D
Draconias Galactica
Guest
Okay, here goes nothing. Your comments/complaints/death threats are welcome.
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The dangers of alcohol are many. Your blood alcohol level could go too
high, and you could fall into a coma or die. You could get into a car,
crash, and die. You could kill off billions upon billions of brain
cells.
Two of the simpler dangers were getting lost and waking up with strange
people. When Hawks started drinking at Vault City, he was just trying
to take his mind off how depressing the city was. He wasn't expecting
to wind up anywhere but in Cassidy's bar.
"About time you woke up," a voice said. Hawks' eyes were still closed,
so he couldn't see who was talking to him. So he did the only real
logical thing to do - he opened his eyes.
"Who're you?" he asked. To him, at least, it sounded like "who're
you?". Since he still wasn't quite awake, it came out as "uher uh?".
The man was sitting beside a fire, looking at something strapped onto
his wrist.
"Drink this," he said, standing up and tossing a flask over to Hawks.
"You look like you haven't had anything to drink in a long while." The
flask landed at Hawk's feet. The Chosen One sat up and rubbed the
debris out of his eyes. His vision became clearer.
The man sitting at the fire was fidling with, what looked like, a
PipBoy strapped to his wrist. Hawk quickly looked down at his own
wrist, and saw that his PipBoy was safely tied to his wrist, and not to
the other man's. Just to be safe, he took his backpack off of his back
and made a quick search of it. Everything that should be there looked
like it was. Hawk then started staring at the man across from him. He
was taller than Hawk, and a good deal larger. He had something layed
down beside his feet, probably a weapon. He was wearing a leather
jacket, much longer than Hawk's (his came down all the way to his
knees, while Hawk's didn't go past his waist), over some armor Hawk
didn't recognize. It looked sort of like leather armor, but different.
"Didn't you hear me? I said drink it, you could use it."
"Oh, yeah, sorry." This time, it came out like it was supposed to. Hawk
screwed off the cap from the flask and sniffed it. It smelled like -
nothing. It was probably water then. He took a catious sip, making sure
it wasn't pissed in or filled with bugs. As soon as Hawk picked up the
flask, the man started counting.
"22 seconds? And I thought you trusted me."
"I don't even your name. I don't trust outsiders, especially outsiders
I don't know."
"In that case, my name's Jake. Now let the trusting begin." Hawks
laughed.
"Sorry, it's not exactally that easy."
"Can you at least trust me with your name?"
"Um, it's Hawks." Hawks took some time to look around at the scenery.
All around him was wasteland, flat and barren. There weren't even any
shrubs or weeds around. There were plenty of rocks, though. Some idiot
must have been trying to breed them. Finding nothing to note on the
ground, Hawks looked up at the sky. What he saw caught him off guard.
He had seen clouds before, ocasionaly, but never enough to cover the
entire sky. But there they were, clouds as far as the eye could see,
all dary gray and somehow angry-looking.
"Forget it was there? You must have been really drunk."
"What?"
"Nevermind. You done with that?" Jake asked, pointing to the flask.
Hawks put the cap back on and tossed it back to Jake.
"Hey, can you tell me where I am?" He figured that he was probably a
few miles from Vault City, but he had never seen clouds like that near
Vault City, or anywhere he had ever been for that matter. Jake finished
the flask off and then looked back to his PipBoy.
"I'd say a good 60 or so miles from Crater Town." Crater Town was one
of the two major points that everyone knew of. One of the best ways to
tell a person his location was in terms of how far he was from Crater
Town or Lake Side.
"Crater Town? Never heard of that place. How far is it from Vault
City?" Jake almost spit the water he drank back up in shock.
"Well, I never heard of Vault City. How far is it from Crater Town?"
Rather than call of the joke (that's what Jake assumed it was, at
least), Hawks walked over to Jake and showed him his own PipBoy. The
northern California reigon map was displayed.
