Author's Notes:
As you'll be able to tell, I wrote this story very differently from it's parent, "Wanderer – Aftermath". I personalized this one far more, focusing on Wreythe and just some of the things he had been through, while explaining several facts about the character.

I realize that Wanderer – Aftermath is extremely hard to actually 'pick up and read' so to speak, as even I can admit the first chapter is a very tedious read, however you don't need to read Wanderer to understand Wreythe's Vision, and I have decided to make all the chapters within Wreythe's Vision to be of 'shortish' length, so it's doubtful there will be any chapters nearly as long as the ones within Wanderer.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Dust.

Two-hundred years ago, the world has become dust.

Not all of it, mind you, just portions.

Sometimes these portions were as big as a city, other times entire countries had been wiped out.

The United States of America was no longer, but I still had a job to do.

The lowly pigeon, one of the last of its kind in the area, was busy pecking at the ground, hoping to find some source of food, when the stranger appeared. The pigeon didn't know what to make of this; for one thing, it had never even seen a human before, and was puzzled by this sight. The other thing, of course, was that the pigeon didn't have to make anything of this, for he was just a lowly pigeon, and as such wasn't constrained to the same misconception as humanity had that it had to poke it's nose, erm, beak into everyone's business.

Flipping his sunglasses down, shielding his eyes against the harsh sun, the stranger walked past the pigeon, giving it only a cursory glance as he did. A light breeze went through the man-made valley of craters, billowing the strangers tattered coat, exposing the side-arm on his belt; a .45 caliber M1911 that he had picked up somewhere near Denver off the dead corpse of a malcontent. Strapped to the stranger's back was a hunting rifle; a scoped Remington 700 that he had liberated from the hand's of a particularly tired sentry in Las Vegas, and by the way the stranger continuously reached back to feel the butt of the rifle, even a pigeon could see he adored the gun.

The stranger wandered up the edge of a crater, its radius easily reaching a mile, and stared at the horizon, pulling out a pair of worn binoculars from his belt.

Dyson Wreythe had been to the flooded Houston where he had picked his way through the rubble that once was NASA's Johnson Space Center, he had visited the hell that once was Las Vegas and blew up Caesar's Palace, and had even swam to see the once-legendary Miami, just because he felt like it, but nothing came close to what he was seeing here, in the city once known as Los Angeles.

It was as if someone had taken a big blob of dough, built a miniature city on it, then smashed it repeatedly with a mallet, then baked the whole damn thing. There was barely anything left. If there was a place that Wreythe truly could say was the visage of Hell itself, it'd be Los Angeles; it was as if the whole thing had become one massive scorched desert, with only the rare house or two standing as far as Wreythe could tell, but a 'house' may be too strong of a word.

Panels of burnt timber, held together by brick and mortar. That's it. They could barely even offer protection from rain, let alone provide shelter against raiders or equally-violent locals, if there were any locals. Wreythe couldn't see any, but the area didn't exactly look like it was a smorgus-board to the self-respecting average scavenger.

It was literally a desert.

Well, that wasn't exactly true, rain had gathered in some of the craters, forming lakes, but doubtless the water was irradiated, after all, it was probably a ten-megaton bomb that made that crater.

Los Angeles, the City of Lost Angels, centre of the planet's attention; maker of movies, spinner of records, retailer of everything, ever. No other city was like this place, and only I remember it as it was.

Two weeks passed as Wreythe eked out an existence; picking through the piles of rubble, searching through the debris of a previous life, and trying to find any scrap of… of anything that he could find.

Wreythe spent many of the past years doing this, going from city to city, either scavenging or hunting, whether he had to dig, crawl or kill.

Wreythe was a hunter of dreams.

Wreythe was the destroyer of dreams.

Wreythe was the fulfiller of dreams.

He wasn't unhappy about his choices in life; in fact he loved the life, being a nomad, doing whatever he wanted, banging whatever pussy he could find, it was the life! It was the other things though, that sometimes made it hard to deal with; the raiders firing at the interloper stealing their fortunes, the gangs infesting every pocket of former-civilization, and the heat! The god-awful heat! It rarely rained anymore, something Wreythe had noticed over the years.

It used to rain almost every week, and all we'd have to do is turn on our taps and collect the purified source of life in our clean cups and bring it to our lips, we could have however much we desired.

Now Wreythe sometimes went for weeks without finding a fresh well of water, needing to survive on the various bottled drinks he kept in his bag. While Cola was nice, drinking it every day was tedious at best.

It's funny; you never know how much you miss these things until they aren't there anymore.

Wreythe didn't notice the rifle barrel aimed at his head until he heard the bolt being pulled back.

