Prospective Bounties Chapter 4

Finally working on the continuation of the first 3 chapters of my Fallout New Vegas MtF Deathclaw Story:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/57958112?utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=android_share

The overgrown trail down the eastern side of the hill across from I-88 Trading Post crumbled into ragged cliffs overlooking Dry Lake. Unfortunately, the easiest pathway down would put her near a well-known nest of vicious Cazadors to the south by the old Wind Farm. Caleb hoped she could find an easy route through the hills out of sight- just a few Cazadors could overwhelm anything stupid enough to travel the Mojave alone. Giant monster or not, Caleb didn't want to get the shit stung out of her and avoided getting any closer than necessary in order to fully descend the dangerous cliffs. She carefully scaled down the sun-baked crags and cursed with a deep, gravely hiss as her talons scraped loose rocks that rolled loudly down the ravine below. She weighed a ton now, and what used to be sure-footing could be a serious liability for her. Luckily, it was closing in on midday and any caravans were likely stopped and hiding from the oppressive heat. Did deathclaws get sunburned? Distracted, Caleb’s razor sharp claws stepped down through a fragile pile of cliff rock. Reflexively reaching out with her dominant right, she clumsily sliced against the rock above her with her sword-like claw and slid nearly thirty feet into a ravine, painfully slamming and scraping against the jagged cliff walls.

Caleb awkwardly laid still amidst the broken chunks of rock at the foot of the cliff for a good while as the dust and loose debris settled. A bit of blood slowly oozed from her only just-healed chest wound after her battle with the Alpha. Her large tail felt twisted under one leg and she hissed as she felt a sting along some scraped scales on the tail’s softer underside. Her right claw ached but nothing felt broken or twisted, thankfully. Instinct told Caleb she needed to stay within her dust-caked blanket and listen- or smell for anything that may have been drawn to her fall. Doing everything she could to remain hidden, she turned her head south along the cliff and the nearby highway. Far off in the distance, a quartet of watery silhouettes flickered above the road. Three in front and one behind. She couldn’t make out detail yet, but her nose caught the stink of fresh blood on the wind and her bestial brain went into overdrive piecing-together all the information it could. Metallic, hot blood, but not a fresh wound and it stung Caleb’s nose from something unnatural. Maybe chems? She couldn’t see if it was junkies or Khans, yet, but either way, Caleb needed to stay down and avoid getting into a scrape not knowing how banged up she was from her fall. She was unused to this giant body and worried any movement would mean gunfire from trigger-happy idiots tripping on psycho.

The group neared and Caleb watched from beneath her repurposed blanket. She felt her eyes focus and wobble slightly as she stared at each one of them. The wobble seemed to help her judge distance and size. The blood smell drew nearer and Caleb’s mouth watered. Her own blood felt warmer and energized. Despite having just eaten a whole half a Bighorner the night before, Caleb’s body was screaming to find the weakest and pick them off for an easy meal.

“I am not a beast. I am in control of myself”, she mantra’d under her breath over and over. With a long, trembling sigh, she felt her boiling blood calm before her mind fixated on the one in the back- the injured one. They drew close enough that she noticed the slight limp in their left leg. The shoulders slumped forward, the heavy chain around an ankle forcing them to pick up their right foot higher to compensate. Most likely a recently enslaved wastelander. From the South? How'd they get past that sniper's nest in Novac?

Waiting a few minutes longer, more detail came into focus. She could smell the others, loaded with chems too, but different ones, they were more anxious and angry. Definitely Psycho. They didn't have the same outfits as some of the Khans' runners did but they stank of unnatural, dirty blood and chems. Probably Vipers. They were armed with rusty boltguns and scavenged metal pipes, knives, and maybe a stick of dynamite or two. Caleb knew a deathclaw like her could take them- tear through them like wet cardboard and not break a sweat, but she needed to keep a low profile and not draw attention to the fact there was a sentient death machine wandering the Mojave loaded with valuable loot. As they passed, Caleb watched the dirty, bloodied, and swollen face of a girl, blankly staring at the ground ahead of her. She looked young. Caleb felt a very human trembling in her clawed fingers and an unease filling her stomach. These were familiar but welcome sensations to Caleb at this moment. Motivating, human empathy. She needed to act.

It would be swift. An attack from behind their right flank. The sound of the chain hitting the dirt and their drugged-up chattering to each other would mask her heavy steps. Caleb made her little battle-plan and let the probability engine on her wrist tell her that a melee rush into three armed junkies was a foolish death wish- but the Pip-boy didn't have any way to categorize the power of its owner's new body. Caleb resigned to not relying on VATS for now, instead, she'd trust her new instincts- but keep them under control to save the girl. Lifting herself slowly from the rubble, she stooped down into a three-legged run with her long claws bared. Not even a hundred feet away, she closed the gap between her and the gang with frightening speed. By the time the closest of the Vipers turned to the thud of her monstrous feet hitting the dry, cracked earth, her claws were buried in his torso, turning him into a man-sized hand-puppet that Caleb then used to bludgeon the man in front. The leader, not even realizing what was happening, glanced back while giving the girl an annoyed chide- and the words choked in his throat as a wall of scaled death crushed into him. Thrown several feet into the air, the puppet and the leader landed in a visceral heap and the deathclaw was face-to-face with the last sniveling bandit already pissing himself with fear. Caleb stood over the man, now so tiny and frail to her, and blew a hot gust into him. With a shriek of terror, he could only squeak out a pathetic “No!” before Caleb threw a tight fist into the man’s chest. Caleb heard several deep pops as his ribs snapped, lifting him off the ground as he crumpled with a weak hiss at her feet.

