Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 10, 2016 22:59:04 GMT
Currently updating old posts with artwork, as well as posting daily.
You expected this to be different. You thought that this would be like an ascension to heaven, with a journey through a tunnel and a glorious bright light at the end. You expected the sunlight to feel warm and pleasant and cleansing. You didn’t expect this.
Not only is the pain of what just happened in the vault still lodged in your chest like a screwdriver, but the light from the sun doesn’t feel nice at all. For one thing,it’s bright, which you were expecting, but it’s too bright, like someone just turned on the lights and you’ve been asleep your whole life. Also, it feels cold. You’ve heard of clouds, but you imagined them as whimsical puffs in a blue sky. The sky seems to be made of one giant, dark cloud. You want to go back to the vault just to get rid of the chill sinking into your bones… but you know there’s nothing to go back to. Also, you’re literally starving. The last meal you had was four days ago, though at this point you’ve gotten used to the constant pain of hunger. Your nose catches the smell of food and you find yourself stumbling after it in a daze, down an asphalt road that time has turned into a rocky path, away from the tunnel in the hillside. As you draw closer to the source, a small town in a nearby valley, the smell of food is joined by the smell of human waste. You press on, passing a sign with “Amberton” written on it in stenciled letters.
Amberton is not what you expected a town to look like, either. All through the town, people shuffle about with seemingly nowhere to go. People are living in metal shacks, tents, boxes and under bedsheets held up by sticks. Many of the actual buildings are practically ruins, and uninhabitable. The buildings that are still standing and lived in have bricks and shingles falling off of them and splintered and broken doors. Broken glass litters the sidewalks, along with the blood of those who walked barefoot and were not careful enough to avoid the shards. Walking down the street, several people give you second looks, eyeing your blue jumpsuit. Nobody, however, eyes you as much as the ladies at the sides of the road. One in particular, barely clad in what appear to be leather straps, motions in a 'come hither' gesture.
“Hey cutie,” she says seductively from chapped lips. “Welcome to the wasteland. Now if you got the caps, I can take you somewhere and welcome you proper.” “Please,” you gasp. “I need food.” She scowls and points in the direction of a large tent with smoke coming out of a hole in the top. “If that doesn’t curb your appetite, you know where to find me.”
You walk over to the tent, still feeling her eyes on you. Inside the tent is a sea of people, with currents going in a dozen different directions. To reach the food, you have to follow wherever the streams take you. Eventually, you find the table where a gentleman with severe acne and more hair coming out of his nose than from his chin is serving kebabs.
He wipes his hands on his apron, which is stained yellow with grease. “Seven caps, pal.” “I don’t know what caps are,” you confess. You’d be more embarrassed if you weren’t so hungry. The man raises his eyebrows in confusion and surprise, but then looks down at your jumpsuit. “Bottle caps. You know, from sodas and shit.” You explain to him that you don’t have any bottle caps. “Well I ain’t about to give you food for nothing. Get outta here, you're wasting my time.”
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 10, 2016 23:29:36 GMT
Now accepting commands.
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 10, 2016 23:35:21 GMT
>Barter with the guy.
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 11, 2016 1:00:09 GMT
You think up a solution and hope it sounds as convincing as it did in your head. "Sir, please. I haven't had anything to eat in four days. Maybe I can do some work for you to pay it off?" "Well, I do have about five radroaches that I need killed out back. Been gettin' into my stock. I'd do it m'self, but my back's been hurting lately and I don't want to stoop down. If you do that, I'll even grill up some of the meat for ya. Not all of it, o'course, just a piece or two. I am running a business here."
Grill up some of the...? People eat radroaches out here? You guess it makes sense; radroaches are definitely big enough to eat. You've seen one that snuck into the vault once. A guard found it and killed it, then showed it around to anybody he could. You bet he would have mounted it on his wall if the overseer hadn't ordered him to throw it out. That was years ago, before the changes. If that roach had come in a week ago the guard would have had competition in killing it. You wouldn't pass up the chance to eat radroach then and you're definitely still hungry enough to do it now.
However, you do worry about getting bit. Those things have awfully big pincers, and could probably tear off a good chunk of your hand if it got too close.
"Well, what'll it be? Come on, man, you're holding up the line." The man impatiently taps his foot as you realize you've been absently staring into the bins of food in front of you.
The people behind you look like they're getting pretty mad at you as well.
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 11, 2016 1:05:40 GMT
>Accept the task.
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Post by everything is okay on Oct 11, 2016 1:06:40 GMT
>Do it, you fallout boy
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 11, 2016 1:49:39 GMT
>Just enter and squish those bugs.
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 11, 2016 3:07:56 GMT
>Just enter and squish those bugs. Right. You're overthinking this.
You lift open the back of the trailer and the roaches turn to face you. Each radroach is about a foot and a half long. They don't scatter in the light like most bugs would, they just stop what they're doing and stare at you.
