Chapter 19: A Needed Drink

Six slunk back down to the bar without any of his previous bravado. Instead of striding up to the bar as confidently as when he had first walked in the building, he was now hunched over and muttering to himself like a madman. Although his face was concealed by his Desert Ranger combat helmet, it did little to hide how utterly broken he looked as he trudged his way to a stool by the bar counter where both the bartender and a wide assortment of bottles were waiting for him.

The bartender's earlier unease had disappeared in the time it took for The Courier and Julia to have their little 'talk', not that Six was in any state to notice, and they were quick to greet him. "Welcome back. How did-"

"Just shut the fuck up and gimme my goddamn drink before I break your fucking legs." Six growled at them.

With their customer's request and general mood made clear, the bartender quickly passed over the nearest bottle to The Courier. They watched in a mix of eager fascination and mild terror as he took out six inches of serrated steel from his pocket, broke open the bottle, and poured a mix of alcohol and broken glass through the respirator of his gas mask without bothering to check the bottle's contents. Six emptied his drink in a matter of seconds, only stopping once he realized that there wasn't anything left in the bottle but a few stubborn bits of glass that hadn't tried to go down his throat.

"That wasn't absinthe." He said as he crushed the bottle in his hand, failing to show any reaction as several pieces of glass dug deep enough into his flesh to draw blood.

The bartender felt a bead of sweat go down their forehead as they, surprised to see that their customer was still not showing any signs of pain, chose their next words carefully. "Uhh… sorry, the wall of bottles wasn't labeled and-"

"What kinda shitty bar doesn't label their goddamn drinks? You do own the place, right?" Six interrupted, the bartender's nervousness growing noticeably worse.

"You know what? Fuck it, doesn't matter." He continued, clutching onto his head and groaning in pain, much to the bartender's relief. "Just keep on throwing the good shit my way. I don't know why my head feels like it's going to fucking explode every time I so much as look in your general direction and I don't give a shit. So long as you can give me enough beer, vodka, or whatever the hell you have back behind the bar to get me drunk, I'll do whatever you want me to."

"If you insist." The bartender replied, regaining their earlier confidence as they passed another bottle over towards the disgruntled Courier.

"You're goddamn right I do." He said, breaking off the neck of yet another bottle. "And don't even think of trying to give me any whiskey. I hate that shit."

Once again, Six downed it's contents without bothering to remove his gas mask or checking to see what he was drinking, swallowing as much of whatever drink he had been given as he ended up wearing as the bartender watched intently. Only after the final drop had been emptied did he lose interest in the bottle, throwing it behind him where it shattered against the floor.

"Another one." The Courier demanded.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" The bartender asked, something about their tone sounding off to him but the prospects of getting drunk quickly overpowering whatever paranoia Six might have felt otherwise. "That can't be healthy for you."

"Did I fucking stutter?" He fired back, pulling out Penetrator and pointing it straight at the bartender. "Give me another goddamn drink before something happens to you and I have to get one myself."

The bartender hurriedly slid over another bottle of booze towards their disgruntled customer, their eyes never looking away from the gun pointed directly at their face. Just as he did before, Six broke off the neck of the newest drink that had been passed his way, this time with the grip of his pistol, and finished it off with the same general air of indifference as the other two.

"More." He ordered, pitching yet another empty bottle behind him without a care as to who or what it might hit.

The bartender didn't move, as they were too awestruck to react.

"NOW." The Courier snarled, quickly shaking them out of their horrified stupor.

Against their better judgment the bartender passed over a new bottle for The Courier to drain, their eyes never leaving the gun in his hands as they desperately hoped he would drink himself to death without accidentally shooting them in the process before the contents of each bottle could take hold. That hope quickly faded as four bottles became five, five became ten, and ten became twenty as The Courier continued downing bottle after bottle.

Even after drinking every single bottle the bartender had laid out for The Courier, his thirst never slowed and liver never quit, much to the bartender's shock. Apparently dealing with this man wasn't going to be nearly as easy as they thought it would be.

