Zion Valley was the furthest she had gotten from Chicago since she first awoke in that rundown facility underneath the ruins of the old Windy City. Or rather, the furthest this version of her had gotten. If that terminal were to be believed, alongside D3-C4L's scattered memory and the various... acquaintances they'd encountered over the past year; Doll was hardly the first to come crawling out of the dark tunnels with nary an inkling of the world around her.

Well, she'd been a bit better off at least. D3-C4L had been left undamaged enough the last time to convey the gist of her situation, and the innocuous looking computer she had almost walked right past offered up the rest of her knowledge. She could only imagine how many times the device had gone unnoticed in previous 'attempts'...

Even so, she could hardly stand to look at it afterward-pressing on through days of footage and assessments, even after skipping hours of downtime and unneeded filler. Each Doll's life had been somewhat unique, rarely tracing the same footsteps and often completely unaware of their counterparts' existences-there had even been a moment, however brief, of two instances occurring simultaneously! They had never met, of course, but the thought made the already harrowing existentialism even more dire.

Furthermore, while the times when even D3-C4l were so trashed as to require a from-the-ground-up rebuild made sense to her, Doll was still unsure of who exactly is responsible for retrieving the robot in those few times in her chassis was able to pass somewhat intact. This question would likely go unanswered, similarly to the question as to whom had setup this endless continuum, and for what purpose; That being, it is extremely unlikely such elusive answers would find their way to her, in her place soon to be occupying this Yao Guai's small intestine.

It was difficult to be surprised, but in retrospect Zion Valley was a poor choice for this Doll-not that her predecessors had met with better fates, at the hands (and more often, tracts) of the various inhabitants of the wasteland. The many non-human creatures that roamed the wastes were, more often than not, the cause of a previous Doll's death-in part due to her model's small stature, and prime display of meat, alongside their general ignorance-having often missed the prior discussed terminal.

Even armed with the knowledge of the danger presented by the world at large, and after a whole year of first hand experience, this Doll was still to meet her end like all the rest. Nestled alongside, but mostly underneath, her robotic compatriot-She trembled in both fury and barely muted horror at what had befallen the duo; viewing prior depictions on a monitor was eerily unsettling, but the actual experience was mind-numbing.

If she had any prior memories of the Dolls leading up to her, she would likely be familiar to the point of boredom with this particular scene-the rarity of their devourer, notwithstanding. With her fellows existences being contiguous, rather than continuous, she was left feeling all of the horrid, overpowering sensations one would feel whilst having been eaten alive. Aside from the more obvious irritant of digestive enzymes coating both Doll and her companion, beyond the confines of the ursine's stomach they were also dragged over the rough terrain of the river valley-seemingly to no discomfort of their predator.

The bear in question simply yawned leisurely, trailing off into a weakly sputtered half-belch. The Yao Guai had spotted the odd couple as soon as they entered the Valley, watching them stray from the usual route into Dead Horse territory. Stalking them from the ridges above, it was little effort choking the pair down when the time came to pounce. The shorter of the two went down in a few short gulps, the taller one being much harder to pin and surprisingly heavy, but went down all the same.

Now, as he maneuvered his legs around the sizable swell of his middle, the River Monster was free to idle his way back to the shared cave, only a few kilometres away from where his prey had been found. Hunting so far from home was essential to keeping would be adversaries and rivals from discovering their den, it also gave time for some of the fight to leach out of his prey-allowing him to simply collapse onto his swollen gut after finally completing the half-hour trek.

By the time the bear reached the cool interior of the riverside cavern, his occupants already had enough of his sweltering insides; Drawing slow, heavy breaths, Doll's unfocused gaze panned over towards her Assaultron's slowly flickering glow. If the robot was already diminishing, there was little hope of her own survival-the stale air and steady burn had robbed her of both her energy and her clothing's meagre protections.

Swiftly, her entire existence was compressed as the beast dropped onto it's stomach, coming to rest after securing itself inside it's den. A metallic crunch sounded out beside her, alongside a searing pain coming from her own bones-she faintly heard a peculiar *Ding!* ring out from somewhere within the animal's expanse, but she was unable to place it before being overtaken by a tide of digestive fluids seeping into every corner of her being.

Facing it's own turmoil amongst the battered forms of it's owners, Doll's satchel-imbibed alongside her person-soon disintegrated, revealing an old, worn out Pip Boy. The model was rarely used, due to it's ill-fitting and clunky design; across it's dusty screen, a new tab brought the old device to life with an out of place chime:

Perk Acquired! {Yao Guai Gourmet}



Part one of two! I still have to write a short blurb for that one, but it should be up shortly after this one; thanks again to  BronzeBanana for working on both of these! I've been planning out something like this for literally two years now, just couldn't find the time to actually do it. Second official piece of Doll and Friend(s), though there's been some other stuff with them I've done on the side-mostly for conceptual purposes.

There's a bit of her/their backstory in there too! Not all, or even much of it-but enough to get a general idea of what's been going on. Yes! It is 'canon', silly as it is, every time she and D3-C4L get eaten or killed-but there is no resurrection/reformation/post-death nonsense, because I still think that's stupid outside of extremely contextual circumstances. Every Doll is a new instance made off the same template, and D3-C4L occasionally gets rebuilt using the old parts, so she sometimes can pull stuff up-but is usually just remade factory new.

Clean version (W/O UI):

https://sta.sh/21yq5mue85c3?

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