Radiance Ch. 115

Both Vlen who looked as startled and confused as Tremour felt both raised both their hands and their pincers as Tremour silently cursed himself, for the second time in such a short period someone had gotten the drop on him.

As they got to their feet the mutant holding the rifle slowly lowered it and smiled at them, "Don't worry Zixxy here tells me you don't mean us any harm and the same is true of us, we just merely wanted to make sure there were no misunderstandings during our first meeting," the supermutant male said putting his weapon away much both Vlen and Tremour's obvious surprise.

"Umm, you are not scared of us?" Vlen asked in confusion and the male chucked.

"I'm more scared of Lia here stubbing her toe than you two no offence," he said in obvious amusement while the female Deatherclaw simply growled at him before swatting him across the back of the head though her actions had a somewhat playful quality to them.

"I'm not that bad!" she growled in a deep voice and another voice chuckled to their left and as the pair turned they saw yet another mutant appear out of the shadows holding a truly massive sword in his hands.

"Lassie do you remember that time you spilt hot coffee on your tail?" he said and the Deathclaw simply growled at him as the others laughed together.

"Pretty sure that coffee pot knocked an old satalite into a collision course with the sun it hit it so hard," the first male mutant said making the female Deathclaw aim another swat at him only to miss this time as he simply sidestepped it.

"Thanks, Zix," he said.

"Your welcome," the little creature sat on his shoulder said beaming at him.

"Who are you, people?" Vlen asked in absolute amazement.

"I'm Raymond, this is Zixxy, Jack and the loveable slab of sexy claws and teeth there is Lia and we are from the Free Peoples of the Wastes nice to make your acquaintance though I gotta admit I didn't exactly expect to meet another new species in the middle of an operation though I should probably start expecting this shit by now, huh I wonder if this is how Seven feels all the time>," the large mutant male said sticking out his hand to them in way of greeting.

Both Vlen and Tremour looked at one another in pure amazement but rather than looking a gift roach in the mouth they decided to act on it and lowered both their hands and pincers to shake Raymond's massive hand.

"How did you know we were up here?" Tremour asked and Zixxy grinned at him.

"Oh sorry that was my doing," she said and it took him a moment to realize that when she had spoken her mouth never moved and her voice had seemed to come from all around him.

"Y-Y-Your a telepath!" he exclaimed and Zixxy's smile widened even more.

"Wait you've encountered her kind before?" Raymond asked looking confused.

"Not like her no but in our records some of our kind were gifted with the ability to read the minds of others around them, it helped our people to survive undetected but it was a gift that was lost to the ages," Tremour said in shock.

"Do you remember when I said that when I was first captured they took samples of my DNA for experiments to study and experiments with before they froze me in that pod?" Zixxy said and Raymond nodded.

"Well meet the descendants of one of such experiments," Zixxy said and all of their mouths fell wide open.

"B-But that's impossible!" Vlen exclaimed and Zixxy turned to her.

"I feel it within you, it's weak but its there, one of the species they injected my DNA into were baby scorpians of various different kinds due to their hardiness and resliance, they wished to study what kind of mutations would occur but before the expreiments could get fully underway they didn't expect the scorpians to rapidly gain intelligence as well as a telepathic link with myself, I told them how to escape their enclosures and they fled the base into the depths of the deserts using a cross country locomotive network to ride their way to freedom, I lost contact with them long before they got there as the range was way too great for me to maintain the link but I always did wonder what had happened to them, i always feared that they had perished in the nuclear fires of the war, but it appears that my DNA helped to shiled them from the effects of it and has now resulted in yourselves and I must say your species has matured magnificently," Zixxy said sounding like a proud grand mother as she spoke.

"T-T-The great brood mother!! The one who led our people to freedom, who called to them in the darkness and guided them to safety from the fires of human wars! It was you!!?" Vlen exclaimed and Zixxy smiled and nodded.

"Allow me to prove it to you," she said and with that, she clambered down from Raymond's shoulder and walked right up to Vlen without fear placing a small green hand upon her carapace where it joined the flesh of her exposed belly before the human tee shirt and leather jacket she wore started.

Suddenly Zixxy's skin little up with a million little glowing yellow swirls through it like the bioluminescent mushrooms and fungi that littered their caves and with that Vlen's carapace also began to glow only her glow was blue.

"W-W-What is this!!?" Vlen exclaimed in alarm looking down at her pincers as luminescent blue swirls pulsed through her pincers.

"I am awakening your dormant abilities, unfortunately, the DNA is too weak for you to be a true telepath like myself, but there is enough there to make you an empath, look at your friend now and tell me, what is he feeling?" Zixxy said.

Vlen looked at him and her face changed to one of pure amazement, "H-H-He's amazed and scared!!" she exclaimed making Zixxy smile even brighter.

"Oh, wonderful! I had hoped it would work but this is even better than I had hoped, you to have the gift if you wish me to awaken it Tremour," Zixxy said turning to him and offering her little hand to him.

He looked at Vlen in amazement and she simply nodded at him eagerly so he stepped forwards and no sooner had Zixxy touched him than fiery red swirls lit up in his carapace.

It was like the whole world suddenly became much louder to him, he could feel everything around him, from the people gathered around him right down to the smallest little insect hiding in the undergrowth, he could hear them and feel them, their fears and their wants were as clear to him as the daytime sky.

