route666rp | After spending thirty years of my life hiding my association with the Enclave [open]

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After spending thirty years of my life hiding my association with the Enclave [open]

Who: Arcade (

taediosum) & OPEN
What: Arts & crafts (or some long overdue vehicle maintenance)
When: Some activity during the morning stop & early evening
Where: His truck
Warnings: TBD but nothing likely

Note: I have an opt-in here for Arcade's vital sense ability, please leave a comment if it's something you're interested in coming up here or in future threads! Otherwise, no worries, it just won't work on/around them.

[ Ordinarily, Arcade only looks for salvage of practical things, at the intermittent garage stop. He doesn't know much about vehicle maintenance beyond the basics, and even that's mostly still only in theory. (Luckily, he somehow hasn't had to field a flat tire or an overheating engine, yet.) But he knows plenty about surviving in a post-apocalyptic waste with little to live on, from place to place. He also knows too much about personally handling triage, in those same circumstances.

So it's really no wonder it's taken him this long to start picking up things that aren't necessarily needed but still... Well, probably should have been considered, at least, a little sooner. (But he's had a whole host of other things to worry about, these past few months, unsurprisingly.)

He's already started a small collection of patchwork canvas, wherever he can find it. It's going to take a while to actually completely enclose the back of the truck, again, so that it can serve as somewhat more suitable shelter - so he'll be around crudely stitching together the various pieces of cover that he's managed to collect, thus far, both in the early morning hours and at night. He's not quite as good at sewing as he is at suturing, and it's kind of obvious.

Or maybe he's trying to flag someone down to lend a hand with actually fitting his makeshift tarp over the top of the truck's trailer— ] Hey, do you have a minute? I could use some help, here.

[ One particular evening, he can also be found with a small collection of old paint cans, painstakingly hunted down in the latest set of ruins. He's set up alongside the truck's cab, eyeing the faded spray paint stenciled logo on the door in front of him - before unceremoniously dashing a swath of old beige paint over it.

Maybe it's because he hasn't made a plan until now to actually get rid of it (despite all the trouble it's already caused), but covering it up feels better than expected. ]

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[The (winged) turtle boy's been a bit frazzled ever since the attack of the brains, and while he has things to work on, he hasn't been able to find the focus for it. ...which isn't great when you're left with some free time before everyone is on the move again.

As it turns out, there are other ways to expend restless energy. Like flying!

The only previous experience Donnie's had flying has been technically existed, but he's found some new exhilaration in being able to do it by his own power. He'd actually spotted Arcade from a distance off, circling down from his aerial patrol of the convoy.

At being asked for assistance, he glides around to the opposite side of the truck, grabbing the end of the tarp so he can drag it along with him as he lets himself drop down on the other side with it.]

[ Well, that's convenient. But it's also handy, so Arcade isn't going to complain. He just gives the tarp a bit of careful adjusting, from his side, before hopping down off of the trailer to check it from a better angle.

As he does, he glances over at Donnie - if not for the wings, he might've mistaken him for another big, talking, bipedal turtle he's briefly met here, before. On second glance, though, the differences seem more obvious. (He just hasn't met a lot of mutant turtles, frankly, and it's weird that it's happening twice.) ]

Thanks. I was never going to get that all the way over the other side, on my own.

[Appearances aside, they're also conveniently color-coded!

Donnie hangs onto his end of the tarp while the human makes his adjustments. Once it seems like it's been evenly spread, he lets go, hopping back to eyeball it for himself before giving Arcade a clawed thumbs-up.]

No probbles, glad to be of service.

This thing looks like the missing link between covered wagons and Winnebagos. Although I may be being too generous with the latter.

[ Arcade shrugs, looking somewhat bemusedly between the truck and his present company. ]

Pre-War military surplus. I don't think they were going for style.

True. I guess so long as it's sturdier than it looks.

[He tries not to fidget too much, taking the excuse of looking around the truck so he can move. He's been a lot more anxious about being on the ground for long lately.]

