Experimental Snowy Sunday

What do I mean by that? Well, the "snowy" part refers to the fact that we got a decent amount of snow overnight and into the morning -- Dad thinks about three inches. Fortunately he got our walkways and driveway all cleared without issue, and the plows came by and actually did a good job of plowing our road for once! Complete with one guy making sure our driveway wasn't plowed in! So that was nice! :) It's rare to see that kind of care taken over here whenever it snows. And as for the "experimental" part -- well, see the write-up below --

Fallout 4: Yes, the gaming stays at the top today, because I decided to try an experiment – namely, play Fallout 4 in the morning before lunch, and do everything else in the afternoon afterwards! My aim was to see if doing so would make my afternoon feel a little bit less squeezed, since I essentially have to do my write-up of what happened in my game twice on Sundays – once normally, and once edited for the FO4 Playthrough Progression – and that always takes a while. Which means I’m always getting to other stuff late, which means I start my YouTube late, which means I’m doing my YouTube summaries – particularly that for Fallout: London – late, and – yeah. Anything to stop that vicious cycle would be nice! So, with that in mind, here’s what happened in my game today –

A) Well, first things first – speaking of things feeling squeezed, I’ve noticed that my C drive has been lacking for space a bit lately. And while I was looking around for the likely culprit, I happened to notice that my Saves folder for this game was getting pretty damn bloated at over 8 GB. So I made a copy of the “Fallout4” folder to my D drive (which is larger and has more space), then spent a few minutes deleting out old saves (though I kept a handful, just in case). I had an hour and a half before lunch, after all, and I generally play for an hour at a stretch – I figured I could spare the time to clean things up a bit!

B) After a few minutes of doing that (which really exhausted the old thumb), I decided it was time to actually play the game and loaded in my most recent save, with Victor currently hanging out at Piper’s in Diamond City after trying to sleep through a radstorm. I promptly had him head out, ready to go meet up with Bobbi and get “The Big Dig” on the road…

Aaaand discovered that the radstorm outside was still in full effect! >( I just cleared his rads, game! Annoyed, I had Victor turn around and walk back inside, then decided I might as well use the opportunity to talk to Piper and see if that mod I have that gives her a couple of radiant quests of her own (to find interesting stories or parts for her printing press) allowed you to pick them up without having her as a companion. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like it – Piper just gave me the regular options to have her join as a companion, exit the conversation, or trade. No “hey, here’s what you can do for me” options allowed without her at Victor’s side, apparently! I decided I might as well trade and checked her inventory – she had a pretty good laser gun, some ammo, and her hat. Which meant no junk for Victor to take –

But also meant that she had plenty of room to hold some of the massive amount of food he’s carrying! So I have him give her a bunch of that, including a lot of roasted mirelurk. Poor guy is swimming in roasted mirelurk. XD I also gave her some more fusion cells for her gun, so she’d remain well-armed – though in doing so, I accidentally clicked over to the apparel section and gave her something from there. Specifically, the spare wedding ring from Nora/Victoria that Victor keeps on him. Whoops – sorry, Piper, but while I’m not OPPOSED to giving that to you, it’s not the time just yet. Gotta get farther in the main questline first!

C) With some of his food offloaded on Piper (she and Nat will eat well while he’s away) and thus a little more carry weight regained, I had Victor wait on Piper’s couch for an hour, then poke his head back outside. Happily, THIS time it was bright and sunny outside, meaning he could head into the marketplace without fear. I had him swing by Polly’s to see if the local merchants had regenerated their caps yet – unfortunately, the answer was no, so all he could offload on her was a cheap bottle of hard cider. Ah well. I then had him head around the noodle stand over to Myrna’s stall, since he hadn’t been there earlier – she was grumpy as ever, but willing to serve him, and Victor took some always-useful junk – aluminum canisters, cake pans, and surgical trays, a dinner plate, a gold watch, some military-grade duct tape, a plunger, and some Wonderglue – in equal exchange for some more food, including yet more roasted mirelurk and loads of roasted squash. XD It’s a real shame that I can’t get the Home Chef Hustle food stand in this game – Victor has enough food in his inventory that he could always keep it stocked and make a killing! Guess it’s good for barter, at least.

