Sunset's Isekai

by Wanderer D


It Walks Among Us (Fallout 4 - Pt. 5)

Sunset's Isekai
It Walks Among Us (Fallout 4 - Pt. 5)
By Wanderer D

"How would Robyn know about a whiskey refinery from the 1650s?" Piper asked.

"You know us Irish girls, love," Cait said, smiling invitingly as she snuggled up to the reporter. "We've got good memories for the important things in life."

"Booze?"

"And lover's weak spots…" Cait bit her ear.

Piper giggled and squirmed away, sitting on the other side of Danse, who chuckled in amusement. "Blue's going to get jealous that we got started early."

"Blue needs to pay more attention to us," Cait countered, "plus I taught Courie a new trick."

"Ah, the energy of youth," Nick said, deadpan.

"So," Danse asked, putting his arms around both women more to keep them in check than because he wanted to cuddle, although the decision was taken from him immediately as they both snuggled in. "Ahem." He cleared his throat, intentionally looking straight at Nick. "So, the smoke?"

Nick chuckled. "Are you sure you want to know? You three seem busy."

"No, Nick!" Piper gasped, sitting up straight. "You can't leave the story there! I need details! Why! When! How! Where!"

Cait, who hadn't removed herself from Danse, smirked. "You're going to write an article, aren't you?"

"Or a novel!" Piper declared. "Either way a good journalist won't let a story drift out of her grasp."

Nick shrugged. "Fair enough. Now, where was I?"

Navigating the streets of modern-day Boston is by no means an easy feat. Collapsed bridges, buildings, and roads; derelict cars, broken up streets with danger lurking in every shadow. Any open window could mean a sniper; any street the potential for an ambush.

Even so, few things bothered us while we had a wolf the size of a car trotting along, and our scouts couldn't be beaten: an eagle and a ghost. Who would even think of keeping an eye for that, or flying witches?

I had always known the world was a strange place. After all, I had woken up in a dumpster and discovered I was basically a robot out of the pulps. I had seen mutants and giant bugs; creatures that belonged in the pages of Grognack or the writings of a deranged mind.

But with the visit of one young witch, my world had only gotten stranger. I wasn't sure what was next, but it would have a hard time beating this. Cryogenically frozen clones? Ancient cults hiding in plain sight? Hell, even that dumb Gilded Grasshoper Marty was going on about just last night.

All of them together wouldn't be enough to surpass this.

Despite the complicated navigation between the ruins of Boston, we finally made it to Olaf's camp. Or what was left of it.

The front wall of the camp had exploded outwards, sending pieces of metal and people flying in all directions, and littering the entire street with debris and occasionally identifiable body parts, almost like someone had detonated a mini-nuke right next to it. However, the area of the explosion didn't match that kind of explosion; whatever had destroyed it had expanded outwards like a fan that had melted the asphalt at the edges of a large crevice it had carved through.

Here and there I could hear the groans and cries of raiders nursing their wounds. There wasn't much threat left: whatever raiders were alive were in no condition to even defend themselves against their former prisoners, who were taking immense pleasure in getting back at them.

The girls immediately spread out as I went to investigate deeper into the camp, where Brutalhammer's nest would be. There I found the patchwork structure collapsed and half-melted… although there were no signs of heat. Parts of the walls were melted in, as if something incredibly hot had seared through them like a warm knife and butter… but there were no scorch marks here. Half the structure was not only melted, but also buried under hard ground, as if something had pulled it into the ground itself before losing interest and letting it rest where it lay.

The only thing I could find was Olaf's War Hammer; a nasty piece of work with rusted spikes, razors and nails dipped in toxic waste making the already deadly super sledge hammer an environmental hazard as well as an invitation for tetanus.

It was broken. The wood had splintered backwards, as if it had smashed with immeasurable force against something much sturdier than it was capable of harming. An arm and hand still clung to it, muscular and tattooed… probably Brutalhammer's.

I could only shake my head. The place looked like a giant had simply swept into an anthill, carelessly destroying, burying, smashing… while the helpless insects attempted their best to stop it with futile, harmless attacks that ended up hurting them more than they would ever hurt it.

Following a noise, I found a live raider, who seemed to be whole in body but the look on his face… It was horrible. As if he was witnessing horrors beyond what we could imagine. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in a silent scream while his hands curled and uncurled in desperate grasping motions at some unseen route of escape.

Except his lower body was swallowed by the ground, so he couldn't run. Instead his hands had scratched his face into a bloody mess.

"Wow," Danni said, emerging from the ground next to me and almost making me jump, "that dude's messed up."

