The Krivbeknih

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens onto a long, narrow spit of rock. Brackish water rises on both sides. "Sorry about this," Ellen says, "but this was the easiest door for me to bring you through without either trying to navigate the swamps alone or taking the chance of running into the other two Paladins. We're at the entrance to a lighthouse off the southern shoreline of the swamp area right now. I'll show you my Pip-Boy map as soon as we're on proper ground."

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

She consults her map a moment, then takes the opportunity to remove her helmet and pull on her goggles. "I'm not seeing any particularly fresh human trails," she says, "but it looks as if there's some heavy swamplurk activity on the terrain to the east. Unless you really feel like fighting giant crabs with the ground trying to pull off your boots, we're probably better off heading west. The iambic pentameter lady's tribe is weird, but they're not flat out insane."

[boston_bruiser]

Iambic pentameter - how's that work, again?

Not five-seven-five, he's sure of that much. But if it's something he needs to know, Ellen'll tell him.

"Lead the way," he says. "I'll let you do the talking."

(Probably the smartest decision he's made today, that.)

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

He'll know it when he hears it, if he hears it. Or at least Ellen will.

Ellen nods and swings wide of the potentially hazardous area, doing her best to pick her way over the more solid parts of the local ground. Just because she's not seeing crab scent doesn't mean there aren't other things around here to be wary of.

Dogmeat, for his part, has his head up and his ears pricked. Ellen's concentrating on scents on the ground, but he can smell things on the wind, and hear a lot farther than anyone else. And there's a lot to hear around here.

[boston_bruiser]

Oh yes there is.

Such as bouts of scuffing and grunting in the distance, along with bouts of splashing. Whatever's making that noise isn't in sight - then again, there's a ton of vegetation obscuring their sight lines.

"Ellen. You hear that?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen stops in her tracks, tilting her head to one side so as to point her ear in the direction Voodoo's looking. After a moment, her breath hisses.

"If that's not at least one razorback in a fight I'm going to be very surprised. Mutant pigs, bigger than me."

She fishes out Karkat's storage deck and immediately swaps her Gauss rifle for the plasma rifle she occasionally carries. This isn't going to be a situation where a long distance strike will be feasible.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo nods, once. "We'll split whatever there is."

He flicks the carbine's fire selector to automatic, then moves forward swiftly, gun up - and stumbles upon a seven-foot-tall catfish duking it out with a pig with spikes all along its back.

He parks his ass against a nearby tree, holding up a fist for Ellen to see. If they're lucky, one will kill - or at least weaken - the other, and they'll save that much more ammunition.

Of course, this assumes they're not spotted.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods and flattens herself as best she can in the Tesla armor, silently cursing the fact that she has goggles on and not her helmet. Personally, she's rooting for the pig to win. The catfish are much too maneuverable for her to want to fight even a wounded one.

Dogmeat, however, hasn't killed anything in hours. And those things up there smell dangerous. The battle of the mutants comes to an abrupt halt as both creatures turn to stare at the sudden arrival of a whole lot of barking and fangs.

Ellen suddenly wishes she were the kind of person to swear.

[boston_bruiser]

"GODDAMMIT."

Don't worry, Ellen, Voodoo swears enough for three.

He steps out from behind the tree, takes aim, and lets loose a series of bursts at the catfish's upper torso.

(Yes, upper torso. It is seven feet tall, bipedal, and really not fucking around.)

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

If Dogmeat hadn't saved her from Tobar when she was passed out, she'd be-

Well, never mind what she would be. There's an oncoming raging pig of doom charging her way and she's got a lot of plasma to deliver straight into its face. Even if she can't wound it enough to kill it on the first pass, brilliant green light tends to blind tiny piggy eyes enough to slow things down.

[boston_bruiser]

For its part, the catfish is doing an admirable job of trying to rip and/or bite Voodoo's face off, considering its physical limitations. The thing is built like a freaking tank, though - 30 rounds of five-five-six and it's still kicking.

It does make the mistake of bumrushing Voodoo when he's reloading though, and Voodoo backtracks like a sensible human being reloading as quickly as possible just kidding; he tackles the fish, straddles it, and gives it an old one-two combo to the eyes and temple before he unsheathes his tomahawk and begins to chop the everliving shit out of everything above the catfish's neck.


Mr. Fish - today was not your day.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Yeah, no. No, it was not. The catfish had a pretty thick skull when it started out this morning- Ellen's seen what happens when you saw one in half- but nuclear-accelerated evolution never designed it to stand up to that kind of abuse. Voodoo's gonna be seeing a whole lot of gray and chunky in a hurry, and the fish is gonna spasm and go limp long before it can avenge itself.

Ellen's just going to concentrate on annihilating the pig's forward end. Dogmeat is busy trying to tear it apart from behind. Bone spikes or armorlike hide to the contrary, the animal's not going to last long.

[boston_bruiser]

Yeah, no. We're guessing the round Voodoo puts through its skull isn't going to help matters.

(Hey, once the catfish is dead, it's dead. And the tomahawk's quick to sheathe.)

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Not in the slightest. Good Lord, that's one distressing death squeal.

