Of Molerats and Men (IC)
<h1 id="title">Elliquiy Role Playing Forums</h1>
		<h2 id="linktree">Play-By-Post: Extreme =&gt; Extreme Small Groups =&gt; Topic started by: Urbanzorro on 18-01-2011, 17:08:23</h2>
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				Title: <strong>Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Urbanzorro</strong> on <strong>18-01-2011, 17:08:23</strong>
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				<br><br><div class="floatleft">(http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2009/05/Top%207%20Gut%20Wrenching%20Choices/Finished/fallout3_megaton1--article_image.jpg)</div><span style="font-size: 18pt;" class="bbc_size"><br>"Some say the world will end in fire,<br>Some say in ice.<br>From what I've tasted of desire<br>I hold with those who favor fire."<br>-Robert Frost-</span><br><br>If he had only known how prophetic his words would be...perhaps Frost would never have penned them?&nbsp; In the climax of a brutal war between the United States, and The Peoples' Republic of China mankind brought about his own judgment. Bombs were launched; who struck first is unknown. And in truth does not matter. Other countries, saw the missiles on their way,&nbsp; and launched their planes and fired their own warheads as well.&nbsp; For two whole hours nuclear bombardment was unleashed upon the earth's surface. The earth's faults shift violently. Mountain ranges thrust themselves through the soil. Whole lands&nbsp; submerged under floods of water. <br><br><br>This was not, as many feared, the end of the world and of all forms of life on it. No it was simply the beginning of a new world, a world of pain, of suffering, of cruelty, and of twisted life that was a shadow of its former self. But not all the survivors of The Great War were forced into this new existence. A small, but lucky, portion of the country's population took shelter in massive underground shelters spread across the country and known collectively&nbsp; as Vaults. It was in these Vaults that they weathered the storm taking place above their heads and awaited the time when it would be safe to return to the surface. One such shelter was Vault 111.<br><br>(http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/9143/v111door.png)<br><br><div align="center"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" class="bbc_size"><strong><span class="bbc_u">-Overseer's Log-<br>October 23, 2077<br>Entry 1</span></strong></span></div><br>&nbsp;<div class="floatright">(http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/466/fafawdfawf.png)</div> In accordance with Vault-Tec<sup>™</sup> standard operating instructions. I am keeping this log to preserve a historical record of the events taking place within this Vault (Vault 111) from this point forward, until such time that the Vault is re-opened. The warning sirens have been going off for the past 10 minutes. It's a good thing I was carrying my Vault-Tec<sup>™</sup> extra early warning system...or we might not have been able to get this place running in time! As you can no doubt see in the picture I've attached to this report the entrance to the cave which Vault 111 was built into is already open. Things are moving at a decent pace, as long as nothing goes wrong we should be ready to seal the Vault within the next 10-15 minutes. I will continue this report at that time....<br><br>Well my estimates were a bit off.... It took us 20 minutes to get everyone inside. We ran into some trouble when we caught Mr. Espinoza, our reactor technician, trying to sneak his entire family into the Vault. I know it sounds a bit harsh, but you have to take into account that Mr. Espinoza counts his wife, his three children, his mother, his father, his grandmother, and his mother-in-law as his "family"(Though only God knows why he'd be trying to sneak his mother-in-law INTO the Vault...if it was my mother-in-law I'd be trying to sneak that old bat OUT!). Normally Vault-Tec<sup>™</sup> procedure dictates that anyone caught trying to sneak unauthorized personnel into the Vault is to have their place in the Vault revoked and to be left outside. But since Espinoza is one of our vital members we had to do things 'diplomatically.' Long story short he got his entire clan in and sadly....the Morgans won't be joining us in the Vault. <br><br>Despite the set back we are all inside now, and my head engineer tells me we have a good seal on the door! So this will not be my last entry! <br><br>-Thadeus Blok<br>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Vault 111 Overseer<br><br><br><div align="center"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" class="bbc_size"><strong><span class="bbc_u">-Overseer's Log-<br>November 3, 2077<br>Entry 5 </span></strong></span></div><br>It's been 11 days since the bombs fell. We haven't been getting any radio signals from Vault-Tec<sup>™</sup> or the government. I was advised in my instructions that this might happen and I'm not too worried. Also...the mouth to the that houses the entrance to the Vault was blown away during one of the nuclear explosions...I don't mean that it has collapsed on us...I mean it's blown away!! <br><br>And THAT does worry me. For two very specific reasons. First off it means our door is practically out in the open and anyone who just strolls on by can see it! The second reason is that I'm not sure how stable the 'mountain' we were built into is and I fear there is a very good chance that without the supports that had been built into the cave's mouth there is a chance of a landslide burring the Vault! I haven't expressed these fears to the general population..and I most likely wont. The last thing we need is someone getting too nervous and trying to open us up before it's safe....<br><br><br>-Thadeus Blok<br>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Vault 111 Overseer<br><br><br><div align="center"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" class="bbc_size"><strong><span class="bbc_u">-Overseer's Log-<br>November 27, 2077<br>Entry 13 </span></strong></span></div><br>There are people out there, they have been there for about 3 days now. I don't know where they are from. I'm guessing they are survivors from the surrounding area...either way there's a group of about 20 or 30 of them out there right now. They're just camped out around the door. The first day they were shouting at the cameras. I guess they didn't realize that there aren't any microphones for us to hear them from. Either way they figured it out. They are holding up signs now... most of them say something along the lines of "let us in." A few of the angrier looking men have signs along the lines of "Let us in NOW !(Followed by quite a few different expletives). I'm actually kind of amazed what men and women will stoop to when they get desperate. There's even a woman (http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs51/f/2009/274/e/7/City_Flasher_by_Mrissxd.jpg) out there who exposed herself to the cameras and had "I belong to who ever opens the door' written on her body in what looked like blood red lipstick...at least I hope it was lipstick. I'd wanted to keep this a secret so as to avoid unrest but the news about the 'beggars' has already spread like wildfire through out the Vault. We held a vote last night on whether or not to let them in. The vote was nearly unanimous in favor of keeping the door closed. Which is good because I hadn't intended on opening it either way....the rad levels are still TOO high. <br><br>-Thadeus Blok<br>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Vault 111 Overseer<br><br><br><div align="center"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" class="bbc_size"><strong><span class="bbc_u">-Overseer's Log-<br>August 14, 2078<br>Entry 123 </span></strong></span></div><br><br>We received the all clear signal last night, so we prepared to open the Vault. There was quite a bit of excitement. I mean, yes, the world outside is literally a wasteland. And the last we've seen of any survivors was the few 'beggars' who didn't leave the entrance before dying. But we had the G.E.C.K. and with it we'd be able to start a new civilization! <br><br>Well...at least that's what we thought....When it came time to open the door we punched in the correct code and nothing! We tried three more times and the damn door wouldn't open! Our engineer isn't too sure what's wrong with the door but he can't seem to get it to function... <br><br><br>It's been 6 hours since I entered the information above, we finally figured out what the problem with the door is. Several of the pneumatic levers somehow ruptured. Along with several key gears managing to fuse together. According to our engineers we don't have the parts needed to fix the door. Or the ability to design and produce them. In short we don't know why all these parts broke, and we can't fix them. We are stuck here for the long haul....<br><br><br><br>-Thadeus Blok<br>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Vault 111 Overseer<br><br><br><br><br><br><br>..............advù4ƒ╪δ¥δ┼♠HÄ416☺98♦☺69‼7kƒ±→■☻♀Oadvù4ƒ╪δ¥δ┼♠HÄ416☺98♦☺69‼7kƒ±→■☻♀Oadvù4ƒ╪δ¥δ┼♠HÄ416☺98♦☺69‼7kƒ±→■☻♀Oadvù4ƒ╪δ¥δ┼♠HÄ416☺98♦☺69‼7kƒ±→■☻♀Oadvù4ƒ╪δ¥δ┼♠HÄ416☺98♦☺69‼7kƒ±→■☻♀Oadvù4ƒ╪δ¥δ┼♠HÄ416☺98♦☺69‼7kƒ±→■☻♀Oadvù4ƒ╪δ¥δ┼♠HÄ416☺98♦☺69‼7kƒ±→■☻♀O.......<br><br><br><br><br><br><div align="center"><span style="font-size: 10pt;" class="bbc_size"><strong><span class="bbc_u">-Overseer's Log-<br>June 1, 2277<br>Entry 13897 </span></strong></span></div><br>This is Thadeus Blok IV, I am Vault 111's Overseer and I have been for 17 years, ever since the death of my father Thadeus Blok III. This entry is to address the fact that due to a computer failure all Overseer's Log entries dated after August 14, 2077 have been lost. And so it falls to me to preserve our history as best I can. With the knowledge that this log will now form the core of our education system's "Recent History" section of the curriculum I hereby pledge as you're wise, fair, and knowing Overseer to provide an accurate account of events. <br><br>After our forefathers discovered that the Vault was permanently sealed they (intelligently) gave up on the prospect of life above ground and focused on giving future generations a better future under ground. Ten years after that decision was made any argument against it was rendered moot... A band of surface survivors appeared at the Vault's door and began to attempt to force their way in. They looked quite fierce and evil! But thankfully the door to Vault 111 held firm! They continued their attempts for several months using everything from construction tools to guns but nothing worked. Finally they attempted to use some explosives(God only knows how they managed to get their hands on them) to blow the door open. Needless to say, the plan didn't work, and instead of breaking open our door they only succeed in causing a land slide and burying our Vault's entrance under what I estimate to be several tons of rock and earth. Since that time we have had no contact with the outside. The cameras placed at the Vault's door were destroyed and we are too heavily burred to receive any radio signals (if such signals even exist...which is doubtful). <br><br>As far as more recent events goes, for the past 10 years we have been hearing more and more noise coming from the other side of the door. At first we thought it was simply rocks shifting. But soon it became obvious that someone up there is trying to dig their way to us. For our protection I enacted laws requiring the Vault's entire population to begin preparing to defend themselves if the time came. At first it seemed like the outsiders would show up any day and it would then be time to do or die. But that just isn't the case anymore. 14 months ago the digging noises ceased. We haven't heard anything from the surface since. I can only presume that who ever was attempting to get to us has given up on their fools errand. Despite what some of our more jumpy residents may believe I encourage everyone to focus on their appointed tasks,&nbsp; give no further thought to the outside world, and always remember We are born in the Vault, We die in the Vault.<br><br><br>-Thadeus Blok IV<br>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Vault 111 Overseer<br>
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				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Haibane</strong> on <strong>18-01-2011, 22:36:07</strong>
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				(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk137/HaibaneR/Vault_111_Plan.jpg)
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				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>TheLivingWonder</strong> on <strong>19-01-2011, 01:20:39</strong>
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				<em>Three years. I can't believe it's already been three years since...</em> <br><br>Coffee break. Just what the doctor ordered. Amy was busy toiling away inside the science lab when she casually glanced down to the small wrist watch hanging loosely about her slender wrist. At least there was something to look forward to on a day like this. Hard to believe that one of the few pleasures still afforded to residents of the vault was freshly ground coffee, but it was a delight and a godsend for someone like Amy Saunders, who had just managed to work herself through the night on a project designed to limit the amount of electrical and system memory consumption inside the vault walls. Resources, regardless of there form were nonetheless scarce this deep underground, and part of Ms. Saunders job was ensuring these resources be conserved and recycled in whatever ways necessary. <br><br>Fourteen hours. That's how long Amy had managed to trap herself inside the science lab, her long, flowing lab coat whisking to and fro about the cold hard floors below as she clicked along in her heels and slowly felt the life draining out from under her. Oh, where the hard working doctors and scientists, and laborers of the world would be without the blessed aroma of freshly ground Coffee beans. That warm scent filled the young scientists nostrils, flaring them wide as her eyes fluttered closed and for the briefest of seconds she forgot all about how it had been three years since her father's death. How it had been three years since someone inside the vault had murdered him. <br><br>Amy never believed what those with authority inside the vault had told her about her fathers death. Claims of negligence and alcoholism, coupled with an unsafe working environment and dangerous, volatile substances. Nothing but a load of nonsense. Her father was no alcoholic, and he was one of the most cautious, meticulous scientists the vault had ever seen. How could anyone say with a straight face that the man who dedicated his entire life to the vault was nothing but a drunkard and an imbecile? There were plenty of people who knew of him and his work, yet after the death of Amy's mother, something inside the late doctor seemed to change. He was driven, compelled to find a way out of the vault. Amy was no fool, and she knew that whatever it was that got her father killed, it likely had to do with his sudden and profound interest with the outside world.<br><br>Three years since the overseer and his goons sat Amy down inside an interrogation room and questioned her for hours on end about the work her father had been conducting. Three years since the last of whatever family the young bookworm had was gone. Three years.<br><br>Amy pursed her lips and latched them around the rim of the porcelain white coffee cup she so desperately clung to. The final trickles of energy slipped down into the girls waiting stomach, and as the buzz started kicking in, so did the realization that she'd spent more than five minutes away from a computer terminal. Placing the cup down and hopping back up onto two feet, Amy hurriedly moved back to her workstation, fingers wildly scurrying about the keyboard as she once again found herself lost amidst the never ending sea of letters and numbers, all beaming back at her in their bright green glow onto the pale, silken flesh of the diligent little twenty something.<br>
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				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Flash Gorden</strong> on <strong>19-01-2011, 05:50:19</strong>
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				Sam had woken up earlier in morning with a good feeling. Something in the air, even as stale as it was in a vault, had let him know, upon waking, that today was a wonderful day. Sure, it had been around around five o'clock in the morning and he didn't technique have to be up for another hour or so, but it gave him a chance to catch up on his reading. And what had he discovered upon crawling out of his bed and moving to his dresser? A pencil, long thought lost, came into light from under his jumpsuit. Calling it a good luck charm, he'd placed it on his side table and sat down to read for the next hour.<br><br>He'd read the story a few times and knew it very well, but it had a cheery ending and it was a good way to start to day. Add that to the feeling he had woken up with and the finding of the lost pencil, and well, Sam went off to work feeling pretty good about the world at general. Or, well, the vault. Might as well be the world, anyway, for all intents and purposes.<br><br>It had been a fairly easy day of work so far. He'd been called on to fix the toaster of a family in the apartments, help someone straighten out their radio issues (It had been a fairly cute girl and he had flirted a little, but hadn't had much success) and then fixed some loose wires that someone had reported. All pretty simple stuff, the radio had just needed him to twist a few nobs around, and was actually almost bordering on being boring.<br><br>Now he was in the cafeteria, eating a sandwich and drinking some water. Sam was the only person around, as far as he could tell, but that was fine. He had his book propped up on the table and was reading parts between bites. Both the sandwich and the book were pretty delicious.
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				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Dashenka</strong> on <strong>19-01-2011, 09:04:13</strong>
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				Kenya Hamilton<br><br>"And that, listeners, was another ancient Jazz song to open today's show on Radio One-Eleven. *plays a jingle*. You know the drill people, requests are welcome, we are located next to the theatre on First Level. My name is Kenya Hamilton and we'll be providing you of your daily dose of music." *plays another jingle*<br><br>Kenya started another song and then stood up from her chair and opened the door to the studio. It was located in a small shop building because at first nobody planned to have a radio station inside the vaults. The window was mostly covered with the white letters saying Radio 1-11. It was a small room with one big desk at the window with all the radio equipment and in the other corner a lounge area for guests or visitors. Three plants and loads of music made the room look cozy. <br><br>(http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r240/YulesRo/Radio1-11Studio.jpg)<br><br><br>Usually she didn't have guests as all the people of importance had already been interviewed a hundred times but her studio was open to everybody who wanted to visit her during work. Last week, another DJ had quit the job so right now she was the only one running the radio station. Not that she did mind, although it left her with less time to get her hobby practiced. Stealing small things and sneaking around the vault at night, trying to be undetected for as much as she could. <br><br>When she had opened the door she made herself something to drink and searched the shelves for some music she wanted to play today, knowing that every now and then people would walk into the studio doing the same thing to help her run a full day's show.
