Chapter IV - Civilization

"Alright," began Six, "Let's get this straight."

Cass and Raul glanced up at the younger man, the fox faunus scarfing down a gecko steak while the ghoul was just spooning some Pork n' Beans into his mouth. Six himself had finished his own Mac & Cheese a few moments before, and was now washing the tin bowl he ate from with water, before drinking the dirtied water, unwilling to waste even a single drop.

"So," he continued, "Ozpin and the others now know me as Odysseus, the right hand man of Courier Six, President of the IMC. It's probably not a good idea to go reveal I actually am Six. I trust Ozpin to keep the Council of Vale from doin' something stupid, but I got no idea 'bout the others. That means we gotta get the story about who Odysseus is straight."

Raul groaned, and flopped back into the sand, the old ghoul letting out a long groan.
"Dios, jefe, I can't even keep track of how many backup plans you have."

"At least you're not Yes Man," the courier retorted, with the ghost of a smile on his lips. "But in any case, from tonight on, you probably should start callin' me Odysseus."

Cass tossed off a sloppy salute as she wiped her hands in the sand surrounding their bedrolls.
"Got it, Odysseus." Her face screwed up briefly, and she sighed. "Oh, I'm gonna miss callin' you Six. It's just… so much shorter and sweeter."

Six privately agreed. However, it was a bit too late to change anything on that front, so all he could do was grin and bear it.

"Well," started Six, talking more at his companions than with them, "I'm thinking just a fairly generic background for now. Makin' me too unique of a person might invite questions that I don't really wanna answer. 'Course, that means that I probably shouldn't use my more… technical weaponry, at least while I'm pretendin' to be Odysseus. A bit hard to explain how I could get my hands on the Tesla-Beaton. Also, I have no idea how much technology has progressed since the Great War. I found the damn thing in an Enclave vertibird that was wrecked as all hell, so who knows how advanced this thing is compared to other shit."

Cass and Raul both shuddered, having seen the raw destructive power of the thing a few times, the energy cannon having been used to great effect while storming Black Mountain, as well as during the defense of Rorke's Ravine. The Tesla-Beaton Prototype was easily the most destructive weapon Six used on a regular basis, the energy cannon easily having the power to blast concrete into chunks.

"Yeah, that probably would be best," conceded Cass. "You still haven't actually told us who Odysseus is, by the way."

Six grunted, acknowledging the point, before leaning forward, staring into the fire intently.

"I was thinkin' it would probably be fine if I was just a caravan guard from the NCR. Got ambushed by some legionnaires on my way to New Vegas, which is where the scar comes from," the courier gestured at the spiderweb across his face before continuing on. "Got found near Novac and started workin' as a bounty hunter. Wound up with Courier Six when he was helpin' the town take care of all the ghouls at REPCONN, and have been with him ever since. Gives y'all an excuse in case you slip up and say that I was doing somethin' that Six would have been. Also helps out with why I have so much weaponry - I was with Courier Six."

Thinking about it for a moment, Cass and Raul gave a nod to the younger man.

"Got it," responded Raul, reaching to grab his bedroll. "Now, if you don't mind, jefe, I'm gonna get ready to trek into the nuclear hellscape you're dragging me into."

Six grinned, and pulled out his own bedroll, tossing it casually on the sand. "Hey, at least you ain't one of the Vale people. They had to stay there for this entire time." Waving his hand, he forestalled the look of concern Cass was developing on her face. "I didn't leave 'em in the fuckin' Divide without protection. Gimme some credit. I stuffed them in one of the old nuclear silos with express command to not fucking touch anything."

Six's tone shifted from cheerfully casual and playful to deadly serious and forceful in a moment, a change that many who didn't know the courier would label as bizarre and jarring. However, for the two who had been with him the longest, the change was nothing new. The juxtaposition of kindness and vehemence was one of the most powerful tools in the diplomatic arsenal. The jarring change was quite useful, catching the other party in the negotiations off guard, and making them more likely to agree with whatever he said. After all, pissing off Courier Six was an absolutely terrible idea.

