IV
Time for Action
Gingerly, did Sanford kneel at the side of the road, the joints in his suit creaking and whirring beneath the weight of the armor plates.
What have we here? –The scavenger thought with a cold sigh. The wasteland's latest victim.
The bones were too fragmented, thrown about and cleaned of any identifying organics for him to recognize the person's gender or age. There was not even the slight touch of ragged apparel or shredded clothes. It was nothing more than a strip of dirt, some femurs, half a skull and some rib shards. No hands or feet or a pelvis. No spine either.
Torn apart.
Sanford grimly frowned, and his X-01 whirred silently as he pressed a pair of metal fingers against the skull's half on the ground.
Rest in peace.
The scavenger dragged himself back to his heels, and looked around the road, reluctantly tearing his attention from the shattered fragments of humanity at his feet.
New England's morning air was brightly penetrated by a glaring view of the sun. The big carbon ball of illumination shown down across the hills, the woods, and the rows of old world houses dominantly and beautifully. Dust devils in their whippings about the road's pavement were made into bronze-colored phantoms, that whisked in and out of existence on the fly.
All we need's a good tumbleweed, and we'll have the ghost town of storybooks.
Sanford smirked, despite the sadness in his heart. Just as he was stepping back onto the street, something feather-light whispered across the ground, and hopped over his boots in a quiet, hissing arc.
The man gawked at the tiny, head-sized tumbleweed as it finished its bounding traverse down the left lane, and vanished over the bend of a sidewalk.
Hot damn, ain't that a kicker?
Sanford shoved the vision of the bones out of his mind and chuckled, keeping his back to them, whilst he reasserted himself into his morning routine.
Not much farther now.
Morning patrols were an important part of their schedule. They were meant to ensure that the surrounding area was… stable, with a lack of better description. Not that anything out here was ever safe entirely, but it stood as a good pointer for him, Nyx and Hancock to make sure no Raiders or highwaymen were setting up shop right under their noses.
The purpose of the rounds was just to make sure things hadn't gone batshit in the night prior. Sanford and Hancock would split up, and scout the area around their home for any unknown campsites or predator dens. Sure, it was risky, and it took a long time to accomplish, but the scavenger couldn't see any value in not seeing it done.
Better than waiting around inside that station all day, he thought glumly, bouncing the stock of his Laser Rifle in his other gauntlet. Things seem quiet.
Aside from a few Radstags that had scattered in his wake, and an errant Radroach he'd educated with the sole of his steel foot, there hadn't been much occurrences on the road. The Commonwealth was calm today, caught under a slight breeze, good sunlight and the occasional caw from a mutated scavenger bird.
All systems are working good, Sanford blink-cycled through a few of the internal monitors inside his suit, seeing gauges for the reactor core stability, the medical injection nozzles, the plating integrity and the internal climate moderations.
Sanford almost experienced a thoughtful reminder that- 'His father would be proud' –but the horror of his family's past actions silenced any potential hope of realizing that sentence to fruition.
Truthfully, Sanford hated that man with every fiber of his being. If it wasn't enough that his father had become a murderer and a lord of terror, he had overseen the kidnapping of Nyx at the hands of those synth assassins.
Probably more than anything, that enraged Sanford the most. The synths hiding in the local populations was one thing of evil, but nabbing his lizard and shoving her in a tube? That was a no no.
Ordy Tobs, Sanford snorted. And I bear the same name as him. Hell.
He couldn't actually believe all of that had happened just a few months ago. It hadn't even been complete year. All that shooting, and that death, and the destruction of the Institute, and the Texan Terror.
Sanford had to close his eyes for a moment as he thought about that last bit. The Texan Terror, the Superintendent of the Enclave of the Reinstated American Government, Laslar Sedunn. Never before had Sanford been exposed to such wanton hatred.
Granted, he was more of an engine of destruction than most folks, but something about Laslar had been completely and utterly animalistic. It was as if the Superintendent was a demon, mindlessly slaughtering everything in front of it without care of whose banner they flew under.
