VIII
Helios
The feral ghoul actually left a wavering trail of steam in its wake as it fell. The crimson glazed, carbon energies wrapping Sanford's blade did little to dim themselves in the din of the night. They produced a hellish hue across the room in accordance with the killing they helped to commit.
The monster didn't have the life within it left to offer even a confused gurgle as it died. It merely slouched from Sanford's presence and folded on the crumbling sill of the window, twitching, its severed throat hissing repugnantly in the dark.
This city's full of things trying to eat me.
The scavenger clicked his tongue and thumbed the rune on his energy cutlass' hilt, watching with a diaspora of annoyance as the dark upper story of the building was swathed in shadow once again.
No more distractions.
Kneeling in the sill to the opposite left of the one with the ghoul's corpse, Sanford breathed out his mouth to filter the horrid, acrid odor permeating from the irradiated creature's body. The smell was all the more powerful due to accumulation. The room was actually laden with eight other ghouls that Sanford had run into. All on the pretext of finding a good observation spot. Perhaps, Sanford should've known better.
Nah, the scavenger grumbled under his breath, using the scope on his rifle to oversee the nighttime world outside and ahead. All within parameters, I'd say.
The parking lot and the street dividing it from the property he was on were both vacant, as far as he could initially tell. The sickly green of his scope put much of Boston into clarity despite dusk's blanketing. The lot was filled with rusted, broken and ruined automobiles. They were all like a pond of dilapidated metal, with varying roof heights, body types and lengths. Sanford could still close his eyes and remember what this sight would've looked like had it been before the bombs.
Brightly colored sedans, minivans and SUVs. Reds, greens, blues, golds and silvers and blacks and-
He shook his head.
All gone now anyway. Focus.
The buildings of the Helios Mall oversaw the parking lot highly. They were colossal rectangular bailey's that loomed like boxy shadows in the night. They were riddled with cracks, crumbled walls and dark windows. Observing these traits was like seeing the individual ulcers and parasites across the hide of some gigantic corpse.
You wouldn't think the place was being controlled by some deranged sociopath with a robot army.
Sanford lowered his scope, and picked out movement among the cars of the parking lot below.
…Or wouldn't you?
There were pillars of light that were flickering between the wrecked sedans and burnt trucks. Cones of whiteness were stabbing into the night, and playing havoc with his eyes in the forms of armies of strange shapes. These were cast from the lights glancing the hulks of the myriad vehicles wrecked in their parking spots.
Searchlights, Sanford initially considered, his nose twitching as he forgot to breathe out his mouth for a split second. Fucking smells in here.
He cast a disparaging glare back at the twisted, steaming bodies littering the upper floor of the building behind him.
I miss that suit and its filtration systems. Maybe I should find an air freshener and hang it over my neck until I can get that suit back.
If he ever got the suit back.
Thinking about it made his stomach hurt. Losing a piece of equipment like that was catastrophic. Sanford had been out here for over eleven years, and he could count on one hand the number of times he'd been able to find working parts for a suit of Power Armor.
It is what it is.
Sanford tried not to think about it, and focused on the parking lot. What he saw next made his heart drop into his feet.
…What the fuck is that thing?
It possessed a humanoid bulkiness and a feral gait that were both easily recognizable. There were lumbering arms, big legs, and tiny heads. Even through the tint of his scope, Sanford could see that they were big, muscular, ugly and green.
But there was something very off about these Super Mutants.
There's something on their faces, and their bodies, and their legs and hands and-
Sanford blinked and lowered his gun.
They're augmented.
He'd never seen anything like it. True, Super Mutants (at least, the ones who weren't completely board-of-wood-level dumb) –had some level of understanding bionics and robotic medical technique, no Mutant was capable of something like this.
These Super Mutants were coated in plated exoskeletal armor, layered with coppery wires, pipes and synthetic straps. Powerpacks were wired into their backs, and helmets bearing lantern-bulbs for visors were stitched, bolted and tethered into the Mutant's very neck-flesh. Their feet were covered in iron, cloven boot, and their hands had been surgically removed and replaced with bladed, three-fingered claws.
That symbol.
They bore the underbitten skull icon on their helm's foreheads, and one of them had a second, larger of the symbols emblazoned over its bare chest in the form of a black tattoo. They walked as a pair, sweeping the spotlights that made their faces east and west with robotic patience and organization.
