"Yeah... right. Just give me a moment. I'll be okay. Dumb as these fools are I'm sure they have a stimpack or two around here.", The poor shot up husky guy says, groaning as he touches the shallow but painful wounds he endured during the firefight.
Before you can reply though a sudden burst of gunfire comes from the stairwell. Thinking of Tessa you're quick to run back and provide some support, but when you run back inside and down the first flight of stairs you see Tessa is thankfully fine. Her 10mm SMG is smoking, and there is a new dead raider slumped over on the stairs. "All good here babe! What do you say we shake the rest of this building down?" she says, giving you a thumbs up and a winning smile. Seeing no reason to not secure the area you tag along.
Luckily for everyone it seems that raider Tessa got was the last one in the building, and soon you all have a decent location to get some looting done. Members of the caravan roam the building looking for anything useful, however given that you, Tessa, and the two husky guys did the heavy lifting here everyone respects you getting first pick of things. You've done pretty well for yourself already though, that new rifle of yours likely worth as much as nearly the rest of your firearms combined! Still, no right minded wasteland scavenger would ever turn down an opportunity to look for goodies right?
Spoiler (click to show/hide):
Loot rolls: 9, 7, 13
You take a cursory look around, and find some decent stuff random goods. A shot of med-x, two doses of psycho, 2 stimpacks, around 45 loose caps, a fragmentation landmine, some electronic scraps, a fission battery, half a bottle of vodka, a pack of cigarettes, and some bobby pins. You find a few firearms and some more ammo too, but allow the caravaners to take that for now. You were starting to get awfully loaded up anyway. It would be nice to get into town somewhere and finally sell some stuff off! Your body might be physically improved with your changes and you might not feel it as much, but it always felt good lightening a heavy load after a hard day of work.
The caravan pauses for a bit and probably spends the next hour or so taking whatever they can from the building, and by the time everyone is ready to move the raider base is thoroughly picked apart. In the end everyone is slightly better armed and slightly better clothed, though still not nearly as much as they'd like to be. At least all the girls seems to have tops on now though, so that's a fair improvement.
Currently everyone is on the road, waiting for Devin to give the order to move out which, naturally, he promptly does when it seems like everyone is ready. "Alright folks. Not to much longer now. A couple of hours more and we'll be at Rose Island and we can start putting those goddamn mess behind us. Keep your eyes open!", he calls out, then starts leading the way.
Mercifully the rest of the trip goes by quickly enough, and the caravan moves through the decrepit and mostly collapsed suburbs around 8 miles off the downtown area. Your close enough though that you can much better see the skyscrapers of the downtown core area though, massive pillars of iron and concrete. Many are still standing, though near the center the lean outward before a strange gap of them appears. You can tell like anyone else that was where a bomb hit during the great war, the blast vaporizing some buildings before pushing others over or just off kilter, a real testament to their construction quality. Like most major cities though the downtown area is incredibly hostile, the radiation there worse and causing more nasty creatures and gangs of super mutants to set up shop there. For the especially risky scav though they could be absolute treasure troves of loot if you could manage the risks however.
Eventually there is a break in the houses where it seems they've been burnt, ripped down, and straight up bulldozed to to make a clearing, and as you come into it you see the the wall and gate that leads into the settlement of Rose Island. They had like cleared the area around the gate to deny cover to any attackers. Looking around some more you confirm some other things you've learned in casual conversation over the course of the trip. Rose Island was a rather protected spot, with only three relatively narrow land paths onto the island while the rest is surrounded by toxic water. Before the war it was probably a relatively upper middle class neighbourhood. Now though it was a trading post and home a few hundred folks who mostly got by scavenging from the city and farming.
Naturally there is some alarm when you first show up, however once again you are shown just how relatively... not rare it is to have random bands of ill equipped animal people show up given the activities of a certain vault obsessed with transforming people. Devin seems to know the gate guards who give Devin what sympathy they can on his forced transformation before opening the gate and letting you all inside. Naturally once inside you get a fair bit of attention, but good and bad depending on how people felt about anthros, but not as much as one would think. Naturally though some of the more... open minded locals don't take hold back on ogling all the scantily clad ladies.
"Fina-fucking-ly.", Devin starts, relief evident in his voice. "Alright folks gather round. You're all due your pay after this fiasco at they very least.", he says as opens up one of the brahmin saddle bags and starts fishing out caps. Once it your turn he gives you 350 caps and his heartfelt thanks. "Hey, thanks for the work out there Joy. I'm sorry how all this ended up, but I feel like things would've been a lot worse without you around."
And with that... you were free to do as you willed. There seemed to be a couple bars and a few trading shops around. Decent spots to offload some gear, get some new clothes, or get some information about scavenging spots or the mysterious anthropomorphizing vault.
