I was still alive when I woke up so that was a plus. It was the early hours of the morning and some more food was passed around. I was rather thirsty having gone through the water they had given me. But the ghouls refused to let me drink anything they had and sent me off with Ken to somewhere called 'underworld'.
It seemed Ken was the conversationalist sort despite it sounding like every word he spoke was painful. I asked about the local settlements and he chatted lightly about a large ship to the south converted into a fortified city and a trading hub to the north. The more we spoke the more entrenched the current system of anarchy that had befallen America became.
There was no government. There were no reconstruction efforts. There were just some fortified settlements with armed trading caravans roaming between them. That meant the bombs had fallen longer ago then I had thought. Enough time for things to deteriorate to this level and for people to have gotten used to it.
I did learn something very important however. It seemed that despite the phobia of ghouls there were still traders who made there way here from time to time. That trade and commerce were overcoming such petty divisions did warm my heart somewhat.
From Ken's description of underworld, it was clear it was not somewhere I wanted to stay for very long. I would have to find an excuse to join a trade caravan somewhere more populated and then work out a way to secure resources for myself.
Entering the Museum of history that had been converted into the ghoul's settlement it looked far worse than I thought. There was debris everywhere. Waste and rubble had been piled up against the walls but no more effort than that had been made to make the building more liveable. There was not even anyone in the atrium. We moved past damaged dinosaur bones that I desperately hoped were fake display models and not actual irreplicable artifacts of history and into underworld itself.
It was a bustling place if shockingly quiet. Ghouls shuffled about from place to place with a pitiful downtrodden look. This part of the museum had been converted into a main square of sorts. It had two floors with rooms running along both sides that had been converted into storefronts. Likely the deeper sections of the settlement were the residential areas. There looked to be almost one hundred people milling about the place and I was certainly getting a fair share of odd looks.
"Come on. Let's go see Tulip." He started to walk towards one of the rooms, this one had a wooden wall built with a door and had the words 'Underworld Outfitters' written on a repurposed exhibit signpost.
"Oh Ken, how are you doing." The omnipresent ghoul smoker voice reached my ears the moment the pair of us slipped into the shop.
"Hey Tulip, I am okay. I was hoping you could take a look at her clothes." Ken replied referring to me.
"Oh... a human girl... well, hello. Welcome to Underworld Outfitters! It's... it's been so long since I had a customer!" She had finally noticed me as I looked around the store. Despite her confession that this was an unpopular place it was somewhat well maintained. The stock was kept clean and well presented. There was none of the rubbish and rubble that was omnipresent in the rest of underworld. I gave her a slight smile and a wave.
"Thank you for your time." I offered since I definitely did not have any money to reimburse her.
"No problem. I don't have much to do right now. Hello there little one. It looks like you have had a rough time. Why don't you come and sit over here and I will lock up to give us some privacy?" She nods to Ken who gave me a smile on his way out.
Honestly my flight suit was an utter mess so watching Tulip kneel behind her counter before pulling up what looked to be a few sweet tins filled with sewing equipment was welcome. I did not have any money on me but I was confident I could work something out if she decided to press the matter.
Emptying my pockets onto the clear counter. A solder needs many things to keep themselves operating effectively and my collection amassed quite the pile. I did not miss Tulip glancing over to see what treasures I had 'collected'. One thing I would not miss were the small rifle magazines and spare 8mm mouser rounds.
Before my second life my knowledge of firearms was confined to the odd movie and I had no idea just how popular the round was in America. I might be able to trade them for some spending money however. This was a shop after all and Tulip did have more then a few firearms and boxes of ammo on the shelves. My sense of modesty had been eroded by war and I quickly stripped down to the thermal leggings and vest. Folding up the flight suit and setting it on the counter.
"I would offer you something but I don't think I have anything in your size." Tulip commented as she picked up the flight suit and looked over it for a moment before beginning to sew and patch sections with expert ease.
"Thank you for helping me, I can trade some things." I nodded at my pile earning a soft laugh from the ghoul.
"Don't worry about it, consider it a welcome to Underworld present." Charity then, I was willing to accept that. I did however need to trade later on when I had a clear idea of what equipment I would need.
