CHAPTER 12
That's When I Came in.
She remembered a bit, a wee-bit, about when there was a multilingual training session that was run into the knowledge feed that was implanted into the side of her temple.
She remembered a bit, because there were people around her- humans, humans and robots designed to work the equipment used to monitor and study and craft her, and more robots to use the medical gear in case of disruption or emergency.
At all times there were three armed individuals- at all times, no exceptions. Sometimes the identities changed with the guards, and she only knew that because the communications chatter that buzzed inside their big armored suits, would be responded to by different voices.
Two of them had guns- energy weapons that were the source of the green scythes that would become her bane in later life, and one had a fire weapon, an incinerator- the thing could burn a welt through a steel wall.
The guy with the flamethrower was the only one of the three guards on station that never was transitioned out for other duties- again, she only knew this because it was the same voice talking beneath the helmet all the time.
"Superintendent of Arms, Laslar Sedunn." He reported to a group of workers. "I'm here to keep your hound under control. Again."
Laslar Sedunn was at first, a recluse of a man that never spoke outside the low banter in his helm's radio uplink- and never moved his eyes from the chest area of the Deathclaw's restraint harness as the scientists continued to 'Grow' her.
The multilingual session- the data itself, she recalled with agitation, was interrupted when Laslar reached over and manually shut it off, causing a reverberation of cerebral backlash to wiggle down her spinal chord and neck base.
The scientists in the room- the bright minds, the smarter ones that were doing all the work -became loud and angered.
"-That'll kill it, Enclave man!" A woman hissed. "You want a weapon or dead meat?"
"I prefer tongues of those whose words annoy me. Shut your mouth. Work without the cultural infusion."
"It'll be mindless." A man said naively.
"What else but perfect?" Laslar sneered beneath his snarling helmet. "My employers are growing displeased with the amount of time you're sucking up with these unneeded attributes."
"We're following the blue-print set by the White House Admini-" The man never finished his sentence.
"WE, are the White House now, doctor. Do as I say."
"-Y-Yes, sir..."
"The Type-III headsets were not our solution. THIS is. Give it to us, and we give you your lives back, it's plain and simple."
"The Type-III headsets were not meant for the subjects."
"The Type-III- Does. Not. WORK." Laslar chimed. "Do you think I tolerate even one mistake within my battalion? I've been generous to you people- and you've been biting the hand for too long."
"We're not even up to date with 'Official' teams of the Enclave to even HOPE with competing to their results!"
"Double the reason for you work twice as fast."
"You're insane."
"I am. The world isn't going to kneel on its own. That's MY job to do that for it. Make it happen you twit."
-The berating that Superintendent Laslar Sedunn harried the scientific team forging her with, always stood as a dominant reminder of her past, her origin, her reason for even being alive.
It carried on with her years after she escaped, and the scientists were all dead by Laslar's hand.
It carried on to effect her interactions with those she cared about in her pack.
I may not be as smart as you, but that does not make me a mere 'thing' to brush away.
Then why not enact the effort for me?
You are temperamental… I do not believe you are sincere with what you say.
"Sincerity has NOTHING to do with it. Leave me ALONE."
-Right on the dot, those were the last words she exchanged with him before the gunfire erupted, before the rotary blades of armored flying beasts shredded the air, and the iron boots of a hundred trained and armed humans stormed the land.
Right on the dot, the same organization to oversee her creation and subjugation, had returned for her. And up until recently, she hadn't even known it.
Some of her kind were apprehended right away, restrained by magnetic tethers and plasma-cuffs at their ankles and wrists- on the spot. Enclave soldiers simply walked over, pulled out small cases filled with medical equipment- and drilled metal collars into their necks, and thin, antenna-laden head pieces into their temples and over their eyes.
Any warriors that resisted were shredded by scything beams of crimson or green. Autocannons and miniguns erupted from the gunships overhead and ended the members of the pack that could not be wrestled to the dirt- dead or alive –by the ground teams.
A missile trailed across the gray sky in the form of a miniature comet- sailing over the chaos and murder- it flew into the ragged maw of stone entry that marked the upper chambers of their interior home, and sent a whirlwind of flame out of every hole and orifice of rock when it vanished inside.
