Layne would hear Paladin Webster's orders and start toward the escalators before being grabbed. He'd continue firing into the seemingly endless crowd of ghouls even as he was being dragged to safety, firing off battle cries as well as ammunition. "YEAH! GET SOME, GET SOME!", he'd scream several times while emptying his remaining clips into the freaks.

Thanks to his bloodlust, however, Layne ran out of ammo for his M-16A4, knowing he'd have to rely on his .45 until they got a re-supply. "[censored]... I think I got a little to into it.."

OOC: I think I'll wait for the Aussie's who have joined to post up to where the rest of us are.

ATTENTION AUSSIE'S: Post from the beginning of the thread, up until the squad is escaping the Metro Station. I will move on from there once everyone has gotten a chance.

Knight Beckett looked up from his laser rifle, well it is more of a laser shotgun, but I digress. There was a scribe with a note.

'It's from Paladin Webster' said the gaunt scribe.

'Well that would've been useful ten minutes ago when the call went out eh?' growled Beckett, he actually did growl as the wound that disfugured his face also made his voice much more gravelly, leading to many calling him 'Dog'. Completely respectfuly of course.

Running out to the main gate, Leroy quickly assesed the men whom would be on this mission.
There was Webster himself, a western Brotherhood vet.
Knight Godfrey, a local sniper, not bad for a local though.
Knight Hawk, heavy weapons, not serious enough for Beckett.
Knight Harris, another local who thought he could be a true Brother.
Initiate Deckard wait they were sending an initiate?
Knight Caleb, another friggin' local, decent man though.
Knight Comara, finally another westener. Very true to the origional mission, maybe that's why Casdin was so interested in him.
Knight Ketrian, the only female as far as Beckett could tell, fights like a coward though.

They were a decent group. With no medic or radioman. Beckett assumed that it was to be a short mission. Paladin Webster made some half-arsed speech about how locals and true Brothers are the same yeah, sure and how they were to go to the mall.

Entering a metro tunnel, Beckett was overwhelmed with a feeling of unease. Unslinging his laser-shotgun and easing his lucky ripper from it's sheath, Leroy prepared himself.

It was a good thing to, those friggin' zombies jumped out of every nook and most of the crannies. firing his shotgun, Beckett reduced several to nothing but ash. To save ammo he switched to his ripper, then things got real fun. In the middle of gutting a zombie, Beckett heard the call to retreat back to the escalators. Running up the now frozen steps, Leroy noticed that the Initiate's rifle was empty, he tossed the stressed looking Initiate his ripper with a nod and a speaker-distorted 'Save your ammo, "super star", I won't be here forever.'

(OOC: I'm back but this will be my only post for about 2 hours as I have to work :sadvaultboy: )

IC
Daniel looked over at the team they had put together. They were all knights except for one initiate Daniel hoped he wasn't just a coffin stuffer. They were about to hit the mall a main stronghold of the mutants. The paladin looked battle worn as he addressed the troops then they were off.

They went through the metro station but were ambushed by ghouls. It was so sudden for Daniel, one rushed up on him, he managed to punch it in the face knocking it down. Another came at him Daniel whipped out his knife and stabbed it through the bottom of its jaw. He then pulled his laser rifle out and started blasting. As he was shooting he stood close to the Paladin and covered his back. He then began to follow him towards the exit.

Layne would inspect the ripper the late comer had given him, nodding to him in thanks and attaching it to the armor plate attached to his left thy. He'd then shoulder his M-16A4 and inspect his fellow squadmates, knowing most of them saw more battles with muties then he had. However, it was doubtful they knew as much about the land west of ruins as he did.

Places like the Deathclaw Sanctuary and Evergreen Mills, where most people wouldn't go for a spot at Tenpenny Tower. Layne had personally scouted these places by himself during his initiation into manhood, and the sites he saw were burned into his mind. This was different though, fighting in real combat where other people are depending on your attentiveness and courage.