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				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Zillah</strong> on <strong>19-01-2011, 22:12:02</strong>
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				<strong>Emily Steele</strong><br>&nbsp;<br>Emily watched the clock, then watched one of her students – young Mister George Standish – scribbling furiously at his exam, then watched the clock again, her eyes flitting back and forth between the two. She sat on the edge of her desk with rapt interest, a proud smile on her face as she observed George checking off his answers. She knew she’d taught him well. She knew he’d <em>do</em> well on his G.O.A.T. exam, too.<br>&nbsp;<br>But George looked nervous. She saw the sweat dripping from his brow, watched as he chewed his pencil … which brought a disappointed frown to Emily’s face. Granted, George was supposed to be taking his examination on a computer, not with a pencil and paper, so she understood his frustration, to a degree. The exam computer had a nasty habit of failing at critical times. But the Vault manuals provided for that contingency. Hence, the pencil, and the thick sheafs of printed exams, all in the proper files, ready for use.<br>&nbsp;<br><em>And thank heavens for that,</em> Emily thought.<br>&nbsp;<br>The lad also kept staring up with an odd look at Emily, as she sat on the desk with her legs crossed … sometimes he stared at her legs, other times, her blouse. She wondered if she’d somehow stained her clothing, or done something else to gather the lad’s unwanted attention. Considering the importance of the G.O.A.T. exam, Emily couldn’t image why the lad would choose instead to let his gaze wander to his teacher.<br>&nbsp;<br>Finally, George put down his pencil. Emily got up off her desk, adjusted her skirt, and picked the exam off the lad’s desk.&nbsp; She took it to her own desk, where she pulled a scoring manual out of one of the drawers, along with a dark red marking pen. Calmly, she put on her reading glasses and began assessing George’s exam, dimly aware of the lad’s hard, coarse breathing as he watched her. She paid no attention to him, though, concentrating at the important task at hand.<br>&nbsp;<br><em>Check. Check. Check.</em> Emily’s pen flew down the exam, circling the appropriate answers, assigning them the proper scores. When she was done, she double-checked them, and then double-checked those results against the scoring manual. A delighted smile crossed her face.<br>&nbsp;<br>“George,” she said, looking up at the lad, “terrific news. According to the G.O.A.T., you’re perfectly fit to be a sanitation worker. Isn’t that fantastic news? You’ve done so well, I’m so proud … what? What is it?”<br>&nbsp;<br>The lad looked crestfallen. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “Somehow I thought that’s what I’d get.” He got up from his desk, and shuffled out of the classroom, before Emily could say anything.<br>&nbsp;<br>The young teacher was shocked. <em>He’s … <strong>disappointed?</strong></em> she thought, in disbelief. <em>How very odd! To be one of the diligent souls who keeps this Vault of ours neat as a pin? Who wouldn’t be proud of that?</em><br>&nbsp;<br>Confused, Emily nevertheless slid the marked and completed exam into the backup scanner, which wheezed and groaned as it accepted George’s results. The Vault systems would be updated shortly, and George would be properly assigned to his newfound tasks. Emily beamed with pride. She loved preparing the children of the Vault for their grand, exciting lives. As the Vault’s primary – and, lately, only – teacher, she took great pride in her work.
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				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>minotaurus</strong> on <strong>19-01-2011, 22:59:57</strong>
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				<strong>Gil Bates</strong><br><br>Gil watched as the hands of the clock marched their pace around its face. Sometimes things got hectic, but most of the time it was pretty quiet. He knew that this shift was his as he was still in training, but one day he'd be a full-time doctor in the Vault. <em>Then, </em>he thought dreamily, <em>I can move up to the 2nd level where the really nice apartments are. Maybe one with more space in it than the spot he had in the dorms. Too think, one of my skill and intellect still stuck living in the dorms. Any girl would be lucky to have me. </em> His thoughts kept up unabated as the medical room at 2 in the morning (vault time) was not a very interesting place to be. Procedures had been in place for over a hundred years to minimize injuries and keep everyone safe. No bugs, germs, viruses, or anything like that could enter the sealed system of the vault. All the food was prepared the same way it had been for hundreds of years. Yep, things kept going smoothly and being a doctor was an easy job in the vault.<br><br>Of course, the security guard he had talked with a while back seemed a little worried. He was talking about some tapping noises they had heard outside the vault door. At first Gil was a little worried. What if those noises came from people. People who might want to come into the vault and bring those nasty germs and diseases and such in here. The vault was a nice, clean, orderly place and should remain so. Panicked, he had gone to the medical records and searched through to find out what he could about diseases and germs. He was placated, instead, when he found records indicating that tapping noises had been heard on many occasions before. So, this wasn't the first time the noises had occurred, and nothing had happened then. It was probably just some natural phenomenon and just like in the past it would go away soon. He may have to administer some calming drugs to a couple of security guards who had overactive imaginations, but otherwise, nothing of significance would come of this.
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				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Ramster</strong> on <strong>20-01-2011, 15:50:48</strong>
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				<strong>FREDERICK H. JUPITER</strong><br><br><div class="floatleft">(http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/3/30014/1163477-shrapnel2_large.jpg)</div>The guys in the dorm called him Eight Finger Freddy, but the man repairing the mainframe wiring and welding a new drainage pipe onto Water Filtration Assembly C preferred to think of himself as F. Howard Jupiter. It had an Old World, Pre-War charm to it, he felt. Once the pipe was in place and connected, the hydroponics deck had water again and the entire Vault wasn't going to starve any more.<br><br>He went for lunch in the canteen, and hungrily, with leaden tastebuds, he dug into his extra large ration of slop. It probably had a daintier name than that given to it by the chef, but it tasted of barely recycled sewage. It kept Freddy swinging his sledgehammer. After lunch, he had a grimy cigarette from a carton he'd scavenged from storage and hoarded, then played a game of pool in the atrium&nbsp; before he reported for his afternoon shift. Radroaches in the basement again. Predictable, but never boring!<br><br>The thick, indestructible concrete walls and floor of the Vault made this work easy. The storage room with the maintenance hatches to the reactor always bred a large, skittering population of the four foot insects. They could easily be dispatched by boot or sledgehammer, but F. Howard always preferred to use some fire first. He walked into the large, dark room, the walls stacked high with spare tools and metal boxes, and looked in one of the tool boxes for flammable materials. The lights were gone, which the roaches loved, so he saw by the flame of his engraved lighter. <br><br>He'd prefer not to use his emergency Molotov cocktails against vermin, and he was in luck. There was a half empty bottle of turpentine in the box, and some Wonderglue. After mixing the substances into a sticky improvised napalm in the plastic turpentine bottle with a screwdriver from his tool belt, he squirted it all over the insects, dribbled a trail of the stuff to the door, then threw the bottle into the middle of the squirming mass of radroaches. With a sense of dramatic effect, he put on Jazzy Interlude - Billy Munn (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0SZ_ibAoIs#)<br><br>on his Pip-Boy radio and did a little dance as he lowered the lighter.<br><br>He lit the trail, watched the flame shoot down the trail to the radroach nest, and smelled them burning. Once the flames had died down, Freddy smashed what was left of the living and dead radroaches into an ashy powder, swept it up and deposited it in the garbage can at the door that was starting to fill. Job done, he headed to the dorms for a shower to get the stench of burning out of his hair, and another Pre-War Lucky Strike.
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				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Rachubka</strong> on <strong>20-01-2011, 18:18:16</strong>
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				"Now open up and say 'Aaah'. All clear! Looks like you didn't eat a radroach after all. Or, if you did, none of it is hanging around your tonsils." Kids these days.<br><br>Dr. Morgan Townsend was getting used to these sort of calls. Random and obscure afflictions, things that should not be eaten, anything to get out of attending class and ultimately writing the G.O.A.T. It's as if people have a problem with filling in a ten question exam and having the rest of your life outlined for you. Silly.<br><br>"Alright, Jimmy, get off of the table and on to your class. I'm sure Ms. Steele has been missing you all day." Morgan gestured for the young boy to leave medical facility through the main doors. On the way to her desk, the doctor tossed the wooden stick she used to look down Jimmy's gullet into the trash receptacle before taking a seat at her terminal. Looking up, the boy was clearly lingering, looking this way and that. Worst off, he was still on the damn counter. "Jimmy..."<br><br>"Okay okay! I'm off, doc. Can... I... maybe get a doctor's note or something?" The boy leapt off the table and splatted infront of Dr. Townsend's desk, a hand outreached as if he were to receive a single piece of paper upon it. He even had the gull to add a cheeky smile to his proposal.<br><br>"If Ms. Steele needs to get in contact with me, young man, then he can use the intercom. Whether or not I cover for you and suggest that you had, in fact, eaten an entire radroach the size of your head by accident, we'll have to see. Off you go." Morgan watched as Jimmy shrunk down dejectedly, his hands at his sides, chin slung down to meet his chest. "Quickly now, I may have another patient who has eaten a baseball!"<br><br>This was one of the doctor's more exciting days. Nothing critical ever really happens in the vault. Everyone comes in on their scheduled days for their check-ups. A few births here and there, but otherwise, rather dull. Just to make sure that there weren't going to be any other peculiar appointments, Morgan punched her password into terminal to check her schedule.<br><br>"Three correct? what does th-- Oh, right, wrong password." It's not often that Dr. Townsend speaks aloud to herself, but when technology comes into the mix (especially these blasted terminals), her fingers don't work quite as well as her mind. Finally accessing her own terminal without being locked out, Morgan browsed through to find that there wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. This vault was blessed without any hypochondriacs. Or maybe they just go to see Gil?
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Writersblockade</strong> on <strong>21-01-2011, 02:45:37</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				The music started softly as he walked through the hot zone. He kept a wary eye on the Pip-Boy 3000 before the heavily shielded eye-holes stared up at his particular problem. He told those geeks time and time again not to give her more than she could handle. Tried to tell them that she could only go so far, but do they listen…ever? Hell no. Then who do they come running to when there’s an issue…the same guy that told them not to get into the issue. It was a riot. Shame he didn’t have enough air to spare a laugh.<br><br>Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" was currently occupying the airspace he had around him as he made a show of ignoring the “concern” of the scientists. Though he enjoyed more vocal tracks himself, he had to admit that the guy put together a good sound. Even in the heavy suit, his body bopped to the beat as he first moved to manually cut off the failing reactor bank. The gears were ancient…everything here was, but it held firm…until the geeks diddled with it. Then suddenly its red lights and loud woofers. ’concentrate on the task!’ he thought furiously as he put his back into the cut off valve. It creaked, then grinded, and finally moved as smooth as it was going to at the moment.<br><br>The valve closed off with a slight shudder, and Herb was pleased that he didn’t have to do anything drastic. The mess could be cleaned up alright. They got to it in time. The Lights would be a little dim for a few hours, but the only people that would notice were the worse off Vault Dwellers, since they got their power cut harder than the other grids. It would be their sacrifice. Nothing Herb could do about that but help fix the problem as fast as possible. Once the bank was cut off, that’s when the geeks moved in. No longer in danger of immediately dying, their pats on his back and radioed attaboys only infuriated him more.<br><br>It was bad enough that their suits could take the situation that he was in for twice as long, but to not even be seen until the immediate danger had passed? With a sigh, Herb walked out of the hot zone, where he would later go through multiple methods of washing to cleanse his suit, and then himself of as much radiation as possible. Combined with the Rad-X, he’s actually par for the course. When he took his final shower, he jiggled his balls a bit when it came time to clean ‘em “Anyone still alive in there?” he muttered. Probably not.<br><br>Finally, his shift over, he patted a few of the guys he knew for a fact put their time in honest, and walked out with his Vault jumpsuit half on, with the sleeves tied around his waist. It was a bit of pride, he believed, or maybe he just felt the ghost of all that heat that is inches from getting to him. Hungry…always so very hungry, and too damn patient! He counted himself lucky for another shift done away with and wondered what the day would bring. ’Sleep…sleep would be a start’ he thought as he made his way up to the first level.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Lemon Lime</strong> on <strong>21-01-2011, 05:02:53</strong>
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				<strong>Alta C. Riley - In the Science Lab</strong><br><br>Another minute and another number to crunch. Alta sat at a lab table surrounded by numbers, graphs, calculations, equations and other forms of data scribbled on paper. She had recently been looking into the structure of the vault and how well it's mechanized parts should do before breaking, how much wear they should have, and if they should be replaced and in what time. Granted a lot of this was hard to figure out and most of it required guessing but this is why she was brought it. She could take the math, the numbers and apply them in a more definitive way. She was a number crunching, lab coat wearing, nerd. Her thin frame sat on her chair while she went through all of her data.<br><br>It could get overwhelming but this is what Alta was good at. Putting in the time to answer questions to help other departments. If it meant looking into biomechanics problems to help doctors, or things like this to help the engineers. Not her favorite thing to do but she was very good at it. Her thin fingers continued to scribble away as se got lost in her work that morning. She had been at it for quite some time but when she really got into things like this it was almost hard to shake herself out of it. She wasn't easily distracted and truly loved her work but wished she could focus more on the things she liked more, like particle physics and such. There wasn't much use for it and she always tried to contribute where she could, even if it meant re-writing notes and data from years before to better keep it and update that information. <br><br>After a deep breath to organize her thoughts she scanned the lab and saw a few others and then pulled one of her long, jump suit clad legs to her chest and continued to work. Her lab coat wrapped around her body and feel covered by plain leather boots. Someone women dressed more femininely but she stayed comfortable and practical. She didn't want to wear uncomfortable shoes, because that would be the day she had to work with chemists and then god only knows what she'd spill on herself if she tripped in said shoes. After another sigh she looked at her math and started double checking everything finding it all a bit unhelpful. Most of it was inconclusive but would give some hints to how things were working. She'd let her senior advisor check it and then she could report it to who it needed to be reported to. Unless someone else wanted to take the credit for her work, again. Whatever. She thought to herself as she fixed some things and cleaned up all the side notes. 
