Chapter One
"Should you really be poking it like that?"
"No."
"Then why are you?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Because I want to, woman! Sheesh, get off my dick!"
"..."
"Finally! Jerry, can you hand me that wrench? I want to try hitting it with that. Thanks, bud."
BANG! BANG!
"What do you hope to accomplish from this?"
"Jesus Christ, Janet! Shut up! If I wanted any of you to talk about what I was poking with my gun and hitting with a wrench, I would ask you! But did I ask you? Ballarms! Did I ask any of you?"
"NEGATIVE."
"Damn right. In fact, Ballarms, go smack it and make a ton of noise. It's what you're good at."
"ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY IN THIS MAN'S ARMY!"
BANG! CRASH!
"Now, Janet, let me explain this to you carefully. I know you were originally a robot and are, thus, mentally inferior to humans like me-"
"It was a brain bot. I was a human."
"-so I'll take it slowly. Slower than Cuddles eats his food. Slower than when I had to get all that gold back here from that stupid city. Slower than a bighorner with his legs shot off. Slower than a hornet in a thunderstorm. Slower than Ballarms-"
CRASH! BOOM! CRUNCH!
"Hey! Hey, Ballarms! I wanted you to make some noise, but not that much, okay? I want to hear myself."
"AFFIRMATIVE. BETTER DEAD THAN RED."
"Damn straight. So, yeah. Where was I?"
"..."
"Oh, yeah. Slower than Ballarms walking back home in the rain. Slower than-"
"READY TO DIE FOR YOUR COUNTRY, YOU COMMIE SON-OF-A-BITCH?"
CRASH!
"Holy shit, Ballarms! What did I just say? Okay, Janet, the point is: if we find some weird, purple, glowing thing in the middle of the Wasteland, I'm gonna do what I want with it. We found that TARDIS a few weeks ago, but that turned out fine, right? Hey, what happened to that, anyway?"
"You lost it."
"Oh, yeah. I lost my TARDIS. Still got the key, though."
Jingle!
"So, basically, stop worrying, babe. I got it under control. Now, what's Ballarms up to? I forgot that I don't like him behind me."
"I'M JUST GETTING WARMED UP! HOOAH!"
CRASH! BOOM!
WHOOOOOOSSSSSHHHHHH!
"Sweet Jesus, no! Ballarms, what did you do?"
"AN ERROR HAS OCCURRED."
"There's a fucking vortex in the middle of the desert! Of course a-! Ballarms! What the fuck are you doing?"
"TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE!"
"Ballarms, no!"
CRASH! WHOOOOOSSSHHH!
"No! Ballarms! Jerry! Cuddles! Hold on! Steve! Grab onto my hand! Steve! Steve! Steeeeeeeevveeee! Janet! Don't you let go of that rock!"
"Why didn't I just stay in the bedroll this morning?!"
"Because there were fiends in the cave, Janet! Wait, Janet, no! Janet! Cuddles, don't you dare! Don't you-! Alright, you know what? If we go, we all go together! Grab my hand, Jerry! Ready? Geroni- ah... no... Allons- no... um...
"Aha! 'Awaaaay!'
"That was actually fucking terrible."
AlChestBreach -- or, as many liked to call him, Al -- awoke with a pounding headache.
Not the kind of headache where it's like, "Oh, I have a headache -- better take some aspirin." This headache was more like, "Oh god, please let there be any sort of painkiller in my medicine cabinet or I will kill myself in the most painful way possible to get my mind off the debilitating hammering in my head." A little bit worse, though. And there was no medicine cabinet nearby.
He groaned and pushed himself up against a tree, shuddering at the bark touching the back of his neck. He had lost his hat, somewhere. No real loss. At least he still had the Tube Blanket. He stroked his collar lovingly.
