Ch8. Shower thoughts

After wrestling free from the intertwined arms of the four girls who kept thanking him, and ignoring the death glare of Cassandra. Alex decided it was best to go for his shower first, even if his perk kept him clean and smelling great, a shower was still a great way to unwind and check out something he was curious about.

"As nice as this group hug is i need a shower, you girls mind?" Looking at the blushing girls back up Alex smiled only to feel a smack on the back of his head and hear a huff from Cassandra.

"Shameless." Cassandra turned and walked back towards her sisters office, leaving Alex alone with the four girls. Shrugging his shoulders Alex bid the girls farewell. Unaware of a blonde girls longing expression on her face as she stared at his broad back.

After he dipped, Alex finally made it to the showers a couple minutes later set in a large building with two entrances, a small community arena of sorts that the army converted to a community shower that drew water from the Colorado and heated it with generators. Walking in, realizing that no one else was occupying the men's showers, Alex went to the furthest enclosed shower stall at the back.

Taking out the clothes he got from Cassandra, Alex placed them on a bench and grabbed a towel before heading into the stall and turned on the lukewarm water, noticing that there was already shampoo and soap to use.

Stripping out of his remaining clothes and adding them to his inventory, Alex admired his well built muscles that were more streamlined then bulky. After such he stepped under the lukewarm running water feeling it rush over his soft tanned skin and let out a sigh of contentment.

Five minutes Alex stood under the flowing water, enjoying the feeling of it running down his head and back. Now that he was relaxed however a blue screen appeared in front of him that was visible to him alone. He never took the time to fully go threw his Pipboy Evo, now that he was alone and relaxed it was the perfect time to do so.

So he started with his status and perks, and was pleasantly surprised at how high they were. It made sense considering that it was a reflection of both the past and present him, however his charisma was still lacking. The Alex he replaced may have been charming if you squinted real hard from a distance, but was also a dense idiot with tunnel vision. Because of that holding a conversation for more then a few minutes was near impossible, unless said conversation devolved into a gunfight.

Moving on from the depressing sight of his charisma, Alex scrolled over to his inventory. Out of 10,000 pounds available, only 1,674 were being used, yet Alex could already feel his body getting sluggish as he moved. It was one of the drawbacks of the Evo, it was meant for an environment without gravity, where weight didn't matter. Yet here on earth the more you carried the heavier and more sluggish you felt. If Alex were to fill out the whole weight limit he would feel like he added almost 500 pounds to himself. It was a brilliant piece of tech the USSA created, yet unless you were super human there was no way you were reaching that weight limit.

Looking at all the gear and weapons he had looted, Alex figured he would need to hit up a trader after his shower. He saw a few on his way here that had set up shop on the Main Street in town, including a gun runners, he might find something useful in those shops as well.

After scrolling his inventory and marking the loot he wished to sell, Alex moved over to the function he was most excited for, one entirely new that wasn't in the base game, the federal store. A massive orbital platform that uses quantum storage devices far larger then anything on earth, with enough supplies to outfit a massive army of five million for ten years. In fact that's what it was designed for and about to do, designed to reward and outfit Americas invading troops on Chinas mainland. It cut out the logistics and supply routes completely, and would have ensured Americas victory if the bombs never dropped.

Opening the store and met with a buffer screen that soon changed into the American military star and then into a directory of sorts, waiting for a prompt of item search. Alex got excited and thought what he should look for first, of course he decided to type in X0-1 power armor. Unfortunately he was met with an 'error not found' menu and couldn't help but click his tongue. Seems the Enclave really did develop the armor, means he'd just have to find one of their abandoned facilities if he wanted the bad ass power armor.

He typed power armor instead and after a short buffering a bunch of power armor's showed up on screen.

