Nuka-Girl: The Lone Teleporter (Or: "That time Taylor found herself in the Fallout Universe").
- Thread starter Aurora Moon
- Start date
- Crossover
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Good question. Although, I do have plans to get her back home eventually, and that won't be the end when that happens.
slight spoilers below, don't click if you don't want to know. It doesn't give away all the major plot points that I've been planning, but still doesn't hurt to be safe:
I have plans for the worm universe and the Fallout universe to interact with each other eventually, once Taylor goes home with Nora's group tagging along for the ride. Taylor will develop not only in the Fallout universe but in the wormverse setting too.
Nuka-Girl: Chapter Eleven--The Kiddie Kingdom
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Author notes:
The weird thing about this chapter. I had an epic action scene planned between Oswald and Taylor… but instead, it got kind of…. Angsty? Still some delicious conflict there anyway.
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It turned out that Taylor couldn't keep the blue power armor for herself, much to her dismay.
The power armor was designed to be piloted by a muscular man who outweighed her in the bodybuilding weight class. Taylor was a scrawny, stick-thin teenager so she couldn't even make the power armor take a proper step without feeling out of breath as she strained to move the power armor with her own body.
Hancock and Nick were considerably stronger than Taylor, but even they had commented that walking in it felt like they had heavy weights strapped to their legs and arms. So it probably wouldn't be too practical to stomp all over the place wearing that power armor.
Nora seemed to have better luck piloting the thing, but even she agreed that it would be too slow to walk around the park in that heavy power armor. She did suggest that they could come back for it when it came to deal with the raiders, however.
So, Taylor had been forced to teleport the power armor back into its display case before they moved on so that nobody else could get to it. Too bad, that had been some serious protection right there. She had barely felt anything the robots sent her way when she had been tanking for Nick Valentine. She wouldn't have minded becoming the "tank" for the entire team if it was going to be like that for the rest of her trip here.
Piper smiled at her sympathetically and told her that maybe after this was over they'd find some power armor that would fit her. Or they could customize one for her.
Taylor took one last longing glance at the power armor before she left with the group to explore the rest of the Galactic Zone. Why did she feel like a heartbroken kid who got told they couldn't have a puppy? Stupid power armor.
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Exploring the rest of the Galactic Zone was rather boring, as they were able to collect the rest of the star cores and explore places like the RoboCo Battlezone without any future incidents.
Turned out that was where the robot horde had come from…. They had a gigantic underground robot factory there, right under the area where they hosted the robot battling shows for the amusement of human visitors.
That discovery made the place their least favorite place ever, knowing that it was the source of their earlier troubles.
They then spent the night in this place which went by the rather wordy name, "Vault-Tec: Amongst the stars". It was a place that Vault-Tec had apparently used to sell people on the idea of vaults and to find volunteers who were willing to entertain the idea of living underground. For some reason, the exhibit indicated that Vault-Tec even had the idea to build a base on the moon too, although nobody knew for sure if they actually went through with it. It was only a model vault, so the beds and the plumbing were technically not real. However, Nora had the bright idea to convert the model vault into an actual working one with real running showers and beds, which Taylor loved.
Out of the entire group, Taylor wasn't exactly used to running around in hot, sweaty and bloodied clothing. On top of it, the raider disguises they had looted off the corpses before coming to Nuka-World clearly hadn't been washed by the deceased raiders themselves in a LONG while.
So to say that Taylor felt very grody was an understatement. Nora kind of felt the same way, even if she was far more used to the idea of not bathing or washing their clothes for days.
Even so, Nora used her power to steadily covert the fake mini-vault into a real one. The first room she created was a shower and locker combo room which Taylor immediately called dibs on as soon as it was done. and the second room was a laundry room so that Nora could wash all of their clothes, while the third room held five beds with room dividers between them for privacy. The final and fourth room was the restroom, with five stalls for each one of them. In retrospect, Nora realized how silly that was immediately after she made that room.
After all, it wasn't like Nick could actually go to the bathroom like a normal human, and Ghouls very rarely had to go as seeing their digestive processes had mutated so much that it strayed far from a human's normal digestive process.
"What, no kitchen?" Hancock had joked slightly, and then he had commented that it was still a pretty nice home base that Nora had made for all five of them.
Nora had smirked slightly, stating that there was already a model kitchen upstairs near the visitor's center, which she eventually intended to turn into a real kitchen. But for now, she was more focused on getting them a place to sleep for the night.
With that in mind, everyone finally slept for the night once they had showered and had a change of clean clothes.
That morning, everyone was back in their usual clothes instead of the raider disguises they had been wearing the day before. The disguises were still wet from being washed in the last batch of clothes, and thus were currently being laid out on the floor to dry out.
Besides, Taylor reasoned that they didn't need to be in their disguises as long as the other raiders weren't coming out to explore the zones to start with. So for now, they could be themselves. Nora agreed with that, so everyone else had gratefully slipped back into their old clean clothes. Seems that nobody really liked wearing the raider clothes to start with.
"Okay, we're done with the Galactic Zone. I suppose we could go on to that bottling plant and clear it as Gage told us to… But I get the feeling we might find something interesting if we were to explore the rest of the zones some more." Nora said as she faced the group.
She then looked at Taylor and asked, "Are you okay with this? I mean, I don't want to put you into any more danger than is necessary…. And I'm sure you want to go back home, as soon as possible. We've got enough star cores for it after all. We can figure a way to leave Nuka-world without too much suspicion and then return here without you."
Taylor suddenly felt like she was put on the spot here as the others turned to look at her.
"Um… well…" She stuttered slightly for a few seconds there, before regaining her composure. "Actually, I'm okay with us going on to explore more of the Zones here. Besides, If I didn't help you resolve this human trafficking and raider problem of yours, I don't know how I'd be able to call myself a hero, you know? I'd have that on my conscience if I headed straight for my Earth instead of helping out here."
Taylor felt calmer now that she said her piece. She pushed her glasses up and stared up at Nora, waiting for her reaction.
Nora smiled slightly at this as she held up her hands in both acceptance and surrender. "Alright. Just had to make sure."
Hancock nodded approvingly. "In for a penny, in for a pound, eh?"
Nick looked slightly surprised that Hancock knew that old British saying, much less what it meant. He hadn't heard anybody say a saying like that ever since the Earth turned into an irradiated wasteland.
Hancock noticed the look on Nick's face and made a rude face. "What, you don't think I can't read? I'm not the mayor of Goodneighbor for nothing, ya know."
Nick suddenly looked flustered. "Ah, no! That's just… I was surprised to hear that saying again. Didn't think I'd hear something like that again. It brought back memories… that's all."
The ghoul relaxed slightly at Nick's words.
Piper then got up from her chair. "Well, let's get this show on the road. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner Taylor can go home. Right?"
Everyone else nodded at this, got up to pack up and get ready for what was obviously going to be a long hike exploring all of the zones.
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A while later, everyone was staring up at the sign which read "Kiddie Kingdom" with doubtful expressions on their faces.
"Are you sure we can find something useful here?" Taylor couldn't help but wonder.
It was obvious that this zone was meant for pre-teen kids under age 10. She could even see the decayed buildings beyond the sign, which was meant to look like they were made out of candy and gingerbread. The signposts all looked like giant lollipops with signs attached to them. And the rides themselves, which were still somehow working after all those years, were obviously made for young kids. The Ferris wheel was the only one that seemed like it could be a ride for all ages to ride.
In other words, it seemed like such a tame and useless place that they probably wouldn't find much here other than the skeletons of young kids and their parents… and wasn't that a depressing thought.
Nora still looked slightly dubious as she answered: "Well, you never know. Maybe there's an underground facility under the castle or something. So we should be heading there, right?"
Everyone alternatively shrugged or nodded at this comment, and they all went in.
Everyone's initial impression of this zone being a harmless, boring and depressing place was quickly dashed to pieces, once the speakers came on.
A masculine voice boomed out of the speakers, "Well now friends, it seems we have some more uninvited guests to the park. Would've thought they would have learned their lessons the first time around…Well, let's teach them again, shall we?"
At this, more than a dozen ghouls started crawling out of their hiding places, making loud groaning and moaning noises, not unlike that of a zombie.
"Oh fuck." Piper cursed, as she quickly pulled out her pistol. Everyone else followed suit, and they all formed a circle with their backs touching each other. This way, they were able to see where the enemies were coming from all sides.
This was the first time Taylor got to see any feral ghouls, even though she had heard of them from Hancock.
The analytical side of Taylor noted that feral ghouls looked somewhat different than the ones who had managed to keep their sanity. For one thing, the muscles and skin hung off them like they suffered a full-body stroke. Yes, she likened it the facial paralysis that humans suffered from after they had a stroke… only ten times worse. They were all droopy-looking, while the sane ghouls like Hancock were leaner in appearance and kept their muscles taut.
Hancock had told her that the reason Ghouls went feral was because of some illness. It happened because the ghouls' brains weren't completely immune against radiation unlike the rest of their bodies. So that resulted in radiation slowly destroying the brain cells over time. So when Taylor thought about it, maybe this feral illness could be likened to a far more dangerous type of dementia.
Of course, it was difficult to feel sorry for them when they were charging at you like a deranged zombie who wanted to eat your brains. It was clear that those ghouls wanted the group dead, so Taylor had no choice but to defend herself against them. A part of her still felt sorry for them, but the more practical side of her said that it was right to defend herself and the group… that way she'd live and have time to feel sorry for them later on.
Thankfully there wasn't that many of them in this area, so they were able to drop all of the ghouls in less than two minutes. Taylor felt a weird sense of satisfaction at that…. It meant that she was getting better at aiming and shooting her gun. She wasn't quite at the pro level yet, but at least she was able to make headshots now instead of just shooting in their general direction and hoping that her bullets scored a hit.
The PA system around the kiddie kingdom turned back on. "Hmm… okay, you lot are tougher than the last group was, I'll give you that," the gravely masculine voice said, "Alright, here's another challenge for you. Find the Theater… and I'll be there. But, we've got sprayers all over the Kiddie Kingdom to keep you cool and irradiated. I wonder, will you die of radiation poisoning before you even reach the theater?"
The voice let out a gravely booming laugh before the speakers switched off. The lollipop-shaped signposts let out a loud hissing noise, as the hidden mist sprayers were activated.
"Fuck. Let's run for high ground." Nora said as a green glowing mist started to fill up the park.
The five of them rushed for the nearest building that had an intact roof and climbed on top of it quickly as they could without falling off. It helped that there was a closed dumpster pushed up against the building that they could use to climb up to the roof, and that Taylor was able to teleport on top of the building and help the others get up onto it.
Once everyone was up there, Nora quickly passed around bottles of pills that were labeled "Rad-X" on them, and for good measure got out the Radaway too just in case.
"What's this?" Taylor asked as the bottle of pills were handed to her.
"Rad-X. It makes you highly resistant to radiation for a short duration. Better take three pills, if you want to be mostly immune to radiation for an hour." Piper explained as she was about to down three of them, although it was hard to do so without a drink to help wash it down.
Taylor's eyes widened at this, and she took three pills out of the bottle before passing it back to Nora.
Nora then asked, after taking some of the pills herself: "So…. any ideas? We could leave, but then we wouldn't find out who's doing this. Plus, this place clearly has working hidden cameras and the like, so obviously he has a base hidden here in kiddie kingdom that lets him see the entire place. Who knows, maybe he's got his own version of star control here. Which could be useful to us?"
"I don't mind running through the radioactive mist myself, but I get the feeling that there's going to be more of the feral ghouls than you ladies can handle. They might overwhelm us before we get to this theater place that he mentioned… which is most likely this guy's plan." Hancock replied.
"Looking at the facts… it's clear that he's not a raider. In fact, it seems that he thinks that we're raiders…" Nick though out loud, as he deducted the facts as he saw them, "Number one, he mentioned other groups coming here. Number two, He said he'd teach us a lesson for trying to invade his home."
Hancock's thinker power flared to life as he pondered Nick's words. He then said, "He's a ghoul like me. Got the same gravelly sort of voice as most ghouls do. In fact… my ability tells me that he's been here for a very long time? Possibly even before the war, but I can't verify that."
Piper brightened up slightly at this. "Oh! So he might be able to tell us a lot about Nuka-world. That is if we can get him to see reason."
Nora smiled wryly. "So it's agreed then? We confront this guy and try to get him to see reason."
Taylor then stood up. "I'll scout ahead for us? I mean, I can teleport around and find where the theater is. That way we won't run around aimlessly getting lost or something."
Everyone simply nodded at this, because that did sound good. Taylor disappeared in a small blip of light, and they could see her reappearing on another rooftop down the road before she disappeared again.
They took this time to rest and drink some colas, and within two minutes Taylor was back.
"The theater's located at the castle. How do you want to do this? I could teleport you over one by one, or we could run for it. But I did see some ghouls on the way there… I can't tell if they're just sleeping or dead." Taylor replied.
Nora frowned. She knew that Taylor seemed to have a limit on her teleporting ability, as it seemed to take a lot of stamina out of her. And once she was out, she needed time to rest and recharge. It seemed that Taylor's strength and stamina were steadily improving over time, and she could do a lot more with her ability now. Even so, Nora couldn't take the chance that Taylor's stamina could run out at an inconvenient time. She wanted the young girl to be able to teleport out of a dangerous situation whenever possible.
"I think we'll be fine if we run for it. We'll shoot at the ghouls we see on the way there." She said, and then asked, "Every human here took their Rad-X pills, right?"
Hancock and Nick were the only ones who honestly didn't need the pills.
Everyone else just nodded.
With that, they hopped off the building and started running for it. They all followed Taylor since she knew where the theater was.
Thankfully there weren't that many ghouls on the way there, and all the adults were able to headshot most of the ghouls before they were able to get up. So they didn't have a mob of ghouls chasing them when they finally got to the theater and entered it.
The inside of the theater was pretty much as Taylor expected it to be. Despite the ruined curtains and the decayed peeling paint, she could tell this used to be an excessively cheery-looking place where the wee kiddies were entertained by stage shows and people in mascot costumes.
The PA system turned on again alongside the spotlights which moved to center on the stage itself.
"Well…. I have to admit I'm impressed. I didn't think you'd make it this far." the voice said, and a dark cloud exploded outwards to reveal a ghoul in a magician outfit. The most remarkable thing about him is that he seemed to be a glowing ghoul, and the radioactive glow gave his eyes and the blood veins in his body a very lovely, eye-catching bright green color.
"But I suppose this means the REAL show can start now… Behold, for I am Oswald...the OUTRAGEOUS!" at this, he posed rather dramatically. Taylor couldn't help but groan slightly at that.
Oswald The Outrageous? That was the worst cape name she had ever heard of, and there was somebody unironically calling himself The Chubster back home. Taylor silently thought that Oswald was probably his real name too… which just added a whole layer to how bad that name really was. Imagine if she called herself Taylor The Teleporter or something… sure, the alliterative naming aspect was neat, but as a cape name? No way. People would find out where she lived and every other personal info about her right away.
Not that she managed to come up with a good cape name for herself yet. She always figured that she'd come up with something once she returned home.
"Oswald, listen to--" Nora was trying to get through to the ghoul magician, but the magician interrupted her by rambling about his background.
"When the bombs fell, everything changed. We changed. And somehow I received a gift. Actual magic. The stuff of legends. Perhaps you'd like to see some?" Oswald replied, smiling sinisterly.
Taylor sighed. Oh, he was just like Myriddin in that he thought his superpowers were magic too? Lovely. That was the last thing they needed… she really didn't want to deal with an insane cape on top of this.
"Up!!" He called out, unleashing a strong wave of radioactive energy throughout the room.
Feral Ghouls growled as they climbed out of their hiding places. They promptly started attacking the group soon as they got to their feet.
"You see? It doesn't matter what you do to them, I'll just resurrect them again and again…" He chuckled.
Hancock smirked back. "You forget, we have a ghoul in this group too… So you'll be resurrecting me too, asshole!"
With that, he lept at Oswald in an attempt to attack him directly despite Nora's protestations. Oswald reflexly teleported out of the way to the nearby balcony, and then back to the ground a few feet away, and that left behind a trail of small radioactive black clouds. Seeing this made a mental part of Taylor sit up and take note. So, This ghoul was a teleporter like she was? But she somehow knew that his teleporting ability worked differently than hers did.
That made sense, she supposed. Every Parahuman's power was like a unique fingerprint… no two were truly the same, even if the end result looked very similar. Take two capes who had a cold freezing ability for example. To the average person, they would think the two capes had the same power… when in reality that couldn't be further from the truth. One could encase things in by chilling the water particles in the air so that they eventually became frozen solid, making it seem as if the ice came from nowhere. The second one simply absorbed the heat out of everything by touching it so it would appear that anything he touched was icing over…
Different methods, yet somehow ending up with the same result.
But now Taylor was getting the weirdest feeling that she couldn't quite explain to herself or others. A part of her really, really, wanted to know how Oswald's teleporting worked…. She wanted to know if she could somehow improve her teleporting ability by studying Oswald's ability.
Taylor put down a feral ghoul that was in her way as she moved closer to Oswald.
"You do have a point there…" Oswald was saying to Hancock, "I'd just be helping the enemy too if I stuck around. So I'll be seeing ya…"
He gave Hancock a mock salute as he was about to teleport, and Taylor took this opportunity to grab the magician from behind as he teleported out of sight.
"Taylor!" She could hear Nora and the others scream her name as she vanished into nowhere.
She could feel her own power activating automatically in order to protect her, as she followed Oswald while he was moving through total darkness.
It almost felt like… he was reassembling himself on a molecular level and then assembling himself elsewhere? The radioactive black smoke that he generated when he rematerialized during this was actually all him… molecules made out of his genetic material and out of his clothes. That was indeed very different than her method of folding the dimensional space around herself until she was at the location where she wanted to be. She wasn't a huge science nerd so she didn't know the exact mechanics around her own ability…. But thinking of it in those terms somehow felt right. Analyzing the differences between their powers were highly fascinating, so she was almost sorry when it ended as quickly as it started.
Within a few seconds, she blinked as she found herself inside some kind of underground place that was full of old-fashioned looking computers, security monitors and a few other gizmos. On the security monitors, there was video feed showing the entire "kingdom" from all angles. Out the open door, she saw a few broken down generators and the place also appeared to be partially flooded.
So, this was where he monitored the entire "kiddie kingdom" park from.
"WHAT? How did you get here?" Oswald exclaimed in shock as he quickly stepped away from me.
"Easy. I just grabbed you." Taylor answered, and that was technically the truth.
"Impossible. I can't take anything or anybody with me… not even if I put it in my pocket. God knows I've tried…." Oswald said.
"Oh really? Well, I can!" Taylor said as she tackled Oswald and activated her teleportation skills at the same time.
She felt the familiar twinge of space folding all around her, but she could somehow feel Oswald panicking and trying to fight her power with his own power. So instead of ending up back at the theater as she wanted, she found herself standing somewhere outside in kiddie Kingdom with Oswald.
"So. You have magic too." Oswald said flatly, once he realized what was going on. "You think that changes anything? You raiders are still all the same no matter what your gimmick is!"
"We're not the ra--" Taylor tried to tell the ghoul, but he was in the process of teleporting out so Taylor was forced to grab on to him again.
But this time Oswald was aware of what she was doing, especially when she tried to piggyback off his power. So it felt like he was doing the equivalent of trying to shake her off, but she held on very firmly and tried her best to pull him towards where she wanted them to be.
Oswald seemed to realize what she wanted and did his best to resist. Unfortunately for both of them, the two of them were in teleporter limbo way too long according to their power and they were forced to re-materialize 3,500 feet high in the air above the park.
The two of them let out loud yelps of surprise as they found themselves plummeting down. They reflexly grabbed on to each other in their fear and teleported together straight to ground level. Or rather, they teleported onto the top roof of a building near the King Cola castle.
Panting slightly, they looked at each other, and they saw that they were still holding on to each other. Oswald started struggling to get away from Taylor, but Taylor stopped him cold by yelling at him, "Just stop and listen for once! We've been trying to tell you that we're not raiders!"
Oswald scoffed loudly and turned to face Taylor. "Yeah, right! Then why are you gunning down all those poor people? Can't you tell they're sick and can't help themselves?"
"We don't want to, but you left us with no choice when you sicced them on us. If there was a way to avoid killing anybody, I'd take it!" Taylor snapped back, "Surely you can understand that? After all, you exactly didn't give us a chance to explain why we were here!"
"Taylor! Are you alright?" Nora called out as she ran down the stairs towards Taylor, the rest of the group following closely behind.
"I'm fine, guys! I'm trying to tell Oswald why we're here… hopefully, he's going to listen this time." Taylor yelled down to her group.
Oswald growled softly. He exactly didn't trust those newcomers, but the young girl did have a point in that he didn't exactly give them a chance to explain. He huffed loudly, and then said, "Alright, alright! I'll give your group a chance to explain yourselves. But the minute I think you're lying to me, I'll chase you out of this place!"
Nora then looked up at Oswald, since they were still on the ground level while he was standing on top of a building, and called out: "We're with the Minutemen, which is a law enforcement agency. We got some reports that there was a very large group of raiders who were kidnapping people en masse and taking them to Nuka-world to work as slaves… or worse."
Oswald sniffed. "Okay. and?"
Nora then said, "Surely you can agree with me that the Raiders aren't allowed to operate in Nuka-world as they are? That they're a threat to the entire commonwealth, just not you and your family? My group's been working undercover, trying to find a way we could drive them all away from Nuka-world."
Oswald mulled this over. Well, Nora sounded very sincere… and he did need some help driving off all those bastards so that they would never come back again. His girlfriend Rachel didn't have the stomach for it, and he couldn't stomach sending Little Sam or the rest of his family out to fight them. Using strangers to fight the raiders, on the other hand, he had no problem with. He didn't really have any emotional attraction to any of the strangers.
Plus, he was kind of curious about the young girl in the black-rimmed glasses there… he wondered how she had developed magical abilities. He had been trying to teach Sam and Rachel how to use magic, but it was useless. They just couldn't grasp it no matter how hard they tried. Maybe this "Taylor" would give him a hint on how to pass his magical abilities on to his girlfriend and Sam.
The PA system activated, and a young scared voice came out of it. "O-Oswald? I know you told me not to use the PA system, but it's Rachel!"
The voice let out a loud sniffle, sounding like they were about to cry, "She's getting worse…. The treatment not working… She's talking about… Kk-killing….. Herself. Please come back."
"Rachel." Oswald softly said her name, and he quickly teleported, leaving a black cloud behind.
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Despite the fact that Oswald had ditched them, Taylor and the others managed to find him anyways.
He was at the very top part of the Castle and were cradling a female ghoul in his arms while a young ghoul child stood by watching with tear-stained eyes.
Nora and the others came out of the elevator, and the child gasped fearfully at their presence.
"Relax, kid. We're not here to hurt you." Hancock replied. The ghoul kid then squinted his eyes suspiciously at Hancock as he asked, "Yeah? Then why are you dressed like a pirate?"
Hancock blinked at this while the others snickered softly.
Nora walked over to Oswald, and asked: "Is she okay? Is there anything we can do?"
Oswald looked up at the group with tear-stained eyes. "Unless you've got the cure for this… disease, there's nothing you can do. Rachel and the others…. They've been working so hard and long for a cure…. But… Argh! Why Rachel? Why did she have to succumb to this disease too??"
"Disease? What disease?" Nora wondered.
"You've seen it. Many ghouls end up losing their minds eventually…. It's like what the old human folks get when they eventually become senile… only ten times worse. It's like… their brains become so damaged," Oswald explained, "200 years ago after the nuclear fallout was over, Rachel and I went around Nuka-World to see who still survived despite all the heavy nuclear radiation that the entire park was suffering from at the time."
He paused for a few seconds, before continuing, "We found little Sam here, but we also found a few surviving scientists who were working here in Nuka world, manning the cloning facility in The Safari Zone. They had become ghouls like us and were horrified when many of the ghouls in the park started losing their minds. Rachel… she was the one who suggested that we should all work together to find a cure for this… 'feral' disease. She had a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, and they were scientists who specialized in genetic tampering and cloning. She thought that between all four of them, that they'd be able to find a cure for everyone. The guys at Safari Zone agreed to that. But as you can see… it's been so long…. And so far we haven't found a cure."
He let out a loud sob after this long explanation was over.
Taylor then pointed out as the others looked at her, "No wonder why you guys haven't found a cure. You'd need both a neurologist and a radiobiologist to understand how the brain is being damaged by the radiation in order to prevent it If what Hancock here told me about it is right. It's not a genetic disorder or illness so any scientist who specializes in genetic tampering and cloning wouldn't be able to figure out how to stop that. The same goes for anybody who knows chemistry. It's got to do with the brain, and you can't heal bits of damaged brains with chemistry…. far as I know."
Piper perked up at the last part, and asked, "What about Stimpacks? Those things are amazing… they can even help you regenerate lost limbs. Wouldn't they be able to regenerate the lost bits of the brain?"
Hancock just simply shook his head. "Nah. Stimpacks were mostly made for humans. It tends to interact differently with ghouls, for some reason. It doesn't kill us, but it's not as effective as it is for humans. You're better off injecting radioactive material into us if you want us to regenerate quickly instead."
"Oh." Piper looked dejected at this.
Oswald was slowly calming down the more he listened to the group discuss what could be done to cure the feral ghouls' condition.
Well, it was looking more likely by the minute that they were exactly as they claimed...that they weren't raiders but rather a group of undercover agents for some police organization. It actually made him feel bad for assuming things about them without meeting with them first. What if he had ended up killing a group of innocent people without knowing it? He felt ill at that thought.
Rachel stirred in his arms, which brought his attention back to his longtime girlfriend. Well, they were more like an old married couple at this point, even though they hadn't made it "official" at a chapel like Rachel always wanted.
"Oz…." She murmured, "It…. it's gets hard now. To think. not think straight…"
"Easy, Rachel. I'm here now." Oswald held her tighter, as a stray tear fell from his eyes onto Rachel's cheek.
"I… I want die, Oz. I, I, I, can't…….want not like Fran." Rachel stuttered, trying to tell him what she was thinking, but it just came out jumbled.
Oswald seemed to understand her anyway, as he answered: "I understand. But I still don't want you to die…. Even if you end up like Fran and Evan. I still have faith that there can be a cure for this… illness. In fact, this girl over there just told us that we'd need somebody who specializes in brains and radiation. That the reason why you and the scientists in Safari Zone hadn't made any headway in it for 200 years, was because you guys didn't specialize in those things. She seemed to know what she was talking about, despite her young age."
Rachel's lips trembled at this, and she blinked back tears. "O… ok. Trust you."
Sam, the ghoul child rushed over. "Oz, is she going to be okay? Or… is she… gonna end up like… my mom?"
Oswald looked up at Sam and sighed. "I'm sorry… it looks like we'll have to take her to Safari Zone. She'll be safe there, just like your mom is."
Sam burst into tears at this. "No… not her too."
Oz pulled Sam into a one-armed hug, as he was still holding Rachel with the other arm, and whispered something comforting into Sam's ear while the boy sobbed loudly.
The rest of the group stood there awkwardly, feeling like they were intruding on a very personal scene.
Finally, Oswald looked up at Nora and everyone else. "I have a favor to ask of you guys… will you help me escort Rachel to Safari Zone? We can talk on the way there."
