Chapter 1: Best Day Ever
War. War never changes.
Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything: from God to justice to simple, psychotic rage.
In the late 21st century, the world was making its final marching steps to utter Nuclear Armageddon. Despite America's victory in the Sino-American War for Alaska, the chaos of the recourse crisis raged on to claim many more lives. And on the 4th of July, 2077, the chaos of the Recourse Wars, and the marching steps of the Atomic Bombs came to a grinding halt as a Great Plague swept across the world. Those who still had the strength to fight against this new threat found themselves united. Former enemies becoming allies. And in the end of it all, the world managed to finally move on from the chaos of the Recourse Wars and into a new era of peace and prosperity.
Humanity with all its faults were deemed worthy of preservation.
Sadly nothing lasts forever, and everything is subject to change. But War... War never changes
December 24th, 2162. One year after the PAO Incident.
Desolation. Devastation. No matter where he went, it was all the same. Mutated beasts on the hunt, PKer Gangs hunting people for sport, players to broken to continue fighting waddling around Safe Zones begging for food and water, or a gun to shoot themselves with. At first the blue-haired Road Warrior was having the best time of his life when he got into this world, but now it was a never ending nightmare for him.
Stood among a group of players camped around their cars on the hillside borders of the Arizona Wasteland stood a young man in brown leather armor; his face blanketed with sand goggles and a face scarf that was the same shade of blue as his scraggly greasy hair. A rusted blue muscle car stood next to its driver. His Magnum Opus. His dilated and tired indigo blue eyes scanned the horizon of the Arizona Wasteland through the scope of his rifle. He hadn't slept all weekend since he got the Intel he needed. He was going to get to Vault 25 no matter who or what got in his way. Even if he was there if he found it too.
"You… You guys honestly think that I'm not gonna die?"
The blue-haired boy tensed his breathing. He could see someone in the distance waving to him. It was her again...
"We don't think; We know."
"Hey! Why did the door shut?..."
"It's a trap guys!"
"Teleport! Bullhead!… T-Teleport! Bullhead!"
"Our Portal Boys aren't working!"
"We gotta get out of here!"
"There's to many of them!"
"My gun's not working!"
His grip on his rifle trembled and his breathing became faster and more tense as their screams rattled through the black matter of his brain like a tumor-induced migraine. He blinked his eyes several times and took a breath of fresh air, trying to recompose himself, and as he retrained the sighs of his rifles' scope to the desert bellow they were gone. Vanished without a trace. In a panicked rush, as his delusions began to take control of him again, he holstered his rifle across his back and jumped into the Magnum Opus' driver seat, slammed the door shut then slammed his boot across the fuel pedal. The burning roar of the Magnum Opus' super charged engine drowning their voices out and the sudden cries of his camping companions behind him as he raced off and down the cliff.
"I'm… I'm so afraid of dying in here… In this game… All I want is to go home…"
"… Shut up…"
"Vault 27, here we come!"
"Hold the line. Don't let them swarm you!"
"Shut up!"
"Sachi! Kirito, help her!"
"SACHI!"
"SHUT UP!"
"… You're Beaters…"
"...SHUT UP! ALL OF YOU JUST SHUT UP!"
He slammed the breaks, bringing the Magnum Opus to a grinding halt. His face was drenched with cold sweat as he rested his head against the wheel, panting like a dog. He didn't need to listen to them right now. Now was not the time.
"Hey Dante! What's going on? Where are you going?" called a voice on his Pipboy's comm radio. He tensed up, hiked out a light sob then began slamming his hands and head against the wheel wildly like a deranged ape until his forehead glowed red from the impact damage and his eyes turned red and puffy with tears cascading down his face.
He just wanted them to stop.
He was in the last place anyone in this game wanted to be in. Hunted by PKers for sport. Haunted by the ones he failed to protect. He could still remember the day it all went to shit. The day he logged onto Post Apocalyptia Online.
One year ago. October 23rd, 2161, Present Day.
The PAO Friendface forms were on fire when he got onto his Terminal today. Today was the day Dante's been waiting for the last month after the Beta ended. Post Apocalyptia Online had finally launched!
It was all he could think about. At home, at school, at the movies, with his friends, his little brother. The awesomeness of the game obsessed him! He organized to meet up with his school friends in Vault City Armory and gear up and let him teach them how to work the guns properly once they linked up. With his experience from the Beta, the Road Warriors were gonna kick some major ass under his leadership. Well… They would once the rest of the gang manage to pick up a copy in the next week or two. Edward was his only friend who contacted him and managed to pre-order the game in time before they sold out last week - despite not being a Beta Tester like he was. The closeted lunatic was gonna have a blast once Dante started showing him the ropes.
