"On my dead earth can I eat, sleep, wander and sing.

On my dead earth, through this nuclear haze.

On my dead earth can I do my thing.

On my dead earth can I kill and kill for days.

On my dead earth can I see space in its throng.

Can I wonder what mankind did wrong?"

-0-0-0-

REDUX

I

Three Wanderers

He always had wondered what had happened to the street during those final hours in the past, and he meant this specific spot out of the entire avenue.

It was strange because where everything else was simplistically marred by mounds of debris, or flipped over cars, here there was a crater, and it left an open divet ten men wide and five height's deep.

Roughly, this section of the road resembled a giant, earthy spoon. The crater was oval-like in its complexity, and water pipes stuck from the edges of its brown weathered flesh like splintered, rusting ribs. Sometimes, when he was approaching it, it resembled a mouth to him, gaping, gawking even, wishing to indulge in loud gossip and cackling laughter with some unseen listener in the sky above.

Even now, as he traipsed down the street's pavement and came upon the familiar feature, he found himself hungering in that reservoir of curiosity. It was a good question; what had blown up nearly two hundred years ago to make the thing?

Had it been a car? Or a tanker truck? Maybe, just maybe, on the verge of apocalyptic holocaust, someone had detonated an actual explosive device in some bid of futile revenge or petty anger. Maybe a military plane had spun out and shot the street with a missile. Or maybe….

-or maybe some god had farted and blown a hole in the earth right here with their rambunctious stench made mortal by sheer concussive force.

Sounds about right.

Gravel, and stray wardings of granular ruination slicking the street like some kind of carpet, crunched and whispered under the heavy trod of his heels as he approached. Observing the gaping crater in the ground through the green-hued display of his suit's internal ocular system, details were made slightly fuzzy, and albeit sickly by even a minute touch of the night-vision's lesser qualities.

Feeling the joints of his suit creak with his movements, he took a final step forwards and teetered on the edge of the hole.

The armor layering his form was composited and multi-layered. It was esteemed with powerful servo-motors and clustered musculature tendons that were meant to mimic as much flexibility and adaptability of the human body as could be rendered. Needless to say, despite its visage as a walking tank; it got by fairly nicely and even with a tiny taste of style.

It wasn't like Sanford Tobs could complain; this suit had gotten him through thick and thin. He doubted he would've been possessed by any sense of care even if the thing didn't make him look like a complete badass on top of it.

Luckily for him, it did. Thus, as a titan in the dark of the evening, with a pair of yellow-tinted, demonic eye-lenses personifying him in the shade, the scavenger reared back and glared with accusatory coldness at the other side of the crater.

I hate climbing.

"-Just another by-product of what happens when god gives ya' legs and not at-mos-spheric thrus-stores' like mine, ha-haaa~!" –Came a metallic voice ringed and embraced with static from the man's rear.

A tiny thrum of laughter purred through the Power Armor's grill vox in response to this. Sanford didn't realize that he had spoken his thoughts aloud in a moment of clairvoyant apprehension.

What had he been thinking? Complaining around his best friend like that? He'd walked into this.

"Don't start, dude." Sanford shook his head, grinning devilishly under the snarling visage of his insectoid helmet. "It was just a pause, not what you're thinking."

"But I'd be abhorred if I took it as anything but what was I thinking, sir!" The whoosh of a Rob-Co manufactured, contract-built engine thruster was prevalent on the wind. A second later, and a levitating, multi-armed orb of metal and circuitry was beside the armored man, illuminating the evening with a flickering bulb of amber light from its engine mouth. "Let it be known to all far and wide!" –Erupted from a speech-box somewhere inside the maddened machine's chassis. "-That Sanford Tobs…. Is afraid of heights~! Ha~!"

"You are relentless, Hancock." The scavenger sighed audibly, his plated fingers wriggling with a sudden urge to swat the Mr. Gutsy robot away like he was some sort of errant fly. "Is it too much to ask you to concentrate on what we're actually here for?"

"Hmmm, let me think on that for a moment…" Hancock bobbed in the air once, as if he'd been stabbed by some kind of secondary sensation of insult at the suggestion. The military-model machine's grisly, mechanical voice sharply rung through the audio receivers in Sanford's helmet, their mocking, smug tones causing the man to grit his teeth out of habit. "-Ah! I've got your answer, sir! Do you remember…"

Sanford grunted when a serrated buzz-saw blade poked teasingly into his armored ribcage with a tiny clank~! –of steel to reinforced synthetic.

"-the bridge two months ago~?"

"Aw, hell, Han'." Sanford groaned.

