Fallout 1. Prologue

The only girl in the class sat quietly at her self-assigned metal desk, listening as the African American instructor at the front of the room rattled off the final, superfluous question to the class. Whatever Mr. Brotch was saying went in one ear and out the other. The girl, known to the class as Dragon, was more than aware that the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test was a load of shit and so she only half-assedly listened to the paragraph-long questions before scribbling down some falsified answer. She could hear the others around her setting their futures in stone as well, the sound of pencils slamming down on the heavy desktops signaling that the exam had, indeed, finally reached its end.

Mr. Brotch turned off the projector in the front of the classroom that had worked to provide visual aids for the most unusual interrogation; no one who had walked in the room only a half hour before had been expecting to see images such as an old woman bearing a gun and a person with a third arm growing out of his gut. Dragon turned her head just enough to catch a look of confusion on a few of her classmates' faces equal to her own. They didn't seem to be understanding the purpose of such a test any better than she was.

The tests were collected and the teacher moved to one of the front corners of the room so that he could make another friendly announcement to the class about his ability to change the results on any of their tests. Dragon began to silently question the validity of life in Vault 117, especially if this was going to be how they handed out lifetime careers to a bunch of sixteen-year-olds.

Life in the vault had never been too bad; everyone had a home and everyone had a family. Of course, everyone was confined specifically to the underground structure composed of little more than small rooms and expansive hallways, but at least there wasn't too much to worry about. After all, they had a seemingly never-ending supply of food and a fresh water supply, and that was a lot more than anyone could say about what was left of the above-ground nuclear wasteland that was a combination of post-apocalyptic Maryland and Virginia.

Prior to the nuclear war that destroyed most of America, several underground vaults were built and a few lucky citizens were given the opportunity to make them their homes. Since then, two generations had passed and humans were still dwelling in at least one of these vaults. This was Dragon's case, and this was the case for all of her classmates as well. Their grandparents had been some of the first to take refuge in the vaults and since the vaults had been sealed off prior to the war, Dragon and her classmates could barely even grasp the concept of what 'outside' really was. They would tell stories about it and, though the stories were almost always the creations of their own imaginations, they would dream about the great outdoors. What their grandparents failed to tell their parents was that outside no longer existed after the bombs had been dropped, and so the message never quite made it to Dragon's generation. As far as she was concerned, the area outside the vault entrance was lined with fruit orchards and packed solid with cute, little, furry animals.

However, facts are facts and the fact was none of them knew what was waiting behind that heavily guarded iron door that led out of Vault 117. Dragon desired knowledge of the outside world, but such a gift was always denied and she was verbally chastised by the adults for reasons she didn't understand whenever she asked questions their lives in the vault. Now that she had reached sixteen, the age in which fellow vault dwellers finally begin treating you like an adult, she had just about fully given up on her pursuit of a less familiar vault education. She wasn't going to keep asking questions if she wasn't going to get any answers. She was too naïve.

Dragon allowed her gaze to follow Mr. Brotch as he made his way over to his desk. In his hand were the crumpled up tests that he had collected moments before. The bottom paper was her own test and everyone could tell since the originally plain back of it bore a work of art she had been drawing in between questions. _Great_. That meant her test was going to be looked at last, and that meant she was going to be stuck sitting in the classroom the longest.

"Alright, let's see who's up first… Mr. Rovito." A head shot up in the front of the room. It belonged to Ronnie Rovito, the first of Dragon's seven other classmates and, like each of the others, a good friend she had grown up with. "Mr. Rovito, please come up to my desk. That goes for all of you. When I call your name, meet me up front here…" Mr. Brotch trailed off.

Ronnie stood up from his desk and slowly made his way to where the teacher waited. Just about every set of eyes in the room watched him; everyone was curious to know each others' verdicts. Dragon was the only person in the room that let her gaze wander. It fell on each of her classmates and she silently laughed to herself, thinking about how they all looked like zombies staring blankly at the front of the room. In a way, it was sort of true. No one noticed the girl's eyes on them; they were too oblivious for the moment being.

Dragon continued to look around, allowing the thought of zombies to pass from her mind and seeing her friends for who they really were. They were the third generation of vault dwellers in Vault 117, and they were all the best of acquaintances. They were all roughly the same age, ranging anywhere from fifteen-about-to-turn sixteen and sixteen-about-to-turn seventeen. That made sense, as it was one of the vault's many rules that teenagers weren't allowed to take the GOAT until they were sixteen years of age. Laziness was what convinced Mr. Brotch to only give the test once so rather than each of them taking it right after they turned sixteen, they took it as a class when they all fell into the general age group of 'sixteenish.'

All being a similar age, the group got along well as a whole. Of course, like all teenagers, that had certain preferences towards some people and bones to pick with others but overall, they made a great team. From a young age they prowled the halls of the vault, playing hide and seek amongst the various rooms and daring each other to sneak into those rooms that were forbidden. The adults often had trouble keeping an eye on all kids at all times, so they would even take turns sneaking away from the group to go steal an extra snack from the vault's diner or sneak a peek of the overseer's office. Sometimes they were lucky and got away with it. For those that got caught, there was usually a lot of childish pointing and laughing in the days that followed.

Dragon recalled back to the year in which all eight of them had gotten to celebrate their tenth birthdays. It was a year to remember indeed, especially since each birthday party was usually followed by another only a month or so later. The year had been crazy between excessive cake consumption and usually failure efforts to scavenge up birthday gifts for each other. Dragon hadn't really been expecting anything for her own birthday from her friends, so she was especially astounded when they had presented her with a dead radroach they had found in one of the vault's lower levels. What really made that year the best, though, was that they all received their Pip-Boys. The Pip-Boy 3000 was a wrist-mounted supercomputer that everyone in the vault received on their tenth birthday and Dragon's generation was no different. She was the oldest of the group so she had received hers first but out of everyone currently present in the classroom, she probably liked the gadget the least. It was confusing to use and something seemed unethical about being able to read up on all of your vitals at any given moment.

Everyone else in the group seemed right at home with their wrist gadgets, Dragon did everything she could to avoid using it. She glanced at it now though, semi-thankful that it displayed the time in the top right corner. They had already been in that classroom for almost forty minutes and they were just starting to get to the good part.

Ronnie had been standing at Mr. Brotch's desk for a minute now, waiting to hear his results. The African American man took his time skimming over the paper with a clueless look on his face, as if trying to understand how the teen had ended up with his result. "Interesting.... Clinical Test Subject," he started. Ronnie paused for a moment and then his eyes grew big with realization. "...Sounds like something you should excel at. I guess you and our vault doctor will be working closely together."

