Fallout 4
Danse, MaCreedy, Piper and I were travelling together trying to get to Sanctuary. It had been a while since we'd left Diamond city. However, we weren't travelling for very long as we began to hear certain things, twigs cracking being one of them.
"Hear that?" Danse looked at the ridge above us, aiming his laser rifle at it vaguely, looking for a stalker.
"Yeah..." MacCready also aimed at the ridge.
Suddenly we heard a roar, something that I'd heard before.
"It's a deathclaw." I breathed, remembering my previous encounter with one.
Danse was the only one of us in power armour, even so, I began to think that this wouldn't be as bad a fight as I imagined. Suddenly we heard gunfire, someone was taking the fight to the deathclaw.
"Looks like we might not be needing to waste any ammo." Piper chimed.
It was then that we saw a figure being thrown off of the ridge onto the road a few feet in front of us, a trail of blood following him. His coat had been shredded by the deathclaw, along with his left arm by the looks of things. He had two 10mm pistols in his hands, he scrambled to his feet, groaning as he did so.
"Are you alright?" Piper almost freaked out as he got up.
Thump
The deathclaw had jumped down onto the road, a tomahawk was lodged in its head. It gave a roar, loud enough for the nearby settlement to hear.
"Fuck's sake." The figure groaned before proceeding to fill the deathclaw's face full of lead.
Unfortunately, he ran out of bullets soon enough. The deathclaw looked at him bemused, it lashed out at him to which he narrowly dodged the claws of the beast. We had to do something, so we all began to fill the beast's back full of lead and lasers. As our magazines and batteries ran out, the beast looked over its shoulder at us. A red glow in its eye.
"Reload, now." Danse ordered.
When I began, the beast began to charge but was halted by a 44 magnum slug in it's back. It stopped and turned around to have the figure lunge into the beast's front. A few seconds later, the beast fell to it's back, the figure's left arm stuck in its mouth.
He was practically howling in pain. Struggling to get his arm out of the beast's mouth, the problem was that the beast was still not dead, it was still trying to chew the figure's arm off. The figure put his foot on the horn of the beast before emptying his revolver into its head.
"Fuckin' things." He growled before throwing the revolver away and trying to pry his arm out of the mouth.
Quickly I moved over and helped prize the beast's mouth wide open. When the mouth was open, I found that the figure's arm was stuck in the teeth of the beast. After more blood and more struggling, the figure retrieved his arm and stumbled back.
"Th-thanks." He thanked me before falling over his feet, onto the beast again.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"D-deathclaws are strong on the outside. If you are trying to kill them, you need to get them from the inside. You can rig up a dead body with remote charges to blow them up, that wasn't an option now. So I tried shoving a grenade down his throat. Only I didn't get the pin out before it chomped my arm." He spoke, reaching for his mask with his right hand.
The mask was a respirator, helping him breathe the air around him. He must have thought he was too far gone to need it anymore.
"Are you insane? You could have been killed." Danse challenged the man, who now looked younger than he did.
The kid proceeded to take off his hood and goggles, bright blue eyes that were now gleaming with tears in his eyes.
"If I hadn't, I would have died and the beast would have lived... Then again, you guys could have done it... I'm a fucking idiot." He winced, looking at his left hand.
There wasn't much of it left. In fact, his arm was barely attached to his arm anymore. Yet he was still bleeding quite profusely. He reached into his coat and pulled out a cigarette and lighter and put it in his mouth then lit it.
"I don't think that's going to help." Piper came over and crouched down to him.
"Look at him Piper, I don't think he's got long left." Mcreedy.
"Don't worry about me. Shit, I didn't have long left anyway." He began to wipe his eyes as he smoked the cigarette.
"What's your name?" I asked, trying to keep him talking whilst I rummaged for a spare stimpack in my coat.
He looked at all of us quizzically, not really understanding what it was that we were doing. He didn't realize that we were trying to help him, I guessed that he'd never had someone help him before. Mcreedy took up the initiative and came to his left side.
"Boss, if he's gonna make it. The arm has to go, it's beyond saving." He spoke quietly.
