PART ONE: MIRROR, MIRROR
"There are two ways of spreading light:
to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it."
—Edith Wharton
Prologue: Quiet like The Moon
War... humanity is never free of it.
Blood has been spilled from the moment mankind first discovered the meaning of death... and the meaning of taking another life. Throughout the millennium, the human race has come up with new and destructive ways to destroy each other: from fists to swords... from swords, to guns... from guns, to explosives... and from explosives, to the atomic bomb, humans have fought against each other for millions of different reasons.
But in the end... we became too powerful.
On July 4th, 2015, one simple act of terrorism destroyed the entire North American Continent and created an atomic wasteland.
What remained after the fires of hell rained down on Earth was nothing but a husk of once-gleaming cities with little food and dying life. However, after the war is when the real fight began: medical researchers predicted that the radiation spreading throughout North America and South America would alter the genetic code of mankind forever... and in the coming years, that much was proven to be correct.
Natural Redheads and children with Albinism, who had slowly been going extinct due to the lack of mutated genes, were suddenly being born at an alarming rate to millions of survivors who were fighting to keep living. Children with deformities and learning impediments spiked so rapidly that twelve entire generations worth of humans could barely manage to survive in the wastelands. But even more noticeable than that was the fact that identical twins had become extinct, and in their place... mutated Siamese twins were born.
As the years began to pass, the husk of a once-proud civilization grew desolate, and yet more deformities began spreading among humanity.
Children were born with fangs... men and women developed strange and frighteningly dangerous abilities... and humans turned into what were soon commonly referred to as 'ghouls.' Ghouls were monstrosities who's bodies were long-dead, but their minds were still alive enough to keep the limbs animated. Due to flurries of neuron signals firing from the brain, ghouls were virtually unable to die normally.
And all of this had come from being exposed to the radiation of the wastes.
However, there was a place in this hellish nightmare that lay free from the horrors of the wastelands... a place that had been sealed up a few days before the war. Just outside the ruins of Washington D.C., there was a hidden bunker called Vault 101: it had been built to shelter the wealthier people from the initial atomic explosions, but in the end, it had remained sealed shut for more than two hundred years. It had become a place of safety and comfort: an oasis of life in a desert full of death and danger.
However, it was in that vault of life where the two of them were born... the first set of identical twins in nearly a hundred and fifty years.
These twins, who somehow held the key to restoring life within their genetic code, were born holding each other's hands.
Raven... the 'strong' one... and Lily... the 'weak' one.
Lily and Raven had been inseparable since before they'd been old enough to walk: hand in hand, they never left each other's sides even when being taught by the teacher. The twins had loved each other to a degree that even their father didn't fully understand... nobody understood the bond between them... the bond that had practically vanished after the war... the bond of twins.
In reality, Raven was the only person who could understand Lily better than she understood herself, and Lily's gentle presence was a necessary factor to keep Raven's chaotic mood-swings in check. They'd always balanced each other out, emotionally and mentally. The differences between them, however, stopped right there: if you were looking at them face to face, you wouldn't be able to tell which twin was the other at a first glance. They both had the same jet black hair, the same pale blue eyes, and the same snow-white skin.
In fact, nobody aside from their father and another girl living in the vault could tell the two of them apart... and her name was Amata.
She was the daughter of the man who ran everything going on inside the vault: the overseer. However, because their father, James, was the resident doctor... the twins had been playing with Amata since they were in diapers. It was true that there were other children in the Vault as well... but they had always steered clear of Amata and the twins, since their parents had fairly important jobs.
However, growing up, only one person had ever really been able to make Lily cry.
A boy named Butch DeLoria.
Lily was different from everyone around her, even her sister to a limited degree: unlike Raven, who was extremely emotional and could throw a tantrum one moment and bawl in sympathy the next, nothing really fazed her and she didn't feel anything for anyone but Amata, her father, and her sibling. A few weeks before the twins turned ten years old, however, that had all changed.
Butch and his two buddies had been picking on Amata for a really long time because of her father's duties, and even though Raven had gotten heated enough to suggest picking a fight with the boys, nobody but Lily actually planned on doing anything about it. She was normally a fairly quiet and reserved little girl, and she honestly would have preferred reading in her room over playing with the other children. Despite that, she'd disliked seeing Amata reduced to tears.
"It's not my fault," the dark-skinned girl had whined, rubbing her eyes. "I'm not my father. And it's not like I get any special treatment."
That day, Lily had knocked on Butch's metal door for the first time and waited until his mother, Beatrice, had opened it.
"Oh, hello Raven," she'd slurred, lifting her alcohol up with a grin. "You here to play with Butch?"
