Another Unoriginal Oneshot Book

Blood in the Water

AN: This was actually the first Fallout fanfic I ever planned out. Obviously some things changed as I developed my lore, but the idea's been in my head for years. Hope you like it, unless you're Wade, in which case I have no hope of you liking it. Bless.

The Capital Wasteland, December 2283.
-
Hope finds a way.

Six years had thrown everything they'd got at Knight Aniss Catherine Lawrence. Blood, sweat, the strongest loyalty and the cruelest betrayal. Sweet freedom and white-hot vengeance. She'd built, she'd broken, she'd stumbled along the way. Braved the darkest dungeons, leveled armies, watched humanity spring from the scorched earth.

Of course, like any young plant, humanity often needed a bit of pruning.

Thunder cracked outside, somehow more ominous to Aniss's ears than the bullets whizzing past her helmet. Those were old news, but the sky was something she'd never been able to get over. Its vast expanse would still be there when she finished up with these cultists, so she focused on the more pressing matter.

Charon crouched to reload, and she moved like clockwork to lay cover fire. They didn't need words anymore, not for the simple things. He stood, and she left the close-quarters combat to him while the Pip-Boy's superior nightvision helped her pick off the snipers on the balcony. This warehouse was the perfect gang hideout, but organized crime had a lot more trouble taking root in the Capital these days. The community staying here had been a fairly benign religious movement until their seers started hearing messages of human sacrifice. It smelled suspiciously like a faction of Ug-Qualtoth's boys, but wanting nothing to do with that, Aniss didn't ask any questions.

The hostiles were down. Not much posed a challenge for the two these days. The only markers on the Pip-Boy radar were a handful of green dots in the center of the high-ceilinged room. The mystery explained itself as she got closer. The captives were stowed in a freshly excavated pit in the floor, overlaid with iron bars. One of the cultists was flopped over backwards onto the pit, one arm hanging down through the metalwork. A man tugged at it, hoping to upset the rifle laying across his chest. The captives startled when Aniss's light hit them.

Seven men and women, no visible injury. Fewer than had been reported missing, but from the smell of things, that dark-stained cinderblock altar had been used recently. Aniss compartmentalized that.

"Brotherhood," she introduced herself. "Any injured?"

"No," said the spokesman who'd been tugging on the arm. "None that can be helped now."

Aniss nodded and picked the trapdoor lock. Charon paced the room, looking for supplies to distribute. The roads were safe enough these days for them to get home by themselves, so there would be no need to babysit after this.

The captives crawled to the surface, and Aniss took inventory. She recognized the spokesman in the black leather jacket as Brock. He'd originally been assigned to investigate these guys, and Aniss and Charon had been called in when he'd failed to return.

Well, Aniss had been called. The Brotherhood preferred not to think of Charon as a separate entity.

He'd been a knight, once. It was just easier to give him clearance, if Aniss was going to insist on taking him along on missions. The rest of the Lyons Pride had been hesitant, but Sarah voiced her full confidence, and he soon proved himself beyond the team's satisfaction. The conga line of elders after Sarah's death, however, had proven harder to convince. Eventually, Charon had received an honorable discharge, ostensibly because the contract prevented him from proper devotion to the Codex. He never breathed a word of opinion about any of this, so Aniss restricted her protests to private seething.