Radiance Ch. 50

Chapter 50: Fixing the World Through Science!

Timothy couldn't help but look at his lab partner, she really was a seriously intimidating presence, standing about eight feet tall and built like a brick shithouse, as he let his eyes roam over her broad and incredibly well-muscled back, her shoulder tops were bigger than his thighs let alone her arms.

Honestly, she kinda reminded him of a picture of a female Orc that he'd seen in a comic that one of the scout teams had recovered from a trip into the city once, she was completely solid with not a single ounce of fat on her anywhere that he could see which given that she seemed to be wearing an oversized lab coat that the odd spider centaur boy Malakai had made for her.

But what he could see was as solid as bunched steel, she had her sleeves rolled up to her elbows showing off her massive forearms and hands as she worked on dismantling the helmet that she had, he also couldn't help but be impressed by the nimbleness and dexterity of her large fingers as she worked.

She seemed to sense him looking at her and she turned to look at him shooting him a surprisingly shy smile as she did while also brushing a long bang of her long black hair over her ear.

Another shock came to him in just how handsome her face was, despite being a super mutant she was a very handsome woman, her features were feminine and attractive and that both shocked and scared him.

He'd been taught since the day he was born into the Brotherhood that he should hate super mutants and in fact, anyone who is different from humans, this attitude had indeed eased somewhat towards Ghouls the hatred still prevailed in its entirety towards the super mutants and to be fair it was with good reason, it was kinda hard to be understanding or to go easy on creatures that would happily kill you and desecrate your body by eating you.

For as long as he had been alive Super mutants had been a threat to humanity where ever they chose to tread, killing villages and towns, attacking caravans and killing simple people who were doing nothing more than trying to scratch a life for themselves in this awful world.

But now with the emergence of these smart super mutant groups, the water got muddier because it brought in a moral and ethical question to the equation, whereas before it was easy you see super mutants you kill them, simple.

Now though if there were intelligent did they have a right to simply exterminate them for nothing more than existing?

Especially if they were non-violent like Shauna here seemed to be, now according to Seven, the group that Shauna had come from that called themselves the Amazons had been exterminated by Seven's group freeing others like Shauna.

Then there was the other group that Seven had mentioned calling themselves the Greasers who were made up entirely of male super mutants and oh boy did that feel odd to say, now most people made the mistake of thinking that all super mutants were boys when infact they were genderless, it simply didn't matter what gender you were going into the vat coming out you were one of them plain and simple, but now apparently with this new variant in play you go in and come out the same but different, same person, different body.

So this left the question, did anybody simply have the right to simply just exterminate these poor people?

Yes, they were super mutants but no they weren't like their genderless cousins, Shauna and Raymond who he had met only briefly when he had delivered some equipment to the lab along with Visa and Ven.

Oh boy, now there was a whole new eye-opening world in themselves, sentient Deathclaws that talked and felt the same as any human and hell any other sentient race and the fact that they could love and even mate with humans or indeed other races.

The thought genuinely shocked and scared Timothy but it also made him kinda curious, what exactly did a claw see in a human and visa versa, but apparently they were very happy with each other both Visa and Seven did seem to genuinely love one another as did Ven and Gregory which was even more surprising in that a male claw loved a male human.

In fact, the whole group was a living breathing testament to what humans and non-humans could achieve together and not just in-between the sheets, from what Seven had said this group was responsible for removing the threat of Paradise falls to the region which was no lightweight feat.

That group had held so much power that even the Brotherhood had seen them as a threat to their operations and safety, but given the sheer amount of fighting that had been doing with the super mutants they simply hadn't had the people or the ordinance to deal with them but these guys as small as they were in number had simply walked in there and taken the whole place out in one fell swoop proving they were not people you would want to mess about with, not that messing about with death claws was generally advisable in the first place.

But somehow contrary to what not only what he would have believed to begin with but what he had been taught with the Brotherhood, this group had already achieved incredible things and now here he was being offered a chance to be a part of.

