thisavrou_log | [closed] stay for as long as you have time

[closed] stay for as long as you have time

Who: Ava (

bloodbinds) and Deacon (

ersatzeverything).
When: 5/20.
Where: Amissis-Re, through the Alter-Ingress.
What: Ava and Deacon leap through one last time and find the worst of both worlds.
Warnings: Descriptions of gore, mild spoilers for both games.

It's on the platform that she initially sees the passing of the Host and their world. She thinks she's jumped in and gone home, and what she sees is so much worse: not her world but someone else's, and the tragedy that befell the Host's planet mere moments before it was gone. She wakes again in the same spot, uncertain and shaking, and it's only then that she decides she has to go back to her own. If this is what is happening, then the things she's done and the steps she's taken to assure her own future... Is this what will happen to Los Angeles too?

It doesn't matter, in the end. Ava returns to the platform ready to jump again with Deacon this time, even as some part of her says to go alone. Deacon's given her enough trust to let her go with him back to his own world. Can't she extend the same to him? Still shaking, she walks with him through the portal...

...and comes back out in the dark streets of downtown Los Angeles, standing in the middle of the street. Except there's...no one. Not a soul to be seen. All the lights are out and some cars have rotted away, decayed on the side of the road. It looks almost like Deacon's world but with all of the landmarks of the Los Angeles she knows so well. LaCroix's old penthouse still partially stands, the stone stained and several glass windows broken on the bottom floors. The air is all wrong, dry and heated, and Ava feels sick just standing there even in the darkness. The buildings don't look quite right, some of them overlapping and leaning together at odd angles, like someone's taken photoshop to a picture and made it look like a Salvador Dali painting.

She can't stop staring, horrified at all of it. "Maybe... Maybe this was a bad idea." If this is what the world is going to be like, how is she supposed to fix all of it? "I didn't expect it to look like this."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Deacon has never been this far west, not even close. California is so far away from the Commonwealth that it sometimes feels almost like a mythical place. His expectations for Los Angeles come purely from Ava's descriptions and old pictures in magazines of starlets posing among palm trees and glistening swimming pools.

There aren't any swimming pools and the palm trees are all withered and decayed.

"So...I'm guessing that this isn't what Los Angeles usually looks like?"

"No? God, no, not at all. This is..." This is a disaster. This is the end times, but there's no fire and brimstone, no scorching hell-sun, no monsters risen up to kill them. Not yet, anyway. Ava's already looking around, considering where to go and who to turn to. Jack? Would he even still be here?

She rubs uncomfortably at her arms, as if cold, before she begins to walk. "Come on. There's a bar near here. If any of the regulars still go there, there might be someone there we can talk to." If anyone's still alive in this place. "This isn't what it looked like. It was bright, there were people. ...I don't understand what's happened."

"Maybe this is post-War LA. And we ended up in your 'hood but my world."

But it doesn't feel right. His instincts are telling him that there's an unfamiliarity that goes beyond geographic location. There are details hovering on just beyond the edge of conscious notice: this isn't merely a location error on the Ingress's part.

"Maybe." That's a fair assessment. "But I don't think this building would still be here hundreds and hundreds of years later." Not in the shape it's in. LaCroix wouldn't allow it, not if he was still alive. And there's the rub, really: if it's hundreds of years later, he would still be alive, unless the radiation had gotten to him.

It's not right. She feels it in her bones, and she walks with Deacon towards the Last Round. "Even if it's your time, there still should be some people there who might know something."

Edited (lmao teach me to use my tablet and trust autocorrect) 2016-05-24 00:53 (UTC)

"Yeah, if the rumors from back west are true, this should be the middle of NCR territory, with people and democracy and taxes and stuff."

He looks around again. Maybe that was the problem his subconscious had picked up on.

"There should be some restoration. The Boneyard's been part of the NCR for, like, a century. Or maybe we're just in the wrong part of town for it."

"Is that what they call L.A.?" God, what a name. It makes her bristle with uncertainty, worse that there still might be traces of the Camarilla around. Even if LaCroix is dead - and it's not as if she wants to see his fucking mug, anyway - she imagines Jack is probably still alive and around. At the end of the world, he's probably the only person besides Beckett that she can see surviving, and it's not like Beckett would stoop to help her anyway.

