Motley Mutants: Ch. 1 - Meat Man

+ Dirt. All Roc could see through his rifle scope was dirt. He had been sent by clan-leader Boston into the wastes a week ago in order to find more meat for the camp to which he belonged. Over the first six days he was able to bag a fair amount of miscellaneous wasteland creatures without a problem, as he visited all of the common hunting spots near the camp. But, as his tended to do, his luck began to wear thin as he struggled to spot anything besides the occasional buzzing bloat fly. There once was a time when his clan had no need for hunting excursions like this. The clan of over a hundred mutants could easily slaughter dozens of the little pink and brown 'bleeders' who they would find inhabiting prewar buildings and facilities, thus sustaining their numbers. That was, of course, before their second encounter with the metal skinned men. The Metal Men had hunted the clan of mutants relentlessly, pushing them back to the Virginia-Carolines border, to a place once called Warrenton. At times like this, Roc would commonly catch himself happily daydreaming of all the dead human carcasses he and his brothers had collected before the rediscovery of the metal men. His fantasy eroded into that of a taunting dream, when a ripping pain in the pit of his stomach reminded him that he had eaten the last of his personal rations the night before.

"Howuur! Howuur!" Roc stumbled to his feet. The howls had come from Cerberus, his tri-headed mutant hound, whom he had been partners with ever since his first memory. He drew his rifle scope near to his eye and peered through the narrow hole, aiming it towards a nearby collapsed Super-Duper Mart. He scanned through the parking lot of forgotten automobiles and along the outskirts of the building. After a while without any sign of Cerberus, he slung his wooden rifle over his shoulder and began to climb down from the ruined two story building he was using as a vantage point. Once at the bottom he stopped, turned, and looked back to the east. He feared what his brothers would do to him if he returned to camp without meat enough for the whole clan to eat. With a determined grunt and a bit of haste, Roc began jogging in the direction of Cerberus's alert calls.

