Fallout: Equestria :Where Am I Now?

Chapter 3: Drink Deep

“Alcohol’s magic, it makes all your problems go away!”

/.|-\_=-]_______________________________[-=-]

“Hey!

Look who’s alive.” The deep blue zombie-pony was the first thing I saw when I woke up, and she appeared to be moving her forelegs back and forth in a manner that was not unlike dancing. She was acting like I was a friend she hasn’t seen in a while, like she didn’t shoot me.

The light directly above this pony-like creature was burned out but the one next to it wasn’t, so you could see her features pretty well. Like the small crack on her horn.

I tried to lean forward so I could stab her in the face with the Snakeoil but I stopped short. I had been strapped down to the cot with leather belts, worn duct tape and faded bungee cords, making me wonder why so many were deemed necessary.

I wasn’t complaining, my pain was little to none, yet I was a bit colder than usual. I soon found out that my jacket and shirt had been removed and my midsection had been wrapped in medical bandages, quality ones at that. Nothing like the ones I found earlier.

“Cutter. Hey get over here! She’s awake,” (SHE?) the zombie-pony beckoned for somepony to come over with a particularly healthy-looking hoof and a begoggled pony poked her head around a metal frame with a sheet draped over it. Her fur was a lighter hue than the zombie-pony’s and the color of her mane along with that coat reminded me of somepony I once met. What was her name? She had a really big hat and wouldn’t stop talking in third person. It was pretty annoying. I couldn’t have been happier to leave when she signed for her package.

This pony’s mane was a bit curlier and shorter than hers, though. And she wasn’t wearing a padded surgical mask with heavy buckled straps either. Sweet Luna’s ass that thing was heavy duty.

She flipped a switch on a bulb attached to a battery, illuminating her white medical barding and causing a glare on the smiley face pin covering the pink letters on the small breast pocket. “Wowie-zowie! I knew that would work! I’m such a genius.”

“You duct taped a light to a battery, amazing,” the zombie-pony rasped before turning her face upwards and gulping down some apple-scented amber liquid from a bottle with a faded label.

“Can it Jester, just let me have this,” Cutter said with that bouncy, light voice of hers as she adjusted her goggles with her magic and looked at me, “So, how you feeling flyboy? Yes Jester, the patient’s male. Stop asking.”

How did she- I guess she did see my wings and she is a doctor. Is she? I yawned as I looked past her, the blackout curtains covering the windows preventing me from seeing what time of day it was. “D’know, I mean you’re the doc, Doc. You tell me.”

The “doctor” pushed a long curled bang away from a goggle lens and leaned in closer to examine my wrappings after removing the binds that held me to the cot, “Well you’re not dying anytime soon, but by the way you look and from what Jester’s been telling me you shouldn’t be alive.”

I wonder what she’s been telling her. Probably that the mottled mule shot me!

“Vertibirds are notorious for being deathtraps for whoever’s inside when one goes down but you?” Cutter said as she pointed a hoof towards me, “My ghoul friend here said she saw you fall out of a hole blown in the side of one by those meanie Raiders in the middle of Rhinestone Junction in Southtown.”

There was a notification in the corner of my vision with Stable Mare’s face telling me that my map had been updated. Cooler and cooler all the time.

Jester levitated her bottle over to the small table with the cobbled lamp and rasped “Yeah. I saw you fall into that big ass insurance building and when I found you… you looked pretty dead to me.”

I almost couldn’t believe my ears. “Whoa, hold on a second there Sunkeyes Crackhorn. I was dead?”

Jester seemed to take offence to me calling her that, since she told me to go fuck myself with an iron stick. “At least I have more legs than you. I bet you get all kinds of ass being a crippled freak.”

“And I bet you have stallions busting down your door with that face.” Apply sterile bandage to burn.

“Alright you guys, cool your jets,” Cutter said as she got in between me and the ghoul, “What’s this about you being dead, Flyboy?”

