-1Author's Note: This is for those people who want a different ending then the one presented. It's up to you which one you like better; please let me know in a review, and let me know what you think of the story overall if you haven't. It goes a long way to helping me improve where I'm weak. Thanks!

The Power of the Atom - Alternate Ending

I had cheated death twice…but I still felt weak. I crawled down the stairs, rolling on my back and staring at the sky. Thankfully, the bullet had only grazed my neck and not penetrated fully--if that had been the case, even my own application of the stimpack probably wouldn't have saved me. However, I couldn't just lay here--sooner or later, Tenpenny's guards would come looking. With a deep breath, I launched myself upward and got to my feet.

Pocketing the dead guard's ammunition, I put my back against one of the double doors, then pushed the other one open with my left hand, my silenced pistol aimed forward. I swept the corridor in a half-crouch, turning in all directions to cover my blind spots. Feeling secure that the penthouse level was clear, I walked toward the elevator, but the doors suddenly parted, and a guard with a ten-millimeter submachine gun looked very surprised to see me. His gun was very similar to the Russian-made Skorpion, a deadly little weapon that would fuck up your day in a hurry.

The guard's gun was already raised, and mine was pointed at the floor…aha! Using the guard's brief moment of confusion, I flicked my wrist and shot my arm up and forward. A few seconds later, the gun smacked the guard square in the face, breaking his nose. He stumbled and hit the back of the elevator car, which allowed me to close the distance between us.

Grabbing the guard's shoulders, I kneed him in the groin and he instantly collapsed in pain; this provided the unique opportunity to slam his head against the wall, and the guard was out cold. A silenced bullet to the back of the head sealed the deal.

Had it been overkill? Admittedly, yes, but it was necessary. He wouldn't be getting up--it was one less threat to deal with. Fuck 'em. He tried to kill me. This guy knew the risks of being a mercenary, since that was what he undoubtedly was. If he hadn't known what his employer did, that wasn't my problem.

What was my problem was how I was going to escape. Tenpenny's vitals were probably monitored somewhere in the building; the guard wouldn't have been sent up otherwise. That meant…shit! This elevator was the only way down! Most likely there would be some sort of ambush in the lobby.

I looked up at the top of the car…and smiled. I picked up the guard's SMG and ammo, as well as my silenced pistol, then put my foot on one of the brass rails. I touched the top and it felt…like drywall? How strange. Shrugging, I unloaded half of a clip in a section of the ceiling, and pieces of it started breaking away. Seeing this, I punched the drywall as hard as I could, and soon I had a nice hole to climb through. I holstered the pistol, reloaded the SMG, and thumbed the 'down' button on the elevator. The car jerked, and slowly began to descend. Launching off the brass rail, I grabbed hold of the hole I had created, and hoisted myself up.

"Gustavo to Ramirez, report," a vaguely Hispanic voice said in the car below. Curious, I peered over the edge of the hole down at the guard's body. "Ramirez, come in!…Ramirez!"

Shit! That Hispanic guy I had seen earlier must've been head of security…Gustavo, huh? This would be interesting.

"Donaldson, wait by the elevator and see if Ramirez comes down," Gustavo radioed in to presumably another guard. "Let's not alert Tenpenny's patrons. If he's there, come outside. Tenpenny's killer only has one way out. We'll show him who he's fucking with."

They must've been communicating by walkie-talkie on a channel where all the guards could hear. A second later, Donaldson replied: "You got it."

The time was near, and I wondered what would happen next. Glancing at my Pip-Boy, I saw that it was around noon, and the tower's guests would be having lunch. Would I have enough bullets? Possibly. If the tower had a so-called 'No Ghoul' policy, Tenpenny had been a bigot…which meant that the guests were as well. In my eyes, bigots were just as bad as mass-murderers. But what did that make me? I killed Silver in cold-blood…wasn't I accountable…no, that was different. I shook my head, stuffing that thought deeper inside of me, and instead focused on the task ahead. There would be time for philosophical thoughts later.

The elevator stopped at the bottom--an audible ping was the indicator. I could see a man's shadow just outside of the car, rapidly approaching the car. Soon after, I saw a man with dirty blond buzzed hair below me standing over Ramirez. Not wanting to give him time to report to Gustavo, I stood on top of the car and jumped down through the hole with as much force as I could muster. Donaldson was caught completely off guard, letting out a groan as I landed feet first on his back. He was a big motherfucker, and I was less so, and he was struggling underneath my combat boots--if he threw me off, I was done. So like Ramirez, I emptied two rounds into his cranium and he stopped writhing.

