new chapter, not of exposition this chapter. Let me know what you think, I'm a bit on the wall about parts of this chapter.
Lousie almost moaned as the hot water soaked her feet to the core. The relief felt so good it made getting the blisters good in the first place.
No,no, that! Never that! Her mind instantly rebelled at the thought.
"How they coming along?" Wheatley asked he was sitting at her desk as she slumped on her bed soaking her feet. Said he had to work on his guns.
All she knew was that he had a tube of lard, some rather interesting tools and sheer skill.
"Much better." she said leaning back.
"Next time were going into town were going to get you a proper set of boots."
"Next time we go into town, I'm not scaring the horse off."
There was knock at the door and Wheatley called out.
"It's open." Louise snapped.
"What do you mean leaving the door unlocked!" to answer her he had a .44 magnum in his left hand in a second.
"Most powerful hand gun in the world." he said with a flourish he put it back on the table as Kriche entered.
"What do you want." Louise smoldered. "I just came to help you familiar out of course." she said overly sweetly.
"I have a name you know." Wheatley said as started connected a pair of wires and his minigun, Eugene began to spin up and draw every one attention before he let it wind down.
"Right, so sorry Wheatley." she said.
"No problem." he spun around to face her. "So what is it? A stash of black powder or something?"
"No silly, I would never be so crass to as to get you a peasant weapon."
"Ya well, it would gum my guns up like you have no idea." he said with a shrug.
"So what is it?" she smiled and brought the fancy sword they had turned down at the weapon shop. "A weapon far more expensive than anything your 'master' could buy you.
Louise ended up laughing.
"What is it pinky?" she said sharply.
"He turned said it was worthless." Kirche eye brows crawled up her head in surprise and turned to Wheatley for confirmation.
"Yup. My pipboy has a scanner on that lets me know how strong a weapon is, also how healthy food is and what effect drugs would have on me. In any case that thing's no good." he held the sword one handed.
"As compared." he pushed a hot key on his pipboy and the sword they did buy de-atomized into his grip. "to this," he was going to say more when a voice from no were began to scream at him.
"DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN!" He almost dropped the sword in surprise. He then looked closer at the cross guard in the insuring silence, not even Kirche said anything.
"Umm, did you just,,?"
"Talk?" the sword said with a rattle of its cross guard. "No, the red head has mastered the art of throwing her voice. OF COURSE I JUST TALKED!"
"O and I, atomized you,," Wheatly said figuring he had just taken a sentient being apart atom by atom. "oops?" he said apologetic. "that must have hurt."
"No kid it felt like a trip to the spa, where they give you messages and put the little slices of cucumber over your eyes. OF COURSE IT HURT! I did not even know I could feel pain before you did what every the hell you just did!"
"Sorry, I had no idea you could talk before I, err bought you?"
"Does this count as slavery?" he asked himself with a frown.
"ya well my chattyness has warded off more than one customer before and let me tell you I've been in the barrel too long to care who bought me."
"I, err see." Wheatley said at last then shifted tract away from the uncomfortable topic.
"Do you have a name?"
"Derflinger." it said. "And let me tell you if you ever do that again we will have some choice words let me tell you!" Wheatley nodded nervously. The last thing he wanted was to piss a weapon he would need at some point in the future off.
Wheatley propped Derflinger against a table and proceeded to rapidly put the mini-gun back together. Locking the last piece in he then atomized it, then summoned up some WD-45 and steel wool.
"Still, let me make it up to you." He said and proceeded to start to attack the rust stains.
While the two had been talking Louise and Kirche had been silent. Then Louise spoke. "Do you have anything else to do in here?"
Kirche made a over exaggerated show of thinking. "not really, no I suppose."
"Then get out of my room!" she yelled standing up, and wincing as she stomped on one of her blisters .
Kirche shrugged "fell free to keep the sword, not like I need it." she said as she left closing the door behind her
Louise sat back down heavily.
