Motley Mutants: Post-Apocalyptia Ch. 8 - The Garden
+ Darion Rockwell – a Brotherhood Sentinel and leader of the Cavaliers division - remained standing despite the multitude of injuries he had sustained during the assault on Evergreen Mills. Were it not for his T-60 power armor's added strength, he would have surely perished on his way to the mutant camp's inner sanctum, just as the 3rd and 5th Cavaliers had. Helmetless, and therefore radio-less, Darion stood with his classic super-sledge in hand, and with his mind focused on his goal of finding and slaying the mutant leader. In the cold, dark, and wet recesses of the underground encampment, he found himself surrounded by several more super mutants brandishing hammers and blades of their own. He was posturing for battle and sizing up each of the four mutants, when he heard a fifth mutant speak from behind him.
"Sentinel… Come in Sentinel. Sentinel… Where are you?" Darion spun around to find the mutant leader pressing his lost BOS helmet against his own mutated ear, and repeating the words he heard from it aloud. "You're a long way from home, Sentinel. A very long way indeed." The mutant leader dropped the broken power armor helmet onto the floor, where from the subtle voices of Darion's remaining Cavaliers emanated softly. "Your fellow interlopers." The mutant leader drew his white laser rifle and blasted a gaping hole through the helmet, cutting off the speakers. "You won't need to worry about them anymore, Sentinel. We're your family now."
"Family!? What the hell are you rambling about, mutant? I came here to eradicate you monsters, and I remain committed to doing so!" Sentinel Rockwell mustered up enough might to ram his super-sledge into the chest of the mutant to his right. The mutant's ribcage shattered audibly, sending boney shrapnel tearing through his internal organs. The mutant projectile-vomited blood onto the Brotherhood Knight's grimacing face, before collapsing onto the rock floor. Just as the Sentinel turned to face the other three mutants, their leader fired a laser bolt through one of the exposed parts of his damaged armor. Whether by an abundance of adrenaline or simply by sheer will power, Darion neglected to accept the wounds very existence as he swept his retro-futuristic cudgel across the next mutant's ankles causing him to fall over onto his back. The Sentinel capitalized on his newfound advantage in height, by slamming his war-hammer repeatedly against the brute's cranium until it was rendered unrecognizable. In the following instant, another two blasts from the mutant leader's weapon found home in Darion's somewhat exposed torso. The pain surged through Darion's body from both points of impact located just beneath his right clavicle, forcing him finally to relent. The remaining two mutant henchmen grabbed the downed Knight and rocketed their fists into his exposed head and chest.
"Enough, you two." The mutants obeyed their commander and released Darion, after which one of them retrieved the Knight's super-sledge so as not to allow another surprise attack. The Leader approached Darion and knelt beside his aching body. "Six soldiers. That's all the Brotherhood cared to send? I'll admit, your men did put on quite a show for a while there but, as expected, our strength soon prevailed. You underestimated me, Sentinel, and you have paid for your hubris." The mutant now held up Darion's limp, blooded, and bruised head in his baseball-mit sized palm. "Now I only want to give you a gift." The mutant reached around Darion and extracted the fusion coil from his armor's backside. Darion fell out the armor's frame and into the green arms of the mutant leader. His body was so badly wounded that he was unable to pull from the mutant's grasp, regardless of how much his mind demanded it do so. The mutant carried Darion deeper still into the subterranean encampment to a large storage-room. One of the mutant followers unlatched the heavy lock and pulled open the steel door allowing the leader to carry Darion into the room. Inside the metal room, the Leader carefully stepped over the various deformed humanoid bodies littered throughout on his way to the center. They would have been in complete darkness if not for the massive vat in the middle of the room, brimming with glowing, green, F.E.V. "I bid you farewell, human. Soon, you will awake anew, better, and stronger: as a clan-brother."
+ About a half mile underneath Fort Duke, beneath many tons of compacted rock and dirt, laid an excavated space half the size of a gymnasium. The space was surrounded by wooden panels on all sides, supported by metal beams, and was partially lit by a few yellow flood lights being powered by a small generator. Highlighted by the warm rays of artificial light were three ugly, green, super mutants, surrounding a boy and a pile of metal parts. The boy's arm had been restrained to a blinking yellow console, where the Pip-Boy attached to his forearm was plugged in. To the far end of the room, was the giant cog-like metal door to Vault 52, which remained sealed tight. The two mutants who were seated, spoke and cackled between themselves uninhibitedly while the boy listened in silence.
"I had little pink men before. Salty, peppery, grilled tiny pink men." The mutant with a light-green complexion recalled.
"It doesn't matter dumb-dumb." The dark-green mutant responded to the light-green one. "Dark, light, big, small. All human tastes good. Even better when they're raw and fresh!"
"Raw no better than grilled! Girder grill best pink man, best brown man."
"Girder uses too much seasons. I like human just after the kill! Little stinky…but better taste."
"No, no, no! Chop!" The light-green mutant spoke to the standing mutant who had been daydreaming during apparent the argument. The much larger super mutant slowly looked over at his brethren. "What you think Chop? Humans better cooked or raw?" Asked the light-green mutant. Chop placed his gigantic palm atop the human boy's head and squeezed slightly, forcing the boy to grimace and moan in pain. He knelt down to meet the boy's eye level.
"Chop like humans raw. Like them warm and juicy and stringy!" Chop growled inches away from the boy's face, pelting his cheeks with foul-smelling spittle.
"Get your green sausage fingers off of me, asshole!" The boy, the squire, named Ramsey Fink yelled. He grabbed a fistful of nearby gravel and slung it at Chop's face, who reared back, hastily wiping his face and eyes.
