X

Fire-Sale!

At first, Sanford thought it was a barricade of some kind. There was nothing but rising steel, festooned with supportive girders and streaked with welded lines of sealing. Scaffolding made of scavenged girders, bolted stockades and repurposed bumpers, fenders and doors of automobiles created a skeleton with which the wall could sprawl against without risk of collapse.

It spanned from the shopping center's floor all the way to the shattered skylights in the ceiling above. It had to have been a barricade, Sanford had reasoned, to prevent people from reaching the center of Helios.

A closer inspection revealed a much different purpose.

Oh my god.

Sanford's gasp was stifled and entirely hidden by the excited shriek of a crowd. Hundreds of people. There were more human beings here, in one place, than Sanford had seen in years. Tens and tens of tattooed, drunken, screaming, hoarse-throated punks. Every single one of them. Sanford wasn't even high enough to see all the details from where he was, and he could still make out tribal markings and brand tattoos that showed off a legion of Raider groups. Many of them, he knew.

Black Snakes, Tunnelheds, Dark Men, Iron Warriors, Templars, Rimmers…

The list went on. From his hiding space behind a collection of support beams, Sanford was able to peak under the very flooring of what was revealed to be a massive set of repurposed bleachers, and his eyes drank in all sorts of names, titles and horrors from the past.

Half of these guys, I don't have a clue otherwise.

Though there were plenty of floorboards and running lines of rusty pipes and boot soles in the way, Sanford could edge his head around and pick out exposed arms and gnarly faces amongst the commotion. There was a riot of insignia he had never seen before. A black dagger, a blood drop with vines around it, and a cracked skull with a bullet hole in the forehead. The latter was the most common. It seemed most of the crowd in the stands above was from the same organization.

What startled Sanford was just how many of them there were in total. Did this mean that there was a Raider tribe out there that had hundreds of members? Normally, they only numbered twenty, thirty, sometimes forty or over.

This wasn't just a gang he was dealing with.

It's an army.

The scavenger rolled his jaw, flinching when some boot soles slammed and jerked into the decking over his head. Dust cascaded from the ruckus and sprinkled into his hair and on his shoulders. He coughed and swept it away hurriedly.

I wonder how many I could kill if I sprayed the boards, Sanford grinned at the thought, looking down at his rifle. No. No, stay focused.

A great deal of noise was not coming from the crowd, but whatever they were cheering at. Sanford had to admit, that the ominous racket of the whoops and howls from the onlookers was a ghostly thing to behold. The manic rush bounced around Helios oddly. What had once been a family-oriented shopping mall had become a staple-point of violence and bloodshed.

He wondered what had them so riled up.

Gotta' get on top.

The undersides of the arena structure were nothing but a maze of crisscrossing girders, wall sections, stockade rises and crosses of beams. Sanford felt like he was a child navigating a jungle-gym that was the size of a city. He was forced to bend, duck and twist through obstacles, marveling at his own previous unseen adeptness with flexibility and constitution.

Nyx must be rubbing off on me.

He came across an outcrop in the ground, where the mall's flooring had been stripped, and colossal support beams had been driven into a gorge gouged in a patch of exposed earth. Kneeling behind a pile of ancient, rusting pipe lengths, Sanford swept the area with his gun, flinching in surprise when some people sitting above his head jeered loudly at some development outside.

This is an arena.

Sanford was able to discern a vaguely disk-like orientation to the superstructure here. Whatever was happening in the arena's iris was unseen to him, as the pit was completely sealed with reinforced stockades and metal plates. There was a long rectangle of bolted steel that connected to the inner ring iris and extended westward until it vanished into a ruined shopping center's remains. He had no doubt that it was a tunnelway of some kind.

First this, then that.

A healthy dose of curiosity was shielding his prior dread. Now it seemed that the kidnapping of his companions wasn't so straightforward. There were no torture chambers, no laboratories. He didn't doubt that there were holding pens, but so far, it was the understructure of scrap-arena, cheering crowds, and-

"-Is that the best you fuckers got on- the Han'~?!"

Oh no.

Sanford felt like someone had drop-kicked his heart into his own throat. He whirled around and stared at the armored barrier barring his vision as to what was happening in the arena's center. Now that he had heard the faint outcry over the scream of the crowds, he knew that he didn't need to see what was happening to understand it.

Oh god.

Sanford ground his teeth and worked around the pipe pile. He jumped into the gorge, navigating through the copious shade until he met its epicenter.

At least whoever constructed this was smart about the layout.

It was inevitable that service ways would be needed to maintain something this big. The ladder extending from the gorge's concrete, diode center upwards was proof of that.

Slinging his rifle, Sanford started to tug himself up the rungs. The ladder creaked with each of his movements, but it held steadfast against his weight.

Soon he was climbing into a rounded porthole built into the structuring above his head. The square-shaped funnel was a thing of layered scrap and repurposed woodboard. It resembled a multi-colored cyclone when he looked up and down in either direction.

Let's hope whatever's above isn't guarded.

For some reason, the scavenger felt confidence in his own safety in that moment.

As it turned out, when he reached the top rung, and his quivering, dirty hand grabbed the final handle of the ladder's spine, it all turned out to be a sick joke of fate.

Ha, Sanford grinned as he pulled himself out of the chute and onto a creaking, wooden floor. Fancy that, you sons of bitches.

