Megaton, 2283

---

The town was doing well; So well that it was expanding for the first time in decades. Settlers from places out of the Capital Wasteland, such as the Pitt, the Cinc. the Decent Lakes, the Commonwealth, Richmond, and even as far out as New Vegas had flocked to the town to start fresh. Well, that was one of the reason. The big reason was because of one of the town's residents; Sam Ross.

The Lone Wanderer. The Crazy Kid From Vault 101. The Great Emancipator. Fallen Steel. The Courier. Some had even gone as far as to call him the Messiah. All titles he had earned throughout his short time in the Wastes. All titles he had been given after walking through hellfire and worse.

He was simply a man who had done what he though was right, but most saw him as a legend. He brought lean water to thousands of people, and dismantled an entire regime almost single-handedly. He who would walk out of Megaton's gate with his dog and return weeks, sometimes months later to someplace; Sometimes it was within DC, others it was across the country. He wouldn't say what he did, but stories about some mysterious do-gooder would come into town with the caravans a few days later.

Samuel Ross, who walked out of his vault a bright-eyed but determined boy, who had been reduced to a shell of his former self, only able to follow a prime directive and not much else. What he needed...was a spark.

---

Sam reclined on his couch, dog on his special rug beside him. He had just come back from a two-week long journey to the other side of the Lakes. His brown duster hung on a coatrack he had scavenged from the same house in Springvale he had gotten the couch from, along with his gas mask, American bandanna (the pattern was of Nifty Fifty, the fifty star American flag used from 1950 to 1965, and not the Thirteen Plus One), and his Stetson hat. His satchel sat on the small coffee table in the center of the pseudo living room. His weapons and extra combat armor lied in the two lockers, wear and tear clear on their surfaces. He would fix them later. The only weapon not with them was his Desert Eagle, which stayed in the holster strapped to his hip. His worn Vault 101 jumpsuit-the same that somehow survived six years in the Wasteland-was snug around his body, enhanced over the years with lining that shielded him from radiation and dissipated lasers better than most armor coatings.

A knock sounded through the house. Dogmeat's head shot up, his ears erect and listening. Sam dropped his hand to his head and scratched his ears, calming the dog.

"It's alright boy," He whispered in a low voice. He got up, groaning as his sore legs held up his weight once more. "You read the sign?" He asked through the sheet metal of his wall, one hand slowly pulling out his Deagle. He had heard the thumps of power armor at the gate, and the impromptu sign beside his door read 'No Brotherhood allowed'.

"Uh...of course!" The voice on the other side said. It was slightly synthesized, the vocabulator of a power helmet. In one fluid motion, Sam swung open the door, grabbed the handle on the Knight's T-45d chest, and pulled his face into the barrel of the Deagle. He sucked in breath as he saw the gun.

"Stand down, Sentinel!" A commanding voice ordered him. Sam looked up and twirled the Knight so he was facing them, putting the gun to his helmeted head. The .50 caliber bullets in the sidearm had next to no issue punching through his decent power armor at three yards; Any pull of the trigger would end the man's life instantly.

"Don't call me that," He told him in a low voice, "I resigned my commission the moment I learned what your brothers did." The man, in the same power armor as the other besides the helmet, scoffed.

"Those were the Outcasts, Wanderer!"

"Then now come the man who fired the first shot is walking around the Bailey without a care in the world?" He struck the man silent. He put down the pistol and shoved his captive in the back, sending him into the dirt.

"Where and why?" He asked, putting the hand cannon in its holster. He figured that they were talked to by Harden, and had a damn good reason to be here, asking him to trudge into the Wastes for the Brotherhood. Arthur sighed; he was always so blunt.

"A newly discovered Enclave outpost northwest of Raven Rock," He told him, "Probably the last before you go past the Lakes." His hand curled into a fist automatically; His hate of the Enclave hadn't waned in the slightest since that fateful day in the Jefferson Memorial.

"Meet me there at midnight." With that, he turned around, marched into his house, and slammed the door. Arthur sighed, and gestured to the soldier. He nodded and jogged out of the gates, telling the pilot of the vertibird outside to prepare for takeoff. Arthur sighed, burying his face into his gloved hand.

