darconor
Dragon negro
- Location
- Mas alla del agua.
- Pronouns
- El/Friki
The Contest of Power (Wiki-Warrior style story) (Fallout)
- Thread starter Aurora Moon
- Start date
- Location
- Ohio
Ouch, I hope you recover fully and without complication.
Truly you are a treasure Aurora, your fics are entertaining and always well constructed.
Love the chapter and glad to see the rolls!
Truly you are a treasure Aurora, your fics are entertaining and always well constructed.
Love the chapter and glad to see the rolls!
- Pronouns
- Human/Form/Keyblade
I enjoy the chapter a lot.
Hope you recover quickly.
Hope you recover quickly.
Odd1todd89
The strange tightrope
- Pronouns
- It
May you have a speedy recovery and both survive and live a long healthy life
Chapter 68--retracing Regan's steps.
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It took Karina and the others a whole day to find a suitable "co-pilot" in one of the robots and to teach it how to use the weapons on the red car… but once they had successfully done that both Karina and Terry wasted no time packing for their trip, and with that, they were off.
Karina was flying overhead again as they planned, but this time she was wearing a headset radio helmet on her head so that she could talk with Terry and Mr.Handy, which were in the passenger seat manning the weapons.
Terry was lagging slightly behind in his car as flying was still faster than being on the road, but it wasn't like she left him behind in the dust. Especially so because Karina was taking her time flying instead of flying quickly like she usually did.
Besides, staying slightly ahead meant that she could give him directions on where to go, and warn him of any possible 'roadblocks' in his paths such as fallen logs or super mutants.
They were going down the route that Karina had followed all the way to Culbertson.
"Around the Medicine lake area, Supermutants seem to have set up camp on top of the old building ruins that's been halfway submerged by the nearby growing lake. So instead of going all the way straight down, it might be more reasonable to take one of the off-roads and circle around the lake itself." Karina was saying.
"Roger that. As much as I want to see how much damage this thing can do, I ain't keen on battling Supermutants just yet." Terry agreed.
Karina hovered in the air for a few seconds as she checked her pipboy's gps. "There should be a side road called Rose hill road. See any old signs pointing the way?"
There were a few pauses, as Terry said over the radio. "Think so? There are a few faded signs that are illegible, but they do have arrows pointing the way."
Thankfully, overhead Karina could see that Terry was taking the right road after all, as they both went "offroad" with Karina flying up ahead again.
It overall took them 30 to 35 minutes to drive around the lake area, before finally rejoining the highway again just south of an old abandoned town called Friod, which also seemed to be overrun by Super mutants.
And a few more minutes of driving and they were finally back at Culbertson. Karina landed here as she needed to take a break from flying, as there was only so much her wings could do to keep on constantly flapping without getting tired.
Terry stopped as well, rolling down his windows to take in the sights of an old abandoned town that was recently razed to the ground. "Hot god damn. You weren't kidding when you said this town was thoroughly destroyed. Regan did this?"
Karina nodded. She then said, "I think he might've been testing out his powers here as nobody was living here. But considering that he had no problems with killing all the men in our vault…I can't help but worry that he might do the same to a fully populated area."
Terry nodded solemnly. "Yeah. Anyways, I think I know where Fort Peck is from here. You don't need to give me directions from now on, you can just follow me alright?"
Karina smiled. "Alright."
With that, they moved again after taking the moment to take a few sips of water and a few bites of an MRE granola bar.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An hour and a half later, they were finally nearing the Fort Peck Area.
"Come down here, we'll have to slow down and have you walk on foot. Or would you like a ride inside the car? I'm sure the guards here wouldn't take kindly to the idea that you could just bypass the security checkpoints by flying over them." Terry replied.
"Roger that." Karina agreed, and with that, she slowly flew downwards. Her wings were getting tired again anyways, so she was up for relaxing in the car.
She got into the car, and with that, they slowly took a leisurely drive down the road leading to Fort Peck.
They finally reached the first security checkpoint where the guards tensed up upon seeing a heavily armed car, although there were signs of awe on their faces too. It wasn't often you saw a working car, after all.
"Halt and state your business!" The guards called out.
Terry rolled down his windows and popped his head out. "We aren't here for trouble! We're just looking for a person! Tell me have you all heard of a person called Regan Turner?"
One of the guards then asked, "If you aren't here for trouble, what's with the car? I've never seen so many big guns attached to something like that."
Terry scoffed loudly. "I'm traveling on dangerous roads, my friend. You expect me to travel by myself with my lady friend here without having something that can take down mutants and other dangerous creatures?"
Another guard chuckled at this. "Got you there, Brody. I'd want to be heavily armed too."
'Brody' narrowed his eyes. "Right. Still, I'd rather you not take this car into my town. It looks like it can do a lot of damage."
Terry nodded. "Understood. Do you have a place where I can park it and keep it sheltered while we go into town? I'm amenable to leaving it with you, but if anything happens to it I'll hold you accountable. Fair?"
Brody relaxed at this. He nodded back. "Yes, that's fair. And we do have an old barn nearby that we use to host merchants' Brahmin when they're visiting. There aren't none in there right now, so I think your car will be okay."
Terry then drove where Brody directed him to go, and with that, both Terry and Karina got out of the car after telling the Mr.Handy robot to stay behind and keep an eye on the car.
Terry took the car keys with him too, for good measure even though he had debated just leaving the keys there as a sign of trust. But Karina thought that was too much, and there were chances that he might accidentally lock himself out that way.
Karina had also pulled out a printed picture of Regan to show people around town while they were at it, and she showed the guards the picture. They might not know the name Regan Turner but they might've seen his face.
One of the guards perked up upon seeing the picture. "Oh yeah, I've seen him around. Visitors around here are very common, but he had an unusual story you just don't forget. Apparently, he was in a bird costume or something. and got shot by Kingely's kid who mistook him for a giant bird until they got close enough to see that it was a man in a costume. Who the hell wanders around the wastes dressed like a giant creature?"
Karina smiled. Finally, a lead. "Do you know which way this man went?"
The guard shook his head. "You'd have to ask Jones Kingely and Dr. Jeremiah Julius about that."
"Where can I meet with those men then?" she asked.
The guards gave her some general directions, such as that there was a hospital section in the Fishery hatchery building as it was one of the most secure and fortified places around.
Karina thanked them and with that, she and Terry got around to exploring the place on foot.
Unlike the other towns she had visited, everything here seemed to be very spaced out between all buildings… and most of the buildings here were old flimsy metal warehouses. And, there were all kinds of farm crops growing in the largest spaces between the buildings and roads. It all seemed to be mainly carrots, some flowers, and other small crops, however.
The fish hatchery building was also one of the first buildings they saw upon sight, and it explained a lot about why the hospital was also in there when it turned out that it was the only proper building with a reddish-brown roof. By the looks of things it most likely had an underground heavy bunker and everything.
And out behind it, you could see small ponds to large ponds where people seemed to be filtering out fish and moving fish between them… so this was clearly a working fish farm.
It made sense in hindsight that a community would spring up centered around this building as it was a place that provided a food source for everyone, and that they might've holed up in this building at first when it was just a few people. Hence why the hospital was located in there as well.
But over time as the population grew they might've needed to expand over to the old warehouses and so on and forth.
Still, it surprised Karina that the fish didn't mutate into monsters or something. Everything else seemed to have done that after all.
"I guess we're seeing Dr. Jeremiah Julius first?" Terry wondered since this building was the first thing you saw when you came into town.
Karina merely nodded at this, because she couldn't think of a reason to seek out the hunter first when it might be easier to talk to the doctor first.
They spoke to the guard standing alert at the door, and they were let in when they told him their business was with Dr. Jeremiah Julius.
They wandered around aimlessly inside, somewhat sidetracked by the museum-like area clearly meant for visitors and tourists as that was the first thing they saw when they came inside. There were pictures of fish and other lifeforms, as well as old mounted fish with plaques under them detailing the life cycles of those fish and stuff like that. They even had a slightly faded section of the wall with words and images painted into it describing what a fish hatchery was and what they did exactly, which was somehow still readable. It was all mildly interesting.
But that wasn't enough to hold their interest for long, and they finally found the hospital section of the building which was located in the underground bunker.
They were greeted by an elderly-looking black man whose head was shaved, as he smiled. "I'm Dr. Jeremiah Julius. I heard you two were looking for me?"
Karina nodded and held up the printed picture of Regan. "We're looking for somebody, actually and some people in town said you treated him. Have you seen this man? His name's Regan Turner."
The man seemed to recognize the face on the paper and nodded. "Oh yes. Hard to forget that face when he was brought in by hunters after being mistaken for a large bird. He had a bird costume that enabled him to fly over great distances, can you believe that? He also fell from over 10 feet high without even a single scratch on him! It was probably a good thing that the hunters had decided to tranq him instead of using a real bullet, otherwise, I'm sure he would've been dead."
Karina didn't know what to make of this. Did Regan in fact literally have a bird costume that enabled him to fly, or did he have a flying power similar to Karina's, and the people just thought the wings were part of his "costume"?
Also, a part of her couldn't help but wish that the hunters had in fact shot him with real bullets and that she wouldn't have to keep on looking for him after this.
But she just asked, "Do you know of any place where he might've gone? It's important that I catch up to him."
The doctor looked over at Karina and noted her vault suit. "Ah, you're from the same vault he was? He did say something about needing a new generator for his vault and was going all the way to Hell… or rather, the old town of Helena as it was known before it got renamed?"
Karina blinked. "Huh. that's news to me… far as I know, the generators in Vault 129 are perfectly fine and don't need replacing."
It was Dr.Julius's turn to blink. "But why would he lie about that?"
Karina smiled wanly. "The truth is, we're looking for him because he's our number one suspect in a murder case and we want to ask him a lot of questions. A lot of men died and he was seen fleeing the scene. It wouldn't be too surprising that he'd try to come up with an innocent-sounding excuse for why he left his vault."
That was mostly the truth, but she had decided to word it in such a way that wouldn't alarm others too horribly.
Dr. Jeremiah Julius gaped at Karina before responding. "My word. He didn't seem like a murderer. Goes to show you that you can never truly know anybody. Anyways, I don't know if he's gone to Hel… Jones Kingsley and I laid out all the reasons why it would've been a bad idea to go there, such as the fact that it's a raider-infested hellhole, but he was still walking in that direction last we saw him. He might have gone to some other settlement instead, however."
Both Karina and Terry looked at each other at this, and they then nodded at the doctor.
"Thank you for the information, it's been very helpful," Terry replied.
With this, they didn't even need to go looking for the hunter to get extra information… since they were already tracking his movement and he seemed to be headed west.
They walked back to the barn, where a couple of guards were curiously inspecting their car.
The guards blinked when they noticed that Karina and Terry were already back.
"Back so soon?"
Terry answered, "The doctor was pretty forthcoming about where Regan, the man we were looking for, might be headed. And Regan's not here anymore, so we have no reason to stick around."
At the last part, Terry shrugged.
The guards nodded in understanding at this, and with that, both Karina and Terry got into the car and slowly drove out the way they had come in, and then sped up slightly once they were back on the westernmost road.
Terry noticed that Karina hadn't asked to be let out to fly again and then asked, "you're not gonna fly anymore?"
"Give me some time to rest, and then let me out. Alright?" Karina said as she pulled out a can of purified water and started chugging it.
Terry smiled. "Alright. I did wonder if your wings ever got tired."
Karina grinned. "You should see how jacked my back looks. I'm gaining a lot of muscle on my back thanks to the wings. So it apparently does need my body muscles to work, they're not just magic wings that attach themselves to me and then poof away without affecting my body… or my stamina for that matter."
Terry looked fascinated by this. "Huh. Neat."
They drove in silence for 10 minutes, with Karina checking her GPS on her pip-boy now and then.
Finally, she said, "There's a town up ahead. Let me get out and scout ahead to see if there's trouble there."
Terry stopped to let Karina out and parked at the side of the road while Karina flew upwards and towards the town… which according to the Pipboy was a town called Glasgow.
It was a good thing that Karina had the foresight to scout ahead… because it turned out that a good chunk of the town was overrun by raiders!
Upon closer inspection with some binoculars, it seemed to be a very specific tribe of raiders called the Flame Vipers, and their gang colors seemed to be primarily Reflective Orange clothing (not unlike what prewar construction workers wore for safety) and black colors which stamped the icon of a viper's head on their backs.
When Karina hid on some roof out of sight and reported back to Terry about this, Terry cussed loudly as he recognized this gang.
"Fuck. they were one of the main raider factions that run Montana, and were the ones who drove us out when we were trying to use Montana as our staging ground against the NCR." Terry explained.
The sad thing was, Karina could see how that happened because there were just so MANY of them. Glasgow was one of the biggest towns in eastern Montana to the point that it was becoming a city in pre-war times, having a population of 7,000. And while the raiders weren't quite that many in number, there was still a great deal of them that were spread out all over Glasgow from what she could see.
And if there was even more of this raider tribe in other places? Oof.
But it was a little bit hard on her faith in humanity because the implication here was that this many humans willingly turned to crime instead of trying to get by doing honest work. Was life really so hard that honest work was no longer profitable enough to outweigh the cons of leading a criminal lifestyle?
"..... do you think Regan could've run into those raiders, or should we just go around this town and try to head for Hel regardless?" Terry was asking.
Karina turned her attention back to Terry. "Actually… Regan's developed the power of flight if the doctor's testimony's anything to go by. It wouldn't be surprising if he skipped towns like this one entirely and flew high enough overhead in a way to not be seen by the raiders. It's what I would've done at any rate."
"Ah. good. Not that Regan can fly, I mean. I meant that we won't have to go in there and try to question those raiders. Not that I think they'd be willing to tell us anything. Although they might make good targets for trying out this car's weapons…" Terry responded over the radio.
Karina smiled. "Let's try to conserve our ammo at any rate. Let's just try to go around them. I saw several dirt roads we could use."
"Roger that." Terry agreed.
~~~
Unfortunately for them, the back dirt roads were also populated by raiders. Seemed that the local viper raiders used Glasgow as their home base while they spread out in all directions to try to scav for useable food and items.
So Terry was forced to floor it and effectively run the raiders over if he hadn't already used his mini-guns to shoot them. The side miniguns weren't much on aiming precision, but using the cannon up top was definitely too much overkill, even if it had a better aiming ability after the robot used that to turn one into the red chunky salsa.
Meanwhile, Karina did her best to take her potshots at the raiders from above too.
This went on like this for miles, until they were able to lose them after they sped past Glasgow's airport center which was miles away outside the town.
After that, the mobs of bugs that tried to attack the car were amusingly easy to get rid of, and Terry didn't even need to use the car's weapons… Karina did all the hard work as she merely practiced using her guns while flying. The recoil while flying was a pain in the ass, but she was learning how to deal with it.
It also helped that Terry was able to just simply ram his way through the bug swarms, even though he had to use the wipers afterward to get rid of all the gross bug gunk on the car's front glass window.
It was almost anti-climatic, but in a good way, when nothing else happened for 3 more hours while they drove on through old ruined towns and the like.
Terry finally stopped at the side of the road in a more mountainous hilly area, before getting out of the car to do some stretches as he had been seriously starting to cramp up driving for so long.
"Let's stop here for the night, I'm getting tired. I never thought I'd get tired just sitting in a moving vehicle while I steered it, but here I am." Terry mumbled as he yawned loudly.
Karina landed and commented, "Yeah, I guess I could've warned you that car lag is a thing."
Not to mention it was late noon now and the sun was going to set in a few hours, so it seemed like a good time as any to set up camp.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the early morning, Karina and Terry were very rudely scared awake by the loud noise of the car's guns going off.
>ring<
"What the fuck!! // HUH?!" both Terry and Karina said at the same time as they bolted upwards in their sleeping bags and frantically scrambled towards their nearby weapons.
"Pardon the rude awakening, but we've got Deathclaws incoming! I shot at them but they're still coming." the robot manning the car's weapons called out.
If the loud sounds of the car's big guns hadn't already done the trick, the mention of Deathclaws would've already done it.
"How many?!" Terry yelled as he turned the safety off his weapons and were halfway out of his sleeping bag.
"According to my sensors, we have a family of them in coming. Two adults, 4 young ones…" The robot answered.
Both Terry and Karina cursed loudly at this.
Karina said as she started pulling hard on her power, "Right, I'm gonna call in reinforcements with my power while you get into the car! Get away from here fast as you can while shooting the death claws from a distance."
Terry didn't need to be told twice, as he quickly got into the car and shut the door behind him hard.
>ring<
Two women appeared alongside a large military-looking robot, and they appeared to be Japanese judging by their body build and hair, as their eyes were completely concealed in a visor so Karina couldn't know for sure.
But she still yelled in Japanese: "please help me out and my friend in the car here! Monsters are coming, so please help me fight them. I'll explain things later okay?"
It seemed that Karina's guess paid off because they seemed to understand her perfectly and they too also spotted the group of deathclaws coming their way. Without much hesitation, they held up their huge automatic guns and made sure their aim was perfect before firing.
The large robot behind them circled around in a wide arc as it took its time to make sure it could fire on the Deathclaws without harming any humans in the way.
Damn, those deathclaws were tough. They were practically soaking the bullets in without taking too much damage, even though it did seem to sting them badly.
"Aegis!" Karina called out the spell without even thinking, and instinctively she just knew this was a way to completely reduce the Deathclaw's attack effectiveness, making their attacks weaker.
There was a strange aura that engulfed the Deathclaws, and one of them rushed at Terry's red car as it attempted to tear the car apart to get at Terry.
But it only left some serious scratches on the car, and Terry was able to fight the Deathclaw off by using the big gun on top of the car's roof to blast it away. He then sped away before driving around in a tight U-turn so that he could use his guns on the deathclaws from a distance.
