War. War never changes.

On August 6, 1945, a terrible new weapon was deployed for the first time against living, breathing humans. Incalculable amounts of energy were released in a single devastating blast, creating a searing inferno that scorched an entire city to the black, barren earth beneath. Thousands perished in an instant; the only memories of their existence, their shadows burned into the concrete, white as the bones of those long dead. Perhaps it was a gentle mercy that they died so quickly, for those that survived soon learned about the invisible poison that would plague them until their dying breath.

The destruction wrought upon the city of Hiroshima brought horror – and a morbid fascination – to all those who witnessed the power of the atomic bomb through film, photograph or memoir. The images of the once-bustling metropolis, reduced to piles of concrete as white as the bones of its dead, became indisputable proof of its might. Photographs of the mountains of charred and blackened corpses, irrefutable proof of its lethality. Every great power in the world could no longer ignore this message; that through the division and annihilation of the most insignificant parts of the universe, there exists a weapon that could bring entire nations to their knees at the push of a button.

A weapon of terror. A weapon of destruction. A weapon of annihilation.

Those that had created it believed that it was still possible to redeem it. To turn a force of annihilation to a force of creation. To harness the nearly-limitless energy of the sundered atom for the good of all mankind. Nuclear fission power plants emerged all throughout the known world, supplying colossal amounts of electricity to a power-hungry planet. Hundreds upon thousands of households, once dark and cold, were now lit with man-made light and kept warm by coils of heated copper.

Limitless power. Limitless possibilities. Limitless potential.

Mankind rejoiced in nuclear fission. The division of the atom brought about the unification of humanity. A common purpose, a common goal to which all could aspire to; to indulge and glory in the age of peace and prosperity that followed the terrible war. Devices once thought to exist only in the realm of fiction – personal robotic butlers, gardeners, security officers, hover cars, boats, handheld energy weapons – all came into being within several decades. The common housewife no longer needed to cook nor clean with a robotic butler; the common working man no longer needed to fear for the safety of his household with a robotic guard. All could travel in absolute comfort with the latest in hover-vehicles. All of them powered by the wondrous process of nuclear fission.

Unlimited prosperity. Unlimited wealth. Unlimited comfort.

All good things, however, must come to an end. Nuclear fission, as potent and ubiquitous as it was, could not provide for everything. Fossil fuels powered smaller devices that could not contain a nuclear reactor, owing to their size or weight. Mineral oil-based coolants were still required for a great many things. The dwindling supplies of fossil fuels raised alarm among the more learned of the world's citizens. Yet the warnings of the wise few were drowned by the outcry of the many, who were intoxicated to obliviousness by the many creature comforts that they had taken for granted.

Unending peace. Unending prosperity. Unending unity.

It was all an illusion. The prices of non-nuclear fuels rose to unprecedented new heights, as the world's reserves of fossil fuels finally ran dry. One by one, the prices of common commodities soared to unreasonable levels. Like addicts in withdrawal, humanity's masses suddenly found themselves enraged by the perceived deprivation of their supposed God-given right to every item ever produced by mankind. Riots raged in Portsmouth when local petrol stations could no longer supply petrol below a thousand pounds a litre. Protesters marched throughout the streets of Liverpool when their beloved Mr. Handy units could no longer be refuelled. Martial law was enacted throughout Great Britain, and military force was used to quell dissent when protesters would not peacefully disperse. More often than not, blood was spilled in the streets as increasing amounts of force was used to scatter increasingly displeased citizens.

April 2052. Public fury at rising prices of commodities could no longer be ignored by the governments of Europe. Citing the unfair rates that were being charged by the oil-rich states of the Middle East, the first of the many Resource Wars was declared by the European Commonwealth. An invasion of Saudi Arabia was soon launched, with millions dead on both sides. Arab nations rallied to the banner of the Saudis, seeing it as yet another encroachment of Western imperialism. The United Nations, powerless to find a diplomatic solution to their grievances, disbands as member nations depart one by one. The illusion of prosperity and of peace, of possibilities and potential, finally shattered to reveal the bleak reality of a planet unable to provide for its myriad children.

Brother fought against brother. Sister slew sister. Cousin feuded against cousin.

It was in this environment that one Amanda Rosalind Flynn, a prodigy among geneticists, found her calling. British scientists of the European Commonwealth, on hearing of the United States of America's research into producing supersoldiers, pressed her into service in order to produce their own. With a virtually limitless budget and the best hand-picked personnel that she could ever have, she took to the task like a fish to water. A deep underground facility – a Vault – was constructed for her use, deep beneath the tunnels of outer London. Dubbed Vault M-3, it was here that she conducted her greatest research. Her magnum opus; her crowning glory; her life's greatest achievement.

