Just a short disclaimer, this is a fallout fanfic that I’ve been working on, it involves alternate character interpretation and a little Alt timeline, and I also attempt to fill a few plot holes. This is just the first chapter; I will release more depending on reaction. ps. sorry it is so short i realy wanted to get out of the vault ASAP so this one is fairly short, the next is much longer
Ch1
As I rubbed my hand through my brown hair and looked in the mirror I just knew that today was going to be one of those days, of course when you live in a Vault everyday is one of those days. I had lived here my entire life with my father, who even trapped in this hole managed to spend next to know time with me. In-fact my earliest memory is him when he left me as a toddler alone in his room for four hours. The only good thing he has ever done for me is give me my BB gun. Now I know that he is a doctor and thus has a good reason for not being around sometimes, but when he comes back drunk I know the only thing he has been doing is drinking with his lazy assistant Jonas!

Growing up down here is dull; unless that is you find ways to make it more interesting. My favorite two ways of making things interesting involve lock picking, and cherry-bombs. As god as my witness I swear there is no better way to get back at your dad for going and spending the day drinking then unlocking the door to his personal bathroom, and rigging a bunch of fireworks to go off when he opens the door!

I walked back into my room and pulled on my Vault 101 Jumpsuit, and started walking down the hall, and who do I happen to meet, why it’s no one but my own personal stocker Amata. Once again I asked god why the only female of my age in the Vault who was interested in me had to be her. She has dark skin and hair and an honest face, and that’s where all the good ends. She has been obsessedly stalking me since I met her when I was six. Ever since then all she has done is follow me around wherever I go, and considering how few places there are to go it equates to my room being the only place I can get away. She greeted me with a big creepy smile and said

“I’m so happy to see you! Did you miss me? Did you dream about me? What do you want to do today, I want to make out, do you want to make out with me?!” I did the only thing I could do, I steeped around her, not even bothering to dignify her with a response. As she does every time I do this she started to walk behind me like a puppy, but much less cute.

Today was the day of the big test suitably named GOAT, I once asked our teacher Mr. Brotch what it stood for he told me it stood for Gagging On A Taco, which is when I stopped paying attention in class or carrying what he had to say. Standing outside the door was my only friend in the entire vault, his name is Butch and for reasons that I can’t possibly imagine he dresses like greaser, complete with leather jacket and way too much hair-gel. Butch and I had been friends since childhood and together we had gotten into some real trouble, like when we blew up the overseer’s lockers, or that one time with the cake. Despite his tough-guy appearance I know that deep down Butch is kind of a softy, I also know that his goal in life is to be a hairdresser.

“Hey man you ready to ace this thing?” he asked me jauntily, I smiled and replied.

“Not like it matters or not, but I might as well.” Meanwhile Amata stood behind me trying to get my attention, Butch and I studiously ignored her and walked into the classroom. The GOAT turned out to be just like gagging on a taco so I guess I shouldn’t have missed judged mister Brotch’s answer after all. First he gave us an answer sheet, then we answered the questions which included some of the most asinine and ridiculous questions and answers that I’ve ever heard such as.

Your grandmother invites you to tea, but you're surprised when she gives you a pistol and orders you to kill another Vault resident. What do you do?

• Obey your elder and kill the Vault resident with the pistol.
  
• Offer your most prized possession for the resident's life.
  
• Ask granny for a minigun instead. After all, you don't want to miss.
  
• Throw your tea in granny's face.

It really scares me that the test has questions like that, do they assume that every Vault resident is insane? I suppose now is a good time to give you more background on the Vault. Around two hundred years ago America and china started a nuclear war, oddly it didn’t last long. The Vaults were built so that incase the bombs fell life could carry on, Vault Tech; the people who built the Vaults also developed the Pipboy. The Pipboys are basically really fancy wristwatches, with the added benefit of being able to stop time at command, life readout, mapping device, radio, and for a select few have small phones built in.

The GOAT’s results told me that I was going to be a vault security officer, so in other words I get to have light combat training and sit in an office all day and do nothing, yippee. Butch on the other hand got to be a hairdresser, so at least one of us could be happy, even if he had to put on the tough-guy fa?ade about it. Amata got to the job of Overseer in training, God forbid she ever gets the real job.

chapter 2 soon

Hmmm... I don't know what to say. I feel like I've seen this somewhere though...

If only I could remember where...

Welcome to the forums! I think you have a decent start to a Fallout 3 fan-fic here. There are a bunch of grammatical errors and it would be easier to read if you put some spacing between the paragraphs. If you want some tips on how to make this easier to read, just let me know and I'll be happy to rip apart a paragraph or two

Thanks for posting. I hope you keep writing.

Sorry for the close spacing, which is as of now solved, I did it in Word and didn’t think it would space it so tight. Also sorry for grammatical errors, I svck at that kind of thing.Expect the next chapter up around tomorrow or the next day Also I’m not going to go into too much detail to the background, scenery, or none new characters too much because anyone reading this should already know what stuff looks like. Finally sorry that the first chapter is so short, I hate the Vault.

Btw sorry for staring a new thread, i'm new anyways this is chapter two and i will add ch3 like i did this one, if this is the wrong way to do it someone please let me know

I fill in a couple of plot holes, like how someone fresh out of the Vault can disarm a nuke. I also give a little karmic justice, hope you guys like it.


Ch2
I woke up on my 19^th birthday with Amata standing over me with a gun in my face. Hysterically she said.

“Your father left the Vault somehow, and without him around you have to love me! If you don’t have six with me right now I’m going to blow your brains out!” [censored] I hate this place. Thanks to a few years of training as a vault security officer her threat didn’t really faze me that much. Remembering my training I quickly knocked her legs out from under her caught the gun in the air and walked out of my room, after of course grabbing my trusty base ball bat.

Walking into the corridors I found that it was chaos everywhere, red lights were flashing, stupid alarms were going off, and there were radroaches everywhere. I holstered my pistol, drew my baseball bat and headed towards Butch’s room. I found him cowering outside the door surrounded by radroaches; of all the things in the world to be afraid of Butch had picked radroaches.

“Help me, help me, I hate radroaches!” I rushed over to him and began to systematically beat the radroaches with my bat. After they were dead Butch pulled me into a hug and said “thanks man, I would have been dead without you! I hope my Mom is ok, the last time I saw her she was getting a Nuka-cola martini from the kitchen. Can you go check on her for me please?” I nodded and told him to go into his room and lock the door.

As I walked along the Vault corridors I noticed a surprising number of dead of dead security officers, from whom I got more pistols and managed to scavenge some good armor. I walked past the kitchen to find Butch’s mom standing next to Andy, Andy is our Mr. Handy robot helper. Think floating white ball with a flame thrower and saw bade attachment and four eyes on metallic stalks. I assumed that she would be fine there; I decided that the best thing for me at this point was to leave the Vault and follow my father. I made my way to the Overseer’s office so I could open the Vault door; luckily as a security officer I had access to the codes. As I made my way towards the exit I was surprised at just how many people had been killed by radroaches. Right outside the door lay the bodies of six or seven security officers, who judging by the number of bullet floors had tried to shoot the extremely small target, instead of hitting them with their batons.

I walked towards the door when suddenly I was surrounded by my fellow officers who had their batons drawn and were glaring at me through their riot helmets. Out of the shadows stepped the Overseer himself. He looked unbelievably tired and worn down as if the crises was draining the life out of him, then again having Amata as a daughter will do that to you too.

“Your father has brought the wasteland into our home, so we will send you out to be with the wasteland, if you attempt to come back we will kill you!” I nodded, flipped him off and walked out the door of the Vault which closed with a resounding shriek of metal. I emerged into a short tunnel that looked like it had been a mine shaft at some point before it had been turned into the vault. I emerged onto a bluff that overlooked the sounding scenery, it was the first time that I had ever been outside in my life, and I wasn’t really impressed. Spread out before me was a land that that appeared to be made up of mostly the color brown, with little bits of grey here and there breaking up the monotony. Directly below was what appeared to at some point have been a small suburb, and over too my right was a large mettle structure that had several lights coming off it, I decided that that was the best place to head.

As I approached the large mettle structure I was greeted by a slightly humanoid robot whose name was apparently Deputy Weld he told me that in a highly modulated voice that this town was called Megaton and that it was the safest place in the wastes. When I entered the town I was approached by a tall black man in a cowboy duster and hat.

“Well looky here another new comer, names Lucas Simms and I’m the sheriff of this town.” He offered me his hand which I shook, his grip was strong, and his hands were weathered.

“Nice town you’ve got here sheriff. I’m new to the wastes; I just got out of a vault over to the north west of here. Do you know anywhere where I can learn how to survive out here?”

“Yeah, you should check with Moria she wrote a book about it, say you wouldn’t happen to know how to defuse a nuke would you?” I stared at him for a few seconds before seconds before saying.

“Well I love explosives so I might be able to do something, why do you ask?” he sighed and looked at his feet before saying.

“The idiots who originally settled this town built the entire thing around a live prewar nuke, hell some crazy [censored] even set up a church centered around the damn thing, and frankly I don’t trust them not to blow us all to hell, so could you disarm it please.” I nodded and told him I would see what I could do. I walked down the main path to the center of town where in a small pool of water I found a large metal bomb, scattered around it were a group of people who were praying hysterically for Atom to bless them with his gaze and for every eye to go blind before his glory, I could see why Simms was nervous.

I covertly levered off the access panel and much to my surprise I found that the inside of a nuke is a lot simpler than most people imagine. There were two switches and one bar, one switch had three labels which said off, active, and activate the switch was currently set on active, I quickly switched it to the off position before looking at the other switch. The label on the other switch said, in order to decommission bomb push switch down and pull on bar until it comes off of bomb, this is highly explosive plutonium inside a safe sheaf, keep away from small children. This was easier than I thought was humanly possible, plus how often do you just come across plutonium. Luckily my Pipboy has a space for things like this fully lead coated and fairly resistant to explosions and bullets.

I quickly replaced the cover on the bomb’s control panel and strolled upwards towards Simms whistling to myself while I went. He fixed me with a grin as and asked.

“So did you do it?” I nodded and said.

“Anytime sir, no charge.” When I said that his grin got a little bigger and we shook hands again.

“A good days work, no charge, and we no longer face nuclear annihilation, for all of that I ought to make you an official citizen of Megaton.” He handed me a pair of keys and said “these go to that house on the balcony that you walked by on your way in, feel free to ask Moria to sell you things to spruce up the place.”

“Thank you sir I will, um could you point me to this Moria’s place please” after obtaining the location of Moria’s shop I set off at a light walk, absorbing the sights. The entire town seemed to have been cobbled together from old prewar airplanes and airplane a hangar, in front of the now harmless bomb was a small restaurant whose’ food brought mouthwatering aroma’s to my nose. I continued past this and took a right, walked up some steps, and walked into the Craterside Supply.

Behind the counter stood a middle-aged serious looking woman with red hair and brown eyes, she was wearing an odd looking red rob that had a little symbol involving gears and a sword on it.
“So you’re our new arrival, and the one who I can thank for disarming our bomb, well I’m Moria Brown and this is the Craterside Supply, what can I do for you?”

“I need two things, first I’ve been told that you have a book that will help me live out here in the wastes, and second I need to know if the names James Hardgrave means anything to you?” at the mention of my father’s name the smile slid off her face and I could tell by the way that her lips grew thin that he wasn’t welcome here.

“Well as to your first question I do in-fact have just such a book, the first copy is always free…” As she said it she reached under the counter and brought up a pristine looking book whose cover was adorned with the words, The Wasteland Survival Guide, your best bet to survive, thrive, and revive. Written by Moria Brown, and coauthored and researched by ThreeDog. “… As to your second question, what does that name mean to you?” I sighed; it looked like this was going to go downhill.

“Unfortunately my name happens to be Zachary Hardgrave.” Instead of getting thrown out on the spot I saw her eyes soften and she reached across the counter to pat me on the shoulder comfortingly.

“Well” she sighed “it’s not your fault that you are related to that man, what do you want to know about him?” I was surprised by empathetic she sounded.

“Well I would kind of like to know where he is right now; I need to thank him if for nothing else then for at least getting me out of the Vault.” Her face was sympathetic and as she said.

“Sorry, I don’t know where he is now, he was here but he left soon after. You may want to head up to the Gob’s bar and look for Colin Moriarty he’s your Father’s friend and probably knows where he went. To make it up to you, and to show you my thanks for finally decommissioning that thing I’m going to give you three things. The first is a suit of combat armor and a hunting rifle plus two hundred shots, the second is five hundred caps to help you not be poor as [censored], and the third and most valuable is this little card…” she slid a tiny metal card across the counter to me, it was inscribed with the same design as the one on her robe. “…that’s a Brotherhood of Steel friend ID marker, show it to any Brotherhood personnel and they will recognize you as an ally. The Brotherhood is the extremely tall muscular people running around in white and grey powerarmor armed with energy weapons or big guns like missiles and miniguns. They don’t really like outsiders most of the time but that card should at least keep them from treating you as a tribal. A word of warning though if you find people matching that description but with armor that has been spray painted to be dark grey to black whatever you do don’t show them that card.” I departed with a wave after quickly changing into my new armor in a dressing room in the back of the shop, as I left she had a troubled look on her face.

I walked into Gob’s Saloon and immediately stopped and stared standing behind the counter was and honest to god zombie! His skin was a sickly brown and was kind of flakey and he was wearing what looked like leather armor. I reached behind my back to grab my new rifle when suddenly I was hit on the back of the head by a young woman who I had missed when I came in.

“I really hop that you are new to the wastes smoothskin, otherwise you and I are going to be doing some talking!” the zombie told me in a gravelly voice “considering that you look like you just saw a zombie I’m going to bet that you are new to the wastes so I won’t have to teach you about what happens to people who reach for their guns around me. I’m a ghoul, that means I’ve been alive longer than almost anyone here, and I can kick your ass with my foot faster than you could draw and shoot that rifle. So unless I throw my hands over my head and growl at you DON’T SHOOT ME! Any ghoul who does growl at you though is free game, [censored] mindless zombies.” I nodded, still trying to make sense of what I had just seen and heard then I said.

