Fallout: Remnant

by The Snow Mage

The world has been torn asunder by the war to end all wars, the only survivors sheltered in Vaults beneath the surface of Remnant. Two hundred years later, seven old souls return to force a change upon the desecrated world, though not all seek the same change. Will the descendants of Team RWBY survive the trials to come, or will they be just another set of corpses?

1. Prologue

Hello, everyone. This chapter has been rewritten.

Odd way to introduce you, I know, but I figured it'd be an attention-grabber.

This story is a crossover between RWBY and Fallout, in a way that some of you have likely seen before. A cataclysmic war, set decades after the time of the show, sent the characters and their children into the Vaults, containment mechanisms designed to house hundreds of thousands of people, in total; more than two hundred years later, their descendants have been forced from their Vaults and into the ruinous Wasteland of the world. Some have only left quite recently while others have been outside for years, and still others were born outside the boundaries of the Vaults.

This prologue is about Summer Dream, a descendant of Ruby Rose. A mechanic and technician, she feels more at home with programming and machinery than she ever has with people, for reasons which will be made obvious shortly.

There were technically multiple reasons for my rewriting this, but they all pretty much boil down to "I don't like the way I did it the first time." At the moment, I'm planning to subject the existing chapters (chapters 1-10) to a rewrite, though I might exclude some of the later ones.

If you would like to skip this prologue, there will be a summary at the very end. However, if you're still reading this opening narration, why would you skip past the actual story? That seems a bit odd. Honestly, you probably should've stopped reading this AN by now. Stop. No, go read the story. Seriously. Why are you still reading this AN?

For future reference, if you would like to skip past the opening Author's Notes, skip to the first set of bolded X's.

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

"Hello, Overseer of Vault 4. This is Jaune Arc, co-founder and CCO of Vault-Technologies Incorporated... Do I really have to say that each time?... Okay, okay. So, uh... The Vault program is designed to protect people, Humans and Faunus alike, in the event of the worst-case scenario: large-scale deployment of largely classified weapons that have the potential to wreak long-term harm to the world, and the people on it. Not that there are any people not on the world, I mean. Our world, I mean... Sorry, uh, where was I?... Right, thank you. Vault 4 is one of the 'experimental' Vaults, denoting a difference in general living structure from-"

Summer Dream let out a tiny yelp as her earbud filled her ear with crackling static, jerking her head away in a startled reaction that tugged the offending device from her ear. She winced as she rubbed at her ear with her right hand, glaring at the much more complicated device the earbud had retracted into.

Her PIP-Boy, a Titan IV variant called a "Rose Model", was made from dyed red leather and a copper-like composite alloy that had stood the test of time; even most of its electronic components had weathered the centuries without needing replacement, despite some its prior owners having been less than precise in their maintenance of it (which Summer had been less than thrilled to discover nearly eight years ago, when she'd first received it on her thirteenth birthday). However, that wasn't to say that it was perfect; most of the older audio, image, and video files had been corrupted over time, especially the files that predated the PIP-Boy itself.

After glaring at the device for a moment longer, Summer sighed, closing her silver eyes as she slid the PIP-Boy's collapsible keyboard back into its housing. When she opened her eyes, the sight of her bangs, a black that seemed to glow red in the faint artificial light, frustrated her anew, and she rose, wincing at the cramp in her leg.

"I need a haircut," she mumbled, idly pulling at her jumpsuit as she started pacing in the small room. It was pale blue, lined with a dozen pockets, and marked twice with a large yellow 4, once on the left breast and once on the back; her belt, a worn length of brown leather, held half a dozen pouches made of the same blue cloth as her jumpsuit, and was more for carrying those pouches than holding up her pants. Despite not being its first owner, the jumpsuit fit her quite well, molding against her breasts and hips tightly enough to showcase them rather enticingly without being so tight as to be uncomfortable, though she'd needed to cut a hole in the jumpsuit's shirt just above where it was tucked into the trousers to let her canine tail out.

Summer glanced at her PIP-Boy and sighed again, forgetting all about how her hair was longer than she'd like. "Okay, restoration of corrupted files takes time," Summer muttered to herself, her tail swishing irritably as she paced. "You've done well so far, but need to keep at it. Touching up the old code was a good start, but... hmm... I need to borrow Myst's algorithm."

"To do what, Summer?"

The voice made Summer yelp and jump a full foot into the air, as did the sudden burst of light as her master turned the lights up, revealing the state of Summer's room. Though the desk she'd been working at was perfectly maintained and kept free of dust and debris, the rest of her room was not; books cluttered the floor on either side of her desk and the top of her dresser, which was missing most of one of its legs after Summer had decided to improvise a conductor and needed some extra metal (a few old, decommissioned textbooks that Summer had scavenged from the trash room served as its replacement), and her bed's sheets and pillows were scattered around the room so thoroughly that there wasn't an obvious explanation.

