iwanttosettheworldonfire | Megaton Dreaming

Megaton Dreaming

The sun cut through the damaged atmosphere over the subtropical desert with all its usual relentlessness, pouring through windows that had last seen glass two hundred years ago (if that) and shabby curtains to fall precisely into everyone's eyes as they slept. The room was full of battered, dried out mementos of another age, mostly toys and books, all cracked and crumbling. A slight humming came from somewhere underneath them, almost drowned out by a staticky radio playing Cole Porter. The air was still and heavy, touched with a scorched, chemical smell that hung over everything, a strangely inorganic smell that seemed to overpower any hint of living things. No hint of anything green, of sweat, even of decay, just that smoky, biting trace in the air. Someone with an unnaturally heavy step was moving in the house, and the sheet metal that made up most of the place softly squealed its protests. The very air hummed with a strange energy, like it was about to storm, though it was so dry it didn't seem like rain was the remotest possibility.

In other words, home. Indrani shifted in bed, head pillowed on her copy of The Wasteland Survival Guide, two ancient stuffed bears and Dogmeat curled beside her, and was perfectly content for a moment. Then she realized it was months, maybe a year, since she'd woken in her own bed, and she hauled herself upright, looking around hurriedly.

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Todd spent a few minutes just scratching Thing One all up and down his neck, grinning with more affection than he was really aware he was showing. At Indrani's question, he glanced over at her, looked a little embarrassed to find he'd been being watched this whole time-- and not just by Indrani, but by the big green stranger, too-- and said, "Uh, sure. What you got to eat around here? You used to go on about radioactive bugs and stuff."

He slid off One's back to land amidst Three, Four, and Five, and then they all piled up on him. He wound up buried under three andrewsarchus cubs almost immediately.

She snickered just watching him for a minute, and then spent another moment appreciating Fawkes trying to look dignified and Dogmeat attempting to join in, and then stuck her head in the fridge. Good, she had some punga fruit. She was going to have to really stock up. Lucky they liked her pretty well over on Lookout Point. And hopefully it would work as well for Todd as for her. If she could get him eating the stuff, it might counteract the background radiation in everything else, and at least the water was good with Project Purity running. "I have some mirelurk claws and most of a bloatfly in here. Take your pick."

Emerging at last from under the furballs and looking quite rumpled, Todd hopped over, looking over his shoulder at Fawkes en route. Said furballs trailed after him, though Thing One stayed where he was, next to the bigger mutant. "Might as well stick with what I know. Gimme the bug. What's a mirelurk, anyway?"

Since the fridge could hardly be said to work or anything, it was just a couple of shelves easily sealed off from the rest of the room, and the packet she passed him was pretty limp and unappealing, even by Todd's standards. "Mirelurk?" she asked archly. "The rest of this." Since the claw was intact, she pulled it free and playfully menaced him with it. It was roughly the shape of a crab's claw but bigger than Indrani's head and jet black.

He ducked instinctively, but then gave a snort and peered at what she'd handed him, instead. "Is that even food?" Whether he meant the package in his own hands he had half-unwrapped already, or the claw she was waving at him, was entirely up in the air. "And what's with the big guy over there? And the robot? You never told me you had roomies."

"Sure it's food," she said defensively. "The eggs are better, but claw meat's okay." To demonstrate, she set the claw down on the scorched, rusty table that served for a counter and whacked it with the nearest heavy object, which turned out to be a crowbar. The tip cracked reluctantly and she pried off the broken bit to slurp up the meat. "Fawkes doesn't really live here," she explained around her mouthful. "He lives down by Underworld. Too human around here for him. But he does stop by. So does Charon. Don't really know where he goes when he's not around. And Gob and Moira are here sometimes. But it's pretty much just me living here. The robot is, y'know, a robot."

Kind of like lobster. Not that Todd had ever actually eaten lobster, but he'd seen people do it through windows before. He finished unwrapping his own, whatever it actually was. "Too human? What, is it like mutant-ville in that Underworld place?" Which pretty much meant he wanted to see it. Would it be like Magneto's dreamworld, or more like living with the Brotherhood? Would they figure out he was one, too?

Todd's packet contained several slabs of pale, rubbery meat such as one might find inside a very large arthropod back home, but the size of steaks. Indrani kept gnawing at her mirelurk, talking blithely with her mouth full. "Mostly ghouls, but they get along okay with supermutants. Their doors are human sized, though, so it isn't any more convenient for him that way." She shrugged. "Besides Megaton it's, like, the nicest town, though. Everyone's sweet and helpful."

