IX
Shadows of the Edge
His successful descent was a move purely reliant on dumb luck. Such was the nature of a scavenger, by far, but totally was it unsustainable and a move he found no comfort in.
The transition from the cool night air above to the claustrophobic, plastic-smelling, artificial atmosphere of the building's interior was swift, like a strike of lightning. Sanford probably fell for a total of six seconds. He didn't work out the math in his head about how many feet that equaled (if such a thing was even possible to do) –but he did realize that the landing itself hurt.
Clung~! –His boots slammed into the metal of the duct chute like a pair of miniature cannonballs, and left sizable dents in the reflective, chrome steel upon their loud contacts. The man fell to a knee and grit his teeth as a staggering numbness wiggled like a giant maggot up his ankles and into his knees. The pain was intense, but at least not as bad as things had been before.
I got stabbed, Sanford almost comically remembered, offering a sultry chortle beneath his breath. I got stabbed twice out there. By a mob of Junkers. Twice. Or… was it three times?
It didn't matter, and that was the bottom line.
Still, nothing had ever been gained by him through the acts of naivety and carelessness. The injuries had healed due to the Stim-packs he kept and his senses were quite keen.
Holding his gun, and allowing his body a long moment to recover, Sanford Tobs fell to a crouch, wincing as he focused on finding good headroom to not bash his skull on the roof of the tunnelway he faced. The moonlight shimmering in from the opened portal high above his head glistened off the surfaces of the chute. If he hadn't known better, he would've said he was standing in some dreamy nightmare passage made of liquid chrome.
I keep forgetting I don't have those anymore.
Out of habit, the man had glanced down at his lower area of vision expecting his suit to chime up a tally of local heartbeats and life signatures in the building. As was to be expected; there was nothing, and he was still on his own as he knew he truly was.
Exciting? Maybe more terrifying. But maybe more exciting. What to choose to feel?
The chute produced hollow, tiny ch-chung –sounds with each step he took forwards, banishing the possibility of climbing his way back up to freedom behind himself. The scavenger ducked and hunch-walked down the tunnel ahead. Luckily, it was just tall enough for him to keep his knees to his chest and level his gun past his own ankles. It wasn't comfortable by far, but it sufficed.
Let's hope this shaft is empty of uglies.
Sanford had seen all kinds of shit living in chutes and pipes out in the city. Roaches, molerats, Radscorpions and Bloodbugs. They could all squeeze into tiny places like this, and things that normally weren't threatening out in the open would become fearsome opponents in such close quarters. He had to be careful, and he needed to use his gun as a last resort.
I'm outnumbered.
This deep in the chute, all he could hear was his own footfalls and a slight hiss of air wheezing down the tunnel. The building sounded like it was breathing. Moreso; it sounded like a gigantic corpse passing death-carbon out its own lungs. The chute whispered to him in the dark, and it made his skin crawl.
Light.
Sanford grit his teeth as the moon failed to further illuminate his travels. Very quickly, the chute became pitch black just ahead, and he found himself cowed by the unknowing depths of that darkness.
Light, c'mon, man.
He dug into the rucksack over his back and produced a small hand flashlight. It bathed the chute in a blinding cone of whiteness with a tiny click! –of the switch, and a buzz of ozone. The scavenger sighed in relief, keeping his gun in one hand and his newfound guide of light in the other.
I'm lucky the panels didn't collapse when I landed.
-Truthfully, this entire move was insane. The whole chute could've been unstable, and there was no telling where it would eventually dump him. He betted that it would lead to a boiler room or some old power cell, but it could've just as easily led to nowhere, or worse, a chute that dumped out into a public utility line.
Let's avoid that last one.
The tunnel twisted eastward, and Sanford followed it, hissing as his head bumped painfully on a groove sticking from the passage ceiling just overhead.
Son of a bitch.