Soon he was but a few strides away from the old world grocery, and had gone a while without hearing from Cerberus. Lifting his head, he sniffed loudly, sifting through the scents in the air for a particularly fetid aroma which he recognized so well as his companion's. All Roc's FEV enhanced nostrils could sense however was some mole rat dung, a distant irradiated corpse, and of course, dirt. He lowered his head and breathed a dissatisfied grumble. It was taking too long to find Cerberus, and the punishment for returning to camp late would be severe if Boston were to have his say - and he always did. The doors of the Super-Duper Mart were left ajar, their hinges broken; he could only hope it was Cerberus's doing. He shouldered his rifle tightly and entered the dark, vacant building. Inside, the only light he was permitted was the sunlight that shone from where parts of the roof had caved in, however many years earlier. The further he went into the store, the louder the scuttling from deeper parts he could not see, became. With each step he began to feel more and more like an intruder, in someone's or something's home. Due to his considerably weak overall mental acuity, Roc rarely felt scared or afraid even when his life was at stake. However, after standing in the dilapidated store for just a few brief moments, even a hulkish mutant like himself began to have sincere feelings of trepidation. Closing his eyes, Roc once again allowed his sense of smell to explore through the wafting smells of the half-destroyed grocery. This time he began walking as he did so, barely using any sense besides that which his nose readily provided. Though, perhaps the dull mutant should have opened his eyes a bit wider, as he would soon walked right into a knee-high counter, thumping his kneecap so hard that a corner of the tile counter broke free. Upset and frustrated, Roc reached to console himself when he caught glimpse of a pile of rotted bones behind the grocery counter. He reached down, picked one up and held it near to his nose. He inhaled sharply and briefly. "Ghouls..." He decided, aloud. After discarding the worthless and brittle bone, Roc wiped the stream of steadily collecting sweat beads from his brow, and pressed on, rifle raised. He traced the ghoulish scent through the categorized aisles and straight to the double doors in the back of the store. He stood before the blood spotted doors, and began to reach for the handle just as two loud bangs struck it from the other side, causing him to retract his hand. Then, in a near instrumental fashion, the bangs repeated, and repeated again. Roc prepared for whatever was on the other side to break through by hunkering down behind a shelf in what the sign above his head explained, was once the frozen treats aisle. Finally, the doors broke open and through them came a familiar set of deformed faces. The humongous, hairless, and all too green mutated hound trotted forward awkwardly balancing its three heads. They scrambled behind Roc and began howling the way they commonly did when alerted to danger, or when begging for meat scraps. Roc took a moment to calm and quiet the obedient, mutant-mutt by laying his palm on its hairless back. From down the hallway came a trio of feral ghouls, stumbling and tripping over each other in their fervent pursuit of Cerberus. Even now confronted by a 9 foot tall super mutant, the ghouls didn't flinch. Roc raised his rifle and fired a round through the first ghoul's throat leaving it incapacitated and writhing on the floor. He took aim at another one and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened: his rifle had jammed. Before he could even attempt to diagnose the cause of the lockup, the zombie-like monster dressed in a polka-dotted, pink and white dress leaped through the air, landing teeth and talons first on his right forearm. The ghoul's jagged teeth tore deeper into the super mutant's flesh as it dangled from Roc's flailing arm. A moment later the last ghoul, a beast of a being dressed in prewar business casual, clung onto his back and tore out a chunk of the flesh meant to conceal his shoulder blade. The immediate pain surged through Roc, forcing him to open the gate to a caged roar. With his left hand he reached behind himself and grabbed the uninvited piggy backer's head. He squeezed until he could feel its skull bones giving way, and then continued even tighter until the ghoul was forced to release his clamped jaws. He yanked the ghoul out from behind his back, raising it to his eye level; he wanted to witness its suffering. The ghoul did not disappoint Roc as its screams of agony reached decibels so high they temporarily deafened him. He ended the creature's final moments with a grip that turned its skull to not but blood and goo. Satisfied, he released the ghoul's remains, permitting him to focus his full ire on the other clinging biter. Cerberus clamped its powerful sets of jaws around the ghoul's legs, and started pulling in an effort to free its master, while Roc pulled in the opposite direction. Ever still, the determined ghoul stayed firmly attached to Roc's massive foliage colored arm. Roc, now particularly perturbed, grabbed hold of the cereal shelf and tugged on it with all his might. This, coupled with Cerberus's firm grip, finally proved to be too much for the feral being. As the mutants struggled, the ghoul's body began to make audible cracks and pops, until finally its spine snapped in two. The ghoul's now unsupported mid-section tore open, allowing its entrails to pour out freely. The two mutilated ghoul halves fell to the ground with an echoed thump. Ghouls, while inedible to humans due to their high radiation levels, made for a tender treat to the rad-impervious super mutants. Breathing hoarsely, Roc knelt down beside the lifeless carcass. He reached into its chest cavity and pulled out a few withered organs, feeding one to each of his mutant hound's heads as reward for the hunt. Roc couldn't help but spread a thin smile across his face at the sight of them happily gobbling down their well-deserved treats. While they were undoubtedly intimidating in appearance, the conjoined triplets never did take to killing the way other mutant hounds did. Nevertheless, they always provided Roc with assistance when need be. He removed the gore bag from his back and laid it down beside the dead feral ghouls. He took his rusty cleaver out and began quartering the former humans. One by one he placed the sections of meat into the already crowded sack. Surely they would make for good meat in one of Girder's stews, Roc thought. The mutant was packing his bags to go when Cerberus caught wind of another scent in the store. "More ghouls?" Roc asked the mutated dogs, who then gave chase to where their noses had directed them. He watched as Cerberus chased over to a corner of the store labeled, 'C stom r S rv ce'. The hounds rammed their sizable skulls into the door of the pre-war office nook, and barked loudly to get their master's attention. Roc hurried over to the door, bid his creature to heel, and listened carefully with his ear pressed to its cold surface. He heard a noise which to him sounded like a bouncing ball accompanied by a slowly deflating one. Confused, he listened closer, but his diligence only helped better paint the picture of the twin rubber balls, of disparate fortune. "Bouncy balls?" Roc asked through the door. The deflating ball stopped making noise suddenly, and the bouncing one repeated even faster. A bullet slammed through the door suddenly and into Roc's leathery shoulder. He backed away from the door, and poked at his wound curiously. The mutant glanced at the blood which colored his forefinger red. "Bullet?" He speculated.

"You'd better back off asshole! Alright?!" A teenage-human voice shouted from behind the door. "I've got so many bullets back here that I could double your weight just shooting you with them! Thousands of them!" The voice claimed vociferously through the door, accompanied by the audible reloading of a handheld weapon.

"HA-HA! HUMAN in there, Cerberus! Too fun!" Roc bellowed.

