Feeling in your bones you can jump across dimensions once more, you gently poke Nora awake and tell her as much. The two of you then go off to find Kate, remembering the last time you went anywhere without her.
Once you find her, the three of you hold hands as you concentrate on your task and, with a resounding plop, the three of you appear in your little lair, next to two piles of equipment and a horny (always horny) Slave.
Kate is naked, as are both you and Nora, but she just laughs and immediately proceeds to force herself on Slave.
You're back, baby.
"Alright girls," you begin after a short celebratory orgy, "time to actually plan out what we'll do next.
Nora still wants to find her son first and foremost, while Kate wants to shoot lots of people, and I just want to train, feed and get more technology to reverse-engineer. Now all we need to do is figure out how to do all of this at once."
"Right, on that topic; last time we were here, I had arranged to meet with a detective in Diamond City who ows me a favor. I figure that's the best start on this whole business on my end."
Okay, now how will you spend your first few days in this dimension?
On your travels, you encounter a handful of ghouls, but your combined firepower quickly puts an end to them. You actually go out of your way to feed on two of them- while they taste rather disgusting, it still keeps you fed.
Kate actually dances a little victory jig at shooting something so distinctly inhuman for the first time.
Once the lot of you arrive in Diamond City, Nora leads you directly towards the detective agency she told you about before. You actually make it a point to subtly look around while you're walking; it's fairly fascinating how these people seem to build up after the apocalypse and the constant danger from the wasteland surrounding them.
In short order, you enter the agency, taken aback at the mechanical man waiting inside. You'd been told about Synths, but seeing one in person makes a whole 'nother impression.
He has Nora sit down and questions her about the exact things she saw while still half in cryosleep. She keeps herself calm the whole time and soon you have a name. Kellogg.
Looks like he actually used to have a house in Diamond City, so the four of you, now that Nick (he insisted on first names) joined you, make your way over. Having local help sure does uncomplicate this whole thing.
Until, that is, you're standing in front of a locked door.
Asking everyone to wait a bit, you concentrate and eventually turn into your shadow, wiggling through the gap of the door and taking a look around the doo- aaand there's a spare key hanging next to it.
Well, that makes this rather easy. Unlocking the door, you open it and let everyone inside. Nick glances at you; you're fairly certain he's going to ask about this later. Not that you particularly care either way, though.
Taking a look around the place, your eyes are quickly drawn towards an irregular shape you glanced under a desk. Kneeling next to it, you grin and tell everyone you found something.
Once the rest of the group has assembled, you press the button and thereby reveal a secret room. Grinning at everyone, you step inside, take a single look around and zero in on a few cigarettes.
"San Francisco Sunlights," Nick says when you show them to him. "These should suffice to let one of my partners track his scent.
Weird, but okay, you suppose.
You spend the next day training by day and traveling by night, once more getting back to training once you arrive back at Sanctuary. Because while you would do many things, you would never just ignore the magnificent group of walking meatshields in the form of your zombies when planning to find a dangerous mercenary.
You're still somewhat miffed you couldn't just take them with you, but there was no way you were going to let them loiter around unattended while you were busy inside the city.
Spending the next two days on training yourself the best you can, you eventually unlock another aspect to your inner realm. Having gotten used to it by now, you look into yourself, noting the room next to the armory seems to have been renovated.
Going on ahead and breathing yourself in, as time is going significantly faster in there anyway, you inspect the place. Looks like a proper workshop, with tools and workbenches and all. All of this stuff is fairly low-tech stuff, though.
You now have access to a permanent low-tech workshop! Use it to modify blueprints or make new ones, as long as what you're doing isn't too complicated nor takes any advanced materials.
Neat. You may even get to use your more technically inclined souls to help you do stuff in here.
With that taken care of, you go on ahead and practice your unarmed fighting for a bit, based on your past experiences, before heading out again.
It's about time you got off your ass, after all.
It is when you're checking over the workbench house that Nora comes running up to you.
"Hey Gabe, I was just going through the radio channels when I got this." she says before showing you her pip-boy, already tuned to the frequency she was talking about.
Listening to the SOS message, you decide you may as well intervene. With any luck, you'll catch a meal or two on the way; you were getting a bit hungry, after all.
"Okay, Nora, you go get Kate, make sure you both are geared up. I'll go tell Preston where we're going and we'll meet at the bridge in a bit."
Nodding, Nora is off even as you locate Preston. It doesn't take long, and a quick conversation later, he knows what's up and has assured you he'll take care of the settlements until you're back.
It somewhat amazes you how he seems to think you give a fuck, but you just give him a reassuring nod and walk away.
Soon after, you and the girls meet up and plan your route towards the place the message mentioned, with you yourself going to take the zombies from the gas station, and soon you're off, the girls sitting somewhat precariously on the deathclaw zombie's shoulder, as they have such a thing as limited stamina.
You just shake your head, moving at a light jog yourself as the group speeds along. Time to see what that is all about.
On the way, following what's left of the streets as best you can, you come upon a scene you suspect is somewhat common; a guy looking like a trader is surrounded by a bunch of raiders, held at gunpoint.
"...and then we'll keep on raping you 'till you drop!" one of the female raiders says. The only male one you can spy is eyeing the dude from behind, too.
... As you said, a somewhat common sight.
Raising a hand, you order your zombies to stop. Kate and Nora dismount their ride, drawing their weapons just in case.
"Okay, you see those?" you ask, motioning towards the robbery in progress. At their nods, you continue. "I'll go shadow and attck, once I do, you and the zombies rush in and finish them off. Any questions?"
"Don't you take a fair bit of time to shadow? They might just shoot him before we step in."