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Haibane</strong> on <strong>21-01-2011, 12:03:57</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				NARRATOR<br><br>It was another day in the wastes, hot, dry, and unnaturally bright as always. The Marshal (http://th09.deviantart.net/fs8/PRE/f/2006/350/2/0/Fallout_by_hunqwert.jpg) let his eyes roam over the small camp set up near the excavation site. He'd had a large force of men and women put at his disposal to use in 'annexing' the vault. It had taken a long time for his technicians to get the machine they were going to used to break into the vault working. According to them the delays in getting the pre-war tunnelling machine (http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:aQ-fucTxTCJ_ZM:http://www.jadcomfg.com/images/mining_drill.jpg&amp;t=1) running had been due to how complicated the fission batteries it used were... <br><br>But in all honesty The Marshal didn't care. All he cared about was the fact that the delays were finally over and they'd be able to crack open the vault, get what they needed, and leave! Once he got to the excavation Rick, the head engineer, walked over to him.<br><br>"What have you got for me Rick?" The Marshal asked. <br><br>The other man sighed and rubbed his temples before answering. "Well... we've had access to the door for a while already," he said, "And so while we were working on the drill, a few of us got the idea that it might be smart to figure out some way to try and listen in on the vault... you know listen for mirelurks, or for sirens, or something like that, so we'd know if we're walking into a reactor breach or a mirelurk den or whatever. So we got to work with a few different things, and we managed to use parts from some radios and..."<br><br>"Cut to the chase Rick," The Marshal said, interrupting him in the middle of his little technical story. The Marshal wasn't even looking at Rick but staring off past his head up the hillside to the blue sky beyond. Over there some large birds were wheeling about. That meant people over there. The Marshal didn't want other people being nearby, he got twitchy with other people. The Marshal didn't really have much of a problem with Rick, he was an okay kinda guy and he did his part but the man could go on forever about how they built this, or how they managed to fix that, or what they did on Sundays after church… and he just didn't have the time for it. "What did you hear?" <br><br>"We heard...well...maybe it's better if you have a listen for yourself." With that Rick walked over to a small table set up in an alcove of rocks on the hillside a little away from the drilling machine. On the table there was a small machine that looked like the bastard son of a television and a radio. Rick flipped a switch on the machine and its speaker crackled to life. Static poured out and into the Marshal's ear for a second, and he was about to make a sarcastic comment about how the static changed everything but before he could even open his mouth the static faded away and was replaced by what sounded like the tail end of an old advertisement jingle like he'd seen on holotapes of old TV shows or radio shows. There was another rush of static and then quite unmistakeably came the sound of singing. He knew that song, it was called <em>"Fly Me to the Moon"</em> and the man singing it was a long-turned-to-dust crooner from well before the war: Frank Sinatra. The ghost of Frank ended his song and then a woman's voice came out of the machine babbling some happy stuff about Radio One-Eleven.<br><br>"Where the hell is this coming from?"<br><br>"Inside the vault," Rick said. "Yep, so that's what I wanted to tell you... we've got signs of human life in there."<br><br>The Marshal took a slow deep breath that turned into a sigh, as if this mission isn't a big enough cluster already! "Damn it!" he cursed, "Now we have to spend another week at least trying to talk these fuckers out of their little hole in the ground, only to get the same 'no' that I'm willing to bet everything I own they are going to give us in the first place! Then we have to just breach the vault anyways and fight our way through God knows how many people, in their territory, who won't only know we are coming but will have had a week to get ready!" <br><br>"It's – ah - worse than that," Rick said, "The digger is already prepped, we've already started to cycle up the fission batteries"<br><br>"Yeah... And?" The Marshal asked.<br><br>"And… we had to jury-rig the shit out of this thing just to get it to work. We aren't going to be able to cycle the batteries back down, they will blow themselves out after about a day and half...it was the only way we could get the machine to work. So if we follow our guidelines we won't be able to complete the mission unless we are very lucky and they let us in when we ask. That's assuming we find a way to communicate with them."<br><br>The Marshal gritted his teeth down in frustration, he was very close to just shooting Rick out of pure anger but that wouldn't do any good. "Well, ain't that nice? Ain't this all just fine and fucking dandy! Shit. Who else knows about this?" he asked.<br><br>"No one," Rick responded, slowly looking around making sure that no one was within earshot. The Marshal nodded. "Well then, listen up. This mission has been deemed of vital importance... and I'm not about to fail because failing really pisses me off and I tend to go kill people. Now I know that as head tech you're going to have to give a report, and when you do...your report will state that we made contact with the people in the vault, they refused to allow us entry, and we had no choice but to annex them by force. Understand?" <br><br>"Yes, sir. I understand." Rick said, his voice betraying the fact that the lie The Marshal had just cooked up didn't bother him in the slightest. <br><br>"Alrighty," the Marshal said, "Then in that case proceed as planned, I'll go get the troops ready to attack."<br>________________________________________<br><br>Minutes after Glenn Miller finished singing about that damn String of Pearls once again and Chuck Wallace Simms swore to his watch buddy that if he heard that shit one more time this week he'd go over to that broad in the 1-11 radio shack and shove her entire Glenn Miller collection up her ass, one of the lab-coated men passing the readouts which displayed Vault 111's systems status spoke up.<br><br>Looking over at Simms he said, "The heat sensors on the inside of the main door are showing a rise in the temperature of the door." Simms, the watch supervisor walked over and read the information on the monitor then the information on a few of the other monitors. "None of the other sensors are showing any temperature spikes...it's probably just the door's sensor on the fritz. Send someone to check it out."<br><br>Simms sipped his coffee then spat it out. It was two hours cold and tasted like radroach dung. "Gah! And someone get me another coffee!"<br><br>________________________________________<br>Like many things that have existed for a very long time, the different organizations in Vault 111 were normally slow to respond to things that fell out of the established routine. None more so than the maintenance department. More often than not if a problem wasn't either important to the Vault's continued survival, or pushed to the forefront by someone with authority shouting about it loud enough, it tended to be placed on the back burner. So it took two hours for Charlie Wilson, one of the Vault's many maintenance personnel, to get to the task of examining the main door's thermo-sensor. Of course by that time a few more of the door's systems had started to act up, so he now had to examine the seismic sensor, and the thermo-sensor and the tilt-magneto. <br><br>Once he was at the door he reached up to grab the access panel to the door's systems. As soon as he touched the door he yanked his hand back sharply with a hiss of pain. The door was <em>hot!</em> Charlie quickly pulled on his gloves and then reached out and opened the hatch. He had to be sure it wasn't just the door's systems overloading or something before he called things in... and to tell the truth he didn't know too much about the door... other than the fact that it had failed to open the thing had never given them any problems in the entire history of the vault! It was like, just a round thick piece of the rest of the walls. And they never fritzed out on them.<br><br>As Charlie worked he remained blissfully ignorant of two very important things. The first being that if he hadn't been listing to the vault radio station via his pip-boy he would have been able to hear the faint sounds coming from the other side of the door, and the second was that he would be working on diagnosing the problem with the door for the rest of his life... all two and a half minutes of it.<br><br>________________________________________<br>As Charlie unknowingly stepped closer and closer to meeting his end, events on the other side of the door were also reaching their climax. The drill had already finished its job and been pulled back from the now considerably thinner vault door. In its place sat an impressive pile of explosives strapped to the weakened portion of the door. A single man stood at the pile of explosives and looked over his shoulder, sheltered behind rocks, slabs of metal, and even the drill that had been used to cut into the door were the men and women waiting to charge into the vault. The trooper's eyes caught on the Marshal. He was easy to spot; he was the only one standing up and in the open. Not that anyone would tell him to do otherwise... you didn't live long by telling a marshal what to do. Without a word the Marshal held up his hand and gave the trooper a 'thumbs up.' The trooper quickly moved his hands to the explosives, finding the small egg timer wired to them and gave it a twist. As soon as he let it go he was running for the cover of the rocks.<br><br>"Fire in the hole!" he shouted as he dived behind the nearest rock and covered his ears with his hands. <br>________________________________________<br><br>When the egg timer counter reached zero several events took place. They were separated by small moments of time but these gaps were very small and they could have been said to have happened in the same instant as each another. The egg timer gave off a soft <em>DING</em>, the explosives detonated with a monstrous blast of sound and concussive force directed into the door, this force succeeding in fully destroying the already weakened door leaving nothing to keep the vault sealed, and Charlie Wilson, just tapping his knuckle on the sensor he'd been sent to check out and frowning in puzzlement as it confirmed that yes, the door temperature was indeed six hundred and nine degrees… died, his whole body from the waist up vapourized by the blast, without ever realizing he was dying.<br>________________________________________<br><br>It took less than five seconds for the emergency alarms set throughout Vault 111 to go off. The Overseer's pre-recorded voice could be heard on the speakers calmly saying; "There has been a breech of the Vault's integrity. All personnel are required to report to their assigned stations. There has been a breach of the Vault's integrity. All personnel are required to report to their assigned stations..."<br><br>* * * * * *<br><br>Inside the main door vestibule there was chaos. A blast of sound and jagged metal and smoke filled the cargo dock and the generator room to the right, the door to which Charlie Wilson had left open as he worked. At the top of the access ramp at the doorway to the corridor that ran down to the atrium, Deputy Macmahon had three security officers with her; troopers Wells, Morgan and Harris. The four officers were the daily shift that the chief of security, Sherriff Kane had ordered be maintained at the main door for many months now; a constant drain on the team's resources. Listening- or thinking they were listening- to half-heard sounds beyond the door had become a joke and the battle against boredom was a constant struggle on the 'Door Shift'. Today however the four officers had been watching Charlie do a tech check on some of the sensors so they were at least awake.<br><br>Carl Morgan had been sat at the listening post's computer terminal, monitoring the repeated readouts of the doors thermal and seismic sensors that were relayed there from the main engineering desk. He was just beginning to put two and two together regarding heat and vibration and a low grinding noise which he was sure he could hear over the calming strains of Duke Ellington and he turned to speak with Deputy Macmahon about his concerns at the very instant Charlie Wilson died. The pressure wave from the explosion blew out the computer terminal's screen which lacerated Morgan's face badly, blinding him in the right eye. His turn aside was enough to save him from being completely blinded but it was not enough to do more however as a dog-sized chunk of steel which had been part of the upper half of the door hinge flew across the chamber and struck Deputy Macmahon, killing her instantly and proceeding to crush the half-blinded Morgan beneath both it and his commanding officer's body.<br><br>Bob Wells and Troy Harris were sat on makeshift stools behind the sandbag wall at the top of the ramp and were thrown to the floor by the blast, miscellaneous chunks of steel and rock thudding into and partly collapsing their emplaced sandbags. Deafened they struggled to get up and were quite unaware of gun-brandishing figures running in through the dust and smoke. Two men and a woman jumped the sandbag wall and shot the two writhing security men at point-blank range.<br>________________________________________<br><br>The door lock mechanism and roller retractor power room was to the right of the door as you faced it from the atrium. Twenty-two year old Denise Wells, sister of the newly deceased Robert, was in there conducting a routine check of the dormant power cells. The pretty redhead was knocked over by the pressure wave, the blast of air tearing her jumpsuit off completely, other than at the neck, wrists and her boots. <br><br>She lay stunned on the metal decking in just her underwear as the doorway was filled with men in helmets and strange padded armour. One of them thrust a gun in the half-naked girl's face.<br><br>"Oh, my wordy. Looky here. We got us some spoils of war boys!" Six soldiers entered the room, closing the door behind them. Two knelt to hold the dazed woman to the ground as the others moved forwards...<br>________________________________________<br><br>On the opposite side of the door access ramp was the door control chamber, a narrow corridor full of power units and computers. It was no longer used and much of the equipment in there had been stripped out, cannibalised to keep other more essential systems running. Jed Harris, Troy's son and member of the science team was in there at the moment the door was blown open. He had that rare trait, useful for self-preservation and essential among scientists; an enquiring and analytical mind. Unlike his complacent colleagues down in engineering who had been so slow to identify and react to the temperature sensor rise, Jed had been a little curious himself and on the excuse of going up 'doorside' to look for a No.17-B12-A rheostatic valve that the door retractor desk had inside it, he had come here to observe Charlie and maybe help him out. The gruff engineer had refused his help however - the chance to work on a really new and unusual fault meant that Charlie had kept the diagnostic work all to himself demanding he be left alone at the door. His rudeness saved Jed's life as the lab technician had no business being near the door and MacMahon was already giving him one of her stern looks. The last time she would ever use that particular look, or any other look, as it turned out. Thus, when Charlie was vapourized into a wet mist by the blast, Jed was on his hands and knees under the door retractor desk - or what was left of it - the prized 17-B12-A in his hands.<br><br>Surprised by the explosion but protected by the blast, Jed crawled back out and jumped up, only to stare down the muzzle of a revolver thrust in his face, the grinning bearded man who held it snarling at him with a shockingly happy expression.<br><br>"Go on, vault-boy, make my day, just try it!"<br><br>Jed didn't really think. He had no intention of being a hero and he was quite unaware of any conscious thought to do anything. He was dimly aware, beyond the bearded gunman, of smoke and debris and other men and women jumping over the security team's sandbag wall and shooting at figures on the ground - "Dad!" he yelled, "DAD!!" - and knew he either had to act or most likely die. Jed Harris was therefore as surprised as the grinning man when his right arm flashed up in a curving punch and rammed the 17-B12-A into the man's face.<br><br>The thinly glass-walled valve bulb broke and the man screamed and clutched at his face, blood running between his fingers. He dropped the small revolver he held and an even more surprised Jed Harris grabbed it and in a scampering crawl, ran down the small room and into the door technician's security lock, punching the 'close' button as he flopped in the corner and seeing a snarling woman's face staring at him from beneath what he was sure was a pre-war police motorcyclists crash helmet. This bizarre vision was shut out by the powered door sliding closed right behind him.<br><br>Jed's exciting day was only just beginning. Exiting the atrium-side door to the security lock he realised the main security door at the top of the ramp was wide open. The listening post boys must have left it slid aside as a simple convenience so that the girls from catering could bring them lunch. To his left Jed saw only smoke and hairy gun-toting figures moving about among the bodies of the security team. Aware that one of the crumpled forms on the floor was his own father, Jed acted with surprising calmness. Rather than panicking and fighting the strangers in what would have certainly been a very short and one-sided battle, he doubled over and quietly as he could under cover of the smoke and dust, ran towards the atrium.<br><br>One of the attackers saw him however and fired some shots which went wide. Another gunman joined in and Jed was hit in the backs of his legs, tumbling with a cry into the atrium itself.<br><br>"Shut the door! Lock the door! We're being attacked!" he yelled. Old Sophie Westcott was playing checkers with Grandpa Walker on a bench booth in the atrium's lower level. At the explosion she got up.<br><br>"Oh my word! What's a goin' on? Jed Harris! You're bleedin'!" The old lady bent down to reach for Jed just as a bullet whacked into her right shoulder sending her spinning and sliding across the floor with a strangled yelp. With the alarm klaxon sounding other people were now running into the atrium (while others ran out), some of them armed with whatever they could carry, others grabbing tables and couches to push them into a makeshift barricade. Some security officers arrived, two of whom had pistols. With a groan Jed dropped the .32 revolver on the floor.<br><br>"Take this someone, I can't use it!" he shouted as an orderly from the medical bay dragged him aside.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>TheLivingWonder</strong> on <strong>21-01-2011, 13:37:19</strong>
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				<strong>Amy Saunders, Science Lab</strong><br><br>Amy's eyes fluttered closed and then open. Awake. Asleep. Awake. Asleep. How easy it was to just slip away. Almost too easy. The exhausted insomniac struggled to keep her head propped up by her elbows, chin constantly slipping off her palms as the computer terminal she was stationed at neared the end of its diagnostics review. Numbers and strings of numbers, and little bright flashes of code and technical information raced down the screen, constant beeping and clicking noises filling the air as the monitor flickered and chugged along. Amy lifted her glasses to rub at her sockets, hands digging into her skull as she took in a deep breath and released it as a tired sigh. She was going on sixteen hours now, and still had a mountain of paperwork to write up along with the data being sent from the terminal report. Will it ever end? The grind. How monotonous.<br><br>"Hey Amy..." Jason, a colleague of Amy's whispered as he leaned back in his swivel chair, nearly toppling back before quickly rolling his seat over next to the busy lab rat. "Hey, look I know how these new sub-system routines they're making us run through are a total drag. First they tell us practical applications is off-loading their database onto us so they can manage resources, then they make us change our whole management protocol entirely because someone upstairs doesn't feel like pressing a couple buttons." His eyes rolled around and his mouth shot off, perspiration beading on his forehead as he gently tapped her arm. "But, hey look...if you need anymore of those mentats I can get em for you from medical. Just...ya know, let me know, alright? Free of charge..."<br><br>Amy managed to lift her head of her own accord for just long enough to turn it and smile faintly to Jason. He had been trying to get under that jumpsuit of hers for a few months now since he was relocated to the science department. Amy wasn't exactly swooning over lover boy, but he constantly insisted on doing her favors, and he was nice enough, aside from the ulterior motive he carried around with him wherever he went. Amy's desk was already packed with a few boxes of Mentats, and she pulled open her drawer to point them out to the anxious, fidgety co-worker. "I think I'll be good for a while, but ya know, you should be careful Jason, if the Overseer finds out you're stealing supplies, all this extra work is going to be the least of our problems. I'm already being watched as it is, they still think I'm hiding something from them about my fathers work. I know they're just waiting for me to foul up." Jason brushed a hand back through his hair as he peered inside the desk and then back up to Amy. "Yeah, yeah, look, don't worry about me. I know people in medical, they told me they're too backlogged to even notice when something goes missing. Trust me, I'll be fine, try not to worry about the Overseer, he's just trying to blow some steam up your ass. Him and his minions, heh, they're harmless. Gotta keep your best and brightest on their toes if you want em working their hardest am I right? They're all bark and no bite." His grin was sheepish and full of itself, a lot like its wearer. <br><br>A loud thunderous roar rumbled and shook through the vault, the alarm that followed immediately blaring itself throughout the halls as chaos and pandemonium ran rampant upstairs. The sounds of gunfire and screaming filled the corridors, echoing and bouncing off metal and glass before settling amidst the chaos of noise. Amy and some of the others in the science lab all looked to each other as their hearts dropped into their stomachs, time standing on end as the rush of orders and procedure was drilled at them from above. <br><br><br><br>