She begins to realize that some explanations will need to happen if she brings Deacon to the Last Round and while she has every hope there will be some kind of understanding, her stomach knots just thinking about it.

Ava leads Deacon down some of the back alleyways, her steps cautious but purposeful, and she pauses as they near the bar. Everything seems like her side of L.A., frozen in some patchwork of time like a misshapen quilt, but there are still so many things out of place. Her eyes fall upon a burned flag in one of the smoldering garbage cans and it isn't the stars and the stripes. She frowns tightly. "Please tell me the NCR are friendly."

He back peddles, feeling guilt at her distraught tone. "Oh, they named it ages ago. Like, just barely after the War. They meant it as a compliment. Well, maybe not a compliment, but it's not what it sounds like. The LA Vault was one of the first that opened after the fallout subsided and, like, people were really excited to be above ground again, and there was a lot of celebrating. Adult-style, "hey, I've got an idea, let's repopulate the species!" sort of celebrating. See where I'm going with this? Boneyard? Yeah."

All a lie, but it's the best he can pull out of his ass on short notice. Post-War naming conventions are sometimes just wacky enough for it to almost pass as a possible truth.

He follows Ava through the streets of her town, down dark alleys and by decayed buildings. When Ava breaks the silence, he follows her gaze to see what drew her attention.

"According to reports, the NCR themselves are really big on law and order. I don't know if you could call that 'friendly' but they won't shoot you without at least asking you who you are and why you're there first. There's still some gangs and raiders hanging on inside NCR territory, though. So, it's not all semi-peaceful authoritarianism."

She snorts. "Please, Deacon. Like I'm going to believe that a bunch of idiots out of a...an underground hole just wanted to screw around the first time they end up coming back to the surface." Although... "...You know what, never mind. I wouldn't put it past some of the people who live in this place. Lived? I don't know. I really wish I knew what year it is."

Ava takes them around the next corner to where the Last Round should be. And it's...still there, half-crumbled in on one side and looking awkwardly haphazard. But there are people outside, many of them wearing leathers and spikes, with ridiculous hairstyles. Frankly, from a distance, she can't tell the difference between them and the Brujah who hang out at the Last Round, so perhaps it's a little surprising that she keeps walking towards them.

That is, until she realizes only two of them are Brujah, in the back. The others are raiders. And quite a few have very nasty looking weapons and paraphernalia on them. It's only when she's gotten too close that she pauses, vision alight with auras. The one Brujah in the back, a nasty looking man with pale skin like chalk, notices her first. The raiders don't quite seem ready on first glance to start a fight, too many of them versus her and Deacon. But Ava already starts to step away, reaching to grab Deacon's arm. "Never mind. We don't want to be here," she says quickly.

Deacon slows as they approach, his hand drifting instinctively towards his laser pistol. Usually when he starts getting this close to people who look like that, he has his weapon drawn and is moving as stealthily as possible. So when Ava changes her mind about approaching, he just jokes.

"Aw, but they look like such a friendly bunch."

And he backs away quickly, following Ava's lead.

"Not now," she nearly snarls, none of the anger directed at him. Instead, it's directed at the Brujah that's already closed the gap as they've backed off, that supernatural speed pushed to the limit with Celerity.

He grabs for Ava first and snatches her up by the throat with surprising dexterity, even as she moves nearly just as quickly to press the pointed end of her boot straight into his face. She doesn't give him a chance to really try to punish her, knowing full well a Brujah's strength far outmatches her own if she doesn't try to get out of his grip as quickly as possible. "Shoot him!" she yells at Deacon, even as she kicks the other vampire in the face again and again.

"Shit!"

How the fuck did that raider get so close so fast? No one that big should be allowed to move that quickly. He draws his laser pistol. At this close range, aiming would usually be superfluous, except he has to be careful not to hit Ava.

He fires three shots in succession to the man's shoulder and chest, trying to keep an eye on the other raiders as well as he fires. If those raiders circle around behind them and cut off their escape, that would be bad, very bad.

The laser shot does more than just hurt like hell. It's a little dose of sunlight in a barrel and the vampire holding Ava practically throws her away as if she's the one who's burned him. She hits the ground and kicks upwards, boot shoved right into his stomach to shove him over. Her gun comes out just as quickly at the second Brujah who's come to join him, a younger man with tattoos all over his face. Ava doesn't bother to start shooting first, not until he gets closer. She's in survival mode now and all that matters is that she and Deacon get back alive.

