The lights began to rise, revealing the interior of a lounge that would look right at home in the 50's. There were tables and wall panels made of dark mahogany; seats and booths backed in rich red leather, held in place with round brass studs; every light hanging on the walls and from the ceiling was surrounded by green glass; a smoky haze filled the circulating around the lazily spinning fans.

There was only one occupant in this lounge, and he was sitting at the table in the exact center of the room. His tousled mane of brown hair had a few flecks of grey, matching his beard, and did little to conceal the vibrant blue of his eyes – or the pair of scars on his face. As he looked up with a smile, he reached for the bottle of whiskey on the table with his cybernetic arm, and began pouring himself another glass.

"Oh, hello there!" he said, in a jovial tone to match his smile. "It's nice to see all of you again. I'm Sheason Fisher. You may know me from my starring role in 'New Vegas: Sheason's Story,' as well as my appearance in the first chapter of 'A Completely Different Night at the Inventory'."

He paused, thinking on that last one, looking at his surroundings.

"Wait, are we in the Inventory right now? Kinda looks like it, but..." he shook his head. "Nah, nevermind. S'not important. I'm Sheason Fisher. Not to be confused with the other Sheason Fisher, from World of Warcraft. As far as I'm aware, that Sheason is currently in a state of limbo with his story on hold. Again. See, the author can't find the motivation to write anything set in Azeroth. Understandable, really, considering the dystopian business practices enacted by Activision Blizzard and their CEO, prolapsed anus given human form, Bobby Kotick. I'd be annoyed too if I was playing a game made by a company boasting record profits in one breath, and then moments later, lays off a whopping 800 people – literally 8% of the company – for no good reason."

Sheason paused once more to take a sip of his drink.

"I'm also not to be confused with the other, other Sheason, the pen name of the author currently writing what you are now reading. Because, of course he calls himself Sheason. Why bother coming up with a different name?" He chuckled softly. "Confused yet? I don't blame you. Honestly, he's just all around terrible at coming up with names. Among other things..."

"OI!" a loud voice bellowed. "Stop stallin' an' git to th' fuckin' point, motherfucker!" Cass appeared from the other side of the room, and immediately made her way to Sheason's table. "We're here fer a reason, remember? We ain't comin' out've retirement just fer the fuck've it, y'know."

"Right you are, Cass," Sheason said. She nodded, leaning back in her chair and propping her feet on the table.

"Fuckin' a. I'm always right."

"Okay, so, here's the deal," Sheason said, turning his attention back to the 4th wall. "The reason there hasn't been much activity here as of late is because when the author brought my adventures to a close, he tried to start on his next project. He figured, reasonably enough, that actually completing a project for once in his life - a feat he had never managed before - meant that he could do it again. His plan was simple: stop writing fanfiction, write something original, hire an agent, get it sent to a publisher, and then begin an actual career as an author."

"Shit ain't gone t'plan," Cass blurted out.

"Yeah, that's putting it mildly," Sheason agreed. He pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket, and began to look it over. "So, since he is, and I'm paraphrasing here: 'resigned to the fact that he is a Mediocre White Man destined to live out the rest of his days in a tedious job he hates with his dreams forever unfulfilled,' he's come back here." Once Sheason was finished, he crumpled up the paper and tossed it over his shoulder.

"Tell 'em th' best part, an' why he's dragged th' two of us out here fer this fuckin' dog'n pony show," Cass chuckled. Sheason grumbled, rubbing his eyes.

"I'm getting to that, keep your pants on," he said with a sigh. "Okay, so he's wanted to do something for a while, and he should've done it ages ago. You know, like, two years ago, back when it was actually relevant: an FAQ/Q&A for... well, 'Sheason's Story.' He still occasionally gets people asking about things, and he wanted to help clear up any lingering questions, misconceptions, or headscratchers related to the story. Of course, getting it to a place where people can read it is a bit of a problem, since nobody reads this story on the Deviantart mirror, he doesn't really use that site anymore, and he has no other way of contacting the people who actually still read his story on this site, except by posting another story."

"But there's a bit've a hitch with that plan," Cass said. "This fuckin' site don't allow somethin' straightforward like that. S'gotta be fiction. It lit'rally says 'No FAQ's' in the rules."

"And while neither of us," Sheason gestured back and forth, "really give a shit about breaking stupid rules, the idiot writing this doesn't want to get banned by the mods on the only platform where people still read his chicken scratch. So that's why you get us as your framing device! And, since this isn't even really canon, we can go ahead and break the 4th wall as much as we want, and nobody can stop us!"

"So, if this ain't canon, does that mean we're in th' Inventory'r somethin' like that?" Cass asked; she tipped her hat forward, and laced her fingers behind her head.

"Maybe? I'm honestly not sure where we're supposed to be. It might be... like... Inventory-adjacent? Is that a thing?"

"Fucked if I know. Still, we're probably gonna need t'find some way t'keep this interestin', if only fer our own sanity," Cass added, despite looking like she was about ready to fall asleep. Sheason just shrugged.