"Here's Vault City," Hawks said, pointing to it on the map, silently
cursing to himself for not having cleared more of it. This Jake
charecter might not even recognize the terrain he had cleared,
traveling from Arroyo to Klamath to the Den to Modoc and finaly to
Vault City. It was just a small strip of land. "Look firmiliar?"
"Not really. What map are you using anyways?"
"Um...this one right here." His knowledge of the PipBoy didn't cover
that sort of thing. Jake's did, though, as he demonstrated by pressing
a few buttons on the side. A momment later, the PipBoy screen displayed
"CA-12.5". Jake stared at the screen, as if chalenging it to change
back to something that started with the letters ID. But it didn't, no
matter how many times he blinked at it.
The fact that this was a map of California didn't suprise him too much
- you could get all sorts of maps at the Great Archives. But the fact
that some of it was actually cleared was the shock. PipBoys didn't
clear a grid all the way unless they had scanned it, and the only way
to scan it was to be in that actuall grid. He had heard rumors of
hacking into a PipBoy, to clear it manually, but those cleared maps
were usually faulty in some way. Also, it required a good deal of
skill, and Hawks didn't even know how to find out what map he had. So
that left only one conclusion - Hawks must have been in California.
"This is a map of California, right?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Then this Vault City...it's in California, right?"
"Somewhere around there."
"You were _in_ California?"
"I think I just said that, several times. Are you slow or something?"
"Sorry, I just have a hard time accepting the impossible. Even when
there's proof."
"What are you talking about? Tell me."
"Answer me one thing first - when you were in Vault City, what was the
last thing you remember doing?"
"I was...I was in a bar, Cassidy's Bar. The place was so God-damned
depressing, I couldn't stand it. There were slaves all over the place,
they treated outsiders like the shit off the bottem of their shoes, and
then they started claiming they were better just because they were born
on the inside of some fence. I needed to get drunk right away."
"So what happened after you got drunk?"
"You just lived it. It's what happened _while_ I got drunk that I want
to know. I'm a long way from where I started. Now what's this crap
about my being here impossible?"
"One other thing real quick - what was the date when you started
drinking?" Hawks thought back for a momment.
"November twenty...something."
"Can you read me the date off your PipBoy real quick?"
"Yeah, sure...December 29? What the hell..."
"You made better time than I thought. You just traveled some 500 miles
to get to here."
"I couldn't have been drunk for a whole month on that watered-down
cra...500 miles?" Hawks jumped up in suprise. "Did you just say..."
"Yeah, I did. But don't be shocked yet, it gets even better. You're in
the Shadowlands. Now, I doubt some Californian would know what that is,
so sit back down because you're going to need to jump up again by the
time I'm done." Hawks did as Jake said, still wondering how he got from
point A (Vault City) to a point B some 500 miles away.
"You're in what used to be Idaho, back before the war made borders kind
of pointless. This particular part of Idaho is called the Shadowlands.
It's a circle about 300 miles wide, with a big cloud over it. We never
get any sunlight in here, just an eternal twilight." Hawks looked up at
the clouds overhead, and decided that it was at least remotly possible.
"What's more, there's this line of automated turrets along the rim of
this place that kill anybody who gets too close. In other words, nobody
gets in _or_ out." Just as Jake predicted, Hawks jumped back up.
"What? That's impossible!"
"Nope, just really improbable. Your being here is impossible. But,
there it is. You're definatly here. I wasn't the only one to see you,
so I guess I'm not imagining you."
"Huh? Who else saw me?" Jake pointed to a corpse a few feet away from
the fire.
"He was trying to loot you. I stopped him."
"Why'd you do that?"
"Pretty simple, I thought you were a corpse, and I wanted whatever you
had. I tried to knock the guy out, I wasn't in the mood to kill a man
just to get what some corpse had, but he didn't want to get knocked
out. So, I sliced open his throught, and took _his_ posessions instead
of yours."
"Gee, thanks," Hawks said, sarcastically.
