The Windy City (Fallout RP)

[Leyyuce]

Les looked up from his seated position as Luca walked past. He had seen the guy a few times in Bellavue, but had never spoken to him. He stopped about ten feet away from Les, and he, too began to watch the strange group standing out in the open. Les crossed his arms across his knees and lowered his head a little, eyeing Luca from behind his sunglasses. I wonder if he has a cigarette.

[Sav]

"Your'e going to the Sears Tower too? Looks like we can help each other out. If your uh, friend wants to come, we might stand a chance, what do you say?"

[King Acunasti]

Luca knocked on the door several more times. "Christ..." he whispered to himself. "I bet Joe gave me the wrong house. S**t!"

Just then, the door opened a few inches. The door itself was chain locked. An amber colored eye peaked through and focused on Luca. "What the f*** you want?" growled a low and raspy voice from behind the door.

"My name's Luca Martinov." Luca said with a stern expression. "I'm a friend of Joe Nakata."

"Huh...Hold on." The man held out a clipboard in front of his face. After a moment or two, he unlocked the door and opened it all the way. "Okay." the man said. "You're on the list. Get the hell in here."

"Thanks." Luca stepped inside.

The man at the door was at least seven feet tall, and he was a broad as a gorilla with giant fists and muscles that nearly ripped through his shirt. His face was completely covered in scars, and he had an eye patch over his left eye. His dark hair was extremely short, and dirt was completely baked into the his skin. He slammed the door shut behind Luca. "You must be here to see Pitz." he said as he brushed past Luca.

"Yeah." Luca replied. "My friend Joe says I can get my smuggled goods from him."

The giant chuckled deeply, putting a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it with a match. "Joe Nakata...Haven't seen that piece of s**t's face in a while. How's he doin'?"

"Not bad, I guess. He's the bartender at The Last Man Standing in Bellevue."

"He's still workin' there!? Jesus...Alright, follow me kid."

Luca followed the giant down a case of hidden stairs near the rear of the shack. The shack itself was small. Inside it was a dresser with a lamp on top of it and two beds. But after seeing the hidden staircase, Luca realized that there was much more to this shack than most would think. The bottom of the staircase was the beginning of a long, smelly underground tunnel supported by numerous wooden poles and beams that almost looked to be rotting. "Right over here." the man said to Luca, pointing to a narrow hallway branching off from the main tunnel.

Luca nodded and turned down the hallway. The hallway was short. A metal door was at the end. The giant was directly behind him. It was a bit uncomfortable. When they reached the door, Luca knocked on it two times. "Come in." said a voice from behind the door.

Luca opened the door. He and the giant stepped inside the room. The room's walls and ceiling were composed of steel. There were racks, shelves, counters, and tables filled with numerous guns, chemicals, explosives, and hundreds of other combat-related goods. The man at the center of the room had a bold appearance. Unlike his associate, he was completely clean. His cheeks were large and pronounced, and he was extremely muscular. His eyes were large and as blue as the ocean (as it was before the War). He wore an old, clean military outfit with tall and shining black boots. He appeared to be repairing an old and rusty machinegun. "What is it you need?" the man asked in a heavy German accent without looking at Luca or the giant.

"My name's Luca Martinov." Luca said. "I'm a friend of Joe Nakata."

The man looked up at Luca. He smiled, revealing a mouth of perfectly white teeth. "Ahh...You must be the Gypsy man I've been expecting!"

"Yeah." Luca replied. "And you must be Pitz."

The man shrugged. "Sometimes." he grunted. "You hear to pick up your bag?"

"Yes...But how did you know?"

Pitz reached under the counter he was working on and pulled out Luca's duffel bag. He threw it to Luca's feet. "I've had it for about twenty minutes."

"What!? It's here already!? How's that possible!?"

"Who the hell do you think supplies the mercs with their weapons?" Pitz said, screwing a bolt into the machinegun he was repairing. "You think God just sends a sack of guns down to this neighborhood every night? Of course not! Half of those bloody mercs out there have their weapons and ammo supplied by me. So if a package is addressed to me, to goes directly to me - noquestions asked...unless the mercs want a round of bullets fired into their puny little heads. I've worked with your friend Joe for quite some time now. A decent portion of my chemical supplies are recieved from him. He's a good man to know."

"Well...Thanks." Luca opened his bag. Everything was inside. "Any of this stuff for sale?"