"How's this for fun you green, motherfucker?!" *bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang* six shots plus four more rang out loudly, piercing Roc's thick skin harmlessly from hip to neck. Laughing sinisterly, Roc kicked the door to the office in, hurtling it deep into the dark room. It landed at the feet of a wounded girl, causing her to yelp. The blonde human raised her 9mm up and squeezed it tightly and frequently. She was visibly disheartened to find that she had already discharged her entire 10 round clip into the towering super mutant. "Fuck!" She yowled at the ceiling, before throwing her pistol at Roc's chest in defiance.

"NO MORE BULLETS, HUMAN!" Roc relished.

"Listen…please just fucking listen for once, goddammit! All you do is FIGHT and KILL!" Roc continued approaching the girl in her late teens as she bled profusely from her wounded ribcage and outer thigh. "I just came to look for some shitty BlamCo and cheese… C'mon man, you have to under- Aghhuh!" Roc stepped on the scavenger's leg who in turn cried out in pain.

"No more talk, human. No more live, human." Outside of the office, Cerberus was laying patiently atop some scattered newspapers dating back to the month of October, in the year 2077. Its two side-heads licked its front paws, while the middle head napped peacefully, seemingly unaware of the distant hacking noises coming from the office behind them.

+ The sun was nearly set as Roc and Cerberus stood before the camp gates, their hunt concluded. Roc raised his gore bag above his head; a signal to the gate keeper he had earned his entrance, as was their rule for returning Meat Men. The camp gates slowly rose revealing a rather bustling scene of merry mutants shouting and brawling amongst themselves. The smell of the harvested meats floated through the air as he passed his green skinned brothers and their gawking eyes. Roc threw a piece of raw meat into the air and followed it with a sharp whistle. His mutant hound companion ran after it and into one of the kennels, which Roc then swung firmly shut. Roc made his way past the lower camp and up the twisting hill to the overseeing tent of Clan-Leader Boston. Boston had come from a place called The Commonwealth and had, on his way to the Carolines, accumulated a fairly large throng of super mutants, centaurs, and mutant hounds. At the time of Roc's first memory, Boston had only around half of the mutants he now led. Back then, many mutants were created like Roc was when they still had the means to do so. Later on most were found wandering the wastes or were assimilated from small groups of their own. Many super mutants joined the young mutant's cause, due to a promise of what all mutants held most dear: A promise to obtain more of the 'green and gooey stuff'. The FEV, and barrels of it is what Boston promised to his recruits. Enough to take super mutants from a scattered nuisance, to an unequivocally dominant force in the wastes.

A rather large brute of a mutant stood guard outside Boston's tent, attentively scanning the landscape around it. Roc knew him simply as, Chop; a name which was appropriately awarded to him, given the countless victims he had done so to with his custom halberd. The weapon was essentially an octagonal street sign which he had torn out of the ground one day while dueling a deathclaw. Since then the weapon had been the subject of several enhancements from Boston himself, including a reforged steel center welded between two symmetrical aluminum street signs, and a sharpened spear point shaped using its original steel post. Chop was Boston's most fierce supporter, whom he protected mostly preemptively by thwarting any plans of rebellion before they were formed. He did so simply by being the necessary hurdle between Boston and any would-be usurpers. Roc's stride came to a halt as he laid his laboriously collected meat before the dutiful warden.

A long moment passed as Chop glared at the bag. Then suddenly, looking up at Roc, he asked,

"What this is?" he sniffed the air above the sack, then continued "Meat?"

"Meat." Roc replied plainly.

Another long moment drifted by, followed by another, before the increasingly inquisitorial mutant yet again wondered aloud, "Meat?"

"Meat." Roc repeated mildly, still not understanding the reason for the confusion.

Chop leaned back and opened the tent shroud slightly before exclaiming into it the words, "Boston! Meat man here!" For a while, Roc could not tell if the tent was inhabited at all. Then a shadow appeared, blocking the light which shone through the tent flap. The flaps then parted ways revealing a mutant who stood an entire head shorter than the one already in front of him, yet equally imposing in ways Roc couldn't quite understand. The mutant wore a black shirt, black cargo pants, black boots, and a strange copper-colored crown.

"Meat man say bag got guts innit. True, methink. But not sure. You think me -"

"Thank you, Chop. You are a fine sentinel, but I would remind you that your duties do not extend to that of detective. This one I sent for meat, and meat he has returned with. He deserves, your thanks." Chop, while thoroughly confused by certain words his master had just uttered, had been in his company long enough to understand what he was supposed to do. And so, reluctantly, he turned to Roc and signaled his thanks by patting his head and then chest in quick succession. Roc promptly returned the common mutant gesture as a courtesy. They both then turned to Boston, who appeared to be satisfied with the exchange.