"Is that all you fucking got back there? Because if it is, I swear to God that I will personally-"

"I'll be right back with some more, Six." The bartender hollered at him as they ran back into the kitchen before hearing exactly what they would be threatened with.

"You better!" He shouted after them as he fumbled around with his Pipboy. "If I don't see another goddamn bottle in my hand before I finish off a tin of Mentats, then you won't live long enough to regret it!"

The bartender, while starting to lose confidence in their plan after it's initial failure, wasn't about to give up just yet. While The Courier might not have started to feel the effects of everything that had taken into their body just yet, it couldn't be long until they would drop dead, even though he should have died moments after taking a single sip of the first drink offered to him..

At least, they hoped it wouldn't be much longer until the Deathstalker Venom they injected into each bottle started doing what it was supposed to do. Just in case, a little extra in the next few couldn't possibly hurt…

Yep, a couple dozen bottles of liquor and a fist full of Mentats was definitely what the doctor ordered. It might not have been as good of a cure-all for bad memories like a couple bullets to the head, but I think I'm okay with not getting my brains blown out for now. I'm also pretty sure those crazy nutjobs in the Big Empty replaced my liver along with most of my other guts, so I probably don't have to worry about drinking myself to death either.

That's probably why the bartender didn't think to bring out more bottles for me, now that I think about it. It isn't every day that you meet someone that goes through vodka and liqueur like they're water, so I suppose I have one more thing to apologize for once he gets back. I don't know how they are getting 'em to glow yellow either, but if that's what's taking them so long to get the next batch out then I am fine with them taking a while longer. Those things look pretty damn neat that way, even if whatever is added to them ends up being watered down in the process.

Actually, you know what? It's been a little too long since that guy went to look for a bottle or two of absinthe like I asked him to. Sure, the glowing bottles of liquor are nice and all, but not exactly what I want to get hammered with.

Now that I think about it, the bartender would have had plenty of time to spike my drinks with something. He did have a good enough reason to try and kill me after all. I'm honestly surprised he didn't try anything funny already. I did sort of accidentally scare away all his customers and blow a fist sized hole through his wall…

Just as I was about to step back behind the counter and see what the hold up was, my musclebound bartender came back with a cart filled to the brim with bottles, each of them glowing a little bit brighter than the batch before. I couldn't tell from a glance whether or not there was any high quality items mixed in with the stuff that he brought me, but with as many bottles as there were, that hardly mattered. As anyone who had ever used a minigun, quantity was a quality of its own.

Actually, I take that back. If that was true, the NCR or Legion should have taken over the Mojave a long time ago.

I let out a whistle as soon as the bartender stopped the cart right in front of me. "Well, well, well. You might not know much about what you have in stock, but I suppose if you're willing to bring me one of everything you have I can forgive you for that." I told him.

"You almost made me a little worried there for a moment since you were taking so long." I joked. "I was starting to think you might be trying to poison me or something like that."

Apparently the bartender didn't think my joke was as funny as I thought it was, because he looked more frightened now than ever before. At least, I think they were. For some reason, the guy was looking a bit fuzzy for some reason, so it was a little hard to get a read on his expression. That might have been a side-effect from my headache, my Mentats being way past their expiration date, or from getting smacked in the face by a freaking submachine gun. Either option was equally likely, so I didn't really give it much thought.

Regardless, I could still tell the bartender liked me more back when I was wondering whether or not I should fill them full of lead now that I had enough chems in me to relax a bit. On the brighter side, they weren't holding onto their fire axe anymore like they might be able to do something with it before I could rip it out of their hands and split their skull in half with it anymore.

"You're looking… better." The bartender commented, sounding almost as nervous as when I first walked in the bar as they tried to make small talk with me.

"Yeah, turns out all I needed was a fist full of pills to take the stick out of my ass and stop being such a dick." I laughed. "If only I had some more Mentats with me, or maybe some of that Daytripper stuff I've heard about so much, I'd try and keep myself chemed up like this all the time. It's a damn shame I only have one more tin of them on me."

"Okay. That's… something…" The bartender said, probably in an attempt to not piss me off again as I cracked open another bottle.

