Chapter 3: Black Bet
My life experience has taught me nothing happens by chance. Even the idea of the ball in a roulette game: it's not chance it ends up in a certain place. It's forces that are at play.
"Thanks for helping out the town." The sheriff said, looking at me apraisingly as he handed me his response to my initial letter. "Your sure you can't do anything else to help?"
"No, I'm not sure, but I'm also not in the helping mood." I said with a stiff look. I tipped my gambler's hat over my eyes. "I have other places to be, other things to see. And that, well, that means going back to the city.
I pointed at the towers of dise in the distance, smiling as I walked out of town.my new gun was on my hip, and honestly, after unloading everything else from my person and grabbing a few extra playing cards, I couldn't feel better.
---
My marching through the desert was relatively uneventful. Sure, I passed by little shacks and old world gas stations and things. But relay, I wasn't some idiot who would walk into every single little shack in hopes of finding loot. They were filled with bugs and raiders and other icky things, and more often then not held nothing particularly useful. Still, finding them gave a pleasant ding on my pip-buck and I sometimes sold their locations to prospectors.
So what did I do instead? hide. I hid from everything I could, including warriors of all types, and of course including the wildlife. I never felt particularly good about dispatching the less powerful wildlife. A few bullets in a rad-scorpions tail and it was dead, and the same could be said of a small gecko.
I avoided a few beaten up roads trying to lead me into a town that I knew had no gambling den. One that, in the distance, I could see had caught to fire. I didn't care if it was a minotaur incursion, or if it was a fucking fire gecko attack. Smoke was bad news, especially considering how little use that fucking place was. I did, however, mark their destruction in my notes to give to the nearest NCA settlement... for a reasonable price.
There was actually a pretty nice town on the way, one that happened to be right near a NCA outpost with one of the few rangers manning it. As I wandered toward it I happened to meet a caravan group, which I happily sold a few things to and picked up some special shotgun ammunition. Sure I didn't really need it, but I just couldn't resist Dragons-breath. The caravan was well protected, which was certainly a good thing due to the fact that within minutes they were attacked.
Maybe my luck just rubbed off on them wrong or something, but they were attacked by a troop of goats just minutes after I met them, half way to the little town/base that I was trying to get to. Thankfully the caravan was able to dispatch them with minimal casualties, and the goats ignored me completely. I looted the corpses, and then sold their wears to the mare that had just dispatched several of the goats herself... But she didn't seem to mind. Blinking idiot she was.
---
When I finally marched into town, leading the caravan and then leaving them to trade, I was particularly happy. I had little to no doubt that everything would go well, and I could have a relaxing time in a high-roller's suite back in Dise. Luck is lovely when the lady shines down on ya, and that was certainly something that always intrigued me. For some reason my luck was always just that tad bit more useful, although that was coupled with a relative inability for me to figure out my odds. Because I was so lucky 90% of the time, I never really was able to calculate my odds and make an informed decision rather than a gutsy one.
Really I should have known that when I went into town, as I walked right up to the NCA camp and let one of the guards know about the Goats in the area, and how I had seen the town in the distance burn. "Troubling." the guard said, which was kind of an understatement. "I'll let my superiors know, thank you for the information."
After taking care of that I walked into the town proper, just a minute away. It wasn't technically directly under the NCA's boot-heal, but it was certainly submissive to them. The little town was known for it's connection to a paleontologist dig. Getting it's name from one of the leading pony's last name. That of a Miss Petunia Paleo. The Paleo motel had a giant skeletal spiny-back Ponysaurus that few saw due to the remoteness of this direction.
Paleo was nice enough, and I went there for a place to store my crap. Most of my rooms were the one for the high rollers in the casinos. And when you have those rooms, well, they wern't that comfortable. So instead I rented a room here to store things, 100 caps a year. I had been in a while, so I stepped up to old granny Tyranna.
"Ah, so your back Gambler." She said, smiling at me from behind the desk that was littered with souvenirs and even some old ponysaurus bones. "Well, your usual room is kept upstairs. You should be glad most ponies are superstitious about bad luck, or I might just have given your room up, you've been so long."
"Been doing work in the north recently. And you know bad luck doesn't effect me." I grinned and forked over the caps to her. "I hope you haven't dipped into my liquor. You crazy old bat." With a laugh and a shake of hooves, I went up and flopped down on my bed. There was a stuffed yagaoi on my bed, a cuddly little ball of floof that I loved to sleep with... once I got a few bottles in me.
So I drank myself to sleep. One whole bottle of wiskey, shot after shot after shot. Each sip filling me with extacy. Now, I wasn't an alcoholic, I spent too many caps to have a chemical dependency, but I had worked up quite the resistance to being poisoned by the stuff. So I drank, until I fell asleep. The next morning I would have to move on.
Level Up!
Skill milestone: Lockpick 75
New Perk:
Egghead: Congrats, you're a nerd. But don't feel too bad, we're nerds too. Just be happy and take your 2 extra skill points per level.