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[Out of Milliways: Ellen went back to Vault 92 a while ago and tried to find her way home. She found Old Olney instead.

It was not a good place.]

The door opens, and Ellen clinks in, wearing a complicated grey suit of armor painted on the shoulders with the markings of the old United States Army. "Oh, thank God," she says at the sight of the Bar. "I didn't think we were going to make it for a while there."

"You're a soldier, not a civvy! Suck it up!" growls a synthesized man's voice, apparently from the armor itself.

"Oh, be quiet, you," Ellen grumbles.

[tiny tag of tracking Timmy: Sativa of Arroyo]

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Sativa's first thought is that the metal outfit looks vaguely, faintly familiar (http://findthegeck.livejournal.com/3950.html) for some reason.

The second thought, when she hears the other voice is that she might have had a bit much to drink.

She gets up and goes to Ellen, BB gun loosely gripped in her off hand. Laddie gets up and follows her soon afterward. "Do you need a shaman or something?" It crossed her mind that Ellen had attracted an Evil Spirit. Or at least a Drill-Sergeant Nasty Spirit.

"Oh- hi, Sativa," says Ellen, as Dogmeat darts forward to sniff curiously in Laddie's direction. "No, I'm fine. This is just-"

"Medic Power Armor reporting for duty, ma'am!"

Ellen sighs and rolls her eyes. "Just a very enthusiastic artificial intelligence, that's all. Like the robots we had in the Vault back home. How are you?"

Sniffing is go? SNIFFING IS GO.

Sativa is taken aback as the suit speaks up again. "And it, it lives inside this... thing you're wearing?" She has to get a good look at the suit. She circles around Ellen, eyes traveling up and down the form in wonderment.

Those are the biggest shoulder-pads she's ever seen. Of all time.

"I've just been, doing... stuff in Modoc," she answers vaguely. "'ll have to get back to it soon..."

"It's built into the suit," Ellen says. "I talked to it a little when I got the suit active. It's from before the War. It was meant to treat soldiers on the battlefield and give them pain medication and healing drugs so that they wouldn't have to retreat unless they were really, really severely wounded. I'm not sure why they gave it that kind of personality, but... well, the deathclaws tore my last armor apart, so this is what I've got now. How are things in Modoc?"

"What else does it say?" Man, she cannot shake the urge to poke it. She's about to tap a finger on the chest-plate... "Deathclaws," she says flatly, stepping back. Yes, she's heard of them. No, she's never seen one, thankfully.

"Well, once I've checked out this mysterious farm that's got everyone spooked, I might actually find out where a GECK is. Apart from that..." She rubs an arm pensively. "I've been looking for a child that's gone missing." She points to Laddie. "The dog belongs to him and I was trying to use him to track the boy down."

"It called me a puke when I first put it on," Ellen admits. "And it let me know when it saw a Deathclaw sneaking up on me."

"TIME TO KICK SOME ASS!"

"Like that." Ellen shakes her head. "I hope you find the little boy- I'm hoping you find the GECK too, of course, but missing children are always important."

Sativa bites her lip. "I want to say I hope so too, but I'm not sure what to do now. See, I got Laddie to take me to where they were last playing, and it was near the town well. So climbed down and all I found was a tunnel, and this," she holds up the Red Ryder, "Just about where the tunnel was blocked off... by a big pile of rocks."

"Oh dear." Ellen grimaces. "So he's either behind a deadfall, or under it... is there any way of moving them, or are they too big?"

Behind it. That was the one tiny slim hope she was just willing to cling to. She shakes her head. "There's just too much of it. I called out but I didn't hear anything. I mean, I've got the dynamite, but..." But it's too risky to consider.

Ellen nods. "That would be a problem," she says soberly. "The right digging equipment might make it possible to do it safely, but the town probably doesn't have any, and if they had any equipment to dig the tunnels under Olney I didn't see any."

"No, no machinery with which to move earth or rock." It's a pickle of a conundrum, no two ways about it. There may be an answer somewhere. Maybe in some other avenue she has yet to investigate. But what are the odds of that?

"Don't know what I'm going to say to the parents."

"I don't know either," Ellen says. "It's been hard enough telling people when it was just bad news about people who were still alive... Is there anything I can do to help?"

That's something she's asked of other people a lot, but it's a question she herself can't come up with an answer for. "Unless you know anyone who can, I don't know, sense people in underground spaces or something like that..." She rubs her nose. It seems like something she herself should deal with, but right now she'd need a miracle.

"You've got your chaplain thing... think you can put in a word with your God?"

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aaaaaaaagh_sky - 2009-11-09 02:15 (UTC) - Expand

"Where on Earth did you get this one??" says Alyx, eying the suit of armor with obvious interest.

"In the municipal maintenance tunnels under what used to be the town of Olney, Maryland," Ellen says. "I was trying to get out of town without attracting any more deathclaws, and I fell through what used to be the equipment loading doors. There was a girl-"

She reaches into the pack she's carrying somewhat awkwardly- this armor wasn't really designed for backpack wearers- and pulls out a pair of holographically engraved tags.

"A Brotherhood of Steel initiate. I don't think she was more than my age when the cave-in killed her... but this was her armor while she was alive."

Alyx's smile fades when she sees the tags. She just nods, mutely.

( There are so many ways to die out here... )

"When I get the chance, I'll be turning these in at the Citadel," Ellen says, unaware of exactly how that must sound. "They deserve to know where she is and what happened to her, even if there isn't a body left by then."

She puts the tags away.

"For now... well, we finally found a road south out of Olney. I'm going to head back to Megaton and work out what to do next."

"And Olney is...?"

"A ruined town a little ways east of Vault 92," Ellen says. "Vault 92's in rocky territory and I thought I'd have a better chance of finding a path southward that wouldn't turn my ankle if I went into the ruins and looked for an old road. What I got was a bunch of giant mutated lizard things called Deathclaws. There must be a nest in the town somewhere or something. If it weren't for the municipal tunnels and a man I met here at Milliways who came with me, I'd never have made it out alive."

Alyx lets out a low whistle. "D'you want an escort back to Megaton?"

"I wouldn't say no," Ellen admits. "Dogmeat's nice and all, but he's kinda... he'll attack anything that looks like it's threatening me. Even when it's five times his size, and armored."

The dog in question is currently flopped on the floor near Ellen's feet, looking mournful in the hopes that passers-by will provide him with food that does not try to claw his face off.

"Hmm." Alyx ponders for a moment, then: "Hang on, I'll be back in a second."

She heads for the hidden elevator to the garage.

"All right," says Ellen, and sets about the process of looking for a chair that won't protest too much over the suit.

Alyx returns a couple of minutes later. She's accompanied by a nine-foot-tall walking junkyard which should be familiar from when Alyx and Ellen first met.

"You remember Ellen, don'cha, D0G?"

Mwoop! D0G nods and offers a hand to Ellen.

Ellen smiles. "Hi, D0G," she says, and reaches out to shake it with a steel-gloved hand of her own. "It's good to see you again."