National Guard Depot
May. 28th, 2012 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skyThe door that opens is not, strictly speaking, a door. Ellen wasn't able to find a working one near enough the National Guard building to use, so she had to fall back on the mouth of the drainage pipe that led out of Rock Creek Caverns. "Sorry about the smell," Ellen murmurs, "and the wet feet. This was the best access point I could get us."
Re: Team Outside
Date: 2012-06-09 07:46 pm (UTC)He tosses aside the handgun for now -- those bullets barely seemed to make a dent in the 'bot's armor -- and muscles the Punisher into position, bracing himself against the kick as he squeezes the trigger and rains hot lead down on the hulking metal thing.
"Is this --" He squeezes off another hail. "Enough of a -- threat for you, you stupid hunk of metal?"
Re: Team Outside
Date: 2012-06-09 07:56 pm (UTC)When one arm drops, and then the other, it still seems to be somehow active - it's legs rumbling as it attempts to move toward them from below.
"Oh come on!" Michael growls - sending an empty cell flying with a hard flick of his wrist before sliding in a new one. "It's gotta be almost down."
Re: Team Outside
Date: 2012-06-09 10:16 pm (UTC)It sounds, at the moment, as if there is nothing else to deal with. Yet.
Re: Team Outside
Date: 2012-06-10 04:34 pm (UTC)It's dark. It's a hole in the floor. Still, if there was a robot down there...
"I wonder if it just fell through," he muses, then drops the Punisher through. It lands with a loud clang as he follows more lightly.
"There's a door down here," he calls up to Michael, once he's taken a second after coming face to face with the sentrybot.
It sure is ugly up close.
Re: Team Outside
Date: 2012-06-10 06:05 pm (UTC)After a moment of deliberation, she holsters the laser pistol and lowers himself into the hole - dropping the short distance onto somewhat unsteady feet. Before he approaches the door, he makes sure that the robot actually is fully out of commission - and then tends to the unexpectedly difficult looking lock.
"I'll give it a shot," he murmurs more to himself than Wolfwood as he withdraws the lockpick set from his pocket; "It's a pretty secure mechanism."
Re: Team Outside
Date: 2012-06-10 06:44 pm (UTC)Wolfwood waves him on, bending to pick up the cross and lean it over his shoulder again. He's just idly glancing around when he sees it, a switch nearby that...really can only be for one thing.
He looks over his shoulder, eyebrows lifting. Michael's at work on the lock, focused and determined, and hell, he doesn't want to make the guy feel like he's not doing any good, or anything, but he also thinks it might be sort of mean to make him try and open a door that's got a handle right here.
"How about this?" he asks, and throws the switch.
It does...pretty much what it was always intended to do.
Re: Team Outside
Date: 2012-06-10 06:54 pm (UTC)He hears the metal movement, but hasn't even managed to turn his head when he feels a sickening hot flush against his skin - his stomach turning and ready to empty itself.
When he finally is able to look up, all he sees is glowing phosphorescent green and dead, empty eyes before catching a rake of gnarled hands across his chest plate.
"Kill it!"
Re: Team Outside
Date: 2012-06-10 07:00 pm (UTC)It's a heartbeat's amount of time to swing the Punisher into position and fire into the green ghoul lunging at Michael. He squeezes the trigger.
The machine gun rattle is deafening in the small room, but it's effective, and he empties as much as it takes into the thing before waving away smoke and looking over to Michael.
"Not dead, are you?"
Re: Team Outside
Date: 2012-06-11 06:51 am (UTC)"Kind of wish I was," he groans loudly, eyes closed as he rolls over onto his side attempting to bring the symptoms under control.
"Radiation. Lots and lots of radiation, Christ."
And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-11 01:52 pm (UTC)"Glowing One," says Ellen's voice, muffled by her helmet- she hasn't taken it off since they got here. "Stay away from Michael for the moment- he's hot. Michael, I'm carrying several doses of chelation chems. I've had radiation sickness before, so I know how to treat this. Don't worry. As long as I can find a vein, you're going to be all right. I'll get rid of that corpse myself afterwards."