That brought him back to Shauna and the smile she was shooting at him, he couldn't believe that in any way shape or form that he could find anyone other than another human attractive, not that he'd exactly had a lot of experience with the opposite sex, one or two of the paladins had made a couple of advances towards him but he'd always rebuffed them due to his nervousness and his lack of confidence and indeed self-worth which had evoked a mixture of reactions from them ranging from pity to outright anger, he also discovered that the paladins and soldiers whispered worse than a sewing circle and he had been the subject of the giggling-behind-hands brigade more than once which had done sweet fuck all for his confidence.

But in all honesty, while he could see attractive qualities within his own race now being presented with an attractive member of another race his entire world had been shocked to its very core, but he simply could not deny what his eyes were telling him, Shauna truly was a beautiful woman and an incredibly smart one too.

He smiled back at her shyly feeling exactly the same as he did every time one of the paladins or soldiers had given him the same smile, "So have you seen anything like this before?" Shauna asked snapping Tim out of his daydream state and he shook his head to clear it.

"No but I've been hearing the stories about them," he said stepping forwards up to the workbench and looking at the disassembled helmet that had been taken from the head of one of the enslaved deathclaws the Enclave had been using.

"I gotta give them this it's an incredible piece of kit, I'm no engineer I'm a biologist and virologist so I can at least figure out how it's manipulating the brain of the claws if you can figure out what each part is doing," Shauna said and Tim nodded lifting one of the parts and turning it over in his hands.

It took them hours and a whole lot of coffee that the pair were grabbing in pots from the mess of the safehouse/bunker that they were in but eventually, they began to make progress as Tim began to identify each part one by one until they began to see how they worked in conjunction together, but finally after many hours of work they had a eureka moment.

"I've got it!! I know how they are fucking doing it!!" Shauna yelled suddenly making Tim nearly jump out of his skin and dropping the charge coil onto the bench from where he had been studying the coil.

He spun around and saw Shauna standing at the whiteboard that she had been doing equations on writing them around a picture of a claw skull and brain they'd drawn in the centre of it, "What have you got?" he asked walking over to her.

"Look here, this component you identified is changing the claw's neuroelectric field yes?" she said holding up the circular component that Tim had plucked out of a receiver that sat between the two tesla like coils and what he had figured out was a radio wave receiver.

"Yeah so?" he said.

'THey've mapped the muscle response of the claws! Think about it, its the only way this could possibly work, what they must have done is subject captured claws to invasive scans and bioelectrical probing to map what signals are sent to what muscles and how, so what this thing does is act like an interrupt, the only ones that get through are the ones that control the claw's organs like it's heart, lungs et cetera, but the ones to its legs and arms and everything else are being interrupted by this little thing and then are being replaced by the signals being sent from the controller to the receiver which is then sent to the claw's muscles and boom radio control claw" Shauna said.

"So all we have to do is figure out the frequencies being used and scramble them and......" Tim began and Shauna grinned broadly before snatching him up off the floor and hugging him to her incredibly ample chest which her lab coat did a good job of hiding from sight but not from his skin as she hugged him to her.

"No more radio-controlled claws!!" she exclaimed happily hugging him tightly against her and pinning his arms to his sides.

The muffled and surprised cry that Tim let out seemed to alert Shauna to the fact that she was kinda suffocating him and she quickly pulled him out of her chest and placed him back on her feet blushing brightly as she did.

"I-I-I'm so sorry Tim I-I-I didn't mean to grab you and touch you without permission, I umm just kinda get kinda excitable sometimes, its umm the mutant in me, it can be a challenge to keep a lid on it sometimes," she said sounding both shy and also worried which really surprised him, the fact that a powerful creature such as her would actually care about his feelings and boundaries was actually both heartwarming and deeply touching.