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Zillah</strong> on <strong>21-01-2011, 18:34:09</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Emily Steele, Going from the School to the Restaurant/Cafeteria</strong><br>&nbsp;<br>Feeling hungry, Emily decided to grab a quick bite to eat at the Vault restaurant before administering her second G.O.A.T exam of the day. Pleased with how her administration of the G.O.A.T. exam earlier in the day had gone, she thought she’d treat herself to something filled with sugar. Something chocolate flavored and quite delicious.<br>&nbsp;<br>As she headed down the corridor, she heard the announcement over the loudspeaker. Calm. Reassuring. Spoken in soothing tones, to let all those listening know that everything would be okay, provided that proper procedures were followed.<br>&nbsp;<br><em>There has been a breach of the Vault’s integrity. All personnel are required to report to their assigned stations. There has been a breach of the Vault’s integrity. All personnel are required to report to their assigned stations … </em><br>&nbsp;<br>And yet Emily found the blood draining away from her face. And chills running down her spine. The very idea that the Vault could be breached, to Emily … well, it was unthinkable. But all the same, the announcement meant just that – the Vault was open, and presumably, something might be coming inside.<br>&nbsp;<br>Or <em>someone.</em><br>&nbsp;<br>“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Emily muttered, shaking her head. Off in the distance, she heard shouting, and the dull thump of an explosion, or something else equally violent. This wasn’t just a breach or a crack in the Vault, this was something bad, Emily could feel it in her bones. She closed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths, trying not to panic.<br>&nbsp;<br>She didn’t feel that she was terribly successful.<br>&nbsp;<br>Emily made her way to the restaurant, not quite knowing what to do, feeling flustered. She took a seat at an empty table, and threw her knapsack on top of it. She brought the stupid knapsack with her everywhere because … well, that’s what Vault procedures indicated. In case of emergency. And Emily felt quite certain that this constituted an emergency. She unzipped it and reached inside it, extracting out a straight razor. She didn’t know how much it would help her – she wished she could get back to her quarters, so she could get her baseball bat instead – but the razor was better than nothing. Or so she told herself.<br>&nbsp;<br>Her assigned station … Emily thought hard, desperately trying to remember the proper Vault protocols in case of a Vault breach. As a teacher, she was considered a secondary Vault defender, so she only needed to go to a public place and gather with others for instruction. She felt fairly confident that the restaurant constituted a public place … and she was terrified of going anywhere else. So, trembling, she slung her knapsack over one shoulder, and started looked about for all the entrances and exits of the restaurant, trying to come up hard with a plan that would allow her – and the other Vault residents there – to properly assess the situation, and defend themselves, if need be.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Rachubka</strong> on <strong>21-01-2011, 20:54:21</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Dr. Morgan Townsend -- Medical Bay, Second Level</strong><br><br><em>Tik-tak-tik-tak, tak-tak-tak</em><br><br>The tapping of an eraser end and then the lead was all that could be heard in the medical bay as Dr. Morgan Townsend, rather lazily, stared idly at the terminal in front of her. Eventually she got bored of flicking the writing utensil in between her index and middle finger, instead just thumping the pink lead-killer on the desk before ultimately tossing it lightly onto the steel fixture. It was times like this that made her question life in the vault. More often than not it wasn't anything she considered, but when there was nothing to do, or she was in the middle of a UV tanning session, it made her wonder what the outside world would be like. Most in the vault tend to believe that this was the end all and be all of life, that we all are born and die in the vault. We're meant to leave though, no? The guide warns us of the dangers of the outside; the vault door and its faulty mechanisms that don't allow us to leave reminds us that there is more to existence than these steely confines. <br><br>The warning of a breach brought it all to the forefront at an alarming rate.<br><br>Standing up straight, Morgan looked around the facility to see just exactly where the warning was coming from. It really made no difference, but it was something that just seemed to come naturally to her. The light on the intercom by the door flashed at the doctor as the warning rang out again. <br><br>"Why is this happening...?" Morgan said out loud to herself, if only just to hear something aside from the warning. The sounds of the violence were dull where she was in the med bay, with that much more steel and distance between her and the vault door. The warning was the only thing that made this situation a reality to the doctor. That was until a panicked voice cut through from the intercom in her own residence next door. Grabbing her Karry-All and slinging it over her shoulders, she ran into her room and listened in on the rampant speech coming through the wall.<br><br>"Morgan? Honey!? Are you there!?" Dad. <br><br>"Dad, I'm here!" Morgan replied with just as much urgency, running to the intercom and pressing the button so her voice could be heard. "Where are you? What's going on?"<br><br>"Me and your mom are just in our apartment - no need to worry. You just have to stay clear and away from fighting, okay? We have security for a rea-"<br><br>"Fighting!?" Morgan was in disbelief. Violence was a rarity in vault 111. The occasional gang scruff in the corridors when someone from one gang stepped on the turf of another, but with a gentle hand and a swift tongue lashing, they were often quelled. Never was there a fight big enough to warrant a vault wide alarm. Staying quiet and listening to the Overseer's nearly robotic tone again, it was clear that this was outside intervention.<br><br>"Yes, dear." Mom. "You probably don't hear it as well as we do, but it seems some ruffians have made their way through the door and are causing a scene. Just from the sounds... I think people are hurt." That was all Morgan had to hear.<br><br>"Alright, I have to head down there." She held down the button to the intercom, knowing full well that her parents had the intention of convincing her to stay in the medical bay. They never did have that much charisma. "I'm not going to let everyone fight for us for nothing. I have to help." Without wasting any time, Dr. Townsend ran through her residence door and down the stairs to the atrium. The pleading voices of her parents ringing in the background for her to stay where she was.<br><br>Running was a bit of an overstatement. It was more of a cautious scurry as others from the vault ran this way and that, either looking for arms, shelter, or their loved ones. The armoury was behind her, across from the medical bay. It didn't occur to her to see if she could help out defending the vault rather than those injured doing so. It wasn't in the books for her to run about with a pistol, anyway. <br><br>The first sounds of bullets pierced her ears when she was in the stairwell to the first level. Here it became all to real for the young doctor. Thoughts of blood and bodies, thought of the dead, thoughts of her own death started to flood into her mind. Dark imagery that she didn't think she was capable of thinking of. It froze her in place, her body once leaning against the wall only to slide down it and sit there, stunned.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Haibane</strong> on <strong>21-01-2011, 22:49:11</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Cafeteria:<br>(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk137/HaibaneR/Cafeteria01.jpg)<br><br>Medical Bay:<br>(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk137/HaibaneR/MedicalBay01.jpg)<br><br>Atrium:<br>(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk137/HaibaneR/Atrium01.jpg)
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Flash Gorden</strong> on <strong>22-01-2011, 08:35:44</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Sam Clarke, Cafeteria, moving to the Atrium though the connecting hallway</strong><br><br>The first indication that Sam had that something was wrong was the dull thump that made him look up from his book. It wasn't really something he was used to hearing around the vault. He had just closed his book and began to stand when the announcement. The vault had opened... It had finally opened?! But wait, those thumps... Listening, Sam could make out more sounds. Very, very bad sounds. He glanced around the cafeteria, taking note of the suddenly panicked expressions around him.<br><br>"Dammit," he whispered to himself. So the diggers, drillers, un-coverers of Vault 111 had finally broken through, and they weren't at all as Sam had hoped they would be. Not friendly in the least, or at least that was how it was sounding like. Gunfire, explosions, horrified screams, the outside world had come to the vault, and it was faaaar from friendly. And from the way people were looking in the little cafeteria, they were shocked. That wasn't the way to deal with this situation at all.<br><br>Sam stood, grabbing his bat from where it had been laying beside him. He sometimes carried it around at work for when things just needed to be hit to start working. Happened surprisingly a lot actual- Sam stopped himself, realizing he had just been standing with his bat in hand, looking at it rather than acting. He couldn't afford to do that sort of thing right now.<br><br>From the sounds of it, the invasion was coming in from the vault door (which made sense). That'd lead them straight to the Atrium, which the cafeteria was part of... Sam knew the vault's layout well, as he had been wandering around fixing things in it for a few years. And it occurred to him that the best way to head off these invaders was to keep them stuck at the entrance to the Atrium. If they managed to take the Atrium, well, they'd have access to all of the rest of the vault. And if there was one thing they didn't need, it was that. Forget moving to his assigned station, defending here was the most important thing, and Sam was suddenly finding himself thankful for all those years of reading old strategy books.<br><br>"Everyone, quick!" he shouted, making towards the hallway that lead towards the Atrium. "We have to defend the Atrium! Bring whatever you can from here to help defend." Sam himself had tucked his bat under one arm and had grabbed a chair, planning on using it as a barrier, if nothing else better came to mind.<br><br>This was bad. This was really, really bad.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Writersblockade</strong> on <strong>22-01-2011, 17:52:17</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Name:</strong> Herb Swann<br><strong>Location:</strong> Atrium, going to the restaurant<br><br>Enough people in the vault listened to the radio that you’d never really be without hearing the smooth sounds provided by Kenya in the DJ booth. Cute girl, and a body to match. He wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating protein supplements! With a thoughtful brush of his thick mustache, he chuckled and moved on to grab himself a bite to eat. He’d given his respectful nod to the security personnel as he went by, not knowing that soon enough, he’d have to probably provide security of his own.<br><br>He’d just gotten there when the muffled sound of an explosion, along with the faint rumble of the blast made him turn sharply to try and locate the trouble. He didn’t have experience with firearms or explosives, so his first thought was that something in the Vault had gone horribly wrong. He was right, but not for the reason he thought. When the alarm blared and the recorded started about them being breached, the stunned Mr. Swann could only stand dumbfounded as he muttered, too low for anyone to hear over the sound around them “You’ve gotta be shining me on…”<br><br>He turned back to the restaurant, and already saw Sam calling for help to defend the café. Instead of running out there like he had security armor on, he moved with surprising quickness as he made his way to a few tables. He turned them over with his sledgehammer without a thought. He didn’t even know if it was the best way to defend, but it was obvious that he and the rest of the people inside would need something between the invaders and themselves. Once he had a few in-line, at least as some small wall of defense, he adjusted his suit so that he wore it as a proud member of the engineer team, then looked for something he could use to plan his own surprise.<br>
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Ramster</strong> on <strong>22-01-2011, 20:16:44</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				FREDERICK HOWARD JUPITER, IN THE ATRIUM<br><br>Fred was fixing a drinking fountain in the atrium, his trusty sledgehammer Mjolnir strapped onto his back, just after a lunch of Salisbury steak and Fancy Lad's Snack Cakes, when the alarm went off. To press the point home further that the shit had hit the fan and was being shredded and blown about the room, he heard gunshots not ten yards away from him, saw Jed Harris slump into the atrium with too many holes in his body, and even poor old Sophie Westcott getting shot down. Luckily there were medics around to drag them off and apply first aid as everyone jumped for cover.<br><br>"Someone else use it!" he cried, dropping a revolver he must have stolen from the invaders, and F. Howard's eyes narrowed to gunslits. Whatever the outside world wanted, it was not coming into <em>his</em> Vault 111 and blowing stuff up without him! He dived and grabbed&nbsp; the revolver, and quickly checked its cylinder. The kid hadn't had a chance to fire it yet, obviously. It wouldn't hit as hard as a sledgehammer, which could knock chunks out of walls, but a gun was a gun, and there were more men with guns waiting to violate his vault, the one he maintained with pride and pyromania, waiting on the other side of the door.<br><br>Kneeling beside the doorway that Jed had just fallen through, Fred nodded at Sam and Herb as they manned the barricades. Their muscle and equipment would come in handy push back the intruders; what would security do without them, with their two puny handguns? He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it stoically, then pulled a general maintenance Molotov cocktail from his Karry-All and lit the fuse of impregnated cotton sock too. Flinging it around the corner, into the narrow corridor where they'd shot Jeb as he fleed, he shouted:<br><br><strong>"There's more where that came from, motherfuckers! VAULT ONE-ELEVEN WILL BE YOUR FUCKING GRAVE!"</strong><br><br>Without sticking his head out from behind the cover of the wall and doorpost, Fred could hear the glass bottle shatter and the home made napalm bursting into a fireball with a <em>whoosh!</em>
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Haibane</strong> on <strong>22-01-2011, 20:32:59</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				NARRATOR<br><br>Sheriff Kane made his way to the Overseer’s office to report in person. He had of course no idea who their attackers were nor how strong they were but so far it seemed like less than two dozen people armed only with pistols. The biggest problem was the layout of the Vault itself which had no escape routes and once the Atrium was taken the only places to fall back were into dead ends on the three main levels. There was communication between levels via the medical bay elevator but that still meant everyone was trapped.<br><br>There were two choices, keep reinforcing the barricade in the atrium and hope the losses inflicted on the attackers were enough to deter them, or use the Vault PA system to offer a ceasefire and see what these bastards wanted and hope it wasn't to slaughter each and every one of them.<br><br>Overseer Blok agreed that trying to stop the fighting was the best method and went to his desk to prepare an announcement that would hopefully bring the gun battle to a temporary halt at least. Sheriff Kane meanwhile departed to the Atrium to organise the defence.<br><br>The Atrium was in fact quite a good place to defend. Vault 111 personnel had a series of stairways and corridors leading off it to move people as needed and on the upper walkways and bridge security officers were in position already with pistols with good fields of fire down onto the heads of anyone who ran in. Three men were held back near the dormitories corridor but to one side. They had a wooden crate of made-up Molotov cocktails ready to hurl into the corridor leading to the main door in case the enemy tried to rush them. There were also two deputies, one on each side of that corridor’s doorway and waiting back in cover who were armed with sawed-off shot guns and were watching and ready to step out on being given a signal and blast anyone who ran down.<br><br>Across the centre of the Atrium a wall of overturned booths, desks sofas and tables had been built up in a semi circle, the ‘horns’ of the barricade curving towards the threatened doorway end so that anyone rushing into the room would be caught in a lethal killing zone. The barricade was not high and could be jumped but it was at least bulletproof against the light guns the enemy seemed to have.<br><br>A few minutes ago the level of gunfire had reached a peak and tailed off, now only desultory shots were being exchanged as most people took cover and just shot blind, holding their guns over the barricades or in the attackers’ case, around the corners of the walls. Hardly anyone seemed to be getting hit now, though the far wall of the atrium and the front of the barricade were full of holes.<br><br>There was a loud <em>FOOSH!</em> of flame and a blast of heat and a profane yell as Fred Jupiter hurled a molotov into the corridor entrance, the steel floor and walls of the walkway now burning as the gluey mass of gasoline and melted rubber stuck and burned. The draft of fresh air coming down from the breached main door unfortunately made the stinking black smoke coil back into the atrium where it rose to the roof and hung in a fetid pall. The deputies on the bridge coughed and swore down at the idiot who had thrown it.<br><br><strong>"Save your ammo for when they rush us!"</strong> Sheriff Kane called from near the stairs to Level 2.<br><br>Jupiter checked the weapon the injured Harris had thrown him. It was a .32 calibre snub nosed revolver, like the police used to use, or perhaps army officers wore more as a badge rank than as a serious weapon to hurt anyone. It seemed to be in good working order but the engineer could tell it was a cheaply made mass-produced weapon of doubtful effectiveness. Just then Deputy Botasky was an unfortunate exception to the exchange quietening down as he looked over an upturned café booth to see the effect of Jupiter's home-made bomb. He fell back an instant later with a loud grunt of pain as a slug whacked into his shoulder. The pistol he held went flying from his grip and skated across the floor towards the corridor that led up from the dormitories.<br><br>Sherriff Kane decided now, while things were quietening down would be a good time to try negotiations. He punched the keys on the wall intercom beside him to talk with the Overseer’s office and was about to speak when suddenly he heard a new sound…<br><br>What the heck was that? Was it… snarling? And... <em>barking</em>…?