“I’m sorry sir I just crawled out of a vault and had never seen a ghoul before, please forgive me for not thinking.” He nodded and made a whatever hand sign “you wouldn’t happen to know where I can find Colin Moriarty?” the Ghoul chuckled and pointed me to a man in the back of the bar.
“That good for nothing drunk is a waiter here he’s on his break. I’m Gob by the way and I’m sorry we got off to on the wrong foot, being a Ghoul means being tough, those who aren’t die fast.” With that job taken care of I walked back to the man who had messy blonde hair and mustache. He looked up from his drink with a drunken grin on his face and said in an Irish

“Well would ya looki here, James’s boy finally got in I’ve been waiting for you for two whole days, you sure took your time getting here that’s for sure! So I bet you want to know where your daddy went, well to bad I’m not telling you until you do something for me!” at that he broke down in drunken laughter. I sighed I didn’t have time for this [censored].

“What do you want me to do?” I asked him he started laughing again and in a pathetic voice he whined.

“I want you to kill my ex wife and then take all of her fifty bottle caps, that’ll show that [censored]!” I slowly brought my hand up to my face and held it there before I said.

“Could I just give you fifty of my bottle caps?” he perked up immediately.

“You’d do that for me, why forget about that [censored] just give me your money!” I counted out fifty of the bottle caps that Moria had given me and placed them in my hand in front of his face and said.

“You can have them, but only once you tell me where my dad was heading.” He looked at them fixatedly like a drug addict at his last fix, and then realized that this metaphor was way too close to reality.

“He was headed for GNR Studios to talk to ThreeDog, that’s where I would look if I were you, now about those caps.” I dropped them onto the table in front of him and started to walk out of the bar, only then realizing that I had no idea where GNR Studios was or who ThreeDog is. I turned around and asked him and he replied in the same whiny voice.

“That’s another fifty caps.” I looked over to Gob who had been watching silently and looked for his approval, he nodded, which I took for a sign to do anything but kill him. I walked up to Colin and drove my knee hard into his crotch as he leaned forward in pain I uppercuted him on his way down and sent him crashing to the floor. I put my boot on his wrist to pry his hand open and leaned down to recollect my caps. I then walked over to the counter and told Gob

“Sorry about the mess, do I owe you anything?” Gob let out a great hacking laugh that went on for quite awhile when he finally got his breath back he said.

“Me charge you for a show like that? Hell you ought to be charging me for that here let me show you how to get to GNR.” He placed a marker on my map Pipboy map and told me the best route to get there; he also showed me how to listen to my Pipboy radio so as not to attract attention with a small headset hidden in it that I had somehow never noticed before. As I thanked him again I began to leave suddenly I heard a gunshot from behind me, and then the sound of a body hitting the floor. I turned to find Colin lying there behind me a large hole in his head and a knife grasped in his dead hand, Gob blew on the barrel of his magnum and saluted me, I nodded my thanks again and stepped out into the sun.

The knife trick in this will only be used once to avoid giving more talents then anyone has any right to have, also i'm going to skip alot of traveling unless something interesting is happining
Ch3

I spent the night in my new house talking to my Mr. Handy named Wadsworth, and listening to my Pipboy radio. It turns out that my Dad is a fairly popular person with ThreeDog because while I was listening I heard this message from him; his voice was that of a charismatic energetic black man, both instantly recognizable and very convincing.

Now I bet you all remember when I told you about James the cool cat from Vault 101, well it turns out that someone else has just crawled out of that hole. What’s going on down there revolution? Vacation? Somebody fart? I don’t know children but what I do know is that when it seems dark out you could always use a little sun. After that was a song about sunning, sung by some women who had been dead for years, oddly I found myself humming along. Around an hour around an hour latter as I was flipping through some of the magazines that had come with the house I heard another one, this one all about me.

This is ThreeDog bowow now do you children out there remember when I was telling you about how someone else just crawled out of Vault 101 well it turns out that he’s already making a big name for himself. We all know about Megaton and its undetonated nuke but still risky nuke right? Well it turns out that the kid who just crawled out of 101 DISARMEND the bomb children. Oh and here’s the kicker, the kid is James’s son! Good work 101 and if you’re ever in the neighborhood feel free to stop by; old ThreeDog’s toaster has been on the frits lately, I now return you to the stories of Herbert Daring Dashwood.

I was stunned, there was no way that he could have heard about it already, and I was also honored to be included in the news. The next day I walked into the Craterside Supply and asked Moria how much food, water, and time it would take me to get to GNR studios. She smiled and gave me more than enough to reach the destination, she also included some things she called stimpacks. According to her they would automatically heal almost any wound, except things like missing limbs and vital organs, all you had to do was inject it and push down on the little hypodermic. I then asked her if she had a toaster that was working, and she started to crack up a bit, apparently I’m not the only one who listens to the radio, I was surprised when she actually gave me a toaster.

I set off towards GNR and was surprised at how uneventful most of the journey was, the only thing that happened besides me killing a small number of raiders with my rifle and picking up some assault rifles and ammo for them, was running into a little boy who was hysterically yelling something about giant ants. As I neared the map marker I heard the sound of a gun large gun fight. My Pipboy showed me multiple red dots along with just as many white dots. As I got nearer I heard the sounds of battle, inhuman yells split the air with the accompanying sounds that someone was using a bug zapper. When I walked around a corner I was confronted by a fearsome site a group of people in white bulky armor was
surrounded by the leering monstrosities known as supermutants. The humans were surrounded by piles of dead mutants but more kept pouring from the sounding ruins. I didn’t need to think to know what to do next, I jumped into VATS, lined up three headshots, and let fly. The hunting rifle jerked in my grip three times and three more of the mutants lay dead their heads split open or completely off in some cases.

Then I remembered the fact that I was outnumbered and horribly outgunned, so ducked back behind the corner just in time to hear the clatter of bullets impacting where my head had just been. Suddenly a large shadow appeared behind me, it was a large mutant wielding what was apparently a 2by4 covered in nails, and it was coming directly towards my head. I just barely had time to jump out of the way before the nails bit into the ground where I had just been crouching. Unfortunately that put me directly into the crosshairs of several dozen mutants. [censored], [censored], [censored] I thought to myself as I rolled over and out of their field of view.

“Stupid human just dieee!” yelled the mutant that was standing over me still who swung his board into my riffle and sending it skittering away leaving me defenseless. The mutant reached down and grabbed me by the throat chocking most of the air out of my lungs; it then raised me to its face level and said. “You get me big reward yaaaaaaaaay!” that’s when I released the combat knife that I had been keeping up the sleeve of my armor I caught the hilt in my fingers and brought it up in a sweeping blow across its face and eyes. It dropped me and staggered back clutching at its eyes, I used this opening to slice into its stomach and I was rewarded by the sight of loose intestines pouring from its stomach. I quickly whipped my knife on the mutant’s rags and replaced it in its sheath on my armor and drew my assault rifle. I peeked around the corner to find that the humans had begun to successfully push back the mutants; I assisted with some direct bursts from my assault rifle.

When the mutants were all dead or gone I moved to quickly grab my hunting rifle from where it had been knocked and went to talk to the big scary looking figures in the whitish grey armor. As I approached one of them removed her helmet and revealed a beautiful face below. She was the classic blonde haired blue eyed women but her eyes seemed to sparkle slightly, or maybe it was the oxygen still rushing back into my brain after being nearly choked to death.

“Thanks for the assist civilian, but what the hell are you doing walking into this warzone?” her voice was kind but with an edge of iron that was odd to hear from someone who appeared to be around my own age.

“I was trying to get to GNR studios Miss, I had no idea that there was a war on.” I said she shook her head in slight annoyance.

“You didn’t know that D.C. was a war zone? Where did you grow up, a Vault?” She asked incredulously. I shrugged, smiled sheepishly, and said.

“Yeah, just came out two days ago.” Her eyes sparkled again or maybe that was just a trick of the light, and said.

“Oh you’re the one who disarmed the nuke at Megaton, well I’m Sentinel Sarah Lyons of the Brotherhood of Steel, and I think you deserve a capable escort to GNR, besides we were heading that way anyways.” I nodded accepting her hand which she had offered me and shook it, was incased in the same metal as the rest of her body and was cold even from holding the gun that thanks to the guide I could identify as a lazor rifle.

“Before I forget…” I told her “…I’m supposed to show you this.” I pulled the ID card out of the little compartment on my Pipboy and handed it to her. She svcked in a deep breath and exclaimed.

“This is from Scribe Moria, well if I didn’t quite trust you before I sure do now!” I was then rapidly introduced to the rest of the squad. Knight Captain Colvin, the group sniper and the obvious people person gave me a big handshake while Paladin Vargas simply nodded to me. The two initiates Reddin, and Jennings looked at me sideways, as if wondering what made me special enough to need an escort. Sarah then turned back to me and said “You’ve proved that you’re a good shot but please keep your head down and let us do most of the heavy lifting, no offense but that tech is a little…antiquated.”

“Technically yours is older” I told her, she just shook her head and hand motioned the squad into movement. We made our way through the ruins surrounding the GNR building killing the occasional mutant as they popped up until after twenty or so minutes we arrived at large plaza where several Brotherhood squads were arrayed pumping lead and lasers into the enemy mutants. We joined in quickly turning the battle into a route, when all of the mutants were dead and just as I had finished reloading my hunting rifle when suddenly I heard a an ominous bang. Followed by another bang, it was coming from the direction of a group of busses that had been stacked to form a barricade.

Reddin had gone over to investigate standing right in front of the group of busses. Suddenly Jennings threw himself on top of her shielding her with his body and armor, as with one last ominous bang the group of busses exploded outward and standing where they had been was a gigantic mutant. Easily just as big as the GNR building, it was holding what must have once been a fire hydrant but was now almost as big as its body, with a blood curtailing roar it rushed towards the shocked Brotherhood positions. Sarah was the first to recover and yelled.

“Behemoth, get some heavy weapons fire on that son of [censored], now people!” feeling slightly useless I looked around for something that would actually make a difference. My eyes settled on what looked like a cross between a catapult and missile launcher, I ran over and picked it up along with what appeared to be miny versions of the nuke at Megaton. I slotted one into the catapult and pointed at the behemoth and pulled the trigger. I was rewarded by a swift rushing noise followed by a small nuclear explosion emitting from the behemoth’s knee, it staggered and fell over forward, right on top of Sarah.

I attached the thing to my back and started running forward to try and lift it off of her; I was joined by several other Brotherhood members. When we finally managed to lift the body of the mutant off of her she emerged loudly cursing us for help her saying she could have done it eventually, but she still gladly accepted Vargas’s hand as she was standing up. She then looked at me and shook her head before saying.

“What could have possessed you to pick up a fatman? Even though nothing went wrong that thing is one of the most powerful mobile weapons in the wasteland, you could have killed everyone here if your aim was off by even a little!” I shrugged and said.

“Me not that smart me just aim and pull trigger.” That got me a hard punch in the jaw that left it numb, but it was still worth it. She turned to the direction of the Brotherhood medics who were crouched over Initiate Reddin and asked concernedly.

“Will she live?” the medics nodded and said.

“Yeah but the arms will have to go along with the left leg, looks like Cross isn’t going to be our only cyborg anymore.”

“And Jennings is dead.” It was a statement, not a question “Well then make sure he get’s full honors and is counted as an official member of the Pride.” She then turned to me and said “Come on let’s go see ThreeDog, before something else tries to kill us.”

Tell me what you think of my ThreeDog, but please wait till the end of the chapter
Ch4
As we walked into the GNR building we were met by several brotherhood members, all of whom were armed with miniguns, lazor rifles, or what appeared to be a flamethrower. Sarah nodded to one and asked.

“He ready for us Wilks?”

“Go on up he’s been waiting for this one” he said pointing at me and smiling. We nodded our thanks and proceeded up a flight of stairs and through a door. On the other side of the door there was another small flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs stood a man who was like nothing that I expected, the first surprise was his appearance. He was a tall muscular white man who was wearing what could have once been considered office ware; he wore a pair of spectacle glasses with very thin lenses that seemed to fade into the background of his face while staying forever present in the foreground. The glasses covered bright green eyes that scanned over me taking in all that I was. Between his eyes jutted a very short but surprisingly sharp nose leaving the impression that he was a bird of prey. His strong mouth opened in a grin revealing very white teeth, on top of his head rested strands of dark brown hair. The second thing that was a surprise was the accent that he greeted us with, it was a very refined English accent as if s he had come from oxford.

“Well you took your sweet time, but you finally made it here welcome to GNR studios. I’m Laurence but you might as well just call me ThreeDog.” I stared in amazement he sounded nothing like how he did on the radio. “Now I’m sure that you have many questions but I can’t tell you everything up front, so bear with me.” I looked at Sarah who just nodded and motioned for me to follow him further into the building.

As we walked into the kitchen I reached into my backpack and got out the box covered in wrapping paper that contained the toaster that Moria had given me and presented it to ThreeDog. He cocked his head to the side and said.

“A present for me, you shouldn’t have.” But as he pulled off the wrapping paper and opened the lid he started to laugh, the laughs shaking his entire body. After around thirty seconds or so he finally stopped and I told him.

“You said yours was on the frits.” He just shook his head and put it on the counter behind him; he then turned around and rummaged in his fridge for a minute while I showed Sarah what was in the box she snorted with laughter, barley keeping it in. ThreeDog turned around again three Nuka-Colas in his hands, which he passed out accordingly. As we sipped our sodas he led us into a small living room, we sat down in three very comfortable leather pre war chairs and ThreeDog said.

“Now I can’t tell you where your father is right now because frankly I don’t know, and I can’t give you that info till you do something for me first. In the meantime I will answer any questions that you have that don’t relate to where your father was headed.” I sighed, apparently saving his building didn’t count, so I asked him.