The man who'd appeared in her doorway most of a foot taller than Summer, though since she wasn't very tall herself, it wasn't much of a compliment. His hair was a shimmery blue, his eyes a much paler shade that people often mistook for grey, and his jumpsuit held a single adornment: a copper pin in the shape of a six-pronged gear, signifying him as the head of the maintenance team. His skin was dark, almost tanned, a stark contrast to his fellow vault dwellers like Summer, who were near-universally pale white.

"Myst," Summer said, her eyes still wide. She took a moment to compose herself, pushing away the fear that she always felt around him and forcing a tight smile onto her lips. "I-I just want to, to put some of the old... files on my PIP-Boy back together."

Myst's smile disappeared for a brief instant at the tremor in her voice before he put it back on and chuckled. "Those old audio logs? The ones your grandmother was obsessed with?" he asked, making Summer flinch and nod her head. "I thought those things were too far gone."

"I managed to get one... mostly," Summer said, tossing a brief glare at her PIP-Boy again. "But it turned back into static after a couple minutes."

Myst whistled appreciatively, making Summer look back up at him. "You restored multiple minutes of an audio file more than two hundred years old, Summer. That's impressive."

Summer smiled. "Th-thanks, boss. So, can I, uh, borrow that algorithm?"

Myst gave her a wide grin, only to frown and shake his head a moment later. "Not yet, at any rate. We've got work to do."

"Oh," Summer said, blinking. A familiar energy started flowing through her, almost like an adrenaline rush. "What's the job?"

"Something, or someone, messed with the food dispensers," Myst said, turning to head out through the door. Summer followed along behind him as he started off down a hallway, heading towards the stairwell leading to the third floor of the Vault. "You'll never guess what they're pumping out right now."

"So it's not food, then?" Summer asked dryly, making Myst chuckle.

"Nope. Not water, either," Myst said, flashing a smile over his shoulder at her before his expression turned grave. "They're popping out guns. Ammo, too."

"What?" Summer was bewildered by that answer; she'd expected that they'd just been shut down somehow. "How? Why?"

"No clue. Looks like some sort of code related problem, but we're going to be inspecting the dispensers to make sure it's not a mechanical problem."

"Why?" Summer asked as they rounded a corner, nearly bumping into one of the robotic security guards. She shuffled to the side as the humanoid robot halted in midstep, its faded blue plating shining in the artificial light as it waited for her to move first. Once she was past, it continued on its path, likely patrolling the halls as it routinely did.

"Because I've already got a program running, looking for any irregularities in the coding," Myst said, ignoring the robotic guard.

"Really?" Summer asked, her voice turning dry again. "That sounds like the idea I came up with last year. The one you said would take too long to make work."

"Yeah, because I wanted the credit for it," Myst said sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he flashed her another grin. "I told the Overseer that it was your idea, Summer. Don't worry; I'm not the sort of shitbird that'd steal something from his apprentice."

"Language," Summer said, almost offhandedly, as she met Myst's eyes with a glare. As he dropped her gaze and mumbled a halfhearted apology, she realized just what she'd done, and twin spikes of fear and pride shot through her.

"Huh?" Myst said, coming to a stop suddenly as someone darted out from a hallway in front of him. When the person stopped at his reaction and stared at him, he just sighed and asked, "Shouldn't you be in the infirmary, Layla?"

"Layla?" Summer asked, peering out from behind Myst to look at the girl in front of him. She was in her early teens, with long black hair, wide grey eyes, and a heart-shaped face; her jumpsuit fit rather loosely around her, for the most part, though it typically wound up snug around her chest whenever she stopped slouching. Of course, she was slouching now, but that was more due to the metal brace around her left leg. "Layla Rose, what are you doing?" Summer asked, anger born of worry blossoming in her as she stepped past her mentor to confront her still-recovering cousin.

Layla chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly. "Hiya, sis," Layla said, forcing a bit of extra cheer into her voice. "How's it going?"

"Terribly, now that I know you've been running through the halls with a broken leg!" Summer said, making Layla try to hide a flinch behind a grin. "Come on, I'm taking you back to the med-wing."

"But, Summer!" Layla whined as the older girl wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I hate it there! There's nothing to do!"

"You need rest, Layla," Summer said, starting the slow process of dragging her cousin back to the Vault's infirmary. "Otherwise, your leg won't ever heal and it'll be in pain for the rest of your life."

"But I'm sick of rest!" Layla complained, though she wasn't resisting Summer's attempts to move her; she was even making the effort to shuffle her injured leg. "I just want to do something!"

"Well," Myst chimed in, getting Summer and Layla to stop, "what we're doing is fairly important, you know, and we probably shouldn't take the time to take her back to the infirmary, Summer. It's probably for the best if we just take her along with us."

"What?" Summer asked, turning to look at her mentor. "Myst, she needs to rest, not work."

