Chapter Four: A Deal of Chemical Sunshine

Ivan walked down into the raider's nest, getting eyed up by a dozen eyes. It was clockwork for him at this point, already he was taking in the sight of defensive emplacements and cover he could take. Every goon he gazed at his mind was flushed with information about their biology. From their posture and gait, their pallor and eye-dilation from several yards away being cataloged into a supernatural repository of medical information. Every wound, every set bone and broken nose and taken drug was known to him at a single glance.

Wonderful for any doctor and medic, of which he was likely one of the best in the wasteland as for some reason any medical technique being preformed by him is three times more effective, most notably injecting someone with a stim-pack. However, such an ability was also amazing for combat, as it highlighted weaknesses and enhanced his perception to supernatural levels, able to predict and analyze a targets next move before they even made it.

To say such an ability synergized with VATS was an understatement. The ability outright paused time, allowing him all the time in the world to plan and organize a combat strategy, along with the targeting system's already present abilities of preforming feats of marksmanship that was out of this world.

There were reasons he could walk into a raider camp and leave both unharmed and richer all for it.

"Well, look who it is!" Boomed a voice. "Gloam! I've got a prize for you today!"

Ivan rose an eyebrow at the voice and cracked a grin at the promise of a prize. Old One Eye, a fellow Ghoul with a mutated cancerous growth that blotted out vision in one eye stalked over.

In exchange for the dead eye, the man was an absolute unit in terms of size and muscle, while not quite up there with Super Mutants and their kind, he was certainly smarter than the muscle heads and far more charismatic. If he'd taken any more radiation in the fallout, he'd likely have become a Bloated Glowing One, one of if not the most terrifying Ferals out there.

He was also a massive Buff-Out abuser, so he and Ivan got along well.

"Still don't know where you got that nickname from, kid."

Roger, also known as Old One Eyed snorted. "Only you would dare call me a kid. And its your own fault for showing up to every raider camp right at sunset to do business."

"Its a good habit to be punctual." Ivan shrugged. "I'm interested in this prize of yours, though."

"Right into biz." Roger grinned, "Boy's bring the bot out!"

Several raiders ran away and a few moments later they were hauling a scrap heap carried on a stretcher likely looted out of an ambulance.

"Well, I'll be damned." Ivan grinned. "Where'd you find this beauty."

"I like that tone. We got in a scuffle with the damn thing, its missing that eye-laser thing, the torso is fucked, and the legs are scrap after we used a rocket launcher. But, knowing you, you'll love it."

Ivan inspected the bot and ghosted his fingers on the torso and left over chassis of the Assaultron. "This model is a Dominator Assualtron, how the hell did you guy's take it down? No offense, but even I'd be wary of one of these things."

Old One Eye rubbed the back of his bandana covered head, "We didn't. Most of that damage ain't us, and the damn thing was repeating some incomprehensible racket while trying to stab us with a shattered sword and lame leg. Look at the rends on the torso." The raider boss pointed at the torn gutted torso. The bot was missing its legs and hips, looking like if a man was bisected at the navel what with a mess of wires spilling out. Yet, on the chassis protecting it, there were a number of claw marks.

"Deathclaw got it." Ivan claimed with Old One Eye nodding. "Aye."

Ivan started really inspecting what he'll be buying. The torso was in a decent enough condition, and he glanced at the broken and warped arms and legs he could likely salvage for materials in repairing the machine. The head was blasted in half, leaving only the lower two plates of face protection and removing everything north of them. This meant the powerful face-laser was gone, but that only gave him...ideas.

"Throw in the legs and arms and I'll give you all my buff-out and a quarter of my psycho." Ivan stated.

"Ahaha! Deal!"

...

Ivan watched as his carry-bot, also known as INV-T0RY set down a massive net of scrap and gear covered in a soaked tarp. The bot was something made with less military-grade materials and was built able to carry thrice its body weight.

Strapped to Ivan's own back was a large duffel-bag filled with bits and bobs of electrical components, a gutted terminal, decent quality polymers, and a plethora of energy weapon cartridges. Raiders rarely came across weapons of the energy variety and even more rarely knew how to maintain the weapons, so selling their munitions was an easy choice.

Ivan stretched his back, enjoying the pops and cracks from his spine as he did so before slumping and walking over to the sack of gear his bot had set down. Opening it, he started putting everything in his inventory and quickly went over his weight limit.

Once he did so he felt a constant pressure around him arise, limiting his movement to a sedated walk, although his arms and fine motor abilities were left completely unharmed from the strange phenomena.

Walking over to his robotics bench, Ivan unloaded the remains of the Assaultron onto a nearby bench, before starting to go through the long process of sorting out all of his gains.

The ghoul once finished left the work area and moved to change out of his soaked gear and came back to work on his project. Short and carefully groomed nails scratched harshly at his charcoal black skin, catching on the various crags and crevices on his face as he did so. He pulled a pen and a large amount of drafting paper and started designing.

He wanted a companion, one that was deadly and could obviously keep up with him, but one that also wasn't just another heavy duty Sentry Bot that he'd need to escort for its offensive power to be of any value.

Already he was looking towards a humanoid android design, and was using the institute's Mark 2.5 Synth Model for the brain of the machine. However, he wasn't exactly all that hung up on striving towards a perfectly human design, and instead looked towards Super Mutants and figured he could create what he referred to as a borg.

Idly he drew inspiration from a cyborg known as Adam Smasher from the game Cyberpunk and animation Cyberpunk Edgerunners. From there his artistic side started catching on fire.

He liked the feminine frame of the Assaultron, and figured he could lean into that, and in a few hours he was left with several pages of concept art and part designs. He scrapped several, some not fitting what he wanted, and others becoming too divergent from the base design that it started looking less like an actionable android and more a mess of optics and artistic liberties. Balancing art and science was one of Ivan's greatest joys, and it was this process that gave him meaning in this new, harsh and hellish world. As he took the materials of what he had and created something better and greater than the parts available to him.

"Well, let's get cracking." Ivan slapped down a welders masks and fired up his fabricator.