Forty-four hours after Callie woke up from the autodoc, the initial layers of re-writing of the Platinum Chip were 'done.' She never had access to the original, so it wasn't an issue of replication, but of prediction and imagination. Her vault lacked Securitrons, but having Yes Man as a building block was enough. Despite Benny's insistence, she hadn't really slept. He hadn't pushed the issue too far, the 48 hour time frame had been his, after all.

At first she had worked from her Pip-boy screen, but it became obvious she would be much faster at one of the terminals in the office. Packets of data were sent back and forth between the terminal and her Pip-boy, there were plenty of little programs still stored on her Pip-boy that could be adapted for the Securitron series. They weren't that different from the Mr. Handys, after all.

Forty-six hours after Callie woke up from the autodoc, she was satisfied with Yes Man's current state. She had tweaked a few settings here and there, making it ready to assume control of House's systems. The only lingering issue was the expression of preferences. There wasn't anything in its coding that suggested it should be able to dismiss direct commands. For the most part, it was as dutiful as any other robot. There wasn't time to acquire another bot and start from scratch. From the way Benny made it sound, it was a small miracle that he had even been able to recover Yes Man at all. When the Securitrons broke down, the other units would swarm in and cannibalize them, tearing them apart, presumably for scrap, and cart off their deceased robot compatriots out of sight and back into the Lucky 38. Of course, that meant the question was really why this hadn't happened to Yes Man's unit.

At forty-seven hours after waking up from the autodoc, Benny returned to the suite in leather armor and combat boots. It was nearly time. Callie had never seen him carry anything larger than a pistol, but he deposited two assault rifles on the bartop before lighting his cigarette.

Callie had been popping Mentats all along, out of sight from Benny, but he undoubtedly knew. After all, he had claimed to recognize her addict's eyes right from the beginning. People didn't just stay awake for forty-seven hours straight without some sort of aid. He could have stopped her, maybe, but he didn't even try.

He had to feign that she was more important than his plan. But that wasn't true. It couldn't be true because he let her work through the night and into the next day. He pushed food in her direction but never stuck around to watch her eat it. Fair enough, he had been running around as well, finalizing preparations.

Last night, through the open office door, she watched him sleep. It was dark in the office and even darker in the bedroom, but she could make out the features of his face from the combination of many dim glows from many different monitors. He looked innocent even though she knew he was not. The darkness hid everything.

"Do you even know how to fire a rifle?" Callie sunk into the couch, thankful to finally be off those chairs in the office that attempted to correct poor posture but in reality were just plain uncomfortable. Corrected your posture by making you happier to stand, maybe.

"Don't even start with me, Girlie." He was smiling. There was a very real chance this would end up with him dead, but it was also likely everything he had ever wanted. His climbing the ladder of power was maybe the one thing he could love unconditionally. The small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes creased, and when he leaned over to kiss her she touched just there as well.

There was an hour left, far as she could tell, and about a dozen questions she wanted answers to. Then there was about a dozen other things she wanted to tell Benny, although they were all sort of silly useless things in comparison.

When he sat down next to her, the leather of his armor creaked in protest. It was a little too tight across his chest, but Callie liked that. She also kind of wanted to tear it right off of him, but there wasn't time for that. It would be inappropriate and Callie was trying really hard to figure out how to not be such a strange one all the time. In her eyes, she had only gotten worse with people since losing Mint.

Still, while she couldn't pull his armor off, she did grab hold of one of the loose buckles and pulled him towards her.

"You're supposed to come back. If you don't, I'm going to collect on those caps House offered me."

"Eh, so you'll just switch teams if I fail, I see how it is."

"No, I'll just take credit for killing you. Because I'll be so pissed at you that I'll need the caps to hire a prostitute to fuck on your corpse, you shit."

Benny laughed like it was the best joke in the world, even though it clearly wasn't.

"And what flavor of prostitute are you getting? If it's all the same to you, get one with nice tits, no one too skinny."

"I'll get a male one, just to spite you."

"And here I was, thinking I was your exception to the rule."

Callie audibly scoffed and pushed him away.