Things were otherworldly in the glare of the little flashlight in his grip. The tunnel almost pulsated like a gigantic, living artery of white. He passed a few vents that were tisking idly whilst dancing shimmers of gray smoke licked out from their grooves.
Some of the utilities in the building are still working. Whoever these people are; they're pretty advanced technologically.
They were advanced apparently in all sorts of ways. An alliance? Or at least a measure of cooperation with Raiders, Gunners and other factions out here? It was something to marvel at. The Raiders were pushovers in terms of organization, especially since Sanford had spent so much time killing so many of their bright-minded people over the years. It was a wonder any of the tribes even existed anymore.
It was also a wonder how they hadn't all united under one banner to stop him. Sanford had to give that opportunity credence; all the tribes out in Boston passionately hated him.
Fine memories anyhow, bunch of bastards, Sanford grinned at that. His amusement was a bit odd, and maddened, but he supposed it was a sign of someone who had spent too much of their lives killing people to be normal anyhow.
Back at the Red Rocket station, he had all kinds of weapons, trophies and baubles he'd collected throughout the years. There was this unique .32 he had found one day a long, long time ago, before he had even met Hancock. It was a silver six-shot custom build with a snub nose and vine-etched handle. Sanford had a story behind that gun that Nyx had questioned him about one night.
"Monsieur, you have accumulated quite the treasure horde in this nest of yours…" The Deathclaw had sounded so… cute, ironically for her identity, in that instance. An almost childish expression of intrigue was written upon her inhuman face as she pawed and fingered through all the things he had lying around in the station's bedding chambers and the garage. Everything had a story, but she only asked him about that silver .32.
"Got it off of a Raider chief." Sanford had smiled, holding the little firearm as if it was a priceless ingot of gold underneath both their noses. "One of the most bat-shit crazy moments of my life."
The chief and Sanford had gotten into a wrestling match. Again, it was just another situation given over to dumb luck.
Sanford and the chief had met each other out in the open after a long, ugly firefight that left the rest of the Raider tribe dead or dying. They'd pointed guns at each other, and had each pulled the trigger at the same time.
Click- each of their weapons had gone. Sanford remembered how there was an awkward second of him looking down at his SMG, with the Raider chief gawking at his rifle.
Two people who were destined to try and kill one another; standing in front of each other, out in the open, letting the adrenaline drain for just a second to ponder how their killing implements were no longer capable of killing.
Something straight out of a nightmare.
As Sanford chose a leftwards direction in the chute, he frowned as the memory played like a miniature move reel in his mind's eye.
The Raider chief tackled him. He was a bigger guy, with lots of muscles, and tattoos of all kinds of vulgar, hideous shit written in piss-blood ink all over his dirty skin. Sanford could still remember the man's breath. It was disgusting, the smell of raw sewage, the smell of a person who had never brushed their teeth since they were children. They screamed, and punched, and bit and kicked and rolled.
That wrestling match had felt like an age's worth of horror and terror and reactions based off of milliseconds of panic and confusion. Sanford didn't quite remember every detail, but he remembered how the blood had felt warm on his neck and his face. He remembered how the chief's own hunting knife had made an excellent killing weapon.
He screamed like a little girl.
Sanford's smile started to die as he passed into another intersection of tunnels, this time, following a rampart that descended in a slight, chrome slope downwards.
He cried for his mother.
What a site to have seen. Such a big, angry looking, tough bruiser like that chief, a man who had spent his life beating others into submission, clawing his way through an underworld of murder, intrigue, lovelessness and hatred. Such a big, muscular beast of a man.
When Sanford had started to open his flesh, that monstrous thug, that chiseled animal of a person had squealed like a little piglet. He did not scream litanies of unending depravity to Sanford, and he did not even curse, or roar or bark in indignant, last-ditch defeatism.
That big ganger screamed one thing.
"-Mommy~!"
-And he screamed it again, and again and again, until Sanford had cut him so many times that the screaming stopped, and his ugly head was only connected to his shoulders by a thread.