“Why does the voice on the radio sound so…different then the way you sound?” he nodded apparently he expected it.

“I inherited this studio from the original ThreeDog who I worked under for many years, and then maybe five years ago he told me he was too old for this job and that he was going to live in Tenpenny Tower. Before he left however he rigged up his radio equipment with some old prewar tech and synchronized his voice with it, the results being that anyone who talks into the radio sounds exactly like him, right down to the accent. I really don’t know how it works but, then again I was never into advanced prewar science like he was what’s next?” That’s when Sarah got up with a worried look on her face and said

“I’ve got to take a call I’ll be right back.” As she walked out of the room I couldn’t help myself from thinking, I wonder what she looks like under that armor; then I turned back to ThreeDog and asked.

“How do you know my father in the first place?” he chuckled, it was a deep and resounding kind of chuckle.

“Your father and I go way back, we grew up together in Rivet City. You should have seen us, playing pranks on the security officers, stealing things from shops’ supply crates and leaving them on the counters. We even set off a smoke bomb in the cafeteria once, my body was sore for weeks for the beating that we got from our fathers, but it worth it. Anyways as time went on we left, or in actuality we were thrown out, but from then on we were freelance fighters who killed our share of bandits and mutants. That’s how I met the original ThreeDog, we were under heavy fire from raiders, and we were pinned down when suddenly he walks in with a sawed off shotgun an literally blows two of their heads off before they had time to react. I can still picture him from that day clearly in my head, his black hair flowing in the breeze his sunglasses glinting in the sun and his leather armor rippling as he walked. Well from there on it was a rout for the raiders and afterwards he came up to me and placed his hands on James and I’s shoulders and said in his incredible voice.

“How would you boys like to really help fight the Good Fight, instead of just killing these nothing raiders you can help take down the big boys!” we were in our early 20s by then and with little else to do we decided that we might as well, having nothing better to do. While we were working with him we also ran into a young Dr. Li and you mother Catharine who remembered us from our time at Rivet City. Li left to go work on the hydroponics project, but your Father and mother stayed here for a little while then they left to live in Megaton. That’s where they met Moria who had recently decided that she could do more good by setting up a shop then by working with the Brotherhood. That’s all I heard about from your father for a few years until he and your mother came through and told me that they were working on a secret project that required him to have a terrible reputation. Which is why anytime you ask anyone about him all you get is disgusted looks and people spitting at their feet, I still have no idea what it is they were doing but around a year later your mother died giving birth to you. James spiraled into a heavy depression drinking more booze then he did water, along with naming me godfather incase he died. Then he found the vault bargained his way in, cut off all communications and first I see of him in nineteen years is two days ago.”

I gaped I was stunned; my father had been a mercenary! The thought just blew my mind wide open, and this man Laurence was my godfather? I slowly sipped my soda trying to organize my thoughts, whatever the case I had to get to my father after an information dump like that. So I asked him,

“If you’re my godfather then shouldn’t you be looking out for me, so why do I need to do whatever it is you need me to do?” he shook his head sadly and said.

“I wouldn’t ask this of you if there was any way that I could avoid it, but the Brotherhood won’t do it and it needs to get done desperately. I do hate sending you into danger like this, if that means anything to you though.” I sighed he really did look sad about it, so I asked.

“What is it you need?” ten minutes later I knew what I had to do, in the place that had been the mall was a museum of technology, there I would find a collapsible satellite dish that I could then attach to the Washington Monument so I could boost the GNR radio frequency. All I had to do was waltz past hundreds of supermutants and securitybots. Then lug fifty pounds of collapsible satellite equipment to the top of the Washington Monument and weld it into place, it sounded like a real blast! As I was about to walk out the door of the GNR building a metal hand gripped my shoulder, I turned around to see Sarah standing.

“I just got off the phone with our leader who gave me express orders to stay with you for as long as I could, if you don’t mind the company that is.” I swear I saw her eyes sparkle, but that could have just been the industrial lights flickering. I smiled and said

“I’d be happy for you to accompany me, considering what we have to do I need all the help I can get, besides now I can have someone to talk to. But what about the rest of the Pride, what will they do without you?”

“They’re being grounded until Reddin is fully functional, along with looking for someone to replace Jennings.” A small note of sadness entered her voice but it was quickly smothered. “Let’s get going you can fill me in on the way.

this is the part where the plot thickens

Ch5
We made our way to the mall slowly and carefully, unfortunately we had to cut through the abandoned metro lines. Man I used to think that the Vault was a creepy little hell hole, the metro puts it to shame. Every inch is filled with raiders or feral ghouls whom I now hate with a passion for being bullet fodder. Sarah’s calm presence was probably the only thing that kept me from turning back and running back to my godfather to tell him I couldn’t do it, luckily she never seemed to notice, or at least she never said anything. After what felt like hours we finally emerged into the light of day, and I immediately wanted to go back into the darkness. The Mall had been transformed into a real battlefield; trenches pockmarked its hide like scars upon its skin, supermutants ambled among them holding rocket launchers, assault rifles, and miniguns. Rising above it all rose the Washington Monument a scarred spire of stone and steel, around its base was a mediumly defended Brotherhood camp. It was nearing darkness by the time that we reached Sarah and I suggested that we spent the night there; I was so tired that all I could do was nod.

We ate a delicious meal of molerat stew with a side of two hundred year old potato chips, god I love the food out here, you can almost feel it when it clogs your intestines. After sharing diner with the two Brotherhood soldiers who made this fun little corner of hell home I lay down on one of the mattresses and went to sleep, it was often interrupted by explosions or supermutant screams. When we woke up we ate some of the hardiest cereal that I’ve ever had, and by hardiest I mean that it still had taste and wasn’t hard as a rock, Sugar Bombs, my new favorite food. We started skirted around the edges of the trenches killing only a few solitary mutants who had made the mistake of crossing our path leaving only pools of blood and piles of ash in our wake. Then we got into the museum.

Apparently they somehow knew that we were coming because the second that we walked into the main foyer of the museum gunfire erupted from both the balconies and the ground level. Bullets ripped through my left arm armor leaving large bloody holes where they passed, I felt my arm go numb before I could even try to regain my balance two more bullets struck me in the other arm causing me to drop my gun. I looked down in horror at my arms and saw two mangled lifeless forms. My vision was going a little dark at that point and I knew the end was near. Then Sarah pulled me back behind door we had just entered through and over to the backside of the reception desk. She then proceeded to jab a stimpack into each of my arms and pushed down the plunger, I immediately felt better as the bone, skin, and muscle grew back into place, god I love stimpacks.

“Thanks!” I told her.

“they’ll come rushing in through that door any second now, here’s a plasma grenade when they rush us pull the pin wait two seconds and then throw it towards the center of their formation. With luck it will catch the bastards off guard.” She replied and handed me an oddly orange looking grenade, I nodded and waited, for the rush. It wasn’t a long time coming, seconds later the doors burst open revealing the forms of more than a dozen mutants. I pulled the pin, held it, and then released. It exploded at chest level throwing out a wave of plasma sweeping in a large circular formation, blood and ooze flew everywhere as the mutants were literally liquefied where they stood. And those were the lucky ones; the survivors were missing arms and legs, while some had giant holes punched in their chests and still somehow clung to life. Sarah and I killed them quickly with a few well placed shots.

“There’re more of them just waiting for us out there, I guarantee you.” Sarah whispered to me I nodded. “I’m going to put on my helmet and act as sniper bait, which means that you shoot the ones who pop up and shoot at me.”

“Ok so I aim down the barrel at them and pull this little trigger thingy, got it.” I replied sarcastically. She snorted, placed her helmet on, and began to creep forward in a crouch. Predictably the muties opened up immediately, apparently assuming that I was dead, they began to regret it almost instantly. I slid into vats with a well trained ease blasting four mutant’s heads into a fine red mist before they could get another shot off. Sarah disintegrated the last two moments later, and we stood in an oddly quite main lobby. I began to search the room for anything that could be useful, and discovered something called a stealthboy, I quickly pocketed it. I then noticed an unassuming terminal that looked like it had been slightly tampered with; interested I went over to investigate. There were a group of questions that offered rewards at the top but then at the bottom there was a miscellaneous entry that stood out from the others.

After I clicked on it this popped up

Hey there Jigs,
I finally found a good place to ditch your share of the loot. It was hell getting here, but I made it. I left the usual breadcrumbs all over some of the info terminals in this place; their computer security was a joke. Complete the sequence and you're home free, but make any mistakes and the system will lock you out. We'll meet up in the usual spot later.

Good luck,
Prime

This was interesting I called Sarah over to look at it, she scanned it and said

“Give it a try; in the wasteland anything could be valuable.” I entered into the system to try my hand at the questions. I found the first one to be easy and answered it correctly. The machine dispensed what looked like mints; I took them and stuck them in one of my pockets before walking over to Sarah who was leaning against the door. She nodded to me and we started through the doors. Immediately the mutants sprung upon us roaring their fury, as bullets flew past me I brought up my rifle and quickly took out one of the mutants with a well placed headshot. Sarah did likewise then we were forced to retreat back behind the door under constant streams of fire from assault rifles and hunting rifles, sadly the door didn’t last long.

“Hold up, I got this” I told her as I pulled three grenades out of one of my belt pouches, pulled the pins, and threw. Two seconds later there was a loud boom followed by several wet noises. We waited there next to the door’s frame for a few seconds before venturing out, where we set upon by several other mutants who had avoided the blasts. Luckily there were only four, I entered vats and killed one with a headshot and the other with two shots to the chest. Sarah accounted for the last two, zapping the far one to dust and punching the other in the stomach before drawing her lazor pistol and melting its brain as it kneeled over. “Nice shot.” I told her. She nodded and wiped blood off her helmet’s visor before continuing down the hall.

Next we entered the planetarium, which to my unfortunate surprise we encountered we encountered a new type of mutant. Instead of just wearing light upper body armor it was wearing armor made of heavy steel plates, and was carrying minigun! It was also surrounded by several other mutants all of whom decided that now would be a perfect time for them to start firing. We quickly retreated back down the hallway walking backwards shooting. I of course had the good fortune to slip on some blood and crashed into Sarah sending myself sprawling. She just reached down and dragged me to my feet effortlessly note to self, Get Power Armor ASAP.

“You certainly like being on your knees in front of me” she said offhandedly while firing lazor blasts into the oncoming mutants.

“Yeah well it’s a nice view.”I replied dropping a mutant with three quick shots to the stomach.

“As long as you don’t get used to it I don’t mind all that much.” She told me while blasting another mutant to ash. I followed up in vats by throwing a grenade into a group of them scoring two kills and an injury. “This is weird” she said

“How so?” I asked her.

“Well, just the fact that that brute is here commanding them, usually they take only show up in groups but that one seems to be alone.” She sounded like she had come to the same solution that I had, we were being led!

“Well unless we want to be trapped between both groups I suggest we go forward and kill the ass before his buddies show up.” She nodded and with her in front e powered our way through the mutants till we were standing before the brute, who started to rev up his minigun. We most likely had only a few seconds left to live so I tried something stupid, I fired directly at the minigun. Apparently it wasn’t expecting this and stopped revving the barrels in surprise, which was just enough time for Sarah to dart in and punch him. Unfortunately that didn’t work quite as well as with an unarmed mutant, what it did do was give the mutant time to return the favor and kick her knees out from under her. She went down hard sprawled on the ground in front of the Brute, who proceeded to kick her in the head with enough force to send her into one of the railings that surrounded the planetarium floor with a loud clang.

This is a terrible idea I told myself as I charged him with my combat knife. The brute apparently thought so to because he started to laugh, it was a really creepy laugh like something that you would hear coming out of hell. He dropped his gun and ran at me. His fist launched out at me but I ducked and it went only through empty air. While I was under his guard I stabbed him one of the chinks in his chest armor, which only made him laugh harder. He then kneed me in the stomach forcing the air out of my lungs and breaking a rib or two. My knife fell from my hand, clattering uselessly on the ground amid the trash.

That’s when I realized that Sarah had unsteadily regained footing and was lining up a headshot I tried to punch him feebly but he caught my hand and broke my wrist. I screamed in pain, hoping that Sarah would be able to kill him before I passed out. She did just that firing a rapid number of clean headshots into the Brutes skull, until it was nothing but steamy mush. She then went over to both doors and dropped some red circular objects inside of them, and dragged me into an unlocked study. That’s when I passed out, my world dissolving into black mist.

Love that suspense. I'm not sure what you're looking for in terms of feedback, there are som grammatical erros, but overall this is well written. I also like your characterization of Sarah, it's nice to see her with a little more attitude.

i'm on chapter 9 right now at home and i will essentialy be posting updates once a day. very soon i'm going to throw off the shackels of the main plot and chart my own course, all i will say for now is that it has to do with the supermutants . As for the grammer i do my best but word can't help with everything sometimes it even makes it worse. As for feedback i'm very glad that people are enjoying it, and will take any help or opinoins that people want to offer

Ok so my timeline is a little different than that in the games, as you probably should have noticed by now. Two large examples of this are the fact that Project Purity was completed by Doctor Li years ago, more on this later. The other is the fact that the events of New Vegas happened maybe twenty years prior to this story, with a NCR victory, what the currier did afterwards becomes important in this chapter so heads up

Ch6
I awoke propped up in the corner of the study my entire body aching but otherwise fine, then I looked around and saw Sarah sitting down behind the desk in the chair. This was interesting because this was the first time that I had seen her without her armor on; she was wearing a tight skin short sleeved shirt and equally tight leggings. Her skin was surprisingly tan for someone who spent so much time in armor, her arms were covered in small purple bruises, but even so and her figure was striking. I groaned softly to let her know that I was awake. She looked up from her work of repairing her armor and turned to look at me.

“Enjoy your little nap?” she asked, I nodded and replied.

“Not that I’m not thankful for this beautiful view, but what about the mutants?” she stood up and turned around to put her chest armor on, and I saw that her figure was even more striking with her standing over me.

