Weapons of the past, victims of the present [Honi Kameoka, CLOSED]

Behind the waterfall there was a naturally ocurring cavern that was dimly by more glowing mushrooms. The cavern was a serpentine corridor that ascended upwards and ultimately lead to a small ledge about five feet over the waterfall, leading to the same river you came from.

Despite having been there not very long ago things were different now, in the river there were two creatures fighting, an infantile mutalligator and a rat were fighting to the death. Both were of similar size and seemed to be on pair in combat skill.

You could attack them but the plasma bolts of your weapon aren't big enough to hit both of them with a single shot. The choice was yours, observe the fight and not intervene or use your Plasma Gun to easily balance the fight in one of the two fighter's favor.

Honi tried not to curse himself for not noticing this passage earlier, but he couldn't help but think of the trouble that might come with rendering the town's well unusable, even for a little while, especially since it had proved to be unnecessary.

Watching the two creatures up close was something to behold, however. Two creatures in the middle of a violent struggle. It was horrible, but he couldn't seem to take his eyes off it. It didn't quite have the same sickening effect that violence between humans had, but that might have been because he knew that they were animals, and animals fought to survive. It was hard-wired into some animals to fight to secure their survival. It was natural.

But didn't humans mostly commit violent acts for survival? Isn't violence therefore natural to humans? Honi decided to ignore his thoughts, as they were mostly irrelevant to the current situation. He was about to head back down the path he had discovered and continue his search, when he felt a stab of pity for the little mutalligator.

It would grow into something fierce and terrible, but nature needed things like that in the wild. Rats on the other had, didn't really need any help. Just before heading down, Honi decided to see if he could take a shot at the rat, maybe wound or kill it.

Dice rolling:

With another great shot of your plasma gun you send a big green bolt of pure overcharged plasma upon your target. The rat doesn't stands a chance, it is completely engulfed by the superheated ball of energy and in an instant explodes in several burnt and smoking pieces. Part of your attack also hit the river, instantly evaporating the water and creating a column of steam that quickly dissipates. When the steam is gone you see the small mutalligator cheerily devouring the cooked remains of its enemy, gnawing bone and meat alike. The creature sees you and stays quiet and still for some seconds, but then returns to its devouring, apparently not considering you a menace despite what you have just done. It seems that the beast doesn't has enough reasoning capability to truly understand what happened, and simply went with it.

Back to the matter at hand. Honi headed back down the passage, and after returning to the bottom of the waterfall, began his journey along its banks, following the river's current.

If he couldn't find the plant down there, he wasn't sure what he would do.

The river went on and on until suddenly an old brick wall appeared, stopping you on your tracks. The human construction diverted all the river towards a big pipe that was covered with a rusty grill, the darkness of the area didn't allowed you to see where the water went but there was a lot of noise coming from that place, and the smell of the Irrigo Plant was now stronger than ever.

Only a dim red light lit the area, and from its crimson light a barely visible metallic door and a message sprayed on the walls more than two centuries ago: "Kaho'olawe Water Treatment Plant"

Suddenly you felt something pulling you from your ankles. As you looked back you saw the baby mutalligator who was happily nibbling on your trousers. Apparently the creature, now with a stomach filled with warm rat meat, had taken a liking for you, and had followed you up until this point.

You could now use your plasma gun to breach open the grill and enter crouching across the tube or go towards the door. Humans from before the war were reckless, but not stupid, if they added a grill to that tube it had to be for a good reason, perhaps that water goes to some machine or something that can heavily hurt living beings, yet on the other side if there is anything creeping on the other side of that wall, going by the door will surely mean that you'll meet it. You were so close yet so far, there was no going back now.

Honi looked down at the creature which seemed to be accompanying him. He was fascinated by it, and was more than a little curious as to how smart it was. Maybe it understood that he helped it out. After a little bit of thought, he decided that he wasn't one to turn down a good omen, especially not one as auspicious as this.

"Hey there! Want to tag along? Looks like we both could use a friend in a place like this." He said, beginning to carefully separate it from his pant leg. "I'm not sure if you're a boy or a girl mutalligator, but I guess I'll call you...."

"Mark."

Satisfied that Mark was content to follow along for now, and that its parents weren't going to emerge from the river to savage him, Honi turned his attention to the grate and the door. He thought of going straight for the grate, as any mutalligator would have surely destroyed it before gaining entry to that area, but the caverns had already proven unpredictable in terms of where passages seemed to appear. In addition, there was probably old world machinery behind the grate that he'd prefer to have shut off.

It seemed to him that he should check out whatever was behind the door first. It was only logical. And admittedly, he was starting to have a lot of questions about this place that he needed answered. With his plasma pistol drawn, Honi decided to head for the door.

The old wooden door creaked and sounded as if it were to fragment and explode into a million of splinters at any time. On the other side lied one of the most stale airs of all the wasteland, the place had been untouched since the great war, even before perhaps. The place was unfinished, some walls remained half built and there were several building materials lying around, sacks of gravel, wooden planks and mounds of bricks lying here and there.

Only one room was completely finished, filled with furniture and seemed to have access to electricity, as it had an unlocked terminal and a small nuka-cola fridge on it.

There was also a corridor, on its other side a great source of mechanical noise. It lead to a great circular chamber in whose center lied a pit with a pool of water with a massive whirlwind in the centre that created a hole that devoured anything that fell down there. On the walls of the chamber there were five machines whose end finished with a great pipe dumping water, albeit three of them didn't worked, it looked like there was something clogging them. Had you entered across the water pipe you would have ended devoured by the guts of the machine, and possibly filtered and dumped into the hole.

And finally, on the ceiling of the chamber, your objective. There was a great crack on the roof and poking out of it the Irrigo Plant. It was a giant plant with narrow, fan shaped leaves, which are usually purple. Several sticky thorns poke out of its body and they all grabbed onto the crack and the ceiling. From time to time several leaves fell down onto the whirlwind only to be quickly devoured and sent onto oblivion.

The plant was too far away to be grabbed by hand, you would have to think of some way of reaching it.

"Looks messy in there. Maybe some of it is controlled from here?" Honi said to himself as he approached the computer terminal. He'd seen a few of these around, and he guessed how they were operated (more or less) from how other people used them.

As he tried to access it, he hoped that it would display something he could understand, instead of the almost arcane collection of symbols from the screens in the other room.

The instant you touch one of the many dust covered keys the entire thing comes to live, it opened to you like a book that was eager of having you read its contents and secrets.

There are two main directories to access, the first one is the machinery control unit, an easy to use system that tells you what purifiers are active, which ones aren't and whats troubling them. The second directory is a journal system that seems to have several entries that span several years, most of them during Pre-War times.

With Mark at his heels and a frown on his face, Honi excitedly took to the computer. He figured that it'd be safer to get the plant while the whirling pool of death was shut off, and he began to shut off the purifiers with that in mind, feeling a brief rush of satisfaction each time he successfully inputted a command. He'd have to remember to turn these back on later, maybe fix the clogged ones.

While waiting for a sign that his commands had gone through, he decided to go through some of the journal entries.