Log 1.1 [Notches of The Blunt End – Part 1]
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If you don't wanna hear me gush out and orgasm over my personal bias feel free to skip the spoiler; you're not gonna miss out on anything.

Spoiler

Yeah, I like Fallout a lot. When it comes to pure setting and lore not much stands up or comes close to the franchise. Even at its lowest, with 4 and 76, the series always manages to catch my attention, even though it's being hung to dry by Todd and his sweet little lies. Not just the rustic makeshift weapons and the atmosphere but the world-building and societies created around it. Nothing quite compares to the first two entries of the series. The story was never the primary; it's always had been about the world-building, the various factions and their philosophies in a retro-futuristic society gone nuclear (quite literally). To me, the power armour and weapons were just icings on the cake. To me, playing Fallout is like watching a civilization reenact the story of Icarus and crawl its way back up, one shit-ridden elbow at a time.

So I thought, What if I did the same to my home country?

My nation was a prideful one in olden age; especially in the late fifties. But since this is Fallout we're talking about, we gotta have a little twist in the subject. A nation at the height of its nationalistic pride faced with an imminent invasion of the great red state COUPLED with retro-futuristic technology-- sorry, COUPLED with retro-futuristic technology that was NUKED and spent two-hundred years rebuilding itself back into shape. How would the culture preserve itself? What could've happened in the past? What could be of the remnants of that past? What would the survivors of the future do with these remains? So many good questions and boundless answers.

A recipe for a good post-apocalyptic story.

It won't be a story that's completely told from a birds-eye view of everything. The series would tackle on one character I made in which I believe would be the most transparent pair of eyes to see the world from. He'd have his character motivations and drives; don't worry about that, but other than that he mostly takes a backseat in these stories, only intervening in the most crucial parts, either directly or indirectly. The focus will be on him, but I'll make sure the setting flourishes as you view it from your eyes.

[collapse]

So I decided to make a new story.

But Ben, you might ask, aren't you working on a story yourself already?

You try working on one specific thing for a whole year and see for yourself. If you're asking, it's this specific thing. (please read it it's really good no I'm not sucking my own dick two reviews had said it's okay so please read it thanks)

This would be my on-and-off series. If I ever get burnt out on my main series, I'd release a batch of chapters here and dip until I burn out once more.

In other words, don't get too attached to it. I'm not planning to drop this anytime soon. If I ever finish this I might turn to this as my main series and open up another equivalent of this series instead. But as of now, this series would be way down the list of priorities I have at the moment.

But hey, if you like it, do leave a Favourite and put it on your reading list. Shill it to everybody as well, cause' God if there's one thing I love more than tits it's people reading my shit.

Without further ado, I hope you enjoy this series (as far as I'm gonna write it anyway).

 


 

The sky was a light, mouldy green as always, with a stale whiff trailing the still, dusty air. The ground was bone dry, with the dirt barely holding onto any residing moisture left within its grasp. Any trace of mud could only be found in forms of solid, crumbling cakes. The landscape was a sterile, empty wasteland. The only semblance of life within the scenery was the earth beneath, butting violently against one another, lifting mountains and sinking valleys in scales so incomprehensible that the only form of understanding it was to simply believe the sight before.

Among the many gorges in the land was a road, opening wide and reaching far between a valley as it wedged between rising cliffs. The ground was covered in a sun-bleached black, with cracks seeping around it from every angle, raising ridges across the stretch. Peculiarly shaped bodies of scrap metal piled on the sides like hills, forming a wall of rust along the road. Some bigger ones, too big to move, were simply strewn across the road, left to rot on their own as it decayed away into a formless, lingering stench of metal to corrupt the air.

Riding along the desolate road was a carriage; a rickety wooden dome rattling across the rugged ground. A man in a straw hat rode on the front, towed by a hairless, wrinkled, horned creature whose baked reddish skin had seen better days.  The straw hat man himself was just as wrinkled as the creature before him, with a back so hunched that the notches of his spine raised like ridges from his skin. He wore nothing but a pair of overalls that hung from the straps over his shoulder, letting his skin soak in the blasting rays of the sun.

The straw hat man looked behind and stuck his head into the carriage.

"So what are you all heading to Sampah for?"

Within the carriage were seven occupants, seated around the sides of the cramped storage as they uncomfortably shifted around bulging sacks and metal boxes.

A man sitting on the far side of the carriage voiced out first. He was dressed in a plaid shirt that had met more sweat than actual water. He had a sack wrapped around his fat belly and held a flask in one hand with a blunt knife on the other. His skin was spotted, with a big birthmark spreading across his cheek.

He blurted out, "What's it to you?"

"Just an old man's curiosity," the straw hat man answered. 

"I paid you to drive, not to talk."

"My apologies," the straw hat man turned back.

"And what are you looking at," the man with the flask and the blunt knife called out.

Seated directly across was another man that seemed timider and significantly less crass. He was dressed in a tight, light green shirt with a collar that rode up beneath his chin. His outfit too had seen more bodily fluids than cleaning agents but there was an obvious attempt to keep it neat and clean. He had a green, thick checkered cloth wrapped around his waist that covered his torn jeans.