"Who the fuck are you?"

The man was shirtless, and had a little red goatee on the tip of his chin. Tattoos of green-colored serpents meshed with those of swastikas and cartoon-oriented ghosts. He had had a boot placed on a chair right beside the chute. As Sanford wobbled to a full stand in front of him, the scavenger could perceive the fresh trails of nicotine-laced smoke that were still rising from the newly lit cigarette between the thug's lips.

Something clanked on the floor. Sanford coughed into his fist and glanced leftwards. The second man who had lit the first's cigarette had dropped his lighter, his mouth agape in confusion.

"Ladies," Sanford grunted. "how the hell are ya'?"

-0-0-0-0-0-

Wood thudded, and the body left a slick of blood as it slid down to the floor.

Sanford grunted, lowered the pistol in his hand, and rolled his opposite shoulder, allowing the corpse that was draped over it to roll onto the ground with a disingenuous thud!

That could've been worse.

Slipping his cutlass from the dead Raider's stomach, the scavenger waited for the energy coalescing over the blade to burn away the last of the blood, before he shut the weapon down and slung it back to his hip.

"I forgot what using these things was like." He mumbled, checking the clip on the stolen sidearm to see that it was empty. "Thanks for that, you dumb fucks." He tossed weapon over his shoulder and proceeded to look for his rifle, which had been snagged away in the chaos.

The fight had been a literal twist. It had been quick, but a twist. Literally. Nobody had died in the same places they had started out in. In fact, an outside observer probably wouldn't have been able to tell which way the attackers had come from or where the defenders had been.

Needless to say, the pillbox was scattered with about eight or nine corpses, if you counted the poor slob that Sanford had cut in half at the waist. If it hadn't been for the carbon-based laser energies of his sword, he would've never have been able to separate the guy from his own legs like that.

Probably would've been better off.

He grimaced as he stepped through the aforementioned Raider's entrails that were slithered across the floor like a small cadre of pink serpents.

At least the mess wouldn't have been as bad.

The crowd screaming their heads off outside had masked everything, even the handful of gunshots. Any passerby who had heard the ruckus had probably assumed it was only some of their buddies getting drunk and putting holes in the ceiling. Sanford was fine with that level of ignorance himself.

At least, for the time being.

Now, the scavenger rolled a corpse over and snatched up his rifle that had been caught under the Raider woman's stomach. He glanced at her open, lifeless eyes. I'll take that, but thanks for holding it. Asshole.

The door leading out of the service pillbox was cracked ajar, and it let in a gray beam of light from the loud exterior that dueled with a hauntingly amber tone inside the room. Some lanterns were scattered on top of rusting aluminum shelving units and a now smashed wood table in the room's center. Apparently, this was being used as a restroom of sorts for Helios' new inhabitants. There were playing cards scattered like fallen hail pebbles all across the bloodstained floor. A Raider that was missing a chunk of his temple was lying ass-up in the table's snapped remnants.

Sanford had shot him with his own gun. 10millimeters were civilian gigs, but hell, in close quarters they packed a punch.

Time for some answers, the scavenger used the nose of his gun to inch the pillbox door open. What he saw shocked him. Oh no.

-0-0-0-0-0-

At first, she thought that the ceiling was coming down.

Truthfully, that was what the motions represented. It looked like debris had snapped off the arena's roof and was about to crush her under its immense weight, like she was nothing more than a bug.

Non. That is not ruination, Nyx's eyes went wide, and she was already moving before her own mind could process her reaction. Merde!

Cylindrical objects that were the size of people descended from the spotlight-laden heavens above. They were entangled in hundreds of feet of mesh-wire, that sang and reverberated and bounced as the cylinders unwound from their lengths via gravity's pull.

The objects spun and rotated crazily, until they reached the fullest lengths of the lines holding them, and they snapped to rigid, dangling attention just before hitting the arena's sandy ground.

Quoi au nom de dieu are those things?

They were engine blocks. Soot-belching, growling engine blocks. Each of them hung from wires that were hundreds of feet long, that shimmered in the glare of the spotlights as they kept the machines suspended. There were tens of them. As Nyx rose to her clawed feet and examined them, she saw what exactly they were meant to do.

You have to be kidding.

Snap~! –Nyx leapt back when an engine block fell to and dangled in the space just ahead of herself. The Deathclaw's talons unsheathed and she poised herself to move. The growling, bucking piece of machinery seemingly challenged her by licking the air with black smog and licks of fire from the exhaust vents layering down its spine. For a moment, she lowered her guard and peered at the line suspending the engine block, following it up and up until the spotlights above blinded her to its source.

Connerai! The reptile thought. Am I not the genetically modified creature speaking a foreign tongue? Why is it that this wasteland has humans that are even crazier?

Clunk~! –went the engine block. Nyx looked down at the block's underside, the side pointing down at the ground.

It was tipped with a propeller.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you all know how the Patron can devise a good evening's entertainment," –Came the announcer's booming voice across the arena's loudspeakers. "behold; the Obstacle Course! Where our heroes will first face off against the Spinning Death!"

"Obstacles?" Hancock screamed nearby, sweeping his gaze about the hanging forest of engine blocks. "Wait a minute! I've been scammed! I came here hoping for a mob of slack-jawed mother-fuckers with guns and blades and shit! What is this?"