Around the room, smiles began to spread across everyone's faces. So, that was to be Ronnie's fate. He was doomed to be the test subject of various drugs and scientific experiments. That is… if he didn't just ask for Mr. Brotch to change his result. "Uh… Mr. Brotch…" The teacher looked up from his desk to see his student standing over him with a petrified look on his face. "Could you change my result for me? Please?" The teacher stared at him in silence for a moment being glancing back down to his papers. "Perhaps I'll make you a hairdresser or a pedicurist or something." Ronnie's face didn't change. None of these options seemed to be quite what he was looking for. Mr. Brotch didn't appreciate how the student was staring at him so he raised his hand to point to the door. "As soon as you get your result, please leave my room. The end of this test signifies the end of this class." Ronnie's face shaped itself to show his upset and anger with the teacher, but there was nothing more he could do. Feeling somewhat defeated, he left the class to return to his room in the vault, talking to himself the entire way. "Why do I always get the dumbest results on everything!?!"

"Alright, next…" The class turned their attention from the disappearing test subject to Mr. Brotch. "May I have… let's see… Mr. Hayden?" Two of the guys in the room looked towards each other, then back to the teacher. "Ah. Jimmy, I mean." The older of the two boys stood up and made his way to the front of the room. This was Jimmy Hayden, possibly the tallest member of the vault's third generation. His father was a security officer in the vault and he had been hoping this test would get him into a similar line of work. After all, none of the other jobs in the vault seemed very entertaining. At least if he was a security officer, he'd get to carry around a gun.

"Jimmy… it says here you're perfectly suited for a career as a Waste Management Specialist. A specialist, mind you, not just a dabbler. Congratulations!" Jimmy's looked mirrored Ronnie's. He was stunned into silence, but this silence quickly turned into anger. "What!?! Waste management! WHAT!?! What kind of dumb test is this any way!?" Mr. Brotch cut him off before he could continue. "Sorry, but I'm not changing your result. It's not that bad of a job anyway. I promise." Anger continued to spread further over the teen's face. "AND WHY NOT?" "Because," the teacher started, "We currently don't have any waste management specialists. It's a brand new outcome of this test. Not to mention, I'm tired of emptying the trash cans in the classroom myself…" Jimmy made a few more angry remarks towards Mr. Brotch before taking the same path out of the room that Ronnie had.

Again, all heads turned to the front of the room as they waited to see who the next victim would be. "And I guess I'll look at Connor's test real quick…" Connor Hayden stood up from the desk behind Dragon and moved towards the front of the room. He was Jimmy's younger brother but he was hoping his result would leave him in better standings. He wasn't much of one for doing dirty work anyway. "Connor, Connor, Connor… They say the GOAT never lies. According to this, you're slated to be the next vault Chaplain." Connor tried to hold back his laughter but failed horribly. "Chaplain? So what, I'm supposed to go around the vault and talk about God all day?" Mr. Brotch nodded, glad to see at least one of his students didn't have it out for him. "Prettymuch. It's kind of like being a missionary only… without anyone to convert. You look like you'll fit the job description well though. Salvation should always be the result of assistance. You assist others on their way to religious glory, and you shall be rewarded. Or well… at least… that's what this paper here says." Connor started laughing at how ridiculous his job sounded. In Vault 117, no one cared much for religion. Therefore his job was going to be an easy one.

Connor left and Mr. Brotch picked up the next paper from the stack of tests. "And let us see whose next… Corey!" Corey De Leon hopped up from his desk, clearly the most excited person in the room to see what his result was. He was at the teacher's desk in a second, impatiently waiting for his answer. "Mr. De Leon…" Mr. Brotch started but was quickly interrupted. "What is it? WHAT IS IT?!" The teacher looked up from the paper to see Corey practically jumping around in front of him. "WHAT IS IT! I need to know now! This could be a matter of life and death!" Mr. Brotch, entertained by the student's enthusiasm, purposely spoke as slowly as he could to prolong Corey's pain of impatience. "Ah, Corey. I always thought you'd have a career in professional sports. You're the new vault Little League coach! Congratulations!"

Corey's eyes lit up with excitement at the announcement of his new title. "YES! A COMPLETELY USELESS JOB! I LOVE IT!" He turned to run out of the room, excited to tell his parents about his new title, when he stopped and turned so that he could address the class. "You guys can all be on my team! This is gonna be awesome! I'm gonna go tell my parents, and then I'm gonna find Ronnie and the Hayden brothers and tell them too!" The teen sprinted out of the room only seconds later. "God, help us all…" Dragon mumbled to herself, but the dark haired boy in front of her somehow managed to hear anyway. He turned around in his seat and spoke loud enough for the remaining people in the room to hear. "Hey, it's Connor's job to talk about God, not yours." A scowl spread itself across the girl's face, but Mr. Brotch spoke again before she had the chance to defend herself.

"Blake Bell, how about we see what duty the GOAT has assigned to you?" The dark haired boy stood up, leaving the desk in front of Dragon empty. He approached the instructor's desk and waited for his answer. He smiled slightly; after hearing all of the other ridiculous jobs assigned so far, he was excited to see what stupid assignment he had been left with. "Mr. Bell… it looks like the diner's going to get a new Fry Cook. I'll just say this once: hold the mustard, extra pickles. Ha ha ha." Blake's smile turned completely upside and his immediate response was and obnoxiously loud, "HUH?!?" Mr. Brotch grinned since this dark haired teen clearly couldn't. "That's right, you're a Fry Cook now. One day, you might even be chef material. Do me a favor and try to keep our food safe." Blake spoke as loudly as he could in an attempt to protect his own self dignity, "But only WOMEN should work in the kitchen! And I'm not a woman! Make Dragon do it! She's a girl!"

The other two boys in the classroom started laughing, as did Mr. Brotch. Dragon channeled her anger in a silent glare that she sent to all of them. "Sorry Blake. That's the not-fun job I'm leaving you with." Blake started yelling all sorts of remarks that no one in the room could fully understand. The older of the two remaining guys in the classroom stopped him as he was about to walk out. "Hey, Blake!" The teen stopped, fell silent, and looked towards the boy who called him. "Make me a sandwich?" He clearly mouthed the words 'Fuck you' before walking out of the room.

"Well, that leaves us with three," stated Mr. Brotch. Dragon looked over to the other two guys that were still in the classroom with her. They were the Trela brothers, the older one being named Jarek and the younger, Artur. The three of them sat impatiently as the teacher decided who the next victim would be.