"Oh, I doubt they'll shoot him. They seem more interested in raping him. Should give us enough time."
Nora looks a bit queasy, but nods. Kate seems like she may want to suggest you just watch them for a bit for fun, but decides against voicing her opinion, likely concluding you have only so much time to waste.
And so it goes; you concentrate on becoming your shadow while watching how your targets puch their target around a bit, before ripping his pants off as the one guy of the group lies onto the ground.
With their combined strength, they force him onto his dick, one of the women throwing off her own pants and getting down to business with him. You reckon if you actually had any empathy with people you don't know, you'd feel bad about choosing a plan that takes this long as you listen to the victim's screams, but you don't, and so you just note Kate's sexual preferences may be coloring yours, as you're getting a bit horny yourself.
Nevertheless, you're soon a shadow and slithering through the night. Time to eat.
Carefully positioning yourself, you rematerialize and throw yourself onto your targets with abandon. Holding onto the woman's head, you drive your teeth into the back of her neck, letting go with your hand and bringing all your claws to bear on the male raider, thrusting them into his face and throat, then pulling to both sides at once.
You're pretty sure you must've hit the carotid artery or something, judging by the sheer amount of blood spurting out of him.
Rising from the pile of your victims and their victim, you're treated to the sight of a charging horde of minions. Your minions.
Kate and Nora shooting everyone standing is great, of course, but the charging supermutant and deathclaw zombies make for a wonderful meatwall. The raiders seem to be trying to flee, but you intercept the nearest one.
Tackling one of the women to the ground, you force her to watch as the other one takes a shot, stumbles and is promptly torn apart by your half-decayed deathclaw zombie.
The thing didn't lose any ferocity even in death, it seems.
Regardless, time to eat this one before you get on with it. With this thought in mind, you bite into her neck with gusto.
Getting off of your latest meal, you ignore the corpse still being ravaged by your zombies and approach the trader, still wedged upon his rapist's dick, though he's begun struggling his way out of the rape sandwich.
Heh. Who'd'a thunk you'd ever say that?
Anyway, you help him out of there, getting him standing, though he can't seem to look away from the bunch of obviously dead things ravaging his rapists-to-be.
Calling them off and having them stand at attention, you focus on him while the girls approach. "You okay?" you ask.
"Yeah, yeah, or I'll be in a bit," he answers, standing a little crouched. Again, if you had any shred of empathy, you may feel bad for him, but you just don't particularly care.
You have a short conversation as a group, though you soon wish him safe travels after telling him about Sanctuary, before you once more continue traveling towards where the message asked for help. You'd like to get there sometime tonight, thank you very much.
It is a short hour or two after your little encounter that you begin to hear the sound of shots being fired... as well as other sounds, though you'd bet they are still the sound of something unpleasant.
Right. How do you approach this?
Bidding everyone to halt again, you take a moment to go shadow again. It's only half a minute or so, and while you're going out of your way to come to the aid of whoever this is, you're not that altruistic and would very much prefer to avoid any serious damage to ourself.
An explosion or two makes the air shudder, but you pay them no mind.
Soon enough, though, you're your shadow again, stepping through the dark and into the battlefield. Or what's left of it, anyway.
Looks like this one group of people made camp here, fighting against a bunch of robots.
Yes, robots. You're not even going to comment on the wackyness of this place anymore.
Regardless, looks like the last of the survivors decided to blow himself up along with a bunch of their attackers... and at least one of the robots actually fought on their side, interestingly enough.
Said robot is now opening fire on the other robots again, it seems.
Darting back to the main group and rematerializing, you summon the soul of that trash cape you ate and tell everyone what's up in as few words as possible as the lot of you approach the site of the battle.
Once there, your summoned minion immediately starts to untangle himself, for lack of a better word, into those tendrils you'd seen when you fought him. In short order, said tendrils latch ono the nearest robots and start to wiggle inside any exposed pieces, making them pop apart, crippling the bots and starting to assemble the parts into his trash body.
He seems as surprised by this as you, which is... interesting.
Regardless, three of your opponents are currently 'tied up' by him, leaving another three of them and one really big robot driving around on what looks like small tank treads.
Shouting "Take care of them!" at the rest of the group while motioning towards the other scrubs, you concentrate on the big enemy.
Chanting Freeze this thing so it may not move! as it's shooting something at your deathclaw zombie, you're gratified to see it immediately stop moving entirely. Looks like the spell works nicely on robots.
Turning around to observe the rest of the battle, it seems like your zombies have used their sheer strength to smash apart two of the robots, while Nora and Kate have shot apart the last one. The three robots in the grasp of your other minion are still being disassembled, though much slower now than when the battle was actually going on.
His outer body composed of mechanical parts extracted from the robots looks pretty cool, actually, though it just falls apart when you breathe him in again. Hmm... At least this is a great way to gather up the scrap they're made of without damaging it too much, you suppose.
Watching on as Nora approaches the robot you're considering nonhostile for now, it seems as though these bots were attacking their little caravan for a while now, with this last attack also being the hardest. She's asking your group for help to find and stop this 'Mechanist' person apparently building the bots aaand yeah, someone really should be doing this, considreing you're not looking forward to being overrun by robots during the day.
The offer of sharing schematics for a 'robot workbench' is pretty nice, too, though.
It seems as though the next part of this puzzle is located in a General Atomics factory quite a way towards the southeast, if what this 'Ada' robot is saying is true.
Looking over what's left of the camp, you can't help but note how a lot of the stuff that used to be stored here was either blown apart by explosions or shot to bits. It's not like you can't find anything noteworthy to scavenge, just far less than you'd have hoped from a caravan of traders specializing in tech of all kinds.
