Paradise Falls

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens on the Capital Wasteland, its rolling scrubby landscape peeling away in every direction. Off to the east, the huddle of reinforced walls can be seen. "This is as close as we can get to Paradise Falls without being seen," Ellen says. "This would be the best place to start from... welcome to the Wasteland, by the way."

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

There's the occasional bob of a sentry head somewhere near the walls' edges, but the main watch-force, it seems, is stationed in a tin-roofed tower that pokes out of the center of the place- dwarfed by the enormous, half-rotted form of a smiling Bob's Big Boy-like figure who still waves his ice cream cone to passers-by two hundred years after anyone last cared.

The gate itself, mind, is guarded by two men. One stands well back from the gate proper, his assault rifle ready. The other, dark-skinned and sour-faced sits behind a waist high wall of sandbags built to funnel oncomers into a manageable zone of fire. "Hold it," he calls out as Fiona approaches. "Where do you think you're going?"

[justcallmefee]

Fiona saunters to a stop, her weight resting on one hip, hand not too far from the .45 in the small of her back.

"Shopping," she sneers, giving him a long once over from top to bottom and back again, biting her lower lip as she considers.

"Nah, you're too old. And I need something -- trainable. Trader down by the river said this is the place."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The man snorts. "Huh. Eulogy was wondering when Crazy Wolfgang was going to show his face here again," he says. "So, in the market, huh? Got the caps to cover your interests?"

[justcallmefee]

Eulogy. Lovely.

She quirks an eyebrow at him, her tone sweet as honey.

"What, you mean you guys won't take my Gold Card here? Of course, I brought the caps." Bitch, please.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

He quirks an eyebrow right back and eyes Fiona a long moment. Finally he shrugs. "No skin off my nose if you come up short," he says. "Head on in. Tell Forty that-"

"Grouse!" yells a man's voice from further back around a bend in the chute. "We've got a runner!"

"Aw, shit," grumbles the seated man, rising to his feet. "Not again."

[justcallmefee]

Her jaw clenches. A runner. The moment they're moving, she's scanning, trying to see what's going on. (Forty. Grouse. Eulogy.) She knows, whoever it is, she can't save them, not by herself. She's here to save the kids.

The best way to evaluate an organisation's tactical skills is to watch them in action. And this sounds like the perfect opportunity to do just that. Her hand curls around the butt of her gun and she keeps a keen eye on the man's hands.

The exploding collars either are activated remotely, or have a perimeter that sets them off.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The scene just around the bend is this: a rearing wall of metal, a pile of dusty wrecks that used to be cars in the parking lot, a man in combat armor rubbing at his rapidly swelling nose. And another man in ragged Brahmin-skin clothing and a collar, running towards Fiona and Grouse and the other gunman as if all the demons of Hell were after him.

They're not. They don't have to lift a finger around here, after all. Pretty much the instant the man rounds the curve and comes in sight of the open gate beyond Grouse, there's a BeeBeeBeeBeeBee! sound.

And another, louder, wetter sound, right before the man stops running for good.

[justcallmefee]

Fiona doesn't react. She's seen similar in the mine fields outside of Sarajevo. (Perimeter detonator. Which means there's a transmitter around here somewhere.)

Her eyes go cold, and she turns back to Grouse with an exasperated sigh. "Clean up on aisle fourteen. You said to tell Forty, what?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That Grouse cleared you for passing the second gate," says Grouse. He jerks his chin at the man with the assault rifle, who grumbles, slings his weapon, and begins the less-than-exciting process of tidying up. "Hey! Forty! Think you can still operate a damn gate, or did the livestock get the better of you?"

Forty gives off rubbing at his nose to make a very rude gesture in Grouse's direction.

[justcallmefee]

Livestock.

Fiona imagines a clean edged little hole right between Grouse's eyes, filling in the details of the back of his head as she walks down the middle of the kill corridor, her skin prickling.

Livestock.

Forty gets a similar once over as she strolls up, not even bothering to step around the muddy streak of gore outside the gate.

"Grouse sends his love, and my clearance for the second gate."

Her eyes watch the man at his task. She can't tell if he's prepping the body parts for the burn barrel or for eating later. Doesn't look like there was enough meat on that one to bother. Without waiting for him to speak, she bends down and picks up a pair of goggles that were, thankfully, coiled around the slaves's wrist. She flicks off a bit of bone fragment before wrapping them around her own neck.

Wastelander chic. Somehow, she makes it look good.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Forty- a man of dirty blond hair and dirty tan skin- gives a grunt of irritation and bangs a fist against a yellow button on the wall. A broad sheet of segmented purple metal clatters upward, not unlike a garage door. Beyond lies a tangle of fencing and sheet metal and a sign reading WELCOME TO PARADISE FALLS. STOW YOUR PIECE.

There are people here- slavers, by the look of them; no one in the area is wearing a collar, and everyone is wearing some form or other of armor, whether it's leather or something heavier. Signs in front of what must've been boutiques and shops once proclaim 'Cutter's Clinic' and 'Pronto's' and 'Restrooms' and the like.

[justcallmefee]

She mentally draws crosshairs on the forehead of every piece of scum she lays eyes on. Yeah, life in the wasteland is hard, she can only imagine, but taking slaves is a capital offense in her book. (To be fair, so's letting your weapon rust or wearing Malibu Barbie pink over grossly fake tits. Fiona's book is not that discriminatory.)

