A cyborg in the Wasteland [Fallout] [Self-insert]
- Thread starter SpiraSpira
- Start date
- Novel Sci-Fi
- Location
- uk
If she keeps all her own bones she'll be the only doctor with an exact one to one anatomical model of herself. Great for teaching and bragging.
RangerKarl
angry un liaison on forced vacation
Heeeeeeeeeeeere's rolling for an NCR origin!
- Location
- USA
Could you provide a link please?
CubicAppalac
Why hello there, sit by the fire and join me.
- Location
- United States, Appalachia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Eve of Destruction (Fallout Pre-War Quest) Mature - Sci-Fi
Sure, but there's a difference between being drawn in slowly from the outside, with some measure of control, and suddenly finding ourselves deep in unexpected (in-universe, that is) and dangerous depths.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
I think this is what they meant by Eve quest.
Villainess phase
Lily asked as they stood up, "So, what was the second thing you wanted to see me about?" She was already pretty sure she knew what the third thing was, hopefully.
Grace hmmed, "Oh! That. Yeah, you'll see when you see my friend Miller in a bit when we come back. It'll be a surprise! I'm sure you'll understand immediately. It's going to take a couple of hours to get a driver and a truck. Should we take all the stuff in through the front?"
"No, we got the freight elevator working the other day. It goes straight to the basement, and you can load four tons on it. You almost can't pull a truck up to the back since the security fence is so close. Still, if you pull it up to the side as close as you can, you'll have quick access to the freight elevator in the back," Lily instructed her.
"Well, okay then. I'll see you in a few hours then," Grace added.
But instead of leaving, she hooked an arm around Lily's hip and pressed her up against the wall, kabedoning her again. Lips met lips, lips met neck, and for a little over a minute, nothing else occurred. After disentangling themselves, Lily coughed and nodded.
Grace sauntered out of the room, whistling. For that, Lily decided not to tell her that she hadn't invented transfer-proof lipstick quite yet. There were several red lip marks on Grace's lips and neck in several places. Lily watched her leave smugly, imagining how much shit Big John would give her.
Lily stepped out of the room; something was in the back of her mind warning her, 'Wait, there is a flaw to this plan of mine,' she thought. Then she saw it, her Apprentice approaching her, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, "Oh, Dr St. Claire... I couldn't help but notice some of your lipstick must have accidentally rubbed off on your business partner, somehow."
Then to add insult to injury, she flipped out a small folding hand fan and used it to obscure her grinning face. The fan had illustrated multicolour plum flowers painted on it, and the whole thing must have been completely synthetic because it was obviously a pre-war product, and a real sandalwood or bamboo fan would have been dusted by now.
Lily half-expected the Apprentice to start laughing like, 'Ohohohoho' stereotypically.
Lily had no idea how or where she got the fan, but with it, she gave a passable imitation of a white lotus bitch archetype character in an imperial drama period piece. The outwardly perfect Imperial Consort who would secretly poison you if you got pregnant in order to prevent you from becoming Empress and who would cry with you as you miscarried.
It was so on point that Lily was positive that the girl had gotten into her stash of trashy Kung Fu wushi novels that she had liberated from the library near Canterbury Commons, and even which one Alice had to be reading.
Obviously, an American library during a war period with China wouldn't have novels in Chinese. Still, some famous ones had been translated into English, and since they were different from what Lily remembered, so she took all of them home with her.
Honestly, she privately suspected they were in the library as bait. If someone had checked them out, they likely would have gotten a house call from an investigator from the Unamerican Activities Bureau.
These novels were a guilty pleasure for her and always had been. It was a shame there were no novels where the main character could punch out mountains or fight devils, immortals and gods. Perhaps she would write one herself when she got to the point of living a life of leisure.
Lily narrowed her eyes at the disobedient girl. Fine, if she wanted to play... Lily threw out some tropes that she knew for a fact were present in the novel she suspected Alice had been reading, "If you've been reading my novels, you should know the tragic, grisly fate of those who are unfilial to their Shifu!" She extended out her hands in the classic grabby pose, "You'll die without leaving a body behind! Take this, my Tyrannical Dragon Claw!"
She grabbed and tickled the Apprentice, causing her to shriek in protest, laugh, wriggle away and run off.
Should Lily be concerned that Alice seemed to like to imitate villainesses? 'Well, who didn't go through a villainess phase now and then,' Lily thought.
Lily would remember this, though, and show no mercy at the moment the Apprentice got moon-eyed over some boy.
Ducking downstairs, she spent about an hour translating the scans she had taken of Megaton's nuke into a passable imitation of engineering drawings using the graphical editor, stylus and her drafting skills to create exploded diagrams.
She even labelled them TOP SECRET and included the appropriate part numbers, which were easily discernable from the embossed ink in each subassembly, before printing out the images on the rickety, yet still functioning dot matrix printer.
The paper was a bit yellowed, but the prints, even the smallest assemblies, were quite legible. She used a pencil to circle areas on several of the printouts, showing a simple way to get at both the circuit boards and the fission kernel.
As she came upstairs, she heard a commotion in front of the building. There were still workers working in and out of the building more or less all day, so she did not think overly much about it However, it kept getting louder, so she went outside to investigate, setting the supposedly top secret blueprints on a table like a discarded comic book.
As she walked out the front door, she caught the tail-end of a scuffle where the workers were giving the bum rush to a group of seedy-looking men. She had to blink at how stereotypically dirty and up to no good the seedy men appeared.
She found the foreman of the work team and asked him what was going on, "Sorry, boss-lady. This scum was attempting to steal some things and harass my men. It's gotten a little worse every day, and I'd say that someone is trying to send a message to you or Boss Tombs."
Lily eyed the retreating figures sceptically, "Are you insinuating zhat zhis rabble is... organized?" She definitely couldn't see it.
The foreman squinched his face up as if he was considering that, before he shrugged once, "Sort of. They're mostly a group of chem addicts, but I guess they're also a gang. They sell chems and weapons, call themselves the East Bridge Merchants."
Lily widened her eyes, "The Merchants?! Zhey don't... 'ave any... like... invisible cars or anything, do zhey? Or a mutant man zhat is made out of zhe gar-bahj?" she asked nervously.
"Well, they're all trash people, in my opinion, but they definitely ain't got any fancy cars, or cars of any kind, really," the foreman replied, chuckling.
Just a coincidence, then. Lily stared off into space and mentioned absently and softly, "But zhere is no East Bridge into Megaton. Or East Gate, or anything."
The foreman smirked, "Yeeaaah... You're not the first one to mention that. If you ask the guy who runs it, name a Blaze, he says something about how the gang itself represents the bridge, but most everyone just assumes he's fucking stupid, uhh pardon my language."
"Why are zhey a criminal gang at all? Chems aren't illegal. Essentially nothing is illegal in Megaton beyond the don't steal, kidnap or kill," Lily asked. She certainly hadn't seen any written laws at all, so she was making even some assumptions there.
"Cuz they ain't citizens. They ain't property owners, nor do they have any permanent residence-like or lease with someone who is. They mainly squat around the edges of town," the foreman said, then paused and added as an aside, "...uhh kind of like the places where you and Boss Tombs have been buying recently."
