Chapter 18 - 18

Adam had every intention to buy a helmet next, that was always his next stop, his next goal. But he paused as he left the Doc's clinic. He was down to 52 caps. From nearly 400 to almost under 50 in a day. He was not a fan of how quickly he was eating through his money. He still had the inn room to sleep in tonight, but if he bought a helmet it meant that come tomorrow, he, once more, would be living just on the edge of homelessness. He would have to go out and scavenge again. While this was his loose plan to begin with, he didn't enjoy feeling boxed in like this. Surviving in this world was a lot harder, no government support meant that if he was broke, he was broke. Harsh world. Still, he needed a helmet. If yesterday taught him anything, regardless of his body armor, if he is hit in the head, it's over, there was no escaping it. So, resolved, he walked over to Winchester's to hopefully buy a helmet. The door to the store was propped open so Adam simply walked right in, standing at the shop counter was a woman Adam didn't recognize. She had long brunette hair and dimples on both cheeks. She also wore what looked like a cleaned and resewn pre-war dress, colored light blue. It looked flattering on her. "Come on in hun." She said with a smile. "Don't think I've seen you around here before, You new?" She asked curiously. But before Adam could respond she seemed to look him over and speak again. "Oh! Are you that Vaulty that my husband has been mentionin' recently?" "Uh, yes actually." He chuckles a bit as he approaches the counter. "Are you Mariah? Chuck's wife?" "Oh! You know of me! I'm flattered." She laughs. "Yes, I am Mariah Winchester, that oaf's wife." She grinned, clearly not meaning to be mean to her husband but teasing him as a matter of course. "Well it's lovely to meet you, ma'am." Adam said, offering her his hand which she gladly shakes. "I owe your husband a debt of gratitude for leading me here so I'm pleased to meet his beautiful wife." He smiled. Adam was laying on the charm. Why? He felt it was the polite thing to do for Chuck's wife. Also, it never hurts to be on good terms with the shopkeeper. "Aw, you charmer you." She giggled a bit and then leaned on the counter. "Now, what brings you into our little shop?" She said, her eyes now twinkling in mercantile whimsy. "Actually I need a helmet, but my budget is kind of thin now." Adam responded as he pulled out the voucher and his caps bag, not that she could tell how many caps were in there. "So I need a good helmet within my budget of 50 caps." He said, hoping this was a fair budget for a helmet, since he was still learning prices but quickly getting a hang of them. "Well with 50 so long as you don't ask for the moon I think we can find you something." She said before pausing. "To be clear you want a helmet for adventuring right? Something to protect you from attacks, not something to just look fancy around town, yes?" "Yes, I'm planning on going out again, probably tomorrow, and I learned how vulnerable my head is without protection so I'm looking to find something to keep me safe." "Safest thing you can do is stay inside the walls." She shrugs and then looks around for a moment. "Well… I think we got three good options for you." She said as she then pointed to one of the shelves. "Over there is an assault gas mask. Sturdy and it even comes with a filter but it's more for frontal protection than all around." She then ponders for a moment and then nods. "Give me a moment to run to the storeroom and I'll be right back out." She said before leaving to head through the other doorway that led to a room behind the counter. In the meantime, while waiting, Adam walked over to the assault gas mask and examined it. It was, ultimately, a reinforced gas mask with a hood that offered little protection from the back where he got hit yesterday. It was actually pretty cool looking and would be good if he needed to walk through a toxic zone or was on guard when he knew his back was safe, but truthfully, he needed to know the back of his head was safe, especially since he was doing all of this alone. So this was not a winner. Mariah came back a minute later holding two other helmets. One looked like a riot helmet, it even had a screen shield in the front made of a sturdy plexiglass that would even absorb small arms fire, probably. As he approached back to the desk looking at it he noted it was a very faded blue. And he could see the edge of a yellow line. He couldn't be sure, but it almost seemed like gear that maybe vault-tec used. Guard helmet, maybe? He couldn't be sure. But then he looked at the other one. It was a combat helmet, the kind he used back on deployment, when he wasn't in one of those walking tanks. The combat helmet was proven to be sturdy and even had some bells and whistles on it in the form of a light. It was very convenient. The visored helmet might give him a face shield but honestly, nothing beats peace of mind, and he knew the combat armor helmet well. It was the winner. "How much is that?" He asked as he pointed at the combat armor helmet. "30 caps." Mariah returned as she put down the riot helmet and held the other one. "Would you do 25? I have the voucher right here?" He asked, hoping he could keep his haggling streak going. Mariah just smiled. "And I can tell you got a few extra caps in there too~" She said sweetly. Adam sighed and pushed no further and then nodded, sliding over the 25 cap voucher and counting out 5 more caps, he was now down to 22 caps. Well… at least he had enough for probably 2 meals. "Pleasure doing business with you." She smiled as she took the caps and handed him the helmet. Adam was quick to put it on, strapping it in like he was back on deployment. The feeling was strange and yet familiar. It had been a long time since he wore one but it chafed just like he remembered. "Thank you." He smiled at her before walking out with his new prize. Adam walked back to his inn room to put it on the dresser, he didn't need to wear it around town so there was no reason to