...I don't know if I'd go that far.

[ It really doesn't seem all that tough, especially not when compared with some of the other vehicles around here. Though he wouldn't know the first thing about assessing that, exactly. ]

But it hasn't started falling apart on the road, yet. So I'm taking that as a positive sign.

[Donnie can't help but laugh there.]

Well...not falling apart is always good. Kind of low on standards though. Technically you only have less than half a vehicle to worry about getting crunched. The back end is unfortunately going to get the worst of anything.

[He comes around to the front of the truck for a better appraisal, giving the front hood a thump with a fist in testing.]

If you say so.

[ Arcade doesn't seem bothered by the assessment. Frankly, having a working vehicle at all counts as a not-so-minor miracle, by Wasteland standards. Let alone something this size.

There's nothing particularly flimsy about it, but the truck doesn't look as if it could handle anything more laborious than their usual terrain. Going off-road would absolutely be out of the question, unless the aim were to get completely and utterly stuck somewhere. ]

I don't really have any plans to test its limits, at any rate. I'd really prefer not to get stuck riding along, for the rest of this trip.

I'm sure no one plans that, but after the whole ride through a whole field of briar, I guess the best thing is to not be too far from anyone if something does get your vehicle stuck.

[He steps back and then flaps his wings to fly up onto the top of the cab. Not too much of a difference but it still feels marginally better to be somewhat higher up.]

You can always give me a call or something if you get stuck. I'm good at fixing things, and the Turtle Tank can pull this thing out of a rut easy.

[ Arcade watches him go, somewhat curiously. He isn't particularly worried about the paintjob on this rusting heap, so it doesn't exactly bother him to see a stranger walking all over it. But there's a curious whiff of anxiety following in his otherwise seemingly chipper visitor's wake. ]

That's a bit vague. Am I supposed to call someone whose name I don't even know?

Huh? Oh, right.

[The turtle looks a bit embarrassed at that, especially when he knows he'd gotten on some other kid's case for not figuring names as important to know around here.]

I'm Donnie. And you are?

Arcade.

[ He offers a brief, perfunctory smile. ]

Any relation to the other walking, talking, human-sized turtle I've seen, around here?

Affirmative, unless we are multiplying and there are orange and-or red-coded variants running around that I have not yet been made aware of.

[The gloves that SecUnit found on its ATV during the beginnings of the Convoy are long since destroyed, between its fighting style (if it could even be called that) and the general hard-on-everything nature of this journey. Which sucks for SecUnit, because that means the only way it has to hide its hands right now is shoving them into the pockets of its jacket, a tactic it usually doesn't like to do, considering its general paranoia.

It's compromised today by keeping one hand (the injured hand) in a jacket pocket, and leaving the other one free, so it can be only half as paranoid as it might be. That's the atmosphere around it - heightened stress chemicals, and the metal-electric-ozone lingering smell that is bloodlike but not quite blood. It should be in pain, but it's not acting like it, when it comes to a stop at Arcade's call for assistance. It's not looking up towards him, but it's clearly paying attention.]

What kind of help?

[ It isn't the first time Arcade has been hit so abruptly by a wall of unpleasant air, the second someone steps too near. He doesn't answer the question, at first, hands fumbling the length of rope he was attempting to knot securely to the wire cage over the truck's trailer - that electric, coppery taste invades his senses, instead, turning his stomach as he turns an ever so mildly horrified look toward SecUnit. ]

...I was going to ask if you'd mind helping me tie this down. But I'm not so sure you should be helping anyone, in your condition.

[ Dropping the line entirely, Arcade climbs back down off the truck, dusting his own hands off on his coat. ]

Where are you hurt? [ He's not going to ask if it's hurt, because he can taste that reality every time he opens his mouth. ]

[SecUnit draws up short, its face going blank behind the mask. The hand tucked into its jacket pocket twitches, like it's about to try and turn to make sure that side of its body is less visible.]

What condition.