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Lemon Lime</strong> on <strong>22-01-2011, 20:47:38</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Alta Riley -2nd Level in The Science Lab</strong><br><br>Alta continued to organize her notes and findings and then moved over to a different station to begin entering it all onto the computer. It wasn't enough to just have it written down and copied. Of course this made it easier to transfer from one department to another and you never had to worry about papers getting lost but something about having a hard copy as opposed to just digital made her feel better. Her father was the same way and she figured she picked it up from him. Her fingers clicked away at the keyboard letting herself get further into her zone. Her ability to focus on mundane tasks well, astounded others and herself. She could do this all day but she did crave more excitement from time to time. <br><br>Within minutes of that thought, and in mid sentence as she typed she heard a low rumble and then the alarm go off. Her head shot up from her computer and she immediately saved what she had entered so far and immediately panicked. Something had compromised the vault's integrity and she started to blame herself. Should she have caught the problem? Had their been a problem? She looked at her papers again and realized it couldn't have been the vault, someone had to have DONE this, from the outside. She couldn't test the outside of the vault obviously, and she knew her numbers were correct. Someone or something had busted the door and from the sounds of it, they/it were coming in. Alta ran into the other part of the lab looking for her father who she quickly in one word tried to justify she had no idea this would happen and if he knew and what was going on. Her father quickly in a reassuring voice convinced her to breath and that he would figure out what to do and then return. And in the mean time she needed to make sure that the computer terminals (the ones in the lab at least) were off and locked so that no one would easily be able to access information that wasn't supposed to, like outsiders.<br><br>He made sure she had her knife with her and she nodded. And with that he kissed her forehead and was off with a few other senior scientists. The tall woman was told to lock the doors behind them and stay there with the few other lab workers she was with and she nodded and stood there. One of the other men, Neil heard the same thing and quickly locked the doors behind them and she went to her computer shutting it down and locking it. She looked around at the others and checked her pockets in the coat and jump suit finding all of her belongings where they should be. Alta sat there in silence not knowing what to do or say. Just listening to the alarm and her father's instructions. She was worried, but kept her cool... for the most part.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Flash Gorden</strong> on <strong>23-01-2011, 01:52:14</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Sam quickly added the chair to the barricade in the Atrium, happy to see it's existence. Many people had already set up behind it, and Sam was pleased again to see Herb and Fred in the area. Those sledgehammers they liked to carry around would probably be pretty effective if the fighting got into close corners, Sam figured. For now, though... Holding onto his bat, he peeked over the barricade just in time to hear Fred throw the bottle and shot.<br><br>Sam ducked back behind the barricade and set down his bat, placing his fingers in his ears as the firebomb went off. Good ol' Fred, thought Sam with a smile as he removed the fingers and grabbed his bat back up. The fires would hopefully keep on burning long enough to give them some breathing room... Sadly, that didn't seem to be the case, as a man Sam sort of recognized took a bullet and dropped his gun. His gun, hmm... <br><br>Sam, careful not to rise above the barricade, hurried on over and picked up the gun, giving it a quick glance over before he was suddenly distracted by a new, unfamiliar sound. Barking, maybe? Were the invaders about to send something new at them? Sam hurried back to the barricade, crouching behind it. Normally he'd try looking up over the barricade at whatever was making the sound, but he had seen what had happened to the previous owner of the gun he now had. Getting shot was not something he wanted to happen.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Haibane</strong> on <strong>23-01-2011, 02:07:00</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				NARRATOR<br><br>As one of the medical bay orderlies crawled forward and dragged the injured deputy back two clips of pistol ammunition fell from a pouch on his belt.<br><br>The sound of barking and snarling from the main door area grew louder. There were also orders of some sort being shouted up there too. Pretty much everyone in the atrium could hear it now and many stiffened and took up positions to try and repel what sounded like a rabid pack of wolves.<br><br>At the rear of the atrium the three deputies with the crate of molotovs took up one each and held zippo lighters close, ready to light the rag wicks.<br><br>Despite the chaos outside, within the <em>Atrium Cafe</em> Norbert (http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090107121018/fallout/images/thumb/7/77/Mr._Handy.png/830px-Mr._Handy.png) the Mister Handy barman and short-order grill chef was hovering on his fission burners behind the bar and polishing glasses. He floated up and down and his vision sensors scanned the front glass wall of the cafe watching for possible customers. It seemed an unusually slow lunchtime today.<br><br>The Atrium Cafe was the middle cubicle on the lower level on the left side of the Atrium (as you faced the main door). The left hand cubicle of those three was the Radio 1-11 booth and the right hand one was <em>Vault Hardware: "For All Your Day-to-Day Repairs and Needs!"</em>.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Urbanzorro</strong> on <strong>23-01-2011, 04:47:48</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Narrator<br><br>"Gimme an update" The Marshal said urgently to the trooper standing beside him. <br><br>"Yes sir" the trooper responded as he began to speak into the telephone receiver he was holding to his head. The receiver was connected to the switch board at the troopers feet. Which itself had a second cord coming out of it, this cord led it's way into the breached vault, at it's end stood one of the men pinned down at entrance to the hall into the atrium who's sole job was to relay the situation inside the vault via the telephone connection. "They&nbsp; they're pinned down sir" the trooper told The Marshal "they've taken control of the door room, as well as the rooms connected to it, but they can't break into the main portion of the vault. They say there's only one hallway and the vault dwellers are holding onto it tight." <br><br><em>'Smart'</em> The Marshal thought, <em>'Very smart'</em> he was willing to bet that who ever was in charge of the vault's defense knew that their best chance lay in never letting the attack get past the entrance hall...but he was also willing to bet that they had no idea what was about to hit them. "Skirmishers halt advance" he said firmly, knowing that the trooper at his side would relay the order without being told to do so. "They are to take of a defensive stance and maintain hold of what areas are currently under their control." without even looking at the trooper The Marshal began to move towards the vault's door. "Second wave in 10!!" he shouted as he got to the door and watched the men and women rush to obey his order. <br><br>To his left he saw an officer addressing his men. "Alright!" the officer shouted "This is it, we're moving in behind the 9s. 1st squad you're with the marshal, 2nd and 3rd you're with me! When we hit we hit hard, you take the objective, you secure the area, you kill anything that even thinks about fighting back. Do you get me?" he shouted. To which the officer's men answered "We get you sir!"&nbsp; <br><br>As soon as the officer had finished his little speech the 9s' handlers were already leading them into the vault's entrance.&nbsp; <br><br><hr><br>The sounds of snarls and barking, there was no longer any disputing that's what they were, grew louder and closer for several seconds until their source revealed itself. Ten dogs (http://images.wikia.com/fallout/images/f/f3/RaiderDogBOS.png), each one looking ready to kill and wearing what appeared to be some form of armor, sprinted down the hall to the atrium.<br><br>They cleared the hall before anyone in the atrium had any real time to react, their training kicking in as each dog moved to attack a different person. They had been trained to disrupt an enemy's firing line as much as possible whether they lived or died wasn't as important as the precious seconds that they bought for the troops behind them to advance. <br><br>Two of the attack dogs leaped directly over the makeshift barricade and landed very close to Herb. With teeth bared they attacked him, one dog jumping forward in the air, and the other running wide to attack him from the side. Their pack instincts working to make them an effective team. <br><br><hr> <br><br>Using the confusion created by the dogs, The Marshal and his troops moved forward. They appeared to be carrying bot automatic and bolt action rifles. As they advanced they opened fire on the barricade, as well as any vault security officers they saw on the upper level walkways. One man on the upper right walkway took several rounds to the chest, the bullets tearing through his armor as he fell back. <br><br><hr><br>The Marshal had a large smile on his face as he brandished his scoped .44 magnum, to call the weapon a 'gun' was an understatement, it was The Marshal's prized possession and practically more of a work of art than a simple weapon.&nbsp; Holding the gun out he took aim and let loose a round at one of the men in what looked like riot armor. The bullet caught the man square in his helmet's face plate, passing through it and his head as if neither one was even there. The man fell first to his knees, then to the floor. "One" The Marshal whispered to himself. <em>'I wonder how high my score will be today?'</em> he thought as he began to scan for his next target. 
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Writersblockade</strong> on <strong>23-01-2011, 07:12:08</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Herb in the Café: Suddenly invited over for Dinner</strong><br><br>How Much Is That Doggie In The Window - Patti Page (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkLE4X-bbU#)<br><br>Herb was beside himself when Fred threw the Molotov wiley-niley into the hall. There was no way to see if it paid off, and he sure as hell didn’t have any on him. There wasn’t much her could do but crab walk from person to person to make sure they were okay. The barking actually didn’t register until it got really close, but by then he only had enough time to wonder why there was so much barking before man’s best friend suddenly decided he looked good enough to eat.<br><br>“Now, now, Fido…” he muttered as the armored dogs tensed to strike. It was no use…he doubted they listened to anyone but whatever son of a bitch bred them. As the one dog went airborne, Herb swung his sledgehammer as close to a baseball swing as possible. He was literally working to knock the dog out of the park, but the added follow through could potentially work against the other dog coming from his side. For now, however, his instincts told him to swing for the fences on the arching mutt. In the split time of the swing and the dog’s approach, his mind suddenly churned out “How much is that Doggie in the Window” <br>
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Zillah</strong> on <strong>23-01-2011, 13:06:18</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Emily, Still in the Restaurant/Cafeteria<br><br>In case there was any doubt that the shit had truly hit the fan, the explosions confirmed it, in Emily's mind. Well, that, and the shouting. And the cursing. And the screaming. And the gunfire, and the barking of ... dogs?<br><br><em>There has been a breach of the Vault’s integrity. All personnel are required to report to their assigned stations. There has been a breach of the Vault’s integrity. All personnel are required to report to their assigned stations … </em><br><br>"Oh, shut up," Emily snapped. She wiped tears from her eyes ... it was at that point she noticed she was crying, and that her hands were shaking. She shook her head, and took a deep breath. <em>Don't panic, don't panic, Em, not now ...</em><br><br>She glanced about the room. Everyone else seemed equally confused, or panicked, or both. Looking around some more, she realized that there was only one main entrance into the restaurant, and that presently it was unguarded and vulnerable.<br><br>She saw Jason, one of her former students, huddled in a corner. Jason was a bookworm, not all that strong, but at least he was a familiar face.<br><br>"Jason, come here, help me," Emily said, doing her best to speak in her stern no-nonsense teacher's voice. She tapped one of the larger dining tables. "We need to get this table up in front of the door. Tip it, slide it ... and we'll get this place sealed off from whatever's attacking us."<br><br>It sounded good, anyway,<br><br>With a grunt, Emily pushed at the table, and began doing her best to defend the cafeteria.<br><br>She hoped that was part of proper Vault procedures. 
