[HOE] Stripping a pickup for parts

[Robert Holland <robert@macauley.com>]

How many junker components do you think could be gained from a old, rusty,
beat-up, but still perfectly functional mid-sized pickup truck?

My junker, Jared, has been getting viciously component-screwed for the whole
campaign and presently has 3 electronic components, 9 chemical components, and
7.5 ounces of ghost rock to his name, which does not leave an awful lot of
construction possibilities open. We recently managed to take out the Slasher in
Movietown and, while they were extremely grateful, it seems there just wasn't a
single usable component or ounce of ghost rock in the entire city (sorry, we'll
give you some rations and spook juice, though, have a nice trip), so when we got
jumped by some Road Orcs in a pickup on the way out of town, Jared was pretty
excited. Thanks to some smooth work by our syker ("Ahh, crap, I only rolled a
19. Oh, well, he's dead anyway."), we managed to kill all five gangers without
damaging their ride. Jared steps down from our semi, looks the pickup up and
down, peers underneath, rubs his hands together, and says, "Well, looks like
it's getting dark. Y'all wanna bed down for the night while I take this truck
apart?"

The Marshal says:
"OK, you search the truck and are able to salvage four structural, five
mechanical, and three chemical components."

I say:
"Do WHAT?"

Long argument ensues about how many components are in a pickup truck. Marshal
argues that the pickup is old and rusty and there's not much good metal in it. I
point out that what junkers DO is make useful items out of rusty, worthless
crap, and also that building an identical mid-sized pickup from scratch using
the Locomotion power would require the expenditure of 22 chemical, 22
electronic, 64 mechanical, and 100 structural components, rather than four
struct, five mech, and three chem. After I make it clear to him that I am not
merely grabbing a few obvious pieces but disassembling and storing the entire
vehicle bolt by bolt, he says he'll think about giving me a few more components,
but I'll have to make a bunch of guts checks since the syker killed two of the
gangers with Boneripper and chunks of them are all over the truck. (Never mind
that he's been boneripping people since the beginning of the campaign and we've
never had to make any guts checks after the first time.)

Bottom line: how much right do I have to complain?

--Robert Holland