D) And with that (and a quick poke at the nearby weapon workbench to see if there was anything I wanted to do to my guns – not particularly), it was over to Power Noodles to talk to Bobbi No-Nose (in disguise with a gas mask covering her face because ghouls aren’t allowed in Diamond City as per the mayor) about her digging project at last! And, amusingly (at least to me), she greeted Victor with “There you are. I was wondering when you’d show up.” XD Sorry, Bobbi, none of my sidequests have taken me over here in a while! Anyway, she quickly got down to business, explaining that her target for her “big dig” was the stronghold of Mayor McDonough – a safe room deep beneath his office that contains caps, food, and meds, enough to keep Diamond City running. If they could get in, they’d have their pick of useful, valuable items to use or sell. However, in order to pull off the heist, they needed Bobbi’s tech guy, Mel – and he was currently sitting in a cell in Diamond City’s security office. And even with her disguise, Bobbi didn’t think she’d be able to get him out, so she needed Victor to do the job. I had Victor ask her about the security office – she explained that it was built into an old locker room, and definitely still smelled the part. XD She told him that she didn’t care how he got Mel out – steal a key, pick a lock, bribe a guard – just that he needed to get it done, and she’d meet up with him again later. She thus got up to get out of the city, and I had Victor turn around to find this security office –

E) Only to be distracted by the sad bum Sheffield nearby, because, for some reason, he’d sat down the wrong way round today, facing into the cinderblocks between Moe and Arturo’s shops instead of toward the center of town. And getting near to try and figure out why he’d done that prompted him to start his spiel about how he’s not allowed to have liquor anymore, so he desperately needs a Nuka-Cola instead, and give me the mini-quest of giving him one. Now, I was all for giving him a Nuka-Cola and recruiting him as a settler –

But I wasn’t entirely sure how to do so when he wasn’t facing me to have a proper conversation. O.o I attempted to hop up onto the cinderblocks above him, but that didn’t work – fortunately, going around the other side of him caused the prompts I needed to appear. Victor confirmed that all he wanted was a cola (Sheffield explaining that he would get one from the Dugout In, but he can’t go in there anymore because he can’t be near the booze – recovering alcoholic, you see), then handed over one of his many Nukas, to Sheffield’s gratitude. And once the guy was on his feet (and facing the right away around again), I had Victor offer him a job and send him off to Jamaica Plain! Felt like a nice place to send him – and I’m heading in that general direction anyway, so I can make sure he’s well set-up there later. Sheffield was very grateful for the fresh start and headed out right away. :) Nice to help a dude out!

F) With Sheffield taken care of, I started walking around Diamond City, trying to find this damn security office – a task not exactly made easy, thanks to the fact I had multiple quest markers on my compass jostling for position, and this particular marker was saying it was through a door. Deciding that meant that it had to be outside somewhere (maybe on the side of the building?), I stopped by the local farm to grab a few tatos for the road (Victor always seems to be shy of those and corn) –

Then realized, “hang on, I’m right next to the Great Green Wall, aren’t I? And I’ve had this miscellaneous quest to talk to Abbot over there in my log for ages – let’s do that!” So I had Victor head over to where the guy was doing his painting and say hello. Abbot gruffly told him not to touch the paint – when Victor was like “why would I do that?” Abbot explained that, since the Wall does so much to protect them here in Diamond City (apparently it’s never been breached), he thinks it’s only right that they keep it as pristine as possible. However, he’d recently run into a problem in that regard – namely, the one place in town where he’s able to get his green paint, Hardware Town, has been recently taken over by raiders. And Diamond City Security won’t clear them for him. So he offered Victor a “community service” job – go get him his paint, and he’d give Victor 100 caps. I was like “sure thing, sir,” though I was certain that it would take me a while –

Then I checked my recently-updated map, realized old Hardware Town was just around the corner, and was like “okay, maybe I can just pop there and pop back again.” XD So yeah, got another side quest, “Painting the Town,” to complete! Hopefully I can just get that one done in one session, if that…

G) However, I still needed to progress the quest I was currently working on, so once Victor’s conversation with Abbot was done, it was back to hunting for the security office! As I’d previously decided it had to be outside the main city, I thus headed around back to the entrance (making a detour to check out a walkway going up – turns out it was the walkway to Kellogg’s house! Wow, that feels like ages ago) and headed out into The Fens…

