บท 61: Level'ing up in the world

Tommy sneers at his response, "Might need you to have a look at my own gun." he states, giving Afton a glimpse of his dirty, rusty .357 revolver.

"Now, now, we can talk on this later, right now we've got a job to do." Karl says, drawing everyone's attention to him. "No Caravans will be comin' through from New Vegas due to the Deathclaws, so we'll need to start getting creative. We'll set up camp near Sloan and wait for the NCR resupply team and ambush them. No point in keeping the Miners around if the NCR ain't gonna get rid of the pests." he explains.

"Sounds good to me." Tommy says, downing a shot of whisky in one go before sliding it back to the barman and standing up. "Well? We're not gonna sit here drinking all day, let's go kill some grunts."

Everyone nods and Afton's given a backpack with a small number of supplies to carry, he was new to the gang so he didn't argue against being given the load. They left the prison and headed back in the direction they came from, veering off the road and onto the taller rocky ledges at the side which gave them a good view of anyone who'd pass by.

Afton hadn't been paying attention while he was walking and ended up stamping on something that broke under his foot. Looking down, he could see the broken pieces of what looked like an eggshell, aswell as the blood-covered corpse of the eggs not-yet-formed inhabitant.

Karl looks over to see what was holding him and his eyes widened, "Shit, Gecko nest! Get your guns out, we're about to have guests." he says, pulling out his .44 magnum.

Afton could hear the thuds of many small feet, they were moving quickly and it was slightly unnerving to not know where they were coming from. He heard a growl behind him and rapidly turned, pointing his Laser pistol at the offending sound and shooting a red beam at the dog-sized lizard with red eyes and grey scales.

It'd been running at him on two legs with its forearms raised baring its claws, its mouth was wide open showing many sharp teeth. The red beam stuck it in the face and caused it to flinch in pain, it ended up leaping past Afton and off of the rocky ridge they were standing on.

He glanced down and saw it land heavily with a thud, its two legs bending at odd angles as it gave out enraged and pained snarls. While he was distracted with that though, another Gecko ran up and was about to clamp its jaws onto his leg.

Afton had heard it and tried to point his gun at it, but wasn't fast enough... His eyes focussed on the creature as its jaws slowly began to shut on his leg... When suddenly time seemed to freeze.

All sound ceased immediately as the attacking Gecko's head started flashing an amber colour, Afton glanced around and saw that everyone wasn't moving, Karl as just kicked a Gecko in the face while blowing another's head off, the blood splatter was frozen mid-air.

Suddenly a thought flashed through Afton's mind, he knew what this was... VATS!

The bottom right of his vision he could see the number of action points he had, and when he focussed on the Gecko in-front of him he could select particular things he wanted to target... Unlike in the game, he could choose very specific things like eyes, mouth, or throat.

He chooses to fire the maximum amount of shots into the Gecko's head, the chance was almost at one hundred percent success rate due to how close it was. With that he confirmed the selection and he felt his body start moving on its own.

Unfortunately, before he was able to get the first shot off the Gecko managed to clamp down on his leg, though, the pain he was dreading didn't appear. He simply stood there in a perfect shooting stance and shot two times into its skull, disintegrating a large portion of its head.

Once it was dead VATS released its grip on him and he could finally feel where the Gecko had bitten him. It'd bit down on one of the reinforced metal bits of his recon armour, so it hadn't breached his skin, but the pressure applied to his leg still hurt a good amount.

He ignored the pain though as there were more enemies still surrounding them. He focussed on an enemy again and dropped into VATS, allowing him to survey the scene while time was frozen. This wasn't its intended use, but it was still incredibly broken... Being able to freeze time and come up with a plan during combat would make him an incredibly hard person to fight.

He selects the nearest Gecko and uses the rest of his action points on it, unloaded three red beams into it. One misses but the rest strike true, burning a deep hole where one of its eyes used to be.

A smaller one charges him but Afton just kicks it under its jaws as hard as he can, his lessons with Veronica hadn't been in vain, and the satisfying *Crack* of the creature's neck-breaking had him grinning slightly.

The group continued to shoot the small colony of Gecko's until none remained. Reggie was the only person who'd gotten injured as one had come from behind and taken a bite out of his thigh, his jeans not giving much resistance against the Gecko's teeth.

Afton slowly walked over and was about to start looking at the wound when time froze yet again. He was about to start complaining but the sight before him had his mouth unconsciously closed...

[WELCOME TO LEVEL 2]