A wide, arcing overhead swing put a swift end to the miserable existence of the rotting ghoul, it’s head not making quite the satisfying crack Gregory had hoped for and instead simply splattering like a melon, including the soggy wet noise of bodily fluids splattering all over the place. The roaring noise of the overhead vertibird alerted McDowell to their position, although he was a little busy to acknowledge them right away, having to turn right to smash an approaching ghoul reaver with his arm, smacking it to the side like it was nothing. As if the crew on board the vertibird knew what was occupying him, the sudden whirl of the minigun on board put a swift end to most of the ghouls around him, most of which just splattered into a gooey pool of limbs and radiated green blood. 

He saluted them quickly, thanking them for their help, but it most likely went unnoticed in the midst of the battle going on. The vertibird put itself down on the location he’d cleared for them, and while Gregory made sure that a ghoul that he’d put down earlier [i]stayed[/i] down, Moss approached the vertibird, getting ready to take off again. Gregory tried to follow suit, moving the power armour at a sluggish pace towards the machine meant to take them out of here, trying to fend off ghouls as they lunged at him from their dark corners between the trucks and cars. 

Most of the crew had boarded by now, and McDowell was busy clearing the way while trying to keep most of the baddies away from the vertibird, drawing their attention so that the last few could board. Paladin Moss was waiting for him, possibly intending to be the first one in, and the last one out. If that were the case, fate was about to play a cruel joke on him and McDowell both.

The earth cracked, and the building sank a good few inches. Gregory paid no mind and soldiered on, not noticing the threat until it was too late. Those in the vertibird would spot it long before he did, so when he finally turned his head slightly to see what the loud thunderclap had been, he was staring right in the eyes of a deathclaw the size of two or three pre-war cars stacked on top of each other. 

There were a few seconds between this realization and the first hit, and in those seconds, McDowell turned to face the paladin, who was now missing from his previous spot and had instead launched himself into the vertibird at record speed. McDowell couldn’t blame him for that, he’d want to get out of the way of such a large deathclaw too. He couldn’t quite make out what Moss was saying to the rest of the crew, but the vertibird began to lift, slowly at first, then quickly. There was no way he was making that.

There were at least a hundred things that were racing through McDowell’s head at that time. 

Only one of these thoughts was loud enough for McDowell to face it.

The crew might’ve noticed a sudden hesitation and rush in his step when he was still trying to reach the vertibird, slowly as he was moving due to the lack of power in his power armour, but that changed when this one thought won primacy over all the others. He stopped dead in his tracks and instead turned around to face the deathclaw.

“FACE ME!” he yelled spreading his arms wide and taunting the creature, and though the comms were off, some might’ve sworn they could’ve heard him yell it. “FACE ME YOU LIZARD!” he yelled again, readying his sledgehammer. The ghouls were still swarming the place, and the deathclaw lazily smacked a few of them aside to get to the hulking Knight-Sergeant. 

In the background, the vertibird was now airborne, and while they might have used the minigun to assist him, it remained eerily quiet. There was no 5mm from the spitfire barrels of the gun, no “ad victoriam” warcry from any of the crew, no sudden thud on the ground from Estevez or Moss launching down in their power armour to assist. 

No, besides the deadly roar of the deathclaw and the equally loud warcries of the Knight-Sergeant, it was deadly quiet to McDowell. Was this... betrayal?

Despite the mechanisms of his power armour not being powered, McDowell managed to produce a deadly swing with his sledgehammer, the rockets of the weapon adding whatever force he needed to swing the weapon. One of the deathclaws launched itself at him at the same moment, and managed to hit him square in the neck, dislodging the knight-sergeants helmet and sending it flying off into the dustcloud left behind by the vertibird. The sledgehammer managed to hit the beast straight in the jaw, dislocating it with great ease, though that did not much more than anger it it seemed. And, as luck would have it, there was a second deathclaw not too far off. 

They’d sealed the tunnel, and McDowell had assumed the deathclaws couldn’t tunnel fast enough for them to reach them this quickly. He had assumed wrong, perhaps, but there was little time to ponder that mistake now. All there was was blood and steel, and a long fight ahead of him. But there was no escape, only death, because even if he managed to beat two deathclaws in a single fight, the ghouls were still there, patiently waiting, and the raiders were most likely still out there too, licking their wounds and keeping an eye on the lone knight-sergeant while he fought for his life. No, there would be no recovery. 

Knight-Sergeant McDowell turned on his feet and, assisted by the rockets of his sledgehammer, swung in a wide arc to cover his back after the second deathclaw had circled him. Once again he hit the creature in the face, not quite how he wanted to, and managed to daze the creature, sending it slinking back into the dust to seek another approach. “FACE ME!” he yelled again, turning around with a certain determination in his movement, yet not being able to shake the fear that a deathclaw could pounce from the smoke at any time. 

He glanced into the air briefly, just long enough to see the vertibird disappear over the dust into the distance. So it was betrayal after all. The man whose rank he had idolized for all his years had left him behind like a disposable asset. He had abandoned his own second in command, for fear of two deathclaws. “Fuck you, Moss! FUCK YOU!” he said, out of breath and in a half whisper, once again turning on his feet to face the deathclaw that he had only narrowly seen from the corner of his eyes.

