My first Fallout 3 fic. Review, and don't be afraid to be harsh!


Jane wasn't the type to try and keep up appearances. She never had been. Back in the vault, her father had taught her to be herself, while the others, the teachers, the overseer, had taught her to fit in. Conformity. Don't stand out. Do what you're told. Listen to your elders. Stand up straight. Don't put your elbows on the table.

Jane, for the most part, had blocked them out. She didn't care what they thought. Why should she? They had been nothing but trouble for her. And the ones who cared about her, who loved her…well, they saw past her flaws and her not-so-accepted strengths. The way she slouched when she sat. The way she was constantly over-sleeping. The way she talked with her mouth full. The way she could aim at and shoot a radroach's head with deadly precision. The way she could win in a cursing contest and almost win in afist fight with Butch.

But there had only been a few people in the vault who she had cared about and who had cared back. Her dad being the first. He was the best dad ever, Jane was sure of that. It sounded childish, but it was the truth. The other fathers in the vault were second-rate at best. But her dad had always been there for her. He had always hugged her when she felt scared or sad, and he had always given her good advice when she felt lost or needed guidance. He had been there for her. Which she had always taken for granted.

There was Amata, too. She was bossy, but she had a good head on her shoulders. She had a sharp tongue and a quick wit. Despite the fact that her father, the overseer, was a complete asshole, she had been a good friend. Jonas, too. He was much older than her, but he always talked to her like an adult. When she had actually become one, around 17, he had seemed happier than anyone. He had hugged her and told her how proud he was of her. Jane had blushed and shrugged it off.

But out here it was different. Much different.

Jane cocked her shotgun and sent another blast towards the Super Mutant charging towards her. The blast hit him square in the face and he fell backwards with a grunt. Dogmeat fell back to her side and Jane took this as a hint. She quickly dodged out of the metro and made her way up the stairs and into the dimming light of the wasteland. She glanced around and sighed. Fucking finally, she had found the Mall. If it weren't for her Pipboy, she'd be royally screwed. Her leg felt broken as she limped along. Her head was killing her and she'd like nothing more than to sleep for a few hours. Maybe a few days.

She was about to put her gun away when there was a growling behind her. Jane turned and aimed a blast at a vicious looking dog, but Dogmeat got there first and tore the other canine to shreds. Jane praised him and they made their way deeper into the mall.

"Watch yourself, outsider." A Brotherhood of Steel Knight nodded at her as she passed. Good. At least there was some help out here. Jane glanced up at the sky. The sun was fading fast. Up head, she saw someone else standing along the ruined sidewalk. They were shorter than Jane, and as she got closer, she saw that their skin was ruined and flaking off.

"What's up, tourist?" The familiar sound of a ghoul voice echoed across the feet between them. She lit a cigarette.

"I'm not a tourist." Jane frowned.

The ghoul laughed. "Here you are, taking in the sights of our nation's great capitol, wandering the mall. You're a tourist."

Jane blinked. "Fair enough. Why are you just standing out here?" Although she did notice the woman had a gun on her back and looked like she could handle herself.

"I'm sentry to Underworld. My name's Willow." The shorter woman took a drag on her smoke. "You lookin' for a place to stay the night?"

"Yeah, actually. It gets freaking dark out here." Jane grinned.

"Well, the ghouls inside usually aren't too keen on humans, but they'll sell to you as long as your caps are good and you aren't a ghoul hater."

Jane gave her thanks and made her way up the steps to the museum. It wasn't the museum she was looking for, The Museum of Technology, but she needed a place to sleep before continuing on this crazy quest for Three Dog. She had been walking all day, and she surely she would have gone crazy by now if it hadn't been for Dogmeat.

Jane walked through the large skull and instantly knew she was in Ghoul City. They were all over the place. Instantly she was greeted by a man in a blue jumpsuit. He told her basically the same thing she had heard in every town she had been to. Shut up, keep her head down, cause trouble and she was dead. He informed her that most ghouls didn't like humans. The thought made her kind of sick. So many problems out there and most ghouls didn't like humans and vice versa. It was sad.

"Yes, sir." She replied. "I'm just looking for a place to spend the night. I'm not looking for trouble."

"Fair enough." The man nodded. "I'm Winthrop. I fix everything up around here. Speaking of which, I could use a hand with something..."

A few minutes later, Jane had managed to get enough ghouls to talk to her to know there was a shop run by a girl named Tulip, a hotel and eatery called Carol's Place (Carol…that sounded familiar) and a bar called The Ninth Circle.

Jane entered the shop first and spoke quickly with Tulip. She stocked up on Stimpacks and sold all the junk she had stuffed inside her bag. Dogmeat sat patiently by her heels.

"So what do you do with the money you make down here if you never leave?"

"Well," Tulip pulled out a box of chems for Jane to look through, "We can give them to Quinn so he can get stuff for us when he goes out, or we spend them at Carol's. Or Ninth Circle. But I don't like it there."

Jane set aside a few syringes of Med-X. "Why not?"

"Ahzrukhal- that's the guy who owns the place- he's…" Tulip glanced around and leaned forward, speaking in hushed tones, "He's not very nice. Slimy, if you ask me."