"Of course it is. I use bottle caps for currency. But these items aren't cheap. It was almost impossible to get my hands on most of these weapons, so make some more profits before you come back here for my bartering services."

"Sure thing."

"Oh, and one more thing - Don't tell anyone about my presence here. Do you unerstand?"

"Yeah, I got it." Luca said. "It was nice doing business with you, Pitz."

"Yes, I'll see you around Mister Martinov. And tell Joe I said hello if you are to see him anytime soon."

Luca nodded, slung his duffel bag over his shoulder, turned, and headed out the room. Closing the door behind him, he made his way down the tunnel and up the staircase, closing the trap door over it when he reached the top. After this, he exited the shack and began walking down the dusty road.

Spoiler:

Damn, these long posts are kicking my a$$!!!
Hopefully that'll be the last one. But hey - if you guys are bored, this'll give you something to read.

[The Tom]

"*bzzt* RobCo Protectron. Serial number 228/3BG *bzzt* Please state the nature of the emergency."

Jordan stared in triumph at the whirring robot in front of him. Finished! And not a moment too soon; it was getting dark! "Activate defense mode," he commanded. "You are to report to the commander-in-chief of the Chead security forces. Is that understood?"

The robot hummed a bit. "Yes."

"Good." Jordan packed up his tool case and dumped it on a desk, careful to miss his prize shotgun. When he turned around, the Protectron was still standing, arms wobbling slightly. "Is there a problem? Open diagnostic program C."

"Accessing." The robot's head light blinked. "Confirmed error in neural pathways. Suggested ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR."

The robot turned to the door and charged through it before Jordan could react. Servos whirring and feet clanking on the solid ground, the robot disappeared into the city to cause untold havoc.

Jordan stood staring for a second or two before his own neural pathways kicked in. Grabbing his shotgun and a coat, he headed out of the robot-shaped hole in pursuit.

It was going to be a long night.

Spoiler:

I was afraid you'd forgotten about me, so let's see how you deal with this one!

[Veck]

South was just about to reply to her two new assistants when she saw a Protrectron beggining to fire its laser at the townsfolk.
"Alright," she said, turning to her companions with a grin on her face, "Time to evaluate your combat skills. Think you can take that Protectron down quickly?"

[King Acunasti]

"S**t!" Luca said to himself. In Bellevue, he would've pulled out an assault rifle and blasted the Protectron into oblivion. But here, he didn't want the mercs to know that he still possessed firearms within the boundaries of Chead. Holding his duffel bag tightly, Luca sprinted into a dark allyway near Pitz's shack and leaned up against the wall of a brick building, catching his breath and trying to keep hidden from the robot.

[Sav]

"Yeah, but we don't have any weapons. How are we going to work this out?" Matthew asked nervously. He continued to watch the Protectron.

[Veck]

"Oh come on, tell me you aren't going to let a little setback like that slow you down?" South replied. "Look, that thing has got some of the weakest firepower out here, and can barely stand you pushing it over. Just... take it down some other way. I'm sure you're capable."

[Sav]

"Uh, okay then." Matthew thought for a moment, then came up with an idea. "South, try and distract it, while you're doing that, i'll try and get to it's combat inhibitor, and rip it out."

[Veck]

"Combat inhibitor?" she gave him a skeptical look, the grin still on her face. "And how will that stop this thing from killing everyone? Never mind, I've got a better idea."

And with that, she grabbed a nearby board on the ground and charged towards the rampaging robot while its back was turned.

[Sav]

Matthew silently watched South charge the robot, unsure what to do. The robot didn't stand a chance.

[King Acunasti]

Luca peaked around the corner of the building. The woman he had seen before meeting up with Pitz was charging at the robot, heavily armed with...a board. "What the hell?" he said to himself with a laugh. He searched through his bag, pulling out a bottle of Nuka-Cola and cracking it open. He sipped it as he watched the entertaining scene, leaning up against the wall of the building.

[The Tom]

Jordan ran in the direction of the commotion, clicking two custom shells into his shotgun as he did. He rounded a corner and just had time to process the image of a woman charging towards his robot with a plank of wood before a laser blast heated the air past his face and he had to duck behind the corner of a shack.

"Hey!" he yelled in the direction of the woman. "Go for the head lamp! Break it open, but for God's sake don't keep hitting it once it's down!"

