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The door opens; Ellen ducks in from a hotter-than-usual Wasteland summer day and spends some time blinking as her eyes adjust to the local light level. She lets out a sigh of relief- there are only so many doors you can try in Arlington before your cow gets frustrated and wanders off- and trots over to deposit an envelope at the Bar. Inside is an assortment of incomplete and fragmentary comic books, some bits as small as just a portion of a page, and a note.

Dear Steve-

I made it back to the Citadel today to deliver my most recent report, and I stopped by the archives like I promised you. Here's copies of the incomplete comics I found. The originals are back at the Citadel, so you can have these.

I'm not sure what else I can bring from home to make things more interesting for you on the road, unless you have a record player with you or something. If you like violin, I mean. There's a woman who has what I think might be the last Stradivarius violin in the world, and she makes her living by playing for traders. I might be able to get some recordings from her, if you ever wanted.

Take care out there,

Ellen.

Once the envelope's in Bar's keeping she deposits two fistfuls of bottlecaps on the bartop. "As much film as this will buy me," she says, "and there's more where that came from, if you have it. And some Cram and noodles, please."

It was a long day in the saddle and she could really use something to eat.

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"Sounds kinda like me, I guess. Theory I ain't always so good at. Practice, though? That one I can do."

A poor man's MacGuyver is Dean. (Not exactly.)

"Gotcha. So. Let's lock and load, huh?"

Hey, there's still duct tape two hundred years after the War. Just sayin'.

"Right," says Ellen, and settles her goggles on her face. "The trigger's the same as anything else. Squeeze when ready."

"Gotcha."

Dean checks his own goggles, then swings the gun up and settles it into position.

He takes a breath, sights the target, then squeezes the trigger on the exhale.

THOOM

"Yeah, okay, that's awesome."

He'll slide his goggles off his face in a second.

Glorying in the moment comes first. And the Tesla cannon is one damn badass gun.

"My commander," Ellen notes, "wants me practicing with more like this. Er, heavy energy weapons, I mean. There's a Gatling laser at home I could bring over if you ever wanted to see, and the Scribes are working on a plasmacaster ever since they cracked the encryption on some of the Enclave files we recovered. If you were ever interested."

Dean lowers the gun, lifts his goggles, and just flat-out grins at Ellen.

"I'm gonna do you the favor of not saying 'duh'. Man, any time you wanna show off the big guns -- or, you know, the little ones -- I'm all for that."

And in the interests of pursuing really awesome distractions --

"The Gatling laser's pretty much what it sounds like, I'm guessing? But what's the plasmacaster?"

Oh.

"And, uh. You wanna go again with the Tesla?"

Ellen reaches for the Tesla, pops out the spent ECP, and reloads it. "It's a prewar type of plasma heavy rifle, one we haven't had a lot of luck recreating," she says. "The secret of making one properly's been all but lost, but when we wiped the Enclave out we found their data files had a lot of leads we didn't, and we should be able to start making them soon. They tend to leave piles of glowing green goo behind instead of corpses."

THOOM!

"Suddenly I almost wish that annoying English man who told me to stop practicing with my assault rifle could see this. He'd have a conniption."

Dean's already got his goggles pushed back over his eyes. Maybe he'll just leave 'em like that.

"Goo, huh? It anything like ectoplasm, or just weird radioactive shit?"

Ellen's world seems pretty full of weird radioactive shit, which is why Dean's asking.

"And, uh. What'd the English asshole care about practice, anyway? He forget his earplugs or something?"

Dumbass.

"Just weird radioactive stuff, and only mildly radioactive at that. If you wait a few minutes it decays enough to safely stick your hand into if you need to search for something, for whatever reason."

Sometimes you can't afford to pass up what you shot for dinner just because something else you shot fell on top of it.

"Oh, he thought it was dangerous to have anybody doing anything with guns out here, especially that one, although he got even less happy when I offered to change to a shotgun or something." Ellen scowls. "And when I told him I was practicing because it was a survival skill I needed back home, he asked why people didn't just move to Canada if things were so bad. We'd been speaking for all of five minutes."

"Why do people think Canada's some kinda magical heal-all land or something? I mean. Seriously."

It's weird.

"Plus, uh. Ain't that what a firing range is for? Not like you can just stumble on it or anything, especially when people're using it."

Sheesh.

Assholes.

Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em off for the good of humanity, either.

Edited 2012-08-01 02:39 (UTC)

"I don't know. I really don't," says Ellen. "I don't even know what's up there any more, except that I heard a warlord in the Pitt say that Pittsburgh's military might was the envy of 'Ronto', and I think he meant Toronto by that. So why this guy thought Canada would be different at all, I don't know... or why he thought he could tell me what to do when I was using the range properly, either. I guess I should just be grateful I haven't seen him in ages, or there'd be trouble."

"Do I wanna know who this guy is?"

Dean raises an eyebrow.

"Just so I know who to avoid if I see 'em?"

For a given value of avoid.

"I think he said his name was Nicholas," Ellen says. "And that he was a policeman, which just made me laugh because we don't even have law in the Wasteland other than bounty hunters, so why did he think he knew what was going on."

"I mean, um, unless you meant the warlord I mentioned."

"Nah, you got it right with the English guy. Cops're pretty much assholes wherever you go. I think that's how they're made."

Dean opinions are based on experience. He's just got that kind of face.

"Figures Pittsburgh'd get warlords, though."

And it ain't like being the envy of Toronto is much of a claim to fame.

Is it?

"Warlords and raiders and rivers so polluted the warlord has to send out raiding parties to bring back slaves to keep the population up," Ellen says. "I'm going to have words with him once we get done with the robot factory."

"Words is probably one way to put it. Good luck with those assholes."

He's not talking about the robot factory.

"Thanks," Ellen says. "I really hope he has enough sense to listen. I don't want to have to destroy the whole city just to keep people from getting the same ideas as him."

"Yeah, well."

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, but.

Damn.

"Here's hoping self-preservation instincts kick in pretty damn soon. For him, I mean."

"He's got a while to go. We only have one windmill up at the robot factory, so it's a long way to go before we have power for the whole plant, and even then we'll need to fix the machinery involved- although that shouldn't be too hard now that we've got a few of the old robots active. The bots can do most of the brute labor, so we'll be concentrating on the difficult stuff, and once that's done..."

"Well, then I have to work out the fastest way to get a lot of robots to Pittsburgh when there aren't any working trucks or viable roads. But that'll happen in its own time. Worst comes to worst, we'll walk."

"Could you borrow some of the crap down in the garage? I mean, if you could find people to drive that shit? I'm sure there's gotta be some tanks or something."

He hasn't gone looking for any of those, but.

You know. There's a Batmobile. And a Mystery Machine.

And mobile suits.

"It's possible," Ellen says. "We'd have to get the fuel here, though. No petroleum anywhere, back home. All the motor vehicles left by the time of the war ran on atomic power. But if there was gas available..."

"I bet you could arrange something. If not with Bar, there's plenty of people from Earths and shit that have got to have a lot of gas lying around. I know I could probably throw in some."

You know.

If it ever came to that.

Ellen nods. "I'll keep it in mind," she says. "And start putting aside goods and stuff to trade for it, because that stuff was expensive before the war. Thank you for reminding me of the garage, Dean."

"Hey, I spend a lot of time down there, just tinkering with stuff."

He grins, tucking his hands in his back pockets.

"Glad to help."

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