Fawkes: Thanks very much, and glad you like this. Out of interest, your username a reference to the Super Mutant from Fallout 3?

Malx: I'm enjoying Michael's little asides a lot; very fun to write, and good to see I'm not the only one who likes them.

McBadgere:


Oi, don't be cheeky, you!


Enjoyed the whole ripping off the Legion plan myself, and it was a good way to show how this lot operate (vis. as greedily as they possibly can), and Michaels money-grabbing schemes are going to be a major driving factor in the plot to come.

And I've got to say, the wincing at the execution was the sort of reaction I was hoping for; they're not nice people, Anston and Co., though I want the reader to be rooting for them by the end in any case, which is a track balance to strike. That execution was an attempt to hammer home their rather ruthless side.

And thanks for pointing out that spelling error, by the way. I'll go fix that one.

Thanks for reading everyone, and enjoy Fallout 3, McBadgere. Stellar game.

This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Dec 13 2011, 08:22 PM

Sort of like how Benny tries to kill you and leaves you for dead buried in the desert - then pops up so pleasant to the player when caught on the strip - "Lets be partners!"

Or how Caesar's Legion is slaughtering people left and right, but when you meet Caesar in person you have to struggle with yourself to not side with him - or kill him (because he kind of wins the player over to his side and makes them second guess their earlier decisions about him and his army?


I absolutely love being able to find a sympathetic side to an evil character, to me that can completely make or even overset a plot in such a stunning way !!! Very excited to see it play out !!

Exactly the sort of thing I'm going for. Though in my case I shot Benny (I wanted that suit) and ended up siding with House against Caesar, mainly because he was the most stylish side you could take.

This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Dec 13 2011, 10:05 PM

Yup! My favorite companion in that game! To bad he can't give piggy back rides D:

Well, I killed Benny too (for his suit - loved it !!) - but I only pretended to side with the House and got my nice hotel suite - but while House thought I was on his side I sneaked around and disabled all the robots going into the strip and inside the casino.

Then I blew up all the robots under Caesars camp (thereby making him think I was siding with him) - however, I then sneaked into Caesar's tent and killed everyone in there too.

Then I went back to the casino and disabled the computer from the House so he couldn't control any of his robots to sic them on me. That way I got the nice digs to live in without having robots controlling everything, lol.

That game had a game ending glitch before the big battle at the end every time I played it, I never got to fight that giant in the gold mask in the camp behind Caesar's camp, never got to have the battle on the dam - still, I loved the game, loved playing it.

*

"We're good at hurting people, you don't want to figure out how good, do you?"

Some people have a knack for imagery. Some people have a knack for character development. Well, it's too early to tell if you've got those, but I know for certain you've got a knack for dialogue.

Zalphon: Thanks very much!

Malx: That's an...interesting plan. I kept the robot army and killed House, myself, and then made friends with all the people I could get on my side. Legion didn't last as long as they hoped they might, though may there be a pox 'pon that glitch's scaly hide!

Fawkes: Fawkes is indeed awesome, and...well, if I could I'd mod in piggy backs (a pity I can't). Though if you ask me, it's Veronica all the way!

Veronica was my absolute favorite early in the game, I could watch her punch Deathclaws forever and never tire of it, lol !!! She was awesome in an early game, but at higher levels she kind of just couldn't keep up.

Veronica and ED-E were brilliant for me...But then I got to a point where I just said "Enough" and I got shut of her...She was miffed...At least in Skyrim they're more polite about it... ...

Chapter 5

“Four thousand caps,” Michael said, looking at the sum on the table before them. “Four. Thousand. Caps. Goddamn, life is truly beautiful today.”

“Might want to stop drooling over the cash, Mike,” Brutus grinned. “We’re still waiting for our cut.”

Michael shook his head, leaning back in his chair in the smoky, dingy confines of the Atomic Wrangler. The wooden piece of furniture creaked under his weight as he did so, and he said; “Y’know, that’s fair. Alright, seven hundred caps each. Best paying job yet, I do think.”

