I used the description from one of the dermal impact armour perk from Fallout 2, rather than the actual Nemean system from FO:NV. So, either that Nemean system was the fruits of other research, the research Lily saw was old versions, or the Followers of the Apocalypse improved it but kept the name.
A cyborg in the Wasteland [Fallout] [Self-insert]
- Thread starter SpiraSpira
- Start date
- Novel Sci-Fi
Introducing Big Chungus
By the next day, Lily's face had finally stopped feeling weird, sort of like she had just gotten back from the dentist. Of course, it wasn't entirely possible to eliminate all unnecessary inflammation after such a surgery, although since her natural immune system was already depressed, relying almost entirely on the medichines to function these days, the inflammation response was muted.
Leukocytes were such blunt instruments anyway that she was looking forward to finishing replacing her entire skeleton so that her body would no longer produce them.
While the monocyte breeder implant did produce myeloid ancestors cells, which could differentiate into leukocytes like monocytes, hence the name, however, in practice, it never seemed to produce these or any immune system cells. Instead, it produced only red blood cells, platelets and some customized stem cells that it made in small numbers and used for healing.
This confused her so much that she spent some time reading all the documentation, engineering details and even design correspondence of the device that she had downloaded from the hospital, finally discovering the reason.
The government funded the research for the device with a grant. It was initially intended to be a supporting implant for soldiers in areas with significant parasite and infection hazards by boosting their immune response. After about eighteen months and two prototypes, they discovered that this was a bad idea when the prototype devices gave everyone implanted with them super-lupus. However, one of the more brilliant researchers recognized the potential for an even more useful and lucrative device that could supercharge a soldier's healing factor, but they could not admit that they had wasted so much time and money on immune system research.
Despite the fact that their new research direction was producing amazing results, they were at a loss as to how to handle the bureaucratic hazards of admitting they wasted taxpayer money for a year and a half.
In fact, even just changing the name of the device they were producing would trigger automatic congressional oversight and likely end their careers. There was some panic in the e-mail archive she read until one of the engineers replied, "Senators don't know what a monocyte is or what it does. Just say this is what it was always supposed to do."
Lily laughed quite hard when she read that. It reminded her of the story she heard when President Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber program, citing cost overruns. Then later, when President Reagan wanted a new bomber, and Congress did not want to approve a new design, so the generals called the proposed aircraft the B-1B, a variant of an existing and already designed aircraft, despite it being almost completely different in most systems.
Lily tilted her head to the side and wondered if that was a real or apocryphal story. In the Fallout universe, it certainly seemed plausible if that sort of thing happened quite commonly.
She had just come from a meeting with Mr Tombs, who had to break some bad news to her. Initially, she had wanted to build a small building housing her generator and cooling system next to the hospital to keep her technology close at hand and under her protection. But that was simply impossible; they would have to disassemble the power substation and reassemble it next door, which would blow the budget completely.
On the plus side, he had arranged the purchase of a fair bit of property in the ten-block radius that would soon have working utilities. Of course, they couldn't hide all the development around the water pumping station and the electrical substation. Still, the present theory by those in power was that Lily was going to build some minimal power infrastructure to provide water and power to the hospital that she had announced would be opening soon. As such, the prices for the properties around the hospital only increased slightly.
Lily did not personally oversee the discharge of the testing cohort, but Alice mentioned that their reflexes were already significantly improved, but they would have to wait the week to see for sure. Still, it was quite encouraging, if anecdotal, evidence.
After the meeting, she descended into her basement to test a prototype laser pistol. She was attempting to build an entire laser weapon from scratch, using the same base design of existing laser pistols but made with parts she could fabricate herself, minus the energy cells, anyway, which she couldn't replicate.
She was humming as she finished seating a connection with the laser output coupler attached to the device that was attached to a test stand.
Standing well clear of the potential hazard area and behind a set of filing cabinets that she had drug down to the basement to house her medical records, she triggered the device to discharge. There was a cracking sound as the laser ionized the gases in the air, and a visible blue beam struck the target, which caused her to feel quite pleased. She could even smell the faintest scent of ozone, which was quite a common scent when firing energy weapons.
However, after walking around to inspect the laser and target, she realized that there was no appreciable damage done to the block of wood she was using as a target, aside from a slightly blackened spot.
Sighing, she disassembled and checked every part of the laser but found nothing wrong. Test firing it again produced a similar result.
Spending another hour inspecting every element, she finally concluded that the gain medium she was using was just not going to work. She disassembled one of the laser pistols she recovered at the hospital, removed the synthetic ruby rod it used, and installed it in the newly fabricated laser. When it was carefully test fired, it burned a hole through the two-foot block of wood and left a burn scar with slightly melted metal on the steel plate backstop. Lily grumpily thought, 'That confirms it, then.'
Frowning, she replaced the ruby rod and rebuilt the working laser and stared up into space, thinking. She had tried to replace the ruby gain medium with a lonsdaleite replacement, and while it produced a coherent laser beam, the power output was just not there.
She didn't have the technology to build synthetic rubies or garnets at present, nor did she have a supply of the rare earth metals they were doped with. Lily had seen signs of yttrium, flourite, neodymium and several other rare earths when she scanned the ruby rod initially.
She had hoped the perfect hyper-matrix of the lonsdaleite would compensate enough so that none of that would be necessary, but she wasn't really educated in high energy systems or lasers, and she was basically practising alchemy... just throwing possibilities out to see if they worked.
Scowling at the device she built, she tossed it on her workbench after carefully disconnecting it from its energy cell. It would probably give a person a blister, but no more damage than that, 'Well, it could set their clothes on fire. I could call it the firestarter. Or the Blinderer, and just tell users to only aim for the eyes.'
Standing up and stretching, she walked over to the aquarium she had built and fed her electric eels. The research on creating a biological organ to create electrocytes was coming along much better.
It was a lost cause to use a coronavirus to transfer enough information to cause a human to grow an entirely new organ, probably. Maybe if she used FEV, but that was asking for trouble as that virus was the opposite of stable and would recombine or mutate if you looked at it the wrong way. Absolutely the wrong thing if you wanted a stable vector for genetic change, although the quad-helix genetic structure it induced in living cells was fascinating.
She considered her previous experiments with FEV after she had brought the briefcase back from the hospital.
---
Lily couldn't help herself and had taken a small blood and tissue sample from herself and exposed it to a tiny bit of the FEV virus, and the changes she saw were extraordinary and chaotic. And dangerous.
She probably should have stopped there, but her curiosity was a strong thing. But she rationalized that a small animal experiment couldn't harm anyone, so she carefully exposed a small white stoat that had been repeatedly captured pilfering their foodstuffs. The small white mammal was cute but was a real menace.
The first two times, Lily had released it outside at progressively farther distances away from her building, but it came back both times and ate even more of their food than usual, as if the creature was charging them a fee for forcing it to walk back.
The last time it was captured, Lily decided to euthanize it but rationalized a small experiment would be morally acceptable so long as she did not cause the creature too much pain or suffering. She was experimenting the hell out of the eels, after all. Was it universal that you considered something more questionable if you did it to a small cute mammal, Lily wondered.
In any case, after exposing the stoat to FEV she watched it in the makeshift cage she fashioned out of chicken wire. Over the course of the day, it got ravenously hungry and over trebled in size, to the point where Lily was really questioning if magic was at work as while she increased its feeding, she hadn't fed it four times its own body mass in food. Where did the extra mass come from?! Maybe it just looked big and was hollow; she hadn't weighed it yet. She supposed she would find out when she dissected it.
