#cant wait to watch these two have the worst time walking through the mojave

[guidedbygunpla]

Gundam REDUX Side Story Chapter 3: Sins Against God and Man

             “this country must’ve been beautiful at some point, feel kind of bad for having set half of it on fire” Dozle said with a laugh as their Gow flew over the Rocky Mountains, the remains of Salt Lake City below them, now looking like nothing but shattered glass strewn across the mountain. Zakus occupying the territory now, painted in stark white. Dozle, Char, Icelina and about 2 dozen crew men waited in the tiny room above the Mobile Suit hanger of the Gow, and watched as America drifted below them. The country had been ravaged during the Late AD and early UC by a monstrous drought and famine. A blight caused the great mono cultures of Corn and Soybean to die off, resulting in billions of farm animals being culled, the resulting food shortages resulted in hundreds of thousands starving to death. Poor water management in the south west caused hundreds to migrate elsewhere, and formerly rich and prosperous parts of the south west became completely abandoned. The country fractured in two due to political strife, in part due to arguments about how best to tackle the ecological disaster, resulting in the creation of the two countries the United States of Northern America and The Southern United American Republic in UC 0007. The North was able to barely survive the famine by switching to crops the blight wouldn’t effect, primarily potatoes and rhubarb. They tried desperately to genetically modify the corn and soy bean crops to be more resistant to the blight in the future, with only middling results. Resulting in food enough to only feed a quarter of their population.  The south however was able to transfer largely to imported food, and fish, but they had a harder time dealing with the increasing desertification, the rampant dust storms, and the massive floods they were battered with year after year. Eventually, they became the first to honestly consider what so many other first world countries would in the coming years, they began the process of forcing their populations off world through the Federations colonial emigration plan, at first willingly….and then, as the years went by, and the droughts got worse, the famines got worse, and more and more people died. by force. the early days of the UC were like that though. The world was dying, and the only option left for so many was to leave.

With a smaller population the southern American Republic was able to stabilize their economy and began plans to help stop the desertification, as well as hopefully reverse it. However that would be dozens, if not hundreds of years down the line. The earth was sick. In the hundred years before the formation of the universal century charter, 2 world spanning wars, runaway pollution and the destruction of much of earths fresh water reserves, a series of small scale nuclear exchanges along with the ensuing sociological, and ecological pressures those put on the planet caused the amount of the earth that was desert to balloon resulting in vast areas of formerly agricultural land to be swallowed by the great deserts of the world. with crop failure, famine, water shortages, and societal collapse eating up much of the world. The Mojave stretching as far east as Missouri and as far north as Wyoming. The Sahara having swallowed up almost all the land as far south as Angola, and the Gobi going as far south as Qinghai. So much land lost to the great deserts of the world. What choice did they have?

 The colony migration plan must’ve made so much sense back then, they must’ve thought they were saving so many millions of lives. if only they had known, Char thought to himself, that because of this all, one day, one of these colonies would come home, and crash into the earth so hard that it would split a tectonic plate in half. In a matter of months it would kill 3 billion of the remaining 6 billion people left on Earth. Through famine, floods and fires. Through volcanos, through tornados, through earthquakes. Life after life would end. All because of a want for power, a lack of caring about ones fellow man, about the world. A Want for control.

If only the people who wrote that damned charter knew what it might cause

If only people had taken better care of things   ________________________________________________________________

The gow touched down near a large laboratory building. The smell of the sea strong in the air. Mendocino had largely been spared of the worst of the ecological collapse of the Country. It was lush and beautiful. A true paradise in hell Char thought to himself.              “I haven’t really gotten to ask Dozle, why are we moving our headquarters to the Flanagan institute? “ he asked as the officers began the process of disembarking from the Gow

             “orders from Supreme commander Gihren, we’re supposed to run some tests here and then likely we’re going to reassign you to a naval crew for a few weeks…..I tried to get you some time off the front line, think it’d do both of us some good to have some time to grieve”              “Dozle, you don’t have to do something like that….really”              “no, Char… I insist. My heart feels like its breaking everytime I think of Garma. I picture my Mineva, I picture Zenna. I cant imagine how you and Icelina feel. I can’t imagine how father is feeling, I pray his heart can take the stress. That’s why Gihren took charge of the military, he wanted to give father time to process this all. I think some fresh air, some time away from the front lines, it could do us all good.”              char looked out at the beautiful scenery around the Gow

             “you know I might take you up on that, make sure Icelina is taken care of here, she’s not just our Princess, she is still the daughter of the USNA’s president, who I believe is in power, even if its just in name.”

