Author's Note: It irks me that there's no proper "wet clothing" mechanic, even though all companions mention it explicitly.
A frantic, male curse echoes over the crack of green lightning and pouring rain. "DAMMIT!"
Some seconds later, the Sole Survivor and her hired gun MacCready, race over a muddy hillside, guns in hand.
The lady stops dead in her tracks at the crest of the hill, swinging around to take careful aim with her modified assault rifle.
Already yards ahead of her, the young man slides to a stop in a mud puddle, yelling at her to quit screwing around.
A Softshell Mirelurk bursts forth from the soggy earth, making a beeline for her.
She focuses all her concentration on the assailant, slowing her perception to crawl. The Survivor gets three sets of direct hits, but it doesn't slow the overgrown crab down.
As it knocks her back with its heavy claw, a handful of rifle shots finally brings it to heel.
"Now stop being a big fu...hero and run," the mercenary yells from behind. "I'm out of ammo!"
As the Vaultee finds her footing, the gang of creatures from earlier scuttle up the hill towards them. For once, she does as she's told and high-tails it southward.
Their sloshing footfalls trail down toward a defunct warehouse and its auxiliary building outlined clear as day in the lighting strikes.
A dozen baby Mirelurks scuttle to the front of the building making an attempt to overwhelm the adventurers.
The woman tries to shoot once more, but empty clicking is all her trusty gun gives her.
MacCready swats angrily at the leaping babies with the butt of his hunting rifle.
They go about mercilessly meleeing the hapless younglings, all the while edging themselves toward the open warehouse door. Each of them take one of the large, metal double doors and slams it shut on the crawling creatures, bolting them closed. The two crouch low, backing away slowly to hide behind some upturned office furniture.
Pincers big and small scrap and wail on the centuries old doors for minutes on end. Then all at once, they loose interest in their newfound prey and disperse.
The duo lets out a collective sigh of relief crouched behind the front desk.
The young man's revelry is short-lived, however. "Is it supposed to be ticking like that?" He nods to her wrist-bound computer, the uneasiness in his voice now apparent.
She checks the numerals; four rads a second. Between the fighting and running, she never noticed the ticking of her Geiger counter, as loud as it still is. "It's not good." The Survivor rummages around her inventory satchel until she finds her Rad-X. "We have to move out of this radiation." She hands him two of the four capsules.
The young woman hops over the overturned desk and across the large, dark warehouse floor, hoping to find the border of the radiation. She checks her Pip-Boy once more. Two rads a second...three rads a second...four rads a second.
"Stop runnin' around, will you, I'm still winded."
She ignores his complaints, her brow wrinkling in confusion. Again she runs off in another randomly chosen direction watching her counter carefully.
Three...two...steady at two...up to three...stopping at four.
"If you get lost, I'm not gonna come looking for you."
She waves her wrist up and down between them. Four...five...four. Then it hits her almost as hard as the Mirelurk from earlier. "It's our clothes!"
"What?" MacCready frowns, not liking where this is quickly going.
"The lightning must have agitated the radioactive particles in the rain! We have to take our clothes off!" The young lady hurries around a stack of mildewed crates, undressing.
He chuckles, thinking it a dirty ruse. "What happens if I don't?"
"You die slowly of radiation poisoning as your clothes dry," she says, dumping her piecemeal armor on the ground.
The quip at the end of MacCready's tongue vanishes at the first inkling of nausea. He finds his own corner to hide in, reaching for his belt buckles in all haste.
For the third and last time, he dumps out all her collected garbage from his satchel, picking through the cans and broken toys for a pair of slacks or even a dress. Nothing but junk clatters to the ground. "Hey," he prompts from across the room. "You have all the extra clothes, right?"
"I sold them all before we started out," she answers back, regretting her decision in hindsight. "Sorry."
It's not the first time MacCready has asked himself, in all seriousness, why he puts up with her own unique brand of shenanigans, but it sure as hell wasn't for the adventure. His dignity couldn't stand it sometimes.
"Let me think." She hugs herself against the damp and cold, thinking of a way out of this mess.
His impatience only makes the chill in the air that much more unendurable. "Well?"
She shrugs, finding it a plausible point of interest. "If the front doors were opened when we found this place, somebody must have passed through here before us. Maybe they left a cache of supplies. If you go looking for it, I'll see about drying our clothes faster."
Taking his gun in hand, he pokes his head around his own wall of boxes. "I'll start with the rooms."
"I'm not looking, go ahead." Her hand waves him away from around the dusty, over-sized boxes.
MacCready frowns ever so slightly, before scampering quickly into the hallway shadows.
The Vault dweller waits until his footfalls recede into the distance before daring to collect their piles of clothes from either side of the room.
"Fire," she says to herself dropping the clothes in a heap at her feet. "And a clothing rack."
Using the dusty shadows to his advantage, he takes silent, measured steps, keeping his back to the wall. Coming to the first door, he uses the muzzle to push it open. Nothing useful except a desk with a blown out terminal and an adjacent filing cabinet. He quickly moves on to the second door. Excluding a high-set, broken window showing the green-tinged lightning in the outside sky, it's more of the same. The gunman holds fast to his rifle, hoping the last door yields a favorable result. To his surprise, there are two bodies. One dead in a desk chair, and the other sprawled on the floor.
The mercenary instantly recognizes the near trademark look of the grungy Raider type. An elite fighter and the standard run and gunner with holes singed through their bodies. Seeing as how the dead have no need of worldly possessions, he commandeers the mostly intact t-shirt, a leather jacket, a chest piece, two left arms, a right leg, and the five bottle caps in the pocket of his new pair of pants.
While dressing, his eye catches the brightly colored yellow-orange square of a holotape. MacCready pries it out of the cold dead hand clenched on top of the desk. "Freed Water," he reads out loud. The man squints at the number etched into the body of the tape. "One slash three." With the terminal screen in similar condition to the other rooms, the only person who would find this of any use is his Boss and that Pre-War screen on her wrist. He gives the armor on his left arm an adjustment yank before setting off back the way he came.