Karina herself morphed into her full Oni form and pulled her minigun out of her backpack and started blasting away at one of the smaller deathclaws, which just made one of the parents angry as the nearest adult deathclaw turned their attention towards Karina away from the two Japanese women with an angry roar.
The large Japanese military robot finally found the perfect spot and timing to fire some of its large ordinances now that there were no humans nearby that would be caught up in the blast radius, and it started firing like crazy.
With that, the young deathclaws were bombed to death, which now left the two adults to deal with.
===========================================================
A/N: Sorry for the cliffhanger. The battle will continue next chapter.
Not so sure about this chapter. I was trying to do a fallout random encounter thing…. I had set it up like this:
Roll for random dangerous encounters--
1)Nothing happens, and you get to travel for a while without getting attacked.
2) Bugs Attack.
3)Plants attack (you go into an area with dangerous plants)
4)Raiders
5)Mirelurks
6) Bears (Yao Guai)
7)Feral Ghouls
8)Super Mutants
9)Deathclaws
10)Aliens
11)Wild dogs
12) Birds
13)Two-headed Bison or Brahmin
14)Rad-storms
1)How many of them are there?
1-10= few in numbers
11-16=handful in numbers
17-20= a large mob
Do they have an advantage over you? Roll up to 20.
How hard do you attack them back? Roll up to 20.
But the long travels seemed somewhat dull to me even when I was rolling for random encounters. I think next time I may just have Karina stop by landmarks and towns instead of describing the long stretches of road in between.
We don't need to know every minute of every step they ever took after all, right?
Karina was flying overhead again as they planned, but this time she was wearing a headset radio helmet on her head so that she could talk with Terry and Mr.Handy, which were in the passenger seat manning the weapons.
Terry was lagging slightly behind in his car as flying was still faster than being on the road, but it wasn't like she left him behind in the dust. Especially so because Karina was taking her time flying instead of flying quickly like she usually did.
Besides, staying slightly ahead meant that she could give him directions on where to go, and warn him of any possible 'roadblocks' in his paths such as fallen logs or super mutants.
They were going down the route that Karina had followed all the way to Culbertson.
"Around the Medicine lake area, Supermutants seem to have set up camp on top of the old building ruins that's been halfway submerged by the nearby growing lake. So instead of going all the way straight down, it might be more reasonable to take one of the off-roads and circle around the lake itself." Karina was saying.
"Roger that. As much as I want to see how much damage this thing can do, I ain't keen on battling Supermutants just yet." Terry agreed.
Karina hovered in the air for a few seconds as she checked her pipboy's gps. "There should be a side road called Rose hill road. See any old signs pointing the way?"
There were a few pauses, as Terry said over the radio. "Think so? There are a few faded signs that are illegible, but they do have arrows pointing the way."
Thankfully, overhead Karina could see that Terry was taking the right road after all, as they both went "offroad" with Karina flying up ahead again.
It overall took them 30 to 35 minutes to drive around the lake area, before finally rejoining the highway again just south of an old abandoned town called Friod, which also seemed to be overrun by Super mutants.
And a few more minutes of driving and they were finally back at Culbertson. Karina landed here as she needed to take a break from flying, as there was only so much her wings could do to keep on constantly flapping without getting tired.
Terry stopped as well, rolling down his windows to take in the sights of an old abandoned town that was recently razed to the ground. "Hot god damn. You weren't kidding when you said this town was thoroughly destroyed. Regan did this?"
Karina nodded. She then said, "I think he might've been testing out his powers here as nobody was living here. But considering that he had no problems with killing all the men in our vault…I can't help but worry that he might do the same to a fully populated area."
Terry nodded solemnly. "Yeah. Anyways, I think I know where Fort Peck is from here. You don't need to give me directions from now on, you can just follow me alright?"
Karina smiled. "Alright."
With that, they moved again after taking the moment to take a few sips of water and a few bites of an MRE granola bar.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An hour and a half later, they were finally nearing the Fort Peck Area.
"Come down here, we'll have to slow down and have you walk on foot. Or would you like a ride inside the car? I'm sure the guards here wouldn't take kindly to the idea that you could just bypass the security checkpoints by flying over them." Terry replied.
"Roger that." Karina agreed, and with that, she slowly flew downwards. Her wings were getting tired again anyways, so she was up for relaxing in the car.
She got into the car, and with that, they slowly took a leisurely drive down the road leading to Fort Peck.
They finally reached the first security checkpoint where the guards tensed up upon seeing a heavily armed car, although there were signs of awe on their faces too. It wasn't often you saw a working car, after all.
"Halt and state your business!" The guards called out.
Terry rolled down his windows and popped his head out. "We aren't here for trouble! We're just looking for a person! Tell me have you all heard of a person called Regan Turner?"
One of the guards then asked, "If you aren't here for trouble, what's with the car? I've never seen so many big guns attached to something like that."
Terry scoffed loudly. "I'm traveling on dangerous roads, my friend. You expect me to travel by myself with my lady friend here without having something that can take down mutants and other dangerous creatures?"
Another guard chuckled at this. "Got you there, Brody. I'd want to be heavily armed too."
'Brody' narrowed his eyes. "Right. Still, I'd rather you not take this car into my town. It looks like it can do a lot of damage."
Terry nodded. "Understood. Do you have a place where I can park it and keep it sheltered while we go into town? I'm amenable to leaving it with you, but if anything happens to it I'll hold you accountable. Fair?"
Brody relaxed at this. He nodded back. "Yes, that's fair. And we do have an old barn nearby that we use to host merchants' Brahmin when they're visiting. There aren't none in there right now, so I think your car will be okay."
Terry then drove where Brody directed him to go, and with that, both Terry and Karina got out of the car after telling the Mr.Handy robot to stay behind and keep an eye on the car.
Terry took the car keys with him too, for good measure even though he had debated just leaving the keys there as a sign of trust. But Karina thought that was too much, and there were chances that he might accidentally lock himself out that way.
Karina had also pulled out a printed picture of Regan to show people around town while they were at it, and she showed the guards the picture. They might not know the name Regan Turner but they might've seen his face.
One of the guards perked up upon seeing the picture. "Oh yeah, I've seen him around. Visitors around here are very common, but he had an unusual story you just don't forget. Apparently, he was in a bird costume or something. and got shot by Kingely's kid who mistook him for a giant bird until they got close enough to see that it was a man in a costume. Who the hell wanders around the wastes dressed like a giant creature?"
Karina smiled. Finally, a lead. "Do you know which way this man went?"
The guard shook his head. "You'd have to ask Jones Kingely and Dr. Jeremiah Julius about that."
"Where can I meet with those men then?" she asked.
The guards gave her some general directions, such as that there was a hospital section in the Fishery hatchery building as it was one of the most secure and fortified places around.
Karina thanked them and with that, she and Terry got around to exploring the place on foot.
Unlike the other towns she had visited, everything here seemed to be very spaced out between all buildings… and most of the buildings here were old flimsy metal warehouses. And, there were all kinds of farm crops growing in the largest spaces between the buildings and roads. It all seemed to be mainly carrots, some flowers, and other small crops, however.
The fish hatchery building was also one of the first buildings they saw upon sight, and it explained a lot about why the hospital was also in there when it turned out that it was the only proper building with a reddish-brown roof. By the looks of things it most likely had an underground heavy bunker and everything.
And out behind it, you could see small ponds to large ponds where people seemed to be filtering out fish and moving fish between them… so this was clearly a working fish farm.
It made sense in hindsight that a community would spring up centered around this building as it was a place that provided a food source for everyone, and that they might've holed up in this building at first when it was just a few people. Hence why the hospital was located in there as well.
But over time as the population grew they might've needed to expand over to the old warehouses and so on and forth.
Still, it surprised Karina that the fish didn't mutate into monsters or something. Everything else seemed to have done that after all.
"I guess we're seeing Dr. Jeremiah Julius first?" Terry wondered since this building was the first thing you saw when you came into town.
Karina merely nodded at this, because she couldn't think of a reason to seek out the hunter first when it might be easier to talk to the doctor first.
They spoke to the guard standing alert at the door, and they were let in when they told him their business was with Dr. Jeremiah Julius.
They wandered around aimlessly inside, somewhat sidetracked by the museum-like area clearly meant for visitors and tourists as that was the first thing they saw when they came inside. There were pictures of fish and other lifeforms, as well as old mounted fish with plaques under them detailing the life cycles of those fish and stuff like that. They even had a slightly faded section of the wall with words and images painted into it describing what a fish hatchery was and what they did exactly, which was somehow still readable. It was all mildly interesting.
But that wasn't enough to hold their interest for long, and they finally found the hospital section of the building which was located in the underground bunker.
They were greeted by an elderly-looking black man whose head was shaved, as he smiled. "I'm Dr. Jeremiah Julius. I heard you two were looking for me?"
Karina nodded and held up the printed picture of Regan. "We're looking for somebody, actually and some people in town said you treated him. Have you seen this man? His name's Regan Turner."
The man seemed to recognize the face on the paper and nodded. "Oh yes. Hard to forget that face when he was brought in by hunters after being mistaken for a large bird. He had a bird costume that enabled him to fly over great distances, can you believe that? He also fell from over 10 feet high without even a single scratch on him! It was probably a good thing that the hunters had decided to tranq him instead of using a real bullet, otherwise, I'm sure he would've been dead."
Karina didn't know what to make of this. Did Regan in fact literally have a bird costume that enabled him to fly, or did he have a flying power similar to Karina's, and the people just thought the wings were part of his "costume"?
Also, a part of her couldn't help but wish that the hunters had in fact shot him with real bullets and that she wouldn't have to keep on looking for him after this.
But she just asked, "Do you know of any place where he might've gone? It's important that I catch up to him."
The doctor looked over at Karina and noted her vault suit. "Ah, you're from the same vault he was? He did say something about needing a new generator for his vault and was going all the way to Hell… or rather, the old town of Helena as it was known before it got renamed?"
Karina blinked. "Huh. that's news to me… far as I know, the generators in Vault 129 are perfectly fine and don't need replacing."
It was Dr.Julius's turn to blink. "But why would he lie about that?"
Karina smiled wanly. "The truth is, we're looking for him because he's our number one suspect in a murder case and we want to ask him a lot of questions. A lot of men died and he was seen fleeing the scene. It wouldn't be too surprising that he'd try to come up with an innocent-sounding excuse for why he left his vault."
That was mostly the truth, but she had decided to word it in such a way that wouldn't alarm others too horribly.
Dr. Jeremiah Julius gaped at Karina before responding. "My word. He didn't seem like a murderer. Goes to show you that you can never truly know anybody. Anyways, I don't know if he's gone to Hel… Jones Kingsley and I laid out all the reasons why it would've been a bad idea to go there, such as the fact that it's a raider-infested hellhole, but he was still walking in that direction last we saw him. He might have gone to some other settlement instead, however."
Both Karina and Terry looked at each other at this, and they then nodded at the doctor.
"Thank you for the information, it's been very helpful," Terry replied.
With this, they didn't even need to go looking for the hunter to get extra information… since they were already tracking his movement and he seemed to be headed west.
They walked back to the barn, where a couple of guards were curiously inspecting their car.
The guards blinked when they noticed that Karina and Terry were already back.
"Back so soon?"
Terry answered, "The doctor was pretty forthcoming about where Regan, the man we were looking for, might be headed. And Regan's not here anymore, so we have no reason to stick around."
At the last part, Terry shrugged.
The guards nodded in understanding at this, and with that, both Karina and Terry got into the car and slowly drove out the way they had come in, and then sped up slightly once they were back on the westernmost road.
Terry noticed that Karina hadn't asked to be let out to fly again and then asked, "you're not gonna fly anymore?"
"Give me some time to rest, and then let me out. Alright?" Karina said as she pulled out a can of purified water and started chugging it.
Terry smiled. "Alright. I did wonder if your wings ever got tired."
Karina grinned. "You should see how jacked my back looks. I'm gaining a lot of muscle on my back thanks to the wings. So it apparently does need my body muscles to work, they're not just magic wings that attach themselves to me and then poof away without affecting my body… or my stamina for that matter."
Terry looked fascinated by this. "Huh. Neat."
They drove in silence for 10 minutes, with Karina checking her GPS on her pip-boy now and then.
Finally, she said, "There's a town up ahead. Let me get out and scout ahead to see if there's trouble there."
Terry stopped to let Karina out and parked at the side of the road while Karina flew upwards and towards the town… which according to the Pipboy was a town called Glasgow.
It was a good thing that Karina had the foresight to scout ahead… because it turned out that a good chunk of the town was overrun by raiders!
Upon closer inspection with some binoculars, it seemed to be a very specific tribe of raiders called the Flame Vipers, and their gang colors seemed to be primarily Reflective Orange clothing (not unlike what prewar construction workers wore for safety) and black colors which stamped the icon of a viper's head on their backs.
When Karina hid on some roof out of sight and reported back to Terry about this, Terry cussed loudly as he recognized this gang.
"Fuck. they were one of the main raider factions that run Montana, and were the ones who drove us out when we were trying to use Montana as our staging ground against the NCR." Terry explained.
The sad thing was, Karina could see how that happened because there were just so MANY of them. Glasgow was one of the biggest towns in eastern Montana to the point that it was becoming a city in pre-war times, having a population of 7,000. And while the raiders weren't quite that many in number, there was still a great deal of them that were spread out all over Glasgow from what she could see.
And if there was even more of this raider tribe in other places? Oof.
But it was a little bit hard on her faith in humanity because the implication here was that this many humans willingly turned to crime instead of trying to get by doing honest work. Was life really so hard that honest work was no longer profitable enough to outweigh the cons of leading a criminal lifestyle?
"..... do you think Regan could've run into those raiders, or should we just go around this town and try to head for Hel regardless?" Terry was asking.
Karina turned her attention back to Terry. "Actually… Regan's developed the power of flight if the doctor's testimony's anything to go by. It wouldn't be surprising if he skipped towns like this one entirely and flew high enough overhead in a way to not be seen by the raiders. It's what I would've done at any rate."
"Ah. good. Not that Regan can fly, I mean. I meant that we won't have to go in there and try to question those raiders. Not that I think they'd be willing to tell us anything. Although they might make good targets for trying out this car's weapons…" Terry responded over the radio.
Karina smiled. "Let's try to conserve our ammo at any rate. Let's just try to go around them. I saw several dirt roads we could use."
"Roger that." Terry agreed.
~~~
Unfortunately for them, the back dirt roads were also populated by raiders. Seemed that the local viper raiders used Glasgow as their home base while they spread out in all directions to try to scav for useable food and items.
So Terry was forced to floor it and effectively run the raiders over if he hadn't already used his mini-guns to shoot them. The side miniguns weren't much on aiming precision, but using the cannon up top was definitely too much overkill, even if it had a better aiming ability after the robot used that to turn one into the red chunky salsa.
Meanwhile, Karina did her best to take her potshots at the raiders from above too.
This went on like this for miles, until they were able to lose them after they sped past Glasgow's airport center which was miles away outside the town.
After that, the mobs of bugs that tried to attack the car were amusingly easy to get rid of, and Terry didn't even need to use the car's weapons… Karina did all the hard work as she merely practiced using her guns while flying. The recoil while flying was a pain in the ass, but she was learning how to deal with it.
It also helped that Terry was able to just simply ram his way through the bug swarms, even though he had to use the wipers afterward to get rid of all the gross bug gunk on the car's front glass window.
It was almost anti-climatic, but in a good way, when nothing else happened for 3 more hours while they drove on through old ruined towns and the like.
Terry finally stopped at the side of the road in a more mountainous hilly area, before getting out of the car to do some stretches as he had been seriously starting to cramp up driving for so long.
"Let's stop here for the night, I'm getting tired. I never thought I'd get tired just sitting in a moving vehicle while I steered it, but here I am." Terry mumbled as he yawned loudly.
Karina landed and commented, "Yeah, I guess I could've warned you that car lag is a thing."
Not to mention it was late noon now and the sun was going to set in a few hours, so it seemed like a good time as any to set up camp.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the early morning, Karina and Terry were very rudely scared awake by the loud noise of the car's guns going off.
>ring<
| https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Aegis_(skill) Roll 7 Aegis is a skill in the Fire Emblem series that was introduced in Fire Emblem Awakening. The skill is a special that reduces ranged weapons' damage. Effect: For 7 hours, Karina has the ability to cast Aegis on any enemy and reduce their attack power by 50%, like in the hero verison. |
"What the fuck!! // HUH?!" both Terry and Karina said at the same time as they bolted upwards in their sleeping bags and frantically scrambled towards their nearby weapons.
"Pardon the rude awakening, but we've got Deathclaws incoming! I shot at them but they're still coming." the robot manning the car's weapons called out.
If the loud sounds of the car's big guns hadn't already done the trick, the mention of Deathclaws would've already done it.
"How many?!" Terry yelled as he turned the safety off his weapons and were halfway out of his sleeping bag.
"According to my sensors, we have a family of them in coming. Two adults, 4 young ones…" The robot answered.
Both Terry and Karina cursed loudly at this.
Karina said as she started pulling hard on her power, "Right, I'm gonna call in reinforcements with my power while you get into the car! Get away from here fast as you can while shooting the death claws from a distance."
Terry didn't need to be told twice, as he quickly got into the car and shut the door behind him hard.
