I woke up looking at the sky, in a brown-grey wasteland, surrounded by nothing but dirt and debris and the walls of a canyon to the side. I hissed at the pain pounding in my head as I tried to get my bearings when I saw something on the horizon that made my stomach drop and my blood freeze; a giant wasp-like creature. A Cazador, a thing I had only seen from the safety of my home when I was safe behind a screen. Those things aren't supposed to exist. Those things are supposed to be video game enemies and I was looking at one, not a few of them, but a goddamn swarm.

"Oh, fuck that's not good," I whispered as I madly tried to scramble away out of sight of the horrific abomination against mother nature. The presence of Cazadors had horrifying implications. Namely reincarnation, transmigration, ROB shenanigans, being a ungh gamer and many other things but none of them currently made themselves known. So, I was on my own in what I had to assume was fallout.

With those horrific thoughts swirling in my head, I hid behind a pile of loose rocks and took stock of the new situation I found myself in. as well as the quite possibly new world.

"Right then. Gun, water, food, shelter in that order or else I'm probably going to be a corpse by the evening. First, what do I have?" I looked down, checking my body. I had all my fingers and toes and as a result of that conclusion all my limbs were accounted for but there was a big problem.

I was younger than I remembered. If I had to guess I would have had to say about late teens but that was ambiguous with a stringy body like mine. This wasn't good; being a young girl in the world of Fallout without any family or group usually wasn't going to end pretty. At least my body was androgynous enough to be mistaken for a boy at a distance if I cut my hair.

For the first time in my life, I was distinctly unhappy about the fact that I was a redhead. It wouldn't be easy to hide my hair with its vibrant colour.

"Right. As soon as I find some lye, I'm bleaching you. Sorry old friend but needs must when the devil drives and judging by the looks of it he brought a party bus. And it's not going to do either of us any good if you give away our location with your glorious shine," I apologised to my hair as I kept hiding behind the pile of loose rocks, hoping that the crimes against evolution hadn't seen me.

Luckily for me, they hadn't seen me and I was able to sneak away from the swarm of murder beasts. I made my way to the far wall of the canyon and slowly crept upwards towards the exit.

Feeling somewhat safe I took the time to check myself for gear. I had my trusty leather hip pouches holding my wallet containing mostly cards and some cash both now useless; what was much less useless was my concealed carry knife. The tiny one-blade carbon steel knife with a walnut handle of my creation would not fail me for most of the simple survival tasks, but it was not needed for that as I had its big brothers. One strapped to my hip and the other inside my right combat boot.

Next up was my basic medic kit in the other pouch followed by my Ferro rod and my smoking pipe and my pouch of tobacco.

At least I would have something to calm my nerves.I also managed to find my iPhone 14 and my Air Pods, as well as the solar charger and the cable needed.

"At least I got lucky enough to be grabbed when I was getting ready to go for a long hike and not when I got ready to go to bed. Just wish I had my bag too. This shit would have been so much easier if I had all of my gear and not just the bare minimum," I hissed as I drew my combat knife from its hip holster and crept forwards.

I had a rough idea of where I was. If I was correct in my assumption then I was lucky enough to be near Goodsprings. I was soon proven right when I came upon a rather grizzly sight. Goodsprings was burning.

I saw a charred corpse of who I assumed was the courier, and there was fighting going on between Powder Gangers. The villagers were dead or missing, those I saw were in various states of dismemberment or mutilation.

This brought back memories of bad times in the army as a combat medic. Burnt corpses flashed before my eyes as my body threatened to cease up but I ruthlessly squashed it down with cold logic and detachment. They were dead and there was nothing I could do. Unless I wanted to join them, I needed to keep moving and fast.

It hit me rather hard at this point that I was no longer in a civilised world but in a death world. One of the safer ones, sure, but still a death world. I had survival training and experience but I had no idea how to deal with bullshit on this level.