"I-I-It's fine Shauna honestly, just surprised me is all, I umm don't really mind honestly, I mean what kind of heterosexual guy would I be if I minded being hugged by a beautiful woman right?" he said trying to ease her tension with a joke before he realised what had actually just tumbled out of his mouth.

Shauna looked completely stunned but not horrified, "Y-Y-You think I'm beautiful!?" she exclaimed and Tim could almost taste the boot he'd just completely jammed in his mouth.

"Well you are most certainly the best looking super mutant I have ever seen," he said trying to deflect the embarrassing question but the look in Shuna's eyes told him she was not going to let him get off that easy.

"Is that all I am to you? A super mutant?" she asked sounding very sad and her eyes fell to the floor as her whole body language changed distancing herself from him.

"N-No it's not that I just........." Tim began but Shauna cut in.

"No it's ok I was just being stupid, I mean who would want to look at me right? I'm just another fucking super mutant!" she said and Tim was shocked by how bitter and angry her voice was, a fact that was easily read in her expression and her body language when she stomped towards him and loomed over him getting right in his face making him shrink back on the spot before his instincts took over and he to his shame actually cowered crouching and raising his arms to shield against the perceived incoming blow, which to be fair if one was coming he'd have had zero chance of stopping.

Shauna froze solid like she's just stared into the face of Medusa, from between his arms he caught a glimpse of her face and she looked both scared and horrified, with a whoosh of movement which washed a slipstream right over him Shauna turned and ran out of the room with her face in her hands leaving Tim still cowering on the floor in stunned silence.

When he finally felt brave enough to move he slowly stood up and tried to stop his hands from shaking violently by reaching out and gripping the edge of the workbench, his heart was hammering in his chest and he could feel sweat stinging his eyes, as well as his legs, were shaking.

"I really thought she was going to give you a much-needed beating right then," a voice said and Tim turned his head to see Faith standing there with a smug-looking expression plastered all over her face and her arms crossed over her chest.

"Oh great it's you, come in here to gloat have you why don't you just fuck off and leave me alone?" Tim said trying angrily to steady his nerves.

Faith's face morphed into a mask of anger and she stormed forwards to get right into his face causing him to recoil once again, it also reaccelerated his heart again as fear gripped him, he had no idea what this woman was capable of, all he knew about here was that she had survived a rather long time and right now she looked crazed.

'What the fuck did you say to me smooth skin?" she snarled at him.

Timothy could feel his knees shaking and he could feel every nerve in his body firing on full as he faced her down, every fibre of his body wanted him to back up but there was nowhere for him to go as he was already in the corner of the room but right now he was angry not just at her but at himself, first Shauna had put him on the spot and he'd upset her causing her to very nearly lash out at him and nowhere was this crazy Ghoul woman wishing violence and pain on him for no good reason other than he represented something she didn't like and now she was the one getting angry when he told her to leave him alone.

So yeah he was starting to feel angry, "You heard me, leave me the hell alone, I have done nothing to you NOTHING, but here you are wishing pain and violence on me for fucking what? Because I'm human and you aren't? Is that why you're angry with me? Because before I woke up in this place I'd never met you before, I've never done anything to you or any other Ghoul but you are happy to see me get hurt or killed, you would be happy for me to lose my life wouldn't you?" Tim snarled at her as his heart began to slam against his ribs as he stared into Faith's blood-red eyes trying his hardest to fight his instinct to break her piercing gaze.

Faith growled low and menacingly, "Who the fuck do you think you are to speak to me like that smooth skin? I could kill you right here and now and no one including you could do a fucking thing about it and sure people would probably be a little angry at first but in the end, they'd be fine, they'd see that I did the right thing because all you are and all you will ever be is some mindless bigoted drone and this world does not need people like you!" she yelled getting right in his face so that the spittle from her mouth flew onto his face and straight away he could smell the wash of alcohol on her breath showing she'd had quite a few drinks.

