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Game Girl · (11-13-2024)

VAULT-TEC CALLING - PART ONE

The sun hangs low in the sky, casting shades of red and orange over the cracked earth. A twin-headed gecko crawls into view, both heads bobbing as it eyes dart around. As the creature edges closer to a stray beetle it’s spooked and scurries away heavy doors creak open echoing through the desolate plains. As the vault door rolls open accompanied by an alarm blaring, dust tumbling as it scrapes along the face of the crag. Game Girl steps out, the sun bouncing off her metallic body, the face on the screen where a head should be looking around at the vast emptiness. Her brow furrows as she steps out onto the rough dirt, her boot imprinting the first footstep outside the vault in years.

GG takes another step and looks behind her at the long tunnel; she spots Robbie behind the glass of the security booth who gives a slow and whirring wave goodbye. A smile comes to her face and she tentatively lifts a few fingers towards her comrade as the door rumbles and slowly shifts back into place closing her off.

With a sigh, she pushes her arms by her side with curled fists and marches forward. Kicking up dust behind her she looks around at her surroundings.

“It’s so…Empty.”

She slowly comes to a stop and takes in the loneliness. The vastness, the far mountains and hills. The endless sea of rust-colored earth. Cupping her hands in front of her screen she shouts with max volume.

“ECHO!!!”

ECHO!!! Echo!! Echo!

:O

“So cool!”

With a smile she continues walking with a little more pep in her step.

Less than an hour passes before she sees it… Stopping at a slope she overlooks a town.

“Oh my…”

Or… What was a town. Smoke bellows from the center of the settlement as homes have been torched and demolished. The dirt paths intersecting between makeshift market stalls littered with spent casings and fallen bodies. GG’s eyes take it all in, darting around to each detail. The bullet holes in the ramshackled homes, the blood painting the town, the bodies scattered like they were thrown asi- She shuts her eyes.

Deeply and tightly she closes them.

A choke noise comes from her as she rallies herself and looks back up with hesitation. Her eyes falling on the royal blue and gold jumpsuit wrapped around a corpse, the number 98 sadly stitched on their back.

“Who would do something like this?”

She says with a mournful rasp. She shakes her head and begins to head down the slope, her heels digging into the soft dirt as she surfs down and hops down onto ground. The houses built haphazardly of corroded metal surround her, looming over her small frame as she steps forward aiming for the center of town with mouse-like footsteps.

Her sights on the body in the Vault-Tec jumpsuit, she edges closer and closer. Kneeling at the corpse she reaches out a hand before drawing it back sharply. A second attempt and her hand places on the man’s cold, firm shoulder and GG pushes him onto his back. A deep, sad sigh leaves her.

“Theodore.”

She places a hand on his and squeezes gently before closing his eyes.

“I’m sorry this happened to you. I wish I could have protected you… But… You wanted to leave the vault. I was told this would happen…”

Game Girl presses her screen against Theodore’s forehead as she clasps his hand with both of hers. After a moment she kneels back up and looks ahead to the black smoke piling into the air. She steps up and continues onward reaching a small concrete building, the heavy metal door busted off its hinges. Making her way inside she sees broken equipment still sparking, the console at the wall billowing the clouds of darkness into the orange sky. As she goes toward it, wafting a hand to clear the smoke her eyes widen seeing the empty cylindrical opening where a reactor core should be. Her head spins around the room.

“How did they get all this?”

Investigating the ruined hovel she follows large black power cords trailing outside and digging into the soil, GG’s eyes trace the direction of the cords back to Vault 98.

“... They were diverting power from the vault?”

Looking behind her at the town and back to the valleys ahead of her she reaches a conclusion.

“Someone must have stolen the core, ripped it out. And that tripped the vault's power causing our core to burn out… But who would do this?”

