"Hello again, Antherica. This is John Henry Eden, your President. There are some things we should talk a-"

With a distasteful curl of his lip. Jinx Curi, formerly of Vault 100 and now an erstwhile treasure-hunter and explorer, adjusted the dial of his Pipboy radio receiver and tuned out the oh-so-smugly reassuring voice. Like everyone scratching out an existence in the Capital Wasteland, he had heard the broadcast a hundred times over, both on the airwaves and blasted out from the speakers of the floating robots that traversed the wastes to the general annoyance of everyone that encountered them. Yet, something also compelled them to listen from time to time, to see if new messages of hope and salvation had been added to the repetitious array they had all heard. Everyone was convinced it was a hoax, but yet, there was sometimes something comforting from the honeyed promises the supposed President made to them.

Silence.

Normally, he prefered anything other than silence as he made the journey between Rivet City and Megaton. The blasted emptiness that was now his home could sap mind and spirit from you if you let it, and Galaxy Radio was a lifeline and source of comfort to those who strode the wastes. But Jinx was in a reflective mood as he stared over at the ruined cityscape before him, and tried to imagine what it must have looked like, two hundred years before. He doubted the library of movies and television recordings that had survived the long decades of entombment within his vault would have done it justice. Just what the Pre-War world had looked like had actually been a source of fierce debate between his fellow vault dwellers. There had been no dates on any of the holodisks and holotape reels labels, and any frame of calendar reference within them had been visually censored or bleeped out. Deliberately so, it seemed. To Jinx's generation of vault dwellers, they had no idea what was historical and what was fictional. It was this desire to learn more about the world beyond the vault (what was left of it, at least) and try and discover the truth about the Pre-War world, that had lead Jinx to leave the vault, the huskoon's natural curiosity too strong to resist. He had made his tearful goodbyes and sworn to keep the location of the vault a secret and strode off into the wasteland, determined not to return without untampered proof.

Two years later, he felt he was a seasoned wanderer of the wastes and had discovered much about what he like everyone else, had come to call 'The Capital Wasteland'. He had come to think of it as home as much as the vault had been and made many friends and allies.

That thought brought warmth to his heart as he surveyed the broken shells of buildings and the skeletal remains of petrified trees below him and made ready to move out, a feeling of cheery contentment filling him, his tail swaying behind him as he twiddled the dial and smiled and began to whistle along as one of his favourite songs crackled out from the speakers across the cracked highway before him.

"...The roads are the dustiest, the winds are the gustiest, the gates are the rustiest, the pies are the crustiest, The songs the lustiest, the friends the trustiest, way back home..."

---

This was a piece I originally commissioned in the middle part of last year, hence the Fallout 3 theming, and when the holy Fallout 4 was still whispers upon the wind. Showing my fan appreciation for one of my most treasured game series' had long been on my to-do list for a commission and thanks to the collaborative efforts of Redcreator and Sizzuhs, my huskoon fursona forever more came in Fallout flavour! Red is a huge Fallout fan too, so when I learned this, I knew this would be a wonderful piece and it certainly is. Writing a little accompanying narrative to accompany was fun too!

Jinx Curi and Flavour Text Story © Myself

Artwork © and  sizzuhs

Fallout © Bethesda Softworks LLC