Just Deserts

From the air you can reach farther into the desert than you ever have before. This perspective allows you to see all kinds of things that you've never noticed before, even in the dark. It's dim, but there's some ambient light from the city and night sky. You find yourself intribued by a strange circular crater near the base of an old volcano. In fact, is that a glint of metal? Could something have crashed there? The crater looks old--really old--but you decide to investigate it anyway.

It takes a while to track down the metal that you saw, and when you do you're disappointed to find that it's just the burnt-out shell of a car amid a pile of other litter. You pick up a loose hubcap, rotating it in your hands as you look around. Something still doesn't feel right about the crater; your sense of something out of place is jangling like a spider's web reacting to the footfall of an insect. You can't figure out what's bothering you, though.

Options:

• See if there's anything good in the car
  
• Spend a few minutes cleaning up the area
  
• See how far you can toss the hubcap (first time, if you have access to Susan Novak)
  
• See how far you can toss the hubcap (subsequent occurrences, or with no access to Susan Novak)
  

Take Action

Results

If you chose See if there's anything good in the car:

'Hola' Is Spanish for Hello
The front of the car is pretty trashed, so you start with the trunk, which is mostly undamaged. You spend a minute prying it open but are disappointed to find that the inner contents are just a bunch of trash. You shuffle through the mound of old clothes and fast food wrappers, but there's nothing interesting there. Frustrated, you move to the back seat. It's coated in soot, but down by the floor there's a case. Hola? What's this? You open the case and find a very serious-looking projectile weapon.

You got an item: your little friend

---

If you chose Spend a few minutes cleaning up the area:

Do One Good Deed Every Five Minutes
You walk around the area for a bit, cleaning up some trash and dumping it into the shell of the car. It makes you feel good, in a boy-scoutish way, doing a little bit for this environment. On the other hand, nobody comes out here in the desert, and since you're a hero you spend your whole night doing good deeds. Maybe you ought to get back to town or something? Still, you do feel like you've improved yourself.

You gain 60-70 experience.

---

If you chose See how far you can toss the hubcap (first time, if you have access to Susan Novak):

Strange as Fiction
Frustrated, you wing the hubcap into the crater and watch as it sails through the air, turns on its side, and plummets to the ground with an odd, hollow metallic clonk. Strange. Very strange.

You climb down into the crater to investigate. Brushing away several inches of sand and gravel where the hubcap landed, you're surprised to see metal. It looks like a big horizontal sheet, slightly warped, pitted and corroded by time, but still very solid. What's it doing out here in the desert? You stomp on the metal sheet and hear an echoey thump, as if the ground underneath is hollow. Gradually you clear away more sand, and the metal keeps going. Whatever it is, it's fairly big, like a bunker. Or a septic tank. But why out here?

Eventually you find what looks like a door, slightly bent out of alignment with the metal surrounding it. It takes all your strength to coerce the skewed and rusted hinges to move, but you get the door open. Pulling out a flashlight (every hero always comes prepared, right?) you peer into the gloom.

Whatever it is, it's not a septic tank. It looks like a large room turned on its side, halfway filled with sand and gravel, the bottom strewn with metal shrapnel. Stalactites drip down from the ceiling in places, and stalagmites rise up from the floor. Whatever this stuff is, it's been here for a long time. It doesn't look human, either. Banks of twisted machinery along the walls somewhat resemble recognizable hardware, but the angles are wrong, the buttons are too big, the aesthetic is just ... different. You think about exploring further but quickly decide that jumping into the dim recesses of some ancient machinery isn't the smartest thing to do. You'd rather have a scientist's opinion about this anyway. Maybe you ought to talk to Susan Novak and see what she thinks about this?

• unlocks A Mysterious Ruin quest.

---

If you chose See how far you can toss the hubcap (subsequent occurrences, or with no access to Susan Novak):

One-Man Frisbee Isn't So Fun
You huck the hubcap and watch as it sails off into the darkness. There's a soft shussshh of a sound in the distance wherever it landed, but that's it.

Location(s)

• Outskirts of Area 54
  

Notes

• Only occurs when you have the ability to fly.