The brightly colored houses are falling apart, wood rotten and soaked with Fallout. Giant insects nest inside these buildings, and a lone Mr. Handy attempts to polish a rusted car.
"The bushes are trimmed and some pieces of roof are no longer in the living room, now if I can just-" the Mr. Handy stops speaking when a door falls off the car. It made a defeated noise and leaned the car door against the vehicle. It began to pretend to trim the dead bushes in front of the blue house in an attempt to busy itself. The Mr. Handy began attempting to hum a tune as it cut at the air with its garden shears.

Ren opened her eyes and found herself leaning against a trash can in an abandoned truck stop with bits of dirt and dead grass stuck in her brilliant red locks. She stretched out and her shoulder made a grinding noise, causing her to halt and stare blankly at her right shoulder. She experimentally moved her arm upwards, causing a grinding noise to fill the truck stop. Ren sighed and continued to fully stretch, ignoring her clunky shoulder.

Shaine turned and ran into a busted up building with Knight Alexis right behind him in her power armor yelling at him to move faster. The supermutant suicider was a little more quick than the knight in her suit, however. He let out a loud rumbling bellow as he closed in on them from outside. Shaine could hear the beast’s feet thumping into the room as he turned to look behind him in a panic. He stumbled and fell hard on the wooden floor, immediately curling into a ball as Alexis covered him with her metal frame.

Just as the Knight hit her knees over Shaine, the mini-nuke the mutie carried exploded around them, filling the room with a heated burst that knocked down a wall, blew a hole in the ceiling and cracked the floor beneath them. Alexis was pressed against Shaine and she strained to hold herself up enough to keep from crushing the kid.

The squire’s ears rung loudly through the muffled sounds of the structure cracking and falling apart around them. A choking cloud of dust swirled around the dilapidated building and made Shaine cough. He frantically scrambled out from under Alexis, who immediately let herself drop to the floor with a loud metallic thud.

He gasped at the sight around him. Blood and gore from the exploded mutie had painted nearly every surface and said surfaces were crushed or broken. A chunk of brick from the busted wall fell nearby, followed by a cascade of rubble.

The boy coughed again and pulled the scarf around his neck up over his nose and mouth as he moved to the Knight sprawled on the ground.

The back of her armor was a wreck.

Shaine’s eyes widened as he remembered seeing Proctor Ingram brought back to the compound after she had been crushed under the landslide of the cliff. She had to be cut out of her suit and she was a mess inside, her legs crushed beyond saving.

The Kight’s suit looked just as bad as Ingram’s had. His hands trembled as he touched the ruined release valve. No way he would be able to get her out. He heard her cough wetly as his hearing started to return. He knelt beside her head and grabbed her dented helmet. He pulled it off with some difficulty, falling back onto his rump as it dislodged. Shaine tossed the helm aside and looked down at Alexis.

A stream of blood fell from her mouth as she struggled to breathe. She turned her head slightly and looked up at the kid kneeling over her.

The squire stared at her with an expression of shocked fear, “I don’t know what to do! What do I do?!”

His medical training definitely didn’t cover this. That suicider shouldn’t have even been out here. This was supposed to be a safe trip. Shaine tried to breathe and think through the panic. The Knight was starting to go into shock. Her body had been crushed inside the suit and Shaine knew that no stimpack would help her now.

Alexis held a wild look of fear in her eyes for a moment as she spluttered and tried to talk. Shaine moved close and held her head against his lap, pulling her hair back from her face, “It’s okay...It’s going to be okay.” His words were just as much for himself as they were for the Knight. Her head lolled against him and her eyes glassed over as she let out a shallow breath and stilled.

A chunk of wood from the ceiling above shifted and fell next to Shaine with a loud crash, startling the boy out of his stupor. He reached down and pulled off the Knight’s holotags, putting them around his neck as he stood up.

Another chunk of wood fell and the entire building moaned and creaked around him as the remaining walls started to buckle.