"She wouldn't be working," Myst said, smiling at the two young women. "She'd just be observing. Call it a preview of what'd be waiting for her in Maintenance, if she decides to join us." Summer sighed, which only made Myst's smile widen into a grin. "Well, little Rose? You want to come with us?"

"Can I? Please?" Layla asked, her eyes widening further.

"Yes, you may," Myst said, making Summer sigh again. "Now, come on. We've got a flight of stairs between us and the main cafeteria, so let's get a move on."

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

The main cafeteria of Vault 4 never failed to seem absurdly large to Summer. With a wide, sloped ceiling, and more than four hundred feet from one end to the other, the cafeteria was broken up by a series of tables and benches, as well as the two dozen concrete columns placed seemingly randomly throughout. Summer, just like every member of the Maintenance department, knew the secret to those pillars: they contained massive amounts of Dust, and were hooked up to various systems and subsystems throughout the Vault, providing power, heat, clean water, and fresh air to the entire Vault.

"Are you sure you're okay, Layla?" Summer asked, her cousin's arm over her shoulders to support her. The younger girl was panting, her face pale (even for a Vault dweller), and she was keeping as much weight as she could off her injured leg.

"I... I'll be fine," Layla said, blinking as she stared blankly at Summer. "I just... need a few minutes... I guess."

"Well, I guess I was wrong," Myst said, frowning at Layla as Summer helped her onto a bench. "Let's go over one or two dispensers, then take her back to the infirmary."

"Thank you," Summer said, exaggerating the words despite her obvious relief.

"Aw, really?" Layla asked, pouting at Summer. "Can't I stay? Please?"

"Well, assuming this really is a mechanical problem, fixing one will look the same as fixing the rest," Myst said, looking at the nearest food dispenser. It was a broad object, nearly four feet wide and set into the wall, that otherwise resembled a vending machine. "If not, though, we probably won't be able to fix this by going over the components, so we'd need to go to the SI access chamber, which is right next to the infirmary, so you'd end up there anyway."

"Damn it, really?" Layla asked, making Summer wince.

"Layla, language," Summer said, making Layla chuckle.

"I'll never understand why you hate swear words so much, Summer," Layla said. She kept chuckling, even as Summer's eye started twitching.

"Okay, that's enough of that," Myst said, snapping his fingers to draw his apprentice's attention. "Come on, Summer, let's get to work."

"Alright, boss," Summer said, giving her cousin one last worried glance before she went over to him.

"So, how should we start?" Myst asked with a smile.

"Determine the flaw exists," Summer said, pressing a button on the dispenser. Within seconds, a panel close to the machine's base opened, revealing a small firearm. Summer picked it up, set it to one side, and pressed the same button again once the panel had closed. Another few seconds later, there was another pistol sitting in the dispenser's tray. "Step two," Summer said, moving that pistol to the side as well, "examine the device to determine the cause of the flaw."

"And how would we do that?" Myst prompted.

"In this case, we'd need to compare the internal components against their blueprints to make sure that it hasn't been tampered with," Summer said, lifting her arm and waking her PIP-Boy. "If this isn't a mechanical problem, we won't find anything wrong," Summer added as she scrolled through her PIP-Boy's menus, finding the dispenser's schematics after a few moments. "Okay, there's an external access panel on the left side, but we'll need to pull it out from the wall first."

"All correct," Myst said, nodding his head. "Good so far. Let's see if you can actually do this, though."

Summer narrowed her eyes at her mentor. "You're not gonna help me with that?"

"Nope."

Summer sighed. "Looks like I'm gonna have to do this the slow way," she mumbled, pulling a small tool out from one of her jumpsuit's many pockets; her hands were shaking badly enough that she nearly dropped it, though she managed to make it look like an elaborate flourish instead. As she walked over to the dispenser's right side, the tool extended with several clicking sounds, forming a thin pry bar with a small hook at one end.

As Summer slid the pry bar through the slim space between the dispenser and the wall, Myst's PIP-Boy let out two shrill beeps that made her wince. "Ah, looks like that program I had running just finished," Myst said, sliding his fingers over his PIP-Boy's display, only to frown after a moment. "Hmm. That's odd."

"What's odd?" Summer and Layla asked simultaneously, sharing a glance.

"The diagnostic data packet's too large to transfer over the wireless network," Myst said, still frowning at his PIP-Boy. "That program shouldn't have been able to compile that much."

"So, you need to head to SI access?" Summer asked, starting to tug the dispenser out from its place.

"Yeah," Myst said, nodding his head again. "Looks like I'm taking you back to the infirmary after all, Layla." The young Rose whined, but that only made Myst cluck his tongue at her. "Come on, now," he said, sweeping her up in his arms. "You gonna be alright while I'm gone, Summer?" Myst asked.

"Yeah?" Summer said, her voice turning it into a question. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Just got a bad feeling, is all," Myst said, frowning as he glanced down at Layla. "Like there's too much weird sh-, I mean, stuff, going on at once."