'Well, shit,' Lily thought. She should have seen that coming. She certainly had expected some contact with the criminal element but had been assuming it would be for whatever passed for a mob or mafia around Megaton; she suspected Moriarty.
She wasn't even against playing ball with the local mob, at least at the beginning of her build-up. She was playing ball with the local government, after all, and she had such a low opinion of governments that she considered the only difference between the average government and the mafia as one of timing -- the government got there first, so they got to call themselves the government and anyone else that came by afterwards doing the same things got called the mafia.
A gang of barely organized drug-addicted squatters was a different matter, though. Her memories didn't include many problems with drug addiction in the far future, but there were similar societal problems, neo-barbarians living on the edge of society, exsurgents controlled by murderous AIs for no known reason, and similar things, and although the particulars were quite different the cores were similar to these Merchants. Chaos. Feral chaos.
It very rarely worked to bribe such elements of chaos, as submission to a minor demand tended to be taken as a sign of weakness and resulted in greater demands instead of an equilibrium.
Lily would call such elements metastatically unstable, and like other malignant tumours, there was generally only one realistic solution, assuming you couldn't avoid them entirely.
Sighing and shaking her head, Lily then continued to discuss with the foreman for about twenty minutes, telling him about the truck that was on its way and asking for some workers to help unload it when it arrived and then picking his brain on everything he knew both about the Merchants and any other underworld activity or groups in Megaton.
Lily had made a mistake not to pay more attention to such things, but at least it didn't look as though the Merchants were about to raid her holdings in force. They were still at the send messages stage.
Eventually, there would be demands, probably shortly after her hospital opened. Then escalation would occur, to the point where either she herself or, more likely, her Apprentice might be attacked in a likely non-fatal but humiliating manner. But, she still had time to formulate a response and would nip them in the bud one way or another before that occurred.
Lily dipped back inside but there wasn't much time to wait until she heard a large flatbed truck pull up carefully in the drive, parking in the mostly cleared parking lot next to her building.
Lily grabbed the blueprints and gave new orders to her two Protectrons to prevent any blue-on-blue incident and went to meet Grace and her band.
A little giddy to see the condition of her new purchases, as she had been relying on what Grace told her what her contact had said, she left the building to meet them.
Lily noticed that Grace had wiped the lipstick off with a smirk. Both Johns waved at her, while Tangent made no real outward gesture or expression, but she could feel him radiating a greeting, somehow. Big John greeted her from the truck bed, "Hey, Doc!"
The smaller man named John introduced her to two new faces, a similarly blonde-haired woman but of only average height and green eyes, quite a rare hair-eye colour combination and interesting recessive gene expression, Lily thought.
"Doc, this is Melissa, New John's sister. She's not a soldier as such, yet, but she has been trained as a medic by their parents. We kind of got used to the idea of one of our team members maybe being able to save our lives, even if she couldn't believe you actually successfully reattached my hand and said she wouldn't be able to do it," Big John waved the hand in question.
The blonde haired woman smiled and offered to shake Lily's hand, which Lily extended out of habit, "It's so good to see you, Doctor! It's so rare to see an actual trained medical doctor around the wastes; I'd barely be considered a paramedic or EMT, according to mom."
Lily nodded and then turned to the next new face, who was introduced, "Doc, this is Sean Miller, he goes back with Grace a long ways."
Then Lily noticed his left hand, or rather the absence of his left hand. This must have been what Grace meant! Did she have a customer for the prototype cyberarm? Well, he didn't look like he needed a whole arm. Maybe just half of one. She grinned and turned to Grace, "Did you chop 'is 'and off just for moi?!"
Miller scowled and said, "No, you crazy bitch, a Super Mutant got it a few years ago."
Lily blushed a little, 'Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.'
They all got out of the way as the workers came and unloaded the truck, using a manually operated crane that folded up on the truck bed, one box of parts at a time.
Lily told them, "You can take zhem on the elevator down to the basement; if you could place zhem next to the robot repair station, I'd appreciate it. Please don't touch anything else; you might die."
Of course, they PROBABLY wouldn't die. But then again, there were a few things down there that would definitely kill them if they touched them, so it wasn't exactly said just to frighten them.
Two workers carting off one box in a dolly paused at that, but shrugged and continued loading the freight elevator one dolly-load at a time.
"You really got genuine PHOENIX implants and the ability to implant them and not kill any of us trying to do it?" asked Miller, a little sceptically. "This is a great deal, if you do. But I don't really know you, Doc."
Melissa popped up, "Oh, Oh! Can I watch the surgery?"
Lily tilted her head to the side, and first addressed the sceptic, "Yes, I do, and of course. And yes, Melissa, you can watch with my Apprentice so long as you don't get in zhe way." She considered for a moment and then handed him the blueprints she made that would both distract him and convince him that she at least had unusual knowledge and connections, "Here, this is the data on the explosive in the centre of town."
He took the sheets and leafed through them quickly, then started over and looked through them much more slowly, "Holy fuck, where did you get these? Are you President Eden's side piece or something?"
Lily sniffed delicately, offended, "I am only ever zhe main dish."
Big John piped up with another attempt at a lewd remark, "And I know Grace sure loves eat---Owe!" But, sadly, he was interrupted again by Grace elbowing him to the ribs. She must have some sort of preternatural sense of when the dark-skinned man was going to pop wise.
Lily continued, "You can certainly examine zhe devices if you wish, but I've tested zhem and vouched for zheir integrity. Would you even know what you're looking at?" Hell, she would be able to build them herself in a few months, but the research was a low priority when she had so many of them and so few buyers of them.
"No, he wouldn't," said Grace, firmly.
Lily then shrugged, "Zhen it is simple. Zhere is a day recovery from the operation, combined with zhe reflex treatment. It is unlikely Grace would want all of you on your backs--"
"The only one she wants on her back--OWE! Okay, okay, I got it, I got it," cried Big John.
Lily rolled her eyes; she was getting a little annoyed with Big John herself but thought that he was only trying so hard because he kept getting interrupted. He probably would have laid off if he managed to get one good zinger in, she thought, "Anyway, since she won't want all of you on bed rest at once, I'll do your surgery and treatments tomorrow, Monsieur Miller? Zhen you see I know what I am doing. We will need a lot more time for a consultation on fashioning you a cybernetic prosthesis anyway."
Lily said the last with extreme enthusiasm.
The man looked slightly mollified and nodded, "Yeah, okay."
Lily grinned in anticipation, not minding this Miller's attitude at all, 'After all, he is a man. And men are always such big babies about surgeries, anyway.'
Grace hmmed, "Oh! That. Yeah, you'll see when you see my friend Miller in a bit when we come back. It'll be a surprise! I'm sure you'll understand immediately. It's going to take a couple of hours to get a driver and a truck. Should we take all the stuff in through the front?"
"No, we got the freight elevator working the other day. It goes straight to the basement, and you can load four tons on it. You almost can't pull a truck up to the back since the security fence is so close. Still, if you pull it up to the side as close as you can, you'll have quick access to the freight elevator in the back," Lily instructed her.