The refinement of life itself. Judging the Forced Evolutionary Virus as both too hazardous and too uncontrollable to be useful, she had decided to forge a new genetic template for humanity. Using her own egg cells and the sperm of an apparently untraceable donor in her team, she started her work in creating a new human capable of surviving the new, inhospitable world that they lived in. The genome of the embryos were purged of all hereditary diseases. Their muscle structure was optimised and made far stronger; their bones encoded to grow into organic ultrahard ceramo-metal structures capable of withstanding forces that would shatter ordinary bones to dust.

Had she more time, perhaps more could have been done; but under pressure from the military to push the schedule of her deliveries forward, she swept aside the hundreds of failed embryos into the facility's incinerator and began work on the first three complete prototypes. Her true daughters.

On July 31, 2063, her ten-year research project had finally borne fruit. Her three daughters – X-1, X-2 and X-3 – were lifted out of their biogel tanks. Weighing an astounding forty pounds each, the babies were christened Aveline, Orianna and Zoe by their mother. By the time they reached eleven, each of them had to wear steel-based boots to withstand their two hundred pound masses. Physical examinations by army physicians revealed that the girls had well and truly exceeded expectations. They could effortlessly lift weights heavier than a fully-grown adult, run for longer and recover from injuries far more quickly than they should. Only a slight issue remained; they were unable to swim or cross rivers, thanks to their density causing them to sink like lead bricks without the aid of flotation balloons.

Needless to say, the generals of the army were very pleased. Their inability to deal with water was an issue, but that was something that could be ignored as long as they were stationed well away from naval affairs.

In exchange for starting the process for thousands more of their clones, Amanda had been given custody of her initial three children and their exemption from mandatory military service, as was initially planned. Vault M-13 had been constructed with her specifications to provide a way for the military to generate an endless stream of supersoldiers for the British military. Consisting of tens of thousands of cloning tanks and numerous biogel synthesisers, it was a colossal facility that would ensure British tactical superiority in the years to come. Yet even she, as the person who specified its requirements, had been kept in the dark about where it was built. Evidence of Russian and Chinese spies infiltrating the British isles were becoming quite common as the Resource Wars heated up throughout the world, and security had become a prime concern among her superiors.

A year passed. Two years. Five years. Ten years. Eleven years. And still Amanda had not been called to start up the cloning tanks. She and her partner of twenty-five years, Lucille Isabelle Laurent, had lived quietly in Surrey while watching over their daughters. Vault M-3, though officially still a government-owned facility, had essentially become their own. The staff had been reduced to a skeleton crew, and many of the scientists had been removed to other facilities. In fact, there were often times that the vault was sealed with nobody inside, as the maintenance crew were moved to other locations. For this reason, both women had acquired their own Pip-Boy wrist computers from the Army quartermasters, in order to be able to open and seal the vault.

Imagine Amanda's surprise that when she rechecked Vault M-3's master records on her daughters' eleventh birthday that the sperm donor that she had used to create her three children had, in fact, not existed at all. There was no record of him – one Phineas Black – anywhere on the computer. Not on the daily roll-call records. Not on the leaving and entering log books. And definitely not on the list of scientists that she had requested to work under her.

Yet the fact of the matter remained that unless she had been hallucinating for the past twenty or so years, the sperm donor must have existed for Aveline, Orianna and Zoe to be born at all. One did not simply create life from nothing, after all. The more she thought about it, the more she thought something was horribly amiss; until her doorbell finally rang in the morning and a person gave her all the answers.

It was magic.

Honest-to-God magic.

If there was ever proof of it, it was in the self-proclaimed Professor McGonagall's deeds that day. Taking her, her partner, and her children to Charing Cross – halfway across London – in an instant, using something that could only be described as teleportation. Conjuring flowers from the tip of a fancy wooden stick, creating a living, breathing bird from nothing – it had all but shattered her perception that magic was an idle fantasy crafted by charlatans. With her daughters apparently possessing the same gift for magic, being genetic daughters of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. And she, as the de facto mother of Phineas Black's children, stood to inherit what was left in his vault in a magical bank.

Which happened to contain a small, cracked stone which exuded a liquid medicine that was nothing short of miraculous. A medicine which reversed aging, though very limited in quantity; the stone produced barely enough for a single person to maintain their youth. There was also small pile of gold within, which was just barely sufficient to pay for her daughters' tuition and equipment – and a sphere containing a most vivid vision of a seer's premonitions.