I closed my eyes and counted silently to ten before I opened them and glared at the ghost. "Can you help me move him? Maybe we can find out…"

"No can do," she interrupted. "His lower body is completely gone a few inches underground. I think the pressure from the concrete being so tight around him is what's kept him alive so far. The moment we move him, it's going to be… messy."

She looked away. "It might be kinder to just… you know."

"Hey, guys!" Luz called, flying over to them. "Did you see the giant broken hammer with the arm still attached?! Wowzer! That guy doesn't look so good."

"He's not," Danni said. "He's dead already."

I glanced at the raider, confirming with a sigh that he had perished as we spoke.

Luz shuffled in place. "Well uh. Darn. That's… one way to go."

I had thought that the girls were used to this kind of thing, but it dawned on me right then that not all of them were as experienced as the other.

Luz was able to fight for her life, but she still held some sympathy for others, while Danni or Robyn were more callous, probably because of their different origins.

"W-well," Luz continued, turning to face away from the horrifying grimace of the half-buried body, "Lena and Robyn found a group of hobo-leppers that saw Sweetie earlier."

"Hobo-leppers?" I asked, blinking as I followed both girls across the destroyed camp to a group of… "Oh. Children of Atom." The spike in my geiger counter should've given me a hint. "Be mindful, girls. That group is radioactive."

"Oh, they're not so bad, Nick," Luz said. "They're kinda nice."

"I mean it literally. They drink radioactive water and make camp next to radioactive waste."

"Oh… that can't be good for their complexion."

"...among other things."

Turns out that Olaf Brutalhammer had crossed paths with a group of Children of Atom, led by 'Sister Mei', a short woman with the sickly-parchment-like skin pallor of a true devout of Atom and traces of what used to be long, black hair still remaining in patches on her head.

She wasn't a ghoul yet, but she was as close as she was going to get before she died. When the girls hadn't cringed or shunned her group, she had opened up quickly to them, seeing Lena as clear proof that 'Atom's love for living creatures clearly extended beyond humanity itself' or something along those lines.

Maybe she thought she could pull them into her cult, or maybe she genuinely was just that willing to help. Either way, she told us about things from her perspective, once we got her talking in earnest.

Sister Mei patted the rotting arm of Brother Tom with silent reassurance. "I know this looks bad, brothers and sisters, but we must have faith in Atom. He works in mysterious ways, and His will embraces us and draws us closer to the truth every day."

She walked around the cage, touching a hand here, a face there. Ruffling the hair of the younger ones. "We are not like the faithless that are trapped with us," she continued, "we are chosen. And as chosen we are challenged, but not prisoners. Never true prisoners."

She turned to face another nearby faithful, but reeled back when his face exploded into pieces, making the others cry in surprise and horror. Above them, safe from their reach, Olaf's Raiders laughed at their suffering, but Sister Mei quickly gathered herself.

She would not give them the pleasure of seeing her shock, or her pain at the loss of yet another member of her flock, although she cursed under her breath the bad luck that had led them to cross paths with these raiders on their pilgrimage towards the wastelands.

She was about to speak again when a commotion near the entrance gathered the attention of all present. She turned to look past the several other large cages containing prisoners, to where Olaf himself led a large group of raiders back to camp.

Apparently their prize was a young woman of maybe… twelve years of age. Certainly no older than fourteen in appearance, at least. But there was something about that girl.

Her skin was flawless, and looked soft, her hair colored skillfully into pink and purple, and she was dressed in a simple white dress that seemed to challenge anything to get it dirty at all, that's how clean it was. Sister Mei would have dismissed the child as no more than some sort of unlucky, rich child abducted by these savages if it hadn't been for the eyes.

As if sensing her gaze, the young woman had turned to stare at Sister Mei with the greenest eyes she had ever seen. Eyes that belonged to no mortal. Eyes that shone with a radiance that could only be matched by the most toxic of radioactive sludge that could carry Atom's blessing.

This was no mere child.

Not even a young woman… she was something else. Something inexplicable that awakened a deep sense of danger within Sister Mei's senses. Although not exactly the same, it reminded her of her test of devotion, performed so many years back, when she had drank Atom's water, ran through Atom's forest, following the flashes and visions that had led her to the Children of Atom's camp and into her true devotion.

It was the exhilaration of being called by a higher force, but also the nagging, almost overwhelming feeling of having done something tremendously, irreparably stupid and dangerous, something so consequentially damaging that being aware that the drugged-like state that had kept the fear at the edges of her senses had allowed her to continue through things that would have otherwise paralyzed her with fear and horror.

It was just a second, but for an eternal second, she was once more there in the forest, running high on radiation-induced delirium, but this time the light haze that kept the darkness away was not her friend or protector, it was mocking her and threatening to fade away just so she could be consumed by darkness.

