this was mainly for my own experimentation. i'll be damned if Charon isn't a tough person to keep in line of the in-character range.





The screams were insufferable, hardly like anything I’d ever heard out of the kid’s mouth. She was in the most agonizing pain that could be described without exaggeration, and that was saying something. No one knew what to do or how to assist, not even myself, since I had no idea what the fuck was happening to her. When we carried her back into the metro, the only injuries that we knew of was a bullet wound in the shoulder and she had been singed on her left thigh and shin. Goddamn Mr.Gutsies and their flamers - you could never get too close to them unless you wanted to turn yourself into a fried shishkebab.

But from what I could see - and I think I spoke for everyone else in the room by saying this - the burns on her leg were long forgotten, focusing too much on the pain in an area that was completely unknown to the rest of us. She began to writhe uncontrollably on the table, her wails seeming to become more rabid and...animal like. It was like she was mutating into something else. If the kid kept rolling around as violently as she did, she might take off one of our fucking arms or swipe a good row of claw marks on someone’s face. I knew we had killed everything in the area, so I took this emergency as a time to set my shotgun down and actually try to keep her from losing it.

“Someone hold her down! Pin her down!”

Miril and Buck immediately obeyed my order and ran to hold down her left arm and her chest, whilst the super-mutant held down her legs with little hassle at all - guy was fucking strong, no way the girl would be getting her legs free from him anytime soon. The few wastelanders that we had rescued kept their distance, some whimpering and some staring in complete shock. This really peeved me; they could have at least helped pin the goddamned girl down to keep her from punching someone in the face. Damned cowards.

I had no choice but to let her right arm flail madly; I was more concerned about her giving herself a whiplash, so I tried my best to hold her head into place without her biting at my hands or attempting to rip off whatever skin was left on my skull with her free arm. My hands weren’t pressing hard enough on her head to keep her still, but it was the best I could do, seeing as she wasn’t going to stop spazzing anytime soon.

“Kid, kid--look at me, look at me!”

She still wouldn’t stop squirming - and I knew that whatever was wrong must’ve hurt pretty goddamned well for her to be acting this way - but she managed to open her eyes for the slightest minute and stare back at me. Tears were piercing the edges of her eyes and her voice had that gurgled, sobbing sound to it as she gasped and let out another yelp. She was trying so damn hard to keep her eyes open, even I could tell that.

“Calm down, calm the fuck down - where are you hurting? I can’t help you until I know where you’re hurting!”

She tried to speak, but appeared to only be choked by her cries and continued to squirm beneath our grasp. This wasn’t working. She could be dying for all I fucking knew, and yet no one, not even myself, knew what was causing her so much pain - no way a measely bullet wound and minor burn injuries would cause her to act this way, there was something else going on and I had to admit that I was gradually becoming even more concerned.

“Her right arm! Check her right arm!”

Fawkes’ sudden outburst caught all three of us by surprise, and not wanting to take any chances, I regarded him for a minute before turning to look at the kid’s arm - after I had pinned it to the table, that is. But as soon as I applied pressure onto the arm to keep it down, my hands, upon sheer surprise, instantly recoiled and thus her arm began swinging about and attempting to hit anything she could. I swear to fucking God I felt something move beneath those bandages. Whatever it was, it squirmed like an eel, coiling and smooth, but it was strange enough to make me pull away from her.

I managed to see her hand grip the side of the table and she just held it there, holding it as if it were her own life, and if I hadn’t seen it myself, I might’ve considered it to have been entirely impossible: the girl’s hand was evidently clutching onto the table with so much force that the metal actually began to bend beneath her palm as if she had the strength of a regular super-mutant.

Fucking A, the mutie was right to check her arm, and I did just that, ignoring Miril and Buck’s surprised curses. I had to get the bandages she had wrapped tightly around it first, though. Everyone had always wondered why she had kept her entire right arm shielded from sight, it certainly wasn’t this protected when she and I had first met, and after she had left Raven Rock, we had all wondered why she was acting so differently.

“Shit, someone hold this one down; I need to get these bandages off.”

Buck reluctantly moved away from his position - leaving Miril to fend for herself in keeping the kid from clocking someone in the mouth - and grabbed hold of Eve’s hand and held down her shoulder. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do, I wanted to get this over with; her screaming was starting to bother me, now.

