NOVEL WEB Chapter 26 (Tanya POV)
-------Tanya POV-------
As far as she could remember, Tanya had a difficult life. Her parents worked as caravan drivers, and for whatever god-forsaken reason, they decided to raise Tanya on the road. The trade routes of the wasteland were nowhere to foster a healthy life for a child. In between constant anxiety from getting ambushed and actual fear after it happened, Tanya was left lonely because there weren't other children around her age.
The closest thing she had to friends were the children at the settlements her family's caravan visited. Sometimes, they're nice enough to let Tanya join in whatever games they had going on, but most of the time, they just deemed her an outsider and kept her at arm's length. And with time, Tanya also learned to stay away from the settlers. It only takes seeing a settlement you made a friend in burned to the ground so many times before you stop trying.
And that was Tanya's existence for the longest time. Wake up, help tend to the brahmins, organize the cargo, let the adults handle the deliveries, sleep, then rinse and repeat. She would repeat this loop day in and day out, continuing her lonely existence, wondering if there was something more to the world. That was until one day, Tanya stumbled across a comic book.
Some might think work in a caravan was limited to driving and trading, but that couldn't be further from the truth. You had to know how to care for the livestock, maintain the carts, forage for food, defend yourself, etc. Being on the road meant that most of the time, you were hours away from the nearest settlement, and supplies for the workers were always tight. Often they would scavenge the surrounding area whenever they got the chance for any supplies that might help them get to the next rest stop.
One day, during one of these scavenging trips, Tanya found her first copy of Grognak the Barbarian. She still remembers it as if it happened yesterday. The cover was faded, and the edges had at least half a dozen tears. Despite the poor condition, Tanya could make out the picture of a shirtless man in a fighting stance standing across from a robot and someone wearing insect-like armor with the title saying 'Grognak and the Ants of Agony'.
The robot was a man in a costume called the Mechanist, and the one in chitinous armor was a villain named the AntAgonizer. That night, she poured over the pictures, engrossing herself in the story of how Grognak encountered a colony of giant ants in the rainforest controlled by the AntAgonizer. The Ants were individually weak, but together they were strong enough to put Grognak on the back foot repeatedly.
The story ends with Grognak finding the Mechanist, who happens to be the AntAgonizer's nemesis, and searching for him in the jungle, teaming up together. They laid a trap in a hidden temple, leading the AntAgonizer there by making him think he would corner Gragnok within. And right as the AntAgonizer thought he had the last laugh, the Mechanist collapsed the temple, trapping and killing the villain within.
She never knew how amazing comics would be, and in the following weeks, she got lost in the fictional world where the story took place. In that world, she didn't have to worry about being attacked by raiders or centaurs. She didn't have to stress about losing time because the brahmin collapsed from exhaustion. In that world, everything was so clear. Good always triumphed over evil.
After she read that issue of Gragnok the Barbarian to the point of remembering every line and picture, she started buying other comics with what little caps she saved. Gragnok, Astounding Tales, Unstoppables, anything she could get her hands on.
It was the little bit of light in her life that she didn't know she craved so much. For a brief time, life was bearable and not so dreary for Tanya. Of course, the wasteland was harsh and cruel, and the world had other plans for her.
One day, while making the rounds on one of the trade routes, her caravan was ambushed by giant ants. They were hiding under the dirt, and once the caravan drove past, they burst out from their caves, quickly overwhelming the guards. Tanya watched in horror as the horde of mutated insects picked apart the caravan workers she grew up with.
In a last moment of parental love, her father shoved Tanya on the last surviving brahmin before whipping it to get it running. He then pulled the pin on a grenade and rushed in front, blowing himself up and clearing the path for Tanya and the brahmin to escape. She remembered her father's upper half turning into a red mist before the brahmin broke through the pack and took her to safety.
The days after that were a blur in her mind. She had somehow stumbled back into the closest town. With nothing to her name except the bag on her back and the brahmin, she was forced to sell the brahmin for caps to buy food. She slept on the streets, often weeping herself to sleep, with the only thing providing a break was reading that first comic book she found while looting an old bookstore.
At first, she was angry at the story. Wasn't good supposed to triumph over evil? Why did the world take everything she knew from her? Slowly, the contents of that book utterly consumed her. The pictures within would cycle through her every waking moment until she finally understood.
The Ants weren't the villains! No, it was the humans that were in the wrong. The filthy humans created the war that ended the world, and now nature's children were finally taking their natural place as the world's rulers. Humanity was a blight upon the planet, and they should be eradicated for their insolence.
Tanya became obsessed with the idea that all humans must die, and that became her new truth. Of course, Tanya now knew that that line of thinking was just the result of a grieving child who didn't know how to cope with the loss she just experienced. But that didn't make what she did next any more understandable.
She wanted to do her part, so she devised a devious plan. One night, Tanya sneaked out of the town she had been staying in and wandered throughout the desert, looking for a giant ant mound. It didn't take long to find one, and when she did, she stomped on the entrance to make her presence known.
