Note: Although I adore the game, I was disappointed with the lack of romantic/sexual content in Fallout 3 and so this series idea was born. This short first chapter contains a little violence and introduces my Lone Wanderer, Ava. The series is mainly a ROMANCE, with a few bits of humour and some severed heads thrown in :)
What Was Missing Part One
Ava stopped and nudged the body with her boot.
"Must be getting close," she mused. A deep, gruff voice sounded behind her.
"They looked afraid, like they were running away."
There was a choked cry behind them. Ava turned with pistol in hand. One shot, the wounded raider was dead.
"Raiders rarely run from anything, crazy bastards." A crooked smile formed on her lips, "Except from me, that is. But they never get far."
Charon holstered his shotgun, saying nothing. They continued as per the instructions given to her by the man they met sheltering in Arefu. His small settlement up north had been the target of raiders for weeks and now they had come in and brutally killed most of the settlers and taken his sister away with them back to their lair. The frightened man had begged Ava, pleaded with her to save his sister from this particularly vicious group of inhuman thugs.
Ava had accepted, of course. She always did the right thing and while she had her own, personal duties to complete, she would not turn down the chance to help someone in need. She was her father's daughter.
She and Charon poked their heads over the top of some large boulders.
"It's quiet," remarked Ava. She placed her hunting rifle over her back as she crawled closer to the huddled wooden shacks that had built up around an old diner.
"Be careful," said the rough voice behind her, but she always was. That's how she's survived so far.
Ava stopped still, they were close now but she couldn't hear anything. No cries of poor prisoners, no whoops of raiders as they tortured their victims. Something was definitely wrong.
She pulled out her pistol as they silently approached the buildings.
"Ava," said Charon. She had noticed it, too. A short way from a smouldering, burnt out car were two raiders, or at least enough pieces to make up two. In a doorway now she could see, lying in a pool of blood, another raider with a hole in his chest. Cautiously she stepped over him, pistol ready. It was dim inside the shack but she could make out the blood and gore splatter on the wall and the headless female raider slumped up against it.
There were similar scenes elsewhere, all with either gunshots or blast wounds from a grenade. The entire raider settlement had been wiped out. All the work had been done, it seemed. Ava looked to Charon. She wasn't quite disappointed, that wasn't the right word. But she did take a little secret pleasure in the incredulous looks on raiders' faces when they see a young, innocent looking woman approach them accompanied by a tall, mean ghoul, who then proceeds to blow their brains out.
Charon betrayed no emotion in his grotesque, peeling face. He had lost the ability to feel and express emotions a long time ago, but he was loyal and Ava knew he respected her for the good that she did.
"Not long ago, no more than a few hours," he stated.
She nodded and shrugged, then kicked at a lone severed leg.
"I hope whoever did this had the decency to free that man's sister."
In the diner they found several beds, many with dead people lying on them bound by the wrists and ankles. One in particular got her attention. It was a woman, wearing a dirty grey dress that was hitched up her legs some, and a long, deep gash opened up her chest and stomach in a bloody mess. It was the man's sister and she was long dead. Ava had seen worse, yet she choked back a gag at the sight. The poor woman had been gone at least a day.
"Let's go," she managed to squeeze out.
When they emerged outside Ava gulped at the air.
"Why? Why do they do this? They're people too, the raiders, aren't they? Why?"
Charon could offer no answers.
"They're sick, that's what they are," carried on Ava, "they're not human. They're animals, beasts!"
In anger she took a run and kicked a raider helmet, which happened to have a raider's head in it at the time. It flew a good few yards before thudding sickly into a shack wall.
"Come on," she sighed, "let's go break the news to the brother."