Hey, I thought I'd try my hand at a Fan fiction. I plan on actually completing this one, and so the story is planned out and will be divided into four parts. If anybody reads, well, I'm mucho thankful (Spanish will not feature)

Part 1: Exile Vilify

Frank Rubin laid against a rock, one of many that jutted from the barren, desolate ground of the Capital Wasteland. On his torso rested an archaic, beat-up 9mm pistol, which rose and fell dutifully with his ragged breathing. He was tired. He was always so very tired, ever since being ousted from his home four days prior. The anger that had consumed him, had drove him to continue moving, was dwindling now in unison with his strength. What was once a conflagration of hate was now a mere flickering flame that he no longer had the durability to tend. The Capital Wasteland had taken from him his last meaningful possession.

"You are a survivor, Frank," the thirty-two year old man muttered to himself from his paltry cover. The land had been distorted from the fallout of the Great War and was now a desert, interspersed with brown lumps. Rubin used to look onto the hilly landscape from his suite in Tenpenny Tower and reflect on how queerly beautiful it was. After spending days traversing it though, what perverse beauty it once held was now lost to the business-man turned scavenger. The powerful icon, turned wastelander. The King, turned degenerate.

What little sustenance he had fled the tower with was gone. He had hoped it would fuel him to Rivet City, but alas... luck was something that was evidentially and abruptly deserting him. Rubin had spoken to many visitors from other parts of the country during his days as a prosperous clothing baron. Wealthy travellers and caravanners would often stop at Tenpenny Tower to rest during lengthy journeys, and through these affluent guests he had learned of men and women who lived off the land, who grew plants and ate them. The Capital Wasteland could support no such lifestyle. He glanced wearily at his only weapon. That was the only way one lived off the land here.

Despite being a lifetime resident of the Capital Wasteland, he hadn't lived away from (well-earned) luxury since his teenage years. He was a born entrepreneur, Frank Rubin, entering the world with an ironed pre-war suit wrapped around his newborn body in place of vernix. He was a self-made man, yessir. His father had been a smalltime shop owner who had been given a room in Tenpenny Tower to fill a vacancy, and because he had found and donned a suit. He ran a modest clothing store from the room. But of course, modest wasn't good enough for such a prestigious establishment. Ol' Malcolm Rubin was on the verge of being kicked out of the building and replaced by a more ambitious and dapper capitalist when he kicked the bucket. Frank inherited and reformed the store, building the beginnings of an empire using nought but his presence of mind. He wasn't a humble man, why play-down your achievements? He rivalled the washed-up [censored] Tenpenny himself for wealthiest individual before he was exiled. That was, of course, the reason behind the exile. The word 'competition' clearly wasn't in the old man's otherwise verbose vocabulary. The irradiated husk of Megaton in the north was a testament to this.

He had been stalking another wastelander for the better part of the day, always remaining hidden behind the deformed earth. Frank's initial plan was to make for Rivet City and gather supplies there. During the process of expanding his business, Rubin had taken over a clothes vendor, 'Potomac Attire'. His men had convinced the owner, Bannon, to pay a percentage of his profit towards the newly emerging clothing corporation. As part of the arrangement, Bannon was also provided with many of Rubin's contacts from the west. Due to a lower concentration of nuclear angst away from the Capital, scrounging up fine attire was a good bit easier there. Stick and carrot.

Once at Rivet City, he intended to rest up and discuss the situation with his mentee. Tenpenny's land had increased in size since the Brotherhood of Steel had taken control over the Jefferson Memorial. The nearby RobCo facility was, at Frank's urging, occupied and cleared by Tenpenny's men. Many wanderers and vendors who could not afford the costs of the Tower had set up there. The outfit tycoon himself had a large stall in the RobCo building erected, which made a tidy profit offloading his firm's less elaborate regalia. Unfortunately, the old man had enlarged his private army in concurrence with his extended realm. Frank's desire to re-establish control over his business was therefore unfeasible. The thought of abandoning his life's work had been sickening at the outset, but four days in this dark hole of despair had put Rubin off the Capital Wasteland for good, no matter how high he would be observing it from. He would fly west, then, where fields of green grew from the earth and the menu of meat was more varied than molerat and bramhin.

His trip to the damp, rusty 'city' had not been so successful. The one time he had travelled there (to dictate to Bannon clearly the terms of their new arrangement) he had been led by a guide from the inside of a caravan. In fact, every single expedition outside the concrete walls of the Tower had been in this fashion since his return thirteen years ago, with the exception of the thirty second walk to RobCo. His geographical knowledge of the area was woeful, but he knew it to be east. Gustavo, fatigued and cantankerous due to the extra responsibilities thrust upon him after to the domain enlargement, warned Rubin that if he had not vacated the immediate area within one day, he would be murdered. "I wanted to shoot you and drop your fat body at Warrington station, but Tenpenny doesn't want us alarming the newbies outside the walls," the ageing security chief had explained, no longer bothering to conceal his disdain.

