Chapter 25: Saying Goodbye

Date Tuesday, August 17th, 2275 

Two years before the events of Fallout 3.

About an hour later, I suddenly awoke and regained consciousness.

Holy fuck, my head hurts. 

I thought while grasping my head, that felt like it was on the cusp of exploding.

As I laid on my bed in pain, wishing for it to go away, time ticked by slowly and after a while, the pressure in my head began to lighten up along with the pain. When it subsided to bearable levels, I unsteadily sat up, got out of my bed, and stumbled over to one of the several medical containers in my room. Once there, I retrieved something to help with the excruciating pain I was still battling with a med-x syringe and stuck it into my arm and pumped its contents into veins.

It took a few minutes, but eventually the drugs kicked in, reducing my pain by a massive percentage. 

Phew, now that I can actually think straight, I should probably top myself off with a couple of stimpaks just for good measure. I don't think that overload of information did any damage to my brain, but I'd rather err on the side of caution than not.

With the idea in my head, I sifted through the medical container, retrieved two stimpaks, and immediately injected them into one of the larger veins on my forearm, one after the other. 

Minutes later, after the stimpak injection, I felt a wave of relief and felt much better. "Aah, yeah, that's much better now."

Alright, I'm gonna go lay on my bed for an hour and see how I feel when I wake up. I would hate to have to delay my venture into the wasteland today.

As soon as I set my alarm, I climbed into bed with my head now resting comfortably on my pillow and closed my eyes for a bit. From there, I passed out and fell asleep in no time at all.

*zzz*

About an hour later, my alarm started blaring, waking me from my short power nap.

*Brrrt...Brrrt...Brrrt*

*Ah-haa-uh*

Now that I've had a short nap, I'm feeling much better. Actually, on second thought, I'm feeling better than ever before truthfully. Let me take a moment to check out all the different things that have changed with my drastically increased stats.

Going over a majority of the changes with my body first, I took a fighting stance next and threw several jabs to test out my newfound strength, along with some kicks. I did that for a few dozen more times before I was happy with my tests, at least enough for the moment.

Having gone over all the improvements that have happened to my body, I can say with certainty that I'm definitely more than ready for the dangers that await me in the wasteland. Unless I come face to face with a super mutant behemoth if I encounter such a monstrosity, I'm getting the fuck out of dodge.

Upon completing that thought, I went around my room getting several things ready to take with me for later. And as I was gathering said things, I noticed it was about time for breakfast since I could sense dad was in the kitchen preparing his morning coffee. Thus, I headed out to spend some quality time with my old man before Amata and her old man showed up for breakfast. This would be the last time I'll be seeing him for a bit, so it's best I spend some time with him before I set off.

"Morning, dad." I greeted.

"Morning, son." He replied while I was coming into the kitchen to get stuff ready for when our company arrives for breakfast.

The two of us chatted while his coffee was being made and shortly thereafter, he headed out to sit on the couch in the living room with his hot cup of joe in hand. I, on the other hand, continued getting breakfast ready for the two of us and the other two that will be joining us here shortly.

Making small talk for a bit, I eventually sensed Amata and her dad way further out than I ever could previously, about 18 meters out, to be exact. So as they were still coming down the vault hallway and passing the other vault residents on their way, I asked dad if he could get the door since they will be at in a few seconds here. "Hey, dad, can you get the door?"

"Yeah, sure thing, son." He replied while placing his coffee mug on the coffee table in front of him before he got up to open the door to our home. 

The instant he opened the door, he found both Amata and her dad were both standing there, thus he welcomed them. From there, they all came my way into the kitchen, attracted by the smell of food I was cooking up.

"Good morning guys, the food will be done in a sec. If you want to, you three can go take a seat while I finish up here." I directed as I busily flipped pancakes.

"Do you need any help, Harold?" Amata asked sweetly, looking to help.

"Nah, I'm good, Amata. Thank you, though."

Several minutes passed before I had everything prepared and once it was, I had Amata assist me in bringing the plates of food over to the table. When everything was eventually brought over and set upon the table, we both took our respective seats and began to discuss several topics in between bites of food.