"Usiner." Nyx growled, stepping back from the nearest block. "We must be rapide. These engines are capped with industrial strength fan blades. They will cut even you."

"Ha! That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of!" Hancock swatted at her with his buzzsaw. "What do they think we'll do? Blunder into these unmoving, still-as-trees propeller blades? That's classic Communist assumptions at work! Damned reds, always takin' us westerners for clods and diaper-lickers!"

"Would it be wrong to ask that you concentrate pour une fois?" She snapped.

"Did you just call me obsolete in Francian~?"

"Franc-ian? Mere de dieu! I speak Francais, French! What even is this word you speak of that is Francian~?" The Deathclaw shrieked. "You're too blinded by your own stupidity! Do you not understand that we must work together to survive this?"

"Ya' know, your tail would make an excellent slave-whip if I ripped it off, treated it with some leather-techniques, and tied it to a rope!" Hancock proclaiming, doting on her bladed fifth appendage.

"I'm going to die in here~!" Nyx screamed.

"Turn on the blades!" –Podcaster called.

The air was suddenly filled with a razor-sharp screech. Nyx leapt back when all of the engine blocks at once began to wiggle and shake. The fan-blades installed on their undersides were whirring into blinding blurs. Soon, the entire arena was drowned with their screams. There were almost thirty of them gridding the open pit of the arena's center. Very little space was left between clusters of these dangling death-traps.

"We're doomed." Nyx mumbled under breath. The reptile kept backing away, scanning her surroundings, until something cold touched one of her spines.

She yipped and spun around to see that she and Hancock had backed into each other. It was a strange moment of parody, being caught in the center of that blade-whirling hellhole in such a manner. Back to back. Normally, either of them were doing that with Sanford, and not at the same time.

"Lizard-Lick?" The robot asked.

"Oui, usiner?"

"Lemme' just say that without a doubt-" Hancock poked her with the inactive flat of his buzzsaw. Steel sang loudly when she backhanded him on instinct. The robot spiraled, righted himself, and hollered- "-Lincoln's Beard-! You sociopathic bitch~! I was gonna' say it was an honor to kick ass with you!"

"Well, let me remind you that this is all-" Nyx caught herself and blinked. "-…wait, really?"

"Not anymore." A nozzle squeaked, and Nyx hissed in disgust when a stream of black liquid pattered onto the ground beside her foot. "-Taste the Han's crude piss, you slap-happy radiation-frog!"

"Now, of course, the Obstacle Course wouldn't be complete without something to goad our heroes into the blades! Of course. Of Course. Release the bugs!"

"What did he say?" Nyx asked.

"Somethin' about ugs I think." Hancock sealed his coolant nozzle. "Ugly-ass Communist footwear! Haven't you bastards ever heard of crocs~?"

Slam~! –went one of the arena's tunnelway gates. Both Nyx and Hancock gazed over several of the hanging engine blocks to the northern face of the arena, to the gate that was at the foot of the Praetorian Box's foundation.

Little lithe shapes that were close to the ground skittered in a small, colorless mob from the dark interior of the passage beyond. They seemingly detached from the very shadows of the unseen depths within, scrambling on thin, straw-like legs.

Nyx tested the air with her tongue, and released a gasp.

"Usiner!" She warned, flicking her talons free of their sheaths on both hands.

"I see 'em!" Hancock chuckled.

"Aim faible!"

"Something about your mother?"

"Aim low~!"

The creatures were younglings of their kind. They were the size of dogs, and yet the venom they carried in hushed, lowered bunches behind themselves was enough to kill even a Deathclaw in significant dosages.

Where fully grown adults outsized men and were evenly at risk of running into the whirring fanblades of the hanging obstacle forest, these youths were too low to the ground to recognize such a threat.

Hancock's Plasma Gun barked and the Mr. Gutsy was rife with laughter.

"Show me what you got, you scampering little bastards~!"

Nyx stepped back right as a barbed, chitinous blade came down towards one of her feet. It stabbed into the sand instead, its host yanking it clear to reorient in a vaguely 'U' shaped presence over its own back.

The Radscorpion's mouth-pieces clattered together, and it lumbered closer to attempt and sting her again.

The Deathclaw snarled under her breath, reached down, and wrapped her fingers around the arachnid's tail. The scorpion shrieked as she lifted it up into the air.

Nyx used her other claw to grip its face, before she tugged in separate directions and ripped the scorpion in two, spattering her knees and the ground with bouts of gushing, white offal.

"I've got enough for all of ya'! Bring it on! The Han's opening up a can of ass-whoop, and you're all on the express order-list!" Hancock weaved left and right, he fired twice and incinerated a scorpion's face. He swung backwards, dodged the upwards swipe of a barbed tail, and stained his metal chassis with death-cream as he scythed the scorpion's back-plating open with his buzzsaw, poaching it like a cooked egg. "Someone give this G.I. a fight! You people don't have any balls~!"

"They are not the only ones, usiner." Nyx spat, transforming a scorpion's scream into moist ripping. She parted her hands and the ragged remains flung themselves east and west.

"I heard that, you talking python!" Hancock barked. "I take back everything I almost said! This isn't an honor, this is bullshit, man! Trapped here in this fine gladiatorial establishment, with my commanding officer's fuck-toy as my only backup!"

