Winter reacts quickly, sighting down his gun and firing on the big dog savaging Darius' leg. While the shot is true, the bullet is slightly faulty and swerves; rather than firing through the beast's head, it punches through one ear, causing it to let go of Darius' leg and howl in rage.
This distraction gives just enough time for Darius to swing his own pistol up for a shot. Momentarily aiming and flicking the overdrive switch, he fires the blast right into the creature's face, and the big dog's howl is cut off as it slumps backward, dead, its head a mess of gore.
Camper crouches down with his dog; while he had been ready to strike the creature attacking Darius, its sudden death leaves him unsure of what to do.
Sagittarii waits until the dog jumps out at him... and he doesn't have to wait long. Quickly sighting, Sagittarii unleashes two quick blasts from his weapon
The powerful weapon bucks in his hands and blows through the dog's body, leaving little more than a steaming carcass that's mostly a pile of torn and burned flesh and bone.
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Emboldened by his cohorts' successes, Gergg pops up to stand atop cover and points his pistol in the direction of the third and final dog.
"Go on, get outta here ya filthy mongrel!" he shouts at the dog in his most convincing, raspy shout, hoping to intimidate the creature into fleeing.
You smoothies are over there blowing those mutts to smithereens with your big powerful guns and I'm over here with this little pea-shooter. Makes me wonder if you're all just trying to compensate for something?" the ghoul jokes.
Sagit responds without hesitation and confidence, "I am not compensating, I am counterbalancing!" ... Sagit eyes the other dog and sets his weapon for single shot.
Deirdre yells back to respond to Gergg, "Yeah, and in my case I need a big gun to fit my big vag. Foot's gotta fit the boot." She giggled at her raunchiness. But she realized Gergg is right amidst his jest and will probably switch to melee to finish the angry pups.
Camper keeps his head down, wile the shooting gos on.
Kora ignored the shouting around him as he leveled his laser rifle taking careful aim at the coyote and fired...
To hit
damage
sorry posting from phone and the map doesn't show up very well. if im unable to
target it i will hold action until it either moves into line of sight and attacks the group. Kora won't fire if it retreats.
Sagit ascertains if the remaining dog is in a precarious location to purge with the multiplas without collateral damage.
The dog looks about ready to run, when Kora sights down his rifle and fires a shot. The energy blast slams into its flank, piercing through, and the dog lets out a short bark as it falls to the ground, its insides sizzling.
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"You ok, big guy?" Gergg asks Darius as he hops down from his perch. "I hope that big mean doddie didn't huwt you too bad."
"By my count, you two lead heads each owe us each 10 caps apiece for saving your butts from certain destruction at the hands... err... paws of those savage beasts," he quips to the paladins, hoping to diffuse the tension between the groups with another of his awful jokes.
Man, I'm gonna need to invest in a better weapon soon. These guys could blow me halfway to Cleveland with the firepower they're packing. Then again, the recoil from some of those guns would probably be more than enough to knock me on my ass.
Sagit casually moves to C-14 and then stands still like an idle robot facing towards the Gulchbottom group, weapon still out, and does not respond to Gergg's question.
I am well thank you for the assist guys.
Looks over at the lead heads and sighs.
Thank you also....
::queueVictoryMusic::
"Hell yeah. That's how you off some angry pooches. Sad they had to go, but the waste is a constant struggle, and there is no mercy in survival. I'm sure they understand. So, paladins: What do you say? Lets mutually ensure each others' survival and we can come out of this with smiles all around. Regardless, we're going in and doing what we have to do." Deirdre, as if entitled, starts making her way toward the entrance to the vault, pausing to give Darius a quick check up. "Good to go, Big D?"
Winter wanders about, methodically picking up empty shell cases and putting them in his pockets. He prods one of the dead dogs experimentally, wondering whther it'd be worth his while to skin it.
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"Sounds good to me, Deidre," Gergg says of the suggestion to join forces. "Heck, I'd even forget about the 20 caps apiece they each owe us if they'd agree to that plan. The alternative, I guess, would be to have the lead heads and our meat head dispense with the pleasantries and see who's the toughest, but if that happens, I'm high-tailing it out of here and then probably coming back to loot the corpses. What?! Just being honest."
Hearing the internal comm crackle he switched over to the transmitter in his helm, it was short range only but it worked if you were trying to keep quiet. Silencing his comm momentarily he responded without hesitation. As he spoke to Sagi though he stomped his way over to the downed dog and ensures it didn't continue to suffer. "Unless they prove to be hostile, we'll assist them and complete our objective. We are Repo squad, we don't have the clearance to enforce Brotherhood law unless forced. As for the Jet-Head Keep an eye on him, I don't trust him and his threat."