While it continued growing after that, its explosive growth slowed down considerably. Lily was able to get a small sample of the post-FEV stoat's genome, and that was really all she was interested in. She wasn't set up to do complicated animal cognition experiments, like put it through mazes or test its strength, so she felt her investigation was over. She had planned to do a thorough pathological examination and compare the physiological changes to the detailed scans she took of the animal pre-exposure.
However, when she went to take the animal out of the cage so she could use nitrogen to asphyxiate it painlessly, the little terror bit her on the finger and ran off. Lily had tried to corner it at the closed door to the stairwell, but the not-so-little mustelid exhibited a degree of intelligence by quickly shifting targets and leaping through the open elevator shaft and climbing up the side of the shaft, upwards.
Lily had stared at it escaping, slackjawed, then sprinted up the stairs to get to the first floor, laser pistol in hand. Kicking the stairwell door open on the front floor, she levelled the pistol at the open elevator shaft of this floor, intending to shoot the critter as it continued climbing up the wall.
Instead, it leapt out at the elevator shaft on this floor and made a break for the front door. With audible cracks multiple laser beams lashed out and missed the white-furred mutant weasel, who was demonstrating an intense amount of cunning as it zigged and zagged all the way out of the door.
Lily did not chase the thing out of the door. She was smarter than that. There was no guarantee she would hit it, and she would be seen for sure, and that would associate her with the little bastard in people's minds. She glanced around conspiratorially, glad nobody had been in the lobby. However, Alice was coming to investigate after hearing the laser shots, "Dr St. Claire! What was that? Is everything alright?"
Lily slowly holstered her laser pistol and glanced at her Apprentice, "Nothing. It was nothing. If you'll excuse me, I have something to do downstairs." Lily glowered internally, 'Like, burn some documents. Stoat? What stoat? What is even a stoat?'
---
Lily shook her head as she recalled that travesty. Since it escaped, she hadn't seen the stoat that was now the size of a chubby cat. If it was as cunning as it appeared, it would stay away and just live its life peacefully, and she would never see it again. Surely, it wouldn't come back to bite her in the rear.
However, that incident had made her carefully place all the vials of FEV back in the briefcase it came in, and she hadn't opened it since.
She was definitely confining her viral experiments to coronavirae for the time being.
Which was a shame as adapting a coronavirus to induce herself to grow an electrical organ was likely impossible. But, she felt it was possible she could alter the eel species themselves to produce a suitable organ.
She could then extract it and use a coronavirus to humanize and individualize it to her genome, then implant it in her body. She would have to build the "wiring" herself, though, but that was a small matter. It also gave her the option to wire the organ directly to her palms which would give her an unarmed taser-like attack that could range from debilitatingly painful to potentially lethal.
This would make this type of modification unsuitable for mass market production, as she would have to expend significant labour growing an eel and customizing to a particular person's individual genome before implanting the organ into their body. So, this might be limited to only her and her Apprentice, if she could get her to agree to it.
She still had plans to completely replace her arms and legs with cybernetic limbs, but not until she could build ones that completely passed for organic limbs, even if they had the capability of opening up like a flower with innumerable spider legs or tools could popping out. That, however, was probably years away.
She wouldn't stop upgrading herself in the short term just because long-term upgrades would necessarily make these initial upgrades obsolete. She'd have to sit around like a flat for years if she did that, which was unacceptable.
The first cohort of eels had already been studied and eaten, while this next generation seemed to have much more promise. She had been improving the electrocytes primarily so that they could provide low-level electrical power over a long period of time, as opposed to short bursts of high voltage.
Hopefully, the end product had both capabilities, which would allow her to have that taser hands option; otherwise, it would strictly be for powering implanted electronics.
Lily heard her Apprentice's voice calling from the stairs, "Dr St. Claire! There is a tall lady here to see you! She says you wanted to see her?"
Lily smiled coquettishly; there was only one tall lady she remembered asking to come to visit her, 'Down, girl! This is about business!'
Lily almost asked her to send her down here, but a glance around her basement revealed a room that screamed mad science super villain, complete with a large aquarium filled with a dozen or so eels that visibly arced electricity into the water at regular intervals.
"I'll be right up!" she yelled to the stairs.
She glanced around her desk and found the stack of paper that she had written detailing everything she wanted to be looted from the hospital, with maps and diagrams. She started to head up the stairs but stopped herself.
She found a mirror, one of the small rectangle mirrors she had taken from Vault 108, and looked at her reflection. Settling her hair a little bit, she fished around her desk and pulled out some cosmetics. Much had been found in the various rooms of the apartment building, and while it had all dried out, Lily had carefully reconstituted it with a little oil.
She carefully applied the barest touch of rouge to her cheeks, and then cherry red lipstick to her lips before nodding and walking up the stairs.
Leukocytes were such blunt instruments anyway that she was looking forward to finishing replacing her entire skeleton so that her body would no longer produce them.
While the monocyte breeder implant did produce myeloid ancestors cells, which could differentiate into leukocytes like monocytes, hence the name, however, in practice, it never seemed to produce these or any immune system cells. Instead, it produced only red blood cells, platelets and some customized stem cells that it made in small numbers and used for healing.
This confused her so much that she spent some time reading all the documentation, engineering details and even design correspondence of the device that she had downloaded from the hospital, finally discovering the reason.
The government funded the research for the device with a grant. It was initially intended to be a supporting implant for soldiers in areas with significant parasite and infection hazards by boosting their immune response. After about eighteen months and two prototypes, they discovered that this was a bad idea when the prototype devices gave everyone implanted with them super-lupus. However, one of the more brilliant researchers recognized the potential for an even more useful and lucrative device that could supercharge a soldier's healing factor, but they could not admit that they had wasted so much time and money on immune system research.
Despite the fact that their new research direction was producing amazing results, they were at a loss as to how to handle the bureaucratic hazards of admitting they wasted taxpayer money for a year and a half.
In fact, even just changing the name of the device they were producing would trigger automatic congressional oversight and likely end their careers. There was some panic in the e-mail archive she read until one of the engineers replied, "Senators don't know what a monocyte is or what it does. Just say this is what it was always supposed to do."
Lily laughed quite hard when she read that. It reminded her of the story she heard when President Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber program, citing cost overruns. Then later, when President Reagan wanted a new bomber, and Congress did not want to approve a new design, so the generals called the proposed aircraft the B-1B, a variant of an existing and already designed aircraft, despite it being almost completely different in most systems.
Lily tilted her head to the side and wondered if that was a real or apocryphal story. In the Fallout universe, it certainly seemed plausible if that sort of thing happened quite commonly.
She had just come from a meeting with Mr Tombs, who had to break some bad news to her. Initially, she had wanted to build a small building housing her generator and cooling system next to the hospital to keep her technology close at hand and under her protection. But that was simply impossible; they would have to disassemble the power substation and reassemble it next door, which would blow the budget completely.
On the plus side, he had arranged the purchase of a fair bit of property in the ten-block radius that would soon have working utilities. Of course, they couldn't hide all the development around the water pumping station and the electrical substation. Still, the present theory by those in power was that Lily was going to build some minimal power infrastructure to provide water and power to the hospital that she had announced would be opening soon. As such, the prices for the properties around the hospital only increased slightly.
Lily did not personally oversee the discharge of the testing cohort, but Alice mentioned that their reflexes were already significantly improved, but they would have to wait the week to see for sure. Still, it was quite encouraging, if anecdotal, evidence.
After the meeting, she descended into her basement to test a prototype laser pistol. She was attempting to build an entire laser weapon from scratch, using the same base design of existing laser pistols but made with parts she could fabricate herself, minus the energy cells, anyway, which she couldn't replicate.
She was humming as she finished seating a connection with the laser output coupler attached to the device that was attached to a test stand.
