Motley Mutants Ch. 2 - Uncle Leo

+ The rusty frame of the camp gates screeched as it was hoisted into the air. Once raised, three figures emerged from beneath it allowing the straining gate keepers to release the chains slamming it shut behind Roc, Cerberus, and brother Brand. Roc was always comfortable traveling with Cerberus; mutant hounds never tried to have conversations with him, or ask him for favors. Super mutants on the other hand always seemed to have something to say, and so having Brand around complicated things for Roc. Roc and Brand were two of only a half dozen mutants who Boston trusted to lead trips into the wastes. Consequently, that meant they rarely saw one another. Brand was a gimp, of sorts. When walking, he would waddle back and forth, appearing slightly shorter than he actually was due to his under developed left leg. Roc tried his best to refrain from mentioning or even looking at the slightly discolored limb. He remembered how the infamous "last one" to heckle the deformed mutant ended up fed to the mutant hounds after a particularly brutal mauling involving a metal chain. Even though killing another mutant was considered taboo under Boston's doctrine, most clansmen suspected that even Boston didn't want to bear the wrath of the self-conscious mutant next, and neither did Roc. And so the two traveled in a manner which served to please them both: silently.

+ Roc held up his hand signaling a halt to the mutants behind him. Their 10 hour trek had left them exhausted and welcoming to the momentary reprieve. Roc kneeled and rummaged through his pockets until his hand detected a small paper, which he then removed and carefully unrolled. He traced the lines on the road map with his finger, starting with their camp, which according to Boston was in a place called Warrenton, down through a place once called Oxford, and onto a road named I-85. In order to compensate for the fact that neither Roc nor Brand were literate, Boston had made the map easy enough for them to understand, with their route highlighted, and their destination marked with a blue circle. About midway through the road was their destination, at which they had arrived. Roc stood up and turned a complete 180 degrees to face Brand whose face portrayed emotions of both confusion and annoyance. He strode towards Roc and swiped the map from his hands. "We here or what Dumb-Dumb?"

"Map say, yes." Replied Roc, clearly unoffended by Brand's ever enduring cantankerous demeanor. Brand focused on the map for a short moment, quietly mumbling to himself as he attempted to best Roc's map reading skills.

"If map say yes, then why no metal men here?" Brand growled.

"Don't know. Boston said map show Roc where, and map show here." Roc replied plainly. Brand tossed the map to the ground with a curse, which Roc promptly reacquired. He whistled to Cerberus to come to him. The mutant hound hustled over to him, its heads bumping into one another as it ran. "Find them." He whispered while holding a piece of broken steel to the hounds' snouts. With its orders it scuttled further down the highway, sniffing the air for any trace of steel.

"What we do now, Roc? Sit? Wait?" Brand asked. Roc, without saying a word, sat and began waiting. Brand reluctantly followed suit and remained quiet for a spell. After a few impatiently spent minutes without an alert call, Brand rose and spoke, "It must have left. Go and -" Roc looked up at Brand quizzically, wondering why he had cut himself off so abruptly. Brand was staring blankly into the distance, his usually dark eyes were now bright from reflected moonlight. Roc peered into the sky and began searching for the moon, and for a few moments, he saw nothing. Then, through the distant trees, he saw it approaching quickly. With it came a muffled choppy noise that ricocheted through the forest. Roc had never heard the moon before, and as such he found himself awestruck by its thunderous approach. "Moon…" Roc dazedly announced. The two mutants were rendered mute by the experience, until finally it emerged from the trees revealing itself to be a spotlight perched atop the nose of a flying metal machine. The mechanical bird's engines sputtered and slowed to hover over the road. Before it could reach a complete stop two large shadowy figures dropped from its sides and landed on the pavement with a duo of resounding thumps. As the dark silhouettes turned to face the mutants, bright lights of their own appeared, highlighting Roc and Brand. Their flying transport sped past Roc and Brand, landing further up the road, effectively flanking them.