Dante grinned and giggled excitedly as he logged off his computer and dived under his bed and fished out the box he had his Nerve Helm hidden in for the last month. He began to set his Pipboy's Wifi and Charger up with the helmet then plugged the Holotape in after securing it to his head and then laid down, his breathing shallow and slow from the excitement-educed adrenaline pumping through his head as he watched the timer on the Nerve Helm's visor count down for launch in anticipation.
10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1…
"… Link start!" The helmet's battery hummed to life. He slowly closed his eyes as he felt the Nerve Helm transceivers slowly take a hold of his mind and dive him into the game.
"Welcome to Post Apocalyptia Online! Please enjoy your stay."
Colors flashed through Dante's field of vision, making him see spots as he felt his senses come back to life through the game's interface after he finished editing his Avatar and language options. English. A young Caucasian base. Male. Blue hair and blue eyes. He made the final edits to make his Avatar look like his IRL appearance as much as possible and he was done. Once he accepted the changes on his appearance another flash of white light blinded him and his avatar materialized into the world. He slowly opened his eyes, taking in the view of where he spawned. He was in a large town filled with concrete block-shaped houses with mechanical doors and steel watchtowers. Players all around him wearing the same blue and yellow jumpsuits he was wearing could be found almost everywhere he looked, taking in the sights and smells of Vault City.
"… I'm back, bitches!"
The foggy blue sky lit up with fireworks as Dante took off running to find the armory. Today was going to be the best day ever!
BANG!
"Son of a fuck!"
It didn't take long for Dante to find Edward. Right outside the meeting place they agreed on the other night. At the Vault City Armory.
Right now Dante was teaching his larger black-haired companion how to work with the weapons the Armory Masters allowed players to test on the shooting range with.
So far he managed to ace all of the timed shooting challenges with the laser based energy weapons, but was having a bit of trouble with the live ammo based guns Dante had him on now - and when he meant having trouble, he meant he was missing every single shot he made at the bottles he was shooting at.
"I don't understand. Why doesn't this stupid gun work?!" yelled Edward, dropping the Rangemaster Hunting Rifle onto the table like a bratty child failing to fix his favorite broken toy.
"You need to take slower breaths with semi auto guns. Just try to relax your breathing and don't wobble your grip so much - you can do it." encouraged Dante. He watched patiently as Edward reloaded the clip and fire it off again. While his bullet did hit a bottle this time it also in a stroke of random chance recoiled against the wall, making the bullet wiz right pass Edward's head, followed by a girly shriek, making the duo turn to see a pink headed-girl in a suit of red and white metal armor clutching the right side of her head from shock
"Whoa! Easy with the trigger big guy!" shrieked the shorter girl as she stuck her finger down her ear to clear out the deafening ring in it. "Do you guys even know what you're doing with that thing?"
"O-of course I do! Not my fault the accuracy on this thing's broken!" shrieked Edward defensively.
"I was in the Beta last month, so no he doesn't," greeted Dante after ducking Edward's backhand. He walked up and stretched a hand out to the pinkette. "Dante 'n' Ed-E at your service~... And who might you be, Little Lady?"
"I'm Lisbeth." Dante smiled as the pinkette accepted his handshake. She grinned evilly as she looked up to Dante's larger companion, making Edward's eye twitch. The girl's grin reminding him of the way his little sister grinned at him when she dogged him in for something he didn't do.
"… So if you're a beta tester then you wouldn't mind having another newbie to show the ropes with? I read on the Terminal forums back IRL that this game has places in Safe Zones where you can build cars. I wanna see where I can make one before the rest of my school friends log on so I can thrash them tomorrow."
"… Sure. The more the merrier as I always say. We were gonna hit the Scrap Yard after this anyway. Got a quest from one of the NPC Vendors to bring him some Mole Rats hiding out there. We can even get some salvage for our cars too and them some."
"… Salvaging?"
Back in the beta for Post Apocalyptia Online Vault City was one of the only two safe zones in the California Wasteland with a scrap yard inside its borders. It was like old times for Dante as he led his companions threw the winding paths between towers of scrapped metal parts, deflated tiles and other junk and grabbing whatever they found useful.
"The salvaging system's lot more organized in this game then I thought it would be. I heard a lot of people complaining about it from the beta," exclaimed Lisbeth happily as she browsed through the scrapped materials she collected in her Pipboy's scrap menu.
"There's ten different scrap boxes to fill your scrap with. Back in the beta it would dump the random junk you'd find into your Pipboy without allocating them to the boxes we've got now, and was a lot messier to find the materials you wanted to recycle - now it does it for you automatically. You can even build a houses and turn abandoned towns into Safe Zones with the right scrap, as well as make custom weapons and armor like you can build cars, but nobody got into the town building mechanics the game had during the Beta," exclaimed Dante.