“Nice,” Doris said, while Ripley declared; “I’m hitting up the Tops!”

Alex had a slight frown on his face, before he said; “Hey, isn’t it eight hundred each if we’re getting paid four grand?”

“Yep,” Michael said. “I’m putting aside four hundred to get us a nice little stimulant to business; an advertisement for Anston and Co. on Radio New Vegas. Was gonna head over to the studio and buy us a nice little recommendation; long term business, y’know?”

“Hey, can I come, then?” Alex asked.

“I was just gonna be doing business there,” Michael said. “Doubt it’s gonna be all that exciting.”

“Yeah, but Mr New Vegas seems like a cool guy,” Alex said. “I wanna meet him, and if we’re going over there to ask about an advert then we might just.”

Michael shrugged, before he said; “Sure, if you really want.”

“Cool,” Alex said. “Thanks, boss.”

“No problem,” Michael said, before he leaned forward on the round table they were seated around and divided the small pile of caps, NCR dollars and Legion aureii on the table before them evenly amongst each member of Anston and Co. “Alright, there we go. Your cash, you do what you want with it. I’m heading over to the Radio New Vegas studio on the Strip, the rest of you can come with me if you want.”

There was a round of nods, the rest of Anston and Co. eager to spend their earnings in the grand casinos that populated what had more than once been called ‘The Richest Place on what’s left of Earth.’ Through Freeside they went, passing by crumbling, dilapidated buildings, through the gate that separated the Strip from its far less glamorous counterpart.

“See you guys later, then,” Michael said in way of farewell as his company, and he and Alex were left alone on the Strip as they made their way towards Radio New Vegas’ studio.

There was quiet as he and Alex made their way along the cracked tarmac roadway, a pair of Securitrons whirling past them in the opposite direction, before Michael asked; “So why do you want to meet Mr. New Vegas so much anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “He just seems like a cool guy.”

Michael shrugged.

“Guess we’ve all gotta have someone we look up to,” he said after a moment. “S’pose there’s worse people to do that with than Mr New Vegas.”

I know what you’re all thinking, and yeah, I do have someone I look up to as well. In fact, Alex and I were walking past his place just then. So, who was this guy? Mr House, of course.

Y’se, the way I had things figured, the situation in the Mojave with New Vegas and the NCR went something like this; the NCR occupied the place, and House gave them power from the Hoover Dam. Now, the Strip doesn’t actually need that much power, and I remember hearing from some NCR techie that all it really requires is something like five percent of the dam’s output (don’t quote me on that, this is years ago). Still, that’s barely anything, and House had absolutely nothing else he needed to do with all that electricity going spare, so he just shut down those generators.

Then along comes the NCR, with a whole goddamn army and it starts demanding all the juice from the dam. All House had was his Securitrons, so he doesn’t have much choice other than to agree with them. Except that, of course, what he gets in return is a whole ton of cash from all the tourists going to the Strip, and an entire army to keep his territory safe, and in return all he needs to give the NCR is power that he doesn’t even need in the first place. Now, I might well be getting the figures wrong, but while the NCR thinks they’re getting a pretty sweet deal out of all this, they seem to have pretty much turned around, bent down, pulled down their pants and said to House; “Do what you want with me, baby.”

“Pity you didn’t get to see Mr New Vegas in person, uh?” Michael said slightly sympathetically as he and Alex left the studio and returned to the Strip, flicking the arms of his sunglasses out and sliding them on. “Still, the advert’s on air now, and that’s what matters.”

“Yeah,” Alex said, still sounding a little disappointed. “Hey, another time, maybe. Anyway, were you going to be hitting the Strip, boss?”

Michael shook his head.

“Nope,” he said. “That’s all that the others seem to do, though; make their money and then spend it away on the tables or strippers. There’s no long term plan.”

“Was there going to be?” Alex asked. “I mean, we’re making pretty good money at the moment.”