subject himself to it but he felt better having it already. However now he was left with what to do with the rest of the day. He had too much energy to laze around. And, for that matter, nothing to do if he did, but he was also running low on caps. So he needed to get more. Of course his plan was to leave tomorrow to go out and Scav again, but he figured now was as good a time as any to begin asking around town for those odd jobs. It would not only, hopefully, turn a profit, but also kill time and ingratiate him with the townspeople, which was never a bad thing. The rest of the day was spent doing exactly this, and he found a number of tasks that could be done. In order: First he noticed an old man struggling to clean his house's gutter, grunt work really, but as Adam had no qualms doing this as he used to do it himself for his own house before the war. So he climbed onto the room of the man's house using the ladder he had and began to sweep the gutters clean, even making sure the rain shute was clear too. For his trouble the man gave him 10 caps. The next thing he found to help was that blasted southern gate. Seems he wasn't the only one annoyed by the loud grinding sound and slow opening speed of the gate. Adam was promised, by the guard at the gate as well as a few other residents, that if he fixed it he would be paid out of the town fund for doing so. So Adam got to work on it immediately, despite the other tasks he would do later this took the majority of the day. He had to first off oil the damn thing, the gears were grinding due to the metal pushing against itself it needed to be smoothed out. Next he installed a few additional motors from his stockpile of motors he couldn't sell to Chuck, a good excuse to get rid of them. The extra motors increased the torque of the pulling mechanism to the gate making the process of opening and closing it to be a smoother process for both the people and the electronics. It sped up the process a bit, but the big change was the fact the motors no longer were being overtaxed like they were. For his efforts as well as for the cost of the motors the town bought from him to fix it, he was paid 100 caps. However he did have to buy oil from Chuck's wife to do so and used nearly the entire can so that cost him 15, netting him a total of 85 caps. Next was another repair job but something much simpler, a young woman wanted to have her radio fixed and Adam was happy to oblige. It was a very easy repair, it didn't take any items other than the tools he had on hand. Another 20 caps. Next there was a young girl who had lost her stuffed cat. Though the fact it was a stuffed cat and not a real cat was not made clear to Adam at first, it took him over an hour to find the cat, which was left just slightly underneath a house's porch, presumably where she had put it down for reasons he didn't know. Returning it to her got him a single bottle cap but it was an art project, the bottle cap was surrounded by a ribbon of paper making it look like a medal. He didn't count this one as money, it was a gift. As the sun was just starting to set on the horizon he helped a farmer move a ton of wooden crates from the field to his storehouse. This was very simple but just a lot of labor, another 25 caps. Lastly, as the night began to set he got the wires he scavenged yesterday and installed them into the Jukebox for free. He didn't have the vacuum tube so it would not have an effect yet, but it would be fully fixed if he ever found a vacuum tube to replace inside the jukebox. And finally, after all that labor he got himself a nice meal and a drink to go along with it, so he was down 13 caps again. Bringing his total net income over the course of the day to 127. He now had 149 caps. It was a lot of work but he did earn back a large chunk of money. Though there were some takeaways from all his labor. First, the repair skills he picked up working at Second Life seemed to translate well to this life. A lot of things needed fixing, some of them mechanical, and he had the skills to do that. Not many others did. If he ever wanted to stop Scaving and settle down he might be able to scrape by making a living offering repair service, perhaps like a tradesman. It was an interesting prospect. Made even more interesting by Mariah asking him if he was able to fix up weapons. The answer being yes, she had informed him that there was a market for weapon repair too, skills he had learned in the Army. Second, Mandy was right, there were simply not enough tasks to go around to make a living here. Surely he could find some work once in a while like this but not enough to rent a 50 cap room and buy at least 2 meals a day, especially not so if he wanted to splurge a little every once in a while, it was simply unsustainable. If he wanted to do more jobs for people he'd need to head to this Midway people talked about. Or at least a larger settlement. Naper seemed to have a decent population but it was not bustling, there were simply only so many jobs he could get here. Third, all his efforts had quickly made him a friend of the community, by the time dinner came he had more than one person come into the bar and buy him a drink. He was grateful and did accept, but it seems his deeds and efforts were noticed, even if it was largely motivated by self gain. Finally, he picked up some intel on some places outside the walls with things that might be worthwhile while running around helping the residents, either in idle talk or curious questioning his pip-boy had a few more locations marked for him to explore. He also learned that the blacksmith, who generally only makes tools for the town or things to order through Chuck when he goes to the bigger cities, is always in need of scrap metal, and he would get a lot more caps if he sold it to Grant, the blacksmith. All put together, even putting aside the caps he learned a lot from his efforts, the day was very much not wasted. But, after a good hard day's labor, he finally headed to bed, his cap's pouch a little heavier, and his heart a little lighter.