"Ey, naranjita!"

Futaba felt someone tapping her on the cheek, and opened her eyes. Her glasses must've fallen off when she had logged out, and so she was only able to make out a vaguely human figure dressed in dark green kneeling in front of her.

"¿Hablas español?" he asked.

Futaba tilted her head slightly. "…nihongo ga dekimasu ka?"

"Había que intentarlo," he muttered under his breath. "English?" he added, louder.

"Yes. English is good." She squinted her eyes, for all the good it did her. "Did you see my glasses somewhere around?"

"I took them off." Judging by the motion, he pulled them out of his pocket and presented them to her. "I didn't want my ugly mug to be the first thing you'll see."

She took them from his hand, wiped the lenses, put them on, and found herself staring at a bald humanoid in a jumpsuit missing noticeable chunks of his head skin. "[What the fuck?!]" she screamed, recoiling away until her back hit the wall of the storage building she was still in.

"Calm down, naranjita," he said, unbothered. "I'm not feral or anything. I'm a normal person, just a bit more rotting."

"I-I'm not a fan of normal people either, t-to be fair," she replied, taking deep breaths. "Who and what are you?"

"Raul Alfonso Tejada," he introduced himself. "I'm-"

"The name tag says 'Miguel'."

"The jumpsuit used to belong to a Miguel and I never bothered to get the tag off. Anyway…" The girl was sticking out in more ways than one and he decided to give her a detailed explanation. "I'm a ghoul – a human that got irradiated to high hell and was 'lucky' enough to mutate into what you see before you. I've been working for… well, enslaved by the previous inhabitants of the area."

"Y-you mean the orcs roaming around?"

"We prefer to be called 'Super Mutants'," a baritone came from outside the building. An o- pardon me, a Super Mutant peeked inside and stared at Futaba. He looked exactly as she had expected him to look – green, bulky, scowling – but there was something in the way he carried himself and spoke that made him appear comparatively non-threatening. "Greetings. I am Neil, and I am the last remaining mutant in the area."

"He won't hurt you," Raul added when he noticed her beginning to hyperventilate. "He actually freed me when the others left."

"I have seen all the other inhabitants depart, following Tabitha and her robot," Neil continued. "I came back to investigate, and found only Raul, imprisoned and unaware of what happened, and you. Do you know what occurred here?"

Futaba took one last deep breath and got up from the ground. "I t-t-turned the robot off and on again and-and apparently her and the blue Super Mutant had a schedule they needed to stick to and so they left."

"You turned the robot on and off again," Raul repeated in disbelief.

"Wh-what?"

"Oh, nothing," Raul replied. "It's just that I have spent hours trying to fix it and you just… turned it off and on again."

"W-well," Futaba countered, "maybe you've fixed some damage that was there and just forgot the last step." A thought creeped in the back of her head. "M-maybe if you hadn't done that, the 'bot wouldn't be operational and the mutants would frag me when they saw me, so…" Another deep breath. "I owe you my life, probably."

"Even if, don't mention it," he waved her off. "Glad I could save at least one kid."

"Your story missed one crucial detail," Neil pointed out. "Namely, how you ended up here in the first place."

"Uh…" In a split second, she decided telling what actually happened would make her sound crazy, and blurted out the first cover story that came to her mind, "mad science experiment gone wrong. Something with teleportation."

Since the ones asking were a 234-year-old radiation-powered mutant that has seen a lot of things in his life, and a ca. 150-year-old victim of military experiments with genetically modified viruses, they just shrugged and took it at face value. "You're from a Vault, aren't you? These people really couldn't leave well enough alone." Neil grumbled.

"Uh… no, actually," she replied. "I'm from Tokyo."

"Wow," Raul blurted out. "You're a long way from home, naranjita," he commented, sympathetic. "Was there anyone else with you?"

"A few others were teleported with me during the experiment," Futaba replied. "A bunch of folks roughly the same race and level as me, led by a black-haired guy in fake glasses. He had a black cat."

"I haven't noticed anyone like that on my way here," Neil commented. "Alive or dead."

Futaba pushed away the unspoken implication. "Can I… leave this building? Is it safe now?"

"Just don't leave the fenced area," Raul replied. "The only road out of here is glowing with radiation."

Futaba nodded in acknowledgement and left the storage building. Raul whispered at Neil to talk about something away from her and so she was left mostly alone to absorb her surroundings.

The first thing she paid attention to was a tall antenna tower with a catwalk surrounding it – the Super Mutant she had seen before was using it as a vantage point to watch the entrance to the area. There were three buildings in total, a small one to the right of the one she just left, and a larger, two-story one on the other side, with a satellite dish on top. The lot was surrounded with other antennas and satellite dishes in various states of disrepair, seemingly confirming her suspicions that she had slept through the apocalypse. One of the dishes was lying on the ground; judging by all the burned wood in it, someone repurposed it as a campfire. Other than that, remains of the asphalt road went past some dumpsters and thoroughly rusted car wrecks into the distance.

Futaba got up on the catwalk and stared into the distance. The road serpentined down the mountain, with some makeshift fortifications dotted around, probably utilized by the previous inhabitants. Further in the distance, there was a quarry with some creatures in it that she couldn't identify – but with the industrial machinery near them for scale, they seemed large enough to intimidate her from so far away. In the north, there were ruins of a larger city, with one particular building sticking out of the skyline – a narrow tower with its uppermost part stylized to look like the top of a roulette wheel.