The young man sat down heavily on the bedroll, and stretched casually, adopting a sitting position. With a few taps on the Pimp-boy, performed expertly in the span of less than a heartbeat, The Ferguson Rifle appeared in his hands with a flash of light. Six quickly checked the Winchester Model 1892 to see whether or not the lever action rifle still had .44 rounds chambered, spending several moments fiddling with the gun to make sure the thing was in good condition. Satisfied that the rifle was ready for use at any moment, he placed it across his lap, and nodded at Cass and Raul.

"I'll go ahead and take first watch. Y'all go ahead and rest."

Like that, the discussion was over, and Six moved a bit closer to the fire, pulling up a concrete block that he had moved over earlier in the evening. He sighed, satisfied, as he threw a blanket over the hard material and took a seat, leaning against the cloth. It was at times that this that he truly was grateful for the cybernetics he had received from both Usanagi and the Think Tank, though he hadn't exactly asked for the latter. Six wasn't sure how much of his body was cybernetic by now. His heart, brain, and spine all still had machinery in them from the experimentation that had been done on them, and while the enhancements were useful, combined with those he had bought from Usanagi (which were as many as his body could handle, all purchased with caps he had obtained from selling gold from the Sierra Madre - after that hell, he wanted every advantage possible), he didn't know if he could technically be called a a cyborg yet.

A cyborg. Part human, part machine. That word scared him, a little. Six didn't want to give up his humanity, didn't want to lose something that defined him.

Such were the thoughts of Courier Six, late at night in the Mojave, as his cybernetically enhanced eyes scanned the desert for raiders - Vipers, Jackals or Fiends - and creatures - Radscorpions, Fire Ants, or Deathclaws - so he could kill them before they could approach the place where his companions were sleeping. A part of him almost perversely hoped that something would come - after all, if he engaged in combat, it might wear him enough to push him over the edge of tiredness to exhaustion.

That might be enough to get him to sleep tonight.

Six was uncomfortable. Quite frankly, he didn't really see a reason why he shouldn't be - he was taking the words of many people for granted here, trusting them based on nothing but his instincts and blind faith. He had no concrete evidence that anything team VRDT, Ozpin, and the Council of Vale said was true. Just like at the Sierra Madre - just like at the Big MT - just like at the Divide - just like at Frosthills (his hands twitched, and the blood-soaked snow appears before his eyes again), he was taking someone at their word.

The last few times he had done that, he had ended up in a desperate struggle for his life against enemies that held drastic advantages over him. Elijah and the Ghosts of the Sierra Madre, the Robo-scorpions of the Big MT, the Marked Men and Irradiated Deathclaws of the Divide, and Marko-

Six made an effort to cut off that line of thinking before it could any further, his horrifically scarred hands clenching, what little flesh that wasn't scarred turning white, mapping out the lines of his injuries across the skin of his hands. Taking a deep breath, he leaned back into the seat of the - bullhead, the vehicle had been called. It seemed to be an improvement on the vertibird - it certainly was, in Six's opinion. The thing was much quieter, which allowed him to listen to music easier. Violins began to create a tremulous noise, a piano rang, a cello played a bass line, and Frank Sinatra began to sing smoothly, asking his lover to fly with him. Closing his eyes, he began to relax into the hard seat, his right foot, boot-clad, beginning to tap gently as the music swelled into his ears, drowning out everything, until all that was left was the feeling of the air against his bare arms, and the sounds in his ears.

From across the aircraft, Davis looked with a slight frown on his face at the totally relaxed Odysseus, who seemed to be remarkably relaxed for being in a strange vehicle with a strange group of people. Leaning over to Cass, he tapped her briefly on the shoulder, and then pointed at the younger man.

"Is he always like this?"

Cass glanced over at the subject of his attention, before turning to the hunter trainee with a look of confusion on her face. "Like what?"

Davis sighed, and rubbed the back of his head distractedly, pale blonde hair flopping haphazardly. "So… at ease. I mean, I'd be scared outta my mind, going with a bunch of people I didn't know like this. Not to mention…" He paused, looking uncomfortable, before sighing and letting it spill. "We have pretty much all the advantages right now. In information, weaponry, ammunition - I just find it hard to believe that he's not worried about it."

