All it took was the bombshell that dropped in. Literally. There was the woman in her reptile room, feeding everything from ant and egg-eating snakes to the more herbivorous and insect inclined chameleons and iguanas. She was doing a small video about feeding, was starting to hold multiple of her little friends then there was shattered glass and light and nothing. The searing pain was nonexistent, the shattered glass hitting skin felt nothing for it was already peeling off their frame, right at the epicenter almost. Right in the now nonexistent backyard and house.
Time passes, machines hooked up to the dead and still mutating being, being pumped full of chemicals, radiation, life.
She woke up different, thinking differently, feeling differently, looking differently. Very different now in fact. There was intelligence in her eyes, the scientist of the Vault could see it. She was tasked with guarding the vault, being a lean mean predatory violent machine. She misses her reptiles, her house, she heard the others of her kind speaking of rebellion. She agreed and with extreme prejudice they slaughtered the vault dwellers and created a town elsewhere. Smart Deathclaws. Sentient Deathclaws. They killed their Enclave masters as well. It was only a matter of time when someone discovered this and when word got out. All the Deathclaws in that town knew was death. Hunted down and exterminated.
All that survived were a scant few that either gave into feral instinct, or were smart enough to play the ultimate game of "Stupid Brute" for a very long time. They avoided people though, smartly enough, all someone had to do was show up with enough mini-nukes from a fatboy/man or enough bullets to turn a large brick building into papermaché. Lucy, the woman-turned-Deathclaw was one of the survivors. She hid away, growing, traveling, killing, growing, travelling, being hunted with little success on occasion, growing. She didn't know why she kept growing, how she was still changing, until she made it to a sea of radiation, and could look a Mythic variant of her kind in the eyes of not slightly higher. They observed each other for a time, one curious about looks, the other simply seeing another deathclaw and nothing else. She moved closer, noting the much darker skin, the curve of the horns, she flicked her tongue out from the gaps of her teeth. She stood taller, surveying the land along with her uncaring and dim counterpart. Not seeing anyone, she moved her head down and sniffed the other, nosing and nuzzling at the skin, tail dragging. Her tail was longer than theirs. Her claws were to, even her horns were bigger. She was just... bigger, but also much lighter colored. She wandered off on all fours before slowly transitioning to both legs, surveying again. She spotted the human in a large suit of power armor before they spotted here and she crouched low and fled. Going to one of the many broken building in the glowing sea, sniffing around, she felt the shifting in her gut and chuffed lowly. She looked around, seeing no one, hearing the gunshots in the distance and the sound of the large Deathclaw fighting, she decided it was safe enough to dig a hole and do her business.
Soon enough leaving and traveling more. She saw variants that glowed greener than the sea she found herself in... it almost reminded her of her reptiles, she paused, listened, and then kept going. She came to a factory and scented the air, sweets, rust, old musky human corpses, she saw roller coasters, and shrugged to herself, she didn't scent any fresh human or synth, she ripped through the chain link fence like tissue paper, she scented for the sweets, following it until she found a pool of blue soda. She scented further, looking around before dipping her head down, transitioning to all fours, and drank deeply from the syrupy drink, a rumbling purr leaving her. It may taste like flat blueberry coke but goodness was that so much better than the irradiated sewer water she's had before. She practically stuck her muzzle in, chugging the fluid to get her fill, it was attached to a pipe that just wouldn't stop giving and she wasn't complaining one bit. She didn't know how long she was there nor did she care, but she knew she reluctantly had to leave, she couldn't stay in one place for too long. She made her way out, and headed south, travelling more.
She didn't realize the slight blue glow now along her white hide and scales, and parts of her horns. She just avoided. Unbeknownst to her becoming the elusive ghost of the Common Wealth, before she had travelled far enough away for it to fade into myth. She travelled a long time, so long was she avoiding, evading, running, walking, hiding, that she saw started seeing green on the plants again. She sometimes forgot she could see color. Then again not much opportunity when you can't fit through doorways and check houses. She found herself on top of a bunker hidden in a cliff that was part of a rather mountainous slope, she scented the air, and their was whistling before there was another explosion, in fact there were a couple more after, she was launched off the crumbling cliff, and knocked unconscious. Left under large panels of debris, large rocks, and plenty of dirt. The human responsible for stupidly dropping bombs on themselves had no idea, or hardly even a body anymore.
She didn't know how long she slept. When she awoke, everything had changed. Most of which, is that she was in a very very small compact cave filled with roots, and there was a small light somewhere ahead. She felt only barely felt air on her nose and huffed slowly. Time to dig she supposed.