Sentries. You're telling me this whackjob has robots and Mutants?
Sanford was grim as he slunk back into the darkness and worked his way to street level again.
I can't fight them.
Sanford no longer possessed the indomitable steadfastness of his X-01 suit. Without it, if he were to suffer an impact from a gun, his likelihood of avoiding injury was non-existent. Super Mutants were punishment sponges to begin with. There had been times where Sanford had shot them in the head, and they still had shrugged off the injury.
Super Mutants could be shot multiple times and still remain an active threat. Sanford couldn't afford to get hit once, and the change of pace that came with that caused him to falter.
Just keep your head down.
Sanford breathed, and checked the charge on his gun's battery. He slowly moved towards the parking lot, letting the Bostonian cool air touch his cheeks as a slight breeze bustled down the street.
Even if they're big, green killing machines, who are augmented, and ten times as strong as you, and outnumber you; you got this, Tobs, you got this.
Sanford's eye twitched.
Jesus fuck.
Dead hedges ringed the exterior of the parking lot. In the dark, they offered much more concealment than they would have during the day. He crouched behind a strip of them and peered with wide eyes through the gnarling patterns of finger-like roots and twigs.
The parking lot was huge. It had to be. Helios was once one of the largest shopping centers in the city. The amount of cars layering through the lot were uncountable, and now that Sanford was closer, he could see that his Super Mutant friends weren't alone.
Oh my god.
There were spaced out pillars of light everywhere. They moved in singles, pairs or in trios down the various lanes and clear paths wedging through the sea of automobiles. The entire lot was being patrolled by these things.
And Diamond's radio sounded like they were uncertain of anything going on here. Those disingenuous fuckers.
Sanford licked his dry lips and looked down at his hands. They were trembling over the stock and handle of his gun.
I almost forgot what worrying about bullets felt like.
He wasn't about to have a repeat of the Institute. If he risked death in that, then so be it.
Here it goes.
Twigs snapped and branches rustled. The scavenger slipped through a gap in the dead ferns and ran in a hunched motion across the parking lot. He reached the first row of cars and fell to a hushed kneel behind the blown-out carcass of a convertible. The car whispered as he pressed his shoulder into it, almost like it was attempting to mutter to him and warn him of the danger he was quickly becoming entangled in.
You're telling me, buddy.
Sanford peered over the car's hood, and darted back down when the duo of Mutants got closer.
Their footfalls were heavy, iron sounds. Thud, thud, thud- they went. Sanford could hear the tell-tale whine of servo-joints that were surgically bolted into their knees and calves. One of the spotlights spawning from their heads swept over the car he was hiding behind. Sanford hadn't felt such a chill like the one this presentation caused run down his spine in a very long time.
Keep it together, Tobs.
The night's breeze whistled overhead. The thudding footsteps of the Mutants got closer and closer.
Move.
Sanford crouched low and shifted position. He treated his movements as he would during a combat situation. The goal was to keep one's head and shoulder level down, and flit between places of thick, heavy cover when the enemy's line of site faltered.
Firefights were always like that. It was all about the reliance upon human instinct for self-preservation. You simply knew that the people you were shooting at wouldn't run senselessly out into the open. You simply knew that they would keep their heads down for the same reason you were. You knew they had to pause, reload, and the like just as you had to.
Those were all opportunities to move, to flank, to gain the advantage. The sweeps of the Mutants' spotlight-faces were exactly the same.
Use the dark. The dark is your friend.
Sanford navigated up the lot. From car to car. He ducked behind wheel wells and hoods whenever lights passed his positions, and he avoided the alleys where Mutant teams were walking.
He passed closely to a patrol of them at one point. It was a duo of the Mutants, their iron heels thudding down the cracked pavement, their shoulders hunched, with hauntingly cold breaths rasping through the metals of their robotic headwear.
That armor is part of them.
Sanford knew enough about bionics to judge that from his hiding place behind a flattened station wagon. He could see the coppery wires that snaked through and under the Mutants' green skin, and where their flesh was inflamed and adhered at the edges of the plates protecting their necks, shoulders, legs and backs. The powerpacks were probably affixed to their skeletal structures. If there was anything left of their heads or faces, the strange, pyramid-like helmets sprawling over their skulls hid it. The lantern bulbs wired into their faces were bright and blinding.
