John took a deep breath and said, "Hello Damien, I did as I intended and killed Benny. However, after I did so, Vulpes Inculta approached me once I left the Tops, then gave me this-" John took out the Mark of Caesar and showed it to Damien before putting it back in his pocket and continuing, "He said Caesar wants to see me. And then soon afterwards, a Gloriian by the name of Cesius approached me and offered that I "kill Caesar for the good of the Wasteland". And I've decided to do so. But I will need help, but I need you to listen to the strategy I have in mind. I'll need to take a trip to Cottonwood Groove where I'll meet someone by the name of Cursor Lucas who'll guide me to the Fort. What I had in mind is that you put on a Stealthboy and follow, and then when we get inside the gate of the main part of the Fort, where I'ld be no doubt patted down for weapons and chems, I need you to attack the guards there. From there, I'll run away up the hill in the resulting confusion and go to Caesar, where I'll keep him distracted so that he doesnt run upon hearing of your arrival. Then when you fight your way to his tent, we kill him together and fight our way out of there." John took a breath and looked at Damien, "What do you say? Will you help?"
Damien had a smug smile across his face when he was offered a chance to kill Caesar, but was even more pleased with the chance to establish total order in the Mojave. If the Glorians were who they say they are, then Damien would serve them like they were his own parents. "Let me prepare my weapons" Damien said, getting suited up in his duster and hood alongside his authority glasses. He took his weapon of choice, a scoped hunting rifle alongside his 45.auto pistol and a gladius. Once ready, he stood at the door and locked it. He might not be returning for a while.
John nodded to Damien after he locked the door to his house, "You ready?" He asked simply as he finished cleaning Lucky and replaced her back into his hip holster, "Because I'm ready when you are."
"Yes. Shall we take down a tyrant?" Damien said, practising his reloading speed which became faster and faster with his handgun until it was almost a blur. Spinning his handgun in an almost cowboy like style into his Holster. "Walking might take us several days, and we can just take one of the trucks towards Cottonwood Cove. It seemed that i missed the cursor, he was most likely away from Cottonwood Cove when the place was cleaned out."
John nodded in agreement, "Yea. Now, let's get on our way." (I'll fast forward to Cottonwood as nothing interesting would really happen besides maybe Camp Searchlight) John and Damien looked down at Cottonwood Cove from where empty crucifixes stood, once occupied by people that Damien had either took down or put out of their misery. John took a deep breath and looked to Damien, "Remember, stick to the plan. Stay hidden until the Fort, or we'll never be able to find our way. And don't forget to act like you and me don't know each other." John quickly said before handing Damien a Stealthboy, "God I hope this works..." He mutters before walking down into the somewhat re-established camp of Cottonwood Cove, wearing the Mark of Caesar around his neck. - - Auto Merge - - John nodded in agreement, "Yea. Now, let's get on our way." (I'll fast forward to Cottonwood as nothing interesting would really happen besides maybe Camp Searchlight) John and Damien looked down at Cottonwood Cove from where empty crucifixes stood, once occupied by people that Damien had either took down or put out of their misery. John took a deep breath and looked to Damien, "Remember, stick to the plan. Stay hidden until the Fort, or we'll never be able to find our way. And don't forget to act like you and me don't know each other." John quickly said before handing Damien a Stealthboy, "God I hope this works..." He mutters before walking down into the somewhat re-established camp of Cottonwood Cove, wearing the Mark of Caesar around his neck.
Damian equipped the stealth boy as a modulating field covered his entire body that transmits the reflected light from one side of an object to the other making the bearer almost invisible to the untrained eye. After watching watching John discuss with a Legionary explorer about his mark, he soon went behind the encampment closest to the Colorado River and went all the way behind the tents and a slave pen until he was standing across a wooden board several feet away from John.
John made his way to Cursor Lucus, hoping that Damien was behind him, "Ave. Are you ready to travel to Forticiation Hill?" Lucus asked John. "Yes. I'm ready." He responded simply, looking at the simple wood barge thing to his left, knowing that little thing was his and Damien's ticket to the Fort. "Okay then, please make yourself comfortable, the journey will take a few hours." (you can do the arrival)
(Cant remember exactly what he said, cant check since I'm at school. Going along with it...) Throughout the trip, Damien stood behind John while remaining unseen by the Cursor. The moment the two Couriers walked into the camp, the Legionary main gate guard walked towards John. "By order of Caesar, all weapons and chems must be relinquished their weapons upon any non-legionary." Damien walked through the four guards nearby, standing barely 10 feet from John. The moment John gave the signal, then he was ready to take down anything that stood in path. He wanted to give Caesar the death he deserved, the revenge he had been waiting for over four years for the Legion murdering his wife.
