[ 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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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. ]