"Every part of me that still believes the brotherhood has the right idea is itching to get that armor from you right now." Veronica whined.
"I believe they make a cream for that." I joked.
"Ugh, of course you'd go there." she groaned.
"What can I say? The brotherhoods doctrine is very similar to a rash, starts small and gets worse and worse the longer it's left untreated." I said with a shrug.
"Can we please focus?" Jess said impatiently.
"Chill, we've got plenty of time." I say as I casually walk into the room and begin to pull open the crates to grab the goodies inside.
The bottles that were once there had been popped open mostly and drained with the caps left behind. Who drained them you may ask? Allen Marks, the blue star hunter himself dead in the corner. It was fairly easy to figure out why he ended up trapped in this room until he died of what was likely either poisoning or starvation. The hallway behind us likely collapsed and before he could dig his way out some sort of automated timer on the room went off locking him inside.-
From there he drank the contents of these bottles to sustain himself until the soda likely killed him. Thing is, the sodas of this world? Not exactly the safest things to consume even before the war. After two hundred years of sitting in their bottles the stuff was far more unsafe. It's why you couldn't pay me to drink any of the stuff unless a fresh batch was whipped up and even then maybe not. I don't doubt that the stuff likely kept him alive for maybe a week or two longer than if he hadn't drank it but all he did was postpone his death and perhaps change the method.-
Anyways with the bottles all empty and the caps stacked neatly in the crates we had no trouble at all collecting them all and counting up a solid two thousand seven hundred and fifty three caps in total. A damned good windfall in the wasteland. Not "I own all I see" levels of wealth but enough to set yourself up comfortably for a good long while if you are frugal. Veronica unsurprisingly went to grab the laser pistol to disect it and find out what made it better than it's more widespread older brother.-
"Honestly it's just a few small elements that have been improved to create an overall better performance." I pointed out as she had already taken it apart and was examining the parts.
"I can see that. It's essentially just the same as the ones we use now with a few of the internal mechanisms having been redesigned to work better. With a bit of time and some experimentation I think I could update all of the laser weaponry that the brotherhood uses with these changes as the base." she said eagerly.
I nodded in agreement.
It was true though as the majority of all laser based weaponry used the same foundation so if a breakthrough with one branch of it like the pistols happened the others could copy the homework so to speak. The reason it probably didn't happen before the war was that the bombs dropped and cut off almost literally everything research and development wise. The only places that didn't have this sort of issue were specific vaults, the Enclaves branches and the Commonwealth Institute of Technology in Boston. At least to my knowledge.-
To be honest the possibility of other groups having fallen into this category existing was very high but my knowledge of this world was only what the games provided. Everything outside that framework was a blind spot for me and considering the absolutely tiny amount of North America that they covered that blind spot was colossal. Even more so there was the rest of the world as well that may even have whole countries that were entirely unaffected by the war and thus technologically not only intact but advanced. That didn't even begin to cover the ACTUAL aliens up in orbit of the planet that had tech that made even our most advanced stuff down here look little better than monkeys banging rocks together.-
Moving on from that matter Veronica easily pieced the laser pistol back together with hands that knew exactly what they were doing. With that done we gathered up and I performed my little trick to earn us another five hundred thirty two caps, I activated the trash collection bot. It was located in a maintenance closet and was of the Mr. Handy variety. These bots had large round main casings that had three stalk eyes and three stalk limbs coming from them. They moved around via jet propulsion with a single high output thruster underneath them that they floated with.-
This one was made with cleaning in mind so it had two pincer grasping limbs and a flamethrower. It floated up and moved in a hurry to collect all the "trash" in the building while we kicked back and waited. The bot was efficient and only needed about twenty minutes to make it's rounds and deposit the collected stuff into the trashcan next to the janitorial closet and going back into power saving mode. There was a bit of trash in truth but most of what had been collected was bottle caps that got added to our total.-
"Now we go get our passes and head onto the Strip proper." I said once I finished putting away the last of the loot.
"Finally! I can't wait to get my hands on Benny." Jess said with a sharp tone.
'Her face when House summons her is going to be priceless.' I thought with a grin but didn't say a word.
Now far richer than we arrived we left the Sunset Sarsaparilla headquarters and made the return trip to Freeside.-
When we arrived there was a hell of a commotion coming from further ahead in the collapsed and ruined part of the city.
"We should probably go see what that is. I have a feeling it would be best if we stepped in and stopped it." I said seriously.
"I mean it's kinda none of our business right?" Veronica said reluctantly.
"Look if i'm not wrong this should be a scuffle between the Kings and the NCR. Having both of these groups at each others throats like this is bad for everyone, even us." I pointed out.