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Dashenka</strong> on <strong>23-01-2011, 18:29:42</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong><em>There has been a breach of the Vault’s integrity. All personnel are required to report to their assigned stations. There has been a breach of the Vault’s integrity. All personnel are required to report to their assigned stations</em></strong><br><br>Oh not another drill again. Kenya cursed out loud and took off her headphones. The emergency broadcast was send on the same frequency as the music she played so all the people inside the vault who were listening to radio 1-11 were now hearing the broadcast in stereo. The luxuries of the Vault were limitless. She sighed and shook her head and stood up to walk to the door and get herself something to drink from the cafetaria when she heard the gunshots. Instinctively she duck down to the floor and closed the door to the radio boot. <br><br>Oh dear. This was serious. Why would anything invade the Vault? Were there survivors out there? But why would they shout at them? She had to get to her knives in the dorm room so she could at least punish the heretics who interrupted her 'Daily Jazz Request'. The nerves!<br><br>The shooting stopped. Sort of but the next sound was even worse. Animals. Viscious looking ones for that too! Oh double dear. Sharp teeth, four legs, they could easily outrun her, so she had to be smarter. Her first plan was to lure them inside the boot, hide somewhere and lock them inside the radio studio as she made a run for the dorms. It was a flawless plan except for the fact that she had nowhere to hide in here. Unless she could climb up to the ceiling and somehow hold herself there with the door open until the animals were inside. Carefully she peeked over the glass to see what was happening and saw a very big mess unfold in the atrium. She heard another round of automatic fire and saw somebody go down on the first floor, her floor. <br><br>Shit. Frantically she looked around the boot for anything she could use as a weapon but unless vinyl or plastic could cut through body armor, it was useless. Or was it? They could use as decoy, giving her the seconds she needed to get herself to safety and to the dorms. Quickly she filled a box with cd's and vinyl and moved to the door. <br><br>Alright. Moment of truth. Here we go. She opened the door, threw the box empty over the railing and made a dash for safety towards the dorms.<br>
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Flash Gorden</strong> on <strong>24-01-2011, 00:08:12</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Sam Clarke, Running for the 2nd Level Stairs (13) from 10a </strong><br><br>Sam swore silently to himself as the dogs suddenly came running into the room. Attack dogs? In armor? He glanced at his bat, frowning. He had a feeling that the dog's armor would help to take most of the bite out of any swings he might make. Fortunately, none of the dogs hadn't charged directly for him, so he had a chance to make a quick plan. Sam looked around around the chaos that the Atrium had become, trying to think and move fast.<br><br>He spotted something laying by the stairs, which lead to the higher level, from which he could possibly make his way to the second or third levels... Sam hated to leave the Atrium and let the invaders have such a crucial room, but the room was getting overwhelmed and there was nothing he could do here. Back up on the second level, however, there was the armory, the med lab and all sorts of other things...<br><br>The sudden sound of guns starting to fire galvanized Sam into action and he ran for the stairs, scooping up the ammo clips from the floor on the way. He just hoped he could make it up the stairs and to the second floor without being shot.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Haibane</strong> on <strong>24-01-2011, 12:43:59</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				NARRATOR<br><br>It was chaos. Complete and utter chaos. When the attackers unleashed their pack of dogs the defenders were surprised, yes, but they did have all their eyes focused on that doorway and as the pack of dogs rushed snarling through it they were met by a hail of bullets and hurled Molotov cocktail bombs.<br><br>There was a ferocious blast of heat and flame, enough to singe the hair of the men and women holding the barricade if they were foolish enough to be looking over it. Instantly several of the dogs screamed and whined loudly as they were coated in blazing melted rubber. Armoured plates could stop bullets, but not fire. Several collapsed and died at once and two more, driven to madness by the pain threw themselves at the barricade, leaping over only to die beyond it, twitching and stinking terribly. Five of the dogs survived, two of them going for Herb Swann and three more darting towards other defenders. One took a length of steel pole in its face and fell down whimpering and twitching, injured but not dead while two others leapt for the throats of their targets.<br><br>Above on the bridge walk over the atrium the deputies up there flinched back, crouching and crawling away as the intense heat below them made their defensive position unbearable. It was one of these that Marshal shot as, eyes watering, he struggled to see through the smoke and heat.<br><br>The two men stationed in cover beside the door turned on the Sheriff's signal, one of them stepped out and blasted two attackers in the chest but was in turn shot by several bullets to the body, one of which tragically came from someone behind him on the barricade. The other man, quite inexperienced and unused to such terrors simply ran.<br><br>Several attackers burst into the atrium, jumping right through the burning wall of rubber and roasted dogs and began firing at anything that moved. The noise was intense and the rapid <em>PACK-PACK-PACK! … PACK-PACK-PACK!</em> sound could only mean semi-automatic weapons. Pandemonium, ensued with the defenders falling back from their barricade trying with pistols to stem the tide.<br><br>It was hopeless. Men and women on both sides fell everywhere but the attackers had more and with better combat skills, armour and guns. Some attackers fanned out to the sides and threw grapple irons up over the railings to the upper walkways. Light rope and wooden ladders uncoiled and they began climbing. Though the first one was shot down, others took her place.<br><br>Inside the Atrium Café Norbert the barbot observed the chaos outside as his plate glass window was blown in.<br><br>"Now that is enough!" he chided the crowd outside in his English butler's accent, "If you wish to order food, please form a queue!" Two men rushed in and shot him, the bullets thunking into his casing and making him shudder and spin round.<br><br>"Alright. That's <em>it</em>. You're barred!" he said to the first man, "And you're barred too. I've never seen such impatient customers!" More bullets hit him and whizzed by, shattering coffee mugs behind his head. That was sufficient to alert the robot's defence circuitry to the fact that these were not customers upset at an undercooked weiner, but something a lot more serious.<br><br>"I said, you're barred," the robot confirmed flatly, lowering his flame attachment, internally adjusting it from its usual low setting for grilling burgers and drying wet glasses to a more useful setting. A jet of lighted flame fuel shot out for fifteen feet across the room and consumed the two men in the doorway. They screamed and writhed and fell to the floor. The doorframe caught fire.<br><br>"Remember the Alamo and to Hell with Mexico!" Norbert shouted, apparently having had his vocal response codes written by a fan of old movies.<br><br>For now the Atrium Café was holding out, however elsewhere every Vault defender who could still move was falling back, some towards the Level 2 staircase, some towards the Level 3 stairs and others down the corridor towards the dorms alongside whose doorways more barricades had been set up. The large space of the Atrium itself was filling with acrid smoke and sometimes friends hit or shot each other in the chaos.<br><br>Sam Clarke gathered up the ammo clips and made it to the Level 2 stairs though he was not alone in deciding it was better to fight another day. Several vault personnel were ahead of him diving down the steps to the lower level. Sherriff Kane was almost bodily pushed aside; despite shouting orders and brandishing his pistol no-one was listening.<br><br>Herb Swann swung his heavy hammer and was gratified to see it connect solidly with the side of the leaping dogs head. The head distorted into a strange elongated and flatter shape as the skull was crushed. Blood gushed from the leaping creature's nose and mouth and its eyes bulged and popped out. The airborne body collided with Herb's left shoulder and though the jaws locked on, by the time the bite reflex was ready to kick in the creature was dead. The second dog was deflected from its attack by the falling body of its kennel-mate and made to leap around or over the obstruction. Herb would need to fight on or run and he had only split seconds to decide.<br><br>It was decision time for everybody, Fred Jupiter, Kenya Hamilton and Morgan Townsend among them. Stay to fight and quite possibly die, or run. And if so, where to?
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Ramster</strong> on <strong>24-01-2011, 17:32:36</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				FREDERICK HOWARD JUPITER, IN THE CAFE<br><br>Jupiter shoved the peashooter he'd picked up in his belt and brandished his sledgehammer as the dogs and shots flooded in, security officers went down and two of the snarling beasts set upon Herb. An officer standing not three feet away from him had just taken a bullet to the head, and Fred didn't want to be next.&nbsp; At least Norbert the Mr. Handy was heroically returning fire, quite literally, and shouting electronic defiance. Keeping his head down, Jupiter sneaked along behind the cover of cafeteria furniture, swinging his hammer around him to keep the dogs at distance, and rifled through the dead officer's kit for something, anything more powerful than the pop-gun he'd found.<br><br>Still crouching, Fred hurled another firebomb over the barricade at the horde of men and dogs trying to rush in through the doorway and the chaos and quickly changed his position as he heard the crash of glass.<br><br><strong>"HERB! FALL BACK!"</strong>, he shouted at his friend as he rushed towards the stairs to the second level. He thought he could see Sam Clarke running in front of him, but the thick smoke made it hard to see. At least it made them harder to hit. Not far behind him, he could hear the whirr of Norbert's circular saw slicing into someone. If he could hole up somewhere on the second floor with a few others, his hammer, and his petrol bombs, he could crush the bastards' skulls into hamburger meat as they tried to squash through a narrow opening, their numbers rendered almost useless.<br>
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Rachubka</strong> on <strong>24-01-2011, 18:12:59</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Morgan Townsend -- Stairs from second level to first. Likely to turn around.</strong><br><br>In her position, on her knees holding on to her Karry-All bag as it was really the only thing to hold on to, the sounds of the battle mere metres away were getting scary. She could see sheriff and his deputies along the railings, poised to strike at those that would dare to break through this barricade that everyone was talking about. That part she could not see. The violence had quieted down and Kane spoke quite a bit during this time but his words wouldn't register to the young doctor. <br><br>Just when she figured that she had the time and the composure to finally stand up and speak to the sheriff about just what her contribution to this defensive position could be, the sounds of dogs followed by a hail of bullets, screams, and improvised fire bombs filled the room again. Her own yelp joined the crescendo, dropping her again to her knees. This violence was not something she was used to and when one of the deputies slumped to the ground, the face of his helmet splattered with his own blood, Morgan had enough.<br><br>Survival mode clearly in effect, Dr. Townsend stood up and turned on her heel, making her way back toward the second floor. There were others that joined her, but were perhaps more inclined to protect themselves than her, shoving the lithe girl around. She was sure she was going to have a bruised rib when her mid section med the railing of the steps as a result of the mass atrium exodus, but that was the least of her problems. <br><br>Once at the top of the stairs, Morgan took a moment to assess what her options were. She could find her parents, who would be on this floor as a married couple. She couldn't be certain, however, as the both of them are intuitive enough to make their way what they deemed as a safer place. That would leave where she had started: the medical bay. With its elevator, she could move about each of the floors and help administer aid if necessary... or perhaps shut it down if the attackers manage to get that far on either of the floors. For her own sake, and the rest of the vault, the doctor quickly made her way back to her work station.<br><br>As the door slid away into the wall of the medical bay, Morgan reached in and turned off the lights. It simply made her feel safer knowing that she had the cover of darkness for at least a few seconds if an armed man burst through the door. Knowing her own 'office', so to speak, helped her navigate the room. Once close to the elevator, she stopped, sat down, and listened. What for? She wasn't sure. Morgan will know when it happens.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Dashenka</strong> on <strong>24-01-2011, 18:41:32</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				The smell that filled the atrium was almost overwhelming but she saw the cafetaria holding out. Good. Hold just a little longer. I'm almost there. Kenya ran into some wounded and probably dead people ubt she didn't stop to help. Her mind told her to keep moving. Anywhere. It took her a few seconds to climb the stairs to the dorm entrance and she was just in time to see a few armed people run the stairs to the second level. <br><br>That would probably be a good idea but she was so useless with a gun. Many times she had practiced and only if the target with big enough and the gun equally big she could hit the target. her own state after firing was often laughed at by others. No she needed her knifes which she kept safely in her stash in the dorms. Along with the moonshine. Thieves privileges was that you could get a drink anywhere anytime. Knowing she had little time she ran into the dorm straight for her place and noticed a few terrified Vault citizens in there. Deciding they were dead if they stayed here and they had a change of survival if they ran, no matter how slim, she barked some orders at them to run to the second level. Then she took her knives and pack and dashed to the door again. <br><br>There was an usual light coming from where the Vault door had been, Kenya guessed it must have been natural light, and it scared the hell out of her. There was an ancient TV show with machines no longer being made that had a spaniel presenter always asking permission to say 'cock'. She granted herself permission. Cursed it out loud and as the bullets began to rain down next to her, she half dived off the stairs to the Second Level. Praying on her way down not to get hit or mortally wounded.<br><br>Christ what a bloody mess this breach was...
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Writersblockade</strong> on <strong>25-01-2011, 00:12:46</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong> Herb Swann: Let’s get the hell outta here! To the stairs!</strong><br><br>Herb felt the connection more than he heard it. The sickening thud of his sledgehammer on the dog would be heard in his mind later on…provided he actually survived. The lifeless body fell against him just as the other attacked, gratefully making the other redirect his attack and go whizzing by. He heard that crazy damn Freddy Jupiter shout fall back, and it was like someone turned on a little electric motor on the man. <br><br>The best way that could describe Herb’s movement to the stairs would be the word “haulin ass”. There were many objects, and unfortunately a few people that were pushed out of his way to reach the stairs behind. He raised the sledgehammer up in an effort to protect at least his face and head, but with everything going on, he didn’t know what was coming from where. He made it past Norbert. His mind spent a split second trying to understand why such a large amount of flame was able to flow out the bot, but his reasoning skills were replaced with the need to run, so run he did.<br><br>He continued ducking bullets and flames. It was all terrible…just mind-numbingly terrible. People he knew, some of them he liked, dead or dying. This wasn’t possible…why would someone do this? Why wouldn’t they just leave them in peace? The thought kept him from descending into madness. Kept him from giving up entirely, and he knew that going up wasn’t the best idea in the word “Vault is closed up…lots of places to hide put…only a matter of time” he huffed as he ran.<br>
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Zillah</strong> on <strong>25-01-2011, 21:53:25</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Emily Steele, Starting to Panic in the Cafeteria</strong><br><br>The sounds of screaming and gunfire grew louder outside the doors of the cafeteria. At first, Emily put who she could to work on building a bigger barricade in front of the doors … then stopped. <em>What if people run here for safety?</em> she thought. <em>I can’t let … well, whatever’s out there! … kill someone outside the doors because I locked them out.</em><br><br>Of course, Emily knew that would mean the doors wouldn’t be as secured as they needed to be … and that by not securing them, she might be doing more harm than good.<br><br>Emily wanted to cry. Her hands trembled, and she kept looking around, trying to find someone else in authority, let them make these decisions that she didn’t want to make … except there wasn’t anyone. There weren’t too many people in the cafeteria – mostly older folks, and a few young people that were ordinarily her students. And most of them, old and young alike, seemed shell-shocked. Emily didn’t blame them, to be honest. It’d be easier not to think.<br><br><em>Stupid manuals,</em> Emily thought bitterly. <em>I’ve studied them all my life, I know them practically by heart, but they never covered a contingency like <strong>this</strong> …</em><br><br>So with the help of a few students, Emily placed a few tables in front of the doors … but left them open a crack, so they could see anyone approaching.<br><br>“And if anything nasty comes close,” Emily told her students, “slam everything shut. Fast.”<br><br>Nervously, Emily paced around the cafeteria as her students did as they were instructed, keeping a close eye out for attackers. She stole uneasy looks up at the ceiling, towards the large ventilation ducts, which seemed, well, <em>louder</em> than normal. She didn’t know if that was paranoia or not. <br><br>She also glanced about for other exits, trying to determine if the attackers might assault them from another direction, or maybe there was a better way to escape to somewhere more secure …