Sweet, sweet Tube Blanket. He and that Tube Blanket had been through a lot together -- deathclaw hunts, giga super mutants, cyborg men with katanas, Buzz -- and Al had only had to repair it once in his life. His one true companion. The duster never abandoned him or turned on him as his other companions were wont to do on occasion, but it protected him from said companions. Not that he loved them any less, but Tube Blanket was just so... caring. And it listened, too. And it never talked back to him. Not once. Oh, Tube Blanket.
Al nuzzled his clothing for a good five minutes before realizing what he was propped up against.
"Do they have apple trees in the Mojave? I've never had a fresh apple." He reached up and plucked one out of the tree, and proceeded to eat it. "Itsh good!"
He swallowed and took another few bites before taking note of an orange presence immediately next to him.
"Did ponies get mutated too?" he wondered aloud, right before two hind-legs shot out and caught him in the stomach. He doubled over on the ground, wheezing.
"Tube Blanket... for once... DT... wasn't good enough..." he whispered with a tear in his eye before the pony trotted over and sent him into unconsciousness with a hoof in the face.
Mister Cuddlesworth was on the prowl.
A looming forest, teeming with life, sprawled around him, hissing and growling at him as he passed through its many worn-in paths. Occasionally, a plant blocked his path, but was quickly amended with a razor-sharp swipe from the Wasteland's most dangerous predator.
The forest irritated his very essence. The deathclaw wasn't used to being on his own, and this made him more alert. With that alertness came a startling knowledge of how unnatural the forest was, and it made him want to find and regroup with his friends as soon as possible.
He missed the Mojave already. He was a predator. He knew what he liked. And he liked having an unchanging hunting ground and unchanging prey. And if that prey just so happened to be fiends or nightstalkers one day, then so be it. But he didn't like being in new situations. By now, he should've grown used to it. And he had, to an extent.
He didn't have to like it, though.
Walking down a path that was likely walked by many of the wilder, four-hooved animals, Cuddles' tail whipped back and forth, further giving note to his inflamed nerves. He felt eyes traveling down the length of his spine, as if figuring the best method of severing it in two. The air smelt of fur and scales. The deathclaw growled his presence into the into the air.
Cuddlesworth felt a ball of rage slowly building in his chest. He swore, when he found Ballarms, the protectron was going to have to get a new body. And a new AI core. Better yet, just throw the parts away. Not worth the caps. Or the labor. Or the thought.
Eventually, the deathclaw came to a green clearing, the sun shining down through the opening in the trees. Brilliantly green grass made up the ground beneath, with sprinkled pockets of flowers scattered about. The trees seemed to form a perfect, circular perimeter. It all seemed to lead into the entrance of a cave, its deeper depths a mystery of stygian black. As Cuddlesworth walked closer, dropping to all fours in apprehension, he saw a trail of brown leading inside, dried into the rock. He crept ever closer, seeing farther into the cave...
It was then that the beast struck.
Janet awoke sprawled on the floor and with sanded wood pressed against her face.
Her robotics-enhanced brain was active immediately. Without wasting a second, she took note of everything in the room. Books, wood, a bed, a small, dog-sized bed, more wood, an unconscious corpse, a set of stairs...
She concluded that she should probably attend to the reanimated corpse, first.
She took him by the shoulder and shook. "Hey, Jerry!" she whispered. "Wake up! I need your help." While she wouldn't get any good conversation or insight from the morally debatable, reanimated corpse, she could certainly use the extra manpower. In an unknown environment, it was all she could do to recruit as much assistance as is readily available before trying to scope out the area. And Jerry was about as much in terms of reinforcement as she needed.
After a solid fifteen seconds of shaking, the corpse roused from sleep with a groan and a crack of his back before gradually rising to his feet. He stood at least six inches taller than Janet, with a raider painspike running over his right shoulder and military pants. He looked at her questioningly.
"Wait," she said, pointing to his face. Jerry nodded before reaching down into his pants pocket and pulling out a pair of shaded, aviator's glasses. He put them on. "That's better.