"Stupid human!" Chop grabbed his street-sign halberd and lifted it over his shoulder. He wound up and released a crushing blow directly into the dirt just missing Ramsey's head. For a few moments the squire was sure if he had been killed, and so he remained completely still until he heard Chop's voice again. "Boston say we no kill you now. But in soon, we kill and eat human. In soon." Chop promised ungrammatically, before removing his halberd's blade from the earth.
"You're really dumb, aren't you? I mean I knew super mutants weren't exactly the sharpest beings found in the wastes, but you set an extraordinarily low mark." Ramsey taunted.
"No talk, human! No talk!"
"Or what? You can't do anything to me and you know it, Chop." Fink continued. "Your master, this Boston, is working with the Elder, and the Elder asked him to keep me alive. So you've basically been reduced to a glorified nanny, left here to watch over a child while they get to explore the vault."
"Chop is no NANNY! Chop is super mutant! A fighter!" Chop insisted, regarding Chop.
"I hear you big guy, I do. But I'm not so sure Boston thinks of you that way. I mean, if he thought of you as a fighter, then why would he leave you here to look after me when he could've just had these two dummies do it? For that matter, why didn't he allow you to lead the battle against the Brotherhood?" The tall mutant thought for a long moment, resting his left hand on his head, then his hip. "Listen Chop. I don't think you need Boston. I've seen him, and he isn't as strong or as big as you are. Maybe you should be the one leading your clan. What do you two think?" Ramsey looked over his shoulder at the light and dark green mutants.
"Well," The darker one spoke. "The pink man does have a point. Chop is the strongest of the clan."
"Yeah! And, and, Chop is best battler!" Yelled the lighter one.
"No! You lie, and you trick, human! Boston is strong clan-leader! NO MORE WORDS!" Chop raised his halberd once again, this time with true murderous intention. As he swung furiously and repeatedly, Fink rolled back and forth, narrowly avoiding each powerful strike. Chop's roars and Ramsey's grunts reverberated between the walls and through the depths of the man-made cavern. Chop aimed for Ramsey's center of mass, hacking downward as hard as he could. Ramsey responded with a backwards tumble, lifting his lower body clear from the zone of the blow. The domineering mutant was beginning to become frustrated with the squire's nimbleness when he spotted the perfect target; Ramsey's immobile, Pip-Boyed arm attached to the vault switch. Chop swung his octagonal halberd towards the boy's arm, only to find that his weapon had been removed from his grasp mid-swing. The vain swing's momentum had spun Chop around in a complete circle, allowing him to witness his weapon hanging in the air from seemingly nothing. The entirety of the pole arm was coated in a blue, glowing light, causing all present to stare, while firmly ensnared in a state of bewilderment. The mutants and the boy all noticed together that the light was attached to a beam which they traced all the way into the distant darkness of the cavern. As if it had been granted sentience from the blue beam, the sign-post weapon began rising into the air slowly tilting its blade upward. Almost as soon as the blade stopped moving upwards, it came plummeting down guillotine-style toward Chop's neck. The mutant showed surprising reflexes as he caught the weapon, halting it in its tracks. As the pressure from the ostensibly vengeful polearm increased, Chop could feel his overgrown muscles begin to fail him for the first time. He refitted his grip on the weapon, and with a fiendish war-cry he managed to yank the halberd from the grasp of the ethereal force. Panting, Chop raised his halberd into the air, claiming victory over the mysterious blue beam. "Ha-ha! Chop wins! Again!" The other mutants stood now and joined Chop in scanning the dark cavern for the beams origin.
"Ramsey!" A female voice echoed. "Run!" In an instant, Rocky, Liona, Agrippina, Montecrief, and Sweetheart emerged from the darkness together, blitzing the enemy mutant-trio.
"Roc?" Chop muttered as he squinted at the approaching figures. "...ROC!" He yelled, charging after his former clan-brother. Liona fired two blasts from her Puppeteer sleeve at the two smaller mutants. They evaded the blasts by rolling in opposite directions, incidentally separating themselves from one another. Just like Rocky had planned, Liona and Monte targeted the one on the left, while Sweety and Aggie went after the one to their right. The dark-green mutant lunged at Monte first, easily avoiding Liona's misplaced shots. The seemingly invincible mutant absorbed Monte's bullets one after one until he came within arm's reach of the ghoul. He grabbed Monte by his legs and swung him around like a medieval flail, eventually throwing him into one of the tunnel support beams.
"Montecrief!" Liona called to no avail. As the dark mutant turned its ire on her, she reverted back to her mother's calming tactics, determined not to let what happened with Subject-A happen again. After filling her lungs completely, she exhaled quickly and opened her eyes: completely centered.
"Human! I will eat your BONES!" The dark green mutant taunted her. Despite her every instinct, Liona remained calm and cool as the mutant closed in on her. Methodically, she extended her fore and middle fingers together, sighted the mutant in front of them, and told her sleeve to fire. The mutant stretched his arms out and leaped to grab Liona, but the scribe's shot was true and it was fast. The blue bolt of blazing otherworldly fire connected instantly, exploding the mutants head as quickly as it evaporated the resulting scattered-brain-matter. Liona watched as what was left of the mutant thudded and slid across the floor harmlessly in front of her. She squealed a celebratory swear word in name of excitement and relief, before sprinting to check on Montecrief.
On the other side of the cavern, things weren't going as well for Sweetheart. He had expected to be fighting alongside Agrippina, but to his surprise, the synth was nowhere to be seen. In her stead, he had only a small switchblade, and what little confidence he could scrape together at his defense. Sweetheart gathered confidence the way most raiders did: by, 'talking shit'.
