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2075 ROBCO(R)

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

623 BYTES FREE

HOLLOW TAPE LOADED:

"THE-SHOT-HEARD-ROUND-THE-MOJAVE"

INITIALISING…

SUCCESS!

STATUS

Battery Level: 87%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 93F

HEALTH

BP: 100/80

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 18

HR: 140

WARNING: GALLBLADDER ABSENT!

TIME

Day: 3 August 2272

Time: 18:11

CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 67F

Atmospheric Pressure: 700 mmHG

...Look at me now, will I ever learn?

I don't know how, but I suddenly lose control-

There's a fire within my soul!

"Are you ready Isaac!?" Shouted mom. I flipped down my visor and nodded grimly. It was a late summer evening, and the sun's orange light had washed over the dreary little gambling town of Primm, where our target lay, defenseless. I turned up the radio on my pip boy, which was playing a song that I'd never heard before but really liked. We leveled our irons.

"Alright, I'll count us down!" She raised her fist in the air. My finger twitched on the trigger.

"Three!"

"Two!"

"one…"

"GO!" I jammed down the trigger, and so did mom. Neither of us let go as the pellets went flying and colorful shrapnel filled the air. I let out a primal war cry as I was splattered with liquid.

Mamma mia, does it show again-

My my, just how much I've missed you?

And just as soon as it had started, it was over- I ran out first, and then a few seconds later, mom fired her last volley. I was already squealing with laughter.

"YES!" I shrieked, balling my hands up into fists and tapping my little boots on the pavement like a happy toddler. I threw my earmuffs and my paint-splattered helmet onto the ground and ran into Mom's waiting arms.

"Oh, come here! That's about the coolest thing in the world, right!?" She picked me up, and spun me around to look at the wall we'd just shot up together. "Look at that, isn't it beautiful? It's beautiful!"

I looked at it. The Casino wall looked just the same as before, only now it was splattered all over with lots of different colors of paint. I was too, now that I looked over myself- there was paint all over my clothes, and my weird hand was dripping with red. I showed mom.

"Look," I said. A big smile crossed her lips. She pointed at the wall.

"Ooh, you should go sign it! It's your first painting, Ikey, go sign it so everyone knows it's yours!"

Mom let me down, and I looked at my hand again- four long fingers, like a gecko's claw. Weird, but not bad. I plodded over to the freshly-painted wall and pressed my hand against it. The even red print stood in stark contrast to the blue splatter on the weathered brick.

Mamma mia, now I really know,

My my, I could never let you go…

And you know what? I was happy. I didn't know how to tell her then, but she knew, because she was my mom and she always knew. She was never confused by me, or scared by me or angry at me. No matter what, I could always run up and throw my arms around her and I'd feel safe, because I was safe.

But not anymore; I was never gonna be safe again. I was all alone now, wandering the mostly abandoned streets and alleys outside New Vegas. Lost, but it's not like I had anywhere to go. Primm wasn't my home no more, not without mom, and I didn't even know where to start looking for Savanna. I'd say it was because I'd failed, but even in my miserable state, I knew there wasn't a damn thing I could've done. Mom's pride and God's cruelty had doomed her from the start. Now all I had to remember her were some new scars and a letter that I couldn't read.

I gotta say, it kinda pissed me off a little.

No, I wasn't sad- I was done being sad about shit! I was angry. Angrier than I'd ever been. The blood in my veins, the air in my lungs, it was all burning with pent-up anger. I was angry at the world for being such a horrible place, angry at mom that she'd held on all this time without telling anyone but couldn't even hold on for the last couple of weeks, angry at Gram for betraying me, at Savanna for stepping on that landmine! Tears of rage filled my eyes as I yanked on a rebar in a rusty metal sewer grate, and pulled it free of the cracked, dusty concrete. I swung it against the alley wall.

"Fuck you!" I screamed. I swung it again, and a chunk of brick flew off and cut my hand. But there was so much anger in my body, so I just kept swinging it until the rebar had bent and the air was filled with red-brick dust. I threw the rebar as hard as I could into the ground. My hands were still shaking so I leaned on the wall for support, and when I moved my weird hand- no, my defective hand, I saw that it had left a print. A bloody red print, on a weathered brick wall...

There were footsteps behind me, but I ignored them. I'd seen more than a couple of homeless junkies wandering around in these alleys, and none of them had so much as looked at me yet. I'd retreated too far into my own world to care about a set of footsteps.

"Hey- hey, you, what the hell are you doing!? You trying to start some shit!?" I twitched my neck to find the source of the shrill voice. There was a man standing there, tall and pale and thin as a metal rail. He was holding a gun.

"Go away," I muttered. He stepped closer. I couldn't make him out well without my glasses, but he looked familiar in a bad way. He put a hand up to his ear.

"Eh, what's that? What did you just say to me?" I turned around. There were still tears running down my face, but I wasn't sobbing no more. I balled up my fists.

"I told you to go away!" He stepped up even closer.

"Well, maybe I don't want to! What are you gonna do about it? You gonna hit me?" He pointed his gun at my chest. "What, you wanna start something?"