>ring<
| https://tokusatsu.fandom.com/wiki/Gynoids:_Sad_Story Roll 7 Gynoids: Sad Story (ガイノイド GYNOIDS-SADSTORY-, Gainoido Saddo sutōrī) is a 2005 original tokusatsu. The series was produced by West Power, previously a production company owned by Japanese hobby shop chain Jungle as part of their Gaion Label imprint. Gynoids: Sad Story was released direct-to-DVD in two volumes. West Power also released Evolver, Powered Sister, and Jan Saber. The plot goes like this: In the near future, Technoport City, located in Honshu, Japan, is a city with major technological development. Robots called androids now exist that look and act just like humans. The user of high-performance androids for consumer use is rising...but so is "robot crime", where the programs of androids and other robots are illegally rewritten to commit illegal activities. To combat this threat, the government created S.A.D. (Search and Destroy), an anti-robot crime division consisting of knowledgeable law enforcement personnel trained in combat against robots. With the huge amount of robot crime taking place, S.A.D. may not be enough to solve the problem. As an experiment and through the cooperation of Heaven's Gate Company, two of their latest model gynoids (female-type androids) are now deployed as investigators. Effect: for 7 hours, Karina summons those two gynoids, who are fully armed to the teeth with all sorts of large guns plus one large backup robot as seen on the DVD cover. They also seem to have scifi visor-headset types that make them look like they have glowing four eyes. |
Two women appeared alongside a large military-looking robot, and they appeared to be Japanese judging by their body build and hair, as their eyes were completely concealed in a visor so Karina couldn't know for sure.
But she still yelled in Japanese: "please help me out and my friend in the car here! Monsters are coming, so please help me fight them. I'll explain things later okay?"
It seemed that Karina's guess paid off because they seemed to understand her perfectly and they too also spotted the group of deathclaws coming their way. Without much hesitation, they held up their huge automatic guns and made sure their aim was perfect before firing.
The large robot behind them circled around in a wide arc as it took its time to make sure it could fire on the Deathclaws without harming any humans in the way.
Damn, those deathclaws were tough. They were practically soaking the bullets in without taking too much damage, even though it did seem to sting them badly.
"Aegis!" Karina called out the spell without even thinking, and instinctively she just knew this was a way to completely reduce the Deathclaw's attack effectiveness, making their attacks weaker.
There was a strange aura that engulfed the Deathclaws, and one of them rushed at Terry's red car as it attempted to tear the car apart to get at Terry.
But it only left some serious scratches on the car, and Terry was able to fight the Deathclaw off by using the big gun on top of the car's roof to blast it away. He then sped away before driving around in a tight U-turn so that he could use his guns on the deathclaws from a distance.
Karina herself morphed into her full Oni form and pulled her minigun out of her backpack and started blasting away at one of the smaller deathclaws, which just made one of the parents angry as the nearest adult deathclaw turned their attention towards Karina away from the two Japanese women with an angry roar.
The large Japanese military robot finally found the perfect spot and timing to fire some of its large ordinances now that there were no humans nearby that would be caught up in the blast radius, and it started firing like crazy.
With that, the young deathclaws were bombed to death, which now left the two adults to deal with.
===========================================================
A/N: Sorry for the cliffhanger. The battle will continue next chapter.
Not so sure about this chapter. I was trying to do a fallout random encounter thing…. I had set it up like this:
Roll for random dangerous encounters--
1)Nothing happens, and you get to travel for a while without getting attacked.
2) Bugs Attack.
3)Plants attack (you go into an area with dangerous plants)
4)Raiders
5)Mirelurks
6) Bears (Yao Guai)
7)Feral Ghouls
8)Super Mutants
9)Deathclaws
10)Aliens
11)Wild dogs
12) Birds
13)Two-headed Bison or Brahmin
14)Rad-storms
1)How many of them are there?
1-10= few in numbers
11-16=handful in numbers
17-20= a large mob
Do they have an advantage over you? Roll up to 20.
How hard do you attack them back? Roll up to 20.
But the long travels seemed somewhat dull to me even when I was rolling for random encounters. I think next time I may just have Karina stop by landmarks and towns instead of describing the long stretches of road in between.
We don't need to know every minute of every step they ever took after all, right?
Gold adorned man
Stay true to your belief, and act for it.
- Location
- Floor of Religion
- Pronouns
- Nonsencioul
Reading back on the earlier chapters, I can't help but notice that our Villain is slowly becoming a scooby doo protaganist
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
? Explain. it sounds funny but I don't see it. 🤔
TheOmnimercurial
Dragon Bard
- Location
- UK
I feel bad for the Deathclaw Family....
Will there be any Sapient Deathclaws/Hairy Deathclaws around in this setting? Or added/transformed via Rolls?
Will there be any Sapient Deathclaws/Hairy Deathclaws around in this setting? Or added/transformed via Rolls?
Chapter 69-- Evil Prison-- not so nice.
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The two parental deathclaws roared loudly as they witnessed their four young ones get firebombed to death by that giant military robot, and the two of them rushed over to gang up on the military robot, doing their best to tear it apart even though their attack effectiveness was cut down by 50% thanks to Karina's spell.
Karina was just thankful that those deathclaws didn't overly fixate on their targets and tended to switch up their targets on whoever grabbed their attention the most. Because this gave everyone a chance to just blast away with their guns.
Even the large military robot got into the action, now that the monsters were close enough to blast at without humans getting injured in the crossfire. And it didn't seem to mind any accidental friendly fire coming its way, even if it was from the two Japanese women who it was accompanying.
With Terry and his Mr.Handy taking potshots in their armed car, the two Deathclaws finally succumbed to their injuries.
Panting slightly, Karina slowly went over to the deathclaws to make sure they were all dead.
And upon closer inspection, she noted that those deathclaws were skinny with their ribs showing. which meant they all must've been starving.
A part of her felt bad about this discovery because this family had been just trying to survive. But on the other hand, part of herself pointed out that she didn't need to feel bad because they had foolishly decided to pick her as their snack. And they most likely had eaten humans in the past, if they were this fearless about going after heavily armed humans. Of course, they could've been just that desperate.
"<Those… aren't robots? I thought they were robotic creatures that escaped from someplace and went on a rampage.>" The Japanese woman commented, sounding confused as they realized that the deathclaw was bleeding.
Terry got out of his car and walked over just as Karina turned around to explain.
"<no. Um, I know this might seem hard to believe, but I'm a summoner, and I have the ability to summon other people from other worlds. You aren't in your world right now. But not to worry, you won't stay here for very long. According to what I sense, you'll probably be sent back after the spell wears off in a few hours.>" Karina explained.
Both women looked skeptical, and one of them looked upwards into the sky still wearing that visor with the glowing four "eyes" on it.
She then said, "<unable to connect to our company's satellite, but currently hacking into unfamiliar ones. Security on those ones is very… usual. Amounts to guessing the passwords selected from a series of words interposed with random characters.>"
Karina raised one eyebrow at that. She had heard of how some people could hack into terminals by remote connection, although that was rare and almost unheard of. And this woman claimed her reach could reach all the way out into orbit to hack into any existing satellites? Really? Pfft.
The woman doing the supposed hacking jerked in shock at something she was supposedly seeing behind that sci-fi-looking visor of hers. She then said in a quiet voice, "<I have accessed the satellite images of this earth… and…. Things are very dramatically different from what we are used to. Even Japan looks altered as if damaged by nuclear war.>"
The other Japanese woman didn't look overly shocked and instead tilted her head in mild curiosity. "<How can that be?>"
The first Japanese woman then looked vaguely embarrassed according to her body langue since her eyes and most of her face were still hidden. "<...it may be that this woman here is in fact telling the truth, that she is truly a summoner. I have no other reasonable explanation for how we could be in America currently when we were in japan just moments ago. And not any America, but a post-apocalyptic one by looks of things.>"
Karina looked interested. "<So you're telling me that this visor of yours can actually access the satellites here?...... ah, would you be terribly interested in a trade? That seems too useful to me for me to pass it up.>"
The first woman then spoke in English, somewhat surprising Karina, "It is not the visor itself, even though it does help with visual interfacing. You see, my associate and I are Gynoids, also known as Androids, and we are assigned to the Japanese S.A.D department of the police force."
(All Gynoids are equipped with a language pack, meaning they can speak any language but they tend to speak the main language of whatever continent they are on currently.)
Karina blinked. "Wait. you're both robots? But… you two look so perfectly human!"
The second woman looked vaguely curious as she asked, "Do your robots here not look human at all?"
Karina shook her head and gestured at Mr.Handy, who had gotten out of the car to inspect the damage to the car. Meanwhile, Terry was now looking over the dead Deathclaws, seemingly eying how to skin them and butcher them for all the meat they had.
Both Gynoids stared at Mr.Handy, and then looked at each other.
"Interesting. The design seems horribly old fashioned…"
But the other one finished for her, "... but the hovering technology they have seem highly advanced enough if they're able to keep afloat like that without constantly burning out all the fuel they have."
The first one merely nodded at that.
Karina then said, "It's mostly nuclear fission energy. We do have Mr.handy fuel alongside that, but a single canister that can last for 10 years in addition to the fissionable energy that the machines inside the robots produce. The robots also can take in types of alcohol, providing that it's the type that you can use as fuel."
Both Gynoids looked fascinated at that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---Hours later---
They were all back on the road again, with the Gynoids sitting in the back with Karina.
The deathclaws were now chopped up into parts and put into containers, they all agreed to go back on the road as the car was still serviceable despite the large scratches on it.
They also had to tie the now-damaged military robot, which was apparently nicknamed Sera, to the back of the car as the women weren't willing to leave without it, even though it would simply return back home after a few hours.
The gynoids went by the nicknames Eru and Miki, their actual "names" being M3904-X001 and M5904-X002… which was admittedly a little bit of a mouthful to say.
Eru and Miki were sharing a little bit of what they did in their world in return for Karina telling them more about her own world.
"I guess it's just hard for me to imagine… the fact that robot crime would become so commonplace that they created a whole new division for it." Karina replied, "Here the robots are hard to hack into and it would take a very long time to program the robots to be able to pull off identity fraud and things like that. They're also heavily programmed to be loyal to American laws first and their owners second."
Miki then said, "I suppose that's the downside of having androids look exactly like human beings. You can alter the robots' appearances to look exactly like anybody, and they can even be taught to perfectly mimic voices and other things if you've got a recording of the person you wanted them to impersonate. In one unusual case, I heard of one time, one husband nearly got away with the murder of his wife that way.
His children were very young at the time of the murder, so they didn't notice anything amiss at the time but as they grew older they started to get suspicious. Especially so because their mom didn't seem to age or get tired easily at all. When they confronted him he finally confessed after all those years. Surprisingly enough they still wanted to keep the gynoid that had been mimicking their dead mother instead of handing her over to be destroyed. They wanted their father jailed to do time for his crime out of respect for their biological mother and forced him to turn himself in.
Looking back on it I suppose they didn't want to lose both parents, and they seemed to feel that the robot was still their mother, in a strange way. After all, even though the robot wasn't their biological mother they still grew up with her and she still raised them."
Karina let out a whistle at that twisted story. "Man, that's so crazy. I have to admit I find myself very uncomfortable at the idea of perfectly human-looking robots, especially if we make them exactly like humans in every way possible and then make them our unpaid labor force. it feels like we're bringing back human slavery in a different flavor if that makes sense. No offense to you two of course, even though I feel horrible for basically saying that you two shouldn't exist."
Eru shook her head. "None taken. There were some good reasons for having human-like robots… but I do agree that there seem to have been several consequences that humanity as a whole didn't think of until it was too late. Had humans thought out all the consequences ahead of time and created preventive measures before they made robots that could easily pass for humans, I think we would have fewer problems. I also admit, if most robots looked non-human to start with then it would make our jobs much easier. We wouldn't be so overwhelmed with so many tasks to search down those robotic criminals and destroy them all."
Mika then smiled cheekily. "Besides, no offense to you humans, but what's so good about being humans that we have to pretend to be and look exactly like you? We should take more pride in being robots, even if you humans created us. I'm in agreement that robots should have more unique traits that make them stand apart from humans because of that, just so everyone knows who's the superior one here."
Karina chuckled loudly. "I suppose so, yeah."
Karina was big enough to take that verbal jab, especially when she felt guilty for expressing that she thought human-looking robots were a bad idea to a bunch of gynoids who looked so perfectly human. Felt like she was being racist there or something. So it was only fair that Mika act racist right back… espeically when it felt more like a humorous jab rather than a mean-spirited one.
Terry interrupted their conversation as he pointed out something weird. "Huh, that's weird. I've been around here before, but I don't remember that large building being there…"
Curious, Karina turned her head to look at what Terry was looking there was a road leading off the road that led uphill to a very large ominous looking stone building. And not just any stone building, it looked strongly like a gothic castle, of all things. It had a huge-ass gate and a ridiculously tall stone fence encircling them, clearly designed to keep things inside and also to keep things outside, looking like a giant fortress of some sort.
The road leading to the building looked so newly paved in comparison to the main road which looked like it was so poorly maintained that it all looked like it was breaking up and returning to nature. Which indicated that something funky was going on there.
Terry and Karina's eyes met, and through unspoken agreement, they merely nodded at each other the car turned onto the new road and drove up towards the gate. Karina got out and was able to see that there was a large sign next to the gate that was in Japanese, which read, "Black Wing Maximum Security Prison".
Karina turned to look at Terry, who was poking his head out the car window with a wry look on her face. "Well… Regan was definitely here. Unless we had a Japanese supermax prison on American soil we didn't know about."
Terry then suggested, "We should check it out. Maybe Regan left some clue as to where he's going next. If he isn't still dead set on going to Hel."
Karina nodded again. "That's what I was thinking too."
With that, she hacked the intercom to let the motorized gate open and let the car through.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An hour later, they hadn't found much evidence that Regan had been here besides this obviously summoned Supermax castle prison.
Karina, Terry, Mika, and Eru all had agreed to spilt up and explore the building and then bring anything of interest back to the lobby.
Sadly, they didn't find much.
Other than the dozens of recorded gross violations of prisoner rights that the gynoids had found in some computer banks here…. Both Mika and Eru were so disturbed by some of the recordings they found that they refused to show Karina and Terry, saying that it would not be good for their mental health.
Terry and Karina took the gynoids at their word because they weren't willing to chance it, not when they still needed to find Regan and they felt that you needed to be in a healthy mindset for that.
Terry found some items as well, and brought back some prisoner clothing, along with what looked to be the uniform of the guards… which looked more like a fancy dress uniform than the everyday casual clothing a policeman would've had. Seriously, what was with this prison?
Terry could only shake his head as he said, "Imagine if we had a fort like this here already before we got driven out by the raiders. We could've easily holed up here instead, and then easily dealt with the raiders who were attacking us at the time. Hell, we could've even easily weathered the storm out if the NCR bastards decided to attack us here. Such a fucking waste."
Karina then tilted her head. She couldn't help but ask: "What's with that anyhow? I know your faction is apparently at war with NCR… but why? I never did get the details of that."
Terry blinked. "Oh, right. You were asleep that whole time, so you wouldn't have known. I guess if I had to summarize it… it's mostly over ideological differences. The NCR and the DBCB are highly similar in a lot of ways in that we're both a policing force and a government stabilizing the area. I guess we could've teamed up or maybe merged our two governments together if it wasn't for a few main sticking points that both sides heavily disagree over."
"And that is?" Karina wondered out loud.
Terry scoffed. "There's a bunch of laws that NCR wanted to be heavily enforced, with some over the top punishments for those who broke the law. Again, Both NCR and DBCB have a lot of similarities in that they both agree that slavery should be banned and that we should enforce equality amongst genders, sexualities, and so on forth. But it seems that we disagree on almost everything else, such as how criminals should be punished.
Such as the ban on open carry rights and the ban on drug use and public drunkness, which the DBCB was against. I know I'm biased, but I agree with the DBCB here… what's the point of telling people they can't do drugs or be drunk while walking outside? If you ask me, I'd rather know who the druggies and the alcoholics are, so I know who not to put my trust in. Let them make fools of themselves in public! They also can serve as bad examples to our children, so they know that heavy drug use and alcoholism is a path they shouldn't take."
Terry shook his head and sighed. "As I said. It's mainly all ideological differences. DBCB tend to be pretty lenient on a lot of things, we very rarely execute criminals unless they're mass murderers with a mountain of evidence backing up that fact. NCR seems to think we're too soft on criminals, and they have a tendency to execute criminals over almost everything, as they don't seem to believe in second chances.
It also doesn't help that those NCR bastards keep on talking about taming the savages of the American Wasteland and bringing civilization back… right in front of our leaders… who are all Lakota. The worst part was that they seemed honestly clueless as to what was wrong with saying such statements in front of the Lakota people and seemed surprised when our leaders didn't respond very positively to that.
But again I know not everyone's been educated on the long history of America and how they discriminated against certain groups in the past, so maybe those NCR aren't the well-educated citizens they claim to be. In which case I wouldn't want to be under their rule then."
Karina cringed inwardly at that. Yeah, she could see how that huge diplomatic mistake was one that was very easy to make if you hadn't been raised learning about America's history by a more honest teacher who wasn't afraid to teach you about America's worst mistakes alongside all the good that America did.
Still, it was interesting… that two factions who were so eerily similar to each other would end up fighting with each other instead of working together thanks to some tiny yet very important differences that each one had, such as the beliefs in how the law should be, and how it should be run. She supposed that it was a little bit like the republicans and democrats in that while there were several things that both did agree on, they still diverged from each other in terms of opinions on certain things so much that they still ended up something akin to mortal enemies.
Would there even be a war at all if the NCR hadn't been so dead set on spreading their rule to all the other states? Karina could see both the NCR and DBCB both simply agreeing to disagree but leaving each other alone had the NCR peacefully reached out to other states and asked them if they'd like to join the NCR and be the sort who actually gracefully accepted "No" for an answer.
Karina could only mentally shake her head at that. All of this sounded like this conflict was almost pointless, and could've easily been avoided had rationality won over ego instead. But that was politics for you, most of it was primarily emotional rather than rational.
She then looked around at the insides of the prison castle here one more time.
She then sighed, saying out loud: "It's a shame that Regan can't be the type I got along with. This kind of place… we could've used this back at the vault. It could've been remodeled, and used as a great alternative to living underground if people didn't want to live in vault 129 anymore but didn't have anywhere else to go. It's such a fucking waste."