Seated beside him was a little girl, covered in a tattered rag neck to toe. She was almost half bald, with eye bags so heavy that it dropped to her cheeks and aged her a dozen years older. The man held onto the girl and pulled her close to his side, keeping a squinted eye at the fat man whilst holding onto the girl.

The girl, terrified to her absolute wits, was shaking in her wooden sandals. Her mouth was ajar, letting out a steady stream of drool dripping from her cracked lips. 

A dark-skinned woman sat beside the girl, dressed in a long, one-piece garment that wrapped around her body that accentuated her slim figure. Unlike the others, she had her appearance kept to a great degree. She seemed relatively sanitary compared to the others. Her clothes were obviously much cleaner and spotless than the other occupants. She drew her sight towards the girl whose drool is starting to stain the corners of her robe. The timid man glanced to his side and caught sight of the act. In a panic, he frantically flung his hand into the cloth tied by his waist and pulled out a small, tattered handkerchief.

"It's alright," the robed woman said, pulling her robes to her side as she adjusted her clothes, “I’m not so barbaric as the others.”

The man with the knife boomed out, “What you say?”

The robed woman didn’t answer. She merely glanced towards the man and sighed as she looked away.

“I’ll make you squeal,” the man said, drawing up his blunt knife towards the woman.

“You wouldn’t be able to afford me,” the robed woman responded with a smirk.

“What you say?!”

The man lashed out, his voice teeming with frothy rage as his bloodshot eyes popped out from its socket. He swung the butt of his knife to the side, hitting the arm of the occupant beside him.

The sound was akin to softwood clashing against thick, heavy metal.

The occupant sitting next to the man with a knife was another man, draped in a trench coat with its sleeves torn, revealing his chiselled arms; or rather, arm. His left arm was a metal prosthetic, shiny and gleaming from the rays drawing from the holes poking through the tarp covering the carriage. He drew his scarred face to the side, his jet black hair blocking the dark gaze of his eyes as he glared towards the man with the knife. His appearance gave off the looks of youth as his tanned, smooth skin insinuated a great degree of exposure under the sun.

"Watch it," he growled.

"Or what," the man with the flask retorted, switching the blade to face the man's metal arm.

As a response, the man with the metal arm drew his prosthetic up towards the man with the flask, facing a backhanded fist towards him.

The tension between them bubbled to a near-fatal boiling point. The timid man held the girl tightly in his arms as the woman watched the two with cautious glee. The two glared each other down, burning one another with looks that would kill if it could.

"My, what a commotion," a feeble, brittle voice called out.

In an instant, the boiling tension phased away as a new subject presented itself. Everyone's gazes shifted towards the new target, sitting on the opposite end of the carriage.

An old lady, dressed in a tattered hood and loose, heavy thickset clothes, slowly drew her wrinkled gaze towards the crowd. She had a small, knitted satchel draped across her wrist, covered by her other hand.

“You all act like a Bantam with its tail blown,” she said, “Why can’t you be quiet like him?”

The old lady drew a weak finger towards her opposite seat. On it sat a body in an overcoat, its face shrouded by a hooded jacket underneath the coat. Its head leaned against the side of the carriage, limp and motionless.

The man with the flask peeped his head out from his seat, poking his knife out towards her, “You want to be quiet like him, old hag?”

The robed woman looked away, whispering under her breath, "Barbarians."

The man with the knife exploded.

"What you say?!"

At that exact point, as the man’s voice boomed, the carriage came to an abrupt stop. The occupants lurched to the side as they grabbed on for balance.

The man with the metal arm called out, “What in the-”

“I-I apologize,” the straw hat man said as he dismounted the carriage, “My Kertau undid the saddle and I don’t know how…”

The straw hat man left the seven occupants alone in the carriage as he chased the horned creature that had somehow escaped and made its leisurely way to the side of the road.

As the heat boiled over, so did the animosity and hostility.  The man with the flask was on everyone’s throat, giving dirty looks as he fiddled with his blunt blade; save for the hooded figure, who was now slumped over its legs after the stop, still oblivious to everything that had happened. The man with the metal arm was keeping a keen eye to his side, occasionally glancing towards the robed woman whose expression seemed irritated by each passing minute. The timid man held onto the little girl still, pulling her close, soothing her balding head as he nervously darted his sight across the carriage.

The old lady was the only one that seemed relatively calm and indifferent to the situation; discounting the hooded figure, who might really be dead for as far as everybody is concerned.

Barely half a minute had passed before the man with the flask lost his patience and called out, “What’s taking so long?!”

He screamed towards the outside of the carriage, getting no response, fueling his already flushed face a deeper red. He pushed his way through the carriage, stepping on someone’s foot as he did. He stuck his head outside the carriage and tossed out an even louder voice.

“Oi, what’s the big deal-”

Then he paused.

“Who the hell are-”

The man with the flask never finished the sentence. Even if he did, no one would’ve heard it from the shattering bang that splattered his head into chunks of grey and red. And even if the man with the flask was indeed loud enough to be heard over the bang, the others wouldn’t have reacted either. A mere split second after the first bang more came tearing through the carriage, breaking through both sides of the wall, flushing everything in a fine, red mist.

 


 

New chapter's coming same time tomorrow, so do look out for that.

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