Arizona Bay. Shady Sands. Just on the edge of the New California Republic territory.






As the sun began to set on this arid, barren wasteland, long shadows were cast over the ruinous old world. A post-nuclear wonderland, if you're into that sort of thing, where life continues to struggle for survival. This land still bears the scars of war from generations long since forgotten. Distant memories, echoing only through stories and accounts told second or even third hand.


Relics of remembrance - half concealed from humanities prideful fall, lay scattered and worn across the forsaken landscape. Once proud cities stood hollowed out like broken rib cages. The nuclear heat singed the air with the constant scent of festering rot. A strong scent of decay that would make your stomach turn if you hadn't already been born into it.


Such is life on the surface. This is their new world. The only thing they know. Yet amid the bleakness and the misery, life weathered on. They had no choice. Small communities developed, patched together from anything that could be salvaged from the desolation.


The Wastelanders proved to be a resourceful people. Resilient and battle hardened but that would only ever get them so far. They were not humanity's greatest hope. That distinction laid at the feet of the Institute and Father. We are the future. The most technologically advanced organization in the Commonwealth. Tasked to redefine the Commonwealth. To redefine humanity.


They call me MS-44 or in broader terms - a Courser. Unlike most synths and every Courser but two, I am capable of having my own thoughts, my own ideas and my own beliefs. I am able to push past the pre-programming that comes standard in the Gen 1, Gen 2 and Gen 3 synths.


The elite few of us that bear the title of Courser have been designed with one specific purpose - to hunt. To hunt down and collect defective synths, wipe their memories and have them decommissioned.


I had orders and they were simple: Locate the deserter and deliver the synth back to the Institute to be eliminated.


But a new war was on the horizon. The old adage: We are only really ever three missed meals away from a Revolution, weighed on me like the oppressive chains of discontent. What remained of the human part of me was bleeding through. This isn’t like me. Do the job. Locate the target. Complete the mission. But I could feel an ever-rising tension in the air on the surface. Palpable. Combustible. It could no longer be denied.


A life full of cold and calculated missions, one after the other, had started to weigh in the recesses of my mind. Filling the cracks between the gray matter like the radioactive lakes and rivers on the surface.


Is this what I'm destined to be? Nothing more than a killing machine, created to deliver wonton death on behalf of the Institute. On behalf of Father.


That thought - penetrating past my programming and into the once unknown, but now all to real world of human emotion.


Why do I care now? I never cared before. This new world has always been black and white to me.


Just do the fucking job. At any cost. The surface dwellers, the synths, the vaulties - immaterial to the big picture. Merely cogs in the machine. If you weren't one of us - a part of the Institute, you were cannon fodder. No more, no less. Expendable. Superfluous. Replaceable.


And if you were against us? You REALLY didn't want to be against us.


This one was different though. I saw her once. She was a part of the Courser program. She never finished. Not because she couldn't do it but because she could see through the evil. A Gen 3, not so different from myself. Forming human-like memories with every minute spent in the Wasteland. Memories that weren’t hers but that we’re implanted long ago to fuck with her head and make her believe that she was someone else. Someone with a past beyond her programming. Only now, she had been on the surface for too long. Disobeying orders from the Institute. Rebelling against the cause. Cozying up to the Railroad. A tight-lipped group charged with helping synths escape the Institute.


The intel provided by my holotape and a synth named Rowan who had infiltrated the NCR faction, has brought me to Shady Sands - the capital of the New California Republic. In search of the synth now known as Aurora. I fucking hated it here. I always had. A rugged terrain with a ferociously defended ideology. Imperialism and expansionism cloaked in democracy. A place where a corrupt and decaying dogma had settled into its roots like strychnine poisoning the proverbial well. The ultimate symbol of the Old World.


The sun-scorched Mojave - unwavering, unrelenting and all too deadly to the incompetent that have tried to traverse these harsh lands, lay at my feet. Quietly and discreetly I moved through the sands. I knew that there were Raiders hiding in the long stretch of canyons, waiting to ambush anyone unlucky enough to overlook their presence. Dodging Raiders and mutated creatures becomes a vital skill set on the surface. I was the fucking best at it.


Just north of my location, past the red rock formations and the ravenous gorge, were a group of settlements clinging to survival at the edge of civilization. Small outposts, deeply loyal to the NCR. It was there I knew I would find the target.


Her original assignment was to infiltrate and report back her findings in the NCR. To be boots on the ground for the Institute, to give us the advantage of surprise in the inevitable and impending faction wars. What had she told them? What did they know? Did they know anything at all? I was here to find out.


There was an eerie calm hanging in the air. A haunting stillness so deep it felt unnatural. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could feel what this was. I could feel what was coming. Shadows stretching across the infertile ground, a precipitous flash lit up the horizon. A searing white light, blinding and anomalous forced my eyes into a squint.


Then came the blast.


The ground below me shook violently, throwing me to the ground. Tearing through all the poorly built structures in its wake. Chaotic shockwaves thundered like a river through what was left of this settlement, turning everything to darkness. For an instant, time stood still. Through blurry vision and an unsteady balance, I staggered toward the sound of an old radio playing some old song from the Old World. I stretched my neck trying to shake it off.


