#they didnt remove him on time so now with the rains the dead tree fell on top of a lil storage hut

[mxwhore]

the dumbassery is too much for me to handle

[kn1ghthawk]

The New Normal

It had been a week now. Sanctuary was fortified, the Abernathy farm was a fortress. Codsworth had been found and brought up to speed. Concord had met the same scrapping end as Olivia. With Sturges and Victor acting as the gear heads, they were scrapping and throwing everything on the sleds. Jun and Marcy walked the path from concord to sanctuary in the power suits, the cores removed to mere pneumatic strength but slow going. To keep them safe, Preston and Codsworth acted as guards to keep the Long’s safe as everything not welded down got brought back. They had the vertibird from concord and the one on the way to Olivia to strip for components as well.

He was still walking with too much of a limp, so it was time to look for a proper doctor. There was one in some place called diamond city, where the old woman kept pushing him to go, but a traveling merchant named Carla told him of a doctor in bunker hill. Knowing bunker hill as the old war memorial, he decides to head there first. But since he is heading east anyways, Preston asks him to head to tenpines bluff on the way to an old radio tower directly east then straight south to find bunker hill easily enough the first time. As the doctor is sometimes known to travel out that direction anyways, he might get lucky. Checking over the guns and armor again, he starts to head out, his leathers a bit thicker than before, and some simple upgrades for a heavier pistol, longer barrel and compensator with a targeting ring to aim in the general area of what he wanted to kill. He still had the bug-bopper rifle, just in case with a new scope set on top. He wasn't alone, thankfully, with the shepard named ‘Dogmeat’ by everyone else and his technically oldest friend codsworth.  Eastwards was relatively quiet, not even any wild game with all the noise they had been making so far. With his leg not getting any better, they decided to stick to the roads, walking through concord yet again and heading east to the bedford railroad. It was there that Victor encountered the most rancid scent he could believe. It almost smelled like dead bodies or rotting meat, it was similar to the scent of the two headed cow or the man in the hood with radiation burns. The train was there and it looked like it had been there since the bomb dropped with no plans of moving again, some of the other rail cars had not fared so well and it was a blessing they approached from the south to the tower. There was a computer still able to function with some strange notes in it, using codewords, safe drops, and the like. But from the window he saw a disgusting sight: It looked like a emaciated corpse, someone who had starved to death, but it was still moving, crouched down and clawing at a body. He took aim with his sights but didnt pull the trigger. He had no silencer and as screwed up as this new world was, that might not be the only one here. Ordering the others to stay, he belly-crawled closer through the station, noting a few more of the putrid people not even talking, just growling like animals. He noticed an old oil barrel and recalled the olivia station as he took aim and fired, letting the fumes turn to flames and engulf these creatures as he made his way up a fallen tree trunk to get some space. Well he certainly kicked a hornets nest for sure, but these things seemed to lack the ability to easily reason as he took what little time he had to aim and take them off as they funneled up the same trunk he did. The flames and gunshots, not only allerted the remaining creatures, but his companions as well as the dog literally tackled into one from behind, bringing it to the ground and ripping its rotting right limb from the torso. Codsworth was a frighting display of flames and sawblades as it butchered through anything within range over four feet high. Between the three of them, they managed to remove the remaining creatures and take a minute to recover, Victor giving the dog first aid and codsworth producing some purified water to dress the wounds. By the time all was said and done, the area examined from front to back and all the chests gone through it was already getting dark, but that just made the campfire easier to see on the top of the hills. Making the march in the dark was unwanted, but a pathway was still able to be made out from something heavy trafficking through the spaces. There wasn't much to the farm to be honest. A few sheds and some rows of tomatoes made the Abernathy look incredible by comparison. As he approached, he announced he was part of the minutemen and allowed to come close enough to the fire to see a man in a white lab coat with two armed guards beside him. “That is an impressive brace you made for yourself, but I’m certain it is only making things worse. I’m Doc weathers and I’ll fix yer flat tire there for forty caps.” Not even bothering to negotiate, victor pulled out a little lunchbox he found and was keeping the caps in there 10,20, 30, 40, with 10 more on top to hope he did a decent job. The man with thinking black hair nodded to one of the guards to take the caps as he got to work, starting with a simple injection to numb the pain, then everything went dark. *** Vic woke up and the sun was out, his boot and brace were off and his leg wrapped in actual white bandages. He was laying on a mattress with dogmeat curled up by his side and codsworth standing vigil. “So good to see you awake, sir. You were in a worse case than you had let on. While you were under, they had to charge an additional fifty ‘caps’ to bring you back to full but I can see now you are right as rain! The settlers here are waiting to speak with you, something about the creatures we dispatched yesterday.” As if on cue, a man with short brown hair approached and tossed some sort of meat to the dog and a tato to victor himself. “Wanted to thank you, we helped move you over her so as to rest the spell. Apparently you already cleared out what we called for the minute men to take care of, so thanks for that. We’ll let everyone know the minutemen are back and taking care of trouble before it starts. By chance, you don't happen to have any other kinds of food on you? We are growing our own but it's hard going, we’d be willing to trade if you got anything else.” In an hour, he had given and gotten from them in trade since Codsworth had just handed over the whole cache of caps while the doctor was working, some of the Abernathy melons seeds growing in a patch and a fairly safe route for them to take to trade with the farmers he had established already. Since he was skilled enough to take on ‘ghouls’ as they were seemingly called, an apt name as any, they had problems with a raider just to the northeast just past the overpass he could see from the farm. The raider had power armor and a fatman, calling himself ‘Boomer’. Taking the chance, Victor waited till nightfall before heading over crossing down one side and up the other of the train track valley leading back to Bedford station. He inched his way out across the stone shelf and waited, and waited, watching through the scope he continued to wait, watching the power armors helmet sweep left and right meant he had to wait. Finally exhaustion overtook the leader as he took the power armor up the stairs in order to go to bed. All it took was a moment, all victor had was a moment. The shot rang out as the round split the crazy warkawk haircut. As soon as the man fell, everyone else started to scramble, but he knew what someone panicking would do and waited for the next one to run to their leader, either for the launcher or the suit, another round came in just under the arm in the gap of the armor and two were down before he had to abandon his shelf. Codsworth and the dog closed the distance to finish the third and an automated turret before Victor could even make it down there. And just like that, three more dead raiders, three less scum in the world. Unfortunately, there was a fourth, either positioned down the road or coming back from somewhere else, a lucky shot hit his armor over the shoulderblade hard enough to send victor spinning around and a second sent him flat on his back. A few more shots rang off of metal while victor stared at the sky before a flamethrower made the last one die screaming. A stimpack for the bruising and possible broken bones and victor crawled his way up the stairs to collapse on the mattress, kicking the dead away more out  of annoyance than horror. It was not comforting how easy it was getting to adapt to this new world.