This did… Not come out exactly as I'd planned. In fact, I'd originally planned on having Sallie go through each of Betty's tasks, earning all that negative karma, because I'd kind of wanted her to have some sort of mental breakdown when she finally got out of the lounger. Instead, I opted for her telling off her father, because, well… I really wish there were more speech options allowing you to do just that in the game - at least, more realistically. Let's get real here: whether or not the world needs clean water, you're going to be pretty damn upset if your dad bails and you have to fight your way out of your home, right?
As previously stated, reviews regarding the choices you think Sallie will make in the Pitt would be appreciated - I'd like to have an outside point of view on this.
Sallie uses the next two days to relax. It's not going to do her any good if she finds her father and she's so wound up that she just shoots him straight through the heart. He doesn't need to know about anything but the good things she's done; That's why she's glad that's all Three Dog ever talks about on his godforsaken radio station. She doesn't need her father to be disappointed in her after listening to the radio for just a few minutes, because things like that are why she's so secretive about the terrible things she's done. Granted, she could gun down a whole town, women and children and the elderly and all, and still be considered the messiah of the wastes; People have killed more for less. It just wouldn't make her comfortable if people aside from Charon saw the darker side of her, the side she wants to keep buried, even if it's still not as bad as most people out here. When you're raised in a vault, you want to rebel, but having the chance to do all that and more is sort of overwhelming, and there's a large part of her still sticking to her metaphorical guns, the same ones she had down in the vault that kept her from killing everyone. How her father managed to embed a moral code so deep into her psyche that even just over a year in the wastes had only barely changed things, she was never going to understand. She knows that she'll never want to; It won't matter. It's not like she'll have kids to do the same thing to - she prefers animals, and finding a pet out here would be damn near impossible to manage.
Weapons are repaired (and hers require surprisingly little upkeep, now that Charon's around to do maintenance rather routinely), armor is patched, food and medicine are boxed and shoved in a series of lunchboxes that she's collected on her travels and placed in their packs. She's as ready as she's ever going to be, but there's an unpleasant bundle of nerves in her stomach telling her that she should just give up and forget she's ever even had a father. It takes every ounce of self-confidence she has and then some to convince herself to ignore those nerves. God, does she ever want to give up and act like she was born out here in the wastes to some nameless woman and a faceless man, but now that she has everything ready and she has Charon to watch her back, she`s too prepared not to go. The familiar weight of her modified shotgun isn't even a comfort anymore by the time they reach what she thinks is somewhere just past the halfway mark; She's checked to see how close they are, if they should find a safe place for the night and realized just how close they are to Evergreen Mills. How she didn't notice it when she first put the coordinates in, she isn't aware, but now, swears are falling from her lips like she was born to speak them. "I'm a dead man walkin' here, but that's the least of all my fears." she sings softly, sighing. The sun is starting to set, and they really only have two choices now - pick up the pace and hopefully reach Smith Casey's by sunrise, or search for shelter.
"Should we keep going, or set up camp?" If only Rockopolis were closer. At this point, she's pretty sure the only safe building in the area is the old RobCo Facility, and the way she sees it, if she's going to go that far out of her way, she may as well get a room in Tenpenny Tower and figure out a way to wrangle Charon inside. There's not even a settlement nearby, that she knows of, but there are still a lot of places she hasn't been and coordinates she hasn't collected, so there could be.
"We should push on, smoothskin. I do not like the look of this area." She nods wordlessly, the ghost of a vague smile on her lips as she turns and continues in the correct direction.
When they reach the garage, it's five in the morning, and he says it before Sallie ever glances at her pip-boy, causing her to narrow her eyes at him when she checks the time and he's correct. "How did you know that?"
He chuckles, a deep rumble. "Training, smoothskin. Training." He doesn't mention that a handful of years in the military had also helped to hone the skill; It's not necessary and he doesn't like to talk about it. The ghoul doesn't think it's worth it to mention a time when he was even less of a person than he is now - it would just make his employer angry, like she always gets when people judge him or her for being with him. He still doesn't quite get how she ticks, why some things bother her and others don't. He doesn't get how she can stomach seeing animal abuse despite being a self-proclaimed 'animal person', but flinches at child abuse or spousal abuse; He doesn't know about her past, though, and maybe there's something there that would clue him in. Doubtful. Vault dwellers are fucking batshit. She's probably just crazy. It's a reasonable assumption, considering her overreactions and the way she'll grit her teeth and bite her tongue in an attempt to remain polite to get an answer from someone, rather than simply beating it out of them like he would. She has more patience than he could ever even pretend to hope to have - hell, she has more skin than he could ever pretend to hope to have as well. Not that it matters; She's still his employer and he's still not entirely sure he trusts her, even if her buying his contract was one of the best things that's ever happened to him. He was hardly willing to admit that, anyways.