"I'll go with you!" Sam piped up after he had stopped crying.
Oswald shook his head. "No, I need somebody to watch the park and turn on the misters while I'm gone. Don't want anybody coming in and taking over, do we."
Sam looked highly disappointed at this, but he nodded.
Nora nodded as well. "Of course, Oswald. I want to gather every friendly face I can find together anyway. I want to see if we can all band together and drive the raiders out of Nuka-world."
Oswald simply nodded back.
The weird thing about this chapter. I had an epic action scene planned between Oswald and Taylor… but instead, it got kind of…. Angsty? Still some delicious conflict there anyway.
--------------------------------------------
It turned out that Taylor couldn't keep the blue power armor for herself, much to her dismay.
The power armor was designed to be piloted by a muscular man who outweighed her in the bodybuilding weight class. Taylor was a scrawny, stick-thin teenager so she couldn't even make the power armor take a proper step without feeling out of breath as she strained to move the power armor with her own body.
Hancock and Nick were considerably stronger than Taylor, but even they had commented that walking in it felt like they had heavy weights strapped to their legs and arms. So it probably wouldn't be too practical to stomp all over the place wearing that power armor.
Nora seemed to have better luck piloting the thing, but even she agreed that it would be too slow to walk around the park in that heavy power armor. She did suggest that they could come back for it when it came to deal with the raiders, however.
So, Taylor had been forced to teleport the power armor back into its display case before they moved on so that nobody else could get to it. Too bad, that had been some serious protection right there. She had barely felt anything the robots sent her way when she had been tanking for Nick Valentine. She wouldn't have minded becoming the "tank" for the entire team if it was going to be like that for the rest of her trip here.
Piper smiled at her sympathetically and told her that maybe after this was over they'd find some power armor that would fit her. Or they could customize one for her.
Taylor took one last longing glance at the power armor before she left with the group to explore the rest of the Galactic Zone. Why did she feel like a heartbroken kid who got told they couldn't have a puppy? Stupid power armor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Exploring the rest of the Galactic Zone was rather boring, as they were able to collect the rest of the star cores and explore places like the RoboCo Battlezone without any future incidents.
Turned out that was where the robot horde had come from…. They had a gigantic underground robot factory there, right under the area where they hosted the robot battling shows for the amusement of human visitors.
That discovery made the place their least favorite place ever, knowing that it was the source of their earlier troubles.
They then spent the night in this place which went by the rather wordy name, "Vault-Tec: Amongst the stars". It was a place that Vault-Tec had apparently used to sell people on the idea of vaults and to find volunteers who were willing to entertain the idea of living underground. For some reason, the exhibit indicated that Vault-Tec even had the idea to build a base on the moon too, although nobody knew for sure if they actually went through with it. It was only a model vault, so the beds and the plumbing were technically not real. However, Nora had the bright idea to convert the model vault into an actual working one with real running showers and beds, which Taylor loved.
Out of the entire group, Taylor wasn't exactly used to running around in hot, sweaty and bloodied clothing. On top of it, the raider disguises they had looted off the corpses before coming to Nuka-World clearly hadn't been washed by the deceased raiders themselves in a LONG while.
So to say that Taylor felt very grody was an understatement. Nora kind of felt the same way, even if she was far more used to the idea of not bathing or washing their clothes for days.
Even so, Nora used her power to steadily covert the fake mini-vault into a real one. The first room she created was a shower and locker combo room which Taylor immediately called dibs on as soon as it was done. and the second room was a laundry room so that Nora could wash all of their clothes, while the third room held five beds with room dividers between them for privacy. The final and fourth room was the restroom, with five stalls for each one of them. In retrospect, Nora realized how silly that was immediately after she made that room.
After all, it wasn't like Nick could actually go to the bathroom like a normal human, and Ghouls very rarely had to go as seeing their digestive processes had mutated so much that it strayed far from a human's normal digestive process.
"What, no kitchen?" Hancock had joked slightly, and then he had commented that it was still a pretty nice home base that Nora had made for all five of them.
Nora had smirked slightly, stating that there was already a model kitchen upstairs near the visitor's center, which she eventually intended to turn into a real kitchen. But for now, she was more focused on getting them a place to sleep for the night.
With that in mind, everyone finally slept for the night once they had showered and had a change of clean clothes.
That morning, everyone was back in their usual clothes instead of the raider disguises they had been wearing the day before. The disguises were still wet from being washed in the last batch of clothes, and thus were currently being laid out on the floor to dry out.
Besides, Taylor reasoned that they didn't need to be in their disguises as long as the other raiders weren't coming out to explore the zones to start with. So for now, they could be themselves. Nora agreed with that, so everyone else had gratefully slipped back into their old clean clothes. Seems that nobody really liked wearing the raider clothes to start with.
"Okay, we're done with the Galactic Zone. I suppose we could go on to that bottling plant and clear it as Gage told us to… But I get the feeling we might find something interesting if we were to explore the rest of the zones some more." Nora said as she faced the group.
She then looked at Taylor and asked, "Are you okay with this? I mean, I don't want to put you into any more danger than is necessary…. And I'm sure you want to go back home, as soon as possible. We've got enough star cores for it after all. We can figure a way to leave Nuka-world without too much suspicion and then return here without you."
Taylor suddenly felt like she was put on the spot here as the others turned to look at her.
"Um… well…" She stuttered slightly for a few seconds there, before regaining her composure. "Actually, I'm okay with us going on to explore more of the Zones here. Besides, If I didn't help you resolve this human trafficking and raider problem of yours, I don't know how I'd be able to call myself a hero, you know? I'd have that on my conscience if I headed straight for my Earth instead of helping out here."
Taylor felt calmer now that she said her piece. She pushed her glasses up and stared up at Nora, waiting for her reaction.
Nora smiled slightly at this as she held up her hands in both acceptance and surrender. "Alright. Just had to make sure."
Hancock nodded approvingly. "In for a penny, in for a pound, eh?"
Nick looked slightly surprised that Hancock knew that old British saying, much less what it meant. He hadn't heard anybody say a saying like that ever since the Earth turned into an irradiated wasteland.
Hancock noticed the look on Nick's face and made a rude face. "What, you don't think I can't read? I'm not the mayor of Goodneighbor for nothing, ya know."
Nick suddenly looked flustered. "Ah, no! That's just… I was surprised to hear that saying again. Didn't think I'd hear something like that again. It brought back memories… that's all."
The ghoul relaxed slightly at Nick's words.
Piper then got up from her chair. "Well, let's get this show on the road. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner Taylor can go home. Right?"
Everyone else nodded at this, got up to pack up and get ready for what was obviously going to be a long hike exploring all of the zones.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A while later, everyone was staring up at the sign which read "Kiddie Kingdom" with doubtful expressions on their faces.
"Are you sure we can find something useful here?" Taylor couldn't help but wonder.
It was obvious that this zone was meant for pre-teen kids under age 10. She could even see the decayed buildings beyond the sign, which was meant to look like they were made out of candy and gingerbread. The signposts all looked like giant lollipops with signs attached to them. And the rides themselves, which were still somehow working after all those years, were obviously made for young kids. The Ferris wheel was the only one that seemed like it could be a ride for all ages to ride.
In other words, it seemed like such a tame and useless place that they probably wouldn't find much here other than the skeletons of young kids and their parents… and wasn't that a depressing thought.
Nora still looked slightly dubious as she answered: "Well, you never know. Maybe there's an underground facility under the castle or something. So we should be heading there, right?"
Everyone alternatively shrugged or nodded at this comment, and they all went in.
Everyone's initial impression of this zone being a harmless, boring and depressing place was quickly dashed to pieces, once the speakers came on.
A masculine voice boomed out of the speakers, "Well now friends, it seems we have some more uninvited guests to the park. Would've thought they would have learned their lessons the first time around…Well, let's teach them again, shall we?"
At this, more than a dozen ghouls started crawling out of their hiding places, making loud groaning and moaning noises, not unlike that of a zombie.
"Oh fuck." Piper cursed, as she quickly pulled out her pistol. Everyone else followed suit, and they all formed a circle with their backs touching each other. This way, they were able to see where the enemies were coming from all sides.
This was the first time Taylor got to see any feral ghouls, even though she had heard of them from Hancock.
The analytical side of Taylor noted that feral ghouls looked somewhat different than the ones who had managed to keep their sanity. For one thing, the muscles and skin hung off them like they suffered a full-body stroke. Yes, she likened it the facial paralysis that humans suffered from after they had a stroke… only ten times worse. They were all droopy-looking, while the sane ghouls like Hancock were leaner in appearance and kept their muscles taut.
Hancock had told her that the reason Ghouls went feral was because of some illness. It happened because the ghouls' brains weren't completely immune against radiation unlike the rest of their bodies. So that resulted in radiation slowly destroying the brain cells over time. So when Taylor thought about it, maybe this feral illness could be likened to a far more dangerous type of dementia.
Of course, it was difficult to feel sorry for them when they were charging at you like a deranged zombie who wanted to eat your brains. It was clear that those ghouls wanted the group dead, so Taylor had no choice but to defend herself against them. A part of her still felt sorry for them, but the more practical side of her said that it was right to defend herself and the group… that way she'd live and have time to feel sorry for them later on.
Thankfully there wasn't that many of them in this area, so they were able to drop all of the ghouls in less than two minutes. Taylor felt a weird sense of satisfaction at that…. It meant that she was getting better at aiming and shooting her gun. She wasn't quite at the pro level yet, but at least she was able to make headshots now instead of just shooting in their general direction and hoping that her bullets scored a hit.
The PA system around the kiddie kingdom turned back on. "Hmm… okay, you lot are tougher than the last group was, I'll give you that," the gravely masculine voice said, "Alright, here's another challenge for you. Find the Theater… and I'll be there. But, we've got sprayers all over the Kiddie Kingdom to keep you cool and irradiated. I wonder, will you die of radiation poisoning before you even reach the theater?"
The voice let out a gravely booming laugh before the speakers switched off. The lollipop-shaped signposts let out a loud hissing noise, as the hidden mist sprayers were activated.
"Fuck. Let's run for high ground." Nora said as a green glowing mist started to fill up the park.
The five of them rushed for the nearest building that had an intact roof and climbed on top of it quickly as they could without falling off. It helped that there was a closed dumpster pushed up against the building that they could use to climb up to the roof, and that Taylor was able to teleport on top of the building and help the others get up onto it.
Once everyone was up there, Nora quickly passed around bottles of pills that were labeled "Rad-X" on them, and for good measure got out the Radaway too just in case.
"What's this?" Taylor asked as the bottle of pills were handed to her.
"Rad-X. It makes you highly resistant to radiation for a short duration. Better take three pills, if you want to be mostly immune to radiation for an hour." Piper explained as she was about to down three of them, although it was hard to do so without a drink to help wash it down.
Taylor's eyes widened at this, and she took three pills out of the bottle before passing it back to Nora.
Nora then asked, after taking some of the pills herself: "So…. any ideas? We could leave, but then we wouldn't find out who's doing this. Plus, this place clearly has working hidden cameras and the like, so obviously he has a base hidden here in kiddie kingdom that lets him see the entire place. Who knows, maybe he's got his own version of star control here. Which could be useful to us?"
"I don't mind running through the radioactive mist myself, but I get the feeling that there's going to be more of the feral ghouls than you ladies can handle. They might overwhelm us before we get to this theater place that he mentioned… which is most likely this guy's plan." Hancock replied.
"Looking at the facts… it's clear that he's not a raider. In fact, it seems that he thinks that we're raiders…" Nick though out loud, as he deducted the facts as he saw them, "Number one, he mentioned other groups coming here. Number two, He said he'd teach us a lesson for trying to invade his home."
Hancock's thinker power flared to life as he pondered Nick's words. He then said, "He's a ghoul like me. Got the same gravelly sort of voice as most ghouls do. In fact… my ability tells me that he's been here for a very long time? Possibly even before the war, but I can't verify that."
Piper brightened up slightly at this. "Oh! So he might be able to tell us a lot about Nuka-world. That is if we can get him to see reason."
Nora smiled wryly. "So it's agreed then? We confront this guy and try to get him to see reason."
Taylor then stood up. "I'll scout ahead for us? I mean, I can teleport around and find where the theater is. That way we won't run around aimlessly getting lost or something."
Everyone simply nodded at this, because that did sound good. Taylor disappeared in a small blip of light, and they could see her reappearing on another rooftop down the road before she disappeared again.
They took this time to rest and drink some colas, and within two minutes Taylor was back.
"The theater's located at the castle. How do you want to do this? I could teleport you over one by one, or we could run for it. But I did see some ghouls on the way there… I can't tell if they're just sleeping or dead." Taylor replied.
Nora frowned. She knew that Taylor seemed to have a limit on her teleporting ability, as it seemed to take a lot of stamina out of her. And once she was out, she needed time to rest and recharge. It seemed that Taylor's strength and stamina were steadily improving over time, and she could do a lot more with her ability now. Even so, Nora couldn't take the chance that Taylor's stamina could run out at an inconvenient time. She wanted the young girl to be able to teleport out of a dangerous situation whenever possible.
"I think we'll be fine if we run for it. We'll shoot at the ghouls we see on the way there." She said, and then asked, "Every human here took their Rad-X pills, right?"
Hancock and Nick were the only ones who honestly didn't need the pills.
Everyone else just nodded.
With that, they hopped off the building and started running for it. They all followed Taylor since she knew where the theater was.
Thankfully there weren't that many ghouls on the way there, and all the adults were able to headshot most of the ghouls before they were able to get up. So they didn't have a mob of ghouls chasing them when they finally got to the theater and entered it.
The inside of the theater was pretty much as Taylor expected it to be. Despite the ruined curtains and the decayed peeling paint, she could tell this used to be an excessively cheery-looking place where the wee kiddies were entertained by stage shows and people in mascot costumes.
The PA system turned on again alongside the spotlights which moved to center on the stage itself.
"Well…. I have to admit I'm impressed. I didn't think you'd make it this far." the voice said, and a dark cloud exploded outwards to reveal a ghoul in a magician outfit. The most remarkable thing about him is that he seemed to be a glowing ghoul, and the radioactive glow gave his eyes and the blood veins in his body a very lovely, eye-catching bright green color.
"But I suppose this means the REAL show can start now… Behold, for I am Oswald...the OUTRAGEOUS!" at this, he posed rather dramatically. Taylor couldn't help but groan slightly at that.
Oswald The Outrageous? That was the worst cape name she had ever heard of, and there was somebody unironically calling himself The Chubster back home. Taylor silently thought that Oswald was probably his real name too… which just added a whole layer to how bad that name really was. Imagine if she called herself Taylor The Teleporter or something… sure, the alliterative naming aspect was neat, but as a cape name? No way. People would find out where she lived and every other personal info about her right away.
Not that she managed to come up with a good cape name for herself yet. She always figured that she'd come up with something once she returned home.
"Oswald, listen to--" Nora was trying to get through to the ghoul magician, but the magician interrupted her by rambling about his background.
"When the bombs fell, everything changed. We changed. And somehow I received a gift. Actual magic. The stuff of legends. Perhaps you'd like to see some?" Oswald replied, smiling sinisterly.
Taylor sighed. Oh, he was just like Myriddin in that he thought his superpowers were magic too? Lovely. That was the last thing they needed… she really didn't want to deal with an insane cape on top of this.
"Up!!" He called out, unleashing a strong wave of radioactive energy throughout the room.
Feral Ghouls growled as they climbed out of their hiding places. They promptly started attacking the group soon as they got to their feet.
"You see? It doesn't matter what you do to them, I'll just resurrect them again and again…" He chuckled.
Hancock smirked back. "You forget, we have a ghoul in this group too… So you'll be resurrecting me too, asshole!"
With that, he lept at Oswald in an attempt to attack him directly despite Nora's protestations. Oswald reflexly teleported out of the way to the nearby balcony, and then back to the ground a few feet away, and that left behind a trail of small radioactive black clouds. Seeing this made a mental part of Taylor sit up and take note. So, This ghoul was a teleporter like she was? But she somehow knew that his teleporting ability worked differently than hers did.
That made sense, she supposed. Every Parahuman's power was like a unique fingerprint… no two were truly the same, even if the end result looked very similar. Take two capes who had a cold freezing ability for example. To the average person, they would think the two capes had the same power… when in reality that couldn't be further from the truth. One could encase things in by chilling the water particles in the air so that they eventually became frozen solid, making it seem as if the ice came from nowhere. The second one simply absorbed the heat out of everything by touching it so it would appear that anything he touched was icing over…
Different methods, yet somehow ending up with the same result.
But now Taylor was getting the weirdest feeling that she couldn't quite explain to herself or others. A part of her really, really, wanted to know how Oswald's teleporting worked…. She wanted to know if she could somehow improve her teleporting ability by studying Oswald's ability.
Taylor put down a feral ghoul that was in her way as she moved closer to Oswald.
"You do have a point there…" Oswald was saying to Hancock, "I'd just be helping the enemy too if I stuck around. So I'll be seeing ya…"
He gave Hancock a mock salute as he was about to teleport, and Taylor took this opportunity to grab the magician from behind as he teleported out of sight.
"Taylor!" She could hear Nora and the others scream her name as she vanished into nowhere.
She could feel her own power activating automatically in order to protect her, as she followed Oswald while he was moving through total darkness.
It almost felt like… he was reassembling himself on a molecular level and then assembling himself elsewhere? The radioactive black smoke that he generated when he rematerialized during this was actually all him… molecules made out of his genetic material and out of his clothes. That was indeed very different than her method of folding the dimensional space around herself until she was at the location where she wanted to be. She wasn't a huge science nerd so she didn't know the exact mechanics around her own ability…. But thinking of it in those terms somehow felt right. Analyzing the differences between their powers were highly fascinating, so she was almost sorry when it ended as quickly as it started.
Within a few seconds, she blinked as she found herself inside some kind of underground place that was full of old-fashioned looking computers, security monitors and a few other gizmos. On the security monitors, there was video feed showing the entire "kingdom" from all angles. Out the open door, she saw a few broken down generators and the place also appeared to be partially flooded.
So, this was where he monitored the entire "kiddie kingdom" park from.
"WHAT? How did you get here?" Oswald exclaimed in shock as he quickly stepped away from me.
"Easy. I just grabbed you." Taylor answered, and that was technically the truth.
"Impossible. I can't take anything or anybody with me… not even if I put it in my pocket. God knows I've tried…." Oswald said.
"Oh really? Well, I can!" Taylor said as she tackled Oswald and activated her teleportation skills at the same time.
She felt the familiar twinge of space folding all around her, but she could somehow feel Oswald panicking and trying to fight her power with his own power. So instead of ending up back at the theater as she wanted, she found herself standing somewhere outside in kiddie Kingdom with Oswald.
"So. You have magic too." Oswald said flatly, once he realized what was going on. "You think that changes anything? You raiders are still all the same no matter what your gimmick is!"
"We're not the ra--" Taylor tried to tell the ghoul, but he was in the process of teleporting out so Taylor was forced to grab on to him again.
But this time Oswald was aware of what she was doing, especially when she tried to piggyback off his power. So it felt like he was doing the equivalent of trying to shake her off, but she held on very firmly and tried her best to pull him towards where she wanted them to be.
Oswald seemed to realize what she wanted and did his best to resist. Unfortunately for both of them, the two of them were in teleporter limbo way too long according to their power and they were forced to re-materialize 3,500 feet high in the air above the park.
The two of them let out loud yelps of surprise as they found themselves plummeting down. They reflexly grabbed on to each other in their fear and teleported together straight to ground level. Or rather, they teleported onto the top roof of a building near the King Cola castle.
Panting slightly, they looked at each other, and they saw that they were still holding on to each other. Oswald started struggling to get away from Taylor, but Taylor stopped him cold by yelling at him, "Just stop and listen for once! We've been trying to tell you that we're not raiders!"
Oswald scoffed loudly and turned to face Taylor. "Yeah, right! Then why are you gunning down all those poor people? Can't you tell they're sick and can't help themselves?"
"We don't want to, but you left us with no choice when you sicced them on us. If there was a way to avoid killing anybody, I'd take it!" Taylor snapped back, "Surely you can understand that? After all, you exactly didn't give us a chance to explain why we were here!"
"Taylor! Are you alright?" Nora called out as she ran down the stairs towards Taylor, the rest of the group following closely behind.
"I'm fine, guys! I'm trying to tell Oswald why we're here… hopefully, he's going to listen this time." Taylor yelled down to her group.
Oswald growled softly. He exactly didn't trust those newcomers, but the young girl did have a point in that he didn't exactly give them a chance to explain. He huffed loudly, and then said, "Alright, alright! I'll give your group a chance to explain yourselves. But the minute I think you're lying to me, I'll chase you out of this place!"
Nora then looked up at Oswald, since they were still on the ground level while he was standing on top of a building, and called out: "We're with the Minutemen, which is a law enforcement agency. We got some reports that there was a very large group of raiders who were kidnapping people en masse and taking them to Nuka-world to work as slaves… or worse."
Oswald sniffed. "Okay. and?"
Nora then said, "Surely you can agree with me that the Raiders aren't allowed to operate in Nuka-world as they are? That they're a threat to the entire commonwealth, just not you and your family? My group's been working undercover, trying to find a way we could drive them all away from Nuka-world."
Oswald mulled this over. Well, Nora sounded very sincere… and he did need some help driving off all those bastards so that they would never come back again. His girlfriend Rachel didn't have the stomach for it, and he couldn't stomach sending Little Sam or the rest of his family out to fight them. Using strangers to fight the raiders, on the other hand, he had no problem with. He didn't really have any emotional attraction to any of the strangers.
Plus, he was kind of curious about the young girl in the black-rimmed glasses there… he wondered how she had developed magical abilities. He had been trying to teach Sam and Rachel how to use magic, but it was useless. They just couldn't grasp it no matter how hard they tried. Maybe this "Taylor" would give him a hint on how to pass his magical abilities on to his girlfriend and Sam.
The PA system activated, and a young scared voice came out of it. "O-Oswald? I know you told me not to use the PA system, but it's Rachel!"
The voice let out a loud sniffle, sounding like they were about to cry, "She's getting worse…. The treatment not working… She's talking about… Kk-killing….. Herself. Please come back."
"Rachel." Oswald softly said her name, and he quickly teleported, leaving a black cloud behind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Despite the fact that Oswald had ditched them, Taylor and the others managed to find him anyways.
He was at the very top part of the Castle and were cradling a female ghoul in his arms while a young ghoul child stood by watching with tear-stained eyes.
Nora and the others came out of the elevator, and the child gasped fearfully at their presence.
"Relax, kid. We're not here to hurt you." Hancock replied. The ghoul kid then squinted his eyes suspiciously at Hancock as he asked, "Yeah? Then why are you dressed like a pirate?"
Hancock blinked at this while the others snickered softly.
Nora walked over to Oswald, and asked: "Is she okay? Is there anything we can do?"
Oswald looked up at the group with tear-stained eyes. "Unless you've got the cure for this… disease, there's nothing you can do. Rachel and the others…. They've been working so hard and long for a cure…. But… Argh! Why Rachel? Why did she have to succumb to this disease too??"
"Disease? What disease?" Nora wondered.
"You've seen it. Many ghouls end up losing their minds eventually…. It's like what the old human folks get when they eventually become senile… only ten times worse. It's like… their brains become so damaged," Oswald explained, "200 years ago after the nuclear fallout was over, Rachel and I went around Nuka-World to see who still survived despite all the heavy nuclear radiation that the entire park was suffering from at the time."
He paused for a few seconds, before continuing, "We found little Sam here, but we also found a few surviving scientists who were working here in Nuka world, manning the cloning facility in The Safari Zone. They had become ghouls like us and were horrified when many of the ghouls in the park started losing their minds. Rachel… she was the one who suggested that we should all work together to find a cure for this… 'feral' disease. She had a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, and they were scientists who specialized in genetic tampering and cloning. She thought that between all four of them, that they'd be able to find a cure for everyone. The guys at Safari Zone agreed to that. But as you can see… it's been so long…. And so far we haven't found a cure."
He let out a loud sob after this long explanation was over.
Taylor then pointed out as the others looked at her, "No wonder why you guys haven't found a cure. You'd need both a neurologist and a radiobiologist to understand how the brain is being damaged by the radiation in order to prevent it If what Hancock here told me about it is right. It's not a genetic disorder or illness so any scientist who specializes in genetic tampering and cloning wouldn't be able to figure out how to stop that. The same goes for anybody who knows chemistry. It's got to do with the brain, and you can't heal bits of damaged brains with chemistry…. far as I know."
Piper perked up at the last part, and asked, "What about Stimpacks? Those things are amazing… they can even help you regenerate lost limbs. Wouldn't they be able to regenerate the lost bits of the brain?"
Hancock just simply shook his head. "Nah. Stimpacks were mostly made for humans. It tends to interact differently with ghouls, for some reason. It doesn't kill us, but it's not as effective as it is for humans. You're better off injecting radioactive material into us if you want us to regenerate quickly instead."
"Oh." Piper looked dejected at this.
Oswald was slowly calming down the more he listened to the group discuss what could be done to cure the feral ghouls' condition.
Well, it was looking more likely by the minute that they were exactly as they claimed...that they weren't raiders but rather a group of undercover agents for some police organization. It actually made him feel bad for assuming things about them without meeting with them first. What if he had ended up killing a group of innocent people without knowing it? He felt ill at that thought.
Rachel stirred in his arms, which brought his attention back to his longtime girlfriend. Well, they were more like an old married couple at this point, even though they hadn't made it "official" at a chapel like Rachel always wanted.
"Oz…." She murmured, "It…. it's gets hard now. To think. not think straight…"
"Easy, Rachel. I'm here now." Oswald held her tighter, as a stray tear fell from his eyes onto Rachel's cheek.
"I… I want die, Oz. I, I, I, can't…….want not like Fran." Rachel stuttered, trying to tell him what she was thinking, but it just came out jumbled.
Oswald seemed to understand her anyway, as he answered: "I understand. But I still don't want you to die…. Even if you end up like Fran and Evan. I still have faith that there can be a cure for this… illness. In fact, this girl over there just told us that we'd need somebody who specializes in brains and radiation. That the reason why you and the scientists in Safari Zone hadn't made any headway in it for 200 years, was because you guys didn't specialize in those things. She seemed to know what she was talking about, despite her young age."
Rachel's lips trembled at this, and she blinked back tears. "O… ok. Trust you."
Sam, the ghoul child rushed over. "Oz, is she going to be okay? Or… is she… gonna end up like… my mom?"
Oswald looked up at Sam and sighed. "I'm sorry… it looks like we'll have to take her to Safari Zone. She'll be safe there, just like your mom is."
Sam burst into tears at this. "No… not her too."
Oz pulled Sam into a one-armed hug, as he was still holding Rachel with the other arm, and whispered something comforting into Sam's ear while the boy sobbed loudly.
The rest of the group stood there awkwardly, feeling like they were intruding on a very personal scene.
Finally, Oswald looked up at Nora and everyone else. "I have a favor to ask of you guys… will you help me escort Rachel to Safari Zone? We can talk on the way there."
"I'll go with you!" Sam piped up after he had stopped crying.
Oswald shook his head. "No, I need somebody to watch the park and turn on the misters while I'm gone. Don't want anybody coming in and taking over, do we."
