Bete Popinski

Nuka

236

Male originally. Identifies as female now.

Like many ghouls, Bete could be best described as “Horrific” in appearance. Her skin has been flayed and peeled due to radiation burns, and lacks any hair. Many scars dot her body including a rather gruesome wound around her loin where she had been emasculated. Her arms are notably scarred up due to many years of explosive experimentation but she fortunately has most of her fingers, and is only missing the tip of her pinky. Surprising even herself however, Bete’s teeth are in perfect condition. She attributes this to radiation and having good dental hygiene before she turned ghoul.

Bete is fairly short even for a ghoul, barely reaching over five feet without aid of shoes. She’s fairly scrawny and lacks much bulk, even for a ghoul. Even ferals are bigger and burlier than she is. Her radiation burns have given her an unhealthy bleached tone and her flesh is slightly luminance in darkness. She has red bloodshot eyes but otherwise doesn’t seem to have any more or less issues seeing than any other person, though she admits that bright light often annoys her and she may have a minor darkvision.

Bete is a survivor through and through. She survived an absolutely horrid childhood, a very violent teenage year, and even managed to make it through adulthood despite her struggles with addiction and depression. And when the bombs dropped and all hell broke loose, Bete was always one step ahead, escaping danger and surviving for the next hundred of years. She’s always making sure she’s prepared, never spending a second idle. This of course has its ups and downs.

She can never trust anyone fully. And if anyone has a problem with the fact her paranoia makes her plan their deaths, then she’s more than willing to abandon them after she takes what she wants from them. Bete can never truly see others as just fellow survivors trying to live, and always sees them as either an asset to maintain or a rival to destroy. Even people who aren’t bothering her are categorized as either a threat that needs to be destroyed or avoided, or a resource to take advantage of. She’ll hardly shed a tear if they die and at most will be annoyed at losing a useful resource.

Generally speaking Bete is very selfish, but pragmatically so. She understands that cooperation and teamwork will accomplish much more than anything she can do alone. And as long as she doesn’t have to sacrifice much, if anything at all, she’s more than willing to work with others. That doesn’t mean she’ll enjoy it though and she certainly doesn’t want to get close to them on the chance she needs to abandon them. She’ll appeal to people’s good nature if it means she can get their help, and just as well will provoke others into violence if it’ll work in her favor. Ultimately she looks out for herself.

Bete’s greatest fear is being caught off-guard. To be put in a situation she didn’t ask for and doesn’t have a solution to escape from, to be powerless in general. She hates the feeling of powerlessness and so she always plans to have the advantage by any means possible. She never goes into any situation she doesn’t have very reliable information to work off of, and would never take the lead in any situation unless she’s alone. And if she is, she probably won’t try for it anyways. A true coward and she knows it.

As for weaknesses, despite being a ghoul who are generally known for their durability thanks to radiation, Bete is actually quite fragile. She doesn’t take pain very well and even minor discomfort can throw off her concentration. She’s not physically very strong either, meaning she has a hard time using raw muscle to carry things and thus she relies far more on her agility and wits more than brawn and toughness.

Bete was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, before the nukes hit. After the nukes, she stayed in the state for a short while, gathering equipment and watching how the survivors rebuild. Things seemed good at first but it wasn’t long before human nature reduced the bustling civilization into a wretched hive full of murderers, rapist, and criminals of all colors and stripes. Bete would occasionally contact one or two for trade, but she never went as far as to trust them, and more often than not she’d kill a wandering raider to steal their supplies. She hardly shed a tear when she decided to leave.

Unlike many, Bete’s beginning wasn’t in the cruel and harsh wasteland, but the still cruel and harsh America. Her mother was just fifteen years old, having been knocked up by her boyfriend as a teen. After Bete was born, her mother abandoned Bete, forcing the child onto the father. The young man took responsibility, but had no idea how to raise a child, nor did he have the resources to take care of Bete on his own. His family was quick to abandon him, forcing Bete’s father to join a gang and run drugs in order to support himself and his child.

