Adam decided to immediately get to work on the two remaining robots he had left to repair. If there was another big battle to come, a Mr. Gutsy and a Sentry Bot would make a huge difference. It was getting late but thanks to his heavy nap he still had a lot of energy. So, with his desire to work in full gear he grabbed Eric and got right to work.
By the time midnight rolled around he had finally finished the final repairs on the Mr. Gutsy and also taught Eric a few things along the way, naturally. With the robot repair and his simple Admin command inputted in he decided to turn it on and give it a whirl. After all, it was physically broken, its programming was still fine. It was working great back when he saw it fighting with the Talon Company, after all.
"Mr. Gutsy online and awaiting orders. Where are the damn commie bastards you want dead, sir?" The Mr. Gutsy said as soon as it was online. Its voice, unlike the Mr. Handy, was not modeled on a mild mannered British voice, instead it was the hardboiled American voice that gave the image of a soldier fighting for freedom. Even when they were talking casually they always felt intense. In fact it sounded very similar to what a civie might assume a stereotypical drill sergeant would sound like, despite the fact it was a robot that held no rank.
Adam couldn't help but laugh. It had been a long time since he had heard those anti communist lines. The Mr. Gutsy were famous for being extremely anti communist. The degree of which varied widely from unit to unit. Some were more tame and rational, others saw nothing but a pink sky and, with blood in their eyes, went after every red colored fool who was unlucky enough to stand in their way. It seems like this was the former. Though it had no commies to fight, surely he could find it new targets.
"Mr. Gutsy, Recognize Adam Baxter." He said with a commanding tone, skipping right to his admin privileges.
"Recognized, sir. How can I help you kill the reds today?" It said without missing a beat. Adam smiled and shook his head.
"Confirm for me that you recognize my commands as your highest priority and then run a full diagnostic of your hardware and software."
"Confirmed sir. Running the Diagnostic now." The Mr. Gutsy said before the sounds of gears whirring could be heard for a few moments. It was, honestly, just a noise the Mr. Handy models emitted. After all, there were very few gears that needed to make sounds inside the robot, so the sound was mostly there to indicate that it was working. Like an auditory progress bar, just for peace of mind. Regardless, after a few moments to process the Mr. Gutsy spoke up again. "I have run a diagnostic as you requested. All systems are functioning optimally. What are you commie killing orders?" He asked, expectantly.
"For now remain in standby mode for further orders. You will get your wish soon." Adam said with a small grin.
"Understood, sir! I eagerly await the day when I can fulfill my dearest wish to see every last red wiped off the face of this earth." He said with pride for some reason. Adam paused, and decided to address this.
"You do know that the world ended, both countries were nuked, the Chinese are all likely dead. Right?"
"The status of the nation is secondary to my mission." The Mr. Gutsy said, confidently. "So long as there exists even the smallest chance one of those red bastards remain alive I shall not rest nor give any quarter!" Adam just shrugged. Clearly there was no talking his way out of this issue with the Mr. Gutsy. He would need to check through all this coding and carefully remove the section of code that caused it to hate communists so much in order to get it to stop. That would be a lengthy and labor intensive process. Truthfully it was not worth the effort. So long as it could follow orders without issue, it could spout anti communist diatribes all it wanted.
He did consider arguing the point that the communists were all definitely dead, as it had been over 200 years, but then Adam remembered that the man that gathered and led Famine's horde was a pre-war chinese military officer turned glowing one, so the possibility of there being survivors was not zero.
"Alright, well there will be fights to be had in the future. Just wait for your orders." Adam said, deciding to let the matter drop.
"Understood sir. I shall be here on standby until then!" Adam was actually pretty glad he didn't need to do any programming work on the Mr. Gutsy. Since it used to belong to the Talon company there was no telling what sort of overhauls they did to him. But he lucked out, the program was almost entirely unchanged, just edited to give a means for the Talon Company to give him orders, which Adam more or less just stole the idea to do. Of course him being an actual former service member could be helpful too, but simply making himself the Admin was the easiest and least problematic solution. This worked fine.
Adam was about to leave the room but then stopped himself and turned to the Mr. Gutsy.
"Also from this moment on your name is Sgt. Fyre." Adam said, deciding to grant him the same name that the Mr. Gutsy had from his unit back in the war. He had the same hard-on for murder and killing communists so it seemed appropriate. The rank was not real, of course, but it was a running joke in his unit that the Mr. Gutsy could contest Adam's orders if he so chose because they shared a rank. Ignoring the fact that is not how it worked at all on the field. Regardless, it was a funny joke.
"Understood. This Sgt. Fyre will wait here, locked and loaded, ready to kill some reds." Adam gave him a firm nod and then turned to leave the room, flanked by Eric.
As they left the room Adam turned to look at Eric and saw he looked exhausted. Adam still felt rather fresh since he had taken a big nap, but Eric was on a normal sleep schedule and is an early riser normally, so this was late for him.
"Im sorry for keeping you out so late, Eric."
"No." Eric said as he yawned into his hand. "I don't mind, I'm glad we got the Mr. Gutsy up and running and I learned some things. Though I'm disappointed that we didn't get to work on the APC today." He offered a half sarcastic smile and then let it drop as he yawned again. Eric's words began to stir an idea in Adam's mind but the idea was not something he could do now. However, something for the future was worth keeping in mind. Regardless he kept Eric up late enough, clearly he needed to sleep.
"Go to bed, we are done for the night anyway." Adam said with a soft chuckle.
"Alright, I'm not going to argue. Night." Eric said, casually before walking off to head back to his room, slouched over as he walked.