The 101 Adventures
Presents
"The Wrath of Liquid"
Oo000ooo000oO
Lawrence "Liquid" Cox watched Wally Mack wince as he gingerly prodded at his noticeably swollen nose and split lip, which he had gotten courtesy of Liquid's sister Brittany. The reason why the middle Mack child had gotten his lumps was because he and his fellow Tunnel Snakes had thought it'd be funny to rough up Amata a little before the G.O.A.T. Test.
Brittany, having been Amata's best friend almost literally since they'd been born, had taken it about as well as Liquid knew she would, and his sister had beat the shit out of all of them.
"You'd think after all these years that they'd know better. Oh, well." Liquid mused to himself.
Levering himself away from the wall he had been leaning on, he sauntered over to Wally.
"Hey, Wally." he said in way of a greeting.
"Hey, Cox." grunted Wally in return.
Liquid made a small show in studying Wally's face in the mirror. "Man, Brittany got you good, didn't she?"
"Fuck off, Cox." Wally growled.
Liquid nodded. "So, I take it by your response that you're not going to pay up on that bet?" he asked.
"After what your sister did to me? You can go piss up a rope, Cox." Wally said as he leaned in to get a closer look at his nose.
Liquid nodded as he surreptitiously slipped a pill bottle out of his pocket. "You sure you want to do it this way?" he asked as he swapped the pill bottle with the one sitting on the edge of the sink.
Wally turned away from the mirror to give Liquid a contemptuous look. "What are you going to do about it? Tell Security about it?" he asked rhetorically. "The Overseer hates your guts, Cox. And my brother's a guard.
Liquid merely shrugged. "Okay then." he said.
Smirking in amusement, Wally snatched the pill bottle off the sink, popped the lid off, and shook out a couple of pills. Popping them into his mouth, he washed them down with some water from the sink. He straightened up, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and was checking his face out again when he tottered unsteadily on his feet before crumpling to floor.
Liquid sighed and regarded the sprawled form of Wally Mack lying on the bathroom floor in front of him.
"I swear, Wally, I don't know you manage to dress yourself without help." Liquid told him.
Reaching down, he grabbed Wally by the arms and started dragging him towards the door. "I think, Wally, that's time you were taught a lesson on why you don't welch on bets with me." he said to the unconscious Mack.
Oo000ooo000oO
"-and so then Sally tells me that she has no idea of where those forms went, when me and everybody else in the section know the reason why they're not done is because she's been making out with Dave every chance she gets-" ranted Amata in between bites of her burger.
"Mmm-hmm." Brittany said, wishing that it was her and Amata making out right then, their tongues exploring twisting around each other...
"-and to top it all off, I also need Phyllis to sign off on the report, but Desmond dropped a clipboard and spooked her, and God knows when she'll come out of hiding." continued Amata.
Brittany mentally shook herself and gave herself a mental reminder to fantasize about the impossible later as Amata sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration.
"Honestly, I don't know how I'm supposed to get anything done with conditions like these. Though I will say this: At least your brother gets his paperwork done and submitted on time." she said.
"That's because there's an angle for him to work, Amata. This is Liquid we're talking about here." Brittany reminded her, referring to her brother's penchant for running schemes, scams, and other assorted perfidy.
Amata nodded knowingly. "I know, I know." she said. "Though Phyllis at gets her work done on time and the paperwork submitted, though no one actually sees her do it."
Now it was Brittany's turn to nod knowingly. Phyllis- a girl the same age as her and Amata- was a diminutive brunette girl with glasses and who was extremely skittish and timid. She had been paired up with her a couple of times on class projects, and while she was very intelligent, her tendency to bolt at the slightest disturbance would have made getting their assignments done quite difficult if Phyllis also didn't have the ability to pass by completely unnoticed.
"I've been trying to figure out how she does it for years." Brittany said.
"And as for Wally-" Amata continued.
Brittany cringed at the mention of Wally.
"Can we not talk about him? Please?" Brittany asked.
Amata stopped and gave her a sympathetic look.
"Liquid raid your panty drawer again?" she asked.
"Yes.". Brittany answered, still cringing at the thought of Wally and his obsession with her, which her brother was all to happy to indulge by selling him her underwear.
