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The shower was nice, but her mind was running in circles, going haywire thinking about everything. The deathclaw, the strange mutation, the stupid gate. She should never have survived. How the fuck _did _she survive? She leaned against the wall of the shower, breathing in the clouds of steam, nostrils flaring. She needed to calm down.

She yanked the shower dial to the left and hissed at the onrush of cold water, but it felt good, helped her heart rate go down. She reminded herself to breathe through her nose.

After a moment, her thoughts settled. The how didn't matter. She was still here. And she'd been raised within the Institute, for God's sake. If anyone could figure all this out, it was her. She'd figure this out.

But she wasn't done with the shower yet. She turned the water temperature back to around lukewarm and pressed her fingers between her legs, rubbing. She turned the dial higher and gasped shakily, her hips starting to rock. But there was a different itch—a literal one spreading down her chest, and as hard as she tried to ignore it, it wouldn't leave her alone.

"Shit," she sighed. "Hope that thing didn't give me radioactive herpes or something."

The blood scan would tell her. She'd had worse; it reminded her of traveling with the Rad Raiders, the gang she'd joined up with just after ditching the Institute. As common as the raider gangbang fantasy was, she had learned first hand it wasn't nearly as exciting in real life—real raiders didn't give a shit about what happened to you, didn't give a shit about consent or whether you were ready. And they had diseases, the kind that didn't just itch or burn, but post-war STDs that glowed and oozed and kicked off more Rads the hornier they got. She was glad she'd grabbed plenty of medical supplies on her way out of the bio-lab, though she'd never expected to be using most of them on a horny raider gang she'd just joined. Plus, well, real-life raiders were so often disappointingly less than hung.

It didn't hit her she'd been scratching herself all this time until she scratched hard enough to draw blood. She hissed and looked at the red mark between her cleavage, but it was a tiny cut, not even worth a stimpak. She growled and grabbed the showerhead, almost yanking it clean out of the wall. She let out a long sigh as the warm water washed over her intimate parts, soothing and arousing at once. Yeah, that'd work.

Afterward, she made her way downstairs and toward the lab, but she paused in the doorway as a loud bang from outside caught her attention. She rushed to the window, fearing a raider gang had noticed her broken gate, but relief rushed through her as she saw the two survivors, Kyle and Cia, working to repair her front gate. She went out to offer help, and the three of them made quick work of it together. She'd never been strong—in fact, strength had always been her weakness—but she was starting to think there had been some merit to Kyle's theory about her gaining super strength. She decided to test this.

"Hey, whoa, don't hurt yourse—" Cia started to say, watching Xavia bend and grab a large girder, the metal groaning as she hoisted it. She lifted it almost up to her neck before the itch distracted her and she grunted, dropping it. It slammed to the earth and the two stared at her, eyes wide.

"Holy hell," Kyle murmured, grinning ear-to-ear.

Xavia fished through her bag and found her old voice recorder, one of the only things not broken by her fight with the deathclaw. She pushed the button and it depressed with a satisfying click.

"Notes on undiscovered mutation, entry one: approximately two hours after mutation began, subject exhibits noticable increase in physical strength," she said.

"Hey, if you discovered it, doesn't that mean you get to name it?" Kyle asked. Cia shushed him. Xavia laughed and clicked off the recorder.

They continued work on the gate and were almost done, but the electronics were giving them some trouble. The frustration peaked and she ended up snapping at Cia after she failed to grasp which port to plug the connector into, telling her to "just put it OVER THERE!!"

The awkward silence permeated the air more than the radiation.

"Shit, maybe I am going full super mutant," she said, taking the port herself and sticking it in. "Sorry about that."

She had never been an angry person. Definitely not like that. She offered to let them stay for dinner to make up for the outburst, though Cia worried about them eating all her food.

"Don't worry about it," Xavia insisted. "I've got a working fridge, there's plenty to eat. I get stuff from the merchant caravans every now and then, and there's a protein printer in the lab for when the harvest isn't as good."

"Pro-tin what now?" Kyle said, mutfruit juice dripping off his chin.

"Protein printer," Xavia said, smiling as she saw Cia grab a napkin and throw it at Kyle's face. "Fabricates any food with the right material and enough power."

She took a blueberry and grimaced at the overly-sweet burst of flavor, swallowing hard. They were probably too ripe. She took a stab at a bit of lettuce, but it was repulsively bitter and she pulled it back out of her mouth, still on the fork.

"Must've gone bad," she muttered.

"Seemed fine to me," Cia said, taking a tentative bite of her own lettuce.

Xavia pierced a chunk of brahmin steak, hesitantly brought it to her tongue. Her mouth was watering before she even tasted it, and when she did, she could feel the blood rush to her tongue. It was tender, chewy and juicy, a bit overcooked, but amazing. She stopped as it hit her she knew this feeling.