Sam looked highly disappointed at this, but he nodded.
Nora nodded as well. "Of course, Oswald. I want to gather every friendly face I can find together anyway. I want to see if we can all band together and drive the raiders out of Nuka-world."
Oswald simply nodded back.
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All Capes Featured in this story so far. (don't read if you haven't even gotten to chapter 11).
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, time to update the list of all capes in this story thus far, just for those who like to keep track of how many capes are in Fallout 4 right now.
All Major Character Capes so far:
1. Taylor Hebert, A Teleporter Cape. Her power seems to be strength and stamina based, so the stronger she becomes the more she can carry. It's also memory-based, only being able to teleport to places that she's been before, as opposed to somewhere she's never been to. Line of sight teleporting seems to work too, probably because her memory-based teleporting is mostly a visual thing... she remembers how everything looks and has a mental snapshot of every place she's been to. So the two teleporting functions "Line of sight" and "Remember this landmark/building/place/etc so I can teleport back to it later" seem to be related to each other somehow because of that visual aspect. Also recently discovered that she could "piggyback" off other teleporters if their ability is similar enough to hers that her power can "learn" from them. Can her power also become stronger from learning how other teleporters' power works?
Trigger Event--Just wanted to be far away from her locker as much as possible. Her Shard/Power granted her wish but overcompensated in the most absurd way possible. It "Halped" her by relocating her to an Alternate Earth in which Nuclear War occurred.
Shard name--Dimensional Space Administrator. Manages all travel through space and dimensions. Is "related" to Queen Administrator under the branch of Administrative shards. If it had to compare the relationship in human terms, it would say Queen Admin was the family monarch, the main family tree holding everything together while D.S Admin was on one of the more minor "Cousin" family branches managing the data it specialized in. Metaphor is really, really bad but that's shards for you... they don't quite understand humans.
2. Nora-- A striker-tinker hybrid type. To be more specific, she's an Artichect-based tinker with a striker power that allows her to create things out of the air and from materials she has lying around. Discovered that she could do more with it than just build a house.
Trigger Event--It was a long, prolonged problem spanning an entire year ever since she "woke up" from her cryonic sleep. She was obsessively focused on getting her son back, no matter what. She endured a dozen traumatic events in the hopes that they'd be able to rebuild their life together as a family once she got him back, adding to the strain. Only, she didn't get the son she wanted back at the end of her journey. Her dying biological son thought that the synth boy was an adequate replacement for his absence... but Nora didn't agree. Months after she lost her biological child and brought home the synthetic son, she realized that she would never be able to rebuild her life back to the way it was before the war, no matter how much she tried. Nothing would be the same, even if she managed to restore her house back to the way it was before the war. Her obsession over getting her old life back, and her son too now shattered, she got powers relating to that obsession.
Shard Name-- Habitat Engineer. Purpose: To collect information on all sorts of protective buildings and machines designed for settlements in hostile environments and the way they work in order to create suitable Habitats for any type of lifeforms across the universe. Pushes its host to build as much as possible in order to collect Data. One of the few shards not designed for conflict, so it doesn't push its hosts towards conflict. Strangely enough, this is one of the few shards that was designed to have as many hosts as possible across a dozen earths, for each host often has completely different methods in how they build things. Nora has a not-so-heroic counterpart on Earth Bet using this same exact shard. Can you guess who?
3. John Hancock-- Yet another hybrid type. This one is a Thinker with a minor Tinker ability. Mostly a Social Thinker, he's able to deduct things about other people by listening to or looking for clues about the person he's using his Thinker ability on.
Trigger Event-- Like Nora, it simply built up over time. But unlike Nora, it wasn't in a year. Instead, it was a whole decade of bitter separation from who he thought was his own biological brother over a betrayal.
Only, the man he thought was his biological brother wasn't who he thought him to be. Instead, it was a Synth who had killed his biological brother and took his place. John Hancock doesn't know which person actually betrayed him... his biological brother or the synth? Was his brother actually an innocent victim who would've never betrayed him all along? When did his brother get murdered and replaced by a synth, and how the heck did he not notice? Unable to get the answers he wanted, he triggers as he watches the synth imposter get executed.
Shard name-- Observer. Is "related" to Tattletale's negotiator shard the same way Taylor's dimensional travel shard is related to QA. Purpose: To collect information on anybody and anything though clues, like a ridiculous version of sherlock holmes. But like with Tattletale, he isn't always right when "observing". Emotions and bias against something or somebody still can result in "user error". Like the negotiator, it is conflict-driven and is more likely to give its host information that would result in conflict instead of a peaceful resolution that Hancock might desire.
Commonwealth Minor character capes so far:
1. Mama Murphy-- A precog that can see a person's background, and their possible futures. That's it, not much explanation needed there.
Trigger Event-- Happened when she was a young woman. Parents died at the hands of raiders, and her settlement got burnt down. she got away. She was scared because she didn't know what was going to happen to her now that her parents and settlement was gone. She was a sheltered girl until that point, and the harsh reality of the wasteland was like a bad wake-up call. She desperately prayed for answers on what the future held in for her, and something answered back...
Shard name: Prospective Simulator. Related to Dinah Accolt's probationary engine shard and also Conetesta's Path to Victory shard, as they all belong to the same "category" of Future shards.
2. Tinker Tom-- It's all in his name. Like many Tinkers, he specializes in one thing, followed up by a secondary related power. His power has to do with computer programming and coding. His secondary power is the ability to build almost any machine that's dependant on computer coding. If it's a machine that doesn't need to be programmed or doesn't require computer coding, then he can't build it. Limited by the fact that he can't create things like hard drives from scratch, and requires components made by other tinkers or pre-war hardware to be able to build anything.
Trigger Event-- His family got killed off by Synths, and he felt alone in the world now as a result. wished that he knew a way to stop all of the synths.
Shard name: Code Processor Creator. "related" to Richter's and Dragon's Shard, but is actually a somewhat weaker version of it, relatively speaking. Its Purpose is kind of obvious here.
Nuka-World Capes Thus far:
1. OverBoss Coulter-- A Electricity-based Tinker. Could even fix up a power plant to get it working again, which he did. Used to be a very brilliant Tinker, bringing hundreds of raiders under his umbrella and were able to take over Nuka-world because of it. But lately, his chem addictions seem to take priority over everything else. This means he's slowly losing the respect of the other raiders, despite everything he accomplished in the past. Still, it seems that nobody's brave enough to go up against him in his Electric power armor, which can deflect any damage you send his way.
Trigger event--?????
Shard name: dynamic energy generator. If it was truly jailbroken, Colter would've been able to do more than just Electrical stuff. But thanks to his trigger event, he's mainly limited to Electricity.
2. Oswald the Outrageous--A striker-mover type. He actually can do more than just teleport around. He can "break down" his own molecules as well as nuclear molecules and reassemble them elsewhere.
Trigger Event-- He was actually just a "Normal" glowing one for a very long while there. He was one of the few who didn't notice his own trigger event and honestly thought that his "magic" had simply gotten stronger and given him a new ability on top of his current ability to resurrect the other ghouls. Watching his best friend Evan and Evan's girlfriend Fran Fowler succumb to the feral "disease" after spending 200 long years together in Nuka-World, and the fact that Rachel suggested that she might be next caused him to trigger. He actually only triggered five years before Nora and the others did, instead of 200 years ago like he might've believed.
Shard name--Energy molecular Control. Purpose: break down things to an atomic level and reassemble them. by deconstructing things this shard collects data about how things work. Can actually do a lot, but due to Oswald's "weak" trigger, its current host is somewhat limited in what he can do unless he finds a way to "jailbreak" his shard or has a second trigger.
All Major Character Capes so far:
1. Taylor Hebert, A Teleporter Cape. Her power seems to be strength and stamina based, so the stronger she becomes the more she can carry. It's also memory-based, only being able to teleport to places that she's been before, as opposed to somewhere she's never been to. Line of sight teleporting seems to work too, probably because her memory-based teleporting is mostly a visual thing... she remembers how everything looks and has a mental snapshot of every place she's been to. So the two teleporting functions "Line of sight" and "Remember this landmark/building/place/etc so I can teleport back to it later" seem to be related to each other somehow because of that visual aspect. Also recently discovered that she could "piggyback" off other teleporters if their ability is similar enough to hers that her power can "learn" from them. Can her power also become stronger from learning how other teleporters' power works?
Trigger Event--Just wanted to be far away from her locker as much as possible. Her Shard/Power granted her wish but overcompensated in the most absurd way possible. It "Halped" her by relocating her to an Alternate Earth in which Nuclear War occurred.
Shard name--Dimensional Space Administrator. Manages all travel through space and dimensions. Is "related" to Queen Administrator under the branch of Administrative shards. If it had to compare the relationship in human terms, it would say Queen Admin was the family monarch, the main family tree holding everything together while D.S Admin was on one of the more minor "Cousin" family branches managing the data it specialized in. Metaphor is really, really bad but that's shards for you... they don't quite understand humans.
2. Nora-- A striker-tinker hybrid type. To be more specific, she's an Artichect-based tinker with a striker power that allows her to create things out of the air and from materials she has lying around. Discovered that she could do more with it than just build a house.
Trigger Event--It was a long, prolonged problem spanning an entire year ever since she "woke up" from her cryonic sleep. She was obsessively focused on getting her son back, no matter what. She endured a dozen traumatic events in the hopes that they'd be able to rebuild their life together as a family once she got him back, adding to the strain. Only, she didn't get the son she wanted back at the end of her journey. Her dying biological son thought that the synth boy was an adequate replacement for his absence... but Nora didn't agree. Months after she lost her biological child and brought home the synthetic son, she realized that she would never be able to rebuild her life back to the way it was before the war, no matter how much she tried. Nothing would be the same, even if she managed to restore her house back to the way it was before the war. Her obsession over getting her old life back, and her son too now shattered, she got powers relating to that obsession.
Shard Name-- Habitat Engineer. Purpose: To collect information on all sorts of protective buildings and machines designed for settlements in hostile environments and the way they work in order to create suitable Habitats for any type of lifeforms across the universe. Pushes its host to build as much as possible in order to collect Data. One of the few shards not designed for conflict, so it doesn't push its hosts towards conflict. Strangely enough, this is one of the few shards that was designed to have as many hosts as possible across a dozen earths, for each host often has completely different methods in how they build things. Nora has a not-so-heroic counterpart on Earth Bet using this same exact shard. Can you guess who?
3. John Hancock-- Yet another hybrid type. This one is a Thinker with a minor Tinker ability. Mostly a Social Thinker, he's able to deduct things about other people by listening to or looking for clues about the person he's using his Thinker ability on.
Also can use his Thinker ability on machines in order to reverse engineer it and fix broken objects, hence his minor Tinker ability. is one of those rare Tinkers who can fix and reverse engineer other Tinkers' work, much like Dragon. Come to think of it, Dragon's been classified as a Strong Thinker with a secondary tinker ability too....hmm.
Trigger Event-- Like Nora, it simply built up over time. But unlike Nora, it wasn't in a year. Instead, it was a whole decade of bitter separation from who he thought was his own biological brother over a betrayal.
Only, the man he thought was his biological brother wasn't who he thought him to be. Instead, it was a Synth who had killed his biological brother and took his place. John Hancock doesn't know which person actually betrayed him... his biological brother or the synth? Was his brother actually an innocent victim who would've never betrayed him all along? When did his brother get murdered and replaced by a synth, and how the heck did he not notice? Unable to get the answers he wanted, he triggers as he watches the synth imposter get executed.
Shard name-- Observer. Is "related" to Tattletale's negotiator shard the same way Taylor's dimensional travel shard is related to QA. Purpose: To collect information on anybody and anything though clues, like a ridiculous version of sherlock holmes. But like with Tattletale, he isn't always right when "observing". Emotions and bias against something or somebody still can result in "user error". Like the negotiator, it is conflict-driven and is more likely to give its host information that would result in conflict instead of a peaceful resolution that Hancock might desire.
Commonwealth Minor character capes so far:
1. Mama Murphy-- A precog that can see a person's background, and their possible futures. That's it, not much explanation needed there.
Trigger Event-- Happened when she was a young woman. Parents died at the hands of raiders, and her settlement got burnt down. she got away. She was scared because she didn't know what was going to happen to her now that her parents and settlement was gone. She was a sheltered girl until that point, and the harsh reality of the wasteland was like a bad wake-up call. She desperately prayed for answers on what the future held in for her, and something answered back...
Shard name: Prospective Simulator. Related to Dinah Accolt's probationary engine shard and also Conetesta's Path to Victory shard, as they all belong to the same "category" of Future shards.
2. Tinker Tom-- It's all in his name. Like many Tinkers, he specializes in one thing, followed up by a secondary related power. His power has to do with computer programming and coding. His secondary power is the ability to build almost any machine that's dependant on computer coding. If it's a machine that doesn't need to be programmed or doesn't require computer coding, then he can't build it. Limited by the fact that he can't create things like hard drives from scratch, and requires components made by other tinkers or pre-war hardware to be able to build anything.
Trigger Event-- His family got killed off by Synths, and he felt alone in the world now as a result. wished that he knew a way to stop all of the synths.
Shard name: Code Processor Creator. "related" to Richter's and Dragon's Shard, but is actually a somewhat weaker version of it, relatively speaking. Its Purpose is kind of obvious here.
Nuka-World Capes Thus far:
1. OverBoss Coulter-- A Electricity-based Tinker. Could even fix up a power plant to get it working again, which he did. Used to be a very brilliant Tinker, bringing hundreds of raiders under his umbrella and were able to take over Nuka-world because of it. But lately, his chem addictions seem to take priority over everything else. This means he's slowly losing the respect of the other raiders, despite everything he accomplished in the past. Still, it seems that nobody's brave enough to go up against him in his Electric power armor, which can deflect any damage you send his way.
Trigger event--?????
Shard name: dynamic energy generator. If it was truly jailbroken, Colter would've been able to do more than just Electrical stuff. But thanks to his trigger event, he's mainly limited to Electricity.
2. Oswald the Outrageous--A striker-mover type. He actually can do more than just teleport around. He can "break down" his own molecules as well as nuclear molecules and reassemble them elsewhere.
Trigger Event-- He was actually just a "Normal" glowing one for a very long while there. He was one of the few who didn't notice his own trigger event and honestly thought that his "magic" had simply gotten stronger and given him a new ability on top of his current ability to resurrect the other ghouls. Watching his best friend Evan and Evan's girlfriend Fran Fowler succumb to the feral "disease" after spending 200 long years together in Nuka-World, and the fact that Rachel suggested that she might be next caused him to trigger. He actually only triggered five years before Nora and the others did, instead of 200 years ago like he might've believed.
Shard name--Energy molecular Control. Purpose: break down things to an atomic level and reassemble them. by deconstructing things this shard collects data about how things work. Can actually do a lot, but due to Oswald's "weak" trigger, its current host is somewhat limited in what he can do unless he finds a way to "jailbreak" his shard or has a second trigger.
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- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
Hmmm.... @Aurora Moon, I'm going out on a limb with this, but if I'm reading Oswald's power description correctly, he seems to actually have the possibility to be the cure for feral ghouls with his Power. What he lacks is sufficient data on other beings to be able to use his power on other's bodies. In a wierd sort of way, if he somehow manages to work past that, or get a Tinker machine to assist his power, I could see him being the ghoul version of Panacea. It really has the feel of a true Worm powerset, considering that he's got the answer to the problem staring him in the face, if he just had a way to make it work.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We'll never see them but I take it the various 'psykers' over in California and Nevada from Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas are all Shard capes, along with the long dead scientist who triggered as a Biotinker/Thinker in the 2070s to create FEV? There's potentially another 4 in the Washington D.C. area but depending on what the Lone Wanderer did they may all be dead. What about Lorenzo Cabot?
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Hell on Strikers
Tank Cat
- Location
- The Commonwealth
I'm Imagining somewhere out there there is a Wanderer that is immune to all forms of damage, Never runs out of ammo and can carry anything/everything, yet never actually feels accomplished.
AKA ~tgm
AKA ~tgm
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sounds like some of my second and third runs on Fallout 3 and NV when I wanted to get all of the achievements but couldn't do so on a single save file. I was basically just going through the motions on the third run. heh.
Nuka-Girl: Chapter Twelve--The Safari Zone
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Author Notes: I honestly didn't like how all the NPCs, especially the ghouls, didn't even seem to know each other at all, despite living in Nuka-world for like 200 years or so. That there was literally no interaction between everyone in the place at all in the DLC game. You're telling me that the ghouls never stepped foot outside of their own zones to see if there were any other survivors in Nuka World, Bethesda? Really?
Truthfully, I always found that to be the biggest plot hole in the main storyline… so I made it that every one of the original residents knows each other in Nuka world in this story. I feel that's more realistic than what they had in the vanilla DLC game, where the ghouls didn't even know of each other's existence.
================================================
Taylor's group and Oswald walked together in silence as he carried his girlfriend out of Kiddie Kingdom.
Hancock had given Rachel some kind of chem that would keep her unconscious for a long while, which admittedly helped. Oswald wasn't sure if he was up to listening to his girlfriend attempt to string a nearly nonsensical sentence together again.
"So… what's with the ghoul kid? I thought he was your son at first, but…" Hancock wondered.
Oswald looked over at the other ghoul and chuckled mirthlessly. A part of him was strangely grateful for something to talk about because it kept his mind off Rachel.
"Ah, Poor Sam. Kid's got some of the worst luck ever. Before the Nuclear bombs hit…. He was just a normal 8-year-old kid who had lost his daddy in the war. Then it was his first birthday without his daddy around...so his mother had this bright idea to take him to Nuka-world in an attempt to cheer him up. Of course, that's when the Bombs hit. He and his mother were one of the few survivors who made it, even though the two of them turned into ghouls like the rest of us."
He shook his head. "It wasn't bad enough that he was now stuck as a child forever, but his mother was one of the first ones to go….feral. The only reason why he hasn't lost it? Because I kept on telling him that there was going to be a cure one day."
Hancock looked like he sympathized with that. "Shit. Yeah, that's really rough."
Oswald smirked, remembering what Sam asked Hancock before as he asked, "So, what's your story? Why are you dressed like a pirate?"
Hancock made a small indignant noise at this. "Not you too. Can't you tell that I'm supposed to be dressed like a famous historical figure? The American Revolution leader John Hancock, who just happens to be my namesake?"
Oswald simply shrugged his shoulders, taking care to not jostle the sleeping woman in his arms as he did so. "Sorry. Never been much of a history buff."
Taylor was listening to this conversation as they all walked towards Safari Zone, and then she asked: "Wasn't he the first governor of Massachusetts, and one of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence paper?"
Hancock grinned. "Yes. Finally, somebody who paid attention in history class…"
He then paused as something occurred to him. "But I'm surprised that your world has the same history? I mean…. You come from an alternate earth, don't you?"
"Oh, it seems that most Earths often have similar histories but will branch off at a certain point. Take Earth Aleph and Earth Bet, for instance." Taylor explained, "Both Earths were created parallel to each other, and had nearly identical histories but then Bet diverged from Earth Aleph around the year 1982, and from that point on our histories were different. This Earth, which I'm calling Earth N for now, seems to have diverged from both Bet and Aleph during World War Two If my guess is right. And It seems that the second World War never really ended here until the Nuclear bombs dropped in the year 2077, whereas on my Earth Bet, World World Two ended in the year 1945. So that's where we diverged, I think."
Hancock honestly found this to be very interesting. "Huh. So you had a John Hancock over there too, But you guys never had things like Vaults because your government never needed to entertain the idea of underground living to protect yourself from nuclear bombs."
Taylor nodded. "Yeah. We do have underground endbringer shelters, but that's not quite the same thing. For one thing, they're meant to be temporary shelter… not to be lived in for long periods of time."
"Wait, what are you two talking about? What's this about other Earths?" Oswald looked terribly confused as hell.
That was when Taylor, Nora, and the others started explaining to the ghoul magician about Taylor, and how she had come to this earth from an alternate earth. That, of course, led to Taylor explaining about parahumans and the cape culture on her earth.
That story took up a good chunk of their journey to the Safari Zone.
"That sounds way too weird even for me. Are you guys pulling a fast one on me or what?" Oswald couldn't help but sound skeptical, not that the others could blame him.
Taylor raised one eyebrow, as she pointed out: "You can believe that magic exists and that you can gain immortality from nuclear radiation…. But you actually draw the line at alternate earths?"
Oswald chuckled. "Okay, you do have a point. Oh, looks like we're here."
The ghoul magician was about to say something else as they got near the sign which read "Safari Adventure", but a loud roaring noise interrupted him.
They could hear a man's voice yell out, "Leave Cito's family alone!"
"That's Cito!" Oswald said, recognizing the voice.
Everyone rushed over, to see a half-dressed muscular man fight something that looked like a deathclaw, but quite wasn't one. It looked like an unholy cross between an alligator and a deathclaw.
Nora and the others immediately pulled out their guns, while Oswald just stepped away to the side.
"Can you drop a house on that one too? Please?" Taylor asked, not quite wanting to get close to that… thing.
"I could, but I'd end up killing Cito too. Can't risk that." Nora said as they fired off shots at the Gatorclaw.
Taylor groaned, but she wasn't surprised. She hadn't wanted to hear that answer but knew that Nora would've said it anyway.
"Shoot at his head… try to aim for the eyes! It can't hunt effectively if it can't see!" Hancock called out, and everyone did just that.
Cito seemed to have heard what Hancock said, and lunged at the Gatorclaw's head with a long knife-like object in his hands. On closer inspection, it appeared to be a long animal bone shaped into a sharp point. His bone knife plunged deep into one of the gator's eyes, and it let out a loud pained howl.
The gatorclaw then shoved him away, sending the man flying.
Nora managed to get in a critical hit, destroying the other eyeball with one of her bullets. The gator roared again, as it started stumbling around. It clawed blindly at everything, trying to kill whoever had harmed it. Blood started gushing out of the bullet wounds, and the group was able to lure the Gatorclaw away from the entrance as they kept on shooting at it.
Finally, it was dead.
Everyone slowly approached the corpse of the Gatorclaw, and Piper asked: "What was that? A mutated deathclaw?"
"I don't know. I've never seen anything like that before." Oswald looked worried, as he shifted his girlfriend a little bit in his arms so that he could hold her better.
"Oswald! You bring strong friends to help Cito?" The black-haired muscular man came over.
Taylor noted that he seemed to be dressed like a bare-chested barbarian from an 80's sword and sorcery movie, and wore black warpaint over his eyes. He was even wearing the stereotypical fur breechcloth and fur boots that so many Barbarians seemed to favor in those types of movies. He had to be a cape too, then. There was just no way he wasn't. Otherwise, that kind of outfit was way too impractical for a regular human to wear. Taylor couldn't complain too much though… Cito's muscles were kind of nice to look at.
"Cito, what's going on?" Oswald wondered as he turned to face the Barbarian.
Cito shook his head, looking somewhat upset. "It all Darren's fault. Darren has idea to create monster to fight raiders, but Hein says no. Says too dangerous. Darren thinks everything be okay, because Cito talks to all animals. Darren says Cito make creature attack Raiders. Most animals like Family. But monster not like Family at all. Too angry, too violent. Can't talk to them at all. Many Family died."
"Oh fuck. Is Dr. Curt Hein and Dr.Darren McDermott okay??" Oswald said, not liking this turn of events at all.
Cito shrugged. "Cito not know. Both men run and hide in underground place with other wrinkly people. Cito not see them then after that."
Oswald just sighed at this. "Great. I need to take Rachel here to a safe place before we can go see if the local scientists are okay. I don't want to risk her life."
Cito nodded. "Cito know place. Follow Cito, please."
With that Cito turned to walk off. Everyone followed him.
Nick then whispered to Oswald, "Does he always talk in the third person?"
Oswald smiled. "Yep. don't hold it against him though… he's had a hard childhood and hadn't really socialized with anybody outside of the Ghoullrias, which he calls his family. His parents died when he was very young, and the Ghoullrias found him afterward when he wandered into the Safari Zone by his lonesome self. The animals wouldn't let the human ghouls living here near him, even if they showed that they meant the boy no harm. They seemed intent on raising him themselves. It's why Cito's often so…. odd. But, his life experience did seem to give him the ability to talk to all animals… which can be useful in itself. He can get them to do things that they normally wouldn't do. We call him the Beastmaster sometimes, but Cito doesn't really like that nickname."
"Ghoulliras?" Nora wondered what the heck that was.
"Think regular Gorillas, only Ghoulified. They were one of Dr.Hein and Dr.McDermott's many genetic experiments. It was the reason why they thought they could find a cure for the feral disease because for some reasons the Ghoulliras simply don't go feral no matter how many times we try to infect them with the disease. They were hoping to find out why that didn't happen." Oswald explained.
Nora simply shook her head at this. "What does it say about my life that I'm not even fazed by the idea of Ghoulified Gorillas running around and raising a young boy into an adult man? I mean, I heard all of that come of out of your mouth and I didn't even blink."
Piper nodded. "You know, you're right… are we actually becoming immune to the weirdness here? Or is this what they call Desensitization?"
The two bantered about that particular topic while Taylor took the time to look around her.
Safari Zone seemed to be a Jungle-heavy place, with tropical plants and trees scattered everywhere that looked like they had been mutated heavily to adjust to living in a less than topical environment. And there were thick strong vines growing over the rusted and broken cages everywhere. Many of the strange-looking trees and plants actually seemed to be bearing fruit, and there were very large birds nesting in the trees who ate from the fruits.
Upon closer inspection, the birds seemed to be like a weird hybrid between Bald Eagles and Macaw Parrots. It was like somebody had painted a bald eagle's brown feathers in the colors of the rainbow, gave them long tailfeathers, and stuck a feathery white mohawk on top of their white heads. Their beaks also looked somewhat oddly shaped, like they were birds that were designed to be omnivorous instead of sticking to a strictly meat-based diet or even a fruit-based diet. They were probably designed that way to maximize their chances of survival.
No doubt the work of the two scientists living here, because from the sounds of it they were very obviously bio-tinkers. Mixing the genetic material of random animals together and bringing them into existence like that? Definitely Bio-tinkers.
She wondered what this bird hybrid was called. Macaw Eagles? Yeah, that sounded about right.
Cito led them to a building that was flanked by two large gorilla statues, and there was a sign over the door which read: "The Gorilla house". Everyone entered the building, and Taylor was struck by how strong the smell was… It was a strong, musty animal smell that you got from being in close proximity to farm animals… or to Ghoulish Gorillas.
Speaking of which, the gorillas looked...odd. they almost looked like normal ones save for the fact that they were all hairless, which somehow made them look even more unsettling. They didn't look like undead burn victims the same way human ghouls did, and the only indication that they were ghoulish and not merely shaved was the fact that all of their eyes looked similar to the eyes of human ghouls like Hancock's.
Compared to human ghouls, their bodies looked strangely unaffected by whatever it was that turned people into ghouls. Save for that fur loss, of course. Maybe that was why those animals couldn't go feral? Something to ponder about…
Taylor then realized that she had been so busy inspecting the gorillas, and had missed a good chunk of the conversation that everyone else was having.
