Arknights X Fallout New Vegas: A Man Chooses, a slave obeys

Cain And Abel

Prologue 1

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In the scorching desert, the courier, Nathan, was shot and left for dead, shallowly buried in the sand. Miraculously, he was saved, pulled out from the depths by a savior made of steel, and revived by the kind doctor from the nearby town of Goodsprings, Doctor Mitchell.

As Nathan recovers from the good doctor's abode, Doc Mitchell couldn't help but feel he might've seen him before. The good doctor is a Sankta like Nathan, much like everyone else in Goodsprings except for some interesting characters, but it was when the doctor took a good look at his ID tag that the face of the promising young man all came back.

The Doc expected a pleasant reunion greeting from the courier, but when he woke up from his coma, just two days after the attempt on his life, Nathan couldn't remember the doctor, nor his own name. He held onto one crucial memory — that he was a courier, and his package had been stolen. It frustrates him that he remembers his job more than his name.

Before the good doctor could send him on his way to exact his revenge, he implored Nathan to stay and get his bearings straight. If he can't remember who he is, then certainly he can't remember his way around. He would be dead just a minute out of Goodsprings.

~~~

The locals, who all knew who he was, and what he was like, took it upon themselves to make him remember, but he couldn't. Their faces are blurry to him, and he is aware he once knew them, he just couldn't see them clearly, but when the locals realized that it's perhaps better that Nathan doesn't remember who he was, they decided to just help him out with his situation.

They prepare him for the world ahead by providing him with supplies and survival tips needed for the journey, and luckily, while Nathan's memories were blasted away with two bullets, his unrelenting determination, stubborn spirit, and the skills and experiences that imprinted themselves into his instincts, relying on muscle memory than memory alone, would see him through the strange land he finds himself in.

The locals all told him the same thing, they're in a place called Eden. To call what's essentially a vast, hot desert "Eden" seems pretty far-fetched; the locals said that it used to be worse, and compared to the standard of living outside of Eden, this is perhaps a better alternative than having to contend with the cramped conditions of nomadic cities, and escaping catastrophes to boot – depends if you'll live long enough before you get robbed for groceries.

~~~

Nathan stayed for only a few days in the town of Goodsprings; while he felt at home surrounded by Sanktas and good people, he has a job to do, a delivery round to complete, and an asshole that deserves to be buried, with more than two bullets in the head. Nathan's hunch, and the speculation of the locals tells him his killer was headed to the city of lights, the destination of where he'll deliver the chip.

The last thing he saw before everything went dark, even if the rest of his memories are gone, is the image of the tacky checkered suit that is forever imprinted on his mind by two bullets. Someone wearing that kind of cheap-ass garment would be a mafioso or a conman or a businessman, or all of the above, and what better location would they hunker down in than a city of sin that was described where fortunes are won and lost in a blink of an eye.