Terry nodded. "It'll act as a great base and fort for our army, however. I've already decided to radio it in and give my men the coordinates as I don't think we should waste this opportunity that Regan unknowingly created for us. Hopefully, they'll be able to come back here and claim this place before the raiders do. I'll be surprised if none of the raiders eventually come this way and discovers this little gem of a place."
Karina chuckled. She had never considered using Regan's summons against himself like this, but that was a good idea. And they had explored this place thoroughly, so they knew that it didn't hold any nasty surprises.
============================================
A/N: I was planning to have Karina react more to Regan's summon like this and stuff. So I got around to viewing the manga that this place was from so that I could learn more about it…. So that I could describe the layout of the building and the advantages it could have as a fortress, etc. Then I discovered that the evil prison was from hentai, which I found really funny as this was chapter 69...
But. READING IT WAS THE WORST IDEA I EVER HAD! Normally hentai doesn't bother me much, but the manga was like edgy erotic fanfiction written by a 13-year-old kid. It was done for shock value and didn't make much sense. Like, why is this convicted woman the only one at a mostly male prison? Why isn't there a new women's wing? It was also non-stop rape scenes wall to wall, all the friggin' time. And of course, being a hentai, the main lady seems to have a kink for it and is kinda into all of it…. So she wasn't too traumatized terribly, but she was still horribly shocked at the blatant abuse by prison staff and by the prisoners. Some of the responses plus the rape scenes were too uncomfortably realistic and stuff… much in the same way Boku no pico was disturbingly a realistic portrayal of pedophilic grooming so that it was less a sexy hentai but more like a really uncomfortable look at a rapist's mentality that makes you go "What the fuck".
Also, the manga or the anime doesn't even describe the insides of the prison much, only what the outside looks like… so I friggin wasted my time for nothing on a shitty hentai rape manga/anime. I also should really have read the reviews more and taken their warnings into account so that I was more mentally prepared for it, because all of the one-star reviews talk about how awful it was, and about the non-stop rape scenes.
-_-;
So this kinda reflected in my writing, as I was trying to distract myself from the sheer awfulness this place represented by having Terry tell Karina more about the politics between NCR and his faction. Ugh.
Next stop, Neo-browser city so that Karina can react to it! That's definitely going to be my favorite part. And I can mentally cleanse my mind of that awful rape hentai by focusing on something else. Really not how I wanted to spend the first day of the new year. 😛
Karina was just thankful that those deathclaws didn't overly fixate on their targets and tended to switch up their targets on whoever grabbed their attention the most. Because this gave everyone a chance to just blast away with their guns.
Even the large military robot got into the action, now that the monsters were close enough to blast at without humans getting injured in the crossfire. And it didn't seem to mind any accidental friendly fire coming its way, even if it was from the two Japanese women who it was accompanying.
With Terry and his Mr.Handy taking potshots in their armed car, the two Deathclaws finally succumbed to their injuries.
Panting slightly, Karina slowly went over to the deathclaws to make sure they were all dead.
And upon closer inspection, she noted that those deathclaws were skinny with their ribs showing. which meant they all must've been starving.
A part of her felt bad about this discovery because this family had been just trying to survive. But on the other hand, part of herself pointed out that she didn't need to feel bad because they had foolishly decided to pick her as their snack. And they most likely had eaten humans in the past, if they were this fearless about going after heavily armed humans. Of course, they could've been just that desperate.
"<Those… aren't robots? I thought they were robotic creatures that escaped from someplace and went on a rampage.>" The Japanese woman commented, sounding confused as they realized that the deathclaw was bleeding.
Terry got out of his car and walked over just as Karina turned around to explain.
"<no. Um, I know this might seem hard to believe, but I'm a summoner, and I have the ability to summon other people from other worlds. You aren't in your world right now. But not to worry, you won't stay here for very long. According to what I sense, you'll probably be sent back after the spell wears off in a few hours.>" Karina explained.
Both women looked skeptical, and one of them looked upwards into the sky still wearing that visor with the glowing four "eyes" on it.
She then said, "<unable to connect to our company's satellite, but currently hacking into unfamiliar ones. Security on those ones is very… usual. Amounts to guessing the passwords selected from a series of words interposed with random characters.>"
Karina raised one eyebrow at that. She had heard of how some people could hack into terminals by remote connection, although that was rare and almost unheard of. And this woman claimed her reach could reach all the way out into orbit to hack into any existing satellites? Really? Pfft.
The woman doing the supposed hacking jerked in shock at something she was supposedly seeing behind that sci-fi-looking visor of hers. She then said in a quiet voice, "<I have accessed the satellite images of this earth… and…. Things are very dramatically different from what we are used to. Even Japan looks altered as if damaged by nuclear war.>"
The other Japanese woman didn't look overly shocked and instead tilted her head in mild curiosity. "<How can that be?>"
The first Japanese woman then looked vaguely embarrassed according to her body langue since her eyes and most of her face were still hidden. "<...it may be that this woman here is in fact telling the truth, that she is truly a summoner. I have no other reasonable explanation for how we could be in America currently when we were in japan just moments ago. And not any America, but a post-apocalyptic one by looks of things.>"
Karina looked interested. "<So you're telling me that this visor of yours can actually access the satellites here?...... ah, would you be terribly interested in a trade? That seems too useful to me for me to pass it up.>"
The first woman then spoke in English, somewhat surprising Karina, "It is not the visor itself, even though it does help with visual interfacing. You see, my associate and I are Gynoids, also known as Androids, and we are assigned to the Japanese S.A.D department of the police force."
(All Gynoids are equipped with a language pack, meaning they can speak any language but they tend to speak the main language of whatever continent they are on currently.)
Karina blinked. "Wait. you're both robots? But… you two look so perfectly human!"
The second woman looked vaguely curious as she asked, "Do your robots here not look human at all?"
Karina shook her head and gestured at Mr.Handy, who had gotten out of the car to inspect the damage to the car. Meanwhile, Terry was now looking over the dead Deathclaws, seemingly eying how to skin them and butcher them for all the meat they had.
Both Gynoids stared at Mr.Handy, and then looked at each other.
"Interesting. The design seems horribly old fashioned…"
But the other one finished for her, "... but the hovering technology they have seem highly advanced enough if they're able to keep afloat like that without constantly burning out all the fuel they have."
The first one merely nodded at that.
Karina then said, "It's mostly nuclear fission energy. We do have Mr.handy fuel alongside that, but a single canister that can last for 10 years in addition to the fissionable energy that the machines inside the robots produce. The robots also can take in types of alcohol, providing that it's the type that you can use as fuel."
Both Gynoids looked fascinated at that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---Hours later---
They were all back on the road again, with the Gynoids sitting in the back with Karina.
The deathclaws were now chopped up into parts and put into containers, they all agreed to go back on the road as the car was still serviceable despite the large scratches on it.
They also had to tie the now-damaged military robot, which was apparently nicknamed Sera, to the back of the car as the women weren't willing to leave without it, even though it would simply return back home after a few hours.
The gynoids went by the nicknames Eru and Miki, their actual "names" being M3904-X001 and M5904-X002… which was admittedly a little bit of a mouthful to say.
Eru and Miki were sharing a little bit of what they did in their world in return for Karina telling them more about her own world.
"I guess it's just hard for me to imagine… the fact that robot crime would become so commonplace that they created a whole new division for it." Karina replied, "Here the robots are hard to hack into and it would take a very long time to program the robots to be able to pull off identity fraud and things like that. They're also heavily programmed to be loyal to American laws first and their owners second."
Miki then said, "I suppose that's the downside of having androids look exactly like human beings. You can alter the robots' appearances to look exactly like anybody, and they can even be taught to perfectly mimic voices and other things if you've got a recording of the person you wanted them to impersonate. In one unusual case, I heard of one time, one husband nearly got away with the murder of his wife that way.
His children were very young at the time of the murder, so they didn't notice anything amiss at the time but as they grew older they started to get suspicious. Especially so because their mom didn't seem to age or get tired easily at all. When they confronted him he finally confessed after all those years. Surprisingly enough they still wanted to keep the gynoid that had been mimicking their dead mother instead of handing her over to be destroyed. They wanted their father jailed to do time for his crime out of respect for their biological mother and forced him to turn himself in.
Looking back on it I suppose they didn't want to lose both parents, and they seemed to feel that the robot was still their mother, in a strange way. After all, even though the robot wasn't their biological mother they still grew up with her and she still raised them."
Karina let out a whistle at that twisted story. "Man, that's so crazy. I have to admit I find myself very uncomfortable at the idea of perfectly human-looking robots, especially if we make them exactly like humans in every way possible and then make them our unpaid labor force. it feels like we're bringing back human slavery in a different flavor if that makes sense. No offense to you two of course, even though I feel horrible for basically saying that you two shouldn't exist."
Eru shook her head. "None taken. There were some good reasons for having human-like robots… but I do agree that there seem to have been several consequences that humanity as a whole didn't think of until it was too late. Had humans thought out all the consequences ahead of time and created preventive measures before they made robots that could easily pass for humans, I think we would have fewer problems. I also admit, if most robots looked non-human to start with then it would make our jobs much easier. We wouldn't be so overwhelmed with so many tasks to search down those robotic criminals and destroy them all."
Mika then smiled cheekily. "Besides, no offense to you humans, but what's so good about being humans that we have to pretend to be and look exactly like you? We should take more pride in being robots, even if you humans created us. I'm in agreement that robots should have more unique traits that make them stand apart from humans because of that, just so everyone knows who's the superior one here."
Karina chuckled loudly. "I suppose so, yeah."
Karina was big enough to take that verbal jab, especially when she felt guilty for expressing that she thought human-looking robots were a bad idea to a bunch of gynoids who looked so perfectly human. Felt like she was being racist there or something. So it was only fair that Mika act racist right back… espeically when it felt more like a humorous jab rather than a mean-spirited one.
Terry interrupted their conversation as he pointed out something weird. "Huh, that's weird. I've been around here before, but I don't remember that large building being there…"
Curious, Karina turned her head to look at what Terry was looking there was a road leading off the road that led uphill to a very large ominous looking stone building. And not just any stone building, it looked strongly like a gothic castle, of all things. It had a huge-ass gate and a ridiculously tall stone fence encircling them, clearly designed to keep things inside and also to keep things outside, looking like a giant fortress of some sort.
The road leading to the building looked so newly paved in comparison to the main road which looked like it was so poorly maintained that it all looked like it was breaking up and returning to nature. Which indicated that something funky was going on there.
Terry and Karina's eyes met, and through unspoken agreement, they merely nodded at each other the car turned onto the new road and drove up towards the gate. Karina got out and was able to see that there was a large sign next to the gate that was in Japanese, which read, "Black Wing Maximum Security Prison".
Karina turned to look at Terry, who was poking his head out the car window with a wry look on her face. "Well… Regan was definitely here. Unless we had a Japanese supermax prison on American soil we didn't know about."
Terry then suggested, "We should check it out. Maybe Regan left some clue as to where he's going next. If he isn't still dead set on going to Hel."
Karina nodded again. "That's what I was thinking too."
With that, she hacked the intercom to let the motorized gate open and let the car through.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An hour later, they hadn't found much evidence that Regan had been here besides this obviously summoned Supermax castle prison.
Karina, Terry, Mika, and Eru all had agreed to spilt up and explore the building and then bring anything of interest back to the lobby.
Sadly, they didn't find much.
Other than the dozens of recorded gross violations of prisoner rights that the gynoids had found in some computer banks here…. Both Mika and Eru were so disturbed by some of the recordings they found that they refused to show Karina and Terry, saying that it would not be good for their mental health.
Terry and Karina took the gynoids at their word because they weren't willing to chance it, not when they still needed to find Regan and they felt that you needed to be in a healthy mindset for that.
Terry found some items as well, and brought back some prisoner clothing, along with what looked to be the uniform of the guards… which looked more like a fancy dress uniform than the everyday casual clothing a policeman would've had. Seriously, what was with this prison?
Terry could only shake his head as he said, "Imagine if we had a fort like this here already before we got driven out by the raiders. We could've easily holed up here instead, and then easily dealt with the raiders who were attacking us at the time. Hell, we could've even easily weathered the storm out if the NCR bastards decided to attack us here. Such a fucking waste."
Karina then tilted her head. She couldn't help but ask: "What's with that anyhow? I know your faction is apparently at war with NCR… but why? I never did get the details of that."
Terry blinked. "Oh, right. You were asleep that whole time, so you wouldn't have known. I guess if I had to summarize it… it's mostly over ideological differences. The NCR and the DBCB are highly similar in a lot of ways in that we're both a policing force and a government stabilizing the area. I guess we could've teamed up or maybe merged our two governments together if it wasn't for a few main sticking points that both sides heavily disagree over."
"And that is?" Karina wondered out loud.
Terry scoffed. "There's a bunch of laws that NCR wanted to be heavily enforced, with some over the top punishments for those who broke the law. Again, Both NCR and DBCB have a lot of similarities in that they both agree that slavery should be banned and that we should enforce equality amongst genders, sexualities, and so on forth. But it seems that we disagree on almost everything else, such as how criminals should be punished.
Such as the ban on open carry rights and the ban on drug use and public drunkness, which the DBCB was against. I know I'm biased, but I agree with the DBCB here… what's the point of telling people they can't do drugs or be drunk while walking outside? If you ask me, I'd rather know who the druggies and the alcoholics are, so I know who not to put my trust in. Let them make fools of themselves in public! They also can serve as bad examples to our children, so they know that heavy drug use and alcoholism is a path they shouldn't take."
Terry shook his head and sighed. "As I said. It's mainly all ideological differences. DBCB tend to be pretty lenient on a lot of things, we very rarely execute criminals unless they're mass murderers with a mountain of evidence backing up that fact. NCR seems to think we're too soft on criminals, and they have a tendency to execute criminals over almost everything, as they don't seem to believe in second chances.
It also doesn't help that those NCR bastards keep on talking about taming the savages of the American Wasteland and bringing civilization back… right in front of our leaders… who are all Lakota. The worst part was that they seemed honestly clueless as to what was wrong with saying such statements in front of the Lakota people and seemed surprised when our leaders didn't respond very positively to that.
But again I know not everyone's been educated on the long history of America and how they discriminated against certain groups in the past, so maybe those NCR aren't the well-educated citizens they claim to be. In which case I wouldn't want to be under their rule then."
Karina cringed inwardly at that. Yeah, she could see how that huge diplomatic mistake was one that was very easy to make if you hadn't been raised learning about America's history by a more honest teacher who wasn't afraid to teach you about America's worst mistakes alongside all the good that America did.
Still, it was interesting… that two factions who were so eerily similar to each other would end up fighting with each other instead of working together thanks to some tiny yet very important differences that each one had, such as the beliefs in how the law should be, and how it should be run. She supposed that it was a little bit like the republicans and democrats in that while there were several things that both did agree on, they still diverged from each other in terms of opinions on certain things so much that they still ended up something akin to mortal enemies.
Would there even be a war at all if the NCR hadn't been so dead set on spreading their rule to all the other states? Karina could see both the NCR and DBCB both simply agreeing to disagree but leaving each other alone had the NCR peacefully reached out to other states and asked them if they'd like to join the NCR and be the sort who actually gracefully accepted "No" for an answer.
Karina could only mentally shake her head at that. All of this sounded like this conflict was almost pointless, and could've easily been avoided had rationality won over ego instead. But that was politics for you, most of it was primarily emotional rather than rational.
She then looked around at the insides of the prison castle here one more time.
She then sighed, saying out loud: "It's a shame that Regan can't be the type I got along with. This kind of place… we could've used this back at the vault. It could've been remodeled, and used as a great alternative to living underground if people didn't want to live in vault 129 anymore but didn't have anywhere else to go. It's such a fucking waste."
Terry nodded. "It'll act as a great base and fort for our army, however. I've already decided to radio it in and give my men the coordinates as I don't think we should waste this opportunity that Regan unknowingly created for us. Hopefully, they'll be able to come back here and claim this place before the raiders do. I'll be surprised if none of the raiders eventually come this way and discovers this little gem of a place."
Karina chuckled. She had never considered using Regan's summons against himself like this, but that was a good idea. And they had explored this place thoroughly, so they knew that it didn't hold any nasty surprises.
============================================
A/N: I was planning to have Karina react more to Regan's summon like this and stuff. So I got around to viewing the manga that this place was from so that I could learn more about it…. So that I could describe the layout of the building and the advantages it could have as a fortress, etc. Then I discovered that the evil prison was from hentai, which I found really funny as this was chapter 69...
But. READING IT WAS THE WORST IDEA I EVER HAD! Normally hentai doesn't bother me much, but the manga was like edgy erotic fanfiction written by a 13-year-old kid. It was done for shock value and didn't make much sense. Like, why is this convicted woman the only one at a mostly male prison? Why isn't there a new women's wing? It was also non-stop rape scenes wall to wall, all the friggin' time. And of course, being a hentai, the main lady seems to have a kink for it and is kinda into all of it…. So she wasn't too traumatized terribly, but she was still horribly shocked at the blatant abuse by prison staff and by the prisoners. Some of the responses plus the rape scenes were too uncomfortably realistic and stuff… much in the same way Boku no pico was disturbingly a realistic portrayal of pedophilic grooming so that it was less a sexy hentai but more like a really uncomfortable look at a rapist's mentality that makes you go "What the fuck".
Also, the manga or the anime doesn't even describe the insides of the prison much, only what the outside looks like… so I friggin wasted my time for nothing on a shitty hentai rape manga/anime. I also should really have read the reviews more and taken their warnings into account so that I was more mentally prepared for it, because all of the one-star reviews talk about how awful it was, and about the non-stop rape scenes.
-_-;
So this kinda reflected in my writing, as I was trying to distract myself from the sheer awfulness this place represented by having Terry tell Karina more about the politics between NCR and his faction. Ugh.