"Come, Roc." Chop stood firmly in the way of the entrance refusing to remove his beady eyed stare from Roc's head. Roc picked up his sack and slid past him and into the tent, barely cognizant of the larger mutant's anger. Wires, clothes, scattered ammunition, and books littered the dwelling almost completely. The interior was illuminated by several lanterns placed on adjacent shelving units, one of which held an automatic rifle that the orphaned ammo could have possibly belonged to, though Roc did not deduce this. Instead, Roc curiously followed the wires with his eyes to a cattycornered desk that supported a brightly colored glass monitor. Boston stood in front of his dusty metal desk, incidentally obscuring the monitor from Roc. "My studies, are very important, I assure you. But they leave little room for much else, including general hygiene it would seem." Roc again pulled the sack from his back and dropped it to the ground. "Meat." He again asserted. "Oh, so you aren't a mute imbecile after all!" Boston chuckled as if he had just told a joke. If he had, Roc thought, Roc did not get it. "Very well, meat it is. Looks to be enough for a while, when combined with Brand's haul, that is. You can take that to Girder later, but first I have something I need to ask of you first, young Roc." Roc was again beginning to feel an unease he only ever felt when talking to Boston. No other mutant paid him much attention, and he preferred it that way. Quiet meant more sleep, and sleep meant dreams. "What you need?" He muttered just over his breath.

"It is not my needs that require fulfilling, rather the needs of our entire race, Roc. Did you encounter any metal skinned men during your travels?" Roc's face wrinkled as he struggled to remember.

"I think…no. Not since long time ago." He admitted. Boston stared directly into Roc's eyes for a long moment, as if he were choosing whether or not to be satisfied with the answer.

"I suspected so." He stood up from his leaning position on his desk, turned around to face it, and then reached into one of its many drawers. He spoke over his shoulder, "I think that there's a reason for that Roc. I believe that the metal ones have their own base of operations to the south. Uhh, a camp…of sorts." Boston turned around and extended his hand to Roc, loosely clutching a rolled paper. "Here. Take it." He said, adding a slight gesture. Roc took the mysterious scroll and unrolled it slowly. "It's a road map. Chop and I acquired it from a fallen metal man. It should have directions that will lead us directly to our enemy's gates. We need only send scouts to confirm." He paused briefly, "I want you and Brand to be those scouts." Roc looked up at Boston. "I need you and Brand to investigate the validity of this map, and go to wherever it leads you." Roc shifted his focus back to the map. He wasn't sure if he was confused more by Boston, or the odd ink scratchings draped across the top of the map. His face must have shown his frustration because suddenly Boston pointed a finger at one of the markings and spoke softly, "These are letters. They read B-O-S, or BOS. It is an acronym, which stands for, 'The Brotherhood of Steel'. The true identity of these metal men. You leave tomorrow. I have already taken the time to debrief Brand. He is preparing to leave, and I suggest you do the same."

+ Roc couldn't sleep. For the last week he had spent his nights atop buildings, in abandoned shacks, or wherever else he could find that provided minimal shelter. Every one of those nights he went to bed longing to be sleeping exactly where he was then, in his tiny quarters above the mutant hound and centaur kennels. The collective and all too monotonous drones of the lesser mutants always seemed to help him slowly drift from consciousness. Eventually he was able to focus on their dull incoherencies and await the ensuing dreams. Dreams, however, did not come. In their stead were nightmarish visions of the metal men. They surrounded him, but on him, they were not focused. Their lasers darted towards an enveloping and slowly approaching darkness. He tried to stand only to realize he was gravely wounded and thus could not. Blood raced freely now from his body. "Not my body", he thought. "A pink man's body". Under the blood he could see only pink skin. His limbs were encased in metal now. Through a screen's heads up display, he saw highlighted creatures approaching from the darkness. Tall, strong, fast, and green creatures. They were his brothers, coming to rescue him, he decided. He planted his hands on the ground and lifted himself up using the metal suits added strength. He could tell that his brothers were winning, as many of the metal men had fallen now, littering the ground around him. He held his wound shut with one hand and waved to his brothers with the other. He had never been happier to see Chop then when he noticed him sprinting his way now. He emphatically yelled "Brother!" several times to him without return. Roc couldn't understand; why didn't Chop respond? Chop stopped a yard in front of him, his beady eyes filled with more than mere suspicion now. In them Roc could only identify conclusion. Chop raised his axe above his head, and down it came. The darkness was complete.