"You older folk always say things like that," Layla said, rolling her eyes and stifling a giggle as Myst gave an exaggerated groan.

"Say that again and my back might give out, whippersnapper!" Myst exclaimed in a raspy voice.

Summer let out a sigh as the two of them left the room, the thick steel door sliding shut behind them. It took her a couple of slow, deep breaths to still her shaking hands, something that always happened whenever she was in the same room as Myst. Or any man, for that matter.

"He's not gonna try anything," Summer mumbled to herself as she slowly dragged out the dispenser. "No one is. Not ever again."

She paused, glancing down at the pair of pistols on the ground, then stooped down to pick one up. The familiar weight of worked steel, of the intricate mechanisms of a firearm, were an immediate comfort; she checked the safety and the magazine, and she let out a relieved sigh as she slipped the loaded 9mm pistol into an otherwise empty pocket in her jumpsuit.

Whichever way she looked at it, Summer just didn't feel right without a gun in her hand.

"Back to work," Summer chided herself, her silver eyes clear of wariness as she resumed her tugging on the pry bar.

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

Summer sighed as she wiped the sweat off her forehead, having finally shoved the dispenser back into place. The pile of guns had only grown over the half hour she'd been working, and had been joined by a smaller pile of loaded magazines for them, but she had succeeded; the canteen of chilled water she held was proof of that.

"Finally," Summer mumbled as she opened the canteen. "Needed to reroute power to trigger a complete hard reset, but I finished." Celebrating her success, one of her first as a member of the Maintenance department, Summer took a long drink, only to turn around mid-swallow at the sound of the door opening.

It was not Myst, as she'd expected, but one of the robotic security guards on patrol. Summer was about to turn away and ignore it, but her gaze stayed on it for a second longer as her instincts screamed that there was something wrong with it. When she realized what it was, she froze, the canteen slipping from her grip and hitting the floor with a muted whumpf.

"Intruder," the robot's synthetic voice said as it lifted the pair of rotating guns that had replaced its hands. "Identify yourself."

"S-Summer Dream, resid-resident number 0-1-2-8-4-6," Summer stammered out, trying to keep from shaking as she took a step backwards. "Wh-what's g-going on?"

"Error: unable to access resident database. Error: unable to access cessation of hostilities procedure. Judgement protocols activated. Crime: theft of Vault property by non-Vault personal. Verdict: Guilty. Punishment: Execution."

Summer let out a sound somewhere between a grunt and a whine, jumping behind a nearby table and taking cover behind it as the robot's guns started spinning, belching out a stream of bullets with a series of loud, hollow pops. Behind all the panic, some part of Summer's mind was grateful that Vault-Tec had decided to make the economically sound decision of outfitting their robotic security with the relatively low-caliber .223 rounds, instead of the higher caliber .308 rounds Ruby Rose had pushed for.

As she shook with fear, Summer's hand brushed against the pistol she'd taken earlier, and she drew it from her pocket in a hurry, calming down somewhat as she ran her thumb over the safety and made sure there was a round in the chamber.

A series of heavy clanks drew Summer's mind away from the pistol again, and she scrambled around the table as bullets started hammering into the floor next to her, flinging up shards of concrete that managed to score several small cuts on her.

Summer hissed in pain, and a sudden rage drowned out everything all other thoughts and emotions. Her breaths and heartbeat slowed, as did the robot's firing speed, as she made her decision, and she rose to a crouch, her pistol held firmly in both hands as she lined up its sight to the robot's "head". She fired twice, hitting right between the small circles of plated glass that housed its "eyes" and sending steel-jacketed rounds straight into the robot's secondary power source, a relatively unstable compilation of Lightning Dust.

Sparking yellow lines of electricity encircled the robot as the Dust exploded, sending it into wild convulsions and overloading its circuitry, disabling it completely. It fell to the ground with a loud thud that echoed around the cafeteria.

Her heartbeat pounding in her ears, Summer lowered the gun slowly, her hands perfectly still as she stared wide-eyed at the broken robot. After a long moment of silence, the wall-mounted intercom crackled to life, startled Summer enough to make her jump, a motion that sent a shock of pain up her leg; looking down, she saw that there were several small shards of concrete stuck in her calf and thigh.

"Everyone, this is Overseer Lyndon. Our security forces, the robots that many of you have become accustomed to, seem to have been reprogrammed. Get to areas free of the security forces; the armory and firing range are under our control, so get to us if you can."

"God's grace," Summer mumbled, swallowing nervously as she tugged out a shard of concrete from her leg and tossed it to the floor, where it joined the two she'd already removed. "Why?"

"If anyone is close to my office, there's a way you can shut down the robots: by accessing my terminal and selecting the Level 0 menu, you can disable all security systems in the Vault. My terminal's password is 'RUBY'. Please, if any of you can get there safely... we're all counting on you."

