[ The notion of being a deterrent himself is not really an angle that has occurred to Danse. His jealousy is not the type that would manifest in actual fighting or threatening of anyone who might try to horn in on his partner, and he can just imagine what Arcade would have to say if it did--but he does rather look like a guy who might, and he certainly is big enough to make someone who might otherwise have taken that gamble think twice just to be safe.
The majority of the interest he's deflected has been from women who don't know him, when he hasn't been in Arcade's company, but anyone who's tried has been met with the same awkward firmness about being flattered but unavailable. (Nobody who's ever seen him with Arcade around Goodneighbor has bothered to try. When he's talking to Arcade, whether they're touching or not, Danse rarely gives the impression of noticing or caring that anyone else exists in the vicinity.)
But he understands now, with this further explanation--or understands at least what Arcade would have had to fear, why romance might have seemed futile at best and dangerous at worst, why it could have seemed easier to avoid the eventual expectation of transparency by never letting anyone get close enough to feel entitled to it. What Danse still doesn't understand in light of that is why he of all people would have been different, when he'd turned up at the door in full Brotherhood uniform (no matter how quickly he'd stripped down to half of it.)
Except that he hadn't hesitated once they got talking to explain that his actual membership in it was a thing of the past, even if he'd saved the why of it for after the first date. And he remembers, too, how willing he'd been to set his own unexpected attraction aside for the chance to just talk more, to take that offer of a book loan and pleasant educational conversation at face value and appreciate the company if that was all Arcade intended it to be. He would have come back for that and been glad of it. Still, he doesn't know what it is that Arcade means by this, and his tone--neutral though he wishes he could keep it--has both audible hope and a tinge of wariness to it. ]
[ There are a lot of answers he could give, to that question. But none of them feel satisfying or, really, like the whole answer. The truth is, it was a lot of little things, all of them adding up - a snowball effect he wasn't prepared for, when he thought maybe at best they could leave things at a convenient hook-up and a pleasant end to a years-long dry spell. That was never going to be the case, and maybe he saw the signs of it right from the start. Ignoring them was just as much of a choice as it wasn't.
But maybe there's one thing that turned the tide a little more decisively than the rest. Something a little more than a passing notion or a minor detail. Arcade sketches the motion of another sigh, but it's inaudible, this time, as he shakes a fragment of tension out of his impossibly heavy arms. (The weight of the armor feels the same as it always does, heavy and somehow easy, at the same time. Comforting, now.) ]
Just you, I guess. I knew after that first night that I was going to tell you. All of this - you're the first person I've met in years who I thought could understand.
[ Never, in the three quarters of his life that he's been using it, has Danse felt this desperate to get out of a suit of power armor--never found the weight an impediment or the bulk in any way restrictive until now, as it walls him off from the touch he suddenly aches to give. His gauntleted hand reaches out for Arcade's pauldroned shoulder in a pale mechanical imitation of what he really wants, the best he can do at the moment.
Even if his brain had curiously filed away odd turns of phrase or bits of unexpected knowledge that came up in conversation, it never had struck him as strange that Arcade had been patient with him in his hopeless and adrift moments, his lingering confusion and despair at finding himself with no anchor and no compass and nothing familiar left, his frightening new normal of feeling like the walls have eyes for designated enemies of the Brotherhood.
Arcade had seemed as if he knew that kind of rudderless loss more than just secondhand, and nobody travels clear across the country anymore on a mere whim, but even taking those details into account, Danse had attributed it more to the empathy he's seen Arcade display often enough elsewhere. It had comforted him either way, whether to think Arcade truly knew what he was going through, or could simply imagine it well enough to say things that helped. That question is answered now, in a way that steels Danse with the utter determination to give that comfort back to him somehow, to be the trustworthy ear and shoulder that Arcade had hoped he someday could be, and ensure his faith isn't misplaced. ]
It's all right. The timing doesn't matter.
[ His voice is a little hoarse, throat a tiny bit tight, though perhaps it can be passed off as the electronic buzz of the helmet. He swallows. ]
And I won't let you regret it. I promise you.
[ It's more than simply I won't give you a reason to regret it. He doesn't intend to let anyone else, either. ]
[ It feels hollow and silly and like far too little, but he's too afraid that saying much more would turn his own voice into an unsteady, cracking waver that a thin buzz of feedback wouldn't cover.
