitation, he pulled the trigger and began his second slave revolt.