Standing well clear of the potential hazard area and behind a set of filing cabinets that she had drug down to the basement to house her medical records, she triggered the device to discharge. There was a cracking sound as the laser ionized the gases in the air, and a visible blue beam struck the target, which caused her to feel quite pleased. She could even smell the faintest scent of ozone, which was quite a common scent when firing energy weapons.
However, after walking around to inspect the laser and target, she realized that there was no appreciable damage done to the block of wood she was using as a target, aside from a slightly blackened spot.
Sighing, she disassembled and checked every part of the laser but found nothing wrong. Test firing it again produced a similar result.
Spending another hour inspecting every element, she finally concluded that the gain medium she was using was just not going to work. She disassembled one of the laser pistols she recovered at the hospital, removed the synthetic ruby rod it used, and installed it in the newly fabricated laser. When it was carefully test fired, it burned a hole through the two-foot block of wood and left a burn scar with slightly melted metal on the steel plate backstop. Lily grumpily thought, 'That confirms it, then.'
Frowning, she replaced the ruby rod and rebuilt the working laser and stared up into space, thinking. She had tried to replace the ruby gain medium with a lonsdaleite replacement, and while it produced a coherent laser beam, the power output was just not there.
She didn't have the technology to build synthetic rubies or garnets at present, nor did she have a supply of the rare earth metals they were doped with. Lily had seen signs of yttrium, flourite, neodymium and several other rare earths when she scanned the ruby rod initially.
She had hoped the perfect hyper-matrix of the lonsdaleite would compensate enough so that none of that would be necessary, but she wasn't really educated in high energy systems or lasers, and she was basically practising alchemy... just throwing possibilities out to see if they worked.
Scowling at the device she built, she tossed it on her workbench after carefully disconnecting it from its energy cell. It would probably give a person a blister, but no more damage than that, 'Well, it could set their clothes on fire. I could call it the firestarter. Or the Blinderer, and just tell users to only aim for the eyes.'
Standing up and stretching, she walked over to the aquarium she had built and fed her electric eels. The research on creating a biological organ to create electrocytes was coming along much better.
It was a lost cause to use a coronavirus to transfer enough information to cause a human to grow an entirely new organ, probably. Maybe if she used FEV, but that was asking for trouble as that virus was the opposite of stable and would recombine or mutate if you looked at it the wrong way. Absolutely the wrong thing if you wanted a stable vector for genetic change, although the quad-helix genetic structure it induced in living cells was fascinating.
She considered her previous experiments with FEV after she had brought the briefcase back from the hospital.
---
Lily couldn't help herself and had taken a small blood and tissue sample from herself and exposed it to a tiny bit of the FEV virus, and the changes she saw were extraordinary and chaotic. And dangerous.
She probably should have stopped there, but her curiosity was a strong thing. But she rationalized that a small animal experiment couldn't harm anyone, so she carefully exposed a small white stoat that had been repeatedly captured pilfering their foodstuffs. The small white mammal was cute but was a real menace.
The first two times, Lily had released it outside at progressively farther distances away from her building, but it came back both times and ate even more of their food than usual, as if the creature was charging them a fee for forcing it to walk back.
The last time it was captured, Lily decided to euthanize it but rationalized a small experiment would be morally acceptable so long as she did not cause the creature too much pain or suffering. She was experimenting the hell out of the eels, after all. Was it universal that you considered something more questionable if you did it to a small cute mammal, Lily wondered.
In any case, after exposing the stoat to FEV she watched it in the makeshift cage she fashioned out of chicken wire. Over the course of the day, it got ravenously hungry and over trebled in size, to the point where Lily was really questioning if magic was at work as while she increased its feeding, she hadn't fed it four times its own body mass in food. Where did the extra mass come from?! Maybe it just looked big and was hollow; she hadn't weighed it yet. She supposed she would find out when she dissected it.
While it continued growing after that, its explosive growth slowed down considerably. Lily was able to get a small sample of the post-FEV stoat's genome, and that was really all she was interested in. She wasn't set up to do complicated animal cognition experiments, like put it through mazes or test its strength, so she felt her investigation was over. She had planned to do a thorough pathological examination and compare the physiological changes to the detailed scans she took of the animal pre-exposure.
However, when she went to take the animal out of the cage so she could use nitrogen to asphyxiate it painlessly, the little terror bit her on the finger and ran off. Lily had tried to corner it at the closed door to the stairwell, but the not-so-little mustelid exhibited a degree of intelligence by quickly shifting targets and leaping through the open elevator shaft and climbing up the side of the shaft, upwards.
Lily had stared at it escaping, slackjawed, then sprinted up the stairs to get to the first floor, laser pistol in hand. Kicking the stairwell door open on the front floor, she levelled the pistol at the open elevator shaft of this floor, intending to shoot the critter as it continued climbing up the wall.
Instead, it leapt out at the elevator shaft on this floor and made a break for the front door. With audible cracks multiple laser beams lashed out and missed the white-furred mutant weasel, who was demonstrating an intense amount of cunning as it zigged and zagged all the way out of the door.
Lily did not chase the thing out of the door. She was smarter than that. There was no guarantee she would hit it, and she would be seen for sure, and that would associate her with the little bastard in people's minds. She glanced around conspiratorially, glad nobody had been in the lobby. However, Alice was coming to investigate after hearing the laser shots, "Dr St. Claire! What was that? Is everything alright?"
Lily slowly holstered her laser pistol and glanced at her Apprentice, "Nothing. It was nothing. If you'll excuse me, I have something to do downstairs." Lily glowered internally, 'Like, burn some documents. Stoat? What stoat? What is even a stoat?'
---
Lily shook her head as she recalled that travesty. Since it escaped, she hadn't seen the stoat that was now the size of a chubby cat. If it was as cunning as it appeared, it would stay away and just live its life peacefully, and she would never see it again. Surely, it wouldn't come back to bite her in the rear.
However, that incident had made her carefully place all the vials of FEV back in the briefcase it came in, and she hadn't opened it since.
She was definitely confining her viral experiments to coronavirae for the time being.
Which was a shame as adapting a coronavirus to induce herself to grow an electrical organ was likely impossible. But, she felt it was possible she could alter the eel species themselves to produce a suitable organ.
She could then extract it and use a coronavirus to humanize and individualize it to her genome, then implant it in her body. She would have to build the "wiring" herself, though, but that was a small matter. It also gave her the option to wire the organ directly to her palms which would give her an unarmed taser-like attack that could range from debilitatingly painful to potentially lethal.
This would make this type of modification unsuitable for mass market production, as she would have to expend significant labour growing an eel and customizing to a particular person's individual genome before implanting the organ into their body. So, this might be limited to only her and her Apprentice, if she could get her to agree to it.
She still had plans to completely replace her arms and legs with cybernetic limbs, but not until she could build ones that completely passed for organic limbs, even if they had the capability of opening up like a flower with innumerable spider legs or tools could popping out. That, however, was probably years away.
She wouldn't stop upgrading herself in the short term just because long-term upgrades would necessarily make these initial upgrades obsolete. She'd have to sit around like a flat for years if she did that, which was unacceptable.
The first cohort of eels had already been studied and eaten, while this next generation seemed to have much more promise. She had been improving the electrocytes primarily so that they could provide low-level electrical power over a long period of time, as opposed to short bursts of high voltage.
Hopefully, the end product had both capabilities, which would allow her to have that taser hands option; otherwise, it would strictly be for powering implanted electronics.
Lily heard her Apprentice's voice calling from the stairs, "Dr St. Claire! There is a tall lady here to see you! She says you wanted to see her?"