"What did you call me~?" Nyx compressed her heel until the Radscorpion's upper half compressed into the earth like it was a pancake. Guts and blood squirted between her toes and speckled the ground. "You fils de pute~!"

"You heard me!" Hancock screamed, even as two scorpions launched themselves off the ground, and latched onto his chassis, crawling around, chattering, blunting the barbs of their tails as they attempted to inject venom into a bloodless foe. "You're a malformed, condescending, ass-crack-lickin' bitttcccchhhhhh~!" –The robot hollered, rolling onto the ground, his buzzsaw flailing as more and more Radscorpions piled onto him.

Nyx would've piled onto him too at that moment. In fact, she would've been overjoyed to not only let the scorpions eat Hancock, but she would also've helped them by ripping him into smaller, more chewable pieces.

Instead, the scorpions were content to attack her too. The Deathclaw swiped her claws low, casting corpses back with each strike, even as they swamped her and forced her backwards.

Now I perceive the danger of these fans, she hummed to herself, casting a worried look over her own shoulder. The fan-propellers blurred the air and the engine blocks wiggled on the ends of the cables suspending them. Maybe this will be quick and I'll walk into one of them. It is better than scorpion venom.

-0-0-0-0-0-

"Is it just me, or is that Deathclaw's mouth moving~?"

"What? I can't hear you~."

"I said; is it just me, or-"

"-Speak up!"

"It is just me, or-"

-Sanford slit the first Raider's throat open before he could finish asking his loud, and annoying question. The cutlass danced once, and torrents of syrupy crimson ran like a tiny waterfall down his vest.

The man choked and gagged as he collapsed and alerted his friend that he had been yelling at. The second Raider gasped, went for a sidearm on his belt, and died when Sanford came from the flank, cupped his head in his arm crease, and wrenched backward.

Crkk~! –went the man's neck. The scavenger bundled the corpse in his arms and hid it with the other behind a railing rise before any of the crowd could see.

Just hold on, guys.

Sanford peaked over the railing and over the heads layering the bleachers. He gasped as he saw Nyx's tiny form maneuvering through the network of blade-rigged engine blocks dangling all over the arena's pit. The Radscorpions skittering across the ground were close on her heels. He saw his Deathclaw occasionally whirl around and hack a scorpion into two or three slices when they leapt at her. She weaved and bobbed and desperately avoided the fanblades she passed. Only she could've managed that with such speed. Hancock couldn't do it, he was too busy being swarmed on the ground nearby.

He'll be fine.

Sanford ducked back down and rolled his eyes. Even over the crowd's roar he could hear his robot cursing and cackling. It was faint but it was there.

Now, how does one cause such a ruckus, that it shuts down an entire coliseum?

He remembered old gladiator movies he had watched when he was kid, before the bombs. Tales of heroes infiltrating and finding loopholes in the Roman slave pits to meet their own goals of freedom. Sanford couldn't have ever dreamed he'd be doing the same for his own friends.

Staying on target's the easy part, the scavenger vaulted a window sill, and ducked behind the ruins of a storefront. He let a stalking pair of Super Mongers waddle heavily past before proceeding. Finding a way to stab through all this is the hard bit.

The raised portions of the arena, the boxes and serviceways that led to the bleacher rows had all once been the second and third story shopping lanes in Helios' main square. They were shielded by the shade of the arena's colossal scrap-structuring, made unimportant by the howl of the crowd, but were patrolled by Super Mongers and more Junker robots. Sanford avoided them by sticking to the shadows.

"…a worthy prize, if I do say so myself, sir. The Patron went to great lengths to… get it."

Sanford slipped behind a pile of drum barrels, kneeling, he shouldered against his cover and listened over all the noise. To his west, the arena was still bustling with noise and lights.

"I have no doubts of the Junker's intuition." –Spoke a second voice, one that was undoubtedly human, at least, and not mechanical like the first. "Where did he find it?"

"Of course, the Patron has forbidden me to reveal such knowledge! But really, presto! It's gone. He removed it from my coding."

"Ah, that is not very surprising."

Sanford watched over a barrel's rim as the man in the trenchcoat and fedora was escorted by the most peculiar looking RoboBrain model robot that he had ever seen. Large speaker-discs replaced the RoboBrain's arms and were festooned like ribbed décor from around his back plating. The dirty treads carrying the contraption rattled on the cracked tiles of the mall's flooring.

That's the arena announcer, Sanford glanced back at the rear of the cheering crowd. Hundreds of people, now without an announcer. This had to be of importance. Maybe they'll lead me to this Junker character I'm hearing so much shit about.

-A terrible crash echoed from the arena to his left. The crowd went into an uproar. Sanford forced himself to tear away from it and follow the two trekkers before him.

Give them hell, guys.

The cheering became more and more quiet as Sanford tailed the trenchcoat man and his RoboBrain escort. They vanished into a traveler's alley between two ruined storefronts, and from there on in things began to replace themselves with an eerie atmosphere.

"Did you hear that?" The stranger glanced over his shoulder.

"The tunnels here hiss up a storm, sir. Keep close! Keep close, one cannot miss this one of a time offer!" PodCaster chuckled, rumbling forwards and into an arched maintenance bulkhead.