"Sorry about earlier by the way. I uhh… I wasn't feeling too well after dealing with my partner." I apologized, hoping I could gloss over what happened with Julia.

"Oh really? I was wondering what was going on up there." He said, still trembling ever so slightly.

"Shit. How much of that did you hear?" I asked them.

The bartender was at least nice enough to not give me an answer. If only they could have hid the grimace they gave me instead of speaking up or stopped shaking like a Fiend on Jet withdrawal. I let out a groan knowing that there was little I could do to unfuck myself in that department, and instead took a swig from the bottle I had picked at random.

I quickly recognized the contents of the bottle long before the strong licorice finish of the herby drink trickled through the filters of my gas mask, even if the faint hint of something the bartender added for that luminescent yellow color made it a bit tricky to pin down for certain until the end. I don't know how I did it, but I somehow managed to pick out a bottle of absinthe at random from the cart without ever meaning to.

Wanting to savor the flavor for as long as possible, I gave myself a moment to let my body adjust to one of the rarest drinks in the wasteland. I didn't even bother watching the stats on my Pipboy change like I usually did as I felt my senses become sharper, vision keener, and that mind numbing headache that kept on springing up whenever I looked at the bartender disappeared as quickly as it had arrived for once.

Of course, being the kind of person that can't help but to test something out for themself, I instantly looked away from the absinthe I was holding onto and towards the bartender to make sure my sudden migraine had been cured. Sure enough, my headache was gone but something far stranger welcomed me instead.

Now I know I might not exactly be the smartest wastelander to have ever walked the world or have the best memory, whether or not that was true before I nearly got my brains blown out is beside the point, but there's quite a few things that I'm pretty damn sure I would be able to notice pretty quickly. The fact that my bartender was actually a woman who was a little shorter than Julia in addition to having a body and face that would have made her one of the more popular girls working at the Gomorrah, and one of those 'faunus' mutants to boot judging by that tail I saw twitching around behind her, is something I'm pretty damn sure I would have noticed the first time I saw him… uhh, her, I mean. I don't know how I could have possibly mistaken a potential Golden Globes actress for a big ol' brute of a guy that could have made Jean-Baptiste Cutting look small, and I intended to find out right away.

All I needed to do was be subtle about it so I didn't look like an idiot for not noticing it sooner. A slow, careful, approach was needed here, as anything else would have been pretty damn embarrassing.

"So…"

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*Effects of Party Time Mentats have worn off. *
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"How long have you had those tits?"

GODDAMNFUCKINGBRAHMINSHITCOCKSUCKINGMOTHERFUCKER!

Of course they would wear off at the worst possible moment! It's moments like these that I almost wish I reinstalled my real brain instead letting that asshole rot in The Sink. It's hard as hell to enjoy the effects of my chems and alcohol anymore.

That aside, I had to thank the bartender for not slapping me the moment I said something that stupid. Instead, she looked as freaked out as the workers from Sloan did when I brought them back a Deathclaw Matron's head as proof that I cleared out Quarry Junction on my own. Her jaw was wide open, eyes trembling in terror, and cheeks flushed in panic. Ordinarily, I would have tried to laugh off my mistake, but after what happened upstairs with Antlers, I felt even more disgusted with myself than I had before.

"W-what did you just say?" She stammered.

Great, another chance to not put my foot in my mouth. Let's try this again.

"How long have uhh… you know… been some faunus gal instead of a human guy?" I asked her as I started considering whether or not one of those bottles of booze might have been spiked with something.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The bartender tried to deflect, the obvious panic in her sultry voice not fooling anyone.

Even so I almost believed her too because I really didn't want to think I could confuse what would have been what would have been one of the strongest men alive with a goddamn supermodel straight out of the Old World. Thankfully I had a little chat with Antlers about aura and semblances earlier, so I didn't have to blame everything on the chems in my system to explain what I was seeing. While I still wasn't completely sure what any of that semblance and aura shit is exactly, aside from being complete and utter cheating bullshit in a fight, I couldn't find any other explanation for what I was seeing. One look at my Pipboy was enough to tell me that I wasn't hallucinating since I still had the same addictions from earlier, only trading an alcohol addiction for the effects of some damn good absinthe, so I knew I wasn't imagining things.