It seems that when the ghoul managed to make her way to me, she found me in a less than advantageous position. She tried to check for a pulse but since she didn’t really know what she was doing she couldn’t actually find a vein. I was bloodied and battered and from that she assumed I was dead, took my leg as a souvenir, looted what she could and blew the safe free from the reception desk with explosives. After selling the safe and other stuff to the ‘local assholes’, she returned to her house just outside of town to get drunk, and pass out to blow through the storm that was brewing with ease.

“So Jester told me that you had a filly with you? Orange mane?”

“Yeah, I did. You don’t by any chance know where she is, do you?”

Bobbi was eating a lollipop in the “waiting room” of Cutter’s clinic and sitting on a ruined couch next to my bag when I came in. I was pulling a jacket sleeve over the Snakoil with my teeth while trying not to fall down, Jester found this quite hysterical judging from the spine-chilling raspy wheezing that must have been her laugh was heard.

She came in with her bottle floating in a red aura beside her and tipped it towards a terrified Bobbi Pin, “Eyh you broke my nose with a toaster, you little cunt.”

“No! Bad pony,” Cutter scolded Jester as she sprayed her with a spray bottle as the alcohol-saturated ghoul complained loudly, “Bad. You don’t call little kids names like that.”

“Give me that damn thing!” She swiped the bottle from Cutter’s magical grip with her own and tossed it into a small dirty trashcan. “I’m not a fuckin’ cat! Where did you even get that?”

Cutter briefly moved her mask down and foalishly stuck her tongue out at Jester, who was scowling back at her.

“So what do I owe you, doc?” I asked with the hope that Cutter saving my life was on the house.

Cutter pulled out a piece of paper and a pen from a desk and started to scribble on it. “Well there’s the Dash I used to keep you from going septic, mixed with the buttload of Med-X to stop you from thrashing around the first time you woke up and I charge per bullet taken out. So that brings it to around three hundred sixty-five caps.”

“Three hundred what now?” My mind flashed back to the small tin full of bottle caps I threw away from before and all the empty bottles scattered in the streets. And did she saw Dash?

“You got potatoes growing in your ears? I said three sixty-five caps!” She said as she held up the paper to show me her “calculations”. All I saw was a crude drawing of a stick pony eating a cupcake with 365 written in large text with several circles scrawled around it.

“Why do you want bottle caps? You’re a crazy pony,” I thanked her for healing me and motioned for Bobbi to come with me. She was already by the door, raring to get away from Jester.

I felt a tug on my jacket as Cutter called out, “No you’re crazy for thinking all this stuff is free! You owe me flyboy, big time.”

After digging around in my jacket pocket, all I could produce was two bits.

“Look, this is all I have and-“ The bits were enveloped in a light purple aura and lifted out of my Snakeoil’s palm before I could finish what I was saying.

“These are shiny! Where’d you get em’?” Cutter placed the coins on the lenses of her goggles as she oohed and ahhed at them.

Truthfully, I didn’t know where I got them. Like some kind of idiot I said, “My pocket.” And she laughed at me.

“I guess you can pay me back when you get the scratch. I mean it’s not like you’re gonna fly off anytime soon!” Cutter laughed even more after saying that. “But just in case, Jester? You’re not planning on doing anything today right?

=-|\_._/|/-=

Jester had taken us to her favorite place in town. For one, it was ghoul-friendly as long as their caps were good. Apparently it is money. I suppose their coin-like nature and the fact that there’s so damn many of them everywhere led to them being used as currency. Besides, I highly doubt bits are being minted anymore.

There wasn’t any guns allowed at the Grassy Ass so when they searched me for weapons I started to make a scene telling the door pony, “Any concealed…? Bitch I am a concealed weapon! Do you not see the big fucking hunk of metal glommed onto me or are you blind? See this? This is your gun. Now lemme through.”

Quickly stuffing the gun back into the holster on the confused pony’s foreleg I headed on inside with Jester chuckling behind Bobbi and me.

“So what is a ghoul?” I asked Jester as she returned with a frosty mug of beer and sat down at the table across from the booth Bobbi and I were sitting in. How did they make it cold? Probably a spell or something, I don’t know.

