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Falling Out and Falling In

Part 1

for NerubianKnight

by Draconicon

Helmrick, like many that worked for the Enclave, was well aware of the faults of the organization. If anyone was speaking positively of the old remnants of the once-government, then they were either working in the propaganda sector of the group or they were completely brainwashed by said propaganda. Everyone else knew the truth: the whole thing was held together by the duct tape of technological superiority - though that was a gap that was closing fast between them and the Brotherhood of Steel - and various experiments that were still keeping them ahead of their rivals.

And secrecy. Secrecy helped their cause a great deal as well, the griffon supposed.

"Hmmm, more pheromones needed for that batch," Helmrick muttered, penciling a few notes onto his clipboard. "Perhaps a few modifiers towards perspiration activators, too...they'll sweat out to nothing at this rate."

He looked up at the wolves that the Enclave had captured from the countryside. Most of them were nothing more than Raiders - or at least, that was what he told himself - but one white wolf had been begging to go back to his family. Probably someone from one of the little settlements elsewhere in the Capital Wasteland, unfortunately. Some of the drones might have gotten their wires crossed.

Helmrick shook his head, his wings flicking past the edge of his white coat. Not likely that had happened, either, if he was honest with himself. If the Enclave saw a reasonable target, they would go for it. Despite the propaganda, they were here for their own purposes.

And he was here...because, quite honestly, there was little other choice. The Enclave was all he knew; they'd pulled him in at a young age, they paid him to work on their experiments and they financed his own. Considering that work was known by the Brotherhood of Steel and other groups out there, leaving wasn't an option. If they got their hands on him...

Well, better that they just didn't.

He glanced up at the subjects again. The aphrodisiac gas that he'd been testing had done its job well on all three subjects. Once he had its potency amped up sufficiently that it could be carried in a grenade, he was reasonably sure that the Enclave soldiers would be able to neutralize targets far easier than before. Certainly with less need for heavy firepower, at the very least, preserving their armaments for more crucial fights.

Plus, he'd be the first to admit that it was fun to screw with people this way. The sight of the three wolves helplessly bucking their hips, their cocks flicking up and down and spitting cum by the spoonful against the clear walls of their prisons, was enough to keep him at half-mast under his clothes. Helmrick smiled a rueful smile, groping himself slightly as he watched them keep grinding away.

The white wolf seemed to have forgotten his far-off family under the influence of the gasses, leaning against the glass wall and humping against it. Squirts and squelches of cum oozed from him, and he was sweating up a storm from the droplets running through his fur. That was the main concern that Helmrick still had about the gas; it pumped the body into overdrive to allow it to process so much pleasure so quickly, and while he knew that there were those in the Enclave that would enjoy that sort of weakening effect - considering that it meant that the victim would be so thirsty and dehydrated that they would be at risk of death if they weren't taken in quickly - he felt that it was crossing a line. And a big line, at that.

He made another note -

Shnk.

" Doctor."

The griffon turned, toes scraping the metal floor in annoyance as he fixed the two armored Enclave grunts with a firm stare. Not that it made any difference to the pair of them; they just stood there and stared back from beneath their thick helmets, eye-lenses glowing as they waited for his response.

Eventually, he was forced to sigh and put the clipboard down. The griffon crossed his arms, cocking his head to the side.

"Yes?"

" Doctor Stephano has asked for you. There's a new acquisition."

"I'm busy."

" The doctor demands it."

Biting his lips, he looked back at the wolves. They'd either work their way through the rest of the aphrodisiac and collapse, or they'd reach a point where they were able to tolerate it. Either way, they weren't that likely to collapse in serious danger. He'd limited the worst of the gas delivery to make sure of that much. And much as he hated to admit it, Stephano wasn't someone that you wanted to keep waiting if you could help it.

"Fine. I'm coming."

" With us, Doctor."

As ever. Sandwiched between the two power-armor-wearing grunts, Helmrick allowed himself to be escorted through the Enclave base. The underground facility was as stale as ever outside the laboratory, and the various cameras that fed all the goings-on in the base back to President Eden followed him and the soldiers around as they followed the many twists and turns beneath the ground.

