Ink, Scars, and Needlework

Arcade had returned to his wash basin to once again wash his hands. His commitment to cleanliness was a step above nearly every medic tent Ava had ever been in. On an avoiding-grievous-infection level that was a plus. On a sterile-unsettling-medical level it was not.

"I don't like doctors," Ava said as she started to undo the magnetic latches on the stealth suit. Whether this was an explanation or warning was unclear.

From the sink, Arcade was now applying a second round of soap. "And I don't like patients." He glanced at Ava. "See? We're bonding."

"Why are you a doctor then?" Ava was struggling to peel the stealth suit's sleeves from her arms. Despite the armor's many wonders, she'd been sweating in it for weeks and it wasn't releasing her without a fight.

"Technically, I'm a researcher. All the medical chems we're used to proscribing come from a potent seller's market. If you don't have the caps, you're going to bleed out in a gutter. Alternatives are needed. So that's what I do, I look for alternatives."

Arcade leaned against his desk and smirked as Ava freed one arm with a wet slap of the sleeve against her face. She took a moment to massage the burn scars covering the arm before yanking her other arm free as well. Arcade's eyes locked on her tattoos.

"Excellent ink!" he exclaimed with more animation than she'd seen him display yet. He stepped over to her and gently lifted her tattooed arm to examine the designs. "These are hand done, aren't they? Not lasered on?"

Fixing Arcade with a stiff glare, Ava removed his hands from her forearm. "I don't…like doctors," she repeated. "Don't push it." Reinforcement of her feelings complete, she shimmied her way out of the bottom half of the stealth suit and hopped up to the exam table.

"Fair enough," Arcade replied, holding his hands up in surrender. "Checkup only. I can do that." He grabbed a hand-held medical scanner from a shelf and started thumbing its switches. Ava had seen a similar model in Doc Mitchell's house. The vaguely mirror shaped device housed enough sensors to bombard a patient with all manner of scans and rays. Held aloft, its arsenal of cameras clicked and whirred as Arcade waved it around her body.

"You know, with scars like these I'm shocked your limbs are all still fully intact." Arcade paused with the scanner over her chest. "Are these…electrical burns?"

"Tesla burns," Ava said tersely and held up her hand with the missing pinky. "And not quite fully."

Arcade hmm'ed and gently flipped her hand back and forth, examining the nub where the digit used to be. "Who sutured this? I know it wasn't Knox; his needle work is quite terrible and this…this is quite cleanly healed."

"No sutures."

Arcade paused his exam and judged her heavily in disbelief from behind his glasses. Ava stubbornly stared back and plucked her hand from his grasp.

"I wrapped a bandage on it."

Arcade hmm'ed again and stepped back over to his desk to read Mitch's letter again. "And no stimpaks? I see here you're allergic."

"Stimpak sickness, so yeah. Or no, no stimpaks."

"Allergy," Arcade corrected with a tut. "Sickness implies a contagion. Overuse in stimpaks can result in a contact allergy causing inflammation instead of clotting." He waved the scanner over her again. "And based on these scans of your circulatory system, you went scorched earth."

Ava pointed at the gnarled scar running all the way across her midsection.

"Ah. I see." He waved the scanner over her again. "Also you have radiation poisoning."

"No, I don't," Ava said, rolling her eyes.

"Oh? Really? Have you developed some innate sense of rad suffusion?"

Taking what she thought was a very patient, deep breath, Ava continued to glare at Arcade, and pointed to her PipBoy on the ground.

"I wear that thing twenty-four-seven. Fat lot of good it'd do me if it didn't tell me I had radiation poisoning."

Plucking the PipBoy up from the rug, Arcade flipped its wrist mount open and peered at it for a moment before showing it to Ava.

"So I suspect the medical sensor is somewhere under the blood, mud, and scum?"

He pulled a pen from his pocket and scraped it over the clotted detritus, revealing the sensor below. It lit up with a flash of green light, momentarily blinding Ava as Arcade shone it directly into her eyes. The PipBoy's radiation warning light immediately lit up.