The squire gasped and ran through the doorway out into the street. He scrambled up over a cement barricade as the large two story building crashed down in an enormous dust cloud and splintering wood. Bits of rubble pelted his cover, spraying across the streets in a loud hailstorm of brick and wood.

Shaine clutched the holotags against his chest and huddled in fear.

The scrape of gravel under boots announced the approach of the human some 50 meters away. At 20 meters X re-enabled his human interaction subroutines for the impending encounter, whatever it might hold. His chest slowly expanded and contracted in an approximation of breathing. He allowed his face ‘muscles’ to make small adjustments to themselves in a human-like assortment of twitches, sniffs, lip licking, and other ridiculous gestures which would make him seem more ‘natural’.

Lacking photoreceptors hampered his ability to evaluate the disposition and possible threat level of the approaching individual. Other sensory queues told him a good deal. A heavyset male by the cadence and scraping impact of footfalls, heavier on the right foot – carrying a load; smell of fungus on leather and ferrous oxide - armor: not well kept; hacking coughs, wheezing intake of breath, but no detectable mucus burbling - lung function impairment likely due to inhalation of hazardous ‘chems’; theory proven as the odiferous person stopped, unslung their load, took something from a buckle at their belt, and ‘puffed’.

“What the fuck is an old man like you doing way the fuck out here?”

“I seem to have lost my way,” X admitted, facing the stranger with a smile on his face, bandages covering his eyes. He held his walking stick firmly planted in front of him with both hands. He was not lost in the truest sense of the word. He had accurate topographical maps of the entire area, and his internal compass still worked. Now that he had evaded his most recent Institute pursuers, he just didn’t know where to go.

“Lost yer way?! That’s an understatement! How the fuck did you even git out here with no eyes? You with a caravan? Someone out here with you?”

“Someone is, yes.” X found humor in stating the obvious truth as a misdirection. He was alone, but the man need not know that.

“Where?”

“Nearby.”

“Riiiight.” The man’s heart rate increased audibly and his weight shifted as he looked around for X’s ‘hidden’ companion. “Well, you don’t want to be out here after dark. If I was you, I’d head east for Concord. Shelter there, and some pals o’mine will be along that way some time tomorrow.”

“That’s an idea…” X nodded, “Thank you.”

Ren stood up and looked towards the trashcan she was resting on. Giant naked molerat corpses were everywhere. It was a little unsettling as she walked into the station. Somehow, a dead molerat was on the counter, looking like it was about to hand a customer their change. She gave a sigh through her nose at that. If the bodies weren't an obvious sign that someone had cleared this place out, the odd placement of the molerat was. She heard soft piano music coming from inside the room behind the counter. Ren walked towards the area and peeked inside, finding a small yellow stereo next to the wall. Figuring it might be good for something later on, she picked it up and walked outside of the station.
She kicked a molerat out of her path as she took a left down the road. The radio played Mars, The Bringer of War, as she walked. Ren heard the explosion before she saw the source. Other creatures were here, ones that were smart enough to pull a trigger. That was far more unsettling than the dead hairless animals behind her.

The addition of an ionized radiation sensor had been on his creator’s “not necessary but nice to have” list. It would allow the X9 coursers to track trails of entities – biological or synthetic – that had been exposed to radiation in much the same manner as a dog’s olfactory sense. At 21:09.128 this sensor was bombarded with gamma particles. At 21:09.134 the concussive blast of the mini-nuke detonation echoed through the streets of Concord…

Dust filled the air around in a massive cloud, settling slowly in the streets of Concord. Shaine wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, smudging tears and dirt over his cheeks. He knew there were raiders in the town somewhere, it was the entire nature of the mission in the first place. Knight Alexis was taking him out to observe as she put the raiders down, but they had never made it that far as the supermutant suicider came after them from the outskirts of town.

As he stood, the kid felt pain shoot up his side from his thigh to his ribs. He hadn’t noticed in the panic and adrenaline, but he had been hurt and he was really starting to feel it. His thigh had been burnt. His pants had a jagged hand sized hole exposing the burn which was blistered and red. His ribs hurt on one side, his back had been bruised where the Knight’s armor had pressed too hard against him. He had been hurt more by Alexis protecting him than anything, but he was grateful for her sacrifice and every pain reminded him of it.

