VII
The Junker
His footsteps were lighter, his arms swung with the weight of air, and the weapon in his hands felt alien to him, like it was shifting in shape and composition before his very eyes.
The dark city around him was a catalyst of unknowns, uncertainties and petty fears that he had believed long ago abolished. Sanford knew that if he had been as he normally was- garbed in his beloved armor plate –that the shadows wouldn't have cowed him.
But the problem was, without synthetic slabs of metal to put between him and the teeth and claws and bullets of the wasteland, the scavenger was experiencing a layman's night out here. He had to remember that most folk weren't blessed with the relics he had managed to rework. Though this was a step backward, Sanford could actually see a tint of humility in its passing.
Back to old times.
So much time having been spent on haughtily entering hostile realms had made Sanford drunk with hubris and certain confidence. Now, he scuttled down the sunken streets of Boston City like a rat, zipping between shadows, moving from one spot of cover to the next.
At least it's dark.
Sanford wasn't experiencing the least degree of panic- as he had been doing what he did best for entirely too long for that to happen –but he still had to swallow his own barrier for haste. Moving around was always frightening. The dark would help with being spotted by other people, but Sanford knew that there were things lurking out here that had the eyes of cats.
Kinda' like Nyx.
Sanford felt his chest twist up. He experienced a plummeting sensation, and it was wholly as unpleasant as it was stirring.
I have to move faster.
The scavenger ground his teeth, looped around the sad hulk of a rusty car, and advanced down a long line of sidewalk. He was careful to keep his footfalls quiet, even as his emotions weighted him down and filled him with feelings of confusion, and anger and panic.
My friends have been kidnapped.
It actually almost made Sanford laugh. It would've been a humorless, venomous gesture of irony had it actually come to pass.
One of them, for a second time.
Sanford recalled when the Insitute had taken Nyx. It had been on a poorer day, when he and the Deathclaw were still in the awkward throes of understanding one another. There had been a lot of darkness, but also a lot of discovery. There had been a kindling, and there had been that…
…that woman.
Sanford shouldered behind a trio of newspaper dispensers, frowning, as he formed to a kneel and scanned the street ahead.
He supposed it was the trademark of someone with combat experience; to multitask as he was. It was as if his body was going through the motions of procedure, while his mind twisted on itself like a serpent attempting to constrict its own throat.
The decisions I've made, Sanford sighed. Do I have to be a killer and an idiot? Wasn't the first one I said enough for you to swallow?
Sanford- having seen nothing of concern to make him halt his trek –moved around the dispensers, running in a crouched jog for the way ahead.
Feel these hands, man, Sanford wiggled his fingers over the stock and handle of his rifle. Bloody hands. Hands of a killer, these.
How many people had he killed over the course of his life? Way more than Nyx ever had, or probably ever would throughout her existence. How many bad choices had he made with these very hands?
Was it ironic, that to most people, the monster of their little wasteland family unit was her, when Sanford was the one who had truly left rivers of spilled life in his wake?
Who's the real monster?
Sanford shut his eyes in a brief moment of overwhelming posterity. He crouched behind a strain of rubble disgorging from a hollowed out storefront.
I failed her again.
He had failed both of them. Nyx and Hancock. It was just doubly horrible for him to realize that he had failed the prior twice.
I'll fix this.
Sanford was creeping around the debris with an assassin's ear to the wind, and it was for the former attentions that his carefulness paid off.
The little scrabbling noise wasn't too far off, it was close enough that Sanford could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising. He instinctively looked down for his own chin, expecting his Power Armor's scanning field to be awaiting him with a detailed report of the thing's position.
You're not tin-man anymore, Tobs, Sanford grinned at his own sadistic discovery of musing. Wake up, or you'll die.
He still had his rifle's safety off, though he was hesitant to actually use the gun unless he was absolutely forced to. Gunfire out here would attract attention. There were gangs of people that lived in these ruins, gangs of Super Mutants, Feral Ghouls and all manner of hostile wildlife.
