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

[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.

[dancewaterdance]

"No, really! Italian opera, it's made people cry before! You don't even have to understand it, because I really don't understand Italian. And there's rock and roll, and soul and bluegrass and I can play some for you next time we get a chance, I can play anything." When unable to lie, excessive truth is sometimes the next best thing.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Huh," says the blonde woman behind the counter of the Lantern. "You know, stranger, I think I wanna hear some more of this-"

"Demyx," whispers Ellen in Demyx' ear, "can you do something about the water and still keep their attention?"

[aeons_crackshot]

"I certainly hope he can, since I don't think they're going to ignore us at this point..." Annabelle whispers.

[dancewaterdance]

Oh ye of little faith. Did you forget Demyx's bartending, Annabelle?

Demyx stands with his back to the water. Radiated, horribly so. But nothing he can't fix if allowed to cut loose. And asking him to entertain while purifying the water? That's just going to make it go easier. He always works better when he can sing.

"EVERYONE! Watch and listen!" Demyx declares, summoning his sitar to his hand a moment later. "All eyes on me!"

He starts playing, catching the water with his music and making it dance with the beat. Dance and churn, separating out all of the radiation from that which was pure.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The slow, tranquil music at the start is one thing, and draws all eyes and ears to Demyx. But then the tempo changes...

There were people coming out of the Church of Atom area to see who the strangers were that were approaching the bomb. Even they've stopped in their tracks to listen and stare.

(Ellen, for her part, is checking her Pip-Boy and waiting for the Geiger counter to drop as Demyx purifies the water. The instant the radiation falls low enough, she darts forward, activates her Pip-Boy's light, and starts right in to work on one of the key panels on the side of the bomb.)

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle has never seen Demyx do something on this kind of scale. It's very impressive.

Annabelle knows how powerful music can be, one of Æon's members was a concert pianist, after all. It's good that the music seems to compel the audience's attention, but Annabelle is starting to worry what will happen when Demyx stops.

If the crowd turns violent, Annabelle isn't sure if she'll be able to stop all of them in time.

[dancewaterdance]

Why would Demyx ever need to stop?

When that song ends he seamlessly transitions into another, something original. A faster tempo, more of a heavy baseline if he had a full band to be able to play it. He's making it up as he goes along, and it feels wonderful to play for an audience. To just play and have it all be listened to.

He could do this for hours, as long as his hands don't cramp he'll be fine, and if they do he's still got his voice.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

He's got an audience, all right. A significant portion of this part of Megaton is either coming down to have a look, or at least poking their heads out their front doors. Quite literally nobody remembers the last time there was music like this around here. Because there wasn't.

Just don't let Confessor Cromwell come out, Ellen thinks to herself. I'm almost done with it...

"Annabelle. I have one more set of wires to pull and then this thing won't ever be able to go off again. How do we get out of here with all these witnesses?"

[aeons_crackshot]

"That's likely to be the tricky bit. If he can hold their attention, we can probably make our way back up the slope. I've no idea what you're going to tell them about where we went though."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"We're going to tell anyone who asks that we're looking for Sheriff Simms, to thank him for letting us make our pilgrimage," Ellen mutters. "Okay, here goes..."

It's a lucky thing Demyx hasn't got a drum with him, because even in the Vault's isolation Ellen learned what a drum roll meant, and she'd probably roll her eyes at one of those right now. Not that it's all that important. A few moments later she holds out a pair of gleaming wires.

"We're done. We should withdraw before people start talking to us."