G
Guest
Guest
the bluepencil@techemail.com(you may stop screaming now)
says:
Okay..okay...here's one of lesser crappus fanfictus that lurk in my HDD..enjoy! *places a finely roasted piece of paper on the table.*
Stasis
by B-pen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Enough."
Megan looked behind her, to the lanky, white-coated man whose eyes were forever hidden under the silvery layer of proto-steel. She shivered slightly, that stark, emotioneless gaze seemed to absorb every bit of her being, puling them down into a void of logical data.
Dr. Menulas P. Unther ...was not a man. His mind had gone so long ago, his body was now ashes..but he continued to exist, to drive the aims of the Enclave.
He / It? walked towards her, and she cringed slightly. She moved away, and let the man to the terminal.
She looked on as his nimble fingers flittered all over the terminal, clicking keys in a speed so fast and pre-calculated that it seemed random. The machinery in the room beyond hummed with new-found purpose, and started to move and grunt.
Someone screamed.
Megan winced, Even though the control room had been fitted with special bulletproof and soundproof glass, she FELT the hoarse cry. It rang with untold anguish, and it snaked out into the ether with a piercing wail.
She looked at Dr.Unther's white-coated back, and felt sick to her stomach.
"Why must we do this?"
"We have had this discussion many times, Megan. I see no need to explain it to you again.", he replied, not once bending away from his task.
She walked over to the glass pane, and looked down on the rows upon rows of canister-like pods, filled with a strange greenish fluid. In that fluid floated what seemed to be human shapes.
Dismembered human shapes.
The first time she looked on her life's work, she ran to the nearest room with a toilet and puked her heart out. But now, she felt almost nothing, as she considered about how these new specimens would fare.
"When did it happen, Father? When did we start to lose our humanity?"
Dr. Unther turned to her sharply.
"We did NOT lose our humanity, daughter! We are trying to SAVE it...."
"Forgive me...but it hardly seems to me that cutting up people and replacing their appendages with mechanical parts is a natural humanic thing.."
"No. It is not."
He joined her by the overhanging glass coven. He stared down, with mechanical eyes. "Without this research..I would be dead. Do you wish it?"
"Yes."
They looked into each other's eyes.
"So do I. So do I .."
"I wish..."
"What?"
"That we were all just back to human..."
Her long-dead father sighed.
"We can't. At most, we can just pretend to be. Mutants..it is necessary for them to die."
"What is a mutant? I, myself, I don't consider these people mutants...", she said with a wave down, to the titanium cages. "They seem as human as you and me.."
"But then, we are not exactly human..."
"All right. A poor choice of words then, father. But what does separate us from them? Without our biomechanical enchancements..."
"Absolutely nothing. A few changes in the genetic code, perhaps. Other than that, there is nothing."
She looked down on her hands, soft and dainty. And streaked with invisible lines of blood. The blood of innocent people who died, indrectly, in her hands.
"I can't let this..."
"Yes. Yes..... you can. It is all for Science."
"Science? Or the murderous gains of the Enclave?"
"It is the same thing...perhaps.."
Megan scowled, and shut her eyes tightly. She tensed and shivered, trying to drive the horrid dying screams from her mind.
"Rest, daughter, rest. It will do you good..", said Dr. Unther, and pressed a button. An Enclave guard in Advanced Power Armor quickly appeared on the door. He looked around and fingered his weapon, alert for any possible threats.
"Take Megan to her room...", commanded the Doctor.
"Yes, sir."
The Enclave guard tok her frail arm in a gentle grip, and helped her stagger out of the room. "Are you okay, ma'am?"
"I'm fine...I'm fine...", she replied, and swatted his hand away. It was getting too close to some sensitive spots. The frontal parts. "Go away. I can handle myself."
"Are you sure ma'am?"
"Yes. GO!"
The Enclave guard shrugged and went back to his post, guarding her father. "Damn crazy lab-type females..", he muttered. "No fun at all.."
She considered using her rank and clout to demote the man into permanent latrine duty, but shrugged the idea off. She was too tired...
She went into her room and locked the door.
Maybe after she got some sleep..
-------------------------
She woke when something behind her emitted a loud, mechanical scream. She picked it up and threw it across the room, smiling at the *clank* sound as it smashed into pieces at the far wall.