"The Junker didn't see fit to remove your advertising programming too." The stranger observed, tearing his cold gaze from whence they had come.

"No. How can we sell our services without a salesman?"

"You've been doing just fine, it seems."

Sanford waited until the trenchcoat's tail flittered into the doorway, he unfolded from behind a mound of rubble with a sigh of relief.

It's quiet back here. Except for those pipes.

The scavenger hunched and hurried down a passageway whose walls were encrusted with bolted, hiss-kicking industrial pipes. An occasional floodlight in the ceiling dimly lit the hallway in sporadic placements. They highlighted the edges of the archway ahead as Sanford shuffled through.

Where are you two going, I wonder?

The arena's racket was completely gone here, replaced by a dull, industrial thrum of active generators. Sanford kept low and relied on a ghoulish, black depiction of his target's shadows that smeared themselves constantly due to the illumination from the tunnel's floodlights. Each time PodCaster and the stranger passed from one light, and their shadows faded, they passed into the next and their shadows would strengthen.

Smells like plastic down here, lots of plastic and… and ozone.

Sanford crinkled his nose.

"So this is where the magic happens?"

"You could say that."

There was another bulkhead, opened, fat and reinforced. Sanford slipped into cover by the frame's flank, and he peered past and into a large chamber beyond.

The stranger and PodCaster trailed down the center of a fully fledged laboratory. It was built like an aisle, with two subchambers divided between the east and west. Tables laden with spare parts, wire-setups and computer consoles littered the center of the room. A strange, disk-shaped orifice bored into the flooring was surrounding by plexiglass shields, and scrap-born, robotic claws that were tipped with clenching pincers, welding heads, and shock-pads.

This device took up the entire northern section of the chamber. Judging by the work-carts filled to the brim with all manner of robotic components, Sanford could ascertain that this was where the Junker constructed his Junkerbot armies.

"This is where those Mongers come from." The stranger tipped his fedora at the accursed machine, as if he was admiring it for a job well done.

"The Patron merely appeased those who were willing to buy. Satisfied customers, that lot! They even got a half-priced deal!" PodCaster exclaimed.

"Really?" The stranger laughed. "How so?"

"Half of the Super Mutant tribe that lived here agreed to be tougher, bigger and faster, and the other half got shot! Fifty-percent off, clearance deals! Everything must go!"

"I appreciate your salesmanship."

That explains the Mongers, Sanford bit his lip nearby, watching as the robot and the man trailed towards the western portion of the room. It doesn't explain why the Junker is doing all of this. Is it really just to get rich? Where'd he even get the resources to convert a whole damned shopping mall into an arena and robot factory?

"You don't think the Scavenger's going to come looking for his toys?"

The Scavenger? Is that… Sanford slipped through the doorframe and knelt behind a wheeled computer tower. …is that supposed to be me?

Up a brief ramp, and PodCaster led the stranger to a large, gated bulkhead.

"This is it, good sir! Just one last step to your prize!" PodCaster laughed as sensors picked the two passersby up, and the gate rumbled and started to lift."One package of the Sludge, as per requested!"

"And you won't tell us where it came from? This isn't our turf, we respect that." The stranger adjusted his coat.

"It's outside of my programming now, sir."

"A shrewd businessman. I like that."

No sooner had to gate risen, and the two were moving inside the chamber, did Sanford advance again. He hid outside the new frame, peering past the arch rim.

"Is that it?" The stranger was pointing into the center of the chamber. Lying there, like a big egg, was a pod of some sorts. It was laden with wires and tube-extrusions, and a film of glass capping its center spine was shrouded with wet mist and machine-sweat. Generators hummed from their bulky, barrel-like masses up against the rightwards wall, and a sprawl of computers were hard-wired to them via a forest of cables snaking across the entire chamber's floor. "Is that where he is?"

"That is outside my programming too, sir. Can I interest you in a sale? A free sale?"

"As a matter of fact, you can."

PodCaster gestured to one of the many worktables littering the chamber. Sanford squinted for a moment, and then raised his rifle to his face to utilize the scope.

The stranger was lifting a glass container off the table. It was glowing a sickly yellow through several viewing ports that were rimmed with aluminum. Even though Sanford could not see the man's face, he could tell by the prideful hunch of his shoulders, and the protuberance of his chest that he was experiencing a moment of prideful success.

He heard the stranger give off a tiny sound of wonder.

"This is it." He confirmed lowly, cradling the container to his breast as if it was a newborn child. "So our transaction was not for naught. Splicer will be overjoyed."

"The deliveries have already been set, with pre-packaging included, as you know." PodCaster's single, glowing green eye was expressionless as he watched the coated man. Something about the robot's body language read off as different. Sanford thought he looked annoyed, for a machine's sense, anyway. "We're both free of loose-ends, my good sir. Another satisfied customer."

"Satisfied indeed." The stranger nodded to the pod in the center of the room. "I'm sure the Junker will… get him out of there. These computers are pre-War. There isn't anything they can't crack."

"…what the fuck are you people talking about?" Sanford mumbled.

Something thudded by the laboratory's doorframe. There was a bestial, metallic grunt.

Sanford looked down at his own boots. Where he was standing was now bathed in a faint cone of amber light.

Thnk-thnk-thnk-thnk~! –went a pair of heavy boots as they stormed closer and closer.