“Pretty good?” Michael said slightly derisively. “Pretty good isn’t good enough! I’m thinking long-term, big business here; making proper, steady money and getting rich, eating at the Ultra-Luxe every day rich. So I’m saving up all this cash, gonna invest it wisely, that sort of thing; that’s why I’ve got the advert, that’s why I’m gonna find us somewhere that we can use as a proper base of operations and that’s why I’m not just gonna spend all of it in the casinos. Beside, you know what they say; cap saved is a cap earned, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” Alex said. “Though thinking of that, I had an idea.”

“Ahuh?” Michael said, raising an eyebrow at Alex in interest. “Let’s hear it.”

“You know the Thorn, over in Westside?” Alex asked.

“Oh yeah, that fighting pit,” Michael replied. “You thinking we could try any betting or something out there?”

“I thought we could put Brutus in there,” Alex said. “Y’know, put some bets on him and stuff, get some cash out of that.”

Michael nodded slowly.

“That’s…that’s a pretty good idea, actually,” he said. “If Brutus would be up for it, mind; we’d lose a pretty big part of the company if he was taken out of action.”

“Sure he’d be up for it,” Alex said. “He’s a big guy; he can look after himself in a fight if any of us can.”

“Suppose so,” Michael said. “We’ll ask him, I guess. Good a way as any to get some cash, isn’t it.”

He nodded contemplatively, and said; “Y’know, you could be on to a winner, there.”

#

“So,” Michael said to woman before him. “This is the Thorn then, uh?”

Harsh striplights glared down on a dirt pit walled in concrete, floor stained with blood, while metal walkways snaked above and around it, and only two lead down to the pit itself. There was an underlying, unpleasant scent of viscera and sweat pervading the air, made all the worse by the fact that it was trapped under the ground in the sewer tunnels that housed the Thorn.

“This it is,” Red Lucy replied, the mistress of the Thorn looking Michael and his associates up and down with a critical eye. “The testing ground where you can choose the moment of death against destiny, where the Wasteland and humankind are placed in competition with one another.”

“Right,” Michael said slowly. “Right, that sounds…sounds like the sort of thing we’re here for?”

“You’re here to fight?” Red Lucy asked, folding her arms. There was the faintest trace of a smirk on her features; all Michael wore was a suit, after all, and even though the jacket was lined with Kevlar it would do little good in a fighting pit when all it needed was a well placed knife in the lapel to stick steel into a target’s vitals.

“Myself? No,” Michael said. “Brutus, on the other hand, is.”

“So I should hope,” Red Lucy said, giving Brutus a far more approving look. “He looks capable of handling himself in there.”

“Glad to hear,” Michael said. “So, what’s he fighting?”

“It depends,” Red Lucy replied. “We have animals he can fight, but we also captured some Fiends just a few days ago, three of them. Some of the Westsiders wanted to put them on trial, but I persuaded them to let them see if they could prove themselves worthy of survival in the Thorn. Your big friend could fight one of them, if he wished.”

“I’ll take all three,” Brutus replied.

There was a long pause, before Michael said; “Brutus, buddy, are you nuts? Three on one?”

Brutus nodded.

“Small pit,” he said. “They’ll get in each other’s way. I can handle that, easy.”

“If you’re sure,” Michael said slowly.

“I’m sure,” Brutus said, his tone calm. “Three Fiends aren’t a problem.”

Michael shrugged, before he said; “What are the odds on him winning, then?”

“Two to one,” Lucy said quickly, working the numbers out with the speed of an experienced bookie.

“Good,” Michael said. “I’ll put four hundred caps on him.”

Red Lucy nodded, and she called to one of the guards; “Get the Fiends, all of them; we have someone who wants to try himself against them.”

The guard nodded in reply, leaving through a metal side door to somewhere in the pit below, and Red Lucy nodded to Brutus.

“Head down,” she said. “Wait for the gates to open.”

Michael and the others headed to the raised ring of flat concrete that surrounded the Thorn’s fighting pit, and he lit a cigarette as Brutus headed into the gated area that lead into the arena.

