Chương 2: Ain't That A Kick In The Head?
Did I sleep on the couch again? Nothing was as uncomfortable as sleeping on the couch, it felt flaky since the leather was worn out, and most of the filler for the couch was as flat as it could be. Then the smell of antibiotics entered my nostrils, the smell that was so similar to alcohol but also smelled somehow like pines. The smell of a hospital.
I opened my eyes slowly. The breeze of a fan rotating on top of my head gave me a comfortable somehow hot breeze of the summer. I must have forgotten to turn on the air conditioner again. This room was blistering hot, for God's sake.
I tried waking up, but my body was stiff. It must have been from the extreme exhaustion of operating non-stop, but to hell with that, I couldn't sleep in this kind of extreme heat. I then sat down on my bed.
"You're awake. How about that."
I tried standing up, but my feet were as wobbly as warm freshly made Jell-O. Then, I saw this white almost balding man, wearing some kind of desert outfit. She was sitting right next to my bed.
He then forcefully told me to sit down, "Whoa, easy there. Easy. You have been out cold a couple of days now."
A couple of days? Man, did I sleep so darn long? What was this place, anyway? Chemistry set in front of me, an IV stand right next to my bed, and behind the almost balding man was a wheelchair.
"Let's see what the damage was. What's your name?" He asked.
My name? "Enzo."
The man nodded in satisfaction, "Can't say that's the name that I picked up for you, but if that's your name, that's your name." He then stood up from his chair and grabbed me by the arms.
"No more sense in keeping you in bed anymore. Let's see if I can get you back on your feet." He helped me stand up from the bed.
My feet were pins and needles, thanks to the lack of blood flow flowing down. I must have been asleep for a very long time. However, I eventually managed to stand up on my own.
"My name's doc Mitchell, welcome to Goodsprings," he said.
Goodsprings? Goodsprings as in the place in Fallout: New Vegas? Wait, how did I end up here in the first place? Let's see, I drank an energy drink and started playing this game all night long. Eventually, I ended up here. Did I die?
"Quite a luck you have there, surviving 5.56 bullet to the head."
5.56? Wasn't that the round used by the Varmint Rifle? This felt like that I was the courier, but I wasn't sure. The Courier was shot by a 9 mm bullet to the head fired by Benny's Maria, not a 5.56 bullet.
"Why don't you try the Vigor Tester machine over there? See whether I miss some bits or something."
It was on the other side of the room. It looked like an arcade machine, with its stick and all. However, I knew the purpose of the machine, it was to test out the S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats that a player had. What kind of stats would I have, though?
I moved the dial left and right to measure my S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats. The summary was displayed on the last screen of that vigor tester machine, indicating my final stats, and it was rather average, I guess.
Strength: ◄3►
Perception: ◄7►
Endurance: ◄6►
Charisma: ◄2►
Intelligence: ◄9►
Agility: ◄4►
Luck: ◄9►
I couldn't distribute the stats point further, unlike in New Vegas and two points in Charisma. Was I that uncharismatic according to the Vigor Tester? Well, no point of keep standing in front of the machine.
"Hmm, must have been frontal lobe damage. Well, we know your vitals are good," Mitchell commented.
He then walked to another room and sat down on a single couch. Behind the couch was a fireplace. Thank god that there was no fire in that fireplace. The place would be blistering hot.
"What do you say you take a seat on my couch and we go through a couple of questions? See if your dogs are still barking."
I sat down on the long couch in front of the fireplace. Then Mitchell grabbed several pieces of paper containing pictures that only could be described as random scribbles as far as I could see.
"First picture, what do you see?" Mitchell asked me.
It looked like a random bear, looked like two cliffs forming a crevasse. I couldn't decide, I would just answer what I saw at that point.
"A crevasse?"
"How about this one?"
The next scribble was an oval shape on top of a stick or some sort of something like that. I really couldn't decide, there might be some sort of plasma-ish beam there.
"A high-tech something something?" I asked.
He then asked the same question for the next six pictures. I really couldn't stop him in the process, knowing a doctor would hate to be stopped during his diagnosis. Eventually, he confirmed the result.
"Very interesting, that's all I wrote. I don't have anything to compare it to, so, maybe you would better have a look at the result. See if it all seems right to you?"
He then gave me a piece of paper from the examination. No, it wasn't a piece of paper that gave me the examination result, it wasn't the details of my injury either. It was all skill points, just like in New Vegas.
Energy Weapons: 26
Guns: 35
Explosives: 26
Melee Weapons: 18
Unarmed: 24
Barter: 16
Speech: 16
Medicine: 45
Lockpick: 26
Repair: 30
Science: 45
Survival: 24
Sneak: 20
Well, that might be enough, I couldn't adjust this one either, mainly because it had been written on a piece of paper instead of appearing as a prompt screen like in-game. Well, there was nothing better than giving it back to Mitchell.
"Alright, that seems to be all. Look, I need you to fill up a form, not like I expect you to have a history of getting shot in the head," Mitchell smiled and gave me a form.
The form was filled with a bunch of traits. However, I only could choose two of all perks that existed on the form. Well, I had no problem with that, to be entirely honest. Heck, I could choose not to check any of the perks. I checked two of them.
☑ Fast Shot: While using Guns and Energy Weapons, you fire 20% more quickly, but your shots are 20% less accurate
☑ Skilled: You're skilled, but not experienced. You gain +5 points for every skill, but you suffer -10% experience gained from now on.
I gave the piece of paper back to Mitchell and he put the paper away. He then stood up from his couch and I followed him from behind. One thing that kept bothering me, though, am I the courier?
"I'll be waiting at the door, follow me."
I followed Mitchell to the door of the house. This place was Doctor Mitchell's house and his clinic. The protagonist of New Vegas spawned here with a bullet in his/her head. Then, the next thing was obvious.
"Here, put this on, you'll look better considering you just woke up. People will think you are just a vault dweller."
He gave me a Vault 21 jumpsuit. I then wore it on top of my undergarments that I seemed to not own nor have in the real world. After wearing it, he then gave me the pip-boy.
"Here's a pip-boy for you. Figure out that it might serve you better than it served my wife," he said as he gave me a Pip-Boy 3000.
I wore it in my hand, thinking that it might give me an extra ability that might help me to survive in the wasteland. The thing about this wasteland was it might be relatively safe in comparison to The Capital wasteland or Commonwealth. However, Mojave was in the middle of a deadly conflict between the Legion and the New California Republic.
Scavengers, caravans, and anything was a target for the Legion, and NCR was quite heavy with their taxes. Well, it depended on how you looked at things, I guess? Some people did Legion playthrough, but I wasn't those people.
"By the way, stop by the saloon. Sunny wants to have a word with you," Mitchell said as he opened the door that led out to Goodsprings.
"Oh, I see. What does she want from me?" I asked.
"She wants to apologize to you," Mitchell said.
Apologize? Weird, Courier came to Sunny for tutorial and Sunny didn't give any apologies one bit. It must have been something else entirely.
"Why?"
"She was the one that shot you in the head with a varmint rifle."
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