"I hate that hussy." she huffed.
"What is your problem with her any way?" Wheatley asked.
"It not just her." Louise leaned back on her bed. "The Vallière's, my family, and the Zerbst, her family, has a rivalry going back century's."
"Sounds a bit like Butch and me." Wheatley said.
"You had a rivalry back home too?" she asked.
"No, no." he said. "I gave up my petty, childish rivalry when I left the vault, now all I had left was a list of target and a hammer to beat them down."
"Sounds hard." Louise said sadly.
"Not so bad when you have friends." he de atomized a photo and handed it to her. "My, well, they fell more like my Brothers and sisters."
She took it and looked at it.
The first thing that struck her was the fact they all had armor similar if not the same as Wheatley's, though they had forgone the helmet for the, she wanted to say painting but that just did not fit with what she was looking at."
"what is this?"
"A photograph, for the history books the scribe said," he scoffed, "not like we always wear that armor though."
Louise nodded content with it being an odd form of magic. She next noticed the faces.
In the center was Wheatley, kneeling down he was putting his hand on the nape of a dogs neck. The dog itself was laying down and seemed to be napping.
To his right a lady with a white lock of hair over half her head and an odd neck band around it.
"Who's this?" she pointed to her. Wheatley winced.
"A old festering wound on my conscious." He said. "That's Clover and, technically she a slave." Louise looked at him confused. "She's been brain washed. I have tried every trick in the book and then some for her to get it that she was free I once told her out right I didn't want her and she belonged to no one anymore."
"What happened."
"She just about starved herself to death over the rejection and I had to take her back and I've killed to many former slaves getting those damn collars off to risk it."
"Collars?" she asked and looked closer at the thing around her neck. "ya, I could, if I wanted to," he de-atomized a small device with a button on it, "blow it up killing her in a second. The only reason I keep this thing with me is so no one else finds it and wonders, what does this button, pushes it and kills her."
Louise looked back at Clover and shivered at the abject cruelty it would take to do that. "God, I,I, would never, I can't image anyone doing that."
"You be surprised you danced pretty close to the edge if I had not put my foot down." he guested to his mattress, and the pile of hay that used to be there. Louise shivered and went back to the photo.
To Clover right was black haired man with some kind of lubricant in his hair. "And him?"
"Butch the barber." he said with a chuckle. "He was my rival back in the vault but I out grew it and he follows me around. Still insists he's the leader of the 'tunnel snakes gang'." he put up finger quotes.
"Hay buddy, less talking more polishing." Derflinger said.
"Sorry." he went back to cleaning. "But really? He scared of the wasteland the raiders, slavers, supper mutants? He follows me around because I know what the hell I am doing."
Louise went back to the photo. Beside Butch looking like he could care less was a man in a cow boy hat. She asked about him.
"Jericho. Hes a bastard. He used to be a raider; he used to be, well evil."
"Evil?" she asked.
"Murdering, torturing, raping, drugging, all for kicks." at Louise horror he sighed "there too many of those freaks out there all of them killing people. But Jericho? He retired if you can believe it. He taught me 1/4 of everything I know, how to clean a gun, how to aim, and to fire a full auto weapon without being a bad shot by the fourth bullet."
"Why did he follow you?" she asked horrified by such a life.
"Things blow up around me." I said. "And I kill a lot of people." Louise looked back at the man and her eye strayed right.
"Is that a bugbear?" she asked. "No it has arms."
"That is Sergeant RL-3 finest drill officer in the United States Army." Wheatley chuckled "I don't travel much with him. He tends to stay in the Citadel drilling Brotherhood of steel initiates. Officer bucket they call him. He was having the time of his life."
She nodded and looked at, it.
"What is he?"
"He is a robot. Think of him like a golem made by commoners that can make decisions and be rational." Louise eyes went wide and glanced at the, robot. She did not know how that was possible.
To Wheatley left was, he looked like a man, but his skin was peeled off and his nose was gone.