Next stop, Neo-browser city so that Karina can react to it! That's definitely going to be my favorite part. And I can mentally cleanse my mind of that awful rape hentai by focusing on something else. Really not how I wanted to spend the first day of the new year. 😛
lockingbane
If you're crazy and you know it clap your hands!
- Location
- Waxahachie tx
.... Silent Hill?
Would they be trapped by it like most others until they fight their sins or could they safely leave being mostly good people?
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Karina was a sniper in the prewar military and Terry is part of the Dakota Buffalo army. Both have killed people and not out of self-defense, even though they would both be described as being reasonably good people.
Silent hill was very remarkably judgemental to good people like that in the past, and even when the person hadn't committed any sins they still preyed on people's fears like this one woman who was the victim of child molestation in the past by her own father.
So yeah, this is gonna be REAAAALLLY fun.
But I did notice that I accidentally did an extra Karina chapter when this was supposed to be a Regan chapter, so the next chapter will be a Regan chapter. And then after that, Karina will react to the city.
- Location
- 𐌂 ̢͎̩̤̲̙͓̑̀͂͒̀͆̏𐋏 ̛͏̫̚𐌀 ̛͉̥̩̤̰͈̂̅͒͊͟𐍈 ̣͛𐍃 ̡̅̈́
Guess, I don't want to know about this prison too. Cursed city is next - I don't envy them. What a horrible jorney wait them ahead.
TheOmnimercurial
Dragon Bard
- Location
- UK
There are worse H out there, sad that the title alone was not enough to warn you away.
"Rape Rape Semen Inferno" Had a title that immediately had me metaphorically turn and walk away going "Nope nope nope nope...."
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In my defense, the H I read had a title that roughly translated to "I became the sadistic Warden's pet!"
So I thought it would be just some kinky S&M roleplaying or something. And then the description was even more misleading.... saying that some innocent woman was wrongly convicted of something she didn't do and was sent to supermax jail where she meets the warden who runs the entire prison. It then claims that the Warden decided to take her under his "protection" in return for a few sexual favors.
That's the sort of thing that definitely does not mentally prepare you for what's coming. It doesn't even suggest that there's constant non-stop rape in it. also, where the fuck was the Warden's protection when that poor woman gets passed around by the entire male population of the prison.... because she's the only woman there?
No wonder why that evil wiki page listed that prison and manga as being SUPER EVIL.
Last edited:
Chapter 70--Yet another Kajiu?
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
For those who don't want to read the whole Regan chapter--
===========================
>Bong<
Regan yawned loudly as his sleep-summoning woke him up with that song. And it was late in the morning, so he didn't feel too annoyed at his power for waking him up like that… and not to mention that itch he was feeling in his sleep was gone.
He stretched out in his hotel bed and then moved to the side to sit up.
In the other bed, Kevin was giving Regan a dirty look. He then said, "Micheal Jackson songs right as we wake up in the morning? Really."
"Ah, this is a song from your world? Neat. I've never heard of Micheal Jackson but his songs sure are peppy as hell." Regan mumbled as he went off to the makeshift bathroom to clean himself and get ready for the day.
Behind him, he could hear Kevin griping about why it couldn't have been a song by some pop star called Dua Lipa instead.
Heh, Regan supposed that Kevin wasn't a big fan of this male pop star.
He undressed and stepped into the shower, only to yelp loudly when all that came out was ice-cold water.
>Bong<
Regan frantically looked for anything that would make the ice-cold water warm, such as a second handle labeled HOT, but found nothing.
He heard Kevin snickering loudly outside as Kevin called out, "apparently they don't even have working water heaters here, you have to boil water by hand. That's how much of a shithole this place is!"
Regan slumped at this. He should've known, this was what remained of civilization after the end of the world after all… and of course, they wouldn't probably have the knowledge to create hot and cold plumbing complete with water heaters.
He then braved through the rest of the ice-cold shower as he washed. At least on the bright side, this was a good way to wake himself completely since he had been kind of groggy before he stepped into this shower. They didn't even have shampoo, just what looked to be a homemade bar of soap. Guess after 200 years they'd run out of shampoo completely but bars of soap was easy to make.
He washed his hair with the soap regardless, and then finally stepped out to dry off and put his clothes back on, despite his clothes starting to stink slightly. He'd have to ask if there was a laundromat around here. With his luck though, there probably wasn't one. He had noticed that everyone here went for the gritty look with their clothes, even if they kept themselves relatively clean otherwise.
He then sat down to count all of his bottlecaps and everything he had collected and traded for so far, to make sure he had enough money to possibly buy a garage of his own.
He had asked around after Kevin dosed off into a food coma, and found out that there was a good garage space with a second-level overhead that could be converted into a bedroom, but it cost up to 600 caps.
And unfortunately, it seemed that he only had 400 caps on him thus far.
He sighed loudly, causing Kevin to ask what was wrong.
When Regan told him, Kevin just scoffed. "I still don't see why you wanna live in this dump. I'd prefer somewhere that has a lake or an ocean nearby, one that actually has running hot water."
Regan paused at that. He then said, "my childhood home was a mansion in the mountains, but it was near a lot of rivers and a small lake. I dunno if it still has running water, however… and I'd rather be where the people are, so I can build up civilization without much difficulty."
He then added, "We also need somewhere to build ourselves a car from scratch too."
Kevin nodded and shook his head. "Right. We can't just leave so easily on foot. Right."
Regan then got up from his seat and pocketed all of his money thus far into a bag that he put into a hidden pocket, one that would be difficult to pickpocket.
"I guess I'll go see old Tom about some work." He said, thinking that Tom would just want him to fix up some old cars.
He was wrong.
~~~~~~
"Huh?"
>Bong<
"You want me to go out there?" Regan stared at Old Tom in disbelief.
Old Tom smirked. "Well, you did say you wanted to make some quick caps, didn't you? You got to before somebody else buys up that place you had your eye on."
Regan rubbed the back of his neck at that. "That's true… That's just, I'm not a big fan of the idea of traipsing through the wilderness to find out where that slime monster came from. Or possibly stepping in any toxic waste pools it might have come from, or worse, meeting more of its kind. 200 caps don't seem enough for any possible dangers I'd have to face."
Tom shook his head. "No worries there, you'll be outfitted in an armored hazmat suit like the rest of the survey crew that our resident scientist hired. And of course, you can take that bodyguard of yours, maybe he'll make some new friends as there's been reported mirelurks nearby."
Regan sighed, knowing that Old Tom had won this round. He wasn't enough of a big shot around here yet to be able to skip out on this kind of quest given to him, especially when it gave him the perfect amount of caps he needed to buy that place he wanted.
"Kevin isn't going to be happy about this, he was more used to having a more cushy job as my bodyguard," he said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The very next day, everyone was outfitted in what looked like an odd cross between an emergency military slash fireman and a normal hazmat suit.
It did make Regan feel secure and safe though like nothing could get through this suit, not even radiation.
Kevin was not as enthusiastic about this as the others were, and he muttered darkly, "This is so stupid. I look like one of those faceless background extras in a horror movie. You know, the ones that get picked off one by one in the backdrop to show how serious things are?"
Regan reached out to touch Kevin, and while he was at it he fed off some of Kevin's fears and anxiety as he started speaking.
"Don't worry, you're with me, remember? I can just easily summon all the guns you want, maybe even gift you the knowledge of how to use them properly…" Regan said reassuringly, as he kept on eating Kevin's fears.
He then pulled on his power, asking for guns and gun skills.
>Bong<
>Bong<
Regan smiled, happy that his power had come through when he asked it to. "See?"
Kevin seemed to feel better by then, as he nodded and grinned through the plastic visor that covered his entire face now. "You're right. And if push comes to shove you'll summon more giant-ass monsters for me to control, huh?"
Regan nodded, and with that, the two of them went to join the survey group, where everyone else was dressed similarly to them.
They were now next to a newly repaired fence, though this one had a new "door" on it. The leader of the survey team was now speaking. "As you all know, the slime monster came through here… but it seems that they also left a trail of ooze, which we'll be attempting to follow as well as purge the areas that the ooze touched. The last thing we need is some wildlife or plants getting into this ooze and becoming even more mutated than they usually are, eh? We'll also be taking samples of the ooze along the way to study so that we can devise a counterattack should more slime monsters come again."
Everyone nodded at this, and with that, they were ready to go through the fence's new "door" and follow the trail of ooze, which somehow still hadn't dried up despite it being a couple of days since the slime attack.
The science guys of the group would vacuum up some of the oozes into containers, while the rest very literally set fire to the ooze and the area that the ooze touched…destroying everything as much as possible.
And with that, it became a slow trek following the trail, that action with the vacuum and then the fire being repeated over and over.
It was such a boring tedious thing to do during the trek that everyone couldn't help but let down their guard as everyone started to feel completely bored. But, 2.8 miles into the trek they paid for that as giant bugs popped out of nowhere and started attacking.
>Bong<
Large rabbit-eared rat things scattered away from the group, seemingly hidden in the tall dead grass this whole time until the noise scared them off, as everyone brought up their guns and unleashed a rain of bullets upon the attacking bugs.
Once the bugs were dead, one of the men commented, "Oh man, did you see those rat things? The biggest thing I ever saw. Looks like they would make delicious rat meat stew. I'll have to go hunting out here again one of those days."
Another one started collecting the corpses of the giant insects as he said, "Yeah. but meanwhile, we have those bugs to cook and eat if this trip's gonna take longer than we thought."
Kevin made a slight gagging sound at that, and Regan elbowed him. Regan then whispered, "I did warn you before that they eat bugs around here. Be nice."
"I know, I know. But still… ew." Kevin whispered back.
With that, they kept on moving, resuming their mission to get rid of any dangerous things left behind by the slime monster, moving southward of District 11 into the wilderness.
--One hour and 30 minutes later--
They finally found the dumping ground site, or rather what looked like the remains of one as the slime monster had eaten most of it so there wasn't much here other than large pools of random chemicals and the barrels. And the remains of half a truck.
"Huh. I've gone hunting out here many times before, but I've never seen this before." one masked man looked and sounded disturbed as the group circled around the dumping ground, making sure that there weren't any nasty surprises in there before they went exploring in it.
"Right? Do you think this place could've been a recent dumping ground? But… who would do that." Another one wondered.
Unknown to the survey group, there had been once a massive mountain of discarded junk, but the plants and slimes had assimilated a lot of it into themselves to propel their growth before finally merging together into that giant slime monster with the plant-like vines acting as the monster's central nervous system. Or that the slime monster had effectively eaten the whole mountain of junk until this was all that remained.
Regan had a sneaking suspicion that this might've been caused by him… although he wasn't sure at all. So when he thought nobody was paying any attention to him, he used his "Observe" skill to open a few UI windows detailing what those chemical pools were.
That didn't tell him much and some of those descriptions were oddly specific. And no matter how much he tried to push his senses into those things, there was no way for him to feel if he summoned them or not.
He then tried to observe even harder, but the UI window didn't tell him if those were summoned by him or not.
So he had to accept the possibility that those chemicals might've been created here on this Earth naturally. After all, in his experience, most scientists born here on this Earth pre-war were mad scientists and it wouldn't be beyond them to have created those things anyhow.
The survey leader zeroed in on the truck and then started scanning it. He then said, "we have traces of the slime monster coming from this."
The others noticed the barrels which were leaking all different chemicals, and that's when they came to a conclusion.
"Do you think there was somebody driving this truck up here, and the truck held those barrels…?" one suggested.
Another one finished for them, "if you mix those chemicals together, you'd get the giant blob?"
Regan shook his head. "I don't think so. But if a living creature were to come across those puddles, it might do something to them. Maybe mutate them so badly that their bodies fall apart and turn into living slime?"
The survey leader nodded and then put his hand to his chin in a thoughtful pose. "A reasonable conclusion. So… judging by the scene here and what we've found so far. Somebody was driving a working truck, transporting dangerous exotic chems for whatever reason…but some lifeform, such as a rat, must've smuggled its' way into the truck and got into those chems. It then mutated into that monster we saw before, tearing the truck apart and possibly killing the driver in the process. The truck crashes here, spilling all those exotic chems here."
Regan then piped up, suggesting an additional detail to the story. "Don't forget, for it to get so big it would've needed additional mass. So maybe it absorbed the driver into itself to get bigger, and when the local wildlife came to eat and drink and got mutated instead, it started absorbing those too in order to get bigger? And when it was too big to find the local wildlife satisfying its appetite anymore, it came for us humans. Maybe it absorbed the knowledge of the driver so it knew where the human settlement was at. Or maybe it had some way to sense where other lifeforms would be at?"
The survey leader mulled this over. "That's possible. But there's no use speculating on what the story here was until we've collected all the evidence."
He then started pointing at random people. "You over there, start collecting samples here! You, take pictures of everything with your camera. Take care to take pictures of the trucks and the barrels themselves!"
He then pointed at Regan and Kevin. "Circle around the perimeter and kill off any wildlife you see. We're quarantining this place and we shouldn't be letting any possibly mutated wildlife escape. we don't know how long it takes to mutate for each lifeform, after all, and the last thing we want is another slime monster!"
Regan nodded. "Of course."
With that, Kevin and Regan got up to walk around the new quarantine site.
Kevin then whispered, "You sure you had nothing to do with this? This is so weird… seems like something straight out of a B-plot movie."
Regan nodded. "I even used my powers on this site to make sure… but surprisingly enough none of this is my summons at all. So I guess somebody else out there is causing plenty of chaos as a mad scientist or something. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if those chems were honestly created by a bunch of pre-war scientists. Seems like the sort of thing they'd do."
Kevin shook his head. "Like I said, weird. I thought it was bad enough that you have naturally occurring giant insects… now this."
Regan shrugged. "I won't argue with you on that."
Their conversation was interrupted when a monster of a rad-scorpion popped up out of the ground, somehow having more than one pair of crab-like pinchers, spider-like legs, and four stinger tails. It was also glowing brightly, not the usual green glow of an irradiated rad scorpion but a weird yellow color.
>Bong<
"Argh!" Both Kevin and Regan yelled at the same time as they fired off their guns, doing their best to kill the monstrous thing.
The many-tailed rad scorpion lunged at the two of them, their tails stabbing at the air where they'd be.
Regan yelped in pain when one of the tails' stingers successfully made contact with him in his shoulder area.
>Bong<
Kevin managed to kill it off by shoving his gun through its mandibles and shooting right into its mouth, and then rushed over to Regan.
"Dude, you alright?"
The others came over at the sound too. "What happened?"
Kevin then pointed over at the dead mutant scorpion. "This thing happened, that's what. Regan's been hurt."
The survey leader simply shook his head when he saw how unusual this rad scorpion was. "This was what I was afraid of, it seems that the wildlife's already gotten into the chems and started mutating. Bag this one up so we can study the effects the chems had on this creature."
One of the other men dragged the corpse off, and with that, the leader went to check on Regan's shoulder.
Regan's shoulder was starting to feel heavily numb like it'd been hit by a paralysis toxin. In fact, he couldn't move his arm where his injured shoulder was anymore.
Regan reported as such, and with that, he was ordered to sit back at camp while they collected samples and then purged the site so that it couldn't infect any more lifeforms.
That was when the ground started to rumble loudly…
And everyone turned to see the biggest insect monster ever, one that was the size of a medium-sized skyscraper.
"Fuuuuccck." everyone seemed to say that all at once or thought that while they spoiled their pants slightly.
==========================================================
A/N: Regan did a lot of pulls this chapter, but that's just because I know Karina will do that too next chapter.
Regan gets recruited to look into the slime monster's origins with help from a survey team. He does it for the promise of a lot of caps.
Along the way, his summons kinda fucks up things for him.
Along the way, his summons kinda fucks up things for him.
===========================
>Bong<
| https://evil.fandom.com/wiki/Bad_(Michael_Jackson) Roll 1 "Bad" is a song by the late famous pop singer Michael Jackson in his 1987 studio album Bad. Effect: due to the super low roll, this song only plays on a loop for a few minutes before going away. |
Regan yawned loudly as his sleep-summoning woke him up with that song. And it was late in the morning, so he didn't feel too annoyed at his power for waking him up like that… and not to mention that itch he was feeling in his sleep was gone.
He stretched out in his hotel bed and then moved to the side to sit up.
In the other bed, Kevin was giving Regan a dirty look. He then said, "Micheal Jackson songs right as we wake up in the morning? Really."
"Ah, this is a song from your world? Neat. I've never heard of Micheal Jackson but his songs sure are peppy as hell." Regan mumbled as he went off to the makeshift bathroom to clean himself and get ready for the day.
Behind him, he could hear Kevin griping about why it couldn't have been a song by some pop star called Dua Lipa instead.
Heh, Regan supposed that Kevin wasn't a big fan of this male pop star.
He undressed and stepped into the shower, only to yelp loudly when all that came out was ice-cold water.
>Bong<
| https://monsters.fandom.com/wiki/The_Evil_Mystery_Inc._Clones Roll 19 The Evil Mystery Inc. Clones appeared in the franchise called Scooby-Doo. The Mystery Inc. evil clones were a set of Hollywood extras impersonating the gang, led by J.C. Chasez, disguised as Scooby-Doo. With their masks on, they looked exactly like the gang, except for having glowing, red eyes. Effect: Regan gets super-disguise powers, being able to disguise as anybody using masks and clothes, and can pass as both female and male. This is pretty redundant considering that he has shapeshifting powers… but I suppose if he wanted a more reasonable explanation for his shapeshifting ability he could leave those realistic masks and fake breasts lying around to throw people off the scent and make others think he's just really good at Hollywood makeup and masks. But this is a skill that also works on others, so this could be useful if he wanted to disguise Kevin and other allies too. |
Regan frantically looked for anything that would make the ice-cold water warm, such as a second handle labeled HOT, but found nothing.
