Chapter Text
A young lady stands in her bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 15th of July, 2172, is this young lady’s birthday. Since it was fifteen years ago she was given life, she already has a name, but you are welcome to guess.
What could the name of this young lady be?
>Enter Name.
>AMANDA WINSTON
>Name Verified.
Your name is AMANDA. As previously mentioned, it is your BIRTHDAY. A number of AIRPLANE PARTS are scattered about your room. You have a variety of INTERESTS. You have a passion for AVIATION AND PILOTING despite never having seen a real, working plane before. You like to tinker with mechanical things but you are NOT VERY GOOD AT IT. You have a fondness for COFFEE and are an AMATEUR MERCENARY. You like the color OLIVE. You also like to play GAMES sometimes.
What will you do?
>Amanda: Check up on yourself.
While you are fairly certain that a good night’s sleep isn’t going to make any significant changes to your biological appearance, you decide to head to the BATHROOM and take a good look at yourself. You open the door to your bathroom and flick on the lights, seeing the once dimly-lit concrete room being illuminated by a sickly, white fluorescent glow as soon as you did so.
You walk up to your MAKESHIFT MIRROR and take a look at your reflection. You see a pair of grease-stained, not-so-fluffy white cat ears on top of your silver, curly and oily hair. Your eyes are as OLIVE as always and that’s a relief. Of course, you still have a lot of freckles on your face, but they match nicely with your wheat-colored skin, so you’ll let that slide. That being said, you can’t help but notice the grime and blood that is covering everything. Your stain-covered not-so-fluffy white tail twitches in annoyance: you are absolutely filthy right now.
>Amanda: Clean yourself up right this moment before things get any messier.
You have no idea what the command-text-person means by “any messier” but you do agree with them. The human part inside you finds the sleep-and-wasteland-induced sanitary disarray you are currently in unpleasantly unacceptable and despite the cat part inside you hissing at you for even thinking about touching water, you decide to take a shower. You walk into the SHOWER CUBICLE and turn on the tap. The water is warm and slightly radioactive, just like how you like it.
You finish your shower and clean yourself up with a towel. You have a lot of towels because you found A LOT OF TOWLS in a box somewhere deeper inside your BUNKER. You do not want to talk about things deeper inside your BUNKER as long as your lights are still on and purified water still comes through the tap.
That tangent aside, you now feel refreshed: your cat ears and tail are now white and fluffy again. Your hair is still very curvy and very much wet, but it is no longer oily. You know in the old world, there existed wonderful things called HAIR DRYERS that could dry your hair way faster, but you haven’t had any luck on your scavenging trips just yet, so the wonderful prospect of drying your hair through electronic appliances is still a far-fetched dream for you.
>Amanda: Ignore your wet hair and get some clean clothes.
Your hair is still wet but there’s not much you can do about that. Instead, you decide to focus your attention on choosing your outfit of the day. Your closet is not very big and there aren’t a lot of things in it, but you still have a couple of choices to browse through before making a decision.
You ended up settling on an OLIVE aviator jacket, a plain white T-shirt that has an odd compass-esque symbol on it, and a pair of dark blue jeans. Your outfit reminds you of old-world ACE PILOTS. You wish you could be as cool as them one day.
Now that you’ve finished your morning routine and chosen appropriate clothing, what will you do?
>Amanda: Visit the HANGAR.
You walk out of your BATHROOM, straight past your BEDROOM, and enter the HANGAR. It is large, dark, and foreboding. Plus, the smell of mold and decades-old concrete isn’t exactly pleasant. But you know it is not the HANGAR itself that matters, it is what’s being stored here that is truly important. A LARGE MYSTERIOUS SILHOUETTE is currently being concealed by the shadows caused by a lack of illumination. Tools and barrels of what you assume are JET FUEL are piled haphazardly around the HANGAR.
>Amanda: Inspect the LARGE MYSTERIOUS SILHOUETTE.
You open your SYLLADEX and UNCAPTCHALOGUE your TACTICAL FLASHLIGHT. You quietly thank the Dust-Mother that you use the simple and non-complicated INVENTORY fetch modus instead of whatever convoluted mess that is popular in the CAPITAL CITY. You turn on your flashlight and point the beam of light toward the LARGE MYSTERIOUS SILHOUETTE. The silhouette is revealed to be a FULLY OPERATIONAL F-15 FIGHTER JET.