"There are tools in my kit if you wanna use those. Honestly, though. I've lost a few more pints than I've got to lose." The figure began again, blowing smoke away from us.
"Stop, you're gonna make it kid." I calmed him as I unclipped his bag from his torso.
The tools he was referring to; were a saw, a med-x stim, bandages and a disinfectant pad. A bottle of whiskey was also there for him.
"Uh... You're gonna have to do that boss." MacCreedy began to look pale.
"Paladin, could you hold his arm for me?" I asked.
Danse agreed, swapped places with MacCreedy and took the figure's arm.
"Can you feel anything in this arm?" He tried.
"No." The figure began, before throwing the cigarette away from him and taking the whiskey.
He took a swig before pouring some of it on the area where the wound was the worst. As he began to look relieved, I apologized and began to saw into his arm. He never even moved, but the saw made a grinding noise as it ripped through his arm and the bone.
Behind me I could hear Piper trying to help MacCreedy with his retching, it was distracting, to say the least. Finally, the saw had gone through and his arm was off.
The figured hadn't even flinched.
"How did you not feel anything?" I asked as I quickly began to take off the upper part of his clothing.
"I've lost a lot of blood. That stim reduced the pain and stopped the bleeding. That and I'm high as fuck." The figure reached for the med-x.
I swatted his hand and used the bandages to fix the pad to his shoulder. It took a while but the bleeding managed to slow down enough to the point where he could be saved after rest.
"You never answered my question." I tried again as I draped his coat over him and closed it up.
"Jason... Your friend is hurting my arm." He chuckled at Danse.
Danse was still holding the severed arm, inspecting the flesh.
"I'm checking if you're a synth, it doesn't look so. These marks are strange though, I haven't seen this before." Danse explained as I helped Jason up.
MacCreedy had trouble recovering himself, but he collected Jason's fallen weapons before he helped us get back to sanctuary. When we began to get in sight of the town, the kid began to drift off. Danse was the one to take up the initiative and picked up the kid and put him on his shoulder.
"Blue, I'm proud of you for helping him. I don't he'd deserve to die out here." She praised me.
"Piper, I think either way he'll die." MacCreedy sighed.
"I still hear you." Jason groaned on the back of Danse.
Eventually, we reached Sanctuary. My old home, my first settlement. A place we hadn't visited in a while, I'd hope Curie hadn't walked away and gone somewhere else. Thankfully, she had stayed put, our only medic who could deal with a botched amputation.
I took him into one of the houses that we set up for medical operations. Danse quickly set Jason down onto the bed and Curie took a quick look at Jason before making a conclusion.
"I will be able to save him, but it will take time." She explained as she delicately removed the clothes he was loosely wearing.
"He protected us from a deathclaw when he could have run Curie, please make sure he survives." I smiled at her, knowing that she would be able to do it.
She nodded and continued to focus on Jason. Everyone walked out, knowing that she worked better when she was alone. MacCreedy was still looking pale.
"I still can't believe you did that without even thinking. What if she could have saved his arm?" He seemed pretty angry.
"MacCreedy, you saw his arm. It made you sick just looking at it, it was barely flesh and bone anymore. If it was kept attached, it would have been infected, he would have died." Danse took my side, I knew full well that the kid's chance of survival was slim if he hadn't had the amputation.
"He said it himself, he wanted to die out there. We saved his life Mac, he saved ours... If not, a ton of ammo." Piper also spoke out.
All of a sudden, we heard a yell of pain. Jason's high appeared to be wearing off, he was feeling the pain now.
"I hope that doesn't go on the rest of the day." I frowned, knowing that the settlers wouldn't like to hear the pained screams for long.
We settled down and began to make think about our next move. I knew that it was the institute that had kidnapped Shaun, the problem was how I was going to destroy the institute and find Shaun. I didn't mind synths themselves, giving them they're own life would be a job for the railroad, but they didn't have the resources like the Brotherhood had, and the minutemen would take far too long to help out. I didn't have time to waste, Shaun was out there, and Kellog made sure that I knew that before I scalped him with my shotgun.