Stab, stab, stab, stab…
-Sanford felt his face twitch, and he licked his lips, almost like he wanted to taste the spray of all that blood again.
He stopped at the chute tunnel's corner, and lowered the cone of his flashlight, lathering in the resultant darkness.
I belong in this. Blackness. For what I am.
Was the cycle no more something to repeat and be lost eternally? All he did was kill and maim and destroy.
I'm trying to save the only good things that have ever happened in my life. Why does the world keep trying to take them from me?
The tell-tale echo of something else in the tunnel reminded him of this simple answer on the dot.
The scavenger reacted with the persistence of speed as he always did. He dropped his flashlight and lashed out with his hand when the metallic reverberation of inhuman motion reached a culmination.
He didn't need the light to see- or feel –what it was that was here with him.
The disgusting, oily and hairy surface of something almost as big as a housecat squished and left residue on his fingers. The man cried out in doubly revulsion and rage, and clenched his fist over the monster's tiny body despite this sickening texture.
The Bloatfly produced a curious noise as Sanford killed it. Things always tended to produce curiously sickening noises when they died. They were things that the killer sometimes didn't even realize were happening until after they stopped.
For instance, Bloatflies weren't supposed to be able to produce any kind of vocalities or noises outside of the buzz of their ugly wings.
Yet somehow, those wings beat and whizzed in a way that just sounded like they were in reaction to his hands.
Sanford slammed the monstrous insect into the chute's wall, flinching as daggered stinger-barbs that were larger than his thumbs were ejected from the orifice capping its hairy abdomen. These projectiles smacked into the tunnel's opposite surface with several metallic ping!-s, and stuck there like fired bullets.
The Bloatfly quivered as he gripped the underside of its thorax, and dug until yellow ichor bubbled like syrup up and around his fingers. The scavenger growled like a beast and ripped the insect's body open with his bare hands, letting the quivering, splattering carcass slide down to create a growing puddle of green ooze on the tunnel flooring.
Sanford slapped his hand on the wall and left a greenish, yellow print to hellishly mark the scene of death, and wiped the rest of the ichor off on his boot.
He stepped over his kill and delved further into the chute.
All I'm good for is killing things anyhow. I can't blame the world for trying to get good people like Nyx and Hancock away from someone like me again, and again.
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His boots were dull on this landing. They met concrete and that reduced any racket they might have caused. The fall wasn't as steep, so the pause afterward was unnecessary.
This was a boon to him, because the chamber had a sentry.
Sanford was at least right about his first hunch when he had traversed that chute network; it had dumped him out in some boiler/machinery chamber with walls of concrete. Concrete muffled noise better than metal did. He dispatched the guard without cause for concern of retribution.
The Junker was once a Protectron, but now it was defiled and repurposed anew with bolted plates, longer limbs capped with serrated blades, and a single, crimson eye poking from the neck-joint where its dome had once been.
The Junker was scythed in half at the hip, and its pieces clattered to the floor in a cacophony of noise. Sanford altered his stance and strapped his energy cutlass back to his hip.
He muttered a quick ''scuse me' –to the sparking, soot-belching remains as he stepped over them.
Up a stairwell and out of the humming darkness in the pipe-strewn underchamber, Sanford disgorged into a taught hallway that went only north. He followed walls of cracked, beaten and ancient plaster until he found an office-cubicle space and surveyed his situation.
This entire place is crawling with sentries. Junkers, Mutant-things…
Sanford didn't have to see the entire room to know how many they numbered. All of the cubicles and desks had been leveled by time and disrepair. The room resembled a miniature landfill; just a hill of jagged, rolling shit for three of these Junkers to wander around in. They sounded machine-like too.
Clunk, whir, clunk, clunk- went their joints and metal heels.
Easy pickings, the scavenger slipped around the smashed flank of an aluminum work desk. Drop low and they won't know a thing.
