The legend of Courier Six; the Wildcard, the Slayer of Caesar, and the King of New Vegas, is as long and storied as Long Dick Johnson's eponymous appendage. He who rose from the grave in the sleepy town of Goodsprings, and proceeded to trek miles across the deadly Mojave Wasteland, all to return the bullet of a certain checker-suited fuck named Benny in his own suite, the man unaware of his impending fate until a ten millimeter bullet introduced itself to the back of his head.

Any rumours to the contrary; for instance that the Courier may have been forced to trek back across the desert and into the den of Caesar's Legion all because he stumbled into the aforementioned checker-suited fuck's line of sight after tripping over the carpet and falling down the stairs are patently false. The perpetuators of said rumors are to be dragged out into the alleys of Freeside and shot, by order of the King of New Vegas.

Finally, having retrieved the Platinum Chip, the Courier returned triumphant to New Vegas, and presented his prize to its rightful owner: Robert House, (Former) CEO of RobCo, (Former) King of New Vegas, and (Former) Smartest Man Alive.

The Courier then proceeded to beat Mr. House to death for being a smarmy asshole, and usurped control of the securitron army, and thus Vegas itself, for his own, with the help of a friendly, if somewhat neurotic, hacked securitron.

Thus the pair set out on their journey, to fend off foes from both the West and East alongside a motley crew of companions, and to liberate both New Vegas and Hoover Dam in the name of the common man and of freedom. But this is not that story. Nor is it one of the Courier's many other stories, such as the time he got trapped in a pre-war casino inside a toxic cloud with a bunch of psychopaths, the time he got trapped in a pre-war research facility full of psychopaths (and robots), or the time he willingly travelled into a nuclear scorched hellscape of a pre-war city to meet one particular psychopath. No, this is not any of those stories. Rather, this is a tale of a man ripped from his home and everything he recognizes, and dropped into a land quite the opposite; one of superheroes and villains, rather than Bears and Bulls.

A land of metropolitan decay, rather than radioactive decay.

This story, like many others, begins with a locker. In that locker is a girl, trapped and traumatized by someone she once called friend, for reasons she cannot comprehend. This girl finds herself embroiled in a war she doesn't understand, and never asked for.

But few ever desire war, for war never changes.

Not really.

And where there is war, Ç̶͓͓ͥ́͋̊ḧ̴̙̪͕̯͍̎̊͑͢ͅǎ̞͖͎̗̃̄o̯̻͋̃̊̈́̌̈̊̇ś͕̻̹̠͌̀ will surely follow.

Taylor awoke to the beeping of heart monitors, her vision blurry as her eyes adjusted to the artificial lighting of her room. Slowly, she pushed herself into a sitting position, scanning what she recognized as a hospital room. Her attention was drawn to the only other person in the room, a figure currently occupied with rummaging through the cabinets lining the wall. He had a trench coat with heavy looking armor strapped over it, and when he turned around, Taylor's heart nearly froze at blood-red gaze that stared back at her, burning with something one might describe as idle fury. They stood there a moment; she, frozen in fear, and he, motionless, as if sizing her up. Taylor instinctively started to curl up in a protective ball. Then, whatever light gave the helmet that eerie red glow flicked off, and where once stood the physical embodiment of death, come to take her soul to the fires of hell, there now stood an ordinary, if somewhat imposing man in a dusty set of combat armor.

"You're awake," He finally said, "Someone should probably call the doctor or whoever, yeah?" With that, he returned to pawing through the cabinets.

'A cape.' Was Taylor's first thought. The second was 'Why would a Cape take me to a hospital?'

Then the memory of the locker slammed into her, and she curled into a ball, shivering.

God. She had been in there for hours. No one had helped her, not the students, not the staff, and certainly not the trio. It had taken a literal superhero to show up for someone to actually do something.

"You alright there, kid?"

Taylor turned back to the cape that had saved her, who was now fully focused on her.

"You're shaking like a leaf there. You want some Med-X or something for that?" He seemed to have abandoned his search of the cupboards in favor of digging through his jacket now, muttering to himself. "I had, like, a million fuckin' doses of that stuff in here somewhere…"

Finally, he seemed to give up, shrugging indifferently.

"Eh. They'd probably just yell at me some more. I mean seriously, I try to do nice things, and what do I get?" He looked at her, as if she knew the answer. "Everyone yelling at me! 'Oh, Six, you can't just stab someone with a stimpak and call it done!' They say. As if I don't do that a dozen times a day. I know real doctors who barely do more than that, and yet suddenly *I'm* the asshole, not to mention 'dangerously unstable' and 'a menace to society'! In the Wasteland of all places! Can you believe that?"