"I don't know about this. Are you sure they'll look after Rachel? What if she wakes up and gets upset because she's in an unfamiliar place? Maybe I could just stay here with her while you take our visitors and have them help clear out the park of all Gatorclaws." Oswald was fretting over the idea of leaving Rachel with a bunch of gorillas, no matter how tame they seemed.
Not that Taylor could blame him. Gorillas weren't easy to domesticate to start with and were still wild animals at heart even if you tamed them.
Cito simply shrugged. "That fine with Cito. As long as the monsters be killed right away. Don't want more family killed by monsters."
Oswald nodded. "Yeah. and you know this Zone better than I do… so you'd be able to guide them more effectively than I do."
Nora looked back at everyone in her group and then shrugged. "Yeah, that's okay with me. Cito can take me to the place where the ghouls created those monsters. I'll see if we can't turn off the machines…. It'd be pointless to keep on killing them all if that machine just keeps on making more of them."
"Cito do that!" The Tarzan-like man agreed.
Nora smiled. "So that's settled, then. Just a moment though. I want to make this place a little more comfortable for Rachel."
She moved towards an empty corner and activated her power. Within a minute she had a large bed with blankets set up, and a side table that had a wireless glowing lamp on it. As an afterthought, she also set up some wooden dividers up, in case Oswald wanted to shield Rachel from the Gorillas.
Oswald blinked. "You know magic too? Okay, who else here has magic as well?"
Hancock smirked. "Nora's power is a little bit different than yours or Taylor's. She can't teleport, for one thing. But she can sure create things out of thin air. I've got power too, but it's a mental power, so it's not as flashy. Piper and Nick on the other hand... Sadly, they're nothing but powerless plebs."
"Hey!" Piper pretended to take offense at that, but she smiled afterward.
Nick just rolled his eyes at Hancock's comment. Being a synth, he had increased strength and intelligence. He also was more durable than a regular human. But he supposed that didn't count as a "superpower" to start with, because he wasn't even human anymore.
Oswald looked thoughtful at this. "I see.."
Nora patted the magician on the back and said: "Well, you can set Rachel over there now. As for the rest of us…. We'll be going now to deal with those… monsters. We'll be back soon."
Oswald simply nodded at this, looking grateful.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It seemed as if those Gatorclaws were everywhere because they kept on running into those creatures on the way to the place that Cito called the "Triangle house", which was actually the welcome center for the park.
"We really do need to shut down that machine," Nora muttered as she killed what seemed like the 20th gatorclaw so far. She had been so tired of shooting at them that she had taken to just dropping a house on them now and then like she had with the first deathclaw that Taylor had seen. Otherwise, it would've taken them hours to reach the Welcome Center, and it was just easier to do things this way… it was an instant K.O kill as opposed to shooting at them wildly and hoping that the bullets would pierce their nearly bulletproof hide.
It helped that Cito wasn't in the way anymore, and he could actually tell any other friendly creatures to get out of the way so that Nora could do her thing with the houses.
Every time she dropped the houses, she scrapped the destroyed houses afterward but left the Gatorclaws behind. Cito actually asked her to leave the corpses behind after she scrapped one because apparently, the birds had asked Cito to leave the corpses behind for them to eat. they had pecked at the one that the group had killed earlier just outside the gate and found Gatorclaw flesh to be very, very tasty.
The Maca birds were tired of eating nothing but fruit most of the time, Cito said, so they often took the opportunity to eat meat whenever they could… whenever it was from bugs or a dead Gazelle. Now Gatorclaws too. It was like a special treat for them.
Taylor and the others honestly didn't really care about that, but they didn't really see the harm in leaving those corpses behind for the opportunistic wildlife to feast on, so they agreed to it.
Finally, they reached the place, and what they found there was a huge mess. The Gatorclaws had clawed their way out of the underground cloning facility and knocked everything over on their way out of the building. So there was a lot of upturned statues and broken furniture, and the door that led down to the underground facility was completely damaged beyond all hope.
Thankfully the damaged door was wide open, so they were able to head down there.
Unfortunately, there were a dozen more Gatorclaws down there and this time Nora couldn't simply drop a house on them… there wasn't just any room down for her to do so. Instead, she created thick, tall metal walls with small glass-less windows that surrounded her group so that her group could take their time shooting at the Gatorclaws without worrying that they'd be mobbed to death by the creatures.
Picking them off one by one took a while thanks to their tough hides that were nearly bulletproof, but finally, they killed the last of them after what seemed like a long half hour. Nora scrapped all the defenses she created, and they rushed over to the central computer that seemed to be in charge of handling all the cloning machines. Nick got there first, so he was the one to make the machines switch from cloning Gatorclaws to Gazelles instead. He couldn't do anything else, because the computer demanded some kind of complicated code to turn off everything in the facility.
Piper groaned as she sat down on a chair. "Glad that's over with. That was almost as bad as dealing with the robot horde over there in Galactic Zone."
"I'm going to have some words with this Dr. McDermott. That was the stupidest idea he's had… who the hell creates a living weapon that they can't control? And on top of it, he dared to make many of them as he could without taking one on a test run first. What a fucking idiot." Hancock grumbled as well.
"Cito scold Darren too," Cito agreed, looking somewhat upset. "Family used to be many. Over many tens of Family before. Now only nine. Darren's fault."
"Speaking of which… do you know where they are?" Nora wondered.
Cito tilted his head. "Cito remember different room full of wrinkly people that way. Cito sees them escape that way when monster appear here, and Cito escape the monster by large pipe when monster not listen to Cito at all."
With that, he pointed at a large staircase that seemed to lead to a small hallway. A hallway large enough for a few humans to walk though, but not large enough for a Gatorclaw.
Taylor and the others were taking this chance to have a Nuka-cola break as they listened to Cito describe what went down here to the best of his ability with his broken English.
Once everyone was done quenching their thirst, They followed Cito through the hallway. At the end of the hallway, there was a thick barricaded steel door like the ones that Nora and Taylor often saw being used by the bank for their vaults. To the side of it, there was an intercom speaker with a button under it.
Taylor was the closest one, so she pressed down on it and called out: "Hello? Is there anybody still alive on the other side there?"
There was a pause, and then a voice asked: "Who is this? What happened to the Gatorclaws…?" They sounded highly relieved and suspicious at the same time.
"Hein! Cito glad to hear you okay!" Cito recognized the voice right away and had blurted that out.
"Cito, Is that you? Oh, I'm so happy to know you're alright. I wasn't sure you'd be okay when that creature went on a rampage. But who's that with you? I don't recognize that voice."
"Oswald come with new friends. Friends help destroy all the monsters! Turn off machine which makes monsters." Cito answered.
"It's true." Nora spoke up, "We're with the Minutemen, which is a law enforcement group in the commonwealth. Recently, we got a report of a large group of raiders living in Nuka-world kidnapping people from the commonwealth. That's why we're here… to deal with them. But we're looking for allies who can help us."
"The Gatorclaws is really gone? Thank god." Dr.Hein sounded very happy to hear that. "Very well. I'll disengage the lock and let you though. But please, don't harm any of the feral ghouls. They're safely locked away in their rooms and won't attack you."
The bank vault door let out a loud hissing noise as the wheel spun about, and slowly started opening. The group stepped back to let it open fully before they stepped through.
Looking around, they saw that the room that Cito spoke was basically one giant research lab that had dozens of jail cells to the sides downstairs and upstairs. Within those cells, there were dozens of feral ghouls scampering about.
It was kind of obvious that the room itself had been a vet center meant to hold large sick animals at one point, but had been retrofitted into a research center in order to study the "feral disease".
Taylor turned to look at Dr.Hein. He looked like Hancock in a lot of ways, especially with his pitch black eyes. But the most notable thing about him was his square jaw, brown hair and his missing right arm which had been lopped off at the elbow a long time ago. His lower right arm was replaced by a wooden arm that ended in a hook "hand". The hook itself was more like a curved clamp that could open and clamp on something if he wanted to grab on to something.
He was dressed in a dirty lab coat and had a semi-formal outfit under it.
"Cito, you mentioned that Oswald was with them. Where is he? I don't see him." Dr. Hein looked worried as he glanced at everyone.
"Oswald at Family home with Rachel," Cito answered.
"Rachel picked the unfortunate timing to slowly turn feral when we arrived in the Kiddie Kingdom. We were helping carry Rachel over here when we saw Cito being attacked by Gatorclaws," Nora explained, "And Oswald didn't quite trust the gorillas to look after Rachel properly, so he choose to stay behind with her while we dealt with the problem."
Dr. Curt Hein didn't look terribly happy at this. "Shit. when it rains, it really pours, huh? Darren…. He's in really bad shape and we need Oswald to heal him. He… he didn't get to safety in time before that Gatorclaw he created got to him. I've been tending to his wounds, but without any radioactive material, I can't heal him. I don't know how long he can hold on at this rate."
"Taylor…" Nora turned to ask Taylor to fetch Oswald, but Taylor was ahead of her.
"On it!" she said, as she teleported away much to Dr. Hein's surprise.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--A Hour later--
Dr. Darren McDermott looked different compared to the other ghouls that Taylor had seen so far. He had albino-like skin and looked like he hadn't been that burned badly from the radiation. Unlike other ghouls, his skin looked downright pristine and smooth, despite the burn scars on his face.
His ears were completely intact, but his nose was missing so he had that in common with other ghouls at least. He also suffered from hair loss as well, like the majority of his kind. He had sky blue irises, which was offset by the red sclera of his eyes.
Right now, he was wearing nothing but his black shorts and his upper torso was covered in bloody bandages even though Oswald had already healed him completely of any damages he faced at the claws of the creature he had created.
And he was apologizing profusely to Cito right now. "I'm so sorry, Cito. I should've listened to you and Curt when the two of you said this plan wasn't going to work. I… I suppose I let my fear overrule my common sense. I was just so afraid that the raiders were going to come here and destroy everything we worked so hard for."
Cito huffed loudly. "Yes. Cito keep on telling Darren, Cito don't control animals. Cito talks to animals, ask animals to do things for him. But animals choose, or not to do things Cito asks. Animals need learning how to do things, also."
"And what were you thinking, allowing the cloning machine to make so many without even doing a trial run on the first Gatorclaw we made? It's just a good thing that the policemen came along when they did." Dr. Hein said. Hancock simply nodded at that, having said something similar earlier on.
"Uh, we're called the Minutemen… not Policemen." Nora couldn't help but point that out.
Piper looked over at Oswald, who was inspecting Rachel's new holding cell to make sure that it'd be comfortable enough for his girlfriend.
Darren McDermott simply nodded and hung his head in shame. Satisfied that Darren was properly chastised for his actions, Dr. Hein then turned to face Nora and the others.
"So what can we do to help you? I know you said you were looking for allies to help take down the raiders living here in Nuka-World, but I don't know how we can help you. As you can see… we're the brainy type, not the brawny type." Dr. Hein wondered.
"We actually don't need you to fight the raiders…we already have an army of our own. But we do need information." Nora replied.
"What kind of information?" Dr. Hein asked.
Taylor choose this moment to speak up. She told him all about the robots, and the idea they had to let the robots kill every raider in sight. However, there was a problem with that idea….
"I see. Using robots like that does make a lot of sense… but as you said, we can't let them massacre the innocents…. Hmm." Dr. Hein mulled this problem over, but he couldn't come up with an answer to that problem.
"Oh!" Dr. McDermott seemed to remember something all of a sudden, and he then told everyone: "I just remembered that Mr.Bradberton was programming all the robots to protect his amusement park from enemies, but that the programmers were still in the process of perfecting the code that helped robots differentiate friendly people from the enemies they were supposed to kill. He never went through with it, because having the robots kill off all the visitors they suspected of being a commie would've been a total PR disaster. I think he had a holotape in his office."
"Mr.Bradberton? Who's he, and where's his office?" Piper looked puzzled as she truly had no idea who that person was.
"Oh, right. You wouldn't know as this was way before your time." Dr. Hein replied, "Mr. John-Caleb Bradberton's the one who invented the Nuka-cola drinks that you can find everywhere. He also happens to be the owner and leader of this entire place, although he's most likely dead at this point. Umm…. I think you can find his office in Nuka-world USA, but that place's overrun with raiders."
Hancock looked around at his group. "So, I guess it's time to go back?"
"Hold on. Tell me, do you know of anybody in Dry Rock Gulch? If there are people there, they might be interested in helping us." Nora asked.
Both ghouls simply shook their head. Dr.Hein then told her, "Nothing there but a bunch of robots. They're friendly, but they've been programmed to stay there and act out a western script. They'd be useless to you. Some traders did use to live there, but unfortunately, they were scared off by the raiders. Said that while life there was pretty good, that they didn't want to become slaves to the raiders if they managed to conquer the rest of the zones here the same way they did the USA zone."
Nora nodded. "Okay, so we can skip that zone then. Good."
"Do you guys have a way for us to contact you and Oswald when we're undercover in Nuka-world? We have a working portable two-way radio on hand, so I was wondering if you guys did too." Piper asked of the Nuka-world residents, as she suddenly thought of this particular issue and wanted to nip it in the bud before it became a problem.
"Of course, we could always send Taylor over with messages but she's the youngest in the group and we don't want to put her in possible danger. Good thinking, Piper." Nora nodded in approval at this.
Oswald walked over to the group after he ensured that Rachel was settled in her new (and hopefully temporary) home. "Now that you mention it, I do have a working ham radio at my home in the Kiddie Kingdom. I tried to find another one so that those gentlemen and I could communicate back and forth without having to use Cito's messager birds, but the rest of the radio equipment that I found beside the PA system was busted beyond any hopes of fixing."
"Great. So you'll be the Nuka-world liaison between the Minutemen and the local residents when it comes to overseeing the future attack on the raiders. I hope you're up to it Oswald." Nora replied.
Oswald smiled grimly at this. "Of course."
Truthfully, I always found that to be the biggest plot hole in the main storyline… so I made it that every one of the original residents knows each other in Nuka world in this story. I feel that's more realistic than what they had in the vanilla DLC game, where the ghouls didn't even know of each other's existence.
================================================
Taylor's group and Oswald walked together in silence as he carried his girlfriend out of Kiddie Kingdom.
Hancock had given Rachel some kind of chem that would keep her unconscious for a long while, which admittedly helped. Oswald wasn't sure if he was up to listening to his girlfriend attempt to string a nearly nonsensical sentence together again.
"So… what's with the ghoul kid? I thought he was your son at first, but…" Hancock wondered.
Oswald looked over at the other ghoul and chuckled mirthlessly. A part of him was strangely grateful for something to talk about because it kept his mind off Rachel.
"Ah, Poor Sam. Kid's got some of the worst luck ever. Before the Nuclear bombs hit…. He was just a normal 8-year-old kid who had lost his daddy in the war. Then it was his first birthday without his daddy around...so his mother had this bright idea to take him to Nuka-world in an attempt to cheer him up. Of course, that's when the Bombs hit. He and his mother were one of the few survivors who made it, even though the two of them turned into ghouls like the rest of us."
He shook his head. "It wasn't bad enough that he was now stuck as a child forever, but his mother was one of the first ones to go….feral. The only reason why he hasn't lost it? Because I kept on telling him that there was going to be a cure one day."
Hancock looked like he sympathized with that. "Shit. Yeah, that's really rough."
Oswald smirked, remembering what Sam asked Hancock before as he asked, "So, what's your story? Why are you dressed like a pirate?"
Hancock made a small indignant noise at this. "Not you too. Can't you tell that I'm supposed to be dressed like a famous historical figure? The American Revolution leader John Hancock, who just happens to be my namesake?"
Oswald simply shrugged his shoulders, taking care to not jostle the sleeping woman in his arms as he did so. "Sorry. Never been much of a history buff."
Taylor was listening to this conversation as they all walked towards Safari Zone, and then she asked: "Wasn't he the first governor of Massachusetts, and one of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence paper?"
Hancock grinned. "Yes. Finally, somebody who paid attention in history class…"
He then paused as something occurred to him. "But I'm surprised that your world has the same history? I mean…. You come from an alternate earth, don't you?"
"Oh, it seems that most Earths often have similar histories but will branch off at a certain point. Take Earth Aleph and Earth Bet, for instance." Taylor explained, "Both Earths were created parallel to each other, and had nearly identical histories but then Bet diverged from Earth Aleph around the year 1982, and from that point on our histories were different. This Earth, which I'm calling Earth N for now, seems to have diverged from both Bet and Aleph during World War Two If my guess is right. And It seems that the second World War never really ended here until the Nuclear bombs dropped in the year 2077, whereas on my Earth Bet, World World Two ended in the year 1945. So that's where we diverged, I think."
Hancock honestly found this to be very interesting. "Huh. So you had a John Hancock over there too, But you guys never had things like Vaults because your government never needed to entertain the idea of underground living to protect yourself from nuclear bombs."
Taylor nodded. "Yeah. We do have underground endbringer shelters, but that's not quite the same thing. For one thing, they're meant to be temporary shelter… not to be lived in for long periods of time."
"Wait, what are you two talking about? What's this about other Earths?" Oswald looked terribly confused as hell.
That was when Taylor, Nora, and the others started explaining to the ghoul magician about Taylor, and how she had come to this earth from an alternate earth. That, of course, led to Taylor explaining about parahumans and the cape culture on her earth.
That story took up a good chunk of their journey to the Safari Zone.
"That sounds way too weird even for me. Are you guys pulling a fast one on me or what?" Oswald couldn't help but sound skeptical, not that the others could blame him.
Taylor raised one eyebrow, as she pointed out: "You can believe that magic exists and that you can gain immortality from nuclear radiation…. But you actually draw the line at alternate earths?"
Oswald chuckled. "Okay, you do have a point. Oh, looks like we're here."
The ghoul magician was about to say something else as they got near the sign which read "Safari Adventure", but a loud roaring noise interrupted him.
They could hear a man's voice yell out, "Leave Cito's family alone!"
"That's Cito!" Oswald said, recognizing the voice.
Everyone rushed over, to see a half-dressed muscular man fight something that looked like a deathclaw, but quite wasn't one. It looked like an unholy cross between an alligator and a deathclaw.
Nora and the others immediately pulled out their guns, while Oswald just stepped away to the side.
"Can you drop a house on that one too? Please?" Taylor asked, not quite wanting to get close to that… thing.
"I could, but I'd end up killing Cito too. Can't risk that." Nora said as they fired off shots at the Gatorclaw.
Taylor groaned, but she wasn't surprised. She hadn't wanted to hear that answer but knew that Nora would've said it anyway.
"Shoot at his head… try to aim for the eyes! It can't hunt effectively if it can't see!" Hancock called out, and everyone did just that.
Cito seemed to have heard what Hancock said, and lunged at the Gatorclaw's head with a long knife-like object in his hands. On closer inspection, it appeared to be a long animal bone shaped into a sharp point. His bone knife plunged deep into one of the gator's eyes, and it let out a loud pained howl.
The gatorclaw then shoved him away, sending the man flying.
Nora managed to get in a critical hit, destroying the other eyeball with one of her bullets. The gator roared again, as it started stumbling around. It clawed blindly at everything, trying to kill whoever had harmed it. Blood started gushing out of the bullet wounds, and the group was able to lure the Gatorclaw away from the entrance as they kept on shooting at it.
Finally, it was dead.
Everyone slowly approached the corpse of the Gatorclaw, and Piper asked: "What was that? A mutated deathclaw?"
"I don't know. I've never seen anything like that before." Oswald looked worried, as he shifted his girlfriend a little bit in his arms so that he could hold her better.
"Oswald! You bring strong friends to help Cito?" The black-haired muscular man came over.
Taylor noted that he seemed to be dressed like a bare-chested barbarian from an 80's sword and sorcery movie, and wore black warpaint over his eyes. He was even wearing the stereotypical fur breechcloth and fur boots that so many Barbarians seemed to favor in those types of movies. He had to be a cape too, then. There was just no way he wasn't. Otherwise, that kind of outfit was way too impractical for a regular human to wear. Taylor couldn't complain too much though… Cito's muscles were kind of nice to look at.
"Cito, what's going on?" Oswald wondered as he turned to face the Barbarian.
Cito shook his head, looking somewhat upset. "It all Darren's fault. Darren has idea to create monster to fight raiders, but Hein says no. Says too dangerous. Darren thinks everything be okay, because Cito talks to all animals. Darren says Cito make creature attack Raiders. Most animals like Family. But monster not like Family at all. Too angry, too violent. Can't talk to them at all. Many Family died."
"Oh fuck. Is Dr. Curt Hein and Dr.Darren McDermott okay??" Oswald said, not liking this turn of events at all.
Cito shrugged. "Cito not know. Both men run and hide in underground place with other wrinkly people. Cito not see them then after that."
Oswald just sighed at this. "Great. I need to take Rachel here to a safe place before we can go see if the local scientists are okay. I don't want to risk her life."
Cito nodded. "Cito know place. Follow Cito, please."
With that Cito turned to walk off. Everyone followed him.
Nick then whispered to Oswald, "Does he always talk in the third person?"
Oswald smiled. "Yep. don't hold it against him though… he's had a hard childhood and hadn't really socialized with anybody outside of the Ghoullrias, which he calls his family. His parents died when he was very young, and the Ghoullrias found him afterward when he wandered into the Safari Zone by his lonesome self. The animals wouldn't let the human ghouls living here near him, even if they showed that they meant the boy no harm. They seemed intent on raising him themselves. It's why Cito's often so…. odd. But, his life experience did seem to give him the ability to talk to all animals… which can be useful in itself. He can get them to do things that they normally wouldn't do. We call him the Beastmaster sometimes, but Cito doesn't really like that nickname."
"Ghoulliras?" Nora wondered what the heck that was.
"Think regular Gorillas, only Ghoulified. They were one of Dr.Hein and Dr.McDermott's many genetic experiments. It was the reason why they thought they could find a cure for the feral disease because for some reasons the Ghoulliras simply don't go feral no matter how many times we try to infect them with the disease. They were hoping to find out why that didn't happen." Oswald explained.
Nora simply shook her head at this. "What does it say about my life that I'm not even fazed by the idea of Ghoulified Gorillas running around and raising a young boy into an adult man? I mean, I heard all of that come of out of your mouth and I didn't even blink."
Piper nodded. "You know, you're right… are we actually becoming immune to the weirdness here? Or is this what they call Desensitization?"
The two bantered about that particular topic while Taylor took the time to look around her.
Safari Zone seemed to be a Jungle-heavy place, with tropical plants and trees scattered everywhere that looked like they had been mutated heavily to adjust to living in a less than topical environment. And there were thick strong vines growing over the rusted and broken cages everywhere. Many of the strange-looking trees and plants actually seemed to be bearing fruit, and there were very large birds nesting in the trees who ate from the fruits.
Upon closer inspection, the birds seemed to be like a weird hybrid between Bald Eagles and Macaw Parrots. It was like somebody had painted a bald eagle's brown feathers in the colors of the rainbow, gave them long tailfeathers, and stuck a feathery white mohawk on top of their white heads. Their beaks also looked somewhat oddly shaped, like they were birds that were designed to be omnivorous instead of sticking to a strictly meat-based diet or even a fruit-based diet. They were probably designed that way to maximize their chances of survival.
No doubt the work of the two scientists living here, because from the sounds of it they were very obviously bio-tinkers. Mixing the genetic material of random animals together and bringing them into existence like that? Definitely Bio-tinkers.
She wondered what this bird hybrid was called. Macaw Eagles? Yeah, that sounded about right.
Cito led them to a building that was flanked by two large gorilla statues, and there was a sign over the door which read: "The Gorilla house". Everyone entered the building, and Taylor was struck by how strong the smell was… It was a strong, musty animal smell that you got from being in close proximity to farm animals… or to Ghoulish Gorillas.
Speaking of which, the gorillas looked...odd. they almost looked like normal ones save for the fact that they were all hairless, which somehow made them look even more unsettling. They didn't look like undead burn victims the same way human ghouls did, and the only indication that they were ghoulish and not merely shaved was the fact that all of their eyes looked similar to the eyes of human ghouls like Hancock's.
Compared to human ghouls, their bodies looked strangely unaffected by whatever it was that turned people into ghouls. Save for that fur loss, of course. Maybe that was why those animals couldn't go feral? Something to ponder about…
Taylor then realized that she had been so busy inspecting the gorillas, and had missed a good chunk of the conversation that everyone else was having.
"I don't know about this. Are you sure they'll look after Rachel? What if she wakes up and gets upset because she's in an unfamiliar place? Maybe I could just stay here with her while you take our visitors and have them help clear out the park of all Gatorclaws." Oswald was fretting over the idea of leaving Rachel with a bunch of gorillas, no matter how tame they seemed.
Not that Taylor could blame him. Gorillas weren't easy to domesticate to start with and were still wild animals at heart even if you tamed them.
Cito simply shrugged. "That fine with Cito. As long as the monsters be killed right away. Don't want more family killed by monsters."
Oswald nodded. "Yeah. and you know this Zone better than I do… so you'd be able to guide them more effectively than I do."
Nora looked back at everyone in her group and then shrugged. "Yeah, that's okay with me. Cito can take me to the place where the ghouls created those monsters. I'll see if we can't turn off the machines…. It'd be pointless to keep on killing them all if that machine just keeps on making more of them."
"Cito do that!" The Tarzan-like man agreed.
Nora smiled. "So that's settled, then. Just a moment though. I want to make this place a little more comfortable for Rachel."
She moved towards an empty corner and activated her power. Within a minute she had a large bed with blankets set up, and a side table that had a wireless glowing lamp on it. As an afterthought, she also set up some wooden dividers up, in case Oswald wanted to shield Rachel from the Gorillas.
Oswald blinked. "You know magic too? Okay, who else here has magic as well?"
Hancock smirked. "Nora's power is a little bit different than yours or Taylor's. She can't teleport, for one thing. But she can sure create things out of thin air. I've got power too, but it's a mental power, so it's not as flashy. Piper and Nick on the other hand... Sadly, they're nothing but powerless plebs."
"Hey!" Piper pretended to take offense at that, but she smiled afterward.
Nick just rolled his eyes at Hancock's comment. Being a synth, he had increased strength and intelligence. He also was more durable than a regular human. But he supposed that didn't count as a "superpower" to start with, because he wasn't even human anymore.
Oswald looked thoughtful at this. "I see.."
Nora patted the magician on the back and said: "Well, you can set Rachel over there now. As for the rest of us…. We'll be going now to deal with those… monsters. We'll be back soon."
Oswald simply nodded at this, looking grateful.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It seemed as if those Gatorclaws were everywhere because they kept on running into those creatures on the way to the place that Cito called the "Triangle house", which was actually the welcome center for the park.
"We really do need to shut down that machine," Nora muttered as she killed what seemed like the 20th gatorclaw so far. She had been so tired of shooting at them that she had taken to just dropping a house on them now and then like she had with the first deathclaw that Taylor had seen. Otherwise, it would've taken them hours to reach the Welcome Center, and it was just easier to do things this way… it was an instant K.O kill as opposed to shooting at them wildly and hoping that the bullets would pierce their nearly bulletproof hide.
It helped that Cito wasn't in the way anymore, and he could actually tell any other friendly creatures to get out of the way so that Nora could do her thing with the houses.
Every time she dropped the houses, she scrapped the destroyed houses afterward but left the Gatorclaws behind. Cito actually asked her to leave the corpses behind after she scrapped one because apparently, the birds had asked Cito to leave the corpses behind for them to eat. they had pecked at the one that the group had killed earlier just outside the gate and found Gatorclaw flesh to be very, very tasty.
