CHAPTER 59
Breakout.
Laslar didn't remember a lot about his childhood, because, it was really all a nonstop pattern of the same thing every day, every moment, but with different places and different people.
Laslar never had a father, he was always a mistake to his mother as she carted him around for awhile, and eventually, she left him somewhere to go run off with a bunch of fighters to take on the Vampiros warbands, where she was undoubtedly killed like the waste of breath she had been.
His aunt and uncle took him in because they saw a nice guard dog for their home whenever they were off raiding, or fighting against foreign invasion from the south or west- they barely fed him, they kicked the crap out of him until he pissed blood, they yelled at him, they used all these things to make him vicious.
Laslar started learning how to use guns, how to use blades, at a very, very young age- he trained himself mostly, his aunt and uncle armed him whenever they needed to hunt, and they didn't worry about Laslar turning these tools on them, because they understood mutually the same thing he did.
His aunt and uncle- their names always escaped him, because after they died, Laslar no longer cared about their memory in his glee -were the only things that he could rely on to learn what he needed to in order to survive.
So Laslar bided his time when he was a little boy- he endured the beatings, the horrible living conditions, the sickness and pain- and when the Vampiros finally conquered deep enough into Texas and New Mexico that they reached their village, he took his opportunity to strike out.
Laslar remembered specifically letting his uncle die- he didn't see what happened to his aunt before he found her body, where Vampiros raiders had broken in, she had carved two of them up with a machete before they shot her, had their way with the body, and started torching the hut.
The south, the borders of former Mexico, the midwest and central North America had turned into great, spanning shitholes of violent, evil people doing violent and evil things to survive and to gain power. Laslar was thrown into the meat grinder, and he decided, after his terrible relatives were dead, that he would be the thing fear itself, feared.
Laslar had earned every bit of his title from back then- the Texan Terror -he committed horrendous crimes, absolutely heinous crimes... He murdered, he burned and raized, he killed combatants indiscriminantly... Laslar always had a trailing hint of knowledge, in the back of his convoluted, evil mind, that there were children out there that were his, from all the women he had forced himself upon.
He had always had the trailing hint of knowledge, that there were thousands of widowers, widows, orphans that he had made, and, while all of them might not still be alive anymore, especially after the depopulating wars between the Vampiros and the natives of the midwest and middle America, and between the Vampiros and Caesar's Legion... Laslar always understood that they had been, or still were, there.
Laslar had no intention of trying to redeem himself from the damning things he had done throughout his life, he had no intention to make it unclear to anyone around him of what he had done, and he also had no intention of discovering the true final punishment that no man had the power to grant.
Laslar kept killing things for himself, and eventually under the guise of the Enclave's interests, because he did not want to see what the afterlife had in mind for him- and he also did it because it was all he knew how to do.
Laslar did not dream, and he did not suffer nightmares, nor did he suffer mental breakdowns from all the things he had done and had seen... But he remembered every face, he remembered how killing became like a drug to him, he remembered the coldness that filled his heart, his eyes, his mind.
The only thing that could drive Laslar nowadays, were anger, and the sensation of winning over others- and for years the only 'Others' that existed in his life, were the High Command of the Enclave.
Laslar had survived the chilling winters, boiling summers, irradiated and war torn landscapes of the unforgiving badlands of Texas, Mexico, and Utah- he had survived the horrors of the lands of the Legion, he had survived the radiation-bathed hills of Maryland and D.C., the clogged and filthy streets of the city of Washington, the vast emptiness of Pennsylvania, and the armies of the NCR.
...So why was it, that when he was brought before this... CHILD, he could not squash the hapless idiot and all his insolence like a bug?
Why was it, that where so many Californian soldiers were hacked to death, where so many Texan Brotherhood overseers had their throats cut, where so many Legion, and Eastern Chapter, and Outcast, and Super Mutants- the powerful, powerful things, of the wasteland had fallen, this... Scavenger, this, Sanford, stood strong?
Why was that?
What WAS he?
Laslar, today, after all his wars, all his crimes, all the chaos and madness he had spread in his wake- could not understand the very fabric of WHY, as he cut down synth after synth, he could kill and defeat so much, but not a scavenger.
He had beaten thousands of professional soldiers, thousands of tireless and voracious beasts that were driven by the definition of boundless hunger, and hundreds of leaders that had underestimated his tactical brutality.
