From the Causeway to Washington DC, Thursday Afternoon

[arboreal_priestess]

This was not the first time on Fandom that Verity had been glad her apartment could double as an armory, but it might have been the most acute. This week had been ridiculous, from fighting off a radroach invasion in their kitchen to the heart attack that had been discovering that the colony of Aeslin mice had been replaced by a colony of Aeslin mole-rats.

Nightmare fuel was walking into a room of giant mole-rats and hearing them talk to you, in case anybody needed a shot of that real quick. (Nobody needed a shot of that. Nobody.)

They also ate a lot more than Aeslin mice normally did and even though they supplemented their diet by eating pretty much any other creature they could find, the food levels in the Kincaid-Price household had gone from 'dangerously low' to 'practically non-existant' over night.

Which was why Liam and Verity had decided to strap on pretty much every single weapon they owned and head into the Wasteland to scavenge the remains of D.C. Supposedly, that was where the best remaining supplies were located.

Supposedly, that was where the most dangerous predators in the Wasteland were located, too. And most of them walked on two legs.

That was a problem they'd deal with when they got to it.

"All right," Verity said, securing another rusty container of bobby pins and her spare screwdriver. "We ready to head out?"

[Open to anyone who wants to join Liam and Verity on a scavenging expedition. Be prepared to self-NPC!]

Comments

[arboreal_priestess]

Good, cause it would have been awkward to have to call Liam out for lying in front of Miguel and Octavia anyway.

"Makes sense. Pretty sure it would mess with me to see Portland like this," she said quietly. "Or Baltimore."

[firstofitskind]

Would she really have, though? Really?

If they didn't have the mice- mole-rats- to feed, honestly, Liam would've considered turning back right now. As it was, they'd better get enough supplies on this run because he didn't want to come back.

"Visiting DC in other worlds- yours, or the one Fandom usually connects to- it's weird, because things aren't exactly the way I'm used to. But they're close enough. This is just- it's wrong."

[arboreal_priestess]

Ugh, no. Shhh. Don't ruin the illusion.

"It's like how empty your DC feels because there aren't cryptids running around in it," Verity agreed, nodding. "This is like visiting a graveyard."

And they'd come to loot.

[firstofitskind]

"The sooner we’re done here, the better," he muttered.

[arboreal_priestess]

"We'll get in and get out, as fast as we can," Verity promised. "First decent-sized haul we find, we're out."

Verity was entirely of the 'bird in the hand is better than two in the bush' mindset. Only in this case it was 'food in her belly.'

[firstofitskind]

Liam nodded, not saying anything more as they approached the edges of what had once been DC.

"Might be worth checking out St. Michael's," he offered, finally breaking the silence. The Lair that existed underneath it had been carved out of an extensive natural cave system, after all. It seemed like a logical assumption that the people of this world might have appropriated the structure for their own use as well.

[arboreal_priestess]

"You know this place better than I do," Verity agreed, falling back a half-step to let him take point. "I'm willing to go wherever you think is best."

[firstofitskind]

There had, of course, been decades of construction followed by destruction and decay here that hadn't happened in his world, but still.

He led their little group into the ruins of a church, purpose in his step as he made his way to a particular back hallway, hand running along the wall until he found what he was looking for, and a portion of the wall slid aside to reveal a hidden elevator.

With a rather unfamiliar looking terminal screen where the biometric scanner should have been.

"That's different," he muttered. Possibly better, because at least something like this would be easier to bypass than biometrics.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Can you hack that?" Verity asked, eyebrow raised. "Cause I got nothing here."

She could...shoot it, maybe?

[firstofitskind]

"If not, there's always the 'shoot it and hope for the best' method," Liam noted, before moving over to the terminal. His first few tries with the keypad earned him angry buzzing noises, but eventually-

"Oh!" he said in realization, grinning slightly as he figured out the pattern. This time, there was no angry buzz, just the sound of the elevator door swishing open.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Well would you look at that," Verity said, impressed. "The real question is, we gonna trust a two hundred year old elevator?"

