Podpop

[cityship]

[Instructions: Post your character with one post establishing them as being podpopped. Tag each other in groups of 2's, 3's, and 4's, to get some interaction to start with. If a thread doesn't already have 2 or 3 people tagged in, tag it with your character's podpop popping near the other people, rather than making a new subthread. If you would

Comments

[hatesautodocs]

To be honest, Christine hadn't remembered ever being so relaxed, not in a long time. She'd been so wound up for so long that there hadn't been a minute to just sleep for sleep's sake. The voice went in one ear and out the other, and just so fast...sploosh, she fell awkwardly on her side, a tangle of limbs and slime.

Humidity wasn't common in the Mojave, even if heat was- it was the damp wetness that threw her through a loop. She tried to quickly gain her footing, grab for the gun that wasn't there, but in the end she realized this was nothing like the Madre. Her nudity didn't bother her as much as it probably should have, in lieu her lacking a weapon in a strange place.

The only comforting thought she had was that this couldn't be Elijah's doing.

[hatesautodocs]

"Same. Last place I was, it was full of holograms and ghost people." A pause, and she turned her head back to look at Maxson. He'd probably not heard a thing about the Madre, not where he'd been.

"Mojave's out west- pretty empty. A few pockets of humanity left, but...it isn't being protected. Not properly." It was just in her nature to be bitter about the ridiculous politics of the time. "Hopefully, it'll be different here. You're the first person I've seen in...at least a month."

[first_of_steel]

There'd been advertising and gossip stories about the Madre to some degree before the bombs fell, but precious little of that found its way to Mariposa. And most of what did make it past the news censors on duty made the place out to sound more like some kind of themed resort than a luxury gambling palace crammed full of the Big MT's latest and greatest cast-offs. So all he did was nod in acknowledgment; he'd heard about holographic research along the way, and as for ghost people, he supposed you got a lot of that sort of thing long years after the War.

"People spread out anywhere they can manage, I suppose," he said; he wasn't sure exactly how to respond to that tone just yet. "Were you assigned out there somehow, or was it your own volition?"

[hatesautodocs]

"...it's complicated." She shifted her shoulders, rubbing at her throat as a sort of unconscious gesture. "Circle's sort of...split off from the Brotherhood. One of the Brotherhood's Elders sort of..." How do you admit this stuff to your founder? "...he lead a lot of people to their deaths. I was ordered by the Circle to take him out."

She gave a heavy sigh. "But, there's time for that later. I'm...sorry to report that the Brotherhood is suffering some wear."

[first_of_steel]

"... I see," said Roger. And then, more quietly, "I'm sorry to hear it."

Any of it; all of it.

"That's..." A hell of a thing to find out? A situation probably more complex by a factor of ten than it looked on the surface? Nothing even close to what he expected to be hearing when he set about his business today? "... something you'll have to brief me on later, I think."

[hatesautodocs]

"Sorry, sir, I didn't mean to dump that on you..." She grit her teeth, trying to figure out how to properly word her apology. She only had a 5 in charisma and nothing in Speech, how does social???

"...but it's sort of been at the forefront of my mind. I...was defending a point, before this. Being taken from that is...not where I should be right now."

[first_of_steel]

"It's all right. It was bound to come out sooner or later," murmured Roger. "I don't blame you."

He resisted the urge to rub at his face with both hands.

"I'm not happy about being taken from my own duties, either. So I suppose we've got that in common, whatever else might be going on."

[hatesautodocs]

"Maybe if we ask nicely, they'll let us go home." More sarcasm, but biting her tongue wasn't a specialty Christine had. By that point, she'd managed to find the sloped stairs going up, and sighed as she eyed the spiral. "Where did they take you from? If it's not a bother to ask."

[first_of_steel]

"Not a bother at all," Roger said. "One of our scout teams came back a few days ago with word of a massive weapon stash in the desert south of us. I don't normally lead field teams these days, but this- the last time we'd seen that many heavy guns outside an actual military base, it was during the Exodus, and they'd all been pointed at us. I was not going to let history repeat itself, so that's where we were headed- trying to clean that mess out before it turned some Lord of the Flies band of savages into warlords."