Megan blinked her eyes open.
"Where am I?"
She held a hand up to her aching temple. "Enclave...", she spat. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked around her spartan room. Bed. Regulation white pillows and sheets. Standard metal cabinets...and off to one side, a computer terminal.
She hobbled over to it and logged on.
INPUT IDEN> MEGAN UNTHER 009342
IDEN PASSED.
She wiped the stray locks off her eyeview and began to work.
INPUT> .. \records.biology.bioenchancement
DIRECTORY RECORDS.BIOLOGY.BIOENCHANCEMENT
00001 Phoenix Implants
00002 Impact Armor Implants
00003 Cerebral Enchancement
000 ^C
-break-
INPUT>
She massaged the deep twinge in her head, and stared at the green on black characters on the terminal. She winced, and slammed her palm into the keyboard, the throbbing in her head had almost made her scream.
She took a deep, calming breath, and looked into the screen.
DIRECTORY ARCHIVES.TECH.THREAT.BROTHERHOOD_OF_STEEL
0001 Power Armor P42d
0002 Maxson
0003 Files.History
"Threat? Brotherhood of Steel?"
Her headache temporarily forgottem, she bent down to peruse the deepest recesses of Enclave.Net resources.
"So..we're not the only ones who keep tabs on the Wasteland.", she said to herself, and absorbed the data that went streaming down her screen. Her left eyebrow developed a twitch, as she realized the implications.
Another military organization, with access to the same tech, but with vastly different aims. She could easily see how this was considered a threat. No, not the sheer military potential, but the ideals they represented.
She loaded everything into her local terminal, for later perusing. Her gaze went around her stark living quarters, and imagined it going up in flames.
She shook her head...these visions were beginning to be discordant.
She shut the terminal and put on her slightly rumpled lab coat. She stretched her long, shapely legs, hidden under the skin-tight blue silken pants. She smiled slightly, remembering how Guardsmen would sigh as she passed. She always swung a little more when she went past them, taunting them with something they could never have.
*************************
When she entered the Lab, she found her father arguing with the General.
General Wayward Stanley, was the only man in the Enclave as old as her father. He was a bit on the pudgy side, and had a triple chin, but if you looked into his eyes, you'd see them burning with a fire that hadn't diminished with age. A viper, cold and calculating, a man of war, who battled with inner demons on a daily basis.
"Good Evening, General.", she greeted him. He gave her a curt nod and returned to yelling at the Doctor. She ignored the two, these was just another part of the scenery..the two would argue, and argue, and let spittle fly...and never decide on anything.
It was an old and bitter rivaly, born of friendship and competition. The ends was no longer important, it was the joy of matching wits with each other that they delighted in. The General was a stinging cobra, with remarks that came fast and hard, and left deep scars. Her father met his piercing gaze with hooded ones, and retorted with flat, sensible statements that crushed without question.
She sighed and turned to her work. Subject 49-D was acting up again, the cell tissues rejecting the grafted parts. Strange. The Dermal Impact Assault Enchancements were supposed to be benign...there was no actual contact with important nerve tissues. It mostly manifested itself on the face, where bits of Combat Armor shards supplanted soft skin. It twisted faces into a strange lizard-like grin, but it other than that, there was no other adverse effects.
The subject's tissues seems to be...healing?!..and rejecting the implants.! Impossible. No human being can heal that fast.
Not a human. A mutant. She slumped forward, laden with years of regret..
She slammed her fist down into the terminal, and felt an odd sense of release at it cracked and buckled under her hand. It attracted the attention of the two old men, who turned and looked at her oddly.
"I'm fine..", she told them "I just need to take a breath of fresh air..."
The two elderly men shrugged, and began to argue again of the benefits of adding cerebral enchancements over Combat endurance enchancements.
She massaged the pain in the nape of her neck. The disjointed blood flow was doing strange things to her mind. She thought she actually saw the General waving his arms around in the way he did for emphasis, while his decapitated head talked from the nearby table.
She opened the doors and leaned against the metal wall. She went down the nearby elevator into the Comissary, and shoved Enclave soldiers out of the line. The attendant was properly frightened of her, and quickly gave her what she wanted.
As she sat in a corner, ignoring the glares and nervous gazes being directed at her, her mind went flying once again.