Somepony with a guitar and sitting on a stool in the corner of the bar had started to strum a little tune and a nearby patron called out to him, “Yo Mando!I can barely hear that thing. Turn it up a little.”

“Maybe if you would stop shouting then you might hear it,” The pony resumed his song.

“Yeah you tell him, Mandolin,” Jester turned to us and set her mug down, the smoky atmosphere of the bar and the dim light making her slurred raspy speech seem somewhat mysterious, “So you wanna know what a ghoul is, eh?”

It isn’t my top priority, no, but I kinda want to know just what the hell Jester is and why she can drink enough alcohol to kill an elephant daily. Okay, that might be a bit of a stretch but in the short time I’ve known her there hasn’t not been a bottle within five feet of her.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know what a ghoul is?” Bobbi asked from beside me.

I turned to her and said, “Well excuse me for being ignorant, but I’ve been a little busy lately just trying not to die. Go on.”

Jester rubbed at her nose with a hoof, a small pop was heard and then she scratched at her mane before starting her lesson, “Well we’re mutants, I guess. When somepony gets cooked by radiation a little too much but they don’t croak they turn into something like me. Well not as sexy,” She said as she winked her creepy dead eye before taking another swig from her mug.

“That’s pretty much it, somepony like Cutter might know more but- hey buddy you mind?” A green unicorn stallion had stepped in front of Jester. He wasn’t moving.

“We don’t take t’ kindly t’ your kind ‘round these parts, zombie. You better get outta here,” He drunkenly slurred before taking a drink out of his bottle.

Instead of blowing up, she sighed, looked him square in the eyes and said, “How about no? I’m talkin’ to somepony here. Now buzz off jackass.”

He smashed his bottle over Jester’s head, who fell out of her chair onto the ground. “You don’t fucking tell me what to do! Nopony does! Especially. Not. Some. Zombie. Bitch!” The raging drunk stomped down with each word, and I was already on him. The thing about unicorns is when you have their horn in your hoof they’re pretty much your bitch for about two seconds. That was more than enough time for slamming his head down onto the table and then punching him in the face with my free hoof before pushing him away from me.

I caught the handle of the hatchet he swung at me as his two buddies came over to assist him. The green drunk tugged on his hatchet and I let go. The heavy hunk of metal struck his horn, chipping it slightly and stunning him momentarily.
I saw somepony in my peripheral vision with a bottle in their teeth preparing to swing at me. Drawing the .32 pistol hidden in my pocket and pressing it against the earth pony mare’s neck, I earned myself a hostage.

Jester painfully groaned and swore some more as she pushed herself up onto her haunches. Rubbing at her head with a hoof a small piece of bloody glass was knocked loose and clinked on the ground and she wiped her hoof off on her barding.

That Mando pony kept strumming his guitar as this fight went on and the barkeep seemed to actually be making wagers with his patrons on who would win this fight.

“Now miss, if you don’t want a fresh new hole to breathe from I suggest you drop the bottle and walk away,” my hostage obliged and she motioned for her deep violet stallion friend holding a wooden chair in his hooves to stand down.

“Thank you,” I stepped over to Green Drunkard, still keeping my weapon pointed at his two friends. “Jester! Put that axe down!”

She had Green pinned to the floor magically with a chair and was floating a hatchet above her horn, ready to strike. “Why the fuck should I?”

A loud bang from the bar answered her as everypony’s attention was directed towards the silver stallion wielding the smoking shotgun pointed at the ceiling. “Now what’s this, then? Are you actually harassing my best customer? You there, with the leg, would you kindly escort these ruffians from this establishment for me?”

Jester lifted the chair from Green and looked at the hatchet as she said, “I think I’ll keep this.”

I lifted Jester’s attacker up then stood on my hind legs to bring him even higher and said, “Now what do you have to say for yourself? You should learn to pay more respect to the fairer sex, ‘cause I ain’t so fair.” That might have came out wrong.

It must have looked silly seeing such a small pony lift that big green stallion up and threaten him, because Jester was laughing at me.