We never found a body.
-Sanford knew what that meant, and he had no doubt that over the course of the following days since that final battle, he'd probably seen one of the several Vertibirds leaving Boston that was carrying Laslar.
The Enclave had pulled out after a brief but nasty fight. Sanford had downed at least two of their airships, and he'd killed nearly forty of their people. He had no doubt that the skirmish had added yet another powerful faction in the world that had him on their shit-list. The Enclave would make their next move one day, and he just had to be ready.
Maybe they're behind the Assaultron assassin, and Helios.
Sanford narrowed his eyes as he walked around the smashed hulk of a burnt out sedan.
Not likely. The Enclave isn't one for mercenaries. They think their own shit doesn't stink.
It didn't leave many options aside from the fact that a new face was in town, and Sanford did not like that one bit.
Today. It ends today, whatever it is, whoever it is, me, Han' and Nyx will-
Sanford stopped near the stoop of a blown-out colonial home. His eyes registered the disturbance before his suit did.
Signatures Detected! –his suit sang in green, ill text. Five Human.
I see them.
Sanford unclicked the safety on his rifle, let the resonators spin, and fell to a slight crouch behind the wood steps of the house's stoop, wedging himself in the tall grass and behind the railing and boards.
Not the best I've had, but it'll do.
On the horizon, over a rise in the street's hill-crossing ahead, he could just barely make out a quick flicker of darker movement as a collection of people scattered, having noticed his own presence as he in turn had noticed theirs.
This oughta' be interesting.
Sanford aimed down his sights. He reached over to the flank of his gun, unscrewed the security lock, and let the custom-made precision scope snap onto the rifle's spine mounting.
Let's see what we've got today.
The green aura cast over the view in the scope bathed the street a sickly hue. Sanford grunted and flicked off the scope's nightvision filter with a dismissive cast of his index finger.
They aren't moving, he realized, focusing the dais of the aiming reticule on the corner of a house, and a nearby burnt out car's corpse. Two positions, right next to each other. Sanford's finger itched at the trigger as he saw a head raise, and then jolt back down a second later.
They don't know how to relocate, the scavenger mumbled a pitying curse under his breath. This'll be easy.
Silently, the man dragged his suit's weight westward, and he skirted in a crouch until he was around the house's flank and advancing down through its rear property.
His boots thudded the earth, and the ruined, wooden suburban fence on either side of him rattled as he hopped over a dip in the earth and moved forwards. He transitioned to the next backyard, and checked his scanner whilst maintaining a fluent jog.
Still not moving.
Sanford cautiously breathed as the suit's servos allowed him to cope with the X-01's mass. He took his finger off the trigger, and managed a struggled sigh.
Calm it down, Tobs, and see who you're about to shoot before you actually shoot.
Inching around the corner of a house, Sanford found the perfect area to flank this mysterious group of people. If this had been a firefight, it would've spelled their death-sentences. This vantage point left their side completely exposed. People tended to huddle to the cover they were using in gunfights, and the horror of being flanked was that it was like knocking down a row of dominoes for the flanker.
Just a straight line of fire down the spine of a defensive spread, and you could kill a lot of people, especially if you had height advantage.
Sanford licked his lips, listening to his suit purr as he glanced around the wooden corner of the house.
There you are, he thought darkly, raising the rifle in his fingers, until the sights were lined up with a huddle of crouched bodies behind the first position he'd marked; the sedan. I don't care how you stupid you bastards may or may not be, you saw me, you took cover, I take that as a threat, and I'm gonna'-
Sanford sucked in his own breath until his chest hurt. As if warding a predator away from some vulnerable babe, he forced his finger off the trigger, and immediately lowered the gun.
Oh my god, his heart pumped at the brevity of what he'd nearly done.
He'd expected to see a grizzled, hideous Raider on the other side of his reticule, or a Gunner, or some thug with a pipe or handgun. Instead, right as he was about to shoot, he saw the one thing that instilled nightmares in any sensible servicemen put in such a position.