Before responding to anyone in the Gulchbottom group he makes his way over to downed hound, draws out a vicious looking mechanical weapon. He kneels before the hound and presses the mechanical blade to its throat and ends its misery with a single quick cutting motion. After wiping off the blades on its fur he turned to the Gulchbottom group. He clicked on his helmet comm, it's usual androgynous crackle masking his voice. Looking to Deidre he shook his head. "No need to thank us, please, it's our duty to aid and protect the citizens. Thank you for your assistance though and we gladly accept your aid in cataloging this Vault. As said before though we may run into SM's in this area, I must warn you we have orders to pull out at the first sign and report back to our base. Hopefully this doesn't discourage you working with us."
Sagit follows Kora changing back to his Wattz 2K rifle to conserve MFCs. Then his head remains on a swivel keeping alert of the area while keeping one eye on Darius as Kora ensures proper dispatching of the mutt.
Camper gos over to any one hurt and checks them out.
"Soo viewers, we not be shoot each other to day, good, so what we do now"
At Sagi's earlier question Kora merely gives a signal for him to follow his lead. He found he had more respect for the Knight and knew, without a doubt that him surviving a SM attack was no fluke. The man had skill and he hoped they continue traveling together in the long term. Kora looked towards the smaller ghoul and shrugged his armored shoulders. "I wouldn't blame you, but I don't plan on starting fights today... We've shared what intel we have on the area, what did the locals fear so much they hired such a... diverse band of fighters? Or are you part of the local Miliria?"
He had put his Ripper away, satisfied that the hound died quickly with little suffering, and had his AER9 Rifle back out again. He stood with it casually though, barrel down and held it with one power armor enhanced hand. Despite the awkwardness of the pose he knew from constant training he could bring it to bear in an instant if he needed to. Aiming it quickly though would suffer...
He eyed the Vault entrance and as the Gulchbottom group responded he signaled for Sagi to follow his lead. He waved him to fall in column formation, that way if there were a mutie hiding hereabouts, Kora could take the first hit and leave Sagi open to bring his heavy arms to bear.
Snorts at the mention of the local militia. I wouldn't have let one of my privates have them shine his boots back in the day.... He trails off. He sets his guns to safe, slips off his jacket and checks it for any pebbles stuck in it. As he does so rather familiar looking symbols tattooed in to his flesh greet the eyes of gergg and the brotherhood. He pulls his jacket back on flips both weapons off safe and holds the rifle at a text book ready postions. Lets go. And anyone besides me and these boys got radios? My milboy has a setting for send receive on milspec channels anyone else got anything in case we get split up? Also we need to designate fore and rear scouts say about twenty to thirty feet infront and behind the paltoon. I mean group. We should have a front heavy and rear heavy weapons man since we seem to have two. He looks at the group and does some figuring. We also need to designate a comabt and nocom leader. Some to sort out tactics and someone who is a good face in case we find these people or other people. We used to us medics for that last. Nothing to build good will like a doc... He stays trapped in his memories of fire fights for a moment the looks around at the group. Whata you all staring at me for get to suggesting ladies....I want ideas and I want them now.
"well if it is medic you want viewer, it be me, and me got a face every one likes, It why me called Surgeon VW Camper Van, I have TV waves and spirits that can heal"
She shakes his TV areal staff and Doctors bag.
Sagit follows Kora for a bit and listens to Darius' sound tactical suggestions and replies to him ... "We obviously got off on the wrong foot. I am Knight Apprentice Sagittarii "Terry" Morrow and this is my squad leader Junior Paladin Kora Kirion. I agree with your tactical decisions except the scout in the rear is not necessary. The forward scout should have a good eye for danger, great disarm skills, be fleet of foot, and maybe either have an EMP weapon or good robot skills. Vaults can be dangerous even ones that housed civilians. As for radios, both Junior Apprentice Kirion and I can switch to unencrypted Milspec and Civilian band radios. As for leadership and etc, I will leave that up to Junior Paladin Kirion, you, and perhaps the rest of the group. All that you need to know is do not double cross us, we will not double cross you, we agree on what we expect, we compromise, then I will have everyone's back. Otherwise, I will not think twice atomizing the next mutt, two-legged or four-legged, who can not agree, conform, or compromise." ... "Terry" holds out his right hand to Darius and his left hand continues to hold his W2K and watching his muzzle discipline (in other words, no one will get shot in a weapon discharge).
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"I can scout out ahead, but I've got no radio and this thing's about as effective as throwing rocks," the ghoul says, gesturing to his sidearm. "Being this size is great when you're trying to sneak around and get into small spaces... Not so great when you're trying to stay upright when firing a weapon that can do much damage."
He's becoming visibly uneasy about being out in the open and starts sidling slowly toward the Vault entrance where he can at least be protected by walls on a few sides.
"Brother Gergg, Sister Deidre and I can all scout. Sister Deidre's got the biggest gun, though, and I don't like robots."
