Part 9: These Boots are Made for Goo

Update 9: These Boots are Made for Goo



Before I went anywhere else, Smiley was now about three weeks past his return time and it was high time I followed through on my promise to go look for him. I also figured this would give me a chance to see if Vic was good for anything other than gecko chow. And if that was all he was good for, we were in the right place.



The geckos made us aware of this fact as soon as we stepped inside out of the sunlight. At first it was just the little silver ones that I was used to from back home, and my new revolver saw them off pretty well.



They'd probably been pushed to the edges of the cave by their bigger cousins, who we found just inside among pools of green liquid that glowed a comforting green in the dimness of the cave.



Vic and Sulik complained that the goo burned their feet, but it didn't bother me and my rubber boots. I had them wait while I walked across the pool and looted an abandoned locker. It had some RadX and another pair of boots, among other things.



Unfortunately we were rudely interrupted as I made my way back to rejoin them. I couldn't complain, though, as both of them immediately rushed over to try and help. I still had to tell them afterward that they should follow me again, but at least they didn't stand there and watch me get mauled.



In the back of the cave we found a ladder leading down, which was terrifying as it implied that the geckos had somehow learned to climb ladders. We'd obviously have to kill them all.



They'd also shredded a poor dog that had somehow wandered in here, which was just one more nail in their coffins. That could have been poor Smoke, if I hadn't come along.



A little further in there was a pool of goo that stretched all the way across the corridor. I had to tell Vic and Sulik to wait for me again… I suppose I could have given them each a set of my spare pairs of boots, but then I would have only had one pair.



There was another pool just past that one, with what looked like old pre-war construction running right up against the rock walls.



Someone had thoughtfully stowed a couple of packs of RadAWay in a locker, under the same logic that had led the Elder to put an antidote at the end of a corridor behind three radscorpions.



"What are you doing here Smiley? It's a bit lizardy around these parts."

"Well, I reckoned that I always caught more golden geckos north and west of Klamath, so I figured that they must all live somewhere up here. Seems I was right, but one of 'em got behind me and damn near took my leg off. I just barely made it in this room and shut myself away."

"Huh… you'd think they could have made it over here to get you somehow."



"Speaking of Buckner's best, we should probably get the hell out of here."

"Sounds good to me. I figure that if I can join you we should both be able to make it out of here okay. I sure could use the help."



We ran into a few more geckos on the way out. After watching Smiley fall on his ass trying to punch one of them I could see why he needed help.



Vic and Sulik also hadn't gotten around to realizing that they shouldn't walk around in the glowing green goo, so I also figured I had to get them out of the cave before their feet melted and they ended up walking around on stumps.



For some reason Smiley didn't feel like walking back with us and left as soon as we hit the mouth of the cave. I think he felt like we were slowing him down. I just hoped that he didn't manage to trip over his own feet and give himself a massive concussion or something on the way back.



I don't know how but he managed to beat us back to Klamath, gimpy leg and all. I blame Vic. Smiley was sitting in Buckner's place with his leg propped up on a chair drinking a mug of beer. As a way of thanking me he taught me to skin geckos, which I think would probably have been better accomplished back in the cave with an abundance of fresh gecko corpses to practice on. I went ahead and asked him for more pointers on geckos while we were talking about them.



"Gecko milk? I thought geckos were reptiles."

"There's more you need to know than you even know you need."

"Teach me, oh great trapper."



Ardin Buckner was grateful enough that she tossed $100 my way, which I pocketed. I was still pretty broke from rescuing Vic from Metzger. Standing there talking to her I gradually became aware of a smell like someone had spilled a bottle of liquor and not bothered to clean it up. I looked around for the source and realized it was sitting at a table right next to me.



"With a nickname like yours, Whiskey Bob, maybe you should by providing the drinks."

"Well, funny you should say that..."



"So how much are we talking here?"

"$50. All you have to do is find a little shack just south of town. Go inside and dump some firewood into the still. Then come back here and I'll give you your money. But it needs to be done within the next day, or my batch of hootch will go bad."

"Seems like a reasonable price for taking a little walk."



Whiskey Bob had pointed vaguely in the direction of a patch of woodsy scrub just down the way from Buckner's. I hadn't even looked in that direction previously, since everything interesting seemed to be in the exact opposite direction.



I probably should have asked a few more questions about why he didn't just have somebody else walk over there and fill up the damn still. It turned out the entire area was crawling with geckos, which explained how he'd managed to get his leg bitten. Put another way, that also meant that the area was crawling with gecko skins that only happened to be attached to living geckos.



Popping the random geckos running around brings us up to level 6, giving us another perk. I really don't care which one at this point, since the more important ones for this build become available at levels 9, 12, 15, and kind of 24. Most of our skill points go to Unarmed for a final push, with the rest going to Doctor.



Once we'd killed all of the geckos and separated them from their valuable skins, the shack itself wasn't all that hard to find since it was the only building in the entire blood soaked forest.



I helped myself to some booze as additional payment for refueling the still, since Whiskey Bob hadn't mentioned anything about the geckos. It wasn't a complicated job, though, so one bottle of booze and $50 was plenty of payment for me.



Once we hiked back to town he paid me and we parted ways. Now that I think about it I probably could have just gone off for a day and then come back and told him it was taken care of and he'd have paid me. We'd talked to everybody of interest in Buckner's, so all three of us took a stroll over to Sajak's. I was particularly eager to keep Vic from visiting his house, since he'd never asked about where that radio came from and I didn't think he really needed to know. He probably wouldn't have cared, but I didn't want to find out. Once we got there, I saw a quiet looking guy sitting in the back...



"Uh… the art? Are you talking about magic!?! Can you teach me magic spells?"

"Sure and begorah, I could teach you about the wee folk, leprechauns, spriggans, Ban'sidhe and the like. Would you like that?"

"That sounds great! Teach away."



"All I need is a drink? That's great. Thanks for the tip."

"Well, mebbe' I am at that. Ne'er-the-less, you were a bonny good sport about it. Here's a beer, on me, for taking it so well. Now, gettin' back to what I was offering to teach you…"



"That sounds a lot more useful. Okay, let's step outside."



"That was great. Let me give you $10 for some brew on me. It's the least I can do."

"No, no, no, I could nay take money from ye. It was my very own pleasure to teach what I know. You take darn good care of yourself now. You've got real potential."

"That's great, but where did you learn to fight like that?"

"A long time ago when I was a lad in a place called Reno. You keep your nose clean and stay away from the likes o' that place."

This little interlude provides a flat 10% bonus to unarmed and melee skill, along with 150 XP. The reason to take this now rather than earlier is that Luke's Unarmed would have been twice as expensive to raise over 100%, so this was actually worth about 20 free skill points. We've now got 110% unarmed, and with a couple more boosters scattered around we'll have a respectable amount of skill by the end of the game.



I needed to get cleaned up after that, so I headed down the way to the one place I hadn't visited on my last trip through town.



Then I told Sulik and Vic to go keep themselves busy, since this evidently wasn't a group activity… something I was going to be very glad about in the near future.



I'd traded in my gecko pelts for as much cold hard cash as I could handle and I was feeling rich again, so I went for the deluxe service. I'd always taken baths by myself on the rare occasions that had come up in the village, so if I was going to take one with assistance I wanted the whole deal.



It turned out that I'd bought a whole lot more than a bath. We'll just leave it at that, and say that Sulik and Vic both had smirks on their faces when they saw me come out.



It was my last chance to feel clean for a while, because I had to jam the scroll bar on my pip boy's map for a few seconds to even see the location of Vault City, all the way on the very edge of the North California Map.