Well, you know the last part isn’t completely true. You might’ve restored a large majority of the EAGLE’s systems, but he’s not suited for the skies just yet. You still need an old-world FLIGHT CONTROL COMPUTER to make sure you won’t instantly smash into the first mountain you see at supersonic speeds when you take off. You’d wager something like that happening on your maiden voyage would totally put a wrench in your plan of turning the HALL OF ELDERS into a smoldering crater.
So, fighting back your intrusive thought of hopping in and turning on the engines, you re-captchalogue your flashlight back into your sylladex and decide to do something else instead.
>Amanda: Captchalogue the FIGHTER JET and use it as your STRIFE SPECIBUS.
Oh, you’ve tried. Your INVENTORY fetch modus allows you to captchalogue large vehicles but for some Dust-Mother-forsaken reason, it won’t allow you to use the EAGLE or any of your vehicles as your STRIFE SPECIBUS, so you are unfortunately left with the considerably less powerful RIFLEKIND ABSTRATUS and your trusty FN P-90 PERSONAL DEFENSE WEAPON. You call it the Bulldog, and it has helped you out of many difficult situations. It’s not quite a rifle and not quite what you wanted, but it’s not completely terrible either.
Now that you’ve explained why you couldn’t allocate your lovely EAGLE to your strife specibus, what would you do instead?
>Amanda: Retrieve BIRTHDAY GIFT.
Now that’s more like it! Even though your quality of life isn’t necessarily what one would call “glamorous”, you’d still like to treat yourself to something nice every once in a while.
You think that a certain ABANDONED AIRFORCE BASE nearby would be the best place to find your BIRTHDAY GIFT. You walk outside of your BUNKER and uncaptchalogue your ARMORED JEEP from your sylladex. Of course, any self-respecting old-world military would certainly scoff at your poor excuse of an imitation of their armored transports if they could see you. Luckily for you, there are several meters of RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT and CRUMBLED RUINS between you and any members of the totally hypothetical self-respecting old-world military.
You hop into the comedically oversized DRIVER’S SEAT and turn the ignition key until you hear the sweet, comforting hums of a V8 diesel engine. Taking your (metaphorical) LICENSE TO KILL out of what you assume is the glove compartment, you think you are ready to do what needs to be done.
>Amanda: Drive.
The trip to the ABANDONED AIRFORCE BASE is incredibly dull and boring: it’s just sixty miles of desert and ruins, and you didn’t even come across any bandits on your way to the airforce base. The 15-year-old in you is upset that there is absolutely nothing exciting about this road trip, but the unnaturally mature part of you is quietly thankful about that. You’ve learned from a VERY YOUNG AGE that as much as it sucks, a dull and boring life is best for health and longevity.
Anyways, you were on a tangent there. You should focus on the task at hand now that you are standing in front of the ABANDONED AIRFORCE BASE.
You silently waltz inside like a cat stalking its prey, weapons drawn and ready to take down anything that comes across your path. Your initial round of scavenging rewards you with some SPARE AMMO and two more intact HEAT-SEEKING MISSILES you could add to your plane, but there is no FLIGHT CONTROL COMPUTER in sight.
Frustrated, you decide it would be best for you to leave before the sun sets, but as you turn around and begin walking toward the gate, you hear a noise from one of the buildings next to you.
>Amanda: Investigate the noise in the building.
You sneak into the building through an air vent because you are not naive enough to just waltz in from the front gate. From an opening, you first hear, then smell, and then see a lonely SCAVENGER walking down a dark hallway. To your surprise, he is holding a big, scary rifle and a pristine FLIGHT CONTROL COMPUTER! You quietly thank the Dust-Mother for delivering you such good news, but then you remembered that you do not have the FLIGHT CONTROL COMPUTER, the scavenger does.
You have options, but all of them have drawbacks.
>Amanda: Confront the Scavenger
You decide to do this the civilized way. You hop down from the vent you were hiding in and land silently like a cat. You uncaptchalogue your tactical flashlight and shine it at the scavenger. He flinches but then he turns around in a snap and points his gun at you.
“The fuck!?” he growls, but his growl quickly turns into a sneer as he looks at you: “God damn, get lost, kitty, go find somewhere else to play, this ain’t your turf. Almost fucking thought you were a raider! Now get the fuck out of my sight before I put you in the dirt.”