Where I was promptly greeted by another radstorm. *sigh* Fortunately, there was a bench really nearby in the entrance where Victor could sit and wait for an hour, and once time had skipped forward, it was just beginning to clear up. I had Victor thus head out and around the side of the building, looking for anything that looked like an actual office instead of just various watchtowers and such –

And was promptly distracted by finding an Advanced terminal that Victor could unlock without it being a crime. XD I wasn’t sure what it did, but I was curious to find out and get that hacking XP, so I had Victor dive in. Unfortunately, the first screen didn’t have a lot of “dud-removing” code in it, so Victor was forced to actually guess, and ended up getting himself locked out. Fortunately, all he had to do was walk to the other side of the entrance, then back, and he could hop back in – and this time, he was able to crack the code! As it turned out, all the terminal did was control the turrets around Diamond City – I didn’t want to mess with those (I’m a friend of DC! My girlfriend lives there!), so I had Victor just immediately exit out. Ah well – like I said, worth it for the hacking XP!

H) Anyway – with the terminal no longer distracting me, I was free to start my loop around the building, sneaking past a nearby junkyard in case something was in it (nothing appeared to be, fortunately) and poking my head into one of the break rooms around the back. Just as I was trying to determine if THAT was the security office, though, I heard what sounded like decently loud gunfire behind me. Curious and concerned that DC Security had gotten themselves into a mess, I had Victor hurry back around to where he started, gun at the ready –

And found nothing. O.o Huh. I guess either I missed the fight, or it was coming from a different direction. However, coming back to the entrance made me realize something – that the marker for the security office seemed to be pointing BACK inside Diamond City! I decided “okay, I officially have too many distracting things on my compass” and turned off all quests except “The Big Dig” to see if that was true –

And it most certainly was. Slightly annoyed, I thus headed back into DC and started following the marker – and as it turns out, I’d just missed the road that takes you to the office during my earlier travels! It’s up the path behind the hair salon, just past Publick Occurrences, and there’s a bunch of signs pointing you in the right direction once you get to the intersection! *shakehead* Brother – every time I think my sense of direction in a game can’t get worse…

I) However – with the security office located (in one of the dugouts, of course), it was time to head inside and get Mel! Victor thus went through the door and down the short hall into the locker room, where he found a bunch of cells, a door into another locker room (for the guards, apparently), and a Nuka-Cola machine where taking any of the sodas would have been stealing ( :( ). And in the nearest cell, sitting on a bench with his back up against a hole that he probably could have climbed through, was the scruffy redhead that was Mel! I had Victor loop around to the spot closest to him so they could talk through the bars, with Victor commenting that he’d heard Mel was a “tech guy,” and Mel confirming that – then admitting maybe that was a little too broad, as his actual thing was robots. (I feel like that would make my fanfic Victor, currently on the trail of the Mechanist, squint a little.) Victor then said that he was hear to get him out, with Mel telling him to keep his voice down – then adding that the guards had tried to get him to look at a haywire Protectron, but he wasn’t able to fix it. Quietly insinuating that, if Victor wanted to cause a distraction… That ended the conversation, so I had Victor turn around to find a guard to talk to next –

Aaand came face to face with the catcher’s mask of one right behind him. XD I had Victor glug some of his Charisma juice, just in case he needed it, then ask the guard what Mel was even in for. Turns out that he was trying to reprogram the robot bartender at the Taphouse to give him free drinks – and the guard admitted that, if he could, he would have tried too. XD Realizing that we weren’t dealing with the most impeccably moraled of lawmen here, I decided to forgo the Charisma checks in favor of just a straight-up bribe of 300 caps, which the guy accepted. Mel was thus released from his cell, and he promptly headed as fast as he could to the exit, telling Victor that he’d be glad to talk once they were away from here. Victor thus followed him outside –