"Metal Men!" Shouted Brand as he removed his assault rifle from his back, and began unleashing a storm of lead on the approaching silhouettes. The metal men barely flinched as the rifles 5.56 rounds pinged and zipped off of their thick framed bodies. Roc looked at the metal bird and saw another two hulking figures stomping their way out of it. He shouldered his wooden rifle and let loose a couple of shots, one for each of the pursuers. They landed exactly where he wanted them to, but were simply not strong enough to penetrate their metal faces. He continued shooting until he had wasted an entire clip into the duo, who were now only a few strides away from him. To Roc's left he noticed that Brand had run out of ammo too, and that he now gripped a sledge hammer tightly above his head. He waited until the first metal man was within his range and then swung with all of his might only to have the improvised war-hammer be caught in midair and its wooden shaft snapped in half. The metal man discarded the now useless weapon and retaliated with a punch directly into Brand's stomach, easily rivaling the hammers power. Brand grunted, vomited, and doubled over and onto the ground where he received a final knockout kick to the head. The remaining three metal men sprinted towards Roc and wrestled him to the ground quickly. Roc flailed about violently trying to hurt the seemingly impenetrable beings, yet for all of his fury, he only managed to split his own knuckles open. One metal man grabbed his right arm, and another his left, as they pinned him to the ground.

"Senior Scribe Daughtry, we have the larger one subdued and prepped. You're clear for approach." The voice came from the third metal man who stood between the two currently restraining him. From behind him Roc saw a much smaller human walk in between the metal men and kneel over him. "Human!" Roc shouted. The woman flinched but then quickly regained her composure leaning in closer, and extending an arm to Rocs chest. He fidgeted and squirmed, unsure of what the frail, orange-haired human was going to do.

"Hold still. We're going to help you." The woman promised. She raised a clenched hand, and then thrusted it down onto his sternum. Roc opened his mouth to yell, but by then he had already fled from consciousness. The soldiers continued to hold him tightly, until finally one spoke timidly. "Is he out?"

"Yes. You can release him. Please be careful when placing him onto the vertibird. He seems to be the better specimen of the two."

"Of course -" The third metal man paused to signal orders to his subordinates. "-but what do we do with the gimp? Should we bring him too?" The teenage scientist placed palm to cheek and thought for a moment, after which she knelt down beside the super mutant. She extended a rubber gloved hand towards Brand's scrawny limb and ran her fingers across the protruding muscles.

"It's, human. Isn't it? The pigmentation, the size. Most mutants lose their sexual attributes as a result of being exposed to the FEV. I believe, although I will have to perform an in depth analysis to confirm, that this one was once a male man, as indicated by the muscle and bone structure of the unaltered foot." As she felt the leg, her imagination ran wild with the scientific implications that arose when confronted with a super mutant who somehow was able to retain a part of its human physiology after its transformation. "We'd better bring him in as well."

+ The smooth tile floors made familiar clipping and clopping noises beneath scribe Daughtry's heels as she strode the empty halls. It was a rather obnoxious echo, and could be clearly heard from around the corners of any hallway in her laboratory unit. It didn't bother her however, as she was never concerned with making a discrete entrance. In fact, she rather enjoyed the way the lower ranking scribes knew she was coming and as such had time to make an effort to straighten up and make sure everything was in order before she arrived. She was by far the youngest among the Senior Scribes, at the youthful age of 18, but her knowledge of advanced biological sciences and technologies couldn't be denied nor surpassed by any of them regardless of age - and she knew it. Her noisy clip-clops finally ceased when she stopped in front of a door, which had the words "LEO Chambers" painted in red followed by the abundantly found letters, "B O S". She paused for a moment and wondered why the Brotherhood had always felt compelled to label every door, wall, and chair in their facilities. There were nearly as many painted labels in her lab as she had freckles on her face, and she had plenty. It was as if they were afraid that someone would come along and claim the facility to be theirs had they not put their initials all over it. She took a sharp breath, then swiftly she opened the door and entered the dark, cold room. She placed her hot mug down on the desk. It's odd, she thought, but darkness always tended to suit her better, especially while working. Had she been working with her team at the time, they would have surely protested against her "shadow studies", claiming it promoted singular thought, and limited interpersonal discussion. But the darkness helped her focus - it helped her think. In it, the only things she could focus on were the two bodies trapped inside of the giant glass cylinder in front of her. Inside, each mutant's hands were restrained by chains from the ceiling, and their ankles from the floor. They were suspended in a viscous bio-regenerative substance, which served to mimic the environment of a womb. The cylinder's green illumination was perfect for studying the subjects within, yet it lacked enough light for her to jot down notes on paper. Placing her clipboard to the side, she opted for a more classic form of remembrance. After a period of time she turned away and retrieved her mug. Before sipping it she hesitated and poked at its contents: cold. She put it back down with a sigh and again approached the captive super mutants. This time she focused on subject A. and now quietly recited to herself the known data.