The inside of the building is infested with mole rats, and while he's completely ready to land one well-placed shot on each of them, Sallie is having none of it. She gently presses him out of her way and simply herds the freakish looking things the fuck out of the building. Really, she was just so full of fucking surprises that he can't believe it sometimes, even if it doesn't surprise him so much as irritate him that she can learn to herd some of the ugliest creatures in the wasteland, but she can't learn to be any better with hand-to-hand or melee combat. It just seems to get better and better, as the girl digs through every box or crate in the place, alternating between shoving things into his pack and her own, singing along to a song that he can almost hear playing in his head. She's been singing the same song for hours now, little snippets of it every so often, like she'd grown tired of the silence but didn't know what to start a conversation about or if he'd even answer her; He knows the tune, he knows the words, and he knows that if he weren't a ghoul, his vocal cords completely destroyed by the radiation, that he would sing along, could sing along. Instead, he just stands back while his employer putters about the building, grabbing things here and there before she finally drops her pack. She's locked the door, so there's no way anyone's getting in, but there's only one makeshift bed here, and not enough for him to make one for himself.
He takes first watch. It consists mostly of him flipping through a copy of 'Tumblers Today' that had been lying at the bottom of the safe near where Sallie now slept, eyes occasionally darting over to the white-haired wanderer to make sure she was still fine, still breathing and merely asleep. He wakes her at eight, like he promised he would, and the only reason he even lays down is because there's a stern note to her voice when she tells him to try and get some sleep that he clings to, it's so like she's ordering him.
When Charon wakes, she's sprawled out on the counter, fiddling with her pip-boy. "It's twelve. 'bout time you woke up, sleepyhead." She'd given him four hours; Four hours that she uses to study one of her four different issues of Pugilism Illustrated on the off-chance that she'd need it down in the vault. When she earns a grunt and nothing else in reply, she rolls her eyes and pushes herself up and off of the counter. She's been trying to convince herself that she's ready to do this for the past twenty minutes, and she's not entirely sure it worked, but she stands tall and proud nonetheless as they march into the other room and she presses the only switch she finds, hoping it will do something. When the floor opens up and stairs are made visible, she breaths a sigh of relief, surprised when she does so. She expects to be disappointed, but she's not; It's like now that she's so close, she knows she can't go back and she can't do anything other than look forward to getting her father back, even if he's been no good to her for a year.
They pass through a series of doors, and when the final one opens, she lets out a high-pitched scream, slapping a hand over her mouth as Charon jumps in front of her, ready to defend his employer.
"Greetings, vault residents! My calculations state that you are two hundred three point three years late. Please proceed to the nearest tranquility lounger. If you have lost your vault-issued suit, I am qualified to distribute another."
Puzzled, Sallie glances at Charon before accepting the suit from the robot - the fact that it isn't hostile is making her nervous, since every other goddamn robobrain she's found out here has been. It feels like it's a trap, but she doesn't voice her concerns. Instead, she just forgets all semblance of modesty, now that she's so close to accomplishing her goal, and strips out of her merc charmer outfit, tugging on her newly-issued vault suit. She grimaces - she remembers exactly why she hated these things, but there's no going back now, as she packs up her things and continues into the halls. Charon is left behind, unsure if he's really just witnessed what he thinks he has, or if he's finally going feral and it's just starting to manifest itself through hallucinations. With a shake of his head, he follows.
"What the fuck are these things?" The room at the bottom of the stairs is full of things shaped like eggs, and when she peers through the glass, she can see people. They look vaguely like they're sleeping, but there are screens in front of them, playing images that she can't quite make out, and the people… They look like they've been here a whole hell of a lot longer than they should have been. She checks a terminal in front of one of the pods, fingers dancing over the keyboard. "'Tranquility lounger', eh? Sounds like a load of Brahmin shit." she mutters sourly as she begins to move around the console in the center of the room, reading the statistics on the screen and hoping for some sort of clue. One for a 'T. Dithers' mentions inconsistent readings and anomalies, but it isn't the one that catches her eye. There's one with an unknown inhabitant in it, and when she scurries over to investigate, her eyes widen and she begins banging on the glass, shouting as tears spring to her eyes. "Dad? Dad! Daddy!" By the time Charon manages to pull her away, the tears are flowing freely and her hands feel bruised, but she's made up her mind. Whatever these stupid fucking 'tranquility lounger' things are for… She's going in there, and she's going to deal with whatever or whoever was in there. She straightens herself out marching around the room until she finds a pod that's unoccupied and she's bouncing from foot to foot as she waits for it to open it.