The last thing Sanford needed was to get swamped again, and this time, without a suit of armor on.
Let's keep things quiet, the scavenger wriggled his fingers over the grip of his gun. If we can.
The idea of running from a fight abhorred the man, but if it came down to things, Nyx and Hancock were more important, and no one else was going to save them if he ended up dead out here.
Patience, Tobs, patience.
His father had said that to him long ago in the past. Though the words held power, they still made Sanford's gorge rise.
I fucking hate that man.
Sanford wandered through the blown out storefront. It had once been a one-story building, but now, it was nothing more than a tiny, convoluted maze of still-standing walls, brick rises and piles of rubble. The building had literally imploded, and in the stead of a ceiling, the starry and cloudy night sky bloomed above his head like a sheet of coalescing onyx.
Helios is just up ahead, Sanford thought. And I know that's where I need to go.
He hid behind a crushed series of filing cabinets that were against a strip of crumbling short-wall. Taking cover in the building's exposed bones, the scavenger could hear the disturbance he had processed before just on the other side of the wall.
It was a curious cacophony of noise. There was the scrabbling of claws, the whistle of a stuffy, ugly pair of nostrils sampling the air, and the slight growl of a feral temperament.
I should've known, Sanford rolled his eyes, and flipped his rifle around in his hands. No use in wasting the shot.
With that, Sanford rose and looped around his hiding spot, his boots kicking loose bricks and causing miniature landslides.
The pinkish, slender outline of the Molerat was easy enough to spot, even in the darkness. It had just raised its hideous little head, and its tail was just starting to whip with surprise. It glared at Sanford with these beady, squinted little eyes, and sought to intimidate him with its disease-ridden, sharp fangs.
Ugly little shit.
Granted, the Molerat reacted entirely too fast for its own good. It leapt off the ground like a pink, wrinkly frog, tiny, barbed claws outstretched, mouth agape and trailing nasty spittle.
Sanford had anticipated an ugly fight for an ugly pest. Thus, he was prepared. Wielding his rifle like a club, Sanford slid to a halt, reared back, and slapped the Molerat out from in front of his face, swinging his gun like a baseball bat.
Crunch~! –sounded the impact. The Molerat's pained squeal trilled across the ruins for but an instant. It landed nearby, limbs flailing, rear legs kicking with almost felinoid panic. Sanford rushed over, and he brought the butt of his gun down on its ugly face.
Crack~! –the animal's head jolted in an agonizingly sharp angle. Sanford grit his teeth, pinned its tiny chest with his boot, and slammed his gun into its skull four more consecutive times until it stopped moving.
Crack-Crack-Crack-Crack~! –bone crunched, and the Molerat's face collapsed into its own skull as a crimson, leaking trench.
Sanford snorted, shaking some blood droplets off the rear of his weapon in the resultant quiet.
As Hancock would say; don't screw with the San of the Fo-
It was probably a sign from the heavens that Sanford was interrupted in quoting Hancock's normally annoying statements. After all, what would've come to pass if the scavenger had committed such a grievous sin?
The Molerat had a friend, and Sanford just had enough time to whip around and hold up his rifle defensively, before the leaping animal landed on him.
The Molerat sounded demonic, even over Sanford's panicked bark, even as his feet lost purchase, and he landed roughly on the rubble strewn floor. It screeched and hissed and snapped, its teeth clambering over the spine of Sanford's gun where it had bitten down.
Its claws made marks over his leather and infantry padding. The Molerat made a ripping motion with its head, trying to tear the gun from the human's fingers.
Crazy little shit!
Sanford grit his teeth and rammed his kneeplate into the Molerat's groin. The animal shrieked, lost its toothy grip on his weapon, and flew clean over Sanford's head in a dastardly oriented flip.
The mutated pest must have hit something hard, because even though Sanford didn't see it, he heard something metallic produce a sharp clang! –noise, and he heard the Molerat give off a weak choking sound.