A vision of fire and brimstone. Of judgement delivered in searing flame and blinding light. Of an impartial executioner, divisible yet indivisible, invisible yet tangible. Of salvation in the shadows of a subterranean shelter while hellfire devoured all above. And of rebirth; the first sprouts of green emerging from the black ashes of the past.

Disturbed by the vivid images that she had seen, the geneticist wondered about her role in all this. Phineas had abstained from consuming the de-aging medicine in order to provide her and her partner with enough of it to last for some time. His final words suggested that she was to be some sort of leader in the dark age to come. Leading a team of scientists? That, she could do. Leading the rebirth of a nation, no matter how small? That was a truly daunting task, to say the least. But if Phineas had willingly sacrificed himself to give her a chance to do this, who was she to let such a sacrifice go to waste?

October 23, 2077. Four years had passed since the day she had discovered the prophecy. Four years since she had discovered the existence of a hidden society of magic-users, which her daughters were now part of.

The war in the Middle East had concluded with the European Commonwealth's victory over the Union of Arab States. Victory that was as bitter as the black, radioactive ash that now covered the deserts of Arabia. The Chancellor of the European Commonwealth had promised that oil shall flow once the Arabs had been defeated; yet in their hour of triumph, the nuclear exchange that ended the war had also decimated the oilfields and rendered them too irradiated to exploit. Not a single drop of black gold came of the millions of lives that had perished during the war.

Tensions ran high within the Commonwealth; France demanded reparations from Germany, which had blamed British incompetence in their apparent failure to capture the coveted oilfields. Spain and Italy outright revoked their own memberships of the union, citing their extreme displeasure with the state of affairs. Heated words were exchanged almost on a daily basis, with the looming threat of a catastrophic nuclear exchange apparent...

Trying to get her mind off the madness of the world's current state, Amanda walked down into the kitchen. She massaged her forehead through her messy copper locks, trying her best to suppress a pounding headache. It didn't help that the radio in the kitchen was warbling out some off-key tune from some ungodly street band that was popular; not that she knew them by name, of course. Music was simply a frivolous waste of time to her.

A pair of gentle arms wrapped around her waist from behind and she felt a gentle kiss on the nape of her neck. "Ma cherie, what seems to be ze matter?" purred Lucille, her partner of twenty-nine years.

Amanda slowly turned about to face her, giving her an appreciative peck on the cheek. Her partner of twenty-nine years had aged rather well, people would say; though they both knew it was mostly due to the miraculous elixir that had been gifted to them by Phineas Black that both of them had been spared the ravages of time. Her chocolate hair tumbled past her shoulders in gentle waves, framing a somewhat rounded face that was flecked by faint freckles. Her blue eyes sparkled with compassion as her fingers gently rubbed circles on the scientist's arm.

"Come now, you shouldn't frown so often. Is it ze news again?"

"Yes," sighed Amanda. "The war on the continent has gotten worse. French soldiers are marching on Berlin, just as British soldiers are marching on Paris. I fear things will only get worse from here,"

"Such doom and gloom. Where was ze confident and unshakable woman zat I fell in love with all zose years ago?" Lucille teased. She pulled back and walked over to the kitchen, putting a kettle on the stove. "Mon amour, do try to appear more cheerful. Ze children are still 'ere, as you 'ave asked of ze 'Igh Command. Zeir friends are also 'ere, and enjoying zemselves. It would not do to frighten zem with such a dark expression on your face, non?"

"I suppose so. A little bit of normalcy in these troubled times is better than nothing,"

A peal of raucous laughter came from the living room, and a slender blonde in an elegant silk robe burst out of it. A veritable storm of snowballs flew at her as she ducked for cover behind the kitchen counter, hands shielding her head as best she could as the icy projectiles rained down about her. On seeing Amanda and Lucille, her heart-shaped face bore the most piteous pleading expression that either of them had ever seen.

"Please, Miss Flynn – could you ask Zoe to stop pelting snowballs inside the house? It is utterly irresponsible and dangerous to do so," she asked. Her emerald-green eyes watered slightly as a tightly-packed snowball smacked her in the back of the head and burst into a white puff of snow. "Ow!"

