Museum Station

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Annabelle will no doubt recognize the cast of the sunlight and the thin dry feel of the air when she and Ellen emerge at last from the reeking Metro tunnels. They're on the opposite side of the Mall from last time, though, and the steps up on this side aren't anywhere near the same- they're rusted, corroded, two-hundred-year-old escalator steps, frozen in place with the weight of time and decay. "I don't hear too much from here," Ellen reports, "but I'm all out of Stealth Boys, so we'd better be careful. There might be mutants."

Comments

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle readies her rifle as she steps through the door and casts a suspicious glance at the escalator steps. "Careful sounds like an excellent idea to me," she says with a nod. Annabelle is certain that there are going to be mutants, thanks to her prior experiences with Ellen's world.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen, for her part, has the alien pistol out; her ammo there is limited, but where mutants are concerned she doesn't like to take chances. "Dogmeat," she murmurs to the Heeler following them, "stay behind me."

Dogmeat was doing that anyway, so apparently he's being obedient.

"Good boy," Ellen says, and creeps forward to the escalator steps.

[aeons_crackshot]

Hopefully, he'll keep on being obedient once they run into trouble.

Annabelle follows Ellen in creeping toward the escalator steps, keeping an eye out for any potential trouble.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

There's nothing on the stairs; Ellen had worried about tripwires. That's a relief. Up towards the top, something's moving- but it's a basking radroach. Dogmeat darts forward after it, but Ellen doesn't stop him. Anything that can get rid of a radroach without gunfire is good by her.

When the bug starts twitching, though, Annabelle may hear footfalls...

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle does hear footfalls. She focuses her attention on the direction the noise came from, trying to get more information. "Ellen, we're going to have company in a moment," she says, talking just loud enough to be heard.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh, crumbs," says Ellen, and does her best to flatten herself against the wall of the Metro exit. When you are wearing power armor, this is kind of impossible. On the other hand, the armor has the sense- well, Annabelle will find out about that feature of the armor later. For now, the important thing is that a human-sized silhouette can be made out up at the top of the stairs, and a voice like a bag full of steel wool rasps, "Will you look at that. Welcome to the Mall, tourists."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle swears under her breath and also attempts to hide, with more or less equal success.

When that raspy voice speaks, she's not at all certain that the speaker means them anything but ill. Thankfully, the bullet currently in the rifle isn't HEAP ammo. (It would be a shame to waste it on something human sized.)

Still, she waits to see what the speaker is going to do. If he so much as twitches in the wrong way, it will be the last mistake he ever makes.

The Tunnels

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Let us be honest here: the urge to make cracks comparing the post-apocalyptic ruined tunnels of the DC Metro to the subway tunnels of modern, functional New York City is overpowering. They are dark. They stink. They have roaches the size of human babies. The ceilings are dubious in structure at best and breaking apart in more places than they're holding together. And there's trash everywhere, not to mention the gurgling noises of- okay, New York doesn't have mindless feral ghouls rambling in the shadows looking for someone to tear apart with their bare hands.

Much.

Anymore, anyway.

*ahem*

REGARDLESS. Ellen leads the way down into the tunnels and comments, "I passed through a few of the local tunnels to get here in the first place, so it shouldn't be too bad, at least for a while. Just watch where you step, okay?"

Re: The Tunnels

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle has never seen the modern New York City subway system, so her mind is preoccupied with keeping a lookout for the gurgling of feral ghouls.

"I will," Annabelle replies. "You could break an ankle down here if you're not careful."

Re: The Tunnels

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oooh, that reminds me," Ellen says. "There's a few places where humans've holed up down here despite the ghouls. Sometimes they protect themselves with snap-jaw traps. Or proximity mines."

Re: The Tunnels

[aeons_crackshot]

"Snap-jaw traps?" Annabelle asks. "I'm not sure I know what you mean by that."

Re: The Tunnels

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"About this big?" Ellen says, indicating something maybe the size of a medium pizza. "Metal, with teeth around the edges, and if you step on the part in the middle it snaps shut on your leg?"