The Maca birds were tired of eating nothing but fruit most of the time, Cito said, so they often took the opportunity to eat meat whenever they could… whenever it was from bugs or a dead Gazelle. Now Gatorclaws too. It was like a special treat for them.
Taylor and the others honestly didn't really care about that, but they didn't really see the harm in leaving those corpses behind for the opportunistic wildlife to feast on, so they agreed to it.
Finally, they reached the place, and what they found there was a huge mess. The Gatorclaws had clawed their way out of the underground cloning facility and knocked everything over on their way out of the building. So there was a lot of upturned statues and broken furniture, and the door that led down to the underground facility was completely damaged beyond all hope.
Thankfully the damaged door was wide open, so they were able to head down there.
Unfortunately, there were a dozen more Gatorclaws down there and this time Nora couldn't simply drop a house on them… there wasn't just any room down for her to do so. Instead, she created thick, tall metal walls with small glass-less windows that surrounded her group so that her group could take their time shooting at the Gatorclaws without worrying that they'd be mobbed to death by the creatures.
Picking them off one by one took a while thanks to their tough hides that were nearly bulletproof, but finally, they killed the last of them after what seemed like a long half hour. Nora scrapped all the defenses she created, and they rushed over to the central computer that seemed to be in charge of handling all the cloning machines. Nick got there first, so he was the one to make the machines switch from cloning Gatorclaws to Gazelles instead. He couldn't do anything else, because the computer demanded some kind of complicated code to turn off everything in the facility.
Piper groaned as she sat down on a chair. "Glad that's over with. That was almost as bad as dealing with the robot horde over there in Galactic Zone."
"I'm going to have some words with this Dr. McDermott. That was the stupidest idea he's had… who the hell creates a living weapon that they can't control? And on top of it, he dared to make many of them as he could without taking one on a test run first. What a fucking idiot." Hancock grumbled as well.
"Cito scold Darren too," Cito agreed, looking somewhat upset. "Family used to be many. Over many tens of Family before. Now only nine. Darren's fault."
"Speaking of which… do you know where they are?" Nora wondered.
Cito tilted his head. "Cito remember different room full of wrinkly people that way. Cito sees them escape that way when monster appear here, and Cito escape the monster by large pipe when monster not listen to Cito at all."
With that, he pointed at a large staircase that seemed to lead to a small hallway. A hallway large enough for a few humans to walk though, but not large enough for a Gatorclaw.
Taylor and the others were taking this chance to have a Nuka-cola break as they listened to Cito describe what went down here to the best of his ability with his broken English.
Once everyone was done quenching their thirst, They followed Cito through the hallway. At the end of the hallway, there was a thick barricaded steel door like the ones that Nora and Taylor often saw being used by the bank for their vaults. To the side of it, there was an intercom speaker with a button under it.
Taylor was the closest one, so she pressed down on it and called out: "Hello? Is there anybody still alive on the other side there?"
There was a pause, and then a voice asked: "Who is this? What happened to the Gatorclaws…?" They sounded highly relieved and suspicious at the same time.
"Hein! Cito glad to hear you okay!" Cito recognized the voice right away and had blurted that out.
"Cito, Is that you? Oh, I'm so happy to know you're alright. I wasn't sure you'd be okay when that creature went on a rampage. But who's that with you? I don't recognize that voice."
"Oswald come with new friends. Friends help destroy all the monsters! Turn off machine which makes monsters." Cito answered.
"It's true." Nora spoke up, "We're with the Minutemen, which is a law enforcement group in the commonwealth. Recently, we got a report of a large group of raiders living in Nuka-world kidnapping people from the commonwealth. That's why we're here… to deal with them. But we're looking for allies who can help us."
"The Gatorclaws is really gone? Thank god." Dr.Hein sounded very happy to hear that. "Very well. I'll disengage the lock and let you though. But please, don't harm any of the feral ghouls. They're safely locked away in their rooms and won't attack you."
The bank vault door let out a loud hissing noise as the wheel spun about, and slowly started opening. The group stepped back to let it open fully before they stepped through.
Looking around, they saw that the room that Cito spoke was basically one giant research lab that had dozens of jail cells to the sides downstairs and upstairs. Within those cells, there were dozens of feral ghouls scampering about.
It was kind of obvious that the room itself had been a vet center meant to hold large sick animals at one point, but had been retrofitted into a research center in order to study the "feral disease".
Taylor turned to look at Dr.Hein. He looked like Hancock in a lot of ways, especially with his pitch black eyes. But the most notable thing about him was his square jaw, brown hair and his missing right arm which had been lopped off at the elbow a long time ago. His lower right arm was replaced by a wooden arm that ended in a hook "hand". The hook itself was more like a curved clamp that could open and clamp on something if he wanted to grab on to something.
He was dressed in a dirty lab coat and had a semi-formal outfit under it.
"Cito, you mentioned that Oswald was with them. Where is he? I don't see him." Dr. Hein looked worried as he glanced at everyone.
"Oswald at Family home with Rachel," Cito answered.
"Rachel picked the unfortunate timing to slowly turn feral when we arrived in the Kiddie Kingdom. We were helping carry Rachel over here when we saw Cito being attacked by Gatorclaws," Nora explained, "And Oswald didn't quite trust the gorillas to look after Rachel properly, so he choose to stay behind with her while we dealt with the problem."
Dr. Curt Hein didn't look terribly happy at this. "Shit. when it rains, it really pours, huh? Darren…. He's in really bad shape and we need Oswald to heal him. He… he didn't get to safety in time before that Gatorclaw he created got to him. I've been tending to his wounds, but without any radioactive material, I can't heal him. I don't know how long he can hold on at this rate."
"Taylor…" Nora turned to ask Taylor to fetch Oswald, but Taylor was ahead of her.
"On it!" she said, as she teleported away much to Dr. Hein's surprise.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--A Hour later--
Dr. Darren McDermott looked different compared to the other ghouls that Taylor had seen so far. He had albino-like skin and looked like he hadn't been that burned badly from the radiation. Unlike other ghouls, his skin looked downright pristine and smooth, despite the burn scars on his face.
His ears were completely intact, but his nose was missing so he had that in common with other ghouls at least. He also suffered from hair loss as well, like the majority of his kind. He had sky blue irises, which was offset by the red sclera of his eyes.
Right now, he was wearing nothing but his black shorts and his upper torso was covered in bloody bandages even though Oswald had already healed him completely of any damages he faced at the claws of the creature he had created.
And he was apologizing profusely to Cito right now. "I'm so sorry, Cito. I should've listened to you and Curt when the two of you said this plan wasn't going to work. I… I suppose I let my fear overrule my common sense. I was just so afraid that the raiders were going to come here and destroy everything we worked so hard for."
Cito huffed loudly. "Yes. Cito keep on telling Darren, Cito don't control animals. Cito talks to animals, ask animals to do things for him. But animals choose, or not to do things Cito asks. Animals need learning how to do things, also."
"And what were you thinking, allowing the cloning machine to make so many without even doing a trial run on the first Gatorclaw we made? It's just a good thing that the policemen came along when they did." Dr. Hein said. Hancock simply nodded at that, having said something similar earlier on.
"Uh, we're called the Minutemen… not Policemen." Nora couldn't help but point that out.
Piper looked over at Oswald, who was inspecting Rachel's new holding cell to make sure that it'd be comfortable enough for his girlfriend.
Darren McDermott simply nodded and hung his head in shame. Satisfied that Darren was properly chastised for his actions, Dr. Hein then turned to face Nora and the others.
"So what can we do to help you? I know you said you were looking for allies to help take down the raiders living here in Nuka-World, but I don't know how we can help you. As you can see… we're the brainy type, not the brawny type." Dr. Hein wondered.
"We actually don't need you to fight the raiders…we already have an army of our own. But we do need information." Nora replied.
"What kind of information?" Dr. Hein asked.
Taylor choose this moment to speak up. She told him all about the robots, and the idea they had to let the robots kill every raider in sight. However, there was a problem with that idea….
"I see. Using robots like that does make a lot of sense… but as you said, we can't let them massacre the innocents…. Hmm." Dr. Hein mulled this problem over, but he couldn't come up with an answer to that problem.
"Oh!" Dr. McDermott seemed to remember something all of a sudden, and he then told everyone: "I just remembered that Mr.Bradberton was programming all the robots to protect his amusement park from enemies, but that the programmers were still in the process of perfecting the code that helped robots differentiate friendly people from the enemies they were supposed to kill. He never went through with it, because having the robots kill off all the visitors they suspected of being a commie would've been a total PR disaster. I think he had a holotape in his office."
"Mr.Bradberton? Who's he, and where's his office?" Piper looked puzzled as she truly had no idea who that person was.
"Oh, right. You wouldn't know as this was way before your time." Dr. Hein replied, "Mr. John-Caleb Bradberton's the one who invented the Nuka-cola drinks that you can find everywhere. He also happens to be the owner and leader of this entire place, although he's most likely dead at this point. Umm…. I think you can find his office in Nuka-world USA, but that place's overrun with raiders."
Hancock looked around at his group. "So, I guess it's time to go back?"
"Hold on. Tell me, do you know of anybody in Dry Rock Gulch? If there are people there, they might be interested in helping us." Nora asked.
Both ghouls simply shook their head. Dr.Hein then told her, "Nothing there but a bunch of robots. They're friendly, but they've been programmed to stay there and act out a western script. They'd be useless to you. Some traders did use to live there, but unfortunately, they were scared off by the raiders. Said that while life there was pretty good, that they didn't want to become slaves to the raiders if they managed to conquer the rest of the zones here the same way they did the USA zone."
Nora nodded. "Okay, so we can skip that zone then. Good."
"Do you guys have a way for us to contact you and Oswald when we're undercover in Nuka-world? We have a working portable two-way radio on hand, so I was wondering if you guys did too." Piper asked of the Nuka-world residents, as she suddenly thought of this particular issue and wanted to nip it in the bud before it became a problem.
"Of course, we could always send Taylor over with messages but she's the youngest in the group and we don't want to put her in possible danger. Good thinking, Piper." Nora nodded in approval at this.
Oswald walked over to the group after he ensured that Rachel was settled in her new (and hopefully temporary) home. "Now that you mention it, I do have a working ham radio at my home in the Kiddie Kingdom. I tried to find another one so that those gentlemen and I could communicate back and forth without having to use Cito's messager birds, but the rest of the radio equipment that I found beside the PA system was busted beyond any hopes of fixing."
"Great. So you'll be the Nuka-world liaison between the Minutemen and the local residents when it comes to overseeing the future attack on the raiders. I hope you're up to it Oswald." Nora replied.
Oswald smiled grimly at this. "Of course."
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is basically a city of Raiders though... this isn't a story where there's only 50 raiders per group. There'd still be too many of them for our adventurers to deal with right now. Hence the need to deal with them in a more clever fashion.
Draxsis
SANLOST
- Location
- United states
That's a somewhat good plan Userid70 but you're overlooking some significant flaws to doing a 'trick them into partying till they drop' run. Even if it were just fifty raiders per group that's still 150 murderous cutthroats with little to no morals and a group of hostages (original settlers and traders) that they are perfectly willing to hide behind. Add to that the Bosses would never let their entire groups go party crazy when there are confirmed hostile from at least three different groups gunning for them (Minutemen from the commonwealth, the galactic zone robots and the Feral Ghoul hive in kiddy kingdom (note that they don't know why the robots never leave the galactic zone and would be wary of an possible change in pattern and they would be wary of the feral ghouls just on sheer principle)) and you still have a significant watch posted to keep an eye on the borders while said party is going on. Also how would you get said party going? I don't see Team sole survivor admitting to clearing any of the zones since they don't want the raiders to spread out making them have to hunt those groups down later. So why exactly would the raiders celebrate anything.
On the other hand you might want to start using the barely suppressed hostility the three groups have for each other against them. Collecting Dixie's trophy holo-tapes that show she's been actively murdering the other two group's members would go a good way towards getting the animals and operators to hunt down the disciples and eliminate them for you then it's simply a matter of sending in the bots to clean house while the internal war is going on. Yes there is a high risk for the slaves but there is always going to be one so long as the raiders are holding the town. At least this way you have the raiders eliminate a third of their own forces before you bring the hammer down on them while they are still recovering from the previous fight.
At least that's how I would go about it if I had that option in the vanilla Nuka-World DLC. Honestly makes me sad that there were not choices like that in the game because sending in the bots instead of having to either - A) side with the raiders and become the true overboss and take over the commonwealth by force. Or B) Kill the raider bosses and just add a bunch of new wandering raider groups to the commonwealth. - Being the only real choices in the game was a total letdown for how it could have played out. I understand that there are limits to what game developers can program but it's always felt like a waste of a good potential storyline to me.
Part of what I've come to enjoy about this story so far is just how you've taken the Nuka-World content and flipped it on its head. If I'd had the option to do so in game I would very much have taken a similar path to what you've been writing so far. So thank you Aurora Moon. I look forward to many rewarding chapters of future Raider ass kicking, followed by the Worm Verse getting tossed head over heels when Taylor comes back with some very interesting company.
On the other hand you might want to start using the barely suppressed hostility the three groups have for each other against them. Collecting Dixie's trophy holo-tapes that show she's been actively murdering the other two group's members would go a good way towards getting the animals and operators to hunt down the disciples and eliminate them for you then it's simply a matter of sending in the bots to clean house while the internal war is going on. Yes there is a high risk for the slaves but there is always going to be one so long as the raiders are holding the town. At least this way you have the raiders eliminate a third of their own forces before you bring the hammer down on them while they are still recovering from the previous fight.
At least that's how I would go about it if I had that option in the vanilla Nuka-World DLC. Honestly makes me sad that there were not choices like that in the game because sending in the bots instead of having to either - A) side with the raiders and become the true overboss and take over the commonwealth by force. Or B) Kill the raider bosses and just add a bunch of new wandering raider groups to the commonwealth. - Being the only real choices in the game was a total letdown for how it could have played out. I understand that there are limits to what game developers can program but it's always felt like a waste of a good potential storyline to me.
Part of what I've come to enjoy about this story so far is just how you've taken the Nuka-World content and flipped it on its head. If I'd had the option to do so in game I would very much have taken a similar path to what you've been writing so far. So thank you Aurora Moon. I look forward to many rewarding chapters of future Raider ass kicking, followed by the Worm Verse getting tossed head over heels when Taylor comes back with some very interesting company.
Nuka-Girl: Chapter Thirteen--Back to the USA Zone
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Author notes:
I'll be honest, this is just a set-up chapter for the real events that's going to happen next chapter. In other words, it's filler that hand waves away how Nora and the others were able to the codes to Nuka-Cola guy's office without going back to the park zones.
Still, there's some interesting conversations that occur between all characters, such as comparing Earth Bet and Earth N to each other. so you might like that part? *shrugs*
I promise the next chapter will be interesting!
=================================
Oswald was back at his castle in The Kiddie Kingdom, watching Taylor teleport her friends over one by one. Sam was at his side watching the process too as well with a small degree of fascination.
Taylor was finally done as she brought over the last one, who happened to be Nick.
Nora was in a quiet conversation with Piper and Hancock to the side, and Nick started stretching once he saw that they were back on King Cola's castle top floor.
Oswald sighed and shook his head. "It's not fair. Some girl decades younger than I am, can do things I can't with my magic? It's enough to make an old ghoul like me feel inadequate."
"Actually about that… I've been kind of analyzing what you can do? And I think you can do it?" Taylor replied as she turned to face the magician with an uncertain expression.
Oswald scoffed. "I've been trying it for decades. Trust me, I can't do it."
"That's because you've been trying to take everything with you at the same time you're transporting yourself over long distances. Um, The way your power works…" Taylor tried to explain what she saw and experienced to the best of her ability.
"It's different than how I teleport. When I do it, I fold the space around me. When you do it, you take yourself apart into tiny atoms and then reassemble yourself elsewhere. What if your limitation is that you can't reassemble yourself AND whatever it is that you're carrying at the same time? Your power could be designed that way to prevent any harm from coming to you. After all, what happens if you accidentally merged yourself with another person? That'd be bad. What if you needed to reassemble yourself first, and then the thing you're trying to carry with you? Instead of both at the same time."
Oswald blinked. He had never really thought of that.
Taylor picked up a red pipe wrench and tossed it at Oswald, who caught it. "Why don't you try it with that? Teleport to a different point in this room, but resist the urge to bring that with you at the same time. Picture putting that wrench together in your hand AFTER you're done putting yourself back together."
Oswald looked very doubtful at this, but he did as he was told. He teleported over to an empty corner, and he could feel the wrench coming with him. But, instead of picturing it reassembling alongside his body, he held off on that and instead focused on himself first. Once he was done he then held out his outstretched hand and pictured the red wrench reappearing there.
A small black cloud formed in his hand, and in a blink of an eye, the red wrench was now resting in his hand.
He was honestly floored… all this time and he had been doing it wrong without knowing it? Every time he had tried taking them with him in the past, they had simply disappeared into the void instead of reappearing in his pockets or hands. But doing it this way as Taylor said, it was actually able to reappear in his hands.
The others were watching this now with some mild interest, and they applauded when Oswald successfully brought out the wrench.
"How did you know, Taylor? I've been doing it for years… but…" Oswald stared down at the wrench as new ideas for how to use this ability started to form in his head.
"Well, you've been thinking like a human stage magician, when you should have been thinking more like a parahuman. A parahuman can do things that a stage magician can't do, after all." Taylor grinned slightly as she said this. "You should try thinking out of the box when power-testing, just to see what you can do and what you can't do."
Oswald blinked slightly at this.
"Well, that's very interesting and all… but we came back here for a reason." Nora said after she cleared her throat.
Oswald was brought back to reality, as he snapped his fingers at that. "Right, the ham radio. I'll go get it."
Instead of teleporting away though, he chooses to walk towards the elevator. His expression indicated that he had a lot to think about right now.
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An Hour later, the orange ham radio was now fully tuned to receive and send messages to Nora's two-way radio.
Nick had also taken this break to cook dinner for everyone, So there had been some friendly idle chatter while they ate at a table that Nora had created, along with some chairs. Hancock was regaling Sam with some of his adventures in the commonwealth with Nora and the others.
Nora herself was chatting with Oswald about the human hostages in Nuka-world, and how to get word to them without making the raiders suspicious.
"I wonder if Mackenzie is still alive." Oswald wondered out loud. "If any of the original settlers were still alive, it'd be her. She's always been a tough broad."
"Who's she?" Nora asked.
He answered: "Mackenzie Bridgeman is from one of the original settler families who used to live here in Nuka-World before the raiders took over. She's actually a doctor, but she also does a lot of trading on the side with myself and the others. She could really drive a tough bargain when she wanted to."
Oswald then gave her a random history lesson:
"Roughly 10 years ago, there were some humans who found this place by accident, and they wanted to settle here. The sane ghouls, myself induced, had an agreement with them…. We'd keep all the feral ghouls in both Safari Zone and The Kiddie Kingdom. Those zones would be our place by right, while they could settle in dry rock gulch and the rest of the zones. This agreement between all of us worked out pretty well. They'd farm food, and trade with us. They liked that Dr.Hein and Dr. McDermott was able to keep up a steady supply of animals for them to hunt, and they weren't keen to take those Zones for themselves because they didn't know how the cloning machines or misters worked anyhow. Sometimes I'd venture out to the human settlements, and put on magic shows for the settlers… just to keep my craft alive."
He then sighed loudly. "God, it was such a massacre when the raiders came here a year ago. At least one of the settlers had the forethought to turn the robots in the Galactic Zone against all the raiders before he died. He and a few of his family members set the computer in the star control center, removed most of the star core hard drives so that the raiders wouldn't be able to regain control of it, and scattered them all over the park. That was able to drive the raiders back and confine them to the USA zone, at least."
Nora twitched slightly at that last part, but she had been content to let Oswald ramble a little bit about the history of this place. It was interesting, after all.
"The robots really did a number on the raiders from what we saw in the Galactic zone. I've honestly never seen so many dead raider bodies in one place….most of them in various stages of decay. I don't think I'll ever forget the smell any time soon." Nora remarked casually.
Oswald chuckled. "You guys actually went there first before visiting my humble abode? I know you said you got things under control there…. But I still have a hard time believing it. The bots… they can be really tough little bastards."
Nora smirked slightly. "Which is why I know that our plan with the bots will help drive the raiders out of Nuka-world."
Oswald simply nodded. "If you say so."
Nora then looked thoughtful. "I'll ask around for this woman, and see if we can't find more of the original settlers over there. There's gotta be some survivors who're still around."
Taylor let out a loud yawn as she put down her empty plate.
Nora smiled at Taylor, as she added, "But first, I believe some sleep is in order for all of us. It's been a long day, after all."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next morning, Taylor and the others swung around to the Galactic zone to put on their raider disguises. They braided their hairs into that faux mohawk hairstyle again and slapped on some warpaint as well.
Once they were done, they were ready to go undercover in the USA zone for a second time.
"Assholes, open up! It's us!" Hancock bellowed from behind his helmet.
"What?" the raiders keeping watch peered out from behind the barricades like they couldn't quite believe what they were hearing.
"Fuck this shit… Gage ain't offering us enough for us to stay out here… let us back in!" Nora growled.
"Holy shit, it's the volunteers. I thought for sure that the robots or the ghouls would've flayed them alive." One of the raiders recognized the group and were somewhat shocked to see that they were still alive.
"Oh god, don't mention the robots again… so many of them… they just keep on coming…" Piper didn't have to pretend like she was traumatized from the experience… in fact, it was kind of suspiciously easy to act like a war veteran with PTSD.
"How are you guys still alive?" one of the raiders asked as they opened up the gates.
"Because we didn't blindly charge into the zones unlike the rest of you dumbfucks," Hancock said in his best rough-sounding gang voice. "Admittedly, we didn't do that at first when we went to kiddie kingdom. We thought that one would be a cakewalk from the name…. Ugh. Fucking Ghouls, man. They have this system set up to spray radioactive shit at you. Then we saw the piles of dead raider bodies in the Galactic Zone, and then those robots fuckin' swarmed us. They were hiding, waiting for us to step deeper into the park before they ambushed us. After that we just kind of sneaked around and peeked into all the zones using our binoculars. Did you know there's like over a dozen mutated deathclaws in the safari adventure place, man? I think they're breeding over there….thankfully they didn't notice us at all."
"Shit, Deathclaws??" One of the raider guards gasped loudly at this.
"As I said, Gage didn't offer us enough bottlecaps to deal with that shit. I foolishly thought that 500 caps were pretty good…. But fuck that shit." Nora griped loudly.
The raider guard nodded sympathetically at that. "500 caps, huh? I hear ya… you wouldn't be able to pay me a million caps to deal with Deathclaws. I value my life way too much."
"Know of any place where we can drink and do….. chems….. until we crash? I wanna forget the fact that we were stupid enough to go into the zones." Taylor asked.
"Well, There's the Cappy's cafe and the Parlor. Cappy's cafe doesn't have any of the hard stuff, but they do have some decent beers there. The Parlor's where it's at, but the Operators charges you an arm and leg for the good stuff. Not literally, of course." The sympathetic raider answered.
Taylor thanked them and they were on their way.
"Nice thinking. Going to one of their regular hangouts is bound to gather some good intel." Nora said as she nodded in approval.
As they walked towards the direction of where the Cappy cafe was at, Taylor then asked something she had been wondering about for a long time. "Why bottle caps?"
"Hmm?" Nora looked over at her.
"How did people start using bottle caps as currency, and why?" Taylor asked again.
Nora blinked. "Ahh…. actually, I have no idea. Piper? Nick? Hancock?"
Nick spoke up. "It's probably because the old world dollar bills tend to be very… absorbent. After all, it's made out of a special mixture of paper and cloth that can't be replicated easily and was a guarded government secret. It absorbed radiation like crazy, so carrying a large stack of those bills in a radioactive wasteland is like carrying around pure uranium rocks. Not exactly very healthy for you."
Nora nodded. "I see. And those bottle caps came from the bottled drinks that were easy to find, but not so commonplace that they'd become worthless. Something had to replace the current currency that was too toxic to carry around, and people just happened to agree on bottle caps?"
"Plus, those things are metal and light enough to carry around. Metals of any type are always worth their weight… a lot of use for them in everyday life." Piper pointed out.
Taylor raised one eyebrow. "You actually used some kind of paper cloth for your currency back in the old days? You didn't even use things like coins? Back home, we use dollar coins made out of a copper and silver mixture instead."
Hancock mulled that over and nodded. "Actually that does sound more sensible. Less likely to become radioactive too, if nuclear war ever hits your homeworld. And you could always melt them down to use in other things too."
"Jeez, you shouldn't jinx her world like that," Piper replied.
Taylor chuckled. "That's unlikely to happen. Remember Scion, the golden guy I told you about? He's got a hate-on for nuclear bombs and the like. He's the reason why all the countries don't even have nuclear weapons."
Piper blinked. "Oh, right."
They found the entrance to Cappy's cafe and walked in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They walked out an hour later, looking somewhat discouraged.
Half of the raiders were too drunk to hold a long steady conversation, and the other half wasn't exactly friendly to strangers. So they hadn't gotten much in the way of intel.
When they asked about John-Caleb Bradberton, the best they got was a blank stare and a "Who? Don't even know who the fuck that is."
And let's not get started on what their response was when they tried asking about any of the original settlers who used to live here before they took over. Talk about being so rude to the point of obscenity.
They were on their way to the marketplace when Nora overheard some blond woman talking to a raider.
"You haven't seen anything that's, um, out of the ordinary around here, have you? Maybe something hidden? Shaped like a bottle cap?"
"I thought we told you to keep your ass in the market. If you're looking for something, you can find it there like everyone else." The raider rudely replied.
"I'm not here for the market! I didn't travel hundreds of miles to go shopping." The blonde was growing irritated at that.
The raider sneered at her, "I don't suppose you came here for a bullet in the brain either, so if you want to live, I suggest you stay where you belong."
Nora chooses that moment to step in before things could escalate. "Is there a problem here?"
"Just this dumb bitch here." The Raider said as the blonde woman turned around to face her.
"Okay…. I'll take over things here, okay?" Nora replied, and the Raider simply scoffed as he walked away.
"So… what was it that you were looking for?" Nora wondered as she took a better look at the woman. The woman was dressed casually in a pair of jeans, sneakers and a t-shirt that had the cappy mascot on it, and the nuka-world logo over the mascot. What really caught her eye, however, was the pair of weird looking glasses that the woman was wearing.
"Oh, um…" The woman seemed hesitant at first and then said, "I'm looking for decals on walls and things like that, that feature the cappy mascot with a speech balloon over his head. He'll be saying random letters…"
That seemed somewhat usual to her. "You mean, you want a wall decoration that you can stick on the wall or you're looking for places that have those wall decals?"
"The second one, I suppose." The woman looked somewhat shifty at this.
That seemed like a strange thing to search for, and Nora said as much. "May I ask why you're looking for those? Seems like a strange thing to look for."
The woman sighed. "You wouldn't understand why. Nobody else here has so far… even though they're in the greatest place in the world! It's like none of them even has an appreciation for Nuka-Colas and the person who made them."