Oh, and some of that Super Hydra stuff too. When did that happen?

Wait… was that from when one of those black scorpions stabbed me? They definitely looked poisonous, and I'm pretty sure Antlers called them Deathstalkers too. I think that one creepy doctor called the Super Hydra I looted from him Deathstalker Venom too.

Damn, I'm surprised that shit hasn't worn off yet. It stabbed me a long time ago.

…and I've been injecting that shit into me to fix up my broken limbs for a couple of weeks now. That uhh… that can't possibly be healthy with a name like that.

Ah well, if it hasn't killed me yet then I doubt it will anytime soon. I'm not going to throw away my only means of fixing up broken limbs, even if I get my hands on another doctor's bag.

Anyways, what was more important than knowing when I would get my hands on some more medical supplies was whether or not semblances could make me confuse a man for a woman. If they could, then that raised a whole hell of a lot of other questions. For starters, why would the girl serving me drinks feel the need to hide her appearance from random people? I know Antlers was saying a whole lot of shit about humans hating faunus but that was-

Fuck. She actually had a point about that shit, didn't she? And I just had to go ahead and nearly kill her over it…

Today is just getting better by the fucking second.

"Oh, I know what's going on here." I groaned after putting two and two together.

"You do?" She muttered, taking a few steps back away from me, getting ready to make a run for it.

I couldn't exactly blame her for doing that since I did kind of make one hell of a racket while dealing with Antlers upstairs. That didn't mean seeing the gal's frightened reaction made it any less painful to see.

"Yeah, you used your semblance or something to make yourself look different, didn't ya?" I asked. "Let me guess: too afraid to let the people 'round here discover that you're a faunus in case they try something? Don't worry, I won't do anything to you for lying to me. I'd have done the same if I were you."

"Y-yes! You're right!" She exclaimed, sighing in relief now that her secret was out and she knew I wasn't going to kill her over it.

"I'm surprised you were able to see through my semblance." She admitted, shifting around uncomfortably at the mere mention of it. "That's… never happened before."

"I bet you haven't met anyone who had their eyes scooped out and replaced by a bunch of scrap metal by some fucking lunatic doctors had laying around either." I grumbled.

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*Effects of Absinthe have worn off. *
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And sure enough, as if to prove my point, just as the little bit of absinthe I drank was purged from my body by the implants the Think Tank gave me, the bartender started looking like the missing link between humans and super mutants again instead of a woman with a tail. Not only that, but my headache came back at the exact same moment too. Guess that was my new brain's way of telling me that I was missing something that should have been pretty fucking obvious. If only it could have done that pack invisible Nightstalkers. Then again, maybe it did. Everything fucking hurt after that distillery landed on my head, so maybe the Think Tank's tesla coils did try to warn me about those cloaked snake-dogs.

Maybe I should start carrying some absinthe around just in case that could help me see through other semblances and find invisible shit without needing ED-E with me? Wouldn't hurt to try at any rate, but first…

"Hey, could you stop doing that semblance shit that makes you look like someone else?" I asked the bartender as I clutched onto my head. "I doubt anyone is going to come in looking for a couple of beers in the middle of the night and my head feels like it's about to burst like a damn mutfruit whenever I look at you like that. You mind doing something to help me out here?"

"Of course." She said as she finally got rid of her disguise and started looking like she did before my chems wore off.

"That's better." I said as the pounding in my head finally stopped once and for all.

"So… there's one thing I need to ask you now that I know you're a faunus." I told her as I broke open another bottle for my enjoyment.

I could have just finished off the absinthe, but I wanted to save it in case I ever fought something that could turn invisible or disguise itself in the future, so I made sure to store it in my Pipboy after tucking the bottle into my long coat.

"What would that be?" She asked after she had finished recoiling away from me.