Then, out of nowhere, one of them lunges at your face. You lift your crowbar up by reflex, and it barely saves you from the roach gnawing your face off, knocking it back into the trailer. You're proud of that totally Grognak-like move, but you don't have time to relish in it. Another one leaps at you and latches on to your right arm, wriggling about and pulling you down to the right. You fall to the ground, landing on the bug, and you hear a crack as you break its carapace with your weight. As you spring up and stomp on it, finishing it off, three others crawl out of the trailer. One of them crawls under the trailer while the other two start coming at you.
Your wrist is really hurting from that bite. You hope it's not infected.
You bring your crowbar down on one of the radroaches that are coming at you, but the other one jumps and bites your leg. Screaming out in agony, you try to shake off the roach to no avail. It bites deeper into your leg. Eventually, you resort to trying to beat it off with your crowbar, and you manage to do it, but you hit your leg several times by accident. Once it's on the ground, you kill it with a few good swings.
Now there's just one left. Thank god this is almost over. You briefly contemplate running away and tending to your injuries, task be damned, but you need the food, and you're not sure you could take the humiliation. Wait. You count three roaches on the ground, and adding the one under the truck makes four. Then, you remember the one still in the trailer. Did you kill it or just knock it back?
You cautiously limp up to the trailer. The roach you knocked away earlier crawls out from behind a box, one of it's wings crooked. It dawns on you how close it is to the edge opening of the trailer and you seize your opportunity before it can leap at you. You bring down the door to the trailer and slam it on the radroach, splitting it clean in half.
You look under the trailer and are immediately attacked. The final radroach bites at your injured arm, only to miss and tear the sleeve up to your elbow.
You kick at it, and it starts chewing your shoe, but you start kicking it against the side of the trailer and it lets go. You switch the crowbar to your left arm (it's getting hard to hold things with your right) and beat the last roach until it stops moving.
The adrenaline starts wearing off and the pain starts really kicking in. You have blood all over you, and it's difficult to tell how much is from the radroaches and how much is from your oozing leg and wrist.
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 11, 2016 3:15:51 GMT
>This calls for a victory meal
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 11, 2016 13:13:52 GMT
>This calls for a victory meal Yeah, that sounds pretty good right now. You gather up the radroach corpses and carry them back into the tent, limping all the way. You have to push past the crowd to get to the front. As you lay the radroaches down on the table in front of the vendor, you start to feel dizzy.
"Good job, vault-guy. Here's a kebab." Says the greasy vendor. "Say, you don't look so good. Maybe you should sit down a sec." "What's a kebab?" you mumble before he hands you a stick with bits of meat skewered on it.
You sit down on a wooden crate a few yards away from the table, biting off the chunks of meat. You've never had real meat before, and if you weren't so hungry, you'd feel much weirder about eating another animal. You're also not sure what animal this is from, and you don't even care. Wow. There's blood like, all over you. It just keeps coming out of your wrist and leg. Maybe you should see a doctor. Nah, you think. Food first. You're about halfway through the kebab when you pass out.
You wake up on a cot in an unfamiliar tent. Looking around you, you see that you're at the end of a row of a dozen or so people on cots. You spot bandages on your arm and leg. Well, that's good. I figured I'd have to pay for that too, you think. Wait, why didn't I have to pay for that? The doctor steps into view from behind a curtain. "How's my favorite patient?" he says, grinning through a dark, bushy beard. "It's not every day you get to work on a vault dweller."
"Uh, ok I guess. Where's my kebab?" "Don't know. Someone must have taken it while you were passed out." He belches. "Well, down to brass tacks. I usually charge someone for fixing them up, but I figured you could give me something else in return," he says, looking down at the pip-boy on your wrist.
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 11, 2016 23:23:01 GMT
>Oh nooo. Okay, you GUESS just this one time... You begin to unzip your jumpsuit.
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NothingIsOkay75
Planet Healer
Homestuck 2? More like Homestuck POO amirite? Please bring back this forum
Posts: 324
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by NothingIsOkay75 on Oct 11, 2016 23:42:13 GMT
Shark oh my god
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 12, 2016 0:10:47 GMT
>Oh nooo. Okay, you GUESS just this one time... You begin to unzip your jumpsuit. You gulp and look him straight in the eyes. "I'm very grateful for you saving my life, I really am, but I'd be willing to do literally anything other than give up my Pip-Boy." He seems disappointed. "Sorry, you're not my type." You're simultaneously perturbed that he took what you said that way and relieved at his reaction. Instead of clarifying what you meant, you change the subject. "Why do you want a Pip-Boy anyway?" "Are you kidding? With that thing, I would just be able to point it at people and know if they had a broken arm," he says. You didn't know this. You've never tested out the Pip-Boy's medical functions and are a little embarrassed that someone who's never owned a Pip-Boy knows more about it than you do. "Oh, yeah. I do that all the time." "You break your arm all the time?" "N-no, I mean I use the Pip-Boy to check..." You clear you're throat. "You know what? It's been awksome- I mean... awesome, but I should get going."
You dash out of the doctor's tent before anyone can stop you.
