Of Blood and Iron(Closed)

Zestari gave a shout as the loud clatter of gunfire spewed forth from the doorway. Dancing on her hooves, she wasn’t sure whether to follow Bakewell in and try and smash the other turret, or draw her pistol. Eyes shifting between The moving form of Bakewell and the gun wielding Ashen and Mona, she made a decision, and quickly ducked her head to draw her .45 pistol. And aimed towards turret 2, the one Bakewell was dashing towards.

(Attack turret 2 with .45 pistol 4 shots, reserve the remaining 8AP for dodging if necessary)

In little more then an instant, both turrets were reduced to rubble by the parties attacks, the first one now nothing more then a pile of metallic slag that dripped pathetically down onto the floor, while the second one was torn off the ceiling entirely by Bakewell's final blow, and sent flying through the wooden door into the next room.

With those turrets out of the way, the group would be free to examine the room.

The reception room looked fairly empty, which probably wasn't too much of a surprise. If any looters had come before, this was no doubt their first stop as well, which meant anything that was of immediate value would have been taken by them long ago. The only real interesting thing was a receptionist's desk, which looked very worse for wear, the computer smashed beyond repair, and with only one drawer actually left inside the office furniture.

There were two doorways out of this room, a simple, broken wooden door, which apparantly lead to a stairwell, according to the giant hole through it (courtesy of the flying turret). The other doorway was metallic, which seemed to signify something of a bit more importance behind it...

With the turrets down, Ashen holstered his rifle, satisfied that there were no more enemies judging by the lack of blips on his EFS. He walked into the building, taking note of the reception room and noting anything of interest, of which there wasn't much. When he walked by the receptionist desk, he glanced towards the one drawer and opened it up, giving it a quick look to see if there was useful inside before moving on to the doors.

He stopped by the metal door, keeping an eye on his EFS for any possible hostiles. "I will check this door." he informed the others, before slowly easing the door open with his magic, keeping his ears open for the sound of any movement beyond his EFS.

[Check drawer in Receptionist's Desk]

[Slowly open metal door]

Inside the receptionists desk, there seemed to be a small pile of plastic cards, each with what looked like a robotics scan code imprinted on them. There was quite a lot of them, making it seem that for a short time, someone had been collecting them for some reason.

On the other side of the metal door, multiple metallic footsteps could be heard...however, no red lights showed up on Ashen's EFS.

Bakewell blinked in surprise as her efforts not only disabled the turret, but sent it flying. That robot hadn’t been very strong at all. This was going to be no problem!

As Ashen moved to the drawer and eventually the metal door, Bakewell carefully crept to the wooden door and climbed up a few of the stairs, stopping just in sight of the main room and attempting to get any clue as to where the stairs lead or what was beyond them, using her EFS if nothing else. She was curious but didn’t want to stray out of sight of her teammates.

With the turrets destroyed, Mona quickly took the time to load several more rounds into her pistol, before she walked over to the now open desk.

She examined the cards inside, as she gave them a lookover, recognizing the code as being something to do with robotics. Therefore, it would probably be best to ask the pony who seemed to know a lot about robotics.

"Ashen. What do you make of these?"

After the gunfire quietened and it was clear that the turrets were well and truly decommissioned, Zestari spat her gun back into its holster and followed the others into the reception room.

Looking about, trying to take in any details in a hurry, she paused as she looked wide eyed at the hole that Bakewell had sent the shattered turret through. “You’re very strong Bakewell, but wasn’t that a little excessive?” She chuckled. “I assume nopony is injured, correct?”

She only gave Mona a vaguely curious glance when she asked about cards. Instead she focused as Ashen took a look through the metal door and Bakewell crept up the stairs to scope things out. Zestari was ready should either of them be suddenly engaged.

Ashen floated the assortment of plastic cards out of the drawer, each one passing by his face as he gave each a thorough look over.