I did my best to ignore her reaction as I gave her my question. "You remember how my partner started shouting at me like I had a giant stick up my ass when I told her I wasn't a faunus, right?"

"Yes, what about it?"

Well, since she was giving me a green light to carry on with what I wanted to ask her, I finally popped the question I had been wanting to hear from Antlers up until she decided she would rather shoot me in the face than talk like a normal huma- faunusbeing. "Am I the crazy one for thinking that she overreacted or is shit really that bad for you folks?" I asked.

The bartender looked surprised after hearing me out, but at least bothered to give me somewhat of an answer. "What do you think?" She responded.

"Lemme guess; most people don't give a shit about what other people look like aside from a handful of dumbasses who give everyone a bad name?" I guessed, summing up my experience with most of the factions in the Mojave.

Well, except for The Legion and Brotherhood of Steel. Both of them deserved a couple of nukes for all the shit they've pulled. I did manage to give the Brotherhood exactly what they fucking deserved though, although I ended up getting caught in the fallout a few weeks later in more ways than one. If only there was a place with a couple hundred nukes laying around to wipe out The Legion from a safe distance away, especially if I could keep a few in my pocket for a rainy day…

"Sounds like you already know more about the world than your partner does, Six." The bartender said with a nervous laugh, snapping me out of my thoughts in the process.

"Don't even get me started on that hot mess." I groaned before starting my next attempt at drowning out any recollection of the past few hours.

"Oh, yeah, there's also a little something else I wanted to ask you too." I continued, unable to hold back my curiosity.

"And what would that be?" The bartender purred, almost sounding like they weren't terrified of me for the first time in a long while.

"What kind of faunus are you?" I asked her.

Sure, it might not have been the best or most polite thing to ask someone, but not knowing what animal her tail came from was bugging the hell out of me. I remember Snake Eyes had the eyes of a Nightstalker, Antlers had the horns of a Radstag, and Bunny Boy the ears of a rabbit and the stamina to match; but I could not tell what animal the bartender's tail resembled for the life of me. It was long and furry like a coyote's yet was as thin as a Gecko's. I didn't know what animal had a tail like that, but just in case I ever needed to kill it, I wanted to at least be able to know what the hell I'd be shooting at.

"I'm a cat faunus." She answered.

Of course, hearing that crock of absolute brahmin shit, I burst out laughing immediately.

"What's so funny about that, Courier?" The bartender asked me, pretending like she hadn't been trying to pull one over on me.

"Cats aren't fucking real! Everyone knows that!" I said in between chuckles. "They're just a Pre-War myth that ghouls like to tell gullible idiots about to earn a couple of caps."

"Wow… you don't say…" She muttered, still doing her best to keep up her act.

As much as I wanted to get her to admit that she was lying, I had better things to do, namely finishing up the cart full of liquor that the gal pushed beside me as soon as possible. I would have done it too, if something she said earlier hadn't caught my attention.

"Wait a minute, did you just call me Courier?" I asked her.

"Yes, I did." She replied, looking completely calm aside from how her tail was twitching like crazy behind her. "Are you not Courier Six?"

"No, you're right." I said, reaching for Penetrator as I did so. "The thing is, I don't remember me or Antlers telling you my name earlier."

In my experience, there are only three types of people who know who you are before they ever start speaking to you. The first type are psykers, and the only two of them I had been able to find before ending up wherever the hell I am were a kid that ran a fortune telling business and a Nightkin that massacred livestock in his free time. The second were bounty hunters and assassins that tried and failed to pick up the bounty on my head, as well as the jackasses that hired them, but I'm not really sure I should count them anymore since I killed most of them before leaving the Mojave. The third type were the most dangerous, as they were the people that knew I could get shit done and wanted me to do the dirty work for them.

Those last bunch were the worst, not because I'd always end up getting shot at or mauled by the end of the day, but because there was a 50/50 shot of them trying to stab me in the back. Personally, I preferred dealing with the assassination squads because I at least knew what they were looking to do to me in the same amount of time it took me to pull out my Ranger Sequoia and Ballistic Fist. While I wasn't exactly sure which category the bartender fell under, I was ready to paint the wall behind her red in case my gut feeling about what she said was right.