At least the robots you took out when you came upon the battle can be reused, especially with that workbench Ada promised you. The three robots your minion disassembled left literally all they were behind, and the big one you froze is perfectly pristine, aside from a few internal pieces that seem to have just stopped functioning entirely.
Cracked glass, burnt-out wires, that kind of thing. Just minor damage, fortunately. Interesting to see the exact effect of your magic on technology, actually.
After a quick discussion, the team deicdes to take all this (suddenly invaluable) loot back to Sanctuary first, to then hopefully assemble a few robots for yourself before tackling what promises to be a drawn-out affair.
First to check out that factory, then to follow upon what you find.
So the tents and any fabric you can find that is big enough is repurposed as bags, then filled to the brim (or until you're worried it may rip) with the more useful parts you have on hand among the loot.
Some of it, mostly plates of steel, has to be left behind due to weight considerations, but soon your zombies and your new favorite summon are carrying a massive amount of robotic and miscellaneous technological parts. The difference is somewhat academic if what Ada is telling you about the workbench she's going to help you build is true.
You're actually looking forward to this. Especially as you can just copy the blueprints thanks to your perfect memory, thankfully enough, and use it in other dimensions.
... Sarah. Even if you have to literally build a million robots to comb through the entirety of Earth Bet, you will find her.
You make your way back to Sanctuary, without incident this time. Good thing, too, you're packed to the brim with loot as it is.
You may need to raise a few more zombies, at this rate. It's an idea, either way. Ada occasionally peppers you with a few question on the way, seeming to be quite interested in your magic. You answer the best you can, though you warn her she's likely to instantly die if any magic were to be applied to her insides.
Well, 'die'. You do consider her somewhat of a person despite her artificial nature, though the question of her individuality is somewhat confused. When you mention that she obviously has emotions, as shown by her insistence on hunting down the killer of her friends, she shuts up for an hour straight.
Regardless, you've arrived back at your homebase. Time to get this loot sorted.
Getting the small mountain of loot stored away takes quite a bit of effort, though you can draft the help of Preston and his hapless crew of villagers. After they get over gawking at your zombies, anyway.
With that taken care of, your group plus Ada comes together to discuss what's next. While building that workbench and assembling a robot army for yourself is tempting, the need to strike swiftly outweighs your desire for being the machine overlord.
That and you're fairly sure you can just overwhelm any resistance, not least thanks to your new favorite soul. No matter how much you wish you didn't have to see his mug.
The first half of your journey goes over without further note, steadily marching southeast and eventually making a detour around what's left of Boston to avoid the more unpleasant things lurking there (though you make a note of the place as a potential place of interest).
Near Boston, however, you're stopped by what looks like the heavily mutated, green cousin of the common crab, assembled near the coastal area you're aiming to traverse.
A dozen or so of them.
Well, this may be an issue.
Halting the group, you consider the situation for a moment.
"So... let's fight our way through them. Luckily, I have just the right souls to do this with."
Summoning Shockwave and Painfire, your trusty combo so far and have them take position.
"Okay, you use your fire on them, and you hit them when they come at us. Ready? Go."
And so it goes.
Looking on as Painfire does his thing, you can't help but marvel at just how useful this power is. Wide area and extremely debilitating to any thinking opponent capable of feeling pain.
... Which these things may not count as, all things considered. Four of them run away, but the other eight start to charge your group while screeching.
Shockwave gets into position and smashes his fist into the big shell of the first one, his power mostly ignoring the biological armor and pulping its insides.
Nice start, but that still leaves seven more of the things.
"Time to disembark, ladies. I want that deathclaw on the crabs."
Rolling their eyes a little, Nora and Kate get off the zombie, whence you immediately tell it to go and kill your enemies.
The sight of a deathclaw barreling into anything on the way and using a mix of speed and sheer strength to blow any opposition apart is always great, even if it's undead and not growling while at it.
The girls have actually started letting off careful shots at the crabs, making sure to hit neither your souls nor your undead. They're also trying to hit the actual bodies of the things rather than have their shots be deflected by their shells.
As a result, they mostly either miss or hit their legs, though hitting their legs is still rather nice as a way to keep them from coming. Speaking of, Shockwave has just killed another one, but is now surrounded by two more of the things, one of which is digging its scissor hand into his side painfully.
Counting the crab the deathclaw zombie just picked up and killed by biting into its underside, there are five of them left, two of which can move at any appreciable speed.
Well, better to nip that situation in the bud before it can develop. Luckily enough, you just so happen to have a bunch of zombies to fill the hole Shockwave's about to leave.
Breathing him in, you order your zombies to charge in instead, having them rush down the surviving crabs, even as the deathclaw zombie is ripping them apart to the side.
Yeah, this is about to be done.
After a short and brutal cleanup, you look consideringly over the corpses of these mutant crabs.
"You thinking of raising them?" Kate asks.
"Yup, at least the ones not damaged too badly. Should make for somewhat decent meatshields."
Inspecting the corpses, you find that half of them are intact enough to be worthwhile. You try to raise the one your deathclaw bit in half, just for fun, but it just trembles a bit before deanimating.
Regardless, you now have four of these mutant crabs, four supermutants and one deathclaw in your little horde.
... You idly wonder if you could build actual saddles to ride on them or something as you watch them scuttle along.
It is dangerously close to sunrise when you finally arrive at the right place. Wasting no time loitering around, you move inside.
Taking a look around, this seems like a typical place in postapocalyptic America. Lots of trash strewn about, everything just a little dinged up at minimum, the usual.
