Fallout Chapter 10: The Wheels of Justice

So, last time on Balls Out Fallout, we let you folks make a few choices. We’re hear to see the results of them today.

First up, comes good old Iguana Bob. Hub street food vendor.  Runs a ‘family’ eating place in the most literal sense. As you may recall, we ran into one of his suppliers in Doc Morbid’s morgue back in Junktown, and found that not all of his ingredients are entirely kosher, and you guys decided that we need to shut his operation down. But there’s a bit of a problem here. The city is very well patrolled, and we’re in a rather public area. If we were to start anything with him, the guards would be on us in a flash. It’s pretty simple to piss Bob off to the point where he starts the fight himself, so we can just proactively defend ourselves against him which wouldn’t draw any of the po-pos here, but I promised to show you guys a neat trick involving a sack today.

Before we get into that, though, I want to make sure that Bob knows why he has this coming. Athena walks over and starts chatting him up.

We start on what would be a really cool Soylent Green bit, but Bob shuts us up. Then he tries to justify it. He’s not the one killing people! They’re already dead! It’s environmentally friendly! Doesn’t Athena like the environment?

Athena does not in fact like the environment. This environment never stops trying to kill her and has not had the good graces to invent Dragon Age yet to make up for it. She tells him so. He stoops to threats, but does not draw his weapon yet. Athena ends the conversation.

I told you before that the burlap sack is the ultimate assassination tool. I was a little hyperbolic in that. The sack is not the ultimate assassination tool. It is half of the ultimate assassination tool. When we get the other half assembled, we are going to kill Iguana Bob in broad daylight, right in front of the police, with nobody having any idea of what happened.

I’ve been having Tycho carry a bundle of dynamite for a while. I take that back from him. This is going to be our actual weapon, but if we just dropped a bomb in the middle of the street, people might understandably get a bit spooked.

Instead, Athena sets the timer, sticks the bomb inside the sack, and puts the sack down next to Iguana Bob. Nobody bats an eye. It’s just a sack. There could be anything inside. Maybe it’s full of candy. Maybe the fact that Athena is quickly backing away is just a coincidence.

The Windows Screenshot tool has a delay on it, so I wasn’t able to catch the moment, but I’ll try and describe it to you. 45 seconds after Athena dropped the bag, OMG A FREAK EXPLOSION CAME OUT OF NOWHERE AND SPLATTERED IGUANA BOB ALL OVER HIS OWN PRODUCT! WHO COULD HAVE FORSEEN yeah whatever. The bomb blew up. So did Iguana Bob. Nobody saw anybody leave a bomb there. All they saw was someone put down a sack, and are you kidding me? Sacks aren’t bombs. This must have been an act of the angry sun radiation god. That thing’s a menace, I tell you.

Also, the sack was completely undamaged. Athena picks it up for future use.

Now, what was next on the shopping list? Ah, yes, Decker. We could go directly to the police with what he told us, as you voted, but first, let’s lighten our load a little. Athena’s pockets are still full of redundant guns and a bunch of other loot she picked up from the last battle, and something tells me that we’re going to get even more when we say hi to Decker again. Just a hunch.

Athena heads to Beth’s Weapon Shop and Rumor Mill. The proprietor, Beth, is very chatty, but friendly enough. She gives us a lowdown on what’s going on in the Hub, nothing we don’t already know or will be seeing soon, but she does mention that Decker is a bad, bad man who erased a friend of hers when said friend wouldn’t play ball with the criminal underground. Similar to what he’s asking us to do, come to think of it…

Before we start our transactions, Beth mentions that she gives special prices to employees of the Far Go Traders, as that merchant conglomerate owns her store. And, in fact, the Far Go Traders have lost a lot of caravans lately, and they’re looking for someone to track them down. Said person would be eligible for said employee pricing! Athena knows a good deal when she hears it, so she heads a few doors down to the headquarters of the Far Go Traders.

If we had Ian in the party, he’d warn us that the Traders’ manager, Butch is about as sharp as a cotton ball before we head in. Keep that in mind as we move forward here.

Butch does have a job for us, just like Beth said. Yay, better sales ahoy! He gives us the details on the carts that have gone missing. Apparently, it doesn’t seem to be the result of any raiders, or any other known group out on the wastes. In fact, the only word on the carts that have gone missing are that they’ve fallen victim to a campfire ghost story. A creature of legend. A deathclaw.

“A what?” I hear you ask? Athena asks that too. She’s not from around these parts. Butch begs off the answer, telling us to chat with Beth instead. I like Beth, so we go do that.

Beth lays out that there’s three possibilities as to who’s attacking the caravans. There’s the water merchants, who are a bunch of apparently very aggressive businessmen who have lain claim to the entire water supply of the wastes, the Brotherhood of Steel, a bunch of crazy tech worshippers who regularly partake in human sacrifice, or a deathclaw, a legendary 20 foot long lizard that’s half-death, half-claw, all doom. The only people who’ve seen the deathclaw are an old ‘ghoul’ and a man who’s taken leave of his senses in the east side of town.

