CH 1: The Rising Gale

The release of the first VRMMORPG wasn't something Asada Shino had taken notice of, until a passing sentence from her grandmother made her think about joining a world of guns.

When Shino was ten, she and her mother had been at a post office when a man smelling of alcohol attempted to rob it. When her mother was knocked to the ground, she'd stood up to the man. The robber knocked Shino into the wall, dropping the gun as he did so. As it skittered a few feet, Shino grabbed it off the ground and aimed for the man. She pulled the trigger once. Twice. Both hit the man in the chest. Blood started to pour out of the man as he slumped down to the ground.

The Type 54 in Shino's hands started to shake as she hyperventilated. Her vision swam. She had killed a person. She had killed a man. These thoughts echoed through her mind as the pool of blood slowly spread over to her. The man's blood had soaked through her stockings and her skirt as she lay trembling on the ground.

The police eventually arrived, but it wasn't quick enough to prevent a ten-year-old from taking a life.

Due to the attack on the post office, Shino's already frail mother became unable to move from a bed and had quickly fallen into a deep coma. The cost of having doctor visits and keeping her healthy was too much for the one girl, so she'd had to find someone willing to pay her to do a job to help pay for the medical expenses that were due.

She'd worked as a car mechanic to help pay for the expenses, though only part-time as she still had to go to school. In what little free time she had left, she studied.

When she went to school, the students had targeted her due to their opinion on her having to kill someone. The bullies would purposefully laugh in her face when they showed her any form of a gun. The images would make her hyperventilate and have flashbacks to the day in the post office.

The cold metal of the gun as she held it. The pressure on the trigger as she pulled it back. The bang as it impacted and the man's dying gasps. The blood. So much blood! Thick, dark, blood! Blood! - who would ever know that someone could bleed this much - the blood pooled around her knees and soaked her skirt, her pants, her underwear - the blood coated her skin. The man's grisly face was still charred permanently into her brain. Tears streamed down her face, slicing two lines down her horror-filled expression.

When she had found a game that had guns as the main focus point, she wasn't really excited about it. She wanted to be done with the bullying. This game would help her overcome her fear. While she may not like it, she had seen others speaking about it and had realized this could be her chance to get over her trauma. She saw that this could be her chance to reconnect with people, so she would not be teased and taunted.

Even if she did want to play it, how would she? She didn't have that much money. It was almost fifty-five thousand yen — she only had about that much each month before food costs, medical bills and school materials. There would be no way for her to save up as the launch was only a few weeks away.

Shino needed to play this game to get over the trauma that she has had for almost two and a half years. She needed to find something that would help her push her boundaries and make it so she had to face it. So that she had to fight against it.

Shino was able to get the game on a miraculous sale that she wasn't expecting. The store that Shino was able to find was a smaller shop that had a few copies of the game.

That still left the question of when she would be able to do this. She breathed a sigh of relief as she looked at the calendar. It started on a Sunday. Sundays generally were free days; the only day she had almost free.

During the weeks leading up to the launch, Shino researched all that she could about the RPG genre and the game system, carefully avoiding the guns, though it didn't stop her from having a panic attack halfway through a post on the way that the gun's physics worked. In her opinion, the author went into too much detail about the way the blood and guts would shatter and explode.

Gun Gale Online used the SPECIAL system, a way of using stats that was very different from other games. In this game style, forty points were given to start. These could be distributed into the seven stats. The minimum amount for each stat was one, leaving only thirty-three points to be distributed.

(The reason that this bore remarkable resemblance to a popular game series a few years ago is that Kayaba Akihiko had bought the license for a Fallout spinoff, which evolved into what it is now, an incredible open world RPG.)

Shino decided she would be a sniper, as that kept her far enough away that she is still facing her trauma, but is still far away from the actual combat if she were to freeze up.

Pointedly ignoring the weapons, she read the information and memorized it. Reading more, she discovered that the "I" in SPECIAL was the most important. It made the skills go up faster as well as increasing XP gains.

The build she found was a sniper build that was similar to one from a previous game with a similar mechanic system.

One of the first choices she made was taking a recurring perk called Intense Training. It gave an extra stat point, to be distributed however the player wanted. The perk was very versatile, and had many uses in the system used by the Fallout games.

Later on in the game, there was a perk called Weapon Handling that would reduce the strength cost for all weapons by two. This would make it so the player could wield a Hecate II, and what was rumoured to be the best in the game that she was preparing for, Gun Gale Online.

She was following a build that focused on being a sniper, which involved having a build based around sneak attacks and a system called V.A.T.S.

