Presidential Metro Nexus

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Twenty minutes ago, Ellen swallowed a fistful of Rad-X and made sure Dinah did the same. Dogmeat, too, although she cut his dose down appropriately for his size. Once the chems kicked in, she opened the door.

The tunnel beyond is dimly lit with flickering blue emergency lighting. "We're pretty near the ghoul area," Ellen says as Dogmeat slips past and Fawkes holds the door open from behind. "The tunnel to the right leads to M.A.R.Go.T.'s alcove. She just monitors the place and sends sentrybots. We want to head left."

The muffled sounds of snarling and electronic voices and laser fire make her next statement all but unnecessary.

"That's where the ghouls are."

Comments

[raptorcanaria]

As is customary when going into someone else's world, Dinah clears her throat just to get a feel for how it works in this world. She's satisfied to find out that it feels like it's there, if she needs it.

She's more concerned as she turns left, with flexing the joints on her hands, because she's every intention of hitting things rather than screaming at them.

"One ghoul clear out coming right up."

[unbreakableben]

Ben squints a bit as he waits for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting.
"These things attracted to light?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Not particularly," Ellen says. She herself is in her power armor, which would, as usual, look more impressive if she weren't 5'3" inside it and maybe 5'4" tops from helmet to boots. "From what M.A.R.Go.T. said, they're probably their own light source. Glowing Ones come by the name honestly. They investigate motion, though."

Dogmeat is prowling back and forth on the ancient train track ahead, rumbling in the back of his throat.

[raptorcanaria]

"Motion, we have." Dinah, in the highly impractical outfit of fishnets and heels, breaks into a jog in order to catch up with Dogmeat. She wants to get into the action as fast as possible, and hopefulyl she what she's up against.

[unbreakableben]

"Gotta love a glowing target," Ben deadpans and half jogs after Dinah and Dogmeat. He's wearing his impact suit which is good because otherwise the tremors of his footfalls would likely collapse the tunnel. "Should I take front and center or a side?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Take the left. Fawkes, if you don't mind taking the right-"

"That can be arranged," says Fawkes, hefting his Gatling laser and offering his usual ghastly smile. "Let's go and have a look."

As soon as Dinah starts moving more quickly, Dogmeat breaks into a trot of his own, his growling growing louder. Hard to blame him, since it smells vile down here. There's a difference between tunnel air that's stood dead for centuries and tunnel air that's recently been violated by bodies that should've lain down and died long ago.

Up ahead the sounds grow louder, and the light is becoming more visible. There's the occasional flash of red laser, but mostly it's a moving, dancing, ghastly greenish color- and some of it is drawing closer...

Ah. Yeah.

One of the Glowing Ones is coming around to play.

[raptorcanaria]

"Hi there," Dinah says cheerfully. Her jog lengthens in stride and she veers to the right, to the edge of the tunnel, where she runs a couple of feet up the wall in order to give her height, before launching herself into the air, one leg leading.

And hits the ghoul squarely in the head with the heel of her boot.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It rocks backward hard, arms flailing. It doesn't fall down, though, just gets driven two or three steps backward. Then it screams, a hoarse, quavering sound no living throat ought to produce, and lunges at Dinah with surprising speed.

There are others coming from down the tunnel. Not all of them are glowing; the dark ones look bulkier, though- and faster. Dogmeat is charging ahead to leap at whichever one he thinks he can hit first.

[unbreakableben]

Ben is going to trust Dianh to take care of this first one and move past her to what may be coming behind. Before he gets too far from Fawkes though he says, "By the way, don't worry about me and friendly fire. I ain't found a gun yet than can hurt me. This air though...pshew."

Distracted by his comments to Fawkes the darker ghouls catch him by surprise and well, he sequels like a little girl before lashing out at the nearest with the full force of his strength. They're really too far gone to be treated right?

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Much too far gone. Once a ghoul's gone feral, it doesn't come back. Kind of like the head on the one Ben just punched-

BLART!