Game Girl ponders this as she makes her way down the street, her eyes avoiding the bodies as she makes her way to the sound of an idling generator attached to a hovel marked “Sheriff’s Office” with a handmade sign. The door creaks open and the fan attached to the light on the ceiling spins lazily cooling the empty office with the empty cell. Her eyes move to a terminal at a desk and she walks around to it. With a tap on the keyboard, the green-hued monitor flashes to an “ENTER PASSCODE”. Game Girl taps away with speed and bypasses the security getting text files and reports that brim to life with clicks and clacks. A short laugh comes from her with a slight smile.

“They made Redd the sheriff? I knew he could make something of himself, he did so well in his aptitude test!”

Game Girl clicks and reads each report one after the other taking only a second to scan each one as she moves on. A smile grows on her face reading how so many of her residents moved here, helped build it up, make it something. She giggles reading the exploits of the townspeople, Redd’s descriptions of every day, calm and happy life. Until.

Some odd-looking folk came into Goodacre today, call themselves Tunnel Snakes! Seems like some kinda gang, I’ll keep an eye on em.

The rest of the report is filled with day to day activities. Game Girl hits next.

Seems the Tunnel Snakes are sticking around, said they looking for a vault. We all know the drill, every one of us shrugged and said there ain’t no vault near here, told ‘em to move on an’ try their luck at Springwater. Their leader, Sebastian, pulled out a switchblade. He won’t do nothin’ no spine. I gave him a warnin’ and went on with my day.

The rest of the entry is filled with how Redd tried to find a lost dog. GG taps next again but nothing. Her eyes look up at the date in the top corner of the last report.

“Only been a couple days, I can track whoever stole the core and hurt these people. Redd thinks the Tunnel Snakes were nothing but punks but they’re my only lead right now.”

Her fingertips tap along the wood in rhythm as she processes for a few moments.

“I need to find footprints or some evidence of where they went.”

Pushing herself up she marches out the office and looks around at the dirt outside, it’s a mess of torn up earth. The fight was too large-scale and scattered to make heads and tails of; with a whir she looks to her right and down the long path towards a fallen water tower. GG’s eyes widen in horror as she sees Redd’s corpse impaled on a piece of rebar jutting out of the metal.

Above his body, hastily painted are the words.

“Tunnel Snakes Rule!”

Game Girl is motionless for a moment. Her eyes stuck on the body as she collapses to her knees.

Her screen falls down to the dirt beneath her, her eyes stuck open before the screen glitches into a face of anger for a split-second then goes back to horrified.

She takes a minute.

“Overseer’s log. Day 1 outside of Vault 98.”

“Tunnel Snakes.”

“Silly name if you ask me! And my creators named me G.A.M.E G.I.R.L so I’m an expert on ridiculous sounding names! But there’s nothing funny about these serpents.”

Game Girl’s eyes twitch, her forced smile and cheery demeanor cracking as her words buzz with an unnatural static.

“They grabbed hope and stuck a dagger in it. This-” She looks around at the bombarded walls around her. “Town! This place my people helped build. Broken, destroyed by nomads! Outsiders! Led by some, preppy, insecure child with an ego.”

The scene flickers all around Game Girl, her surroundings go dark as she looks through the screen back to you. Hey large round eyes fixating on a point between the planes.

“Sebastian Everett-Bryce. What can be said that hasn’t been said a million times? I’m sure you’re tired of contenders lining up thinking they’re gonna be the one and failing every time using the same recycled lines. I could talk for eons about how a man-child screaming he’s the best in the business exudes such self-doubt, how he seeks approval like a toddler. Treating the industry like a scorned father as he bounces around earning accolades to make someone who doesn’t care proud.”

“A smug, little boy coming into a business and beating the best only to disperse and reappear like a phantom in another. Over and over and over until repetition and recycling is the only thing Sebastian has going for him now. I can be like everyone else, I can say you don’t belong here. That you’re distant as a champion, you don’t care, that you only want the fame and not the respect of your peers. That you, your teammate Lucy Wylde and so many others refuse to even use the tools in front of you to create a whacky promo where you play pirate or have a jolly romp through a land Erik Holland knows all too well.”

“Meanwhile, I’m ingrained here.”