"…That's what I get…" Sanford grumbled, righting himself and dusting off his uniform. "-for being such a shitty friend."
As it stood, he wasn't even angry when the situation further devolved. In fact, Sanford took the following occurrence with a brash grin.
"As I said; you're all here because of karma." Sanford was seemingly amused as he swept his gaze across the entire eastern flank of the ruined storefront. The pattern of tiny hisses, snarling growls and nasally shrieks drowned out his speech, but did not remove its purpose. "Look, karma or not, I don't have time for this shit."
Sanford tore his looted cutlass free from the other side of his belt, and it bathed the ruins an eerie crimson as he activated the stud on its handle, wrapping the blade in wavering, carbon energy.
"So let's get this over with." Sanford twirled his fingers, letting the sword spiral in a quick loop. "Who's first?"
Though they numbered over ten, to maybe thirteen or fourteen, the pack of Molerats were nothing but a stepping stone to Sanford Tobs, a stone meant to lift him to what he ultimately needed to do.
One of them hurled through the air, screeching, baring fangs and lashing with tiny, bladed paws. Sanford ducked westward and let the little monster fall onto the teeth of his sword.
He let the blood run down his wrists, and slid the impaled corpse from the girth of his blade with a downwards tip of his hands. Sanford curled the cutlass in a graceful underhanded sweep, and the decapitated head of a second Molerat twisted in bloody wheels in the air behind him.
The animals advanced on him as one, crawling over rubble, leaping from filing cabinets and trampling the mangled bodies of their dead.
The ruins echoed with the grunts of a tortured man and the death shrieks of his rodentia foes for many long minutes.
-0-0-0-0-0-
Why do you not eat it?
It was such a simple question, one born from a mind entirely wrapped in feral innocence. Though it was asked on a foundation of naivety, it did not lessen the vulgarity of its offense to her in any way, shape or form.
Even back then, before she had made her personality concrete, the probing tendrils of other folk's minds had caused her to retract and undulate from them.
Why don't you just eat it? –The question was repeated in nagging.
At that second, she had had the tip of her snout engrossed in the furry confines of what the other was indicating. She remembered that the fur had smelt like mothballs, and yet, it was a diluted stench, one that wasn't powerful enough to sweep away her love of the object.
Because it isn't alive.
Her body quivered as the wafting trails of pheromone-speak left her scales and permeated the chamber's atmosphere. Her eye ridge quirked itself into a scrutinizing expression to match her glare, and she stared down the other that was sitting on the earth before her under an impatient atmosphere.
It isn't? The male asked dumbly. She remembered that he possessed milky eyes. They glowed like a pair of diamonds, unmarred by traces of earth, and caught in beams of light in the shadow. He widened them, lowering his snout, transfixing himself upon the thing in her grasp. Then why does it look like it is?
Because you are stupid, she shrugged, her chops smacking with a disillusioned lack of care. It is my teddy bear, and you will leave it alone.
What is it? The male's fingers had been opened as he sought to reach out and touch the little stuffed animal, they now retracted with a curious twitch. What did you call it?
A teddy bear. A stuffed animal. She hugged the ratty, brown bear to her breast, her upper chop twitching as she snarled at him. It is my comfort animal.
It looks like food, the male sat back on the dirt, his tail whipping behind himself in a perplexed dance. Animals are meant for eating.
Not this animal, she shook her head, her serpentine tongue flicking over the teddy bear's nose. This is my comfort animal, she reiterated.
So you won't eat it?
No!
…Can I eat it?
Newcomer~! –The female's scents shrieked, pluming around the room like a rushing wall of fire. She clutched the bear to her chest and pranced backward from the male with a trio of panicked steps. Newcomer, help!
I am busy, drawled a hushed response from nearby. The smell wasn't even that powerful, it was merely a touch of pheromonal effort, the equal nature of a speaker's whisper.
She is always busy. The male turned his attention from the teddy bear, exposing his fangs towards the back of the darkened chamber, where a hunched, gray shape sat looming in the shadows with its spined back turned to them.
