Snippet #1657733

Predictably enough, Dante had been eating the whole time. A mountain of food sat on his plate; most of which was high in calories and protein and suffixed by "meat". Brahmin meat, Bighorner meat, grilled mantis meat, even the tough, stringy flesh of a Deathclaw. Dante marvelled at how they had managed to get that particular delicacy. In the Mojave, Deathclaws were a force to be reckoned with. Even the oldest and weakest of a pack could move faster than any man and kill at least three people in a single swipe without breaking a sweat. He even noticed some 'Guai sitting on his plate. Yao Guai were a rarity in the Wastes; to his knowledge he'd only seen one, and that had been a tamed one (barely) in a sideshow attraction at a carnival on the Vegas Strip. Although he'd heard rumors of more of the giant mutated bears up in Zion. Maybe after he got home he'd hitch a ride with one of the caravans and see what was up there. This job would set him up with enough caps to go anywhere he wanted, whenever he wanted. He could even outfit a caravan into the Big Empty if he so chose. Of course, he'd heard rumors that the place was haunted something fierce, and therefore would have no part of it.

These thoughts occupied him, along with the copious amounts of meat and potatoes and assorted high-sugar-content juice concentrates in front of him (why did Dante drink the syrupy concentrates and not "Just Add Water!" as the packaging advised? Nobody knows), kept him distracted almost all the way through the briefing; and by the time he was done the man giving the briefing had just left the room after mentioning a few extra rations for "the big guy" (Dante assumed this meant him). Dante set aside the ruins of what had once been food (even the marrow-bones had been broken open, their contents absconded with) and moved over to the rest of the group.

He picked one of the MRE bags from the package, but the strange characters on the front were foreign to him. Dante had never been taught to read; it was fairly obvious at this point (A/N: Dante's build was INT 3 at this time. ~C), so he looked helplessly at the one person he'd managed to connect with on the bus ride over - Jo. "Uh... Can you read this for Dante Mo'fuggin' Adams? Dante Mo'fuggin' Adams can't read." He looked guilty of something, like a five-year-old who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.