It had been a real bitch of an effort to get this place up and running, but somehow that made the feeling of satisfaction stronger when they finally finished their hydroponics bay room. It wasn't quite the high-tech room they all had initially envisioned, as there were mostly rows of vats made for growing plants with simple pipes and UV lamps overhead to shower the plants in order to simulate rain and sun. and each vat was designed to simulate the perfect temp and season for each specific plant there.
But the fallout shelter project computer had informed them that they could eventually upgrade the room over time into the ultimate hydroponic room with all the bells and whistles it needed. So keeping in mind this wasn't too bad a start.
Especially when you kept in mind that all they had before was a bunch of cans with water in them on a shelf, and trying to regrow discarded leftovers in them. Which in hindsight was… decidedly lame. Yeah.
They were still gonna do that scrap growing method, but now those were gonna be in fancy vats instead of old tin cans or glass jars shoved in some corner of the food storage room. Might grow better that way.
And of course, thanks to this very large room being completed now, this meant that there was no longer a bunch of workers evenly split up between this and the hospital wing room they were planning to build now. Which meant the hospital was going to be built faster than the hydroponic room was.
But now Karina was starting to feel really restless because of that.
She was starting to have a strong desire to go out there and explore somewhere new now, and it seems that the pulls nowadays were starting to reflect her boredom and listlessness as her summons from yesterday and today were all basic boring stuff such as--
>Ring<
>Ring<
https://graveyardkeeper.fandom.com/wiki/Priestess_Ring Roll 12
Despite its name and it being a quest item, it seems to be just a plain ring otherwise. No holy effects or anything like that.
Effect: thanks to the low roll, it's now a very old well-worn ring that looks like it belongs in an antiquities display rather than a ring that could be worn comfortably. |
It could be just her bias, but it did look like her pulls only got truly interesting whenever there were interesting activities going on, or when she was exploring someplace more interesting.
That's if she asked her power to surprise her instead of her trying to summon something specific. And even when she asked for something specific, it wasn't guaranteed that she could get anything good if her power seemed bored by whatever was happening here.
And was it kind of insane that she was anthropomorphizing her power here when it was most likely only summoning things that reflected her mood? If she was bored, then she was going to summon things that seemed boring to her.
Besides, she really was starting to suffer from cabin fever… she seriously needed to hike somewhere else and get some fresh air!
Thankfully, she had the perfect excuse.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I'm gonna go out and look for the rest of the stuff needed to make more of the revival fluid, alright? I also may need to look for more canned foods, just in case. Got to keep all the women we awakened fed, right?" Karina told Lauren and the rest of the group.
Isabelle then piped up, "could you also take photos and recordings of what it's like out there also? Um, I found my old recorder and my camera amongst my personal effects in storage. That's just… I thought it might be nice to have some actual evidence on our side when we tell the rest of the women what happened to the outside world."
Karina blinked. That was a pretty good point, actually. All the women needed to be fully informed when deciding to stay or to leave. If they left, they would at least have a pretty good idea of what was waiting for them out there. Maybe while she was at it, she could also document the wildlife that had mutated over time and become more dangerous.
"Sure, I can do that." She agreed.
With that, she went to look over Vault 129's emergency services map once again, and while she was at it she marked Plentywood on the map with a red marker to show that she had cleared it already.
But it seemed that the next nearest hospital was in a town called Scobey, which was 41 miles away from Plentywood.
It was an even smaller town than Plentywood was, so she doubted she'd find much in the way of things there. But still, she just wanted to get out of here for a while so that wasn't exactly her true goal despite what she told others here.
But…. on the other hand, there was a much bigger town south of Plentywood, a place called Culbertson.
Scobey was a tiny pre-war town of mostly only 150 people, so the hospital they had there would have to be tiny as it didn't even have vet hospitals either, everyone had gone to Plentywood for that.
Culbertson on the other hand… was a big town almost on the verge of becoming a city in itself. So that one would have a bigger hospital, and therefore more supplies they could use, right?
Culbertson, it was then. Nodding to herself, She packed the usual stuff that she felt was needed to defend herself or heal herself if she got injured, as well as packing the shrunk trunks…. Just in case there was way more stuff than she thought she'd find. She also packed the camera and recorder that Isabelle had given her.