Or it would be if Ellen were the slightest bit likely to feel distressed over the death of something that attacked her right now, anyway.

"Thank you, Voodoo," she says when she stops panting. "Remind me not to complain about Wasteland wildlife being tough any more? That was just ridiculous."

[boston_bruiser]

"Will do," Voodoo says, sliding the P226 back into its chest holster. "Think there might be more of 'em on the way there?"

He reloads as he does this, tucking the empty magazine in a back pouch before inserting a new one and palming the bolt release. The fire selector gets switched to semiautomatic - cool as full-auto may be, he simply hasn't got the ammunition for it.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The catfish get a little territorial, from what I've seen," Ellen says. "If there weren't two of them here, then this one's probably been busy keeping other fish out of the area. I don't know about the pigs, though. We'd better stay on alert... you weren't hurt or anything, were you?"

(She always worries about people who aren't wearing her level of body armor.)

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo gives himself a quick once-over - the struggle with the catfish dirtied him up some, sure - but there will always be stains he can never manage to get out of this uniform.

He looks up and shakes his head. "Still in one piece. You?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Same condition I was when we started," Ellen says. "Give me a moment to stuff these things in the storage deck and we'll get moving. I hate leaving meat to rot."

She's not sure how long the meat will stay good in there, but things don't really seem to age in the storage deck, so she's hoping the answer is 'a long while'. Having the ability to cause an object the size of a seven foot mutant catfish to vanish into an object the size of a deck of cards without taking on extra weight is kind of amazing.

"Remind me to thank Karkat when we get back... anyway, let's go. I don't want to still be looking for this stupid thing when it gets dark, scent trail or no scent trail."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo's got no problem with that. He might have low-light gear, but Ellen doesn't.

The ground as they go along is mucky and sucks at their feet, but it's not like it's pulling off their boots. Voodoo's just grateful he's not crotch-deep in muckwater by now.

It's a bit of a walk before a chance turn of the head reveals something on one of the trees - long, vertical slashes in the bark. Voodoo stops and runs his hand over the trunk - it looks like it was done by something of Ellen's height, but at the same time, it's far too neat to be claw marks.

"Ellen." He jerks his head toward the tree. "C'mere."

When she's close enough, he taps the trunk with the back of his hand. "Gashes in the bark. Think someone was trying to mark territory?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen glances at the gashes through her goggles. "They stink of human," she reports. "We're getting close-"

She turns to look around for more traces of the familiar faint orange glow.

"This way," she says, and starts shouldering her way through the mucky mess of swamp growth. It's not long before the trees start to give way and the ground starts to grow firmer and slope upwards.

The stakes in the distance with multiple doll heads impaled on them are probably not really the best sign.

[boston_bruiser]

Yeah, no. Voodoo's going to stare at them for a while.

Then:

"Okay, so they're the 'harmless and senile' kinda weird. I can live with that."

Then, as an addendum:

"Looks clear, far's I can tell."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I hope you're right," murmurs Ellen, moving forward with the plasma rifle at the ready. "... wait, are those dolls hanging from the trees? Like, by their necks?"

It's kind of disturbing and weird, it's true, but let's face it: on Ellen's first day out of the Vault she encountered the home of people who used human limbs and torsos as room decoration. Her wrongness meter is calibrated considerably differently from most people's.

"Looks kind of like the set for some kind of weird drama or something..."

[boston_bruiser]

"Your dramas are way different from my dramas, kiddo."

He takes a look around, prodding at some of the doll heads.

"Was this where you met the guys who spoke iambic?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"They're farther west," Ellen says. "But that doesn't mean it's not the same people. If you were the kind of person to buy an evil ritual book from a man who did lobotomies and kept the brain pieces in jars in his closet, I don't think you'd be very likely to try to use the evil rit-"

She was going to finish the sentence, she really was. But Dogmeat started growling, and she glanced his way and beyond, towards what looked like the ruins of a house surrounded by impaled doll heads.

"Voodoo," she says quietly, "if you're carrying anything that you can use to filter your breathing, you should probably put it on. There's human scent going straight into those ruins, and the air close to the ground in the middle is all covered in the same kind of gross haze I saw in Tobar's shack."

[boston_bruiser]

See, he knew he was carrying this gas mask for something.

Just because they hadn't planned on going near that freaky-ass punga plant doesn't mean it'd oblige them. Or that circumstances would let them get away with it.

He stretches out the straps, setting his helmet down in the muck before taking a knee.

"Masking up. Cover me."

His facial hair is less of a hassle than you'd think - soon enough, the mask is secure on his head, and he takes a few deep breaths and tweaks the filters before putting his helmet back on. He buckles the chinstrap and tightens it before standing back up, the carbine's stock on his shoulder.

"Ready."

To paraphrase what they say - shit might get real.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Covering," Ellen says, and does so. She really doesn't like the look of that smell. And as soon as he's done-

"My turn. I'm putting my helmet on."

Tesla armor and T-45d gear alike have serious filtration systems built into the helmets. She walked into the basement in Andale unprotected. Not again. Never again.

"Okay. Let's get moving... and I think this time Dogmeat stays here."