"Too bad you were alive. I don't go in for theft, just looting. Much
safer that way."
"Is that so? Well, it's been fun. Now, kindly point me in the direction
to the exit so I can get the hell out of this place."
"You don't seem to get it. There _is_ no exit."
"I got in, didn't I? So there has to be one."
"Maybe. I doubt it, though - those turrets have been running strong for
160 plus years now, and acording to the specs in the Archives, they can
repair themselves. You tell me what has the firepower to take them down
before they take it down, and then maybe, _maybe_, I'll start beliving
that there's a gap in the perimiter."
"I'm here, aren't I? And acording to what you told me, the only way I
could get in was if there was a 'gap in the perimiter'. What more do
you need?"
"You want to know what more I need? Proof that you were ever outside
the perimiter in the first place. All you have is a very detailed but
limited map of CA, and I don't know what CA's supposed to look like.
There's no way to confirm your story." Hawks turned away and thought
about that. There were two particular possibilities that he didn't
like. One, he was imagining that he had been on the outside. Two, Jake
was imagining that this "Shadowlands" even existed. Since he didn't
like them, he decided to ignore them. Something Jake said stood out for
a breif minute.
"Hey, what was that archives thing you were talking about?"
"The Great Archives. Are you going to tell me that you never heard of
that, either?"
"No, since you already figured that out. So what's this Great Archives
place?"
"Short version, it's two domes in the middle of nowhere that have
almost all of the pre-war knowledge, and most of the post-war type. You
can learn a lot there."
"Would it have maps of California?" Jake quickly figured out what Hawks
was getting at.
"Yeah, the pre-war type. I don't know what the war did to the terrain,
though. Even then, there's no proof you didn't just copy that map you
have from the Archives and put some green circles on it."
"I can barely get this thing to display the date properly, let alone
draw circles on it."
"You can always fake incompatantcy, you know."
"Okay, how can I prove to you that I'm not from this 'Shadowlands'
place of yours?" Jake thought about that for a minute, trying to figure
out what an outsider would know that an insider would not. Then,
something hit him.
"Alright, how about this - what's that light from behind the clouds?
You can see it if you come close to the perimiter, but you can't see
what it's coming from."
"That's the sun. Haven't you ever seen the sun?"
"Take a good look up," Jake said, pointing to the clouds. "The sky's
like that every single day of the year. Of course I've never seen the
sun! Anyways, how do you know it's not some light from the gods, hmm?
Or some sort of giant torch?"
"Because I've seen it. Satisfied yet?"
"Sort of. At least I know you're not some worthless moron, like 90% of
the people I know. You must have actually looked that sort of thing up
in the Archives."
"Arghh! How can I prove it to you?!"
"Simple, you can't." Hawks looked like he was about to kill Jake. "But
I can't exactally disprove it, either. Since you're not a complete
idiot, aparently, I might as well belive you."
"Finally," Hawks muttered. "I guess I should start beliving your crap
about this whole 'Shadowlands' place."
"You still don't trust me? That hurts, it really does," Jake stated,
without a hint of sincerity in his voice.
"Can you tell me where the Great Archives are?"
"Tell _you_, probably not. Not unless you know where Crater Town, Lake
Side, or any other city is. Can you read a map?"
"Yeah."
"Then I can probably show you." Jake unstrapped a wire that was hung on
the side of his PipBoy, and plugged one end into a slot on his PipBoy,
another into the same slot on Hawks'. "This will download my map onto
your hard drive. I suppose I'll have to show you how to switch to it."
"Probably," Hawks muttered. Jake pressed a few buttons on the control
pannel of his PipBoy. A series of chimes played, and the map began
downloading onto Hawks' PipBoy.
