(Sorry this ended up taking so long-- I left it on my hard drive at work.

)

It was always nice to come home.

There had been a time, long enough ago that only the stories remained, that the land beneath her feet had once been beautiful. Rolling hills, pristine lawns, the promise of wealth and freedom that came from living in America. Before the Great War, before fire had rained from on high like the hand of an avenging god, the Capitol Wasteland had been a thriving metropolis and home to thousands, if not millions, of people.

But it surely wasn't that way now. And yet Bethany Ann Masters still got a little thrill of joy whenever she found her steps leading that way. It was populated -inasmuch as there were populations anymore-, there were places to find fresh enough water, to trade or sell whatever largesse the open road had given, and yet there was still enough open space for her to find a corner or two for herself and her pack each night with only minimal disturbances.

Home sweet home.

It hadn't always been so, of course. The earliest years of her life -memories grown fuzzy with age and distance- had been spent in what had once been Kentucky. There had been a Vault there, underpopulated when the End came, and so for three generations had sheltered the descendants of those wise enough to listen when those fateful sirens sounded. It had been her parents who had left initially, though the steel doors were never locked behind them, and Beth had been raised in what could arguably be called a community scrapped together in what was left of the fallen city of Louisville. And it had been a decent life, from what she could recall, but fortune didn't always favor the bold. She'd been twelve when raiders or mutants or whatever threat that prowled the darker places came knocking, and in a fateful day while she had been blithely digging caps out of ruined buildings her whole world had been slaughtered.

There'd been options, of course. Beth had known at the time that she could go back to the vault, could have found solace and shelter there if she'd wanted it. But she was a month's shy of thirteen, and childhood in the Wasteland was often brutally short. Hiding got you nowhere but cornered, she'd reasoned, and she'd been moving when the attacks happened. Ergo, movement must be key to survival. It was childhood logic and yet logic that she'd built her life on.

And so it went. Like so many lone travelers before her, in a tradition spanning back to the first faltering steps of early and curious humans, Bethany carried most of her world on her back. The pack was built on a frame that tied snugly at her waist with straps around her shoulders, and was packed with ergonomics and speed in mind. Her staples, the cooking wear, the bedroll, stimpacks and whatever rations she had available were rolled tightly together to prevent noise or excess movement that might throw off her stride. Pouches along the pack's olive dun sides held whatever treasures she'd found for trade or sale, though her even more precious soapbox of caps was kept more securely and hidden, belted to the small of her back and resting beneath the pack's weight. Beneath her battered leather armor -gleefully scavenged from a Raider who thought she was faster on the trigger than Bethany- it was all but invisible, and that suited her fine.

It was a spare fortune, one that rose and fell with her own luck and risk, but one that she called her own and was content with.

And yet one she was always seeking to grow, hence her return to the familiar silhouettes of the Capitol Wasteland, and the scant but hardy population that might be convinced to part with their own valuables for what she herself had hoarded. Following as she always did the long ridge that had once, she supposed, been a river bank Beth picked her way down the long embankment and stopped for only a moment to catch her bearings.

There was, if memory served, a settlement perhaps five or six miles farther on that she'd not visited in the last three trips to this corner of the world. It meant new faces, less trading with merchants or citizens grown familiar with her and no longer as willing to bargain. The light was with her and the day was decent for traveling, and so with a spring in her step and a hand that rested constantly on the butt of her chinese pistol -faster than getting to the hunting rifle strapped to her pack but less satisfying than the tire iron of baseball bat- she set her stride with her back to the sun and set off to make her fortune.

(I left her age a little ambigious and tried to chose a picture that had a range of options -- not sure what we had in mind for an age difference.)

"And if you could actually make sure the drinking water isn't, you know, surrounded by ghouls, that'd be great." His broad shouldered frame jostled happily as he chuckled, speaking into the beige cylindrical object that wrapped around most of his left forearm:
"That was ONE time, Jocelyn. One time."
"Don't make me send Hank down there. If he knows that his bro-wife is in trouble, he'll spring out of the trailer and come running with his latest invention in tow."
"You know he loves you more than he does me, right?" A sigh came through the singular and miniature speaker located on the very right hand side of the object.
"Sometimes I don't know." Another laugh, this one shared.
"I'll be back before dusk with a report. Just let Ignus and Zoe know that this is a promising site..." He looked across the mutilated road, past the chunks of pavement and rotted vehicles down towards the river.
"Minus the potential for mirelurks. But I can deal with that."
"Alright, fine. Just...be careful out there, big guy."
"I'll try."
"I hate it when you say that."

With the communication over, his right hand twisted one of the three dials located on the right side of the machine and navigated back to the black and green colored map that seemed to ever be expanding. There were several icons that were visible from the wider view the map defaulted to, but Mansfield wasn't interested in heading to any of established points. He zoomed in on the triangle that represented his location, noting the lack of anything featured on his display.
"Time to change that." He mused aloud, looking once again to the right in the direction of the river before turning his attention to his left. Mansfield stood in the alleyway of two run down buildings that had somehow managed to withstand the nuclear assault of the past and the dangers of the present, serving as an example of what humanity was attempting to become...well, minus the rundown part. Of course, many of the people Mansfield had met on his travels were in worse shape than the edifices he stood in between. What did it say about humanity that their creations could endure better than the creators?

Ok, ok, back to business.

He headed left deeper into the alleyway, which naturally curved right and opened up into a wider, square shaped space. The remains of a fountain stood in the center, cracked and unused. Before the war, this was probably a nice centerpiece to a courtyard that denizens from the buildings flanking the fountain could enjoy watching while eating their lunch in this courtyard(assumed courtyard, anyhow). Mansfield's eyes narrowed, examining the other entranceway past the fountain, which led to the street that intersected the one running parallel to the riverbank.
"Perfect." Nodding in approval at the rusting and/or crumbling arches that hung over areas to provide shade, he pressed a button on the left side of the "Pip-Man" (bless Hank) to record his findings:
"Log one hundred and two, remains of downtown D.C. Possible settlement close to river..."

A few minutes of spoken observations later and Mansfield was satisfied, ending the recording before making his way across the road and down the gentle slope to a path that ran right alongside the river. In the distance stood more ruined buildings, a few moving shapes that looked like mirelurks waddling along the opposite shoreline, which was thankfully at least half a mile off.
"Probably will need a fence he-" The relative quiet that permeated the ruins was pierced by the roaring of a gas motor, a few shouts of command floating from down the road, maybe a block(or two?) away. Uttering a curse, he withdrew the sniper rifle slung across his back and flattened himself on the ground, granting him slight cover thanks to the slight elevation of the road. He was able to see part of the road, which hadn't made himself

There's someone on the riverbank.

Footsteps coming from his left.

His rifle was quickly trained on the potential intruder, finding a young girl of maybe twenty approaching him as a leisurely pace. Her pack was jangling far too loudly for his liking, so he hissed:
"Get down! Now!" The motor had stopped, voices much more understandable:
"You know the drill! Into the buildings!" They were here to scavenge, probably. If this was raider territory, Mansfield would have to clear them out somehow...and he would need help. Spotting the rifle on the girl's person, he asked her:
"You good with that thing? Cause if you are, I could use the help." He nodded towards her pack.
"I can get you to a settlement to trade, warm food, clean water-"
"Check the river! Don't need to get ambushed by bloody mirelurks." Mansfield then hurriedly added:
"Now or never, kid. What's it going to be?"