Chapter Text
“Truth is…The game was rigged from the start.”
Sylvie burst from sleep with the smell of gunpowder lingering as a memory. She had not be haunted by that nightmare of a day in a while, but no matter how it happened, it always felt so real. Her eyes were still blurry from sleep as she rubbed them clear, sitting up from where she once laid.
The room was only lit by dim light drifting through the grey blinds that covered the window. Wooden walls made up the room, with a dresser, nightstand, and a cabinet made up the rest of the rooms substance. The soft mattress she sat on was far softer than anything she slept on for who knows how long.
She carefully stood, legs weakened from sleep slightly as she stumbled across the room. Pictures hung on the walls, showing an older man and a woman, with a younger woman in between them. A family; they must be the one that lives here, she thought.
They were all beautiful. A sort of beauty she had never seen, a beauty she had never seen anywhere in the waste that is the Mojave. Even the air felt….different somehow. It felt cleaner, and the light did not look touched by the changed sky of the wasteland she grew up in.
Where was she?
The door to the bedroom opened with a creek, causing her to quickly turn around, ready to strike. She only lowered her guard slightly as an older man awkwardly limped into the room, cane clanking against the wooden flooring. He wasn’t used to using a cane, she thought, maybe a recent injury.
“Ah…you’re finally awake. Are you hungry? I can go tell my wife to make you something quickly…can’t have a young one like yourself starve.”
“What…What happened to me?” Sylvie stuttered, watching the man as he slowly closed the door again.
“Don’t know,” The old man shrugged, “One of our hunting parties found you in the woods and decided to bring you back to town. Since I’m the only one here with any sort of medical experience, they decided to hand you off to me and my wife.” The girl only nodded, still weary of the man, even if his age would limit the dangers he could even cause her. The man patted the bed before he pulled a chair from the nearby desk, placing it in front of the bed and sitting down. “Need to do a final round of tests before I can safely let you go…”
“….OK, mister,” Sylvie replied nervously, quickly sitting on the soft mattress once more. The man pulled a small light from one of his pant pockets, ordering her to follow it without moving her head. She complied swiftly and tried her best to keep still. She was used to these sort of checkups, but they still strained her eyes.
“Can I ask your name?” She asked cautiously, nervous to overstep their hospitality.
“Rusty, and the wife is Carmen, what’s yours?”
“Uhhhh, Sylvie…sir!”
“Hm, a strange name that is. Where are you from, miss?”
“Mojave.” She replied, choosing the area instead of a hometown. She didn’t care for her old hometown anymore. She was a wanderer anyway.
“Hm, must be near Vacuo. What are you doing all the way out here?”
“Uh…I got lost delivering a package?”
“A package? Out here…? Hmm, ” The man asked with confusion as he prodded her knees and elbows, assumingly checking for joint injuries. He seemed to be searching fo something as well as looking for any injuries as he prodded around her body. As he finished feeling for any injuries, a field of grey energy—she assumed it was some sort of energy—burst to life around her. Warmth flooded her veins as she felt any soreness that arose from the man’s checkup slowly disappear. “Ah, there we go. I was waiting for that to show up, should be good as new shortly.”
“Wha—andWhat…?” Sylvie asked, astounded at the field that seemed to disappear after a minute or two. The man had moved away now, putting the chair back where the desk was, and strolled to the door as he failed to notice the shock in her voice.
“Come out when you’re ready, have to tell the wife you’re all patched up!” With that, the old man limped out of the room, letting the door stay open just a crack. She could hear the muffled exchange of voices through the walls, but not the words that passed through the people's lips. She pried herself up from the bed, far quicker than she had before. Whatever that shield was, it had refueled her strength.
Light erupted in her vision as she stepped through the door into the rest of the house. It was far smaller than she expected it to be. A small kitchen area with a dining room in between the kitchen and living room was the main area within the house, with a hallway split into two bedrooms and what she assumed to be the bathroom. In the living room, an older woman sat huddled over a steaming cup of tea, while the older man sat next to her, softly rubbing her shoulder.
“Sylvie, come sit,” Rusty called for her, pointing towards a chair across from the pair. His wife did not speak, still silent beside her husband. Carmen leaned into her husband as he continued to rub her arm, skin wrinkled and hair greyed with age; just like her husband's.
Sylvie slowly settled into the chair as her brain continued to race with the knowledge she just unknowingly learned. She did not know of this Vacuo he spoke of, nor where she even was. “Hi…I assume your husband told you my name?” She asked Carmen, who looked up to meet her gaze.
