Chapter 22: Important Observations

A double barrel shotgun, a fire axe, and a burning desire to make these bandits bleed was all I carried with me as I stalked the sandy streets of Dawson. Well, I had a few other things, but they weren't much good in a fight. There wasn't anyone worth saving in this hell hole any more, at least, I hoped there wasn't because all the screams and Grimm roaring just beyond my range of vision didn't exactly paint a happy picture for anyone who survived the bandit's initial assault.

I remember what Goodsprings looked like after the Powder Gangers came for Ringo. It wasn't pretty. Only ashes and some real freaky mutant mole men can be found in Goodsprings these days.

With the memory of one of my greatest failures pushing me harder than any amount of Psycho ever could, I charged into the first pack of Grimm I came across with a savage war cry. I ran into the middle of them swinging my axe, planting it square in the face of a stunned looking Beowolf who didn't see it coming. The other Grimm, an assortment of Beowolves, knee high Deathstalkers, and a single Deathjaw, this one was thankfully barely larger than the average fire ant, all gaped at me as if they weren't sure what to make of me despite having killed one of them in an instant. To help them decide whether they wanted to die running or fighting, I slung the shotgun off my back and fired a few slugs into the thickest bunch.

My shots barely staggered the two Beowolves I managed to hit, only doing enough damage to scratch their masks rather than blow their heads off, but it did give me plenty of time to break open my double barrel and throw in a couple of Dust rounds at random before those two made up their minds and pounced towards me. I had apparently chosen some of the fire Dust rounds because the moment I pulled the trigger, a torrent of fire that would have been any pyromaniac's wet dream spewed out from my shotgun and completely consumed the two Grimm trying to attack me. The overgrown mutts let out frantic howls as they writhed around in the sand in a desperate attempt to put out the flames, the raging fire continuing regardless of how much they tried to put it out and making far quicker work of them then it had any right to do so.

I've used dragon's breath shells plenty of times, mostly on the few legionnaires that had personally pissed me off since that particular type of ammo allowed me to kill them nice and slow, so I knew what a couple of piddly little shotgun shells should do to a heavily armored target. Turning them into a living torch, despite the hefty bit of extra pyrotechnics contained by the particular Dust rounds I picked at random, was not at all what I expected to happen. Apparently Dust rounds were a lot more effective than I gave them credit for earlier, especially against Grimm.

The other Grimm who hadn't bolted the moment the two lucky Beowolves went up in a torrent of flame quickly regained their wits and snarled at me, each one eager to tear me apart limb from limb. Thankfully, I was looking for a fight and had little to worry about despite being outnumbered by a dozen of the abominations.

I paid the Deathstalkers no mind since I already found out that their toxin didn't affect me in the slightest, leaving me only four Beowolves and the Deathjaw capable of doing any meaningful damage to me. The armored sand worm tried and failed to take a bite out of me as it leapt out of the sand, sailing over me as I ducked underneath it and decapitated one of the Beowolves it knocked aside with a single chop. Two of its friends tried to put their claws to good use, but I darted away from them before they could slice through my armor. A lone Deathstalker tried to stab me in the gut as I retreated and had its stinger deflected by the metal wrapped around my chest. I rewarded the scorpion's effort by crushing its head underneath my boots.

I took a brief moment to reload another couple of shells in my shotgun at random before holstering it on my back and charging back into the fray. The few Deathstalkers that scuttled in between me and the Beowolves tried to stab me, a few of them managed to inject me with their venom, but didn't do anything more than make me feel better than I had been before the fight even started. That familiar sensation of my body becoming much more resilient after taking the edge of a Hydra addiction washed over me, and for a moment I was thankful I let the little bastards poke holes through my pant legs.