He'd think back to stories of how Super Muties would drag people back to their bases, such as German Town Police HQ and Vault 87 to "experiment". The young initiate had already decided that if it came down to being taken alive by the yellow freaks, he'd blow his own brains out.

(( Ha ha, oh geez. I went to bed after my initial post, and everyone's moved halfway across the wastes. XD How to get back in...))

Ketrian was the quiet one of the group apparently, speaking little on the walk to the metro; without her speaking, one might not even have known she was female if they had not seen her around the Citidel previously. AKM unslung and held to the ready during the walk, her stance was cautious walk of a soldier, steps light as could be helped in her tin can armour, body slightly hunched with stock firm against her left shoulder. Yes, as a matter of fact, she was left-handed, which had made using side-biased weapons like laser rifles inconvenient at best, potentially deadly at others.

And then, of course, there were ghouls. "Contact!" the female voice suddenly offered, tinny from the speaker built into her helmet. The AKM spoke the rest a moment later, orange fire spitting from its barrel as a controlled two-shot burst found its way to a charging ghoul's right left... Which collapsed in a bit of a mess, the tibia shattered by one of the rounds. Sure, the ghoul was still alive, but now it was unable to run, the lack of support mid-sprint forcing in to the floor face-first, sliding briefly before coming to a stop. It let out a most ungodly shriek in reply, crawling quickly now... But compared to the pace of its run, it literally was a crawl.

At the sign of more enemies, however, it was... definitely time to go, especially with the Paladin's call to do so. Firing another short burst at the upper mass of a ghoul charging her, she doesn't stop to see if it's fallen, only starting to run with the others, to get away from the twisted remnants of what might have been normal people...

Ryan threw his pistol to the side, "Yea thats not going to help," and he reved up his mingun, Ryan started to tear through 5 ghouls that were unlucky enough to be caught in front, "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!" The sound was great as Ryan ripped through 300 rounds just one those ghouls. "C'mon guys, have fun with it!"

Layne would notice a few Knights were still in the tunnel, deciding to head back down with his .45 drawn. He'd begin to systematically score head shots off wandering ghouls, not trying to draw the attention of the bulk of the force without the entire squad for back up. "This is way better then wastin' time at the shooting range!", the young man would yell to Ryan enthusiastically.

"Hahaha, Damn right man!" Ryan laughed as he ripped apart packs of helpless ghouls, "Nothings better than some leisure time in the metro!" I better stop, or i won't have any ammo left for the real fighting. Ryan quickly whiped out his pistol and began shooting, not that well too, as one came at him he shot, "Holy [censored]! I shot him right in the balls!"

Initiate Deckard would grin as Dan scored a rather comical "ball shot", holstering his weapon shortly after, however. He'd learned his lesson by wasting all of his 5.56x45mm NATO rounds when he got too enthusiastic with his M16 earlier. "Hey man, we better get topside soon. Sentinel Webster will have our ass if we waste all of our ammo down here."

Ryan took out a couple more ghouls and ran outside to meet up with the squad, The sunlight blinded him after spending just a short time underground,"Whats wrong, you guys chicken? We have plenty of ammo anmo its good practice. Maybe Webster is just being a hard ass, but thats my opinion. Ryan let out a laugh, "So where to now, Mr.Webster?"

Richard heard Paladin Webster's order to retreat to the metro exits and started using his Combat Shotgun to cut a bloody swath to the exit, passing by Ryan and Layne, who were having the time of their lives killing Ghouls. Richard thought, "Well, [censored] it.", and started shooting alonside them, killing Feral Ghouls with his Laser Rifle, leaving some with cauterized holes in their chests, others as ash piles while saying, "This is pretty fun, just don't get cocky!"