“Ah, what do we have here? Abupbupbup, yoink!” Lifting the bag off the leather harness the pony was wearing and shaking it a little in front of his face I thanked him for his generosity and with Jester’s assistance we threw him out on his ass with his friends following behind him.

“You better get outta here,” I held my Snakeoil up and extended its scary blue knife. Holding up the bag I called out, “Barkeep! Another round if you will? And some snacks! I’m starving.”

=-|\_._/|/-=

“You didn’t have to do what you did, but thanks,” Jester said as she stroked her dog’s fur with a hoof, “I don’t know many ponies that would do something like that to help a ghoul out.”

We were just south of Highway 57’s massive intersecting ruins that was the primary trade hub for the town. It was also the only way you could get across the river to the other part of the city, why anypony would ever willingly go there is beyond me. And Jester’s house or whatever is over there! Maybe they don’t let her live in town? Oh yeah, I should say “you’re welcome or something.”

I waved a prosthetic hoof and said, “Aw it was nothing. That asshole had it coming, didn’t he Bobbi?”

She nodded as she petted Jester’s small dog. I think Bobbi is actually starting to warm up to the ghoul. That was all the third party insight I needed to justify taking Drunky’s cash. He had somehow fit sixty-odd bottle caps into that bag of his and we blew about thirty-five on the food and drink. Still I was well on my way to paying back Cutter for saving my life. What I needed to be doing was find Molly instead of dicking around beating up drunks to help another drunk.

I don’t know why I haven’t told Jester about Molly yet, I guess somepony like her wouldn’t have seen the kid. I mean she’s plastered at all hours, hell Jester probably still thinks I’m a mare.

It couldn’t hurt to try, right? “Say Jester?”

She was picking her teeth with a knife when she looked over to me and asked, “What?”

“You haven’t seen a pegasus, a Yellow one with a pink and black mane?”

“Nope. In fact you’re the only turkey I’ve seen for a long while.”

Now hold on, what does she mean? Didn’t Watcher say something about that? Why weren’t there any pegasai anywhere?

“Heh, and you’re grounded! Ain’t that a trip?” She started to laugh, then cough violently and dropped her knife where it stuck in the damp ground. When she got a hold of herself Jester wiped the spittle from her receded jaw and said, “That assface really did a number on me.”

“Yeah, you might want to see Cutter about those bruises, they look pretty bad,” I advised as I picked up the white book labeled The Wasteland Survival Guide and underneath that read By Ditzy Doo.

Ditzy? No fucking way, this isn’t possible. She couldn’t have written it! I mean, what year is it, something seventy-seven right? Besides she’s with the Doc right now doing who knows what! It had to be some other Ditzy Doo.

I flipped through it, occasionally reading passages here and there. There was stuff I already kind of knew about like cannibalizing weapons for their parts, bat shit crazy Raiders, small pockets of civilization such as this fine place, killer robots, ghouls and ‘feral’ ghouls with an artist’s rendition of a feral ghoul pony. It was some scary shit, right up there with weeping pegasai.

“This world is damn dangerous,” I said as I put the book back into Jester’s worn out, ratty cart full of metal boxes, bags, and bits of metal, “There was a whole chapter in there just on landmines. And you’ve written a hell of a lot of stuff in there on the sides.”

“Yeah I got a lot of time on my hooves,” It was starting to become hard to understand her raspy speech now all that alcohol she had consumed was taking effect. A normal pony would be puking their guts out by now, but Jester isn’t you average pony. I only had half a beer, where my new friend drank various hard liquors and the rest of my beer. It was as amazing as it was horrifying.

=-|\_._/|/-=

We were on our way back to Cutter’s clinic when something caught my eye. A pegasus stallion wearing one of those old military harnesses that FI used to make and like the ones I saw drawn in the Guide by Jester. What was it called? Battle saddle! There were two big honking long rifles attached to the sides and he was wearing a dark Stetson that was damn sexy.

Through the crowd I saw a small grey unicorn wearing barding similar to Jester’s call out to the pegasus pony. I looked over to the ghoul and asked, “Hey do you know this guy?”

“What guy?” She looked around before she uncorked a fresh bottle and took a swig.