She saw the Enclave, the symbol of two men supporting a glove in their arms, burst into flame and melt into golden droplets.
She smiled.
-----------------
"How long is she going to hold that donut in front of her mouth?", asked an armoured Enclave soldier to the people in his table.
"I dunno. Look at her eyes...it's like she ain't there..", replied the man across him.
"Creepy."
"What a waste, what a waste....", he added. "And she's such a looker too."
"Hey, if you like her so much, Frank, why don't you go up and talk to her..."
"What?! You're gotta be shitting.", replied Frank, and ruffled his own blonde hairs. "Do I look like I'm crazy?"
"Yeap."
"Go do it, Wort."
"I'm askin' you.."
"No fuckin' way."
They settled back down to eating. Frank picked at the gelatinous blob in his plate, the one that was termed Steak Surprise. What a surprise. It's not beef steak. It's made of squid entrails.
He scooped up a good portion and shoveled it into his mouth. He swallowed it, and resisted the urge to spit into his friend's face.
He looked at his friend's plate. He seemed to be enjoying his meal of synthesized chicken.
"What'll I get if I do?"
Wort looked up from his food and gave him an amused twinkle. "So....you'll do it...?"
"You double-dare me..?."
"Yes, I do."
"Good. I'll go up and talk to her..and if she doesn't kick me in the nuts...you eat my food, then buy me dinner for the next week."
"Done."
Frank nodded and put on his best, most charming grin. He got up from the table and walked over to Megan Unther.
"He's a brave man...", Wort remarked to his companions."But stupid."
Frank Horrigan looked down at the beauty before him, her intense, focused gaze was set to infinity. He was hard put to place this incredible woman as the most feared girl in the Enclave. An incredible scientist, a surpassing commander. An..by the words of those who tried to get her into bed...a Ball-Buster.
So he did what nobody expected him to do.
He sat. He supported his chin with his palm, his elbows on the table in front of her, and stared off into her eyes.
An hour later, they still were at it. People began to murmur. Frank had it down pat. They looked like so much a still-life sculpture, composed of a dryad, a knight, a table and...a donut.
She stared of somewhere, a point just beyond his eye.
He lost himself in her blank gaze.
She smiled lightly.
He smiled lightly.
She pursed her lips.
He pursed his lips.
She yawned.
He yawned.
She bit into the donut.
He bit into the air in front of him.
She chewed.
He chewed.
She stared off into infinity again, crumbs falling gently down the corners of her mouth.
He stared off into her eyes, and let imaginary crumbs fall out of the corners of his mouth.
She blinked.
He blinked.
She lifted her other hand and scratched her nose lightly.
He lifted his gloved hand and scratched his nose lightly.
She sighed.
He sighed.
She blinked.
He blinked.
Her eyes snapped as focus returned, and she looked as if she was just touched with a cattle prod. Her eyes regained the signs of awareness, and the first things she saw were amazingly brown eyes looking at her, an amused twinkle in them.
"Hi.", Frank Horrigan said.
Her eyes widened, and she turned away, blushing a bright red, contrasting nicely with her almost purplish hair. There was much laughter. The Ice Queen had been broken.
Megan still looked out of it...and it was this that saved them. The laughter subsided as soon as they saw she was starting to get some sense.
"Uhh.....", she said to Frank.
He pushed agaisnt the table and let himself extend into his full height. Her eyes widened. Gods! He was tall, almost seven feet in height. And atop the Eclave armor was a handsome, boyish face that grinned at her kindly.
"Uhh...huha..neh..?"
"Hello...it seems we still haven't been properly introduced.", he remarked and held out his hand. "I'm Frank. Frank Horrigan. And the Lady is..."
She smiled, knowing his plot. "I am Megan... Megan Unther.", and took his hand and shook it.
"Charmed, Milady", he added and kissed it, eliciting another smile, and a faint coloring of the cheeks from her. He sat down again, and a waitress placed an order of the best meals the kitchen could make in front of him. She winked at him suggestively as she passed.
"May I eat in your company, Milady Unther..?"
"Yes, you may...Sir Horrigan."
They smiled at each other, and began to eat their dinner, an already an hour late.
They had to bring in a tactical squad to stop the frenzied cheering in the Commissary.
------------------------------
Megan massaged the kink in her neck. She stared into the printouts and sighed again.