He saw a woman and a child.
She had to have been in her late twenties or early thirties, she was thin, wearing a brown trenchcoat and a pair of scavenged leather pauldrons. Her face was slender, with a triangular, youthful nose and two hazel eyes beneath crimson brows. A redhead, her short-trimmed hair was almost at the length of peachfuzz on her scalp, and the small little girl by her flank mimicked this genetic likeness to the dot, except she had ponytails.
Mom and daughter, Sanford realized. I almost shot a fucking kid.
Immediately, the scavenger grit his teeth and paused in his efforts to confront these people. He had not listened to his own advice. He'd even specifically told himself to stay his hand! He'd ordered it! And he still was too edgy for his own good.
At least nothing happened, Sanford glanced back around the corner, and he saw the three other people in the group, two by the house rim beside the sedan, and one peaking over the redheaded woman's back. Nothing happened yet.
These folks made him more nervous. One of them was armed, and he was packing. It was an Army standard issue Assault Rifle that he had in his hands, with his lower face covered in the black swathe of a bandana. He had a coat over himself too, though this was one strapped with kinds of protective plates and strips made from truck tires and what looked like metal caging.
Sanford; don't just shoot him.
It took a lot for Sanford to muster himself and keep his gun lowered, and it took a lot more for him- even in the armor he was wearing –to step from cover and announce himself.
"Yo!" He shouted into the vox-amplifiers of his helmet. "Who goes there?"
The redhead gave off this awful gasping sound, and the little girl before her vanished in a swift bundle of arms close to the woman's chest. Two men and a teenage boy appeared from behind her, the boy looked related to them, he had brown hair and freckles, and a pudgy face. The two men were different.
"-Don't move!" The one with the bandana over his face screamed. A darker skinned fellow with overalls grunted as the former shoved to the front of the group, and aimed the rifle in his hands at Sanford's head. The scavenger wasn't intimidated as he trotted closer.
He can't shoot it, Sanford frowned, his eyes keening to the armed man's wrists and their slight trembling. The Assault Rifle looked like it was vibrating with how fiercely its user was quaking. Guess he didn't expect any Power Armored behemoths to be walking around today.
"-I said don't move~!" Rifle-man hollered again. The teenage boy and the overalls fellow put themselves between their armed escort's back and the redheaded pair behind them. It was a heart-warming effort, and Sanford was just thankful it was him who had found them and not a band of gangers.
Focus on getting this guy to lower his weapon.
"-I'm not gonna' shoot any of you." Sanford held up one of his gauntlets for peace, lowering his rifle one-handed by his flank. He still kept a several foot distance, standing ostensibly in the street before them. "Could you lower your rifle?"
"Who the hell are you?" The rifle-man snapped, refusing the scavenger's request. Sanford could see through the bandana the fighter's brown skin, his stubby nose and a pair of scrutinizing, angry eyes, one of which was green, the other, hidden behind a black eyepatch. "What are you doing out here?"
"I live out here, buddy." Sanford chuckled, smiling when all of them flinched at the metallic snap~! –of his rifle adhering to his suit's hip-plate. "And now you're the only one pointing anything at anybody."
"Reg'," The other man in the overalls whispered, his voice was so low, that Sanford almost missed it. "Reginald, hold on a minute-"
"No way, Orvil, he's a Raider or something." Reginald growled, his fingers flexing on the handle of his rifle.
"A Raider?" The redheaded woman asked. "Raiders don't talk first, they shoot first, Reg'."
"Be quiet." Reginald wasn't having any of these excuses. "He's up to something. You hear me, in that tin can? You are."
This is actually amusing, Sanford realized with a tiny chortle. There were a multitude of issues with this 'Reginald's approach to Sanford. The first being; that Assault Rifle wouldn't be able to cause any meaningful damage quick enough before the scavenger was on him and breaking his neck. The second; Reginald was in no place to make statements. Thirdly, Sanford had disarmed himself.