Actually, I did want to start something. But the man had an NCR service rifle, and all I had was my bloodied knuckles. And even if I did somehow win, I didn't really want to hurt anyone. I just wanted mom back, wanted Savanna to be alright. I took a deep breath.

"Ain't worth it," I muttered. I turned my back and started to walk away.

"Hey, come back here!" I flipped him my middle finger. I heard him yank on the charging bolt of his rifle in response. Nothing came out the ejection port. "No! No, hands up, put your hands behind your head!"

"Oh come on!" I shouted. Nonetheless, I put my hands behind my head. "Why do we gotta do this?"

"I'm a soldier, do you hear me!? You do what I tell you to!" He jabbed me in the back with his rifle. "Now, turn the fuck around!"

I turned the fuck around. For the first time, I got a good, hard look at him, and I immediately realized where I recognized him from. Tall, thin, curly head of hair… My eyes narrowed. The thoughts in my head began to drown in that sea of incoherent buzzing, that sensory chaos that I couldn't ignore. I looked away from him.

"Son of a bitch," I growled. He laughed at me.

"Oh, recognize me now? I was starting to think you were blind and deaf! Now, give me that thing on your wrist!"

"You shot Savanna," I said. He started to unclip my pip-boy. "I told you to stop, but you just kept shooting…"

"I was there, thank you. Wolf kicked me out of my unit for shooting at you two, some nonsense about prisoners and noncombatants, being against his vision or some shit. And now he just lets you walk free?" He shook his head. "That's not fair. There's gotta be some justice for that!"

"Savanna was the only person I had left. Everyone else is gone now, why couldn't you let me keep her?" The soldier ignored me and picked up my pip boy off the ground. He patted me down.

"Where's the psycho?" He patted me down some more. When that didn't turn up anything, he started pulling on my coat. "Hey, where's the fucking psycho!? You're a combat medic, you must carry psycho!" I shook my head.

"I have nothing," I replied. And I was telling the truth- I really didn't have nothing or nobody left at this point. That pip-boy had been my last valuable possession, and frankly I couldn't believe no one else had taken it yet. I didn't even have any bandaids left on me anymore, much less a dose of combat stimulants like Psycho.

Of course, the soldier didn't care about any of that. He jabbed his rifle into my stomach, pushed me up against the wall. I grit my teeth.

"Stop lying! I know you have it!" He shoved me against the wall again, and raised his rifle like he was going to hit me. I flinched away. "Where is it!?"

"I don't know man, just leave me alone!" I pushed myself off the wall and started walking away again, faster this time. He followed behind me.

"What, you still wanna run away? You know who I am and you still want to run?" I kept walking. The buzzing was getting stronger. "I shot your friend, doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"What did you say was her name, Savanna? I killed her!"

"... listening to me!? I killed Savanna..."

The light at the end of the alley was almost blinding. I couldn't hear anything the soldier was saying anymore, just static. It was all just static, now- I could smell it on the walls as they grew narrower and closed in on me, I could taste it in the blood on my tongue. I turned around, and it was coming closer, too close, and it was trying to touch me. I didn't want it to touch me.

I didn't let it touch me.

Through the static, I heard a crack- like the peal of a bell through a storm. There was another crack as I did it again, against a rusty gutter pipe this time. The sound echoed through the alley; the blood splashed and teeth clattered to the ground. My pip boy glowed green on the asphalt.

The world came into focus around me.

"Goddamn- Goddamnit!" The soldier spit out a gob of red onto the ground. He started crawling, reaching towards his gun. I let out a howl of rage and kicked him in the teeth. "Aaugh!"

"Shut it!" I roared. His nose made a horrible cracking noise as I ground his face into the bricks with my boot, and then kicked him in the side of the head. I wound my leg back to kick him in the throat, but then his leg shot out and I was facedown on the bricks with him. I scrambled up on all fours and drove my elbow into his skull as he tried to get up. "AAAHHH, Fuck!"

I crawled forwards on the bloody bricks and reached out towards the rifle, but the soldier yanked on my leg and I went sprawling face first. The smell of blood filled my nose as it ran down my face and pooled in the back of my throat. I grunted in pain and rolled onto my side, tried to prop myself up by my elbow. A heavy kick connected with my chin.

"How's that feel, eh? How's th-"

The soldier's mouth exploded with chunks of brick. I picked up another one, and lobbed it into the fallen man's ribcage.

"I told you to shut your mouth..." I snatched the rifle up off the ground, and leaned against the blood-spattered wall. My finger wrapped around the trigger. "Why won't you listen to me? Why does no one listen?"

"I'm sorry…" he whimpered. I pointed the gun at him. The sights hovered above his chest. "Please, sir, I'm sorry!"

"No, you're scared. Look, you're pissing yourself!" The soldier crossed his legs and looked away from me as the dark stain grew. I didn't stop pointing the gun at him. "You're lying to me! Like everyone lies!"

"Please!" sobbed the soldier. My finger twitched. He got up onto his knees, started crawling towards me.

"Please-"

I pulled the trigger.

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