Caleb turned to the girl, her eyes wide with fear as she desperately tried to drag herself away via the heavy chain that was wound around the waist of the guy whose chest cavity Caleb just caved in. Caleb stepped towards her and the girl panicked, falling to the ground, wailing with utter dread, shielding her face at what she believed was her brutal end. Caleb felt a rush of tingles down neck and spine at the weak human, hardly even prey, like a snack on the way to another juicy bighorner. Caleb shivered and heavily shook off the haze of instinct, letting her tail curl around her. Bending down, Caleb took the chain in her huge jaw and bit down onto the thick, dirty iron until the metal creaked loudly. The young woman looked up to find the deathclaw tear through the chain near her leg with a loud snap. The heavy thud of the chain in the dirt as Caleb opened her maw was music to her ears. The girl was free. She was trembling and didn’t speak, with an expression of confusion, fear, and exhaustion.

Caleb looked back at the slavers and found the leader struggling to push his impaled partner off of him, swearing and frothing profusely as he flailed. Caleb let her immense size do the talking as she covered the man in her shadow in the high sun. Her crown of horns and crimson scales were like that of a demon, and to the slaver filth at Caleb’s feet, she may as well have been the devil himself. He clawed at the dirt near him for his fallen weapon, a rusted and taped-together sawed-off shotgun, just out of reach. Caleb scraped the earth with her claw, knocking the shotgun further away and, with a hauntingly deep voice like stones grinding together, Caleb spoke aloud for the first time: 

“What should we do with him?”

The man cried out, the psycho and adrenaline making him nearly incoherent. He could merely swear at Caleb, tossing insults to her mother and whatever else, she wasn’t listening. The girl looked at Caleb and the Viper, utterly confused as she tried to process what she just heard. “W- what?” She muttered, trembling. Caleb turned and repeated the words, staring into the girl’s eyes. The girl’s expression changed- realization that she did, indeed, just hear a 10 ft tall lizard just ask her a question. “H- He killed my daddy… My brother. They-” she stopped and sobbed, grabbing her tattered rags. Caleb understood the way of the wasteland. It was a heartless place, and even though she’d only been female briefly, she didn’t need the girl to finish to know all that had been taken from her. Caleb slid the shotgun over to her with her claw and stepped away, putting her makeshift cloak back over her shoulders. The girl was quick to end the suffering of her captors. Emptying both barrels into the leader and the incapacitated guard. She dropped the gun into the cracked earth and let out a ragged sigh.

“Take their supplies and follow the interstate north to the trading post. It's safe there.”

The girl turned and Caleb was already treading west across the Dry Lake towards Black Mountain. “I- I don’t know if any of this is real. But, thank you, uh, Deathclaw lady. M- my name is Theresa.” Caleb paused and looked back at the girl and felt her scales blush. Caleb had been dreading this moment since his changes. ‘Caleb the Female Deathclaw’ sounded ridiculous and she didn’t want to use her own human name… “Why not? You're never going to be human again!” Caleb pushed down those thoughts and cleared her throat, feeling the dry, dusty air filter through a strange moist organ in her throat.

“My name… is Calamity.”

Theresa smiled weakly, satisfied and looked at the mess of Vipers about her. She grabbed various items and a pack held by the one who had held her chains before giving one last kick to the dead man’s groin. By the time she turned again, Caleb, now Calamity, was ascending the far hill overlooking the ruins of Vault 11 and disappearing into a grove of Joshua trees. Theresa, still not sure if she was delirious or high or what, went east across the barren lake bed towards I-95, eager to find shelter and safety.

The hills that lead up the eastern side of Black Mountain were treacherous and unforgiving. Calamity sat with her back to a tall rock scanning the ridge that ran far to the south, dotted with rusted and toppled pylons. She could just barely make out the tops of the satellite arrays from this side. Following the peak to the north with her binoculars, Calamity slowly chewed a chunk of Brahmin jerky while she pondered how to proceed. Ordinarily, the trip to Goodsprings would take her far south and around Black Mountain at the very least. That would not be an option for her now. Too many NCR posts and too many guns pointed at the ghoul-infested ruins of Searchlight and former Legion territory for her to slip by unnoticed.