"Any other last minute confessions? We've got a little time before I've got to grab Swank and Cass." They had drifted closer again and his hand was in her hair. It still pulled away from the flesh at her neck even though the incision was well scabbed. It would vanish any day now.

"Fuck, wasn't the last one enough? I can't believe I even said that to you." She honestly didn't believe it. The plan was to keep that bit of herself well hidden. In fact, she had said it without really understanding what it meant. It felt right, at least, to tell him that she loved him. Fuck, she would have to try it again. "I love you, Benny."

Yep, it certainly felt right even if she couldn't really explain what she meant by it. It felt warm inside her chest even though it was something she expelled rather than consumed.

"I love you too, Callie." His smile was pretty dopey, silly, a whole bunch of other childish words for childish things.

They sat together in silence for awhile. Benny was normally such a talker that the stillness struck Callie as odd. It might have been a tactic to get her to speak first, but her resolve held.

"I'll come back to you. Don't worry about that." There was something more he wanted to say, that he just had to say before leaving. It wasn't like Benny ever needed an excuse to run his mouth. "I had to try, with you. I meant what I said, that I want you now, for your own sake. It doesn't have to do with Mint. But it's not as if I can erase my past, I can't live like she never existed. I've tried to learn from my mistakes in general. If you don't stop going forward, you die."

He was utterly rambling, Callie wasn't really sure where he was going with these looping sentences and vague language. Why couldn't he just be more direct.

"I regret. I'm not some sort of sociopath." Get to the point. Their time together was slipping away. "I regret that after we got civilized, when we came to the Strip, that I didn't marry Mint. I regret it because I know it's something she wanted. And I made a mistake in asking you, because it's not something you want. I should have made a better judgement."

Callie knew she was supposed to respond to that. If she said nothing, he might just keep on talking. Yeah, that was what was going to happen. She let the lull in conversation wrap around them.

"While I should have made a better judgment, I don't regret asking you. So don't for a second think that I didn't mean it. Only, if you do change your mind, you gotta tell me. It clearly upsets you, so I won't bring it up again after this. I'll put a big, fat, useless, salvaged rock on your finger whenever you want it."

She laughed, because she had no better response to give.

"Good, that's the last thing I wanted to say. Your turn."

Over the time that had elapsed she had pressed herself against him, like he had become a piece of the furniture.

"I have something, but it's kind of big. You'll just have to come back to hear about it."

"Making promises like that means I'll have to keep my ass alive."

"Yep."

Benny worked to extricate himself from the couch and from her. His armor creaked and groaned the whole time. Once he was up, he retrieved the assault rifles, slinging them both over one shoulder. They wouldn't be super effective against the robots, but they would make due. Callie had mentioned EMP grenades to Benny yesterday, but he had already thought of that. Cass had them, what few Benny had been able to locate. Other than that, they would have to get by with conventional weapons.

"You'll know once we're ready?"

"Yes Man will. It inventoried all the Securitrons in the Lucky 38 and knows the thresholds we're looking for. We're obviously not waiting for all the Securitrons to go offline, most important is finding and eliminating House's connection to the Securitrons, that should shut them down until they get new commands from Yes Man and us."

"There always is a way to get you talking."

Callie followed him to the door, hesitating before following him out of the suite and down to the lobby. The door clicked shut behind them.

"Shit, I don't have a key."

"Oh..."

It was such a weirdly mundane thing that they both kept forgetting, that it was up to Benny to let her back in, though she was free to leave whenever she liked.

"Here," he grabbed his full set of keys from one of the zippered armor pockets and shoved them into Callie's hands. She accepted them and put them into her slacks where they bulged against the fabric. Every access point to the Tops must have been on that ring, though it wasn't overly hefty. He handed them over as if it were nothing. Then it struck her, if both he and Swank went down, this fell to her.

They held hands in the elevator traveling down. Each time they rode this elevator together, the world had been changed.

The world probably deserved better than the two of them. He was ambitious and she was talented but largely apathetic. People who were kind and who were good and were noble didn't stand a chance against them. If she had only been a good girl the residents of Vault 3 might not be dead now. But in the end she was selfish and careless and put her own happiness in front of that of others. All of that and she might not have even been happy now.

