Hello my readers it is Hypn0s, returning with yet another chapter from the Chornicles of Maverick!
now this chapter has some new goodies, including some characters and whatnot, now before anything, in this chapter i'm going to introduce a beast so twisted, so ugly, so demently strong and awesome, and complex, that i think Bethesa and Obsidian might have come with it, but due to it's complexity, and the fact that what we see on promotional art does not do justice to the in-game creature or object, the ranger's armor and longcoat, joshua Grahamn burn face being some examples.
also in this chapter i'm going to include a lot of esoteric things, after all we will be dealing with tribes, tribals are more connected with the spirits and all that, and will speak differtnly from the average wastelander.
so without any delay, i give you all chapter 8, enjoy.
CHAPTER 8: SONS AND DAUGHTERS
"I want the status of our communication arrays!" Sergeant Montgomery was not a man that could be easily angered, especially after training the Vault Dwellers, which in his honest opinion, were the greenest recruits he had ever encountered, but as he had done with some many others, he had turned green molerats into ferocious Yao Guai, there was no one so far that has reached the level of real danger and ferocity a Deathclaw possessed.
That was until he saw the video of what Maverick had done in the Capitol, and the dead of the Hellfire unit deployed to stop him, he wouldn't admit it out loud, but he was afraid, really afraid if this untrained individual were to harness all hat skill and train, really train, what if someone actually took him and turned that dull, yet deadly blade into a sharp and even more dangerous sword?
He dreaded that, and the attack to Raven Rock had been an example, a perfect maneuver of how to make your enemy look like an ass, and also inflict the fear of God onto the enemy's hearts.
He had seen several recruits, commandos and troopers basically shaking on their boots, gripping their weapons like if they were lifelines, the Hellfire battalion in special was eager, yet a bit edgy to engage Maverick again, and make him pay for what he had done, and as usual Sigma squad gave a damn about their opponents, looking at them as trash, after all Sigma squad was composed of the most battle hardened veterans the Enclave had, some of them were direct descendants of Poseidon Oilrig survivors, and had been part of operations against NCR patrols, Brotherhood knights and even killed a massive albino radscorpion of the size of a bus, Sigma squad was all every trooper wanted to be, and hope to have at their side if they ever encountered Maverick on the field.
The confrontation as inevitable, soon the President would deploy all forces, the son of James was outside, the only key to catch the project leader of Project Purity.
The other one was already dead when they found her corpse, and dead people tell no tales.
Looking around he spotted Amata, fully clad on her Tesla Power Armor, on one hand a Rocket Launcher, on the other a bandoleer full of plasma grenades, it was obvious what she wanted to do.
"I hope you're going to Deathclaw hunt, because if it isn't then I can't let you go Almodovar" the sergeant stated, making Amata growl, "You know better that we must wait presidential orders…"
"Fuck'em" Amata snarled, "Maverick is outside, he just taunted us after an attack, he attacked us and even dared to mock us, I will have his head on a pike" she snarled, moving away, only to stop when she heard a hammer being cocked.
Unlike most Enclave soldiers, Sergeant Montgomery favored the traditional and ever favorable 44. Magnum, with a scope of course, who doesn't want a hand cannon with a scope?
"The NEMEAN will not help you with a bullet lodged in your skull, so desist immediately soldier" Montgomery stated calmly, almost bored, Amata let out a curse on her breath, then returned to her quarters, all the way glaring at the sergeant and his little friend.
Once she was on her room, he lowered his gun and let out a sigh, Amata had been, honestly one of the few recruits that had taken his training like a fish to water, the commitment she had in those days to her training was unknown to him, she looked like someone who gave a damn about the people around here, simply using them as means to a goal, steps to an objective.
It wasn't until now he understood why Amata was so driven, the reason behind her actions and her way of being her, it was Maverick, something he had done had set her off, now the kid had a very angry girl on his tail, wanting to rip a new one to him, the question was of course would the kid actually defend himself and kill her?
After all this is the wasteland, the law of the gun rules it all, even in NCR territory, no matter how hard they try to make a civilized land, the law of the gun ruled supreme.
Sarah looked oddly satisfied, no really she did look like that.
Dusk had to hand it over to Maverick, for being a vault dweller; he surely acted like a wastelander, and seemed to be interested in stopping the Enclave, for real.
Besides he had actually made their own orbital platform turn on them, and blasted their base to kingdom come, although she had to wonder what the hell were those two blue fireballs that came first?
Nevertheless he had delivered, somehow he had attacked their base, a feat the brotherhood had tried to achieve, it only earn them a lot of good dead men, at least they got some vertibirds out of that mess.
As Sarah, Maverick and Veronica exited Three-dog's studio, the place the lone maverick had decided to transmit his little message, she had to wonder what would be the repercussion of such act, and attack against the Enclave base would earn him some assassins and commandos hounding his ass, but attacking their base with their own weapons, and then taunting them, basically belittling the very same existence of the Enclave and declaring that nothing they had would stop him would surely make President Eden blow his top off.
Now that is a sight she would pay a thousand caps to see.
Then she realized that Sarah's gaze was on her, glaring at her, "Why you didn't tell us that Li was in the Citadel?" Sarah asked/snapped.
"Slipped my mind?" Dusk shrugged her shoulders, not really wanting to tell her that the only reason she didn't told her about Li's whereabouts was because of Maverick.
In an instant Dusk flinched when a fist brushed on her left cheek, and opened a hole on the wall behind her, looking around she saw Maverick, holding the boomstick, with both eyebrows raised so high that they were about to fly out of his face, and so was Veronica, even with the hood on.
Looking at the source of the fist, she found herself staring at Sarah's angry gaze, "I expected more of you knight Dusk" Sarah hissed, pulling her fist out of the hole she made on the wall, now aware of how great the enhancements Sally made to the ATHENA truly were, true it wasn't Maverick strength, but it gets the job done.
Dusk just huffed, her nostrils expanding as she angrily stared at Sarah, then at Maverick, the wanderer basically understood that she was angry at him and he moved out of the way, heading to the exit to the plaza, "I'll wait you outside Sarah, come Veronica" Maverick said, motioning his companion to follow him, the scribe did it without even saying a word, not wanting to get in the shouting that would ensure.
Once Maverick and Veronica were away, Sarah attacked first, instantly shoving Dusk away, angrily staring at her, "The hell is your problem soldier?" Sarah asked angrily.
"My problem?" Dusk asked with indignation, "My problem is that so far I haven't see the same Sarah Lyons that led Lyons Pride a month ago, I just see an girl on a tin-can acting like a lovesick girl and protecting that vault bastard!" Dusk angrily retorted.
"Don't snap at me bitch, I put you on your place once, I'll do it again" Sarah snapped, reminding Dusk why Sarah was sentinel and leader of the pride, it wasn't because she was the daughter of the elder and leader of this chapter, no, it was because she trained hard, she became the best, and when a jealous Dusk had told Sarah that she was just a spoiled girl and the only reason she was sentinel was for her father's position.
That day Dusk had to be admitted to the infirmary with three broken ribs and her eyes swollen shut, Sarah hadn't taken that attitude kindly, and had put the hot firebrand in place.
Now here they were, once again Dusk and Sarah, ready to duke it out with each other, but this time however both knew that while the circumstances were different, the reason was the same, trust.
"You don't know what happened there Dusk, that was hell itself, I had to fight alongside a vault dweller, and I didn't like it at first, but he prove to be a valuable ally, more to that he is a friend, true I didn't want it at first, but he showed me that not every dweller is a sniveling bastard that crawled out of the ground…besides he told me something that I know other dwellers wouldn't do" Sarah said, "Really? And what he said that could impress you so much?" Dusk snarled.
"Simple, what vault dweller would leave the safety of the vault just to go for his father, and demand answers? More better, what son would leave the only place he knew as home, his friends, his land, just for his father" Sarah asked to Dusk, the sniper just blinked several times, and tried to answer, but nothing came out.
"Right, no dweller would do it, even more no son on this world would do so, survival of the fittest some say, I say otherwise, he is different, special…and as humans we fear the different" Sarah stated defiantly, "If you don't like him well I don't blame you, we lost too much to his people, but I let my anger get the best of me and I nearly lost my only chance of escaping…my only chance to get redemption" Sarah stated.
"Now you better shape up Dusk, or I swear I will reject you as my sister" Sarah's ultimatum had the desired effect to Dusk and the members of the brotherhood with her, to reject a brother or a sister was to reject the chains that bind, to reject that which held the brotherhood, it basically meant that to the eyes of that person, his rejected brother or sister was nothing less than cannon fodder, or less than cannon fodder.
To Dawn Dusk, who had lost it all to the wasteland, only to find it all again in the brotherhood of steel was something worse than death…and all because of a vault dweller.
"…Is he worthy enough to you reject me as your sister?" Dusk asked, "Yes, he would take a bullet for anyone on this room, even if he doesn't know them…I know he would have taken a bullet for Jason Dan" Sarah said, it was the first time Dusk heard the complete name of the deceased fiancée of Sarah.
"Dusk…for all that is worth…please don't let your hate cloud your sight…anger is a bad counselor" Sarah spoke softly slowly turning away of Dusk.
Both girls turned fast of course when Maverick busted inside, "Sarah, Dusk, get in here now, we got company" he said, immediately both women made their way outside, Dusk taking a note to do what Sarah suggested.
Once outside both brotherhood soldiers looked at the sky, just like Maverick, "There" he pointed at the horizon, two grey things moving in the air, "Vertibirds" Sarah said, turning to Maverick, "Looks like the Enclave didn't like your little speech…blast'em of my sky" Sarah commanded.
"With pleasure" Maverick hissed as he hefted The Boomstick upwards, Dusk gave the two approaching vertibirds a longer look, then got eye wide, "Wait!" she screamed, thrusting her hand and pushing Maverick's boomstick out of the line of fire.
"Dusk what the hell!" Sarah demanded angrily, "Those are not Enclave" Dusk said a visible smile, "Those are ours" she said, making Sarah blink, "We have vertibirds?" Sarah asked, "Yeah we do, we attacked Raven's Rock some days after you vanished, we got slaughtered and slaughtered people in return, we lost too good men and women, but we got some vertibirds out of the deal" she said.