Newcomer? The younger female's tail twitched, and she lowered the teddy bear in her bladed fingers.
She doesn't listen to you, or anyone else, the male shook his head, his white eyes locking onto the bear again. Why are the females in this clan so broken?
They aren't broken, both of them looked back at the hunched hideaway on the fringes of their scent-conversation. They see the value of sentimental things. Them understanding what they seek for happiness is not wrong of them.
Oh yeah? The male growled.
Yes. The Newcomer turned her horned head around, shattering his boldness with but a single glare of her golden, yellowish eyes. And if you cannot accept that, you will voice your concerns to me.
Before, it had seemed as though the male was insulted that the Newcomer could not make time to dish out a solution for an instigation he had caused. Now, he faltered, and was experiencing not indignation, but intimidation.
The female with the teddy bear took that as a cue, and hurriedly moved away from him. On the other side of the chamber, the Newcomer felt a rising sensation of agitation as she turned around and pretended to not notice the other's encroachment.
What are you doing?
The Newcomer snorted and didn't answer her immediately, her bladed thumb producing a slight crackle as it was dragged through the chamber floor's soil.
Newcomer?
Go away.
The Newcomer sighed when her demands were contradicted. In fact, the teddy bear lover's defiance was granted from the very stupidity that she had accused the male of suffering.
The ground thudded as she took a seat and observed what the larger female was doing. For the Newcomer's part, an awkward silence on their olfactory nodes descended, as she was caught between feeling anger at the disruption, and excitement over an observer seeing her efforts.
While the teddy bear lover had been arguing, the Newcomer had been using the tips of her claws to make tiny, delicate symbols in the dirt. They were alien sigils with curves and sweeps and specifics that the teddy bear lover didn't understand, and never did wind up understanding.
What do those symbols mean? The teddy bear lover asked.
They're letters, the Newcomer shrugged, her tail curling protectively over her own legs on the ground. Letters from the Old World. I'm studying them.
With that? The younger female pointed via talon to something lying by the Newcomer's hip.
It was an opened, dusty and ancient book, one so old that many of its pages had crumbled to dust, and the surviving pages were tanned with age and brittle. Just enough of the writing inside was legible to make out broken words, charts of more perfected examples of the letters drawn in the dirt. There were so many of them that they boggled the teddy bear lover's mind.
What is that? She asked. Is that your comfort… object?
It's a book.
I know that smell!
You know teddy bears, the Newcomer nodded over her shoulder at the ratty little stuffed animal. Should it come as a surprise that you know of books?
I know of books! Do you know of cars?
Indeed.
We both know so much about them! The younger female quaintly placed her teddy bear by her hip, and beamed at the Newcomer with vibrant pride. We both know so many smell-terms for the humans.
Humans, the Newcomer snorted, looking back down at her dirt-written letters. They are animals, just like your bear. They are nothing more.
What do you mean? The teddy bear lover asked, her nostrils flaring as she tested the air over the ancient book. Animals snarl, and growl and are stupid. Humans do what we cannot. They build, they make symbols on surfaces and can understand words from them. They communicate without scent-smells. How do they do that?
They speak. The Newcomer snorted again. "…like this. They speak using their throats."
Are you sick? The teddy bear lover blinked at the words rasping from the other's mouth. What were those noises you just made?
I spoke in their language. They use their mouths.
To place scent-smells?
They don't use scents, they-
Even at the prospect of explaining the process to someone other than herself, had the Newcomer leapt at the opportunity. But, as she remembered accurately, it was never meant to be.
The teddy bear lover turned her gaze to the ground, and produced an audible shriek when she saw that her stuffed animal was missing.
In the back of the chamber, there was a slight trill of tearing fabric. Both females glared at the male, who, feeling the discovering eyes drilling into his flank, raised his head in surprised guilt, strands of ratty fur and white stuffing sticking from between all his fangs.