This way.

That way.

Over there.

Under there.

They went up, down, left, right, down, down, left, up, right, and so on. The base was all but impossible to find one's way through without an escort, and he knew that it had been made that way intentionally. The Enclave wanted to make sure that everyone stayed where they were supposed to be and nowhere else. The point of the base was to ensure that everything was as secure as possible, and those that were in the employ of the Enclave did what they were told, and never felt the temptation to go beyond the scope of their jobs.

It worked, too. Helmrick knew almost nobody outside his own department, and he doubted that anyone else in the Enclave was much better off.

They left the biotech department behind, eventually reaching what some affectionately called the Kennels. He hesitated as the guards took position outside a triple-reinforced door, shaking his head.

"Don't tell me he captured another one..."

There was no answer from his escorts. He doubted that they'd be giving him anything, for that matter. Shaking his head, he lifted his wrist. The Pip-Boy on the side flickered, accessing the base's signal codes, and he held his ID card against it. A moment later, the codes were imprinted from Pip-Boy to the card, and he pressed the card to the scanner by the door.

It opened to reveal a hangar long-since stripped of the various Verti-Birds that had once been there, replaced with cages and dark gray machines that had a different purpose. Deathclaws collared and shackled filled over 90% of the cages, and each one was watched by no less than a squad of soldiers with plasma weapons trained on the beasts.

His attention, however, was dragged to the far end of the hangar, where the doors were closing and a new beast had been brought in. The griffin narrowed his eyes at the flickering shapes that popped out of the beast's back, half-convinced that he was looking at some giant Mirelurk at first before he saw the face.

Aquatic Deathclaw...that's a new one...

Shaking his head, he strode across the room, moving between the cages while keeping his eyes on the new creature. His eyes flicked up and down the other thing's shape. Not quite the same height of a normal Deathclaw - though still considerably taller than him and most others in the hangar - it had tendrils that looked almost like those of a jellyfish coming out of its back. More to the point, it had a collar.

"Doctor Stephano," he called out to the squirrel at the head of the little entourage surrounding the new captive. "It seems that you've already collared this one; why am I needed, then?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes, Helmrick."

The squirrel turned around. The head of a third of the science departments that the Enclave had running at any given time - and a direct subordinate to the colonel and the President - Doctor Stephano hadn't cut the figure that Helmrick had expected when they first met. The gray squirrel, with his fluffy tail, slight build, and that cocky smirk right in the corner of the mouth that never quite met his eyes, was someone that he would have expected as an intern, or some plucky assistant to one of the other scientists.

He'd learned quickly that the only time that smirk reached the doctor's eyes was when he was seeing his experiments advance the Enclave's cause. When the first iteration of 'tame' Deathclaws had been released on one of the more rebellious settlements in the Capital Wasteland, when the blood had flowed and the Deathclaws had been left ravaged by the electro-stimulation to their more primitive brains, was the first time that he had seen the squirrel actually smile. It had been...terrifying.

"Helmrick, tell me. Does this look like one of our collars?"

"..."

"I insist. Take a close look. This one seems docile enough."

There was more than insistence in that statement. It was an order, through and through, and he bit his lips to keep the sarcastic response in the back of his throat from coming forward. Instead, he took a deep breath and took a close look.

Sure enough, it wasn't Enclave design. Not dissimilar, however, and certainly on par with the sort of technology that they had managed to create for their own purposes. Rather than targeting the top and sides of the Deathclaw's skull, this one tapped into the brain stem. He imagined that it was probably closer to body control rather than full-on mind control, and just at a glance, he was fairly certain that this one was less disruptive and damaging to the overall brain structure of the large creature, as well.

"No, sir," Helmrick said.

"Indeed. Which suggests that there are others out there that are either copying our technology, or have come up with this on their own. I don't think I like that. What do you think?"

"...I think that it's something that we'll need to take a closer look at. Was he alone?"