"Ha~! Your little monkey face under that helmet is probably priceless right now!" Hancock cackled, zipping in front of the scavenger, and somehow appearing giddy, despite his lack of any facial features whatsoever, aside from the three buggish ocular devices protruding from the top of his chassis. "Those Gunners put up one hell of a fight! A fight to match the ages! A fight to make even Uncle Sam wince at the blood-letting, shit-flinging calamity of it all! But best of all that fine, fine evening? Watching the San-of-the-Ford get whacked in the arse' with an anti-personnel rocket, and go tumbling off the side of the fuckin' bridge~! Haaa~!"

-As judged by the rampant and commonly non-sensical garbling that spewed from Hancock's speech directives like sludge from an opened sewage line; his connectivity to reality at best was… strained, but somewhat present.

Despite how annoying the robot was, Sanford was left to wonder; where would he be without Han' and his anti-Communist, Nazi-hating speeches and rants?

Probably in some dark hole like this one, except, you know, dead and full of bullet holes, I'd bet.

Still, perhaps ungratefully, Sanford muttered something unintelligible and hostile under his breath. He reached out with an armored arm, and batted the airborne robot from his path without so much as a flex of true effort.

"-Ha-haaa~! Oh, oh you're just too easy, sir!" Hancock chided, floating mockingly in the space beside his companion. "Look on the bright side of things; at least that oversized tin-can you wear all the time cushioned the impact! But really, could a simple fall do you in? I think not! But, hell! It was funnier than Hitler's art career watching you flap your arms like some fucked up pigeon!"

"You're digging a hole deeper than this crater, Han'." Sanford warned as he took a step towards the cracked pavement's ledge. "I might just pick up a sharpie back home, and draw a few errant penises on your plating when you're recharging your cells."

"-Hey~! Keep your monkey-humor away from me!" The robot snapped sharply. "It's not my fault you flea-bitten primates have to walk around with your Johnsons swinging in the breeze!"

"At least we have Johnsons," Sanford leaned over, and snickered. "-and balls, unlike some people."

"You Chinese-loving son-of-a-bitch~!"

"Last one down's a Nazi ball-washer." Sanford didn't give his robot proper timing to react. With a single step forwards did he let gravity take over, this time; willingly, in contrast to the prior mishap his companion had mocked him over.

Sanford's metallic form actually created a brief, whistling scream as he descended several feet in free-fall, his arms craned predatorily, his legs daggered and prepared for the impact.

Crunch~! –went the X-01's heels as they stabbed into the earth, casting detritus and dust everywhere.

At the bottom of the crater's slick, Sanford rose from a brief kneel, his gauntlets sweeping majestically and with trained precision to his suit's hips.

"Seems like I landed pretty good that time." Sanford nonchalantly called back, his fingers locking on the hilts of very familiar tools of self-defense. "Han'? Your scanners picking up anything out here?"

"Nothin' beside a cheating pigeon-man wearing a metal skirt!" Hancock snapped, and with a zip of his thruster did he fly down the crater's earthy wall vertically, and keen-out the acceleration by Sanford's side. "By default that makes you the Nazi-ball-washer! So have fun sand-papering Himmler's nuts, you hairy bitch!"

"I'll keep a note to do that." Sanford stepped forwards, his night-vision sweeping the large crater's bottom with almost malevolent intent. It was seldom the case where he maneuvered through the world and didn't find himself in danger out here. The Commonwealth was still a hotbed of ghoulies and ghosties, even after almost fourteen years of skirting it back and forth and killing whatever got in his way.

Sanford always liked to view himself as simply surviving; it was what other people had said that had esteemed him into the eyes of more powerful political entities. Flashbacks of his little adventure months ago stemmed into his brain like hot wildfire.

"I know that perplexed look." Hancock drawled, his tone evening out as play-time began to recede from them in the presence of a possible threat down here. "What's that adept brain of yours wiggling and farting over now?"

"Nothing." Sanford snorted. "Scanners?"

"Emptier than the list of things Russia's done right!" Hancock chortled, his three robotic limbs clicking and shifting as their weaponized systems claim to play anyhow. There was his Plasma Gun, the Flamethrower, and the dreaded buzzsaw that Sanford had seen stained brilliant crimson all too many times. "But scanners are like women! You never know when yes means no! Ha-ha!"

"Damn, talk about a bur-"

Clack~! –one second Hancock was there, floating in the air, and the next he was not.

Sanford cut himself off and whipped around to face his west, where he watched in confusion as a sphere of black mass with an amber-flicking bottom bounced across the ground like a rogue sports ball. The craziest part of the exchange was listening to the vile and vulgar cacophony of vulgarity that unevenly vomited from said sphere as it rolled to a stop nearby.

