City

The ruins beyond the gates looked a lot like Ellen's first memories of the ruins of DC. In a way, it was reassuring. She'd half been expecting- well, as the woman had pointed them through the gates with her stick, it'd occurred to Ellen that she did know of a walled city in the Wasteland other than Megaton. A former walled city, anyway. There wasn't anybody left in Paradise Falls now, so far as she knew- the traders who came to Lacuna still grumbled about losing the sales opportunities of the city of slavers.

But that was the Capital. This was Philadelphia- Philly, by the local dialect- and where she herself had personally seen to the destruction of Paradise Falls, Philly was very much alive. And while neither of the gate guards had mentioned anything about slaves, there'd been that comment about the Pitt…

Well. You never knew.

Kang was on point as they made their way down the battered mess that was City Street. Conklin had fallen back to guard the pack Brahmin. Neither one of them was within easy hearing range; Ellen glanced over at her husband. "So," she murmured, "what do you think?"

"Well, we didn't get swarmed. That's always nice," Jerald answered, equally quietly. "Killing your way into a new city? Not a good first impression. I was worried."

Ellen blew a sigh between her teeth, but nodded. "I wasn't looking forward to that," she admitted. "This place… I don't know. We've been here all of five minutes and I'm already wishing Elder Lyons'd sent someone else."

Jerald glanced sidelong at her, his expression dubious.

"Not instead of me. I'm not complaining about that," Ellen said quickly. Briefly she wished she felt secure enough to stop and take her helmet off. "I mean along with us. Somebody with more experience with new places."

"New places like the Pitt?"

"My first trip to the Pitt, I was there for maybe two days and I accidentally volunteered myself for gladiator fighting, and my second trip to the Pitt, I threatened the city into submission with an orbital death ray and a robot army," Ellen said. "Remember?"

"I remember," said Jerald. "So does Elder Lyons."

"Yes, well- what?"

Jerald shrugged. "I'm just a Scribe. I know. I'm not command material, I don't think like that. But try this on for a minute, okay? Say you're the Elder, all right? Thirty years ago, you got sent east. You didn't know what to expect. You didn't know what you were going to find. You had orders to find whatever tech you could and get it back. And you got most of the way across the country, and then you found the Pitt. What do you do?"

"Well, if I'm Elder Lyons," said Ellen slowly, "I'm still just a Paladin, but-"

She made a slashing gesture with one hand. Jerald nodded. "Right. Maybe there's tech in the Pitt you should reclaim, maybe not, I don't know. But you know? The place is a horror show. So, you take everyone you've got and you wipe out everything you can. You take what you can carry with you, and you leave. Only you didn't do enough and you left a man behind and it makes a hell of a mess thirty years later. Right?"

"Right…"

"Okay, so, now it's thirty years later and you've got your mess mostly under control-"

"It's not his mess-"

"Yes it is. He made it when he left part of the Pitt standing. Ashur? Didn't have a whole lot going for him. Not until he took the mills over. Lyons? He remembers this. So now here's Lyons, thirty years later. And here's this woman from the past telling him there might be super tech left in Philadelphia. And Lyons remembers how things were in the Pitt, and what happened after he left. So what does he do now?"

Ellen opened her mouth, realized she didn't know what to say, and closed it a moment later.

"I'll tell you. He picks the best weapon for the job," said Jerald.

"Hey!"

"I'm sorry, El, but it's true," said Jerald. "Remember back at the RobCo factory? When I helped you bury that raider?"

( "What's the best weapon?" "The one that ends the fight the fastest." )

". . . yes."

"If there's anything left of General Atomics, it's because there's something here that's kept it from being found all this time. And if that something isn't a bunch of psychotic killer robots? It's probably people. And if it's people? Then they're probably really dangerous. Either they need to be on our side, or they need to be destroyed. You? Don't do things halfway. You emptied Paradise Falls. You wiped out those aliens on that ship and blew up another one. You got sent to look for a couple of raiders who attacked a water caravan and when you came back Evergreen Mills was dead. Point blank, El, he knows that if there's a problem here you're either gonna get the people involved on our side, or you're gonna make sure there's nothing left standing in a ten mile radius. Not just grab what you can and leave the job three quarters finished."

( *TARGET ACQUIRED: Adams AFB Mobile Platform* )
( ** WARNING: This will commit ALL WARHEADS to target and lock this station! ** )

". . . El? You okay in there?"

( if you had not committed such great sins God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you )

"Sorry," said Ellen, shaking her head rapidly. "I just- just hope- I don't want it to be that. I really don't."

He reached for her hand and threaded his fingers between hers, a difficult feat given that his were bare and hers were armored. "I know," he said gently. "I know. Neither do I, I'm just saying. Now, do me a favor. Take a good, deep breath, then let it out, and try to hope, okay? Who knows. Maybe the guards are just for show. Maybe they've got bad neighbors, like the kind that eat people or something. Maybe they're sane here."

". . . you're way too good at making me laugh."