Deciding to at least make proper use of all this trash, you breathe out your favorite vacuum cleaner and order him to start gathering trash.
... Is it just you or did you just hear clicking? As in, mechanical clicking?
Okay, time to get serious.
"Zombies towards the front, everyone else behind. I have a bad feeling about this."
It is as you finish speaking that a small ball-like robot floats across the doorframe, letting out a loud crank at seeing your group.
Followed by a cacophony of clicks, cranks, whirrs and other mechanical noises echoing from deeper inside the building before Kate shoots it down.
Well, you suppose it really was only a matter of time before whatever is in there came at you. Considering your opponents are likely going to be robotic in nature, you cast Make the world a colder place! at the room on the other side of that door, hoping it will hinder them.
"Okay, Trashguy, you take any parts you can easily reach, but don't grow so big you can't move inside the building. Girls, you keep on shooting at anything coming at us until he's grown big enough to just walk right through any bots. Zombies, you, uh, just smash anything trying to get in. I'll just float around up here," you say as you lightly jump off, proceeding to float near the ceiling, "and cast at anything I see. Oh, and Ada, you probably don't want to come into this next room, I've cast magic on it. Don't go inside until someone gives you the okay."
This is all you have time for, as next thing you know, the enemy is upon you!
The robots come at you, some walking, some driving on treads, some floating, but they all share the same sentiment. They want you dead.
Luckily enough, they seem to be rather simplistic, as they tend to aim for the zombies that are just standing there and taking it, at least until they try to enter the room you've set up in.
That's about the time the deathclaw zombie starts to tear them apart.
You and the girls aren't idle, of course, keeping up a constant stram of bullets and magic, and the robots are soon all done.
You're about to ask if that was it, when you hear more clanking. Of course there's more. You take a moment to order the zombies around a bit, rearranging their formation so the crab zombies stand in front. One of your supermutant zombies looks quite a bit worse for wear.
That's all you can do before the next wave comes.
Okay, shit, things are getting loud in here. Time to use their numbers against them or something.
You cast Let the grasp of winter coat all before me in its icy breath! at what you can see of the other room from up here, hoping it'll prove effective, before the next load of robots comes at you.
It's a significantly higher amount of enemies this time around, making you rather glad you set up around a natural chokepoint. A few tense minutes of combat follow, with your side bombarding the opposition with firepower and spells while the robots keep on throwing everything they have at you.
You've had to change out one of the crabs standing in front of the door mid-combat, the continual rain of laser and what you think are railway spikes eventually wearing through its shell.
In fact, a few shots come through and you have to hurriedly press against the ceiling to evade, but they're few and far between and eventually, when the quantity of fire becomes too much, Nora just waits for the right moment and throws a grenade through the door, drastically reducing the massed firepower opposing you.
Once the fighting dies down, you take a moment to look over, and... yeah, as you'd expected. The area you coated in ice didn't really stop the floating torsos with guns for hands nor the treaded ones, but the robots actually walking on two legs got tripped up rather badly, judging from where the 'corpses' are lying, until eventually the robots just had to go around the small mountain of their fallen comrades.
Turns out that while they can't really recognize the ice as a problem, obstacles such as unmoving robots still work for that purpose.
It is then that Trashman moves forward. You hadn't really realized just how big he had steadily grown, but now he squeezes through the door, mostly by pushing one section of his body through it followed by the next, contorting as needed to make it work.
"Leave the rest of them to me." He growls.
You can hear the brief sound of combat, but your summoned minion smashes once, twice, and the problem is solved.
Nice.
With all this taken care of, the whole lot of you proceed to move into the factory. It seems smaller parts were produced here, but you don't see any truly serious hardware.
Then again, this was apparently used for civilian production, so you didn't expect anything too advanced, either. Still, this will be a lot of loot to carry, especially in combination with all the robots you shot/smashed/froze.
In fact, without your trusty trashman, you doubt you could take all of this back to Sanctuary in less than three round trips.
However, before you can get on that, you have to find what you came here for. Aaand that... is there.
Seems Trashman found the target. In his grasp is a giant robot, crowned with a glass dome containing what looks suspiciously like a human brain.
Whoops, and now it's squashed. Ah well. "Leave that one, we'll want to take it apart carefully in a bit."
Bringing the, apparently so-called 'robobrain' (seriously who comes up with these names), back towards the front of the factory where you had Ada wait just in case while the girls are getting started on taking this place apart, she soon manages to point out the one actually important part of the trashheap.
"A radio beacon. Wherever the Mechanist is, they just have to send their orders via these little things and the robots obey. This is a good first step, but we may require more of them yet before we can use them to figure out where that place is."
Huh. Progress, at least, though you would've liked for this to be the last horde of robots you had to deal with.
It takes a while to gather all this crap, but it'll be immensely helpful once you start to build your own robots. That said, cramming all of this into the first room to be taken out once nightfall comes around only takes so much time, so you spend the rest of the day training even as the girls sleep.
Eventually, however, the sun goes down and you're off towards Sanctuary, with a giant scrapman in tow and carried by a small horde of zombies also carrying loot.
At least you can travel in style.
You arrive at your homebase sometime during the night, quite fed up with the wasteland for now. There's only so much nothing you can look at before it becomes boring.
But anyway, here you are. Time to just rest, relax and train a bit, right after thoroughly fucking Slave while Kate and Nora watch. Good times.
Spending a night training, along with the accompanying two days, you eventually take a moment to decide on your plans for the next few days.
Spending the next few days training, you use the nights to get on that whole robotics thing with Ada, occasionally having your souls with a fitting education help you.
