In the Capital wasteland, near the town of Megaton, as a green nuclear cloud traveled by, a rather peculiar sight can be seen, a sight that even the wastelanders would find strange
A young man seemingly in his early 20's is laying down on his back with his chest facing the air as his body is being slowly fried by the sun as his limbs are outstretched
His chest is still not moving at all, his face is drained of all color as is the rest of his body, if someone touched his skin it would be ice cold as if it was a corpse and at first glance, it might seem like any ordinary corpse
That is it of itself would not be so peculiar, oftentimes travelers either pass out or voluntarily lie down on the dirt due to the sun, or he might just be another dead rotting corpse, also an often occurrence/sight in the capital wasteland no the truly strange part is the man's clothing and how his body temperature is so cold when the sun is practically melting the very ground itself with its heat
He is wearing a red, loose and a little too big T-shirt with no design on it and a pair of black sweatpants with the Nike logo in white at the left thigh side, he has black Addidas leather shoes and black socks that are rolled down to his ankles
His clothes are clean as if they have not been in the wasteland for the past 200 plus years, nor do they look like they were produced by someone in the wasteland, the marks of his clothes are unknown, no one has or ever will see such clothes in the wasteland nor in pre-war America so it gives the man an alien-like look
The only thing that could somewhat be related to the wasteland is a sleek black finish pip-boy 3000 on the man's left arm but even that is questionable since the pip-boy is too sleek and futuristic looking, completely different than the bulky 3000 version besides that this pip-boy for some reason has no buttons so the pip-boy on the man's arm has only the faintest rebalance to the pip-boy 3000
All of those factors combined is exactly what makes this scene so puzzling, cryptic and peculiar even by the standards of the post-apocalyptic Capital wasteland, a place where even aliens exist
Suddenly and unexpectedly the man's eyelids move, it is just a small twitch but it is as thou that small twitch was a trigger that created a chain reaction setting his body back in motion
Immediately his chest begins to rhythmically rise and fall, his heart starts to beat, pumping his blood which has now started to circulate thru his veins and arteries bringing back color to his seemingly lifeless body
The young man stayed that way for another 10 minutes just laying there in the sand and the dirt as a soft breeze blew by, while the sun-scorched his body and he slowly regained back his colors, as he lays there another strange occurrence happens, his pip-boy somehow miraculously came back to life without even needing anyone to boot it up manually as if a ghost possessed it
Just when the 10-minute mark of when the body reanimated hit the pip-boy beeped out and the man's eyes violently shot open as his eyeballs started to creepily rolling around observing his new and semi-familiar surroundings
'So, I have really come to fallout huh?' Thought the young man as he played there for a few seconds longer before he pushed himself up with his hands and putting himself into a semi-sitting position leaning his back on a nearby rock while holding his head with his right hand as a terrible headache hit him
He remembered how he got here, why he is here and where here even is, but the information all flushed in at once assaulting his poor brain and giving him the headache of a lifetime basically turning his brain into mush, that cupeled with the fact that he biologically just came back from the dead making his body ache and scream out in pain, would be reason enough why he was not feeling too great
He sat down like that for an additional minute before his headache somewhat cleared out and he could somewhat think straight although that is also not 100% accurate as his body is still aching all over and the headache just became less intense it did not stop completely
Putting his hand on the boulder he was leaning on the man half pulled half stood up with all the strength he could muster before leaning up against the boulder with his shoulder as he examined his immediate surroundings
He looked left, then right, then he turned around and looked behind himself before he looked up, thankfully there was no one in sight, no Deathclaw, no raider, no rad roach or mole rat, no hostiles nor friendlies insight although he could see the iconic Megaton wall behind himself not that far off into the distance
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The man sighed a breath of relief as he noticed that there was no one in sight before he sat down once again as standing sapped his already low energy, he then looked down at his pip-boy screen and at the row of text being presented in front of him
[Welcome to the Capital wasteland user! I am your system, the Fallout system!] The row of text was presented in a bright neon green color as a vault boy on the screen was giving a thumbs up to the man, the neon green was truly bright and hard to miss basically stabbing the man in the eyes as he barely looked at it from how eye stabbing it was