Behind his armor, Arcade ducks his head, gesturing with the arm not paralyzed by his side for want of reaching for the hand on his shoulder. ]
Let's try to survive today, first, though.
[ They have too much left ahead of them to fall apart, now. No matter how much he wants to, in the moment, there's no turning back. He's spent enough of his life running. ]
[ The faint little huff of gallows-humor breath at this is only just audible, but Arcade's right. Danse leads on. The journey is mostly able to proceed along the highway until its last leg, which diverts into some unpleasantly marshy territory that Danse would ordinarily avoid like the plague if it weren't saving them hours, but the only derailment aside from the bogging mud is a skirmish with the occasional mirelurk. In the distance, as they reach the edge of a vast pond, Medford Memorial Hospital is just barely visible, though not the easiest trek from where they're standing.
It's not where their objective lies, anyway. Danse gestures to call a halt before they can skirt any further around the edge of the water, because the tip of the rocky ridge overlooking it is encircled ominously with black military barricades--but he knows better than to think there won't be turrets locking onto their movements when they get in range to trip the sensors, and the vantage point of the camp is such that the humans inside it, however many there are, can see for miles when they decide to look.
He ducks quickly for cover behind a tree that isn't really wide enough for the purpose, jerking his head toward the only other one of similar size nearby. ]
Well, we can't have expected them not to know what they're doing when it comes to entrenchment. Damn it.
[ The same can't be said for any attempt at subtlety, but that really doesn't seem to have been a priority at all. The overall effect is more one of brazen dick-waving, spared only in the unlabeled simplicity of the dark walls. What Danse can see of the camp is encouragingly small, though, if nothing else. ]
Brotherhood regulations for an encampment that size would have limited the personnel to...three, maybe. If that. We shouldn't be too outnumbered. We just need to maintain the element of surprise for as long as we can.
[ He pauses, looking over as if he can discern anything about Arcade right now underneath the armor. ]
[ There is something horribly, eerily familiar about the outpost. It's not exactly something he's seen, before, but it has an unpleasant nostalgia about it all the same. Makes all of this feel far more real and concrete than the long miles of walking it took to get here from the bunker. He's caught up in his own thoughts when Danse prompts him, and the second it takes for him to respond makes it obvious, even with the armor obscuring him.
He shakes his head, easier to telegraph than a nod. ]
As well as can be expected.
[ He isn't in crisis, and he hasn't changed his mind. But calling this good would be too blatant a lie even for power armor to mask.
Still, he hasn't been completely in his own head, either. ]
But, uh, you might be overthinking this. They're out here recruiting, right? And, no offense, we both look the part.
[ In armor as well as out of it, though he doesn't press that clarification too hard, as he gestures between them. ]
Look at it this way - if nothing else, the Enclave really hates leaving their technology in enemy hands. And even if, worse case, they think they can get two functioning suits of armor off our corpses without a fight damaging them, they're just as likely to let us walk right in.
[ And getting the drop on them from the inside, while only slightly outnumbered, at worst, sounds ever so slightly less suicidal than trying to attack from afar only for them to dig in behind their barricades. ]
[ It's a satisfactory answer to the question of whether Arcade's ready for the fight, and an almost-satisfactory one to the concern for his emotional well-being--Danse believes him, but it's true that there's only so okay he can reasonably be--so he accepts it without further probing.
The proposed plan, though, blindsides him into momentary silence, so different is it from anything the Brotherhood would have done or anything that would have occurred to him on his own. It's the sort of thing he thinks of when he says "subterfuge" to Deacon like it's a swear word, the sort of thing anathema to a man who has unironically charged into battle before shouting "FOR HONOR! FOR GLORY!"
It is not a bad plan in the slightest. It is, in fact, a vastly better one than any alternative they've got. It just requires an unusually radical reorientation of his expectations.
And at another time, maybe he might have protested it, made some more noise about the notion of honor. But that other time was when he had less, on a personal level, to live for. When he might have thought he could do more good to the world as a name immortalized in the Codex than an actual presence in anyone's life; when he was still so knee-deep in blood and steeped in numbing loss that it made sense to think harder about his legacy after death than anything he could do beforehand.
