Chapter 4: First Contact

The gate, traders and caravans were still a fair distance away as Jayson continued forward through the open, but rough and bumpy, area. Going around a small greenish pond, he walks around the group of people and past the gate. He will be going into Megaton but he needs to get something first.

Jayson travelled along the long spanning walls of Megaton, scanning his surroundings and looking for something. The wall of the town beside him as he walks is made of sheets of metal that has clearly been scavenged from various things and vehicles. In the game the wall looked very thin and you could actually see the town through the other side at some points. Here though, the wall looked fairly thick and is also full of bullet holes, dents and scratches. Most likely from defensive battles against raiders and creatures of the wastes.

After quite a while, Jaysons ears eventually pick up some soft clawing and grunts nearby. He immediately drops down and fully draws his 10mm pistol; keeping his senses alert. Going away from the flat ground around the wall, Jayson takes cover in between the large rocks nearby and slowly walks between them. He eventually sees the culprit. Molerats. Specifically, four of them.

Molerats resemble naked molerats from his world but way bigger and bulkier. He doesn't know if their actually descended from naked molerats or just regular rodents like rats and mice that have been heavily mutated, grown larger and loosing most of their fur.

Looking around his cover, he notices they haven't noticed him yet. Two are laying beside a rock, one sunbathing on top of the rock like a cat and the other one roaming around slightly; sniffing and clawing the ground. Looking at the rock the molerats are surrounding, he notes the three small dead trees surrounding it and small scuff marks around the base. This is it, this is the hollowed out rock with the secret cache he was looking for.

Scanning the area and his opponents, Jayson raises his 10mm pistol and aimed at the closest and currently most dangerous opponent; the one clawing the ground. Waiting slightly, the molerat eventually shifts a bit in a way that his head is clearly visible to Jayson. Stilling his breath, he aimed at the molerat and pulled the trigger.

A 10mm round is shot from the barrel and careens through the air. Meeting it's home, the bullet shoots clean through the skull of its target and burrows itself into its brain. The molerat slumps down on the ground as the sound of a gunshot rings out, alerting the other three by the rock.

Swiftly shifting his gun towards them, Jayson activated Vats as the two on the ground started to get up and the one on the top tried to shift off of its back. With time frozen from Vats, Jayson analyzed the situation and knew the two on the ground were the bigger threats. Mentally confirming to shoot a few rounds into each of the two, time unfroze.

Jaysons hands shifted slightly as one bullet put down the one on the right. The other one on the left had a bullet missing its head but went through its jaw instead. Before it could screech from the pain, another round put it down for good.

The last molerat just managed to flip over on the top of the rock as Jayson aimed at it. Before it could even look at Jayson it went into a deep sleep from a round through its head.

Crouching still behind the rock and his pistol poised, Jayson stilled and surveyed the surroundings. After a bit of time of not seeing or hearing any creatures coming to his location from the shots, Jayson lowered his gun and walked over to the four molerat corpses and stored them in his pip-boy's inventory.

Going over to the big rock, Jayson lifted it up and put it on its side, revealing it was a hollowed out rock and a small dufflebag is underneath. Opening up the bag, he finds a holotape explaining what the cache is, two stimpacks, a stealthboy, a handful of .308 caliber rounds and the most important thing laying inside, a .308 Sniper Rifle.

Holding the rifle in his hands, he notices it's not in the best condition but that didn't take away its beauty from his eyes. Holding it up and looking through its scope feels natural to him. With a small smile on his face, he holstered it against his back from the small straps on the leather armour and transferred the rest of the items, including the bag, into his Pip-boy.

Putting the rock back in its original position, Jayson turned around and headed back where he came and towards Megatons gate.

Since he woke up in this world, he has felt a small difference about him but only figured out what was causing it when he left the vault. After getting the sniper rifle and feeling a bit of comfort and satisfaction from holding it, he confirmed his thoughts. His three Tag skills (Stealth, Small Guns and Speech) are affecting him slightly.

In the game the three Tag skills only increases that skill by 15 points; it looks like in real life the Tag skills also determines a bit of your character. The three Tag skills basically represents the three skills that have the biggest impact on you, your life and determines your specialties. They are basically a big part of what makes you you.

Jayson can tell that because of this impact he finds it enjoyable speaking with others, taking a quiet/stealthy approach and being around/using guns. Also, because both Stealth and Guns are tag skills, he finds he prefers firearms and add-ons that are best suited for stealth-like missions; basically silencers and scopes. Jayson doesn't really mind these changes that much but it's still nice to know what caused the slight differences he felt.

Continuing on, Jayson arrives back at the front gate and looked up at the gate before going up to enter. This gate has a plane turbine at the top and the gate itself is two large plane wings that slide up to allow entrance. When he first arrived the gate was already open and still is, so he guesses that they open it during the day and close it during the night; most likely because of quite a few foot traffic from the traders and caravans. He also sees a few guards positioned behind the wall and above the gate, watching the traders and himself.

Going up to the open front gate, he passes through it and into a fairly large enclosed area with the second gate leading to Megaton on the other side. When entering, two guards came up to and brought him to the side and quickly asked some questions.

"Have you ever been to Megaton before, Wastelander?"

Looking at the two guards, Jason shook his head no. "No, I haven't."

One guard wrote something down on a clipboard while the other guard asked another question. "What's your name and purpose?"

"Name is Jayson. I'm here to stock up on supplies and to offer my services of repair if needed."

Nodding, the guard with the clipboard writes it down while the other replies. "Please wait here, the Sheriff likes to meet any new arrivals personally."