Sprinting for her life- she was shot several times –rounds entering her thigh, hip, and right shoulder, a beam of energy cauterized a patch of scales near her center back.
Wounded, confused, disoriented- she had started sprinting when it turned her past had found her in a place of sanctuary, revealed now as a place of false hopes and comforts. Without breath and in pain- she slumped over miles away, her gifted speed- even for that of her own species –having carried her far enough to avoid further pursuit.
Gunshots rang for another hour in uneven bouts as the Enclave scoured the entire area, Vertibird aircraft zoomed back and forth a few times- some landed, some took off with great metal containers mag-locked to their bellies, containing the mind-wiped survivors of the pack.
Raw grief ate into her system- alongside pure anger, and lack of knowledge to why and how the Enclave had found her.
She was so enraged, so passionately engulfed in a instantaneous hatred for the Enclave military, that she did not even regard the death of those bodies that had meant the most to her, until hours had passed of her heaving away hidden behind a crag of boulders.
The flashing image of the male she had never learned of in title or name- if he even had one -becoming obliterated by hundreds of tiny metal slugs that slowly chewed him away in horrible red wrenches from his physical form, filled her mind.
Curling up in a ball- it was the most pathetic display of torture she had ever presented for least of all herself, EVER. Compressing her knees to the scales of her torso- her yellow eyes become highlighted with moisture, she grabbed a rock off the ground and stuck in her mouth.
Clamping down as hard as she could with her razor-sharp fangs, she made high-pitched sobs, clenching her eyes shut.
It seemed like hours more- and having her mutated bodily structure figure -the rock cracked into a million pieces before her teeth did, and she was honestly hoping for the latter rather than the prior.
Inside her deepest shadowed thoughts- she wished the Enclave had just seen her and shot her.
She didn't like who she was, WHAT she was, and why she was living at all.
Her young life was filled with nothing but terrifying uncertainty about practically every damn thing she came across or got involved in... Violence, seething rage, sorrow, and a rampaging storm of negativity that shockingly failed to consume her every day.
Needless to say- the hours spent in the real world -understand, OUTSIDE her fantasies of dreams or dead hopes of simply being her to live her life for the simple sake of living it- the hours spent here were not pleasant.
She had grown conniving, detesting of every breathing and non-breathing thing around her- she felt cheated by creation itself.
Why should she be so miserable? What had she done to warrant it? She had done NOTHING, there was no right or reasonable explanation of WHY she was in such complete, and utter HELL.
No reason at all.
None.
"I hope we get here soon, Ms. Deathclaw," Sanford muttered behind her. "I have to check on my hideout.."
"The Fortress! The impenetrable Fortress!" Hancock clarified. "-Laughing-Boy here took an old gas station and turned it into Fort Knox!"
"Or something like that, Han'..."
"Indeed! Perhaps it's more a Alcatraz on land sort of thing... Or... Maybe it's the house of every drug-trafficking politician who existed before the War!"
"Maybe."
"MAYBE, he says... BAH!"
Glaring with a dissecting need to find something, anything, to change the subject and avoid a ranting spree- the Deathclaw narrowed her eyes with a grimacing grumble, examining the horizon of the coastline.
She thought that the big roofed structure- the one with its rear partially tumbled into the sea -was the mill plant she was searching for, and she could discern it from the distance its mottled, chipped wooden blue structure and brown shingled roof.
A big stone chimney was half crumbled on the opposite sided face of the structure- a pair of skimmers were beached on the sands directly adjacent to the building's flank, their hulls breached and cabins flooded with tan water.
Spiraling series of mud lanes cut through a few ruins and deserted vehicles- across a mile or more of terrain, roughly -to the entrance of that plant.
Seeing that made her exhale a hiss of wind from between her fangs in sarcastic exasperation.
This was insane. Caught with the town boobs, AND running around in the slog-pits of the Commonwealth.
Fan-frikkin'-tastic.
"I hate my life..." She mumbled.
"What was that?" Sanford asked. "I didn't hear."
"Nothing."
"Ah."
"The structure I was talking about is there," She pointed. "The blue one."