He wants this fight to be over. And he wants both of them to be alive and well and together at the end of it. If that means bending a few unnecessarily steely principles to make it happen, he can. The truth of the matter is what it is, too, the clarification unnecessary but no offense taken when it does apply to them both for essentially the same reason. He considers. ]
The recruitment is a pretense, I'm sure--at least for the vast majority of people who might hear it. But you're right. We do have an in that the wastelanders don't.
[ He looks over at Arcade again, with a wary tilt of his helmet. ]
[ The silence drags on for a minute, and Arcade steels himself in the interim to defend his suicidal idea. It's less suicidal than a full-blown siege, and he'd stand here and argue that fact all day if he could, but they don't have the time for a debate, and—
And Danse is agreeing without the obligatory back and forth, somehow, so he doesn't hesitate to seize on that while he can. Who knows if the walk will change his mind. ]
Sure. Just... back me up.
[ As much as possible, anyway. Arcade really has no idea how he's going to be talking his way through this, but. The time for worrying about that was before he had this genius idea.
He motions for Danse to follow, as he peels away from the tree and steps back further from the outpost's view. ]
Come on. We'll look more convincing - or at least gullible - if we approach from the front.
[ He lets Arcade lead as they skirt through the sickly bare woods toward the camp entrance, taking advantage of these last minutes where they're out of eyesight or earshot of the inhabitants. ]
Well, I'm hardly going to leave you out to dry. I'm just not exactly practiced with...this sort of thing.
[ But as long as he has agreed to it, he might as well commit, because doing it halfway will just ensure it doesn't work. ]
If the idea is to lull them into a false sense of security, we should agree on a signal to coordinate our attack once we're in position. I don't know if everyone in that camp will be in power armor, but I can try to get myself behind one of them and disable the fusion core if you hold their attention. Obviously we won't have time for more than that.
And if you need me to contribute to the story, I'll...I mean, I'll do my best. We can claim to have come from Adams, if they ask.
[ It would be a plausible enough tale, two soldiers fleeing a burning Enclave base under the impression that its regional power had been broken and blending into the wasteland population for a decade, even if Arcade didn't know firsthand what that was like.
Between the two of them, they might be able to provide enough combined detail to keep these people talking for a few minutes, and give them a reason to think their new recruits won't literally stab any of them in the back. Maybe. ]
[ Beyond the quiet kind of subterfuge - complex codes and hidden caches and keeping to the not-so-beaten path - Arcade isn't any better equipped to pull off a gambit like this. But it really does feel like their best option, with only the two of them.
So they'll both just have to learn to act on the fly. Or this'll just have to end in disaster - but Arcade wasn't going to count on that not being an inevitability, anyway. ]
Is reaching for my weapon too subtle a signal?
[ Maybe now isn't the best time for jokes, but Danse isn't the only one with a touch of that unfortunate gallows humor compulsion.
He sobers as he goes on, though. ]
It might be better if we claim to be from back West. There's too much of a chance they'll have actually known someone who did come from an East coast base.
[ It's doubtful, certainly, and that uncertainty is clear in his tone. These little pockets of Enclave holdouts weren't, to the best of Arcade's knowledge, still in communication even back before Navarro fell. The chances of that cloistered, violently exclusionary culture being all that different out here seem low. But why risk it? ]
...Not that I even knew East coast bases were still a thing, until now.
That ought to suffice. [ The humor in his voice is grim, but still in step with that tone, and sobering in that same moment. ] And that makes two of us. I really did think Adams was the last of them. I can't even guess as to where these ones came from.
[ But then, that was precisely the kind of blindness that had allowed the oil rig survivors to build their strength and become a threat to the Capital in the first place. Elder Lyons dismissing them as a lower priority than the super mutants until it was too late; wastelanders laughing at the "pre-war broadcasts" from the shabby old eyebots and asking if George Washington was going to come riding in to save the day too. ]
I thought maybe my familiarity with it could lend some extra credibility, but I never set foot in the place until it was under Brotherhood control. I wasn't part of the assault.
At the time, I remember being furious that they were taking me off the front lines, making me guard the water distribution network instead, but in retrospect...maybe I was needed more there. We probably lost more soldiers to caravan raids while we were trying to get clean water to settlements than we did taking over the base, all told.
