Chapter 1: Tick
In The Wasteland, sometimes what comes towards you over the sand is what you would guess: raiders, traders, crusaders, and escapaders, or on a slow day, maybe a pack of radioactive scorpions the size of dogs. But between all that... is the wind... and the waiting. Tick... Tick... Tick...
Brass Bulldog placed an iron Three of Clubs onto a copper Four of Hearts. Tick.
The robot stood in the desert, sandy wind howling across him.
With his metallic fingertips, he flipped over the card that had been under the iron Three of Clubs. Tick.
Even in the harsh winds, the heavy metal cards laid obediently still on the sun-bleached table.
The newly revealed card was an iron Ace of Spades. With his metallic fingertips, Brass picked it up (Tick) and set it down in the foundation area above the tableau. Tick.
Brass stood at his usual post at the base of the hill below the Mojave Outpost checkpoint. At the top of the hill, at the checkpoint itself, NCR Rangers screened newcomers to the wastes surrounding New Vegas. Mostly, anyone could get in who didn't glow and didn't have suspiciously deathclaw-like features that were all the better to gobble you up with. Not a lot of point to being pickier than that. Not here. Bad for business. Bad for, well, everyone's business. A New Vegas without sin and vice? Might as well stick to the east and save yourself the trip.
Coming down the hill, picking their way down the steep broken-up-ashphalt road, was a new traveler. Allowed through the checkpoint, though again, that didn't mean too much. They wore power armor. To Brass's visual scanners they appeared to waver in the heat, though other percepters were less prone to distortion. Thermals confirmed it was LIKELY a biological being inside of the suit. "Human" was getting to be a bit of a poor assumption these days. Not that he was one to talk.
Brass continued to play his card game as the figure neared.
Tick... Tick... Tick...
Once they were in conversational distance, Brass stopped busying the cards, picked up the only other item on his table (a cowboy hat) and put it (the cowboy hat) on.
"Howdy do, pard?" Brass asked, doing his best 'friendly cowboy.'
"Stay away," came the female voice through the suit's speakers. She continued to walk on a route to pass by Brass's table. Not breaking stride, she drew an especially mean-looking plasma pistol.
Brass leaned an elbow on the table. "Word of advice?" he offered. "Iffin yer new to these parts. Iffin yi've been before, don't mind me."
The person in the power armor slowed, and then stopped, and turned to face Brass, pistol still ready enough to make a smoking puddle out of the bot before her.
As the two stood there in the desert, face to face, Brass found that his scanners fixated on one detail of her armor. Over the left breast, a decal of a blue zeta symbol was spray painted onto the gunmetal armor. That symbol certainly used to mean a lot, pre-war. But that had been a long time ago now. Likely it meant something else entirely to this traveler, or, heck, even more likely that it had meant something to someone else who used to own this armor before this traveler killed that person and took the working parts from among their things.
"Well?" she asked.
"Hm?" Brass said, and then quickly played back a sped up version of his memory of the interaction thus far. "Oh, yessum, the advice. Hang a right at the highway intersection down yonder, iffin yer headed to New Vegas. The left fork would get you as far as Goodsprings, but past that, that there road belongs to deathclaws now."
"Right..." she said. "Do you stand here all day just to tell people that?"
"No ma'am."
"Why do you stand here?"
"Offerin my services. Gun for hire. Get you where you're going in one piece, though blistered toes and sunburned noses are still your liabilities. How is the arch support in power armor boots anyways?"
Rather than answering, the traveler instead asked, "Who do you belong to?"
"No man and no clan. I was a human once. Pre war. As things went on, well, get a finger shot off here, swap it out. Get a footsie blowed off there, swap it out. The heart was a doozie I tell ya, though, that's vestigial now, sort of a momento. Nothing organic left to need it, nohow. The brain was the last organic holdout of consequence. But, some memories start to get fuzzy, why not store them in a solid state? Odd to get used to, but you can't beat the fidelity, and soon enough it's all you use. Sharpness starts to slip, math what used to be mental math is now paper figurin', and math what used to be paper figurin' needs a calculator. Why not skip the middle man and add the calculator to the circuitry?"
Brass glanced down at his card game, and then shook his mechanical head, and looked back up to the traveler.
"Anyways. I rambled. Who do I belong to? Only myself."
"How much for an escort to New Vegas if we don't talk on the way?"
