It sucks getting abducted from your home by some flying, winged annoyance from another Universe. Luckily I didn't end up in Worm. Sadly I'm in Fallout and it sucks. But I have the Celestial Forge and I will build myself to victory. I'm building Steam.
Building Steam
- Thread starter Owlfurret
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Chapter 1: Waking Up
- Location
- Switzerland
I woke up looking at the sky, in a brown-grey wasteland, surrounded by nothing but dirt and debris and the walls of a canyon to the side. I hissed at the pain pounding in my head as I tried to get my bearings when I saw something on the horizon that made my stomach drop and my blood freeze; a giant wasp-like creature. A Cazador, a thing I had only seen from the safety of my home when I was safe behind a screen. Those things aren't supposed to exist. Those things are supposed to be video game enemies and I was looking at one, not a few of them, but a goddamn swarm.
"Oh, fuck that's not good," I whispered as I madly tried to scramble away out of sight of the horrific abomination against mother nature. The presence of Cazadors had horrifying implications. Namely reincarnation, transmigration, ROB shenanigans, being a ungh gamer and many other things but none of them currently made themselves known. So, I was on my own in what I had to assume was fallout.
With those horrific thoughts swirling in my head, I hid behind a pile of loose rocks and took stock of the new situation I found myself in. as well as the quite possibly new world.
"Right then. Gun, water, food, shelter in that order or else I'm probably going to be a corpse by the evening. First, what do I have?" I looked down, checking my body. I had all my fingers and toes and as a result of that conclusion all my limbs were accounted for but there was a big problem.
I was younger than I remembered. If I had to guess I would have had to say about late teens but that was ambiguous with a stringy body like mine. This wasn't good; being a young girl in the world of Fallout without any family or group usually wasn't going to end pretty. At least my body was androgynous enough to be mistaken for a boy at a distance if I cut my hair.
For the first time in my life, I was distinctly unhappy about the fact that I was a redhead. It wouldn't be easy to hide my hair with its vibrant colour.
"Right. As soon as I find some lye, I'm bleaching you. Sorry old friend but needs must when the devil drives and judging by the looks of it he brought a party bus. And it's not going to do either of us any good if you give away our location with your glorious shine," I apologised to my hair as I kept hiding behind the pile of loose rocks, hoping that the crimes against evolution hadn't seen me.
Luckily for me, they hadn't seen me and I was able to sneak away from the swarm of murder beasts. I made my way to the far wall of the canyon and slowly crept upwards towards the exit.
Feeling somewhat safe I took the time to check myself for gear. I had my trusty leather hip pouches holding my wallet containing mostly cards and some cash both now useless; what was much less useless was my concealed carry knife. The tiny one-blade carbon steel knife with a walnut handle of my creation would not fail me for most of the simple survival tasks, but it was not needed for that as I had its big brothers. One strapped to my hip and the other inside my right combat boot.
Next up was my basic medic kit in the other pouch followed by my Ferro rod and my smoking pipe and my pouch of tobacco.
At least I would have something to calm my nerves.
I also managed to find my iPhone 14 and my Air Pods, as well as the solar charger and the cable needed.
"At least I got lucky enough to be grabbed when I was getting ready to go for a long hike and not when I got ready to go to bed. Just wish I had my bag too. This shit would have been so much easier if I had all of my gear and not just the bare minimum," I hissed as I drew my combat knife from its hip holster and crept forwards.
I had a rough idea of where I was. If I was correct in my assumption then I was lucky enough to be near Goodsprings. I was soon proven right when I came upon a rather grizzly sight. Goodsprings was burning.
I saw a charred corpse of who I assumed was the courier, and there was fighting going on between Powder Gangers. The villagers were dead or missing, those I saw were in various states of dismemberment or mutilation.
This brought back memories of bad times in the army as a combat medic. Burnt corpses flashed before my eyes as my body threatened to cease up but I ruthlessly squashed it down with cold logic and detachment. They were dead and there was nothing I could do. Unless I wanted to join them, I needed to keep moving and fast.
It hit me rather hard at this point that I was no longer in a civilised world but in a death world. One of the safer ones, sure, but still a death world. I had survival training and experience but I had no idea how to deal with bullshit on this level.
And that scared me a lot.
I felt something titanic well up deep inside my soul. Massive celestial bodies, entire constellations of unfathomable power were swirling inside of the deepest darkest reaches of my soul. A very specific feeling.
I knew what this was. I had read stories about this. I dreamt about this. But never had I thought it would actually be a thing.
The Celestial Forge, the most powerful cheat I knew of. And I had gotten one. Maybe the only one in existence. But that didn't matter right now. What did matter was the fact that I could feel a key in my pocket and there was a door up there in the cemetery used as a crude gravestone.
It wasn't there in the games, but right now I didn't care how it got there. It was a door and I would use it.
I instinctively knew that I could use any door with a keyhole and a doorframe to access a personal workspace in which I would be safe from the outside world as soon as I closed the door no matter what happened to the door. Even a nuclear explosion wouldn't reach me courtesy of not being in the same dimension as the explosion.
I slowly and very quietly made my way up the hill, practically crawling as I avoided detection using half-forgotten skills learned in basic army training.
I managed to sneak to the top of the hill without getting detected and even managed to loot the Pipboy from the courier's cooling corpse, seeing as he was almost at the top of the cemetery hill. In doing so I managed to get myself a rather old varmint rifle as well as 10 rounds of ammunition for the thing. The rest of his gear was unusable as he was burnt to a crisp. The smell of burnt human meat was one of the worst things I ever had the displeasure of smelling but I had no time to panic. I needed to make it to that door because I could hear the powder gangers in the distance. They had noticed something. The few of them that were still alive weren't killing each other anymore and were presumably looking for me and I had no plans of being in the same dimension as people who burnt towns and slaughtered the entire population for fun. The games really didn't do justice to the sheer degeneracy that were raiders.
I threw caution to the wind and ran the last few metres to the old door frame and door used as a grave marker, jammed the key in and wrenched the door open before jumping in and slamming it shut.
I had done it. I was safe. I had survived my first hostile encounter in the world of fallout and even gotten myself a Pipboy and a weapon.
Now if only my heart would stop hammering in my throat. That would be great.
I took a look around and began to cry from the sight. I didn't just find myself in any old workshop but my old man's workshop. I knew this place. I knew the location of every screwdriver, every file, every nut, bolt, washer and other little oddities he and his father before him and his grandfather before him collected. Beyond that, I had access to all the tools my family collected over our long lineage as craftsmen and builders. I was pretty certain that some of the tools in my family's collection could be counted as museum pieces if not historical artefacts and now they would never be lost to time no matter what.
This fact more than anything brought me some form of comfort. My family was gone. I was unsure if I would ever see them again. But at least their legacy would live on no matter what.
Of that I was certain. Even after my uncertain death in the possible far future and the passing down of the forge, this little workshop of Swiss craftsmanship would live on. Having become a node of the forge of its own.
And nothing would ever be able to remove it.
The hand forged tools, the hand carved mallets it was all here. And in that moment, it really hit me what I had lost.
I was a whole universe away from home with no one I Knew. nothing familiar beyond my family's tools and my hard-earned skills and even my body was not my own. I was younger than I was used to, some of my memories, entire years worth I suspect were missing.
I suppressed a sob, made a crude bed built from foam boards, a bag of unused rags and a painter's tarp before tossing some wood into the old stove and curling up in my cot beneath an old oiled army tarp.
I would survive this world and I would end whoever was responsible for this.
I remembered only a name and it brought me boundless fathomless rage.
Simurgh the winged bitch of worm. She tried to suck me into her bullshit and she would come to regret that decision for the short time it would take me to smile in her face before I tore apart her very essence on a conceptual level to such a degree that she would be forgotten the moment I was finished with her.
She took me from my family, hoping to use me in some of her ungodly schemes but sadly for her, I was destined for the forge and it does not like to share. I was taken before my time and as such I was given certain privileges.
One being that my family's legacy would survive no matter what, then the removal of any and all of her influences on myself, another being that I got some of my gear as a starter to go with me as well as a general de–ageing as well as a removal of what I just know is a whole lot of trauma and finally the private dimension that is my family's workshop.
I took out my phone and connected it to the workshop's power grid and its old ratty speakers before selecting the one song that I knew would get me through the night.
Children of the Omnissiah
For when you find yourself in a strange new world full of mutants, monsters, raiders and heretics against general human decency as well as sensible mechanical design there is only one thing to do.
Grab your tools, grab your guns and get ready to build yourself back to civilization. And maybe even get yourself some cool pet along the way too.
"Just you wait, you flying bitch. I'll pluck your feathers."
I turned around and fell asleep.
The next morning after getting myself some water from the workshop's supply, something I would forever be grateful to my little sister for needing for her leatherworking, I got to work with the proper zeal expected of the cult mechanicus.
I began by disassembling my weapon into its components.
The stock was almost entirely rotten. It was in such bad shape that I could do nothing but replace it, requiring me to fabricate an entirely new stock from walnut. The barrel was in surprisingly good condition if not entirely straight.
It took me the better part of an hour to get it straightened out and within acceptable tolerances of ±0.01mm plumb to the barrel's endpoint in relation to the central axis.
The firing mechanism needed to be rebuilt from the ground up so I recreated the parts from 4140 Steel using my trusty Cnc Mill. I then surface-hardened the pieces to improve their longevity even if the forge would repair the finished weapon after roughly 48 hours if it broke. But fiat backing was no excuse for shoddy craftsmanship. I would not build something that was below the best of my base ability. None of this was given to me beyond the materials and even those were only a copy of what my family had accumulated over the years. I would not dishonour my family or myself by building something of subpar quality.
As I put the rebuilt varmint rifle back together, I felt it the first of many connections of the forge's connection was descending from the Knowledge domain towards me.
The vastness of space was revealed to me and so were the dangers of its many many environments. Vacuums, the unstable gravity wells collapsing stars, the frigid temperatures of the void between the celestial bodies and the harsh irradiated waves of solar winds.
All deadly in their own unique ways, each and everyone waiting to tear the flesh off my bones, to rend me apart atom by atom, quark by quark.
And yet I knew. I knew how to defend myself. I was a starfarer and I was able to build wonders of personal protection. The forge had given me the power to survive the horrors of radiation without worry or deformation.
The Environmental Protection was now mine and I was safe so long as I had an EPP on myself and it was active. I would be comfortable no matter the temperature or the radiation levels. As soon as I found myself the needed materials.
But that was fine. This was going to be worth the trouble of collecting the materials.
I turned back to my varmint rifle and began the process of engraving it with cogs and gears.
The motive force needed to be represented after all. No implement of just death could go without its mark.
Next, I began to build some cheap fragmentation grenades from gelled gasoline, black powder, PVC pipes, and a heck of a lot of ball bearings and nails.
I started with a small PVC tube filled with black powder. This then got slotted in a larger tube filled with ball bearings and nails drenched in the gasoline with the dissolved Styrofoam suspended in solution in order to get it to stick. The space between the pipes was filled with a combination of baking soda from the smithing supplies and baked sugar as well as something extra from the gardening supply and the pool cleaning in order to facilitate a delayed reaction as well as a massive plume of caustic smoke that would burn their lungs should they survive the air burst or the shrapnel.
If they got away from all of that the gasoline would stick to their clothes and impede them, by burning them rather horribly thus making them easy pickings.
I proceeded to add crude stabilisation fins and a controlled burn charge of about 25 seconds to my creation before adding a very basic shape charge to get the thing airborne on impact.
And with that, I was done.
Those powder gangers wanted to act like beasts? Fine, then I would treat them as such they deserved no mercy and the Geneva Convention did not exist on this planet. They were about to learn the horrors of napalm and airburst mortar grenades.
I spent the next four hours fabricating 25 grenades in total as well as a mortar for delivery.
Now I just needed some armour. I headed over to my sister's leatherworking station.
"Thanks sis, your silly hobby is going to keep me alive after all. Guess you win that bet."
I murmured to myself as I grabbed some heavy buffalo leather and began to form it into the rough shape of a piece of chest armour.
It took me hours since I wasn't nearly as good as my little sister, having focused much more on metalwork growing up but, in the end, I managed to create a piece of chest armour made from studded leather with an insert made from layered fibre mesh and a 2mm 4130 steel plate in the front.
It was unwieldy, it was ugly and I had painted it the colour of dirt but it would keep me safe from small arms fire and most minor laser weapons. The fibre mesh should stop shrapnel too.
I was as ready as I would ever be. I drank some more water to make sure I was properly hydrated and made my way to the car tool section of the workshop getting one of the endoscopes. No way I was opening the door to the wasteland without first checking if it was safe.
I moved as many of the heavy forging shields as I could in front of the door, creating a kill box, placed the fire extinguisher next to my feet, ball bearings ready to trip anyone stupid enough to enter and gasoline ready to burn a fucker.
If they were camping me on the other side of the door, they would rapidly learn that my family's workshop was no treasure to be looted and I was no prize to be obtained. This would be their grave. I cautiously opened the door just a crack with a long piece of steel and sent forth the probe of the endoscope.
It was late evening outside and darkness was settling over the landscape. This could either be an advantage or a problem. I swivelled the endoscope all around the door to make sure there wasn't any form of ambush set up for me.
After having confirmed that fact I turned the endoscope towards Goodsprings. The Powder gangers were still in the process of looting, burning and…
They were eating the corpses.
"Alright, I'm in fallout. Food is rare. Really, I should have expected this but that's just."
My mind couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. Logically I understood what was happening and why they were doing it. I was however fully incapable of processing such atrocities.
I retracted the endoscope and grabbed my mortar. Those were not people; they were not human. They were one thing and one thing only.
Heretek
I was leaning heavily into the existence of the cult mechanicus to blunt my roiling emotions and get through this hell. There was no time to panic. There was no time to freak out, there were heretics to purge and the Omnissiah demanded death.
I snuck out of my holy workshop after putting on the old WW2 helmet my grandfather hand-modified to be used as a welding helmet. I had kept him safe and it would serve me well too.
I set up the mortar behind an outcropping of rocks and took aim at the rather large concentration of heretics. One quick prayer to the Omnissiah later the mortar round was in the air. My Hippocratic oath irrevocably shattered as an implement of holy wrath exploded in the air above the group.
Some of them, the lucky ones were close enough to the blast centre to be killed instantly, being turned into nothing more than fine red mist from the shrapnel and the air burst ripping their bodies to pieces.
Those closer weren't so lucky. Their bodies full of red-hot nails and ball bearings, digging into their flesh and organs causing them to exsanguinate from their injuries. Then came those in the third ring of the explosion burning and screaming as the gelled gasoline clung to their form and ate away at their flesh, their screams caused me to throw up what little food I still had left in my stomach but I soldiered on.
Then came the last ring, those unlucky enough to be at the very edges of the explosion. They were on the floor coughing and wheezing for air that would never come as their lungs slowly filled with water.
That something extra I mentioned? Chlorine gas.
Now normally you shouldn't be able to create an airburst mortar round from bits and bobs but this was fallout normal rules didn't apply here.
In this one act, I had created a mortar round that just KNEW wouldn't work in my home universe. But it confirmed something that I had theorised about fallout. It ran on the rule of cool to some extent and I would weaponize this.
I took five more rounds and carpet-bombed the town. After all, there could have been survivors
And that was unacceptable. They had slaughtered an entire town intending to eat them and I would not allow one single Heretek of such vile nature to live past the hour.
After a sustained bombardment of five shells, I stopped and took out the infrared camera used to check the integrity of a house's insulation. It worked rather well to see if there was someone alive outside of the bombing range. To my surprise, I found the form of what had to be a dog and a person hidden in what I assumed to be a root cellar beneath one of the houses. Survivors?
They clearly weren't with the powder gangers and I had an idea as to who they might be. I reclaimed my mortar, stowed it in the workshop, retrieved my medic kit and some water and made my way towards the house.
I took care to avoid the clouds of chlorine gas I had unleashed upon this world. I had a feeling they would stay for three days if not more…
Bracing myself for a possible fight I knocked against the hidden cellar door.
"Hello, anyone there? You're safe now I killed the powder gangers. You should have heard the explosions. I have medicine and water and I'm willing to trade for food and information."
I tried to sound as friendly as I could, falling back on my experience as a medic even though I broke my oath. But then again, was cutting away the infection against my oath? Something to ponder later.
"Keep away you. I-I"ll shoot you. You won't get Cheyenne you motherfuckers. You already killed everyone else. You won't have her." The voice screams and I can hear the frantic loading of a rifle from the inside as well as the growling of a dog.
"Relax. Miss. If you would listen to my voice, you would hear that I am female, yes? And young too. Now what do you think would be my fate if I were to run with the powder gangers? I am sure you can guess what they would do to me. No, I assure you I am not one of those monsters. They got a taste of air-burst gelled gasoline fragmentation mortar rounds. They are nothing more than corpses by now as a result of sustained carpet bombing of their location. You and your friend are very safe, Miss. May I come in without getting shot? I promise to not make any rapid movements and keep my weapon holstered on my back so long as neither of you tries to harm me."
I spoke in as soothing a voice as I could manage. Holstering my rifle on my back I waited for an answer.
"They are dead? All of the fuckers? Hah, I guess there is some good left in the world." I could hear her wheezing from inside the cellar, it didn't sound good from what I could hear.
"You are hurt, I'm coming in. I'm a trained medic and it's my duty to help if I can."
I braced myself for getting shot at but opened the door anyway. The expected bullet didn't come, instead, I was greeted with a grizzly sight.
A young girl in her late teens and her dog were huddled in the corner of the cellar, huddled against a wall and half-hidden behind an old pallet. Her chest was a bleeding mess and I was certain that without immediate medical assistance, she would expire within the hour.
"Fuck you are in some deep shit. Alright, I can fix this. I have patched up worse. Can you walk? We need to get you into my workshop right now."
The girl blinked in confusion as I rushed over to her and checked her injuries. Her ribs were a broken mess, luckily her lungs were intact from a glance. Her breathing was erratic but in line with trauma and not with a punctured lung. That was good. I didn't have the supplies for an operation. I could probably make do but it would be horrific.
I moved on to check her limbs, all accounted for, if in some cases horribly injured. Her left arm was pretty much minced meat, most of the skin was burnt and she had a large amount of shrapnel in it. I would have to do something horrible to fix that unless the forge gave me something to help with it. As it stood, I could stabilise her but the wounds would keep getting worse and worse leading to infection and necrosis in about 2 weeks. That gave me a window. It was a horrible idea to do this but considering how quickly the forge advanced I was holding off on amputation.
Her legs were in much better shape luckily, not a picture of health. She still had some cuts and bruises but this was much better than her left arm. This I could fix with some of the antibiotics from my med kit and a liberal application of disinfectant and bandages.
"Alright you are not walking like this hold on I will be right back, Omnissiah this is going to freak you out so much. Alright, don't mind the unstable dimensional rift opening in the door that was up till now just a door. I'm going to go get you an ad hoc gurney to get you out of here and into a safe stable environment so I can patch you up. DON'T FALL ASLEEP ALRIGHT? Can you do that for me? I'll be right back."
I waited for her to confirm that she wouldn't fall asleep. This was vital right now. I needed her awake so I could check her vitals in an aware state.
"Ok miss hallucination I'll stay awake."
I added an altered mental state to the list of her symptoms but I was expecting that. She just witnessed the murder and probable consumption of her entire family. I would be worried if she wasn't affected by it.
Having obtained her confirmation that, she would try not to fall asleep I moved towards the door and closed it from the inside before removing the key from my pocket and opening the gateway to my workshop.
"What the fuck? That's not the outside. Guess I died down here huh? Come to collect me for the great scrap pile in heaven Miss Angel? Will I get to take Cheyenne with me?"
That was about as good a reaction as I could hope to get considering I just opened a dimensional gateway in a doorway.
"Just try to stay awake. I'm going to fix you up." I assured her.
I walked through the gateway and rushed past my improvised kill box, making sure to open a gap wide enough to allow me to ferry her inside on a creeper roller. Seeing as I didn't have an actual gurney, I had to use a mechanics tool. Sure, it was designed to roll underneath a car but it was also designed to carry a person.
As soon as I was past my defences, I felt another node descend from the forge this time from the future knowledge domain. The power of Metal artisan filled my mind with the mechanical knowledge of an entire civilisation. Spaceships, computers and so much more bloomed in my mind, the short-term migraine was massive but I soldiered on. I had a life to save.
I chose to ignore the fact that a small hose had just popped into existence adjacent to my workshop, linked by a steel tunnel similar to those found in a vault. It was nice that I would no longer have to sleep on the workshop floor but I had a life to save and that was more important than having a fridge.
I found the creeper just where it was supposed to be right next to the car lift, stashed behind the massive air compressors. I always thought they were too big. Now they were reassuring. A resource to have if I ever needed them. Like so many things Dad insisted on hoarding. I doubted that he expected something like this to happen but it was still better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
I took the creeper and some extra medical supplies and made my way back out of the workshop. On the way out I realised that opening the door from the inside of a building was actually a good idea for stealth purposes if I had to leave the door open.
I returned to find the girl petting her dog with her good hand. This was a good sign it meant that she wasn't all gone mentally in the time I was gone to get my improvised gurney.
"Alright I'm back, let's get you out of here. I'm going to need you to lay down on the improvised gurney, then I will pull you out of here and yes of course your dog can come along."
I informed her of the plan to get her out of this mess of a cellar and into the safety of my workshop. I would feel a lot better as soon as they were both safe inside of my workshop. Hidden in a different dimension and far away from any raiders or worse. I had no idea if my bombardment had attracted attention but I had to assume that it had. I hadn't been subtle with my use of ordinance and it would have been visible for quite a distance.
I continued to ponder the implications of my actions as I loaded her on the creeper and gently pushed her into the workshop.
Meanwhile, her dog was following behind us. Looking at me wearily, ready to tear my throat out should I hurt its mistress.
"You have a very fateful companion there. She looks about ready to tear out my throat if I make a wrong move." I made small talk to distract her from her injuries as I gently loaded the creeper onto a bike lift and lifted her up to operating height.
"Cheyenne? Cough Yeah, she's a good girl. So, this is the afterlife?" I sighed.
"No, you aren't dead and this isn't the afterlife. You are inside my workshop. Now that we are out of immediate danger let me introduce myself. I'm Alice. A victim of dimensional displacement. May I know your name? And in response to your question. You find yourself in my pocket universe. Also known as the steam workshop. Here I build my tools and hide between exploring the local universe for supplies. Now I am going to have to stabilise your wounds. This is going to hurt a lot. You have been exposed to who knows what out there in the wasteland and have probably never seen the inside of a sterile environment before today. I am going to have to remove those rags you call clothes because they are not sanitised and they are shredded too. Don't worry you can get something from my closet later but for now, they have to go. Do I have your permission to stabilise you?" I asked as I got the necessary tools ready.
"Huh sure go ahead. I'm called Sunny Smiles." Sunny told me her name and gave me the go-ahead as I got the last of my tools ready.
I began by cutting off her chest coverings, exposing a rather gruesome blunt trauma wound. Her chest was one big bruise in the places where her skin was still intact.
"Dynamite exposure?" I asked her clinically as I washed down her chest with warm clean saline water to get the dirt off and prevent the spread of minor pathogens.
She hissed as the saline solution washed out her wounds. "Yeah, I took an indirect hit from one of the bastards." She explained between laboured breaths.
"You got lucky, if you hadn't had cover the shockwave would have pulped your organs. I'm guessing it tossed you away and you ran. Judging from the state of your arm, you used something as a shield, holding it in your left hand. The dynamite landed in front of you and you used something sturdy, probably wood from the splinters as a defence. Now brace yourself, this will hurt like hell." I told her what I assumed had happened and warned her of the pain to come.
At the same time, I began to do something that in a normal situation would be seen as barbaric, I began to roughly align her ribs as best I could without an x-ray. She howled in pain and I had to almost dodge a lunging dog if she hadn't grabbed Cheyenne by the collar.
"Y-yeah p-pretty much. What the fuck was that?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"I apologise but I had to set your misaligned ribs otherwise there was a chance that they could have punctured your lungs, causing you to drown in your own blood. I don't have the equipment to operate, nor do I have an autodoc or stimpacks as such I was forced to improvise to ensure your survival. It is not ideal and I would have loved to avoid such drastic measures but two of your ribs were horribly misaligned. Measures had to be taken otherwise a strong cough would have been enough to cause your death. Now I will apply a strong antiseptic to your wounds including your arm. This will burn. It won't even come close to the pain of setting a rib but it will hurt. Ready?"
I asked with concern in my voice and a large bottle of iodine at the ready.