[ It had been a very different Brotherhood, when he'd first signed up. But either way, having knowledge that comes exclusively from that side of the war probably is more of a dangerous liability than a potential help, and he considers further. ]
Are you proposing we come up with some fictitious Western base to namedrop, or say we're both from Navarro?
[ Arcade is quiet while Danse speaks, listening with a careful intensity. There's a lot he wants to ask, in the wake of so much explanation. But now doesn't feel like the time - so he files it away, instead, that curiosity put on a shelf for another day. Assuming they're going to see one.
When he answers Danse's question, his voice is as even as before, though he no longer feels that equilibrium. ]
Better to keep things simple, and as close to the truth as possible. We were originally from Navarro. You're a soldier, I'm a scientist.
[ There's a tilt of his helmeted head that seems to indicate a particular sidelong glance - the faint, tense smile obscured behind metal and darkly tinted glass. ]
That way, they won't expect you to talk much, regardless.
[ It's a strange tense balance, a topic Danse doesn't know how to navigate at all yet, let alone sensitively. He can reflect later, shamefaced, on the fact that there really would have been no sensitive way to bring up his younger self's resentment at having been denied the chance to take part in the kind of battle Arcade would have been caught on the other side of as a child. Not even when they're now preparing together to do the same thing to these forward camps. These are Enclave combatants, and he's spent his entire career taking for granted--never thinking about it, but assuming--that there were only combatants at Adams as well.
But would that necessarily have been the case? It was their Prydwen, and Danse has lost enough sleep before over the safety of the little squires aboard the Brotherhood's warship. He opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn't know what, doesn't have a thought sufficiently formed, and it isn't noticeable under the helmet anyway before Arcade is moving on. ]
I can do that.
[ And at this point, probably should. Hard to talk much with a power-armored foot in one's mouth. There's no more time left for it in any case, as they finally clear the trees and come within sight of the camp entrance. As Danse had predicted, the turrets detect them instantly, and swivel to lock on--
--but then, as Arcade had predicted, they switch off and return to rest. A trooper in full Hellfire armor, Tesla cannon aimed and ready, appears suspiciously at the gate to size them up--Danse in particular, with his suspiciously unmarked and basic model of armor, but still an X-01 for that--and only when the dark helmet's gaze tracks over to the insignia on the shoulder of Arcade's suit do things proceed. ]
Your reinforcements. Or was all that big talk over the airwaves just for show?
[ Arcade hardly sounds like himself, anymore, and the distortion of his voice through staticky speaker amplification can only be blamed for a fraction of that difference. It's easier to avoid all of the usual telltale signs of mistruth in his voice, though, when he thinks of it less like lying to strangers and more like... an impression. A combination of voices so familiar he can effortlessly summon them up in his mind (hearing them even when he'd rather not, at times). And thanks to the power armor, it's impossible to tell that he's sweating right through all of that padding.
Though for a moment it looks like the guard in the Hellfire suit might be able to, as he considers them silently. When he abruptly cocks his head to the side, Arcade can imagine him speaking into a radio, taking silent-to-them orders to take a step back and open fire along with the turrets— ]
Where did you get that armor?
[ He doesn't seem convinced, yet, but at least he isn't trying to kill them. Yet. Maybe this won't completely blow up in their faces, after all. ]
The same place my father did. It's an original issue suit from Navarro. You'll... have to excuse my associate, though. His armor didn't survive the cross-country trek.
[ He gestures to Danse, and a little of that anxiety is bleeding through, now. Just be convincing enough. ]
We - liberated this replacement from the locals. I hope you aren't all so loose with Enclave property, around here.
[ It's not the first time today that Danse has had this rare, strange opportunity to hear his lover sounding like someone he doesn't know at all, but it's harder this time to pin down how he feels about it. The lying is almost shockingly smooth, Railroad-smooth, and yet Danse can at least somewhat grasp how Arcade's pulling it off.
He can, in fact, try to back it up and feed into it as promised, with the same seat-of-his-pants improvisational energy he'd discovered an untapped well of back when Nora wanted to run around Goodneighbor cosplaying as a superheroine with a dashing burly bodyguard. ]
But from what we've been hearing, you've already had enough of a problem with that to need help. So why don't you let us through?