Taking a moment to drink the cool purified water from her canteen, she thought about the name she gave that girl, Theresa. It wasn't bad- to be honest, the name sorta just came out and might be perfect. A lone, talking Deathclaw killing slaves and freeing the innocent… It was a cute story, appropriate for the wild and changing wasteland of today. Calamity remembered listening to the radio shows with her uncle Pete. The Silver Shroud and Grognak the Barbarian were her favorites as a boy. She smiled, albeit awkwardly with the maw of knives she called a mouth, and wondered if Theresa's story might reach Mr. New Vegas’s radio program. If it did, then surely Uncle Pete would hear it. The thought stuck in her mind as she slowly rolled over low to the shadowed side of the rock and scanned for anything moving. It was nearly evening and she hadn't seen a living thing except for a few chubby bloatflies buzzing around the remains of a long-dead Gecko. Deathclaws seemed to have extremely good vision in twilight and could hone in on hot-blooded targets that seemed to glow with their body heat in the darkness. She couldn’t see much except for a few distant blobs of pale orange flickering to the south. Those were almost certainly NCR troopers on patrol guarding the El Dorado Substation. The large rocky outcrops and hills made it easy for her to make the slow ascent towards the northern slopes of the mountain.

Winding up the long way north through a small valley between peaks of the mountain, Calamity began to smell something she could only describe as ‘ugly’. It bit her nostrils foully and the geiger counter on her Pip-boy began to click. Ascending made the clicks rise in frequency and the awful stink became more potent. Calamity slowed down and drew her 10mm pistol awkwardly with her long and thick fingers. She tried to think of what her Deathclaw senses could be translating. NCR reports a while back said the Super Mutants had all left the mountain after that crazy Nightkin, Tabitha, was killed by a mailman. The press briefings from the NRC were always full of half-truths at best, but that one was so bizarre that she remembered even Mr New Vegas covered the story. Whatever the truth was, the fact was there had been no sightings of Super Mutants at Black Mountain for years now, but was so irradiated that nobody was setting up shop any time soon. This fact stuck in Calamity’s brain. The buildings at the peak could be a good spot to rest her head free of any possible visitors. Her new body was more resistant to radiation and she could probably find a few supplies leftover from the Super Mutants.

As she ascended the valley, the smell became an acrid, miserable miasma. Her senses were flaring and Calamity couldn't help but feel on edge. Her pip-boy couldn't detect any threats, but clearly the deathclaw part of her was going nuts. Pressing on, with pistol drawn, she kept her profile low and moved along the shadows along the base of the valley’s western ridges. Her eyes darted from the hills ahead to the crests on either side. Finally, as dusk had fallen, Calamity decided to make camp in a narrow channel between large rocks. Taking her dusty cloak off, she made a small blind with it and a few stones. She slid between the stones and filled her belly with the last of the cooked bighorner meat she had wrapped up. It tasted like heaven and she washed it down with a few gulps of water. Feeling the constant vibration in her nerves made Calamity shift uncomfortably. She wouldn't be able to sleep without knowing what she sensed.

Fighting her better judgement, Calamity slid out and tucked her things under the rock and scanned the ridges and sighed. Loping low, on all fours, she climbed the hill and peeked over the other side. Her senses roiled. What she saw didn't make sense. Flesh, sliding with many awkward limbs, crawled across the desert earth, and moaned with horrifying humanity. There were many. Shapes that resembled slugs or a centipede, but formed from human flesh with a mutated torso and head atop the writhing mass. Half a dozen of the abominations wandered around a deep, bowl-shaped crater seemingly without any thought or reason, surrounded by the bones of many different creatures and humans. If Calamity wanted to ascend this path to the peak and use the clear route towards Goodsprings and avoid NCR, Sloan, and a whole mess of Giant Radscorpions that infested the canyons all along the eastern outskirt… she had to either learn how to fly or sneak around these things.

She sat a while, thinking and watching them mill about. If she took the way north, she'd hit hives of Cazadores towards Red Rock Canyon- and of course any drug-smugglers trading with Great Khans. But, if she took the road along the quarry and junction, there would only be Deathclaws. Calamity grinned, amused at herself downplaying the threat of clusters of Deathclaws just because she resembled one. She probably smelled like the FEV-enhanced “alpha” and who knows what they'd do to her besides just killing her. Her little pistol and one-hand of claws didn't really make her feel confident in a fight with more than maybe one at a time. But, only a few of these centaur-like things were roughly her size. Big and bloated with radiation, their stink alone made her scales itch along her neck and spine.

While she mulled over her options out of sight, a lone golden gecko wandered up the hill on the far side of the craters, seemingly unperturbed by the flesh things and approached a thin stream twisting down from the peak. The tallest of the monsters slowly twisted its attention in the gecko’s direction and groaned. The gecko hissed in reply, barking and flaring the fleshy ridges on its neck before stopping down to drink from the stream. The monster arched back and spit out a thick sludgy glob with impressive accuracy and hit the gecko across the shoulder and its side. The gecko hissed in surprise and tried to flee, but its limbs struck by the slime drooped and the flesh bubbled, exposing bone beneath. Calamity watched in horror as the lizard was surrounded and torn apart with terrifying speed by the shambling fleshy monsters. Not wanting to watch anymore, Calamity retreated down the dry creek bed and found her tiny camp. Gathering her things, she felt an overwhelming sense of dread that if she stayed, the same fate might befall her too. She decided to brave the way north and abandon Black Mountain altogether. If more of those things had infested the radiation-soaked paths up ahead, she had no chance.