Timothy felt genuinely fearful for his life but that's when he'd had enough, "Well what the fuck are you waiting for then!?" he yelled right back and by the look on her face she was genuinely taken aback by the level of vitriol in his voice but he was all in now this was either going to end incredibly badly and in which case he'd lose his life but at least he wouldn't have to be scared any more or it was get her to back down and leave him alone.

"I'm right here! And you hate me so very much right? Because I have wronged you in so many ways, my mere existence is an insult to your precious Ghoul victimhood right? Because I have done so many vile things to you personally and your people even though I have never said a single fucking thing to you or done a single thing to any Ghoul or any other person, but because I belonged to an organization that has done bad things to them that means every single one of us does and thinks the same fucking way right? All while you've done nothing but try to provoke me, to get me to say something, to bait me into saying something just so you can fucking justify your fucking anger towards me or more towards this uniform that I wear!" he yelled making Faith flare right up.

"Don't you fucking dare preach to me like you have any fucking idea what it feels like to be a Ghoul!? I didn't choose to be like this! I didn't CHOOSE any of this!!" she yelled right in his face again.

"And you seem to be under the fucking delusion that I had a choice to be in the Brotherhood! I was fucking born into it! I had about as much choice as you did and for the umpteenth fucking time I don't care about the fact that you are a Ghoul, if anything the only one who seems to have a fucking problem with it is fucking YOU!!" he yelled and it was this that finally pushed Faith right over the edge and she snapped.

She lunged forwards striking Timothy with a short-range punch to the face that whited out his vision with starbursts of white-hot pain that flashed across his eyes, before his head and sprung back forwards a second hit caught him right in the throat snapping his airway shut and instantly starving his brain of vital oxygen and causing his body to go into panic mode as it flooded his body with adrenaline.

But Faith wasn't done there as his hands came up to claw desperately at his throat she caught one and pulled him off balance before kicking his legs out from under him and slamming him down hard on his back which knocked his besieged senses about even more, instantly he felt a weight drop down on his torso and as he snapped his eyes open he saw the flash of a blade before feeling the coldness of the blade against his exposed throat, this was it, this was how he was going to die, helpless and defeated at the hands of a crazed woman who he had done no wrong who was going to slit his throat and bleed him dry and he felt fear like a kind he had never felt before, it was so powerful that no cognitive thoughts made any sense to him any more.

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The rage that was coursing through Faith's veins was like liquid fire, it was hot and it made her feel powerful, this rage she felt was righteous, it filled her with a vigour she had never felt before, this man, this bigot, this vile smooth skin was a living breathing representation of everything she hated, he was one of the people who had killed so many of her friends and fellow Ghouls that it had become hard and painful to open herself up to making new friends because she was just so fucking tired of the pain of losing them all over again.

But now SHE had the power and it started here with this new group of people, this group that embraced the principles of no racism or bigotry, they didn't see Ghouls, mutants, claws, humans or anyone else, they saw simply people and it was in their name she was going to do this, she as going to kill this fucking bigot, she was going kill him in the name of all those Ghouls that had fallen, she was going to take his life away from him like his people had taken so many lives away from the Ghouls that had survived against insurmountable odds only to be killed over the way they fucking looked!

These poor people had lived through the nuclear fire only to be killed by the soft lead of fucking bullets fired from the guns of people just like this fucking scumbag right here, so by killing him she'd be avenging those lost souls, right?

But that's when everything changed, she looked down at the man whose life she was about to end in the most horrible way, she wanted to look right into his eyes so she could see the moment that the arrogance of his smooth skin existence left him and he felt the true helplessness that she and indeed all Ghouls felt but instead of arrogance or anger, she saw something very very different in his bright eyes, fear, pure unadulterated fear.

But it wasn't just fear she saw in those surprisingly pretty eyes of his, she saw herself, quite literally, she could see her reflection staring right back at her and what she saw not only shocked her it scared her to death.