POV Rio
As I walked through the mirror, I felt like I was being stretched into a string of laffy taffy and then flushed down a toilet. After a while, I was let out of the portal and noticed a system message on the Pip-Boy.
[New Universe Reached, System Update In Progress...]
[Please Standby]
I let it be and started to look around me, only to fall on my face after trying to walk.
"What?" I say while spitting dirt out of my mouth.
I look at my body and notice I don't have arms anymore. I also don't have feet anymore. Instead, I have 4 nubs which, upon closer inspection, appear to be hooves.
...
...
"HUH?!"
It took my brain several moments to process what just happened, and I was freaking out a bit. Okay, a lot. But to be fair, suddenly being a quadruped is a very shocking thing to happen.
"Okay, calm down. I know this is weird, but not impossible, and this can be seen as practice for when I get transformation spells. And admittedly, I should have seen this coming. I mean, a mirror that acts like water and is very magical. And I can travel through it, and then there was the strange spatial distortion I felt when in it. It's kind of obvious now that I say it out loud," I comment to myself.
It takes a few minutes of fumbling around and more face plants than a professional doing push-ups, but in the end, I get the hang of using four legs without feet. It did help that going from bipedal to quadrupedal was easier than the other way around. It also helped that I seemed to retain my oddly high flexibility, and my control over my wings was already high.
Once I was able to move, I started to investigate my situation. The first thing I noticed was the similar structure of the area around the mirror. It was a cellar in decent condition with ice all over the walls and floor. Walking through the cellar, I got to the open cellar door.
"Wow," I say with wide eyes.
Outside the cellar was an endless expanse of white. Everything was ice and snow. There was a slight wind, but otherwise it was silent. I activated my Magic Eyes, and even then, it was still the same in every direction. There was, interestingly, no house above the cellar; it was just a random cellar in the middle of nowhere. I decided to take out some binoculars and see if I could spot anything more, but it was just the same. I decided to head back into the cellar as I didn't know if there were hostiles, and I did not blend in with the white landscape. A random black and blue dot would stick out quite a bit.
'What is up with this place? Is this Hoth or something?'
Despite my joke, I didn't actually want this to be Hoth, as that would not be safe, and the Star Wars Universe was quite a large threat that I didn't want to have to deal with. I put away the binoculars and took out some equipment. One was a radio frequency scanner, another was a thermometer, and other things would measure various things about the planet.
The first thing I got was the info on the Temperature. It was -87.1 °C (-124.78 °F) right now. That was close to the coldest recorded temperature on my original Earth. Other than that, I picked up no signals, and the instruments I used seemed to indicate that the planet I was on was not that different from Fallout Earth. The largest difference was the massive difference in magic. Fallout Earth had little mana in the air, and as such, fewer magic creatures and magic spells cost more on average. The concentration was several magnitudes higher on this unknown planet.
'Which is nice as it feels like I can do anything here compared to the other world, where magic feels almost like pulling teeth when trying to cast spells. And I can fly for free here.'
Flight used AP in Fallout World, but here I didn't feel that restriction. But before I could test that out, I heard the alert that the system had updated. There were very few changes, just a few additional bonuses.
For one, I could choose if I wanted to stay in my human form or the new form. I could automatically leave this world by activating the icon on the map. I could choose to teleport all companions to me when I enter or leave this world, regardless of it they are far away or unconscious. They can also choose what form they want to be in upon entering this world, but regardless of their choice, they and I will return to our original forms upon exit. I could do quests in this other world and earn experience like in the Fallout World. Like I surmised, magic is much cheaper to cast here, and flying is practically free. It didn't, however, tell me the name of this world, so I would call it Hoth for now.
'At least my companions and I are immune to the cold here. As long as it doesn't get colder than liquid Nitrogen or the like.'
I wasn't sure if this world would have any resources, but hopefully it did, as I was fairly sure Fallout Earth was out of most resources. Most resources would have to be obtained from recycling and scavenging. I at least didn't have a massive amount of competition, as according to the satellite info, the population of Earth is estimated to be around 10-11 million. Yeah, you heard that right, only 10-11 million. Turns out a nuclear apocalypse combined with society not rebuilding and only regressing will cause the population to continue to decline. Oh, and there was a missing continent.