We settled into some light conversation. It turned out that Underworld was situated in an exhibit on the book paradise lost. I was reasonably sure I had read it in my last life but trying to remember anything meaningful about it was not bringing anything to mind. Tulip offered me a copy of the book considering she had plenty of copies in the back that no one was interested in.
I accepted mostly as a means to help develop my English. I was under no illusions that my accent was not terrible and I did not want to embarrass myself when I came across a particularly hard word.
"You don't get a lot of customers?" I asked looking over the stitching in the flight suit. It was honestly impressive work.
"No, not really. To tell you the truth everyone around here who wants a gun already has one. I sell ammo now and then but we try not to use it all that often if we can help it."
"I imagine the stigma does not help."
"Well, I just like keeping to myself anyway. We do get traders every now and then after all but we are just a stop off between Rivet city and Canterbury. Even then the city is becoming more dangerous lately and a lot of caravans have been raided."
"It's getting that bad?" I asked slipping into my repaired outfit.
"Getting an idea of the big picture is hard when you are stuck here. But I try to chat to every smoothskin that comes around and give them fair deals. It seems that a lot of raiders in the west have been pushing east into the city and disrupting trade." She blinked and smiled as if she remembered she was talking to someone who looked like a twelve-year-old. "You are a very smart young woman, aren't you? I have not had a lovely conversation like this in a while. Thanks for putting up with an old ghoul like me."
"Thank you. How much are these worth?" I had put all my things back into the appropriate pocket while keeping out the empty rifle magazines and remaining 8mm mouser rounds.
"Let me see." She picked up a magnifying glass and picked up one of the rounds. "I have not seen this kind of round in a while." She muttered. As I expected, in a chaotic world like this exotic ammunition must have a very low value compared to more common utility ammunition. "I can give you two caps for each round and five for each magazine." Now I just had to work out how much a 'cap' was worth.
"Do you have nine millimeter pistol rounds? The same ones as these." I pulled out one of my pistol magazines and showed her the bullets.
"Oh, I have plenty of these, I think they make them over at Megaton. They always come in from Harith going down to Rivet city." She pulled up a well-worn green ammo box and pulled off the top to display what must have been hundreds of the small pistol calibre. It turned out that caps as a denomination was actually reasonably valuable as I was able to trade a dozen exotic rounds and four magazines for over one hundred nine millimeter bullets and some more pistol magazines.
Filling an old cardboard box repaired with duct tape with the bullets so they would not shake about in my pocket took longer than I expected and I settled on evening out the loose ammo over several pockets. I did have to question the sanity of a world where a child could buy several hundred rounds of ammo without any background checks. With the only comment from the kindly old lady running the store was 'mind the safety now dear'.
Caps it turned out, were bottlecaps. I had been very disappointed but all currencies rely upon people trusting in its value. If bottlecaps were shown to be a functional currency I just had to accept it and work out a way to replace them later. Hopefully as fast as I could to prevent the inevitable economic disaster that they would no doubt bring.
Apparently bottlecaps were backed by purified water with Megaton, Tenpenny tower and Rivet city agreeing that twenty bottlecaps was worth five hundred millilitres of purified water. Considering the constant need for water and that most bodies of water were contaminated this made the practice make some sense even if it painted a bleak picture of the quality of life in this world.
That also meant that while the twenty bottlecaps price was fixed in the main settlements of the area I had no doubt the price would be driven up for water transported to satellite settlements. Considering that I needed a large amount of pure water to survive I also had a dog in the race. I decided that securing a place in these settlements was a top priority.
I inquired about when the next trade caravan would arrive and found out that it would actually be any day now. It seemed that after being thrown haphazardly into a nuclear apocalypse by a pretender god I had filled up my bad luck quota and was due some positive karma.
It seemed that Ken and Tulip were content to spoil me, paying for food and pure water that was worth upwards of a hundred caps over the few days I spent in Underworld. I did my best to remain useful and gather important information about the world I was trapped within that included the worst possible piece of information.
The date.
