Nuclear bombs fell like very precisely aimed meteors onto every major populated area on Earth. The whole world was being baptized by nuclear hellfire. All of the doomsayers over the last few years had been right. For two hours on October 23, 2077, there was nothing except for light, and noise. After the last bomb detonated, there was nothing but darkness, and silence. The few living beings that survived the nuclear shockwaves and heat would be reduced further by radiation and deadly rain. It was the end of life as we know it; A sucker punch to human civilization so severe that civilized life would be nearly impossible for hundreds of years. But still, humans would adapt. And fight. And survive.

While descending the elevator into the vault, Captain Scruffy ironically whistled "I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire."

Underneath the sarcastic exterior, however, our hero was afraid, perhaps more so than the shocked neighbors around him. You see, he knew something. He knew that Vault-Tec wasn't simply a hopelessly optimistic organization that manufactured and populated fallout bunkers. It was the world's biggest collection of sick science experiments. The kind of stuff that would not only get an A at the junior high science fair, but the stuff that would also get the pimply, pubescent experimenter sent directly to the principal's office. During his adventures in the Mojave wastes, Captain Scruffy had never heard of a vault that didn't destroy all of its residents, physically or psychologically. However, he kept his composure. For five seconds.

"You'll never take me alive!" He screamed this at the security guard and Overseer who greeted him at the bottom of the shaft. They took no notice, only directing the new vault dwellers to their new homes. Captain Scruffy thought the Overseer had a creepy mustache. He walked up to the man and attempted to punch, but found that no matter how hard he pressed the square button, he couldn't engage in some good 'ole fashioned fisticuffs. He couldn't fight. He couldn't do anything except stand there or decide to walk further into the belly of the godforsaken vault. Figuratively, he had no mouth but found that he must scream.

He proceeded up the stairs and through the entrance, greeted by harsh lights and way-too-friendly Vault-Tec employees. He trudged onward, getting his clothing magically swapped for a vault suit. He trudged down a hallway. He trudged into what was clearly a chamber filled with cryogenic pods. The scientists around Scruffy explained that they needed to be decontaminated in these special chambers so that they would be clean for vault life. Our intrepid hero however knew that was a dirty lie.

"You're a dirty liar," he said to the nearest doctor who was politely motioning for him to enter the pod.

"Please step into the chamber whenever you're ready," said the man. He had graying hair and a Vault-Tec lab coat.

"Do you think your lab coat gives you the authority to tell me that black is white? That's clearly a cryogenic pod. You're going to turn everyone here into popsicles. And probably probe us in the butt or something. Nevertheless, I admit that the lab coat is pretty bitchin,'" said Scruffy.

The man in the bitchin' lab coat stared at him blankly.

"Just step into the chamber," he ordered, politely, after a few minutes. Scruffy kept waiting. If he could move his arms, he would definitely cross them.

"Just take your time. We have all day."

"Reverse psychology is not going to work on me, fancy doctor man! I have 4 intelligence. Maybe that trick would work on a 3 intelligence man, but not me."

Captain Scruffy waited for a few moments. Then he thought about the situation. It was evident that nothing was going to happen in the game until he stepped into the pod. It was also fairly evident that if he stepped into the pod, he was going to be frozen and bad things were going to happen to him and the rest of his neighbors (not that he cared). Was it better to sit here in this chamber with nothing happening for eternity, or unleash fate upon himself? The question haunted him. After some consideration he decided to stick it out for as long as he could. So that at least he had a moral victory.

He made it two solid minutes (wow!) before pressing X to enter the chamber.

He watched himself and his wife and son quickly freeze. An eternity passed. When he woke up, he heard the computer talking about a manual override. He watched a scientist and a mercenary open the door to his wife's pod and attempt to steal his son. His wife resisted, and was met with a large caliber bullet shot straight into her face.

"Hey, he stole my signature move!" Exclaimed an irritated Captain Scruffy. The two allies walked off with Scruffy's son.

"I'm probably going to have to spend half of the main quest looking for that little guy. How come every fallout FPS game has the player spend the first act of the story trying to find a person? First Liam Neeson, then Benny, now an infant named Shaun. It gets lamer and lamer."

Captain Scruffy pouted as he made his way through Vault 111. At least he could use his fists now. He randomly punched the air as he frolicked through the corridors. At one point he paused to jump in the air and spin around.

"Ahh, the radroach, my old nemesis," he muttered as he beat the stuffing out of the bug with his newly acquired security baton.

"It's not a tire iron, but it will do."

Captain Scruffy enjoyed making his way through the abandoned vault, and retracing what was evidently an armed conflict that signified the end of the vault's residents. His character made exclamations about how everything was dead, or irradiated, like it was some kind of big deal. But ironically, dead and irradiated was what Captain Scruffy was used to, while the new and shiny world of the prologue had been strange.

He noted that the man in the bitchin' lab coat from earlier was now a skeleton lying on the ground.

"Serves him right."

He continued picking through everything, and grabbing whatever loot seemed important. Then he picked up a dusty old Pip-Boy and opened the vault with it. The great steel door, capable of withstanding a full nuclear onslaught, was pulled from its socket like a Super Mutant pulling an arm from a human's socket, and rolled over like a Super Mutant Behemoth rolling over in its sleep.

At the elevator, Captain Scruffy was asked if he wanted to tweak his character. He decided to take away from Perception and Intelligence and add to Strength and Endurance so that his S.P.E.C.I.A.L. was .4.3.3. Now he could hit stuff harder, and withstand harder hits. But he might be susceptible to reverse psychology in the future.

His appearance however, was perfect.

"Enjoy your return to the surface. And thank you for choosing Vault-Tec," droned the automated voice as the elevator ascended. At the surface, Scruffy was confronted with the wasteland that he knew and loved. He had a bigger map than ever to play with. The Commonwealth was his oyster. He decided in that moment that he would not rest, that is, press X when his cursor was over a bed, until all of the greater Boston area was fully in his grasp. He gathered his thoughts, thinking that the moment was pregnant with gravity and he had better not waste his words. He made up his mind to say a few words after all that had happened to him and his family, and the mission that lay before him.

"I'm back, bitches!"

I'm planning to update this somewhat frequently. One way to motivate me to update this more frequently would be to leave a review!