"Well, okay then. I'll see you in a few hours then," Grace added.
But instead of leaving, she hooked an arm around Lily's hip and pressed her up against the wall, kabedoning her again. Lips met lips, lips met neck, and for a little over a minute, nothing else occurred. After disentangling themselves, Lily coughed and nodded.
Grace sauntered out of the room, whistling. For that, Lily decided not to tell her that she hadn't invented transfer-proof lipstick quite yet. There were several red lip marks on Grace's lips and neck in several places. Lily watched her leave smugly, imagining how much shit Big John would give her.
Lily stepped out of the room; something was in the back of her mind warning her, 'Wait, there is a flaw to this plan of mine,' she thought. Then she saw it, her Apprentice approaching her, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, "Oh, Dr St. Claire... I couldn't help but notice some of your lipstick must have accidentally rubbed off on your business partner, somehow."
Then to add insult to injury, she flipped out a small folding hand fan and used it to obscure her grinning face. The fan had illustrated multicolour plum flowers painted on it, and the whole thing must have been completely synthetic because it was obviously a pre-war product, and a real sandalwood or bamboo fan would have been dusted by now.
Lily half-expected the Apprentice to start laughing like, 'Ohohohoho' stereotypically.
Lily had no idea how or where she got the fan, but with it, she gave a passable imitation of a white lotus bitch archetype character in an imperial drama period piece. The outwardly perfect Imperial Consort who would secretly poison you if you got pregnant in order to prevent you from becoming Empress and who would cry with you as you miscarried.
It was so on point that Lily was positive that the girl had gotten into her stash of trashy Kung Fu wushi novels that she had liberated from the library near Canterbury Commons, and even which one Alice had to be reading.
Obviously, an American library during a war period with China wouldn't have novels in Chinese. Still, some famous ones had been translated into English, and since they were different from what Lily remembered, so she took all of them home with her.
Honestly, she privately suspected they were in the library as bait. If someone had checked them out, they likely would have gotten a house call from an investigator from the Unamerican Activities Bureau.
These novels were a guilty pleasure for her and always had been. It was a shame there were no novels where the main character could punch out mountains or fight devils, immortals and gods. Perhaps she would write one herself when she got to the point of living a life of leisure.
Lily narrowed her eyes at the disobedient girl. Fine, if she wanted to play... Lily threw out some tropes that she knew for a fact were present in the novel she suspected Alice had been reading, "If you've been reading my novels, you should know the tragic, grisly fate of those who are unfilial to their Shifu!" She extended out her hands in the classic grabby pose, "You'll die without leaving a body behind! Take this, my Tyrannical Dragon Claw!"
She grabbed and tickled the Apprentice, causing her to shriek in protest, laugh, wriggle away and run off.
Should Lily be concerned that Alice seemed to like to imitate villainesses? 'Well, who didn't go through a villainess phase now and then,' Lily thought.
Lily would remember this, though, and show no mercy at the moment the Apprentice got moon-eyed over some boy.
Ducking downstairs, she spent about an hour translating the scans she had taken of Megaton's nuke into a passable imitation of engineering drawings using the graphical editor, stylus and her drafting skills to create exploded diagrams.
She even labelled them TOP SECRET and included the appropriate part numbers, which were easily discernable from the embossed ink in each subassembly, before printing out the images on the rickety, yet still functioning dot matrix printer.
The paper was a bit yellowed, but the prints, even the smallest assemblies, were quite legible. She used a pencil to circle areas on several of the printouts, showing a simple way to get at both the circuit boards and the fission kernel.
As she came upstairs, she heard a commotion in front of the building. There were still workers working in and out of the building more or less all day, so she did not think overly much about it However, it kept getting louder, so she went outside to investigate, setting the supposedly top secret blueprints on a table like a discarded comic book.
As she walked out the front door, she caught the tail-end of a scuffle where the workers were giving the bum rush to a group of seedy-looking men. She had to blink at how stereotypically dirty and up to no good the seedy men appeared.
She found the foreman of the work team and asked him what was going on, "Sorry, boss-lady. This scum was attempting to steal some things and harass my men. It's gotten a little worse every day, and I'd say that someone is trying to send a message to you or Boss Tombs."
Lily eyed the retreating figures sceptically, "Are you insinuating zhat zhis rabble is... organized?" She definitely couldn't see it.
The foreman squinched his face up as if he was considering that, before he shrugged once, "Sort of. They're mostly a group of chem addicts, but I guess they're also a gang. They sell chems and weapons, call themselves the East Bridge Merchants."
Lily widened her eyes, "The Merchants?! Zhey don't... 'ave any... like... invisible cars or anything, do zhey? Or a mutant man zhat is made out of zhe gar-bahj?" she asked nervously.
"Well, they're all trash people, in my opinion, but they definitely ain't got any fancy cars, or cars of any kind, really," the foreman replied, chuckling.
Just a coincidence, then. Lily stared off into space and mentioned absently and softly, "But zhere is no East Bridge into Megaton. Or East Gate, or anything."
The foreman smirked, "Yeeaaah... You're not the first one to mention that. If you ask the guy who runs it, name a Blaze, he says something about how the gang itself represents the bridge, but most everyone just assumes he's fucking stupid, uhh pardon my language."
"Why are zhey a criminal gang at all? Chems aren't illegal. Essentially nothing is illegal in Megaton beyond the don't steal, kidnap or kill," Lily asked. She certainly hadn't seen any written laws at all, so she was making even some assumptions there.
"Cuz they ain't citizens. They ain't property owners, nor do they have any permanent residence-like or lease with someone who is. They mainly squat around the edges of town," the foreman said, then paused and added as an aside, "...uhh kind of like the places where you and Boss Tombs have been buying recently."
'Well, shit,' Lily thought. She should have seen that coming. She certainly had expected some contact with the criminal element but had been assuming it would be for whatever passed for a mob or mafia around Megaton; she suspected Moriarty.
She wasn't even against playing ball with the local mob, at least at the beginning of her build-up. She was playing ball with the local government, after all, and she had such a low opinion of governments that she considered the only difference between the average government and the mafia as one of timing -- the government got there first, so they got to call themselves the government and anyone else that came by afterwards doing the same things got called the mafia.
A gang of barely organized drug-addicted squatters was a different matter, though. Her memories didn't include many problems with drug addiction in the far future, but there were similar societal problems, neo-barbarians living on the edge of society, exsurgents controlled by murderous AIs for no known reason, and similar things, and although the particulars were quite different the cores were similar to these Merchants. Chaos. Feral chaos.
It very rarely worked to bribe such elements of chaos, as submission to a minor demand tended to be taken as a sign of weakness and resulted in greater demands instead of an equilibrium.
Lily would call such elements metastatically unstable, and like other malignant tumours, there was generally only one realistic solution, assuming you couldn't avoid them entirely.
Sighing and shaking her head, Lily then continued to discuss with the foreman for about twenty minutes, telling him about the truck that was on its way and asking for some workers to help unload it when it arrived and then picking his brain on everything he knew both about the Merchants and any other underworld activity or groups in Megaton.
