Nine years later.
David walked down the hall making his way to the diner for a quick lunch. He knew that today was his birthday, and although he knew that it probably wouldn't get much recognition, he knew that he would at least get his own Pip-Boy 3000 any day now, and the excitement and anticipation was tearing him apart. Little did he know that he would be having cake for lunch instead…
"Happy Birthday!"
"Happy Birthday!"
"Happy Birthday!"
"Happy Birthday!"
As if the lights in the diner not being enough of a hint, the cheers and clapping was more that enough to put a smile on his face, and hands over his eyes.
"Stanley! You turned the lights on too quick, you blinded the kid!" Said Oficer Gomez. Gomez was the father of Freddie Gomez, who unfortunately did not get along with David as well as he had hoped. The problem that he was having was that besides David, the only other boys in the vault Freddie's age were Butch DeLoria, Wally Mack, and Paul Hannon. The three boys had recently founded a loosely organized gang called the "Tunnel Snakes". Gomez knew that they were not a problem now, but if this nonsense continued for five or six years, these kids could become a serious problem for the security officers, let alone his own son.
Other than David and the Tunnel Snakes, there were only girls in the vault for Freddie to play with. Another problem was that Freddie was still under the illusion of the, "horrific coodies" which apparently plagued all the girls and made Freddie and the Tunnel Snakes cringe at the sight.
This seemed to not to be too much of a problem for David however, as he had seen that the Tunnel Snakes were not to be messed with, and had thus turned to the girls for friendship. He had made two close friendships with Amata and Jessica, and was on neutral ground with Christine and Susie.
"Happy birthday kiddo! God, I'm so proud of you." James said happily. He knew that this was an important time in David's life and he hoped to make the best of it. He thn looked to his so and said,
"Look, don't let me keep you waiting, go mingle with the rest of the people."
David then looked to his dad beaming and walked past him but was soon stopped by Amata followed closely by Jessica. Amata smiled and said,
"Bet you didn't expect us to be behind this party did you?"
David looked at her and said sarcastically, "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that Susie and Freddie were behind all this and that you guys had nothing at all to do with it. Let me go and give thanks where it's due."
"Ha, ha, very funny David." Jessica responded dryly. Jessica was a bit of an oddball, she had been born a little early for the pregnancy cycle, almost a year older that any kid in the vault, save David, maybe. The size of her body made her seem at least two years younger than she was, but her voice more than made up for it. Just the sound seemed to demand attention, which happened to help her out on more than one run in with Radroaches and the Tunnel Snakes.
Amata then cut in saying, "I bet you can't guess what we got for you for you're birthday!"
David thought "hard" for about two seconds before a scoundrel grin appeared on his face and he said, "Um, a date with Susie Mack?"
Amata's expression darkened and she spat back, "You can be a real jerk sometimes, you know that?"
"Whoa, whoa, it was just a joke, geez you're easy to fool huh?" David said defensively. This made a quiet giggle erupt from Jessica and immediately made Amata turn on her saying angrily,
"What? So all of a sudden you're on his side?!"
"No, no. Amata, don't take this seriously, it was just a joke anyway." Jessica said in response. This seemed to defuse Amata who soon returned to her previous state (albeit reluctantly) and handed David a small, thin, paperback book. David's eyes immediately lit up and he snatched it out of her hands before she could even utter the phrase, "who's you're favorite barbarian?"
"No way! How did you get you're hands on this?!" said David with excitement covering his face.
"Weeeeell, believe it or not, I found it in a box of my father's old things. I guess everyone was ten once" Amata mused.
"Hey, I put just as much effort into finding that as you did, don't try taking all the credit for yourself!" Jessica pouted.
"Aw don't worry about it Jess, I'm sure-" David quickly stopped talking as the Overseer approached him with a small device in his hands.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything am I? No? Good. I thought now would be as good a time as any to present you with your own Pip-Boy 3000. Get used to it." grumbled the Overseer as he marched away, his duty done.
"Wow, your dad sure likes to cut in to conversations, doesn't he?" Jessica said angrily. Along with being an oddball, Jessica had never found favor with the Overseer as had David. Both of them always seemed to be the ones whom trouble was blamed on by the Overseer even when it was blatantly the cause of Butch and his petty gang. She sometimes wondered if the Overseer had done this purposefully to drive a wedge between Amata and her. Jessica could easily see why though. It was a well known fact that Alphonse was grooming Amata to be the future Overseer, partially because the man truly didn't trust anyone in the entire vault other than his daughter. Sad, yes, but she did understand.
"Well don't let us keep you hanging, go mingle, we'll talk more in a bit" Amata said abruptly, obviously wanting to have a word or two with Jessica.
David then left the two girls to bicker and made his way to where Old Lady Palmer was. It would have been a nice scenario had the Overseer not been giving him a death stare from across the table. David knew the Overseer hated his presense, too optimistic for his taste. At the same time though, David was an extremely soft spoken individual, living most of the time in his head, mulling over different ideas that had been put on the proverbial back burner, and never really saw the Overseer as someone worthy of his attention. However, he managed to maintain his composure and calmly walked up to Old Lady Palmer saying,
"Hi Mrs. Palmer! Glad you could make it." The statement was hollow at best. Over the past 200 years the vault's population had been shrinking faster than it could reproduce. Nowadays, the population was so small that most people had nothing better to do anyway. However, Mrs. Palmer was an exception, she enjoyed the child's company much more that many of the other people in the vault, partially due to the fact that he seemed to speak better with adults than with his own age group.
"Oh, I wouldn't miss it for the world, even if there was a world outside the vault to go to. But, on a more serious note, I'm sure that you want to know what I got for you." She said with a smile on her face.