The Legionary rolled back his shoulders, loosening them up a little, and drew his machete. There was a soft ‘whumph’ as he span it in his grip, blade parting the air, and he looked through the chain-link fence to see what was coming.

Like most of their kind, the three Fiends of New Vegas that emerged from the opposite pen were scrawny, wiry individuals, bodies ravaged by drug use and malnutrition. They wore a patchwork of metal plates and crudely tanned leather to serve as armour, and Brutus could see one of them, a particularly skinny one holding a metal pipe with its end wrapped in barbed wire, twitching slightly; a symptom of Psycho withdrawl. The other two were armed with similarly crude weapons; a sharp hook on the end of a steel chain, the Fiend wielding it whirling it around in front of him and grinning wickedly, and the other carrying a pair of broad bladed knives. Brutus made a mental note to watch the chain-wielder; the other two would need to get in reach of his machete or claw if they wanted to try and deal with him, but the one with the chain wouldn’t have that problem.

He could hear the roar of the crowd begin to dim as he focussed only on the combat ahead, the details of his opponents’ bodies already being assessed instantaneously, almost unconsciously; a bullet wound on the knee of the Fiend with the knives, possibly impairing mobility, fingers laced through the links of the chain, making it harder to let go of and either a blessing or a curse, depending on the circumstances. In normal combat, this tunnel vision would have been too risky to use, but Brutus knew what he was fighting. For the next few minutes, the entire world would simply be four walls and three enemies.

There was a rattle of chains and the gate swung upwards; the crowd roared its bloodthirsty approval, cheering on the fighters, and Brutus and the Fiends emerged.

They spread out, trying to flank him, but in the small pit’s confines that was easier said than done, Brutus making their job all the more difficult by backing into a corner and keeping them in his sight.

The chain swung down from his left, and Brutus raised his bionic, the hook wrapping around its claws. He closed them and yanked down just as Knives dashed forwards, using Chains’ weight as a counter pull himself out of the way of the barely controlled charge. A split second later, and the wire-wrapped pipe swept into his shoulder, barbed wire and metal hitting muscle with a wet slap.

He threw up his machete, pushing away the pipe with the flat of the blade and wincing as the wire pulled loose a few chunks of flesh and spatters of blood. Chains was still holding onto his weapon, trying desperately to tug it from his grasp, and before Pipe and Blades could do anything Brutus pulled, yanking himself towards Chains. His machete swung down, blade splitting Chains’ skull, and Brutus turned with surprising grace to face the others, limp corpse of their compatriot between them.

“Your friend’s good,” Red Lucy remarked to Michael from their place above the pit. “Didn’t know he did arena fights.”

Michael frowned down at the combat as Brutus blocked the swing of the pipe with his bionic, seeming to manage it with little difficulty despite the fact that it was constricted by the chain still wrapped round it, and said; “Neither did I.”

Below, Brutus slashed outwards with his machete, forcing Pipe and Knives to back away, and tugged, wrenching the chain from his dead enemy’s grasp. That thing swinging around was going to be irritating, but at least he wasn’t trying to fight and lug about a corpse at the same time.

Knives suddenly dived forwards, his two blades raised, and Brutus threw himself out of the way only for Pipe to swing at him as well. The former Legionary gave a yell of pain as the crude weapon sank into his gut, barely managing to stagger away, bleeding from the dozens of miniature holes punched into his stomach from the wire. Knives went for another attack, but the weapon he struck with glanced off the metal plating on Brutus shoulder and he stumbled. Brutus’ claw struck down and crushed his skull with a single blow, bone no match against solid steel.

Pipe circled Brutus warily, looking for an opening of some kind, feinting to the left before diving in suddenly. Brutus didn’t rise to the bait, knocking away his enemy’s crude weapon before the rear of his claw swung out and slammed into his chest. The Fiend was sent flying, rolling to the floor in a breathless tangle of limbs, and Brutus took a moment to wrench the chain from his claw before advancing, machete raised.