John nodded, "Of course" he told the gate guard before making a slight flick of the wrist as the signal to Damien to suddenly attack.
Damien jumped into the air and pulled his Gladus exactly at the right moment where his Stealth Boy wore off. Hearing a war cry before turning around, the main guard's throat was buried as a gladius found it's target. In one swift motion, Damien swung his wrist to the left as it slit another Legionaries throat and decapitating another unfortunate Legionary who stood closer to the Courier. Just when the Crimson coloured soliders realized what was going on, Damien shot all of them dead before they could even lay their hands on their weapons. He looked at John and nodded. "Now's your chance..."
John nodded then sprinted off, perfecting the "running scared" look, yelling at any soldier he passe that the Demon of the West was attacking. Before he knew it, he was before the presence of Caesar and surrounded by his guards, "So your the Courier whom I heard so much about. You somehow manage to be a stabilizer in the Mojave without truly supporting anyone. You put the NCR in charge of Primm, making that town easy to take once my Legion wins Hoover Dam, you spread word of my Legion's atrocities, you killed Powder Gangers and chem crazed raiders without so much a thought. Now. I know about the man in our camp, and I have no intention of letting him attack me, so you don't mind..." John turned to see a massive barricade being set up at the tent flap, a barricade not even a super mutant could push aside, and metal plating be put on the walls, all in very quick fashion by the Preatorians, "Now, onto why I called you here, even if we are stuck in here for the time being. I called you here because you impressed me with how you tracked down a man across the length of the Mojave because he tried to kill you, then you kill the man in his own hotel and his fellows are none the wiser it was you who did it? When you put your mind to something, you get it done, and I like that. I need those kind of do-er's to help in my attack on the Mojave, my "crossing of the Rubicon", if you will. Now, once this menace has passed, I'll need you to go to the Weather Monitoring station where you'll find a machine with a slot very similar in size to that Platnum Chip. I'll need you to open the doors in there and destroy anything you find inside, got it?"
Damien fought his way across the lower levels of the fort after dealing with hundreds of attacking recruit legionaries that poured out from the Fort. Very poorly equipped and lacking in training, they quickly fell as Damien shot all of them in the torso and the head before the legionaries could even touch him, his quick reload timing providing a critical significance. While being hit by six rounds by those who had guns and hit by a spear which had buried itself in Damien’s shoulder, this barely slowed him down as he advanced. The higher he advanced, the more skilled the soldiers he fought against became and the more protected and armed they were. Despite their numerical advantage, they fell like the others. Some of the higher Decanis proving more of a difficult fight against Damien on a stairway. After soon running out of ammo for both his guns, Damien took another gladius from a fallen Veteran Legionary and duel wielded his way through the horde of Legion until he made it to the huge steel gate, where a slave stood at the door and opened it before running for her life before detonating several bricks of C4 that was planted onto the doors, purging any Legion nearby the doors in fire as Damien rushed through the smoke caused from the detonations as an advantage. Now dripping with blood and riddled with cuts among his body, Damien had cut through almost an entire military base. The only thing left standing were two Praetorians, whom rushed towards him once they were in range from the tent. While providing more of a fight then dozens of Legionaries combined, the fight between Damian and the two Praetorians lasted longer than the majority of the fights. Damian, after killing a praetorian by snapping his neck finished of the last remaining member of the praetorian after taking and equipping his batistic fists and literally punching his opponents face off. Just when he expected the fight to be over, the remainder of the Centurions across the fort arrived to finish off Damien. Damien, while weakened due to his injuries, was put against over a dozen high ranking officers of the Legion inside of the Gladiator arena. Cracking his neck, Damien prepared for the fight of his life as he raised two batistic fists on each hand and got into a stance. Thanks to the brutal training he was given by his father between the 2250’s-2260’s and serving as a former ranger in the late 2260’s, he was ready to face his enemy. “Mortuus vel vivus, quantum potero, me accipit mihi. Dont tenuit, et da mihi morte dignus !!!” ("Dead or alive, i'm taking as many as i can with me. Dont hold back, and give me a worthy death !") Damien cried out in Latin before looked towards the ground, a small smile on his face as the first centurion came running towards him. “I might see you soon Anna....”