J) And happily, Mel was willing to chat right outside the dugout, instead of outside the city or something. :p He thanked Victor for the spring and clocked him as Bobbi’s “new toy,” saying that only she would go to this much trouble when Victor was like “how did you know?” He complained about her being impatient (apparently he was going to be released pretty soon anyway) and pretty damn cryptic about her jobs – but the minute Victor mentioned they were busting into Mayor McDonough’s stronghold, he was like “hang on, that’s a big score – and as shady as Bobbi is, she does always pay up. Okay, I’m in.” He thus left to get his equipment –

And mentioned that he’d meet us at her old dig site. For some reason, I thought that you met up with him and Bobbi at a different location and then dug your way to Goodneighbor (because she’s not trying to get into Mayor McDonough’s stronghold, as it turns out), not that you went to Goodneighbor and then started digging. Hmmm. *shrug* Ah well, no skin off my nose – I was heading there one way or another anyway!

And so the playsession ended with Victor heading out of Diamond City himself (passing the stuck Mel, who mentioned the time he and Bobbi tried to break into a Vault, only to discover it was heavily irradiated – chronic vomiting is not his thing, as he learned then), reenabling his other quests before stopping to save by the statue – and then with me spending a few more minutes deleting yet more old saves. XD It had to be done – and it did paid off, as my C drive is now no longer an angry red when I look at how full it is! Still hoping to find more ways to free up space, but this is a good start. :) And it’s not like I don’t have all of my old saves backed up in case I need them! Next time, I think we’ll go ahead and clear out Hardware Town and get Abbot his paint, then start heading Goodneighbor-ward to get digging!

Tumblr: Not as productive a day over here as yesterday, I must confess –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Didn’t get as much done over here as I’d hoped, but I got some of what I wanted to do sorted –

A) As promised, I reblogged the link to Chapter 2 of “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded” at a more reasonable hour (sometime around 10:30 AM, I think, before I got off to play Fallout 4) – a couple of people reblogged it over the course of the day, so that paid off

B) And tonight, I got the image alt text done on my Valicertine “Valicer Kitchen Table Polyamory” bonus image post (though I still need to finish the main text and tags on that); the first “Polyheart OT3 House” post; and part of the second “Polyheart OT3 House” post – I only got up to describing the kitchen before I had to stop for the night. Still, I made some good progress, and hopefully I can finish up all that alt-texting tomorrow!

Valice Multiverse – Had a surprise reblog of last night’s “Nosferatu history” post, with my friend Satirical Demon informing me that, seventeen years after his initial appearance as a joke at the end of “The Graveyard Shift” episode of Spongebob Squarepants, Count Orlock (under the name “Nosferatu”) actually became a recurring member of the Spongebob cast. Like, seriously, he’s apparently now officially the night shift manager of the Krusty Krab and once invited Squidward to stay in his castle. The creators of the 2024 remake of the movie thanked Spongebob for helping keep the vampire in the public consciousness. High School!Alice was like “I didn’t know this show was so bizarre,” with Smiler being like “I knew about the original joke, but not him coming back seventeen years later...also, Spongebob has been running for over seventeen years???” *shakehead* Learn something new every day!

Writing: Another Sunday with Fallout 4, another Sunday spent updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression! And this particular update of the fanfic universe had some reasonably significant differences from what happened in the game above –

A) First off, Victor didn’t have to walk out of Piper’s front door to realize there was a radstorm still raging – Ada was able to report that to everyone thanks to her amazing power of “being radiation-proof and able to look outside without risking anyone else.” XD So everyone just had breakfast while they waited for it to stop, with Victor almost begging Piper and Nat to take his spare roast mirelurk. XD

B) Second, the meeting with Bobbi was a bit different – mostly because Victor didn’t know that he was meeting with Bobbi there that day! I set it up so that she’d arrived that morning herself in her disguise, and just happened to see Victor as he did his trade with Myrna, getting his attention before he could do more ammo trading with Arturo. Victor was rather surprised to see her (having more or less forgotten about their little venture) and asked how the dig was going, and she confirmed that she’d been spending all this time trying to track down Mel, who is much more wily in my fanfic verse than in the game, apparently. XD Had to have her doing something while Victor was faffing about! Victor was also somewhat more reluctant to join in on the raid on the stronghold initially, because he was worried that stealing from it would hurt Diamond City – however, Bobbi reassured him that it was all McDonough’s personal stash, and since has no love lost for that asshole, he decided he was in after all. Revenge for Piper!