He was too late, the deathclaw crashed into him and grabbed him around the waist with those monstrously large claws, and held him up into the air, raising him just barely over the dustcloud. The only other bodypart of the deathclaw that was not shrouded by the dust was it’s head, and it roared at him viciously with it’s jaw hanging half loose. 

By now the reality of the situation must have set in with McDowell, because all he could do was laugh. “You think you scare me, you overgrown piece of shit? RAAAAH!” he screamed back, his face uncovered. He tried to kick at the creature but there was no way he was reaching past the arm length of the deathclaw, who dangled him like a toy. Then, suddenly, McDowell was floating. No, he wasn’t floating, he was falling. With a sudden crash he landed against the wall of the warehouse, going right through it, and only kicking up more dust. The entire was turning into one big dust cloud, made worse when a section of the wall collapsed and the roof came down with it. 

Once again, McDowell closed his eyes, and simply laid there like he had when they first crash landed. That time, Moss had gotten the rubble off of him and ‘saved’ him. It would be a little different this time. The same sounds, the same movements, but it wasn’t Moss’ T60 power armour helmet shining a light on him, it was the face of a hideous radiated monster. “You look much better like this, Moss,” Gregory told himself, “without the helmet, you ugly rat.” The deathclaw pulled him out of the rubble and instead threw him the other way, sending Gregory skidding through the dirt, much like the ragdoll raiders and ghouls Gregory himself had been throwing around earlier. He had the benefit of wearing power armour, but that didn’t protect him from hitting his now uncovered face on a rock. A sudden spike of pain burst through his entire head, and his nose now seemed to be bent in a few different places where it really shouldn’t have been bent.

When he finally came to a stop, he slowly tried to get back up, stumbling a bit, but finally managing to do so. He turned to face the deathclaws again, who appeared through the dust like stalkers. The one with it’s jaw loose was much larger, and seemed much more agitated. The smaller one might’ve been a female, or it was a younger one, and seemed to be following the lead of the larger alpha. It was weird. McDowell didn’t remember deathclaws working in pairs unless they were part of the same nest. And even then, finding two deathclaws working together in such an organized way was… weird.

“Haha,” Gregory managed to get out, leaning on his knee with one hand while trying to remain upright. He spat out some blood and wiped his mouth with the cold metal of his armour, which was by now bent and destroyed in a lot of places. “You think I’ll… cough… die that easily, you skinks?” Slowly he straightened his back, and stared the two deathclaws down. He had a deathwish, for sure, and this was a better way to die than most other ways. The broken nose hurt, his entire body hurt, he no longer had his sledgehammer. But what hurt the most was the fact that the man he had sought to take after had left him there. He coughed loudly once or twice, coughing up more blood, before laughing to himself. “Ha, I’ve killed entire groups of muties by myself, put them down like rabid animals, and this is how I die? Shameful, McDowell, shameful,” he told himself.

The deathclaws, on cue, both roared at him, sending bits of spit and saliva his way. Gregory raised his arm to shield his face, as if this was just a heavy wind, and lowered it quickly to fight, expecting the roar to be a prelude to an attack. But the deathclaws just stood there.

A sudden voice came from the dust, a voice that Gregory didn’t recognize. Was he hallucinating? “Is that true?” the voice said, deep and dark and definitely not one of theirs. “Entire groups of ‘muties’? Is that what you call us?” The figure came forward, and took it’s place in between the two deathclaws, putting its hand on their head, calming them down or controlling them somehow. His face was horribly malformed, covered in scars, but it was unmistakingly the face of a supermutant. Just… not one Gregory was used to. This one seemed to be more intelligent than even McDowell himself, speaking as if he was a human, not a mutant. 

Slowly the figure stepped forward, and now that McDowell could see more clearly, the black rags and the metal plating revealed that he was one of the figures that he and Laura had seen in the tunnels prior. How was that possible? 

“You’re-” McDowell pushed out of his throat before a horrible cough took over.

“Yes, I am. And you...” the figure answered, “will no longer be.”

When the figure approached even closer, Gregory tried to step forward and take a swing at the supermutant, not wishing to go down with his pants down, and instead wanting to go down fighting, perhaps kill the mutie before the deathclaws finished him off. But the mutant was faster, stronger, … better.

The mutant extended his arm rapidly and wrapped those cold, green fingers around McDowell’s neck, pulling him off the ground. [i]Such strength![/i] was all McDowell could think. Even in power armour, he didn’t think he could lift another person in power armour off the ground, and this supermutant did it as if it was nothing. McDowell struggled, fruitlessly, and the supermutant just stared him down. Finally, when McDowell stopped, his face showing how weary he was of the fight, the supermutant spoke again.

“I see,” was all the [i]thing[/i] said, before throwing the knight-sergeant down into the ground and stepping on his face with a brute, resolute stomp of his foot. The lights went out, forever.