"A pyrrhic victory" Maverick said, earning himself a look of Dusk, "You know, a hollow victory where both sides win but with heavy losses on both sides"
"I know what a pyrrhic victory is, I'm not stupid" Dusk hissed, seeing how the vertibirds began to go fly around the plaza, looking for a spot to land, and once they found it, began to descend.
Once they touched ground, the back doors of the vertibird opened, exposing the insides of the bird, and its crew, several knights armed to the teeth, and a face Sarah thought would only see in the Citadel at the side of her father.
"Star Paladin!" Sarah cried, advancing to the dark skinned woman with a short buzz haircut, looking really serious and like owning the field, once the woman laid eyes on Maverick her eyes widened.
"Cross? What the hell" Dusk wondered, seeing the great deployment of forces in the plaza, "She seems like…an important person" Maverick said, "She is dweller, Star Paladin Cross, she outranks Sarah by a longshot, you could say she is the second in command of the field forces, and the third person with the highest rank on this brotherhood chapter"
The way Dusk spoke of Cross made Maverick believe this woman was some sort of super-soldier, or someone who didn't let her rank get on her head, like many people, so he was surprised when the woman made a beeline to him, not Sarah, and eyed him head to toe.
Then she spoke, and what she told him surprised him, "It is good to see you again, son of James" she said, placing a hand on his shoulder, the fact that she knew his father was diminished by the fact that she knew him, and yet he didn't knew her.
"Uh…do I know you?" Maverick asked, the woman slightly smiled, a condescending smile, the smile his father always flashed at him every time he tried to figure girls out, or medicine, the kind of smile of an experienced person, your superior in that area if you want to get technical.
It was also the smile for 'I know something you don't know' and he hated it.
"We will have time to talk later, now we must leave" she said, moving to Sarah, "We spotted at least 50 urban commandos approaching GNR, we must evacuate now" Cross stated simply, her statement had a desired effect on Sarah, she soured up and simply reached for her Tommy laser Gun, "Let them come, I have enough EC packs for every single one of them" Sarah said.
"This is no time for bravado, we must evacuate, initiate Lars, get Three-dog and his wife out…"
"No, we must stay and fight, the Enclave will think this is a show of weakness after what we did" Sarah said, Cross was about to say something when Maverick stepped in, "I'm with Sarah on this one, they started this war yes, but we will end it, but first what the hell is an urban commando?" Maverick asked.
"Simply told, guerrilla forces, they use the ruins of the city as ambushes points, lay mines, use terror tactics around any patrol near DC, all of them have Multiplas plasma rifles, plasma mines and grenades, plasma, plasma, plasma, we nicknamed them 'the gooies'" Sarah said.
"Do I want to even know why?"
"No" Sarah and Cross said at the same time, then Cross sighed, "Look Sarah, we can't stay here, there are simply too many" Cross began, "But they wear normal combat armors" Maverick perked up at that, "And besides all that armament, they are just soldiers" Sarah continued.
"Superstitious soldiers" Maverick said, a small smirk forming on his face, one that Sarah mimicked once she imagined what he was planning, after all he had the biggest gun ever fabricated for human use (or at least genetically and cybernetic enhanced super-human use) and an armor that had the most advanced stealth technology ever, alien tampered stealth technology with alien alloys as plates for the armor, wore by a damn juggernaut that barely made it her height.
"Cross, place two knights here as guard, Dusk, Veronica, were going with Star Paladin Cross to the Citadel, Maverick, give them hell for me will ya" she said, everyone immediately blinked, did Sarah entrusted the defense of GNR to a vault dweller? While they are a formidable force, a single dweller does little difference against such numbers Cross described.
"Okay Sarah, see you on the Pentagon"
"Is the Citadel now!"
"Who gives a damn about the name, is still in the same place, I can use my pip-boy old map to find it, just tell the guys outside not to shoot me unless they want to see in how many pieces I can break their arms" Maverick said, walking away, before anyone could stop him he suddenly flickered out of sight, becoming less than a shade and wind on the area.
"That's some hi-tech stealth technology" one of the knights muttered, then turning to face Cross for orders.
The Star Paladin by her part stared at Sarah, the woman seemed to held Maverick in high regard, just like she had held his father before, and still does, if she could she would look on the wasteland for the man, to help him, men like him were rare, and needed to be protected, and aided in their quests to change the world for the better.
"Morales, Gonzales, stay in GNR, kill anything that dares to attack it, Dusk, Lyons" Cross began, her eyes landing on Veronica, "Santangelo, Veronica Santangelo, Ma'am" Veronica said, a small smile on her lips.
"Santangelo, you three are with me, we are returning to the Citadel, let's hope Maverick knows what he is doing" Sarah simply smiled, a small confirmatory smile.
"Oh, is the commandos you should be worried about Star Paladin" Sarah said with a smile as she looked at the darkening sky, the sun's descend making the once dark clouds to become orange somewhat.
It never failed to amaze her.
A jump here, ducking a lot, jogging rather than outright running like a maniac and a lot of checking around became part of Maverick as he trekked the remains of the once great capital city, now little than ruins and ashes remained of the proud Washington DC.
He found odd that he hasn't found mutants, let alone ghouls, or any kind of mutated fauna that might have found the ruins of the city as their home, after all it was far safer than being out on the open in the wasteland, lots of hiding spots, ambush spots, places to lay low, this area was perfect for predators that rely more on surprise rather than brute strength.
With a grunt he gave a mighty jump, easily covering a floor and landing on the remains of what used to be the third floor of a building that was tipped to the left, allowing him the easy jump to the third level, he found himself smiling that so far, while the buildings were completely and utterly trash and scrap, they had so far held their own on his weight combined with the weight of the Boomstick and his sudden landing, it surely shows how sturdy and well made the building were back in the day, after all he could see at plain sight that the city had been the target of some major nuclear strikes.
Walking to a nearby window, Maverick kneeled, placing the barrel of The Boomstick on the frame, and then waited, maybe he is not an experimented scout that has spend all his life on the wasteland and somehow got attuned with the area around him, and therefore knew where danger would come, how to track, and how to survive in the seemingly sterile wasteland.
But he had a radar, how the hell the guys of Vault-Tec were able to put a damn radar on a pip-boy then able to hay-wired it to the HUD, yet again he wondered how they were able to do everything he was used to for the past nineteen years, a HUD system with its own radar, Geiger counter, health meter (that still eluded him) human body condition, weapon condition and ammo count, not to mention the fascinating VATS, whoever had designed all this was a genius, that or someone with no social life whatsoever and a lot of time on his hands.
His mental musings were cut short when his radar caught up several signals, and his ears caught a sound that no one for the past 200 years had heard.
The sound of a bus engine.
Looking outside the cover of the window, Maverick eyes widened when he saw a rare sight, the truth about the post-apocalyptic world was that all of the old world was reusable, broken homes could be repaired, towns could be made, but the truth was that everything of the old world was reusable, cars, houses, buildings, what people called scavenging, sometimes a scavenger would find something valuable, something worth fighting for, something worth dying for, let it be food, weapons, shelter, the old world was dead, and nothing would bring it back, its ideals however still lived.
So it was a surprise to Maverick, after seeing so many damaged beyond repair vehicles that worked more as improvised shelters for small cars and permanent homes such as buses, to see a bus, an actual bus, moving inside the rounds, its fusion engine letting a small hum and the rocks around scrapping the metal around the bus.
The bus by its part didn't looked like an ordinary bus, in fact it looked a post-apocalyptic version, the front was outfitted with what seemed a reinforced bumper that covered the front and looked like a train bumper, surely to inflict horrible wounds to whatever stupid enough trying to attack it up front, the front windows were covered in metal sheets, with a pair of rectangular gaps to allow some vision, after all there was no company that could produce bullet-proof glass, and the only one that did it on Washington was turned into dust during the war.
Also the side windows and the sides of the bus were reinforced with metal sheets, most of them seems scrapped out of damaged cars, hell even the tires were armored, well the sides of course, on top of the bus was one man, poking out like a mole, and a freaking minigun placed on that area, on his hands, acting as a guard.
Maverick also saw a whole plethora of men and women marching alongside the bus, surely the commandos Sarah and Cross spoke of, all of them clad in black armors, just like Elliot, Maria and Johnson had, but some of them had some sort of painting on the plates, like a claw painted in white on it.
All of them were carrying plasma rifles, but these seemed to have extra barrels, somehow tucked neatly in a rectangular manner to allow multiple fire, accuracy must be a murder with it.
"Multiplas" Maverick murmured, seeing how one of the commandos with the painted claw approached some of them, "We got orders of Mr. Littlehorn, hit orders on this Maverick and Sarah Lyons, he wants his heads on plates for a change" the man stated, making Maverick narrow his eyes, the guy was going to die first, and he would remember the name Littlehorn for future reference.
Holding The Boomstick hard, Maverick took aim, he counted roughly 35 commandos escorting the bus, the rest surely was inside, not counting driver, so the bus was his first target.
"The kid that basically badmouthed Eden and Mr. Littlehorn?" one of the guys asked, "That guy must really have a pair to do that" Maverick smirked, they had no idea he could hear them.
Before Maverick pulled the trigger, something made the bus shake, that drew a glance of Maverick, even more when he heard muffle roars and groans inside and saw the commandos jump away in sheer fright.
"Fuck! Those Enclave eggheads are messed up!" one of the commandos snarled, pointing his Multiplas at the bus, Maverick found that odd, "Hey, I work there…but yeah, they are a little touched of the head, I mean what they were thinking with splicing Ant and Deat…"
The bus shook once more, and this time it caused it to stop, even more as the thing began to shake left and right with force, Maverick drew a worried glance at it, really wondering what they had inside the bus.
"I told Stalingrad that this was a bad idea!" one of the commandos, surely the leader of the group cried, holding the Multiplas closer to his chest, and so every single commando around the bus.
Then the shacking stopped suddenly, the gunner on top of the bus seemed the most scared of them all, after all half of his body was inside with whatever that was inside.
"O'Connor, what the hell is happening there?" one of the commandos asked to the gunner, O'Connor apparently was his name, "I don't know switchblade, the fucking thing just started-" that was as far the gunner could go before a horrible sound of metal being bended and tore apart was heard, and then he screamed.