Honestly, I didn't even know I was capable of such malicious brutal acts of violence, but I balanced the shock of what I was doing with the idea that these guys were trying to kill me, and I had to do what I needed to in order to survive. Oh, and they were most likely bigots, too.

Looking up, I found myself behind the reception desk and no one had seemed to notice me--they probably thought another guest had fallen over. I grinned. They were so wrong. I holstered my pistol, and brought up the SMG. What happened next was my anger manifesting, and when that happens, it's uncontrollable.

In front of the desk was the entrance, and a male patron in a vest and khaki pants was idling about. I jumped over the desk with my left hand, landing and rolling into position, and unleashed a five-round burst into the man's body. He jerked and writhed on the floor, whimpering, until I put him down for good. I heard various screams coming off to my right, both male and female, and before I could run over to their doorway to silence them, a tanned woman in a pink dress came running out.

She literally skidded to a halt, slipping but managing to catch herself, and tried to zoom away behind the staircases near by. Without even aiming, I shot at her legs, and was rewarded with her falling and crashing face-first into the ground, fucking up her pretty little face. I ran over and kicked her in the ribs for good measure.

I was mad. How can people like this even exist? How can somebody hate someone who's skin and face may not have been the most attractive, but was just as human as they were? What if these fucking bigots were in their place? How would they feel then? Simply put, they would never know nor would ever want to know, because their stupid ignorant asses were clouded with notions of perceived high status, which was really arrogance. Nobody likes arrogance. This bitch was probably no different. Fuck her.

As I was about to turn around, I was greeted with an elderly Asian gentleman trying to claw my face, albeit unsuccessfully. With a loud growl, I shoved the barrel of my SMG into his gut and let lose. When he was finally dead, I pushed him to the side, walked through the doorway, and sprayed both what looked to be a store and a café with bullets. Body after body fell and the walls and floors were decorated with blood, and it left a most gratifying feeling within me. Bigots were not needed in this world--well, they were, so somebody else could kill them. I just happened to be the administrator of justice for these poor, pathetic souls.

All that stood before me now were the guards outside in the courtyards, and they wouldn't be so easy to cut down. As best as I could remember, there had been two pillars opposite the door outside, with a plant pot in front of each.

Reloading my SMG, I stood before the double doors and took a deep breath. Here we go. I kicked the center of the doors, flinging them both open and the bullets started flying as soon as they did so. I slid behind the right pillar, and waited for a lull in the shooting. When it finally came, I pushed it out from behind cover and dove to the other pillar. In the few seconds I was exposed, I counted six guards plus Gustavo, and my bullets sent them all scrambling for cover by lines of sandbags as well as the fountain in the middle.

When I hit the other pillar, I popped onto my feet, and ran down the center spraying with the ten-millimeter SMG. The feeling seemed otherworldly, like everything around me was moving slower--damn, there must be a hell of an adrenalin rush going through me. I reached the fountain, and grabbed hold of the center, using it to swing around and kick one of the guards in the jaw. As that guard's body was falling, I flew over it and emptied the remaining rounds into two more guards. As I touched down, I hurled the SMG at another, using that distraction to pull out my pistol.

Circling the fountain in a low crouch, I picked off the remaining three guards with an entire clip, leaving Gustavo. I saw him draw his weapon and begin to sprint towards the main gates, but after quickly reloading, I fired a bullet towards his left leg. It hit the mark right below his left buttock, and he fell. I ran up to him, flipped him over on his back, and put a knee to his chest.

"How does it feel to know that everything you've worked for went to shit in the past few minutes?" I screamed, almost incoherently.

Gustavo only stared; it was the coldest stare I had ever received in my life up to this point. "Fuck you…do what you need to do."

He spit on me, further provoking me into action, which I was all too glad to carry out. I put my pistol right to against his Adam's apple and pulled the trigger. His hands immediately clawed at his neck as I went about collecting magazines and weapons from the dead guards to use to repair my weapons. In the process, I found lots of ammo for my pistol as well as an assault rifle and 5.56mm ammunition.

