Chapter Text
Bull and Bear over the Dam, at each other's throats... but a light from Vegas?
Ball spinning on the wheel, more than two at the table, placing bets.
All lose in different ways, a dam of corpses, towns of corpses, scattered across the sand.
But whose, in what shares?
Even the dealer doesn't know.The Forecaster
"I've been thinkin' about what you asked me this mornin'." admitted Six.
Although not to go back to sleep, the Courier had laid back down again, sprawled out loosely on his side of the bed. His face and eyes were fixed to the ceiling.
"About Veronica?" Arcade asked.
After hearing about their mutual friend's ordeal, Arcade had found himself worrying about her too. She said she needed some time alone, but he knew from experience the opposite was more likely to be true.
"No. Well… I have been thinkin' about Ronnie… but what you said about your dream. Old memories."
"Did you have a dream like mine?"
The dream he had in the morning, Arcade mentally noted. Not the faux pas he had just earlier.
"Dunno. If I did I've already forgotten it." shrugged Six. "But I feel like I owe you an apology."
"What for? You've woken me up far earlier than that."
"Hah. Not that. I guess I've been feelin' awful that I've withheld certain stuff. That I wasn't completely honest with you."
That hurt, like a twist of a knife made from guilt, but the Follower didn't admit that aloud. Nor was it his friend's fault — he didn't mean it as an attack. He didn't know. He couldn't know.
"You don't have to apologise for that…" Arcade insisted. "You were only protecting yourself."
At the request early in their friendship, Six had on occasion shared with Arcade scattered memories, mostly of his childhood. Nothing he had recalled could really pin down what his family unit might have looked like, or where he had grown up. He had also been sparse with the details of said recollections too, and at times it seemed like he purposely omitted certain parts. It didn't seem fair to pry further into those moments of vulnerability, especially back then. Gannon realised soon after the Courier had returned from the Sierra Madre exactly why.
"Guess I don't need to explain the reason."
Arcade debated whether or not to bring up the night Six had disappeared, which could only have played out differently if he already knew. However, that was not an old memory, and it was not the only burning question in his mind. Affectionately, he truly wanted to know everything about Six, but it felt like any queries related to his gender and sexuality were perversions.
"You don't have to answer but… did you always know?" he mustered the courage to ask at least one of the questions.
"Always know what, exactly?" Six turned to face him.
Gannon should have anticipated that.
"Did you… somehow always know you were transgender?" he asked again, frustrated he had to spell it out.
A lump of guilt circled in his throat.
"No… I didn't have the words to describe myself til much much later." Six heaved himself up and held his legs to his chest. "My memories 'round that time aren't great but I remember feelin' wrong somehow."
Gannon fought back the gut reaction to say that there was nothing wrong with his friend, because, and strictly medically speaking, there was. He couldn't find the words wherein he'd console Six without sounding condescending on accident.
"Wrong?"
"When you're a little girl you're kinda expected to like boys. But I didn't like 'em in the way girls were supposed to… and I didn't like girls in the way someone like Ronnie would either." Six explained. "I remember at some point I found this trashy gay erotica novel… Or was it a magazine…? Either way I got all emotional and sad 'bout the cover. Seems so obvious in hindsight…"
When Arcade recalled his own experiences coming to terms with his own sexuality, it was also painfully obvious in retrospect. In a small way Gannon had grappled with his own gender too during that time, although it was more recognition and a much simpler conclusion that he was a boy who liked other boys. Then a man who loved other men. It was a puzzle with less moving pieces, hardly complicated when compared to what someone like Six would have gone through.
"I think I understand… Do you remember the title of that book by any chance?"
"Nope." Six chuckled. "Didn't have the guts to read it back then… but I'll get it if I ever see it again."
"You might have missed out on a bonafide classic." joked Arcade.
Not his usual reading, but Gannon had read a few thin paperbacks in the past that could be also classified as 'trashy gay erotica'. They didn't turn out to be the remedy for repressed feelings he had hoped them to be. If the novel (or magazine) was anything like the ones he had read, two (sometimes more) manly hunks described in almost grotesque detail would go to town on one another without any real satisfying build up. The lube situation, as in the complete lack of it, was dire too. It didn't feel like they were written with people like him in mind.
"Maybe!" Six smiled. He shuffled closer, taking a loose seat beside his doctor. "I let Ronnie know. As in I came out to her too."
"She didn't know you were bisexual…?" Arcade asked, puzzled.
"No… the other thing."
"Right! Was she supportive?"
"Of course!"
"Good. I'd hate to have a bone to pick with her after what she's gone through."
