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Post by elizar on Feb 26, 2009 17:32:42 GMT -5
Jonathan yawned. It were just few minutes until the meeting, but he hardly could care. He had seen more bodies than he had ever seen in NYC. He took up a pair of binoculars and looked at the city in the distance. He couldn't pick up any defining features of it that would identify it, but he knew what it was. He had even been there few times.
Jonathan was a contracted Relic Hunter. And the city in front of him was the holy grail of Relic Hunters. Washington DC. It had been a no-mans land due to radiation for the longest time, until the newest magic trinket arrived. It sucked in radiation in a sphere around you, so you were never exposed to the high doses. The problem was that it didn't last that long, and needed some cooling off period. Jonathan had already been in the city few times, mapping a safe path from nearest cleared landing zone and over to the objective of this mission. Library of Congress.
And he had the urge to just go in and get whatever valuable and historical was there. But he was not solo. While he was always with Gideon on different crews, this was the first time the semi-freelance pair of Relic Hunters were the only actual Relic Hunters. The rest were so tied up with the government Jonathan was surprised they didn't have to fill out some paperwork for taking a piss in DC.
Gideon approached Jonathan. He did it quietly, but Jonathan knew that he was coming. Gideon was a stealth-type Oka. Actually the first Oka to be born. His sister had come out seven hours later. Among helicopters, he was Casanova. Something about him just made female helicopters (and some airplanes) let loose and bend their tailboom for him. He didn't mind the attention, but revered it. Already he had five kids, and those were just the ones he knew about.
"Come on, stop daydreaming." Gideon said. "The meeting's about to start."
"Alright." Jonathan stood up. "I'm coming."
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Post by Evangeline on Feb 26, 2009 17:58:55 GMT -5
Ariane DiMarco, a descendant of Agusta A109 lines, waited outside the tent that served as a temporary base of operations for both Peterson Salvors Ltd. and the small group of helos and other personnel under Capt. Arataki Quinlan. She was one of the other scouts who would be helping out Thorne Peterson, the Sikorsky/Bell mix who was the head of the firm. She sighed wearily and moved off while the human personnel on break chuckled their way through an impromptu and obscene puppet show featuring several latex and/or plastic/ and/or metallic articles of a rather intimate nature that always seemed to turn up in the remains of houses and apartments. Why couldn't they just find a long-lost porn stash or an untouched liquor store with inventory intact and make themselves scarce for the night?
Catherine Keenan, the assistant coroner assigned to the group, watched as a bored CV Unimog brought in another load of bagged bones for her to make sense of, take samples from and do the paperwork on for later re-interment. Matching their DNA to any surviving relatives was almost a forlorn hope, but occasionally miracles did happen. It was almost like digging out Pompeii, in a sense. A modern Pompeii.
Capt. Quinlan, Gideon's fraternal twin sister, flicked her double set of rotor blades irritably. Back with Bro again... a/k/a Lothario. She and Thorne had been married for almost nine years, and had two daughters, for whose gender she was secretly glad. She wouldn't have known how to deal with a son who acted like her brother. What a happy family reunion this was going to be!
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Post by elizar on Feb 26, 2009 18:13:42 GMT -5
Jonathan looked at the puppet show, and realized that the villain in it was half-melted dildo that had been pink sometimes in the ages of unicorns and fairies. He smirked while rolling his eyes. That thing had actually been the first item he had managed to 'Sniff'. He seemed to have this uncanny sense of knowing where interesting items were. He had found that particular item deep in a fireplace. As it was, interesting items were most of the time useless, not worth anything, and most of the times just thrown back. He had once found a rubber ducky under twenty pounds of stones.
"Come on now." He said to the 'cast'. "We may actually get to the Library today. Inside even."
Gideon had made a beeline for Ariane. She was good looking, and even if she had been in a crowd of other female helicopters, there would have been high chance of him going to her anyway.
Gideon smiled his best friendly smile. "You're Ariane, right? I'm Gideon." He had been on a scouting mission when she had arrived.
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Post by Evangeline on Feb 26, 2009 18:55:56 GMT -5
"Oh yeah?" the "Puppeteer", one Cyrus Johnston by name, turned to Jonathan. "No shit? We're cleared and everything?"
Ariane looked Gideon up and down. She was young, twenty-three years of age, but by no means inexperienced. "Yes. Ariane DiMarco. I'd ask what I could do for you, but I think I already know the answer."
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Post by elizar on Feb 26, 2009 19:07:15 GMT -5
"The meeting that's in five minutes will be about what we do when we're inside." Jonathan said. "So I say it's a good chance."
Certainly not beating around the bush there. Gideon thought as he got positive vibes from her. "I've been here before, and I know a good safe spot far enough away. Maybe after duty sometime?" He proposed to Ariane. His last lay had been back in NYC, but that had been out of pressure since that same helicopter had been about to bring in a team of wildcatters that had been intend to kill the team of Relic Hunters that Jonathan was in. So Gideon had to think fast.
Seducing someone in just under fifteen minutes had been rather hard. Even harder when he had to make her just not care at all about her mission.
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Post by Evangeline on Feb 26, 2009 19:34:29 GMT -5
Cyrus and Rihanna, the other scouts, stood up and stretched. "About f***ing time. A mountain of paperwork just to take a dump around here."
Thorne Peterson came up to the tent, along with a couple of his staff. He was the contractor working to recover government assets, and his firm had in turn hired Jonathan and his associates as scouts. The Bell/Sikorsky mix was a good-sized and handsome as CV helos went, if a little weathered paint-wise. His assistants, a taurcat woman and a small forklift, carried files and a laptop in. He sounded off a crisp ATTENTION! snort, and went on inside.
