CHAPTER 35
Down Below.
A good amount of years ago- he didn't know an exact number, he didn't count because he really didn't care for the memory outside a musing thought every other day- Laslar had been running around the wastes of California during the final days of the NCR war.
The desert had always been a hellish place to him- far worse than the East Coast, even worse than central North America and Mexico- and his temper had been rife for the amount of killing wrought on that day.
Laslar had become notorious for the butchering he lead into the New California Republic's midsection territories- and, of course throughout his whole campaigning- he had become enraged on the field MULTIPLE times... But there were some instances that stood out to him.
Laslar had pretty much razed the settlements of Squat and One Pine- and he had killed so many NCR soldiers and rangers, and he had killed them in almost every way thinkable. Laslar had never amounted to such diversifying of his killing before- even in Texas, he had guns and booby traps for it every time, all the time.
In Nevada and California, though, Laslar had ended men and women with his bare hands (Even though they were in gauntlets from his suit, it still counted in his mind)- with blades, with guns, explosives. There were physical drags of browning crimson that stayed on his armor for days at a time.
The Enclave's older logistics systems didn't exist anymore exactly, and directly because of the NCR-Enclave War- even though they had won, with flying colors- Laslar's and the other commanders' armies ran out of pretty much everything all the time. THIS, was the main reason for Laslar's uncontrolled anger.
Vertibirds would run out of gas, squads had to resort to using local projectile arms when all their Plasma batteries or Power Packs died out- there had been some Enclave soldiers that had died of disease or injury infections because they couldn't be medically evacuated from the Nevada desert in time.
Despite the heat, the dryness, the hell it played with his movement- Laslar despised Nevada, he despised Utah, he despised California and Arizona and Texas and Mexico- he fucking HATED it all, because it had been the most frustrating theater in his career.
There were entire Enclave units that had their offensives turn into fall-back operations because the NCR armies had enough people still alive to mount counter attacks when the Enclave soldiers ran out of damned ammo.
It was a war of attrition- the desert would allow nothing but.
Even though the Enclave had lost so few soldiers, and the NCR military still, arguably, had never fully recovered from the horrendous losses they sustained against the technologically superior foe- the Enclave still lost a lot of Vertibirds, most of them being captured after pilots had to abandon them.
Efforts at getting the right supplies to the field at the right time failed- and the irony of it was, so many Enclave personnel that HAD what their comrades needed, were forced to try and destroy the equipment to prevent it from falling into NCR hands when it broke down or the tanks ran dry.
The whole 'Slash and Burn'- policy hadn't worked out to the slightest degree of effectiveness- in fact, Laslar argued that it backfired.
Those Vertibirds that had been captured had been repaired- it was foolish to think the Republic's engineers- the most versatile Wastelander scavengers in the world- would be deterred by the fires Enclave soldiers had set in their cabins and cockpits, or the shrapnel damage from explosives.
His men had run out of so much- they didn't even have anything effective enough to destroy their own planes. As a result, the old Vertibirds- a lot of VB-01's, were still in service with the NCR army, painted forest green, retrofitted with projectile cannons and machineguns.
Even though the NCR offered a truce- and the Enclave had been too materially drained to continue the invasion any deeper south OR north- the NCR obviously kept a hold of the captured aircraft. There were rumors sometimes of an aircraft factory that the Republic was trying to gather funds to start.
Laslar thought of his first real taste of organized combat as a cohesive unit- because not only did it directly give him access to the science team that had helped him make the same thing he was now chasing today- BUT, it also reminded him of the burning, red rage he suffered from.
-Because this Wastelander, and his pet, were pissing him off, A LOT.
"FUCKING LITTLE SHITS!" Laslar screamed- his boots roaring with each thundering fall against the concrete flooring. "COME BACK! SO I CAN KILL YOU!"
The Superintendent was in a wild sprint down the dark tunnels of Springs Quarry- just like Sanford had found a knack of fluent motion within his own suit- Laslar was able to move frighteningly fast in his own armor. That may have had something to do with the fact that Laslar had been using the same suit for probably close to fifteen years.