"He put his gun away." The teenage boy by Orvil's side stated, his voice strangely collected for the situation at hand. "Reg'?"
"Orvil, keep that boy close." Reginald said. "We don't know this person. Where'd you get that suit, tin-man?"
"Wouldn't you like to know." Sanford sniggered. "Look, dude, I'm all up for you protecting your family. I'll just walk away. I have a patrol I gotta' finish."
"You're not going anywhere!" Reginald snapped.
"Reg'!" Orvil moved between the woman and the two children, making Reginald flinch as he touched a hand to his coat arm. "Just wait a second-"
"No! You wait a second!" The other shook his head, the bandana over his mouth tenting with his raised volume. "He'll go off and let someone know where we are!"
"Buddy, if I wanted you dead, I'd kill you right where you're standing." Sanford grunted. "I tried to be polite, but my politeness just ran out. Put the gun down or I'm taking it from you."
Reginald's shoulders tensed and he took a step forwards.
"No, stop!" Orvil tugged at him wildly. "Reg', knock it off! Don't you know who this guy is? He's the-"
"-Agh~!" –Reginald screamed femininely. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Metal clicked, gauntlets swung. Sanford- to the naked eye –appeared to flinch, but in reality, the movement was something much more complex.
The scavenger's armored hands swept, and yanked the rifle from Reginald's hands like it was nothing more than a baby's toy. The gun flipped, and soon, Sanford was holding the weapon at his assailant, finger on the trigger.
"Shit." Orvil's eyes bugged in his skull as he and Reginald stepped back with their hands up, the latter's notably higher and much more stiff.
Guy's just a train-wreck, Sanford shook his head.
"That's enough, fellows." The scavenger uttered under his breath, his words purring out the metal vox of his helmet like a slight cone of steam. "I told you I'm not here to kill anyone."
Sanford tossed the rifle, and it clattered over Reginald's boots.
"-And I don't want your damn gun either, I got enough of those."
"Oh yeah?" The teenager swallowed, hanging by Orvil's side, where he was fervently shushed by the redhaired woman, who was still clutching her little daughter.
"Definitely, kid." Sanford grinned, looking down at the shorter array of human beings past the armored chin of his cuirass. "Now, uh… I know you're Reginald," The scavenger pointed at the aforementioned man, who still hadn't put his hands entirely down even though a gun wasn't being held to him anymore. "-You're Orvil, I assume?"
"Yeah." The man in the overalls nodded, putting an arm over the teenage boy's shoulders. "-Yeah I am. I think I know who you are too."
"Shoot." Sanford nodded, and then glared at Reginald as he picked up his gun off the street. "-Not literally, bandana-boy."
Reginald's wild and one good eye experienced a tremor. He hugged the gun to his gut and said nothing, staring up at the armored scavenger like he was some kind of ferocious beast.
"He's the Scavenger," The redhead woman interrupted, rising from her crouch behind the wrecked car, she let her daughter out of her arms, and the small girl clung to her waist, watching Sanford around her mother's leg with doe-eyes. "He's that crazy man we keep hearing about."
That's presumptuous, Sanford blinked.
"Crazy man?" He echoed, suddenly experiencing a slight aura of awkwardness. "I mean, I'm friends with a crazy person, and he's got the buzzsaw to prove it."
"You're the Scavenger, the guy who shredded the Institute." Orvil adjusted his overalls. "That's the truth, yeah? That's what they told us at the border."
"Border?" Sanford grunted, still keeping an eye on Reginald, who had yet to speak again. "You're from out of state?"
"What?" Orvil gawked.
"-I mean- you're from out of the Commonwealth?"
Damn pre-war talk.
"Yeah we are." The woman stepped forward, an arm over each of the children. "We came up from Maine."
"Maine?" The scavenger almost gasped. "How is that possible? Most of the East Coast is irradiated and lifeless, you couldn't-"
"We took a boat." Reginald muttered, making everyone look at him. "The Migration Ferry, down at the docks here. We paid for a new life. We got it."