[firstofitskind]

"Looks like it's in good condition, at least," Liam said, giving the interior of the elevator a once-over.

Indeed, it looked clean and rather unscathed from the destruction and decay that had affected most of the rest of the city, the backlit controls glowing steadily, hinting at the fact that whatever power source it was using, it was still going strong.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Fair enough," Verity said, taking a moment longer to study it. "Looks like we're going down then?"

Not dirty. Nothing about this place warranted dirty feelings.

[firstofitskind]

Well, the Wasteland in general definitely warranted literal dirty feelings.

He stepped into the elevator and waited for the others to follow suit before he pressed the 'down' button.

"Going down," announced a vaguely female mechanical voice as the elevator did just that.

"And it works," Liam added somewhat unnecessarily.

[arboreal_priestess]

"What do you think's gonna be down there?" Verity asked. "With no Taelons to resist..."

[firstofitskind]

"Maybe something like the school, on a smaller scale?" Liam said. "Seems like people were pretty paranoid." To be fair, they'd obviously had a right to be.

[arboreal_priestess]

"One of those Vault things?" Verity asked. "Maybe. And maybe that means food to trade for."

Verity had plenty of ammo, after all, and that seemed to spend almost as well as bottlecaps out here.

[firstofitskind]

The elevator door slid open, revealing a cave system much like the one in Liam's reality.

Unlike the Lair, instead of high tech computer systems, comfortable couches, and priceless art, this place had a row of those old-fashioned-looking terminals along one wall, and the rest were lined with shelves upon shelves of all sorts of supplies: ammunition, food... the only thing missing were the medical supplies like RadX and RadAway, but Liam suspected if they went further into the not-Lair, they'd find something like the infirmary.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Perfect," Verity said, but didn't move. This seemed a little too easy to get to. One hacked terminal and suddenly they were in a supply depot?

Not likely.

"One second," she said, and tossed in one of her bounce balls, the kind she'd used when they'd first ended up in the tunnels with the servitors. The ball bounced once, twice...and then was blown out of the air by twin turrets.

[firstofitskind]

"If you're paranoid enough to build yourself a fancy bomb shelter, you'd make sure it had a decent security system," Liam acknowledged, taking careful aim at the spot the laser beams had originated from and firing off two quick shots in succession.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity was about to respond, but another voice cut her off. "Who's ready to have their ass kicked?!" the voice demanded as a bright yellow eye appeared in the darkness beyond this first room.

"Okay, this is weird," Verity muttered.

[firstofitskind]

“Seconding,” Liam replied. “Getting our asses kicked was absolutely not part of today’s plan, right?”

[arboreal_priestess]

The voice resolved itself into a robot, floating several feet in the air; it had three of those glowing eye stalks and three dangling arms: one with a pincer, one with a flame-thrower, and one with some kind of futuristic gun. "You better run, you commie-loving bastards!" it yelled, voice like a Hollywood drill sergeant.

"I can't even," Verity said, and shot the thing twice. Both bullets ricocheted off its armor. "Well, fuck."

[firstofitskind]

Maybe an energy- sorry, laser pistol would work better?

Liam fired off a couple of blasts, aiming for the fun that looked like... well, like a nicer version of what his normal weapon had been turned into thanks to this week's weirdness.

[arboreal_priestess]

The arm holding that weapon was armored but the weapon itself wasn't. It exploded in the robot's...hand?...sending it reeling to the side.

Which gave Verity an excellent idea. She waited for it to stop moving, tracking the flame-thrower as it raised it to return fire.

Steady...steady... If she didn't get this right, this was going to hurt like hell.

The flame-thrower stopped moving. "There's nothing better than the smell of fresh plasma--" it began.

Verity's bullet slammed into the nozzle of the flame-thrower and a gout of flames whooshed backwards over the unit.