[h3]Rivet City Science Lab,[/h3]

The Rivet City laboratory was the only one of its kind in the entirety of the Capital Graveyard. Bright minds from all around the D.C. area and beyond had flocked here for years, looking to put their scientific expertise to good use in the only place they could. Indeed, the entire city's foundation was centred upon the scientific community's presence—first in studying the local wildlife, and closer to the modern day on fusion power and hydroponics projects. In between, though, a collection of exceptionally brilliant individuals had put their minds together on an ambitious mission to end fresh water scarcity all across what was then called the Capital Wasteland. Project Purity was perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Rivet City's scientific community, even tarnished as it was by the project's takeover and subsequent corruption under the Enclave. It took men and women as wise as those who had started the project in the first place to understand that all breakthroughs of science can be put to a multitude of uses. The Enclave's interest in Project Purity, rather than damning the project, only made it seem all the more impressive for the powers that be of the Commonwealth. A technology so innovative as to attract the brain-dead brutes of a nation long dead was surely something the Institute would greatly enjoy possessing. It was this plea, of the importance of Project Purity and all information relating to it, that Madison Li had ventured north to deliver to the Institute. As it turned out, Madison Li's attempts to attract the Institute's attention had been successful. So successful as to ensure that Rivet City, and the new arrivals defending it, were ready for precisely this situation.

As the militia formed in the Rivet City marketplace, settlers ready to defend with tooth, nail and laser rifle their homes and livelihoods, a small army of an even less professional sort gathered not far away. From the DC Metro Tunnels, near the city's entrance, a horde of dozens of angry, mind-addled feral ghouls came pouring out into the streets. Their screams of rage and anguish broke what was otherwise a chorus of gunfire and explosions, and they immediately set upon the first living things they saw: the Enclave soldiers. Anyone even slightly perceptive nearby would have spotted that, at the same time as this occurred, a bright red mist, smelling of rotting flesh, emerged from a hidden compartment inside the construct from which Rivet City was entered. Those Enclave soldiers near the release of the mist were coated in it, the red covering their power armour like paint, and sending the ferals against them with an even greater ferocity than they targeted their partners-in-arms.

As chaos ensued towards the main entrance, the Enclave soldiers pouring into the Rivet City Marketplace were making gains. Dead settlers, dying guards and spent casings littered the militia's defensive line, and although the Enclave withstood noteworthy casualties as well, the force attacking the marketplace seemed too large and too well equipped for a rag-tag band of Wastelanders to hold them off. It was when the line was nearly broken, and what defenders were left were looking to flee, that a man in a black suit fighting alongside the militia crawled behind cover to prod the neck of a young BoS soldier shooting down Enclave at the other end of the marketplace. As Longshot ducked back behind cover and turned his gaze to the attention-seeker, he saw the man looking straight into his eyes through black shades, face emotionless, and point towards the door leading to the laboratory. Then, without a word, the well dressed stoic ran, assuming Longshot to follow. At first he neglected, determined to stay and fight, but when he saw the defenders of the market place dying and fleeing around him in greater numbers, all as more and more Enclave marched against them, he knew it was his only choice and ran after the man in the black suit. As Longshot fled, a small number followed closely behind them, assuming a man from the BoS would know what he's doing in these types of situations. A blast of plasma nailed the leg of a Rivet City guard, one of the men following Longshot, just before the door to the laboratory was closed, locked all those who had fled from the marketplace inside—spare the dead guard. His body turning into a bright green ooze was the last sight that the fleeing defenders of the market place saw before the doors sealed shut with a louder than normal thud.

The inside of the laboratory was extremely crowded, refugees from other areas of the city and new arrivals decked out in advanced combat armour filling nearly every last bit of open space. A second man in a black suit stood alongside the one that had led the defenders into the lab, the both of the well-dressed pair flanking a tall, smiling man, who had his eyes trained on the Brother of Steel. The door had barely sealed and Longshot's gaze had only just arrived on the smiling man before the sound of an intense jolt of electricity filled the room, and the lights momentarily dimmed. Anyone outside of the laboratory would have been greeted to the sight of a burst of blue energy filling the entirety of Rivet City's interior, but be relatively unaffected by it. Anyone outside of the laboratory and also wearing power armour, however, such as the Enclave Soldiers, whether near the main entrance, the market place, or anywhere else in Rivet City, would be treated to the unique sensation of their flesh and skin melting inside their armour, and their suit's interfaces, joint servomotors and weapons capabilities all going dead as soon as their bodies were struck by the electromagnetism. Energy weapons, too, were immediately turned into useless hunks of metal and plastic, and burned against their wielder's hands. The buzz of electricity lasted exactly nine seconds before it stopped, and the laboratory's doors unsealed and opened. The many soldiers inside the lab then poured out, rushing in large squadrons to each of Rivet City's entrances to stop any more Enclave from entering the city. On their way, any Enclave Soldier they ran into that had wisely [i]not[/i] been wearing power armour was shot and left to die along the countless dozens of their armour-clad compatriots. All of Rivet City smelled of melted flesh and burnt hair, and the war between the Enclave and Institute over the gravestone of Washington D.C. had begun in earnest.