She also keeps an eye out for that transmitter, and the kids. Nothing so far, so she makes her way deeper into the warren, idly thumbing the mic at her throat.

"Did you hear all that?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Loud and clear," comes Ellen's answer. "No activity out here, thank goodness."

There's a set of ramshackle stairs along one of the fences that leads up to the central sentry area. A wall of rubble gives way up ahead to a larger open area. It might've been meant as the mall's central plaza long ago. For now, it's used as the slavers' dining area, to judge by the tables and ancient refrigerators and steel-drum barbecues to the right. To the left is a pool table and a roasting headless cow (or something else of that size) on a spit over an open fire. Beyond that is building that might've once been a movie theater, all false grandeur and pillars and peeling paint. A sign next to the door proclaims it to be Eulogy's Pad.

The roasting Brahmin may be enough to mask the smell coming from the buildings further to the south, or it may not. Certainly the fire under it isn't putting off enough smoke to mask the sight of twelve-foot-high double fences topped with barbed wire that wall off what might've been the mall's administrative offices once, or hide the milling human figures behind the fences.

[justcallmefee]

Two points of interest: head boss man is the kind who likes to advertise where he sleeps (idiot), and the "livestock" pens. Again, her jaw clenches.

Fiona describes the layout so far in brief, tactical language, keeping her voice down as she walks. "I'm heading to the pens now. No sign of the transmitter yet, but I'm guessing it's centrally located." Probably in head boss man's HQ and here's hoping he put up a sign for that, too.

She's thinking she's glad she brought her good set of lock picks and the wire cutters, just in case it comes to that.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The pens, it happens, are shared with more than one kind of livestock. Part of the rank smell is the work of a massive, thin-furred, two headed bovine with an udder that would make James Herriot wince. It turns one of its heads in Fiona's direction, makes a small grumbling noise, and moves on between the fences.

Beyond the cow, the pens are divided down the middle by a similarly high fence. A cluster of adults ranging in age from 'just out of teenagerdom' to 'ancient' with a brief stop for 'never mind your age, what the hell happened to your nose' occupies the right-hand side. To the left, three or four children- perhaps eight, perhaps ten, hard to say when Wasteland nutrition is involved- are doing their best to be unobtrusive and avoid the eye of the guard at the gate to the pens.

[justcallmefee]

"Bingo."

She has to take a moment to bite back her initial response to seeing these people kept like and with animals. It really would be a suicide attack if she took off the heads of every guard here, but that doesn't keep her from flexing the fingers of her right hand over and over again.

She heads for the guards.

"Hey sugar," she drawls. "You who I talk to about the merchandise?" She juts her chin out, gesturing to the pens.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The guard starts to look Fiona up and down, but his eyes stop on her weaponry; he knows better than to take certain chances. "You talk to me, you show your caps, you get to make your selection," he says. "Eulogy's the one you talk to for the final sale. Most of these are earmarked already, but we still have a few...."

[justcallmefee]

Her eyes narrow. Show the cash first, risk getting killed for it. She's done this dance a thousand and one times with equally illicit merchandise. (Guns usually, or explosives. Never people.)

She shakes her hand out and reaches inside her jacket, pulling out the small canvas sack and giving it a heft to make the contents rattle.

"I want those." Her other hand points at the kids.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The sound of bottlecaps against bottlecaps is very distinctive. He laughs; it's not a pleasant sound. "This is your lucky day, then," he says. "It's the adults that're off the market. The Pitt don't buy half as many kids. I'll go get Eulogy for you. No funny stuff- we got our eye on you."

And with that he strolls off towards Eulogy's Pad, whistling cheerfully as he goes.

[justcallmefee]

"Take your time," she sneers. "Ain't like I got places to be or anything."

Fiona watches him go, one hand shielding her eyes against the perpetual glare of the Wasteland sun, the other brushing her choker to thumb the throat mic.

"You know that name?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It... sounds familiar," Ellen says over the radio. "I think one of the runaways at the Lincoln Memorial mentioned Eulogy Jones. The Pitt used to be Pittsburgh. The Brotherhood scoured it years ago. Someone must've decided to reoccupy the place..."

[justcallmefee]

"More intel better," Fiona muses.

She's deliberately not looking at the kids or the adults either for that matter. She can't or she'll lose it and they'll all be fucked.

Her heel is bouncing on the ground in a manner that says bored, not antsy, and she's mentally totalling up how many rounds of ammo she has in each weapon before she gets to switch to the Bowie knife.

"Perimeter detonator needs a transmitter. Centrally located. Some place secure. I'm guessing Eulogy's pad," she muses, her voice only loud enough to trigger the mic.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I wouldn't be surprised. He's probably got a terminal hooked up to a radio antenna somewhere in there. I've seen it done with another system before."

One of the Pad's doors opens, and the guard emerges, followed by a dark-skinned man in a well-kept, deep red suit.

[justcallmefee]

Well, would you look at that? A man who knows how to wear a suit in the middle of all this delightful devastation.

Fiona shifts her weight, a predatory grin blossoming on her features.

"Mister Jones, I presume?" She can't help but here the Frenchman's lilting accent in the back of her head. If you could only see her now, Indy.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The one and only," says the red-suited man with a smooth bow. "Ronson here tells me you've taken an interest in my newest acquisitions. Am I correct in thinking you want the whole set?"