             Dozle knodded at him as Char walked down the ramp to the ground below

The lab they were near was called the Flannigan institute for Zeonic Military Research. It had a… reputation. Soldiers got sent here, came back different. What went on inside the walls of the institute were classified. Char knew they would frequently send POWs here, and that a lot of their research resulted in new mobile suits and new weapons.              “Mr. Aznable, please follow me” Char heard a voice call to him as he stepped off the ramp of the Gow               “My name is Dr.Tonus, I am a researcher here at the institute, we have been reading over your exploits and wanted to show you around the facility and possibly run a simple test, just to show you what it is we research”              “I’m really not the one you should be kissing up to, Commander Dozle is right there, if you are wanting additional funding I’d speak to him instead” Char spoke back in response

             “sir this isn’t a request for more money, this is a request to show you, one of Zeons most decorated officers what is in our militaries future.

               Char followed him into the building, there were people walking around the halls like in asylums of old, people who seemed confused, distraught, and lost just wandering the halls, dressed poorly and in various states of poor hygiene. It was revolting. The researcher led Char into a back room, where they could see into another room via 1 way glass.

             “now Captain Aznable, watch our subject behind this glass. She will guess the cards that are shown on the television screen in front of you, that is showing us footage of a researcher in another lab who is acting as our sender”

             Char looked into the room and a woman wearing a bright yellow dress, and of what he believed to be middle eastern decent was re arranging the cards on the table into the same pattern as the researcher on the television.              “quite well, so she can perform simple card tricks…..fantastic use of Zeons resources” Char said dismissively

             “eh, but watch this Captain Aznable…..I want you to imagine something, something concrete and real, something you know well, and hold that image in your mind”              “Lalah, if you could can you read the mind of the man in the room with me, and tell me what it is he is picturing?”              Char felt a wall of ice overtake him, his body tingling as if he was diving into a cold pool. The chill of it slid through his brain, feeling like a spear of ice rolled through his mind, peeling away at the layers of gray matter              “he is picturing a man with dark black hair, they are in a bathroom with concrete floors and steel cabinetry. There is a smell of tobacco in the air” she said, her voice turning into a laugh towards the end as she realized what it was Char was remembering

             “that’s enough. So what is this? Some psychic research program?” Char said turning and staring daggers in the researchers eyes

             “…well, yes. Minovski particles make long range communication by radio waves too difficult, so we are researching controlling long range weapons through…..well less conventional means. And Lalah here has been the most successful of our experiments. She was brought to us from West Bengal, she was being used by a card shark there to help him gamble. When she grew obstinate, he abandoned her, and she was taken in to one of Zeons shelters in the area where our men found her, and shipped her back here for study.”              “and the rest of the…..subjects, in this facility. Why are they so…..vile”              “well, before Lalah, we had been experimenting with getting these abilities by grafting brains of clones of people with similar abilities onto the brains of POW and lower ranked officers, a super soldier program so to speak”              “clones of people with similar abilities? Dr.Tonus, please elaborate….because what you are saying is making me want to pull my side arm out and personally shut this whole facility down right now….this sounds like human experimentation, and at that, forced human experimentation…..which as you know violates the antartic treaty as well as the teachings of Zeon Zum Deikun”              “Captain, the war will be won by whoever can harness these powers first, and by who can harness them the best. As you have already seen, the federation has 4 pilots who can out pilot even you….surely they have already started to harness Newtypes for combat use”                            “Newtypes…..the people who Deikun said would be worthy of inheriting the earth, you think that means this? That it means psychics?” Char snapped at the man and pulled his gun, pointing it at the man

               “yes sir, spend a few hours with Lalah, you will believe the same as we do, Newtypes…..they are worthy of salvation, we are simply trying to find a way to elevate the rest of us to their level” Char lowered his gun and looked back through the window, then at the small man, who said with no fear the evils he had committed……viewing them as aspects of Chars fathers teachings

               “show me these clones…..I need to document this, send it back in a report to the high command.”              “before we do that Captain, we do want to run some tests on you….we want to test a theory” ______________________________________________________________

Char found himself hooked up to a machine, a wreath around his head, and a blood pressure cuff on his arm              “am I just testing the same thing that the woman from before was testing?”              “yes Captain, I want you to clear your mind, and try to see what it is the woman in the room across from you is looking at”              char looked at the cards in front of him, and thought about how stupid this all was…he did wonder though