"I believe," he explained to Mona Tones, "that these are scan cards. They each carry a code that a robot can scan and recognize." He shuffled the cards and gave another check. "However, what the codes are or what they do is an unknown to me. Although there are several possibilities, ranging from identifying the card holder as a friendly or allowing them to give commands, to causing the robots to shut down or self destructing. We will not know until we find an opportunity to test them, or a reference guide that states their respective functions."

He slid the cards into his saddlebags for safe keeping, they would likely be useful in the future.

Bakewell would notice the steps didn't go up too far, only leading to a second floor by the looks of things. However, three doors would be immediatly visible

Two were clearly bathroom stalls, due to the 'Mares' and 'Stallions' signs on the doorways. The other one looked like a fairly neater wooden door, like it lead to a much neater section of the facility (Or at least it probably used to be a neater section).

Behind this door, the clanks of metallic footsteps could also be heard, though no red lights had come up on Bake's EFS.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to!” Bakewell replied to Zestari with a slightly crooked grin. “Ashen over there made them sound tough, how was I to know it would break after only a few taps?”


Bakewell peered at the doorways and bit her lip absentmindedly in thought before going back down a few steps to gain better eye contact with those in the room under her. “Hey. There’s a couple of bathrooms up here and what’s probably a hallway or something.” the cook informed the rest of the party. “It sounds like there's something metal in the hall, I think, maybe. The bathrooms seem clear though so I’m going to go check them for medical supplies real fast while you guys are fooling with that metal door thing.” She reported before moving back upstairs and checking the bathrooms in the hopes of finding something important or at the very least helpful. Habit made the earth pony start with the mare’s room, checking the stallion’s last.

Zestari nodded at Bakewell, “Be careful, don’t trigger any security devices!” Zestari figured Bakewell would probably be pretty safe, after all, a bathroom didn’t seem like the normal place to put security things, but then, she wasn’t much of an expert in these matters, so who knew.

“In fact, I might come with you!” She turned and trotted after Bakewell turning to enter the mare’s room behind the earth pony.

Bakewell would enter the Mare's Restroom with zero issues, only to notice some things that really should not have been in the restroom.

Like a picked clean pony skeleton, and several radroaches scuttering around it.

It only took a moment for the radroaches to spot Bakewell, and they let out several chitters...calling to the veritable colony that had set up shop in the stalls and air ducts! Radroaches swarmed out of everywhere, ready to consume their new prey!

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Radroach 1: Healthy
Radroach 2: Healthy
Radroach 3: Healthy
Radroach 4: Healthy
Radroach 5: Healthy
Radroach 6: Healthy
Radroach 7: Healthy
Radroach 8: Healthy
Radroach 9: Healthy
Radroach 10: Healthy
Radroach 11: Healthy
Radroach 12: Healthy
Radroach 13: Healthy
Radroach 14: Healthy
Radroach 15: Healthy
Radroach 16: Healthy
Radroach 17: Healthy
Radroach 18: Healthy
Radroach 19: Healthy
Radroach 20: Healthy
Radroach 21: Healthy
Radroach 22: Healthy
Radroach 23: Healthy
Radroach 24: Healthy
Radroach 25: Healthy
Radroach 26: Healthy
Radroach 27: Healthy
Radroach 28: Healthy
Radroach 29: Healthy
Radroach 30: Healthy
Radroach 31: Healthy
Radroach 32: Healthy
Radroach 33: Healthy

Mona looked like she had been about to say something, but Bake and Zes were gone before she could speak.

"We really shouldn't split the party. Who knows what lurks around this facility? We shouldn't get cocky."

She mumbled, before trotting over to Ashen. She wasn't going to leave a group member alone...she would just have to hope that Bake and Zes would be safe up there...