That wasn't the head. That was the wad of something distinctly caustic and nasty sailing over the heads of the other ghouls and hitting Ben square in the eyes, even as Ellen and Fawkes open fire with laser and plasma on the oncoming horde.

[raptorcanaria]

"Unpleasant," Dinah remarks. She's landed in a crouch from the first flying kick and drops down further to sweep out the legs from under the ghoul charging her.

Then she keeps moving, somersaulting backwards and planting her feet on the ground for the merest second before attacking again, fast strong strikes designed to push it back, towards the crowd.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The glowing ghoul goes down hard and attempts to roll over and push itself up. It's not as fast as Dinah; it doesn't get up in time before the next round of kicks, and the next.

So it does the next best thing and hisses as it draws its arms up and back. There's an oddly pulsating quality to its light.

"It's gonna let off a radburst! Take it down!" shouts Ellen. "And you! GET AWAY FROM MY DOG!"

Any further dialog is lost in a hail of plasma fire.

[unbreakableben]

"Ah come on," Ben says trying to wipe the goo from his eyes. One thing that is nice about this new body is it doesn't have problems with little things like acid, still his eyes do sting a little.

He's gotten most of it off when Ellen's warning and the glow get his attention. He swings around, grabs the ghoul by the chest, lifts him off the ground and throws him like a grenade at the largest and farthest pack of the things. "Fire in the hole!"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The ghouls scatter like bowling pins, even as the thrown one's light flares to almost blinding levels. There's a brief angry chatter from Ellen's Pip-Boy, but it goes silent almost immediately.

And then the hail of... stuff... starts. The dark, bulky- no, not bulky, armored, there's enough light to see that now, they're wearing the scraps and tatters of ancient armor they never remembered to take off- the dark and armored ghouls are throwing something at anyone with a pulse. And it's setting off Ellen's Geiger counter like mad.

"No more games," Fawkes suddenly shouts. "Time to die!"

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah suddenly finds herself in the middle of a crowd of ghouls. Sharp hand and foot strikes give her enough space to actually grab a ghoul by the shoulders and lift herslef up, flipping backwards over it to get herself out of the crowd.

She is so destroying this costume when she's done.

She watched the blast. More accurately, she watched the effect the blast had on the structural integrity of the tunnel - none at all.

So it's time to get serious.

She opens her mouth and screams.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

She brought her own blunt instrument.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

WHAM.

Ben did his bowling, Dinah did hers; the wave of sound literally flings the ghouls in its path out of its path, bouncing several of them off the tunnel walls. A few of the Glowing Ones don't get up afterwards.

The dark ones do, though. And some of them are apparently trying to imitate Dinah's scream- without much success, given that they don't seem to have bottom jaws any more- before flinging stuff and charging at Ellen and Fawkes.

[unbreakableben]

Another nice thing about this new body is that it is big...well nice for situations like this where you don't want your buddies to get hit with flying goo. Ben leaps to throw himself in the path of the flying goo and block as much of it as he can and place himself in the way of the nearest ghoul. He's still blinking the crude out of his eyes but he can see clearly enough to strike out a punch at one and attempt a clothes line of another.

"What, I'm not good enough play with?" He quips remembering She-Hulk's banter. "You guys trying to hurt my feelings?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Well, if it's any comfort, one of the Glowing Ones has apparently decided to grab hold of Ben's outstretched arm and start trying to claw it apart? Or chew on it?

.... it's surprisingly strong for something that dead-looking.

[raptorcanaria]

Surprising strength would be one of the reasons Dinah isn't going to let any of them get hold of her. She keeps moving too fast for fast for that, feet only on the ground as a passing note on her way to striking, or in the case of one of the dark ones heading towards Ellen, a neat little Judo throw designed to send it over into one of its buddies.