"You do know that you're wanted for murdering Major Ironwoood, right?" She asked, pulling out a wanted poster from underneath the counter to prove her point.

Sure enough, that poster had my helmet and name on it, front and center for everyone to see. Not only that, but the picture they chose was back when those shitheads broke my lenses when I was escaping that one sex dungeon thing, so it had my eyes glowing and my gear covered in blood too. Hell, it even had my name in all caps right under the 'Wanted: Helmet Needed as Proof of Execution' disclaimer. Guess they figured bringing me in alive wasn't much use, just like how hauling in my naked corpse wouldn't do jack shit for them since they didn't know what I looked like underneath my armor either.

Now, as concerning as it was to see those Mantlesian fuckers had the time to pump out wanted posters of me while they were running back home with their tails in between their legs, I appreciated exactly how they treated me as an actual threat, unlike the bastards back in the Mojave. While I'm still not exactly how much a Lien is worth compared to a cap, I'm pretty damn sure a hundred thousand of them is a pretty respectable bounty for my head. The picture they chose to show me off wasn't half bad either. It really gave off a 'do not fuck with me unless you want to be torn in half by my bare hands' vibe, something the NCR's bounties on me definitely lacked.

"It's about time someone starts showing me some goddamn respect." I grumbled after taking a good look at my wanted poster.

"You can't be serious." The bartender muttered to herself.

"Of course I'm fucking serious!" I shouted at her. "Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to deal with a couple armies full of shitheads all eager to fill you full of lead because they think you're going to be easy to kill?"

"I… don't know what to say to that." She murmured.

"Well, let me tell you, getting pelted by a ton of low caliber rounds might not sound all that bad since none of them will penetrate your armor, but it fucking hurts! Sure, everyone thinks shrugging off a couple of hundred five millimeter rounds is a joke, but they aren't the ones covered from head to toe in fucking bruises afterwards! And don't even get me started on how much it cost me to patch up my armor whenever a bunch of idiots felt like committing 'suicide by Courier'."

The bartender looked at me in sheer confusion before finally finding something to say.

"You are without a doubt one of the most… interesting people I have ever met, Six." She finally blurted out.

"Fuck you too, kitten." I fired back, cracking into another bottle afterwards.

Neither of us said anything as I slowly but surely made my way through the cart of alcohol bottle by bottle. The bartender looked increasingly nervous with every bottle I downed and tossed onto the floor for some reason, but I didn't give it much thought since my mind was focused on something else. Now, I'm not saying that the girl was shit at her job at serving and storing drinks because there wasn't much point in stating the obvious, but there was a little something I kept on tasting in each bottle I poured back that didn't quite feel right. Must have been whatever coloring she added, and whatever it was she went real fucking heavy on it for this batch. That didn't stop me from drinking them though. Good liquor or bad liquor, it'll get you drunk all the same.

At least, it would if you didn't have a goddamn artificial heart and liver like I did…

I probably passed the better part of an hour trying to get hammered and failing miserably, but since the catty bartender was providing one hell of a show by trying not to freak out every time I finished a bottle, I didn't mind it too much. After I was about halfway through, she left without even letting me pay for anything I drank. I tried to throw a couple more cards of Lien at her as she left, but she didn't bother to stop and pick them up. Apparently she had something more important to do than take a couple thousand Lien off my hands, not that I was complaining about getting a whole hell of a lot of free drinks thanks to her.

For the first time since ending up in Europe; Vacuo, the city, not the kingdom; or wherever the hell I was, I felt that everything was going my way for once. Sure, there was my colossal fuck up with Antlers that happened a while ago, and I did still need to deal with that bitch because she did try to kill me earlier, but that could happen later. All that mattered now is that I finally had a moment to relax and treat myself right for the first time in a long while. There were no quests that needed my urgent attention, no toasters bitching and moaning about everything I do, and no one trying to actively kill me for once. Truly, nothing could possibly-

*BOOM*

-and there it is, right on cue.