Of course Nora and Kate wanted something to do, so you simply told your deathclaw zombie to do what they say and sent them off to have fun while you were working. This was a surprisingly good strategy, all things told.
Building that workbench to create and modify robots took longer than you'd hoped, mainly because Ada accidentally switched parts of the blueprint out for a toaster blueprint, so you had to disassemble parts of it to get the toaster out of the space the terminal was supposed to take once you'd noticed.
Overall, though, you're pretty proud of what you've gotten done. You and a few helping hands have put together an all-purpose robot assembly, complete with mechanical arms that automatically complete a series of tasks on command.
Of course, it is also immensely bothersome to use, considering terminals are shit compared to actual computers, but hey, semi-automatic robot assembly. You can make a few sacrifices here, especially once you have a few robot servitors.
That it can work with literal scrap and turn it into the parts you need is just a bonus at this point.
It does take you a few hours to get a grip on this thing's system, but eventually you get a grip. It even automatically highlights any problematic parts, such as when you tried to have a Mr. Handy thruster propel a body that was too heavy, which saves you a lot of time and effort.
It's even got several base VI modes pre-prepared, so you don't even have to do anything aside from keeping on feeding the materials into the machine and watching the robot be assembled.
Eventually, you'd settled on designing two different kinds of robot, a basic 'shoot anything hostile' one and a farming version.
You actually reused the turret's friend/foe recognition system when programming the former, while a rather thorough farming thought matrix was actually preloaded in the databank Ada copied onto your terminal. Apparently this 'Jackson' that built her was planning to lead the wasteland into a widespread agricultural reform before getting himself killed.
Ah well, it's worth trying it out, at least.
After a lot of deliberation, you end up with a farming bot based off of a Mr. Handy, though you'd replaced one of the three buzzsaws with a 'grabbinator' (no shit, that's what it's called by the terminal) to let it work as an effective farmer, as well as one of the eyestalks replaced by another arm with a hand.
This way, it should be capable of really helping along with the farming, from what you saw of the fields, as long as at least one human is occasionally making sure it's on track. As well as helping with any other small tasks that require long hours of work.
That, and Codsworth actually mentioned to you once that the condensation of his thruster makes as a decent source of purified water. You're fairly sure that won't actually be necessary inside the settlement, given you have the purifier running, but hey, it doesn't hurt any, either.
That taken care of and in the process of being produced, you spent significantly longer on your combat bot. Specifically, another source of ranged damage, given your group's usual composition. Using what you have, you first start thinking of basically building a turret on robotic legs, but quickly trash that idea and just use the friend/foe recognition, as you'd already noted.
Combined with that, you use a thruster as the base again, but go with an aggressotron torso with it. They're apparently quite the menace, though you haven't encountered any yet, so you'll just have to trust Ada's testimony. On both of the arms you slap some of the better guns you have lying around, having the workbench do the heavy lifting on integrating them so the bot knows how to fire.
You'd like to modify it further, maybe use a head with better aiming capabilities or slap some armor on it, but you just have no idea how. The workbench doesn't have anything beyond the basics already in it, so you'd have to personally figure all that shit out and program it in.
At least it's pretty user-friendly.
With your new robots in active use, you get Preston to stop patrolling the settlement for a few evenings to help you try and figure out improvements to the laser musket design he taught you about.
He actually seems to like the change of pace, and mentions about how he could spread the changes to anyone else that wants to help down the line.
You don't particularly mind, so you just nod and keep on trying to fit that damned lense into the socket.
It took two meetings with Preston, but eventually you have the prototype for a better laser musket lying before you.
It's actually visibly different, sporting another lens in addition to the traditional two, hopefully letting the capacitor (that you also improved on) hold more charges. In theory, this should let the user crank up to 3 times before the crank stopped until the thing is fired (another improvement you'd made).
Oh, and you actually added a scope to it you had lying around from some of the other guns you scavenged all over the place, as well as replacing the stock with a full rifle stock.
The end result was somewhat heavier than the basic design you had before, but would hopefully lend itself to landing heaver shots from afar easier without impeding fire rate and aim when needed over short distances.
Well, only one way to figure it out, you suppose. You and Preston take the finished product to the little firing range Nora and Kate had set up a few days earlier, and after three cranks, not one more (you actually do test it out), Preston fires.
The target... well, it doesn't disintegrate, but you're fairly sure the earlier capacitors didn't allow to bore into the stone with quite such intensity. You can actually see the difference, given the smaller holes on the same target, so you're fairly sure this is an all-around improvement.
It's surprising what some half-remembered highschool classes can do when combined with literal superscience.
You don't have all that much time to ruminate on this, though, with how Preston is laughing happily and running at you. Oh shit, you know what's coming, but you have no idea how to react.
When he slams into you with a bearhug using all his strength, thanking you about something you don't care about, you have to spend just as much time to calm him down again as you eventually spend on testing your new design out. At least it seems to be reliable, really.
After all the excitement over the new musket design, you'd spent another day training several things, most notably your unarmed fighting. You'd finally reached a standard you'd be comfortable to call 'adequate', though it's still far from 'good'.
Anyway, you eventually decided you may as well go and find some food, considering you didn't really get anything when you went to take a look at that factory and you didn't want to feed off of the settlers quite yet.
Running off into the night, you used your owl form to scout some distance away from Sanctuary, and as luck would have it, found what you were looking for near Lexington's ruins, though still far away enough not to attract any of the seemingly unending number of feral ghouls from there.
Looking over the small camp, it seems a group of raiders robbed a trader and had some 'fun' with their wares. You can't really make out what gender they were from the torn apart carcass, but yeah.