"Come on you ugly, Frankenstein look-alike asshole!" The light-green mutant swung his sledgehammer fiercely, yet predictably. Sweetheart quickly caught on to his left, right, left, right swinging pattern, allowing him to better time his dodges and continue to bolster his confidence through the art of trash-talk. "You are trying to hit me, right?" The mutant's swings grew increasingly desperate, while he himself grew increasingly exhausted. "You know, I'm sure there's a clinic somewhere that can take care of that hair-loss problem of yours. Maybe a toupee would do the trick." Sweetheart reached an all-time high in confidence then. He toyed with the mutant for a while; dancing, spinning, and making silly faces to try to incite him to exhaust himself.
Meanwhile, Rocky was contending with an all-too ferocious Chop. Rocky decided to not even shoulder his rifle after seeing how quickly Chop was covering the ground between them. Instead he unholstered his cleaver and braced for the inevitable impact. Chop's halberd came down fast from above Rocky, but the LEO mutant was able to parry the strike with his reforged cleaver blade. He riposted quickly with a swipe at Chop's belly. His cleaver, while much faster than his opponent's halberd, was significantly shorter and so he missed Chop who juked backwards.
"Roc! Traitor! Boston say you died!" Chop whined. "No worry, Roc. You die soon!" Again Chop attacked Rocky who could only do his best to parry and sidestep the ensuing onslaught. Eventually after a series of mostly ineffective strikes, Chop's halberd struck Rocky's cleaver in such a way that it was ejected from his hand, sending it clattering against the rock floors some yards away. Rocky head-butted Chop before he could strike again, making the bigger mutant stagger backwards. With his opponent stunned, Rocky decided to make a run for the cleaver. He took two long strides and dove towards it, only to be restrained from his ankle by Chop's massive hand. Chop dragged Rocky in close to himself, laughing loudly while Rocky tried in vain to resist Chop's raw power. When Chop had pulled Rocky close enough, he lifted his halberd up for the killing blow. As soon as Chop raised his polearm though, Rocky up-kicked the hilt of the weapon hurtling it right out of Chop's clutches. Infuriated, Chop rained down a storm of hammer-fists onto Rocky's body. At first, Rocky attempted to guard against the blows, until eventually they grew to be too numerous and too damaging. Rocky felt his body refusing to continue, despite his minds persistence. He was trapped beneath Chop's wrath and fury, with no solution. Only once Rocky had seemed to be incapacitated did Chop finally stop punching. He dragged Rocky to his knees and posed him there, granting himself a moment to reclaim his sign-post halberd. Rocky wanted so badly to get up and to fight, but his body was too debilitated from the stronger mutant's punches to continue. As Chop held his halberd to the ceiling one last time, Rocky resigned himself to death. Suddenly Rocky felt a warm wave of rejuvenation wash over him just as a cold, refreshing spark tore through his muscles and ligaments. The hypnotic sensation bid he rose to his feet at once, and so he did. Just a moment before he could barely kneel, yet now he stood tall and with ease. With both hands Rocky took hold of Chop's halberd mid-swing, claiming it with a single pull. In a blurred motion he swung the weapon horizontally across Chop's belly, eviscerating the hulking mutant. Rocky himself was barely aware of his movements as he executed them, as they were no longer his own. Authorship of his actions now belonged to Liona, who guided his body using her Puppeteer Sleeve's tertiary function: mind control. With his entrails spread all over the floor, Chop finally fell to his knees with his arms wrapped tightly around his stomach, trying to keep what remained of his innards inside. Still under the influence of Liona, Rocky returned the halberd to Chop by burying it into his skull. Liona, who was standing a couple dozen yards behind Rocky, released her mind control beam and in doing so regained control of her own faculties. She found herself falling safely into the arms of Montecrief, who gawked at her in amazement.
"I don't know or care to know what the hell that device is, just please whatever you do, don't use it on me." Monte said. The ghoul helped Liona to her feet. They ran to help Rocky, who had also collapsed once the neural link was finished, and injected him with several stimpacks.
All the while, Sweetheart was still contending with the light-green, sledgehammer wielding super mutant from before. At some point during his dancing routine, he had accidentally backed into a slight change in elevation and lost his footing. The raider had stumbled and fell flat on his back immediately causing his spine to ache. The mutant aggressor cackled sinisterly once he saw his opportunity to finish the human. Hoping to catch the mutant by surprise, Sweetheart sat up suddenly and thrusted his knife into the hulking monster's right pectoral muscle as deep as he could. The monstrous mutant slowly looked over at the tiny blade. He studied it as if it were an ancient artifact of some kind, and as if he were someone who cared for such things. After a few brief moments he held his head back and laughed boomingly, having realized that the human had intended to kill him with the miniature knife.
"Mistake! ... I made a mistake!" Sweetheart called out to whoever could hear him while crawling backwards. The mutant abruptly stopped laughing then, and made a face like he had swallowed a fly. To the befuddlement of Sweetheart, the green monster began patting himself all over and grabbing the air in front of his own throat. In seconds he was kneeling and swinging wildly at the air around himself like a lunatic. After less than a half-minute of the super mutant's strange outburst, he was lying flat on his face completely still. From out of the thin air which he had seemed to be attempting to wrestle, appeared the thin figure of a brown skinned woman dressed in a lumberjack-flannel and jeans.
"Agrippina?" Sweetheart asked. "How did you-"
"Pretty sneaky, huh? My synth component was outfitted with self-reliant stealth field capabilities when I was created." Agrippina answered Sweetheart's question before it had fully been asked. "That is to say, I basically have an unlimited supply of Stealth Boys within my body." Aggie helped Sweety to his feet.
"So you were literally made for sneaking… Cool." Sweetheart blushed for a moment, but quickly recollected himself. "You could have told me you were going to do that, though. I really thought that asshole was going to smash me to death for a second."
"What was it you said? Oh right, 'I'd never let such a pretty thing like you take on such a difficult task all by yourself'."