Subject No. 94 was starting to rot in several places, as the Implants began to eat into his system.
Subject 56 was doing well...but he was a blithering idiot.
Subject 45.....was simply too gruesome....all that was left was a bloody smear on the wall.
"This is not going well...",she remarked.
Her father didn't turn from his assembly of a huge biomechanical arm. "Do not worry, Daughter. Things of such magnitute tend to take time to develop."
He inserted a wire, and the arm flexed its mighty claw-like fingers into a powerful fist.
"Magnitude...magnitude..", she whispered. Strangely enough..the word brought a smile to her lips. Magnitude reminded her of the Earth, which reminded her of the hard ,stone-strewn ground, which reminded her of upheaving red volcanic rocks, which reminded her of towering, craggy mountains, and whose height reminded her of....Frank Horrigan.
Practically everything reminded her of Frank these days..
She looked into her watch and groaned. "I'll have to leave you alone in here now, Dad. I have to go."
"Meeting up with your boyfriend again, Daughter?"
"He is not my boyfriend."
"As you wish.."
She sighed and gathered up her notes into a folder. She saved the data into a holodisk and placed it into her pocket. She hugged the valuable top-secret data in her arms and walked out the door.
Dr. Unther smiled, his visage stretching out, his thin-muscled face becoming almost skull-like in that motion. She had never called him "Dad" before...
End Chapter One
===============================================================
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!! Ain't I a stinker? Ending a story not even half-way? Aside from what you may have started to think, this isn't as much of a dark story....for now..
While it does deal with how Frank got his Armor...it also deals with his hidden life before it happened. The cold-blooded killer we know from Fallout 2 wasn't always such...and that's what I'm trying to paint a picture of here...
Hey, I could've placed it in the Bet, if I wanted...but I've had other plans.
See you in a couple!
Additional Notes:
Once again....pay no notice to actual historical correctness. Since when did I pay it any heed?
Whose POV should the next Chap be on? Should I continue to keep it on Megan's or alternate between hers and Frank's?
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
put this on..
http://uro.topcities.com/bluearmor.gif
~cause I can get a little cranky....without moi daily dose oh coffee!!~
-it's the freakin' bluepencil!
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
says:
Okay..okay...here's one of lesser crappus fanfictus that lurk in my HDD..enjoy! *places a finely roasted piece of paper on the table.*
Stasis
by B-pen
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Enough."
Megan looked behind her, to the lanky, white-coated man whose eyes were forever hidden under the silvery layer of proto-steel. She shivered slightly, that stark, emotioneless gaze seemed to absorb every bit of her being, puling them down into a void of logical data.
Dr. Menulas P. Unther ...was not a man. His mind had gone so long ago, his body was now ashes..but he continued to exist, to drive the aims of the Enclave.
He / It? walked towards her, and she cringed slightly. She moved away, and let the man to the terminal.
She looked on as his nimble fingers flittered all over the terminal, clicking keys in a speed so fast and pre-calculated that it seemed random. The machinery in the room beyond hummed with new-found purpose, and started to move and grunt.
Someone screamed.
Megan winced, Even though the control room had been fitted with special bulletproof and soundproof glass, she FELT the hoarse cry. It rang with untold anguish, and it snaked out into the ether with a piercing wail.
She looked at Dr.Unther's white-coated back, and felt sick to her stomach.
"Why must we do this?"
"We have had this discussion many times, Megan. I see no need to explain it to you again.", he replied, not once bending away from his task.
She walked over to the glass pane, and looked down on the rows upon rows of canister-like pods, filled with a strange greenish fluid. In that fluid floated what seemed to be human shapes.
Dismembered human shapes.
The first time she looked on her life's work, she ran to the nearest room with a toilet and puked her heart out. But now, she felt almost nothing, as she considered about how these new specimens would fare.
"When did it happen, Father? When did we start to lose our humanity?"
Dr. Unther turned to her sharply.
"We did NOT lose our humanity, daughter! We are trying to SAVE it...."
"Forgive me...but it hardly seems to me that cutting up people and replacing their appendages with mechanical parts is a natural humanic thing.."
"No. It is not."
He joined her by the overhanging glass coven. He stared down, with mechanical eyes. "Without this research..I would be dead. Do you wish it?"
"Yes."
