Mutatis Mutandis 17
Brutus laid his head in his palm and sighed. "How many?"
At the foot of his throne, Rust and Argus, the two generals both shifted uneasily, aware of how angry Brutus could be sometimes. Their Master was often prone to fits of violent rage, and they had often wondered if the stealthboys he used to use had anything to do with it. He was an imposing sight, clothed in full armour, with the torches behind him lighting up his throne room, and throwing his face into shadow. The ceiling hung far above their heads, hidden in darkness, but presenting them with the feeling that they were bearing witness to an endless night.
"Two hundred and seventeen brothers." Rust reported quietly.
"And two behemoths." Argus added. "Counted with the casualties we already had, that's three-quarters of our Rivet City forces gone."
Their king sat silently, eyes shut as he tried to calm himself. His head was supported loosely by his left hand, but his right was gripping the throne's concrete arm so tight that cracks were beginning to appear.
"In one stroke," Brutus said, "Wiping out all of our quicklime in the process. How did this happen?"
"The Scientists soaked the place in fresh water." Argus winced. "Our brothers burned to death."
Brutus growled. "And how did the scientists escape?"
Rust and Argus exchanged a Look. Neither of them were looking forward to imparting this particular scrap of news. They weren't entirely sure one of them wasn't about to die. "A few Brothers said they saw the Lone Wanderer there."
Brutus bellowed in rage, rising to his feet and ripping the arm off of his throne as he went. He hurled it at the far wall, causing both of his generals to duck. The chunk of concrete exploded as it hit, filling the space behind them with dust. Twisted rebar clattered to the floor as the mutant king roared. "TRAITOR!"
He stomped down the uneven staircase and brushed past them, pacing furiously across his throne room. "Burke betrayed us, Brothers! He told us the Wanderer had been dealt with. Clearly he lied."
"We should attack him." Rust suggested, relief pouring off of him. "Teach him a lesson."
Brutus halted in mid stride and spun on his heel, regarding his general with a cold glare. "And bring the wrath of Burke's master down upon us? Burke is just a scout. A Frumentarius. Do you think we would survive the Legions themselves? You saw the abominations as well as I did. You think we lost too many yesterday?" he scoffed. "No. Burke is untouchable. We must deal with the Wanderer ourselves…" he paused to think, then pointed at Argus. "This was your failure. You will correct it."
"How?" Argus demanded. "We cannot beat the Wanderer in open combat. And we've lost too many brothers trying."
"So find another way." Brutus snapped, pulling his sword form the sheath on his back. "Get creative! Use our untapped resources! Find another way or I will hang you from the top of Project Purity as an example to the rest."
Argus nodded and hurried away, his only desire to put as much distance between himself and Brutus as possible.
The King turned and pointed to Rust. "Send a messenger to the new GNR garrison and tell them to meet us at Fort Bannister. We're going to pay Jabsco a visit."
Rust frowned, "I thought you said-"
"Burke is untouchable." Brutus reiterated. "But perhaps we can scare his Talon Company away. Keep them from doing any more damage. Tell me, Brother, do you know what the term 'bluffing' means?"
Something slimy and wet slithered across Jason's face, forcing wakefulness upon him, and making him jerk backwards. Dogmeat licked him again and whined, backing away slightly.
Three days. Three whole days had passed since the battle at Rivet City. The first thing Jason had done since leaping off the bow of Rivet City was attempt to find Alex Dargon. But there was no sign of the scientist, nor of the scribes traveling with him. The facts were not in his favor, but Jason still held out hope. Perhaps they were bunkered down somewhere underground.
It would have to be underground. The entire south eastern corner of the capital wasteland, from the Jury Street Metro Station to the Cryslus Building -both of which were being utilized as Brutus' forward observation posts- was teeming with supermutants. Jason had wiped out both observation posts twice in as many days, not to mention several patrols sniffing around Megaton.
Fort Independence was empty, save for a large pile of Outcast bodies. Not enough to account for all of them, but wherever the Outcasts had run off to, they had taken some heavy losses.
In fact, after their initial push, the Mutants seemed to be moving forward at a fairly sedate pace. On one level, Jason could understand why; all the greatest threats to their success had been eliminated in one masterful stroke, leaving the rest of the Wasteland vulnerable to be claimed at their leisure. They appeared to be more interested in consolidation and strengthening rather than outward expansion. Or perhaps his victory at Rivet City had made them more cautious. Either way, there was certainly a long delay between their first push, and the coming attempt to take the next ring of settlements.