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Urbanzorro</strong> on <strong>29-01-2011, 23:21:19</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"STOP STOP!" Sheriff Kane shouted at his men as they pushed passed him. "Hold the line! We need to hold the line!" He tried to step in the way of one of the engineers and was only thrown aside by the man's body weight and momentum for his effort. He struggled to catch his balance, knowing that falling now would mean he might never get back up. As he caught his balance he looked all around the Atrium at the battle which raged inside of it. The invaders had already overrun the first line of barricades on the main level, and now THEY were using them as cover from his own security officers' return fire. On the upper level he could see several of the invaders opening fire with automatic rifles. They'd already cut down the men and women he'd stationed up there and were now using his own tactics against him. <em>'We've lost the atrium'</em> he thought to himself with despair. The defensive line had fallen and Kane knew that there was really no way to form it up in the atrium again. He had to salvage what he could, as fast as he could. He needed to pull his men and women back as fast as possible and try to form up a new line or this would just turn into a giant rolling retreat until they all had their backs to the wall! <br><br><br>The only exception to the general retreat, which was already taking place without Kane needing to order it,&nbsp; was the small Café that Norbert ran. The crazy robot must have activated its security programs and now it was attacking any and everyone who tried to enter the Café. Kane winced inwardly as he saw one of his recently 'deputized' men, Bobby Carmichael, dive into the Café in order to seek cover behind it's tables. Only to have Norbert open up on him with his flamethrower and shout out "This is for Davey Crockett!" It would almost have been funny if it wasn't so horrible. <br><br><br>"FALL BACK!" Sheriff Kane shouted as loud as he possibly could. He cupped both of his hands around his mouth in order to be able to be heard "Fall back on me!" as he shouted this Kane started to step back wards and to the side. His pistol in his hands as he opened fire and made his way to the stairs leading to the 3rd level. "Fall back to the 3rd Level!" he shouted hoping that some of his men might hear him and follow his orders. <br><br><hr><br>At the other end of the atrium The Marshal was taking cover behind the first barricades, to his right was the Officer in charge of the platoon that had come with him in the 1st wave. "Alright" The Marshal said to the officer, raising his voice to be heard above the chatter of the rifles being fired by the troopers all around them. "the next wave should be arriving within a minute or so. When they hit they're going to push past our position and storm the entrances to this room on the upper and lower levels. While they do that I need you and your men to pour everything you've got onto the enemy! I want them to be forced to keep their heads down!" The officer nodded in response. <br><br><hr><br>3 minutes later the next wave arrived. As the men and women charged passed the barricades and opened fire they found the resistance being put up before them to be quite less than the first wave encountered. Many of the Vault Security personnel had heard the Sheriff's orders and were already following him down the stairs to the 3rd level. This combined with the suppressive fire being laid down by the remaining men of the 1st wave meant that there was very little fire power being directed at the advancing troops. <br><br><br>But once again, the exception to this was the café, Norbert was still operational and was proving to be quite the efficient warrior. 4 of the invaders attempted to enter the café. As soon as they stepped into it they were met by Norbert's fury. The robot shouted "Down with Santa Ana!" and let loose a 15 second gout of flames into the intruders. The front two men were killed almost instantly. The super hot flames both ruining their bodies and raising their core temperatures to fatal levels. As they fell to the ground, their brains and organs cooked inside their bodies, the other members of the squad tried to fan out and opened fire with their own weapons. Their .32 caliber rounds pinged of Norbert's metal skin as he almost instantly closed the distance with them. His saw equipped arm, the blade already red with the blood of the vault's invaders and defenders alike, let out a ferocious roar as it spun to life. Norbert swung the weapon in an upward arch, the blade cleaving through the closest invader's elbow as if it were not even there. Without pause Norbert opened up with his flame thrower again. This time launching a short 5 second blast directly into the face of the final invader. "I said this establishment is CLOSED!" Norbert said firmly. His statement was instantly followed by a loud metallic <em>PING</em>, those who knew about such things would be able to recognize the sound as a bullet striking and penetrating a metal target. Norbert's three ocular sensors first flickered then went dark. His arms dropped and his thruster shut down. He fell to the floor 'lifeless.' <br><br><br><hr><br>"Good shooting son" The Marshal said to the trooper next to him. The man held a sniper rifle in his hands, a small trail of smoke filtering from the barrel. The Marshal couldn't help but smile. He'd always appreciated precision, and it amused him that a single man with a weapon and the ability to take his time was able to do what an entire squad wasn't. <br><br>That having been said.... The damn robot had stalled their assault! He couldn't have his men push any farther than the cafe while that thing was there. If they had to fall back it would have been a catastrophe. The defenders had more time to re-organize than The Marshal would have liked. The atrium was theirs though. The last resistance had either fled or been cut down. He had seen a number of the defenders head down one of the sets of stairs and he knew that they would probably have some sort of defense ready....<br><br><hr><br>On Level 3 Sheriff Kane halted his men at the foot of the stairs. Here there was a good defensive position where the corridor turned an angle by the door to the hydroponics deck. It was vital that this facility remain in their control because of the important machinery, food and water inside. Using spare blast doors from the stores and an arc welder from the engineers’ workshops Kane set about sealing the corridor off at the angle and punching weapon slits into the steel door his men were hurriedly securing in place.<br><br>Trooper Samuel Reemes was one of the men who had made it out of the Atrium in one piece although several of the other deputies were injured.<br><br><hr><br>In the restaurant and dormitories area things did not look good. The attackers were firing shots down the corridor from the Atrium forcing everyone behind the makeshift barricade there to crawl between it and the restaurant itself. The senior person present was the head of the science team Doctor Morrison and while he had a brilliant mind his tactical sense was sadly lacking. His age and approaching infirmity didn't help.<br><br>"We should counterattack!" He was shouting to Deputy Linda Akkermann, the most senior platoon leader of the security team present, "Counter-attack! Charge them now before they charge us! Push them back out whoever they are!"<br><br>"Charge? What with? I have four troopers here and a dozen plumbers and electricians armed with wrenches and table legs. We'd be shot to pieces before we got twenty yards, especially in a straight narrow corridor. No, we should make them come to us. We’ve still plenty of ammo and flame-bombs."<br><br>"You must attack! Staying here will only get us all killed!" Doctor Morrison kept taking his glasses off, pulling a cloth from his lab coat pocket and wiping them, then putting them back on, only to remove them ten seconds later and repeat the gesture. Linda watched his nervousness. The man was losing it.<br><br>"I am not going to ask anyone to charge back in there," Akkermann said firmly, "Besides the restaurant is full of women and teenagers - even some kids. Look, I'll watch the line here. You take care of getting the non-combatants down to Level 2. The barracks and armoury are down there so at least there's more weapons for those who can use them. Now go!" Akkermann turned to shout for volunteers to man the barricade. She did at least have the rest of the box of Molotovs and a couple of men willing to throw them. One was cast now up the corridor towards the Atrium where it shattered and burst into a splash of flame in the doorway. It helped keep the attackers away and the smoke gave Morrison cover while he ran back past the dorms calling for non-combatants and minors to follow him.<br><br>Over the next ten minutes the med-bay elevator made several trips shuttling people to relative safety and bringing ammo and more home-made firebombs up. Two of those who were sent down to the medical bay and who then bumped into Doctor Townsend were Emily Steele and Kenya Hamilton. They were sent into the science lab to clear space for the last few deputies who were not already busy or casualties to get supplies up to Level 1.<br><br><hr><br>Overseer Blok came to his final decision. He had made several announcements over the Vault PA system calling for a ceasefire but the attackers seemed completely uninterested in negotiation. They appeared to want to kill or take prisoner everyone and then... what. He still had no idea what they wanted but the technology in the Vault must be of interest to them and maybe... maybe the women as well. It was clear they had no need of more powerful weapons; the attackers gave no sign of having a shortage of automatic rifles or ammunition.<br><br>No... it was time.<br><br>"Warren. I think we need to do what we have to do.” Blok switched off his computer and stood up from his desk. He addressed the thirty year old thick-set man in the leather jacket beside him. “You understand of course. I've kept you close in the past and allowed the Vault Rats to carry on under your leadership doing what <em>you</em> needed to do. Without me pulling the strings you and your gang would have been disbanded by Kane a long time ago. I stopped this from happening for the good of letting your boys vent their frustrations. Now you owe me. Gather the gang and escort me down to the reactor level. It's house-moving day."<br><br>Warren Steinman was a nasty piece of work. He'd been an electrical engineer once but had been busted down to janitor by Sheriff Kane for constantly pilfering stores and doing God-knows what with them. Kane suspected he had friends in the security team too and was machining parts down to make weapons. Why the son of a bitch needed weapons Kane didn't know but he didn't like it one bit and he put pressure on Steinman and his unruly gang of misfits, thugs and time-wasters, always coming down hard on them when there were scuffles or disagreements in the corridors. Steinman’s gang called themselves the Vault Rats and they were a royal pain in the ass. Originally just teenaged layabouts and bullies he'd expected them to grow out of their thuggish posturing as they matured but they hadn't. Now the five of them - along with their leader Steinman they were Andy Oades, Kevin Mackerson, Bob Burnes and Angela Carling – would be of great use to Overseer Rameses Blok. In some ways Angela Carling was the worst of the lot. Kane was convinced she slept around for anyone who could be of use to Steinman and his boys. In return for sex she bribed engineers, science lab staff and probably his own troopers to get them <em>stuff</em>. It might be chems, it might be some of the A grade moonshine or worst of all it was probably guns. Kane however kept a tight rein on the armoury stores which is why he was convinced the Vault Rats were making their own guns from machined parts.<br><br>Steinman gave the Rats’ whistle – one long call and one short at a higher pitch. Right outside Blok’s office doorway Kevin and Bob; the one tall and blonde and wiry, the other shorter and bald with a broken nose - stuck their heads round the doorway.<br><br>“It’s time, Rats, we’re moving out. Plan B. Bob – go get the other two. Bob jogged off down the corridor his baseball bat slung over his shoulder. Andy and Angela were loitering about near the barracks entryway while two deputies kept an eye on them. Men more useful to Kane or Akkermann right now but wasted down here because Kane considered the Rats such a threat. Andy and Angela came running back with Bob. They understood Plan B well enough. The day had come.<br><br>Blok had always had a Plan B in readiness. While the Rats were useful as his own private security force he knew that one day he’d be voted out as Overseer and someone else voted in. Without his powerful position Steinman would then become as much a threat to him as he was to Kane; over the years Blok had let Steinman and his Rats get maybe a little too powerful. The reason so many fission batteries went missing from the door control consoles when they were being dismantled wasn’t because that bird-brained idiot Morrison stored them away and forgot where, it was because Angela had been busy on her back for two days and got three separate engineers to hand them over in return for her usual favours. What Steinman had done with that many fission batteries Blok didn’t want to think about. No, Steinman was only useful while Blok protected him. And now the Vault was lost it wouldn’t take even the slow-witted Rat’s leader long to work out that he was now top doggy around here with Blok – or without him.<br><br>So Blok called in his favours. Gathering up his pistol, some ammo, chems and pre-war money and stuffing them in a Karry-All, Blok moved to the exit of his quarters. Steinman and Andy Oades went ahead, pushing a path through the crowded hallway with the others bringing up the rear and giving fierce ‘you don’t want to know where we are going’ looks at those who stared as the small formation made it’s way down past the stairs to Level 1 and towards the medical bay and its vital elevator.<br><br>“Shee-yit!” Clive Webber cursed as Blok and the Vault Rats went by, “The rats are leaving the sinking ship!”<br><br>“Shut it, Webber, you asshole,” Bob Burnes snapped, pushing the security man aside. Webber fell back against Fred Jupiter and Sam Clarke who were helping defend the base of the stairwell down from Level 1, before falling to the floor. Herb Swann was nearby and saw the exchange too.&nbsp; Blok stared at the three engineers, seeing that they had probably worked out what was going on. They were three good men and he knew they could prove useful. For now.<br><br>Blok addressed them keeping his voice low so as not to be heard by anyone else. “You each have a choice. You can stay here, help out these good people, and die gallantly for your efforts or you can come with me. Vault 111 doesn’t just have just one exit. There is a second, secret exit to be used only in emergencies by the Overseer and any he or she deems worthy. As far as I'm concerned that means you three, myself, and these fine 'gentlemen' escorting me. It’s your choice but make your mind up quick because time is short. I know you may consider simply telling everyone about the exit, but I implore you to do otherwise. If you tell everyone, well then everyone will try to use the exit, any chance of keeping it a secret will be lost, and we may be unable to escape. BUT if you don't tell anyone then....we should be able to escape while our Vault's good citizens keep these savages at our gates distracted.”
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>TheVillain</strong> on <strong>30-01-2011, 11:54:16</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Samual Reemes, Ready To Kick Ass</strong><br><br>Samuel Reemes was a security deputy. Not much of someone who could be expected to enforce all of the rules or even knew them. He was, however, good with a gun and good with solving a crisis with talking. Usually. The 10 mm pistol felt natural in his hands as his armored and armed form gets ready for the sheriff's plan. He manned one of the punched holes to watch for invaders.<br><br>"<strong>Sheriff Kane, ready at this one.</strong>"
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Writersblockade</strong> on <strong>30-01-2011, 15:26:55</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Herb Swann w. Freddy Jupiter and Sam Clarke: Choices on Level 2</strong><br><br>Herb saw it all, but was too stunned to speak. Here was the man who was supposed to protect them…to see this all through one way or the other, running and running hard. He knew then that anything he tried concerning the invasion would be all for nothing. Dead friends up there, and hard choices to make right where he was standing. In his confusion, he turned to the other men and frowned mightily. <br><br>Herb was no small man. He was shaped by the world he occupied and made strong by the work that kept this place, his home, running. But those dogs were just the start of it…even now there were invaders advancing while they retreated. He knew it was all gone, and their hopes now rested in a harsh world outside. He’d seen the movies…it would be horrible, full of grotesqueries not fit for man. What it wasn’t, however, was certain death. <br><br>One thing was abundantly clear. Herb did not want to die. “I’ll go…but I’m taking any able body person I see on the way. If that slows me down, so be it…but if we can’t make a huge announcement then we have to do that much…we have to.” He stared at the Overseer, his eyes hard and something else. Perhaps the word would be ‘sure’. He was desperate to live, but simply could not leave without feeling like he’d done what he could to help others do the same.<br>
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Flash Gorden</strong> on <strong>30-01-2011, 21:39:14</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Sam Clarke, with Herb and Fred, chatting with the Overseer and his men</strong><br><br>Sam felt... disappointed in the Overseer. Their leader was running away when he should have been working the hardest to repel the invaders. It was saddening.&nbsp; But deep within him, Sam could feel something telling him that Blok was right. Loosing the Atrium had been a horrible mistake, and those dogs were probably only the start of their worries. But could he really abandon the Vault? All these people?<br><br>Sam stayed silent until Herb spoke. Herb was a good man, and he was enough for Sam to decide. "Herb's right," Sam said with a frown. "If nothing else, we should bring some scientists and doctors along with." Whatever await them outside of the Vault, he was sure doctors and scientists would be useful. Plus, it'd save more people from whatever these invaders were going to do. "In case if we get hurt or anything like that," he added, trying to justify it to the Overseer.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Zillah</strong> on <strong>31-01-2011, 00:17:52</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Emily, Headed to the Science Lab<br><br>Things were pure bedlam. At first, when reinforcements had come to the restaurant, Emily had been relieved. Clearly, procedures were in order, whatever sort of attackers or dangers that threatened the Vault were swiftly being dispatched ... and things would shortly be back to normal.<br><br>Except, well, they <em>weren't</em>. <br><br>As Emily was escorted out of the restaurant, she saw all the bloodshed. And heard all the gunfire. And heard ... <em>dogs? Can that be right?</em> she wondered. She'd thought the restaurant was chaotic ... but what she saw outside of it was pure anarchy. Terrified, she'd scurried along with armed guards to the medical bay, hoping to find safety there ... but no. What they really wanted was another pair of hands to carry things. She'd been handed some extra ammunition and a baseball bat, and sent to the science labs.<br><br>"This can't be happening, no, no, no," Emily murmured, as she entered the science lab. Her world was all about procedure and order and routine, and in the space of a few short minutes, that world had disintegrated. She didn't know what to do.<br><br>Looking about, she desperately hoped to see family and friends - her father, perhaps - but no. The only familiar face she saw was that of Kenya Hamilton, the Vault DJ, who'd she'd chatted with a few times before. She didn't know the woman well, but she thought she was a good person. She smiled nervously at Kenya, and idly twirled her baseball bat about in her hands ... and dropped it.<br><br>"Stop being so clumsy," Emily said to herself in a scolding tone. She picked it up, wiping tears from her eyes, not noticing that she was crying.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Ramster</strong> on <strong>31-01-2011, 21:15:23</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Freddy Jupiter, answering opportunity's knocking, with Herb, Sam, the Overseer and his goons</strong><br><br>At the Overseer's offer, Fred didn't hesitate. He didn't feel like being besieged any longer, for some reason. <strong>"Sure, <em>Thad,</em> I'm in. Lead the way."</strong> Once he was on the outside, at least he wouldn't have to put up with those asshole Vault Rats any more. <br><br>Once the Rats and Overseer had headed a yard or two past him, he held back Herb Swann and hissed in his ear.<br><br><strong>"Say, Herb, old Blok has a point. I'd rather not stick around here and end up as dog food. And I'd like to see the outside world too. Imagine there's no ceiling, above us only sky. Imagine more possessions. Just one thing. <br><br>See and remember how that bastard's happy to leave the children of Vault 111 to die to save his wrinkled ass. Let's save as many folks as we can without him noticing. Then, on the outside, we cremate the fucker with my last Mollies. Let's roll."</strong><br><br>He quickly caught up with the small group of people headed for the secret exit. 