"Subject A is 8 ft. 9 ½ in. tall from his fully mutated leg up, and has a greenish yellow pigmentation. While he has a crude tattoo that seems to read 'Brand' on his left deltoid, his most distinguishing feature must be his human-like left leg, which does not carry the same pigmentation of the rest of his body. Rather -" Scribe Daughtry paused and asked aloud, "Did…you just…move?" She snapped her attention to the two heart rate monitors against the wall. The Subjects weren't due to wake up for another hour, yet subject A's monitor had begun to spike. Slightly once, then twice, then again and again. "Shit." Inside the glass the mutant was wide awake, now. He barely struggled to snap his hand restraints, before he began head butting the 20 mm shock absorbent glass. Scribe Daughtry searched her brown messenger bag for her 10mm pistol. She focused on breathing and calming herself, like she remembered her mother teaching her long ago. Finally, she grabbed the pistol and aimed it square at the mutant who pulled his now bloody head back, and with a final blow broke through the glass, leaving nothing but air between himself and Daughtry. Subject A squatted and leaped without realizing he was still restrained by his smaller ankle, which slammed him back to the floor. He continued his pursuit on three limbs, now crawling towards the armed scribe, occasionally slipping on the spilt viscous substance. She yelped and squeezed the trigger repeatedly until the gun stopped jerking, and then squeezed it a few more times. She dropped the empty gun, disheartened to find that it had had little effect on the ever more furious mutant. Her mother's calming tactics failed her now, as she began screaming loud for help, with countless tears rolling down her face. "Human! You're gonna DIE!" His voice was booming and maniacal, and filled with a hunger she had yet to encounter in her sheltered life. She looked and noticed there were two sets of beeps coming from the heart monitors, and before she could look back, Subject B, as if he had been awake the whole time, came leaping out of his glass encasement and onto the smaller mutant. He stomped down hard on the mutant's smaller leg, completely crushing it and prompting his victim to scream. He then knelt down over Subject As back and swung fist after fist at the back of his head. Daughtry stared blankly with her mouth roughly in the shape of an O, confused as to why, or if, Subject B had just saved her. He continued for a few more swings, until finally, exhausted, he relented and stood above the deceased mutant. His breath reflected his punches: heavy and often. Scribe Daughtry's eyes remained pasted to the pieces and puddles that were once Subject A's skull. "Where is Roc…or…where am I?" Daughtry managed to close her mouth as she peered up at Subject B's face. It was a mutant who spoke, the same mutant she had heard speak two days ago when she found him, but the sentence sounded like it had come from a being much saner. She stood to face her unlikely savior. "Who…who is…who's Rock?" She forced herself to ask through her chattering jaw.

"I am. Or… I am Rocky." He paused and glanced at his body. "I am…a super mutant?"

She studied his face. He showed no signs of hostility, at least, not towards her. She hadn't anticipated such a question, and so she stuttered. "Y-you're…a super mutant. Yes."

"Why…do I not remember? Where am I now? Who are you?" The mutant inquired.

"I'm a scribe, a…a kind of scientist. I'm with the Brotherhood of Steel. My name is Liona Daughtry."

"Metal Men... I remember Metal Men. But..." His eyes wandered.

"But what?" She refocused the mutant.

"I…Rocky that is, do not remember anything. Except that I was, and am I suppose, him."

"Look I know how confusing this has to be for you, but if you just -"

"You… You took me. Took me and…Brand." The mutant slowly turned his attention to the twitching body of his kin, whose blood now painted his own hands red. He refocused on the orange haired woman with renewed vigor. "Where is Cerberus?!"

"Cerberus? Wh-who is that?"

It was then that the lab door swung open and one scrawny, red-robed man entered the room.

"I've got him, Daughtry! Get down!" He screamed.