T-51b set x1000 ~3000exp

T-45d set x 2,300 ~1,500exp

T-65a saturnite plated set x25 ~5000exp

Prototype medic T-45d set x3 ~11,000exp

T-1000s War Machine set x1 ~ 50,000exp

Cocking an eyebrow, Alex clicked on War Machine too see what it was, it took a second for his shock to wear off and his boner to go down after seeing the armor on display. He would definitely be buying that in the future when he had need of it. It was a foot taller the any other power armor at nine feet tall, weighing in at 2,000 pounds with jet pack capabilities, a full function chain great sword with heated saturnite teeth and a small mini missile launcher on its right forearm with a quantum storage that held ten thousand missiles that auto loaded for constant bombardment. It was basically an 'I win' wasteland edition, Alex had to have it but held back, for now it wasn't needed and too flashy. Oh but it would be his, in due time.

After clearing the search prompt, Alex typed in ballistic weapons and waited for the screen to load, this time taking longer due to the sheer number of choices available to suit one's killing preference. After a minute another screen popped up with a choice of heavy, light, mods, and special.

Ignoring the first three, Alex chose the special weapons menu, he was greeted with any mercenaries wet dream in return.

All the weapons with special traits or prototypes that the military needed tested were displayed before him. He had to back out of the menu before his gun lust took over and he spent all his earned exp.

For nearly ten minutes Alex browsed the store, it was truly vast with an assortment of different items and tools. From the mundane to the fantastical, everyday use and once in a life time items. There was even ten G.E.C.Ks up for grabs for 10,000,000 exp each. The military hardware that was offered up went from a simple bullet up to a Auto pilot Virtibird, or even a double barrel heavy tank. Though there was no full size nukes on offer, only mini nukes.

Still, realizing that as long as he kept bringing 'democracy' to the wastes, the Federal stores AI would award him exp accordingly. Developed to work in tandem with the Evo to assist and assess the soldier and their actions, it currently considers America under invasion and allows lethal force on the unruly population. Occasionally giving out 'missions' it deems morally correct for massive rewards, meant to push soldiers to the limit so to speak. The AI can read Alex's memories and emotions and see through his eyes, giving him missions that are with in its parameters that it thinks he would complete.

It was going to make his journey into the wasteland that much easier, eventually he would wrack up quite the lot of exp, at that time he would build himself a formidable settlement. Using the resources of the federal store to become a powerhouse in the wasteland. First thing he needed was to find a place to settle, his first choice being what would become Jacobstown, from what he's gathered, the mutants haven't been lead by Marcus from black mountain yet to the old ski resort. It was the perfect spot to set up, also their was the old remnants bunker he could crack into and grab all that tech, along with an X0-1 power suit and a virtibird not to far away.

The more Alex thought about all the opportunities out in the wasteland, the more excited he became. He wasn't going to just stick to the Mojave, he wanted to visit the east coast and see the capital Wasteland as well. Also he wanted to head to the Commonwealth and see about vault 111 and the sole survivor, if he or she was in this world still frozen.

Picking up a shampoo bottle Alex couldn't help but sing in excitement with his makeshift microphone.

~ I don't want to set the world on fiiire~

~ I just want to set a flame in your heart~

~I don't want to set the world on fiiire~

~ I just want to tear it apart~

~welcome to my apocalypse!~

~welcome to my apocalypse!~

Singing one of his favorite odes to fallout by JT Music- welcome to my apocalypse, Alex sang his heart out, though if anyone passed by his stall they'd think he may have lost his marbles, or that there was 23 angry ducks fighting over a piece of bread, either or.

After his day dreaming and 'wonderful' singing, Alex got out of the shower and toweled himself off before putting on the regular NCR fatigues. Leaving the showers, Alex was surprised when he saw a little blonde bombshell sitting on the bench outside of the entrance waiting for him.

"Carla?" Looking down at the girl who seemed lost in thought, she immediately jumped up from her spot with a flustered look on her face at Alex's voice.

"Ah, Alex! Umm I was just waiting for you! I- I wanted to say thank you… away from everyone else that is, and to ask, why did you do it?" Looking up at the handsome face of Alex and his dark green eyes that caught the light, Carla felt her heart beat louder and louder.

"I was a prisoner just like you, I managed to escape though. Didn't seem right to just run away and I had a personal grudge to settle anyways. I knew a place with supplies, I made my way there and that's where I met your husband." Alex noticed Carla's face instantly darken at the mention of her 'husband'. Alex couldn't blame her but the man cared for her at least.