In a second of time was the younger female on her feet, and sprinting across the chamber. The Newcomer watched in defeat as the teddy bear lover tackled the male to the ground, hissing, yelling, cursing him in ever smell-scent she knew. She clawed open his arm, punched him powerfully under the chin, and soon the two Deathclaws were rolling about the floor, spitting, hacking, fighting.
A few of the nearby others in the surrounding chamber cavities leant over stalagmites and around arches to observe the battle. They resembled crowds of levitating yellow, crimson and white eyes, occasionally blinking, or shifting as they edged closer, and eventually worked towards breaking the fight up.
The Newcomer snorted and turned back to writing the alphabet in the dirt, ignoring the happenings of her tribe as she always did.
She made to turn the book's page, and instead ripped yet another corner of the paper free. She snarled under her breath, and did her best to write down a shaky letter P.
P for piss. Piss and shit. It was all I ever felt like.
The darkness of the cave became ever more complete. She had already been there for so long, and yet the Deathclaws of her tribe had always called her that until the end of their days.
Newcomer.
She had escaped the Enclave, and they had still found her. She had always been a Newcomer, yet she had been nothing but an Outcast for far longer.
The teddy bear lover. Mon dieu, how I have forgotten of her.
There was a slight jolt of cold sensation, and the chill of air touching her scales. Nyx could no longer see the cave from all those years ago in the west, and she could no longer see the others of her kind she had so been ignorant of in her more blessed days.
The dream ended, and Nyx shivered as she awoke. The chains suspending her huge arms in the air rattled.
"…Sanford…?" The Deathclaw tiredly asked, shaking her horned head, leering her exhausted and squinted eyes about her surroundings. "…Usiner…?"
There was nothing. No answers, no movements, and no sounds. There was a chamber, one of cold ambiance, with a tiled floor, and walls that glinted their obvious metal makeup even in the dark. Mist gathered about the ground like a colony of phantoms skittering around her heels and cloven feet. There were heavy wrought-iron binds that secured both of her wrists in a fervent lock. The cuffs were wrapped over with a securing of chains that were tethered to a heavy pair of hooks bolted into the ceiling.
Quelle est cette folie?
Nyx bore her fangs and yanked against the restraints, the chains' high pitched song echoing throughout the empty chamber.
This cannot be really happening.
The Deathclaw slouched in her imprisoned state, her tail lashing like a whip to her rear, her golden eyes now positively beaming with hateful defiance.
What did they do with Sanford? And the usiner?
Something had to have happened to both of them if whoever who kidnapped her had her here in the first place. Nyx knew that Sanford would tear Boston apart in a search for her, it was what he had done when the Institute had played this card almost a year ago.
The Institute.
Nyx bowed her head at that memory. Suddenly, despite the innate sense of panic that was swelling in her stomach, she felt an overpowering sensation of weakness. She felt weak that this was occurring. She felt like a defenseless thing, beckoning the call of someone else to bail her out.
I spit on this, the Deathclaw exposed her fangs in a rearing sneer, hanging from the chain bindings overhead. I spit on every fathom of this.
The sound of steel crunching, and the heavy thud of restraint locks unclicking earned her attention. The angry reptile raised her snout, and blew a disgusted venting of steam from her nostrils to the north of the room.
I will not have it.
The light wasn't bright enough to blind her from a quick transition, but it was powerful to the degree that she still squinted. There was a hallway beyond the doorway, one of tile, metal and brickwork. She couldn't exactly see most of the details over the shoulders of the thing standing in the archway.
What is that?
The Deathclaw twitched at an unfamiliar feeling pinpricking against the back of her scaly skull.
It was just a taste of fear. Her pride could not shield that. Whatever was standing in the archway looked utterly ferocious.
Maybe once it had been what it smelt like, and vaguely resembled. She knew the scent anywhere, as encounters with its kind had been stained in her memory as wholly unpleasant experiences with each passing. It smelt of rotting meat, sulfur, motor oil and fungus spores. It was ugly, muscular, bulbous and green all over.