“Yes…he did. The guards found you in the woods, knocked out. Did the bandits attack you too?”
“What bandits?” Sylvie asked, confused as she turned to look at Rusty. “You didn’t mention an attack?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.” The man replied, gripping his thigh as he avoided both his wife’s gaze. “But…yes, there was an attack…just before they found you. It’s how I got my injury here, and—and how our daughter was taken…”
“Your daughter, the one in the picture, right?”
“Yes…,” Carmen spoke up, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “She tried to stop them from taking the other girls of the village, but they beat her down…and took her too. We…we—” The older woman slowly broke into tears, shuddering with silent cries as her husband took over.
“We wanted to ask you for help. We know you just woke up, and are probably very confused…but you look like a warrior, and we need a warrior now more than ever. Whatever you need—and whatever we have access to—can be given to you if you go after these bandits. We understand if you say no, but we beg you. Please, help us.”
Sylvie sat silent for a few minutes. She wanted to help, wanted to return the favor after they helped her out. But she had no weapons, no gun or sword or knife. Not even armor to wear. But, she remembered how she helped Goodsprings against the Powder Gangers. She had done that after she had just woken up from being shot in the f*cking head. She could do this.
“I’ll do it, but I’ll need a gun, and maybe some armor.”
“It’s old, but I have what you need,” Rusty replied, getting up and limping into the other room. It was only a minute or two before he returned, a large box in hand. “Here, my father's old gear, hopefully, it’ll meet your needs?”
She took the box carefully, slowly opening the black wooden box the man brought out for her. Inside, a silver revolver sat, flowers and vines engraved across the barrel and cylinder. A clean wooden hilt sat polished, clearly not having been used in many years. She picked it up carefully, flicking open the cylinder and checking each opening where a bullet would go. There were six in total, and all were in pristine condition.
“This is beautiful! Should be perfect, are you sure I can have it?”
“Yes…yes of course! We don’t have a need for it, I’ve only taken it out of the box to have it cleaned and for upkeep. There is some armor in there too, bullets are on the very bottom, you can use the bedroom we had you in to change.”
“Thank you so much, I’ll only be a second.” She called to the pair from over her shoulder, quickly closing the door to the bedroom and unpacking the set of armor, praying that it would fit her slender frame. Luckily, it did.
She quickly slipped on the pieces over the t-shirt and shorts the husband and wife had given her. It felt familiar to the gunslinger, its black armored pieces looked almost like the old Ranger armor she once wore in the Mojave. Even the helmet had the signature red eyepieces from her old armor. She would have thought about the coincidence more, but it made her head ache.
Before donning the helmet, she tied her brunette hair into a short ponytail, letting it curl behind her neck so it didn’t get in the way. Gods, she thought, looking at her face for the first time, I’m young.
The helmet went on smoothly, hiding her light blue eyes behind the red “goggles” as well as hiding her true age from the world. She looked nineteen, but she had been twenty-one in the Mojave. Whatever happened to her made her somehow de-age.
A minute later she exited the room, and Rusty smiled proudly at the young girl. “Oh, look at you!” He exclaimed as a large smile graced his wrinkled face. “You seem ready, here’s a map and compass, the bandits have set up camp a ways north, according to a scouting party. Are you sure you’ll be ok?”
“I will, you all will get your daughters back, I promise.”
“Thank you…thank you. One last thing, you were found with this on your person, I decided to have it upgraded while you were knocked out,” Rusty said, before giving Sylvie an object wrapped with cloth.
Carefully, she opened it, revealing something she thought she lost, but somehow found once more. Her old Pittboy sat in her hands, still rusty with age but clearly new. The screen opened up to reveal a modern screen, with a lot of new options for her to explore.
“What…I….I don’t know what to say.”
“Just a thank you would suffice, and getting our daughter back. The man I took it to had never seen anything like it, can’t say I had before today either. But, he added some new features from a Scroll, so you got all the updated maps and compasses you’d need.”
“Thank you, Rusty. I’ll get her back for you. I promise.”
“Thank you, young one. Now, get going, and be safe.”
Sylvie nodded once before leaving through the couple's front door. The sun was still high in the clear blue sky as she set out through the town, her black jacket flowing with the breeze. She felt renewed, and finally in something she remembered.
And thus, Corrier 6 started a new adventure, in a fresh new world full of new dangers. And one more, she had a big iron on her hip.