They seem to all be asleep, so you should have a relatively easy time eating your fill however you want, at least.
Setting down, you transform back into your vampire form, smiling to yourself.
It's just so considerate of them to serve themselves up as dinner, after all.
Taking your time to stalk from one sleeping form to the next, you cover their noses and mouths before biting down into their necks and feeding on them. Easy.
Caprice, Helin, Isa, Keyan, Taha and Tyron were a usual band of raiders. Sure, they were the kind to dare to hunt near bigger, better established gangs' territories, but that was not that strange, considering the usual lifestyle and mindset of raiders.
After you finished going through all of them, you took a look around, but it seems as though most of the valuables around were in the form of drugs these guys already consumed.
Four of them had more damn pipe weapons, for fucks' sake. That said, two somewhat decent guns would have to do in terms of loot for you as you transformed again and took off back towards Sanctuary.
Oh well. At least you got what you came here for, a full meal.
Continuing your meetings with Preston over this period of training, you mostly fiddle around with the handcrank and how it connects to the fusion cells providing juice for the capacitor.
Mostly, you're trying to figure out how to make the charging more efficient. Consuming several fusion cells with every shot is somewhat unsustainable in the long run, or at least a giant pain in the ass for you.
You idly think about programming a robot to assemble the things, but shake the idea off for now.
Through trial and error over several days, you finally manage to unearth what you suspect was the original design purpose behind these things.
They don't need any ammo.
Okay, that's not entirely correct; it still needs to be charged up, but now you managed to have the handcrank charge the capacitor up directly instead of having to use fusion cells to do the job.
Preston has the biggest grin all over his face when you tell him you managed to get results, especially once he realizes just how huge of a thing this is, considering not everyone had fusion cells lying around by the hundreds.
Taking a moment to tell Preston he 'needs to get laid one of these days' half jokingly, you move onto find first that one raider chick you kinda forgot about and then Ada.
You don't need to convince him, just put the thought into his head, after all. The rest will follow by itself if you give it some opportunities, and maybe it'll get him to concentrate on something that isn't you.
Beyond that, though, you have actual shit to do tonight.
... Yeah, this should go fine, you think to yourself after having a few words with boring girl. Nothing could go wrong.
Finally getting around to Ada, though, it seems she's made progress on her whole thing with that part you took out of the brainy robot.
"I have succeeded in comparing the passive signal this radio beacon is both sending and receiving. With just two more of them, I should be able to backtrack the signal and triangulate the location the Mechanist is using to send orders to their robots.
Luckily enough, one more of them seems to be in a location nearby. I should be able to lead a group to the location."
Well, that's a lot more progress than you initially thought.
Summoning your favorite slavesoul at the start of the journey, you order him to take any loose material he can grab easily along the way to start up his power. Turning to Nora and Kate, you immediately receive two nods as they climb onto the deathclaw zombie.
You, uh, you actually did notice it's starting to smell a little, though that may be due to your enhanced senses. It's something to keep an eye on.
Regardless, Ada leads your merry band along, taking the bridge leading outside Sanctuary and immediately turning towards a north-east course, straight through the wilderness. Joy.
It takes a good hour of unceasing travel, greatly sped up by the fact nobody actually walking here has stamina that could be depleted, though you make a note your zombies can be pretty slow in general outside of large distances where this fact makes up for their shortcomings.
Anyway, you arrive at what looks to be a dumping ground of some kind, primarily filled with trashed robots. Makes sense someone mass-producing robots would want to use places like this to gather materials.
Taking a look around, yeah, there's a dozen active bots of different sizes, apparently lead by another 'robobrain', as Ada calls them. Luckily enough, you do happen to outnumber them.
Looking at trashman, you nod towards the robots.
"Well? You go fuck them up while the rest of us shoot them."
With strategy taken care of, you start to chant Freeze this thing so it may not move! at the robots, trusting the others to do their jobs. Which they do.
You idly note that the robobrain seems to be partially immune to your spell, or at least it doesn't stop immediately. May be because it is at least partially biological. Then again, it didn't survive for long once it got cold, so it's not that much of an issue.
Of course, your summoned soul disassembling half the robots and smashing apart of the others did help this whole thing along quite nicely. Either way, you now have a pile of robots turned into loot, a heap of trash you may even manage to find a use for all around you and the second radio beacon Ada needed.
Having your zombies and robots stay and guard the place you're putting everything, you and the girls spread out to search the surroundings for any other valuables.
While you're surrounded by useless wilderness for the most part, you do manage to locate what looks like a downed 'vertibird', the same kind of helicopter you saw back in the museum in Concord.
Nearby it, though, lies the real treasure, at least for now; another power armor, incomplete at only a torso, head and left leg, but power armor nonetheless.
Sure, it's also rusted all over and in bad disrepair, but you can still use this thing anyway. Nora and Kate have some fun trying it on, using the fusion core Nora kept from the first armor you used, while you're inspecting the crashed vertibird.
It's, uh, mostly junk now. What parts survived the fall didn't survive the centuries all that well, though it's still something. You're fairly sure you won't be pulling complete schematics for how to build these things out of this, but it may well help you along, at least.
Returning back to the dumping ground, Kate wearing the armor, it seems the last thing to investigate is the central building of this place. Coming inside, you see a few useful parts and a terminal. Leaving that to Nora, you take a closer look at what appears to be a workbench, noting the selfmade battery standing under it. May come in useful.
"Okay, so according to this thing, a suspicious sentry bot was dumped here by what looked like government spooks before the war. Want me to try to fiddle with the control tape?"