"To switch maps, just press this button, and then select ID-3.8 on the
screen." Hawks did as Jake instructed, and brought up a large map of
the Shadowlands area. The map had major locations, setlements for breif
stop-overs, trade routes, and water locations. Near the center of the
map, north a bit, was a circle labled "Great Archives". "Right now,
we're around here." Jake moved the map down some, to a spot that was
roughly 60 miles south, southeast of Crater Town. "The location-
determining, um, thing isn't working right."
"Location-determining thing?"
"Hey, I never claimed to be an expert with these things. Anyways, we
should get going if we want to get to Crater Town soon. It doesn't
really get any darker around here at night, but there's still some
animals who are nocturnal, for some damn reason."
"Wait, hold up. _We_?"
"You're dead if you think you can make it anywhere here alone. What
would you do if you were attacked?" Hawks unstrapped his riffle and
raised it to an imaginary target.
"This, and then I'd pull the trigger."
"Except you can't aim here. It's too dark to aim at a target, and most
people around here know how to sneak around. They'd rush up to you and
run you through before you could aim at their chest."
"Belive me, I can shoot the hair off your head."
"Prove it."
"Huh?" Jake picked up a burnt piece of firewood from the dying fire and
held it straight up.
"On three, shoot the top of this." Hawks shrugged and took out his
riffle. Jake began turning around, holding the piece of wood as far
away from himself as he could. "One," Jake said as he finished his
second turn. He said "two" on his fourth turn, and when he finally
stopped after his sixth turn, he shouted "three!". Hawks raised his
riffle and fired two rounds at the piece of wood.
"How'd I do?" Jake tossed the piece of firewood over to Hawks. There
wasn't a single hole in it.
"Your first shot was off by about two feet to the left, your left. The
second one damn near hit _me_. Now if you were shooting at me on
purpose, which you might have been doing for all I know, I would have
run in with my back bent down. You'd have missed me both times, since
I'm a hard target to pick out. That's another thing - most people
around here dress in black, since it's easier to sneak with that color.
I would have reached you without a scratch on me and run my sword right
through your heart." Jake, in a flash, grabbed his sheived sword from
the ground, unsheived it, and ran up to Hawks. His sword was about an
inch from Hawks' heart.
"Okay, you might have a point," muttered Hawks. "How many people I run
into would try and shoot at me?"
"With the exception of a few talented raiders and a few morons, none.
Ammo is scarce, and it gets used up." Jake pulled his sword back and
held it up so Hawks could see it. "_This_ is the weapon of choice -
sharp, shiney, and long-lasting. Plus, by the time you're close enough
to use this, it's pretty hard to miss."
"Just give me some time, I'll get used to the light around here."
"I was born into this light, and I'm not used to it. At least, well
enough to aim at a fast-moving target. You got a sword, or something?"
Hawks put his riffle down, and untied his sharpened spear from his
back. "Well, if you're agile enough to jump out of the way, that'll do
it. You might want to layer the wood parts in metal, though."
"And where would I do that? The Archives?"
"Not likely, unless they changed drastically from the last time I was
there. You might try Crater Town, though. We shoudld stop by their
before heading to the Great Archives anyways."
"Again, what's with this we? Thanks for the advice and all, but I can
take care of myself."
"I still doubt it. Plus, you're the most interesting thing to happen to
me all year. And I am _not_ about to leave before I figure out how you
got in here. If you are right about being from the outside, which I
want to find out if you are as well, then that means there's a way out
of here. I've been all over the Shadowlands - I want someplace new to
explore."
"Can I trust you?"
"Probably not, I'm probably in this to get that riffle of yours." Hawks
laughed and picked up his things.
"At least your honest. Hell, I could use a partner anyways. Let's get
moving."
"Wait, can I trust _you_?"
"It doesn't matter, I can't beat you in a fight. I don't have a choice
but to stay on your good side."
"Well then, c'mon. It's a good three days or so trip to Crater Town."
"Right." Hakws picked up his riffle and spear, tied them both to his
back, and followed off after Jake.
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Well, what do you think? Kindly point out any blaring errors I've made that I'm too blind to see. And, thank you for your time.