"Lily," she'd murmured, peering around the woman to see the boy glaring at her from the other side of the room. "I need to talk to you."
"What if I don't want to?" Butch had sneered, getting up and swaggering over with his chest puffed out; for someone who was only a year older, he was already pretty tall. Then again, Raven and Lily were both extremely tiny: their father had told them outright that they wouldn't ever get taller than four feet and nine inches at the maximum on their previous birthday. "What will you do, Dorkface?"
"I'll kiss you," Lily had stated flatly, making his nose wrinkle in disgust. "Right on the lips. So come on."
"Ew! Gross!" he'd squealed, instantly hurrying past his mother despite her hysterical giggles. "You'd better not try anything, nerd girl!"
"Be quiet," she'd retorted, walking down the metal halls and pushing a button to open the door to the kitchen. "Follow me."
"Just say it already!" Butch had snapped, folding his arms over his chest and glaring at her. "What do you want?"
I can't just sit back and do nothing after seeing that expression on Amata's face, Lily had told herself, swallowing and standing tall even though her entire body had started shaking like a leaf for some reason. I can't just walk away and leave things like this...
"I could care less about what you think of me since I don't like you... but... well, stop bullying Amata," the girl had stated coldly, looking up at him with fury in her startling blue eyes. "What you're doing is wrong. You can't be mean to people like that."
"Excuse me? Who do you think you are?" Butch had sneered, walking over to her and leaning close to her face. "Look, Dorkface, a nerd like you has no right to be talking to someone like me, so what makes you think you can just walk in here and start telling me what to do?"
"I'm just stating things how they are," Lily snapped, glaring up at him even though her knees were shaking. "What you're doing to Amata is wrong!"
"So what if it's wrong?" the boy laughed, grabbing her hair and tightening his fist in it; the girl winced when he jerked her head forward and pulled her face up close to his. "I do what I want, and that's the way it's gonna stay. I'm stronger than you are!"
As if to make a point, he used his grip on her hair to slam her against the wall. Then he grabbed the front of her shirt and drew back his little fist... and the next thing she knew, Lily was lying on the ground with a bloody nose. And like any rational little girl, she'd immediately burst into tears, and the adults had come running.
As a result of that event, however, Lily had gotten a black eye... and up until her tenth birthday, she'd been given the nickname 'nosebleed.'
Still, there had been a weird change in Butch's attitude after that incident: before, he'd harassed Amata and the twins without seeming the least bit guilty of his actions, but ever since the day he'd punched Lily in the face, he had become extremely quiet and only picked on Amata when Lily and Raven weren't around. However, it was during their tenth birthday party that Butch had gone back to his usual antagonistic self.
And honestly, Lily didn't blame him since it had been one of the worst birthdays ever.
The cake had accidentally been destroyed, all of the adults had acted extremely weird, and worst of all... Butch and his friends, Paul Hannon and Wally Mack, had teased the twins relentlessly over everything they'd received. Like she always did, Raven had simply ignored the boys and gone off without a care in the world, since Amata had given her a Grognak the Barbarian comic book: she'd been hoping for a date with Freddie Gomez, but she'd gotten something better instead, so Raven was happy.
Lily, on the other hand, had been given a sweet roll... and Butch had taken it from her.
That night, her father had given both twins a set of B.B. guns and had started teaching them how to shoot with a little help from Jonas Palmer, a medical technician who was studying under their father's guidance. After that, they'd had a picture taken... and Lily had gone off by herself to be alone. However, in spite of everything, the black-haired girl had been hurt by everything the boys had said about her. They'd called her ugly and said she was so pale and undersized that even the grossest boy in the vault would never like her.
And truthfully, she believed them.
The bullying didn't stop there, though... it continued clean on through the years, right up until the day that Lily and Raven were supposed to be taking their G.O.A.T. tests to see where they would be placed in the vault management group. By the time that day had rolled around, however, the twins had become undeniably beautiful and their looks had already drawn the attention of several people.
It was also then that some physical differences began taking place, although even today, nobody knows why.
Raven and Lily had always prided themselves on never cutting their hair even once in their lives: at thirteen, they'd both started using all of their required soap resources to maintain their tresses. Most girls kept their hair cropped short since having long hair was considered a nuisance, but to the twins, their hair served more purposes than not.
However, during their fifteenth year, Raven's hair had slowly started curling like their mother's... and by the time they'd turned sixteen, her ebony locks had become voluminously wavy; Lily, on the other hand, had acquired no change in her hair... it remained straight and sleek, like always. That was the first change that people saw, and it slowly became the known way of telling the twins apart: not the face... not the voice... not the attitude.
For a long while, the hair was the key: wavy versus straight.