Sanford nudged to the side to view around her flank- gauntlets holding her thumb and pointy respectively to lean forwards and examine past her arm in his way.
"Oh yeah."
"Fear not, monsieur', our nightmare is almost over."
"Nightmare? This is the most exciting stuff that's happened in months!"
"-But I thought it was WEEKS, sir!" Hancock mocked. "Nothing exciting in WEEKS. What?! 'You saying I'm boring?!"
"That was about a firefight..." Sanford sighed. "-And no, you're too much of a malfunctioning piece of shrapnel to be BORING."
"YeaHEAH!" Hancock laughed.
The Deathclaw yanked her wrist again- tugging Sanford out of his conversation with a brief stumble.
"-Ow! Not the elbow...OO!" He failed in clenching his impacted arm-joint through the metal plating of his armor with a wrapping gauntlet. "Stop doing that!"
"Company."
"What do you mean?"
"Company, you monkey. You have guns, use them."
"... Is this about that whole discussion beforehand-"
The Deathclaw's nostrils flared in agitation- she turned slightly over her trapped arm -reached up, and clasped the thimble-like mass of Sanford's helmet with two of her nailed fingers from the free claw.
Turning her fingers, she angled his head to face where she was facing ahead with a tiny creak of steel- and Sanford immediately reclined a bit inside the suit with a gasp.
"-WOAH! Shit!"
"AHHH-HAH! -VICTIMS!" Hancock chortled, zipping by the human's side with a thrust of ignition fire- green bolts of plasma flicked away from the barrel of his gun.
The creature was crawling on four chitinous legs that were angularly jointed- ended in blades that pin-prickled in insect like skittering as the thing traveled.
Big claws that were larger than Sanford's head were ajar at both sides and on the end of two armored, barnacle ridden arms draped with dark green tendrils of seaweed. A tiny head in comparison to the body sprouted up under the top chin of a rounded shell covering the creature's hunched back.
A pair of rounded bug-like red eyes, mandibles that extended down its oral orifice akin a pair of bladed doors- the mouth chittered and drooled acidic green bile, the shell making scrabbling noises whilst the hundreds of barnacles and ocean debris crusted to its girth shifted around.
It was a Mirelurk, and it obviously was too stupid- or hungry -to care about the imposing form of the Deathclaw or the guy in Power Armor.
"-Eat this, crab-sicle!"
CLAK CLAK
A pair of green blobs flew into its layered, chitin body- vanishing in puffs of tan soot and chips of exoskeleton.
The mutated crustacean flinched in its sprint for them, stumbled on one leg, and actually sped UP.
"Not working, Han'!" Sanford snapped, grabbing his SMG with one hand, and jabbing a finger into the Deathclaw's ribs with the other hand. "We need to back up!"
Snarling, the reptile turned around and poked his breastplate with her nail.
"Don't. TOUCH. Me."
"-Not the time! Back up!"
"I'm working on it!"
CLAK CLAK CLAK
CLAK CLAK
"-Would the Sunday night reality-show couple stop bickering and FALL BACK?!" Hancock cried. "We're gonna' get CRABBED! HOLY SHIT!"
CLAK CLAK CLAK
"-Alright, come with me!" Sanford heaved back, and started tugging against the Deathclaw's wrist, dragging her with him with a few stumble of confusion.
"What are you doing?" The Deathclaw snapped.
"You can't take on that thing in a fight!"
"I'M the one to judge who bests me!"
"Not today, sista'."
"What did you just say?!"
"Come-on, get-OUT-!" Sanford turned the torso of his armor in a quick swing- uncomfortably angling his legs and arms to keep them facing the Mirelurk, the Deathclaw was carried by the immense weight, and almost fell on her face as she tumbled out of his line of sight.
The Mirelurk was a few feet away- its carapace pocked with black soot marks from Hancock's gun.
"I've seen jungles in 'Nam take less punishment then this! MAYDAY!" Hancock screamed.
"You weren't IN 'Nam, you moron!"
CLKCLCKCLCKLCKLCKLCKLCK
-Together, man and Mr. Gutsy showered the crustacean with bullet and plasma- to the point, where right as the Deathclaw was standing back onto her feet, she felt a warm paste-like sensation spatter on one of her legs.