She ignored the questions from her followers, ignored the dead body in the cage, ignored everything else as Olaf picked up the young… creature… and set her up on a stage.

"Well then, little princess," he said with one of his big, bellowing laughs that promised unpleasant times ahead, "now that you're here, sing for us. If we like what we hear… well, I might let you join my gang as our pet."

The young woman, who had been studying the camp while he talked, turned to face him, tilting her head. "Your pet?"

Olaf, a giant of a man as any Sister Mei had seen, leaned over grinning, his muscles rippling, his spiked, dirty leather and metal clothes clanking menacingly as his wide eyes seemed to grow with malice. He licked the young woman's face.

"My personal pet."

The young woman's eyes narrowed. "I think not."

This caused a roar of laughter from the gathered raiders as Olaf roared in laughter before savagely punching the young woman in the face.

"Ah." Luz bit her lip as she glanced around. "I guess that explains the arm," she said helpfully to Nick, who turned to look at her.

"The one still attached to the hammer?"

"No the other one," she said, pointing to a body nearby.

Nick took a long, pondering look at it before turning around to face Luz again. "How does that explain OIaf having his other arm ripped off then used to punch through his face all the way to the elbow?"

"He should have known better than to punch a lady in the face."

Mei giggled almost hysterically, and Lena patted her on the shoulder. "There, there. Sweetie's gone now."

"Still," Danni groaned, "she left us quite the mess." She turned to face Nick as he walked closer to an area with half-devoured bodies. "Hey Nick, be careful. Don't touch the black stuff, it will drain your soul and possibly chew on your body."

Nick looked down at the puddle of obsidian-black liquid. It bubbled once, as if mocking him. "I'm a synth."

"So? You still have one, and Azathoth wouldn't care if you didn't anyway. It'd probably give you one only so it could eat it, and I'm certain that's one of its."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Nick replied.

"All the more reason to leave it alone. Shoo. Go do detective things, I'll get rid of the chaos puddle."

With nothing better to do, Nick left the ghost to her work and sat next to Lena and Sister Mei, who was now the defacto leader of not only the remaining Children of Atom, but most of the survivors that had been released during the fight.

"What happened next?" Lena said gently, while Robyn brought a bottle of water for Mei, who took it gratefully.

While Mei did her best to describe feverish descriptions of the dismemberment, destruction, tearing apart and physical disassembly of several dozen raiders in varying levels of unbelievable violence that had traumatized a good amount of prisoners and driven others mad, Nick instead concentrated on figuring out Sweetie's next move.

According to Mei, after Olaf had punched Sweetie Belle, all hell had broken loose. Literally. Sweetie had maimed, murdered, ripped, disintegrated, and summoned creatures from beyond to do her bidding in making sure the Raiders were not only dead, but suffered before being snuffed out… possibly only to suffer more later on in other planes of existence if Lena's whispered mutterings were to be believed.

"Wait," he interrupted. "What was that you just said?"

"W-well," Sister Mei stammered, "the Goddess…"

"Nope. Don't call her that. Bad idea," Robyn interrupted quickly. "Just Sweetie."

Clearing her throat and glancing nervously at the archer, Mei nodded. "Um…. y-yeah. Okay. Uh, t-the G-Sweetie Belle… she said she sensed something familiar heading North East from here… she said it was moving, so she wanted to see what it was."

"It was… moving?" Nick repeated softly. "Could it be that she's been following someone all this time?"

The girls looked at each other. "I guess… that would explain things?" Luz said. "If she wasn't interested in something in particular, I think she'd be okay with just heading home."

"But what could possibly interest her so much? This world has very little that could draw her attention," Lena said.

"Unless she really wants to destroy it," Robyn pointed out.

"Yeah, but she would get in trouble with Sunset if she did that while we're here," Luz said, making all the girls nod.

"Whatever the case might be," Nick said, "we still have to follow her somehow, and she's hidden her steps too well. Even Mehbe can't track her." He stroked his chin. "If we only had another thing to focus on…" His voice trailed off as he contemplated the traumatized Child of Atom. "Tell me, Sister Mei, did Sweetie pick up anything from here? Did she take something belonging to Olaf, perhaps?"

"N-no, but… w-well," Sister Mei cleared her throat. "S-some of my group decided to worship her and follow her… although I think she's been chosen by Atom, I just couldn't abandon everyone else, so I stayed behind…"

Robyn's eyes widened. "Brilliant! That's fantastic, isn't it?" she turned to face the others excitedly. "Mehbe and I can't follow Sweetie's scent on our own… but we can follow the one from the Children of Atom that followed her!"

"Yes!" Danni crowed, grinning. "Let's go get her!"

"See?" Luz elbowed Nick, grinning at the others. "Aren't you girls glad I got us a detective?"