The dust barely had time to settle before I noticed the target through a blown out window. Trying desperately to pull herself to her feet. Trying to make sense of what just happened. I pressed on. It was now or never.

War is hell. War is necessary.

 
Barney Green. What can I say about you that hasn't already been said about Razor Blade. At least Razor shows up and works hard. Not like you though, Barney. You’re a lazy fucking slob who has half-assed his entire career. You’ve spent your career jerking every curtain in every federation that would let you. And you have the balls to preach - legacy? What legacy do you think you’ve left, Barney?


Ask someone, anyone about Barney Green and they’ll first ask you who? Before realizing, oh yeah, that’s the guy who has made having an eye patch and type one diabetes his entire personality. We can see your cpap indent, Barney. Jesus Christ man.


You fashion yourself a Deathmatch Specialist? You need to see an autism specialist. You’re Corey Black with an extra chromosome. You come here touting your CULT World Title win but I think that says more about CULT than it does Barney Green. You didn’t even defend that title. Lost it immediately like everyone knew that you would. You know why, Barney. Anyone who knows Barney Green knew that wasn’t going to last. You did what you set out to do and then got lazy. Like you always do. You worthless fucking waste of breath.


That’s your fucking legacy, Barney.


Jesus Christ, Serenity. I have never met anyone that rides coattails like you do and I know Spencer Adams. I’m sure we all look forward to you name dropping Uncle Corey Black and Aunt Tyler Norrie while pretending that you’re anything more than Summer Page on a perpetual period.


I got here on my own, Serenity. Hovering around the top of the biggest federation in this industry because Matthias Syn is undoubtedly one of the best wrestlers on this planet. You… you have to fucking name drop to even make yourself feel relevant in a place that was so bad that it had to change its name.


I know why you do the name drop thing though. It’s because you have no aura. You have no allure. You’re a beefed up Barbie doll with the charisma of penile cancer.


I am going to fucking hurt you, Serenity. I’m going to leave you with scars that you can take back to the minor leagues to remind yourself that beyond those crumbling walls, Matthias Syn is the epitome of violence. Then you can go back to the place where you can pretend that you’re special. Where you can continue to seek absent-minded glory as you fight fake Bin Laden and TJ Alexander every week. Where you can be coddled by Spencer and made to feel like you’re anything more than a name lost to history.


Corey Black - another guy who believes himself to be an attraction, when in reality all that he is - is SEB’s fucking sidekick. A fucking real life, living, breathing Robin. Too delusional, too wrapped up in his own hubris, that he is unwilling to see what the rest of the world sees. All that lineage. Mr. Legend in his own eyes and STILL, passed over by his own stable mate, in the War Games draft for a, Syn whispers into the camera, five foot seven, one hundred and thirty pound…woman.


How’d that feel, Corey? Mr. fucking King of the Deathmach. Knowing that SEB doesn't even respect you enough anymore to view you as a sidekick. You’ve been relegated to the sidekicks - sidekick.


I know why you spend your time in CULT with the Barney fucking Greens of the world and create your own show, where you can nestle tight to the creature comfort of home field advantage. Where you can handpick your opponent. It’s because you’re trying to step out of the silhouette of Sebastian Everett-Bryce. It’s because SEB’s not there. SEB isn’t walking through that curtain. The realization has hit you like a fucking missile. You know, deep down, that you're Samwise Gamgee and NOBODY wants to be Sam.


You’d do anything to reclaim just a small piece of the relevance that you think you've earned just by being around for two decades and you can't do that with SEB around. Can you, Corey?


That's why you hide from the XWF. That's why no matter what happens at War Games, you can always crawl back to CULT or just make another XIII card. Because if you stay here too long, you'll be exposed. Exposed for the phony fucking, easily forgotten sidekick that you truly are.


I am looking forward to this, Corey. I really fucking am.


That brings us to Cypher. The XWF’s resident beta. The basement dwelling hack, hackER, excuse me, who spends the majority of his time on xvideos because his girlfriend would rather spend time traveling across the United States with Jason Cashe. How's his dick taste, Tyler. But I really shouldn't even say resident because you only ever stop by long enough for people not to forget you. But your empty-headed ego and your stubborn pride, blind you from the fact that nobody fucking cares. You’re not attraction, Tyler. You're a card filler.


Your reputation precedes itself to only you. You work the lightest schedule I have ever seen from a mid card talent. Losing two matches a year before you go and fuck off behind a keyboard.


You're a nobody, Tyler. Mr. Nobody. No matter what you tell yourself. You try your hardest to hang in circles with names much bigger than your own. But all that has been good for is making you a tiny, insignificant blip on the radar of this industry.


I know that I say cuck a lot but, Syn points through the camera, that guy is a cuck and I cant wait to twist your fucking neck off of your shoulders. You’re an embarrassment to men, to real men, the world over. I am going to send you back into the void, Tyler. Back to dark, pathetic basements and blue light filters.


See you again in six months you fucking clown.