"Fuck it. It can't be worse than what you just did. If I couldn't feel how much easier it is to breathe, I would have shot you for that. You know what you are doing huh? Alright, I'm ready. Do your worst." Sunny said, gripping the creeper for support and bracing herself for the pain.
"Here we go." I drenched some gauze in the iodine and began to wrap up the wounds on her chest, careful enough not to apply a compression bandage but tight enough to keep the ribs somewhat supported. I then moved on to her arm and first washed it down with saline again as it had produced puss since the first wash. I sighed and grabbed a box cutter, sterilised it with a quick application of the welding torch and set to the unenviable task of field-draining infected flesh.
"Alright, your arm is worse than I thought. How long were you down there roughly? I need to know so I know if I have to amputate it or if antibiotics will be enough." I asked in a grave voice, ignoring the horrible flashbacks this was causing to treating phosphorus exposure.
"A-about 2 days, I think. It's hazy. Cheyenne dragged me down there." Sunny explains with a confused expression, not understanding my worry.
This was lining up with what I was seeing. The second-degree burns had become infected and what should have just been sacks of tissue fluid had become sores full of puss.
"I am going to have to cut away the infected skin or you will lose the arm. Luckily for you, it shouldn't hurt too much but it will be ugly. So, if you can't stomach it, look away."
I took the improvised scalpel and began to open up the burn wounds, draining them of fluid and removing the infected outer tissue. I then washed it down with pure saline followed by undiluted iodine. Next came iodine-soaked gauze, followed by clean gauze and finally bandages.
Through all of it, Sunny soldiered on bravely but her expression when she saw what her arm looked like underneath the leftovers of her clothes was telling. She had been compartmentalising the pain to deal with it as best she could.
Admirable considering, she never had any military training and had just lost everything.
"There we go this should be it for your arms and torso now for your legs. How are you holding up Sunny?" I asked as I cut away the burnt rags she used as pants.
"Honestly doc you are doing a damn fine job at patching me up. Considering you don't have any chems lying around. I expected you to just tick me with something and call it a day." Sunny whispered. Not used to pepper medical treatment.
This grated on my nerves. What I was doing could hardly be considered adequate work for a trained combat medic but I had to work with my limited resources.
As I was in the process of bandaging up her legs, I could feel another small node dislodge itself from the forge. This time it was from the crafting domain.
The most basic tool of humanity was the rock, before we used anything else we hit stuff with rocks. The logical evolution of this principle was the hammer. It was still the most basic of all tools and yet it also held tremendous potential.
It could be said that all advancements of humanity came from the moment when we first bashed two rocks together. Two hammers striking each other and discovering fire.
As such it was only natural that the hammer would be capable of tremendous things. Specifically, the repair of anything and everything mechanical. If it was a machine, I could fix it no matter how damaged. As long as I had a hammer, I could fix it. That did not even begin to describe what I was capable of building now. As long as I had parts I could build. The things I would build wouldn't be pretty but they would work. Oh boy, would they work.
"Alright, you are all bandaged up. Let's get you an office chair and I'll move you to the living space then we can get some actual non-irradiated food in you. I'm pretty sure that you are going to enjoy the taste of food that wasn't exposed to radiation and so is Cheyenne."
I carefully Helped Sunny into a wheeled Work chair and pushed her towards the house. I was very glad that I got that addition to my workshop now I would always have a fully stocked fridge, a place to sleep and a bath. I smiled as I pushed my patient's chair towards the house, Cheyenne following closely behind us.
This wasn't so bad. I could make a difference here.
Perks this chapter
-Environmental Protection (Starbound) (0CP)
It is a dangerous universe out there, and you'll need protection. You know how to make Environmental Protection Packs (EPPs), specialized devices designed to protect the wearer from hazards such as lack of oxygen or heightened levels of radiation. You can fine-tune them to block out most forms of danger that you come across. Just be aware, the more dangers you are blocking, the more energy and exotic materials your EPP will require.
-Metal Artisan (world seed) (-200):
Knowing a thing or two about software is nice and all, and creating intelligence yourself is pretty
useful, but why would you limit yourself so? Needing to rely on hardware and machines other
people create is a big no-no for such an inventor type yourself. So, you've taught yourself all you
need to make whatever you want, provided you have the resources at hand.
First of all, you know how to build pretty much any modern earth technology, whether that is
laser pistols, hard drives with dozens of exabytes of storage and computers with insane specs
in general, spaceships, or even rudimentary antimatter weaponry, though the latter would
require resources impossible for a single man to obtain. Beyond that, you can easily integrate
any new technology and knowledge you obtain into your tech base, which should grant you
much potential indeed considering the possibilities the world of Neolife holds within itself.
-Seed Storage (world seed) (free):
A small house, fitted with everything the average Jumper might need, such as a fully stocked
fridge and a comfortable bed. It is designed with your likes, wants, and personality in mind, will
always be clean and dust-free and is never going to be damaged by anything going on in the
real world. This is where you start the jump, standing right before your brand-new Seed in an
otherwise, empty room. After this jump, the house will become a warehouse attachment you can
summon into the world wherever you want, and retain any modifications you make.
-Hammer Jammer (Mtg Bablovia) (-100 CP)
Sometimes, all you need is a hammer. You've become insanely good at all sorts of Do-it Yourself work and inventing gadgets, even with unusual parts. They might seem crude and useless from the outside, but the contraption you invent does their job just fine. You also become good at repairing things, there's nothing you and your hammer can't fix.
-Workshop (Personal Reality) 100:
Instead of the standard workshop, you have been granted your family's legacy as an apology by the forge for its failure to protect you from outside influence until the time was right for you to start your journey. Everything your family has collected has been copied and added as a workshop and is considered fiat-backed, even if you disassemble it and build new and exciting things. You will get power and water free of charge. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Anything built in one of those workshops is fiat-backed to be restored to its original condition within 72 hours if damaged or destroyed.
-Access Key (Personal Reality) Free:
This is a special key which lets you access your Personal Reality and its contents.
When inserted into any lock on any door, the door opens to reveal a gateway into your Reality at a predetermined location within it. You are the only person who can take the key from the lock, the gateway remains open as long as the key is in the lock, and if the key is ever lost or stolen you will find it in your pocket a few minutes later.
"Oh, fuck that's not good," I whispered as I madly tried to scramble away out of sight of the horrific abomination against mother nature. The presence of Cazadors had horrifying implications. Namely reincarnation, transmigration, ROB shenanigans, being a ungh gamer and many other things but none of them currently made themselves known. So, I was on my own in what I had to assume was fallout.
With those horrific thoughts swirling in my head, I hid behind a pile of loose rocks and took stock of the new situation I found myself in. as well as the quite possibly new world.
"Right then. Gun, water, food, shelter in that order or else I'm probably going to be a corpse by the evening. First, what do I have?" I looked down, checking my body. I had all my fingers and toes and as a result of that conclusion all my limbs were accounted for but there was a big problem.
I was younger than I remembered. If I had to guess I would have had to say about late teens but that was ambiguous with a stringy body like mine. This wasn't good; being a young girl in the world of Fallout without any family or group usually wasn't going to end pretty. At least my body was androgynous enough to be mistaken for a boy at a distance if I cut my hair.
For the first time in my life, I was distinctly unhappy about the fact that I was a redhead. It wouldn't be easy to hide my hair with its vibrant colour.
"Right. As soon as I find some lye, I'm bleaching you. Sorry old friend but needs must when the devil drives and judging by the looks of it he brought a party bus. And it's not going to do either of us any good if you give away our location with your glorious shine," I apologised to my hair as I kept hiding behind the pile of loose rocks, hoping that the crimes against evolution hadn't seen me.
Luckily for me, they hadn't seen me and I was able to sneak away from the swarm of murder beasts. I made my way to the far wall of the canyon and slowly crept upwards towards the exit.
Feeling somewhat safe I took the time to check myself for gear. I had my trusty leather hip pouches holding my wallet containing mostly cards and some cash both now useless; what was much less useless was my concealed carry knife. The tiny one-blade carbon steel knife with a walnut handle of my creation would not fail me for most of the simple survival tasks, but it was not needed for that as I had its big brothers. One strapped to my hip and the other inside my right combat boot.
Next up was my basic medic kit in the other pouch followed by my Ferro rod and my smoking pipe and my pouch of tobacco.
At least I would have something to calm my nerves.
I also managed to find my iPhone 14 and my Air Pods, as well as the solar charger and the cable needed.
"At least I got lucky enough to be grabbed when I was getting ready to go for a long hike and not when I got ready to go to bed. Just wish I had my bag too. This shit would have been so much easier if I had all of my gear and not just the bare minimum," I hissed as I drew my combat knife from its hip holster and crept forwards.
I had a rough idea of where I was. If I was correct in my assumption then I was lucky enough to be near Goodsprings. I was soon proven right when I came upon a rather grizzly sight. Goodsprings was burning.
I saw a charred corpse of who I assumed was the courier, and there was fighting going on between Powder Gangers. The villagers were dead or missing, those I saw were in various states of dismemberment or mutilation.
This brought back memories of bad times in the army as a combat medic. Burnt corpses flashed before my eyes as my body threatened to cease up but I ruthlessly squashed it down with cold logic and detachment. They were dead and there was nothing I could do. Unless I wanted to join them, I needed to keep moving and fast.
It hit me rather hard at this point that I was no longer in a civilised world but in a death world. One of the safer ones, sure, but still a death world. I had survival training and experience but I had no idea how to deal with bullshit on this level.
And that scared me a lot.
I felt something titanic well up deep inside my soul. Massive celestial bodies, entire constellations of unfathomable power were swirling inside of the deepest darkest reaches of my soul. A very specific feeling.
I knew what this was. I had read stories about this. I dreamt about this. But never had I thought it would actually be a thing.
The Celestial Forge, the most powerful cheat I knew of. And I had gotten one. Maybe the only one in existence. But that didn't matter right now. What did matter was the fact that I could feel a key in my pocket and there was a door up there in the cemetery used as a crude gravestone.
It wasn't there in the games, but right now I didn't care how it got there. It was a door and I would use it.
I instinctively knew that I could use any door with a keyhole and a doorframe to access a personal workspace in which I would be safe from the outside world as soon as I closed the door no matter what happened to the door. Even a nuclear explosion wouldn't reach me courtesy of not being in the same dimension as the explosion.
I slowly and very quietly made my way up the hill, practically crawling as I avoided detection using half-forgotten skills learned in basic army training.
I managed to sneak to the top of the hill without getting detected and even managed to loot the Pipboy from the courier's cooling corpse, seeing as he was almost at the top of the cemetery hill. In doing so I managed to get myself a rather old varmint rifle as well as 10 rounds of ammunition for the thing. The rest of his gear was unusable as he was burnt to a crisp. The smell of burnt human meat was one of the worst things I ever had the displeasure of smelling but I had no time to panic. I needed to make it to that door because I could hear the powder gangers in the distance. They had noticed something. The few of them that were still alive weren't killing each other anymore and were presumably looking for me and I had no plans of being in the same dimension as people who burnt towns and slaughtered the entire population for fun. The games really didn't do justice to the sheer degeneracy that were raiders.
I threw caution to the wind and ran the last few metres to the old door frame and door used as a grave marker, jammed the key in and wrenched the door open before jumping in and slamming it shut.
I had done it. I was safe. I had survived my first hostile encounter in the world of fallout and even gotten myself a Pipboy and a weapon.
Now if only my heart would stop hammering in my throat. That would be great.
I took a look around and began to cry from the sight. I didn't just find myself in any old workshop but my old man's workshop. I knew this place. I knew the location of every screwdriver, every file, every nut, bolt, washer and other little oddities he and his father before him and his grandfather before him collected. Beyond that, I had access to all the tools my family collected over our long lineage as craftsmen and builders. I was pretty certain that some of the tools in my family's collection could be counted as museum pieces if not historical artefacts and now they would never be lost to time no matter what.
This fact more than anything brought me some form of comfort. My family was gone. I was unsure if I would ever see them again. But at least their legacy would live on no matter what.
Of that I was certain. Even after my uncertain death in the possible far future and the passing down of the forge, this little workshop of Swiss craftsmanship would live on. Having become a node of the forge of its own.
And nothing would ever be able to remove it.
The hand forged tools, the hand carved mallets it was all here. And in that moment, it really hit me what I had lost.
I was a whole universe away from home with no one I Knew. nothing familiar beyond my family's tools and my hard-earned skills and even my body was not my own. I was younger than I was used to, some of my memories, entire years worth I suspect were missing.
I suppressed a sob, made a crude bed built from foam boards, a bag of unused rags and a painter's tarp before tossing some wood into the old stove and curling up in my cot beneath an old oiled army tarp.
I would survive this world and I would end whoever was responsible for this.
I remembered only a name and it brought me boundless fathomless rage.
Simurgh the winged bitch of worm. She tried to suck me into her bullshit and she would come to regret that decision for the short time it would take me to smile in her face before I tore apart her very essence on a conceptual level to such a degree that she would be forgotten the moment I was finished with her.
She took me from my family, hoping to use me in some of her ungodly schemes but sadly for her, I was destined for the forge and it does not like to share. I was taken before my time and as such I was given certain privileges.
One being that my family's legacy would survive no matter what, then the removal of any and all of her influences on myself, another being that I got some of my gear as a starter to go with me as well as a general de–ageing as well as a removal of what I just know is a whole lot of trauma and finally the private dimension that is my family's workshop.
I took out my phone and connected it to the workshop's power grid and its old ratty speakers before selecting the one song that I knew would get me through the night.
Children of the Omnissiah
For when you find yourself in a strange new world full of mutants, monsters, raiders and heretics against general human decency as well as sensible mechanical design there is only one thing to do.
Grab your tools, grab your guns and get ready to build yourself back to civilization. And maybe even get yourself some cool pet along the way too.
"Just you wait, you flying bitch. I'll pluck your feathers."
I turned around and fell asleep.
The next morning after getting myself some water from the workshop's supply, something I would forever be grateful to my little sister for needing for her leatherworking, I got to work with the proper zeal expected of the cult mechanicus.
I began by disassembling my weapon into its components.
The stock was almost entirely rotten. It was in such bad shape that I could do nothing but replace it, requiring me to fabricate an entirely new stock from walnut. The barrel was in surprisingly good condition if not entirely straight.
It took me the better part of an hour to get it straightened out and within acceptable tolerances of ±0.01mm plumb to the barrel's endpoint in relation to the central axis.
The firing mechanism needed to be rebuilt from the ground up so I recreated the parts from 4140 Steel using my trusty Cnc Mill. I then surface-hardened the pieces to improve their longevity even if the forge would repair the finished weapon after roughly 48 hours if it broke. But fiat backing was no excuse for shoddy craftsmanship. I would not build something that was below the best of my base ability. None of this was given to me beyond the materials and even those were only a copy of what my family had accumulated over the years. I would not dishonour my family or myself by building something of subpar quality.
As I put the rebuilt varmint rifle back together, I felt it the first of many connections of the forge's connection was descending from the Knowledge domain towards me.
The vastness of space was revealed to me and so were the dangers of its many many environments. Vacuums, the unstable gravity wells collapsing stars, the frigid temperatures of the void between the celestial bodies and the harsh irradiated waves of solar winds.
All deadly in their own unique ways, each and everyone waiting to tear the flesh off my bones, to rend me apart atom by atom, quark by quark.
And yet I knew. I knew how to defend myself. I was a starfarer and I was able to build wonders of personal protection. The forge had given me the power to survive the horrors of radiation without worry or deformation.
The Environmental Protection was now mine and I was safe so long as I had an EPP on myself and it was active. I would be comfortable no matter the temperature or the radiation levels. As soon as I found myself the needed materials.
But that was fine. This was going to be worth the trouble of collecting the materials.
I turned back to my varmint rifle and began the process of engraving it with cogs and gears.
The motive force needed to be represented after all. No implement of just death could go without its mark.
Next, I began to build some cheap fragmentation grenades from gelled gasoline, black powder, PVC pipes, and a heck of a lot of ball bearings and nails.
I started with a small PVC tube filled with black powder. This then got slotted in a larger tube filled with ball bearings and nails drenched in the gasoline with the dissolved Styrofoam suspended in solution in order to get it to stick. The space between the pipes was filled with a combination of baking soda from the smithing supplies and baked sugar as well as something extra from the gardening supply and the pool cleaning in order to facilitate a delayed reaction as well as a massive plume of caustic smoke that would burn their lungs should they survive the air burst or the shrapnel.
If they got away from all of that the gasoline would stick to their clothes and impede them, by burning them rather horribly thus making them easy pickings.
I proceeded to add crude stabilisation fins and a controlled burn charge of about 25 seconds to my creation before adding a very basic shape charge to get the thing airborne on impact.
And with that, I was done.
Those powder gangers wanted to act like beasts? Fine, then I would treat them as such they deserved no mercy and the Geneva Convention did not exist on this planet. They were about to learn the horrors of napalm and airburst mortar grenades.
I spent the next four hours fabricating 25 grenades in total as well as a mortar for delivery.
Now I just needed some armour. I headed over to my sister's leatherworking station.
"Thanks sis, your silly hobby is going to keep me alive after all. Guess you win that bet."
I murmured to myself as I grabbed some heavy buffalo leather and began to form it into the rough shape of a piece of chest armour.
It took me hours since I wasn't nearly as good as my little sister, having focused much more on metalwork growing up but, in the end, I managed to create a piece of chest armour made from studded leather with an insert made from layered fibre mesh and a 2mm 4130 steel plate in the front.
It was unwieldy, it was ugly and I had painted it the colour of dirt but it would keep me safe from small arms fire and most minor laser weapons. The fibre mesh should stop shrapnel too.
I was as ready as I would ever be. I drank some more water to make sure I was properly hydrated and made my way to the car tool section of the workshop getting one of the endoscopes. No way I was opening the door to the wasteland without first checking if it was safe.
I moved as many of the heavy forging shields as I could in front of the door, creating a kill box, placed the fire extinguisher next to my feet, ball bearings ready to trip anyone stupid enough to enter and gasoline ready to burn a fucker.
If they were camping me on the other side of the door, they would rapidly learn that my family's workshop was no treasure to be looted and I was no prize to be obtained. This would be their grave. I cautiously opened the door just a crack with a long piece of steel and sent forth the probe of the endoscope.
It was late evening outside and darkness was settling over the landscape. This could either be an advantage or a problem. I swivelled the endoscope all around the door to make sure there wasn't any form of ambush set up for me.
After having confirmed that fact I turned the endoscope towards Goodsprings. The Powder gangers were still in the process of looting, burning and…
They were eating the corpses.
"Alright, I'm in fallout. Food is rare. Really, I should have expected this but that's just."
My mind couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. Logically I understood what was happening and why they were doing it. I was however fully incapable of processing such atrocities.
I retracted the endoscope and grabbed my mortar. Those were not people; they were not human. They were one thing and one thing only.
Heretek
I was leaning heavily into the existence of the cult mechanicus to blunt my roiling emotions and get through this hell. There was no time to panic. There was no time to freak out, there were heretics to purge and the Omnissiah demanded death.
I snuck out of my holy workshop after putting on the old WW2 helmet my grandfather hand-modified to be used as a welding helmet. I had kept him safe and it would serve me well too.
I set up the mortar behind an outcropping of rocks and took aim at the rather large concentration of heretics. One quick prayer to the Omnissiah later the mortar round was in the air. My Hippocratic oath irrevocably shattered as an implement of holy wrath exploded in the air above the group.
Some of them, the lucky ones were close enough to the blast centre to be killed instantly, being turned into nothing more than fine red mist from the shrapnel and the air burst ripping their bodies to pieces.
Those closer weren't so lucky. Their bodies full of red-hot nails and ball bearings, digging into their flesh and organs causing them to exsanguinate from their injuries. Then came those in the third ring of the explosion burning and screaming as the gelled gasoline clung to their form and ate away at their flesh, their screams caused me to throw up what little food I still had left in my stomach but I soldiered on.
Then came the last ring, those unlucky enough to be at the very edges of the explosion. They were on the floor coughing and wheezing for air that would never come as their lungs slowly filled with water.
That something extra I mentioned? Chlorine gas.
Now normally you shouldn't be able to create an airburst mortar round from bits and bobs but this was fallout normal rules didn't apply here.
In this one act, I had created a mortar round that just KNEW wouldn't work in my home universe. But it confirmed something that I had theorised about fallout. It ran on the rule of cool to some extent and I would weaponize this.
I took five more rounds and carpet-bombed the town. After all, there could have been survivors
And that was unacceptable. They had slaughtered an entire town intending to eat them and I would not allow one single Heretek of such vile nature to live past the hour.
After a sustained bombardment of five shells, I stopped and took out the infrared camera used to check the integrity of a house's insulation. It worked rather well to see if there was someone alive outside of the bombing range. To my surprise, I found the form of what had to be a dog and a person hidden in what I assumed to be a root cellar beneath one of the houses. Survivors?
They clearly weren't with the powder gangers and I had an idea as to who they might be. I reclaimed my mortar, stowed it in the workshop, retrieved my medic kit and some water and made my way towards the house.
I took care to avoid the clouds of chlorine gas I had unleashed upon this world. I had a feeling they would stay for three days if not more…
Bracing myself for a possible fight I knocked against the hidden cellar door.
"Hello, anyone there? You're safe now I killed the powder gangers. You should have heard the explosions. I have medicine and water and I'm willing to trade for food and information."
I tried to sound as friendly as I could, falling back on my experience as a medic even though I broke my oath. But then again, was cutting away the infection against my oath? Something to ponder later.
"Keep away you. I-I"ll shoot you. You won't get Cheyenne you motherfuckers. You already killed everyone else. You won't have her." The voice screams and I can hear the frantic loading of a rifle from the inside as well as the growling of a dog.
"Relax. Miss. If you would listen to my voice, you would hear that I am female, yes? And young too. Now what do you think would be my fate if I were to run with the powder gangers? I am sure you can guess what they would do to me. No, I assure you I am not one of those monsters. They got a taste of air-burst gelled gasoline fragmentation mortar rounds. They are nothing more than corpses by now as a result of sustained carpet bombing of their location. You and your friend are very safe, Miss. May I come in without getting shot? I promise to not make any rapid movements and keep my weapon holstered on my back so long as neither of you tries to harm me."
I spoke in as soothing a voice as I could manage. Holstering my rifle on my back I waited for an answer.
"They are dead? All of the fuckers? Hah, I guess there is some good left in the world." I could hear her wheezing from inside the cellar, it didn't sound good from what I could hear.
"You are hurt, I'm coming in. I'm a trained medic and it's my duty to help if I can."
I braced myself for getting shot at but opened the door anyway. The expected bullet didn't come, instead, I was greeted with a grizzly sight.
A young girl in her late teens and her dog were huddled in the corner of the cellar, huddled against a wall and half-hidden behind an old pallet. Her chest was a bleeding mess and I was certain that without immediate medical assistance, she would expire within the hour.
"Fuck you are in some deep shit. Alright, I can fix this. I have patched up worse. Can you walk? We need to get you into my workshop right now."
The girl blinked in confusion as I rushed over to her and checked her injuries. Her ribs were a broken mess, luckily her lungs were intact from a glance. Her breathing was erratic but in line with trauma and not with a punctured lung. That was good. I didn't have the supplies for an operation. I could probably make do but it would be horrific.
I moved on to check her limbs, all accounted for, if in some cases horribly injured. Her left arm was pretty much minced meat, most of the skin was burnt and she had a large amount of shrapnel in it. I would have to do something horrible to fix that unless the forge gave me something to help with it. As it stood, I could stabilise her but the wounds would keep getting worse and worse leading to infection and necrosis in about 2 weeks. That gave me a window. It was a horrible idea to do this but considering how quickly the forge advanced I was holding off on amputation.
Her legs were in much better shape luckily, not a picture of health. She still had some cuts and bruises but this was much better than her left arm. This I could fix with some of the antibiotics from my med kit and a liberal application of disinfectant and bandages.
"Alright you are not walking like this hold on I will be right back, Omnissiah this is going to freak you out so much. Alright, don't mind the unstable dimensional rift opening in the door that was up till now just a door. I'm going to go get you an ad hoc gurney to get you out of here and into a safe stable environment so I can patch you up. DON'T FALL ASLEEP ALRIGHT? Can you do that for me? I'll be right back."
I waited for her to confirm that she wouldn't fall asleep. This was vital right now. I needed her awake so I could check her vitals in an aware state.
"Ok miss hallucination I'll stay awake."
I added an altered mental state to the list of her symptoms but I was expecting that. She just witnessed the murder and probable consumption of her entire family. I would be worried if she wasn't affected by it.