"Shit~!" –Sanford barked, whirling around, he brought the muzzle of his rifle to bear, and then, without thinking, he pulled the trigger.

Crimson beams shot out in a repeating, crack-like report. It bathed the entire chamber crimson for a good while, and it sizzled the air as if someone was cooking the very particles that made it whole.

As for the Super Monger that had been stampeding towards Sanford, the truth didn't fall so far from such a description.

The laser bolts negated the protective effects of its skin and the bionics layering its body. Its bionic head popped in a fiery spray of sparks and soot. Its shoulders crumpled and were reduced to gelatinous mounds of red oatmeal by the chewing effects of the laser beams.

Sanford drained half the battery face, all until the Monger teetered in its run, and slammed onto its chest on the floor before him, everything from the pectoral and up vaporized, and trailing red steam. Its limbs and robotics kept twitching even after it was dead.

Guess that does away with stealth, Sanford snorted, stood up and rounded the gateframe, intending to deal with the stranger and PodCaster. Now for you two, my little-

Clap~! –there was a flash of light, and before Sanford knew it, he was blind, and he could not hear anything.

Stumbling, and shouldering into the gateframe, the scavenger could feel his throat quiver, but could not hear his curses and barks. He steadied himself, blinking away coronas of light and splotches of darkness. His head was swimming like mad and he could not stand straight.

Smell that? Son of a bitch, it smelt like an expended firecracker. There was just a whiff of it, but a whiff was all he needed. Flash-bang.

Sanford pinched an eye open and saw just a glance of the laboratory's doorframe. He saw the tail-end of the mysterious man's trenchcoat, and then nothing.

He ran!

The scavenger grunted and hugged his gun, angrily shaking his head as sight slowly began to return to him.

That just leaves-

"-Congratulations! Sir, you have just won a once in a lifetime opportunity for the perfect time-share plan!" –A slight, sparkling market-tune reverberated from PodCaster's speakers as the RoboBrain rattled on its treads towards where Sanford was standing, its green eye locked on him coldly.

"-Yeah~?" Sanford groaned with annoyance, running a quivering hand through his hair. "What are you gonna' do, barrel-boy? Ya' know, I've heard the brains in you guys belonged to chimps once."

"Might I interest you in some subterranean realestate?" Two hatches on the sides of PodCaster's chassis flipped open, revealing a matching set of stilt-suspended flamethrower heads that flickered with untapped little fire bulbs. "'Cause I intend to bury you!"

"-Fuck~!" Sanford yipped. No sooner did he round the corner of the arch did the spot he was leant against burst into a searing wad of flames.

Whoosh~! –roared PodCaster's weapons. Twin, concentrated, white-hot cones of fire erupted like torrents of liquid from both sides of the announcer robot. The flamethrowers were so loud that they even drowned out the Vaudeville theme blaring from PodCaster's speakers.

"-Fuckin' crazy ass robot!" The scavenger gasped, feeling sweat run down his face as the flames ate away at the other side of the arch frame.

"Everything's going fast, this hot-hot-hot selling season!" PodCaster stated matter-of-factly, rumbling closer and closer to the arch, with twin hell-jets still vomiting from his flanks. "Not the kind of fellow to settle down are you? No worries! I'll turn you around! I turn everyone around! Because I'm damn good at fire-selling my inventory!"

PodCaster was too absorbed in the rushing screams of his throwers. He never noticed the fragmentation grenade that rolled across the ground, and clicked to a halt right in front of his treads.

At least, not until it was too late.

The RoboBrain's green eye jolted downwards.

"Express deals on fire extinguishers!" –He got out, and then, the grenade detonated.

Bang~! –PodCaster vanished in a burst of smoke, glowing shrapnel and a lick of fire. There was a distinct racket of something metal hitting the floor. But after that, all was silent, save the crackle of the burning solvent that was littering the archframe and the floor.

"…I don't suppose you people take coupons." Sanford dusted some ash off his shoulder pad and leered at all the smoke swirling around the laboratory. PodCaster was lost somewhere in there, in pieces, and reduced to a pile of scrap. "How's your match gonna' go without an announcer? Damn shame."

Sanford took a step back and offered a glaring eye at the large tube-shaped orifice cut into the floor in the lab's northern corner. The robot-making machine made his eyebrows itch and his anger simmer.

Putting an end to that cannot be anything other than productive.

Sanford unpinned another grenade, and underhand tossed it across the room. He heard it rattle against metal, and it vanished at the tube's bottom.

Fuck you with a stick.

Bang~! –the scavenger flinched as he walked out of the lab, uncaring as flame whipped from the smoking rent in the floor, and several of the robotic claws snapped from their moorings and plummeted into the fire.

When he reached the hallway outside, he scanned it for targets. The stranger in the fedora and coat was gone, along with whatever had been in that container.

It's not important right now, Sanford grumbled under his breath, heading back the way he had come. I need to find this Junker and rip his head off.

The scavenger's boots thudded down the hallway, and soon he was gone and off to save his Deathclaw and his robot.

Back inside the laboratory, lying in a sparking heap across the floor, PodCaster waited until a slab of his own chassis slid off his carapace and bounced onto the ground beside him. The machine was sprawled on its back, its green eye leering almost heedlessly at the ceiling above.