All of that, and the thing he could not beat was some stupid ass commoner guy in Boston.
It didn't even make sense.
It defied all logic.
It... Was... Madness. The thing he had terrorized the midwest with.
Absolute fucking madness.
CHSK-! CHSSSSM! -He just kept hacking synths. That was all he knew how to do, it was the only thing that sated his rage, was death, even death to machines.
He saw Sanford on the other side of this mess- he was chopping synthetics aside too, there were barely any of Laslar's men left as bulwarks in the swarming horde of tens of synthetic soldiers that came at them with holo-blades, rifle butts, bare hands even.
"WASTELANDEERRR!" Laslar screamed at the top of his lungs- hacking left and right, casting corpses at his boots which were then crushed and dashed beneath his stomping heels as he cleaved his way closer.
He saw Luft to his flank- he had his own Ripper sidearm out, one of the smaller standardized variants, not the custom monster Laslar ran about with- he was cutting down synths too, he'd lost his rifle somewhere in the pile.
There were only three other soldiers left with them by now- they used their rifles and Rippers with abandon- swinging back and forth, kicking, punching, head-butting- one went down with a mess of ten synthetics rapidly digging into the hips and gut of his ruined curaiss with holo-blades- blood fountained.
Laslar hacked aside one last combatant- and sprayed the whole pile with his Tri-Archer- CLKCLCKLCKCLK -He cut down the whole group.
Sanford left a road of dead behind him as he viciously fought his way to the other end of the passage- back towards the spiral stairway that lead to the 2nd floor computing hall the cowardly Institute scientists had gathered in.
Laslar couldn't let him reach the Deathclaw, that would mean he would break the reptile out of its pod, and it would escape, and that meant that all of this would have been for nothing.
He had to keep killing. Killing would solve the problem.
He just had to keep-
BMMMMSSKKKK!
-A huge plume of fire, tossed metal, blackened debris erupted like the head of a volcano on the other end of the passageway from where Laslar fought- bursting through the curved, chrome wall there, and forming a firecloud that reached the ceiling.
Dead synths were tossed everywhere, Luft, Laslar, his two men were thrown off their armored heels from the concussion of an explosion that couldn't have been caused by anything less than a tactical ICBM it seemed.
Sanford was scrambling to his knees among the flailing horde of synthetics- as seen by the Superintendent in a final glance mid-flight.
CLKNK!MMmm... Laslar's whole body shook and jolted as he was slammed against the face of a pylon, crushing a pair of synths that had flown behind him and had been crushed by his weight.
He slid to the floor, still kind-of standing with his back against the metal- he blinked rapidly, and realized that there was an acute pain in his ears from the suit's lack of ability to compensate for the concussive force of the impact.
Fire and embers licked through the air, slabs and tears of metal bounced off the floor, off of twitching or stilled mounds of synths, slapped off walls and pylons and fell again- fire crackled and hummed in his hearing as all the shooting, hacking, and screaming stopped.
Laslar looked up.
Sanford, from across the way, grunted, and barked one last time- and tore his cutlass from the neck of his last man, just beneath the chin of his helmet. The body rumbled and fell in the layers of corpses around him- and Sanford met the Superintendent's gaze, with a burning crater in the wall behind him.
Laslar's eyes were big, his lips twitching, hands trembling still- he still held his Ripper, his Tri-Archer.
He glanced at the flaming wreck that had been torn into the curved metals of the wall of the passage- noticed a slightness of movement from within the sooty mess beyond.
"-I'll... KILL you..." He snarled, raising his Tri-Archer for Sanford. "-I'll- KILL YOU-!"
"-HA! In your wet-dreams, you goat-fucker!"
"-Wha-?!"
fffWHHSSHH!
-A three-armed monstrosity left an arm of soot to ghostily trace its breakage of the fiery depths of the crater, as it levitated in the center of the hallway, and raised a single limb, tipped with a multi-purpose, superiority launcher.
A missile sailed from the nozzle, leaving a whimsical curl of smoke in its wake- Laslar saw the munition incoming, went wide eyed again- and tossed his body to the side, away from the pylon.
"-LOOK OUT!" Luft screamed from the floor nearby.
BMMMMMMLLLKKK!
-Both Enclave soldiers vanished in a puff of soot and a brief lick of flame, the pylon shrieked, indented, cracked, and tore sparking plates off the cieling above as it snapped off its moorings and collapsed in a smoking wreck into the mounds of bodies around it.