He kicked the Fiend onto his back, a boot pressing heavily down on his victim’s chest, and prepared to strike the final blow, before someone in the crowd suddenly yelled; “Crush his head! Use the claw!”

“Yeah!” someone else called. “Crush it!”

In moments, it was a beat of the same word over and over; “Crush! Crush! Crush! Crush!”

Obligingly, Brutus picked up the raider by his head, ignoring the man’s desperate flailing as he struggled to break free.

“Crush! Crush! Crush! Crush!”

Slowly, Brutus began to apply pressure.

“Crush! Crush! Crush! Crush!”

The screams grew louder, the struggles more desperate.

“Crush! Crush! Crush! Crush!”

Bone began to crack, yells sounding less like that of a man and more like that of an animal.

“Crush! Crush! Crush! Crush!”

It burst, blood, brains and a corpse dropping to the ground, and the crowd roared its approval, Brutus raising his viscera streaked claw to the ceiling in acknowledgement. The fight’s audience had gone wild, standing on their feet in barbaric joy at the spectacle before them, clapping enthusiastically and cheering. Even Red Lucy was smiling quietly, clapping slowly. Only Michael was quiet, looking thoughtfully down at the co-founder of his company, a slightly contemplative expression on his face underneath his goatee.

“Crowd like him, don’t they?” Red Lucy asked as Brutus began to ascend from the pit, spattered in blood and still bleeding, but triumphant.

Michael nodded.

“Hell, they love him,” he said after a moment. “Though I’ve got a question for you; how much would you pay me to have him come back same time next week and wow them again?”

Violence in exchange for money. That was Anston and Co. all over.

Excellent!!!... ...

I missed this... ...

Semi-controlled laughing moment (3.30-ish am, the kids'll be unamused if I wake them )...



Hah!!...Nice one... ...

More!!...

Cheers McBadgere; was particularly pleased by that little summary of events. Michael's a savvy fella.

And my near-apologies to your kids for nearly waking them, to.

A New Vegas story! I confess I have not played any Fallout, but from the mountain on which I live, I do overlook the Las Vegas Strip in the distance, if that counts.

Oh, anyway, you have a nice crisp and natural style with dialogue. I have been in TES so long that it is fun to see using things like sunglasses as props to smooth and connect dialogue.

And you have some gritty descriptions. Seems no matter where you go, some things never change: ’Violence in exchange for money.’

You've hooked a new reader. Everyone has already made all the comments I was going to make. I've been too busy spending 189 hours in Skyrim

I noticed a typo, "cartoonihs", in the first post.

Acadian: Not played New Vegas? Shun the unbeliever. Shuuuuun...

And yep, some things never change, like war and money. Didn't you read the subtitle

MyCat: Don't worry about the Skyrimmy stuff it's all good. And thanks for pointing out the typo, I'll go fix that up.

Thanks for reading, you two!

Urk! Graphically gross end to another great chapter, lol.

Squish squish slop... hehehe...

Chapter 6

Three weeks went by, and all in all, life was pretty good. Business came rolling in since the advert, Brutus kept getting asked back to the Thorn to beat the crap out of whatever it was that Red Lucy had lined up for him time (except for the Deathclaw. I drew the line at that Deathclaw; I need Brutus alive). The only problem was, there was something missing. I couldn’t place it, at first, and then it hit me, just like that. Bam, bolt from the blue.

“An office,” Michael announced suddenly. “That’s it, an office!”

“What?” Ripley asked from his place around their table in the Atomic Wrangler.

“We need an office,” Michael said. “A headquarters, a base of operations.”

“The hell do we need that for?” Alex quizzed, raising an eyebrow. “That sort of thing’s expensive.”

“Kid’s got a point,” Brutus added. “We’re getting by pretty well already. Office would be pricey; need power, plumbing, someone to keep an eye on it when we’re gone, all that.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got money coming in,” Michael said. “We can pay for that. But we get an office, and people know where to find us, more business comes in, we get richer. Besides, it’s an office. A proper goddamn office! C’mon, gimme one merc company that has themselves an office; you can’t, can you?”

