Chapter 7: Chapter 7

The remote pickup was basically the limited telekinesis of the game’s build mode. It only affected things that were mine, so I had to manually slap on a claim on an item to use it. How claims work I’ve yet to figure out, but still, considering I could lift a tank? I could foresee some uses for TK.

Cracking damage reduction and resistance was a much bigger deal though. Seems most things have those values. I pretty much secured peace of mind with that, knowing the girls could walk through an active war zone with maybe a case of the sniffles from Fatmans blowing up around them. Or I could just drag the values down all the way to make concrete walls fall apart like wet paper.

Now I had to figure out how to access SPECIAL values and the Wright sisters can make pretzels out of anyone stupid enough to try harming them. Also really lowers the worry of kidnapping if I knew the girls could easily resist drugs and break out of their bindings.

Not that I wouldn’t atrocitise the fuckwits who dare lay a hand on them. I’m invested in the wellbeing of the girls, and I’ve got to admit, it’s getting harder to look at Piper and not be a pervy scumbag. Yeah, I know I’m getting attracted to her because she’s someone I think I’m familiar with and all that, but knowing that doesn’t really help much.

The console did bring up some unfamiliar values while I was buffing Piper’s damage resistance and reduction though, stuff that neither I nor Nat had. Couldn’t begin to understand what they did, so I left it alone.

Urgh, and that’s the argument for starting to take captives to experiment on… Do I really want to go down that route?

… No, but I will if it makes me and the girls survive better in this wasteland. And I’ll eventually have to figure out the synth problem too, starting with how the hell do I identify one.

On a related note, do I want to bother with the Railroad? Or the Minutemen?

“Sev!”

Nat’s call cut my pondering short, and I joined her and Piper at the driver’s area. It still early in the evening and Piper pointed out the glowing streak in the sky.

“A meteor?” I asked aloud.

“What’s a meteor?” Nat asked back. I wanted to answer, but then I noticed the thing’s flight path.

Piper noticed it too. “Is it going to crash?”

Wait a moment. I didn’t notice anything that looked like a level system in the console, but even if there was a hidden value for it, I shouldn’t have hit 20 yet, right?

We saw the meteor crash way up ahead, a fireball and column of smoke marking its impact. I chewed on the potential implications here. I got to the hatch and opened it, peering up the skies. No crows following us. Good.

“Piper, drive us up to the crash site. Go slow though, just in case.”

Night fell by the time we reached the crash site. It looks like I’m at least the equivalent of level 20, seeing how we were looking at a crashed Zetan ship. The burning trees around it gave enough of an idea of what it looked like, and it looked severely fucked. I made sure the girls stayed in the tank as I got out for some recon.

The ship’s front was buried in dirt, and the cockpit bubble was shattered. There were bright green stains on the jagged edges of the cockpit’s glass, and taking a look around, it wasn’t too hard to find a trail of it leading away. Knowing what to expect, I got my beam gun ready and followed the green smears, though not before reminding the girls to stay in the tank until I got back.

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Sure enough, I was led to a cave. I sneaked in as quietly as I could. The cave wasn’t too big, and I found the Zetan pilot at the far end of the cave, maybe around 10 yards away. Illuminated by glowing brain fungus on the cave walls, it seemed busy looking for something.

Let’s make this quick.

I triggered the console, slowing down time to a crippled snail’s pace. The weird texts flowed around the edges of my vision. With a thought the alien’s silhouette was highlighted. More of the console’s text appeared, circling around the Zetan’s outline. Some I recognized (damage reduction, damage resistance, hunger, thirst), some I could only assume (health, another kind of health), others I had no clue about.

I selected and chained a series of images that flashed through my head, then mentally took a step back and watched as the time dilation eased up a bit and I was no longer in control of my body. I felt myself raise the beam gun, thumbing the safety and flicking to a thin beam before depressing the trigger for 0.3 seconds, all in a single fluid motion. The laser struck the alien in the head, detonating it into ash.

Exiting console mode and feeling time return to its normal speed, I walked over as the corpse dropped to the ground, pristine other than the missing head. This was a rare time where I was alone with a corpse with some time to spare.

I knelt beside the corpse and went back to the console. The text circling the body were mostly the same, only some were changed (both healths... See the problem here?) while a small bit went missing.

I gingerly touched the spacesuit, its image flashing in the back of my head to signal that it’s been added to my catalogue. Cool, that works at least.

I yanked out the gloves and touched the alien’s cold dried-leather skin. More values circled around the headless corpse. Hm. Leaving the resetting as a last option, I tried tinkering with some of the stuff that I had no idea about and wouldn’t risk trying on myself.

How did I identify DR and DT in the first place? Very easily once I figured out what numbers looked like. I found the entries itself on pretty much everything, living or not. With some testing on the spare weapons we collected, I confirmed them before applying the changes to myself and voila.

Back to the corpse, some random playing around with whatever text or numbers I could modify led me to the discovery of skin color and the much vaunted size scale values. A Zetan in human skin looked creepy as fuck, and enlarging it to the point it exploded like smashing a tube of toothpaste was not going to be good for my sleep.

Most of the other stuff were still unknown, the changes either didn’t or couldn’t take effect, or were not obvious (like what if I modified the voice or hearing?). I reset the splattered corpse and...found the corpse shrunk to a gelatinous egg thing with a solid nucleus in it. Didn’t last long though, it melted away immediately and the nucleus disintegrated before everything eventually evaporated. Other than its uniform, the Zetan’s only possession was its pew pew gun which I couldn’t take seriously, even if it was supposed to be good. I kept it anyway because it’s better out of anyone else’s hands.

With some new knowledge and a new collection of nightmares to keep me awake, I headed back to the tank, doing a quick sweep around the place to make sure no one else was around. I looked to the crashed ship, making simple deductions. If the alien craft exists here, would that mean that DLC was in effect too?

Console came back on again and I oh-so-carefully freed the spacecraft out from the dirt, then resetted it. It no longer was smoking, the cockpit bubble was whole again, and considerately, the landing gears were extended.

Cool.

I called the girls out to join me, and as I waited for them I took another dive in the console. I found the particular text I wanted. It couldn’t be modified, but it was so far the only console entry that I could interact with like this. And what did it do?

“Girls, remember I promised to make y’all fly?”

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