“I mined the doors, floor, and I even stuck some in the vents, they discovered this quite explosively when they tried to charge into the main planetarium. Anyways now that you’re up we need to get moving, no telling how long till those idiots try to swamp us.” By the time she had finished talking she had gotten completely dressed again and started out the door, much to my disappointment.
I pulled myself to my feet, unhooked my assault rifle from my back and set off after her. Even under her armor I could tell something was up.

“What is it?” I asked her, she turned and regarded me for a few seconds before saying.

“This is wrong, all of it!” there was an edge of fear in her voice, and it sent a chill up my spine.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“none of this is right, the group of supermutants that we were fighting before we met you were headed directly in your direction, then out of nowhere a behemoth shows, behemoths don’t just pop up out of nowhere! Then there’s this museum, the ambush in the lobby shouldn’t have happened, mutants don’t just plan things like that! Finally there was the supermutant master dressed like a brute; I think someone in the mutants is out to get you. I don’t know who or why but I know one thing for sure, it’s going to be over my dead body!” I was deeply moved by her commitment to me even though we had only known each other for a day or so.

“Between the two of us we can handle anything those bastards throw at us.” I told her encouragingly with that we walked further down the hall, along the way I found and solved all of the puzzles to get Jig’s loot, which was a marker on my Pipboy and a key for a storage area that we found along the way. Inside we found a large collection of stimpacks, a lot of ammo and even five grenades, we both agreed that it was worth it. We made our way through the rest of the museum with no trouble and got the dish that we were looking for, it folded up into a tinny little plate sized piece of metal and I handed it to Sarah who put it in one of her armor pouches.

We even made it back to the Washington monument without encountering any trouble, but the second that we closed the door behind us we heard the noise of hundreds mutants screaming. We ran up to the wall around the base to find that every supermutant within one hundred miles had decided to attack us. They surrounded the outpost in their hundreds firing missile launchers, miniguns, assault rifles, and hunting rifles at us.

“I told you something was up!” Sarah yelled over the noise while she fired indiscriminately into the seething mass of mutants that surrounded us. The other Brotherhood personnel had joined us and were adding their impressive firepower to our own but even so we weren’t making much of a dent. I reached into my pack and withdrew the unassembled fatman and quickly put it back together, then I put one of the three mininukes into the ammo slot and fired. The resulting explosion was unsatisfying, I had killed around thirty, there were still hundreds left and they filled the gaps in their ranks quickly.

“Damnit there’s no way that can do this!” I yelled to Sarah as one of our Brotherhood allies went down minus a head.

“[censored] that [censored]! I’m not being killed by some mutant slimeball!” Sarah replied firing off another salvo of lazor beams into the enemy; I dropped the fatman, picked up my assault rifle and started to fire into the mass of yellow bodies. Another Brotherhood member went down clutching at his stump of an arm and I raced over to apply a stimpack, which stopped the bleeding but didn’t grow the arm back. The soldier nodded his thanks and took up his gun in his other hand before going back to the edge and firing again. We spent an hour on that wall before we began to run out of ammo, we were down to three Brotherhood soldiers and around four hundred mutants left to kill. Then we heard a loud gruff shout that managed to carry over the entire battle field.

“TALON COMPANY ATTACK!” suddenly the mutants where surrounded by an army of humans wearing pitch black combat armor who were armed with shotguns, lazor rifles, missile launchers, and some odd looking assault rifles. They quickly cut a bloody swath through the mutants leaving none alive in their path, unfortunately they were still outnumbered black armored soldiers went down in just as great of numbers as the mutants. Leading one charge in particular was a man wearing duster carrying a large magnum. Bullets seemed to miss him grenades and missiles decided that they were needed elsewhere and exploded in the ranks of the mutants instead. He killed dozens of mutants just by virtue of being near them, that and the fact that he was surrounded by four others who were killing just as many as him. One was a man dressed like the leader wielding a giant sniper rifle; the other was a large supermutant wearing a tattered blue dress carrying the biggest hammer that I’ve ever seen. The last two were a woman in brotherhood armor who was using some kind of fist mounted weapon to literally break the supermutants in half and a ghoul dressed like a cowboy wielding two of the magnums that the leader was.

The leader noticed me looking at him somehow and saluted me before smashing a supermutant’s head in with the butt of his magnum and firing into another three mutants. Those of us in the outpost took heart and started firing with renewed vigor. It took half an hour to kill the last mutant and the smell of that many dead bodies was nearly suffocating, but we had won so there’s that.

Sarah and I met the leaders of the new army at the door to our little fort where we greeted them with happy handshakes. The main leader, the one with the pistol and the duster shook my hand and I felt great strength emanating from the man. He then pressed a package into my hand and told me in the same gruff voice that we had heard earlier.

“This is a gift from you father, he sends apologies for not coming here himself but he said that he needed to be at Vault 112 urgently. He sent us to bail you out when he heard that there was an army of mutants coming to kill you, and I’m glad to see that my luck hasn’t quite run out yet.” Then the ghoul who was standing behind him spoke up in a dry sarcastic.

“Boss when has your luck ever been but perfect?” his boss turned to look at him and said.

“Well there was the time that I got shot in the head.” the ghoul shrugged and replied

“You got better, most people die boss I still call that luck.” This was obviously an old argument because the sniper and the Brotherhood member looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

“I’m sorry to interrupt but who exactly are you and how do you know my father?” I asked them the leader rubbed his hand through his graying hair and said

“I’m the leader of Talon Company, and this is Boon, Veronica, Raul, and Lilly…” he said gesturing to the sniper, then the Brotherhood member, then the ghoul, and finally the supermutant. “…your father and I go way back, I helped him and ThreeDog get on their feet when they were young and we’ve been friends ever since. Like I said we were sent to rescue you from that army of mutants.” We shook hands again and welcomed them into fort, I asked if they had anyone who was good with machines and explained what we needed, Raul volunteered and sauntered over to the elevator and went up to the top. Sarah looked at veronica and asked

“You’re West Coast, what are you doing out here?” Veronica sighed heavily and said.

“I just couldn’t take it anymore; the elders wouldn’t listen to reason. We are dying out, out there but they won’t recruit more Brothers from the local population so we aren’t replacing the people that we lose fast enough. I just needed to leave before I watched everyone that I loved die a slow painful death.” Sarah went over and patted her on the back sharing a moment of sadness over the Western Brotherhoods fate. Boon cleared his throat and said,

“Looks like Raul’s finished, anyone got a radio?” I nodded and turned my Pipboy’s.

Hello Capital Wasteland, it is I ThreeDog and this message goes out to people all over the wasteland. The kid from the Vault did it, he fixed my toaster and he finally fixed my radio tower halleluiah! In other news I’m getting reports of a huge battle between those glorious bastards known as the Talon Company and a giant army of supermutants, all centered upon the Brotherhood fort surrounding the Washington Monument, I wonder who that was centered around? Also this message goes out to the Vault kid himself, if you’re talking to the leader of Talon company then you probably already know what I would have told you when you got back, which is why instead I’ll give you something else, see you whenever you get back.

Ch7
We departed from the Monument the next day; Sarah told me that we were headed back to a place that she called the Citadel. I wanted to head directly to Vault 112 and see my father but she overruled me and told me that the Brotherhood needed to know the specifics about everything that had happened. We had been traveling for around half a day when we came upon the Citadel. It was a massive five sided building that was heavily scarred, yet strangely seemed resilient and radiated power. That may have been thanks to the dozens of auto lazor cannons that bristled along the metal ramparts that had been built into the top of it, or it could have been the dozens of powerarmored forms that walked between those canons, hard to say. As we neared it Sarah became less tense, letting go of something that had been eating away at her conscience.

At the door we were greeted by a paladin named Bael, he greeted Sarah enthusiastically before calling up to someone in the Citadel to tell them that we had arrived. In the courtyard we were greeted by an old white man dressed in blue robes, when we reached him Sarah went over and gave him a deep hug. He returned it heartily for someone in their sixties and said.

“it’s good to have you home again Sarah I miss my daughter when she isn’t home, now lets’ look at this boy that you keep telling me about!” oh [censored] he chuckled at my facial expression and said “Sarah why don’t you go and get that armor repaired, it’s looking a little worn.” She nodded took off her helmet, gave me a smile with her eyes glinting at took off towards a door at the opposite end of the courtyard. “Follow me young man!” Sarah’s father told me strictly and headed towards another door, I had little choice but to follow him. He led me through a maze of corridors and offshoots until we came to a nicely appointed office where he sat down behind the desk and motioned for me to do the same. He then said in an enthusiastic voice.

“Now son I really must congratulate you on your accomplishment, you made my daughter who has never shown any real preference in anybody fall for you! I really am happy, do you know how long I’ve wanted grandchildren?” I was caught completely off guard and kind of sputtered.
“But, but, but, sir, we’ve only known each other for three days! And we certainty haven’t had that kind of relationship!” he started to laugh again; this one went on for longer before he finally said.

“Have you ever met anyone who you’ve liked more, or for that matter have you ever found someone who you respect as much? Besides your eyes follow her everywhere she goes, you aren’t real subtle about it, and that’s coming from someone in their sixties who saw you interact with her for two minutes!” I blushed deeply, I had not thought about things that deeply. “Besides any son of James is like a son to me as well.” [censored] how many powerful people is my dad friends with. I thought to myself before saying.

“My father knows you to?” he chuckled.

“Yes he rescued my squad once from supermutants; he was leading a group of Talon Company soldiers. Anyways I owed him my life and we became good friends latter, don’t act so surprised. All old people know each other; it’s how we got old in the first place!” Sarah walked into the room, sat down next to me, and said.

“Damnit Dad, there goes all that planning about going slowly and not rushing into something!” Her father just chuckled, and then he turned serious and said

“Sarah James is in danger and it’s up to you two to save him, he should’ve known better then to go to Vault 112 by himself. On the bright side you two can take your time, he isn’t going to be in danger of dying anytime soon.”

“What do you mean sir?” I asked him in confusion he shook his head sadly and said.

“If I know Vault 112 then Braun has him trapped in that virtual reality simulation, he’s perfectly safe, physically at least.” Sarah and I exchanged glances, we were both thinking the same thing, was her father telling us to go off and experiment?

“Well we need to get outfitted better before we run off on some rescue mission, especially if things go as they have so far.” Sarah said to her father who nodded and told us to take as long as we wanted. As we walked down the hall I kept getting weird looks from the other members of the Brotherhood. Many of the men looked jealous, while the women just smiled and shook their heads; it was going to be a long day. After walking past a giant robot who Sarah called Liberty Prime we walked into the quartermaster’s office. Along the walls in niches and on racks were more kinds of gun then I knew existed. Sitting behind a mesh fence was a dour brown haired woman reading a book, she looked up when we entered and asked.

“Is this him Sarah? Hmm not to bad I guess, could use more muscle but then I like my men huge.” I blushed; I really need to stop doing that! I thought to myself as Sarah shook her head and said.

“Not now Durga, anyways we need equipment.”

“What do you need?” Durga asked.

“Well I need a plasma rifle, and he needs some and advanced combat armor mark two and an actual rifle.” Durga scratched him chin in thought for a moment before saying.

“I think that can be arranged, provided of course you have four thousand caps between the two of you that is.” Sarah immediately replied.

“Three fifty and not a cap higher Durga, we both know that you have millions of armor sets and rifles.” Durga’s eyes narrowed before she exclaimed.

“But Sarah that’s robbery, we also both know the price of importing that armor!”

“Yes but I know that you sleep with the merchant to get lower prices on things from her, besides you order in bulk!” Durga sighed and said

“Bartering with you is no fun Sarah, you always resort to blackmail! Fine here take the armor and rifles!” Sarah just smiled and reached to put down the money but I stopped her hand halfway down.

“I can pay half of that and still have some left over, no need for you to spend all of your money.” She gave me a thankful look and I set most of my money on the counter and Durga passed me some extremely unique looking combat armor, it was covered in large plates and pads that looked perfect for stopping bullets and claws. The helmet also had what looked like a camera attachment along with some other interesting things. The rifle was also new looking, it was short, ugly, and painted black but it looked like it would pack a solid punch along with being easy to reload and operate. Sarah’s rifle on the other hand was very interesting; it looked like a long green tube that was surrounded by few layers of metal, little tubes ran along the side and the front was rounded and closed. Sarah nodded her thanks and said goodbye to Durga before walking out with me in tow.

“We’re all set, let’s get going before my dad tries to convince us to get married now.” She told me to which I could only nod and ask.

“So where are we going first?”

“I need to see Moria in Megaton, where we can stay the night…” she said it in a suggestive voice “…and then we can go and rescue your father from this man Braun”

“alright sounds good to me let’s go.”

No I’m not going to go into it too much, don’t ask for it, also if I’ve violated an forum rules with the beginning of this chapter just let me know

Ch8

We arrived at Megaton half a day later and were met at the gate by Simms, who seemed happy to see me again; we then made our way into my house just as the sky was gathering darkness. Wadsworth told me that he was happy to have me home again and promptly went about giving us diner. This time it was giant grab claws from something called a mirelurk, the meat was tasty and delicious which was odd for something that came from what Sarah told me was a giant bipedal crab. After diner we went up to my room and started undressing.

The first thing that Sarah did was take out a tiny case; she then reached into her eye as I watched confusedly she withdrew what looked like a tiny piece of plastic and stuck it in the case, she then did it with the other eye. Seeing my confusion she said

“Those were camera contacts; all of the Brotherhood wares them. It sometimes makes my eyes sparkle…” so that’s what it was I thought suddenly. “…anyways I don’t think anyone needs to watch this” When we both in our underwear I turned to Sarah taking in her beauty and said.
“Just so you know, there is this girl…” she looked shocked and said

“Are you using me to cheat on somebody, because if you are using me like that I’m going to kick your ass!” I held up my hand to stop her and continued

“…that’s been stocking me my entire life and won’t leave me alone, I just want to make sure that you know that ahead of time in case we ever run into her.” She calmed down and told me.