What's been done to these creeps that they'd listen to someone who wasn't a Mutant? I know whoever this is isn't one of them. This is all too complex for a Mutant. Too complex, too organized, too-
Sanford winced as a blinding pillar of light landed right in his face.
Oh no.
Sanford held his breath and swiftly ducked back behind the car's trunk. Still, he heard the Mutant produce a tinny noise in the silence of the night. It was a rasping sound of inclination and surprise. The thing metallically snarled, and he could hear its bootsteps thundering across the pavement.
Move move move!
The light that was fixed over his position changed color. It was now an enflamed amber hue, and the bulb marking the Mutant's face had turned into a blaring, offended shade of crimson.
Sanford whisked away with skill behind a neighboring pair of trucks. He did not stick around long enough or closely enough to see what the Mutants did when they reached where he'd been hiding. Judging by the lack of any sort of alarms, howls and gunshots, he assumed that they had thought nothing of the disturbance further. In the dark, panting, the scavenger peered back down the lot from a new hiding spot, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the distant spotlight change from an enraged amber, to a docile white.
The cones flipped to face the south, and they grew in distance as the patrolling pair continued on their route.
Close call.
Sanford gazed north. Helios was right in front of him. The main buildings of the complex, and the central visitor plaza. Once, before the war, this place had been beautiful, and bustling with activity. Now it was a damned graveyard. The plaza's trees and bushes had rotted away, the cobble walkways were cracked and matted. A large fountain in the plaza's center was nothing but a large, inactive dust bowl. A pair of swan statues presided over the plaza to the left and right. Both were crumbling, one to the point where it was headless, almost acting as a portent of doom for the encroaching intruder.
Stupid bird.
Sanford crossed a street and hid behind a strain of rubble birthing from one of the statue's pedestals. He scanned the darkness of the plaza and listened for anything that could point to a nearby threat.
No Mutants at least, but that doesn't mean that-
…Voices. Distant voices, ones that echoed with confidence out into the night.
Whoever was bold enough to get that animated out here with all these monsters lumbering about had to be important. Only a boss shouted in the presence of his goons.
Lemme' see your face, you kidnapping piece of shit.
Sanford advanced through the plaza, magnetizing his senses to the voices. There were several people, judging by the variation he faintly detected. Men, women, and a good deal of them too.
Who the hell are you people?
Sanford vaulted the rim of the ruined fountain, and he crouched inside the empty water basin, peering over the bowl trim to stare at the plaza's north.
One of Helios' main entrances was there. It was once a wall of glass with rows of similarly glass doors barring its lower half. It had all shattered and bee ruined. A towering face of bolted scrape metal and stockade wood replaced the glass in its concrete and metal shell of the building.
Burned in black paint across this barrier's flesh was the skull symbol of whoever had claimed fealty over this place. It was the largest example of it Sanford had seen so far.
At least I know I'm in the right place.
He saw the people next. There was a congregation of them, numbering more than ten. Sanford hunched lower. He realized that they were caught in light, and he saw one of the Mutants patiently stalking right behind them, standing two heads taller, and yet no more imposing over them for it.
"-that's where you're wrong, see? Further you go back to your place, people get soft. It's the softness that's killing the east. You should take some examples from the Skulltakers! Pure rage got them where they are." –Spoke a man.
"I speak for the entire gathering when I say that no one likes a kiss-ass." Another grunted.
"I'm fine with it." A third, gruff sounding male chuckled. "Good to hear that my reputation's preceding me. Those caps? They're going to good use here. Everything back by me'll be dead soon and I can make you all happy."
"That's erroneous and cocky."
"You say that about everything, you corps'-wannabe."
"People here argue too much." A woman sighed. "Where's your etiquette?"
"See?" The first speaker laughed. "Easterners; little teddy bears who are too busy licking their own nuts to make any headway."
The tallest man in the procession was almost as much a monster as the Mutant sentry that was trailing at his heels.
Raider.