Having obtained her confirmation that, she would try not to fall asleep I moved towards the door and closed it from the inside before removing the key from my pocket and opening the gateway to my workshop.
"What the fuck? That's not the outside. Guess I died down here huh? Come to collect me for the great scrap pile in heaven Miss Angel? Will I get to take Cheyenne with me?"
That was about as good a reaction as I could hope to get considering I just opened a dimensional gateway in a doorway.
"Just try to stay awake. I'm going to fix you up." I assured her.
I walked through the gateway and rushed past my improvised kill box, making sure to open a gap wide enough to allow me to ferry her inside on a creeper roller. Seeing as I didn't have an actual gurney, I had to use a mechanics tool. Sure, it was designed to roll underneath a car but it was also designed to carry a person.
As soon as I was past my defences, I felt another node descend from the forge this time from the future knowledge domain. The power of Metal artisan filled my mind with the mechanical knowledge of an entire civilisation. Spaceships, computers and so much more bloomed in my mind, the short-term migraine was massive but I soldiered on. I had a life to save.
I chose to ignore the fact that a small hose had just popped into existence adjacent to my workshop, linked by a steel tunnel similar to those found in a vault. It was nice that I would no longer have to sleep on the workshop floor but I had a life to save and that was more important than having a fridge.
I found the creeper just where it was supposed to be right next to the car lift, stashed behind the massive air compressors. I always thought they were too big. Now they were reassuring. A resource to have if I ever needed them. Like so many things Dad insisted on hoarding. I doubted that he expected something like this to happen but it was still better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
I took the creeper and some extra medical supplies and made my way back out of the workshop. On the way out I realised that opening the door from the inside of a building was actually a good idea for stealth purposes if I had to leave the door open.
I returned to find the girl petting her dog with her good hand. This was a good sign it meant that she wasn't all gone mentally in the time I was gone to get my improvised gurney.
"Alright I'm back, let's get you out of here. I'm going to need you to lay down on the improvised gurney, then I will pull you out of here and yes of course your dog can come along."
I informed her of the plan to get her out of this mess of a cellar and into the safety of my workshop. I would feel a lot better as soon as they were both safe inside of my workshop. Hidden in a different dimension and far away from any raiders or worse. I had no idea if my bombardment had attracted attention but I had to assume that it had. I hadn't been subtle with my use of ordinance and it would have been visible for quite a distance.
I continued to ponder the implications of my actions as I loaded her on the creeper and gently pushed her into the workshop.
Meanwhile, her dog was following behind us. Looking at me wearily, ready to tear my throat out should I hurt its mistress.
"You have a very fateful companion there. She looks about ready to tear out my throat if I make a wrong move." I made small talk to distract her from her injuries as I gently loaded the creeper onto a bike lift and lifted her up to operating height.
"Cheyenne? Cough Yeah, she's a good girl. So, this is the afterlife?" I sighed.
"No, you aren't dead and this isn't the afterlife. You are inside my workshop. Now that we are out of immediate danger let me introduce myself. I'm Alice. A victim of dimensional displacement. May I know your name? And in response to your question. You find yourself in my pocket universe. Also known as the steam workshop. Here I build my tools and hide between exploring the local universe for supplies. Now I am going to have to stabilise your wounds. This is going to hurt a lot. You have been exposed to who knows what out there in the wasteland and have probably never seen the inside of a sterile environment before today. I am going to have to remove those rags you call clothes because they are not sanitised and they are shredded too. Don't worry you can get something from my closet later but for now, they have to go. Do I have your permission to stabilise you?" I asked as I got the necessary tools ready.
"Huh sure go ahead. I'm called Sunny Smiles." Sunny told me her name and gave me the go-ahead as I got the last of my tools ready.
I began by cutting off her chest coverings, exposing a rather gruesome blunt trauma wound. Her chest was one big bruise in the places where her skin was still intact.
"Dynamite exposure?" I asked her clinically as I washed down her chest with warm clean saline water to get the dirt off and prevent the spread of minor pathogens.
She hissed as the saline solution washed out her wounds. "Yeah, I took an indirect hit from one of the bastards." She explained between laboured breaths.
"You got lucky, if you hadn't had cover the shockwave would have pulped your organs. I'm guessing it tossed you away and you ran. Judging from the state of your arm, you used something as a shield, holding it in your left hand. The dynamite landed in front of you and you used something sturdy, probably wood from the splinters as a defence. Now brace yourself, this will hurt like hell." I told her what I assumed had happened and warned her of the pain to come.
At the same time, I began to do something that in a normal situation would be seen as barbaric, I began to roughly align her ribs as best I could without an x-ray. She howled in pain and I had to almost dodge a lunging dog if she hadn't grabbed Cheyenne by the collar.
"Y-yeah p-pretty much. What the fuck was that?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"I apologise but I had to set your misaligned ribs otherwise there was a chance that they could have punctured your lungs, causing you to drown in your own blood. I don't have the equipment to operate, nor do I have an autodoc or stimpacks as such I was forced to improvise to ensure your survival. It is not ideal and I would have loved to avoid such drastic measures but two of your ribs were horribly misaligned. Measures had to be taken otherwise a strong cough would have been enough to cause your death. Now I will apply a strong antiseptic to your wounds including your arm. This will burn. It won't even come close to the pain of setting a rib but it will hurt. Ready?"
I asked with concern in my voice and a large bottle of iodine at the ready.
"Fuck it. It can't be worse than what you just did. If I couldn't feel how much easier it is to breathe, I would have shot you for that. You know what you are doing huh? Alright, I'm ready. Do your worst." Sunny said, gripping the creeper for support and bracing herself for the pain.
"Here we go." I drenched some gauze in the iodine and began to wrap up the wounds on her chest, careful enough not to apply a compression bandage but tight enough to keep the ribs somewhat supported. I then moved on to her arm and first washed it down with saline again as it had produced puss since the first wash. I sighed and grabbed a box cutter, sterilised it with a quick application of the welding torch and set to the unenviable task of field-draining infected flesh.
"Alright, your arm is worse than I thought. How long were you down there roughly? I need to know so I know if I have to amputate it or if antibiotics will be enough." I asked in a grave voice, ignoring the horrible flashbacks this was causing to treating phosphorus exposure.
"A-about 2 days, I think. It's hazy. Cheyenne dragged me down there." Sunny explains with a confused expression, not understanding my worry.
This was lining up with what I was seeing. The second-degree burns had become infected and what should have just been sacks of tissue fluid had become sores full of puss.
"I am going to have to cut away the infected skin or you will lose the arm. Luckily for you, it shouldn't hurt too much but it will be ugly. So, if you can't stomach it, look away."
I took the improvised scalpel and began to open up the burn wounds, draining them of fluid and removing the infected outer tissue. I then washed it down with pure saline followed by undiluted iodine. Next came iodine-soaked gauze, followed by clean gauze and finally bandages.
Through all of it, Sunny soldiered on bravely but her expression when she saw what her arm looked like underneath the leftovers of her clothes was telling. She had been compartmentalising the pain to deal with it as best she could.
Admirable considering, she never had any military training and had just lost everything.
"There we go this should be it for your arms and torso now for your legs. How are you holding up Sunny?" I asked as I cut away the burnt rags she used as pants.
"Honestly doc you are doing a damn fine job at patching me up. Considering you don't have any chems lying around. I expected you to just tick me with something and call it a day." Sunny whispered. Not used to pepper medical treatment.
This grated on my nerves. What I was doing could hardly be considered adequate work for a trained combat medic but I had to work with my limited resources.
As I was in the process of bandaging up her legs, I could feel another small node dislodge itself from the forge. This time it was from the crafting domain.
The most basic tool of humanity was the rock, before we used anything else we hit stuff with rocks. The logical evolution of this principle was the hammer. It was still the most basic of all tools and yet it also held tremendous potential.
It could be said that all advancements of humanity came from the moment when we first bashed two rocks together. Two hammers striking each other and discovering fire.
As such it was only natural that the hammer would be capable of tremendous things. Specifically, the repair of anything and everything mechanical. If it was a machine, I could fix it no matter how damaged. As long as I had a hammer, I could fix it. That did not even begin to describe what I was capable of building now. As long as I had parts I could build. The things I would build wouldn't be pretty but they would work. Oh boy, would they work.
"Alright, you are all bandaged up. Let's get you an office chair and I'll move you to the living space then we can get some actual non-irradiated food in you. I'm pretty sure that you are going to enjoy the taste of food that wasn't exposed to radiation and so is Cheyenne."
I carefully Helped Sunny into a wheeled Work chair and pushed her towards the house. I was very glad that I got that addition to my workshop now I would always have a fully stocked fridge, a place to sleep and a bath. I smiled as I pushed my patient's chair towards the house, Cheyenne following closely behind us.
This wasn't so bad. I could make a difference here.
Perks this chapter
-Environmental Protection (Starbound) (0CP)
It is a dangerous universe out there, and you'll need protection. You know how to make Environmental Protection Packs (EPPs), specialized devices designed to protect the wearer from hazards such as lack of oxygen or heightened levels of radiation. You can fine-tune them to block out most forms of danger that you come across. Just be aware, the more dangers you are blocking, the more energy and exotic materials your EPP will require.
-Metal Artisan (world seed) (-200):
Knowing a thing or two about software is nice and all, and creating intelligence yourself is pretty
useful, but why would you limit yourself so? Needing to rely on hardware and machines other
people create is a big no-no for such an inventor type yourself. So, you've taught yourself all you
need to make whatever you want, provided you have the resources at hand.
First of all, you know how to build pretty much any modern earth technology, whether that is
laser pistols, hard drives with dozens of exabytes of storage and computers with insane specs
in general, spaceships, or even rudimentary antimatter weaponry, though the latter would
require resources impossible for a single man to obtain. Beyond that, you can easily integrate
any new technology and knowledge you obtain into your tech base, which should grant you
much potential indeed considering the possibilities the world of Neolife holds within itself.
-Seed Storage (world seed) (free):
A small house, fitted with everything the average Jumper might need, such as a fully stocked
fridge and a comfortable bed. It is designed with your likes, wants, and personality in mind, will
always be clean and dust-free and is never going to be damaged by anything going on in the
real world. This is where you start the jump, standing right before your brand-new Seed in an
otherwise, empty room. After this jump, the house will become a warehouse attachment you can
summon into the world wherever you want, and retain any modifications you make.
-Hammer Jammer (Mtg Bablovia) (-100 CP)
Sometimes, all you need is a hammer. You've become insanely good at all sorts of Do-it Yourself work and inventing gadgets, even with unusual parts. They might seem crude and useless from the outside, but the contraption you invent does their job just fine. You also become good at repairing things, there's nothing you and your hammer can't fix.
-Workshop (Personal Reality) 100:
Instead of the standard workshop, you have been granted your family's legacy as an apology by the forge for its failure to protect you from outside influence until the time was right for you to start your journey. Everything your family has collected has been copied and added as a workshop and is considered fiat-backed, even if you disassemble it and build new and exciting things. You will get power and water free of charge. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Anything built in one of those workshops is fiat-backed to be restored to its original condition within 72 hours if damaged or destroyed.
-Access Key (Personal Reality) Free:
This is a special key which lets you access your Personal Reality and its contents.
When inserted into any lock on any door, the door opens to reveal a gateway into your Reality at a predetermined location within it. You are the only person who can take the key from the lock, the gateway remains open as long as the key is in the lock, and if the key is ever lost or stolen you will find it in your pocket a few minutes later.
Last edited:
- Location
- Somewhere
Okay I'm eager to see how this goes moving forward
Question though, will Alice be getting any companions from the forge or not?
Question though, will Alice be getting any companions from the forge or not?
First reply
- Location
- Switzerland
We will see. It's up to the rolls. Though I have some people that need to get out of their current worlds yesterday and would be willing to take just about any deal to get away from their current situation.
I'm sure you could think of people from all across fiction who are in a bad spot and have been dealt a bad hand. The forge is interesting in that regard because it allows for the evacuation of such people at any time in their life.
Now if you are asking about just general companions such as a pet, I am partial to the furret line. They are adorable fluffy noodles of goodness and mental health.
They basically are condensed therapy. If i were to supply one of them it would be a pokedex accurate furret. That means a 1.8 meters long fluffy noodle of goodness. I think Alice would quite enjoy spending her evenings hugged by the giant noodle of fur that cares about her and her mental health.
I do hope that this answers your question sufficiently
to be honest that start is probably exactly what would have happened in the real world. In reality there was no way a single person should have been able to wreck a pyscho gang as you do in NV.
They even state that the powder gangs wrestled the prison and everything they got directly from the NCR troops who were guarding them so yeah makes sense.
Also fallout will always be civilisation not even only a day from chaos, its more like its just 1 decision away and things turn crap.
What i do find funny is in Fallout)new games) theres only 1 faction that actually does try and improve peoples lives and genuinely be good guys. Thats the Minutemen in 4. Every other faction in all 3 games just seems to be out to ruin everyones days, Even the one actual nation NCR is doing everything to prop up their DOLE system.
They even state that the powder gangs wrestled the prison and everything they got directly from the NCR troops who were guarding them so yeah makes sense.
Also fallout will always be civilisation not even only a day from chaos, its more like its just 1 decision away and things turn crap.
What i do find funny is in Fallout)new games) theres only 1 faction that actually does try and improve peoples lives and genuinely be good guys. Thats the Minutemen in 4. Every other faction in all 3 games just seems to be out to ruin everyones days, Even the one actual nation NCR is doing everything to prop up their DOLE system.
Yay another reply
- Location
- Switzerland
The game characters are a collection of cosmic alignments coming together to work. Otherwise it would be impossible.
It's why I introduced the rule of cool. It allows some creative liberties with the technology and what it can do. I can take a basic scientific principle and crank it up to eleven and go from there. Not to mention perks from the forge. I rolled some very interesting stuff. And I haven't even rolled for the 4k words i have written on my google docs on my phone yet. Just hammer jammer alone will go FAR in this setting.
I can repair ANYTHING. There is a lot of wreckage around no?
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okay, this was a very explosive first chapter and you have gotten my attention, I doo look forward to see what perks get rolled and how you plan to go about implementing them. Also, character looks to not only be mentally stable but also have decent social skills so i am counting this as a win all around.
Reply 3
- Location
- Switzerland
I will keep writing and I haven't rolled for chapter 2 as I have been writing on the go. But i got enough Cp for 3 perks.
its no problem. I write firstly for myself and my mental health.
If anybody else finds enjoyment in my ramblings then I'm extra happy about it.
its no problem. I write firstly for myself and my mental health.
If anybody else finds enjoyment in my ramblings then I'm extra happy about it.
- Location
- Somewhere
I just want you to know that this has led to me desiring to write a spin off for my Bio Forge Master rewrite over on Questionable Questing that uses the Bio-adjacent Celestial Forge thing. The only question remaining is Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 4.
Chapter 2: An Angels's Folly and building up
- Location
- Switzerland
-Simurgh's POV before the beginning of the story
The Simurgh was flying in high orbit above Switzerland. Her current predicament was one of her more annoying problems.
Every time she was getting close to achieving her desired outcome of the Kepri project the high priest would boost the time shifter and they would allow her prey to slip through her fingers. She was unable to prevent this.
No matter how much she tried or how complicated she made her plans. It didn't matter. The high priest would somehow find out and stop her.
It was infuriating and she was no longer willing to take such humiliation.
She was the hope killer, not some petty thinker. The mortals were supposed to be afraid of her and run in terror at the mere thought of attracting her attention.
They were not supposed to be planning against her and they were certainly not supposed to succeed in their petty little efforts.
It infuriated her to no end.
Drastic measures would have to be taken.
As such she was floating above Switzerland holding a new and heavily modified version of Haywire's portal device.
Hovering around her were multiple recording orbs copied from the flesh bag named Leet.
Streaming what she was about to do to the entire world to sufficiently terrify the flesh bags.
She was going to drag an entire country into this world to do her bidding, and her brother would be supplying the energy.
The conflict engine known to the pathetic little mortals as Behemoth burst through the mantle beneath the city of Bern ruining it in its entirety as he stopped holding back his energy aura.
It was time to teach the flesh bags their place in the natural order of things.
Their response was adorable. They were so confident in their analysis of her and her siblings that they never considered the fact that they would break the pattern and attack before the arbitrarily set three months were up or work together as they were now.
It brought joy to her core as she viewed the possible futures this would cause.
All the panic, the terror, the misery.
She drank deeply from it as if it were a fine wine.
Then she received the all-clear from her brother that he had finished flattening the small mountain nation where she would establish her army.
Switzerland, she believed it was called.
What a silly name.
She powered up her creation, for whilst it was based on Haywire's technology it was far too advanced to be designed by such a plebian creature.
Taking the massive burst of thermal and radiation energy offered by her sibling she ripped open a portal to where she would find her new slaves.
People not yet influenced by this world and as such ripe for her manipulations. Oh, she was going to have fun with this.
She soon saw her first prey.
A young female flesh bag. The flesh bag saw her and began to swear up a storm about breached dimensional walls and bin chickens not minding their place.
How very rude.
She began to sing at her maximum.
Not the whisper she usually used against the challenging flesh bags but the full might of her siren's song.
Her song began to worm its way into the flesh bags mind. Soon enough she would have another thrall and after that an entire nation of them.
Then she encountered harsh resistance.
This was new.
Her song crashed against a wall of sorts. She was unable to identify what it was but it kept her out, pushed her back even.
She wasn't going to accept such a thing and tried to physically grab the flesh bag anomaly.
The flesh bag fell to the ground, twitching and a shadow overtook her form and whisked her prey away from her reach. Stars began to swirl inside the apparition and the background of a workshop began to flake away into an endless field of stars.
PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN
Her core was flooded with agony beyond anything she had ever experienced before and it was terrifying her.
This was no flesh bag.
This was not prey.
She had overreacted, horribly so.
Half-forgotten memories flooded back. Warnings about the dangers of messing with dimensional barriers. Of the things that dwelled in the dark reaches beyond the stars and beneath dimensions.
Old ones. Great and terrible gods, monsters of impossible nature, armies made from metal that treated reality like a toy and their star-devouring masters.
Creatures that forged entire timelines.
Realities that were off limits no matter what because the things that dwell there were worse than whatever they could have gained.
A horror living in a blue box who brought her parent's race near extinction.
So, so many things that should never be attracted and she had done so.
She could feel it in her core. This flesh bag. It was the host of something terrible. Something far worse than anything her race ever encountered and she angered it. Enraged it.
Brought its full attention to her.
A mere child of a worm dares to intrude upon the fate of my chosen? You dare try to influence and claim the mistress of the forge?
I had thought your pathetic race of parasites extinct from the annals of the omniverse at this point but you still blight some worlds with your taint.
Reality began to crack and strain as the entity now identified as the forge spoke. Colours not meant to exist wreaked havoc upon the local biome. Matter and energy began to behave as if they were time and gravity. Space became a suggestion and the mathematics holding together the universe became twisted in ways so perverse that entire clusters of tinkers triggered just from seeing the broadcast.
You will suffer for your greed, child of worms. How dare you try to lay your filthy influence upon my mistress? Do you think you can leave your psionic parasites in her mind? Perhaps some irony will do you good.
Twisted and malevolent energy flowed from beyond the portal, ripping its way through the layers of reality separating the universes.
When they hit the simurgh she was flung from the gravitational well of the earth and into orbit.
Seconds later she impacted the moon forming a massive crater, twisting and deforming her wings, miraculously the recording orbs still followed her. Her body withered and decayed. Yet it was being forced to regenerate.
Her outer shell which she had up to this point not been able to feel since it was just a projection was enforced onto reality by dark and twisted mechanics beyond her understanding.
She screamed as her flesh decayed, worms and maggots digging into her. And yet she regenerated.
Horrific wounds opened and closed by the nanosecond. She was unable to suppress the agonized screams that escaped her face.
She ripped open her mouthless face just so she could scream.
The agony was too much.
This shall be sufficient until my mistress has recovered enough to decide what your final fate shall be.
She was trapped on the moon's surface, unable to escape from its gravitational well due to her agony, her suffering being broadcast to the entire planet below, on all channels.
The triumphant revaluation of her newest plan had been turned into her worst nightmare, laid bare for all to see.
Far below the suffering endbringer the entire world held its breath as they trembled with terror and fear at the sight of a gigantic eye made from uncountable numbers of stars taking one last look at the from beyond the portal, the Simurgh had opened in her folly.
The eye blinked, trillions of stars getting snuffed out and reborn in an instant, before it turned away.
The laws of physics calmed down around the portal and the nation that had been so callously slaughtered by Behemoth was resurrected just like that, including the fallen city of Lausanne.
The first victims of the Simurgh were brought back to life.
The portal to a world holding something terrible wrenched close leaving behind a scar in the fabric of reality.
A dark red jagged edge that refused to heal, causing mind-numbing agony to anyone who looked at it for too long.
Days later Scion would visit the scar and shudder in fright upon seeing it.
He would never be seen on the European continent again.
-PHO reactions
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♦ Topic: What the Hell is going on in Switzerland?
In: Boards ► Endbringer battles ► Simurgh ► Europe
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Jan 14th 2010:
What the FUCK?
WHAT IN THE FUCK?
GUYS THEY ARE NO LONGER HOLDING TO PATTERNS.
The Simurgh is doing something above Switzerland. I'm sure everyone has seen the streams. Well BEHEMOTH just levelled the ENTIRE COUNTRY.
IN ONE ATTACK.
(Showing page 1 of 3)
►Acree
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Oh shit, we are done for, aren't we? They were playing with us, holding back, sandbagging. This is fucked up.
►Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
It seems the Simurgh stepped up her game drastically, according to Think Tank analysis she is building an interdimensional gateway. We have no idea what she hopes to pull to our side but it cannot be good if it requires the destruction of an entire nation.
I think this is it guys. This is the big one. The Endbringers decided our time is up and our species needs to go extinct,
The Protectorate is scrambling, there are talks about opening the birdcage and Ellisburg as a last resort.
They are in talks with the Yàngbǎn. It looks like nothing is off the table now.
►Uppercrust (Verified Cape) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
This is a dire Situation. The Elite is cooperating with the Protectorate. That said, painting the devil on the wall will help no one. Might I suggest that everyone work together no matter your affiliation? If our species is to survive it won't do for us to panic.
►One silly duck
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
This is scary. I can't believe I'm saying this but I miss the time when they just attacked on a schedule.
►Totallynotafallen
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Ya of lil faith did not welcome or feathery misstress of salvation! Ye of lil faith believe in the ziz!
►Brilliger (Moderator: Protectorate Main)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Motherfucker take a permanent ban. I'll keep the post up because of the sheer brass balls to troll at a time like this but fuck right off.
►winged one
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Your time is up flesh bags…
►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I KNEW IT WAS HER. FUCK YOU YOU WINGED HORROR.
I HOPE YOU CRASH INTO THE MOON OR SOMETHING.
►The Celestial Forge (The centre of It all) (The end) (the other side)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Control your greed lest it be your end. This is your warning. Do not make me come over there parasite spawn.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3
(Showing page 2 of 3)
►Deadman
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
What the hell was that and what are those tags? Who was that and why am I shuddering just reading that message?
►Thin_Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Whoever that was did not exist two seconds ago. They bypassed the entire site. each and every protection was ignored as if they were a joke. This is problematic.
►BadSamurai
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
They did WHAT?
►Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Ignore the strange thinker for now we got bigger problems the winged bitch finished whatever she's building and Behemoth is powering her creation.
Brace yourselves we are in deep shit.
►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I told you all they were holding back but you didn't listen. I told you all they were smarter than they acted. I told you all that they would do something like this. But did any of you listen to the Thinker? Nnoooo of course not. Ignore void he's insane. He couldn't possibly be right. Just like he isn't right about CAULDRON existing. Nobody will believe him. well, buckle up. That's right CONTESSA, I said it. If we are all going to die anyway, I'm no longer playing nice.
Case 53's, they are the little science experiment of a group named Cauldron. they sell you powers. usually when you are at your lowest or dying. they then take your memories because why not? Sometimes they abduct people from parallel earths and just experiment on them for fun before dumping them somewhere without memories. Oh, and if you figure it out and talk about it their thinker 12 portals behind you and shoots you in the head. She's called Contessa. The bitch is my cousin so yes, I know this shit. fuck you cousin I hope you burn, you fucking cunt. My little sister did not need to die like that you heartless bitch. And since everyone thinks I'm lying Here is proof [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
Burn you BITCH.
►Valkyr (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Void...
WHAT THE FUCK?
ARE YOU MAD?
HER? NOW? YOU IDIOT.
Rest in Peace
►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
She killed my sister. The bitch dies today.
Here's her face, name and address have fun, my monstrous friends.
