...Arcade is one of my favorite companions in New Vegas. Less useful than Boone, but hey, gauss rifle. :D
Nellis
"Get down!"
What a way to start the day. Arcade thought as artillery shells exploded all around them.
Oh, it had started simply enough. Ambassador Crocker had asked Meda to go negotiate with an out-of-the-way tribe in the northeast of the Mojave. He'd just forgotten to mention that said tribe was the Boomers, and every last one of them seemed to be armed with pre-war artillery. As a result, he, Meda, and the resident Enclave eyebot were going to spend their day getting shot at by rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds, and several different types of munitions Arcade wasn't sure he'd ever be able to identify.
The most annoying part was that, when you really paid attention, the Nellis Air Force Base wasn't actually that far from New Vegas, and the Boomers' killzone was actually restricted to about three hundred feet around their perimeter. It really wasn't that far, particularly not for an experienced wastelander, who generally got by on a day-to-day basis by running away from anything bigger than a radscorpion. Sure, there were bodies strewn everywhere (usually in bits) within that radius, but given the tip they'd gotten from the enterprising wastelander standing just outside, they probably weren't going to die.
Probably.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM-BOOM. BOOMBOOMBOOM. BOOM.
And then, eerie silence.
"You okay?" Meda asked, shaking the cement dust out of her hair. She was carrying ED-E under one arm to make sure the robot didn't float off and get blown into a million scraps of circuitry and Hellfire armor.
Arcade, who had ended up having to sprawl flat on the ground to avoid being suddenly six inches shorter, muttered, "All limbs accounted for. You know, when I said I'd be happy to help you make the Mojave a better place, I didn't think we'd be at risk of perforation via shrapnel quite so often."
"Hey, at least you're not him." Meda replied, nodding at a partial skeleton about two feet from Arcade's head. It seemed to be missing about two-thirds of its ribcage.
"Thank God for small mercies, then." Arcade said dryly. "Though the further we venture into this deathtrap, the more I wonder if it's simply a matter of time and concentrated firepower." He clambered back to his hands and knees, dusting off his labcoat, and straightened his glasses with a sigh.
"Well, we're halfway there." Meda said, ignoring his fatalism. "See that other bombed-out house? That's next."
Arcade glanced up. There was, at best, one semi-solid wall still standing in that entire building. At least in this one there was a corner, even if what remained of that "cover" was about four feet tall and two feet wide on each side, and barely big enough for Meda and ED-E to cower behind. He'd just been lucky that none of the flying shards of near-molten steel had hit him while he was lying on the ground.
Every once in a while, the world just has to remind me that I volunteered for this. "Ready when you are," he said, getting his feet back under him.
Meda nodded. Then, with her back still to the wall, she took one final look at the main gate to the Boomers' settlement. Then she leapt over the remains of the rest of the wall and ran. Arcade followed and quickly gained speed—his legs were longer, after all, even if he wasn't as accustomed to running for his life.
ED-E jerked free of Meda's grasp and floated on ahead as they finally stopped at the next scrap of cover. The stubborn Enclave eyebot zoomed off, landing near the base of the rust-red fence that marked the edge of Boomer territory. It beeped.
That thing has to be taunting me.
Arcade hit the wall, wincing as Meda barreled into his side and nearly smashed him against the concrete—why in the world was she still carrying that super-sledge around?—and again, explosions rocked the ground. Meda growled something indecipherable and shoved his head down as a shell detonated barely ten feet away. Something about him being too tall, maybe?
Coming from someone who's barely any taller than a twelve-year-old, that could mean essentially anyone. Arcade didn't argue, though. There was plenty of time for that when they weren't being shot at.
Then the dull thud-boom of artillery ceased again.
"…should've remembered cover doesn't work like that, argh…" Meda hissed, sitting back for a moment. Arcade straightened and noticed immediately that she had pulled a doctor's bag out of her pack. She glanced up.
…That's going to scar. Arcade thought blankly. Apparently they hadn't been quite as lucky as he thought, since Meda had a deep, ragged slice along her left cheekbone and a scattered mess of holes in her jacket and pants. Most of them were bleeding, though the facial wound was the worst that he could see. Then again, facial wounds tended to be.
"Can you still run?" he said, rather than ask anything else. It wasn't going to help them at all to attempt to treat apparently-superficial injuries in the middle of what amounted to a killing field.
"Yeah." Meda replied, pressing a double-layered wad of bandages to her face. "The rest is less than what I'd get if I was dragged around by a brahmin."
…That's an execution method somewhere, I'm sure. Arcade thought, but there wasn't time to worry about it. "In that case, what next?"
"See the ditch?" Meda pointed with her free hand, and Arcade glanced back over his shoulder. ED-E was waiting patiently at the bottom of the embankment. "Go for it and don't stop running until you hit the fence."
Arcade sighed. "May I just reiterate that I think this entire excursion has been a bad idea?"
"You're still alive to complain about it, so I guess so." Meda pointed out. "Let's go."
They ran. Well, Arcade ran about halfway before doubling back a bit to grab Meda's leading hand and drag her along. She was limping quickly, but not fast enough. They ended up sliding down the rest of the way. Arcade bounced off the fence and ED-E beeped at him. And Meda, maybe, but he was pretty sure the note of reproach was only for him.
"Well, we're here." Meda said after a moment or two.