"He's collared, Helmrick. Don't tell me you're too dull to understand the implications."

He wasn't, but he had been hoping that Stephano would be. A pre-collared Deathclaw meant that there was a good chance that he had a handler out there somewhere, and that, in turn, meant that there was someone that would be looking for this dangerous, tentacled, slimy thing.

"I'm assuming the collar's already blocked to outside signals, then?" Helmrick asked.

"Of course. First thing that we did. And now you are going to figure out the mystery of this new collar, and what it means. And whether we have something useful in this particular species."

Helmrick glanced back at the massive brute. He was certainly different, and -

There was a flicker. It was barely more than a glance, something that was so brief and instant that it was like catching lightning on film by accident, but it was there. This Deathclaw had looked between him and Stephano while they were talking, and had been listening. There was something more than just the regular beast-brain behind those eyes, and more than that, it knew enough to keep hiding it.

Helmrick hid his immediate reaction, shaking his head as he turned back to the squirrel.

"I'll take care of it immediately."

"Good. I want this done quickly; if there's someone rivaling our tech out there, I want it, and so will President Eden. See to it."

"Yes, sir."

"And do something to take control of that collar; it's taking up too much power to keep the signal blockers going. You can do that, I trust?"

"Of course."

"Good. And..."

The squirrel looked over his shoulder. His eyes flicked up and down the beast that they'd captured, and he smirked.

"See to milking him. He may have some interesting DNA to pass on to some of the other broodmothers."

#

Thankfully, 'hacking' the control collar turned out to be as easy as finding its signal numbers on the back and broadcasting on that wavelength. The more complicated part was taking control of the Deathclaw wearing the collar properly, considering that it utilized a different operating system than his own equipment was designed for.

Despite that, it was easy enough to make the new captive march through the underground base to the labs. The Deathclaw marched on without a sound, despite the sheer bulkiness of its body, and he wondered if this was something that it was more used to than the rest of the team believed.

Stephano is right about him having a handler...and that means that there might be someone out there waiting for this one to come back.

And if that person knew what was good for them, they'd stay well clear of wherever they were supposed to meet up. If he was a betting man, he would say that the Enclave would be stationing soldiers along the creature's trail, looking for anyone that might come and find their lost...

Helmrick hesitated to think 'property', because there was something off about that, particularly with the occasional glance that he shared with the beast. This Deathclaw had some intelligence in his eyes, an understanding of the world around him that he was taking a great deal of effort to keep hidden. Someone that knew that they had to look dumb meant that there was a great deal of intelligence in that skull, and it made him want, more than ever, to see what the scanner could pull out.

The armored guards led him back to his lab and departed as soon as it was clear that the Deathclaw was completely under the griffon's control. Once he demonstrated by making the beast hop up and down on one foot - something that Deathclaws in general could not do - they believed him, leaving him to his work. Helmrick shook his head at the closing door before turning back to the creature.

"Alright. Let's see what we have in there...Over here."

He put the beast on a scanner pad. It was something that he and several other engineers had worked on together once they realized that there were beasts out there that required more attention than a mere MRI machine would be able to handle. Lacking something of that size - and the machinery to make something like it - they had created a pad-scanner. Once the Deathclaw was on it, he activated it, sending little hover-drones around the pad, each one passing x-rays, heat scanners, and more across the beast's body, feeding information into the nearby computer in fits and bursts.

The readout was, to put it bluntly, astonishing.

He didn't let it show on his face as he read through the information. The skull of the Deathclaw was nearly the same size as the others that they'd bred and controlled, but this one had a more open brain-space, containing a larger than normal brain, and most of the scans were picking up greater than usual neural activity. That, in and of itself, wasn't a guarantee of intelligence, as it might have merely been the body reacting to the interruption of the collar, but further down...

He saw vocal cords. Not just the simple things of predators, of dogs and other beasts, but well-developed ones. So developed, he realized, that they could quite possibly be capable of coherent speech.

A Deathclaw with intelligence...and maybe more...

