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]

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.

[androidvictoriam]

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. ]

[taediosum]

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.

[androidvictoriam]

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?

[taediosum]

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.

[androidvictoriam]

I suspect that's far more true than either of us even knows.

[ Only ever a sticking point for the Brotherhood, which didn't really want its soldiers' loyalties divided, particularly not to a priest fond of adapting parables to include the human dignity of ghouls. It was the Brotherhood, not Father Clifford, that molded Danse into the kind of guy prone to calling people "godless heathens" as trash talk, while simultaneously stripping the deeper thought or meaning from it until it just felt like one more thing to say. But that, too, is behind him now. Along with his power armor. ]

That's a shame, though. I really think more people should.

[ He might at one point have added "with the Brotherhood's blessing," but that's harder to do when he no longer even has that himself, and he's always been a fair amount more permissive than the typical Brotherhood hardliner with this particular genre of tech anyway. ]

You might get a taste for it if you tried it out.

[ It's his turn to make assumptions now, though perhaps with slightly less reason to append a "no offense." ]

[taediosum]

Somehow, I doubt that.

[ Because he prefers not to fight at all, of course. And not for any other reasons.

...Though, really, given the prevalence of power armor in the last, uncomfortable leg of his dream, Danse might be readily able to come to his own deeper conclusions as to why Arcade doesn't find the prospect of donning it himself all that appealing. And they wouldn't be that far off the mark, either.

But he's eager to change the subject, anyway. ]

What's it like, out there, anyway? I mean, not even caravanners tend to travel that far. You might be my only real chance to learn how the other side live.