The exact year was unimportant. What was important was that I witnessing the decay of a society that had remained stagnantly chaotic for almost two hundred years! I had expected things to be this bad a few decades after a nuclear war but for centuries to pass and a region ostensibly rich in things to salvage to remain so backwards beggared belief.
It was 2275 and everything was a mess. The first thing that clued me in was the floating robot casually drifting past me and the amused looks from the ghouls as I stared at it in open mouthed shock. Like any good Japanese child, I had loved the idea of robots especially the sci fi giant fighting kind.
This was less of that but it was still very impressive. It turned out Willow, the lookout I met on the first day in this world. Had a laser rifle, when a kindly ghoul tried to explain how it worked, I got a bit of a headache. I had no idea what a variable refractive fibre diode was and I suspected that this world's magic was just technobabble.
All the robots and lasers in the world did not make up for a lack of basic infrastructure and coffee. If X had came down from the sky and asked me if I wanted to go back to world war with wizards I would do so in a heartbeat. At least the food was occasionally good.
Here my diet consisted of grilled mole rat, onions and a tin of chopped carrots. Underworld did not have a budding agricultural sector but it did have an onion farm on the roof. Apparently, onions did not need direct sunlight and were very good at re sprouting.
The food ghouls mostly ate I learned had a high degree of radiation poisoning. Safe for a smoothskin like me apparently but it would build up and could lead to long term problems. The tin of chopped carrots was from Rivet city. Apparently, they had a hydroponics laboratory and supplied the local area with fruits and vegetables.
The more I learned about the economy the more it became clear how fragile and small scale it was. There was clearly wealth here to be exploited but radiation, raiders and mutant monsters made that difficult.
Mutant monsters? Well, I learned that there were giant bears, super packs of wild dogs and something called a 'Deathclaw' that sounded like some dinosaur when it was described to me. All of this including the lack of food from the soil being unable to sustain most crops and the lack of pure water meant that people tended to have a high mortality.
Not to mention the 'super mutants'. Some kind of science experiment to the west that was near constantly raiding caravans and settlements and was slowly pushing eastward. Giant green musclebound savages that enjoyed killing. It was typical that the Americans would create something like that.
It also turned out that being melted by radiation sometimes made you immortal. Magic was definitely real here and not just because I could call upon it to strengthen my body to help moving crates of scrap metal and the like while trying to make myself useful to the ghouls in Underworld.
These people were all centuries old and had lived in the world before the bombs fell! That made it even worse! They had a point of reference to a better quality of life, they had skills and knowledge of the social environment that provided that life and they still did nothing but survive in the day to day.
I never made my frustrations public but it was always frustrating to know people had capabilities they did not take advantage of. I played the part of a quiet young women to the best of my ability. While I did not expect to come back it never hurt to be polite. I did not know what the future could bring and having a settlement that regarded me somewhat positively was a boon.
I was sat on a stone wall overlooking what was the national sculpture garden but was now little more then rubble with paradise lost in my hands when movement caught my eye. From my position on the roof of the museum I had a commanding view of the surrounding area and the convoy of men and what looked like cattle instantly caught my eye.
Just shy of a dozen people the trading caravan looked quite well armed with the people taking up the front and rear carrying some kind of riot equipment. I hopped off the wall and fed a little bit of magic into my boot to make my landing utterly silent and trotted off down to Underworld.
There were parts of the museum I was restricted form at first, they had been cagey with the reasons why but after some prodding, they explained that becoming a ghoul had a chance to leave you a mindless and aggressive to anyone who was not a ghoul. The way they were described sounded a lot like zombies. I was more then a little uncomfortable to discover that I had been sleeping in a building with hundreds of crazy ghouls in the west wing and basement.
All the more reason to move on from Underworld. As I went to the common female dorms to collect my few possessions from a footlocker, I got cheery greetings from the ghouls that I was quick to return. In the few days I had been here I had generated a reputation as a polite and helpful young woman and I was not going to do anything to tarnish that reputation.
The traders it seemed were happy to keep a distance from the ghouls as both parties carried over things they were willing to trade and began negotiations. My appearance had garnered no small amount of attention and the lead trader quickly inquired about me giving me the opening to make my case.