C) Third, his conversation with Sheffield was a little more involved than it is in the game, with Ada guessing that the guy was a recovering alcoholic who’d turned to Nuka-Cola to deal with the cravings, and Sheffield confirming that after getting his coke (a Nuka-Cherry, because I think Victor currently has more of those on-hand) and explaining that it was pretty rough for him in Diamond City what with the two bars AND Solomon’s Chems nearby (since I believe Solomon does also sell liquor). Victor promptly felt sorry for the guy and suggested a fresh start in Jamaica Plain, which Sheffield was only too happy to accept, and even gave the guy some extra sodas for the road. Because he’s nice like that. :) Just made the conversation feel a little more real, you know?

D) Fourth, his conversation with Abbot was also slightly more involved, with Abbot telling Victor straight out that the reason he doesn’t want him touching the paint is because he’s running low; Victor complimenting Abbot’s job on the wall, which Abbot appreciated (and may be why he decided to suggest the “Hardware Town” job to Victor in the first place) –

And, upon accepting the job, Victor asking Abbot where the hell the security office is and getting some directions, thus completely cutting out my wandering outside when I didn’t need to. XD I mean, fanfic!Victor sure as hell doesn’t need those couple of points of XP I got from hacking the turret terminal out there! Nor the extra rads from the brief radstorm I encountered out there.

E) And fifth, Victor’s interactions with Mel were a little different! For one thing, he told Mel right away that he’d been sent by Bobbi when he met the guy in his cell, with Mel promptly complaining about her impatience right there and then (right before telling Victor about the malfunctioning Protectron he could use as a distraction – Victor was like “subtle”); for another, as I hinted at in my write-up above, Victor did indeed get kind of suspicious as to whether or not Mel was actually the Mechanist when the guy mentioned his thing was robots. Fortunately, when Victor talked about it with Ada after freeing and recruiting Mel and sending him on his way, Ada said that, as per her calculations, the odds of him being the Mechanist were low, citing specifically that a few of the attacks they’ve had to repel would have happened during the guy’s stint in jail. So no worrying that they’re working with the very person they’re trying to bring down! (I did still have Victor get jumpscared by the guard in the security office, though. That was funny. XD)

So yeah – some pretty decent tweaks this time! But it all ended in the same place, with Bobbi contacted, Mel freed, and the Big Dig back on! However, just like me, Victor wants to clear out Hardware Town and get Abbot’s paint before he heads over to Goodneighbor – so next time, the trio will be clearing the raiders out of there! Now that FO4 PP update should pretty much be exactly like the game – well, I assume. You never know for sure!

YouTube: Kept up with my usual Sunday Two, easy-peasy (though maybe not lemon-squeezy) –

A) First up, before my workout (isn’t THAT a rare occasion), we had GrayStillPlays’s Sunday Happy Wheels video – “I found the dumbest ways to survive!” Had some pretty interesting boards in this one, with my favorites being an absurdly long “steal the diamond” board where Pogo Guy had to brave ALL the harpoons (and then briefly face down a guy with a guy before Nixon dove in with a sword); an absurdly long green-themed “pogo fight” board where Pogo Guy had to take on like fifty million opponents to reach the end (they had to put little ledges on the sides of the pillars so he could reach the top by the final few! Good thing there was a landmine at the beginning that Gray could use to launch himself across part of the board); “Classic HW Level 45!!” which saw Bike Mom and her two kids having to take on an INCREDIBLY deadly jungle landscape full of murderous coconuts, deadly volcanoes, and rolling boulders (Gray found this one INCREDIBLY difficult, and in the end, only Mom survived to see the win); and two levels by MAXIMPIG – one where you made an emoji by rolling Segway Nixon through all the choices of background circle, mouths, eyes, and accessories before falling down to see the finished product; and “Dumb Ways To Survive,” a board all about showing people surviving supposedly-deadly situations (like Santa falling into a shredder that immediately breaks, or a homeless guy being protected from a guy with an axe by the big-chinned Sigma face with its laser eyes, or Bike Dad and Tom falling into a pit of landmines with a secret win floor above them). Fun stuff – I do like it when the creators get extra-creative! :)

