Ready to see my new friend off and get busy airing these two places out, I got Trev's ECHO number and arranged a time to meet up later, which would be about 4 hours later, eight o'clock tonight and at the same exact establishment we frequented earlier. I was planning on saying goodbye and waving him off here, but we were heading in the same direction, so we stuck with each other until we got to the lot that had my dump truck.
"Alright, this is where we separate. Have fun cleaning, Vic."
"Haha, fun." I laughed monotonously, knowing full well I had one hell of a job ahead of me. "I'll catch you at Jerry's tonight."
Waving my dark-skinned acquaintance off, I stuck the plump sleeping skag pups in their "seat", climbed into the truck, and drove the mechanical beast down the street and pulled into the garage I had just purchased. I then threw it in park, hopped out of it, and grabbed a shop vac I spotted earlier along with a handful of old beat up fans around the place and got to work cleaning and airing these 2 new properties of mine out.
Both properties hadn't been inhabited nor used in quite some time, so there was plenty of dust and debry to clean up, to say the least. However, after cleaning practically nonstop for a couple of hours, the only place left untouched by my shop vac and cleaning rag was that locked door on the first floor of my new home.
"Phew, I'm nearly done." I thought aloud, eager to get this over with and move all my junk in.
I wanted to wrap this up as quickly as possible, so I visited the garage once more and grabbed a screwdriver as well as a handful of other tools before returning to the locked door. The minute I arrived in front of it, I looked it over from top to bottom to figure out how I wanted to go about opening it.
If I want to see what's behind it without damaging the door, I guess my best bet is to take the doorknob off and dismantle the lock. I'm not a locksmith, nor do I have the tools required to try going that route, so this is my best option at the moment.
Setting my other tools to the side, I began unscrewing each screw one by one. I enjoyed tinkering around with stuff back in my old world, so I quickly had it all apart and sitting beside me, and not even a second after I completed my handiwork, I opened the sturdy metal door. I thought I was going to be looking at a closet of some kind, but to my surprise what lay beyond it was a set of stairs leading down into darkness.
Sweet, I have a basement.
Raring to explore, I located a light switch, switched it on, and took the steps leading downward. It wasn't a long flight of stairs, so it soon revealed a mostly bare concrete basement, with only a washer, dryer, and a couple dozen empty crates strewn about, and amongst those crates I found was one of those crimson weapon chests.
"Oh, look what we have here."
As I was beginning to get excited, I started approaching the lone chest, and once I was in front of it, I activated it. This caused it to release a bunch of meaty mechanical noise as it whirred to life and brought to bear what was hidden inside.
It's not exactly a jackpot, but I'll take it, nevertheless.
What lay on display was an alien and organic-looking Eridian weapon with two barrels, one stacked on top of the other, and an odd-looking sight attached right behind the dark violet infinitely recharging magazine. I knew it was a blaster of some kind given its physical feature but I was unsure of what variant it was.
Curious, I examined the weapon over and over as I considered just aiming it at the wall and pulling the trigger. However, I didn't want to go fucking my new pad right from the get-go, so I took to the net to find out just what I had on my hands. And even though I was still a noob when it came to the ECHO net, my efforts didn't go unrewarded.
So, it's a Mercurial Blaster, huh... Well, that's the one I would've wanted out of the variants I know of, so I'm glad it's something I would actually want to use.
Happy to have a fast-firing alien blaster in my hands, I stowed it away in my "backpack" whilst I went back upstairs to grab my vacuum cleaner. When I returned, I restarted my work, but the basement was sealed up pretty well, so there wasn't much to suck up. Hence, I moved on to the garage next and finished cleaning both properties in the hour.
Okay, time to start unloading and moving all my loot into my new home. But before I begin, let me dump that one skill point I earned on the drive to Fyrestone into | Just Got Real |... There, now I only need 2 more levels to go before I have this skill tree maxed out.
Although I very much wished to race off to the bounty board to grab myself a handful of missions and run out of town to go commit a slaughter upon the local bandit population, I was well aware of what needed to be taken care of now. So I threw those sorts of thoughts to the back of my mind, grabbed the still peacefully sleeping skag pups, and brought them into their new home for the foreseeable future.
From there, I deposited them on a makeshift doggy bed I managed to scrounge up on the third floor and began ferrying a majority of the loot from the dump truck in the garage into my home. Though most of it went into the basement since that was the safest and most secure place I had for all the guns, ammo, and explosives I brought with me from the Headstone Mine.
There was a metric fuckton of loot that needed moving, so I had to dedicate nearly an hour to the activity. But once everything was where I wanted it, I was plenty happy with the new setup. Somewhat beat from the physically demanding activity, I plopped onto the leather couch that came with the place, took a nice deep breath, and kicked my feet up on the rugged steel coffee table.
I was planning on giving Angel a ring after I got set up here, but it's almost time to go meet up with Trev, so I'll have to put it off till later tonight when I get back or possibly tomorrow depending on how long I stay out. That said, there ain't a hell of a lot to do in Fyrestone from what I've seen thus far, so it'll probably be the former.
I relaxed for a couple more minutes before I got up and started heading out, still fully decked out in my armor. One could say I was being overly paranoid by strolling around town in my full kit, but this was Pandora after all, and I wasn't about to be caught with my pants down, especially when the surrounding area beyond the walls had a sizable bandit population that would love to collect an easy kill… Not that I was one even without my armor.
Leaving my new home behind, I meandered through town whilst making my way in the direction of the chicken joint under the blazing hot Pandoran sun. Unamused by the temperature, my thought transitioned to dreaming of when I can finally leave this crap hole planet and reside somewhere with more comfortable conditions, or when I would be able to transform and shape this planet into what I desire.
I kept moving whilst imagining the limitless future that lay before me and soon arrived at my destination, Jerry's Fried Chicken. And standing right outside of it was, Trev just as I expected... But he wasn't the only one.
[ Status Changes ]
Skill Points: 1 → 0
[ Skill Changes ]
Tier 4: | Just Got Real | (2/5) → | Asbestos | (3/5)
[ Loot Acquired ]
Guns: | Uncommon || Eridian | Mercurial Blaster
Ammunition: 14,757
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The next chapter will be longer and will probably come out later this week.
Usual plug: if you want to read ahead, you can do so on Patreon.