"I'm sorry." Amata said, gently patting Brittany on the arm.
"Thanks. I hate to think how many pairs of my underwear he's sold-" Brittany started to say before she was interrupted by the PA system activating.
"People of the Vault! This is your Overseer!"
Brittany rolled her eyes and took a swig from her Nuka-Cola. While Amata's father was the Overseer and Brittany recognized his authority, she generally had no use for anything he might say- a sentiment that her and Amata shared with Liquid.
"In an effort to be a better and more effective leader, I have been talking with our Vault's therapist, Ms DeLoria. She has advised me to get some things off my chest, so that I may better concentrate on my duties as your Overseer."
Amata looked very surprised to have heard her father say that, while Brittany was mentally running what he said through her mind to make sure that she had heard him correctly.
"So, to begin: I enjoy fellatiating other men. I was beat up regularly when I was an adolescent, and I found the experience arousing. Every Wednesday evening, Security Officer Mack and myself, along with a few other men in the Vault, gather together for a circle jerk."
Amata's mouth worked up and down as her brain tried to form words and her eyes went as wide as dinner plates while Brittany's fingers went slack, her soda bottle slipping out of her hand to shatter of the floor of the diner.
"That's... that's not my dad..." Amata said when she was able to get her brain working.
A horrified look came across Brittany's face. "Liquid's gonna die..." she said, her brother being the first person to come to mind when she thought of who could do something like this.
Oo000ooo000oO
In the Overseer's office, Chief Hannen stared at the ceiling speaker in shock while Almodovar worked furiously at his terminal.
"How did they find out about the circle jerk, Sir?" he asked, voice shaking.
"Quiet! I'm trying to trace where this is coming from!" snapped Almodovar.
Hannen held his tongue and waited as Almodovar entered commands into his terminal. He hit "enter" and waited, drumming his fingers impatiently on his desktop as the mockery of him continued to play over the PA system.
His terminal beeped and he leaned forwards slightly as he read the results on his screen.
"Found him!" the Overseer crowed. "Hannen! Who's your fastest man?"
"Mack, sir!"
"It's coming from level fifteen, junction room "A"! Send him down there!" ordered Almodovar.
"Yes, sir!"
Oo000ooo000oO
"Another indulgence of mine is figuring out what absurd things I can make you do or say just for my own amusement. I usually do this whenever I tire of choking myself in the shower."
Amata had gone white. Brittany would have been worried that she was going to pass out if she hadn't been staring at the speaker in shock.
"I, for a brief period when I was a young man, considered becoming a dance instructor rather than taking the management track, but reconsidered-"
"Oh man, do you hear that? That's messed up." Liquid said, pointing at the speaker as he came into the Diner.
It took Brittany a moment to process that her brother was actually standing in front of her.
"Liquid! What the hell did you do?" she demanded.
"Nothing!" Liquid protested. "I just walked in! How could I have anything to do with this?"
Brittany narrowed her eyes as she stared daggers at her brother.
"It's true! You saw me walk in!" Liquid protested.
Brittany didn't buy her brother's protestations for a moment. "You're involved in this. I know you are. I just cant prove it." she said, her tone accusatory.
Liquid looked offended. "Brittany, where's the trust?" he asked.
Brittany held up her fist. "Liquid, do you want punched?"
"I haven't done anything!" he protested, inadvertently pulling Amata's attention away from the speaker.
"If you're not the one behind this, then who is?" she asked.
Liquid shrugged. "I don't know, but whoever they are, they are gonna be in a lot of trouble when Security finds them..."
Oo000ooo000oO
"On a personal level, when my wife died I was devastated, not just because she was gone, but also because then I could no longer have someone denigrate and abuse me like the lowlife piece of dirt that I am.
My mother was the person who first told me that, and my late wife was ecstatic when I reveled this secret to her.
I hope that my revealing these secrets helps strengthen my relationship with all the residents of the Vault, and I thank you for your time. You may go back to what you were doing.
Good day."