"Craig isn't my husband anymore, any man willing to shoot his own wife and unborn child doesn't deserve that right, he could have tried to save me another way." Carla dug her finger nails into her palms as she thought that she came so close to death, she always had hope she would be saved. Only to find out she was going to die in that second if Alex hadn't stopped Craig. She just couldn't get it off her mind no matter how hard she tried.

"I'm sure if there was another way he would have taken it, what was the man supposed to do? Run and gun down the entire camp by himself? He would have died trying and you would still have ended up a slave. There's no way he could have done that." Happy with his assessment and thinking he had a valid point, Alex crossed his arms before Carla destroyed his well built assessment with two words.

"You did." Looking at the smug smile of Alex slowly fade, Carla watched as he opened and closed his mouth multiple times trying to refute her while raising his pointer finger like he wanted to point out a fact. It was incredibly cute seeing this side of the guy, every time she saw him he had a gruff and unapproachable look on his face.

Alex however looked at this girl like she was the devil, that innocent look while she tore apart his whole reasoning like it was nothing. Man, women are scary creatures that Alex needed to stop underestimating if he wanted to survive to old age, trying to win an argument with one was like hunting for land mines with a sledgehammer.

"You can't even defend him, because what he did was wrong. If Craig took the time to make a plan like you did, then I'd be at his side right now, even if his plan wasn't any good and you still saved me." Lowering her head, a tear slid down Carla's cheek, Alex couldn't help himself and reached out and wiped it away.

"Your life is your own, but don't let what he could have done take away from the fact that he still took a risk with my plan to get you out alive. I could have failed as well and I told him if I did to end us both, it was a shitty situation and we got lucky, you, me and him." Patting the blonde on her head Alex was about to leave when he felt her throw herself into his arms.

Taking a deep breath Carla scrunched up her nose and furrowed her eyebrows. "Huh that's weird? I wasn't imagining it, You smell like the cookies my grandpa use to make for me and my sister…" taking another deep breath in Alex's embrace, Carla felt…safe for the first time in a long time.

Alex however panicked when he saw the man standing about 50 feet away, looking at him with Carla in his arms, a sad smile on his face that brought up some best left forgotten memories in Alex's head.

However as Alex was going through his own troubles, multiple people around the wasteland began to move… All of them with one thought in their heads, 'where's Alex'.

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(Author thoughts)

How y'all liking it so far?

Currently have a flu so it's harder to write then usual, this chapter was slower and I debated on scraping it entirely, but the new pipboy and federal store will be major plot points later on so I bit the bullet and made an info dump type of chapter. At least tried to make it a little interesting, also should I let Carla and Boone patch things up or should he deal with the consequences of nearly braining his own wife?

In case you all didn't know, in the game Boons was one hundred percent sure she was dead because yeah… he killed her rather then let her become a legion plaything and wanted the players help finding out who sold her, before he decided to take his own life out in the wasteland.

I really like Carla as a character and wanted her and Alex to start a friendship, have her settle in his new town but also had a new love interest lined up for Boone but wanted to get y'all's opinions first. P.s the new love interest for Boone was Betsy the 1st recon sniper.

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SPOILERS AHEAD!

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Making the next chapter from multiple point of views, first will be a secret that I think people will like… I hope.

The second will be General Oliver at camp Golf as he deals with the aftermath of his sons 'death' and his own anger at bringing said son out to the Mojave.

The final one will be of the most powerful woman in the New California Republic, General Oliver's wife, her lineage, and her four daughters, where a very big secret shall be revealed, as well as the woman's twisted obsessive thoughts on a certain MC.

This chapter is planned out at about 10k-15k words rather then the usual 2k-5k chapters I do. After that it will be Alex and his final day in Searchlight before heading out. The next 10 or so chapters after that will be full of badassery and death with Alex not giving a hoot… also Deathclaws!

Also I gave up editing this chapter because of my flu so sorry if there's more mistakes then usual.

See you then!