Chapter 47: Rough and the Smooth.
After a few hours of planning and information sharing the group had a pretty solid basis for a plan, it seemed that by the pattern of the sightings being mostly around the fringe of Brotherhood territory that the Enclave were either testing the Brotherhood's defences or they were harassing them trying to divert their attention from something else but that put up two questions remained, which was it and if it was the latter what were they after.
"Well, we know that Brotherhood has a pathological obsession with old technology that borders on the kleptomaniacal as they will happily steal it right of the hands of anyone unfortunate enough to reveal to them that they have it, think that could be a motive? They have something the Enclave wants or they are trying to keep them away from something the Enclave have?" Faith said leaning back in her chair and folding her arms behind her head, for a Ghoul she had a rather nice figure, her body looked to be rather lithe and surprisingly toned under her road leathers.
It had surprised Seven to learn that Ghouls seemed to have variance in how much they had been affected by the radiation that had created them, the ferals looked like walking corpses and hell even some of the non-ferals did but then some of them just looked different, not bad exactly just different.
Now it would be obvious that they wouldn't be to everyone's taste hell the vast majority of humanity would have a difficult time getting past things like their skin and how most of them seemed to be missing noses and teeth, but Ghouls like Faith were pretty much intact she even had all of her own teeth, well unless they were implants or something.
"More likely it's something they want, if they already had it it would be gone they'd have called in a team to lift it out," Visa said scratching her chin with her long claws making a soft rasping noise.
"Unless it's something too big to move," Seven said.
"And that's worrying because something that big is either going to be dangerous or will shift the power balance in the area and that's worse," Faith said and the others nodded, she turned to look at Seven who was now sitting without his helmet at the table.
"You sure you guys are up for this?" she asked.
"Honestly anything to do with those fuckers is bad news and hell we'd be in just for the chance to fuck with their operations and throw em for a loop, but given the chance to rescue some innocent claws who may or may not be related to my beloved one and now a chance to hit them where it hurts while also fucking with the bigoted tail holes over at the Brotherhood oh hell yes we're in," Seven said making both Faith and Visa smile.
"Thought you liked tail holes?" Visa said with a soft purr making Faith go wide-eyed as she glanced between them.
Seven turned and smiled at her salaciously, "Just yours my love and can you blame me give the noise you make when I give it some attention?" she said with a purr both his words and purr making Visa's tail swish and a deep throaty growl escaping her.
"Wow, you guys seriously do not hold back do you?" Faith said and both Seven and Visa turned their smiles on to her.
"Not even for a second," they both said in perfect unison.
Ven chuckled softly, "I'd say you two are spending too much time together but honestly she's one step away from climbing into that tin can with you in the morning not that you's complain, might be a bit difficult to concentrate though or indeed walk," he said and Visa turned her smile onto her brother.
"Like you wouldn't climb into Gregory's suit with him given half a chance," she said and ven roared with laughter and swished his long tail before coiling it around Gregory pulling him out of his seat and into his lap much to both his surprise and delight.
"Not a chance, you think I want to stretch that thing out and ruin the fact that I get to keep tripping over my own tongue while I get to keep looking at him wearing the shit out of it," Ven said wrapping his long arms around the human man in his lap and resting his head on Gregory's shoulder as he reached up and stroked his horns gently.
"Never in my life would I have imagined ever seeing a group like this one and I've been around a long time you know?" Faith said.
"Yeah been meaning to ask you about that how long to Ghouls live exactly? I keep hearing you guys mentioning things about the prewar like you were there in person" Seven asked.
'That's because I was, I saw the bombs fall with my own eyes, hell I felt the heat, it was like watching a star being born right in front of you, hell you'd have thought that the light alone would have made me go blind but nope, one moment I'm in the middle of Atlanta the next moment there's no more Atlanta it's just me, a whole city of people just gone in the blink of an eye and there I am all alone, naked as the day I was born and changed, both happy to be alive and scared of why I was, the early days were hard as hell, no-one knew what a Ghoul was back then so I just kinda went underground, fortunately, I was now in an empty city so I kinda had decent access to supplies" Faith said.
"I'm sorry," Seven said feeling the weight of her pain in her voice and then she smiled at him.
"Don't be I'm not, I got to live when so many didn't granted it changed me physically and yeah Ghouls aren't exactly going to be winning any beauty contests any time soon but I'm still the same person I was back then just stronger I guess?" she said.
"What did you do before all of this?" Seven asked.
"I was a cop and a damn good one if I do say so myself," she said smiling.
"How come you don't look like the other Ghouls?" Visa asked and Seven glanced at her with an eyebrow raised.
"Subtle," he said and Visa grinned at him,
"When have you ever known claws to use subtlety?" she asked and he laughed and shook his head.
"Good point," he said.
Faith laughed and nodded, "Don't be sorry Visa and it's refreshing I like it people wither tiptoe around us like we're made of glass or just outright insult us its nice to have someone talk to us and more so me like I'm a normal person again, usually only Ghouls do that for other Ghouls and the occasional smooth ski......err I mean human and in answer to your question it has something to do with the exact frequency, type and wavelength of the radiation that hit me, it's incredibly rare but it does something to DNA that makes it regenerative, it doesn't mean that I get to look like I once did but it does mean that I get to heal a hell of a lot faster than anyone else checks this out" Faith said pulling out a blade and before anyone could say anything she ran it across her hand.
Everyone gasped and before their eyes, the deep red line across the palm of her hand sealed itself up, "Holy shit that really is something" Seven said and Faith nodded before wiping her hand clean on a rag she pulled from her pocket.
"Yup and I'm not the only one, chances are any Ghoul you see who looks like me has it, it lets us keep our hair and teeth which is nice, pity about the nose though, but it also does prevent our skin from continually peeling off then having to regrow like what happens with most Ghouls as its oddly fragile, hell it even lets us build muscle mass which I'm chuffed about because I've always been a gym bunny though finding weights and a treadmill in the apocalypse is not easy though we managed it here and we built up quite a nice collection, but all at the same time as all this we have the same life span as any other Ghoul which to this day no-one has been able to measure as no Ghoul has been ever known to die of old age, so the jury is out on that," she said.