"-sonofabitch-cocksuckin'-brick layin' fucktardiness of the Revolutionary fuckin' war-~!" Hancock ranted from the dirt, his limbs clanking and rolling as he attempted to right himself back up. "-I should've known that the bitch would've showed up on que! Such is the curse of an honest G.I of the United States of America!"

Sanford shook his head and bent down to retrieve the heavy item that had hit Hancock and caused the tumble. His joints whirred as he retracted, holding aloft a rock that was bigger than his head, his systems rendering it weightless, like it was no more than a bundle of loose paper. There was still a tiny fleck of olive-drab paint on the side of it from where it had scuffed Hancock's hide.

It was a good thing his Mr. Gutsy was made of… tougher stuff, or else their third companion's strength just might have damaged something important.

"Wicked good aim, girl." Sanford sniggered, tossing the large rock over his pauldron, where it smacked hollowly away. "There isn't one for me too, is there?"

Sanford was looking up the cliff-like face of the crater slick, where at the rim above, stood a towering, seven-foot-tall shadow of lithe uniformity.

Though the light through the cloudy nighttime sky was fickle and unadulteratedly minute; somehow did it play off of the armored layers of scales networking down her body, giving her a ghostly, and sharp tint of silver at all her jagged edges and sweeping curves.

"-Non, mon cher, but if you had finished that sentence, my hand would have been forced."

Though formed with a complicated network of feminine arteries, her voice was entirely inhuman as it was alien, and powerful to behold. The thrum of a thousand muted locusts curled like a serpent's tongue beneath an underlayer of rumbling thickness to contrast the higher pitched uniformity of her throat.

Talons as long as his forearms clenched the earth of the crater's rim eagerly, flexing as retractable, black-colored nails slid in and out of their moorings within her fingers. Her armored arms dispersed for a defined collar, a creamy breast and underbelly, and a highlighting notion of the curvature he had come to find stirring from her.

As Sanford drank in the moonlight flavored sight, Nyx's throat chortled deeply at him, resonating with a reptilian purr.

"You're gawking." She mused from above.

"Kind of hard not to." Sanford quirked his head.

Nyx produced a flattered hum, and the air snapped under a whip's crack as her tail flashed behind her.

Soundlessly- that is, until she landed –she was a black blur in the night that hit the dirt with a predator's expertise and grace. Sanford was staring up at a taller being than himself within seconds as she crossed over to him, his helmed face matching only to her clavicle.

There was a part of him in that moment taken by the mixture of her bestial appearance, and her intoxicating presence. It was the stark contrast between these things that had utterly transfixed his interest in her in the past.

Where he gave off an aura of cold metal, Nyx resonated a growing cloud of soupy miasma that made his head swim. He supposed that could've been himself being blinded by her importance to him, or because of the pheromones he knew she plumed whenever she was in his company. At the end of the day; he supposed it did not matter.

"How are ya'?" The scavenger grinned, chuckling when a pair of layered, armored ram-horns butted into the metal of his helmet.

"Tres satisfait." The Deathclaw rumbled thickly, her golden eyes glinting in the dark. "Ai-je manque beaucoup?"

"No." Sanford grinned, reaching up to and patting her shoulder. "Me and Han' were just about to start sweeping."

"-Yeah~! You hear that, lizard-slaps? Me and Sanford! Me! Not you! You Communist iguana!"

Nyx's placated expression was abolished for a fanged snarl as something tinny bounced harmlessly off one of her horns. Sanford looked down between her hoof-like feet and his boots to see that Hancock had tossed a crumpled soda can at her.

Here we go- flashed through his mind with a pained realization.

Nyx's draconic, long chops curled in a violently intending sneer, and her armored, crocodilian tail whipped behind her.

"Have you an idea how brashly annoying you are, usiner?" Nyx growled, turning on the Mr. Gutsy angrily. "I could understand in detail your rants from almost half a mile away. Tres intelligent? I think not."

"Things were going just fine until you showed up and started puking your escargot-speech all over the place!" Hancock snapped, his buzzsaw metallically whining as the blade spun. "That entire country's just an ashbin anyhow! Just like the damn Brits, and the Belgians! And all of Europe! Ha! Damn nukes did somethin' good for a change. You fuckin' Europeans, what with your white-man's sense of entitlement-!"

"She's not even human, you dick." Sanford commented as he stepped past his two fuming allies. "Now, if we're ready to play nice in the sandbox, you two, I'd like to comb the place and be out of here within an hour. That sound reasonable?"

"Half-an-hour if we're lucky." Hancock snapped, all three of his ocu-lenses locked on the displeased reptile. "My reputation's at stake here, lizard-lick! What would the world do if it knew The Han' was in a tug-o-war with you?"