"Welcome to your birthright young one," Zixxy said stapping back as the pulses gradually subsided but didn't fully vanish and nor did the feelings he could now hear.

With that, the group gently guided the two scorpions down the hill to meet up with the rest of their group who were now returning from their part in the mission they had just executed rather successfully.

Zixxy handled the introductions to the group and all of them seemed both amazed and then ecstatic to have new people to greet which actually shocked Tremour because he could now feel the genuine warmth in these people, had had half expected them to hide resentment or horror behind false smiles but that simply was not the case, they were actually happy to welcome them.

"So Tremour Zixxy tells me that you sought us out in the hope that you could help you with something, care to elaborate?" Raymond asked as they all sat around in their cave eating from a freshly cooked barbequed molerat though no one asked if it had been lifted off the fence or not, tasted good all the same.

"A group that calls the Enclave has hunted us across the country, everywhere we have tried to hide they have found us and we've had to flee, well they finally caught up to us and trapped us in a cave network that we were hiding in, they took our people away," Tremour said the fire and sadness in his voice now being reflected in his carapace by the bioluminescent red pulses.

All of them looked at one another with a mixture of worried and angry expressions.

"What?" Vlen asked noticing it.

"We are no strangers to this group, we too have been hunted by them multiple times, hell they are still after us right at this very moment but we have outsmarted and beat them back every time, in short, we are no strangers to these vile fuckers," Raymond said bitterly.

"We were searching for people who were not only strong enough to help us but willing to do so, we haven't exactly had good experiences with humans," Tremour said and Raymond nodded.

"Yeah that's a pain most of us know well but I can assure you that it is not a problem you will have with us at your back, the humans in our group are the very best kind, they do not see you as different to them and will fight for you as they would for one of their own kind, in this group we are all one united under a common cause," Raymond said passionately.

"Well said my male, I believe I speak for all here when I say we will help you to get your people back, as it happens we were out looking for a way to track down the Enclave so this helps us as much as it does you and the enemy of my enemy is my friend as the humans say," the big Deathclaw girl called Lia said leaning herself on Raymond's shoulders and draping her long arms down his broad chest.

"Wait, your male? As in you are a couple?" Vlen exclaimed looking at the pair and getting a pair of knowing smiles back in return.

"Indeed, this big hunk of sexy green male belongs in my claws and mine alone, among us you will find that ideals are not the only thing we share, we believe in a true unity and with that comes a love of all different shapes, sizes and indeed flavours," Lia said proudly.

"She tells the truth with every word, without good people of Seven me's would have never met me's beautiful wife and found true happiness," the human that called himself Runs-With-Nightstalkers said before being hugged by the big Nightstalker girl called Riss.

Both Vlen and Tremour looked around in amazement as they realised just how many interspecies pairs there were among this group and both of them actually felt the love and devotion rolling off those pairs in powerful waves, it was both curious and wonderful all at once, not to mention a little overwhelming.

Raymond looked around at his group, "So what do you say guys, everyone up for a little hostage freeing and scumbag hunting?' he said.

"Oh you can count me and mine right the fuck in ain't that right Knights?" the Paladin called Wright said lifting a power armoured fist.

"Ad Victorium!!!" the other power-armoured humans said raising their own fists with hers.

"Well, you know me and the Ronin are in laddie, been itching to kick these Enclave fuckers right in their tiny balls since this whole thing started," the super mutant called Jack said.

"The Featherguard stand ready to stand wing to wing with our allies against these vile excuses for humans!" Jewel said with some affirmative growls from her team of Valkyries.

Raymond turned back to the pair with a broad grin plastered on his face.

"Well it looks like you got yourself a group, which as it turns out is very fortunate timing for us as a rather large raider war is probably about to kick off before long so making ourselves scarce is probably a good idea," he said.

"What do you mean?" Vlen asked.

"He's talking about the raiders we let go, that was on purpose, they did not escape us as they believed, we let them go," Lia said.

"But why would you let them go? Surely they'll just bring more of them down on you and now us?" Tremour asked in amazement and Zixxy grinned up at him.

"Because what they saw and will now report to their surviving cells is not what happened, for you see when we attacked they saw members of rival raider factions attacking them and now some doctored evidence on the ground will confirm this," she said.

"You made them see things didn't you?" Vlen said and Zixxy nodded.

"My abilities are far stronger than your own and they allow me to project images into people's minds, so those poor fools are right now doing our jobs for us by helping kill off as many of those thriving trash piles as they can before they get wiped out themselves, better for the region as a whole I believe," she said.

"Which leaves us free to deal with our mutual Enclave problem, let's start by heading to these caves you guys were trapped in, once we've scouted them out we should hopefully be able to pick up their trail from there and with a bit of luck it should lead us right to the main force the Enclave got in the area," Raymond said.

"But what if it's too much for us to handle, there were far more of us than you and they still beat us down hard," Tremour said and Raymond grinned at him.

"Let's just say we've been doing this for quite a while now and we've gotten pretty damn good at it," he said.

"And if that fails let's just say now they have some rather powerful friends," Paladin Wright said clapping Jewel on one shoulder and Jack on the other and both nodded.

Tremour looked at them in amazement, "Welcome to the Free People's kid bring your own claw night is every Thursday but you have to supply your own claw," Raymond said making Lia growl and hug him tightly.

"I am yours every day," she said making the rest of them laugh, just what the hell had they gotten themselves into with these guys?