Better News Monday

I am pleased to report that Mom and Dad came back from Dad's doctor appointments today with the news that his labs are already looking much better and showing a good amount of tumor shrinkage! :) So the chemo is definitely working and his prognosis is looking better. Like, not perfect -- the cancer is never going to go fully into remission or anything, it's there and will keep coming back -- but it's not as dire as it could be, or was thought to be at first. We might have more time with him left than we thought. :) We'll see how things go from here -- he's got more chemo appointments starting Wednesday, which will almost certainly be pretty rough on him but also will hopefully do more good work shrinking those tumors. *nods* Nice to get some good news, especially since the weekend started out so rough!

As for what I accomplished today:

Writing: As promised, I wrote the rough draft for my tumblr friend Brynlee Marie’s birthday gift fic today, featuring Alice arriving in the Vale of Tears one night – and being rather surprised to find her daughter Madeline already there, chatting away to Cheshire. She was initially quite “???” about the whole thing, wondering why and how her daughter could be there, and considering the possibility it was an imaginary Madeline she’d conjured up as a result of realizing her daughter was now the same age she was when she first discovered Wonderland...only to toss that idea away as too logical for her dream world. XD Madeline, when questioned, didn’t know how she’d ended up in Wonderland either – just that she’d fallen asleep and then opened her eyes and found herself in the Vale. She was very excited by it all, though, going on about how all the weird stuff her mother had described, like cow-headed birds and snails with trees on their shells and honking daffodils, were really there (Alice was like “I told you,” though she did give proper credit for the daffodils to Victor) – and, after some confusion about whose dream they were in (Madeline’s, Alice’s, or – as per Cheshire – the Red King’s), declaring that she wanted to see everything. Which Alice was pretty sure was going to take more than one night, but if Madeline found her way there once… I left it on Alice offering to show her daughter more around the Vale of Tears and maybe the Crockery if they got there before the night was up. *nods* Pretty good, I think – I’ll refine it sometime this coming weekend so it’ll be ready to post next Monday!

FreeTube: I did end up choosing to spend today watching videos instead of playing any video games – and while only watched two over here, they were two very good ones –

A) First up this afternoon was the video that I didn’t get to watch during my workout yesterday because for unknown reasons Jon uploaded it late – “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 30 - Alea Iacta Est!” The continuing adventures of our favorite Drunken Melee Courier P. D. Shoot as she –

I. Made two important trips to two important places to get some important things done while she was still in good standing with the Legion, as she was about to tank her reputation with them with the next NCR mission:

a. First, she traveled to Nelson (apologizing again to the NCR troopers who have been stuck up on their crosses all this time because she refuses to kill or save them), then carefully navigated the path north of the settlement (keeping an eye out for mines – should have taken “Light Step,” Jon!) until she found the drainage pipe that serves as the official entrance to the abandoned Brotherhood of Steel bunker. Reason? That abandoned bunker is in fact where you kick off “Dead Money,” so she wanted the location tagged so she could fast travel straight to it when she was ready and not have to deal with the soon-to-be-angry Legion at Nelson or whatever bullshit might be happening up at Camp Forlorn Hope.

b. And second, she swung by Wolfhorn Ranch and headed from there to Camp Searchlight (the little NCR outpost outside the heavily-irradiated town of Searchlight) so she could talk to First Sergeant Astor and do the first half of the quest “Eye For An Eye!” (Well, after she waited for a very slow-walking patrol of Legion Recruits and their dogs to get slaughtered after they walked straight into Astor and his patrol. Apparently sometimes the guys leaving Nipton just forget to move unless you’re in the area!) Which, thanks to her being Idolized by the Legion at the time, was very easy for her to complete – basically, all she had to do was tell Astor about the Legion camp at Cottonwood Cove; agree to find whatever intel she could on their raid plans and patrol routes and bug their radio for the NCR; sneak into the camp at night and waltz into the building with the radio, hiding the bug in a crack in the casing and securing the latest raid plans from the filing cabinet next to it; sneak up to Aurelius of Phoenix’s office while he was sleeping and steal the patrol plans from his desk; then return to Astor and deliver the plans and the news about the bug. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, with no skill checks and no one from the Legion suspecting a thing. She did also tell Astor that she’d be happy to wipe out the camp for him (as revenge to the Legion dooming Searchlight to death via radiation), but taking care of that will be for a future episode – P. D. had enough on her plate in this one!