With her father busy with the drug trade and the other children not liking Bete, she was often left alone to fend for herself. She had to learn how to take care of herself, how to make her own food, and how to deal with people. Even when she started going to school she could never really find herself getting close to others. Most of them picked on her anyways for being so quiet and scrawny. At first she tried to get help from teachers, but they never did much beyond assure her that “they’ll look into it”, and nothing happened. So Bete learned quickly that if she wanted anything done, she had to do it herself.

So as a child she started to learn the power behind the bomb. One of the few gifts her father gave her as a child was a packet of Cherry Bombs, a few which she used to celebrate her birthday, but realized it’s destructive potential when one of her cherry bombs killed a bird. From there she started to eavesdrop on her father’s business friends, even reading through his papers to learn anything about how to take vengeance against her bullies. Before long she crafted her first functional landmine using one of her cherry bombs, a lunchbox, and a simplified sensor module. She stashed the bomb in her locker after arming it, knowing that her bullies would go into her locker and steal her lunch as they always did. Two children died when the lunchbox exploded.

Naturally, Bete was taken from her father and sent to a juvenile delinquent facility for the murder of two children. But things never got better for her there. Turns out when you put someone like Bete, small, weak, and a murderer, around other kids with various emotional problems and no hesitation to hurt others, it just meant that Bete had to get tougher. She started to learn how to make the needed chemicals to craft bombs using simple materials like tin cans and metal shavings, or how to convert batteries into fusion cells which she could over charge into viable energy grenades, and even how to convert cleaning chemicals and a bottle of Nuka Cola, her favorite beverage, into a veritable nuclear weapon. All of these things were her weapons of choice when she had to deal with others, and she always made sure to kiss up to her disciplinary officers in order to stay under suspicion whenever the others are left bloodied and burned.

Thanks to a combination of “good” behavior and showing an active interest in Chemistry, Bete was able to escape the Juvie system work towards a scholarship. She wanted a clean slate, so she tried to work hard and honest. She really did. But it was a lot of stress on her mind. She learned that while she was in Juvie, her father was killed in a drug bust, leaving her effectively orphaned. Her apartment was robbed and nearly everything stolen or destroyed. Whatever debts her father had occurred, both legal and illegal, suddenly fell onto Bete. Her juvie record made sure that despite her intelligence no legitimate business would hire her. So much like her father, she had to resort to crime.

As an adult Bete joined gangs and helped produce drugs and weapons as needed. She always hated working with gangsters as they had no respect for “eggheads” like her and more often than not were just as bad as the cops who were constantly hounding her. It wasn’t even unusual for her to rat them out just out of spite, escaping the ensuing mess and trying to go on her own. But it was during those moments that she started getting addicted to Mentats. She had to stay ahead of others but she was so paranoid, so concerned about not knowing what she was up against, she turned to drugs to get the edge she needed. By the time she was 22, she had developed a full addiction to Mentats.

What followed was a downward spiral where all of Bete’s cunning and intelligence just flushed away and turned her into a regular drug fiend. She stopped being paranoid about people trying to take advantage of her just so she could feed her habit, which naturally allowed people to take advantage of her, and would’ve likely killed her had she not been arrested for public indecency when she was 26. She was sent to an asylum where she struggled against her addition, detox, and therapy. She never really recovered though, and was always in-and-out of the system no matter how many times she said she’d get clean. It wasn’t long before it got to a point where she was simply too numb to even really try and get high, and just became a homeless wanderer. She thought she’d just go and die one day. End it all once and for all.

About five years later on October 23, 2077, the end finally came in nuclear fire. Bete had wandered off into the mountains, woefully ignorant of worldly events, thinking she could go here and die somewhere pretty. It inadvertently saved her when she was far away enough from the nuclear blast to avoid a majority of the initial devastation. But she would never be the same. The radiation peeled away her flesh, caused her hair to fall off, and even rotted her dick off. The next few days were spent in agony and suffering. But it also made Bete realize that she never wanted to die. She wanted to live.