The entire continent of Africa was turned into some sort of kaiju that then flew into space. Because apparently that is how messed up and cursed the Fallout Universe is. Of course, it's possible the info that the spy satellite had was inaccurate, which I sincerely hope so as I don't want to deal with continent-sized kaiju, but I somewhat doubt that the satellite could be so wrong or tampered with to such an extent that the info is false or someone dumbly thought this was a good idea for a prank.
Regardless of the validity of the info, I was fairly sure the 10-11 million humans would be fairly accurate. The Great War ended over 200 years ago, and yet most of society still hasn't rebuilt. The closest there is to a functioning government in the USA is the NCR and New Vegas, and both are riddled with issues and not exactly a fully rebuilt and safe society. So, with 200 years of negative growth, it makes a decent amount of sense that the population would be so small. That and even if they do rebuild, then the other societies or problems get jealous and tear them down. Or the Zetans will invade, or some other nonsensical interruption will happen.
'I feel like I am forgetting something?'
POV Other side of the portal
We all look down at the rope that was spit out of the strange portal.
"Uh, what do we do now?" Preston asks.
"I have no idea," Curie innocently responds.
POV Rio
"Oh, yeah, the rope. Where did it go?" I say while looking around.
After some searching, I give up and decide that my trip to this other world has lasted long enough, and I should head back. I could come back later when I am equipped for an expedition. I do make a makeshift false wall to hide the mirror in case someone stumbles upon this long-abandoned cellar. With my maxed-out sneak skill, I could make a very convincing false wall. I maxed it out when I leveled up a bit ago. Which reminded me that I leveled up when I killed the Wendigo.
I placed the points into Survival, getting it to 40.
Cracking: 75
Barter: 1
Energy Guns: 1
Explosives: 1
Guns: 1
Magic: 50
Medicine: 16
Melee Weapons: 1
Science: 100
Sneak: 100
Survival: 40
Unarmed: 1
Then I used the Perk Points for Adamantium Skeleton Rank 3 and then the 3rd rank of Archmage Legacy. With the maxed-out Adamantium Skeleton, I no longer took any limb damage. I could still take damage to my limbs, but they could no longer be crippled or disabled. The perk didn't give me a metal skeleton, but I guess that was a good thing to some extent. As otherwise I would ne weak to magnetism, and I would suffer from metal poisoning. As for Archmage Legacy Rank 3, it just made all my spells 25% more effective. It wasn't much, but it was honest work.
With that level up, I now only have one remaining negative trait from my start. I still had the Out of Shape debuff, but I was getting close to getting rid of it. If I estimated right, I only had a week or two more of exercise until I am in shape.
I left Hoth and returned to Earth, where everyone had questions about where I went and what I saw. I answered their questions as best as I could, and then I started to figure out how best to deal with the mirror. As I was doing this, we discovered that the house was gone. It had vanished as if it never existed. There were no ruins left behind, not even a foundation, making me think the house was an illusion. It was the best theory I could come up with that would explain how it could just vanish completely. It did mean that the cellar was actually quite well hidden now, as it was in the middle of nowhere, and it could be camouflaged easily.
But I was still unwilling to leave the mirror alone, so we decided to transport it back to Vault 111. By hand. I learned that the system couldn't store the mirror with its current abilities. Which indicated that it could be upgraded, but I wasn't sure how. The trip back was easy enough, and once it was secure in Vault 111, we then walked back to the cellar to see if it vanished as well. All the back-and-forth travel made me come back to an idea that I had been wanting to do for a while. A transportation device would be very helpful. But that was for another day.
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Authors Note:
No, the planet Rio found is not Hoth. I am pretty sure Hoth is colder than -87.1 °C, and I doubt Hoth has high ambient mana. As for the world population, I thought it would be a fair number given the NCR is only 700k despite controlling most of the West coast and, more importantly, California, one of the most populous states in the US. That and I remember someone saying that the Fallout Universe was regressing, and society was not rebuilding, or at least whenever they try, they fail or have something terrible happen that slows or breaks them. That and we know that despite both sides wiping out the world, they still didn't use all their nukes, otherwise I would expect everyone to die. Oh yeah, and all the doomsday weapons or dangerous experiments that could wipe out the world that are now released or unsupervised. And I noted it in the chapter, but the 10-11 million is strictly the human population. It doesn't count Super Mutants or Ghouls, or other similar non-humans. Until next time, Ciao.