[quote=Mr. Zero]He touched his arc welder to the man's chest and turned down the power setting so that it would only cause convulsions.[/quote]

Poe had been only had listening to whatever the Mr. Helper - or apparently 'Mr. Smarty' (the lead designer for the model had probably thought he was the funniest goddamn joker on the planet) as it started to speak again, in lieu of reviewing the information it had divulged. Manufactured in Atlanta, so he didn't have to deal with the messy process of familiarizing himself more fully with West-coast termlink arrangement. The laser cutter and arc welder tools were pleasant surprises - it meant he would have some help with constructing turrets, which were by far the most time-intensive security features to make. Poe wasn't terribly concerned by the revelation that the robot had apparently done a stint with the Enclave - he would probably have to see about tearing out its behavior core and replacing it with a blank one in order to make sure no Enclave contingency functions booted up in the middle of the journey, causing the robot to kill all of them in their sleep, but that wasn't an immediate concern. The most interesting piece of information was the fact that the Mr. Smarty (it felt stupid even thinking the term) was a prototype unit. Prewar experimental prototype ANYTHINGS were notorious for their bugs and glitches, but Poe supposed that years of Enclave maintenance had probably sorted most of those out by now and-

Poe stirred from his thoughts when his noticed Mr. Zero's extending arc welder. He tensed up with a startled expression, having been caught entirely offguard - he made to back away from the implement, but not quickly enough. The arc welder activated and sent a low charge through Poe's body, causing him to jump and his arms to stiffen at his sides as muscles throughout his body seized - though at the same moment, he reflexively jumped away from the arc welder, dancing far enough away that with the tool's reduced power, the electrical current couldn't arc through the air to hit him. For a moment, it looked like he would fall over as he stumbled backwards - but right before he reached the tipping point, he flung himself off to the left and thudded against the stairwell leading up to the elevator balcony. A shaking hand darted into his jacket and pulled out his plasma defender, leveling it directly at Mr. Zero - and if his hand was unsteady, the distance between them was small and the target itself was fat and slow.

[quote=Mr. Zero]"Tell me who you are, where you're from, and your medical history. When's the last time you were treated, and for what? How many times have you had an embarrassing disease, like a Venereal Disease? Come on, surely you're not going to force one person to give up confidential information without offering it up yourself? Or do you not consider me a person because I'm not human?"[/quote]

Poe stared at Mr. Zero for a few moments, his hand slowly steadying apart from abrupt, faint jerks. Poe's expression was a mixture of disbelief, shock, and unfettered rage as he digested the robot's rebuttal to his hacking. 

Nearly a full seven seconds passed before he burst out laughing, throwing his head back and laying an arm across the stone railing of the staircase to steady himself as the business end of his plasma defender sank a few degrees, no longer aimed explicitly at Zero.

"Ok little Mote, I suppose I can tell you all of that. I've got nothing to hide. My name is Poe, I was born in St. Louis in 2268. I was exposed to low dosages of octarine radiation prenatally and was born with a full set of baby teeth. I treated myself two years ago for shrapnel-related injuries from an IED, and when I was eleven I contracted Hepatitis B from an infected blood transfusion performed by a Follower doctor. It isn't that I don't consider you a person [i]because[/i] you're not a human - I don't consider you a person because you're a Mr. Helper model. I'd consider a Robobrain a person, I'd consider a ZAX A.I. to be a person if you gave it some time, but you aren't a person because even when your pathetic excuse for a parallel co-neural process imitator has been given hundreds of years of heuristic development and rampancy you couldn't pass even the simplest turing test. You're not a person, you're a glorified tool. And by the way, you got your hardware diagnostic wrong."

Poe raised his plasma defender again, a wide and nasty smile gracing his face.

"Your left-hand optical sensor appears to have been rendered nonfunctional due to severe thermal ablation."

Poe was less than two meters away and, even recovering from the last vestiges of Mr. Zero's shock prod, was still a crack shot with most energy weapons. Only a miracle would cause him to miss.

Before he could pull the trigger, all of the Luck 38's penthouse windows polarized to 100% opacity and all the lights in the room shut off, leaving the room in total darkness. The plasma discharge from Poe's energy pistol whizzed scant centimeters past Mr. Zero's sensor, colliding with the wall behind it and dissipating harmlessly.

"Oh goddamnit, this is such an obvious setup." Poe groaned.