Pain in the Butt
Figured I'd upload it in the story section as well, since that was my main contribution
"I'm telling you, this is stupid." Cassidy and Philon were crouching behind a bit of rubble, a few hundred meters away from the old Fuego Ironworks. Most of the outlying pipes, that had once carried... something, had rusted and collapsed years ago. Like most places, it had gone to hell without maintenance after the bombs, but at least it made good cover.
"Jeez, are you a Houndoom or a Wishy-Washy?" Cassidy shot back. With one cracked half of a old pair of binoculars in hand she was scoping out the target for her next big score. The IronWorks was always occupied by someone, being the biggest mother-load of high quality scrap this side of Mt Coronet, even after almost two decades. A gang would move in and take shelter in the steel fortress, slowly chipping away at the building, until they got betrayed, or a bigger gang wiped them out, or mutants were drawn by the noise or...
Look, the point was the place was a deathtrap, but a valuable deathtrap. Not just for the metal, but for the amount of personal gear that had built up in the place after it had gone through so many owners. And Cassidy had gotten a good tip that it was currently empty.
"I'm smart is what I am, also, not dead. That's a good thing to be." For someone who looked like he climbed out of the depths of hell, then got in a serious bar fight, Philon certainly didn't act like it. "That place is way too valuable, no one just leaves it empty. So it's either not or something made it empty. My caps are on the 'something' being way more than one 'mon can take on."
"One?! Are you seriously going to sit on your ass back here while I'm getting rich?" "Yeah and I tell you what, when I have to pull your ass out of the fire, again, then it belongs to me!" "Fine! You take the glass and watch as my ass hauls off a ton of salvage!"
At that Cassidy carelessly tossed the glass over to the Houndoom, before hopping over the rubble. No help just meant no share for him and she wasn't gonna buy the booze back at Jubilife. Besides, she had two barrels of ol' faithful with her. Anyone or thing that had stuck around was getting a face full of buckshot.
The foundry was silent. Pieces of scrap and pipe lay everywhere, forming a maze of valuable metal that just hadn't been moved yet. Meta,. however, wasn't what she was after. Cassidy didn't have a gang to help her haul the scrap away, but the really valuable stuff would be further in. Caches of smoked and preserved food, bottled water, and GUNS! Any gang who hoped to hold the foundry would need shit-tons of firepower and there was no way the previous owners could have carried it all with them, not with how fast they cleared out.
Stepping lightly around the junk, Cassidy cocked an ear. The ruins were fairly silent, as they should have been. Wind whistling through the pipes, the occasional piece of concrete falling to the ground, a low shuffling.
"Aw shit. Well this couldn't be too easy now could it." Cassidy ducked behind a pillar and pulled her old double barrel out of its back holster. A treasure pile this big was of course going to have some roaches. The only question was, 'Mon or mutant? Another Mon she might be able to scare off, but on the other hand they might shoot first. Mutants? They were durable but simpler. Only cure for that condition was a hole in the head. *drip* *tap* *FWOOOOOOOSH!*
"Oh shit!" Seemingly without warning a massive gout of flame had burst through the area, scorching the concrete and causing the exposed rebar to sag. Cassidy threw herself back as the pillar she was hiding behind started to glow red, desperately trying to aim at the source while keeping her head from bouncing off the ground. At the same time all she could think was this place must have been loaded with food, if some Mon was willing to waste that much energy on a move.
Picking herself back up, she quickly scanned the area. Eye's darting from pillar to pillar. Hot'n'Tosty had to be hiding behind one of them.
"What a warm reception! But there's no reason to get so hot under the collar." Cassidy called out, her voice echoing all around her. "There's more salvage in this place then any one Mon could carry off before another gang get here. So why don't we just..."
*FWOOOOSH!*
Another burst of flame ripped through the dark interior of the foundry, the concrete floor even starting to melt under its assault. This time illuminating her assailant.
"I'd really rather not waste the... shells... OH SHIT!"
There was going to no reasoning with the creature shambling out of the shadows, but buckshot wasn't going to be much help either. It used to be a Charmeleon, probably, with it bubbling orange skin and malformed horn jutting out the back of it's skull.
