Ellen Park, the Lone Wanderer

"Same model as Button Gwinnett.." There's a glance towards Jordan. "You want this one?"

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Jordan is wearing an armored form-fitting jumpsuit complete with matching closed helmet. Behind her, one of her spiderlike service bots follows. "Straight ahead? I think I can." She presses a button on her arm. "Give me five seconds to charge a big bolt, and open the door for me."

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Ellen nods, silently counting. On the count of five she throws the door open to reveal a man-sized bipedal robot, its 'head' ringed in white and black-checked paint and the words 'Nuka-Cola' painted across its middle in ornate script.

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Jordan moves quickly, advancing a step, turning and crouching to make herself a smaller target and letting fly a powerful superheated plasma bolt at the robot's head.

The head should house the brain, or a sensor array, so it is a good target no matter what.

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It's a nice glowing target too, relatively easy to pick out and strike. Which makes one wonder why the people at RobCo didn't reinforce it better.

"Unable to contin-"

BLAM.

Ooh, let's hope that didn't damage the fission battery.

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"....damn."

He's getting the feeling that his skills are going to be largely useless in this mission.

...and yes. He kind of wants one of those cannons.

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"Phew." Ellen exhales and steps away from the door. "Thank you, Jordan. I think the next room is clear, or it was when I last saw it, anyway... I have to admit I don't actually have a map of this facility. The bottling area could be anywhere. I'd like to find the vats and see if there's anything left and get us the heck out of here as fast as possible, since I used up my ammo on a bunch of other robots and apparently the people who made Nuka-Cola were paranoid or something."

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"My kind of people." Jordan grins, getting up. "Okay, you come here." She beckons the service bot over. "Climb up, hold to the ceiling and go standby." The bot does that, finding a dark corner to hide.

"All the robots are like this one? I think I can take one down with a few normal shots, I really do not want to have to power up for a big one while it fires lasers at me."

"If we find more, can we not shoot the head? That way I will have matching parts to examine."

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"So far as I can tell they are," says Ellen. "I can't imagine a soda company would have much reason to buy Mr. Gutsys or sentrybots. Those were military issue only."

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"Well..it's a soda company that's paranoid enough to actually put Protectrons around to guard their secret formula for making the soda." Moon Shadow adds. "Might be one or two of Gutsies. If we run into em, we'll just try and leave them mostly intact for you to study, Jordan."

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"Thanks. I want to take a good look at this tech... technically speaking, it is obsolete, but... it is still working after 200 years." There's something to be said for that kind of resilience. "Which way, Ellen?"

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Ellen nods towards a door hanging partly off its hinges on the left-hand wall. A faded sign next to the door reads RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. "I'm pretty sure that's the safest way," she says. "The other doors lead to rooms where the ceiling's about to come down."

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Moon Shadow nods, trotting forwards towards the door to peer inside through a gap for a moment. It doesn't look like there's anything on the other side that's going to kill them, so he's just going to ease the door open.

-fwump! clatter!-

Except...well. Those hinges were coming off anyways.

"Sorry about that."

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Jordan watches from a distance, and looks ahead into the room. "Seems empty so far?"

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Cubicle farms were pretty ugly to begin with. Two hundred years of world-shattering neglect does not do them any favors. The room is only dimly lit by fingerlets of light falling through the occasional gap in the walls or grimed-over window; Ellen switches on the light in her power armor helmet to make matters easier.

... of course there are Nuka-Cola machines along the far wall. What else would there be? That probably explains why there don't seem to be any coffee urns despite there being close to two dozen coffee mugs scattered among the rubbish near the-

"Is it just me, or is that a safe in the wall?"

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"...Your eyes do not lie," Moon Shadow replies, moving over to the safe to examine it, and the lock on it. Darn shame he didn't bring the belt for B&E, it looks like a tough one. "It's not a combination lock, and it looks like a very secure keyhole. Should've brought my lockpick set."

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....

"I could probably blast it open, but it would not be good for the contents." No, it would not. "Maybe the key is somewhere around here."

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"Let me try-" Ellen crouches down to give it a go with her bobby pins and screwdriver. Eventually, though, she stands away with a frustrated look. "Yeah, no. All right, let's try looking."

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any sort of key in any of the nearby drawers. A red-covered volume written entirely in Chinese? Yes. (That might prove of interest, given that a survey of its pages turns up quite a lot of illustrations of unarmed combat, low-tech armed combat, and sneaking techniques.) But no key, even when Ellen manages to joggle one of the filing cabinets open. She does, however, pause at the sight of a decrepit old binder labeled QUANTUM TESTING, which she extracts with great care. "I wonder..."

Isotope CE770 has proven to be a disastrous failure. All of the test subjects suffered severe internal organ failures and died within three days of ingestion. We recommend the immediate destruction of container A32 in the production rooms and suggest switching to isotope CE772. Please send standard "Nuka Condolences" Fruit and Cheese Packages to test group members' families.

"Good Lord."

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.
.
.

Excuse him a bit. He just read over Ellen's shoulder. From what little face can be seen under the visor of the helmet, it looks like he's got a good facial tic and muttered manta going on.

"They've been dead for 200 years, they've been dead for 200 years...you cannot beat the sense god gave a dog turd into them, they're dead."

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"Callous and sloppy..." Jordan has been reading over the other shoulder, and gives a small sigh. "Some things do not change."

She also mutters under her breath what might be a string of profanity... well, she would know better than feeding people radioactive material and not expecting a disaster.

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Half-horrified, half-fascinated, Ellen turns the page.

Isotope CE772 has proven too damaging to the initial test group which now needs to be disbanded due to their reluctance to continue in our program. This group has suffered 4 fatalities, 12 major internal organ failures and 32 internal radiation burns. This is an unacceptable number of issues in a given test group and recommend we switch to an alternate isotope (such as CE774 or UR993)...

Test subjects in the Nuka-Cola Quantum program are responding well to the reconfigured taste and the new isotope. The only listed side effects from the group are: 3 cases of dizziness, 1 case of nausea and 1 case of impaired vision. We find from a sampling of 50 that this is an acceptable number of cases and approve this product for production...

"... and Sierra Petrovita wanted me to find her thirty bottles of the stuff. To drink."

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He's just going to stare at her for a bit.

"...She wasn't born in Canterbury Commons by any chance, was she?"

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"To drink. This Sierra is crazy or wants to melt her own guts, which is pretty much the same." Jordan sighs, glancing around so they are not ambushed by something. "Anything else on the files, besides how the bastards in charge decided that making people sick at a 10% rate was okay?"

"After killing a lot more and making others sick for the rest of their lives." Jordan will not mention she is more irked at the sloppy, careless and inefficient experimentation than the death and suffering of the subjects, and that's probably for the better.

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Ellen flips through the notes some more, then shakes her head. "Not here," she says. "Other than a couple of references to marketing documents that aren't supposed to leave the second floor of the building, and... okay, it does say that they're going to need a line item in the budget for extra Rad-X and for lining the control rooms in the storage and mixing vats in the lower level with lead. So that's something."

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