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

[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...."

[aeons_crackshot]

"Backstabbers?" Annabelle inquires. "We're interested in the truth about the founding of this city Dr. Pinkerton, whatever it may be."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Well, you've been poking around all right," Pinkerton ungraciously concedes. "I'll bet they still laugh about how they edged me out of the Council back then. But you can set the record straight."

"We're big believers in accurate records," says Ellen.

Pinkerton nods. "For that, you have to go all the way back to when remnants of the Naval Research Institute cleared the mirelurks off this wreck about forty years ago. We were looking for more lab space, and this bucket of bolts just happened to have a well-preserved science bay on it. Everything else just grew up around that lab once we got it up and running... and the science team was led by one H. Pinkerton."

[aeons_crackshot]

"So you were in charge of the science team that started this place, that would explain why we were referred to you for information. What kind of research were you doing, and what Council are you talking about?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The same as anyone who had any sense- environmental monitoring and adaptational biological research. Not the kind of 'Project Purity' pipe dream that pushed me out. And I mean the city council, the one that runs all the major policies and affairs of Rivet City and our dealings with the rest of this godforsaken wilderness." He turns and yanks open a drawer, rummages a moment, then shoves a notebook and a holotape at the two women. "Here! They probably don't even remember, but I kept minutes of that first meeting when we organized ourselves. That'll put them in their place."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle will take the notebook and the tapes if Ellen doesn't. "Thank you, this will be very useful. Project Purity? I'm not familiar with that name." That name is setting off all kinds of warning klaxons in Annabelle's mind...