Lily had made a mistake not to pay more attention to such things, but at least it didn't look as though the Merchants were about to raid her holdings in force. They were still at the send messages stage.
Eventually, there would be demands, probably shortly after her hospital opened. Then escalation would occur, to the point where either she herself or, more likely, her Apprentice might be attacked in a likely non-fatal but humiliating manner. But, she still had time to formulate a response and would nip them in the bud one way or another before that occurred.
Lily dipped back inside but there wasn't much time to wait until she heard a large flatbed truck pull up carefully in the drive, parking in the mostly cleared parking lot next to her building.
Lily grabbed the blueprints and gave new orders to her two Protectrons to prevent any blue-on-blue incident and went to meet Grace and her band.
A little giddy to see the condition of her new purchases, as she had been relying on what Grace told her what her contact had said, she left the building to meet them.
Lily noticed that Grace had wiped the lipstick off with a smirk. Both Johns waved at her, while Tangent made no real outward gesture or expression, but she could feel him radiating a greeting, somehow. Big John greeted her from the truck bed, "Hey, Doc!"
The smaller man named John introduced her to two new faces, a similarly blonde-haired woman but of only average height and green eyes, quite a rare hair-eye colour combination and interesting recessive gene expression, Lily thought.
"Doc, this is Melissa, New John's sister. She's not a soldier as such, yet, but she has been trained as a medic by their parents. We kind of got used to the idea of one of our team members maybe being able to save our lives, even if she couldn't believe you actually successfully reattached my hand and said she wouldn't be able to do it," Big John waved the hand in question.
The blonde haired woman smiled and offered to shake Lily's hand, which Lily extended out of habit, "It's so good to see you, Doctor! It's so rare to see an actual trained medical doctor around the wastes; I'd barely be considered a paramedic or EMT, according to mom."
Lily nodded and then turned to the next new face, who was introduced, "Doc, this is Sean Miller, he goes back with Grace a long ways."
Then Lily noticed his left hand, or rather the absence of his left hand. This must have been what Grace meant! Did she have a customer for the prototype cyberarm? Well, he didn't look like he needed a whole arm. Maybe just half of one. She grinned and turned to Grace, "Did you chop 'is 'and off just for moi?!"
Miller scowled and said, "No, you crazy bitch, a Super Mutant got it a few years ago."
Lily blushed a little, 'Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.'
They all got out of the way as the workers came and unloaded the truck, using a manually operated crane that folded up on the truck bed, one box of parts at a time.
Lily told them, "You can take zhem on the elevator down to the basement; if you could place zhem next to the robot repair station, I'd appreciate it. Please don't touch anything else; you might die."
Of course, they PROBABLY wouldn't die. But then again, there were a few things down there that would definitely kill them if they touched them, so it wasn't exactly said just to frighten them.
Two workers carting off one box in a dolly paused at that, but shrugged and continued loading the freight elevator one dolly-load at a time.
"You really got genuine PHOENIX implants and the ability to implant them and not kill any of us trying to do it?" asked Miller, a little sceptically. "This is a great deal, if you do. But I don't really know you, Doc."
Melissa popped up, "Oh, Oh! Can I watch the surgery?"
Lily tilted her head to the side, and first addressed the sceptic, "Yes, I do, and of course. And yes, Melissa, you can watch with my Apprentice so long as you don't get in zhe way." She considered for a moment and then handed him the blueprints she made that would both distract him and convince him that she at least had unusual knowledge and connections, "Here, this is the data on the explosive in the centre of town."
He took the sheets and leafed through them quickly, then started over and looked through them much more slowly, "Holy fuck, where did you get these? Are you President Eden's side piece or something?"
Lily sniffed delicately, offended, "I am only ever zhe main dish."
Big John piped up with another attempt at a lewd remark, "And I know Grace sure loves eat---Owe!" But, sadly, he was interrupted again by Grace elbowing him to the ribs. She must have some sort of preternatural sense of when the dark-skinned man was going to pop wise.
Lily continued, "You can certainly examine zhe devices if you wish, but I've tested zhem and vouched for zheir integrity. Would you even know what you're looking at?" Hell, she would be able to build them herself in a few months, but the research was a low priority when she had so many of them and so few buyers of them.
"No, he wouldn't," said Grace, firmly.
Lily then shrugged, "Zhen it is simple. Zhere is a day recovery from the operation, combined with zhe reflex treatment. It is unlikely Grace would want all of you on your backs--"
"The only one she wants on her back--OWE! Okay, okay, I got it, I got it," cried Big John.
Lily rolled her eyes; she was getting a little annoyed with Big John herself but thought that he was only trying so hard because he kept getting interrupted. He probably would have laid off if he managed to get one good zinger in, she thought, "Anyway, since she won't want all of you on bed rest at once, I'll do your surgery and treatments tomorrow, Monsieur Miller? Zhen you see I know what I am doing. We will need a lot more time for a consultation on fashioning you a cybernetic prosthesis anyway."
Lily said the last with extreme enthusiasm.
The man looked slightly mollified and nodded, "Yeah, okay."
Lily grinned in anticipation, not minding this Miller's attitude at all, 'After all, he is a man. And men are always such big babies about surgeries, anyway.'
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- She
Lily thinking for a moment they chopped someone's hand off for her xD
- Location
- USA
I could see the drugged scum trying to knock over the new hospital only for the robot security punching holes into them. Then Lily using the bodies as training cadavers for the apprentice to practice elective surgeries... the fact that a number of cadavers still has a heart beat, just means the training dummies will stay fresh longer. The residents of Megaton shouldn't get upset, not one citizen would be harmed. I could see someone higher up the food chain in the black/grey market get upset about his crew getting squelched.
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have to admit I loled when it turned out that Lily did in fact read Worm and were worried that there was some crossover with worm characters.
And weirdly enough, there are some fallout characters who share similarities with Worm characters which makes me wonder if the wildbow were a fan of the fallout games or something.
The names I think of off the top of my head:
In fo3's DLC point outlook, one of the big bad is a character named Calvert. and of course, like the one in Worm, he's a backstabbing manipulative bastard and so was his biological family prewar apparently.
There's ranger Barnes in fallout 76, who's completely cuckoo in the head, loves his park more than he does humans and betrayed his friend over a stupid reason. (although this one was obviously created long AFTER worm was over)
And weirdly enough, there are some fallout characters who share similarities with Worm characters which makes me wonder if the wildbow were a fan of the fallout games or something.
The names I think of off the top of my head:
In fo3's DLC point outlook, one of the big bad is a character named Calvert. and of course, like the one in Worm, he's a backstabbing manipulative bastard and so was his biological family prewar apparently.
There's ranger Barnes in fallout 76, who's completely cuckoo in the head, loves his park more than he does humans and betrayed his friend over a stupid reason. (although this one was obviously created long AFTER worm was over)
- Location
- Aperture Laboratories
Life is cheap as dirt in Fallout. Pay some actually proven mercenaries (as in famous ones that will not just pocket your money and run) and they will kill them. Drop some poisoned drugs around the block and then only heal the residents. Upgrade the whole new batch of securitrons and then raid them with the "workers". Go solo in a number of raids to kidnap small numbers to use as test subjects until they just disappear.