"Exorbitant."
The traveler sighed. "How much if we do talk?"
"Twelve caps."
"HA! If you want to get someone alone to kill them and take their stuff, you have to make the good deal BELIEVABLE!"
Deadpan, mostly dropping his cowboy voice now, Brass said, "Oh me, what was I thinking. Five... NINE hundred caps. A thousand even or I won't budge from this here table."
Without looking, he picked up an iron Two of Spades and placed it on the appropriate Ace.
Tick,
Tick.
She wasn't all wrong. There was an angle. Two angles, really. But not robbery. Neither angle was robbery.
The first: travelers' tales were music to his memory banks.
The second: good way to keep towns out of trouble was to be in lockstep with the trouble. Brass kept the peace for the sake of the animals in these parts, the bramen, the dogs, no wicked hearted outsider would do any harm to them on his watch. So when a newcomer was passing through, he liked to come along with them as best he could help it, keep em moving until they got into the city and then, their vices were their own business.
Brass toyed at one of his cards for show. "As you can see I'm very busy, so by all means, carry on."
The traveler took a deep breath in, and then sighed. "God you remind me of someone."
"Someone good? Bad? Ugly?"
"An old friend."
"Hm."
"Fifty caps to New Vegas, and when we're there I'll call in a favor with a mechanic I know and take care of any tuneups you need."
Clever. Probably a complete lie. But a clever way to insentivize keeping her alive.
"Deal, fifty caps and a tuneup," Brass agreed, and started collecting up his metal cards. "Name's Beebee."
"Hello, Beebee. You can call me Akito."
If there was a centimeter left of flesh or nerves within Brass, he would have flinched at that, felt chills spread through his torso, might have even shed a tear or two. But as it was, he continued to mechanically collect up his cards. Best to give the situation further time (of which there was plenty) to see if it was all just a great, big, coincidence.
Tick... Tick... Tick... Tick... Tick...
October 23, 2077...
Akito rapidly tapped her fingernails against her microphone. Tick tick tick! "Is this thing on? Hello?" Tick tick tick! Tick tick tick! And then, Tick tick SCREEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeee went the last series of taps, as Brass flipped a switch on the sound board and the microphone came online to a squeel of feedback that would wake you up better than coffee any morning.
With an annoyed tone, Brass said, "Yes, it's on." He then took his headphones off for a moment and rubbed his ears. It was anyone's guess as to how the constant ringing in his ears wasn't even worse by now.
"Are we on-on?" Akito asked.
Brass double checked with the sound board, and then looked up at the two lights mounted into the recording desk: the red light was illuminated, the green light was not.
"Everything is primed on our end, but we're not broadcasting until the station... oh wait!"
Brass spotted that the new patch cable was sitting unplugged. Some over-complicated nonsense that practically seemed intentionally designed to muck things up. He plugged it in, and the green light came on.
"Shit!" Brass said, and then quickly added, "I mean, uh, phooey! I think we ARE broadcasting!"
"Ohhhh my god."
Brass quickly took his chair beside Akito, scrambling to get his headphones and mic in order. He was a little off his game, and regretted all of the drugs he had done earlier that morning including ketamine, cocain, PCP, mushrooms, ayahuasca, mescaline, captain morgan, sailor jerry, kraken black, coffee, bacardi 151, meth, marijuanna, and e. As he got situated with his microphone and stuff, Akito covered for him on the airwaves.
"Gooooood moooooorniiiiiing Massachuseeeeeeeetts! Excuse us as we get settled in our new office. Besides some technical hangups it is a LOVELY morning, the weather today is a cool 68 Farenheight and partially cloudy. To any dogs listening, 'Bark bark bark!' Which for you non-dog-savy listeners means, 'Hey pooches, it's a great day to take your human out on a walk! The sidewalk should be cool enough for their paws and the temperature is just right for some physical activity!'"
Brass, finally set up, jumped in with, "I don't think we have to give OUR listeners any help coming up with 'physical activities' a human and a dog could do together today."
Akito gave a polite laugh, and then reached for the notes that she and Brass had been given about the day's news. "In Alabama today, the controversial bestiality bill has been... wait is this right? The bill has been REJECTED early this morning, meaning that non-abusive sex with animals remains LEGAL in all fifty states!"
"Wooooo!" Brass said, clapping his hands. Plap plap plap plap plap!
