(Untitled)

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Out of Milliways: An Encounter at Farragut West

The door opens on a scene of mud and tumbled concrete, and shuts very, very quickly behind Ellen's armored form as she darts through. "Ew ew ew ew ew that was vile, that was just nasty," she mutters to herself, her shoulders hunched up around her ears. She's shuddering as she runs for the Bar. "I

Comments

[blueshifted]

"Need any help with that?" says the kindly man wandering over. He has a bit of experience with keeping armor clean.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Please?" says Ellen, looking up. "It's some kind of spit, and it's all- it's clingy. I've never seen body fluids that nasty before."

The stuff has the consistency of... well, let's be nice and call it mucilage... and the dark brownish color of expelled tobacco chaw. There are other things stuck to the black body armor as well, but they're more normal substances- blood, mud, and so on. Ellen's just glad for her Vault jumpsuit at this point.

[blueshifted]

"I have," Barney says, giving a reflexive shudder when he thinks of Xen. "It's a pain in the ass, isn't it?" He goes to the bar to get some Goo-Gone and a scrub brush.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I don't even know what that thing was that spit it at me," Ellen says when she comes back. "The mutant was bad enough! This thing was just- brrr."

[blueshifted]

"Oh, I understand you, don't get me wrong. You don't look--you just shoot."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It had three tongues!" Ellen bursts out. "As long as my arms! And there were teeth growing out of its chest and it had hands instead of feet! It shouldn't have even been alive!!"

Ellen's normally pretty good at maintaining her equanimity, even if combat freaks her out a little, but let's be honest. If you were attacked by one of these, you'd probably have a twitchy fit too. It's no testicle monster, but it's up there.

[blueshifted]

"You serious? Damn, that sounds like the bastard child of a zombie and one of those bull-squid things," Barney exclaims as he squirts the orange, citrus-y cleaner on the goo and starts scrubbing.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Bullsquid?" repeats Ellen; she's working on another piece of the armor. "You mean like a Brahmin with tentacles? I didn't know anything like that existed..." She shakes her head. "I don't know what it was. It's dead now. It just- it was horrible. Even the mutant didn't look like that thing."

[blueshifted]

"It's not from Earth... it's just bizarre. Horrible's good too."

A beat.

"You want something to calm you down after we get this clean? I hear chocolate works wonders."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Um. Maybe just a bottle of Nuka-Cola," Ellen says. "I've tried chocolate. I'm not really very fond of it. ... or maybe some fruit. They have actual fresh fruit here. It's amazing."

[blueshifted]

"I know! Funny how it becomes a treat when it's rare, right?

"I think fruit salad sounds great."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"We didn't really have much of it in the Vault in the first place," Ellen says. And then: "I should probably explain, since a lot of people think it's kind of weird. My world had a nuclear war two hundred years ago. I grew up in a sealed fallout shelter outside what used to be Arlington, Virginia. I've only been on the surface a month or so now."

[blueshifted]

Speechlessness, Barney has it.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I get that look a lot. My name's Ellen Park, by the way. It's nice to meet you."

[blueshifted]

"...Barney Calhoun, and nice to meet you too.

"I'm sorry, just... trying to imagine what would bring that sort of thing on. Did it all happen at once?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Twenty years of war in different places around the world over the last few really good sources of oil and other resources, mostly," Ellen says. "Red China invaded Alaska to get at the oil supply in 2067, and we didn't manage to drive them out until January of 2077. The war went nuclear on October 23rd of that year, and that was when they sealed the door on Vault 101 and all the other Vaults in the country."