Re: The Tunnels

[aeons_crackshot]

"Ah, I knew them by a different name," Annabelle explains. "Nasty things, but at least they don't explode."

The Hospital

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The less said about the trip through the dry sewers the better. What matters now is that a door finally opens onto the basement of Our Lady of Hope Hospital. There is none of the antiseptic smell of hospitals in action here; there hasn't been for a very long time. There are other smells, though. Gunpowder, for one. And a kind of rancid, unwashed smell, for another.

Ellen grimaces at the smell and pinches her nose. "There's mutants here, all right," she mutters. "Dogmeat, behave yourself..."

Re: The Hospital

[aeons_crackshot]

"At least they'll have more trouble moving through these doorways than we will," Annabelle replies. The mutants are, after all, a bit larger than the human standard the doors were likely built for.

She readies her rifle with the HEAP ammunition.

Re: The Hospital

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Keep an eye out for tongue monsters, too," Ellen says. "Sometimes they bring them as sentinels."

The walls are lined with shelves here, the shelves full of medical braces and equipment, but up ahead in a corridor leading towards the stairs the light is blocked by a looming, bulky-shouldered shape.

Re: The Hospital

[aeons_crackshot]

Blocking the light just means that you're rather obvious to anyone who wants to kill you.

Unless Ellen makes any objection, Annabelle is going to be aiming for where she expects its head to be.

Re: The Hospital

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

No objections at all, unless they're from the other mutant that gets splattered with the first one's remains. "NOW TRY AND HIDE FROM THIS!" it roars, charging forward as the whine of a minigun spinning up fills the air.

Ellen is firing immediately, of course, which means that the mutant is swiftly engulfed in flames. Unfortunately it's rather a tough one, so it's still charging at them, on fire, with the minigun.

Re: The Hospital

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle dives quickly out of the way of the bullets from the minigun. Unfortunately, the relatively close quarters of the hallway and the mutant's charge mean that she's not likely to get the chance to reload and get another shot off with the rifle...

However, she does have a new melee weapon that might serve very well in close quarters. The familiar buzz of a chainsaw fills the air as Annabelle fires up the ripper and rolls between the mutant's legs, bringing the ripper up in an arc as she passes underneath it...

The Statesman

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens onto what remains of one of the central floors of the Statesman Hotel. The only light here is what filters in from rooms where doors hang open, or from a lone, grimy window at the far end of the corridor. There's rubble piled up against the walls, and the air is unnaturally still.

Ellen grimaces and staggers over to lean against the wall just next to a firehose cabinet. "I need a stimpak," she says through clenched teeth. "Maybe more than one."

Re: The Statesman

[aeons_crackshot]

"I'm not surprised," Annabelle says as she slams the door behind them. "I could use one myself. I'll keep an eye out while you heal up."

Re: The Statesman

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods and fumbles through a pouch attached to the side of her armor; her fingers are shaking. It takes her a few moments to locate a spot where the armor can be opened far enough, and then some more to achieve a successful injection. "If only this weren't a prototype... here," she says, and hands over another stimpak to Annabelle. "I'm just going to stand very still for a bit."

Re: The Statesman

[aeons_crackshot]

"Thanks," Annabelle says as she takes the stimpak. "Do I need to get this in a vein, or just under the skin?"

Re: The Statesman

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Directly into the site of the injury for an intramuscular shot," Ellen says. "Into a vein if you have to inject yourself anywhere else. Otherwise it doesn't spread far enough to do you any good."

Re: The Statesman

[aeons_crackshot]

"I'd better put it in a vein, then." Annabelle grins ruefully, "I'm not going to be able to move this armor enough to inject it at the sight of the injury."

Annabelle is mostly blood colored at this point, so finding a vein takes a moment or two. Still, once the drug starts to take effect it works quite well.

"How are you doing?" she asks, concerned.

(OOC: I'm going to be AFK for a bit.)