Watching the Mirelurk- she was granted the last vision of the creature whole as it broke apart in green offal from the barrage of fire. It's arms tore off, chitin cracked and innards squelched, the monster splattered face-first onto the ground a hole-ridden, gashed mess.
It twitched, and a faint squeaking noise sounded- the mutated crab lay still like a big green, brownish lump sticking out of the muddy earth, seeping ooze, one leg of the four still on its lower half, occasionally jerking.
"I knew I'm immune to the crabs! Take THAT, Healthcare Magazine!" Hancock proclaimed- he flew right up to the remains, unscrewed a sealing knob somewhere on his chassis -and started draining a thin stream of black liquid that trailed down the Mirelurk's shell in a miniature onyx river between barnacles and chitin lumps.
A thin waft from the scent of engine coolant tainted the air, and Sanford's jaw went slack at the same time his nose crinkled.
"-Damn it, Han'! That's disgusting!" Sanford said in horror- changing the drum of his SMG with awkwardness working over the Deathclaw's arm.
There was a loose metal creak as Hancock put a screw back in place, and reclined to finish closing a panel by one of his legs.
"DOMINANCE!" He swung his buzz-saw around.
"Neanderthal..."
"Don't speak Shakespear at me, sir!"
"Shakespear isn't a language, you trainwreck."
Pressing a knuckle into the ground to right herself- the Deathclaw had a twisted expression of perturbed distress on her face- in fact, it looked as for a second she was going to eat Sanford.
She went to provide for him strife again- to smack him around inside that stupid tin-can that prevented him from being dead for the last few hours -and almost keeled over when the human reached up and popped the helmet off with a hissing of steam.
Cradling the helmet under his arm, he dropped the SMG by his foot and 'Tsk'ed in annoyance.
At first, the man was frowning in the robot's direction as he flew around in circles on a tirade about the durable armor of some long forgotten piece of military equipment -and looked at the Deathclaw with a big, stupid grin.
"How are ya'?" He laughed. "I know, the helmet's an improvement, right?"
She hadn't even formulated a response, her jaws locked and expression set with grinding molars.
She didn't LIKE being told what to do.
Right as she worked up some horrible insult in ape-tongue, Sanford's eyes bugged- for the quintillioth time today -and he slapped the metal helmet back over his head with a clung of metal, bending down to pick up his gun.
"That thing brought friends!" He announced.
Hancock stopped cheering, whipped back towards the body of the fallen Mirelurk- and made a 'Hoo-rah!' followed by another barrage of whipping plasma from his ranged-equipped arm.
The Deathclaw swallowed when she turned around- uncaring as her arm was jerked from her side to being drawn out in front of her as the human wormed his way around her hips to face the enemy.
Bursting from the wet coastline land were at least six or seven of the hunchback, chitin-rounded hills that symbolized a Mirelurk's back- they were near duplicates of the creature they'd killed, hued swamp green, brown and tan.
They chittered in a small mob towards them- and shockingly -one of them dropped when Hancock's luckiest shot of the day imploded its exoskeleton-sealed skull.
CLAKSHSK -It was a nasty sound alright. Spewing yellow and muck-colored goop and chunks of white flesh, whenever the Mirelurks were cracked open like that, it was almost as if someone had taken a plastic container of rice-pudding mixed with mushrooms, and spilled it out on the deck.
In addition, that rice-pudding would have been WAY past the expiration date.
Like by a few years.
Mirelurks were fragged to all heck on the outside AND in.
Who knew?
"I'll cover your back." She muttered- breaking out of her trance, the Deathclaw opened her free palm, and the nails that had been sheathed flicked out with tiny slides of bone.
"Aim for the heads, Han'!" Sanford barked. "The HEADS, you dumbass!"
"But I need to get at least ONE testicle shot!"
CLCKCLKCLCKLCKCLCK
CLAK
CLK
CLK
CLK
"They don't HAVE any!"
"HA! Their lives must suck!"
"All the more reason to-OHSHIT!" -Sanford cursed- stepping back hurriedly, his voice cracked from the startling speed in which one of the Mirelurks crawled right up to him.
