John hadn't stopped or rested fora little over three days now. he'd just been walking along nonstop down a road. He'd seen a few corpses along the side every so often. normally picked clean of anything useful for the most part. John had long since stopped checking himself, no sense in wasting the energy to go over, check, and get disappointed. a quick scan of the corpse was normally all it took for him to see if anything he valued was on it. It was still early in the morning when he came up towards a site that seemed to rub him the wrong way. his eyes scanned the area as various warnings seemed to go off in his cybernetic mind telling him this was an area where things were likely to get ambushed. Wreckage from caravans that had been torn to shreds littered bits of the road and roadside. small mound of earth ran along one side of the road with tall grass covering most of it. taking a few steps closer to the site John's eyes scanned the area more intently, picking out points in the pavement where bullets smashed into the ground, laser fire scorched the earth, and hot plasma showed that nothing could resist the fourth state of matter. Kneeling by a pile of ash John reached his hand into it, sifting around for anything that may have survived. all he managed to pull out was a bottle cap that no longer served it's purpose as currency anymore. this was apparently where the victim had been shot. turning the remains of the cap over his eyes scanned it, he could see the black char of biological materiel that was flash imprinted on the bottle cap as someone was atomized by a well placed shot from an overcharged laser weapon. the shot had impacted the cap which appeared to be apart of a necklace of some sort, burning right through and then ended the existence of it's owner. dropping the mangled remains of the metal John looked up carefully to everything around him as his pipboy's radio flickered to life as it picked up a signal and started playing it. a few notes strummed from a guitar came out before a voice spoke "It's all over, but the crying. And nobody's crying but me. Friends all over. know I'm trying. To forget about how much I care for you" the radio kept playing the old song from a band known as the ink spots as he stood up and moved his hand down to thumb the third yellow button on his pipboy a few times as he looked around. The feeling was intense as V.A.T.S kicked in and he could feel his remaining power drain quickly in the process. He watched as his power meter went down and down and down. 45% dropped to 40% with the first press as the pipboy's processors scanned the area where he could see, though nothing came up. turning his head he watched again as his power levels took another hit as he scanned again, pressing the third yellow button with a distinctive click as his power plummeted down to 35%. Again nothing. but still the fake hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end as he could feel something or someone watching him. Again he'd turn his head, his thumb pressing the button once more as his power dropped to 30% and all sorts of warnings in red text began running down the side of his vision. [color=ed1c24]Model J-70 Status update... Power has dropped out of safe operating levels. Power now at 30% and dropping. Decreasing power to lower body actuators to compensate. Movement speed decreased by 35% via locomotion. Decreasing power to arm actuators to compensate. Overall strength and accuracy decreased by 35%. Shutting down advanced vision settings... Flair Compensation: 0 Night Vision: 0 Thermal: 0 Magnetic: 0 IR:0 Optical Zoom: 0 Advanced object scanning and recognition: 0 Power now in critical levels. New Primary objective... Find Nourishment.... error power plant faulty. Nourishment insufficient. New Secondary objective... Find Nuka Cola[/color] nothing was there.... with sluggish and tired movements he'd turn his head one more time to scan one last area, his thumb pressing the button once more. his power plant let out a hungry growl as it struggled to keep up with the power demands as his power dropped to 25%. The low power warning kept flashing like mad in the corner of his vision, though this time was different. This time data began feeding into his senses like mad as the pipboy's V.A.T.S system found something. [color=00a651]Target... Human. Alignment Unknown. Weapon.... Error... insufficient power to complete scan. Chance to hit... Head: 0 torso: 0 Left Arm: 0 Right Arm: 0 Left Leg: 0 Right Leg: 0 Target currently in cover. Ambush imminent. Recommend securing cover.[/color] Rather than continue and take ineffective shots at a target he already knew he couldn't hit even if he focused everything he had into a single area, John let his system exit the sensation that was V.A.T.S. and instead chose to try and do something else. Looking up the road John could see an old grocery store just down the way, but as is he wouldn't be able to outrun someone with a long range firearm with the low power he was running on. So he did the only thing he could do right now... Abide by the advice his Pipboy gave him. With that John dove down behind a pile of wreckage that he knew was insufficient. his mind calculating chance to hit him from the ambusher's location. no matter the calculation, from his current point of cover, it didn't look good. For all John knew the man hiding and waiting in ambush could have seen john look straight at him. yeah, this was gonna be one of those days. was probably gonna get shot again. ()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()() Potential encounters [@Pripovednik] for his character henry. [@Valais 66] and [@Balmung1100] for NPC raiders if there are any left. could all be dead due to their base possibly being the old grocery store. ()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()