Brotherhood was sounding better and better, each point that came up sounded so good that I couldn't find another solution.
Before long, we all tried to get some sleep, but we found it difficult seeing as it was difficult seeing as we were almost deafened by the silence of the night.
The next morning - Jason
I woke up lying in the homemade bed inside a house which looked as though it had been professionally repaired by someone. The pain from my left side was numb, but it was still there, with each second I could feel painkillers and their effects wearing off slowly.
Carefully, I sat up on the bed, trying to support myself with my left arm.
Unfortunatly, it wasn't there to support me. My weight came crashing down on the edge of the bed, rolling me off it and onto my face on the cold but clean floor. The pain spiked for a few moments as I breathed through gritted teeth, not only dealing with the missing arm, but the piercing headache I was dealing with. As it subsided, I pulled myself to my feet with a mission in mind.
Get a cigarette.
My coat was dangling on a hook outside, near the window. It looked as though it had been cleaned and had been left outside to dry. The same couldn't be said about the clothes I was wearing, they were filthy. Either way, the coat's belongings were set out on the table in the front room.
I walked slowly, trying to get my bearings with the loss of an arm shifting my balance quite a bit. I reached the table and quickly fiddled with the packet of cigarettes with my one hand so I could get a cigarette out. I placed it in my mouth and lit it with the slowly dying lighter I'd been carrying for a while.
After wandering outside, I sat down on the steps, leaning against the rail to keep myself upright for as long as I could.
The sweet release that came from the tobacco dampened my headache a little, but did nothing to help with my left arm being hacked off and coming down from the high I was on.
To be honest, it was a break for me. I learned something very important from that fight, shoving a grenade down anything's throat was a bad idea. Especially when you make them yourself.
Either way, my combat effectiveness had been halved. My dual-wielding phase had been cut short, as had my sniping skill. It seemed as though I was going to have to figure out a way to reload with only one hand. Holding a bulky 10mm between my teeth wasn't the best way to retain it whilst trying to shove a magazine in it. I was wondering about holstering it then loading, however, the revolver was going to be a problem.
As was the rifle, how could I use a bolt action with one hand? It was my favorite gun, and that axe was my favorite blade. Couldn't use them now.
"Garcon? How long have you been awake?" The lady had come outside to see me.
"Not long, thank you for this. I mean it." I smiled at her.
She returned the smile, but noticed the cigarette.
"You do know that smoking cigarettes is a leading cause of lung cancer and to other serious illnesses, no?" She asked, sitting down next to me.
"I know... Can I ask you something? What happened to my arm, will it take a few years off me?" I worried.
"Judging by my data collection of the wasteland, it could, but be positive, this experience should teach you not to take a fight that you cannot win without serious wounds." She tried to cheer me up.
I took another drag of the cigarette before I considered throwing the pack away, I had worse vices than cigarettes, besides the pain was starting to become unbearable. That was of course unless I could find my med-x stim.
"How is the pain?" The French medic was trying to get me to talk.
"It's bad, besides it's only been a few hours. It's strange not having my left arm, so much I could do, I can't do it now." I looked longingly at the stub on my shoulder.
Bandages still gracing the missing limb.
"Yes, but you will find new ways of getting through the day. Believe me." She tried comforting me.
She could try, but no words would stop my pain.
I saw a man walk out of another building, I thought that he was something else, the man in the power armor. He came over to us.
"Curie, how is the patient?" He asked.
"He is recovering well, but he says the pain hasn't subsided, this is worrying." She replied.
The man sat down on the other side of me, sizing me up from head to toe.
"You fought well back there, I didn't think kids your age had it in you to take on raiders, let alone deathcalws." He commented with a smile.
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" I raised an eyebrow.
"I've never lost a limb. Proctor Ingram lost both her legs and she doesn't feel any pain anymore, she uses power armor to get around." He stayed serious.
"Oui, there are solutions to your predicament. Do you have any family? A place to live?" Curie asked.
I chuckled as I blew smoke again.
"I was raised in Goodneighbour. A couple of Ghouls took care of me, other than that no family alive. As for where I live." I explained.
I pointed at the road.
