Head of State

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Well. Reilly's been dealt with, and her people are happy with that. It's time to go back to the basics now. Ellen needs to get herself out to the Lincoln Memorial and check things over so that she can report to the slaves and get them set up before getting back to Rivet City. Of course, from what she remembers from Mr. Mills' world, the Memorial has decent lines of sight and a fairly strategic location. There are Brotherhood of Steel patrols around the base of the Washington Monument; that implies that if there are mutants holed up in the Memorial, they must be pretty well established, otherwise the Brotherhood would've gone after them. Too bad Tulip was out of Stealth Boys when Ellen stopped by her place in Underworld. Maybe she can get one from the bar....

Comments

[vance_prime]

Oh good! An excuse to look at the shelves rather than the woman with no nose, no ears, and most of her skin and hair gone.

"Twelve-gauge shotgun shells, and nine-millimeter bullets. In clips for a semi or submachine gun, if you've got 'em."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Hm. You know, I think- yeah, okay, here..." Tulip takes down a couple of positively ancient, dust-covered boxes. "Most of the guns around here use ten millimeter. A few years back, though, Quinn picked up a couple of cases of this stuff from some guy who said he'd come in from out west. Nobody's had any interest in it since. Lemme know if this is suitable. As far as the shells go..." She gestures at a small stack of green and red boxes. "Always in demand."

[vance_prime]

Alyx holds up the box and carefully blows the dust off. The printing underneath is faded, but still legible. She reads it and lets out a low whistle. "Armor-piercing. Nice."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's all the same price as far as I'm concerned," says Tulip. "Not like anybody else's ever expressed an interest. Standard, armor piercing, hollow point, it all takes up shelf space just the same."

[vance_prime]

Alyx opens one box, then the other, pulling out the clips to ensure that they're still in good shape.

"How much for the lot?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The clips are fine- untouched and unused, but still fine. Tulip names her price, and Ellen's eyebrows jerk upwards in surprise. "That's maybe a quarter of the price for ten millimeter," she murmurs to Alyx.

Then Tulip mentions the price on shotgun shells; Ellen nods. "That's about what you'd pay anywhere, though."

[vance_prime]

"Excellent." Alyx opens the bag of bottlecaps she acquired from Bar and starts counting out.

Haggling? What's that?

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Something Ellen's no good at either, for whatever that's worth. Tulip smiles and says, "Another satisfied customer. There anything else I can do for you?"

"I think we should be good now," says Ellen, "unless you know anything about the Lincoln Memorial..."

"Nah, I haven't heard anything. Quinn doesn't go up that way much," says Tulip. "The Brotherhood guys at the Washington Monument took a couple of potshots at him once when he headed that way. It's not worth it."

Ellen nods. "Okay, then. I think we're set. Ready when you are, Alyx."

[vance_prime]

"Just a sec..." She carefully pulls out the clip in her pistol and replaces it with the hollow tips.

Better safe than sorry.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods and leads the way back out. There's another ghoul woman with an assault rifle in her hands once they get past the front doors; she just glances at Ellen and nods. "That's Willow," Ellen says. "She's the sentry, in case anything or anyone comes out of the Metro station, there-" She points to a set of rusted escalators that open onto street level. "Usually they don't have to worry about anything coming in from the Mall. The Brotherhood is busy, and the mutants don't bother."

Possibly because, once one reaches where the street actually used to be, the other side is not so much the National Mall any more as it is a vast network of entrenchments, earthworks, and fortifications.

"There's not a lot of mutants in there right now. Most of them are concentrated up towards the Capitol," Ellen says. "If we keep to the shadows and out of the way we should be all right, but I've got a Stealth Boy on me just in case. I was hoping not to have to use it until we got to the Memorial, though." She nods towards the Washington Monument. "It's past that."

[vance_prime]

"Right. D0G, watch our backs, and be quiet about it."

Woop! says D0G with a salute. Then he looks sheepish and lets out a much quieter woop.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen chuckles. "Thank you, D0G," she says, and creeps forward.

There's a sound of gunfire in the distance, but it's well and truly away from here- down at the far end of the Mall, if the occasional flash of light and paff of smoke from that direction are anything to go by. Ellen takes the opportunity to creep forward and peer through a gap in the fortifications. "I think," she murmurs, "that we're in luck. They don't seem to have retaken this part of the trenches- if we move quickly we won't need those Stealth Boys at all."

And a good thing it is, too, given how many half-collapsed buildings and chunks of rebar litter the vicinity, not to mention the remains of rotted-out automobiles half again the size of the muscle car Gordon and Alyx rode in. You could put your eye out on the remains of the tailfins.

[vance_prime]

"Are those real?" murmurs Alyx dubiously. "They look like they came off a movie set."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I've never seen one operational," Ellen admits, "but I've seen them in other places around the Wasteland. They're real, and they're dangerous. If shooting starts, get away from the cars. A bullet through the car's power plant will cause an explosion more often than not- even after all this time."

[vance_prime]

"Power pla--? Are you telling me the cars were nuclear powered too?!"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The oil fields of Texas were nothing but tapped-out husks by 2055," Ellen says. "The Chinese invaded Alaska in 2067 because it was the only place left on Earth producing oil in industrial quantities. They converted most of the cars over to nuclear power- fusion plants, I think. There's not nearly enough radiation left after a car explodes to be consistent with a fission power source."

[vance_prime]

"Oh, that's smart. Let's put a nuclear fusion reactor in the front end of a fast-moving vehicle."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen shrugs. "I didn't design them," she says. "You're right. It's crazy. At least the motorcycles still ran on ordinary flammable fuel, I can't imagine wanting to ride around with a nuclear power plant directly between your legs."

[vance_prime]

"I'm amazed there was anyone left by the time the bombs hit," Alyx mutters, too low for Ellen to hear.

Enough rabbiting. They've got a job to do.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods and picks up the pace.

They pass wrecks of cars, and wrecks of... well. Ellen was right when she said the supermutants used to be people. The corpse they pass, half-out of one of the trenches, is of something that must have been seven or eight feet tall when it was alive. Its skin is an unhealthy yellow-green, and has the texture one would expect from the hide of a rhino, to look at it. Its lips are fixed in a peeled-back snarl, even in death, but its assault rifle tumbled from its too-thick fingers some time ago. The armor it wears is bodged together from whatever scraps of metal and leather it could scavenge; it doesn't seem to have helped much...

"Supermutant," Ellen identifies. "Also called muties, uglies, Frankensteins, and greenskins."

[vance_prime]

...

Yeah, Alyx is just gonna be staring openmouthed at the corpse for a bit, okay?

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"They used to be humans," Ellen goes on. "Most of them don't speak much beyond snarling and cursing. I know they can do more than that, though. I met one once who got cast out from the rest for trying to turn them away from fighting and killing. He called himself Uncle Leo, and he said they capture people alive and drag them off to some kind of cold metal place to try and turn them into more mutants."

[vance_prime]

Alyx shivers a little.

"Why?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I don't know," says Ellen. "Uncle Leo's the only one who could carry on a conversation beyond 'green stuff makes many mistakes, we dump bodies in cave too many times'. They must not have much luck reproducing- I remember reading in science class that a lot of mutants are sterile- so they've got to reproduce some other way, and that means turning people into more of their kind."

[vance_prime]

"They're not a 'kind'!" Alyx almost shouts. "They're mutated humans, and they know it! Why would they want to force that on other people?!"