Sanctuary

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens on what looks like concrete that's suffered two hundred years of neglect. "We're right on the edge of the area people were calling the Sanctuary," Ellen reports. "This place used to be a minor radio station. The Enclave tried repurposing it for propaganda broadcasts for a while. I've torn down their posters and taken most of the supplies they left behind, if you needed anything. We'll be heading west-northwest from here."

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo nods, his expression unreadable through his sunglasses. "I think I'm good."

And he is, more or less. He's gone with a Mark 14 for his primary on this one, a pair of canted iron sights sitting just next to a variable-power scope and a vertical foregrip and bipod attached to the railing below the handguard. The SAPI plates that usually sit in his Kevlar are gone - no need putting on weight that won't do you any good here, especially not when it's this mountainous.

Though he does take out a compass and check where west-northwest is from here, just for curiosity's sake.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

From the look of things, it's in the direction of the Potomac's current course (which may or may not match the course it had in Voodoo's day, but it's reasonably close). They're not far from where Travilah, Maryland used to be. 'Course, Travilah probably didn't have a whole lot of multi-storey satellite communications towers pointing their dishes into the sky, or nearly so rocky a landscape. At least it's greener than it used to be. Ellen brought Jack of the Green from Milliways to visit the area, and he went out of his way to plant adapted seeds near the riverbanks; they've been spreading as far as they can in the thin, dry soil. So there's that.

[g00d_d0ggie]

D0G lumbers out and immediately starts scanning the horizon for any hostiles. Ellen borrowed him for perimeter guard duty, and perimeter guard duty it shall be.

[1nv1nc1ble]

Invincible steps through and looks around. "I'm good, too," he says. Then, he lifts off and ascends to about fifty feet above the ground, looking around for anything that might be hostile (and presenting himself as a bright yellow-and-blue target in the process). After a minute or two, he drops back down. "Looks clear from up there," he says. "Though I can't be sure there's not anything just over the next hill."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Thank you, Invincible," says Ellen. "There's always something over the next hill, but we'll deal with it when we get there. It's worth noting that we haven't had much chance to stabilize this area, so there's a much higher chance that any humans who might be here somewhere are going to e the hostile raider kind."

[boston_bruiser]

At the mention of raiders, Voodoo grunts. They're untrained, barely worth the bullet - but hey, if they got a death wish, then that's their prerogative.

"I got point." He tucks the compass back into his vest and comes back out with a suppressor that he holds at the Mk14's muzzle. "You want it silent or loud?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Loud is fine," Ellen says. "If they don't hear us, they're just as likely to smell us, so there's not that much point to trying to be quiet."

[1nv1nc1ble]

"What's the layout?" asks Invincible. "Another canyon, like with the behemoth?" He looks around, taking in the rocky surroundings and the towers.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Not exactly. We don't have much mapping data for this area. People tend not to come back," Ellen says. "But what data we do have from the Enclave indicates a lot of steep, rocky hills with narrow valleys between them and a good possibility of a tunnel system."

[boston_bruiser]

"Well, it ain't gonna investigate itself."

Voodoo sets off, keeping a respectable distance from the riverbank. There's not much in the way of cover, and there's a whole lot of high ground around him. The pucker factor is through the roof.

Thank god the day's young, or they'd never get through this place before they started needing NODs.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Wish I still had Vallincourt's transmitter," mutters Ellen, and pulls her headpiece on. She's not going to engage the stealth field just yet, but if necessary, she likes to know it's available.

It isn't long before they encounter their first sign of deathclaw activity. Know how in every cartoon, ever, when the protagonists are staggering through the vast and empty desert, they run across a lone cow skull? Maybe some ribs? This is kind of like that. Except that the skull looks definitely ursine, and the ribs are about twenty yards away along with the crunched-up remains of quite a lot of other bones.

"Yao guai," Ellen mutters. "The bear never had a chance."

[boston_bruiser]

"No kidding," Voodoo mutters, squatting down to get a look at the skeleton. "'bout all it's missing is a time stamp."

He picks the skull up and turns it around in his hand before setting it back down.

"We might wanna start huggin' the slopes. Better sightlines."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"No arguments here," says Ellen, nodding to D0G. "The ground's getting way too uneven up ahead."

This is putting things mildly. This area was rolling hills once. At some point in the past two hundred years, water somehow managed to cut through the area in a vicious rampage that carried away most of the soil and left the rock behind; it's gullies and rock outcroppings now, and the turns and ledges don't yield much in the way of visible distance if one stays at ground level.

(Also, there's something foul-smelling on the wind- probably carrion- that won't be quite as noxious in the nostrils from an elevated position.)

[1nv1nc1ble]

"I'll go high," says Invincible, wrinkling his nose at the smell. "Better to see incoming." Suiting actions to words, he levitates above the other three, hanging in the air high enough to get a look at the edges of gullies and the tops of the outcroppings.