Shaine took out a stimpack from one of his pouches but then hesitated. He could walk. His injuries weren’t bad enough to need it. He put it back in the pouch and decided to save it for later. He felt fear well up inside at the thought of needing to save his stimpack for...later. He was alone in the wasteland.

He moved down the street, closer to the center of town on the west side, to find a good hiding spot or something worth salvaging. Shaine only carried a single stimpack, two rations of squirrel on a stick, water, a pistol and some ammo. He wished he had a sniper rifle, but squires didn’t generally use them and when asked to be able to practice with one, Maxson and Kells both denied him. That did not stop Shaine who ‘borrowed’ a good rifle from Teagan and snuck away daily to practice from the Prydwen’s forecastle.

The squire turned down a street and stopped cold in his tracks. He started stupidly as a beast down the street shoved long claws up into a man he held up in one massive hand. The man’s screams were cut off as he was disemboweled ruthlessly. Shaine gasped and took a few steps backwards. Maybe the deathclaw was too preoccupied to notice him.

The beast tossed the body to the side, down the street towards Shaine. Its massive horned head turned and it stared right at the boy. It hunched down on all fours and prepared to run.

Shaine yelped and took off into the nearest building for cover, slamming the door shut behind him as the beast roared outside.

On her way, Ren dug through various trashcans. She found an old rope, which she used to tie the small radio to her backpack, something she also found in the trash. She had found a few half used stem packs, a nearly full jet, a wrinkled coy boy hat, and several batteries to keep her radio running. She tilted her hat covered head up towards Concord while in the middle of attempting to take a duster off a corpse. Ren heard the deathclaw growls echo into the empty space. Her emerald eyes widened at the thought of dealing with a deathclaw with nothing but a few Molotov cocktails and a laser rifle.
Ren quickly pulled the duster off the dead man and ran into a nearby building. She moved the fridge in front of the door. "As if this would stop such a large monstrosity," she mumbled to herself as she ran up the stairs. When she walked on the roof, she saw the hulking form of the deathclaw and frowned.

Coming to Concord had been just as likely to be a good idea as a bad one at the time X had decided to on this course of action, now it seemed less than the most advantageous place to be. Leaning against the corner of a building somewhere south of the mini-nuke’s explosion, a new threat announced itself in the frustrated growling of a Deathclaw. The immediately obvious decision was to secret himself away in one of the buildings and remain undetected until the creature left the area.

He turned, one hand feeling along the side of the building hiding him from the Deathclaw, which was noisily trying to get at whatever prey was eluding it. He took a step forward and heard a beeping coming from below. Immediately he dropped to his good knee, dropping his walking stick, jamming his thumb against the emergency safety of the fragmentation mine (aptly named the "dead man's switch"). Likely he could have disarmed it, if he could still see... But for now, he wasn’t going anywhere…

The Deathclaw began to grow tired of chasing after prey long gone. When it heard the subtle beeps of a mine, it eagerly turned its head towards the noise. With one last scrape on the brick to get it going, the Deathclaw began searching for the quiet beep in hopes of an easier catch.

Ren had just finished finding a good place to shoot at the monstrosity when it ran off. She sighed and looked away from the rifle's scope. She began looking for the Deathclaw again when she saw an old man kneeling on the ground. She turned her head to the side in confusion, not understanding why an elder would bother being in the wastes. Then, the Deathclaw showed it's big ugly head.

Two loud beeps before X had managed to get his thumb on the switch had been enough to distract the Deathclaw from the original target of its ire. Now it seemed to be coming this way. Lumber groaned inside the building beside him as the reptoid flung debris out of its way. Sporadic angry hoots and growls accompanied the sound of crashing china. X tried desperately to think of a way to extricate himself.

