[color=00aeef]FRIEDA RICHTER[/color] - Brandy's house -- morning "Come on, come on..." she muttered to herself, trying to rifle through the drawers as quietly as possible. She flinched every time something clanked or clattered and hoped it was the effects of the Study Buddy causing her to think the sounds were much louder than they really were. The last thing she wanted to do was repay Brandy for all of her kindness by waking her up. Frieda pushed in the drawer she had been searching and sighed, hearing it make a little squeak as she did so. Her search had been unsuccessful. Wasn't Brandy carrying literal cartons of cigarettes? Didn't she say -- Frieda straightened at her realization. Brandy had left the cigarettes at the diner, as barter. "Fuck!" she swore, immediately covering her mouth with both hands. She paused, listening, certain she heard another squeak and some movement. Frieda blinked. She tip-toed to the kitchen door and leaned towards the stairs, straining her ears, but her ears kept telling her the sounds came from elsewhere, past the kitchen. She slowly crept towards the cellar door then froze. There was [i]definitely[/i] some shuffling and squeaking coming from beyond the door. [i]Rats! Or, mutated rats! Or...roaches? Do roaches squeak?[/i] Frieda stared at the bottom of the door, aware of the floor's clean surface but worn and distressed linoleum. She took a breath, reassured her pistol was on her belt, then flung the door open and clattered down the stairs to the floor, below. Sunlight lit the room brightly, reflecting easily off the unpainted concrete walls, refracting off the dimples and flaws of the ancient cement. Her head whipped back and forth, preparing herself to encounter some kind of mutated nasty that had dug its way into the house, but instead, beginning to cluster at her feet, were fluffy little puff balls, peeping and chirping away. "Oh god, ohhhhhh god," Frieda moaned, raising her hands, thrown completely off guard by the fact that her intruder was really a bunch of baby chickens. She'd been drafted towards piloting decades ago and never had to even think about 'Cultivation.' She stood on the spot, completely frozen. The chickens continued to bob and chirp. [i]Richter! You've single-handedly shot and killed raiders, Yao Guai, and more -- and these little chicks got you petrified? Brandy's chicks?[/i] She looked down at her feet and noticed several were pecking at the ground, almost expectantly. "Awww, you're just hungry?" she cooed, her tone and attitude fully changed. "I think I ate some of your mom, yesterday. Sorry about that. She was goo-- you know what, never mind." Frieda took large, very tender strides across the room towards a shelf and started looking for the feed. Sure enough, a sack of grain sat open, plain as day. Frieda took a large handful in each hand, turned, and started sprinkling the grain onto the floor. The chicks frenzied, peeping their approval and scattering all over, pecking and eating. Frieda laughed, in spite of herself. The peeping was eventually replaced by the din of tiny beaks pecking along the floor. One of the chicks hopped and flapped towards her, causing Frieda to startle and stumble backwards, knocking her backside into the shelf. It rattled and dislodged a test tube that rolled onto the floor. "Oh shit!" Instinctually she bent and reached for the tube, though as she did so, one of the chicks flicked to peck the floor and pecked into her hand, instead, drawing blood. Frieda hissed in pain, snatched the tube, and went to replace it when she stopped, cold. The label on the tube most clearly had the Enclave E-and-stars marking on it, a title "x1614LGO - Accelerated Growth," and other text that had been rubbed off, faded off, or perhaps, deliberately modified to be illegible. Frieda turned the tube in her hand, her eyes wide. [i]What could this mean? How would Brandy have Enclave technology?[/i] Her eyes widened further. [i]Perhaps Brandy is an Enclave defector, as well! That's stupid,[/i] she argued within herself. [i]Her whole family history is on display in that front room. Of course it is. If you had enough smarts, you'd have made up a wasteland family, too, dumbass.[/i] Frieda reached up with her free hand and ran it through her hair. She looked from the tube, to the grain feed, to the little chickens. Was Brandy using it on her chickens? That would mean... Frieda gagged, thinking about the chicken she had eaten the night before, and that it had somehow been grown using an artificial serum. Years of GMO practices within the Enclave bunkers themselves had no meaning while she imagined that Brandy had fed her some kind of 'frankenfood.' Irradiated, wasteland frankenfood. She forced herself to take some deep breaths. Frieda looked down at the chicks, reminding herself that mere minutes prior she had thought of them as adorable little puff balls. Reminding herself that they were yet still, adorable little puff balls. That just because she found proprietary Enclave technology in Brandy's basement didn't mean she had been using it. There was only one person with the scientific mind she trusted enough to take the serum and test it, and that was Arthur. Frieda searched herself only to discover that, of course, between her sweatshirt and her khakis, she didn't exactly have a discreet place to hide it. Besides, if Brandy were to return and find the serum missing... Frieda put the serum back onto the shelf, cursing herself for somehow not noticing where it had been stored before she knocked it off. She hoped Brandy wasn't the type to think it weird if something wasn't in the same exact spot she'd left it. She took another handful of grain and spread it onto the floor, much to the celebratory peeping of the chickens, below. Frieda crept to the stairs and paused as the sound of a door slamming was cause for alarm. She perched onto the steps, telling herself she would just tell Brandy she heard the peeping and came down to feed the chickens -- because, after all, that part was true -- but she heard nothing more than the sound of someone going up the stairs, some quiet, then the return back down the stairs and out the door. Frieda took a breath. She clapped both hands on her knees. She got lucky. "Well, my little friends, I gotta go for a bit, but I'll be back." She crossed the room, picked up the serum, then popped out the cellar door and closed it firmly behind her, glanced around the kitchen, and exit the front door and hurried back towards the clinic. How did she not notice how many cracks and grooves there were in the road, before? So many pebbles, too... She hesitated at the door, before she entered and approached the doctor. "Uh, hey, Arthur. Something...has come up. I need to show you something. I'll just take a second." Frieda motioned for them to go upstairs. She made her way back to Arthur's small apartment and deliberately turned her back to the window. "Brandy had this in her possession." She procured the vial from her pocket and held it out to the doctor. "Enclave branding. I don't know what it does, but you're the only person I know who would be able to figure it out." Frieda swallowed, then added. "I kind of...found it by accident, then took it without asking. If...you catch my meaning..." She cleared her throat. "She's keeping baby chickens in the basement. I was looking for their food when I found, well," Frieda gestured at the vial. "What do you think it is? Why would she have it?"