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When I arrived back at Megaton in the early evening, I was unexpectedly greeted by the entire town. The most pleased of all, however, was Lucas Simms. Everyone cheered and clapped, hollered and hooted, and for a brief amount of time it felt good knowing I had made a difference.

"Boy, you've done good," Lucas roared over the loud cheering. "You eliminated a threat from our town, and for that you have Megaton's sincerest thanks and gratitude. I also have some things to give you."

With a wave of his hand, Lucas dispersed the ground and people went back to their lives. For them, the excitement was over. Lucas then motioned with his hand for me to follow him. We walked up a set of arbitrary steps to the left, and it curved up and right to a rather large house.

We stood before the door to this structure, and the sheriff handed me a bag full of caps. "Here's a cap reward for disarming the bomb."

I looked inside the small bag, and estimated the amount to be around one hundred caps. Coupled with the thousand I plucked from Mr. Burke's corpse, I was sitting pretty right about now. "Sheriff, you didn't really--"

The older man smiled, tugging on his beard. "You did a very brave thing…Scott, right?" A nod. "You have to understand, Scott. These people, my people who I've sworn to protect, have been living in fear since the time this town was constructed fifty years ago. I didn't tell the residents that the bomb had still been ticking until just recently, after you left last night.

"Right after you broke into my house to inform me of your plan, which I forgive you for doing, I immediately went out to check on the bomb. Sure enough, one of Burke's men was down there seemingly tampering with the bomb, but I didn't want to take the chance, so I knocked him out with Ol' Stainless here, and threw him in the Armory with Deputy Steel until further notice."

Sheriff Simms patted the Chinese Assault Rifle on his back and smiled. He seemed to be really happy and relaxed…no, more likely relieved that there wasn't a threat to his town anymore.

"Well, at least that's taken care of. You wouldn't believe what I had to do…" I explained in detail for several minutes my adventures at Tenpenny Tower, minus the part where I gunned down the tower's guests in a psychotic angry rage. I figured it best to leave that absent--I didn't need the sheriff to look down on me.

"Goddamn, that's one hell of a story, son. But you know what, they had it coming. They planned to massacre my town, my people, in such a horrifying brutal way…it was justice served for them to be repaid in kind. Which reminds me…"

Lucas fished around inside his trousers for something, and finally produced a worn key and a faded piece of paper. He placed it in the palm of my hand and all I could do was just stare. "What's this?"

He motioned his head in the direction of the building we were standing next to. "Your very own house. No need to pay a rent or worry about sleeping in some Raider stronghold and being stabbed in the back. It's a bit bare on the inside, but you can purchase items from Moira at The Craterside Supply if need be. You also get your own personal butler, a Mr. Handy robot named Wadsworth."

My face positively beamed with joy. Of all the possible outcomes, this was one I hadn't expected. I almost grabbed Sheriff Simms in a bear hug, but thought better of it. Instead, I grinned broadly and extended my hand, and Lucas took it in return. "Thank you. This means a lot to me, and I'm glad I could help you guys out."

"It's not a problem," Lucas said with a nod. "But look, I got to resume my duties. If you need anything, though, I'll be patrolling the town." With that, the dark-skinned man walked around the corner of my house and down the causeway toward the front of the town.

I stuffed the parchment paper into the breast pocket on my combat armor, and placed the key into the lock. I opened the door and shut it, happy as hell to have a place of my own. Wadsworth floated down the stairs and came over to me.

"Ah, good morning sir!" the robot said in a British accent. "I'm your personal butler, Wadsworth. I can do virtually anything you ask, within reason. I can give you a haircut, tell you a joke, or how to spruce up this old dusty pad. If you want a drink, I will supply you with some of the cleanest water in all the Wasteland."

I took a seat in a nearby chair, laying all of my gear on the tabletop. On the long trek back to the town from Tenpenny Tower, I had done a lot of thinking, and had come to the conclusion that everything happens for a reason. Silver's death was part of fate, my fate, and that couldn't have been avoided. Maybe she would've understood that. That's what I told myself in any case.

"Wadsworth, I'd like some water and a joke, please."

The robot seemed to whir and shift, and then a bottled of purified water shot from the top of the robotic frame at me. I caught with my right hand, popped the top, and took a sip. I smacked my lips approvingly; it was some of the best damned water I ever had.

"Two cannibals are eating a clown, one turns to the other and says 'does this taste funny to you?'"