Chase's light caught a ghoul right as it lunged at him. He fired his rifle, hitting the thing in the chest. More of the things screamed at him as the air filled with the smell of burning flesh. Not that Chase could smell it, what with the air filters and all. He took another three shots into the darkness as gunfire erupted all around him and his comrades opened fire. All of a sudden, one came out of nowhere, hitting him with his claws. It didn't do any damage. In fact, Chase could only barely feel it, but the ghoul did succeed in knocking his gun from his hands.

Chase backhanded the ghoul with his gauntleted fist, shattering it's skull and sending it's head flying off. In the same movement, he drew his trench knife from it's sheath on his back and plunged it into another ghouls neck. He ripped it across to the left, spraying blood everywhere as he freed it and cut another ghoul's neck open. He then punched another with all the force he had, his fist going clean through the radiated man. He ripped his hand free among flying blood and gore.

"Come on! That all you ghoulies got?"

None of the ghouls came after him though. They all seemed to be rushing towards his teammates instead, so Chase took the opportunity to go pick up his laser rifle again. On his way, he heard a crunch beneath his feet, and looked down to see that he had stepped on a baseball bat. He looked to the left and saw several raider corpses, all mangled and half-eaten.

"Guess the locals didn't make it through after all."

Chase picked his laser rifle up just as Paladin Webster called for the retreat. He began to slowly back up, firing four shots into the darkness as he retreated from under a hanging light, towards the escalators. Each shot was rewarded with a scream. He looked over his shoulder to see Knight Beckett toss a ripper to the initiate, who seemed to be running empty.

"Hey initiate, next time don't waste all your..." The scream of a minigun interrupted him as hundreds of rounds of ammo came from Knight Hawk. "Ammo... Right."

Chase continued backing up, firing the occasional shot into the darkness. Then, the ghouls came under the light he had been backing up under earlier. There were dozens of ghouls and rabid dogs still down here, and they didn't appear to be running out of bodies.

"Whew. I'd suggest a tactical retreat is in order. Before they bury us in bodies."

Chase turned and ran for the exit, then turned at having a thought. He unclipped a grenade from his belt and tossed it in the air, letting it fall back to his hand as he contemplated pulling the pin.

"Oh so very tempting..."

He made a sigh of annoyance, clipped it back onto his belt, and hurried out of the Metro, towards Paladin Webster.

Satisfied with the amount of kills he racked up down in "Zombieville" (A name he so affectionately named the tunnels they'd just fought through), Layne would find a bench near the exit and remove a holotape recorder from his utility pack, deciding to add another chapter to a long line of recordings he'd made for his father, in hopes of giving them to him after his first deployment was over. He wanted his father to know all he had achieved, from making it through Initial Brotherhood Training to being assigned to a well-respected Paladin's squad before he even made it to the rank of Knight.

Layne would remove his helmet, revealing a fairly handsome and extremely young man, his neck-length blond hair soaked with sweat at this point. He would press the button on the side of the recorder and begin recounting the events that had taken place since he first met Paladin Webster at the Citadel. "Chapter 13: My First Combat Mission. Early this morning I was finally called to duty over the loudspeakers. I mentioned the letter I got in the last recording, and I've been psyched for this assignment for a while now. The leader of our squad is a veteran, a Paladin by the name of Webster. I get the feeling he's seen more action then most, definitely more then me."

"Moving on, we just got out of Metro Station. We expected some ghoul resistance, but man is that an understatement. For some reason they were all drawn to that spot, maybe from years ago when they used it for cover against the bombings. Everyone in my unit got at least one kill, and most of them got more then five. I'm not sure how many I got, but I know emptied 90 rounds worth of ammunition into the svckers. It's possible I got a little over-zealous... Anyway, I think we're about to head out now dad. Next chapter will be on my experience in "The Mall". I must admit I'm not looking forward to it. Layne Deckard out."

Richard kept on until he got bored and started running towards the exit, not stopping until he was out of the metro. He said, " Well, that was fun, but now it's over." He then decided to sit on a bench while he waited for Paladin Webster's next orders.