"Slimy bartender, eh?" Jane laid down caps for the Med-X and Stimpacks she had picked out. She recalled Moriarty in Megaton. "Doesn't sound out of the ordinary."

"I guess not." Tulip put away the box of chems. "But he's always trying to make people buy more booze, more chems. He wants them to get addicted so they'll buy more. Half the people in Underworld are addicted to something because of him."

Jane frowned. "That's not good. Hasn't anyone tried to put him in his place?"

"We can't." Tulip shrugged. "He has this bodyguard that always hangs out in the bar, Charon. Scary guy. Does anything Ahzrukhal says."

Jane wrapped up her conversation with Tulip. After selling everything, even after buying Stimpacks and ammo, she had around 1500 caps left. She limped upstairs and passed two double doors. A sign next to it said "The 9th Circle". The number had been painted on with red paint, and dripped down to looked somewhat like blood. She could hear talking and the familiar sound of the radio playing. She wandered past and around the rotunda until she came to "Carol's Place".

Jane stepped in and was greeted by a short ghoul with fragments of blonde-green hair.

"What is it- OH! Oh, hello. My goodness, you must think me so rude. This is Carol's Place, I'm Carol. It's not often we get a pretty young smoothskin such as yourself in here."

"Hi, Carol." Jane leaned on the counter. "You know, your name sounds so familiar. You wouldn't happen to know a Gob, would you?"

"Gob? Why yes, yes, of course!" Carol hastily explained that Gob was her adopted son, and he had worked with her for quite some time before heading off into the wastes to find a new life.

Jane was extremely hesitant to tell Gob's mother that he had been a slave and bought off by Moriarty and was currently working off a debt for the Irishman.

"He's working in a bar in Megaton." Jane smiled. She felt bad for lying, but it was at least a half-truth. Carol exclaimed her happiness for him, and then quickly told Jane that Gob shouldn't risk his neck traveling back. Jane felt glad that there was still love out there. Jane and Carol talked for a while longer. Jane introduced herself and how she knew Gob. It was no secret she was looking for her father, so she told her. She then bought a room for herself and Dogmeat.

Jane opened the stall door into her little room and quickly set her belongings down. She collapsed on the bed, tucking her gun underneath the sheets. She could do with a little sleep before checking out the rest of Underworld.

Indeed, it was different out here. She had never been taught about ghouls in school, how they were hideous, yet there were the ones like Carol whose inner beauty shone through their rotted skin. In the vault, they never told her about shooting a gun into another human's brain. The first time Jane had done so, in the abandoned and collapsing Springvale School, she had cried, then doubled over and vomited. The sound of her retching had attracted more raiders, and she had been forced to kill the rest.

Only after she had cleaned the place out did she have time to cry. She went back to Megaton and bought a room at Moriarty's. She had told Nova to leave her alone and she threw up and cried silently for what seemed like hours. She could still distinctly remember the sound of her bullet going into that first raider's gut. He had doubled over and screamed. She had shot him again, in the chest, and it made a hollow sounding thunk. Then he had fell and his skull had cracked hard against the marble floor. That's when she had lost her lunch.

Jane rolled onto her side to look at the wall. Dogmeat curled up at her feet. Never, back in the vault, had she been taught that there was life outside the vault. She knew there had been a war. It's like everyone assumed that the outside world was dead. No one was alive, why would they be after nuclear holocaust?

She had asked her father about it. What it was like. Who was out there, if they could ever go there. He had always said "We're born in the vault. We die in the vault." It had always disappointed Jane. She was anxious to go out there. To see. With only three friends, Jonas, Amata, and her father…well, it seemed dull. She wanted more. She wanted adventure.

But now she had no friends. Jonas was dead. Amata would never come with her, she was too stuck on the vault. But her father was out there, somewhere, and Jane had to find him. He…he was all she had left.

And Jane fell into a restless sleep.


End chapter 1. "Gui Zhen" is "Ghost Town" in Chinese. Seemed only fitting.

I'm nervous that maybe Jane will turn into a Mary Sue, so if anyone sees any Mary-Suish tendencies creeping in, be sure to let me know and I'll try to rewrite the chapter with less "Derp I'm perfect", although in game, your character pretty much is perfect if you distribute your stats and perks around well enough. But I want this story to be realistic. Obviously, in real life, if you shoot someone in the arm with a .32 pistol, their arm won't fly off in a bloody arch of death and they won't just drop dead afterwards. And if you shoot a Raider in the face, he's probably down for the count unless you just barely grazed his scalp or something. "Raider face Crippled" my ass.

Also I took some liberties with the conversations you have with people, as you can see with Willow and Tulip. I wish you could ask them more than what you can, and I wish you could make more comments on what they say to you. Like when Tulip says "Or 9th circle, but I don't like it there", you can't even ask her why! So I kind of changed things up a bit. I didn't want to be copying each conversation word for word, anyway, because that's just plain lazy.

Anyway, this story will switch between Jane and Charon's points of views, but will mostly stay in Charon's once he gets around to being in the story. Again, don't be afraid to be harsh in your review. :)