-Nearby, Sanford Tobs winced at the display of destruction, and watched the plumage of smoke branch out, and gradually thin.
...For a moment there was quiet once more, save the crackling of fire, and the echoing rants of a certain robotic menace as he preached his own skill.
"-HA! I fucked you up, Texan-Slut-Bag! HA! Ha-ha! Stick THAT in your Spirit-Pole and suck it! WOOO! Death to Nazis! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S... A... U.S.A...A... Hey," Hancock zoomed over to Sanford, who stood there, glaring over his pauldron, lowering his weapons by his hips. "...I believe I... KNOW you..."
"...Yep." Sanford croaked after a pause. "...I believe, you most certainly do."
"I know! You're... A SALESMAN!"
"...Mmhm."
"And you... ARE TRYING TO SELL ME SOMETHING!"
"...Yep."
"-WELL, take your 'As-Seen-On-TV' -motto, and shove it down your tobacco-clogged windpipe! I hope you get HOTDOG water on your suit! You business-wear obsessed son of a bitch!"
"Hancock,"
"WHAT?!"
"Shut the hell up."
"...Well played... Monkey..." Hancock raised his buzzsaw, Sanford clamped his blade to his hip, raised a fist, and pumped it once on the side. "-We're BACK in business! Ha-ha! The world shall tremble, from the tag-team hyperforce, of SANFORD, the monkey! And HANCOCK, the-! Uhm... THE HANCOCK! YES!"
"How'd you blow through the wall?" Sanford shook his head and gazed at the flaming tear in the metal behin them.
"Home-made explosives, baby! Nothing quite like them! Who said Democracy was always enforced with PROFESSIONAL arms, eh? Standardization is for uneducated slobs!"
"You would know, man."
"-See?! SOMEONE appreciates my informed view on this gaping ass-crack we call a world! I pride myself on- OH, hey! Waitaminute-THAT wasn't supportive of the HAN'! You slanted wax-application!"
"Eat me."
"-OOOooohhh-HO-HO! I see, how THIS, is goin' down!"
"You do, huh?"
"AB-so-LUTLEY! You broke me out of prison to RUB IT, in my FACE! -Well, ocu-lenses... DOESN'T MATTER! I'll swab the floor with these egg-heads' fat brains! Let's cut open some skulls!"
"You know where all the Institute staff is hiding?"
"Oh for the love of- do ya' SEE, the big wad of scumbags on your little scans there, sir?!"
"...Yep. Not too far away, just down here."
"It's a swarm of angry nerds! FUCKERS! Let's steal their pocket protectors and insult their mothers! AH-HA!"
"How about a warm up before that?" Sanford smirked, eyeing a patch of fresh synthetics moving down the scanner screen towards them from the halls ahead.
"-Communists! I always KNEW those bastards would try to do me in underground! It's the opposite of God and his attempts to strike me down with asteroids!"
"Asteroids, huh." Sanford smiled, moving off to the side, behind a pylon. "Get in cover, would ya'?"
"-GAUDALCANAL'S BEING BOMBED AGAIN!"
Laser fire flickered by as the robot hurled himself behind Sanford, and together, the team to undo all teams, leant out of hiding, and began peppering the group of synthetics that emerged from down the way ahead.
"-It's like watching a trainwreck!" Hancock cackled. "-In slow motion! WITH FLAMING JAP' PLANES RAINING FROM THE FRIGGIN' SKY! AH-HAHAHAHA!"
"Even prison couldn't set you straight, Han'!" Sanford laughed. "-Keep the insanity going for me!"
"I COULDN'T EVEN STOP IF I WANTED TOO! IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY, UNDERWEAR, AND IMPROPERLY APPLIED BAND-AIDS! A-TAAACCCKKKK!"
Sanford and Hancock charged into a cluster of synthetics wielding holo-blades- and the bodies started flying, and the robot was still screaming his same warcry even after the charge had briefly lived itself out.
Several feet away, Laslar Seduun, of course, having survived the missile shot- clambered free of a few slabs of broken steel, and parts of fallen synthetics. There was a brief avalanche of blackened ruin that cascaded from his armor's burnt hide.
Similarly, nearby, Luft clawed out from the mounds of ruin, and sat up beside his Superintendent.
"...That didn't go as planned." The Sergeant huffed.
"Squad's fuckin' dead..." Laslar growled, standing up on creaking servo-joints. "...C'mon..."