Metal shrieked and a body of steel clattered to the ground. Sanford cut out one of the Junker's legs from under itself, and he plunged the cutlass' tip into its grooved chest when it fell. By the time its two friends wattled over, Sanford had already moved.
More Protectron models. Each of them was screwed up in its own unique way. Their hulls were repainted with the black-white colors and the skull emblem of this mysterious faction that owned them. Their arms had been replaced from the elbow-up with serrated machete blades and sharpened pylon shards. All rusty and beaten to hell; they looked like things straight out of the latter. Hell.
Lemme' send you there.
Crash~! –the first Junker collapsed with a sparking trench wrought down its spinal plating. It vomited soot and bouts of machine-blood black as night as it fell.
Its friend was quicker on the mark, and Sanford was forced to weave westward as the last Junker robot twisted on its heel and slashed outwards with one of its machete blades. The weapon actually whistled as it passed closely, and horizontally to Sanford's nose-bridge.
Gotta' cull that shit.
The scavenger swept upwards and ran the thing through the abdomen with his blade, gritting his teeth, twisting the hilt, and kicking the spasming machine free with a swift jolt of his foot. Clack~! –rang the corpse. It twitched and sparked and heaved before going still.
Sanford, three; Assholes, zero.
The scavenger didn't stay to regard his handiwork. The office led into something that was of higher cause for his concern.
Damn.
There was no fighting his way through this one. This time, he was outnumbered by a lot. Even he couldn't win a fight in these circumstances.
Oh, Helios, how I've missed you from better times…
The appliance store might have once been bright with daylight and even at these hours, at least sporadically populated by late-shift clerks and eccentric night owl customers.
Now, it was a hollow, hangar-like tomb that was crisscrossed with rows of desolate refrigerators, ovens, washing machines and combination kitchen setups.
That, and it was patrolled by tens of Junker sentries.
The robots wandered like lumbering, metallic zombies. Protectron-Assaultron hybrids, Gutsy chassis welded onto leg sponsons, and RoboBrain treads affixed to the waists of other models. They were in singles and pairs, and they patrolled the almost endless rows of old suburban refinery with a diligent persistence.
Sanford did the same thing he did with all the old cars outside. It was all just a game of weaving and using the dark. Even robotic sensors had their limits, and these were Junkers, they had plenty of scanning software and hardware that was already on the fritz.
"Have. A. Nice. Day." –A wandering Protectron groaned without tone or humanity, its stubby feet clacking with each fall as it passed between a pair of door-gaping fridge units.
Eat me, you freak.
Sanford waited for the machine to waddle past and slipped from where he had been hiding in the dark gap between the units.
"Please. Remember. To wash. Your. Hands." –The robot droned to his south.
At least there's something we can agree on, you me.
The appliance store's front was shattered. It once been made of glass and was now open on all squares. Sanford slipped between a few islands of ruined cashier counters and avoided the studious, almost drunken observations of a hovering Gutsy Junker as it passed between two of the registers.
This was a Home-Co store.
Home-Co! The modern suppliers to meet your needs for the standardized family lifestyle of the American household. Sanford cast the dead store a grim smile as he hopped over the front's shattered glass mounds and through one of the window sills.
Outside was one of the main aisles of Helios' public shopping center. The Home-Co! logo emblazoned over the storefront's roof behind him was a dark, unlit reminder of the world he had once known.
I remember when dad took us to buy a fridge from there one day. He thought the prices were so outrageous, that he left in a fit, and bought our new fridge from some independent place outside where Goodnieghbor is. It worked for a year and crapped out.
Sanford hid among an old seating area, looking around the grand-styled center, his eyes fell on torn, rotting banners that had once draped over the aisles and halls. Mounds of rubble buried storefronts once littered with bright colors and spunky brandnames. Ruined Nuka-Cola machines stuck from the debris like mourning gulls trapped in a dried landslide. Moonlight shimmered from a massive pair of shattered skylight panels directly overhead, and the silvery illumination dappled off of the remnants of his old world with seeming sorrow.
