North and South, two separate situations have emerged, both requiring the actions of a specialist. To the North, the Enclave have secured uninterrupted passage to the city of Fort Wayne, of the former state of Indiana. To the South, the Mammoth Cave and all its terrifying inhabitants awaits. Today, we will be highlighting the perspective of those specialists, starting with...
BOB
They calleed him Bob, but his full name - as far as anyone could tell - was Roberto Malcontente' The 3rd. We don't know how true this is, considering nobody's ever met the previous iterations of his family, but nobody really wanted to question him because Bob has several things going for him that deter heavy scrutiny. One, he was strong enough to bend a man in half. No chems, no augmentations, just raw strength and Greco-Roman Wrestling style, he bent a man to the side and left him at a 45-degree angle. Two, he was extremely good with all things incendiary, second only to FalloutJohn in conventional explosive ordinance. And three...the man was flipping nuts. One time, he was on a mission and had been captured by a some members of the Brotherhood of Steel that were, themselves, out on a scouting mission. While they were examining his custom powersuit, Bob had cracked open and swallowed two false teeth in the back of his jaw that contained samples of Buff-Out and Psycho. Needless to say, he broke out of the chains, the room he was in, and pounded through everybody there with a
door and a steel chair. He ended up coming back looking like
The Humongous and needed a week in detox, which he spent singing opera,
especially The Anvil Chorus when he emerged back into the world, roaming the halls naked until he made it to his quarters!
That's the man who now stood outside the Mammoth Cave.
He was cast in his powerarmor, a black-and-orange heavy piece of work that was top-of-the-line in the Hellfire Brigade. This one not only resisted fire, but
projected it. Not far, mind you. It was like his claymore, an armored heat weapon, like a Shish-Kabob you wear. Thus, Bob's general loadout would read out as Hellstorm Powersuit, Heat Claymore, Incendiary Grenades, and Flamigaster Deluxe for the customized Heavy Incinerator/Flamer unit in his hands. Bob stood at the entrance to the cave, adjusted the speakers on his suit, took a deep breath, and let out
a loud battlecry. The other men behind him looked at each other, then over to him.
"Uhh, sir? What're you doing?""What? Oh, yeah. Just getting in the mood.""Mood, sir? We were planning on sneaking up on the enemy-""In these things, tromping around like nobody's business? No way.""Seems to work for Sniper Division.""Yeah, but that's Sniper Division, and I'm not them."He turned around to the men now.
"I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go raise hell in that cave, and all our slashing buddies'll come right out. You guys just have the capture stuff and the cages ready.""Are...you sure that's a good idea?""No idea! Sounds like fun, though. Better get into position. I'm off!"Wasting no more time, he went in there. The cave was dark, but it was about to get a whole lot brighter in here. Bob was never a good leader. He just didn't have the capacity to strategize. However, he DID make an excellent spearhead, someone that others gather behind as he presses through enemy lines, plunging deep into the hear to create further openings with the damage inflicted. This place was a dank, dark cave with pools of water. Not very conducive to flame, but he knew his incendiaries. His suit was like a beacon of heat, and his equipment would be spreading flammable cocktails this way and that. The Diamondbacks and Hellwings who
didn't want to be caught in fiery explosions of napalm soon left, and in came the
first contestants: Mirelurks. Now, these crabcakes held a certain resistance to flame themselves, if they were shelled. Kings were not so, but they were more physically capable too. Not enough room in here for a Queen, unless it was much much deeper. Anyway, when
those things started walking through the flames, out came the claymore, plunged right into the exposed faces for quick and easy damage. The only decent weakness they had, really. The heat and the
meat were set out, just as planned, and soon enough...he heard the call.
A Deathclaw...no,
severel Deathclaws were headed this way. Goody!
He opened with a wild barrage of the Flamigaster into all the tunnels and open spaces, making sure that only the strong could possibly approach now. They swept through the fire like demons of hell itself! Muscular and taloned creatures with horns, hides like leather and faces like death itself... They were here! And this is where Bob ran the
fuck away! You see, he was up for any challenge, really. He'd try to kill anything in the world worth going after. But this wasn't about trophies of food. This was the most difficult mission of all: Live samples. Bob kept ahead of them with his training and his jetpack to avoid more than glancing blows by the lunging demons. He emerged from the cave, a full pack of SIX of these creatures bursting from the entrance next...right into the target zone for the launchers. They'd come prepared, of course. Same volt-wire launchers they were using to stun things like Big Horns and whatnot for food, they were using here, mounted on top of the cages they intended these brutes to go into. They were basically spears with trailing electrical cables leading up to the Vertibird. The Vertibird pilot then gets the signal and shoves a proper amount of voltage into the creatures. The other soldiers wanted to lure out one or two Deathclaws at once. Bob thought that was boring and just led a whole bunch into a well-manned killzone.