The gunner was suddenly pulled down, and tried to held of the mounted minigun as a lifeline, pained screams mixed with terror left his mouth as blood began to gush out of the roof like a fountain, then his screams became gurgles as he was fully pulled down, more blood coming out, alongside a severed arm that landed near one of the commandos.
"Oh shit" was all the man said as they heard a female scream inside the bus, the bus shook even more, gunshots were heard, then suddenly the front metal sheet was torn open, and a barely alive woman emerged out of it, half of her face was missing, and both her arms were gone.
"H-help" was all she muttered before she let one last gurgle of a scream as fire emerged from behind her, enveloping her and causing her to come out of the bus completely, now everyone could see that she was lacking her legs up to her knees down as well, one of the commandos could not tolerate seeing her like this, and pulled his Multiplas, shooting her in the head and ending her suffering.
"Holy shit that thing is going to get loose" one of the commandos said, seeing how the bus shook and trashed with some unholy power behind it, Maverick didn't knew what was inside, but he knew that he had to kill it before it got…
Then the right side of the bus was torn apart by something, because of the bus Maverick had obstructed view, but he knew it was big, and was killing everything from the other side, as the shots and blood could attest to.
He didn't liked this, neither what he was going to do, but these guys were Enclave, and working with them, he had no idea how many people they had killed, and truth to be told he didn't want to know, so he took aim to the part where the bus fusion engine was, and fired.
The result was expected considering that the bus was running on fusion energy, near identical to nuclear energy, but safer, in a way, but the problem, just like nuclear energy was when there was a rupture in the containment device, in this case the engine, all hell breaks loose because there is no way to contain the chaotic reaction that causes the energy generation.
Usually this causes a very large explosion, which was what happened.
The bus was lifted into the air with the force of the semi-nuclear explosion, it could be argued that a fusion powered vehicle blowing up was as setting five mini-nukes off, a rather nasty and messy thing to do and see, as Maverick could attest to as several of the commandos went flying away by the force of the explosion, either in one piece or in many pieces, all of them without a doubt set in flames, including whatever had come out of the bus that by now had flew at least five stories, then landed roughly on the ground with a thunderous thud, all while a mini mushroom could rose and dissipated as soon as it came.
"Stealth mode off" Maverick said, immediately becoming visible to the naked eye, looking at the destruction he brought with The Boomstick with some sadness, most of the commandos he saw were not older than him, perhaps two or three years older, but unlike him they didn't had a 'normal' life and moral upright like he did back in the vault thanks to his father and Jonas, to do what was right instead of what was easy was hard, but it had to be done, and it seemed only a selected few outside the vaults would ever grew up with the fortune of having a father or a mother and teach them what was right and wrong.
Then yet again, the wasteland tends to twist the moral of people in ways no one can ever hope to see or expect.
With a sigh he picked the boomstick and jumped to the ground, landing with a hard and dry 'thump', raising dust as he did so, and began advancing, staring at the carnage he committed, but that he didn't began.
With a sigh he brought his pip-boy up, and looked for The Pentagon, finding its location and immediately his HUD marking the location he had to take to reach it, Maverick began to walk away, not sparing a glance to whatever had come out of the buss and surely he had killed.
Had he actually looked back he would have seen the arm of the thing that had came out of the bus, a strange mix of a Deathclaw arm with ant like exoskeleton plates and claws that looked more like very sharp pincers, pale white pincers, pincers that twitched, still attached to the thing he had supposedly killed, buried under ruble and the bus.
Sarah imagined herself sometimes, when near a bus or a car, to be driving it, or better, being a passenger, it was something that started when she saw them the first time near what use to be the Pentagon's underground parking lot, now a small town of refugees of several communities.
She wondered what it would feel to be actually driving them, using them, feeling the breeze on her face, moving around without a care, and basically becoming the first hit-and-run maniac on the post-apocalyptic world, she would admit that the idea of ramming a car at 100km/h against an Enclave trooper, Power Armor or not was a very entertaining thing that made her smile, then the trooper changed and became Amata, and the idea became more like a private joke and a way to tone out boring conversations.
Now she found surreal being aboard a Vertibird, an Enclave Vertibird, true she traveled on a flying saucer and a space-station tram, seeing the universe in its vastness, but being aboard an enemy ship, one that had brought so many grief to them was something even more crazy.
"So" Cross began, "Where did you met Maverick? Last I saw him and his father, they had entered Vault 101" Cross conversed, Sarah by her part couldn't even imagine how Cross had met James and Maverick to begin with.
"First of all how you know Maverick, of his father to begin with" Dusk asked, really wondering how the Star Paladin met the guys to begin with, the Paladin by her part just sighed, then looked at Sarah and Dusk.
"A long time ago, nineteen years to be exact, a wasteland scientist and a vault dweller of another land came to us with an idea, free, pure water, for everyone, that's how Project Purity began, with a dream, then the dream became an idea, the idea became a reality, and slowly it began to yield results, small, yet it showed that it could be done" Cross began.
"But as they told us, it is too hard to create a miracle with just spare parts, Project Purity was missing an important component, such component, according to James, would allow massive purification of metrical tons of water in the matter of seconds, imagine a whole irradiated river, no matter how irradiated and muck filled, in an hour or less, Project Purity would have turn that dark, poisonous water into pure, potable water, a true miracle to the wasteland" Cross said, the small, fond smile that once decorated her face began to die out slowly.
"Then things began to get complicated, the final component was near impossible to find, also the Super Mutants began their attacks, at first it was isolated assaults, but then they began all out sieges, we stopped them of course, they might be stronger than the average human, but they are not bulletproof… (Sigh) then Catherine died, and all fell apart" Cross said with closed eyes.
"Catherine?" Sarah asked, "Yes, James's wife and Maverick's mother, she died at childbirth, you can't even being to comprehend the pain James felt, a widow and father at the same time, all in the span of minutes, without his muse, he simply…gave up, not enough to give up on his son, but enough to give up on Project Purity" Cross said, looking at the cockpit of the vertibird, seeing the Citadel outline just kilometers away.
"The rest, as people say is history, I escorted James and his son to Megaton, there we remained the night, as a sandstorm died out, we met both the good and the bad of the Capital Wasteland, the Sherriff of that time, one Sonora Cruz and her deputy, Lucas Simms, they kept law on Megaton, we met the religious part of Megaton as well, Confessor Cromwell of course baptized Maverick, despite James's protest, with irradiated water, yet at his age, Maverick didn't show any kind of skin irritation like the rest if kids baptized with irradiated water" there Cross chuckled at that, "I remember Cromwell saying that Atom was not giving his blessing to the youthful one, in that moment I knew…that kid would be special" Sarah slightly smiled, Cross didn't even knew how true that was.
"We're landing people, strap on" the pilot shouted over his shoulder, immediately, Sarah, Cross, Dusk and Veronica did so, Veronica with a lot of anxiety, "I say it once, and is say it again, I hate flying!" she screamed as she held on dear life.
"Oh come on Veronica, it can't be that bad?" Sarah said with a smirk, "Oh sure laugh it up you bitch!"
The way Sarah laughed made Cross slightly smile, it had been so long since someone had a reason to laugh in these times, mostly they were bitter chuckles, even the birth of new babies had been bitter affairs, how could it be happy when the father was dead and the mother didn't had any scrap of life in them to look after their newborns?
Soon the vertibird shook slightly, indicating that they had indeed landed on the Citadel courtyard, with a grin Sarah was the first to stand up and exit the vertibird, followed by Dusk, then by Cross and a very spooked Veronica, apparently flying with gravity makes her greatly twitchy.
The moment Sarah exited the vertibird was the moment that she remembered many things, they day Dan proposed, the day the Pride was formed, the day she became a sentinel, the day she fired her very first weapon, the day she got fired (by accident) the Citadel courtyard held many memories, fond memories for Sarah.
So it was comprehensible for Cross and Dusk to see Sarah in a state of shock upon seeing the courtyard littered with wastelanders and makeshift homes, alongside many brotherhood soldiers, not to mention medic tents and some wastelanders helping in loading some weapons into crates.
"This is new" Sarah commented, "We ran out of space in the underground parking lot, we had too many refugees to hold in the lot, most of them are tribals that were newly settling in and got pushed by Enclave advance" Cross said, "There is more, the badlands are home of various tribes and perhaps the most dangerous creatures the American Wasteland has ever seen, but is not enough to push whole tribes to this point" Sarah stated.
"Of course, those who speak English speak of men, armies of men, armor as red as the blood they spill, attacking them without any sort of reason, slaughtering their men, enslaving their children, whoring their women, men who utter a name in reverence" Cross said, "Caesar"
Sarah furrowed her brow, glancing at Veronica for one second, then turning her gaze at Cross, "Maverick was right after all" Sarah muttered, "Excuse me?" Dusk asked.
"Maverick is quite a pre-war dictionary…that's the name right?" Sarah nodded at Veronica's question, "Apparently in the vault he had classes, everyday, math's, history, languages, science, name it they had it, most of it was of the pre-war era, Maverick apparently made an essay about the Roman Empire, long ago, even before firearms were an idea, the empire was led by a man, someone everyone look up for, a Caesar" Sarah said, Cross immediately took a deep breath.
"You encounter these men in the place you were held" Cross stated, more like an answer to an unmade question, "Yeah, we were eight in that moment, me, Maverick, Veronica, Somah, a little girl named Sally and three soldiers we found pinned down by turrets" Sarah began, walking away of the vertibird and heading to the labs, as in autopilot, Dusk, Cross and Veronica followed close.
"I volunteer to find some clothes and food with Veronica and Somah, the place was huge and had all kind of pre-war and post-war tech and armors, Maverick had found an armor used on the Anchorage campaign, but got damaged, so I decided to help him with some wasteland like clothes, all while he and Sally tampered with two Gauss Rifles"
"And so the Twin Boom was born" Veronica piped up, "The what?" Dusk wondered.
