'Sidora is doing an admirable job hiding his disgust. Which seems to be more to do with the amorphous mass of meat than what Cat is doing.

"I...trust you don't need a hand relieving the...corpses of their valuables?" he asks.

Cat shrugs. "I dunno if these still count as corpses, but super mutants don't carry much. No pockets. You can see if their ammo's any good, if you want to make it go quicker."

Hancock, meanwhile, is glancing between the three newcomers incredulously. "Are all of you just pretending this is normal, or am I actually the only sane person here? Because that?" He points at Cat, who's in the process of extracting several bottle caps and a mostly-empty pistol magazine from the gore and wiping most of the blood off on her pants. "That's not normal. There's something wrong with you."

Cat scoffs. "There's a lot wrong with me," she quips. "Go look in that one, I have like a dozen .308s left, they can't all have come in here with peashooters."

"Fair," 'Sidora agrees. And he grimaces, but he crosses to one of the others hunks of meat and starts rooting through it.

"I wouldn't necessarily say normal, but you gotta do what you gotta do."

He pulls a handful of cartridges out, but can't, immediately, identify it. "'Metheus?" he says, tossing one over.

Prometheus catches it, and gives it the most cursory of looks. ".308 callibre," he reports, throwing it back.

He gives Hancock a curious look. "Well, they have resources you require? They do not need it?"

"While we have never had to raid such...unidentifiable bodies, when you are behind enemy lines, and running low on weapon and ammos, sometimes your opponents corpses are the only thing that you have to provide supplies."

"I've got about another dozen .308s here for you, Cat. No idea what it was shooting it out of, but..."

"Oh, I won't argue with that," Hancock says. "But usually the corpses are... corpse-shaped." Despite his complaints, he's also found a net of meat to poke through, this one hanging off the side of a telephone pole. "There's a lot of weird shit in the Commonwealth." He comes up with what looks like an inhaler, a handful of shotgun shells, and a blood-soaked pack of cigarettes, the last of which he tosses off to the side as useless.

"Thanks," Cat tells 'Sidora, blithely ignoring Hancock's commentary. She takes the cartridges and slots them away with her other spare ammo, offering him the 10mm bullets in return. "Let's finish up and get a move on before the ones in the library buy a vowel." Between them, they've more or less covered the... larger piles of blood and gunk. "There'll be a lot more in the hospital."

"It helps for myself and Prometheus that we can dull reactions to adverse stimuli if the reaction exists at all. Sir is simply adept at doing things he dislikes with minimal fuss."

"Comes with the military lifestyle," 'Sidora says with a grin. He takes the bullets with a nod of thanks. "Buy a vowel?"

"Onwards to the hospital then?"

Cat slings her gun over her shoulder. "Oh, god, okay, so there used to be this TV show - TV is like radio but it does video - that was old even when - hell, when my mom was watching. You had to guess a certain word and if you got it right you got points, and then you could use those points to make it easier for yourself or to win things at the end. So 'buy a vowel' means, like, to get a clue, to realize something's going on, because usually if you bought a vowel with your points you could get the rest of the word. I have literally never heard anyone else use this phrase, I don't know why Mom did all the time." As she talks, she starts walking in the right direction.

"We do still have TV," he says, chuckling. "But good description." He falls in beside Cat, eyes scanning the area. (Behind them, 'Metheus and Epime seem to be keeping an eye on their rear.) "Ah, that makes sense I guess?"

He thinks for a moment. "What's the plan then? Any idea what the terrain's likely to be in this hospital?"

"We don't," she points out. "Terrain is... there's gonna be a floor? And walls? I dunno, it's a hospital and there's super mutants, it'll look like someone put an operating room in a blender and forgot the lid."

"Terrain can also refer to the general environment we are intending to enter. The more we know about the layout, the less risk there is. We can, however, work without. The question is whether we stay as a unit or potentially separate to cover more ground faster."

"Not so much less risk as the ability to choose a place that suits us for fighting in. Like finding choke points, make it hard for large numbers to get at us and pick them off that way. And I'm not entirely sure splitting up is a good idea, Epime. Given how much punishment these guys seem able to take."

"Oh. In that case I do technically have a map of it, but it'll be pre-war and I can only look at it once we're actually there. Limits of this thing," she adds, indicating her Pip-Boy. "They'll probably have blocked off all but one entrance, if they've been there for a while. They're dumb but they're not oblivious, and they like hunting humans." She chews her lip for a second. "We can always sweep through and then split up to look for the stuff. Odds are, there'll be a pretty linear path through the place."

"That will at least give us a general idea of the layout," Prometheus says, "Even if it has been somewhat altered. I am almost certain that even in this chassis, Epimetheus has something in her arsenal that can make doors if it is so required."

"If it is not a load-bearing wall, yes," Epimetheus agrees. "And we should probably avoid splitting up until we are sure that it is relatively safe to do so. Will they be smart enough to leave a guard on the door?"

Cat shrugs. "Maybe? Usually there's at least a few of them outside, but they never seem to try and alert the ones inside, so I don't really know what that's about."

"It's not like it would change much if they did," Hancock points out. "There's not, like, a super mutant school of little super mutant kids that would all go shelter in place or something."

Cat grimaces. "Thank you for that delightful visual."

"No problem."

The road is blocked with a pile of debris, most of it chunks of the road itself. It's large enough that they can't see over it, but not sheer, and when Cat checks her map they're supposed to go straight ahead. She picks a likely-looking spot and starts heaving herself up and over it.

Prometheus crosses over and braces himself against the wall. "Perhaps make use of the friendly robot to get yourself up sheer surfaces," he says lightly.

'Sidora literally facepalms. "'Metheus," he groans. "Although he does have a point, why make life any harder than it has to be?"

"We up and over then?" he checks and Epime crosses to brace herself next to 'Metheus.

Cat's already rolled herself onto the top of the rubble, but Hancock smirks and braces a hand on 'Metheus's shoulder. "Don't mind if I do."

"You're cooking tonight," Cat says casually.

"Man-!"

"...Is there a reason you're forcing Hancock into cooking?" 'Sidora asks, letting Epime boost him up onto the top of the rubble.

(Once Hancock's up, Epime will boost 'Metheus up and then with some help from her fellow AI haul herself up.)

They stay low once they're up. Ahead of them is an empty road.

"There appears to be a structure of some sorts that was probably a parking garage," Epimetheus reports quietly. "I am...not seeing any hostiles."

"'Cause she doesn't want to see us fuck," Hancock says, and hops down to the other side of the pile. Cat makes a quiet noise somewhere between resignation and exasperation. "Also I'm better at it than her."

"I'm used to ingredients that I didn't personally see walking around, thanks," she snarks back at him as she follows. There's no heat to the exchange.

Prometheus gives something close to a grin. "I cannot imagine it would be comfortable." It sounds almost teasing.