Deciding to stop focusing on things outside of her render distance, she got off the catwalk and walked to the two-story building, curious about what's inside.

A moment before that, Raul and Neil marched towards the exit from the area, just to make sure the kid wouldn't try anything funny. "Alright, big guy, quick question:" Raul muttered in a conspiratorial tone. "Do you know where Tokyo is?"

"I do not," he replied. "I assume it's somewhere in what used to be the Midwest."

Raul inhaled air through whatever teeth he had left. "The other direction. It's on the other end of the Pacific."

Neil took a moment to process that information. "...are you sure?"

"Before the War, there was this island country near China. Name escapes me now, but Tokyo was the capital. If she had gotten teleported from there, we're looking at massive margins of error in play. Who knows where her companions ended up."

There was an awkward pause, finally broken by Neil: "Since we're discussing outrageous theories…" He glanced at the girl getting off the catwalk. "I'm eighty percent sure she traveled through time as well as space. Either that, or that 'Tokyo' place is way ahead of even California's standard of living. She's unnaturally spick-and-span."

"So, we have a fish out of water on our hands," Raul summed up. "What do we do about her?"

"I can't leave Black Mountain," Neil pointed out. "I have a duty to my own kind. Who knows how many Super Mutants are now heading here, tempted by Tabitha's broadcast. I need to direct them to a safer spot."

"Are your compatriots too dense to read a sign?"

"Some of them are." Neil's tone turned a bit sour as he gave Raul a pointed glare. "And they didn't have a choice in the matter."

"Yeah, right. Sorry about that." After a pause, Raul continued. "I guess I could take her somewhere safe, but last time I checked, the road out leads to Deathclaw country."

"You could go down the mountain towards that NCR substation," Neil pointed out. "The slope's not that steep, and from there you can walk to Helios One, and then you'll be by the main roads."

"Hm." Raul seemed unconvinced for some reason. "I don't know. I have a bad track record when it comes to keeping young girls safe." Beat, realization. "Wait, where is she now?"

She wasn't in the building where Raul was imprisoned – he was glad; it's been a while since his waste bucket was emptied – and not in the storage building, and by the time they marched to the building with the dish on it, they were somewhat concerned that she had managed to give them the slip while they were distracted.

The building was filled with assorted electronic devices – computers the size of a small wardrobe, data storage machines utilizing magnetic tape, a few more compact terminals on the desks, some of them not broken, and various well-worn signal processing machines on racks. A few slightly-damaged shelves housed assorted busted bits and bobs that could've been used for spare parts if need be. Futaba was moving erratically across the room, inspecting the machinery. At that point she expected any tech she'd encounter to be broken in some way, shape or form, but the system in front of her seemed operational to a satisfactory degree, if outdated by her standards.

"There you are," Raul remarked.

She turned to them, startled. "Oh! D-didn't hear you come in." She had her own theories, but decided asking the inhabitants wouldn't hurt. "What is this place?"

"The Black Mountain Radio headquarters," Raul exposited. "The Super Mutant that kept me imprisoned was running her own radio station, attracting new mutants to her settlement with heavy-handed propaganda."

"But she's not using it now." A smirk appeared on Futaba's face. "And so I can log in and contact my friends."

"That's a fantastic idea, naranjita," Raul commented. "Let's scream from the rooftops that there's a lonely young girl on top of this mountain, defended only by an arthritic half-blind ghoul."

"Besides," Neil spoke up, "do you think your friends will be in the vicinity of a radio to hear your message?"

"They should carry the receivers on themselves," She pulled out her smartphone and displayed it to them. "Dunno if your post-apo society has these, but they are common where I'm from and you don't seem to be using the frequencies for anything else. All I'll need to do-"

"I will be blunt:" Neil interrupted her, "what year are you from?"

"Uh, 20XX. What year is it now?"

"2281."

"Nani?" Futaba was shocked enough to codeswitch before catching herself. "This-this hardware looks like it was made in the 1950s!"

"The technology plateaued before the Great War," Raul shrugged. "I've been around back then, and I can tell you that what you have here is the best you're gonna get."

A previously-unnoticed speech option appeared to Futaba. "…so you know how this system works?"

"I know a thing or two," he replied.

"He got it back up and running after the previous inhabitants smashed it to bits," Neil elaborated.

"Oooh." Futaba smiled. "I'll need to adjust the transmitters so they'll operate as cell towers for my party members' phones, and then craft some receivers for two-way comms. Will you help me with difficult skill checks if they come up?"

Raul assumed 'difficult skill check' was an idiom lost in translation. "Sure. I have nothing better to do with my newfound freedom than to assist a girl I just met in a fruitless search for her misplaced friends."

Neil glanced at him. "How on earth did you and your big mouth live this long under Tabitha?"

"My secret is not quipping at people strong enough to cave my skull in." He turned back to Futaba. "Seriously though, I only know how to make it work as a radio. I can advise you on the practical side of things, but unless you know the theory, we'll stay here for a long while."

"There might be a bit of trial and error involved," Futaba admitted. "I know the theory, but implementation on this ancient hardware might take some time."

"Ancient? You're from two-and-a-half centuries before us," Neil said.

"Yeah, and my time's technology progressed beyond the museum exhibits you have here," Futaba countered. "And apparently that's as good as it ever got, somehow."

"We've already accepted that you've traveled through time and space," Neil commented. "Maybe you're from a different universe altogether."

"Maybe." Futaba shrugged and sat down by one of the terminals. "I really hope that electromagnetic waves here work like in mine, otherwise I'm file-system-check'd."