Jason winced; Bigtown was on that list, alongside Arefu, though the latter could certainly take shelter in the nearby metro station. Neither, however, were as important to the Capital Wasteland's survival as Fort Bannister. Accepting that his responsibilities lay with Jackrum and the Talon Company had hurt, but Bigtown's entire population could be counted on the fingers of a blind butcher's hand, whereas Jason knew that the Talon Company was probably the last hope for any organized human resistance, and come morning, he fully intended to march to Jackrum and start organizing.
All in all, though it could have been far worse, the situation were not looking good. Jason had not gone an hour in the past seventy-two without firing his weapon. The mutants had set a tight net, and no matter where he turned, there always seemed to be a mutant patrol lying ni wait. It was as if they were herding him. Testing him. He would have run out of bullets long ago were he not an expert scavenger, and at that very moment, he was hiding in the Fairfax ruins, trying desperately to catch some sleep.
Dogmeat whined at him imploringly.
Jason yawned and rubbed his eyes. he said, "I already fed you. Twice is enough."
The dog padded over to the broken window and whined again. Jason rose to his feet and followed, staying low in case there was a mutant patrol nearby.
Morning had not yet dawned on the capital wasteland, and clouds blotted out the moon. However Jason had excellent night vision, and from his second story perch he could make out the playground across the street, and the empty wasteland beyond. He scanned it carefully, looking for the telltale hulking green of Supermutant forces.
He was hiding in a raider outpost on the northern edge of the Fairfax ruins. He had very carefully chosen it because of two things: its unparalleled view of the open wasteland, and the turret which some very intelligent raider had mounted on a section of ceiling near the broken window. Most of the second story roof was missing, save for the small area, and the position gave Jason an excellent view of the north and the west, where he could see any mutants trying to strike out in either direction.
Yet the ground before him was populated by nothing but dust devils.
"There's nothing there." He muttered, scratching his companion behind the ears. The Dog's hair was coarse and oily; it had not been washed in several months, and was probably infested with fleas, but there was nothing Jason could do about it at the moment.
In the playground beyond, the swings began to rock back and forth in the gentle breeze. Beside Jason, Dogmeat began to growl. The Wanderer frowned, heeding the dog's warning, and leaned forward to search the playground a little more closely.
Something was off. He could feel it in his gut. After a few seconds he realized it was the swings. They weren't moving in tandem. Jason raised the Perforator and scanned them through the scope. If they'd been pushed by the breeze, they'd all move in roughly the same way, swinging in unison. Yet they were swinging in seemingly random directions. Back and forth, side to side, occasionally crashing into each other, being pushed in a dozen different directions.
At that moment, the moon broke free of the clouds, and Jason caught the shimmer. It was one he recognized instantly. He'd seen in all too often, every time he activated his own stealth suit. A feeling of cold, spite-filled admiration swept through him. Stealthboys! The bastards!
The playground lit up as dozens of cloaked supermutants peppered his building with 5.56mm rounds, forcing him to leap backwards, pulling Dogmeat with him. Shards of plaster and splinters of wood rained down on them as the cloaked mutant hunters shredded his refuge. The floor sagged a few inches as the streams of lead sawed through a few vital supports, and though Jason couldn't hear anything over the sounds of gunfire, he could feel the sudden shifts and drops which told him that the second story floor was giving way.
The air around him was so rapidly filling with dust that it was nearly impossible to see, but he forced himself forward, trying to desperately keep hold of the struggling animal. A grenade clattered across his vison, and Jason let go of his companion, making a mad dash for the small green sphere before it blew them both to hell. He managed to toss it back, but not before the dog slipped away down the stairs. Jason heard a yelp, and the cries of angry Supermutants, but the incoming fire did not lessen.
Four more grenades landed around him, and Jason sprinted frantically for the open across from him. He rolled over the sill half a second before the grenades blew up, and landed heavily on the shrub-encrusted floor of the narrow alley. The ruined detritus of the former house buried him, but he shrugged off the rotten timbers and sections of drywall, and fought down the alleyway, desperately trying to shake away the dull pain and disorientation.
Thankfully, the dust cloud caused by the demolished building had obscured his escape, and bought him a few precious moments of peace. Enough for him to make his way to the edge of the alleyway. He found himself on a ledge overlooking the central street of the Fairfax ruins. The small town had a tiered arrangement, with clusters of buildings and alleyways at differing heights.
Now that he knew what to look for, he could see dozens of the shimmering shapes moving around the alleyways and across the street. The net was closing in, but he wasn't too worried. He smiled down at a manhole cover. He'd explored Fairfax before quite a few times. It was a favored Raider den, and he suspected that the supermutants, even if they had worked out how to use stealthboys, didn't know about the sewer system.