After a few days of rest, Bete rose from the ashes. The world as she knew it was gone. The laws, the rules, the people, vaporized. Even she was forever changed into a horrid looking creature who looked less like a human and more like a zombie. This shock was enough to shake off Bete’s depression and jump start her old paranoia again. No longer did she whine and moan about the futility of her life. Instead she immediately started to think about how she would survive in this new world. What sort of people would be around, what sort of threats would occur. After getting back on her two feet, Bete took the steps she needed to become a survivor.

For over many years Bete would learn new skills and grow more powerful. She started learning how to hack computers and reprogram robots in order to have powerful minions who would defend her. She learned how to create more potent explosives and drugs in order to protect herself and trade with others. For a while she tried to work with other survivors to make something from the ruins of Pittsburg, but it wasn’t long before their basic human nature turned even the most noble intention into a cesspool of violence and depravity. So Bete kept her distance from others, stockpiling weapons, robots, and supplies.

One day, while watching the bustling hive of scum and villainy known as The Pitt, an unusually organized band of power armored soldiers swept through the area. Bete was only safe because she had used her robots to spy on the destruction as these soldiers blasted their way through the armed gangs, leaving almost no survivors in their wake. Curious about these men, Bete decided that it was time to leave her old home and find out more about these mysterious people, these “Brotherhood of Steel”. And so she would head south, to the lands known as the Capital Wasteland...

Robotics Expert - Despite a lack of formal education, Bete is a skilled roboticist. She can easily force a shutdown on even the most advanced robots as long as she can survive reaching them, and even knows her way around turrets, computers, and even power armor.
Chemist - In addition to technology Bete knows her way around various chemicals, plants, and other resources to create potent explosives or drugs. She can also manufacture her own Nuka Cola.
Repairman - Bete’s normal job when she isn’t making bombs or robots. She can fix a lot of things and generally likes restoring tech to functional use. Which plays a large part of her greatest skill:
Communication and Espionage - Bete often repairs radios and communication towers, intercept encrypted signals, and even created a device to allow her to easily receive and send on radio signals, for communication on the go.
Ghoul Friend - Bete’s ghoulification might’ve made her lose friends among smoothskins, but most ghouls completely ignore her, even ferals. Of course ones who still have their wits may have their own reasons to start shooting at Bete, and just because Bete is safe from ferals doesn’t mean that any of her friends are. And this neutrality generally ends once Bete starts shooting at ferals.

Repair Kit, Scrap Electronics, Readius Hand-Held Computer, Scout Eyebot (Stripped out laser weapon for built in Stealth-cloaking technology), Empty Nuka Cola Bottles, Cherry Bombs, Teddy Bear, Wig

Explosive Expert - Bete’s skill with explosives, from the humble Molotov to a Rocket Launcher, makes her a deadly threat despite her small size. She’s a deadeye shot at getting her bombs where they need to be, and she has a vast array of explosives to deal with different enemies.
Agile Dodger - Lacking Heavy Armor and having a very low pain tolerance, Bete relies highly on her agility to avoid bullets, knives, and people carrying big sticks. She moves quickly and is even rather acrobatics, allowing her to quickly reposition herself in and out of danger.
Light Step - Bete is a skilled sneak, and knows all sorts of tricks and items that can help her sneak pass even the sharpest senses. When it comes to tech sensors such as proximity explosives or robotic radars, Bete is easily able to avoid their detection, enabling her to easily sneak up on machines, disarm bombs, or even avoid regular traps.
Keen Senses - To avoid getting ambushed herself, Bete has developed a sort of sixth sense when it comes to danger. She can smell trouble and prepares accordingly. She’s also got a keen eye for structural weaknesses whether that’s in armor, buildings, or just plans. This enables her to waste no time making sure she can dish out the most damage with the least effort.

Leather backpack, Filtration Mask with oxygen tank (built in night/thermal vision, Targeting HUD), Combat Knife, 40mm Grenade Rifle (Sawn-Off Stock, Compressed Air Launcher), 40mm Grenade Rounds (High Explosive, Incendiary, Plasma, and Pulse), Frenzy Grenade (Causes those caught in the blast to lose their mind and attack anything near them, friend or foe), Molotovs, Nuka Grenades, Flashbangs, Satchel Charges, Microfusion Cell Cluster, Caltrops, Stealth Boy