Megaton

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens on exactly the heat and smell one might expect of a metal-walled, metal-roofed, metal-floored community bathroom in the later part of summer someplace well south of the Mason-Dixon Line. It's something of a mercy that the sun's almost completely down, as the hottest part of the day's been and gone; nevertheless, a certain measure of swelter remains.

One ought to expect that sort of thing here, really. Quite aside from the condition of the Megaton women's restrooms- which are as clean as people with a restricted water supply can manage- an about-face will reveal the nature of the town all too clearly. Given half a chance humans will live absolutely anywhere they can manage it, and here they've managed it in the sides of a massive crater. Everything in sight- everything- is made of metal. Scavenged from somewhere, clearly, and put to hard use immediately, it rather has the look of a junkyard made to disgorge all its larger elements at once.

"The bomb's down there," Ellen says, pointing down towards the center of the crater. "Are you all right?"

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen blinks. "Oh- you two know each other?" she asks, all the while keeping an eye out for possible Church of Atom members.

[dancewaterdance]

"We've met before." Demyx says with a little smile. "So... why again can't we just go down there? I mean, we're trying to help, so."

[aeons_crackshot]

"I met Demyx while he was tending Bar," she says to Ellen.

"Probably because the Head of the Cult is likely to take our interference in the worst possible way," she says, dryly, in response to Demyx's question

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Do you see that man?' says Ellen, and points to the thin, pale figure standing next to the much much larger bomb. "He and his followers worship the atomic bomb there. I'm going to try to defuse the bomb. His people would consider it sacrilege for me to try, and they'd try to stop me. Probably violently."

[dancewaterdance]

"...And we can't just, you know, reason with them?"

Despite all the shit he's been through, there is a lot that Demyx is sometimes painfully innocent about.

[aeons_crackshot]

"We could try, but they might do something... drastic if they thought we were going to destroy their god." Annabelle's face suggests that she doesn't think reasoning with them is going to work.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Demyx," says Ellen quietly, "bombs like the one he's praying to there are what killed most of the life on this world, and made the water poisonous. Someone who worships that isn't likely to listen to reason."

She's only nineteen, and she doesn't claim to understand the surface at all, but Reverend Avellone drilled certain things into his protege. An understanding of what the Bomb meant was one of them.

[dancewaterdance]

"So - what, are you going to hurt him?" Demyx asks, still distracted somewhat from looking all around at everything.

This world could really use some nice rain.

[aeons_crackshot]

"Only if we have no other choice," Annabelle says quietly.

"I think we're waiting for him to retire for the night."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods. "Even the most dedicated man has to sleep sometime," she says, "and he's standing in the middle of a pond that's so radioactive his bones should've melted long ago, assuming that he didn't mutate. He can't be out here much longer tonight."

[dancewaterdance]

Demyx finds a nice-ish patch of dirt and sits down on it. "Alright. So... waiting it is."

He waits. Like a waiting thing.

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle also settles into a waiting position, though she never stops watching for trouble. She's been responsible for the deaths of too many guards who were lax in watching for trouble to be at ease in potentially hostile territory.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen keeps stealing glances at the sky. The walls and the crater's shape make it easier for her to deal with their current location, but...

It's sky. It goes on and on forever, and it's full of stars and darkness. It's sky.

Shuddering, she looks away hastily, and-

"Hey, he's leaving! Let's head on down!"

[dancewaterdance]

He had started to doze again.

"!! Ah, right, right. Thrilling heroics, let's go!" Demyx says, jumping to his feet - stumbling a moment then standing rightly.

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle moves to follow Ellen with her hands near her guns. Somehow, she doubts that they are going to make it through this unopposed.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Question for you, Demyx," Ellen murmurs as they pick their way Oh So Very Casually down to the bottom of the crater. Nope. Nothing to see here. Nothing at all. Three people out for a nighttime stroll on their way to the bomb, totally ordinary and every day. "You said something before. What do you mean, 'let's rock and roll'?"

[dancewaterdance]

"You don't know rock and roll?" Demyx asks, stopping dead in his tracks to stare at Ellen. "Did music die along with the rest of this world?"

[aeons_crackshot]

"I'm not familiar with it either." Annabelle states. "I've heard of it since arriving at Milliways, but it didn't exist when I was still alive."

"Demyx, this may not be the best place for discussion."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"We have music!" Ellen protests. "There were plenty of music recordings loaded into Vault 101, and we even had some instruments-"

At Annabelle's comment she blushes and nods. "Right. I'm sorry. Um. After the bomb... oh, that must be the Brass Noodle over there, that place with the Chinese writing over the counter, why are those people looking at us..."

[dancewaterdance]

"People stare at me all the time." Demyx quips casually. He starts humming Elvis.

[aeons_crackshot]

"Can't imagine why..." Annabelle mumbles under her breath. She's keeping an eye on the crowd in the restaurant.

"I suspect they're looking at us because nothing else around here is particularly interesting at the moment."

Quietly, she asks Ellen, "Should we just keep going?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"... we should pretend," Ellen says suddenly. "We should pretend we're just as crazy as Confessor Cromwell. I can be the one who's silently praying right up next to the bomb, and you can act like you think it's the greatest thing since packaged noodles, and- um- I don't know what you have to do to make the water safe to step in, Demyx, but if you could make it look like you're all... impressed or something? I don't know..."

[dancewaterdance]

"I AM IMPRESSED! I'm impressed you all managed to live this long without music it's that which feeds the soul and makes the heart sing. Music is the language of the heart, you know. It brings people together, even if you can't understand it. Like Italian opera."

Demyx has this little thing. Where he can't lie anymore. So he's babbling.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"... or... that too," says Ellen a little weakly. Because now? Now people are not looking at her and Annabelle any more. They're looking at Demyx. Which could be helpful, maybe...

"We get music out here, sometimes," says one of the patrons of the Brass Lantern. "When the radio's workin', anyway. Galaxy News Radio's got some good songs."

"Yeah, the same good songs, all the time," mutters a darker woman from further down the open-air-bar's tables. "Three Dog'd better find something new soon. That stuff's getting as old as the Enclave tracks."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle is good at reading a crowd. "Oh for the love of....hush Demyx." Her next sentence is carefully pitched to ensure that their audience hears it. "Hopefully, once we've seen the Atom you'll stop this nonsense..." Annabelle's not the world's best at lying, but she seems to be better at it than Demyx.

Now that she's got the audience's attention, she gestures toward Demyx and makes the hopefully still universal gesture for crazy. She then puts on a sad face. They are going on a pilgrimage to heal the poor crazy man, really.