"Okay," Summer said breathlessly, letting out a whimper as she pulled another bit of concrete from her leg; her pant leg was slowly reddening as blood seeped from the multiple small wounds. "The Overseer's office is only one floor down, and..." Summer paused mid-sentence as she pulled out the last bit of concrete. "One floor down, and only... two or three hundred feet away from the staircase. I can get there within... three minutes, if I don't have to hide."

As she turned to leave, the piles of weapons and ammo caught Summer's eye. After a brief moment of consideration, she walked over to them and picked up a second pistol, as well as a half dozen spare magazines, all of which went into one of her belt's pouches. After another moment, she exchanged the pistol she'd already used for a fresh one, checking the magazine it was loaded with to make sure it was full.

"I might need to defend myself," Summer mumbled quietly, blushing faintly as she realized she was trying to justify her carrying a weapon around again. "This time for rea... oh, no." Summer's voice shook and her eyes widened. "Layla. I need to get to the infirmary."

With that, Summer took off for the stairs at a limping jog, her worry for her cousin making her grit her teeth against the pain in her leg.

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

"God's grace," Summer whimpered, staring at the hallway leading up to the infirmary. Blood marked the steel walls and rested in wide pools along the concrete; their origins lay haphazardly in the hallway, a mess of corpses that greened Summer's cheeks and made the young Faunus step carefully around them. "Why?"

As she slowly picked her way over the bodies, Summer tried to keep her eyes on the long hallways and open doorways around her, watching for any robots that could wander out looking for more people to kill. She'd already dealt with another two on her way there, and the echoing gunshots had made Summer realize her pistols weren't well suited to stealth; she'd run away from the robots she'd disabled, hoping to avoid any others that had heard and were on their way there.

Summer pressed her back up against the wall as she neared the infirmary door, swallowing nervously as she raised her pistol. She checked it to make sure the safety was off, then tapped her fingers against the door's control. As it slid open, the thick slab of metal drawn up into the ceiling, Summer glanced inside and flinched back behind her cover as she saw a humanoid figure. After a second, she realized that the figure she'd seen was too short to be one of the robotic servitors, and glanced inside again, this time for a long moment.

The person she saw was very short, not quite four feet tall, and had thinning white hair falling down to the small of his back. He wore a white coat over his jumpsuit, the broad yellow 4 emblazoned on it telling Summer that he was a doctor. He was mumbling under his breath as he grabbed a clear plastic bottle filled with red fluid from one of the many cabinets in the room, tucking it away into a backpack at his feet.

"Doctor Albus?" Summer asked, drawing a yelp from the short man. He whirled on his heels, his light blue eyes wide with startled fear until he saw Summer. "What's going on? Why are the robots attacking us?" The words left her in a panicked rush, the fear she'd been feeling reasserting itself now that there was someone who she knew outranked her in the Vault's hierarchy. Summer didn't know why she was asking him, though; she didn't think he'd know any more than she did.

The doctor grimaced, his already deep wrinkles growing further from the motion, and shook his head. "If I did, I wouldn't be in here, now would I?" he muttered darkly, turning back to the cabinet and pulling out another bottle, this one full of pills.

Summer stepped into the room, closing the door behind her, and asked, "What are you doing, Doctor?"

"Leaving," Albus said, glancing down at his PIP-Boy for a brief moment. There was pain in his eyes, as well as tired resignation. "I can't get to the Overseer's computer with legs like mine, and staying here is a death sentence. So, I'm leaving the Vault."

Summer's eyes widened, and she gaped at the man as he kept stuffing medicine into his backpack. "What are you talking about?"

"You saw the dead in the halls, didn't you?" Albus asked, chuckling darkly. "They are the least of them. Here," he added, pausing in his looting to pull up a display on his PIP-Boy, which he then tilted to show Summer. "This is a population counter for Vault 4," Albus said, making Summer's heart sink in her chest. "It only counts everyone who has a PIP-Boy monitoring their vital signs, but, well... you can see how well that's going, can't you?"

As Summer watched, the number on his PIP-Boy flickered, dropping from 105 to 96.

When Summer woke up this morning, there had been more than four thousand people living in Vault 4.

She swallowed at the lump that had formed in her throat, her hands shaking as Albus went back to pilfering supplies. "How?" Summer mumbled, shaking, her voice a dry croak. "Why? Why is this happening?"

"I hope to live long enough to find out," the doctor said, standing back up. "Here," he said, holding the bag up for her to take. "Go get your things, if you can. Our only shot is getting out of here, and you're likely to last longer than me."

Still stunned, Summer numbly took the backpack from him, holding it so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "I can't," she murmured, ducking her head. "I need... I need to find Layla," she said, resolve filling her voice with strength. Though her hands still shook slightly as she shrugged the backpack on, her silver eyes were as hard as steel. "Can your app help me find her?"

"Layla Rose, right?" Albus asked, receiving a nod from Summer. "I'm afraid not. She didn't have PIP-Boy, and this app only tracks people who have them."