"Avec pitie; it would weep at how such an innocent soul as myself was cursed with your company." The Deathclaw harrumphed, turning her snout up at him. "Or perhaps I would find fortune, and a meteorite would crush you into dust on a fine day."

"-God already tried that!" Hancock laughed mockingly, making her scowl. "He threw you at us! You fat ass! And he still missed! Ha~!"

"Gee' this is taking longer than it needs to." Sanford called back from nearby. "I'll probably have to spend double the time as one guy sweeping this stupid crater."

"Coming, mon cher." Nyx's attitude miraculously dropped from her tone at this, and then returned sourly when she looked back down at Hancock. "This is not over in the slightest, usiner."

"Ditto, you fucking newt!" The Mr. Gutsy snapped. "One of these days, I'll skin you, and make you into a nice, new pair of Democracy-Brand Snakeskin Boots!"

"And I will find the pair of toaster-ovens you were born from and step on them." Nyx shrugged her mighty shoulders. "We all chase our own vendettas in this world, I would figure a being of such malice like yourself would know that."

"Your poetic-speak won't save you!" Hancock ranted, even as the Deathclaw began to trot away with disinterest. "I'm not through with you, alligator-buns! Mark my words! I'll have your sooouulllll-~!"

Clack~! –another rock hit Hancock right in the center of his chassis and knocked him to the ground raggedly. His cursing was muted by Nyx's heavenly, inhuman laughter.

After all, it was pretty hysterical to witness. Sanford had thrown that one.

-0-0-0-0-0-

The Commonwealth could be compared quite acutely to a realm of recycling and repurposing, thus leading to an economy fueled by the endless rebuilding of a great deal of products from the Old World.

Some people made their caps by supplying ammunition to the many warring factions of Boston, or by producing and modifying weapons. Still, some did it through robotics, others through trade, and some through murder.

Sanford Tobs attained his fortune through the art of scavenging, and he had been doing that since he was a lad fresh out of the cryo tube in that blasted Vault.

His journey had taken him far and wide across New England, and the treks hadn't been easy. It was safe to say that there were folks beyond and about who pondered at Sanford's story of humility and for the lives of themselves couldn't understand it.

Sanford had destroyed the Institute, beaten back the Enclave, crushed the Raiders and had almost single-handedly redefined the face of the Commonwealth. His legacy alone warranted so much more than what he lived to do.

But to Sanford, power and glory were things to be misused and abused, and he did not want to go down the same path as his enemies, or even his own mother and father.

Folks labeled him a hero, a one-man army, and the Brotherhood had even attempted to indoctrinate him into its ranks. Gangers and thugs across the Commonwealth feared him, the Minutemen were itchy around him, and the Super Mutants knew him as 'The Tank' –ever since he had found the suit of X-01 armor in an errant military transport.

There was so much he could do with all those titles, and those names.

But instead, Sanford Tobs was quite content to put all of that aside, forget of its existence, and fervently dig through people's garbage.

Some called it foolish, he called it therapeutic. The world had too much death in it already without another power-hungry person of great skill running amok.

He had always been Sanford the Scavenger, never Sanford the Warrior.

Tin cans, rocks and pieces of rusting pipe clattered around his heels in a great storm of rackets and uneven music. In the shade of the old aluminum over his head, Sanford dug through the piles of detritus with his gauntlet and whistled a quiet tune.

He stood inside an old and blown out refugee tent, one constructed of plywood stilts layered over with strips of aluminum and cardboard. There was no telling how long ego it had been erected and by who had done it. The great crater in this patch of road was notable for that; being a stoppage point for travelers and immigrants to and from the Commonwealth. Sanford liked to sift through the crater slick at least once a month to see what people left behind.

Knowing the carelessness of humanity, even in a time of such rationing and danger; there was plenty of a bounty to be had.

Sanford's rucksack that was tied around the X-01's thigh was bulging freakishly with all kinds of good finds he'd made throughout the garbage piles marring the crater's slick. In this old campsite alone, he had found energy cells, batteries, trinkets worth melting down and stray caps.

Scavenging was a good method of intake if one knew how to perform it properly, and generally speaking, Sanford knew where to look and where not to look. It was all about which minute details to find that no else cared about, and the niche was set.

It had worked thus far for him, and he didn't plan on stopping that now.

Nice and quiet, his whistling played out as a faint and ghostly chime through the box amplifier of his helmet. Comically, the X-01 looked quite odd when he was bent over, kneeling and lowering himself, swiping around the ground and in low containers and boxes like a beggar. Sanford was happier for it. It was better than what he'd been doing during that mess months earlier.

Found Nyx through that.

Of course, the Deathclaw was always on his mind as of late. There was a reason that she permeated the air with her presence around him and it wasn't simply a bodily function that was unwitting.

