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aaaaaaaagh_skyPete feels naked these days more often than not. He tries not to think about it too much.
After Adams, the way he saw it, he had two choices. One was to throw himself on the mercy of a bunch of armored cultists who'd slaughtered everyone in their path before blowing the Enclave's last bastion to ashes. The other was to turn submarine and run silent, run deep. Back in California, he knew, there'd been relentless hunting for anyone left of the Enclave after Navarro's destruction. It was why his family'd been sent across the continent when he was just a boy. The Brotherhood probably planned on chasing down and wiping out any survivors here, too... well, they couldn't wipe out what they couldn't find, was how he saw it. They'd never seen his face. The rest of his unit was already dead. Unless he wanted to try to scrounge together some supplies and make for Chicago on foot, his best chance for survival was here, and in obscurity.
So he scrounged up a set of pre-war clothes in a pile of ruins in Fairfax and he stashed his power armor under a heap of concrete rubble in the most disgusting sewer he could find. Nobody saw him go in, nobody saw him come out, just like he planned. He was safer out of his armor than he was in it.
He still feels naked, though.
It's not just the physical danger. It's- everything else. It's quietly drifting into small towns and making himself useful doing handyman work, or guard duty (he's good at guard duty), and catching sight of the Brotherhood emblem on water caravans in the distance. It's bunking down for the night in an isolated shack that used to be a Red Rocket station and finding a radio, only to find Galaxy News Radio broadcasting Three Dog's propaganda on the frequencies where the President's voice used to be. It's standing guard over some settlement's pair of Brahmin and having to drive the cattle away when a radscorpion comes into sight instead of standing his ground and firing on the beast- because the plasma rifle he used to have's as dead a giveaway as his armor, so that's been hidden too, and a .32 caliber hunting rifle won't take one of those damn bugs down before it gets close enough to sting what he's supposed to guard.
It's being surrounded by mutants and hearing them think they're the normal ones. And knowing they think you're one of them, when you're not.
If this is the way the future is going to be, forever, he's not sure he wants any part of it. And he knows this is how it's going to be. That's what being on the losing side means. You don't get to say how it's going to be, ever again.
He just didn't think it would be this hard to swallow, or this hard to get up in the mornings.
After Adams, the way he saw it, he had two choices. One was to throw himself on the mercy of a bunch of armored cultists who'd slaughtered everyone in their path before blowing the Enclave's last bastion to ashes. The other was to turn submarine and run silent, run deep. Back in California, he knew, there'd been relentless hunting for anyone left of the Enclave after Navarro's destruction. It was why his family'd been sent across the continent when he was just a boy. The Brotherhood probably planned on chasing down and wiping out any survivors here, too... well, they couldn't wipe out what they couldn't find, was how he saw it. They'd never seen his face. The rest of his unit was already dead. Unless he wanted to try to scrounge together some supplies and make for Chicago on foot, his best chance for survival was here, and in obscurity.
So he scrounged up a set of pre-war clothes in a pile of ruins in Fairfax and he stashed his power armor under a heap of concrete rubble in the most disgusting sewer he could find. Nobody saw him go in, nobody saw him come out, just like he planned. He was safer out of his armor than he was in it.
He still feels naked, though.
It's not just the physical danger. It's- everything else. It's quietly drifting into small towns and making himself useful doing handyman work, or guard duty (he's good at guard duty), and catching sight of the Brotherhood emblem on water caravans in the distance. It's bunking down for the night in an isolated shack that used to be a Red Rocket station and finding a radio, only to find Galaxy News Radio broadcasting Three Dog's propaganda on the frequencies where the President's voice used to be. It's standing guard over some settlement's pair of Brahmin and having to drive the cattle away when a radscorpion comes into sight instead of standing his ground and firing on the beast- because the plasma rifle he used to have's as dead a giveaway as his armor, so that's been hidden too, and a .32 caliber hunting rifle won't take one of those damn bugs down before it gets close enough to sting what he's supposed to guard.
It's being surrounded by mutants and hearing them think they're the normal ones. And knowing they think you're one of them, when you're not.
If this is the way the future is going to be, forever, he's not sure he wants any part of it. And he knows this is how it's going to be. That's what being on the losing side means. You don't get to say how it's going to be, ever again.
He just didn't think it would be this hard to swallow, or this hard to get up in the mornings.