She can do whatever she wants up to going straight to one and shoting him in the face in the middle of the street that unless she eats him no one, and I mean NO ONE, will bat an eye. Maybe the security will ask her one or two questions but nobody will care. Specially because they don't live there and are just littering around, using drugs and basically consuming limited resourcers (I'm talking about food and water) and harassing actual useful citizens. I mean, if she manages to deal with them she will probably even win some kind of recognition xD
What I'm trying to say is that she doesn't need to be reactive or secretive. She can murder them in the open and nothing will happen to her except some pats on the back from the security for making them have to deal with one less problem.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- She
This is a solid point, and a good reminder that we are dealing with gang politics. Unfortunate that nothing's stable enough for there to be any kind of laws or police to protect people
So...in two seperate instances Miller absolutely gave away that he (and thus most assuredly Grace and probably Old John and Melissa) are all former Enclave (if only because undercover CURRENT operatives wouldn't be so obvious, nor would they exist considering how condescending and arrogant the organization is as a whole, even while struggling). First when he new the name for a top-secret implant that only seems to have been used by the Enclave with all their toys and the Followers with their vested interest in medicine and their own discovered old technology.
Second, when he mentioned President Eden (yeah, the Enclave are currently also trying for a propaganda campaign, but that's also the Colonel's bloc. Not sure how much Eden has advertised himself to non-Enclave considering he wants them all dead.)
At this point Lily had played it off as things going over her head, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the next personal moment Grace either tries to 'reveal' the truth to Lily, or she tries to make contact with her as a fellow 'deserter' (because why else is anyone super well educated and secretive about their past in the American wasteland).
Second, when he mentioned President Eden (yeah, the Enclave are currently also trying for a propaganda campaign, but that's also the Colonel's bloc. Not sure how much Eden has advertised himself to non-Enclave considering he wants them all dead.)
At this point Lily had played it off as things going over her head, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the next personal moment Grace either tries to 'reveal' the truth to Lily, or she tries to make contact with her as a fellow 'deserter' (because why else is anyone super well educated and secretive about their past in the American wasteland).
Professor Emerita
While Lily trusted Grace to some extent, she definitely didn't trust either the expertise or the morals of Grace's contact to whom Grace originally tried to sell the robots. Lily was, in part, relying on his representation of the condition of the merchandise, after all.
She had been peeking in the boxes as they came off the truck, and they appeared to be good. Still, after inviting Grace's team inside for refreshments, she excused herself to go downstairs. She took a quick ten minutes to briefly plug a self-powered diagnostics terminal of her own devising into the auxiliary maintenance ports of about half the robots at random.
Some of the motivators were shot, but in all the cases, the quantum processors and power systems were in good condition, which was the main thing Lily was concerned about.
She smiled as she walked back to the cafeteria, where her Apprentice offered the crew some lunch and refreshments. Thankfully, they arrived around lunchtime for the workers, anyway, so the catering staff was still on duty and was able to accommodate six more mouths to feed easily.
While Lily usually cooked for herself or ate her Apprentice's cooking, when the girl was attempting to be filial, she decided to eat a sandwich from the cafeteria today.
When she considered Alice's cooking, she shuddered and then thanked ThorAllahJesus that the Apprentice's culinary skills were improving rapidly. Lily did not even have to turn off her sense of taste anymore surreptitiously.
"The merchandise is of better quality than I thought. Almost everything that is important is in good condition," Lily told them.
That cheered them up considerably. Lily sat with them and ate her roast beast sandwich; it always generally a better idea not to question which exact beast you ate today.
She sat, ate and considered the origins of all the parts of her sandwich that weren't alive at one point. Processed grain and flour was a trade good from as far away as the east part of Ohio, which was the closest place which had something resembling a civilized government in place, even if it was theocratic.
The so-called Dominion was based out of what was once called Cleaveland, now called Temple, and the vast and, for the most part, clean waters of Lake Eerie gave them ample wealth to expand and control economically a relatively large portion of that former state. They did not have a high level of technology, but they had a large number of men at arms who were crack shots with rifles, so their territory was mostly quiescent.
The Mormons weren't that bad as feudal post-apocalyptic warlords went, quite friendly, in fact, most of the time. However, their stance on the proper place for women meant that it wasn't ever going to be an option for Lily, even if she wanted to move somewhere safer. They tolerated "foreign harlots" if they were visiting or just passing through, but they expected everyone who put down roots to assimilate with their monoculture, or they would be shown the door.
They even shipped some water to the Capital Wasteland, but it was over 700 kilometres between Lake Eerie and D.C. which tended to make water priced exorbitantly, not much different than purifying your own or even more expensive.
Actually, compared to some tales she heard from the few people in town who claimed to be from the West coast about what was happening in Arizona and New Mexico, the Dominion were practically feminists. They would not, in fact, crucify you if they thought you were a witch, but they would talk to you about your immortal soul (and nothing else) until you toed the party line or got out of town. Kind of reminded Lily of how the Quakers or Amish handled social problems in some ways.
Lily did not know if she believed the tales of a resurgent, genocidal Roman Empire on the Colorado River, of all crazy things, but the two men who claimed to be from the New California Republic did seem genuinely terrified.
Both polities, even if one might be fictional, combined with what she knew of the NCR, did bring to the forefront something she had been thinking about for some time, which was obvious when she put it into words. She said it out loud to the mercenaries and her Apprentice, "You know, true upper order 'uman behaviour and civilization can't exist if zhere is not a ready and ample supply of potable water. Most people around the Capital Wasteland are barely more zhan cunning beasts."
Eyes stared at her; some looked surprised, and others looked like she was stating the obvious. Her Apprentice piped up, "Isn't that why you're creating the water purifier at the electrical station, Dr St. Claire?"
Lily squinched up her face, "Zhat thing will only ever be able to produce zhree or four thousand litres a day, at zhe absolute max. Even zhough we're pricing the water very low, all it will do is make Megaton slightly more tolerable, relieve the stresses of zhis one community just slightly."
Lily shook her head, "It's of no matter. It will take a transformative change to solve zhis issue. I was just ahh.. talking to myself out loud."
Miller looked at her, perhaps slightly approvingly, "At least you consider the logistical implications. Most people never do."
After the lunch rush ended and the cafeteria cleared out of workers, Miller and Grace glanced at each other, the former nodding at the latter. Grace looked at Lily, "Ah, we wanted to put some cards on the table. Is it OK to talk in front of Alice?"
The Apprentice looked affronted, which Lily thought was quite funny. Lily tilted her head to the side and nodded, "Yes. Of course, what ez zhe issue?"
Grace scrunched up her face, "Well, the truth is that we've been intentionally dropping some hints, hoping you'd ask us about it. But you haven't, so I'm just going to say it -- we used to work for the Enclave, all of us, in fact. Captain Miller here was my CO. Our unit and a group of non-combatants deserted to a man when they gave us a suicide mission into the Commonwealth to the north."
