milliways_bar | (no subject)

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[Out of Milliways: Gunny.]

Ellen is dusty, sweaty, sore, and visibly bruised in a number of places as she slips through the door from the Citadel. Nevertheless, she looks fairly pleased with herself. "Bar," she says, "i can't really afford to get too healed up while I'm here, but could I have something to just take the edge off a little, please? And something to drink?"

Bar manages, despite being an inanimate object, to convey the impression that the largely shaven-headed, scarred young woman in the dark green Brotherhood of Steel uniform is crazy. However, a bottle of generic ibuprofen and a larger bottle of Nuka-Cola appear.

"Thank you," Ellen says, and goes to look for a place to sit and have her drink.

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Tarik happens to be looking that way when Ellen walks past his table from the Bar.

"If I may be frank, you look like crap." There's a faint smirk on his face. "Then again, I'm pretty sure you've been through worse, considering what you've told me about your world."

"Oh yes, as recently as a month ago," Ellen says with a crooked grin. "I'm just now getting back up to normal condition after six weeks of treatment and rehab for radiation poisoning. Hello, Tarik. It's good to see you again."

She manages a respectable bow of greeting.

Tarik scowls, remembering a botched raid on a secret facility masquerading as an ancient toxic waste dump.

"Radiation poisoning. That's nasty stuff. Hope you're recovering fully." He knows the treatment is available in his world, but Ellen's world didn't sound like they have much in the way of biomedical tech left.

"Thankfully, yes," Ellen says. "I got emergency chems on site, and I spent two weeks in a Brotherhood of Steel infirmary getting more treatment. When I came here I spent a week under a United Federation of Planets doctor's care at the Milliways infirmary. He's the one who gave me the clean bill of health and said I could start on physical rehab again."

"The United Federation of Planets?" Tarik smirks a little wider, shaking his head. "You seem to take all this... Science-fictiony stuff much better than me."

"I used to read a lot of comic books," Ellen admits. "Or at least, any comic book we still had in the Vault. When I got out onto the surface in my world and things turned out to be even crazier than the comics, I guess it kind of made the weird stuff here seem a little more normal."

Few things are written on paper anymore in Tarik's time, so he just assumes she liked to read comedy. And, well... Milliways sometimes feels like something out of a surrealist comedy, so it kinda fits.

"I guess it's easier for a young person to adapt to something... This new."

Ellen nods. "There's not really much point in me objecting to the crazy," she says. "It's still going to be there when I run out of steam. So I might as well just take it on its own terms and work from there. I mean, if things are too far into the weird I reserve the right to back off and not have anything to do with it any more, but for the most part... it's not going to go away because I don't know how to deal with it, you know?"

Tarik nods, a tired expression washing over his features.

"Of course I do know. I've been trying to tell my superiors exactly that for months now. Hopefully they'll get it if we manage to slip back to our lines alive and with the data we have collected." A pause.

"Mind me, that's one big 'if'"

"Oh dear." Ellen winces. "That sounds like a bad situation. What's going on, if I can ask?"

"Well, it's a long story. Thing is, we were dropped behind enemy lines to try and help a huge column of our men get back to human-controlled territory. We have managed to liaise with them and they have collected some very interesting data on the enemy. The problem now is how to make it back across their lines."

Ellen nods. "Making it out of enemy territory is easier with small groups. I've never had to see more than two or three people at a time back to safety," she says. "And definitely not over the kinds of distances you're up against, either. That's... that's got to be complicated."

"We have a couple advantages. The two main species of the Combined Army don't seem to be too fond of each other, so there is some kind of... 'neutral zone'. The commander of the column had the good luck of finding it early on and sticking to it. And of course, there is the fact that Paradiso is the best planet ever when it comes to providing cover. Literally too good."

"I'd ask if that meant enemies every rock and plant," Ellen says tentatively, "but you're talking about it in the context of your own advantages. Is there something damaging or unusual about all the cover?"

Tarik shakes his head. "Damaging? No. It's just that in Paradiso all vegetable life grows at an unbelievably speedy rate. Setting up camp for the night is exhausting, as you have to keep hacking at the creepers and vines to prevent them from snagging every piece of equipment and anyone who is sleeping. They don't choke or anything, they just... Cover you and creep over you and before you realize it's morning and you need someone to cut you out with a machete."

He pauses, shaking his head pensively. "Plus, it makes clearing a path through the jungle nightmarish, specially for a couple hundred men, as is the case."

".... I have no idea what that must be like," Ellen says after a few moments' blank staring. "Literally. I can't even picture that many plants, or plants that active, and I've been to a place where there's a man who's been turning into a tree for longer than I've been alive."

"Yeah, I've seen the reactions of men brought up in Bourak's more arid regions when they arrived in Paradiso. It can be quite a shock if you aren't prepared."

"You can take my word it gets exhausting after a while."

"It would pretty much have to be," Ellen says. "Wow. And I thought making my way through all the stuff that pokes out of the walls and the floor in the old Metro tunnels was a tiring proposition."

"Ruined underground tunnels are in a league of their own, I'd say." Tarik smiles a little. "At least for me. I guess I'm more of an outdoors kind of person."

"It's all in what you're used to, I guess," Ellen says "I have a better sense of direction underground than on the surface, thanks to the way I grew up. Maybe someday I'll get more used to the outdoors and get to like it properly."

"Of course it all depends on what you're used to. I was under the impression that you had done a great amount of outdoors exploration by now, no?"

"Oh yes," says Ellen. "But compared to nineteen years in the Vault, it's still not that much. Enough to be kind of used to it, not enough to avoid getting lost more often than I'd like, not enough to really like it."

She hasn't admitted that to anybody except Dogmeat, really- although she's pretty sure Star Paladin Cross has an idea. The woman is amazingly perceptive.

Tarik nods. It took him an awful long time to get used to outer space. You did your part in the incredibly high-risk boarding actions and you just tried not to think of what laid on the other side of the hull.

"You don't have to like it, not right away at least. It would make no sense. I suppose, compared to a place called The Vault, you must feel awfully unprotected outdoors."

"There are times when I have to concentrate really hard not to think about how big the sky is," Ellen admits. "And sometimes I still slip up and call it the big room with the blue ceiling. In Vault 101, the biggest room only had a ceiling about twenty or thirty feet high, and you were never, ever more than about three or four paces from a wall unless you were in the atrium. Sometimes I think the best thing about my power armor is that it gives me metal walls close enough to touch no matter where I am."

Okay, those issues are quite more serious than his own used to be. But then again, she has lived in a far more extreme environment than he ever did.

"As I said, you don't have to get used to such a great change right away. Just take your time to get used to it."