A crashed zeppelin.

Less than a month before Desmond had left his home, a massive zeppelin of the Brotherhood of Steel had been passing over the skies of Illinois, but something occurred, and before the eyes of the unprepared Brotherhood, their entire vessel had burst aflame.

This left many oblivious soldiers to burn away within, as only a few of the inhabitants made it out, through many unprompted early departures, though only fifty two people made it out, out of over five hundred.

…

Desmond saw many burned out Power Armor frames, with over seventy utterly singed skeletons scattered within them, as he was scavenging through the area.

But, something that interested him particularly, was the locked cabin of the somehow preserved cockpit.

This led to Desmond simply tearing the singed door from its hinges, and as he entered the cabin, someone from within began trying to blast through his body with a heavy caliber machine gun, but Desmond had leapt out of the way just in time, as right where he’d been, rained down a hailstorm of bullets, as he rolled behind a nearby fallen steel locker, which was then the prime target of the concentrated fire.

After around twenty seconds of gunfire, Desmond heard a reload occurring, as he whistled out, before skulking around the locker, taking a shotgun from the floor, as he aimed it toward the direction of fire, and he waited.

But he didn’t have to wait long, as a massive set of claws began tearing through the heavy steel cabin as though it were paper, before walking up behind the person with the machine gun.

And after a few screams, the gunner was gone, a bloody splatter against the teeth of Big Red was all that remained of him.

And as Desmond approached his furry friend, he heard a pounding at a door, so he walked over to it.

And upon opening the door, a whimpering figure held their hands outward, in a sign of surrender, as Desmond looked on in shock, at a harmless woman bound in the small closet.

He grabbed her form gently, before making his way out of the zeppelin’s cabin, and as he reached a good distance, he set the woman to the ground, and snapped the binds from her form, releasing her.

“Thank you sir… May I know your name?” A seemingly innocent voice asked him.

This drew a desire to be genuine to well up within his gut, as he introduced himself, “Well… My name is Desmond Scorch, miss.” As he said this, she seemed unaffected by his somewhat distasteful form, especially compared to the person who’d apparently captured her. This brought him to ask her why, “Miss, does my face not frighten you?”

While Desmond’s face had remained familiar for a while, somewhat recently, he’d found thicker layers of flesh forming upon his face. And while the extra skin only slightly improved his face’s durability, it had vastly altered his appearance. This all led to a nearly Orcish snout beginning to protrude forth.

And, as this had impacted Desmond’s mind, he couldn't get it off his mind.

But then, this woman just… Didn’t care?

But, she explained why a second later, “Well, sir, even if it were grotesque, as my savior, I couldn’t fear you… Or your face. But regardless of that…” As she went to continue, she looked up to him, looking somewhere close to where his eyes would be, “I lost my eyesight when the Vault my family had been inhabiting had failed to hold off the radiation. It was years after the bombs, but the Vault… It just broke one day. And my family… They weren’t lucky enough to escape.” She laughed to herself, as tears began falling from her pale, bleached eyes, as she continued, “Yeah… A blind girl made it out of the Vault. She ran for her life while her family was fighting for theirs…”

As she went to continue, Desmond stopped her, bringing her in for a hug, and cutting her sentence off. And after a second of just sitting there, Desmond spoke about his own past. “I was in a Vault too. Mine didn’t even get past the bombs… So many people died, while I remained alive. But…” He stopped, looking at his greenish tinged skin, and remembered the beastly snout he was growing, he continued, “The radiation got to me too. But I guess I drew the longer stick, you got shafted.”

As Desmond said this, it drew a cackle from the gloomy woman, and she spoke, “Haha, haaa… It’s not that bad, I guess. Well… It’s pretty bad.” She then broke into another bout of cackling, this one Desmond joined in on, as she laid back against the near barren grass, dragging Desmond to fall with her, as they lay side by side. Then, she suddenly jerked to the side, looking at him intently. Though, the obvious was, well, obvious, as she tried holding back her laughter as she poked fun at him, “If the Vault fell when they dropped, you have to be like… Seventy? How old are you?” As she was giggling to herself, she waited for a response.