"Sure, activate it and let's see what happens. Worst case, we have to shut it down the hard way."
Obliging, Nora turns to the terminal and types a few times. Next thing you know, there's a giant explosion outside. Well, shit.
Bursting through the door, it seems this 'sentry bot' is a fucking tank with miniguns for arms or something. You certainly don't like having it shoot at any sensitive equipment, aka Kate, so you Freeze it in short order.
Only to find out it can still move for some reason. Not to be discouraged, you keep on casting the same spell another three times, eventually shutting it down entirely.
Still, this was far too close to an actual fight for your tastes, not to mention you lost one of the crabs and your gunbot to it, as well as a few more holes in your other zombies. Ada, thankfully, took cover behind said zombies, so at least she didn't get damaged.
At least you now have this this to take apart and study, you suppose.
Lugging the sentry bot back as is would be nigh impossible, given its sheer weight, so you reluctantly start to take it apart with your claws, just taking parts off to make your zombies carry individually.
You could just have trashman take it apart, of course, but that'd make reverse-engineering it nigh impossible, so you just have him work on the trashed machinery lying around the disposal site.
At least you'll have a surplus of steel for a while, what with all these car frames.
Anyway, it takes a bit of work, but soon enough the entire group is on the way back to Sanctuary. Hopefully the radio beacon still works...
Once you return, you seem to have really gone on a building rampage. First you threw together a robot workbench in record time, then you had the bright idea of using the one you just built to help make parts for another one.
It DID work... you just had to rebuild half of the end results. The benches simply aren't meant to assemble parts of other workbenches, and it was felt on this occasion. Ah well, you still finished far earlier than expected and tried to apply one of your unknown soul mechanisms on the soul of that one super drugged up raider you ate that one time, but it didn't quite seem to 'click'.
Souls are really finicky.
Matching your timing to catch Preston, who is coming out of the communal living house faintly smelling of sex (... thanks, enhanced senses, you really needed to know that) one evening, you ask him to have some of the others produce more of the farming bots when they have time, at least until Sanctuary starts to have issues with too much food.
With his easy approval, you move on to your main purpose, the sentry bot and what you can learn from it.
First you assemble the parts you had to cut it into for transportation, then try to figure out the important parts of the design.
Well, looks like you have good news and bad news. Good news is, you have a decent idea of how everything is put together, though you'd want to actually investigate the whole thing a bit more before you're comfortable reproducing it on the workbench.
Bad news, this thing is driven by a pair of fusion cores, meaning you'll need to figure out how they are made, too, before you can actually make your own sentry bots. That said, you have a decent idea of just how devastating one of these things could prove to be. Two miniguns atop a small tank with lots of armor all over? Yeah, you doubt all too many things in the wasteland would like a scramble with one of these.
Or all too many capes, for that matter. Few of them are bulletproof, after all, and this this has all the bullets.
Taking some time to go over all your zombies and casting your newest undeath related spell to reverse any rotting they seem to have undergone, you spend most of your time on studying those fusion cores.
They're interesting little things, though their secrets are yet beyond you.
Amidst your training over the following days, you decided to try your hand at that mysterious soul-mechanism again, but just as soon as you really get into it, you're disrupted by a blinding headache and have to stop.
The pain is gone just as suddenly as it came, and you experience pain quite differently compared to when you were alive, but still. Poking your soul again gives you a warning flare of headache, so you decide against trying to mess around with it for now.
Taking some time to work on your robots, you first integrate the newest model for laser muskets you have into the ranged bot design.
No longer will you have to refill their ammo once every few years! On another note, these things used to have a LOT of ammo capacity. Regardless, once you have that done, you proceed to go pester Nora to help you with the next part.
You remembered how she'd once mentioned her pip-boy had some pretty advanced auto-targeting software installed, which, on closer thought, is pretty insane. All the better to copy it over to your robots, then!
You're just making it a universal add-on to the software of any robots you make from now on. It takes a bit of work, considering you're not too familiar with programming, but you manage with some time.
After you finished working on your robot designs for now, you decide to head out and find something to eat- you're actually getting quite famished here.
Though the feeling is similar to the way you feel pain now, more of a warning that something is wrong rather than an all-consuming need. Still, it does what it is meant to do.
So, turning into an owl, you fly off towards the south, passing the ruins of Concord and heading straight onward.
... At least until you hear something.
"I told you, I TOLD YOU, not to fiddle with the teleporter, but no! You had to say it was fine and stick your screwdriver in!"
"Well maybe if someone didn't keep on nagging at me for an hour straight beforehand, I would've hit what I wanted to instead!"
"Guys, shut up and help me figure out a way to contact the institute before we're eaten alive by whatever crawls around here!"
Three guys in labcoats, arguing loudly in the middle of nowhere. Well, well, well, isn't that interesting?
Okay, to be honest, this is too funny to not interdict after that last sentence. Swooping down, you land right in front of this group of jokers.
One of them begins to say "Is... is that an owl? I thought they were extinc...", being cut off as you transform back into your full glory.
"Well, I wasn't planning on eating you fine gentlemen, though if you insist..." you drawl once you have a human throat again, grinning your best smug grin at them.
"Did... this this owl just turn into a man?""Idiot, obviously the man was turned into an owl!""Okay, either I'm already going crazy from radiation poisoning or he just violated the conversation mass something fierce."
Mhm, you'd hoped for a stronger reaction, though you may as well address an issue you need them to be aware of.
"Before we move on, would you mind keeping it down the best you can? Talking loudly is liable to attract attention in some areas, including this one. To be honest, I'm surprised you haven't been eaten alive by any of the local critters yet."