Taylor just tried to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, hiding under the sheets, hoping that somebody would escort the possible escaped mental ward patient out of her room. It was with great (silent) rejoicing on her part that a nurse entered the room moments later.

"Mister… Courier," She began, tentatively, "Perhaps you could wait outside? You wouldn't want to distress Miss Hebert here, would you?"

The Cape, Courier or Six or whatever his name was, dropped his arms to his sides. Slowly, he stumbled out of the hospital room, occasionally lurching to one side.

Was he drunk?

Taylor didn't have time to consider the stranger's actions, as her father quickly took the focus of her attention.

"Taylor! Oh my god, you're alright!"

Danny Hebert, her father, practically sprinted to her side, eyes still red rimmed. A doctor followed behind him, much more sedately as he looked through whatever files decorated his clipboard with a confused expression.

"Well, Miss Hebert…" He said slowly, "The good news is that you appear to be perfectly healthy."

Taylor and her father both gaped at the man in disbelief.

"You're telling me," Danny started, "My daughter was locked in a pile of filth for hours, and you can't find anything wrong? At all?"

"Believe me, Mister Hebert, we're as shocked as you are. We've run just about every test we could, and we couldn't find a single thing." The doctor shrugged. "Hell, if I hadn't seen the state she was in when she arrived, I'd have said she was faking it. We can't find a scrape on her."

The room was uncomfortably silent for a moment, the three of them simply staring at each other, Danny and Taylor in awe and disbelief, and the doctor in a sort of resigned bemusement.

"...Do- Do you have any idea how this happened?" Danny finally mumbled.

"Well, the man who brought Miss Hebert in, a Mister… Six, I believe he calls himself, mentioned injecting her with something he called a 'Stim Pack'." The doctor replied, flipping through his clipboard, "I have no idea what a 'Stim Pack' is, but given his… appearance, I think it's a fair guess that it's some sort of Tinkertech device that he used to heal her injuries. We just don't know how much it actually did, so we're going to have Panacea give you a once over before we let you out, to make sure there's no nasty side effects."

Taylor nodded dumbly, her thoughts drifting back to the stranger. He had found her locked in that filth, broken her out, healed her wounds, and even carried her all the way to the hospital from Winslow. Granted, she didn't exactly weigh a ton, but still. Taylor made a mental promise to thank him when she saw him again. He had done more for her in one day than just about everyone else she knew, combined, in the past few months.

And then the screaming started.

Amy Dallon trudged through the halls of Brockton Bay General for the hundredth time that day. There was always another broken bone to mend, another car accident to work through, another victim of gang violence riddled with bullets to patch up. It was a monotone of blood and bone, and she had long ago grown bored of it. At least this next case was different. Fifteen year-old girl came in looking like she had been swimming in biohazardous waste, and yet no one could find anything wrong with her.

Her pessimistic side told her it was probably another new cape, another Brute to patch up every time they overestimated their abilities, just like Aegis, but a small part of her was interested. The urgency of the request told her that there was something strange going on, beyond the usual explanation of 'Cape Stuff'. Her questions were answered when she saw the cape standing outside the girl's room. The one who currently had a lit cigarette sticking through an opening in the helmet he wore.

"This is a hospital, you know," She grumbled, walking up to him, "So would you kindly refrain from smoking here?"

"What, is this one of those fancy hospitals where the doctors all crawl up your ass about stuff like sterile environments and endangering their patients?" The man snipped back, taking another drag from his cigarette before crushing it beneath his boot. "Back in the Mojave, the doctors make do with a bottle of whiskey and whatever tools they can scavenge. Don't charge nearly as much for it, either…"

Amy felt her eye twitch at the cape's blatant disregard for basic health and safety rules. Then she heard the snickering.

"Pff… Heh, the look on your face…" The cape wiped a nonexistent tear from the optics of his helmet, before holding out his hand. "I'm Six. Courier Six."

Reluctantly, Amy grabbed his gloved hand, giving it a light shake.

"Amy Dallon," She said dryly, "So, what are you doing in this hospital, Courier Six?"

"Found some kid that got locked in a metal box fulla shit." He grunted, leaning back in his chair. "Gave her a stimpak and brought her here, then the doc asked me to wait around till someone named 'Panacea' could come around and tell me what I already knew, that the kid's fine, and they're very sorry for wasting my time. Then the lady came in and very politely asked me to keep anyone from distressing the girl, so now I'm playing guard duty." At that, he reached into his jacket to pull out a bottle of whiskey, pulled the top off and started chugging it straight from the bottle.

"Really?" Amy snorted, "They asked you to guard her room?"

"Well, the exact words were *I* wouldn't want to distress her, but I got the message. No one gets in or out."