He looked back at the beast again. Hesitating, he tapped the control, bringing it off the scanner pad. If his assumptions were right, he didn't want to say something that would go straight to President Eden. The head of the Enclave wasn't precisely known for his compassion to those that were affected by the FEV; knowing that this was not just a mutant, but a mutated mutant, would just lead to greater efforts towards his destruction.

Was this a betrayal of the Enclave? He supposed it was, in a small way.

Other scanned information from the Deathclaw's body confirmed that it wasn't merely a male. There were multiple 'parts' between its legs, giving it both an ovipositor and male equipment that would be able to impregnate other Deathclaws capable of such things. As he looked down, piloting the Deathclaw to some of the more 'intimate' machinery on the far side of his lab, he could see that there was already something going on down there.

"Heh...looks like you enjoy being used..."

There was no answer, of course, not that he expected one. He imagined that this Deathclaw was more focused on keeping its silence at the moment to ensure that whoever else was waiting for it would have a chance to stay safe...or maybe it was smart enough to know that it had to stay quiet to ever have a chance of escaping. Either way, he would have a little fun with this.

As soon as they reached the milking machines on the far side of the room, he tapped a few buttons on the control device. They forced the Deathclaw to all fours, and - unlike with a regular one - the tendrils on this one's back flailed back and forth through the air. It was clearly not entirely sure what was going on, but that was fine; it would learn soon enough, and he would make sure that it got everything that it needed. Everything.

He was panting, he realized, panting with excitement and eagerness. The white-coated griffon pulled his lab coat off to the side, reaching under it to fiddle with his zipper and the button of his pants with his free hand. With the other, he tapped a couple other buttons, testing functions -

"Yes...I thought that would work..."

The Deathclaw's slit opened between its legs, releasing a long, fleshy...thing, for lack of a better word. It was already oozing, all but gushing to the ground with slime and other substances, and he doubted that it would be clean anytime soon. He shook his head; the controller allowed him to make the Deathclaw's body into whatever he wanted. The biology of the massive creature was his to control.

Truly, it was a heady sort of feeling to have that sort of power over someone else.

Once the beast was fully erect - and fully erect in this case being several feet of cock - he leaned down, picking up a few tubes. One ended in a long glass canister, barely sufficient in size for this. Previously, he'd used it to collect genetic material from some of the Deathclaw bulls for the captive matriarch in one of the other labs; it'd serve the same use today.

Regardless of the high quality of the collection tube, he could feel it sliming up from the excess fluid coming from between the creature's legs almost immediately. The ovipositor was dripping with it, oozing over the large glass end and leaving it sliding out twice before he managed to snag it properly. He forced it down to the midpoint, then activated the machine. Suction did the rest, dragging the collection tube down to the base in bobbing motions before settling in to suck properly.

Up, down, up, down went the glass tube, both squeezing and teasing the ovipositor by turns. The Deathclaw grunted, huffing despite the control collar as it was milked and sucked by turns. Up, down, up, down went the tube, and the creature's sex oozed all the more down the plastic tubing attached to the glass end.

Despite himself, he was rubbing his dick through his underwear, feeling just how hard the barbed thing was getting. It had only something to do with the creature before him; he'd been half-aroused ever since the experiment on the wolves, and this was just the most recent thing to hold his attention and fascination. He growled under his breath, clicking his beak quietly as he walked around to the beast's head.

It looked up at him, eyes still in and out with intelligence, hiding and showing it by turns. Helmrick picked up the control device again, tapping a button.

"Take my cock out...with your tongue."

He had done this once or twice with some of the better-trained Deathclaws in the kennel. Once they were properly conditioned with the helmet, you could order them around without it, and the fear of pain often made them more obedient and less spasmodic than they would be while wearing it. At the same time, you only did this if you were at least a little crazy, or particularly desperate.

Helmrick was never entirely sure which of the two camps that he fell into. The Enclave base wasn't really a support of ready 'company' as such things went, but at the same time, there was no denying that there was a lot of danger to be had when taking one's dick in one's hand around a Deathclaw. The last time he did it, he'd needed to head to the Infirmary to get some medical care from the scrapes along his shaft. No questions; he wasn't the first one to have been that stupid, but he was the first one to get off from it.