"Ah, the first of the Trelas. Jarek, care to hear your result?" The older boy stood up, but not before commenting on how Mr. Brotch didn't need to tell him anything. He already had it in his head that this test was going to promote him to be the new overseer of the vault. He would be in charge of all…

As soon as Jarek reached the front desk, the teacher's face turned to one of uncertainty and confusion. Clearly he hadn't been expecting the older brother's outcome. "Huh. I wonder who will be brave enough to be your first customer as the vault's new Tattoo Artist. I promise it won't be me…" Jarek looked a bit confused as well, "Are you sure you're looking at the right test? I mean, it sounds to me like you may have accidently switched mine and Artur's results around or something." Behind him, Artur made a face to show his disapproval for his brother's smug comment. Mr. Brotch began to laugh at this remark but checked to make sure it was Jarek's name on the paper anyway, just for his sake. "I'm entirely certain this is your test, Mr. Trela, and the results tell me that you're the new Tattoo Artist…"

Jarek contemplated this for a moment and finally came to the conclusion that being a tattoo artist probably wouldn't be so bad. After all, he doubted any of his friends would want tattoos anyway and the adults certainly wouldn't be getting any, so that meant less work for him. "Alright, I guess I wouldn't mind that job too much. But really, I'm hoping none of the guys in here ask for a tattoo. Drawing on their arm would be fine, but anywhere else would make things… uncomforting…" He then glanced back to the other two in the room before singling Dragon out specifically. "Too bad Dragon is the only girl in this vault who isn't old and unpleasant to look at. If we had any hot girls down here, I'd give them tattoos whenever and wherever they'd want them…"

Dragon narrowed her gaze at him but kept her mouth shut. She'd grown used to all of her friends' random, sexist comments. There was no point in attempting to defend her own, clearly outnumbered gender in the third generation. She just accepted it as an obligation of being the only young girl in the vault.

As soon as he realized no one had anything to say in response to him, Jarek moved to the back of the classroom where the door to exit was. Unlike the others, he waited there instead of walking out and turned around so that he could watch the next person receive their career title.

"And that leads us to you, Artur. Perhaps you're outcome will prove to be a bit more… useful than your brother's." Artur stood up and made his way to the teacher's desk just like all the others had while Dragon made a hushed comment to herself about how none of their jobs seemed useful at all. She was taking a risk by assuming Artur's job would be equally as useless; she rolled her eyes from her self-sarcasm.

Mr. Brotch looked over the younger boy's paper one final time before speaking. "Huh. Vault Loyalty Inspector... I thought that had been phased out decades ago. Well, sounds like a job right up your alley, hmm?" The teacher was familiar with most of the teenagers' antics, including their habits of sneaking into places where they didn't belong. He knew that, at some point or another, they had probably all been inside the overseer's office and private quarters. After all, it's not like a bunch of kids living underground had anything better to do then to get into trouble, and the best way to do it was to pick the locks of private rooms and sneak on in.

Artur didn't have any problem with his job placement. After all, being a loyalty inspector meant he could go just about anywhere or do anything in the vault and use his new title as an excuse. He'd be allowed to go in and out of the overseer's office freely, as well as just about every other off-limits room, even if just to make sure everyone was doing their jobs.

The younger boy's face twisted into a grin as he chewed over his newly found freedom in his mind. Mr. Brotch was suddenly unsure of whether to be pleased that the teen liked his new position or worried about what might become of his independence. "Well, I'm… glad you're already enjoying your title but, if you don't mind, there's still one other person I need to talk to." Artur, not having spoken thus far, finally broke his streak of silence. "Of course."

He turned to walk away, leaving a perturbed Mr. Brotch in his wake. The simple, two-word response had sent a shiver down the older man's spine. He already had a bad feeling that there would never be such a thing as privacy again in the vault. That kid was going to get into everything he didn't belong in… and now he had a legitimate excuse for it.

Artur made it to the door where his brother waited before turning back to face the teacher and speaking. "And Mr. Brotch, one more thing…" The teacher sent him a nod of acknowledgment. "Are YOU doing your job?" He was unsure of how to answer him; he really hadn't been expecting such a question. "I believe I am. After all, isn't putting up with teenagers like you a large portion of my own job description?" Artur didn't respond, but rather sent him an awkward wink and disappeared into the halls with his brother.

Mr. Brotch was slightly taken aback by the student's actions, but he did his best to ignore it. He shook his head and picked up the last test that was sitting in front of him. "Ah, Miss…" A sudden, "No homo!" echoed into the room from the hall. The teacher recognized Artur's voice immediately, but the boy's interruptive comment did little to make his leaving wink any less unsettling. Shaking his head again, he started up once more. "Miss Moreland." He looked up from the paper and to the girl that was now approaching his desk. "So much for ladies first, right?" He started laughing but quickly silenced himself when he noticed Dragon wasn't finding the humor in his remark. "Anyway, let's see what the GOAT has in store for you, Ashley…"

The girl cocked her eyebrow when the teacher mentioned her actual first name. No one in the vault called her Ashley. Ever. That was just the way things were. When she was young, she had received the entirely random nickname Oyster Eating Dragon from her friends and since then, the name Dragon had just sort of stuck.

The teacher stared long and hard at the girl's paper, piecing everything together and nodding in agreement with the test. "Apparently you're management material. You're going to be trained as a Shift Supervisor. Could I be talking to the next Overseer?" Dragon's face remained expressionless; she wasn't at all excited about the possibility of becoming an overseer. It was a boring job that required a lot of boring work. "I'm no leader. I highly doubt it." Mr. Brotch was disappointed by her answer. Dragon seemed to be the kind of kid who capable of keeping her head on straight and so he would have figured she'd be an excellent manager of the vault. However, he found her negativity somewhat discouraging.

"Stranger things have happened…" He attempted to make her believe being an overseer wouldn't be such a difficult task. "I just watched my best friends walk out of this room with a few jobs that I didn't even know existed. One even walked out as a coach for a sport that we can't even play in this vault due to a lack of space, people and… well… teamwork. I'm more than aware that stranger things have happened." Mr. Brotch set the girl's test back down on the desk, leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms and looked up at the girl. "So, are you saying you wouldn't mind the job?" Dragon shook her head as she answered. "No. I'm just saying stranger things have happened."

The teacher leaned forward in his chair and sighed. He was right, Dragon was charismatic and would probably make the best future overseer of the vault, but there was one problem with her. She was stubborn. "Well, I hope you have a change of heart in the days to come, Miss Moreland. We're going to need a new overseer eventually, and it seems you're the only one of the third generation who'd be able to handle such a title." Dragon stared hard at the teacher for a moment before lowering her gaze to the floor and speaking. "Wow. Then I guess we're all fucked."

With that, the girl left the room and the gaping Mr. Brotch behind her. She had no intentions of becoming the next vault leader and she didn't feel like lending an ear to any more of the man's insightful propaganda.

