"Yknow, for a woman, you're awfully...electronic."
This earned a dangerous whirring of clawed hands and an angry voice from the assaultron behind the counter.
"Ain't 'woman' enough for you, baby? I suggest you buy something or I might be tempted to test out some product...on you..." She almost hissed that last part. Wait, no. She literally hissed that last part, as an exhaust port let off the steam her words created. The lackey in front of her counter grimly winced and backed off.
"Yeah, yeah, I got you!" Shivering visibly, he left the storefront. A sigh could be heard from nearby. It was quiet enough today any normal person could have heard it, but the previously mentioned owner of this store would have heard it regardless. Her sensors were always kept in perfect condition, allowing her ample opportunity to catch even the smallest of sounds and movements.
"You can't keep doin' this K-L-EO. You're gonna run off all your business, sexy robot that you are or not." A raspy voice followed the sigh with exhasperation. "Even a robot with an arsenal full of weapons has to make a living, after all!" The voice came from the next storefront over, just to the right, actually. A lithe ghoul, aged 200 years and running by the name Daisy kept this shop. She mocked the assaultron knowing full well K-L-EO would never take it personally. They were partners in business advertisement. K-L-EO sold dangerous weapons and fully capable armor. Daisy sold the junk needed to tweak it. It was a good setup.
The latter made her way around to the former's counter. "It's time to close up shop, isn't it?" K-L-EO checked her internal sun gauge and nodded a confirmation. Daisy and K-L-EO, ofcourse, never truly locked up shop, knowing the chem-addled would probably want their midnight snacks, so they had another great setup. Daisy would take her nightly rest, and K-L-EO would watch her store front. In return, Daisy shared all the electronics that K-L-EO ever needed, "free" of charge.
Were they of the same flesh, one might have called them sisters, the way they worked in unison so beautifully.
"Ah~! Just another beautiful day in good ol' Goodneighbor!" Another, deeper raspy voice croaked out like rocks rolling across pavement.
"Morning, mayor. I see you came for your sweetrolls and jet?" K-L-EO voiced almost emotionlessly. If only it weren't for her sultry tone, one would have thought she were a mindless bot with no personality. "A little late, aren't you? It's already zero-three-and-twenty-two hours."
"Aw, c'mon K-L-EO, you gotta gimme a break here! I couldn't deny my people what they wanted, and what that drifter wanted was a little bit of tender ghou-"
"Your order, Hancock." She interrupted swiftly, placing two sweetrolls and four canisters of jet on the counter.
The ghoul frowned and tossed 26 bottlecaps on the counter. K-L-EO felt an odd twinge as he did so. Something was familiar about that twinge. Huh, she'd have to ask for a newer circuitboard when Daisy awoke at zero-six-hundred hours. "Have a great day, mayor. I hope noone stabs you for those." She meant well, but it always came out harsh. Hancock was used to that long ago.
She watched him closely as his red duster flowed behind him almost pompously before disappearing altogether. She felt the twinge again. A slightly different one, mind you, but one all the same that she hadn't felt in a while. So long, in fact, she had purged the feeling from her sensor readings. Robot forgetfulness, and all that. She couldn't place it, though she knew she should have been able to. She would deal with it when Daisy awoke. Hoping against hope that it wouldn't have to come to...that...she returned to her own counter as quietly as a 300 pound robot could.
Daisy watched her partner carefully, frowning, although she had been reassured there was nothing to worry over. K-L-EO had sounded as anxious as she ever could when she came up to dutifully awaken Daisy at 6 a.m. It had been easy identifying a loose wire when she sat the robot down to examine her. She was no robotics expert, so K-L-EO had precautiously explained her basic circuitry to the woman perched carefully behind her at the time. It appeared to be nothing a soldering gun and some silver couldn't fix. However, as the day progressed, the ghoul watched her friend twitch more often; jump more often; whirl more often. Whirling was not a good thing. Ever.
"Listen, baby, you'd better buy something soon. I don't have all day." If the robot could smirk, Daisy was sure a poignant smile would've stretched across her face at that moment.
And then it all happened so fast. It happened and she couldn't do anything to stop it.
Let's see, first - Daisy tried to note over the explosions and screaming - there was that damned drifter from before. He had already insulted K-L-EO the previous day, and clearly he was stupid enough to come back and do it again. That wasn't the problem. The problem was K-L-EO's reaction to being told she was less than filth, less than a synth. She wasn't 'woman' enough to stop herself from beaming him straight in the face.
'Beaming' has a different meaning to assaultrons than it does to everyone else. Beaming to regular people meant adding a new and improved fleshy feature (usually a fist) to someone's face, giving them a facial makeover. It's all fun and dandy because you can walk away from it.