"You have radiation poisoning," Arcade repeated.

"Well, I feel fine!" Ava protested, snatching her PipBoy from him and flipping through its status menus. Her trusty little computer was indeed telling her she had radiation poisoning.

"Oddly enough I'd have to agree with you. You seem to be suffering no ill effects." Arcade tapped thoughtfully on his chin with the pen. "Hmmmm."

"Every time you 'hmmmm', I want to break something," Ava said, discarding her PipBoy back to the floor.

Arcade ignored her and snapped his fingers. "I need a sample."

Before Ava could react, he grabbed a hypo from his workstation and jabbed it into Ava's bare thigh. He failed to notice Ava's shocked and outraged expression and stepped out of striking distance with the blood sample.

"Do that again, see how it goes," Ava threatened. "And anyways, forget all this other shit, I'm here for my head-"

Arcade spun back around and slapped a sticky electrode patch on the side of Ava's head.

"Your head, yes. You're a Mentat addict?"

"Mentat user," she stressed, hostility bubbling in her tone. Arcade's bedside manner was beginning to wear on her already paper-thin patience.

A battered computer monitor lit up on Arcade's desk, receiving data from the electrode he'd stuck on her. A grainy scan of her brain appeared. The light reflected in Arcade's glasses, obscuring his eyes as he absorbed and assessed the scan.

"You know what this reminds me of?" he asked after a moment.

"How would I know that?"

"I don't know how well you know Knox, but once upon a time he was shot in the head-"

"I'm aware."

"-his scans look almost just like this, except for one fun little detail. Biologically speaking, when a brain scars, fibroblasts attempt to repair the area. They're soft at first but then harden which can be problematic and require corrective surgery. Which Knox received."

"Waiting for why this is fun," Ava said, looking at the monitor as well but the details Arcade was sussing out went beyond her medical knowledge.

"Your fibroblasts don't appear to have hardened." He looked at her and cocked his head to the side. "Turns out your prodigious ability to scar extends to the brain as well."

Ava stiffened. "And what does that mean?"

"I don't know," Arcade replied with a shrug. "It shouldn't be medically possible."

Ava clutched at the edge of the exam table, her knuckles white. Her heart thundered in her ears as her pulse spiked. She asked for help -went to a fucking doctor- and he didn't know what was wrong with her. This was everything she'd feared would happen. And she didn't take fear well.

"You…don't…know?" she hissed, voice dangerously low.

Arcade was unimpressed. "Oh, calm down, you drama queen," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I'm a researcher who spends all day looking at plants. I can tell you that your brain is confounding basic human biology. Congrats. You're a freak."

"I will stab you."

Her threat fell on deaf ears as Arcade continued talking almost to himself more than her. "The brain isn't my area of expertise. But I know of at least a few doctors who do specialize in neuroscience. Dr. Usanagi, or Dr. Henry in Jacobstown, maybe. I'll put out some asks." He stopped speaking and glanced at Ava, for the first time noticing the conflicting fight or flight expression raging on her face. Arcade blinked in surprise.

"This is good news!" he cheered flatly. Clearly he was not used to displaying encouragement. "Yay for brain science!"

Ava took a deep breath through her nose and closed her eyes. She held the breath before very slowly looking at Arcade. "I hate you… so much."

"And I feel nothing but a mild apathy for you, but then again, I'm a humanitarian and you're a delinquent Knox foisted upon me."

"Foisted? Who says foisted?" Ava said.

"It means to impose an unwelcome or unnecessary thing or person on. From the Latin fustis."

"I know what it means!" she snapped, voice laden with every barb and bristle she had. This man wanted to die. He had to. There was no other way Ava could explain it to herself.

"Can we talk about the Mentats?" she managed to spit out between her clenched teeth.

Arcade snapped his fingers. "Ah! Yes, of course. Credit where credit is due. Your freakish brain-scarring presses directly on your hippocampus and parahippocampus which I can only assume produces a delightful array of nightmarish psychoses. However, your copious self-dosing of Mentats reduces that swelling and takes the pressure off those portions of your brain."