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Dashenka</strong> on <strong>01-02-2011, 10:40:17</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Kenya Hamilton hiding with others. </strong><br><br>Kenya looked around the mass of people. Shit. If whoever was invading the Vault would find them here it would become a massacre. She had to get out of here and find a better place to hide. Then she spotted her teacher. She had hated school as she found it pointless being in a vault but the teacher was nice. The woman was crying and except for the baseball bat, which she didn't seem too good in handling, she had nothing on her to protect herself. Kenya felt her hips where she had stuck her knifes and walked up to Emily and picked up the baseball bat. <br><br>"It's going to be fine."<br><br>Immediately after she had said it, she cursed at herself for lying but it was the best she could do. <br><br>"Emily we have to get out of here," she said while she laid a comforting arm around the woman's shoulder.<br>"If they find us in here, we're all going to be butchered."<br><br>Then she saw Freddy and some others. They had a plan. They must have!<br>She showed Emily how to hold the wood and then showed the teacher her knifes.<br>"Come. We go with them."<br>With that she dragged Emily with her towards Freddy, Sam and the others.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Rachubka</strong> on <strong>02-02-2011, 16:15:05</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Morgan Townsend -- Ushered into the science lab with the other women</strong><br><br>Morgan was not a fan of this useless feeling. When it came to living or dying, though, she wasn't going to complain a whole lot of it was done for her safety. Just how safe was it, though? By now, the group of infiltrators would have made a nice home in the atrium. The only thing really preventing them from coming up was a makeshift defense in the cafeteria and a shaking holding of the stairwell to the second level. She could only hope they don't know how to use an elevator.<br><br>Sitting on one of the desks in the lab, Dr. Townsend watched as her fellow vault dwellers paced and pondered about their current situation. Many cried, many other consoled them, and a few were agitated by being shut into this lab. Morgan figure out what to do with herself in here. As a senior doctor, she would have assumed her life's work would have been more useful to the sheriff and those protecting her... but perhaps there just aren't any wounded to attend to. The doctor recalled the poor man that was shot clean in the head, crumpling down a few yards in front of her. It made her shudder.<br><br>The young woman had her hands flat together between her clamped thighs, trying to keep them warm despite the cold jitters. It was so annoying to be sitting here, waiting for this whole thing to end. Judging from the body language, the movement of the remaing security forces, it was not good. It made her wonder where her parents were, if they were safe. She wondered why they weren't here with her in the lab - probably went further into the dorms to scrounge up those that were locked with fear in their rooms. Dad always liked playing the noble type.<br><br>Morgan came back to reality when she noticed that two of the women were making their way out of the science lab. It was a curious sight as she would have assumed that the guard would rather not have people run about all willy-nilly and potentially get in the way. The one girl, the voice of radio one-eleven, looked determined to be out of this lab. The doctor bit her bottom lip in thought, outlining all the pros and cons of just running out there with them.<br><br>It all boiled down to her wanting to help out here. The call for medical aid is bound to happen.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Urbanzorro</strong> on <strong>04-02-2011, 01:44:22</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Thaddeus Blok sneered at the three men, his eyes glowering especially hard at Fred Jupiter. "You want to stay here wiseass? Then keep up with the mouthing off and my boys will see to it that you do, buster." Blok had a wild almost uncontrolled look in his eyes. Beside him Steinman opened his jacket to reveal the handle of some home made weapon, some sort of gun. He made sure Jupiter had seen the gun. The leather-clad Vault Rat smiled horribly and let his jacket close.<br><br>It looked bad for the Overseer and his five goons to be moving about the Vault on their own but if Thaddeus had some engineers with him, and better still some staff from the science and medical teams it would look better, as though he were on the case and organising an important task. He curtly ordered Andy Oades and Kevin Mackerson to find someone suitable and they ducked into the science lab and grabbed some staff at random. To their surprise Alta Riley, Amy Saunders and the Vault's senior doctor, Morgan Townsend found themselves being bundled out the door to join the Overseer's team.<br><br>"I need the assistance of you ladies now, please," Blok said calmly as though nothing more serious than an electrical fault had occurred in the Vault's wiring. "Down on Level 3, there's important work to be done. Follow my boys."<br><br>Kenya Hamilton had already seen Fred Jupiter and grabbed hold of his arm as the three engineers went by, Angela Carling and Bob Burnes bringing up the rear. Kenya dragged Emily with her and soon the five women and three men were travelling down to Level 3 in the med-bay elevator.<br><br>On Level 3 the doors slid open to reveal a hive of activity. In the general stores deputies and engineering people as well as ordinary workers and students were stripping the place of useful items to support the barricade that was being built to hold onto this level.<br><br>Upstairs there was a dull THWUMP! sound as a heavy explosion rumbled through the Vault. There were screams and the chatter of automatic guns.<br><br>"Here they come!"<br><br>"The Stairs, they're on the stairs!"<br><br>"What about the guys holding Level 2?"<br><br>"I'm hit!"<br><br>"The restaurant's been taken, everyone's dead!"<br>“Game Over Man! Game Over!”<br><br>The hallways were filled with confused shouts and running people. Panic was starting to take hold, things were falling apart.<br><br>"Hold the line!" The booming voice of Sherriff Kane roared. "Hold the barricade! We've the reactors here and the stores and food and water. We stand here! All of us!"<br><br>Blok led his motley party of people out of the store-room, along the corridor. At the junction that led down to the engineering and reactor rooms to the left and up to the Level 2 staircase to the right the Overseer and the Sherriff came face to face.<br><br>"Sir!" said the Sherriff, then his face clouded over, "What? What are you doing?"<br><br>&nbsp;Blok barked, "Out of my way, Kane. Important business. Overseer business."<br><br>"What the hell is this?" Kane frowned getting angry.<br><br>"This," said Steinman, stepping past Blok and pulling a gun from his jacket and pointing it at Kane's chest, "Is a VIP party on VIP business. Your business Sherriff, is to defend the Vault. Now do your job and we’ll do ours."<br><br>"Steinman, well, well, well. I should have known a rat like you would be a part of this. Going to the reactor level access tunnel hm? I'm might have known your sort would rather run than fight."<br><br>Steinman continued to point his gun, his hand though was shaking, "Make it easy on yourself Kane, don't cause any trouble. Old Smiley has a hair trigger. Built it myself, and it tends to go off if I get agitated."<br><br>Behind Steinman the other Vault Rats made sure that the eight civilians were hauled past the junction of the two corridors and sent down towards the reactor level.<br><br>Suddenly a gun went off, smoke coiling from the barrel of Steinman's homemade weapon. Kane, wide-eyed slumped down in the hallway. At once there was a stunned silence as several of the security team stared at Steinman. The shocked pause lasted only a few seconds before there was a shout of "BASTARD!" and a massive blast. Steinman's face dissolved into a red splash as Walt Kruger, up until now a completely ineffective security man, leveled his shotgun at the Vault Rat leader and gave him both barrels at point blank range. The wall behind Steinman was splashed with red gore and his heavy body thudded against it.<br><br>With a yell Bob Burns ran back to the intersection his baseball bat ready to swing at Kruger, "Warren!" he shouted, "Fuck!" At the barricade half the men were shooting at the attackers coming down the stairs while the other half were in shock having seen their Sherriff murdered, Steinman's head blown off, and their Overseer doing nothing at all.<br><br>Burnes swung at Kruger who dived aside. Another deputy then shot Burnes in the side. He grunted and went down, rolling over and clutching his ribs.<br><br>At the front of the collection of civilians Overseer Blok decided now was the time to take his bow and depart this particular stage. Taking a strange looking flat key from a chain round his neck and a 10mm pistol from his Karry-All he bolted down the corridor towards the reactor maintenance tunnel past the red and yellow 'RESTRICTED ZONE', 'DANGER HIGH RADS', 'PROTECTIVE SUITS MUST BE WORN' and 'GOT YOUR RAD-X?' signs. The other Vault Rats grabbed weapons and ran to follow Blok. Dragging the<br>three engineers and the science, medical and other staff along with them.<br><br>Thanks to Kane’s untimely death, Andrew Withers was now the highest ranking security officer. He looked over at Samuel Reemes and said “Go follow them!” If there’s some way out we need to know about it!”<br>
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>TheVillain</strong> on <strong>04-02-2011, 08:43:37</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Sam so does not like the idea of not shooting a murderer or two right here and now, but the man had a point. This, what was happening now, was just chaos and madness. It was death and violence where the number of survivors would probably be on one hand- and those that did survive would probably wish they hadn't.<br><br>The Vault was going to fall soon, with the sheriff dead, some of his lieutenant now dead traitors, and the Overseer running with his tail between his legs. Damn it all! Alright, think it out Sam. You want to help? Think of a way. Think of a way to help these people live to see another florescent alarm simulated sunrise.&nbsp; <br><br>"<strong>Right, see what we can do about evacing survivors. I'm on it!</strong>" Sam replies, following the group of renegades if not too closely. Yes, that was the best he could think of to help survivors. Just obey orders for now. He doesn't have a better idea himself and this could work. Yes, this could work.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Flash Gorden</strong> on <strong>06-02-2011, 07:29:27</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>Sam Clarke, With the Escapees</strong><br><br>Sam was shocked. Astounded. People were not only actually fighting each other instead of the invaders, they were killing each other. That was just so stupid. And the fact that he was with the guys who fired the first shot. He still felt resolved to escape, and he was glad that the Overseer had gone along with his advice on bringing some scientists and doctors along, but he felt rather angry and upset that they were leaving the vault in this sort of situation. The chief of security would have been a great help to the defense, he was sure. What Sam didn't feel, however, was like trying to wrestle away from the Vault Rat that had taken a hold of him.<br><br>He could read, though. Heading into an extremely radioactive zone without any protection was very stupid... But if there was a hidden escape rout from the Vault, he supposed it would make sense for it to be in a place very few people wandered. Didn't stop it from being dangerous, though. Getting out of the vault wouldn't be quite as good if he ended up becoming some sort of radioactive monster in the process.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Urbanzorro</strong> on <strong>13-02-2011, 00:56:05</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Overseer Blok's path lead him and those following him to what appeared to be a simple wall with a broken terminal. He quickly inserted the strange key into the terminal's intake slot and a soft rumbling could be heard form behind the wall.<br><br><br>A moment later the section of the wall directly next to the terminal slid downwards into the floor to reveal a small hallway. "This way" Blok said as he lead the way, it was a short walk. No more than 20 feet before the hallway opened up into a room that was an exact duplicate of the Vault's main door room. As they approached the door Blok addressed the remaining Vault Rats as he punched a short sequence into his Pip-Boy "Gentlemen, and lady I thank you very much for your services, you have proven yourselves to all be quite useful mammals...but your usefulness has worn itself out. And so...It is time we said goodbye." <br><br><br>It was at this exact moment that this door room's only difference from the main door room became apparent. Eight auto-turrets (http://images.wikia.com/fallout/images/7/76/MK-I_Turret.png), with two turrets in each corner of the room's ceiling, instantly activated with a deadly purpose. They were old Mark 1 models, installed from Vault-Tec's surplus of military equipment. Each turret was hooked into the same computer system and as such they each opened fire in the exact same moment. <br><br><br>The turrets did their job with near perfect efficiency, they cut down the remaining Vault Rats in moments. The gangers didn't even have time to draw their weapons in defense. As the last Vault-Rat fell to the ground the sounds of electric discharges could be heard....Something had gone wrong in the turrets' system. Before the smoke had even cleared their barrels they were all offline...never to fire again.<br><br><br>The smirk that had been on Blok's face disappeared. <em>'Damn Vault-Tec!!'</em> he thought to himself...if only they had equipped the vault with better turrets he would have been able to hold his advantage and force his press-ganged workers to do his bidding for a bit longer. "Now..." he said searching for words "Now....we can't afford to go back for the others. I know you might want to but if we do we will lead the enemy right to us. "The door we came in through will seal automatically in under two minutes. I understand that you may view me as a monster...but I only did what I needed to in order to insure the survival of at least some members of our community. The door behind me leads out of the Vault, we can leave and start a new life. I'm sure that you will see that under my guidance there is no doubt we will survive."<br><br><br><br>He knew he was in a tight spot, should they decide to kill him there was no way he could defeat them all, his only hope was that they would show some mercy. <br><br>
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>TheVillain</strong> on <strong>13-02-2011, 04:44:47</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<span class="bbc_u"><strong>Samuel Reemes, Kicking Ass and Taking Names- Starting with Overseer Blok</strong></span><br><br>This was Samuel Reemes, Shocked and Appalled. Sure, the Vault Rats had rarely been anything but trouble but to be gunned down like that? That just wasn't right- not right at all. Samuel Reemes decided to act quickly, there was a 2 minute timer that was counting down apparently. Now he had about a minute forty seconds by his count.<br><br>Pulling his weapon, Deputy Reemes pulls his gun out at the same time he puts on his Big Boy pants. Time to be a hero Reemes, here's hoping it doesn't get yourself killed.<br><br>"<strong>OVERSEET BLOK!</strong>" Reemes yells out, stepping through the up door and into view, his gun in front of him and ready to fire.<br><br>"<strong>GIVE ME THE DAMN KEY, YOU MURDERING TRASH!</strong>"
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Of Molerats and Men (IC)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Ramster</strong> on <strong>15-02-2011, 23:36:01</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<strong>FRED H. JUPITER - WITH THE ESCAPE PARTY, MAKING IT FESTIVE</strong><br><br>Fred ran along with the group, shouting at Kenya and Emily to hurry as they ran on to a large door that even he hadn't found before while sneaking through the Vault. Given the choice between sticking around and certain death, or taking a few rads and seeing sunlight for the first time, he moved fast and was glad he'd bought some Radaway.<br><br>Then, the Overseer stupidly turned on his own security. Perfect. He'd just signed his own suicide note. The door in front of them was theirs to swing open to freedom, and finally the man who had jailed Vault 111 and left it to die would get his comeuppance. Not that Fred would miss the Vault Rats, on the contrary; but he'd fantasised about decorating the ceiling with fragments of Overseer skull for years. <br><br>As one of the Sams screamed at their brave leader and held him at gunpoint, Fred took the chance to slip behind the nervous elder as he made excuses for himself The technician stepped behind Blok, between him and the Vault exit, pulled open a bottle of moonshine, raised the bottle to his lips and took a long swig.<br><br><strong>"To freedom!"</strong><br><br>He swung the 40 pound head of his sledgehammer with berserker strength at Blok's elderly skull, roaring <strong>"Blok, I've always thought you were a cowardly piece of shit. Nice knowing you!"</strong><br><br>
			</dd>
		</dl>
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