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 12, 2016 1:00:38 GMT
>Check the map on your Pip-Boy
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 12, 2016 1:28:19 GMT
>Check the map on your Pip-Boy You figure now would be a good time to get your bearings._ _ Well, this sort of helps. It's weirdly off-center though. You guess the marker next to Amberton is your vault.
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 12, 2016 1:38:29 GMT
>Head southwest
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 12, 2016 2:11:21 GMT
You pull up your local map to find the best path to head southwest.
Huh. The town felt a bit bigger than this.
You note that it's night time. There's still WAY too many people out and about, and none of them seem to be up to any good, but you no longer have to strain your eyes to look around, so that's nice. You're still pretty hungry, but you don't like the people here, and maybe now would be a good time to leave.
You follow the path to the southwest when you hear a deep, roaring sound. The ground starts to shake, and men driving wagons with two-headed cow-like creatures leading them enter the town from all ends. They're wearing outfits that look like armor that Roman soldiers would wear. They block off the main exits and start controlling the crowds in the streets.
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 12, 2016 2:34:52 GMT
>Against every basic instinct in your body, go towards the roaring for further exploration
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 13, 2016 3:29:47 GMT
>Against every basic instinct in your body, go towards the roaring for further exploration You suspect that the roaring sound was coming from the stamping hooves of the cow-things and the shouts of the soldiers. You don't really feel like approaching either of them. Still keen on getting out of here, however, you start looking for possible exits, but there aren't many left that aren't blocked by soldiers.
One soldier with a sideways plume on his helmet stands up on one of the wagons and fires a few rounds from a pistol, calling for order, or at least attention. "Citizens of Amberton: You have become your own plague! Fear not; Caesar's Legion is here to cure you. The first thing that your founders built... was a whorehouse! They built it in the husk of a building that was once used for people to better themselves. It still bares the name 'Recreation Center,' with its meaning now perverted. This whole town has sprung from hedonism, and hedonism bears ugly fruit. There are too many of you for the little progress you've made. You screw in the alleys. You defecate in the streets. You steal, you drink, and you birth bastard after bastard. Caesar has sent us here to bring virtue to this town and end it's squalor. The first step to this will be to relieve you of your children. They will be taken to our camps and trained to serve our army. They will learn honor and glory. Any mothers who try to hide their children from us will be put to death, along with their children. The same goes for all citizens who should try to leave the town. Bring us your children, return to your homes, and await further orders from the legion!"
Yeah, definitely time to go. You spot an alley to the south that seems unguarded and hobble over. Apparently, the stimpaks that the doctor gave you still need some time to heal you. That is, if he gave you any stimpaks. The alley's clear. Now you just have to make it to the other side... A woman jumps out from behind a trash can. You almost shove her out of the way and make a break for it, but you see that she's holding a baby. Oh no, you think. Please, don't.
"Sir, please, take my little girl," she pleads. "Ma'am, I-" "Don't let her stay here; I know all about the Legion," she says. "Girl's don't become soldiers, they become slaves." "Well, that's-" "Everyone can tell you're not from around here, and there's a good chance that they'll let you leave, but they'll shoot me down as soon as they see me," she says, making you take her baby in your arms. "Here, take my bag," she says, making you take her bag. "Stow her away in there until you're out of the city. Take her to my sister, Maggie, in Broken Heart. I have to go back now. They have my little boy already, and he'll tell them about his sister. If I'm here, they might think I've hidden her somewhere. That'll buy you some time. Goodbye Sasha. I love you."
She runs off. Great. You assume she was talking to her daughter with that last bit; your name isn't Sasha. Actually, nobody's asked you your name since you got here. You hate this town. Putting the surprisingly sound-sleeping Sasha in the backpack to hide her and putting it on, you get the hell out of Dodge.
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NothingIsOkay75
Planet Healer
Homestuck 2? More like Homestuck POO amirite? Please bring back this forum
Posts: 324
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by NothingIsOkay75 on Oct 13, 2016 3:43:59 GMT
>Take a look at the kid >Look on your pip-boy for "Broken heart"
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 13, 2016 3:44:49 GMT
>Steal the name "Sasha" for yourself
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 13, 2016 4:06:26 GMT
>Take a look at the kid >Look on your pip-boy for "Broken heart" Once you're a safe distance away from the town, you hide behind a rock and check on the kid, unzipping the bag. Yep, not dead, just asleep. You see the gentle heaving of her chest. Now, where's Broken Heart? You check your Pip-Boy, and it seems to have guessed that she was talking about a place called "Heartland Hospital."
It marked the location and the new name. This seems like quite a stretch, even for the Pip-Boy, but it's the best lead you have right now.
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Finalius
Nipper Cadet
Posts: 72
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Finalius on Oct 13, 2016 4:08:13 GMT
>Steal the name "Sasha" for yourself You do like the idea of dawning a wasteland name, but you think that having the same name as the baby could get confusing in the future.
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Post by Sharkalien on Oct 13, 2016 4:17:02 GMT
>Check inventory
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