"Shouldn't we try to kill them again?" Luft asked sarcastically, standing up as the Superintendent watched him briefly.
"We need to get the 'Claw before they do."
"We can't carry it, Las'."
"We can kill it. They won't take a body."
"...What will that give us?"
"A corpse. Something for D.C."
"Sir," Luft snorted, glancing over as Sanford and Hancock hacked through a fresh cluster of synthetics- shooting, buzzsawing, and slashing with abandon. "-I didn't like this from the moment that damned 'bird landed."
"Necessary losses," Laslar observed the dead bodies of their squad. "Let's go."
"...Yes sir."
"Where's your rifle?"
"Lost it."
"Here," Laslar shoved one of the soldier's Plasma rifles into the Sergeant's grip. Luft took it with a look of developing sickness. "MOVE."
"Sir."
-0-0-0-0-0-
Most of the synthetics had left the computing hall by this point- having been redirected by Valerie to attack the outsiders.
Director Ordy, the powerless leader of the always divided Institute, just kept on sulking like a child around the pod of the Deathclaw, waiting, for... Something, anything. An explosion to kill them all, a victorious Valerie to emerge into the room and announce all the outsiders being dead.
Maybe Laslar would come back and kill all of them after emerging the sole survivor from the rumbling mess outside.
Ordy, sitting on the floor before the wheeled base of the Deathclaw's tank- looked over all the heads of the crowd, and he gazed to the sealed pill-shaped bulkhead across the large chamber longingly. He half hoped the Wastelander would step through it, and maybe Ordy could reason with him.
But for some reason, Ordy just... KNEW, that this, was the end of what he had been trying to repair for the last few years.
blep
blep
blep -Through all the noise, all the ruckus, the shouting... Ordy could hear one of the computer monitors nearby complaining.
He quirked a gray brow, sat up on creaking joints, and shouldered past some of the staff that had gathered in the center of the room before him. He rounded the edge of a row of consoles, and soon bowed over the keyboard and series of screens above it.
He saw a structural alert was noted- a breach from the prison cell ward.
He shut his eyes.
That damned robot got out obviously.
Breathing, and shaking his head quickly- he typed in a few passcodes to access the other alerts listed- grunting in anger when a woman butted by to his rear in a blind hurry.
There was an alert for the... Tunnel... Section... Out into Charles River.
...Oh no.
"She's coming." Ordy muttered. "After all these years, she's actually coming here."
Linda had bided her time more expertly then any other person in the Institute.
All these years later, and the second it was determined that an all-out fight had broken out, there were tens of synthetic signals traveling through the empty hauling tunnel at blinding speeds, and they were dispersing, as they took to ventihilation shafts and plumbing pipes.
So... Linda had deployed her Gen-X models.
Ordy slowly detached from the keyboard of the console, and stared ahead blankly.
Caught between a Deathclaw in stasis, a raving lunatic from the Enclave, a bloodthirsty Wastelander and his robot, and now a strike team of Generation-X synths from the Division.
They were all dead.
BMMK!
-The bulkhead flew off its hinges on the other side of the room.
Ordy ducked a bit as reaction from the sound- turned around- and to his horror, there were two, blackened, damage-ridden suits of Enclave Power Armor shouldering in from the steaming, ragged frame, stepping over the fallen door.
All of the commotion in the room settled for a brief moment, as fifty souls looked over in sudden shock.
Even from his distance, across this big chamber, Ordy heard the Superintendent of the Enclave, Laslar Seduun, state the one thing, that simply showed what he truly was- not a man, not human, but the very monster of the Texan Terror.
"Shoot them."
-0-0-0-0-0-
"It's effortless! ABSOLUTE BAD-ASSERY! Ha-ahaha!" Hancock was still ranting even after the last body fell, and he and his best friend stood in a hallway literally PILED, with dead synths, and a small cluster of dead Enclave soldiers.
Sanford stalked among the remains for a minute or two- swinging his arms, breathing heavily from the exhausting effort- he stepped on any synths that were still twitching, or trying to claw around with their arms after their legs had been severed or ruined.
"We seriously, need to consider making a comic-book series about our shit!" Hancock laughed, his buzzsaw revving. "-The Adventures, of the HAN'! And his sidekick! SANFORD! Monkey man of the 66th Dimension! GUEST STARRING, LIZARD-LICK! The escargo-obsessed iguana-chick!"