"DIE, DAMN IT!"
CLACK CLAK
-Up ahead, not even far enough from Laslar to not hear his voice in explicit detail as he hollered about tearing his throat out with his bare hands- Sanford rounded a corner in the blocky concrete wall right as a trio of burning green punched into the stone just behind him.
He was giving off a heavy breath with each time his legs arced past each other- his head was tipped back, and poor Mr. Tobs was in one of the fastest sprints of his own to counter the Superintendent's- and it was probably the biggest workout over the last day.
"This-guy-is-REALLY-pissy'!" Sanford barked between breaths- earning no response from the Deathclaw, who was just keeping pace ahead of him, her reptilian body slinking down the middle aisle of the tunnel fluently.
"TAKE A PILL YOU MECHANIZED BITCH!" Hancock shouted back at the Enclave commander without hitch as he flew behind Sanford. "WE'RE ONLY RUNNING BECAUSE YOU STINK LIKE DOG SHIT! WE'LL BE BACK!"
"Hancock-SHUT-UP!" Sanford wheezed. "I-don'tgetitwithyou! -You-justkeep-SCREAMING-all-THE-GOD-DAMNED-TIME!"
-They ran down a straight passage for a quite a few seconds- and rumbling down at the end of the tunnel by the corner they had narrowly dodged Superintendent Seduun's fury with- rattled and belched dust about as Laslar battered through.
He was like a lumbering animal- his armored boots were literally leaving small clusters of fissures in the concrete he stepped on- his arms sometimes knocked off in glances from the walls on either side of him. He wielded a Plasma rifle- a kind that Sanford had never seen before -one-handed, and sprayed the hallway they ran down.
CLAK CLAKCLAKCLCALCLCK
-Green bolts started to fly everywhere.
PSSHKK!
"-AGH! DAMN IT!"
ssssssssssss...
Sanford was too busy trying to get away to assess the damage now on the BACK of his suit.
"This guy's pegged your ass TWICE, sir!" Hancock admonished- ducking as a bolt of plasma sailed right between two of his raised ocu-lenses with a passing hiss of ozone.
"HANCOCK! SHUT- UP!"
"How rude, sir!"
"Monsieur'-! Look out-!" CRSSK
"SHIT!"
...Here was an excellent question.
How many God forsaken times was Sanford going to fall in this adventure? Like, what the actual hell?
This was too stereotypical- if Hancock wasn't tumbling down with him, against every law of mechanical science that theoretically should've kept him in the air- he would've made some comment over how crappy of an action-movie the last few days had been.
Sanford fell through a roach-swarmed steeple's floor, he fell off a lift just before it got eaten by napalm, he fell through an archway with its stairs crumbled... And now, he was falling down a straight-shot, cigar-shaped pit that had just randomly popped up.
There wasn't total randomness with how this newest habit of his had spawned up- it had been his life up until recently- FALLING, falling physically sometimes, falling emotionally as the lonesomeness of the Wasteland had been eating away at him, falling in every way he could think of...
Now that had all kind of stalled, but in exchange, he was tumbling through Earth's deepest crags. Literally.
That sucked.
Bring back the depression, this was gonna' kill him faster.
-The breakage of wood is what he heard before the very same drop in his gut was felt, and he was plummeting.
The good news kind of was, the fall didn't last too long.
-0-0-0-0-0-
pmk pmk PMK PMK-PKMM
"God-DAMN IT!" CRSSHM -Laslar almost stumbled into the pit himself when his quarry, all three of them, vanished in a jerking motion downwards, obscured by pluming smoke and woodchips from a cluster of planks strewn on the concrete ground.
Where his targets had once been running, there was now a four-foot wide hole that encompassed to both sides of the tunnel, meeting just before the left and right wall- the concrete raggedly turned to soil for a snaking trail of darkness below.
Laslar steadied himself from the perilous screeching halt he made with but a boot's toe on the edge of the new crater- he stepped back, steel thunking in his Power Armor.
