Make a deal

You were raised in a Vault to be civilized. You’ve heard stories, but… if you want people up here to treat you well, you have to start by doing the same thing.

So you gather up your courage and walk around to the door. You take a deep breath and knock. You hear stirring inside the building. Right, they were sleeping. You’ve woken them up, even though it’s still daytime. Barely. You look worriedly at the sky. The light is fading. Where are you going to spend the night? Here?

You look at the girl in the cage. She hasn’t moved, but she looks so pathetic. These people are abusing her. You keep your hand on the grip of your Mauser and step back as you hear someone approaching.

It opens and a bleary face peers out.

She’s dirty and rough, with disheveled hair. She stares at you curiously.

“What the fuck is this?” she asks. Behind her, you see a smaller, thinner woman picking herself up from a makeshift bed. She’s naked and covered in tattoos, but it would be rude to watch this person get dressed. And probably get you punched by this other woman.

“I want to talk to you,” you say, focusing on the woman who answered the door.

“You what?”

“I want to talk to you,” you repeat, then you twist to point at the cage. “About her.”

The face gets serious. The door opens, and the woman inside steps out. She must have been leaning forward, because she straightens up as she comes out. She’s tall and strong. Not huge, but when she stands a head taller than you, it’s hard not to sweat.

You take a step back as she looms over you.

“And who the fuck are you, Vault Girl?” she asks.

“Who are you?” you reply, taking in her mismatched armor and clothes, covered in spikes and studs. And the big club in her hand.

“You’re the one knocking on my fucking door,” she says. Her wild, dark hair frames her face… which right now is wearing a scary expression.

“OK, I’m Jane. Why are you keeping that girl in a cage?”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

“Because,” you begin, taking a deep breath. “Because it would be the healthy thing to do.”

She smirks. “Nice try, Vault Girl. What the hell do you care about her?”

“I don’t think that people belong in cages.”

“Funny coming from a Vault Girl. What do you think that vault is?”

“I think it’s home. What’s it going to take for you to let the girl go?” you ask bluntly.

“You’re offering?” the woman looks taken aback. “You’re offering to trade for her?”

“Depends on what you want. Maybe I can get her for the low cost of one bullet,” you say, patting your gun.

“Try it, you little bitch. The rad skeeters will be sucking your blood up off the pavement for a week.”

“Let’s do it the friendly way. What do you want?” you press.

“You really want to make a deal with me,” the woman says, sounding disbelieving.

“That’s right. And I want to make it today,” you say.

“Spicy. All right, Vault Girl. My name is Spiker. And if you want that girl over there, I want my gun back. You bring it back to me and you can have her.” She shrugs at you. “Seem fair?”

“Depends. Where’s the gun?” you ask.

“I dropped it,” she says.

“Where?”

“In the cave.”

“What cave?”

“The cave down the hill.” She points past you. “That way. Go up the hill and down the other side. You can’t miss it. Good luck, Vault Girl.”

She slams the door in your face.

“And don’t touch that cage,” she warns, her voice muffled by the door.

If you were going to pick the lock, you’d have done it already. You step back. That woman wasn’t exactly friendly, but at least she didn’t come out swinging at you with that club.

You hear the door lock. Well, you just made a deal. You better hold up your end, and you have to move fast. The Wasteland is always dangerous, but it will be worse at night.

“OK, Spiker,” you call out. “See you soon.”

You go to the cage and crouch in front of it. The girl is pretending to sleep, but your conversation must have woken her. She must be very scared. Her hair is long and dark, and the rags that she’s wearing are pitiful. You don’t see any injuries on her. And it doesn’t look like Spiker is starving her.

“I’ll get you out of here,” you tell her quietly. “One way or another.”

She keeps pretending to sleep. Or maybe she’s playing dead. You can’t blame her. You would be scared too if you were in a cage.

You turn and jog across the road, into the swamp, slogging your way up the hill. But you quickly realize this hill is more of a mountain. It’s a lot, and you’re losing light fast. You’ve also read some of Dr. Curio’s reports, so you know better than you rush ahead foolishly. You aren’t an idiot.

You slow down, then you face the truth as you light up your Pip-Girl. It’s not enough to show the way in this thick swamp. You’re just going to get yourself killed.

You find a hollow underneath a big tree and take shelter, killing your light. You need to wait until morning. Then you can go find this gun and get that girl out of there. As you curl up to go to sleep, you feel something… and see it too.