"I'm sure we'll think of something," he said, turning back, once again, to the 4th wall. "Anyway, let's get cracking. There are two questions he's been asked, over and over again, so we should probably start there. First is 'When are you going to do Honest Hearts?' and 'How, exactly, did the Enclave survive?' Now, the Enclave answer is..." Sheason winced, gritting his teeth. "... it's long."

"Motherfucker wrote up a whole timeline fer that, stretchin' back t'before th' Great War an' shit, filled with fuckin' stupid details nobody but him really cares 'bout," Cass grumbled from under her hat.

"Exactly. That's going to take a while to adapt for this little framing device we have going here. So, we should probably start with the Honest Hearts question. And don't worry, you don't have to put up with this tissue-thin excuse for a framing device the whole way; for the Q&A part, we'll drop the act, and he'll just answer your questions directly. And if you, the readers at home, have any more questions about 'Sheason's Story' that you'd like to see answered, do feel free to leave them as reviews here. I'm sure he'll do his best to get to them. Eventually."

"S'not like he's got anything better t'do," Cass chuckled.

"Sadly, I think you're right," he said, turning back to Cass. "Wanna get outta here?"

"Ah, man!" Cass grumbled, pushing her hat back up. "An' I just got comfortable too! Think we can order a pizza'r somethin'?"

"We could try, but... do you know any places that deliver to... wherever the fuck we are?"

When are you going to do Honest Hearts?

Believe it or not, I still get asked this question. Even though Sheason's Story has Very Definitely Ended™, people still ask why I didn't do Honest Hearts, or even when Honest Hearts is going to happen. And this is really funny to me. At least, it is in hindsight. See, I thought my first clue in the early chapters, when I gave Boone the Desert Ranger combat armor – an armor set you can only get by going to Zion – was going to be enough of a blatant hint that Sheason was never going to go to Zion himself, and the events there played out quite differently than in the DLC.

But then people just kept asking.

So, I thought to myself "Okay, I need to be a bit more blatant about this," and started dropping less subtle hints. I was absolutely convinced that when Sheason was in the Lonesome Road, and he made the comment about how he turned down the job offer from the Happy Trails Caravan, that I wouldn't get any more questions about it. I thought "I'm spelling this out as clearly and as blatantly as possible. Nobody is gonna miss this gigantic-ass hint."

Spoiler alert: it just caused the questions to get worse.

I'm gonna be real with everyone for a moment: I didn't like Honest Hearts. Oh sure, there were bits and pieces of it that I enjoyed. But as a whole package, I didn't like it. It felt unfocused, with very little actual story – which is bad for a primarily narrative driven game like New Vegas – and almost nothing interesting to do. It felt less like an adventure, and more like a nature hike with the occasional scavenger hunt. Which... yeah, that makes sense, considering the only reason it even exists is because Zion Canyon is J.E. Sawyer's preferred holiday destination. Plus, I was distinctly uncomfortable with the whole "White Man's Burden" plot of the "enlightened" Caucasian religious missionaries helping out the "backwards" primitives, and "saving" them because the "backwards primitives" were clearly too inept to save themselves. I wasn't really interested in dealing with the fallout (ha ha) from any of that.

More important to me, I just didn't think the story (what little of it even existed) would fit thematically with the rest of Sheason's side adventures in the DLC. To elaborate:

*In Dead Money, the Courier has to stop Elijah from covering the wasteland in Red Cloud and ushering in another apocalypse.

* In Old World Blues, the Courier needs to stop the Think Tank from escaping the Big MT crater and covering the wasteland in SCIENCE!, ushering in another apocalypse.

* In Lonesome Road, the Courier has to stop Ulysses from launching the nukes and ushering in another apocalypse.

* In Honest Hearts, the Courier does some... stuff, meets Joshua Graham, and helps a bunch of tribals out of a boxed canyon in the middle of nowhere, so they don't have to deal with the OTHER band of tribals backed by Caesars Legion.

One of these things is not like the other.

However, I didn't want to just take it out and leave nothing in its place. So I decided to have Sheason meet the Lone Wanderer and fight Space Nazis on the Moon. I figured it would be something exciting and action packed and suitably ridiculous with appropriately high stakes (ie.: stop the Enclave from invading the Earth and ushering in another apocalypse).

I am nothing if not a fan of the utterly ridiculous.

As an added bonus, when I realized that Honest Hearts felt more like Fallout 3 DLC than New Vegas DLC (with its lack of story, good atmosphere, fun items to collect, and a grand total of One Interesting Character), I figured I had the perfect way to stop the questions about when I'm gonna do Honest Hearts: Sheason didn't need to go to Zion, because The Lone Wanderer already got there first and took care of everything. This is why Christopher mentioned going to Zion every chance he got. I thought to myself "This is it. This has got to be the final nail in the coffin. People are DEFINITELY going to get the message now that I have literally spelled it out."

Spoiler alert: the questions did not stop.

"Thank you for joining us," Sheason said, chowing down on the slice of pizza in his hand. "Tune in next time for more questions answered, and more bullshit from the two of us. Cass? Anything to add?"

"Stuffed crust!" Cass said, unable to contain her joy, holding aloft her slice of pizza like it was a precious treasure. "Ah didn' think they made this shit anymore! This is amazin'!"

"See you next time," Sheason said with a wave.