Jason dropped into the darkness and felt immediately at home. This was his world. His game now. He melted into the shadows and disappeared down the hall, paying close attention to the sounds and deep shadows all around him. The smell of ancient sewage was disgusting, but he adjusted quickly. It was nothing he wasn't used to putting up with.
A part of him was worried for Dogmeat. The poor animal had been a good companion. A loyal one. One of the few, though he reminded himself that grief would have to wait. There was a war on.
He heard guttural laughter and the stomp of heavy feet, and ducked into a handy alcove across from a maintenance door. A gang of four Supermutants shouldered their way down the narrow hall, moving slowly as they swept the area, searching for him. He darted out as the last one passed, and opened fire, spraying the Supermutant's back with silenced rounds. The creature fell, gurgling. The next two in line turned in shock, and had just enough time to register his presence before their blood painted the ceiling. His final shot plunged straight through the forehead of the leading mutant, and chunks of his skull skittered down the length of the hallway, leaving long thin bloody trails.
Jason paused a moment and let out a breath, watching the smoke rise form the tip of his silenced assault rifle. He lowered it slowly, just in time to hear a growl from his right. From the very alcove he'd taken shelter in. Where before the shadows had been completely flat and smooth, they now shimmered, morphing into a fifth mutant. This one was coloured in navy blue and streaks of dark grey. Its yellow eyes surveyed him with alien menace, even as its right hand clamped down on the barrel of the Perforator, tearing it from his grasp.
Its left snapped out and snatched him up, rushing them both through the maintenance door on the opposite side of the hall. Jason winced as the new creature bashed him through the metal, but he fought for his combat knife and jabbed it in the stealthy mutant's side. The thing frenzied and ran them both through a set of rusted railing and over the edge of a long two-story drop. The room was large. A staircase circled the inner wall, descending into a deeper, flooded section of the sewer system. The two combatants arced across the gap, and Jason's back hit the opposite edge of the staircase, momentarily crushed against it by the weight of the supermutant. However only a moment was needed for his back to break. Then there was another, shorter drop.
His legs went numb, but of far more concern was the cold sewer water rapidly closing over his face. Jason stretched out his arms, thrashing wildly through the murky green, searching for a handhold.
Mutant hands grasped his neck, forcing him down further, and no matter where his felt, he couldn't find his knife, and the world was spinning too fast for him to keep up. Water poured into his lungs, smothering him. Jason held his breath, ignoring his own reflexes, and tried to concentrate. His back was healing, he knew. He'd kept himself above 400 Rads ever since hiding Three Dog. But he needed a few precious seconds for the process to complete, and the black mutant was giving him no quarter.
His hand closed around the knobbly surface of a fragmentation grenade at his belt. Jason pulled the pin, counted three seconds, and tossed it into the air as far as he could in his half-dead state. The chamber was suddenly filled with harsh light. The air and water seemed to compress, making his ears pop. He felt a sudden stinging in his ribcage where the shrapnel had embedded itself. Mutant blood dribbled into the pool, mixing with the water which was rapidly suffocating him, and he was pushed to the bottom of the pool as the dead weight of the mutant corpse landed on top of him. His legs wouldn't respond, and his arms had lost their strength. His last sight as the murky waters closed in to darkness was a pair of yellow eyes, watching from the catwalk above.
My apologies for the short chapter. Hopefully the awsomeness of the next one will make up for it.
The house where Jason was hiding at the beginning of his scene exists, as does the playground across from it, and the manhole cover at the end of the alleyway. I do my best to choreograph all the fight scenes in the series. I map them out in the game world. I think it pays off.
The cloaked mutants/ Nightkin were actually supposed to appear in the citadel battle, but I decided to save them for this. Somehow it works better when they're meeting stealth with stealth. I also like the idea of Jason not actually being very good at fighting stealthy supermutants. He wouldn't be used to it, and I know that despite all my time stealthing Fallout 3, FNV nightkin are still able to sneak right up and bash me in the head.
Alright, so if you have any interest in following this story from here, I would highly advise you to reread all the new sections with Brutus. A few rather significant changes have been made. I added a few characters to fill out the plot a little, and add a little background to Brutus and the Supermutants. Not sure if it helps, but it's certainly different than he was before. Part of my problem was that I couldn't' see how he could possibly run the entire operation by himself.
Anywho, re-read them and let me know what you think. The ones changed so far are 5, 7, and 9. I have yet to touch the scene with Fawkes, but that's coming too.
***SPOILER ALERT*** ***SPOILER ALERT***
As a sidenote to those who are really worried, and can't stand not knowing…
…Dogmeat is still alive. I have no intention of killing off that dog.