"... Damn it." CRSSHM Laslar turned and planted his bunched fingers into the wall again- further leaving an indented flower of cracks in the blocky protrusion.
Rearing back and shaking his gauntlet- he growled, looked over his shoulder to see his team catching up- the group of armored soldiers rattling down the hall to stand before him in the blackness ungracefully.
"Sir? What happened?" One asked through the communications link.
"Grizaro, Manecks," Laslar snapped at the two men in the front ranks- each had a Heavy Flamer, an Incinerator, clenched in their plated hands, and were garbed in rounded Hellfire Armor.
Laslar pointed bluntly to the crater next to him.
"Burn it."
-0-0-0-0-0-
The actual dropping into nothingness lasted a mere five or so seconds- and then, midway through- Sanford felt his back hit something through the rear of his cuirass- it wasn't a hard impact, just a startling jolt, and it sounded dusty.
PFFT!
-He heard tiny crumbles of dust flittering down the X-01's plating, and then he heard hissing, like a ridge made of titanium being dragged across a dirt road.
ssssSSHHHHHM
-Then, the feeling of weightlessness was replaced by the feeling of being on some whacked roller coaster.
Sanford shook his head wildly inside the helmet of his suit- saw ragged, root-strewn soil that formed the ribbed walls of the tunnel whoosing past his face, going upwards- he was dragging down in an incline in the worm-like passage.
He raised his head, and saw over the rounded curve of his breastplate- another drop in the dirt-made tunnel.
"-OH SHIT-!"
ssssssssSSCRSK!
BM-BM
BM
BM
"-WHA-?! AHH! AAHHH! AH- Ah... Uhm... Uhm... O-Oh... Oh, hey..."
Sanford had landed right on his heels.
That second drop couldn't have been more than a couple of feet.
After a quick stumble- Sanford stood on the dusty, dull brown ground beneath his heels, arms spread for balance that was no longer required. He was upright, a little dizzy from the adrenaline- but as the silence settled on him in the darkness of this new place, Sanford Tobs gathered his composure.
He sighed in relief, arched his spine inside the suit, and stretched himself with raised gauntlets.
"...Woo. That could've, gone a lot worse."
"Monsieur'?"
There was movement right in front of him- and he saw the Deathclaw materialize from the shadows, her yellow eyes standing brighter in the dank mist- she opened her jaws in a gasp, and nodded towards him with worry.
"Are you hurt?"
"Did the last fall hurt me?" He chuckled after a second. "And I even fell on my FACE that time. I'm good."
"Good."
clckt
clktlkl
cltlCLKCLCK
CLK
"-iiiiiIIIIIIINNCCOMMMINNNGGGG!"
Sanford started to turn- but it was too late.
Hancock's echoing warning rebounded down the tunnel just above his head- and was interrupted in its full volume from a pattern of metallic crashes, bangs, and impacts off of rocks as the robot clattered all the way down in a heap.
Sanford's eyes bugged in his head- and before he could duck, a missile of seeming scrap metal plowed into his torso.
CLKK! lckclcklckclk...
-Sometimes Sanford wished he made the sound of a bag of tin cans spilling out everywhere when he hit the floor. It would've made such scenes a lot more lighthearted.
Having not even flinched, Sanford gazed down at the pile of robotic insanity that was draped over both his boots with all three splaying arms draped on the ground. Hancock's chassis was lain ahead of that, and all three of his ocu-lenses were down.
"...Han'," Sanford sighed, looking up at the tunnel with a roll of his eyes. "Hancock, c'mon please, we don't have time."
"Monsieur', what if he's damaged?" The Deathclaw asked as she peered past his arm the metal bundle on the ground. "Not that I hold much concern either way."
"Trust me, he's being an ass again. HAN'. Get up. Let's go."
...Nothing.
Sanford flexed his teeth over his tongue, brows indenting.
"Get up, Commi-bot'."
CLANK!
-A small stone rebounded off of Sanford's helmet, bounced away to the left in the dark of the chamber.
