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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."

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From:

aeons_crackshot

Annabelle grins, "He does seem to like getting into scraps."

"I'll follow you as quickly as I can." Who knows, she may even be as fast as Ellen.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"He attacked a robot once," Ellen says. "As in metal."

Dogmeat just wags his tail. Hooray! people are paying attention to him!

"Anyway. Let's get moving...."

From:

aeons_crackshot

Annabelle chuckles at that.

"Agreed. I think I may even be able to keep up with you, as we're about evenly matched, weight wise."

After that, there will be stair climbing and sprinting through an abandoned hospital filled with mutants.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"All right..."

The stairs aren't so bad, though they're a little iffy structurally speaking. It's what happens on the other side of the door that's the problem, because holy cow are there ever mutants in the infectious disease ward, and they're whipping out guns and nailboards and grenades with equal horrible abandon...

(On the bright side, there are so many possible threats to his human that Dogmeat doesn't know who to attack.)

From:

aeons_crackshot

"I think speed is going to be our friend!" Annabelle shouts in dismay as she pulls out both pistols. (There is no way she's going to have time to reload the rifle.)

Annabelle sprints very quickly through the ward, aiming for the grenades being hoisted by the mutants. It won't be enough to kill them, but it will hopefully keep the two of them from explosive death.

Run, run as fast as you can....

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

It's something, at least. Ellen's doing her best to keep the air as filled with blazing bolts of alien energy as possible as she runs, just so that it's not filled lead instead. The net result of it all is a nightmarish combination of flashing, booming, gun stink, meat stink, and shouting- both from the mutants and from Ellen's suit, which is roaring, "You're a soldier, not a civvy! Have some vitamin M and suck it up!"

And up ahead, the light of day winks through a hole in the outermost wall, gleaming off the form of rickety, fragile metal...

From:

aeons_crackshot

Annabelle curses at the sight of how fragile the metal is, but she keeps moving at a run. One mutant with a minigun gets 2 shots in the head, causing it to roar with pain and accidentally hit another mutant with fire from its gun.

Right before she passes through the opening, she turns to take a shot at any mutants that might be getting too close for comfort. The weight of those mutants following them onto that fragile metal could be the end of both of them....

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

Fortunately, the mutants have just enough sense not to pursue them out onto the bridge. They're too busy howling and reloading, and firing through the gap in the wall instead. And with that kind of impetus it's really easy to ignore the fragility of the bridge underfoot until both humans and the dog are safely on the other side.

Ellen's gone very pale, but she doesn't stop once they hit the gap in the wall of the Statesman. "Door," she manages. "Get it open- need to get inside-"

Best be careful. There's a good chunk of the floor missing here, too, and the slightest misstep could easily send everyone down to a lower level. Who knows what they'd have to fight to get back up?

From:

aeons_crackshot

Annabelle skirts carefully around the gap in the floor and moves to open the door.

The door fails to move the first time she yanks on it, and Annabelle curses and yanks again with all of her strength.

What should happen is this: the door, its mechanism long rusted and unmaintained, cannot be opened. Thus, our heroes must jump down through the hole in the floor and battle their way upwards through hordes of mutants. In 999 out of a 1000 universes, a man could waste a lifetime and never apply the correct amount of force at precisely the right angle to force the door to yield.

The Inspired, however, are fortune's favorite children, and what is and what could be tend to shift ever so slightly in their favor. The force of the blow hits at precisely the right angle and the right moment to jar the rusted mechanism loose, and the hinges scream in protest as the door is forced open.