"Wow… Thanks. I'll be able to buy the schematics for a car or bike in no time if I sell half of this stuff then." said Lisbeth excitedly. Suddenly a small pothole opened up before her and a pink shriveled up creature shot out of the ground like a bullet and into the Pinkette's face, making her scream as her reflexes made her catch the creature. It snapped its bucked teeth in her face and foamed from the mouth. It's tiny red eyes glowing with a predator's killing glare at it's larger prey.
"EW! What in the hell?!" she threw the Mole Rat Pup across the ground, making its HP drop into the yellow zone when it hit the ground; and before it could get back up to fight again it was zapped into a pile of ash by Edward's Laser Pistol.
"Nice shot, Ed," praised Dante.
"… What the hell was that?" asked Lisbeth; baffled by the sudden sneak attack.
"A Mole Rat. Standard low-level creature. Usually found in scrap yards like this. One down fourteen to go," chirped Dante cheerfully. He dashed off to hunt the remaining fourteen rats, leaving a gobsmacked Lisbeth with his best friend.
"...Fourteen more? Should we help him out?" Edward shook his head to the aspiring grease monkey.
"Worst thing Mole Rats can do is give you a slight nudge in your Radiation gauge," argued Edward. "Not to sound cynical, but if you're gonna get jumpy with a single Mole Rat then I'd love to see what you'll think of the other creatures Dante told me about. Apparently they've got something in this game that can keep up with cars called a Deathclaw."
"… What's a Deathclaw?"
"A Velociraptor on steroids from what Dante told me in school," answered Edward. "I read about them on the PAO forums too. Only way you'll get out of a fight with one of them alive is if you're packing legendary gear."
"… Sounds pretty cool. Do animals drop skulls in this game then? If Deathclaws are that nasty I bet they'll leave some awesome junk to make ornaments with." Edward was taken back a little by Lisbeth's reply.
"…Huh?"
"Nothin'." She giggled. She raised her Pipboy and began typing through her party menu bar. "You guys are pretty rad. I gotta go now, but I hope we'll be able to play again after I get back from school tomorrow," spoke Lisbeth sweetly as she forwarded a pair of friend requests to Dante and Edward. Her smile turned to a confused frown when she dialed her Pipboy to the exit button. Only to find no exit option.
"… What's wrong?" asked Edward.
"Do you have a exit on your Pipboy by any chance?" The black-haired ray gunner raised an eyebrow before looking through his own Pipboy, only to be given the same conclusion as the pink-haired grease monkey.
"No… Do you think it's some sort of glitch?" asked Edward worryingly.
"Hey guys, what's crackin'?" greeted Dante as he returned with a bandoleer of dead Mole Rat Pups wrapped over his shoulder. "Check this out. I found a crossbow. Score!"
"Dante, shut up. We're-" But before Edward could continue he vanished in a burst of sparks of blue energy.
"… Ed?" Lisbeth soon followed the large boy too, nearly making Dante start freaking out until he vanished in a flash of blue lighting and reappearing outside of Vault City's center where he first spawned into PAO at.
"… What's going on? Why did we get TPed?" Wondered Dante to himself. All around him many more players were being teleported into the city center. It looked like everyone in Vault City were being summoned back to the city center too.
"A bug perhaps?" wondered Lisbeth.
Dante gazed up towards the sky then took notice of a sign hovering above the crowd. He couldn't make out the text it was displaying, but then the sky began to glow red as everyone in the city center was domed off from the rest of the Safe Zone as the sign began to multiply. A ominous shade of red blanketed the plaza, making Lisbeth gulp at the ominous red glow the buildings around herself and her compatriots took. Everything around her felt so demonic now.
Suddenly a current of electricity began to spark before the clock tower, which grew bigger and bigger into the shape of a man before exploding into the form of a giant suit of crimson red and white power armor. It's shadow cascaded over the 20,000 players below it.
"Attention players, and welcome to my world," spoke the giant suit of armor as the shadows of his arms stretched out across the court yard.
"… What the fuck?" wondered Edward out loud. What in the world was going on?
"I am Akihiko Kayaba. CEO of Vault-Tec Game Studios, and the lead developer of Post Apocalyptia Online: And as of this moment I am in complete control of this world.
"I'm sure many of you have discovered a item missing in your Pipboys: The exit option. Let me assure you that this isn't a defect in the game. I repeat: This is not a defect. This is how Post Apocalyptia Online is meant to be played. You can no longer log out of PAO. And if someone in the real world attempts to forcefully deactivate or remove your Nerve Helms, all of the Nerve Helms safety protocols will be disabled and the Nerve Helm will destroy your brain thus ending you life."
"Wait… WHAT?!" shrieked Dante. What the hell was he hearing? The giant metal man better be some troll or he was gonna get a Mini Nuke and blast him to pieces.