"Then how about Myst, the Chief of Maintenance?" Summer asked. "He was the last person with her, and he was bringing her here, so if they never made it..." Summer trailed off, biting her lip.

"Let me check," the doctor said, lifting his arm and scrolling through menus on his PIP-Boy. After a moment, he frowned at his PIP-Boy and made a small, curious sound in his throat. "Myst is still alive?" he mumbled, glancing up at Summer. "Let me double check that... No, his PIP-Boy is saying that he's alive. His heartbeat is elevated, and he seems to have more adrenaline in his system than is natural, but he's alive."

"Can you tell me where?" Summer asked, her voice a breathless rush. Her heart was pounding in her chest at the mere thought that her cousin might have survived.

"Second floor dormitories, east wing. Looks like... either room 212 or 214. Map doesn't zoom in far enough," Albus grumbled under his breath, irritably slapping his PIP-Boy with two fingers.

"That's good enough for me," Summer said, biting her lip again. She closed her eyes, letting her worry wash out of her for a moment, firmly forcing herself to believe that her cousin was still alive, despite only having hope and no evidence.

"Well, that might be enough for you, but I need to get another backpack now," Albus said, walking past Summer to the door and tapping a finger against the console next to it.

The door slid upwards, but before the doctor had time to register what he was seeing, one of the servitor robot's sword-hands lanced through his chest, tearing a gasp from his throat. The other blade stabbed through his head a moment later, killing him.

Summer couldn't help but stare as the elderly man slumped backwards, his own weight dragging him off the robot's blades. She tore her eyes away from him, raised her gun, and fired twice, sending two bullets into the robot's secondary Dust reservoir and frying its systems.

As she ran out from the infirmary, heading towards the dormitories, Summer didn't notice the tears running down her cheeks.

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

The stench of blood had long since filled Summer's nose, to the point that she was starting to ignore it by habit rather than intent. The halls around the dormitories were covered in it, and held so many corpses that Summer had been forced to slow down to keep herself from tripping over them, a fact that she was not happy about.

Summer gagged as she opened the door to room 212; the sight of the dead children, having been killed around their parents who'd futilely tried to protect them, was starting to get to her. A pair of servitor robots were in the room, their heads and chests crushed by the sections of pipe and torn-off chair legs that the adults in the room had wielded before being gunned down.

Summer shut the door, her knuckles white from how hard she was gripping her pistol. She ran the fingers of her other hand over it, tracing over the curves and edges. After a moment, she started to calm down, her breathing slowing down as she pushed the sight from her mind.

"She's gotta be in there," Summer mumbled, glancing up and down the hallway as she took the few steps over to the other door. Room 214 was her room, where she'd lived ever since she turned twelve and her uncle had decided she was old enough to live on her own. "She has to be in there," she repeated, her hand starting to shake as she lifted it to door's control panel.

For a long moment, Summer just stood there, her hand shaking, her tail hanging limp behind her. Fear for what she might find, what the robots might have already done to her cousin, made her unable to just open the door and walk in. But then she took a long, deep breath, ran her thumb over her pistol's safety, and tapped the panel, making the door slide into the ceiling.

What she saw scared her, infuriated her, but most of all it confused her.

Layla was in Summer's room, alright: her hands and feet were bound to the bed's frame with rope, and her clothes were lying in the corner, tattered and discarded. She had several bruises that Summer hadn't seen a mere half hour ago, and her left leg was bulging obscenely, her broken leg having been jostled and misaligned at some point. When she saw Summer, her eyes widened and she started struggling, screaming into the gag that, Summer noted with horror, was made from her panties, not Layla's.

Myst was also in Summer's room, his shirt halfway off his body. When he saw Summer, he froze.

Then, a slow smile stretched across his lips.

"Hello, Summer," Myst said, tugging his shirt off in a lazy, sensual gesture. "How kind of you to join us."

"Myst?" Summer asked, her voice dry and cracking. She looked back at her cousin for a moment before she narrowed her eyes and glared at her mentor. "What in God's name are you doing? Shouldn't you be trying to stop the servitors?"

"There's no point," Myst said, and for a moment his brittle, lustful demeanor fell away, revealing the uproar of fear that lay just beneath the surface. "Those... they'll kill us before long," he said, closing his eyes for a moment as he steadied his breathing. "We might as well try to enjoy the last few minutes of our lives, while we still can."

"Not if you stopped the damned things by getting to the Overseer's terminal," Summer said, making an effort to keep herself from raising her voice.

"It's too late for that, Summer," Myst said tiredly, glancing at the still open doorway. "The odds of any of us getting out alive... we'd never make it." Myst took a long, slow breath, then raked his eyes over his apprentice's body. "You would've been my first choice, you know."

"Huh?" Summer asked, taking a step back as memories flashed through her, filling her nose and mouth with the scent and taste of blood.