He heard Kevin snickering loudly outside as Kevin called out, "apparently they don't even have working water heaters here, you have to boil water by hand. That's how much of a shithole this place is!"
Regan slumped at this. He should've known, this was what remained of civilization after the end of the world after all… and of course, they wouldn't probably have the knowledge to create hot and cold plumbing complete with water heaters.
He then braved through the rest of the ice-cold shower as he washed. At least on the bright side, this was a good way to wake himself completely since he had been kind of groggy before he stepped into this shower. They didn't even have shampoo, just what looked to be a homemade bar of soap. Guess after 200 years they'd run out of shampoo completely but bars of soap was easy to make.
He washed his hair with the soap regardless, and then finally stepped out to dry off and put his clothes back on, despite his clothes starting to stink slightly. He'd have to ask if there was a laundromat around here. With his luck though, there probably wasn't one. He had noticed that everyone here went for the gritty look with their clothes, even if they kept themselves relatively clean otherwise.
He then sat down to count all of his bottlecaps and everything he had collected and traded for so far, to make sure he had enough money to possibly buy a garage of his own.
He had asked around after Kevin dosed off into a food coma, and found out that there was a good garage space with a second-level overhead that could be converted into a bedroom, but it cost up to 600 caps.
And unfortunately, it seemed that he only had 400 caps on him thus far.
He sighed loudly, causing Kevin to ask what was wrong.
When Regan told him, Kevin just scoffed. "I still don't see why you wanna live in this dump. I'd prefer somewhere that has a lake or an ocean nearby, one that actually has running hot water."
Regan paused at that. He then said, "my childhood home was a mansion in the mountains, but it was near a lot of rivers and a small lake. I dunno if it still has running water, however… and I'd rather be where the people are, so I can build up civilization without much difficulty."
He then added, "We also need somewhere to build ourselves a car from scratch too."
Kevin nodded and shook his head. "Right. We can't just leave so easily on foot. Right."
Regan then got up from his seat and pocketed all of his money thus far into a bag that he put into a hidden pocket, one that would be difficult to pickpocket.
"I guess I'll go see old Tom about some work." He said, thinking that Tom would just want him to fix up some old cars.
He was wrong.
~~~~~~
"Huh?"
>Bong<
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2304 Roll 19 A scp cognitohazard that causes muscle growth in the throat and cancer. Effect: Regan gains the ability to create meme-like images that cause a shortage of breath and cancer in its viewers. |
"You want me to go out there?" Regan stared at Old Tom in disbelief.
Old Tom smirked. "Well, you did say you wanted to make some quick caps, didn't you? You got to before somebody else buys up that place you had your eye on."
Regan rubbed the back of his neck at that. "That's true… That's just, I'm not a big fan of the idea of traipsing through the wilderness to find out where that slime monster came from. Or possibly stepping in any toxic waste pools it might have come from, or worse, meeting more of its kind. 200 caps don't seem enough for any possible dangers I'd have to face."
Tom shook his head. "No worries there, you'll be outfitted in an armored hazmat suit like the rest of the survey crew that our resident scientist hired. And of course, you can take that bodyguard of yours, maybe he'll make some new friends as there's been reported mirelurks nearby."
Regan sighed, knowing that Old Tom had won this round. He wasn't enough of a big shot around here yet to be able to skip out on this kind of quest given to him, especially when it gave him the perfect amount of caps he needed to buy that place he wanted.
"Kevin isn't going to be happy about this, he was more used to having a more cushy job as my bodyguard," he said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The very next day, everyone was outfitted in what looked like an odd cross between an emergency military slash fireman and a normal hazmat suit.
It did make Regan feel secure and safe though like nothing could get through this suit, not even radiation.
Kevin was not as enthusiastic about this as the others were, and he muttered darkly, "This is so stupid. I look like one of those faceless background extras in a horror movie. You know, the ones that get picked off one by one in the backdrop to show how serious things are?"
Regan reached out to touch Kevin, and while he was at it he fed off some of Kevin's fears and anxiety as he started speaking.
"Don't worry, you're with me, remember? I can just easily summon all the guns you want, maybe even gift you the knowledge of how to use them properly…" Regan said reassuringly, as he kept on eating Kevin's fears.
He then pulled on his power, asking for guns and gun skills.
>Bong<
| https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/RPK Roll 10 RPK light machine gun. The receiver is identical to that of the AK-47 except for bulges on the sides of the forend to accommodate matching bulges in the front trunnion which add strength to the design. The weapon's stock is different to allow for more comfortable and effective use during prone firing. The barrel is also longer and heavier, to provide more reliable and accurate performance during heavy usage and automatic fire. The weapon's rear sights are also different, allowing for elevation adjustment. Effect: For ten hours, Kevin gets to have this light machine gun, which can use automatic fire. |
>Bong<
| https://electronicarts.fandom.com/wiki/Battlefield_(video_game_series) Roll 8 Battlefield is a series of first-person shooter video games that started out on Microsoft Windows and OS X with Battlefield 1942, which was released in 2002. The series is developed by Swedish company EA DICE and is published by American company Electronic Arts. The series features a particular focus on large maps, teamwork, and vehicle warfare. The PC games in the series are mainly focused on online multiplayer. The Battlefield series has been played by more than 50 million players worldwide as of 2012, across 11 games and 12 expansion packs released since its inception in 2002. Effect: For eight hours, both Regan and Kevin are fully educated and trained in Military tactics, and know how to use most guns. |
Regan smiled, happy that his power had come through when he asked it to. "See?"
Kevin seemed to feel better by then, as he nodded and grinned through the plastic visor that covered his entire face now. "You're right. And if push comes to shove you'll summon more giant-ass monsters for me to control, huh?"
Regan nodded, and with that, the two of them went to join the survey group, where everyone else was dressed similarly to them.
They were now next to a newly repaired fence, though this one had a new "door" on it. The leader of the survey team was now speaking. "As you all know, the slime monster came through here… but it seems that they also left a trail of ooze, which we'll be attempting to follow as well as purge the areas that the ooze touched. The last thing we need is some wildlife or plants getting into this ooze and becoming even more mutated than they usually are, eh? We'll also be taking samples of the ooze along the way to study so that we can devise a counterattack should more slime monsters come again."
Everyone nodded at this, and with that, they were ready to go through the fence's new "door" and follow the trail of ooze, which somehow still hadn't dried up despite it being a couple of days since the slime attack.
The science guys of the group would vacuum up some of the oozes into containers, while the rest very literally set fire to the ooze and the area that the ooze touched…destroying everything as much as possible.
And with that, it became a slow trek following the trail, that action with the vacuum and then the fire being repeated over and over.
It was such a boring tedious thing to do during the trek that everyone couldn't help but let down their guard as everyone started to feel completely bored. But, 2.8 miles into the trek they paid for that as giant bugs popped out of nowhere and started attacking.
>Bong<
| https://speculativeevolution.fandom.com/wiki/Lutie Roll 15 A kangaroo rat-like species with rabbit-like ears. While regular kangaroo rats are the size of a human's hands, the Lutie is much bigger than that, around the size of an actual small rabbit. Effect: As they're classified as prey and can be used for meat or skinned for their fur, and not outright classified as a "person" or a "character" by the rules, they are allowed to be summoned as a large group. As it was a roll 15, a medium group of them are summoned peramently. |
Large rabbit-eared rat things scattered away from the group, seemingly hidden in the tall dead grass this whole time until the noise scared them off, as everyone brought up their guns and unleashed a rain of bullets upon the attacking bugs.
Once the bugs were dead, one of the men commented, "Oh man, did you see those rat things? The biggest thing I ever saw. Looks like they would make delicious rat meat stew. I'll have to go hunting out here again one of those days."
Another one started collecting the corpses of the giant insects as he said, "Yeah. but meanwhile, we have those bugs to cook and eat if this trip's gonna take longer than we thought."
Kevin made a slight gagging sound at that, and Regan elbowed him. Regan then whispered, "I did warn you before that they eat bugs around here. Be nice."
"I know, I know. But still… ew." Kevin whispered back.
With that, they kept on moving, resuming their mission to get rid of any dangerous things left behind by the slime monster, moving southward of District 11 into the wilderness.
--One hour and 30 minutes later--
They finally found the dumping ground site, or rather what looked like the remains of one as the slime monster had eaten most of it so there wasn't much here other than large pools of random chemicals and the barrels. And the remains of half a truck.
"Huh. I've gone hunting out here many times before, but I've never seen this before." one masked man looked and sounded disturbed as the group circled around the dumping ground, making sure that there weren't any nasty surprises in there before they went exploring in it.
"Right? Do you think this place could've been a recent dumping ground? But… who would do that." Another one wondered.
Unknown to the survey group, there had been once a massive mountain of discarded junk, but the plants and slimes had assimilated a lot of it into themselves to propel their growth before finally merging together into that giant slime monster with the plant-like vines acting as the monster's central nervous system. Or that the slime monster had effectively eaten the whole mountain of junk until this was all that remained.
Regan had a sneaking suspicion that this might've been caused by him… although he wasn't sure at all. So when he thought nobody was paying any attention to him, he used his "Observe" skill to open a few UI windows detailing what those chemical pools were.
| Smilex-- Formula devised by the Supervillain Joker who wanted his victims to die laughing. Chemical X-- Formula created and studied by Professor Utonium in the year 1998. Is said to be able to bring things to life, as well as being a powerful, mutagenic chemical that gives people and animals superpowers and special abilities. Versamina--a drug that turns pain into pleasure. The consequence is that people will hurt themselves to feel plenty of pleasure…. Take care not to take that too far. Rainbow Gloop-- The aforementioned gloopy liquid that kept on changing colors rapidly was created by an alcoholic scientist. Has mutating effects and can change you into a Cronenberg monster. Ooze mutagen-- Can turn normal turtles into teenage mutant ninjas. |
That didn't tell him much and some of those descriptions were oddly specific. And no matter how much he tried to push his senses into those things, there was no way for him to feel if he summoned them or not.
He then tried to observe even harder, but the UI window didn't tell him if those were summoned by him or not.
So he had to accept the possibility that those chemicals might've been created here on this Earth naturally. After all, in his experience, most scientists born here on this Earth pre-war were mad scientists and it wouldn't be beyond them to have created those things anyhow.
The survey leader zeroed in on the truck and then started scanning it. He then said, "we have traces of the slime monster coming from this."
The others noticed the barrels which were leaking all different chemicals, and that's when they came to a conclusion.
"Do you think there was somebody driving this truck up here, and the truck held those barrels…?" one suggested.
Another one finished for them, "if you mix those chemicals together, you'd get the giant blob?"
Regan shook his head. "I don't think so. But if a living creature were to come across those puddles, it might do something to them. Maybe mutate them so badly that their bodies fall apart and turn into living slime?"
The survey leader nodded and then put his hand to his chin in a thoughtful pose. "A reasonable conclusion. So… judging by the scene here and what we've found so far. Somebody was driving a working truck, transporting dangerous exotic chems for whatever reason…but some lifeform, such as a rat, must've smuggled its' way into the truck and got into those chems. It then mutated into that monster we saw before, tearing the truck apart and possibly killing the driver in the process. The truck crashes here, spilling all those exotic chems here."
Regan then piped up, suggesting an additional detail to the story. "Don't forget, for it to get so big it would've needed additional mass. So maybe it absorbed the driver into itself to get bigger, and when the local wildlife came to eat and drink and got mutated instead, it started absorbing those too in order to get bigger? And when it was too big to find the local wildlife satisfying its appetite anymore, it came for us humans. Maybe it absorbed the knowledge of the driver so it knew where the human settlement was at. Or maybe it had some way to sense where other lifeforms would be at?"
The survey leader mulled this over. "That's possible. But there's no use speculating on what the story here was until we've collected all the evidence."
He then started pointing at random people. "You over there, start collecting samples here! You, take pictures of everything with your camera. Take care to take pictures of the trucks and the barrels themselves!"
He then pointed at Regan and Kevin. "Circle around the perimeter and kill off any wildlife you see. We're quarantining this place and we shouldn't be letting any possibly mutated wildlife escape. we don't know how long it takes to mutate for each lifeform, after all, and the last thing we want is another slime monster!"
Regan nodded. "Of course."
With that, Kevin and Regan got up to walk around the new quarantine site.
Kevin then whispered, "You sure you had nothing to do with this? This is so weird… seems like something straight out of a B-plot movie."
Regan nodded. "I even used my powers on this site to make sure… but surprisingly enough none of this is my summons at all. So I guess somebody else out there is causing plenty of chaos as a mad scientist or something. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if those chems were honestly created by a bunch of pre-war scientists. Seems like the sort of thing they'd do."
Kevin shook his head. "Like I said, weird. I thought it was bad enough that you have naturally occurring giant insects… now this."
Regan shrugged. "I won't argue with you on that."
Their conversation was interrupted when a monster of a rad-scorpion popped up out of the ground, somehow having more than one pair of crab-like pinchers, spider-like legs, and four stinger tails. It was also glowing brightly, not the usual green glow of an irradiated rad scorpion but a weird yellow color.
>Bong<
| https://electronicarts.fandom.com/wiki/EA_Pacific Roll 12 A failed video game company that got folded into EA and was renamed EA Pacific. They only ever worked on a handful of games. Effect: Regan gets a few points toward video game development. |
"Argh!" Both Kevin and Regan yelled at the same time as they fired off their guns, doing their best to kill the monstrous thing.
The many-tailed rad scorpion lunged at the two of them, their tails stabbing at the air where they'd be.
Regan yelped in pain when one of the tails' stingers successfully made contact with him in his shoulder area.
>Bong<
| https://monsters.fandom.com/wiki/King_Saedoen_(Colossal_Kaiju_Combat) Roll 7 This page is a stub, so I had to go find a different page on it. King Saosin is a prehistoric cicada nymph mutated by atomic bomb tests. Effect: For 7 hours, this giant Cicada monster roams the wasteland of Montana. |
Kevin managed to kill it off by shoving his gun through its mandibles and shooting right into its mouth, and then rushed over to Regan.
"Dude, you alright?"
The others came over at the sound too. "What happened?"
Kevin then pointed over at the dead mutant scorpion. "This thing happened, that's what. Regan's been hurt."
The survey leader simply shook his head when he saw how unusual this rad scorpion was. "This was what I was afraid of, it seems that the wildlife's already gotten into the chems and started mutating. Bag this one up so we can study the effects the chems had on this creature."
One of the other men dragged the corpse off, and with that, the leader went to check on Regan's shoulder.
Regan's shoulder was starting to feel heavily numb like it'd been hit by a paralysis toxin. In fact, he couldn't move his arm where his injured shoulder was anymore.
Regan reported as such, and with that, he was ordered to sit back at camp while they collected samples and then purged the site so that it couldn't infect any more lifeforms.
That was when the ground started to rumble loudly…
And everyone turned to see the biggest insect monster ever, one that was the size of a medium-sized skyscraper.
"Fuuuuccck." everyone seemed to say that all at once or thought that while they spoiled their pants slightly.
==========================================================
A/N: Regan did a lot of pulls this chapter, but that's just because I know Karina will do that too next chapter.
I skimmed through to reach the data boxes for the actual summons, which are interesting even coming from him. But thanks for the summary anyway.
- Location
- Ohio
Another Regan chapter I managed to skip, thanks Aurora!
Recently I tried out this little modification to the roll system, based on the thought that this Mutant had a variation of the power kind of based on Spin the Wheel. Namely five slots they can push a roll into to gain powers, five slots that can be bolstered by sacrificing rolls, and the person jumps into the Super Hero/Villain dynamic to appease the part of her power that tries to force them to roll. Eventually they are defeated, powers burnt out from being forced to constantly use them, and then killed to be studied so they can somehow graft someone else with a similar power set.
The power shifts to one of the killers minus the Slots, badness for those in the area ensues.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So basically I listed six choices that were bad places, assigned them to a die and rolled to see which terrible place they would be presented with as their new home.
1 Arkham Asylum
2 Arkham City
3 Raccoon City
4 Silent Hill
5 Murderworld
6 The Pitt
I rolled Arkham City with a 23 roll, then I rolled Fallout 2 with a 17 as the world and era of time they would be lost to. So basically a cursed Arkham City where the nights of terror never end now lives in California at the time of Fallout 2, each faction in the place are based on the villains that populated it, and of course their is a force trying to contain it and instead unleashes it upon the world...
Does this even sound viable to anyone as a way to minimize the randomness in some rolls?
Recently I tried out this little modification to the roll system, based on the thought that this Mutant had a variation of the power kind of based on Spin the Wheel. Namely five slots they can push a roll into to gain powers, five slots that can be bolstered by sacrificing rolls, and the person jumps into the Super Hero/Villain dynamic to appease the part of her power that tries to force them to roll. Eventually they are defeated, powers burnt out from being forced to constantly use them, and then killed to be studied so they can somehow graft someone else with a similar power set.
The power shifts to one of the killers minus the Slots, badness for those in the area ensues.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So basically I listed six choices that were bad places, assigned them to a die and rolled to see which terrible place they would be presented with as their new home.
1 Arkham Asylum
2 Arkham City
3 Raccoon City
4 Silent Hill
5 Murderworld
6 The Pitt
I rolled Arkham City with a 23 roll, then I rolled Fallout 2 with a 17 as the world and era of time they would be lost to. So basically a cursed Arkham City where the nights of terror never end now lives in California at the time of Fallout 2, each faction in the place are based on the villains that populated it, and of course their is a force trying to contain it and instead unleashes it upon the world...
Does this even sound viable to anyone as a way to minimize the randomness in some rolls?
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I don't know about minimizing the randomness, but it does sound like a interesting setup for a story. 
Chapter 71--Karina finds Neo Bowser City.
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Terry got in touch with his men via radio, giving them the map coordinates of the castle-like prison. And his men agreed to come over and check it out.