She turns the gun to fire three times into the Brujah, between the eyes, and he vanishes into ash beneath her. And when the second Brujah gets close enough, she casts without a thought, and the other vampire stumbles in his tracks and topples over to start vomiting up blood, as if he's suddenly become sick. She puts five more bullets into him until he becomes nothing but ash, not paying attention to the raiders that are closing in.

Ava looks up, giving Deacon a hard look, and then she looks past him to the raiders. "We need to move. There's too many for the two of us."

"Your call, boss. I'll follow."

Nothing is making sense right now. Standard bullets turning people to ash, spontaneous blood puking, raiders that move faster than even a jet high is capable of doing. Ava seems to understand more than he does, but he can't ask her now. Survival first, then questions.

That he doesn't ask questions gives her relief. She can't linger on it. Instead, she shoots into the group of raiders coming for them and starts to back up, looking around for the quickest route out. The streets have things in them she doesn't remember, and too many buildings are in terrible condition. There's nothing she can trust.

"The sewers. Find a grate or...or a manhole. We can lose them if the sewers aren't fucked up too." And they probably will be, she realizes, but they can at least put a little distance between their pursuers and them.

He fires half-blindly towards the gang while he looks for a sewer entrance. All business now.

"Manhole. Twenty feet ahead, two o'clock. Keep the leather daddies off us while I raise the cover."

The division of labor is a strategy of practicality. He knows from experience that he can only barely lift a manhole cover--they're fucking heavy--so he assumes that Ava would struggle with it even more than he would.

Ava can barely spare a glance to see what he's speaking of, and of course they're going to need to move up to accommodate. She pulls out the emptied clip in her gun and quickly reloads, taking several steps ahead so she can engage the raiders as they get closer. "I've got you covered." She can take much more punishment than he can, after all.

Deacon's done enough to take two down, another limping along and debating non-engagement. Ava steps ahead to continue shooting, precise with every shot she makes despite the potential for injury to herself. Once, she feels the scrape of a bullet into her arm and still keeps firing, waiting on one of the heavy-hitters to come close. She casts again without a single gesture, taking blood from him to increase her own stores. He seems just as confused, stuttering to a stop even with the chain gripped in his fist and the nasty looking knife in his other hand. She immediately engages in the moment, striking him twice in the face and then grabbing his wrist. Ava doesn't manage to break it hand but she pulls it enough to get him to drop the weapon. Two bullets finish the job and she sets her sight again on the enemies closing in, ready to fire again while Deacon works at the manhole.

He pries the manhole cover up a few inches, scraping the tips of his fingers in the process. He can't watch what's happening or risk smashing his hands if he drops this, but from the corner of his eye he can see more questions being raised for later. Right now he's just glad Ava's on his side.

With a grunt and a twinge in his back, he lifts the cover high enough to get his hands under it properly, then drags it to the side and drops it with a clang. His muscles are gonna be feeling that tomorrow.

"Escape's clear! Head this way, I'll cover your retreat." He fires laser blasts at the gang; he doesn't bother to aim carefully, he just needs to keep them away, slow them down.

She doesn't look back when he calls for her, instead taking the laser fire as her cue to make a getaway. Ava grabs up both the knife and the chain link from the raider as she tries to make her retreat, tying the latter to her belt as she goes. She turns and fires a few more times into the group, hoping to slow them down and force them to take cover while she ducks behind Deacon. With little concern for the drop, she hoists herself over the side and hops down into the sewers below.

The smell is bad, realizing moments after her feet strike the concrete. There's rot, far worse than she's ever smelled, and she can already see the effects of the fallout that plagued this world. She ignores it for the moment, quickly checking their exit routes. Eventually, she looks back up at Deacon. "Come on, hurry. Screw putting the lid back on, I can guide us. We can lose them."

Edited 2016-06-01 03:27 (UTC)

"I'm right behind you, chief." He drops down into the hole, laser pistol still in hand.

"Jesus, I think my nose would rather take its chances with the raiders. Lucky for the rest of me, it doesn't get a vote."

And maybe the smell will help discourage some of the peculiar raiders from following. It takes a dedicated pillager to pursue prey into a place like this.