“Oh that’s fine then, I just wanted to make sure, now let’s get started.” From there on things got interesting.

The next morning I was awoken by my Pipboy buzzing telling me that I had a call, now there was only one person besides my father who had my number, and that was Butch. I rolled out of bed making sure not to disturb Sarah who was still sleeping soundly; I then walked out into the hall and answered the call. Butch’s voice was a mix of relived and anxious.

“Dude, thank god I finally got through! You won’t believe it in the time since you left Amata killed the Overseer and declared herself the new overseer. She then declared martial law and tried to keep us trapped in our rooms, but most of us won’t stand for it so Officer Gomez barricaded off most of the way down to where we are all staying. Unfortunately she still has guards loyal to her and we don’t know how long until she sends them on a real attack, please man you’ve got to help us!” I tried to be shocked but failed; I had always known that Amata would try something like this. I sighed and told Butch

“Don’t worry, I’m coming back, and I’m bringing a friend.” He was nearly ecstatic.

“Thanks man it’s hell down here!”

“See you in two hours, bye” I hung up and thought how lucky it was that I had told Sarah about Amata last night, it would make things much easier and less awkward. Speaking of Sarah she had woken up and gotten dressed while I was talking to Butch, she walked over gave me a kiss on the cheek and asked.

“What’s up?”

“Apparently my stalker went insane and made a grab for power, we’re going to go and resolve it.” She nodded and said

“Alright but after that we need to go talk to Moria, with all of the excitement last night I completely forgot about it.” We set off for the Vault in high spirits and made it there in ten minutes, as the door rolled closed behind us I took in a scene of chaos. There were little haphazardly designed barricades set up at multiple points along the hallway made from apparently anything that could be considered defensible. Garbage and trash littered the floor and the smell of death was lightly present in the air. Sarah placed her helmet back on her head and said.

“Well it looks like the party started; let’s see if we can’t find this friend of yours.” I nodded and we set off down the corridor. When we entered the living corridors I entered first and was immediately told to freeze by a voice very familiar to me. Standing across a well designed barricade aiming a pistol at me was my mentor Officer Gomez.

“Well that’s a nice way to treat your favorite student Gomez!” I told him he looked shocked before he said

“Zachary is that you? You look like a soldier!” he told me incredulously holstering the pistol.

“Yeah, the wasteland kind of does that to you; may my friend and I please come over the barricade?”

“Of course you can son, but where is this friend of yours?” That’s when Sarah stepped out from around the corner in full powerarmor; my master let out a startled yell and drew his pistol. “Stay back inhuman monster or prepare to be cleansed by the fire of Gomez!” she looked at me and I could tell that through her helmet she was raising her eyebrow sardonically at me.

“Sir please lower your weapon, it couldn’t hurt me if I gave you a year to try, besides if you promise not to shoot me I’ll show you that I’m human.” Gomez looked startled by the fact that a feminine voice was emerging from the bulk that was Sarah’s armor. With that Sarah removed her helmet and let her blond hair spill out, wait when did she stop wearing it in a ponytail? I asked myself confusedly. Gomez was extremely surprised as well, but I expected it was for other reasons.

“Christ, I thought you were a ghost from the wasteland here to harvest our souls, instead you’re just a little girl in a tin can!” she turned to look at me sideways and made a, I’ll explain latter motion and went up to Gomez and asked.

“Where’s Butch?” He pointed down the hallway and told me that he was in the infirmary crying over his dead mother. We walked down hallways that I knew like the back of my hand past people that I had known most of my life, most of whom now viewed me with barely controlled awe. When we got to the infirmary I found Butch crying on the bench outside the doors his leather jacket was rumpled and his hair was crooked. I quietly sat down next him and put my arm around his shoulder and patted him on the back. Sarah stood off to the side letting me consol my friend through his grief, when he stopped crying he looked at me and said.

“We are going to kill her for this, I swear it by the end of this I will have killed her.” This was a side of Butch that I hadn’t seen before; it was a dangerous calm, like the eye of one of the great hurricanes that raged out in the seas.

“How many officers does she have?” I asked him.

“Twenty five, armed with standard Vault security armor and 10mm pistols.” Sarah and I looked at each other and started to chuckle.

“Well this should be a nice vacation from killing mutants, come on Butch let’s go kill the stupid [censored].” He looked surprised when I handed my old hunting rifle and gave him a hundred rounds, along with my old combat armor. “Put that on and we should have this cleared up in, oh I’m guessing ten minutes of fighting tops.”

“Really?” He asked as he stepped into the armor that I’d given him.

“Yeah, trust me on this Vault security doesn’t know that much, at least except for Gomez.” Butch nodded and set off after us. All was silent until we came to the corridor in front of the Overseer’s office where we found all twenty five officers standing around waiting and looking bored. Sarah and I nodded at each other and each threw a grenade down the hallway, where they detonated with enough force to kill at least ten of the officers. The others were stumbling around looking for their guns and proved to be easy targets for my new rifle, which gave a satisfying vibration every time that I shot. Sarah reduced five to glowing goop in a matter of seconds and Butch contributed to the last five or so.

“See I told you, ten minutes.” I told Butch who was looking at the piles of goop that had been men left by Sarah’s plasma rifle. He nodded; his face was surprisingly calm for someone who had just killed five people for his first time. We entered the Overseer’s office to find Amata looking far crazier than before, her hair was wild and disheveled with strands going in all directions. Her eyes settled on me and she tried to tackle me to the floor, she forgot about the desk being in the way. As she crawled back to her feet she started to laugh hysterically.

“Your back my love, I knew you would come back to your Amata, she’s been waiting here since you left all those years ago for you to return! But don’t worry I’m ready for you to finally do it I’m ready for you to love me!” Sarah looked at me and said

“You were worried that I thought something might be going on between the two of you, Jesus Zachary this woman is so screwed up that I doubt that anyone would ever touch her.” Amata swung around to face Sarah her eyes shooting daggers.

“And who would you be? Oh I see you’re trying to steal Zachary from me, is that it? Well you can’t have him, he belongs to me!” Sarah replied

“I can’t steal what you never had, oh and by the way we already fu…” she would have continued but Amata lunged at her screaming like a wildcat, until Butch pulled the trigger and sent the .32 shell into her brain. I looked over at him to find him combing his hair and straitening his jacket which he had put on over his armor, the rifle strapped over his shoulder made him look strangely more out of place. All three of us left the Vault soon after that, leaving Gomez in charge; he’d do the best job, even if he was a little crazy. We made good time back to Megaton where we headed straight for Moria’s

I would just like to thank everyone who has continued to read this with special thanks going to kdn003 for comenting as much as he has

These next two chapters are the last you will see of the main plot of the games, at least for a long time

Ch9
“Sarah it’s been far to long since I saw you last time, you were fifteen then and now you’re twenty one!” Moria said as she embraced Sarah in a hug, that Sarah returned, albeit with less enthusiasm on account of the armor. “So what brings you to my shop, I can see that you’re with James son, which means that you know enough about his past to have pieced together just about everything?” Sarah nodded and said.

“Yes but we still don’t know why the supermutants are so interested in him.” Moria shook her head and replied.

“I wish I could tell you, but I honestly don’t have the faintest idea why they are after him. I would guess that James is the only one who does, and I don’t know where he is.”

“He’s in Vault 112, or at least that’s where everyone seems to think he is.”

“[censored]! You mean that idiot went back there by himself? Never mind of course he did that moron, Braun will probably turn him into a cat, especially after last time!”

“So you’ve been there before?” I exclaimed trying to get into the conversation...

“Sarah you’ve got to go rescue him before we lose one of the few brilliant minds that this world has left!” …and apparently failing miserably to do so “go now, save James and get him to Rivet City, maybe Pinkerton can keep him sane!” that was about all that we got out of her before she ran off to the back of the shop mumbling something about mind rays. Butch looked at the two of us and said

“If the two of you are going on a suicide mission, you can count me in.” Sarah and I exchanged glances; we weren’t sure how Butch would handle himself out in the wasteland and we needed a liability like we needed another army of mutants. Besides he’d always had more of a gentle side to him.

“Butch you just got out here and you must be suffering some extreme mental trauma from your mother dying, I really think that you are rushing into this half cocked.” I told my friend earnestly, he just shook his head and said.

“Don’t give me that, you’ve been out here for around a week and you already think you can do anything, trust me if your week has been anything like mine then I’m perfectly capable of doing just as much as you!” I looked at Sarah to see what she thought she just looked at me and raised an eyebrow, great she was leaving it up to me.

“You can come, just be careful I don’t want your death on my conscience.” He nodded and reloaded his rifle and tried to look badass, he would’ve pulled it off too if it weren’t for the hair which once again needed combing.

The three of us went back to my house where we loaded up on all of the essentials including Sugar Bombs! We also packed several gallons of water to carry between the three of us, as I had found out through earlier trips fresh water is hard to come by out in the wastes. It was a long and grueling trip that brought us by a place called Evergreen Mills which was packed so full of raiders that it lost count after several hundred, they even had a captured supermutant behemoth!

When we finally got to our destination I was underwhelmed with it. We were standing outside of an abandoned garage that looked like it had seen better days; a sign barely still attached read Smith Casey’s Garage. When we entered it looked like a dud Sarah and I were actually talking about where we should look next when Butch suddenly called.

“I think I found something, come and see!” Sarah and I hurried over to him. He was standing against the opposite side of the room his hand resting on a switch when we got near enough to him he flipped it and two pieces of the floor slid away to reveal a stainless steel hallway that ended with a Vault door that had the numbers 112 written on it.

“Great work Butch!” said Sarah I nodded and said

“And to think I almost told you that you couldn’t come, we’d be back at square one and then have to come all the way back.” Butch just smiled in a satisfied way and led the way into the Vault. He then screamed loudly as a robobrain appeared from around the corridor, normally this would be mock worthy but the first time you see a robobrain is usually like that. “Calm down Butch, that’s a robobrain unless they are shooting at you just ignore them.” He nodded but still looked uncertain and said.

“Is that a real human brain in there?” Sarah nodded and said.

“Yeah, I heard that Vault tech promised the participants immortality, well I guess they got it!” The robobrain scolded us for being so late to enter the Vault and handed us all Vault 112 nero suits. When we walked into the Vault we found a strange site everyone in the vault was hooked up to a life support and simulation pod, well almost everybody. Leaning against one of the pods was Jonas, his black hair was in a mess and his lab coat was stained with blood but it was definitely him. When he saw us he jumped to his feet and drew a small .32 pistol and pointed it at me, he then yelled in a shaking voice.

“Sta, stay back I’m armed!” this was great he was trying to threaten me with what is possibly the worst gun in the entirety of the capital wasteland.

“So I can see Jonas, now will you quite pointing that at me before I start to worry about what would have happened if it was anyone else who had found you!” he looked shocked and he replied.

“Zachary, is that you?” I nodded and he sank to his knees in relief the worthless pistol falling from his hand and shooting him in the foot. My hand had invariably found its way to my face where I kept it for a few seconds before stabbing a stimpack into his arm and pulling him to his feet.

“Well now that that’s out of the way why you don’t tell us what happened.’

It turned out that my father had dragged him from one end of the wasteland meeting the same people that we had, until my father had arrived here three days ago and decided to go in and attempt to talk to this Braun man. Jonas hadn’t heard anything from my father since then and was beginning to worry that he might never again. Sarah and I elected to go in and look for him while Butch decided to help look after Jonas. We shared a quick kiss before we got into our appropriate pods. The interior of the pod was air-conditioned and felt pleasant, and then in front of me popped down a little screen the words Tranquility Lane popped up. Then my world went black.

I did not see that coming. Poor Amata. One thing in this is making this harder to read. You've got the habit of ending a paragraph like "So-n-So said." And then starting a new paragraph with what that person said. This is particularly confusing when it comes after what someone else has just said something. The best format for dialog is with the traditional:

"I'm saying something," said So-n-So.

"I'm askiong a question?" asked someone else.

If this becomes a little reppetiive for your liking, remember you don't always have to write who said something. Sometimes you can describe the way they talked, or just leave it up to the reader to infer who is speaking based on a back and forth between two characters.

Still enjoying this, keep it up.

Thanks I will try to implement this pattern in future chapters that I write, although that won’t be till chapter 14 as I’ve already got up to there written. Also I’m glad that you are enjoying it, and thank you for commenting

Sorry for the shortness of this chapter, hopefully Sarah will make up for it with some well placed words

Ch10
I was standing in an oddly black and white environment that looked like it had come from an idealistic view of a prewar town standing next to me was a cute blonde girl, with sparkling eyes. Oh [censored].

“Sarah would that happened to be you?” I asked in a much younger voice the girl turned to me incredulously and said.
“Oh [censored], Zach?”

“Oh yeah, I’m going to love this, I can just tell.” I replied “let’s find my father and get out as soon as possible, I really don’t feel like going back through puberty!” she giggled and we set off ignoring most of the people going about their business. “This is so weird” I told her still getting used to the sound of my new voice.

“Yeah well look on the bright side at least you aren’t in a frilly dress!” she told me, she had a point. We walked together into the middle of the playground to find a little girl watering some flowers while talking to a dog. When she heard us approach she turned around and squealed with delight before saying.

“More new toys, it’s been years since this many new people moved in!” Sarah and I looked at each other and I asked

“Dr. Braun I presume?” the voice that emerged this time was that of an old German man,

“Why yes how did you know?” I snickered a little before I said

“Your mental profile said you were a pedophile, and that’s about as pedophilic as you can get.” I gestured at his body as I said it.

“What do you want? You are wasting my time and I hate wasted time!” his voice was full of annoyance.

“I’m here looking for my father have you seen him?” He/she nodded, pointed to the dog and said.