Lily's eyebrows raised slightly. She wasn't surprised at Grace or Miller, but she was surprised it was all of them. She was a little surprised that Miller was the CO, he had been pulling off a pretty good annoyed enlisted vibe. She glanced at New John and his sister, "Them too? But she's not supposed to be a soldier?"
Miller sighed, "Daughter and son of one of the civvies we were escorting. A group of scientists. I had a short company, really more like a platoon, and we had about that many civvies, also. Plus their families, too. That was the real hint that something wasn't on the up and up. I don't know what you know about the Enclave, but it has internal politics like any other organization. My dad and the current military commander grew up together on the west coast and were something like rivals, I guess. My dad died in the line of duty, and the Colonel was always a real pragmatic sort, you understand? Our mission consisted of all the rejects, hard cases and the scientists were all the ones who questioned things a bit too much. As far as I know, nobody has even looked for our bodies, nor been surprised we suddenly stopped checking in."
Alice had wide saucer eyes and said, "Awesome! This is just like The Guns of the Congo! You even became mercenaries! Right under the nose of your former unit!"
Lily rolled her eyes. Had the girl read all of Lily's books?
It WAS interesting, though. But she was curious why he was laying all this on the table, as it were. Right before she was going to ask him just that, he continued, "I mention this because I wanted to ask you -- did you escape from Raven Rock or Adams, too? I don't recognize you, but that isn't that unusual, especially with the best researchers at Adams. We can provide help, maybe obfuscation. It was a good idea coming to Megaton; Autumn likely won't invade it to rendition or kill you, no matter how good of a doctor or researcher you were. If so, we're offering to help you, plus we hope to get your help also."
'Oooohhhh... I get it. Well, the Enclave must be bigger than I thought if he wouldn't recognize me. Combined with their willingness to throw fifty or so undesirables away and not blink twice at it, they have to number at least in the thousands,' Lily thought quickly to herself. She thought it was quite nice of him to try to help what he thought might be a fellow deserter, though.
Lily tried to think of a way to both deny any Enclave bonafides while also sticking to her existing plan of insinuating, but not outright stating, that she was a pre-war researcher.
Finally, she said, "Ah. Zhat's almost sweet. But I assure you I have no relationship with zhe remnants of zhe federal government." She pursed her lips, "While I apologize for not being able to reciprocate entirely about my own past, I can say zhat I have no outstanding entanglements or loyalties to any party... I have been almost entirely in Academia, you see, until I found myself in these Capital wastelands. I wouldn't even dare call myself a Professor anymore."
Lily smiled internally. There! That should be a pretty blatant hint that she used to be involved with a pre-war University.
She was a little surprised that Miller's emotions he was displaying on his face seemed to go from disappointment and confusion to shock; he even paled a little.
Alice, once again, piped up, "You were a Professor, Dr St. Claire?! Weren't they all old?! You don't look very old at all!"
Lily grinned internally, 'Thanks, Apprentice! This should seal the deal.' "Ah, but I am zhe master of zhe life science, yes? Life extension research has always been an interest of mine. I am a little older than I look."
Miller and Grace were sharing looks that Lily could only describe as deeply concerned, which wasn't the reaction she was going for. Odd.
Miller finally said, "Ah... I see... I think... You don't have continuing correspondence with your ... uhh... Institute ... of Higher Learning, do you?"
Lily blinked. She was missing something, she realized. But she was already too invested in this backstory to pull out now. She shook her head but laughed, "No. I would be deeply shocked and concerned if zhey came calling." She was trying to imply that they were all dead, after all.
Was there an organization she didn't know of that sprung up from a pre-war University? Wasn't Rivet City a Naval Research Institute? Was that what he was implying?
In any case, her response seemed to make Miller much more relieved; he even audibly sighed in relief, Grace smiling too, "Ah.. that's good. So you're not so much different than us, then."
Lily pursed her lips, "Well, I have no one to rely on but myself and perhaps zhe friends I make, zhis is true. You don't have to worry; I will remain discreet regarding your origins. And I would definitely be open to cooperation with your group, or at minimum Grace's Grenadiers."
Oops, she used her private name for them. This caused Grace to look confused and Miller to grin. Finally, Grace asked, "Grace's Grenadiers?"
"Well, every mercenary band needs a pithy name! And you have to admit that grenades figure very prominently in your small unit tactics," Lily rationalized, blushing slightly.
"She's right about that," mouthed off Big John.
With that, Lily and Miller talked some more, for around thirty minutes. While neither side was willing to offer themselves to the other like a blushing bride on her wedding night, it was still early days yet. So, they merely agreed in principle to help each other where they could and just continue as they had been. Grace's group was based out of Megaton most of the time, in any event, so she would be Lily's main point of contact.
Lily did appreciate that he tried to rescue her, though. She wondered how many times he's done so to Enclave deserters? Or how large the Enclave in D.C. was to begin with?
"Do you want to disassemble the bomb today, then?" asked Miller, "Grace wasn't lying when she said bombs were my speciality. While I was always a better administrator than a combat leader, I was still an engineer." Lily assumed that meant combat engineer.
Lily pursed her lips and shook her head, "We either 'ave to do it in the dead of night in total stealth or get the Sheriff on board. I recommend the latter; as such, it will take some time. I suggest we do your team's surgeries and treatments today and tomorrow. Then after you've recovered, you guys visit my hôpital, and when you come back, we can make safe Megaton's homonyme."
Miller seemed a little surprised she was willing to stick so close around a live nuke, until she shrugged, "There's still dozens in Fort Constantine, after all. I probably wouldn't be in a good way if they went, either."
Miller groaned a little, "Well, I didn't know that, either. We'll just have to put a pin in that at the moment. I guess if it hasn't blown in a hundred years, it probably won't blow in a week."
When they got to discuss the treatments, Lily pulled out a small inhaler, copied exactly from the ones that Jet utilized. She held it out, and Grace looked confused, "Uhh... we don't really want to party, Girlie. Thanks, though?"
Lily snorted, "Zhe reflex treatment is inside. I needed a way to deliver a metered dose. One puff for every part of 50 kilos of body weight, so if you weigh 51 kilos, two puffs. OK? It takes a day to propagate and then about zhree days to see full results. Go with my Apprentice, first, though. She'll run you through the reflex test we use. If you happen to be preternaturally quick already, maybe we don't treat you. I doubt that, though. I would have noticed. We can do the same three surgeries for the phoenix device starting at... 1500?"
Miller hummed and suggested to Grace, "You, NJ and Melissa today, then, you think?" Lily thought it was interesting it was framed as a suggestion or advice rather than an order. How military was this group's bearing still, she wondered? They didn't seem to have more of a goal than to survive and seemed to be more of a mutual assistance society.
Grace, however, agreed, and the three of them walked off with the Apprentice. "You're also welcome to utilize the isolation ward I had set up as a barracks. It's clean, has beds but no linens."
Miller considered it before nodding, "We have our sleeping gear bags and such, so that'll work well. Thank you."