“Wait, don’t you-“ I looked back to see where the cowpony was, but neither him or the Stable pony was anywhere to be seen. Damn it! I might have gotten some answers about the PipBuck if I talked to that other Stable pony, because Jester’s was just about useless when I asked her earlier and she just mumbled something about “Radhogs” and how many caps one owes her.

=-|\_._/|/-=

Cutter counted out the thirty-three caps and put them back in the bag they came from, “Wow! Ponies don’t usually start paying me back this fast.”

“Well I don’t like owing ponies for too long, tends to end up badly for the guy owing,” I said as I took a candy from a bowl on a shelf. There sure is a lot of candy all over the place in Cutter’s clinic. It was like a friggin’ candy store.

“You know, Southtown is just full of shit that these assholes would sell their firstborn for,” came a raspy slur from a ghoul behind the ‘reception desk’ and sitting in a padded chair with more than a bit of duct tape applied to it, “I’m speaking from personal experience here.”

I put a piece of hard candy in my mouth, tossed the wrapper behind the chair I was sitting in and said, “I barely got any of that.”

“Okay makin’ it simple for ya. Losta shit down there, treasure everywhere… be up to our necks in caps…” Jester passed out before she could say anymore while her little dog Marty slept nearby.

Cutter was sterilizing a needle with a shot glass of some of Jester’s stronger alcohol and from heating the needle up with the tip of her horn before wiping it with a cloth. I didn’t know if that actually worked or not, but hell I’m not a doctor nor do I claim to be one.

A curious little filly came up to the masked doctor and asked “What are you cleaning those for?”

“There’s this dummy who sells all kinds of Chems in the market and she pays me for any needles I can get her. I don’t want ponies getting sick from dirty needles so I’m trying to sterilize these,” She explained as she replaced a protective cap on another needle before setting it on a handkerchief.

I was thrown by the strange word. “Chems?”

“You know, chemicals, drugs and stuff. Where are you from?”

“What? How could you sell needles to somepony supplying stuff like that to ponies? And I’m from somewhere that’s uh, far away.”

Cutter sighed as she moved her padded surgical mask. “Like I said, medicine isn’t cheap. I don’t like what Jump Jet does, but I need all the money I can get in order to keep supplied.”

“What about all this candy here?” I asked as I picked up a cracked bowl, spilling a wrapped treat onto the floor.

She quickly replaced her surgical mask before saying, “I… I don’t have to pay for that.”

I just stared at her for a moment before setting the bowl back down. “Whatever, I don’t care. I have a lot of shit on my plate right now and I just don’t have time to data mine for candy sources.”

What time is it? I’m not tired at all and I want to pay off Cutter as soon as possible so I can continue my search for Molly. Everypony was closing up their shops when we all came back anyways and I don’t really know the lay of the land around here if you know what I mean. I also didn’t have any of my tools with me.

That doesn’t mean I can’t improvise.

“Cutter? Can you do me a favor and Watch Bobbi?”

=-|\_._/|/-=

There was an eerie quiet that went on at this time of night in North Wicker.

Walking through the streets was kind of awkward when a patrolling lightly armored guard couldn’t stop staring at the metal things poking out from my jacket sleeves. “You want to stare all night or are you gonna go do your job?”

Telling that pony off felt good, but I probably shouldn’t have been so rude to her.

Where was I going? I was just wandering though the muddy path and into alleys behind where many of the merchant’s closed up stalls was located and away from the lantern light.

An unconscious pony lying on a ruined mattress on the ground caught my eye. There was small inhaler in her hooves and she was shaking slightly, I knew drug abuse when I saw it. I took the dark cloth on the ground next to her and tied it to my head to hide my mane. Not sure why, but there was that evil feeling in my wings again and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be spotted snooping around back here.

Whadya know, a couple bottle caps next to some empty bottles on a crate, I pocketed the pseudo-coins and for some reason I decided to check inside the trashcan next to that and found a spiked horseshoe. Okay… I’m not sure if I want to know why this was left here. In my bag it goes and I move on.