They looked into each other's eyes.
"So do I. So do I .."
"I wish..."
"What?"
"That we were all just back to human..."
Her long-dead father sighed.
"We can't. At most, we can just pretend to be. Mutants..it is necessary for them to die."
"What is a mutant? I, myself, I don't consider these people mutants...", she said with a wave down, to the titanium cages. "They seem as human as you and me.."
"But then, we are not exactly human..."
"All right. A poor choice of words then, father. But what does separate us from them? Without our biomechanical enchancements..."
"Absolutely nothing. A few changes in the genetic code, perhaps. Other than that, there is nothing."
She looked down on her hands, soft and dainty. And streaked with invisible lines of blood. The blood of innocent people who died, indrectly, in her hands.
"I can't let this..."
"Yes. Yes..... you can. It is all for Science."
"Science? Or the murderous gains of the Enclave?"
"It is the same thing...perhaps.."
Megan scowled, and shut her eyes tightly. She tensed and shivered, trying to drive the horrid dying screams from her mind.
"Rest, daughter, rest. It will do you good..", said Dr. Unther, and pressed a button. An Enclave guard in Advanced Power Armor quickly appeared on the door. He looked around and fingered his weapon, alert for any possible threats.
"Take Megan to her room...", commanded the Doctor.
"Yes, sir."
The Enclave guard tok her frail arm in a gentle grip, and helped her stagger out of the room. "Are you okay, ma'am?"
"I'm fine...I'm fine...", she replied, and swatted his hand away. It was getting too close to some sensitive spots. The frontal parts. "Go away. I can handle myself."
"Are you sure ma'am?"
"Yes. GO!"
The Enclave guard shrugged and went back to his post, guarding her father. "Damn crazy lab-type females..", he muttered. "No fun at all.."
She considered using her rank and clout to demote the man into permanent latrine duty, but shrugged the idea off. She was too tired...
She went into her room and locked the door.
Maybe after she got some sleep..
-------------------------
She woke when something behind her emitted a loud, mechanical scream. She picked it up and threw it across the room, smiling at the *clank* sound as it smashed into pieces at the far wall.
Megan blinked her eyes open.
"Where am I?"
She held a hand up to her aching temple. "Enclave...", she spat. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked around her spartan room. Bed. Regulation white pillows and sheets. Standard metal cabinets...and off to one side, a computer terminal.
She hobbled over to it and logged on.
INPUT IDEN> MEGAN UNTHER 009342
IDEN PASSED.
She wiped the stray locks off her eyeview and began to work.
INPUT> .. \records.biology.bioenchancement
DIRECTORY RECORDS.BIOLOGY.BIOENCHANCEMENT
00001 Phoenix Implants
00002 Impact Armor Implants
00003 Cerebral Enchancement
000 ^C
-break-
INPUT>
She massaged the deep twinge in her head, and stared at the green on black characters on the terminal. She winced, and slammed her palm into the keyboard, the throbbing in her head had almost made her scream.
She took a deep, calming breath, and looked into the screen.
DIRECTORY ARCHIVES.TECH.THREAT.BROTHERHOOD_OF_STEEL
0001 Power Armor P42d
0002 Maxson
0003 Files.History
"Threat? Brotherhood of Steel?"
Her headache temporarily forgottem, she bent down to peruse the deepest recesses of Enclave.Net resources.
"So..we're not the only ones who keep tabs on the Wasteland.", she said to herself, and absorbed the data that went streaming down her screen. Her left eyebrow developed a twitch, as she realized the implications.
Another military organization, with access to the same tech, but with vastly different aims. She could easily see how this was considered a threat. No, not the sheer military potential, but the ideals they represented.
She loaded everything into her local terminal, for later perusing. Her gaze went around her stark living quarters, and imagined it going up in flames.
She shook her head...these visions were beginning to be discordant.
She shut the terminal and put on her slightly rumpled lab coat. She stretched her long, shapely legs, hidden under the skin-tight blue silken pants. She smiled slightly, remembering how Guardsmen would sigh as she passed. She always swung a little more when she went past them, taunting them with something they could never have.
*************************
When she entered the Lab, she found her father arguing with the General.
