"Keep fighting the bastards! Pandora will never fall!" you shout as you mow down another dirt biker.

In all the fighting though you begin to worry where Marina is, you look around for her in the chaos, and then you see her fighting with multiple enemies converging on her position.

You rush towards her to back her up and then you're blown back by an explosion. You slam up against a wall of one of the barracks, other than some minor pain and some scars you're going to have you aren't harmed, however your heart is when you see Marina lying bloody on the ground. She isn't moving. Ignoring everything else you run to her, you kneel down to pick up her body, she grabs weakly on to you, but she's in bad shape.

"Keep fighting to rebuild civilization…its still worth it…" she says before losing total consciousness.

 Alex suddenly comes up to you.

"Hey! We got people firing on us; you need to get the fuck outta the open!"
"You! You're a fucking surgeon! You fix her! Save her! Save her NOW!" you shout, picking her up and shoving her into Alex's arms.
"Wha…I…" Alex realizes you mean fucking business so he just nods and runs with her to one of the few undamaged buildings.

You're blind with rage, you begin charging into battle trying take out as many of these motherfuckers as you can, its quite possible with your actions alone you turned the tide, but you are still just one man, and you nearly get yourself killed, if it hadn't been for Vivica managing to get a few people from Ashtown to help out, and they arrive just in time.

Ophelia shoots a Combine soldier who was sneaking up on you. You turn around to see her, you nearly don't recognize her decked out in battle gear.

"Told you, you'd see me in the future." She says and runs off to clean up the stragglers running away.

The Combine is pulling back. You've won, but at a high cost.

When you return to check on Marina, you find her dead. Alex explains there was nothing he could do for her. You ask to be alone which he complies. You spend the rest of the night alone with Marina's lifeless body weeping and vowing revenge.

 
The next day, you come out with one focus. To assault Fort Justice. This will never be over until Harry is dead. You need to strike now when he's weak.

A lot of people are wondering if you shouldn't wait to regroup, but you won't hear of it, you're determined to do it now and everyone who's in fighting condition is coming with you.

In a couple days you and your small army arrive at Fort Justice. You half expect to die this day assaulting the place, but once again destiny is with you. Fort Justice is experiencing a minor authority problem. You can take the scum out of the wasteland, but you can't make them disciplined soldiers. The last defeat has shattered morale, and apparently some are starting to question Harry's orders, while others aren't willing to die for him. The gate is wide open and parts of the place are in flames.

You walk in relatively unopposed. Some fighting occurs, but you're looking for Harry and when the loud mouth shithead sees you, instead of confronting you, he runs for the trapdoor to the underground. You immediately run to cut him off and shoot him in both legs. He falls and grabs for his pistol, but you take careful aim and blow his hand off, he screams in pain when he sees his fingers all over the ground.

A kick to his face follows, and then a stomp, and another, and another. You don't stop until his face looks like tenderized hamburger. He tries to act defiant by trying to give you the finger with his good hand, but you take it and break the motherfucker along with the rest of his hand.

"This is for Marina and the rest of the deaths you caused." You say, before blasting his mushy bloody head into mushy bloody pieces.

Now its over.

You collapse by Harry's body, spent and drained. Alex goes over to see if you're alright, but Ophelia tells him to just make sure all the enemy are either dead or running. Ophelia takes you to a barrack and puts you on a bed and tells you to rest, which you do.

"I did it Marina…I got him…" you mumble while falling asleep.

The next few weeks consist of rebuilding. Rebuilding everything. Fort Justice. Base Pandora. All the damage Harry caused. Word gets out to the Combine occupied towns about their current situation, with no centralized authority figure anymore, the Combine dissipates as wasteland scum flee and return to the outlands where they belong. The townspeople of those places are very grateful for your help, and you're now in charge of everything but you take no joy in any of it, or anything. You're numb. You go through the motions, but you're basically in a daze. All your thoughts are of Marina, you feel empty without her.

If it wasn't for her, you wouldn't even be alive right now. You would've died in a big mushroom cloud death. You start blaming yourself for not being able to save her, you start thinking about suicide. Everyone gets a little worried about you. Vivica starts radioing in wondering about your condition, Alex (Who's quite familiar with mental breakdowns) attempts to talk to you, but it's Ophelia who turns you around, though not immediately, but it's her actions that become the turning point.

Late one night, as you wallow in the emptiness, Ophelia visits you. You expect her to tell you not blame yourself for Marina's death again, but she doesn't. Instead she talks about the time when you saved her from the cultists and how grateful she was that day and how she would've almost done anything to repay you for saving her life.

"Mm…well you repaid it already. You saved mine back at Pandora." You say wishing to be left alone.
"No, I'm saving it now."

Ophelia begins to remove her clothing, something that takes you completely by surprise. You feel you shouldn't, you know you shouldn't, but maybe it's feeling of loneliness, maybe it's the feeling of confusion, or maybe its just plain hormones, and you give in to Ophelia's advances. And for that one night, the emptiness within you disappears.

The next day Ophelia is gone leaving you a note saying she's going back to Ashtown and tells you that you shouldn't give up on life since you have so much more to change in this new world.

When you think about it, Marina saved you, so you could carry that goal out. She always did see the potential in you to do great things.

With this new perspective, you begin to return to normal, though there still was a little piece of you that died when Marina did. You'll never completely be the same. Life goes on though.

Five more years pass…

It's been ten years since the bombs dropped and civilization is starting to rebuild itself again…well somewhat.

Hard to believe you would've become any type of leader trying to rebuild civilization. Marina might not be around anymore, but obviously her influence on you still is and always will be as you follow her dream of rebuilding civilization again.