Through the crackle of fire from the flamethrower chemicals, PodCaster's internal systems could be heard whirring and struggling to fulfill the RoboBrain's request.

"-PodCaster? PodCaster, dear friend, where are you? The Obstacle Course is nearing an end, and I need someone up here to be… you know… you!" –Came a crackly voice through the communication uplink as soon as it was established. "PodCaster? You can't go dark on me now, this is an important-"

"-Bzzkkk-kkkzzzk-! -JuNKer… sIr…" PodCaster's voice sounded out of tune. It bounced, like an audio track mutilated by a wave-form. "We hAVE a…. proBLem…"

"What are you talking about, Pod'? Wasn't the man happy with his gift? I'm telling you now, if you botched a deal with Splicer's goon, I'll-"

"The DeAL went… FINE…" PodCaster paused, as if he was making to clear phlegm from a throat he didn't have. "There IS… anoTHER… ProBlem…"

"Well then, what is it?"

"ThERE are…. SHOP-LIFTERS… about-! Bzzzkrrrrkkkk~!"

-0-0-0-0-0-

"Everything A-Okay, pal?" Brokeman chuckled nearby.

"Of course." Calvin laughed carelessly, touching the com-bead wired into his one organic ear to kill the link. Aside from a slight twitch of his eye as his concentration and control were tested, it was impossible to tell that the Junker was suddenly overcome with an urge to shoot someone. "It appears PodCaster has run into some mechanical difficulties. I'll have to spectate in his absence."

"I'm sure your warband will be thrilled." Sarah Locust glanced at Brokeman.

"No." Brokeman's face lit up like a lightbulb. He grabbed the Junker's shoulder so roughly that the cigarette Calvin had been smoking was practically catapulted from his lips. "Can I do it?"

"What?" Calvin had never sounded so flabbergasted with anyone before, much less his prime patron and supporter that was Brokeman Jawlock of the SkullTakers tribe. "Why on Earth would you-?"

"Can I?"

For someone who had made a reputation of smashing people's heads in, Brokeman couldn't have been more childish. He was like an overexcited pre-teen boy. Calvin wondered sometimes what would happen if someone gave the Raider warlord a toy to play with. Would he put down that god-awful killing hammer and actually run around the room with it, making airplane noises?

Probably.

"Go right ahead, my friend." Calvin touched the Raider's hand. "Ms. Locust-"

"Sarah." The Scythe commander corrected.

"-Sarah, is most correct. I'm certain that today's audience- ninety-percent SkullTaker, ahem –would love the surprise in a new announcer that they so adore."

"Yeah man, fuck yeah." Brokeman stomped a foot, grinning like a madman. "Yes! Here's where the fun starts! Oi! Locust, have one of your goons wire me up!"

"Would you all excuse me for a moment?" Calvin took the opportunity to slip away.

-0-0-0-0-0-

One of the fans nearly caught her. It came so close that Nyx felt a tinny glance of blade's tip drive through the air right over her back's scales.

The Deathclaw was quick, though. She swung her arm outwards, tucked into her own weight, and rolled between the death-fan chopper behind herself, and the cluster of Radscorpions in front of her.

Crunch~!

Blood squished and stained over her shoulders. She weighed so much that when she landed on one of the arachnids, she wound up flattening it like a pancake. Its guts decorated her back and her spines for long after.

This is madness. Unacceptable.

Nyx righted herself with an angry huff. She watched with hateful, yellow eyes as more of the scorpions scrambled towards her, avoiding the surrounding death-fans due only to their height.

If they were just a little lower, they would all-

Nyx blinked, snarled, and lashed out with her talons to the left.

Snap~! –went one of the cables. The engine block produced a sharp bark, and soot catapulted from its vents when the line broke. The fan-blade kicked dust and debris everywhere as it landed on the ground, screaming, clanking, and sending shrapnel flying.

Nyx didn't wait for more than a second. Careful to avoid getting her feet caught, the reptile reached out with her long arms, and wrapped her powerful fingers over the engine's sides, wincing as unbearable heat burned into her palms despite their leathery armoring.

Pull through it.

The Deathclaw gave off a serpentine rumble of effort. The metal of the block creaked and steel snapped. She crushed her talons into the material, and as the fan continued to spin and jerk and wiggle, she lifted the kicking engine block up before herself, and she used it like a meat-grinder against the RadScorpions.

"-As monsieur would say-!" Nyx cried over the repulsive sound of chitin and flesh being squelched. "-Go to hell~!"

The RadScorpions couldn't tell the difference either way. They leapt at her and died in the fan's blades, being swept and sliced to white, gory pieces. Severed legs flew about like loose blades of shrapnel, organs clogged the fan's rinds and strips of keratin were hurled in globular streaks in every direction.

Arachnid innards flowed from the fan's underside like a fall of toxic sludge, steaming in the sand even as Nyx's cloven feet squished and compressed through it.

Bzzzzzzzzzzkkkkk~! –the sound was terrible. It was like a lawn mower meant to mow bugs instead of grass.

"-Come back here, you little fuckers~!" –Hancock screamed. Some of the scorpions had evidently tired of him, or were genuinely trying to escape. They skittered away from the rampaging robot only to be caught in swinging cones of fire jettisoning from Hancock's flamethrower. Their blackened corpses twisted and riled on the ground like expended, living scabs. "Taste the power of the Han'!"