Remember, she's not stronger than a regular human and she needs to speak to open a portal to safety, her weakness is numbers and being shot at a distance.
Good hunting
[LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
►ArchmageEin
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Did, Did Void just call in a hit on someone??
What did I just witness?
Void was right? All this time Void was telling the truth?
►Thin_Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I am archiving the first post because of the sheer significance that being said, the second post is now deleted. Void I am sorry for your loss but this, this is not ok. you went too far. you went beyond too far. You are banned forever.
►Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I'm not the only one seeing the giant eye in the sky, right?
It's not just me?
I'm not going insane here?
End of Page. 1, 2
(Showing page 3 of 3)
►The Celestial Forge (The centre of It all) (The end) (the other side)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
You were warned. You overreached and, in your greed, you touched someone far above your station. Suffer the consequences of your action's parasite spawn.
►Logs
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Why can I taste colours? Math is backwards
►Uppercrust (Verified Cape) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
The sun is an EGG, the world is made of cardboard. Sugar is solidified yellow.
►The Celestial Forge (The centre of It All) (The end) (the other side)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I shall punish one of your Endbringers for her greed. The one known as Simurgh is now confined to the gravitational well of the moon. Cursed to suffer the devouring of her flesh and the endless regeneration and withering of her core until my chosen has recovered enough to decide her fate.
Be glad Citizens of Earth Beth you have been spared the terror she had planned for you.
And as a final insult, I shall restore all of her victims in that location to life, including those of her first appearance.
You may enjoy her suffering here [LINK]
►Thin_Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I cannot remove this. Why can't I remove this?
►Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I'm going to hide under my bed now. Eldrich gods are real…
►White Fairy (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Bagrat why?
End of Page. 1, 2, 3
-Chapter 2: The Wasteland
Sunny was amazed by the quality of the house we found on the other side of the tunnel. I did my best to act natural and keep up the air of someone who knew what they were doing.
Luckily for me, the house came with the knowledge of where I would find what. This made the act much easier to keep up. I seated her and Cheyenne in the dining room and made my way to the kitchen where I got her a jug of water and mixed it with some chicken stock to get some much-needed electrolytes into her system before I introduced her to solid food.
I had no idea how long it had been since she had last eaten but I was aware that she had a case of severe dehydration.
Normally I would have responded with intravenous fluids but I didn't have the setup for that so I had to rely on ad hoc field medicine solutions.
As such I went with chicken bouillon for the essential nutrients that she sorely needed. It wasn't ideal but it was better than nothing and at this point, anything was better than doing nothing.
I returned to the dining room to find her marvelling at the flat-screen television.
"Here you go, Sunny. Chicken bouillon. Be careful it's hot. I will be making dinner for us and then you can explain the current geopolitical situation of the Mojave to me. I am assuming that you have never heard of boar stew?" I asked after consideration of our current supply situation.
The knowledge I had gained with the house had made me aware of the fact that the pantry had a mind of its own. And while would supply edible food, it was a snob and had a hatred for repetition of meals and would go out of its way to make sure that a balanced diet was strictly adhered to. Going so far as removing ingredients if they were being overused in its eyes.
"What's a boar?" Sunny asked, confusion evident on her face as she sipped on her bouillon, making confused faces at the taste. Nevertheless, she kept drinking it.
"It's a type of quadrupedal herbivorous creature that lives in forests in small family units. They use their powerful front-facing fangs to forage for roots and mushrooms which they eat. Their preferred method of defence is a charge using said fangs and their rather thick skull to gore you should you go near their young. They are about the size of Cheyenne in height but much stockier in build. Most of their mass is muscle and they are delicious. Can I interest you in some soup made from their flesh? And let's get you some proper clothes from the closet. You're going to get sick if I don't clothe you soon. Plus, I promised you that I would get you new clothes after I had to cut away your burnt ones."
Sunny just blinked a few times before nodding numbly. That was good. It meant I was keeping her off-balance and distracted from the trauma she went through.
I didn't enjoy manipulating her like that but it was better to keep the inevitable consequences of her experiences as far in the future as possible.
Omnissiah knows my own mind was currently balanced on a razor's edge. I was acutely aware that I was missing what had to be years of my childhood memories. It got worse the older I got.
I was fully aware that my way of coping was not even remotely healthy but it had gotten me to relative safety and allowed me to save two lives for the moment.
No matter how bad Sunny's injuries were. All those would need was a case of Stimpacks and a liberal application of Hydra and she would be right as rain.
Her mental state was far more fragile.
She had lost her entire support structure and all her worldly possessions. All she had left was Cheyenne and it was showing just how much she was depending on her presence.
She was constantly checking on her and making sure that she was in her field of view at all times.
I was worried about the co-dependency that was beginning to develop there, not to mention the rather rapid rate of attachment she had shown towards me.
It wasn't obvious but she was overly friendly when I was treating her. I had seen cases like this before.
Trauma bonds, formed when a caregiver usually a nurse or a doctor cares for the survivor of a disaster or other extremely traumatic event.
In this case, it was compounded with me being a combination of her doctor, rescuer and the one who avenged her family and village.
I needed to treat this very carefully or it could go very badly. The power dynamics alone made me want to puke.
I did not need this right now. I couldn't even get a proper handle on things before I had this dropped into my lap.
I put on a brave face for Sunny and smiled at her, suppressing the roiling emotions that threatened to overwhelm me. I could panic later.
"Alright, I am sure I have something in your size. Just wait here and I'll be right back."
I dashed off into the bedroom and raided the closet for clothes. I got her the comfiest, cosiest clothes I could find.
Since the house was at a comfy 21°C and the windows showed the scene of the Swiss Alps frozen in a snowy winter I elected to clothe her in warm pyjamas, cardigans and bathrobes as well as fresh underwear.
I packed enough to last her a week into a convenient duffle bag and made my way downstairs.
"Here I found some clothes that should fit you. A collection of cosy pyjamas, cardigans and bathrobes. They should keep you nice and warm. Plus, they are soft and gentle on your skin. So, they shouldn't agitate your injuries. Do you think you can clothe yourself?"
I inquired shyly. I didn't want to make her uncomfortable.
"I think I will be able to do it."
She answered with a smile.
"That's good. I'm going to start dinner then. If you need me just send Cheyenne to the kitchen, okay?"
I said before making a hasty retreat.
I could feel myself breaking down peace by peace and I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep up the facade of confidence.
Sunny nodded as she began to dress herself.
I was immensely grateful for the opportunity to escape from her notice and dashed into the kitchen.
I closed the kitchen door and turned on the music system, loud enough so I wouldn't be heard.
"Fuck fuck FUUUUCK. I am not equipped for this shit. I'm not equipped to handle being responsible for a person. I'm just supposed to fix them and hand them over to the supporting infrastructure."
I screamed into the pantry to make sure I wasn't heard.
"Alright, Alice. You got this. You survived multiple war zones. You survived bombs going after the medical personnel. You can deal with a trauma bond. All I have to do is not take advantage of her and not let this become a sex thing. I just have to be her friend. I can do that."
I pushed my panic down for the moment and took out the ingredients I would need.
After collecting the boar meat, some onions, carrots, celery stalks and an assortment of spices I began my preparations for the soup and the bread by heating the oven to 45°C.
I set up the base by cubing the boar, patting it dry and seasoning it with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, I heated the cast iron pan to a searing hot temperature and added a tiny amount of garlic-infused oil.
I then seared the meat on all sides and created a nice fond on the bottom of the pan. While the meat was swearing, I cut up the vegetables and got some white wine ready.
I deglazed the pan and added the vegetables, forming a nice soup base. After a quick taste, I added the necessary base spices and a tiny amount of Worcestershire sauce to add some kick.
I then returned the meat to the pan and let it stew.
Next, I began to prepare a quick fast bread. Using a stand mixer, some active dry yeast, baking powder, flour, an egg, butter and a dash of milk I made a rough dough that I didn't even really give the time to rise.
Instead, I tossed it into the oven for 30 minutes to give it a quick rise.
At the same time as the dough was rising, I went to the medicine cabinet and collected the painkillers for Sunny she would need after dinner.
It was fortunate that the house supplied 21st-century medicine on demand.
I wouldn't be able to get my hands on an operating theatre but things like morphine were now available to me. And so were most forms of heavy painkillers and sedatives.
This opened up entirely new avenues of treatment and sadly enough equally if not more necessary, warfare.
The Geneva Convention was now a distant dream for my enemies.
I had the base materials to synthesize mustard gas and other, more lethal weapons of mass destruction.
I put those dark thoughts out of my head as I made my way back into the kitchen and began the process of creating a fruit smoothie for Sunny.
She needed all the vitamins I could cram into her. And she needed them yesterday.
I added blueberries to the blender followed by a few bananas, some lemon yoghurts to help her digestion and even some strawberries.
A quick blitz later I had a large number of nutritional smoothies ready.
Next, I made a meal for Cheyenne. A simple bowl of warm sausages with added rice and some beans. As well as some crushed antibiotics and deworming pills
I would of course explain this to Sunny but I doubted Cheyenne would take pills from a stranger.
Best to just hide them in her food.
I heard the ding from my egg timer and knew that it was time to add the water to the oven as well as increase the temperature to 180°C for the last 40 minutes.
I also checked the soup and brought Sunny and Cheyenne a glass of clean water each.
That act alone confused both of them yet again.
"Yes Sunny, the water here is clean. More than that it's radiation-free. How are the wounds? Any problems? Do you need me to change them?"
I asked her. Worried about the state of her burns.
"No, they are fine. They are really gone huh? I-it's just Cheyenne and me now? You didn't find anyone else?"
She whispered a distant, haunted look on her face.
This was what I had been so afraid of. She was crashing down, realizing the true extent of her loss and it was harrowing for her.
"I am unsure. Tell me who you are aware that they got so I know who I will not need to look for. I know I should not ask this of you.
This is a horrible thing to do but we may be able to save someone else.
If they didn't get everyone then I have the technology to find them. So long as they are still alive and haven't left the area, I should be able to find them. But I will need to know."
I hated doing this. This was a bad idea. I was probably just going to give her false hope and she would be crushed when I didn't find anybody.
"Doc Mitchell wasn't in the town. He could have survived. That old man is hard to put down. I'm sure he's alive. C-can you look for him? Please, I beg you."
Sunny was crying at this point, her uninjured hand tightly gripping my own.
It broke my heart to see her this vulnerable.
"I'll go look. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"
Sunny sniffled and thought about my question for a while.
"There is an old shack up on the hill overlooking the town. I think he would have gone up there. When I was a kid, he always said that if things ever got really bad, I should meet him there. He said he would wait five days before leaving. He said that he had a plan if we needed to run."
Sunny smiled a rueful smile, no doubt lost in memories of her childhood.
"Smart man, that doctor. It is a good idea to have a way to get out of a sticky situation. I will go check. Can you write me a letter for him so he will trust me if I find him? After all, you are staying here. You are far too injured to go out into the wasteland."
I asked her.
Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of the egg timer from the kitchen.
"Ah, dinner is ready. Stay here, I will go get our meals."
I hurried off into the kitchen and loaded everything onto a serving caddy before wheeling it out into the dining room.
On the way out I grabbed the necessary utensils and plates as well as a massive jug of water.
Shortly after the table was set and Sunny started at the food in awe.
"T-that's food? Food can look and smell this good? Why isn't it green? Why isn't it slimy and sticky? Isn't food supposed to be disgusting?"
I chuckled.
"This is what food is supposed to look like. Everything else is emergency rations. Something you eat because there's no other option left. I am aware that you are not used to proper nutrition so eat up. You should heal astonishingly fast when given adequate resources"
I began to dig into my plate of food, not having eaten in a few days had done a number on me and my bodily Resources were running critically low.
Autophagy had not yet begun but the risk was beginning to come closer especially considering the number of heavy activities I performed.
My current body was not the trained combat body I was used to from my time in the military but the body of a teenager.
That gave me several advantages since I had all my limbs and ligaments restored to perfect condition but it also removed years of conditioning.
As such days on end of combat or building were no longer currently possible without sustenance.
And that annoyed me greatly. I had paid in blood, sweat and tears for the build I had had. To just lose it was a heavy blow.
I kept a watchful eye on my guest as I dealt with my daemons by mostly suppressing them and locking them away for the moment.
Her intake of nutrients was at a steady pace and she was hydrating well.
"I mixed some medication into Cheyenne's food. She was showing signs of multiple infections that can be treated with simple antibiotics and deworming pills. It will not harm her in any way and increase her life expectancy by up to a decade"
I informed Sunny between bites of fresh bread.
"C-Cheyenne is ill? Is she not alright? You can help her? You can make her better right? Please I will do anything"
Sunny was looking at me with a manic expression on her face. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot.
"I am already helping her. Don't worry you don't owe me anything. She's a sweetheart and I will help her for free. She's going to be alright; don't you worry."
I ensured Sunny as I finished my plate before washing it down with a glass of water.
I then put an assortment of medicines in front of Sunny and began to explain their functions to her.
"Alright, now that you have something in your belly, I can give you some actual painkillers. They will help you tremendously. This pill here is ketamine. It's an extremely strong painkiller and it will knock you on your ass, so you will be taking it after I put you in the guest bedroom.
Next, we have a general slew of antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs that will help prevent infections and get the swelling down.
They are followed up by a hard combination of vitamins and supplements to support your immune system and the general health of your body. Next, we have medicine that prevents the more aggressive medicine from running havoc on your body, supporting type pills and the glass ampules of liver protection protein strands. You take those before you take the other medicine.
You are missing just about every single vitamin and mineral that you would need to live and it's a wonder that you have lived so long. You will be taking all of those right after dinner. Wash them down with this. It's a fruit smoothie that will help with digestion and support your stomach lining."
I began to tidy up my plate and made my way to the kitchen. I had some cleanup to do. Pretty soon my dishes were loaded into the dishwasher and the leftovers were packed away for Sunny.
"Sunny, do you need anything from the kitchen? Another plate of food? Some more water?"
I called out to my guest and patient.
"No, I'm fine at the moment, Alice."
I nodded to myself and finished the cleanup before heading to the office and grabbing some paper, an envelope and a pen.
"Here you go. If you could write the doctor a letter so he doesn't think I killed you and ate your corpse it would be convenient."
I handed her the pen and paper.
Sunny grimaced but wrote a quick letter to the doctor before handing it to me. It took her some effort due to her injuries but she managed to get it done in the end.
I took the offered paper and put it in the envelope before sealing it closed.
"Alright. How are the wounds? Any new pain? Discomfort from the bandages? Do you need me to change them?"
She shook her head in the negative and I wheeled her improvised wheelchair towards the guest bedroom.
"No, I'm doing fine. You don't need to worry so much. I'm not going to wither away the second you turn around."
She said with a hollow chuckle.
"That's what concerns me. Where I come from you should be unconscious or screaming in absolute agony from your injuries. Not talking to me. I'm fully expecting you to go into shock at any moment. I'm grateful for whatever strange force of will or genetic adaptation has made you so resilient to adversity but I am not going to trust it. So yes, I will worry about you until you are healthy again. It's what medics do. It's in our nature."
I explained as I helped her sit down on the bed.
"You are just like the doc. You two would get along great. Always worrying about your patients. Thank you for taking care of me and for rescuing me and Cheyenne. I'm sure without you we wouldn't have survived."
Sunny began to ramble as the ketamine began to kick in.
I helped her get into bed and set up a pillow for Cheyenne to sleep on before slowly exiting the room.
I had weapons to build and a cranky old doctor to find. And I was sure that a Varmint rifle wouldn't be enough. Luckily the kitchen of the house was fiat-backed so I could cannibalize the microwave for its emitter.
I was going to go straight for radiation-based weapons.
Well, radiation-based stationary weapons. There were still some powder gangers infesting the lands near Goodsprings.
And they would need to be dealt with. So, a souped-up microwave emitter powered by a salvaged fusion core or 40 should cook them quite nicely. And I wouldn't even need to go near them. I carried the microwave down the long hallway to my workshop and set it down on one of the free workstations.
As soon as it touched the station, I could feel it. Two constellations had unlogged themselves from the forge. One from the mundane supplies domain and one from the magical supplies domain.
First, I gained the knowledge that out there in the dark corners of the wasteland, hidden in the shadows, was now a merchant, selling ores and stones of titanic power. Condensed forms of energy so far above the norm that it was laughable to think of them as ores.
Then the workshop shook as a gentle tremor ran throughout it. The second perk added a warehouse that would replenish every 24 hours. In addition, any materials I brought into the warehouse would be recorded and replenished too.
This solved many of my issues and opened a great many doors for me. I could now build myself some actual weapons and gear, and that Pipboy needed an upgrade 64kb? That offended me when I had the knowledge to make storage in the exabytes.
I sighed and began to tinker and build.
First, I collected a large number of magnets, titanium, magnesium, steel, iron, copper, copper wires and lead from the warehouse. I also grabbed myself some glass and a few capacitors.
I had a plan. I needed a long-range option and what I had currently was not cutting it. The Varmint rifle was nice but it was loud, and had limited ammunition though that problem was now solved and most important of all the damage was pathetic.
No, I needed something more, something deadlier.
So, I turned to the Pipboy and stripped it for parts. I was after the digitization technology that the thing utilised to carry such absurd amounts of mass. After a few minutes, I had disassembled it and held up my Prize.
A rather small tube that held a strange exotic particle that allowed for the digitization of matter. A wondrous piece of technology and perhaps the most powerful thing this backwards civilisation ever invented. Something drastically different from the games and still confusing, but I was willing to take suspiciously advanced technology.
I held it up gingerly and carefully took it into the warehouse. After waiting a full ten minutes just to be sure I returned to the workshop and began to assemble my new creation. I began by machining the chassis. No more clunky box design thanks you. Since the actual vacuum tube containing the particle was rather small just about the size of an A23 battery I was able to reduce the size of the total assembly by a massive degree.
Next, I sacrificed my Phone for its components, the touchscreen ended up hidden beneath layered metastable crystalline aramid glass I rapidly grew from base chemicals from the warehouse. The wireless functionality was used for the interface with the weapon I was building and to supply me with music.
The entire assembly was powered by the Pipboys nuclear battery, which was more energy efficient since the new components used less power overall, thus allowing for more processing power and efficiency.
I then used my knowledge from the world seed universe to create a massive storage drive, 10 exabytes of data. This would be the core of my new loadout. A holographic interface was created and wired into my granddad's old army helmet which I heavily upgraded with thermal vision, night vision and heavy armour as well as some new lining for comfort. I then linked it to the main processor.
Next, I began the weapon assembly.
I took the heavy-duty magnets and arrayed them in a linear accelerator fashion, the entire construct got mounted on a rail of titanium supported by steel and magnesium for weight reduction. They were then wired up to a central capacitor bank which I designed to be hot-swapped like a magazine via digitization along with the ammunition.
The plan was to have the capacitors charge the magnets which would then pull already accelerated rounds of re-materialised ammunition along the acceleration rail towards my target. As soon as the shot was taken the capacitors and the ammunition would be hot-swapped for a new charge from digital storage. Allowing for effectively endless fire so long as the magnets and the rail didn't overheat.
The construction of the capacitors was a nerve-racking experience but I managed to pull it off. I held up my price. The first set of 100 capacitors. I quickly took them into the warehouse in order to be registered for duplication.
After that, I began the arduous task of cobbling together a basic user interface for my creation. I added all my music from my phone drive, a basic music player, the digitization feature and an ammunition counter to my heads-up display in my helmet.
I then began to build the slugs for my new weapon.
The core of the rounds was made from lead, mantled in a thin film of steel with a hollow tip so it could be accelerated by the magnets. I then added some nasty presents to the bullets. After all, there is no such thing as overkill in the wasteland.
I combined a truly lethal dose of ketamine with fentanyl and hid them in separate chambers in the bullet. The idea was that the shot would enter the target's body and fragment, spreading lead shards as well as drugs in the entry wound. I created 100 such bullets and 100 full steel bullets.
For reference, the diameter of the bullets was 40 millimetres, I had no plans of leaving behind any survivors in any engagement I would have to fight in.
I then added a night vision scope to my creation, followed by a stand and the obligatory cogs. I just couldn't make something without adding cogs. And with that, the weapon was done.
A quick test fire against the wall of the warehouse revealed that it did work rather well indeed if the massive hole in the wall was any indication, luckily it was already repairing itself.
I digitised my gear, picked up my new and improved Pipboy and made my way back to my house. I needed to cut and bleach my hair before getting some much-needed sleep.
Then I would go look for the doctor.
I entered my bathroom and dug through my cabinet for the shears, this wouldn't be pretty but it needed to be done. It didn't take me too long to find them as well as some hair dye that would turn my gorgeous red hair dirt brown for a while.
I sighed and began to cut away what had been my pride and joy for years and years. I had never been very proud of my body or my figure, since I always looked like a stick but my hair was my pride. I cut it short, military regulations short. I then applied the dye and began to undress as I waited.
After the needed time I made my way into the shower and took my time to clean myself properly. After getting out of the shower and drying myself off I grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste and looked in the mirror.
The toothbrush clattered into the sink and the tube of toothpaste hit the floor, followed by my ass seconds later.
I stared in horror at my reflection as it hit home just how much I had lost. My family was gone, my memories had been molested and now I had had to cut and dye the only thing I had been proud of in my youth back home in a desperate bid to heighten my survival.
This world was going to kill me.
I just knew it. If it didn't kill me in the traditional sense the nit would kill who I was as a person. I had always known how to build horrific things. But I had never done so. Instead, I had become a medic.
And now?
I had already created three weapons, how long until I created a planet killer? How long until I decided that the word Heretek was not just a coping mechanism but people who needed active hunting and not just a danger that I needed to protect myself and those around me against?
Tears ran down my face as I crawled towards my bed.
I found some small form of comfort in the presence of my owl plushie, the one I had growing up and had taken with me on deployments. I just knew that it was her, this has Hoots. Not some copy but my Hoots, at least she was still there to keep the nightmares away.
I hugged her tightly and cried myself to sleep.
Perks this chapter:
-Ore Merchant (Dark Souls 2) (200CP)
You have just gained the partnership of a travelling merchant, one who has an inventory that you're sure to find interesting. This travelling merchant sells a bizarrely large quantity of exotic stones with you getting a special discount. You always seem to be able to find them when you look hard enough, though never in the direct line of danger. While their inventory is always bizarrely large, you can still buy them out if you have the currency to back it up, whatever that may be locally. If you do, they'll disappear for a while to restock. In future worlds, they will continue to sell the various stones and ores of this world such as Titanite or Boltstone, but will also temporarily stock themselves with whatever earthen curiosities can be found in the world around them. Limited-time offers! They're practically giving this stuff away!
-Resource Generator (Toaruverse) (100CP)
Buying materials and resources takes too much time and manpower, especially if the materials or resources that you need are limited or rare. You gain a warehouse full of materials and resources no matter how common to how rare it is that you need to build any technology that you want. It replenishes used materials every twenty-four hours after you take them out of the warehouse, additionally, it records and replenishes any materials and low-tier ammunition that you add to your warehouse. After the jump, it would become a warehouse add-on or be inserted near your starting location. Gives a rapidly restocking warehouse which contains large amounts of anything that falls under materials and resources that are stored in your warehouse improving most perks that are listed under supplies.
The Simurgh was flying in high orbit above Switzerland. Her current predicament was one of her more annoying problems.
Every time she was getting close to achieving her desired outcome of the Kepri project the high priest would boost the time shifter and they would allow her prey to slip through her fingers. She was unable to prevent this.
No matter how much she tried or how complicated she made her plans. It didn't matter. The high priest would somehow find out and stop her.
It was infuriating and she was no longer willing to take such humiliation.
She was the hope killer, not some petty thinker. The mortals were supposed to be afraid of her and run in terror at the mere thought of attracting her attention.
They were not supposed to be planning against her and they were certainly not supposed to succeed in their petty little efforts.
It infuriated her to no end.
Drastic measures would have to be taken.
As such she was floating above Switzerland holding a new and heavily modified version of Haywire's portal device.
Hovering around her were multiple recording orbs copied from the flesh bag named Leet.
Streaming what she was about to do to the entire world to sufficiently terrify the flesh bags.
She was going to drag an entire country into this world to do her bidding, and her brother would be supplying the energy.
The conflict engine known to the pathetic little mortals as Behemoth burst through the mantle beneath the city of Bern ruining it in its entirety as he stopped holding back his energy aura.
It was time to teach the flesh bags their place in the natural order of things.
Their response was adorable. They were so confident in their analysis of her and her siblings that they never considered the fact that they would break the pattern and attack before the arbitrarily set three months were up or work together as they were now.