"So you do think I'm pretty, then?" Sweetheart volleyed.
"You're more like…a charming annoyance." Agrippina joked.
"Charming? I'll take charming." He smiled.
"So you were pretty scared for a little bit there, huh?" Aggie prodded.
"Me? Of course not, no. I've fought worse than him when I was still in diapers."
"You had diapers? In the wasteland? Pampered little boy, weren't you."
"No, what I meant was - It's like a figure of speech! You know what I mean… I wasn't scared."
"I'm sure." She smiled satisfactorily.
"Are you guys okay?" Liona called out.
"Yeah we're fine. You?" Aggie returned.
"Yeah. Mostly anyway." Liona admitted. The group collected at the vault entrance near a stunned and confused Ramsey Fink.
"Liona! I half expected you to come, but not with all of these…people. Where's Dalton?" Ramsey asked.
"He's…he's going to be fine, but he was hurt during the battle with the mutants. A battle which for all we know is still being fought up there." Liona strode over to Fink and began untying his hand restraints.
"Why are all of them here?" Ramsey pointed using his free hand. "Why is he here?" Fink focused his pointer finger on Rocky.
"Peace, Squire. We're all here for the same reason, Ramsey. We came to save you, and then put a stop to whatever the Elder and Boston are up to." Rocky explained. His eyes slowly drifted from Ramsey to the pile of metal at his feet, noticing a glass-encased brain amongst the scrap. "Is that…Edgar?"
"Oh right, I almost forgot. You can stop playing dead now, Edgar. It's all clear." The pile of multifarious metal pieces, knotted wires, and circuitry began magnetically reconfiguring itself after Ramsey spoke. At an astounding pace, the parts reformed back into a shape that resembled a modified eye-bot, placing all of the intricately designed internals and externals exactly where they belonged. Once the robot was fully reassembled its lights hummed on and its Mr. Handy propulsion unit fired up, lifting it from the earth.
"Hello everyone! I'm glad to see you found the elevator all right. Apologies for leaving you back there, Mr. Sweetheart, but I had to be sure that my wee master was alright." Spoke Edgar.
"Edgar, you sound like my mom. Wait, who did you just say?" Ramsey stopped speaking momentarily as Liona finished untying him. He sat up to get a closer look at someone in particular in the group. "Hey! You're that raider, Sweetheart, from the cellblock! What are you doing here?"
"Hey-a kiddo. I just came to get my weapons back to be honest, and maybe to make sure you didn't get killed or nothing. Although now that I'm here, I'm beginning to think I may stick around for the finale. Who knows what kind of prewar treasures are in that vault, right?" Sweetheart responded.
"Well, first things first. You'll find your weapon and ammo on that rock behind me where the mutants were sitting. Sorry to say, I accidentally lost the rest of your equipment though when I was captured. I thought I could use your rifle to paralyze myself and have Edgar get rid of the Pip-Boy once we were far enough away. So much for that plan." Sweetheart followed Fink's directions and collected his syringer rifle, Nurse.
"Hell yeah! Wait 'till those muteys get a load of me now! If I can take on a super mutant with only a switchblade, -" Aggie glared at Sweetheart who immediately reconfigured his statement. "- and of course with a little help from Aggie, then who knows how many I can take on with a real weapon." Sweetheart boasted.
"I don't think you'll have a chance to find out today, Sweetheart. After they used me to open the vault, Boston and Cyrus went in by themselves. It's going to be a real pain to find them now, The Garden being as huge as it is." Ramsey explained.
"What do you mean, 'The Garden'?" Montecrief asked. Ramsey tilted his head curiously in the direction of his robot companion.
"You didn't tell them about The Garden, Edgar?" Ramsey asked the floating robot.
"Well I didn't exactly have a lot of time for chit-chat, Mr. Fink. What with all of the super mutants attacking, and the Pip-Boy business, and of course you being captured. It's a terribly large amount of things to explain, Mr. Fink."
"Ramsey." Liona chimed in. "Do you mind telling us what you're talking about, please?"
"Yeah, sure. I mean I could tell you, but I think it might be easier just to show you." The group watched curiously as the precocious squire plugged his Pip-Boy into the vault door console and threw the switch forward. At once power flooded the vault door causing the entire cavern to rumble slightly. They could hear something metal interacting with the vault door's opposite side, and they could see the door begin to pull away slowly. In a matter of seconds the vault door had been removed completely out of its locked position, at which point slivers of light came slipping through the cracks around the door. A large, rusty mechanical arm could be seen through one of these cracks struggling to roll the door out of the way. Just when it looked as though the door had seized up, it suddenly gained momentum and started moving to the side. The rolling vault door gradually revealed a sprawling landscape comprised of lush, green foliage of all sizes, colorful, darting insects, distant waterfalls, and rocky caves. The group stepped into the suspiciously well-lit vault together, their mouths agape and their eyes wandering. "This, is The Garden." Ramsey spoke from behind the group. "Pretty insane, huh? According to the Elder's notes on it, Vault 52 was built in order to house a small scientific community comprised of a bunch of bio-engineers, mathematicians, and whatnot. At least a year before the war, Vault-Tec excavated this cavern and built a small research facility smack-dab in the middle of it for the scientists to live in as Overseers. After which they employed a G.E.C.K., and put in some fancy, cycling artificial sunlight emitters on the roof to make it feel more like an outdoor environment. To aid in the façade, and perhaps to help keep the scientists sane, they developed some sort of illusory display of blue skies and clouds for the daytime, and black starry skies for the nighttime as well."
"It's…" Rocky started.
"…Beautiful." Liona finished.
"Before two minutes ago, I never would have fucking believed that a place like this could exist in the world." Sweetheart said while spreading the sides of his jacket open so that his bare chest could feel the warmth of the pseudo-sunlight.