[Okay so the buzzing that accompanies its voice now is at the more intensive end of the spectrum when it responds, and the response is more of a defensive snap than genuine confusion. But in its defense, it thought it was doing a pretty good job of being casual! It figured out what to do with its hands and everything.

81% performance reliability is... not great, but Arcade wasn't asking it to shoot something. It would have been fine.]

It's not - it looks worse than it is. [Great start, Murderbot.]

It's bad enough. I can tell just from— [ Arcade falters for a half-second, then thinks better of something before he amends, ] ...Looking at you.

[ Because that's all he's doing, definitely. Just. Noticing that awkward stance and having some kind of normal, medically knowledgeable insight. Sure.

That buzzing sound doesn't exactly inspire confidence, either. But one thing at a time. ]

You don't have to let me have a look at it, but I'd appreciate it if you did.

[Did it catch that hesitation? Yeah, but that doesn't mean it can process why. Arcade and the rest of the humans here don't usually have the kind of scanning capabilities to know that it got damaged, but humans who know it well have caught it off-guard before by reading something in its posture or expression that it didn't know was there.

... Does Arcade know it well? Weird thought. Time to ignore that.]

I already told you it looks worse than it is.

[But that's sign enough that it's capitulating. The reasons for the warnings become clear the moment it lifts the arm it's been hiding, because even with the sleeve pulled over its forearm, its hand and fingers are torn up with what has to be bite marks. The wounds are strangely bloodless, barely scabbed over and exposing not muscle and bone but metal strutwork at the core. At least some of the jagged bite marks carry up its wrist under the sleeve.]

Worse is a pretty broad spectrum, when we haven't even established where bad should fall, yet.

[ Or good, or even just okay, for that matter. He really doesn't want to risk irritating it into taking off without at least giving him a chance to assess the damage he can, unfortunately, taste radiating off of it, though. So he leaves the petty needling there, stepping forward to examine its offered arm, instead.

Not that it takes him long to measure the extensive damage and find it sufficiently alarming. Arcade glances between its arm and face, plainly horrified as he grimaces. He supposes, on some level, he must've known it was more metal than bone under there (how else would it have guns in its arms? honestly), but the bloodless, barely scabbed-over look of the wounds is still jarring, awful. ]

...Yeah. This is bad. It doesn't even look like it's begun to heal.

The veins sealed and I barely lost any body mass.

[... Yeah so it's perspective on 'worse' is maybe different than most people's. It almost jerks the arm away but stops, holding stiff and not looking either at the injuries or at Arcade's face when he starts trading incredulous glances between the two.

And here it has to admit;]

I don't know how fast it will repair without a medsystem.

This is barely losing anything, to you?

[ It looks massacred, that arm, and Arcade isn't letting up on the insistence that it is, actually, as bad as it looks. There's just no way it can't be. And he knows that it hurts.

But that's not a productive avenue worth pursuing. ]

What do you need? We've got plenty of medicine and even some extra equipment, from that hospital. Maybe I can put something together, to help fix this.

[It wouldn't hurt if only SecUnit could get turning down its pain sensors to work the way that's supposed to, but instead, yeah, it kind of sucks. It's not going to say that, though. Nor is it going to talk about the time it lost basically all the organic material on its back. If this is how Arcade reacts to a chewed arm it doesn't want to see what colors his face turns at that one.

Mostly, though, it's because it's looking entirely blank about being asked what it needs. The arm drops a few centimeters.]

You can't just patch it?

Edited 2025-06-07 03:41 (UTC)

[ Danse no longer deliberately parks his truck in a good vantage point to keep tabs on what's going on with Arcade's, but he's been reassured that he doesn't have to go out of his way to avoid it, either, and this is one of those nights where it just happens to be readily visible from where he's relaxing.

(It's a good thing, probably, that his hearing hadn't begun to feel this oversensitive when he was still attempting active surveillance, because he can hear the conversations in other vehicles now even when he's trying not to, and it would be all the worse if he still felt justified in invading anyone's privacy. But there's nothing in particular to overhear right now, and it's a quiet enough night in general that even the noise headache is less bothersome than usual.)