Feeling more like my usual self, I came in swinging my axe at the Beowolves before me with reckless abandon, rending a deep gouge through one of them that dropped the abomination without so much as a whimper and took the arm off of another one that thought it's limbs were sturdier than my weapon of choice. The overgrown man-dog I didn't debilitate managed to score a hit on my chest, peeling off a few scraps of Saturnite but failing to do any real damage to me. I rewarded its successful hit by bashing the flat head of my axe against one of its knees, toppling the mighty beast over before planting my axe in the middle of its gaping jaw as it cried out in pain.

The final Beowolf looked at me with a manic fury in its eyes and roared as it tried to tear me apart with its razor sharp claws, its anger doing little to make its swipes at me any less obvious and far too easy to evade, the lack of its other arm making it even easier to dance around. Despite proving to be unable to strike me, the Grimm didn't stop trying to rip me apart. If anything, it seemed to be getting more and more frenzied as it pushed me back farther and farther, not caring at all when it would trample one of the scorpion Grimm or accidentally carve them into pieces. Something about this didn't feel right, and after sparing a glance behind me I found my suspicions to be confirmed.

The Deathjaw was making another pass at me from behind, brandishing its long serrated teeth as it swam through the sand packed streets as it approached. I wasn't entirely sure if the Beowolf planned this or was simply making the most of a bad situation, but regardless of which I hatched a plan of my own, one with a healthy serving of irony. I played along with the Grimm's scheme just long enough for the Deathjaw to come too close to change its trajectory and rolled to the side the moment I heard it breach the sand and try to pluck me out of the air and into its gaping mouth.

My reflexes were quick enough to give me a good view of the Deathjaw as it bit down on the surprised Beowolf frantically trying to break free from its clenched jaws. The lupine abomination's head and remaining arm were stuck inside the sand worm which seemed largely indifferent as to what was trapped inside its jaws. While I would have liked to see if the Deathjaw would have been satisfied with devouring the Beowolf instead of me, or if it could even fit the mangy mutt down its throat, I didn't give it a chance to spit or swallow. I blew off both of their heads with the goddamn lightning bolt that raced out of my shotgun the second I pulled the trigger. A shower of bone, black blood, and a few chunks of smoky black meat splattered me, showing me exactly why I needed to get off my ass and learn as much as I could about Dust as soon as possible. Once all of this shit was over, I really had to look over the files I downloaded off of Ironcock's scroll concerning this magical force of destruction.

But before I could do that, I had more things to kill and no idea how long it would take to either kill all the bandits and Grimm or to drive them off. Rather than needing to find my next victims, they found me instead. I can only assume the bandits that came running towards me thought I was on their side after they heard me fire off a few shots. At least, that's the only explanation I could think of for why they were hauling ass in my direction without shooting at me. They were a good distance away too, just far enough to put my anti-material rifle to good use for the first time in a long while.

I swapped my shotgun for the bulky sniper rifle and emptied the entire magazine in a matter of seconds. Out of the seven bandits that started running my way, three of them were lying in a puddle of their own blood and another was hobbling towards me while the others pulled out a few rifles of their own. The survivors were just close enough to put their rifles to use and keep me from turning them into a Bloody Mess with my own guns. Not wanting to just stand there and be shot with icicles for the second time today, I ran to the nearest building and threw myself through a window as a hail of bullets flew past me. A couple of them managed to hit home, but they weren't able to do enough damage for my Pipboy to display any changes to my overall health.

For a moment, I thought I was completely and utterly screwed, then I remembered that I had a few guns digitized inside my Pipboy that I had written off as worthless after seeing how effective my regular bullets were against aura. I rematerialized both of the 11mm pistols the Xiongs had given me as payment for carrying a couple of letters for them, collecting them off the floor when they inevitably spawned a couple of feet out of my reach, and checked to see what kind of Dust they were loaded with. Ejecting the magazine on each pistol revealed rounds painted yellow with a small lightning bolt etched into each one of them, eight in the magazine plus one in the chamber, making it painfully obvious to anyone without any prior knowledge of Dust that they obviously had something to do with electricity. I don't know who had the foresight to label their bullets like that, but I thanked them regardless as I prepared to fire off a few shots at the bandits peppering my cover to see exactly what I was working with.