More crashing from the building, and the mass of the second floor started to creak above him. The Deathclaw stepped up onto the pile of wood 3 feet from X, and roared upon seeing him. It shifted its weight and the support the wood was lending to the 2nd floor was lost… bringing the structure crashing down, the bathtub catching the Deathclaw where its shoulder met its neck with a sick crunch.

What a shithole... well, I suppose the whole Commonwealth is.

The stray thought crossed his mind as he sifted through more worthless scrap, an entire day in Concord had netted him little of worth and had cost him more dearly after a run in with a pair of raiders. They had to be part of a bigger group, they looked like they had been patrolling around, or perhaps he had been too inebriated and had merely failed to realise that they hadn't actually moved at all. Regardless, after he'd been spotted, the skirmish that took place was a vicious struggle, the coppery taste of blood still lingered in his mouth from where he had hit the ground too hard and bit down on his tongue. All to just avoid getting riddled by the clearly modified pipe pistol that cranked out rounds faster than a mole rat on jet, he had damn well gone through his last bottle of whiskey to calm his nerves and numb the pain before popping out from his cover to shoot the fucker.

By some ungodly miracle he had made it out of that alive, with little more than a flesh wound to his side, which had dampened and darkened his clothes, on his right side, with blood. Alas he had only been brave enough to loot the closer of the two bodies, which unluckily for him was not the holder of the modded weapon and held only a handful of .38 rounds for the pipe pistol in her hand. Other than that she held a couple of bottle caps tucked in her shoe as a lot raiders did, a broken silver fog watch, Ha! probably only kept it cos it's shiny in some parts where it's not rusted to hell, and a blunt combat knife tucked away in the aforementioned shoe as well.

The sudden Explosion drew him away from his reminiscing, and he let the various scrap metal and wire he held in his hand drop to the floor. "What the bloody hell was that?" He muttered to himself quietly, reaching for the .308 rifle he kept slung over his pack. I only got 13 bullets dammit. He thought bitterly to himself, of course he had more rounds for the pistol, but as far as he was concerned, that shooter was as good as a BB gun.
With a last nervous gulp of his drink, he would clumsily remove the headgear from his pack to place unceremoniously over his head as he moved out with a sigh, crouching and moving out into an alleyway to get a better view of the action that was unfolding in Concord.

Shaine ran through the room as the beast mauled the door behind him. It splintered and cracked easily under the massive deathclaw’s attacks. The squire knew the door wouldn’t last long at all with that thing raking against it, so he hopped up onto a counter and scrambled out a window in the back.

The kid fell out clumsily then scrambled to his feet and ran to the back of the next building, then around and into another. He had been hoping to hide from the thing, but it had suddenly turned its attention toward a movement and the beeps of a mine nearby.

The deathclaw bounded through the street as Shaine ducked through a doorway and up the stairs to try and hide once more. He looked out the window of a bathroom to see if he could get out of this building and he saw a figure crouching down below him.

It was an old man.

Shaine spoke quietly, “Hey...hey sir…?”

The creature bounded into the alleyway and up onto a broken wall, making a stack of lumber shift and crash into Shaine’s cover. He heard the beast below him roar in anger, rattling the entire structure around him. The sound was the single most terrifying thing he had ever heard.

Then the wall next to him buckled and busted. The floor caved in on one side and Shaine was nearly taken down with the bathtub that crashed into the deathclaw below.

Ren took the Deathclaw's stillness as a chance. She aimed her laser rifle, and time seemed to slow and three laser beams shot out of the gun. The first hit the beast in the eye, and the other two blew off its wounded shoulder. Blood sprayed everywhere, but the missing limb just seemed to anger the Deathclaw more. Another roar escaped its giant mouth and it charged at nothing in particular. Not the smartest abomination in Concord I see. Ren thought as she charged up her rifle, soft classical music filling her head instead of the Deathclaw's anger. Keeping the radio on wasn't the smartest move, but the Deathclaw occupied itself with the old man and the house that was splintering. She then saw a tiny arm poke out of the collapsing building. Ren wasn't concerned as she fired again, hitting the monstrosity in the chest with three red laser bullets.

