milliways_bar | (no subject)

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There's a two-headed cow out back.

With two bridles, one saddle, and a stealth-suited rider, because today just wasn't surreal enough.

... okay, Ellen has her headpiece down in concession to the relative safety of Milliways, but she's carrying her Gauss rifle across her back and wearing that sword of hers and nobody is going to make her change that. Some habits die kinda hard.

Botherable, if you don't mind that the two-headed cow smells exactly as bad as you would expect an oversized two-headed cow to smell.

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That is a sight to make a new patron, no matter how worldly-wise and jaded he may think himself, stare widely and doubt his own sanity as he explores the outside for the first time, and encounters that.

"^Mm_mmooo_ooo^oo_{ooo."

Apparently both heads can vocalize independently. Who knew?

And one of them's looking over in the new explorer's direction, because why not.}

"What in the name of everything that is holy..." the new patron breathes, utterly unable to process what his senses tell him is there.

The rider's noticed that the left head is distracted, so she kicks the cow in the ribs and it ambles over his way.

"Hi there," the rider says when she gets closer. Her headpiece, thankfully, is down. She's- well, if Dorian would be able to make the distinction between ethnicities, she's Korean-looking save for the steel-grey hair. She has the face of someone in her very early twenties, but there are more than a few scars across it- not to mention two or three notches in her left ear. "Are you okay?"

"I am sorry," he says, trying to collect his wits and his breeding into a semblance of a polite smile. "It is just that your steed is the most unusual thing that I have seen since..."

There is really no time scale to the strangeness of a two-headed cow being used for riding by a lady knight from China? Japan? in black armour. None.

"Since forever. You, my dear lady, may just have presented me with the most extraordinary sight of my entire life. I would very much like to thank you for the experience."

She smiles at that. "You're welcome," she says. "I'm just glad she didn't startle you. Some people don't deal with her very well. Excuse me-"

She swings out of the saddle and down to the ground, where it becomes a bit more clear that she's all of 5'2". 5'3", tops.

"That's better. I hate looking down at people," she says. "This is Shiphrah and Puah, my Brahmin- all the cattle are like her where I live."

Now, he is significantly taller than the 'lady knight from Japan or China'; she will have to look up to him. "Brahmin, like the religious caste in India?" he asks. "And the cow has a name for each head, but is referred to in the singular because of her body?"

Even language must bend to accommodate the oddness. He keeps smiling, fascinated. It's like something out of a story by H.G. Wells. or perhaps the more stolid and orthodox Jules Verne -- no, Wells, definitely.

"I... honestly, I don't know," says Ellen. "We didn't really cover a whole lot about India in my history classes. I always thought it was just a breed of cow."

She reaches up and pats the nearer of the two heads while the other one lows quietly.

"Most people in the Capital Wastes only give their Brahmins one name each, from what I understand. I'm not even sure it matters all that much which head gets called which name- they're not really very bright- but it just seemed to me like it should be one name per head instead of one name per animal. I take it the cows are a little less peculiar where you come from?"

"They only have the one head," he says. "And they're hardly ever used to ride on, except in silly parodic stories."

And then for country yokels, maybe. Not for knights. Especially not lady knights from the Far East.

"But I should introduce myself. My name is Dorian Gray."

He offers his hand.

"Well, fair enough. If we had horses-"

But they don't, a thing for which Ellen is extremely grateful. (Giddyup Buttercups don't count.)

She shakes the offered hand. "Ellen Park," she says, "called Paladin 101, of the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel. It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Gray."

The name sounds familiar, but a lot of names sound familiar, especially when they're short and simple. No big deal, right?

A paladin -- that does make her a knight!

"It is a great honour to meet you, Paladin," he says, impressed, before letting go of her hand. "I have never heard about your Brotherhood and your home, but I'm new to this place and haven't heard of much that doesn't exist in my own world."

"You probably wouldn't have heard of us anyway," Ellen says. "So far as I can tell, I'm the only one from my world who comes here at the moment. Er, before I try to explain anything- are you from Earth?"

"London, 1891," he says. "Yes, that is on Earth, to answer your question. I should take nothing for granted here."

Ellen nods. "Okay," she says. "Then you're from... um. Not quite four hundred years before my time. It's the year 2280 where I am, which is also Earth. It's just that on my Earth, there was a world-wide war fought with weapons that pretty much destroyed all of human civilization back in the year 2077. From what the other people here tell me, most of the other histories here don't include that war, assuming people are even from that far forward in time."

... it made sense before she said it, honestly.

Definitely H.G. Wells, Dorian thinks. He should write the man a letter when he's back home in London.

"And that war caused cows to grow a second head?" he asks, determined not to be confused, even though he is. Somewhat.

Ellen nods. "There are certain poisons and certain kinds of energy that can cause really nasty disruptions to the reproductive process," she says. "Most of the time the result is incompatible with life, but not always. The most powerful weapons of the Great War spread a lot of those energies and chemicals around. Not everything was affected the same way, or to the same degree. The cows wound up with something they could survive." She nods towards the Brahmin, which has decided to attempt grazing with one head while the other keeps watch. "Occasionally you get a cow born with only one head. People consider them freaks of nature, by now."

"But people still have only the one head, as a rule?" he asks, looking at her.

"Oh yes," Ellen says. "I mean, sometimes you find people with six fingers or webbed toes or something, but it's still one head to a person, same as always."

She's never seen a West Coast centaur, and those aren't really people any more so much as mercy kills waiting to happen, poor things.

"And as far as anyone seems to know the horse is pretty much extinct in North America, which is why I'm riding one of the cows instead, in case that question was going to come up."

"Paladins, as we think of them, would be riding horses," Dorian concedes. "And not having any would rather put a crimp in that, so I suppose you make do with what you have. The armour is still very impressive. What is it made of?"

"A number of different polymer fibers- I'm not really sure how to explain those given your level of technological advancement- and small, lightweight cerasteel plates," Ellen says. "I have heavier armor at home that looks more like what you would see in medieval usage, but it's noisy and takes about fifteen minutes to put on or take off. This is stealth gear, an old Chinese design. Not as protective, but easier to move in, and harder to be seen in, so that makes up for a bit."

"What are you fighting against, Paladin Park?" he asks, curious. "To need that stealth?"

"Oof." Ellen rubs at the back of her neck. "It'd almost be easier to say what aren't we fighting against. Right at the moment, though, there's a nest of greenskins- supermutants, they used to be human- who holed up in an old power station along one of the northern trade routes. I was scouting out their territory and defenses and thought it might be a good idea to come back here for a resupply stop before making for my home garrison again. There's more of them than I want to face alone, and definitely not without my other suit."

"In a nutshell, you are facing a castle full of ogres?" Dorian asks, impressed. "Alone?"

What a knight!

"... I guess you could probably say that," says Ellen. "Ogres eat people, right? Because the mutants do that a lot now that they don't have a means of making their prisoners into more of their own kind."

"Yes, that's what ogres do," Dorian says. "Don't you have other paladins to go with you? A castle full of ogres sounds like quite the challenge."