“It’s in my code.”

“I’m one of the last bastions even though I come and go in many different forms. I am this place and you have salted it with your existence.”

“I can be like everyone else, I can make nothing remarks about how you’re British but say cell phone for some reason instead of-” She wobbles her head beginning a bad British impression.” ”Mobile phone” A brief smirk enters her face as a sharp sigh of laughter exits it. “I can go on about how you’re criminally overrated and that you only win so many times because of a certain friend even though that makes zero sense because he doesn’t enter your matches.”

“I can do all this basic stuff you expect me to do, you expect it and because it’s become so tiring to you you’ve let your guard down again and again until it comes to the point where you are here.”

“Looking at me.”

“A dormant white blood cell in the body of the XWF attacking a virus.”

“And although right now you see me, a solemn simulacrum, believe me I’ll have an army alongside me, and you’re in a war you can’t win. Lucy Wylde was a smart choice, grabbing a teammate you know is clever that’s why I chose Dolly. Dolly beat me more than anyone else here, she put me through my paces like she did with you, in a match she should have won. A match she deserved to win!”

“I have someone alongside me that I know can fight like she’s got hellfire in her belly and can beat you to a pulp, Sebastian, you have Lucy Wylde whose attention is split looking at Aurora from across the way. A person you picked first to form a two person team within a squad.”

“How are you going to hold onto Enigma? A man built like a fridge made out of flesh with the mind of a casual r/Atheism enjoyer? How are you going to stop Adam Garcia from blowing your chances of winning like he squandered his shot for glory in this company when he lost to the mediocre Matthias Syn?”

“You and Lucy going to hold hands and pray that the power of friendship is going to sail you onward to victory? While I have Dolly Waters reignited beside me? Atara Raven, the Goddess, the person who caused more major upsets than Buster Douglas? Erik Holland who can make that little trauma dump you showed everyone on Savage into a real nightmare?”

“What can I say that hasn’t been said a million times, Sebastian?”

“We are that one in a million and you started a war you’re not going to win.”

The air crackles into static as we go back to the world before. Darkness retreating, the moon baking Game Girl as it pierces through a hole in the roof. She shudders, involuntarily, an alien feeling to her and her new body. Her next words come shakily as she scrapes away the dirt on her heel.

“I am coming for you Tunnel Snakes… I will find your nest and take back what was stolen. I will end you like you did to MY people!”

A look of concern drops onto her face.

“... End of overseer’s log.”

Game Girl stays still, a memory repeats in her head of when she was early in development.

“Game Girl, can you hear me.”

Guy says through the view of a hazy monitor drenched in fluorescent lighting. Tapping a black pen against his notepad. Words appear on the screen letter by letter mirrored to us.

H0WDY CAMPER!.

A wide, toothy smile appears on his face with a giddy laugh.

“Great! Your personality seems to be set, Game Girl, now before we start any tests. We need you to recite your primary directives.”

I’D L0VE TO0! PR1ME DIR3CTIVE ONE! EN5URE TH3 PROT3CTION 0F ALL VAUL7-TEC PERS0NNEL AND PROP3RTY!

TWO. EN5URE VAULT-TEC G0AL5 ARE MET ACC0RDINGLY!

THR3E. DO N0T HARM HUMAN LIFE UN7ESS 1T IS TO PROTECT VAULT-TEC PERSONNEL.

Guy nods with a smile.

“Very good, Game Girl, very good.”

Guy’s compliments echo out as Game Girl stares at the ground before picking her head up and looking at the night sky.

“They stole the reactor core, they’re bleeding my vault, they’re harming my residents. These parameters are satisfactory.”

She stands with determination.

“I’m gonna kill them all.”

Stomping out of town, leaving the husk of Goodacre, Game Girl spots a small campfire just on the outskirts. A figure posted up in deep thought; GG leans in and squints staring until she giggles with a smirk. She confidently strides over as the figure looks up.

“Howdy camper! :D”

She throws out a hand for a shake but is met with a pistol directed towards her face.

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