I stood up for a brief moment, an 11mm pistol in each hand, and fired off three shots from each into the cluster of bandits who were still trying to break through the stone wall protecting me with their piddly little icicles and fireball bullets. If I were back in the Mojave, I would have called them idiots for wasting their ammo like that while I was beating them to death with their recently empty guns. After watching a couple hundred rounds melt an elevator door so sturdy that I couldn't pry it open with my bare hands, I didn't feel nearly confident enough to trust my cover to hold forever. That, and these bandits really seemed to have their shit together, aside from being blindsided by the sudden shadow beasts that assaulted them from nowhere. I had a sneaking suspicion that these guys had plenty of ammo stockpiled somewhere and didn't particularly mind dumping everything they had just to kill me and get away from the Grimm.

Anyways, out of the six shots that I fired… I didn't manage to hit a goddamn thing with any of them. I probably could have managed to hit something if I had some Steady or Fixer to clean me up a bit and help with the light twitch I had going on, but I didn't have any more of those chems for whatever reason. Instead, I had to holster one of my pistols and start two handing the other, going into battle holding the damn thing like I had just crawled out of the grave again instead dual wielding 'em like the gunslinger I had become since then.

This time, I hit more shitheads than I missed. Didn't kill any of them by the time I was out of rounds, but the satisfaction of hearing the curses they threw my way made my failure a little more bearable. I ducked down to reload and just as I heard another couple of Grimm howl at the sight of fresh prey. Once I finally chose the newest magic bullet I felt like playing with, one that probably shot fire by the looks of it, I leapt out of my window and ran towards the bandits while they were distracted.

It seems that a pair of Deathstalkers managed to find the final four and the bandits considered them a bigger threat than me. If their venom was anything like that of a cazador's then I wouldn't blame them for thinking that. Thankfully they only managed to put down one of the bone covered scorpions by the time I was at a range where it was impossible to miss them. I fired off the majority into one of the bandits and was happy to discover it only took four shots to start blowing cauterized holes through his torso, proving that Dust rounds were a bit more effective against the bullshit aura everyone here seems to have. The last two caught some gal with wings in the back of her head, her comparatively mild reaction of being shot in the back of the head knocking her straight into the claws of a nearby Deathstalker which proceeded to effortlessly snap her into three chunks.

I burned the image of those perfect cuts that separated her torso away from the rest of her body as a reminder to never let those little bastards come anywhere close to me with those claws while the last two bandits finished off the other Deathstalker. I quickly put my boot through the face of the armored scorpion in front of me just as the last two bandits pointed their guns my way. Before they had a chance to open fire, I threw my gun and brained one of them in the head to throw off his aim and moved so that the other bandit needed to shoot through his friend in order to get to me.

Making the most of the small window of opportunity available, I drew my axe and ran at the bandit duo as fast as my legs would take me, the blinded bandit blind firing through the pain while his partner decided to cut his losses and make a run for it. It was just as the blinded bandit realized that he would have better luck shooting me with his eyes open that I swung my axe at his head with all of my strength. Much to my surprise, he didn't end up losing a few inches off the top and was instead thrown to the side, screaming like a madman the entire time.

The bandit dropped his weapon from the force of the unexpected blow, leaving nothing to defend himself against me as I strode up to him slowly with my axe raised high, ready to be brought down blade first into his stomach. Sadly, I never had the chance to kill the savage as I was punched out of the air by a Beowolf I hadn't noticed sneak up on me. I slammed hard against a nearby wall but managed to hit the ground standing up, giving me the perfect view of the Beowolf as it lifted up the bandit I was about to kill and start eating him alive as he struggled to get out of its grasp.

"Hey, put him down, you kill stealing mutt!" I roared as I charged the lone Grimm while it was preoccupied with its meal.