An important Raider, at that. He had a shaven head, tanned skin, narrow eyes and a strong, defined jawline that flowed into a pair of ears laden with hook and loop piercings. Tattoos designed after vines of twisting, black script riddled his cranium, his cheeks and even his throat. Armor plating made from scavenged military standard, leather and parts of automobiles created an almost insectoid cocoon over his muscular body. A beard that flowed down to his chest sat as a dirty affliction marring his image. He was flanked by two bodyguards clothed in leather and crimson colored pads, with visors shielding their faces.
Looks like a bruiser.
Sanford noted the melee weapon slung over the man's back plating. It was a two-handed hammer, weaponized via coils wringing up and down its handle, ending in an obvious propulsion vent welded into the rear of its spiked head.
Let's make a note right now to not get hit by that thing.
The other people in the group were less impressive individually, but carried their own points of worry for the scavenger. A woman clad in black and silver colored infantry armor strode between two similarly bedecked soldiers on either side of herself. She was darkly skinned, with pursed lips and serpentine eyes. Her hair was almost the same shade as her face, and thus from a distance, in the night, she resembled some kind of reptilian creature, caught in the glare of her Mutant escort's lantern.
Who are those people?
Sanford's eyes locked to another pair of people walking just in front of them.
Gunners.
Two of them, bedecked in drab colored infantry armor and fatigues. One man and one woman, clean shaven, dirt-stained mockeries of the United States Army, complete with white stars across the breastplates and helmets. Sanford hated them, and they hated him.
I should've figured that they had a hand in this.
Much like Sanford had every single Raider tribe in Boston gunning for him, the Gunners themselves had a special place for him on their shit list. Sanford had damaged the Gunners irrevocably over the years. He had killed hundreds of them, destroyed their robots, blew up their ammunition dumps and ambushed their camps. In the last few conflicts that had sprouted up between them and the Minutemen, Sanford had always invariably wound up becoming involved on behalf of the latter. The Gunners had been trying to kill Sanford for years, he should've found it as no surprise that they'd enlisted help.
If that's even what this is.
There was a final, notable man in that procession that Sanford did not have a comment or thought for aside from blank curiosity. The figure was garbed in a trench coat, with a black, glinting fedora topping his head, and a pair of dark army boots obscuring his legs up to the ankle.
For a moment, Sanford was reminded of the half-robotic Robert Cannery from Diamond City, the self-employed investigator that he had rescued from the jaws of mercenaries under the employ of his father's Insitute.
The figure carried that same mysterious flavor with him. The air practically radiated in this visible stench of relation. Sanford couldn't quite put his finger on it.
Some Raider warlord and his goons, two gunners, three mercs, a mutant and some guy with a trenchcoat. That's some combination.
Steel hissed and hydraulics complained into the night. The stockade wall sealing the interior of the mall from the plaza apparently possessed a ramp-gate. It lowered from previously unseen edges in the metal with a rush of gusting steam.
"Let's get down to some killing." The big Raider boss clapped his filthy, dirt-smeared hands together. "You say this Scav's got a Deathclaw? And now our boy has it?"
"Quite." One of the Gunners said. "I wasn't certain I believed it myself."
Nyx.
Sanford was tempted to stand and open fire on the group. The ramp closed soon after, and they and the Mutant escorting them vanished inside the mall.
Son of a bitch.
Sanford ran over to the barricade, seemingly uncaring of being spotted now that he had received so obvious a hint of his correct assumption about this place. He stood before the sealed conglomerate wall, spreading his arms and looking up at its taller height.
God damn it. I can't open it.
He could probably blast through it, but he couldn't have the entire mall alert to his presence. Now things were at a deeper angle. There wasn't just one person involved in this anymore. There were Gunners, Raiders, and other factions that Sanford didn't even know the identities of.
I need a way in.
Sanford backed up, and cast his eyes to the west, where an alleyway leading from the plaza obscured, but did not veil something important from his eyes.
Now there's something, Sanford smiled as he turned his body to face the aforementioned angle. Hope nobody minds if I borrow it.
Clang~! –rattled the ladder as Sanford smacked it against the rim of a nearby rooftop. The aluminum creaked and edged as he handworked up the rungs. There was a part of Sanford's mind that was reeling with the possibility of the thing snapping like a twig and sending him tumbling back down to the pavement.
Ignore it. Move, Tobs.