"Of course, Daphne. And I have informed you that you may call me Amanda," she replied. "Zoe! You will cease that immediately, or you will clean the toilets for a month. Without magic,"

"Oh, come on, mum. It's only in good fun," complained Zoe as she poked her head out of the living room. Seeing her mother's narrowed eyes, however, she quickly snapped off a mock salute. "Fine, fine, geez, mother-in-chief, I'll stop throwing magic snowballs around,"

"See to it that you do, Zoe. And do be a bit more respectful. Goodness knows that you could learn a thing or two from your friend Daphne. Or Orianna,"

The red-haired girl rolled her eyes and popped back into the living room. Daphne smiled and nodded gratefully; she waved her wand and vanished the bits of snow that clung to her hair and robes, and with another smooth movement had them all dried out. "It never ceases to amaze me how convenient it is to do things like that with magic," said Amanda, chuckling quietly to herself. "That which we cannot do or understand looks remarkable, even if to another it may seem ordinary. How did you find your first night in a non-magical home, Daphne? I hope that you were able to sleep soundly,"

The blonde flushed slightly at some unknown memory and blanked out for a few seconds, but nodded fervently once she realised that her host was still waiting for an answer. Her green eyes shone with happiness. "It was certainly much better than I thought, Miss Flynn. The bed was far more comfortable than anything I've ever slept on in the magical world, and I find it incredible that Mug-sorry, non-magical people could record sound and moving pictures without the help of magic. Your cooking was wonderful as well,"

"My cooking?" Amanda smirked, "No, it's probably best that you did not have my cooking. I think the last time that Lucille was sick and unable to cook, none of us had anything other than reheated pork and beans. I believe Zoe's charming description was that my cooking was 'more poisonous than a whole box of Abraxo cleaner'. You were likely thinking of my wonderful partner's signature braised beef stew,"

"Oui. And it is truly flattering to think that you appreciate my cooking, Daphne. Would you like to sit down and have some warm chocolate milk?"

"I would love that, thank you," she replied, taking a seat on one of the barstools. Lucille poured each of them a steaming mug of the drink; the girl accepted hers gratefully. A couple of sips later, and Daphne was smiling as she savoured the delicious taste of real chocolate – and not the artificial simulations that were oh-so-common in the supermarkets. Scarcely a minute later, and the last of the chocolate had all but disappeared.

"That is delicious. Thank you," Daphne sighed contentedly, setting down her now-empty mug. "If I might ask, Miss Flynn, I couldn't help but notice that you keep a dittany plant on the end of the kitchen table. That's a magical plant, isn't it?"

Amanda raised an eyebrow, but smiled. "A sharp eye you have. Yes, it is a dittany plant, purchased from Diagon Alley's...herbology store. Come to think of it, the lady that was serving at the counter looks much like you,"

"If it was from the Greenmeadows Magical Shrubberies, that would be my mother. Wait, what use would you have for buying those?"

"Purely academic interest," Amanda replied cryptically. Judging by the girl's raised eyebrow, however, she did not believe that was the entire truth.

Perceptive, considering that most wizards simply didn't dig any deeper than appearances. In fact, it had been all too simple to masquerade as a witch in that Diagon Alley. A gaudy silver-trimmed robe with a hood to obscure her features, and not a single person even so much as questioned whether or not she was able to cast any magic.

"Hmm. If you say so,"

Before they could continue their discussion, however, the warbling on the radio suddenly cut out. A sharp buzz of static filled the air for a couple of seconds, before a slight cough came through.

"This is Jeremy Martin of Galaxy News Network. I...uh...reports have just come in from our news correspondents in San Fransisco. Bright flashes...and explosions..." the news reporter said shakily.

Amanda sat bolt upright and stared at the radio. "No. It can't be," she mouthed.

A few more moments of silence ensued before the reporter continued. "More information has just arrived. We have...we have confirmation from our colleagues in Washington. Confirmation of...of nuclear explosions. Oh god,"

A pregnant silence fell on the room as Amanda switched off the radio. Lucille had gone white, her hands trembling; Daphne looked completely nonplussed, not comprehending the danger that had just been mentioned. "ORIANNA! Get your sisters out of there, NOW!" Amanda shouted, "ZOE, AVELINE! Get your things! GO! NOW!"

"Amanda? What is happening?"

"What's happening, mum?"

"Mother-in-chief, what the hell's going on?"

Amanda laughed bitterly and held up her hand to silence the girls. "The Apocalypse. That is what it is,"

A/N:

Well, while playing Fallout 4, this idea came to me and stuck. I thought I might as well get it out while I'm idling and gathering inspiration for my other stories. This is a spinoff of my other story, Synthesis, recycling characters and established characterisations. Dates have been shifted to match the canon timeline of Fallout's Great War as best as possible. Assuming that the nukes landed on the west coast of America at 9:42am, and the east coast by 9:47am, this would put the current time in Britain to be 2:47pm. What a barbaric way to end the world, destroying it just before tea time in London :C

Will the magical world survive the incoming nuclear firestorm? Find out in the next installment of Genesis!

-ArcturusWolf