Kyle heard the fallback order from Webster and layed down covering fire. Unable to run very fast, he pulled back slowly covering the group with bursts from his rifle dropping a few more ghouls as he back stepped up the escalator, back towards the gate which took you to the other hell-hole. At the top he noticed a few knights had held back at the top of the overhang, hopefully for him. The gunner, the new initiate who looked like he was trying to pull a rambo and a few other knights continued to thin the wave of undead flesh.

Over his radio he told the others to fall back, that he had them covered, but asked the gunner to wait at the gate and give him cover fire. Even if he couldn't make it out he wanted the others to make it.

After he heard the others starting to run back to the gate, he began to fall back. The narrow corridor gave him a fighting chance as he continued to fire, as the ghouls near he pulled out two frags and dropped them at his feet. He took off at a running limp where the gunner began to unleash a deadly hail of 5mm rounds. Kyle hopped through the gate and into the blinding sunlight, with the whole squad intact plus a few newcomers. He took of his helmet and pulled out some adhesive and synthetic leather to cover the small slash in the side of his armor...

Frank rested for a moment with the others. The sudden rush of ferals and rabid dogs gave him that little bit of a jolt, to get him moving at a quicker pace. He looked around from where they were, and pulled out his map. He looked it over for a minute, giving the men and woman, sometime to relax and not get over zealous about the whole thing. He marked where they had gone down in, and looked up to find a sign with where they were. He checked his map once again, and put a dot on the map. They were several blocks from the Mall, but it shouldn't take to long for them to reach it. Frank stood up, looking at the entire squad.

"Ok, we're about nine or ten blocks away from the Mall, but the D.C. Ruins always have a plan to throw us off course in someway, so it may take us longer to reach. But don't worry, I think D.C. is still crawling with enough 'Frankensteins' that you'll get your chances to kill one before we reach the Mall?" Frank picked up his laser rifle, and slung it over his back. He double checked the squad, making sure everyone was still alive and well. They seemed O.K., the ghouls were nothing serious, just more of a hassle.

Frank started towards the route he had planned out, and the squad followed. The sun was still shinning, but more clouds had started to cover the sky, and far off in the distance large storm clouds seemed to be rolling in. If they wanted to beat the storm towards the Mall, they would have to step up their pace. Frank looked back, and started moving faster.

"Lets pick up the pace, we don't want to get beat by that storm or ambushed by Mutants." Frank said continuing on towards the Mall.

Richard said, "Yes sir.", and started walking behind Paladin Webster. As they walked, Richard noted how haunting the D.C. Ruins were, a constant reminder of what fear and greed could do if left unchecked. He brought himself out of his darker thoughts by thinking that while things were bad, the success of the Brotherhood could help the people of the Capital Wasteland by paving the way for a new civilization to be built on the ashes of the old by eliminating the Super Mutants.

Layne would nod to Paladin Webster in acknowledgment of his orders, removing his sidearm from his holster and covering the squads blindspot in the back. He knew super mutants weren't exactly tactical masters, and setting up ambushes took some degree of intelligence, but he would stay alert all the same.

Ryan moved ahead the rest of the team, scanning the rubble with his minigun. Ryan relaxed, seeing as there was no activity, he noticed how boring the ruins seemed, all grey and brown, and in the sky, grey and brown, then he took a look at the water, grey and brown, he took a look at his armor, grey, "Is there anything in this entire country that isn't grey or brown? Even out west its the same damn thing." Ryan turned Webster, "Remeber the good old days? When we were back out west, when we still had honor and we didn't hire unqualified locals? Ah, if only, if only. Well actually, we can get rid of them pretty easily, hey guys! ever hear of Old Olney? Hahaha." He took a glance at the rest of the team, he hoped they knew he was kidding.