I remember this life.
Sanford switched to his rifle and navigated through wire-iron seats and wire-iron tables, he knelt over a rotting, fallen table-umbrella bloom that was spread on the floor like a red-white striped blanket.
I wonder how many others might be alive who do too.
He knew the answer to that. His father was alive. His mother was alive. Fuck them both.
All alone.
There were Junker patrols out here too. He could see them far off down other aisles in the shopping passages. They were in pairs and trios, working loops through the ruined storefronts, lobbies and dining areas. Sanford had forgotten how huge Helios was on the inside.
I hear something.
The scavenger lowered his head and presented his ear. For just a second, he believed he was hearing the whisper of those chute tunnels again.
But it wasn't a whisper of wind. This time, it was a whisper of voices.
Shouting, cheering, some things that were very distant.
Follow the noise.
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The cheering was always something of a double-edged sword for him. On one hand, it made it easy to fantasize, and forget the reasons why he led the life he led. On the other hand, it reminded him of the repugnancy of these people, and of how much he hated them.
Calvin Studebak didn't have as much humanity left in his skin as he did his own guts. What had gradually started to happen over the years was a transformation that left him in some indescribable parody between the realm of flesh and that of steel. His left arm was metal, his left eye was metal and so too was the leftwards wrap of his cranium. All of the bionics wired across his breast and legs didn't exactly subtract from the constant feeling of Winter due to the soulless metal that was gradually replacing his birth-skin.
So it was indeed strange, smoking a cigarette, feeling the nothingness on his lips and on the exterior of his robotic form, yet taking in the smog and the rejuvenation of addiction within his very organic lungs and throat.
He coughed, and some of the smoke rolled out and past his teeth to dissipate in his face. Calvin bit the cigarette's butt and ducked his one good hand into the pocket of his coat, digging until he found the object he sought.
Eat it up, you bastards, it's what you've wanted.
"I can't believe you got both of them."
Why must they always try to speak with me during the events?
Calvin pinched his smoke out of his lips and smiled, hiding his newly retrieved bauble behind his own hip in his other hand. He stepped towards the rim of the Praetorian Box again, and he followed the Gunner envoy's gaze down into the arena below.
"They always say that the early birds gets the worm." He said, gesturing with his cigarette. "The Scavenger's never been a me problem, and so it's easy to catch the jump on someone who's ignorant of you."
"That's…" The Gunner was named Leeroy. He was a scarred fellow, like pretty much everyone in his group was. Dark skin, missing an eye and clad in an Army-standard flak suit. He looked every bit like an Old Earth soldier of the United States of America, minus the leather, and the raggedy appearance. If nothing else, Calvin admired the Gunners for their discipline, but not so much their purpose.
No better than Raiders.
"-I've idolized General Sherridan in my matches of late." Calvin said, his bionic eye whirring as it focused on the envoy's face. "I never needed the sponsorship that the Skulltakers offer to know a good ally when I see one. I assume this will… help things along with our agreement?" He gestured again to the two unwilling participants below.
"Oh yeah." Leeroy grinned, watching the events below with a fixed and keen eye. The patch over his right eye was a bit of a mark of kinship between them. A man who had lost an eye could have good words of reason and mutual understanding with another man who had lost an eye too. "The Scavenger's nothing without these. That Deathclaw? That thing's getting what's coming to it. Say, you're a know-it-all; how'd some Scav' get his hands on a loyal beast like that?"
"Truthfully," Calvin shook his head. "I haven't the foggiest myself. Not at all. Not at all."
"He probably mind-wiped it."
Leeroy and Calvin looked over at the other Gunner envoy standing next to them. A bald-headed woman of younger age by the name of Kell. She had both her eyes still, but there were a series of scars running up and down her grimy face that spoke leagues of troubled times all of their own. Their similar origins led to a distinct likeness in body type as well as attitude. Calvin had observed that all Gunners possessed the personalities of corpses, but rarely did he run into women that held such masculine blandnesses and men who lacked any muscular definition whatsoever.