Dragon moved slowly and silently through the halls of the vault, taking the longest path possible back to her room. Along the way, she noticed at least a few of her friends we're attempting to get a foot in the door with their new jobs. She had seen a less-than-enthusiastic Ronnie through the glass window that separated the hall from the clinic. He was talking to the vault's current doctor, probably trying to get out of having to do his job… ever. A bit further down the hall, Jimmy and Connor were sitting side-by-side on an iron bench. The younger brother was going on and on about a bunch of religious stuff that he could say to everyone in the vault, but there seemed to be a note of sarcasm in every word he said. Jimmy was pretending to be listening to him, but he was clearly too focused on a non-existent object of sudden interest at the far end of the hall to notice a thing the other teen was saying. Dragon didn't bother to stop and talk to them. Instead, she continued to shorten the distance between her and her room on the far side of the vault.

At some point, the girl had seen Corey running down one of the halls perpendicular to her own, wildly swinging a baseball bat and yelling something about being an awesome coach. Other than that, the rest of her walk had been relatively uneventful.

Dragon came to a stop in front of the door that led to her room and started to dig around in one of her vault suit's pockets for her room key. She was interrupted though when the door started to slide open on its own. Before her stood the vault's newest Loyalty Inspector, standing in her doorway with a universal card key in his hand that she assumed the overseer must have given to him. She struggled to finds words and ended up just saying his name, "Artur?" The boy stepped out of her room and past her before speaking himself. "Just checking out all of the rooms I usually don't have access to around here. After all, it is my job you don't have secret, written plans to overthrow the overseer in your room or anything…" He quickly moved off before the girl even had a chance to respond. "Great," she mumbled to herself, "Now I can't even be guaranteed privacy in my own room…"

Dragon stepped into her room and sealed the metal door behind her. She made a mental note to herself to find a way to lock her door so that even someone with a card key for all locks wouldn't be able to get in. She threw herself onto the bed so that she laid with her face buried in the pillow. After all the random things she had seen in the last hour alone, she was ready to call it a day. She never had the chance to fall asleep though…

…..She woke up first.


	2. Another Glorious Day

Tired eyes opened reluctantly to reveal a somewhat blurry scene. There was a desk in the far corner of the room, far meaning only a few feet away, and a cabinet that leaned up against the wall between the desk and a bed. The bed touched three of the walls in the room and yet it couldn't have been more than five feet long. It was on the stone-hard mattress that Dragon laid, once asleep but now groggily awake.

The girl pushed herself up on the bed so that she could lean her back against the wall and spent the next few seconds recalling where she was. Her gaze focused in on the desk across the room. On top of it sat a variety of damaged books and comics yet a single one stood out amongst them. It was significantly larger than the others and sitting up against them, allowing the peeking skull on the cover to stare out into the room. The words on the front cover brought back several memories. It read, "The Wasteland Survival Guide."

Also on the desk sat a set of holotags, the form of military idea that members of a fighting force known in the wastes as the Brotherhood of Steel wore around their necks. The best treasure of all though rested on the desk next to these tags. Dragon traced the outline of the plasma rifle she had recovered out in the wastes with her slowly sharpening gaze. These clues helped to remind her of exactly where she was. In the loosest terms possible, she was home sweet home.

After the initial feeling of exhaustion dissipated, Dragon hopped off the bed and rose to her feet. She stretched her arms and bumped the nearby metal cabinet with her elbow, disturbing the liquid in the jar that sat on top labeled 'lump of brain.' The girl watched the ripples start and fade on the liquid's surface and, satisfied with the idea that the jar had no intentions of falling, reached with one of her hands to touch the back of her head. She felt for the familiar scar there; it brought back another memory.

Other than the few odds and ends sitting about, there wasn't much to the tiny room. There was some money, also known in the waste as caps, stuffed inside the desk's drawer and a few small guns and unused outfits in the locked cabinet, but nothing else of any particular interest. Dragon didn't even bother opening the cabinet to grab some gear for the day; she was already dressed for success since she'd fallen asleep in her casual clothing and the only weapon she needed sat on the desk before her.

The girl picked up the plasma rifle and slung it over her shoulder, making sure to grab the extra power cells it used for ammo off the desk as well. The weapon clicked against a metal chain that hung from her collar, a piece she'd added to her otherwise bland apparel. She wore what was known as a mercenary cruiser outfit; basically just a plain white shirt with a black leather overcoat, black leather pants and a compilation of different materials and chains wrapped around her arms and legs. She blended in perfectly with the other humans of the wasteland. The only thing that made her really stand out in a crowd was her Pip Boy 3000, the computer she'd had wrapped around her left forearm since her tenth birthday. She still had no preference for the gadget, but it had proved to be a worthy tool in the first few months after she'd left the vault.

Dragon adjusted the gun one final time so that it hung comfortably on her back before moving to leave the room. Once through the doorway, she looked around again. She was currently on the top floor of a very small house. Behind her was the room where she slept, to her left was another small room that she used for storage and to her right was a sort of small catwalk. On the far side of the catwalk was a small table set up with some flasks, beakers and other scientific objects sitting on it. Also on the catwalk was a small rolling table with a tray and a bunch of doctor tools on top. A small piece of the walk next to her held a decorative table, a wooden chair, and a Nuka Cola soda machine.

The interior of the house was unexceptionally drab. All the walls were stained a sickly brown, the roof had a several cracks that let a few rays of light in and the floors always looked like they were speckled with dirt and grime. No amount of cleaning or decorating would ever make the place look decent again, but Dragon at least tried to spruce it up a bit by setting around a few of her wasteland souvenirs. A Civil War draft poster hung on the far side of the catwalk, guns and armor of every shape and size filled the room next to her and a few old comics sat on the table near the soda machine. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

A sudden noise caught the girl's attention. It sounded like someone was fumbling around downstairs and a familiar growling was already on its case. Dragon already had an idea about what was going on down there but she moved to check it out anyway. She reached the top of the steps that rested along the wall opposite the one her room was part of and headed down them. The scene before her was a normally humorous one on any other day but today, the girl just didn't feel like smiling.

On the first floor of the house was her hovering robot butler, Wadsworth, struggling to gather up a few things that had been knocked off of some nearby shelving. He was having a lot of trouble because Dragon's pet dog, Desoto, had his jaws clamped tightly around one of his robotic metal arms and was pulling as hard as he could, threatening to rip the steel from its socket. The canine, a middle-aged doberman pinscher with an overly protective personality, must have found some sort of humor in messing with the robot butler because he caused trouble for the machine on a daily basis; even if that meant knocking making a mess of his owner's stuff just so Wadsworth could clean it up.

Desoto let go of the butler as soon as he saw his master and started wagging his stub-of-a-tail furiously. His tongue lolled from his mouth and any guilt he might have felt for the robot that he had been cruel to was too well hidden for Dragon to see. The girl stood motionless at the bottom of the steps, eyeing the dog's sudden enthusiasm. Wadsworth, finishing up the last of the reorganizing, turned to face her as well and spoke in his mechanical, servant-sounding voice. "Good morning, Madame. It's nice to see you're alive and well today. I do apologize if the noise I was causing is the reason for your early awakening. The canine company we share this house with seems to cause more trouble than it's worth."