Lily smiled coquettishly; there was only one tall lady she remembered asking to come to visit her, 'Down, girl! This is about business!'
Lily almost asked her to send her down here, but a glance around her basement revealed a room that screamed mad science super villain, complete with a large aquarium filled with a dozen or so eels that visibly arced electricity into the water at regular intervals.
"I'll be right up!" she yelled to the stairs.
She glanced around her desk and found the stack of paper that she had written detailing everything she wanted to be looted from the hospital, with maps and diagrams. She started to head up the stairs but stopped herself.
She found a mirror, one of the small rectangle mirrors she had taken from Vault 108, and looked at her reflection. Settling her hair a little bit, she fished around her desk and pulled out some cosmetics. Much had been found in the various rooms of the apartment building, and while it had all dried out, Lily had carefully reconstituted it with a little oil.
She carefully applied the barest touch of rouge to her cheeks, and then cherry red lipstick to her lips before nodding and walking up the stairs.
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Tall lady that is expected? This is the mercenary babe isn't it? Me'thinks the team for the hospital job is in town, and they're potential bodyguard muscle for the mean time. Maybe even proactive 'bodyguards' depending on how quickly the corrupt/criminal elements of Megaton catch on to Lily's venture.
As this story reaches the hallmark of over 100,000 words, which has generally been a mark where I considered reading a story in the past (as I read so fast that I used to think anything less wasn't really worth the candle) I want to thank everyone who has taken their time to read my silly story.
Thank you!
(I read a lot of fics that have less than 100k words these days, I would have missed out on a lot of nice stories otherwise.)
Thank you!
(I read a lot of fics that have less than 100k words these days, I would have missed out on a lot of nice stories otherwise.)
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- Location
- va
the stoat is going to find a fedora and start thwarting her "plans"
John Therion
The Rat In The Wall
- Location
- Walls
It's been pretty great story, rather enjoyed it so far. It's one of the top 10 stories I follow right now. There's also a dearth of good Fallout stories. Especially ones which concentrate, at least on some level, to 'rebuilding' rather than outright murderhoboism. Of course, part of the problem is that Fallout universe is rather ... uh, fragile if you look at it too closely. Bethesda's lack of understanding of the original source, and their general lack of storytelling ability hasn't really helped in the last decade.
I also read rather fast, so I had some of the same issues when reading stories. I personally put the limit at 50k, or if I am really running out of stories to read then at 10k. But anything below 10k is just... well, why bother?
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It also doesn't help that half the fanfics seem to be a rehash of the actual games themselves. like the other day I read an fic on here called "The lone sister" and the entire thing seemed to be a rehash of the fallout 4's early game where you wake up, go to sanctuary, talk to the robot and then go to concord, meet the people in need and then kill off a deathclaw, etc. the only thing that was different was the fact that the character was the older sister of baby shaun and thats it. but otherwise everything else was exactly the same?
Not just molerats, - an entire community of Deathclaws, and a radscorpion (god DAMN that bastard could play chess)
CubicAppalac
Why hello there, sit by the fire and join me.
- Location
- United States, Appalachia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I am planning on starting a Fallout 4 fic in which an entire convoy of US soldiers from Afghanistan is sent to Concord just as the SS gets there. It's still in the early stages of development, but I think people will like it, maybe.
Anyways, Yeah, great chapter @SpiraSpira, can't wait for the next chapter.
I REALLY hope this comes back to bite her in the Rear. I hope that Stoat becomes super intelligent and forms an entire clan of hundreds of mutant stoats then becomes a megalomaniacal villain bent on the subjugation of humanity. I WANT THIS STOAT TO BE THE OVER-ARCHING ANTAGONIST OF THE STORY.
On a small unrelated note, Stoat's are actually related to weasels and ever since I had a ferret as a pet I've loved weasel-like animals. They're adorable and clever.
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- Pronouns
- She
I am deeply curious about the FEV. Lily is so careful, how did something so simple get so out of control so quick?
KillerFish
Grumpy Owl, Bird Lawyer
Wait, hyper intelligent white mammal which looks like a mix between a rat an dog and a bear? Is this a stealth My Hero Academia reference?
Is this the Origin of Nedzu?
The duality of Lily is cautious yet insane/curious (insanely curious, perhaps?) If she actually felt the experiment was a danger to her life she wouldn't have conducted it. But since she couldn't consider how it could ever be a danger to her she pushes the envelope. For the science, of course.
This is hinted by her repeated reminiscing about people, including her peers, thinking she was insane in her past life, and her befuddlement about that. She never did anything that would endanger an armoured 12 meter robot spider (she thought), so why would they call her insane?
Since she has other people she cares about now too, she'd likely avoid doing anything that she thought might harm them as well, so she won't be totally going ape as she gets more and more durable (fortunately? unfortunately?)
That would be awesome! You'll have me for a reader for sure.
I read your entire Nuka Girl fic and thought it was amazing, especially
how you incorporated what was ridiculous building mechanics as a architect Tinker power for the Sole Survivor, and I remember LOLing when Taylor came back to Brockton Bay and just forgot she couldn't just murder bad guys. I was totally going to steal the fact that Nuka Quantum made your pee glowing neon colours, even had something thought up about how the special strontium bound to urea in pee. In fact that was the main reason I had Lily drink one in the diner in Canterbury Commons, but then I forgot.
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CubicAppalac
Why hello there, sit by the fire and join me.
- Location
- United States, Appalachia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh nice, as I said, it's currently in the rough-draft stage. If you're interested in the idea, I had a fic similar to this idea, but it isn't that good in my opinion, which is why I'm writing this new one. Actually, if you could give me any tips on writing dialogue, that would be great. Mostly because writing dialogue isn't my strong suit.
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm glad you're enjoying it.
It's interesting seeing every writer's strong points and weaknesses.
I can do dialogue well but I keep on forgetting to flesh out the background and what people in the background are doing. sometimes I just have people chat for a full page and they might be sitting there in a white void for all I know. heh.
are you more comfortable describing the scenery and the actiony bits?
CubicAppalac
Why hello there, sit by the fire and join me.
- Location
- United States, Appalachia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I am comfortable with describing things such as how a society develops, the actions of characters and how they affect their surroundings, and other things. Or at least I believe I am. And scenery, maybe. I can probably describe how a diner looks dilapidated, something like that. And action, I don't know? I can honestly say that I've never truly tried to write an action scene, nor have I tried to choreograph such a scene.I'm glad you're enjoying it.
It's interesting seeing every writer's strong points and weaknesses.
I can do dialogue well but I keep on forgetting to flesh out the background and what people in the background are doing. sometimes I just have people chat for a full page and they might be sitting there in a white void for all I know. heh.
are you more comfortable describing the scenery and the actiony bits?
I do consider Cubic's Across the Multiverse to be one of my best works, along with my story Roosevelt's Paradox on AH.com. And I also enjoy your fic, it is a fun read.
All According to Keikaku
Lily smiled when she saw Grace upstairs, dwarfing over the Apprentice in their small but clean conference room.
She said in a friendly yet teasing tone, "Hey, Girlie. You're looking like a bigshot now! Have minions, a huge building that doesn't even look like a wreck, the whole shebang!"
"Yes, my plans for global domination are proceeding apace. All according to keikaku," Lily said smugly.
"Keikaku?" asked the taller woman.
Lily loved it when she could unleash her popular culture references, even if she was the only one to appreciate them, "Translator notes indicate it means to plan."
Alice glanced between the two of them, not quite suspiciously but interestedly. Her teacher was rarely so friendly with, well, anyone. She always had the mask of friendliness, even with the most frustrating of patients, but it was always just that, a mask.