He tilts his head and wonders what Arcade's up to with the paint cans, thinks about going over to ask, but with that first stroke of paint it becomes entirely obvious. It isn't cathartic for Danse, the way it must be for Arcade, but it's pleasing nonetheless. After a moment, he hops down out of his truck bed and wanders over. ]

About damn time.

[ It's friendly, with a little smile and no actual reproach in it. It's not like he's known where to find any paint before now. ]

[ It's friendly, but it still manages to startle Arcade, who turns his head jerkily, almost guiltily toward the interruption before finding (some of) his composure again. ]

I've had a few more pressing priorities, of late.

[ Like, you know, mutating into a horrific freak and also just generally struggling to survive while hoping to help keep as many others alive as possible—

But that's not really a clarification he needs to make. Or feels the need to, his defensive knee-jerk reflex a fast-fading one. Hard to be too standoffish, when at least they're on the same page. ]

But I thought I'd get rid of it before someone else decides to make it their whole first impression of me.

[ Not that that seems especially likely. Danse recognizing it in the first place had been one nasty stroke of bad luck too far, already. Arcade takes another couple of swipes at the cab door with the brush he found, blotting out the rest of the insignia. The brush's stiff and clotted bristles aren't ideal for the job, but luckily it's not needed for any delicate work. ]

[ It doesn't sound quite so unlikely to Danse, who would expect anyone who's spent time in the Capital Wasteland to have a good chance of recognizing it. Then again, he's the only one who's made a thing of it thus far, so Arcade is probably right. And Danse has made enough of a thing of it for like three people, in any case, so he doesn't push back, only exhales mirthlessly in a way that suggests he knows the pointedness is deserved. ]

I'll vouch for you. If anyone else from my side of the country gives you a hard time.

[ But with the logo now illegible, that would be unlikely. He sticks his hands in his pockets to survey the current progress. His coveralls are a bit worse for the wear after all of that simultaneous horrific mutating, but this at least means that a few paint stains are even less likely to matter than they would have before. And he ought to be willing to get them dirty, to extend some goodwill here, so Arcade doesn't have to do all of this himself now that the satisfying part of it is over. ]

You have a spare brush?

You don't have to do that.

[ Ideally because there won't be any reason to, after this. But Arcade isn't asking anybody to fall on their sword for him. He wouldn't have done, back home, and he won't, here, either. The cards'll fall where they may, and he'll try to deal with the next probably inevitable disaster a little better - but it's his burden. His past. His life.

Reaching for a little more of the paint from the can balanced on the truck's step (a second coat certainly can't hurt), he looks surprised as he glances back up at Danse. ]

Uh, check the crate. [ There's a small wooden crate he also brought from the garage, the other nearly-depleted cans of paint he collected still sitting inside, and he gestures to it as he straightens back up. ] I think I grabbed another one, but it might've fallen out.

[ More brushes weren't a priority; he would've painted with his hands, if it meant getting rid of that. But he's pretty sure he found at least two that had more than a few bristles left on them. ]

I know. I'd just rather see the truth being represented than a misconception.

[ There's a note of finality in Arcade's tone that tells Danse it isn't worth arguing over a hypothetical that probably won't ever come to pass anyway, so he leaves it at that. It's partly the principle of the thing, partly the fact that he truly doesn't want to see Arcade forced to contend with that again now that he knows the real story, but he thinks he's at least done his best to warn Deacon in a more roundabout way against judging anyone in the convoy too harshly from the start, and that probably will be the end of it.

He crouches to pick through the contents of the crate and see what they're working with. He can manage well enough with the brush that's fallen over and gotten tucked in along the side, if he wiggles the bristles around a bit to loosen them up. ]

Just the cover-up, I take it? Not sure what you'd want to replace it with.

I don't suppose you would be. But I am.

[ Sure of exactly what he wants to cover up that ugly spray paint stencil-job with, that is.