General Wayward Stanley, was the only man in the Enclave as old as her father. He was a bit on the pudgy side, and had a triple chin, but if you looked into his eyes, you'd see them burning with a fire that hadn't diminished with age. A viper, cold and calculating, a man of war, who battled with inner demons on a daily basis.
"Good Evening, General.", she greeted him. He gave her a curt nod and returned to yelling at the Doctor. She ignored the two, these was just another part of the scenery..the two would argue, and argue, and let spittle fly...and never decide on anything.
It was an old and bitter rivaly, born of friendship and competition. The ends was no longer important, it was the joy of matching wits with each other that they delighted in. The General was a stinging cobra, with remarks that came fast and hard, and left deep scars. Her father met his piercing gaze with hooded ones, and retorted with flat, sensible statements that crushed without question.
She sighed and turned to her work. Subject 49-D was acting up again, the cell tissues rejecting the grafted parts. Strange. The Dermal Impact Assault Enchancements were supposed to be benign...there was no actual contact with important nerve tissues. It mostly manifested itself on the face, where bits of Combat Armor shards supplanted soft skin. It twisted faces into a strange lizard-like grin, but it other than that, there was no other adverse effects.
The subject's tissues seems to be...healing?!..and rejecting the implants.! Impossible. No human being can heal that fast.
Not a human. A mutant. She slumped forward, laden with years of regret..
She slammed her fist down into the terminal, and felt an odd sense of release at it cracked and buckled under her hand. It attracted the attention of the two old men, who turned and looked at her oddly.
"I'm fine..", she told them "I just need to take a breath of fresh air..."
The two elderly men shrugged, and began to argue again of the benefits of adding cerebral enchancements over Combat endurance enchancements.
She massaged the pain in the nape of her neck. The disjointed blood flow was doing strange things to her mind. She thought she actually saw the General waving his arms around in the way he did for emphasis, while his decapitated head talked from the nearby table.
She opened the doors and leaned against the metal wall. She went down the nearby elevator into the Comissary, and shoved Enclave soldiers out of the line. The attendant was properly frightened of her, and quickly gave her what she wanted.
As she sat in a corner, ignoring the glares and nervous gazes being directed at her, her mind went flying once again.
She saw the Enclave, the symbol of two men supporting a glove in their arms, burst into flame and melt into golden droplets.
She smiled.
-----------------
"How long is she going to hold that donut in front of her mouth?", asked an armoured Enclave soldier to the people in his table.
"I dunno. Look at her eyes...it's like she ain't there..", replied the man across him.
"Creepy."
"What a waste, what a waste....", he added. "And she's such a looker too."
"Hey, if you like her so much, Frank, why don't you go up and talk to her..."
"What?! You're gotta be shitting.", replied Frank, and ruffled his own blonde hairs. "Do I look like I'm crazy?"
"Yeap."
"Go do it, Wort."
"I'm askin' you.."
"No fuckin' way."
They settled back down to eating. Frank picked at the gelatinous blob in his plate, the one that was termed Steak Surprise. What a surprise. It's not beef steak. It's made of squid entrails.
He scooped up a good portion and shoveled it into his mouth. He swallowed it, and resisted the urge to spit into his friend's face.
He looked at his friend's plate. He seemed to be enjoying his meal of synthesized chicken.
"What'll I get if I do?"
Wort looked up from his food and gave him an amused twinkle. "So....you'll do it...?"
"You double-dare me..?."
"Yes, I do."
"Good. I'll go up and talk to her..and if she doesn't kick me in the nuts...you eat my food, then buy me dinner for the next week."
"Done."
Frank nodded and put on his best, most charming grin. He got up from the table and walked over to Megan Unther.
"He's a brave man...", Wort remarked to his companions."But stupid."
Frank Horrigan looked down at the beauty before him, her intense, focused gaze was set to infinity. He was hard put to place this incredible woman as the most feared girl in the Enclave. An incredible scientist, a surpassing commander. An..by the words of those who tried to get her into bed...a Ball-Buster.
So he did what nobody expected him to do.
He sat. He supported his chin with his palm, his elbows on the table in front of her, and stared off into her eyes.
An hour later, they still were at it. People began to murmur. Frank had it down pat. They looked like so much a still-life sculpture, composed of a dryad, a knight, a table and...a donut.
She stared of somewhere, a point just beyond his eye.
He lost himself in her blank gaze.
She smiled lightly.