[P ALIGN=right]-Draconias Galactica
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The dangers of alcohol are many. Your blood alcohol level could go too
high, and you could fall into a coma or die. You could get into a car,
crash, and die. You could kill off billions upon billions of brain
cells.
Two of the simpler dangers were getting lost and waking up with strange
people. When Hawks started drinking at Vault City, he was just trying
to take his mind off how depressing the city was. He wasn't expecting
to wind up anywhere but in Cassidy's bar.
"About time you woke up," a voice said. Hawks' eyes were still closed,
so he couldn't see who was talking to him. So he did the only real
logical thing to do - he opened his eyes.
"Who're you?" he asked. To him, at least, it sounded like "who're
you?". Since he still wasn't quite awake, it came out as "uher uh?".
The man was sitting beside a fire, looking at something strapped onto
his wrist.
"Drink this," he said, standing up and tossing a flask over to Hawks.
"You look like you haven't had anything to drink in a long while." The
flask landed at Hawk's feet. The Chosen One sat up and rubbed the
debris out of his eyes. His vision became clearer.
The man sitting at the fire was fidling with, what looked like, a
PipBoy strapped to his wrist. Hawk quickly looked down at his own
wrist, and saw that his PipBoy was safely tied to his wrist, and not to
the other man's. Just to be safe, he took his backpack off of his back
and made a quick search of it. Everything that should be there looked
like it was. Hawk then started staring at the man across from him. He
was taller than Hawk, and a good deal larger. He had something layed
down beside his feet, probably a weapon. He was wearing a leather
jacket, much longer than Hawk's (his came down all the way to his
knees, while Hawk's didn't go past his waist), over some armor Hawk
didn't recognize. It looked sort of like leather armor, but different.
"Didn't you hear me? I said drink it, you could use it."
"Oh, yeah, sorry." This time, it came out like it was supposed to. Hawk
screwed off the cap from the flask and sniffed it. It smelled like -
nothing. It was probably water then. He took a catious sip, making sure
it wasn't pissed in or filled with bugs. As soon as Hawk picked up the
flask, the man started counting.
"22 seconds? And I thought you trusted me."
"I don't even your name. I don't trust outsiders, especially outsiders
I don't know."
"In that case, my name's Jake. Now let the trusting begin." Hawks
laughed.
"Sorry, it's not exactally that easy."
"Can you at least trust me with your name?"
"Um, it's Hawks." Hawks took some time to look around at the scenery.
All around him was wasteland, flat and barren. There weren't even any
shrubs or weeds around. There were plenty of rocks, though. Some idiot
must have been trying to breed them. Finding nothing to note on the
ground, Hawks looked up at the sky. What he saw caught him off guard.
He had seen clouds before, ocasionaly, but never enough to cover the
entire sky. But there they were, clouds as far as the eye could see,
all dary gray and somehow angry-looking.
"Forget it was there? You must have been really drunk."
"What?"
"Nevermind. You done with that?" Jake asked, pointing to the flask.
Hawks put the cap back on and tossed it back to Jake.
"Hey, can you tell me where I am?" He figured that he was probably a
few miles from Vault City, but he had never seen clouds like that near
Vault City, or anywhere he had ever been for that matter. Jake finished
the flask off and then looked back to his PipBoy.
"I'd say a good 60 or so miles from Crater Town." Crater Town was one
of the two major points that everyone knew of. One of the best ways to
tell a person his location was in terms of how far he was from Crater
Town or Lake Side.
"Crater Town? Never heard of that place. How far is it from Vault
City?" Jake almost spit the water he drank back up in shock.
"Well, I never heard of Vault City. How far is it from Crater Town?"
Rather than call of the joke (that's what Jake assumed it was, at
least), Hawks walked over to Jake and showed him his own PipBoy. The
northern California reigon map was displayed.