"Neither would I have." Admitted Montecrief. "Look at how huge those trees are! The green grass, the bright flowers - it's just like it was before the bombs." Monte knelt down and picked one of the more femininely colored flowers from the dirt.
"I once knew a similar underground society, full of egg-heads. I think they would have loved to have gotten their rubber-gloved hands on this place." Agrippina remembered, taking a seat in the grass.
"Ramsey. What were all of those scientists doing here anyway?" Liona asked. The group looked back at the squire together, awaiting an answer. He only looked past them, smiled, and said,
"That." The group turned back towards the sunny interior of the vault. Stomping its way through a not-so-distant field was a giant turtle, standing well above the highest blades of the surrounding tallgrass. From its shell protruded massive spikes which extended several feet into the sky. As the quadruped walked towards a nearby water source and out of the tallgrass, its armored tail could finally be seen swaying back and forth like a biological mace.
"What the hell is that thing?!" Sweetheart asked.
"It looks like a giant snapping turtle to me… Look at its mouth. Its head is like a vise with eyes." Agrippina theorized.
"The scientists here were using the Forced Evolutionary Virus to…well, force certain species of animals to evolve in the hopes of creating another sentient race of beings here on Earth. Perhaps one better suited for the world we created."
"Hey guys, look at that." Sweetheart, who had wondered up a nearby hill, called out. The group met him at the hill's low, windswept summit. One by one they looked to the direction in which Sweety was already facing. Above the tree lines and towards the middle of the visible landscape, the group spotted the circular top of a dilapidated spire. Beneath all of the overgrown vines and moss that covered the aging structure, they could see the sunlight reflecting off of pieces of windows and metal walls. The structure was strangely similar to a diner table, with one disproportionately long leg.
"That must've been their think-tank." Liona decided.
"Think Tank? Isn't that place way over in the Big MT? Oh, wait. I see what you mean. Never mind, ha-ha." Aggie said. "Anyway, at least we know where we need to go. Hopefully we won't run into a mutated…I don't know, a rabid, mutated beaver or something."
"I wouldn't worry about the mutated inhabitants; we've got the numbers on our side. So long as we give the creatures here a wide berth I think they'll leave us be." Fink hypothesized.
"Well that will be easy for you Ramsey, because you're not coming." Liona declared.
"What!? You cannot make me stay here, Liona! I -"
"You have to stay here, Ramsey. It's too dangerous in the vault. Your mother is worried sick about you, and I don't want to have to face her if something happens to you." Liona reminded Ramsey. "Edgar, see to it that Ramsey remains safely outside the vault. We'll be back soon to take him to the Chapel."
"Aye, mam." The hodgepodge robot answered. Ramsey wound up to fire back, but instead exhaled quickly and relaxed his posture.
"Fine… I'll stay here. But I wanna say something before you guys leave." The young squire teased.
"What is it, Ramsey?" Liona asked. Ramsey Fink walked to the top of the hill and peered past the trees, and directly at the black Spire.
"A dormant spire laboratory, a bunch of dead scientists, and a giant mutated snapping turtle - these are all scary things in their own right. But I've read enough prewar Sci-Fi to know that there's something more…insidious at work here. I know it's the Brotherhood's mission to secure all lost technology and so this may sound blasphemous to you Liona, but I'd leave whatever's up there for somebody else to find. It doesn't look like their inventions brought the scientists anything but trouble."
+ The Brotherhood of Steel's eastern presence, while not as widespread as their western presence, had nonetheless managed to find root in many different communities alongside the Atlantic coast. Connecting these bases, by means of supply deliveries, were a few dozen squads led by experienced Knight Captains. One such squad - Intrepid Squad - was once a unique unit formed at the Capitol Wasteland's Citadel, originally specializing in reconnaissance detail. For years Captain Ryan Dutch's crew had been sent up and down the coast by the Brotherhood leaders, searching for new technologies and places to expand. More recently, the once adventurous squad had been relegated to delivering shipments from base to base as Brotherhood expansion had stagnated. While his crew commonly complained about the lack of excitement found in their new appointment, Dutch rather enjoyed the calm wasteland treks along strictly charted territories only. Shipley, Hutchison, and Phillips missed traveling to places no one else in the Brotherhood of Steel had ever been to before; it gave them purpose. For Dutch however, their trips into the unknown provided him only anxiety and stress. Every time they would come across a new settlement of cannibalistic raiders, or be attacked by some strange pack of mutated creatures, the fear that he may have led his soldiers directly to their deaths would eat away at his mind, even after they had survived the encounters. Delivering packages had fared far better for his mental well-being, Dutch had found - that is, prior to the last 24 hours or so. As he and Shipley snuck along the rubble-strewn borders of the battlefield searching for their squadmates, he could sense that same, malignant feeling beginning to creep into his thoughts. He attempted to block it out by tuning his comm-radio to the squad's frequency, in the hopes of hearing the voices of either Hutchison or Phillips.
"Hutch? Phillips? Come in. Sgt. Shipley and I are back at the Fort, and we are on our way to you. Over." Dutch radioed. In response came only static. "Mike, Raymond, come in!" Dutch called with considerable amount of urgency in his voice. Shipley grabbed him by his shoulder, reigning her captain in from his worry.
"Dutch, they can't hear you. We should just search for them using their suit's local transmitters." Shipley recommended.
"Right." Dutch breathed. He and Shipley activated their HUD's signal receivers together, immediately locating the position of their lost squadmates.
"You see 'em?" Dutch asked.
"Yeah. It looks like they're in…the Infirmary." Jenny responded, after having taken a look to their left at the Infirmary building, the front of which had been collapsed at some point during the battle. What was left standing had been rendered inaccessible by common means due to the heaps of piled stone left from the ongoing battle.