He smiled lightly.
She pursed her lips.
He pursed his lips.
She yawned.
He yawned.
She bit into the donut.
He bit into the air in front of him.
She chewed.
He chewed.
She stared off into infinity again, crumbs falling gently down the corners of her mouth.
He stared off into her eyes, and let imaginary crumbs fall out of the corners of his mouth.
She blinked.
He blinked.
She lifted her other hand and scratched her nose lightly.
He lifted his gloved hand and scratched his nose lightly.
She sighed.
He sighed.
She blinked.
He blinked.
Her eyes snapped as focus returned, and she looked as if she was just touched with a cattle prod. Her eyes regained the signs of awareness, and the first things she saw were amazingly brown eyes looking at her, an amused twinkle in them.
"Hi.", Frank Horrigan said.
Her eyes widened, and she turned away, blushing a bright red, contrasting nicely with her almost purplish hair. There was much laughter. The Ice Queen had been broken.
Megan still looked out of it...and it was this that saved them. The laughter subsided as soon as they saw she was starting to get some sense.
"Uhh.....", she said to Frank.
He pushed agaisnt the table and let himself extend into his full height. Her eyes widened. Gods! He was tall, almost seven feet in height. And atop the Eclave armor was a handsome, boyish face that grinned at her kindly.
"Uhh...huha..neh..?"
"Hello...it seems we still haven't been properly introduced.", he remarked and held out his hand. "I'm Frank. Frank Horrigan. And the Lady is..."
She smiled, knowing his plot. "I am Megan... Megan Unther.", and took his hand and shook it.
"Charmed, Milady", he added and kissed it, eliciting another smile, and a faint coloring of the cheeks from her. He sat down again, and a waitress placed an order of the best meals the kitchen could make in front of him. She winked at him suggestively as she passed.
"May I eat in your company, Milady Unther..?"
"Yes, you may...Sir Horrigan."
They smiled at each other, and began to eat their dinner, an already an hour late.
They had to bring in a tactical squad to stop the frenzied cheering in the Commissary.
------------------------------
Megan massaged the kink in her neck. She stared into the printouts and sighed again.
Subject No. 94 was starting to rot in several places, as the Implants began to eat into his system.
Subject 56 was doing well...but he was a blithering idiot.
Subject 45.....was simply too gruesome....all that was left was a bloody smear on the wall.
"This is not going well...",she remarked.
Her father didn't turn from his assembly of a huge biomechanical arm. "Do not worry, Daughter. Things of such magnitute tend to take time to develop."
He inserted a wire, and the arm flexed its mighty claw-like fingers into a powerful fist.
"Magnitude...magnitude..", she whispered. Strangely enough..the word brought a smile to her lips. Magnitude reminded her of the Earth, which reminded her of the hard ,stone-strewn ground, which reminded her of upheaving red volcanic rocks, which reminded her of towering, craggy mountains, and whose height reminded her of....Frank Horrigan.
Practically everything reminded her of Frank these days..
She looked into her watch and groaned. "I'll have to leave you alone in here now, Dad. I have to go."
"Meeting up with your boyfriend again, Daughter?"
"He is not my boyfriend."
"As you wish.."
She sighed and gathered up her notes into a folder. She saved the data into a holodisk and placed it into her pocket. She hugged the valuable top-secret data in her arms and walked out the door.
Dr. Unther smiled, his visage stretching out, his thin-muscled face becoming almost skull-like in that motion. She had never called him "Dad" before...
End Chapter One
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AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!! Ain't I a stinker? Ending a story not even half-way? Aside from what you may have started to think, this isn't as much of a dark story....for now..
While it does deal with how Frank got his Armor...it also deals with his hidden life before it happened. The cold-blooded killer we know from Fallout 2 wasn't always such...and that's what I'm trying to paint a picture of here...
Hey, I could've placed it in the Bet, if I wanted...but I've had other plans.
See you in a couple!
Additional Notes:
Once again....pay no notice to actual historical correctness. Since when did I pay it any heed?
Whose POV should the next Chap be on? Should I continue to keep it on Megan's or alternate between hers and Frank's?
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put this on..
http://uro.topcities.com/bluearmor.gif
~cause I can get a little cranky....without moi daily dose oh coffee!!~
-it's the freakin' bluepencil!
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