Super Mutant.
Except, there was something wrong with this Super Mutant. In fact, it was something unlike anything she had ever seen before.
The creature (if it could even be called that) –waddled into the chamber on an uneven gate, and its steps were slow, and each rise of its legs, Nyx could discern the tinny whine of servo-joints and robotic augmetics upon the cold air. With each fall of its heel, Nyx could hear the slamming noise of metal-shod boots on the tiles.
The initially dim light source from the hallway became brighter and more blinding the closer the monster got. Its feet- concealed in hissing, augmetic boots of steel –rattled the floor of the room, each fall getting louder, and more pronounced.
Thunk, thunk, thunk… THUNK-!
It lumbered to a halt right before where she was hanging. The Deathclaw's temperament spun circles in that moment, doing loops between enragement, terror and uncertainty. She must have looked comedic to crueler eyes, for the reptile leant back into her chains, and she peered at the grotesque mutant between her elbows with wide, golden eyes.
She realized that the light source was not coming from the hallway. The light was coming from the Super Mutant's face.
-Or, at least, what was covering its face.
"…Mon dieu…" Nyx mumbled, finding purchase on the floor with her cloven heels. The chains rattled as she slipped her shoulders behind the curls of her horns. She winced as the spotlight beamed into and reflected off her facial complexion.
The Super Mutant's head and shoulders were completely sealed in rusting, scrap-compiled armor plating. The plates were laden with coppery veins of wires and conductor strands, pipes that coursed inside their leaden hides with quietly sloshing fluids splayed like vines up the Mutant's ribs and down its broad back. A power pack that whistled tiny, visible vents of steam hummed in its strapped place across and over the Mutant's shoulders. The vaguely draconic helmet bolted over its head was sealed with a spotlight canister, that cast a malicious, dreadfully still pillar of illumination on her almost accusingly.
If not for the ragged, hollow and muffled breaths of raggedy carbon wheezing out from the Super Mutant's curious headwear, Nyx would've been convinced that the creature was robotic in nature. It certainly was partly of that mechanical womb.
I thought you weren't having this?
The Deathclaw gasped under the gaze of this biomechanical horror. She saw to her chagrin that the creature's fat hands had similarly been changed to metal. They were a pair of robotic forearms, wired into the Mutant's very flesh, where coppery threads vanished into its green skin through scabbing, inflamed wounds.
I'm not having this at all, the Deathclaw snorted in insult as she faced the monster down, literally feeling her strength returning to her as a pooling, warm reservoir in her chest. Eat my foot, creature of the abyss.
Nyx hauled on her chains and lifted her clawed feet off the floor. She kicked the Mutant square in the chest, swinging forwards and colliding with the exposed, green breast there.
There was a crack! –as her heels shattered a pair of ribs. The Mutant stumbled back, its robotic limbs swinging outwards for purchase it could not find.
For a second, Nyx was satisfied with her assault. Her roar of rage echoed around the interior of whatever facility she was in, beating up and down the walls as a reptilian, serpentine shriek.
If these freaks believe they can use me for their amusement, they are sadly mistaken.
The Mutant was as big as her, and thus kept a similar degree of endurance. Broken bones or not, the kick was not nearly enough to render it out of action.
The spotlight wired into its face became brighter, the illumination reaching a crescendo until the very bulb within the canister flickered, and the light returned as not white, but a deep hue of orange.
Now colored amber, Nyx grit her fangs as the Mutant released a terrible, metallic bellow. It was an indescribable sound, something made by a torture victim who could never escape life in an armored box.
It is most certainly accurate, the Deathclaw planted her heels as the monster lumbered towards her in a run, its heavy boots slamming into the tiled floor. Yet another slave to morbid, human ingenuity.
Nyx lashed out with her bladed feet again, but this time, her defense was of a different means.
Perhaps the monsieur's techniques are not as shallow as I perceived.
