Radiance Ch. 98

The last bolt of lightning took out the third and final Vertibird as it tried to flee and she flew down to find a scene of utter carnage in the building that her team were held up in, the only person left alive was the Luitenant and she was firing her plasma minigun out of a window but by the patchwork of holes in her armour, she had not gotten off unscathed.

"Nine? What the fuck are you doing here!?" she yelled over the din of the incoming gunfire that was hammering just about every window as Yui flew in and rolled to a stop looking around at all the slumped power armoured bodies around her, she didn't see Phillip anywhere.

"They hit the base, the Verti and the comms system are gone, they missed me," Yui said as a bolt of green plasma shot over her head and scorched the ceiling above her.

"Fuck!! The Brotherhood knows where our camp was too!?" the Luitenant screamed in frustration and Yui shook her head grabbing a plasma pistol so she could blind fire out of one of the windows onto the troopers below making them take cover.

"No it was Seven's lot, I saw a Deathclaw and there were spider's webs, the whole place exploded before I even had the chance to fight back, knocked me the fuck out they must have thought I was dead or didn't see me one or the other but the whole place is fucking gone, where's eight?" Yui said.

"Wait they knew!!? How the fuck could they know!?" the Luitenant yelled and Yui simply shrugged as she swapped the fusion battery and continued firing.

"No idea they must have though because they waited for you guys to leave and then they hit us like a fucking fatman shell, both sarge and Tex are gone," Yui said.

"Fuck!! Fuck!! FUUUUUCCCCKKK!!" the Luitenant screamed as she levelled her minigun out of the window and sprayed hot plasma down onto the oncoming Brotherhood soldiers.

"Where's eight?" Yui asked again.

"Safe inside the Railroad, we got him in before we accidentally stumbled into this nest of fuckwits, we were sneaking around them back to our camp when someone hit a fucking trip mine, it set off a fucking EMP grenade in a can, the fuckers had weirded up both plasma and EMP in a set of can's so that no matter what tripped it would get taken out, human or robot, they called for back up and before we knew it it was raining Brotherhood, fucking wrong place wrong time, the whole thing is gonna get undone by a simple piece of bad fucking luck," she said bitterly.

"So what do we do now?' Yui said.

"You took out those vertibirds can you do the same to those fuckers out there?" the Luitenant asked and Yui glanced outside seeing about twenty Brotherhood soldiers spread out and in cover before shaking her head.

"Maybe one or two but after flying her and taking out those vertibirds my power is almost spent, I got maybe one or two hits left in me before I go down," she said bluntly.

The Luitenant nodded and pulled something off her belt twisting the cap off it and pressing it she tossed it into the other room before Yui realised it was an Enclave signal grenade, it would send a ping signal that would bounce off any relay in range and get broadcast wide band, she was calling in the heavy cavalry.

"Thes fucking traitors want a fucking war I'll give em a war but it won't be one we're gonna fight, we'll leave that to our betters as for me I'm done, lost too much blood already and unfortunately kid if I'm done so are you," the Luitenant said before drawing her sidearm and levelling it at Yui's head.

"W-W-What are you doing!?" Yui exclaimed as she found herself staring down the barrel of the plasma pistol.

"Can't let you fall into the enemies hands, got strict orders that if we were overrun or about to be captured to eliminate you, can't let the Brotherhood or anyone else have this weapon, wish I could say I'm sorry but I'm really fucking not, wish we didn't have to rely on freaks like you to fucking win this but whatever gets the jobs done, least now I won't have to fucking look at you anymore and at least I'll get to be the one to pull the fucking trigger on you, fucking hybrid freaks, it makes me sick to my stomach that I even had to look at you let alone put up with you and rely on you, you're an abomination and a stain on the Enclave I'm going to enjoy.........." the Luitenant began but she never got to finish because from outside there was a terrific boom and it took Yui a second to realise that there was now a rather large hole through the centre of the Luienants armour and chest.

She looked down at the hole running through her and the blood pouring out of it, "Oh....." was the last thing she said before she well face down into the blood and dust on the floor at her feet.

It had been an anti-material rifle and Yui was gripped by fear as she realised they must have used a thermal scope to see them through the wall and that now the only hot thing in the room, was her!

Yui barely managed to doge before the next shot ripped clean through the wall and out the other one behind her, running on pure instinct and adrenaline she ran for a window on the other side and dove through it activating her flame tunnel as she did.

She could feel how weak it was now, her power was nearly spent but she had to get away, she had no idea where the Railroad entrance was as they had never shared any of those details with her or Phillip before they'd sent him in, need to fucking know they'd said and that meant now she had absolutely zero fucking clue how to reach him or contact him, she was all alone.

