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~ April 22nd, 2286 ~
Derek watched as Sturges stuffed another Fancy Lad snack cake into his mouth.
"Man, how can you eat those? That stuff is over two hundred years old!"
Sturges shrugged. "Still taste fine though."
The journey from Bunker Hill to Quincy was quite a slog, mud got everywhere and he'd have to thoroughly clean the legs of his new X-01 suit once he got back, but meeting up with Sturges made it all worth it. Finally, someone who knew even more about power armour than he did! Sturges was a great guy and talking shop with him was always so much fun. Sturges appreciated the opportunity to study the X-01 suit and understood Derek's excitement about making such a rare find.
Derek had brought a dufflebag full of paints, small power armour parts and various tools and Sturges searched through it, looking for the paints he needed for his latest projects. Meanwhile Derek sat on a church bench and made a pencil drawing of Grognak the Barbarian on the blank pages of an old book. When Sturges heard about his love of comics, he had suggested a Grognak themed paint job. That was such a good idea, why hadn't he thought of that?
Sturges painted flames on a T-45 torso, just like the ones in the Hot Rodder magazine Zeke gave him. The church was slowly getting dark until Sturges put down his airbrush.
"Well that's it for today.The fumes are too much, so we can't sleep at my garage," Sturges said, "Not to worry, me and the Long family have an arrangement, maybe you can stay over as well?"
It didn't work out that way. Little Kyle might be charmed by Derek with his strange vaultsuit and his cool Minuteman hat, but Kyle's parents not so much.
"I don't know you," Marcy bristled.
"But Marcy, he came all this way–" Sturges tried.
"The hotel should still have a room."
***
They did indeed have room at the hotel, though 'hotel' and 'room' were not words he would have used for this… structure. Why the fuck did Wastelanders hate the concepts of walls and ceilings so much?
The woman running the place was even less pleasant than Marcy.
"Payment up front."
He kept smiling.
This brahmin shit was costing him fifty caps, too. Fifty fucking caps.
"You know what? You should visit our vault in Ronto. Great place, I think you'd love it there! Hah! It has walls and everything!"
Then he leaned over the counter and said in a stage whisper, "Tell them Derek sent you, eh?"
The hotel owner didn't react to his offer. He hadn't expected her to, but it was so lovely to imagine her as a new vault resident. Not part of the control group, of course.
In the end he just shoved the bed aside, flipped it against the remains of a wall and put up his tent inside the so-called 'room'.
***
Derek headed for the Atom Cats garage in the early morning light. The surrounding swamp was still covered in thick fog. His PIP-Boy would keep him from getting lost, but this fog could be hiding anything, so he moved as quietly as his power armour allowed. He was almost at his destination when he spotted two raiders sneaking around on the beach near the old bus stop. It seemed like every week a new bunch of hopeful losers tried to get their dirty hands on some primo power armour.
No wait, not hands, 'bread hooks'!
His new pals had such a colourful vocabulary!
These latest two interlopers were woefully unprepared, the woman had a shitty pipe pistol and the man had a stick with a nail in it. Not even a big stick, more like a twig? And seriously, what was with that longjohns-held-together-with-duct-tape look?
The Atom Cats were cool and he wasn't about to let these two bozos get anywhere near them!
He snuck towards the duo and they never even noticed him until the woman suddenly crumpled to the ground.
Only amateurs couldn't sneak in power armour.
"No! Don't you die on me!"
"A bit late for that, I think," Derek remarked.
The raider turned towards Derek, bared teeth, eyes full of hatred. Tears left streaks in the dirt on his face, Nose full of snot, too.
Gross .
"You'll fucking pay for that!"
"Yeah, so, this X-01 suit and the syringer disagree."
That was a badass line, he should really write these down! He almost wished he wasn't wearing his helmet; it was much more fun when they could see his expression. Let it sink in how hopeless their situation was.
The raider risked another worried glance at his companion, reached for her arms and tried to drag her away.
"Emmy, get up! We need to go!"
"Oh... you're a couple? I was going to use #7, drag this whole thing out a bit, but I suppose it's rude to keep your girlfriend waiting, eh?"
"Wha–"
"So that pinprick was Batch 5. I'd explain it to you, but you don't have that long and you'll feel the effects pretty soon anyway. Unless you're some kind of mutant. Or perhaps a synth. Are you a synth? No clue what it does to synths yet."
The raider fell to the ground, and looked kind of like a fish out of water, convulsing, gasping for air.
"Hey, you don't happen to have a pencil, do you? I left mine in Quincy and my boss insists on reports. Otherwise it's just not science , you know?"
After he finished jotting down a quick report, he yanked the darts out of the dead bodies. Then he dragged the pair into the water, and watched them drift away into the fog. Raiders were fair game for field tests, no one cared if they died. He never bothered to invite them to 'Ronto either; most raiders weren't prosocial enough to adjust to life in a vault, but they still had their uses.
But what if that was how the Overseer saw him?
Was he not prosocial enough to be a vaultdweller? Was that why she banished him? He pushed the thought away. Alkali was his best friend, she must have given him this mission because she knew he was the only one who was tough and clever enough to handle it! Every day he survived in this place proved that. And any day now he would get to go home again!
He turned on his helmet light, so as not to startle his Atom Cat friends. It was a novelty light, shaped like Vault Boy, his little joke.
Then he stepped into the garage.
"That you, Derek?" Bluejay asked. "That's a smokin' suit you got there! How did you find it?"
Derek took off his helmet, then combed his hair into place.
"Well, that's quite the story. It all started when I spotted a Mister Gutsy near the National Guard Training Yard…"