Manners weren't something Todd tended to worry a whole lot about, so it didn't bother him any, her talking with her mouth full. He prodded at the "bug" meat, then shrugged and shot out his tongue to scoop a whole slab of it up and swallow it down. At least he rarely actually tasted anything he ate. "You're gonna hafta show me around, I guess. If we're gonna be here a while, or anything. Wonder how we even got back... think Salvation just mixed up where I belonged?"

"That's as good a theory as any." Maybe one she should hope for. If the error was discovered, she might be able to get Todd back where he belonged. "We can walk around town, sure. That's fine. Don't go outside Megaton without me, though, okay?" She was being a lot fussier than usual, but Todd wasn't ready for the Wasteland, and there was no ship to bring him back if something happened. "Uh, not that there's all that much here. It's a lot smaller than anything back on Verdana. There's a bar, and a couple food places, and the doc's, and the Church of the Atom, and Moira's, and besides that it's just houses and some workshops."

"I don't need to be babysat," Todd pouted at her, a little bit. "'Sides, I've got Thing, if it's all that bad out there. ... how bad is it out there?" Sure, he'd heard her stories, but he'd figured they were embellished, and even so, she hadn't ever really told him about anything much worse than what you could run into on accident outside Poseidon.

She paused, debating internally for a moment, and tried to put it in a way that wouldn't sting his ego. "Okay, Thing and you with a gun could probably take out a lot of the big monster threats. I wouldn't worry about you and a coyote or a mole rat, maybe even a mirelurk or a yao guai, once you got a little practice in. But that's not the only problem. FEV monsters don't play fair. There are people out there who'll try to kill you, and I don't went you to have to try to kill them back." Trying to deal with being upset in a way she usually wasn't, she put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a hug. "Also traps and explosives and feral ghouls and stuff," she added, not very good at tender moments.

It was still appreciated, awkward or not. Todd looked over at her in mild surprise, but then slithered an arm around her, back. His tone was less reluctant than the words might have sounded, otherwise: "Okay, okay, I'll be careful and stick with you. I don't really wanna try to kill anybody, either." Animals were one thing, especially when you were doing it to feed your beloved pets, but people? Even horrible, evil people trying to kill him first? If it were anyone back at the Brotherhood who suggested it, he might have tried to act like it wouldn't bother him, but this was Indrani. He really didn't know if he could do something like that. He might just be more inclined to run away than even try.

She gave him an extra tight squeeze for being a good boy. "Thanks. I promise I won't let you get too bored." Though they had no video games. Hmm. "I'll take you on a tour of town once you're done eating, and maybe we'll get drinks and some iguana kabobs from Gob tonight. Let me get you out some walking around money, just in case..." She turned to a half-collapsed cabinet and dug through it as she kept talking. "And we'll get you some of your own guns. Moira should have stuff in. Here." She tossed him a sock that looked more like it was full of garbage than money. There were a few crumpled bills that looked more or less like cash back home, but it was mostly old fashioned bottle caps, a few loose cigarettes, and one large and menacing looking tooth. "I'll put on the radio, see if there's anything fun going on." She was a little manic.

"Guess you're excited to be home, huh?" All of that sounded okay to Todd, though, so he didn't protest, he just kind of grinned at her. But then he couldn't help but peek into the sock curiously. "They, uh, use bottle caps as money here?" Cigarettes he could kind of see, didn't he see a movie once where that kind of thing worked for getting favors and stuff? But the bottle caps-- and the tooth-- were definitely weird.

"Around here, and it travels pretty well," she said, fiddling with the dial. The radio began to play what was to Todd decidedly golden oldies, some scratchy old blues from the fifties back on his earth. "Portable, sturdy, and there's a more or less limited supply. Barter works too, and most people'll take prewar money. Ooh, I should have you read the Survival Guide..." Still a little bit manic, definitely.

If she was looking for someone to tell her to calm her ass down, she was looking at the wrong mutant. Todd not only saw nothing wrong with a little hyperactivity-- he's sixteen-maybe-seventeen, come on now-- he was too busy being boggled by everything. Like the blues and the idea of a survival guide. "It's not anything like that pamphlet we were gonna make for Salvation, is it?" he asked, eying the radio. "And is that all they play? I figured the future would have, I don't know, different music than the stuff the Wolverine would like."