“That’s because they don’t need and office, though,” Ripley said. “A base or something, mesh fence and all that, that’s better.”

“No it ain’t,” Michael said. “Sure, it’s safer, but a client isn’t going to be happy about just going into any place full of armed thugs where they’re surrounded by big walls and gun turrets; they aren’t at ease, are they? While an office, that’s different; an office has class. An office shows that the people they’re dealing with here are a cut above the rest of the hired thugs out there, marks us out as private military contractors as opposed to just mercs.”

“What’s the difference between those two anyway?” Alex asked. “I still don’t get it.”

“There ain’t one,” Doris said. “Just that private military contractors sounds better.”

“Exactly,” Michael replied. “This is all about selling ourselves, people; we want Anston and Co. to be the go-to company for any mercenary work, and that means we need a place in a busy location where we can drum up lots of business.”

There was quiet for a few moments as the rest of the company considered this, before Brutus asked; “Where were you thinking, Mike?”

“Somewhere in Freeside,” Michael said. “Near the strip gate; I noticed a couple of old buildings that are in pretty good shape and just need the bums turfing out of them.”

“Reckon the Kings wouldn’t appreciate someone setting up on their territory,” Ripley pointed out. “They get pretty good business out of escorting folks to the Strip; might think it’s a threat.”

“Kings can suck it,” Michael declared. “Besides, there’s hardly any overlap, is there? We do bigger jobs, they do smaller ones. If we’re scrounging caps getting people through Freeside then we’ve got bigger problems than just the damn Kings.”

“The King won’t see it that way though, will he?” Brutus said.

“Worst case scenario, I talk things over with him,” Michael said. “He’s a reasonable guy, he can be brought round.”

“Hope so,” Ripley said. “I don’t want the Kings gunning for me.”

Michael waved a hand dismissively, saying; “It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

#

They found their potential office on the run up to the Strip, near the end of the long straight road, not too far from the gate. It was, come to think of it, one of the perfect places to set up shop; near enough so that wealthy patrons from the casinos could enter feeling safe and secure beneath the ever-vigilant gaze of Mr House’s securitrons. The old front doors were held closed by several near-rotten planks of wood, but Brutus’ claw made short work of that, wrenching them off with ease.

“Nice looking front on this thing,” Michael said as Brutus prised the ancient, rusting doors open. “I like it. S’almost like one of the casinos.”

Next to him, Doris nodded, adding; “I like it. That’s got style.”

She was right; the façade of the building stretched skywards, almost a good storey above the rest of the structure, a metal front that was rusted and pitted, a bit of polish would scrub the place up to a shine. Over the front doors was some kind of awning or balcony, a few letters scattered randomly across its front, and there was some kind of cubicle next to the entrance, its glass front shattered.

“What do you think it was?” Michael asked as they entered. They found themselves in some kind of foyer, an ancient, rotten linoleum carpet slowly surrendering ground to the concrete floor beneath it as damp and mould ate away at it. The only light was dimly filtered in from the sunlight outside There was, he was pleased to note, a desk off to one side, an ancient sign above it announcing; ‘Tickets and snacks.’

“No idea,” Brutus said, looking around as Michael approached the desk with a curious frown.

The legionary’s boss crouched down next a glass cubicle on the desk, the cubicle itself empty, and asked; “Any idea what ‘popco’ is?”

“Some kind of prewar company, maybe?” Doris suggested. “Like Robco?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Michael said. “Must’ve owned this place before the bombs dropped.”

A door behind them creaked slowly, and they glanced around to see a figure dressed in rags shuffling out of a doorway. He peered at them with unfocussed eyes, and managed to mumble a challenge; “Who’re you?”

“We’re moving in here,” Michael said.

The bum seemed to mull this over, swaying slightly, before he said; “But…but I live here.”