"Yeah, it's a lot worse down here than it was before. It's probably whatever's gotten into the water supply...or anything that's ended up dead down here." The Nosferatu usually keep this place clean and clear of things to allow them safe passage. Now? Now, it looks awful.

Ava gestures for him to follow her as she takes him down one of the winding paths and to a grating that seems rusted over at first glance. She pries it off with care, noting the hinges on the side, and lets Deacon go first. "We're going to come out to a much larger part of the sewer, but hopefully this will be enough to put some distance. Then we can breathe." She pulls the grating closed behind them and walks with Deacon down the passageway. Sure enough, it opens out to a much larger area, the water murky, trash and rusted debris along the sides. There's some sewer life - large bugs and even larger rats - but nothing too dangerous. Already, she can see some of the other passages are blocked off with debris and crumbled walls, and she looks around to get her bearings.

"There's a few places we can go. I don't know if anywhere's going to be safe, though. Not based on what we just saw."

"Yeah, about what we just saw... So, where I come from, laser guns occasionally spontaneously ash people, but bullets definitely don't. And raiders usually don't practically fucking teleport right in front of you. Or start puking up blood in the middle of a fight. That? That was a whole new level of weird, and I've seen a lot of weird in the 'wealth. Is that just, like, normal where you come from?"

Ava never breaks her stride as he interrogates her, but her gaze is very pointedly forward along their path, never looking back at Deacon. This is the test, she realizes. He's the only person who's seen evidence of her world besides herself. What can she say that will make him believe her? She could conjure up some story - that there's crazy drugs on her world or something equally ridiculous - but what's the point?

She takes a breath - not real now, sadly - and then stops in her tracks. "Remember when we were in the prison? What you said you saw?" All the blood on her hands. "Those are the things I was talking about. The things I've killed." It's not the Brujah; she's killed only Sabbat and Tzimisce. Things are different now, she realizes, and she regrets it in the aftermath, when the adrenaline's run out. She likes the Brujah. She's liked Jack and Nines and Damsel. She didn't want it to be like this. "So, yeah. For me, it's normal. For most of the world...they have no idea."

The monsters of her world. Some human, some not. He wonders which category those raiders count as.

"Aren't super speedy, blood-puking raiders pretty obvious? Maybe it's just me, but it seems like they'd be kinda hard to miss."

"They're not usually that obvious. Those guys... They look like brawlers, gang members, people who love to fight. That's their thing. But there are a lot of others and they don't always look so obvious." She folds her arms across her chest, glancing back at him. "And they don't puke blood. That was... That was me. I did that to them."

"That's some impressive long-distance poisoning. Like, invisible long-distance poisoning. How does that even work?"

He's seen weapons that shoot poisoned needles, he's seen people put toxins on their knives, but unless Ava was putting poison on her bullets which, making someone sick after you've shot them with a gun seems kinda overkill. And the one who got sick, Deacon doesn't remember him being shot first.

How can she even begin to explain it in a way he might understand? Ava trusts Deacon and the idea that he might immediately recoil and think she's a monster...hurts. It makes her stomach tighten with anxiety and she wonders, only now, if this is one of many reasons why they can't talk about it. "I don't know if I can explain it to you right now." Not with the walls having ears. Not when they're in the middle of downtown and so close to the Camarilla's base of operations. "When we get back-- I promise, I'll tell you. But I need you to just trust me for right now."

It's a tall order. She understands that. "...What you saw in the prison, the blood? This... This is tied to that. All of this. What I can do. But if I tell you here, we're going to have a lot of worse problems on our hands than we already do."

Deacon is silent for a while. They seem safe enough for the moment. He could insist. But he still hasn't told her the truth about himself, that he's not a synth, so it seems unfair to get all demanding about her being honest.

"Okay."

He shrugs.

"I've trusted you this far, might as well go all the way. You haven't made me vomit blood yet. Which, by the way, is a super useful distraction tactic, but also kind of gross. Like, as far as super powers go, it's totally practical but definitely messier than, like, flight or invisibility."

The tension in her shoulders and limbs visibly lessens when he allows her to keep her secret for the time being. She'd been scared of how this might end, and Deacon is someone she trusts in good confidence. He's earned the right to know. But not here, and if he'd pushed, she might have caved, and it would have ended poorly for the both of them.

