Minor alterations again - Dogmeat is not an ordinary dog. I practically hero-worshiped the Littlest Hobo growing up. He's not going to start talking or scratching out words or anything, but he will be fairly bright and have a bit more personality than we get in-game that hopefully fellow fans will recognize. :) Let's face it, mutt can get into locked containers on default, there's something up there. I've got some nice plot funnies in mind for this already so it should be worth it.
Once the nastiness of digging through corpses was over, Cort had spent a pleasant afternoon going over all the items she had found in the scrapyard. There were two more 10mm pistols, one of which she made short work of repairing her own with, two assault rifles, a hunting rifle, and a sawed off shotgun, plus ammo for all four types of weapon. She hauled the armour off of the raiders, then reluctantly stripped off Dogmeat's old master. The leather armour he was wearing was too good to pass up compared to her armoured Vault suit, especially considering the damage it had taken on the way here. She cleaned it out with sand, looking around or up at the clouds while scrubbing the worst stains, and switched clothing.
There was also more food, dirty water, bobby pins, a screwdriver and assorted meds, along with some more dangerous narcotics from the raiders. They had interesting effects, but considering the addiction warning Cort decided to shove them to the bottom of a side pocket and leave them there. The last thing she needed was a fix to feed, especially out here, and she couldn't detox herself without the right equipment. Her father had taught her how after finding her ripped out of her skull on scotch with Butch(she still winced over the thought of the dressing down they both got from that, her for letting him down and Butch for should have knowing better), but somehow she didn't think there was any chance of a quick convenience trip to Vault 101 in her near future to get access to the things needed for it. Tripping her balls off in her current mental state and location didn't seem like a swift move either.
Digging through the wreckage around the yard produced some other nice things. There was scrap, bits of junk and rubber, a little lantern that still worked, and even an ammo box with two instructional magazines and a comic inside. Cort managed to get these after smashing a rock and shard of metal against the lid for half an hour after it was clear her lock picking skills weren't going to cut it. She tried a similar tactic on the door to an outbuilding she found, but it held up against her barrage entirely. Even Dogmeat brought her stuff, and Cort finally decided that he'd probably been trained for it, since he would find something similar after a particularly happy reaction from her to a particular type of item. She made sure to fuss over him after this, giving him treats from the little bag she had found and scratching behind his ears. Packing up everything proved to be too heavy for her, so Cort made a cache of scrap metal and a couple sets of raider gear in a car trunk behind a wrecked out bus towards the back of the yard, then piled loose parts against it.
"I am so done for today, Dogmeat." Cort walked around the bus and then crawled inside, sitting down on the floor in with a whoosh. The fading sunlight was streaming in through what was left of the windows, the scum on them giving it a pleasant golden colour. Dogmeat sniffled around the outside corners, marking the remains of the tires, and scrambled in after her. "Come on over and give kisses. Ew, not in the mouth!" She spent the next little while doing nothing but play and scuffle with the dog, feeling genuinely happy for the first time in days. Everything seemed easier with him around, and as soppy as it was, having someone to hug whenever and for as long as she wanted patched over a lot of the mental wounds she had accumulated. She flopped down against her pack when she ran out of breath and turned on her Pip-Boy.
"Six days? That's it? It hasn't even been a week yet. Half a dozen days out here, and look at me." Absently touching the edge of her diminished ear, Cort lost herself in her thoughts for a while, then looked at Dogmeat, who had laid down with his muzzle on her ankle. "I can't keep going on like this. I mean, I don't expect it to get less dangerous, but the way I am right now, I'm amazed I'm not dead. Again. Twice. You're the first thing outside of Megaton and Silver who hasn't tried to eat me. I would be dead if it wasn't for you. I need to get better." He whuffed back at her as if in agreement, then yawned.
"Yeah, I'm tired too, but let's see about eating something first huh?" Cort dug around in her pack, fishing out the magazines and the lantern, and then a box and a can. "Mmmm, Blamco Mac and Cheese with Cram. Bet these will go together, and they're nice and mooshy. We'll still need to go find more water tomorrow though." She fed herself and Dogmeat out of the packages, giving him every second handful, then snuggled down with him after flicking the lantern on. Sometime after dark, when she had fallen asleep under Grognak the Barbarian, Dogmeat leaned over and poked out the light with his nose.
Cort sat on a ledge with Dogmeat, kicking her heels against the rock face in the morning sunshine(the new leather armour made this pleasantly warm) and fiddling with her Pip-Boy. "Huh, there's radio out here Dogmeat! I never thought to check after I got out of 101. There's a couple actually. Right now I've got Galaxy News Radio...nothing but static on that one. Enclave Radio...President Eden? What?" She listened to this station for a long while, occasionally throwing pebbles from the ledge down the hill, head tilted in thought. Once it had cycled back to the first speech she had turned it on to, she snorted and switched the receiver off, bringing the screen back to the map.
"You know fella, that has to be the biggest load of horseshit I've heard, even if there aren't any more horses. I mean look at this place." Cort waved an arm and Dogmeat looked. "If things were a little better, maybe propaganda that badly written might work. It kinda worked in the Vault because everyone was comfortable, and even that sonofabitch Alphonse wasn't that cheesy. I mean, he even visibly did things with everyone, like the yearly duct cleaning and crap. And baseball? The only things people out here want to hit with bats are the balls on top of people's necks!" Cort pushed up her sunglasses, pinched the bridge of her nose and then yelped, having forgotten about the break yesterday. Frowning, she rocked her butt back and forth and sat on the offending hand. "At least now I know who the flying toasters belong to."
Leaning back against a boulder behind her after some more time had passed, Cort hauled out one of the bottles of dirty water and drank, holding it for Dogmeat to lick out of in between swallows. There was no particular desire to get back to Megaton immediately, since it was warm up here and she knew the river was on the way back. She could see a road down there, and pretended the cars wrecked on it were still working, going places, people in them without a care in the world. Wait. There was something moving down there, but there was no way it was a car. Cort sat up and looked harder to her right. It looked like people and a Brahmin loaded with sacks, and they were roughly coming her way. She looked over at Dogmeat.
"What do you think fellow? Go say hi? Maybe I'll get lucky and they won't be insane cannibals."
Dogmeat got up and stretched. "Whuff!"
"I'll take that as a yes then. Let's go meet the neighbours." Cort slid down from her perch and started walking towards the little party, waving an arm over her head. "Hey! Hi you guys!" Cort got an answering wave from both and smiled, squinting down at her friend. "Look Dogmeat, friendlies! let's go shake ha...wait weren't there two people a second ago?"