V.A.T.S., Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System, wasn't used very often for snipers, as the distance for being able to use the V.A.T.S. was generally shorter than snipers tended to shoot from. One of the comments on the build was actually about how V.A.T.S. wasn't all that useful to the build, but the build still used the VATS hit chance of having a high Perception and Luck.

Jerked out of her thoughts by an alarm, Asada Shino realized that the server opening was soon, so she slid out of her chair. Slipping into the bed, she pulled the clunky NerveGear onto her head and spoke the words that would doom her.

"Rinku Sutato!"

A song played in the background, a soft, quiet sound. This was interrupted by a smooth male voice that started talking over the music.

"War. War never changes.

"The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower.

"But war never changes.

"In the 21st century, war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired. Only this time, the spoils of war were also its weapons: Petroleum and Uranium. For these resources, China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states, bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth.

"In 2077, the storm of world war had come again. In two brief hours, most of the planet was reduced to cinders. In those two hours, mankind had changed; the world had changed.

"And now, two hundred years later, the sun scorches what is left of this desolate place. The grass withers and dies in its unrelenting heat and overwhelming radiation. The animals die, and those that haven't died are changed, mutated beyond recognition.

"As we step into this light, out of our once safe vaults, we recognize what we lost, but also what we have to gain.

"Now, the doors are open. Go forth, to bring the Wastes back to its former glory."

The song "Blue Moon" starts playing as a slideshow of pictures are presented while a loading circle spins in the corner. After a minute, the music fades and a screen with a slight green tint appears.

Create a Character?

The blinking answers hover for a second before they vanish.

A perfect copy of Asada Shino stood in the mirror that appeared. The person in the mirror changed rapidly, a rainbow of colors flashing across her vision. The avatar settled on a character with teal hair and blue-green eyes. Both her avatar and herself were the same height, about 141 cm.

Shino pressed the accept button, making another green-tinted screen appear.

Choose a Faction

Brotherhood of Steel

The New California Republic

Caesar's Legion

The Institute

Gun Runners

Khans

Commonwealth Minutemen

People's Liberation Army

She chose the NCR, as it was the one she was most familiar with. During her research, it had come up multiple times and seemed to fit the build she was attempting to make. She also rightly assumed that the faction that she chose would act as the starting spawn point.

'And so our story begins…' she thought as the world vanished.

A flash of color splashes her vision as the world tilted and spun out of control, and her senses overloaded. The world spun around in a dizzying array of lights as they rocketed toward a place an infinite way into the center.

A flash of a conversation with the ghostly words from a man with a checkered suit('Benny', her mind provided) and a familiar face, one she had seen on all of the research she had done for the game. "The game was rigged from the start."

The rapid flashing stopped as the sensory overload abruptly ended. The world still spun somewhat as a single face loomed out of the darkness. It was a young man's face, with the rugged beginnings of a beard. He smirked a little before pulling back silently. A light flickered on above her, revealing the chipped walls and rusted metal of the room surrounding her. The yellow name that he had above him signified him as an NPC.

Shino wrinkled her nose at the stench of smoke that wafted off of him. That was one of the problems of having a FullDive: it meant being able to touch, taste, smell and hear everything that happened.

Sitting up, she glanced at herself, realizing she only had a tank top and shorts on. A flush came over her face before she glanced back up at the man whose smirk seemed to grow at the angry look he was given.

She quickly tried to tackle him with a screech, but her weaker limbs and lighter body did little to him.

A look of concern covered his face before he gave a reassuring smile. "Whoa, I wouldn't move around so much. You took a pretty bad hit back there."

Feeling her limbs are heavier than before, she tested each before setting them on the bed, realizing that this was part of the character creation process. "What happened?"

A grimace marred his face before he stated, "There was a raid by Caesar's Legion. I'm surprised that you even made it out alive. Well, at least in one piece. Though if our good doctor had any say in it, you might have lost your leg. Doc Brig said you had some damage to your head."

Shino glanced at her leg, immediately seeing the scar that sat in her leg. It was pink and stretched almost four inches across her thigh and left another pink scar on the back of her thigh, a few inches below her rear.

"What happened?"

"No one knows, but the raid was a few days ago. You were out of it for a while there. Can you remember anything? How about your name?"

This is so odd. It feels almost like I am talking to a normal person! I guess I should just follow his lead.

"No, I don't. Can you tell me what I was like? What was my name? What was I good at?" she responded.

"Yeah, I can stay for a few minutes before I have to wait. There ain't no rest for the wicked.

"But, yeah, you came running in here when you had just turned fourteen. The NCR couldn't just leave an orphaned girl wandering the wastes. So we took you in. You had said you didn't have a name and just to call you-"

The game paused here as a screen popped into Shino's face. Giving a slight smile, she entered the name she had decided on: Sinon.

