I had the laser musket held low in both hands, thumb near the crank but not moving it yet. Though it was starting to grow on me, it didn't need ammo just for you to crank it. So, it was a good weapon to have. My charge pistol sat on my hips; it was probably better to have it there and not need it then to need it and have to wait those few seconds for it to appear from my storage.
Claptrap walked closest, his bag strapped on properly. Behind him, the other Protectrons clanked in a loose line. The duffle bag from the shelter hung between two of them, not full to bursting, but close enough that I didn't trust adding more. Milo walked near my boots. The Protectrons could talk. Not well, mind you. Milo just moved with its small metal feet, small shotgun just following me, I needed someone to talk to. I looked down at him for a second.
"Don't get stepped on," I muttered while milo gave no answer sadly. "Yeah, yeah. Riveting conversation." Claptrap's head turned slightly. "STATEMENT: UNIT MILO IS OPERATING WITHIN ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS."
"I know he is. I'm just being petty."
"PETTY ACKNOWLEDGED." I kept walking, The road ahead wasn't really a road anymore. Not properly. A rusted car sat nose-down in a ditch with its doors had been removed by something or someone. My Pip-Boy map helped, but only to a point. I knew the general direction of Vault 81. Sort of, it was usually my first top for a follower in the game. I knew it was west of the city, tucked away near hills. But knowing "somewhere near there" and knowing which cracked road wouldn't dump me into a nest of ferals were two different things.
The map had old lines, I zoomed out again, chewing the inside of my cheek. "If that's the city proper..." I turned my wrist, squinting at the little glow. "And that road bends south... then Vault 81 should be more that way. Maybe. Unless I'm thinking of the wrong curve."
One of the Protectrons stopped behind me. "ROUTE UNCERTAINTY DETECTED." I looked over my shoulder. "Thank you for narratin' my shame."
"YOU ARE WELCOME."
"I hate that you sound proud." I angled us toward a side road that looked less open. Not because I loved the idea of walking near trees where anything could hide, but because the larger road felt too exposed. Seven bots was not subtle. Seven bots on a main road might as well come with a marching band and a sign that said, Please Rob Me, I Have Interesting Things. The side road dipped low, passing the remains of a little neighborhood. Just a few houses spread apart, most with roofs sagging or missing. One had an upstairs bedroom open to the sky, wallpaper still clinging to one wall. Little yellow flowers grew through the floorboards.
I slowed near a garage, the door had collapsed halfway inward. Inside, I could see shelves and a workbench. I shifted the laser musket against my shoulder and stared through the gap. Tools. Maybe screws, maybe adhesive, maybe an intact box of wonder? My backpack was already full enough to bug my shoulders. Claptrap's bag had weight in it too. The duffle was somewhere between useful and problem. We were not overburdened but close enough that one bad decision would turn the whole day into a miserable crawl.
"Five minutes," I said and Claptrap turned toward me. "WARNING: PREVIOUS FIVE-MINUTE STATEMENTS HAVE BEEN INACCURATE."
I slowly looked at him. "Did May teach you sass when I wasn't looking or did you grow that yourself?"
"QUERY NOT UNDERSTOOD."
"Sure, lad. Sure." I stood at the garage door and looked only from outside. There was a tin can full of nails on the bench, a broken motor casing on the floor. Then I spotted a small box on a low shelf, half-open, the label faded but still readable enough. "Oh, that's different," I said while Claptrap made a small servo noise. "Don't judge me."
I squeezed through the gap just enough to grab the box and back out. The box held four fuses, two cracked beyond trust, two intact. I took the good ones and left the rest. Then I checked the shelf beside it and found a tiny roll of electrical tape that had gone a bit stiff at the edges but wasn't useless. I stepped back from the garage. "There. Done."
Claptrap stared.
"That was under five minutes. Do not ruin this for me." We moved on and by midmorning, the road got rougher. Old tree roots had split the asphalt in jagged ridges, and the bots had to pick their way over them one at a time. The Protectrons were not graceful creatures. They could manage stairs if they had to but watching them handle broken road was something else.
The one carrying the right side of the duffle stumbled on a root and the duffle swung. "Easy," I said, moving to help stabilize them. The Protectron caught itself, heavy foot slamming down with a thud that made nearby birds explode out of a dead bush. The birds scattered into the sky, flapping hard, and the sudden silence after felt too loud.
I crouched and raised laser musket up. After a while nothing moved, no shouting, no growling. I exhaled slow through my nose. "Careful," I said, quieter this time. "LOAD STABILITY COMPROMISED," the Protectron said.
"Aye, I noticed." I checked the duffle seam they were fine thankfully. The next hour was slow. Not awful, just slow. I kept us off the biggest roads, aiming by memory and map both, checking landmarks that only half matched what I remembered. The Commonwealth had that annoying habit of being familiar and wrong at the same time, well that was given, since it was bigger. At one point I found a road sign with half the letters gone.