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-11 02:36 pm (UTC)"Tell me what to do, boss," he forces a smile; "my first time being radioactive and all..."
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-11 03:34 pm (UTC)She makes the effort not to think about that.
By this point it's no surprise that Ellen's prepared for something like this, so as advised -- no anti-rads in her system right now -- she keeps a reasonable distance.
"Frak me." The corpse on the floor wouldn't have looked good even before Wolfwood and Michael got to it. "How was that thing alive?"
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-11 04:03 pm (UTC)Looks like their little moment of too quiet to be good was too quiet to be good, but not for their team. For this one, but now the five of them are together again and five is a number he's used to working with. It's comfortable, it's familiar, it's easy. It works.
"You good?" he asks Wolfwood. The guy looks okay, but everyone's full of surprises and he wouldn't put it past anyone to be, do, or say anything.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-11 04:12 pm (UTC)He is. He always is, regardless of the way his shoulder aches, and it's not him, or his suit, or the Punisher he's concerned about. He's watching Ellen take care of Michael, and only after she sets to work does he look up at the other two, a tiny, unamused smile curving his mouth in a thin line.
"Everybody still in one piece? That's not too bad, considering. Surely statistics were against us."
Aren't they always?
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-11 04:37 pm (UTC)She's got a small bottle of pure alcohol in her storage deck along with everything else; it'll do for an antiseptic at the site. "Okay, Michael. Hold still. This is going to be painful going in, and then it won't hurt any more until after the drip is done. You're going to have a very, very bad time in the men's room the next two or three days, though. I'm sorry, it's a side effect of the medicine."
"I'll get you a stimpak as well. That's going to have to go in the other arm. It'll accelerate the body's healing processes and close up your wounds in a matter of minutes. Bones knitting will take a little longer, but if there are any broken ones now, they won't be by the time I'm done."
She glances up at the rest of the room and notes, "At least you found the storage rooms. I haven't seen this many suits of combat armor since we drove Talon Company out, let alone this many guns."
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-11 07:13 pm (UTC)No stranger to an IV and more used to field medicine than actual doctors, Michael shifts his arm to maintain the blood flow without knocking the site as he rolls onto his injured side.
"Took some shrapnel outside," he mutters, reaching back to tear away the dark, bloody fabric. Before anyone else jumps in, he removes the square shard of metal and throws it on the floor and then flops back down.
His hand shaking and bloody, he gives Ellen a bitter grin and mutters; "Now I'll have the drugs, please."
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-12 01:49 am (UTC)(Two weeks since all hell broke loose and she feels more used to people dying than getting injured.)
When she turns, her eyes linger on Sam's for a split second, eyebrows up as if to prove a stubborn point. Sounds like Michael'll be fine after a few days and she won't deny that she's shocked by what Ellen says she's able to do to help him, but she's still gonna bet these stimpak things couldn't raise the godsdamn dead.
With an unexpected ghoul tucked away in here she trusts downtime even less, especially with two of the party preoccupied. But that doesn't stop her from turning away and taking a look around, because Ellen's not kidding: there's a frakton of guns in here.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-12 02:06 am (UTC)For her too, and when Kara turns to start gathering supplies, he figures he might as well do the same thing. Especially now that he knows Ellen's got a card-sized way of transporting everything back. He answers Wolfwood's question with a nod. They made it okay. Ellen took the brunt of things 'cause she's the one in the high-performance armor, but they all did okay.
One of these days, he might have the luxury of plenty of time to compare and contrast rifles and sub-machine guns, but that day isn't today; they all go in a pile together. He picks what looks like a little doll -- a kid's toy -- off a shelf and wonders for a moment what the frak it's doing in an armory. Something, so he adds it to their inventory. Ellen can give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down: he's just following orders.
The injury to Michael is nothing he hasn't seen before. Radiation poisoning, shrapnel and other projectile injuries, the way blood blossoms over clothing, all that's familiar as frak to him and he wishes it wasn't, but that's life and it's better than the alternative. He takes just a moment to crouch down at the guy's side, tap him on the leg once gently. It's acknowledgment and solidarity, that's all. Any sympathy, that can come later. He knows well enough to know that in the moment, that's probably the last thing the guy wants.