Akito went on, "The bill was shut down for anti-animal-rights reasons, oh, which is not great, buuuut we'll take what we can get!"
Brass gave an uncertain "Yeah" in agreement.
"That was the only thing really IN the bill, so, I guess it's fine?"
"I- um- ye- um- ye- uh- I guess so," Brass contributed.
"I don't love it."
"No."
"But, it's fine."
"Sure."
Moving down to the next bullet point on her list of news, Akito read, "In other news..."
She trailed off as some ticker tape started to print from a machine on Brass's side of the desk.
"Oh!" Brass said, and reached for the tape as it was being printed. "We are getting some breaking news, listeners. 'Emergency. Seek shelter at once. Nuclear attack... imminent.'"
"Uhh..."
Cold chills ran through Brass as he looked at the message. His fingers trembled, his heart beat fast, and he swallowed nervously.
Mind racing, Brass remembered the emergency proceedure. "Listeners, we will be switching this channel to the emergency broadcast line. Stay safe."
With that, Brass scooted back on his chair, went to the sound board, yanked out a phone line, and plugged it in to the appropriate other port.
Brass stood leaning over the sound board, bracing himself against it, trying to find his breath.
Akito grabbed him by the wrist, and said, "Let's GO!" as she pulled him towards the studio door to go seek shelter.
Brass and, well, someone CALLED Akito, sat beside each other at a campfire a little west of Novac, nestled in the pocket between the township and the mountain. Brass sang a song as the two of them looked at the burning campfire logs.
"Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded 16 tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said, "Well, a-bless my soul"
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain
Fightin' and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion
Can't no high toned woman make me walk the line
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
If you see me comin', better step aside
A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don't get you
Then the left one will
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store..."
Akito put another log on the fire, and then said, "It's less impressive when for all I know you're just playing a recording."
"Do you want me to do it once more with feeling?"
"Nooooooo I do not."
Brass sighed. "Maybe tomorrow while we finish the walk."
"That will not be necissary."
"Maybe not NECISSARY, but-"
Akito cut him off with a harsh, "Who goes there," as she picked her rifle up from beside herself.
Brass, perplexed, looked up to follow her gaze. His sensors hadn't alerted him to any threats.
"Oh," Brass said, amused, as he realized what this 'Akito' had noticed. "Just a friendly raccoon. Heh heh heh. Put the gun down, PUT THE GUN-"
With robotic percision as he saw her finger move to the trigger, Brass shot a blast from his laser pistol that destroyed the mechanism of the traveler's rifle.
"EXCUSE ME?" the Akito demanded, looking down at her destroyed rifle and then over at the robot.
"That raccoon... is a friend," Brass said.
Indeed, in spite of the uproar, the raccoon had already come up and stolen Brass's snacks out of his satchel and was sitting on a smooth rock nearby the fire, looking at the fire as they ate some cotton candy and chips and pizza and a good pretzel and some dabs from a pixie stick between food items to taste.
"Here's some water for you too, Tarro," Brass said, and set out a bowl and poured some filtered water into it. Tarro washed the pretzel in the water appreciatively and resumed eating the pretzel which was already a good pretzel, well it was at least an OKAY pretzel, but now it was a REALLY good pretzel for sure.
"Okay that raccoon is pretty hot I mean cute," Akito admitted, and set down her broken rifle.
The slightly German accent... the name Akito... and calling animals hot...
Brass was finally ready to go there. He asked the traveler, "What's the symbol on your chest mean to you?"
"Are you not programmed with non-English symbols?" the traveler chided. "It's a zeta. From the Greek alphabet."
"I know it's a zeta. I asked what it means to you," Brass said, and turned the bloatfly spit on the fire to let the other side cook for a bit.
The traveler, 'Akito,' sighed. "It's a symbol for zoosexual pride. It used to be a bigger deal. Now it's, kind of just a memory of a happier time. On the walk here, I told you about my adventures through the Commonwealth. How much of my heroics you actually believe is up to you-"
"I'm unconvinced poisoning the entire water supply to overthrow the mildly corrupt local government is heroics."
"WHATEVER, what I was saying is that whether or not you believe what I said I did, it should at least be clear that I was speaking about that part of the world with firsthand knowledge. You don't get that much detail unless you've actually lived in the place."
Brass thought back on the traveler's stories, and nodded. "True."