Once in the past, Sanford had told her a story of how a band of Raiders had caught him in close combat. One of them was big, wrapped in cage armor, and was using a pair of serrated meat-cleavers.
Sanford had jumped onto the Raider's shoulders, wrapped his legs over his caged head, and had brought him down to the ground with his own body weight. It was a baffling move that had saved Sanford's life, long before he had met her. Nyx was quite larger than Sanford, but given the stature of her attacker, she figured that the weight ratios would even out.
Curious, Nyx thought rather civilly as she and the Mutant screamed at one another. The Deathclaw's thighs clenched over the armored giant's head, shoving the light canister and its scrap-face into her groin. Normally, I only let Sanford put his face down there. Though, I suppose this isn't normal by a longshot.
Feeling the Mutant's metal fingers grip her hips, Nyx knew that she didn't have much time. She glanced upwards at the ceiling, bunched her wrists, and released a quick grip on the chains wrapping over her cuffs.
Sanford was right, the chains shattered, causing a drizzle of bent links to rain like glitter across her and the Mutant's shoulders. I am really heavy. That asshole.
The Mutant roared in a hollow scream as it and the Deathclaw tumbled thunderously to the ground.
Isn't it always the same? Nyx was in no mood for semantics in her act of killing the beast, but it did at least stand in her mind for a good second as she prepared to rip its head off. Once I get something down, it is as mon cher says; the 'jig' is up."
"-Now just wait a second there, my wild friend! Boys, if you will?"
Who in the fuck was that?
The amber light in her face was twofold, and briefly, she wondered how it could be so when the only source of light was pinned underneath her and doomed for a quick death.
Not fair.
-The answer to that problem was simple.
There was a second Mutant that had lumbered into the room.
It was a duplicate of the thing she had against the floor, a robotically augmented green torso and legs with robotic hands and feet and a lantern-faced helmet. The striding titan didn't chance enough time for the Deathclaw to even blink. One moment, Nyx was looking up, and the next, a metal fist with the weight of a cannonball behind it was crashing into her face.
Thwack~! –the punch was so quick and powerful that she didn't even feel any pain. Everything just went blurry, and she couldn't feel her own neck.
The Deathclaw's mournful howl of defeat was silenced as she landed on her back, sprawling against the cold room's tiled floor, spreading a dissipating, white flower around her by disturbing the mist creeping everywhere.
Powerful, metal fingers clenched over the reptile's wrists. Nyx was hoisted onto her heels with a groan of metal and a whine of robotics. She lazily drooled, and looked at either side of herself, where she was greeted with a lantern-faced visage to the west and east.
The Mutant she had tackled righted itself without any further commotion, save for the moans of its metal joints. The chamber had been filled with them in a flurry of motion. Two of the augmented Mutants held her aloft, and still more figures were coming into the chamber by the second.
Junkers, Nyx realized even as her mind swam. Conglomerate Frankenstein robots made from scavenged parts of multiple models. They were every shape and size, and they were innumerable. Ten of them, at least, standing at rigid attention (or sometimes simply floating) –in the archway and at the corners of the room.
They were obviously working in tandem with the Mutants, and now, that Nyx was unable to move, she looked at her captors with a scrutinizing, tired set of eyes to bring herself to yet another realization.
The symbol.
The Mutants were all garbed in steely and black painted armor, and on the forehead of each one's helmet, just above the lantern bulbs, was the scrap-skull symbol she knew would be there.
The Assaultron assassins.
"-Well done, fellows! What a dapper twist of fate. Truly, a dapper one. Though, not without reason to stand; you are as dexterous and mighty as they say you're supposed to be."
Isn't it about time I came face to face with this connard?
Nyx growled and fought against the arms constricting her shoulders. She earned nothing more than a few hollow creaks of machinery, and some pain from the Mutants' bionic edges digging into her scales.
"You certainly put up a fight. Listen; that's good! That's very good, because that's why you're here! That's why you're here, and that's why I need you! Cheerio?"