Looking down- he saw a single ocu-lense raised from Hancock's chassis- and the robot silently stared him down, the lens adjusting with a few whispering whines.
"Way to pollute the funny, Corruptor!" Hancock snapped. "I could've been DEAD!"
"Like me? On the inside, Han'?"
"Exactly! You soulless Nazi!"
"Ouch." Sanford stepped away, making sure to kick off the robotic arms over his boots- he stepped beside the Deathclaw who was observing the robot collect himself off the floor with a look of disgraced pity.
He checked around this new space they had accidently uncovered- and instantly, now that they had gotten away from the Enclave for the second or third instance- he felt the tiny bit of dread in his heart again.
This was getting too much.
He never let anyone, or anything else suppress him or keep him from his goals- and right now, his goal was to escape with his friends- and if that meant sticking it to this- 'Calth' -thing, then that's what he would have to do.
Though, as expected for such a hidden chamber of this earthy caliber- the place was pretty bland. It was a round cavity in the earth, tiny stalagtites protruded from the ribbed roof all over and randomly.
His night vision filters gave him full sights of everything in the chamber- and the thing he saw that gave him the chills, was a oval-shaped hole in the wall up ahead- it was ribbed in texture, and made of stone that breached from the soil on either side of it.
The passway lead into another bulb of darkness beyond- but what was different with this dark expanse, was that he could see light somewhere inside, feint, and barely audible.
"Sir! This crapshoot isn't on the schematics!" Hancock snapped, flying beside his friend. "I don't know how to get out from another way besides this tunnel! Seeing as Texan-Turd up there isn't going to exactly, you know, hold our hands and HELP US OUT!"
"Sssh." Sanford muttered, stepping towards the stone passage. "Both of you follow me, stay behind me."
"I don't DO- 'Behind'- monsieur', we've been over this." The Deathclaw chimed.
"Do as I say."
Sanford didn't wait for a response he knew was coming- he started towards the arch, and his two companions were forced into being behind him as they caught up, leathery heels patting against the soil, central-thruster whistling quietly.
Sanford stepped over a slight chin that beveled from the dirt floor in the form of stone from the arch- he slipped between the rounded flanks of the rocky maw, and into a larger expanse.
There was another chamber- it was bigger, and what Sanford saw inside, made his skin crawl.
In the shadows, all of this probably wouldn't have been discernible to him without the night filters- but with his helmet, Sanford saw the entire setup through the lenses of his helmet.
There was a row of work chairs- swivel ones like in some of the offices back above, and foldible metal and plastic ones you'd see in a picnic or an outdoor setup were also there. The chairs numbered ten or fifteen- they were set in a square formation before the horror ahead of them, in the center of the chamber.
Even though it was a crudely carved block of concrete- the attempts to poorly forge ornate shapes into the stone, and the fact that the flat top was larger than its thinner base- told Sanford it was either a lectern, or an altar of some kind.
Browned stains that erupted from the center of the top and bloomed all across, and in long dried trails down the concrete's flanks- pointed more towards it being the opposite choice of his hopes for its origins.
It was an altar.
Right behind that was a structure, a tall one- at least six feet- Sanford was startled, because it looked like a person was standing behind the altar at first glance.
But no, it was made of stone, not flesh and bone. And it most certainly, did not look human.
Sanford started moving towards the row of chairs before this sickly array- in the darkness, he glanced left and right- and strewn on the edges of all sides of the chamber, were unlit, expended wax candles- sat atop rocks, or the dirt of the floor.
The Deathclaw and Hancock said nothing, they wordlessly followed him.
"Oh mon Dieu'..." She muttered lowly. "Sanford. We should leave."
"Not yet."
"Sanford, please."
He stopped right before the right flank of the chairs- turned around and saw her yellow eyes, wide to him.
"I need to know."
"It may not be worth it, mon ami'."
"I need to know, and if I can, I need to destroy it."
"But we don't even know what IT is."