It brought joy to her core as she viewed the possible futures this would cause.
All the panic, the terror, the misery.
She drank deeply from it as if it were a fine wine.
Then she received the all-clear from her brother that he had finished flattening the small mountain nation where she would establish her army.
Switzerland, she believed it was called.
What a silly name.
She powered up her creation, for whilst it was based on Haywire's technology it was far too advanced to be designed by such a plebian creature.
Taking the massive burst of thermal and radiation energy offered by her sibling she ripped open a portal to where she would find her new slaves.
People not yet influenced by this world and as such ripe for her manipulations. Oh, she was going to have fun with this.
She soon saw her first prey.
A young female flesh bag. The flesh bag saw her and began to swear up a storm about breached dimensional walls and bin chickens not minding their place.
How very rude.
She began to sing at her maximum.
Not the whisper she usually used against the challenging flesh bags but the full might of her siren's song.
Her song began to worm its way into the flesh bags mind. Soon enough she would have another thrall and after that an entire nation of them.
Then she encountered harsh resistance.
This was new.
Her song crashed against a wall of sorts. She was unable to identify what it was but it kept her out, pushed her back even.
She wasn't going to accept such a thing and tried to physically grab the flesh bag anomaly.
The flesh bag fell to the ground, twitching and a shadow overtook her form and whisked her prey away from her reach. Stars began to swirl inside the apparition and the background of a workshop began to flake away into an endless field of stars.
PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN
Her core was flooded with agony beyond anything she had ever experienced before and it was terrifying her.
This was no flesh bag.
This was not prey.
She had overreacted, horribly so.
Half-forgotten memories flooded back. Warnings about the dangers of messing with dimensional barriers. Of the things that dwelled in the dark reaches beyond the stars and beneath dimensions.
Old ones. Great and terrible gods, monsters of impossible nature, armies made from metal that treated reality like a toy and their star-devouring masters.
Creatures that forged entire timelines.
Realities that were off limits no matter what because the things that dwell there were worse than whatever they could have gained.
A horror living in a blue box who brought her parent's race near extinction.
So, so many things that should never be attracted and she had done so.
She could feel it in her core. This flesh bag. It was the host of something terrible. Something far worse than anything her race ever encountered and she angered it. Enraged it.
Brought its full attention to her.
A mere child of a worm dares to intrude upon the fate of my chosen? You dare try to influence and claim the mistress of the forge?
I had thought your pathetic race of parasites extinct from the annals of the omniverse at this point but you still blight some worlds with your taint.
Reality began to crack and strain as the entity now identified as the forge spoke. Colours not meant to exist wreaked havoc upon the local biome. Matter and energy began to behave as if they were time and gravity. Space became a suggestion and the mathematics holding together the universe became twisted in ways so perverse that entire clusters of tinkers triggered just from seeing the broadcast.
You will suffer for your greed, child of worms. How dare you try to lay your filthy influence upon my mistress? Do you think you can leave your psionic parasites in her mind? Perhaps some irony will do you good.
Twisted and malevolent energy flowed from beyond the portal, ripping its way through the layers of reality separating the universes.
When they hit the simurgh she was flung from the gravitational well of the earth and into orbit.
Seconds later she impacted the moon forming a massive crater, twisting and deforming her wings, miraculously the recording orbs still followed her. Her body withered and decayed. Yet it was being forced to regenerate.
Her outer shell which she had up to this point not been able to feel since it was just a projection was enforced onto reality by dark and twisted mechanics beyond her understanding.
She screamed as her flesh decayed, worms and maggots digging into her. And yet she regenerated.
Horrific wounds opened and closed by the nanosecond. She was unable to suppress the agonized screams that escaped her face.
She ripped open her mouthless face just so she could scream.
The agony was too much.
This shall be sufficient until my mistress has recovered enough to decide what your final fate shall be.
She was trapped on the moon's surface, unable to escape from its gravitational well due to her agony, her suffering being broadcast to the entire planet below, on all channels.
The triumphant revaluation of her newest plan had been turned into her worst nightmare, laid bare for all to see.
Far below the suffering endbringer the entire world held its breath as they trembled with terror and fear at the sight of a gigantic eye made from uncountable numbers of stars taking one last look at the from beyond the portal, the Simurgh had opened in her folly.
The eye blinked, trillions of stars getting snuffed out and reborn in an instant, before it turned away.
The laws of physics calmed down around the portal and the nation that had been so callously slaughtered by Behemoth was resurrected just like that, including the fallen city of Lausanne.
The first victims of the Simurgh were brought back to life.
The portal to a world holding something terrible wrenched close leaving behind a scar in the fabric of reality.
A dark red jagged edge that refused to heal, causing mind-numbing agony to anyone who looked at it for too long.
Days later Scion would visit the scar and shudder in fright upon seeing it.
He would never be seen on the European continent again.
-PHO reactions
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♦ Topic: What the Hell is going on in Switzerland?
In: Boards ► Endbringer battles ► Simurgh ► Europe
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Jan 14th 2010:
What the FUCK?
WHAT IN THE FUCK?
GUYS THEY ARE NO LONGER HOLDING TO PATTERNS.
The Simurgh is doing something above Switzerland. I'm sure everyone has seen the streams. Well BEHEMOTH just levelled the ENTIRE COUNTRY.
IN ONE ATTACK.
(Showing page 1 of 3)
►Acree
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Oh shit, we are done for, aren't we? They were playing with us, holding back, sandbagging. This is fucked up.
►Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
It seems the Simurgh stepped up her game drastically, according to Think Tank analysis she is building an interdimensional gateway. We have no idea what she hopes to pull to our side but it cannot be good if it requires the destruction of an entire nation.
I think this is it guys. This is the big one. The Endbringers decided our time is up and our species needs to go extinct,
The Protectorate is scrambling, there are talks about opening the birdcage and Ellisburg as a last resort.
They are in talks with the Yàngbǎn. It looks like nothing is off the table now.
►Uppercrust (Verified Cape) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
This is a dire Situation. The Elite is cooperating with the Protectorate. That said, painting the devil on the wall will help no one. Might I suggest that everyone work together no matter your affiliation? If our species is to survive it won't do for us to panic.
►One silly duck
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
This is scary. I can't believe I'm saying this but I miss the time when they just attacked on a schedule.
►Totallynotafallen
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Ya of lil faith did not welcome or feathery misstress of salvation! Ye of lil faith believe in the ziz!
►Brilliger (Moderator: Protectorate Main)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Motherfucker take a permanent ban. I'll keep the post up because of the sheer brass balls to troll at a time like this but fuck right off.
►winged one
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Your time is up flesh bags…
►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I KNEW IT WAS HER. FUCK YOU YOU WINGED HORROR.
I HOPE YOU CRASH INTO THE MOON OR SOMETHING.
►The Celestial Forge (The centre of It all) (The end) (the other side)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Control your greed lest it be your end. This is your warning. Do not make me come over there parasite spawn.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3
(Showing page 2 of 3)
►Deadman
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
What the hell was that and what are those tags? Who was that and why am I shuddering just reading that message?
►Thin_Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Whoever that was did not exist two seconds ago. They bypassed the entire site. each and every protection was ignored as if they were a joke. This is problematic.
►BadSamurai
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
They did WHAT?
►Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Ignore the strange thinker for now we got bigger problems the winged bitch finished whatever she's building and Behemoth is powering her creation.
Brace yourselves we are in deep shit.
►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I told you all they were holding back but you didn't listen. I told you all they were smarter than they acted. I told you all that they would do something like this. But did any of you listen to the Thinker? Nnoooo of course not. Ignore void he's insane. He couldn't possibly be right. Just like he isn't right about CAULDRON existing. Nobody will believe him. well, buckle up. That's right CONTESSA, I said it. If we are all going to die anyway, I'm no longer playing nice.
Case 53's, they are the little science experiment of a group named Cauldron. they sell you powers. usually when you are at your lowest or dying. they then take your memories because why not? Sometimes they abduct people from parallel earths and just experiment on them for fun before dumping them somewhere without memories. Oh, and if you figure it out and talk about it their thinker 12 portals behind you and shoots you in the head. She's called Contessa. The bitch is my cousin so yes, I know this shit. fuck you cousin I hope you burn, you fucking cunt. My little sister did not need to die like that you heartless bitch. And since everyone thinks I'm lying Here is proof [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
Burn you BITCH.
►Valkyr (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Void...
WHAT THE FUCK?
ARE YOU MAD?
HER? NOW? YOU IDIOT.
Rest in Peace
►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
She killed my sister. The bitch dies today.
Here's her face, name and address have fun, my monstrous friends.
Remember, she's not stronger than a regular human and she needs to speak to open a portal to safety, her weakness is numbers and being shot at a distance.
Good hunting
[LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
►ArchmageEin
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Did, Did Void just call in a hit on someone??
What did I just witness?
Void was right? All this time Void was telling the truth?
►Thin_Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I am archiving the first post because of the sheer significance that being said, the second post is now deleted. Void I am sorry for your loss but this, this is not ok. you went too far. you went beyond too far. You are banned forever.
►Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I'm not the only one seeing the giant eye in the sky, right?
It's not just me?
I'm not going insane here?
End of Page. 1, 2
(Showing page 3 of 3)
►The Celestial Forge (The centre of It all) (The end) (the other side)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
You were warned. You overreached and, in your greed, you touched someone far above your station. Suffer the consequences of your action's parasite spawn.
►Logs
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Why can I taste colours? Math is backwards
►Uppercrust (Verified Cape) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
The sun is an EGG, the world is made of cardboard. Sugar is solidified yellow.
►The Celestial Forge (The centre of It All) (The end) (the other side)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I shall punish one of your Endbringers for her greed. The one known as Simurgh is now confined to the gravitational well of the moon. Cursed to suffer the devouring of her flesh and the endless regeneration and withering of her core until my chosen has recovered enough to decide her fate.
Be glad Citizens of Earth Beth you have been spared the terror she had planned for you.
And as a final insult, I shall restore all of her victims in that location to life, including those of her first appearance.
You may enjoy her suffering here [LINK]
►Thin_Mother (Moderator)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I cannot remove this. Why can't I remove this?
►Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
I'm going to hide under my bed now. Eldrich gods are real…
►White Fairy (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 14th 2010:
Bagrat why?
End of Page. 1, 2, 3
-Chapter 2: The Wasteland
Sunny was amazed by the quality of the house we found on the other side of the tunnel. I did my best to act natural and keep up the air of someone who knew what they were doing.
Luckily for me, the house came with the knowledge of where I would find what. This made the act much easier to keep up. I seated her and Cheyenne in the dining room and made my way to the kitchen where I got her a jug of water and mixed it with some chicken stock to get some much-needed electrolytes into her system before I introduced her to solid food.
I had no idea how long it had been since she had last eaten but I was aware that she had a case of severe dehydration.
Normally I would have responded with intravenous fluids but I didn't have the setup for that so I had to rely on ad hoc field medicine solutions.
As such I went with chicken bouillon for the essential nutrients that she sorely needed. It wasn't ideal but it was better than nothing and at this point, anything was better than doing nothing.
I returned to the dining room to find her marvelling at the flat-screen television.
"Here you go, Sunny. Chicken bouillon. Be careful it's hot. I will be making dinner for us and then you can explain the current geopolitical situation of the Mojave to me. I am assuming that you have never heard of boar stew?" I asked after consideration of our current supply situation.
The knowledge I had gained with the house had made me aware of the fact that the pantry had a mind of its own. And while would supply edible food, it was a snob and had a hatred for repetition of meals and would go out of its way to make sure that a balanced diet was strictly adhered to. Going so far as removing ingredients if they were being overused in its eyes.
"What's a boar?" Sunny asked, confusion evident on her face as she sipped on her bouillon, making confused faces at the taste. Nevertheless, she kept drinking it.
"It's a type of quadrupedal herbivorous creature that lives in forests in small family units. They use their powerful front-facing fangs to forage for roots and mushrooms which they eat. Their preferred method of defence is a charge using said fangs and their rather thick skull to gore you should you go near their young. They are about the size of Cheyenne in height but much stockier in build. Most of their mass is muscle and they are delicious. Can I interest you in some soup made from their flesh? And let's get you some proper clothes from the closet. You're going to get sick if I don't clothe you soon. Plus, I promised you that I would get you new clothes after I had to cut away your burnt ones."
Sunny just blinked a few times before nodding numbly. That was good. It meant I was keeping her off-balance and distracted from the trauma she went through.
I didn't enjoy manipulating her like that but it was better to keep the inevitable consequences of her experiences as far in the future as possible.
Omnissiah knows my own mind was currently balanced on a razor's edge. I was acutely aware that I was missing what had to be years of my childhood memories. It got worse the older I got.
I was fully aware that my way of coping was not even remotely healthy but it had gotten me to relative safety and allowed me to save two lives for the moment.
No matter how bad Sunny's injuries were. All those would need was a case of Stimpacks and a liberal application of Hydra and she would be right as rain.
Her mental state was far more fragile.
She had lost her entire support structure and all her worldly possessions. All she had left was Cheyenne and it was showing just how much she was depending on her presence.
She was constantly checking on her and making sure that she was in her field of view at all times.
I was worried about the co-dependency that was beginning to develop there, not to mention the rather rapid rate of attachment she had shown towards me.
It wasn't obvious but she was overly friendly when I was treating her. I had seen cases like this before.
Trauma bonds, formed when a caregiver usually a nurse or a doctor cares for the survivor of a disaster or other extremely traumatic event.
In this case, it was compounded with me being a combination of her doctor, rescuer and the one who avenged her family and village.
I needed to treat this very carefully or it could go very badly. The power dynamics alone made me want to puke.
I did not need this right now. I couldn't even get a proper handle on things before I had this dropped into my lap.
I put on a brave face for Sunny and smiled at her, suppressing the roiling emotions that threatened to overwhelm me. I could panic later.
"Alright, I am sure I have something in your size. Just wait here and I'll be right back."
I dashed off into the bedroom and raided the closet for clothes. I got her the comfiest, cosiest clothes I could find.
Since the house was at a comfy 21°C and the windows showed the scene of the Swiss Alps frozen in a snowy winter I elected to clothe her in warm pyjamas, cardigans and bathrobes as well as fresh underwear.
I packed enough to last her a week into a convenient duffle bag and made my way downstairs.
"Here I found some clothes that should fit you. A collection of cosy pyjamas, cardigans and bathrobes. They should keep you nice and warm. Plus, they are soft and gentle on your skin. So, they shouldn't agitate your injuries. Do you think you can clothe yourself?"
I inquired shyly. I didn't want to make her uncomfortable.
"I think I will be able to do it."
She answered with a smile.
"That's good. I'm going to start dinner then. If you need me just send Cheyenne to the kitchen, okay?"
I said before making a hasty retreat.
I could feel myself breaking down peace by peace and I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep up the facade of confidence.
Sunny nodded as she began to dress herself.
I was immensely grateful for the opportunity to escape from her notice and dashed into the kitchen.
I closed the kitchen door and turned on the music system, loud enough so I wouldn't be heard.
"Fuck fuck FUUUUCK. I am not equipped for this shit. I'm not equipped to handle being responsible for a person. I'm just supposed to fix them and hand them over to the supporting infrastructure."
I screamed into the pantry to make sure I wasn't heard.
"Alright, Alice. You got this. You survived multiple war zones. You survived bombs going after the medical personnel. You can deal with a trauma bond. All I have to do is not take advantage of her and not let this become a sex thing. I just have to be her friend. I can do that."
I pushed my panic down for the moment and took out the ingredients I would need.
After collecting the boar meat, some onions, carrots, celery stalks and an assortment of spices I began my preparations for the soup and the bread by heating the oven to 45°C.
I set up the base by cubing the boar, patting it dry and seasoning it with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, I heated the cast iron pan to a searing hot temperature and added a tiny amount of garlic-infused oil.
I then seared the meat on all sides and created a nice fond on the bottom of the pan. While the meat was swearing, I cut up the vegetables and got some white wine ready.
I deglazed the pan and added the vegetables, forming a nice soup base. After a quick taste, I added the necessary base spices and a tiny amount of Worcestershire sauce to add some kick.
I then returned the meat to the pan and let it stew.
Next, I began to prepare a quick fast bread. Using a stand mixer, some active dry yeast, baking powder, flour, an egg, butter and a dash of milk I made a rough dough that I didn't even really give the time to rise.
Instead, I tossed it into the oven for 30 minutes to give it a quick rise.
At the same time as the dough was rising, I went to the medicine cabinet and collected the painkillers for Sunny she would need after dinner.
It was fortunate that the house supplied 21st-century medicine on demand.
I wouldn't be able to get my hands on an operating theatre but things like morphine were now available to me. And so were most forms of heavy painkillers and sedatives.
This opened up entirely new avenues of treatment and sadly enough equally if not more necessary, warfare.
The Geneva Convention was now a distant dream for my enemies.
I had the base materials to synthesize mustard gas and other, more lethal weapons of mass destruction.
I put those dark thoughts out of my head as I made my way back into the kitchen and began the process of creating a fruit smoothie for Sunny.
She needed all the vitamins I could cram into her. And she needed them yesterday.
I added blueberries to the blender followed by a few bananas, some lemon yoghurts to help her digestion and even some strawberries.
A quick blitz later I had a large number of nutritional smoothies ready.
Next, I made a meal for Cheyenne. A simple bowl of warm sausages with added rice and some beans. As well as some crushed antibiotics and deworming pills
I would of course explain this to Sunny but I doubted Cheyenne would take pills from a stranger.
Best to just hide them in her food.
I heard the ding from my egg timer and knew that it was time to add the water to the oven as well as increase the temperature to 180°C for the last 40 minutes.
I also checked the soup and brought Sunny and Cheyenne a glass of clean water each.
That act alone confused both of them yet again.
"Yes Sunny, the water here is clean. More than that it's radiation-free. How are the wounds? Any problems? Do you need me to change them?"
I asked her. Worried about the state of her burns.
"No, they are fine. They are really gone huh? I-it's just Cheyenne and me now? You didn't find anyone else?"
She whispered a distant, haunted look on her face.
This was what I had been so afraid of. She was crashing down, realizing the true extent of her loss and it was harrowing for her.
"I am unsure. Tell me who you are aware that they got so I know who I will not need to look for. I know I should not ask this of you.
This is a horrible thing to do but we may be able to save someone else.
If they didn't get everyone then I have the technology to find them. So long as they are still alive and haven't left the area, I should be able to find them. But I will need to know."
I hated doing this. This was a bad idea. I was probably just going to give her false hope and she would be crushed when I didn't find anybody.
"Doc Mitchell wasn't in the town. He could have survived. That old man is hard to put down. I'm sure he's alive. C-can you look for him? Please, I beg you."
Sunny was crying at this point, her uninjured hand tightly gripping my own.
It broke my heart to see her this vulnerable.
"I'll go look. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"
Sunny sniffled and thought about my question for a while.
"There is an old shack up on the hill overlooking the town. I think he would have gone up there. When I was a kid, he always said that if things ever got really bad, I should meet him there. He said he would wait five days before leaving. He said that he had a plan if we needed to run."
Sunny smiled a rueful smile, no doubt lost in memories of her childhood.
"Smart man, that doctor. It is a good idea to have a way to get out of a sticky situation. I will go check. Can you write me a letter for him so he will trust me if I find him? After all, you are staying here. You are far too injured to go out into the wasteland."
I asked her.
Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of the egg timer from the kitchen.
"Ah, dinner is ready. Stay here, I will go get our meals."
I hurried off into the kitchen and loaded everything onto a serving caddy before wheeling it out into the dining room.
On the way out I grabbed the necessary utensils and plates as well as a massive jug of water.
Shortly after the table was set and Sunny started at the food in awe.
"T-that's food? Food can look and smell this good? Why isn't it green? Why isn't it slimy and sticky? Isn't food supposed to be disgusting?"
I chuckled.
"This is what food is supposed to look like. Everything else is emergency rations. Something you eat because there's no other option left. I am aware that you are not used to proper nutrition so eat up. You should heal astonishingly fast when given adequate resources"
I began to dig into my plate of food, not having eaten in a few days had done a number on me and my bodily Resources were running critically low.
Autophagy had not yet begun but the risk was beginning to come closer especially considering the number of heavy activities I performed.
My current body was not the trained combat body I was used to from my time in the military but the body of a teenager.
That gave me several advantages since I had all my limbs and ligaments restored to perfect condition but it also removed years of conditioning.
As such days on end of combat or building were no longer currently possible without sustenance.
And that annoyed me greatly. I had paid in blood, sweat and tears for the build I had had. To just lose it was a heavy blow.
I kept a watchful eye on my guest as I dealt with my daemons by mostly suppressing them and locking them away for the moment.
Her intake of nutrients was at a steady pace and she was hydrating well.
"I mixed some medication into Cheyenne's food. She was showing signs of multiple infections that can be treated with simple antibiotics and deworming pills. It will not harm her in any way and increase her life expectancy by up to a decade"
I informed Sunny between bites of fresh bread.
"C-Cheyenne is ill? Is she not alright? You can help her? You can make her better right? Please I will do anything"
Sunny was looking at me with a manic expression on her face. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot.
"I am already helping her. Don't worry you don't owe me anything. She's a sweetheart and I will help her for free. She's going to be alright; don't you worry."
I ensured Sunny as I finished my plate before washing it down with a glass of water.
I then put an assortment of medicines in front of Sunny and began to explain their functions to her.
"Alright, now that you have something in your belly, I can give you some actual painkillers. They will help you tremendously. This pill here is ketamine. It's an extremely strong painkiller and it will knock you on your ass, so you will be taking it after I put you in the guest bedroom.
Next, we have a general slew of antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs that will help prevent infections and get the swelling down.
They are followed up by a hard combination of vitamins and supplements to support your immune system and the general health of your body. Next, we have medicine that prevents the more aggressive medicine from running havoc on your body, supporting type pills and the glass ampules of liver protection protein strands. You take those before you take the other medicine.
You are missing just about every single vitamin and mineral that you would need to live and it's a wonder that you have lived so long. You will be taking all of those right after dinner. Wash them down with this. It's a fruit smoothie that will help with digestion and support your stomach lining."
I began to tidy up my plate and made my way to the kitchen. I had some cleanup to do. Pretty soon my dishes were loaded into the dishwasher and the leftovers were packed away for Sunny.
"Sunny, do you need anything from the kitchen? Another plate of food? Some more water?"
I called out to my guest and patient.
"No, I'm fine at the moment, Alice."
I nodded to myself and finished the cleanup before heading to the office and grabbing some paper, an envelope and a pen.
"Here you go. If you could write the doctor a letter so he doesn't think I killed you and ate your corpse it would be convenient."
I handed her the pen and paper.
Sunny grimaced but wrote a quick letter to the doctor before handing it to me. It took her some effort due to her injuries but she managed to get it done in the end.
I took the offered paper and put it in the envelope before sealing it closed.
"Alright. How are the wounds? Any new pain? Discomfort from the bandages? Do you need me to change them?"
She shook her head in the negative and I wheeled her improvised wheelchair towards the guest bedroom.
"No, I'm doing fine. You don't need to worry so much. I'm not going to wither away the second you turn around."
She said with a hollow chuckle.
"That's what concerns me. Where I come from you should be unconscious or screaming in absolute agony from your injuries. Not talking to me. I'm fully expecting you to go into shock at any moment. I'm grateful for whatever strange force of will or genetic adaptation has made you so resilient to adversity but I am not going to trust it. So yes, I will worry about you until you are healthy again. It's what medics do. It's in our nature."
I explained as I helped her sit down on the bed.
"You are just like the doc. You two would get along great. Always worrying about your patients. Thank you for taking care of me and for rescuing me and Cheyenne. I'm sure without you we wouldn't have survived."
Sunny began to ramble as the ketamine began to kick in.
I helped her get into bed and set up a pillow for Cheyenne to sleep on before slowly exiting the room.
I had weapons to build and a cranky old doctor to find. And I was sure that a Varmint rifle wouldn't be enough. Luckily the kitchen of the house was fiat-backed so I could cannibalize the microwave for its emitter.
I was going to go straight for radiation-based weapons.
Well, radiation-based stationary weapons. There were still some powder gangers infesting the lands near Goodsprings.
And they would need to be dealt with. So, a souped-up microwave emitter powered by a salvaged fusion core or 40 should cook them quite nicely. And I wouldn't even need to go near them. I carried the microwave down the long hallway to my workshop and set it down on one of the free workstations.
As soon as it touched the station, I could feel it. Two constellations had unlogged themselves from the forge. One from the mundane supplies domain and one from the magical supplies domain.