Myst chuckled, shaking his head. "For my wife. Or lover, or whatever you'd like to be, as long as you were mine," Myst said, a flicker of something appearing in his eyes; with a shudder, Summer realized it was a particular madness, a lustful craze that she'd seen twice before, years ago. "Why do you think I pushed so hard for you to be my apprentice? I wanted you to be mine, Summer Dream, my beautiful wife."

Summer took another step back, swallowing nervously as she raised her pistol, pointing it at her mentor's head.

"I took a peek into the genealogy logs, Summer; we're far enough apart that we'd have been allowed to marry," Myst said wistfully. He sighed sadly, then took a step towards her, smiling at her. "If only we'd had more time."

"Step back," Summer said, her voice cracking as she backed up another two steps. "Let me and Layla go, and I won't have to shoot you."

"Shoot me?" Myst asked, chuckling again. He began to walk towards her, saying, "Summer, if you were going to-"

She squeezed the trigger, letting loose a raucous clap of sound as a bullet shot from her pistol and sank through Myst's eye, punching through his brain before bouncing off the back of his skull. He collapsed, his head landing on Summer's foot and making her jump back in fright.

Summer stood there shaking for a moment, the flashbacks overwhelming her, until Layla screamed into her gag again. The sound of her cousin in pain tore Summer from her own misery, and she ran to her side. "Are you okay?" Summer asked, her voice tight and watery as she pulled the pair of panties from Layla's mouth.

"N-no," Layla replied, her voice hoarse. She coughed, and Summer set to work untying the ropes that bound her. "He... he was go-going to... to..."

"Shh, it's okay, Layla," Summer said as soothingly as she could as her cousin started to cry. The deep, heaving sobs, born of fear and relief, bounded around the room and made Summer wince and bit her lip.

"Intruders: identify yourselves."

Summer stood up and whirled around in a smooth motion as the robotic voice clipped through the doorway, raising her gun and beginning to fire at the first robot she saw, two quick pops of noise that buried their rounds between the robot's camera-eyes, sending up a spray of sparking electricity that arched from it to the others, making them jerk slightly, their arms moving very slightly off course.

Unfortunately for her, there were three, and the one she'd chosen to take down first was the only one armed with blades instead of guns.

The arms of the other two, which ended in distended tubes with numerous holes, began revolving rapidly as the first robot fell to the ground. Summer's eyes widened as she hurriedly shifted her aim to the next robot and fired, but she was in too much of a hurry; she missed her first shot.

And then the robots opened fire.

Steel-jacketed tracer rounds filled the air with steady lines of heat as Summer fired again, this time managing to land a hit on the second servitor, piercing through a weak point in its chestplate and striking its cooling system, a fairly small source of Ice Dust that nonetheless burst spectacularly. The rapid expansion of ice chilled the metal with an audible groan that was only barely audible over the gunfire, and the robot's guns creaked to a halt, the barrels stuck in place due to the encroaching ice.

Summer moved on from the somewhat disabled robot to the one that was still firing in chattering bursts, only for her left shoulder to jerk as a bullet managed to find her. She grit her teeth, swallowed a scream before it could come out, and started firing, mostly with one hand; she used her left hand to brace her right, instinctively trying to reduce the amount of strain she could put on her shoulder.

Four spent 9mm rounds and one bullet grazing her thigh later, and Summer managed to hit the robot's secondary power supply and shut it down like the first one. It collapsed, and Summer sucked in a deep heaving breath as pain lanced through her shoulder and thigh, letting out a little squeak of pain.

Now that the battle was over, Summer's mind started working overdrive, trying to make up for the singular determination to take down her targets she'd had only a moment earlier. She mused that the only reason she'd survived the fight was because of the way she'd down the first one; if it hadn't reacted so explosively, likely as a result of an improperly sized Dust source or some other manufacturing defect, the others' aim wouldn't have been compromised, and she and her cousin would have been thoroughly ventilated.

Summer turned around, facing Layla with a weary smile on her lips, only to gasp in horror as she saw what had happened. Shattered concrete and metal covered the younger woman, dust coating multiple small cuts and bruises that she hadn't had only moments ago. But worst of all was what Summer saw when she looked further up her cousin's body, the instinctive reassurance of "You'll be okay," dying in her throat before she could even speak.

Layla's throat, much like Summer's thigh, had been gouged open by one of the robots' wild shots. Blood gushed out in an unrelenting torrent as she gagged, her lips already dyed red as it flowed into her windpipe and she coughed it up. Her grey eyes shone with fear and tears rolled down her cheeks as she twitched and spasmed on the bed.

"Oh, God, no," Summer mumbled, tears welling up in her own silver eyes as she went to Layla's side. She grasped the younger woman's hand in both of hers, holding on tightly, as if she believed that she could pull her cousin away from death's grasp by just holding on tightly enough. "Oh, Layla. I'm here. I'm with you, Layla."

