CHAPTER 13: MUTATION OF RAGE.

"Rage only works if it is justified. That's the trick with rage. You gotta have a reason to be mad." -Sam Kinison.

The six wanderers were captured. The Overlord and the Super Mutants forced the group down the halls of the old mayor office, each one of them had their arms tied behind their backs with a Super Mutant holding them, Cavall had a crude muzzle over his face and a thick rope tied around his neck. Their situation was bad, probably the worse they've been in so far, the strange Super Mutant was also being dragged harshly by two of its brethren.

"Where are you taking us?" Louis asked to break the silence.

"Shut up, Human! Or I crush your head!" the Overlord shouted.

"Just let them go! I'm the one that betrayed you!" the strange Super Mutant spoke.

The Overlord turned and punched the Super Mutant in the gut. "Quiet! I deal with you later!" it shouted before looking to the Wanderers. "And you all, you're too much trouble! All of you will die here!"

"First you say you're gonna kill us, then say you're gonna turn us into Super Mutants, and now you're gonna kill us again! Make up your mind!" Doug frowned at the Overlord.

The Overlord looked to him. "I have made up my mind! You all will die, but your blood hair friend will become one of us."

"Like I said before, not a chance! I'll die with my friends!" Victoria spat at it.

The Overlord grinned at her. "I'm not giving you a choice. Now let's go! They are waiting to eat..."

"I really don't like the sound of that..." Joe gulped in terror.

"No shit." Chloe looked to him.

The group was soon herded into a large room with the second floor above ripped open. At the center of the room was a pit that was actually the basement below, and in the pit was four Centaurs. The failed Super Mutant attempts crawled around on the dirty floor below, their gurgling and other disgusting noises made the group cringe in disgust.

"This the Centaur pit! This is were we throw our troublemakers!" the Overlord announced as if it was talking to a crowd. "And we haven't fed them in a few days! So you all will make good meals!" it said before grabbing Victoria and pulled her over. "And you will watch! Watch as they all die!"

"Rot in hell you monster! We won't let you get away with this!" Victoria struggled against its hold.

The Overlord squeezed her arm tighter. "You will become one of us! And you will watch your friends die!" it shouted and looked to the group. "Now throw them in! We'll eat their dog later!"

The Super Mutants holding the wanderers untied their ropes and pushed them into the pit. They managed to land on their feet safely, but the Centaurs in the pit were quick to notice them and started crawling after them.

"Spread out! Find anything that could be used as a weapon!" Louis shouted while grabbing a piece of concrete on the floor.

The rest followed his instructions, each of them looking for anything that could be a weapon. The Super Mutants above laughed at their struggle, the yellowish green beasts always enjoyed watching the Centaurs tear their victims apart. Some of the Super Mutants forced Cavall into a large cage. The hybrid tried to get out, but the cage was too sturdy and confined for him.

The strange Super Mutant tried to pull away from the ones holding it. The Overlord shoved Victoria into the grip of another Super Mutant and marched over to the strange forger and grabbed the top of its head. "You remember this, human lover! Watch your Human friends die! They die because of you! You should have just kept pounding hot metal! You're weak! You have always been weak! The future belongs to Super Mutants! And we don't want any weaklings in it! Humans are inferior!"

The captive Super Mutant looked up to its Overlord and frowned. "Have you forgotten?! We were all humans once! Everyone of us! We are mistakes of nature! Just byproducts of an experiment from before the war!"

The Overlord screamed and punched it right in the face, blood started to drip from above its brow. "Silence! We are no longer weaklings! We are Super Mutants! Nothing is stronger than any of us!" it started pounding the Super Mutant all over, each heavy blow inflicting painful cuts and bruises.

Victoria screamed for the Overlord to stop, but the Super Mutants just laughed as they watched their leader beat the defenseless Super Mutant. The Overlord finally had its fill and stopped, the forger hung its head limp with more blood dripping from many cuts. The Overlord scoffed in satisfaction and walked back to where Victoria was. In the Centaur pit, Louis kept tossing chunks of concrete at the Centaur that was coming after him while Joe found an old pipe and bash as best he could at the Centaur attacking him. Doug ripped off a piece of rebar in the wall while Chloe just used her fists, hoping her metal bones could do some damage.

