A Visitor

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens from Milliways onto the startlingly sun-lit ruins of what was once a decent small-town home. What's left is burnt or decayed wood, concrete rubble, bits of unidentifiable metal, all of it worn by centuries of neglect. Between the rotted beams that still somehow stand upright it's easy enough to see other such ruins, and a little ways off the brick-and-mortar remains of a much larger building.

"Welcome to Springvale," Ellen says, her voice muffled by the filters on her helmet. "We're a ways outside Megaton. I'd have brought you in through my front door, but between Stockholm the gate sniper and Deputy Weld, someone would've realized you never passed through the front gates, so this seemed like the safest option."

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo pauses for a minute, sweeping his eyes over the dilapidated houses and roads. Call it a reflex.

"It's...browner than I expected. Grayer, too."

HOORAY FOR LAMPSHADING

He squints at a building in the distance. "Is that a school?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It used to be," Ellen says. "That's where I- that's the first place I told you about. With the people I had to clear out."

The term doesn't make the memory any more palatable, but that has more to do with what the people holed up there had done to the place than anything else.

"There's only two people living here now, and they're in a house across the road from the school. If you see any giant ants while we're here, don't bother them. They answer to one of the women who lives there and she reacts very badly if people hurt her colony."

[boston_bruiser]

"Don't kill any giant ants. Got it."

He unslings his M4 and flicks the safety to semiautomatic. He gets the feeling that if he needs firepower, he'll need it in a hurry.

"So how far are we from Megaton?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"From here? About five or ten minutes' walk," says Ellen. "Right this way."

She makes her way through the fallen piles of rubble and out of the remains of the house. There's grey, scabrous asphalt underfoot, the shell of a long-neglected road doing its best to hold together. On the wind there's a smell of fires and cattle.

"That rock formation to the west, there- that's where I grew up," Ellen says as they begin moving southward. "Vault 101's dug into that. The entryway's in one of the caves higher up, by the old scenic overlook."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo nods, keeping his back to Ellen as he keeps a constant watch over the terrain to her six. It's a ruined, desolate world, and that makes constant vigilance all the more necessary.

"I don't think you ever mentioned any Vaults to me before," he says over his shoulder.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen starts to speak, then stops. There's a definite clang! as one armored hand claps against her helmet's forehead.

"I could've sworn... I'm sorry." She shakes her head. "Before the Great War, a company called Vault-Tec built a great many sealed, underground fallout shelters across the country. They had room for up to a thousand people each. Maybe more, I don't know about them all. Some of them opened up not all that long after the War, like maybe ten or fifteen years, and some of them... stayed closed a lot longer." She gestures towards the rock formation. "Vault 101 stayed closed for nearly two hundred years before they started exploring the surface again. The Vault Overseer let my dad in because they'd lost their doctor and Dad was trying to go somewhere safer than the DC ruins with me, and then they sealed themselves up again. I never saw the surface world until I was nineteen."

[boston_bruiser]

"Two hundred years, huh? I can't decide whether they were on to something or just paranoid."

A glint out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. It's glass. Glass or metal, but he's not taking a chance either way. He looks in the direction of the glint - careful not to turn his head - and is able to make out a pair of prone figures in ragtag armor and mohawks observing them with a pair of binoculars on a rock outcropping about 400 yards away.

Just keep walking. Don't spook them until you have to.

"Ellen. We've got company. Two bogies 400 yards distant at your seven o'clock, on that rock outcropping. They've got binos. I think they're watching us."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh, worse than that-"

Ellen doesn't stop moving, but she does fall quiet at Voodoo's words. "Damn. I'd hoped all the chaos had driven most of the raiders off," she murmurs. "Let's keep going. If they're not on chems, sometimes they have enough sense not to attack people better armed than them."

Mentally she's calculating how far they have to go before they reach the city walls, and whether Stockholm's old rifle is capable of dropping raiders at that distance.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo nods, keeping his eyes out for freshly piled dirt or recently dead animals. His trigger finger's still resting on the trigger guard.

"They don't have any training, do they? The raiders, I mean."

This road looks good for an ambush. Too good. He's just hoping they're not smart enough to realize that.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Nothing formal that I know of, unless they're Regulators gone bad," Ellen says. "They're not very well organized around here. Just people who gave up being civilized to take from people by force, instead."

She thinks for a minute.

"They could be ex-slavers. That's the most training they're likely to have."

[boston_bruiser]

Slavers. Paramilitary training, then. It probably couldn't hold a candle to his own, but he wasn't taking any chances.

He put the M4's stock to his shoulder, muzzle still pointed at the ground. Now would be where he'd ambush them if he were in the raider's shoes. Close enough to Megaton to send a message, yet far enough away that they'd be outside the range of most small arms.

They'd lost the element of surprise, the question being not if but when they would strike.

And he'd be ready.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It's been hard lately, being a Wasteland raider. The Enclave's rolled through the place killing anything that looks even the slightest bit mutated; it's got everyone on edge. They don't bother hunting you down, but if you get in their way or give them even the slightest trouble, you're dead before you can so much as blink. And the Brotherhood's out here too, now, no one knows what the hell's up with that... It doesn't matter. Either way, it's bigger guns, better armor, and bigger numbers. The only way to survive these days is to band together into bigger groups yourselves, find these people when they're not on their guard, look for the smallest numbers you can, and go after 'em in force. Preferably from a position of surprise, surrounding them on as many sides as possible so they can't retreat.

And that's what this particular strike was going to do if some asshole hadn't decided he just had to get first blood. The zang! of that first stray bullet is all but drowned out by a sudden metallic voice bellowing "TIME TO KICK SOME ASS!"...