BROO—
Could have been Brookline. Could have been something else. Could have been the Wasteland having a laugh. "Brookline would make sense," I muttered. "Maybe. Vault's not far from there, right? Or near enough. Fuck, I should've paid more attention instead of fast travelin' everywhere like a lazy shit."
Claptrap's head rotated. "FAST TRAVEL?"
"Never mind."
"CONCEPT FLAGGED FOR FUTURE CLARIFICATION."
"Don't you dare." Milo stepped over a crack and kept going. I glanced down at him again. "At least you don't ask questions." Around noon, I stopped under the shade of a broken overpass. The concrete above had split but not fallen, which made it only mildly terrifying instead of suicidal. I didn't stay directly under the worst cracks, I wasn't that stupid. I let the bots form a rough half-circle while I drank water and ate a few bites from a ration pack.
My charge pistol hummed softly when I checked it next, just a tiny vibration under my palm. Something clinked behind me and I turned so fast my shoulder twinged. It was one of the Protectrons adjusting its grip on a bundle tied to its side. I stared at it and It stared back with that blank robot face.
"Can you not?"
"PLEASE SPECIFY REQUEST."
"Exist quieter."
"REQUEST IMPOSSIBLE."
"Story of my life." I stood and adjusted the straps on my backpack. The weight had settled into my shoulders that promised future suffering. The tool belt was worse, because it liked to slap my thigh every time I walked too quickly. We started moved again and the land shifted as the afternoon wore on. More broken houses. More open patches where the old suburbs had thinned into scrub and low stone walls. Some of the houses had been picked clean. Others were boarded up or burned out. I passed a little store with a faded sign and did not go in.
"Bad brain," I muttered.
Claptrap turned.
"MEDICAL ISSUE?"
"No. Well. Maybe. Emotionally."
"EMOTIONAL ISSUE DETECTED."
"Aye, and you're part of it."
"ACKNOWLEDGED."
The road curved down toward a shallow stream, more mud than water, with a little concrete bridge still standing over it. I stopped before crossing. Bridges were one of those things that looked innocent and where someone put mine on them. I crouched, scanning the ground. No fresh footprints except animal tracks, maybe dog, maybe mutt, maybe something I'd rather not identify, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.
"Stop," I said and the bots held as I walked the edge first, slow. The laser musket felt too long in my hands for this kind of careful work, but I kept it ready anyway. The bridge smelled like damp concrete and algae. There was trash caught beneath it, old plastic and a tire and something that might have been a suitcase.
A soft bark came from downstream and another bark answered it. Then a low growl. I stepped back from the bridge. Three shapes moved through the brush on the far bank. Not close enough to attack yet. Dogs. Feral, from the look of them. Ribs showing, patchy fur, heads low.
They saw me and we both had an unpleasant moment of decision. I lifted the laser musket. The Protectrons behind me shifted, arms rising. Their emitters warmed with that faint high-pitched whine. The dogs growled. "Don't," I said, voice low, the largest one took one step onto the bridge.
I cranked the musket once as it gave a Whirr-click and the dog stopped. I cranked it again. The three dogs stared. "Go on," I said. "Find somethin' else." For a second, I thought they would come anyway. Then Claptrap moved up beside me, one heavy foot landing on the road with a concrete thud.
The dogs looked from me to him, then to the line of machines behind him. The smallest dog whined and the biggest one backed off. They melted back into the brush, still growling, but leaving. I didn't lower the musket until I couldn't hear them anymore. "Good," I breathed. "See? Nice. No one had to get shot."
"HOSTILES RETREATED," Claptrap said. Milo stepped up onto the bridge and stopped beside my boot. I looked down at him. "You would've shot them, wouldn't you? Little psycho." The bridge held as we crossed. The afternoon stretched long after that. My legs began to ache as the bots could go longer than me, which was deeply unfair. I had to stop twice to adjust the backpack and once to retie the sleeve of my jacket around my waist because it was hot, so I opened my vault suit to let air inside.
I checked the map at every split. I knew I was closer to the area I wanted. Not close to Vault 81, not yet, but close enough that the direction felt less like guessing and more like educated stupidity. The roads were starting to fit better in my head. A few landmarks clicked into place. A water tower in the distance. A broken rail line. A patch of road that bent toward where I thought an old neighborhood should be.
Then I heard music. At first, I thought my Pip-Boy had turned itself on then the sound drifted thin through the air. A radio somewhere ahead. Then a voice half-singing over the music. "Ammooooo! Guns! Death delivery systems for the discerning customer! Come on out, little wasteland babies, Cricket has what makes the nightmares go pop!"