"That's where I live. The road." I smiled.
"That's quite a life for someone so young. Do you want to talk about what happened?" the soilder asked.
"When I was about 9, I was branded by the slavers. Something came over me, I was so pissed I went on a rampage. They always promised us freedom when we did enough work, being branded meant you were owned, I knew that... So I killed them all, that's when I wandered the wastes. I went all around." I explained.
Just talking about the branding made me look for my left arm, but it wasn't there anymore. The branding was gone, the past was the past.
"Normally I am against murder, but slavery is a more heanous thing." Curie spoke.
"Monsuire Danse, what do you think we should do with the boy?" She continued.
"He's resilliant, perhaps he could be a valuable asset to the brotherhood." He began
"I've already tried the brotherhood, they took me in as a squire when I helped out one of their patrols. They tried to teach me the way of the brotherhood, but I was freinds with Ghouls." I explained.
"I see, perhaps this could be changed once you've met a few ferals." Danse nudged me.
"I've met ferals, but those aren't the people I know. Ferals loose their way, once they are away from civiliasation they begin deterorating. It's lonliness and depression that turns a Ghoul feral Danse." I stopped smiling, glaring at Danse.
The other guy appeared from no-where, he stood in front of the sun. With no way of blowing the smoke away, I stubbed the cigarette out and kept the rest of it for later. He looked very familar, he'd come from Goodneighbour like me.
"MaCreedy... Still a merc?" I joked with him.
He then looked at me closely until he realised who I was.
"I figured you looked familliar, no-one else is crazy enough to take on a death claw." Mac smiled at me.
I chuckled, knowing that he was the kind of person who was as crazy as I was. Only he wasn't crazy enough to actually go looking for a fight with a death claw.
"So, Jason. The wandering's come to an end for you?" He joked light-heartedly.
"Looks like it, might have to go back to Goodneighbour... Speaking of familliar faces, how long have you been a part of the Brotherhood?" I turned to Danse.
"I was a boy when I first joined the Brotherhood. Why?" He asked.
Danse looked familiar, now I knew why. When I first escaped from the slavers, the Brotherhood took me in. They made me a squire, but I never stayed for long.
"Knew you looked familliar... I ran away from the Airport a while ago." I began to speak with him again.
Danse looked at me for a while, before figuring that it was time to speak again.
"I remember now. You couldn't get used to laser rifles no matter how hard we tried. We berated you for it, but I can see that you've managed fine with normal bullets. Of course apart from the recent amputation." Danse apologised.
MaCreedy laughed heartilly.
"Bullets aint why he lost his arm, home-made grenades being shoved down a deathclaw's throat was the reason." He chuckled.
I couldn't help but chuckle with him, I was stupid to think that making my own grenades was a good idea in the first place. Looking back, I couldn't understand why I did it. It was about this time that the woman came out, someone I also recognised.
"Piper." I greeted, finally picking myself up from the ground.
"Oh, I should have recognised your face." She instantly recognised who I was.
She'd written something in a paper about me.
"Does everyone know you kid? How does Piper know you?" MaCreedy was surprised.
"He snuck around all over Diamond City." Piper lowered her voice to a dramatic tone.
I found it hard to stifle a chuckle but I did my best seeing as that she would want this story to be heard.
"One night, when most of the security guards were asleep. He broke his way into the printing building." He explained.
"Why?" Danse seemed confused.
"He noticed that the press was broken, so he decided to fix it. Instead of just leaving it there, he didn't steal a thing, no. He loaded up a news story onto the terminal all about him with a picture of the landscape of Quincy, the headline was 'Boy climbs the Quincy bridge and bags deathclaw from 200 yards' on the front page. When I woke up, I distibuted the papers thinking that there was nothing different. People started coming up to me and asking about the hunter, then I saw him trying to fix Takahashi to speak properly by speaking in the same language." She told the story.
"Wait. How many Deathclaws have you killed?" Danse asked, standing up.
