Community:Fanfiction/Fallout: Nuka-World

Fallout: Nuka-World is a Fanfiction written by KitMaelstrom, taking place in 2310, in Nuka-World.

Chapter One
Damn. Its hard to recall all of it, all of the shit that I've been through. I've been shot, burned, bitten by wild animals, trampled by Power Armour, and, I believe in one case, been kicked by my own horse.

Yep. You heard that correctly. A horse. Those still exist. Or at least they do in Nuka-World. I'm not so sure about the rest of the world, but here, horses are as mundane as dirt. Great herds of wild broncos roam the plains, where the raiders and bandits once committed horrible acts. But now they're gone, and in their place, we have horses. Horses and a few other wild animals.

Yeah, for an abandoned theme park, we have a LOT of wild animals. I heard once that it was from a cloning machine gone wild, or... I'm fucking rambling, aren't I?

So, if you don't mind, I'd like to start over.

I live in Nuka-World, a place west of the Commonwealth. Member state of the UCG, home to around 23,000 people, and one of the richest places in the whole damn wasteland. A place of grand walls leading into subdivided parks, all of which are home to people, though some are more...Populous than others. A place of wonder, opportunity, and Nuka-Cola. A hell of a lot of it.

So, what exactly could you do here? Simply put: Anything. You could corral animals, you could find Nuka-Cola shipments and sell them to one of the numerous bars operating around the area, you could salvage tickets for the Nuka-Cade, cash in those tickets, and then sell the prizes that you were given for inflated prices, you could even set up a tourist trap where you hawked some pre-war magnet souveniers. So, with everything that I have mentioned, all the things that you could do to make a living, I think that most people outside of the park would find interacting with a Nuka-Worlder quite strange, especially when they mentioned how FEW of those things were actually doable.

All of the Nuka-Cola shipments, at least those that people were aware of, had been tapped, their supply of cola feeding into one of the regional bars. All of the great Brahmiluff herds, the ones worth owning anyway, had been corralled, with their members ending up the property of cattle barons. The Nuka-Cade was still an option, but even if you spent your life in there, it still took a while, and a lot of caps, to win anything worth it. As for the magnets, they were cheap, easy to find in any area of the park... and almost everywhere sold them. Why would you stand out from the rest of the crowd, especially if you were just doing what everyone else was? So, yeah. All of the grand money-makers had been dried up, or the big businesspeople had a monopoly on them.

For the average person, you couldn't do much in the way of a living, or at least in the way of becoming an independent business owner. For the average person, the options were pretty much as follows:
 * 1) Work for a Nuka-Cola supplier in finding old shipments, refrigerating them, and shipping them off.
 * 2) Work for a Brahmiluff baron, and breed and feed cattle for them.
 * 3) Work for one of the local bars, shops or tourist traps. Hell, Cappy's Cafe is always hiring, right?
 * 4) Work for the weapons manufacturers and build rifles, extract Nuka-Cola Quantum to pour into bullets, and create new versions of those weapons that might, MIGHT be a success.
 * 5) Work for yourself, and spend your days out in the wastes, scouting every location that you can find, looking for some score, some big haul, something that all of the entrepreneurs of previous years missed.

By the time that my story begins, I was doing number five on that list. It wasn't big, it wasn't a supreme money maker, but at least I was working for myself. I didn't find much, but it was enough to make a living. Barely. Every once in a while I would find something a little expensive, something enough to keep me going for a couple of weeks, enough time for me to find something else. It was slow, and I had next to nothing in the way of savings, but hell, I was alive, right?

But inevitably, you can't find any new sources of income, right? So one day, I strode into Dry Rock, hoping to ask something of the local bartender. Hey, he may be a robot, but he's still a barkeep, right? Yeah, this is where my story really begins. So, without further ado, welcome to this recounting of the crazy events that followed.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention something crucially important. My name's Alex, but you can call me Al. It's nice to meet you.