The abomination didn't bother to take notice of me until I managed to plant my axe through its spine. The Beowolf dropped its mewling victim who immediately clenched at his ruined face and throat as if that would somehow prevent the inevitable, but as much as I wanted to put the savage out of his misery I wanted to deal with the more dangerous of the two first. Just because I took away movement from its legs didn't mean the beast was unable to fight, although calling the few pathetic attempts it made to claw at me a fight is a bit generous. I caved its skull in with the blunt side of my axe once I was finished gloating at its suffering and then proceeded to walk over to the bandit it tried to steal away from me.

The man was bleeding like a stuck mole rat from the jagged hole in his throat but he still tried to make some noise once he saw me. Whether it was a plea for help or a cry for mercy, I couldn't even begin to guess. I simply stomped what little life was left in the poor son of a bitch and started looking for something else to kill. Wasn't nearly as satisfying as it should have been, letting that bandit take the easy way out, but there was no way in hell I was letting that mutt take credit for my kill.

I didn't have to look far for my next challenger, as another pack of Grimm managed to find me. It was a murder of crow-like Grimm and a small pair of Deathjaws that tried to swarm me this time. After having already dried to swat at a thick cloud of stabbing feathers once today, I abandoned my axe in favor of my shotgun. I loaded what I assumed to be one ice and one electric Dust shell thinking that one or the other would be capable of knocking them out of the air. You can imagine my shock when the entire area in front of me flashed white and tazed everything I could see before being blinded by the sudden flash, including myself.

It felt as if someone cut open my arms and replaced my bones with cattle prods for a brief moment, but I had gone through worse and fought off the pain as best as I could. When my vision finally filled with something other than whiteness, I was pleased to see that the murder that had been flying my way were all laying motionless on the ground either dead or disoriented worse than the two Deathjaws that were flailing around in circles behind them. I don't know what the fuck happened there, but what I did know is that if I could ever manage to make a grenade do something like that without blinding myself then I was going to be a very happy, very dangerous man.

I took my time walking over to the two Deathjaws who were somehow blinded despite not having eyes. Must have used some of that same electro-whatchamacallit Ganon told me about when lecturing me on how they had different senses than people did which is why I could never manage to avoid the armor ignoring bastards when passing by Lake Mead. Guess these Grimm had some really strong sixth sense and I really fucked with them, because they had only just managed to recover to the point where they started trying to gnaw on the closest thing to them. As that thing happened to be the other Deathjaw… yeah, as I had yet to see any Grimm trying to kill each other I think I really did a number on them. Didn't nearly mess them up nearly as much as they did each other, but for not actually harming them, I'd say there wasn't much worse I could do aside from trying to crush their heads but they were already hard at work trying to eat each other's faces. Rather than throw myself in between one of the only cases of cannibalism I had ever been happy to see, I reloaded my shotgun knowing that there was no way in hell my little light show didn't catch anyone's attention.

Turns out I was more right than I thought I was, as all I needed to do was turn around to see a horde of Grimm that numbered in the dozens headed straight for me. Apparently the bandits were either horrifically overwhelmed or managed to get the hell out of town leaving me alone with enough Grimm to ravage an entire town. I didn't even try to save face as I started running as fast as I could now that I had all the motivation I could ever need snarling behind me. In an act of sheer desperation, I pulled out my Vault 13 water canteen and an inhaler full of jet and pumped as much of that shit into my trusty drinking can as I could before pulling up my gas mask and downing as much of it as I could. I felt a euphoric rush as my stomach revolted knowing exactly what was headed my way and used my newfound speed to outrun the abominations pursuing me until I could figure out how to get rid of them without blowing myself with a mini-nuke again.

There were only so many times you can blow yourself and walk away unscathed and I knew I had already exceeded that number far too many times.

So, there I was, running around a burned out ghost town for who knows how long wondering how the hell I was going to survive while taking pot shots in an attempt to thin the herd of Grimm behind me when things went from bad to unbelievably worse. Standing there, no, floating there in front of me a couple dozen yards away from the last street I bolted down was the faunus woman I had nearly killed before everything went to shit.