"A jury-rigged double cannon Gauss rifle with more kick than a Super Mutant punch, Maverick is smart I'll give him that, he modified his sidearm, That Gun to actually shot magnetic propelled rounds, basically a gauss handgun" Dusk actually looked at Sarah in disbelieve, in the Capital Wasteland no one had seen a Gauss Handgun, most of them were either on the other side of the country, or too damaged to be worth repairing, "But Sally…Sally is the smartest, she helped with the Twin Boom and the Boomstick, Maverick current weapon, anyway" Sarah continued, regaling Dusk and Cross the tale of how the group had first contact with the Legion, and how they got disposed, not to mention the fact those Legion soldiers were looking for Maverick in particular, thanks to Amata.
"Almodovar seems obsess with Maverick and his demise" Cross said, "No shit Star Paladin, Maverick told me she blames him for the death of her boyfriend, a man Maverick presented to Amata herself, but he told me that he wasn't even near the place her boyfriend was found death" Sarah added, opening the entrance to the lab room.
"Understandable, Maverick was the only one out during the lockdown, he killed two guards and severely crippled one and the Overseer" Cross began, "Son of a bitch did things we want to do" Dusk muttered with a sneer.
"So Amata pinned the blame on him, and his father, after all this might not have happened if neither had left" Cross added, "Are you sure? If that's the case then this war should be blamed to them" Sarah snapped, making Cross rethink her words from before.
"I didn't meant it like that" Cross stated, reaching the stairs and going down with the group, "I said that project Purity had always been abandoned, only inhabited by Super Mutants, whenever James wanted it or not, his presence triggered a chain of reactions that ended in this precise moment" Cross stated.
"Is not his fault" Sarah stated, "And you would do good in not saying that in front of Maverick when he returns, friend of his father or not, he will not take your words well"
"Truth is a harsh thing" Cross said sagely, "I didn't meant it like that, I mean that he will tear you apart like a Deathclaw tearing a molerat" Sarah warned, finally reaching the labs properly, there she let out a long sigh at the familiar setting, the same gigantic useless robot, the same scribes scurrying like little mouses looking for food, the same knights standing guard, all was the same, it was like time had ignored this part of the world altogether.
"I'm home"
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The subway systems, once the pride and joy of the Dc urban area, stations scattered all over the city and even far more, allowed before, fast mobilization of the masses of workers and citizens that lived before, the carts used to transports between twenty to fifty people, each, and in a day over a million people would mobilize from one place to the other, in a slow day.
When the Great War reached its apex, the underground metro was found to be another bastardized fallout shelter, and while it protected the people in it of the massive shockwaves and heat waves that killed many in the first two hours, it was unable to shield people of the massive radiation unleashed by the bombs, not to mention that the metro lines were not built to withstand such shockwaves, it was not strange that entire lines were cut off one from the other, and people inside the carts were buried alive, the unlucky ones, the lucky ones were crushed and killed instantly.
The survivors either emerged to a raped world, or stayed underground, those who emerged outside became the first survivors, and the first to feel firsthand the harshness of their once forgiving world, and the weight of their actions, there were no more politicians, police, soldiers, medics, everyone was equal, and as screwed as the next one.
Those who remained underground formed small settlements, scavenged all what they could of what didn't fell down, and remained underground, in time their eyes adapted to the low light, and they became 'the tunnelers' and underground society that could trace its roots back to the Great War, perhaps the only underground tribe ever know in the world, of course they weren't strangers to the dangers of the outside world, most of them became ghoulified by the lingering radiation, and those left once they began to feel their sanity slipping by, choosing exile and becoming another danger in the wasteland rather than become a danger to the tribe, that was during the first 100 years of their lives, then they found a truck full of Rad-X and Rad-away, and allowed them to prevent the ghoulification process, at least for their children.
The Brotherhood had met with them by mere chance, when a woman, on its rite of passage stumbled with a pair of knights exploring the metro lines, the woman, who like the rest knew English, was able to communicate with the knights well enough to them to understand her, and not confuse her and a feral ghoul, after all it was dark, and any humanoid shape could be confused by a ghoul in its feral stage.
Regardless, the tunnelers and the brotherhood began a beneficial alliance twenty years before the war against the Enclave, food and fusion batteries for whatever they could find on the tunnels, weapons, ammo, scraps of metal and electronics, the brotherhood led by Elder Lyons was needed of the raw materials to upgrade many of the outdated defenses of the Pentagon and repair their weapons and armors, the tunnelers, hungry and needy for energy exchanged this, the tribe had chosen to use sharpen pieces of metal and whatever blunt object to defend themselves, alongside traps that might not stop a Power Armored individual, is enough to even cripple, if not outright kill an Overlord, they didn't knew if it could stop a Deathclaw, after all the beasts never ventured into the concrete jungle, rather choosing open spaces where their speed and size was exploited to the full rather than becoming targets on cramped spaces.
The tribe was no stranger to the Enclave, to the commandos, or the hordes of feral ghouls pushed away by the Enclave bombs, or underground raiders, which were their natural enemies.
"The fuck was that?"
And apparently, the raiders had finally won.
The tunnelers had been prepared for raiders, most raiders were armed with normal ordinance, handguns, some hand-made grenades and any kind of melee weapon such a police batons, which were abundant in the Capital Wasteland, knifes, sledgehammers and knuckle dusters, it was odd to see a whole raider party, armed with military ordinance, mostly because most of the spots to get such weapons were heavily guarded, and getting killed for guns was not worth the risk.
Yet they were not prepared to such coordinated assault that relied on both luck and preparation.
The raiders had somehow found military grade weapons, assault rifles, grenades instead of Molotov cocktails, and numbers, it seemed they were either tired of the resistance of the tunnelers, or got paid by someone, it could be second, as several women and children wore slave collars, and the few men that survived the attack were on make-shift jails that were in fact shopping carts welded together to hold a full grown up person and with barbwire around it.
The reason the raiders, which once numbered to fifty, but got reduced to a dozen, thanks to the traps and the defenders melee weapons coated with radscorpions venom, were already on the edge after this costly victory, their leader had already took three of the capture girls to one of the carts and had his way with them, killing one in the process, to unwind after such loses, not to mention that the tunnelers had been living around a feral ghoul infested zone, and most of the traps were made to deal with the ghouls.
The sounds of the screaming woman on one of the carts and several children crying were suddenly silenced by the very loud shots that echoed on the metro tunnels, along with the sounds of dying ferals.
"Timberjack, check that out" one of the raiders, the third in command (the second in command had her head crushed under an engine during the raid) commanded, the male raider just gave a rude grunt, and the finger as he moved to one of the tunnel entrances.
The gunshots continued, and Timberjack returned five minutes later, looking pale as a sheet of paper, and considering that raiders have tanned skins and never took any kind of showers.
"So'ething…there is a guy…big gun…ghouls…bam!" Timberjack said, the other raiders didn't knew what to say, Timberjack had a long history of abusing chems, more than usual for raiders anyway, he could be hallucinating, yet again the shooting wasn't stopping at all, and neither the screams of dying ghouls.
"Co'e on I'll show you" Timberjack said, turning around, that was the last thing he did in his life.
The moment he turned, a massive spike emerged out of his back, a pale white curved spike, lifting him up, even in the darkness of the metro lines, they could see what had killed Timberjack.
"The fuck is that?"
"Timberjack!"
"Fucking shoot it!"
And so they shot it, and sealed their fates.
One ghoul, two ghouls, three ghouls! It didn't matter how many of them he shot, they just kept coming!
The good thing was that they came on mobs, so using the overwhelming penetration capacity of the boomstick allowed him to dispatch more than two or three ferals with a shot, after all they were emaciated corpses, there was little that could stop a magnetic propelled projectile fueled with alien energy, let alone several corpses.
But damn where they persistent.
So as they kept coming he kept shooting them, he was not going to relent at all, they were all going down, no matter how-
CLICK!
The dreaded sound that made hardened soldiers to sweat ice and skin turn yellow in the heat of battle reached Maverick ears, he, somehow had spend the whole magazine of the boomstick against the ghouls.
Grunting in anger he hefted the boomstick to a more comfortable position, one at least to swing around, then he began to swing, there was a reason he and Sally added the blades to the boomstick, the barrel was not only reinforced to withstand the massive recoil, just like the rest of the body, but it was also reinforced to withstand Maverick swinging the weapon and using the blades to cut anything on his path.
They never found a chainsaw to add in the first place.
The remaining ghouls, some twenty or some stood little to no chance against Maverick as he swung the boomstick and cut them apart like nothing.
As the last ghoul was cut down, Maverick reflected on his decision of using the metro lines again to move, he could have easily run and jumped instead of using the damaged metro tunnels, but he decided to cut time, and now he was paying for it, not that the ghouls could actually hurt him, they were more like annoyances.
"Sarah never mentioned there were so many ferals in the metro tunnels" he mused to himself, then suddenly perked up when he heard shots echoing in the distance, alongside with screams, furrowing his brow he made his way towards the sounds of gunshots, the screams became louder and so the sound of…something, the growling was familiar.
Escalating some stairs and turning some corners he began to see blood, lots of blood smeared around, the shouting was as intense as ever, now he could heard women and children screams and sobs, that made him go even faster, then he arrived, and froze upon seeing what had caused the blood around.
The floor was littered with blood and body parts, human body parts, alongside guns and empty casings, he spotted the mauled remains of raiders, their clothes, no matter how torn and their skin, matted with blood and grime was a quick giveaway, especially after he saw the only non-mutilated raider corpse, with a hole on his chest, he also spotted some women with nasty gashes on their chests, fear etched on their faces, slaves by the metallic collar on their necks.
Maverick eyes finally locked with the reason of this massacre, standing with one massive paw pinning a still living raider stood a Deathclaw, but nothing he had seen before, the body for instance was covered in some sort of white exoskeleton that left gaps for movement, and exposed soft, pale flesh, the claws were in fact a hybrid between Deathclaw claw like hand and scorpion pincers, each long like nail claw was in fact a thick pincer with small hair around it, as long as a Deathclaw claw and nails, two parts of the creature stood up the most, beside the exoskeleton covered body, one was that the Deathclaw like creature had, instead of a short tail that allowed some sort of balance and steering for the fast creature, was replaced by nothing else that a scorpion tail, a massive sting that oozed a colorless fluid on the tip of the tail, the head was the most scary thing Maverick had ever seen, while it looked like a Deathclaw head, horns included, it lacked the massive maw of the Deathclaw, instead replace by what seemed a hybrid of ant's pincer like mouth with rows of sharp teeth inside it, and the eyes, the eyes as in four eyes were in fact two massive ant like eyes with two smaller scorpion eyes.