Yui rocketed out of the city with half of the Brotherhood firing at her as she flew but thankfully her power held long enough for her to not only get out of range but out of sight before forcing her to land near some kind of swap lands.

She'd seen an old fishing hut from the air through the thick fog surrounding the place and had landed at it before quickly clearing it and hiding inside.

Yui collapsed and stared at the wooden walls of the hut and stayed that way for hours as the exhaustion caught up with her hard, along with the fear and the dread.

She was alone now, with no one to rely on but herself and she was being hunted not just by Seven's people but by the Brotherhood, she had no idea how to reach Phillip though given that he was inside the railroad and when they had left with him he'd been hidden inside a suit of power armour so his identity would be hidden in case anyone saw his new face in the company of Enclave soldiers so at least he was safe and his cover intact.

But this didn't answer the question of what the hell was she going to do now.

Something the Luitenant had said kept slapping away at her the back of her mind, of how she had resented her, called her a freak, saying she was glad that she was going to at least get to kill her before she died, why did she want her dead, what had she ever done to her, all she'd ever done was be loyal to the cause like she had been trained and programmed to be?

That's when the tears came and once they started they simply wouldn't stop, Yui punched the wall and screamed at it in frustration before sinking back to her knees, had her entire team, the people she'd trusted to keep her and Phillip safe all wanting her dead for nothing more than existing all this time?

As she leaned her head against the wall of the small hut with its single chair, hanging fishing nets and old-school cast iron stove Yui began to see flashes of how the entire team had looked at her and Phillip over and over again, the disgust, the barely veiled hatred, to them they hadn't been people, just things.

Disgusting things that they had to put up with because they were ordered to, things that they wouldn't hesitate to leave bleed to death alone and scared in a ditch if they'd had the chance to.

That's when his face popped back into her mind again, the one called Fuller, he hadn't looked at them like that, his eyes had been sympathetic, gentle, almost kind.

Did this mean that there were people out there who wouldn't look at her like a fucking beast, like a fucking thing?

She thought back to the Enclave, to Dr Chalmers when she had shown her the videos over and over, to all the times and lectures where she'd analysed her, to all the times she'd disciplined her for making mistakes and that's when she saw it her eyes were an almost perfect mirror of the Luienants, even though she was the one who had created them, brought them into being, she fucking hated them just like everyone else did, she was the closest thing to a mother that any of them had and she'd hated them more than anyone, she'd taken pleasure from hurting them, from tormenting them, from pushing them to their limits.

It was like someone ripped the covers off someone sleeping with their head under a thick duvet pulling them into a room filled with sunlight and blazing flood lamps, she hadn't been celebrating their successes because she was proud of them, she was doing it because of how much glory she would get from her bosses in the Enclave, she hated them as much as anyone.

Confusion and a wave of anger like she'd never felt before in her life bubbled inside Yui, it felt like her stomach was filled with molten metal, it felt like fire was running through her veins boiling off her blood until only the flames remained, well if humanity hated and reviled her so much two could play at that fucking game.

Something inside the back of her mind snapped like a twig as both the control device and brainwashing simply destroyed themselves trying to control the surge of pure hatred and anger that well up within her.

That's when another thought occurred to her, Seven and Three must have known about this, this is why they'd gotten out when they'd had the chance, they'd run from it rather than be a part of it but rather than help the rest of them to be free as well they'd left them to suffer at her hands and those hands had been infinitely crueller in the days following their escape, they'd caused them that pain, that suffering, all those beatings of rage that Dr Chalmers had taken out on them because of her own failings, they'd caused all of it!

Yui suddenly knew what she had to do and what she was going to do, she knew the Brotherhood was hunting her and so were Seven's people well two could play at that game too, she was not going to be the hunted any more, she was going to be the hunter and he was going to find them all and when she did she was going to make them pay in pain and blood for all the suffering they had made her feel, for every wound she or Phillip ad suffered, for every insult that cut into her soul with the power of a heated plasma tipped blade, she was going to show them all what true pain was.

She began to pace around the hut, her first instinct had been to get into the air and to start looking for them but she knew that would be no good, her power would fail her a hundred times before she even got wind of them and she needed all of her strength for when the fight did come, as much as her hatred was burning she knew what Phillip had said was true, they needed to be smart and cunning with these two, they had already shown exactly what they could do when they had steamrolled over Enclave troops like they were nothing more than tin soldier figurines.

That's when something Phillip had said to her rung in her head like s truck, "A smart hunter doesn't hunt his prey, a smart hunter chooses the hunting ground and makes his prey come to him, he fights with the advantage and knows both his prey and his terrain," he'd said.

That's exactly what she was going to do, she wouldn't go to Seven and Three, she'd make them come to her and when they did this time it would be they who walked head first into an ambush and it would be she who closed the trap on them. this time they were going down for good.