"Just two. Besides, I think Tak was the harder task. Even when you speak at him in Mandarin or Japanese, he doesn't respond." I chuckled
"Yeah, there's only so many times that you can hear Nini-ni-shimoska before you think about shooting the thing. Anyway, I asked him if he knew who this hunter was and he bolted out of the city right away, laughing as he did. Nice to see you've matured a little bit." She tried scolding my behaviour, but it never worked.
I laughed at her, she knew that I meant well with what I did, but it didn't change the fact that I'd wasted a lot of her paper doing that.
"You speak Chinese?" Danse pressed.
"Not much, I can understand it better than speak it, even so it's not something that I do regularly. People get jumpy when they hear someone who looks like I do speak chinese, they think I'm a chinese revenant with the mask on. Speaking of which..." I began to remember that my mask was missing from my clothing.
"I have taken the liberty to improve your breathing so that you would no longer need the mask. Besides the mask is insightly no?" Curie put a hand on my shoulder.
"I didn't think so, well thank you for that anyway. Is there anything else that you'd like to tell me you did to me?" I asked, wondering what else that she had done to me.
"I have amputated the arm further up to the shoulder so that you should feel a little bit more comfortable. Not only that, but I have also treated the rash in your geni-" Curie began.
"Alright, that's enough." I halted her before she finished.
"Been having a fling eh?" MaCreedy nudged me.
"Hey, for all you know it could have been a rusty stim I took... Stim." I looked back into the house and saw my bag.
Quickly I rushed for the bag, but I was grabbed by Danse who realised what I was looking for. He seemed pretty pissed about it.
"I knew it, he's addicted to med-x. Why else would he have had that junk with him?"
"Give it to me, I'm in fucking agony!" The walls began to fall as Danse wrestled with me to stop me going for the bag.
MaCreedy took pity on me and decided to try and help.
"Jase, that stuff's only going to slow you down. Trust me, that's the last thing you need right now." He tried but to no avail.
The more I fought against Danse the more the wound hurt. The gentle release that that stim would have provided me with would have saved me a lot of pain. Eventually, I gave up when I realized that I was going to start bleeding almost immediately.
"Fuck, could have used that right about now." I fell to my knees to try and regain my strength.
Curie decided to try and help me up, but my legs had lost almost all of their strength. Not a good sign.
"Why don't you try and subdue the pain with actual painkillers rather than Chems?" She asked.
"He makes them himself, I remember seeing his lab in Goodneighbour. Apparently, they aren't as bad as the raider stuff, but never the less still not worth the withdrawal symptoms." Mac explained the deal to Curie.
"It doesn't matter who makes the damn things, it's below people like us." Danse sighed.
"Jesus..." I tried to get back up, but to no avail.
I needed that stim more than I needed them talking down to me. Nothing stopped me trying to get to the bag, even when Danse grabbed my leg I kicked him off and scrambled to the bag where I knew I'd hidden one. Within seconds of grabbing the bag, the stim was in my hand.
I rolled onto my back and tried to jab myself in the leg with it, however, the leader of the group had appeared and grabbed my wrist. He didn't stop me though, the urge was too strong, but so was he. I couldn't fight against his strength, but I did have a plan. As he pulled me, I came up with him allowing me to jab my leg into the stim and hit the plunger.
"Damnit!" He practically kicked himself as he realized what he'd done.
MaCreedy
Jase had jabbed himself with the needle and gone on to roar with new found strength. I'd hoped the pain had faded away for him, that wasn't the end of it though.
"Fuckin'... Oh fuck." He stumbled as he took out the stim.
"Mac, what's happened to him?" Piper knocked me with her elbow.
"He's topped his high up. I guess that stim wasn't what he thought it was." I theorized.
It was true that Jase was experiencing something he wasn't expecting. Judging by the fact that he made them himself, it wasn't a long shot to assume that instead of Med-x he'd given himself a Psycho stim.
"What was that?" Boss shook Jase by the shoulders.
"Psyc-et... This isn't good... Why's my arm got a deathclaw's hand on it? I fucking hate deathclaws!" Jase began to feel his high not going the way it should.
"Psycho and Jet mixed together... Hell of a way to get sick." Piper sighed.
"Tell me about it, he's going to be out of it for a while." I held in a snicker as Jase was trying to rip off an imaginary arm.