Hancock swung with his buzzsaw and clipped a scorpion just beneath his thruster in two. His gun barked and another collapsed into a pulsating mound of glowing, green goop from the plasma melting its flesh.

Exhilarated, the Mr. Gutsy reared back on his engine, and roared in triumph. The crowd was eating it up. It seemed like ten times the bottles were now bouncing off the chain mesh sealing them in.

Breathing, and scanning the grounds, Nyx let her shoulders slouch. She heaved and tossed the failing engine block over to her side. It landed, bounced once, and the propeller blade finally fell still as scorpion guts gunked up the lines inside.

"Usiner…?" The Deathclaw tiredly stepped closer, minding all the other active blocks that were still hanging around them.

"-Ha-haaaa~! Lizardlips! You're alive!"

Nyx retracted her head in disgust when the robot flew closer, jamming his ocu-lenses in her face.

"That. Was. Fucking. Amazing~! Ahhhh-ha-haaaaa~!" Hancock screamed as loudly as his amplifiers would allow him. "Drink that in, you scabs! Scorpions? Buzzsaws? We've got you covered! For Democracy, and Roosevelt's mustache!"

Nyx almost threw him into one of the fan blades, but controlled herself. She tiredly slumped to her knees and curled her tail over herself, closing her eyes.

C'etait ferme… she thought, flexing her muscles to un-bunch and relax them. That was too close.

"I wonder what the judges have to say!" Hancock turned his gaze onto the Praetorian Box above. It was still looming there, as it always had been. "Well? Speak up, you motherless bags of dogshit! Juddgggeeee meeeeeee~!"

"Usiner…" Nyx waved a claw weakly at him. "…I beg of you, to shut the hell up."

"Eat me!"

Creeeeekkkk~! –both Hancock and Nyx flinched when the air released a terrible, high-pitched whine. Even the audience began to calm down a bit. The Raiders and tribesmen layering the bleachers looked up at the box, and for a moment, there was a still moment of serenity even throughout the arena.

"…Mm, this is lovely, actually." Nyx mumbled, closing her eyes again in the silence.

"….so… so is this thing on? Oh, it is? It is! Hey. Hey, yeah! Fuck. So, uh… So, fuck. Hey~! You boys and girls out there, guess who?"

-The arena erupted. The crowd screamed, cheered, cursed, and few gunshots went off.

A round dusted off the sand right beside Hancock. The robot turned on the wire mesh barrier hatefully.

"-Hey~! Which one of you mother-fucking reds just did that~? I'll rip off your dick!" He aimed one of his weapon arms at the wall. Some of the Raiders in the crowd ducked, and others clambered over one another to move.

It gave Nyx an idea.

"Usiner," She gasped, rising onto one of her clawed feet. "usiner! Y-You are- dieu forgive me –you are a genius!"

"Ah-haaa! See that? I knew you'd come around some day, Gecko-Ass! You'd see that- the Han –has the smarts to- waitasecond, whatdidyousay-?"

"They're mocking you, usiner." The Deathclaw persisted, standing, casting a glance at the box overhead. "They're all picking fun at you. T-They scoff your ability to kill and… and kick-ass- yes."

"So there's a script, for this shit, but I hate scripts. Scripts can fuck off. Listen! It's time for part two of this mess! These two… things, this, lizard, and this robot, got through the Obstacle Course! I, Brokeman Jawlock, congratulate them!"

The crowd clapped and jeered. More bottles flew off the mesh, and so too did some other forms of blunt objects and offal.

Hancock scanned the crowds and looked back at Nyx.

"What say you, Crocodile-Woman?" He jabbed his buzzsaw at her.

"They mock you." Nyx grinned toothily, pointing at the stands. "They scoff you. They are not cheering you on, usiner, they are berating you."

"…No." Hancock uttered after a long pause. "No. That's not true! That's a lie! Falsities and lies~!"

"It is true." Nyx glanced up at the Praetorian Box. "-And up there? In la tour? They are laughing at you over drinks and smoke. You were brought here to be made fun of."

"No! No! You speak deceit and- and-" Hancock stuttered. "-fuck! Curse my limited, bad-mouthed vocabulary!"

"Bad-mouthing. They all bad-mouth you." Nyx swept a claw over the stands. "All of them, usiner. They are all… uhm… Communists, and reds! Oui. Communists, and Chi-nese sympathizers."

"It's time for the Hazard Course! Sponsored by me! Brokeman Jawlock of the SkullTakers! Bring on the shit! Yeah!" –The speaker link cut, but not before there was a tiny: "…did I do good…?..." –in the background.

The ground rumbled again. Nyx glanced over her shoulder as the cables suspending the engine blocks were reeled in. Automated systems were rewinding them. The fans were shutting off and the dust around the arena was settling.

"… So…" She looked back down when Hancock spoke again. He sounded very quiet all of a sudden. "…You're telling me that I've been reduced, to a caged canary, at the behest of an audience of fuckbags. Is what you're saying?"

"Usiner, I…" The Deathclaw licked her nose in thought, shrugged, and put a claw on the back of the robot's chassis. "-That is exactly what I am saying."

"Activating Laser-Beams!" –Warlord Jawlock howled over the arena's speakers.

"Laser Beams?" Nyx mumbled.

-0-0-0-0-0-