"It's gonna be fine, Jenny. We'll find them." Dutch said halfheartedly, as if he were trying to convince himself. The two began jogging towards the split building.
"Yeah, I know, Skipper. The question is: How?" Shipley responded. Dutch scanned the building as they approached, searching for a new point of entry.
"There," He pointed to a service ladder still attached to the building's side. "We can climb that and find a way in from the roof." As they arrived at the ladder, Shipley started laughing like Dutch hadn't seen since he told her the story about how his childhood pet molerat died trying to swim.
"You mind telling me what's so funny?" Dutch demanded humorlessly, remembering her cruelness.
"Nothing, nothing. It's just going to be so funny watching you break that damn thing while trying to climb it in full power armor."
"Well it's not like I can leave my suit out here." Dutch explained.
"Just hug me, Captain." Shipley said, spreading her arms out.
"Hug you? What the hell -"
"Just do it, dammit." She ordered her C.O. Dutch acquiesced to her demand, and wrapped his arms around Shipley's armor tightly. "Hold on." The female Knight ignited her jetpack suddenly, slowly lifting the duo into the air. Once they were hovering above the roof, Shipley dropped Dutch who crashed against the still-standing portion of the roof loudly. Laughing, Shipley lowered herself steadily until her feet were touching the roof, at which point she killed her thrusters.
"Asshole… You could have dropped me from a bit lower, you know." Dutch said in a slightly injured tone.
"Next time maybe you'll listen to me and have the engineers install a jetpack onto your suit, so you won't have to ride bitch anymore. Ha-ha," Jenny cackled. Dutch dismissed her comment with a subtle wave of his hand as he stumbled over to the caved-in side of the roof.
"Phillips! Hutchison!" He called, leaning over the side. "I don't see anything." Dutch said.
"After you." Shipley responded. Dutch leaped into the hole, landing on top of a fallen ceiling fan with a crashing thump. Shipley fell immediately afterwards, smashing the remains of a medical gurney. "Whoops." She whispered into the shady, dust-filled room.
"Human…Human…" A deep voice struggled to say from behind them. The Knight duo turned to see the owner of the voice, a super mutant, reaching for them with the only part of his body which hadn't been crushed under stone debris: his left arm.
"Poor, knuckle-dragging bastard." Said Shipley. "Should we kill him?" She asked.
"I would, but I can't see a way of doing it that wouldn't just leave him in more pain." Dutch explained.
"'More pain'? Don't go soft on me now, Skipper. He deserves this pain; all of them deserve this." Shipley responded. Dutch looked at the mutant's flailing arm. Furiously and aimlessly, it searched for something to grab and kill, like a blinded anaconda.
"I used to think so too, Jenny. Lately…I don't know." Dutch admitted.
"No, you clearly don't. But I do." Shipley responded. She blasted the green arm with her plasma rifle turning it into a puddle of goo. Unexpectedly, a noisy scuffle coming from the next floor up, interrupted their discussion. The two Knights hurried up the brief stairway and pointed their rifles down the long hallway. Of the rooms still standing, only one had an open door. Through it the leaders of Intrepid Squad could hear the scuffle grow into a legitimate all-out brawl. They peeked into the room and spotted three super mutants being fended off by a weaponless Knight in dark-blue accented T-60 power armor.
"On my go." Dutch ordered Shipley, who nodded affirmatively. "Hutch get down!" He shouted, before giving Shipley the 'go' signal. Hutch dropped onto his back, having immediately recognized his captain's voice, while Shipley and Dutch filled the room with plasma and laser bolts respectively. When the shooting was finally done, Hutch rose timidly to his feet. After realizing that he was the only one left standing, he threw his hands up victoriously.
"O captain, my captain! Ha-ha! Damn is it good to see you two!" Knight Hutchison effused.
"Likewise Hutch. I see your armor is still in one piece. What happened to your radio?" Asked Dutch, who greeted Hutch with a bro-hug.
"Yeah, we've been trying to reach you for like an hour now." Shipley added.
"Yeah, I know. I could hear you." Hutch started tapping his helmet. "My damn mic must've gotten fried or something when I took a nasty hit to the dome earlier."
"Hllwoo? Ihym til perlies ohfer hehr!" A muffled voice spoke from behind Hutchison.
"Is that Phillips? Is he ok?" Dutch asked, looking past Hutch to a Knight in red detailed T-60 armor who was lying still in the far corner of the room.
"Yeah, yeah, he's fine. He's just probably bitching about his suit being frozen or something. He took a super-sledge to the back, and I think it locked his armor up. I'll get him." Said Hutch, who then knelt down next to his childhood friend and current squadmate. He rolled Phillips' immobile suit over, and grabbed its fusion coil release. He yanked on the bent piece of metal until it broke off, revealing a busted yellow fusion coil.
"Yup. The hit must've burst his fusion coil open. I'll give him one of my spares." Hutch retrieved a fresh coil from his suits reserve battery compartment, and replaced Phillips' old one. In seconds the red suit's headlight flickered on and the man within it regained control over it. Springing to his feet, Phillips addressed the group.
"We've gotta get the girl!" Announced Phillips.
"What girl? What girl is he talking about?" Asked Shipley.
"I don't know, I was on this floor when the roof caved in. I came running in here and that's when I saw Raymond get turned into a mannequin." Hutchison recalled.
"That's really funny, Mike. Seriously, you should have signed up for an open mic at Moriarty's when you had the chance. I'm talking about the girl who was getting chased by a giant mutant hound. I saw it chase her into these rooms and so I went in after them. I had almost gotten to her too, when the floor fell out from beneath me." Phillips elaborated.
"Okay, so she's up there?" Shipley asked, pointing to the room above them where a portion of the floor was missing.