With that, she was off once again.
She got to a running start soon as she left the vault, her wings popping out once again. And with that, she took to the skies.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
20 minutes she was already gliding over Plentywood, and by the look of things, she'd be in Culbertson in 18 minutes once she started flying south.
She flapped her wings so that she was now speeding through the air toward the south.
Ahhh… this feeling of total freedom as she was high in the air, with the wind in her hair. This was exactly what she needed today.
As much as she felt that it was important to help those women back there rebuild and help them awaken the rest, sometimes she just needed time to herself and let herself have fun, ya know?
She let out a loud whoop of joy as she did de-loops in the air and all other sorts of fun air tricks.
She didn't even care if this would slow her down, she was having fun!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A few minutes, however, she stumbled across trouble around the medicine lake area.
((bang!)) a bullet whizzed close by, missing her by inches. Karina instinctively flinched and moved out of the way in mid-air.
>ring<
https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Birdramon_(Adventure Roll 3
A Digimon that looks like a giant flaming phoenix with sharp teeth. It's way bigger than a bunch of teenagers and pre-teens. They look tiny in comparison to him, so I only can imagine that the same would be said for an adult human.
Effect: For three hours, Birdramon will be here to help Karina out of any trouble she's in. |
She quickly looked down to see who was attacking her, while the giant phoenix thing looked about itself to figure out where the hell it was.
….. Great. Turns out that this place was a hotbed for super mutants. Which she had to deal with AGAIN. Where the hell did those super mutants come from??? Grr.
She would've liked to deal with normal human raiders for a change.
She flew close to the bird while calling out to it, "I was the one who summoned you here. Can you please help me out with those troublemakers?"
Meanwhile down on the ground, the Super mutants were cussing profusely at the sight of a giant flaming bird that had appeared so suddenly.
And one of them was even dumb enough to keep on shooting at it along with Karina as his original target.
"Owch! That stings, you bullies!" The bird rumbled loudly in annoyance once it got shot at, not even being given a chance to respond to Karina.
He had been unsure about helping Karina out as she wasn't even one of the chosen children that it typically protected and helped out, but those Mutants' actions just helped him decide which side he should be on. In other words, he was pissed off now.
"Meteor wing!" he cried out his attack name, as dozens of fireballs shot out of his flapping wings and rained down upon the unfortunate giant green creatures.
The old ruined underwater buildings they were standing on top of exploded in fire, and the Mutants screamed as they fled the scene, some of them even catching on fire.
The ones on fire apparently hadn't been taught the "stop, drop, and roll" thing, because they just kept on running around screaming their heads off trying to find something that would put the fire out. They even went as far as to jump into the lake that had apparently overtaken the nearby town, and there was a comical sizzling noise as they put themselves out.
Karina winced in sympathy because that had to HURT. Still, she couldn't bring it in herself to feel too bad because hey, they did attack her first so….
"Thanks for the save." Karina thanked the giant flaming creature, before introducing herself, "I'm Karina."
The two of them were still flapping in the air, just kind of hovering there although it was kinda getting harder for Karina to do because apparently pegasus wings weren't meant to hover in one place infinitely.
The giant creature bobbed his head, saying, "I'm Birdramon. What's going on here?"
"I'll be happy to explain, but first can we go to ground? My wings are getting tired." Karia responded.
A few moments later, after Karina had ensured that they'd find a safe spot to hide from the mutants, she explained everything. Inducing the fact that he'd go back to his original world shortly as the summon "spell" was pretty weak and temporary.
Birdramon seemed to accept everything at face value and was okay with being Karina's temporary bodyguard while she went in to raid the local abandoned hospital.
Karina smiled. "Thanks. Now we just need to get past those super mutants without being noticed, which is easier than said now that you're here…"
Birdramon huffed. "Those guys back there weren't so tough. I'll just toss a few more Meteor wing attacks their way to dissuade them from following us."
Karina mulled that over and then shrugged. She didn't really have any better plans here, it was hard to come up with a plan in which a giant phoenix creature that was bigger than both mutants and humans could plausibly sneak by without being noticed. Birdramon was right, it seemed that brute force and intimidation were the way to go.