For a moment, I thought I didn't mix the Jet into my Rushing Water as well as I should have. Then Julia threw a goddamn fireball from her hands which barely missed me and landed in the middle of the horde behind me and burned a good chunk of them to ashes in an instant. As pissed as I was that she came so close to scorching me, I was too relieved to see the first semi-friendly face that wasn't doing everything they could to rip me limb from limb at that very moment.

Then I saw a wall of spearlike icicles form out of thin air in a wall behind her and once again regretted letting that bitch live.

I dove to the ground not caring whether or not a couple of Grimm started tearing into me because I was far more confident that my armor would hold up long enough for me to fend off whatever abominations tried to take a bite out of instead of an couple of icicles as thick as I was and longer than I was tall. Sure enough, one of the Beowolves that had managed to force its way to the front of the pack attempted to pin me to the ground and I didn't bother fighting back in case I lost a limb because of it. The abomination had just enough time to take one swipe at my chest, peeling the last few scraps of Saturnite I had covering my torso and digging three long wounds across my chest. It hurt just as much as a Deathclaw's namesake, but not nearly as much as what happened to the Beowolf immediately afterwards.

The wall of icicles Julia managed to somehow magic into existence came flying overhead of me as I fought back a scream of pain-fueled rage. It was with no small sense of satisfaction that I watched one of those frozen spears catch my attacker in the chest and throw him off of me like the giant abomination didn't weigh a couple hundred pounds. I hazarded a look in the direction the icicles were flying as more soared over my body and felt my jaw drop when I found the mutt pinned to the wall and looking like a pincushion. The other Grimm that weren't leaning over to a prospective victim didn't fare much better. No, there were more chunks than bodies from the rest of the Grimm. They looked like they were burning up too, but whether that was because of the Jet or Julia's magical bullshit I couldn't even begin to guess nor did I have time to find out.

I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I dared and faced Julia who serenely floated back down to solid earth like nothing ever happened. There was a brief moment where I thought the two of us might have been able to part ways in peace and I used the opportunity to dig out my last Super Stimpack and jammed that sucker straight into my chest before anything slipped out of the bloody gashes I had recently earned. Then I saw that girl don that same manic look that I had seen time and time again back in the Mojave that told me all I needed to know about what she had planned for me.

We were only a few feet apart at this point. She had fucking magic and I had only a goddamn empty syringe and a couple of empty guns strapped to me. I wasn't sure if I could trust the axe to do what I needed it to since the shaft was only wood and the head was metal. I wasn't sure if the girl could shoot lightning from her fingertips like the villain in that one movie I watched back in Vault 21 did, and you better believe I wasn't in any mood to find out if she could top that.

I ran with all the speed Rushing Water afforded me and prayed to whatever sick, cruel god Graham tried to get me to believe in, that I would survive the magical nonsense she was bound to throw my way. It was with that thought in mind and a burning desire to live that I ended up running straight into the man sized fireball she ended up flinging at me, unable and unwilling to try and evade it. It was too close to avoid and if I did somehow survive a glancing blow, if it was hot enough to burn through my armor then I wouldn't have been in much shape to run at her again. It was one of those rare few times when just taking my beating was the best option I had available to me, and just like all the other times I had to pick that option, it fucking sucked.

I had managed to end up on the wrong side of a Flamer before, and let me tell you, this hurt much more than being coated in burning ethanol ever did. Even so, I still managed to survive relatively unscathed but definitely in need of another Stimpack and a few more repairs to my now scorched armor. On the bright side though, the wound on my chest was mostly sealed shut thanks to the impromptu cauterization it received and I was still running like a man possessed at the woman that tried to burn me alive.

The terrified look on her eyes as I kept on running at her was without a doubt one of the most glorious things I had ever laid eyes on. The sight of that cunt getting knocked out with a flying Legion Assault was almost but not quite as good.