Winter sounds slightly jealous/nervous.
"But I'll leave the decision-making to Brother Darius, or our friends from the BoS. Darius sounds like Saint Patton in the old holotapes!", he adds in a happier tone of voice.
Kora, the dog is already quite dead by the time you reach it, but if you wish to slit its throat anyway, that works fine. The body jerks a little as you cut the skin, but it's obvious that the dog died instantly as Terry's blasts cut through it.
Now that the battle is over and you have a chance to look around, you all notice the two humanoid shapes lying out front of the building that houses the Vault entrance, and the door is half open.
"Yeah. You might even want me tailing slightly behind, though up front with Gergg could be equally beneficial. I can cover for ya with the 'dream team' here." she pats her self-made sniper like a fragile kitty. "Vaults and other pre-war buildings are my jam, but no doubt in a combat situation, I'm best outside the fray. Make no mistake, I can handle myself against some nastiness up close. But still, I think if we're determining a formation, keep me... well... I like any position really ;). I only know a little bit of ancient military tactics from my research, but most field experience has been solo. Anyone here know sign language? Could be beneficial. No radio for me, D. We could even devise up three teams to cover more ground. Three radios, three teams, more ground."
As if she just saw it for the first time, Deirdre approaches the bodies with curiosity.
What kind of sign language? Quickly makes sets of force recon/seal team hand signals to see what she resonds to after thise he moves to old style swat hand signals. Do our brotherhood guys know any of those i imagine anything they used would be based of thise sets.... Know any of those? Yeah you behind with the sniper for cover would be ideal. I will see about cobbling together a radio for you at somepoint.
Kora's time as a scribe allowed him to learn sign language. As a brotherhood soldier he learned sets of signals as well, He watched Dariuses signals and noticed a similarity with his own training.
He didn't mind sound tactical judgements but coming from the man that had threatened to gun down his partner mere minutes ago made him a bit leery. Staying on the side of wary Kora decides its better to work with them. If he screwed this up he'd be expelled for good...
Deidres... humor reminded him of Kylee back at the vault and he had to try really hard to avoid getting too comfortable. He couldn't trust all of them. Not yet anyways. Keeping his head on a swivel he looked at the bodies near the entrance for a long moment before kneeling down to look at them along side Deidre. His comm crackled as he responded to the suggested marching order.
"I'll take lead behind Gergg, if we encounter resistance it'll give you all something to hide behind and i can soak up the initial assault." Staying on the cautious side he shoulders his rifle and uses his ripped to move the bodies before getting too close.
Once he ascertain they are in fact dead he'll use his Power Armor enhanced strength to move them. "Looks like blood here, may be infected but lets see what killed them..." With that he rolled the bodies over in the open so the others could see it as well.
"Guuuuuuuhhlll...... did you saaaaay...." she flashes some signals to test if the message came across. "Could be different. But maybe you can teach me some basics. My old group I use to roll with would used sign language a lot, and we'd teach it to many people in the waste who are mute or deaf. Saved our asses in less cooperative situations plenty of times."
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"Me and my big mouth," the tiny ghoul mutters as he takes the lead and sneaks toward the entrance.
Stealth:
As he nears the two bodies in front of the building, he peeks back, raises two fingers and swipes his thumb in front of his throat. To mock the military types' sophisticated sign language, he adds a contorted facial expression, eyes crossed and what remains of his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth to convey that the two bodies are lifeless. Even when he's being silent he's obnoxious.
Wary of the partially opened door to the shack, he strains to pick up any indication of activity inside before searching the bodies for loot, checking for traps before he proceeds.
Perception (traps):
Perception (shack):
Traps detected: Disable Device:
then/otherwise:
Sleight of Hand to loot bodies:
Profession (Scavenger) to make sure I'm not missing any loot:
Terry retracts his hand to Darius and replies to Gergg ... "Hey little man, sorry for little man jokes but I do not know your name, when you see something mean and nasty run back to us to take cover. Once we find a weapons cache, we will see about getting you a larger weapon. I myself, would like a Ripper over this machete." ... Terry pauses ... "As for hand signals, I believe most military and SWAT use pretty much the same hand signals except for a few. Besides in the vault, we are not going to be use hand signals for wedge or the echelon formations or any other fireteam or platoon related hand signals. Most of them will be pretty easy to understand." ... Terry looks to Kora ... "Sir, do you want me to take front or rear point guard? In addition Sir, should we place a claim on the artifact we are searching for to reduce future chances of a firefight?"
Kora continues examining the bodies as he responds to Sagi. "Rear point Guard, it'll allow us to use our armor and heavy weapons to greater benefit. Now, if you were given different mission parameters then me then that changes our objective. As for an Artifact I haven't been told anything about a specific item. All I was told was this was used as a mausoleum and that there was a possible spike in Raider and SM activity in the area. If I found any tech I was to catalog and bring back what we could like normal for our squad. Nothing specific was mentioned... This is however an unmapped Vault. So perhaps Delta Bunkers intel was more limited then Gamma's..."