             He cleared his mind…and for a second he felt like he saw it, at the same time he felt it, there it was a line of ice through the middle of his brain, right into the top of his spine.              he arranged the cards and the researcher knodded at him

             “promising” he said as he took the cards away, and wheeled in a small box, with a T shaped item in it, the top bar balancing on a blade, like a knifes edge

             “all I need you to do is to move the top part of this metal bar, so that it makes contact on either side of the case, this will trigger an electrical contact, and turn on a light in this office.”              char emptied his mind and tried to slow his hands trembling and stared at the metal T

After about ten minutes just as the researcher started to walk towards the box to push it out of the room it tilted and made contact

               “now…..now that we have finished your stupid tests, show it to me” Char said as he ripped the wreath off his head.

  __________________________________________________________

Dr. Tonus walked Char into a basement, where all around him in vats were young women and men, all blond, all quite young.  Dozens and dozens of them, tubes and wires hanging around them, and skewering their bodies.

               “they are all clones of two children who were donated to the facility about a decade ago, we had been studying their abilities at that time, but our research wasn’t folded into the military until recently when Supreme commander Gihren decided that our research could be useful to the war effort.”              char walked over to the tanks and looked at the faces of the children

             “their features look familiar…who donated them?”              “well…..unfortunately that is classified Captain Aznable….their lineage is unfortunately a state secret at this time”              “ah, I see…..so they are his children, it’s unmistakable, the jaw line, the ears...they look just like Girhen when he was younger. Wonder who the mother was…that too is probably a state secret too isn’t it” Char said craning his neck to look back at the doctor

             “well….yes…..unfortunately it is”              “are the children, this mysterious man left here, are they still alive?”              “yes they are taken care of in the eastern wing, they are about 13 years old now”              “13, and how old are the children in these tubes? Surely they all haven’t been floating like this for 13 years.” Char said looking at the children, they looked to be in their late teens, early 20s,  surely these clones weren’t so young.              “well, we are injecting them Human Growth Hormone, a combination of Steroids and developmental enhancers and of course they are being dosed with sedatives so they are largely unresponsive, we really just need to get the brain to the right size so that we can excise the parts that we believe are responsible for the Newtype Phenomena. We then graft that part onto the brain of the test subject, though it has so far been unsuccessful…Lalah has been able to telepathically communicate with 2 of our test subjects who became nonverbal after the fact, and they seemed to have still been mentally capable, though we still need time to perfect the surgical process as well as the drug cocktail that will be required to prevent rejection of the parts of the brain that are grafted on”              “I don’t understand…how would sticking someones brain matter onto your brain give you their powers?” Char said turning to face the man

               “well, you see….this is difficult to explain, but when someone learns something often there is a physical region of the brain, a new organ that is grown. We noticed it in the late 20th century while examining Einstein’s brain. He had a knuckle shaped area behind his right ear, and we saw that same shape, that organ in people that had one thing in common with him, they were violinists. In a normal human brain, that region would be missing, just smooth gray matter but if they had studied the violin in childhood, there it was, the violinists knuckle right behind their right ear. A similar region we called the seat of the pianist would be closer to the center of the brains of those who had studied the piano. Our early tests were with excising those parts and implanting them in others, and surely enough often they could play the instrument in question after the surgery, though they lacked the muscle memory to properly coordinate their body with their mind. But the newtype phenomena is purely mental, we know if we keep experimenting we can uplift ourselves to their level. There is no muscle memory to overcome. “              char looked around, these were human beings

Their bodies were being harvested for war

They were being made into weapons, no not even weapons

Parts of a weapon

What happened to the child when their brain was harvested Casval wondered

Who thought up this monstrous idea

             “who ordered this research? Who pushed for the cloning, the brain surgery”              “well….Supreme Commander Gihren of course, and the use of them in military applications was further expanded by his sister, Rear Admiral Kycelia. She has begun production of Newtype use weapons to be used in the war effort, we just need to create a decent pool of soldiers for her to use first. “ “this is disgusting…” Char said as he turned away from the man. He began to walk out of the facility, Revolted. As he was about to reach the door though, he felt a line of ice sliding between the lobes of his brain once more. And a woman’s voice in his ears

               “you saw the children in the basement didn’t you?”              he didn’t know how to respond should he speak aloud, should he just think? Instead Char simply knodded

             “it is monstrous isn’t it. I am scared every day they will come for me….that they will carve me up the same way they did those children”              Char swallowed in fear as images of surgeons, doctors, and blood filled his mind, he felt like he was drowning in a horror movie

             “please you have to take me away from here” Char stormed back into the building, past the lost souls that wandered the halls, and into the room where Lalah was still being studied, grabbing her by he arm he spoke aloud

               “I am captain Charles Aznable, and I will be taking this women here with me, if you want to fight me on it, take it up with my commanding officer Dozle Zabi.” He then pulled the women with him out of the facility. Off into the sunny Californian afternoon they walked Lalah free from that horror

And Char burdened even further, knowing that his mission was to no longer hurt Degwin for the pain that he endured as a young boy, but now he had to kill them all, every Zabi had to die…..for this sin against god and man.