Sanford reached the building's roof, and hopped over the rim edge with a hasty grunt. The gravel of the rooftop crunched under his heels as he quietly moved forwards and swept the area for threats. Everything seemed as still as a rooftop should've been, more or less. Bulky, silvery ventilation boxes acted as a quick maze, but as Sanford edged his way to the western side of the roof, he found what he was looking for.
Not too far of a drop, the scavenger grinned as he slung his rifle across his hip, and armed himself with his energy cutlass. I didn't even have to turn you on, baby girl.
Sanford wedged the tip of his blade forwards. Clink~! –went the bolt, and he kicked the vent cover off with a swift jolt of his boot.
Better than taking the front door.
-0-0-0-0-0-
The first thing that Nyx smelled with soil. Wet soil. It was a permeated scent that one got when they rammed their face into a puddle of mud, pulled back, and lathered in the surreal aftershock of the fact.
Mon dieu, my head…
The reptile snorted, and she could feel the dusty clouds kicking up off the ground beneath her snout.
What a beautiful dream that was.
The Deathclaw's golden eyes fluttered open, and her tongue lapped over her exposed fangs. They tasted like dirt.
I saw it. I saw them. Emeraude. Greener than I have ever seen. Sanford…
Nyx dug her fingers into the soil, and wrenched her arms until the scales on their interiors ached from being dragged on the ground. The prior feelings of warmth that she had coveted were lost upon her, even as she made to embrace the man that was not really there with her. Still, she was so drunken in this moment of apprehensive stupor that she continued the mental debate with herself nonetheless.
Qu'est-ce que je ressens maintenant?
What was she feeling right now? It was an excellent question, because she really didn't know herself.
On one hand, she was tired, and in pain and she wanted to go back to sleep. But she was also hungry and thirsty for some reason, and on top of that she was experiencing a mixture of being angry, happy, fearful, and was even suffering from the slight touch of a libido.
None of the last few hours made much sense, but Nyx doubted that her newest house hosts cared much for these individualistic concerns.
Hosts.
The reptile's teeth audibly produced a grinding sound as she rolled her jaws together.
Those connards.
Her ribs stung alongside her mandible and her breast. She didn't need a reminder of the fact that these pains were due to the top-off beating she'd received in that cell.
I will kill them. All of them.
Nyx dug her fingers back into the dirt, but this time it was for the purposes of steadying herself. Ignoring the complaints of her arm muscles, the reptile shoved herself off the cold, dusty ground and shook her head with vehement effort.
At least, I pourrait continuer cet effort. Now where am I?
Shaded darkness was the first thing she saw. A sea of black cascading with faint, ghostly wisps of steam.
Maybe this is hell.
-But then Nyx heard the ca-clunk –sound of locks releasing, and light flooded into the chamber like liquid silver.
Ah, perhaps not yet.
There was a racket upon the air, that coincided with and yet was entirely separate from the scream of the ramp-gate's joints. Even as the metal wall in front of her lowered itself more and more, she could hear the secondary disturbance all the more prevalently.
Is that…
Nyx held up a claw to shield her long face from the streams of light. The gate snapped thickly onto a dusty, earthen ground beyond, and the joint hinges screeched as they locked into place. The at-first faint noise she had been perceiving was now in an uproar.
…cheering?
Drunkenly, the Deathclaw's heels rattled the ramp as she stepped forwards, blindly lumbering out into the unknown on the pretense of escaping the racket. Her efforts were futile in such respects, as they only carried her into their center and not to their fringes.
Her eyes adjusted rather quickly though, and the drugs flushed into her system let known their temporary hosting by soon banishing their effects upon her. Nyx's gasp was a pathetic, panicked thing. She did not believe she had ever sounded so afraid before in her life.
But the presence around her was staggering enough for her to allow that to come to pass.
"Coming up from the center Gate number 1 is a colossal charnel-house of destructive capability and dreadful capacity."
Nyx staggered off the edge of the ramp and onto the sandy ground ahead. The crowd jeered and clapped. The noise was thunderous, and it reverberated across the spanning ring with ease.
Mon dieu.