Lily wasted no more time to go look at her new robots for a few hours before the time for the surgeries arrived.
---
POV Miller
---
The man once called Captain Sean Miller watched the Institute scientist walk off. 'Former Institute scientist,' he corrected himself. As an officer with a mission in and around Boston, even if it was a thinly veiled murder attempt, he was naturally well-briefed on all of the players inside what would have been his AO. And there was no bigger or more mysterious player to the north than the Institute.
They were, in fact, the main reason his mission would have been so suicidal.
She didn't seem willing to straight out say she left the Institute, but he supposed it might be a concession that allowed her to walk around without a bunch of robot assassins showing up to shish-kabob her. Or maybe they just didn't give a fuck about things this far south. He just didn't know. Nobody really did. That was the problem with the fuckers.
Well, she wasn't wrong that two people or groups abandoned in the world could find a common cause. He didn't know anything about the internal ranks of the Institute, either, but Professor sounded important.
Well, he didn't think she was or planned to kill them, anyway, and he had a really good sixth sense about that sort of thing.
She had been peeking in the boxes as they came off the truck, and they appeared to be good. Still, after inviting Grace's team inside for refreshments, she excused herself to go downstairs. She took a quick ten minutes to briefly plug a self-powered diagnostics terminal of her own devising into the auxiliary maintenance ports of about half the robots at random.
Some of the motivators were shot, but in all the cases, the quantum processors and power systems were in good condition, which was the main thing Lily was concerned about.
She smiled as she walked back to the cafeteria, where her Apprentice offered the crew some lunch and refreshments. Thankfully, they arrived around lunchtime for the workers, anyway, so the catering staff was still on duty and was able to accommodate six more mouths to feed easily.
While Lily usually cooked for herself or ate her Apprentice's cooking, when the girl was attempting to be filial, she decided to eat a sandwich from the cafeteria today.
When she considered Alice's cooking, she shuddered and then thanked ThorAllahJesus that the Apprentice's culinary skills were improving rapidly. Lily did not even have to turn off her sense of taste anymore surreptitiously.
"The merchandise is of better quality than I thought. Almost everything that is important is in good condition," Lily told them.
That cheered them up considerably. Lily sat with them and ate her roast beast sandwich; it always generally a better idea not to question which exact beast you ate today.
She sat, ate and considered the origins of all the parts of her sandwich that weren't alive at one point. Processed grain and flour was a trade good from as far away as the east part of Ohio, which was the closest place which had something resembling a civilized government in place, even if it was theocratic.
The so-called Dominion was based out of what was once called Cleaveland, now called Temple, and the vast and, for the most part, clean waters of Lake Eerie gave them ample wealth to expand and control economically a relatively large portion of that former state. They did not have a high level of technology, but they had a large number of men at arms who were crack shots with rifles, so their territory was mostly quiescent.
The Mormons weren't that bad as feudal post-apocalyptic warlords went, quite friendly, in fact, most of the time. However, their stance on the proper place for women meant that it wasn't ever going to be an option for Lily, even if she wanted to move somewhere safer. They tolerated "foreign harlots" if they were visiting or just passing through, but they expected everyone who put down roots to assimilate with their monoculture, or they would be shown the door.
They even shipped some water to the Capital Wasteland, but it was over 700 kilometres between Lake Eerie and D.C. which tended to make water priced exorbitantly, not much different than purifying your own or even more expensive.
Actually, compared to some tales she heard from the few people in town who claimed to be from the West coast about what was happening in Arizona and New Mexico, the Dominion were practically feminists. They would not, in fact, crucify you if they thought you were a witch, but they would talk to you about your immortal soul (and nothing else) until you toed the party line or got out of town. Kind of reminded Lily of how the Quakers or Amish handled social problems in some ways.
Lily did not know if she believed the tales of a resurgent, genocidal Roman Empire on the Colorado River, of all crazy things, but the two men who claimed to be from the New California Republic did seem genuinely terrified.
Both polities, even if one might be fictional, combined with what she knew of the NCR, did bring to the forefront something she had been thinking about for some time, which was obvious when she put it into words. She said it out loud to the mercenaries and her Apprentice, "You know, true upper order 'uman behaviour and civilization can't exist if zhere is not a ready and ample supply of potable water. Most people around the Capital Wasteland are barely more zhan cunning beasts."
Eyes stared at her; some looked surprised, and others looked like she was stating the obvious. Her Apprentice piped up, "Isn't that why you're creating the water purifier at the electrical station, Dr St. Claire?"
Lily squinched up her face, "Zhat thing will only ever be able to produce zhree or four thousand litres a day, at zhe absolute max. Even zhough we're pricing the water very low, all it will do is make Megaton slightly more tolerable, relieve the stresses of zhis one community just slightly."
Lily shook her head, "It's of no matter. It will take a transformative change to solve zhis issue. I was just ahh.. talking to myself out loud."
Miller looked at her, perhaps slightly approvingly, "At least you consider the logistical implications. Most people never do."
After the lunch rush ended and the cafeteria cleared out of workers, Miller and Grace glanced at each other, the former nodding at the latter. Grace looked at Lily, "Ah, we wanted to put some cards on the table. Is it OK to talk in front of Alice?"
The Apprentice looked affronted, which Lily thought was quite funny. Lily tilted her head to the side and nodded, "Yes. Of course, what ez zhe issue?"
Grace scrunched up her face, "Well, the truth is that we've been intentionally dropping some hints, hoping you'd ask us about it. But you haven't, so I'm just going to say it -- we used to work for the Enclave, all of us, in fact. Captain Miller here was my CO. Our unit and a group of non-combatants deserted to a man when they gave us a suicide mission into the Commonwealth to the north."
Lily's eyebrows raised slightly. She wasn't surprised at Grace or Miller, but she was surprised it was all of them. She was a little surprised that Miller was the CO, he had been pulling off a pretty good annoyed enlisted vibe. She glanced at New John and his sister, "Them too? But she's not supposed to be a soldier?"
Miller sighed, "Daughter and son of one of the civvies we were escorting. A group of scientists. I had a short company, really more like a platoon, and we had about that many civvies, also. Plus their families, too. That was the real hint that something wasn't on the up and up. I don't know what you know about the Enclave, but it has internal politics like any other organization. My dad and the current military commander grew up together on the west coast and were something like rivals, I guess. My dad died in the line of duty, and the Colonel was always a real pragmatic sort, you understand? Our mission consisted of all the rejects, hard cases and the scientists were all the ones who questioned things a bit too much. As far as I know, nobody has even looked for our bodies, nor been surprised we suddenly stopped checking in."
Alice had wide saucer eyes and said, "Awesome! This is just like The Guns of the Congo! You even became mercenaries! Right under the nose of your former unit!"
Lily rolled her eyes. Had the girl read all of Lily's books?
It WAS interesting, though. But she was curious why he was laying all this on the table, as it were. Right before she was going to ask him just that, he continued, "I mention this because I wanted to ask you -- did you escape from Raven Rock or Adams, too? I don't recognize you, but that isn't that unusual, especially with the best researchers at Adams. We can provide help, maybe obfuscation. It was a good idea coming to Megaton; Autumn likely won't invade it to rendition or kill you, no matter how good of a doctor or researcher you were. If so, we're offering to help you, plus we hope to get your help also."