And that scared me a lot.I felt something titanic well up deep inside my soul. Massive celestial bodies, entire constellations of unfathomable power were swirling inside of the deepest darkest reaches of my soul. A very specific feeling.

I knew what this was. I had read stories about this. I dreamt about this. But never had I thought it would actually be a thing.

The Celestial Forge, the most powerful cheat I knew of. And I had gotten one. Maybe the only one in existence. But that didn't matter right now. What did matter was the fact that I could feel a key in my pocket and there was a door up there in the cemetery used as a crude gravestone.

It wasn't there in the games, but right now I didn't care how it got there. It was a door and I would use it.

I instinctively knew that I could use any door with a keyhole and a doorframe to access a personal workspace in which I would be safe from the outside world as soon as I closed the door no matter what happened to the door. Even a nuclear explosion wouldn't reach me courtesy of not being in the same dimension as the explosion.

I slowly and very quietly made my way up the hill, practically crawling as I avoided detection using half-forgotten skills learned in basic army training.

I managed to sneak to the top of the hill without getting detected and even managed to loot the Pipboy from the courier's cooling corpse, seeing as he was almost at the top of the cemetery hill. In doing so I managed to get myself a rather old varmint rifle as well as 10 rounds of ammunition for the thing. The rest of his gear was unusable as he was burnt to a crisp. The smell of burnt human meat was one of the worst things I ever had the displeasure of smelling but I had no time to panic. I needed to make it to that door because I could hear the powder gangers in the distance. They had noticed something. The few of them that were still alive weren't killing each other anymore and were presumably looking for me and I had no plans of being in the same dimension as people who burnt towns and slaughtered the entire population for fun. The games really didn't do justice to the sheer degeneracy that were raiders.

I threw caution to the wind and ran the last few metres to the old door frame and door used as a grave marker, jammed the key in and wrenched the door open before jumping in and slamming it shut.

I had done it. I was safe. I had survived my first hostile encounter in the world of fallout and even gotten myself a Pipboy and a weapon.

Now if only my heart would stop hammering in my throat. That would be great.

I took a look around and began to cry from the sight. I didn't just find myself in any old workshop but my old man's workshop. I knew this place. I knew the location of every screwdriver, every file, every nut, bolt, washer and other little oddities he and his father before him and his grandfather before him collected. Beyond that, I had access to all the tools my family collected over our long lineage as craftsmen and builders. I was pretty certain that some of the tools in my family's collection could be counted as museum pieces if not historical artefacts and now they would never be lost to time no matter what.

This fact more than anything brought me some form of comfort. My family was gone. I was unsure if I would ever see them again. But at least their legacy would live on no matter what.

Of that I was certain. Even after my uncertain death in the possible far future and the passing down of the forge, this little workshop of Swiss craftsmanship would live on. Having become a node of the forge of its own.

And nothing would ever be able to remove it.

The hand forged tools, the hand carved mallets it was all here. And in that moment, it really hit me what I had lost.

I was a whole universe away from home with no one I Knew. nothing familiar beyond my family's tools and my hard-earned skills and even my body was not my own. I was younger than I was used to, some of my memories, entire years worth I suspect were missing.

I suppressed a sob, made a crude bed built from foam boards, a bag of unused rags and a painter's tarp before tossing some wood into the old stove and curling up in my cot beneath an old oiled army tarp.

I would survive this world and I would end whoever was responsible for this.I remembered only a name and it brought me boundless fathomless rage.

Simurgh the winged bitch of worm. She tried to suck me into her bullshit and she would come to regret that decision for the short time it would take me to smile in her face before I tore apart her very essence on a conceptual level to such a degree that she would be forgotten the moment I was finished with her.

She took me from my family, hoping to use me in some of her ungodly schemes but sadly for her, I was destined for the forge and it does not like to share. I was taken before my time and as such I was given certain privileges.

One being that my family's legacy would survive no matter what, then the removal of any and all of her influences on myself, another being that I got some of my gear as a starter to go with me as well as a general de–ageing as well as a removal of what I just know is a whole lot of trauma and finally the private dimension that is my family's workshop.