The strange Super Mutant's head and upper body cried with pain, everything in the room spun around before its vision started to go black. And that's when it all came back, something that the Super Mutant hadn't remembered in a long time. Its earliest memories was pain, horrible pain like electricity tearing across its body. It remembered being in a cylinder chamber filled with FEV and covered in medical electrodes. It remembered more agonizing pain, a strange and unfamiliar facility that seemed to be from before the war. It remembered countless of painful tests and several people in white lab coats, and one man that was always looking at it. All that memory and pain reminded it of the one constant thing the Super Mutant felt during those countless and hazy days, absolute rage.

The Super Mutant woke back up, its dark green eyes slowly lit up into a faint glow of green. Its fists clenched tightly and its already powerful muscles seemed to almost double in size. It then threw its head back and let out a rage filled scream that seemed to make the walls shake and everyone in the room go silent. Before either of the Super Mutants holding the odd one could do anything, it pulled out of their grips and punched the one on the left, crushing its face in. The enraged Super Mutant then turned and grabbed the neck of the other and crushed it with ease. All the Super Mutants stepped back in terror as it yelled again, but this time something even stranger happened. All the veins of the Super Mutant's body started to glow green like radiation, it was bright like a Glowing One and it only seemed to increase its strength.

Louis heard his Pip-Boy ticking and looked at the radiation meter. "What the fuck?..." he said in surprise before the Centaur wrapped its three tongues around his arm. "Oh, shit! I forgot about this freak!" he started whacking it with the piece of concrete he held. But it barely seemed bothered by the attack.

The glowing Super Mutant charged, it pummeled every other Super Mutant that tried to stop it with such terrifying force. The glowing brawler broke bones like they were twigs, tore through flesh like paper, and smashed in faces like rotted pumpkins. It then grabbed the Super Mutant carrying everyone's weapons and snapped its neck before tossing it into the pit. The group saw the dead Super Mutant fall in and went for their weapons without hesitation.

Doug pulled out his sawed-off and turned to fire two shells at once into the head of the Centaur coming after him. Chloe grabbed her plasma rifle and unloaded into the monster before switching to the flamethrower attachment for extra measure. Joe cocked his combat shotgun and shot the Centaur that was chasing him to pieces. Louis still had his arm wrapped by the three tongues of the Centaur as it pulled him in closer. Doug cocked Louis' pump shotgun and tossed it to the Vault dweller, he caught it with his free hand and pointed the end of the barrel right at the Centaur's face and blew it clean off.

"Oh, god! It's all gross and slimy! I think I'm gonna puke!" Louis cried out and leaned forward to dry heave in disgust.

"What the hell is with that Super Mutant?" Doug asked as they watched the bright Super Mutant beat its kind to death. "I've never heard of a Super Mutant that can glow!"

"That's because there is no such thing! I've been around for over two hundred years and never heard of one!" Joe said, thinking he had seen it all.

"I don't care what's going on as long as we can survive. And speaking of surviving, we have another problem!" Chloe pointed to the dark corner of the room.

From that dark corner, another Centaur came crawling out, and it was almost twice as big and had two heads. The abomination spat two globs of acid at them, they managed to dodge the acid saliva. The saliva hit the ground and started to burn right through the concrete.

"Okay, new problem! Avoid the acid spit!" Louis yelped in fear before pumping a few shells at the two headed Centaur.

Four Super Mutants leaped onto the rage filled Super Mutant to wrestle it to the ground, but it simply threw them off and grabbed one by the sides of its head. The Super Mutant screamed while crushing its captive's head with ease. The last mutant hound charged and leaped at it, but the Super Mutant was quick and grabbed the hound and killed it by snapping its jaw open and tossed it aside. The Brute tried to stop the glowing brawler, but it was easily struck aside and fell over into the pit. The Brute hit the floor hard and slowly staggered back up. But as it stood, Louis pointed his Desert Eagle at its head.