"Yeah, and so is that mutt." Phillips confirmed. "I don't know if she was able to get away from it."
"I'll go take a look." Shipley activated her suit's thruster pack and lifted herself up to the top floor of the collapsed Infirmary. She turned on her headlight and scanned the room for life. From behind a desk two snarling, green, mutant hound heads revealed themselves, followed by a third. "There's more than just one hound up here, Phillips. There's three of them."
"Three? No, there was only one. What about the girl?" Asked the red colored Knight.
"I don't see her. I'm gonna blast these dogs though, before they leap at me or something." Shipley aimed her plasma-firing sniper rifle at the hound, and straddled the trigger with her finger. Just as she began to squeeze, she was halted by the appearance of a raven-haired teenager who wrapped her arms around the mutated dogs.
"Whoa, shit!" Jenny pulled her rifle away from the four beings hiding behind the desk. "Never mind guys. I found her."
"P-please don't shoot them, miss. They're not like the other ones outside, I promise! They're nice, see?" The girl started petting the hounds and scratching their ears.
"I…I won't hurt them, so long as they don't give me a reason to." Shipley offered.
"Thank you! They saved me from all of those…mutants."
"What's your name, sweety?" The sergeant asked.
"I-I'm… I mean, my name is Shannon. I'm a scribe, or, at least I will be soon."
"Okay, good. Hello Shannon. We're Knights, my companions and I. We're Intrepid Squad. I need you to come with me now, so we can take you to the Steel Chapel: to safety." Shannon stood up slowly and walked over to Shipley, who lowered the girl down to Phillips who then placed her on the floor safely. Shipley watched as what she believed to be three mutant hounds, came climbing over the desk, revealing themselves to in fact be one hound with three independent heads. The mutant hound leaped down after the girl and sat by her side, licking the maroon cloth of her scribe's robe. Finally, Shipley dropped down, shaking the entire second floor of the crumbling building.
"Man, that thing is ugly. Just keep it away from me, alright." Phillips said, referring to the hound.
"I think they're beautiful." Shannon whispered, scrunching the dog's middle face.
"Don't mind him, little girl. Phillips is just scared of dogs, that's all. Always has been, ha-ha." Hutch recalled, to which Phillips responded with a shove.
"She said it protected her from the super mutants. Looking at them together now, I kind of believe it." Shipley admitted.
"We should get back to the chapel, and bring the girl to the rest of the scribes. We'll let them decide what to do with the dog. Now let's get out of this place before the rest of it falls on top of us." Dutch ordered.
+ "How far away do you think that spire is anyway?" Asked Agrippina. "I probably should have asked Ramsey that before we left, huh?" A few members of the group smiled humorously at Aggie, as they walked through the shady Oaktree forest.
"I've got a better question." Liona said while attempting to safely walk over the humongous intertwining tree roots at her feet. "How come all of these trees are so big? I mean look I'm no botany scribe, but that doesn't mean I haven't read my fair share of books on the subject. I've never heard of trees growing to be this wide and tall in only 200 years. It doesn't make sense why they would be this big." Liona pointed out.
"Is it possible that they were planted here earlier than two centuries ago?" Rocky asked.
"No, that wouldn't make sense knowing what Ramsey told us. According to him, this place was excavated just a couple of years before the Great War." Liona reminded.
"These trees," Montecrief began, placing his palm on the bark of the closest tree to himself. "They're Oak trees. Old Oak trees. The town called Old Oakwood, the town I lived in for many years before today, was renamed that sometime after the war by early settlers for its many Oak trees. They used the trees for their survival needs; some say those old oaks are what saved them. Before the war, that town was a city named Raleigh: the capitol of a state named North Carolina."
"What are you getting at Monte? You're starting to bore me a little." Aggie said half jestingly.
"Well Aggie, while this may seem redundant to you based on what they taught you at the Institute, but to the rest of the party I believe that most of this is new information." Monte waited patiently for Aggie's response, but the synth simply gestured for him to continue. "As I was saying… These trees could have been brought from the city of Raleigh and placed down here, already fully grown. It's plausible that over the following two hundred years they could have grown to be something like what we're seeing now."
"That makes sense, I guess. But how would they have been able to bring entire trees down here? We got here through a tiny elevator, and I don't see a back door." Liona stated, poking holes in Monte's theory.
"Ooh, wait! I've got one!" Sweetheart exclaimed. "So this place was built for like, a bunch of scientists and whatnot, right?" Liona nodded. "And they were testing on the same stuff that made Rocky a super mutant, right?" Liona nodded again. "Okay, so what if the eggheads eventually, y'know over like the 50 years or so of nothing but testing on the stuff, got bored of using just animals as test subjects. What if instead they decided to try using it on plants…like these oak trees?" Sweety held his hands out with his palms up in a sort of, 'what do you think?' kind of way.
"It seems pretty far-fetched, but then again so is this entire place. It doesn't not make sense." Liona admitted. "It would certainly explain the rapid development of all of this plant life." Just as Liona finished speaking, a particularly large oak tree the width of a small house began shaking and rattling as something large scurried about its interior. The group collectively snapped their attention to the gigantic asymmetrical tree. Their gawks were focused solely on the human-sized hole which had been bored into it by a force unknown to them.
"What the fuck was that?!" Sweetheart shouted, backing away from the tree.
"I think it was a squirrel! How bloody cute would that be?!" Agrippina asked, clasping her hands together in an attempt to contain her excitement.
"A giant rabid squirrel who's big enough to eat humans? How cute would that be? Not very cute Agrippina, that's how much!" Sweetheart shouted.
"You don't know that it's rabid!" Aggie defended the squirrel whose existence she had yet to confirm. Rocky, compelled equally from both curiosity and caution, was the first to approach the tree. He grabbed onto the barkless sides of the hole and peered through it.