The sound of heavy ceramic hitting flesh was followed by an enraged roar of pain, a second thud as the bathtub came to rest next to X, and three vibrato pings of laser fire. The intended target appeared to be the reptoid as its exhalations of pain matched their rhythm of impacts. X was sure he heard the popping of bone being superheated and bursting apart. Another volley from across the street hit soon after. The blood of the deathclaw sprayed down on X.
He pushed his shoulder against the bathtub, trying to estimate its mass and possible density. The casing of the mine was familiar to him from records of the Chinese-American conflict – the model was old, and the primer had likely decayed. Taking perhaps the biggest risk he had since his escape from the institute, X pushed himself up over the lip of the tub. He strained, stretching to keep his hand on the dead man switch until the last possible moment as he fell into the tub itself and snatched back his arm. Drool and blood dripped from above him as the mine went off, the blast hitting the Deathclaw full in the face.

Today was supposed to be a peaceful day. Or as peaceful as a day could get in the Commonwealth.

Newton had been hired to take 'care' of a stingy chem dealer close to Concord. The confrontation itself hadn't been pleasant, as his employers failed to mention the chem dealer wasn't alone. Two lackeys had been with the dealer, and once he made it very clear that he wasn't here to buy their product they became quite hostile. Not even his so-called 'brilliant' charm could talk them down from making the fight a living nightmare.

The fight had lasted only five minutes or so, but it was a dreaded five minutes with nothing more than the repeated: fuck, fuck, fuck, oh shit, fuck, fuck... occupying his thoughts. Though, three dead dealers, and a busted shoulder later, he was still alive, and all was good.

Two hundred caps was hardly worth the risk. Hell, I wasted two stimpacks trying to heal this goddamn arm, two! I'm going to have to talk to my employer about some extra compensation. Though that could be dealt with later, right now he just had to worry about the trek back to Goodneighbor. Well, it's not like this day could possibly get any worse right?

As if the universe had an ironic sense of humor, he heard a massive explosion sound in the direction of Concord. The exact same direction he was planning to take back to Goodneighbor. "Oh c'mon now!" He let out a huff through gritted teeth. "Goddammit it all." There were other ways he could take back to Goodneighbor, though he knew that those ways were usually crawling with mutated critters or Raiders who just didn't know when to quit.

If I'm lucky whoever caused that explosion got caught up in it. Though he doubted his luck was all that good, and that there would be something - someone, causing a havoc in Concord.

Newton's movements slowed as he began to near the ruined town itself. He kept himself alert and focused, ready for just about anything to happen. His fingers tightly clutched the bindings of the Deathclaw gauntlet that he had tied to his right hand. In the distance he could hear three shots being fired. Of course they weren't killed in the blast, figures.

Once at the outskirts of town, he crouched down, peering over the side of a building, before - BOOM! The sound of a mine being set off was enough to startle the man out of his wits. He didn't even notice the lumbering Deathclaw at first, the ringing sound from the mine being set off filling his ears. When he did glance out again he saw the wounded beast, it clearly looked like it had taken a beating from those who had its attention.

I could run, maybe manage to get away. I don't need to get involved with this. Newton only had one stimpack left to his name, and no fire-arm. His only weapon was the gauntlet forged from the very thing these people were fighting. Though it would be pretty neat if I could say I helped bring down one of those things. Heh, I might even get a free drink at the Third Rail.

It was almost sad to say that all it took for him to gain motivation was a (possible) free drink, and bragging rights.

Brandishing his gauntlet the man moved out from the cover of the building he hid behind in clear view of what the scene truly was. Moving forward, he ran towards the scene, in perhaps what wasn't tactically the best move. He was exposed, if there was someone hostile with a gun then they could take him out in a clear shot.

The fight itself seemed to be happening the tight quarters of what was now ruined home. Filled with determination to get at least one good strike in, the man lunged at the back of the Deathclaw, slicing the claws against the leather-y flesh. It wasn't long before his thunder was cut short when the whip-like tail of the beast smacked into his gut, sending him back on his arse. The charred and grotesque face of the brute turning around to snarl at him.

