John

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens from Milliways onto the tumbletown ruins of what used to be an industrial area on the fringes of Arlington. The temperature is summertime-warm, the air dry; the last rains to pass through here are long since gone. Overhead, a scavenger bird or two circles, visible only to people who know what they're looking for. A breeze listlessly

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[luckyspartan]

The Spartan is much lighter on foot than the heavily armored Ellen. Ellen's power armor makes her more like a walking tank than a woman on foot. John suspects the power armor is probably more capable of taking heavy fire than his own, and adjusts his spacing and movement patterns accordingly. Weapons were always a step ahead of armor, and he had no intention of testing his own in this universe. He would have to play to his strengths--agility and precision--when they encountered hostiles.

The desolation of Ellen's world is much more apparent to him now that he's traveling under the sun. There are buildings and vehicles everywhere, the hallmarks of civilization, yet there's no one in sight. Ruins and rusted hulks.

John checks his rifle again. It's weather worn and a little archaic, but perfectly functional. It wouldn't do a thing against his shields, but he wouldn't be engaging anything with shields here.

"So your father is working to purify the drinking water here?" He was capable of silence, but it seemed in this case that the benefits of speaking outweighed its drawbacks.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"He's been working on it since before I was born," Ellen says, peering up ahead for any signs of incoming movement. "He had to put it on hold after my mother died, to get me to someplace safe to be raised. He's gone back to it now. There's not really a lot of farming around here, since they can't irrigate land with radioactive, filthy water... so you can see why they haven't developed or recovered much."

Briefly, she starts to raise her rifle to her eye at the sight of something moving in the distance; then she lowers it. "Never mind," she says. "It's just a Brahmin. They're harmless- they're cows, mutated ones."

[luckyspartan]

The Spartan had noticed the animals a while ago with his superhuman eyesight, but had come to the conclusion Ellen had just confirmed.

"What about that one?" He asks, pointing with his rifle at what appeared to be a very large scorpion scuttling over the craggy hills in the opposite direction.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Those are dangerous," Ellen confirms after a moment's squint. "Snapping claws and a lot of venom in the tail. Dogmeat, stay here."

The last was warranted; Dogmeat had lowered his head and started to growl.

"He'll attack anything he thinks is a threat, but those are best taken out at a distance."

[luckyspartan]

"It's not coming any closer," John observes. Sure enough, the scorpion disappears under a distant block of rubble and doesn't emerge. He continues walking for some minutes in silence.

Under the glaring sun, John casually memorized the patterns of fur on Dogmeat, just in case he had to quickly identify the animal later in low visibility conditions. He proceeded to do the same with Ellen's particular posture and the small unique scratches, scrapes, and markings on her armor. Her powered armor lacked a friend-or-foe identification tag that his suit could easily latch onto. He would have to ask later about that. He might be able to modify its existing system so his suit could pick her up.

After another while of observation, John breaks the revere. "You mentioned something about a vault when we first met. Is it some kind of bunker?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Not exactly," Ellen says, "although it shares characteristics with them. The Vaults were a series of long-term fallout shelters built before the War. The situation with China was really bad for so long that I think people thought nuclear war was almost inevitable. Vault-Tec Corporation built... I don't know how many shelters. At least a hundred and twelve, though, in different places across the country, and I think some in Canada after we annexed it. They were designed to hold up to a thousand people for an indefinite amount of time without allowing radiation or contamination to get in. Vault 101 is where I grew up- it's under a rock formation northwest of here."

"Only they weren't really proper shelters, ultimately. The whole thing was being run as a series of experiments. I haven't found out what the ultimate goal was, but each Vault was a separate test of something. And most of the Vaults I've found here in the Wasteland failed- very, very badly."

[luckyspartan]

The US of John's universe had done a lot to the betterment of humanity, on the whole. "It doesn't sound like the old US government had its act together," the soldier says. That was probably part of the reason there was no US government anymore.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Not especially, no," Ellen agrees. "The old Army was pretty efficient, from what I saw in a prewar combat training sim I had to go through, but outside of the War Department everything I've ever found seems to point to the government being kind of off the rails way before the bombs fell. And their descendants don't seem to be a whole lot better, if what people've told me about the Enclave is true."

[luckyspartan]

The UNSC's only purpose had been to protect humanity, both from itself and from outsiders. It seemed that the US of this universe had slightly different priorities.

"What about yourself?" John asks. "Why did you leave the Vault?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It wasn't my idea." Ellen wrinkles her nose, but behind her armor's helmet it's completely invisible. "There was a policy in place when I was growing up- the Overseer didn't like the fact that the Vault had had contact with the surface around the time Dad and I arrived, so he forced all the adults to act as if it had never happened. When Dad escaped to go back to work on his water purifier, the Overseer sent the security team after me and Dad's assistant during the night. They killed Jonas trying to interrogate him, but the Overseer's daughter woke me up before they could find me. I still had to fight a couple of them to get out of the Vault alive."

It seems like it was a million years ago, now that she thinks about it. Milliways time aside, that was very nearly a different life altogether.

[luckyspartan]

He could tell by her tense posture that this was a sensitive topic. "I understand how that is, ma'am," says John.

He continues to walk in silence, passively evaluating every aspect of the landscape.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's all right. I'm sorry," Ellen says. "That was the first time I ever had to actually fight for anything- literally, I mean. A lot of things happened that day."

John is likely to spot it first: in the distance, skimming along a rise in the landscape that used to be part of a road, is a round, shiny metallic robot of some kind. It's no Monitor, though. The Monitors didn't have trailing antennae, or broadcast patriotic fife-and-drum music.

(343 Guilty Spark was weird in a lot of ways, but that wasn't one of them.)

[luckyspartan]

John raises his rifle, casually drawing a bead on the machine. "Eliminate or evade?" he asks. He decides to aim for the sensor array. If it was a recon drone, it would do no good blind. If he shot it though, anyone who was watching on the other side would know their position.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Eliminate," says Ellen. "It's Enclave. They're trying to scout out the Wasteland with the intention of taking over."

It's far from the most dangerous variety of robot in the Wasteland, but ever since Linden told her about what the Enclave tried to do in California, she's gone out of her way to destroy every eyebot she's come across.

[luckyspartan]

John fires twice, working the bolt in between shots: once at the drone's sensor array, and another at its power plant. The drone explodes.

The gunshots are so close together that an untrained ear would mark them as a single sound.

John continues walking while he reloads his weapon and mentally notes the specific ballistics of his current weapon, just in case longer range engagements became necessary.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Very nice," Ellen says. "Suddenly I miss my old Gauss rifle. I haven't had anything that accurate in a long time."