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Mystic Rain Soda
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“Give me a second,” you sigh, mentally checking out from one location partially so that you can have better control of your eyebot at the Brotherhood compound.
By this point, Davis has long since gone off his shift, but a brief explanation is all it takes to get the new faces out of your way and drift back down to Buford’s workshop. It actually is getting a bit late at this point, but sure enough, the old broad is still up to her elbows in grease and softly cursing to nobody in particular. You almost turn back around, unwilling to catch her mid-bustle, but no sooner does the thought cross your mind than her eyes lock on you hovering in the doorway.
“Got something ye want to discuss?” she inquires, not waiting for your answer before her hands are once again filled with tools, a ratchet turning away at the skeleton of a power-armored leg. “Well, then, speak up. Only three more hours of this horseshit, and then I’m in bed.”
It’s more time than you need, obviously, but you don’t exactly throw caution to the wind and skimp on the details as you try to walk a verbal minefield explaining recent developments. You try to put your best foot forward, of course, remarking how what you’re proposing might result in less casualties on the Brotherhood side in the coming engagement while providing them a greater boon in the long term by offering them the mint conditioned truck buried not far beneath the ruined parking garage. To her credit, she lets you get everything out before offering any remark. Unfortunately, the first thing to come from her mouth immediately after is a long, tired sigh.
“Trying to renegotiate after already having walked out with half yer payment doesn’t look good…” she tells you honestly, setting aside her tools and folding her arms to her chest as she leans against the nearest work table. “I sure as hell wouldn’t have allowed it had I thought there was any chance you’d be trying to walk us back at the last minute, like you are now.”
“I realize,” you say. “It’s just-”
“It’ll be a safer engagement,” she admits, “at least for that particular day. Hell, there might not even be an attack if the Sons pull out like they’re promising you they will. Then again, never been one to trust a man who’d shoot his own mother if the price was right to honor a commitment. That’s how my first marriage ended.”
She enjoys a lonesome, self-depreciating laugh over that one before returning to business.
“Fact is, whether they do or they don’t honor their commitment, that leaves nothing on the table for the boys on our side who are about to risk their necks for you all. Nothing but a truck under 12 tons of unstable rubble guarded by a horde of giant goddamn mutant spiders, that is.”
You had to tell them sooner or later about that, and so you decided it was better to get it all out in one clean cut.
“If we dig up that garage, even assuming we get the truck and everything is peachy, those little bastards might decide they need to find themselves another nest in a hurry. It’d be like pulling the pin on a grenade full o’ ugly, and we’d all probably live to regret it.
“Now, to be clear, I ain’t going to close the books on negotiating just yet, but you’re going to have to keep it to the cards in your hand, kiddo. We need something we can use and that you can give us, no if’s, but’s, or maybe’s. Only alternatives I see to that are returning the assaultron we gave you as good as you got it and breaking contract with us or sticking to your guns and hoping these raider pups are more bark than bite.”
> Things could have gone worse, but what now…
> [] You could try trading them information. About what, though?
> [] It might hurt relations with the BoS, but weakening both sides of this engagement is better for the Metro.
> [] You need the Brotherhood more than you need the Sons to back down.
> [] Something else
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