"No stop!" Daughtry yelled, but her words came too late and the shivering figure in the doorway had already fired. Roc fell limp and crashed onto the bloody laboratory floor. "What did you do? What did you do!?" She leapt to her knees and felt the mutant's limp body for a pulse. "Did you kill him?!"

"Relax Daughtry, they were just tranquilizers. Really frickin' powerful tranquilizers. You know I wouldn't waste- aww shit, did he kill the other one?"

"Yes Theodore. The LEO gene didn't take to Subject As system, but in Subject B it seems to have flourished. He - before you came storming in guns blazing like a want-to-be knight - was capable of non-hostile communication and even eloquent speech."

"A super mutant? Eloquent? Sorry if I don't take your word for it Liona."

"Have you forgotten Leo already?!" She roared, which, coupled with the fierce look she gave him could have been enough to incite another tranquilizer dart from poor Theodore, who hung his head low and apologized.

"What's done is done, and luckily he'll be out long enough for us to prepare. Gather the rest of the team, and maybe a couple of Knights as well, we'll need help if we're going to move him into a room suitable for an interview."

+ First a light. It was far too bright to look at, so he didn't. Then three figures, draped in red, with blurry faces. The one in the middle leaned in closer and spoke as it slowly came into focus.

"Hello, are you awake? How do you feel?" Her voice was calm, and yet strangely both cold and warm. It was the human who called itself Daughtry. Roc pulled his hands up to his face only to realize they were restrained at the wrist again, this time with considerably larger chains and more of them. Looking at his feet he could see his ankles were given the same treatment. He lowered his head and rubbed his eyes slowly until the bright lights on the ceiling stopped hurting them. Looking up, he could see all three of them clearly now. All staring intently at him, all holding clipboards and pencils close to their chests.

"There's water there. O-on the table. If y-you're thirsty, I mean." Stuttered a female voice from Daughtry's left. Roc met eyes with the tiny raven haired girl who spoke. She smiled nervously for a second, and then, as if remembering something, she looked back down at her clipboard and began writing.

"How do you feel?" Said Daughtry, who hadn't yet leaned back in her chair.

"I feel…confused. Who are these humans? More…" The bulky mutant took a moment to think. "Scribes?" The two of whom he spoke shifted in their seats to look at one another, and then jotted down something on their clipboards.

"To my right is Theodore Wicket. He is a Senior Scribe like myself. To my left is Sharon Price, she is the granddaughter of our leader, Elder Cyrus, and an Apprentice Scribe." The girl to Daughtry's left looked to be but a few years her junior, despite the many ranks separating them.

"Hmm. Brotherhood, then." The mutant growled. "I am…Roc. But to you, maybe I am Rocky."

"I wanted to thank you for saving me from the other mutant earlier. He was clearly out of control, and I'm sorry to say our tests failed to save him." Daughtry explained.

"Brand? Hm. I killed him, yes. 'Murderer' will be the tamest of the names they will call me, I'm sure." The mutant responded.

"Who's they?" Asked the man named Theodore.

"My kin, human. My brothers. Super Mutants. Their leader is a strong one, who they call Boston. I have seen him deal with murderers and traitors before." The mutant's facial expression grew dark then.

"Do you have any questions for us, Roc?" asked Theodore.

"Questions? ...Yes, I do. What I just told you, about Boston. That is Roc's story. It is not the only story of mine that I remember though. There is another, far vaguer story. I feel like I'm in a dream… I know I am Roc, because I've always been Roc. But something else has awoken in me, and it tells me something different. What happened to me?" Theodore and Sharon both looked at Daughtry, who at last leaned back and ran her fingers as best she could through her curly hair.

"About 9 years ago we were sent south by our original Elder, Elder Maxson, in order to scour the east coast for technology on our way to the prewar University known as Duke; that's where we are now. On our way here, we found a super mutant sitting on a dock near an old farm. Knight patrols come across hundreds of mutants every year, and the further north you go the worse it gets, so this wasn't surprising. Err, no offense." Daughtry blushed slightly, but the mutant seemed unaffected by her words, and so she proceeded. "Anyway, the mutant sitting at the dock was doing something our Knights had never seen one do before: he was singing. He had no armor, no weapons, and he had no company, and he was singing. The Knights, led by Commander Dorsey -" She stopped to point at a lightly armored soldier in the far corner of the room. "-began laughing, and pointing at the mutant unconcerned of such a queer one posing any real threat. The mutant stood then, and began laughing as well, perhaps attempting to join in all the fun. And well, I'll let the Commander finish." The tall elderly soldier holstered his sidearm, and approached the table at which they spoke, to do so himself.