"So you're immigrants?" Sanford tried.
"More like refugees," Orvil sighed, glaring at Reginald as if the man who spoken too much. "things aren't good where we come from. We shipped out here on account of all these stories we've been hearing, about some titan in armor being a knight of Boston."
"The people at the ferry said you were 'Stabilizing the Commonwealth'," –The woman shrugged. "I couldn't raise my daughter and my son back there, so I took that chance."
"…That's…" Sanford was baffled, and truthfully, he didn't know what else to say. "…A ferry?"
"Old Man Easterwood," Orvil nodded. "he helped us get out of that mess really fast."
"…And how did he know about me?"
"Who doesn't know about you?" The woman shrugged again. "Apparently you're the word of the town, every town. You get around."
"Reg' didn't know about him…" Her son mumbled.
"No he didn't." Orvil agreed. "Reginald, see that? You almost shot a good guy this time."
"Be quiet." Reginald hissed. "I'm here to find you people a dumpoff, not play good-guy bad-guy."
"You're heading to Diamond?" Sanford asked. "Everyone's heading to Diamond these days."
"My brother's the mayor of a settlement west of the city." Reginald shook his head. "I'm getting these people there and heading east."
"Might be for the best." The woman hugged herself, her expression modeling contained anger. If Reginald was impacted by the jabbing comment, he did not show it, though the rifleman still offered her a long, consistent look. He did not appear insulted, just… blank.
Personal problems. Not my problem, Sanford thought.
"…Y-You said this ferry was in the docks?" He rasped, making to scratch the back of his head, until he remembered that he was still wearing his helmet.
"Old Man Easterwood's boat," Orvil said. "he makes the rounds from Maine, Land Port, Far Harbor, Monty and here. He's always got a big cigar and no hair, you can't miss him, or that ugly trawler he uses."
"I'll add it to my to-do-list." The scavenger fiddled by his hips, his gaze lowered to the street. "What's the trouble in Maine? On the coast?"
"Same trouble in Far Harbor." The woman said. "There's this mist, and people are vanishing in it. Nobody knows what it is."
Oh great, a killer shopping mall and now killer clouds, Sanford rolled his eyes. What the fuck.
"I didn't get your names." Sanford interrupted his own thoughts, pointing at the lady and the two kids.
"Marie," The woman gestured to herself. "Marie the second," -To her daughter. "Robert." Her son.
No dad?
-Sanford didn't ask that aloud. Judging by the look Reginald had on his face, he had a feeling that that identity and that man were somehow intertwined.
"You folks have enough supplies for the walk?" He asked instead.
"We've plenty." Reginald growled, and stepped around the larger man's flank. "Come on, people, we need to be there by sundown and we're running out of time."
"As ever." Orvil adjusted his overalls again, seeming dumpy, what with a round pot-belly underneath his shirt. He looked the least grizzled out of the whole group, even out of the children, Robert and Marie. Sanford didn't like that. "I can't believe I met the Scavenger in person, this quick too."
"We figured you'd happen on the settlement at some point." Marie flicked a cautious smile, ushering her and her children after Reginald. "Guess that didn't need to happen."
"Not at all." Orvil smiled. "Hey, Scavenger; what do you look like under that headwear anyhow?"
"Orvil, come on!" Reginald called, already halfway down the street behind them. He stopped with an audaciously sour groan when Marie and her kids stopped walking to watch.
"Nothing special." Sanford shrugged. Cables hissed, couplings detached, and the scavenger smiled cheaply as he cradled the insectoid helmet by his hip. "Just some dude in a suit."
"Just some dude in a suit." Orvil shook his head, examining Sanford's face. "Dayum', and they say legends aren't real."
"How do you know I'm a legend, and everything you heard isn't bullshit?" Sanford asked.
"Because you give people hope." Marie said, smiling again. "You can see it in their faces when they talk about you."