She pushes out the breath she didn't realize she was holding and gives him a short, barely-there smile, washed with a look of genuine gratitude. "Thanks. I promise...I'll tell you. Just not here." Not in this hellhole of a strange world.

Ava rubs at her arm and makes an odd sound, like a strangled little chuckle. "Trust me, I'd prefer being invisible right about now. It's completely unattractive." And definitely noticeable. "Anyway...let's keep going. We can pop out of the sewers in a few tunnels so long as nothing else has caved in. And provided that there's nothing down here."

"I'll hold you to that. Or not. Your choice. I mean, I'm not gonna go all CIA interrogator on you if you don't tell me, but I will be super curious." He very much wants to know, but he's always earned people secrets out of them, never forced. (Sometimes earned duplicitously, for his work with the Railroad, but it was for a good cause.)

He glances around the sewer, looking for radroaches or ferals or mirelurks or any of the other usual suspects that are found in damp underground places.

"I'll follow your lead. Have we got a new destination, other than 'not here?'"

"I'm...I think I'm okay with telling you," she says, voice low. "I just...Not here. Not here, not in this sort of place." For all she knows, Gary is still alive and listening in, and as much as she doubts he'd immediately go running off to tell someone, she's not exactly high on the Camarilla's good list right about now. "But getting out of here would be good. I think those guys back there knew who I was, the two that were faster than the others."

As to where they can go... That's another question. "I was hoping we'd run into someone who would've been okay with helping us. He hangs out at that bar. Unfortunately, that doesn't look like it's going to happen." So where can they go? Hollywood, to Isaac? To V.V.? If Nines is dead, Ava's as good as marked for death even around them. She scrubs at her face as she walks. "Santa Monica's a bust. Hollywood's an even worse idea. We could...We could try a building down here in downtown to see if it's still operational but if it's not, I'm going to quickly be out of ideas."

She leads Deacon down a second tunnel, then a third, and it's there that debris has been clogging up the drains. Ava walks by without looking at much, but there are quite obviously synth pieces down there in the garbage, old second-models that go in as cannon fodder. And there's more than a few radroaches among them, which Ava pulls her gun to begin killing off. "Gross. These things are here too."

Deacon casually shoots a few of the radroaches. "If we can't figure out where else to go, we could totally make it as exterminators. Ow!" One roach gets close enough to bite his calf and he kicks it away and shoots it.

"Hey, do you have synths or androids in your world?"

One more and...that seems to be it. For now. She bristles at the idea of continuing to do this for much longer. "I think I'd rather throw up blood myself, frankly. Eugh." She looks over when he yells, alarm in her eyes. "You okay? Are you hurt?" Not that she can fix it but...she really doesn't want to think about a radioactive bug bite.

Ava reloads her gun, giving him an odd look as she does so. "Not that I'm aware of. But then, I haven't seen all of the weird shit that the world has to offer yet. No one's ever said anything about synths besides you, though. Why?"

"I'm good, just a little bite, no big. Death by radroach would just be embarrassing."

But that seems to be the last of them. He points with the end of his laser pistol towards the synth components.

"Those are synth guts. I'd recognize them anywhere. I've seen a lot of them. Too many."

"I don't know. Irradiated, infected bites sound pretty horrible." She tries to put it out there like a joke, lighten the mood, and falls a little flat with the concern in her tone. But Ava turns to where Deacon points and goes to crouch in the ankle-deep water, brow furrowed. "This stuff?"

On closer inspection, she can see the outlines of a metallic face and, nearby, a hand with stripped digits. Her expression turns to horror. "This... This is what a synth looks like on the inside?"

"Standard occupational hazard. And synths are immune to radiation, so that's a big plus for me." Actually, he may have to take some RadAway later, but he has a sufficient stash.

"Yeah, that's the bits and pieces of a Gen 2s. They're not as human as the Gen 3s.

"This is what they look like?" They almost seem human. Their faces aren't entirely detailed, but the vacant eyes seem to unnerve her. She bristles, uncertain, and looks up at Deacon.

"When you say they aren't as human...do you mean in terms of looks, like you? Or... I don't know. Do Gen 2s understand free will, have memories and emotions?" She still doesn't know if she believes he's synthetic. Ava can hear his heartbeat just fine and it doesn't sound mechanical. But Deacon's made her think that a Gen 3 synth is so identical to a human that it wouldn't make any difference.