I informed him I wanted to travel with them to Canterbury commons. This group having come from Rivet city and on there way north. He asked about where I came from and who my parents were and I gave him an answer that would not raise too much suspicion. I did not know where I lived before and my parents were dead.
I was apparently young enough that my lack of knowledge of the world could be attributed to an inattentive guardian. There were apparently thousands of scavengers living lives in the city in the day to day with very little contact with each other and the occasional small settlement.
The city itself was known as a save haven away from wild animals and radiation storms but was plagued with raiders and extensive damage that made navigation difficult. Wolfgang, the trader who funded the caravan, asked what supplies I had. I had expected this, in an anarchy simply giving away supplies and food was a terrible idea. Even more so when you were a trade caravan. Wolfgang had likely planned for only the supplies the people in his employ needed and the rest was slated to generate a profit. If I upset that then taking me along with him would not be viable.
Thankfully I had anticipated this and had put in work to acquire enough pure water, caps and preserved food to last me a few days. If I could find a source of pure water, I could stretch that out far longer. Earning the money had been a bit too easy. It seems that ghouls were quite willing to dote on a cute child that I resembled and I was not so prideful to avoid taking advantage of my appearance.
I eagerly presented my case informing him that I knew how to operate a firearm and had supplies. I was willing to aid in the defence of his caravan in return for allowing me to accompany him to my destination. I did not even need payment.
"You are just cute as a button aint'cha!" One of the guards, a black woman with what looked like a pump action shotgun behind Wolfgang spoke up with a big smile. "Can we keep her boss? Fierce little thing like that." I did my best to avoid an eyetwitch.
"Now listen here Tanya. It ain't all that safe. If you come along with us you gotta do exactly what I say or you could get all of us into trouble." He looked down at me with a serious expression and I gave him a calm smile.
"I understand sir. You won't have to worry about me." He took a moment more to look into my eyes before he relented.
"Well then you can come along kid Stick close to Joy and don't wander off on your own." Joy turned out to be the women who thought I was 'cute as a button' and seemed desperate to try to live up to her name.
The next few hours were filled with tearful goodbyes. At least it would if the ghouls could cry, it turned out many of them had dried tear ducts and yet somehow still retained eyesight. Tulip came out to wrap me in a big hug and begged me to come and see her whenever I could make the trip safely. Even burrows came out despite not having spoken much to him since we met and passed a small bag of bottlecaps to me with a quiet nod.
I thanked him for the very generous gift. It honestly felt overblown considering I had only known these people for less then a week but then I supposed they did not meet many new people who were friendly to them. Eventually I had to move on with the trade caravan, with the sun high in the perpetually cloudy sky the caravan was expected to make good time to the first stop before darkness.
Walking was a very repetitive task that you could do without thinking about it all that much. Humans were persistence predators geared towards efficiency in how we travelled and used our environments but even a human would quickly become exhausted when traveling over rough urban terrain that necessitated clambering over concreate and at times dragging twin headed cattle over the same unsteady ground.
I still did not know if the twin heads were just how cows were in this world or if it was some magical mutation. I had learned at this point to just roll with the punches and pretend nothing phased me. I was of course not expected to help pull the cattle up places they did not want to go but that did not prevent me from walking a long, convoluted trip that had left everyone else exhausted.
"Used to wandering in the ruins huh kid?" Joy commented as she leaned against a slanted wall to catch her breath. Her armour and backpack were so heavy that she did not trust herself to sit down fully.
"Something like that." I said with a smile. In reality I had been working through several spell formulae to strengthen my body rejuvenate my muscles. Necessary to avoid drinking too much water considering how precious it was. I honestly felt like I could walk forever.
Normally a complex spell formula was near impossible to cast without the support of a computation or operations orb. But with the trance like nature of walking I could slowly focus my mind on creating the necessary formula over a long period of time.
That meant that the spell was near useless when I started walking and was full of energy but became more efficient the longer, I spent focusing on it and fixing the millions of little mistakes. I could have used my computation orb. I did spend some time fixing it up somewhat with little to show for it. But the device was able to hold a spell.
However, like any mechanical device in use it would require maintenance and could break down. I wanted to begin working on some kind of replacement orb before I would use this one in anything other than an emergency.