"WHAT? That's an actual issue here?""Now who's the idiot, IDIOT? Keep it down!""I apologize for the both of them, sir. I'm afraid we suddenly found ourselves in a rather stressful situation. Really, I'm so sorry."
You're stopped from answering them as you hear that distinctive, deep voice. Supermutants nearby.
"Okay, stop, quiet, now. Looks like we have company. Try to stay behind me, okay?"
Not waiting for them to react, you stride towards the corner around which you heard the mutants. Luckily this is a fairly urban area, aside from most buildings being torn down by either bombs or age, so at least they can't fire at the labcoat gang quite so easily.
Now how will you do this?
Quickly summoning your two souls chosen for this occasion, Trashman and Painfire, you round the corner and cast Let the grasp of winter coat all before me in its icy breath!, coating the ground in front of you in ice.
Good thing you did, too, as one moment later, one of the three mutants coming in your direction presses onto what you're fairly certain is a fucking mini-nuke, priming it and coming running towards you...
...only to slip on the ice, slam the nuke into the ground and blow both himself and one of the mutants to pieces. Whoopsie.
Regardless, the last one is armed with yet another stupid pipegun, so you just fall onto him like the hungry wolf you could be described as, ripping into his neck even as he fruitlessly tries to shake you off before dying.
"Are you okay? We heard an explosion!""What does he look like, moron? Those other things look worse off.""I'm glad you aren't hurt. Now, uh, why are you eating that one?"
Loosening yourself from your latest victim, you sigh. This may be a trek home, if you take them...
"Okay, stop, important stuff time." You say, and are mildly surprised when they actually quiet down.
"This whole area isn't safe, so we'll be getting back to a semblance of civilization before discussing anything. Sanctuary isn't far off and I'd much prefer to have anything trying to eat us be greeted by turrets rather than having to do it manually."
Turning to the supermutant you ate, you recite the chant and raise it as a zombie. The other ones are blown into little bits and you honestly don't have the patience to gather them up.
"It's moving.""Yes, I can see that""How is it moving?""More importantly, how come he can turn into extinct animals?""Are you still on that?"
Clearing your throat, you tell them to come closer, physically picking them up and having them cling to your undead minion.
"Just hold on to it and we'll be there in no time."
And well, so it goes. A minute or two in, one of them seems to suffer from motion sickness, greatly limiting their ability to ask questions you're ignoring anyway as the other two are busy trying to make him face away from them, thereby pointing his head at the other one, respectively.
Turns out that the middle seat can't vomit out the window, heh.
Regardless, it doesn't take long to get back to Sanctuary, and everyone manages to keep the majority of their stomach contents inside, even. Once you approach, you're greeted by Nora, who just raises an eyebrow while looking at the three stooges.
"I can explain?" You ask, mildly worried she'll make you sleep on the couch.
You don't have a couch, but she could find a way, you're sure.
Nora sighs.
Leading the three stooges towards the workshop house, you're quite surprised to see Kate there, using Slave as a chair while working over some of the guns you have in storage, disassembling, cleaning and/or trashing them for later recycling.
"Hey Kate, I picked up a few randomly teleported scientists. Would you mind helping Nora to interrogate them while I'm off to hunt?"
Turning around without leaving her human chair, Kate just smiles, answering "Sure, Gabe, leave it to me."
"Oh, and your chair is leaking. Should probably do something about that."
Leaving at this point, as you have shit to do, you leave the slack-jawed labcoat boys to your girlfriends and transform once more.
Flying towards the south-east this time, you soon come upon a camp full of people wearing what looks like army uniforms. You think you remember Preston describing these guys. Gunners.
Somewhat better guarded than the last camp you assaulted, you can still see only two guards, and they don't seem too enthusiastic about their job. Time to eat.
First, time to go shadow. Landing some distance away, you untransform and do so. Making your way through the night and into the camp, you consider the enemies.
You might need some help for this. While you could take out the guards trivially, you couldn't necessarily do so quietly. So, naturally, you mentally contact one of your souls, telling it to prepare to be summoned and silently knock out the guard next to it.
That done, you position yourself behind your target. Let's do this.
Surging up from the dark, you take the guard you're aiming for into a chokehold you'd learned from your various souls you forced to train you.
It seems to work wonders, and after a few moments to make sure she really is unconscious, you carefully lower her body, turning around to see your minion having already taken care of his, with what you suspect to be chloroform.
You'd actually heard it doesn't work as well as some media suggests, but hey, maybe what you heard was wrong, or maybe this world just had a superscience variant of it.
Regardless, the guards are unconscious and only sleeping enemies are left.
Time to eat.
Making your immediate decision, you prowl over to the sleeping gunners. Carefully moving around to avoid making noise, you put your hand onto a mouth and nose before biting into a neck, keeping the brief struggle fairly quiet.
Then another one.
And the last one that your minion took down.
That really hit the spot.
Conor, Terence and Woody were normal gunners, that is to say, well armed raiders with a strict social structure that occasionally took contracts from other people.
When they made their camp in order to shake down settlements in the area the next day, they never expected someone would come for them rather than the other way around...
Licking your lips clean after the third meal, you mentally order your summoned soul to make sure the last sleeping enemy isn't going to wake up, before going back to deliberating what to do with them while he walks over and pushes a wet cloth onto her face.
Well, best get them to Sanctuary for now... that is, after you have looted this place for all it's worth. Summoning one of your victims to do so, you soon have a small pile of loot packed into a sack of cloth.
Figuring you may as well make your summoned souls carry your human loot, you're off to Sanctuary.
Overall, this went rather well, you'd say.