Grace had the feeling she was being made fun of somehow by Lily but couldn't figure out how, so she ignored it, "There was a message posted that you wanted to see me? Which is a coincidence; I wanted to see you too!"
Lily blushed faintly for a moment before she asked, "You did?"
Alice, who, as teenaged girls often were, was hyperaware of potential romance within a fifty-meter radius around her, snapped to attention on Lily's face like a heat-seeking missile, eyes narrowing. Then her lips started twitching upwards as if trying to prevent herself from grinning. She coughed and said, "Dr St. Claire, I'll go get the tea service if you'd like to discuss your... business with your guest."
With that, Alice ducked out of the room, but Lily's peak human senses heard at least one giggle from the girl on the other side of the door.
"Yep, I had two things..." and with that, Grace trailed off, giving Lily a quite blatant elevator-eye appraisal, pausing meaningfully at the doctor's thighs, hips and chest before correcting herself, "... well, three things that I wanted to see you about. I'm not sure that girl thinks we have actual legitimate business to talk about, though."
Grace then grinned wickedly, "Suppose we surprise her by actually be discussing business when she gets back?... or maybe lean into what she's expecting, and I can see how tousled I can get you in a few minutes."
Lily coughed lightly, "I've already 'ad the dragon and the phoenix discussion with 'er for biology studies; I'd rather not 'ave the phoenix and phoenix discussion just yet. Or ever. Some zhings she can find out on her own."
Grace chuckled, "You know, you have really odd sayings, you know that? But I think I know what you mean." She stood until Lily took a seat at the table and then sat next to her, "I take it phoenixes are female, for some reason?"
Lily nodded, "Hn... yes, although you don't have any of the cultural referents as to why," and she said the next word with perfect Mandarin tonal pronunciation, "fènghuáng might be considered full of yin. Let's just say the birds and the bees; I often forget where I am sometimes when I get flustered, you see."
Grace's eyebrows raised considerably at the foreign word, but Alice came back into the room suddenly with the platter with a tea service on it, glancing between Lily and Grace suspiciously, then looking clearly disappointed. She gently sat the tea service down in front of Lily as the hostess, bowed as she was taught and backed out of the room.
While Lily was by no means a tea artist, if over three hundred years you repeat an action a couple of times a week, even or perhaps especially if it is in a robotic body, you will tend to look like an expert at it to those who don't know any better.
Lily warned, "This isn't actually tea, but I've discovered that the leaves of the shrub that produce mutafruit actually produce a fair imitation of an Oolong or maybe even a red tea, perhaps. I'm afraid I don't have any 'oney, though."
Grace was grinning at her and accepted the teacup, which was a simple and small bowl, "You know, Girlie, it is a little weird for me to ask this of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic bombshell, but... uhh... are you Chinese?"
Lily winced. How does one say that the better parts of your memories were? This wasn't a question that lent itself to the answer "Sort of," so she decided to go with, "It's complic--"
Grace interrupted her with a manic, "A deep cover sleeper agent honeypot, trained to wring secrets from an unsuspecting soldier after you've exhausted her in the bedroom! Now your sexy accent makes perfect sense!"
Lily stared blankly at her, in shock, as Grace continued enthusiastically, "Oh, I have so many secrets, comrade! Wring them from me! RE-EDUCATE ME!!"
Was she being teased, or had she just stumbled across one of Grace's fetishes? From the grin on the other woman's face, Lily decided that while it might be a little of both, it was clearly mostly her being teased, so she decided to pout. She enjoyed being the one to verbally win in teasing matches, not being hoisted on her own petard.
This caused Grace to grin even wider, so Lily sniffed delicately and lifted her teacup to her lips to sip, "Your mutafruit tea will go cold."
"Oh, yes, yes, of course," replied Grace evenly, taking an immodest gulp like a barbarian. She paused, "This is actually not bad."
Lily smiled appreciatively, "Thank you. I suppose I'll discuss some of my business first; then you can go?" At Grace's nod, Lily laid out the sheets of paper on the table, "I scavenged in a nearby hôpital, which still had a fair amount of useful technology. I want to 'ire your team of four ne'er-do-wells--"
Grace interrupted her, "Six! There are six of us now! An old comrade of mine and New John's older sister are working for me now, too." She stressed the word comrade with a jaunty wag of her eyebrows.
Lily grinned, "Wow, keep accumulating more minions, and they'll have to start calling you ma'am soon!"
Grace snorted, already looking at the maps and diagrams and lists of items on the paper. She didn't even raise her head from them to raise her objection, "As if I'd ever be an officer, Girlie. Plus, combat arms officers should be referred to as sir regardless of sex. Do you take me for some staff puke?! Remember what happened the last time you called me, ma'am? Are you angling for another spanking?"
Lily blinked. She was, actually. She definitely was, but she hadn't intended to with that statement. That was certainly different from the Army she remembered in America, where sirs were men, and ma'ams were women, full stop.
She recalled Grace's antipathy towards anyone wearing power armour and realized that was quite different from the standard Brotherhood doctrine and rank structure, too.
Lily was starting to get the feeling that Grace might be away without proper leave, and for some time, from President Eden's infantry forces. If so, Lily couldn't really blame her. Lily would have deserted from the Enclave at the first opportunity, too.
She couldn't help herself, though, and said with eyes glittering misbehaviour, "Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am..."
"I'm counting, don't worry..." Grace replied, then started humming. "This is a lot of heavy things. We'll need to hire a truck for sure. Why does this say the top floor is out of bounds?"
Deciding that there was enough flirting for the moment, Lily got down to business, too, "Because it is a death trap. I barely made it out alive. I was stupid and triggered some contingency, and now that floor is crawling with over twenty floating eyebots, each armed with a laser. I barely survived running past two, and had to kick out a window and throw myself out of it, four floors high, to survive."
Grace gave her another appraising look; this time, it wasn't sexual at all. She nodded and said approvingly, "Badass."
Then she asked, "They're contained on the top floor, though?"
Lily nodded, "Yes, and the top floor is locked with a pretty difficult code lock. Zhey were doing military research up there, sort of. Cybernetics, which is actually right up my alley. I managed to cart off a bunch of a working model of an implanted 'ealing system called... amusingly enough... the phoenix system. It can be implanted in boys, too, though, even though it is full of yin."
Grace's eyebrows went up again as if she recognized it, "Really badass. And you have an Auto-Doc with the program to install them? Are you planning on selling these, cuz we'd might be interested in them."
Lily tapped the diagram of the Auto-Doc, which was listed as priority #2 to loot, "I do intend to sell them, but I'm not sure the price point yet. I will have an Auto-Doc soon, but I actually don't need one to do the surgery for a device as simple as this. It's really just plug-and-play with your cardiovascular system."
Lily considered offering one as payment for the job, but she had been planning on pricing them at about four to five thousand caps a piece, which was definitely more than she was willing to pay for this job, but at the same time, she'd keep her liquid caps which was more important to her now. Lily didn't know the financial status of Grace's Grenadiers, although they probably made a killing on the kilos and kilos of drugs they sold.
Grace nodded, as if to consider it. Then she looked up, "Okay, Girlie. We're definitely interested. Only issue is that this is a multi-day job for sure, and we're still finishing up our last one -- that was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I was wondering if you could act as an in-between for me, see if that friend of yours who lent you that crazy robot was interested in some of the goods we've got from our last job."
It was Lily's turn for her eyes to rise to her scalp. Did she want to talk to the Mechanist to sell him something? Presumably something robotic? Did Grace not know she liked robots, also?
Lily hummed, "You want to sell 'im something? That isn't easily liquidated but is related to his interest in robotics? Most robots are easily liquidated, yes? So it has to be ... non-functional ones. Even most non-functional robots you could find buyers for here in Megaton. What do you got, ma'am?"