"Alright, get 'em in those cages before one of 'em wakes up. I'll make sure nothing else comes out."JOHN
You call in a specialist of the Fallout Sector when you want something done absolutely the way you intend it to be handled. If it's an issue that requires adaptive ability and leadership, you call Jack. If it needs to be beaten into the ground and burnt to a crisp, you get Bob. If it's a technical or electronic matter, you get Scott or Greg. And of course, it you want to be quiet about it with a slug turning the target's head into mulch, you call in David. But...nothing out of all of these men says 'Just Die' like FalloutJohn, the Enclave's heavy weapons and ordinance master. His powersuit was one of the heaviest there is, second only to Scott, who was kind of a wiry short guy who needed
more robotics or else he'd seemingly fall behind in the strength department. The man's a genius, so they gave him leeway on that. The man they called Jonny Bo Drago didn't need anything like that. He just needed armor to survive whatever got flung at him while he pasted the landscape with gunfire.
They had established a perimeter around the area of Fort Wayne. As described, it had walls Most were buildings collapsed on one side so that half the structure was wall on the inner side while the interior of the buildings themselves were just impassable The streets were blocked by a combination of cars, fencing, corrigated steel, and mortared bricks and rubble. They had to contain the animals, of course. It was a jungle in there, so to speak. A zoo had had a number of wild irradiated animals to begin with, but then something made them change for the worst. Chimeras, Indy called them. They saw a few on the
outside of the walls. Some of them managed to climb or even
fly over, gaining access to more food. Another stronger creature had - at some point - managed to partially break through a wall, jumped the rest of the way. They were fierce mutations, but enough plasma will put down
anything.
That was when they lowered John in, by Vertibird.
He was going in alone. Some thought he was like Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, hence the name. Cold and heartless, and without mercy. Others felt he was like Todd from the movie, Soldier, as in Kurt Russell-like. Actually...it was neither of these things. John was a stoic sort of guy, but the truth is that the man was a deadpan snarker. Not cruel, but actually funny. The guy saw Greg working on some kind of project of his - a rocket car - and flatly declared
"Oh hey. It's Buckaroo Banzai.", causing anyone within earshot to bust out laughing. There was no laughing, right now, only a job to do. Heavy Troopers had Reinforced Powersuits. John's was a Maximus Powersuit, holding numerous grenades and explosives, a compressed Air-Launcher for them, and also...well...the Enclave had once attempted to build a gauss vulcan, a gatling weapon using the principle of the magnetic-driving system of a Gause Rifle in full-auto form. The ones that didn't do so well were decent enough weapons in their own right and labeled as Vindicators. Any that excelled
beyond that was called Vindicator Prime. As soon as John entered the area in his black-and-silver powersuit, he spun up and...
...he made a sweep that would worry most
tanks. Remains of buildings in this place suffered within the first few minutes, as he opened up on creatures that use to be wild animals lunged from hidden places if he didn't tag them from far away. John took his hand off the trigger and tossed a grenade from his belt, not carrying how close it landed. If it was in the
creature's face, it was fine. He'd take damage, sure, but it would be much worse for
them, and that's all that mattered. What he DIDN'T like was that he found two things going on when he wasn't firing: One, the animals were eating each other. They weren't dying when it happened, either. They just started regenerating. Everything ate everything else here, and nothing died. Well...nothing except what he blew apart. But
two, though... These animals were smart. They weren't outsmarting
bullets, but they were trying to duck and dodge around them. It was like how the Deathclaws were, and the Deathclaws were
good at it.
The roar came soon after he started moving out of residential areas, a sound that came from the actual zoo area and seemed to
elevate quickly. Taking refuge inside a building through a hole of his own making, he quieted the V-Prime and had a look around. There were sounds you would associate with some kind of colossus on some of the rooftops, heading roughly this way. He opened up radio contact.
"This is John. Anybody get eyes on whatever made that noise?""Uhh, Spotter-7 here. That's a big affirmative on the 'What the hell IS that thing?' scale. It's jumping rooftops, looking for you, now.""Nobody move or make a sound. A thing that big can break containment, easy. What's it look like?""Looks like wriggling flesh in a giant lion costume, with croc and octopus thrown in for good measure.""Does it look at all like it was designed, created to be that way?""That? Are you serious? I don't know!""But it IS patrolling around, and it's not leaving? None of them are leaving the area, despite their growth of wings?""Not even after your rampage."That was it, then. No way were these mere animals, creatures caught in the middle of something they couldn't understand or know how to handle. Instincts should've told some of them to run, to get away and press their perimeter to try and escape, but they didn't. They were either controlled or commanded, and that meant they were made to obey. They were
made by someone, on purpose.
"Send this message back to base: We may have located Dr. Bastion."
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