Akito went on. "Well, the truth is... I didn't just grow up there, in the Commonwealth. I grew up there BEFORE the Commonwealth. Massechussets. I was alive there when the bombs dropped. Survived that. Found my way into a vault. Took someone out of their cryogenic storage pod, killed them, and stole their place. That was when I knew morality was gone, or at least, it had become a completely different set of rules. I unthawed all this time later. Since then, I've been looking for... a pre-war friend, who I did some zoosexual pride projects with. Well, I've been looking for resolution on what happened to him, anyways. I know he would have been dead for about 200 years now."
Well. Of all the odds. When they got to New Vegas, he might have to step in and play a hand for once.
"Aki... Those are happy memories for me too. I still listen back to our old episodes on my walks back from New Vegas to the Mojave Outpost."
Brass held up his arm, and from a speaker in his wrist came the voice of a pre-war Akito. "Hello! And welcome once again to Z & M Morning Radio, all things Zooey, all things Morning. We hope all the dogs and horses listening are having a good start to their day, and, I don't know, if any weird human things are listening or whatever they can have a good day too I guess-"
He stopped the audio, and lowered his arm.
"Aki..." Brass said... "Just for old times' sake... Just for once... Look on your friend with your own eyes..."
Slowly, the traveler reached up to her helmet, and lifted it off of her head. Brass's mechanical heart beat faster. It really was her.
Beside the campfire, Brass and Akito fell into a long hug with each other, as Tarro ate some more of the cotton candy and pizza and had some more of the pixie stick as well.
Later in the night, Brass and Akito were still up, howling with laughter as they reminisced on moments from when they had done the show together. The time they had brought a vet on as a guest who hadn't realized the zooSEXUAL theme of the show, and was very flustered as he did his best to answer all of the strangely specific questions from the both of them. The time they had done the show as each other, using voice mods and trying to impersonate the other's mannerisms. The time they had a folley artist on to make sound effects for them throughout the broadcast. There were a lot of good times.
Coming off of one of the fits of laughter, Akito gave a happy sigh, and leaned against the side of Brass's chassis. "I'm glad that when the world ended, it was in the middle of our show. That was a good 'last normal thing' memory to hold on to."
"I'm glad I was able to find an archive, after," Brass said. "Mostly complete, just some gaps here and there. But I would be a less happy person if I couldn't relive these."
"You know, you... you always had a chance..." Akito mentioned.
"What do you mean?" Brass asked.
"A chance to smash!" Akito answered, slapping the chest of Brass's chassis lightly.
"Oh, uh- I- I don't- I-," Brass said awkwardly.
Akito sighed. "Oh well."
"Why not now?" Brass managed to ask. Upping seductiveness to 100%, the robot wrapped an arm cozily around Akito's power armor, and said, "I don't normally tell travelers this, but since it's you, my place is just in town here, in Novac. I have a... certain collection that we could have some fun with."
"Ohhhhhhhhhhh?" Akito asked, interested.
Still with seductiveness set to 100%, Brass said, "My place is the second disheveled shack on the left."
"Fuck yeah okay let's go," Akito said, and then stood up and picked up Brass bridal style and carried him into town. She set him down outside of his shack.
Brass extended his finger towards the door's lock. A little key came out of his fingertip. He inserted the key, turned it, and unlocked the door, then retracted the key back into his finger. He opened the door, stepping in first, and held it open for Aki. Inside, he lit a lantern, casting light onto a clean room that was painted sky blue, with a tidy king sized mattress in one corner, a desk in another corner, and several display shelves of dildos monopolizing one of the walls.
"Why do you have so MANY?" Akito asked.
Brass walked over to the shelves, and placed his hand on one shelf so that the fingertips were almost touching a green silicone piece. "This little dog-shaped one, Daisy, the shopkeeper's mutt, she likes this one the most. Daisy 3, the cart mule over in Goodsprings, she likes this big one. Daisy 2 in Freeside is a mare but she actually likes this normal-ish human one-"
"OKAY I GET IT, THANK YOU."
"So..." Brass said, and then looked between Aki and the shelves. "Wanna pick one out?"
"Hmmmm..." Aki looked them over. As she did, she took off her power armor. Brass ogled her but totally acted like he wasn't. "That one," Aki eventually said, and pointed to a human-shaped one, made in multiple colors to look like natural flesh. "I think that's what yours used to look like."
Brass chuckled a little bit to himself.