"We need to find out where we are and where the others are. This place looks like it'd be a good place to start looking," Janet gestured around the room, and Jerry grunted in affirmation, "so, we should probably look for a reference guide or encyclopedia or something."
Jerry nodded, then pointed at the stairs. Janet nodded too.
"That's what I needed you for. I want to check out the rest of this place, but I don't want to do it unless I have backup. You in?" She gestured to the filled holster at her hip. Jerry just flexed the hand that held Dr. Klein's glove.
"Alright, let's do it. Get in front of me, and get down so that if they see you, you can rush them safer." Jerry grunted again and got into formation. Janet unholstered her gun. "Alright. In three, two, o-"
"Ahh!"
"Ahh! Zombies! Run away!"
The first scream wasn't Janet's. The second wasn't hers, either.
Steve was in a deadly situation. His antennae chattered. His legs wobbled. He could barely keep his wings from flickering out because of his nerves.
He had already washed his front legs, prepared the batter with the painstaking care needed to put the exact amount of ingredients into the mix, read excruciatingly long books on how to bake, and finished it off with spreading icing over the top with precision that would've made any surgeon fume with jealousy.
So what did he do wrong this time?
"I don't know, Steve. They just won't eat anything you make!" Steve stood there, dumbfounded, holding a tray of cupcakes. He was speaking to the impromptu head chef of the bakery, Pinkie Pie, who was blocking his way to the display case. He let out a confused click.
"No, Steve, it's not your food. I tried it, remember? They were good!" Click.
"Alright, I'll just ask them this time. You set those down, and I'll be right back."
Steve set them on the counter, and, he swore, he was only looking down dejectedly for five seconds before Pinkie was back. Skitter?
"They said it was because you're a cockroach, and, well, cockroaches are dirty," she said bluntly. Steve disbelievingly scratched the ground.
"Yes, I know it's "radroach", but they don't know. And don't blame them, they just aren't used to seeing one of you so... big." Steve clicked angrily.
"I'm sure there are plenty of you back home who're the same size as you. Look, fact of the matter is, they won't eat anything they see you make." Sad skitter.
"Hey! None of that, mister. Your treats are great!" Pinkie leaned in close. "How about this? We make a new batch, together, and we'll go over to each of my friends' houses and give them some! Then, they can talk all about how good they are, and everyone will want them!" Questioning click.
"Don't worry. If I liked it, then you can be sure that they'll like it!" Steve let out a click of joy.
"That's the spirit, mister! Now, let's get baking! Maybe Gummy can help, too..."
"Are you brushing your teeth, honey?"
"Yes, mom!"
"Okay, go out on some jammies when you're done!"
"Okay!"
Golden Brass saw his shiny, yellow coat glow blue and his ears flooded with noise as he turned on his monitor and immured his headset to show Championship of Combatants playing. As soon as his character started to move, his headset burst to life.
"Dude, where the hell were you? We had a perfect gank on purple while they were getting Lord Rashon and we lost because you weren't there! What the hell?"
"Sorry. Had to turn off my stuff in case my mom came in. We should be fine, now. She probably went to bed."
"Alright, don't let it happen again."
He continued the game, occasionally uttering cries of, "Celestia-damned Reemo!" or, "THE PENTA! THE PENTA! THE P-! Aww..." and, "'X' is fed."
Eventually, though, the game was won. And after going through post-game formalities, Brass let his party know that he was going to get dressed quickly before they started up another game.
He slid out of his plush office chair and took off his headphones. Then, as he walked to the closet, he heard the strange sound of... whirring? Coming from his closet, too. He put an ear to the door. Yep, definitely whirring. Well, what could he say? Ain't no rest for the wicked. He threw open the doors.
"THINK YOUR ASHES WILL BE AS YELLOW AS YOUR SKIN, YOU COMMIE BASTARD?"
He slammed the doors shut.