"Don't laugh at this, give me that rope." Danse ordered, pointing at the rope around my chest.
I handed the bundle of rope to him and he went straight into the house and grabbed Jase by the shoulders.
"Come with me, I know where there's a deathclaw you can kill." He lied.
Jase went with him, practically growling and gritting his teeth whilst looking at the imaginary arm. He was livid and that's not going lightly, his eyes were going red with anger. I knew exactly what Danse was doing. Honestly, it was the best thing that he could do for Jase at this moment.
"Mac, what's he doing?" Boss asked.
"Well he's going to tie him to a pole or something, wait for the drugs to wear off. Best we can do seeing as he's drugged up. Should take a couple of hours, then the pain will get worse." I explained.
"Why'd he do it then? He knows it'll get worse." He pressed.
"Ever lost an arm? He's confused and in pain, that will get worse. He's trying to compensate for that pain, but trying to do it quickly, he's trapped in that cycle. It's best to cold turkey him for now until he's fine." I tried to make it the simplest I could.
Boss never really thought much of the chems, he never took them, he never even looked at them. One thing was for sure though, Jase being tied to that pole wasn't going to go down.
1 hour later
An hour later I decided to ditch the work and see how Jase was doing, thankfully he was still there even though he was trying to rip the bonds with his teeth.
"Jase, it's for your own good." I smiled, trying to get him to do the same.
No avail though, he was shaking like some sort of wild animal.
"It's burning, it burns!" He yelled at me.
"It will burn kid, you've been here before." I tried comforting him.
I noticed just how much he'd been struggling with the bonds. There were groves in the dirt where his heels had slipped in the dirt at least a foot deep, the rope was beginning to fray at some parts.
"How did you think this was going to go down?" I tapped him on the shoulder.
"Good." He growled, his head rolling on his shoulders.
"Good, good ,good, good. No bad. Bad. Burns!" He began rambling, even more so.
To be honest Jase would be like this through the night if not more, trying to cold turkey someone who'd just taken drugs was a hard thing to do. I had hope though seeing as this wouldn't be the first time this happened.
I left Jase alone, he was too stressed out and needed to be alone, if I was to piss him off without even trying he could destroy that rope and run off. It was no surprise that whilst we were planning our next move, Jase had broken out of his bonds, grabbed his gear and hauled ass away. We never even noticed he'd left until about 2 hours later when we went to look for him, the only thing he left behind was the rope and a blood splatter across the ground.
"Idiot, you let him get away." Danse slapped the back of my head.
"Hey, if I remember correctly it was you that tied him up. Maybe if you hadn't tied him up in the first place." I argued.
"Shouldn't really matter, I mean he'd just be weighing us down after all." Boss began.
"Blue, he's a kid, with one arm for crying out loud. We've got to go after him." Piper piped up.
Jason
I wasn't in that much pain, so I managed to pick up a brisk pace. Getting away from the town was the best thing that I could do for myself. The 'holier than thou' vibe with that group wasn't my style, besides my life didn't belong to them. If I couldn't live my life as who I was, that wasn't a life I wanted to lead.
Goodneighbour was always affectionate towards people who knew their way around Chems and explosives. Fortunately I was both, unfortunately, I didn't think I'd be in the business for much longer. Instead of sticking to roads, I stuck to the off-road track so that my movements couldn't be followed easily, either by wildlife or the group who'd rescued me.
I'd been on the way for about 2 hours and still standing, losing the arm hadn't diminished my trekking skills. It would be a pain not being able to climb. However, I'd find a way to stay on the right path, keep my head above the water.
Finally, I reached Goodneighbour, the door opened allowing me to slide into the place. However it was not convenient for anyone, something was going down.
Goodneighbour was still filled with rubble, litter and lowlifes. Thankfully for me, I was adjusted to this. Something else was wrong, people were gathered around, someone was selling something. So I did my best to get into the crowd in the courtyard of the town. Once again, this guy was back selling 2nd-grade drugs to the people of Goodneighbour, but this time he had something new.