Ugh, arrogant bastard. Your ears pull back in irritation as you clear your throat and state your offer: “Well I’m not here to play, sir.” You steady yourself and stare at the scavenger with a defiant but polite gaze: “I’m here to initiate a trade with you—you have something I need, and I think I could offer you something you need as well.”
“The fuck could a shitstain mutant like you offer!?” The scavenger sneers and threateningly shakes his rifle: “Get outta my sight before I end ya pitiful life, kid.”
“Listen, man, I’m a mercenary of sorts, and I can offer you a contract for free: whoever you want dead will be dead by tomorrow, and I’ll walk away with that flight control computer. Deal?” You are not very intimidated by the gun barrel in front of your face, instead, you press on like a shrewd businessman.
“Oh, so you’re one of those lawless mercs who kill for money huh?” The scavenger’s sneer suddenly turned into a menacing grin: “Heard mercs like you got pretty big numbers on ya heads, you wanna see how much yours is worth?”
“Come on, don’t be stupid, let’s resolve this the civilized way, shall we? Both of us can profit if we solve this with a deal.” You feel the furs on your tail and ears bristle like a cat ready to pounce as you slowly and stealthily reach for your gun. Come on, act reasonable, no need for any bloodshed today. Silently, you pray that the scavenger can come to his senses before this escalates any further.
“Nah, I think a year's worth of extra rations is a better deal for me,” The scavenger grins with his heinous teeth and raises his rifle: “Thought I made jackpot when I found the computer but nah, looks like I got to kill two birds with one stone.”
>Amanda: Strife!
He fires first, the stale and dusty building air reverberates with the violent blast of a high-caliber rifle. You evade with a swift dodge roll to the side while re-captchaloguing your tactical flashlights and drawing your P-90. You fire a swift burst at the scavenger but he sidesteps in a flash and made your shots miss their targets.
“Thought I left the life of purging mutie scums when I got discharged from the Brigade, guess I’m wrong.” The scavenger grins menacingly and cycles his rifle, ejecting the empty shell casing and loading in a new round. You draw your backup dagger and snarl at him, revealing your sharp feline fangs—you hated a lot of things about CAPITAL CITY and its barbaric rulers, but the PURITY BRIGADE and the monsters that work for it definitely make a solid contender for the top of that list. He simply continues to wear that menacing grin as he raises his rifle again.
He fires again but you evade with your cat-like agility. You dash forward with your dagger raised and hellbent on drawing blood. He blocks your rapid, furious strikes again and again with his rifle but as he grins in expectation of a battle of sheer strength, you reveal your P-90-wielding spare hand, and with a pull of the trigger, an onslaught of 5.7X28mm hollow-point bullets turns his lower torso into a bloody mess. His eyes open wide with shock and he staggers back, leaving him open for a finisher. You waste no time and violently jam the dagger into his throat with all your strength. You watch him writhe on the floor as he gurgles his last breaths and eventually, he stopped moving.
Ugh, that’s a bit messy. You wince at the scene and can’t help but feel sorry about the dead scavenger. Sure, he used to work for the PURITY BRIGADE and definitely would’ve enjoyed killing you if he got the chance, but dying like that? That’s just plainly painful and you are too dust-damned sympathetic to not at least try to care about that. Still, he’s now dead and you should probably do something about that.
>Amanda: Loot the dead scavenger.
After making sure that the scavenger was truly dead, you walk toward the now-dead scavenger and inspect his dead body. You first grabbed the slightly blood-stained but still otherwise very pristine FLIGHT CONTROL COMPUTER and immediately sent it into the safe confines of your sylladex, then you look at the big, scary rifle, and hell yeah! It’s a well-maintained TAC-50. You captchalogue it since the scavenger certainly doesn’t need it anymore and you certainly don’t want it going to waste. The rest of the SCAVENGER’s loot is unassuming at best and downright repulsive at worst. But just before you decide to ABSCOND, you found something you weren’t expecting: a pristine video game disc held in its original case.
>Amanda: Investigate videogame case.
You picked up the case in excitement but were immediately disappointed because it’s not Project Wingman 3: Prez’s Dipping-Dots-Fueled Rampage. Damn it! That was the only PROJECT WINGMAN game you haven’t found! Instead of the fighter-jet-flying, explosion-packed, story-rich game of incredible replayability and quality that you were hoping to find, it’s some random game you’ve never heard of, it’s a game called SBURB.