Daisy felt tears slip down her face as she struggled to breathe, having been trapped under a support beam from the collapsed building. A fire was spreading quickly through the decimated town. She tried hard to recollect.
First it was a high keening sound, which reverberated uncomfortably with a low tone. It was sickeningly familiar. She had just enough time to blink and turn her head, a brightish orange light catching her eye, before she watched as K-L-EO beamed the drifter in the face. It was clean, it was disgusting, it was beautiful. The headless body dropped to the floor with a thump. More thumps followed with metallic clanking and dangerous whirring. K-L-EO was on the move, arms at her side in a jogging stance as she bolted like lightning, striking another – innocent – drifter in the side. He didn't stand a chance as her clawed hand wrapped around his arm, pulling it sharply from its socket and with a wet shlopping sound, the rest of his body.
She was scared. She screamed, but couldn't even hear herself over the sound of sudden gunfire and the cries of Goodneighbor. Oh, god, what did they do to deserve this misfortune? The house suddenly came down with a crash as K-L-EO accidentally struck it attempting to hit one of the guards. Daisy didn't have time to register the cracking of brick and wood before she leapt for freedom, only to fall short, with a pillar of wood above her body, trapping her in place. It was literal hell. She cried for help before she stopped being able to breathe and passed out.
She didn't know how long she was out, but a red arm was desperately pulling her frail body from the rubble. The town was on fire, the walls down. She could hear the sound of K-L-EO shooting and punching at anything and everything.
"Are we dead? Is this hell?" She croaked out.
"No, but if you know how to shut her down you'd better help me do it now or we will be." So it was Hancock carrying her? She hadn't even tried to look, too bruised and beaten to bother lifting her aching head.
"There's a port on the back side of her head...loose wire...drive behind it...pull the wire and...get the drive..." She slipped back to unconsciousness, an odd comfort reaching her as she was able to catch her breath. Everything hurt...everything hurt so badly...and her heart ached.
"If I didn't love you, I woulda killed ya long ago, fuckin' dickwad." A girl bounded over soundlessly, save for her cheery pacific-southern voice. "I hope you end up dead so I don't cross mah mohral bound'ries first. Dick." She laid it on thick that time, showing her humorous attitude on the current situation.
The receiver of her attention smiled a toothy smile at her. His ruined face betrayed his happiness at her approving disapproval. "It was your idea Ari!" He hung upside limply from a cord. It streched upward to the top of an old receiving tower. "'Oh, it'll be fine, just get on there, get the copper coil, come back down, enne bee dee!' Yeah, no big deal, whatever! I coulda died!" He mocked her, but then screamed as she shot at him. Mind you, he was dangling 20 feet above her.
"Kay, so ya don't mind if I take a couple pot-shots, do ya?" She smiled and winked at him. Then, she aimed once again and almost fired when a looming green figure appeared behind her.
"Arianna, get him down."
"You get him down, he's the one who got himself stuck there! I would've gotten shocked outta my mind, and he can take the radiation. You're simply too big, Jon-puh-jo." She grinned and stood triumphant before she was lifted and chucked at the dangling ghoul. She barely managed to clasp onto his supporting cord before she was, too, dangling 20 feet above the ground.
"Sure, I'll get him down." She angrily huffed before working a knife out of her pocket and dragging it across the cord. They both gasped, the ghoul screaming as they dropped into muscular arms. The arms of a super-mutant, actually. "Thanks for nothing, Jonathan! Asshole..." She squirmed and jumped out of his arms.
The super mutant, Jonathan, dropped the tied company onto the ground and ripped the cording from his body. "You okay, Dylon?"
"Yeah, although I think I may have shat myself a little."
"Two-hundred years and you still don't have that potty-mouth under control?" The ghoul glared as the girl as she bounded around, looking for scraps that may have fallen from the tower. She tied her red hair back and prodded at the rubble, blue eyes beaming with curiosity, Finally, she picked up a neatly green coil from a pile of metal. "Check it, guys, I gots somethin' gooooood~!" She sang delightfully as she produced it for them to see.
"Awesome, should be able to afford that devil now. That was the final piece we needed to open her up." Jonathan noted in a deep grumbling voice. He rubbed his balded head thoughtfully and led the group through the lush greenery they had come from. The journey back was gonna be a bitch, especially with the raiders coming down from the north to try and take over the area. Bastards kept razing the little green left in the US after the Great War.
"Uhm, didn't we also need an assaultron circuitboard...?" A meek voiced crooned behind him.
Dammit, Dylon.