Despite being at the job of Elder for only two months, the sixteen year-old was already sick of working with the Lone Wanderer.

---

Arthur dropped out of the vertibird, crouching and scanning the Wasteland for threats. He began moving to the Enclave outpost at a brisk pace as the vertibird flew off. As he got into sight of the outpost-maybe 100 yards away-a blade shot out form behind a rock and nearly cut his head off. He stopped instantly. The wielder-in a cowboy hat-watched as the Brotherhood vertibird flew over the small black dome, its occupants giving no reaction to it. Either they realized it was Brotherhood and their lives were over, or they assumed that it was Enclave.

"Real sneaky, Maxson," Sam scolded in a whisper, putting his unignited shishkebab away on his back. Dogmeat growled a little, but did nothing else. His scoped hunting rifle was on his back along with his special assault carbine and shishkebab, and his Deagle and M1911A1 were in their holsters. A .44 magnum was strapped to his lower leg, and a knife under his duster and under his bicep. A 10mm pistol was strapped across his chest, but as long as Arthur had known the Wanderer he had never shot it.

"I can't walk across the entire fucking Wasteland in power armor!" Arthur shot right back as he leveled his laser rifle up.

"Then don't-" He stopped to watch two power-clad Enclave soldiers march around the small hill the dome was situated. As they disappeared around the other side, he grabbed Maxson's shoulder. "Run." And with that he was sprinting towards the enemy, his dog on his heels. Arthur didn't waste time to grumble, simply trying to follow him as fast as he could in the power armor. He watched as Sam began to climb up the side, and mimicked it, his own strength the only reason why he made it.

They both slammed their backs into the steel of the dome, knowing that the thickness could cancel sound and (hopefully) vibration. Sam pulled his bandanna down and pulled a gas mask out of his satchel, a gas mask that Maxson recognized as a M50, but this one had a tinted red visor. He crouched down and put a smaller one on Dogmeat's muzzle after putting his hat back on. He looked to the top of the dome, then to the Brotherhood Elder.

"Stay here and-" He pulled out a thermite charge from his satchel and handed it to him. "-Blow it when I blow it." He turned and began creeping around to the other side. Arthur shrugged and planted the thermite on the wall, and began thumbing the detonator. Maxson noted now different Sam's voice sounded with his mask on-much deeper and more commanding. Must have been a vocabulator he had installed at some point.

As soon as he saw sparks fly from the roof of the dome, Arthur activated the thermite and prepared for it to blow.

Wait, the roof?

All three thermite charges blew at the same time, and Arthur charged in with mechanical precision, ready to blast any Enclave that were ready to blast him. But there weren't any Enclave ready to blast him; All of the Enclave personnel, soldier and civilian scientist alike, were on the ground convulsing and clutching at their throats. That was when Arthur noticed the green cloud that covered their bodies.

He quickly reached up and activated his reserve oxygen supply, while at the same time pressurizing his suit. For the next hour, he would be able to breathe even in the vacuum of space. He looked to Sam, who was looking down on the dying Enclave. Dogmeat was pawing the body of one power armored soldier that didn't seal off his suit in time.

"Poison gas?" He asked him, "Are you serious?" Sam returned his stare.

"They deserve far worse than this." His voice was now cold and emotionless. "You wanted me to do this for you, so I'm doing this my way." He slowly walked towards him. "Either work with me, or get out of my way." His hand was on his Deagle, who hadn't been pulled out of its holster yet. Arthur slowly nodded, a little more afraid of the man than he once was.

The two spent the next hour clearing out the surprisingly extensive Enclave installation, which apparently descended for three stories. While Arthur kept to the more quick and practical kills-laser blasts to the head or chest-Sam was keeping them as painful as possible. He pulverized the kneecaps of one Enclave soldier with two shots from the Deagle before putting him out of his misery with his M1911, which was loaded with FMJ rounds for this mission. He shoved his ignited shishkebab through the stomach of another one and waited for a minute as the heat cooked the man alive from the inside. A rather disturbing but one doubt creative kill he had was slamming the head of a scientist into the side of a doorframe then closing the Vault-like door, her life ending in a couple of snaps and a short but horrifying scream. The woman's bones splintered, and Arthur could see the bone marrow oozing out of her bones as the door opened and they walked through it.