I took out my phone and connected it to the workshop's power grid and its old ratty speakers before selecting the one song that I knew would get me through the night.

Children of the Omnissiah

For when you find yourself in a strange new world full of mutants, monsters, raiders and heretics against general human decency as well as sensible mechanical design there is only one thing to do.

Grab your tools, grab your guns and get ready to build yourself back to civilization. And maybe even get yourself some cool pet along the way too.

"Just you wait, you flying bitch. I'll pluck your feathers."

I turned around and fell asleep.

The next morning after getting myself some water from the workshop's supply, something I would forever be grateful to my little sister for needing for her leatherworking, I got to work with the proper zeal expected of the cult mechanicus.

I began by disassembling my weapon into its components.

The stock was almost entirely rotten. It was in such bad shape that I could do nothing but replace it, requiring me to fabricate an entirely new stock from walnut. The barrel was in surprisingly good condition if not entirely straight.

It took me the better part of an hour to get it straightened out and within acceptable tolerances of ±0.01mm plumb to the barrel's endpoint in relation to the central axis.

The firing mechanism needed to be rebuilt from the ground up so I recreated the parts from 4140 Steel using my trusty Cnc Mill. I then surface-hardened the pieces to improve their longevity even if the forge would repair the finished weapon after roughly 48 hours if it broke. But fiat backing was no excuse for shoddy craftsmanship. I would not build something that was below the best of my base ability. None of this was given to me beyond the materials and even those were only a copy of what my family had accumulated over the years. I would not dishonour my family or myself by building something of subpar quality.

As I put the rebuilt varmint rifle back together, I felt it the first of many connections of the forge's connection was descending from the Knowledge domain towards me.

The vastness of space was revealed to me and so were the dangers of its many many environments. Vacuums, the unstable gravity wells collapsing stars, the frigid temperatures of the void between the celestial bodies and the harsh irradiated waves of solar winds.

All deadly in their own unique ways, each and everyone waiting to tear the flesh off my bones, to rend me apart atom by atom, quark by quark.

And yet I knew. I knew how to defend myself. I was a starfarer and I was able to build wonders of personal protection. The forge had given me the power to survive the horrors of radiation without worry or deformation.

The Environmental Protection was now mine and I was safe so long as I had an EPP on myself and it was active. I would be comfortable no matter the temperature or the radiation levels. As soon as I found myself the needed materials.

But that was fine. This was going to be worth the trouble of collecting the materials.

I turned back to my varmint rifle and began the process of engraving it with cogs and motive force needed to be represented after all. No implement of just death could go without its mark.

Next, I began to build some cheap fragmentation grenades from gelled gasoline, black powder, PVC pipes, and a heck of a lot of ball bearings and nails.

I started with a small PVC tube filled with black powder. This then got slotted in a larger tube filled with ball bearings and nails drenched in the gasoline with the dissolved Styrofoam suspended in solution in order to get it to stick. The space between the pipes was filled with a combination of baking soda from the smithing supplies and baked sugar as well as something extra from the gardening supply and the pool cleaning in order to facilitate a delayed reaction as well as a massive plume of caustic smoke that would burn their lungs should they survive the air burst or the shrapnel.

If they got away from all of that the gasoline would stick to their clothes and impede them, by burning them rather horribly thus making them easy pickings.

I proceeded to add crude stabilisation fins and a controlled burn charge of about 25 seconds to my creation before adding a very basic shape charge to get the thing airborne on impact.

And with that, I was done.

Those powder gangers wanted to act like beasts? Fine, then I would treat them as such they deserved no mercy and the Geneva Convention did not exist on this planet. They were about to learn the horrors of napalm and airburst mortar grenades.

I spent the next four hours fabricating 25 grenades in total as well as a mortar for delivery.

Now I just needed some armour. I headed over to my sister's leatherworking station.