Sanford didn't respond- he angled his head up, and took a quick look about the yawning blackness of the chamber's unseen roof. He glanced at the rounded walls all around them- he determined the source of light.
There was a concrete arch- a miracle down here for them- and there was a small pile of metal crates at its flank, topped with a dying lantern on the gray box at the height of the stack.
Sanford squinted- he turned back to the stone figure, the statue- behind the bloodied altar- he finished rounding the chairs and soon stood directly before the concrete piece.
It was indeed blood that was dried all over the thing. Horrible. Looked like whoever was unfortunate enough to be up here was gutted like a pig.
pm
-His boot nudged something on the floor.
He stopped short, a gear creaking in his suit- he looked down, and Sanford cringed.
It was a body. Hidden in the shadows, just ahead of the chairs- he hadn't even noticed it, too transfixed on the altar setup.
The remains were mostly skeletal- MOSTLY, because some of the organic matter was stringed across the gray bones in dusty, sprawling inconsistencies of decay and olden rot.
The corpse looked like it had been here for months- the point where the flies finally stopped, but there was still some rubbery garbage left to rot away. There were still clothes on this corpse- and they looked... Odd, out of period.
It was a colonial overcoat- once a navy blue.
Sanford looked at the poor man's head.
His face was barely audible from its side-strewn position on the ground, head turned rightwards- there was the grayed, shriveled remains of an eye in the right socket- the left was dark. The man's mouth was wide open, almost unhinged- filled with dark teeth, some having fallen out.
Sanford saw a weapon lying on the ground, long, a rifle.
He stepped back from the corpse to examine it from a greater distance- and he saw that the butt and handle of the gun were buried beneath the hip of the fallen man- and look-wise, the gun was weird, but... Sanford knew the design.
A crank on the back, a battery-charged projection tube and power-pack chamber, a thin barrel...
It was a Laser Musket.
This person had been a Minuteman.
"...What the hell..."
"Cap'n? More over here!" Hancock called from a position by the concrete arch at the chamber's flank- Sanford managed to tear his viewing of the cadaver for a brief second to glance at his robotic companion.
Hancock levitated by a corner near the archway- he pointed down at the ground with his Plasma gun, and bundled there were three other bodies- Sanford didn't need to get close to see they were in the same state, and clothing, as the one he faced.
"This one has a lantern," The Deathclaw stopped locking her eyes to the altar, and tread over to the bodies Hancock had discovered- she pointed down. "I think we've found who has been leaving them, monsieur'."
"But that's not possible," Sanford said. "The lamps we're finding are all still lit, and these... These bodies, I just- LOOK at them. They have to be a decade or more old, I-I just... I don't..."
Sanford huffed, and the Deathclaw didn't respond with anything more than a glance away from him, and to the bodies before her.
Sanford stepped over the Laser Musket draped beside the fallen militiaman- he stood before the altar- and he looked at the stone statue right behind it.
It emerged from the earth on a thin, cylindrical pedestal- still encrusted with dirt at its bottom and down its sides- there were marks all over the previously pristine and shiny stone, probably from shovels being used to dig it out more precisely.
The statue depicted a humanoid, but not human- creature. It had bare flesh, muscular- two legs, two arms- each arm raised with hands upturned, as if praising something unseen in the center of the chamber.
The normal human-like qualities were all but gone to its head- it resembled some strange cross of reptile and mammal- Sanford couldn't describe it. It was kind of crocodilian, but it had fur... And it had a bovine-like shape to it... Soulless eyes made from darker, rounded stone.
Sanford was just noticing that- the entire statue looked like it was made of limestone, pretty bland, all one color- but the eyes looked like reflective onyx. They were big, buggy- kind of like the eyes he had seen in pictures of baby alligators when he was a child pre-War.
...Was this, Calth?
Was THAT, Calth?
Was the statue Calth? Or was the statue OF Calth?
Sanford rolled his jaw- he bowed his head, and he listened to the ringing silence of the chamber.
He discovered it no longer was entirely silent.
Just clawing at the back of his hearing, faintly, so low that he almost didn't hear it... Whispering, muttering.