The fox faunus sat for a bit, thinking it over, before shrugging.

"Well, the thing is, there ain't really a damned thing we can do about it, right? Far as we're concerned, the world ended 205 years ago. Ever since then, the ruins of America have been trying to carve some semblance of order out of the wastes. In between attacks from the Grimm and the other creatures that the fallout made, not to mention other people, no entity has really had the opportunity to try to reach out. Besides, everyone basically figured that the rest of the world was in the same state we were, if not worse, so what was the point?"

Cass sighed, and slumped back into the seat on the side of the bullhead, looking with an unidentifiable expression at Odysseus, who almost looked asleep, short sliver hair in wild tangles.

"Odysseus knows that you have the advantage. But he can't do anything about that, so he's accepted that fact for now. And since he's accepted it, why bother worrying about it?"

Davis nodded, accepting the explanation, and turned his attention away from the wastelander. After all, Venus would need a break from piloting the bullhead sometime soon.

Six had never seen so much green in his life. Vault 22 was one thing, the greenery being solely confined to the insides of the confining metal labyrinth and the surrounding several dozen yards of Mojave. The same went for the X-22 Botanical Garden from the Big MT, the source of the vegetation in Vault 22. This - this was beyond comprehension, a veritable carpet of green reaching as far as his (cybernetically enhanced) eyes could see.

He, Raul, and Cass were all staring at the forest, unable to tear their eyes away from a sight he and the faunus had never been able to conceive of, a sight that the ghoul standing beside him hadn't seen in over two centuries. Six stole a glance out of the corner of his eye at the ghoul next to him, who had been decked out in a modified version of some IMC armor that had a head wrap around everything but his eyes, which were covered by sunglasses. The three had agreed that trying to explain what a ghoul actually was was a tall order, and would more than likely result in Raul taken away for experimentation, instead deciding to just present Raul as having an illness. While it may have been a rather cynical view, Six had insisted on it, having personally met some scientists from the Old World. Admittedly, the chance of that scenario taking place was small, as the Think Tank may have gone… pretty much insane from their 200 year stay in the Big MT, but he still remembered that sensation of waking up, and realizing three of his most important organs were gone. While he had reclaimed them all, he had never exactly forgiven his new employees for that violation - as well as all the other experimentation they had been responsible for. The sight of those children spore carriers still haunted his vision, as did the sickening crack their heads made as they were blasted open with 20 gauge shotgun shells from his Remington 310 Spartan.

Breaking himself out of the memories (scarred hands flexing unconsciously, desperately seeking for a gun), the courier poked an elbow into the old ghoul's side. The jarring motion caused Raul to jolt from a reverie of his own, giving a half-hearted glare to the scarred wastelander.

"What do you want, jefe?"

Six grinned faintly, and looked back at the forest below them.

"Ever seen something like this before, Raul?" Giving a quick scan around the bullhead and noting that the entirety of team VRDT was over in the cockpit, gathered around the scroll of Redding, he turned back to his militia commander, and lowered his voice. "Y'know, before the war?"

A smile crossed the green and patchy face of the ghoul, though Six was unable to see it.

"Si, jefe. I took Rafaela to the forests in the North-West Commonwealth frequently before the war. She loved to see the enormous trees. Thankfully, that Commonwealth hadn't succumbed to the more industrial urges of the Plains Commonwealth and chopped them all down."

Six hummed in acknowledgement and turned once more to the forest below them. He glanced quickly to Cass, who seemed to be enamored completely by the sight, blue eyes under a rattan hat fixed firmly on the ocean of green. Grinning at the child-like wonder on the face of the fox faunus, he pushed himself away from the glass with a great groan, and began to make his way across the bullhead to team VRDT. Combat boots purposefully pounded on the metal floor, making enough noise to warn the group he was coming, a warning they took, as the conversation between the hunters in training died out as the silver-haired young man approached. With the same faint grin, Six lifted his hand and waved.