"Allow me to finish the job..." Louis grinned widely to finish the job of making both its eyes match.

As soon as the Brute started to turn, the Vault dweller unloaded more than half the clip into its head. Chunks of blood and brains flew as the one eyed Brute's body collapsed to the ground. The group then focused on the two headed Centaur, their bullets made quick work of it by shooting at it from all sides until it collapsed to the floor in a bloody mess.

The glowing Super Mutant was about to finish off the last of its kin, some tried shooting at it, but the bullets barely dug in and each wound only seemed to heal up. The Overlord shoved Victoria to the floor and picked up its precious sledgehammer from the floor nearby. The rampaging Super Mutant slammed the last of its brethren into the wall and crushed the back of its skull with ease before turning to its Overlord just as it came charging in with its sledgehammer. The glowing Super Mutant dodged in time, the blow from the Overlord almost smashed the wall in. The Overlord turned and started taking wild and erratic swings at the strange Super Mutant.

Louis, Doug, Joe, and Chloe managed to climb out of the pit by hoisting each other up then pulling the other two out. Louis quickly dashed to the cage and broke Cavall out and took off the muzzle. The giant dog barked happily and leaped up to lick his face. The Vault dweller petted the heavy dog in return and eased him down to go over and help Victoria up and untie her tight ropes.

"This day has been nothing but hell..." Victoria said as she rubbed her wrists to relieve the pain.

"Then consider our glowing Super Mutant friend a gift from above." Louis said as they watched the bloodbath. "And we should stay back as far as we can. That one is giving off a lot of radiation right now."

"I'm good where I am..." Joe spoke while lighting a cigarette.

The Overlord swung again, but the glowing Super Mutant blocked with its arm and managed to pull the sledgehammer away and toss it aside. After that, the two started brawling, fists flying and landing hard, the glowing Super Mutant's strength was increased immensely, but the Overlord types were the second strongest compared to Behemoths. The Overlord grabbed the glowing Super Mutant by the throat and shoved it into the wall, making it cave in a little before throwing its fist into its face. The glowing Super Mutant blocked the next punch and shoved the Overlord away and landed a few hits to its chest and head. The two were then in a deadlock, their fingers crossed together and side by side from their heads.

"You kill your kind! You kill them for Humans! I only one that let you join us! You're nothing without us! You barely a Super Mutant! A glowing coward!" The Overlord shouted as its grip got tighter, the hatred in their faces burning deeply.

The glowing Super Mutant's eye's went brighter from anger, its grip on the Overlord's hands tightened to the point where it broke the knuckles between each finger. The Overlord cried out in pain from its hands being crushed as the glowing brawler tackled the Overlord to the floor.

"I'm better off without you!" the Super Mutant screamed and punched the Overlord in the face. "I'm not a coward just because I don't want to be like the rest of you!" it pound the Overlord in the face again, stunning it. "I won't be pushed around by you anymore! And you will never hurt another person again!" it started pounding away even harder.

The glowing Super Mutant pummeled the Overlord's head in, each blow crushing it more and more. The Overlord twitched from each hit until finally going limp, but the Super Mutant just kept punching until it was pounding the floor that was covered in chunks of flesh, brains, and blood. The Super Mutant raised both its fists in the air and brought them down on what was left of Overlord's head and chest with a powerfully loud slam. The Super Mutant turned its head up and screamed to the air, its rage slowly fading and its glowing veins started to dim like the sun going down, its body covered in sprays of blood.

Victoria wanted to go over to the Super Mutant, but Louis stopped her because his Pip-Boy was still displaying dangerous levels of radiation, and they felt the Super Mutant need its space. The Super Mutant then stood up and took deep and heavy breaths, the glowing veins finally returned to normal and the radiation readings were finally gone.

The room was like something out of a horror movie. The floors and walls were covered in blood and gore, the blood seeped deeply into the floor and even slowly dripped into the pit at the center. Every Super Mutant that still had its face were contorted in terror from the bloody rampage from one of their own. Deep down, despite being so different from the rest, the surviving Super Mutant couldn't help but feel a little regretful of its fatal actions.