Radroaches were nothing new to Bakewell. Even during her days back in the Stable the occasional mutated roach had on rare occasion somehow wormed its way into the pony’s safe underground dwelling. It had never been too big of a problem, the Stable’s security measures often took them out before they could lay eggs or whatever it was Radroaches did to get such a huge number. Bakewell herself had been lucky enough to find a lone insect one day. It had kept the mare entertained for hours before finally dying. It had been pretty weak. Radroaches weren’t exactly the strongest insect in the wasteland. A lone Radroach would probably have trouble with even the weakest pony, right?

Thirty three of the things, however, was an entirely different matter. Bakewell quickly backpeddled with the intent of getting out of the restroom and slamming the door in an attempt to lock as many of the hungry insects into the room as possible, but Zestari had followed her and there was no way both equines would fit back through the door. Bakewell was not about to even consider blocking one of her best friends into a room full of hungry insects, so the beige earth pony pulled out her Trench knife and flailed the blade in front of herself protectively while trying to keep as many of the insects away from her as possible. The bugs probably wouldn’t be able to get through the earth pony’s thick armor but her unprotected face was another matter entirely.

(2 AP: Drawing Trench Knife
Attacking Radroach with Trench Knife (8 times) 62 melee. two AP remaining. Starting with Radroach 1 and swapping targets as each one dies.)

Following Bakewell into the bathroom, she was about to turn and rummage through the wastebasket before a swarm of radroaches swarmed towards the duo. At first Zestari wanted to turn tail and run. The insects would lose interest in pursuing her quickly enough, but as she watched Bakewell draw her blade and start swinging her weapon at the vicious bugs, Zestari changed her mind.

Sliding into a stance, she dove towards them, hoping to crush the chitinous curs beneath her hooves.

(Doing the same as Bakewell, work my way through them. Unarmed 52 (If unarmed is still 4AP then attacking 8 times, leaving 8 AP for a dodge, if it has been changed by Kes to 6AP, then attacking 6 times, leaving 4 AP and not enough for a dodge)

Ashen Coat nodded. "I agree, however at this point I do not believe it can be helped. Also," he checked his EFS, "I am not detecting any hostiles, so they are most likely fine."

Ashen turned towards the metal door. "From the sounds of it, there are most likely several robots beyond that door. We could scout out the area now, or we could wait for Bakewell Tart and Zestari to return, as it would be preferable to have more allies if we are to engage hostiles."

Bakewell's and Zestari's powerful blows would thin the Radroach hordes. They had avoided being overwhelmed by the radroaches sheer numbers, but the beasts still got in a painful bite here and there.

Fortunatly, while Bake's knife had been fairly quiet, the smashing of Radroaches by Zestari was creating a decent thumping noise that could probably be heard from downstairs, should anyone be inclined to investigate.

(-13 Radroaches, 20 remain)

Bakewell tried her best to ignore the painful bites, she had suffered worse noms than what these insects could deal out from Mr. Snuffles on a fairly regular basis. Still, there were quite a lot of these things, which meant that her mental forecast of a super duper large amount of painful bites was probably valid. Were radroach bites poisonous? Bakewell surely hoped not. Especially since Zestari wasn’t doing quite as much “getting the hay out” as the beige mare had originally wanted.
Not that Bakewell was ungrateful that Zestari would willingly stand by her beige side and gaze into the horrible insect ranks of tartarus with her, of course.

Bakewell continued to slash at the Radroaches. There didn’t really seem to be any other option aside from painfully dying and becoming lunch. A road which the mare obviously wasn’t going to travel willingly.

(Attacking Radroach with Trench Knife (9 times) 62 melee. 0 AP remaining. Same targeting deal as last time.)

Mona thought for a moment, not sure what to do right now, with the party split up.

"I guess they'll be fine if they're just checking the restrooms. Let's just have a look through the doors, and make sure it's safe."

She would state, as she trotted over to the large door, but not before using her telekinesis to ready her pistol, as she gave the weapon a quick once-over.