I whipped out my knife and began to cut away at the fabric that seemed almost like it had melted together now, trying hard not to injure her arm due to the fact that she was still shaking violently. Damn, this shit was hard to shred; kid must’ve been desperate to keep it hidden to have it covered this much. Finally, I managed to cut all the way through the cloth and tried to rip it off as carefully as I could without causing anymore damage to whatever injury she had, here. But once I had removed the bandages and her entire arm was exposed up to above her shoulder, most of us instantly froze at the sight we were given.

Despite the fact that the rest of the skin on her body had retained its pale image, her right arm was a whole fucking other ballpark. There were bits here and there of the cream color of her skin, but they were chafed and had about the same tone that my remaining human flesh had, a dark tan color that faded in and out. Her skin appeared to be flaking, and, just as I had experienced a minute ago, it looked like something beneath was writhing around just as she was, making a sickening sound as we watched.

Most of her flesh appeared to have rotted off, which exposed some of her muscle tissue and the veins that trailed through them. Catching my eye, I turned to look at her shoulder and saw that more of her skin was flaking off, right before my eyes, however, it stopped about five seconds after I locked onto it. This was probably one of the most fucking grotesque things I’d ever seen - aside from exploded bodies and organs sprawled across the floors of a Raider compound, this was just...indescribable. Especially to see this on Eve’s body. Whatever the hell happened to her...I didn’t know, but I certainly knew that she didn’t deserve this. Whether or not she did this to herself or if someone fucked with her DNA, she did not deserve this kind of pain.

“Jesus Christ...”

That was pretty much all I could get out of my mouth, and similar words escaped Miril as well. Surprisingly, after a single minute of staring at her mutilated arm, the pulsating in her forearm stopped and the trail it made up her shoulder stopped near the base of her neck. Eve’s screaming slowly came to a minimum, and all that was left was sobs and whimpers as her head rocked unconsciously and her body calmed down. Shit, what was happening now? None of us knew what to do. She went silent and still so quickly that it was almost like she had actually lost all life inside.

But sure as shit when all leaned in to check on her, she was still breathing. Labored, but barely audible. Kid was goddamn tough, I’d give her that. I couldn’t understand how much pain she’d been in but I had to give her credit for enduring it. Her whole body seemed to go limp, her head still rocking, as she began muttering under her breath. Everyone encircled her to get a look at her arm, all astounded at its new look. To be honest, even I was surprised. In the time that I had been with Eve, I had never seen something like this before, but that was before Raven Rock, and this was now. Something must have happened inside, and I’ll bet every fucking cap and bottle that those Enclave bastards did something to her while she was held prisoner. There was no way she could’ve done this to herself unless she just dipped her damned arm in a pool of radiated ooze and left it there for about an hour. Not likely.

“Hnn...Charon...?”

Eve’s sudden voice took us by surprise, and we all focused on her face to find her reentering reality. Her eyes fluttered and she continued to quietly pant; I still didn’t know what the hell to do with her, seeing as I couldn’t tell if she was fully mutating or if this was a bad side effect of being around radiation for far too long.

“I’m here, kid. We all are.”

“...God almighty my head hurts.”

Miril, from what I could hear, let out a thankful sigh. I could tell she was probably the worst of the worried right now, next to Fawkes, who hadn’t taken his eyes off of the kid for a single second. She was dear as all get out to him, the two were inseperable, virtually unstoppable when they were alone and out roughing it in the Wastes. I didn’t need to see it with my own eyes to know that. I had to admit, it was slightly similar with myself since the kid had liberated me from the hell it was working for Ahzrukhal.

The girl seemed to notice that the cloth on her right arm had been removed, and this seemed to set her into a worried panic, even though she couldn’t move much due to utter exhaustion. She stared at her hand as if she didn’t recognize it and tried to shift into a sitting position, not to mention that she was also trying to hide her arm.

“Take it easy, kid. You were whipping around a good fucking bit a minute ago.” Even when I spoke it didn’t seem to calm her in the slightest. Her eyes were full of fear while she hid the infected arm, looking at us suspiciously.

“What’s going on?”

I raised a brow. “I think we should be asking you that.”

Everyone looked at her expectantly, and she still seemed to be way out of it, still drowsy. “What happened to your arm?” Miril asked.