"The mutant gets up, and comes walking over to us. Like we were old friends or something. I tell my guys to stay sharp, but hold your fire, and they did. When he reaches us, I can see his expression change, maybe he recognized us as Brotherhood. I don't know. But he apologizes for interrupting and says he will leave us alone. I stop him from leaving, and ask him why he was singing. He says, and I do fucking quote, 'After I was made to be what you see before you, a super mutant, my brothers didn't allow me to do so. So I left. Now that I am alone I can sing to my heart's content. But I do apologize if it bothered you, human.' I nearly shit a brick at that point! I mean we had never even talked to a super mutant before, and now we were being apologized to by one? Anyway, we asked if he had a name and he told us to call him Uncle Leo. My field scribe at the time, Liona's mama that is, convinced him that he should come with us back to our camp, and he did."

"Thank you Commander. When they returned with him, there were problems. Many of us thought we should kill him and be done with it, despite his clearly peaceful disposition. Others were of the mind that he posed no threat but were still uncomfortable with him being present at our camp, and said we should allow him to leave back into the wastes. But in the end my mother convinced Elder Cyrus to allow her to interview him. A full psych evaluation. Once the interview was granted and conducted, she deemed that he must have had some sort of genetic predisposition to fight the FEVs neurological degenerative qualities, and its behavioral modifications. She and Uncle Leo talked a lot over the trip to Duke, and over the following two years he would find a way to ingratiate himself not only with her, but with our entire community. Some even thought he should be granted full amnesty, and the clearance to come and go as he liked. But, of course while there is power in majority, the few sometimes define the day. And there was only one man who saw fit to end the mutant's life, and who did. He was our Head Scribe, a man named Gerald Fasner. He never liked Leo, and he was a proponent of the idea that we kill him like we had killed so many other super mutants before. "They cannot be cured of their violent nature" he said. But, after being overruled and outvoted, for a time he was able to swallow his pride and leave Leo be, until one day Gerald's son, a low ranking Knight, died out in the wastes patrolling near Richmond HQ. It was a super mutant that had killed him, chopped him to pieces. It was too much for Fasner; to him it was a sign that he had been right all along. He snuck into Uncle Leo's quarters after hours one night and set it on fire, killing him. Many heard the mutant's screams of terror and agony, and when they came to Leo's room they found Fasner kneeling and sobbing before it. At his trial he would only say that he did what the rest of us were too cowardly to do, and that he had saved us all. Many called for his execution -"

"Everyone did!" Barked the Commander named Dorsey, whose face wrinkled in disgust just listening to the scribe's recount.

"Everyone except my mother. She asked that he be stripped of his head scribe status, and be outcast, but not killed. I was a little girl when this happened, maybe 12 years old. I have many memories of Uncle Leo, and I cherish all of them...we all do. When I asked my mother why she didn't want Fasner to be hurt, she told me with tears in her eyes, 'I do want him hurt child. But Leo wouldn't.' Ever since that day it felt as though I barely saw my mother. She obtained the head scribe position left by Gerald and remained in her laboratory for most days, down to the last of them. I was never allowed to know what she was working on during those years, no one besides her team and Elder Cyrus was. The year after my mother died, when I was 16, I finally made it to scribe, allowing me the clearance I required to finally access my mother's studies and documents. What I found was nearly inconceivable. She was working on a way to save every super mutant from their own hostilities, using Uncle Leo's genes. The FEV works by copying the host cell's DNA, and placing them into exons that are then reintroduced into the hosts cells alongside preprogrammed introns, to be repeated indefinitely, granting those it affects a sort of immortality and radiation immunity. My mother created a way for Uncle Leo's genes to be seamlessly added and replicated indefinitely as well, but only in a host who has already been exposed to the FEV: a super mutant. I've spent my teenage years studying as best I could, so that I could be in the position that I am in now. To be able to say that I have finished her work. Roc, you are it. You are the very first successful LEO super mutant."