B) And second, after supper, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and “Fallout: London - Part 29 - Clink And You'll Miss It!” The continuing adventures of Lady Aria and Kiera in Westminster, featuring –

I. Lady Aria’s attempt to get into Parliament and confront Smythe! Which immediately ran into some trouble thanks to the appearance of new guards at the gate – Angel troops in voice-altering masks and berets. (I’m surprised that Jon did not immediately try to murder them for their hats. XD) They did accept her petition when she presented it (a bit mockingly, to be sure), but told her that the front gates were only for show, and she’d have to use the “discreet” entrance, hidden in a ringing telephone box on Bridge Street, to get in. Jon was instantly like “well, this is a trap,” but with no other way to progress the quest, and certain that Aria could take on just about anything, sent her over and into the box (without Kiera, who unfortunately couldn’t fit into the cramped conditions). Which proved to be a secret elevator to a strange underground facility –

Where a bunch of telephone boxes were brought along a ceiling conveyor and exploded. Jon was like “shit, I didn’t plan for this kind of trap.” XD On the plus side, Aria was not exploded when she reached the front of the queue, and was instead sent on; on the MINUS side, she was then immediately knocked out, and woke up in a prison cell with just her prison digs, her pencil, her fancy History Museum watch, and Archie’s Memento. And five frag grenades the guards somehow missed. XD Anyway, she was greeted by another Angel trooper outside of her cell once she woke – who revealed that he was actually a dissident, who wanted to see Smythe killed for everything she’s done not only against people, but life itself. Meaning he was on Aria’s side, yay! He couldn’t get her out directly, but he was willing to volunteer whatever information he had about the facility to aid in her escape, and tell her where to go next – the Science Museum in Kensington, where she needed to speak to the director there, Mr. X. Apparently he was also a friend, but he’d been imprisoned by his own subordinates and thus couldn’t come to her. Aria accepted the key to the museum and the mission, and the trooper left, leading to –

II. Lady Aria’s grand escape from Symthe’s secret dissident jail! Which got off to a rough start, as Aria wasn’t good enough at lockpicking to open the door to her cell, even after finding a bobby pin hidden in the toilet cistern. Fortunately, she soon found an alternate option – a weak bit of wall between her cell and the next! And oh look at that, there was a chisel conveniently under her bed. Aria thus made herself a hole to her neighbor’s cell and crawled through –

And came across Nilson, who was naturally rather confused to see her. XD She explained she was breaking out – Nilson was like, “do you have a plan?” and she admitted she was kind of winging it. Fortunately, Nilson appreciated her honesty and was willing to help – and HE was so good at lockpicking that he could open the door by poking the bobby pin into the mortar of the bricks on the other wall. XD Aria thus poked her head out to see what was what –

And caught the vague attention of two nearby guards. Aria decided “welp, I guess we’re going loud,” waited for them to get a bit closer, then ran out and straight up punched one guard to death. A process that took a while, as Unarmed is not her strong suit. XD But she did it eventually, and stole the guy’s truncheon and outfit before going after his buddy, alarm blaring in her ears. She found said buddy in the hallway beyond –

Holding a machete. A machete that happened to have bleed and what looked like poison damage on it. A machete that I in fact think was Aria’s own damn VATS Enhanced Sacrificial Blade machete, which the guard had grabbed from where her stuff was being held to use against her. And because it is a VERY good machete – yeah, Aria died. I suppose the Cutethulus appreciated your sacrifice? Anyway, this led to –

III. Lady Aria’s grand escape, version 2! Which went a LOT smoother than the original, that’s for sure. For one thing, Aria remembered to turn off her flashlight before leaving the ceiling, making her a tiny bit sneakier so she avoided the notice of the guards; for another, she found a power box near the cell and was able to use her incredible luck to take out the power for EVERYONE; and for a third, she also found a nice solid pipe wrench beside the power box – and THAT, combined with some powerful sneak attack damage, allowed her to take out the guards without almost any issue at all. Aria once again stole one of their uniforms, then used the master key to free all of her fellow prisoners before resuming her escape. At the end of the hallway, she found the “contraband” box where all her stuff was being stored (more evidence that the guy from before was using her own machete against her) –