"Here's Vault City," Hawks said, pointing to it on the map, silently
cursing to himself for not having cleared more of it. This Jake
charecter might not even recognize the terrain he had cleared,
traveling from Arroyo to Klamath to the Den to Modoc and finaly to
Vault City. It was just a small strip of land. "Look firmiliar?"
"Not really. What map are you using anyways?"
"Um...this one right here." His knowledge of the PipBoy didn't cover
that sort of thing. Jake's did, though, as he demonstrated by pressing
a few buttons on the side. A momment later, the PipBoy screen displayed
"CA-12.5". Jake stared at the screen, as if chalenging it to change
back to something that started with the letters ID. But it didn't, no
matter how many times he blinked at it.
The fact that this was a map of California didn't suprise him too much
- you could get all sorts of maps at the Great Archives. But the fact
that some of it was actually cleared was the shock. PipBoys didn't
clear a grid all the way unless they had scanned it, and the only way
to scan it was to be in that actuall grid. He had heard rumors of
hacking into a PipBoy, to clear it manually, but those cleared maps
were usually faulty in some way. Also, it required a good deal of
skill, and Hawks didn't even know how to find out what map he had. So
that left only one conclusion - Hawks must have been in California.
"This is a map of California, right?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Then this Vault City...it's in California, right?"
"Somewhere around there."
"You were _in_ California?"
"I think I just said that, several times. Are you slow or something?"
"Sorry, I just have a hard time accepting the impossible. Even when
there's proof."
"What are you talking about? Tell me."
"Answer me one thing first - when you were in Vault City, what was the
last thing you remember doing?"
"I was...I was in a bar, Cassidy's Bar. The place was so God-damned
depressing, I couldn't stand it. There were slaves all over the place,
they treated outsiders like the shit off the bottem of their shoes, and
then they started claiming they were better just because they were born
on the inside of some fence. I needed to get drunk right away."
"So what happened after you got drunk?"
"You just lived it. It's what happened _while_ I got drunk that I want
to know. I'm a long way from where I started. Now what's this crap
about my being here impossible?"
"One other thing real quick - what was the date when you started
drinking?" Hawks thought back for a momment.
"November twenty...something."
"Can you read me the date off your PipBoy real quick?"
"Yeah, sure...December 29? What the hell..."
"You made better time than I thought. You just traveled some 500 miles
to get to here."
"I couldn't have been drunk for a whole month on that watered-down
cra...500 miles?" Hawks jumped up in suprise. "Did you just say..."
"Yeah, I did. But don't be shocked yet, it gets even better. You're in
the Shadowlands. Now, I doubt some Californian would know what that is,
so sit back down because you're going to need to jump up again by the
time I'm done." Hawks did as Jake said, still wondering how he got from
point A (Vault City) to a point B some 500 miles away.
"You're in what used to be Idaho, back before the war made borders kind
of pointless. This particular part of Idaho is called the Shadowlands.
It's a circle about 300 miles wide, with a big cloud over it. We never
get any sunlight in here, just an eternal twilight." Hawks looked up at
the clouds overhead, and decided that it was at least remotly possible.
"What's more, there's this line of automated turrets along the rim of
this place that kill anybody who gets too close. In other words, nobody
gets in _or_ out." Just as Jake predicted, Hawks jumped back up.
"What? That's impossible!"
"Nope, just really improbable. Your being here is impossible. But,
there it is. You're definatly here. I wasn't the only one to see you,
so I guess I'm not imagining you."
"Huh? Who else saw me?" Jake pointed to a corpse a few feet away from
the fire.
"He was trying to loot you. I stopped him."
"Why'd you do that?"
"Pretty simple, I thought you were a corpse, and I wanted whatever you
had. I tried to knock the guy out, I wasn't in the mood to kill a man
just to get what some corpse had, but he didn't want to get knocked
out. So, I sliced open his throught, and took _his_ posessions instead
of yours."
"Gee, thanks," Hawks said, sarcastically.
"Too bad you were alive. I don't go in for theft, just looting. Much
safer that way."