"Thanks sis, your silly hobby is going to keep me alive after all. Guess you win that bet."

I murmured to myself as I grabbed some heavy buffalo leather and began to form it into the rough shape of a piece of chest armour.

It took me hours since I wasn't nearly as good as my little sister, having focused much more on metalwork growing up but, in the end, I managed to create a piece of chest armour made from studded leather with an insert made from layered fibre mesh and a 2mm 4130 steel plate in the front.

It was unwieldy, it was ugly and I had painted it the colour of dirt but it would keep me safe from small arms fire and most minor laser weapons. The fibre mesh should stop shrapnel too.

I was as ready as I would ever be. I drank some more water to make sure I was properly hydrated and made my way to the car tool section of the workshop getting one of the endoscopes. No way I was opening the door to the wasteland without first checking if it was safe.

I moved as many of the heavy forging shields as I could in front of the door, creating a kill box, placed the fire extinguisher next to my feet, ball bearings ready to trip anyone stupid enough to enter and gasoline ready to burn a fucker.

If they were camping me on the other side of the door, they would rapidly learn that my family's workshop was no treasure to be looted and I was no prize to be obtained. This would be their grave. I cautiously opened the door just a crack with a long piece of steel and sent forth the probe of the endoscope.

It was late evening outside and darkness was settling over the landscape. This could either be an advantage or a problem. I swivelled the endoscope all around the door to make sure there wasn't any form of ambush set up for me.

After having confirmed that fact I turned the endoscope towards Goodsprings. The Powder gangers were still in the process of looting, burning and…

They were eating the corpses.

"Alright, I'm in fallout. Food is rare. Really, I should have expected this but that's just."

My mind couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. Logically I understood what was happening and why they were doing it. I was however fully incapable of processing such atrocities.

I retracted the endoscope and grabbed my mortar. Those were not people; they were not human. They were one thing and one thing only.

Heretek

I was leaning heavily into the existence of the cult mechanicus to blunt my roiling emotions and get through this hell. There was no time to panic. There was no time to freak out, there were heretics to purge and the Omnissiah demanded death.

I snuck out of my holy workshop after putting on the old WW2 helmet my grandfather hand-modified to be used as a welding helmet. I had kept him safe and it would serve me well too.

I set up the mortar behind an outcropping of rocks and took aim at the rather large concentration of heretics. One quick prayer to the Omnissiah later the mortar round was in the air. My Hippocratic oath irrevocably shattered as an implement of holy wrath exploded in the air above the group.

Some of them, the lucky ones were close enough to the blast centre to be killed instantly, being turned into nothing more than fine red mist from the shrapnel and the air burst ripping their bodies to pieces.

Those closer weren't so lucky. Their bodies full of red-hot nails and ball bearings, digging into their flesh and organs causing them to exsanguinate from their injuries. Then came those in the third ring of the explosion burning and screaming as the gelled gasoline clung to their form and ate away at their flesh, their screams caused me to throw up what little food I still had left in my stomach but I soldiered on.

Then came the last ring, those unlucky enough to be at the very edges of the explosion. They were on the floor coughing and wheezing for air that would never come as their lungs slowly filled with water.

That something extra I mentioned? Chlorine gas.

Now normally you shouldn't be able to create an airburst mortar round from bits and bobs but this was fallout normal rules didn't apply here.

In this one act, I had created a mortar round that just KNEW wouldn't work in my home universe. But it confirmed something that I had theorised about fallout. It ran on the rule of cool to some extent and I would weaponize this.

I took five more rounds and carpet-bombed the town. After all, there could have been survivors

And that was unacceptable. They had slaughtered an entire town intending to eat them and I would not allow one single Heretek of such vile nature to live past the hour.

After a sustained bombardment of five shells, I stopped and took out the infrared camera used to check the integrity of a house's insulation. It worked rather well to see if there was someone alive outside of the bombing range. To my surprise, I found the form of what had to be a dog and a person hidden in what I assumed to be a root cellar beneath one of the houses. Survivors?

