milliways_bar | (no subject)

"UGGGHHHH! What the hell is that SMELL?"

Stepping into the main bar with his shoe box containing a baby porg, Cisco immediately springs into emergency funk-mode.

Seizing the front of his t-shirt (which features Godzilla dunking a basketball) Cisco pulls it up over his nose and gasps through the fabric.

Giant bipedal lizard on the shirt- green, not pink or gray- no horns- not a Deathclaw, then. Probably anotherbworld, so-

"Mirelurks," Ellen says, wiping at her nose ineffectually with the back of one arm. The dark green fatigues are cleaner than she is, but not by much. "Giant, mutant crab monsters, and two or three other species of giant mutated armored sea things... I'm sorry, I've tried washing, but the ship's soap isn't up to the task."

"Have you tried Febreze? Or acid? Maybe you should go with acid." Cisco suggests, voice muffled through his shirt.

The porg in the box seems to think this is the greatest smell ever, because it starts shrieking it's 'YAY FOOD FEED ME!' shriek.

"You smell like-- wait, did you say 'giant mutant crab monsters'?"

"Well, most of them were crab monsters," Ellen says. "I don't know what the ones with antennae were. Or what the one the size of a Behemoth was. We don't jave anything like that back in the Capital Wastes."

"It... sort of had crab legs, though? And an exoskeleton?"

That's not helpful, Ellen.

"Capital Wastes? That sounds like a dream spot," Cisco replies sardonically.

Is he being rude? Yeah, actually, and realizing that maybe this lady doesn't deserve so much heavy sarcasm, he tries to tone it down.

"Based on that description I'd say 'crab monsters' works." Until he thinks of something better to name them. "Was there a reason you had a close encounter of the crustacean kind, or is Red Lobster just trying out a new menu?"

Speaking of menus, the porg isn't shutting up, so Cisco stops a passing wait rat and asks for some crab meat.

"It's not as bad as the Pitt, for whatever that's worth," Ellen says. "Washington was a strategic target in the Great War, though. The DC area was more or less bound to end up in a bad way, whatever its name was."

She rubs at her nose again.

"I'm sorry, we haven't met so you probably wouldn't know- my name's Ellen. In my world it's the year 2280, a little over two hundred years after a world-wide nuclear war. We have a lot of giant mutant hostiles. This time just happened to be mirelurks."

She eyes the source of the critter noises.

"Friend of yours?"

Some of these things are sounding a bit familiar, and Cisco starts trying to puzzle out why on the back burner of his brain.

In the front he's focused on Ellen, and the crazy ass shit she's describing.

"I'm Cisco, it's 2014 for me and so far we've manage to avoid turning into a post-apocalyptic hellscape." Thankfully.

"This is GP, he's my porg."

"Oh, good," says Ellen. To the porg she politely says, "Hello, GP. It's good to meet you."

You never know who or what might speak English around here.

"ARAAAAAAW!" screams GP in response.

"Yeah, no, he doesn't talk. Just screams like a little jerk until he gets his way."

And his way has arrived, as the rat returns with the requested crab meat.

Lifting a piece from the plate, Cisco doesn't look as he lowers it down to the porg who gobbles it up greedily.

"He was orphaned in my workshop, so I've been saddled with taking care of him."

Edited 2018-06-13 02:59 (UTC)

"My mistake, then," Ellen says. After a moment's thought she adds, "You said 2014. That'st he Earth calendar, right? I don't remember anything like him in the science texts from before the War. Do you have a lab here?"

Cisco nods. "Yeah. But GP isn't from my world, he comes from Milliways via a galaxy far, far away. There was a porg infestation and they got into my lab down in the garage. I spent a whole day fighting them and cleared them out, only to find they'd left this guy behind in an egg."

Cisco does feel slightly guilty about that. Now.

"He hatched and with all the porgs gone I've had to take care of him."

"Huh. The only animal I've wound up taking care of like that is a dog," Ellen says. "Saved him when he was fighting the people who killed his last owner. All the other animals I've dealt with have been farm creatures, and I think they work differently."

"Aww, that is both tragic and awesome," he says of the dog.

"Being a chick parent isn't so bad. Y'know, as long as you don't want to sleep ever and like smelling like a seafood buffet." Which... well she can at least understand the latter, maybe?

"Seriously, though, did these crab things blow up, or did you get swallowed by one or something? Because that is some major funk."