Brushing a plant pot aside, he pulled a worn and cracked model of the human brain from a shelf and pointed to several areas of the brain to demonstrate. Shifting in discomfort, Ava looked away. The model looked to be scavenged from a VaultTec facility. She could make out the faded logo on the base. The exact same model had been in her father's lab back in 101.

"So good on you," Arcade continued, returning the brain back on the shelf. "You kept yourself from going crazy and managed to flood your gray matter with glutamate thus jumpstarting every memory neuron you have." He paused and looked at her. "You must be quite good at trivia."

"Yeah, I'm real impressive," Ava mumbled, still refusing to look in the direction of the anatomical model on the shelf. Her stomach was beginning to swim. All this doctoring was starting to overwhelm her. She rocked back and forth on the table for a moment to gather her wits and courage. She didn't want to ask the next question.

"Why… Do you know why they're not working anymore? Or, not working as well? I mean-" Ava was babbling and the words came out in a garbled mess. She took a breath. "I'm talking about resistance. Drug tolerances. At a certain point the body needs more and more to process as intended. The Mentats aren't working like they used to."

Arcade waved a hand dismissively. He'd returned to studying her brain scan and was feeding the blood sample into a centrifuge. "Unlikely as you're not exhibiting signs of advanced dementia. Mentats will rot your brain long before you develop a resistance to them."

"Then explain why they're not working" Ava pressed. Arcade's attitude was steadily moving him towards throttling territory.

It was Arcade's turn to take a breath begging for patience. He turned away from his desk to face Ava once more. "Outside of the physical damage across your temporal lobe, I see no other signs of neurological degradation. Not a one. Despite being brutalized and a history of rampant chem use, your brain is actually quite healthy. Shocking, I know. Tell me, why do you think you're developing a resistance?"

The clacking of the centrifuge was the only sound in the tent for a few moments as Ava and Arcade sat in silence. She worried at her lip, teeth nipping at a sun blister, and Arcade idly tapped his pen against his knee.

"It was in Arizona…"

"That's Legion territory."

"It was in a Legion town."

She laid it out for him. Centurion Hadrian, the attack in the hotel, the nightmares. Every twisted perception that had invaded her waking life and warped the world around her. She held herself as she remembered the sound of the Mentats rattling in their tin as the Legionaries were breaking the door down to find her. She could hear Hadrian's voice in her ears, repeating the words of the raider gladiator, Gruber, as he came to kill her. Gonna chop you up, meat!

"You had a panic attack."

Ava's fingernails dug into her arm as Arcade spoke. "Go fuck yourself." She stood up from the table and made to grab the stealthsuit from the floor.

Rolling his eyes, Arcade stood up from his seat and stepped between her and her belongings. "It's not an admission of weakness. It's a clinical fact. The human body becomes annulled to stressors over repeat exposure. You remove the body from that environment and it loses its tolerance. Reintroduce the stressors, shock to the system. It sounds like the Legion was your reintroduced stressor."

Still bristling, Ava was glaring at Arcade suspiciously. One of her hands was twitching just slightly as if it longed to grab something -anything- and squeeze until it broke. She clenched that hand into a fist to control the movement.

"So…what?" she snarled. "Avoid stressors? You want me to take a nice vacation? Maybe practice some deep breathing?"

Arcade's mouth twisted up into an impish but genuine smile. "Oh, you've got some wit with all that rampant aggression. You're more fun than I thought." He motioned back to the table. "Sit. Please. And I'll tell you exactly what."

With his hand guiding the way, Ava allowed herself to be seated once more. Arcade busied himself digging around in various drawers, searching for something.

"You strike me as someone who likes to fight," he said, switching to pushing plants around to search behind them. "Something threatens you, you react. Probably by hitting it."

"Stabbing it," Ava corrected.