That barrier had been broken before, and he was actually prideful of it. He'd never have worded it to her in such a way himself, but the conquest of such a power had tapped into the spark of his more corrupt self.

It was the part of him that did seek glory from all the tales and legends he'd spun in his bids for peace in the Commonwealth. It was the selfish part, the heroic part. Sanford made a distinction. To him, trying to be a hero ended in nothing but more problems. There was a difference between being heroic and being brave. He wasn't sure he could define that for someone, however, if they had asked him.

This, he found quaint and contradictory.

But then again, both of those things were inherent parts of his nature, and people's opinions on that could mightily screw off.

"Anything?" Sanford interrupted his whistling as he heard Hancock's thruster motor hissing quietly behind him. The robot's chassis clanged and rattled as whatever goodies he'd pick up banged around in the storage compartment inside him.

"We're rich, sir!" Hancock announced, levitating inside the ruined shelter, his form black and amber in the night air. "Because of my entrepreneur's eye! We're that much closer to getting enough parts to build that doomsday-robot wife I've always wanted!"

"We never agreed to that." Sanford shot back quickly. "You, plus an even bigger robot, equals bad things."

"It equals a match made in heaven, by all hell!" Hancock denied, his buzzsaw and subsequent grabber-claw arm sifting aside some stones on the ground below him. "You know, sir, even though that stupid iguana's a pain in the balls, I've got to hand it to you; I'm envious!"

"No you're not." The scavenger laughed, tugging something moderately sized free of a stray plate of aluminum and some wood boards. "How long, Han'? Have you scoured these blasted sands with me? Eleven years, maybe twelve? The Hancock I know did not just say that."

"I never meant to diminish The Han's standing." The robot guffawed, raising his claw to his ocu-lenses, where he twisted it to and fro, examining a spent shell casing. "All I'm saying, is that even a single-handed Communist-killing G.I like myself doesn't always need to ride off into the sunset-" –His claw twitched, and he lost the casing somewhere on the ground. "-alone."

"That's the most wistful thing I think I've ever heard you say." Sanford chuckled, wading heavily through the trash piles until he was at the mouth of the shelter with his robot. "You know, you're not one to want. So, what's up?"

"Up?" The Mr. Gutsy bobbed in the air, his ocu-lenses whirring whilst they focused on Sanford. "Nothing's up! That's hogwash! Nonsense! Scat-piled skullduggery! Get out of my face with it!"

"Hey, look, just a measurement of concern." The scavenger laughed, holding up his armored hands for peace. "We don't frequently enjoy these moments of… I dunno'… brotherhood?"

"Ha!" Hancock wheezed- which was awkward, seeing as he lacked lungs –and Sanford frowned as his shoulder jerked from a good tap of the robot's buzzsaw blade. Any normal person would've flinched and been fearful at the weapon being used so cordially. Sanford was so used to it that he no longer noticed.

"What's so funny?" He instead quirked a brow.

"You! Aw, hell, trying to imagine being part of the same litter as you is almost nightmare inducing!" Hancock laughed. "-Ah, but, yeah, maybe, positively. No matter how much my dashingly good looks may trump your ugliness, sir, we are linked as sibling-G.I's in a metaphorical sense!"

"Mmmmmm, do tell." Sanford hummed musingly, shouldering past and back into the outside of the crater trench, which sprawled like a great wound of earthen ruin around them.

"Well, you see, sir, there's just a time and place where true, red-blooded Americans are born! Pure and simple!" Hancock explained in a matter-of-fact tone as he followed. "You and me? We've got that look in our eyes, and that glint in our souls! Pressing forth into the world of Communist whores, Nazis, beasts and Jehovah's Witnesses! Slaying them all in the name of Democracy, apple pie, and liver-damaging alcoholic beverages!"

"You lost me." Sanford said, only half-paying-attention.

"Damn it, and then you wonder why we're so different, you and I!" Hancock contradicted. "I'm the only one with a sense of purpose! I was built to liberate this shit-hole country and I won't stop until my task is done! Death to feminists!"

"Stop talking." Sanford rolled his eyes, surveying the crater. After a moment of grumbling stillness from the robot, the scavenger pointed east, motioning to a stip of boulders. "See if any of those traveler parties left anything over there, would you?"

"If there's something you gotta' get off your chest, chimp-boy, why don't ya' be a man about it and just say it~?"

"Go away, you're bothering me."

"You got it, sir!" Hancock cheerily saluted with his buzzsaw, and flew off towards the aforementioned point. Sanford watched him go with an arduous expression of bafflement, and sighed through his vox.

Oh, Hancock, you sociopath.