Before too long Wolfgang whipped the caravan back into motion towards the first stop. Things were going well apparently and we were well ahead of time. The sky turning red as everyone turned on flash lights to eat into the long shadows cast in the dead city. There were people we passed now and then. Signs of occupation in windows or piles of refuse outside of buildings.
But despite that there was a sense of isolation that was made all the more opinion for the rare signs of life. This was a city that, according to Tulip. Had housed millions of people in a sprawling metropolis. Now it was a graveyard with a few squatters. This was the true depth of war. The horror of war that could scorch the earth and leave ruin for centuries. Perhaps this city would never recover.
What a waste of resources.
We reached our first stop and it turned out it was a multi-story concreate car park that had been reinforced with scrap metal walls on the bottom floor. Likely from the cars that would have been inside when the bombs dropped.
When I learned that the belligerent in the war had been Communist China, I had gone on a bit of a tirade. Tulip at least understood my reasonable hate for communists. She had more reason to hate them then I did considering the damn commies had destroyed her life.
The car park fort opened up as we approached and we filed in greeted by a man with a beard that reached his belly and a small horde of children. I already knew I was going to hate it here. Caps exchanged hands and soon after bedrolls and bowls of soup were brought down. There did not seem to be much consideration for security with the seven children of various ages between roughly two and fifteen staring at the caravan. Or rather staring at me.
The person who owned the fort was apparently a cousin of Wolfgang. He and his wife maintained this outpost for traders and were well compensated for living in the middle of what was effectively nowhere.
"Hey. My name is Tommy." I turned to look at a young boy. From the look of him he was around nine or ten. Despite that he was much taller than me. He had a double barrel shotgun hung on a shoulder and was giving me the patented big toothy American smile.
"Tanya. Pleasure to meet you." I was a guest and I was going to be polite. Besides this little family had been nothing but respectful and pleasant.
"Your voice is funny. But you are very pretty." Who the hell comes on that aggressive?! No, I am not fucking blushing.
"Uh, thank you." I mumbled out glancing about for any escape.
"We were going up for some gull shooting. Wanna come with?"
"I don't know I am kind of ti-."
"Don't worry about us Tanya. You still have tons of energy I'm sure, go and have some fun!" Joy cut in at the perfect moment to ruin everything. I turned to fix her with a concerted glare as she gave me an even bigger patented American grin.
"Great! Come on Tanya." Tommy took the opportunity to grab my hand in his giant gorilla mit and drag me off as I struggled to keep up with him. He led me to the blinking horde of children.
"This is Tanya. She said she wanted to play with us." Lier!
"Hello. Its nice to meet you all." Remember to smile, I can survive this. Wait why the hell was I worried about children? I had dealt with tons of children. I was great at this!
"You are super pretty. Can I touch your hair?" A girl that could not be older then six walked up to me and stuck her hand into my hair without waiting for any response. This seemed to open the floodgates as all the rest of the children crowded around me and chattered endlessly about how my accent was funny and my hair was nice and how cool it was to meet another kid.
"Leave her alone a bit." The voice came from a teenage girl watching her siblings while leaning against a wall. "Come on give her some space." The other children did in fact give me some space to collect myself even if they did leave my hair a mess.
"Thank you."
"No problem, Names Jenny. Come on let's get things ready." I was pulled along by the gravity of the children as we marched up to the top of the car park fort. Part of it had been converted into a greenhouse and there was a large rain catcher.
Bloodstains and clear plastic tubs of small animal bones in the far corner of the upper floor indicated just how important small game hunting was for the family. Without any other ready source of protein that was expected.
The children all opened a metal box and started handing out earmuffs. Incredibly ratty and well-worn earmuffs but I accepted nevertheless. I understood that Empire soldiers would use small rubber ear plugs while mages could reinforce our ears to the point where ear protection was just not important.
Not that I needed to advertise my magical ability. I was then witness to just how many guns this pack of children had. Only the very youngest did not carry some sort of firearm. Putting them away on a table Jess handed out two battered old air rifles and what looked like a .22 hunting rifle.