[it-s-blue-ink]

for having played fallout new vegas for a number of hours i haven’t gotten anywhere in it. i just met mr house for the first time today. 

so. fallout casfin au thoughts, courier!casimiro (who’s also a radio host) and, sosu!finas, naturally.

heavy on the casimiro angst

imagined casimiro sitting down in Sanctuary, probably not sharing a bottle of whiskey, Finas and Preston doing Minutemen logistics planning and other things he’s glad he doesn’t have to do. Reminiscing on stuff. The stuff he really liked abt the Mojave, the Strip (Diamond City doesn’t compare), what’s not there anymore when he’s in fallout 4 land. no sarsasparilla, for starters. Mama Murphy likely looking at him, very ignored, waiting for a chance to talk about the Sight and ask him for Jet. 

Misses the radio channels, Trevor isn’t any Mister New Vegas, that’s for sure. He knew how to talk to his audience. Casimiro probably models himself after Mister New Vegas, not meaning to.

Misses the songs- he didn’t really like them per se, but had to hear them if he wanted the news. And you wanted the news, what with the Legion running around. Knows them all by heart, Jingle Jangle and Big Iron and Johnny Guitar, plus a dozen others. Realizes it’s been years since he’s heard them properly now, when Trevor plays Sixty Minute Man for the third time in the last 15 minutes like a goddamn amateur. Grows irrationally angry when he cant remember some of the lyrics. Probably snaps at Finas. 

There were some really sappy romance-y songs and he kinda remembers the melody to, and if he could just remember the words again he could sing them on air for variety or off air for Finas bc he’s the biggest sap and if the ring on his finger means anything he would kill for him, would sing a sweet song to him, but he doesnt remember it, and so he cant. 

He’s doing some menial task, sewing or cleaning up meat for the fire or fixing tech stuff for his radio equipment, totally focused and lowly humming. and only when finas asks him what he’s singing he hears he’s sang the lyrics he didn’t remember. He also doesnt remember what he just sang. Cas is still a very frustrated radio host.

Thinks back while he’s shoveling shit from his trailer where an escaped brahmin made its home, he had two VIP suites, he had walked on marble floors in relatively fine clothes and dined at the expensive restaurants. Now he’s in the back of a Red Rocket truck stop where he can’t sleep from the damn bells of the brahmins and supply lines passing by, or in a cold, windy shack in buttfuck nowhere (but great radio signal.) 

Dogmeat’s taken to following him around when Finas is away, and lies at his feet when he’s sitting around the fire with Finas’ other companions. Casimiro pats him and says that he’s no Rexie, but he’s still a good dog. Then he misses Rex. Remembers the King still owes him a favor.

In the sounds of turrets firing, sometimes he hears the dings of slot machines. His caravan deck lies on a shelf somewhere, dusty and yellowed. Worst is, no one knows who he is until he opens his mouth and then he’s just “that annoying radio host”. 

No one really believes in his stories of his adventures and really, who can blame them? Piper says he’s a story-teller more than a newsman, and they nearly came to blows. Sure, he does tell stories, but there’s a different between the news, his tall tales for shits and giggles, and his Actual Stories. 

One day a traveller passes through a settlement, a traveller also from the Mojave, who isn’t sure if her eyes are really seeing who she thinks. She knows the look of the courier who sat at the blackjack tables when not meeting with Mr House himself, not his voice or name. There’s no way it’s really him, so far away from the Strip? She invites Casimiro and some others to play a game, and watches Casimiro fidget with a chip after giving it a strange fond look and walk it over his knuckles like the courier always did when she watched him play back at the Tops. 

Casimiro has some of his fame restored through her confirmation that he’s Someone. He’s a local legend. No one even mentions it again after she leaves. There are more important things than Casimiro’s fragile ego to think abt. 

She did remember the lyrics Casimiro didn’t, so it’s OK. He sings a sappy song for Finas. He looks adorable and flustered.