With all the Fiends dead the situation quickly settled down. Afton looked over the side of the building and spotted Karl trying to tend to the injured Ranger while the man kept spouting random things like "I'm sorry Christina" and "I should've listened to you."... Perhaps the blood loss was making him delusional? If that was the case then he'd need to start working on him soon before he starts sleeping forever.

Getting down to the ground via the ladder he rushes over and kneels beside the man while his hand rifles through his Deathclaw leather bag in search for medical tools. "What're his injuries?" he quickly asks. ​​

"Some shots to the arms and legs, and one bad one in his gut." them man calmly lists off.

Afton lifts some of the bandages Karl had applied and spots the injury, that'd definitely need surgery. It seems to have breached his intestine, bacteria will infect the wound soon enough... He retrieves some high potency alcohol and pours it over the wound, cleaning it off dirt before he plunges his tweezers inside in search of the bullet.

Most doctors wouldn't dare try this without a whole team supporting them, as well as an x-ray to get the general idea of where their target was, but Afton isn't an ordinary doctor anymore. As if his tweezers were magnetic he pulls it outta the man. He looks over the bullet to make sure it hadn't shattered and leave any shards behind, once he was confident he doused the wound with alcohol again and injected a stimpack into some key areas.

He made sure to inject it into the intestine first to allow it to heal completely before moving onto the destroyed muscle surrounding it. In the game stimpacks would heal different amounts depending on your Medicine skill, that wasn't because they improved though. It was simply because you got better at applying them.

Once Afton was done, all that was left of the deadly wound was a pink spot of skin where the new flesh had grown. He'd still be sore tomorrow, and he may shit some blood, but he'd live.

Afton looks down at the man who seemed to be coming to his senses, stimpacks didn't just regrow muscle and organs, but assist in the production of blood. "You alright?"

Morales looks down at his wound and slowly nods, "Wow... You're crazy doc. Didn't think I'd make it through that, not even my Implant could've healed such a wound." he says, laying his hand back into the sand, clearly exhausted.

"Impant?" Afton asks, with his medical knowledge he knew implants existed, but he hadn't expected anyone to be selling them in the Mojave... They are a notoriously difficult thing to credibly give to people, even before the Great-war they only had a 70% chance of working and not being rejected...

Morales nods, "Yeah... My wife Chrstina was worried about me and managed to convince me to get one... It was called moncyte or something? Supposed to slowly heal my wounds, obviously it didn't work on that one though."

"Monocyte?" Afton asks, getting a nod from the man.

"Yeah, Monocyte breeder I think she called it... Doctor Usanagi charged an arm and a leg for it though."

Doctor Usanagi? Strange, wouldn't have thought any eastern names would've survived the Great-war, with all the anti-communist robots going around trying to exterminate 'foreign spies' he was surprised they hadn't changed it... Though, he did find it quite funny that even 200 years in the future after the apocalypse, Japanese people still kick the shit out of Westerners when it comes to academic studies...

"You know anything about this 'Doctor Usanagi' Karl?" he asks, wanting to know more. Getting a couple Implants didn't sound too bad if he were honest.

Karl shrugs, "A good Doctor but makes most of her caps by selling those Implants... 4000 caps for one last I checked." he says.

4000 caps each? That makes sense, it isn't easy to recover the specific parts for each one... If Afton were honest then he'd say that the price was more than fair, especially with what she was supposedly providing.

"Alright, we should get you back to the Sergeant... Karl, we'll come back and loot the Fiends later." he says, picking Morales up in a princess carry.

"Hey, not that I'm being ungrateful or anything but... Could you carry me over your shoulder or something?" Morales asks, clearly he felt emasculated at being carried like this.

Afton gives him a kind smile, "No."

The man just grumbles in response to Afton's refusal to put him down. He and Karl eventually reach the NCR soldier's position. The area was riddled with bullets from the earlier fight, but no one seemed injured, the plan had worked flawlessly.

"Sergeant, we've brought your boy back." Karl says from the side, from the side Boone was slowly walking towards them from the REPCONN building, a satisfied look on his face.

"Ranger Morales, are you alright?" the man quickly asks while looking him over.

Morales sighs at being treated like an injured child, "Yes, yes, I'm alright... Now can you put me down? I think I can stand on my own."

Afton shrugs and lets him down, the Ranger stumbling and having to be caught by the Sergeant as he loses the strength in his legs.

"Yeah, nice one princess." Afton snarks, causing the ranger's face to go red with embarrassment.

Afton was waiting to retort to any response the man was going to give, but time abruptly froze as soon as the Sergeant got a good grip on the ranger.

[WELCOME TO LEVEL 22]

Huh, didn't think those Fiends were enough to level up... Maybe saving Morales was a quest? Whatever.

Afton just dumps all his new skillpoints into Sneak. It'd definitely proven useful while he was sneaking up on the Fiends, and would likely give an extremely overpowered Perk once he maxed it...

Looking at the Perks available he frowns at the lack of options again... This was becoming a trend, the further he progressed the fewer Perks appeared... Was it like this in the base game or was he just unlucky?

[Spray and Pray] : Your attacks do 75% less damage to companions. Afton wasn't sure what to make of this Perk... It could potentially be overpowered depending on how he used it... Imagine strapping an explosive to one of his companion's chests and sending them into an enemy fortification. The explosion would likely leave them alive while killing everyone else, though, he felt uncomfortable just thinking about it.

He wasn't heartless and appreciated the people travelling with him. Karl was already a prominent figure in his life, he may be his best friend as well... As weird as it sounds to have a best friend who could probably be your grandfather...