Layla rolled her head onto its side, staring into Summer's eyes for a long moment. Then, she mouthed three simple words that made Summer's vision blur with tears.

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

Summer stumbled out of the Vault in shock, the massive, gear-shaped door slowly turning shut behind her. The stony cavern she found herself in was simple, almost unrefined, though there were a few steel beams and supports poking through here and there.

The past hour was all but a blur to her. She'd stayed by Layla's side for a long time, even after she'd died, before she made the dangerous trek to the Overseer's office. Shutting down the robotic servitors had been the easy part, even after one of them had shot apart the monitor of the terminal she'd been using.

Time rocked by in a flash, and before she knew it, Summer was working on restoring an old audio log again. In the back of her mind, Summer managed to not that she was in shock, that she was only working because it was practically the only thing she had left in the world, but the thoughts were distant. Fleeting. And the restoration took up all of her attention, until she finished.

She set it to play, collapsed onto her side, and curled up into a ball, her tail pressed in tight against her. Tears blurred her vision again as the now vaguely familiar voice began speaking, and she sobbed softly into her knees and thighs.

"Hello, Overseer of Vault 4. This is Jaune Arc, co-founder and CCO of Vault-Technologies Incorporated... Do I really have to say that each time?... Okay, okay. So, uh... The Vault program is designed to protect people, Humans and Faunus alike, in the event of the worst-case scenario: large-scale deployment of largely classified weapons that have the potential to wreak long-term harm to the world, and the people on it. Not that there are any people not on the world, I mean. Our world, I mean... Sorry, uh, where was I?... Right, thank you. Vault 4 is one of the 'experimental' Vaults, denoting a difference in general living structure from the other Vault programs. In this case, due to the presence of several hundred re-purposed Knight-class robots, thanks to the Atlas military and the Schnee Dust Company. The purpose of this experiment is to see if Humans and Faunus can coexist happily if neither species has a reason to enslave or belittle the other.

"I know what you're thinking. Given the recent events, this sort of thing seems a bit... off, considering how many people stopped caring about racial tensions recently. But, you see, well, this has happened in the past, and a lot of the events leading up to where we are now happened because of things like this. So, robot servants. Odd solution, I know, but, well, the CEO was rather insistent... Yes you were, Pyrrha, don't try to deny it.

"Anyway, the robots are tied into a non-sapient Artificial Intelligence taskmaster that is built into the Vault itself. There are hundreds of routers and repeaters being spread out, both within the walls and without, so that it would take either a prolonged and well-coordinated assault to turn them all off, or the press of a few keys on the Overseer's dedicated terminal or PIP-Boy."

At these words, Summer pressed her face even harder into her legs. She'd found the Overseer, Lyndon Harkness a few dozen feet away from his office... and his head and the upper third of his torso within it. The ragged tears along his wounds had told her that his body had been torn apart by gunfire, not blades, and the various holes in his head and shoulders made her numbed mind think that he'd been dragged the rest of the way before the robots had stopped firing.

"I know that you don't really want to give up your PIP-Boy, but we can't upgrade the hardware on it without breaking it completely, and it can't handle the firmware upgrade that it would need to manage the uplink to the terminal. I'm sorry, Summer. I know that losing your mom was hard on you; it was hard on all of us."

Summer blinked, shifting her body so that her Rose Model PIP-Boy was in front of her. "Huh?" she murmured thickly, confused.

"Ruby was one of the best people I've ever known, a real hero. If we had even twenty people like her, this war would've already been over, but there just isn't anyone like her.

"I'm sorry. I know you don't want to give up your PIP-Boy, but upgrading it to work with the system would make it lose everything that it holds. All of her. So, just... where both? For now? Until you have kids of your own to pass it down to. Assuming you want to have kids someday, I mean. I know I didn't."

The message ended, and then began repeating, so Summer closed the audio program. For moment, she tried to puzzle out what all of that had meant.

Then she curled up into a ball again, the sheer agony of losing everything tearing away her ability to think, to breathe, to do anything but feel miserable.

When she passed out, she didn't dream. There was only darkness waiting her.

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

I really like how this turned out. Compared to how it was originally, I mean. It makes Summer seem a bit more sympathetic, as opposed to how callous and (mildly) sociopathic she was in the original version, and this makes the rape elements of her backstory come less out of nowhere, too.

At the moment, this is the only part that's been rewritten so far, so some things later on might not match up with this until I manage to rewrite those chapters. Be patient: this only started like six or seven months after my last update to the story.

Yikes. I need to get back to work on this shit.

But for now, I must rest. I've got a knot in my back from sitting at my desk too long.

Until next time, everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this.

Oh, and before I forget: no, I don't write lemons. If I'm going to write porn, I'm damn well going to be paid for it, and I can't do that on this site. So, unless there's an incredible demand for it (i.e.: several hundred people going "yeah man, I'd give you money to let me slap the squirrel to something that came from your head"), you won't find me on trying to shill porn.