"You mean John-Caleb Bradberton?" Nora wondered.
The woman's eyes perked up at this. "You know who he is??"
"Yep. The inventor of the Nuka-Cola formula, and the leader of the Nuka-Cola Corporation. He also was the one who created this place."
She was bouncing up and down with unbridled glee now. "That's so great! It's so nice to finally find another Nuka fan in this place… I was starting to think that nobody else here appreciated the Nuka-cola brand. What's your name? I'm Sierra!"
Nora remembered the name she had given Gage, so she decided to go with that… as seeing she didn't know if she could trust this stranger just yet. "I'm Bellona. So, you still didn't tell me why you're looking for those decals."
Sierra blinked at this and then smiled. "Oh, right. Well, Mr.Bradberton was holding a contest for the kids back in the days before the bombs dropped. He hid those Cappys around the park for them to find… and the kid who found them all would be able to meet him in person… in his personal office! Can you imagine that?? Getting to meet the man himself in person…."
She sighed with a dreamy expression on her face after she said that last part.
Nora widened her eyes. She couldn't believe that the clue to one of her missions dropped into her lap just like that. "Oh, wow! I never knew that about the contest… how did you find that out."
Sierra smirked slightly. "Girl, I'm not just the biggest Nuka-Cola fan in the world…. I have my own Nuka-Cola museum in the town of Girdershade! I know everything there is about the Nuka-Cola Corporation."
Nora chooses this moment to act appropriately shocked and acted like she was fangirling over Sierra's revelation. "Oh wow, I've heard about that museum… but I had no idea you were the owner of it!"
Sierra's smile grew wider at Nora's reaction. "Oh, you've heard of my museum? Aw, swucks."
Nora decided then that she really should butter up the woman some more. "Tell you what, this calls for a drink between two fellow fans? I've got some Nuka-colas with me… would you like to sit with me and my friends? I think I saw some benches nearby."
Sierra grinned widely, showing her brown-stained teeth. "I never turn down a Nuka-cola."
As they sat down, Nora finally introduced her friends to Sierra. "Sierra, I want you to meet my friends. This lady's Rocky, Those guys are Rex and Ed Winters, and…"
"I'm Sophia. Pleased to meet you." Taylor smiled as she held out a hand for Sierra to shake.
As Sierra shook Taylor's hand, she looked slightly confused. "I gonna say, you're not exactly like the other raiders…."
Nora chuckled. "You're right. Truth is, we weren't raiders before we came here. But you know the rules… If you want to live here in Nuka-world as a resident, you choose to be a slave or one of the raiders. We didn't want to be slaves, but… how could we not want to live in the one place where the Nuka-colas were created? So we had no choice but to become raiders."
Sierra's face cleared up at that. "Ah, that's totally understandable."
Nick pulled out the Nuka-colas for everyone, and Nora then gestured at the several choices they had. "Which one would you like? The Nuka Victory, the Quartz one, or the Quantum one? We have the original Nuka-cola too."
Sierra bounced slightly in her seat. "Ohh, I've never tried the Quartz one before. Let me have that one!"
Nora handed that one over, and with that everyone cracked open their drinks and sat there drinking in companionable silence.
As they were almost done with their drinks, Nora finally spoke up. "I've been thinking… and I'd like to help you with your quest. How would you like to stay with us? We can ask around for you? You just gonna know the right way to ask those raiders….In return, you'll lead us to John-Caleb's office. Truth is, we've been looking for a holotape that would allow us to take control of the amusement park. We've looked elsewhere, but now I think that such an important holotape would be in his office."
At Sierra's uncertain look, she added, "You can have everything else. We really do just want that holotape."
The woman slowly smiled, as she thought about it. "Alright. It's a deal."
With that, she led them to a building that was located right next to the Parlor that had a security keypad on the side of the door. There was a faded sign over the keypad that read, "Collect all the clues and enter your code here!"
"See that? It's a security measure… you need to know the password in order to get in. And that's what the contest was for… and you can't hack it at all. Trust me, I've tried." Sierra replied.
Nora looked thoughtful at this. "Right. I'll have my friends spread out and ask others about that. Ta--Er, Sophia, why don't you go radio Ozzie and ask him if he knows anything about the contest from back in the day. Ed and Rocky, why don't you go to the marketplace and gather some intel there? See if you can find Mackenzie while you're at it, she could be helpful with Sierra's quest as well. Rex and I will walk around with Sierra looking for clues and also make sure that the other raiders don't bother her."
Piper, aka Rocky, just simply nodded. "Right, boss. Where should we all meet up?"
Nora looked around and then pointed at a sign that hung over an orange door. "Let's meet up in front of the Nuka-cade in half an hour."
Nora handed her portable two-way radio over to Taylor and had her disappear by having her walk around a corner before teleporting away. In reality, Taylor was now on the roof of Mr.Bradetion's office building and was now contacting Oswald.
The rest of the adults spilt up to wander around the park some more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Taylor spoke with "Ozzie" on the radio, and Oswald knew nothing of that contest as he hadn't paid any attention to that back in the day. However, his ward Sam did know all about it, as seeing he was one of the original contestants back in the day. Apparently, every cappy was hidden in all the zones, and he had been two letters away from solving the riddle when the bombs fell.
To a kid, the puzzle would've been somewhat difficult but to an adult, it was obvious that the letters spelled out the word "Refreshing". Even when she didn't have the two missing letters to help spell it out.
Taylor was just glad that Sam already knew about it, and that they didn't have to go back out there to travel all over the damn place again just to collect a bunch of letters. Just the idea of going back and exploring the zones again already made her feel tired. She really didn't want to go through with that, even if it was just to explore Dry Rock Gulch and the Bottling plant to find the two missing letters.
With that in mind she teleported back down to ground level, and she saw Nora and the others coming back to stand in front of the Nuka-Cade sign.
She rushed over to meet up with them.
"Hey, Sophia. Find out anything from Ozzie?" Nora greeted her, as Piper and Nick joined up with them.
Taylor nodded. "Yeah, Ozzie's friend knew all about the contest, and thankfully they knew what the code is too so we don't have to go all over the park looking for those cappys."
Sierra let out a loud squeal of joy upon hearing that. "Oh, you know the way to get into the office? So awesome!"
Nora smiled. "Great. What about you guys, Ed and Rocky? Made any headway in finding Mackenzie?"
Piper smirked. "She's alive. And working in the marketplace as one of the slaves. She was very pleased to hear that Ozzie sends her his regards and that the Minutemen are….. Well, around. Gave her the frequency numbers to Ozzie's radio, so that the two of them would be able to talk."
Nora grinned, happy that everything was going their way for once. She just hoped that the rest of their plans to get rid of the raiders would go off without a hitch for once.
I'll be honest, this is just a set-up chapter for the real events that's going to happen next chapter. In other words, it's filler that hand waves away how Nora and the others were able to the codes to Nuka-Cola guy's office without going back to the park zones.
Still, there's some interesting conversations that occur between all characters, such as comparing Earth Bet and Earth N to each other. so you might like that part? *shrugs*
I promise the next chapter will be interesting!
=================================
Oswald was back at his castle in The Kiddie Kingdom, watching Taylor teleport her friends over one by one. Sam was at his side watching the process too as well with a small degree of fascination.
Taylor was finally done as she brought over the last one, who happened to be Nick.
Nora was in a quiet conversation with Piper and Hancock to the side, and Nick started stretching once he saw that they were back on King Cola's castle top floor.
Oswald sighed and shook his head. "It's not fair. Some girl decades younger than I am, can do things I can't with my magic? It's enough to make an old ghoul like me feel inadequate."
"Actually about that… I've been kind of analyzing what you can do? And I think you can do it?" Taylor replied as she turned to face the magician with an uncertain expression.
Oswald scoffed. "I've been trying it for decades. Trust me, I can't do it."
"That's because you've been trying to take everything with you at the same time you're transporting yourself over long distances. Um, The way your power works…" Taylor tried to explain what she saw and experienced to the best of her ability.
"It's different than how I teleport. When I do it, I fold the space around me. When you do it, you take yourself apart into tiny atoms and then reassemble yourself elsewhere. What if your limitation is that you can't reassemble yourself AND whatever it is that you're carrying at the same time? Your power could be designed that way to prevent any harm from coming to you. After all, what happens if you accidentally merged yourself with another person? That'd be bad. What if you needed to reassemble yourself first, and then the thing you're trying to carry with you? Instead of both at the same time."
Oswald blinked. He had never really thought of that.
Taylor picked up a red pipe wrench and tossed it at Oswald, who caught it. "Why don't you try it with that? Teleport to a different point in this room, but resist the urge to bring that with you at the same time. Picture putting that wrench together in your hand AFTER you're done putting yourself back together."
Oswald looked very doubtful at this, but he did as he was told. He teleported over to an empty corner, and he could feel the wrench coming with him. But, instead of picturing it reassembling alongside his body, he held off on that and instead focused on himself first. Once he was done he then held out his outstretched hand and pictured the red wrench reappearing there.
A small black cloud formed in his hand, and in a blink of an eye, the red wrench was now resting in his hand.
He was honestly floored… all this time and he had been doing it wrong without knowing it? Every time he had tried taking them with him in the past, they had simply disappeared into the void instead of reappearing in his pockets or hands. But doing it this way as Taylor said, it was actually able to reappear in his hands.
The others were watching this now with some mild interest, and they applauded when Oswald successfully brought out the wrench.
"How did you know, Taylor? I've been doing it for years… but…" Oswald stared down at the wrench as new ideas for how to use this ability started to form in his head.
"Well, you've been thinking like a human stage magician, when you should have been thinking more like a parahuman. A parahuman can do things that a stage magician can't do, after all." Taylor grinned slightly as she said this. "You should try thinking out of the box when power-testing, just to see what you can do and what you can't do."
Oswald blinked slightly at this.
"Well, that's very interesting and all… but we came back here for a reason." Nora said after she cleared her throat.
Oswald was brought back to reality, as he snapped his fingers at that. "Right, the ham radio. I'll go get it."
Instead of teleporting away though, he chooses to walk towards the elevator. His expression indicated that he had a lot to think about right now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An Hour later, the orange ham radio was now fully tuned to receive and send messages to Nora's two-way radio.
Nick had also taken this break to cook dinner for everyone, So there had been some friendly idle chatter while they ate at a table that Nora had created, along with some chairs. Hancock was regaling Sam with some of his adventures in the commonwealth with Nora and the others.
Nora herself was chatting with Oswald about the human hostages in Nuka-world, and how to get word to them without making the raiders suspicious.
"I wonder if Mackenzie is still alive." Oswald wondered out loud. "If any of the original settlers were still alive, it'd be her. She's always been a tough broad."
"Who's she?" Nora asked.
He answered: "Mackenzie Bridgeman is from one of the original settler families who used to live here in Nuka-World before the raiders took over. She's actually a doctor, but she also does a lot of trading on the side with myself and the others. She could really drive a tough bargain when she wanted to."
Oswald then gave her a random history lesson:
"Roughly 10 years ago, there were some humans who found this place by accident, and they wanted to settle here. The sane ghouls, myself induced, had an agreement with them…. We'd keep all the feral ghouls in both Safari Zone and The Kiddie Kingdom. Those zones would be our place by right, while they could settle in dry rock gulch and the rest of the zones. This agreement between all of us worked out pretty well. They'd farm food, and trade with us. They liked that Dr.Hein and Dr. McDermott was able to keep up a steady supply of animals for them to hunt, and they weren't keen to take those Zones for themselves because they didn't know how the cloning machines or misters worked anyhow. Sometimes I'd venture out to the human settlements, and put on magic shows for the settlers… just to keep my craft alive."
He then sighed loudly. "God, it was such a massacre when the raiders came here a year ago. At least one of the settlers had the forethought to turn the robots in the Galactic Zone against all the raiders before he died. He and a few of his family members set the computer in the star control center, removed most of the star core hard drives so that the raiders wouldn't be able to regain control of it, and scattered them all over the park. That was able to drive the raiders back and confine them to the USA zone, at least."
Nora twitched slightly at that last part, but she had been content to let Oswald ramble a little bit about the history of this place. It was interesting, after all.
"The robots really did a number on the raiders from what we saw in the Galactic zone. I've honestly never seen so many dead raider bodies in one place….most of them in various stages of decay. I don't think I'll ever forget the smell any time soon." Nora remarked casually.
Oswald chuckled. "You guys actually went there first before visiting my humble abode? I know you said you got things under control there…. But I still have a hard time believing it. The bots… they can be really tough little bastards."
Nora smirked slightly. "Which is why I know that our plan with the bots will help drive the raiders out of Nuka-world."
Oswald simply nodded. "If you say so."
Nora then looked thoughtful. "I'll ask around for this woman, and see if we can't find more of the original settlers over there. There's gotta be some survivors who're still around."
Taylor let out a loud yawn as she put down her empty plate.
Nora smiled at Taylor, as she added, "But first, I believe some sleep is in order for all of us. It's been a long day, after all."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next morning, Taylor and the others swung around to the Galactic zone to put on their raider disguises. They braided their hairs into that faux mohawk hairstyle again and slapped on some warpaint as well.
Once they were done, they were ready to go undercover in the USA zone for a second time.
"Assholes, open up! It's us!" Hancock bellowed from behind his helmet.
"What?" the raiders keeping watch peered out from behind the barricades like they couldn't quite believe what they were hearing.
"Fuck this shit… Gage ain't offering us enough for us to stay out here… let us back in!" Nora growled.
"Holy shit, it's the volunteers. I thought for sure that the robots or the ghouls would've flayed them alive." One of the raiders recognized the group and were somewhat shocked to see that they were still alive.
"Oh god, don't mention the robots again… so many of them… they just keep on coming…" Piper didn't have to pretend like she was traumatized from the experience… in fact, it was kind of suspiciously easy to act like a war veteran with PTSD.
"How are you guys still alive?" one of the raiders asked as they opened up the gates.
"Because we didn't blindly charge into the zones unlike the rest of you dumbfucks," Hancock said in his best rough-sounding gang voice. "Admittedly, we didn't do that at first when we went to kiddie kingdom. We thought that one would be a cakewalk from the name…. Ugh. Fucking Ghouls, man. They have this system set up to spray radioactive shit at you. Then we saw the piles of dead raider bodies in the Galactic Zone, and then those robots fuckin' swarmed us. They were hiding, waiting for us to step deeper into the park before they ambushed us. After that we just kind of sneaked around and peeked into all the zones using our binoculars. Did you know there's like over a dozen mutated deathclaws in the safari adventure place, man? I think they're breeding over there….thankfully they didn't notice us at all."
"Shit, Deathclaws??" One of the raider guards gasped loudly at this.
"As I said, Gage didn't offer us enough bottlecaps to deal with that shit. I foolishly thought that 500 caps were pretty good…. But fuck that shit." Nora griped loudly.
The raider guard nodded sympathetically at that. "500 caps, huh? I hear ya… you wouldn't be able to pay me a million caps to deal with Deathclaws. I value my life way too much."
"Know of any place where we can drink and do….. chems….. until we crash? I wanna forget the fact that we were stupid enough to go into the zones." Taylor asked.
"Well, There's the Cappy's cafe and the Parlor. Cappy's cafe doesn't have any of the hard stuff, but they do have some decent beers there. The Parlor's where it's at, but the Operators charges you an arm and leg for the good stuff. Not literally, of course." The sympathetic raider answered.
Taylor thanked them and they were on their way.
"Nice thinking. Going to one of their regular hangouts is bound to gather some good intel." Nora said as she nodded in approval.
As they walked towards the direction of where the Cappy cafe was at, Taylor then asked something she had been wondering about for a long time. "Why bottle caps?"
"Hmm?" Nora looked over at her.
"How did people start using bottle caps as currency, and why?" Taylor asked again.
Nora blinked. "Ahh…. actually, I have no idea. Piper? Nick? Hancock?"
Nick spoke up. "It's probably because the old world dollar bills tend to be very… absorbent. After all, it's made out of a special mixture of paper and cloth that can't be replicated easily and was a guarded government secret. It absorbed radiation like crazy, so carrying a large stack of those bills in a radioactive wasteland is like carrying around pure uranium rocks. Not exactly very healthy for you."
Nora nodded. "I see. And those bottle caps came from the bottled drinks that were easy to find, but not so commonplace that they'd become worthless. Something had to replace the current currency that was too toxic to carry around, and people just happened to agree on bottle caps?"
"Plus, those things are metal and light enough to carry around. Metals of any type are always worth their weight… a lot of use for them in everyday life." Piper pointed out.
Taylor raised one eyebrow. "You actually used some kind of paper cloth for your currency back in the old days? You didn't even use things like coins? Back home, we use dollar coins made out of a copper and silver mixture instead."
Hancock mulled that over and nodded. "Actually that does sound more sensible. Less likely to become radioactive too, if nuclear war ever hits your homeworld. And you could always melt them down to use in other things too."
"Jeez, you shouldn't jinx her world like that," Piper replied.
Taylor chuckled. "That's unlikely to happen. Remember Scion, the golden guy I told you about? He's got a hate-on for nuclear bombs and the like. He's the reason why all the countries don't even have nuclear weapons."
Piper blinked. "Oh, right."
They found the entrance to Cappy's cafe and walked in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They walked out an hour later, looking somewhat discouraged.
Half of the raiders were too drunk to hold a long steady conversation, and the other half wasn't exactly friendly to strangers. So they hadn't gotten much in the way of intel.
When they asked about John-Caleb Bradberton, the best they got was a blank stare and a "Who? Don't even know who the fuck that is."
And let's not get started on what their response was when they tried asking about any of the original settlers who used to live here before they took over. Talk about being so rude to the point of obscenity.
They were on their way to the marketplace when Nora overheard some blond woman talking to a raider.
"You haven't seen anything that's, um, out of the ordinary around here, have you? Maybe something hidden? Shaped like a bottle cap?"
"I thought we told you to keep your ass in the market. If you're looking for something, you can find it there like everyone else." The raider rudely replied.
"I'm not here for the market! I didn't travel hundreds of miles to go shopping." The blonde was growing irritated at that.
The raider sneered at her, "I don't suppose you came here for a bullet in the brain either, so if you want to live, I suggest you stay where you belong."
Nora chooses that moment to step in before things could escalate. "Is there a problem here?"
"Just this dumb bitch here." The Raider said as the blonde woman turned around to face her.
"Okay…. I'll take over things here, okay?" Nora replied, and the Raider simply scoffed as he walked away.
"So… what was it that you were looking for?" Nora wondered as she took a better look at the woman. The woman was dressed casually in a pair of jeans, sneakers and a t-shirt that had the cappy mascot on it, and the nuka-world logo over the mascot. What really caught her eye, however, was the pair of weird looking glasses that the woman was wearing.
"Oh, um…" The woman seemed hesitant at first and then said, "I'm looking for decals on walls and things like that, that feature the cappy mascot with a speech balloon over his head. He'll be saying random letters…"
That seemed somewhat usual to her. "You mean, you want a wall decoration that you can stick on the wall or you're looking for places that have those wall decals?"
"The second one, I suppose." The woman looked somewhat shifty at this.
That seemed like a strange thing to search for, and Nora said as much. "May I ask why you're looking for those? Seems like a strange thing to look for."
The woman sighed. "You wouldn't understand why. Nobody else here has so far… even though they're in the greatest place in the world! It's like none of them even has an appreciation for Nuka-Colas and the person who made them."
"You mean John-Caleb Bradberton?" Nora wondered.
The woman's eyes perked up at this. "You know who he is??"
"Yep. The inventor of the Nuka-Cola formula, and the leader of the Nuka-Cola Corporation. He also was the one who created this place."
She was bouncing up and down with unbridled glee now. "That's so great! It's so nice to finally find another Nuka fan in this place… I was starting to think that nobody else here appreciated the Nuka-cola brand. What's your name? I'm Sierra!"
Nora remembered the name she had given Gage, so she decided to go with that… as seeing she didn't know if she could trust this stranger just yet. "I'm Bellona. So, you still didn't tell me why you're looking for those decals."
Sierra blinked at this and then smiled. "Oh, right. Well, Mr.Bradberton was holding a contest for the kids back in the days before the bombs dropped. He hid those Cappys around the park for them to find… and the kid who found them all would be able to meet him in person… in his personal office! Can you imagine that?? Getting to meet the man himself in person…."
She sighed with a dreamy expression on her face after she said that last part.
Nora widened her eyes. She couldn't believe that the clue to one of her missions dropped into her lap just like that. "Oh, wow! I never knew that about the contest… how did you find that out."
Sierra smirked slightly. "Girl, I'm not just the biggest Nuka-Cola fan in the world…. I have my own Nuka-Cola museum in the town of Girdershade! I know everything there is about the Nuka-Cola Corporation."
Nora chooses this moment to act appropriately shocked and acted like she was fangirling over Sierra's revelation. "Oh wow, I've heard about that museum… but I had no idea you were the owner of it!"
Sierra's smile grew wider at Nora's reaction. "Oh, you've heard of my museum? Aw, swucks."
Nora decided then that she really should butter up the woman some more. "Tell you what, this calls for a drink between two fellow fans? I've got some Nuka-colas with me… would you like to sit with me and my friends? I think I saw some benches nearby."
Sierra grinned widely, showing her brown-stained teeth. "I never turn down a Nuka-cola."
As they sat down, Nora finally introduced her friends to Sierra. "Sierra, I want you to meet my friends. This lady's Rocky, Those guys are Rex and Ed Winters, and…"
"I'm Sophia. Pleased to meet you." Taylor smiled as she held out a hand for Sierra to shake.
As Sierra shook Taylor's hand, she looked slightly confused. "I gonna say, you're not exactly like the other raiders…."
Nora chuckled. "You're right. Truth is, we weren't raiders before we came here. But you know the rules… If you want to live here in Nuka-world as a resident, you choose to be a slave or one of the raiders. We didn't want to be slaves, but… how could we not want to live in the one place where the Nuka-colas were created? So we had no choice but to become raiders."
Sierra's face cleared up at that. "Ah, that's totally understandable."
Nick pulled out the Nuka-colas for everyone, and Nora then gestured at the several choices they had. "Which one would you like? The Nuka Victory, the Quartz one, or the Quantum one? We have the original Nuka-cola too."
Sierra bounced slightly in her seat. "Ohh, I've never tried the Quartz one before. Let me have that one!"
Nora handed that one over, and with that everyone cracked open their drinks and sat there drinking in companionable silence.
As they were almost done with their drinks, Nora finally spoke up. "I've been thinking… and I'd like to help you with your quest. How would you like to stay with us? We can ask around for you? You just gonna know the right way to ask those raiders….In return, you'll lead us to John-Caleb's office. Truth is, we've been looking for a holotape that would allow us to take control of the amusement park. We've looked elsewhere, but now I think that such an important holotape would be in his office."
At Sierra's uncertain look, she added, "You can have everything else. We really do just want that holotape."
The woman slowly smiled, as she thought about it. "Alright. It's a deal."
With that, she led them to a building that was located right next to the Parlor that had a security keypad on the side of the door. There was a faded sign over the keypad that read, "Collect all the clues and enter your code here!"
"See that? It's a security measure… you need to know the password in order to get in. And that's what the contest was for… and you can't hack it at all. Trust me, I've tried." Sierra replied.
Nora looked thoughtful at this. "Right. I'll have my friends spread out and ask others about that. Ta--Er, Sophia, why don't you go radio Ozzie and ask him if he knows anything about the contest from back in the day. Ed and Rocky, why don't you go to the marketplace and gather some intel there? See if you can find Mackenzie while you're at it, she could be helpful with Sierra's quest as well. Rex and I will walk around with Sierra looking for clues and also make sure that the other raiders don't bother her."
Piper, aka Rocky, just simply nodded. "Right, boss. Where should we all meet up?"
Nora looked around and then pointed at a sign that hung over an orange door. "Let's meet up in front of the Nuka-cade in half an hour."
Nora handed her portable two-way radio over to Taylor and had her disappear by having her walk around a corner before teleporting away. In reality, Taylor was now on the roof of Mr.Bradetion's office building and was now contacting Oswald.
The rest of the adults spilt up to wander around the park some more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Taylor spoke with "Ozzie" on the radio, and Oswald knew nothing of that contest as he hadn't paid any attention to that back in the day. However, his ward Sam did know all about it, as seeing he was one of the original contestants back in the day. Apparently, every cappy was hidden in all the zones, and he had been two letters away from solving the riddle when the bombs fell.
To a kid, the puzzle would've been somewhat difficult but to an adult, it was obvious that the letters spelled out the word "Refreshing". Even when she didn't have the two missing letters to help spell it out.
Taylor was just glad that Sam already knew about it, and that they didn't have to go back out there to travel all over the damn place again just to collect a bunch of letters. Just the idea of going back and exploring the zones again already made her feel tired. She really didn't want to go through with that, even if it was just to explore Dry Rock Gulch and the Bottling plant to find the two missing letters.
With that in mind she teleported back down to ground level, and she saw Nora and the others coming back to stand in front of the Nuka-Cade sign.
She rushed over to meet up with them.
"Hey, Sophia. Find out anything from Ozzie?" Nora greeted her, as Piper and Nick joined up with them.
Taylor nodded. "Yeah, Ozzie's friend knew all about the contest, and thankfully they knew what the code is too so we don't have to go all over the park looking for those cappys."
Sierra let out a loud squeal of joy upon hearing that. "Oh, you know the way to get into the office? So awesome!"
Nora smiled. "Great. What about you guys, Ed and Rocky? Made any headway in finding Mackenzie?"
Piper smirked. "She's alive. And working in the marketplace as one of the slaves. She was very pleased to hear that Ozzie sends her his regards and that the Minutemen are….. Well, around. Gave her the frequency numbers to Ozzie's radio, so that the two of them would be able to talk."
Nora grinned, happy that everything was going their way for once. She just hoped that the rest of their plans to get rid of the raiders would go off without a hitch for once.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Huh. Well that's one way to fast-forward the whole Find the Hidden Cappy quest. Maybe this bunch will be able to get more help and info out of Bradberton.
Does Earth Bet USA not use notes? Her dollar may be a coin instead of a note but for higher value denominations they should use notes like in our world. This is a very strange thing for Taylor to say.
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Acccording to the worm wiki, dollar coins instead of dollar notes were used on Bet. That was said to be one of the differences between Bet and Alpeh. So that's what I'm going with, even though most Fanon tends to overlook this and have them use notes like we do in our world.
Earths
Besides, imagine how strange it would be for somebody used to using nothing but coins as currency, to see a world where paper money was used instead. hence her comment.
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- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
The whole currency system was a bit skewed. Apparently, coins were used in place of petty cash, though I imagine that large denomination paper bills still had a place anywhere electronic currency wasn't preferred.
Edit: I was doing a review of the story, and something finally registered about Nora's power. She collects damaged material (AKA "scrapping") and then uses it to assemble new structures according to patterns in her list. What I'm wondering is if her power is capable of inputting new patterns to build to? Like, say, Nuka-World? She wouldn't have a perfect template to start from, but I wonder if her ability would let her stretch to reassembling the buildings in something closer to factory-new condition? I could see where she'd be stuck with trying to replicate complicated machinery that wasn't in working condition, but there are a surprising number of intact and functional mechanisms in the park.