"Stop stroking yourself and let's go, Han'." Sanford wheezed as he stomped on by. "-Let's get Nyx, and get the HELL out of this place..."
"But it's so... ADVANCED," Hancock noted as he followed on a whistling thruster flame. "-It looks like one of those crappy movies where all the dumb actors in cargo shorts walk around wearing aluminum foil!"
"Aluminum, huh?" Sanford smiled.
"Indeed, sir! AL-uu-MINIUM! Like them Brits' always say it as!"
"Sure."
"-Hey, uh, not to burst your foreigner bubble,"
"MY bubble?"
"-But it looks like someone's eating all of our scientists! HOLY FUCK-BALLS! They're dropping like flies!"
"...What are you...-OH SHIT!" Sanford checked his scanners. "-We gotta' go! A-And you're sure, that she's there?!"
"Affirmative!"
"It's Laslar..." Sanford snorted.
-0-0-0-0-0-
In Texas, Laslar was against the world. If there was another living thing he came across, he killed it, scavenged it, left it to rot.
The only people in Texas back then were the brutish tribes he had been born in, the invasive Vampiros and Legionaries, and lots of highwaymen and bandits. It was all a mob of people doing what he was doing- clawing through life desperately, and doing anything to survive.
That was why Laslar had made it a profession- the art of extermination -because he figured, if you shot the civilians, not only did you take away the ability for your foe to repopulate, but you took away their children's ability to restart what their parents had.
Laslar had been a proponent of destroying settlements, not subjegating them- it was why the NCR, the Legion, practically the entire West Coast and midwest areas knew who he was- he was vicious, and merciless.
Laslar relived a bit of his old life every time he killed something- it was a sickness that had been lodged in his very skull since the age of young adulthood, and it continued to pulse and churn within his blackened mind every day.
He had brief flashbacks of the fleeing masses of women and children, young men, elderly- all them howling curses to him, to each other, crying out in terror and confusion- he remembered what it felt like to direct his weapon at them, pull the trigger, watch them fall down, stilled.
When it came to butchering people, not just fighting them- it was all a never ending pattern of pointing, and shooting, pointing, and shooting, pointing, and shooting, and pointing... Civilians were worthless, and hapless, thus, the people of the Institute were no different.
Most of them were veterans of the years of inner conflict that had been waged throughout their facility- some of them had ordered synths to kill other members of their staffs, some of them had seen these deaths occur, had been caught in fights and had started them...
They were all brilliant people, corrupted, by materialistic wealth, power, and drunken delusions of authority.
So after all the mistakes the Institute made, after all the people it had murdered, hurt, displaced, robbed from... After all the technological marvels they had started, and picked up on, after all of that... The Institute's Secession was completely wiped out in a span of minutes.
Laslar Seduun stepped into the chamber and started strafing, back and forth, back and forth- with no clear, definitive targets in mind- he just sprayed the room, grinning, toothily, as he enacted his rage, his hatred and his anger that had broiled up from the very beginning of his horrid life.
Blood spattered from torsos that were burnt and split open at their chests or guts- legs were blown off, arms were blown off, heads were incinerated- there were screams all over the place, men and women, there were curses- Laslar had a swarm of diminishing bodies flowing away from him towards the back of the chamber, leaving trails of corpses in their wake.
His shattered helmet was highlighted green with each shot he made- he slowly stepped into the center of the chamber, up to the first row of consoles- and he just kept shooting anything that moved.
Behind him, still in the doorframe, Sergeant Luft was stilled in a great trepidation for his own leader's word- he had his Plasma rifle raised, but he did not shoot it, he just watched Laslar... Kill all of them.
They cried, they screamed, they flailed around whenever bolts of burning green clipped into their lab coats, and dropped them hurriedly- wails cut short, bodies tumbling... Even Luft didn't understand this chaos.
"-I SAID FOR YOU, TO FUCKING SHOOT!" Laslar barked over his shoulderplate, casting away an expended cell for the Tri-Archer, and shoving a fresh one in the receiver, before he started firing again. "-KILL THEM!"
Luft swallowed, his mouth hung open, and he looked out across the room without comment, without a noise.
There were tens of bodies draped across the floor, over consoles, over each other... Some of the pathetic little scientists were still scrambling about, clawing over the floor, behind computers... Luft saw Laslar stop in his slaughtering, and glare darkly back to him.