[boston_bruiser]

The report of the assault rifle is enough for Voodoo - his M4 is up and ready before the bullet even hits the dirt.

"Contact! Shooters high at your three!"

All he sees amongst the rocks is a bearded, tan head and an assault rifle, but that's more than enough for him to center it in his front sight and squeeze the trigger. The raider's head snaps backward with a flash of red mist, but Voodoo's too busy sprinting for the nearest cover to look. It's all muscle memory now. He taps the forward assist and stands up, ready for more.

It's not long in coming.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Yeah, this? This is familiar. The raiders' strategy around here relies way too heavily on superior numbers and speed. It'd work better if they were faster- if they had vehicles, say, or even just riding animals- but on foot it's not really much more than screaming rabble armed with ancient guns, opening fire from their positions among the rocks. Or charging from their positions among the rocks, letting loose with volleys of shotgun fire as they attempt to close in.

Voodoo won't be seeing it, because the helmet covers her face, but Ellen's rolling her eyes hardat that. She's got herself behind a chunk of masonry and is filling the air between her position and the first few raiders with blazing green plasma fire. It won't get them all, but it'll at least slow down the ones who don't get hit. Assuming they have any survival sense left; given the madness of the attack it's probably safe to bet that someone got into the local stash of Jet and Psycho earlier today....

[boston_bruiser]

The fact that they're charging them, especially from a far superior position, is almost enough to give Voodoo pause. Almost. At the end, though, muscle memory wins out over cognition, and Voodoo starts pumping rounds into the raiders, counting each one. They've got to be hopped up on something - it's taking a lot to take these guys down.

His round count reaches 30, and Voodoo thumbs the magazine release, letting the empty magazine hit the ground as he grabs another one out of his web belt -

- but not fast enough to deal with one particularly crazed raider, who knocks his M4 aside and raises a sledgehammer above his head for a killing blow. His response is swift, almost automatic.

He steps forward, wraps his arms around the raider's raised shoulder, and drives his right knee straight into the raider's sternum. Drug-addled or not, that has to hurt. No time to let him recover though - the only unfair fight is the one you lose.

He sweeps the raider's legs, and he falls to the ground, face-first. Voodoo takes the opportunity to unsheathe his tomahawk and drive it right between the raider's C1 and C2 vertebrae. No time to rest, though - there's another one coming up behind him. He gets it right in the jugular for his troubles, and another one coming up on Voodoo's left gives him just enough time to unholster his P226 and riddle his chest cavity with a half-dozen .40 caliber rounds.

He looks around, scanning with his pistol. That looks like the last of them. It's quiet. For now, at least. They could have friends nearby. He picks up his M4 one-handed, then holsters his pistol and sheathes his tomahawk.

"We clear?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen wasn't watching the fight; she's seen enough of Voodoo in training to know the man knows what he's doing. Her job was to pick off anybody who got closer to their position before they could effectively do any more harm.

Judging by the number of faintly glowing green puddles in the area, she was pretty busy doing exactly that.

"One more left," she reports, not looking up from her plasma rifle. "He got into the rockface; I'm looking for-"

There's a tzang! and an explosion of red up high on the hillside. Ellen blinks, then lowers her weapon. "Stockholm," she reports. "The town sniper. Okay, we're clear."

She turns and waves in the general direction of the sloping city walls; if they're close enough for Stockholm to have scored a headshot, then he's probably sweeping the area with his scope right now.

"You okay there?"

[boston_bruiser]

"Yeah, I'm fine," Voodoo says, inserting a fresh magazine. "You?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I'm okay." Ellen scans the area one more time before slinging her plasma rifle. "Could you keep an eye on the area? There's something I have to do."

Not all of the raiders were gooped. She's got to check all the corpses for anything valuable, then lay them as straight as she can manage. There'll be a brief prayer for the lot of them when it's all said and done. It's a thing.

[boston_bruiser]

"Got it," says Voodoo. He takes a knee and starts watching the road and the slopes leading to the river, looking for any sign of movement.

He eventually spots some - out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ellen...praying?

This warrants a question or two. Not now, though. They could be jumped at any moment. For now, he'll wait for Ellen to finish doing...whatever she's doing.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It doesn't take long. She's been doing this in the field long enough now that she's got it down to a science. As soon as she's done she looks up, glances around, and calls out, "Okay, all good... let's get moving. It's not that far to Megaton from here and Stockholm's probably already told Deputy Weld we're coming."

[boston_bruiser]

"Okay." Voodoo gets up and follows Ellen, his back to her, again.

"Was that a prayer back there?"

Yeah, he's not real big on tact.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods. "A habit of mine," she says calmly; she wasn't really expecting tact, and it's better than the shrieking fits some people who've visited the Capital Wasteland have fallen prey to. "Whenever I survive a fight with a human, or something that used to be human. I owe them at least some respect, whatever they'd become."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo shrugs. "Not how I see it, but whatever floats your boat."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It helps," is all Ellen says.

(One of the first things to be dropped from the catechism in Vault 101 was any kind of drive for evangelism. The Vault's population was, after all, supposed to stay put for an indefinite span of time. Anything that might encourage them to try to spread out and interact with people outside the parameters of the Vault Experiment was erased as quickly as possible. The end result was a certain unwillingness to pester other people on philosophical matters unless Communism was involved.)

"Nice, um... hatchet?... by the way. I didn't see much of it there, but..."

[boston_bruiser]

"What, this?" Voodoo says, unsheathing his tomahawk.

"'s called a tomahawk. Got it after my tour in Somalia. I wanted something with more range than a knife." He cleans the blood off of the blade with his gloves.

"It doubles as an axe if you need it to. I use it more for chopping wood and cutting things than for fighting, come to think of it."