"Is that so? Well, it's been fun. Now, kindly point me in the direction
to the exit so I can get the hell out of this place."
"You don't seem to get it. There _is_ no exit."
"I got in, didn't I? So there has to be one."
"Maybe. I doubt it, though - those turrets have been running strong for
160 plus years now, and acording to the specs in the Archives, they can
repair themselves. You tell me what has the firepower to take them down
before they take it down, and then maybe, _maybe_, I'll start beliving
that there's a gap in the perimiter."
"I'm here, aren't I? And acording to what you told me, the only way I
could get in was if there was a 'gap in the perimiter'. What more do
you need?"
"You want to know what more I need? Proof that you were ever outside
the perimiter in the first place. All you have is a very detailed but
limited map of CA, and I don't know what CA's supposed to look like.
There's no way to confirm your story." Hawks turned away and thought
about that. There were two particular possibilities that he didn't
like. One, he was imagining that he had been on the outside. Two, Jake
was imagining that this "Shadowlands" even existed. Since he didn't
like them, he decided to ignore them. Something Jake said stood out for
a breif minute.
"Hey, what was that archives thing you were talking about?"
"The Great Archives. Are you going to tell me that you never heard of
that, either?"
"No, since you already figured that out. So what's this Great Archives
place?"
"Short version, it's two domes in the middle of nowhere that have
almost all of the pre-war knowledge, and most of the post-war type. You
can learn a lot there."
"Would it have maps of California?" Jake quickly figured out what Hawks
was getting at.
"Yeah, the pre-war type. I don't know what the war did to the terrain,
though. Even then, there's no proof you didn't just copy that map you
have from the Archives and put some green circles on it."
"I can barely get this thing to display the date properly, let alone
draw circles on it."
"You can always fake incompatantcy, you know."
"Okay, how can I prove to you that I'm not from this 'Shadowlands'
place of yours?" Jake thought about that for a minute, trying to figure
out what an outsider would know that an insider would not. Then,
something hit him.
"Alright, how about this - what's that light from behind the clouds?
You can see it if you come close to the perimiter, but you can't see
what it's coming from."
"That's the sun. Haven't you ever seen the sun?"
"Take a good look up," Jake said, pointing to the clouds. "The sky's
like that every single day of the year. Of course I've never seen the
sun! Anyways, how do you know it's not some light from the gods, hmm?
Or some sort of giant torch?"
"Because I've seen it. Satisfied yet?"
"Sort of. At least I know you're not some worthless moron, like 90% of
the people I know. You must have actually looked that sort of thing up
in the Archives."
"Arghh! How can I prove it to you?!"
"Simple, you can't." Hawks looked like he was about to kill Jake. "But
I can't exactally disprove it, either. Since you're not a complete
idiot, aparently, I might as well belive you."
"Finally," Hawks muttered. "I guess I should start beliving your crap
about this whole 'Shadowlands' place."
"You still don't trust me? That hurts, it really does," Jake stated,
without a hint of sincerity in his voice.
"Can you tell me where the Great Archives are?"
"Tell _you_, probably not. Not unless you know where Crater Town, Lake
Side, or any other city is. Can you read a map?"
"Yeah."
"Then I can probably show you." Jake unstrapped a wire that was hung on
the side of his PipBoy, and plugged one end into a slot on his PipBoy,
another into the same slot on Hawks'. "This will download my map onto
your hard drive. I suppose I'll have to show you how to switch to it."
"Probably," Hawks muttered. Jake pressed a few buttons on the control
pannel of his PipBoy. A series of chimes played, and the map began
downloading onto Hawks' PipBoy.
"To switch maps, just press this button, and then select ID-3.8 on the
screen." Hawks did as Jake instructed, and brought up a large map of
the Shadowlands area. The map had major locations, setlements for breif
stop-overs, trade routes, and water locations. Near the center of the
map, north a bit, was a circle labled "Great Archives". "Right now,
we're around here." Jake moved the map down some, to a spot that was
roughly 60 miles south, southeast of Crater Town. "The location-
determining, um, thing isn't working right."