I stopped so fast the bots behind me clanked into formation like a very stupid metal accordion. "Oh no," I whispered. Claptrap turned his head. "AUDIO SOURCE DETECTED."
"I know."
"VOICE PATTERN: HUMAN FEMALE."
"I know that too."
The road ahead rose slightly, then opened near the remains of a little checkpoint or toll booth. Sandbags, rusted barricades, a bus tipped onto its side. And there she was, Cricket. Of course it was Cricket. She stood beside a pack brahmin loaded with crates and bags, one hand on her hip, the other waving around. Her hair stuck out in wild dark clumps, goggles perched on her forehead, coat patched and strapped with ammo belts. Two guards stood nearby, both looking like people who had accepted a long time ago that their employer was the real hazard.
Her eyes landed on me then on Claptrap and then on the Protectrons and finally on Milo. Her grin spread like a lit fuse. "Well," she said, drawing the word out. "Look what rolled out of the toy box." I tightened my grip on the laser musket.
"Road's wide enough," I said and Cricket laughed, quick and delighted. "Oh, she talks. And with an accent. Adorable. Terrifying. Adorifying."
One of her guards gave me a tired look over his rifle. "You buying or passing?" he asked.
"Depends," I said.
"On?"
"Whether she tries to buy my bots." Cricket slapped both hands over her chest. "Wounded. Injured. Shot through the heart, and I didn't even get to sell you the bullet."
"That a no?"
"That's a maybe." She leaned sideways, peering around me at the line of robots. "Protectrons, mostly. Little rough. One custom thing. Oh, I like the tiny one. What's the tiny one do? Stab ankles? Please say stab ankles."
Milo stood blankly beside me. "He doesn't do tricks," I said.
"Everything does tricks for the right price."
I stared and Cricket grinned wider. "Fine, fine. The little death parade is emotionally unavailable. I respect that. Mostly. So what does the walking workshop need? Cells? Rounds? Mines? A gun that makes men question their life choices right before they stop having them?"
"Maybe trade," I said and Cricket clapped once. "There it is! Commerce! Civilization's prettiest corpse!" Her brahmin snorted. One of its heads chewed something brown. The other looked at me with an expression that suggested it knew all my sins and found them boring. I moved slowly to the side of the road, keeping the bots behind me but not crowding her. Claptrap stayed close. The guards watched the robots more than me.
I crouched and opened my backpack, but only enough to reach the small trade pouch. I wasn't showing her everything. I wasn't stupid. A few duplicate tools. Some extra scrap bits too small to matter but useful to the right person. A pipe pistol I'd taken and never planned to use. Some .38 rounds I cared about less than cells. Cricket's eyes glittered.
"Aw, little mouse has pockets."
"Don't call me that."
"Little heavily armed mouse?"
I gave her a look.
"Fine. Customer."
"Better." She took the pipe pistol, checked it, made a face. "Functional, Like half my exes."
"I don't need commentary."
"Commentary is free. The gun is worth maybe twelve caps." I sighed looking at her. "It's worth more than that." I narrowed my eyes. "Fifteen."
"Twelve."
"Fourteen."
"Oh, I like you. Thirteen."
"Done." She tossed caps into my palm. I sold the duplicate junk next. Not much. Enough to lighten the pouch and make my backpack feel slightly less like punishment. Cricket bought screws, a spare sensor lens, and the cracked casing from something I didn't want to carry anymore. She tried to ask where I got half of it and I just kind of ignored her. Then I looked at her ammo.
"Fusion cells?" I asked.
"Yes, I have cells. Also, shotgun shells, .45, .308, some 10mm, and if you're feeling spicy, a mine."
"How much for cells?"
"Depends how many do you need."
"Small stack."
"Small stack means poor or cautious."
"Aye."
"Which?"
"Both."
She laughed again, but softer that time. Cricket didn't seem like she had a kind setting, more like amused. She counted out a small bundle of fusion cells and named a price.
"That's robbery."
"My store my rules."
"I could get those cheaper."
"Then go find the cheaper lady."
I glanced at her guards, one of them muttered, "There isn't one."
"See?" Cricket said. "Market confirmed." I paid more than I wanted, but cells were cells, and I had no idea what Vault 81 would charge, or if they'd even let me trade properly once they saw the bots. I also bought a laser musket's maintenance kit. I checked each one before paying. Two were useful. One was trash. She looked personally offended when I rejected it.
"You're picky."
"I'm poor."
Then her eyes dropped to my hips. "Now those," she said, voice suddenly lower with interest, "are pretty." My hand went to one charge pistol without thinking. Cricket's grin sharpened. "Relax. I didn't say for sale. I said pretty. There's a difference. One gets people touchy. The other gets people killed."
"They're not for trade."
"Obviously. You look like you'd bite."
"I would."