All I have to do is just think about how the world isn't trying to fuck me over for once to get that mistake taken care of. If I wasn't used to this kinda shit by now, I'd probably have tried finishing what Benny started a long time ago.

I don't know what the hell blew up or why it sounds like half the town is shooting at something, but that didn't mean I didn't know anything about it either. It wasn't much, but I knew damn well that I didn't want to find out what was making all that racket if whatever the guards were shooting at broke through the walls surrounding the town. Hell, maybe I can even get paid for saving their asses.

With that thought in mind I rematerialized the Anti-Material Rifle from Mantle that Antlers gave me, finished up my drink, and made my way out of the bar eager to put a bullet through the skull of whatever decided to ruin what was starting to become a peaceful night for me. It was only when I considered that, while keeping Antler's close enough to stab me in the back wasn't good for my health, not knowing where she was would have been even worse for me, that I decided to make my back up to our room and haul her ass out of bed before dealing with whatever was going on.

Maybe I'd apologize to her for what I did, maybe I'd just put a bullet through her skull and be done with it. Regardless of which, I wasn't going to let things stay the way they were and wanted to at least get rid of one last regret in case shit goes sideways like it usually does.

Bonus!

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Super Hydra (Deathstalker Venom)
Effects: HP -10 (1hr), AP -5 (1hr), ST - 5 (1hr), AG -5 (1hr), EN -5 (1hr), Heals Crippled Limbs (1hr)

Additional Notes: Apparently this is an animal poison, so I'm immune to the drawbacks! It isn't addictive either, but it still fixes my Hydra cravings when I use it for some reason. Guess I have one more reason to be happy I no longer have a tumor for a heart. It's a shame that this stuff is a strong enough poison that it can melt the flesh of everyone but me.

…I want to question how my heart somehow prevents this shit stops me from melting from the inside out I don't think I want to know the answer. So long as it keeps on working I don't really give a shit. At least I have some of my own brahminshit helping me out since I can't have an aura of my own.
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Author's Corner:

This chapter was supposed to come out around late October/early November of 2021. I've uhh… I missed that by quite a few months as you can already tell. My only defense is this: overtime is a bitch and a half, and fuck everyone that thinks mandatory overtime for several MONTHS straight is a good thing.

Okay, unhinged ranting aside, things are finally starting to heat back up a bit. Only time will tell if another mini-nuke will save Six's ass while irradiating it in the process.

I'd also like to take this time to thank most good ones were taken for beta reading for this story once again.

Comments:

Rio Skyron: Chapters like this are why I like this story, this Six is a scum bag but he has a good reason for it. And he has good points. Come to think of it I'm remembering a quote from mass effect "a pessimist is an optimist's word for a realist" and that's ultimately what Six is , a realist. He's seen more shit than anyone else. And something I think should be said here (in my opinion anyways feel free to ignore it if your prefer) everyone thinks they are the hero of their story,. And I do think that really fits Julia here

The bitter pragmatist is a character type I rarely see in fiction and one of the archetypes I find the most interesting when given an actual reason to behave the way that they do, so of course I had to make a story focusing on one such character. As for how justifiable this Courier is so far, it all depends on how much you believe a drunken scumbag's occasional rant or offhand comment.

K. God: Poor EDE man, hoping that we get more interludes from best companion

Don't fear, ED-E's involvement in the intermissions is not over yet. It's just… well, as much as I want to tell them now, I can't for… 'reasons'…

Starflatinum999: Excuse me what the fuck he has like 1000 chems on him bruh even I didn't have that many and I chugged as much jet, med x and psycho possible if I got shot ONCE

Funnily enough, Six's loadout leaving Vacuo (the city, not the kingdom), closely mirrored my own. I might be a bit of a hoarder when it comes to meds and chems, especially when they are weightless, cheap, and sold in bulk by places like the Gomorrah. I know I ended with several hundred of most chems by the end of my virgin playthrough, although I can't say which ones I had the most of for sure.

As always, thanks for reading and I hope to see you all again in the future!