This went on for a good number of minutes when we discovered we had devoured most of the food on the table. Seeing as this was as good a moment as any, I excused myself and went to my room to retrieve the encrypted ground-penetrating radios that we'll be using while I'm away from the vault.

After I retrieved them from the container they were sitting in, I came back out of my room with the radios in hand and handed everyone at the table their own radio. As they were looking at them with interest, I began going over their different functions and how to operate them, including a few other things of importance.

"That covers everything. Just make sure you keep it on your person at all times, otherwise you might miss me." I told them getting a round of agreement and head nods.

We then finished up what little bit of food remained on the table. But when I say we, I mainly mean me though, since I'm the one whose meals going forward are going to purely consist of shelf-stable food. I'm honestly not looking forward to that part, but it is what it is. After that, everyone thanked me for the meal before Amata and I started bringing the dishes to the sink to rinse them off and put them in the dishwasher.

A quick few minutes of clean-up later, we started heading out as planned to my workshop/research facility. As soon as we reached it, I tested out Mechu-deru on my robots. And after a bit of trying things out, I discovered that it just seemed to give me direct control of them on top of improving my ability to make calculations, the more robots I had under my control.

This perk definitely has a ton of latent potential.

When I was done having my fun, I had all the robots start moving all the materials that I'm going to need for the RobCo Facility to the vault entrance. While they were busy with that, I went over to my gear and started putting it on and in no more than five minutes I had my armor equipped along with my other gear like my sidearm, magazines for the 50 caliber A-21 Anti-Material Rifle, and my grenades.

Giving my gear a good check over, I asked Amata if I was forgetting anything. "Hey Amata, am I forgetting anything?"

"Hmm, I don't think so, but did you grab your spare magazines?" She responded.

"Yeah, I got them." I replied before I gave my gear one final look over.

Satisfied with my equipment checks, I began thinking about the next thing that needs to get done.

It's gonna take several hours to get everything moved and assembled, so I better help my robots to hurry things along. The sooner I get out and get on my way, the better.

With that decided, I spent the next several hours moving all the materials to the vault entrance and putting Hauler back together with everyone. When everything was finally ready and loaded up, I did one final check in my head to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. Better off being sure than having to turn back around and waste precious time that I could've spent on getting myself set up at the RobCo Facility.

... Alright, looks like I'm good to go.

Everything checked, I gave everyone here one last hug and an especially long one with Amata, since she was tearing up more than a wee bit at this point.

Once Amata calmed down a bit, I said. "Well, it's about time I got on the road since I don't want to travel in the dark. Take care of yourselves, everyone."

"Yeah, we'll be just fine, son. Make sure you try to avoid anything too dangerous out there and come back alive and well. Otherwise, I'll come out looking for you." Dad said in reply before Amata spoke up immediately after.

"Harold, you better come back, you hear me, or else I'm following suit if you leave me here all alone." She said very seriously, on the brink of tears again. 

Seeing her tearing up again, I hugged her and rubbed her back whilst trying to reassure her. "I'll be back in no time, Amata. You have nothing to worry about."

I kept her in my embrace until she got control of her emotions for the second time in this short goodbye.

With Amata dealt with, the overseer decided to take his turn to speak. "Listen here son, you better come back safe and sound or so help me. I'll go to whatever hell you end up in and kick your ass for leaving my precious daughter behind." He said seriously before bursting out into laughter seconds later, which brightened the general mood of everyone here.

The minute I was done saying my goodbyes and giving Amata some extra reassurance plus a few encouraging words, I put my helmet on and took out my Mulcher gatling gun. When I had those two pieces of equipment equipped, I finally set foot out past the massive vault door.

Giving everyone one last wave goodbye, the overseer had uncle Gomez activate the door controls and begin shutting the door. It took a second, but the gargantuan door began turning and once it was lined up, it slid forward and screeched shut behind me.

"No turning back at this point. Let's set out guys." I said aloud to my robots while heading out of the huge cave Vault 101 was located in.

"Okay, boss." Hauler answered lastly as I kept moving forward towards the cave entrance with my sizable squad of robots following not far behind me.

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If you want something else to read, that's similar to this, check out my other webnovel Wasteland Conqueror. It has a lot more chapters released.