The two slammed their backs into the wall right next to the last door. Arthur put his hand on the activation switch. He looked to the Wanderer, who had his assault carbine in his hand. He nodded, and the switch was flipped. Sam dashed through the door with the skill of the Old World's special forces, and sent three AP rounds into the heads of the three soldiers that were crouched behind barricades. The only Enclave left alive was one scientist in a pristine lab coat. Sam quickly holstered his rifle and marched up to him. As the scientist turned around, his throat was quickly grabbed by the Wanderer's hand, who lifted him up in a very Darth Vader-like way. He and Arthur looked to the two skeletal arms wrapped in wires holding up a large device that looked similar to a power conduit in the center of the large chamber they were in.

"What is that?" Sam asked in his warped voice, looking to the scientist.

"T-trans dimensional..." He gasped for air after choking out the words. Sam sighed and dropped the scientist, who fell backwards and onto a terminal on a high table. He clutched his throat and coughed. "A trans-dimensional portal."

"Why?" Arthur asked as Sam walked to the device to study it. He didn't take his eyes off of it as he knelt down and took the gas mask off of Dogmeat's muzzle.

"We were trying to crack teleportation," The scientist explained, "We thought that trans-dimensional transportation would be a good stepping stone."

"You were wrong," Sam said in the center of the three arms, Dogmeat almost wrapped around his legs, "Teleportation is transporting an object from one place to another atom by atom in a very small window of time. No living thing can survive it, doesn't matter what protection it has. Second, a dimensional portal is simply ripping a hole in the time-space continuum without destroying the entire universe. And third..." He held up his arms, gesturing to the whole thing. "This is about as ramshackle as Megaton's walls." Behind his quiet and rather brutal demeanor, Arthur, who had been also studying the device (only from a safe distance), had forgotten how ridiculously smart this man was. Having a bionic brain might've helped, but his father was also, as Rothchild had once put it, 'The most brilliant scientist of his generation'.

The Enclave scientist furrowed his brow at the insult to his work.

"Do not call this achievement junk, you dirty wastelander!" Sam smirked under his mask.

"Look at the Vault suit, you-" He turned around and saw the scientist tapping few keys on the terminal, pulling a 10mm pistol from a hidden holster and firing at the man and his dog as he did so. The four bullets he fired missed, but they all imbedded themselves into the exposed circuitry of the portal. He quickly pulled his Deagle and fired as the scientist pressed enter. The bullet tore his head apart, but a moment later a clear tube materialized and surrounded the device, along with Sam and Dogmeat. The next moment the device began shooting blue arcs of energy all around the top of the tube, along with a multitude of sparks.

"Sam!" Arthur shouted, running up to the tube and looking it over for a moment. He punched it with all of his might, but it only gave him sore knuckles. He pulled out his laser rifle and shot it a few times, but the beams of energy curled around the entire surface before dissipating, not even leaving a scorch mark.

"Arthur, stop," Sam ordered as Dogmeat whimpered, pawing the tube, "It's no use." He tore off his gas mask and hat and looked Arthur in the eyes-well, his visor.

"I didn't want to go out this way, with me and my dog's atoms spilled into subspace. I was supposed to die fighting to make the Wastes a better place. I had so many wrongs to right, people to meet, slaves to free..." Tears were building up in his eyes. "I want you to promise me that you will do EVERYTHING in your power to fulfill my dream." Arthur took off his helmet, tears leaking out of his eyes.

"I will, Sam," He said in a higher-pitched voice than normal, as if he was regressing back to his ten year-old self, "I promise."

"Thank you," He replied, bending down and picking up his gas mask and hat, which went to his satchel and head respectively. "Then I accept my reinstatement as Sentinel of the East Coast Chapter." Arthur smiled through the tears. "And who knows? We could still see each other again. Someday."

Dogmeat let out one 'aroo?' in confusion before they were enveloped in a flash of blue.

---

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Transdimensional Reset-being sent to a different dimension means a fresh start. You are back to level 1. All perks and skill points are kept.