"Gen 2s are tricky. They're sorta sentient. They can make basic decisions on their own and so have some minimal degree of free will. But they don't have emotions really. You could put them in a human-suit and they still wouldn't pass as human, not even close."

Deacon crouches to pick up the synth's face and hold it in one hand.

"But they're sentient enough that I feel kinda bad whenever I have to kill them. They didn't get a choice in any of this."

Pause.

"'Alas, poor Yorick...'"

"So they don't empathize with people like Gen 3s do, right?" Which means they can make decisions without being able to process a full human experience. It's pretty sad, she'll admit, and she doesn't know much else to say. "Do you consider them people, then? Or just...androids created by the Institute?" She doesn't really want to go into an argument about organics versus synthetics - the Moira has enough of debate these days - but it's still a question that's been on her mind.

Ava snorts, nudging him with her elbow. "Ugh, you're awful." Her eyes, however, linger on the arm still there. "Do you guys bury your dead or...use their parts?"

"I've learned not to ask whether Gen 2s are people or not. It's the sort of thing that starts up fights back at HQ. It's a hard question, like trying to pin down exactly when in the evolutionary path those old hominids became people and not apes."

He shrugs.

"When they shoot at me, I kill them. I kinda wish I didn't have to."

He looks at the face in his hand. Almost human. Almost, but not quite.

"Even humans don't always bury their dead any more. A lot of the time retrieving a body is too risky. It's just not worth it." The agents at the Switchboard, the ones who didn't make it, all left to rot. It's just how things go.

"But if, like, Glory died, and it wasn't too dangerous to bring her body back, yeah, I'd give her a burial."

The more she knows of his world, the more she hates it. He has to kill his own kind, things created to emulate humans...but first, to be slaves. It's pretty disgusting. The world is dog-eat-dog and she's seen that more and more since her death. She hates how bitter it's made her even when it's allowed her to see how much of life is about survival. Just like now.

"You have to do what you have to do, right? It's your life or theirs." She doesn't know his friends but she's glad Deacon looks after himself in that capacity. "You'd think people would have better things to fight about in a wasteland where you could die of dehydration or starvation. Or radiation." Instead, it's better to make slaves and then take away their autonomy instead of, you know, make better machines to cultivate clean water and food. Or make sustainable resources. "How many people are in your...group?"

Edited 2016-06-12 03:57 (UTC)

"Not as many as there used to be. The Institute hit us pretty hard again not too long ago. Not as bad a massacre as the Museum. We learned our lesson from that real well, to always have an escape route. But we still lost a lot of people. We're, like, seriously understaffed and we can't find a decent temp agency to help us fill our personnel shortage."

He drops the destroyed Gen 2's face.

"I had a recruitment plan in the works before I left. Dez thought it was kinda crazy, but I hope she doesn't drop the idea without me around pushing for it."

"The museum being the one I saw." The aftermath, anyway. Makes more and more sense. The Institute is like the boogeyman that wouldn't die and instead continues to dose itself up until it's a hulking giant. Completely unpleasant. "And no one has any idea where it is? There are no...hidey holes or secret passages, no notes or trails to follow?" Then again, people who are able to create androids seem to have more aces in their sleeves than what seems to be fair. "So it sounds crazy but totally worth it, yeah? That's the impression I'm getting."

Ava's eyes go back to the ladder. "Look, I know where we're going to come up but...I can't guarantee it's any safer. I'm hoping it's going to be. But just keep your eyes open behind those shades of yours."

"Nothing, nadda, zip. We've tried to find the Institute's HQ for over twenty years. It's like the fucking thing's invisible. Hell, maybe it is. It wouldn't surprise me."

So even a crazy plan is worth a shot.

"I wanna recruit someone over two hundred years old. Cool, huh? Like, so cool it's frozen." He smiles at his inside joke. The vault, the cryostasis. He's been researching, watching.

"I always keep my eyes open. I wear shades all the time because some people find it unnerving, me not blinking and all, sleeping while looking awake..."

"Do you have that kind of technology or...power where you're from?" Some vampires can hide themselves, sure, but a whole building? Not even the Camarilla have those kinds of tools. She hasn't ready of any magic that would allow such a thing, either. "It's not underground? Or...in the sky?" Look, as far-fetched as that might sound, Deacon's world has ghouls and fucking Deathclaws. Ava feels she's allowed a little imagination.