Laslar tremored with heavy breaths, he nodded for the rifle in Luft's hands, ignoring the clacks of shoes against tile, or the tumbling of bodies as what few survivors there were quietly skittered away into the corners of the chamber- hiding behind tanks, consoles, or under desks.
"I said... To SHOOT." Laslar snarled.
Luft stood rigid, he licked his lips, looked out across the chamber, and saw an older man clambering over the stacked forms of three of his kin- he fell over them, his eyes tearing, he was on his one knee and saw the Enclave soldier aiming at him.
The man held up his hands, mouth open in a silent plea for mercy- Laslar snorted nearby, and Luft kept his gun leveled, and then he shot the man dead.
CLK -The bolt of green tore into the fellow's chest, and he curled in on himself, and slowly folded to the ground. Nothing dramatic, he just closed in on himself like a dying bug, and passed quietly.
Luft felt nothing.
But he kept looking at the body, even as Laslar stomped away, towards the back of the chamber.
The Superintendent, now trotting through a chamber of stillness, and haunting quiet- developed a gradual chuckle in the back of his throat as he worked around the heaped and entangled bodies of almost fifty helpless human beings strewn across the area.
He looked down at some of the faces he passed- eyes open, some closed, mouths open, some closed... Varying states of damage to the physical form, sometimes a lot of blood, sometimes none, and just a burnt welt in their chests or stomachs.
Laslar turned his glance to the back of the room.
Luft was still standing back there.
"...SO, Director," Laslar spat out ahead of himself- closing in on the floating form of the Deathclaw in the tube. "...Director Ordy, I know you're back there, like the little cowardly shit that you are... You're next."
-Just like Laslar's feral sense could detect, Director Ordy was indeed behind that same tube, and he was in a fetal position, hudding his knees to his chest... He had his eyes shut, and he was sobbing.
As a new arrival to this horrible, horrible mess, you could never resonate with the sheer amount of energy that had been invested in this place, in all these people, and in Linda... Ordy was ruined. Mentally, he was so ruined.
His entire team, every, single, one of them... Murdered, by the brute that was soon to kill him next.
His facility, wrecked. His synthetic army, gone to the last operating system.
Ordy could see some of the bodies around the rear flanks of the pods around the one with the Deathclaw, the one he was hiding behind- he saw the Courser's body in there, XM-988, his chest blown open where the Superintendent had effortlessly dropped him.
For a moment, Ordy thought about Valerie, and how it had been HER, that had reprogrammed all the synths to enact this fight that they couldn't possibly have won...
...He wondered if Laslar had gotten to her too. He hoped he did.
"...You know, Director, I had to kill a lot of people here in old Boston, just for you to wreck my fuckin' day..." Laslar said, stepping over to face the Deathclaw in the pod. "I'd thank you for the exposure to the continued target practice, but, I'm still killing you."
Ordy just squeezed his eyes shut tighter.
Maybe it was for the best anyway. He deserved it. For all of the bedlam he had caused across Boston, all the people murdered and replicated, all the communities driven to hate the Institute because of roving packs of androids stealing their survival equipment.
According to the people who had been here before him, the Institute was meant to help people. Funny how that all turned out.
'A train wreck in slow motion.' -Linda would've described it like that.
Ordy flashed a brief grin to himself.
He missed Linda.
Ironically, as he thought of her, it was her very interference, that would save him.
Clkmkmm... -Something was torn off of the ceiling of the computing hall, and Laslar was stopped in his move for the hiding, pathetic Director- he spiraled around and saw a square panel finish its tumbling descent from the plated top of the chamber.
He looked up, and saw a square hole up there.
It must have been a shaft of some kind.
However, air, wasn't the only thing coming out of it.
It looked like a torpedo. A thin, metallic, complex torpedo- with curving porcelain-looking plates of armor over layered chrome, and cylinder laden electronics. Laslar thought it was part of the vent that had fallen from inside, or some kind of debris at first.
However, this robotic pylon smacked tip-first onto the body-strewn floor below, and the very tower unfolded, and grew larger, and more spread out.
Two spindly, humanoid arms shot out from either side of it, as did two legs, and the transforming machine now stood on cloven heels with three prongs each as toes, at a height of seven feet tall. What passed as some amalgamation of a humanoid head protruded from the pylon's top center, it was long, insectoid, eyeless, a detail-lacking cranium of white, with slight indents where eyes should've been.