[Now before anything else please input your age, race, gender, design your look and finally pick your system!] Before the man even had time to think and comprehend the previous text the text already shifted into a new one before it also suddenly disappeared the moment the man read thru it
Instead of the text there came in a fully colored human model with his arms and legs spread out to the right side while there were all types of parameters, scales and things to input on the left side also in the neon green color as the text
The human model has black short hair, a soft jawline, a borderline unibrow, crooked nose and so on while the body itself is a little lanky and thin while appearing quite tall, overall the person this body represents could be counted as average in looks, maybe a little above average but that is just 1% above average nothing too stunning
The body and the looks belong to none other than the MC himself the only difference is that the body in the pip-boy is naked while the MC is, thank god, fully clothed
On the left, the parameters were showcased in 2 ways, there was either a green box in which a name/character came in or a slider with an arrow and a name on top of every slider basically saying what that slider represents
'So this is my custom pip-boy.' Thought the man as he looked at the model of himself at the right and at the parameters on the left side of the pip-boy
He just stared at it for a minute before he had decided on what to do, what to keep and what to change about himself but before he could start altering himself he noticed a glaring problem, his pip-boy contains no buttons
There are no buttons, no keys, no mouses, no nothing, it is just a screen attached to a black piece of metal/plastic with text coming on the screen, it's aking to a smartwatch just bigger and probably, hopefully, more useful
The man contemplated on how to go about this issue before he thought of something and tried to swipe the screen with his finger and surprise surprise he rotated his character model to the right
'So it works like a touch screen?' Thought the man as he observed and fiddled with the screen a little longer but had ultimately decided to get on to it and customize himself
He ticked the male gender box and the human race box, both of which was a given since he is a male and he would rather not spend the rest of his life as a rad roach a race that he could have become if he so desired thanks to the system
That, however, was the end of the light/easy choices as now come the difficult decisions and modifications that could/should be made and that the man will make about himself and his body
The man began by adjusting his nose and getting rid of that small crook before he turned to the eyebrows and removed the unibrow, he gave himself a slightly sharper jawline and adjusted his body size a little bit and heaps of other small stuff that bothered him
All in all the modifications took about 15 minutes before he was finished, there wasn't that much that he wanted to get rid of anyway but some things like his unibrow and crooked nose were things that he had lived with for years and despised form the bottom of his heart so he was happy to finally be rid of those things, as for his hight which he reduced well he would rather not have to duck down while passing thru doors because of his height, which is something that annoys him quite a bit, even if he isn't 2 meters tall some doors are just too small for him
'Now for a name, should I keep my name or change it?' Thought the man as he intently stared at the screen or rather the top of the screen which featured the name box
This is going to be his new life so should he rename himself as a new name signifies a new beginning or should he continue with his old name, the name he has carried since birth and he has always been known for
It didn't take long for him to decide what to chose, he sees no reason as to why he should change or rename himself so he might as well keep his old name
So the man typed in Adam, this has been his name since birth and a name that he should have taken to the grave with him in his past world but it seems he has instead taken it with him into the fallout universe which is arguably worse as here he might not even get a grave nor a burial
'Now, which system do I pick?' Now that everything was looking alright it was time for the probably most important decision and modification right now or at any point in time really, this is going to affect him from now on to every single day of his existence
In the bottom of the pip-boy screen, there was a row of text, it is probably the most inconspicuous text on the whole screen however it is also the most important
[Systems: Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, Fallout 76.]
These were obviously the systems that all of the protagonists of the fallout universe have had and have wielded or should wield at least that's how it is in the game
Adam stared at the screen for 5 full minutes with the intensity of a Deathclaw's stare, his brain was working full throttle trying to decide which one of these systems should he chose to wield, he already knows that right now he can only wield 1 system until he meets the requirements to unlock another one he will be stuck in here with only that one system for a long amount of time
After thinking about it in every rational and irrational way Adam has decided to use the...