the waiting game

"Two days isn't that long to wait. It might give me time to prepare," said Dan while going back into the vault and continuing to explore. He passed the overseer's office and found the living quarters. As he went through the rooms, he found there wasn't much, mostly vault suits in okay condition and some terminals complaining about food shortages.

Dan had looted five vault suits, two mentats, one jet, and one buffout. As he went to the last room, Dan almost jumped with excitement. He found a skeleton dead on the bed and an intact 10mm pistol on the floor. Going through the drawers, he found two boxes of ammo. He also found something unusual that he had never seen in Fallout: a broken device that read V.E.S and three holotapes. The V.E.S looked like a handheld device that was vaguely similar to a Game Boy.

After a few minutes of fiddling with the V.E.S and using parts from broken terminals, Dan fixed the V.E.S. Turning it on, the screen was black and green at first and then displayed "Vault Entertainment System." A message appeared that said "Please enter holotape." Dan took one of the holotapes and put it in the slot on top of the V.E.S and a game of Red Menace started playing. After an hour of playing, Dan put the V.E.S in his inventory and continued to explore the vault. Along the way, he found another dead security officer and took their baton. A few hours had already passed, so Dan went to lay down and sleep.

After a few hours of sleep, he was woken up by a blaring alarm. Confused, Dan went out of the room he was sleeping in and saw three mole rats. As soon as they saw Dan, they ran towards him. Dan took his baton out and prepared for battle. The first one jumped towards Dan's face, only to be met with a baton to the head, blowing it back into the wall. The second one bit down onto his leg, causing a sudden pain to wash over Dan. He hit the second rat with the baton, crushing its head and killing it. The third one was far away, so Dan took out the pistol and started aiming [VATS activated]. Suddenly, time slowed, and he focused on different parts of the rat's head. He pulled the trigger three times. The first one missed, the second one hit the leg, and the third one hit it in the head, killing it. After all of them died, the alarm stopped. Breathing a sigh of relief, Dan stored all of his weapons. The pain in his leg wasn't as bad as it looked. The damaged metal started repairing itself. Suddenly, a message displayed in his vision: "Battery consumption temporarily sped up by 20% until repair completed."

"Damn, those rats can bite hard. Almost ripped my leg out," said Dan with his heart racing.