//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: Fallout New Vegas: Unexpected Friends 
// by Sleepyted 
//------------------------------//

After pulling out a different bag from her main one, she intertwined her fingers, pointed her palms forwards, and cracked her knuckles before wiggling her fingers, hoping to loosen them up before pulling off her one glove. With a sigh, she brought out a large squared shaped brown bottle from the bag and read its worn label.

‘Vodka’

“Such a shame, I wanted to drink myself into a stupor with this,” she said twisting off the cap before downing a mouthful.

It left a burning sensation as it went down her throat, which caused her to take the bottle from her mouth and let out a wheezy cough. ‘Note to self, get something that tastes better to drink,’ she thought, letting out a few more small coughs.

Once she was done hacking, she took out a clean rag from the bag, well, as clean as something in the Wasteland can be anyway, and put it to the top of the bottle before tipping it over and dousing the area in alcohol. She then poured a large amount onto her hands to try and kill anything on them.

With a rag ready, she picked up a small, silver needle off the ground before taking its cap off. With one swift movement Anne brought down the needle and jabbed it into the purple unicorn’s ass, right in the middle of its branding, before pushing the plunger. She looked back down to the other needles she dropped on the floor and let out an annoyed sigh. “I knew I should have stocked up on more Stimpaks than Med-X.”

True, Med-X could help you keep fighting after taking anything from a gunshot wound to a broken bone, but it didn’t do anything to heal the wound, and you would most likely bleed to death before the dulling effects runs out, while Stimpaks actually closed the wound, and healed bone but didn’t stop any pain, and with some injuries, you would just lose the ability to stay awake before the fight is over.

With a sad sigh, Anne grabbed the cloth and started rubbing around the edges of the wounds on the mutant’s ass. After a few moments, Anne pulled away the now bloodied, rag and let out another sigh. She reached back down and grabbed the still opened bottle of vodka, and splashed a generous helping of the liquid onto the mutant’s lower half.  

Anne froze when she heard the mutant let out a pained gasp, as the alcohol touched her.

The mutant let out a groan as it tried to roll over, but was stopped by Anne’s knees that were still next to her body. It continued to roll over its upper half, and looked at Anne before freezing. Its eyes were darting around the room. It seemed to no longer be in its previous ghoul like state she was in from all the pain.

The two just stared at each other, each not wanting to make a move.

Anne looked into whatever it was eyes. Like the rest of its body, the eyes were a deep purple, but what stood out to Anne, was the sheer size of them. They were huge. However this thing even have a brain with its eyes this big, she didn’t know. They looked scared beyond what seemed possible, and it made Anne feel like she just killed a dozen orphans.

She was drawn out of her staring when the mutant’s horn began to glow a sparkly purple. Automatically, a thousand switches went off in Anne’s head. Before anyone knew what happened, Anne’s bloody hand shot out and grabbed the offending appendage, and tightened her hold on it.

“If you care for whatever this thing is, you’d better turn it off,” she threatened, slightly bending the horn.

The mutant’s eyes widened, ears folded down, and she let out a sad sounding whimper, and not a second later its horn stopped glowing. “Good girl, and because you did that I assume that you’re intelligent?” Anne said, loosening her grip on the horn, but still not letting go.

The mutant nodded slowly, averting its eyes away from Anne’s. “Are you able to talk, or will I have to ask yes and no questions?” She asked.

“I-I can t-talk,” she whispered out.

The fact that this thing could talk didn’t surprise Anne as much as she thought it would. She did hear it talk a while ago after all. “That’s good to hear, but first things first: I need to ask if you’re squeamish.”

“W-why?” The mutant answered trying to look where Anne’s hands where.

Before it could look at the wounds, Anne used her other bloodied hand, and grabbed its purple jaw, and yanked the head up, smearing the still wet blood on its coat. It let out a sacred whimper but Anne did her best to reassure whatever it was. 

“You don’t want to do that; you woke up at a very awkward time,” Anne said removing her hand from its horn.

Anne couldn’t do anything if she had to hold the thing’s head, and if she didn’t hurry, there might be serious damage done to its muscles and tendons, but from the look of it, that has probably already happened. “If you want to know the truth; you’ve woken while I was in the middle of an operation on your ass.” She said plainly.

Its pupil’s shank to the size of pinpricks and its face went a few shades whiter. It looked like it wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind.