"Dayum'." Orvil was laughing. "Dayum' dayum' dayum', what a day…"
"Come on." Reginald took Marie's arm, and guided the five of them back down the road, glaring once at Sanford before holstering his rifle, and trotting dutifully.
The scavenger stood in the plainness of the street and watched them go, until their forms were dark specs over a rise of road, and then gone from his sight.
Sanford sighed after a long moment, and put his helmet back on.
A legend, he scoffed, securing the helm's links. Legends don't murder people. Not good ones anyway.
He didn't know if that statement reaffirmed or contradicted his negative view of himself.
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"Monsieur?" Wham~! –went the garage door, and Nyx peered her long head inside inquisitively.
Empty.
"Sanford?" The Deathclaw called again, tearing from the garage, sweeping her snout about the interior of the kiosk's lobby. "Sanford!"
Wham~! –went the sleeping room door. Nyx wiggled her larger frame through the arch, pinched some of the conglomerated sheets and mattresses that she and Sanford shared, and lifted them in a tenting arc.
Mon dieu, what am I doing?
"…Sanford?" The Deathclaw breathed, her tail whipping behind her with fury.
"-Alright! Who left the corpses on the front fuckin' stoop~?" –Came from outside the kiosk. It was a faint, metallic voice caught on the wind. A faint and familiar voice.
God give me strength.
-There she was, asking some kind of god for things. It was probably Sanford's fault, and all the little humans they interacted with every other day. Their expressions were wearing off on her, and she suddenly felt a need to itch at her own scales like she had contracted fleas.
"Usiner." She called out in an accented shout, shouldering back out of her and Sanford's room.
Outside the kiosk, the daytime sun was glaring brightly right in the center of the heavens, it actually made some of the distant horizons wiggle under the lapping of heat waves. It glinted off Hancock's rusty, drab-colored chassis brightly, forcing the Deathclaw to wince as a sharp pain stabbed into her retinas.
Even when he is not trying, he manages to cause me grief.
"Usiner?" Nyx spoke, shielding her eyes from the sun with a spreading palm over her snout. She passed through the reinforced stockade arch and stepped quickly into the surrounding flatland ringing the outpost.
"You!" Hancock did not sound amused at all. The robot was oblivious to her concerned tone, and was too busy levitating with a judgmental flavoring about himself, over a duo of heaped cadavers at the foot of the outpost stockade wall, one bleeding, one sparking and sooting. "I should've known this was your doing, you Nazified skankosaurus!"
"Usiner, I must find Sanford immediately, an attempt was made on my-" Nyx had just been gesturing to the blackened, scabby wounds on her breast when Hancock's words chose to register in her brain.
For a moment, there was silence, and as Hancock drifted closer, his weapons-attachments raised in scrutinous, accusatory intrigue, Nyx's golden eyes narrowed into a dangerous pair of knife blades on either side of her long face.
"What did you call me?" She asked politely, her voice drenched in honey, her prior concerns briefly sunken into a swirling vortex of developing rage.
"You heard me, Tyrannosaurus-Bitch!" The robot snapped, gesturing to the heaped Radstag corpse, and the sparking strip of Assaultron debris laid onto the ground beside it. Nyx had dumped them both off outside the base camp in her rush to find Sanford. She should've known that such a move would've irked the nonsensical malice of Hancock. "You've soiled my Liberty Porch with your Communist-induced viscera! You're to blame for these cadavers marring my view of this U.S-Brand Soil!"
"Skank? You have referred to me as skank?" The Deathclaw snarled, and the air produced a horrid Shck~! –noise as her talons jutted from their mountings. "T'es un salaud! You are nothing more than a stinking heap of merde! Va te faire enculer, vous morceau de merde!"
"I didn't understand a single buzz of that shit that just flew out of your gizzard, bird-buns," Hancock growled, choosing that moment to permeate the air with a metallic shriek as he whirred his buzzsaw blade. "but my veteran intuition's telling me that them' be fightin' words! You wanna' go, Puff the Magic Assball? Let's go!"