Grace raised four fingers at her, to indicate that she was still counting, "Right you are. We hit an old warehouse and discovered almost two dozen robots in various stages of brokenness. They look like Protectrons but don't have any weapons at all; our contact here in Megaton said this model was kind of difficult to sell for that reason. They're not for protection but for things like mopping the floors or moving boxes from one part of a warehouse to the other. But he said you needed a lot of computer infrastructure to really make use of them, so he didn't want to buy them. Without a mainframe, they often just run into walls if you tell them to do things."
Lily's eyebrows raised considerably, "Firstly... I am now your contact for offloading robotics parts. If I can't use zhem myself, I will definitely find a buyer on consignment. Zhese, I want all of them myself. 'ave to be Servitrons or Labourtrons. Essentially the same model as a Protectron, just in a chassis that is not armoured, and quite fragile actually, and of course no weapons."
Lily tapped her fingers on the conference room table. They had the same internals as a Protectron, the same motivators and processors, except they didn't have the independent combat software or any weapons. Dr House was really quite fond of a single multi-role robotics platform serving many different functions, and the Tron series of bipedal robots demonstrated this the most.
Lily could definitely flash their processors with a fork from one of her existing Protectrons, and even armour their chassis considerably, but the lack of weapons would make them unsuited for any defensive tasks, 'I don't care! I want them! Every hospital has to have orderlies, right? Mine will be robots!'
Lily understood why Grace wasn't willing to take on a new job that would take her far away from Megaton now, though. Even though they were proving difficult to liquidate, all these robots were still valuable. Her team was guarding them until they got rid of them.
Lily hummed, "'ow much are you trying to get for zhese Labourtrons, Grace?"
Grace smiled, "I was hoping to get five hundred per on any of the batch that could be rebuilt."
Lily rolled her eyes. An unarmed, unarmoured Labourtron or Servitron was probably worth that or perhaps a little more in operating condition. Lily would pay five hundred for a broken Protectron, but not for this. If they were the special construction and demolition model, the Constructron, Lily would pay over a thousand just for a broken model. Those had special hardware and special software modules that allowed them to function with little supervision on a job site, doing things as varied as electrical work, plumbing and drywall.
Lily haggled, "Zhat's way too much. Zhat's how much a working model would go for, and zhat's if you sell them one at a time. Who would be willing to buy maybe twenty at a time but moi?"
"Yeah, but they come with ten charging stations! We had to hire a flatbed to drag all this junk off to town," Grace groused.
They continued going back and forth for a time before Lily stopped her, "How about a trade in-kind? You said you were interested in the Phoenix implants. I can give you four of those, plus I'll throw in a reflex augmentation treatment for all six of you for free."
Both testing cohorts had completed the entire protocol, with the reflex augmentation increasing ones reflexes on average 95% compared to baseline, with a reduction in the endurance of only 2.5% -- which Lily couldn't even be confident was statistically significant with an n-value of only ten subjects.
No health items had popped up on either the reflex or the clean metabolism mods, and even though, for any civilized society, much more testing would have been warranted, Lily was willing to tentatively put both of them on the market. She was going to charge 1,000 to 1,500 caps for the reflex mod and 500 for the metabolism mod.
The lesser price for the latter mod was her version of charity on the olfactory senses of everyone in Megaton. She would give it away, but nobody valued things they got for free.
If Grace's Grenadiers became the launch customers for the reflex mod, perhaps the ladies of the Pink Slipper could become the launch customers for the clean metabolism mod?
Grace looked interested, "Reflex augmentation? It makes you faster? How much faster, how long does it last, and what are the drawbacks? And it's safe?"
Lily smiled. People that were intelligent enough to realize that this was a world full of trade-offs made her happy, especially if she was sleeping with them. "Yes. On average, it will make the average person almost 100% faster. It lasts forever... well, as you start getting older, your reflexes will naturally slide -- but you'd still be faster than your average granny, no? And, it does very slightly reduce the stamina of the person treated. However, my tests could only determine a two-and-a-'alf per cent decrease. I expected about a five per cent, though. And yes, it is safe, I believe. My Apprentice, the girl who gave us the tea, took zhe treatment earlier today."
Grace stared at Lily, "But you haven't? Why?"
Lily scowled, "I wish I could. But, it increases your reflexes only up to a certain point. If you already have peak 'uman reflexes, you won't gain anything out of it. I don't zhink any of your team have that, but we can test you beforehand and give you an idea of how much it would help you in theory."
Grace frowned, "Did you just humble brag? ... This sounds good, actually. Things that make us safer, increase our potential are worth more than mere caps. Only, theres six of us. I can't just buy four of the healing devices and tell the two new guys they're shit out of luck!"
Lily pointed to the sheets of paper, "Do zhe 'ospital job. I'll pay your expenses, but your payment will be another phoenix device. And zhen I have one more job after zhat which will actually be quite a lot simpler and hopefully quick, same thing."
"Bitch, you just fucking jinxed us to a total clusterfuck on that one, now," the mercenary groused irritatedly.
Lily considered that. She was a Staff Sergeant in the service, so it wasn't like she didn't know exactly what Grace meant. You didn't become an NCO without a healthy dose of superstition. It was somewhat universal. She decided she'd just own up to it, "Sorry."
Grace grumbled, "What's the second job?"
Lily smiled brightly, "Bodyguard duties while I disassemble and make safe the nuclear bomb that is in the centre of town."
Grace suddenly looked infuriated, "Uhhh... they said that fucking thing was ALREADY safe. They assured me of that a decade ago when I came to this fucking shithole. Are you telling me that one, that is a live bomb and two, that you can disarm it without it exploding, right? Right?"
Lily smiled and nodded, "Yes, and yes. It's definitely a live bomb, and although it hasn't been activated with the proper codes, it would still be possible to detonate it in theory. A fusion pulse charge would do it, for example." Lily mentioned that because she knew that was how it was done in the Tenpenny Tower quest, despite not knowing from Adam what a Fusion Pulse Charge actually was.
She then continued, "I have the full diagrams of its internal structure for this model of explosive and am one hundred per cent confident in disarming it. Not only will I need to disable the detonation circuit, which is easy, but I think it might be prudent to either remove the fission kernel entirely or, at the minimum, poison it so a full-order detonation would be impossible."
Lily planned, initially, to just disable the detonation circuits until she thought about how the Tenpenny Tower quest in Fallout 3 detonated the bomb. She had no idea what a Fusion Pulse Charge was besides a game MacGuffin, but it kind of sounded like something that might tend to bypass the detonation circuit itself and act on the fission bomb kernel itself, so she needed to solve that issue, too.
Grace calmed down a little bit, but not by much, "Fuck! Okay, yes. We're doing that. If you hadn't already offered to pay us, I'd help you with this for free... but you have to meet our new guy. My old friend and comrade. He was a demolitions expert with me in... err, another lifetime ago, and it would make me feel a lot better if you two handled this problem together. He just assumed the nuke was for show, too. Fucking hell!"
That would make Lily feel a lot better, too, actually, so she just nodded. She would have to print off the scans from her scanner, but she had already found out how to add the Fallout universe dot-matrix printers as a peripheral with a cord to her computer.
She extended her head to shake, "Deal, ma'am!"
"That's five!"
She said in a friendly yet teasing tone, "Hey, Girlie. You're looking like a bigshot now! Have minions, a huge building that doesn't even look like a wreck, the whole shebang!"
"Yes, my plans for global domination are proceeding apace. All according to keikaku," Lily said smugly.
"Keikaku?" asked the taller woman.
