The Rejects (AKA The Dirty Half-Dozen, The Six Wanderers)

Bob Perce (Herodian)
Colt Riffle (Gigermann)
Dr. J. Turk (CommJunkee)
Lance Bennett (Ronnke)
Lenny Leonardo (Melissa)
Romeo Sylvester (Rigil Kent)

The One Where They Saved Megaton

11 Jul 2162

The Rejects had been on the road for the last six months, wandering East from Vault 13, the community they had grown up with, which had rejected them as “irreversibly contaminated” by their time in the wasteland, the result of their mission to retrieve a new water chip that saved the lives of said community.

Somewhere near the East Coast of the Old USA, they arrived at the gates to a small town, the walls of which were made of old airplane scraps. They were met by a robot, which welcomed them to this town, called Megaton, and when pressed for some background information, told of the “inactive” atomic bomb around which the town was built, its namesake. At mention of the bomb, inactive or not, Colt had to be arm-twisted into entering the gate (being uncharacteristically fearful of radiation poisoning due to a childhood incident).

Within, they were met by Sheriff Simms, and shown around; Lance nearly had to be restrained to keep him from tampering with the bomb. Afterward, they went to the general store run by the impossibly-positive Moira Brown, who traded for some of their collected goods and recruited them for a mission to check out the nearby Super-Duper Mart, as research for the Wasteland Survival Guide she was working on. Then, as the day was winding down, they headed to Moriarty’s Saloon: Lenny and Turk gambled with some of the locals there; Sly hit on an unaccompanied woman at the bar, who told of a nearby community, Arefu, being harassed by rustlers; Colt, Bob and Lance ordered drinks at a corner table, and were approached by a man calling himself Mister Burke, who attempted to recruit them for a job for a man called Tenpenny, showing them a small device to be attached to the bomb at the center of town—he had an ill-favored look, and the Rejects figured he was up to no good here, and refused him. Later, Colt slipped into his “security guard/cop” mode, and started asking around about Mister Burke. Lance seized the opportunity to slip away and have a closer look at the bomb; Bob followed (to help, to look out, or maybe just out of morbid curiosity).

The coast clear, Lance braved the assuredly-radiated water in which the bomb rested and opened it up, and determined its firing circuitry had been removed. The Sheriff showed up and demanded he explain himself; Lance did not try to deceive him, and included the story about Mister Burke’s illicit recruitment. The Sheriff asked Lance to seal up the panel on the bomb such that nobody could ever tamper with it again, and took his leave in a slight rush. Lance and Bob followed him, heard gunshots ahead, and arrived to find the Sheriff dragging the lifeless body of Mister Burke out of his home; the device-to-be-inserted was identified, now holed and mostly useless—Lance was allowed to keep it for electronic parts.

The next morning, the Rejects met with the important folks of the town, and were thanked for their intervention on the town’s behalf, and were offered one of the empty homes in town to live in, which they accepted. Then they geared up to head out to the Super-Duper Market.