Arcade bit back a groan and helped her to her feet. And people called him a hopeless optimist…
ED-E hovered next to Meda's head as she experimentally put weight on her left leg. She wordlessly slung her pack over the eyebot's frame. ED-E beeped and started to float off toward the gate.
"I hope they're friendly enough." Meda said, still wincing as she limped forward. "I can't really fight like this."
"I have a spare energy pistol." Arcade suggested.
Meda sighed. "I think I'll pass. I was so horrible at aiming down the sights that Cass can't even look at me without laughing."
Well, that certainly explains why she charged at the geckos with a sledgehammer rather than retreating and shooting. And to think I thought she was sane.
The Boomer's gate guard was reasonable enough, if stunned that all he'd managed to do was give Meda a number of superficial scrapes. They were escorted to Pearl's quarters, where they got to listen to the predictions of an old woman who was apparently the only one who could keep the rest of the Boomers from splattering them across the landscape. Pearl was an intelligent woman, but past a certain level of stress or injury Arcade found he didn't care much. After that, Pearl pointed them to Pete if they wanted to know the Boomers' history, and Argyll if they didn't want to bleed to death. Arcade overrode Meda's curiosity about their story by dragging her to the nearest thing to an infirmary.
It turned out that all but one of the beds in Argyll's infirmary were full. It had something to do with giant exploding ants and the fact that the Boomers inevitably favored high explosives, which just exacerbated the problem. Arcade just tried to ignore the conversation while he pulled needle-sized pieces of shrapnel out of Meda's leg. At least after he'd added Med-X to the mix she'd stopped twitching every time he tried to extract the damn things.
Twenty minutes later, Arcade said, "I got everything out of your leg, assuming I could find it. What about your arm and face?"
"Can't feel anything still in my cheek." Meda said, prodding at the wound through the bandages and stitches he'd carefully applied. "Doesn't feel like I broke anything, either, or else I wouldn't be able to do this."
"And your arm?" Arcade asked.
"I think there are at least three. And maybe one next to my kidney." At Arcade's disbelieving look, she added, "I was the one who patched Veronica and Boone up before you came along. I can at least figure that much out."
Well, the kidney one was probably going to be too far in for a pair of tweezers, but it wouldn't hurt to make sure the strip of metal didn't touch anything important. "I see. In that case, let me have a look."
As Meda struggled her way out of her jacket and t-shirt, Arcade glanced around at the rest of the patients. Sure, he hadn't gotten permission from Argyll to treat any of them, but it couldn't hurt to at least take a look.
"What are the ants eating?" Arcade wondered, seeing the burns on one man and trying to guess the time left before gangrene set in.
"Gunpowder." Argyll snapped.
Of course they are. Arcade turned back to Meda and picked up the tweezers again.
"Ow."
"Stop complaining." Arcade ordered.
"Ow."
Well, she wasn't apparently interested in listening. So, Arcade decided to bring up something else. "Where did you get that scar?"
"Which one?" Meda asked, watching him poke at her arm with suspicion.
"I find it very hard to believe that you are unaware you have a ten-inch scar running right down the center of your chest." Arcade said flatly.
"Oh, that." Meda shifted uncomfortably. "Open-heart surgery back when I was seven."
…What? "It was a congenital heart defect, I imagine," he said, more to fill the silence than anything.
"Yeah. The doctors said it probably would have killed me by the time I turned ten if my parents couldn't pay for surgery." She shrugged. "So my sisters kidnapped me in the middle of the night and took me to the Followers of the Apocalypse outpost in Los Angeles. I guess they were pretty good at puppy-dog eyes, since I'm still alive."
"Ah. I can see why you'd help out Julie while you were in Freeside, then." Arcade's mind whirled. More than once, he'd wondered why a Courier who'd been shot in the head would bother helping anyone instead of tracking down their foe (or perhaps just running out of the Mojave altogether). This put a slightly different spin on it.
"Well, you're nice people, which made it easier." Meda said. "And I think the Followers here need all the help they can get."
"That we do." Arcade dropped the last of the shrapnel in a nearby paper cup. Then he went through Meda's pack—still carried by ED-E—and found a roll of bandages. "Well, in spite of the likelihood of fiery and fragmentary death, we appear to have survived. What would you like to do with your tentatively-assured near future?"
Meda giggled—As much the effects of Med-X as anything, Arcade thought—and said, "Give me a second." Then she turned. "Hey, Argyll?"
"What do you want, Outsider? I still have patients to treat. Unless you have any medical expertise I could use, which I doubt."
"I have enough medical knowledge to keep from dying out in the wasteland, but Arcade here is actually a qualified doctor. He pulled a lot of metal shards out of me and I'm still alive, so I'll vouch for his skills." Meda said. "Though if I didn't get shot at earlier today, I might have been able to help on my own…"
Is this what Boone meant when he said he was volunteered by her? Somehow, I think I understand why he and the others decided to stay behind and "keep watch" over the Strip...
"If what you say is true, you can do us a world of good. Thank you." Argyll replied.
Meda turned back to Arcade and grinned. "You're up, doctor."
Arcade sighed. Then he rolled up his sleeves and walked over to the first man. Swelling, infections, horrid lacerations…it was like he'd never left Old Mormon Fort. Still, there was a job to be done, and he knew how to do it. He waved Argyll over so the other man could watch, and then began treatment.