“Ah yes you must be Zachary, your father and I talked about you. I turned him into a dog to reinforce the lesson that I thought I had taught him the last time he was here.” Suddenly the dog turned to me and said in my father’s voice

“I’m glad you finally made it Zach, although I expected to be meeting you again face to face, as it stands I’m a little too far down for that.” I was emotionally conflicted. On the one hand I had finally found my dad and I had so many questions to ask him, on the other hand this place seemed like the wrong place to ask them. “Now I’m sure you have a lot of questions but I would like to leave this body as fast as possible.”

“I’ve delivered your request, now you must help me with what I need.” Braun told me.

“But I meant that I wanted to leave with him!” I exclaimed Braun shrugged and replied

“Then you should ask what you mean in the future.”

“Fine, what do you need me to do?” I asked frustrated but knowing that he was the only one who could help me.

“I want you to murder everyone in the town, this place bores me and I feel like a change of pace. Unfortunately the only way to do that is to murder everyone.” My hand had found its way to my face again and I said in a dry voice.

“You want me to murder everyone in the town, so that you can put them in a new environment, do you realize how stupid that is?” Braun shrugged his shoulders and said

“It was a slight oversight in my design, at the time I didn’t expect to want to change the original environment; little did I know how dull paradise gets after four decades.” I sighed and said

“How would you like me to do it? It’s relatively simple really in a dog house in front of that house over there is a mask and a butcher knife. Put on the mask and then kill everyone with the knife.” God I hate this so much I thought Sarah looked conflicted but just shook her head sighed and asked.

“You wouldn’t happen to have two sets of those would you, I really hate being stuck in this dress and I’ll help with anything to get out of it.” Braun thought about it for a moment then said.

“Well you can help him with that or you can help me with something more personal.” Sarah looked disgusted and said.

“Just give me a mask and a knife you perverted old freak.” Braun shrugged obviously not caring one way or the other what she did. We did the distasteful work fast, between the two of us we managed to kill everyone in the town in a little under five minutes. We made it as painless as we could with a butcher knife, but still managed to feel ourselves dying a little on the inside as we worked. When it was done we took off our blood stained masks and dropped our bloody knives in utter self loathing. Braun started to celebrate as we walked up to him and he said.

“Well done very well done in fact so well done that I think I’m going to keep the two f you her for when I want to do it again!” before I could stop her Sarah was on top of Braun screaming.


“I just murdered five innocent people you twisted old [censored]! If you try and keep any of my friends here any longer, then I’m going to literally tear the arms off of your [censored] body, then I’m going to feed you too James over there, and then I’ll throw whatever tiny insignificant little piece of [censored] you turn out to be into a [censored] furnace! Do I make myself completely [censored] clear on that you bastard?” Braun’s face was co covered in bruises that it was unrecognizable but I could just vaguely make out a nod. “Good because if I ever half to look at your nasty face again I’ll make the previous threat look like a [censored] warning!” she then turned to me and said “we’re going.” I simply did what anyone would; I nodded my head and followed her through a portal that had come into existence behind us.

don't ask me how James does it, I'm just going to assume that he's that awsome

Ch11

I came awake in my pod and clambered out. Overhead red lights were flashing and emergency sirens roared. From the hallway I heard the sound of rapid gunfire and the screams of supermutants. Sarah stepped out of hers and immediately began to don her powerarmor I followed her example and put on my own armor. From the pod next to me emerged my father who although disgruntled looked like himself again. Complete with the ever-present 5oclock shadow and the short hair, unfortunately he must not have been very used to his body after spending time as a dog because he immediately collapsed. I rushed over to him but he waved me away and said in a strained voice


“Go help whoever is holding off those mutants, I’ll be fine in a few minutes I’m still adjusting to not being on four legs!” Sarah and I sped down the corridor to find Butch and Jonas firing into a wild rush of supermutants, unfortunately there is only so much you can do with a hunting rifle and a .32 pistol.


“Well look who finally woke up, we’ve been holding them off for an hour, but they just keep coming!” Butch yelled to me while finishing the last one off with his rifle. We could see what he meant; there were so many mutant corpses in the hallway that it looked like a mass grave was being prepared. “So you find your dad in there?” he asked slightly calmer while reloading his rifle.


“Yeah he should be along now any second, he managed to get himself turned into a dog, the useless drunk!”I replied while I unslung my rifle and opened fire on the latest wave of mutants. The rifle made a reassuring rattle as it fired into the mutants sending limbs flying in all directions. Sarah stepped up beside me and added her plasma to the fray, I had learned by now that despite how weird the plasma rifle looks it can pack one hell of a punch. Gaping holes appeared in the mutants’ stomachs and their heads. She still radiated anger at what Braun had made her do but having an appropriate target to take her anger out on seemed to help. Jonas had crept back down the hallway to check on my father, we didn’t mind much he wasn’t much help.


“Am I the only one who is wondering how exactly that they keep finding us?” I yelled over the sound of gunfire.


“Worry about it when we aren’t dealing with the mutants.” Butch shouted back, Sarah just grunted and threw a plasma grenade. On and on they came and I was beginning to run out of ammo for my rifle, butch had switched to a pistol, and Sarah was firing much more slowly than before.


“We can’t make it much longer!” Sarah yelled with an edge of steel entering into her voice.


“Well then you may want to step back because I just entered the party!” I turned to look the voice had come from my father’s mouth but the man I was looking at looked nothing like my father. He was dressed in armor like that of the leader of Talon Company but his was even more protective looking. His voice was coming out of a helmet gasmask combination that made him look almost inhuman; in his hands were one short barrel auto shotgun and one .50 caliber machinegun. I had no idea how he was carrying them at the same time, but then again I didn’t really care.
He opened up with the shotgun first blowing mutants apart at to the point of reducing them to shreds of flesh and pools of blood. He then let loose with the .50 cal and what little courage the mutants offered dissipated into mist, like so much dust in the wind. I was stunned; this was my dad, the man who had come home drunk every night for nineteen years of my life. This was the man who I had been chasing all over the godforsaken wasteland, trying to defend?


“What’s the matter Zachary, you look like you’ve just had the surprise of your life?” My dad asked me, underneath his mask I could tell that he was smiling.


“So the drunkenness has always been a fa?ade?” I asked him uncertainly, he nodded and said.


“It kept people in the vault from wondering too much about why I was there, and asking questions that I didn’t want to answer. Although I do deeply regret not being able to be a good father for you, if we make it through the next few weeks I swear I’ll make it up to you!” he said it with passion and love that I had never heard in his voice before, in that moment I realized that It really had hurt him to watch me grow up so close but yet so far away. He then turned to the rest of our group and looked startled when he saw Butch “Butch what in god’s irradiated green earth are you doing out here! This is no place for barbers!” Butch just shook his head and said.


“Amata went insane and the three of us killed her and around twenty five vault officers, let’s just say that I had had enough of the Vault.” My father’s hand had found its way to his face and he sighed and replied.


“Well I suppose it was just a matter of time before that happened, and son I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything about her for you.” I nodded silently then he went on “and this must be the little girl that threatened Braun that she would feed him to me, what’s your name?” when Sarah said it my father doubled over with laughter. He laughed for around five minutes before he came up for breathe gasping for air before saying “[censored] you’ve grown, I remember when you were around three. You were the cutest little girl in the entire Brotherhood, but also the toughest why I remember once I had some toy you wanted and I wouldn’t give it to you so you kicked me in the leg until I dropped it!” At this point Sarah was flushing deeply, and I offered my hand in support, which was apparently enough to send my father into another fit. “Oh please tell me your father knows! Oh this is so good; Owyn must be laughing worse than I am right now at this irony.”


“What irony?” I asked him while he reloaded his guns.


“Well when I saved him he asked me what I wanted out of it and I told him I wanted his firstborn son, so now I’ll be getting his first born daughter and he will be get my first born son!” Butch looked up from where he was scavenging from the dead mutants and asked.


“Am I the only one getting mood whiplash right now?”

sorry for the shortness of this chapter, the next one is long and we finally meet the main villian, for now

Ch12
We made an odd band our little group, Butch in his leather jacket, Sarah in her powerarmor, my father in his western gear, along with Jonas and me in our slightly unusual armor. It felt odd traveling with my father, mainly because Sarah or I were used to leading but he took up the position immediately.

“We’re going to the Talon Company HQ; by the way Zach did Adam give you my present?” I didn’t know anyone named Adam so I asked

“Adam who?” he sighed and replied

“The leader of the Talons, he probably just introduced himself as the Currier or something similar.” I nodded and rummaged in my pack until I found the package and pulled it out. My father ran his hand over his mask and sighed before saying.

“Well you might as well open it now, although I’m sure it would have been very helpful earlier.” I did as he asked and became speechless, inside was a pistol, but not just any pistol the perfect pistol. Its grip was made of polished black leather, above that the body was that of a 10. Millimeter pistol but it was inlaid with tiny designs and swirls that added more uniqueness to it, the barrel was sleek tapering off to a fine hole. The entire pistol was colored midnight black. “It’s fully automatic and can hold twelve rounds; it was the first thing I asked Adam to make for me when I got to their base the right before I went to 112. I hope that you like it!” he said in such a hopeful voice that any real lasting resentment passed out of my system and all I could do was nod my head.

Talon Company HQ put anything that I had seen except for maybe the Citadel to shame. The outer walls were ten feet thick at their thinnest while they towered twenty feet into the air, my father told us that they were made out of stainless steel which was then painted black with an advanced type of emulsion polymer, which could supposedly stop laser and plasma fire. Large machinegun nests were located every several of meters interspaced with what appeared to be rocket and even several tesla turrets. Walking along the walls were Talon company men in their signature black armor carrying .50caliber rifles, along with some who were carrying several rifles that looked like sniper rifles but with somewhat wider barrels and what appeared to be a hand crank.

“Oh my god, they have gauss rifles!” Sarah breathed in a hesitant breath before asking my father “where in the hell did they get those? The Brotherhood hasn’t seen gauss rifles since they came east!” my father shrugged and said that she would have to ask Adam about it, all that he really knew was that Adam had more caps then the entire population of Vegas and The Capitol Wasteland combined. We neared the gates of the building and the gate opened upwards as if it were an old fashion portcullis. We stepped inside to be met by Adam himself his entourage was with him including the ex brotherhood agent who stepped forward and embraced my father in a elder sisterly hug and said.

“Everything working in that thick head of yours James, I would hate to have a repeat of the last time that you met Braun, it took us weeks to get you to wear cloths.” My father returned the embrace and said.

“Yes, my son and his girlfriend here got to me before I became to in touch with the body I was in.” then the door slammed down behind us with a dramatic crash causing all of us except my father to jump in surprise. Adam and his group chuckled a little then my father asked

“Where’s Cass, I miss her bright smile, and foul mouth?” Boon spoke up with a slight grin on his face and said.

“She’s off at the Citadel bargaining with that merchant Durga.” Sarah started to laugh while I grinned slightly. “Yeah…” Boon continued “…When Durga comes here I can hear them arguing late into the night.”

“Really with Durga, I always thought she was on the straight and narrow” my father replied and shook his head. We then walked into the HQ; along the ceiling were innumerable auto turrets which watched us carefully as we made our way through their domain. After around ten minutes we arrived at what appeared to be a command center, there were large monitors set up at various points along the walls and large maps were displayed on holo maps where small icons moved and feinted.

“Ok Dad spill it, what in the [censored] is really going on?” I asked him he sighed and said in a weary voice.

“Now you learn the real reason that I took you into the vault instead of just staying here.”

Ch13
He was at the head of his patrol leading his small company of Talons into a small tunnel where there were rumors of large supermutant activity. His group were scouts, and as such they were very lightly armed so that they could move quickly and quietly. From down the tunnel they could hear the distinctive sounds of supermutants talking their gruff slightly crazy voices rebounding off of the tight tunnel walls and creating frightening echoes.

“Remember boys this is a scouting mission, we go in, and then we go out, no casualties.” James whispered quietly to his squad who nodded and readied their stealth suits, and prepared to creep farther forward down the tunnels. Then they vanished, the HUD in his helmet kept track of them on a little radar screen down in the corner of his right eye. Silently and invisibly his squad moved down the tunnel and into a large opening at the end of it. When they got there James gasped in surprise at what he saw.


Instead of the small little shacks that they had been expecting they were confronted by a massive cavern that was covered floor to ceiling with equipment. Large pipes were attached to the walls and through them flowed a sickly glowing green liquid, the very sight of which seemed to change the way that the world stood. James found himself becoming angry, angry at the tunnel, angry at cavern, angry at his men, and it scarred him, in fact it terrified him. Suddenly without any type of fanfare an incredibly large mutant steeped into view carrying two humans wriggling in his iron hard grip. The mutant made its way towards a large pit in the middle of the floor that was filled with the glowing liquid; it then nonchalantly threw the two humans into the pit where they started to scream in pain and terror.


Right before the horrified eyes of his squad the two humans in the pit began to change, their bodies split apart with their skin and muscle falling off of their bones in great pink and red heaps. Then while their heads continued to scream all of the skin and muscle began to meld back together twisting together to become a disgusting mutated bulbous ball of flesh that that took on a shiny mucus covered sheen. Then the heads were forced together, the two separate sides pressing into each other until they were one smashed together mash of features, the skull had four eyes and one mouth filled with razor sharp teeth. The ball of flesh started to nit itself into a new form molding like clay to form as twisted a menagerie as could be imagined. A large chest that led to a creature with four incredibly large arms, four spiderlike legs then erupted out of its lower body.


“Ok that’s not what I was expecting!” James gasped to his squad, all of whom sounded like they were on the verge of throwing up. “This is bad guys we need to leave now!” as he said it he heard a deep rumbling from down below, he looked down to see supermutant after supermutant climbing towards them. “Pull back!” he shouted while pulling out his trusty riot shotgun his fellows followed suit. As the first mutant cleared the top of the ledge James sent a volley of scattershot into its chest sending it flying off the ledge screaming in pain. Soon they were knee deep in mutant corpses while walking backwards and firing was becoming increasingly difficult. Suddenly the flow of mutants ebbed away and a deep ominous yet cultured voice shouted.


