It is moving day.
Well, it would be if I had anything to "move." Between the caps I had saved, the caps that Moe gave me for his trinkets, and the pile of dead raider guns and armor that I sold last night after getting back from finding said trinkets, I ended up with close to 2,800 caps. I think my logic is sound - Diamond City is damn near the center of the area I am going to be living in and around, so why not jump at the chance to actually own a place to call my own instead of paying for a room every night? I managed to grab the place called "Home Plate" for 1,800 caps instead of the 2k they were asking. All it took was a couple compliments tossed at Geneva and a hesitation at the cost of 2k caps. Without even asking the blowhard mayor, she told me that because it has been "on the market" for so long, that she could reduce the price by 10%. I gave her the caps and my signature - she gave me the key.
There is going to be some extensive work that I need to do here, but it came with tools and a ton of building materials. There is a bed, a basic workbench, and what used to be a warehouse full of crap for me to go through. Better security and locks is a must and will be my first order of business. Scratch that... I think my first order of business will be getting my power armor down here. Arturo told me today that he had a new source for fusion cores, so being able to use that T-45 armor on a more regular basis looks promising.
"Raiders" are a joke. Undisciplined, unintelligent, shit-talking toddlers with guns. Who the hell yells "All right! It's on!" from 20 meters away before they even fire at you? Seriously, these idiots may as well have cymbals tied to their knees and blow horns before they attack. I have honestly been more intimidated by the wildlife than these buffoons. They seem to think that their numbers compensate for their complete lack of brain power, but all I see so far has been additional targets. In fact, going over finances, I have found that the majority of the caps I presently have came from crap pulled from dead raiders. I think I must have killed a dozen or so yesterday just getting to the place that Moe told me about to find his relics of baseball. I dropped six or seven before leaving the city proper and then another six or seven on the cross-country walk. My favorite was the one who had me dead to rights who yelled out "Oh yeah!" before he pulled the trigger. He was three stories up in a building behind me, and yells? WHO DOES THAT?! I have a target in my sights in that situation it is breathe and squeeze, and wait for his friends. He yelled, I ducked into cover, he fired, I saw how and where he bullet impacted, he yelled shit, I popped out from my hiding place and put a round in his chest and another in his forehead. My only complaint was having to find the way up to the corpse to loot it. That resulted in eliminating his two buddies that were asleep on the floor below him. Three for the price of one? Such a deal! Pipe pistols, a 10mm, a few more frag grenades, some crappy armor, and a few other trinkets were pretty much tossed into my backpack and I moved on.
That reminds me, I also picked up the .44 today, but I would have loved to have had it yesterday. Apart from the 12g, it is probably the only thing I have right now that would have helped make that day go better. I was, after all, nearly killed by an overgrown beetle... a big, ugly, damn near bulletproof beetle.
Once I left the city and hit the dirt I got to experience the thrill of what are called "mole rats" first hand. Ugly damned things popping out of the ground out of nowhere, and they apparently travel in packs. I managed to pop three of the four that had attacked me, but the fourth managed to knock me off the small ridge I was walking on. I must have hit my head on something when I landed, because the next thing I remembered was waking up to the sensation of something licking my face. Let me say that the feeling of a warm wet tongue on your cheek as you wake is not the most comforting thing in the world. I cracked an eye and found a pretty damn healthy German Shepherd looking at me inquisitively and whining. I did the stupid human thing and asked him where his owner was, as if I was expecting him to reply. Another inquisitive headcock and whine, as he laid down next to me and rested his chin on me, still watching, as if to see how I was doing. OK... so now I apparently have a dog. I was going to just up and leave him, but then I saw the mole-rat no more than a foot from my head with its throat ripped out - a dog that, apparently, saved my life when I went unconscious.
Well shit.
The two of us walked the last mile or two without incident. We arrived at about 1pm and I shared a meal of Brahmin jerky with my new pal before I went to go hunting for the treasures that Moe wanted. I should have paid more attention to (Dog? yeah.. Dog.. I am not an author... I am a trained killer, dammit!) Dog's not wanting to set foot past the gate that led into the now flooded estates. I figured he just didn't like the water. Stupid me. I found the baseball fairly quickly in a safe. It was coming out of that first ruined house that I heard something moving in the water. Thinking that it was just Dog, I headed to the next building and found the signed catcher's glove Moe wanted. that was followed by even more motion in the water, closer this time. I whistled for Dog and heard him whimper - back where I had left him... When I saw his furry ass still at the gate, but nervously pacing, I felt a chill down my spine - I was being stalked by something in the water. Croc was the first thing that went through my mind. I wish. When the first one popped out of the water, to be honest, I almost screamed like a girl. All I saw was a massive shell, legs and pinchers. I dumped the entire clip of 10mm into it, only to have every round just ricochet off. I slammed another magazine in and, like a moron, emptied that at it, again watching every round do nothing. I literally dropped the 10mm, reached down and grabbed the laser pistol. 20 shots from the laser and I think I may have heated this bastard's shell up a little. It lunged at me and missed only because I managed to get my ass onto a porch with some railing between this thing and myself. My relief turned sour when I saw his buddy show up.
Fantastic. I lived through eight years of black ops in the brush of China, four as a Ranger seeing combat on a regular basis, was frozen for 210 years, and I am going to end up as beetle food? Screw that. I dropped the laser and reached for the 12g, and tested the first round on the shell. A nice chunk flew off - pay dirt. Then, I saw what looked like an eye reflect out from under that armor and pumped the second round at, what I assumed was, its face. It stopped dead in its tracks and just stopped moving. My joyous moment of bad-assery was short-lived as his buddy figured out how to get onto the porch and hit me from the side. I felt something tear through the jacket and my skin. Bite? Pinchers? At that point it didn't really matter. I grabbed a stim-pack and jammed it into where it hurt. It came at me again as I got back to my feet and hit me in the gut. This one was faster than the first and even more aggressive. As I moved to inject myself again, it managed to knock the stim out of My hand... This was bad. Between pain and blood loss, I needed to do something fast. There was a bark, a growl, and a crunching sound. Dog had bit into one of this thing's hind appendages and managed to break through. It shifted its attention now to what it figured was it most immediate threat, giving me a chance to slam the stim-pack and toss two more rounds into the 12g. I blew off a couple of hind... things?... and it turned to face me again. It raised up a bit, possibly to make itself bigger or more imposing, and in doing so, exposed its face. I swung the 12g up so that the bottom lip of its shell was resting on top of the barrels, and pulled the trigger.
I didn't feel tough, bad-ass, or cocky.. No.. this was literally the first time I had ever felt this kind of relief to have killed an adversary. I have always been the predator or hunter. In a period of less than 5 minutes, I had used more stim-packs than 12 years in the military. I sat there on the porch for a moment to get a breath and just calm my nerves. Dog walked over, plopped down, and rested his head on my lap. I scratched him on the head and thanked him for saving my ass twice in the same day. I don't even remember where I found the autographed card. What I do remember is the mire lurk that popped out of the water as I tried to leave. Now I got your number, fucker. One to the shell to stagger it, another to the face to end it.
Killing is easy if you can find the pattern and remember that everything dies if you shoot it in the face.