"-Sinon." The man gave a smile that made her suddenly realize he wasn't as young as she thought he was. His hair was graying and his eyes looked older. The smile brightened and his hair seemed to regain its color. "We fed you, we clothed you, and we trained you. You were always on the petite side, and we didn't even realize you needed glasses until someone brought up your squinting in class."

Trait Added: Small Frame (+1 to AGI, but limbs are crippled more easily)

"Some of your other unique traits were..."

A menu popped up with a list of traits to pick from.

Shino chose the Fast Shot and the Quick Hands traits, which together gave her a 50% faster fire rate, as the bonus was multiplicative, not additive. Fast Shot was very good, as the built-in accuracy of sniper rifles was much higher than any other weapons in the game. The description of the traits were as follows:

Fast Shot: 20% faster fire rate, but 20% reduced accuracy.

Quick Hands: Increases fire rate by 25% and hack and lockpicking success rate by 15%, but -1 STR.

Like most of the Fallout games, each weapon type (Energy Weapons, Guns, Melee Weapons) has a leveling system of 1 to 100.

Unlike the Fallout games, Gun Gale Online had more classical RPG elements. Each weapon class (Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Pistol, Submachine Gun) had levels; a skill could be unlocked for every level. There were at least fifty levels for each weapon class, but the skills, known as Gales, numbered over two hundred and fifty per weapon class.

Each weapon had three levels as well, giving what would have been a weapon mod in many of the other games. They also had modifiers in the name, giving damage boosts or fire speed increases.

"You were SPECIAL too."

The game paused here yet again. A screen appeared in her vision.

Choose your SPECIAL:

She configured her SPECIAL stats to conform to the build she followed.

S: 5(6-1 from Quick Hands)

P: 6

E: 4

C: 1

I: 9

A: 8(7+1 from Small Frame)

L: 7

"You seemed to be good at-"

Here the game paused again. A screen slid into her vision and she saw the list of all the overarching skills.

She decided to tag Sneak, Repair, and Guns, adding 25 to each of the skills.

Guns: 20-45

Repair: 22-47

Sneak: 20-45

She glanced at the list one more time before nodding. That looked as good as it was going to get, at least at this point. A level one character never looked very good at first. Eventually, those stats would be maxed.

There was a skill that was specific to each weapon that unlocked with every 20 points in the individual weapons skill tree, that also went up to 1000. Even when the max in the overarching skills was reached, the individual weapons would only have 100. The individual weapon skills were much harder to gain than the others; it mostly was earned by grinding. Experience gain for the individual weapons was calculated by the damage done divided by two(D/2). Sniper rifles had an advantage on experience gain because of this.

She had just finished the character creation process when an alarm sounded. The ringing echoed around the room for a second before the NPC grabbed her by her arm and helped Shino onto her feet.

"That's the alarm for a large group of hostiles. It could be Caesar standing before those gates. Unfortunately, that may be a large enough force that it will break through the defenses," he spoke to Shino quickly.

"Here, take this," he handed her a set of military fatigues. "Make sure you put on that beret: it is how we identify the bodies of our comrades."

"Yeah," Shino agreed

Despite her misgivings, Shino was excited; it was her first battle. The NPC prompted her to choose a weapon, giving her choices of various rusty weapons.

She chose the Rusty Remington 700 as her starting weapon. The starting weapon that was chosen was meant to help improve the drop mechanic, giving more weapons and ammo that corresponded to the type chosen. That was not saying that it was impossible to get other types of weapons, just harder.

As she ran toward the door that would let her join the fight, she was in a large group with others. Before splitting away, she . With a nod to a fellow sniper, she quickly opened the door to the roof of the one-story building.

A blast of sweltering heat blistered over her skin as the Mojave Desert made itself known. It was an unending stretch of sand and stone, the only things dotting the war-worn landscape, other than the few dozen troops of Caesar's Legion, being a few players wearing the uniform. Unfortunately, they couldn't choose where to start, just who to start with. The chosen place wasn't always the best place to start. Still, it was quite beneficial for backstories and roleplaying purposes, which was nice for those that cared.

The number of expected role players was surprising, though expected, since it was a world-wide game that had over 250,000 players as the starting player count, most of whom were people that had played the previous games of a similar genre.

All previous Fallout settings had been remade in this game, with old trains connecting the maps. There was a way to walk all the way, but it was mostly pointless, though there might be a few easter eggs that the beta testers hadn't found. The travel time was realistic, so they didn't want to have a four-month trip across an empty area. It was speculated that not only was the United States included, so were Mexico and Canada. It was hoped that the whole world would eventually be included in this game, as the technology improved, probably as DLC.

Shino didn't really care about all that, having never played the previous games, but she could say that it did feel like a desert.