Then she's sliding back, ducking under the projectiles.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

They're tough, all right. All of the ghouls are tough, especially the dark ones. But they're not invulnerable, and it's starting to show; where they'd previously been getting up and charging their attackers, the ghouls are starting to stagger and fall instead. Slowly, one by one- and mostly in Ben's direct path- but they're falling and not getting back up again. There's starting to be breathing room. And aiming room; Ellen had mostly been firing her plasma rifle into the ghoul crowd at what was probably the center of mass for most of them, without picking a specific target. Now she can get line of sight on some of the more intact ones, towards the back.

BZAP! BZAP!

"Uh-oh."

Possibly she should have taken into account that the Glowing One she was aiming for was just about to fall down anyway, and that the second plasma bolt would strike the Sentrybot behind it. More specifically, the back of the Sentrybot. Squarely in the combat inhibitor, too. So much for friend or foe recognition....

"Alert. Hostile detected. Lethal force authorized for all units," it announces, and immediately begins spraying absolutely everything it can see with laser fire.

[raptorcanaria]

"Oh crap."

Dinah nearly pulls a box split as she drops to the floor to let one of those laser beams pass inches over her head. Rolling forward onto her feet, she makes a beeline for the robot, vaulting ghouls on the way and flip flopping over and under and around the rest of the laser beams, determined not to provide a target.

"How do I shut it down?!"

Admittedly taking down ghouls is good, but she doesn't want her friends to be targets either.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Massive damage! There's no one vulnerable spot-" Ellen drops and grabs Dogmeat's collar, as he was about to leap at the robot. With his teeth. "Most of its works are in the torso, though!"

[unbreakableben]

And now is when the ghouls decide to swamp Ben. They aren't really doing any damage and have yet to knock him off his feet but they are making it hard to get a good swing in.

"Okay, maybe this is too much loving guys," he says and starts wading towards the robot. If he could just get a grip on one of the ghouls and a clear shot at the missile arm...

As he makes his laborious way forward it's almost like the pile of ghouls grows but that must be a trick of the light right?

[raptorcanaria]

"Keep collecting ghouls, Ben," Dinah says. "You're an enormous target for this thing."

Which almost makes it a shame she's going to have to take it down.

Sliding one leg out, she lands directly under the robot, and tilts her head back.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"

It's not quite the pitch of the last one, but it's focused tightly, and directly up at the robot. That's Dinah's brand of massive damage.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Do not interfere wwwwwwwwww-"

It's hard to maintain any kind of coherent speech when your innards are vibrating at that kind of frequency. Against each other. In every kind of direction.

Even the ghouls scatter as the robot suddenly flails its arms and starts falling apart.

[unbreakableben]

Now that he can move again Ben takes the chance to clothesline a few of the ghouls into the tunnel wall. Normally he'd feel bad about hitting someone from behind but these aren't really someones anymore.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Definitely not. Anything of them that could have been reclaimed is long since gone; the robots have more sense of self to them than these things. And there are robots now, a good number of them. They're all sentrybots, like the one Dinah just destroyed- and the ones the ghouls haven't pulled apart are concentrating their fire on the greatest threat, the dark ghouls in armor.

"Looks as if we have our work cut out for us," says Ellen as one of the dark ghouls goes down. "Thanks, guys!"

She's addressing the robot forces. And she's also racing forward along the wall to fire at any Glowing One that Dogmeat may choose to target; she's not about to let her dog get irradiated or torn to pieces, thanks.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah had covered her head with both arms and rolled backwards head over heels to get away from the disintegrating sentry. Now she flips onto her feet and strikes the nearest ghoul hard in the neck.

She tries to ignore the voice telling her that she's walking a line, using fatal blows even against these things.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Perhaps the fact that the two Glowing Ones nearest to her- among the last of the group- are drawing themselves up for a synchronized, massive rad-pulse may help assuage that.

And even if not, there's one jumping at Ben, clawlike fingers stretched out, with apparently every intention of trying to get past his guard and rip up his (admittedly stony) face.