A smug voice announced from a radio set in Caesar's tent that announced that Damien had been captured and was now, in a severely injured state, having to face nearly a dozen centurions in the arena, almost all of the remaining centurions in Caesar's army (but much, much more were still in the approaching Legate Lanius' army). Caesar gave a small laugh, "Looks like a thorn in our sides is about to be removed. Oh, and John, please know that everything that man has done, won't make a single bit of difference at Hoover Dam. Not a single bit. Now, go do as I asked." He demanded John simply stood there, coldly realizing what he had to do with Damien's capture. He heard the barricade get brought down and took a deep breath, and in one swift motion, entered VATS, using it to empty 2 shots straight into the head of Caesar, another for Vulpes Inculta to Caesar's left, then another for Marcus, the head of the Praetorians and Caesar's top advisor, effective rendering the Legion to be ruled by Lanius and Lanius only in one swift move. Before the Praetoriams could even react, John turned and ran out of the tent, two final shots from Lucky going into the two Praetorians in the way. Sprinting out of the tent, he looked down to see Damien in the arena, just a few seconds away from being swarmed by Centurions wielding ballistic fists, machetes, and various small arms. John took out his cowboy repeater and fired a shot into the air to get their attention, yelling loud enough for those in Caesar's tent to hear, "Sic semper tyrannas! Caesar is dead!"
Damien easily dodged the first blow from the attacking centurion, ducking below a pointed stab towards his throat as Damien hit the Centurion directly in the exposed region of his torso before finishing off with a blow to the centurion's temple. The moment John got the Centurions attention with his shot into the air, Damien decided to make his exit by running to the side of the arena's walls and throwing an incendiary grenade he stole from the "Confiscated" weapon and chemical sections of the fort which soon set all of the Centurions alight with no way to remove their burns. With the aluminium sections of the Centurions armor only making the pain worse as it heated to much higher tempratures, the Centurions had no chance of survival as they were torched inside of their heavy armour. Upon seeing John, his heart almost skipped a beat in relief as he seen the courier run from the tent shortly before the Praetorians were to leave the tent and resume chase. Taking another weapon and survival tool quickly from a nearby table underneath one of the tents, a flare gun, Damien shot a carefully aimed towards the foundations of the tent as it soon some of the critical sections of the tent on fire, soon making the tent collapse upon itself and spreading the flames very quickly. Despite not being directly hit by the flare round, where the fire would have spread from Legionary to legionary and providing a simular outcome with the body count that Damien had lost count on, this move had sealed the fate of the Praetorians still inside as they had no chance to escape and were burnt alive. While appearing severely injured with many cuts, bullet wounds and an entire spear harming his body, Damien was weakened but still very much alive and in exceptional fighting form. While moving slightly slower then John, Damien smiled that the ones responsible for murdering his wife was dead at last. For the first time in 3 years, he was at peace.
John and Damien didn't stop running until they reached the barge and started heading back to Cottonwood Cove. Taken gasping breaths as John tried to recover from the run, he slowly relaxed and sat back on the barge as the sound of waves lapping at it filled their ears in replacement of gunshots, "We did it. We killed that bastard. And Vulpes too. All that's left and the Legion is headless." John remarked, "I bet the only thing that'll keep them together now is fighting NCR. But once the Legion is turned back at Hoover Dam once more...They'll fall..." He breathed, "We...we just killed a nation..."
Damien removed the spear from his shoulder slowly to prevent more harm, clenching his teeth due to the pain that he had to endure while doing so. Once the blood stained spear had been removed, he threw it into the Colorado as patched up the wound while getting to work on the bullet wounds. "Feel's amazing, doesn't it?" Damien replied. "She can finally rest in peace up in heaven, knowing that the ones responsible have been killed. I cant believe that Caesar is dead....all those years of dedication and training for hunting the bastard down and then the two of us go into the heaviest military fort in the entire mojave and kill a king and over a thousand loyal to him." "Remind me to give you one of my best whiskeys available and to tell you the story between me and my wife." Damien said, panting in exhaustion. "We need to find another way to escape from Cottonwood Cove first before we can head back, want to take things silently or guns blazing?"
John looked at Damien with a questioning look, "I think stealth would be best. You may be a very resilient man, but I don't want you straining yourself after that. Plus, I'm not much one for unneeded killing, Cottonwood Cove will fall just like every other Legion post west of the Colorado during the coming battle of Hoover Dam." He replied simply, "But there's something you should know. When I was asked by the Gloriian to kill Caesar, he said if I succeeded, I would be allowed into Westside to talk with the Gloriian Viceroy himself. Would you like to accompany me?"
Damien nodded as he coughed up blood before spitting it out into the river. He preferred any sort of order, and the Glorians seemed to be the best hope for the Mojave then the other factions he has seen and known about. "Sure. I'll be *Cough* happy to assist you. Pretty sure the Viceroy would only wish to meet with you, because their guards tend to allow one of us in at a time. Let's *Cough* hear what he needs to say" Damian said before taking a bottle of water and drinking it to stop his coughing fit.