A particularly loud boom shook her out of her thoughts. The NCR was making progress, but it was slow going. The estimated 50 players and 10 NPCs from the NCR were facing a much larger group of 75 players and 20 NPCs from Caesar's Legion. However, due to their fortified position, for every NCR member killed, Caesar's Legion lost two. The battle went on for a few minutes.

As the thundering roars of the multitude of weapons joined into a cacophony, she quickly started to lose control. She had been distracting herself with her thoughts, but she had to do something. Her breathing quickened.

The blood, the steel, the cold tile as the warm blood slid across it.

She suddenly realized: she didn't have to worry. This wasn't real. This wasn't her. Her avatar's heart rate sputtered to a halt, leaving a slowly breathing Sinon — This wasn't Shino anymore, this was Sinon, she told herself — to focus on the fight. Lining up a shot, she fired.

The bullet arced through the cloudless sky and went through the head of a Legion member. The head exploded, sending brains all over the ground, the body slumping to the ground. Even still, Sinon continued. The player broke into red motes of light, fluttering away from the body like ashes in the wind. He was dead for now, but would respawn at his faction base, though only after the battle was over. The budding sniper lined another shot, and another, taking care to make them lethal and trying to hit wherever was available: chests, heads, torsos, legs, and arms all were pierced by her fast-moving projectiles.

All said she got around three kills, which she felt was pretty good.

As the last enemy faded into motes of red light, a trumpet sound played a small ditty as a screen showed her rewards from her kills and completing the quest.

Some Basic Legionary Armor, a Pocket Knife, a Rusty Glock, and some .223 ammo for her Rusty Remington 700. It wasn't a bad haul, especially for her first battle. The quest had also given her an item that would upgrade her weapon's level by one. It was a really good item, but not very good for the beginning of the game, as it was much better to save it for later levels, which took a lot more experience

None of it was very useful for her, but the XP she got was enough for a level, bringing her up to level 2. A screen popped up, showing the list of perks that she had available.

A screen appeared showing her skills. After using the system and applying her points, the next screen appeared.

The large list of perks appeared in her face, giving her a slight grin. The build that she saw only followed the perks that were in that game. This game, however, had most perks from Fallout 3, 4, and New Vegas, along with a couple from Fallout 1, 2, and 76.

Due to the larger number of perks, a perk was gained every level instead of every two levels of the former Fallout games. Every fifth level gave two perks instead of the one. Some builds didn't need that many perks, like the sniper. Though the sniper could use a lot of the perks, they didn't need that many, mostly just the ones that increased speed, accuracy, or fire rate.

The general idea for snipers early on is to increase the attack speed. Sniper Rifles inherently fired slowly, to balance the game. The build would be entirely based on who had the most optimized build.

Sinon grabbed the Rapid Reload perk. That would boost her reload speed by 37%, as the bonuses are multiplicative. The boost would help her against what seemed to be the main enemies in the tutorial/ intro for the New California Republic.

Caesar's Legion was a group that was led by a man named Caesar, someone that was a dictator. Caesar's Legion has a joinable group that had many things looked down upon by today's society. They forced all women to be slaves and killed those they thought were weak.

Sinon shuddered. There is a reason I didn't join them.

Caesar's Legion had the largest spread of any organization, other than possibly the Brotherhood of Steel. The Brotherhood had different sub-factions that were isolated from each other, so whether or not they all agreed on things and could be considered one faction was questionable.

In Fallout: New Vegas, the Brotherhood were isolationists. They just sat in their bunker underground, uncaring of the problems of those above the surface. Some areas of the Brotherhood's influence hadn't even been discovered because they hid in their vaults. Nobody knew how far their reach spread.

A few minutes after their battle was over, a sound almost like a tolling bell rang out over the area. The hundreds of players in that area had to take a few seconds to realize that their Pip-Boys were the cause of it. The bell continued to toll for another minute before the sounds halted. The smiling face of a man appeared on the screen. Some would recognize him as Akihiko Kayaba, the creator of this game.

Soon, they would treat him like a devil in disguise.

"My name is Kayaba Akihiko, and I am the creator of this world. Some of you may have noticed the lack of a 'Log Out' button in your menus. This is not a defect in any way. This game was made to have this feature. You cannot log out of Gun Gale Online yourselves, and anyone attempting to remove the headgear will cause you to die. If your health reaches zero, you die. Already, 600 have not heeded this warning and have perished. You can never be released until the game is cleared by having all factions united against a common enemy. The only release you may have until then is the sweet release of death. Go forth, my players into this game. Go and complete the game," Akihiko Kayaba stated. A sickeningly sweet smirk appeared, sending shivers down the backs of the players.

"I will await your arrival. See you at the top! And good luck!"