Soft, red hair tickling your face and your body. It’s blurry, but you see yourself nude, and red hair between your legs as someone wraps her lips around your cock. You feel the shape of a slender, warm, soft body in your arms. You see a pair of damp, sweaty breasts swaying and look down to see your cock disappearing into…

You shake yourself out of the dream or the trance, finding your erection straining against your vault suit. You better take care of this, or you’ll just have a wet dream at this rate. There’s no laundry service up here, so you shouldn’t stain your suit more than Trixie already did when she came on you.

You unzip the front of the suit and take off your Pip-Girl, activating its comfort feature. The padded interior swells up and self-lubricates. You get comfortable and gently stroke your shaft, then slip it into the makeshift cock sleeve that the Pip-Girl provides. You’re lucky that you were able to get a working one. It’s a poor substitute for the real thing, but still better than your hand.

You close your eyes, but the memories of Daisy seem distant. Instead, you call up more recent memories… specifically when you did it with that girl from maintenance in your bunk, covering her mouth to keep her cries from waking up the whole Vault as you furiously thrust into her. You could hear the rapid squelching of your roommate masturbating in the bunk below yours the whole time. You remember the maintenance girl moaning into your mouth as you came inside her.

You grunt and sigh, your pearly cum spurting out onto the ground. You collapse back to your hiding spot, sliding the Pip-Girl off and setting it aside to air out as you pant for breath. You feel a little better.

Nothing kills you in the night.

You wake up stiff and uncomfortable, but that’s how it is up here. The dawn light isn’t much, but you know that this is way safer. You are glad that you are not an idiot.

You make your way to the top of the hill. There, you have to stop, your eye on something moving in the trees. It’s a snake, but you spotted it before it could hurt you. It’s huge… as thick as your leg.

You creep around it quietly, and it doesn’t notice you. The way down the other side is easy. It doesn’t take long to find water, so the cave can’t be far away. The trees here are dead and rotting, but still thick. Not much light gets through. The heat and humid air remind you of the boiler rooms and back corridors of the Vault. You try to think about your good memories back there. There are not too many, but there was that time that you and the maintenance girl got it on while you were supposed to be working. You keep that image in your mind as you make your way around the edge of the water: you and the girl among the steam pipes, you holding her up against the metal wall and fucking her urgently because supporting her weight like that was hard. You remember how you ended up on the grimy floor of the corridor, her riding you until she came and collapsed on top of you.

That wouldn’t be such a bad memory, but the Overseer came looking for you and found you like that, you still inside her, cum leaking out of her pussy, both of you limp as rags…

A bit embarrassing.

The cave mouth is ahead. It’s surprisingly large and obvious. You thought it would be tucked among the twisted roots of these trees. No such luck. It’s right there. It looks like one of the caves in a Diagra comic. The first erection you ever had was when you stole a Diagra comic when you were younger. You vividly remember the panels that made up the scene of Diagra carrying the brunette that she’d just rescued to the cave, where they had sex beside a campfire. You remember being very turned on by the curve of the woman’s back and the panel of her belly covered in semen when they were done.

“Well,” you murmur to yourself, glancing at a swarm of rad skeeters at the far end of the pond. “That’s convenient.”

Lighting up your Pip-Girl you enter the cavern. Slime and mud cover the walls, and you find yourself wading through sludge that gets deeper as you go. you find yourself having to climb on the rocks on either side of the passage to stay out of it. It's quiet, but you keep the gun at the ready as you descend. This cave sucks. It’s nothing like the ones in the Diagra comics. Nobody would ever want to get lewd in here.

You reach a chamber much bigger than the passage. your light works now so you can kind of see it. It's a pond or lake—real water, but your Pip-Girl is beeping at you. It's highly radioactive. You remember the Overseer’s warning about mutation. The sound of dripping water echoes around the chamber. You absolutely cannot go swimming in this water, but your light gleams on something metal on the far side. There’s something on the rocks over there, and you bet it’s the gun you’re here to get.

If you’re going to stay out of the water, you only see two ways to get there. There’s a narrow path, some rocks or something that you can jump to. It’s almost like a bridge. You will need good balance, but you can tiptoe along that, then jump to the rocks on the far side.

Or you can climb up the rocks right here and grab the tangled roots that are on the ceiling to use them like monkey bars. Both options seem physically demanding, but not beyond what you are capable of. It’s dark up there. The roots are very hard to see, but you can manage.

How do you traverse the pool?

The narrow bridge?

Or the roots?