To be honest, I scared myself there for a second. Quite nothing like landing in a foreign place you heard and seen to shake you up. Also, in my previous life, I couldn't stand seeing violence. Not video game violence. That was fake, but watching live footage of a REAL stabbing in a corner store? DOOM, Gears of War, and Fallout I could digest and enjoy. Even watching people accidentally light themselves on fire made me cringe while others laughed. Before, I'd say I can't stand it. Now? I must, and whatever "training" this vault gave me was helping a little.
Say what you want, being thrown into a dog eat dog world is traumatic. It's foreign to everything I used to believe. It's against my faith and personality. My teachers and parents put it in me to be kind and look out for others.
Then BOOM.
I'm sitting on a headless corpse, psyching myself up into searching all these dead bodies. Psyching myself up into disrespecting the dead bodies of human beings. Flies already descended upon the corpses, some drowning in the bloodshed. The smell of rust, or that olfactory illusion of the smell of blood filled the air. I've read war stories before, I needed to dehumanize the enemies but it was so hard to do. But if I kill and think about the thousand people I might need to end violently I might go insane.
Another kinda scary thing was I felt like I had the capacity to do just that. I could very well lose my humanity here and that scared me more than anything. In fact, with my stats I could kill more than that. I could seriously open up a can of kickin' butt on the Wasteland but I needed to get set up first.
These Gunners were a good first step. Laser pistols sold for good money. Carrying ammo was also a dilemma for me to figure out. Judging by the hyper realism I would say that the difficulty is amped up to Survival. If I didn't have my stats and robot I would have been dead. Period.
"Hey Esperanza," I finally said, after 'catching my breath', "help me get the frame off this big guy."
"Sí senõr."
Huffing and puffing we stood him up by a miracle and I hit the locking button. This kept the power armor standing up as I unsealed the suit and pulled out the dead body. I mentally groaned at the idea of scrubbing the blood out of the inside. Not hopping inside yet I got a duffel bag and started packing supplies.
They had a lot of food, other guns, and ammo boxes. Some of the boxes even read Aqua Pura. Isn't that a Fallout 3 thing? Sad that my Pip Boy isn't a Fallout wiki that can magically look up stuff on the internet.
Oh Jesus, I just realized there is NO internet. I joked about killing myself right then and there in my head; letting out a chuckle. No phones, no washing machines… other than maybe Nanny Bots. I kinda knew this already but it was really just so much to digest.
I'm going to need to keep notes… and I was always a bad student. Then I got blessed with 9 intelligence so it wasn't going to be too bad. I heard a metallic click behind me and Esperanza exclaimed,
"¡Senõr! Behind you!"
I slowly glanced back and saw the one blonde girl I didn't kill. Should have kept that noted. I forget crap easily. She held a 10mm at me and I lazily pointed an AR-10 at her with one bent arm. She stated,
"Y-you killed them all."
"Yep." I answered.
She didn't shoot but was shocked by the turn of events. While thoughts rushed all over her face I just watched her with a lazy look on my face. We stood there in a Mexican standoff for a second until I casually asked, "They force you into the group?"
"Took me away from a family of scavvers." Anger boiled in her voice when she spat, "I hated a lot of their guts."
"Plenty of food and water for both of us. Take some and go. I don't plan on coming back."
She lowered her gun a tad and I did the same. Half her face was covered in blood. No doubt from laying in the pools unconscious back where I woke up.
"Where you going?" She asked.
"I don't know yet." I admitted. I looked out the window and saw the Med-Tek Research building and the hospital not far from it.
"Northeast is the small settlement of Greentop Nursery. Just North is an old sinkhole. I scouted the area for my…" she looked around and kicked some stray bullet casings in the blood, "now dead team."
"We are in the middle of Pre-War Malden." Esperanza elaborated, as if in contest with the Gunner. "Just Southwest is the Malden Center. A metro of sorts. And west of that is the hospital you see. South of us is the Slocum Joe's HQ, an old donut chain's corporate office."
"Yeah, but the hospital is overrun by green skins and Raiders rule the metro and HQ."
I glanced at the power armor and smirked.
"Not for long. Do the Raiders know your team was here?"
"We had a one sided scrim with them but they never came close to the school afterwards."
"Alright then, we'll mop out the subway first."
Both the women-well robot and woman-looked right at me and echoes in unison,
"What?"
***