A whole mess of trouble seemed to be occurin' back there, and throughout it all the heckler-stranger-driver had eyes for just the one passenger; a focused intensity to the periodic squints he sent her way in his rear-view as she sneakily tried to go about what she was going about.
"You raidin' my refrigerator right now, bandit girl?"
Inside were a beer, a half-peeled orange, and an ashtray with one single cigarette in it.
Before the car's occupants could even begin to contemplate how to navigate that embarrassing moment for both parties, a hiss forced its way out the man's teeth with all the force and pitch of a whistle, and a sharp twist of the wheel saw the scream of rubber on asphalt rip through the pleasant tranquility of the Mojave at night. Chaos followed quickly, the capacity of the seatbelts (and Razz's grip strength) being stretched to their absolute limits
and the fridge's contents doming Mia in the skull as their chauffeur followed through on the motion to maintain their spin; wrenching the car into something resembling a donut to (just) avoid going off the highway.
Consequentially, all eight passengers were briefly afforded a moment where they were free to collectively gawp out their closest window at what the hell had come up out of the black on them so suddenly. The sight of an unfamiliar danger made that one of those moments like to drag on forever; as though they had all just shot up on Jet in the last ten seconds then forgot about it, the deafening tones of Radio New Vegas accidentally cranked up in the bedlam drowning out all other noise.
It stood close to ten feet in height, its shadow cast by the full moon nigh engulfing the car in its totality. Perhaps unfamiliar wasn't quite the word; FEV pumped through the monstrosity's veins rightly enough, assuming anything at all did outside dust and formaldehyde. Its bulk and cranium were roughly consistent with a super mutant, but taller, broader; its bone structure seemed malformed, skin paler and more desiccated than even their feral cousins out east. Its skull was sunken, bearing significant scar tissue and a large, noteworthy dent at the center of its crown where an array of sleek black coils and plated cathode tubes ran into the ebony carapace grafted to its flesh, up one nostril and down its throat. Slung across one shoulder was the aforementioned Fat Man, which it hefted with an ease that made a launcher specifically designed to be used in power armour look positively made of foam.
About two more rotations followed before the car was fully under control, and the man drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in an erratic tempo as they sat in a pit of sand, steam, and simmering frustration, simply studying the monstrosity to see what it did next.
As they looked at the Mire, the Mire looked back at them, and opened its mouth to meet them with a a throaty, protracted growl layered by a synthetic ring.
" J O B . "
Then it turned, slowly rotating itself as if on an axis before it began to amble down the 93 at much the same pace it had been going, walking dead-centre of the road without a care for where the securitron parachuted out. The driver's grip on the wheel loosened slightly, but not enough to come anywhere near relaxed, and he chewed his jaw in deep thought for a few seconds before speaking.
"If these boys so smart how come they didn't just send the sorta feller could run?"