"Try and get some rest, I'm sure Yes Man can wake you when it's time."

"There's no way I'm sleeping. Besides, this shouldn't take you very long. You have the maps from Yes Man. You know where House is, you just have to reach him and disconnect him."

His hand was on the back of her neck and he pulled her towards him, bringing their lips together in the center of the lobby. Cass whistled.

Benny snickered and pulled away. Swank still hadn't arrived, but Cass stood by the door, a shotgun over one shoulder and a revolver on her hip. Callie still didn't have a good read on the other woman, only that she was kind of a drunk and kind of...slutty? But she wasn't one to talk. Cass didn't know really what was going on, other than they were off to kill a pre-war relic of a man. She didn't know about Yes Man or seizing full control of the Strip or telling the NCR to fuck right off. Benny was probably right and her allegiance could change quickly. But Cass was also small, probably easily dealt with if her loyalties did change.

"Where's Swank?"

"I'm not his ma, how would I know?"

Benny hadn't yet let go of Callie's hand. She was starting to feel the effects of exhaustion, that was for sure. Even if they did take control of the Securitrons today, she probably wouldn't have the mental capacity to finish up the upgrades tonight. The attack party could take control of the building, Yes Man could assume control of the systems, and then she would pass out.

"I'm going to watch, from this side of the street." Callie wasn't entirely sure she had meant to say that out loud.

"You could always come with us." Cass smiled, showing off her pointy incisors. "I wanna see if the rumors are true."

"I'm not necessary, besides, I've got work here. Remote support."

Cass shrugged. She looked antsy, ready to go.

Swank appeared minutes later. He carried one assault rifle and one hunting rifle for longer range shooting. Like Benny, his armor pulled too snug against his chest but hung too loose everywhere else. It seemed so rudimentary that nothing ever fit anyone. Her vault suits had always been well tailored to her frame. In fact, they were a bit too flattering for her tastes. When she had first left Goodsprings, she had worn Mitchell's wife's old suit from 21. Pretty much the first thing she had done was discard that. At the time, she had thought that it was too out of character to wear something from a vault, now it was obvious the problem was it was too in-character.

"Benny, Cass, Cal, sorry I'm late."

"Nah, you're right on time." Benny clapped him on the back and they headed out the door. No one else had been briefed on what was about to happen. If everything went well, maybe a few shots fired in front of the Lucky 38, only to take out the immediate guard bots, then the rest of the fight would be safely contained inside the building, away from the prying eyes of the Strip. She wouldn't actually see anything from across the street. But somehow she felt like the gesture of it would mean something to Benny.

It felt like they had kissed goodbye a dozen times already. But they did, again.

Callie watched them cross the courtyard and pulled her box of Mentats from her pocket. The Lucky 38 wasn't terribly far away, but far enough that a little enhanced perception would be useful. Besides, she felt as if she were ready to pass out. Undoubtedly, if she did, her sleep would be haunted.

Benny conversed with one of the guard bots, but from this distance there was no chance at all of hearing what was transpiring.

She toggled her HUD on, hoping it would give her a bit more information about what was happening. The two guard bots were still green, but she was unsure at this distance if she and Benny would be read together as a joint threat and the tics would change color for her at all.

When she went to look at her Pip-boy again, to manually switch functions over so it displayed all hostility rather than those entities personally hostile to her, she missed the first shot.

Looking up, one of the Securitrons had buckshot blasted through its screen. Cass had unloaded her shotgun into it at point blank range, decimating the screen and compromising vital mechanisms. Clearly, she had good instincts about where to fire.

It was minor chaos on the Strip, tourists and regular patrons ducking for cover and running in the opposite direction. Even the drunks that dotted the landscape were visibly shot. Inside the Strip walls were seen as an oasis from the routinized violence that most were familiar with. The conflict should have been over soon, though.

Benny shot off rounds from one of the assault rifles in quick succession; the shotgun had clearly been the more effective of the two weapons. Callie should have known that and warned them. That being said, her experience with robots generally meant mending, not destroying them.