There were four ponies sitting around a drum filled with fire and they were talking amongst themselves in an empty lot. I hid behind a wagon with a sleeping- Oh this thing is just disgusting. Why does it have two heads? And the smell! Pinching my nose with my prosthetic, I tried my best to listen in on the conversation.

“I fuckin’ swear I’m gonna kill that fucking zombie, and that little cyberpony bitch too,” That was certainly a familiar voice, what are the chances that I happen to eavesdrop on these ponies in particular?

A gruff voice responded to the pony’s angry promises, “Damnit Reach, I’m about tired of your shit. We told you not to fuck with that ghoul but did you listen? No you didn’t! Now look at you, your horn is fucked up and all our booze money is gone because of you.”

“Hey don’t blame me! That little bitch took my money!” I’m really starting to get real sick of everypony calling me a mare.

“And whose fault is that? Yours!” I looked under the wagon to see a mare angrily waving her forelegs in Reach’s direction. It was kind of funny.

“Shut up you two! I hear something over there,” The large violet earth pony shushed his comrades and pointed a hoof in my direction. What do you say about leaving immediately, Me? I say, that is a capital idea Me! Shall we? Lets!

“Hey who is that?! Get back here!”

Like Jester said, “How about no?”

Now I can’t fly out of trouble, but remember what I said about improvising?

*Chck-whirBANG!*

My dirty bandana came off as I reeled myself up to a windowsill of a brick building, and just because I’m so lucky the brick I held onto came loose. Reach broke my fall, so that’s okay I guess.

“Get the fuck off- You!” He attempted to grab me and got a blue blade in the foreleg. I pulled my leg out of his as Reach screamed from the intense pain he was experiencing. I punched him again for the fourth time tonight as he fell over onto the ground. I prepared myself for the big earth pony guy to attack me, but instead that yellow maniac with the blue mane jumped me from behind.

She was a mite bigger than me, and she was trying her damndest to beat me to a pulp. My answer to this was pulling on that wavy mane of hers and dropping to the ground, bringing her with me. I quickly popped the spiked horseshoe onto my good hoof and punched at a foreleg that was attempting to stomp my head in.

Yellow reeled with pain which gave me an opening. Placing the open palm of the Snakeoil on her chest I fired Cinnamon’s “Grappling-hoof” once again. She slammed into the nearby wall of the dead end alley. It took a second or two to reel my leg back in place and by that time I was up on all- er… threes? Well now it’s all four.

I hauled ass past the violet pony dressing his friend’s wound over by their wagon and reassuring him that he’s going to be okay. What a night this is turning out to be.

I didn’t stop running until I got back to Cutter’s Clinic.

=-|\_._/|/-=

“Wake up you big dummy!” Cutter shouted as she shook me awake while dumping a bucket of water on my head. If you want to wake somepony up, I’d say that’d be the way to do it. Too bad I decided to sleep up in the rafters of the clinic. I wasn’t fast enough to grab the rafter with my Snakeoil and down I fell to the hard, unforgiving tile floor.

“Did you almost kill two ponies last night?” She pointed at a bandaged, pissed off-looking pony with a hoof as I got up from the ground.

Quickly, lie! LIE!“Pffft! Me, stab anypony? That’s ridiculous. He must be hysterical.”

“I know that’s the mare that-“ Oh that is fucking it!

“For fuck’s sake I’m a stallion! Are you that stupid that you can’t tell the difference?! I say you deserve that stabbing just for being that big of an idiot!”

“So you admit it!”

“Oh no, you attacked me. I was acting in self-defence while you idiots chased me down that alley!”

Jester came into the room holding a hoof to her head and started to ask, “Will you dumbasses keep it d- Hey! It’s you. Ha ha, you got hurt. I have what one might call a ‘world-class hangover of epic proportions’, so would you kindly shut the fuck up?”

I step over to Reach and say to him, “Look I’m sorry about you and your friend but when you attack me you better be ready for a fight. Especially if you still have a bone to pick with my friend here.”

He looked like he was going to say something that would be regarded as fighting words but held his tongue.