If she can use her power to scrap and rebuild even something like the terminals or dispensers, she'd have a good way to boost the living standards. Of course, she's going to need a lot of material for that to work. Good thing there's a lot of robot scrap and the like available.
Edit: I was doing a review of the story, and something finally registered about Nora's power. She collects damaged material (AKA "scrapping") and then uses it to assemble new structures according to patterns in her list. What I'm wondering is if her power is capable of inputting new patterns to build to? Like, say, Nuka-World? She wouldn't have a perfect template to start from, but I wonder if her ability would let her stretch to reassembling the buildings in something closer to factory-new condition? I could see where she'd be stuck with trying to replicate complicated machinery that wasn't in working condition, but there are a surprising number of intact and functional mechanisms in the park.
If she can use her power to scrap and rebuild even something like the terminals or dispensers, she'd have a good way to boost the living standards. Of course, she's going to need a lot of material for that to work. Good thing there's a lot of robot scrap and the like available.
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Nuka-Girl: Chapter Fourteen--John-Caleb Bradberton, Part One
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Everyone entered the office building and at first, there had been nothing out of the ordinary. It looked like a typical old-fashioned office building and a small one at that. It certainly didn't seem like the office of a big-wig CEO and owner of Nuka-Cola Corporation, despite all the Nuka-cola merchandise on display here. Rather, it felt more like it belonged to somebody in middle management or something like that…. And Taylor said so as much, much to everyone else's amusement.
"What did you expect? A throne chair made out of bottle caps?" Hancock wondered as he looked down at Taylor with an amused expression on his face. Taylor just playfully stuck out her tongue at him, causing him to chuckle.
Every inch of the rooms was searched thoroughly from bottom to top, and Nora had been somewhat disappointed to find out that there wasn't a holotape that could control the robots. Not even in the safe, they had found behind the desk. She had been ready to call it a total bust when Nick discovered the secret elevator by finding a suspicious button that was located on the side of a Nuka-cola vending machine.
So all of them got into the small and cramped elevator so that they could see where it led to….
And well… Taylor certainly hadn't been expecting this.
"What the fuck?" Taylor couldn't help but blurt out.
There was a disembodied talking head in a jar down here in some luxurious-looking mini-vault, who was claiming to be the original John-Caleb Bradberton. Which had Sierra practically foaming at the mouth because she was just that excited at meeting her idol?
Technically, it wasn't a literal jar as seeing the jar thing was attached to some kind of machine keeping him alive.
Taylor didn't know what to think. And what did it say about her that she was getting used to giant bugs, deathclaws, and other things, yet a talking severed head still tripped her up?
Maybe it was the fact that she couldn't wrap her head around the fact that somebody had been willing to do… THIS…. To another human being. John-Caleb Bradberton was currently telling everyone his life story, and how he had wound up like this.
Which basically boiled down to the fact that he had thought the army's scientists were going to freeze his whole body, not sever his head and keep that part alive while the rest of his body rotted away elsewhere. And now he was trapped down here, able to do anything for himself. He was perpetually stuck staring at a wall for all of eternity.
God, what the army had done to him… it was downright inhumane. How the hell did they think that John-Caleb would've been okay with this? They hadn't even told him what they were going to do to him… They simply went ahead and did this without his consent or knowledge. If somebody back home on Earth Bet had tried to pull this kind of shit, they would've been facing the biggest lawsuit in existence AND be sent to jail for life. Straight to the birdcage too, if they were a parahuman.
And he had been trapped down here all alone for 200 years… how did he manage to stay sane? Taylor couldn't blame him at all when he started begging everyone to kill him despite Sierra's protestations.
"Before we do anything so drastic, there are a few questions I want to ask you first," Nora replied.
Mr.Bradberton looked vaguely annoyed that his wishes weren't being granted right away, but he also looked like he didn't mind chatting with people some more. Taylor wondered which was winning right now-- Mr. Bradberton's suicidal side or his desperate need to socialize with other human beings after being alone for so long.
"Very well. What do you need to know?"
"There are criminals swarming all over the place, and they have human hostages. They've turned Nuka-world into an entire city full of raiders, and I have this plan to turn all the robots against them, to wipe out all the raiders and at most drive them out entirely. For that, I need a holotape you had. You were programming the robots to attack your enemies but keep the visitors and employees safe, weren't you?" Nora asked.
John-Caleb Bradberton chuckled. "Heh…. you've certainly done your homework. But I hate to disappoint you…. There's no holotape. You see, while I was certainly worried about my enemies infiltrating my park and sabotaging everything I worked so hard for, I also recognized that having a holotape like that lying around would just tempt my enemies. Then my fears would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just think of the PR disaster if my enemies got a hold of that holotape and reprogrammed the robots to attack everyone in the park except for them, and then claimed that I was the one who ordered the attack? My reputation would've been ruined."
Nora raised her eyebrows. "I'm sensing that you still programmed the robots anyway?"
The head smirked slightly. "Indeed. Instead of a holotape, I simply buried a code phrase deep into their programming…. A phrase that only I know. Unfortunately for you, that code requires voice and face verification to go with it in order to prevent it from being abused by the enemy should they find out what it was. So you'd need a way for the robots to see and hear me… and you certainly can't just carry me out of here, can you? I'm sorry, but your idea was completely futile."
Nora looked like she was thinking about something rather hard, and then she turned to face Taylor. "I feel like we need a third opinion. Can you go get one of the scientists from Safari Zone and bring them over? I want them to check John-Caleb here and see if we can safely remove him without killing him."
Taylor didn't know what Nora was up to here, but she nodded at the woman anyway and teleported away.
"Nora, what are you doing?" Nick whispered.
Nora just gestured at the head. "You heard him. There's no holotape at all. So we need him and his code phrase. I doubt the robots will listen to us if we're seen carrying his dead severed head around, even if we have his voice recorded on a holotape. They might not be sentient, but they're still intelligent enough to recognize when somebody's dead. They'd think we killed him, and they'd be right."
Piper looked nauseous at this. "He's already suffered enough. Are you really going to make him suffer longer just so that you can say you accomplished your mission? no matter what the cost?"
Hancock just shook his head at Piper: "Haven't you heard? Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. It may not be moral, but we do need a way to free all the slaves and drive away the raiders. Otherwise, the raiders are just gonna prey on the commonwealth. Keeping that in mind, keeping a severed head in a jar alive doesn't seem like such a big deal now, does it?"
"I still don't like it…." Piper said. Nick nodded in agreement with Piper.
"I'm with Piper on this one. Keeping him alive longer just so you can use him… that's just cruel. And immoral." Nick replied.
Nora sighed. "If you're so worried about that, Why don't we ask John here what he wants?"
With that, she walked over to John-Caleb and knelt so that they were face to face. "John… can I call you John? Anyways, I've been wondering one thing. If you had the chance to regain a new body and to be able to walk out of here, would you still want to kill yourself?"
The head blinked at this. "Why are you even asking me that? It's impossible to start with…"
Nora chuckled. "Oh, it's not as impossible as you think it is. I've personally witnessed a lot of supposedly impossible things, like a robot switching bodies with a brain-dead comatose victim. I've seen robo-brains… that is, human brains steering the bodies of robots. I know that the technology for this exists. We could transfer your mind into a new body if you want."
Sierra gasped happily once she realized the implications of that and clapped her hands. "Yes! And then we could go anywhere in the world together… that's so perfect!"
John-Caleb pondered this, and then said hesitantly: "Well… I suppose I do want to see a sunset one last time before I die. You have no idea how sick and tired I am of staring at the walls around me."
At this moment, Taylor finally came back with Dr. Darren Dermott.
"My god…." The albino ghoul gasped as he immediately recognized the man's head in the tube. "It's really you, John-Caleb Bradberton! I wasn't sure if I could believe Taylor when she told me what they found but…. It's really you."
John-Caleb frowned slightly as he tried to place who the person before him was. "That voice sounds familiar somewhat… but I can't place your face…?"
Dr. Dermott chuckled. "I'm Dr. Darren Dermott. I'm second in command just under Dr. Hien at the cloning facility at the Safari Zone. Remember? But I do look a little bit different now, thanks to the nuclear fallout from all the bombs. Getting burnt from the radiation isn't a joke, let me tell you."
"How are you still alive? I know that a lot of time passed by… so how?" John-Caleb wondered.
"Well, sir, I'm a ghoul now, thanks to the radiation. Most ghouls are immortal, although many do suffer from a so-called 'feral illness', not unlike human dementia. Dr.Hien and I are currently trying to cure that, by the way. Why have immortality in the first place if we eventually become senile and dangerous anyway, right?" He chuckled weakly at the last part.
John-Caleb looked like he had just bit into a sour lemon at this revelation. Then he started chuckling maniacally, sounding like he had just lost his mind.
Finally, he calmed down to see everyone in the room staring at him.
"I'm sorry for that outburst...that's just... You have to appreciate the irony of it all. You see, I wanted a way to cheat death. I was desperate enough that I even bribed the army into letting me use their experiment on myself if it meant I'd live longer. Then…. hundred of years later, one of my employees told me that immortality was possible after all and that I didn't need the army or that blasted experiment. I could've been a ghoul instead of being a goddamned head in a jar! Come on, you have to admit that's funny!"
He chuckled loudly again, only for his laughter to end in a loud whimper. Then he started sobbing, regardless of the fact that the others were staring at him again.
The others just stood around awkwardly, not sure what to say or do in response to this emotional outburst.
Finally, Nora asked Dr. Dermott: "Do you think you can clone a new body for him? I think I can build a robot body for him, but he might do better with having his body back."
Dr. Dermott blinked, and his expression turned thoughtful as he thought about the logistics of that. "We certainly can. But we'd need DNA from his old body in order for it to work...otherwise, the body would reject the head, and he'd die. We don't have the right materials to make anti-rejection drugs, after all. Cloning the body also requires time. So I suspect you'd need to build him a robot body first so that we can move him elsewhere where we can take better care of him."
Nora frowned. "I was afraid of that. I'd need to build a robot that had built-in life support for his head, but I don't have a blueprint for his life support system, so I don't know if I'd accidentally kill him when I attempt to move his head onto a robot body. What if the life support system I made is too incompatible with his current one?"
John-Caleb Bradberton cleared his throat, once he got over his brief crying jag.
"If I may? I think I have the answer to your problems. I know the location of my underground weapons testing facility. It was also where I allowed the army to test out many of their experiments. Especially project LEAP-X, which is what got me here in the first place. You might be able to find the schematics for my life support system there. I also recall being there the last time I had a body… I remember the doctors telling me to get on a surgery table, then blacking out.…"
He paused at the unpleasant memory, but then added, "anyway, I think my old body might be stored there as well."
Nora and Darren looked at each other as they briefly considered that.
"That really does solve a lot of our problems," Darren said.
"Where's this facility at?" She asked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bad news: it was in some underground facility right under the Nuka-Cola Bottling plant. Which they had to visit in order to access it.
The good news: John-Caleb Bradberton had a lot of underground secret passages and employee tunnels that spread out all over the entire Nuka-World amusement park. Each one of them led to a different zone, and one led directly into the Bottling plant itself. He had been exceedingly helpful in pointing out where all the secret passages were, and which section of the park each one took them to.
So Taylor and the others didn't need to come up with an excuse for wanting to go back out there….The Raiders needn't know that they left at all in the first place. Far as the Raiders were concerned, the "volunteer group" were still drinking their sorrows away at Cappy's Cafe or hanging out somewhere else in Nuka-world USA.
Taylor found it to be somewhat irritating if she was being honest with herself. She had thought that they were very nearly at the end of their journey here and that all they had to do was meet with the human slaves and stage a slave uprising against the Raiders…. Or something like that.
Of course, she and the others were helping a poor tortured soul regain his autonomy by finding a way to give him a body. That was a good deed far as she was concerned. So things kind of balanced itself out?
But it seemed like this whole day was erratically swinging between being a bad or a good day… there didn't seem to be a middle ground there at all. Especially now that they discovered that there was A LOT of feral ghouls hiding out in those underground tunnels… ugh. She was sure they were going to hear a long lecture from Oswald about respecting mentally ill ghouls once he found out that they had been forced to mow down dozens of them with their weapons. Oh well, it wasn't like he couldn't resurrect them later on anyway.
Taylor thought the robot horde in the Galactic park was pretty bad in terms of mobs, but the feral ghouls were getting to be a close second there. She could kind of see why some people were so prejudiced against ghouls if they all eventually ended up like this. Mobbing innocent people in groups like this… They looked like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie.
The fact that they were in a dark and narrow tunnel didn't exactly help at all… it very nearly triggered her newly discovered claustrophobia, which Taylor didn't even know she had until that moment. She might have been repressing a lot about her…traumatic locker moment...more than she thought she did. Thankfully, the dark tunnels didn't overly remind her of her locker, so she was able to keep herself from having a panic attack.
"Hey, you okay?" Piper wondered as she moved over to Taylor.
Taylor was taking deep, long breaths and then exhaling out loudly in an attempt to keep herself calm while they walked through the poorly lit tunnel. "I'm fine. I just think some things are getting to me is all… I'm trying to not let it get to me."
"Want to talk about it? It might help to get it off your chest?" the black-haired woman asked.
Taylor shook her head, citing the fact that she was fine so she didn't need to talk. Piper just scoffed loudly at this.
"Ugh. You and Blue are exactly the same. Always repressing your feelings, acting as if you're perfectly okay when you aren't!" She grumbled loudly.
"Seriously, Piper? You really want me to bare my soul to you in the middle of a dark tunnel full of feral ghouls? Isn't this a bad time?" Taylor couldn't help but sound incredulous at this.
Nick chuckled. his yellow eyes glowed brightly in the near darkness as he looked at both Taylor and Piper. "She's got you there, Piper."
Piper grumbled loudly at this. "Bah, you know what I meant. Sure, maybe we can't talk right now… but would it hurt to admit that something's bothering you instead of pretending like you're invincible?"
"When the alternative is to act like a total sobbing wreck in the middle of a dangerous place, at a time when your friends are depending on you to back them up? Yes, it would hurt… not just only me, but you and the others as well. I don't want to become a liability." Taylor said rather bluntly, "I know that people like yourself think it's unhealthy to repress and compartmentalize things like this… but so far in my life, I've found it to be a very effective coping and survival tactic. I've had to do that long before I even came to this world. Especially ever since my own best friend betrayed me. So don't knock it."
Piper wondered about the best friend that Taylor mentioned, and was about to ask her when she felt a metallic skeleton-like hand on her shoulder. She looked over at Nick, who simply shook his head at her. He was silently telling her to just let it go…. For now. After all, like Taylor pointed out… now wasn't really a good time to get into it all.
"Hey, I think the door to the bottling plant is just up ahead," Hancock called out. He had taken to walking in front of the entire group, just in case any more feral ghouls were up ahead. The ghouls didn't attack him unless he attacked them, so he made for a handy warning system.
"Great, I didn't really need to deal with any more ghouls," Nora said, and Taylor couldn't help but agree with that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bottling plant was not as bad as the tunnels or the rest of the parks were, which Taylor thanked god for.
There was a lot of crab-like mirelurks, yes… but they didn't swarm or come at the intruders in droves as the ghouls or robots did. In fact, most of them were content to stay near their nests and only attack if they felt that the humans were getting too close to their eggs. Which already made them Taylor's favorite creature so far in this world… because the rest of the wasteland creatures she had seen so far liked to attack on sight for seemingly no good reason at all. Those ones seemed very sensible… they prioritized what was really important to them and protected that instead of throwing their lives for what they hoped would be choice prey.
And they didn't really tour through the entire bottling plant, because John-Caleb Bradberton already gave them very precise directions to the underground testing facility, so it wasn't like the group had to comb through the entire place to find where it was. So as a result, they were able to avoid most of the mirelurks and save their energy for whatever they would find down there.
Once they finally reached their destination, everyone found that the secure beverageer lab was a place devoid of life… but it was far from a quiet and peaceful place. The underground lab had a haunted look to it and the fact that Taylor happened to discover that people had been brutally murdered here? That only upped the creepiness factor for her.
There were obvious signs that several murders had been committed down there, and she didn't even need to listen to the holotapes left behind by the victims to know that. There were decades-old spilled blood splatters all over the place everywhere, signs of struggle, and paper notes that had been written in blood by the victims saying that somebody called "Rex Meacham" was behind their murders. The skeletons with the shattered skulls lying next to the notes just clinched it for her.
Even Nick seemed unnerved by it all, and he was normally a stoic guy.
"Right. Let's get this over with quickly as possible…" Nora muttered loudly to herself when she jumped at the popping sound that one of the light bulbs made when it burnt out. It burned out at the exact moment that she happened to be walking by, which unnerved her somewhat. The timing had seemed too perfect, after all.
Taylor couldn't help but smile slightly at this… somewhat relieved to see that she wasn't the only one who was creeped out by this place. Seriously, she couldn't shake the feeling that this place was haunted no matter how much she kept on telling herself that she didn't believe in ghosts.
"Hey, over here! I think Piper and I found the main entrance to the main testing lab…" Hancock called out, as he waved everyone else over. Piper was in the process of lockpicking a pair of blue dirty doors.
"Damn, this lock is expertly locked…. This might take a while, guys." Piper mumbled as she kept her screwdriver steady as she jiggled the bobby pin inside the lock.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rex Meacham twitched slightly as he heard the sound again. There it was….that sound at the lab entrance.
He wondered if it was going to be Kate again, or if it was that annoying Ed come to mock him for his failures. He twitched with annoyance at that thought. It always seemed like no matter what he did, no matter how many times he killed everyone, they always kept on coming back.
Things had truly gone tits up ever since the bombs hit, and nothing had gone his way at all after that. That damn coward Edmund Medford had hung himself when he thought it was the end of the world, and then Kate Leavitt had the nerve to say that her work for the united states of America was no longer important… that she just wanted to be with her family right now during those trying times.
Rex always prided himself on being a proud American, so he took her words as a form of betrayal. While America might be at war with a dozen enemies out there right now, there was no way America would ever lose. America was always the world's number one superpower, and nothing could change that. To even imply that one didn't think that they were winning the war… ugh. What a traitor!
Kate had deserved everything coming her way for her betrayal, and that's why he had killed her. For some bizarre reason though, the rest of the surviving scientists had strongly objected to this and claimed that he was insane. He couldn't believe that they could side with a traitor so willingly and rightfully deduced that they all had to be traitors too. so he had to kill them too as well.
He thought it'd be the end of that, and that he would continue his work for the sake of America until somebody came to find him. But life wasn't so simple. Not too long after their first deaths, the scientists came back to life as specters and tormented him endlessly. Thankfully, he discovered that he was able to "kill" them again… even if only temporarily. Unfortunately, there was no permanent method to fully exorcise the ghosts from what he could see, so they just kept on coming back after a while.
At least, not until now. Rex smirked to himself as he looked down at the large cannon he had made a few months ago… or were it years ago? He had lost all sense of all time entirely, so the days and years just seemed to go by in a fast blur for him.
Anyways, he had finally figured a way to kill all the ghosts for good. It stood to reason that ghosts were actually multi-dimensional beings if they were able to exist on multiple different planes at once. That was the only way to explain why they kept on coming back to torment him… their real selves were elsewhere on a different plane, and they sent projections of themselves to taunt and mock him.
So, going by that reasoning he had built this multi-dimensional cannon gun that would target them across different planes of existence and wipe them right out. Then he'd finally be able to tinker on his projects alone in peace….
The doors opened, and Rex Meacham swung his cannon around to face his ghostly intruders, ready to fire…
But the sight before him stopped him from firing. For one thing, the five people before him weren't the ones he had killed in the past. Their faces were unfamiliar and new.
"What? Who are you?" Rex blinked, as he lowered his cannon gun.
"Uh…. We're friends, so don't shoot us?" Piper blurted out the first thing she thought of to say, snice the others were too surprised to see that there was somebody still alive down here… even if he was a ghoul.
"Are you with the united states army? Wait, no... you're not wearing their uniforms. Who are you with?" Rex wondered as he circled around the group in order to take a better look at them.
"We're here on John-Caleb Bradberton's orders. He wants us to collect schematics from the Leap-X project, as well as what's left of his body. He's in the middle of a new project right now so he needs those plans. And before you ask, yes he's still alive." Nora replied somewhat honestly.
Rex was gratified to learn that his employer was still alive if what they said was the truth.
However, They seemed like a rough bunch, what with those mohawks the ladies were sporting… and what was up with the spiky leather armor? Truthfully they seemed like a bunch of hoodlums to him.
"Really. Here's the thing though. You don't seem like the sort that Mr.Bradberton would hire. So how do I know you're telling the truth? This is a highly secure weapons testing facility, you know. I can't just let in any random person without proper verification." Rex Meacham smugly said.
Nora sighed. "I understand that I really do. But you have to understand… even though it's been a long time ever since the bombs fell, the entire park is still in disarray. You could even say that Nuka-world is extremely short-staffed now… that's why John-Caleb was willing to hire us right off the street. John-Caleb and the others are still in the process of getting things back in order. Dr. Hein, Dr. Dermott and the others are managing to keep Mr.Bradberton alive for now, but his time is limited. We really do need that Leap-X project. You can escort us, and make sure that's the only thing we take. Okay?"
Rex Meacham mulled this over. So those bastards over at Safari Zone was still alive too… that was too bad. Those men always rubbed him the wrong way… they thought they were such hot stuff because they knew advanced cloning techniques and used that to clone random animals.
He always knew that they looked down at men like him, just because he was… no, used to be, a beverageer lab technician. The men at the cloning lab thought that mixing and testing Nuka-cola drinks weren't "real science"... Well, the joke was on them! When the US army had come to John-Celeb Bradbertion and asked him to help test out their weapons… who had John-Celeb Bradbertion come to first? Not the men over there at the cloning lab, but the beverageer technician himself!
Mr.Bradberton had recognized his brilliance and knew that he was being wasted as a beverageer. Truthfully, that had been the happiest day of his life. He was being called on to serve America itself, by testing out new weapons that nobody else had ever heard of. Of course, that came with new responsibilities, such as making sure that this lab was fully secure and free of any foreign spies.
Speaking of which…
"Do you have any Identification papers on you? You might be a communist spy, after all."
Everyone stared at him as to say: "Seriously? This man can't be for real…."
"Listen," Nora said, trying not to lose her temper, "I don't think you understand how bad it is out there right now. Carrying around identification papers are the last thing anybody thinks about. If you really doubt who we are, why don't you just escort us right to John-Celeb Bradberton's office?? He can tell you in person that he personally vouches for us. I'm sure he'll be happy to see that you're alive as well."
Rex scoffed. "You just want me to leave my post and leave all those weapons and schematics unguarded! Do you think me a fool? I am Rex Meacham, a true patriot of the United States of America! I shall not be deterred from doing my duty!"
The young lady at Nora's side stiffened at this. He could hear her whisper to the woman, "Nora… he's the one who killed those people back there. The notes said a Rex Meacham went crazy and were killing everyone…"
"That I did," Rex said, and he couldn't help but smirk when the young girl jumped. "What, you didn't think I heard you, did you?"
Nora stared at him. "I see… why did you do that?"
Rex sniffed at this. "They were all traitors, every one of them. They didn't seem to have any faith in America, that we'd win this war no matter what. They were sniveling fools who just wanted to leave and be with their families during what they saw to be the end times. Well, the joke's on them… the world hasn't ended yet, hasn't it? So you see, I was completely correct in killing every one of them. They don't seem to agree though… they keep on coming back to life to tell me what an utter bastard I am."
"What do you mean, they keep on coming back to life?" Nora asked, not sure if she was going to like the answer.
"They came back to life as specters. Apparently, when you shed your physical body, you become a multidimensional being who can exist simultaneously in different planes of existence. I keep on killing them, but they just keep on coming back… but this time, it'll be different. I've finally constructed a weapon that will kill them permanently for once…" Rex was all too happy to explain.
"Boy, he's really flipped his lid," Nick mumbled in the back.
"I can't tell if he needs to lay off drugs, or if he needs to take more…" Hancock agreed.
"Blue… I don't think we can reason with him." Piper said to Nora.
Taylor hefted up her gun. "He's an insane mass murderer. Why are we even humoring him?"
Nora sighed again. She was afraid that everyone else was right, and that they had no choice but to put down this ghoulish madman. Still, she couldn't help but give diplomacy one last chance, out of pure habit.
"I'm sure you're a reasonable man. What's the harm in letting us have Leap-X? It's not even a weapon. It's just a life support system." Nora asked again.
"I told you before… give me some verification that John-Caleb Bradberton did send you, and I'll be happy to oblige. Otherwise…. No." Rex replied.
Nora looked back at her group to see that everyone was equally as annoyed as she was, and she shook her head. Honestly? There seemed to be no guarantee that he'd let them through even if they did have a recorded holotape with John-Celeb's voice on it. Rex was after all, insane.
"Alright, then," Nora said as she raised her gun and shot him in the head.
Taylor quickly raised her gun as well and shot at his hands so that he'd drop the multidimensional cannon, just in case. But it seemed that her precaution wasn't needed. Nora's bullet pretty much destroyed Rex's brain at point blank, because of how close they were to each other.
Rex's body landed on the hard concrete floor with a loud thud.
"Well.. so much for that," Hancock said, as he stepped over the corpse towards one of the testing rooms.
===================================================
Author notes: I actually had this long, epic battle between Rex Meacham and the group planned.... But of course Nora had to happen.
The Nora I'm writing has a tendecy to prefer talking over battling first, and will often use her diplomacy (charmisa) checks to talk her way out of trouble.
And of course, it would've been out of character for her to suddenly become aggressive and charge in guns blazing. So of course she ended up nerfing my awesome gun fight scene. And when I thought the scene was finally happening, she rolls a critical hit and instantly KOs him out of the scene. *blows raspberry* -_-;;
At least I'm consoled by the fact that there's no way for her to avoid the epic raider beatdown scene we all know is coming... heheh.
On John-Caleb Bradberton, did it honestly annoy you when he went on and on about how there was no treatment for him in his state and you couldn't respond with: "Actually there is....?"
I always wanted for there to be a opition in game where you could turn him into a robot with a human head on top. I googled it once, and apparently I wasn't the only player to think that. And some japanese dude made a mod for that.... no I'm serious. You can find it here: Bradberton-Pocket Edition
"What did you expect? A throne chair made out of bottle caps?" Hancock wondered as he looked down at Taylor with an amused expression on his face. Taylor just playfully stuck out her tongue at him, causing him to chuckle.
Every inch of the rooms was searched thoroughly from bottom to top, and Nora had been somewhat disappointed to find out that there wasn't a holotape that could control the robots. Not even in the safe, they had found behind the desk. She had been ready to call it a total bust when Nick discovered the secret elevator by finding a suspicious button that was located on the side of a Nuka-cola vending machine.
So all of them got into the small and cramped elevator so that they could see where it led to….
And well… Taylor certainly hadn't been expecting this.
"What the fuck?" Taylor couldn't help but blurt out.
There was a disembodied talking head in a jar down here in some luxurious-looking mini-vault, who was claiming to be the original John-Caleb Bradberton. Which had Sierra practically foaming at the mouth because she was just that excited at meeting her idol?
Technically, it wasn't a literal jar as seeing the jar thing was attached to some kind of machine keeping him alive.