"Who's that?" she asked.
"Charon. Hes a Ghoul. Perfectly fine if you ignore how he looks, and please don't ask him to cook he gets flanks of skin in everything blech."
"How that happen?" She asked
"A ungodly amount of radiation, a sort of poison made by atomic bombs that changed him from human to that. It's not all bad though, I've know ghouls who are over 200 years old." her eyes went wide at that fact.
To Charon's right was a women with a short crop of hair. "Before you ask the women to Charon's left is Star Paladin Cross. Technically that makes her my superior in the brother hood of steel."
"Your knightly order?" she asked.
"Just about." she looked into Cross face before moving to the last one.
He was huge! His skin was a dull yellow and the torn out fit of some kind was around his shoulder.
"That's Fawkes he's a super mutant."
"You mentioned them earlier." she said
"Yes super mutants are humans who have been turned into, that." she looked more closely, that thing had once been human? "In the process most mutants loose there mind and go insane and are hostile and should be put down. Or they will kill anyone around them and turn them into more Super mutants."
Louise took a look at the odd group, a wide spectrum of his world. Then saw the back ground and gasped.
The picture had been taken on the steps of the Citadel with the whole of DC as a back ground. The ruined city loomed like a ruin of black iron sky scrapers and tall rusting buildings.
"My god! Is that you home?" she pointed to the city. Wheatley sighed.
"That is what atomic war does to your home. And no. those ruins were over 200 years old when that picture was taken." he took the photo and atomized it.
"And that's my world."
"What happened to them when you gone." she said softly.
"Well Jacobs dead died soon after that photo was taken in fact. He was well over 60 and spent a little too much time raiding. He died as he lived, gunning people down lucky they were the right people that time. Cross would stay at the Citadel. Clover contract would pass to Fawkes as he's one of the few people I trust not to abuse her, Butch would likely follow them around. He always did have a crush on Clover." he chuckled at some memory. "Charon would likely head back to Underworld, or maybe join the Brotherhood proper. Dogmeat?"
"Your named you dog dogmeat?"
"No, that just the name he had on his tags when I found him." he said a little guilty. "Any way Dog meat, I have no idea. Probably walk the wastes till he found a new master. I have no idea how old he was, really."
Louise yawned.
"ya I'm tired too." Wheatley said and he looked at Derflinger. "I'll have to let the stuff sit over night then I can really clean that rust off."
"Fine by me." the sword rattled and with a snap of his fingers Wheatley turned the magic lights went out and the two quickly went to bed.
That night Louise had an uneasy sleep.
In her dream she was chased by men, sometimes ghouls, sometimes super mutants, sometimes mages, with clubs, a collar of iron wrapped tightly around her throat making it hard to breath, eat, or drink.
The land was barren dry, hard and cut her bare feet as she ran leaving tracks of blood.
At long last she could go no further and collapsed in some kind of building that reeked of hot iron, sweat, and death.
One of the men walked up bouncing his club, now a sword, now whip, in his hand. A wicked leer on his face.
"I'll put your head on a fucken pike!" he yelled the club rose, she screamed.
Then a sharp crack echoed and the blow never fell looking up in walked Wheatley! In his hand he clenched the rifle he used to humble Guiche from his back sprouted a pair of majestic angel wings and he was clad in armor of a true noble.
Before she could blink he took aim and the raiders fell one by one, their heads exploded. Once the room was clear he walked in, the waters of life flowing behind him, cleaning the wasteland of filth, both the evil and the dead, plants springing to life in its wake.
Suddenly he knelt down and picked Louise up, sheltering her form the deadly wasteland that would kill her in a heartbeat. Their lips met, the pure and unblemished, to her own scared and burned.
They parted, and Louise saw he was the scared one, not an angel but a man.
She woke up that morning. She sighed and looked at Wheatley, who was still asleep. She suddenly realized just how lucky she was. She had gotten an angel, when it would have been much more likely for her to get a demon.