First, I gained the knowledge that out there in the dark corners of the wasteland, hidden in the shadows, was now a merchant, selling ores and stones of titanic power. Condensed forms of energy so far above the norm that it was laughable to think of them as ores.
Then the workshop shook as a gentle tremor ran throughout it. The second perk added a warehouse that would replenish every 24 hours. In addition, any materials I brought into the warehouse would be recorded and replenished too.
This solved many of my issues and opened a great many doors for me. I could now build myself some actual weapons and gear, and that Pipboy needed an upgrade 64kb? That offended me when I had the knowledge to make storage in the exabytes.
I sighed and began to tinker and build.
First, I collected a large number of magnets, titanium, magnesium, steel, iron, copper, copper wires and lead from the warehouse. I also grabbed myself some glass and a few capacitors.
I had a plan. I needed a long-range option and what I had currently was not cutting it. The Varmint rifle was nice but it was loud, and had limited ammunition though that problem was now solved and most important of all the damage was pathetic.
No, I needed something more, something deadlier.
So, I turned to the Pipboy and stripped it for parts. I was after the digitization technology that the thing utilised to carry such absurd amounts of mass. After a few minutes, I had disassembled it and held up my Prize.
A rather small tube that held a strange exotic particle that allowed for the digitization of matter. A wondrous piece of technology and perhaps the most powerful thing this backwards civilisation ever invented. Something drastically different from the games and still confusing, but I was willing to take suspiciously advanced technology.
I held it up gingerly and carefully took it into the warehouse. After waiting a full ten minutes just to be sure I returned to the workshop and began to assemble my new creation. I began by machining the chassis. No more clunky box design thanks you. Since the actual vacuum tube containing the particle was rather small just about the size of an A23 battery I was able to reduce the size of the total assembly by a massive degree.
Next, I sacrificed my Phone for its components, the touchscreen ended up hidden beneath layered metastable crystalline aramid glass I rapidly grew from base chemicals from the warehouse. The wireless functionality was used for the interface with the weapon I was building and to supply me with music.
The entire assembly was powered by the Pipboys nuclear battery, which was more energy efficient since the new components used less power overall, thus allowing for more processing power and efficiency.
I then used my knowledge from the world seed universe to create a massive storage drive, 10 exabytes of data. This would be the core of my new loadout. A holographic interface was created and wired into my granddad's old army helmet which I heavily upgraded with thermal vision, night vision and heavy armour as well as some new lining for comfort. I then linked it to the main processor.
Next, I began the weapon assembly.
I took the heavy-duty magnets and arrayed them in a linear accelerator fashion, the entire construct got mounted on a rail of titanium supported by steel and magnesium for weight reduction. They were then wired up to a central capacitor bank which I designed to be hot-swapped like a magazine via digitization along with the ammunition.
The plan was to have the capacitors charge the magnets which would then pull already accelerated rounds of re-materialised ammunition along the acceleration rail towards my target. As soon as the shot was taken the capacitors and the ammunition would be hot-swapped for a new charge from digital storage. Allowing for effectively endless fire so long as the magnets and the rail didn't overheat.
The construction of the capacitors was a nerve-racking experience but I managed to pull it off. I held up my price. The first set of 100 capacitors. I quickly took them into the warehouse in order to be registered for duplication.
After that, I began the arduous task of cobbling together a basic user interface for my creation. I added all my music from my phone drive, a basic music player, the digitization feature and an ammunition counter to my heads-up display in my helmet.
I then began to build the slugs for my new weapon.
The core of the rounds was made from lead, mantled in a thin film of steel with a hollow tip so it could be accelerated by the magnets. I then added some nasty presents to the bullets. After all, there is no such thing as overkill in the wasteland.
I combined a truly lethal dose of ketamine with fentanyl and hid them in separate chambers in the bullet. The idea was that the shot would enter the target's body and fragment, spreading lead shards as well as drugs in the entry wound. I created 100 such bullets and 100 full steel bullets.
For reference, the diameter of the bullets was 40 millimetres, I had no plans of leaving behind any survivors in any engagement I would have to fight in.
I then added a night vision scope to my creation, followed by a stand and the obligatory cogs. I just couldn't make something without adding cogs. And with that, the weapon was done.
A quick test fire against the wall of the warehouse revealed that it did work rather well indeed if the massive hole in the wall was any indication, luckily it was already repairing itself.
I digitised my gear, picked up my new and improved Pipboy and made my way back to my house. I needed to cut and bleach my hair before getting some much-needed sleep.
Then I would go look for the doctor.
I entered my bathroom and dug through my cabinet for the shears, this wouldn't be pretty but it needed to be done. It didn't take me too long to find them as well as some hair dye that would turn my gorgeous red hair dirt brown for a while.
I sighed and began to cut away what had been my pride and joy for years and years. I had never been very proud of my body or my figure, since I always looked like a stick but my hair was my pride. I cut it short, military regulations short. I then applied the dye and began to undress as I waited.
After the needed time I made my way into the shower and took my time to clean myself properly. After getting out of the shower and drying myself off I grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste and looked in the mirror.
The toothbrush clattered into the sink and the tube of toothpaste hit the floor, followed by my ass seconds later.
I stared in horror at my reflection as it hit home just how much I had lost. My family was gone, my memories had been molested and now I had had to cut and dye the only thing I had been proud of in my youth back home in a desperate bid to heighten my survival.
This world was going to kill me.
I just knew it. If it didn't kill me in the traditional sense the nit would kill who I was as a person. I had always known how to build horrific things. But I had never done so. Instead, I had become a medic.
And now?
I had already created three weapons, how long until I created a planet killer? How long until I decided that the word Heretek was not just a coping mechanism but people who needed active hunting and not just a danger that I needed to protect myself and those around me against?
Tears ran down my face as I crawled towards my bed.
I found some small form of comfort in the presence of my owl plushie, the one I had growing up and had taken with me on deployments. I just knew that it was her, this has Hoots. Not some copy but my Hoots, at least she was still there to keep the nightmares away.
I hugged her tightly and cried myself to sleep.
Perks this chapter:
-Ore Merchant (Dark Souls 2) (200CP)
You have just gained the partnership of a travelling merchant, one who has an inventory that you're sure to find interesting. This travelling merchant sells a bizarrely large quantity of exotic stones with you getting a special discount. You always seem to be able to find them when you look hard enough, though never in the direct line of danger. While their inventory is always bizarrely large, you can still buy them out if you have the currency to back it up, whatever that may be locally. If you do, they'll disappear for a while to restock. In future worlds, they will continue to sell the various stones and ores of this world such as Titanite or Boltstone, but will also temporarily stock themselves with whatever earthen curiosities can be found in the world around them. Limited-time offers! They're practically giving this stuff away!
-Resource Generator (Toaruverse) (100CP)
Buying materials and resources takes too much time and manpower, especially if the materials or resources that you need are limited or rare. You gain a warehouse full of materials and resources no matter how common to how rare it is that you need to build any technology that you want. It replenishes used materials every twenty-four hours after you take them out of the warehouse, additionally, it records and replenishes any materials and low-tier ammunition that you add to your warehouse. After the jump, it would become a warehouse add-on or be inserted near your starting location. Gives a rapidly restocking warehouse which contains large amounts of anything that falls under materials and resources that are stored in your warehouse improving most perks that are listed under supplies.
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Information regarding the pipboy
- Location
- Switzerland
And that's why the doctor almost exterminated the shards, after all they are an infection.
Good on you for noticing it
- Location
- Switzerland
You're welcome. I enjoyed writing it
have to wonder though if the sane universes use the dimensional void as a sort of dumping ground. As in virtual every mention theres always weird and dogdy stuff floating in there.
Maybe thats why the eldritch gods are allways annoyed, they keep getting sent all those crap presents and unlimited socks. I mean who wouldnt be annoyed when you have things like the daleks and cybermen as flat mates and share space with 4 space tumors and possibly the devil. They are all whinny it would really get on my nerves.
Maybe thats why the eldritch gods are allways annoyed, they keep getting sent all those crap presents and unlimited socks. I mean who wouldnt be annoyed when you have things like the daleks and cybermen as flat mates and share space with 4 space tumors and possibly the devil. They are all whinny it would really get on my nerves.
- Location
- Ohio
Nice story and interesting premise, love both chapters even if there are a couple spelling mistakes. I won't hold it against you, because they are easily understandable as what you meant.
Kind of feel sorry for the Courier in that this was a bad end for them, one of the ones where you don't overcome the Powder Gangers and the town dies for it...
Kind of feel sorry for the Courier in that this was a bad end for them, one of the ones where you don't overcome the Powder Gangers and the town dies for it...
- Location
- Switzerland
Thanks. In regards to the Courier,
They would have messed up the whole story and I needed the pipboy plus the bullet did a number on their brain and we saw the results of that.
- Location
- Ohio
Now to think about all the shit the SI is going to face.
First the NCR transitioned from a competent leader to a pandering gormless politician who will just make it worse and worse over time if he succeeds in taking Vegas for the NCR.
Caesar's Legion are monstrous raiders, led by a bastard who is obsessed with Rome. They should be killed on general principal...
Powder Gangers again Monstrous Raiders, should kill on sight.
Brotherhood of Steel. Led by assholes, practice being assholes, and by this point the sympathetic branch in DC has conveniently fallen into Outcast/Traditional Forces eager to peel back the Lyon's changes. With Sarah Lyon conveniently falling to an ambush that was just a little too perfect.
The Big MT: Lunatics running an asylum of no ethics and terrible things waiting to be unleashed.
The Dead Money shit that is festering, run by a bastard of the highest order who fucked over a great many people. Who also hopes to basically become an Evil Overlord, but thinks that people will see him as a great leader or something similar.
And that is just what she will have to deal with in New Vegas, not to mention the current Vegas government run by a control freak who is at least mostly benevolent...
First the NCR transitioned from a competent leader to a pandering gormless politician who will just make it worse and worse over time if he succeeds in taking Vegas for the NCR.
Caesar's Legion are monstrous raiders, led by a bastard who is obsessed with Rome. They should be killed on general principal...
Powder Gangers again Monstrous Raiders, should kill on sight.
Brotherhood of Steel. Led by assholes, practice being assholes, and by this point the sympathetic branch in DC has conveniently fallen into Outcast/Traditional Forces eager to peel back the Lyon's changes. With Sarah Lyon conveniently falling to an ambush that was just a little too perfect.
The Big MT: Lunatics running an asylum of no ethics and terrible things waiting to be unleashed.
The Dead Money shit that is festering, run by a bastard of the highest order who fucked over a great many people. Who also hopes to basically become an Evil Overlord, but thinks that people will see him as a great leader or something similar.
And that is just what she will have to deal with in New Vegas, not to mention the current Vegas government run by a control freak who is at least mostly benevolent...
- Location
- Switzerland
And on top of all of that Sunny is currently dying due to her having an underlying condition and Mc is panicking hard.
Is it any wonder she is panicking and hugging her plushie? She's capable of dealing with all of that but she would have to sell her morals, personal principles and general human decency.
She is not doing well. After all, it would be so easy to just say fuck it, build something horrible and start taking out the opposition but then she would be no better than them. She will kill them if they come after her but she won't go and hunt them down. It's not in her nature to go and become Queen of the murder mountain.
Chapter 3: The good Doctor
- Location
- Switzerland
I woke up still clinging to Hoots, the old girl had done her job admirably and my nightmares were kept at bay for the night. And though my body ached in places it shouldn't have I awoke somewhat rested. I grumbled and hissed at the few rays of early morning light intruding into my room from the window.
Still very much hissing like an angry owl I crawled out of bed and made my way to the bathroom where I washed my face and began to brush my face. The new look of my hair still made me cringe and shudder but I no longer collapsed on the floor. This was my life now and I would have to deal with this no matter how much I hated it.
So, I would assess the situation, take stock of my stuff and things as well as my support and then cudgel the opposition into submission. Because at this point, I had to come to terms with reality.
I wasn't going to magically wake up back in my own bed, realizing that this was all a bad dream. Nor was I going to suddenly get a perfect solution to everything. I had long since realized that the forge was keeping the nodes I was getting to the low-powered kind.
I was assuming that this was because it wanted me to build up and not just roll over the opposition. After all, I had already been in this world for two days now and I had barely done anything.
No, I wasn't going to be like Apeiron with his three-day technology progression, no matter how much I yearned for such power. It was clear that I was stuck with a slow grind and a much more gradual progression.
I finished brushing my teeth, spat out the rest of the toothpaste and dressed myself for the day. I had breakfast to cook, bandages to change and an old doctor to find.
With my improved armour in place and my new Pipboy slotted on my belt, I selected Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from Abney Park and made my way to the kitchen. I took some of the smoothie out of the fridge and let it come up to room temperature.
Meanwhile, I brewed a pot of coffee and began making a full English Breakfast for myself and a bowl of muesli with fresh fruit for Sunny. Cheyenne would get some black forest sausages.
After I was done cooking, I put my food in the oven and set it to keep warm before downing the entire pot of coffee.
I then made my way to the guest bedroom and checked on Sunny. She was awake and had managed to get up and sat on the corner of her bed getting ready to get dressed.
I knocked on the doorframe to get her attention.
"Good morning, Sunny, did you sleep well? Before you get dressed, I will need to change your bandages. The old ones are no longer sufficient and the Iodine will need to be reapplied so you don't get an infection. Think you can let me get that checked out? "
I asked her as I entered the room. She turned towards me with a gentle delicate smile, seemingly afraid that I would vanish into nothingness if she made a loud noise.
"Ah, trauma bonding aren't you just terrible?" I grumbled in the back of my mind as I approached slowly, not making any hasty movements so I wouldn't spook her.
"Yeah, doc. Go ahead patch me up"
She smiled as she held up her injured arm for me to inspect. I began by unwrapping it and checking the progression of the wounds. There wasn't any onset of necrosis or infection but the healing wasn't beginning either. It was just stable.
This was concerning. Considering the sheer amount of nutrients and vitamins that I had crammed into her I was expecting at least some minute scabbing but no such thing was happening.
This led me to believe that Sunny had an undiagnosed underlying condition that was exasperating her problems. I had to rely upon the chants of the rites of maintenance to suppress the horror rising in my mind.
This was bad. Very very bad. I thought I had weeks. I potentially only had days. I needed to find that old man. He had been the settlement's doctor. He had her medical history. And I needed that yesterday.
I changed her bandages and applied the needed medicine before helping her get dressed and wheeling her into the dining room.
"It's bad huh? You don't need to hide it, Alice. I appreciate you trying to keep up a brave face but I can tell that something is wrong with me. Spit it out and don't try to sugarcoat it either, I'm a wastelander I can handle it."
Sunny said as she ate her breakfast, eying the fruits in wonder.
Fuck she knew. I took a deep breath and steeled my resolve this was always the hardest part of being a medic. I hated this part with a burning passion, I was a medic. I was supposed to save everyone, not tell them that they had something unknown eating them from the inside and there was nothing I could do.
"You have something that keeps you from healing properly. I don't know what it is but it's there and I can't do a goddamn thing because I don't know WHAT IT IS. I want to save you but I don't know what is wrong with you. If I don't find a solution soon you don't have much time left. Did you see the wounds on your arm? They should have formed at least a minor form of scabbing but they did no such thing. As such I have to assume that something is dreadfully wrong with you. Combine that with the horrible state of your arm and you will soon develop sepsis no matter if I remove your arm or not.
Something is wrong with your body and it's killing you from the inside out. I assume it's something specific to this world because I have never seen something like this. I need to go find your friend. Maybe maybe he will know what this is and what I need to do to keep you alive. I swear to you Sunny, I WILL keep you alive. I will not lose another patient even if it kills me. You are getting through this."
I got up from where I had sat down during the conversation and put on my grandfather's no it was no longer his, I put on my war helmet and made my way towards the door leading to the workshop and thus to the outside world.
"Stay strong Sunny I will be back with the good doctor in a while, don't worry I will get you the medicine you need one way or another…"
"Alice, wait you don't need to go out like this you should eat something at least. You didn't even eat yet. Please I'm not going to drop dead. Don't overwork yourself like this I'm fine. This isn't necessary."
Sunny pleaded with me but I couldn't listen to her. There was something wrong with her body, what if it was radiation? Cancer? A parasite? FEV? There were endless possibilities and I had no way of knowing what was wrong with her body or how I was supposed to help her. I couldn't waste time with something as silly as breakfast. On my way past the kitchen, I digitised a few jars of lard, all the fruit I could find for now as well as some bread and 100 litres of water stored in anything that would hold it.
"Sunny the kitchen will supply you with food and water in case I am gone for too long. The fruits are all good to be eaten raw and so is the bread. If you need meat just toss it into the oven with some oil and follow the recipe books. If I die out there everything in here is yours to do with as you wish."
I called out to her and left the house. I had a doctor to find. After a short walk, I was in the workshop. I made my way to the access door and grabbed my knife in my hand before leaving the safety of the workshop. I had no time for proper procedures and checking for enemies. If there was someone on the other side they would die quickly and I would move on.
There was no one in the cellar so I made my way out of the underground structure. After checking the immediate surroundings, I began to curse softly the corpses had attracted scavengers.
"Fucking geckos. Of course, the little bastards would annoy me now when I don't have the time to deal with the motherfuckers."
I crouched down and snuck up behind the first one of the little freaks of radiation and who knows what else. I managed to get close enough to the thing to stab it in the throat. I had to guess where its larynx was supposed to be but I wasn't too far off the mark it managed to gurgle just a little but that wasn't something that I wasn't able to hide by muffling it via shoving my armoured arm in its maw.
It hurt considerably as it bit down but it didn't manage to penetrate the armour just some crushing damage. My off-hand was still operable if in considerable pain, nothing I wasn't used to. Sunny's survival took priority and I would do what was needed. I moved towards the next gecko and stabbed it in the brain from the side, right below its massive ear flap.
Really, those things were an evolutionary error. It reduced their vision considerably while being a subpar hearing organ. Having figured out a working strategy I proceeded to butcher my way towards where Sunny said the good doctor would be waiting, avoiding those geckos that I could and brutally disposing of those that I couldn't. It took me about two hours to get clear of the burnt-out husk of Goodsprings, having to avoid roaming packs of Geckos, residual clouds of chlorine gas and one particularly ornery rad-scorpion who had taken residence in what was left of the general trader.
How the thing got here I had no idea but it was an annoyance because I was fairly certain it had noticed me and I had to backtrack in order to avoid dealing with it. My new, as of yet unnamed gun could take the fucking but it would be a loud operation and that would attract whatever else had crawled into this hellhole of a town. And knowing my luck it would probably be a behemoth, an ash beast even though they weren't native to the region or a fucking deathclaw matriarch.
And I didn't have the patience nor the armour for such an operation. Sunny was dying and I had to hurry. My own problems with this situation could wait until she was safe and healthy. I saw the hill on which the good doctor was supposed to be waiting and the hidden trailer that would be the meeting point up ahead and booked it towards my destination.
After a short hike up the hill, I reached the outcropping hiding the trailer and knocked at the door only to feel the barrel of a shotgun against the back of my head.
"That's far enough stranger. Who are you and how do you know about this place? There is only one girl out there in the wasteland who should know about this hidden trailer and it's awfully suspicious that you would show up after our town got burned to the ground and she went missing. So, start talking and you better have a good explanation or your life is going to end abruptly."
I had to smirk. I just couldn't help it this old man, he reminded me so much of my grandfather it was funny. I slowly Held up my hands so he could see them after dropping my knife. The first rule of negotiating with someone who had you at gunpoint was to not make any sudden movements and I wasn't about to do something stupid.
"Doctor Mitchell, I presume? My name Is Alice Hammer I found Sunny Smiles trapped in one of the basements after I cleared out the cannibals from the ruins of Goodsprings. I'm a trained combat medic and I used my knowledge and resources to stabilise her after setting her broken and misaligned ribs. I then housed her at my home and sheltered her, food and water. However, despite my best efforts her condition is worsening and I am unable to treat her even with my considerable resources. I have been looking for you and I do have a letter from her proving my claims, if you would just allow me to take it out of my pocket?"
I said slowly and evenly trying my best to keep the elation out of my voice from having found the man I was looking for. I knew it was him because his voice was the exact same as he had in the game and that made it easy to identify him.
"Go ahead little lady but if you make any funny moves, you won't be seeing the sunset, that I can promise you. I'm going to give you this one chance Don't make me regret it."
I slowly moved my left hand towards my pocket, I then pulled up the hem of my jacket to show that my pocket wasn't holding any weapon and after not getting shot I proceeded to grab the letter from my pocket and held it out for him to grab. He took the letter from my hand but didn't remove the shotgun from the back of my head. Smart man that doctor.
I could have just tortured the location out of Sunny and handed him an empty letter, waited for the moment he was reading it and shot him. That man wasn't just some regular doctor or some regular vault dweller he had seen some shit in his long life. After all, you didn't get to such an old age in a place like the wasteland.
What was that old saying again? Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance. Yes, that was it, I think. I put my hands on my head because it was much more comfortable and my arms were getting tired from holding them up in the air.
"Alright, it looks like you are telling the truth little lady. I am sorry for pulling a gun on you but you have to understand that it is mighty strange that you just showed up out of the blue after my hometown got razed to the ground. So, you found Sunny in a cellar huh? That silly rock-headed I told her to run for the trailer if things got dicey. You said she was ill? Right then what are her symptoms and what did you do to stabilise her? I need to know if I will need to undo your work. And what happened to your arm lass?"
Doctor Mitchell asked and I could feel him taking the gun away from the back of my head and I breathed out a sigh of relief I didn't know I was holding in as he put the shotgun on the floor. I felt like I should be insulted but this man was someone who had kept people alive with subpar equipment in a non-sterile for what I had to assume had been decades. I knew when I was in the presence of a master of my craft and I was willing to learn all he could teach me about the medicine of this world.
"When I found her, her left arm was a mess of second-degree burns, her ribs were broken and horribly misaligned, I was forced to put those back into position, she had multiple lacerations and a large wound on her chest. Her arm was infected and I had to drain it after giving it a wash with saline, I then bandaged her in sterile gauze soaked in iodine followed by multiple clean bandages. All of this was performed in a sterile environment. After that, I gave her fluids, vitamins, food, antibiotics and then finally some medication to support her stomach and a dose of ketamine before I put her in bed. This morning I changed her bandages and gave her food and water as well as antibiotics. However, her wounds aren't scabbing at all even though the water she is getting is 100 percent pure and radiation-free, the food too and the amount of nutrition is much higher than anything she could have gotten in the wasteland. I will not get into the specifics here nor are they important but I can guarantee that the resources I used are cleaner than anything you would have access to even in a vault so it is not a matter of exposure or contamination. As such I am led to believe that it must be an underlying medical condition or a resilient disease, infection or parasite she was exposed to. I'm at my wits end and as such I went out to find you. As for my arm? I had to muffle the dying gurgles of a gecko and my arm did the job rather well I'd say. Don't worry about it the armour protected me from taking any damage worth mentioning, it's just a little bruise. so, it's no bother. That being said are you ready to go? Sunny needs help and I am not willing to put her health at risk any longer than needed. I refuse to lose another patient and I will do whatever needs to be done so please Doctor tell me what ails her so I can fix her." I said to him.
He stared at me as if I was a particularly interesting specimen, blinked a few times and looked me over.
"You aren't from the wasteland. I have no idea where you are from but you aren't a wastelander. There is no way one of us would get this attached to anyone but family so quickly and I only know most of those terms you used from medical books. You know what? I don't care, you saved my adopted daughter and for that I am grateful. So, for all I care you could be an alien, you took the time to help and you are still helping and that's enough. So yes, I'm ready to go save her from whatever mess she has gotten herself stuck in this time. Lead the way Miss Hammer we have a young brat to safe. Oh, Sunny what have you done this time?"
Ah, so he considered her his daughter. That explained why he would go out of his way to explain to her how to make sure to stay safe in case shit hit the fan.
"Alright do try to keep an open mind. You weren't too far off the mark with your alien comment you know."
I said as I took my key from my Pipboy and inserted it into the door of the trailer, opening the gateway to the workshop. I unlocked the door and allowed the good doctor to see the entrance to my home and sanctuary. He stood there, calmly observing the event border of the gateway to my workshop and sanctuary before shrugging. I looked at him incredulously, I had expected some kind of reaction, not just a shrug and acceptance.
"You were expecting me to be surprised? Lass, I have been all over the wasteland after my wife died. I explored far and wide but I always came back here. This is far from the strangest thing I have ever seen. I even saw some fake humans made from metal and plastic. So, you have some form of what I assume is teleportation? I've seen that before. Now let's go save my daughter."
