Voodoo - Harrisburg

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It is generally considered traditional that when any ragtag group of travelers undertakes a long journey, particularly on foot over unfamiliar territory, someone in the group will begin whining, "Are we there yet?" far too soon for the answer to be anything affirmative.

The first time the words came up in the group, Voodoo and Hector both smacked the offender on the head at the same time. It has not happened since.

At any rate, the group has been walking for a long while, and fending off interest from all the wrong sorts of people and wildlife. But there's a smell of smoke and human habitation on the wind ahead.

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Fortunately, these guys don't look armed. Maybe if Voodoo moves quickly enough and looks intimidating enough...

"Get back in your fuckin' rooms!" he shouts, pistol up. "Do it now!"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It is possible- just barely possible- that the movie Ghostbusters exists in this world. We bring this up because unlike in Security, the response here is for the pudgiest guy in the group up ahead to yell, "GET 'EM!" and charge.

However, there is a slight difference between this situation and the movie, namely: there's a lot more than three guys here.

And they're all various degrees of inebriated.

And most of them played in the Clash earlier today and are either injured or exhausted or both.

And they're all broad-shouldered and trying to fit down a two-person-wide hallway at once.

Okay, there's a lot of differences between this and the movie.

[boston_bruiser]

A lot.

Voodoo doesn't even have to shoot; they do all the work for him. The resulting pile-up is an absolutely masterpiece in its sheer clusterfuckery, and is at least six dudes deep and three dudes wide.



"You assholes are an embarrassment to the species."

He gives one on the bottom a love tap to the side of the head. "Fuck outta my way, 'Roid Rage."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Up yours," the guy mutters in return. He struggles briefly before nudging the guy next to him. "Hey, my arms are pinned. You mind?"

The other guy gives Voodoo the finger.

"Thanks."

[boston_bruiser]

"Aw, how cute."

STOMP.

"Oops."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAU-"

He'll just keep screaming as our heroes head down into the women's quarters, thanks.

[boston_bruiser]

Thankfully, the womenfolk here seem to have more sense than to try and tangle with four well-armed wastelanders.

"Stay in your rooms. Nothin' to see here. Stay in your rooms."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Just one moment, young man."

She's gotta be at least sixty-five, and she's got a well-worn white jacket over her Vault suit. There are horizontal stripes of white and blue painted under her eyes; this does not do the way her face wrinkles up as she squints at Voodoo any favors.

"Who the hell are you people, anyway? I don't recognize your colors."

[boston_bruiser]

(Why is it that the biggest pains in the ass are always the old ones? Someday Voodoo is going to spend a nice, long afternoon pondering that.)

"Your people took one'a ours; we're here to get him back. Now are you gonna stay in your room or am I gonna have to make you?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That's not the question I asked-"

"We're the Wildcats, ma'am," says Hector. "We beat your referee's team to get in here."

She sniffs. "Well. You might've said," she says primly. "Might've known he'd pick a losing team, he's been an Orangeman since he was a boy...."

And with that she turns and stomps back into her room.

Hector spreads his hands and offers Voodoo a helpless shrug.

[boston_bruiser]

Diplomacy works funny in this Vault. For what it's worth, Hector, Voodoo is giving you his best NOT BAD face.

"I should probably have you out front to do all the talkin'."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Tell you the truth, I'd probably have punched the wrong person by now," Hector admits. "Let's just hope they keep playing by their own rules on our way out. We've still got family quarters to go before we hit level seven, right?"

[boston_bruiser]

"Yup, then we're good. Let's hope they don't get stupid all of a sudden."

With that, Voodoo presses forward. "Nothin' to see here. Stay in your rooms - yes, that means you."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

There's fewer people in the family quarters than there seemed to be on the other levels. Then again, there were a lot of people in the atrium; maybe they're all up there. Who knows. The point is, passage through the remaining space with white-and-blue striping along the tops of the walls is relatively easy, and at the end of the stairs there's a huge heavy door with a sign reading OUT OF BOUNDS.

[boston_bruiser]

Oh. Well, darn. They're gonna have to turn back now.

Hahahahaha- oh, the narration really cracks itself up.

Doorknob, meet boot. Twice. It swings in slowly at first, but Voodoo gives it a helpful little push.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The other levels had stripes running around the tops of the walls. This one has... good Lord, someone spent a very long time stenciling football helmets and footballs and... is that a mountain lion? It is. It totally is. It's a damned Nittany lion, alongside some kind of stylized leaf and all the other images. We're not talking detailed realism here, just the kind of bright cheerful color that one might reasonably expect in a middle school... on the top of every wall of this level of the Vault.

Mind you, the extended oval windows into several of the rooms down here show quite a few rooms full of desks and such, so that might not be all that far off a description.

[boston_bruiser]

"Kate, you're with Josepha, Hector, you're with me. Start clearing rooms."

The first door they breach leads into what looks to be a civics classroom. A flag hangs on the wall, next to a chalkboard. Someone did a half-assed job of erasing it - there are still fight songs on part of it, none of which Voodoo recognizes.

"Christ. Football," he snorts, idly checking desks. "Centuries of American ingenuity and intellectual development and the closest two things we had to national sports were baseball and football."

It feels weird, using past tense.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Hey now," says Hector, "there's nothing wrong with baseball. We used to play something like that when I was a kid. 'Course, all our bases were different rocks or cracks in the dirt, so some days we had seven or eight bases, but..."

The women pass by the window. Kate holds up what looks like a hand-sized slate on which is written NOTHING IN SCIENCE LAB, STILL LOOKING.

"You know, for people who seem to like running into their enemies with their heads, these folks sure seem to've had a lot of space put aside just to teach things."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo grabs a similar slate and writing utensil out of a desk, scribbling furiously. "What can I say? That pigskin sucks common sense out of people."

He holds it up to the window in a similar fashion to Kate. LIKEWISE. CHECK YOUR CORNERS.

"You know they had entire stadiums built for this shit? We're talkin' capacities of, like, tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands. Eating shitty overpriced fat-kid food, drinkin' overpriced horse-piss beer, watchin' plays go like five yards at a time in-between thirty-second breaks - some people? That was their idea of fun."

He shakes his head, replacing the slate where he found it.

"God help 'em."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Kate nods and returns to the search.

"Hard to believe, except for the part about the beer," says Hector. "Folks'll drink just about anything, whether or not it's worth the price. That was a whole different world, wasn't it..."

[boston_bruiser]

"Yeah. It was."

Voodoo points to a door that looks like it connects to the next classroom over. "Got more rooms to clear. Let's be quick about this, Al might not have much time."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Hector nods, tests the door, and winds up having to find a screwdriver in the teacher's desk to jimmy it open properly. The classroom on the other side looks like it was aimed at slightly younger kids, with the traditional painstakingly hand-printed alphabet with the capital A being roughly the size of Danny DeVito plastered across the room above the blackboard.

(Ellen would be kind of jealous if she knew. Vault 101 operated on the one-room schoolhouse model.)

"Looks like they pulled everybody out, if you ask me."

[boston_bruiser]

"Kids must have the week off school. Dollars to dinars the teachers're plastered. -or dead."

It's a fairly small room. Not many places to hide - if there are secret compartments, Voodoo doesn't see them.

"Al? Al, you in here?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

There's no reply, but shortly after Hector starts prodding the ceiling to make sure there's nothing fishy up there, Josepha pokes her head through the door. "You guys should come see this," she says. "We found him, all right."

[boston_bruiser]

"Shit." That never means anything good.

Voodoo follows, his pace quick. Perhaps asking for him alive would be too much at this point.