Separated from her by a mesh of iron netting, and suspended atop a ring of plated scrap metal, the crowd numbered well past a hundred little human beings. They were lined in rows of seats, swivel chairs, park benches and all manner of gathered sitting apparatus. They were organized in suspended rows. Storefronts on a second story ring had been converted into boxes. Protective railing walls had been shortened or in some cases completely removed. Areas that had served as walkways along the mall's second story level were transformed into bleacher rows where tens of filthy, poorly dressed people cheered and pumped fists and threw beer bottles against the mesh.
The noise was overwhelming, and the spotlights beaming down at her from the scrap-dome's roof were blinding. To Nyx, it was straight out of a nightmare.
Maybe I'm still dreaming.
"Weighing in at approximately one helluvva' lot of tons, and sporting an attitude like no other, the Praetorian Box brings to you; The Scavenger's Dragon~!" –Erupted a booming voice that echoed across the arena, suspended orally by the beating resonation of a loudspeaker, and vox amplifiers installed around the premises.
I don't weigh tons.
Grumbling, and placing a self-conscious claw on her belly, Nyx scanned the crowds with wide eyes, until they fell upon the very direct north and center of the ring.
"Ladies and gentlemen from the north, from the Commonwealth and on the road East; feast your eyes upon the Boston Terror! Beast of the Infamous Scavenger~!"
The crowd went wild. They hooted, screamed and roared. Nyx flinched when a bottle ricocheted off the protective mesh directly over the gate arch she had exited from.
Are they speaking of Sanford?
The reptile blinked at the idea. She knew that Sanford was influential in the Commonwealth's steering, and that people knew of him, but all of this? This seemed…
Nyx scanned the crowd again, and refocused on where the loudspeaker was coming from.
-Extreme.
Risen highly to view across the entirety of the sand-filled arena pit was a box placed atop a scrap stilt. It almost looked like some kind of junk spire, and yet it carried with it a pristine air of corrupt royalty. Such an atmosphere spliced through the common stenches of groveling peasantry that made Raiders and ganger scum the lowlives they were. It was the most well-constructed thing in the entire arena. In fact, the bolted over plates that made the spire's flesh seemed to be polished where everything else was grimy and matted. Nyx held no doubts that such was the result of efforts that were purposeful.
How endearing of these people, Nyx hissed under breath. She did not turn around when the gate she had exited expectedly creaked and moaned. Sand whispered from the ramp's edges until it rose completely and clapped shut, sealing her in the arena. At least they have offered a grande entrée.
"Coming in at high and loud speeds from Gate 2 is the Robotic Menace."
Oh no.
Nyx winced, and immediately her gaze fell upon the western flank of the arena.
"-Ha-haaaa~! Yessss~! The Robotic Menace of Democracy and Commie'-ass-fuckin' dopeness! Bathe in my red-blooded American glaze, you motherless plebians!"
"Usiner?" Nyx blinked.
The Deathclaw felt her tail swaying behind her as her emotions nose-dived into a mixture of apprehension, fascination and horror. She quaintly stared as a very familiar, orb-shaped robot levitated out of a gate that looked just like hers, and spun circles in the air in the center of the large ring.
Hancock hadn't looked this esteemed and excited in a very long time. The Mr. Gutsy was eating up the attention like a good sponge did a shallow puddle of water. The crowd cheered, cursed and threw bottles and junk against the mesh nets, but Hancock was undeterred. He sliced the air with his buzzsaw, made salutes with his claw, and revved his thruster ports.
"-The Han's in the house, you crème-brulee eatin' sonsofbitches!" He shouted, laughing as some of the overhead spotlights whirred and focused their beams directly onto his chassis, where their light glinted and reflected from the drab paint.
He has gone insane, the Deathclaw thought. Attends un minute; that happened long before tonight.
"Usiner~!" Nyx called over the commotion, stepping towards him and across the distance. "What in the hell is going on~?"
"Lizard-Cakes~!" Hancock whirled around, and threw all three of his arms up in the air. "They put you in the ring too, eh?"
"Ring? Usiner," Nyx and he closed their distances, she had to bow her horned head to attempt and speak with the robot. "-have we not been kidnapped against our will?"
"Kidnapped? More like forcibly reduced to vacation status!" Hancock cackled, gesturing to the surrounding arena with his buzzsaw. "This is my kinda' place! That Junker fellow dropped us off in a- are ya' ready? –A gladiator arena~! Ha-haaa~! My childhood dream has seen recognition! Now I get to kill people, and get paid for it! Haaaa~!"