"Are you people okay?" the Super Mutant finally asked the group after a few long minutes.

"We...we're fine. Thanks to you..." Victoria answered while walking towards it.

Joe pulled out a crooked cigarette and lit it up. "Well, we were thrown into a pit filled with monsters. But yeah, we're okay..." he muttered to himself and took a long inhale.

"I just can't believe you were able to kill all the others by yourself. How did you even make yourself glow like that?" Doug asked next, the smell of blood hitting his nose hard.

"And give off dangerous levels of radiation!" Louis waved his Pip-Boy a little and pointed at the screen. "I've heard of abnormal Super Mutants, but this is completely new! Are there any others like you?"

The Super Mutant looked down at its blood covered fists. The memories of the strange facility were still blurry in its mind. "It was...more than thirty years ago if I've counted the days right. Almost everyone knows how Super Mutants are made, but me, I wasn't made with other Super Mutants. I remember...a strange lab in a facility. Maybe from before the war. The first thing I remember was pain. Like my body being ripped to pieces and electrocuted. I also remember a chamber with gas, most likely FEV. I even recall humans in lab coats, running all kinds of tests on me. The tests felt like they lasted for eons until one day I managed to break free. I ran and ran until I was outside for the first time and saw the sunlight. I wandered the Wasteland for a few years. I was like an infant, I didn't know how to talk well, I didn't know how to fight, and I didn't understand why humans shot at me or ran whenever they saw me. And then I was soon found by that Overlord and brought in."

"You seem well spoken now. Which is rare for a Super Mutant." Chloe commented about its refined speech.

"After awhile when I was found, the first place we lived was an old library. I found an old terminal computer filled with learning videos and even holotapes with different categories. I learned how to read and talk, even basic math and some videos on how to write and count." the Super Mutant smiled a little before frowning. "Then one day they found it while I wasn't around and used it as target practice..."

"The Overlord said you pounded hot metal? What's that about?" Doug decided to ask next.

"Some years back, the Overlord and some of the others attacked a settlement and brought back a man that was a blacksmith as he said. The Overlord made him fix and make weapons, and I was assigned to guard him. And during those two years he was kept, he taught me a lot about metalwork. I grew to like forging metal and learned as much as I could. The Overlord decided he outlived his use and was going to kill him, but I managed to help him escape before anyone found out. I managed to convince the Overlord to let me take over the metalwork so they wouldn't go after him." the Super Mutant informed.

"So you're a good Super Mutant, and you're a blacksmith. What a crazy world filled with endless events..." Joe chuckled.

"Since that day, I tried to help as many Humans as I could. Like scaring off those that accidently wandered into our area or those that were captured." the Super Mutant then sighed. "But I couldn't save everyone, some were killed on the spot or killed while captured. It was always horrible."

"But you still tried to help others. That's what matters." Victoria said to him. "Have you ever done that before with the glowing?"

"About a year after I was taken in by the Overlord, a small pack of five Deathclaws attacked us during a small hunting trip. I was gashed across the chest by one." the Super Mutant lifted its chest armor at the pecs and showed a faded claw mark scar. "That's when I had the glow from anger. It was all a blur, and when I calmed down, the Deathclaws were ripped to pieces. And the Overlord saw everything and told me about it. I guess that's why the Overlord always kept me from most fights and raids. It must have figured I would try to take over."

"I bet the Overlord did." Louis nodded in agreement. "How interesting. People experimenting on Super Mutants. The Wasteland is full of surprises." he pondered to himself for a moment. "But what will you do now?"

The Super Mutant looked to the floor. "I don't know. I'm not like other Super Mutants, and I can't live with Humans either. I guess I don't belong anywhere."

Victoria frowned a little and made up her mind to ask them. "Guys...I know it sounds crazy, but maybe...we should let this Super Mutant come with us."

Everyone looked to her in surprise. "Victoria...that's a bit of a risk..." Doug said to her.

"I know it is. But we can't just leave the guy alone. I think it deserves to come with us on our journey." Victoria firmly stood by her suggestion to have the Super Mutant come along.