"Stabbing it, yes." He stepped around Ava to a trunk and began to rifle through it. "Your brain's threat response system is intensely wired. It keeps you alive. And in your case, it has done a very aggressive job of that. But what do you do when that threat response system doesn't turn off?"

He stood up and put his hands on his hips, trunk thoroughly tossed through. He hmmm'ed to himself before sidestepping around the exam table again and going to his bookshelf. He'd pull a book out, open it without reading, and replace it before moving on to the next.

"That constant state of anxiety and alarm drives the brain into an overwhelmed depressive state. What do you do? How do you fight your brain? You can't." He pulled another tome out and flipped it open to reveal a hollow cavity. "Aha!" He whirled around to grin at Ava. "You may not be able to fight your brain. But science can."

He pulled a bright green pill bottle out of the book. "I had a rash of junkies ransacking my tent looking for a fix. I needed to hide the good drugs." He handed the bottle to Ava. "This is DayTripper. I want you taking one a day. It's not a miracle but it should help prevent your brain from knifing your endorphins and allow you to 'stab back' a little. That and a few deep-breathing exercises may make you slightly more pleasant to be around. Maybe a vacation."

Slowly and suspiciously, Ava reached for the bottle, watching Arcade all the while. "I know you're mocking me. But I'm going to allow it."

DayTripper. In her raging drug addict days, she'd spent more than a few blissful afternoons popping pills from bottles just like this one. It was a hell of relaxing high alright; she could barely lift a finger, it was so relaxing. Admittedly, she was crushing handfuls of pills and snorting them, so maybe a more proscribed approach could be beneficial.

"I'll take these. One a day," Ava said, holding the bottle up between the two of them. "But I know where you live now, so if these aren't what you say they are, I'm going to find you."

Arcade clapped his hands together in an inappropriate display of glee. "And back to threats! I was so worried you'd run out."

"And the Mentats?"

"Keep taking them. Though I'd like to lower your dosage. Wean you off. Morning and evening only. And while you do that, I'll get to asking around for a more permanent and less neurologically toxic solution. Now, get the hell out of my tent."

The Atomic Wrangler wasn't much to look at as far as businesses go, but for anyone unable to meet the credit check to get onto the Strip it was the best place in Freeside to gamble. Back-alley card games didn't count. You were unlikely to have to bet with your organs at the Wrangler.

Knox had a soft spot for the grungy, divey, dirty building. Anytime he saw its glowing neon sign of the cowboy riding an atom his mood would improve. The Atomic Wrangler had been one of the first places he'd been able to scrap some caps together after leaving Goodsprings. He'd made good work as a headhunter. Both hunting for caps owed to the owners, and hunting for exotic talent to bolster the casino's stable of employees.

A group of disgruntled NCR sharecroppers stood just outside the entrance glowering at someone's graffiti sprawled across the wall. 'FUCK NCR' wasn't exactly an eloquent message but it got the point across. Knox sidestepped around them and dipped into the bar.

Smelling of beer, sweat, and the experiences of the world-weary clientele, Knox took a deep breath in, smiling fondly. What a wonderful shithole.

A suited woman behind the bar clapped a similarly dressed (and similar in physical appearance) man on the shoulder.

"Holy shit, we've got a live one," she said with a slick grin.

Knox held his arms out wide as he approached the bar. "Francine, James, my darlings, how the hell are you?"

Francine and James Garrett, the twin proprietors of the Atomic Wrangler, were ruthless, borderline despicable, and more than a little dodgy, but as far as friends in low places went, Knox could (and had) done worse. The Atomic Wrangler existed on the seedier side of sinful: chems, prostitution, blackmarket sales, it had it all. But they also helped keep the peace in Freeside.

One of their stills produced medicinal chems exclusively for the Followers of the Apocalypse. Their debt collection wasn't a rigged game, brutal and unforgiving, but at least it was honest. And they paid their guards well enough that no one was dying in the street too regularly. For icons of the community, Freeside could do better than the Garretts, that was certain, but the Garretts were what they had.