Dragon's eyes shifted from the dog to the robot, back to the dog and to the robot again. She narrowed her gaze at the mechanical butler, somewhat offended by his comment. She had found Desoto wandering around and mourning the death of his past owner in a scrapyard to the east of the town she was currently living in during one of her first weeks out of the vault. Since then, he had been her only lifeline more than once during her days of wandering in the waste. She would let him tear apart her entire house, destroy Wadsworth and kill every living being in the wasteland if he wanted to. He had been a priceless friend and companion to her for nearly four full years now, so of course he was worth indescribably more than the trouble he caused.

The girl didn't give this reasoning to her robot butler though. That was something she had learned to get used to while living with Wadsworth; a robot is and forever will be just a machine. He could pretend to have feelings, but he never truly did. There was no way he'd be able to compute the connection between a master and their dog. So, she responded with silence instead.

"Is there anything I could do for you today, Madame?" Dragon finally stepped away from the staircase, patted Desoto's head and opened her mouth to speak. "You could tell me a joke." The girl stepped past the dog and robot and moved to a far corner of the room that could be considered the kitchen. There were some shelves covered in various kitchen-related objects next to an old, stained and still somewhat functional refrigerator. A sink could be found in the corner as well, but the irradiated water was useless for anything and so the girl avoided using it at all costs.

The robot butler paused and selected a random proverb from his long-exhausted list of jokes. Dragon was already familiar with the different sayings Wadsworth could cook up; about the only entertainment she got from his attempting anymore was from simply trying to guess which overused line he would pick. The metallic voice started back up again as the girl, with a hungry dog now waiting patiently for breakfast at her side, scavenged a meal from the fridge.

"It's common knowledge that irradiated cats have 18 half-lives." The robot waited expectantly for the home-owner's response but it never came. Instead, Dragon continued to sort through the messy collection of what could be called 'food' in the refrigerator. She began to speak below her breath, "Mole rat meat… no. Squirrel on a stick… no. Salisbury steak…?" She pulled the item in question off of one of the fridge shelves and started looking over the packaging. The red box was faded and the writing was hard to read. "How old is this thing?" Her interrogative comment was answered as she finally identified an expiration date on the back of the package. Her face twisted into disgust upon realizing the processed piece of scrap meat was well over two hundred years expired.

Dragon tossed the box onto the floor. Even if she wouldn't eat it, Desoto would probably consider it gourmet. The doberman didn't hesitate to grab it up and start tearing at the cardboard packaging so he could get to the treat inside. The girl went back to rummaging through the fridge and, accepting the fact that just about any of the food within would be absolutely unappetizing, pulled out a bottle of water.

After shutting the fridge, Dragon turned around and walked over to the nearest chair while trying her best not to trip over the dog that laid in the middle of the floor, sprawled out and with half of an expired steak hanging from his mouth. Upon sitting, the girl opened the bottle of clean water and allowed her gaze to wander around the interior of the house's bottom floor. After all, there wasn't much else for her to do. That's something else she had gotten used to since she'd left the vault; there was never anything to do anywhere, and there was certainly no one else to hang around with other than her dog.

The girl's gaze jumped from one end of the room to the other. Next to the steps she had walked down was a line of shelves which were covered in various knick-knacks she had retrieved from the waste. There were a few more old comics sitting on one end, a basketball next to them, a red truck that said 'Nuka-Cola' on the shelf below, a human skull next to that… just about anything interesting she'd found in the waste had a home on one of those shelves. Next to the shelving was the corner with the kitchen and the nearest corner to that is where Dragon currently sat. She was in a corner between a large scientific-looking object that was sold to her as a room decoration to remind her of life in the vault and a few lockers where she hoarded a bunch of junk. The junk lockers were also where she kept parts that she could turn into customized weapons though, so the metal doors on the front were all breaking apart from the constant abuse of having metal scraps packed into them and the occasional, corrosive fission battery acid leak.

Further down the wall was a stand designed to hold her Vault Boy bobble-head collection. Vault Boy had been a sort of mascot of Vault 117 during her childhood which is why she was forced to question how so many bobble-heads of him had been scattered over the waste. It wasn't uncommon for her to be strolling through a collapsed building swarmed with super mutants and raiders only to find a conveniently placed, head-nodding figure of the mascot resting peacefully on a desk nearby. After finding twenty of the toys, she had finally given up on wondering what their source may be. Instead, she resorted to using them and their individual playful antics to spiff up her home.

Past the bobble-head stand was a workbench that was currently littered with scraps of metal, "Wonderglue" brand glue and an assortment of other weapon parts. This is the bench at which Dragon molded some of her most amusing weaponry; everything from a dart-gun with a toy car at its base and a rocket launcher that could launch… well, anything.

In another corner of the room was a second set of lockers. These lockers were a bit sturdier than those across the room as they were filled with a variety of items that didn't threaten to dissolve or collapse the metal shelving within. Instead, they were packed with sawed-off human fingers, several boxes of an old-fashioned cereal known as "Sugar Bombs," books that hadn't been overly damaged during their stay in the waste, and a large selection of other gizmos and gadgets that didn't seem to go hand-in-hand. These were the lockers in which Dragon stored her items to be taken back into the waste; many of them were items that people she had met asked her to collect on her journey through the wasteland. As with most of her actions in the decimated modern world, she only did this because she looked forward to the reimbursement.

In the fourth corner is where Dragon's radio was located as it was built into another vault furniture-looking machine. The radio was almost always left on but it was off for the time being. In the past day especially, the girl had grown tired of the everyday radio announcer, Three Dog, saying the same shit about her and her journey through the wasteland that he always did. Not long after she had left the vault, Dragon had ventured deep into the urban wasteland that was once Washington, D.C. It was here she discovered a radio station building under attack by overly-irradiated monsters and was invited by Brotherhood of Steel soldiers to help fight off the attackers. After her success in doing this, Three Dog, an African American man who stayed at the radio building known as Galaxy News Radio and took pride in preaching over the radio about "fighting the good fight," took it upon himself to talk about her and just about all of her adventures in the wasteland. The girl wished that she knew where he got all of his information from. Everything he said about her was always right, which was sort of creepy and stalker-like, but she often got tired of re-living her adventures as the announcer felt the need to elaborate on them again and again every single day.

Also in that corner of the house was where Dragon kept a plate of the ground. This plate was for Desoto and it was often covered in mutilated body parts but the girl could see from where she sat that the plate was empty and had been licked clean. No wonder the doberman relished the Salisbury steak so much, he probably hadn't eaten in quite a while. The girl noted she would have to put out more food for him later but for now, she tipped up the bottle in her hands and chugged the clean water. It was refreshing, something that couldn't be said for any consumable in the waste except for Aqua Pura.