Voices. Tens of them.
What in God's name has these foolish people dug up? What WAS this? This was bad news.
"...Hancock," Sanford muttered- he glanced over his pauldron as the robot pepped up in attention. "Dig in your storage compartment, find me an explosive."
"An explosive? What for, sir?"
"Give me a damn explosive."
"WHY, sir?"
"I'm destroying this statue."
"...Demonic result of Hercules fucking an alligator-cow? Check. Unknown temperature signatures radiating throughout said statue? CHECK! Need of purging said obvious occult-shit with holy fire? ...Right-o! Explosive coming up!"
Sanford watched the statue- he turned back to it, and he kept his eyes locked on the black orbs, the black, onyx orbs that made its own unliving eyes.
They glistened- like rolling marbles. Sanford could swear they were quivering.
Whatever this 'Calth' was, it was evil. It had driven the Haven Corps from these tunnels, it was what had obviously caused these Minutemen to die. Sanford didn't know how they had gotten into the tunnels, or how they'd ended up in here- but there was no weapon he'd ever heard of that...
-He looked back over his shoulder at the rotted corpse by the foot of the altar.
...-That did THAT, to people.
"...Hello... What have we here..." Sanford bent down when he looked back at the altar- there was a sliver of reflective light by the altar's foot.
The armor whined as his helmet became low enough to perceive detail- lying on the ground, was a blade, but it wasn't just any kind of blade... It was a full fledged sword.
Not a machete, not a combat knife, not a cleaver... It was a colonial era, silver-hilt, black-handled, curved-bladed sword- almost like a cutlass, except thicker at the business end.
Sanford assumed it belonged to the Minuteman lying dead here- an officer's blade, he knew higher ranks in the militia wielded cutlasses that were electrically or laser powered... This sword must have been one of those types.
...That meant it was a good weapon.
Sanford looked up at the statue.
The sheen of the eyes, the reflection- wasn't the same as it had been when he first looked at it. The whole of the statue remained still, though.
Sanford snorted- daring it, albeit -he gripped the hilt of the blade, where it clanged metallically from the disturbance in movement.
Sanford brought the sword around, and flipped it horizontally in his grasp.
whmwhmwhm-CLINK -He caught it by the handle, mid-air before it spun out. He felt brave- he underhand tossed the whole weapon into the air over his head.
whhm! whm-whm-
-It flipped tip over hilt twice, and then descended with a flicker of brightness against the shadows.
whm-whm-CLINK!
-Caught it, gauntlet fingers over the handle, tight grip.
Sanford liked it.
"MONSIEUR'!"
"Jeez'! Do you have to yel-"
"AAUUuuggghhhGGHHhhh..."
Sanford went wide eyed- he spun around, and presented the blade of the sword in a horizontal leftwards slash- in a quick U-turn.
swssk-SLK!
-Flesh parted repulsively- the sword ate through from one end of the hip and parted through the other.
Two halves raggedly flew to the ground, arms raised, legs standing rigidly still- dust and gray flecks of destroyed organic matter flinging leftwards.
Sanford stood with the sword presented by his side- and glanced down at his fallen assailant.
...It was the Minuteman that he had stepped over. Now, he was a foot away from where he had been laying, and in two halves- the one good eye in his socket looked wide, jaws open in a silent scream for mercy.
The Deathclaw was by his side- she HAD been right as he slashed the thing.
"M-Monsieur'? It was a Ghoul." She reasoned.
Sanford looked at her- he looked at Hancock as he flew over with a fragmentation grenade clenched in his claw- and then he turned around to look at the statue.
"-Whatthe?!"
The arms were lowered.
"GIMME'THATFUCKIN'GRENADERIGHTNOW!" Sanford snatched it out of Hancock's claw, unpinned it, and clapped it between the human feet of the statue, right on the pedestal.
fffwwhHHMMMMMM
-All three gazed to the stone archway they had taken to get to this point.