"Am I right?" Akito asked.
"Creepily accurate, yes."
"Mwahaha."
Brass picked up the dildo, and held it to his crotch. He was glad he couldn't blush anymore, because he felt a lot of embarrassment at how forward all of this was. Being candid about horny stuff with an animal, that just felt normal to the robot. Canine, bovine, equine, he knew their rituals, their desires, and how to get them feeling pleased and impressed. There were no... hangups. Doing these silly, private things with a human, it felt odd, not bad by any means, just notably different than what he was used to.
Akito stepped forward, and nuzzled against the front of Brass's chassis. Brass wrapped his free hand around Akito's back, and used his thumb to gently give her back some small stokes. Akito reached over to a lube dispenser on the shelf, and then started massaging the toy as Brass held it where his flesh manhood once would have been.
The two nuzzled forehead to forehead.
"So," Akito asked after a while, still massaging around the head, "Does this transmit the feelings to you by radio waves?"
Brass, who had kind of just been thinking about stuff, said, "Hm?"
Akito seductively elaborated. "It's not plugged in, so how are you feeling this?"
"Oh, I'm not."
"WHAT!"
Akito stopped giving Brass a homie handjob.
Brass tossed the toy onto the bed where it bounced floppily a couple of times. Brass then defended, "I don't know! This seemed like what you wanted to do! I wasn't questioning it!"
"No that's dumb! Oh my godddd! Seriously? Okay look, what can you tell me about the factions around here?"
"Well, there's the New California Republic, who you already met on your way in. The New California Republic (NCR) is a post-War federal republic founded in New California in 2189. It is comprised of five contiguous states located in southern California, with additional territorial holdings in northern California, Oregon and Nevada. There's also a group called Caesar's Legion who mostly occupy the area to the east of here. Caesar's Legion (Latin: Legio Caesaris), also referred to simply as The Legion, is a totalitarian dictatorship founded in 2247 by Edward "Caesar" Sallow and Joshua Graham, built on the conquest and enslavement of tribal societies in the American southwest. To enforce unity in the absence of any civilian institutions, the Legion loosely models itself after the military of the Roman Empire, repurposing its language and aesthetics for the post-apocalypse. Another faction you might cross paths with is the Brotherhood of Steel-"
"Okay shut up yes that one. How far away from here is the brotherhood of steel enclave? EXACT distance, robot."
Brass thought about it for a sec and then answered. "3,000.771 kilometers."
"Okay, stand right here. Faaaace that way with me. There we go, okay. Moves us 3,000.771 kilometers to the left."
With that done Akito then took a step forward and knocked on the enclave door.
"Hey! I have a robot out here! You guys are technology people or whatever, let us in!"
Brass and Akito (Brakito) heard some murmurring from inside, and then after a moment, the door slid open with a big PSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH noise.
Aki lead the way inside, and took them straight down to a room that had a big simulation machine inside of it. As she was hooking Brass and herself up to the machine, she said, "I came across one of these back east once, in my travels there."
"You used it for bird stuff didn't you."
"No! Okay a little! One maybe two years at MOST!"
"Uh huh."
"Look," Aki said, as she typed at one of the machine's terminals. "I think doing it this way will be better for both of us."
With that, she slapped the enter key, and the two of them were transported into the simulation.
Brass blinked. He looked down at his hands. They were something... advanced. Machine, to be sure, yet he could feel them, in the best way, when he tapped his thumb and his pointer finger together. Metal, but with many areas encased in transparent components that, while not as weak as flesh, simulated some of the sensations of it.
He looked up at the world. Everything was so lush and clean. Pre-war. It was a cool 68 Farenheight and partially cloudy.
Beside him, a blue horse nosed at him. He giggled at the feeling of it, and the horse continued to playfully nibble at the side of his face.
"Yes," the horse said, and Brass realized that the mare was for sure Akito. "Yes I think this will be much better. I'm sure we'll mix it up and try all sorts of other things too. But for now, let's go for a walk."
Brass stroked Akito's mane, looked into her eyes, and then leaned in for a kiss. The two of them did a big smooch, and afterwards Brass felt a pleasant shiver and Aki did a happy horse noise. This was certainly just the beginning of their sexlife-to-be.
Brass mounted Akito, and the two began their walk, hooves clipclopping over the road.
Tick... Tick... Tick... Tick... Tick...