"Y-You never had a childhood." Nyx stammered childishly. "-And, usiner, gladiators are not paid for their efforts!"
"What was that? I couldn't hear ya' over the sound of my new fanbase screaming their balls off! I love you too, you ugly fuckers~! Who wants to see the Han's sprocket-pump~?"
"I said gladiators are not paid for that they do!"
"What~?"
"Gladiators are forced warrior-slaves~!" Nyx shrieked, her large claws producing crunching noises as they formed into fists. "-Do you not understand what is happening? We've been kidnapped to be entertainment attractions! We kill, until we're killed, and that's the end of it! Caput! Finie! Utilise et ensuite elimine~!"
"…So," Hancock noticeably paused, and glanced around the arena with two of his ocu-lenses. He sounded dubious all of a sudden. "…what you're saying is; they aren't unionized?"
"Ughhhhh~! Usiner~!" Nyx clapped a claw over the robot's chassis and hoisted the flailing machine into the air. She was so angry at the moment that she could've ripped him in two, and she almost did exactly that.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Praetorian Box presents; The Scavenger's Gutsy~! Robot from Hell!" –The box announcer's voice bounced across the dome chamber. The crowd howled yet again, the seats fluctuating with the movement of bodies as if they were a collective surface of dirty liquid.
"-'Robot from Hell'…?" Hancock had just been raising his buzzsaw to clip into Nyx's face, but now the machine lowered all of his limbs, and seemed to sit in Nyx's hand, thinking, for a good while. "…My…. gladiator title?"
"You of all beings on this god-forsaken planet would rejouir at this…" Nyx lidded her eyes and snorted at him.
"I'm the Robot from Hell, baby~!" Hancock cried, pumping his arms out in exasperation. "Yes! Yesssss~! Ha! And what are you, Lizard-Lick? Emperor Ceaser's Scaly Poodle~?"
"You fils de pute'."
"Brought to you at much expense of the Patron; The Junker presents the limited event, exclusive Power Hour."
Nyx and Hancock similarly took their glares off one another looked back at the surrounding crowd.
"Ya' know, deep down, somewhere in that freakishly ugly heart of yours," Hancock hissed to her sharply. "-I think you're pumped about this!"
"I assure you," The Deathclaw opened her fingers and let the machine clatter onto the ground at her feet. "I am anything but."
The crowd began to mellow almost as soon as the eruptive outroar had cast its shadow over the ring. Though she struggled to view through the glare of the spotlights above, Nyx stepped forwards and stared with malice up at the top of the Praetorian Box overseeing the arena. Through an observatory slot high up in the spire, she could see him, the Patron.
It was the Junker, and he had an audience up there with him.
"As you all know, the Praetorian Box is only made possible through the productions of our esteemed Patron. Northerners, Easterners and those few cowboys with us," –A few hoots and cries from the back of the stands in the dome. "-Give it up for, the Junker."
Sporadic applause met this proclamation, but mostly it was more drunken screeches and howls. These people were animals, Nyx knew that already. Raider tribes, gangers and people not native to the Commonwealth. She didn't have to stare at the stands long to pick out the gang tattoos and markings on their dirty skins.
"So where're the victims?" Hancock zipped beside her, aiming his Plasma Gun around the ring.
"I expect whatever we will face will be arriving soon." Nyx swallowed, offering him a quick eye.
The Junker was fully alight in the glare of the lanterns above, and now, without the darkness, and his minions kicking her ass, Nyx could fully appreciate the inhumanity of what it was they faced.
"Friends, visitors," The Junker's cool voice rebounded as he held out a hand to silence the jostling masses. "-I bid you welcome to the Helios Arena."
"Hm. Looks like the San of the Ford was right after all." Hancock grunted, turning his attention up to the box.
"Did you really doubt him?" Nyx mumbled.
"Not even for a second." One of his lenses whipped about to the crowds. "This place is fuckin' whacked."
"You have suffered more rescue missions under monsieur than I have. How long until something explodes and Sanford gets us out of here?" Nyx huffed.
"Holy crap-balls, are you actually asking me for an estimate on the ass-kicking?"