They clearly weren't with the powder gangers and I had an idea as to who they might be. I reclaimed my mortar, stowed it in the workshop, retrieved my medic kit and some water and made my way towards the house.

I took care to avoid the clouds of chlorine gas I had unleashed upon this world. I had a feeling they would stay for three days if not more…

Bracing myself for a possible fight I knocked against the hidden cellar door.

"Hello, anyone there? You're safe now I killed the powder gangers. You should have heard the explosions. I have medicine and water and I'm willing to trade for food and information."

I tried to sound as friendly as I could, falling back on my experience as a medic even though I broke my oath. But then again, was cutting away the infection against my oath? Something to ponder later.

"Keep away you. I-I"ll shoot you. You won't get Cheyenne you motherfuckers. You already killed everyone else. You won't have her." The voice screams and I can hear the frantic loading of a rifle from the inside as well as the growling of a dog.

"Relax. Miss. If you would listen to my voice, you would hear that I am female, yes? And young too. Now what do you think would be my fate if I were to run with the powder gangers? I am sure you can guess what they would do to me. No, I assure you I am not one of those monsters. They got a taste of air-burst gelled gasoline fragmentation mortar rounds. They are nothing more than corpses by now as a result of sustained carpet bombing of their location. You and your friend are very safe, Miss. May I come in without getting shot? I promise to not make any rapid movements and keep my weapon holstered on my back so long as neither of you tries to harm me."

I spoke in as soothing a voice as I could manage. Holstering my rifle on my back I waited for an answer.

"They are dead? All of the fuckers? Hah, I guess there is some good left in the world." I could hear her wheezing from inside the cellar, it didn't sound good from what I could hear.

"You are hurt, I'm coming in. I'm a trained medic and it's my duty to help if I can."

I braced myself for getting shot at but opened the door anyway. The expected bullet didn't come, instead, I was greeted with a grizzly sight.

A young girl in her late teens and her dog were huddled in the corner of the cellar, huddled against a wall and half-hidden behind an old pallet. Her chest was a bleeding mess and I was certain that without immediate medical assistance, she would expire within the hour.

"Fuck you are in some deep shit. Alright, I can fix this. I have patched up worse. Can you walk? We need to get you into my workshop right now."

The girl blinked in confusion as I rushed over to her and checked her injuries. Her ribs were a broken mess, luckily her lungs were intact from a glance. Her breathing was erratic but in line with trauma and not with a punctured lung. That was good. I didn't have the supplies for an operation. I could probably make do but it would be horrific.

I moved on to check her limbs, all accounted for, if in some cases horribly injured. Her left arm was pretty much minced meat, most of the skin was burnt and she had a large amount of shrapnel in it. I would have to do something horrible to fix that unless the forge gave me something to help with it. As it stood, I could stabilise her but the wounds would keep getting worse and worse leading to infection and necrosis in about 2 weeks. That gave me a window. It was a horrible idea to do this but considering how quickly the forge advanced I was holding off on amputation.

Her legs were in much better shape luckily, not a picture of health. She still had some cuts and bruises but this was much better than her left arm. This I could fix with some of the antibiotics from my med kit and a liberal application of disinfectant and bandages.

"Alright you are not walking like this hold on I will be right back, Omnissiah this is going to freak you out so much. Alright, don't mind the unstable dimensional rift opening in the door that was up till now just a door. I'm going to go get you an ad hoc gurney to get you out of here and into a safe stable environment so I can patch you up. DON'T FALL ASLEEP ALRIGHT? Can you do that for me? I'll be right back."

I waited for her to confirm that she wouldn't fall asleep. This was vital right now. I needed her awake so I could check her vitals in an aware state.

"Ok miss hallucination I'll stay awake."

I added an altered mental state to the list of her symptoms but I was expecting that. She just witnessed the murder and probable consumption of her entire family. I would be worried if she wasn't affected by it.