She remembered trying out the different mutations; one of them had made her purely carnivorous. It had been exactly like this. She recalled being disgusted by the taste of fruit and vegetables, even wound up selling off those she had or just throwing them out, and meat was the greatest thing she'd ever tasted. Had she gotten so irradiated she'd picked up multiple mutations? But no, she could rule that out—if it were simply a series of different mutations, even the basic blood analysis would've told her, but instead it had said 'Unknown Mutation.'

"You okay, Doc?" Kyle asked.

Both of them were looking at her, Cia's forkful of mutfruit and meat salad paused halfway between her mouth and her plate, though Kyle's was still shoveling food into his, albeit at a slightly slower speed than it had been.

"Yeah," Xavia said. "Just thinking."

She shoved a few more mouthfuls of seared brahmin steak down her gullet, not even using her fork for the last one, and grabbed her recorder.

"You two keep eating," she said. "As much as you want. I'll be right back."

She shot up and sped into the lab, clicking the recorder before she'd even reached the door.

"Undiscovered mutation, entry two: noticeable dietary shift, subject appears to now be entirely carnivorous," she said, making her way over to the analyzer. It had completed the analysis and dropped into low power mode, and she rapidly tapped a key to rouse it from its slumber. "Additionally... subject experiences increasingly uncomfortable itching. May not necessarily be related to the mutation. Other possible sources include infection and disease transferred by bodily fluid contact with recently encountered deathclaw."

She turned the recorder off, tossed it aside, overshooting the table, and tapped the keys of the analyzer more insistently.

[Loading analysis. Please wait...]

"Come onnn!" she growled.

"'Bodily fluid transfer?'" she heard Kyle's voice chuckle from the doorway of the lab. "What'd you do with that deathclaw?"

She laughed, looking up.

"It bled on me, don't get any ideas," she said, but it was probably to late for that.

"You think that, uh, itch is contagious?" he asked, smirking and leaning against the doorframe. "I was all ready to hit that."

His eyes glanced down her body and she smirked back. This kind of forwardness might've been out of place in the common talk of the pre-war world, and they'd've had no place for it in the Institute, but it was tame compared to the carnal ways of the raider gangs. Sometimes they didn't even bother with talk first.

"Might still be worth it," Kyle said, giving her a more thorough look. "Itch or no itch."

And this she was equally familiar with. The call of instinct could overcome the fear of unknown contagions, especially if it had been awhile. Even the terminal kind weren't too big a deal—in an irradiated post-apocalyptic wasteland, no one was sweating a few years off their lifespan, not when a raider gang or radscorpion could make tomorrow your last day.

Xavia stepped forward with a grin, the warmth building in her core like a reactor. Kyle looked eager, and she didn't give him a chance to reconsider.

***

She was scratching before she was even fully conscious. The significance of this was the first thing that hit her and it snapped her to full consciousness with a feeling of dread. The itch had spread along her arms and all down her legs.

"Shit," she hissed, sitting up. She groaned, a tight ache all down her back, centered in her ass. She glanced at the sleeping form of Kyle. She didn't think they'd gone that hard. And anyway, she'd taken harder. Maybe she'd slept wrong.

Damn it. This itch wouldn't go away. She pressed her nails harder against her arm and hissed sharply at the stinging pain, drawing back.

"Shit," she muttered again, looking at the red scratch, blood trickling down her arm and dripping. She grabbed a bandage from her bag and wrapped the scratch quick, a temporary fix. She looked at her nails and her eyes widened. The nails had darkened and hardened, tapering into sharp points, the beginning of a familiar mutation.

So, the Rads had given her talons this time. She sank back into the old mattress. At least now she knew.

But... wait. Her sleep-fogged mind connected things suddenly. She'd already found out the mutation's effects. The carnivorous diet shift yesterday. And what about the increased strength before that?

She sat up again, confused. She returned to scratching her arm idly, forgetting about the talons, and almost yelped when one of the sharp hooks caught on something and tore. Something small and hard clattered to the floor, like a rock or a wood chip, and her eyes followed it. It felt like it had come off of her.

She leaned forward, peering at it, a small, smooth, brown thing, slightly glossy. Her first instinct was that it was some kind of bug, possibly something radioactive that had tried to burrow into her skin overnight. She shuddered, but picked it up. It wasn't a bug. She knew the shape from diagrams in old Institute textbooks. It was a reptilian scale.

She lifted her arm, looking at where it had detached, and saw the little hole it left behind. There was a patch of them, grown in a cluster on her arm. Scaly skin... a mutation she hadn't encountered yet. Supposedly, it granted increased endurance, at the cost of agility. Not a bad trade. She'd never been too flexible anyway.

"Huh," she said, examining the rest of her arm, finding other patches of brown scales as she turned it over. There weren't any on her belly, weirdly enough, which was where the itch had started, but though the itch was gone from that part of her, her skin there did seem slightly thicker than normal.

Kyle stirred, rolling on the mattress, and sat up. The scales itched around the edges and she growled, gently dragging her claws along her arm.