As she takes her seat and settles in, she casts one final, apprehensive look at Charon, who looks like he disapproves of her plan entirely. He probably does. "Charon, if I don't get out of this…" She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes for a few moments in an attempt to help herself focus. "Your contract is in the safe at home. Tell Wadsworth, tell Simms, tell Gob… You're free."
"You will make it out, smoothskin. Do not worry."
When Sallie opens her eyes again, everything is wrong. Her world is suddenly black and white, and she's in the middle of some suburb she's never seen before, and… She's short. Shorter than normal, anyways, and when she looks down at her hands, she realizes everything is small, like she's a child again. At that realization, she checks her hair, half-hoping it will be restored to the same lustrous black it had been before it had turned white, but it's not. She shouldn't be surprised. Fisting her hands in the stupid, bland little dress she's wearing, she glances around, waiting for who knows what to jump out of nowhere and start attacking her, but even as she takes tentative steps forward, towards the center of the area, a grassy little playground, it doesn't happen. Something about this whole place is just bad news, and she knows it. There's a little girl there, watering flower, but there's something shifty about her, and if she hadn't beckoned her over in the first place, Sallie knows she wouldn't speak to her.
"Have you seen my father?" She doesn't like the way the little girl's lips twist into a smirk at that; It's creepy and evil and if she had a gun, this little girl wouldn't have a face.
"Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. You'll have to play with me to find out." She doesn't want to play, especially not with this creepy little fuck - instead, she just wants to scream and cry and possibly kill something, someone. "The first part of our game - make Timmy Neusbaum cry!"
What the fuck kind of game is this? "Are you fucking kidding me? I just want to fi-"
"Now, now. Run along, all in good time." Grinding her teeth together, the white-haired girl marches off to the only other child she's seen in this place and leans against his lemonade stand with a wide smile.
"Are you Timmy?" When the boy nods, she carefully motions to the girl in the grass, rolling her eyes. "Do you know who she is?"
"That's Betty. She's weird. And she's mean." Ah, the simplicity of children. She almost misses this.
"I bet. Get this: she wants me to make you cry, Timmy. But I'm not mean like she is, and I don't want to." From "there on, she tries just about everything she can think of to get him to cry - bribes him with candy and cookies and coming over to play, but he obviously doesn't trust her, and she sighs. She didn't want to have to do this, but apparently it's necessary. Leaning forward conspiratorially, she motions him closer. "Did you know your parents are getting' a divorce because of you, Timmy? They just can't handle the stress - your daddy wants to send you to military school, but your mom says that she wants you to stay here. You're ruining their marriage." It has the desired effect, and the small boy begins sobbing loudly before running into his house, almost tripping over something in his lawn on the way there. She feels guilty as she returns to Betty; The girl is clapping and it's obvious that she's some sort of sadist or something.
"Perfect! Wonderfully executed!" Betty is still clapping, and Sallie wants nothing more than to rip the girl's hands off and paste them to her eyelids - see her try and clap then. "The next part of our game… I want you to break up the marriage of Janet and Roger Rockwell."
She nods, ashamed of herself, and wanders off to find the pair in question, when she's approached by some old woman who's positively frothing at the mouth, she's so freaked out. She's babbling about this being a simulation and how none of them belong here and a failsafe in an abandoned house. The girl quirks a brow at the older woman, nodding at everything she says. Of course it's a goddamn simulation, that much seems obvious - but it doesn't matter. There's a failsafe, and she's going to figure it out. Scanning the area, it's easy to pick out which house is abandoned - the lawn is unkempt, there's no car in the driveway, the windows are shadowed, dark. With a knowing smirk, she bolts to the house.
It's disappointing inside - there's nothing here, no failsafe terminal. She steps forward, kicking at an old pitcher on the table and yelping in surprise when it doesn't move or shatter, but makes a noise. That was unexpected. Maybe the others… She darts around the room, tapping at different items until she has a mental list of the things that make noise. She still doesn't know how to activate the failsafe, so she just starts hitting the objects until they form a familiar melody. That little shit! The tune Betty was whistling, that had to be it! After that, Sallie moves swiftly, hitting the radio, the pitcher, the gnome, pitcher again, the cinder block, the creepy-ass gnome again, and finally, the empty soda bottle. A terminal appears, and she feels air rush from her lungs in relief. There's multiple entries, one about 'Toucan Lagoon' and 'Slalom Chalet', along with an entry on the failsafe - information on it and how and why to activate it and she is simultaneously intrigued and horrified by everything she's read. She swallows hard, and clicks on 'activate failsafe'.
