Out of the Vault Into a Golden Morning (Worm/Fallout Tinker commission) 1 (Patreon)

I idly tapped a rhythm on the armrest of my chair, staring at the screen in front of me. It had taken nearly two years of buildup and preparation before I felt ready, before I thought I’d done all that I could to secure and ready myself for the world outside. Two years of smelting, designing, welding, building up everything from scratch. Only to discover that I’d missed it.

The end of the world happened, and I was too busy being shoulder deep in robot guts to notice. People used to tell me that I’d be late to my own funeral, but I never thought I’d be late to the apocalypse.

With a sigh, I stood up from my chair, picking up my helmet and securing it in place, “Alfred, crack her open, I’m going to go for a walk.”

“Are you certain, Sir?” the robot butler with a posh british accent asked. “You have not stepped outside since activating me.”

I gestured to the monitors, “Zion’s dead, the event that had me freaking out for two years is over. I need to clear my head, figure out what I’m going to do now. What do you do when you learn that everything you’ve dedicated yourself towards has been for nothing?”

“Very well, Sir,” Alfred said, making his way to the gear shaped entrance to the vault and beginning the procedure to open it.

I swallowed nervously inside my T-60 power armor. Two years ago, I’d woken up alone on the top floor of the vault, and from the radio broadcasts that the computers inside the vault picked up, it became apparent that I was in Worm. I’d never read the story proper, only a shit ton of fanfics, but I knew enough to know that too soon, Zion would go insane and start killing everyone.

That, combined with the fact that I somehow just… knew how to make basically everything from the Fallout franchise, made my immediate plan obvious: start preparing for the day that the big gold plated idiot went coo coo for cocoa puffs. I didn’t anticipate my tech would do much, the power level of Fallout wasn’t high enough, but I had to do something. Instead, I was so focused on getting ready that I missed the big event.

As the door to the vault finally opened, I pushed those thoughts aside and stepped out. Walking outside for the first time in literal years. The visor of my helmet automatically adjusted for the difference in light levels, as I took in my surroundings. A forest, it was night, and the moon was out. Checking my HUD, and seeing that the air was rad-free, I reached up and took my helmet off, closing my eyes as I breathed in the fresh air.

Turning around, I looked over the hill that the entrance to the vault was built into. It looked like a basic, easily dismissed hill, without anything fancy or distinguishable about it. Letting out a quiet sigh, I turned my attention to Alfred.

“Close the vault, I’ll be back after I’ve done a bit of exploring,” I told him as I backed away to head into the woods.

“Of course, Sir,” he answered, shortly before the interior door shut and hinged doors closed over it, making it near impossible to notice that the hill was anything but that. Huh.

Shrugging, I turned around and started making my way into the woods. I’d walk around for a while, get a sense for the surroundings and then… figure out where I’d go from there. I didn’t have an overarching goal anymore, so maybe I’d see about expanding on what I could do with the tech I’d already made. The technology at my disposal was amazing, and I had to admit, I was pretty curious as to what lengths I could push the envelope. Well, it was the beginning of a plan.

[hr][/hr]

“Sir, can you hear me?” Alfred’s voice asked through my Pip-Boy a few hours later.

Holding my left arm up in front of me, I pressed a button and said, “Loud and clear, Alfred. Is something wrong?”

“Potentially, Sir,” he answered, a feed of one of the security cameras appearing on the screen. Two people sitting on the hill hiding the vault entrance, one was a woman in a white dress shirt and suit pants, folding a suit jacket and placing it on her leg as she sat down on a rock.

The other individual looked to be completely unconscious, with brown, slightly curly hair and hips that made it painfully obvious that they were of the feminine persuasion. What can I say? I’m a hips and ass man. I considered the situation for a few moments, before nodding and giving Alfred his orders.

“Knock them out and have them brought inside, have the Auto-Docs take a look at them and fix up anything that’s beyond the ordinary,” I told him.

“Very well, Sir,” was the immediate response. I watched the screen on my Pip-Boy as two tesla coil looking structures (there was a proper name, but I’d never been able to pronounce it) rose up out of the dirt on the north and south sides of the hill. The woman who was awake stood up, her lower jaw and lips moving.

The feed didn’t have audio, but the cutout in reality that formed behind her as she threw herself back through it made it pretty easy for me to guess. The cutout closed, as shimmering waves began rolling off the tesla coil structures. Turning around, I started making my way back to the vault, closing down the security feed as a trio of medical drones floated out of the now opened vault and grabbed my guest.

Something about the woman who’d fled tickled at my brain, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was just a side effect of being too distracted over the last two years and forgetting her character. Either way, I had a guest that could use some medical treatment and probably some implants to keep her brain parasite from affecting her thoughts any more than it already had. Thankfully whatever had downloaded the Fallout tech into my brain hadn't put a Shard in me, so I didn't have to worry about it.

[hr][/hr]

“So what’s the verdict?” I asked as I entered the room where my guest was resting after her inspection and surgery.