Taylor didn't know what to think. And what did it say about her that she was getting used to giant bugs, deathclaws, and other things, yet a talking severed head still tripped her up?
Maybe it was the fact that she couldn't wrap her head around the fact that somebody had been willing to do… THIS…. To another human being. John-Caleb Bradberton was currently telling everyone his life story, and how he had wound up like this.
Which basically boiled down to the fact that he had thought the army's scientists were going to freeze his whole body, not sever his head and keep that part alive while the rest of his body rotted away elsewhere. And now he was trapped down here, able to do anything for himself. He was perpetually stuck staring at a wall for all of eternity.
God, what the army had done to him… it was downright inhumane. How the hell did they think that John-Caleb would've been okay with this? They hadn't even told him what they were going to do to him… They simply went ahead and did this without his consent or knowledge. If somebody back home on Earth Bet had tried to pull this kind of shit, they would've been facing the biggest lawsuit in existence AND be sent to jail for life. Straight to the birdcage too, if they were a parahuman.
And he had been trapped down here all alone for 200 years… how did he manage to stay sane? Taylor couldn't blame him at all when he started begging everyone to kill him despite Sierra's protestations.
"Before we do anything so drastic, there are a few questions I want to ask you first," Nora replied.
Mr.Bradberton looked vaguely annoyed that his wishes weren't being granted right away, but he also looked like he didn't mind chatting with people some more. Taylor wondered which was winning right now-- Mr. Bradberton's suicidal side or his desperate need to socialize with other human beings after being alone for so long.
"Very well. What do you need to know?"
"There are criminals swarming all over the place, and they have human hostages. They've turned Nuka-world into an entire city full of raiders, and I have this plan to turn all the robots against them, to wipe out all the raiders and at most drive them out entirely. For that, I need a holotape you had. You were programming the robots to attack your enemies but keep the visitors and employees safe, weren't you?" Nora asked.
John-Caleb Bradberton chuckled. "Heh…. you've certainly done your homework. But I hate to disappoint you…. There's no holotape. You see, while I was certainly worried about my enemies infiltrating my park and sabotaging everything I worked so hard for, I also recognized that having a holotape like that lying around would just tempt my enemies. Then my fears would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just think of the PR disaster if my enemies got a hold of that holotape and reprogrammed the robots to attack everyone in the park except for them, and then claimed that I was the one who ordered the attack? My reputation would've been ruined."
Nora raised her eyebrows. "I'm sensing that you still programmed the robots anyway?"
The head smirked slightly. "Indeed. Instead of a holotape, I simply buried a code phrase deep into their programming…. A phrase that only I know. Unfortunately for you, that code requires voice and face verification to go with it in order to prevent it from being abused by the enemy should they find out what it was. So you'd need a way for the robots to see and hear me… and you certainly can't just carry me out of here, can you? I'm sorry, but your idea was completely futile."
Nora looked like she was thinking about something rather hard, and then she turned to face Taylor. "I feel like we need a third opinion. Can you go get one of the scientists from Safari Zone and bring them over? I want them to check John-Caleb here and see if we can safely remove him without killing him."
Taylor didn't know what Nora was up to here, but she nodded at the woman anyway and teleported away.
"Nora, what are you doing?" Nick whispered.
Nora just gestured at the head. "You heard him. There's no holotape at all. So we need him and his code phrase. I doubt the robots will listen to us if we're seen carrying his dead severed head around, even if we have his voice recorded on a holotape. They might not be sentient, but they're still intelligent enough to recognize when somebody's dead. They'd think we killed him, and they'd be right."
Piper looked nauseous at this. "He's already suffered enough. Are you really going to make him suffer longer just so that you can say you accomplished your mission? no matter what the cost?"
Hancock just shook his head at Piper: "Haven't you heard? Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. It may not be moral, but we do need a way to free all the slaves and drive away the raiders. Otherwise, the raiders are just gonna prey on the commonwealth. Keeping that in mind, keeping a severed head in a jar alive doesn't seem like such a big deal now, does it?"
"I still don't like it…." Piper said. Nick nodded in agreement with Piper.
"I'm with Piper on this one. Keeping him alive longer just so you can use him… that's just cruel. And immoral." Nick replied.
Nora sighed. "If you're so worried about that, Why don't we ask John here what he wants?"
With that, she walked over to John-Caleb and knelt so that they were face to face. "John… can I call you John? Anyways, I've been wondering one thing. If you had the chance to regain a new body and to be able to walk out of here, would you still want to kill yourself?"
The head blinked at this. "Why are you even asking me that? It's impossible to start with…"
Nora chuckled. "Oh, it's not as impossible as you think it is. I've personally witnessed a lot of supposedly impossible things, like a robot switching bodies with a brain-dead comatose victim. I've seen robo-brains… that is, human brains steering the bodies of robots. I know that the technology for this exists. We could transfer your mind into a new body if you want."
Sierra gasped happily once she realized the implications of that and clapped her hands. "Yes! And then we could go anywhere in the world together… that's so perfect!"
John-Caleb pondered this, and then said hesitantly: "Well… I suppose I do want to see a sunset one last time before I die. You have no idea how sick and tired I am of staring at the walls around me."
At this moment, Taylor finally came back with Dr. Darren Dermott.
"My god…." The albino ghoul gasped as he immediately recognized the man's head in the tube. "It's really you, John-Caleb Bradberton! I wasn't sure if I could believe Taylor when she told me what they found but…. It's really you."
John-Caleb frowned slightly as he tried to place who the person before him was. "That voice sounds familiar somewhat… but I can't place your face…?"
Dr. Dermott chuckled. "I'm Dr. Darren Dermott. I'm second in command just under Dr. Hien at the cloning facility at the Safari Zone. Remember? But I do look a little bit different now, thanks to the nuclear fallout from all the bombs. Getting burnt from the radiation isn't a joke, let me tell you."
"How are you still alive? I know that a lot of time passed by… so how?" John-Caleb wondered.
"Well, sir, I'm a ghoul now, thanks to the radiation. Most ghouls are immortal, although many do suffer from a so-called 'feral illness', not unlike human dementia. Dr.Hien and I are currently trying to cure that, by the way. Why have immortality in the first place if we eventually become senile and dangerous anyway, right?" He chuckled weakly at the last part.
John-Caleb looked like he had just bit into a sour lemon at this revelation. Then he started chuckling maniacally, sounding like he had just lost his mind.
Finally, he calmed down to see everyone in the room staring at him.
"I'm sorry for that outburst...that's just... You have to appreciate the irony of it all. You see, I wanted a way to cheat death. I was desperate enough that I even bribed the army into letting me use their experiment on myself if it meant I'd live longer. Then…. hundred of years later, one of my employees told me that immortality was possible after all and that I didn't need the army or that blasted experiment. I could've been a ghoul instead of being a goddamned head in a jar! Come on, you have to admit that's funny!"
He chuckled loudly again, only for his laughter to end in a loud whimper. Then he started sobbing, regardless of the fact that the others were staring at him again.
The others just stood around awkwardly, not sure what to say or do in response to this emotional outburst.
Finally, Nora asked Dr. Dermott: "Do you think you can clone a new body for him? I think I can build a robot body for him, but he might do better with having his body back."
Dr. Dermott blinked, and his expression turned thoughtful as he thought about the logistics of that. "We certainly can. But we'd need DNA from his old body in order for it to work...otherwise, the body would reject the head, and he'd die. We don't have the right materials to make anti-rejection drugs, after all. Cloning the body also requires time. So I suspect you'd need to build him a robot body first so that we can move him elsewhere where we can take better care of him."
Nora frowned. "I was afraid of that. I'd need to build a robot that had built-in life support for his head, but I don't have a blueprint for his life support system, so I don't know if I'd accidentally kill him when I attempt to move his head onto a robot body. What if the life support system I made is too incompatible with his current one?"
John-Caleb Bradberton cleared his throat, once he got over his brief crying jag.
"If I may? I think I have the answer to your problems. I know the location of my underground weapons testing facility. It was also where I allowed the army to test out many of their experiments. Especially project LEAP-X, which is what got me here in the first place. You might be able to find the schematics for my life support system there. I also recall being there the last time I had a body… I remember the doctors telling me to get on a surgery table, then blacking out.…"
He paused at the unpleasant memory, but then added, "anyway, I think my old body might be stored there as well."
Nora and Darren looked at each other as they briefly considered that.
"That really does solve a lot of our problems," Darren said.
"Where's this facility at?" She asked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bad news: it was in some underground facility right under the Nuka-Cola Bottling plant. Which they had to visit in order to access it.
The good news: John-Caleb Bradberton had a lot of underground secret passages and employee tunnels that spread out all over the entire Nuka-World amusement park. Each one of them led to a different zone, and one led directly into the Bottling plant itself. He had been exceedingly helpful in pointing out where all the secret passages were, and which section of the park each one took them to.
So Taylor and the others didn't need to come up with an excuse for wanting to go back out there….The Raiders needn't know that they left at all in the first place. Far as the Raiders were concerned, the "volunteer group" were still drinking their sorrows away at Cappy's Cafe or hanging out somewhere else in Nuka-world USA.
Taylor found it to be somewhat irritating if she was being honest with herself. She had thought that they were very nearly at the end of their journey here and that all they had to do was meet with the human slaves and stage a slave uprising against the Raiders…. Or something like that.
Of course, she and the others were helping a poor tortured soul regain his autonomy by finding a way to give him a body. That was a good deed far as she was concerned. So things kind of balanced itself out?
But it seemed like this whole day was erratically swinging between being a bad or a good day… there didn't seem to be a middle ground there at all. Especially now that they discovered that there was A LOT of feral ghouls hiding out in those underground tunnels… ugh. She was sure they were going to hear a long lecture from Oswald about respecting mentally ill ghouls once he found out that they had been forced to mow down dozens of them with their weapons. Oh well, it wasn't like he couldn't resurrect them later on anyway.
Taylor thought the robot horde in the Galactic park was pretty bad in terms of mobs, but the feral ghouls were getting to be a close second there. She could kind of see why some people were so prejudiced against ghouls if they all eventually ended up like this. Mobbing innocent people in groups like this… They looked like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie.
The fact that they were in a dark and narrow tunnel didn't exactly help at all… it very nearly triggered her newly discovered claustrophobia, which Taylor didn't even know she had until that moment. She might have been repressing a lot about her…traumatic locker moment...more than she thought she did. Thankfully, the dark tunnels didn't overly remind her of her locker, so she was able to keep herself from having a panic attack.
"Hey, you okay?" Piper wondered as she moved over to Taylor.
Taylor was taking deep, long breaths and then exhaling out loudly in an attempt to keep herself calm while they walked through the poorly lit tunnel. "I'm fine. I just think some things are getting to me is all… I'm trying to not let it get to me."
"Want to talk about it? It might help to get it off your chest?" the black-haired woman asked.
Taylor shook her head, citing the fact that she was fine so she didn't need to talk. Piper just scoffed loudly at this.
"Ugh. You and Blue are exactly the same. Always repressing your feelings, acting as if you're perfectly okay when you aren't!" She grumbled loudly.
"Seriously, Piper? You really want me to bare my soul to you in the middle of a dark tunnel full of feral ghouls? Isn't this a bad time?" Taylor couldn't help but sound incredulous at this.
Nick chuckled. his yellow eyes glowed brightly in the near darkness as he looked at both Taylor and Piper. "She's got you there, Piper."
Piper grumbled loudly at this. "Bah, you know what I meant. Sure, maybe we can't talk right now… but would it hurt to admit that something's bothering you instead of pretending like you're invincible?"
"When the alternative is to act like a total sobbing wreck in the middle of a dangerous place, at a time when your friends are depending on you to back them up? Yes, it would hurt… not just only me, but you and the others as well. I don't want to become a liability." Taylor said rather bluntly, "I know that people like yourself think it's unhealthy to repress and compartmentalize things like this… but so far in my life, I've found it to be a very effective coping and survival tactic. I've had to do that long before I even came to this world. Especially ever since my own best friend betrayed me. So don't knock it."
Piper wondered about the best friend that Taylor mentioned, and was about to ask her when she felt a metallic skeleton-like hand on her shoulder. She looked over at Nick, who simply shook his head at her. He was silently telling her to just let it go…. For now. After all, like Taylor pointed out… now wasn't really a good time to get into it all.
"Hey, I think the door to the bottling plant is just up ahead," Hancock called out. He had taken to walking in front of the entire group, just in case any more feral ghouls were up ahead. The ghouls didn't attack him unless he attacked them, so he made for a handy warning system.
"Great, I didn't really need to deal with any more ghouls," Nora said, and Taylor couldn't help but agree with that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bottling plant was not as bad as the tunnels or the rest of the parks were, which Taylor thanked god for.
There was a lot of crab-like mirelurks, yes… but they didn't swarm or come at the intruders in droves as the ghouls or robots did. In fact, most of them were content to stay near their nests and only attack if they felt that the humans were getting too close to their eggs. Which already made them Taylor's favorite creature so far in this world… because the rest of the wasteland creatures she had seen so far liked to attack on sight for seemingly no good reason at all. Those ones seemed very sensible… they prioritized what was really important to them and protected that instead of throwing their lives for what they hoped would be choice prey.
And they didn't really tour through the entire bottling plant, because John-Caleb Bradberton already gave them very precise directions to the underground testing facility, so it wasn't like the group had to comb through the entire place to find where it was. So as a result, they were able to avoid most of the mirelurks and save their energy for whatever they would find down there.
Once they finally reached their destination, everyone found that the secure beverageer lab was a place devoid of life… but it was far from a quiet and peaceful place. The underground lab had a haunted look to it and the fact that Taylor happened to discover that people had been brutally murdered here? That only upped the creepiness factor for her.
There were obvious signs that several murders had been committed down there, and she didn't even need to listen to the holotapes left behind by the victims to know that. There were decades-old spilled blood splatters all over the place everywhere, signs of struggle, and paper notes that had been written in blood by the victims saying that somebody called "Rex Meacham" was behind their murders. The skeletons with the shattered skulls lying next to the notes just clinched it for her.
Even Nick seemed unnerved by it all, and he was normally a stoic guy.
"Right. Let's get this over with quickly as possible…" Nora muttered loudly to herself when she jumped at the popping sound that one of the light bulbs made when it burnt out. It burned out at the exact moment that she happened to be walking by, which unnerved her somewhat. The timing had seemed too perfect, after all.
Taylor couldn't help but smile slightly at this… somewhat relieved to see that she wasn't the only one who was creeped out by this place. Seriously, she couldn't shake the feeling that this place was haunted no matter how much she kept on telling herself that she didn't believe in ghosts.
"Hey, over here! I think Piper and I found the main entrance to the main testing lab…" Hancock called out, as he waved everyone else over. Piper was in the process of lockpicking a pair of blue dirty doors.
"Damn, this lock is expertly locked…. This might take a while, guys." Piper mumbled as she kept her screwdriver steady as she jiggled the bobby pin inside the lock.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rex Meacham twitched slightly as he heard the sound again. There it was….that sound at the lab entrance.
He wondered if it was going to be Kate again, or if it was that annoying Ed come to mock him for his failures. He twitched with annoyance at that thought. It always seemed like no matter what he did, no matter how many times he killed everyone, they always kept on coming back.
Things had truly gone tits up ever since the bombs hit, and nothing had gone his way at all after that. That damn coward Edmund Medford had hung himself when he thought it was the end of the world, and then Kate Leavitt had the nerve to say that her work for the united states of America was no longer important… that she just wanted to be with her family right now during those trying times.
Rex always prided himself on being a proud American, so he took her words as a form of betrayal. While America might be at war with a dozen enemies out there right now, there was no way America would ever lose. America was always the world's number one superpower, and nothing could change that. To even imply that one didn't think that they were winning the war… ugh. What a traitor!
Kate had deserved everything coming her way for her betrayal, and that's why he had killed her. For some bizarre reason though, the rest of the surviving scientists had strongly objected to this and claimed that he was insane. He couldn't believe that they could side with a traitor so willingly and rightfully deduced that they all had to be traitors too. so he had to kill them too as well.
He thought it'd be the end of that, and that he would continue his work for the sake of America until somebody came to find him. But life wasn't so simple. Not too long after their first deaths, the scientists came back to life as specters and tormented him endlessly. Thankfully, he discovered that he was able to "kill" them again… even if only temporarily. Unfortunately, there was no permanent method to fully exorcise the ghosts from what he could see, so they just kept on coming back after a while.
At least, not until now. Rex smirked to himself as he looked down at the large cannon he had made a few months ago… or were it years ago? He had lost all sense of all time entirely, so the days and years just seemed to go by in a fast blur for him.
Anyways, he had finally figured a way to kill all the ghosts for good. It stood to reason that ghosts were actually multi-dimensional beings if they were able to exist on multiple different planes at once. That was the only way to explain why they kept on coming back to torment him… their real selves were elsewhere on a different plane, and they sent projections of themselves to taunt and mock him.
So, going by that reasoning he had built this multi-dimensional cannon gun that would target them across different planes of existence and wipe them right out. Then he'd finally be able to tinker on his projects alone in peace….
The doors opened, and Rex Meacham swung his cannon around to face his ghostly intruders, ready to fire…
But the sight before him stopped him from firing. For one thing, the five people before him weren't the ones he had killed in the past. Their faces were unfamiliar and new.
"What? Who are you?" Rex blinked, as he lowered his cannon gun.
"Uh…. We're friends, so don't shoot us?" Piper blurted out the first thing she thought of to say, snice the others were too surprised to see that there was somebody still alive down here… even if he was a ghoul.
"Are you with the united states army? Wait, no... you're not wearing their uniforms. Who are you with?" Rex wondered as he circled around the group in order to take a better look at them.
"We're here on John-Caleb Bradberton's orders. He wants us to collect schematics from the Leap-X project, as well as what's left of his body. He's in the middle of a new project right now so he needs those plans. And before you ask, yes he's still alive." Nora replied somewhat honestly.
Rex was gratified to learn that his employer was still alive if what they said was the truth.
However, They seemed like a rough bunch, what with those mohawks the ladies were sporting… and what was up with the spiky leather armor? Truthfully they seemed like a bunch of hoodlums to him.
"Really. Here's the thing though. You don't seem like the sort that Mr.Bradberton would hire. So how do I know you're telling the truth? This is a highly secure weapons testing facility, you know. I can't just let in any random person without proper verification." Rex Meacham smugly said.
Nora sighed. "I understand that I really do. But you have to understand… even though it's been a long time ever since the bombs fell, the entire park is still in disarray. You could even say that Nuka-world is extremely short-staffed now… that's why John-Caleb was willing to hire us right off the street. John-Caleb and the others are still in the process of getting things back in order. Dr. Hein, Dr. Dermott and the others are managing to keep Mr.Bradberton alive for now, but his time is limited. We really do need that Leap-X project. You can escort us, and make sure that's the only thing we take. Okay?"
Rex Meacham mulled this over. So those bastards over at Safari Zone was still alive too… that was too bad. Those men always rubbed him the wrong way… they thought they were such hot stuff because they knew advanced cloning techniques and used that to clone random animals.
He always knew that they looked down at men like him, just because he was… no, used to be, a beverageer lab technician. The men at the cloning lab thought that mixing and testing Nuka-cola drinks weren't "real science"... Well, the joke was on them! When the US army had come to John-Celeb Bradbertion and asked him to help test out their weapons… who had John-Celeb Bradbertion come to first? Not the men over there at the cloning lab, but the beverageer technician himself!
Mr.Bradberton had recognized his brilliance and knew that he was being wasted as a beverageer. Truthfully, that had been the happiest day of his life. He was being called on to serve America itself, by testing out new weapons that nobody else had ever heard of. Of course, that came with new responsibilities, such as making sure that this lab was fully secure and free of any foreign spies.
Speaking of which…
"Do you have any Identification papers on you? You might be a communist spy, after all."
Everyone stared at him as to say: "Seriously? This man can't be for real…."
"Listen," Nora said, trying not to lose her temper, "I don't think you understand how bad it is out there right now. Carrying around identification papers are the last thing anybody thinks about. If you really doubt who we are, why don't you just escort us right to John-Celeb Bradberton's office?? He can tell you in person that he personally vouches for us. I'm sure he'll be happy to see that you're alive as well."
Rex scoffed. "You just want me to leave my post and leave all those weapons and schematics unguarded! Do you think me a fool? I am Rex Meacham, a true patriot of the United States of America! I shall not be deterred from doing my duty!"
The young lady at Nora's side stiffened at this. He could hear her whisper to the woman, "Nora… he's the one who killed those people back there. The notes said a Rex Meacham went crazy and were killing everyone…"
"That I did," Rex said, and he couldn't help but smirk when the young girl jumped. "What, you didn't think I heard you, did you?"
Nora stared at him. "I see… why did you do that?"
Rex sniffed at this. "They were all traitors, every one of them. They didn't seem to have any faith in America, that we'd win this war no matter what. They were sniveling fools who just wanted to leave and be with their families during what they saw to be the end times. Well, the joke's on them… the world hasn't ended yet, hasn't it? So you see, I was completely correct in killing every one of them. They don't seem to agree though… they keep on coming back to life to tell me what an utter bastard I am."
"What do you mean, they keep on coming back to life?" Nora asked, not sure if she was going to like the answer.
"They came back to life as specters. Apparently, when you shed your physical body, you become a multidimensional being who can exist simultaneously in different planes of existence. I keep on killing them, but they just keep on coming back… but this time, it'll be different. I've finally constructed a weapon that will kill them permanently for once…" Rex was all too happy to explain.
"Boy, he's really flipped his lid," Nick mumbled in the back.
"I can't tell if he needs to lay off drugs, or if he needs to take more…" Hancock agreed.
"Blue… I don't think we can reason with him." Piper said to Nora.
Taylor hefted up her gun. "He's an insane mass murderer. Why are we even humoring him?"
Nora sighed again. She was afraid that everyone else was right, and that they had no choice but to put down this ghoulish madman. Still, she couldn't help but give diplomacy one last chance, out of pure habit.
"I'm sure you're a reasonable man. What's the harm in letting us have Leap-X? It's not even a weapon. It's just a life support system." Nora asked again.
"I told you before… give me some verification that John-Caleb Bradberton did send you, and I'll be happy to oblige. Otherwise…. No." Rex replied.
Nora looked back at her group to see that everyone was equally as annoyed as she was, and she shook her head. Honestly? There seemed to be no guarantee that he'd let them through even if they did have a recorded holotape with John-Celeb's voice on it. Rex was after all, insane.
"Alright, then," Nora said as she raised her gun and shot him in the head.
Taylor quickly raised her gun as well and shot at his hands so that he'd drop the multidimensional cannon, just in case. But it seemed that her precaution wasn't needed. Nora's bullet pretty much destroyed Rex's brain at point blank, because of how close they were to each other.
Rex's body landed on the hard concrete floor with a loud thud.
"Well.. so much for that," Hancock said, as he stepped over the corpse towards one of the testing rooms.
===================================================
Author notes: I actually had this long, epic battle between Rex Meacham and the group planned.... But of course Nora had to happen.
The Nora I'm writing has a tendecy to prefer talking over battling first, and will often use her diplomacy (charmisa) checks to talk her way out of trouble.
And of course, it would've been out of character for her to suddenly become aggressive and charge in guns blazing. So of course she ended up nerfing my awesome gun fight scene. And when I thought the scene was finally happening, she rolls a critical hit and instantly KOs him out of the scene. *blows raspberry* -_-;;
At least I'm consoled by the fact that there's no way for her to avoid the epic raider beatdown scene we all know is coming... heheh.
On John-Caleb Bradberton, did it honestly annoy you when he went on and on about how there was no treatment for him in his state and you couldn't respond with: "Actually there is....?"
I always wanted for there to be a opition in game where you could turn him into a robot with a human head on top. I googled it once, and apparently I wasn't the only player to think that. And some japanese dude made a mod for that.... no I'm serious. You can find it here: Bradberton-Pocket Edition
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Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Edit: I was doing a review of the story, and something finally registered about Nora's power. She collects damaged material (AKA "scrapping") and then uses it to assemble new structures according to patterns in her list. What I'm wondering is if her power is capable of inputting new patterns to build to? Like, say, Nuka-World? She wouldn't have a perfect template to start from, but I wonder if her ability would let her stretch to reassembling the buildings in something closer to factory-new condition? I could see where she'd be stuck with trying to replicate complicated machinery that wasn't in working condition, but there are a surprising number of intact and functional mechanisms in the park.
If she can use her power to scrap and rebuild even something like the terminals or dispensers, she'd have a good way to boost the living standards. Of course, she's going to need a lot of material for that to work. Good thing there's a lot of robot scrap and the like available.
I've honestly thought about this a lot... and I decided that the only way she would be able to build things exactly like new is if:
1: she can build things she remembers perfectly from her prewar days. For instance she remembers the layout of her old house pretty well, so she could easily spam perfect replicas of her pre-war house all over the commonwealth if she wanted to. Then it'd be up to the settlers to repaint the houses and alter it any way they wanted so that all the houses didn't look exactly the same.
2: or she's given a blueprint or schematics of all the plans, etc. that would be one way for her to be able to rebuild things and make everything look like they're new refurbished buildings. So theorically she could refurbish the whole amusement park from the ground up and make everything look exactly like it did before the bombs fell, but that's only if she was given the blueprints for the entire park. and the schematics for the rides.
What's this about a review? can you post it, I'd love to see your review of this story.
- Location
- USA
Too bad Rex was killed off. He seemed like the kind of person that worked on Nuka-Quantum, the nuclear cola. He might have shed some light on radiation and why the "normal" ghouls keep going feral. I haven't played FO4 into Nuka World DLC so I wouldn't know if he was just an ass or if he was genuinely a chemical engineer/nuclear chemist.
Mitchell Delaney
(Verified Tenno) (Autistic)
- Location
- On the Road of Life
- Pronouns
- Him
Just a note about Shaun. Third generation synths like he is are fully biological. So he should grow up normally. I mean the only difference between third gen and normal humans is that they were born adults, and often had some kind of mental programming. If only basic skills and the self destruct code.
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Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You'd be right except for one thing. In the game, they very specifically said that he was biologically engineered to not be able to grow up at all. The scientists were weirded out by Father's command that Shaun not grow up at all... that's why they made a note of it. Some data terminals say that he won't and even Dr. Li herself says so.
So Shaun is effectively an immortal child. The only way he can actually grow and evolve is mentally-wise. he is the only 3rd gen synth to have that feature, while other 3rd gen synths will grow old and die like normal human beings.
I think Father wanted it this way because he was facing his own mortality. He not only wanted a second chance to grow up with his mother but also felt that growing old sucked monkey balls. He wasn't in his right mind at all to realize how immoral that would be to trap somebody as a child forever. Hence why Nora was so horrified by the implications.
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Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Eh, even in the base game he was said to be insane so he wouldn't have been of any use to anybody after he snapped. Also...
in the base game, he never turned into a ghoul so you just saw his dead corpse next to all the weapons he was working on. I changed that little detail just to keep things interesting.
And yeah, he was both.... an ass and a chemical engineer, that is. According to the fallout wiki, He was the type who was always so uptight that even John-Celeb Bradberton the workaholic had to tell him to chillax and go take a vacation. Nobody liked working under him, because he was so anal about every little detail.
It's no wonder why he snapped so easily and went nuts. Dude did not know how to relax at all.