Another Unoriginal Oneshot Book

Power and Beauty

AN: Hello! This baby has spoilers for a couple New Vegas quests, if you're looking out for those. Also has some Legion-flavored adult themes, but nothing I wouldn't want my little sister to read (not that I'd ever let her read my work... yikes).

Flagstaff, 2266.
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When Mikayla Dean turned seventeen, her father gave in to her pleading and agreed to start taking her along on his hunting trips to Arizona. The best game was all out there, he said, and no other hunter was brave enough to risk the cazadores. Brave enough to risk the Legion was more accurate, but Charlie Dean had an arrangement with the patrols, in exchange for a portion of the game he bagged. He could offload some extra weight, and the Legion got fresh meat. Most importantly, the Deans got protected passage.

It was safe.

They didn't tell Charlie that the protection only applied to him. They didn't tell him that they found his daughter exquisitely, irresistibly beautiful. They didn't tell him that Legion patrols were paid for bringing in valuable captures.

Mikayla was nineteen. It was night. They were about to finish the trip and head home. Dad wanted to eat enough to lighten the brahmins' load. Mikayla didn't. She was very much aware of her beauty — sunstreaked golden hair, eyes a vibrant, expansive green —and didn't want to ruin her figure. Her father dismissed her vanity with a chuckle and told her she'd always be his little girl. They teased. A playful punch was thrown. Mikayla left the tent to use the bathroom.

She would never see her father again.

Many days later, she found herself in a dusty, crowded slave pen in Flagstaff, Arizona. She lay on her side, trying to find a head position that wouldn't have her feeling hyperaware of the heavy metal collar clasped around her neck. She had been scared for long enough that the adrenaline had stopped trying to keep up. The fear was a bleak thrum in the back of her mind. Her main concern right now was that she smelled. Like, a lot.

Mikayla was aware, of course, that she was a hot commodity. It wasn't as if she didn't know what the Legion did with its women. All the horrible possibilities were very real to her, but all she could think about was how awkward it would be if any guy tried to drag her off right now, before she could get some sort of shower. Not that she cared about the hypothetical man's comfort, but the thought that it would be gross on top of everything... for some reason, she fixated on it.

It made her angry in addition to the fear, but she didn't really have the energy to be angry. It all mixed together, heavy and flat, in the bottom of her stomach, along with the squirrel and yucca they'd fed her. Instead of angry, she just felt sick.

She languished in the dirt, morose people strewn about the pen like discarded rags. She became aware, slowly, of activity at the edges of the pen. Her eyes closed as her heart weakly started up again. The captives were moving out.

-

"You're gonna get us all killed," Boone muttered, amusement breaking through his flat exterior.

"I am not," growled Arcade.

"I dunno, your knuckles are looking a little white on the controls, there," added Veronica, popping her head into the cockpit.

"That's it," he snapped. "I'm putting this thing in a lake. You can start debating about the afterlife while I find one."

"Daisy would kill you," said Sage.

"Did you miss the part about all of us being dead?"

"She'd find you and Frankenstein you back to life and then kill you. And then make me steal Bear Force One for her."