At this point, it was getting dark out there as it was now evening, as time seemed to fly way too fast for Karina. So Terry suggested that they stay the night as he was suffering from mild car lag.
The Gyonids was about to agree when they disappeared with a soft "ring".
Terry could only shake his head at this, saying, "I don't think I'll ever get used to that."
Karina nodded. "Yeah. I don't know why, but I always feel a little melancholy when they go back. But I'm also not the sort of person who'd want to keep them here forever against their will."
Terry tilted his head as he set up a portable fission-powered heater inside the lobby room they had agreed to stay in, while he said, "Sounds like you're the sort of person who gets lonely easily. You must've been the sort who was used to being around people all the time, huh?"
Karina mulled that over. Now that Terry mentioned it… well.
Even though Karina did want time to herself occasionally, she couldn't honestly remember a time when she wasn't around people all the time, pre-war. Paradoxically, she was like something of an extroverted wallflower.
She liked blending into the background, but she also was okay with being in a crowd and being around other people. There were times when she felt like chatting up a storm with people, and also times when she liked being in the corner alone during a party just quietly observing people having a good time. She liked having people around neither way, both to interact with when she was in the mood and also for people-watching when she was in the mood to just sit there quietly.
Now that she thought of it, wasn't that sort of person called an ambivert? Of course, her wallflower tendencies got "worse" when she became a sniper because in the military she had it hammered into her head that a sniper who stood out too much instead of blending quietly into the background was a sniper who got sniped right back. Even now, it was hard to shake the idea that standing out too much would get her killed. But even then she still liked being around others at times.
"Yeah, you might be right there," Karina replied.
With that, she helped roll out the sleeping bags.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was very early when the two of them woke, and they were unable to sleep anymore so Terry set up a beacon on a very specific wavelength for his fellow military men so that they could find the prison without Terry's help.
Karina yawned so hard upon seeing that it was 5 am in the morning that she accidentally pulled on her power.
>ring<
The two of them ate protein bars and with that, they were back on the road. Or rather Terry was as Karina decided to take to the skies again.
Hours into the day they stopped to have a restroom break, each one taking turns while the other one kept guard at a very polite distance with averted eyes.
And after that was done, Karina opted to sit in the car with Terry, having tired of flying as it didn't seem that there were enemies for miles around that Karina could see and warn Terry of this time.
They were barely a mile up the road when they encountered a frightened-looking man who looked as if he had been through hell. He was in the middle of the road, shaking as he staggered along on blooded feet and hands. His clothes were torn and bloody as well, making it look like he had been in a struggle.
He didn't have a weapon on himself by the look of things, which made it so weird too.
Terry and Karina warily got out of the car, scanning the dead petrified woods around them in case it was some kind of trap. Karina then approached the injured man while Terry stayed by the car.
"You alright?" she asked.
"No no no no stay away from me." The man whimpered, as he dropped to the floor and covered his head. "You're just a monster waiting until I let my guard down to eat me aren't you."
Karina blinked. She then knelt down and unleashed a calming aura at the man as she said, "It's alright, I'm not a monster. Will you tell me what's going on?"
The man stared up at her, as he mumbled, "I think I finally escaped that hellish city, but I'm not so sure… that city likes to mess with your head."
"What city?" Karina wondered out loud.
The man got to his knees, even though he was still shivering violently. "It looked like such a beautiful city from the outside. Lights shone brightly like stars in the darkness, beckoning all who saw the lights to enter the city. But it was a trap! Once you're inside, the fog traps you and you can't ever find your way out again. It's a city full of the dead and your past… It took my teammates but left me alive. Tortured me. Forced me to face my own past."
Karina's eyebrows furrowed at this. She asked, "You mean to tell me that there's a whole city lit up, powered by electricity? In this day and age?"
The man continued to stare up at Karina, but how he looked slightly perplexed. "You want to go there?"
A strange look then came over his face, and he started chuckling. "Oh. if I let you two take my place, maybe it'll let me go…"
Karina tilted her head. "You gonna tell me or not?"
The man then shakily told her the coordinates, and then got up to hobble away with a maniacal look on his face not even caring about his injuries.
Karina walked back to Terry, saying, "looks like we got our next lead on where Regan might be."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--An hour later--
They were standing at a tall cliff-like area overseeing the massive city from a far distance.
Terry shook his head. "Yeah, that city definitely wasn't there before. We would've known about it, maybe tried to take it as part of our military strategy in our war against the NCR. Hell, NCR would've wanted to take it for themselves too."
Karina looked over at him. "... and not to mention, I've never seen this architectural style before. I'm not an expert on building styles but I don't even know what to call this. This is definitely from another world."
Terry sighed. "Regan probably went on a summoning spree here, judging by that poor man's words. Might be a city full of monsters and junk. We'll have to be really careful while we comb through this huge-ass city looking for him."
Karina nodded grimly. "I'll fly overhead, while you stay in the car. You can blast away things and I can drop bombs from overhead. Between the two of us, we can map out the city and find out where Regan's at."
Terry nodded, and with that, he walked back to the car. Karina willed her wings back into existence and jumped off the cliff, and climbed upwards into the sky.
It was a bright clear morning today as the two of them slowly moved into the city, and Terry noted that there was a sign low to the ground where Karina couldn't see it and that it said, "Welcome to Neo-Bowser City."
So this mysterious city had a name after all, and weirdly enough it looked pretty innocent in the morning light… looking every inch a perfectly normal pre-war city save for the fact that it seemed to be a ghost city and the weird building aesthetics.
So many giant round windows and rounded squares! And for every normal boxy building, there were ten pill-shaped skyscrapers. Seemed that anything that had a sharp corner was far less popular in whatever world this city came from.
There were no monsters nor people to be seen anywhere at all, not even when they moved deeper into the city. which puzzled the two of them.
"Maybe the monsters were temporary like some of your summonses were?" Terry suggested over the radio.
"Maybe." Karina agreed, adjusting her headset radio so that she could communicate with him better while high in the air.
She then noticed something weird while she was flying overhead and had a face-down view of the city, or at least a part of it that she was hovering over.
"Hey. some of the roads here look like they're meant for racing cars. You can enter them through the normal means but some of those roads look like they loop into each other, and even have special markings on them you see on a racetrack."
Terry said over the radio, "I've seen signs near those roads indicating that yeah. ...is it bad that I'd love to give it a shot? See what this baby you gave me can really do?" Terry said, "you could summon another car and we could race each other."
Karina suddenly found herself very tempted by that idea, as she stopped on top of a tall skyscraper to ponder that idea. She had never been into any type of sports before, but all of a sudden the idea of racing cars with others seemed highly thrilling and FUN…. she just wanted to do that so badly!
She then shook herself, realizing how suspicious this sudden urge was. She hesitantly said, "Terry, be careful not to give into that impulse. This might be part of the trap that Regan laid out for us. Giving us the desire to want to race, and that sort of thing? I mean, have you ever felt this way before?"
".... shit. Well, I've never had my own car before, so no. But I'll take your advice." Terry sounded slightly spooked at the idea that such desires and ideas could be implanted into his head so easily like that, even without him noticing.
They then moved on, scanning the area for anything unusual.
After a few minutes, Terry then spoke up. "Hold on. There's what looks like a pre-war supermarket here, and there have been signs of activity here. It looks like a giant monster tore out of there considering there's a big hole in the entranceway."
"Means that Reagan's been in there." Karina said, "Let's stop by there and check it out. But have your weapon ready."
With that Karina landed by the building, while Terry parked a safe distance away.
Terry told Mr.Handy to stay in the car and activate the guns if anything or anyone besides them got too close to the car, and the robot complied.
With that, they went into the supermarket through the destroyed entranceway's hole.
"Whoa! Look at all this food," Terry commented with wide eyes as he looked around.
Karina nodded as she noticed that some shelves were now bare, with some food items knocked to the floor. "I see signs of looting too. Hard to tell if that was Regan or some other person who was here before, however. That man we encountered mentioned having a team before they got lost here."
Terry noticed a shopping cart nearby, and grabbed it while he said, "I'm gonna do some looting myself too as I'm feeling peckish myself, but I'll remain alert."
Karina snorted loudly. She could understand where Terry was coming from, although she was a little reluctant to accept any of Regan's summoned things as being safe. "Okay, but I think we should test all of the foods for anything strange before eating them."
Terry nodded and then pulled out a strange cube-like item that was attached to an iron chain necklace and said, "no worries, miss, I've got my food sanitizer. Never go anywhere without it. Makes all foods safe to eat, and if the food is so far gone to be saved by it then it gives off a warning beep not to eat it."
Karina blinked. "I didn't realize that your people had something like that."
Terry shrugged. "It was made by some pre-war company called… Abra-something? but they kept on making it long after the bombs dropped. They've got traveling caravans all over the entire American wasteland selling them. Goes for a lot of caps too, but they sold to my group at a discount since we were buying them in bulk. Best investment ever."
Karina blinked at that. Huh. a company that did some actual good? Would wonders never cease? In her experience, most companies tended to be thoroughly corrupt and often did a lot of unethical testing on humans… and this was pretty much in the open and seen as normal, sadly enough. Nobody was ever surprised whenever the local newspaper did a expose on them, although sometimes this ignited a few riots and protests.
Karina nodded. "Fine. but if you feel sick, come to me right away alright?"
Terry merely nodded back. With that, Terry went to browse the wares and Karina got to work exploring the place, one gun loaded and ready in one hand.
Walking deeper into the store, Karina found an odd sight-- some sort of mannequin that had been mangled very badly, as if attacked by a monster. But what really caught her eye, was the fact that the half-destroyed mannequin had been wearing a very familiar vault suit, which was now torn to shreds. And… it was also wearing an intact pip-boy, which had somehow survived the attack on its persons.
And all around it were piles of bone-white ash and pools of dried blood as if a battle took place, along with what looked like the feet tracks of somebody very large who apparently didn't believe in shoes.
She then noticed the wheels on the bottom of the male mannequin and noted that they used to be RC cars and that Regan had managed to permanently attach those RC cars to the feet of the mannequin, turning them into something like automated skates.
'Did Regan use this thing as a decoy to distract some enemies and then killed them? Okay, that makes sense. But, why would he leave his pip-boy behind? It's such an important survival tool.' She wondered quietly to herself.
She righted the mannequin upwards so that it was now standing on its wheels again, though the torso was leaning to the right now with broken or missing arms, and its' head was missing as well. She then dragged it along as she went back to where she saw Terry last.
Terry wasn't in the same place as before, but she still found him easily as he had gone down a few aisles and was now collecting some canned and jar foods into the cardboard box trays he had found. He also had a box of crackers open and was snacking on them.
"Look at what I found," Karina said as she dragged the mangled mannequin into view, complete with pip-boy and a tattered vault suit.
Terry blinked as he looked at the pip-boy on the mangled plastic creature and then saw the shredded vault suit. "That thing belongs to Regan?"
"Seems so." Karina nodded. She then said, "Unfortunately, all this tells me is that he was here, but no clue as to where he would've gone."
Terry cleared his throat. "I had an idea just now. You can shrink things and put them all in your inventory, right?"
At Karina's nod, he continued. "I've checked over all the foods here, and most of them seem to still be fresh, are completely radiation-free, and safe. There are no bizarre poisons in them or anything that I can detect. Save for the more sensitive perishables, which are only starting to spoil after being out for a few days. And well… if Regan's been coming here to get food he needs? We should starve him out… by taking everything in the whole supermarket! That could get him good and mad, causing him to make a mistake. Then we find him this way and then deal with him."
Karina blinked, and then grinned viciously. "I like the way you think Terry. Not to mention, our people back at the vault could sure use that food more than Regan does. All this food just for one man? Such a waste, even if he summons permanent allies of his own. Am I right or what?"
Terry nodded vigorously. "Exactly! And we should do it fast as humanly as possible before anybody catches us… so you grab a cart and we'll see who can cram all the foods into the suitcases you have the fastest without damaging them."
Karina looked surprised, and then she started giggling. She then said after calming down, "Sorry, this just reminded me of a TV game show my parents and I use to watch with our neighbors sometimes. It was called Supermarket Quiz Raid. Never thought I'd be playing an improvised verison of it with you, is all."
Terry shrugged, having no clue what Karina was even talking about. Just yet another pre-war thing she was referencing, so he choose to ignore that part. "Uh, right. Just as long as you get a general idea. Let's become loot gremlins together."
Karina smiled again. "Sure."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'<that woman's doing it all wrong!>' Karina's mom said, signing with her hands in Karina's memory, '<she should start with the meats first, they're all flat and if they're at the bottom they won't fall out of the cart when she's running around like that.>'
Karina then translated what her mom said for a few of the visiting neighbors who weren't fluent in sign language, and one of the male neighbors agreed as he pointed out that the female contestant's speeding shopping cart was already spilling things everywhere because she had been too much in a rush to stack everything in the cart properly.
Karina giggled at that bit of random memory of her time watching TV with her parents. She thought to herself, 'Thanks for the advice, mom.'
But the problem, of course, was the matter of cold storage while they were traveling around in a car. So she had to get a cooler first and fill it up with ice before putting meat into it.
But once she had that? It was looting time, and she rushed over to the frozen meat products to look over everything she could take that wasn't nailed down. She didn't even bother with the meat product that hadn't been in the frozen section, because she didn't know how long the non-frozen meat counter display had been laid out and she didn't want to risk food poisoning.
Didn't she hear that meat laid out on the counter display for more than 5 days in a grocery store could easily go bad unless it was something like sausage? because sausages lasted 6 weeks before they went bad due to being specially treated meat?
Okay, maybe she would check out the sausages… eventually.
In no time at all the large cooler that she had put into the shopping cart was now full of frozen meat products and ice, and she ran back to the spot where she and Terry had agreed to put all of their loot.
Terry seemed to have collected canned foods and jarred foods on 24-can cardboard carrier trays, stacking them on top of each other. Judging by how he collected so many cans in each 24-can carrier tray, Karina guessed that there were already around 360 cans already. Jeez.
And here she only had managed to collect enough frozen meat that could've made up a whole cow, along with a few chickens. Well, that kinda answered the question of whether she could've won that pre-war TV show or not. Obviously, Terry would be the winner here.
Karina used her oni super strength to lift the heavy cooler full of frozen meats out of her cart and lay it down by the large empty trunks and suitcases that she had returned to normal size so that they'd be filled up.
She became normal again and sped off once again, pushing her cart back where she found the 150-quart coolers that had been on "sale". This was mainly because the freezer section was more than just meat, there was frozen pasta and frozen potpies too along with what looked like pizzas… so she wanted to go for a second round at that now that she cleaned out as much of the frozen meats aisle as she could.
Truthfully, she was starting to feel overwhelmed by how much food there was in a place like this. Karina grew up during the food riots, so she was more used to seeing bare shelves than full shelves of food. God, this was so surreal.
By the time she brought back a fourth cooler full of frozen foods to the spot where they had collected, Terry looked thoroughly exhausted as his stacks of canned goods and jars now seemed to be over 700 roughly. And by the looks of things, he had only managed to empty out half of a 10-foot-long tall aisle that held the canned foods section.
Terry then said weakly, "Might've overestimated ourselves here. Mainly because I didn't truly realize how much food there is here. Jesus, all this much food is enough to make me a billionaire if I ever set myself up as a food merchant. Might take us more than two days just to empty out this place…"
Karina sat down next to him. "Yeah, I've barely only dented the number of frozen foods myself. Stocked up on frozen fruits, veggies, and most importantly meat. And I only emptied out those four huge-ass industrial fridges, there's 20 more lined up side to side, back to back."
Terry then mumbled, "... I just realized that in such a huge city, they'd have more than one supermarket too. So even if we managed to empty this one out completely…"
".... oh. Regan would just go to a different one. There'd be no way of starving him and making him angry until he made a mistake." Karina finished that thought.
The two of them slumped at this.
Terry then perked up. "What if you used your power to summon something? Maybe summon a large group of people and tell them to help pick up everything here while we use your shrinking powers to pack it all away?? With more people, we could pick this place clean in less than a day, and then move on to finding other supermarkets. If anything else even if our plan to starve Regan out fails it would be good to have an extra set of eyes looking for him."
Karina facepalmed at that. "Why the hell didn't I think of that?"
She then pulled on her power, practically begging it to give her a group of people that could help them out here.
>ring<
All this pull did was make Karina feel stronger. And it didn't summon a person as she had hoped.
Terry noticed her disappointed look. "It didn't work that time?"
She just sighed.
=========================================================
A/N: Thanks to this story, I got exposed to yet another questionable manga… this time from the heroes' wiki side of things. Sigh. still not as bad as that prison rape manga though. This was one of the reasons why I didn't summon much this chapter as I had to recover from the fact that this fanfic seemed to be hating me and giving me shitty recs to read. XD that, and Karina was traveling around so much and having no reason to summon anything.
Also, this chapter was getting so long so I have to break this up into different parts, next chapter will have Karina summoning a shitload of stuff.
At this point, it was getting dark out there as it was now evening, as time seemed to fly way too fast for Karina. So Terry suggested that they stay the night as he was suffering from mild car lag.
The Gyonids was about to agree when they disappeared with a soft "ring".
Terry could only shake his head at this, saying, "I don't think I'll ever get used to that."
Karina nodded. "Yeah. I don't know why, but I always feel a little melancholy when they go back. But I'm also not the sort of person who'd want to keep them here forever against their will."
Terry tilted his head as he set up a portable fission-powered heater inside the lobby room they had agreed to stay in, while he said, "Sounds like you're the sort of person who gets lonely easily. You must've been the sort who was used to being around people all the time, huh?"
Karina mulled that over. Now that Terry mentioned it… well.
Even though Karina did want time to herself occasionally, she couldn't honestly remember a time when she wasn't around people all the time, pre-war. Paradoxically, she was like something of an extroverted wallflower.