[ If there's anything Danse had anticipated being able to contribute here--beyond the well-worn and slightly condescending confidence of an officer accustomed to negotiating from a position of power, slipping itself back on of its own accord like a uniform--it would have been those details he'd learned from the Brotherhood, information they've both already considered and discarded as too dangerous to risk.
Instead, the unexpected opening Arcade leaves him is one he fills in with Minutemen intelligence, a flash of inspiration he capitalizes on before the moment can pass. More current, more relevant, less personally volatile even if there's a separate kind of inherent risk in pissing these soldiers off by reminding them that they have, in fact, been derelict enough in their duties to let technology fall into civilian hands. Even if they've taken some of it back already (with deliberate, punishing lack of concern for anyone with the misfortune to be in the same general vicinity of the thieves.) ]
That wasn't us. Lose the attitude, straggler.
[ There's something paradoxically reassuring, at least to Danse's sensibilities, about the clear angry tension in the trooper's voice. It's in-group anger, the lashing-out of a man who isn't considering it an option to kill them at the moment, because he's bought the premise well enough to think there might be a risk of consequence if he does.
It wouldn't have worked without that experience and familiarity in Arcade's voice, a tone Danse isn't replicating but that seems to have primed the soldiers in the camp to be more receptive to them both. Danse has the strong feeling this would be going very differently right now had he spoken first. They're waved forward through the barricades, into a camp even smaller than Danse had been prepared for, with only one other lightly-armored woman sitting at a terminal surrounded by eyebots in various stages of construction and repair.
The trooper gives her a terse, monotone rundown of the situation, repeating what Arcade's told him and pointedly leaving out Danse's needling, but this is apparently enough to incur another suspicious look as the scientist scrutinizes both of their armor for herself. ]
I've heard of Navarro. Didn't think anyone survived it.
[ She doesn't necessarily look old enough to have a reason to know that for herself. ]
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The majority of the interest he's deflected has been from women who don't know him, when he hasn't been in Arcade's company, but anyone who's tried has been met with the same awkward firmness about being flattered but unavailable. (Nobody who's ever seen him with Arcade around Goodneighbor has bothered to try. When he's talking to Arcade, whether they're touching or not, Danse rarely gives the impression of noticing or caring that anyone else exists in the vicinity.)
But he understands now, with this further explanation--or understands at least what Arcade would have had to fear, why romance might have seemed futile at best and dangerous at worst, why it could have seemed easier to avoid the eventual expectation of transparency by never letting anyone get close enough to feel entitled to it. What Danse still doesn't understand in light of that is why he of all people would have been different, when he'd turned up at the door in full Brotherhood uniform (no matter how quickly he'd stripped down to half of it.)
Except that he hadn't hesitated once they got talking to explain that his actual membership in it was a thing of the past, even if he'd saved the why of it for after the first date. And he remembers, too, how willing he'd been to set his own unexpected attraction aside for the chance to just talk more, to take that offer of a book loan and pleasant educational conversation at face value and appreciate the company if that was all Arcade intended it to be. He would have come back for that and been glad of it. Still, he doesn't know what it is that Arcade means by this, and his tone--neutral though he wishes he could keep it--has both audible hope and a tinge of wariness to it. ]
Yeah? Then what was it?
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But maybe there's one thing that turned the tide a little more decisively than the rest. Something a little more than a passing notion or a minor detail. Arcade sketches the motion of another sigh, but it's inaudible, this time, as he shakes a fragment of tension out of his impossibly heavy arms. (The weight of the armor feels the same as it always does, heavy and somehow easy, at the same time. Comforting, now.) ]
Just you, I guess. I knew after that first night that I was going to tell you. All of this - you're the first person I've met in years who I thought could understand.
I just, uh, wish I'd gotten around to it sooner.
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Even if his brain had curiously filed away odd turns of phrase or bits of unexpected knowledge that came up in conversation, it never had struck him as strange that Arcade had been patient with him in his hopeless and adrift moments, his lingering confusion and despair at finding himself with no anchor and no compass and nothing familiar left, his frightening new normal of feeling like the walls have eyes for designated enemies of the Brotherhood.