"You're in good hands."
Then he's back to the mission at hand. Ellen's people need as much of this shit as they can gather.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-12 02:28 am (UTC)A larger one is this room they've found: Ellen's right, the place is jampacked full of stuff, and while she's taking care of Michael, he joins the other two with ransacking the place. The guns are nothing he particularly recognizes, but then, how's that different from anything else in this Godforsaken hellhole?
He doesn't need to know what they are, anyway, just needs to load them up as efficiently as possible and get the hell out of here and back to the Bar. That's what she's paying him for, and it's what he'll do.
Even if he finds himself wondering just what the differences might actually be between this place and the one the settlers left so long ago.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-12 02:43 am (UTC)When she's done, and sure that Michael's healed, she comes to her feet and starts on a sweep of the room. Not that anything's likely to be hiding in here, it would've attacked by now, but... well, it doesn't hurt to try.
And sure enough, in the dimmer parts of the back, beyond the shelves of guns and armor, there's one last door. This one is steel, and heavy, and its lock is held not by tumblers but by a magnetic system of some kind- one controlled, it seems, by a computer terminal set into the nearby wall.
Oh, how Ellen wishes she could crack her knuckles in this armor. It seems the thing to do before settling in to have Words with the computer about how it really, really, really wants to turn off the current, open the door, and let them see what's on the other side.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-12 07:10 am (UTC)Thankfully, he's smart enough to know that right now sitting with his back against the wall and watching the others loot the place makes a lot more sense.
When he sees Ellen sit down at the terminal, his curiosity gets the better of him and hauls himself up to watch quietly over her shoulder at the interesting combination of keystrokes. The shell itself is unlike any network he's used before - not like any software he's seen in it's simplicity and single minded purpose.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-12 08:04 pm (UTC)She trains her rifle on the door, waiting. She won't be surprised if Ellen can get them in, but she will be a little surprised if a door important enough to require hacking doesn't have some kind of fail-safe.
Maybe in the form of a robot on the other side.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-12 08:19 pm (UTC)Personally, he's not all that interested in computers or in hacking into their systems. Hasn't missed them back home, except in the abstract, 'cause they've got more important things to do. Just like here. He finishes gathering up what he can and like before, separates it into discrete piles.
Until Kara goes on alert with her rifle. She knows what she's doing, and he... has to learn somehow, and this is way frakking better than trying out fancy tricks from movies on unsuspecting toasters. This is real-time training and if he doesn't pick up hints and tips from this, he's hopeless. So he stands, grenade at the ready in his throwing hand and rifle in the other. There'll be time to catch up with whatever the frak happened outside later.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-12 08:26 pm (UTC)What can he say? Considering he's known the guy for all of a week or so, they've been through some hairy times, and Wolfwood sort of owes him.
Hard to pay back a favor to a dead man.
Tossing a gun onto a pile of...similar guns, he guesses...he catches sight of Ellen's task, and slips out a handgun from the crossarms, holding it easy but ready. A glance at Michael shows him the guy's still there, and if anything comes through the door, it'll hit them before him, which isn't much, but it's...
Well, yeah. Not much.
Nothing he can do about that.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
Date: 2012-06-12 08:40 pm (UTC)... and nothing comes out of the musty-smelling darkness on the other side but the smell of earth and damp.
Well, that's... something, at least. Although now she wants to know what in the dickens these people were thinking, to carve a tunnel into the underlying bedrock here without bothering to finish the walls or properly brace the ceiling. She turns to the left and then the right, spilling her helmet's light over-
"Huh. Looks like somebody thought they'd have their own private Vault here," she notes as the light plays over a heap of human bones at the foot of a cabinet full of military manuals. "Guess he was wrong.... at least he had reading material."
She'll include the skeleton in the last rites, once they've stripped all the books and all the energy cells and all the guns and absolutely everything else from the place, but for now it's just one more unfortunate thing in a very unfortunate place. It happens.
Re: And now Team Reunion Time.
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