48 The Respect
I needed some comfort to calm my mind at the recent change to the system that guided my choices till now. Converting from Fallout New Vegas to the Fallout 4 System meant that all that agonizing over crafting the perfect build went right out the window. In Fallout 4 you can just get all the perks. Fucking all of them. All those years dedicated to Intense Training, trivialized. In Fallout Four you can just spend perk points to get additional SPECIAL points.
Despite my griping, this was the best thing that could have happened for me. At level 50 I should have spent 50 perk points, but I'd only spent 25 meaning I now had 25 points to spend on the newly unlocked Fallout 4 Perk Chart. It took me 14 points to go from SPECIAL to PERFECT, with a full 10 in all my base attributes. It made me want to break out in song, but more importantly when I looked in the mirror of the fancy bathroom in which I cleaned up after my rampage… that jawline, amigos. That jawline.
I tossed my clothes in the laundry/dryer combo and set it to 'Blood' and raided Saito's kitchen once more and found it stalked primarily with fresh fish which I quickly turned into piles of sashimi to tide me over as I considered what to do with the 11 remaining perk points.
I could outright double my damage in two of five combat categories, but honestly my damage output is already on the high end of a DPS heavy world. There were however multiple crafting categories that would likely feed off my Skills and experience to get into some pretty mind boggling stuff, but I could wait on that.
I thought about how I started off my perk selections and approved of past Juan's choices. Don't hope for an easy path, be tough enough for the hard path. And while Toughness seemed like a fine choice with its 5 perk ranks and +50 to damage reduction (not damage threshold folks) I knew how that math actually worked. I'd spend 5 perk points to reduce the damage of a standard 9mil round by 72 percent. That's dogshit.
What wasn't dogshit was spending 4 points on Medic and turning Stimpaks into full heal items for me. Fucking broken.
Another easy choice was taking 3 points of Solar Powered, which stacked on top of my old perk but also grants +2 to my Endurance and heals radiation damage over time. Not super important on that last one due to Radaway, but lowering item dependency is never wrong.
I considered taking Night Person but losing 60 IQ points every morning would drive me insane quickly. The 3 points of Life Giver on the other hand were very nice, gaining me an additional 60 health points and granting me another source of major regeneration, capable of healing my entire being in 200 seconds just by itself.
I put the last point into Quick Hands to pick up a 35 percent cut to my reload times.
With that all finished I relaxed as I ate the dead man's food. The ding of the elevator doors at the entrance of the penthouse sought to disturb me, so did the rush of feet and the yells seeking to confirm Saito-sama's condition.
A trio of young men burst into the dining room with guns drawn, pointing them at me and yelling.
"I'm done." I responded as I wiped my lips with a burgundy napkin.
The men sweating heavily looked away at the wailing cry of "Saito-sama!" from where I left him.
The dirge call caused them to turn their heads back, but I was not in sight having slipped passed them. The trio reached for their necks and found their blood leaking out of gaping gashes all the way across their throats.
I flipped the trusty carving knife which was showing a fair bit of chips and nicks after my sword fight and was really only held together by Full Maintenance at this point. Still held up as I went through the house ending everyone. It was bloody work and I couldn't put on my clean clothes covered in such, so I found Saito's master bathroom and turned on his multijet system hot that took up half the room, scrubbing myself with his green tea scented soap.
"~Guadalajara, Guadalajara, …
Guadalajara, Guadalajara, …~" I sang as the bathroom filled with more Neon Nips.
"You motherfucker! It's time for you to pay for what you've done!" One of them shouted, likely the leader.
"I refuse." I refused.
"You…!" the man tried shouting again but I interrupted by stuffing the bar of soap into his mouth and slapping it down his throat.
The strike also snapped his neck, but I think between the bodies and my demonstration someone was finally ready to listen.
"Now…" this time I was interrupted by the rest of the goons lifting their guns and once more I had to go through the house killing folks.
After tossing them all out of the bathroom I returned to wash off again with a fresh bar of soap from a nearby closet. Then I slipped into Saito's large medicinal bath. Fucking relaxing let me tell you. Not even the next wave of goons could end my chill.
"Listen." I sighed at the sight of the terrified young men and women, "Just put the fucking guns down before you hurt yourselves."
In a rare and staggering display of good sense, a young man chucked his gun away like it turned into a poisonous snake, and the others followed suit.
"Fucking finally!" I shouted in joy, "Alright. You guys are going to put all the bodies out on the balcony, clean this place up. Supplies are in the closet down the hall, bottom shelf. One of you is to get my clothes out of the dryer and press them. Another is to clean and polish the shoes on top of the unit. Polish is in the master closet in the case by the shoe rack. Any questions?"
"Why?" Whimpered the guy who threw his gun down first.
"Leather care is vital to extending the service life of your footwear and keeping its appearance tops." I responded and his face let me know I did not answer how he meant it, but the terrified stooges ran off.
I stepped out of that house in a perfectly presented tuxedo with glossy black shoes while a pack of young asian people rethought their life choices and squeegeed the blood of the men they looked up to into retractable floor drains. Truly - in the grimdark future of a world ravaged by corporate greed and governmental incompetence - human ingenuity wins again, however small a victory it is.
As I emerged from the elevator at the base of the megabuilding, a police cordon prevented anyone from leaving the premise and the various media from entering, even going so far as to shoot down any drones attempting to cross their line. They began shouting at me with weapons drawn.
"Gentlemen. Ladies." I grinned before I vanished in a blur of speed, leaving behind a series of shacking police and news vehicles that I jumped upon to skip through the crowd.
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We receive a deep dive of why the Fallout 4 System is so much more powerful yet less flavorful than the Fallout New Vegas System, and we finally see Juan getting some of the raw respect we saw him enjoy in 2076. I think the next chapter will be another trip back there.
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