The attack party's quick reaction time had saved them. The guard bot had barely gotten off three rounds before it was down and it's red tic faded from Callie's HUD. Benny turned and looked back at her before crossing the threshold to the Lucky 38 and disappearing from sight.

Callie hadn't brought her laser pistol with her, and she wasn't wearing armor, but she was filled with an irrational impulse to go after them. But Benny hadn't asked her. He shouldn't have had to ask, she should have just gone. But no, all she had to do was be a good girl and not have a seizure. She had to wind a few lines of code and a few more once they were inside. It wasn't as if she was a combat liability.

Fuck it. Benny was giving her what she wanted. She didn't have to play hero here, only participate in the parts she actually found fun. Twenty minutes elapsed as she sat on the steps of the Tops, studying the facade of the Lucky 38 as if it would give her a clue as to what was happening inside. The passersbys who were in a panic just minutes before resumed their day to day activities, chatting, drinking, flirting. They were enculturated to punctuations of violence. This was nothing and not one of them had been injured. She rested her head on her hands and waited.

After Yes Man was installed and she got some fucking sleep she would tell Benny about her life in the vault. Maybe she wouldn't tell everything, but she would ramble and spill stories like Benny did so easily. He would like that, appreciate it. It would be a way of letting him in and showing her appreciation of him. She would never be feminine or romantic or sweet, but she could make an effort to be open and honest.

Fuck she was so tired. She swallowed another Mentat dry.

There were two noises, pulling her in opposite directions. A whirl of mechanical punctuations approached her from behind. The doors to the Lucky 38 were thrown open, crashing against the exterior walls with a violent force.

Yes Man behind her, Benny ahead. It was ready, House was dead. And now a third noise, her Pip-boy chimed for a new message.

Three noises, and her feet pulled her forward to Benny. She didn't run, and he didn't run. They met somewhere in the middle of the road and she put her arms around his shoulders. His arms rested at her hips. He smelled like gunpowder and grease and every so slightly of iron. There was the giddiness of murder and chaos just underneath his controlled smile. He dropped the one assault rifle he still carried with him into the pavement.

There was a rip in his armor, right at the shoulder where her hand had come to rest, another one at his waist. Burn marks speckled his left side, but it hadn't gone through the protective layer.

"You need stims?"

"Already took them, now kiss me, Girlie, I'm the new master of Vegas."

She laughed and kissed him anyway, even though he was being terribly silly. She took his face between both her palms. Fuck was it great that her hands never hurt anymore. The kiss was slow and a tiny bit vulgar. Benny was undoubtedly aroused from the fight.

"What a lovely couple. Brings a tear right to my eye." No sarcasm, bots weren't capable.

Callie broke the kiss and turned back to Yes Man, who had rolled after her. "You don't have eyes, Yes Man."

"Oh."

"Come on, lets get you set up."

Callie and Benny walked side by side back into the Lucky 38, Yes Man rolling behind them.

"Wait, where is Swank?" Fear gripped her a little bit.

"Upstairs. So is Cass, figured we could use a private moment."

"Wasn't exactly private with an eavesdropping robot and half the Strip wondering what the fuck happened."

Benny just shrugged.

The interior of the Lucky 38 was now riddled with bits and pieces of robots. Blown out units lay like corpses in the lobby. Securitrons, maintenance Mr. Handys, all of them. It would have been nice if they could have saved some of these bots as well. The more units they had the better. It probably couldn't have been helped though.

"If there are some Mr. Handys left I can assign them to clean this up." Callie tripped over an arm. She hadn't been paying attention.

"Still thinking of moving in here?"

Benny, Callie, and Yes Man barely fit together in the space of the elevator. The elevator could have easily accommodated four people, maybe five, but the exaggerated 'shoulders' on the Securitrons dominated the space.

Callie idly wondered if Yes Man processed the graveyard of broken units they had waded through. It didn't have emotions, not like a person would, but it did assess information, and being faced with so many recently damaged units might have thrown up a warning flag. But no, it just faced straight ahead, its smiling face never changing, only occasionally flickering.