Frank was more or less lost. On the second day of his voyage he had encountered two Brotherhood of Steel boys. Nobody in Tenpenny Tower had spoken to him after the exile judgement had been passed, so beyond 'east' and 'water', Rubin had no real idea what it was he was searching for. The sight of the armour clad soldiers had raised his spirits. He knew all too well of the hostility of the Wasteland's inhabitants, and these were the first people he had approached. As befit the merchant's recent luck, they had no time to escort him anywhere. "Follow the river," one had grumbled, "it's near Jefferson Memorial. You should see it from a way's off. Just keep east." After much pitiful pleading, they had also parted with two bottles of purified water. Frank had lived most of his life without worrying about the provision of clean water, and when he had heard all the exclamations that some guy had died purifying the irradiated tidal basin of the Potomac River and that the Brotherhood were disbursing it throughout the wastes, he had assumed it would not be overly-difficult to find. What an idiot he had been. The bottles had tided him over for the remaining two days of his disastrous venture into the wastes. He had brought as little food, however, and the Brotherhood had not been distributing any of that.

On the fourth morning, Rubin had heard rifle shots. His portly shape had been diminishing and soon enough, he conjectured from what little he had read from the scarce amount of pre-war medical books people had pulled into the Tower over the years, that this would reverse and he would begin bloating again from starvation. He had been used to three large meals a day for the past ten years. The sun had just arisen over the brown terrain when the shots were fired. Frank had been camping on a hill, clutching the 9mm to his chest. He didn't know where he was (though he had lost sight of the towering structure that had been home for most of his life). The sound of gunfire pulled him from his restless slumber immediately, and he scrambled for cover with an adrenaline-aided celerity he hadn't been able to manage since the first day of his expulsion. The gunfire had come from the base of the hill. Rubin had cowered behind a long-dead tree for minutes, his hand on the trigger of the 9mm, pointed aimlessly towards the noise. After whispering words of encouragement to himself he had regained some semblance of dignity and removed himself from the flimsy cover. Advancing towards the brink of the hill, he kept his barley-passable instrument of defence and destruction pointed ahead. The man responsible for Rubin's near-encounter with cardiac arrest was obliviously and hurriedly skinning a bramhin with a knife, facing away from the hill on which he was perched. Rubin drank in as much details as he could while daring to remain exposed before darting back beyond possible sight. The shooter had a bagpack opened next to him, splattered with the black stains of blood. Betwixt the pack and the freshly-executed bramhin, a hunting rifle.

About ten minutes later, the increased rate of breathing involved with such vigorous work ceased. Rubin writhed towards the edge and saw the hunter set off, his hands, the exterior of his pack, and the stock of his rifle bloodied. In that bag was food. It was as simple as that. While spearheading his company's expansion, Frank had gotten rid of the competition, through incorporation or otherwise. This was the same thing, though on a much blunter lever. Survival no longer meant forcing adversaries to sign documents of paper.

And so he had been prudently following the man since, trying to formulate a plan. A strategy to take what he needed to continue living. The elevated land Rubin felt safer treading ran east, and the hunter was working under cover of it. This proved beneficial to the process of stalking and after the first hour it became somewhat habitual. Rubin retained enough distance to avoid being heard, and made deliberate, measured movements. He avoided sudden jerks that might alert the man to his presence. Whenever the hunter turned his head, no matter how out of sight Rubin remained, he took the precaution to duck down and remain still for at least a minute. The hunter was heedful. Upon spotting potential prey, he did not begin shooting. He crouched. Looked around for any threats. Rubin had taken to retreating beyond some form of concealment until he heard the rifle fire. The hunter had stopped a total of nine times since the bramhin. Four of these times, he had opted for whatever reason not to try and take down the creature he was trailing. Once, at around midday, Rubin had remained under cover for too long and lost sight of his man. He searched for half an hour, eventually taking the calculated risk of descending from the hills he had been on since morning and striking out into flatter (and more terrifying) land. After half an hour more, Rubin retraced his mark. He was scrounging though the rubble of some long collapsed D.C. buildings for the moment however. The exile had seen the fabled river as he was searching and deduced that, coupled with the stone ruins before him, it indicated a close proximity to Rivet City. The rusty boat was far from his mind at that moment. His eyes remained transfixed on the figure in the distance, and the barely-discernible bag on his shoulders.

And here the tycoon lay, trying to regain some strength before he had to resume his hunt. After a few minutes, Rubin decided it was necessary to move into some more effective cover, the land between him and the hunter was as horizontal as one was like to find in the Wasteland. The merchant looked around for an improvement, before speedily but steadily advancing on a shack he spotted at the outskirts of the mass of collapsed edifices. Just after halting at the hovel, Rubin gazed towards the man and noticed that he had begun making his way back towards the hills, right in Frank's direction. After overcoming a momentary attack of panic, the exile clambered into the shack and drew his gun uncertainly. If the hunter came to inspect and scavenge the little construct, Rubin would just have to deal with it now. The problem was he had no idea how he meant to conclude this game he had been playing.