Eve’s eyes trailed back to her arm and she held her gaze at it for a moment, probably contemplating on an explanation. “Did you guys know that the Enclave had ‘experiments’ in their labs? I saw...I saw mutants...deathclaws and fucking feral ghouls too. I think they’re...I think they’re creating them there!”

Bing-fucking-oh.

“Wait, you say you saw ghouls and mutants in there? I thought they were only made back in Vault 87...”

Buck turned to look at the super-mutant questioningly as if he held the answer. I should’ve clubbed the guy in the face for thinking that just because Fawkes was a mutant, he must’ve held all knowledge about them. Dumbass.

“That’s where the main breeding ground for them is at. No one ever said that they weren’t created elsewhere. No telling what kind of fucked up shit the Enclave still has hidden in their base.”

Buck seemed a little insulted at my quick comeback, but as far as anyone was concerned, the guy deserved it. He’d put my mistress through enough hell and hot water already. I gotta admit, Eve grew on me over the time we’d spent surviving out in the hellish pit of the Wastes. Kid did good to keep my back just as I did hers; she was probably the most kind and generous person I’d ever come across in a long, long time. Makes me sound like a damn pussy when I say it, but it’s the only truth, which is something you can never change.

“Raven Rock is destroyed.”

Those few sudden words took us all, save for Fawkes, by surprise. Hearing this made me wonder what the fuck the kid had done that had been so powerful to take out that entire mountain. Finding out that she had the ability to destroy an entire fort was partially intimidating. She was stupid in some situations...but the kid sure as fucking hell knew how to cause a catastrophe and actually mean for it to happen.

“That’s right, I made damn sure that the people in there suffered for all the shit they’ve put me through.”

I couldn’t help but grin mentally; sometimes I liked her brutality.

“What exactly did they do to you?”

Again with the goddamn questions. The kid just recovered from a fucking seizure and they can’t keep their mouthes shut. Fawkes and I shared a glance and I was pretty sure we were sharing the same thought: Shut up and let the girl rest!

Eve seemed to go silent for a moment. I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it, and I wasn’t about to make her to, even though Buck and Miril would disagree. I saw where Fawkes’ hand rested on the table next to her hand, she attempted to sneak her own fingers around one of his much larger ones, clutching tightly as if in need of affection. Fawkes didn’t move, but he kept his eyes on her.

“They injected me with something. When I refused to give them the code to the Purifier, they took me into their labs and gave me a dose of some weird looking ooze, saying that there was nothing left for me to do. Don’t know what the hell it was but, uh...yeah, I’ve kind of been hiding my arm because I had no idea what was happening to me.”

I had to understand her predicament, even when she (for some ungodly known reason) trusted me and Fawkes, she didn’t seem too trustful to Miril or Buck. I couldn’t blame her for trying to hide her infection from them. She was only trying to survive.

“We need to get you to a doctor. If that stuff hasn’t gotten to your heart yet then we might be able to stop its transformation.”

Snapping back to reality. Miril was right this time, whatever the hell those assholes injected Eve with needed to be looked at before it got worse. It made me uncomfortable to see how her arm looked gravely similar to my own right now, and I definitely didn’t want to see her face look the same way either. I don’t know how I’d cope with that. It might not bother me as much as I’d like to think, but the kid didn’t deserve that. If there was anyone who did not deserve to look like a goddamn corpse, it was her.

“Well, the closest doctor near us is in Underworld. Think you can make it that far?”

The kid looked a little angry at this. Couldn’t blame her for being cranky. “I’ve survived this far, haven’t I? Of course I will.”

Nothing more needed to be said. We were taking her to Underworld, whether she wanted us to or not. I turned and glared at the wastelanders we’d risked our necks for. Even after all we’d done they hadn’t lifted a finger to help us. Assholes.

I retrieved my shotgun and slung it over my shoulders, making my way around the table. From the looks of her injuries, Eve could walk just fine, seeing as she stood on her feet without any problem at all, save for having to lean on Fawkes since she was still a bit dizzy from her wrestling fit earlier. Now that her arm was bare, it only made me sick to my stomach looking at how it had been nearly burned to the bone. And I think, maybe it was because we both cared about her in a vague sort of way, but Fawkes and I shared the exact same concern in hoping that she wouldn’t become a mindless, rampaging monster like the others.