The body continued unfurling from its mitigated size- Laslar realized this machine had catapulted itself through the shaft in that form to move faster- now that it had its jump, here was what it really looked like.
A Generation-X Synthetic operating system. Laslar had never seen one in person before, primarily because the Division, up until today, had kept to itself.
The thing now had two pincering claws on each arm folding out from the slots on its spindly, multi-plated forearms- each had a laser weapon's nozzle jutting from their palms, with thin fingers of six each.
The Gen-X synth was hunched over in its impressive height- its legs were digitigrade in nature, its arms long and lumbering- Laslar was frozen for a second from how fast the creature had presented itself on the ground floor of the chamber.
Standing among the bodies, the Gen-X synth's elongated head cocked to the side for a moment as it examined Laslar and Luft, processed its orders, and carried accordingly.
It raised its arms and shot Laslar in the chest.
PMPMPMPM -Red bolts flickered and bounced off his refractor fields like light would dapple across water- the Superintendent barked out angrily from the annoyance- he raised his Tri-Archer and planted a few shots into the Gen-X's chest.
CHSSK! -Its torso popped open, sparks flew, the spindly limbs flailed and convulsed- the advanced synthetic soldier clambered among the dead, and stilled.
"-Mother fucker..." Laslar growled.
"LASLAR!" Luft cried.
clkccmcmc...
CLK-mmm
Clkcmcmc...
clck
-Four more plates were kicked off the ceiling from above, they bounced into the bodies lying around the chamber, and four more Gen-X synths shot down, unfurled from their torpedo-like extrusions, and started bouncing around the room- shooting like crazy.
Laslar's refractor generators were screaming- his form flickered neon green multiple times, and he and Luft started shooting all around them- dropping pairs of the Gen-X synths across the whole chamber's floor- more of them kept dropping down from all five vent covers.
Laslar leapt back when one of them suddenly blocked his vision from the rest of the room- its towering form overtaking his whole front- he saw a third arm fold out from nano-packs on the android's ribsection, and instead of a hand topping this extra skeletal limb, it had a holo-blade.
He drew the butt of his Tri-Archer across its head, mangled it, sent it tumbling to the side where he shot the fallen body to stop it from moving.
Laslar looked up at the ceiling, just by chance, from a shadow at the top of his vision.
There were a pair of Gen-X synths crawling across the plating up there- their cloven feet magnetizing to the surface, and allowing the platforms to sprint literally across the walls and roof as they peppered the Enclave officers with laser fire.
"-YOU'RE FUCKING ME!" Laslar cried. "-LUFT! The ceiling!"
"-I SAW!"
-Back behind the pod with the unfortunate Deathclaw to be caught among all this, Director Ordy was curled up in a ball as he listened to the vicious firefight erupting around him. He flinched whenever bolts of lasers or plasma would sail nearby.
CLKCLKCLK-chszzzzz... -He heard three shrieks of metal, zapping ozone- Ordy leapt out of his own skin, and scrambled across the ground away from the pod when it jolted under impact.
He spun onto his back, and saw around the rounded flank of the tube, Laslar and Luft standing against the influxing tide of Linda's infiltrating Gen-X synths.
Ordy swallowed, and he looked at the tube.
There was smoke billowing from in front of it.
Bravely, the Director got onto his heels, in a crouch, and he shuffled over to the side of the pod, wrapping his arms around the chrome metal for some vain attempt at providing himself some reassurance of the rocking world around him.
He yelped when a Gen-X collapsed in front of the pod, and hissed and whined as its power systems shut off.
Blinking at the corpse, he thought about Linda again, with this android's back to him, slouched before the pod, defeated, by the Superintendent.
Ordy swallowed- he looked up at the translucent, drab glass of the tube.
-He gasped, and his blood ran cold.
The console moderating the tube's amniotic fluid, and the levels of chemical intake, had been pierced right through the keypad and screen with three stray laser bolts, three blackened craters steaming, and sparking internally before the Director.
Ordy looked through the glass again.
The Deathclaw's head was raised higher than it had been.
Its eyes were open.
Groggy, and thinned- he could still see their burning yellow shapes between the lids.
The reptile angled its head, by both shoulders, he could swear he saw the fluid filling the tube vibrate with the Deathclaw's cracking joints. Its fingers slowly flexed in the fluid, the rebreather cap over the tip of its snout floated down to oblivion with a casting of bubbles from its nostrils.