This time, however...

There was some force from the collar, something that got the beast to stick out its tongue, but there was no mistaking the underlying willingness. Whether that was all the collar pushing things through the brainstem and encouraging arousal or whether that was the beast knowing how to fake it, it didn't matter. It was a much smoother ride than it otherwise would be.

As the tongue slipped past his waistband, he leaned forward. Not far, just enough to make it look like this felt really good to the cameras. As he did, he whispered.

"I know you can talk," he muttered. "Don't. If you can hear me...if you can understand me...lick my balls twice."

There was a moment of hesitation, then the tongue slid out around his shaft, past the base of it, and into the depths of his underwear. One lick, then a second, right over his balls.

"Good. You aren't alone; someone else should be holding the collar. Alive or dead? One or two?"

Two.

"Okay...waiting for you?"

Two.

So far, so good. Not brilliant, but good. This...this was an opportunity for him, and if he could find this person - which wasn't impossible - then there was a chance for him to change his life.

"Keep sucking...more questions when it's not so obvious..."

Standing up again, he leaned his head back to enjoy the tongue playing over his barbed shaft. He would have more time to enjoy this later, and probably the other end of the beast, as well, but for now...for now, it was better to enjoy this for as long as he could. It would help fool the cameras into thinking that he was actually exhausted later when he fell over and whispered to the beast, rather than just playing at it.

#

Leaving the Enclave base wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but when the guards were more than willing to trade a little 'surface time' - as they called it - with a scientist in exchange for access to some of the more erotic experiments, it was manageable. He hoped that the wolves would be taken care of, but considering the foxes in the uniforms were more than a little randy, he didn't put good odds on that. He imagined that the wolves would end up well-rutted and tossed like wet rags back in their cages.

He refused to let himself think about that for the moment. He had a job to do, and more than that, he had a name.

Axel, hmm?

The Deathclaw - apparently named Gruth - had limited capacity for speech, and his grammar left much to be desired, but he had given the griffon what he needed to know. Axel was a capybara from further away, someone that had journeyed towards the Capital Wasteland on rumors of Project Purity, something that the Enclave was currently playing with on its own. The fact that the pair of them had gotten tangled up in this had nothing to do with any sort of plan from down south. It was nothing but pure bad luck.

They'd had a plan, though. If they got split up, they would meet again in a bar on the far side of the Jefferson Memorial, not that far from Rivet City. It was a place called the Nut-and-Bolt-Hole, off the beaten track and more than a little dangerous...well, if you weren't armed with Enclave tech.

Even so, it was a surprisingly nervous griffon that eventually reached the building. He'd left a small trail of ghouls in his wake, their patchwork bodies barely holding together after so many years exposed to the radiation of the wasteland. His own body was prickling with it, barely held at bay with copious use of Med-X, Rad-X, and Rad-Away, and he was already questioning his general plans of leaving the Enclave.

Only for a few moments at a time, however. The more that he thought about it, the more that he knew that this was his only chance to make a clean break for it. Stephano was slowly going off his rocker, and President Eden was a monster. One that spoke well, admittedly, but a monster nonetheless, and one that was going to turn on the whole of the Enclave, soon enough. It was only a matter of time.

He rested his hand on the door to the bar, collecting himself, then pushed the door in. In an instant, six pairs of eyes and two gun barrels turned toward him, including a very big laser weapon held by the bartender at the far end of the room. The griffon immediately held his hands up, plasma pistol pointed toward the sky.

"Just looking for someone," he said. "No harm here."

"Not a common weapon there, friend," the bartender - a weasel woman - said, not bringing the sights of her weapon down. "Where'd you get it?"

"Dead robot."

"..."

"It had it grafted to its hand."

"...Uh-huh. Well, come in." She shook her head, lowering the gun. "But I hear that thing warming up, I'm taking the first shot."

"I understand."