James Garrett plucked a glass from below the bar and started filling before Knox had even sat down. "Courier! Looks like you haven't talked your way into a second early grave yet. That's nice to see."

"James! Looks you haven't been lasered in the face while fraternizing with that securitron. Equally nice to see."

"Hardy-har-har...that securitron is upstairs and free for the next hour if you're looking for a ride."

The securitron in question, aptly named FISTO, was a very specific item Knox had procured for the Garretts. Or more accurately, for James Garrett. The man knew what he liked and what he liked ran on fusion cells.

"Even with your discount, it'll still run you though. We don't do free rides," Francine added quickly. For Francine, business was pleasure. She was a hard task mistress and ran the Atomic Wrangler and all things in her life with an iron fist. Knox knew first hand. He winked at her, widening her smile just slightly.

The mesh wire covering the front window rattled as the NCR punks outside hurled a brick at the graffiti covered glass to no effect. Francine rolled her eyes and gave a nod to one of the bouncers lurking by the door.

"Fucking NCR," she said to Knox, leaning in and lowering her voice. "Their money spends just fine but they throw their weight around too fucking quick." James shook his head, agreeing with his sister's assessment.

"You're not wrong," Knox said.

NCR did tend to be pushy. And there were a damned sight more of them month over month. The expansionist policies of the New California Republic pushed their people further and further into the Mojave with the promise of land and wealth without there being enough to suitably go around. Inevitable friction between the settlers and the locals was to be predicted but the animosity was bubbling over it seemed.

The disgruntled voices from outside rose a notch to full on yelling. Francine rolled her eyes again and waved an irritated hand at another bouncer who was lurking menacingly by the poker tables.

"They just don't get it," she said.

"No, they do not," said James.

"Yeah?" said Knox.

"Freeside," James clarified. "They don't get how we do things. Think their army goons are the end all be all of law and order. You would not believe the number of ash piles I've seen outside the Silver Rush because some NCR dickhead thought they wouldn't atomize him."

The Van Graff family, owners and operators of the Silver Rush, were certainly liable to turn anyone giving them grief to a reduced pile of ash or goop. They traded in lasers and plasma, energy weapons for every occasion. Desperate Freesiders knew better than to mess with them. It took someone from far afield to be dumb enough to give them guff.

"You should have seen it, Knox. There was a troop of those dumbasses in their pit helmets who tried to get into Members Only. Fucking hilarious," Francine added. Her grin was back at the thought of NCR soldiers getting throttled for their stupidity.

Members Only was a special establishment in Freeside. As the name implied, no one was getting in who wasn't already part of a very specific, very dangerous in-crowd. To cut down on rampant violence on the streets between various gangs, The King, patriarch of Freeside itself, sat down with leaders from the Jackals, the Vipers, and the Great Khans to set up a specific establishment to serve them all bloodlessly. A place for the various gangs to go, set their differences aside, and generally drink, whore, and sin to their hearts' contents.

If someone wasn't wearing a Kings jacket, a Khans vest, Viper or Jackal tats, they weren't getting in. Needless to say, a den of iniquity populated exclusively by outlaws, Members Only was a very real thorn in the NCR deputies' sides.

The shouting kicked up another notch outside and the door shook as someone was thrown into it.

"Fucking hell!" Francine growled. Someone fired a pistol outside. She groaned and reached into her suit jacket for a pistol. "Fucking idiots! James, let's go!" she snapped at her brother and started for the door.

Knox made to stand up as well but James held a hand up to stop him. "Drink your drink. We've got this." He pulled an 10mm SMG from below the bar and followed after his sister.

"Have fun," Knox said after them and took a sip from his drink. Outside Francine was yelling "No one fucks with the Garretts!"

Francine and James were practically rabid in defending their reputation. They didn't have the gang loyalty of the Kings or the firepower of the Van Graffs, so they defended their turf with vigorously applied aggression alone.

"Your degenerate friends truly are wild animals, aren't they?" an oily voice said in Knox's ear as a man slid into the seat next to him.