“Not any more,” Michael replied. “Go on, off you go.”

There was a confused silence, before Brutus simply clapped a meaty hand on the man’s shoulders and led him to the door. The bum stood on the cracked pavement outside, in the blazing sun, looking completely lost before he wandered away down the run-down street.

“Alright, let’s take a look around,” Michael said. “Hopefully that should be the last of any of those drifters.”

He pulled open the door that the intruder had accosted them from, revealing a flight of stairs. Brutus and Doris were in his wake as he climbed them, getting to a corridor at the end of the stairs, flicking on the light of his Pip-Boy to compensate from the fact that they were walking in total darkness.

“Hope Alex and Ripley find that generator,” Doris remarked as Michael shone the torch on his wrist ahead of him down the corridor. “This place isn’t going to be much good if we can’t light it up.”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “Gotta say, this place is bigger than I thought.”

Brutus nodded as Michael pushed open a door off the side. The room his Pip-Boy illuminated was small and boxy, much of the floor taken up by an ancient, rotting mattress. Pointing towards an empty window that simply showed more darkness, a strange, boxy device with a lense rested on a table, with a pair of large wheels held above it by a few metal struts. Michael peered at it, spinning one of the wheels with a finger.

“Wonder what this place was,” he said.

Brutus just shrugged, before he suggested; “Shall we check downstairs?”

“Yeah, might as well,” Michael said.

In the foyer, they pushed open another door, this one set back in the wall and with a sign of some sort above it, the letters above it long since fallen or peeled away. The room they entered seemed to be large, despite the fact that it was pitch black, and as Michael shone the torch around them they realised only then the scale of where they were.

Michael grinned.

“Now this,” he said. “This is something else.”

#

“Y’know what I don’t get,” Alex said as the door he pulled open revealed a cupboard full of protectron parts. “Is why all the robots about have ‘tron’ at the end of their names.”

Ripley just shrugged as he hauled away a sheet of corrugated iron and glanced underneath to see if there was anything there.

“I mean, there’s the protectron,” Alex continued as he quickly climbed over the ancient conveyor belt that ran through the derelict robot factory that occupied a quiet, largely ignored corner of Freeside. “And you’ve got the securitron as well, and there’s the…the...uh…”

“You can’t think of any other robot names, can you?” Ripley asked.

“Alright, I can’t,” Alex admitted.

“Well I remember there was the sextron back before the war,” Ripley said.

“What?”

“Well, basically, you’d bend over-”

“Hey, I didn’t ask for an explanation.”

“And the sextron would have this fist on a kind of arm-”

“Shaddup, shaddup.”

“And it would stick it-”

“SHUT UP, RIPLEY!”

Ripley cackled hoarsely and grinned at him through rotten teeth.

“Just pulling your leg, kid,” he said.

“Oh, thank god,” Alex said. “Man, that’s just gross.”

He shook his head, before he said; “Whatever, what I mean is that tron’s gotta mean something, hasn’t it?”

“No idea,” Ripley replied. There was a clattering and a curse as he knocked over a box of ancient, rusted tools. “I remember…I remember robot used to mean ‘slave’ in Greek or something.”

“What’s Greek?”

“Another language,” Ripley explained as he pulled open a door. “Hey, here we go.”

He picked up the small fission generator that sat at the bottom of the maintenance cupboard with a grunt, and said; “Gimme a hand with the door, will ya?”

Alex held it open for the Ghoul as they stepped out of the old factory, blinking in the change of light from the dim confines of the factory to the blazing sunshine that beat down mercilessly upon Freeside.

“This place it too damn hot,” Ripley grizzled as they made their way up the street. “I swear, I should’ve stuck around the Boneyard; sea kept things cool there. This, though, this just wears you out.”

Alex nodded at this. The light duster he wore was loose, the collar of his shirt undone, and his shaved scalp was glistening with a sheen of sweat; even though they were good desert clothes, they were sticking to him like glue in this heat.