The creature stared at Maverick, and Maverick stared back at the…chimera, then the thing roared, opening its mouth and exposing even more teeth inside, and forcing its weight on its legs, instead of one, the raider under its leg was crushed messily, and it charged as fast as a normal Deathclaw.
Maverick lost no time and swung the boomstick at the chimera, meeting the face of the beast, his surprise came when the beast staggered a little, and only a minor abrasion was visible on the pincer like mouth of the beast.
"Oh shit" he muttered, putting some distance between him and the chimera, then pulling That Gun and firing it at the chimera, the shots, instead of piercing the exoskeleton actually bounced off, albeit leaving visible dents and cracks on it, the chimera roared, either in pain or annoyance he couldn't tell, and when it got close enough it swung one of its arms at him, backed to a wall Maverick did the only thing he could think off, he ducked fast, feeling how dust and debris were lifted by the claw upon meeting concrete, with a roar then he brought hr boomstick and swung it at the legs of the beast with all he got, making the beast lose balance and meet the ground, now on the ground Maverick took advantage, and kicked the chimera like a ball, sending it flying towards one of the makeshift homes around, causing it to collapse.
Seeing that since he didn't have ammo for the boomstick (Veronica had it on her backpack) he tossed the gun to the ground then reloaded That Gun and aimed it at the chimera rising form.
The beast itself wasn't finished, standing up it let out a deafening roar and then breathed fire at Maverick, with a yelp Maverick jumped away, only part of his pants and his boots catching fire, surprised by this event, Maverick didn't saw the stringer of the thing come at him until the armor plating took the brunt of the hit and knocked him away at least several meters.
Groaning for the sudden hit, Maverick had little time to roll away as the stringer nearly met his head, then such event repeated itself, over and over, the chimera trying to stab Maverick on the head with its stringer and Maverick rolling on the ground trying to not get his head impaled by the thing, he really doesn't know how his hard skin would handle such massive thing.
After a while Maverick just grew angry, rolling one last time of the stringer he suddenly reached it with his left arm, gripping the appendix hard enough to crack the hard exoskeleton around it, it did crack under the pressure, he assume the tail, being the most flexible part of the chimera body, sans arms and legs, was the one with more soft like exoskeleton, unlike its torso, he was right.
With a roar he yanked the appendix to him with all he got, the sudden pull made the chimera to actually spin in the air and land hard on the ground, Maverick reincorporated fast, the tail still on his hand, now gripping it with both hands he pulled again, this time lifting the chimera and forcing it to its chest, there he rammed his leg to the back of the beast, gripped the tail by the base and pulled.
The chimera let out an unholy scream of pain as its tail was ripped off, the limb letting out blood out, this one a darker shade of red, tossing the tail aside Maverick kicked the beast again, lifting it up and then slamming it back to the ground with a hammer like strike with his hands.
The chimera by this moment was beyond angry, after that hammer like blow the beast recovered fast, much to Maverick's shock and covered the distance between them rather fast, even to a Deathclaw, the chimera then opened its massive pincer like jaw and bit his whole waist.
Maverick let out a grunt of annoyance as he was bitten and basically driven to a wall by the chimera, annoyance became utter rage when the thing began to breathe fire while biting his waist, burning whatever remained of his pants and part of his shirt, still pinned to a wall Maverick suddenly rammed his fists to the armored head of the chimera, so far no dice, yet he could see the muscles on the backside of the chimera working overtime.
"This is a planned maneuver, it pins and bites the target, immobilizing it and hopefully crushing it or burning it, if it doesn't dies then it tries to stab it with its stinger" he thought, now glad he got rid of the tail in general.
Soon he grew annoyed by the chimera not wanting to relent on biting him, and honestly the biting and fire was getting rather uncomfortable, so he tried something else, grabbing the horns of the chimera, Maverick pulled upwards, hoping to make the beast's head move to the way he wanted, what he didn't expect was to actually rip the horns off, the chimera howled in pain, but didn't relent on biting him, but now Maverick had another idea, with horns in hands, he aimed the sharp tips at the scorpion eyes of the chimera and plunged them all the way, now that made the chimera release him, or rather toss him away.
Rolling out Maverick saw that chimera roar in pain, trying in vain to pluck out the horns with its pincer like hands, seizing his chance Maverick aimed That Gun and activated V.A.T.S. immediately he took an even greater aim to the two remaining eyes and fired.
If the beast was in pain before, now it was suffering alright, blinded and all, all it could do was breathe fire randomly and sweep its claws around, not an effective way to kill your opponent, something Maverick noted, with a grin and a yell he rushed at the chimera, tackled it to the ground and then began to choke it with one hand, the chimera tried in vain to fight back, and tried to ignite Maverick point-blank, only to stop altogether when Maverick shoved That Gun at the open mouth of the beast.
"Open wide and say ahhhh"
BANG!
The back of the head of the chimera exploited with blood and some brain matter, and stopped altogether of fighting, now dead and gone.
Maverick pulled his right arm out of the chimera's mouth, cleaning some blood and saliva of his arm with what remained of his clothes, then holstered That Gun.
"…Hey" Maverick turned around, spotting the survivors of the attack of the chimera, still on…where those shopping carts?
"Can you help us?" truth to be told the tunnelers would rather try their luck being slaves and trying to remove the slave collars than rather ask for one of the sons of war to help them, but they had just seen him kill that…demon, barehanded, and well, he looked different.
"Sure" Maverick said without missing a beat, in less than five minutes, the remaining tunnelers that were bounded were freed by Maverick, which still left a problem, the device on their necks.
"Hmm, explosive collars" Maverick mussed, looking at one of the collars, at least one that was not attached to the neck of one of the survivors, "I can remove them, but it will be a delicate and nerve shattering operation" he stated.
Soon the tunnelers would find out that the 'sensitive and nerve shattering' way as he put it was simply hold an end of the collar with his hands, and rip them apart.
So it was comprehensible that when he did it the first time, the tunneler, a male, screamed like a little girl when he did that.
Well at least he didn't try to bash it open with a rock.
After that Maverick took on his way, leaving the tunnelers to try to remake their lives, he told them they could take whatever they wanted off the bodies of the raiders, and had helped tossing away the corpse of the chimera, after he took the venom out of the tail and stringer with some empty syringes.
For their part, the tunnelers of that specific section were never seen again, they just took their things, the raider weapons and head on to 'Haven' an area designated by the tunnelers in general to gather after the first battle of the Enclave and the brotherhood, and which was rumored a family of individuals who were adverse to sunlight lived.
Yet these tunnelers would carry with them the story of one of the sons of war, their estranged brothers and sisters that lived in the fancy tunnels and had emerged out of the tunnels to wage war and spill blood, the story of one of them who spilled blood, to save them of a demon.
"Sarah!"
"Father!"
For the first time ever since the war and the disappearance of Sarah Lyons, Elder Owyn Lyons was seen with a smile, the cause of this was of course the return of his only daughter to him.
The hug they partake was emotional for many, after all Sarah had become the emotional anchor for Elder Lyons before and during the war, after she vanished he just…became a shell, but now they could see him again as the man he was before, not a frail old man, but their leader, their elder.
"It is…oh praise Maxson you're back" Owyn said with a small smile, "That I am dad, thought not alone" she said, breaking the hug and allowing her father to take a good look at her, and what she had with her.
"A T-51b" he murmured, then spotted her new weapon, "And a RCW, my you do come with surprises, a heavily modified power armor and a laser machinegun" he said, "Is not all I brought from captivity" Sarah said, motioning Veronica to come over.
"I know is a little rushed and you want to find out who kidnapped me so you can bring steel vengeance on them, but I assure you, they are already dealt with, with the upmost prejudice possible" she said allowing to Veronica stand by her side.
"You brought friends as well" he added, by now several knights and paladins were celebrating the return of their most fierce warrior and sister, it hadn't been the same without her, and the scribes were working overtime to update her chapter and erase the KIA status on her.
"Not a friend, a sister, Veronica Santangelo, Mojave Chapter" Sarah introduced, many knights actually rose an eyebrow, the Mojave Wasteland was known for being perhaps the less bombed and irradiated wasteland know in North America, a natural desert that got even harsher after the great War.
"I see" he said, looking at Veronica, "You are a long way home-"
"Scribe, Elder Lyons, yet distance hasn't stopped me from hearing about you guys…and I want to help" Veronica stated, this statement was met with some hesitation by various people, after all the reason they had to recruit locals was because Lost Hills had cut them of any kind of reinforcements, and the Outcasts, even in this war, were as bitter as ever of them.
"Is that so" Elder Lyons said, "Yeah, I know you won't believe me, but I know what you're doing is right, the Brotherhood of Steel will die if we don't get new blood and change our goals, enduring on a hole is a vault dweller thing, not ours" Veronica said, "Besides, you're helping people, they should make you High Elder instead if alienating you" she added.
"Try telling that to the elders on Lost Hills, they firmly believe that we can endure everything, the war, NCR, even-"
"The Legion" Sarah stated, drawing a surprised look of her father, "I know about them, we met them back where I was, this part however got snared with Amata"
"So the Enclave was involved in your disappearance"
"Hardly, we just found them by mere chance, crazy thing about being a prisoner, you meet odd people" Sarah said, there Owyn understood what she meant, "You mean…Maverick, right?" he asked.
"Yep, the black sheep of Vault 101, just like his dad" Sarah said, there Cross stepped in, "Elder, Maverick is James son" she said, two people, beside the elder looked at Cross with wide eyes, one of them a woman on a lab robe, her hair like if she hadn't washed herself or combed it for days.
"So…Madison was right, James left the vault, and it seems the son followed close" Owyn muttered, "Not so close, he got kidnapped the moment he got out, spend six months as a lab rat, when I met him he had no idea about the war" Sarah stated, some knights snorted at that, not believing that a vault dweller was on their side, let alone unaware of the war his kind fomented.