Were the Gunners cloning people, or were their recruitment processes so vigilant and standardized that people came out like this each and every time?
"What is this woman going on with…" Leeroy was laughing at Kell's suggestion. It lightened Calvin's mood, and so he sucked on his smoke and grinned as he watched the two mercenaries bicker. "The Scavenger's not smart enough to do that. That's a southern thing. Ya' know, the stories? You think our guy could do that?"
"How else could he have wiped out half of a division in just a few months?"Kell countered, staring at him with these expressionless eyes. They lacked commandeering and dominance. Calvin didn't like it. Leeroy had it too. He didn't like either of them. "This Tobs guy is the shit. He killed General Hart."
"Hart." Leeroy tisked. "He will be missed. Guy was an asshole in the barracks block, but he got the job done. You know that, man? The Scavenger, the guy you stole these things from? He assaulted Hart's camp, killed everyone, and disemboweled the General, all in a night."
"All in a night." Kell was looking down at the arena again. "I had friends in Hart's unit."
"We all did." Leeroy sighed. Calvin experienced nothing from the exchange. To him, Gunners had their uses being either dead or alive. Alive; and they could prove to be valuable allies for his cause. Dead; and they weren't bothering a soul anymore.
Calvin showed none of this anyhow, which was a trademark of his cold, roboticized exterior. It had its ups and downs.
"Junker."
Calvin turned from the rim of the Box and smiled.
"The man of the hour." He said.
A hand thick with strength gripped his shoulder and clenched. It was a good thing Calvin, the Junker, could hide his expressions and emotions well, because Brokeman Jawlock's breath stunk like a heap of dead bodies.
"I see you've put my caps to good use, eh?" Jawlock's grin was hidden underneath all the facial hair, and even though Calvin was a standard height for a middle aged man as he was, he still had to look up at the monstrous, younger warlord for clarity.
"As always, my friend. As always. Your prisoner stockhold this week was quite lovely. I look forward to their performance." Calvin waited for the Skulltaker warlord's fingers to slip off his shoulderblade before he took another drag of his cigarette. "-As I would think, and hope, your crew does as well."
"Aw yeah," Brokeman laughed, and Calvin could see the handle for his massive hammer jostling around back there as the mount-straps struggled to keep it against the Raider chief's spine. "-I've got a whole house of rabble-rousers waiting for that blood to spill. I got ya' a good selection this time; one of those wars, ya' know? Lots of prisoners not willing to wear my emblem. They'll make you fine entertainment. They will."
"I've no doubt of it!" The Junker laughed. "Ah! Mr. Brokeman Jawlock," He turned to the two Gunner envoys standing beside him, gesturing them to the towering man. "Lord of the Skulltakers hailing from the North! The Eviscerator, and the Hammer of Nuka, and… and…"
Calvin actually faltered. The Warlord of the Skulltakers had an extensive list of titles that was as long or longer than the very height of his ego, and he enjoyed having them listed in prim, proper introductions.
"-You got it, and;" Brokeman grinned like an appeased child. "-The Beast of 495, eh?"
"Yes, of course, and-"
"-Go on, Patron."
Calvin fucking hated the man.
"-The Beast of 495, and the Doom of the Dirt Rod Tribe." Calvin finished with a hitch of disgust. "Gunner envoys Leeroy and Kell; it appears you both share a common enemy."
"Nah, Boston's outside my watch." Brokeman wiped at his mustache before either of the Gunners could speak. Both of them were looking up at him as if he wasn't even a human, but a giant of some sort. "This Scavenger dude you people ramble about sounds like a trip though. Maybe I should bring him up to Nuka-World and use him for some things. I've got plenty of people I need stamped."
"Chieftain of the Skulltakers?" Leeroy laughed. "I'm honored, sir."