The man was tempted to scratch at an itching irritation by his gut, rubbed his gauntlet absentmindedly across the plating of his suit's cuirass, and yawned audibly.

I wonder where Nyx is at.

The Deathclaw had always resorted to her more naturalistic ways during their outings. Whenever Sanford went on scavenging runs, and even when times of danger approached, Nyx's first reaction was always to become the solitary predator she knew how to be, breaking away from the pack, and scouting ahead.

Needless to say she was good at it. For all her size, and even her weight and mirth, Nyx was as silent as a cat and as stealthy as one. He wondered how such a big, thorny reptile could hide so well.

She's had to do it for so long, I guess she's just mastered it.

As good an answer as he sought, Sanford didn't trouble himself with it as he followed the trench of the crater west. The clouds in the night sky weren't letting up, and now the moonlight he'd perceived earlier was completely gone. It made the high edges of the crater look like toothed mandibles that were closing in on either of his flanks, like he was standing on the tongue in some long-faced dragon's mouth.

I feel a bit underhanded, Sanford patted the rucksack on his leg. Not enough haul for this outing. Too far from home, too dark, and too-

-The scavenger's eyes flickered to a disturbance perceived not in the world before him, but on a tiny screen that was utilized by the internal systems of his helmet's Heads-Up-Display.

It was the scanner sheet for his suit's detection systems he had created. They were meant to use a combination of radar and electronic ping waves to pick up heartbeats and technological signatures in the surrounding proximity. He had Hancock's signature, friend-marked as a golden orb of yellow to his south, and he was even picking up Nyx's signature in that direction too.

But there was something else just ahead of him, and it was marked crimson.

Unknown Robotic Signature –the suit read in a tiny bar of text when he blink-clicked on the dot on his tiny map.

Sanford mumbled under his breath.

Can't I ever leave the house and not get shot at?

His gauntlets now not only wrapped around the two weapons he kept on his suit's hip magnet plates, they clasped and tugged them free, which he'd failed to do when they first got here.

Back then, everything had been serene, and a fight hadn't been brewing. It still may not have been, as it could've been anything from a suit glitch, to a robot that was already disabled and lying destroyed somewhere. Sanford wasn't taking any chances.

In one hand did he clasp the custom constructed Laser-Rifle pattern he'd designed and pieced together. The rechargeable double-faced battery hissed as it was secured into the gun's flank, and the diode spinners on its mouth rotated as carbon-based energies were harnessed and heated up inside.

In the other hand, crimson energy crackled to life whilst he thumbed the channeling rune on the hilt of his saber sword, the same he'd collected off a fallen Minuteman officer in the dreaded quarry tunnels of old.

A brief remembrance of the supernatural energies he'd encountered there made him shiver, even beneath the X-01. He still didn't quite understand what had killed those militiamen, and he doubted he ever would.

Least I'm putting it to good use.

Sanford held his weapons by his hips and trotted forwards, following the crater's ruined section towards the signature on his HUD.

Blink, Blink, Blink- it went, giving off tiny rings around it to symbolize its increasing proximity.

Sanford watched up ahead and saw a tumble of past activity. Here was his and his companions' ticket to getting out of the crater, as they always did in these runs. Most people couldn't do the far-falling jump he'd used to get down here so quick, like the travelers and immigrants who camped here sometimes. Luckily, the trench skid ended for a rather leveled ramp that opened into the woodlands on the side of the highway he and his group had been following.

The trees poked as a massive bushel of dead limbs off into the distance ahead. A burnt out pickup truck was angled against the shrinking and receding wall of the trench as it faded into flatland, and a few piles of rocks shielded an outcrop that he knew to exist.

That stupid little cave, Sanford thought as he knelt behind a boulder.

Just ahead was a little natural cavern that had been cored out when this crater had been made during the nukes two hundred years ago. He'd explored it before, he'd even killed Radroaches and other insectoid horrors inside on his prior journeys.

It's in there.

Sanford thumbed off the safety on his gun and moved off in a hurry, eager for any violence- if there was some to be had –to be over expediently. He wasn't in the mood for a fight tonight, probably the result of bad-air from so long away from adventuring.

I guess if I kill it, I can rip some hardrive parts out. I need those anyhow.

Sanford crossed some rough terrain, his heavy boots crunching in the quiet night air through gravel and stones. The land buckled in a slight raise, and a yawning stretch of blackness as tall as he was in the suit clawed from the earth like an uneven flesh wound.

The cave mouth was stout, and he'd still have to duck when he was heading inside. His night-vision filters cored out the blackness and eviscerated it, rendering the chamber within perfectly seeable and in clarity.

Who are you, I wonder?

Sanford shouldered into the rim of the tunnel arch, his insectoid helmet snarling, and its yellow lenses gleaming in the dark. He peered round the earthy stone and perceived something lying on the ground several feet within.