“Welcome to domain my name is Mathias, you won’t be human long be human long enough to care. But I feel like you should at least have the honor of knowing who you will be serving for the rest of your lives, by which I mean forever.” James was able to think up a suitable reply and shouted


“If this is your domain why don’t you come out and show your face!” dark ominous laughter drifted up the shaft as a enormous dark shape loomed into view from the end of the tunnel. The thing that appeared was massive easily taking up the width and height of the tunnel, its hide was covered in vast steel plates that shined yellow from the background glow of the liquid in the pipes. Evil looking red eyes were looked out from the large head that was covered in a large metal helmet. It carried a huge supersledge in each hand that looked capable of obliterating the human body in a matter of seconds.


“You asked and so you have received, now prepare yourself for the beginning of your second life!” with that it charged James and his group. Someone threw a grenade which detonated right at Mathias’s feet but seemed to inconnivance it about as much as the shotgun rounds that were rebounding off its armor and flesh. It had quickly ate up the ground between the squad and itself in around three seconds, as soon as they had its come into range it quickly dropped the members of his squad with light blows to the head. The last thing he saw before he rushed into the tender embrace of unconsciousness was the monster named Mathias looking down at him a smile spreading across the bestial face.


When he awoke James found himself looking into the same face as he had been when he was fading into unconsciousness he was currently being held in the air above Mathias’s head. Arrayed in front of him were his squad mates, his friends that he had known and bonded with for years. They were completely naked bent forward on their knees, they were handling their situation with great solemnity their faces a mask of stone.


“I see that you are awake, good, their leader deserves to watch his followers become something greater than they ever could be otherwise.” James knew there was only one thing that he could do, it was time to stall for time and hope that Adam would send reinforcements.


“You told us your name but not who you are or what you want, I think my men and I at least deserve to know what it is that we will be working for!” the great mutant scratched his chin and thought about it for a few seconds before saying.


“I suppose you are right, after all once you know what it is that you will be serving then it will motivate you to fight further for our cause. As I said my name is Mathias, I was once a member of the United States Government, my job was to create a new kind of super soldier using a material called FEV, this proved ineffective. We could create super soldiers but they were mindless idiots, I believe that you yourself have killed quite a few of them over the years. So I devised a new kind of mutagen which I dubbed FEEV or, focused elemental evolutionary virus. It was radically effective and caused much greater intelligence in the subjects. Then came the war, I had no idea what was going on until I was thrown into a barrel of FEEV by the vibrations of the bombs going off. That’s when I became the amazing being that you see before you, and now my goal is to bring everyone on the earth to this glorious level of evolution!” this was bad James knew he was out of time and that the end would come soon, though he felt the worst for not being able to save his squad.Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a shimmer in the air in the place where they had recently made their stand, he smiled at his captor and said.


“I would love to join your glorious army sir, but there is one problem...” The large mutant looked at him surprised and asked.


“And what would that be James?” James’s smile got even bigger and he yelled.


“…I have a preexisting contract!” right as the .50 caliber rounds tore into Mathias and his surrounding mutants. Mathias staggered backwards dropping James in front of his squad mates whom he quickly untied and they began to sprint towards the exit.


“AFTER THEM!” Mathias somehow yelled even though several .50 caliber rounds had slammed directly into his skull, while James looked back he saw the skin around Mathias’s head stitching itself back together.


“Move, move, move damn it we don’t have much time!” they had reached the ledge where rope ladders were tossed down to them, overhead the trained and concentrated blasts of .50 caliber ammo slammed into the oncoming horde of mutants keeping them firmly in place. At this point the cavern floor behind them was covered in a thick layer of blood. Through it all Mathias was yelling at the top of his lungs for his mutants to move forward even as five or six more .50 caliber bullets slammed into his chest and head. Under the orderly fire of the Talons the enemy was kept away from the ledge long enough for the rope ladders to be cut. Then the snipers and their unarmed friends ran up the tunnel to find several more Talons waiting who had just finished setting up a large group of explosives all around the interior of the tunnel. The mutants came charging up the tunnel, some of the newer four legged monstrosities leading the charge.


Then a switch was flipped and the only sound left to hear was the ringing in your ears as you rushed towards the light of day, the next day back at Talon HQ James and Adam where in deep discussion about what to do about Mathias.


“We need to kill that thing now Adam, if its army gets any larger then we will never be able to stop it!” James was tired of this argument and yet he’d been having it repeatedly for hours.


“Yes James we do need to kill it, how exactly do we do that again?” Adam responded dryly James snorted in frustration the monster named Mathias had been shot in excess of fifty times by .50 caliber rounds to his head, neck, and body, yet he had managed to shrug them off as if they were BBs. “face it James until we have a way to end that thing permanently we can’t do much besides kill its servants.” Then Veronica walked into the room and said.


“I think we may have come up with something…” Adam and James nodded for her to continue. “…well it occurred to me that there are only two sources in the Capitol Wasteland that we could possibly find a way to kill this Mathias. The Vaults, or the Enclave, and because frankly I doubt that the Enclave will do anything but shoot plasma at us that leaves the Vaults.”


“Yes but all of the Vaults are deathtraps, hell I doubt that we could find a single one with any data left intact enough for us to use!” James replied angrily, then slight smile touched Veronica’s face and she said.


“Well actually Vault 101 is still perfectly intact, and it occasionally opens its doors to people who are hopeless. For example they might take in a brilliant scientist and doctor whose wife just died in childbirth leaving the poor man and his child alone in the Wasteland.” At the mention of his wife’s death James’s face grew sad, he would miss her for the rest of his life but he realized that Veronica was probably right. “Besides James you look awful and you could use some time away from the Wasteland.” said Veronica worriedly.


“Alright I’ll do it, and Zach may benefit from living in a place like Vault 101 without the Wasteland trying to kill him constantly.” James said, and so James packed up his belongings, paid his friend Laurence one final visit, then picked up his young son Zachary from Moria, and departed into Vault 101 to hopefully find a way to defeat the mutant army.


As my father finished his story it sank in just how much he’d had to sacrifice in order to live in the Vault, how many friends he’d had to leave behind and, just what we were facing.


“So how do the mutants know about me, and what could I possibly do to threaten them?” I asked my father, who shook his head and said.


“As to that I have no idea.” My father replied sadly then he said “But it is very troubling, on the bright side we now know how we can defeat Mathias.”


“What is it?” I asked him he scratched his chin and said with a straight face


“Well if my information is right all you have to do is cross the continent, fight ten armies of mutants each more terrifying then the last, then sail across the sea to china where you will have to make an offering to the dragons that control the weather who will then give you the spark of power which we can then use to overpower him by using the six people with the purest heart…” he smiled at Butch, Sarah and my faces before continuing “ …Na I’m just screwing with you. Inside of the old Dunwich building there is a Vault that has several powerful weapons that we can use to kill Mathias, that’s where you three come in. you go in find the weapons that I will place a description of in your Pipboy, go in, then get out, it should be simple and fast, any questions?”


This one was really fun to write, please let me know what you think of Mathias. Also the next chapter takes place in the Dunwich building so expect some mental fun

Ch14
After raiding the Talon armory for ammo Butch, Sarah, and I set off to find the Dunwich building. What my father never mentioned is that it was farther away than the Citadel, so one night stop in Megaton, and a lot walking later we arrived outside of the Dunwich building.


“I feel really bad about this place for some reason.” Sarah told Butch and me, oddly that was exactly what I was thinking too. The Dunwich building just seemed to radiate terror and unease.


“Zoiks guys it sure looks scary in there, man I wish we had a dog.” Butch put in helpfully, Sarah and I’s faces were too obscured by our hands for him to see us laughing. “well then let’s get in there before something tries to kill us, and because I’m traveling with you two something probably will.”


As we entered the building I thought I heard voices whispering, but when I looked for the source of the noise it stopped, only to start again the moment I stopped looking. As we moved past the destroyed front desk we heard the telltale signs of ghouls, namely the weird shriek that they always make. And yet none appeared from anywhere, we waited quietly and the whispering engulfed us in a sea of silent noise. What you have come here for is beyond your comprehension one of the voices whispered for the first time allowing me to hear what they were saying. Then as quickly as they had come the voices vanished and the ghouls came running towards out of the shadows, these were a variety that I had never encountered before. Their skin gave off a radioactive glow that seemed to make them even more insane then the normal ghoul and they were much harder to kill.


When the ghouls were dead the whispering came back less distinct then before, but far more threatening. Death will visit upon you soon a fitting reward for your vanity, we continued farther into the building and were greeted by insane laughter his is the way whispered the voices menacingly. Suddenly the sides of our vision became shrouded in black and an even louder voice spoke from nowhere YOU WOULD DARE TO DISTURB ME! Then our vision was normal again and we kept moving. Sarah scanned the rooms carefully as we moved through them, her newly acquired gauss rifle scanning the areas for threats, then she vanished in a puff of blackness. We have her with us now the voices whispered in my ears as I futilely called her name.


Our vision became red and we saw the building as it once was a sparkling clean office building whose employees went about their jobs with speed and efficiency, then the louder voice came back. ALL OF THEIR LIVES THEY WORKED HERE, AND NOW THEY BELONG TO ME, JUST AS YOU SHALL. The background whispers returned and suddenly Butch was gone too. All alone I walked through the darkness with the whisperers calling to me when your light is extinguished we shall feast upon your delicious soul! I was beginning to panic I could feel the embrace of madness trying to overwhelm me you will never find your way out, never again shall you be able to see the light, never again shall you lie down with your lion in the sun, for we posses both of you forever! I had to get out; I had to find the way out before whatever it was found me! YOU BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND, THERE IS NO ESCAPE, NO WAY OUT! YOU ARE TRAPPED IN THIS REALM OF MADNESS FOREVER! The voice was right there is no way out it’s hopeless, nothing that I do can save myself nothing!


It could have been hours or it could have been minutes, but eventually I made it to a point where one spotlight illuminated the ground in front of me when I stepped into it and the whispering stopped. The light also cleared my mind, allowing me to discern my surroundings, as I embraced the blessed silence in my head I began to wonder what was going on. Before with the constant whispering and occasional shouting I couldn’t think about it, but here in the light I could and I didn’t like what I came up with.


“Yeah dad, simple, fast and easy, next time you come with us and you can say hello to Lord Cthulhu for us.” I said to myself absently the voice suddenly returned chuckling CTHULHU, IF I WERE CTHULHU THEN YOU WOULD HAVE GIVVEN INTO MADNESS LONG AGO, HE HAS NO PATIANCE AND NO SENCE OF FUN, AFTER ALL WHAT’S THE POINT OF DRIVING MEN INSANE IF YOU RUSH IT. “Ok note to self do not talk to self!” Eventually I realized that I couldn’t just stay under the spotlight and that I would have to keep moving, of course once I did that the whispering returned.


We missed you, out from the darkness erupted ghouls, these glowing like before but throwing balls of goo that sent my Pipboy beeping from the radiation. Give in, acceptance is so much easier then fighting the voices slowly chanted in my head as I blew ghoul after ghoul into bloody paste. As I reloaded I thought about how around a week ago I was living contentedly underground, then the voices said. You should have accepted Amata, you were the reason she went insane, and you caused her death! I really needed to learn to control my own thoughts. While I had been down here I began to ignore my vision, mostly because whatever kept whispering to me was trying to show me things I never needed to think about. These included Sarah turning into a headless lioness who started to say how much she hated me while blood poured out of the severed head’s mouth, along with images of her and Butch sleeping together.


After that the whispering began to get louder until it was more like they were yelling trying to get my attention, or as I hopped trying to prevent me from going any farther forward. FOOLISH CHILD THE FUN HAS JUST BEGUN! I was sick of this little game, I was going to find this thing, and I was going to end it! the laughter returned I SEE THAT THE LION HAS FOUND HIS CLAWS AT LAST! NO MATER YOUR CURAGE WILL TAKE YOU NO FARTHER ESPECIALY NOW! I wondered what it meant as I stumbled into an alter; it appeared to have been carved out of bodies of people in terrible agony who were then turned to stone. Blood seeped over the edges of it obscuring the floor in a red pool. Beyond the alter was a Vault door, but whatever had once been labeled on it was now destroyed and had been replaced by someone creatively writing the word HELL on it in blood.


WHAT WILL YOU DO NOW? YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE THE PASSWORD YOU FOOL! I smiled; if there was one thing that I had learned during my time in the Vault it was that the people at Vaulttech were idiots, for some reason all of their Vault doors were unlocked with one combination of numbers, the number 4 followed by the number 2.


WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO DO NOW, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHERE WHAT YOU SEEK IS?” The stupid voice just didn’t seem to get it; I’d stopped caring about it. I had realized that if it was going to do something to me it would have already. In fact I was pretty sure that it was grasping at straws at this point. ME GRASPING AT STRAWS, THE NERVE OF YOU LITTLE MORTAL FOOL! It told me in outrage.