Arcade had seemed as if he knew that kind of rudderless loss more than just secondhand, and nobody travels clear across the country anymore on a mere whim, but even taking those details into account, Danse had attributed it more to the empathy he's seen Arcade display often enough elsewhere. It had comforted him either way, whether to think Arcade truly knew what he was going through, or could simply imagine it well enough to say things that helped. That question is answered now, in a way that steels Danse with the utter determination to give that comfort back to him somehow, to be the trustworthy ear and shoulder that Arcade had hoped he someday could be, and ensure his faith isn't misplaced. ]
It's all right. The timing doesn't matter.
[ His voice is a little hoarse, throat a tiny bit tight, though perhaps it can be passed off as the electronic buzz of the helmet. He swallows. ]
And I won't let you regret it. I promise you.
[ It's more than simply I won't give you a reason to regret it. He doesn't intend to let anyone else, either. ]
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[ It feels hollow and silly and like far too little, but he's too afraid that saying much more would turn his own voice into an unsteady, cracking waver that a thin buzz of feedback wouldn't cover.
Behind his armor, Arcade ducks his head, gesturing with the arm not paralyzed by his side for want of reaching for the hand on his shoulder. ]
Let's try to survive today, first, though.
[ They have too much left ahead of them to fall apart, now. No matter how much he wants to, in the moment, there's no turning back. He's spent enough of his life running. ]
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It's not where their objective lies, anyway. Danse gestures to call a halt before they can skirt any further around the edge of the water, because the tip of the rocky ridge overlooking it is encircled ominously with black military barricades--but he knows better than to think there won't be turrets locking onto their movements when they get in range to trip the sensors, and the vantage point of the camp is such that the humans inside it, however many there are, can see for miles when they decide to look.
He ducks quickly for cover behind a tree that isn't really wide enough for the purpose, jerking his head toward the only other one of similar size nearby. ]
Well, we can't have expected them not to know what they're doing when it comes to entrenchment. Damn it.
[ The same can't be said for any attempt at subtlety, but that really doesn't seem to have been a priority at all. The overall effect is more one of brazen dick-waving, spared only in the unlabeled simplicity of the dark walls. What Danse can see of the camp is encouragingly small, though, if nothing else. ]
Brotherhood regulations for an encampment that size would have limited the personnel to...three, maybe. If that. We shouldn't be too outnumbered. We just need to maintain the element of surprise for as long as we can.
[ He pauses, looking over as if he can discern anything about Arcade right now underneath the armor. ]
You doing all right?
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He shakes his head, easier to telegraph than a nod. ]
As well as can be expected.
[ He isn't in crisis, and he hasn't changed his mind. But calling this good would be too blatant a lie even for power armor to mask.
Still, he hasn't been completely in his own head, either. ]
But, uh, you might be overthinking this. They're out here recruiting, right? And, no offense, we both look the part.
[ In armor as well as out of it, though he doesn't press that clarification too hard, as he gestures between them. ]
Look at it this way - if nothing else, the Enclave really hates leaving their technology in enemy hands. And even if, worse case, they think they can get two functioning suits of armor off our corpses without a fight damaging them, they're just as likely to let us walk right in.
[ And getting the drop on them from the inside, while only slightly outnumbered, at worst, sounds ever so slightly less suicidal than trying to attack from afar only for them to dig in behind their barricades. ]
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The proposed plan, though, blindsides him into momentary silence, so different is it from anything the Brotherhood would have done or anything that would have occurred to him on his own. It's the sort of thing he thinks of when he says "subterfuge" to Deacon like it's a swear word, the sort of thing anathema to a man who has unironically charged into battle before shouting "FOR HONOR! FOR GLORY!"
It is not a bad plan in the slightest. It is, in fact, a vastly better one than any alternative they've got. It just requires an unusually radical reorientation of his expectations.
And at another time, maybe he might have protested it, made some more noise about the notion of honor. But that other time was when he had less, on a personal level, to live for. When he might have thought he could do more good to the world as a name immortalized in the Codex than an actual presence in anyone's life; when he was still so knee-deep in blood and steeped in numbing loss that it made sense to think harder about his legacy after death than anything he could do beforehand.
He wants this fight to be over. And he wants both of them to be alive and well and together at the end of it. If that means bending a few unnecessarily steely principles to make it happen, he can. The truth of the matter is what it is, too, the clarification unnecessary but no offense taken when it does apply to them both for essentially the same reason. He considers. ]
The recruitment is a pretense, I'm sure--at least for the vast majority of people who might hear it. But you're right. We do have an in that the wastelanders don't.