When the bottle was empty, the girl held it out in front of her so she could look at the label. It lacked all the information a bottle preceding it by two hundred years would have had; there were no nutrition facts, no bottling company information, and there was no way to be certain whether or not the container held exactly sixteen ounces of the beverage. It was plain and straight-forward. That's how things needed to be in the waste.

The only things on the label were the name of the beverage, "Aqua Pura," and a brotherhood of steel symbol since they were the group currently working on bottling and shipping the drink. Both of these symbols brought back memories to the girl though. She had been a large part of the reason why Aqua Pura even existed.

Dragon left Vault 117 of her own free will not long after she had taken the GOAT. She hadn't liked her outcome of the taste and she knew changing it wouldn't be enough to satisfy here. Life in the vault had just been too… mechanic. Everyone woke up, socialized, half-assed their jobs, went back to sleep and then they did it all over again the very next day. Dragon didn't want to be the overseer of such a mundane life. She needed to get out of that place and so, she did.

One of her childhood friends, Artur Trela, had discovered the exit of Vault 117 during one of his in-depth explorations as a Loyalty Inspector. Having such a title just meant he was allowed to carry around keys to every room in the vault and go places where none of them had ever been able of allowed to go to in their youth. When he came across the exit, word of it spread between Dragon's friends. She had been the only one to express a serious want to put the exit to use after two hundred years of silence.

And so, about two weeks after the GOAT and a few days before her seventeenth birthday, the girl managed to slip out of the underground dwelling she had called home for so long. Although this went against everything the vault for meant for, to protect the future generations from the hideousness of the wasteland, she didn't have a single regret. No one bothered to follow her. They all figured she'd be dead by the end of the day.

Such wasn't the case though. On her first day in the wasteland, the girl managed to set herself up for success. She had discovered an abandoned town near the vault entrance that was once called Springvale. Some of the adults, including her parents, had mentioned it down in the vault as it's where their own parents had once lived before choosing to move underground. Back then though, it had been a colorful town full of jolly people. Now, it was nothing more than a collection of the rotting, collapsing remains of housing and the same dust covered scenery that seemed to stretch for miles in the wasteland. After scavenging around the town and collecting an old pistol, ammo, and some tattered clothing, Dragon disembarked with a semi-valid conclusion forming in here mind; there was nothing left of the world her grandparents once knew.

Later in the day, the girl discovered an unexpected settlement with a robot standing guard in front of it. The robot greeted her and, a bit hesitant to talk back to the machine, she slipped into the town without much further interaction. It was bad enough that she was in an unfamiliar element, she figured conversing with a mechanized human would be a bit out of her league. It was in this town known as Megaton, which was little more than a crater with an active nuclear bomb wedged into the ground at it's center, that she found hope for a decent future in the waste. From the beginning, she created a mental list of people to cling to and people to avoid. The town's sheriff, Lucas Simms, quickly made it onto her list of people to like since he was the first to welcome her and point her around the town. He also introduced her to his son, Harden Simms, who she found to be friendly enough to make it onto her like list as well. Both of them pointed to the various buildings in the town and recommended where she should head to next.

She began at a building known as "The Brass Lantern" where she meant Andy and Jenny Stahl. They were the owners of the little bar and both of them seemed fairly nice, but there was something odd about the way Andy acted that made Dragon suspicious of him. She then went on to visit the little clinic in the town where Doc Church, a bitter man that took quickly to disliking her, chased her off without so much as even asking if she needed medical help. Above the clinic was a general store known as "Craterside Supply." It was here that Dragon was given her first opportunity to explore deeper into the waste. Although a bodyguard on one side of the room continuously commented on how novice she was, the eccentric store owner, Moira Brown, offered her compensation for running a few errands in the waste. She figured it couldn't be anything too bad so she agreed without hesitation.

After being asked to visit a run-down grocery store a bit ways off from Megaton in order to collect some food, Dragon left Craterside Supply. She had intentions of fulfilling the quest however, she was more interested in learning about the town she was currently in first. She paid a visit to a man known as Walter in the town's water processing plant who asked her to fix some leaking pipes, she stopped in the Church of the Children of Atom and listened to their preaching about the bomb in the center of the town before walking out in boredom, and she even snuck into a few different houses and poked through some of their owner's belongings. By the time she walked out of the final house, she was a few hundred caps richer and carried an old assault rifle with very limited ammunition on her back.

After she was finished with exploring in places she didn't belong, she walked into Megaton's second and seemingly more popular bar, "Moriarty's Saloon." It was in there she met most of the characters she would be associating her life with in the future. Behind the bar was a ghoul, a zombified yet non-feral human, known as Gob who liked the girl from the moment she walked in the door simply for the fact that she wasn't horrified by his appearance. He offered her a discounted drink but she politely refused, wanting to preserve the caps she did have. There was also a woman in the room who worked for the saloon, however, her profession was in being a prostitute. Her name was Nova and although she came off as a nice person, Dragon couldn't help but feel uncomfortable in her presence.

There was an older man by the name of Jericho who sat on one of the nearby bar stools, making nasty comments about the girl and how she didn't belong in the wasteland. Dragon did her best to ignore him. She later found out that he was a retired raider, meaning he had professed in hating, mutilating and just plain slaughtering people back in his prime. It was in his blood to be a malicious person. Dragon eventually met Colin Moriarty as well, the owner of Moriarty's Saloon. He had an unfamiliar Irish accent and didn't seem overly welcoming, but the girl had a feeling she'd be spending a lot of her time in his bar in the future so it wouldn't be in her best wishes to get on his bad side.

There had been one other person in the bar when Dragon walked in by the name of Mr. Burke, but she could barely remember the conversation she had once had with him. Supposedly, he needed her to blow up the bomb in the center of Megaton and destroy the town and everyone in it, but she had other plans for her new found home. One event led to another and Mr. Burke ended up killing the town sheriff, which impulsively led to Dragon popping a cap in his ass. Lucas Simms' death was followed by his son taking over management of the town and giving Dragon a key to her own house in the crater. It was this building that Dragon would call home base for the next four years.

After a few days of mingling with the overall standoffish population of Megaton, she finally gathered up enough courage to head back into the waste. She did the only things she could think to do, travel from building to building, settlement to settlement, meeting new people, gathering caps and supplies and returning to her base in Megaton every now and then to drop off what she'd collected and improve her rank on the town's social ladder. Every day she was making new connections and putting together the clues she gathered from settlers and wanderers to map out what was left of the modern world's Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, all better combined and known as the Capital Wasteland.

