III :: Long Days ::


I wish I was rich so I could help Gob out.

I mean, he doesn't deserve to be stuck there under Moriarty's dictatorship. Nova either, though she doesn't seem to like me. She didn't want to talk to me as much as I wanted to talk to her. Whatever, I don't like stuck up bitches anyway. Moriarty says she's just mad because there's another pretty girl walking around Megaton but I ask him who the hell he's talking about. I'm not pretty. Don't ever call me that. You will get punched in the face.

"Hey Moira," I pushed back a strand of hair from my face and lifted up my goggles, looking around the room for the practically insane bundle of experiments I have come to know and begrudgingly enjoy. "You have any fission batteries?"

She popped her head over the railing above my head, her own goggles pushing back her bangs until I could see so many strands straining to keep to her scalp. She pointed a finger at her chin, cocked her head and I heard Eduardo (her hired, live-in mercenary) grunt behind me; I almost smiled, but that would be pretty much useless. Moira would ask what I was smiling about and I didn't want to hurt her feelings when I needed her help.

"Oo," she chirped, relying solely on her hips to hold her up against the railing while she pointed with both hands at the shelf behind her counter. "Top shelf, in the brown box with stars on it!"

I saluted her. "I thank you kindly," I swiped my beer up as I turned on my heel, swilling down the last mouthful as I pulled aforementioned box from the shelf. After rifling around in it with my free hand for a moment, I grinned with a fission battery between two long fingers. "There you are my rusty beauty," I licked the rim of my beer and then dropped the bottle in the trash, readjusting my goggles before I moseyed my way back over to the workbench.

As I cracked open the battery, I eyed the shiny chassis that I had opened to replace a few wires to his speaker system. I had polished him pretty good before fixing that dent in is plate armor, so he was like a mirror now but I had to work with that speaker system. I don't think he'll be able to like have a legit conversation with me but maybe I can get him to play some music or something. He's a cutie and I don't want him to just sit out there and rust, plus that laser was pretty handy. Downed that raider pretty damn easily, figured that out after telling the old man Walter while helping him work on some pipes.

Should have never told any of these people I was handy with a wrench.

"That should be it," I twisted together three new wires, my gloves chaffing. "Now let's see how he works."

I pressed in a few buttons and then closed the panel. After a moment or two of waiting, listening to Moira's welder huffing upstairs, the laser on the metal ball crackled to life and the speaker belched a few incoherent words then wobbled into a hover. It almost shook its 'head' and then beeped once, twice and bobbed happily, spinning around me. I chuckled and tugged my goggles down around my neck, pulling my gloves off and tucking them into my back pocket.

"Well you little shit, you're lucky you saved my ass back in Springvale or I wouldn't have done all this work on you. A lot more work than you think."

It beeped a few times and then froze, chassis humming. Eduardo shuffled behind me, Moira peeked over the railing again, welder in hand. The humming grew louder for a moment and then it belched out one word.

"Hello."


I got a house.

I got a house after disarming a nuclear bomb.

A motherfucking. nuclear. bomb.

I hope I run into people from the Vault one day so I can show off how useful I am. How I'm not the big fuck up that trails after daddy and someone I can't have. I saved a town! How's that for useless?

But right now, I feel useless because I'm sitting on my bed, back against the wall, elbows propped on my knees. I'm worrying my chin between my fingers and I'm sitting in my underwear. The robot – who has yet to be named – is resting on the desk on the other end of the room, hooked up to a portable nuclear charger Moira helped me rig up.

The robot hasn't spoke since and I'm glad for that because to be honest, it freaked me out a little bit. Since coming from the Vault, it took a lot to freak me out. Hell, ghouls have been around for hundreds of years and people out here are still freaked out by them. Gob is the best friend I have ever had, really. I'm glad I talked to him, he taught me all kinds of things, sort of gave me a brief history lesson of the settlements that had been popping up all around the Wasteland. He told me which mercenary groups were good guys, which were bad guys. I gotta remember to look out for guys in black armor with white paint on the chest. There's these people with a green four leaf clover on the chest, they're Reilly's Rangers and they investigate ruins, bring important invoices and everything.

I would love to join them.

My favorite tip however was about going to Moira's though, I was so happy to get a new gun and some better clothes. She had this armor called Merc Adventurer Armor (though, there is no fucking point in calling it armor) and I love it, so I bought it. Lots of bullets, shiny guns and other things later, I was ready to go out into the Wasteland. Jack offs and raiders, this odd dog that is waiting for me outside of town. I felt bad for the little robot because I couldn't really bring him out to much, the dent in his chassis made him clumsy. Didn't need that out there.

But I did need something out there.

I asked Jericho, he sucks.

I asked Billy, he has Maggie.

I asked everyone, except for Gob. Who was the brunt of my attention tonight. Not that he complained, but I know I was annoying him. Just a little. I wish he could come out into the Wastes with me, it gets pretty lonely out there. I didn't like camping alone, unless I could find a really small place to huddle in. Then I was. . .ok.

"Hey Gob," I ran my finger tip around the mouth of my Nuka-Quantum, feeling the radiation and the sugar buzzing through my teeth but I was surprisingly mellow. "Didn' you say something about a city of ghouls the other day?"

He sighed, looked up at me from under his scraggly brow. "Yeah, Underworld. That's where I used to live before I left to find fortune and adventure," he waved his arms in the air like the care-free guy I know he can be, but then Moriarty cursed somewhere in the building and he hunched back in on himself. "All I found was this place."

I chewed on my lip for a moment, took a sip of my drink, saw the Quantum shine in the reflection of Gob's milky eyes as it slipped down my chin. "Think I could find a partner down there?"

He raised what was left of his eyebrow. "What about that little trash can you fixed up?"

I waved a hand. "He can't go out yet, his power core needs some tweaking. I was thinking of swinging him by Rivet City if you said Underworld was a prime partner crop."

When he didn't say anything, I finally really looked at him and saw the nervousness in his shoulders. It made me cock my head, then I jumped when Nova tumbled down the stairs, hitting her head hard on the far wall. A man came tumbling down after her but so did Moriarty and he grabbed the man by the back of his neck, obviously cutting off some air supply by the way the stranger scrambled and gagged. Nova stumbled to her feet, rubbing her own throat and adjusting her dress, hiding behind her red hair when she saw me staring; Moriarty was busy dragging the 'patron' outside.

"Gob," I mumbled, he looked over at me. "Think you could tell me how to get there," I asked with a pouty face, something that often won Amata (or, once upon a time, Suzie Mack) over in the past.

I slapped myself when Gob turned away to pull a few beers from the fridge for some people at the end of the bar; they looked at me weird.

No thinking about the Vault, especially Amata.

He hesitated and then nodded reluctantly, leaning onto the counter. "Okay, so here's what you gotta do. . ." I listened to him for a moment, catching what I needed but mainly I heard 'It should be possible to hit Rivet City on your way'. After all that, he made me freeze with the added, "But please be careful, Min, you're one of the few friends I've got. And I don't wanna lose you."

It took me a moment but I curled my lips up in the corners like a cheshire cat I saw in an old holotape once. I pushed up onto my knees in the stool, sticking my ass in the air and reaching over to pat him on the shoulder. I heard someone whistle behind me and chuckled, sliding back into a modest sitting position.

"Don't worry about me, Gobby! I can take care of myself," true, that contradicted half the reasons I wanted a partner in the first place (the other half of course being that I was just plain lonely sometimes), but what else could I say to him?

I'm a lonely, lonely girly, Gob.