You tried inspecting it further but the packaging shows nothing about the game: there isn’t even a developer name or price tag! The only thing on the cover was a green, house-like symbol. You reckon it’s some sort of city-building game, which isn’t fun but it’s hard to come across a pristine copy of video games without going to the Capitol City these days. So you captchalogue it and put it in your sylladex. You hope it is single-player-compatible because you have absolutely no friends to play with.
>Amanda: Abscond.
The ride back to your BUNKER COMPLEX is still boring and in fact, it’s worse because you are now haunted by the image of the dying scavenger. Damn it! You just couldn’t help but give your sympathy to everyone, even those that made your life miserable. At least you got what you needed, and honestly? You think that is definitely a silver lining in this whole ordeal.
You arrive at your BUNKER COMPLEX and as soon as you enter the BUNKER itself, you uncaptchalogue the FLIGHT CONTROL COMPUTER. It is a bit blood-stained but still undeniably pristine. You decide to head into your workshop and prepare the FLIGHT CONTROL COMPUTER for installation.
The preparation process mainly includes initializing the systems and programming the operating parameters. You are not very good at coding but you found some official documents a while ago that sorta explained everything. You leave most things in their default setting but decide to turn the AOA Limiter off. You think it’ll make you do fancy maneuvers like in Project Wingman but you are not very sure.
Now that the FLIGHT CONTROL COMPUTER is ready for installation, you leave your WORKSHOP and enter the HANGAR. After a bit of fumbling because you are not a federally-licensed airplane technician, you successfully install the FLIGHT CONTROL COMPUTER without losing any limbs.
You then spend a while cleaning out your HANGAR, but eventually, you think you cleared out enough space for takeoff and landing. You first put on an OLIVE flight suit and your helmet. Then, you hop in and settle comfortably in the EAGLE’s cockpit after connecting your oxygen and electronics to the seat.
You begin the engine cold-start process while looking at the instruction manual: You first switch on both ENG MASTER switches, then you move to turn on both ENG CONTROL switches and follow that by turning on both ENG GEN switches. You then turn on the JFS STARTER switch and pull on the JFS handle. Hearing the low humming noise of the JFS, you turn on the 2nd engine first and you hear the low humming turn into a howl, and then into a deafening scream as the powerful Pratt & Whitney F100 engine kicks back into life. You then repeat the last step but with the first engine. With both engines screaming with power and thrust, you think you are ready for your maiden voyage.
>[S]Amanda: Take to the Skies (listen to Mighty Wings by Cheap Tricks while reading this for the best experience)
If your creator is ANDREW HUSSIE himself or is familiar with Microsoft Paint, this is the part where you will have an entire flashy animation of you soaring across the sun-scorched wasteland in your newly-revived supersonic Air Superiority Fighter, complete with an awesome soundtrack from no other than the legendary composer/game developer Toby Fox. However, your creator is not Andrew Hussie and not only does he know jack about Microsoft Paint or animating, he also couldn’t afford to hire Toby Fox for soundtracks. So you are unfortunately stuck with just the description of what happens:
You increase the throttle way harder than the manual’s instruction and the twin Pratt & Whitney F100 engines let out a deafening roar. A split second later, the previously-stationary EAGLE accelerates forward with incredible speed, pinning you against the pilot seat with sheer momentum and force. Like a blazing arrow, the EAGLE shoots out of your BUNKER HANGAR and you are flying. You are soaring above the sun-scorched sands that once imprison you and all of a sudden, you feel an overwhelming sense of freedom —you feel as free as a mighty gust of wind, unchained, untamed, and carefree in utter defiance against all forces that intents to keep you bound, and you feel fucking cathartic.
So, you grin and push the throttle further. Your EAGLE responds by turning on his afterburners with a mighty roar. You soar low and fast above the endless plains of the desert at supersonic speeds and you see the shockwave your EAGLE leaves on the land as you blaze across the sand-blasted wasteland with two bright flames behind you. You cackle maniacally because you think you are addicted to this kind of thing now: the rush of adrenaline, the power, and the sheer momentum of your movements feel as intoxicating as it is liberating. You pull up once more and feel the overwhelming yet strangely arousing feeling of G-force pinning you against your seat. You roll around and pull to your right as sharp as the EAGLE allows you to. You feel like your head is getting lighter and there is darkness at the edge of your vision but everything feels so right you couldn’t even care, you simply grin and fly.