The Deathclaw's eyes were wide now, fingers splayed on the surface of the tube.
It examined the clear glass, brought back its horned cranium, and then crashed forwards with its forehead.
bmmsk
-The pod developed a spider-legged crack right where she made contact.
Ordy flinched, and he tossed himself back behind the pod.
bmmsk
-The crack grew.
Nyx's eyes opened fully, her cheeks puffed as she held her breath, her legs bunched up, she bucked her head again.
bmmsk
-A big arm of silvery breakage developed all down the glass of the tube's flank, all the way to the wheeled, chrome base, to its chrome capped top.
bmmsk
bmmmsk
bmmmsssk
...
bmm-CRSSSKKKK!SSHSHHHhhhhhmmmmmmm... -A small tidal wave of amniotic fluid flooded and flowed from the shattering tube of drab glass- and in the miniature, splashing, frothing tsunami's center, was the wet, scaly form of the Deathclaw.
She sailed a foot away from the pod, sliding on her flank through the corpses covering the computing hall's floor, she grabbed and tossed about, hands trying to find a leverage point, heels trying to determine flat ground.
She was blinking, hissing, coughing wetly and horridly- her tail swung arcs wildly behind her, casting ghostly-traced trails of liquid as it lashed through the air.
Nyx sat up on her palms and knees, she keeled over and vomited a small lake's worth of fluid from the pod onto the floor, and she hacked and coughed and hacked more.
Ordy, who was peering out from behind the pod, watched in both awe, and horror.
...Maybe he should just... You know... HIDE.
He did just that.
Laslar tore out his Ripper from the chest of a Gen-X- and he kicked the body away from him, turned over to see the Deathclaw out of her prison, draped over the floor, jaws gaping, eyes squinting, mind addled with disorientation.
He snorted, and aimed his Tri-Archer at her.
Better a corpse than nothing at all, he always said.
CLK -He fired once, it tore into Nyx's shoulder.
The Deathclaw screamed out, it was a reptilian-like sound, something alien in the ways to describe anguish- a reverberating hiss mixed with the roar of a great beast- she tumbled onto her side with a fresh, black wound welting her arm.
Laslar hurried over, firing as he went.
-To his surprise, of course, the way fate would have it, the Deathclaw ignored the subsequent bolts of plasma that ate into her ribcage and her upper arm- she clambered off the floor, screeched at him, and covered the distance between them in seconds, on all fours.
Laslar brought up his Ripper to parry a claw coming from the side- but Nyx was too fucking pissed off to necessarily have any want of actually dealing with the Superintendent.
CLKK! -Laslar suddenly felt weightless, his bones having a sensation of sailing inside his own body- Nyx gripped her whole hand over his helmed head, lifted him off his feet, and tossed him away like a ragdoll.
Laslar sailed through the air for five seconds, and plowed into one of the energy storage tanks on the side of the chamber.
CHHSSKKK! ssssssssss... -He left a man-shaped gash in the rounded aluminum, vanished inside, with steam billowing from the breakage and filling the whole side of the computing hall.
Nyx shook her head rapidly- now in pain, and confused- she heard shooting, she tried to rely on her sense of smell and her hearing, as she always had whenever she had been blinded, or unable to use her eyes.
A Gen-X synth jumped behind her, and she swung around and hacked it in two with a horizontal swipe of her claws, casting the two halves away cheaply.
Another one landed next to her, shot her three times in the back, and as she bellowed out, she slipped over to it and ran it through the gut up to her knuckles- she gripped the top half of the quivering, spindly body, and she tore the android in half from the waist up with her bare hands.
Tossing the halves away, she lumbered straight ahead, stomping through the corpses, smacking and chopping away any synths that attacked her- she reached Luft who had just kicked away his latest victim- and the Sergeant didn't even get to raise his plasma gun before she swiped across his chest.
The nails tore through the cuirass, they ate into his ribs eight-inches in and came out the other side.
As her hand breached the other side of his torso, blood flecked out with tortured strips of steel, and Luft quivered, still on his feet, before clambering over and becoming one with the piles of bodies.
Nyx cuffed at her face, she chopped away a few more synths, shook her head rapidly.
CLKSNM! -The Deathclaw vanished into the hallway outside the ruined, and destroyed computing hall- right through the pill-shaped frame that Laslar and his men had first taken to come and see her in the pod down here.
Now she was free.
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