It was during one of these explorations she had come across the Brotherhood of Steel and befriended a group of them known as the Lyon's Pride, led by Sarah Lyons. She assisted them in defending the Galaxy News Radio building in which she met Three Dog. He had plans to improve the wasteland through the use of his radio station, and eventually these plans must have gotten to Dragon's head. When she had left Vault 117, she did so in search of adventure. Three Dog inspired an idea for such an adventure, the wasteland proved worthy in assisting the idea and she had the Brotherhood to help back her up. Her plans were to create a clean water source for everyone in the Capital Wasteland. The idea may have sounded a bit farfetched at the time but then again, no one had expected a young girl to leave an underground haven in search of adventure in the hellhole that was the waste, but that had, for whatever ungodly reason, happened.

Dragon spent the next several months traveling between her home in Megaton, the science labs of a large ship-based settlement known as Rivet City, and the crumbling remains of what was the Jefferson Memorial some two hundred years before. It was in the labs of Rivet City that she worked with other scientists in a rather fruitless attempt to create a clean water source. Any piece of success they might have had became part of machine that was being held in the memorial a distant ways off from the ship. This machine would, one day, be their ticket to fresh water.

Another thing that the girl was learning about the wasteland was that wherever good seemed to be happening, some sort of malevolence was always lingering near or standing by. The issue of the water-cleansing machine in the heart of DC was no different. Another group of elite soldiers, clad in power armor very similar to that of the Brotherhood of Steel's, threatened to ruin the scientists' plan of clean water for all. These adversaries were collectively known as the Enclave.

The Enclave was all that remained of the United States' government of the past. Most of them were descendants of politicians or congressmen, yet all of them had it in their mind that they still had some sort of control over the badlands that were once the land of the free and the home of the brave. They felt that they were the only pure human beings left in North America, and for that reason they needed to purge the irradiated filth of other living organisms from their country. This meant killing everyone and everything that was every seriously exposed to radiation. That included Dragon and just about everyone she knew.

It wasn't long before the Enclave captured the girl and took her to their base at Raven Rock, a company run headquarters far to the northwest of the DC ruins. It was there she met the leader of the faction, President John Henry Eden. She hadn't been expecting a super-computer to be the leader of the division of professional soldiers and claiming-to-be law bringers, but that's exactly what the president was. Courtesy of the robots Dragon had encountered on her many journeys, as well as the one she shared her home with, the girl had quite an expansive knowledge on how to mess with a machine's mind.

Eden did everything in his mechanical power to try to convince Dragon that the Enclave was only trying to help future America. He explained that all ghouls, feral or not, were nothing more than hosts to diseases and disgust. He explained that the wasteland's irradiated wildlife was only a collection of suffering animals that needed to be put out of their misery. And he explained that almost all humans that weren't in the Enclave were already too overly exposed to nuclear residue and that they would all turn feral themselves eventually. Dragon wasn't buying any of it.

The computer tried again and again to change the girl's train of thought but alas, she remained stubborn. Instead of preaching further, Eden decided to cut to his point and hand over something to her that he felt she could put to use. It was a small canister containing a sample of the Forced Evolutionary Virus, better known as FEV. This was the virus that turned humans and other beings into irradiated monsters, but this particular strain had been modified so that it would kill all forms of life with any degree of radioactive or virally-induced mutation. The president hoped that the girl would find it in herself to add this string of the virus to the water she planned to purify, thus ridding at last part of the east coast of mutation and making the Enclave's job that much easier.

After nearly an hour of debate between human and machine, Dragon had somehow convinced Eden that his programming was faulty and his actions in leading the Enclave were actually doing more to harm the chances of an ultimate goal of radiation eradication then help them. The system began to overload and the president himself became the self-destructing bomb that would soon destroy the Enclave base at Raven Rock.

This may have been the end of President John Henry Eden and the possibility of adding the FEV to the Potomac River water supply that was to be cleansed, but it was nowhere near the end of the Enclave. Another man by the title of Colonel Augustus Autumn had his own plans for the faction. Colonel Autumn had been second in command to the president and leader of the Enclave military. Though he often disagreed with the super computer's desires, he had gone along with the FEV plan from the start, following in the footsteps of his father. Since the president was finally out of the way, there was nothing to stop him from leading his army on a new mission. He didn't have the same intentions as Eden had; he didn't want to kill anyone in the waste. Instead, his plans were to take over the water cleansing process after the scientists of Rivet City and Dragon were finished with their discoveries. He would claim all credit for the project, he would be in control of the wasteland's only fresh water, and every being in the waste would then turn to him and the Enclave for assistance. He would restore order to the United States without killing a soul. They would all seek his guidance, and he'd be the reason for the revival of the states as a nation of power in the post-nuclear world.

Just like with Eden's plan, Dragon wouldn't be having any of this either. The cleansing of the water played out as the scientists had hoped and all seemed to be going well until Colonel Autumn and a few of his Enclave lackeys decided to pay a surprise visit to the Jefferson Memorial, home to what was now known as Project Purity. Dragon happened to be present at the time, overseeing the development and making sure the newly bottled Aqua Pura, the freshest water in the Potomac, was being sent out on caravans to everywhere. Autumn confronted her and warned her that she better step down from her leadership position or else the Enclave would wreak havoc on the operation. The girl merely laughed in his face. She reminded him of who had been the person to survive a life in the waste against all odds, who had been the person that put up with the nuisance of Autumn's faction day after day and could now chase off the power armor clad men just by waving her gun in the air, and who had been the one to completely destroy the Enclave base that had been left in his hands to protect. The Colonel wasn't so hard-assed with his next few comments.

As she had done with the president, Dragon convinced Autumn that his plan was faulty and America could never be fully restored. She brought on what seemed to be a change of heart in the man; she said she would let him walk away alive if he discontinued working with the Enclave and he agreed. The girl didn't think much of what may become of the Colonel, she simply figured she'd never hear from him again. He was a thing of the past.

The Capital Wasteland grew relatively boring after this last run-in with Autumn. The Enclave were still around to cause trouble, but they never proved to be a threat to the Jefferson Memorial anymore. Dragon stayed with the scientists at Project Purity for a short time before finally turning to the Brotherhood for assistance. They were aware she had been working with the scientists to create clean water and they were more than willing to take over the project for her since it had finally happened. Elder Lyons, the leader of the east coast's Brotherhood of Steel, sent many of his followers to help with the job. Within a day, they had become professionals at managing the processing, bottling and shipping of Aqua Pura across the waste. Dragon's leadership was no longer needed.

This left the girl with a lot of free time. She had already explored a large portion of the waste; she was familiar with just about every building and every living being between her hometown of Megaton and the stationary vessel that held Rivet City. So with her free time, Dragon went on to explore what she'd never seen in the wasteland. In a month, she was familiar with the entire southwest Maryland, northeast Virginia and post-apocalyptic DC area.

With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, Dragon retired to her home in Megaton. It was here she would spend the next three and half years drinking at Moriarty's saloon, socializing with the not-so-people-friendly townsfolk and leaving only to do a little yao guai or mole rat hunting. Life was good.