"Hard to believe" Owyn began, "You'll see when you meet him, he should be here by know" Sarah said, starting to walk away, "I'll go wait in the entrance, Veronica, talk to my father, explain him what you want to do, he'll understand, remember you already have my support" with that Sarah walked away of the labs, by his part Elder Lyons just gave Veronica a look, he would have all the time on the world to talk with his daughter, this required his attention.
"Okay…how to put this…what do you feel about a girl from California with stars in her eyes and a pneumatic gauntlet joining your chapter elder?" she asked with a nervous smile.
"…I say that has to be the most strange way to ask it" he confessed honestly, "Nevertheless we need people such a yourself, by my part, you are already part of this chapter, we will work the finer details later" he said as he turned around, "Rothchild, take over for me here, I'll join my daughter in waiting this man" he said as he walked away of the lab, leaving some shocked knights and scribes.
"What? What's the shock?" Veronica asked, "Elder Lyons hasn't left the lab ever since Sarah vanished"
He was in a hurry, really, he said that himself the moment he took on like the devil was behind him, reason why he was already on the citadel entrance, at least he believed it was the entrance.
The door, on simple terms was the thickest piece of metal he had ever seen, and recognized it immediately as a piece of a mechanical pile driver, used before the Great War to basically remove massive pieces of rock and land, to create trenches in controlled areas, maybe that's how the trenches back at the mall were made.
"Well, but if it is a vault dweller-" one of the knights said upon seeing Maverick's pip-boy, he was about to fire his minigun, but actually thought that back once he saw Maverick's boomstick, and the way he carried himself, he looked more in a hurry rather that waning to fight.
This seemed the case when he approached the intercom near the massive doors, a design flaw many knights had complained about, the knight was about to stop him, that was until Maverick pressed the button and began to speak.
"Okay Sarah I'm here, open the doors" Maverick stated, the two knights guarding the door were about to raise their weapons and tell him off when the massive doors actually opened, at least enough for him to step in, once he did so the massive door was closed behind him, leaving two knights wondering what the hell just happened.
Inside Maverick saw that behind the doors, at least five knights, armed with what seemed laser miniguns stood, pointing at him, ready to fire.
"At ease knights" Sarah suddenly said, appearing from one of the doors on the bottom of the rubble hall, the knights took this as a sign, and were eager to see what the dweller was going to get from Sarah Lyons, the woman who lost her loved one at the hands of a vault dweller.
What a shock they got when she actually smiled and stepped aside, "I see you got a rough trip" she said causally, leading Maverick with her, "You don't say" was all the dweller drily stated as they went to the courtyard.
"Okay…what just happened?" one of the knights asked to the other, no one could really answer.
After all not everyone in the Citadel had heard the message of 'The Maverick of Vault 101'
"I need ideas people, how we deal with this?"
"We receive reports from outpost 24; they haven't seen the convoy at all after their last report"
"Outpost 15 and 20 states the same"
Coronel Autumn bit a curse as he tried to process all the scattered info he was receiving from the comm. Operators.
It seemed the commandos send to attack GNR with the newly created BOW had never arrived, an eyebot had already been deployed to scout the last known location of the convoy, at least of what outpost 34, the last outpost to ever seen the commandos had said.
"Is like our luck had turned on us the moment that guy made himself know" Autumn bit the urge to shoot the operator because there were already so few of them that killing each other just for petty comments would just be infantile.
Yet he had to give the guy some credit, hard to believe or not, ever since Maverick made himself know, or better said ever since he set foot on The Capital Wasteland, things had turned bad for the Enclave, not bad in the sense they are screwed over, but in the annoying way of bad.
It was fortunate that Maverick was back, now they could lure James out of whatever hole he was in, he wasn't on a Vault, the closest vault, 112 was basically sleeping pods, and last they checked, James wasn't there, at least he wasn't there in the first place, they should check it again.
Some people couldn't see that they were the good guys, they were bringing law and order back to the wasteland, just like NCR was doing it, but they would not only bring law and order, they would bring peace, prosperity, technology, safety, all that which NCR couldn't accomplish, they would also bring America, the old America, the old government would rise again.
True their methods were questionable, but in a harsh world, were everyone did everything they could to survive, to kill, to rape, to steal, what right they had to judge them?
"Eyebot 34 just arrived to the area the convoy send its last signal" one of the operators spoke, "Opening visual link…god mighty" Autumn grimaced, the eyebots, just like their names said, were machine eyes, they were the eyes of the Enclave when they were getting ready to their return, their little scouts that were expendable, and easy to built, he knew that there had been another eyebot project, one where the speed of the machines would be exploited to its max, adding a duraframe armor plating to the bot and some extra firepower, creating versatile combat/scout bots, of course that project was scrapped and changed for the Hellfire armor program.
And here he was, seeing from the optic sensors of the eyebot at the last know location of the convoy and the remains of the commandos.
"…No life signs sir, they are all dead" the operator stated, feeling overwhelmed by the sight, "A lone man did this?"
"He didn't" Autumn stated, "he just fired a single round to the fusion engine, boom" Autumn had to praise Maverick, just one bullet to massacre almost forty men and their cargo…
"Make the eyebot look at the remains of the bus" Autumn commanded, not a second later the eyebot was rounding the damaged bus, trying to find anything out of the ordinary, at least Autumn was.
"There" he said, spotting the massive gaping hole to the right side of the bus, and the glaring amount of mauled bodies, "Looks like JK-1 got out before time" Autumn muttered, "Trace JK-1 integrated tracer" he commanded, soon a small red don't was shown in what seemed a rough sketch of the metro lines.
"We found it, metro lines, it is static"
"Must be feeding up" Autumn summarized, signaling to one of the operators to make the eyebot reach that particular destination, the operator did at so, and so the eyebot moved fast to the location, but even at full speed it took it fifteen minutes to reach the location of the JK-1 tracer, and during its trip they could see some interesting things.
"Tunneler territory" one of the operators muttered, "I hate those tribals" another stated.
"Focus" Autumn stated, his eyes trailing the once small amount of corpses of feral ghouls, an amount that began increasing exponentially, something everyone noted, such was their shock when they saw the almost insane amount of dead ghouls and the wounds on them.
"…Large ammunition was used" Autumn muttered, seeing some of the ghouls, the ones in 'one piece' at least those with still visible torsos.
"It looks like Maverick poses some sort of heavy ordinance, interesting" Autumn mussed, with a head motion he made, the comm. Operator send an order to the eyebot to proceed, once it did, they got quite shocked of what they saw.
There it lay, the JK-1, the first of a series of Bio-engineered weapons, splices of DNA of some of the most dangerous animals the Wasteland could generate, spliced together into this abominable human made killing machine, while some have taken into calling it 'Chimera' for its incredible resemblance to the mythological chimera, the scientist that had worked on the project rather call it JK-1, and would surely mad as hell once they see their precious BOW as it is.
They assured not even a Vault Dweller could kill it, that its thick exoskeleton could withstand Gauss Rifle rounds, point-blank, and that nothing in this world could kill it.
But here it was, dead, with its horns, part of the Deathclaw DNA that could not be purged, stuck into its eyes, the others blown by something, the Albino Radscorpion tail ripped clean of its base, laying somewhere around, with at least two abrasions on the torso, Gauss rounds, not to mention the fatal wound, a gunshot point-blank, into the mouth, coming out of the most soft spots of the beast head, brain and blood splattered around.
Autumn didn't admit it at first, but he was afraid, whatever had done this to the killing machine they had made, and yet live was something that made Frank Horrigan, a beast that killed Deathclaws with just its bare hands, look like a baby in comparison, the claws of a Deathclaw mixed with Albino Radscorpion venom and pincers, alongside its exoskeleton and the rare breed of Fire ants 'Pyrosis' and viciousness that outshined Deathclaw, all mashed together into a beast capable of laying waste to anything on its path, and yet it was not enough.
"Sir…do…do you think…the target actually did all this?" one of the operators asked, for once in his time, Autumn was lost of words, The Chosen One had killed everything on his path to get his people out of the Oilrig, Frank Horrigan and the President in that moment included, yet not even the Chosen One had been this…brutal.
They were not facing a common Vault Dweller, they were facing a monster.
A monster only Amata knew how it was born.
Autumn decided it was high-time to pull out the truth of what really happened during her absence and encounter with Maverick before she let her lose.
After all he did read Moby Dick, and he knows that Maverick is Amata's big white whale.
He had to know what she knew before she ended like Ahab.
"…So that's Liberty Prime" Maverick muttered, "Yep, as mean
as it gets Maverick, I won't bore you with technical stuff, suffice to say that is armed to bear, dual Vulcan guns mounted and hidden on the forearms of Prime, Missile launchers mounted on the torso, three nukes strapped to the back and laser eyes, a pre-war giant" Sarah stated.
"A sleeping one, why the brotherhood hasn't deployed it, with that kind of firepower you would have won the war easily" he asked.
"Is not a matter of energy, at least not anymore, our scribes and Doctor Madison Li finally worked that out, but another problem came, apparently the IFF Prime uses to identify friend from foe on the field is a very outdated version found on every single bot in the wasteland, without constant maintenance it degrades, and in time sees everything as targets" Sarah said, turning to face him.
"Now you see why I need Sally here, by the time I was gone no one has been able to find a workaround to the issue, but Sally can, with her smarts alone she can do this" she added, "With you and Prime on the field we can turn the tide of the war to our favor, imagine this, you on Vault 101, severely crippling them, while Prime lays waste on Raven's Rock, meanwhile our forces can focus on their bases and outposts scattered throughout the wasteland, then, and then…we reclaim Project Purity!" she exclaimed, Maverick by his part didn't know what to think of Sarah's plan.
"I don't know Sarah, winning with overwhelming brutality and firepower seems a little…extreme" he stated, "They set the pace of this war Maverick, not us, and we have been following it ever since, truth to be told I would rather use guerrilla tactics, or put a bullet between Eden's eyes, that would end the war for sure, but since none of that is going to happen" she stated, her hands over her armored waist, looking at Liberty Prime.