The mutated creature clamped a claw in his direction- missed -to even the Deathclaw's surprise, as Sanford quickly jerked away from the attack.
As he swung away- the Deathclaw followed the momentum, taking his place, she stood before the Mirelurk, snatched out her claw, and wrapped her fingers around the entire chitinous forearm.
She grunted with effort, and there was a squelching crack. The Mirelurk's arm was torn clean off, leaving a pulsing green stump that trailed connection to the arm briefly in the form of offal-draping tendrils of ripped innards.
The Mirelurk made a tiny screeching sound- and she ended it, tossing the arm away, and driving the center nail of the five she held, through the bug-like face of the crab's front, scything away the entire insectoid mug in place of a disgusting, gaping hole that splurged white blood all over her fingers.
She planted her foot into the shell- sent the corpse flailing and tossing away -swung her arm, and let the weight, and her feet- carry her back behind Sanford whilst he was spun back to face the still oncoming members of the deceased's species.
"-WOO!" He stumbled, shaking his head, and pulling back the bolt on the gun as he finished feeding a clip instead of a drum. "This is like a tag-team!"
"Shut up and SHOOT!" She barked.
"Ugh- Sorry, MOM."
CLCKLCKLCKLCKLCKLCKLCKLCKLKCLK
The fireline that he and Hancock established did not falter.
However, the battle itself, also did not wane as of yet.
When could there be an encounter with just ONE monster? Was that so hard to ask for?
Just a lone dirtbag without a posse' of dirtbags? Where were they at?
"Sir, lookout!"
Sanford drained his last clip for the submachine gun with a climactic killing of another Mirelurk- the last rounds chewing away its upper torso beneath the shell and its scrawny face in a burst of vomit-like organics.
"Damn!" He cursed, stepping back when a larger, darker-colored crustacean used the back of its claw to swat the still-standing deceased away in a clacking smack of chitin to chitin.
The body bundle on its hunched-back- and the brown Mirelurk scrabbled right over it, extended its claws to the Power Armored human- and instead went face to face with his Deathclaw companion.
Sanford jutted his gut out- spun like some sick interpretive dancer -and brought the Deathclaw in a stumbling fill to his vacated stance. The claw vanished under the whimsical strike of a set of nails that could tear titanium- the Mirelurk reeled back, and died when the claw arced back and severed its face in two jagged flaps.
It collapsed raggedly- right as Sanford extended his forearm in a lean over her hip- his silenced sidearm clicked until the clip ran dry, and another mutated crab dropped like a bad habit with a hole-ridden head.
Hancock was actually, while all this transpired- relatively unphazed in his actions throughout the fight.
The Mirelurks saw Sanford and his new buddy a more prevalent threat- thus they all ran at THEM, not the Mr. Gutsy. So, Hancock was going to town just blaring his plasma gun at anything not humanoid that moved.
"HA-HA! HAHAHAHA! Eat it you-OH-HOLY MACKEREL!"
"Not a time for fish-jokes, Han'!" Sanford said with a roll of his eyes- changing magazines for his sidearm.
"You two always-" The Deathclaw's rumbling speech was interrupted- she reached out, swept with her arm a few times, cast away a severed set of gore-spewing arms, and kicked the corpse of a Mirelurk away. "-Run into these situations, DON'T you?!"
"Pretty much, Ms. Deathclaw." Sanford replied, emptying his gun into another Mirelurk that was bulging from the mud of the nearby silt in an attempt to ambush them from the side.
It's face imploded, and sent a traveling bloom of yellow/white spreading across the moist sand it fell into like a gruesome flower bud.
"Je' suis maudit! SATANE'!" She cackled with venomous sarcasm. "Only I could find YOU, monsieur'..."
"I always knew my life would be uplifted by a randomly appearing mythical being! I KNEW IT!"
"WHAT?!"
"Nothing! I'm ranting!"
"See that, sir? I'm RUBBING off on you!" Hancock scoffed loudly over the screams of his gun. "Now we got crabs because of you! Happy?"
"I agree with the Deathclaw!" Sanford snapped. "-Go fall in the ocean!"
"-SPROCKET PUMP! SUCK IT!"
"Filthy freak!"