Armed with that knowledge, Athena finally makes use of the employee pricing to make a mint on what the raiders at the farmhouse were carrying.

Following this, she heads straight to the police station to let Sheriff Justin Greene know that Decker had hired her to assassinate one of the local merchants.

This little sojourn works exactly like Killian’s deal to take down Gizmo did, except Greene’s a bit less exact as to what evidence he needs. In fact, he’s already got enough of a case that he’s willing to take action based solely on Athena’s testimony. And he’s willing to turn Decker’s desired assassin against him. He offers us 1300 caps to help him bring Decker in or end him. Athena’s a proper type, she just wants to see justice done, but she’s happy to add to the war chest in the process. She accepts the offer.

Together with the police, our crew heads back to Decker’s basement. The crimelord immediately parses what’s up, and throws a knife into Athena. It tickles a bit.

After Decker made the surprise attack, it’s Athena’s round up first. With the Awareness perk you guys chose for her a while back, she immediately evaluates the situation, checks out everyone’s weapons, and prioritizes targets. Decker’s only using throwing knives, and frankly, with the single point of damage he did in his last attack, I think we can safely write him off. His enforcer, Kane, has a ton of HP but is only wielding a set of spiked brass knuckles. Fearsome, sure, but there are a bunch of dudes with guns around us. Athena sets her sights on one of those, and lets off a shot.

Athena takes a few hits following, but nothing major. Then Kane comes up and belts her hard enough to knock her off her feet, before he starts making his way towards Tycho. Tycho and the police pump bullets into him while Athena regains her feet and starts pumping stimpaks. She takes a few more hits and regains Kane’s attention. The heavy gets into melee range again and starts working her, but this time he was close enough that he can get in like four hits. As I know now in retrospect, the big danger with Kane is not that he hits hard, but he’s just like Dogmeat in that he’s fast enough to get in like four or five hits a turn. This is too much for her and Athena…

Wait, no, that didn’t actually happen. Just some Fallout fanfiction some jerk was putting out there on the internet. What really went down was that Athena properly recognized that Kane is a total beast and is deadly at hand to hand combat, and fires the opening shot directly into his head.

And oh, what a shot it is. Read that there in the bottom left corner. Critical hit for 90 damage. 90 freakin’ damage. It’s a good thing that this is a one-of-a-kind gun, because that’s more than twice Athena’s hp. As it is, Kane is a tank, so it doesn’t kill him outright, but it gets him very close.

Dogmeat’s up next, and he bolts to another room and engages one of the thugs in there. Sheriff Greene takes aim at Kane and renders him not anyone’s problem anymore. Athena takes a few more potshots, which are a bit more damaging now that we’re getting to the point that we’re actually expected to run across the metal armor we got way early in the game, but nothing a few stims won’t cure.

Some guy runs up and tries to lay into Athena with a sledgehammer. She dodges, deftly. Another of Decker’s guards moves into the room Dogmeat’s fighting in and starts firing at the pupper. I don’t like his odds in a two on one situation. He’s quick, adept at knocking people down, and hard to hit, but he’s not able to heal himself the way human characters are. Luckily, Tycho follows the guard in to help the dog out.

Athena’s had enough of all this and just shoots the sledgehammer guard in the eye. This lays him out, one of the police officers finishes him, and the enemy formation just collapses. The enemies in the room with us start fleeing as Dogmeat and Tycho wipe up their side of things. Our companions and the police chase the remaining guards into a spare room and the bathroom, and finish them there. Athena for her part draws near to Decker, takes careful aim, and kills him in the groin.

After the fight, we head back to the police station. Sheriff Greene is ecstatic. Apparently, now that both Decker and Kane are dead, he’s thinking the Underground is just going to fall apart, and the Hub will be a lot safer from now on. Having already seen some of the other types who hang around here, Athena is skeptical of that, but she lets him have his moment. He pays her happily.  Also, this gives her enough experience points to reach sixth level and finally get that perk y’all chose forever ago, except I’m still not leveling her up yet because it’s daytime and Athena gets more skill points when she’s smarter at night.

With that, because we didn’t get the chance, we head back to loot the battle we were just at. Most of them don’t have anything of interest, even the powerful crimelord Decker, but Kane’s carrying enough chemical enhancements on him to… well, make for a fun and interesting if ill-advised weekend, were we so inclined. Probably what made him so dangerous. Athena pockets the drugs, as well as the bunch of Stimpaks he was carrying. I’m guessing those are going to come in handy later.

And with that, we used violence to solve all of our problems. What’s up for next time? Will we finally use our speech skills to end deadly situations by making everyone happy? Tune in to find out!

Next time: Justice!  Or maybe not.