There were mutants out there, that everyone knew, and some were still decent people. Victims of the radiation, doomed to bodies that hovered right on the edge of full decomposition. Then there were the unlucky ones, the ones that the radiation changed something deep inside. Burnouts. A lifetime of energy used in less than two years. An insatiable hunger that tore at the mind, and in this case, fire hot enough to vapourize lead shot in the air.
It was time to beat what pre-war militaries had called a 'strategic retreat'. "Shit, fuck, balls, cock!" Quickly giving him both barrels to try and keep it busy for a few seconds, Cassidy scrambled to her feet, stumble running toward the entrance. Amazingly a few of the pellets managed to graze the abomination, a few trickles of blood leaking out before quickly combusting, adding further to the burns that covered more of it's body than clean flesh.
"Oh fuck, it's Iron Island all over again." That Steelix had not been happy, and iron spikes should not grow out of anythings eyes. She'd left the island with Tone franticly rowing and over two dozen metal shards lodged in her leg. This was no time to repeat that performance.
"Philon! Philon! Where the hell are you? We need you go ya oaf!" Bursting back out into the open Cassidy fumbled for another pair shells, before dropping them to the ground as she stumbled over a loose bit of pipe. Shit, no matter how this turned out this was gonna be a deficit run.
Turning down another blind alley, between ancient pipes and tanks, the shotgun found its way back to it's holster. Fighting a Burnout was almost never worth it and it had probably already melted all the easily grabbable scrap in there to slag. Now if she could just loose the damn thing in this maze...
*Fwoosh*
One of the tanks to her left melted into slag right before her eyes. The damn thing was claiming through the molten metal it created without even noticing. Even as a last resort a Psyshock might not even phase the thing, with how much of it's mind was gone. Glancing side to side, Cassidy wasn't seeing many options, tangled messes of rotting rubber tubes and gauges covering the undersides of the tanks made sliding out a no go. They were also too high to jump over and running to the left or right would just put her at the end of a firestorm funnel.
"This is what you get for trying to make a semi-honest living in the world" Cassidy mumbled out, as the inferno grew again. The odds of dodging in such a confined space were...
"Fuckin move! You damn green elf!" Philon's horse voice yelled out from... behind the abomination? A question answered a fraction of a second later as the black dog charged over the still glowing metal, boots burning away but fur not even singing, as he rammed his horns right into the things spine. It let out a horrible cry, bursts of flame mixing with sound, that overlapped with Philon's yell of "To the left!"
Quickly recovering from his tackle-come-headbutt he rapidly took off in the self-same direction, dropping a small cylinder behind him as he went. The two were nearly out of the tangle when it went off in a earsplitting burst of sound and light. They didn't stop sprinting till they were both clear back to the dead forest.
"Ah,ah, I have to admit, that was pretty badass what you did back there." Cassidy collapsed against the splintered boards of some old forest shack as she tried to catch her breath. The abomination didn't seem to have followed them. Damn thing had probably made the Ironworks its lair.
"Yeah, I can be pretty badass when I wanna be" Philon was slumped over a old crate, also catching his breath. Though with a certain annoying smirk on his face as well. "I'm also pretty good at telling when somethings a stupid idea, if only a certain rock-headed psychic I knew would take my sage wisdom."
"Hey some other scavvers would have been one thing, no way could you have predicted a Burnout there."
"Scavvers, Burnout, either way it would have, and did, end with me pulling your ass out of the literal fire, and you now owing me big time."
"Yeah Yeah, whatever. I'll buy the drinks drinks when we get back to Jubilife, assume Nithya doesn't try to leverage another surprise tax again, or add me to her creepy snake harem... again." Cassidy pushed off the old wall and brushed her ragged coat off, about to start the long walk back to civilization, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. A rough paw clapping on to her ass stopped her dead though.
"Drinks? Oh no no no my friends. Since you not only decided to ignore my wise council but also cost me a pair of boots, a good flashbang, and a headache, drinks aren't going to cut it." Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a small tube with faded writing. "I wasn't joking earlier and since I pulled your ass out of some literal fire, for tonight at least, it belongs to me!"
Cassidy could only groan. She hated walking funny in the morning.