Lily loved it when she could unleash her popular culture references, even if she was the only one to appreciate them, "Translator notes indicate it means to plan."
Alice glanced between the two of them, not quite suspiciously but interestedly. Her teacher was rarely so friendly with, well, anyone. She always had the mask of friendliness, even with the most frustrating of patients, but it was always just that, a mask.
Grace had the feeling she was being made fun of somehow by Lily but couldn't figure out how, so she ignored it, "There was a message posted that you wanted to see me? Which is a coincidence; I wanted to see you too!"
Lily blushed faintly for a moment before she asked, "You did?"
Alice, who, as teenaged girls often were, was hyperaware of potential romance within a fifty-meter radius around her, snapped to attention on Lily's face like a heat-seeking missile, eyes narrowing. Then her lips started twitching upwards as if trying to prevent herself from grinning. She coughed and said, "Dr St. Claire, I'll go get the tea service if you'd like to discuss your... business with your guest."
With that, Alice ducked out of the room, but Lily's peak human senses heard at least one giggle from the girl on the other side of the door.
"Yep, I had two things..." and with that, Grace trailed off, giving Lily a quite blatant elevator-eye appraisal, pausing meaningfully at the doctor's thighs, hips and chest before correcting herself, "... well, three things that I wanted to see you about. I'm not sure that girl thinks we have actual legitimate business to talk about, though."
Grace then grinned wickedly, "Suppose we surprise her by actually be discussing business when she gets back?... or maybe lean into what she's expecting, and I can see how tousled I can get you in a few minutes."
Lily coughed lightly, "I've already 'ad the dragon and the phoenix discussion with 'er for biology studies; I'd rather not 'ave the phoenix and phoenix discussion just yet. Or ever. Some zhings she can find out on her own."
Grace chuckled, "You know, you have really odd sayings, you know that? But I think I know what you mean." She stood until Lily took a seat at the table and then sat next to her, "I take it phoenixes are female, for some reason?"
Lily nodded, "Hn... yes, although you don't have any of the cultural referents as to why," and she said the next word with perfect Mandarin tonal pronunciation, "fènghuáng might be considered full of yin. Let's just say the birds and the bees; I often forget where I am sometimes when I get flustered, you see."
Grace's eyebrows raised considerably at the foreign word, but Alice came back into the room suddenly with the platter with a tea service on it, glancing between Lily and Grace suspiciously, then looking clearly disappointed. She gently sat the tea service down in front of Lily as the hostess, bowed as she was taught and backed out of the room.
While Lily was by no means a tea artist, if over three hundred years you repeat an action a couple of times a week, even or perhaps especially if it is in a robotic body, you will tend to look like an expert at it to those who don't know any better.
Lily warned, "This isn't actually tea, but I've discovered that the leaves of the shrub that produce mutafruit actually produce a fair imitation of an Oolong or maybe even a red tea, perhaps. I'm afraid I don't have any 'oney, though."
Grace was grinning at her and accepted the teacup, which was a simple and small bowl, "You know, Girlie, it is a little weird for me to ask this of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic bombshell, but... uhh... are you Chinese?"
Lily winced. How does one say that the better parts of your memories were? This wasn't a question that lent itself to the answer "Sort of," so she decided to go with, "It's complic--"
Grace interrupted her with a manic, "A deep cover sleeper agent honeypot, trained to wring secrets from an unsuspecting soldier after you've exhausted her in the bedroom! Now your sexy accent makes perfect sense!"
Lily stared blankly at her, in shock, as Grace continued enthusiastically, "Oh, I have so many secrets, comrade! Wring them from me! RE-EDUCATE ME!!"
Was she being teased, or had she just stumbled across one of Grace's fetishes? From the grin on the other woman's face, Lily decided that while it might be a little of both, it was clearly mostly her being teased, so she decided to pout. She enjoyed being the one to verbally win in teasing matches, not being hoisted on her own petard.
This caused Grace to grin even wider, so Lily sniffed delicately and lifted her teacup to her lips to sip, "Your mutafruit tea will go cold."
"Oh, yes, yes, of course," replied Grace evenly, taking an immodest gulp like a barbarian. She paused, "This is actually not bad."
Lily smiled appreciatively, "Thank you. I suppose I'll discuss some of my business first; then you can go?" At Grace's nod, Lily laid out the sheets of paper on the table, "I scavenged in a nearby hôpital, which still had a fair amount of useful technology. I want to 'ire your team of four ne'er-do-wells--"
Grace interrupted her, "Six! There are six of us now! An old comrade of mine and New John's older sister are working for me now, too." She stressed the word comrade with a jaunty wag of her eyebrows.
Lily grinned, "Wow, keep accumulating more minions, and they'll have to start calling you ma'am soon!"
Grace snorted, already looking at the maps and diagrams and lists of items on the paper. She didn't even raise her head from them to raise her objection, "As if I'd ever be an officer, Girlie. Plus, combat arms officers should be referred to as sir regardless of sex. Do you take me for some staff puke?! Remember what happened the last time you called me, ma'am? Are you angling for another spanking?"
Lily blinked. She was, actually. She definitely was, but she hadn't intended to with that statement. That was certainly different from the Army she remembered in America, where sirs were men, and ma'ams were women, full stop.
She recalled Grace's antipathy towards anyone wearing power armour and realized that was quite different from the standard Brotherhood doctrine and rank structure, too.
Lily was starting to get the feeling that Grace might be away without proper leave, and for some time, from President Eden's infantry forces. If so, Lily couldn't really blame her. Lily would have deserted from the Enclave at the first opportunity, too.
She couldn't help herself, though, and said with eyes glittering misbehaviour, "Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am..."
"I'm counting, don't worry..." Grace replied, then started humming. "This is a lot of heavy things. We'll need to hire a truck for sure. Why does this say the top floor is out of bounds?"
Deciding that there was enough flirting for the moment, Lily got down to business, too, "Because it is a death trap. I barely made it out alive. I was stupid and triggered some contingency, and now that floor is crawling with over twenty floating eyebots, each armed with a laser. I barely survived running past two, and had to kick out a window and throw myself out of it, four floors high, to survive."
Grace gave her another appraising look; this time, it wasn't sexual at all. She nodded and said approvingly, "Badass."
Then she asked, "They're contained on the top floor, though?"
Lily nodded, "Yes, and the top floor is locked with a pretty difficult code lock. Zhey were doing military research up there, sort of. Cybernetics, which is actually right up my alley. I managed to cart off a bunch of a working model of an implanted 'ealing system called... amusingly enough... the phoenix system. It can be implanted in boys, too, though, even though it is full of yin."
Grace's eyebrows went up again as if she recognized it, "Really badass. And you have an Auto-Doc with the program to install them? Are you planning on selling these, cuz we'd might be interested in them."
Lily tapped the diagram of the Auto-Doc, which was listed as priority #2 to loot, "I do intend to sell them, but I'm not sure the price point yet. I will have an Auto-Doc soon, but I actually don't need one to do the surgery for a device as simple as this. It's really just plug-and-play with your cardiovascular system."
Lily considered offering one as payment for the job, but she had been planning on pricing them at about four to five thousand caps a piece, which was definitely more than she was willing to pay for this job, but at the same time, she'd keep her liquid caps which was more important to her now. Lily didn't know the financial status of Grace's Grenadiers, although they probably made a killing on the kilos and kilos of drugs they sold.
Grace nodded, as if to consider it. Then she looked up, "Okay, Girlie. We're definitely interested. Only issue is that this is a multi-day job for sure, and we're still finishing up our last one -- that was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I was wondering if you could act as an in-between for me, see if that friend of yours who lent you that crazy robot was interested in some of the goods we've got from our last job."