And, as you might imagine, from that point on the guards didn’t pose NEARLY as much of a problem. XD She easily made her up and through the facility, murdering a few people with Scaramunga, locating a bunch of telephone boxes (none of which went anywhere, sadly), discovering a terminal which revealed everyone’s crimes (and the fact that, if you end up in this prison, you’re going to end up dead sooner or later), and finally locating a set of stairs that took her up into –

Scotland Yard! Yes, apparently the local bobbies are in on this, or at least know not to ask too many incriminating questions of the people in the creepy masks. Anyway, she snuck around in the backstage area for a bit before finally finding a door that lead to the back of a bookcase, which led into a supply cupboard of sorts, which led into the station itself, where Aria and Kiera reunited, yay. :) The two started immediately making tracks to the Science Museum – but while trying to figure out how to get there, Jon remembered a comment someone had made and had Aria try talking to Kiera to see if she was ready to hand over her affinity perk. Which led to –

IV. Kiera and Aria officially becoming besties! After a very heartfelt conversation where Kiera apologized for not believing Aria when she told her about how she woke up in a vat, explaining that she thought it was just some sort of ruse Aria was using to not tell her about herself. But when Lady G at the Natural History Museum revealed that it was all true – well, Kiera developed a bad case of The Guilt over treating it as a lie. Especially since Aria was like the only person to accept her as she was. And while Kiera was not shy about admitting she’d been burned badly in the past by trusting the wrong people...she trusted Aria, and was glad she could be herself around her. Aria assured her it was all fine, then asked if that meant she wasn’t Kiera’s sidekick anymore. Kiera was like “maybe we can take turns being sidekicks,” which Aria was fine with –

And then suggested that maybe they could be a bit more? *flutters eyelashes* Kiera, however, reacted with panic, quickly putting on the old “Treasure Hunter” bravado, so Aria quickly backed down, apologizing for getting the wrong impression. Seems she’ll have to find someone else to smooch! But she did get Kiera’s perk, “Tube Raider,” for being her bestie –

And ooooh, is it good. Action points regenerate faster overall and drain slower when she’s sprinting, and she just gets a +50 boost to carry weight! :D Talk about a useful perk, especially for someone like Aria who lives and dies by her AP and who needs all the carry capacity she can get! When do we get Kiera in main Fallout 4, I could use that perk too. :P Anyway, after that lovely display of friendship (and Jon making a detour after killing some robots to track down a weird symbol on his compass, which led him to some weird wooden fort thing on an island with banners with dragons on – Jon thought it might be related to the Camelot faction somehow), we moved onto –

V. Aria and Kiera breaking into the Science Museum! Which involved quite a lot of robot murder on the lower levels; a bit of radiation as they moved up past some of giant radioactive core thing on a bench that it looked like somebody was trying to steal at some point (as per the Environmental Storytelling Skeletons); the acquisition of some alien blaster ammo in the “Space” section – but not the blaster itself, as it couldn’t be taken out of the case for some reason; and finally on the top level quite a lot of Angel Conscript murder while a bunch of Angel researchers completely ignored the carnage around them in favor of experimenting on a prisoner. XD But they made it through and to the office of Mr. X, who buzzed them in and got straight to the point – namely, that he and Aria (who he says was abducted and experimented on – meaning she’s not a clone? Jon still seems to think she is, but I’m guessing she’s somebody who was surgically altered to look like Smythe?) should join forces to take Smythe down. Aria had some questions first (like “what’s the deal with you being imprisoned by your own subordinates?” – Smythe knows he’s working against her but wants to keep him alive for some reason, so rather than kill him she’s made it so his subordinates won’t let him leave – and “who was that guy who visited me in the prison?” – a “flash-clone,” apparently, who – unlike his brethren – has free will), but was willing to hear out his plan –