She liked blending into the background, but she also was okay with being in a crowd and being around other people. There were times when she felt like chatting up a storm with people, and also times when she liked being in the corner alone during a party just quietly observing people having a good time. She liked having people around neither way, both to interact with when she was in the mood and also for people-watching when she was in the mood to just sit there quietly.
Now that she thought of it, wasn't that sort of person called an ambivert? Of course, her wallflower tendencies got "worse" when she became a sniper because in the military she had it hammered into her head that a sniper who stood out too much instead of blending quietly into the background was a sniper who got sniped right back. Even now, it was hard to shake the idea that standing out too much would get her killed. But even then she still liked being around others at times.
"Yeah, you might be right there," Karina replied.
With that, she helped roll out the sleeping bags.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was very early when the two of them woke, and they were unable to sleep anymore so Terry set up a beacon on a very specific wavelength for his fellow military men so that they could find the prison without Terry's help.
Karina yawned so hard upon seeing that it was 5 am in the morning that she accidentally pulled on her power.
>ring<
| https://animanga.fandom.com/wiki/Keloid roll 13 A manga about a chronic cheater in college who can't seem to be satisfied with any woman he meets, though he tries his best to be faithful and satisfied with his latest girlfriend, who he plans to marry. Then his male coworker blackmails him into having a secret relationship with the male coworker, opening his eyes to the reason why even though he can have sex with women just fine, they can't seem to do anything for him emotionally. A "romantic" yaoi love story. Though there seems to be a lot of non-con stuff in this manga, what with the blackmail and one-sided drunk sex. Effect: This male-on-male "love story" manga with all of the problematic rapey scenes in it gets added to Karina's inventory, collected in a thick voluminous book. |
The two of them ate protein bars and with that, they were back on the road. Or rather Terry was as Karina decided to take to the skies again.
Hours into the day they stopped to have a restroom break, each one taking turns while the other one kept guard at a very polite distance with averted eyes.
And after that was done, Karina opted to sit in the car with Terry, having tired of flying as it didn't seem that there were enemies for miles around that Karina could see and warn Terry of this time.
They were barely a mile up the road when they encountered a frightened-looking man who looked as if he had been through hell. He was in the middle of the road, shaking as he staggered along on blooded feet and hands. His clothes were torn and bloody as well, making it look like he had been in a struggle.
He didn't have a weapon on himself by the look of things, which made it so weird too.
Terry and Karina warily got out of the car, scanning the dead petrified woods around them in case it was some kind of trap. Karina then approached the injured man while Terry stayed by the car.
"You alright?" she asked.
"No no no no stay away from me." The man whimpered, as he dropped to the floor and covered his head. "You're just a monster waiting until I let my guard down to eat me aren't you."
Karina blinked. She then knelt down and unleashed a calming aura at the man as she said, "It's alright, I'm not a monster. Will you tell me what's going on?"
The man stared up at her, as he mumbled, "I think I finally escaped that hellish city, but I'm not so sure… that city likes to mess with your head."
"What city?" Karina wondered out loud.
The man got to his knees, even though he was still shivering violently. "It looked like such a beautiful city from the outside. Lights shone brightly like stars in the darkness, beckoning all who saw the lights to enter the city. But it was a trap! Once you're inside, the fog traps you and you can't ever find your way out again. It's a city full of the dead and your past… It took my teammates but left me alive. Tortured me. Forced me to face my own past."
Karina's eyebrows furrowed at this. She asked, "You mean to tell me that there's a whole city lit up, powered by electricity? In this day and age?"
The man continued to stare up at Karina, but how he looked slightly perplexed. "You want to go there?"
A strange look then came over his face, and he started chuckling. "Oh. if I let you two take my place, maybe it'll let me go…"
Karina tilted her head. "You gonna tell me or not?"
The man then shakily told her the coordinates, and then got up to hobble away with a maniacal look on his face not even caring about his injuries.
Karina walked back to Terry, saying, "looks like we got our next lead on where Regan might be."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--An hour later--
They were standing at a tall cliff-like area overseeing the massive city from a far distance.
Terry shook his head. "Yeah, that city definitely wasn't there before. We would've known about it, maybe tried to take it as part of our military strategy in our war against the NCR. Hell, NCR would've wanted to take it for themselves too."
Karina looked over at him. "... and not to mention, I've never seen this architectural style before. I'm not an expert on building styles but I don't even know what to call this. This is definitely from another world."
Terry sighed. "Regan probably went on a summoning spree here, judging by that poor man's words. Might be a city full of monsters and junk. We'll have to be really careful while we comb through this huge-ass city looking for him."
Karina nodded grimly. "I'll fly overhead, while you stay in the car. You can blast away things and I can drop bombs from overhead. Between the two of us, we can map out the city and find out where Regan's at."
Terry nodded, and with that, he walked back to the car. Karina willed her wings back into existence and jumped off the cliff, and climbed upwards into the sky.
It was a bright clear morning today as the two of them slowly moved into the city, and Terry noted that there was a sign low to the ground where Karina couldn't see it and that it said, "Welcome to Neo-Bowser City."
So this mysterious city had a name after all, and weirdly enough it looked pretty innocent in the morning light… looking every inch a perfectly normal pre-war city save for the fact that it seemed to be a ghost city and the weird building aesthetics.
So many giant round windows and rounded squares! And for every normal boxy building, there were ten pill-shaped skyscrapers. Seemed that anything that had a sharp corner was far less popular in whatever world this city came from.
There were no monsters nor people to be seen anywhere at all, not even when they moved deeper into the city. which puzzled the two of them.
"Maybe the monsters were temporary like some of your summonses were?" Terry suggested over the radio.
"Maybe." Karina agreed, adjusting her headset radio so that she could communicate with him better while high in the air.
She then noticed something weird while she was flying overhead and had a face-down view of the city, or at least a part of it that she was hovering over.
"Hey. some of the roads here look like they're meant for racing cars. You can enter them through the normal means but some of those roads look like they loop into each other, and even have special markings on them you see on a racetrack."
Terry said over the radio, "I've seen signs near those roads indicating that yeah. ...is it bad that I'd love to give it a shot? See what this baby you gave me can really do?" Terry said, "you could summon another car and we could race each other."
Karina suddenly found herself very tempted by that idea, as she stopped on top of a tall skyscraper to ponder that idea. She had never been into any type of sports before, but all of a sudden the idea of racing cars with others seemed highly thrilling and FUN…. she just wanted to do that so badly!
She then shook herself, realizing how suspicious this sudden urge was. She hesitantly said, "Terry, be careful not to give into that impulse. This might be part of the trap that Regan laid out for us. Giving us the desire to want to race, and that sort of thing? I mean, have you ever felt this way before?"
".... shit. Well, I've never had my own car before, so no. But I'll take your advice." Terry sounded slightly spooked at the idea that such desires and ideas could be implanted into his head so easily like that, even without him noticing.
They then moved on, scanning the area for anything unusual.
After a few minutes, Terry then spoke up. "Hold on. There's what looks like a pre-war supermarket here, and there have been signs of activity here. It looks like a giant monster tore out of there considering there's a big hole in the entranceway."
"Means that Reagan's been in there." Karina said, "Let's stop by there and check it out. But have your weapon ready."
With that Karina landed by the building, while Terry parked a safe distance away.
Terry told Mr.Handy to stay in the car and activate the guns if anything or anyone besides them got too close to the car, and the robot complied.
With that, they went into the supermarket through the destroyed entranceway's hole.
"Whoa! Look at all this food," Terry commented with wide eyes as he looked around.
Karina nodded as she noticed that some shelves were now bare, with some food items knocked to the floor. "I see signs of looting too. Hard to tell if that was Regan or some other person who was here before, however. That man we encountered mentioned having a team before they got lost here."
Terry noticed a shopping cart nearby, and grabbed it while he said, "I'm gonna do some looting myself too as I'm feeling peckish myself, but I'll remain alert."
Karina snorted loudly. She could understand where Terry was coming from, although she was a little reluctant to accept any of Regan's summoned things as being safe. "Okay, but I think we should test all of the foods for anything strange before eating them."
Terry nodded and then pulled out a strange cube-like item that was attached to an iron chain necklace and said, "no worries, miss, I've got my food sanitizer. Never go anywhere without it. Makes all foods safe to eat, and if the food is so far gone to be saved by it then it gives off a warning beep not to eat it."
Karina blinked. "I didn't realize that your people had something like that."
Terry shrugged. "It was made by some pre-war company called… Abra-something? but they kept on making it long after the bombs dropped. They've got traveling caravans all over the entire American wasteland selling them. Goes for a lot of caps too, but they sold to my group at a discount since we were buying them in bulk. Best investment ever."
Karina blinked at that. Huh. a company that did some actual good? Would wonders never cease? In her experience, most companies tended to be thoroughly corrupt and often did a lot of unethical testing on humans… and this was pretty much in the open and seen as normal, sadly enough. Nobody was ever surprised whenever the local newspaper did a expose on them, although sometimes this ignited a few riots and protests.
Karina nodded. "Fine. but if you feel sick, come to me right away alright?"
Terry merely nodded back. With that, Terry went to browse the wares and Karina got to work exploring the place, one gun loaded and ready in one hand.
Walking deeper into the store, Karina found an odd sight-- some sort of mannequin that had been mangled very badly, as if attacked by a monster. But what really caught her eye, was the fact that the half-destroyed mannequin had been wearing a very familiar vault suit, which was now torn to shreds. And… it was also wearing an intact pip-boy, which had somehow survived the attack on its persons.
And all around it were piles of bone-white ash and pools of dried blood as if a battle took place, along with what looked like the feet tracks of somebody very large who apparently didn't believe in shoes.
She then noticed the wheels on the bottom of the male mannequin and noted that they used to be RC cars and that Regan had managed to permanently attach those RC cars to the feet of the mannequin, turning them into something like automated skates.
'Did Regan use this thing as a decoy to distract some enemies and then killed them? Okay, that makes sense. But, why would he leave his pip-boy behind? It's such an important survival tool.' She wondered quietly to herself.
She righted the mannequin upwards so that it was now standing on its wheels again, though the torso was leaning to the right now with broken or missing arms, and its' head was missing as well. She then dragged it along as she went back to where she saw Terry last.
Terry wasn't in the same place as before, but she still found him easily as he had gone down a few aisles and was now collecting some canned and jar foods into the cardboard box trays he had found. He also had a box of crackers open and was snacking on them.
"Look at what I found," Karina said as she dragged the mangled mannequin into view, complete with pip-boy and a tattered vault suit.
Terry blinked as he looked at the pip-boy on the mangled plastic creature and then saw the shredded vault suit. "That thing belongs to Regan?"
"Seems so." Karina nodded. She then said, "Unfortunately, all this tells me is that he was here, but no clue as to where he would've gone."
Terry cleared his throat. "I had an idea just now. You can shrink things and put them all in your inventory, right?"
At Karina's nod, he continued. "I've checked over all the foods here, and most of them seem to still be fresh, are completely radiation-free, and safe. There are no bizarre poisons in them or anything that I can detect. Save for the more sensitive perishables, which are only starting to spoil after being out for a few days. And well… if Regan's been coming here to get food he needs? We should starve him out… by taking everything in the whole supermarket! That could get him good and mad, causing him to make a mistake. Then we find him this way and then deal with him."
Karina blinked, and then grinned viciously. "I like the way you think Terry. Not to mention, our people back at the vault could sure use that food more than Regan does. All this food just for one man? Such a waste, even if he summons permanent allies of his own. Am I right or what?"
Terry nodded vigorously. "Exactly! And we should do it fast as humanly as possible before anybody catches us… so you grab a cart and we'll see who can cram all the foods into the suitcases you have the fastest without damaging them."
Karina looked surprised, and then she started giggling. She then said after calming down, "Sorry, this just reminded me of a TV game show my parents and I use to watch with our neighbors sometimes. It was called Supermarket Quiz Raid. Never thought I'd be playing an improvised verison of it with you, is all."
Terry shrugged, having no clue what Karina was even talking about. Just yet another pre-war thing she was referencing, so he choose to ignore that part. "Uh, right. Just as long as you get a general idea. Let's become loot gremlins together."
Karina smiled again. "Sure."
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'<that woman's doing it all wrong!>' Karina's mom said, signing with her hands in Karina's memory, '<she should start with the meats first, they're all flat and if they're at the bottom they won't fall out of the cart when she's running around like that.>'
Karina then translated what her mom said for a few of the visiting neighbors who weren't fluent in sign language, and one of the male neighbors agreed as he pointed out that the female contestant's speeding shopping cart was already spilling things everywhere because she had been too much in a rush to stack everything in the cart properly.
Karina giggled at that bit of random memory of her time watching TV with her parents. She thought to herself, 'Thanks for the advice, mom.'
But the problem, of course, was the matter of cold storage while they were traveling around in a car. So she had to get a cooler first and fill it up with ice before putting meat into it.
But once she had that? It was looting time, and she rushed over to the frozen meat products to look over everything she could take that wasn't nailed down. She didn't even bother with the meat product that hadn't been in the frozen section, because she didn't know how long the non-frozen meat counter display had been laid out and she didn't want to risk food poisoning.
Didn't she hear that meat laid out on the counter display for more than 5 days in a grocery store could easily go bad unless it was something like sausage? because sausages lasted 6 weeks before they went bad due to being specially treated meat?
Okay, maybe she would check out the sausages… eventually.
In no time at all the large cooler that she had put into the shopping cart was now full of frozen meat products and ice, and she ran back to the spot where she and Terry had agreed to put all of their loot.
Terry seemed to have collected canned foods and jarred foods on 24-can cardboard carrier trays, stacking them on top of each other. Judging by how he collected so many cans in each 24-can carrier tray, Karina guessed that there were already around 360 cans already. Jeez.
And here she only had managed to collect enough frozen meat that could've made up a whole cow, along with a few chickens. Well, that kinda answered the question of whether she could've won that pre-war TV show or not. Obviously, Terry would be the winner here.
Karina used her oni super strength to lift the heavy cooler full of frozen meats out of her cart and lay it down by the large empty trunks and suitcases that she had returned to normal size so that they'd be filled up.
She became normal again and sped off once again, pushing her cart back where she found the 150-quart coolers that had been on "sale". This was mainly because the freezer section was more than just meat, there was frozen pasta and frozen potpies too along with what looked like pizzas… so she wanted to go for a second round at that now that she cleaned out as much of the frozen meats aisle as she could.
Truthfully, she was starting to feel overwhelmed by how much food there was in a place like this. Karina grew up during the food riots, so she was more used to seeing bare shelves than full shelves of food. God, this was so surreal.
By the time she brought back a fourth cooler full of frozen foods to the spot where they had collected, Terry looked thoroughly exhausted as his stacks of canned goods and jars now seemed to be over 700 roughly. And by the looks of things, he had only managed to empty out half of a 10-foot-long tall aisle that held the canned foods section.
Terry then said weakly, "Might've overestimated ourselves here. Mainly because I didn't truly realize how much food there is here. Jesus, all this much food is enough to make me a billionaire if I ever set myself up as a food merchant. Might take us more than two days just to empty out this place…"
Karina sat down next to him. "Yeah, I've barely only dented the number of frozen foods myself. Stocked up on frozen fruits, veggies, and most importantly meat. And I only emptied out those four huge-ass industrial fridges, there's 20 more lined up side to side, back to back."
Terry then mumbled, "... I just realized that in such a huge city, they'd have more than one supermarket too. So even if we managed to empty this one out completely…"
".... oh. Regan would just go to a different one. There'd be no way of starving him and making him angry until he made a mistake." Karina finished that thought.
The two of them slumped at this.
Terry then perked up. "What if you used your power to summon something? Maybe summon a large group of people and tell them to help pick up everything here while we use your shrinking powers to pack it all away?? With more people, we could pick this place clean in less than a day, and then move on to finding other supermarkets. If anything else even if our plan to starve Regan out fails it would be good to have an extra set of eyes looking for him."
Karina facepalmed at that. "Why the hell didn't I think of that?"
She then pulled on her power, practically begging it to give her a group of people that could help them out here.
>ring<
| https://animanga.fandom.com/wiki/Michel Roll 16 A Korean anime. A girl named Kim chases a group of thieves called the Black Hammer Gang. Until one day the Black Hammer gang and Kim fall on an island inhabited by fairies and their guardian Michel. The Black Hammer Gang tries to steal the life source of the island called the tree of life. Causing damage to the land and kidnapping the fairies, Michel and Kim have to combat the Black Hammer gang and take back the fairies. Michel is an angelic holy guardian who has actual white wings that he can make appear on his back or disappear at will. He has telepathic powers in that he can tell what a person is thinking and feeling by touching them, and also can amplify the powers of fairies and in return borrow the fairies' powers for himself. Effect: Karina's magic core is strengthened even more, and her magic wings grow more in size, with there being white feathers in her wings alongside the blue and gray feathers now. If she meets any fairies, she can make them stronger by lending them her magic power or borrowing their power in return. Karina's minor telepathic skills are also strengthened as well. Unfortunately, because Micheal counts as a character/person he cannot be summoned. Too bad it wasn't a roll 20, he would've been summoned then, just like Karina wanted. |
All this pull did was make Karina feel stronger. And it didn't summon a person as she had hoped.
Terry noticed her disappointed look. "It didn't work that time?"
She just sighed.
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A/N: Thanks to this story, I got exposed to yet another questionable manga… this time from the heroes' wiki side of things. Sigh. still not as bad as that prison rape manga though. This was one of the reasons why I didn't summon much this chapter as I had to recover from the fact that this fanfic seemed to be hating me and giving me shitty recs to read. XD that, and Karina was traveling around so much and having no reason to summon anything.
Also, this chapter was getting so long so I have to break this up into different parts, next chapter will have Karina summoning a shitload of stuff.