The violet Stallion came out from the screens behind Cutter and said to me, “We’re all sorry about my friend hurting yours but was that really an excuse for hunting us down in the middle of the night and spying on us?”

“Now that was just a coincidence, I really didn’t know that any of you were there. I heard ponies talking and I got curious.”

He grabbed me and forced me to look at what was behind the screen he came from and I saw her. The mare’s midsection was wrapped in bandages and she was lying in a cot with an aggrieved look on her face, maybe that horseshoe was a little unnecessary.

"Look at her, her name's Ginger and you. hurt. HER! Now I can barely give a rat's ass about Reach but I care about that mare, and you're going to pay for every cap it takes to make her better."

“Mister, I promise I'll pay you back as soon as possible," I choked out from underneath the pony's deathgrip.

“Damn right you are son,” He said with a deadpan expression as he let me go and jabbed me in the chest with a hoof.

I really have to stop owing ponies money. “Alright, alright. Let me talk to the pony drinking a bit of the hair of the dog over here.”

=-|\_._/|/-=

Eight hundred sixty-eight caps. That’s how much I owe these ponies added to my current debt. It’s a good thing Jester has a “plan” to get us some money.

“Whadhya mean you can’t open it? I blew the hell out of it with dynamite, that had to loosen the lock or somethin’,” Jester loudly asked the appraiser determining the value of the safe she pulled from Pokey Insurance Firm.

The blue stallion pushed his ill-fitting glasses up on his muzzle before saying, “I’m sorry, but unless we can get this thing open I can’t tell you what it is worth. And maybe if you didn’t reek of alcohol every time you came here with some random lockbox you say you ‘found’ in Southtown I might be able to help you more. Sadly that isn’t the case, now thank you for wasting my time, take your dirty safe elsewhere and have a good day.”

“Hey! I didn’t technically steal this when nopony’s owned it for two hundred years!”

Two hundred years?! So this is 229 years in the future, for me at least. But that didn’t make any sense, I’ve been to year 1500 and there wasn’t any Goddess-damn apocalypse!

“Yo Flyboy, you wanna take a crack at this damn thing?” The ghoul asked as she tossed aside a bobby pin that had snapped in two, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

She was surrounded by a random assortment of tools, most of which had nothing to do with safecracking. The bobby pins being used as crude lockpicks was pretty resourceful, but they simply weren’t as good as the real thing. I guess you have to make do with what you have in this kind of place.

“The name’s Tellis, and yeah, I’ll have a go,” I thanked her as she tossed a small orange tin of bobby pins to me and I got to work. The lock was too small for me to use my Omni-limb’s knife to apply torque so I used one of Jester’s flathead screwdrivers.

“You mean like ‘tell us’? Yeah, I ain’t callin’ you that,” Jester said as she uncorked a half-full bottle of apple whiskey and sat on the bench next to the safe.

It took some doing, but with my crude gear I got it open. “Behold, your treasure. Some tins of mints I guess, bits, and blocky pistol.”

The PipBuck identified the gun as a 10mm Pistol, which was a definite upgrade from the weedy little pea shooter I’ve been carrying around. The ammunition counter on the E.F.S let me know that there were seven bullets inside the pistol.

“Aw come on! The only thing that was worth anything was the pre-war money, and there was barely any of that. I feel cheated,” Jester grumped as she tossed the empty safe into a dumpster as she took a mint from one of the tins and placed it on her tongue.

She popped some joints in her neck before saying, “Oh, that’s a lot better. You know I remember a way we can get some quick cash now.”

“And that is?”

“You ready to do a little grocery shopping?”

-=-________________________[|]|.,/=|oO.0l Stable-Tec|l[{/%/}]l|Stable-Tec l0.Oo|=\,.|/[|]________________________-=-

Welcome To Level Four!
Unarmed increased to 25
Lockpick increased to 30
Sneak increased to 30

New Perk!

Foal at heart:
“Am Not!” Meeting Cutting Edge has gotten you back in touch with your inner foal. Experiences and interactions with children are greatly improved and you sometimes have unique dialogue options during conversations.