Judging by the haphazard sprawl of the limbs, and the freshly rising steam from blackened blots pepperring its naked back, Sanford was confident in the hunch that this person wasn't just lying down to take a nap.

"Hancock?" Sanford whispered into his suit's communications uplink, his eyes grimly remaining locked on the fallen man inside the cave lobby. "Come in, man."

"Aye-aye, Cappytan', I got you!" –Came his robot's crackling voice. "-Get this, someone left a whole endtable out here! And it's got- are you ready? –an underwear drawer! Ha-haaa~! Whoever they are, they had good taste in bloomers!"

"Hancock, are you done?"

"Perfectly, sir!"

"I found a body." Sanford looked at the cave's roof, and he checked his scan sheet constantly. "See if you can get Nyx and head over to that cave at the mouth of the trench. You know where that is?"

"Up your mother's ass, of course!"

"You know where it is. Get over here." Sanford cut the link before his robot could chime in again.

What happened to you, friendo'?

The spinning arms of his gun's barrel path-found into the cave firstly, and then the rest of the towering, armored scavenger followed. He was still cautious, even though the signature he was picking up was still farther away, and as he neared the body he could detect a terrible smell coming to him through the filters on his helmet's vents.

Snorting, Sanford processed the stench of burning flesh with an apprehensive grunt.

Laser fire.

He looked at the scan-sheet inside his helmet again. The signature was deeper into the cave, it seemed. He didn't know how that was possible, seeing as the cave was short, and it didn't tunnel that deep-

-A slight tumble of pebbles ahead erected his suspicions. Sanford aimed his rifle forwards as he stood over the corpse on the ground, lowering his blade so its crimson glow could bathe the cadaver in a slight, and blood-colored illumination.

Ritualistic scars and tattoo patterns marred emaciated limbs and exposed ribs. There was nothing but rags and an unkempt haircut to cover the man's unhealthy and gray skin. Even though he was ruined, and had been shot in the back with some carbon weapon, Sanford didn't need to examine him closely to see what he was.

Raider.

The scavenger pinched an eye at whatever was ahead of him, where the noise had come from. He used his boot to nudge the dead ganger over, wincing, as some of his burnt flesh squelched from the movements.

Messed up pretty bad, huh?

The man's eyes were still open, locked in this wide expression of terror. His mouth was hanging limply, missing most of its teeth, and it was disturbing to see such lightlessness in his pupils, despite their exposure.

What is that?

Sanford squinted at something on the ground. It had been hidden by the dead man's ribs, and now, that the body was slouched aside, it had been revealed.

Crrrunnnch- -went a patch of gravel up ahead. He definitively knew that he wasn't alone in here with this laser victim.

Sanford looked at his scan-sheet, and the barrel of his gun spun faster as he put his finger on the trigger.

Wait a second.

The cave flashed crimson, and the searing, snickering report of a high-intense beam of carbon radiation simmered through the air with an angle towards his face.

Sanford instinctively crouched, his knee smacking into the dirt. A trio of flickering, blood-red trails of sun-energy whipped over his cranium, and dug brown divets into the cave wall behind him.

Son of a bitch.

The scavenger fired from the waist one-handed, his rifle kicking as an echoing, repeating cacophony answered the pot-shot with precise fury.

The gun sounded like a hundred hands clapping as the barrel spun at hurricane speeds, and red beams of concentrated power flickered into the back of the cave. Sanford couldn't see what he was shooting at. The signature was there, but physically, the air and the space here were bland. There was nothing but rocks and sweeps of earth.

Stealth-boy.

Sanford didn't give his opponent time to recover, and thus he didn't limit his firing to a single burst. He compressed the trigger and drained the battery's first face, sweeping his lane of fire west, and then east in a pair of darting movements.

There! In midair, as his bolts churned the earth of the cave's walls, some of them vanished in their travels, kicking sparks and a fat belch of fire.

Black smoke bucked outwards and metal shrieked, following by the resonant crackle of exposed circuitry meeting ruination.

The atmosphere seemingly rippled under the duress of a heat wave, and with a tumbling sense of defeat, a body materialized out of nowhere and collapsed to the cave floor, blackened, with trails of wafting steam rising from it.

Sanford cut his auto-fire the moment he saw it, and he let his gun whine as its over-heating safeties kicked in.

Eat that, you piece of shit.

Sanford checked his scan-screen, his breathing controlled, and calm despite the heightened boiling in his bloodstream. The signature was gone. He'd gotten it. Whatever it was.