Ellen grimaces. "We fought the biggest one I've ever seen," she says. "There were... ugh. At least four or five of the regular ones, which are a little taller than me. Two mirelurk kings, which aren't really mutant crabs like the other mirelurks but people call them that anyway, I don't know why. They were trying to climb over our boat's rail from the water. There were the... sort of centaur-shaped ones? I don't know what they are, but they've got four little legs on each side and two huge claws in front and things I thought were tongues that turned out to be antennas, and they're not only tall enough to come up to my shoulder but they spit acid. And there was the giant one, whatever she was. I swear, that thing was at least fifteen feet tall, maybe more... we all but ran the ship aground trying to get to a point where that thing wouldn't sink us before we could kill it, and then it wound up spewing pieces all over the place when we finally got off the killing shots. I washed as hard and as long as I could in the boat's cleaning area, but we only have so much soap at the moment and it doesn't seem to have been strong enough." She plucks at one sleeve. "This is my backup set of fatigues. I'm really hoping this place has a good enough laundry to get the stench out of the ones I was wearing. I knew I should've had my armor on instead..."

Cisco listens, expression shifting from fascination to horror and back again, with plenty of disgust thrown in, before finally lighting in excited interest.

"Armor, you say? Just what sort of armor are we talking about?"

"As long as we're at sea, I stick to my regular combat armor," Ellen says. "It's not as protective as my regular power armor or the Hellfire suit, but it has the advantage of being light enough to swim in. Mostly it's plates of cerasteel and high impact polymers attached to a ballistic thermal dissipative membrane weave. Is that something you do much work with? It seems like a lot of people here don't really have the same kind of armor tech we do back home."

"Hellfire suit, that's so awesome," Cisco says, giddy.

"I've done some work with tri-polymers, and I've tinkered a bit with energy absorptive and dissipative materials," he says, oh-so casually. "Milliways has given me a lot of tech and projects to play with."

Ellen nods. "I'll be honest, that's more a Scribe's work than mine," she says. "I can do basic maintenance on my own armor, but research and development like the kind of stuff you're talking about is more of a specialist's job. Unfortunately I can't bring any of them here or even tell them about it because I've got orders not to let anyone back home know about this place, even if they're researchers, so it gets a little awkward sometimes."

"Scribe, huh? I'm a mechanical engineer where I'm from, so building stuff is what I do."

He nods in commiseration regarding not being able to bring up Milliways outside the door.

"Yeah, I'm supposed to keep this place a secret, too. Which is a huge bummer when I want to take projects and things home with me." So far he's managed to satisfy himself with just posting cryptic pics on the internet, but that's bound to change eventually.

Ellen nods. "That's the scientific and engineering branch of the Brotherhood of Steel- the military organization I'm a part of," she says. "The fighting orders are the Paladins and Knights and all the other ranks below them, the scientific and research orders are the Scribes. There's a handful of people back home who know the truth about this place but mostly I'm just supposed to let people assume whatever they assume about how I wind up coming back with weird technology or help from strange people... the prevailing theory is that I'm somehow in contact with a subterranean race of mole men that nobody else has managed to find. Really advanced mole men." She rolls her eyes. "It's not the worst thing that people could believe, I guess."

"Morlocks," he declares. "Way cooler than mole-people."

The porg finishes the crab, and Cisco wipes his hands.

"Your world sounds pretty intensely crazy. What the heck happened that you had to join a Brotherhood to fight mutant crustaceans?"

"Honestly, the crab monsters aren't even the worst of it," Ellen says. "The Brotherhood's major reason for existence is to find and reclaim whatever technology we can manage from the world before the Great War, and to develop new stuff where we can. Under Elder Lyons we've also made it a priority to use the technology we have to assist the people of the wastelands out there in rebuilding and reclaiming the world, although there's a lot of people who'd rather just stick to the tech mission."

She does not sound as if she thinks very much of the people who feel this way.

"I joined up mostly because my father had worked with them when he was still alive, on a project to build the biggest and most efficient water purifier possible. It takes up most of the Jefferson Memorial's space in the ruins of Washington, DC. The mirelurk fighting today was because my current mission involves taking a recon squad into the Commonwealth, which is the area around where Boston used to be, and investigating the place for old tech and a possible group of really advanced scientists called the Institute. We just... happened to run into a swarm of mutant crab monsters when we were trying to navigate our way to the old docks at Spectacle Island."

Cisco listens, nodding along as she speaks.