You're still running things from Base Pandora, which is now the unofficial head of the Atomic Alliance. The towns formally under Combine occupation are included, but are now treated as equals rather than glorified labor camps, though getting everyone to agree completely on anything still remains a problem. Fort Justice is now under Vivica's command and the Farmhouse, now known as Eden is a fully functional agricultural community. (It supplies food as well as biofuel for vehicles now) After that one night with Ophelia you don't see her anymore, but last you heard she had a baby and got married to someone in Ashtown. Good for her.

Other than political disagreements, everything has been going fairly well; raiders are still a problem, but much less than in the past. For the most part people are pretty happy living in your territory.

One thing that's been debated among you and some of other leaders, are the few GZS Shelters the Alliance has stumbled across over recent years. No effort has been made to open them, but they're all sealed shut by their main computers. From what you know by reading some of the GZS documents found in Base Pandora (and Alex who definitely has some knowledge of GZS protocols) the Shelters weren't supposed to open up until the central computer determined that sufficient amount of time had passed and the surface deemed safe. Apparently the computers still think the surface sucks. (And that assessment wouldn't exactly be wrong)

Most of the other Alliance leaders say that some sort of contact should be made with them. You get the impression some of them might've done it anyway, it's just you have most of the equipment that makes it a lot easier.

You leave them alone

You remember something the Colonel said years ago "They made their bed now they can sleep in it." You see no reason to disturb the Shelters; you have enough to do with surface matters.

Your unwillingness to contact them though is frowned upon by the other alliance leaders. Some are even calling you "inhumane" for leaving them down there. You take great offense to this since you're anything but inhumane; you just don't see the need to contact a bunch of people who wanted to be shut off from society for a long period of time in the first place. Besides who says they want to be contacted? Who know how they'll act? Seems like it's just going to open up trouble you don't really need.

It doesn't matter though, the other town leaders are determined to go through with it, and you can't stop them, it's not like you're running a dictatorship here. You are however denying all help from your end. Base Pandora, Fort Justice, and Eden are not to be involved. The Alliance relationship becomes a bit strained.

A few weeks pass and you get a report from the Alliance towns, the first Shelter openings didn't go very peacefully. Due to their fumbling and having no plan other than "Opening them up." They manage to get into misunderstandings and a few fights occurred resulting in some deaths on both sides, but mostly on the Shelter people side, seeing as they haven't been hardened by the surface. Ultimately they pull everyone out the Shelters kicking and screaming. Some Alliance citizens don't like the fact that their local governments have engaged in these kinds of tactics, and you're wondering what the hell they think they're doing, since you said it was a bad idea in the first place and this just proves it.

You later find out that one of the pettier leaders convinced most of the others that the Shelters contained resources that would make them less dependant on you (Such as operating filtrated water recycling systems) and decided taking the Shelters by force would be a good idea since if you were unwilling to help before you might be unwilling to help in the future.

Of course that was just idiotic logic on their part since you were just against the idea of fucking around with the Shelters; you weren't on some power trip.

Within the next few weeks reports start coming in about riots in the towns and mistreatment of the relocated Shelter people. It's the Combine all over again…

You send in troops on your end to try to maintain some sort of peace, AND to stop all this unnecessary cruelty to the Shelter folks who were just peacefully living out their existence until some Alliance assholes pulled them from their homes.

Naturally being a peacemaker is a thankless job. The "doves" think you're being a fascist by using force to stop the rioting and protests, and then by the same token the "hawks" think you're meddling in business that isn't your concern since you didn't want anything to do with the Shelters in the first place and shouldn't be telling them what to do with the Shelters OR its people. Now you start to get angry.

"Motherfuckers I RUN the goddamn Alliance! I fuckin' built it! I'll say what the fuck goes!"

That's the last transmission you make to the Alliance as a single entity. The next day it becomes a much smaller entity as the Alliance town leaders official break off from you and declare themselves independent and calling themselves the Atomic Confederation.

You're so pissed of by all of this that you don't even WANT to bring them back into the "fold". You're ready to wash your hands of this exercise in stupidity. You withdraw all peacekeeping troops and instead of wasting more resources and man power on a long drawn out war taking town after town that will only weaken you, you decide to take a more strategic approach and attack the Shelters themselves. You send a strike team to locate each one that's been opened up and blow up the water recyclers, and then to blow up the elevators allowing access to the Shelters in the first place. You also of course aren't going to be trading food supplies from Eden anymore.

"So much for your new resources. See how long you last without our help, fucktards." Is your last transmission to the Atomic Confederation.

The Atomic Confederation doesn't last very long, it collapses mainly due to the inept and corrupt government, civil unrest, and even outside attack from raiders who are always attracted to chaos. By the time its all over the towns are little more than criminal havens that fight amongst each other.

You're still in good shape though; however this event has caused a trend in isolationism. The Atomic Alliance doesn't expand past its now severely shortened borders. You still have dealings with Ashtown every now and then, but after they heard all the problems that were going on, it appears they become a bit isolationist as well (Which does have the benefit that they don't try to open the Shelter that they located nearby, thankfully someone learned the lesson to leave well enough alone.) and you even have less contact with them as well.

You live out the rest of your years running the Atomic Alliance which mainly consists of protecting your borders. Your death comes suddenly when Alex unexpectedly assassinates you. (Theories point to simple revenge for all those years ago and just his underlying unstableness) You're buried next to Marina, he's immediately executed and Vivica takes over.

The Alliance continues under her leadership, but after her, leaders become less capable as leaders are apt to do in government systems. Eventually like the Combine, and the Atomic Confederation, the Atomic Alliance collapses completely thus ending the attempt to rebuilding civilization in this part of the wasteland.