( Oh these always get long, you and I both know it )

B) And second up tonight was the latest from C. M. Alongi – “CaFae Tales: the Medieval Dog Duel!” This short video featured:

A) JC kicking things off by talking about how, if we were all allowed to legally punch one person once a month, there would be less stupidity in the world – Patrick, their werewolf friend, was all for it, while Cyrus was like “you want to bring back legal dueling and while that has historical precedent, it really only leads to more cases of ‘might makes right’” (you can tell who’s the trained lawyer in the group)

B) The trio discussing dueling a bit more – Cyrus confirming he’d never been a duel because he’d been too young when dueling was legal (though he admitted Bob had won a few in the Wild West), and JC musing that they thought they’d be good at dueling (Cyrus: “Yes, you’d be a terror”) – leading to Patrick asking JC and Cyrus if they’d heard the story of a dog who won a duel against a knight in Medieval France to avenge his murdered owner – they had not, with JC being particularly interested in this story about a “reverse John Wick” situation

C) Patrick telling the story, starting with the knight Macaire killing commoner Aubrey de Montdidier in the forest outside his village, with no other witnesses other than Aubrey’s loyal greyhound, dubbed “Dog Wick.” Macaire buried Aubrey and went off to do knight stuff (JC: “So much for chivalry” Patrick: “Knights being paragons of honor and virtue is just a giant PR scam”), while Dog Wick found another knight, Ardilliers, and led him to his master’s dead body. JC wondered if, being a knight, Ardilliers would then be in charge of the investigation to figure out who killed Aubrey –

Causing Cyrus to go “oh you sweet summer child” and Patrick to explain that the modern system of cops and detectives and properly investigating murders instead of leaving things up to God was fairly recent, historically speaking. Cyrus then ranted for a minute about what a mess the medieval court system was and how crimes were often unsolved and how the rich could just get away with whatever – cue JC giving him a look, and Cyrus weakly insisting it was worse back then XD

D) Patrick continuing the story but talking about how Ardilliers took in the dog to give him a good home...only for Macaire to show up in town again about a year later. Causing Dog Wick – otherwise a very kind and gentle creature – to start constantly trying to attack him whenever he laid eyes on him. After a few incidents, people started wondering if Macaire killed Dog Wick’s old owner – Macaire, however, denied it, and the case ended up coming up before the King of France. He heard the evidence and agreed that it didn’t sound good for Macaire, but that he wasn’t about to put it before a court –

So instead he ordered a trial by combat so God could sort it out by either letting Macaire kill the dog or the dog kill Macaire. As you might have guessed from the title, the dog won – though he didn’t kill Macaire, as the knight confessed to avoid being mauled to death. JC mentioned that that would have convinced them on a jury, causing Cyrus to rub his face and mutter that confessions made under duress are not applicable to the modern court system. XD

E) And Patrick ending the story by cheerfully stating how Macaire was hanged for the murder post-confession! JC declared they liked that story, while Cyrus was unsure if they liked it or hated it, and what the hell the moral was. JC suggested “don’t murder,” Patrick suggested “be kind to animals” –

And then they both agreed it should be “Legal dueling should make a comeback,” with Cyrus being like “HELL no.” XD

Workout: Hopped back on the bike again tonight to pedal my way through another half-hour or so of “Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues - Part 2 - A Bed of Robo-Scorpions!” Tonight’s chunklet featured:

A) Useless Steve activating Blind Diode Jefferson the Jukebox and getting him to upgrade the Sonic Emitter by swapping out the sound file inside for “Tarantula” – which is apparently the second-best file in the game for that gun, so Jon is very surprised that it’s so easy to pick up in Higgs Village

B) Useless Steve also activating Light Switch 01...and then flirting with her with his “Lady Killer” perk, causing her to ask if he wanted to discuss theorems later, and giving him a Programmer’s Digest so he could brush up – Steve being Steve, he was never going to say no to a free skill magazine