"That's where I got the idea for our pamphlet. Moira and I wrote the Wasteland Survival Guide for here. My copy's around somewhere. Actually, I was using it for a pillow for a while. Might be in the bed. It's a pretty big book." She leaned against the wall and glanced around, but since it didn't immediately materialize, she left it for later. "And yeah, Three Dog only really has a few prewar records. It gets kinda repetitive, then annoying, then it comes out on the other side all amusing again. Plus it's about all that's on. I blew up President Eden, so that broadcast doesn't work, and you probably don't wanna listen to violin lady."

"Uh, no. This is better than violin lady. You blew up a president?" He's heard a lot of littler stories about her time here, in the time he's known her, but that's one he's missed out on, so far. He looks impressed and a little taken aback, all together. "How come?"

"Cus he was a genocidal bag of dicks. ...And he was the kind of president who's actually an AI in charge of a couple idiots in a bunker. I get the idea that presidents are supposed to be more about, y'know, justice and stuff than the idea of apple pie. Conceptually. Like... Lincoln." He was the only president from the past she'd given much thought, unless she'd encountered a robot who played him in a museum.

"I don't know that the actual presidents were all that much better," Todd shrugs. "They're just people, and people pretty much suck most of the time. Though I'm pretty sure most of 'em were actually people and stuff," he adds, wrinkling his nose at the idea of a computer for a president. Sounds dumb. "Come on, why don't you show me around?"

That'll give her an outlet for all her energy, and he's anxious to find out about this new place he's landed in. At least he has a friendly native guide.

"Sure, let's do it. Fawkes, back in a while. You wanna go to the bar first for snacks and meeting people, or head up to the walls so you can kinda get the lay of the land?" Not that the view was exactly striking, but it might help him get a sense of where he was. And possibly scare him a little bit. She opened the door and Dogmeat came bounding over to nose outside.

The down was dusty and everything seemed to be rendered in shades of brown and gray and rust, the odd splotches of faded pastel from old advertisements that covered parts of the walls just making the whole thing more drab. The sun was brutal, glaring off the old metal that made up a lot of the building material. Megaton was mostly made out of spare parts from an airport, and it showed. It was busy, though, with people wearing Indrani's sort of drab and old fashioned clothes, plus weapons and bits of armor on most of them. A tall, handsome man in a leather duster and broad-brimmed cowboy hat that Wolverine would have envied waved as he walked by, and a couple of kids ran by shrieking happily.

"Hey, we can do the wall thing and then go get snacks," was Todd's suggestion, as he trailed out after her into the light.

The sun was the worst part. Todd was used to New York or, at worst, Verdana, where the heat was muggy when it got hot at all. This kind of desert searing was uncomfortable. He kept close to Indrani-- and Thing One followed amiably behind, panting like a dog, himself-- while watching the people around them more than the scenery. The scenery was mostly chalked up to "weird", "slightly less weird", and "appropriate for climbing on". Many things fell into the latter category.

He squinted at the Wolverine-hatted guy suspiciously. "Does that guy know you?"

It was definitely appropriate for climbing on. Even Indrani, lacking Todd's arboreal habits, was as comfortable walking on the roofs. She led him up a rickety set of stairs, and it became clear that there were paths on multiple levels. While certainly providing possibilities for Todd, even the old lady currently crossing a bridge between a house and the bar at rooftop level seemed comfortable.

"That's the sheriff. Lucas Simms. He's pretty cool. We'll have to talk to him about you. Maybe be easier if we tell him you're from Little Lamplight or something." She looked around for points of interest, but compared to Verdana, her adopted home seemed a little... drab. "On your left you'll see the giant unexploded atomic bomb, and here we are at shoot the raiders point," she announced a bit lamely as they reached the narrow top of the wall. The Wasteland stretched in all directions, dotted with ruins and scrub, the river a flat, black line in the distance, a few moving shapes to break up the dusty expanse. "Huh, looks like bloatflies are moving in again off vaultways. That might be one you could help me with."

It wouldn't be hard, considering Todd had quickly resorted to hopping rather than just walking.

Actually, the unexploded atomic bomb got a craned neck and an interested expression. The impromptu title for the wall made him snicker and hop up onto the edge to peer down. Falling didn't really bother him, since he'd just bounce right back up again, or else grab onto the wall halfway down, anyway. "Are they like the bugs back on Verdana?" he asked, snapping his tongue out-- and probably startling anybody else who happened to be nearby, unless they really were as used to mutants as Indrani seemed to think-- at the idea of more giant bugs to make dinner out of. They'd probably be tastier fresh... not that he necessarily tasted much of what he ate, anyhow.

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