"Eh, a good plan as any?"
With that, they both flapped up into the air and started flying south together.
On the way there, however, they noticed that a nearby small town that hadn't been overwhelmed by the expanding lake was now under siege by…. A large whale??
One that apparently could swim underground just as much as it swam through water too. And could jump into the air out of the dirt. What.
The local mutants were trying their best to alternately kill it or capture it, she couldn't tell.
But the whale thing wasn't so easily killed or captured because the giant mutated glowing thing could simply disappear back into the ground every time they threw a net over it, or when they stabbed it.
And, it seemed to be strangely careful in avoiding the buildings, jumping upwards out of the ground or water inside wide open areas.
There was a purple-skinned mutant who seemed to be the boss around here, as he kept on getting more and more upset that they couldn't catch the damn thing.
The two of them gawked at the scene down below for a few seconds that they almost forgot that they were supposed to fly south quickly without the super mutants catching up to them, but then the two of them remembered.
As Karina and Birdramon flew on and glided on the air currents, Karina couldn't help but comment, "Well, that's a scene you don't see every day…?"
"Indeed. That's the strangest Digimon I've seen!" Birdramon replied.
"Digimon… is that a name for giant whales where you come from?" Karina asked as she glided close to him.
"Nope, it's a catchall name for digital monsters like myself and others! Haven't you seen a Digimon before?" He answered.
Karina blinked. "Wait. are you telling me that you live inside computers….?"
Birdramon nodded. "Yep! Although we can come out of them any time we want, or if the Digi-destined ones summon us to their world. We're effectively sentient, magic code assembled together, and so is the digital world we live in!"
Karina digested that for a few minutes as they kept on flying in silence.
Okay, not the single weirdest thing she had seen or heard so far, but it was definitely near the top of the list there.
It was hard to imagine this creature as just lines of code, he seemed so alive. Not to mention… how the fuck would a bird this freakin' HUGE come out of what she imagined was a small CRT-style computer??
Did the poor computers just explode every time they came out? Or was it more like a beam of light, and they materialized a few feet away from the computer?
Karina was so lost in that line of mental questioning that she almost didn't notice it when they finally arrived in Culbertson.
Thankfully Birdramon seemed more on the ball than she was, as he pointed out, "is there supposed to be a large pile of rubble down there?"
Karina looked down…. And sure enough, the entire town looked as if a tornado had gone through it recently.
Strangely enough, you could tell the damage was somewhat recent as opposed to having been bombed hundreds of years ago. It was hard to describe or explain why, you just got this sense of how things were before when you looked at the damage.
And unfortunately, by the looks of things, not even the hospital was spared as she saw a hospital sign lying on what was a pile of large rubble, some of the bricks completely ground into dust.
"This is… Culbertson?" Karina sounded like she didn't want this to be true as they landed close to the town, But her Pipboy confirmed for her that this was in fact the town of Culbertson.
She groaned as she sat on the ground. "Fuck. how am I supposed to search through this rubble to find the medical supplies I needed?"
"Hey. somebody else's here," Birdramon commented as he nodded off into the distance.
Karina looked over in that direction and sure enough, she could see somebody moving like they didn't want to be noticed, moving away from them.
Karina moved quickly, with some aid from her magic wings, and stopped in front of the crouching person.
"Ack!" The man in rags cried out as he fell on his ass and crawled away from Karina in fear.
Karina then projected an aura of calm as she replied, "Whoa, easy there. I'm not gonna hurt you… I just want to know what happened here. The damage seems recent?"
The man eyed both Karina and Birdramon, who had moved closer in curiosity, with wary eyes. But at least he seemed calmer now that he realized they weren't gonna hurt him.
"Dunno man. I scav those ruins once in a while. But, one day I heard this noise… and sneaked in to see what was going on. And I see those two monsters fighting. One was this huge-ass wheel that had giant arms and heads stuck to it. The other one was a freakin' huge lizard, bigger than any deathclaw I had seen in the past. The damnest thing I ever saw, once I retreated to a safe distance to watch the fight. Especially after they disappeared into thin air after a time. Poof, just like that. Made me wonder if I saw what I thought I saw… but those felled old buildings tell the tale, don't they?" he mumbled.