"Gotta admit it was pretty cathartic tellin' her, even if it sorta… just came up. My timin' wasn't great though…" Six trailed off. "But shit memories of bein' a kid is one thing. It's the shit that feels more recent that scares me. I don't really know if I like the person I used to be…"
Arcade found it difficult to imagine the man next to him as anyone other than the odd yet charming Courier Six.
"For what it's worth, I like the person you are now."
Six abruptly leant into Gannon's side.
"Even my nocturnal schedule?" asked the warmth pressed into the blond man after a pause, hiding a genuine reaction behind a veneer of humour.
"I haven't got any sunburns all summer." Arcade pointed out.
"What about you? Did you always know you were gay?"
"My mother did, apparently."
"D'you still think she would liked me?" Six rolled his cheek into the doctor's upper arm.
"Yeah." replied Arcade, and with his opposite hand he patted the Courier's head. "I'd like to think so."
"Even if she knew what I am?"
"A package courier?"
Six gave him a forceful nudge.
"It wouldn't be any of her business unless you wanted to tell her." he told Six softly. "I can't know for certain how she would react, but if she didn't accept you I wouldn't stay quiet about it."
Through the sleeve of his shirt, Arcade felt his friend smile ear to ear.
* * * * * *
In a manoeuvre Arcade had seen Six pull of before on other hatches, he pinched the rounded screws of the air-conditioning vent and spun them loose. A wrench would too easily distort the shape of the fixtures, and neither of them could really know how secure the room was. Someone astute enough would recognise it for what it was — a secret stash.
Essentials: A couple of toy dinosaurs, a few rations and some loose ammunition fell out as Six removed the grate and dug through the outlet. He ended up submerged within the duct to haul out his prize: an elongated sports bag and a pile of rolled up papers. Everything had been positioned to not block the airway, which would only draw unwanted attention.
"That Raul! I could plant a big ol' kiss on that lipless face of his!" chortled the Courier as he assembled the bag's contents: an anti-materiel rifle. "Though I don't think he'd appreciate that very much!"
Gannon could think of a more than willing volunteer to collect such an award instead.
It could only be the same gun Six had talked about in the past. To everyone else but its owner (and Raul apparently), it was broken beyond repair. Too heavy and cumbersome for Benny's hired goons to lug it with them for scrap. The large firearm still bore deep scratches from the damage that had once rendered it unusable. Arcade watched Six run his fingers over the battle scars, sanded and meticulously shaped back into its original configuration. It wasn't the kind of damage one would expect from thugs, but it wasn't the doctor's place to speculate further. What could not be patched up had been replaced with spare parts, and then further improved with the mods the Courier had invested in.
An impressive weapon, one befitting of the man who carried it.
Even though Arcade abhorred violence, he trusted Six to wield it responsibly. He was not ignorant of the dangers that justified such tools.
"At the risk of sounding insincere, I hope you won't have to use that any time soon." Arcade told his companion.
"Yeah, me too." Six remarked. "There's much nicer things I wanna invest in than bullets for this thing."
Rifle in hand, he stood and took aim at the locked door in a test of muscle memory. His fingers were purposely off the trigger, and there was no ammunition loaded into it — but the Courier looked plenty threatening from where Arcade watched. He peered down the scope at an enlarged and out of focus wood grain.
"Still…" Six said nostalgically, bittersweet in his inflection. "It's nice to have a bit of my past back with me, even if it's somethin' like this."
"It doesn't seem like something you'd need to hide from Mr. House." Gannon blurted.
"You catch on quick. The rifle's not why we're here."
"So why are we here then? Not that I don't enjoy your company."
"Well… sometimes the Securitrons don't let Raul in at the gate if he's by himself. Assholes." Six answered as he set down his rifle with the rest of his gear. "Easier if I just show you."
Arcade guessed the papers were part of what Six meant by that, but the Follower was apprehended before he could gather them up. Instead, he was walked backwards onto the end of the bed, gently steered to sit down. The mattress squeak a prelude to the thundered heart in his chest. He craned his head up at the other man, whose hands sat upon the doctor's shoulders.
"Must be very serious if I need to sit down for it." joked Arcade.
If there was any chance Six was about to demonstrate a distraction worthy of hiding from his employer, Arcade had nuked any probability of it.
"Please. Stay." he stammered, giving one shoulder an exiting friendly pat.
"Wherever you need me."
Perhaps it was just Arcade's imagination, but Six appeared just as flustered by the exchange.
Gannon's gaze followed him across the room: and the mailman retrieved a lunchbox from the bookshelves against the wall. From the way it rattled, the container was filled with objects of differing materials, and not a mistimed meal. It was set down next to the rolls of papers.
Each roll unfurled into tourist posters and brochures. Six began to place them together on the floor in front of the bed, and roughly where the locations overlapped. The Courier's Pip-Boy satellite map of the surrounding area would have been far more accurate, though at a similar scale would easily cover the entire floor. From the lunchbox he tamed the corners down with stones, geologically uninteresting rocks and minerals, but they all had a quality that would have caught their collector's eye.