"Location-determining thing?"
"Hey, I never claimed to be an expert with these things. Anyways, we
should get going if we want to get to Crater Town soon. It doesn't
really get any darker around here at night, but there's still some
animals who are nocturnal, for some damn reason."
"Wait, hold up. _We_?"
"You're dead if you think you can make it anywhere here alone. What
would you do if you were attacked?" Hawks unstrapped his riffle and
raised it to an imaginary target.
"This, and then I'd pull the trigger."
"Except you can't aim here. It's too dark to aim at a target, and most
people around here know how to sneak around. They'd rush up to you and
run you through before you could aim at their chest."
"Belive me, I can shoot the hair off your head."
"Prove it."
"Huh?" Jake picked up a burnt piece of firewood from the dying fire and
held it straight up.
"On three, shoot the top of this." Hawks shrugged and took out his
riffle. Jake began turning around, holding the piece of wood as far
away from himself as he could. "One," Jake said as he finished his
second turn. He said "two" on his fourth turn, and when he finally
stopped after his sixth turn, he shouted "three!". Hawks raised his
riffle and fired two rounds at the piece of wood.
"How'd I do?" Jake tossed the piece of firewood over to Hawks. There
wasn't a single hole in it.
"Your first shot was off by about two feet to the left, your left. The
second one damn near hit _me_. Now if you were shooting at me on
purpose, which you might have been doing for all I know, I would have
run in with my back bent down. You'd have missed me both times, since
I'm a hard target to pick out. That's another thing - most people
around here dress in black, since it's easier to sneak with that color.
I would have reached you without a scratch on me and run my sword right
through your heart." Jake, in a flash, grabbed his sheived sword from
the ground, unsheived it, and ran up to Hawks. His sword was about an
inch from Hawks' heart.
"Okay, you might have a point," muttered Hawks. "How many people I run
into would try and shoot at me?"
"With the exception of a few talented raiders and a few morons, none.
Ammo is scarce, and it gets used up." Jake pulled his sword back and
held it up so Hawks could see it. "_This_ is the weapon of choice -
sharp, shiney, and long-lasting. Plus, by the time you're close enough
to use this, it's pretty hard to miss."
"Just give me some time, I'll get used to the light around here."
"I was born into this light, and I'm not used to it. At least, well
enough to aim at a fast-moving target. You got a sword, or something?"
Hawks put his riffle down, and untied his sharpened spear from his
back. "Well, if you're agile enough to jump out of the way, that'll do
it. You might want to layer the wood parts in metal, though."
"And where would I do that? The Archives?"
"Not likely, unless they changed drastically from the last time I was
there. You might try Crater Town, though. We shoudld stop by their
before heading to the Great Archives anyways."
"Again, what's with this we? Thanks for the advice and all, but I can
take care of myself."
"I still doubt it. Plus, you're the most interesting thing to happen to
me all year. And I am _not_ about to leave before I figure out how you
got in here. If you are right about being from the outside, which I
want to find out if you are as well, then that means there's a way out
of here. I've been all over the Shadowlands - I want someplace new to
explore."
"Can I trust you?"
"Probably not, I'm probably in this to get that riffle of yours." Hawks
laughed and picked up his things.
"At least your honest. Hell, I could use a partner anyways. Let's get
moving."
"Wait, can I trust _you_?"
"It doesn't matter, I can't beat you in a fight. I don't have a choice
but to stay on your good side."
"Well then, c'mon. It's a good three days or so trip to Crater Town."
"Right." Hakws picked up his riffle and spear, tied them both to his
back, and followed off after Jake.
**** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****
Well, what do you think? Kindly point out any blaring errors I've made that I'm too blind to see. And, thank you for your time.
[P ALIGN=right]-Draconias Galactica