And he did; up here, they had a_lot_ more reason to be jumpy than they did down in the underground. He would have to watch his steps carefully when they moved on with the plan.

He panned his gaze over the crowd and soon found the only capybara to be seen. Gray back, blue stripes along his sides, just like Gruth had described between cock-sucking sessions. He holstered his pistol and walked over, sitting down at the other man's table.

"Seat's taken," the other man muttered. Smaller than the griffon, the capybara nevertheless managed a solid appearance under a thick layer of surprisingly metallic-looking armor. "You can head off."

"Axel?"

"...Who told you?"

"A Deathclaw, name of Gruth."

Axel's eyes widened as he leaned across the table, grabbing the griffon by the hand. Fast reflexes, there, and faster response times. It was a surprisingly clinical response considering that he was the one getting his wrist squeezed so hard that he genuinely feared for the safety of his arm bones.

"Where is he? What happened to him?"

"He was captured by the Enclave," he said, experimentally twisting his hand from side to side. It didn't work to get free; the capybara had too good a grip. "You're going to break my wrist if you keep that up."

"How do you know?"

"I'm one of them. But I want out...and I can get him out, too, if you work with me."

That was enough. The capybara pulled his hand back after a moment or two, looking Helmrick up and down. No surprise there; he imagined that having someone from the Enclave actually being willing to talk to someone that wasn't one of them was probably out of the ordinary. Certainly, he didn't hear of any of the surface troops doing anything but shooting at the common folk of the Capital Wasteland.

The silence stretched on between them. Helmrick resisted the urge to rub his wrist, shaking his head as he looked away from the other man.

"I'm sure that you have a few little tools. The technology in Gruth's collar is...impressive. If, for example, you had the coordinates of a patrol of Deathclaws being taken to a testing ground, and access to a few EMP devices...and the timing of the patrol in question..."

"Don't worry. I get what you're offering. Just...thinking it through. Don't want to make another mistake," Axel said.

"Smart."

"...Why do you want out? Seems like you're the one in the good place, and I'm the one trying to get there."

"There's reasons. It might look different from the outside, but from inside? The Enclave is slowly falling apart. They're disintegrating, despite everything that they have to their name. But anyone inside can't leave; they're marked, recorded, and more than that, anyone that finds out that we used to be part of the Enclave is going to shoot us on sight. I have to get out without anyone knowing...and if everyone thinks I died...that gives me a chance."

"...Fair enough." Axel nodded. "You give me the coordinates and the timing, and I'll be there. But if I don't see Gruth at the front of the pack -"

"He'll be there. And so will I."

He didn't know how he was going to swing that one, precisely; Stephano didn't call the shots of who got sent on surface patrol, nor did he think that he could have manipulated the other man if he had been the one. But there had to be a way to get assigned to it. One way or another, he had to be there.

"And after that?" Axel asked. "You just going to run?"

"...I heard rumors. Tales of what's down south. The Carolinas have...something going on," he said, shrugging. "The details are fuzzy in our logs, but we've heard stories."

"Yeah...you're not the only one."

"You, too?"

"We were torn about going down there or coming north. Looks like we made the wrong decision." the capybara said. "If you can deliver on getting Gruth out, I'm not opposed to traveling together. At least for a while. Someone else that knows his gadgets would go a long way towards getting us to safety."

"I can promise some expertise."

"Heh. Then welcome to the team."

Axel offered his hand, and Helmrick took it. A quick shake was all they had time for before he excused himself, getting to his feet.

"I'll get a message out when I know it's near to time. The coordinates for the testing ground are north of the Mall; you know it?"

"I can find it."

"When I know the route, I'll let you know. The timing should come at the same time. Be ready."

"I will be. Oh, I will be...and you..."

"Hmm?"

"Take care of Gruth until you're free."

"That, I can do."

The End

Summary: The beginning of a Fallout saga, in which a griffon, a capybara, and a deathclaw try and make it work.

Tags: M/M, Griffon, Deathclaw, Fallout, Control, Bondage, Milking Machine, Oral, Body Control, Enclave, Escape, Series,