(no subject)

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

[Out of Milliways: Megaton, Revisited.]

The door opens on a dim room lit by slanting rays of sun. It closes a moment later as Ellen dashes through in one of her old Vault suits, Dogmeat at her heels. "We made it!" she calls out to no one in particular. "The city's okay and we brought the first water caravan there and everything!"

She darts up to the Bar and puts a battered shoebox down. "Here," she says. "For my bill, and for anybody else who might come through for my world. Can I have some noodles and Cram, please? And a really cold Nuka-Cola?"

Some people's ideas of celebration are rather different than others'.

Comments

[first-runihura.livejournal.com]

Tarik nods from a stool not too far, raising his glass of tea in salute.

"Congratulations on a job well done."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Thank you," says Ellen, turning around with the bottle in her hand. "And it gets even better. Did I ever tell you about the Oasis seeds? ... um. Hi, by the way."

[first-runihura.livejournal.com]

Tarik chuckles, he isn't going to hold that kind of forgetfulness against a young person, specially one that's being enthusiastic.

"I think you mentioned them once."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods. "Well," she says, "I was with the first Brotherhood of Steel water caravan to bring safe drinking water to Megaton from the Tidal Basin. We just made it to Megaton today. Not only did the Enclave not destroy the city, but the seeds I brought back from the Oasis valley and planted? My robot's been watering them, and two of the townspeople've been helping take care of the experimental plot the whole time. And they're growing, even that far away from the valley."

[first-runihura.livejournal.com]

"Considering what you've told me of the conditions and the equipment you got, that's quite impressive." The people that terraformed Bourak had both experience in dealing with desert environments -and- technology from the 22nd century to do it, after all.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I know," says Ellen. "I'm going to have to go back to Oasis sometime and thank Harold and the Treeminders there. Especially once the plants get to the point of bearing fruit, whenever that's likely to be."

[first-runihura.livejournal.com]

Tarik shakes his head. "Can't help you there. I was a city boy, and after I joined the military I didn't have much time to learn about plants outside survival lessons."

[yucca-isnt-porn.livejournal.com]

...Here Ellen, have a man staring at you with a jeweler's eyepiece stuck into one eye. It's not an especially menacing look, just one of a familiar variety of crazy, if the mess of wires in front of him is anything to go by.

She doesn't look especially like someone helping out the army-corps in foreign lands..

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Yeah, he kind of just looks like four out of five people from Canterbury Commons really. No big. If he stares carefully enough he'll probably start noticing that for a 5'4" Asian girl of maybe nineteen at the outside, she's got way more than her share of visible scars. That might set off a few bells. No guns at the moment, alas, and no Pip-Boy either.

The dog at her heels bumps his head against her leg; she smiles. "I didn't forget you, Dogmeat. Can we get some water and mirelurk meat for Dogmeat here, too?"

[yucca-isnt-porn.livejournal.com]

...Yeah, it's the scars that start making the zombie hamsters start running their wheels. No one should have that many scars at that age unless things are really messed up.

It is anyone's game as to just where the 'really messed up' dart lands.

Could range anywhere from 'living in ghetto' to 'Gordon Freeman' levels of fucked up home territories.

"What's the occaission?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I was just part of the Brotherhood of Steel escort on a caravan with the first load of fresh water from the purifier my dad built at the Jefferson Memorial," Ellen says cheerfully, "and I found out that an experimental plot of seeds I got from up north is actually growing and thriving. It's probably the best news I've had in months."

Well, it makes sense to her.

[yucca-isnt-porn.livejournal.com]

...He understood about one fifth of that.

Ellen, you're going to find yourself being scrutinized a lot more closely now, by the man who could have come from Canterbury Commons.

"...Purifier in the Jefferson?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"oh- I'm sorry, I thought you were from my world for a moment," Ellen says. "They didn't have the worldwide nuclear war in 2077, did they."

[boston_bruiser]

"Not a bad start, kid. Any problems along the way?"

That'd be Voodoo, cleaning his field-stripped M4 at a nearby booth.

Mind where you sit, Ellen. That solvent gives off some powerful fumes.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Some mutants," Ellen says. "And a mirelurk incident down around the Anchorage War Memorial. But other than that it wasn't too bad. The worst I had to do was disarm a couple of frag mines, then rearm them and reset them after we'd gotten through the 'lurk area."

She seems to think this makes sense.

[boston_bruiser]

Mirelurks? Wait, nevermind, I don't think I want the mental image."

To be fair, it's a pretty ominous name.

He quirks an eyebrow at the mention of frag mines.

"When'd you get EOD training?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Mutant crabs," Ellen says, though she stops before finishing the gesture that indicates something alarmingly larger than her. "Oh- that was ages ago, not all that long after I left the Vault. There were some old textbooks on defusing various types of explosive device that somebody'd found in a National Guard armory or something like that, and I read up on them in case I ran into something when I was out looking for my father. It wound up coming in very, very handy."

[boston_bruiser]

"Not how I got my start, but a start's a start."

He starts putting away his cleaning gear and reassembling the M4.

"So where were you taking all this water?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"A town called Megaton. I wound up living there after I left the Vault. It's probably the biggest population center in the Capital Wasteland other than Rivet City," Ellen says. "I could take you to see it, if you wanted. Nobody would notice one more person with the whole caravan having come into town."

[aeons_crackshot]

Here's someone Ellen hasn't seen in a while. (Annabelle and infirmaries don't get on too well, bad memories.)

"Congratulations!" Annabelle says with a grin, pulling Ellen into a hug.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen beams. "Thank you,," she says. "Hi, Annabelle. How're you doing?"

[aeons_crackshot]

"Pretty good," she replies with a grin. "Even better now that I know you're doing OK. I heard about what happened from Alyx..."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I didn't mean to spook anybody like that," Ellen says. "Dr. McCoy didn't want me getting out of bed to look for people for a while. I spent a lot of time both here and at home doing rehab work."

[aeons_crackshot]

"I expect you did, with that much damage," Annabelle says with a frown. "Getting things back together after you've been out for a while takes a hell of a lot of work."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The medical treatment helped," Ellen says. "I'm pretty sure I'd still be in the infirmary trying not to spit out my teeth or something if I hadn't gotten stuck full of all of that future medicine. I still have tough patches sometimes but nothing I can't get around."