I let out a sigh of relief as I laid there on the ground, not bothering to pick myself up as I wondered what the hell I was going to do now that all the killing was finally over. Finishing up that job Bunny Boy had hired me was out the fucking window, leaving me with only one reason to head on over to Vale. With some luck, the Xiongs or whoever I was delivering their package to would have some information on how the hell I could get back home, but there was just one small issue with that. Said issue came from how I now had no way to safely head on over to Vale anymore.

As confident as I was in my own abilities, I had nearly found myself buried in a shallow grave twice since leaving Vacuo, the city, not the kingdom, and only survived thanks to ol' Antlers saving my ass by pure coincidence. I was not a gambling man on account of my shit luck, so I knew exactly how likely my odds of making the rest of the journey alone was looking like already. That of course didn't take into account all of the bandits that would likely be out for blood, my blood once they finished licking their own wounds and Mantle's army which was apparently still in the process of fleeing from me. I wasn't no stranger to stacked odds, but fuck me was I not in the mood to deal with any of that.

So, lacking any better plan beyond the usual song and dance I performed after every shoot out I was involved in, I started looting every corpse I found in the hopes they held something useful. Before I started checking the bandits for late citizens of Dawson for keys to the scant few vehicles I could see, I made sure to tie up Julia and pat her down for any weapons in case she woke up before I was finished.

Now, leaving her alive wasn't exactly the greatest idea, but considering how Grimm actually seemed to hone in on negative feelings on account of a full town of them chasing after me when they also had Antlers on the menu, I decided to entertain the idea of leaving any stragglers who showed up late to the slaughter a bit of live venison as a consolation prize for them. With some luck, that distraction would buy me enough time to get a head start on the next horde of Grimm to chase after me.

I didn't really find much of anything worth swiping from my former partner, the only weapons she still had with her was her sword and submachine gun I gave her, but I did happen to notice she was carrying something interesting on her instead. Inside of her breast pocket was a coin, a small black piece of rounded metal with a coyote head and three claw marks decorating it.

Feeling like I had seen that somewhere before, I digitized it into my Pipboy and checked my inventory for any currencies that I only had two of and sure enough, there was a single unidentified entry under there that I only had two of. I rematerialized both of them and wracked my mind as I studied them side by side, thinking of where and when I picked up the first one. That was when I recalled one of the last things Bunny Boy gave me before sending me on this fool's errand with his woman before we parted ways without taking up his offer to join him. It was the exact same coin, a 'token of allegiance' he called it. Call me paranoid, but I had a suspicion that these bandits, these faunus bandits were all carrying one too.

I wasn't one to believe in coincidences. Never have been, never will be. Something about this whole mess stunk to high heaven, and you can bet your ass I was going to find out why. I had plenty of reason to think that rabbit-tailed asshole back in Vacuo, the city not the kingdom, might somehow have something to do with a bunch of faunus bandits wearing the exact armor as my 'partner' who all seemed to have about as big of a hate boner for humans as Antlers. There were a lot of questions to be asked about this mess and I intended to get my answers.

Thankfully there were more than a few corpses around for me to search for what I wanted. At least, that's what I thought. By the time I heaped most of them together in a pile to avoid accidentally checking the same one twice, it turns out that it was actually just two bodies that had been shredded into a dozen pieces. If I didn't know better, I'd say the Grimm were either playing with their food, if they were even intending to eat them at all. Giant, sadistic abominations that are only vulnerable to melee or Dust based ammunition? That is not a combo I look forward to dealing with… not that it has stopped me before.

Anyways, once I finally managed to push that thought out of my head, I immediately started getting to work and shook out every single pocket I could find. Most of what I pulled out was caked in blood to the point that it was hard to tell exactly what it was I was looting, but I could still at least recognize a bullet when I felt it. These bandits also had a couple dozen cards of Lien too. Those'll be nice to have, especially once I figure out how much that color coded crap is worth.

But that wasn't all that I found. No, not at all. Sure enough, I found more of those 'tokens of allegiance'. Them being waterproof really helped, kept all the blood from sticking to them.