Amy only understood about half of what the man had just said, but it was enough to give her an idea of why they had called her up. Powers that could heal were notoriously rare. A lot of so-called healers ended up realizing that their amazing healing powers were really just a side effect of some other horrific ability. Usually by killing the person they were healing.

"So what about you, kid?" He grunted. "I'm guessing you're one of the Followers, based on that getup you got."

"The Followers?" Amy asked, patting at the crosses on her costume absentmindedly. "Followers of what?"

"The Followers of the Apocalypse. Y'know, 'helping other people just because it's the right thing to do'? Good people. For the most part." Amy didn't catch that last part, already lost in thought as she tried to remember a cape team that called themselves the Followers.of the Apocalypse. Despite the fact that they had a name that wouldn't sound out of place as a sect of the Fallen, Courier Six made it sound like a heroic team, though not one she had ever heard of.

"Oh." She finally said. "Are you a member?"

"...Sorta?" Six replied, waving his hand back and forth in a 'so-so' motion, his drink sloshing in its bottle. "Julie offered me a spot after I helped them out a bunch, but I'm not really great with the whole 'scientific research' thing. I was really just trying to, y'know, 'be a good person' and all, trying to make up for some… not so great things I did.

"Not so great things?" Amy asked, laying on the snark. "Like what, smoking in hospitals?"

"Oh, you know…" Six muttered. "Things…"

The Courier let out a manic, howling laugh, falling to his knees as he watched the two mushroom clouds rise from either end of the Mojave. He had done it. House was dead, and now both the Bull and the Bear faced a slow death by starvation. The final pieces were moving into place for his grand scheme. People would call for his head, try to usurp him the same way he did House, sure, but they'd have to kill him first. Of course, he couldn't die. The Sierra Madre couldn't do it, Big MT couldn't do it, not even the fucking Divide could do it. The Courier isn't done until he says he is, and he still had a battle to win and a Dam to conquer.

"But I ain't like that now, anyway."

Amy let out a faint laugh, sitting beside Courier Six. He seemed like a decent guy, all things considered. Had a weird sense of humor, but oh well.

"You know, you did a good thing helping that girl." Amy finally said, turning to Six. "If you'd like, I suppose I could offer you a free healing, just this once."

"Shit, seriously?" His head whipped around so fast Amy thought he might break it. "Can you cure addictions too? I think I accidentally got myself hooked on Jet a few days back. Maybe Med-X too..."

"I could flush your system out, yes…" Amy agreed hesitantly. Maybe offering free healing wasn't the best idea, but she couldn't back out now.

"Oh hell yes, let's do it then."

They both sat silently, staring at each other.

"...Are you going to just sit there?" Amy asked, sighing. "I need skin-to-skin contact for this."

"Oh! Oh… It's that kind of healing."

Amy rolled her eyes. And, there goes the other shoe. Yes, super-powered healing. Honestly, not to sound too egotistical, but who hasn't heard of Panacea by this point?"

"...Sorry kid, but you're not really my type."

What.

"What? No! Not like that! God, get your head out of the damn gutter!" Amy grabbed at his arm, pulling off his glove. "Just-"

Amy froze, the complete biology of Courier Six crashing into her mind. All she knew was what her power told her, and her power told her that the man- No, the Thing sitting next to her had neither a heart, nor a spine, nor a brain; at least, not as such. He had so much artificial Tinkertech stuffed into him that her power seemed to be having trouble with whether to even call him a living thing.

Amy stumbled back, sickened, at the kind of cruelty that Courier Six must have endured, to end up so horribly disfigured. She couldn't begin to imagine the kind of pain he must be feeling.

"Hey… You alright kid?"

She realized that he had stood up, and was crouched over her. She tried to say something, but one question repeated over and over in her mind.

"Wh-" She gulped, her body shaking in sympathetic agony. "Where… Where's your brain?"

"My brain?" He cocked his head. "Oh! Yeah, hold on."

Amy watched in mute horror as he dug around in his jacket, slowly pulling out a sealed glass jar, one that contained, unmistakably, a human brain.

And then she started screaming

Man, anyone check that new Fallout reveal from Bethesda? I couldn't have timed this more perfectly if I tried. There really isn't nearly enough quality Fallout: New Vegas content out there, especially when "Enough" basically means "a bottomless supply" in this situation.

Anyway, I wanted to write a fic for Worm at some point or another, and I also wanted to write something for New Vegas, and so here we are. Dunno if I'll try making this a whole big thing. We'll see I guess. Just glad I finally got my ass to sit down in a chair and write again.

Interestingly, my original idea for this had Joshua Graham in place of Courier Six, because I really liked the idea of how the various characters of Worm would view and interact with him, but I couldn't really figure out a way to form a cohesive plot around the parts in between the good stuff that followed what I think Joshua Graham would do, so I put Courier Six instead.