“The reason you can’t feel much is because I stuffed a bunch of painkillers in your system, so please don’t move if you care about anything down there, I don’t want to go through all the work of stopping you from leaking if you’re just going to be a cripple,” she said slowly taking her hand from its jaw, leaving a red handprint on its face.

The mutant’s eyes went wide, and breath hitched in her throat, as she saw the blood on Anne’s hands. Anne’s eyes drew away from the mutant to look at what it was looking at and let out an annoyed sigh, as she realised what happened. 

“You think operations are clean? But, don’t worry I cleaned them before,” she said with a smirk.

But sadly, with all the reassurance Anne gave to it, nothing helped calm the mutant down.

It started to sob uncontrollably, slightly shaking. “I wanna go home.” She said between sobs.

“Of course you do,” Anne said lazily, as she reached back into her bag, and pulled out a few different sizes of scalpels and a pair of tweezers.

“I’m going to continue if you wouldn’t mind, the painkillers will wear off at this rate,” Anne said turning her attention to the mutant’s lower half.

With a sigh, she picked up the smallest scalpel with her left hand, and picked up the tweezers with her right. Before she did anything else, she turned on her Pip-Boy’s radio and turned it onto a station. With a smile at the song it was playing, she got back to the task at hand.


__________________________________________



Twilight had no clue what was going on. She had one of the monsters she saw kill each other currently operating on her flank. She saw it had one of the ‘L’ shaped boom things on its side, but it was silver instead of black, and larger but it still had a lot of similarities.

She was broken out of her observing, as it poked the metal thing on its arm with one of the claws, and suddenly music started playing from it.

Click for song


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Anne let out a satisfied sigh as she looked at her handy work.

The mutant’s ass was still covered in blood, but that’s sort of a given with what just happened. And all the holes and deep scratches had been stitched over, and then covered in bandages. Because of how messed up the legs had been, Anne had to cut them open, and peg it together so there were stitches going down the entire length of the legs, and due to the current lack of cast, all she could do was break off a few chunks of the wooden floor and use them as splints. Four on each leg then cover them in more bandage. With the wings, it was more difficult to do. She ended up pegging them into what she thought, was normal then, covered them in bandages, but didn’t splint them.

All in all, the entire mutant’s lower half now looked like a mummy in slightly bloodied coverings. Half way through the operation, the mutant fell asleep, and once the operation was done, Anne threw everything on the table off in the middle of the room, and put the mutant onto it, thinking it probably didn’t want to wake up in its own bodily fluids.

With a sigh Anne wiped her bloody hands on her chest, before opening the door of the shack, and peeking out to see it was nearly midnight. ‘Well I’m not going out at night, not even I’m that stupid,’ she thought with a chuckle.

She closed the door again, and walked back into the room.

With a slight shiver, she realised that shack was so cold she could see her breath in front of her in the form of small tuft of steam. She looked around for anything she could use to make some heat, but didn’t see any safe way to start a fire without burning the whole shack down.

She sat down on the small chair in the room, and thought about how to make a safe fire, while looking around. With a metaphorical light bulb, she thought of something. She hopped off her chair and walked over to the metal lockers, and pulled down the empty ammo box, and threw open the lid. She looked around the room, and the large crate caught her eye. With a smile, she walked over to it and brought out her machete, and brought it back before swinging it down.

Over a few minutes, Anne broke a large hole into the side of the crate, and grabbed a few hands full worth of the splinters and wood, and threw them into the ammo box before reaching into the hole in the box, and felt around for something she could use. After a few swings around in the box, she felt something brush her hand and she let out a small chuckle before grabbing it and pulling it out into the open.

In her hand she saw the extremely worn down and decomposed remains of some rope and cloth, before throwing it in the box, with the wood to act as cindering. She reached into a pocket on her thigh and pulled out a lighter. With a few ‘clicks’, a small flame appeared on the top of it; and for a moment, Anne was entranced in the flame. She put her arm into the ammo box and let the flame lick at the decayed rope before they caught alight.

Anne cupped her hands around the box, and let out a few blows to help get the fire going. Once it was going well Anne got more comfortable and started to rub her hands together.

She reached into her main bag, and pulled out a half finished bottle of dirty water. After unscrewing the cap she chugged down the rest of the bottle and let her face crinkle up at the muddy taste. After throwing the bottle into the barrel next to the wall, she reached back into her bag, and pulled out a small, blue, dirty cardboard box with most of the labelling having faded years ago, save for the yellow lettering that was still readable that read: ‘CRAM’, in big, yellow letters.

With a sigh, she opened the box and dug in.