The man did not make a stop at Rubin's temporary abode. The merchant peaked his head through the gap that functioned as a door and saw the hunter fall in before the shade of the hills. The sun was beginning its descent. The time when darkness provided the concealment necessary to get in close was approaching. Rubin shut his eyes and inhaled deeply, trying bring his shaking hands back under his control, before setting out in chase.

He crept towards the rolling terrain. Rocks and tree shrubs protruded from the barren floor, and Rubin utilised these as resting points. If he ran straight for the hills he was sure the hunter would sense him. So he crawled to a piece of cover, halted, crawled to the next, halted, and so on until he was scrabbling up the bronze mound. From here he recommenced his inveterate process of slowly slinking behind the hunter from one piece of concealment to the next. Rubin speculated that the hunter was not nomadic, that he was returning to a home. The bag had been empty, or nearly so, that morning when he saw it next to the dead bramhin. Now it was filled with animal meat of many kinds. The man hadn't stopped to eat any of his profit, either. The time to strike would be when he returned to wherever it was he was trekking and lowered his guard.

After an hour or so, the sun had fallen below the horizon, the sky shifting from greyish-blue, to greyish-orange, to black. The light provided from the moon was meagre, but this was not long an issue. As suspected, Rubin's 'prey' had entered a makeshift house, a shack around twice the size of the one he had hidden in not so long ago. At first it had appeared as if the man had simply disappeared, vanished into the darkness. The shack was painted an unilluminated colour (dark red, Rubin discovered upon approach) and it was nestled into the shadow of the hills. The exile might have passed right on by ignorant, had he not scrutinised the spot where the hunter had faded from view.

As he neared the little hut he heard voices and laughter, female and male. He had hoped to find the hunter alone, and the thought of taking on more than one opponent brought the nerves back violently. He inched closer to the building, placing his feet and angling his body meticulously to emit as little sound as possible. His heart was thumping so combatively that Rubin feared looking down and seeing a bruise on his chest. The shaking had returned, the 9mm fluttering uncontrollably in his right hand. After what seemed an eternity, the merchant reached his destination, the side of the house. He steadily transferred the 9mm to his left hand and pressed his shoulder gently against the impromptu wall. Creeping, silent as a radroach, he glanced around the corner of the shack toward the part facing the open Wasteland, where he assumed the door allowing access to this house faced. The sound of laughter and shuffling could be heard inside. The urge to fly away gripped his mind, but Rubin shoved it out roughly. You can do this, he told himself. You need to do this. He was desperately trying to ignore the apprehension within his own thoughts when a loud banging noise sounded from around the corner. Rubin's heart skipped a beat. The sound of laughter he had only barely heard through the corrugated metal a moment ago suddenly amplified to a booming. The exile stumbled away from the corner, startled and confused, and aimed the pistol toward the point where the two slabs of metal met at a right-angle. Nobody rounded the corner. Cackling could be heard from around the other side, as well as the dim scuffling of feet on the dead earth. Rubin picked himself up and, gun raised dead ahead, slithered to the corner. He peeked around and saw her, a blonde woman clad in the standard, filthy, lacerated garments of the wastelanders. She was pacing slowly away from the opened door, still giggling to herself. Swinging at her hip was a holster Without thinking, Rubin strode towards the opening and inside the hut. Sitting away from him upon a wooden chair, roasting what looked to be bramhin upon an improvised barbecue fashioned from a drawer and piece of wired fence, was the hunter. He had long, dark, matted hair. From behind, Rubin also noticed the fuzz of a fine beard covering the left side of his jaw, and presumably the rest of it too. The man had noticed the merchant in his peripheral and was beginning to turn to face him.

"Lizzie, we really should..."

BANG. Blood and brain spewed from the side of his head where the 9mm bullet emerged, coating the barbecue and already red wall. Rubin danced out quickly and rotated. The woman was too in the process of revolving, scrambling despairingly at her holster, a look of horror and bewilderment etched on her grimy face. BANG BANG BANG BANG.

She crumbled to the ground. He had hit her twice in the left upper leg, once in the neck. Once in the heart. It was impressive that he had struck her with all four bullets considering the distance, but Rubin didn't even realise this. His attention was focused entirely on the morbid sight before him. Then an image flashed, as visceral as if she was there. The deep green eyes and long, grainy, brown hair. Meghan. Frank dropped the gun and fell to his knees, clutching his eyes, rubbing them violently. He attempted a scream, but a mere whimper exuded forth. Her face, her beautiful face. It was covered in blood, riddled with holes.

No, no, Meghan. WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

After a minute or two, he let his arms fall feebly to his side. He stopped bleating. Before him lay a corpse, not of Meghan, but of some blonde scavenger he had never met. Rubin forced himself up. Between his body and her's were two handguns, the 9mm which had executed the assault, and the 10mm that had been in the woman's holster. She managed to liberate it, but too late. It lay pathetically by her still foot. Rubin bent over and clasped his 9mm, leaving the 10mm where it sat.