#the sloth is named honeybiscuit

[slocumjoe]

Gage with Sole that gets lost in nuka cola world? Like he doesnt pay attention to them for one second and they already wandered off and has no clue where they at "gage pick me up im scared and there are flying ants"

aka my experience being underleveled and doing the hardest areas of the park first :'D

Gage and Overboss's No Good, Very Bad Vacation In Nuka World

Realistically, Gage should have anticipated it. It's was a theme park, they were designed to be massive labyrinths with money sinks at every corner. The bigger and more confusing it is, the more likely someone will get lost and wander, and hopefully stumble into a shop or something. This is basic Capitalist Design 101.

Another thing he should have expected was that there were damn good reasons the other parks weren't already full of raiders, living the high life. Colter didn't do it because he was lazy; no one else did for fear of death. Gage himself never heard of anyone coming back from the other parks, that means they don't.

So, really, he should have considered it his own damn fault for not thinking about it, the first time he lost track of his shiny new Overboss.

That first time, it happened in that bottling plant. They went into a door, he followed behind, they went into another door, and another, and shit got weird from there when the soda river erupted with crabs.

He killed some crabs. They killed some crabs. He turned to see where they were killing crabs and saw jack shit.

It was then that he realized that the bottling plant was echoey as fuck, and he hadn't been behind them for...a good ten minutes, at least, just following noises that came from God knows where.

Gage didn't know the layout of the place. Neither did they. The fact that the river is just one line doesn't help shit, because there's employee tunnels, manufacturing, the rest of the plant. The plant was fucking big. They could have been anywhere. Whererever they were, there was more fucking crabs. And Gage, being a good underling who had to pull a lot of strings to get to this point in the first place, wasn't very okay with the idea of his boss being crab dinner.

So he hit the legs, backtracking through tunnels, the walkways above the bottling zones/whatever the fuck those were. Kept finding crabs he didn't kill, good start. Kept hearing gunfire, grenades, crab-screaming. Less good. Ended up back on the soda river (what the fuck was wrong with these people). Accidentally triggered every fucking pre-recorded line from the intercom, which drowned out the shit he needed to hear. At this point, Boss has been fighting for their goddamn life for twenty minutes, and the walls had started to melt into one big blob of samey-samey. Not even the sky was this blue.

Eventually, they found him, pursued by six hunters. He killed some crabs. They killed some crabs. He turned around, grabbed them, and was about to threaten to put them on one of them toddler leashes if they wandered off like again. But then a pack of Assaultatrons kicked down a door and they jumped in different direction away from the lasers. Ran down different hallways. Found more crabs. Killed more crabs, pursued by Assaultatrons. He knew Boss ran back into the river, because the all of Announcer Lady's lines were playing over and over each other, like the layers of hell condensing into a pure diamond of auditory psychology warfare.

Gage didn't notice when the chaos stopped, when the robots and crabs started dropping. It just happened and he had to take a breather, find his happy place. When he met back up with the boss, they were covered in stab wounds from stimpaks, used all their ammo and grenades, and thought that a suit of power armor made up for it.

The power armor did do well against the crab kings on the roof. It did not survive the Queen in the pond.

After this, he pulled them aside, told them to slow the fuck down and not charge through places like a drunk bull in a china shop. They said yes, Gage, I will definitely do that, and I will definitely proceed with caution and carry extra supplies on my personal.

They did, for their credit.

The Mr. Frothy's, however, didn't let that stay true for long.

Both of them took one step into Galactic World, and a fucking soda nuke dropped in between them. And again, they scrambled for different cover. Then a Frothy went after Gage, and the soda bomber bot went after the boss, and they had to separate again.

It'll be fine, he thought, I'll just kite around this corner that leads back into the main area, this wall is like three feet wide, this doesn't lead into a different level entirely.

It did.

Gage made it to the middling level of the Galactic Zone, every eyebot swarming like they wanted fresh meat or some shit, and the Overboss was running from the Nukatrons and a Mr. Frothy screaming about strangling them. Couldn't go the way he came, had his own robot fixated on asphyxiation behind him. Kept running. Then the laser turrets kicked on, and this was now an exercise in agility and being God's favorite.

When the robots patrolling the park finally all died, it was midnight, Gage was half-dead, had no ammo, and no indication that the overboss was alive, save Redeye's music playing at full volume somewhere nearby. Back to Nuka-World for supplies, sleep, and a nervous breakdown.

The next day, they took on the Vault attraction.

It seemed like things were looking up. Sure, the boss got lost looking for...what, stickers on the walls? Something with dumb bottle-cap glasses. But the robots were few and far between, the space was small and linear enough Boss couldn't wander off too far, and they made it out having not used all of their ammo. It was a good sign.

They went to the Interstellar Theatre, next.

Boss had the good idea to go in quiet, sneak around. They found an elevator up to the projection room, found a starcore, and figured that the area was clear, or at least mostly safe. They just cut all the power, after all.

The robots are motion activated.

Fighting turrets, protectatrons, Mr. Handy's in the dark was bad enough. But whoever the fuck put a sentrybot in a theatre, Gage hoped they went to hell.

He found the boss trying to drown themselves in a water fountain, when the last bot went down.

Back to Nuka-World for ammo, stimpaks, and another nervous breakdown as a treat

I saw a robot fighting ring, Boss said. The bots would have already killed each other in there, they said.

So they went to the Robco Battleground.

One or two robots, the rest were dormant. Thank. God. Boss found some starcores, some good loot, went into a door in a basement with robots.

The door shut and maglocked behind them. The pre-recorded announcer starting up the match. All those dormant robots in the basement woke up. On one side of that door, the Overboss fought for their goddamn life with a bunch of tincans. On the other, Gage did the same damn thing. When it opened back up, guess what they did? Yep, back to Nuka-World for stimpaks, ammo, and another nervous breakdown. And a shower, because flammable oil is not a good thing to be covered in, when using firearms. Gage heard the boss muttering and giggling about laser turrets to the plush toy sloth they picked up, and wondered if he would have to put them down out of mercy.

And then the fucking...Nuka Galaxy ride.

So dark. So big. So long. It was the longest attraction at that fucking park. Couldn't see your hands in front of you. Gage could have lost his mind in that section with the giant fake rocks. Found a lot of dead people who did, anyway. Once the Frothy's came barreling out from a hallway, yet again, the Boss went one way, he went the other. When they killed the bots, had to marco-polo triangulate their way back to each other. And then the area with the giant UFOs, and no lighting on the scaffolding. Who the fuck made this park? None of this was OSHA compliant, surely. You know what's even less OSHA compliant?

Laser turrets on EVERY FUCKING WALL.

Laser turrets on every UFO, every ceiling, every wall, every stairwell, every giant fake rock, laser turrets everywhere. Why? Why would Nuka Cola Corporation think they needed this many? Were they expecting two dipshit raiders to come strolling on through, and hated them, specifically? They weren't fucking ashing little Timmy for lifting from the gift shop, right?

You know what else sucks? Laser turrets high above you, in a pitch black corridor, where there's a drop just mere feet in front of you.

Boss didn't get lost in here because Gage grabbed them by the scruff of their shirt if they so much as leaned too far away. No, he doesn't care what shiny thing you see, you are staying within arm's length. Fuck treasure, fuck Galactic Zone, and fuck John Nukacola, or whatever his name was.

Gage never again let them get more than five feet away from him, after Galactic Zone was cleared, and the boss never again had to whisper hateful nothings about laser turrets to their sloth toy.