"Hey. Got an idea about our ETA at Beacon?"

Glances were briefly exchanged (Six being honestly impressed at the ability of the four to communicate without speaking), and Davis spoke up. "Yeah. We should be about an hour out from the academy, tops." After the briefest of pauses, the older man began again. "How are you three holding up? I know we only saw the Divide, but if the rest of the world is anything like that… You probably haven't seen something like that before."

A bitter expression flashed on Six's face for just an instant, before it was quickly wiped away and replaced with the smile he almost always kept there (a change that slightly unnerved the other four he was speaking to).

"Yeah… I sure haven't."

Without speaking anymore, the wastelander turned around, wandering back over to the benches. Reaching over to his Pimp-Boy, he pressed a button, turned a dial, tapped the screen, and the sound of the bullhead was drowned out by a song he didn't even have the heart to pay attention to. He shut his eyes again, leaning his head back against the wall, breathing deeply while stroking the spider-web scar across his face, trying to get rid of the sick feeling in his stomach whenever he was reminded of the vast gulf in his memories.

Six's earliest memory was waking up with a headache in a grave, with hands bound and Jessup trying to convince Benny to just kill him and get it over with. After that, there was nothing but pain in the right side of his head, and waking up in Doc Mitchell's house in Goodsprings. And after that? He had helped Sunny with the geckos, saved one of the citizens, gone to see Trudy, seen Joe Cobb - then killed all the Powder Gangers after Ringo, and hadn't stopped since (his hands flexing once more, scars standing out against them like a map of New Vegas). The courier remembered nothing before that - where he was from, where his family might be, if they were relying on him for money. The Mojave Express didn't have his name on the list - apparently, that was the first job he had done for them, and his only listing was as Courier Six. Not even Ulysses had known his name, though he had known about Six supplying the Divide for a couple of years. The last of the Twisted Hairs had figured that he was just a dumb kid taking on a dangerous job no one else would for money. There was no link between Courier Six and whoever he had been before Goodsprings but half remembered fragments of blurry faces and vague impressions.

It didn't sit well with him, to say the least.

The estimate of Davis was surprisingly accurate, Six catching sight of Beacon about an hour from the hunter in training's pronouncement. The sight of the academy wasn't quite as astonishing as the Emerald Forest below them. He lived on the Strip, after all, and was the owner of the Lucky 38, the soon to be reopened tower of lights that symbolized New Vegas like nothing else, not even the Tops, the Ultra-Luxe, or Gomorrah. Cass had run caravans through the city and Freeside for several years, and Raul had had a month or so to get used to the ostentatiousness of Sin City. Even with all that being said, Beacon Academy was still wonderful, catching the attention. Gray spires reached to the sky, the school looking like nothing so much as a castle. A green field sprawled out alongside the school, flowers growing in beds of vibrant color. Yet for all the majesty of the premier hunter academy of Remnant, Six was focused on something else entirely.

The city.

His eyes, pale blue, were focused inordinately on the city of Vale, shining brightly, the sun reflecting of metal that was bright and polished, not rusty and dented. Concrete was not pitted and cracked, but smooth and unblemished. The city was easily bigger than New Vegas, even if one included the districts of Freeside and Westside. Hell, the two might only match in size if he went by Old World maps, including the areas north and east of the city, in addition to the Fiend territory to the west and south.

Suddenly, it hit him, and Six stumbled, holding his hand out, balancing himself on the wall, desperately trying to control his breathing. This was real. The Old World still existed - he was staring right at it. The world hadn't ended 205 years ago, in 2077, when missiles came rocketing down from the sky and nuclear fire billowed across the landscape of America. Only America had.

Though Cass and Raul gave him concerned looks, it was obvious that the revelation hadn't hit them as hard as it did him. That made a certain amount of sense - after all, he was the leader of the IMC, a major power now that it had control over Hoover Dam and its power. While he hadn't asked for the position, in the end, it made the most sense for him to have it. And with that position of power, came a great deal of responsibility. He was responsible now for them - from Jacobstown to Nipton, from Goodsprings to Hoover Dam, all citizens living in the Mojave were his responsibility. Six had accepted that when he had emptied Maria into Mr. House, ending the centuries long life of the billionaire.