[ He looks over at Arcade again, with a wary tilt of his helmet. ]
As long as you do the talking.
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And Danse is agreeing without the obligatory back and forth, somehow, so he doesn't hesitate to seize on that while he can. Who knows if the walk will change his mind. ]
Sure. Just... back me up.
[ As much as possible, anyway. Arcade really has no idea how he's going to be talking his way through this, but. The time for worrying about that was before he had this genius idea.
He motions for Danse to follow, as he peels away from the tree and steps back further from the outpost's view. ]
Come on. We'll look more convincing - or at least gullible - if we approach from the front.
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Well, I'm hardly going to leave you out to dry. I'm just not exactly practiced with...this sort of thing.
[ But as long as he has agreed to it, he might as well commit, because doing it halfway will just ensure it doesn't work. ]
If the idea is to lull them into a false sense of security, we should agree on a signal to coordinate our attack once we're in position. I don't know if everyone in that camp will be in power armor, but I can try to get myself behind one of them and disable the fusion core if you hold their attention. Obviously we won't have time for more than that.
And if you need me to contribute to the story, I'll...I mean, I'll do my best. We can claim to have come from Adams, if they ask.
[ It would be a plausible enough tale, two soldiers fleeing a burning Enclave base under the impression that its regional power had been broken and blending into the wasteland population for a decade, even if Arcade didn't know firsthand what that was like.
Between the two of them, they might be able to provide enough combined detail to keep these people talking for a few minutes, and give them a reason to think their new recruits won't literally stab any of them in the back. Maybe. ]
no subject
[ Beyond the quiet kind of subterfuge - complex codes and hidden caches and keeping to the not-so-beaten path - Arcade isn't any better equipped to pull off a gambit like this. But it really does feel like their best option, with only the two of them.
So they'll both just have to learn to act on the fly. Or this'll just have to end in disaster - but Arcade wasn't going to count on that not being an inevitability, anyway. ]
Is reaching for my weapon too subtle a signal?
[ Maybe now isn't the best time for jokes, but Danse isn't the only one with a touch of that unfortunate gallows humor compulsion.
He sobers as he goes on, though. ]
It might be better if we claim to be from back West. There's too much of a chance they'll have actually known someone who did come from an East coast base.
[ It's doubtful, certainly, and that uncertainty is clear in his tone. These little pockets of Enclave holdouts weren't, to the best of Arcade's knowledge, still in communication even back before Navarro fell. The chances of that cloistered, violently exclusionary culture being all that different out here seem low. But why risk it? ]
...Not that I even knew East coast bases were still a thing, until now.
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[ But then, that was precisely the kind of blindness that had allowed the oil rig survivors to build their strength and become a threat to the Capital in the first place. Elder Lyons dismissing them as a lower priority than the super mutants until it was too late; wastelanders laughing at the "pre-war broadcasts" from the shabby old eyebots and asking if George Washington was going to come riding in to save the day too. ]
I thought maybe my familiarity with it could lend some extra credibility, but I never set foot in the place until it was under Brotherhood control. I wasn't part of the assault.
At the time, I remember being furious that they were taking me off the front lines, making me guard the water distribution network instead, but in retrospect...maybe I was needed more there. We probably lost more soldiers to caravan raids while we were trying to get clean water to settlements than we did taking over the base, all told.
[ It had been a very different Brotherhood, when he'd first signed up. But either way, having knowledge that comes exclusively from that side of the war probably is more of a dangerous liability than a potential help, and he considers further. ]
Are you proposing we come up with some fictitious Western base to namedrop, or say we're both from Navarro?
no subject
When he answers Danse's question, his voice is as even as before, though he no longer feels that equilibrium. ]
Better to keep things simple, and as close to the truth as possible. We were originally from Navarro. You're a soldier, I'm a scientist.
[ There's a tilt of his helmeted head that seems to indicate a particular sidelong glance - the faint, tense smile obscured behind metal and darkly tinted glass. ]
That way, they won't expect you to talk much, regardless.
no subject
But would that necessarily have been the case? It was their Prydwen, and Danse has lost enough sleep before over the safety of the little squires aboard the Brotherhood's warship. He opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn't know what, doesn't have a thought sufficiently formed, and it isn't noticeable under the helmet anyway before Arcade is moving on. ]
I can do that.