A mosaic of the greater New Vegas area, with Hoover Dam in focus.
"A murder board?" Arcade queried.
"I s'pose this plan isn't without its casualties."
"True… but I meant like in your detective holo-tapes when they have the case pinned up and tied together with yarn."
"Aren't those… not on the floor?"
"You've always been a little unconventional." he shrugged.
"Only a little?" Six feigned offence.
"Perhaps you're quite familiar to me."
Six explained that the patchwork map was his 'battle plan', like the campaign table of a general's desk. A second battle for Hoover Dam was inevitable, but there was still time to shift the balance of power in their favour. He began to place other items from the lunchbox over certain locations, which Arcade recognised as markers for the vying powers in New Vegas.
"The Bear." said Six.
A two-headed bear carved from redwood at the city's former airport.
"The Bull."
A plastic yellow cow on the other side of the damn, roughly where Fortification Hill would be.
"The Brotherhood"
A metal chess piece, a knight, long stripped of its original colour, marked Hidden Valley.
"The Great Khans."
A small pewter rocking horse, a game token familiar to Arcade's childhood, at Red Rock Canyon.
"The Boomers."
A toy aeroplane sat over Nellis.
"The Strip and Freeside."
A mismatch hand of playing cards, all but one face down to show their backings: Lucky 38, The Tops, Gomorrah, Ultra Luxe. Face up was a King of Spades.
"…and The Followers." concluded Six.
A brooch of their emblem at the Old Mormon Fort. Who had given him that?
"…will have their hands busy for this second battle for Hoover Dam…" Arcade added.
"No doubt. I'll do my best to minimise casualties."
"I know."
"Yes-Man tells me the full Securitron army waitin' beneath the bunker doesn't need back up. That I don't need anyone else's help."
"Do you think that was Benny's plan? Subjugation?"
"Dunno. Everythin' he did was self-servin' but he's too stupid to really think things through." Six subconsciously touched the scar on his brow. "House considered him for a protege because he's ambitious, but that alone will only get you so far."
"What is House's plan for New Vegas anyway? You've told me bits of it… but beyond that I don't know what he really wants to do."
"He keeps his cards close to his chest — every now and then he mentions somethin' and I have to figure out how it all fits in." Six stood and walked to the light switch. "A lot of it is what I'm doin' already, it's just House thinks I'm securin' loyalty for him. I'll explain what I know."
*Click*
Aside from the faint rim of light around the door, the only thing Arcade could see in the dark was Six illuminated by the glow of his Pip-Boy.
*Click*
The Pip-Boy's flashlight function enveloped the room in bright green. Six returned to the campaign-map-murder-board.
*Flick*
He brandished a telescopic antenna pole from his pocket. It looked like it originally fitted onto a car.
"I was wondering why you bought that."
"It's in good nick. Never know when you might need an antenna."
"Just don't poke me with it."
"No promises." Six grinned. "Let us begin."
With a few button presses and a turn of one of the dials, the green light of the Pip-Boy shifted hue and luminosity to a black light.
Arcade expected the room to be covered in fluorescent signatures indicative of bodily fluids, but the room was surprisingly spotless.
"It's… clean."
"The room?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I wouldn't wanna see the bathrooms downstairs…" shuddered Six. "…but jeez, Arcade, what d'you think I'm doing in here?!"
The casino bathroom walls and surfaces probably would glow like a Pollock painting, Arcade thought to himself. He wasn't sure how well Six knew Pre-War artists, especially those from the twentieth-century.
"Not you! — whomever else might have used this room."
Unlike the photographic recreations Six had done with Veronica, creating a Pollock style painting was the opposite to what the Courier wanted to achieve with the Brotherhood of Steel. Much less the rest of New Vegas.
"I'm gonna make sure a room rented out to me is clean… " Six pouted.
"Also… I didn't know your Pip-Boy could do that." pointed Arcade.
"Oh, it's got all sorts of colours!" he replied giddily, adjusting the dials to show a full spectrum of colours — in the order of a rainbow, naturally.
"Cute."
"Back to the task at hand!" Six declared, chest puffed up. He tapped the tip of the antenna pole against the knight. "The Brotherhood is on my side, and my current… condition… means that House has let up about blowin' their bunker up."
"For now." added Arcade.
With his eye on the chess piece, he noticed why the Courier had turned on a black light. The map and some of the tokens on it had been annotated: near the knight read 'Hidden Valley'.
"Yes. For now." Six dragged the point of his pole, tapping the carved bear next. "As you already know, reinforcing the NCR's front lines is our best bet makin' sure this war doesn't drag out any longer than it needs to."
