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“Asshole!”
“Jackass!”
“Bastard punk raider bitch drunk!”
Shrapnel, hiding with a gun behind an irradiated boulder while his best frenemy and rival flaps around nearby, pauses to cogitate, eventually deriving a crucial clue from the accent bombarding him like nuclear popcorn. “...Paddy!” he yells, turning and shooting a mutant hound’s head off from around the side of the rock.
Oooh! That one hurts, hurts Moriarty so much that he's distracted, distracted for long enough that an enemy (a supermutant) manages to catch him in the chest with a missile from a lucky rocket launcher. Boom! The man in the suit of powered armour crash lands, knocking over the mutie with the missile launcher, but not the supermutant who runs up behind him and thrusts a massive blade between disjointed plates of steel. It's the last thing he ever does as a saturnite wing comes down on him, smashing him to mush as his floundering ‘brother’ is shot in the back of the neck by Shrapnel.
Howling quiet blankets the Commonwealth once again. Howling, because it's still full of disturbing noises - distant shrieks and groans, nearby pained and laboured breathing.
“Aaah, bastard!” Moriarty wrenches the knife out of his side, dropping it to the rubbish strewn earth, where ants immediately plan an assault upon it.
“...You alright?” asks Shrapnel, while looting the bodies. He's known the belligerent bar owner for years and years by this point, and each moment it becomes more difficult to speak to him, more difficult to look at him. No doubt it is the same with all people who achieve significant change in the world, no doubt. The Lone Wanderer was the same....kindof. It's no so much the physical ability of these Chosen Ones, as the strange and unknowable quirks of their minds.
“Yeah. But I need to sort it out. Come on.” replies Moriarty. The earth shakes, deep booms casting dust into the air so that it acts like a beige mist further deepening the dark of the night.
Shrapnel licks his lips and steels himself, keeps his eyes on the corpse at his feet, all his efforts going to restraining his urge to run, which makes his breathing shallow and his heart race. His effed up companion can sense all that, making his rising panic even worse. A metal paw of immense size seizes his arm. It's not the power armour that's the frightening bit. Anyone can get used to that, even grow to feel safe around it, like back at Rivet City. The Brotherhood of Steel part is A-okay with him.
Colin rarely gives anyone the benefit of a 3, 2, 1 before take off, and there are no huge engines to spool up or long runway to proceed down, although he sometimes does take a running leap, apparently just for fun. Now he simply leaps into the air, yanking his companion off the ground. If you're not one of his immediate family, or about to give him a lot of caps or some other favour, you need a stimpak and possibly surgery after he flies you anywhere. Luckily the flight is relatively short, only to the top of the skyscraper above them.
The top is broken, and in deference to the squishy, non-cyborg person in his grasp, the former King of Megaton refrains from breaking it any further, something Shrapnel quietly appreciates. Once the latter has been dropped, and has gone to check that the exits are barred, his arm and shoulder burning all the while, and Moriarty has landed, a new problem presents itself.
“There's an unusual amount of human bones up here, Colin.”
“So what.”
“I'm going to be pissed if we're jumped by a deathclaw. Three times in a row is not on.”
But his companion is no longer listening. Having lit a lamp, he's shucking off his armour by its light so he can both check on how his wound is healing after a couple of stimpaks were automatically injected, and also fix said armour. Missile to the chest at near point black range? Not good in general. Hanging out with Shrapnel? Not good for the focus. The man is belligerent and yaps incessantly.
Shrapnel, who thinks the same about his companion, does not drop his guard and instead takes the most defensive position. “Doesn't that hurt?” he asks, his eyes inevitably drawn to the bodily mess near by.
“A knife in the ribs? Yes. What do you think. My bloody lung's punctured. Again.”
Shrapnel risks a more direct glance at the ‘enhancements’ sewn into his friend's flesh, grimacing as he does. “No, the other bits. It looks like it hurts like shit.”
Moriarty twitches a wing, metal and plastic creaking and whining, its weight pulling on his muscles, skin and bone, the many eyes covering it rolling as a fresh spike of pain shoots through their host. “...It does. Like feck. All the bloody time.”
“Is it worth it?”
“Can you fly to the top of a tower, Shrap? Are you a post apocalyptic angel?...Do you get plied with free drinks and info everywhere you go? Yeah, it's worth it.”