Knox recognized the voice and his hand was halfway to his pistol before the man pressed a thin dagger against his groin.

"Ah-ah-ahhh, Courier. I'd hate to deny the twins their favorite part of you," the man said.

"Would you believe me if I said that's not their favorite part?" Knox said carefully, withdrawing his hand from his gun and placing it on the counter.

"Oh-ho, must be that silver tongue then. All the same. Go for your gun again and I sever the artery in your thigh."

Knox fixed the man with a steely-eyed glare. He was dressed simply in a burgundy suit and fedora and sat casually at the bar despite the knife pressed to Knox's crotch.

"How can I help you, Vulpes?" Knox asked.

The man, Vulpes, tutted. "Please, Courier. No need to be so formal in the land of infidels and dissolute. Fox, if you would."

"How can I help you, Fox?"

Vulpes Inculta was Legion. Not just any member of Caesar's horde either. He was frumentarii, a spymaster, saboteur, and terrorist given unorthodox leave from the tenets of the Temple of Mars to pursue glory in the name of Caesar.

The first time Knox had met him Vulpes had twisted and manipulated an entire town into massacring itself.

Vulpes wiggled the knife absentmindedly as Knox sat still. "I've heard some interesting rumors, Courier. An illicit slave smuggling ring in a backwater town in Arizona, a priestess embroiled in all manner of scandals, and a Courier carrying the Mark of Caesar." Vulpes eyed him with a devious smirk. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"You expecting me to lie, Fox? Catch me telling a tall tale?" Knox said, playing for time. This was theater. If Vulpes was going to assassinate him, he wouldn't do it so publicly. He was here to deliver a message. Caesar knew Knox had been in Dobe. And he wasn't happy.

With a chuckle, Vulpes turned the knife gently again, keeping a single finger on the top of the hilt and balancing the blade against Knox's thigh. "Do I expect you to lie? Of course I do. All you do is lie. To me, to Caesar, to yourself. You are a degenerate, Courier. Lying is your native tongue."

A few more gunshots from outside. Both Vulpes and Knox glanced to the door. Francine and James were almost through cleaning up the rabble. The window for Vulpes' interview was closing.

He leaned in to whisper in Knox's ear. "The Son of Mars would like a word with you, Courier. Best come crawling on your knees if you wish for mercy."

With the threat and his breath on Knox's neck, Vulpes withdrew the knife and stepped up from the chair just as Francine and James strode back into the building.

"No one fucks with the Garretts!" Francine shouted. "One on the house paid for by those jackasses!"

The assembled gamblers, drinkers, and vagrants cheered and clapped and stomped to their feet. Knox turned to put a bullet between Vulpes' shoulder blades but the frumentarius had disappeared amidst the crowd suddenly surging towards the bar.

Knox pushed his way through, shouldering past the people, and went to the side exit that Vulpes would have used. One drunken gambler stood from his card table directly in front of Knox and was knocked back to his seat, chips scattering to the floor. The man looked like he wanted to make something of it but thought better of it seeing the gun in Knox's hand.

Knox exited into the alley and an electric stun baton was thrust to his ribs followed by a black bag being thrown over his head.

Ava walked out of Arcade's tent, stealth suit back on and affixing her PipBoy back to her wrist. Arcade was half a step behind her.

"So just to reiterate, one a day of the DayTripper, two a day morning and night of the Mentats, and then we'll circle back on an updated treatment plan. Oh, and let me know if any of your bodily fluids start glowing what with your freakish radiation condition."

Ava ignored him and looked for Knox. The Courier was not there.

"Where's the Atomic Wrangler?" she asked. That was where Knox had said he was going. She remembered hearing a crier on a street corner earlier advertising for it but beyond that she hadn't a clue.

"That way," Arcade said unhelpfully, already turning to reenter his tent.

"Arcade," Ava snapped, punctuating his name with the final clasp of the PipBoy snapping shut.