C) Useless Steve then venturing out into the world again and almost making it to the Saturninte Alloy Research building without any trouble apart from having to fight one Cyber Police Dog trying to chomp him...only for all hell to break loose when a Trauma Harness showed up, forcing Steve to just make a run for it, dodging and weaving around all the hexagonal structures in the general area to avoid both the Trauma Harness’s laser fire and the Nightstalkers that eventually took an interest in the proceedings. Oh, and did I mention he was also doing this without most of his delicious healing sodas because he forgot them back at base? *facepalm* However, despite all this nonsense, Steve actually made it to his destination, and not only managed to get the thing he wanted – the holotape that would eventually allow him to upgrade Light Switch 02 once it was turned back on with mood lighting – without getting too flame-broiled by the crazed Mr. Handy inside, but managed to outrun everything waiting to kill him outside again to reach the radar fence and get teleported back to the Sink, hooray

D) Useless Steve then making damn sure to get all his Nuka-Colas and Nightstalker Squeezin’s and all that from his foot locker, before recycling a bunch of ammo for his Advanced LAER gun and fast-traveling over to X-13 to actually complete the infiltration tests to send the schematics for the Aural Stealth Suit over to the Think Tank and upgrade the damn thing! A process that was fraught with danger because, after the first test, Dr. Mobius would release the robo-scorpions, and Steve wouldn’t have the option of running away from them this time, as he had to complete all four tests to make sure the suit got fully upgraded. But Steve had a plan to handle all this danger, which included:

I. Discovering that he could use the chemistry set in front of the test to make some chems because his Science was actually high enough, and making five stimpacks, which made him very happy

II. Using the power of Dr. Klein’s Scrubs combined with Mentats to get his Science high enough to disarm the laser tripwires in the test and make it easier to complete once he officially activated the course

III. Using the power of his upgraded Sonic Emitter and the ability to hide around corners to kill all the robobrains and turrets in the test so they’d pose no threat to him when he officially activated the course – this led to a hilarious moment where Steve leveled up to Level 6 MID-FIREFIGHT WITH A ROBOBRAIN (granted, he and the robobrain were shooting at each other from opposite sides of a corridor, but even so!). He brought Science up to 36, Speech up to 11, and grabbed “Bloody Mess” for his perk as it was a nice flat damage increase

IV. Throwing down all the various frag and pulse mines he’d picked up all over the corridors in spots where he figured the robo-scorpions would crawl and thus blow themselves up before they even got to him

*nods* A solid set-up, I think we can all agree! It’s what I would have done in this situation!

E) Useless Steve then running the basic infiltration test and getting through it no problem thanks to hacking all the laser tripwires and killing all the robots, earning himself a Stealth Suit firmware upgrade and a level-up to Level 7 from sending the schematics to the Think Tank (he promptly boosted Energy Weapons to 23 for more hitting power)...and then discovering that the robo-scorpions were not going down to his mines as expected. Both because the little bastards weren’t crawling into them –

And because Jon miscalculated and set all of this up in the expectation that he’d be getting the weakest variant of robo-scorpions – the kind you get when you’re under level 5. And, well, as I just said, Steve just hit level 7. AND he was critically low on ammo for his Sonic Emitter. And the LAER didn’t do nearly as much damage as he would have liked to the little monsters because they were tougher than expected. Cue Steve resorting to battering them with the X-2 Antenna club –

And, despite not being able to wield it properly thanks to his abysmal stats, doing pretty damn well! Turns out, in order to defeat the robo-scorpions, all he really needed was a powerful electro-stick! Sure, he died a couple of times, but that was only to be expected, he’s Useless Steve! The important thing was, he managed to track them all down and batter them to death! Yay!

*whew* Some pretty epic stuff there, I think you’ll agree! I left off with Steve preparing to finish off his time in X-13 – tomorrow, we’ll finish this off and then move onto the next part! Quite looking forward to it. :)

Other:

-->As it had been a week and I had the day off today, I made sure to answer all of Moose’s latest messages after lunch today (which was a bit early thanks to Dad’s appointments this afternoon). Important to keep up with those!

-->I also made sure to write a proper thank-you note to my aunt for my belated Christmas and birthday presents, since that’s only polite. Accidentally filled out the envelope upside-down, but I figured it didn’t matter if the flap was on the bottom. XD

Not too shabby -- very glad I was able to catch up with the F:NV YOLO Remastered series, it was annoying me that I couldn't watch it yesterday. And good to get that gift fic done and out of the way -- well, the first draft anyway. Now, though, it is time for me to head to bed, as I do have work tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be too shitty a first day back -- night all!