Which involved them LITERALLY blowing Smythe to kingdom come. It seemed that Mr. X had learned that Smythe would be making a previously-thought-impossible public appearance at a tournament coming up, and he wanted Aria to slip some timed explosives under the box she was going to be in and blow her up. Aria was like “Uh, what about the other people in the box?” but X told her they were asshole Gentry who enjoyed their luxury while everyone else suffered, sooo...no great loss. Aria was still reluctant, asking if there was a way to get rid of Smythe without bloodshed, but X was adamant – she’d apparently spent lifetimes controlling London (interesting), and she would never step down willingly. The only way to be rid of the adder was to cut off the head. And he had his personal reasons to see her dead too – namely, that he felt like working for her had drained all of his humanity out of him, explaining how, as a child, seeing a particular statue of a dog in Eastminster had brought him pure joy, but now, looking at it, all he saw was stone. Aria wasn’t fully convinced by any of this (with Jon saying “sounds like you’re passing the buck onto Smythe for all the awful things you did under her command”), but she accepted the timer for the explosives and told him that she’d do what needed to be done before heading toward the tournament grounds –

Which, lo and behold, were in that weird fort thing Jon found earlier! Now open to the public! So next time, Aria shall attend the tournament, and decide whether or not she’s going to blow up that box. Because, as Jon rightly pointed out, if clones are involved, that might not actually be Smythe making a public appearance at all...we’ll find out next week!

Workout: Back on the bike today, sticking with James Turner but moving back to the Tiny Town series with “We're having a town banquet in Tiny Town Challenge! - Part 19!” Which just so happens to be Pablo’s finale episode! Pablo being the second-born, the one earning money through Fitness skill (which has evolved from “doing horse-riding competitions” to “diving in Sulani for treasure and then selling it on a selling table”), and the one with a Fallout-style vault home, an adopted toddler named Kyra, and a horse named Pecan. This first chunklet of his Grand Finale featured –

A) Kyra aging up from a toddler to a child! Mostly because James did not want to play with Kyra as a toddler anymore. XD She got a nice hamburger cake, became a “Recycle Disciple,” and has managed to keep herself alive with her dad constantly disappearing off to Chestnut Ridge and Sulani. She even became best friends with him after he helped her with her homework, which was nice. I guess she doesn’t mind him being an absentee dad? :p

B) Pablo hiring a ranch hand to take care of Pecan while he does his diving...only for the ranch hand to basically do everything BUT take care of Pecan because every time James leaves the lot, her assigned tasks reset so she’s focused on gardening and repairing stuff. The most she seems to do is try to feed Pecan apples when he’s hungry, and half the time they just end up randomly scattered around the lot. Hopefully James fires her before too long!

C) Pablo doing a couple more horse competitions (as James IS committed to doing some horse stuff still – though he isn’t sure if he’s going to go for the Ultimate Horse Championship or not), including his first Master Endurance competition – and despite him and Pecan both being in foul moods at the time, they managed to get bronze, so that was nice! Meant James didn’t lose any money.

D) James finally getting the chance to take advantage of a Rebate Day with his Sims by making Pablo dive for treasure and then sell it in Chestnut Ridge until he had enough for an Aqua-Zip (the Sims 4 equivalent of a jetski) so Pablo could now just ride to all the diving spots instead of having to swim there! He also made sure to get Pablo a better bed as the old one was just NOT cutting it when it came to his energy needs (to be fair, it looked like an old camping bed, soo – unsurprising?).

E) And Pablo doing more treasure diving and pulling up a really epic haul (multiple items worth thousands of dollars – he’s actually almost finished the Sulani treasures collection, which is cool), then taking it all to Cuidad Enamorada to sell it from an empty residential lot...only to give up early because he was in too bad a mood thanks to a full bladder and being fatigued from all the diving. James was quite annoyed, especially when he realized that there were no public bathrooms in the area, so Pablo HAD to go home. Meh.

And that’s about where I left it – with Pablo back in Tiny Town, having just made besties with his daughter, trying to fix up his needs so he could sell all these treasures, damn it. XD We’ll see how successful he is, and where his quest to get money so he can properly kit out his vault goes from here, tomorrow!

Whew! Lot done today. Now, as for the results of my experiment in doing Fallout 4 first and everything else second...I think it definitely helped with getting through my various write-ups on the games and my Sunday Two YouTube videos -- I was able to start Jon's video way earlier than normal, and that meant I had way more time to summarize it afterward. But tumblr definitely suffered, so -- hmmm. Perhaps more testing is required. We'll try it again next Sunday and see what happens! In the meantime, I should really hit the sheets -- night all!