"Shift ends around 1900." Ariane answered with a coy glance. She was already quite well-protected, having had a new ring put in the previous month. "Maybe then."
From around the corner, Gideon's sister came, with a steely snort to echo that of her mate. "General meeting means EVERYONE, bro." Arataki Quinlan snapped at his tail boom. "Surely you can keep your goddamn snake in its sheath for thirty minutes?" She tossed her nose at Ariane in a nonverbal GET-MOVING gesture.
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Post by elizar on Feb 26, 2009 19:52:03 GMT -5
"Sis, I'm sure you're supposed to ride the broom, not stick it up where the sun don't shine." Gideon answered quickly, then followed. He knew that she knew that he would have come to the meeting, and not actually begun anything with Ariane until both had free time.
Jonathan and the crew followed. "Please tell me some good news." He said. There was a problem with being gov associate, you had to abide by their rules. Miles was though sure that this was the only time it applied, as anyone who went in there without protection either didn't go out, or went out displaying the 'dead man walking' signs.
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Post by Evangeline on Feb 26, 2009 20:46:14 GMT -5
"A few minutes of inattention or losing track of time could get you killed, or others." Arataki warned both. "So be sure and pay attention during the meeting, we shouldn't have to tell you again." She rolled her eyes as they entered the large, three-sided tent. Thorne was up front with his helpers, and he waited for Arataki to join him.
"Looks like yet another big safety and regs lecture. Guess we'll have to sit through this shit one more time." Cyrus yawned as he took a seat on one of the folding chairs.
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Post by elizar on Feb 26, 2009 20:56:51 GMT -5
"We better be on the opposite ends in the tent." Gideon warned Ariane. "She may ripping us a new one if we're just next to each other." He then retreated near the crew he belonged to.
"Well, it is our first time into a hot zone." Jonathan said. "And we don't exactly know very much about this stuff.
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Post by Evangeline on Feb 26, 2009 21:14:50 GMT -5
"Yeah." Ariane could only agree with that. It wasn't a good thing to sass the boss's wife.
"My uncle went into a hot zone last year," Rihanna said to Jonathan and Cyrus, "And he could only go in an hour and then relay with somebody else. He said the worst thing about it was the dead silence and how any sound he made just.. echoed."
"All right, listen up people!" Arataki's sharp voice cut the air like a rapier. "Staff Sgt. Brandis here is gonna enlighten all those who have never worked in a hot zone before." She edged aside for a squat, short but bullnecked man in his forties who was probably an infant at the time of the blowup. "So keep it down back there, 'cause God help you if he has to repeat himself! I'm not gonna hold him back."
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Post by elizar on Feb 26, 2009 21:25:58 GMT -5
Jonathan had been thinking about mentioning how people had lived near where Japan had been bombed just due to population problem, but now people avoided hot zones because they could afford it, and couldn't afford the mutations. But Arataki's sharp voice had killed off any hope of speaking about that as an interesting tidbit.
He leaned forward to indicate he was interested. He had been told that the charms they had were limited. So getting some additional cover and how to use it would be good.
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Post by Evangeline on Feb 26, 2009 22:07:09 GMT -5
Sgt. Brandis started with a map of the DC area, with an overlay of concentric circles, several sets, indicating the major hot zones and varying degrees of radioactivity in each. The red dot of his laser pointer indicated the course to the LoC that they were to take every time they went and NOT deviate from, as well as the safe exposure tables, of which copies would be given out to each of the crew along with their film badges. He then brought a full set of hazmat gear and explained each part and every item of clothing - hood, full mask, coverall, etc.. His tones were as clear and sharp as Arataki's, and he came across as equally intolerant of nonsense. When it came to decontamination procedures, they were to be carried out every time a person left the zone - any dirt on the coverall was to be washed off before the gear came off, and then the user was to get a full shower on the off chance that something might have found its way inside. He ended the lecture with a quite colorful warning of what he would do to people who forgot this. Thus ended the lecture for the humans.
The lecture for air and ground vehicles was that the ground-rollers were to have as much protection as possible, and full spraydown after each exposure. Aircraft were to minimize their ground time in the area, avoid places with a lot of dust and get the spraydown afterwards. Of course, everyone would log their time and be swept with geiger counters after return.
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Post by elizar on Feb 27, 2009 6:40:15 GMT -5
After the safety lecture was over, Gideon leaned over to the scouts and Jonathan. "Seems like LoC may be lost to us today. There's enough red tape in this mission to cover the whole city."
"This is certainly not like New York." Jonathan said. "I guess this is how we go about while in radioactive zones. At least we won't have wildcatters on our hands, trying to kill us."
"Remember the one who wanted you to join his group?" Gideon said.
"It was awfully tempting, right up to the point where he tripped out and thought I was an alien trying to suck his brains, as little there was of it." Jonathan chuckled.
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Post by Evangeline on Feb 27, 2009 14:58:29 GMT -5
"That's nothing." Rihanna smirked. "There's a guy who's been in the Florida keys awhile, thinks he's King Neptune and has a whole bunch of cult followers and a castle of scrap."
Arataki was busy demonstrating the use of breather masks and eye protection for helos, showing how the flexible devices were to be fitted to each type of helo in a certain size range.
Ariana yawned and rolled her eyes. She had been through a couple of these before. "Ever work in a hot zone, Gideon?"
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Post by elizar on Feb 27, 2009 19:50:09 GMT -5
"Goes to show just how desperate people are now." Jonathan said. "Willing to believe anything." He looked over at Gideon and Ariana. They had started out being in the separate parts of the tent, and much to his amusement, it had been Ariana who had come over to Gideon. That guy didn't even have to sing for his supper.
"Once." Gideon said. "But not as hot as this one. It was at Camp David."
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