There was excited chatter from the children showing me the rifles and shouting to be heard over the earmuffs. Tommy was very eager to show off his shooting skills to me and kept telling me to watch him as Jess walked downrange to throw out a bucket full of bits of meat and blood. Likely offal and other waste meat. Before she could jog back to us there was a flurry of birdcalls and a mix of gulls and pidgin's dove down for the free meal.
I expected a flurry of action from the children who were first up with the rifles but they rather carefully took shots. Shouting and mocking anyone who wasted a shot and handing the rifle off when they did shoot without killing something.
I found myself enjoying the easy-going atmosphere and before long I had an air rifle pushed into my hands and I was laying down on what was likely a yoga mat two hundred years ago and was now hard as rock. The cheers as I slowly racked up kill after kill did feel good. It was always nice to receive praise for doing a good job.
After twenty kills I missed a shot to pass the rifle along to someone else earning a chorus of boos and laughs as I was congratulated on getting such a high score. Jess was busy keeping an eye on everyone to make sure they were being responsible with the guns so as I sat down on a chair, I was joined by Tommy who was carrying the youngest who was snoozing in his arms.
"Nice shooting." He said with a blush sitting next to me. We were far enough away from the .22 to leave our earmuffs off.
"Thanks. I had a lot of practice." He smiled and I glanced back at the darkening sky.
"Nah. I had a lot of practice, you're just good at it." I could see the obvious. He was smitten, I was likely the first girl he had seen in years that he was not related to. At least girl his age. I could not imagine that many children joined risky caravans that required guards in full body armour.
"Thank you." I did not know what else to say to him. I was never good at talking to people like this. In my first life when the dreaded western holiday valentine's day came around and girls would offer me cards and chocolate, I never knew what to say.
I was not great with dates in general. Most of the women I had tried dating had complained that I seemed distant and dispassionate. I had endeavoured to make sure the breakups I had were amicable and polite and for the most part they were.
"Are you going to travel with Wolfgang now?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Wolfgang comes along every few months. Will you be there too?" Oh, that was an awkward way of asking that.
"I was just traveling north to Canterbury. I don't know if I will come back south this way."
"Oh." He sighed and I honestly felt bad for him. Not that I was interested in anything. He was a child and I still did not know if being a woman had changed my sexuality. I had more important things to worry about in the war.
"Want to help us dress the gulls? We have a lot more then we normally do. I guess we got carried away…" I must have given a look of disgust because he giggled at my expense. "Its okay, I forget how girls are with Jenny around because she is totally gross. You don't have to if you don't want to." I bristled at that. While I had grown to accept, I was female I was certainly not girly.
"I can do it!" I said getting up as the other kids began to pack away the rifles, with the sun going down it was too dark to keep shooting. I was surprised that the birds kept flying down for food with the gunfire and fellow bird corpses but I supposed hunger and mutations might have changed bird behaviour somewhat. Not that I knew how birds acted normally while being hunted.
Ah well, time to cover my hands in bird guts to satisfy my dwindling masculinity.
"What the hell is the Unified States?! Is this another treasonous fucking successor state!" Autumn glared at the twig armed scientist in front of him.
"She seems to think that we are some kind of insurrection or pretender state herself. All she did at the start was list of her name and rank. Mary Sue, Second lieutenant in the volunteer mage company for the Unified States."
"Mage company? Is this some kind of joke?" Jade sighed and shrugged.
"I asked her about it but she clammed up, won't say a word about it. I watched a rib poking out of her chest snap back into place sir. Something is not right."
"And she was flying?"
"The evidence does support that conclusion. She was defiantly hit with the anti-air missile. We found shrapnel in her body…"
"I don't care how, just get me answers. For some reason Eden thinks this girl is important. I will be passing on your reports directly to the president."
"That… Is an honour sir." Jade rubbed her thumb against the hem of her skirt as Autumn waved her out of his office.
If the president himself was interested in her project she had best get results quickly. If Mary was unwilling to talk soon Jade would have to get more creative.
AN: Tanya is a fun character to write. I am happy to see the positive reaction to this idea I have been playing around with. Its always nice to read the reviews too so if you have some criticism don't be afraid to throw that my way.