His coat is hanging from the cab's side mirror, the hem more tattered than ever after that last fight - but the rest of it kept as diligently intact as possible. Arcade reaches up, tugging on the sleeve to pull the patch on one shoulder into view. The Followers' cross and the rod of Asclepius won't require a great deal of artistic skill to sketch onto the truck's doors, even with such shoddy tools. ]

If I'm going to be advertising my associations, I'd at least like them to be the right ones.

Well, it's definitely more appropriate for general audiences than the last thing I saw someone paint on the side of a truck here. You might have to turn away some people expecting sermons, if they don't already know you.

[ His tone is wry as he studies the patch in more detail. He's noted the insignia before with some curiosity, thinking of the red crosses he's seen in ruined hospitals and rusting ambulances, and wondering too how deep the religious connotations actually go, but he hasn't been in a position to ask since that first day they'd met.

All he knows about the Followers is what Arcade had mentioned about training medics and "spreading knowledge," whatever that means in practice, and the former is at least a good thing to advertise in Danse's opinion. And maybe the latter isn't so bad either, in a place like this. ]

But we can make that work. There ought to be enough paint if we do this strategically.

[ He sizes up the door and mentally overlays a grid on it, arms folded, before getting back to work on the second coat of beige. ]

Historically, a red cross has a more medical connotation than religious.

[ And though the only paint he could find is a color likely to dry to a hue a little more on the purple-maroon side of that spectrum, it should still pass. Either way— ]

I won't leave anyone who does make that mistake in suspense for long, though, as to my actual feelings on old world-style religious fanaticism.

[ His brief, tight-lipped smile clearly indicates that they're not positive. Though the sermon will be no less passionate for it.

Picking up another of the nearly-empty cans of beige (a completely different shade, of course), Arcade rounds the truck's cab to the other side, to get to work on blotting out the matching stencil, too. It goes quicker, this time, because he's past the initial catharsis of it all. Now it just feels right, lifting a weight off his shoulders that he suddenly feels he's been carrying around for no real reason at all, all this time.

In the mellow, mild air of their last days in the valley, his voice carries easily. ]

You talk like you've done this sort of thing before. But you don't exactly strike me as the artistic type. No offense.

I know what those look like. When it's shaped like this, it just reminds me of trying to stay awake in church no matter what color it is.

[ Danse is not a guy who gets to talk about fanaticism of any stripe, religious or otherwise--even before taking on the Brotherhood's particular flavor of it, he was as post-apocalyptically Catholic as any other good Rivet City boy. But that was...more than one lifetime ago, by now. The only thing that comes through in his voice here is a low tentative hint of teasing, and some satisfaction besides to have accurately pegged Arcade's opinion on the matter.

He works steadily to even out the coating on the door, nitpicky and military-precise about it, and raises an eyebrow when Arcade speaks up again from the other side of the truck. ]

You make a lot of "no offense" assumptions, you know that?

[ Not that any of them have been that far off the mark yet. ]

I didn't say I was Picasso. I said I could replicate a symmetrical design. You know how many times I've had to repaint the insignia on my power armor?

Edited 2025-06-06 06:14 (UTC)

The east coast really is a different world.

[ Just the idea of going to church feels archaic, to Arcade, who's reasonably sure he doesn't know a single person with a belief system that's anything more than personal. At least if it isn't a cult or a military outfit they owe their devotion to.

He wonders, briefly, if that isn't a sticking point, here, but doesn't ask. Or make another assumption.

His brief, crooked half-smile is out of view on the other side of the cab, but probably still audible in his tone. Danse isn't calling him wrong, after all. ]

How would I even begin to guess? Not all of us spend our lives maintaining cumbersome suits of armor.

[ Some of us just keep them locked up safely in very secure bunkers, and spend most of our lives pretending they don't exist. ]

Or their paint jobs.

[ Still. ]

Glad to have an experienced hand, either way, though.

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After spending thirty years of my life hiding my association with the Enclave [open]

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