After a solid thirty minutes of peering through a set of binoculars, Dinah sighed and slouched in a centuries-old office chair. "No customers this afternoon," she sighed, resting her chin in her hand. She shrugged and threw her hands up in the air, a melodramatic gesture she was displaying only to entertain herself. "I don't need to make any caps or anything!" she defiantly declared. Dinah paused, daring the Mojave itself to prove her wrong.
A light desert wind brushed against the walls of her shack, and Dinah immediately sank into her chair. Her fingers became lost in her mess of tangled red hair, as she ran through it over and over.
"Oh, that was a lie, that was a lie," she moaned, gripping the ends of her hair and tugging each time she had said 'lie'. She started inching backwards in her chair as she kept whimpering and fussing. "I'm not getting any customers, and I'm running out of caps, and then I won't get food, and then I'll slowly starve to death like everyone else out here til' I'm a skeleton and-"
Dinah's worries were cut short as the chair (as well as her head) hit the back wall. "OW!" She climbed out of the chair and dragged it in front of her large desk at the front of the shop, muttering and cursing all the while. "Goddamn brahmin-fuckin' chair, need to make a kickstand for this thing..."
Dinah sank into the chair and rested her head onto the desk. Where did everything turn to Bighorner dung? She used to have a lot of fun running an explosives supply shop; it was more relaxing than she had thought. Her life's ambition was to make things explode, and by some miracle she'd actually made it into a usable career niche. The shack-shop was a cozy, dynamite-riddled gas station she'd found, and she couldn't be more proud of it's secure location; Freeside was just a 45 minute walk away, and the Sentry Bots she had fixed up kept most of the nearby Raiders away (the wise ones, anyway- not that there were too many of those).
Outside, Dinah could see the mechanical "heads" of the Sentry Bots as they stood guard outside the shop. After the shop's grand opening, they had scared off the potential customers, so Dinah had signs put outside the shop that stated: "THE BOTS WON'T BITE-UNLESS YOU BURGLE!" People were still a bit wary of them, but at least people came inside the building. Dinah looked at the lower right corner of the window; yep, the signs were still there, warning potential shoplifters of their laser-filled fate.
Was it the sentries that were driving away business? Dinah stared at them out the window. "Aw, I could never get rid of those guys," she said warmly, waving at them dismissively. "They're the best security a gal could ask for; besides, with how much I talk to them, they're really close in my circle of friends!" She reflected on what she had said, and bent down to look at the body of a deactivated Mr. Gutsy. "Well," she added with a wry smile, "Not as close as Bertha."
She stared down at Bertha's shiny metal form. Bertha was also security, but was more of a night watchman for the interior of the shop. If there was one thing Dinah loved just as much as explosives, it was playing with robots and their insides; as a result, Bertha was upgraded by Dinah to be the best darn night watchman in the Mojave. The two of them had been together for so long, that they'd actually forgotten when they'd met.
Dinah's brown eyes narrowed in confusion. "Had to have been after the bombs dropped," she muttered, trying to remember the fateful day she'd met Bertha. "Not like I'm a Ghoul or something."
Shaking off where her mind had wandered, Dinah looked back up and tried to focus on how she could get more caps, she thought of doing some deliveries; maybe some customers wanted explosives, but lived too far away, or were too lazy to pick them up themselves. After realizing she actually needed customers in order to deliver things to customers, she frowned. "Back to Square One," she muttered, drumming her fingers on the desk and resting her head. "What...Can I do...To make caps..."
As Dinah tried to formulate a plan, she heard a group of men talking close to her shop. She snatched her binoculars and spied a small troupe of men in blue jumpsuits; from where she was, Dinah could see the white printed "NCR" letters on their backs. Even better, their faces, even in the distance, were very familiar. "Oh, thank goodness," she said, breathing a sigh of relied, "I thought I wouldn't make any money this week!"
The group made their way to Dinah's shop and entered. Dinah leaned against the desk and grabbed a stick of dynamite to play with. "Welcome to Dinah Mite's Boom Supply," she said coyly, expertly twirling the dynamite like a baton. "What'll you boys have?"
The gang's leader, a tall man with scruffed black hair, rolled his eyes and shut the door. "Cut the crap, Dinah," he said in a deep baritone voice. "We'll just take what we get every time we come here."
Dinah gleefully grabbed an empty crate and stuffed it full of explosives, rattling off every item. "Twenty frag grenades, twenty sticks of dynamite, twenty frag mines, and four bottles of water," she said briskly, hauling the crate over to the front desk and beaming at the lead Ganger. "That'll be 100 caps total, boys."
The lead Powder Ganger fished out fifty caps and laid them on the desk. "What do you say we cut that in half and we call it a fair deal?"
Dinah blinked twice and stood up from the desk. "Warner," she slowly began, "I've always lowered my prices from the competition so people down on their luck can enjoy making things explode. And I hate to be a businesswoman first and a philosopher second, really, I do, but you're kinda trying to undercut me here." She frowned. "And that really isn't fair to me, the hardworking explosives manufacturer."
She pulled out her 9mm pistol, and the Powder Gangers immediately drew their respective weapons. Warner scowled at her, the scarred flesh on his lower lip rippling.. "You really think you'd make it in a four-on-one shootout? Don't be stupid, Dinah," he warned.
Dinah raised an eyebrow and snorted. "I'm not gonna shoot you," she explained. Slowly, she moved her pistol to the right until she was aiming at the many crates of grenades and mines that were roughly two feet away from both her and the Gangers. Warner's eyes widened, yet he kept his scowl. The rest of his men's arms began to wobble ever so slightly.
"I'm not afraid to slice off my own arm in order to spite my hand," Dinah threatened. She pursed her chapped lips. "Actually," she added, "I almost did that once, come to think of it." She shook her head. "But I don't have time to tell you about it, since now you're going to take out the other fifty caps I know you have in your pocket, take your supplies, and then never come here again unless you want Sam and Bobby to shoot you full of holes."
Warner motioned for one of his other Gangers to toss him a bag of caps. The other Ganger obliged, and Warner started counting out the remaining caps. As he counted, he looked up at Dinah. "Did you actually name your Sentry Bots 'Sam and Bobby'?" he asked in his usual monotone.
Dinah glared at him silently. Warner continued counting out the caps until all fifty were on the desk with the rest of the payment. The Ganger who had tossed Warner the bag of caps now grabbed the crate of supplies with one arm, and all of them slowly backed out of the supply shop. Dinah gave them a small wave with her free hand, and Warner gave her one last eyeroll before slamming the door shut.
Dinah watched them walk off into the distance, and gave a giddy cheer. "I made a sale, I made a sale," she chanted in a sing-song voice, scooping the caps and adding them to the safe in her bedroom. She yawned, and realized that it was closer to midnight than she had thought. Normally she'd stay up until three in the morning making new explosives to restock the shop, but that last sale had barely made a dent in her inventory; besides, all the excitement had made her a bit tired. She activated Bertha for nighttime patrol, shut off the one light in the shop, and went into her bedroom to get some shut eye.
Jumping into her bed, she wrapped her dusty blanket around her and closed her eyes. "G'night, Bertha," she sleepily called out into the darkness. The sound of mechanical hovering grew louder and louder until it was outside her bedroom. "Goodnight, {Dinah}," Bertha stated in its robotic tone. "Get some good shuteye, Sarge!"