-0-0-0-0-0-
There was a flash of light- luminescent, dim, and buzzing with frying ozone. The flash gave way to a highly offensive idling to the iris of his organic eye, it made him hiss in discomfort, and it also made him realize several physical sensations at once.
One- the least disturbing -he couldn't move his arms or his ankles, all his limbs in general and he was sitting. Sitting, and unable to move.
Gee, he wondered what exactly had been DONE to him? Hmm? Notice said sarcasm. He wasn't amused.
Second- the in-between in unconformities this evening -his gear was gone, ALL of it. The flat canvas bag containing his cameras, his recorders, his scanners and mines and all that fancy gadgetry crap he toted with him everywhere, was not over his shoulders.
That stung, but it could be replaced.
Third- the thing that made him ice-over with anxiety -his hood was yanked back, and cool air was exposed to the synthetic portions of his head, and the few organic strips left.
THAT wasn't good in the slightest.
Nuh-uh.
"-AwwwwwwwooooOOOOHHHHH!" He roared in frustration. "Damn it."
"Comfortable, Mr. Cannary?"
A square room- wooden and plaster, obviously inside an urban structure on the same street he'd been nabbed from -surrounded him with a few pre-War lamps lit under yellow-stained shades that were torn and scorched.
Metal shelving units lined the back of the room beside a wooden door- and the shelves were stocked with all kinds of bladed, or sharp things, a few of them dried brown from usage on some poor soul a long time beforehand.
Swallowing nervously- Robert Cannary looked up at the looming shape standing over him watchfully.
There he was, still as ugly, bulging and overly muscular as he remembered from the day they first started trying to kill each other.
Hark was a big, BIG guy. He had tanned skin that was worked over with so many tattoos, that his ethnicity would utterly be a mystery should a few more patch up the clearer portions on his chest, upper arms and face.
A nasty scar drew up from his bottom lip, and ended in a twisting visage to gradual nothingness just below his left nostril- Robert did that, a few years ago, with a serrated knife.
Oh boy, Hark probably had some overly-elaborate torture plan in place.
"Mr. Cannary, you look ill?" Hark mocked. "Would you like a drink?"
"You have any Nuka-Cherry? I'm parched, man." Rob responded cockily. "How ya' doing, Hark? How's crimes?"
"Hybrid freak."
"That's not very neighborly."
"Drink THIS."
Hark reared back with his hand- and in it was clasped a drained glass bottle.
CREESSKLKLK
"-Ouch." Robert dismissed when the thing fractured into a million reflective pebbles off the top of his cranium with a tiny crash.
The synthetic coverings and portions of his body... LIMITED, pain, per say. It was a welcome addition for things like this.
Hark tossed away the shattered remains still in his grasp- leaned forwards, and clenched a meaty hand around the plastics of Robert's neck.
"I'm gonna' tear you apart!" He barked. "First the arms, then the legs! Then you go in the trash compacter!"
"That's a step down, Hark!" Robert complained. "In the Pitt you were going to throw me in a cauldron of molten steel, what the heck happened?"
"SHUT UP!"
Hark waved his hand, and two other figures emerged from the shadows of the room- one of them was the ugly freak who had apprehended him, Feng.
Feng gave off a girly grin with all his yellow, few remaining teeth, and grabbed his left arm while the goon opposite side took the right. Robert was stood from his seat, and carted towards the door.
Hark, the leader in question here- reached to a taped sling holding over his back, pulled out a weapon, and held the rifle-like configuration in his hands as he covered the spy's rear. If one thing had been learned by those that dealt with Rob', it was that he was an escape artists. A GOOD one.
It was amazing that Hark hadn't just shot him.
It was also really stupid.
"Hark, the villains always die in the movies when they take the hero prisoner..." Robert warned, looking down at his ankles and wrists- both firmly linked together with double knots of rope.
"I ain't got a HERO, Cannary. I've got a rodent, and rodents get STEPPED ON!"
"Squeak-squeak?"
"SHUT THE HELL UP!"
Hark lashed out with the rifle- and Cannary suddenly couldn't remember his own name amid the flushing pain flowing through his head.
Even the synthetics didn't save him from blacking out.
-0-0-0-0-0-