Louis thought it over for a moment and sighed. "Alright, we'll make it work somehow." he walked up to the Super Mutant and looked it in the face. "But first, if you're coming with us, we need to stop calling you an 'it'. Identifying as an 'it' all the time can be a tad hard and annoying. Would you like to go by a 'he'...or a 'she'?"

"Please, not the second one..." Joe said to himself.

The Super Mutant thought it over. "I do believe I was a man before becoming a Super Mutant. It just feels right, more or less. So I guess I can identify as that if you want."

"Good! And I guess you don't have a name, I didn't hear any of you call each other by name." Louis said next.

"No. All Super Mutants never really have names." the Super Mutant frowned sadly.

"In that case, I might have some ideas." Louis gave a deep smile. "I used to read a lot of books on mythology back in my Vault. And I once read a book on Norse mythology about a person known as Wayland the Smith. And since you like to forge with metal, I can't think of a more appropriate name for you. So what do you think? Does Wayland sound okay to you?"

The Super Mutant thought it over before slowly pronouncing the word. "Way...land? Wayland? Wayland! I like it!" he cheered and scooped the Vault dweller in a powerful hug.

Cavall barked excitingly and ran in a circle.

"Okay, he's a hugger!" Louis chuckled with a wheeze. "And you're still covered in blood. And brains. And gore..."

The Super Mutant now named as Wayland put him down. "Sorry about that..."

"So now that Wayland has a name. The next thing to get him is some weapons. But I don't think that settlement is in the mood to sell any weapons..." Doug spoke to them.

"And it's getting late. We shouldn't go back at this time." Chloe pointed out.

"Not to worry. The Overlord kept the best weapons in the back of the armory. It was the Overlord's personal stash." Wayland said and looked to Victoria. "Your weapons should be inside too."

"Good, I miss my bow." Victoria couldn't wait to regain her stuff.

The group of seven went to the south end of the building and took a detour to the old bathroom so Wayland could clean off his bloody body. After that they came up to a metal door that was installed into the room that was once a conference room. They broke the lock of the metal door off and went in. The room was filled with many weapons, both from what the Super Mutants salvaged and unfortunately stole from their victims. Victoria easily found her lost weapons and gathered them up. The rest started to look around the place with gusto, gathering as many of the ammo they needed, along with the guns so they could sell them for caps.

At the far end of the room was a built in chainlink fence with metal supports to hold it in place. Wayland opened the cage up and found what he was looking for as Louis walked up to look inside with curiosity.

"Holy crap. Is that what I think it is?..." the Vault dweller smiled.

"Yes, the Overlord's personal weapons." Wayland picked it up and pulled it out.

Wayland held in his hands a CZ57 Avenger minigun. Six spinning barrels of deadly red hot lead. Connected to the minigun was a feed belt and hydraulic support arm that connected to the ammo box holding thousands of rounds. There was a quad-barrel missile launcher with lock on scope. The final weapon was a sledgehammer that had a spear like tip on top of the head.

The Super Mutant smiled and picked the minigun up and charged it, the barrel rapidly spun to life. It was very tempting to pull the trigger that would allow the gun to fire its thousands of rounds per minute.

"Man...now I'm jealous..." Chloe moaned with a sour face.

"With that firepower, our enemies will think twice before attacking us." Louis came over to look at the weapon. "But I think it needs some tweaking. The barrel kinda made a clattering noise when it spun."

"And I found some canned food over here too!" Doug held them up. "I'll get a fire going."

"Just don't burn the building down!" Joe called to him.

"Go fuck yourself!" Doug called back.

"You sure have an unusual group of friends..." Wayland said to Louis and Victoria.

The Vault dweller just laughed. "You have no idea. So I think you'll fit in well with us."

"He's right. These people have surprised me a lot in the last few weeks since I was freed." Victoria nodded.

Wayland placed the minigun on a nearby table to tinker with it. "Sounds like I won't be bored. But why are you people traveling anyway? Where are you going?"

"That, my friend, is a bit of a long story." Louis answered him and raised his Pip-Boy to explain.