Chapter 663 - New World Destruction

It's been two months since the eradication of the NCR leadership, and, well, things have proceeded exactly as you may have expected... As soon as the announcement of the attack was made, the NCR almost immediately began destroying itself.

The people holding the reigns of the Brahmin barons and other powerful people were gone, leaving a literal wasteland where no rules could really be governed. The NCR military couldn't do anything as they were barely holding the Brotherhood of Steel back at the borders, and the populace couldn't individually do anything aside from sitting back and watching the fireworks.

This was why the NCR split and fractured, the territory being claimed by various new factions that'd sprung up. Most of these factions were Brahmin barons with enough resources to stake a claim on more land, while the rest were simply large groups of NCR citizens that wanted to protect themselves and their way of life.

It didn't take long for the fighting to start either, once the groups were decided, any action that could be considered even slightly 'negative' would result in a massive conflict... A stray member of the People's Republic wandering into the Brahmin Lord Kalthakuk's territory? War.

Someone from the American Liberation Party sends a mean letter to the White Rights Faction? War.

The Anti-Mutant Coalition stones a Ghoul to death, infuriating the Mutant Freedom faction? War.

It was as if Afton, Cass, Anja, and Juan had pushed a tiny domino, that led to others that steadily grew in size, which continued until a domino large enough to flatten a country finally fell onto the NCR.

Afton was now wondering if the Mojave would be better off if Ulysses had just nuked the trade routes... Some of the fighting had started to spill into the local region, factions wanting to control as much territory as possible randomly staking claim on anything that didn't have a name on it.

This was easily dealt with however, the Brothers of Kimball had decided to march towards the South East entrance into the Mojave where the NCR Mojave Outpost had previously been. Their group numbered at around two hundred, and they'd somehow managed to scavenge an old out of order military base for equipment...

Afton just waited until they stopped to pay their respects to the large statue of a trooper and a ranger, before shooting the Range Finder at them... Instantly, the two hundred men were vaporized, along with the statue that'd previously marked NCR and Ranger cooperation.

The only thing left was a large scorched crater, a reminder to any attackers who thought the Mojave was theirs to claim.

Of course, Afton hadn't been twiddling his thumbs during all of this. Research on healing his father had continued, and with the 'willing' assistance of Macka Bree, they were finally beginning to make progress on returning Zachary Parker's humanity... Of course, they were still a long way away, but any progress is good progress.

As for how Macka was doing during his time in prison? Well, after extensive testing, Afton found that using hydrofluoric acid would temporarily stop the man's healing. It seemed as if the adaptivity of his body was useless in the face of it, and while he could make himself 'somewhat' resistant to it temporarily, he'd experience extraordinary pain when subjected to it.

Even without pain receptors, being touched by the substance made the man feel as if he were 'on fire' on every cell of his body. An interesting finding, to make use of this, Afton had changed Macka's cell floor with it. This allowed him to stop removing the man's limbs constantly, as Macka was too afraid to go against Afton after it'd been installed.

Indeed, he'd also been utilising the man's abilities against prisoners, seeing how extensive his manipulative of organic material really went... After the third 'Croninburg' monster they'd inadvertently created however, Afton decided it wasn't worth risking such a procedure on anyone he actually liked... Enemies though? He imagined it'd be an incredibly effective psychological torture option.

This might be useful soon enough, as the Brotherhood of Steel had finally taken notice of Afton, Bulwark, and New Vegas itself. The defences Afton and House ha constructed seem to have finally drawn their ire, though, he was sure they wouldn't try to attack the Mojave before eliminating whatever was left of the NCR.

Additionally, Afton scouts that'd been sent to whatever's left of Boston. He'd thought that teleportation would be easy to set up, but it seems that something was obstructing his Cyberdog's efforts in marking down coordinates for the place...

Every time they locked a coordinate in, something seemed to scramble it moments after, which was incredibly unnerving... It basically meant that someone either knew how to stop their methods of teleportation, or, there was a device there so powerful that it intentionally interfered with their attempts.

Afton was honestly betting on the former though, he knew the Institute was probably still around and active, so it doesn't surprise him that they may have teleportation tech. All it meant was that Afton would need to make some countermeasures in case they weren't as cooperative as he hoped.

He had no idea how they operated, what their goals were, or even if they were still sane... Who knows, perhaps he'd get another set of mad robotic scientists to add to his research and development department.

Speaking of which, progress on the cloning project had finally reached its conclusion, or at least, Afton hoped. With the data they'd extracted from Clone Caesar after having it self destruct, they'd quickly fixed the issues they'd been having with the other clones they'd created.

The rapid biological degradation had been 'somewhat' fixed, improving the overall lifespan of the clones by around fifty years or so. The only problem left now, was actually utilising the technology...