A/N: My older readers, I know you're waiting for my Mass Effect/Halo crossover, but I'm waiting for the other author to finish through on his part, so here's something I cooked up in the meantime. I decided to use the style from World War Z by Max Brooks(a very good book and author) to set up the tale of a journalist(or closest thing to it in the Wasteland) finding the information necessary to record the tales and actions of a Lone Wanderer. Enjoy. Oh, forgot, usual thing, all characters/places/*insert* are owned by Bethesda Softworks, and thanks for giving us Fallout 3
Vault 101, D.C Wasteland
[I am surprised to be allowed inside the near mythical Vault. Long known for their indifference to Wastelanders and isolationist policy, it is truly an uncommon occurrence. However, given recent events, Vault Dwellers have increasingly been trading and interacting with the greater Wasteland. As I am led by their guards, I notice that their weaponry and protection seem quaint and rather mediocre given what the Brotherhood and other entities have at their disposal. Their main line of defense is that massive door, which was created to survive the blast of a nuclear bomb. It is their only way in and out, their only line of defense. I finally meet the Overseer.]
We'll want to make this quick as we can, I have many responsibilities around here to attend to, and more bluntly, some of us are still distrustful of you Wastelanders. Yes, we are willing to trade with you as you can tell by some of the cases of Aqua Pura we have around here, which I view as a complete waste, we already have perfectly functioning water sanitizing chip, but some of us want to know what it's like on the outside, even if they aren't willing to go themselves. Even with this, it comes from generation after generation of isolationism that we prefer to be more... independent. So, how should this work, where do you want me to start?
Wherever you feel comfortable starting.
Alright then, well, might as well start from the beginning. Not the beginning, but what I guess you can call our childhood. Life was safer here than it was on the outside, but it didn't mean it wasn't without trouble. I guess we could both be considered outcasts. With my father being the Overseer, the other kids would decide to vent their frustrations against him on me. It was stupid. Just kids being idiotic. And the others just seemed to like ganging up on him. I guess they somehow knew he was different. I mean, none of us knew back then that he wasn't actually from the Vault. The old saying, now gone, "We are born in the Vault, we die in the Vault."
My father, with all the stress that comes as being the Overseer, didn't like James, his father. He was the doctor, I always remembered him as kind, really listening to what you said, protecting, and from what we now know, an idealist. I guess that's why he clashed against my father all the time. My father simply viewed such views as nonsense, better to live as the previous generations had than rock the vault.
Maybe it's a combination of all this, the tension between his father and the Overseer, that stupid Tunnel Snakes gang always trying to show their dominance over him, perhaps when everything went to hell that one day, that's why it became so… [She pauses]
If you're uncomfortable, we can...
No, I'm fine, it needs to be said. Just one day, James left the Vault. Don't know how he got the codes, how he got past security, but he did. The Overseer was outraged, paranoid of possibly losing control, and ordered the guards to find out how he had escaped, what he planned on doing. They... they killed Jonas, an assistant to James. That was what pushed me to action. I was able to steal a gun from my father, and tried to find him. James' son. My closest friend. Maybe I shouldn't have given him the gun, maybe it was all too much of a rush for him. Finding out Jonas was dead, his father missing, the Overseer was trying to find him. There was only one option: he had to follow his father. He had to leave the Vault.
And that is how he became the Lone Wanderer?
No, there's more. We split up. The entire place was going to hell. The guards were cracking down on anyone, and anything. The radroaches were coming from who knows where, there were just so many of them. We lost a lot of good people. Maybe some deserved it, but many others didn't. I know the Tunnel Snakes lost their leader, a punk named Butch. He'd always made the life of your Lone Wanderer hard. Perhaps the radroaches or the guards were the ones that got him. Or maybe he just said the wrong damn thing at the wrong damn time. I… I'm getting off track. What happened before he left though, well, the Overseer - my father - caught me, and decided to have some of his guards interrogate me. I tried pleading, I tried telling him it wasn't right to be doing this. One of the guards approached me with a baton and then… it happened so fast.
Sorry to interrupt, but what exactly happened?
I was getting to that. He arrived, your Lone Wanderer, and he... he shot the guard. He told me to run for it. I fled for my life. I shouldn't have left, I shouldn't have done it. If I'd been there, it could have been different, it didn't need to end like that. He... he killed the Overseer.
He killed your father?
Yes. Maybe it had needed to be done, maybe my father had made one more failed attempt to gain control. He tried to explain that he wished it had been different, that it was the only choice: I wouldn't hear it. I needed to get him away from me, away from our home. He had killed one of us, he had killed the Overseer... my father. I wasn't sorry at the time to see him run past the great door. Damnit it all, why did it have to go down like this. [There is silence as she stares down at her desk.]
Well, I'd like to thank you for your time. . .
That isn't all. After he left, went on all those journeys that made him famous to you Wastelanders, things continued to get worse. Allen Mack became Overseer after the events of that one day. I didn't think anything could be worse than what my father put us through that day. I was wrong. Some of us wanted to see real light for the first time, to travel into the open like your Lone Wanderer and his father had done. Overseer Mack wouldn't have any of it. He ruled with a tight-fist, and eventually it went to open civil war, with casualties between us and the guards. We'd been able to get a short-wave radio, I'm surprised it actually worked, and did the only thing we thought possible: sent out a distress beacon asking for someone, anyone, to help us.
And that is when the Lone Wanderer returned to Vault 101?
Yes. By then, the shock of my father's death was beginning to wear off: he had, after all, allowed his guards to interrogate me, and when your Lone Wanderer came, I didn't know what else they would have done to me. I don't want to know. But shortly after our emergency broadcast went out... The great door opened, and there he was. He was wearing some sort of green-colored combat armor, and had enough firepower to take on perhaps the pre-war United States military. It was like some sort of old reunion. Some of the Tunnel Snakes, they'd basically disbanded after Butch's death, were on our side, and were trying to make chit-chat with him. I could tell by his cold stare he remembered how they'd made his life growing up. He promised to me he would let us free, see the wastes...
How did Overseer Mack react to this?
How do you expect? Your Lone Wanderer... he tried to talk things out with Mack, make him realize that if we didn't start trading, didn't start increasing our numbers and integrating with the other settlements, we'd die out eventually. But Mack didn't buy the argument. I'm guessing he made the same mistake as my father, Butch, and many others: he tried to assert domination over your Lone Wanderer. And he ended up just like them, and that's why you're talking to me.
So, why didn't the Lone Wanderer stay at the Vault after that, help you repair any damage that had occurred?
It just... it just wasn't possible. You probably don't understand. He had killed two consecutive Overseers. He had killed guards loyal to those Overseers. He had killed some of us. Maybe it needed to be done. Maybe it was the only way possible. But, even if it was necessary, we couldn't forgive him. He was a hero... he was a friend... but he had to leave.