"Hey~!"
-Both Hancock and Nyx spiraled to face their flank, where they saw the approaching form of a familiar suit of Power Armor.
"Sir!" Hancock cheered, lowering his weapons.
"Sanford." Nyx gasped, sheathing her claws. "Sanford, something has happened!"
"What the hell were you two doing?" The scavenger held his arms open, gawking with an offended tone. "Han'? You're pointing weapons at Nyx? Again? And Nyx? You're brandishing your claws at Han'? Again?"
"She started it!" The robot pointed childishly with his claw.
"Ugh~, grow up, usiner." The Deathclaw spat, stepping closer to Sanford. "We would not even have been in this situation were it not for your maddened pigheadedness."
"Sonofabitch-! No one calls the Han' a pig!"
"Both of you!" Sanford shouted, placing himself between his feuding companions to hold the peace. Hancock put more power into his thruster to gaze angrily over the man's shoulder pauldron, and Nyx growled in the back of her throat. "What did I miss?"
Sanford glanced between the two of them, before he reached over and ripped his helmet off, his pale face turning bright red with anger.
"Well?" No sooner had Sanford looked at Nyx again, did his eyes wander- (as they inevitably did whenever he looked at her) –and fall upon the blackened impact marks on her chest and her flank. "…Oh my god."
"Non, they are not serieux," Nyx quickly stammered, placing a palm protectively over her breast. "Merely scratches."
"Those aren't scratches," Sanford growled like a dog, stepping over and ripping her claw free to examine the damage. "Jesus Christ, Nyx, you got shot? What happened? Who did it? I'll fuckin' kill 'em."
"I'm not one to form hunches on the ball, but I'd say she already got the bastard." Hancock disparagingly glanced at the corpses. "Or bitch. It's a bitch, confirmed! Damn Assaultrons, and their feminine personality programming! Who the hell thought that up?"
"Assaultron?" Sanford didn't even give Nyx time to explain herself, he slipped from her claws and stomped over to the corpses, ignoring the Radstag's body and leaning over the Assaultron's shattered form. "Damn it. Same group like the one I shot."
"Sanford, that disc that you discovered," Nyx stepped closer, wincing as the wounds on her chest flared. "we are being hunted because of it."
"I figured as much." Sanford huffed raggedly, spiraling around, and clicking his tongue as he noticed the scabbing detritus on her scales again. "Christ, Nyx…" –He mumbled, fumbling in his rucksack for some Stimulant injections.
"Damn pansy-ass villains, sending out henchmen to do a Democracy loving American's work!" Hancock ranted, the distinct squeaking of a nozzle cap being heard as he deftly worked his claw about his lower thruster ring. "Eat my piss, minion!"
"Non!" Nyx snarled, a reptilian hiss drawling out from her throat as she leaned over Sanford's back, and snapped two of her taloned fingers with a scaly crunch~! –sound. "That is lunch!"
"The Assaultron?" Hancock almost wheezed.
"Non! Non non non, non, usiner, the Radstag!" The Deathclaw grit her teeth as Sanford touched one of the blast craters on her chest, and stuck the needle of the Stimulant into its charred flesh. "…fucking twit…" The reptile moaned from the resultant pain, and her horns produced a loud, bell-like thwack~! –as she buried her face in Sanford's pauldron exhaustively.
"Were you hit anywhere else?" Sanford took a second Stim out of another large wound and flicked away the empty needle, patting her arm as he watched the flesh slowly start to stitch itself together. "Nyx?"
"Non." She muffled into the metal of his shoulder. Nyx quivered when Sanford brushed his fingers over one of the closing shot holes, the dead flesh and scales crumbling away like trailings of solid coal onto the ground below.
"You people make my internal patriotism weep!" Hancock guffawed nearby. "What a world! Let's kill these people already and be done with it!"
"That's exactly what we're doing." Sanford snarled, turning on his robot with a hateful glare. "Nobody shoots my fucking Deathclaw and gets away with it."
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