"Is he joking?" asked Lisbeth nervously.
"…He better be joking." growled Edward.
The crowd's silence rose to uneasy chatter and began to get restless and louder in whispered worry. Once again their murmuring fell silent to the armored man's booming voice.
"This rule also applies to all remaining players in PAO. If your health bars drop to zero your Avatars will be deleted from the game forever, and simultaneously the Nerve Helm will destroy your brain."
The memory of Edward's recoiling bullet flashed through Dante's mind back in the Vault City Armory. When he nearly shot Lisbeth. If the armory wasn't in a Safe Zone and it hit him or her directly in the head and between the eyes…
"… Oh shit…"
"There is only one way for a player to escape now: You must clear the game." A giant holographic map of the United States of America materialized before the giant suit. - the exact same map on everyone's Pipboy menus.
"Right now every remaining player is within Vault City in the Southwest Commonwealth. Make your way east and north across the rest of Post Apocalyptia's world. Find and defeat the Vault Guardians of the one hundred and twenty-two Vaults that you will find. After you complete this task you will all be granted access to Vault 0 at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, where you will face the final Vault Guardian. Defeat the Vault Guardian of Vault 0 and you will clear the game. You do not require to conquer the vaults in numerical order. You may conquer whatever Vault you discover regardless of its designated number. And for a head-start, you will be able to find Vault 8 here in Vault City itself."
Dante, Lisbeth and Edward just stood next to each other, all three of them bog eyed and struggling to process everything they were hearing.
"Finally: I have added several and useful gifts in everyone's Pipboys. Enjoy…"
Everyone raised their arms and opened the item storage in their Pipboys. Everyone was given the same set of items. A set of keys, schematics for low grade motorbikes and dune buggies, and a unknown item with a large question mark for its item storage symbol. Curious, Dante clicked his first and then screen on his Pipboy began to glow a ultra violet green glow. He shrieked as his face was bathed in the light, and as it subsided he looked around to face Edward and Lisbeth… Wait… How did Edward's face scar suddenly appear? And how did Lisbeth change her hair color so suddenly. And how did she get so small?
"… Erm… Ed? Lis?" asked Dante. His companions stared back at the blue-haired boy. Edward's appearance didn't change that much except for the huge scar that decorated the left side of his face IRL was back, and Lisbeth's hair had became shorter and turned dark brown. They too were taken back slightly in the sudden change of Dante's Avatar, which like Edward's changed to look like the spitting image of his IRL self. Five foot nine inches tall, shaggy and greasy blue hair and indigo blue eyes and a lightly tanned baby face. Lisbeth thought he looked like a really tall ten year old kid as she looked at him now.
"… What the fuck is going on?!"
Wasteland Survival Guide
The Great Plague: A devastating pandemic that brought the end of the Recourse Wars in mid 2077. Originally a bio weapon engineered from a genetically modified strain of Bubonic Plague called "The Black Flu", which the People's Republic of China were planning to use to decimate the American population, but on September 11th 2077 a containment leak caused a imperfected strain of the virus to be accidentally released. China and many of the world's less politically stable regions such as South America, most of Southern Asia, Africa, India and some parts of Russia, Korea and even West Coast Alaska were decimated by the Great Plague, wiping out nearly 70% of the human population within the next three years, as the surviving and more politically stable nations managed to organize themselves and create a counter-measure for the Plague in early 2081 from a perfected strain of the US military's FEV project, which was redesigned to become a mutagen that would mutate the remaining human and animal populations of Earth just enough so that the Black Flu became harmless and thus die out. The aftermath and decrease of the human population helped remove the strains of the Energy Crisis, and thus brought the end of the Recourse Wars and a new dawn of cooperation between the surviving countries of Earth that hasn't been seen since the early 21st century.
Nerve Helm 1000: Nerve Helm 1000 is the first line of Vault-Tec Game Studio's newly developed VR gaming system. It is designed to connect to its owners Pipboy 5000 to use it as both a secondary power source, and as its main data processor for the Nerve Helm to keep it connected to the Information Superhighway.
I've been sitting on this idea after seeing everything going on with Mad Max Fury Road and the reveal trailer for Fallout 4 last month. And I'm finally kicking it in. ):D
Big thanks to RevenantOmega for beta reading this chapter for me. Be sure to check out his stuff too if you're a fan of anime-based series like his new RWBY fanfic project, Darker then BLCK or his Attack on Titan fic, Military Police, and many of his other stuff from the last year. Once they get rockin 'n' rolling you'll be in for a ride with those like I hope to give to you guys with this fic. :D
Next chapter I'll be organizing OC requests, as this is a OC centered story alongside the main anime cast as minor characters. Be patient until then children. This is sUbSonIcSoundwave, reminding you kiddies as always to read, comment, review, and I'll shall see you again in the future~!