Well… that's exactly what I was looking for but the last goddamn thing I wanted to find. Fuck me, it sucks being right all the time. Or was I right? These fuckers could have just gone rogue and never bothered chucking on their proof of membership away when they stabbed Bunny Boy in the back.

And maybe Benny really could have taken over Vegas if I didn't end up killing him back on Fortification Hill. I might also sprout wings and start pissing Sunset Sarsaparilla too. Ha!

Now… as much as I wanted to put a bullet in Antler's head here and now so I could just be done with her once and for all, I still had a lot of questions that needed answering. As much as I didn't want to trust a single word she said after having nearly killed me twice, once with one of my own guns and again with a FUCKING FIREBALL, I didn't have much of a choice in the matter. The only other option I had was finding a bandit who was either carrying a map on them before they died or, even less likely, find one that is still alive and beat some answers out of them.

…well, Antlers doesn't look like she'll be waking up anytime soon and I don't have anything better to do until then. Might as well start looking for a place to carry out this interrogation. Maybe I'll stumble across a few survivors or half-dead bandits after I finish hogtying her and start looking for a spot. I should have enough rope to spare for a couple of other people. Got a few Stimpaks to spare too if I need to patch them up to get the job done, especially since I have plenty of blood sausage and thin red paste to stock up on now.

Oh yes. I can already see a plan coming together…

Author's Corner:

I don't have much to say this time so I'll keep things brief. No real surprises, twists, turns or anything of the sort here, but things will be escalating in the future. Uploads will be returning to a consistent monthly schedule.

Comments:

Maglad: (On the intricacies of shotgun ammo and gauge varieties)

I am by no means an expert on firearms of any sort, but as I do have family that hunt for sport regularly I have picked up more knowledge about them than the average person. To oversimplify a very complicated concept; the gauge of a shotgun references the number of even sized lead balls, or pellets, weighing one pound that can be fired out of a shotgun whose barrel has been designed to fire projectiles of said size and quantity. A 10 gauge can fire 10 pellets, 12 gauge fires 12 pellets, so on and so forth. While the gauge of a shotgun is a good indicator of how destructive it can be, the shot type is what really determines how lethal it is… or isn't.

I'll describe just three of the most well known shot types relative to each other to keep things simple. Birdshot is the smallest type but each shell contains A LOT of pellets, is good for killing small vermin and birds as the namesake implies, but does fuck all against large mammals and is fairly 'safe' to use for home defense as each shot has little chance of penetrating through a wall. Buckshot pellets are larger, contain far fewer pellets, are useful against large mammals like deer and bears, will shred smaller game if the pellets hit them, and have a good chance of penetrating through both drywall and intruders if used in home defense. Slugs are the largest projectile a shotgun can fire that most people can get ahold of, VERY effective against larger mammals, much more destructive than buckshot, and can become a threat your neighbors will have to worry about if fired in a home defense scenario as they can and will punch through multiple walls… or anything else that is unfortunate enough to be in front of the barrel.

One "Guest": God Julia is such a hypocrite and a overall piece of shit I hope Six kills that racist fuck next chapter.

If anything I'd say that makes Six able to understand Julia more than anything as she isn't the only one who has shown her prejudices, if anyone recalls his dislike of 'civilized folk' and 'savages' or what perks relate to these two groups. It takes a scumbag to really know a scumbag, and I think we all know that Six isn't anywhere close to being a saint. Whether or not he finally rubs out one more annoyance is another matter entirely.

Another "Guest":So Salem is interested in Six, I mean who wouldn't be given what he's done. Maybe she wants him to join seeing how she is completely fine with insane murder machines serving her.

That, of course, implies Salem wants to work with him instead of using him as a disposable asset. The Courier has put an end to House, Caesar, the Think Tank, presumably Elijah as he has visited the Sierra Madre, and who knows how many other tyrants. I don't see Six taking kindly to someone else attempting to turn him into their personal killer.

Then again, Six does have a few screws loose and considers the Toaster a friend…

Well, that's it for me. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all again in the future.