"No, I don't know why I said, that. I don't want to stay here. Force of habit, I guess. Offering a robot for a job."

When they reached the penthouse, Yes Man wheeled itself out first and made a beeline for House's monitor and the control panel below it.

"What the fuck!" Cass's voice. Right, she didn't know about Yes Man.

"Calm down, this one's with us." Swank assured her. Callie had never seen Swank interact with Yes Man, but she supposed that Benny would have told him.

She and Benny rounded the corner and Callie could see Cass was still on edge, gripping her shotgun and keeping it aimed on Yes Man. Yes Man, for all its credit, had no fucks to give. Robots were like that. It didn't matter if Cass freaked out on it anyway. Callie had backed up all of its programming to her Pip-boy beforehand, just in case they lost Yes Man somehow. It could be installed in any of a number of deactivated units.

"Okay, Yes Man." She was the robot wizard, after all. Benny would follow her lead with the bots, so she took it. "First priority, bring the remaining Securitrons back online. Leave in place their previous targeting parameters." In the minutes that had elapsed between House dying and Yes Man bringing the Securitrons back online, the remote units would have powered down, leaving the Strip vulnerable. The patrol bots needed to come back up as soon as possible to keep business going as usual.

"Adjust the internal bots so that the four of us are permitted to access the Lucky 38, exclude everyone else from entering the premises for now." She would remove Cass from the access list as soon as she left the room. The redhead was already on edge and hearing she wasn't an authorized user might have set her right off. "Position new guards in front of the building. Other than that, proceed with the download of the upgrade data. I need everything you can get, materials available, damage thresholds, processing power, SOPs. Whatever you can get on the MKII upgrades. Transfer all of that to my Pip-boy. Give me a ping if it runs out of space, but we should be good."

"Yes ma'am."

"Don't adjust access to your unit though, keep that as is. Just me and Benny."

"Swank, why don't you take Cass back to the Tops. She looks like she could use a drink, or ten," Benny suggested.

"What the fuck is going on here? I don't like being lied to." The shotgun was still trained on Yes Man.

"We're taking control of the Strip, that's it." Callie kept her voice clean and even. "You should have realized that."

"Yeah, yeah I guess. But fuck, we just spent half an hour blowing these robot shits to bits, now I'm supposed to trust this one."

"Don't worry, she's a wizard!" Swank laughed his exclamation. "Come on, Cass, we did our job, next step is up to Cal."

Cass lowered her weapon, but still seemed uneasy about the whole thing. "Okay, okay, let's go." She was rattled, that was for sure. If it was from the firefight or purely Yes Man's introduction, Callie couldn't be sure.

Callie noticed Swank's hand come to rest on the small of Cass's back as they made their way back to the elevator. So maybe that was back on. Or something. It wasn't like she was the intimacy expert.

"Benny, I need to sleep." She hadn't meant to admit that. She wanted to perform the upgrades first, but nothing was left in her.

"I know. Hand me your drugs."

"What?"

"You'll just be tempted to take them again to stay awake. Yes Man has some work to do, right? Go lay down in the bedroom. I'll keep an eye on him."

Callie reached into her pocket and passed her box to Benny. There were only two tabs left, anyway. She wasn't super pleased with the idea of sleeping in House's bed, but she supposed he hadn't actually slept in it for hundreds of years, so it was probably fine.

"Wait, one last thing. Yes Man." She should take care of this before she fell asleep.

"Yep."

"Are Cass and Swank out of the building?"

"Yep."

"Exclude Cass from the whitelist. Don't let her back in."

"Sure thing, Pretty Lady."

"You think that's for the best?" Benny had already settled in an armchair, propping his boots up on the glass-topped coffee table.

"We should have killed her before she left." Callie was matter of fact about the situation.

"Swank will take care of it when he's ready. Now, go. to. bed." He punctuated each word but didn't get up from the chair.

Callie didn't bother to reply, and rather just made her way to the bedroom. She was asleep just about as soon as her head hit the pillow.