Cheerio? What the hell.
Nyx quivered as she tried to curl her arms free of the Mutants' clasps. She snarled as a single, little human man stepped before her and into the glare from his minion's lantern-faces. The light played off his features, and lit up his attire and head completely. It revealed to her, that he was quite possibly the ugliest thing she had ever seen.
"So here we have come to stand. It's not the Scavenger, by far. I could not hope to contain the Scavenger I'd bet! But I've got myself the next best thing." The man chortled, pairing his spindly fists on his hips. Batteries buzzed from his body, and bionics clicked from a particular port on his face. "Now, just to make sure; you are the Scavenger's pet are you not?"
Nyx almost drenched him in a cascading torrent of vulgarity. His words so angered her that she turned crimson even through her scales. Her teeth were clenched together so hard that they threatened to crack.
"I'll take your infuriated expression as a confirmation." The man smiled. "I'm aware of several most preposterous rumors about you. They say a lot of things out in the wasteland, you know? They say, that you're the Scavenger's pet, and that much I believe, but also…"
Nyx snarled as a hand reached out towards her nose. The reptile tugged violently against the Mutants holding her, and the man was just able to snap his wrist back in time before her chops clapped over where it had been.
"-that you're ferocious." He mumbled with consideration, dusting his hand off with a few metallic claps on his chest. "They say you're cunning, they say you're quick, they say you and your master sew legends out here in Boston. But, they also say that you…"
The man leant forwards, and spoke so that his voice was but a mere whisper.
"…speak."
Nyx was able to shield herself just a bit beneath the feral rage obscuring her features. She never looked more animalistic than when she was angry, and as long as she offered him nothing, did she appear no different than any other enraged Deathclaw. She still snarled at him, though, and this made him smile.
"You at least understand English. Why, golly! How else would you have known to be so angry when I said you were the Scavenger's pet? Ain't that a doozy, eh, boys?"
Nyx whipped her head to both of her captors when she began to hear a tiny, almost automated growl from beneath both of their lantern-faces. She realized with a pitting twist in her gut that the Super Mutants were chuckling. Their laughter didn't sound natural, even for their kind. It sounded robotic. It sounded forced. She wondered about that.
"Yes yes, see, you can't hide anything from me here." The mysterious man hopped on his own heels giddily. "This is my business, and my home, but it is most certainly my passion! My passion is the art of what I do! The caps those fools from the Outside give me to pursue it! Think about it, what will the caravans say as they double their trips to see me? They will say: "Look! Another has been thrown into the grand arenas! Look! It is the Scavenger's Dragon! It is the latest wonder presented by, the Junker!"
Nyx stared at the Junker incredulously, lost in a long span of shocked silence at his presentation.
"Yes, all fine, all fine." The Junker sighed, mimicking the motions of wiping a tear from his one organic eye. "But I think we need to understand exactly what we're dealing with here. I mean, all I have are rumors, and your… lack of word."
He seemed to be thinking for a good while, as evidenced by his stilled speech. The Junker hummed, snapped his fingers with a whistle of metal, and pointed at the door of the chamber.
"Boys, I'm not paying you just for the tabloid coverage. Bring my friend outside. We're running a trial!" The Junker clapped his hands. "We're running a trial, to see the Scavenger's Dragon in action! You have no idea how lucky you are."
Nyx hissed when he reached out to her again, and retracted.
"You don't just get a front row seat; you are the attraction! The early access, sponsored exhibition! You'll wow them, I'm sure of it, especially with the trials I have in mind!" The Junker finally did touch her, and his fingers were cold, like steel, which, they actually were. The Deathclaw grunted and wiggled backwards into the Mutant's arms, her claws digging trenches into the tiled floor beneath her. She wanted to kick him too like she had his goon. "You're going to change everything. Everything indeed." The Junker chuckled, looking at his own hand as if he had dipped it in gold. "…But in the meantime. Throw her in the pit for the trials."
-0-0-0-0-0-