The peace that comes with a simple life was never quite for Dragon though. Every day, whether through her own mind or through Three Dog's ranting on the radio, the girl was forced to relive just about every experience she'd already made it through in the waste. The radio announcer continuously told the tale of a time when Dragon had visited a plant filled settlement known as Oasis and killed a living, talking tree there, a time with she had rescued a little boy from the destroyed town of Grayditch after a hive of giant, fire-spitting, genetically modified ants had killed his friends and family, and a time in which she'd allowed a pack of feral ghouls into a fancy building known as Tenpenny Tower so they could kill everyone and take over, simply because the tower's residents were unwilling to share their home with the irradiated zombies.

Another memory haunted the girl though, one that went back even further then her meeting with Three Dog and her residency in Megaton. From time to time she would still think back on the life she left behind when she walked out of Vault 117. She would remember her friends and the childhood spent with them. She often found herself wondering about how they were doing, if life in the vault had changed after she left, or whether or not they even remembered her. It was thoughts like these that allowed her mind to take control of her and replay parts of her childhood while she slept. Curiosity had been the inspiration of the dream she'd been having when the antics of Wadsworth and Desoto woke her up.

Dragon snapped out of her reverie to find her robot butler still hovering in front of the shelving by the staircase and her anxious dog sitting at her feet and staring up at her. Dragon glanced back at the nearly empty bottle of Aqua Pura and then back to Desoto. It was obvious what he wanted. The girl rose from the chair and moved to the kitchen-corner of the house, collecting a small bowl off of one of the shelves when she got there. She poured the remaining water in the bowl and walked across the room to set it in the dog's own corner, right next to his food dish.

It was in the wall between Desoto's corner and the corner that held her take-back-into-the-waste-items locker that the door to the house could be seen. It was a creaky old door and several rays of light managed to slip through the areas between it and its frame, but at least it was relatively efficient at keeping people out. It was a quiet knock at this door at the given moment that sent the doberman into a barking tantrum. Dragon looked to the door that was only a few feet from where she now stood, frustration slowly playing across her face. She knew exactly who was knocking and, if she unfamiliar with the idea that the person who chose to disturb her now would continuously knock for hours on end if that's what it took to get her to open the door, Dragon would have completely ignored the interruption.

Rather than attempt to wait out the knocker's patience, the girl reached out and opened the door to her house. The daylight was blinding at first but both her and Desoto's eyes quickly adjusted. Once satisfied that it was indeed the same African American woman who knocked on the house's door nearly every day and not some mutated, zombified freak that planned on killing all residents in the house, Desoto quieted down. Dragon simply stared at the woman, trying to make her aggravation as obvious as possible.

"Dragon, it's been a while…" The woman's voice trailed off. The girl was forced to silently question how the dark-skinned lady's mind functioned, after all, the two had seen each other just the day before and almost every day straight for three years before that. "I wish there were more people like you in the world…" And with that, the African American reached forward with something in her hand and the girl took it from her. The woman immediately walked away without another word.

Dragon had grown semi-used to this awkward interaction that occurred on a daily basis first thing every morning. The woman would knock, Dragon would answer, she'd receive some inspirational comment and then the older lady would hand over some sort of small gift. The girl was never entirely sure what the other's motivation was, but she always assumed it had something to do with her stopping Mr. Burke from blowing up the town.

She now looked down to see what small gift she'd received from the woman today. In her hands was a small reptile, a bit crispy around the edges and with a skewer impaled through the length of its body. Dragon had never been much of a fan of The Brass Lantern's specialty, iguana on a stick, so she turned around and let her dog snatch the snack out of her grasp. The girl winced as she watched him eat; there wasn't the slightest bit of hesitation in his action. He swallowed the thing nearly whole, chewing only enough so that he could break apart the skewer and swallow it as well. Clearly, the sharp piece of wood didn't agree well with his stomach. He coughed what was left of the skewer back up, stared at the now slimy pieces that rested on the floor of Dragon's home, and proceeded to gather them back up in his mouth, chew them again, and swallow. This time, he kept the stick down. The girl shook her head in slight disgust and spoke below her breath, "Lovely."

Dragon decided it was time to start her usual daily routine, a routine that included little more than stopping at Moriarty's Saloon and then paying a visit to a few of the other people around town before returning to her house again for another night. She turned back towards the front door, opened it, and allowed the light of day to seep into the building for a second time. Dragon waved a short farewell to Wadsworth and, with Desoto at her side, stepped out of house.

The stench of an irradiated world filled her nose but it was a smell she'd long since gotten used to and come to enjoy. It was her definition of a breath of fresh air only… without the fresh. She allowed her gaze to wander into the town. Her house was built on a platform that extended out of the crater wall so it stood out well above the majority of the town. Below her was The Brass Lantern, the clinic, the atom bomb surrounded by the religious Children of Atom, and a few other people and buildings of little interest. All the way around the walls of the crater, either level with her house or a bit lower, were other houses and buildings such as the public restrooms, Craterside Supply and Moriarty's Saloon. The overall town was as drab and colorless as the inside of Dragon's house, but one really couldn't expect there to be much joy and wonder in a post-nuclear village.

Satisfied that nothing new was occurring in the town and she was looking at the same old shit she saw every single day in Megaton, Dragon turned around to face her house one more time before walking away. She shut her front door, locked it, and then she finally noticed something that filled her with an explainable rage. Stuck on the door was a pamphlet that spoke about "Holy Water" that could be found at the Holy Light Monastery right outside of Springvale. Two things about this piece of yellowed paper pissed the girl off. To start with, she'd had dealt with those fools at the monastery years ago not much after she'd finished up with Project Purity. They had been blessing water or something, but the real issue was that they were taking the Aqua Pura that was supposed to be being delivered to Megaton in order to do this. They had been unrightfully stealing water and then advertising their religion all around town, so Dragon had to step in and dispose of them. They part that bothered her was that they were indeed long gone, but someone still felt the need to put up pamphlets anyway.

The second thing that bothered her was that she ripped the pamphlet off of the door, balled it up and threw it away every single day. Every day she'd take one down only to find another pinned to her door the very next morning. The never-ending presence of the pamphlet bothered her to no end, and today was no different. Dragon ripped the paper off the door, shredded it and threw it over the railing next to her house so that all the little pieces rained down gently onto the heads of the Megaton settlers below. She managed to yell, "Fucking water pamphlet!" somewhere along the way.

Dragon stood at the railing and watched the reactions of the townspeople below before turning back to the door of her house. It was now pamphlet-free and the girl's anger was replaced with a sort of smirk. She looked down at Desoto who waited patiently for his master to start moving and then she turned so that she could face the path that led to Moriarty's. She then said aloud the motto that the Mister Gusty brand robots, a variation of Wadsworth's own model, were programmed to shout in the heat of battle…

"Another glorious day in this man's army."


End file.