He said before he just strolled into my workshop without a care in the world. The balls of that man, he truly didn't feel like he was in danger at all. And despite his old age, I wasn't sure if I could take him if it came down to a fair fight. Oh sure, I was younger and faster but the way he walked was remarkably similar to some of the hardened combat veterans I patched up back home during my time in the army.
Their faces and names were something I could no longer remember thanks to the winged bitch. Just thinking about her made me angry, but still he held himself far too similar to men I had seen walk out of combat zones that left entire squads dead. Yeah, I was not going to mess with that one. He had the same energy as my grandfather. Old and kind to family but vicious to others. Not someone you fuck with.
"Yeah, let's go. She's up ahead in the actual living space of my workshop. I wouldn't house a patient between my tools and materials. Though I did the actual medical treatment here it was more of a necessity than anything else. She was rapidly wasting and I didn't have the time nor was the living room expansion present at that time. Oh yeah, don't mind the randomness of the place and its random expansions. They shouldn't be harmful, just don't walk into any active volcanoes or anything like that."
I said before I took the lead and began to show him the way to the house. The expression he had at the mention of active volcanoes was rather funny. It seemed that I was capable of shocking the good doctor. After a short walk, we exited the tunnel and found ourselves in my entrance hall. I looked around and spotted Sunny in the dining room still poking her breakfast. The moment she saw me she perked up and began to smile at me, her smile turned radiant when she saw the doctor.
"Alice, you found dad. Wait a minute what happened to your armour. Are you alright? Dad, is she alright?" She looked concerned but I didn't get why the bite didn't do that much dama…
My thoughts were cut off by a stinging pain from my right arm. Upon closer inspection, I realised that it wasn't just a squished bone. The armour was mangled and twisted in ways that looked very unhealthy and a small drip of blood was collecting at the tip of my gloved pinkie finger.
"Ah fuck I compartmentalised my pain again. Doctor, are you okay with checking on her on your own? I'm going to go ahead and get this cleaned, disinfected, bandaged and possibly in a cast if needed. I really shouldn't have used my arm as an improvised gag for a gecko huh? Oh well, lesson damn well learned. Luckily the thing didn't get through the armour. It just crushed it. Fucking lizards."
While I waited for a response from the good doctor, I began to remove the armour from my arm after wiping it down, no need for an infection or worse. It looked like a minor fracture with some skin punctures. Luckily it didn't go deep or hit an artery but it bled like a bitch. I took a gauze from my Pipboy and wrapped my arm.
"Go ahead. Oh, and make sure to keep their spit out of your wounds. That stuff is full of nasties. And next time don't do something so idiotic as that. Just shoot the things. In fact, why didn't you?"
He chastised me as he began to look Sunny over.
"Didn't want to alert the bastards. The downside of my doorway is that I have to leave where I entered. I rushed Sunny in here from a cellar and by the time I went out the village was swarming with who knows what. The first gecko was practically on top of me so I had to be quick and quiet about it before it alerted all of its friends and they swarmed me. Sadly, I missed his larynx by a few inches and the thing tried to scream so I had to muffle it at any cost. Needed to get Sunny help and all that. Thought my armour could take it. Apparently, they bite harder than a crocodile when dying."
They both blinked and stared at me.
"Lass you are the maddest healer I have ever met. I know not a single one who would do something like that just because their patient needs help. You could have lost your arm or even your life right there and you just, did it? And don't think I didn't see how you just flat-out ignored what has to be at least a broken bone if not a fully mangled arm. Atom's sake you kept using it. You, little lady, are not quite there when it comes to self-preservation. I appreciate what you did for my daughter and getting me to her but you need to be alive to treat patients you know? So, I am taking over as doctor in residence, you aren't fit for the job currently because you will kill yourself trying to save people and that will help no one. I remember what you said about not losing another patient. I won't prod but judging by the sheer amount of desperation that you put into trying to save Sunny, I guess it was someone close. I will just say this, from what I have seen from you I assume that you did your best and that there was nothing that you could have done differently. So, rest, heal and let me take care of you and Sunny. You saved my kid it's the least I can do"
He said as he took the bandages from me and looked over my first aid kit, letting out a low whistle of approval. He then proceeded to disinfect my arm
After taking off the temporary gauze I had applied to sulk off and lick my wounds.
"Good news it's not broken, just fractured. The wounds are from the armour breaking and digging into your flesh. Some pain tolerance you got there young'un, haven't seen resilience like this unless the patient is a raider full of chems but you don't show any of the symptoms. You should be right as rain with 2 weeks of no strenuous movement and a proper bandage. But how you haven't screamed at all is beyond me."
Doctor Mitchell kindly explained as he finished up bandaging my arm in a turtle wrap, something I didn't expect to see in the post-apocalypse.
"I had worse, much much worse. I come from a different world. A world where civilization hadn't collapsed yet. And our weapons of war were terrors you can't even imagine. We unleashed weapons upon each other, so terrible that almost all nations outlawed them. On punishment of capital execution in some cases. We had bombs that set the sky on fire and they weren't atomic. No, our atomic bombs would make yours look like children in most cases. Little playground toys to be laughed at. I walked through fields of corpses of civilians desperately trying to find someone, anyone still alive. Just to find survivors and when we tried to rescue them the bombs placed underneath them would tear them and those of us unlucky enough to be close enough to them to pieces. Some gases ate a man from the inside in seconds, liquid and sticky in the cold air outside and as soon as you escaped the field of battle and made it to safety it would heat up from the warmth of your shelter, aerolise, killing you and all those in the shelter no matter if they were combatants or not. Soldiers returning to their families had to watch as the gas ate their families in front of them. And that was during our first world war. We have had another since. And many wars since. When I was taken from my home it looked like the third was knocking on our door. I was a combat medic. It was my duty to save the survivors from the most horrific inventions of the human race in a world that didn't blow itself to pieces. And unlike this world, we don't use vacuum tubes anymore. We unlocked the secrets of the microchip decades ago and with that came autonomous weapons of war greater than anything this world has ever built. Autonomous intelligent war machines greater than anything this would ever build. Death could come from the sky at any moment anywhere in the world. You wouldn't know it. One second you are safe and the next everyone and everything in a 20-metre radius around you is naught but rubble and giblets. Rocket-propelled bombs, delivered by drones faster than sound piloted by a person on the other side of the planet. Our cars could be hacked, turning your trip home from work into a quick and messy grave. You didn't even need to be in a car. If someone was skilled enough and ruthless enough could turn the simple act of walking down the street into a possible accident that would kill you by hacking multiple cars to home in on you as soon as you are close. My world was not a nice place. It had a great gleaming shine but it was rotting underneath."
As I described my home, I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was remembering some things wrong or worse than they were. It wouldn't surprise me after getting mind fucked by the Simurgh and having it undone by the forge via cutting stuff out I wouldn't be surprised if some of the things were movies. But I remembered experiencing them too vividly for them to be false. You don't forget a metal gear.
Sunny looked at me with mute horror and the good doctor was not far behind but he hid it far better.
"Atom above kid. Some of the things you just said. I can see how you would build pain tolerance like you have. Guess the apocalypse was good for something. At least we don't have problems like that anymore"
Sunny nodded to her father's words as she wheeled over to hug me but stopped when both of them noticed me flinch.
"About that. We should talk after Sunny is healthy. This world isn't any better than mine, even now. Just thinking about the tunnelers makes me cringe. Going to need to do something about those things. But that potential underground apocalypse can wait and so can all the others. Now doctor, what is her prognosis?"
I asked with a grim expression, ready for the worst. I was prepared to do just about anything to get her whatever she may need, including making a deal with Robert House for his life support pod. He wanted the chip, I knew where it was and unlike the courier, I wouldn't be getting slowed down by side quests. If it was truly necessary for me to do that quest then it would be done by the end of the month at most.
"Repconn shake. Haven't seen the thing in years. Sunny, did you drink a funny-shaped nuka cola?"
Oh, fuck I had a bad feeling about this. Repconn made a lot of things and most of them weren't friendly. For a sickness to be named after them?
"Yeah, I found it in one of the old cars in the flatlands when I was exploring. It came in a rocket-shaped bottle. I guess it wasn't a nuka cola then?"
Sunny asked, coughing up a tiny amount of blood.
"No Sunny it wasn't. Alright, you are lucky that I still have the equipment needed to treat heavy radiation poisoning because what you drank was rocket fuel. Miss Alice, is there a bed I can use for this? I need her to lie down so that I can get the rad-away and the rad-x into her bloodstream. But I can fix this. It is no wonder you wouldn't have recognised it. It's something extremely rare and I'm quite sure Repconn doesn't exist in your home world so you couldn't have known about this."
His words were like a blessing from the motive force and the Omnissiah combined. I wouldn't lose another patient, another friend. I couldn't help myself. I let out a soft laugh of joy and gently hugged Sunny.
"You are going to be alright. You are going to be alright. You are going to be alright. I am not going to lose another patient. Oh, thank the Omnissiah. You're going to be alright. R-right the bed yeah, bed follow me."
I smiled as great fat tears of happiness ran down my face and giggles of joy and relief escaped from my lips. I then grabbed hold of the office chair that still served as Sunny's wheelchair and pushed her towards one of the two guest bedrooms. I needed to make her something better than this, this was a disgrace to me, my craft and the forge. But then again when I put her on this chair I wasn't operating with a full drawer of spoons. Heck, I would say I was running around in combat mode with trauma heaped on top of it. The presence of someone older than me who had medical experience was a blessing. I could defer to his experience when it came to patients and didn't need to run everything by myself.
I didn't need to worry about defence, offence, supplies and healing at once. This was such a great relief and I needed the support I was getting now. Just the fact that I didn't have to bandage my own wounds helped tremendously. In the span of a few days, I had gone from nothing to a minor support network and it took a massive load off my shoulders. I wheeled Sunny into the bedroom and helped the good Doctor to get her into bed.
"Alright young'un, I'm sure you have never seen this done before so pay close attention. I am going to administer the Rad-away first. The dose is 10ml per kg of body weight. Now if the patient has extreme symptoms such as green veins you can use a whole pack of rad-away but if you do that you are also killing any form of immune system they have. So, you will need antibiotics. If you have liquid ones those are what you want but they are extremely rare. However, I don't think that you will have that issue."
He said to me with a knowing look and placed the IV drip in her right arm, he then fixed the IV bag to the standing lamp so it would be high enough to drip.
"Now since my daughter was stupid enough to drink rocket fuel, she gets the whole pack AND rad-x to suppress whatever may still be left in her system. Now rad-x is a curious thing. I don't know how it works but it stops radiation from entering your body up to a point. Normally I would suggest one pill per 30 kg of weight but in this case, we are doubling that amount because someone drank radioactive material. You can go beyond that but that is not something you will want to do; the consequences are not pretty. Double the dose is the maximum I would go unless you got bit by a feral glowing one. It drains your body of fluids at a drastic rate so Sunny here is going to need a fluid IV."
He took a bag of pure saline from his doctor's pouch, it was in a protective container of steel, and handled it with great care. I could understand the caution. Pure saline was extremely rare in the wasteland and I would handle such a thing with the same reverence if I was in his position.
He then placed the needle in her arm, affixed the bag to the lamp and fed her the rad-x.
"Now then young'un, did you learn what I did.?"
He asked me in a kind tone, not unlike my own grandfather when he was teaching me how to carve wood or repair something.
"Yes doctor. 10mlg per kg of body weight for Rad-away and the full bag in extreme cases. In such a case the immune system is the casualty and will need to be supplemented. One pill of Rad-x per 30 kg of body weight and double in bad cases. More only if you have extreme situations, the heavy use of Rad-x drains fluids at a staggering rate and requires direct IV supplements to keep the patient going."
At the end of my report, I found myself saluting on instinct and blushed like a tomato as I quickly stopped doing that. Stupid army-trained reflexes.
"Oh my god that's so silly. You look adorable like that Alice. Why did you do that?"
Sunny was holding onto her belly in a fit of laughter and giggling like a schoolgirl at my display of army reflexes.
I pouted at her and grumbled.
"I'm going to eat breakfast; it should still be in the oven, right?"
She snickered at my attempt at running away but nodded and made no effort to keep me detained with uncomfortable questions like why I hugged her or why I cried like I did when we got the prognosis of her full recovery.
Stupid trauma bonds going both ways. I didn't think I would grow attached this quickly but what did I expect really? She was the first sane person I met in this hellhole of a place and she was hurt of course my instincts as a medic would latch onto her like a lifeline, a hurt person I could help instead of dealing with my feelings and problems. I kept grumbling about feelings and emotions as I walked into the Kitchen. I took my meal out of the oven and made my way to my workshop. I had some thinking to do.
Settling down on my workstation I began to eat my meal. I grimaced at the sausages; they had become too crispy after the time they spent in the oven. The beans had clumped together a little and the bread was a bit too dry now. After I finished my meal, I could feel it three nodes had unlodged themselves from the forge.
From the assistant's domain came the dingbots. Mechanical helpers, each animated with a spark of their own, capable of building anything I would be able to, salvaging, repairs and upkeep and most worryingly and yet adorably enduring to me. Connected to me on an intrinsic level. The little steampunk monstrosities would serve me well even if they would no doubt build creations from my subconscious mind. They rushed around in my workshop in all their misshaped oddly formed steampunk glory and I had a feeling that I would regret this but I had to leave them unsupervised for now. Because I had other perks to deal with and Hoo boy, I just got my first racial change. I gently picked up the adorable dingbot prime that once was my Pipboy and cradled the little girl. She climbed up my arm nuzzled against my cheek and settled on my shoulder.
I was no longer human anymore. This one had come from the alchemy domain of all things. No longer would I be confined to the weak form of a two-legged species nor was I plagued by the weaknesses of the form of flesh. Bullets? Knives? Explosions? Pha what were those before the glory of a magma slime? Oh yes, I was no longer human though I was easily able to pass as one as my body mimicked one so long as I wished it. I had become an apex hunter a species hailing from the lands of Múspellsheim. Memories of hunting players as a weak mob in the world of Yggdrasil flowed into my mind. Luckily, they were few and I was able to push them aside to revel in the fact that the injury on my arm was easily healed by shifting my mass to mimic an intact arm. The reduction of belly fat was just a side effect I assure you. The benefits of this change massively outweighed the negatives and I was rather happy with this.
I had expected something like this to happen at some point and I was glad it was a form I could live with and not something horrific. I could have gotten something bad or something that would have changed my entire mentality instead I got immunity to physical damage, the ability to mix chemicals in my body, a body that was both magmatic and acidic should I choose so. shape-changing skills, agelessness and a twenty times multiplier to all my stats including speed.
This was nice, and the last perk was another amazing one. From the magical supplies' domain, a skill of the pixies had been granted to me. I could fly just like Tinker Bell. Upon emitting a cloud of pixie dust, I would be able to take flight, and I would be able to extend this flight to others too as long as they had joy in their heart. I chuckled as I imagined myself as a rescue hero in the world of my hero academia. The fae queen, leading everyone to safety on her cloud of fae dust. If I ever went to that world, I would absolutely become a rescue hero. It would fit my nature.
I cackled as my dingbots began to buzz and well ding with glee at the idea. After all, the fae have two sides, naughty and nice. Nice would be me rescuing people and naughty…
Well, Endeavour and that yakuza dude both abused children did they not? In Endeavour's case, it was even his own. If I ever got the chance, I would introduce them to the inside of a magma slime. Yes, that was a nice thought but for now, I needed to focus on the here and now. The punishment of bastards in different worlds I may never reach could wait for now. With that thought in mind, I let my creativity run wild. I had a wasteland to clean up, multiple world-ending problems to defeat or outright destroy and slavers to prepare for. I wouldn't go looking for the legion, for now.
No for now it was time, time to begin building steam.
Perks this chapter:
-Ding! (Girl Genius SB) (200CP)
Well, this is different. A certain gentleman called Von Neumann would be delighted, at least. You are now the proud master of a full set of Dingbots of your own, or similar clanks or drones, at least. They're all minor sparks in their own rights, and can themselves build more of their kind
even though those don't have the spark. Led by a Prime, they are connected with you on an intrinsic, mental level, being fully capable of building any and all devices or works you can. They get everywhere, performing construction upkeep, salvage and everything else you might need them to. Not even needing blueprints, they seem to draw upon your knowledge directly, using their in-built tools to perform all the things you normally would need to do yourself, making everything you'd like them to... and a lot of them you wouldn't.
Don't leave them unsupervised.
-Pixie Dust (Peter Pan) (100CP)
Most if not all fairies constantly produce the magical substance of fairy dust around their body, such that a trail follows wherever you fly. People and even objects as large as ships, when covered in the sparkling dust, gain the ability to fly. However, while inanimate things can fly without any challenge, people wishing to fly must have sincere faith and happy, carefree emotions. You can constantly emit pixie dust at will and even surround yourself with a cloud of fairy dust. The perk also enables you to breathe easily without choking on pixie dust or other particles, such that you can breathe and talk even with smoke all around you. If you are not a fairy, you will be looked at quite strangely by others, but things are often strange in Neverland so that's hardly a bad thing.
-Slime (Overlord - The Series) (200CP)
There are many types of slimes and oozes. All of them are uniformly next to impossible to hurt with physical attacks, but are incredibly vulnerable to one type of elemental damage (fire for a regular slime, ice/cold for a lava slime, etc) and also possess a slight weakness to magic in general. You possess the ability to take on a human form that will pass even close inspection while losing none of the benefits that come with being made up of an amorphous slime-like substance and possess physical abilities at least twenty times that of a human. Including speed, despite how odd that may seem. You can naturally fit through tight spaces, shape your body into unnatural forms, and can make as many 'feelers' or 'manipulator arms' as you like. In truth, you're more like a uniformly coloured Shoggoth than you are anything else, except without all the eyes and body parts. Slimes are also powerfully acidic and can inflict grievous acid damage on anything they touch; you naturally possess the ability to determine whether or not your acid will damage the things you are in contact with. All Slimes are naturally good at alchemy and can create alchemical substances and magical potions, if they possess the knowledge of their creation, directly out of their own body. Slimes, due to their nature, are ageless.
Still very much hissing like an angry owl I crawled out of bed and made my way to the bathroom where I washed my face and began to brush my face. The new look of my hair still made me cringe and shudder but I no longer collapsed on the floor. This was my life now and I would have to deal with this no matter how much I hated it.
So, I would assess the situation, take stock of my stuff and things as well as my support and then cudgel the opposition into submission. Because at this point, I had to come to terms with reality.
I wasn't going to magically wake up back in my own bed, realizing that this was all a bad dream. Nor was I going to suddenly get a perfect solution to everything. I had long since realized that the forge was keeping the nodes I was getting to the low-powered kind.
I was assuming that this was because it wanted me to build up and not just roll over the opposition. After all, I had already been in this world for two days now and I had barely done anything.
No, I wasn't going to be like Apeiron with his three-day technology progression, no matter how much I yearned for such power. It was clear that I was stuck with a slow grind and a much more gradual progression.
I finished brushing my teeth, spat out the rest of the toothpaste and dressed myself for the day. I had breakfast to cook, bandages to change and an old doctor to find.
With my improved armour in place and my new Pipboy slotted on my belt, I selected Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from Abney Park and made my way to the kitchen. I took some of the smoothie out of the fridge and let it come up to room temperature.
Meanwhile, I brewed a pot of coffee and began making a full English Breakfast for myself and a bowl of muesli with fresh fruit for Sunny. Cheyenne would get some black forest sausages.
After I was done cooking, I put my food in the oven and set it to keep warm before downing the entire pot of coffee.
I then made my way to the guest bedroom and checked on Sunny. She was awake and had managed to get up and sat on the corner of her bed getting ready to get dressed.
I knocked on the doorframe to get her attention.
"Good morning, Sunny, did you sleep well? Before you get dressed, I will need to change your bandages. The old ones are no longer sufficient and the Iodine will need to be reapplied so you don't get an infection. Think you can let me get that checked out? "
I asked her as I entered the room. She turned towards me with a gentle delicate smile, seemingly afraid that I would vanish into nothingness if she made a loud noise.
"Ah, trauma bonding aren't you just terrible?" I grumbled in the back of my mind as I approached slowly, not making any hasty movements so I wouldn't spook her.
"Yeah, doc. Go ahead patch me up"
She smiled as she held up her injured arm for me to inspect. I began by unwrapping it and checking the progression of the wounds. There wasn't any onset of necrosis or infection but the healing wasn't beginning either. It was just stable.
This was concerning. Considering the sheer amount of nutrients and vitamins that I had crammed into her I was expecting at least some minute scabbing but no such thing was happening.
This led me to believe that Sunny had an undiagnosed underlying condition that was exasperating her problems. I had to rely upon the chants of the rites of maintenance to suppress the horror rising in my mind.
This was bad. Very very bad. I thought I had weeks. I potentially only had days. I needed to find that old man. He had been the settlement's doctor. He had her medical history. And I needed that yesterday.
I changed her bandages and applied the needed medicine before helping her get dressed and wheeling her into the dining room.
"It's bad huh? You don't need to hide it, Alice. I appreciate you trying to keep up a brave face but I can tell that something is wrong with me. Spit it out and don't try to sugarcoat it either, I'm a wastelander I can handle it."
Sunny said as she ate her breakfast, eying the fruits in wonder.
Fuck she knew. I took a deep breath and steeled my resolve this was always the hardest part of being a medic. I hated this part with a burning passion, I was a medic. I was supposed to save everyone, not tell them that they had something unknown eating them from the inside and there was nothing I could do.
"You have something that keeps you from healing properly. I don't know what it is but it's there and I can't do a goddamn thing because I don't know WHAT IT IS. I want to save you but I don't know what is wrong with you. If I don't find a solution soon you don't have much time left. Did you see the wounds on your arm? They should have formed at least a minor form of scabbing but they did no such thing. As such I have to assume that something is dreadfully wrong with you. Combine that with the horrible state of your arm and you will soon develop sepsis no matter if I remove your arm or not.
Something is wrong with your body and it's killing you from the inside out. I assume it's something specific to this world because I have never seen something like this. I need to go find your friend. Maybe maybe he will know what this is and what I need to do to keep you alive. I swear to you Sunny, I WILL keep you alive. I will not lose another patient even if it kills me. You are getting through this."
I got up from where I had sat down during the conversation and put on my grandfather's no it was no longer his, I put on my war helmet and made my way towards the door leading to the workshop and thus to the outside world.
"Stay strong Sunny I will be back with the good doctor in a while, don't worry I will get you the medicine you need one way or another…"
"Alice, wait you don't need to go out like this you should eat something at least. You didn't even eat yet. Please I'm not going to drop dead. Don't overwork yourself like this I'm fine. This isn't necessary."
Sunny pleaded with me but I couldn't listen to her. There was something wrong with her body, what if it was radiation? Cancer? A parasite? FEV? There were endless possibilities and I had no way of knowing what was wrong with her body or how I was supposed to help her. I couldn't waste time with something as silly as breakfast. On my way past the kitchen, I digitised a few jars of lard, all the fruit I could find for now as well as some bread and 100 litres of water stored in anything that would hold it.
"Sunny the kitchen will supply you with food and water in case I am gone for too long. The fruits are all good to be eaten raw and so is the bread. If you need meat just toss it into the oven with some oil and follow the recipe books. If I die out there everything in here is yours to do with as you wish."
I called out to her and left the house. I had a doctor to find. After a short walk, I was in the workshop. I made my way to the access door and grabbed my knife in my hand before leaving the safety of the workshop. I had no time for proper procedures and checking for enemies. If there was someone on the other side they would die quickly and I would move on.
There was no one in the cellar so I made my way out of the underground structure. After checking the immediate surroundings, I began to curse softly the corpses had attracted scavengers.
"Fucking geckos. Of course, the little bastards would annoy me now when I don't have the time to deal with the motherfuckers."
I crouched down and snuck up behind the first one of the little freaks of radiation and who knows what else. I managed to get close enough to the thing to stab it in the throat. I had to guess where its larynx was supposed to be but I wasn't too far off the mark it managed to gurgle just a little but that wasn't something that I wasn't able to hide by muffling it via shoving my armoured arm in its maw.
It hurt considerably as it bit down but it didn't manage to penetrate the armour just some crushing damage. My off-hand was still operable if in considerable pain, nothing I wasn't used to. Sunny's survival took priority and I would do what was needed. I moved towards the next gecko and stabbed it in the brain from the side, right below its massive ear flap.
Really, those things were an evolutionary error. It reduced their vision considerably while being a subpar hearing organ. Having figured out a working strategy I proceeded to butcher my way towards where Sunny said the good doctor would be waiting, avoiding those geckos that I could and brutally disposing of those that I couldn't. It took me about two hours to get clear of the burnt-out husk of Goodsprings, having to avoid roaming packs of Geckos, residual clouds of chlorine gas and one particularly ornery rad-scorpion who had taken residence in what was left of the general trader.