Damn, the thing's almost dead and it can still make a hit like that. Shit! He was a goner unless someone managed to take the beast down. It had to be on the last leg on its life, right?

Oh man, I'm so fucking dead.

Ren was tired of the Deathclaw's ability to still stand, so naturally, she did something about it. She moved her creaky shoulder and fired three rounds just as Marche Slave come on her tiny radio. Two red bolts went into the Deathclaw's left knee, destroying it completely. Her last discharge hit it in it's right thigh. "You have a surprisingly large amount of health," Ren said as she disabled both of the Deathclaw's legs. It fell forward, almost crashing into the broken house once again. It gave a small croak in outrage, its arm and now both of its legs bleeding.

Shaine yelped and scrambled to grab ahold of the sink and then the window frame to keep from sliding out of the busted up room along with the tub.

Suddenly another explosion rocked the broken building, the concussion of the blast hitting hard from below. Shane was mostly protected by the second floor and the bulk of the messed up deathclaw, but the structure groaned and creaked as it further buckled beneath him.

More shots fired.

It felt like slow motion as the rotted wood cracked loudly and broke off in his hands and he fell backwards. He clutched the sharp splintered stake of wood as if holding onto the remainder of his once anchor could stop him from his descent. He slid, then rolled and fell out into the space below, landing hard half on his side and half on his stomach.

The kid uncurled his fingers from the chunk of wood and tried to stand up on the heap underneath him. He wobbled and fell to the side, off the deathclaw. He yelped and backed away clumsily a few steps until he noticed the beast was laying still, the shiv of wood jutting out of its eye.

The thing was beyond messed up. Its face was a wreck, its legs blown to stringy bits surrounding broken bone, a gaping wound in its gut showed partial intestines that were nearly expelled.

And that smell!

Shaine swallowed hard to fight the rising bile in his throat and backed away, tripping half over his own feet and half over the leg of a blonde man downed behind him.

As Erin was sitting in a chair at a bar in the combat zone she sees a man with a fedora looking back and forth from his drink to her. After a about 30 seconds she stand up and ses to the man "I don't like being looked at funny what do you want?" He then stands as well

"you look out of place here, you a gun for hire?" She then looks at him through the corner of her eye "yea why you looking for protection?" "Yea" the man in the hat ses "I'm heading west to a a small bunker where me and some of my friends are held up. I'm gonna go meet them they sent word they got some money they oah me and they want me to come pick it up. I'll pay you 600 Capps for your services. I'll pay you 200 up front and the rest once we get there."

Erin turns to grabb a cup of whisky "sounds like we got a deal, just let let me grab my gear and we can head off." "Sounds fine to me" the man in the fedora ses. Erin walks to the room she rented for the day and grabbed her .50 cal sniper and the amo for the riffle and the revolver already sitting snugly in her holster, she then reached for her belt with her satchels to hold her amo and grenades.

She then walked back to the bar sat next the man again and sed "its time" and the man slipped a sack of caps into her hand and she poot the sac in her satchel, stood up with the man and walked out the door and strode west where she would get paid in full.

Ren smirked as she saw the boy fall on the Deathclaw and lodge rotting wood into the beast's brain. She began packing her rifle, humming along to the song playing on her radio. She then stopped humming when she realized that her assisting with the murder of the Deathclaw had shown the things down there where she was.

Ren grimaced and pulled her backpack on, then quickly ran down the stairs. She began moving the fridge out of the way when she heard something in her shoulder snap. Her arm fell to her side. Ren could still move her hand, but trying to do anything with her left arm would be near impossible.

She glanced at the window that led outside, towards the ugly mess of a Deathclaw outside. Breaking the window and crawling out of it would be better than attempting to move a fridge with one arm.

Ren picked up a nearby globe and smashed it through the window, wincing as the noise echoed throughout the town.