Nuclear winter.

Is this really what the world had descended into during his absence? The war must have really gotten bad. Although, he supposes that he already knew this, given the circumstances.

“Careful,” says Tango, watching as the girl flops around inside of the compartment, fiddling around with the container for the radiation fragment. He’s trying to show her how to replace the old crystal with this new one. It has a bit more juice inside of it than the old one, so he hopes that it’ll help make the suit run at a higher level again. “Now you just need to pull on that mechanism there, to your left,” he explains, watching her legs kick around, as she lays upside down, hanging face first in the small hatch below the seat.

“Mecha-what?” asks Pen, her head popping back up again to look at the bauble.

“Uh, there’s a little red stick down there, yeah?”

Pen turns back downward to look. “Yeah?”

“Turn that to the side. It’ll unlock the compartment,” explains Tango.

She blinks and then shrugs, doing as he instructs. At first her attempts are unsuccessful, but then she realizes that she was pulling the lever the wrong way. Pulling it to the right instead of back towards herself, it now budges and comes loose.

“Okay, now you need to go outside.”

“Huh?” asks Pen, looking back up.

“The compartment’s unlocked, so the shielding is going to be loose. If you open it while you’re inside, you’ll flood yourself with stagnant radiation,” he explains. “You need to do the replacement from outside.”

Pen blinks, staring at the bauble. “…Huh?”

“Poison air,” says Tango, remembering to simplify.

She looks at the bauble and then back down to the spot below her seat, before then looking back towards the bauble. Her ears twitch. “Isn’t it super dumb to have a box full of poison beneath my chair?”

“Yes,” replies Tango. “But war makes you do stupid things.”

“…Huh…” replies Pen, shrugging. She crawls back out, but warily eyes the man’s glass eye. “You better not try to run off though,” she warns, pointing at him. “I’m a fast runner. I’ll catch you!” she warns.

Tango sighs. “I need you. I’m not going to run away without you.”

Pen looks at the bauble in mildly pleased suspicion for a while and then simply jumps out of the cockpit, through the hatch in the back. She lands back down on the floor of the cave.

“We should leave as soon as we get this done,” says Tango. “The radiation in this cave is pretty bad,” he says. “I mean, it’s pretty bad everywhere. I don’t know how anything is still even alive at this -” He stops, looking at her perplexed face, her fox ears twitching as she listens to him. “- Never mind,” says Tango. “How was the soup?” he asks. “Do you feel better now?”

Pen strikes her stomach twice with one hand. “It was great,” she says, turning her head towards the metal box, sitting on some rocks. “Can we heat the rest up again?” she asks.

“Sure. But let’s do this first,” he says.

Pen sighs, her ears drooping. “Okay.”

It’s a fairly simple process, if not a little awkward. But with some instructions and a few mandatory breaks to have some soup in between after all, they manage.

[Rad-Frag Replacement Complete] Current Energy Status: 77%

The top of the suit hisses, as a cloud of steam is vented out of itself.

Tango turns around, looking at Pen. She’s protectively guarding the old crystal, doing her best to stay as close to it as possible, despite it being glowing hot.

“Be careful and don’t stand so near to those,” says Tango. “They’re dangerous.”

She narrows her eyes. “You’re just trying to get me to lower my guard.”

Tango, kneeling down, holds a hand out behind himself to let her climb back inside. “You’re just going to have to learn to trust me one day. Come on.”

“I’ll trust you when you stop always lying to me,” replies Pen.

He tilts his head. “I don’t lie to you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Sure. I’ll just breathe in some fat air and try to avoid any micro-organs in that case.”

“- Micro organisms,” corrects Tango.

“Stop making stuff up!” she yells, pointing at him.

Tango shakes his head. “— Are you going to get in?”

She crosses her arms, glaring at him in silence. Pen turns her head to look at the crystal. “Not until it’s cold enough for me to take.”

“The old shard?” he asks. “It’s spent. There’s not much juice left in it. Just leave it there.”

A loud dinking sound fills the cave as a rock flies, striking against his head and bouncing off of it. The stone falls to the ground. “I’m not going to leave it!” she yells. “If you don’t want it, then just go!” she snaps. “But I’m staying too.” Pen crosses her arms, closing her eyes.

Tango sighs, staring at her for a time.

He supposes that it does make sense. She’s a desperate person and, in the way the world has developed, these crystals are literal lifelines. If she wants to buy a house and live in a place like a city, she’ll need money from somewhere.

Tango turns to look at the spot where the irradiated, dead bear had lain, killed by the ambient radiation present in the world and especially from the crystal. He turns his gaze back towards the girl, who is standing there, literally right next to the other crystal.

Realistically, the chances of anyone living in this world long enough to live a safe and happy life are slim to none.

Pragmatically, he needs her for the mission.

Emotionally, he returns his gaze back forward, towards the entrance of the cave.

“Okay,” he says, relenting. “We’ll take the old crystal. There’s a little compartment on my leg. You can put it in there,” he says. “- When it’s cold.”

What difference does it make? At this level of radiation, the one old crystal more is hardly enough to matter anymore.

He hears the sound of a pair of excited feet tapping around behind himself in a secretive dance. But he doesn’t look.

The two of them exit the cave, returning to the world outside.

Snow falls heavily from the sky, coating the ground in a soft, white blanket that hides the grim truth of the world.

Pen sits inside of the cockpit, humming as she rests, comfortably leaned to the side inside of her warm nest. She shivers, releasing the last lingering touch of the cold she had brought in with herself and she then presses herself into a soft bundle. Her eyes wander towards the screen, which is on display in the center of the console. It gives her a view of the outside world and, quite frankly, she’s happy to be on this side of it.

Her belly is full. The air is warm. She has a soft place to live and to sleep in. She has someone reasonably trustworthy, even if he is a compulsive liar.

— She supposes she can live with that, considering the perks.

“You ready?” The bot assumes a lowering stance, getting ready to move. “Strap in.”

She groans. “Do I have to?” asks Pen, fiddling with the belt. “I hate this thing,” she says. “It’s always holding me down.”

“That’s the point,” replies Tango, looking at the safety-belt. She clicks it into the harness and then sits back in the seat, this time like a normal person. “You ready?” he asks. “Hold on, we’re gonna go faster now. Way faster.”

She nods, adjusting herself into her seat. “To where?”

Tango leans forward, aiming down the valley and then getting ready to take a sharp bend. “The north,” he says. “The city,” finishes Tango. “Home.”

Her ears perk up together with her eyes just in time to be flung back against the seat as Tango shoots off with a speed she hasn’t seen him move in since they first met, in that abandoned ruin.

Her bones and face and senses rattle and shake and she can’t even come close to keeping up with the blurring images on the monitor as they blast over the countryside.