"Hey, an admirer. I dig." Brokeman gripped Leeroy's shoulder and winked at Kell. "Who're you then, doe?"
Kell looked like she wanted to shoot him. Quickly, Calvin stepped forwards and pointed to the arena.
"So the deal is set then, and to the mark I must remind you all," He explained. "I get the caps, the Gunners have their arch rival weakened, and you," He pointed to Brokeman. "-the moment this Scavenger's Deathclaw outlives its marketing value; it's yours. Sedated, mind-wiped, augmented, however you want it."
"-Yeah." Brokeman stroked his beard, intrigued. "Yeah, all you lot are telling stories about that thing. Y-You say it can talk? How's that?"
"I heard it myself." Calvin winked. "I even believe, it refers to itself as a she."
"Hey, havin' some razor-dragon on the rag's not a bad weapon." Brokeman watched the arena below. "Look at that thing. Fuckin' ugliest motherfucker I ain't evva' fuckin' seen. Don't kill it, man, I can use a machine like that. Nuka-World's politics demand some sharp edged precision, you know?"
"Precisely. Precisely, really!" Calvin laughed, and then he pointed to a spot behind the warlord. "-And you, Ms. Locust-"
"Sarah is appropriate." Spoke a woman clad in black infantry armor. She had been so silent throughout this exchange that even the Gunner envoys and Brokeman had forgotten she was there. The warlord leered at her with this ugly smile. He did that with every woman he encountered, but he did it with persistence against Sarah Locust of the Scythe Company. "You get the computers, we get that machine." The Company commander nodded to the Mr. Gutsy below in the arena. "I've heard tales of that robot. It and this Scavenger have a long history?"
"The longest." Leeroy sneered. "I saw that freaking robot clip one of my guys in two with its little saw there. I heard it laughing while it did it. The Scav's got a thing with that Gutsy."
"It calls itself Han-cock." Calvin blew a puff of smoke out from his lips, and flicked the spent butt off the ledge of the Box. "In fact, I must relent, I couldn't get the Mr. Gutsy to shut up when I had it in its cell. I had some of my Super Mongers restrain it, and only then could I get it to see reason. We actually have a participant down there today who entered the ring willingly."
"No shit?" Brokeman grinned like a doofus. "Hell, can we switch prizes?" He went to nudge Sarah Locust, but one of her nearby guards put his hand on the sidearm at his hip, and the Warlord stopped to grin at her. "Lady, I don't want you to pull out that gun. People pull guns on me and go bye-bye."
"The Mr. Gutsy is ours. You receive the creature." Sarah smiled humorlessly. "It's a fair split of the spoils. Besides; I'm not transporting a live Deathclaw back to D.C."
Brokeman muttered something under his breath along the lines of that being 'too bad' –along with a more vulgar insult for the armed Scythe guard.
"All's well for the best. Now, you," The Junker turned to the other side of the Praetorian Box, where the only person who wasn't interested in observing the match below stood within the shadows of the conversation, hidden in a long trench coat, and a silvery fedora hat. "-your request is a little more complicated but doable. Podcaster! If you would show our guest his own take of the spoils?"
"I've got a one-time offer for you, straight from the market-mind of the Patron."
"Fuckin' thing gets on my nerves…" Brokeman grumbled.
The RoboBrain rattled on its tread system from the Box's ledge, its green eye focusing on the worldless stranger who stood nearby.
"You sir, are a lucky, lucky man."
In acceptance of this, the stranger stepped forwards and offered a curt tip of his hat to the Junker. All in attendance- aside from the Junker –risked him a glance, and did not stare longer than that, for they all sensed a sort of wrongness about him.
"I appreciate that, Mr. Junker." The stranger said. "It'll all make sense when I get what I need."
"As with all clientele." Calvin waved Podcaster onwards. "Podcaster? The spoils."
"Righty-o, sir, righty-o." The RoboBrain wheeled its way closer. "Come with me, honored guest of the Box! We've got your deal."
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