You fly like somebody who’s hopped on caffeine and every hard drug known to man and you are not even high. You pull into an aileron roll and follow that with a barrel roll. You pull a wingover followed by a split-S and you shout with excitement as if you are a kid on a roller-coaster. You enter a lag displacement roll against an imaginary opponent but then immediately break off and turn hard left as if you are evading an incoming missile. You try every single aerobatic maneuver you can remember and then some more. You fly yourself into a canyon on full throttle and you shimmy your way through it, flying way too close to the canyon walls for anybody-except-for-yourself’s comfort. You practice gun runs on nonexistent enemy convoys and you pretend you have endless missiles and use them against imaginary air-combat furballs filled with fake enemy jets, all while wearing a big and stupid grin that even you didn’t think was possible to pull off on your face. You fly and fly and fly and only when the Bingo(low-fuel) warning light starts blinking did you reluctantly decide to call it off for now and resign yourself to your earthly confines again.
You made it to your BUNKER HANGAR riding on an orange-red sunset like a badass cowboy except your mighty steed is a 20-ton, all-metal jet-powered war machine once belonging to the legendary U.S of A and her allies, and your “revolver” is a 20mm autocannon capable of delivery 6000 rounds of freedom and democracy to anybody unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end. As you approach the runway, you reluctantly slow down and get everything ready for your perfect landing.
>Amanda: Land the plane
People always say that any landing you could walk away from is a successful landing. Of course, you disagree: the only successful landing in your books is a landing that both you AND the plane can walk away from because you’d never want anything bad to happen to your precious EAGLE ever. By that merit, your landing is very successful: Both you and the EAGLE are intact and feeling A-Okay about your collective maiden voyage. Though judging by where you found your EAGLE, you doubt this is his first rodeo.
You instinctively captchalogue the EAGLE as soon as you disembark. Despite repeatedly trying, you can’t help but feel curious about the (now fully operational) EAGLE’s compatibility with your strife deck.
>Amanda: Use the EAGLE as your STRIFE SPECIBUS.
You try to allocate the captchalogued EAGLE to your STRIFE SPECIBUS once more. Initially, you feel the usual supernatural push-back, but this time, as you push harder, something unexpected happens…
//Allocating -THE EAGLE- to User: aerobaticCatnip[AC] 's STRIFE SPECIBUS//
//Error: Kind Abstratus Not Found//
//Initializing Fallback Loop… Setting up placeholder Kind Abstratus…//
//Placeholder Kind Abstratus Created: JetplnKind. Automatic Balancing Enabled//
//Generating Legendary Weapon for Kind Abstratus: JetplnKind…//
//Generation successful. Automatic rebooting in progress…//
//Detected a Critical Error in File Strifedeck.main. Error Code: 413//
//Error: Data Corrupted, Attempting to boot in Safemode…//
//Safemode not found. Continue Rebooting Progress? Y /N//
//Warning: Data Corruption may cause critical failures during gameplay, do you wish to continue the reboot process? Y /N//
//Reboot Complete. Please Enjoy your Session//
>Amanda: Gain a New STRIFE SPECIBUS.
Praise the Dust Mother! You have just gained an additional STRIFE SPECIBUS! Now in addition to using your useful RIFLEKIND ABSTRATUS, you can also use the never-before-seen JETPLNKIND Kind Abstratus! You can now summon your fighter jet(s) at will and never have to worry about resupplying and you are confidently certain that your new overpowered strife specibus won’t have any dire consequences for you in the future whatsoever.
Now that you’ve gotten the best BIRTHDAY GIFT a girl could ever ask for, what will you do?
>Amanda: Relax and play some games
You decide it’s a perfect opportunity to play some VIDEOGAMES and relax. You look around your gaming shelf. It is filled with all kinds of games involving AEROPLANES. That being said, you are in no mood to replay ACE COMBAT, PROJECT WINGMAN, or DCS after all that intense real-life dogfighting against your imaginary ace pilots. So you decide to settle on that weird “SBURB” game you found on the dead scavenger instead.
Facing your computer, you take the game out of its case and insert the disc into your computer’s disc driver. Navigating the files on your computer, you find SBURB.exe in no time. However, as you hover your mouse over the green, house-looking symbol, you hesitate as a voice inside you tells you to stop right here and throw this game as far away from civilization as possible.
So, you ask your dear Command-Text-Person: what will you do?
>Amanda: Play Sburb.