When she exits the house again, there are Chinese soldiers everywhere, gunning down the citizens of Tranquility Lane but miraculously avoiding not only her and Betty, but a dog that she hadn't noticed before. She marches towards Betty, a snarl tearing its way out of her throat when she reaches her and grabs her by the collar of her dress. "Now, do you know where my father is, you fucking soulless automaton?" All it took was reading the entries on that terminal to realize that Betty was Braun, and now she wasn't going to put up with the bullshit anymore.
"What have you done? You've activated the failsafe! I'll be stuck here alone, forever!" Sallie gives Betty a rough shake, glaring, and the man disguised as a little girl relents. "The dog. He's been there all along."
The… Dog? She looks at the dog then, and it looks strangely like it's nodding at her. She drops Betty. "So, I can just… Leave? Will I… Will I get my dad back?"
Betty sounds entirely unenthused now, and she motions vaguely to a door that has appeared. "Yes, fine, leave. Go."
It's been hours - Charon doesn't know how many, because he's not the one with that goddamn computer on his arm and there's no sun in this stupid hole in the ground - when Sallie's tranquility lounger swings open. He's not expecting it, but he feels relieved that she really did make it through. He'd only spent the last few hours seriously doubting if his words to her had been true or not. When she stumbles out of the lounger, obviously forgetting it was on a raised platform, he catches her, setting her on her feet and keeping his hands on her shoulders for a few moments before he finally lets her go, sure she can stand. "I told you that would make it, smoothskin. I did not doubt it for a minute." True. He'd doubted it for much longer.
"Sallie? Sallie, you saved my life!" he hears from behind him, and he takes a few steps to the side to let the vault dwellers embrace. He feels awkward as he watches this, kind of like he's witnessing something that he's not supposed to see as the vault girl sobs into her father's chest. "You were supposed to stay in the vault." And that's when everything comes unhinged and his employer is tearing away from her father, frowning.
"Excuse me? I was supposed to sta- They fucking killed Jonas; The overseer went fucking batty after you left. They tried to kill me! I had to leave, you, you… You bastard!" The tears are starting again, and he can't bring himself to do anything more than stand there like he's blind, deaf and dumb; He's still baffled by tears. "You could have brought me with you, I could have helped, and you wouldn't have been stuck here, and-"
James sighs. He knows his daughter has a lot of patience, so the fact that she's exploding now must mean she's been keeping everything bottled up - something she should know is a bad idea. After all, she did place as the vault psychologist after taking the G.O.A.T. But if he had known that all of these things would happen as a result of him leaving the vault… Well, he probably never would have wandered in there looking for safety in the first place, let alone wandered back out. Even for the greater good.
"Sweetheart. Sweetheart, calm down. Deep breaths. That's good, good job. Now, do you understand why I left?"
"Chasing fucking pipe dreams?" He really wishes she would stop swearing, and that she'd quit breaking eye contact in favour of looking at - a ghoul. A massive ghoul, standing there like he honestly didn't know what was going on.
"Who… Who is this, sweetheart?"
"He's Charon, he's a mercenary, he's my friend, the end; Don't try and change the subject!" Sallie has her mother's fire, that's for sure. Catherine had never been scared to put me in my place either. he muses wryly, jerked out of his reverie when the white-haired girl snaps something at him that he doesn't quite catch.
He's still concerned about the ghoul, but that's the least of his concerns right now. "I left the vault to finish Project Purity. It was your mother's dream to get clean, pure water to the entire wasteland. It's what's right-"
"Did you stop to think that maybe it was right to stay with your daughter?" Sallie snaps, arms crossing over her chest as she subconsciously takes a few steps closer to Charon. "Or given her some warning or something?" It's obvious that she's biting back some other remark, and honestly, he's glad she's biting her tongue this once. He's been in that pod for months; He can't just jump headfirst back into being a father.
"But that's the great thing, sweetheart - you can come with me now! Come with me back to Rivet City, we'll get the rest of them together and we'll get the purifier ru-"
His daughter is holding up her hand, effectively shutting him up. "No, Dad. Not today. I'm not going back to Rivet City right now. I want… I want to help you, but there are things I need to do first, okay? So you head back to Rivet fucking City and dealing with all your little scientist friends. Get them ready for any possible thing that could happen, and I'll… I'll fucking meet you there eventually."
She doesn't hug her father before he leaves, just tells him that she'll see him soon enough. For a few minutes, she just stands there, taking deep breaths and resisting the urge to punch something. It's stressful, being the messiah of the wastes, and even more stressful when you finally find what you're looking for. When she exits Smith Casey's with Charon, there's a familiar crackling on her pip-boy that always means a distress signal. It's from a man named Wernher, who's apparently an escaped slave or something, from somewhere called the Pitt. With squared shoulders, she looks at Charon. "Let's go."
"And I will follow."