[unbreakableben]

Fortunately Ben happens to be turning to look for a new target and sees the one jumping for him. He grabs it mid-air and spins (who ever said ballroom dancing was for sissies?) to slam it into the wall head first. That done he grabs the three that aren't glowing quite so much into a bear hug and squeezes (after closing his own eyes tight).

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

SPLUT.

It's a lot darker in here all of a sudden.

Well, that and Ben's front is kinda... glowy.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah stands up straighter, stretching her legs, and running a hand through her wig.

"You got glow on you," she remarks.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

There's a few more rounds of laser fire, a few more jawless screams and vile gurgles... and then the robots lower their weapons as well. As do Ellen and Fawkes.

"Area secure," announces one of the 'bots. "Thank you, citizens."

[unbreakableben]

This latest turn of events has left Ben with something of a conundrum, one that is hard to choose from. His faces works his thoughts until he finally says, in a little squeaky voice, "Why am I drippings with goo?"

He would have gone with a Thriller quote or try to moonwalk but there are still ghouls around. Bun then the robot says its piece so he tries a moon walk anyway. It's something he'll need to practice.

[raptorcanaria]

"Citizens, yeah," Dinah says, blowing synthetic blonde out of her face again.

"OK, Ellen, what next?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Well-" Ellen hesitates and glances over at the robots. The biggest one turns their way and rolls forward.

"Cleanup and repairs on Presidential Metro electrical subsystem will now commence. Service to Adams Air Force Base estimated availability: fifteen minutes."

"Wait," says Ellen. "Service?"

But the robot is already turning around to assist the others in vaporizing the ghoul remains and lifting the shattered, broken bits of destroyed Sentrybot off the tracks.

"Did he say-"

"He did indeed," rumbles Fawkes. "And unless my eyes deceive me, I believe there may be the form of a pre-War train car in the distance, down that tunnel ahead."

Ellen whistles softly and looks to the others. "That'll make things easier," she says. "Um. At this point I should probably check you two over for radiation- we'll want to get you decontaminated before sending you home...."

[unbreakableben]

"Ah but glowing green is such a good color on me," Ben drawls as he attempts to wipe off the goo. "This better not stain."

[raptorcanaria]

"You should meet a friend of mine," Dinah remarks. "He loves glowing green."

To Ellen, "I'd like to be decontaminated, please."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's going to be a ways back," Ellen says, "but Fawkes and I've cleared out everything in the tunnels except the radroaches. If you don't mind walking for a while, I can bring the two of you back to the Jefferson Memorial. The Brotherhood has decon facilities there."

[unbreakableben]

"That'd probably be for the best," Ben says with a nod. "I don't think radiation bothers me much but that doesn't mean I can't become radioactive and hurt other people. You need or want any other this? I can carry it if you want." He points to the scraps of robot and loose pieces of armor strewn about to clarify his question.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The batteries would be good," Ellen says, "and the power cells. But beyond that, the rest of it can stay here... and there's one other thing I need to do."

The robots have already vaporized the ghoul corpses, leaving nothing behind but ash, but that's no reason not to take a few moments to pray for them. They'd been people once, after all. They'll just set out through the tunnels again when she's done, that's all.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah sees, and she nods understanding, standing to the side respectfully as Ellen does what she has to do.

[unbreakableben]

Ben catches on pretty quickly himself and stands by respectively lowering his head.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Eventually Ellen looks up. "Okay," she says, "let's get moving. I don't want either of you two to be hot any longer than you have to be."

[unbreakableben]

"Just a minute," Ben says bending to pick up what battery pack he can spot. Working with science geeks can be useful sometimes. "Did I miss any?"

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah turns around once to give the place a thorough check over herself. "I don't think so. You have all that, Ben?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Looks like you got them all, I think," says Ellen. "Thank you, Ben. Those are hard to come by."

[unbreakableben]

"Pshtt," Ben says with a shoulder shrug and an eye roll towards Dinah. "I can bench press a battleship what do you think? Lead away Ellen."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"All right," says Ellen. "Right this way, everyone."

It's a long way back. But it'll go where they need to be.