Zestari paused in her deadly dance of insectoid slaughter to take a breath and wince at the pain caused by the vicious overgrown creatures. This was far from the first creature to try and take a bite from the zebra, and so far the least painful. Indeed, of the many things to have tried to kill her by eating, these certainly worried her the least and having caught her breath and briefly checked that Bakewell was going okay, spun elaborately to continue the fight.

(Attacking the same as before. Working through the list, I’ll use all the AP I can, so 40ap means either 10 attacks(4ap) or 6 attacks, with 4 spare(6ap).)

Zestari and bake would quickly smash their way through the remainder of the Radroach army, the final two rushing off back into the vents, saving themselves. With their attackers disposed off, they were now free to explore the room.

The restroom was a complete mess, bone piles in the stalls, and a horrible stench of decay that only now began to set in as the adrenaline from the fight wore off. However, there did appear to be a medical cabinet on the wall. However, it was locked. The lock did seem fairly simple though, and so long as one knew a smal extent of what they were doing, probably wouldn't pose too much of a challenge...

-----------

Ashen and Mona would peek through the doorway, scouting out the next room.

The room was massive, filled with broken-down machinery. This had clearly been the main factory section of the facility. Multiple Protectrons clanked about the room as they patrolled...however, unlike the turrets, they didn't show up as red on Ashen's pip-buck. For now at least, they seemed non-hostile...

Ashen glanced down at this EFS as he and Mona examined the room ahead. According to his EFS, the numerous Protectron Droness patrolling what appeared to be the main factory floor were all presently non-hostile. His brain started to devise numerous hypothesis for this.

"According to my EFS these Protectrons are not hostile. I suspect that either they are simply not designed for combat and aren't programmed to fight, or that they are programmed to only to respond with force against any unauthorized personal. If the latter scenario is the case, the cards we discovered in the desk may be identifiers that would label us as authorized, assuming we could find the right card. If we can, it will save us from a significant amount of fighting."

Bakewell stopped and sighed with relief as the last of the hungry insects died. She almost immediately regretted the decision, one of her combat armored forelimbs shooting up and covering her muzzle with the limb’s joint.

“Euuugh.” She gagged. “It smells like somepony died in he- uh, you know what? Nevermind.” The mare said. The comparison was slightly too real to make. Being eaten alive by radroaches was just too disgusting a fate to even joke about.

Bending down and moving armored leg away from beige muzzle, Bakewell began to try and cut the backside off of a few radroaches. It wasn’t a particularly appealing notion, but the cook knew that after removing certain bits Radroach was a fully edible substance. It never hurt to have a little bit of spare food just in case the worst thing happened. Zestari could check the medical box; she’d know more about what all the fancy medical words in the case meant anyway.

Zestari was breathing a little heavily after dispatching the remaining insect and took a few moments to shake some of the disgusting ichor from her hooves as she wrinkled her nose in disgust at the smell.

She nodded at Bakewell, “Good job with the radroaches. If you have any bites or wounds that require attention I’ll take a look at them back with the others.” She suppressed a cough, “When we’re in cleaner circumstances.”

Wincing in disgust as Bakewell started collecting radroach meat. Disgusting. Looking about for a distraction, she spotted a closed medical box and trotted over towards it to see what was there. It appeared to be locked, and not wanting to damage the contents which might have been fragile, she tried to see if it could be easily pulled off the wall instead, “When you’ve finished there, check the rubbish bin. Ponies were very wasteful back before the bombs fell.”

Mona just...stared at Ashen for a few moments. She considered herself a Pony of above-average intelligence to the average wastelander, thanks to her Tenpony upbringing and training...but she would never have thought of that possibility as fast as this Goggle-wearing Vault Dweller. While ponies had compaired Mona to sounding like a machine, right now, she wasn't unconvinced Ashen actually was one to come up with that very accurate-sounding thought so quick.

The surprise was actually enough to force a slight hesitation in her voice before she spoke again.

"...O...okay then. We should check on our companions first though. If you turn out to be wrong, I'd rather we were all ready to return fire."

She would state, before trotting over to the stairwell.