“By the way mister omnipotent being would you please give me my friends back, having nothing but a annoying disembodied voice to talk to is getting a little stale?” as I said it I walked down the corridor of the Vault past water fountains overflowing with blood and skeletons holding conversations. YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD ESPECIALLY YOUR LOINESS, GIVE UP ALL HOPE OF SAINITY! “If they were then you would have lost your bargaining chips, you know for a god from another dimension you aren’t very good at this.” I replied coolly as two ghouls ran around the corner and I blasted their heads to gray goo. YOUR SAINITY STILL LINGERS? FEAR NOT I SHALL EXPUNGE IT FROM YOUR SYSTEM! “Oh shut up, Jesus Christ if you aren’t the biggest ham I’ve ever met then I’m actually a monkey!” after that it was quite for a long time while I searched for the Vault’s armory when I finally stumbled upon it the voice came back and asked. WHY ARE YOU STILL SANE, NO ONE ELSE HAS EVER BESTED ME? I sighed and told it “look you went way too far to soon with the images of Sarah and Butch. If you’re going to show someone those kinds of things then you have to wait till they’re at their breaking point otherwise it looks like you’re simply looking for things to freak them out and it
breaks the immersion. Wait why am I telling you?” SO YOU’RE SAYING IT WAS TOO MUCH TO SOON? I nodded and said “my point exactly”


“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I yelled looking around the armory; it was full of Sugar Bombs IF YOU’LL REMEMBER I DID SAY THAT THE THING YOU SEEK WAS FAR BEYOND YOU’RE COMPREHENSION. The voice said snidely “Oh go [censored] yourself” I responded to the tune of his laughter “Is it indicative of your power that you have nothing better to do then mess with random mortals” I asked him NO MORTALS ARE JUST MORE FUN THEN GODS, SAY YOU WOULDN’T HAPPEN TO LIKE CHEESE WOULD YOU?” I nodded slowly, and the boxes of cereal were replaced by the materials that I was looking for, several shiny rocklike substances that had an odd glow about them. I quickly placed them in my bags then suddenly the voice came back IF YOU’RE DONE THEN I WOULD REALLY LIKE YOU TO LEAVE I HAVE PLANS FOR LATER AND EMPERORS DON’T JUST DRIVE THEMSELVES INSANE YOU KNOW! Before I knew what had happened I was standing outside the building with Sarah and Butch, we slowly turned to look at each other and in unison we said


“We are never speaking of this again!”


I wonder if anyone guessed who it was before I gave it away

Ch15

We walked back to Talon HQ quietly each of us stuck in our own thoughts; mine were mostly centered on the fact that I had just singlehandedly talked down a powerful god, where the other’s thoughts were I had no idea. My father met us at the gate ginning and asked.
“Did everything go well?” the three of us looked at one another and exchanged a glance before I said


“Yep no problems at all, in and out, just like you said.” He nodded happily and wrapped me in a hug before ushering us into the base.


“So while you were gone we talked it over and it turns out that you guys need to get two more things for us before we can make a move against Mathias.” My father told us with a note of regret seeping into his voice he continued “I’m sorry that we didn’t know until after you left, and your Pipboy’s phone wasn’t working. For some reason it kept asking if we would accept a call from The Shivering Isles, whatever that means.” We looked at each other and shook our heads, he didn’t need to know.


“So what exactly are we looking for?” Sarah asked him. My Father paused before he said


“In a junkyard to east of here there are several small cores that we can use to enhance the effects of the material that you picked up from The Dunwich Building, don’t worry there shouldn’t be much if any resistance, it is a junkyard after all. Unfortunately the last thing we need you to get for us is located in Evergreen Mills. In the possession of a man named Smiling Jack you should find several tubes of a red glowing substance, be very careful when you are handling them if the contents touch you…well let’s just say that it wouldn’t be pretty.”


After once again raiding the Talon armory for ammo and picking butch up an decent assault rifle we headed off to the junkyard. On the way I turned to Butch and asked


“Is it just me, or has everything that I’ve been doing starting to feel like a fetch quest from those old games in the Vault?” he just shook his head and replied


“Dude if you want me to get into a philosophical discussion with you then you should pick a better topic.” I snorted and said


“Coming from a hairdresser that’s rich.” Butch looked slightly insulted and replied.


“There’s a lot about philosophy that you can learn about styling hair. For example when you end a life are you not simply snipping off another piece of hair from the head of the world?” before we could get any farther into the discussion Sarah held up her hand for silence. In the distance we could hear what sounded like raiders laughing manically and the sounds of a dog growling defiantly. We rushed into the junkyard to be confronted by a group of raider armed with hunting rifles trying to dislodge a dog that was standing defiantly over the body of a man in a leather jacket.


“Get off poochi we ain’t going to hurt you, we just want your former masters key!” one of the raiders told the dog apparently trying to reason with it. “Our boss has a thing for dogs so he’s told us that we can’t hurt you, but if one of our guns were to go off accidentally…well it wouldn’t be our faults.” The raider continued raising his rifle. “Alright last warning three, two on…” he never got to finish his countdown because at that moment the dog had the raider’s throat in its teeth. Before any of the raiders could attack it Sarah, Butch, and I stepped into view and calmly gunned down them down.


The dog looked over at us while cleaning blood off of its lips with its tongue and wagged its tail. The dog came up to Butch and rubbed his head on Butch’s leg before licking the hand that Butch lowered in response. Butch looked over at Sarah and me and asked in his best little kid voice.


“Can we keep him?” Sarah and I looked at each other before she took up a stern motherly voice and told him.


“Butch owning a dog is a big responsibility are you sure that you’re up for the task?” Butch nodded rapidly before responding


“Please I’ll walk him, and feed him, and make sure that he goes out every day!” the dog barked enthusiastically its tongue lolling out of the corner of its mouth in a doggy grin.


“Alright mister, but only if you take good care of him!” I put in fatherly, and then we all fell to our knees laughing. While he was on his knees Butch looked at the collar around the Dog’s neck.


“His name is Dogmeat, his last owner must have been very creative.” at the mention of his name Dogmeat’s ears stiffened and he barked happily. After that we looked at the man lying dead on the ground, Dogmeat whined when Butch touched the body and nosed it over one last time before shaking his head and walking away to sniff a tire. On the dead man’s body we found one small pistol, twenty caps, and the key that the raiders had been after.


“So where are we looking for these “cores” again?” Sarah asked me, I looked at my Pipboy to see where it had placed the marker that we were following.


“South.” I told her confidently. After ten minutes of walking through giant piles of junk we came upon a small shack. The front door was locked, but luckily we had the key. Inside we found a large assortment of random odds and ends along with several glowing spherical objects that my Pipboy identified as cores.


“Well guys that’s another macguffin in the bag. And I got a dog, right Dogmeat?” Butch asked, Dogmeat turned his head and barked once happily.

Ch16
Evergreen Mills looked terrible, dozens if not a hundred raiders patrolled the settlement, and those were just the ones outside walking around. The behemoth was still locked in its electrified cage and there were slave pens everywhere.


“Well [censored], this is going to be a blast isn’t it?” Butch asked sarcastically, Sarah punched him in the arm causing him to wince slightly.


“I’m trying to decide if it would be easier to let the behemoth out and deal with it after it had killed all of the raiders, or just kill all of the raiders and ignore the behemoth.” Sarah told us which is when I smiled and pulled out the fatman. Sarah successfully snipped the power generator with a one shot of her gauss rifle, it being the most accurate gun that we had, along with her being the unquestioned best shot in the group. As the electricity went down the behemoth let out a wild yell and charged in among its former captors joyously sending them flying high into the air with well timed punches. One unlucky bastard even fell close to Sarah still breathing, she nonchalantly kicked him off the edge of the cliff that we stood on with the toe of her powerarmored foot.


“A little low for a field goal, but it think it should be ok.” Butch told her, god Butch knows way too much about the past, I guess it comes with being a greaser. Sarah just raised her eyebrow and looked at me, I just shrugged. As much fun as it was watching our enemies kill each other mindlessly I decided that we might as well end it. I mounted the fatman on my shoulder, took careful aim, and fired. Much to my amazement the behemoth simply caught it in mid air and threw it off into the wasteland. Sarah Butch and I’s jaws dropped, then the Behemoth called up to us in a friendly voice.


“Thank you for the freedom my friends, fear not I shall not seek retribution on you for you were simply doing what the Wasteland has taught you. In this case however the stereotypes of the Wasteland are incorrect; my name is Fawkes by the way.” Sarah and I looked at each other to stunned that we were having a conversation with a supermutant behemoth to respond, Butch on the other hand took things in stride and called down.


“Cool my man, I’m Butch, this is Zach, and this lovely young woman is Sarah Lyons.” Fawkes let out a disbelieving laugh at the mention of Sarah’s name before saying.


“The Sarah Lyons, well I’m surprised that I’m not dead, she has by all accounts taken the art of mutant slaying to a new high!” Butch snickered and turned to Sarah saying.


“Looks like you have a fanbase out there.” Sarah punched him again, this time hard enough for me to wince.


“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a man called Smiling Jack, or a mutant named Mathias, would you?” at the sound of Mathias’s name Fawkes ground his teeth, which is like the sound of nails on a Vault chalkboard times ten.


“Oh yes I know about both of them, Smiling Jack is the [censored] who trapped me and was planning to sell me to the Enclave as part of one of their experiments, the nerve of the man! Mathias on the other hand is someone who you want to avoid at all costs; he’s absolutely mad and coming from a supermutant that’s saying something!”


“Wait you’re insane?” Sarah asked contributing her first rational thought to the conversation; Fawkes turned his massive head to regard her and completely deadpan said.


“Yes, that’s generally what it’s called when someone from my race talks to someone who is supposedly a devoted killer of us, besides the fact that I can form complex thoughts and emotions unlike most of my mutant brethren of course.” Sarah actually blushed, I was in stitches myself, until she hit me, and this time Butch winced for me.


“So do you have any ideas about killing Mathias?” I asked him, he smiled while shaking his head slowly and said.


“That is a very difficult question for anyone to answer, that serum of his makes him much harder to kill then a normal mutant. Personally I’d advise throwing him into a volcano, but there seem to be a shortage around here.” The big mutant then waved and set off down the valley leading out of Evergreen Mills and shouted over his shoulder. “If I ever see you again my friends I will aid you in whatever way I can, for now though I must depart.” As we watched his departing back Sarah just shook her head and said.


“I can’t believe it, we just had a perfectly understandable conversation with a behemoth, which can casually catch and throw away mininukes!” Butch looked at me and said.


“I can’t believe that your girlfriend has a reputation as a serial killer!” it was hard to say whether Sarah’s or my fist hit him first.

Ch17
Colonel Augustus Autumn sat at the conference table discussing the ongoing Enclave operations in the Capitol Wasteland.


“And so sir as you can see your plan is working perfectly, the Talons and the Brotherhood are far too busy dealing with Mathias and his armies of mutants to even consider acting against us.” Autumn nodded his head and motioned for the officer talking to him to continue. “Also as according to plan whoever wins the conflict will be far too undermanned and exhausted to defend themselves.”


“Excellent job soldier, now what is this I keep hearing about our project at the Deathclaw Sanctuary?” Autumn asked.


“Well sir the lone survivor says that a mininuke fell from the sky in the middle of the group killing most immediately. The sole survivor also says that he did a scan and it showed that the only enemies anywhere in the vicinity were the deathclaws themselves, and if they’ve learned how to use fatmen then I doubt that the Enclave will manage to stay the top military superpower in the Wasteland.” The officer replied, obviously joking, if deathclaws figured out how to use technology then humans would most likely stop existing.


“So it just fell out of the sky?” Autumn asked incredulously the officer shrugged and replied.


“Apparently sir.” Autumn decided to let the matter be, it was something to ponder later though. “Also sir the raider known as Smiling Jack has been killed by unknown forces, along with that behemoth getting free.” Now Autumn was annoyed. He had paid a lot for the capture of that particular mutant and he was sure that he wouldn’t see any of it ever again, just to check though he asked the officer.


“Please tell me that somebody brought back at least some of my payment!” the officer shook his head and replied.


“Sorry sir but whoever killed Jack seems to have also taken all of the payment, including the anti radiation serums that he was supposed to mass produce and then sell for us.” Autumn groaned inwardly and asked the officer.


“Has anything else gone wrong with any of our operations?” The officer chuckled nervously before saying.


“Well sir the bomb in Megaton has been decommissioned so we can’t exactly use that as a bargaining chip like we wanted to, and apparently James Hardgrave has reemerged from Vault 101.” Autumn’s hand slammed down on the table, he was out of patience.


“So if what you are telling me is true then the only thing that hasn’t gone badly is my attempt to make our enemies kill each other! Damnit Jenkins I promoted you because they said that you were the top in your class!” Jenkins looked offended and replied.


“Sir it certainly isn’t my fault that these things are happening; besides at least Adams is going well. With all of those vertibirds along with that basecrawler I doubt even the NCR could stand up to us, luckily they’re still too busy pacifying the remains of the Legion in Vegas to pose us any real threat.”


“I suppose you’re right Jenkins, just don’t speak out like that again unless you want to get demoted.” Autumn told him getting ready to leave and putting his jacket back on. He walked down the metal hallways that made up the majority of RavenRock thinking about all that he had just heard. So James is out of the Vault after nineteen years, that bodes ill whenever he is around things tend to get a little hectic. And a mininuke falling out of the sky and killing the soldiers working at the Deathclaw Sanctuary that really is something to ponder, I wonder where it came from? He was jarred out of his thoughts by a voice over the loudspeaker.


“Would Colonel Augustus Autumn please report to the President’s office?” Autumn sighed, great another audience with “His Excellency” just what I need today. As he entered the president’s office he sighed inwardly thinking about how much he hated his boss.


“Autumn come in, come in, it’s so good to see you again how has the day been treating you?” the President asked him in a robotic voice brimming with irony, he knew exactly how Autumn’s day had been.


“Well Mister President my plan is working as expected with the Talons and the Brotherhood doing exactly what I presumed they would.” Autumn told The President.


“Please Augustus we’ve been over this, call me John. Now what’s this I’m hearing about the Deathclaw Sanctuary?” Autumn sighed and ran his hand over his face before flatly saying.


“Apparently a mininuke fell on them sir.”


“But Augustus mininukes don’t just fall out of the sky do they?” John asked Autumn sardonically.


“I suppose someone must have launched it sir.” Autumn said while grating his teeth.


“Well you may want to find out, unless of course you would rather just let the men die for nothing.” Somehow the mechanical voice managed sound threatening.


“I’ll have someone look into it sir, may I leave now?” Autumn asked him. The president’s mainframe buzzed noisily, which The President did purposefully to irritate Autumn, before he replied.


“Yes you’re dismissed, oh and Augustus, make sure that you watch out for James. I hear he’s back, and I would hate for there to be another misunderstanding” As he walked out of the office Autumn wondered again why he hadn’t shut down the stupid computer years ago.


I've got to say this one was very fun to do