Rivet City

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens onto an afternoon of graying sky and greyer cityscape. Megaton and its buildings of metal were one thing; this is the ruins of DC proper, all tumbled-down concrete and metal rusted beyond repair. Here and there the occasional wall still stands, or rebar protrudes from a pile of rubble. Underfoot are the remains of what was once a street, but it's shattered more or less beyond recognition.

"According to my Pip-Boy map, we don't have much farther to go," Ellen says. "The river's up ahead, and then we just follow it to the boat."

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Silently, Ellen reaches over and pulls the lever on the side of the box. There are two very audible chunk! noises, but nothing else happens. She reaches over to the central wheel and turns, and behold, the door opens- onto the very place they had been trying to force the lock.

"Magnetic seal. Turn the power off, and the magnetic force goes away."


(OOC: yes, it's that frustratingly easy in the game. Try to open the door straight on, and it demands a 100 lockpick skill. Turn to the switch off to one side and pull the lever, and HEY PRESTO OPEN DOOR.)

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle is recalling the trek through the dark radioactive river, hoping nothing would attack them and that they wouldn't run out of air at precisely the wrong moment. Then, when they finally got out of the water, there were giant crab monsters...

Annabelle looks at the magically open door and then turns to Ellen, "Have you ever had the feeling that the Universe is laughing at you?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I'm beginning to get familiar with that feeling," says Ellen dryly, and closes the door. "Come on. Let's go see if we can't find Mr. Pinkerton. Someone's kept that door working."

They make their way back to the stairs and into the next corridor, where the gas hissing grows louder. It still doesn't smell, but there's a distinct wavering to the air, as if it weren't entirely composed of the normal substances. "I don't like the feel of this," Ellen murmurs. "I hope we don't get any more mirelurks. Who knows what a weapon spark could set off..."

[aeons_crackshot]

The shimmering of the air sets all of Annabelle's nerves on edge, "I don't like the looks of that either..." Annabelle murmurs. "Do we want to toss something in front of us and see what happens? I don't know that whatever is in the air will hurt something inanimate, but there might be other traps."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That sounds like a good idea," Ellen says. "We should do it from as far back as we can. Just in case. You know."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle nods and backs up as far as she can. "Do we have anything we can afford to lose?" she asks, looking for anything in the area that looks safe enough to yank off and use to test for traps.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I stripped down to the essentials," Ellen says, "but I could go disarm one of those mines. They look like they could be thrown pretty far..."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle grins, "Those will work. We'll just have to hope that they're heavy enough to trip any pressure plates in the floor."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Sounds good to me," says Ellen, and heads back to the ammo area to start disarming the mines. She eventually hands three to Annabelle.

For what it's worth? No pressure plates. But there was a tripwire waiting, and the first mine broke it.

The sound effect best applicable to all that gas going up at once is FA-THOOOM.

[aeons_crackshot]

"Very impressive," Annabelle says once the noise from the explosion has died away, "and now we know that the gas is flammable."

"I'll have to show you how to skip rocks on water when we get back to the Bar, it's similar to what I did with the mine."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Okay," says Ellen, who's busy feeling her eyebrows to make sure they're still there. "I think that got all of it- but we should move carefully, just in case..."

Looking for tripwires as they move through the next few rooms, Ellen almost misses the next trap: a carefully concealed group of grenades, their pins connected to a thin length of cord so that the slightest impact might pull them out. She pulls up short barely an inch from the cord and makes a 'ngh!' noise.

"Either Mr. Pinkerton's really antisocial," she says, "or he doesn't want mirelurks coming up here..."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle moves carefully through the rooms, watching for traps. Even alert as she is, she doesn't notice the trap until Ellen does. "Or both," she says in response to Ellen's statement. "If he's hostile, I can probably take him down without killing him."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Ellen says as she carefully works the cord free of each individual ring and adds the grenades to her belt. Then she pauses. "I'm sorry, did you want one?"

[aeons_crackshot]

"If you don't need all of them, I'd be glad to take one," Annabelle says with a grin. "I hadn't realized how useful these things could be before I arrived in Milliways, we didn't use them much back home."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen hands one over, and they keep moving, coming eventually to a room with its only alternative exit in the side, rather than the same corridor as the rest. She eyes the Nuka-Cola machine on the floor with suspicion- as much as she fancies the stuff, everything around here seems to either bite or explode- and eases the next door open very, very carefully.

Which is good, because there is a visibly different-colored panel of metal in the floor directly on the opposite side of the door, and a pair of combat shotguns canted to focus both their cones of fire on whoever might happen to step onto that panel are mounted on some shelving on the far wall...

[aeons_crackshot]

"Good going Ellen, that would have been a rather nasty surprise!" Annabelle says as she eyes the shotguns mounted in the shelving. "Do we want to take a chance by jumping over the panel, or should we see if we can take the shotguns out from here?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Let's see if we can't take them down," Ellen says. "It'd be just our luck to find out that the next panel is the actual trigger."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle eyes the shelving with an expert eye, "If we hit the shelves there and there," she says, pointing, "the shelves should tilt down, maybe collapse." She grins, "The guns won't do much harm if they're pointed at the ground."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"All right," says Ellen, taking careful aim. "Ready in three, two, one..."

Unless Annabelle was referring to grenade hits, the following volley of gun and laser fire ends with a severely tilted set of shelving. It might be worth noting that there's another door visible behind it.

"... this is getting ridiculous."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle grins in satisfaction as the volley of bullets and laser fire ceases. "That should take care of that particular trap."

At the sight of the new door, she glances at Ellen and sighs, "Another one. Still, we've come too far to give up now."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen will look more closely at the shotguns later. Right now, she's just relieved to see that the door behind the shelving opens onto a larger room- one festooned with medical equipment on the ground floor, and what looks like several banks of computer equipment up above. Operational computer equipment, we might note.

"I think we found our place..."

[aeons_crackshot]

"I think you're right," Ellen says with a grin. "Let's go see who's home."

Annabelle will have her pistols handy and keep an eye out for trouble as they move through the room.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Whether it was their footfalls in the decidedly echoey room that set him off, or simply a habit of checking around, we may never know- but a gray-haired man with a heavily lined face pokes his head out from one of the far recesses of the room. "Hey! Who the hell are you, and what do you think you're doing here?" he demands.

[aeons_crackshot]

"We're just two folks interested in the history of Rivet City," Annabelle replies. "Dr. Pinkerton, I presume?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Hnnnf. I'm surprised anyone up there even remembers me," says the man. "Yes, I'm Dr. Horace Pinkerton. I don't know who you are, and I'm not sure that I care. You're probably working hand in hand with those backstabbers topside anyway."

"Actually," says Ellen, "Mr. Holmes said you were probably the only one left who knew the truth about how Rivet City got started...."