But to Deacon's crazy idea? She gives a little snort, though not entirely disbelieving that he'd concoct something so strange. "What're you going to do, dig up some old fossils and scrape the DNA off of them to make a person? Where are you going to find someone who's two hundred years old?"

And, more importantly, why is it such a specific age? What happened two hundred years ago?

As she ascends the ladder, she shoots him a look from over her shoulder. "Please. I know you blink. Seen it myself." Wouldn't put it past him to be able to go without, though. Creepy sort of thing to do. Ava pushes the lid of the manhole up a few inches with relative ease, looking out for a moment. What she sees doesn't look exactly safe but it's far and away better than where they were. She pushes the lid completely off and climbs up. "Come on, coast is clear."

"I don't have that kind of tech. The Railroad doesn't." There are Stealth Boys, but they couldn't hide an entire building. They can't even hide a person for more than a few minutes at a time. But he's been keeping quiet about his Stealth Boy for now.

"But the Institute? Maybe. In the sky wouldn't surprise me either. Or invisible and in the sky, like a giant disappearing airship. That'd be awesome. If, you know, they weren't our sworn enemies. That just makes it unfair."

He follows Ava up the ladder, towards street-level again.

"My two hundred year old person is buried underground." He's having too much fun with the cryptic answers.

"And yeah, you got me. I do blink. It's programmed in. I don't have to blink. My eyes don't need the moisture to function, the blinking and the wetness is all cosmetic, so I'd be amazing in a staring contest. But it takes effort to override the autonomic systems."

"But the tech is viable. That's a hell of a lot more than we had in my time." And it's scary to think of what can be accomplished in just a few centuries. "It's a shame you guys can't get stronger backers. I know you're a secretive organization but a little funding wouldn't hurt to keep you safer." If people cared more about synths, maybe.

Ava gives him a skeptical and almost frightened look at his answer. Is he talking about a vampire? Does he even know what one is? She doesn't ask about that, tries to play it cool. "First of all: the eye thing is super creepy. Why did you have to tell me that?" Really, really creepy. She offers her hand as he gets to the top of the ladder. "Second...are you resurrecting a dead person? Shocking a mummy back to life so they can help you? Who is this person, anyway? Some kind of hero?"

"Next time I go recruiting for the Railroad, I should try to find us a sugar daddy. It'd be super useful."

But finding people with those kinds of resources is difficult, and finding one who cares about the fate of synths is nigh impossible.

He grins at her dubious expression in response to his comments about his two hundred year old person. "There's a vault in the northwest, underground, designed to protect people from the fallout of the war two hundred years ago. It's sealed up, but I've done some digging into old records and stuff and the people in that vault were cryogenically frozen. I've been keeping an eye on it for over a year now. If I could get someone from the Old World on our side they'd have knowledge and abilities that the Institute wouldn't see coming."

"Go for the old high rollers, if you know any. When they bite the dust, you guys can have a cut." Isn't that the point?

Ava's expression doesn't change much, though she becomes somewhat more relaxed in knowing that he's not looking for some Antediluvian buried in who-knows-where. "I never thought something like that would work. I mean...it's been hinted at even in my time that maybe it'll work but-- You guys have the technology to actually revive a person?" And then to set that person on the Institute? She's not sure she can agree with Deacon's methods...but he knows better than she does. "What if you grab someone who's just a housewife or a mailman? They're not gonna know how to fight."

"Good idea. I'll use my gold digging wiles to nab us a lonely old coot who wants a young...ish thing to hang on his arm. If it helps us destroy the Institute, I will totally wear a French maid outfit until the millionaire kicks the bucket."

If he ever gets back home, he should tell Dez. She'd get a laugh out of it. And probably think it was only slightly less wild than his current actual plan of recruiting a frozen vault dweller.

"The vault should be able to reverse the freezing. And even if they've never picked up a gun, that's something that can be learned pretty quickly. Old World sensibility, not so much. But in any case America had been fighting for a long time before the Big One hit, and military families were pre-selected for entrance into this one vault, so I've got good odds of getting someone with honest-to-god military experience."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[closed] stay for as long as you have time

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject