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]

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.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Well, see, here's the thing. The door that Josepha opens leads into the most brightly painted room yet- and the loudest. Because it's full of five-year-olds, screaming and laughing and throwing miniature footballs at what might just possibly be the world's most miserable-looking mascot.

Kate, who's doing her best to keep the especially rowdy ones in check, glances up at Voodoo. "Turns out they wanted him for a babysitter," she says. "He said they told him it was wear the lion suit or they'd get out the Betsy Ross getup, whoever that is."

[boston_bruiser]

It's hard not to laugh. It's really, really hard.

So you can't blame Voodoo if he does it anyway, right Al?

After a few moments, the novelty wears off, and Voodoo sighs, wiping a tear from his eye.

"How you doin', Al?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

A football bounces off his head from behind, and a little girl screams, "FIELD GOAL!"

"I'm not sure what I did to deserve this. I'm really not."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo shrugs, as if to say, "me neither".

"You want outta that?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"For the love of God, yes."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo moves over to Al and gestures to Hector. "There's gotta be a zipper or some kinda straps for this. Help me look, wouldja?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's down the middle of the back, but you have to undo a bunch of snaps holding the head on first," All offers. "I can't get any of them with these stupid paws, either."

[boston_bruiser]

"Bunch of snaps holding the head- ah, here we go."

The snaps are undone, and the head lifted off and tossed onto one of the brats who was making a beeline for Voodoo's leg.

"Feel better?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Whoops, there's another football tossed his way. At least Al can see well enough to grab it out of the air. "Interception, you little brat," Al snarls. "This game is over. Can we leave now? Like, right now?"

"You're still dressed as some kind of animal from the neck down," Hector points out.

"... make it quick."

[boston_bruiser]

One unzip later, and it's done.

"Tell you the truth, I was thinkin' of initiating some kinda self-destruct sequence for the Vault - probably would have, too, if they killed you."

He shrugs. "But they're just a buncha drunk frats. We find some way to put the fear of God into the Overseer and I think he'll stop taking the settlers' shit - or find some way to trade for it."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

One of the less obnoxious children looks up at Al as he wriggles his way out of the costume and runs off. He returns a moment later with a child-sized towel, which Al immediately uses to start wiping sweat away- that wasn't a well ventilated costume. "Thanks, Don," he says, and then to Voodoo, "They're jerks, but they seem like jerks who keep their word, except for the ones who're less than six years old."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo gives a simple, curt nod. "That's that, then. Let's get you outta here. If we're lucky, they're even drunker than they were when we came down."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Kate snorts. "Nobody that drunk gets any less drunk in the space of an hour," she says. "I've seen enough to know that much."

Hector nods, and pokes his head out the classroom door. "We're clear," he reports. "Let's get moving."

[boston_bruiser]

The trip back up is equally uneventful. The Vault's football team is still knocked out, though that's likely more to do with their blood-alcohol content than anything the Wildcats did to them.

Voodoo locates the Overseer and pats him on the head. "Hey, buddy. I wanna talk t'you."