Act 1: Scene 1: The Task At Hand

~Dareal~Dareal crawls on over to the defective turret. The red light watches him approach, and though it perceives a threat, it is helpless to do anything about it as another spark shoots out the side of it. ~Everybody Else~

The rest of the group begins heading inside the house. The small adobe farmhouse is a wreck. The first thing that registers is the stench, like something died, rotted, was burnt, then died and rotted again. The tiny entrance room opens up into a small living room. Off from the living room there are two doors, which look to lead off to a bedroom and a kitchen.

In the living room, furniture has been overturned, and the floor is scattered with broken picture frames, simple jewelry, and blood-soaked farm tools. A slow, quiet dripping sound draws the characters' attention to an archway leading to the kitchen. On the wall, beside the archway, is an old ghoul woman wearing a bloody nightgown, her rotted skin falling away from her face in folds that flap about in the breeze. A garden hoe is thrust through her sternum, impaling her to the wall.

You recognize the impaled ghoul as Theresa. Theresa’s eyes are frozen, wide with fear, and her chin is slumped down towards her chest. She’s not breathing.

Link is momentarily stunned as he sees Theresa. Figuring that they were dead, Lincoln is still shocked by the savage attack. It took someone or something with exceptional strength to do this damage.

Kenzie activates the camera mode on her Pip-boy and snaps off a couple shots of the ghoul impaled to the wall, for proof to the sheriff. "Well. We found one. Where's her other half?" She questions and moves for the kitchen to take a look for the other old ghoul.

Lincoln follows Kenzie into the kitchen. As he moves Link jokingly says..Do you think all of our jobs will be this easy?

Kyle goes over to the body. He starts looking it over, seeing if there's any signs of who or what could have done this.

Dareal lacks the self-awareness needed to feel embarrassment for his current scenario(although once bystanders recover from the shock of witnessing a mutant crawling on the roof - they might be tempted to do so on his behalf if they're not the alarm-raising type).

When he's within reach of the prize, Dareal wraps his legs around the turret and goes in for a viselike bear-hug. All Super Mutants knows that if you do a physical task with a modicum of resistance, the proper technique is to grunt as loudly as you can. That's a sure-fire way to assert dominance. Strange sounds that can hardly be classified as intelligible escapes his mouth as he tries to yank the turret from its mount.

~Rooftop~

And assert dominance over this poor turret he does. The wavering red light seems to quiver in defenseless fear as Dareal wraps his legs around the turret and yanks it out of the roof, the frail wooden boards bending and snapping as the hunk of metal is ripped free.

~Living Room~

As Kenzie takes the snaps of the female ghoul's body and Kyle takes a closer look, it's evident that she put up one hell of a fight. Her face, arms, and hands are badly bruised and cut, which is doubly impressive since a ghoul's skin is usually bruised and rotting away anyway.

~Kitchen~

The kitchen is in surprisingly good shape for being at least 200 years old. The kitchen seems pretty clean and tidy and everything but the wallpaper looks pretty well-preserved, which looks similar to the ghoul's skin as it wrinkles and sloughs off the wall. A single drawer has been open and bent crooked, with utensils and knives strewn about the floor underneath it.

Where the floor in the living room was covered in clutter and dirt, the floor in the kitchen is freshly mopped, besides the trail of bloody footsteps that leads from the living room, through the kitchen, and out the back door that gently creaks ajar in the breeze.

Lincoln takes a quick look around, trying to see if there's anything useful.

Lincoln begins investigating the kitchen, and notices underneath the counter with the messed up drawer is a gun rack affixed to the back wall, only problem is that it's empty.

Lincoln notices the empty gun rack but continues casing the joint, and eventually in one cupboard he stumbles across a perfectly ripe-looking Mutfruit.

Lincoln quickly puts the Mutfruit in his pack. Continuing on Lincoln searches the rest of the house.

Dareal crowns himself a victorious hero; the conqueror of turrets far and wide.

Nevermind the fact that this particular one was busted and had yet to fire a single bullet; the metal beast was doubtlessly crippled by fear in the face of an indefatigable adversary. The mutant tucks his hard-earned prize into the crook of an arm, and then plummets off the roof in the only way a seven feet tall meatbag can.

"OooOOOoooOOoo. Where all?" he calls out as he circles the perimeter of the house in search of his sidekicks.

Kenzie points out the bloody footprints on the clean kitchen floor leading out the open back door. "Looks like whoever impaled Theresa exited out through the kitchen door."

"I'm going to check the bedroom and see if our missing ghoul is back there." She announces and promptly exits the kitchen. Pistol in hand and flashlight lit, Kenzie proceeds to the bedroom and peeks in carefully.

If nothing immediately urgent or dangerous occurs, she steps in and searches the room.

While the two other takes the kitchen and the bedroom, Kyle looks closer at the living room. "I'll stay back here," Kyle replies to Kenzie.

~Living Room~

Kyle searches the living room more thoroughly, but does not find anything else that seems of significance, though, it does seem odd that all of the picture frames scattered around the floor are empty or have little scraps of a picture left in them, as if the pictures held within were torn out.

~Bedroom~

The bedroom, like the kitchen, is well-kept and clean. The bed is neatly made and the clutter is surprisingly sparse. However, upon the bed is a pile of glass shards of old shredded pictures. Underneath one of the pillows is a heart-shaped locket with two ancient-looking pictures inside of it. One is of a man in his late thirties who stands with a goofy grin on a clean front lawn, crossing out the FOR in the FOR SALE sign in front of what is unmistakably the house the party is currently within. The is viciously scratched out with a sharp object. Under the other pillow is a bloody handkerchief. Moving to the small closet, Kenzie notices that hanging within there is only women's clothes and a bunch of empty hangers.

~Backyard~

Link enters the backyard. Like the front, a shoddy, vine-covered fence closes in a small area in which the entire ground is completely filled with Melons. So much so that it is hard to find a path through the thick, intertwining and interlocking vines. However, it's not hard for Link to notice the bloody footprints that lead to a small red shed in the far back left corner of the yard. The shed has a single white door on the front of it that is currently shut, and appears to have a small window on the wall that Link can see.

~Everyone~

Just as Link begins heading outside the back door, everyone hears three sounds suddenly break the overhanging silence that fills the homestead, all originating from within the red barn. Two long, painful-sounding coughs and a deafening shotgun blast. Then silence again...

Kenzie takes the locket, then searches through the clothing, before looking under the bed. She is down on her hands and knees with her flashlight on, when the sound of the shotgun alerts her to something happening outside. She scurries up, grips her pistol and heads back toward the kitchen to see what's is transpiring out the back door and in the direction of the barn.

The sound of the shotgun blast causes Kyle to duck to the ground. Crawling on all four, to the closest window, or, if it's closer, the door to the backyard. He takes a careful look outside.

The sound of the shotgun blast, makes Link react on pure instinct. Bring his pistol up, Link moves quickly, but carefully to the red barn.

Once there Link pauses to see if he can hear anything and then opens the door. Letting his pistol lead the way, Link steps I side the barn.