"Good." I shifted the laser musket against my shoulder, not liking the way her eyes stayed too curious. She wasn't Brotherhood. She wasn't Institute. She was just Cricket, which somehow didn't make me feel better.
"Seen Vault 81?" I asked before she could ask more. That got her attention. "Seen it? Sure, it's a Lovely place if you enjoy being judged by people."
"So I'm going the right way?"
"Mostly."
"Mostly?"
Cricket leaned over the little table made from a crate lid and tapped the road with one dirty finger. "You keep following that bend, you'll hit old houses and then a bad dip where the dogs like to play king of the trash pile. Don't go that way unless you want them biting your ankles. With your metal choir, you might scare them off, but why gamble if the prize is rabies?"
I looked at the map on my Pip-Boy. She kept talking. "Cut south before the broken bus with the blue stripe. There's an old service road. Vault's tucked past there. You won't see it until you're close." I studied her. "Why tell me?"
"Because you asked after buying."
"That's it?"
"And because anyone walking around with seven robots is either very lucky, very doomed, or very interesting." Cricket tilted her head. "I enjoy finding out which."
"Any raiders?"
"Always."
"Well that's helpful."
"You want specifics? Fine. Group near the old school two roads east. Call themselves the Splitters. Dumb name, dumb haircuts, decent aim. They don't hit hard targets unless they're starving. You look dangers so you should be fine."
"Noted."
"Ferals, and other types near the drainage tunnels. Don't camp there unless you enjoy waking up alive. Traders been avoiding the creek road because someone keeps placing bear traps in the grass. Might be raiders. Wasteland is a buffet of possibilities."
"Thanks," I said.
Cricket blinked dramatically. "Oh no. Politeness. My weakness." I packed the cells away carefully, shifting things so the weight sat better. The backpack still felt full, but cleaner now. Cricket watched me tie everything down. "You heading to the Vault to trade, hide, or beg?"
I glanced up.
"None of your business."
I stood and the bots shifted with me. Her guards shifted too. Cricket gave Claptrap a little wave. "Bye, handsome."
Claptrap's optic brightened. "FAREWELL, MERCHANT." I stared at him. Cricket gasped. "He called me merchant. I might cry."
"Don't flirt with my Protectron." I started walking before the conversation could get worse. Cricket called after me, "Blue stripe bus! South before it! And don't let the polite Vault people talk you into selling the tiny ankle-stabber!"
Milo walked silently at my heel. "He's not an ankle-stabber," I muttered. "Probably." We left Cricket's music behind slowly. The broken bus with the blue stripe appeared about an hour later. It lay half off the road, nose buried in weeds. Someone had painted a skull on it. Someone else had painted a mustache on the skull.
I stopped before it and looked at the road beyond. It dipped downward, exactly like Cricket said. The grass near the edges was tall. Too tall. The kind of grass that hid bear traps and dog packs and every other little surprise the world liked to tuck under your boots.
Then I looked south. The service road barely looked like a road at all. More dirt than asphalt, winding between low stone walls and dead trees. "South," I said and the bots turned. The service road made us slow down even more. The Protectrons had to step over roots and cracked stone. The duffle caught once on a broken piece of fence, and I had to stop to untangle it. My patience wore thinner with every little snag.
Thankfully no dogs came and no raiders shot at us. And no ferals climbed out of a drain. So, Cricket had been telling the truth. The sun began to sink toward late afternoon by the time the road climbed again. The land rose gradually, giving me a better view through the trees. In the distance, I could see the broken skyline of Boston. Somewhere out there was Vault 81. My feet hurt. My shoulders hurt. My brain felt stuffed with too much map and not enough certainty.
We stopped before sunset near a little cluster of rocks above the service road. I sat on a flat stone, eating from a tin with my laser musket across my lap. Claptrap stood nearby, quiet except for the faint hum inside his frame. The other Protectrons formed a loose perimeter. Red laser emitters angled downward but ready. Milo settled near my right boot.
The sky turned orange behind the trees. I leaned back against the rock and let myself breathe. Claptrap turned his head. "UNIT MORGAN. STATUS?" I swallowed the last bite and wiped my fingers on my pants.
"Tired."
"INJURY?"
"No."
"THREAT LEVEL?"
I looked toward the darkening road.
"Ask me in the mornin'."
"ACKNOWLEDGED."
A faint breeze moved through the grass. Somewhere far off, a dog barked once. I rested one hand on the laser musket and the other near Milo. "Tomorrow," I said softly, mostly to myself, "we find the vault."
[[Hey guys sorry this took so long. It took me a while to set up fallout 4, cause im fucking dumb lol. But I did find a good fallout mod pack, i did end up adding a few other mods. but for the most part it should be good. [(( A StoryWealth - Fallout 4 Collection - Nexus Mods)) if anyone want to download what im playing.]]