"Fuck, did it get worse?" Kyle groaned, sitting up. His voice was all husky from sleep and it was kind of hot. He lifted the blanket, looking down, and she laughed at the fact that his first concern was his genitalia.

"Hope you didn't pass it along," he said. "It'd be kinda worth it if you did, though."

His ridiculous grin was back. She smirked back and pushed to her feet, groaning at the spike of pain in her back and ass.

"Yeah, sorry," he said. "Even the toughest wasteland gals can't take me at my best and come out of it without a scratch."

"I don't think this is you," she said, wincing, rubbing the sore muscles. "Feels like something... else."

She trailed off into a soft whisper as it dawned on her, eyes widening. It was like a series of mechanical pieces fitting into place, and now the machine was whirring.

The strength, the carnivorous diet, the talons, the scaly skin... How the fuck hadn't she seen it?? Her mind must've been addled enough to cloud her thoughts, made it harder to put things together. The increased aggression made sense, too. But she had to be sure. She ran for the stairs and bounded down the steps, the wood creaking loudly in protest. She didn't bother with clothes.

"Hey, I fixed the gate while you two were screwing," Cia said bluntly. "And slept on the floor. You now officially owe me. Whoa, where are you—?!"

Xavia ignored her, barreling past and into the lab.

"Do you always work without clothes?" the survivor asked, walking into the lab behind her.

"Sometimes," Xavia said quickly, trying to wake the analyzer. "When it's hot. Or when I want to and it's not too cold. Come ON! Damn it!"

She raised a fist to smash the stupid analyzer, but reigned herself in—with her strength, she might actually smash it. She took a breath and waited for the screen to come on, tapping a taloned foot as the results loaded.

[Advanced fluid analysis results compiled.]

[Fluid Tested: Blood, Mixed]

[Mutation Designation: Unnamed (Select to designate)]

[Mutation Effects: Multiple]

"Very helpful, thank you," she sighed, then highlighted and selected the 'Blood: Mixed'. A new page loaded:

[Blood analyzed: Genome sequence is hybridized, contains multiple species.]

[Genome Content: 84% human, 16% deathclaw]

She let out a breath. There it was.

She went back a page and selected 'Mutation Designation' this time.

[This mutation is undiscovered, and thus not officially designated. Select below to input an official designation, or choose one from the recommended list.]

[Input Designation: ]

[Recommended Designations:

Deathclaw Hybridization

Deathclaw Hybridism

Deathclawification

Deathclaw Anthropomorphication]

[Note: Congratulations on your discovery! Remember to consult the Institute Bioscience Division to obtain permission before applying a new designation.]

She chuckled. This must be the last bit of Institute programming she'd forgotten to erase from the thing.

She glanced over the list. The last one was too wordy. She hit the first of the recommended designations and the page refreshed. Good enough. She stood back from the screen, hands on her hips, smirking.

"Looks like I'm the first in the wastes to pick up a brand new mutation," she said.

"Is that... what's wrong with your skin?" Cia asked. Xavia turned and saw the girl's eyes roaming her curves, then snapping back up to her face. Kyle's didn't have the same courtesy, but she didn't mind.

"No offense," the girl said quickly.

Xavia leaned back over the controls, sticking her ass out a bit more. She went back a page and navigated down to 'Mutation Effects.' A new page:

[Beneficial Effects:

Scale & Keratin Epidermis: Increased endurance

Claws: Hardened keratin talons, effective in combat

Heightened Senses: Visual, olfactory, auditory, and gustatory acuity

Increased Strength

Radiation Immunity]

[Negative Effects:

Scale & Keratin Epidermis: Decreased agility, decreased tactile sensitivity

Claws: Decreased dexterity

Heightened Senses: Visual, olfactory, auditory, and gustatory sensitivity]

[Note: Mutation may cause additional effects if it progresses naturally or is enhanced via a catalyst.]

"Catalyst..." she murmured.

She thought back to the strange rush she felt with each stimpak she'd taken. Of course. It made sense. She reached for the recorder in her bag—shit. She'd thrown it across the table. She planted a hand on the table's surface and leapt clean over it.

"Whoa!" Cia yelled.

Xavia grabbed the recorder and heard the plastic frame squeak as she gripped it.

"Mutation notes, entry three: approximately 20 hours after mutation first occurred, I believe I've nailed down the cause. The large dose of radiation broke down my DNA, the introduction of deathclaw blood served as a mutagen, and the stimpaks I administered immediately after seem to have catalyzed the mutation. By my theory, further doses should continue this effect."

She saw the dumbfounded looks on the two survivors' faces.

"In layman's terms," she continued, "the radiation damaged my genetic structure, the deathclaw blood added new traits, and the stimpak increased the mutation."

Their eyes widened.

"Note that I still possess a sound frame of mind, despite a mild increase in aggression," she said. The two seemed to relax at that.

She stopped the recorder and they continued to stare at her.

"So you're part... deathclaw?" Kyle asked.

She shrugged.

"Guess so," she said. "Honestly, I kinda like it."