"Gentlemen, here I've got something that'll give you the edge in the fight should you ever need it. Here you go!" He held something in the air.
"Med-co! A blend of Med-x and Psycho. Only 100 caps." He advertised.
Someone had been trying out my recipes, now I didn't really care as it was Hancock who'd taught me how to brew them, I couldn't do that anymore. Either way, making the blends were dangerous. I didn't care if a few raiders OD'd on the stuff.
Suddenly though, a hand hit me on the shoulder turning me around. Hancock was stood there.
"You and I need to have a little talk, later though." He barely spoke to me.
He walked up to the guy and began to talk to him. There was a little bit a of a rule in Goodneighbour, but you can sell drugs in Goodneighbour as a caravan, but a percentage of your earnings go to Hancock, most people agreed as it was one of the only places that you could freely trade chems without having to deal with do-gooders or raiders.
As soon as the conversation started civilly, it turned to shit as the salesman didn't want to pay Hancock the money, nor did he want to leave Goodneighbour. So Hancock wanted to oblige him.
"Kid, come here." He looked at me.
So I walked into the clearing.
"Give him a permanent place to stay." He ordered.
Without listening to the guy's pleads, I drew my pistol and put one in each kneecap so that he was in extreme pain. I let him scream for a few seconds before shooting him the head.
Silence.
Hancock decided to take the proceeds from the body and give them to me.
"Your lab was raided, I was wondering where they'd gone. Come on." He directed me towards the office.
He took me into the building and up to his office in complete silence. He let me go in first and then followed me then locked the door behind me. He was angry, even I could see it.
"Go on, take the weight off your feet." He invited me to sit down.
So I did, when Hancock was angry it was best you do as you were told.
"What happened to your arm?" He pressed.
Lying wasn't worth it.
"A deathclaw attacked a group of people, a big deathclaw. So I figured if it's not me it's going to be them. I tried throwing a grenade down its throat. It grabbed my arm and well..." I began, then decided that showing him would be the best idea.
I took off the coat in order to show him exactly what had happened to my arm. It had healed decently, but the fact remained that the Hancock would have found it hard to believe seeing as I'd had some medical attention.
"Wait. You tried saving a group of people?" He asked.
"Uh huh" I nodded.
"Hm... Let me see." He came over to me to take a look at what was left of my arm.
He was staring at the stitches, looking over the problem.
"So you did, stupid kid. Could have killed yourself." He scolded me.
"That was the point, they couldn't take that thing, it was like 15ft tall. If not for me there'd be a few more amputees out here. Besides, it's taught me one thing." I started.
"What?" He asked.
"Throw the grenade in the mouth of the thing, not feed it to it." I joked with him.
Hancock looked at me in doubt, he thought that I was putting on a brave face. So, if I were to simply break down in front of him, he wouldn't be surprised exactly.
"Listen, I'm... OK, I lost my arm. You know that, but I thought seeing as you've dealt with turning into a ghoul, maybe you could tell me how you dealt with it." I pondered.
"Listen, you made a big fucking mistake challenging a deathclaw. I made a mistake taking that chem, but there's a big difference. I got high off that, limbs still attached... well apart from that toe. You know what I mean, but how the hell can I relate to losing an entire arm? You need to learn how to use that arm more than ever, but let me tell you something, it's going to take a while before you even get close to being able to back out there." Hancock began a monologue.
When Hancock did this, it was best to listen. His words of wisdom were worth more than people say they are.
"You need help, those chem cocktails you've been enjoying for this long, it's gotta stop. As much as I hate to say it, it's slowing you down. Keep going with it, you're going to end up a husk." He explained the situation to me.
"I'll destroy my stills, then the stash. Better no-one gets hold of it." I agreed with him.
"Then you've gotta learn how to do the things you used to be able to do all over again. Once you're back in the swing of things, you can go back out there. But if I were you, I'd be on the lookout for Nick Valentine, he can give you a job on the lowdown, get you back in the ass-kicking swing of things. Right now I'll be with you every step of the way." Hancock comforted me.
When Hancock did this, everything looked up in the world. Soon, I would be on my feet, ready to kick ass.