"Hey, is there anyway we can end this without me being dead?" asked the now-worried Wreythe, his hands straight up in the air, his attacker just out of his eye-line.

"Unless you can give me a damned fine explanation, then I'm 'fraid we can't."

It was a woman, Wreythe was interested to note, and not only a woman, but a woman who was plainly scared out of her mind right now.

The pigeon, however, was watching this all rather peculiarly, and rethought his decision about not retiring; plainly, his memory was failing. Wreythe however, wasn't thinking at all about the pigeon, and decided to try another tact.

"My name is Dyson Wreythe, and I'm not here to hurt you. I'm simply trying to find something a friend of mine told me would be here."

"Which is?"

"I'm not sure," admitted Wreythe. "It's some sort of invitation. I don't really know much about it, I was paid to come here and find it."

Now the woman was interested. "Who paid you?"

"Tennyson, the Mayor of Grainyard, near Denver."

A click sounded, and the woman had come around to stand directly in front of Wreythe, searching his face for something. She had dark, almost red-brown hair, with grey eyes and a cute nose. She was of a fair height, and of an average build, but she couldn't have been any older then 20. She had been wearing a type of segmented leather army, straps holding it in place, while her arms were bare. She carried almost casually a proper sniper rifle, not like Wreythe's.

"Nice gun, huh? We're not like the usual riff-raff you find in the wastes; NCR has all the best stuff."

NCR. Wreythe had heard of it before, back down in Texas. A group of raiders whom he'd been stalking had gathered around a campfire one night, and Wreythe had been patient enough to listen in before dropping in and slaughtering them all.

"You guys hear of that place up in the east?" asked the first raider, peeling open a can of beer.

"Nah, too fucking busy pounding to give a damn about any shit, what's it?" replied a raider disdainfully.

"Apparently some bitch in California went and organized an entire city! She went and gathered people from all 'round, and now they've got a massive fucking city!"

"Bullshit" laughed one of the raiders, spilling his beer.

"Nah, it's true, Chenga told me. He said he's been there; they've built up an entire city from nothing, population at around six-hundred-thousand and they've even got a whole army!"

It was at this point Wreythe had swooped in and killed everyone, and he was beginning to wonder if that was the smartest idea in his life, however, he was sure he could deal with some snot-nosed woman who thought she could get the drop on him.

Wreythe allowed himself to be taken out of the crater field by the woman, keeping his hands up in the air the entire time, but he noticed her guard was lax, as if she was expecting someone or something, and was too busy scanning the horizon to keep both eyes on Wreythe.

Wreythe exploded into action, crouching and closing the gap between them within a split-second, and before the woman knew what was happening, he had grabbed the rifle's barrel with one hand and moved it aside while his other hand had already pulled out his M1911, and he aimed it directly at her head. The woman whimpered as Wreythe checked her for any further weapons, finding only several fragmentation grenades.

"Now missy, start talkin'; who are you, who sent you and why are you interested in this goddamn junkyard."

Taking a deep breath, the woman slowly moved her hand to her pocket, and pulled out a plastic card.

Name: Rain Munroe, LCpl.

Sex: F

D.O.B: 08/16/2194

Place of Birth: Sphere Seven

General Access Level: 4

Security Access Level: 3

Wreythe mulled this over before looking back up, staring at the Lance-Corporal inquisitively. "So, you're in the army, eh?"

"Yes."

"What's Sphere Seven?"

"I don't rightfully know. I grew up in a land full of corpses and sand; my family took the first boat here when they got the chance." However Wreythe wasn't stupid, he could see there was a lot more behind her story, but he moved on anyways. "Where are you based now, and what are your orders?"

But this time the woman said nothing, her back straightened, and she stared straight ahead, ignoring Wreythe. Wreythe began to get angry, and was about to ask her again, when he began to hear something that made his hair stand right up. A low rumbling sound was building up, as if coming closer and closer, and almost afraid of what he might see, Wreythe turned to see what Munroe was looking at.

A giant eighteen-wheeler stormed towards the pair, bounding over the ruined highway and going at speeds that could leave Wreythe a very, very broken man. A black snake charging its prey. The din rose and soon Wreythe couldn't hear anything as the truck applied the brakes, screeching to a halt only meters away. Wreythe hadn't seen anything like this for years; it had a brand-new black paintjob, the windows had been tinted and a vinyl on the body had read 'NCR Marine Corps' in white, bold striking letters.

Gob-smacked, Wreythe was soon knocked out, unconscious of the fact that Lance-Corporal Munroe had taken the opportunity to take her rifle out of his unresponsive fingers and butted him in the side of the head.