Part 5: You take your time, you do your work well...
Previous: Part 4: The blind dogs of the sun in their running...

Clara is a hoarder of the first order, I think I've already mentioned. Upon reaching any new workbench, anywhere, she immediately drops whatever she's doing and scraps or stores every single item she can find within to the fullest extent of the available building area. However, unlike typical hoarders who just, you know, hoard, Clara also uses the random bits of trash she finds to build things. She is actually sort of manic about it, in fact. A hoarder with an obsession to break down anything that can be broken down, a thief without conscience, a corpse robber, an obsessive wall construction fanatic, with a penchant for mindless violence - we're talking about a woman with some, as the professional psychiatrists say, unresolved issues. Actually, the typical professional psychiatrists might say "fucking bananas" and be damn right to do so, in my humble opinion.

However, the one facet of her personality that springs to the fore at this moment is the one that must build ALL THE THINGS. Back in Sanctuary (apparently no longer called Sanctuary Hills, despite what the big sign at the main entrance proclaims), after getting Garvey's Gang settled, she proceeds to wall the entire town in corrugated metal and leftover scrap wood, leaving only the bridge out front and a single back gate as openings. I'm all for defensive walls, but if I were the one doing it I'd probably stick to concrete instead of rotting wood and rusty tin. She then fills every house she can with crudely-fashioned sleeping bags, apparently in the hope that this place will become home to over forty people someday. After building a bunch of chairs and tables, putting up paintings, setting up gun emplacements, putting down some carpet, and building a brand new clapboard shack where an old home used to be, she then starts building things that will help her build more things, to wit, workbenches and chemistry labs. She then decides to set up a radio beacon that will bring in anyone who can receive the broadcast. This will include settlers wanting to start a new life out in the boonies, and will also undoubtedly alert every super mutant and raider within a hundred mile radius that here is a collection of goodies free for the taking. I'm not sure she's thought this through carefully enough.

After all that, just when I think that maybe she's finally ready to go back to looking for her kidnapped son and the guy who murdered her husband in front of her eyes, she... goes to Sturges (one of the members of Preston's Patrol, not the fish, don't get confused) and asks if there's anything else she can do to help. Sturges sends her off to build some beds, as if she hasn't already put down enough beds to fill a bunker. Then he sends her off to build some water pumps, and then plant a bunch of crops. At this point I'd probably smack the lazy bugger around a bit and tell him to get off his duff and do his own planting, fertilizing, watering, and harvesting - after all, he's the one that wants to be a farmer - but Clara just buzzes around like a bloatfly on jet doing every odd job he asks of her. Which also includes building yet more defensive turrets. Never can have enough firepower situated at the main entrances, ignoring the fact that that smart enemies will just carefully break down one of the cheap bits of hastily cobbled together wall at the back and come right in, not to mention burrowing creatures such as mole rats and, apparently, deathclaws.

She heads over to some of the workbenches and starts messing about, probably fashioning some new and exciting weapons and armor for the newly un-homeless layabouts. As happy as I am that she found a permanent residence for the pikeys, I can't say I'm pleased that now she's become the general dogsbody of the group. Not that running errands is a bad thing, but these errands do tend to involve an excessive amount of fighting, and I can only take so much in the way of burning laser blasts before I start to unravel, you know? The bullet holes and shrapnel tears are making me look like a piece of yellow and blue Swiss cheese, and I'm not sure how much more of this I can... wait, what are you doing... Clara, stop that! What are you doing to meeeeeeeeeee...

Oh, God. When I wake up from my horrendously traumatic experience, I take stock of what she's just done. She just decided to practice her amateur sewing skills on me, and now I've been fitted with some sort of energy-resistant lining, and some of my rips have been sewn back up. I'm torn (not literally) - do I thank her for reinforcing my seams and thus giving me a longer life, or do I curse her for doing so without my permission? Is there a term for someone who, against your will, forcibly improves your life? Yes, there is, and that term is "dozy bint." She goes on to do the same to the rest of her worn of leather and metal, adding and tweaking until it all looks pretty damn stupid, a mishmash of rust, cloth, leather of different colors, metal bits, all overlaid on a field of blue and yellow, like the inspiration for some sort of avant-garde abstract sculpture.

At any rate, Clara finally seems to finish her housekeeping duties, Sturges doesn't have any more chores he wants her to complete, and she can get back to looking for her lost... uh, okay, never mind. In the absence of Sturges giving her jobs, she's gone looking for jobs elsewhere, and sure enough, Preston has something for her to do. He wants her to go to some farm and rescue some farmers, and he can't do it himself because he feels unable to leave the people here in Sanctuary without a guard, ignoring the fact that there are, by my count, twelve heavy-duty automated defensive turrets and a dedicated guard with advanced weapons and armor. He's apparently worried that if any raiders attack, the absence of his incredibly slow-firing and inaccurate laser pew-pew gun will mean death for everyone here.

Well, sure enough she jogs off after this farm, neglecting to consider the possibility that Preston just said it to get her out of his hair and this may well be a snipe hunt. Hey, at least she's eager to help people, right? That's enough, isn't it?

Well, it would be, but they probably should have sent someone smarter. The first thing she does is try to drown herself in the lake, and when that fails, she comes across a junkyard with a fully-functioning military-grade robot. She decides to activate said combat bot, despite several computer entries (and the activation holotape itself) saying this is a really bad idea. She does leave it idling there, which shows uncommon good sense for Clara - I'm sure actually sending it out to guard one of its preset locations would have disengaged its combat inhibitors or activated its aggression sensors or some other vaguely-tech-sounding thing and it would have gone berserk and attacked her. Well done you.

The next stop on the trip is a herd of what at first glance appear to be deer but at second glance appear to be deer with extra heads, because that's what radiation does - put extra body parts on animals. Well, that and drastically enlarge otherwise relatively benign creatures to gigantic size and aggression. Clara, dunce that she is, decides that this is a good time to go hunting for venison, which is fine for the first one (radstag), still okay for the second one (rabid radstag), and really not fine at all for the third one (glowing legendary radstag). She empties her entire stock of shotgun ammunition into this green abomination and seriously depletes her stock of diseased radiated meat stores by the time the fight is over. Lucky for her, the deer was carrying a piece of armor that magically increases her strength, which she immediately puts on, covering me in blood and some mysterious green goop from the mutant glowing ruminant. Nice. Thanks a lot.

Next: Part 6: One act of kindness, one act of cruelty...
Sidetrack: Buzzer 2
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Author's note: I don't have a problem with animals carrying pieces of armor. For all I know, the creature in question is highly intelligent and was wearing the armor instead of just, like, carrying it in it's mouth, which would explain the animal's resistance to damage. My problem is with the people who then kill those animals, take the armor, and put it on without washing it off. Come on, Clara, have a little dignity, and give that bit of leather you just pulled from the charred and oozing corpse of a feral ghoul a good scrub before laying it against your skin, or worse, me.

Image: Contrast the previous image of Sanctuary with this new one. Now, instead of rusted hunks of metal overgrown with rotting vegetation, we have... rusted hunks of metal overgrown with rotting vegetation, surrounded by used tires and barbed wire. Quite an improvement, wouldn't you say?

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