"…you stay there," Sanford mumbled to the Raider's corpse beside his knee as he switched the battery face on his gun, and stuck his blade to his hip. "-I'll be right back…"

The suit whined in the quiet of the cave, its sounds meshing with electric crackles and whips of power from the newest corpse of whatever it was he had shot. Sanford reached the casualty and looked down at it with a pitting sensation developing in his gut.

The slender nature of the robot would've been made more prevalent if whoever had modified it had kept the olive drab original scheme. But nonetheless, though its chassis had been repainted black, and the curious modifications had changed its bodily shape, he still recognized it as the Assaultron it was.

What have we here… Sanford knelt and examined the destroyed machine. It was lying face-down, with black soot belching from a cluster of rents he'd shot through its chest and belly. The lasers had burst out its back, and had ruined a pack of reflective chrome that had been enwrapped in leather. He saw the buttons gridding the device's face and knew exactly what it was.

Stealthboy, older model. Now I've seen it all.

Sanford had encountered people using cloaking technology in the past, but he'd never seen it hard-wired into an Assaultron before. That combination seemed a lot deadlier than it initially sounded as, and he realized with a taste of chagrin that he'd been lucky.

Probably impatient, he reasoned, nudging the robot's head with his boot.

Emblazoned on the black paint, he saw, was a tiny symbol of some sorts that had been applied most likely through a spray-can sheet cutout, judging by the precision, and the run lines.

He saw that it was a pearl-white skull with a large, lower jaw, and daggered devil eyes. It was painted right on top of the Assaultron's cranium.

Whose symbol is that?

Sanford had never seen it before. It wasn't Gunner, and it certainly didn't belong to any Raider or gang tribes here in Boston.

"-Daw, hell~!"

Sanford whipped around, aiming briefly at Hancock before he lowered his gun. The Mr. Gutsy was levitating in the mouth of the cave, two ocu-lenses locked on Sanford, another on the Raider's corpse.

"Don't tell me you murdered people and didn't let me join in!" The robot snapped.

"Not me," Sanford breathed, standing upright and pointing down at the Assaultron. "talk to laser-happy here."

"Ah, just another case of robot-abuse turned violent." Hancock floated over beside the scavenger and looked down with disinterest at his fallen mechanical cousin. "You know what they say; displease the machine, displease the… wait, fuck, I lost it."

"Found him," Sanford pointed at the dead Raider, shouldering around Hancock. "-he'd been shot full of holes. I picked up a robotics signature and followed it here. I guess that Assaultron was it."

"So it's just another random murder to match the thousands of other ones that happen out here!" Hancock rebuked, turning around and floating after him. "You sound all Sherlock-Holmes-y again, like this is some kind of complicated mystery! Just accept that we're badasses and these pussies have nothing to stop us with!"

"Look at this." Sanford picked up the item he'd seen lying on the ground earlier, the one that had been wedged under the Raider. "It's an audio disc." He said, turning the little reflective wafer in his fingers.

"-Oh boo-hoo-hoo-! So, the pansy ass recorded a farewell for his shitbag wife and inbred child before he keeled over!" Hancock snapped. "He's a Raider! That means the only thing he's good for is target-practice or a place to piss on after he's dead."

"Well there's no harm in digging a little deeper, isn't there?" Sanford smirked, popping the disc into a small joint behind the collar of his suit. "Besides, this wasteland's full of mysteries."

"I thought you didn't want to get into an adventure." Hancock stared.

"I don't." Sanford looped through the audio commands. "Maybe it's nothing."

"Or, maybe it's the first step onto the road of a long, drawn out shit-flinging contest between us and yet another group of douchebags out here!" The robot suggested hopefully. "God I want it to be that so bad! Do you know how good it feels to literally make your enemies eat shit? Just to watch them cringe, and vomit and die as the feces run down there-"

"I'm gonna' stop you there." Sanford cringed, still toying with the disc in his suit's options. "I swear, you can't go five seconds without saying something disgusting, can't you?"

"Ha~! Nope!"

"The disc isn't playing." Sanford popped it out, and held it before himself in the faint glare of the cave from Hancock's thruster.

"Well isn't that just a shame, I don't get to hear tattoo-ass here whine for his mother." Hancock nudged the corpse with his buzzsaw thoughtfully. "But hey, here's a question right; what's just one of these sleazebags doing all the way out here? Getting shot up by some hunter-killer robot?"

"I dunno'," Sanford shrugged, popping the disc into his rucksack's flap. "-the Assaultron had cloaking tech on it too. I didn't even see it until it shot at me."

"Really.' Hancock muttered, still staring down at the body. Sanford didn't need to antagonize the robot to know. Hancock felt it too. They both did. These peculiar events were like the swansong of the wasteland. They happened, and things changed. Sanford just wasn't sure how or when.

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