The Followers doctor groaned and with a deliberate dragging of his feet to clearly demonstrate how done he was with her turned back around. He looked around for a moment before spotting a robed woman working with a power saw on a battered generator.

"VERONICA!" he shouted over the sound of the saw. "I NEED YOU!"

The woman with saw stopped and looked their way from behind shrouded goggles. "WHAT?" she yelled back as the saw whirred down.

Arcade took a deep breath to shout again but thought better of it and waved for her to come over. Disentangling herself from the mechanical innards of the generator, she set the saw on the ground and stood up with a languid stretch, clearly taking her time as she knew it would frustrate Arcade. Ava could respect that.

She pulled the goggles from her face, grease and soot stains circling her eyes. She was young, younger than any of the Followers doctors, but she walked with a certainty of someone who spent a great deal of time in a great many places. It was an earned confidence.

"Veronica," Arcade said as she walked up. "This is Ava, I need-"

"You're Brotherhood," Ava said, interrupting Arcade and staring down Veronica.

Both Arcade and Veronica stiffened at her accusation. Almost simultaneously they both spoke. "No, I'm not." "No she's not."

Ava raised a single eyebrow at Veronica as Arcade checked over each shoulder to see if anyone had heard her. Veronica leaned in towards Ava.

"Hey, how about ix-nay on the whole rotherbood-hay?"

"Whatever." Ava rolled her eyes and shook her head dismissively. This wasn't worth pursuing to her.

"So Ava, this is Veronica, who is absolutely not Brotherhood of Steel," Arcade said, stressing his words specifically.

"Can we just stop saying it," Veronica said quietly. This time it was her glancing over her shoulder.

"I don't care," Ava said firmly. "I don't care. I'd just like to find Knox and get on with my life."

Veronica blinked, her eyes owlish surrounded by all the motor oil streaking her face. "You know Knox? Knox is back?" The second question was directed at Arcade.

"Yes, Veronica. Knox is back. Now-" Arcade started to say but was interrupted by Veronica this time.

"Well, where's he at? I've got some thoughts on the-" she stopped talking and looked at Ava. "...stuff," she finished lamely.

"For fuck's sake!" Ava barked, clenching her fists to her chest in frustration. She had no more spare threads to fray in the Old Mormon Fort full of doctors. "Knox is at someplace called the Atomic Wrangler and Arcade wants you to take me there, I assume."

Veronica and Arcade looked at Ava. She glared at them. Veronica looked to Arcade for confirmation. "That about sums it up," he said.

"Well…I'm busy. That generator isn't going to repair itself," Veronica mumbled.

Arcade's eyes narrowed. "Oh, I'm sorry. You're busy? Working on the generator that has been broken for months and I told you was a fool's errand?"

This was apparently a sore subject between the two of them.

"Look, if I fix the generator maybe Julie will finally say yes!" Veronica protested, Ava's ears perked as the mohawked doctor's name was thrown out,

"Julie is never going to say yes, Veronica. It's not going to happen."

"It could!"

"No, it couldn't." Arcade placed a hand on Veronica's shoulder as she pouted. It was almost comical as the quite tall man leaned over the quite short woman. "As your friend and Julie's, I want you both to find nice girlfriends. However, it won't be one another. Your dream date is fine dining and gowns at the Ultra Luxe. Meanwhile Julie would like nothing more than to be the person lighting the fire that burns the Ultra Luxe down. That is, if she didn't consider that an obscene waste of resources. Move on."

"Your dating advice sucks," Veronica said, her arms crossed in mulish defiance.

"So's his medical advice," Ava added.

Arcade stood straight and started for his tent once more. "Anyway, I'm done with you both now. Veronica, give up on Julie, take Ava to the Atomic Wrangler, and kick Knox for me. Tata!"

He waved over his shoulder without looking and disappeared into his tent. Veronica stuck her tongue out and Ava flipped off his retreating back. They looked at one another.

"So, the Wrangler?" Veronica asked.

Ava sighed and walked towards the front gate. "Let's go."