“August in the Mojave,” Ripley continued. “Is not a pleasant time of year.”

“There any place cooler?” Alex asked.

This got a strange glance from Ripley, before the ghoul remembered that Alex had spent his entire life in the Mojave; before the war, the world had shrunk to the point where a fission jet could fly all the way around it in a matter of hours, but the falling of the bombs had blasted everywhere far, far apart from each other.

“I remember I took a holiday in a place called Canada once, way up north,” Ripley said. “Around this time of year, too. Nice and mild up there. Lots of trees.”

Alex shrugged.

“Could do with some mild weather now,” he said.

On the other hand, Freeside in this heat was quiet; the usual gangs of thieves and muggers that marauded the shanty town had retreated to the shade along with the beggars and the rest of its residents, and the closest they got to trouble were a few glares from the groups huddling there. It seemed that the consensus amongst Freeside’s people was that it wasn’t worth braving the heat just to mug two people lugging an old generator up the street.

“Hey!” Michael called to them as they were on the approach to the Strip. “You two, over here!”

“You picked the old movie theatre?” Ripley asked disbelievingly as the two approached the building.

“I picked the old whatty what?”

“The movie theatre,” Ripley said. “That’s what this place is, isn’t it?”

“I dunno,” Michael said. “It’s just some big old abandoned building. The hell’s a movie?”

“It’s like…it’s like a picture that moves, and they play sound to, y’know, tell a story,” Ripley said as he entered the foyer. “I remember as a kid that every week they’d show an instalment of the Adventures of Captain Cosmos; showed every Saturday, and you paid a nickel to get in and watch.”

“Why’d you pay to see the same thing again every week?” Michael asked.

“They left it on a cliffhanger every time,” Ripley answered. “So they’d have Captain Cosmos in some new kind of danger so you’d want to come back each time to find out what happened next.”

Michael looked thoughtful, before he said; “Not a bad idea.”

“Anyway,” he said. “There’s a place you can hook the generator up down in the basement, that should give us power.”

Ripley nodded as he followed Michael down, the torch on his Pip Boy lighting the way. There were a couple of battery powered electric lanterns hanging in the small brick room, and Doris was waiting with a box of tools she’d found from somewhere.

“That the generator?” she asked.

“Yep,” Ripley replied. “Where shall I stick it?”

“Just over there,” Doris said, gesturing to a gap in the wall where there were several wires loose. “Used to be where the place was hooked up to the grid. Just have to hope this generator works.”

She nodded over to Michael, saying; “Gimme a minute or two, hun. I’ll get it going.”

“Alright,” Michael said, heading up to foyer. He glanced around the dimly lit room, lighting a cigarette, and it was burnt almost down to the filter when Doris called up; “Michael, honey, I got it working. Give the lights a try, will you?”

He searched for the switch, flipping it up and the striplights that illuminated the foyer flickered on after a few moments.

“They’re good!” he called back, before he headed into the huge room they had discovered earlier. Seeing that the power was on, Brutus followed, and Michael tapped the many switches by the doorway as he entered. Before, they had stumbled around it in the dark, but now the true extent was revealed; easily a good fifteen metres across and more than twice that in length, tiers of seats all in neat rows, facing a white, flat screen that was speckled with mould and damp.

“Could have one hell of a firing range in here,” Brutus remarked with a grin.

“Yep,” Michael said. “Y’know what? This has gotta be the best office any merc company has ever had.”

*Runs around cheering madly...*

I loved this...Soooo much...

Michael's enthusiasm for the idea of an office...I can picture the location from the game...All that stuff Ripley (who's my fave character btw...Old and grumpy...I like him... ...I don't share his...Orientation though... ...) was saying about "before the war" and also the tour of the cinema, where - obviously - we knew what it was, but Michael and that lot had no idea...FANTASTICally done...

Soooo good...So so soooo good...

*Applauds with aplomb*...

Nice one x infinity... ...

My fave character was Fisto, lol. (KIDDING) !!! Great Write !!