[ And at this point, probably should. Hard to talk much with a power-armored foot in one's mouth. There's no more time left for it in any case, as they finally clear the trees and come within sight of the camp entrance. As Danse had predicted, the turrets detect them instantly, and swivel to lock on--
--but then, as Arcade had predicted, they switch off and return to rest. A trooper in full Hellfire armor, Tesla cannon aimed and ready, appears suspiciously at the gate to size them up--Danse in particular, with his suspiciously unmarked and basic model of armor, but still an X-01 for that--and only when the dark helmet's gaze tracks over to the insignia on the shoulder of Arcade's suit do things proceed. ]
Who the hell are you two?
no subject
[ Arcade hardly sounds like himself, anymore, and the distortion of his voice through staticky speaker amplification can only be blamed for a fraction of that difference. It's easier to avoid all of the usual telltale signs of mistruth in his voice, though, when he thinks of it less like lying to strangers and more like... an impression. A combination of voices so familiar he can effortlessly summon them up in his mind (hearing them even when he'd rather not, at times). And thanks to the power armor, it's impossible to tell that he's sweating right through all of that padding.
Though for a moment it looks like the guard in the Hellfire suit might be able to, as he considers them silently. When he abruptly cocks his head to the side, Arcade can imagine him speaking into a radio, taking silent-to-them orders to take a step back and open fire along with the turrets— ]
Where did you get that armor?
[ He doesn't seem convinced, yet, but at least he isn't trying to kill them. Yet. Maybe this won't completely blow up in their faces, after all. ]
The same place my father did. It's an original issue suit from Navarro. You'll... have to excuse my associate, though. His armor didn't survive the cross-country trek.
[ He gestures to Danse, and a little of that anxiety is bleeding through, now. Just be convincing enough. ]
We - liberated this replacement from the locals. I hope you aren't all so loose with Enclave property, around here.
no subject
He can, in fact, try to back it up and feed into it as promised, with the same seat-of-his-pants improvisational energy he'd discovered an untapped well of back when Nora wanted to run around Goodneighbor cosplaying as a superheroine with a dashing burly bodyguard. ]
But from what we've been hearing, you've already had enough of a problem with that to need help. So why don't you let us through?
[ If there's anything Danse had anticipated being able to contribute here--beyond the well-worn and slightly condescending confidence of an officer accustomed to negotiating from a position of power, slipping itself back on of its own accord like a uniform--it would have been those details he'd learned from the Brotherhood, information they've both already considered and discarded as too dangerous to risk.
Instead, the unexpected opening Arcade leaves him is one he fills in with Minutemen intelligence, a flash of inspiration he capitalizes on before the moment can pass. More current, more relevant, less personally volatile even if there's a separate kind of inherent risk in pissing these soldiers off by reminding them that they have, in fact, been derelict enough in their duties to let technology fall into civilian hands. Even if they've taken some of it back already (with deliberate, punishing lack of concern for anyone with the misfortune to be in the same general vicinity of the thieves.) ]
That wasn't us. Lose the attitude, straggler.
[ There's something paradoxically reassuring, at least to Danse's sensibilities, about the clear angry tension in the trooper's voice. It's in-group anger, the lashing-out of a man who isn't considering it an option to kill them at the moment, because he's bought the premise well enough to think there might be a risk of consequence if he does.
It wouldn't have worked without that experience and familiarity in Arcade's voice, a tone Danse isn't replicating but that seems to have primed the soldiers in the camp to be more receptive to them both. Danse has the strong feeling this would be going very differently right now had he spoken first. They're waved forward through the barricades, into a camp even smaller than Danse had been prepared for, with only one other lightly-armored woman sitting at a terminal surrounded by eyebots in various stages of construction and repair.
The trooper gives her a terse, monotone rundown of the situation, repeating what Arcade's told him and pointedly leaving out Danse's needling, but this is apparently enough to incur another suspicious look as the scientist scrutinizes both of their armor for herself. ]
I've heard of Navarro. Didn't think anyone survived it.
[ She doesn't necessarily look old enough to have a reason to know that for herself. ]