Later on, Raven's body started developing further than the gene projector had anticipated: she'd grown a little taller than five feet, and her breasts had grown past the expected B-cup. On top of that, her personality had opened up and she'd become extremely cheerful: without even realizing it, Raven's existence in the vault had become similar to a miniature sun. After that, she'd easily started fitting in with the other teens. In the eyes of the older Vault Dwellers, Raven was flawless: a classic beauty.
Lily, on the other hand… well, her looks had become almost otherworldly, even though nobody had really noticed.
After Raven had bloomed into the open, most eyes had been on her rather than on Lily... so nobody really noticed that the younger twin's hair had become extremely fine and glossy to the point where it hung down to her thighs like a curtain of liquid satin. She was a very slender girl, and she hadn't developed a womanly figure like Raven, but there was a graceful type of allure about her that would have drawn a fair amount of attention had anybody noticed the changes. Raven was like the sun because of her looks and personality… but Lily was her polar opposite. She was like the moon: always hiding behind the sun, and doing nothing but reflecting its magnificent light.
On top of that, she was a lot grouchier than Raven since she'd been having terrible migraines ever since she'd turned thirteen years old.
In truth, it didn't really matter, especially since they weren't even close to being the prettiest girls in the vault.
Lily probably ranked last as far as her looks in general were concerned; although, because of her large chest, Raven had moved up and now ranked third.
Amata, surprisingly enough, was number one.
She was literally the most drop dead gorgeous teenager living in the vault: she had grown so beautiful after hitting puberty that every male turned their heads when she walked past. The girl had become alarmingly popular among all of the boys, and Wally had made it a personal goal to court her no matter what kind of effort it took. He usually hung out with Butch and Paul in an attempt to provoke the Hispanic girl into doing what he wanted.
Raven found it rather annoying, and she agonized over it with Amata whenever the trio was hanging out together... but Lily merely stayed out of arguments concerning the Tunnel Snakes. Mostly because Butch had been giving her some weird stares that had kind of scared her. Why he was looking at her rather than at her gorgeous sister, Lily had never really figured out, but... in truth, she didn't like it at all. His eyes had changed, somehow... and whenever he glanced at her, she felt as though he was checking her out.
A few months before her seventeenth birthday is when Lily's health took a bad turn: her migraines had started worsening.
She'd constantly talked to her father about them... after all, even on the day of the G.O.A.T. she'd gone to see him because her head had been killing her, but James had stated over and over again that there was nothing physically wrong with her. He'd even gone as far as doing a full-body examination only a month after the big test to see if there was something happening inside her. However, after the examination, he'd proclaimed it to be nothing more than exhaustion... and for a while, she'd believed him.
It was only five weeks later, however, that Lily discovered something frightening about herself.
That morning had started off like any other: wake up, get dressed in the jumpsuit, brush teeth, and brush hair.
However, that morning, the constant headache had suddenly increased... and increased... and increased... the pressure had built up so much that it had made Lily feel as though her head would explode. She'd started seeing black and red spots and her vision had gone pale with the agony, but just before she blacked out, she'd lifted her hand to open the mirror cabinet... and something inside her brain had twitched. Without warning, her mirror had quite literally exploded into a million pieces.
Lily had screamed and jumped away from the glass, but her fright had somehow caused the lights above her to flicker and go out.
That day, the vault had lost power for a total of four hours.
It was during that time that the girl slowly discovered that she had a dangerous talent: somehow, if she looked at something long enough and focused on it, the next time she moved her hand or her eyes... the object of her focus would move on its own and fly off in the direction she was looking. Lily didn't understand the ability at all, and in truth, the thought of being laughed at even more than she already was kind of terrified her.
That's why she'd kept it bottled up and refused to tell anyone, even her father, what was going on with her.
Nobody had known the cause for the power-outage, but Raven had instinctively suspected something when they'd been interrogated about the black-out later that afternoon. Especially since Lily had been forced to explain what had happened to her mirror: she'd told Officer Gomez that she'd gotten angry and thrown her bat across the room, and it had broken by accident. She'd been given a punishment, of course, but it was better than having them find out the truth.
After that day, she'd slowly started learning how to control the pressure inside her head.
And in turn, she'd eventually taught herself how to make things move without touching them.
It was an amazing gift... but it was her secret alone, and she'd refused to let anyone know about it, even her family. However, Lily didn't realize that her comfortable life was about to come to an end. After all, aside from what she'd seen, she didn't know her father as a person... she'd only seen him as her wonderfully amazing dad. Then came the day... that he and Raven disappeared from the vault: Lily, for whatever reason, had been left behind... and because of it, she had been forced to endure the chaos that had followed.
And this, my friends, is where our story truly begins.