Wally came to as the holotape recorder lying next to him on the floor ran out of tape and clicked over. He blinked a couple of times and looked around, not sure where the hell he was. It looked like he was in a closet of some kind, there was a holotape recorder hooked up to wires coming out of an access panel in the wall, and the last thing he remembered was being in the restroom, talking with Liquid-
Wally grimaced as he realized that Liquid had knocked him out and put him in there, probably because he wouldn't pay up on that bet he owed him. Though why Liquid would knock him out and stick him in an empty closet was beyond him, though knowing Liquid this was part of some scheme of his, so Wally figured the best thing to do was get the hell out of there before whatever it was Cox had cooked up ensnared him.
He was shakily getting to his feet when he heard footsteps pounding outside, then the door was activated, sliding open to reveal his brother and two other Security officers behind him. For a moment, Stevie looked shocked to see him, then the shock was replaced by near-incandescent fury.
"WALLY!" Stevie roared. "YOU LITTLE BASTARD!"
"W-what I do?" asked Wally, wondering what had pissed his brother off.
"COME HERE! I'M GONNA BEAT YOUR ASS!" Stevie roared as he lunged for his brother.
"N, wait-!" was all Wally could say before his brother began beating the piss out of him.
Oo000ooo000oO
Liquid, Brittany, and Amata stared at the speaker in shock as the sounds of Wally Mack getting viciously beaten spilled out of the ceiling speaker before abruptly cutting out with an electronic snap.
In the stunned silence that followed, Liquid was the first one to speak.
"Wow. I would not want to be in Wally's shoes right now." he said.
Brittany looked over at her brother with a suspicious look on her face.
"Liquid, what did Wally do to make you frame him for this?" she asked, her voice dangerously even, like a bottle of nitroglycerin perched on the edge of a rickety table.
"I have no idea what you're talking about, sis." Liquid responded, his tone and demeanor that of someone who was shocked that they were accused of such a thing.
Brittany, who knew her brother as only a sister could, didn't buy his act for a second.
"Bullshit. He's your best customer. You've been selling him my underwear for years. Now, what did he do?" she demanded.
"Brittany, there's a fine line between being suspicious and paranoia-" Liquid began to explain as Brittany started to crack her knuckles. "-and I just realized that I have somewhere to be talktoyoulaterbye!"
Brittany jumped out of her seat as her brother turned tail and beat feet out of the Diner, but she didn't pursue him. Amata watched him go and sighed as the door slid closed.
"You think he's behind this?" she asked Brittany.
"What do you think?" Brittany asked in response.
Amata pinched the bridge of her nose. "I think that you're right, and that there's no way in hell you can prove it." she answered.
"Exactly." Brittany said. "And on that note, I'm getting another Nuka-Cola."
Oo000ooo000oO
In addition to the split lip and swollen nose he'd gotten from Brittany, Wally was now sporting a limp, some nasty looking bruises and swelling on the right side of his face, a rather nice goose egg on the back of his head, and a spectacular black eye.
He was also scrubbing down the Overseer's personal bathroom twice a day, before school and after his work assignment, by hand, for the next eight months as punishment for his "prank".
"So, Wally, what have you learned?" Liquid asked cheerfully.
Wally jerked his head up and glared murderously at Liquid where he was nonchalantly leaning up against the wall.
"Fuck. You. Cox." Wally spat out.
"Now, don't be that way, Wally." Liquid said condescendingly as he levered himself away from the wall.
Wally pointed to his now badly bruised face. "This, for thirty credits?" he asked.
Liquid spread his hands in a "don't blame me" gesture. "Hey, I gave you plenty of chances to pay up." he pointed out. "Don't go blaming me for what happened after that."
Wally's glare was positively seething. "I hate you, you know that?" he asked.
Liquid merely smiled and crossed his arms. "And speaking of those thirty credits, you got 'em?" he asked.
Wally gave him an incredulous look- well, as incredulous as he could manage with his much abused face.
"Really?" he asked.
Liquid's smile turned into a cheeky grin. "That was the injury. This is the insult." he answered.
"I hate you so fucking much right now." Wally growled at him.
Liquid's grin got bigger. "Yeah, but where else are you gonna get my sister's unmentionables?"
Wally gave an irritated groan. "I'll pay, I'll pay..." he said, admitting defeat.
Liquid crossed his arms and beamed. "I'm glad we were able to clear this up." he said.
"Asshole."
Oo000ooo000oO
End.