Matt sighed as he piled the last of the corpses off on the side of the road, pulling a pack of matches he had liberated off of one of the caravaneers he lit it and dropped it on the pile of bodies, over which Willow had just finished dumping kerosene.  They went up in flames, billowing a greasy black flame to the sky.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Their bodies would have disappeared after 24 hours...”  she said looking at him with a curious look she seemed to almost always have on her face.  

“Sends a message.”  he said looking at the pyre, “Tells them that there is a raider in town, also, I don't want to leave their corpses, who knows what would happen to them after we left.”  he said nodding in satisfaction at the large smoke cloud that was there for anyone to see.

“You do realise they are not actually dead right?”  she said, there was a hint of concern in her voice that he noticed.

“I know that, just saying I wouldn't want someone to dessicate my corpse.”  he shrugged. “Let's go, the vultures will descend on this pyre sooner rather than later.” he said, grabbing the mutant mule thing by the course leather halter and led it along. Behind it wobbled the makeshift cart, which looking at it now was actually the bed of a truck. Not that it mattered, so long as the thing moved and they could get it and all the loot away from the fire.  

“There are no vultures in this region,”  she said, following behind at a trot to keep up with him and the mule thing.  

“Bird wise, you're right there are none around here, but I was referring to people.”  he said with a grunt as he led them back to the base.  It only took a few minutes to unload, they stashed it in the elevator shaft of the building right next to his apartment, the one that they had shimmied across the I beam to get to.  Reaching up he opened up the trapdoor in the ceiling of the elevator, with a slight jump he caught the edge and pulled himself up, he hissed as he used the arm that had its shoulder shot. “Hand me two of the rifles, and three side arms.”  he said, his legs dangling over the edge and he reached down, and grabbed the guns from her, he also had her hand up two of the rusty metal plate armor, one of the leather, and two dusters, along with some food, and about a quarter of the ammunition, and a good stock of the nano vials as she called them.

“You should use one of these for that shoulder,”  she said looking at his arm, which was currently still just wrapped up tightly with some spare cloth.  

“What exactly is that?”  he asked looking at it.  It was a small glass vial that had either end of it covered in silvery metallic covers, and inside there was a shimmering silvery liquid that seemed to slosh back and forth without any actual movements of the beaker to prompt it.

“Nonoitite, it is how people heal from the wounds inflected in this word, it is a tube full of tiny microscopic robots that eat away at any damaged tissue and massively accelerate the healing process,”  she explained as he hopped down back into the elevator compartment.  He looked at the vile, and its self moving contents with suspicion, he was about to shrug it off and continue about his way when she grabbed him by the uninjured shoulder and pushed him back against the far wall of the elevator, pinning him there. “I was made to help you, it is one of the main priorities of my programming,”  she stated in a voice that would brook no argument,”And I will help you and protect you, even if it is against yourself.”  she said, and she smashed one end of the glass vial on the hand railing and quickly poured it into his wound.

He was about to protest but before he could a pain gripped him much worse than even being shot.  It felt like something was scraping the flesh out of the wound, this constant burning itching pain that caused his eyes to water.  It lasted for what seemed like an eternity as he felt the torturous teath of the nanites eat away at the damaged flesh.  In actuality however it only took three seconds or so, but by the end of it he was sweating up a storm and found himself writhing on the floor.  Pushing himself up he growled, pointing a finger into her chest. “Don’t ever do something like that to me again, am I clear?”  he growled.

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“Your arm is better now is it not?”  she asked, not backing down even with his aggressive mannerism directly in her face.

He quickly realised he had just been jabbing her with his arm that had been shot, and had not felt a pain in the slightest. “That is irrelevant.”  he growled, and turned away to pick up the armor that was destined for there second loot cache inside his apartment, pretending to not see the satisfied smile that spread on her face.

It was much harder to go back across the i beam seeing as it was uphill and he was now dragging a bundle of weapons and armor and other items.

“Why are we putting all of these in different locations?”  she asked as she helped him pile the clothes and armor in a corner of the room where they kept their respawner beacons.

“Never put all your eggs in one basket,”  he responded before stripping off his shirt.  Her eyes widened as she watched him strip down, even her cheeks started to burn slightly as he dropped his pants and kicked off his shoes.  He grabbed one of the metal scrap suits of armor and pulled it on, not once noticing her embarrassment as he donned the armor.  The suit was made out of a basic leather full body armor to which pieces of rusty scrap metal were stuck. It was surprisingly form fitting, even though the person that had worn it was much taller than Matt was. “How exactly does this work?”  Matt asked looking at the armor. “This shouldn't fit this good...”

“There are a few things in this game that are non realistic for gameplay purposes, for example the armor and clothing change to your specific size once you put it on,  it wouldn't be very fun if you couldn't equip this cool armor you just looted or purchased because it was made for a small person, or for a fat one.”  she explained with a shrug, she still had a slight blush about her cheeks and was trying her best to not show it.

He thought about it and shrugged, yeah that made since. “Come on, get dressed,”  he said as he grabbed a long brown duster and shrugged it into place over the armor, she looked at him and then back at the armor, and blushed slightly.   He took her meaning, and laid the armor on the floor,  and walked out of the room allowing her to change into the gear without him there.  He shook his head and smiled, he should have been more considerate, these A.I. they were programmed to act like humans, so he should treat them as such, she obviously had full intelligence and he should not have treated her like an npc.  He took note of this and nodded to himself.

She walked out of the room, kitted like he now was, in a suit of metal and leather armor over which she wore a long brown duster.  Though he was pretty sure she wore it better, the armor in his case looked protective, but somehow in her case looked like it showed off all the right curves as it slimmed down near her waistline and then flared out by her hips.  “Ready?”  he asked looking at her.

“Just a sec,”  she said, and she froze in place, her body going unnaturally stiff and her eyes widening, and weirdest of all they glowed, or rather they glowed brighter than they normally do. He was about to shake her, see if he could do anything but she reverted back to her normal state.”Ok, we're good.”

“What the hell was that? Did you glitch out?”

“What? I don't have any glitches!” she shouted her face dying beet red. ”I am clean as can be!”  she turned away from him and muttered something that didn't really sound all that nice, but he felt the need to apologize any way.  Women, honesty even the programmed variety were damned good at playing with his emotions.

“Sorry, it's just you stopped moving and...”

“I was uploading a video you moron.”  she pouted.

“A video?”  he asked, slightly confused and worried now.

“Yeah, you said you wanted to send a message so I uploaded a video of us raiding.”  she said, she turned back towards him, with a hurt look still on her face. “Is that ok?”

He thought about it, and then nodded “Yeah thats fine, its up to you if you want to upload a video,”  he said with a shrug, it didn't bother him one way or the other. “Well, I think I am going to call it for the day,”  he said, rolling his shoulders.

“Your leaving?”  she asked, there was a tad bit of sadness in her voice.  Damn her programmers they probably added that just to make him feel like shit leaving her here, and it was fucking working.

“Unfortunately, you know I would take you with me if I could...”

“You don't know how glad and relieved that makes me!”  she said, all smiles and sunshine when she heard that.

That was an odd thing to say… relieved huh?  Pushing it out of his mind he spoke to her one last time before logging out “Well I'll catch you later,”  he said, “Vis, log me out.”he was about to wave to her good by when he saw her face grow angry and her eyes narrow dangerously.

“Who is Vis?”  she asked in a cold voice, but before he could answer the world went dark around him as he exited the game New Earth Online.