AN: Here's one of those bullshit plot devices to help connect my story to being an actual, plausible story. I'm not gonna lie, this was made on the spot for the purpose of making the later chapters make more sense.
|Chapter Two - Wishful Thinking|
Alma ran with Charon directly behind her to the entrance of Underworld. Right outside its doors she would be greeted with the awe-inspiring tyrannosaurus rex skeleton before running past the lobby and into the grand stretch of the Mall. But her hands stopped pushing on the doors when she realized she left her other equipment at Carol's. She wanted to smack herself, but then she realized they wouldn't be running in the first place if Charon hadn't killed Ahzrukhal. Yet now wasn't the time to reprimand her new companion.
"Charon, could you please wait outside the door for me? I need to run back to Carol's real quick to get all my things." He only replied with a nod, and she could hear him grumbling to himself as he pushed through the doors. He sure had an attitude on him, that was for sure. Or maybe he was just annoyed she had to get her bag. She would understand his frustration. She was getting frustrated herself for running back up the stairs and pondering her bodyguard's feelings instead of focusing on running through Carol's to her room and gathering her stuff. In fact, she was afraid she scared the woman when she barreled through the doors looking both scared and deathly serious.
"Um, hello Miss Adler, are you all right? I heard a huge bang and Greta said a couple people came rushing in and that there was all this commotion in the Ninth Circle. You're fine, right?" Carol asked, waving Alma over to her desk. Alma quickly dropped her expression and sighed, smiling as she trotted up to the desk.
"Ah, yes, I'm fine, Carol." Alma leaned on the desk, her elbows braced on it and holding her head up. "It seems I'll be checking out early. I'll go grab my bag and you'll have that room open for business as soon as I'm out the door." Before she stood up straight, she looked hard into the slightly confused woman's eyes. "Oh, and please don't be mad at me for whatever you may hear from the people here. We didn't mean to cause any possible trouble." Alma turned and sprinted to her room, and she heard Carol back in the lobby calling after her about what she meant.
Her bag, well, it wasn't too full. She had sold off a great deal of junk to Tulip, the eccentric girl saying that it would keep her busy to mess with the items. She had needed the money for her journey, but ended up using it to buy Charon's contract. She was sure she made a good investment, though. Charon... did seem very capable with his shotgun. She ran her hands through the pocket in her bag that held all of her caps. Still partially empty. After all, those strings of bottle caps she had with her had been exchanged for Charon. She felt lucky that at least the obnoxious things came in denominations. Black was worth one whole dollar, as she put it. Green was five dollars, blue was ten, red was twenty, gold was fifty, and silver was a hundred. Once again she had to thank Simms from Megaton for lecturing her on how to organize caps. Though why silver caps were higher in worth than gold ones, she wasn't sure. She just felt lucky she managed to have ten of the shiny bottle caps to pay for that contract. Now all she had left were a few blacks, two greens and one red. Thirty three dollars, in comparison.
Alma felt in the second, larger pocket for her supply of food and drink. A few bottles of purified water Walter from Megaton had been kind enough to give her, five bottles of dirty water she planned to boil and wash her clothes in and to wash herself, a couple bars of soap she found in a wardrobe in Springvale (she immediately moved the soap and dirty water into the caps pocket to keep it from spoiling her food), and a few packs of noodles she could boil as well. Low on food. It was okay, she didn't find herself too particularly excited to eat the food she often found in the hands of residents of Underworld and Megaton. Her tastes were still considerably refined from her life at the Vault. She would stick with noodles until she was adventurous enough to eat wasteland food.
The pocket opposite that was filled with ammo for her precious .32. And a lot of spare parts, in case her rifle broke. She wasn't a genius at gun repair, so she hoped Charon could manage. There was also a few screwdrivers and a pack of bobby pins. Amata had given her those. She hardly, if ever, used them like she was told to. She saved the pins for her hair and the screwdrivers for prying open containers and the like. Simply, she hadn't happened upon anything that needed to be picked. Yet she had a desire to lock pick at least something. Perhaps a footlocker. She felt that the skill was essential, on par with gun repair.
The smaller pocket on that one was filled with bandages and band aids, cotton swabs, a couple small bottles of antiseptic she took from her father's desk in the Vault, and a few of those stimpaks. She didn't particularly enjoy stimpaks. Maybe everyone else in the world did, but the idea of just stabbing them into herself so ruthlessly as advised by Simms didn't suit her. Yet she knew she would need them, her dad once told her how they were like the ambrosia of medicine.
The main pocket had her junk, her sketchbook and pencils, her strips of clothing she found to replace bandages if needed, etcetera, "Alright, I have everything, okay. Now, time to leave." She practically ran past Greta and Carol, "Goodbye you two; thank you for having me!" Yet she slowed when she heard them ask about Megaton. A soft smile arose on her lips as she backed out the doors. "Yes, yes, I'll tell him."
Charon heard his new employer call for him as she came into the lobby, and apologize when she realized she didn't see him by the door when she came out. He only grunted and watched her flounder in her own awkwardness. Eventually, the girl decided to leave, and he followed, fingers itching to pull the trigger on her, but never listening to them. He was under contract, after all.
Outside of the museum, they were greeted with a grenade exploding underneath them at the entrance to the metro. The girl had jumped in fright, and he wanted to smack her for being so childish. The guardswoman, Willow, had emerged from the metro stairs, waving at the both of them. When his employer talked to the ghoul, she said that a band of raiders had set up camp in the metro below. He inwardly smiled at his employer's disappointment at the news. For some reason, she wanted to go through that dank, dark tunnel system to reach Rivet City. The smoothskin turned to him.
"Well, I don't think we're ready, to um, go down there. We'll have to go around outer D.C. and follow the Potomac to find Rivet City." He didn't say a word, only stared down at her. She averted her eyes and turned to face away from him; he had bothered her. "But first, we should backtrack through these metros I came through. They're really empty, I'm sure there's nothing in them, and on my map it says we can do a complete loop through them to this place called Friendship Heights. That will then put us on a straightaway to Megaton." The smoothskin looked back up at him. "I have a pretty strong feeling that taking the Potomac will be hard to do, so that's why we're going to Megaton first to get ready."
He wanted to ask why they wouldn't go through to Farragut, since it was the closest tunnel to Megaton. But he couldn't, and he knew if he could, she would likely come up with some bullshit excuse. Most smoothskins were like that anyway, and he had a feeling she was too. Maybe she would indeed die on the way. He wouldn't let it happen with all of his abilities, as his contract promised, but possibly, just maybe, they'd find a raider with a scope. It was wishful thinking, but he enjoyed the idea of getting the bitch off of his hands. She smiled up at him, and he smiled in his mind at her lack of awareness that he'd rather see her dead.