He checks the bodies for obvious wounds and tries to ascertain the murder weapon...
Terry responds ... "Roger for rear guard and mission parameters." While Kora searches the bodies, he keeps watch of the area for more mutts or worse.
I'm fine with your ripping out tech you need with two execptions. One if it would harm any residents we find and two if we find a certain grade powercell. Thats why I came here need it for a project.... Lets move out people we got work todo....
Looks over at Rose. Sure darlin be glad to teach you anything you can think of to ask.
He pulls out and old style black black beret with a patch with twin crossed lighting bolts on it. He dusts off puts it on and tips it to Rose.
Winter looks alarmed when he sees Gergg checking out the two corpses and quickly scuttles over to "help" before the ghoul nicks all the good stuff.
Camper looks around, but let the others chatter.
"I can hear de TV Spirits calling from down below, its hell callin viewers and we be keep our remotes at da ready"
His dog follows, Camper keeps it close not letting it run ahead.
Weirded out by the sudden flocking interest in the corpse and the grabbing hands between the CoA and Gergg Kora stands up. He made sure that neither were near his spare clips and hanging gear and moved to align himself with the entrance. Darius's comment didn't sit quite right with him and he nodded in acceptance to his simple terms. However his project interested him some. "We agree to your simple terms Darius but let me clarify something with you and hopefully settle this distrust for now. I don't care who you dealt with before as we are not them and we are not Reavers. Now, If removing tech threatened the welfare of the populace then it will be left as is and reported in that regard." He stood in the doorway, eyes forward, laser rifle held firmly and aimed into the opening to the vault as he waited to follow Gergg in.
They your different from everyother brotherhood soldier I have ment say them rip the water purification system out of a town near whitesands new mexico because they "needed it" left 400 people to die without drinkable water in the middle of the desert.
He spits on the ground and readies himself. We going in or are you gonna play with the bodies all day?
Fair enough but the sound of gunshots ruined that already out here. We were however planning for the future. You would have made some Capitan a wonderful top though. Heh.
Terry pipes up to back up Kora's statement and addresses Darius... "It is true that our fellow BoS brothers sometimes act in an inappropriate manner, there are evil people from all walks of life or those who are considered evil because their practices are not popular with the region. In addition, were you in Whitesands or is this just scuttlebutt? Scuttlebutt or word of mouth news tends to change the real story into fiction of some sort. Not everyone who wears power armor is from the Brotherhood of Steel and it could have been stolen BoS armor?"
Terry nods in agreement with Darius ... "Darius is correct, our noise discipline went to he** once we engaged the mutts. However, vaults are big, so that does not necessarily mean that whom ever is in this vault, heard us, yet."
"I am ready to move out when everyone else is." ... Terry conducts one last check of his gear.
Camper takes one look and runs away,
"Have a nice time dying"
The two bodies lie there, apparently savaged by some wild beast, in pools of blood. One is a male ghoul, and the other is a female human. Both wear remnants of what looks like patchwork armor, the kind worn by Gulchbottom's sentinels--Winter even notices a symbol stitched onto the shoulder pad of the ghoul. Blood spatters cover the landing and the flagstones just inside the building's doorway.
The bodies are pretty easy to loot, although they don't have much on them. The armor and clothing are ruined, completely worthless and unusable. Winter and Gergg do, however, find a small ammo pouch on the small of the back of each guard, and between the two pouches you gather 7 rounds of 10mm ammo. Each of the guards also carries a small baton (club).
Listening into the building, Gergg, you don't hear anything. It's deathly quiet--fitting for its usage as a mausoleum. Of course, the thick doors that usually keep Vaults closed off from the world would probably block any sound from coming through.
Looking closely at the bodies before Gergg and Winter rustle through the pockets, you notice some interesting things beneath the savage bite marks and the wear and tear of what's apparently been some time in the elements. The female seems to have been bludgeoned to death, as you feel the break in her skull under the torn flesh and muscle, as well as a broken humerus. The male is even more interesting, as you find two small wounds in the chest--the kind resulting from gunfire. Peering closer, you ascertain that these are the results of close-range fire from a .38 caliber gun, judging by the size of the wounds, the penetration, and the small flecks of gunpowder and burning around the shots.
Terry remains on guard keeping his head on a swivel for any further aggression.
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"More ammo for my pea-shooter at least," Gergg mutters to Winter. "Those batons are yours for the taking, now get back to your position."
After the party's reorganized, Gergg carefully enters the shack housing the Vault entrance and, sensing no immediate threat or traps , opens the door to the underground facility.
"Here goes nuthin'"