In the end he seems to mull something over very carefully before finally declaring, "I hope you don't mind, but I'm not gonna add your world to my list of 'places to visit'."

"Just as long as you don't tell me I should make my life better by moving to Canada," Ellen says dryly. "Or give me a hard time for practicing with my guns out back at the shooting range. I've had that happen before."

Nicholas Angel has a more or less permanent place in her memory.

"So what's it like where you are?"

Edited 2018-06-13 17:39 (UTC)

"I am the last person to give anyone a hard time." Okay, that's a lie, but certainly not about things like that!

"My world is awesome. I mean, we don't have some of the cool stuff like interplanetary space travel or flying cars, but we have the internet and a Big Belly Burger in every major city!"

"I don't remember my world ever having flying cars either, unless you count the ones in the old comic books," Ellen says. "I mean, I'm pretty sure the history texts would've said. Big Belly Burger was a... diner, I'm guessing? Like the Dot's Diners I used to find all over the Capital area?"

"Man, I have got to find a world that actually achieves a flying car." It's so disappointing otherwise!

"Big Belly is fast food. On my world they're different. Diners are still more sit down and eat, fast food is scarf and run."

"I'll let you know if I ever hear of one," Ellen says. "I seem to remember that there's a garage under this building with a lot of vehicles in it- maybe one of them's a flying car. I've never been down there, though."

"Oh, you should totally check it out, it's awesome," he enthuses. "Seen a lot of spaceships, but no flying cars yet. But it's huge so... "

Maybe he should have Barry run the place for him someday.

"I've got my workshop down there. Seems it's a safer location to test stuff than the main bar."

"There's probably fewer people down there," Ellen agrees. "Most of the stuff I have to test I take out back, but I'm not really building things so much as taking what I find in the field or what the Scribes give me and making sure I know how to use it. I don't think a garage is a good place to set off grenades, at least not if the garage down there is anything like the ones I've seen back home." She considers. "It might not be a bad place to test out robots in need of repair, except that then I'd have to make sure to wipe the robots' memory holotapes before taking them back."

"Grenades and robots? Oh man, count me in," he grins. "Definitely outside, though. I'd hate to find out property damage on a spacecraft goes onto a person's tab."

Ellen winces. "That'd be an awful lot of bottlecaps," she agrees. "Seriously, though- if you ever want to see a handheld explosive made from Abraxo cleaner and glowing purple soda, I can probably manage a couple of practice Nuka-grenades out there."

"Bottlecaps?"

What is he asking about bottlecaps when she's talking Nuka-grenades?!

"I would love to see an explosive made out of Ajax and soda. Or, whatever you just said."

Beat, eyebrow lift. "Seriously, the soda glows?"

"Money," supplies Ellen. "We use bottlecaps for money back home. Except in the New California Republic, they've got paper money there."

She nods. "Nuka-Cola Quantum. Cola with fifteen fruit flavors, extra sugar, extra calcium, and a strontium isotope potent enough that I used to use a bottle to read by at night."

He'll get back to the bottlecaps in a minute, right now he's focused on this soda she's talking about

"Whaaaaat? Can I drink it?" he asks eagerly. "I mean, can I drink it and not die, or end up with a third eye or mutated into some sort of Sharktopus creature?"

"As long as you don't mind the headache afterwards and the fact that it's still glowing when it leaves your body, sure," Ellen says. "I don't drink it myself, but I know people who have, and it doesn't mutate them as far as anyone can tell. It's just extra caffeinated and very, very high in sugar, so you won't be sleeping for a good while afterwards."

Cisco giggles in delight.

"Oh trust me, I've been on many a caffeine-sugar bender, I'm used to the crash and hangover. And sleep is for the weak."

"In that case, Nuka-Cola Quantum should suit you just fine," Ellen says. "I don't have any on me at the moment, but the Bar sells it when I need a bottle."

"Awesome." He is so going to give it a try.

"So now the bottlecaps, is it just like any kind of cap? Because I would so be totally rich given how much soda I've had in my lifetime."

"Metal caps with the edges crimped under so they're flat and don't snag on bags or pockets," Ellen says promptly. "In the Philadelphia area they use specific brands for specific denominations. Most caps I've seen in the Capital area are Nuka-Cola caps, but people accept any as long as they're metal and still painted."

"Cool. All we've got on our money are old dead guys." So disappointing.

"Listen, though, my eyes are watering here, so I'm gonna let you go get the funk out, alright? Febreeze, for real, girl."