Having obtained her confirmation that, she would try not to fall asleep I moved towards the door and closed it from the inside before removing the key from my pocket and opening the gateway to my workshop.

"What the fuck? That's not the outside. Guess I died down here huh? Come to collect me for the great scrap pile in heaven Miss Angel? Will I get to take Cheyenne with me?"

That was about as good a reaction as I could hope to get considering I just opened a dimensional gateway in a doorway.

"Just try to stay awake. I'm going to fix you up." I assured her.

I walked through the gateway and rushed past my improvised kill box, making sure to open a gap wide enough to allow me to ferry her inside on a creeper roller. Seeing as I didn't have an actual gurney, I had to use a mechanics tool. Sure, it was designed to roll underneath a car but it was also designed to carry a person.

As soon as I was past my defences, I felt another node descend from the forge this time from the future knowledge domain. The power of Metal artisan filled my mind with the mechanical knowledge of an entire civilisation. Spaceships, computers and so much more bloomed in my mind, the short-term migraine was massive but I soldiered on. I had a life to save.

I chose to ignore the fact that a small hose had just popped into existence adjacent to my workshop, linked by a steel tunnel similar to those found in a vault. It was nice that I would no longer have to sleep on the workshop floor but I had a life to save and that was more important than having a fridge.

I found the creeper just where it was supposed to be right next to the car lift, stashed behind the massive air compressors. I always thought they were too big. Now they were reassuring. A resource to have if I ever needed them. Like so many things Dad insisted on hoarding. I doubted that he expected something like this to happen but it was still better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I took the creeper and some extra medical supplies and made my way back out of the workshop. On the way out I realised that opening the door from the inside of a building was actually a good idea for stealth purposes if I had to leave the door open.

I returned to find the girl petting her dog with her good hand. This was a good sign it meant that she wasn't all gone mentally in the time I was gone to get my improvised gurney.

"Alright I'm back, let's get you out of here. I'm going to need you to lay down on the improvised gurney, then I will pull you out of here and yes of course your dog can come along."

I informed her of the plan to get her out of this mess of a cellar and into the safety of my workshop. I would feel a lot better as soon as they were both safe inside of my workshop. Hidden in a different dimension and far away from any raiders or worse. I had no idea if my bombardment had attracted attention but I had to assume that it had. I hadn't been subtle with my use of ordinance and it would have been visible for quite a distance.

I continued to ponder the implications of my actions as I loaded her on the creeper and gently pushed her into the workshop.

Meanwhile, her dog was following behind us. Looking at me wearily, ready to tear my throat out should I hurt its mistress.

"You have a very fateful companion there. She looks about ready to tear out my throat if I make a wrong move." I made small talk to distract her from her injuries as I gently loaded the creeper onto a bike lift and lifted her up to operating height.

"Cheyenne? Cough Yeah, she's a good girl. So, this is the afterlife?" I sighed.

"No, you aren't dead and this isn't the afterlife. You are inside my workshop. Now that we are out of immediate danger let me introduce myself. I'm Alice. A victim of dimensional displacement. May I know your name? And in response to your question. You find yourself in my pocket universe. Also known as the steam workshop. Here I build my tools and hide between exploring the local universe for supplies. Now I am going to have to stabilise your wounds. This is going to hurt a lot. You have been exposed to who knows what out there in the wasteland and have probably never seen the inside of a sterile environment before today. I am going to have to remove those rags you call clothes because they are not sanitised and they are shredded too. Don't worry you can get something from my closet later but for now, they have to go. Do I have your permission to stabilise you?" I asked as I got the necessary tools ready.

"Huh sure go ahead. I'm called Sunny Smiles." Sunny told me her name and gave me the go-ahead as I got the last of my tools ready.

I began by cutting off her chest coverings, exposing a rather gruesome blunt trauma wound. Her chest was one big bruise in the places where her skin was still intact.