Karina's blood ran cold, as she realized what had gone on here.
Damnit… she didn't want to believe it, but it seemed that Regan had the same powerset as she did. This was just one point in favor of the theory that Karina had gotten the powerset that was intended for the men, and that she had originally meant to be an Amazoness like the rest of the women in vault 129.
And Regan was randomly summoning those creatures to this world. Was that weird whale thing one of his summons too??
And it told her where he had gone too… it seemed that while she had been busy with vault 129 or going to North Dakota, he had opted to go to Montana and then head south for whatever reason? Would he be looking for civilization?
She quickly asked the man, "Listen. Did you see a man dressed in the same clothes I am? This blue vault suit with the number 129 on the back of it?"
The man shook his head. "Nope, all I saw was the monsters."
She sighed. "Okay. so is there any place he might've gone to, then? Some place where there are humans living together in a community or whatever?"
He thought some, and then said, "There's this place called Fort Peck. I trade with the hunters there."
Karina then gestured at her Pipboy, opening it to the maps feature. "Can you point at the map where it might be?"
The man pointed to a spot on the map, which she marked with a location marker. "Thanks."
The man looked at them both warily, as he mumbled, "Can I go now, please?"
Karina nodded. "Sorry for holding you like this. I just wanted to know some things, is all. Thank you for being so helpful."
She paused, before reaching into her bag and pulling out the discarded chems that had been labeled as useless in terms of not being part of the revival fluid recipe. Karina had thought she'd trade them away should she find another human settlement, but this might do as a reward for the man.
"Here's the payment for giving me the information I needed."
The man perked up slightly at the sight of the chems, which were mostly things like Jet. He now sounded more friendly as he took them. "Thanks kindly."
He then hurried away with his prize while Karina turned to face Birdramon. "Well, my original quest here was a bust, but I've found out something important that I need to share with the others at Vault 129. Do you want to come with me?"
Birdramon shrugged with his wings. "Not like I have anything else to do in this world."
Karina nodded at that, and with that, they were off back north where they flew from.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The buffalo men's reaction to Birdramon was unexpected, as she had thought they'd panic at seeing such a giant creature or something. But instead, they stayed calm as they saw her first and the creature second… and upon seeing him their expressions were one of awe.
"It's a Thunderbird!!" one man exclaimed excitedly.
"Huh. always thought they were a metaphor for nature…" another one said, with the voice of somebody who had just discovered that a mythical creature was in fact real after all.
They surrounded the giant phoenix with the large teeth with the same reverence that they might have if Jesus personally come down to visit a bunch of Christians, practically worshiping him on sight.
Birdramon was caught off guard by this, and he looked conflicted like he couldn't decide between wanting to preen from the positive attention or just looking modestly embarrassed.
Karina's eyebrows were raised as she asked, "You guys know he's just one of my summons, right?"
One of the men nodded before saying, "Yeah, we know. But this beautiful creature looks nearly identical to the Laktoan legends about the Thunderbird. Do you know what this means? If those creatures can exist in other worlds, then so can our Thunderbird. You've got to understand how awe-inspiring that is. How much this validates our faith?"
Karina admitted that he did have a point there. Just because they didn't exist here in this world didn't mean that they never existed in other worlds. Although… it did give her a weird thought.
Did this mean that there might be a world where people like Santa Claus and Unicorns existed?
Shaking her head free of such a silly thought, she opted to go into the vault to inform the others of her recent findings.
============================================================
A/N: It occurred to me that Karina wasn't doing much about Regan at all, despite my plans for her to do so. I was also getting bored of her staying at the vault. Heh.
So I just imagined that the Robs might feel the same way and give her a sight nudge, making her feel like she needed to get out of there for a while. Ya know? 🙂
I had plans for her to explore both North Dakota and Montana, damn it. But then I had to take into account what she'd really want to do, and ughh… that derailed my pants a little bit.
And now 66 chapters later, we're finally at the point where Karina finds out where Regan's been going and what he's doing. Uggghh. 😛
