As the sun began to rise over D.C, in a small shack atop a rocky hill, Sebastian Marsh's eyes slowly opened, and he rolled off of the mattress he had been sleeping on. After landing uncomfortably on the metal floor of the shack, he lay for a minute, contemplating the cloudy sky through the holes in the roof. Eventually deciding that the sky didn't seem likely to change from its usual murky grey, he slowly stood up, walked over to the shack's door, flung it wide and looked out over the dusty devastation before him. As the sun hit his face, he yelled out "Goooooood morning Capital Wasteland!" He then yawned and stretched, trying to stick his arms as high as he could. However, just as his fingers were brushing the top of the door frame, he overbalanced. He tried to steady himself on the door, but the rusted thing fell from its hinges the moment he put his weight on it, and he fell sprawling into the dirt.
"Ow. Fuck," groaned Seb, as he pushed himself to his feet.
Grumbling about uneven flooring and poor shack construction, he set about getting dressed and preparing his breakfast. As he donned his armoured leather jacket, he found himself pondering the usefulness of armouring clothing at all. It wasn't as though a few leather pads and an old street sign would stop bullets, let alone a plasma rifle. However, he reckoned that the jacket, with its toughened leather pads and metal pauldrons, made him appear rather menacing. And out here looking menacing was half the battle. If a group raiders thought that you were too tough to be worth a fight, well then that was one more needless shootout avoided, a few more clips of ammo saved for when you really needed them. After all, even if you looked tougher than a old leather boot, the muties would always want to play.
Just as he had sat down at the small metal table in the corner of the hut, about to eat his breakfast, the loud clang of a bullet hitting metal right next to his head made him jump out of his chair, swearing. He dropped to the floor, and crawled over to the shack's window to get a look at his attacker. Before he could do so, however, he heard a yell.
"Hey, asshole, come out of the hut with your hands up!"
Seb hazarded a glance out of the window to see an extremely vicious looking man, wearing what appeared to be the leather armour of a raider, with several metal plates, and what looked like half a skeleton's worth of bones strapped to it. If Seb's jacket was menacing, then this man's armour was absolutely terrifying. Before he could examine the man's face however, he was forced to duck as the raider took aim and fired again.
"What the hell do you want?" Sebastian yelled, hoping that the fear in his voice wasn't apparent.
"I want you to come out of that fucking shack, with your fucking hands up!"
"Go bother somebody else! I haven't even had breakfast yet!" Seb immediately felt like an idiot after saying this, but the man laughed.
"Good! That means you'll have more food for me to take!"
"If it's food you want, you could have just asked, you prick!"
"I'm a raider, kid! We're not into asking!"
After a pause, Sebastian stood and looked out of the window. "Come on man, it doesn't have to be like this! Come up here and have breakfast with me! We can talk this out!"
Amazingly, the raider lowered his gun. He seemed to be considering the proposition. Seb decided to risk sticking his head out of the window "Hey, shithead! My throat's getting sore from all this yelling! You gonna come come up here or not."
The raider laughed again "You've got balls kid, I'll say that! Alright, I'm coming up!"
As the raider began making his way up the hill, Sebastian rushed about the hut, digging out a chipped, Nuka-Cola brand bowl from his pack. He set the bowl on one side of the hut's table, and a plate on the other. He was pulling a couple of Nuka-Colas from his bag as the raider walked in through the door. As he sat at the table, Seb handed him a cola. He accepted with pleasure, oblivious to the fact that Seb was staring at him warily. After taking a swig of the drink he slammed the bottle onto the table, and looked at Seb.
"So, kid, how old are you?"
Thrown by the oddness of the question, Seb replied reflexively.
"19."
"Hmmm. And what's a 19 year old kid doing in a tiny, blasted up shack in the middle of the wastes? Shouldn't you be holed up in one of those nice settlements, safe from all the psychotic bastards out here?"
"This is just one of my stop points. I do jobs for people in the settlements." The raider raised an eyebrow.
"You don't look like a bounty hunter. Or a mutant slayer. Or any kind of fighter for that matter"
"I don't do those sorts of jobs. I'm more of an... errand boy." The raider burst into laughter.
"Ha! An errand boy! In the middle of the D.C. wastes! Stupidest shit I've ever heard!"
"Think about it! What if someone needs a message delivered? Or a caravan negotiated with? Maybe they need a mechanical part, or a kind of weapon they can't buy from the merchants."
"So, you're a jack of all trades kind of guy?" The raider looked genuinely interested. After all, he only knew how to make money from killing, stealing, and on occasion, slaving.
"I suppose. But I've never been very good at fighting."
"That's not a smart thing to say to a raider kid."