"If we let them win, then all free people on the Capital wasteland will suffer" she said, gaining a thoughtful look, then turning to Maverick, "Come with me Maverick, I need to show you something" she said, motioning Maverick to follow her out of the labs, aware of the stares he had attracted ever since he had entered the lab, hell ever since he entered the Citadel with Sarah at his side.
He has to admit that a Vault Dweller being escorted by Sarah Lyons, daughter of the elder and leader of the Brotherhood in the Capital Wasteland, with half-burned, tattered clothes covering some sort of hi-tech armor and carrying a BFG like if it was a handgun and not killing everything on sight like every other Vault Dweller, would of course drew the attention of everyone, and every single gun aimed at him.
Not that he could blame them, in the little time he had spend in the Capital Wasteland he had found a lot of hostility against him, and his actions that went against everything the wastelanders knew about Vault Dwellers made them skeptic about his true goals, which he has to confess still focus on finding his father…and surely killing anything Enclave related along the way.
He is still not sure how to deal with the other Vault Dwellers, how could he? He grew with them, he saw them age, change, he remembers when Christine was shy, how Butch used to be an ass, how Susie, Jackie and Carrie used to hang around like glued to the hips, the 'ies' as his dad nicknamed them for how their names ended, how Wally and Paul were…different.
Now things were bad, if he heard right, Christine had nearly 90% of her body burned when she rescued her little sister Monica, Butch is leader of a man only shock unit, The Tunnel Snakes, in the end he got his gang, Jackie had to escape once she found out she had sensitive info and was marked for termination, Susie and Carrie were Amata's personal guards and part of the 'Femme Fatale' Paul and Wally died by his hand, and Amata…now that was the hard part, the friend he knew, the friend he cherished was dead, dead as Paul and Wally, and then reborn as…something else.
"Where are you taking me Sarah" he asked, she didn't answered, she just kept guiding him underground, even deeper that the lab where Prime was located.
"The pentagon, as you plainly put it before, housed some of the best minds on warfare during the pre-war era, the lab was place underground the pentagon, but it was hardly underground and hidden" Sarah said, approaching what seemed an elevator door.
"We'll be going five floors down the labs Maverick, there we found a stash of Power Armors, T-45d models, the one most knights here use, nothing compared to the T-51b, also they had a parking lot there" Sarah said, Maverick actually gave her a look that said 'really?'
"We restocked of basically everything here, father's finding of a pre-war installation, with intact equipment, but outdated, and with Liberty Prime allowed him to pass of Paladin to Elder, anyway" she said, pressing a button and calling the elevator.
"When the war began, we began receiving a lot of refugees from many settlements and small encampments created by tribals, nomads trying to find a place in this god forsaken land, the Enclave's view of every single person not born in the Enclave is trash didn't help much, by the first month of the war, the Citadel was already a refugee camp" Sarah said, looking at maverick straight in the eye.
"By the time I was kidnapped by the aliens, the courtyard was already beyond storing capabilities, we moved every single tribal and their homes here" she said as the elevator stopped with a small jerk, "A small malfunction on the brakes, 200 years old of course" she said, Maverick by his part actually looked at Sarah like she had grew a second head.
"So, you purposely guide me to a malfunctioning elevator? What for?" he asked, "We could have used the stairs of course, but the guys guarding the entrance…let's say that Deloria and his gang strolled around and their tribe paid a heavy price in saving their few women and children, so they basically hate Vault Dweller guts" Sarah stated, "We have to cross a small checkpoint, but this road doesn't has guards at all, so no one will try to kill you on the spot…not that they can in fact" Sarah added.
"That's not the point" Maverick said as the elevator doors opened with a skin crawling grind of metal, "Just because they can't doesn't mean is not annoying, well it is" he said as he exited the elevator, and was welcomed with a brass knuckled fist to the face.
"AHHH MY FINGERS!"
Sarah didn't knew if to either punch the guy for attacking Maverick like that, or just feel pity for the guy, Veronica had the benefit of a whole metallic gauntlet covering her hands and her knuckles being protected by a thick metallic plate, the guy had just bronze made brass knuckles to enhance the blow, and it seemed all it did was to break his fingers.
"Ah hell bells, why every time I exit an elevator, this happens?" Maverick wondered out loud, actually not caring if he drew attention to him, not that Sarah actually minded at that, but it seemed that stealth and tact were not Maverick's forte.
The man simply gave Maverick a long glare, Maverick by his part noted the highly tanned skin of the man, surely to the exposure to the sun, not to mention the red like tattoos in the shape of bird claws located on his cheekbones and the fact his hair was set on a very short Mohawk.
"Crow Claw, you better have a reason for having done that" Sarah hissed, looking at the after mentioned Crow Claw, the man by his part gave Sarah and Maverick, especially Maverick a dirty glare, "Do not demand explanations of me daughter of steel, you bring this bastard son of the ground to our home like if he was a friend of you" Crow Claw snarled, Maverick nearly seized Crow Claw by the neck when he said he was a bastard son, but held himself, he could see he was a tribal, and he could not hold him account for his hostility to him or any other Vault Dweller.
"He is a friend of me" Sarah stated, "And for the record you're lucky you have just a broken hand, last person who punched him like that ended up as a pile of goo" she added as she motioned Maverick to follow her.
"Uh…sorry about the hand" Maverick said, not noticing how Crow Claw narrowed his eyes at him.
"This, Maverick, is the reservoir" Sarah said, motioning Maverick to stare at basically the massive parking lot that was teeming with human life, most cars that were once in the underground parking lot were stripped bare of everything that could be used to make a home, the frame and engine included, which might explain how each home had electricity.
"They are using the fusion engines to power their homes" Maverick muttered, passing a crude made home and seeing how an elderly woman gave him a wide look once she saw his pip-boy, and the boomstick.
"Each person living here are tribals that came to the Capital Wasteland from the south and west, all escaping what seemed to be a tide of 'red men'" Sarah stated.
"Caesar Legion" Maverick said, noticing how men bristled upon the mention of the name, "Yep, from what I could gather from Cross when I came here before, the tribal influx stopped two weeks after I got kidnapped, so what you see here is a good chunk of the Capital Wasteland civilian population" Sarah said, guiding Maverick to what seemed a bar/restaurant, it looked more like a bar due for the amount of beer stashed near a stool, and the smell of alcohol.
Soon both were seated, Sarah actually asking for a bottle of Vodka to drink, Maverick would have refused hadn't been for the fact that when he passed his GOAT, his dad actually procured a bottle of Vodka, and he and Amata were drinking it rather than Nuka-Cola, the hangover the once inseparable duo got was legendary, somehow neither Alphonse not Amata's newly minted boyfriend, the deceased Marcus knew about that, it was a secret Maverick, Amata and his dad knew about.
"Here, have a drink" Sarah said, offering the bottle of Vodka to Maverick, "No glasses?" he asked, "We don't have the luxury of having clean rags or pure water to clean the glasses, we share the bottle, true is not exactly something hygienic, but what the hell" she said, Maverick just gave a long sigh and drank, it a small zip, like he used to drink back in Vault 101, Sarah noticed this and snorted.
"Maverick, you have near invulnerability, and you take kid zips?" Sarah stated, taking the bottle of his hands and taking a long swing of it, "Oh yeah! I was missing this, irradiated Vodka!" she exclaimed.
"The Russians must be proud of this, the non-irradiated one I took taste the same" Maverick said, "You drank? A goody-two shoe vault dweller? How you guys even got Vodka to begin with?" Sarah asked.
"A long story, to make it short, I was sixteen, the GOAT had placed me as my dad's assistant, and to celebrate it he broke on the Overseer's private stash, and gave me and Amata a long lesson on how to drink" Maverick said fondly, Sarah could see he liked that memory in particular, and who wouldn't, getting piss off drunk with your best friend after an exam, she did all the time when she was an initiate and when she became a knight, sadly her best friend had died just two months after they had become knights, a raider getting a lucky shot a car's fusion engine and blowing it near her, there was little she could find of her, besides her holotags.
"You still have doubts on facing her don't you?" Sarah asked.
"Can't blame me here, you would do the same on my position, is just that…it feels so surreal, six months ago she helped me escape, the next time I see her she shot me, twice, and I ended up breaking her ribs and making her vomit blood with a vicious punt" he stated, Sarah rose an eyebrow at that.
"Not to mention all the horrible crimes she has committed, I feel…like this isn't real at all" he added, "Oh but is real Maverick, too real, I do sometimes believed this was a dream, that I would wake up one day with Dan at my side, and actually laugh at the stupid dream, but here we are, me a woman who hates vault dwellers and has been waging a war against them and a shadow pre-war government organization hell-bend on human purity, and you, a enhanced vault dweller that can take magnum rounds to the face and break a Deathclaw's neck with ease and without sweating, not to mention what you did to the Overlord" Sarah stated, "And you know what's funny?" he shook his head.
"I never imagined myself sharing a drink with a vault dweller, deep within the reservoir, filled to the brim with hostile tribals wanting to take your scalp" she stated, taking a swing of her Vodka bottle.
"So…why you brought me here, in the middle of the hornet nest" he asked, Sarah by her part took another swing of her Vodka, then looked at Maverick straight in the eyes, "I wanted to show you…to show you those who have suffered by this war" Sarah said, Maverick easily understood what she wanted to relay to him, without Prime fully functional they wouldn't end the war, that meant more people would die without need.
"You don't need to guilt trip me Sarah, I know what's at stake, what worries me is what you guys will do once this war is over and with Liberty Prime fully operational" Maverick asked, to Sarah this was a valid question, The Brotherhood of Steel was both revered and feared as one of the few powers to ever hold their own against the New California Republic, and while the Capital Wasteland Chapter held no grudge against NCR, Lost Hills would surely demand the use of Prime against any enemy of the BOS, after all there is no way to safe keep such technological marvel such as Prime, it was meant to be used as a weapon of war, and she knew that Maverick feared the moment people would actually get over their heads and use Prime to basically wage war, thus generating more deaths.
"Truth to be told I don't know, I know dad won't abuse of Prime, and basically you have the favor of a girl that commands her own ship" Sarah began, her words low and chosen so they don't blow the secret of Mothership Zeta.