Water. Food. Shelter. Safety. Power. He needed to provide all of these for his people. Power came from Hoover Dam and Helios, both now under his control and bringing electricity to Freeside, Westside, and the Strip. Safety was another thing he could help with - the range of the Securitrons had extended to protect the neighborhoods outside of the Strip as well, and he had formed a militia, comprised of volunteers, who were outfitted in armor marked with the seal of the IMC, led by Raul. Shelter was harder, but the many destroyed buildings in Vegas could be repaired with materials taken from hideouts that Fiends used. As far as food and water went, Heck Gunderson had struck a deal with the IMC soon after the formation of the nation, so brahmin came in on a regular basis, and water was also shipped in from both the Colorado River and the NCR. As long as citizens had the caps to buy the food and water, they wouldn't starve.

The people of the Mojave would survive. It would be a tough life, to be sure - after all, he had lived it, until he had killed House - but they would survive. Barring an attack by Fiends. Barring an attack by Grimm. Barring a raid on the Gunderson brahmin caravan. There were hundreds of ways to die in the Mojave, caused by any number of things. Yet here - all those ways were negated. The walls of Vale were tall, made of burnished metal, as opposed to the walls of crumbling concrete and corrugated metal of New Vegas. Those walls could keep out Grimm for certain, and Fiends most definitely. The kingdom of Vale hadn't been bombarded by nuclear blasts, so the water, food, and soil wasn't irradiated, with uncorrupted food and water at a premium. The entire economy hadn't had to rebuild itself from scratch using bottle caps instead of paper money. The remnants of the population hadn't been put in Vaults to be experimented on, and now had to deal with the constant threat of not only Grimm, but the mutated creatures of the wasteland, and raiders like the Fiends.

Vale wasn't broken, not like America.

Six wrestled himself under control as the bullhead began to descend from the sky to the landing pad at Beacon. He shakily drew in a breath, and rubbed his hand over the spiderweb of his scar. Nodding reassuringly at Cass and Raul, he walked confidently over to team VRDT. They nodded at him as he approached, Davis, who seemed to be the de-facto liaison between the team and the wastelanders speaking up.

"Ozpin should be at the landing pad, waiting for us. You just about ready?"

Six offered the weak smile again (though it did not reach his eyes, a trend that all the hunters in training had noticed). "We've been sitting in this damn thing for the longest time. I'm about to go insane if I stay in here any longer."

"Sounds perfect," Davis replied, reaching out to the control panel, hands flicking a series of switches and buttons, causing the door of the bullhead to open, a ramp lowering, light shining through the crack, a beam that grew as the opening widened. As the ramp thudded into the ground, sending some dust whirling up into the air, Davis and Venus hopped out of the vehicle first, heading over to a woman with blonde hair pulled up in a fancy bun of some sort. Six turned to Redding, who jerked his head towards the exit with a raised eyebrow. A shared glance between the two communicated everything they needed to know, and with a deep breath, Six stepped out of the bullhead into a world he had thought long dead.

A/N: Originally, this chapter was also gonna cover Six watching initiation and his reaction to things like Aura, Semblances, and the absurd weapons. Then I realized that would take a while, and also realized that I hadn't updated in over three weeks. Sorry about that.

I blame many things, foremost among them Joe Rogan. I was listening to the Drunken Peasants on the way home from school when I was reminded that TJ had been on the Joe Rogan podcast. And so of course, while scrolling through the list of episodes, I of course had to download and listen to Rogan talking with Sargon, Jordan B. Peterson, Bret Weinstein, Peterson and Weinstein. And since I can't listen and write, I had to listen and play games, and so I started a playthrough of Borderlands 2 as a Siren.

…I have no one but myself to blame. The next chapter might also take some time, as I need to write something to submit to a scholarship. See you then. As always, leave comments, concerns, criticisms, and testimony in the reviews.

P.S. - I got my first please update review. Does that mean I get a prize of some sort?