If he happens to be a far more obvious target to any predators in the area (Deathclaw or otherwise), then so be it. He is the superhero; it comes with the yellow-and-blue long johns.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ah, now, that's the way to get surveillance done around here. Seriously, this place is a mess for anyone on foot, or anything. There's far too many splintered bones (not entire skeletons, mind you- just bones, as if something dragged a haunch away and settled down to eat it in private) to give any kind of sense of reassurance.

It might be noted that somewhat to the northwest, the otherwise rocky and irregular landscape is disrupted by a perfectly horizontal line of shadow along one of the higher promontories.

[1nv1nc1ble]

Occasionally, Invincible wishes he had some of the more esoteric superpowers known in his world. Captain Dynamo reputedly can see clearly through solid walls and at far distances; Invincible cannot. Curious about the contrast of shadow, he squints and holds up a hand to shade his eyes, trying to make out the details.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It has the look, at this distance, of some kind of metal wall- possibly a segmented one, as a good squint might make it clear that there are notches along the top here and there. There might also be something tall and slender poking up from behind it- probably about the height of a human adult, maybe a little taller- that gives the impression of being made of pipe or other narrow metal parts.

Nothing in that area is moving, though.

[1nv1nc1ble]

Invincible debates, momentarily, heading in that direction, but decides against it. He's here to work with Ellen, not go off on his own. He drops down in altitude, so he doesn't have to shout, and says, "There's something manmade off to the northwest. Some sort of wall or fence, with something behind it."

"No movement, though," he adds, looking back in that direction briefly before refocusing his attention on closer surroundings.

[boston_bruiser]

Huh.

"I'm gonna take a look," Voodoo mutters as he jogs up ahead, careful to crouch to avoid silhouetting himself against the skyline. As he comes up on a suitable outcropping, he hits the deck and crawls forward, deploying the Mk14's bipod once he's got a good line of sight into the compound. He steadies his breathing, slowly looking over the place through the scope.

"Yeah, it's something. Looks like an outpost."

Tents are set up all around the camp, some of them bearing a very familiar insignia. He glances between the mil-dots in the scope and one of the tent poles, doing some quick calculations in his head.

"Three-zero-zero meters. Tents, cages - no permanent structures. Enclave insignia on the tent fabric."

He glances up at Invincible.

"Your 'somethin'' looks like a jerry-rigged radio antenna." He looks back to Ellen and shakes his head. "It's totaled."

He turns his head back to look through the rifle scope-

"Lots of debris, torn-up uniforms-"

-and stops at the collapsed remains of a Deathclaw-sized cage.

"Whoa. Something got out."

[1nv1nc1ble]

"I'll do a flyover," says Invincible. "Be ready for targets." Suiting action to words, he heads towards the outpost. His flight is direct and obvious.

He takes a moment to slowly circle the camp, before coming to a stop high enough that he thinks that he's still visible to Voodoo. He scans the camp below him for any indication of activity, but it looks like whoever was here is long gone. He spies something and descends, but very shortly after, he's back up above the fence, waving the others forward.

Landing outside the gate, he waits until they approach. "Place looks empty," he says. "Not even bodies." He holds up a single armored boot. Something has torn the reinforced leather down the side to get at the interior, and the edges are stained with dried blood. "Some torn up uniforms and what looks like it used to be body armor scattered around, but nothing else."

Invincible drops the boots. "These Deathclaws of yours are pretty voracious, Ellen."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen winces. "This must've been a capture team once," she says. "If there was anything left of their control technology, either it didn't work or they didn't get to implant it-" She nods over towards the remains of the cage. "That's what they used to use to transport the things. This site's pretty cold by now, though. Look at the-"

BRABOOM!

"-that was a mine," Ellen says, head snapping around suddenly in the direction of the echoing explosion. "Grenades don't sound like that."

[1nv1nc1ble]

Invincible is airborne in a blink, literally. One second, he's standing next to Ellen and Voodoo, and he next he's more than fifty feet in the air, spinning to scan for the explosion. Land mines generally throw dirt and dust into the air, and as soon as he's spied it, Invincible heads towards the cloud. He's not moving at full speed (if he did, the others wouldn't see which direction he went), but he's definitely moving fast.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The explosion came from a patch of ground just at the foot of a large, sloping rockface. It's scattered a lot of blood over the vicinity, and some chunkier stuff, too. What it hasn't scattered is the rest of the fifteen-foot-long reptile currently trying to pull itself back to a standing position on its remaining leg. The horned, pinkish-brown creature does not seem much fond of the situation, but its sudden bellow as it grabs at the nearest rock with one massively clawed forelimb has more of anger than pain to it.

Stubborn beast, that.

[g00d_d0ggie]

D0G took off in the direction of the explosion as well. His top speed is nowhere near Invincible's but still impressive.

The creature is likely to hear D0G coming, though. Stealthy he ain't.

[boston_bruiser]

Well fuck.

Voodoo's fast, but he's sure as shit not on Invincible or D0G's level.

He does what he can - which is to say, he sprints up to the highest ground he can find, hits the deck, deploys the bipod, and-


-that Deathclaw'll have to deal with a 7.62 millimeter SLAP round in its brainpan very shortly.