“One of ze subject’s arms is missing. Her armor included a flight-capable harness along wiz some ozer features, it has been sent to ze laboratory for you to study,” Oppy, the closest thing in the vault to a proper doctor, said, it’s programmed German accent light enough to be noticeable while being easily comprehensible. “Additionally, ze subject’s brain contained an anomalous structure that was in ze process of subsuming ze rest of ze brain. I took ze liberty of applying ze Lobotomite procedure to ze subject so zat additional surgery and implant installation may be done.”

I stared down at the girl on the medical bed. If I was right, and it was who I thought it was, she was going to be pissed that Oppy had completely shaved her head prior to conducting the brain surgery.

“Anything else?” I asked, half rhetorically.

“Just ze standard organ replacement, augmentive implants, and ze like. You will be happy to hear zat ze frauline’s reproductive organs have been augmented wiz ze Arktos OvaShield Model XX!” Oppy proudly declared.

It took a lot more effort to resist facepalming than it had any right to. I’d honestly forgotten about that implant, probably because I’m a guy. It was an implant that served as both birth control and period blocker, by preventing the ovaries from releasing eggs unless given a signal by a connected control device. I knew why Obby said I’d be happy to hear it: I was a lonely guy with a lot of time on my hands, I’d gotten well acquainted with Rosie Palm.

“Whatever, just keep her under until you’re at a point where you can put her brain back in her skull,” I told him, before turning and leaving the medical clinic.

“Of course! Now, my little gehirn, let’s remove zis parasite feeding off you!”

I picked up the pace more than a little. Obby freaked me out when he got in Mad Doctor Mode. Fifteen minutes later, I was in my lab examining the armor that had been removed from my guest. The majority of the armor was straightforward enough, a bodysuit made from spider silk, while the majority of the armor was fairly uninteresting. Not to say that it was bad, it was just that the armor I produced could do the same, if not better.

No, what I was really interested in was the flight harness. When triggered, it would release a series of field generators that resembled dragonfly wings, repelling gravity and allowing for directed flight. There was also a set of thrusters underneath to aid in steering, which were clearly powered by a battery pack. I spent a few minutes examining the battery pack, before concluding that my own were a lot better. But, from a closer examination of the wiring on the rest of the harness, I found a number of ways that I could improve energy efficiency in my tech.

I’d have to find the one who designed it and thank them, just looking over the harness would augment my weaponry by nearly three hundred percent.

Shaking my head, I leaned back in my chair and considered. The harness was a distraction, I needed to figure out my plan going forward. The apocalypse was over, governments had certainly collapsed…

“Alfred,” I called out, knowing that the vault’s systems would pick up my voice and connect it to the butler bot, “was the vault able to identify anything when the fancy dressed woman escaped?”

“Unfortunately not sir,” Alfred’s voice crackled over the speakers. “Sensors could not identify the means by which she escaped.”

I let out a frustrated breath through my nose. Annoying, but not unexpected. Still, I had an idea for how I’d proceed from here on out. I was unique among Tinkers in that my tech wasn’t black boxed, it could be duplicated and mass produced. I was uniquely positioned to lift up humanity after the apocalypse that had just happened.

Chuckling, I left the lab and made my way to the communication center. If I was going to play king builder, I needed subjects.

[hr][/hr]

The next two weeks were some of the most fun I'd ever had in my life. Sure, the first week was mostly me sitting around trying to come up with a master plan to save the world (there was no such plan) and scanning the ham frequencies to find potential subjects, but the second week was pure fun.

There were several hundred refugee camps a few hundred miles away from the vault, and by listening in on radio broadcasts I was able to pick up enough to piece together where I was. I really should have paid closer attention to the initial broadcasts I’d eavesdropped on when I first woke up here, I’d heard the name Brockton Bay and assumed that I was on Earth Bet. I wasn’t, I was on Earth Gimmel.

Silver lining: there was already a sizable population that had spent the last two years laying the groundwork for infrastructure. It helped distract from an annoying surprise I’d gotten when Obby reported that my guest had woken up.

“Obby,” I half groaned half growled as the large, brown eyes of Taylor Hebert stared up at me, shining with adoration and submission. “At what point did I tell you to make her into a submissive maid?”

Because that’s exactly what the medical robot had done, apparently neural sciences in Fallout were a fuckton more advanced than I’d been anticipating. Yes, I know lobotomites were a thing, but there’s a huge difference between remote piloting a cybernetically augmented body and precisely altering a brain to turn someone into an individual completely unlike they were prior!

“I was merely anticipating your desires, Sir! You watched the recordings of French maids with enough frequency that I thought it obvious that you desired one,” Obby defended himself.

“It is alright, Sir,” Taylor said from where she stood in a cliche French maid costume. Where the hell did she even get that? I’d been through everything in the… right, the Sierra Madre vending machines. Because how else would she get one? “I am at your service. In all things.”

…I hated the fact that she knew (probably because of Obby) just how to say it in a way that went straight to my dick. Oh what the hell, I was going to make myself a king anyway, might as well enjoy the benefits.