How the thing got here I had no idea but it was an annoyance because I was fairly certain it had noticed me and I had to backtrack in order to avoid dealing with it. My new, as of yet unnamed gun could take the fucking but it would be a loud operation and that would attract whatever else had crawled into this hellhole of a town. And knowing my luck it would probably be a behemoth, an ash beast even though they weren't native to the region or a fucking deathclaw matriarch.
And I didn't have the patience nor the armour for such an operation. Sunny was dying and I had to hurry. My own problems with this situation could wait until she was safe and healthy. I saw the hill on which the good doctor was supposed to be waiting and the hidden trailer that would be the meeting point up ahead and booked it towards my destination.
After a short hike up the hill, I reached the outcropping hiding the trailer and knocked at the door only to feel the barrel of a shotgun against the back of my head.
"That's far enough stranger. Who are you and how do you know about this place? There is only one girl out there in the wasteland who should know about this hidden trailer and it's awfully suspicious that you would show up after our town got burned to the ground and she went missing. So, start talking and you better have a good explanation or your life is going to end abruptly."
I had to smirk. I just couldn't help it this old man, he reminded me so much of my grandfather it was funny. I slowly Held up my hands so he could see them after dropping my knife. The first rule of negotiating with someone who had you at gunpoint was to not make any sudden movements and I wasn't about to do something stupid.
"Doctor Mitchell, I presume? My name Is Alice Hammer I found Sunny Smiles trapped in one of the basements after I cleared out the cannibals from the ruins of Goodsprings. I'm a trained combat medic and I used my knowledge and resources to stabilise her after setting her broken and misaligned ribs. I then housed her at my home and sheltered her, food and water. However, despite my best efforts her condition is worsening and I am unable to treat her even with my considerable resources. I have been looking for you and I do have a letter from her proving my claims, if you would just allow me to take it out of my pocket?"
I said slowly and evenly trying my best to keep the elation out of my voice from having found the man I was looking for. I knew it was him because his voice was the exact same as he had in the game and that made it easy to identify him.
"Go ahead little lady but if you make any funny moves, you won't be seeing the sunset, that I can promise you. I'm going to give you this one chance Don't make me regret it."
I slowly moved my left hand towards my pocket, I then pulled up the hem of my jacket to show that my pocket wasn't holding any weapon and after not getting shot I proceeded to grab the letter from my pocket and held it out for him to grab. He took the letter from my hand but didn't remove the shotgun from the back of my head. Smart man that doctor.
I could have just tortured the location out of Sunny and handed him an empty letter, waited for the moment he was reading it and shot him. That man wasn't just some regular doctor or some regular vault dweller he had seen some shit in his long life. After all, you didn't get to such an old age in a place like the wasteland.
What was that old saying again? Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance. Yes, that was it, I think. I put my hands on my head because it was much more comfortable and my arms were getting tired from holding them up in the air.
"Alright, it looks like you are telling the truth little lady. I am sorry for pulling a gun on you but you have to understand that it is mighty strange that you just showed up out of the blue after my hometown got razed to the ground. So, you found Sunny in a cellar huh? That silly rock-headed I told her to run for the trailer if things got dicey. You said she was ill? Right then what are her symptoms and what did you do to stabilise her? I need to know if I will need to undo your work. And what happened to your arm lass?"
Doctor Mitchell asked and I could feel him taking the gun away from the back of my head and I breathed out a sigh of relief I didn't know I was holding in as he put the shotgun on the floor. I felt like I should be insulted but this man was someone who had kept people alive with subpar equipment in a non-sterile for what I had to assume had been decades. I knew when I was in the presence of a master of my craft and I was willing to learn all he could teach me about the medicine of this world.
"When I found her, her left arm was a mess of second-degree burns, her ribs were broken and horribly misaligned, I was forced to put those back into position, she had multiple lacerations and a large wound on her chest. Her arm was infected and I had to drain it after giving it a wash with saline, I then bandaged her in sterile gauze soaked in iodine followed by multiple clean bandages. All of this was performed in a sterile environment. After that, I gave her fluids, vitamins, food, antibiotics and then finally some medication to support her stomach and a dose of ketamine before I put her in bed. This morning I changed her bandages and gave her food and water as well as antibiotics. However, her wounds aren't scabbing at all even though the water she is getting is 100 percent pure and radiation-free, the food too and the amount of nutrition is much higher than anything she could have gotten in the wasteland. I will not get into the specifics here nor are they important but I can guarantee that the resources I used are cleaner than anything you would have access to even in a vault so it is not a matter of exposure or contamination. As such I am led to believe that it must be an underlying medical condition or a resilient disease, infection or parasite she was exposed to. I'm at my wits end and as such I went out to find you. As for my arm? I had to muffle the dying gurgles of a gecko and my arm did the job rather well I'd say. Don't worry about it the armour protected me from taking any damage worth mentioning, it's just a little bruise. so, it's no bother. That being said are you ready to go? Sunny needs help and I am not willing to put her health at risk any longer than needed. I refuse to lose another patient and I will do whatever needs to be done so please Doctor tell me what ails her so I can fix her." I said to him.
He stared at me as if I was a particularly interesting specimen, blinked a few times and looked me over.
"You aren't from the wasteland. I have no idea where you are from but you aren't a wastelander. There is no way one of us would get this attached to anyone but family so quickly and I only know most of those terms you used from medical books. You know what? I don't care, you saved my adopted daughter and for that I am grateful. So, for all I care you could be an alien, you took the time to help and you are still helping and that's enough. So yes, I'm ready to go save her from whatever mess she has gotten herself stuck in this time. Lead the way Miss Hammer we have a young brat to safe. Oh, Sunny what have you done this time?"
Ah, so he considered her his daughter. That explained why he would go out of his way to explain to her how to make sure to stay safe in case shit hit the fan.
"Alright do try to keep an open mind. You weren't too far off the mark with your alien comment you know."
I said as I took my key from my Pipboy and inserted it into the door of the trailer, opening the gateway to the workshop. I unlocked the door and allowed the good doctor to see the entrance to my home and sanctuary. He stood there, calmly observing the event border of the gateway to my workshop and sanctuary before shrugging. I looked at him incredulously, I had expected some kind of reaction, not just a shrug and acceptance.
"You were expecting me to be surprised? Lass, I have been all over the wasteland after my wife died. I explored far and wide but I always came back here. This is far from the strangest thing I have ever seen. I even saw some fake humans made from metal and plastic. So, you have some form of what I assume is teleportation? I've seen that before. Now let's go save my daughter."
He said before he just strolled into my workshop without a care in the world. The balls of that man, he truly didn't feel like he was in danger at all. And despite his old age, I wasn't sure if I could take him if it came down to a fair fight. Oh sure, I was younger and faster but the way he walked was remarkably similar to some of the hardened combat veterans I patched up back home during my time in the army.
Their faces and names were something I could no longer remember thanks to the winged bitch. Just thinking about her made me angry, but still he held himself far too similar to men I had seen walk out of combat zones that left entire squads dead. Yeah, I was not going to mess with that one. He had the same energy as my grandfather. Old and kind to family but vicious to others. Not someone you fuck with.
"Yeah, let's go. She's up ahead in the actual living space of my workshop. I wouldn't house a patient between my tools and materials. Though I did the actual medical treatment here it was more of a necessity than anything else. She was rapidly wasting and I didn't have the time nor was the living room expansion present at that time. Oh yeah, don't mind the randomness of the place and its random expansions. They shouldn't be harmful, just don't walk into any active volcanoes or anything like that."
I said before I took the lead and began to show him the way to the house. The expression he had at the mention of active volcanoes was rather funny. It seemed that I was capable of shocking the good doctor. After a short walk, we exited the tunnel and found ourselves in my entrance hall. I looked around and spotted Sunny in the dining room still poking her breakfast. The moment she saw me she perked up and began to smile at me, her smile turned radiant when she saw the doctor.
"Alice, you found dad. Wait a minute what happened to your armour. Are you alright? Dad, is she alright?" She looked concerned but I didn't get why the bite didn't do that much dama…
My thoughts were cut off by a stinging pain from my right arm. Upon closer inspection, I realised that it wasn't just a squished bone. The armour was mangled and twisted in ways that looked very unhealthy and a small drip of blood was collecting at the tip of my gloved pinkie finger.
"Ah fuck I compartmentalised my pain again. Doctor, are you okay with checking on her on your own? I'm going to go ahead and get this cleaned, disinfected, bandaged and possibly in a cast if needed. I really shouldn't have used my arm as an improvised gag for a gecko huh? Oh well, lesson damn well learned. Luckily the thing didn't get through the armour. It just crushed it. Fucking lizards."
While I waited for a response from the good doctor, I began to remove the armour from my arm after wiping it down, no need for an infection or worse. It looked like a minor fracture with some skin punctures. Luckily it didn't go deep or hit an artery but it bled like a bitch. I took a gauze from my Pipboy and wrapped my arm.
"Go ahead. Oh, and make sure to keep their spit out of your wounds. That stuff is full of nasties. And next time don't do something so idiotic as that. Just shoot the things. In fact, why didn't you?"
He chastised me as he began to look Sunny over.
"Didn't want to alert the bastards. The downside of my doorway is that I have to leave where I entered. I rushed Sunny in here from a cellar and by the time I went out the village was swarming with who knows what. The first gecko was practically on top of me so I had to be quick and quiet about it before it alerted all of its friends and they swarmed me. Sadly, I missed his larynx by a few inches and the thing tried to scream so I had to muffle it at any cost. Needed to get Sunny help and all that. Thought my armour could take it. Apparently, they bite harder than a crocodile when dying."
They both blinked and stared at me.
"Lass you are the maddest healer I have ever met. I know not a single one who would do something like that just because their patient needs help. You could have lost your arm or even your life right there and you just, did it? And don't think I didn't see how you just flat-out ignored what has to be at least a broken bone if not a fully mangled arm. Atom's sake you kept using it. You, little lady, are not quite there when it comes to self-preservation. I appreciate what you did for my daughter and getting me to her but you need to be alive to treat patients you know? So, I am taking over as doctor in residence, you aren't fit for the job currently because you will kill yourself trying to save people and that will help no one. I remember what you said about not losing another patient. I won't prod but judging by the sheer amount of desperation that you put into trying to save Sunny, I guess it was someone close. I will just say this, from what I have seen from you I assume that you did your best and that there was nothing that you could have done differently. So, rest, heal and let me take care of you and Sunny. You saved my kid it's the least I can do"
He said as he took the bandages from me and looked over my first aid kit, letting out a low whistle of approval. He then proceeded to disinfect my arm
After taking off the temporary gauze I had applied to sulk off and lick my wounds.
"Good news it's not broken, just fractured. The wounds are from the armour breaking and digging into your flesh. Some pain tolerance you got there young'un, haven't seen resilience like this unless the patient is a raider full of chems but you don't show any of the symptoms. You should be right as rain with 2 weeks of no strenuous movement and a proper bandage. But how you haven't screamed at all is beyond me."
Doctor Mitchell kindly explained as he finished up bandaging my arm in a turtle wrap, something I didn't expect to see in the post-apocalypse.
"I had worse, much much worse. I come from a different world. A world where civilization hadn't collapsed yet. And our weapons of war were terrors you can't even imagine. We unleashed weapons upon each other, so terrible that almost all nations outlawed them. On punishment of capital execution in some cases. We had bombs that set the sky on fire and they weren't atomic. No, our atomic bombs would make yours look like children in most cases. Little playground toys to be laughed at. I walked through fields of corpses of civilians desperately trying to find someone, anyone still alive. Just to find survivors and when we tried to rescue them the bombs placed underneath them would tear them and those of us unlucky enough to be close enough to them to pieces. Some gases ate a man from the inside in seconds, liquid and sticky in the cold air outside and as soon as you escaped the field of battle and made it to safety it would heat up from the warmth of your shelter, aerolise, killing you and all those in the shelter no matter if they were combatants or not. Soldiers returning to their families had to watch as the gas ate their families in front of them. And that was during our first world war. We have had another since. And many wars since. When I was taken from my home it looked like the third was knocking on our door. I was a combat medic. It was my duty to save the survivors from the most horrific inventions of the human race in a world that didn't blow itself to pieces. And unlike this world, we don't use vacuum tubes anymore. We unlocked the secrets of the microchip decades ago and with that came autonomous weapons of war greater than anything this world has ever built. Autonomous intelligent war machines greater than anything this would ever build. Death could come from the sky at any moment anywhere in the world. You wouldn't know it. One second you are safe and the next everyone and everything in a 20-metre radius around you is naught but rubble and giblets. Rocket-propelled bombs, delivered by drones faster than sound piloted by a person on the other side of the planet. Our cars could be hacked, turning your trip home from work into a quick and messy grave. You didn't even need to be in a car. If someone was skilled enough and ruthless enough could turn the simple act of walking down the street into a possible accident that would kill you by hacking multiple cars to home in on you as soon as you are close. My world was not a nice place. It had a great gleaming shine but it was rotting underneath."
As I described my home, I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was remembering some things wrong or worse than they were. It wouldn't surprise me after getting mind fucked by the Simurgh and having it undone by the forge via cutting stuff out I wouldn't be surprised if some of the things were movies. But I remembered experiencing them too vividly for them to be false. You don't forget a metal gear.
Sunny looked at me with mute horror and the good doctor was not far behind but he hid it far better.
"Atom above kid. Some of the things you just said. I can see how you would build pain tolerance like you have. Guess the apocalypse was good for something. At least we don't have problems like that anymore"
Sunny nodded to her father's words as she wheeled over to hug me but stopped when both of them noticed me flinch.
"About that. We should talk after Sunny is healthy. This world isn't any better than mine, even now. Just thinking about the tunnelers makes me cringe. Going to need to do something about those things. But that potential underground apocalypse can wait and so can all the others. Now doctor, what is her prognosis?"
I asked with a grim expression, ready for the worst. I was prepared to do just about anything to get her whatever she may need, including making a deal with Robert House for his life support pod. He wanted the chip, I knew where it was and unlike the courier, I wouldn't be getting slowed down by side quests. If it was truly necessary for me to do that quest then it would be done by the end of the month at most.
"Repconn shake. Haven't seen the thing in years. Sunny, did you drink a funny-shaped nuka cola?"
Oh, fuck I had a bad feeling about this. Repconn made a lot of things and most of them weren't friendly. For a sickness to be named after them?
"Yeah, I found it in one of the old cars in the flatlands when I was exploring. It came in a rocket-shaped bottle. I guess it wasn't a nuka cola then?"
Sunny asked, coughing up a tiny amount of blood.
"No Sunny it wasn't. Alright, you are lucky that I still have the equipment needed to treat heavy radiation poisoning because what you drank was rocket fuel. Miss Alice, is there a bed I can use for this? I need her to lie down so that I can get the rad-away and the rad-x into her bloodstream. But I can fix this. It is no wonder you wouldn't have recognised it. It's something extremely rare and I'm quite sure Repconn doesn't exist in your home world so you couldn't have known about this."
His words were like a blessing from the motive force and the Omnissiah combined. I wouldn't lose another patient, another friend. I couldn't help myself. I let out a soft laugh of joy and gently hugged Sunny.
"You are going to be alright. You are going to be alright. You are going to be alright. I am not going to lose another patient. Oh, thank the Omnissiah. You're going to be alright. R-right the bed yeah, bed follow me."
I smiled as great fat tears of happiness ran down my face and giggles of joy and relief escaped from my lips. I then grabbed hold of the office chair that still served as Sunny's wheelchair and pushed her towards one of the two guest bedrooms. I needed to make her something better than this, this was a disgrace to me, my craft and the forge. But then again when I put her on this chair I wasn't operating with a full drawer of spoons. Heck, I would say I was running around in combat mode with trauma heaped on top of it. The presence of someone older than me who had medical experience was a blessing. I could defer to his experience when it came to patients and didn't need to run everything by myself.
I didn't need to worry about defence, offence, supplies and healing at once. This was such a great relief and I needed the support I was getting now. Just the fact that I didn't have to bandage my own wounds helped tremendously. In the span of a few days, I had gone from nothing to a minor support network and it took a massive load off my shoulders. I wheeled Sunny into the bedroom and helped the good Doctor to get her into bed.
"Alright young'un, I'm sure you have never seen this done before so pay close attention. I am going to administer the Rad-away first. The dose is 10ml per kg of body weight. Now if the patient has extreme symptoms such as green veins you can use a whole pack of rad-away but if you do that you are also killing any form of immune system they have. So, you will need antibiotics. If you have liquid ones those are what you want but they are extremely rare. However, I don't think that you will have that issue."
He said to me with a knowing look and placed the IV drip in her right arm, he then fixed the IV bag to the standing lamp so it would be high enough to drip.
"Now since my daughter was stupid enough to drink rocket fuel, she gets the whole pack AND rad-x to suppress whatever may still be left in her system. Now rad-x is a curious thing. I don't know how it works but it stops radiation from entering your body up to a point. Normally I would suggest one pill per 30 kg of weight but in this case, we are doubling that amount because someone drank radioactive material. You can go beyond that but that is not something you will want to do; the consequences are not pretty. Double the dose is the maximum I would go unless you got bit by a feral glowing one. It drains your body of fluids at a drastic rate so Sunny here is going to need a fluid IV."
He took a bag of pure saline from his doctor's pouch, it was in a protective container of steel, and handled it with great care. I could understand the caution. Pure saline was extremely rare in the wasteland and I would handle such a thing with the same reverence if I was in his position.
He then placed the needle in her arm, affixed the bag to the lamp and fed her the rad-x.
"Now then young'un, did you learn what I did.?"
He asked me in a kind tone, not unlike my own grandfather when he was teaching me how to carve wood or repair something.
"Yes doctor. 10mlg per kg of body weight for Rad-away and the full bag in extreme cases. In such a case the immune system is the casualty and will need to be supplemented. One pill of Rad-x per 30 kg of body weight and double in bad cases. More only if you have extreme situations, the heavy use of Rad-x drains fluids at a staggering rate and requires direct IV supplements to keep the patient going."
At the end of my report, I found myself saluting on instinct and blushed like a tomato as I quickly stopped doing that. Stupid army-trained reflexes.
"Oh my god that's so silly. You look adorable like that Alice. Why did you do that?"
Sunny was holding onto her belly in a fit of laughter and giggling like a schoolgirl at my display of army reflexes.
I pouted at her and grumbled.
"I'm going to eat breakfast; it should still be in the oven, right?"
She snickered at my attempt at running away but nodded and made no effort to keep me detained with uncomfortable questions like why I hugged her or why I cried like I did when we got the prognosis of her full recovery.
Stupid trauma bonds going both ways. I didn't think I would grow attached this quickly but what did I expect really? She was the first sane person I met in this hellhole of a place and she was hurt of course my instincts as a medic would latch onto her like a lifeline, a hurt person I could help instead of dealing with my feelings and problems. I kept grumbling about feelings and emotions as I walked into the Kitchen. I took my meal out of the oven and made my way to my workshop. I had some thinking to do.
Settling down on my workstation I began to eat my meal. I grimaced at the sausages; they had become too crispy after the time they spent in the oven. The beans had clumped together a little and the bread was a bit too dry now. After I finished my meal, I could feel it three nodes had unlodged themselves from the forge.
From the assistant's domain came the dingbots. Mechanical helpers, each animated with a spark of their own, capable of building anything I would be able to, salvaging, repairs and upkeep and most worryingly and yet adorably enduring to me. Connected to me on an intrinsic level. The little steampunk monstrosities would serve me well even if they would no doubt build creations from my subconscious mind. They rushed around in my workshop in all their misshaped oddly formed steampunk glory and I had a feeling that I would regret this but I had to leave them unsupervised for now. Because I had other perks to deal with and Hoo boy, I just got my first racial change. I gently picked up the adorable dingbot prime that once was my Pipboy and cradled the little girl. She climbed up my arm nuzzled against my cheek and settled on my shoulder.
I was no longer human anymore. This one had come from the alchemy domain of all things. No longer would I be confined to the weak form of a two-legged species nor was I plagued by the weaknesses of the form of flesh. Bullets? Knives? Explosions? Pha what were those before the glory of a magma slime? Oh yes, I was no longer human though I was easily able to pass as one as my body mimicked one so long as I wished it. I had become an apex hunter a species hailing from the lands of Múspellsheim. Memories of hunting players as a weak mob in the world of Yggdrasil flowed into my mind. Luckily, they were few and I was able to push them aside to revel in the fact that the injury on my arm was easily healed by shifting my mass to mimic an intact arm. The reduction of belly fat was just a side effect I assure you. The benefits of this change massively outweighed the negatives and I was rather happy with this.
I had expected something like this to happen at some point and I was glad it was a form I could live with and not something horrific. I could have gotten something bad or something that would have changed my entire mentality instead I got immunity to physical damage, the ability to mix chemicals in my body, a body that was both magmatic and acidic should I choose so. shape-changing skills, agelessness and a twenty times multiplier to all my stats including speed.
This was nice, and the last perk was another amazing one. From the magical supplies' domain, a skill of the pixies had been granted to me. I could fly just like Tinker Bell. Upon emitting a cloud of pixie dust, I would be able to take flight, and I would be able to extend this flight to others too as long as they had joy in their heart. I chuckled as I imagined myself as a rescue hero in the world of my hero academia. The fae queen, leading everyone to safety on her cloud of fae dust. If I ever went to that world, I would absolutely become a rescue hero. It would fit my nature.
I cackled as my dingbots began to buzz and well ding with glee at the idea. After all, the fae have two sides, naughty and nice. Nice would be me rescuing people and naughty…
Well, Endeavour and that yakuza dude both abused children did they not? In Endeavour's case, it was even his own. If I ever got the chance, I would introduce them to the inside of a magma slime. Yes, that was a nice thought but for now, I needed to focus on the here and now. The punishment of bastards in different worlds I may never reach could wait for now. With that thought in mind, I let my creativity run wild. I had a wasteland to clean up, multiple world-ending problems to defeat or outright destroy and slavers to prepare for. I wouldn't go looking for the legion, for now.
No for now it was time, time to begin building steam.
Perks this chapter:
-Ding! (Girl Genius SB) (200CP)
Well, this is different. A certain gentleman called Von Neumann would be delighted, at least. You are now the proud master of a full set of Dingbots of your own, or similar clanks or drones, at least. They're all minor sparks in their own rights, and can themselves build more of their kind
even though those don't have the spark. Led by a Prime, they are connected with you on an intrinsic, mental level, being fully capable of building any and all devices or works you can. They get everywhere, performing construction upkeep, salvage and everything else you might need them to. Not even needing blueprints, they seem to draw upon your knowledge directly, using their in-built tools to perform all the things you normally would need to do yourself, making everything you'd like them to... and a lot of them you wouldn't.
Don't leave them unsupervised.
-Pixie Dust (Peter Pan) (100CP)
Most if not all fairies constantly produce the magical substance of fairy dust around their body, such that a trail follows wherever you fly. People and even objects as large as ships, when covered in the sparkling dust, gain the ability to fly. However, while inanimate things can fly without any challenge, people wishing to fly must have sincere faith and happy, carefree emotions. You can constantly emit pixie dust at will and even surround yourself with a cloud of fairy dust. The perk also enables you to breathe easily without choking on pixie dust or other particles, such that you can breathe and talk even with smoke all around you. If you are not a fairy, you will be looked at quite strangely by others, but things are often strange in Neverland so that's hardly a bad thing.
-Slime (Overlord - The Series) (200CP)
There are many types of slimes and oozes. All of them are uniformly next to impossible to hurt with physical attacks, but are incredibly vulnerable to one type of elemental damage (fire for a regular slime, ice/cold for a lava slime, etc) and also possess a slight weakness to magic in general. You possess the ability to take on a human form that will pass even close inspection while losing none of the benefits that come with being made up of an amorphous slime-like substance and possess physical abilities at least twenty times that of a human. Including speed, despite how odd that may seem. You can naturally fit through tight spaces, shape your body into unnatural forms, and can make as many 'feelers' or 'manipulator arms' as you like. In truth, you're more like a uniformly coloured Shoggoth than you are anything else, except without all the eyes and body parts. Slimes are also powerfully acidic and can inflict grievous acid damage on anything they touch; you naturally possess the ability to determine whether or not your acid will damage the things you are in contact with. All Slimes are naturally good at alchemy and can create alchemical substances and magical potions, if they possess the knowledge of their creation, directly out of their own body. Slimes, due to their nature, are ageless.
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