A second of whipping, blue light bloomed from the ceiling above, as again, the Enclave flooded the unknown with flame to burn them out.
"RUN!" Sanford cried.
Man and Deathclaw sprinted, and one robot flew- all for their lives as flame vomited from the arch in the back of the chamber, and spread like ooze across all of one side of the chamber- illuminating everything a bright hue of aqua.
They ran through the arch- and Sanford found, as he stopped in the darkness just past it- that there was a bulkhead, opened, against the wall in this new tunnel they needed to escape through.
"DEATHCLAW! HELP ME CLOSE IT!"
She ran back for him- he wrapped his gauntlets on the metal rim, and she her clawed hands- together they pushed, the door protested with moaning creaks of titanium.
It shifted, and Hancock joined the pushing efforts by shoving the side of his chassis into the door's girth beside his comrades- thruster screaming.
The trio eventually stumbled away as the door swung for a final shutting in the concrete archway.
Regaining his footing, Sanford saw into the chamber for a second before the flames ate everything right outside the archway.
There was a vaguely humanoid shadow that flicked into the light, and then vanished in the fire- still, as if frozen by his stare through the diminishing crack. It was safe to say, that the figure's stance was far from the pedestal they had observed.
The door shut.
BMMMM
-Then fire caressed the other side, unable to get at them.
whhhmmmmm-WHMMMMMmmmmmm...
-Then there was silence.
They heard water dripping- and the only other sound besides that, was Sanford and the Deathclaw's heavy breathing, and the whistle of Hancock's thruster unit.
"...I can't believe we fell for the dead-body trick again! ANOTHER Ghoul! Damn them!" Hancock ranted after a minute. "Let's not do that again, eh?"
"...It wasn't a Ghoul." Sanford grumbled, turning around to contemplate yet ANOTHER place that they had been forced into- lest his further troubled mind forget their overall objective of escape.
The good news was, he was pretty confident that the THING, wasn't escaping with them. His grip on the sword tightened, and then relaxed. He magnetically stuck it to his hip.
-0-0-0-0-0-
CLKCLCKL
CLK
CLKMMMmmmm
-She hated sewer grates.
They just reminded her of less desirable instances in her life.
So she was perfectly happy to shoulder-slam the thing from their path as they reached the end of a metallic, rounded tunnel that had branched for an end that had light from the day outside.
The grate snapped right off it's own bolt heads- it clattered away into a small ditch of moist soil below, and the Deathclaw gripped the rims of the apparent pipe they had gone down- and looked out into the surface world.
The hills were on either side of her- the ditch below was literally a hop's height away- and she heard nor saw any presence of the Enclave.
"Clear." She said- she stepped out of the pipe's torn-open mouth, and rattled the fallen grate cap when her clawed feet further pressed it against the moist dirt of the ditch around them.
She stepped back as Sanford ducked through after her, and thudded onto the metal she had just vacated- CHM-CHM -he dented the cap in on itself a tad, chuckled, and watched as Hancock flew out of the pipe to levitate beside him.
Sanford looked at the two of them, then he looked at the sky- nodded in satisfaction.
"You know, we were almost killed by a rabid Enclave officer, the Enclave in general, and we almost got eaten by a demon," He listed. Hancock didn't even have comment for that.
Sanford smiled at them.
"-And it was literally, the coolest fucking shit I have partaken in, in years. We make a good team."
"The squad of bad-assness! HOO-RAH! Steak and Eggs when we get home!" Hancock cheered.
"I'm just glad we're alive, monsieur'." The Deathclaw sighed.
"Let's get out of here before the Enclave start running heat sigs' again- through the woods, harder to see us." Sanford pointed to the west.
In a few moments, they were walking farther and farther away from the accursed site, of Springs Quarry, back into the hills of the daytime Commonwealth. The Enclave Vertibirds never saw them- as, not only were their pilots too focused on hovering over the tunnel arches back into the quarry... Their scanning equipment was getting strange resistance to local sweeps.
Must have been a glitch from all the dust kicked up by their propellers.
-0-0-0-0-0-