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

[taediosum]

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. ]

Comments

[taediosum]

[ 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.

[purplexing]

[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.

[taediosum]

[ 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.

[purplexing]

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.]

[taediosum]

...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.

[purplexing]

[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.]

[taediosum]

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.

[purplexing]

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.

[taediosum]

[ 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?

[purplexing]

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?

[taediosum]

Arcade.

[ He offers a brief, perfunctory smile. ]

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

[purplexing]

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.