"Do you see anything, Rocky?" Liona asked.
"Tell me if you see any giant leftover acorns!" Agrippina hoped with her fingers crossed.
"I don't see -" Suddenly the entire vault went dark, and nobody could see anything. Rocky quickly removed his head from the tree's hole, scraping the back of it.
"Damn." He muttered, consoling his head. "What happened to the light?"
"Ramsey did say this place had an artificial day and night cycle, but that sure didn't seem like a gradual sunset to me." Liona remembered.
"Tremendous. There's no way we'll be able to find our way out of the forest in this darkness." Monte asserted.
"Hoot-hoot-hoot!" The whole group stopped speaking and listened.
"Did anybody else just hear an owl?" Asked Monte in a low voice.
"I think I did." Agrippina responded quietly.
"What's an owl?" asked Sweetheart.
"It's a nocturnal species of bird." Montecrief answered. "I thought they had gone extinct."
"They probably did on the surface, but who knows how many species of animals the scientists brought down here before the bombs fell." Whispered Liona.
"So what you're saying, Liona, is that there could be squirrels down here?"
"Would you shut up about squirrels, Agrippina?!" Sweetheart yelled, breaking the chain of whispered responses.
"Hey Monte, where are you? I need to see those matches." Rocky said. Monte forced his skin to glow a brighter green, signaling to Rocky his position. The LEO mutant reached over and grabbed the matchbox from the ghoul's hand, which he then used to light the two extra torches he had picked up in the catacombs. When he had finally lit both, he returned to Monte his matches, and offered the second torch to Liona. Liona grabbed it, illuminating her own face and the face of the synth holding tightly on to her sleeve.
"Good thinking Rocky!" Liona said. Suddenly the tree began shaking once again. The second time it shook so hard that several large branches snapped from its body, littering the forest floor below. Rocky held his torch near to the bark of the tree, exposing the face of a giant owl with two massive, twisting horns and yellow eyes. The torchlight spooked the man-sized owl, forcing it out of the tree hole and into the 'night' sky. The group lost sight of it as it flew above the tree line, where from they could hear many other winged beasts hooting amongst themselves. The group watched three of the birds swoop down below the tree line and perch on as many branches. Silently the two groups watched one another, carefully reading each other's posture and expressions for any sign of a threat. The largest owl hooted aggressively, prompting the other two to hoot along with it.
"Those things…are not owls." Monte whispered.
"I knew I should have left after we found the kid." Sweetheart whined.
"Rocky look out, I think one of them is moving!" Agrippina warned.
The largest one, the flock matriarch, dropped from its perch and stood just a few yards in front of the group. She spread herself out as wide as she could in order to display her impressive wingspan, before lunging at Rocky, talons first. Rocky swung his torch at the horned beast mid-flight, scaring it back into the treetops.
"Alright, this is good. I think they're afraid of fire. On the count of three, I want everybody to run in that direction, towards the spire. It can't be that far now. Liona you have a torch, so you'll have to take the lead. I'll watch your backs with mine. Ready? 1…2…3!" The group sprinted through the woods following Liona's torchlight, and being shielded from the winged beasts by Rocky's. Rocky had to run with his head constantly looking over his shoulder at the swarming birds as they came swooping down for him. For a while he managed to keep the nocturnal predators at bay with intermittent swipes of his torch, until eventually he tripped on an overgrown tree root and tumbled to the grass losing his torch. Immediately the birds abandoned their chase of the group and focused on what they saw as easy prey. Rocky rolled over onto his back just in time to see one of the owls grab his leg with its talons. In one motion he unsheathed his cleaver and lopped off the bird's raptorial limb, causing it to release a blood-curdling screech. The bird's disembodied talon remained stuck in Rocky's calf, while the creature itself flew away to safety. He hacked away at a few more of the birds, wounding each enough to quit the hunt. Meanwhile, the group had noticed Rocky's disappearance and found ways to help. Liona fired hot blue energy orbs into the closest tree, lighting it on fire and scaring away several of the owls, while Montecrief and Sweetheart fired shots into the crowd of furiously flapping wings. Eventually the burning tree fell down next the birds, and the resulting embers lit many of their plumages ablaze. Suddenly the artificial lights flicked back on, and the sky returned to a calm blue. The remaining birds stopped attacking Rocky and returned to their hole-homes in the trees leaving behind a cloud of dust, smoke, and feathers. Rocky quickly stood up and ran to the end of the forest, where he could see the others waiting for him. Exhausted, he held on to his knees and breathed deeply.
"You okay, Greeny?" Agrippina asked after patting Rocky's back.
"That was a little too close." Rocky said. "I think we'd better get to the spire before the lights go out again. I don't wanna find out what else here hunts at night."
"Never fear, we're already here!" Aggie said. "Did I just rhyme? I did, didn't I?" Rocky let go of his knees and looked up, spotting the spire in its entirety from below. It was no wonder why he had missed seeing it on his approach, Rocky thought. The building was even more decrepit than he had previously believed it to be; the land itself had completely swallowed it in moss, grass, and vines. The only part of it left unaffected by the overgrowth was a small compartment housing an elevator at its base.
"Look, there's another elevator." Rocky pointed out to the group. They walked along the paved walkway towards the black tower, shrouded in both mystery and foliage. Rocky pressed the call button on the metal door and soon the elevator opened, allowing the group to enter the spire.
"Well, I've now ridden in more elevators in the past two hours than I've ridden in the last two hundred years." Montecrief announced, prompting the entire group to chuckle. Again Monte pressed the only button provided, this time taking them up. Along with Boston and Cyrus, they would be the first living souls to enter the laboratory in over a hundred years.