'Oooohhhh... I get it. Well, the Enclave must be bigger than I thought if he wouldn't recognize me. Combined with their willingness to throw fifty or so undesirables away and not blink twice at it, they have to number at least in the thousands,' Lily thought quickly to herself. She thought it was quite nice of him to try to help what he thought might be a fellow deserter, though.
Lily tried to think of a way to both deny any Enclave bonafides while also sticking to her existing plan of insinuating, but not outright stating, that she was a pre-war researcher.
Finally, she said, "Ah. Zhat's almost sweet. But I assure you I have no relationship with zhe remnants of zhe federal government." She pursed her lips, "While I apologize for not being able to reciprocate entirely about my own past, I can say zhat I have no outstanding entanglements or loyalties to any party... I have been almost entirely in Academia, you see, until I found myself in these Capital wastelands. I wouldn't even dare call myself a Professor anymore."
Lily smiled internally. There! That should be a pretty blatant hint that she used to be involved with a pre-war University.
She was a little surprised that Miller's emotions he was displaying on his face seemed to go from disappointment and confusion to shock; he even paled a little.
Alice, once again, piped up, "You were a Professor, Dr St. Claire?! Weren't they all old?! You don't look very old at all!"
Lily grinned internally, 'Thanks, Apprentice! This should seal the deal.' "Ah, but I am zhe master of zhe life science, yes? Life extension research has always been an interest of mine. I am a little older than I look."
Miller and Grace were sharing looks that Lily could only describe as deeply concerned, which wasn't the reaction she was going for. Odd.
Miller finally said, "Ah... I see... I think... You don't have continuing correspondence with your ... uhh... Institute ... of Higher Learning, do you?"
Lily blinked. She was missing something, she realized. But she was already too invested in this backstory to pull out now. She shook her head but laughed, "No. I would be deeply shocked and concerned if zhey came calling." She was trying to imply that they were all dead, after all.
Was there an organization she didn't know of that sprung up from a pre-war University? Wasn't Rivet City a Naval Research Institute? Was that what he was implying?
In any case, her response seemed to make Miller much more relieved; he even audibly sighed in relief, Grace smiling too, "Ah.. that's good. So you're not so much different than us, then."
Lily pursed her lips, "Well, I have no one to rely on but myself and perhaps zhe friends I make, zhis is true. You don't have to worry; I will remain discreet regarding your origins. And I would definitely be open to cooperation with your group, or at minimum Grace's Grenadiers."
Oops, she used her private name for them. This caused Grace to look confused and Miller to grin. Finally, Grace asked, "Grace's Grenadiers?"
"Well, every mercenary band needs a pithy name! And you have to admit that grenades figure very prominently in your small unit tactics," Lily rationalized, blushing slightly.
"She's right about that," mouthed off Big John.
With that, Lily and Miller talked some more, for around thirty minutes. While neither side was willing to offer themselves to the other like a blushing bride on her wedding night, it was still early days yet. So, they merely agreed in principle to help each other where they could and just continue as they had been. Grace's group was based out of Megaton most of the time, in any event, so she would be Lily's main point of contact.
Lily did appreciate that he tried to rescue her, though. She wondered how many times he's done so to Enclave deserters? Or how large the Enclave in D.C. was to begin with?
"Do you want to disassemble the bomb today, then?" asked Miller, "Grace wasn't lying when she said bombs were my speciality. While I was always a better administrator than a combat leader, I was still an engineer." Lily assumed that meant combat engineer.
Lily pursed her lips and shook her head, "We either 'ave to do it in the dead of night in total stealth or get the Sheriff on board. I recommend the latter; as such, it will take some time. I suggest we do your team's surgeries and treatments today and tomorrow. Then after you've recovered, you guys visit my hôpital, and when you come back, we can make safe Megaton's homonyme."
Miller seemed a little surprised she was willing to stick so close around a live nuke, until she shrugged, "There's still dozens in Fort Constantine, after all. I probably wouldn't be in a good way if they went, either."
Miller groaned a little, "Well, I didn't know that, either. We'll just have to put a pin in that at the moment. I guess if it hasn't blown in a hundred years, it probably won't blow in a week."
When they got to discuss the treatments, Lily pulled out a small inhaler, copied exactly from the ones that Jet utilized. She held it out, and Grace looked confused, "Uhh... we don't really want to party, Girlie. Thanks, though?"
Lily snorted, "Zhe reflex treatment is inside. I needed a way to deliver a metered dose. One puff for every part of 50 kilos of body weight, so if you weigh 51 kilos, two puffs. OK? It takes a day to propagate and then about zhree days to see full results. Go with my Apprentice, first, though. She'll run you through the reflex test we use. If you happen to be preternaturally quick already, maybe we don't treat you. I doubt that, though. I would have noticed. We can do the same three surgeries for the phoenix device starting at... 1500?"
Miller hummed and suggested to Grace, "You, NJ and Melissa today, then, you think?" Lily thought it was interesting it was framed as a suggestion or advice rather than an order. How military was this group's bearing still, she wondered? They didn't seem to have more of a goal than to survive and seemed to be more of a mutual assistance society.
Grace, however, agreed, and the three of them walked off with the Apprentice. "You're also welcome to utilize the isolation ward I had set up as a barracks. It's clean, has beds but no linens."
Miller considered it before nodding, "We have our sleeping gear bags and such, so that'll work well. Thank you."
Lily wasted no more time to go look at her new robots for a few hours before the time for the surgeries arrived.
---
POV Miller
---
The man once called Captain Sean Miller watched the Institute scientist walk off. 'Former Institute scientist,' he corrected himself. As an officer with a mission in and around Boston, even if it was a thinly veiled murder attempt, he was naturally well-briefed on all of the players inside what would have been his AO. And there was no bigger or more mysterious player to the north than the Institute.
They were, in fact, the main reason his mission would have been so suicidal.
She didn't seem willing to straight out say she left the Institute, but he supposed it might be a concession that allowed her to walk around without a bunch of robot assassins showing up to shish-kabob her. Or maybe they just didn't give a fuck about things this far south. He just didn't know. Nobody really did. That was the problem with the fuckers.
Well, she wasn't wrong that two people or groups abandoned in the world could find a common cause. He didn't know anything about the internal ranks of the Institute, either, but Professor sounded important.
Well, he didn't think she was or planned to kill them, anyway, and he had a really good sixth sense about that sort of thing.
Last edited:
Let's hope the Brotherhood doesn't catch word about Lily's possible Institute associations. They take a rather dim view of any organizations that can rival or exceed their tech level. And by "dim view" I mean "exterminate the heretics and loot their tech! Only we can have tech! For the safety of the world, obviously…" While Lyons' chapter are nicer than the norm for Brotherhood they're still nowhere near soft or compromising.
- Pronouns
- She
My lack of FallOut knowledge really shines here. I am as confused as Lily XD Well, I'll find out when it becomes more important