"Dynamite exposure?" I asked her clinically as I washed down her chest with warm clean saline water to get the dirt off and prevent the spread of minor pathogens.

She hissed as the saline solution washed out her wounds. "Yeah, I took an indirect hit from one of the bastards." She explained between laboured breaths.

"You got lucky, if you hadn't had cover the shockwave would have pulped your organs. I'm guessing it tossed you away and you ran. Judging from the state of your arm, you used something as a shield, holding it in your left hand. The dynamite landed in front of you and you used something sturdy, probably wood from the splinters as a defence. Now brace yourself, this will hurt like hell." I told her what I assumed had happened and warned her of the pain to come.

At the same time, I began to do something that in a normal situation would be seen as barbaric, I began to roughly align her ribs as best I could without an x-ray. She howled in pain and I had to almost dodge a lunging dog if she hadn't grabbed Cheyenne by the collar.

"Y-yeah p-pretty much. What the fuck was that?" she asked through gritted teeth.

"I apologise but I had to set your misaligned ribs otherwise there was a chance that they could have punctured your lungs, causing you to drown in your own blood. I don't have the equipment to operate, nor do I have an autodoc or stimpacks as such I was forced to improvise to ensure your survival. It is not ideal and I would have loved to avoid such drastic measures but two of your ribs were horribly misaligned. Measures had to be taken otherwise a strong cough would have been enough to cause your death. Now I will apply a strong antiseptic to your wounds including your arm. This will burn. It won't even come close to the pain of setting a rib but it will hurt. Ready?"

I asked with concern in my voice and a large bottle of iodine at the ready.

"Fuck it. It can't be worse than what you just did. If I couldn't feel how much easier it is to breathe, I would have shot you for that. You know what you are doing huh? Alright, I'm ready. Do your worst." Sunny said, gripping the creeper for support and bracing herself for the pain.

"Here we go." I drenched some gauze in the iodine and began to wrap up the wounds on her chest, careful enough not to apply a compression bandage but tight enough to keep the ribs somewhat supported. I then moved on to her arm and first washed it down with saline again as it had produced puss since the first wash. I sighed and grabbed a box cutter, sterilised it with a quick application of the welding torch and set to the unenviable task of field-draining infected flesh.

"Alright, your arm is worse than I thought. How long were you down there roughly? I need to know so I know if I have to amputate it or if antibiotics will be enough." I asked in a grave voice, ignoring the horrible flashbacks this was causing to treating phosphorus exposure.

"A-about 2 days, I think. It's hazy. Cheyenne dragged me down there." Sunny explains with a confused expression, not understanding my worry.

This was lining up with what I was seeing. The second-degree burns had become infected and what should have just been sacks of tissue fluid had become sores full of puss.

"I am going to have to cut away the infected skin or you will lose the arm. Luckily for you, it shouldn't hurt too much but it will be ugly. So, if you can't stomach it, look away."

I took the improvised scalpel and began to open up the burn wounds, draining them of fluid and removing the infected outer tissue. I then washed it down with pure saline followed by undiluted iodine. Next came iodine-soaked gauze, followed by clean gauze and finally bandages.

Through all of it, Sunny soldiered on bravely but her expression when she saw what her arm looked like underneath the leftovers of her clothes was telling. She had been compartmentalising the pain to deal with it as best she could.

Admirable considering, she never had any military training and had just lost everything.

"There we go this should be it for your arms and torso now for your legs. How are you holding up Sunny?" I asked as I cut away the burnt rags she used as pants.

"Honestly doc you are doing a damn fine job at patching me up. Considering you don't have any chems lying around. I expected you to just tick me with something and call it a day." Sunny whispered. Not used to pepper medical treatment.

This grated on my nerves. What I was doing could hardly be considered adequate work for a trained combat medic but I had to work with my limited resources.

As I was in the process of bandaging up her legs, I could feel another small node dislodge itself from the forge. This time it was from the crafting domain.