"Oui."
"Hmm." Hancock bobbed a bit in his levitation. "Won't be long at all."
"Over the last few days," The Junker spoke to the crowds, not even casting a glance down at the subjects he tortured below in the ring. "I have transformed your lives. With each and every Praetorian Boxed show, I change just a little bit of how you all think, and how you all live."
A long pause was born after this. The Junker swept an organic eye, and a whirring, silvery bionic one about the arena. He seemed to take pleasure in this moment of gripping audacity. The Patron festooned himself with delusions of his importance, smiling on cold lips, grinning with daggered, jester's teeth.
This connard is out of his mind, the Deathclaw realized.
"The robot trials were interesting," The Junker continued, now firmly fixing his gaze upon her and Hancock. "and the beast matches were vigorous and bloody. Let us not also forget…" He grinned even wider. "-the Dirt Rod tribe."
-A sickly murmur of chuckles bounced around the arena.
"They made fine gladiators, all of them." The Junker clicked his tongue, the noise snapping like the length of a whip due to the vox broadcasters he was hooked up to. "But the remnants of whatever families may be left in Boston are not suitable anymore. As the north changes, and the Skulltakers expand, so too do my goals, and, I would hope, all of yours as well."
"The fuck does this guy think he is? Mussolini?" Hancock growled. "-Hey! Dirtbag! I don't mean to shit on your douche-sprinkling parade, but I'm a killing machine! And I'm not a patient killing machine! Where're the mobs of nameless pawns that I get to buzzsaw in the nuts? Or the ferocious, man-eating animals I get to rectally skewer? 'Cause right now, all I see is some fat, egotistical turd with a self-importance complex and a lack of respect for anything modeling decency! I don't know whether to salute you or piss on your mother's shoes!"
Some people in the crowd laughed, some cheered, others howled at the challenge. Nyx actually grinned in reaction herself. She took pleasure in how red this Junker became as he stood up there in his little Praetorian Box.
"You dragged our asses in here for a gladiator match!" Hancock continued, pointing his buzzsaw arm at the box. "Well, where's the fuckin' show~?"
Nyx frowned. The crowd cheered and erupted.
"Usiner," She snapped, bearing her fangs at him. "is not the idea to focus on escape, and not participation?"
"Oh no! The crowd's too loud, Lizard-Buns, I can't hear ya'!" Hancock cackled.
"The Scavenger's pets desire a gladiator match!" The Junker snapped quickly, regaining the arena's focus. "Then that is what we shall give them! Podcaster, begin the trials."
"-You heard him, folks, the trials are at hand."
The Junker blinked down at the arena below him, stepped off the edge of the box, and vanished inside. In his place, on a pair of wobbling, thick tread suspensions, a cylindrically shaped machine growled into position, a pair of round speakers protruding via pipes where its arms should've been.
The announcer is a RoboBrain? The Deathclaw snorted. I should've known.
"Each of our contestants will be tested to their very extreme limits." The dome containing the robot's pulsing, gray-colored brain leveled downwards on dedicated support sprockets. A central, robotic eye that glowed neon green regarded her and Hancock in judgmental silence, before Podcaster continued. "The trials are reserved for The Junker's most promising gladiatorial contestants. If they can survive the Obstacle Course, the Hazard Course, and the Survival Course; then, well folks, they just might be destined for the Heaven's Arena!"
The crowd burst into commotion once again.
"Heaven's Arena? Fuck you, buddy, I'm goin' straight to hell!" Hancock ranted. "'Cause I'm; The Robot from Heeelllllll~!"
"You may be in a position of power now," Nyx called defiantly up to the box, her voice ringing through the noise of the arena. "but it will not last, connards."
"Have it at folks; here comes the first part of our grand event, sit back, grab a hotdog and smell the napalm."
"-Hell yeah, I fuckin' love napalm!" Hancock cackled.
"Designed by the Junker to the dot to root out the weak and proclaim the strong; let's get ready, for the Obstacle Course of Helios Arena."
The ground began to tremble, and Nyx could already feel the encroaching pit of dread in her belly.
Sanford, she thought. Whatever you're doing; do hurry.
"Holy bitch-cakes, look at the size of that drill!" She heard Hancock laugh.
"Begin!"
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