Layne would let Ryan's attempt to get a rise out of him roll off his back, having encountered this type of prejudice toward wastelanders before. He'd heard plenty about how the Brotherhood out west was all about "pure" bloods and keeping the bloodline "pure". Truth was, if they had the option they'd wipe anyone that had ever encountered radiation off the planet given the chance, much like the hated Enclave.

However, he'd be grateful that Elder Lyons was more open-minded, seeing that the afflictions wastelanders face was not their own doing, but a failure on their governments part. "Honor is more of a perspective type thing. I'm sure those Enclave bastards think what their doing is "honorable". Fact is, honorable doesn't mean right."

Frank walked on, looking at Ryan as he made his remark, obviously directed towards the Wastelanders who had joined the squad. Frank didn't really have a problem with Wastelanders joining, just as long as they stayed alive, and kept their whits about them. Most of them knew alot of the Capital Wasteland, but the D.C. Ruins was very unsafe until the Brotherhood came along.

"I would be careful of what you say, Ryan. Maybe one of these days, you'll be laying on the ground bleeding to death, and the only one who can or could save you is a Capital Wastelander?" Frank said looking at Initiate Layne, giving a unknown smile from behind his mask. "I know the Western Elders are great, but some of their thinking is not always right."

Frank knew that his comment could get him into trouble, but he didn't care. The Brotherhood was low on enlistment numbers, and had a little foot-hold in the Capital Wasteland, and the need of Capital Wastelanders who wanted to join was highly needed. The clouds moved across the sky, sometimes blocking the sun, and casting a large shadow over them, and the surrounding buildings. Suddenly some crumbling of rubble came from the left. Frank looked over, still proceeding in his direction.

"Stay alert everyone. This could be it?" Frank said in a calm manner. He held his laser rifle close, ready for anything to leap out and attack, even a Super Mutant. Some more crumbling sounded, and the squad all became quickly alert. Everyone was on their toe's.

"Stay close Initiate, this may get a little rough. Ryan, that gun better be fully loaded." They continued, the sound still coming from the left.

Chase walked along with the group, his posture far more laid-back than it had been before. He picked his away across the group, avoiding the occasional debris piles that littered the ground.

"Ah, I miss the West. Things were so much easier then, so much simpler. All I had to do was yell at some initiates, shake down the occasional civilian for their tech, and kill the occasional raider. So much simpler. It was definitely easier pleasing the higher ups too. None of this entrenching."

He completely ignored the initiate as he continued on. He removed the power cell from his laser rifle and looked at it for a few moments, then discarded it and put a new cell in, fully charged.

"You know, I've always wanted to pay a trip to Old Olney. With adequate fire support of course. I heard from a few locals we picked up a little while back that there's tech in the sewers there. What I wouldn't give to find out the truth to that. That place is such a deathtrap right now though that it will probably never happen. Real shame too. Actually there are a number of places out here I wouldn't mind taking a look at. Like the Dunwich Building. I've heard of some pretty freaky stuff going on down there. But we'll probably never get to figure any of that out. Instead, we're sent off to fight the freakin muties. Man, I really miss the West..."

The sound of falling rubble alerted him to his surrounding, and he immediately snapped up his laser rifle. He continued moving forward, his rifle trained on the ruins around him.

Richard heard Ryan's remark, and being a Wasteland recruit himself, he took off his helmet and fixed him with a cold glare and said, "I didn't appreciate that, even if it was a joke that was uncalled for. I may not have been born in Lost Hills, or even just out West, but my fellow Wasteland recruits and I are just as much a part of the Brotherhood as you, and you should learn to respect that." He then turned to Layne and gave him a nod in agreement.

Layne would instinctively level his weapon on the spot where movement caused rubble to fall, ready to empty a clip in the first yellow freak that popped his warped head out. "C'mon out you big yellow bastards... I got 15 rounds in this clip with each of your names stenciled on'em. Let's see if they reach their targets...", the over-confident initiate would say loudly.