[Veck]

South looked up just as she swung her board at the back of the Protectron, knocking it to the ground. Swiftly, she reached for a loose operations cable behind the combat inhibitor and disconnected it, shutting down the robot.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't just fry this tin can right now!" she called out to the voice.

[King Acunasti]

"Damn..." Luca said, taking another sip of Nuka-Cola.

[The Tom]

Jordan's face drained of colour as he heard the voice and he leapt out from behind his cover to kneel at the robot's side, ignoring the woman. "Oh, no no no no..." he breathed, checking the sparking cable. It was no good. The wire had been completely severed.

"You've destroyed it," he said, looking vacantly into the woman's face. "There's no way I can reboot this now. The memory's been wiped. What am I going to do? This robot was the only reason they let me stay here!" He buried his face in his hands, and sat, shaking, on the ground.

[Veck]

"Here," South tossed down a small piece of wire from her pocket. "If you can get some scrap iron, a heat source and have some skill with electronics, you can get that thing working again. There's a house a few streets outside of the walls with a fully operational terminal. You can rework the memory files from there. This is a post-68 Protectron I think, meaning they store hard-printed memory caches as backup in case of full power failure. Correct me if I'm wrong, Robotics was never my strong suit."

She looked across tye horizon at the Sears Tower still looming in the distance, as if it was in danger of disappearing while she kept her eyes off it. "Damn," she murmered to herself. "I was only expecting on being here for a few hours."

[King Acunasti]

After hearing South's words, Luca finished his Nuka-Cola and threw the bottle at the ground. It shattered into hundreds of pieces. "Nothin' ever goes as planned, doll!" he shouted in the South's direction.

He picked up his bag and stepped out of the allyway, slowly walking down the street in the opposite direction.

[Sir_Cuthulhu]

Caulfield laughed (though it sounded more like a grunt), when he saw South run after the robot. "A board? Really?", he thought. The ghoul ran after her, but Natalie took care of the robot pretty quickly. Using some tools and spare parts from his electrician's kit, he opened up a panel in the back of the robot, disconnected the weapon's systems, and soldered the operations cable to repair it. He then went to work installing a memory cache that he had managed to salvage when the Enclave destroyed his lab. After a few minutes of tinkering with the robot, he turned it back on. The robot powered back up, but couldn't attack. He helped the now defenseless machine to it's feet, and watched it carefully, ready to take it down at the first sign of trouble.

[Veck]

"Anyway, yeah." Natalie picked up her backpack and began to move towards the town gate. Evening was approaching quickly, and she'd planned on being far away from the town by now. "I'm heading off soon. If anyone wants in on what I'm doing, mett me at the gate within the next 20 minutes." She turned to the man who owned the robot. "If you want, I can show you a house just up the road. There's a working terminal to help get your robot back up and running, and a functional Mr Handy that you can restore to work with it."

[King Acunasti]

"The Bloodroot" was a bar Luca had spotted at the corner of the street that was connected to Chead's entrance. It looked small from the outside. Luca figured it would be a perfect spot to relax for a while. He had considered turning around and meeting up with that girl at the gate, but he decided against it. There was too much opporunity for him in this neighborhood. He entered The Bloodroot and sat down at a table beside the entrance. The bar was almost empty. Only a few other people were inside. It was nice and quiet.

Luca pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his bag and began drinking.

Spoiler:

I love inventing names for these bars!
"The Flying Fin", "The Last Man Standing", "The Bloodroot"

[Sav]

Matthew noted to meet South at the town gate in 20 minutes. He walked over to the nearby bar, and tried to pass the time.

[Sir_Cuthulhu]

Now that evening was approaching, Caulfield was starting to have trouble seeing. He started adjusting the tint on his mask, turning it completely off. He then walked over to the gate and waited for South to be ready to leave. As he waited, he got an idea. Using his soldering kit, he carefully burned his name into the the metal plate on the left side of his chest. When he was finished, it neatly said "Caulfield", in bold letters, that were just barely burned into the metal.

[King Acunasti]

Luca was halfway through his bottle of whiskey when Matthew entered the bar. "Oi!" he said to Matthew, taking another swig of whiskey. "Sit down. Have a little whiskey with me."

[Sav]

Matthew sat down next to Luca. He checked the time. It was almost time for him to go to the gates, he was thirsty, so why not he thought.
"Uh, who are you?" Matthew asked cautiously.