Two guard ants quickly rushed out of the nest and noticed her. Once Tanya was sure the ants would follow her, she quickly ran back toward the town. Once there, she got onto a high point and watched in glee as the ants razed the place to the ground. She reveled in the screams of the residents, happy that she had done her part in helping nature reclaim its glory.
Once everybody within the town had died, the ants finally made it to Tanya and surrounded her. She had known this would happen, and she closed her eyes, ready to die, knowing she had been a martyr for the greatest cause there could be. But death never came.
But the ants never took her life. Instead, they circled her a few times before all retreating into the capital wasteland. This had shocked her. Why was she spared? Was she, not another filthy human who deserved to die? Unless...
Unless she was never human, to begin with. Of course! She must have been an ant queen! That's why the ants had attacked the caravan. It was so they could set their queen free, and she could help them take over the world! Returning to the ant mound confirmed her theory, as the ants allowed her to travel deep within their nest.
From there, Tanya adorned the persona of the AntAgonizer and schemed to rid the world of humans. She would launch attacks on settlements and caravans, every raid one step closer to her ultimate goal. Every successful incursion brought her mind closer to the ants, and Tanya began to be able to feel their thoughts and communicate with them. But her advance came to a grinding halt when she ran into the small town of Canterbury Commons.
Tanya had launched a few provisionary raids into the trading settlement, each time making more progress, until she was stopped by the most unlikely of foes. One day, while launching another attack, her senses told her that her scouting party had suddenly died. Finding that weird, she personally led a contingent to where the ants had passed and found a man wearing a familiar silver suit.
To her surprise, she had found the spitting image of the Mechanist, the AntAgonizer's greatest enemy. He was surrounded by an army of robots, who quickly opened fire on Tanya, wounding her and killing several more of her soldiers. Having been injured, outnumbered, and outgunned, Tanya was forced to retreat that day.
That started a long and bloody feud where Tanya waged war on the town of Canterbury and the Mechanist. This time things would be different. This time, Tanya wouldn't fall for the ploys of her nemesis. It would be the AntAgonist who is ultimately victorious. This battle continued for several weeks until a stranger wearing a vault suit came into town.
Despite all the damage and chaos, the stranger didn't choose to fight her immediately. Someone treated Tanya like a person for the first time in a long time. Tanya was reminded of her previous life and the humanity that she had abandoned. She was reminded of the little girl reading the comic book, believing that good will always triumph over evil. The stranger gave Tanya a second chance that day, and she took it.
Ashamed of what she had done, Tanya ran as far away from the Capital Wasteland as possible, eventually finding herself in the Commonwealth. She found an abandoned house near a few smaller settlements and made a living by doing odd jobs here and there. One night, she was awakened by a stinging pain in her thighs, only to quickly pass out after seeing the giant ant that had bitten her.
When she came to again, she found herself trapped within an old building of some kind. With her in the room was a newly transformed ant queen. Seeing all the ants around her, Tanya thought that she would finally die and that it was ironic justice for it to be ants that did her in. But what happened was so much worse than that.
Instead of killing her, the ants would bite her to extract her blood. When they bit her, they would inject some venom that made her heat up and sweat more than usual. The ants would then also collect her sweat. Tanya's sweat and blood were then fed to the ant queen, and she watched in terror as the ant queen grew in size several times faster than it should have been able to. This continued for several days, and Tanya was forced to watch as she was once again helping ants ruin lives.
Tanya hated herself, from when she was too scared to help her caravan, to when she first helped the ants attack people, and now, when she didn't have the guts to bite through her own tongue and end her own life. Right as she was sure she was about to die from dehydration, a miracle happened.
A man in power armor stormed into the compound Tanya was trapped in and killed all the ants within it. He then rescued her from her own personal hell and returned her to the outside world. Robots reminiscent of when she fought the Mechanist carried her back to his camp. Over the next few days, the man would leave the camp to scavenge for supplies while the woman would stay behind and build robots. The companion's name was Isabel, and Basil was the man's name.
The fact that somebody in power had saved Tanya and brought her back to his robot companion was already strange enough. Even stranger was Tanya's ability to sense Basil's emotions as she could with ants. This had never happened with anybody else before, and it stumped her. Why was he different?
Once Tanya was strong enough to move by herself again, Basil told her his goals. He told her that he was a vault dweller that was cryogenically frozen before the war. Basil told her that the state of the planet saddened him and that he and Isabel planned to help the world get back on its feet again. Basil dreamed of creating a world without suffering. A world where people didn't have to starve, be constantly checking their backs, or worry about a slave collar being slapped around them.
And Basil meant it. Reading Basil's emotions confirmed that he was telling the truth and genuinely believed he could do it. Basil offered Tanya the option to drop her off at the nearest settlement or to help him achieve his vision. Having been given that choice, Tanya finally understood the purpose of her life.
Tanya's life until this point must have been built for meeting Basil. Her experiences in the Capital Wasteland and running to the Commonwealth was all so she could meet Basil and help him achieve his goals with her powers. Being able to read his emotions must have meant that he was the one. The one to save the world. The one to rule them all. The one for her to dedicate her life to.
Of course, Tanya chose the option that allowed her to serve Basil. She decided right then that from that moment on, everything that she was, and everything she would be was his and his only.
