After lightly jogging to where Chance and Amy are kneeling while looking at a piece of discolored paper, Damian looks closely at the paper and notices markings and symbols scrawled on it.
"Is that a map?" Damian inquires.
Chance looks over his shoulders and says.
"Yeah, we have all the places we've been to marked on it. Also a list of the 'helpful' people we know that inhabit the places."
"Why did you put an odd tone on helpful?"
"Well, some of the people actually are a use to us, others are more of a tolerable burden."
Damian watches as Chance and Amy fold the map back up, following the various crease marks showing just how used this map is. Chance then turns and talks of the group's current plan of action.
"There is a gas station a few hundred feet past here overlooking a bridge. The last time we were there it was infested with radscorpions, and below the bridge were a few giant ants. Anyone have an idea on how we can take them out without getting ourselves poisoned, or worse, killed?"
Damian starts formulating a plan in his mind to have his thought process quickly interrupted by Amy's suggestion.
"I know! We could have one of us walk up and attack the ant colony, but he will have to be fast, because he's gonna run over to the radscorpions and we can watch as they both wipe each other out!"
Damian looks over at Amy rather surprised before saying.
"Uhh, yeah... That is actually quite an impressive plan."
"What? Didn't you think I am capable of thinking?"
"Well it is not that I thought you were dumb, I just thought you would be more of the person to go in a situation with guns blazing behind you."
"Hmm, as you can see I am capable of more than what you thought."
"Apparently."
The group stands together looking to see how many creatures they are going to be up against. Chance asks the inevitable question of who the bait is going to be.
"So guys, who do you think should go lead them away?"
"I think it should be Damian."
"What makes you two say me?"
The pair look Damian over and tell him.
"You have armor on unlike us, you probably are in good shape considering you're legion, and the most important thing, you my friend are new to the group."
Damian realizing there is no use in arguing starts to dreadfully walk to the ants.
Upon reaching the road declining to the bridge underpass, Damian watched as the ants scurried around in some form of organized mayhem. He looks around until he spots a decent sized rock, he picks it up and chucks it at the biggest of the ants he sees.
The ant turns its ugly pincers toward Damian and lets out a chatter alerting the other ants to the disturbance. All the ants look towards Damians direction and begin their charge.
Damian cuts to the gas station in a full on sprint, the ants following closely behind. Damian, in his haste, trips over a cactus protruding from the ground. Falling forward he attempts to catch himself only to have his arms fail him and allow him to fall flat on his face anyways.
He quickly rolls over onto his back and stares ahead at the swarm of ants rushing towards him. He can see one presumably faster than the others as it was at least ten feet ahead of the rest.
It manages to close in on Damian before he can pull himself off the ground. The ant crawls onto Damian and begins gnashing its pincers in his face. Damian pulls the spearhead from his pocket and slashes at the creatures face, but the spearhead is no match for the ants tough exo-skeleton. As the ant gnashes its pincers Damian can see the soft spot between them. He waits for it to open up again and the moment it does he jams the spearhead into the soft spot, shoving his whole hand into the creatures face.
He pulls his hand out leaving the spearhead behind in the creature. To his dismay though, the ants are now right on his heels, he can feel the vibration from the collective stomping on the ground by all the ants. All this noise apparently drew the attention of the radscorpions as well, as when he looks ahead they are already closing in on him.
He quickly turns to the gas station in the hopes that they will see each other and begin attacking one another, and to his excitement, it works!
He runs to the gas station as radscorpions run past him to aid their brethren. He ducks into the nearby garage and climbs into the bed of a busted up utility truck.
Damian looks on as the creatures attack one another simply for being in each others vicinity. After getting bored of watching the aimless violence he spots the other two members of his group slowly creeping there way past the battle. Damian decides while they make their way over to him he will check out the surrounding area.
He opens the toolbox in the back of the truck and reveals a pair of sun washed blue jeans, an old black leather jacket with a patch for "Las Vegas Fire Department" and some pre-war military patch that Damian didn't recognize. He takes off his legion armor and tosses it to the side in order to put on this new, less conspicuous, outfit.
He removes the jeans and begins looking them over. They appear to be his size(close enough at least) and he even sees a leather belt to go with them.
Next he picks up the jacket. As soon as he lifts it up though, something else catches his eye. Under the jacket was a fire axe. He picks it up with enthusiasm to find its handle is still quite sturdy. He now has an actual weapon he can use, besides his revolver.
He sets the axe to the side while he puts on his new jacket. After putting on said jacket he picks his axe back up and starts walking to the station itself.
He tries to look through the window on the outside but its boarded up and those boards are not coming off anytime soon.
So he instead decides to take the risk of walking into the station with no assistance and not the slightest clue of what awaits him on the other side.
He slowly and cautiously reaches to open the door, but the moment he makes contact with the handle the door springs open knocking him flat on his back as a person runs past him.
Damian, now lying on the ground doing a combination of cursing and groaning over having a heavy door bashed into his face, finally stands up to watch the figure disappear over the horizon, he can see the figure has leather armor on and quite possibly red hair.
He suddenly hears footsteps coming from behind him. He quickly wheels around and delivers a good and solid punch... To Chance...
Chance falls on his back and grabs the side of his face in an attempt to comfort himself to no avail, he found cursing and threats were a much better anesthetic. Damian slyly looked down at him and tells him.
"Hey, just be glad that I did not remember I found a new axe."
Chance looks up as he spits out another tooth along with a bit of blood from the back of his mouth.
"Yeah, lucky lucky me. Shit like this keeps up and I'll be toothless by the time I'm 30."
"If it will help to alleviate your pain, I apologize."
"Why do you talk like that?"
"Like what?"
"You always use these big fancy words, when you could just as easy get your message across using normal words."
"Well that was an odd switch of the subject."
"we aren't talking about subjects, I asked you a question. Now it would only be right for you to answer it."
"Hmm, I suppose it is about the only advantage of growing up in the legion. Caesar wants at least his officers to be educated, he always told us in his annual address of the legion, "A commander must be smarter, braver, and more prepared than the men he leads". So when I was moved up the ranks after showing my skill, I was sent to the officers training course. Where we were taught in subjects ranging from military tactics and the most efficient way to kill a man, to arts and poetry."
Chance sets on the ground now both in a daze from the punch and the confusion of listening to the rant of his ally.
"You know what, I really regret asking you that. Remind me never to ask you anything again."
Amy reaches down to give Chance a hand back on to his feet. He grabs her hand and accidentally pulls her down to him.
She lets out a slight chuckle and they smile at each other for a brief second before they both get back on their feet.
Damian takes note of this and then gets back to the task at hand.
"Did you guys see the person running from the station?"
Amy still having a bit of joy in her voice says.
"Yeah, they laid you out with that door."
"I am quite aware of that, Amy."
"Just thought I would make sure you realize that."
"Trust me, I am painfully aware of that."
Chance speaks up.
"We should make our way inside and start setting up so we can eat."
"yes, I agree." Says Damian.
And with that the trio make their way inside.