"Lost Hills don't want us, that's for sure, they cut our reinforcements when dad chose the people of the wasteland over the Brotherhood directives and main goals, that caused a lot of people to leave us and become the Outcasts, still loyal to the cause of gathering technology and letting it gather dust" Sarah said with a smirk, "But I know this, I won't allow anyone to abuse of Prime's power, and neither yours" that made him raise an eyebrow.
"You might not see it, but you are an asset, a very important one, in time, like Sally said you will be as strong, if no stronger than Lanius-"
"WHAT!" whatever Sarah was about to say was interrupted when another tribal, this one with a chalk painted hand on his face, looking at the duo in shock, "You fought the monster of the east?" the man said.
"Chalkhand" Sarah muttered, looking at the greatest gossip of the reservoir, and part of the 'chalk' tribe, their name was due to their use and sometimes abuse of chalk to mark their bodies, how they kept the chalk marks on their bodies for life she would never know.
"You fought the monster…how you live?" the after mentioned Chalkhand asked, his shouts had drew the few people at the makeshift bar to surround Maverick and Sarah.
"Yeah, I fought him, it wasn't easy" Maverick stated to Chalkhand, remembering fully well that Lanius had been a superior foe, and only luck, and a space-station blowing up in the vacuum of space had ended the man-drone that Legate Lanius had become at the hands of the aliens.
"We know" Chalkhand stated, "My tribe was one of the man tribes Lanius hunted to near extinction and conquered, all in the name of Caesar, 19 tribes, their lives, their blood, their history erased by Lanius, some tribes survived by fleeing into the badlands" one of the tribals stated.
"The badlands?" Maverick asked, "Hell on earth Maverick, basically America is divided in two thanks to a desert that is filled with some of the most vicious raider tribes ever know, and some of the most dangerous animals know, crossing the badlands is a risk itself, there is little to no water, irradiated or not, the same stands for food, and the fauna there is as much as food as you are food to them, I know it" Sarah stated, remembering fully well the march of the Brotherhood trough the badlands, and entering the Pitt, which in turn allowed safe access to the Capital Wasteland.
Of course they had taken the north path, a 'safer' path to pass the badlands, safer being used loosely of course.
"So…the beast is dead?" the same tribal asked, Maverick noted that the man had his face devoid of any kind of facial painting, but had his whole right ear pierced.
"Yeah, saw it myself, consumed in a bigass ball of green fire…alongside with the base me, Sarah and a lot of people escaped from" the man seemed to take the news on stride, not showing any kind of emotion at this, just standing up and slightly nodding his head to Maverick, then leaving.
"That's Wolf upon Skull, part of the red desert tribe, they lived on the badlands, tougher people you'll ever meet, but not even them survived the Legion, story goes that Wolf upon Skull fought the monster of the east, and barely made it out alive, his wife actually was the reason he is alive, she stabbed Lanius on the back with a fork, near the neck, that allowed him to escape, but his wife wasn't so lucky" Chalkhand stated, "Lanius is not someone to be crossed, especially if you're a woman" he added as he also walked away.
Maverick and Sarah just stared at each pother, then shrugged, it was not something they could fix now, at least Lanius was dead, so his many victims could now rest in peace.
Neither noticed the old lady staring at Maverick with a glassed look, and then a small, mirthful smile decorated her aged face.
"Ah…the son of man comes to right the sins made to the world, about time" she said as she turned around, her eyes crossing with the one of a man on a trench coat and a fedora, on his hand he held a small duffle bag.
"Wait until he is asleep, then you can leave it there" she stated, "I am stealthy enough to do that Madam" the man said.
"Good" was all she said as she walked away, then stopped and looked at the man, once again, "You should go to your son once you give him your gift, all sons and daughters need their parents" the old woman said as she hunched away of the fedora wearing man.
"It doesn't matter if their parents are strangers to them"
"We should launch an all-out assault at the Citadel; let's put an end to this pathetic war once and for all!"
"Discretion is part of our initiative; if we start shooting like crazy we will lose any kind of support we have of the population"
"Megaton and Canterbury Commons hardly qualify as population; most of them are in the Citadel!"
"Not to mention that Paradise Falls would capitalize this opportunity to gains more slaves, ever since the Pitt fell by unknown reasons"
"We have that well in mind, but this…Maverick cannot be allowed to live, his presence alone has already caused disturbances on Megaton, not to mention the fact Vault 1010 closed its doors immediately after the broadcast"
"Not to mention that killing him will make him a martyr for a rebellion"
"His very public and painful execution will deter any sort of rebellion forming"
"…he cannot be killed"
That made the war council held in Raven's Rock stop dead in their tracks, all eyes were focused on one Augustus Autumn, "And why is that Coronel?" one John Boon, head scientist of the Enclave asked.
"The JK-1 was found dead" was all Autumn said, silencing immediately any sort of answer of the head scientist, "The Chimera was killed, by who?" Rosa De Castilla, part of the Enclave's detachment on what use to be Navarro base wondered, her eyes focused on the form of Autumn.
"I talked to Almodovar before, Amata I mean, she didn't told me where she was this past month, but she admits that they were being held in a high-tech facility, one that six months prior held the son of James there, for six months they experimented with him, they turned him into some sort of superhuman fighting machine, one strong enough to engage the JK-1 barehanded and kill it, strong and fast enough to face trained individuals, Power Armored individuals, and also kill them, to kill Super Mutants alone, he is basically bulletproof and laser and plasma proof, if what we saw before was of any indication"
Of course Autumn was referring to the footage of the Capitol, "Heavy ordinance seem to have little to none effect on him, and I must remind you all that the Brotherhood of Steel has any know kind of magnetic propelled weaponry, so using that on him is out of the question" he finished.
"Then what you suggest, roll over and die?" De Castilla snarled, "He didn't say that, if we could turn him to our cause and see our goals…"
"He won't accept them, he is his father's son Amata's admits, a coin with the same face on both sides, our only chance to deal with this…superhuman is to overwhelm him it seems" Boon asked.
"And sacrifice my men so you can have Maverick on a slab? Not a chance in hell, I would rather drink arsenic before I sacrifice my men for a goal that might be impossible" Autumn stated firmly.
"Then what do you suggest Coronel?" President Eden asked, "I said I wouldn't sacrifice my men, I never said the vault dwellers were my men, is time to use them at its fullest, we will conscript every able body in the vault, excluding women and children below the age of sixteen and above the age of fifty, they will hunt and bring Maverick to us, after all what better way to bring down a Vault dweller that another Vault dweller, also we will outfit their pip-boys with tracking devices, so we can track their every move while they hunt Maverick down" Autumn stated.
"And if they fail coronel?" Eden, "As I said, they are not my men, I won't be hold accounted for their failure, rather I would pass…the torch to Maverick's most vicious opponent"
"Almodovar" Boon said with a grin, "But who Almodovar to chose, his daughter, or the man itself?" De Castilla asked, "I say Alphonse, he will be driven by fear of Maverick retaliation on him, and will make the dwellers sacrifice their lives for him just he can escape, a fitting role I dare say" the others nodded, Eden even more.
"And the brotherhood, Lyons's daughter is back, this will bring morale up to their forces"
"We have superior numbers, we will succeed" Eden stated, this finalized the meeting, each one of the members of the war council walked away, Autumn by his part made his way towards Amata's room immediately, once there he saw Amata, still clad in a power armor, waiting for him.
"Good news Almodovar, you and your people have green light to hunt Maverick and bring it here dead or alive" Autumn smirked as Amata smiled maliciously, her fingers twitched in anticipation, something he noted, "About fucking time"
At Midnight an elderly women sat in the middle of a metal hut, in the middle of the hut burned a small fire, a bonfire, the elderly lady simply began to chant as she pulled some dust out of a pouch and threw it over the fire, this one immediately taking shape and size.
"The sons and daughters of war march" she chanted in a trance, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, slightly shaking, around her were heads of several tribes, of the remaining tribes, all seeking council from the only remaining shaman and elder of any tribe.
All focused on the man that has killed Lanius, if someone was able to kill the monster of the east, then it was worth asking to the shaman for council to approach him, either as an ally, or something else.
Of course they didn't expect her to actually began chanting and asking the spirits about the immediate future.
"They all come for one man, like a pack of coyotes swarming on the wounded Yao Guai" she continued, now on her left hand she held a bag of something, it clanked every time she swung it around, in any moment she would recover of her trance, and then she would throw the bag, whatever it contained it would allow her to say accurately the future of this person.
"They don't know they are facing someone who ascended to the sky, just one of them knows, and chose bliss of ignorance for her allies" that brought some murmurs of the men, but they quiet themselves down to hear the rest.
"They try to slay a man, but they will be slain by a giant, a giant that will nurture a two headed cub, on his feet shielding a woman oozing blood of her head with his shadow" they didn't understand the last part, but they did get the first two parts, the unholy sons of the ground would face something beyond their normal comprehension and in time he would actually held the future of the people of the two headed bear nation within his hand, after all that nation was still in infancy.
"Ahhhh, mmmmhhh, uuuummmm" she began, slowly moving around, making some sort of dance around the bonfire, the men tensed up, this was it.
With a scream the elderly woman tossed the bag to fire, her eyes focused again as the bag impacted on the fire and then exploited, causing the fire to rise, yet no smoke rose out of the oddly blue painted fire.
The men dared not to speak, as they had seen something odd, they had seen orange fire, red fire, at one time black fire, that black fire was followed by the attack of the tribe of the elderly shaman by Lanius and his men, their survival was tied to the shaman's predictions, but those that have live with her and knew her predictions never had seen blue fire before.
The shaman stopped, and stared at the fire, then went to her knees, and took a deep breath.
"The spirits have spoken, the unbranded will bring victory"
Immediately the men exploited in shouts and celebrations like no other person outside the tribes had heard.
The people outside the elderly shaman's tent, upon hearing jubilees shouts, began their own, some dancing, others thanking the spirits, but in all, it was pure crazy unadulterer happiness.
The shaman smiled at this, she had a good feeling upon seeing the boy, she hoped the stranger had left his gift.
It turns out he did.
And there you go people, another chapter, I really hope I didn't take too much time updating you all with this chapter, in any case i hope you have enjoyed this chapter, as usual read and review, until a next time, Hypn0s signs off.