Seb froze as he saw the man smiling threateningly at him, sure that he was about to be shot, or worse. Suddenly, the man laughed. A great, booming laugh that echoed weirdly on the corrugated metal walls of the hut. He laughed a lot, Seb noticed. Encouraged by this, Seb asked the question that had been bothering him ever since the raider had entered the shack.
"Why did you accept my offer of breakfast?" The raider looked at him for a moment.
"Well, kid, sometimes, living out here in the middle of nowhere, you get bored of killing everyone you meet. I guess I felt like having chat with someone, and you seemed interesting enough. And besides, food is food right? I mean, I'll get some either way, but this way saves me from wasting a bullet on your sorry hide!" He laughed again. Seb was finding it quite disconcerting. "Speaking of food," the raider continued, "I thought we were having breakfast here! Come on, get out the food, before I have to shoot at you again!"
"Oh, of course, sorry."
Seb reached into his pack, and pulled out some Fancy Lad's Snack Cakes, and a box of Sugar Bombs. He set the Snack Cakes before himself, and poured some Sugar Bombs into the bowl before the raider.
The moment the raider noticed the Sugar Bombs his eyes seemed to light up. He leapt on them and began to devour them, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his host had yet to add any brahmin milk. Sebastian sat across the table, nervously chewing at a Snack Cake and observing his guest as the latter gorged himself. The man couldn't have been much more than 20, and, beneath his hulking armour, he appeared to be rather tall and slim. His face was cleaner than most raiders' too. After a while of silence, punctuated only by loud chewing and crunching noises, Seb felt he ought to say something.
"So, uh, what's your name?"
"Sugar Bombs," the raider grunted between mouthfuls. "Okay, I get it, you like Sugar Bombs," Seb replied, unnerved. The raider swallowed, before looking up.
"Sugar Bomb IS my name, dumbass."
"Oh."
Seb had been about to ask what sort of name Sugar Bomb was, but an impressive belch from Sugar Bomb's mouth drowned his words out, as the raider drained the bowl and threw it down onto the floor beside him.
I really liked that bowl, Seb thought, as it shattered on the metal floor of the hut. He'd bought it from Crazy Wolfgang about a year ago, after the bright red of the Nuka-Cola logo emblazoned on it had caught his eye. It wasn't anything special, just a cheap promotional piece of pre-war garbage, but something about it had given Seb a warm feeling whenever he had eaten from it. Although, considering Nuka-Cola's alarming habit of experimenting with radioactive isotopes in their products, he supposed that the warm feeling could have been a result of his food blasting his insides with radiation. Just as this thought struck him, Sugar Bomb doubled over and threw up. As he straightened up again, he glared at Seb, something bestial in his face.
"Don't look at me like that. That's what happens when you eat too fast." Seb said. The raider ignored this.
"Where did you get those Sugar Bombs?" he growled.
"What?"
"WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GET THOSE SUGAR BOMBS!" the raider yelled suddenly, pounding the table. Seb stared at him, completely shocked at his guest's sudden change. At his silence, the raider pulled a knife from his belt, leaned across the table, and put the blade to Seb's neck.
"I'm going to ask you one more time. Where. Did. You. Get. Those. Sugar. Bombs."
Seb was absolutely terrified now, and when he spoke his voice cracked "I f-found them in an old Super Duper Mart. B-But the place was completely cleaned out! There's nothing l-left!" Clearly Sugar Bomb didn't like this answer, as he roared and upended the table onto Sebastian. He pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Seb. "Give me ONE reason not to shoot you now!"
"Why would you do that?!"
"Maybe because I'm pissed the FUCK off, and killing you seems like it would cheer me up, ASSHOLE! Now give me a FUCKING reason not to!"
"Wait, wait, wait!" Seb begged, playing for time. What could he do? He couldn't offer caps or food. If Sugar Bomb killed him, he'd just take those things anyway. Suddenly, he had an idea. "The Super Duper Mart may have been cleared out, b-but, I can take you to a HUGE stockpile of Sugar Bombs!"
The raider paused, unsure whether to believe him. Seb continued, "Yeah, I know a place! A room piled high with boxes of the stuff! You'll have all the Sugar Bombs you want!"
Sugar Bomb paused for a second, still breathing heavily. "Alright kid. Pack your shit, and lets get going. You're gonna lead me there."
As Seb frantically moved about the hut, packing his belongings, he watched the raider waiting by the door. Sugar Bomb seemed to have calmed down a little, but the memory of his sudden outburst of rage was still fresh in Seb's mind. He still wasn't quite sure what had come over the raider, but it was obvious that the cereal had had something to do with it.
Finally, Sebastian straightened up, bag packed. "Ready to go kid?" asked Sugar Bomb, obviously back to normal.
"Yeah, sure."
"Well, then, errand boy, lead me to the promised land!" Laughing again, he shoved Seb out of the door, and followed him into the wastes.