The Republic's military operations were drawn across the map, although a few locations had question marks written beside them. Perhaps they were places the Courier hadn't personally visited.
"It'll bolster peace and trade negotiations too."
"You'd hope so." sighed Six. "That's on the back burner til we get to Fortification Hill."
With the end of the antenna pole, he tipped over the pewter horse.
"The Great Khans have broken their would-be alliance with the Legion. They'll be escaping north during the chaos."
Below the game token, an arrow due north drawn in invisible ink. A strategic blow to Caesar, but one that would not slow his army down. Sending the tribe into the front lines would be suicide, regardless of which side they fought for. Relocation was nothing new for them, and with the NCR's attention elsewhere they had opportunity to begin again — a sentiment Six seemed to share.
"So that's one thing already sorted, packaged as less attacks on House's valuable NCR customers." he acknowledged. "For now our focus is here."
Six brushed circles around the hand of cards.
"Gainin' the loyalty of the Three Families will ensure nothin' goes wrong on The Strip while the dam is fought over. House has his suspicions that the Omertas are up to somethin'."
"Other than drugging their workforce and clientele?"
"House is plenty familiar with exploitation. Apparently they've been too quiet, and I've heard other rumours former business partners have been left high and dry… No pun intended. I'd hate to know what a place like that is hidin'."
At least Six could steel himself for the possibilities better than Vault 22. He already knew what to expect on the surface. What Gomorrah offered apart from its neighbours was nothing new or unique in the Wasteland — it was just more organised. A step above crack dens and sex trafficking. Proper reform and better protections for its workers was sadly something that would have to wait.
"The White Glove Society."
"I doubt those socialites have any tactical prowess."
"No, but they have social influence, not to mention lucrative business contracts within the NCR." Six clarified. "…and I thought it might be nice to dress up and indulge for a bit. I was plannin' on takin' Ronnie with me, but you're welcome along too."
Maybe during a time of peace Arcade could play Pre-War make believe with Six and Veronica, but for the moment he didn't believe he could enjoy it properly.
"I'll pass." said Arcade. "It sounds as if you don't believe the cannibalism rumours?"
"Apparently before they became the White Glove Society their tribe had… eaten… other people but I'd assume it was a survival thing."
A possibility, albeit an optimistic one.
"Let's hope for everyone's sake you're right."
With Benny ousted and MIA, the Chairmen were another group 'already sorted' according to the Courier. Swank was an ideal replacement, and the Chairman's outspoken loyalty to Mr. House sated some potential suspicion toward Six. As for the other major businesses on the Strip not run by the Three Families, they all seemed to like the plucky delivery boy too. He was well liked in Freeside too, but Arcade didn't need to tell him that. Six had the support of both The Kings and the Followers of the Apocalypse for a while now.
"After I've secured the loyalties of the Omertas and the White Glove Society, I have an ace up my sleeve courtesy of the Boomers."
Nellis.
"Their howitzers?"
The ones that were fired at the very ally they ended up making.
"Yes, but that's not the ace here, dear doctor. Have y'heard of the World War II bomber at the bottom of Lake Mead?"
If Arcade hadn't the access to Enclave government files, he would have believed the three-hundred year old sunken plane at the bottom of Lake Mead to be merely an urban legend. Kreger and the other Remnants had joked about the aircraft when they first moved into what was Clark County, Nevada.
"You're joking. Please tell me you're joking."
"I, Courier Six, am to deliver one 'B-29' to Nellis." he stated matter-of-factually.
"Respectfully," Arcade gripped the bridge of his nose. "…how the hell are you going to do that?"
"Like I've said to you before — I'm a very good courier."
A bank vault's worth of gold bars, now an antique plane.
Sure!
Why not?
"After that, I plan to deliver news of my success to Mr. House." Six's voice wavered a bit. "It will be the perfect opportunity to… unplug him before going to Fortification Hill."
"You sound hesitant. Surely it'll be like turning off a terminal. You're not actually killing anyone."
"That's the thing… I don't believe that he's some sorta sophisticated computer program. I guess I'll find out either way…"
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"No… This is somethin' I have to do alone. Besides… Can't ask you to walk into hell twice for me."
He traced the antenna along a trail heading south from New Vegas. It joined several other trails of glowing ink all converging to a point on the western side of the Colorado River, labelled: Cottonwood Grove. The heart of Legion activity in Nevada. One didn't need to be a local to have heard horrifying rumours and survivor accounts from there.
It would not be an easy escape if Six's entry obol was rejected.
"This is where we'll need to go to get to the bunker. There's a barge that will take us across the river." Six ran the antenna across a kitschy tourist map of the Colorado River. "Any questions?"
Arcade always had questions.
Forecast: A rain of blood will flood the desert and not purify it.