"You didn't have to get me a present, Mrs. Palmer, I'm fine right now," David said with a grin. Mrs Palmer always seemed to know just what he wanted.
"Fiddlesticks! What ten-year-old doesn't like presents? Well, regardless I made a sweetroll just for you! No sharing required!" she said with a worn smile.
With that, David took the sweetroll, thanked Mrs. Palmer, and made his way over to the barstools where Stanley and his father were. Befor he could get there, Butch managed to plant himself right in front of his path. With that, David shot,
"Move it Butch, I wanna talk to my dad."
" No way loser! I want your sweetroll, didn't you see what happened to your stupid cake?" Butch spat at him. David hadn't even noticed what had become of his after Andy the robot had torn it to pieces with his buzz saw attachment. When he turned to look at the cake, Butch the momentary distraction and snatched the sweetroll out of David's hand and pushed him to the ground. Now, David had never been in a fight before but he knew the decision of fight or flight when dealing with radroaches before and he knew that the best action was to run from them and alert a security guard of its location. Looking at Butch, David knew that he was more formidable than a radroach, but he also knew that if he let this stand things would only get worse. Quickly, David rose up to a laughing Butch and grabbed the sweet roll out of his hand and pushed him away before quickly putting some distance between himself and Butch and setting his prized sweet roll on the counter before looking back at a very pissed little monster. Butch charged at david for all it was worth before running headlong into the armor plate of Officer Gomez, sending a little Butch to the ground in tears.
"What do you think you're doing?" said an angry Gomez.
"He tried to steal my sweet roll and he pushed me down. So I got up, stole my sweet roll back and pushed him away." Said a rather calm David.
"Is that true Butch?" Said Gomez.
"Yes"
"Your mother is going to hear about this"
"Aw, No!"
"Aw, Yeah!" said a triumphant David.
"David, please stay out of this and go back to your party will you?"
"Sure, no problem"
With that, David wandered of towards Stanley sitting at the bar talking with his father, he was the vault engineer/mechanic.
"Hi Stanley! Did you see my new Pip-Boy?"
"Why yes I did! A little heavy huh?"
"Yeah, kinda"
"Well don't worry to much about it, give it a few days and it'll feel as if it wasn't even there in the first place."
"Ok. By the way, this seems kinda familiar, did you fix this one up?"
" I certainly did! I always liked the A Series for its reliability"
David thought the same way, he always chose function over fashion. It was his philosophy, to have something that could be used rather than some eye candy.
"Oh! Almost forgot! Her you go," Stanley then put a red baseball cap on David's head.
"Happy birthday. It isn't much but I hope you like it."
"Thanks Stanley!"
David then left the bar stools and headed back over to where Amata and Jessica were guarding his recently reacquired gooey treat.
"Wow David, seriously? You already forgot your sweet roll?"
"Oh, well how about in exchange for you guys guarding my sweet roll we split it?" David offered.
"We were waiting for you to say that" stated Jessica who immediately tore the sweet roll into three sections, handing the biggest one to David. All three began to munch on their third of the sweet roll when James came around, whispered something into David's ear and quietly left the room. David awkwardly finished his share of the sweet roll before saying,
"Do you guys think I might be able to slip away for a few minutes? My dad needs me for a bit."
"No problem, just don't stay away too long r there might not be a party to return to ." Jessica said.
"Ok I'll be right back."
David quickly made his way out of the diner and down to the reactor level where he knew his father was waiting. He had no idea what James had in store for him but he knew he would find out soon enough. When he opened the reactor level door he was me with a smiling Jonas Palmer, a research assistant and James' protégé. Jonas was like a brother to david and like any brother, he knew how to push the little one's buttons.
"What do you think you're doing down here? Last time I checked, kids weren't allowed on this level."
"Oh come on Jonas, everyone knows that, but I think I'm a bit of an exception, don't you think? Besides, I've got my own Pip-Boy! That proves that I'm old enough to be down here."
"True, true, I'm sure you're here because of your father, and I believe he has something for you." Jonas said wisely. James approached the pair saying,
"Well I see you two are getting along just fine. Anyway, David I know you were expecting to help us somehow, but I think that can wait a bit." As James said that, he reached behind the door for a long object hidden in the shadows. As he grabbed it, a thought crossed his mind: should I really be doin this? I could be setting into motion a life of violence for him…Nonsense it's a BB gun, a pea shooter, nothing close to what lies outside… He shook off the feeling and presented the recently restored object before his boy and said,
"Here you go kiddo, your own BB gun!"
David's eyes grew wide at the sight and he slowly reached out and cradled his new weapon of minor destruction and looked at his dad with a burning excitement.
"Well I know what you're thinking. Do you want to shoot it?"
"We can't shoot in here can we?"
"We certainly can't, but me and Jonas have found a place where you can come and shoot any time you like, ok?"
As soon as James finishes saying that, Jonas opened another door leading into a storage room and let David's eyes feast on the sight before him: Three freshly painted spinning targets. David immediately took aim and fired. A ping was heard, but the BB hit the wall behind the target to his dismay. However, the ping noise attracted a radroach which made its way into the shooting range and hissed at the sight of david. This tim was different though, for David had a brand new BB gun in his hands. No running away this time. Adrenaline took over and he aimed down the sight of his gun and fired three shots into the creature's mutated head. All three BB's hit their mark and the small creature hissed before its legs gave out and it rolled over on its back. Dead. The shock on James' face was soon replaced with a proud expression as he walked over to his son congratulating him saying,
"Now that's how to take down a radroach! Jonas, come and take a picture of me and the big game hunter."
James reached down, putting his arm around his son and Jonas quickly grabbed a camera off the shelf and readied it.
"Ok, say cheese!"
"Cheese!"
Flash