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.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"You might as well come out, you know," the speaker says after a while. "I don't bite. Not unless you bite first."

Cautiously- very cautiously- Ellen pokes her head out of the shadow and peers upward.

"There you go. Was that such a big thing?" says the voice. "The name's Willow. Mind if I ask what you two're doing here?"

If Annabelle squints, she'll see that the voice belongs to a .... well, she could be any age, really. But she's female, even if she does look rather like someone forgot to tell her she was supposed to be dead.

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle can't help but wince internally at the sight of Willow's condition as she sticks her own head out.

"It pays to be cautious," Annabelle calls out apologetically. "My friend and I don't mean harm to anyone that doesn't try and hurt us first." She'll let Ellen explain their reason for being here.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Fair enough," says Willow, and then glances at Ellen. "Oh, no. Don't tell me you're one of those Brotherhood of Steel assholes."

"What? No," says Ellen, startled. "Is it the armor? I found it up north."

"Hmf." Willow shakes her head. "Well, long as you're not planning on taking any potshots at me or the others..."

"Actually, we were hoping to find Underworld," Ellen says. "We need to buy some supplies."

[aeons_crackshot]

"We won't be shooting anything that isn't trying to harm us first," Annabelle reassures Willow.

She just nods in agreement with Ellen's statement that they need to buy some supplies.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Huh. Where'd a couple of smoothskins like you hear about Underworld?"

"From some ghouls I ran into outside Bethesda," Ellen says. "They'd been trying to get here themselves, but they had trouble with the mutants on the Mall."

Willow makes a noise that would be a snort, if she had a nose. "Amateurs. Any city ghoul knows how to keep those guys from noticing them... okay, well, you seem to know how to keep a civil tongue in your head. Keep that dog of yours from going nutso on anyone, and your caps're as good as anyone else's." She gestures towards the doors of the Museum with her assault rifle. "Through there. Ground floor. Can't miss it."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle nods in understanding. "Thank you for the information, Willow."

She turns to Ellen, "Do you want to go first, or shall I?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"No problem. Enjoy the sights, tourist."

"Could you go first?" Ellen says. "I don't know how Dogmeat's going to react."

[aeons_crackshot]

"I can," Annabelle says with a grin. "You keep an eye on him, and I'll keep an eye out for trouble."

Annabelle moves toward the entrance, keeping an eye on her surroundings.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The front doors are battered and worn, but the hinges work smoothly enough. Beyond lies a reception area ground down by time, littered with the detritus of years- rusted bits of shopping cart, a forgotten baby carriage, discarded tin cans. There was an information desk here once, by the look of things, and a cloakroom or a bathroom or two.

It's not until the second set of doors is passed that the place takes on a veneer of respectability. In the second room the ceiling soars to thirty feet or more, though the upper reaches are lit only by such daylight as makes it through strategically placed slit-windows. A beam of dust-laden sunlight falls on the upright, stiffly posed skeleton of a predatory dinosaur, its skull and the upper part of its ribcage having crashed to the floor not far away quite some time ago. To the right a disheveled but mostly-intact stuffed, mounted mammoth rears its tusks at predators that no longer come. Corridors radiate away in all directions, their purposes spelled out in letters too high up to read in this light- but there's one that's far too obvious to miss. The doors to that corridor have been flanked by a huge facade of gray 'stone', carved into skulls and other garish features, and a tattered gold and black banner proclaims 'UNDERWORLD: The Mythology of Shadows'.

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle grins briefly at the sight of the fallen dinosaur skeleton. They're far more impressive in the flesh, in her opinion.

"I think our destination is this way," she calls back to Ellen as she tilts her head toward the banner.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Sure looks like it," Ellen says, following along and leaning over to take firm hold of Dogmeat should the need arise. Which, thankfully, it doesn't. Beyond the facade lies a room long enough to have housed the central part of the exhibit, with smaller rooms opening off to the sides and up the stairs that flank either side of the room. A sign near the foot of the right hand staircase reads 'WELCOME TO UNDERWORLD'. The place certainly looks active enough; there are people wandering about everywhere, many of them dressed in clothes not unlike those that Annabelle may remember from Megaton. A few are in traveling clothes, and one's wearing a faded blue RobCo jumpsuit. They're just... y'know, all looking like they're rotting on the hoof.

"... I don't even know where to start asking," Elle admits.

[aeons_crackshot]

"There are a lot of people here," Annabelle remarks, a bit surprised.

"I'm not sure either," Annabelle replies with a frown. She's looking for signs other than the welcoming one, but she's having little luck so far.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I wonder how old they are," Ellen murmurs. "Gob said there are ghouls alive who remember the War-"

"Atten-shun! Civilian on deck," announces a metallic voice from nearby. Ellen knows that kind of voice, so she's unsurprised when she turns to find the familiar olive-green form of a round, multi-armed, multi-sensored robot facing them.

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle is a bit surprised, but she manages to keep herself from shooting the robot.

"Do you know what that's about?" she asks Ellen.

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"It's a Mr. Gutsy. We've got one as a guard 'bot on the armory in Megaton," Ellen says. "Hi there. Who am I speaking to?"

"My name is Cerberus. I'm a certified, qualified Mr. Gutsy unit, serial number WR0471, stationed in Underworld for the foreseeable future." It's hard for a bobbling, hovering robot with that many arms to draw itself upright, but it tries. "What can I assist you with today?"

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"A fitting name," Annabelle says with a smile. "I don't think we'll need to bribe this one with honey-cakes, however."

"I don't suppose you could provide us with directions, Cerberus?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I'm programmed to offer assistance to any and all visitors to the fine, upstanding people of Underworld, damn this pansy zombie programming, so long as they behave themselves," Cerberus announces. "Name the place and I can start you on your way."

[aeons_crackshot]

"Where did you want to go first, Ellen?" Annabelle asks. "I've no particular preference."