The one with the clipboard then leaves into Megaton while Jayson and the Guard he was talking to waited for a bit. After a small amount of time the sheriff of Megaton, Lucas Simms, arrived through the gate from Megaton and came to Jayson and the guard. The guard nodded and walked away from the two.

Lucas looked Jayson up and down, taking notice of the rifle on his back, the beat-up leather armour, the 10mm pistol on his hip, the Pip-boy on his left arm and his young youthful appearance.

"Look at you, another newcomer. So many arriving these days." He then offered his hand and Jayson shook it. "Name is Lucas Simms, Sheriff of this town and also Mayor, when the need arises."

"Jayson. Nice to meet you."

Lucas smiled and nodded as he looked him over again. "I don't know why kid, but I like you. You seem like the kind of kid who'll do the right thing."

Jayson smiled back at the compliment. "Thank you sheriff. I'm here to mainly stock up on supplies."

"Well, you are welcome in Megaton. If you treat my people right, you can stay as long as you like."

"Thank you sheriff. Oh, and another thing." Lucas was about to turn away but then turned back to Jayson. "Is there anything that you need help around town? As you probably heard from the guards, I am a bit of a mechanic but also have other knowledge and skills as well."

Lucas thought about it for a bit and then replied. "Well... what do you know about explosives?"

"I know my way around them. I would say I know the same about them as I do about repairing things."

Lucas could be seen thinking long and hard about something until he eventually asked. "Well, I have a bit of a bomb trouble in town. It's a big nuke in the middle of town that hasn't gone off but is still armed. Not many people know it's still kicking though, so please be quite about this. I would like you to take a look at it and disarm it if you can. You up for the task?"

Jayson nodded. "Sure, I can take a look. When do you want to do this? I doubt you would like me to poke around a live bomb in front of everybody in town."

Lucas scratched his chin and thought for a bit. "Hmm... how about we meet up at it a bit before the sun fully sets, when most are in their homes."

"Sure, I'll meet you then."

Jayson and Lucas nodded and parted ways, with Jayson opening up the entrance to Megaton and stepping inside.

Megaton is a town that is in a large crater created by an un-detonated nuke. The nuke is in the middle and at the lowest point with all the buildings being made out of greyish-brown and rusted metal around the nuke; with buildings and walkways stacked on top of each other. The size of Megaton is WAY bigger than the game and everything is utterly massive and complex that it boggles the mind. The crater is huge and the greyish-brown metal buildings are stacked on-top of each other all over the place with walkways everywhere. In front, behind, on-top, going up, going down and snaking around; it's an unorganized chaos that has a very unique charm to it.

Lots of places, areas and walkways don't look familiar but he does notice some things that are familiar from the game. Jayson wandered around and walked along a lot of the walkways throughout to get his bearings. After a small amount of sightseeing though, he eventually found his destination; the water processing plant.

Inside, Jayson found an older man in a mechanics jumpsuit called Walter working on the shaking/rattling pipes and machines of the place.

Going up to him, Jayson had a short conversation and asked if he needed any help; mentioning that he knows a bit about tools and repair. Walter jumped on his offer and mentioned that the water pressure in the plant is very low from all the leaks springing up around town. He doesn't really have much time to go around and hunt down all the leaks though, since he has to spend most of his time in the plant making sure everything doesn't just randomly explode. He offered him some caps if he could fix some of the leaks and raise the water pressure. The more he finds and fixes, the more caps Walter will reward him. Accepting the small job, Jayson borrowed some tools from Walter and left.

With a 10 in his perception, Jayson was easily able to spot the leaks as he walked around Megaton. Fixing the leaks in the pipes themselves did take a bit of effort since the minimum amount of repair skill he needed was 30 and he had that exact amount. Because of this, actually repairing the pipes was more work than spotting them. He did multiple rounds all over the place to be extra sure and when the sun started to go down in the horizon, Jayson was sure he found and fixed all the leaks.

Going back to Walter at the water processing plant, he was completely ecstatic. He said that he has never seen the water pressure this high and stable before. Walter shook Jayson's hand vigorously and happily rewarded him with a bunch of caps. He also said that he could keep the tools he borrowed as thanks and if he ever found any scrap metal that he would buy it off of him.

After Jayson finished talking to Walter and turned around to leave, he was shocked when time froze and the 'Welcome To Level 3' screen appeared in-front of him. This is only his first day hear and not that long ago from when he levelled up to 2; now he's already level 3!

After getting over his initial shock, Jayson looked over his skills and decided to put the 20 available points all in Small Guns. He did this because he wants his small guns skill to increase as fast as possible since it'll be one of the most important things to keep him alive in the wasteland. Second would be sneak and he's already planning to raise that after Small Guns gets high enough. After putting the 20 points in Small Guns, it rose up to 76.

Next was to choose his next perk. Since the level is an odd number, the available perks were the same seven perks from before; including Swift Learner since it has three ranks. Since he already thought about it, he chose Swift learner again to increase his learning speed and experience gain.

After accepting and time resumed, Jayson felt like his mind opened up a bit more again; feeling like learning new things will be way more easier than before. The knowledge, experience and muscle memory from his 76 Small Guns skill also flowed into him. It now felt like he has used pistols and rifles for an incredibly long time that they almost felt like another part of him. The weight and feeling of the pistol on his hip and sniper rifle on his back also felt right; like that's how it should be.

As the sun started to sink low, the sky started to darken and the residents started to head inside. Jayson looked at the horizon and at the lowering sun, deciding it was time to head down to the nuke and meet Lucas. It was finally time to solve this little nuclear problem.