It was Lily's turn for her eyes to rise to her scalp. Did she want to talk to the Mechanist to sell him something? Presumably something robotic? Did Grace not know she liked robots, also?
Lily hummed, "You want to sell 'im something? That isn't easily liquidated but is related to his interest in robotics? Most robots are easily liquidated, yes? So it has to be ... non-functional ones. Even most non-functional robots you could find buyers for here in Megaton. What do you got, ma'am?"
Grace raised four fingers at her, to indicate that she was still counting, "Right you are. We hit an old warehouse and discovered almost two dozen robots in various stages of brokenness. They look like Protectrons but don't have any weapons at all; our contact here in Megaton said this model was kind of difficult to sell for that reason. They're not for protection but for things like mopping the floors or moving boxes from one part of a warehouse to the other. But he said you needed a lot of computer infrastructure to really make use of them, so he didn't want to buy them. Without a mainframe, they often just run into walls if you tell them to do things."
Lily's eyebrows raised considerably, "Firstly... I am now your contact for offloading robotics parts. If I can't use zhem myself, I will definitely find a buyer on consignment. Zhese, I want all of them myself. 'ave to be Servitrons or Labourtrons. Essentially the same model as a Protectron, just in a chassis that is not armoured, and quite fragile actually, and of course no weapons."
Lily tapped her fingers on the conference room table. They had the same internals as a Protectron, the same motivators and processors, except they didn't have the independent combat software or any weapons. Dr House was really quite fond of a single multi-role robotics platform serving many different functions, and the Tron series of bipedal robots demonstrated this the most.
Lily could definitely flash their processors with a fork from one of her existing Protectrons, and even armour their chassis considerably, but the lack of weapons would make them unsuited for any defensive tasks, 'I don't care! I want them! Every hospital has to have orderlies, right? Mine will be robots!'
Lily understood why Grace wasn't willing to take on a new job that would take her far away from Megaton now, though. Even though they were proving difficult to liquidate, all these robots were still valuable. Her team was guarding them until they got rid of them.
Lily hummed, "'ow much are you trying to get for zhese Labourtrons, Grace?"
Grace smiled, "I was hoping to get five hundred per on any of the batch that could be rebuilt."
Lily rolled her eyes. An unarmed, unarmoured Labourtron or Servitron was probably worth that or perhaps a little more in operating condition. Lily would pay five hundred for a broken Protectron, but not for this. If they were the special construction and demolition model, the Constructron, Lily would pay over a thousand just for a broken model. Those had special hardware and special software modules that allowed them to function with little supervision on a job site, doing things as varied as electrical work, plumbing and drywall.
Lily haggled, "Zhat's way too much. Zhat's how much a working model would go for, and zhat's if you sell them one at a time. Who would be willing to buy maybe twenty at a time but moi?"
"Yeah, but they come with ten charging stations! We had to hire a flatbed to drag all this junk off to town," Grace groused.
They continued going back and forth for a time before Lily stopped her, "How about a trade in-kind? You said you were interested in the Phoenix implants. I can give you four of those, plus I'll throw in a reflex augmentation treatment for all six of you for free."
Both testing cohorts had completed the entire protocol, with the reflex augmentation increasing ones reflexes on average 95% compared to baseline, with a reduction in the endurance of only 2.5% -- which Lily couldn't even be confident was statistically significant with an n-value of only ten subjects.
No health items had popped up on either the reflex or the clean metabolism mods, and even though, for any civilized society, much more testing would have been warranted, Lily was willing to tentatively put both of them on the market. She was going to charge 1,000 to 1,500 caps for the reflex mod and 500 for the metabolism mod.
The lesser price for the latter mod was her version of charity on the olfactory senses of everyone in Megaton. She would give it away, but nobody valued things they got for free.
If Grace's Grenadiers became the launch customers for the reflex mod, perhaps the ladies of the Pink Slipper could become the launch customers for the clean metabolism mod?
Grace looked interested, "Reflex augmentation? It makes you faster? How much faster, how long does it last, and what are the drawbacks? And it's safe?"
Lily smiled. People that were intelligent enough to realize that this was a world full of trade-offs made her happy, especially if she was sleeping with them. "Yes. On average, it will make the average person almost 100% faster. It lasts forever... well, as you start getting older, your reflexes will naturally slide -- but you'd still be faster than your average granny, no? And, it does very slightly reduce the stamina of the person treated. However, my tests could only determine a two-and-a-'alf per cent decrease. I expected about a five per cent, though. And yes, it is safe, I believe. My Apprentice, the girl who gave us the tea, took zhe treatment earlier today."
Grace stared at Lily, "But you haven't? Why?"
Lily scowled, "I wish I could. But, it increases your reflexes only up to a certain point. If you already have peak 'uman reflexes, you won't gain anything out of it. I don't zhink any of your team have that, but we can test you beforehand and give you an idea of how much it would help you in theory."
Grace frowned, "Did you just humble brag? ... This sounds good, actually. Things that make us safer, increase our potential are worth more than mere caps. Only, theres six of us. I can't just buy four of the healing devices and tell the two new guys they're shit out of luck!"
Lily pointed to the sheets of paper, "Do zhe 'ospital job. I'll pay your expenses, but your payment will be another phoenix device. And zhen I have one more job after zhat which will actually be quite a lot simpler and hopefully quick, same thing."
"Bitch, you just fucking jinxed us to a total clusterfuck on that one, now," the mercenary groused irritatedly.
Lily considered that. She was a Staff Sergeant in the service, so it wasn't like she didn't know exactly what Grace meant. You didn't become an NCO without a healthy dose of superstition. It was somewhat universal. She decided she'd just own up to it, "Sorry."
Grace grumbled, "What's the second job?"
Lily smiled brightly, "Bodyguard duties while I disassemble and make safe the nuclear bomb that is in the centre of town."
Grace suddenly looked infuriated, "Uhhh... they said that fucking thing was ALREADY safe. They assured me of that a decade ago when I came to this fucking shithole. Are you telling me that one, that is a live bomb and two, that you can disarm it without it exploding, right? Right?"
Lily smiled and nodded, "Yes, and yes. It's definitely a live bomb, and although it hasn't been activated with the proper codes, it would still be possible to detonate it in theory. A fusion pulse charge would do it, for example." Lily mentioned that because she knew that was how it was done in the Tenpenny Tower quest, despite not knowing from Adam what a Fusion Pulse Charge actually was.
She then continued, "I have the full diagrams of its internal structure for this model of explosive and am one hundred per cent confident in disarming it. Not only will I need to disable the detonation circuit, which is easy, but I think it might be prudent to either remove the fission kernel entirely or, at the minimum, poison it so a full-order detonation would be impossible."
Lily planned, initially, to just disable the detonation circuits until she thought about how the Tenpenny Tower quest in Fallout 3 detonated the bomb. She had no idea what a Fusion Pulse Charge was besides a game MacGuffin, but it kind of sounded like something that might tend to bypass the detonation circuit itself and act on the fission bomb kernel itself, so she needed to solve that issue, too.
Grace calmed down a little bit, but not by much, "Fuck! Okay, yes. We're doing that. If you hadn't already offered to pay us, I'd help you with this for free... but you have to meet our new guy. My old friend and comrade. He was a demolitions expert with me in... err, another lifetime ago, and it would make me feel a lot better if you two handled this problem together. He just assumed the nuke was for show, too. Fucking hell!"
That would make Lily feel a lot better, too, actually, so she just nodded. She would have to print off the scans from her scanner, but she had already found out how to add the Fallout universe dot-matrix printers as a peripheral with a cord to her computer.
She extended her head to shake, "Deal, ma'am!"
"That's five!"