The most basic tool of humanity was the rock, before we used anything else we hit stuff with rocks. The logical evolution of this principle was the hammer. It was still the most basic of all tools and yet it also held tremendous potential.

It could be said that all advancements of humanity came from the moment when we first bashed two rocks together. Two hammers striking each other and discovering fire.

As such it was only natural that the hammer would be capable of tremendous things. Specifically, the repair of anything and everything mechanical. If it was a machine, I could fix it no matter how damaged. As long as I had a hammer, I could fix it. That did not even begin to describe what I was capable of building now. As long as I had parts I could build. The things I would build wouldn't be pretty but they would work. Oh boy, would they work.

"Alright, you are all bandaged up. Let's get you an office chair and I'll move you to the living space then we can get some actual non-irradiated food in you. I'm pretty sure that you are going to enjoy the taste of food that wasn't exposed to radiation and so is Cheyenne."

I carefully Helped Sunny into a wheeled Work chair and pushed her towards the house. I was very glad that I got that addition to my workshop now I would always have a fully stocked fridge, a place to sleep and a bath. I smiled as I pushed my patient's chair towards the house, Cheyenne following closely behind us.

This wasn't so bad. I could make a difference here.

Perks this chapter

-Environmental Protection (Starbound) (0CP)

It is a dangerous universe out there, and you'll need protection. You know how to make Environmental Protection Packs (EPPs), specialized devices designed to protect the wearer from hazards such as lack of oxygen or heightened levels of radiation. You can fine-tune them to block out most forms of danger that you come across. Just be aware, the more dangers you are blocking, the more energy and exotic materials your EPP will require.

-Metal Artisan (world seed) (-200):

Knowing a thing or two about software is nice and all, and creating intelligence yourself is pretty useful, but why would you limit yourself so? Needing to rely on hardware and machines other people create is a big no-no for such an inventor type yourself. So, you've taught yourself all you need to make whatever you want, provided you have the resources at hand. First of all, you know how to build pretty much any modern earth technology, whether that is laser pistols, hard drives with dozens of exabytes of storage and computers with insane specs in general, spaceships, or even rudimentary antimatter weaponry, though the latter would require resources impossible for a single man to obtain. Beyond that, you can easily integrate any new technology and knowledge you obtain into your tech base, which should grant you

much potential indeed considering the possibilities the world of Neolife holds within itself.

-Seed Storage (world seed) (free):

A small house, fitted with everything the average Jumper might need, such as a fully stocked fridge and a comfortable bed. It is designed with your likes, wants, and personality in mind, will always be clean and dust-free and is never going to be damaged by anything going on in the real world. This is where you start the jump, standing right before your brand-new Seed in an otherwise, empty room. After this jump, the house will become a warehouse attachment you can summon into the world wherever you want, and retain any modifications you make.

-Hammer Jammer (Mtg Bablovia) (-100 CP)

Sometimes, all you need is a hammer. You've become insanely good at all sorts of Do-it-Yourself work and inventing gadgets, even with unusual parts. They might seem crude and useless from the outside, but the contraption you invent does their job just fine. You also become good at repairing things, there's nothing you and your hammer can't fix.

-Workshop (Personal Reality) 100:

Instead of the standard workshop, you have been granted your family's legacy as an apology by the forge for its failure to protect you from outside influence until the time was right for you to start your journey. Everything your family has collected has been copied and added as a workshop and is considered fiat-backed, even if you disassemble it and build new and exciting things. You will get power and water free of charge. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Anything built in one of those workshops is fiat-backed to be restored to its original condition within 72 hours if damaged or destroyed.

-Access Key (Personal Reality) Free:

This is a special key which lets you access your Personal Reality and its contents.

When inserted into any lock on any door, the door opens to reveal a gateway into your Reality at a predetermined location within it. You are the only person who can take the key from the lock, the gateway remains open as long as the key is in the lock, and if the key is ever lost or stolen you will find it in your pocket a few minutes later.