@33goosey / "finally a friendly face. you would not believe the week i've had."
Vault dweller, he's seen her coming a mile down the road; technically, he supposes if you want to get down the brass tacks of it all, he's one, too, in a broader definition, but he never had the misfortune of wearing the blue and gold jumpsuit, and he's actually kind of glad. It's like a target out here, people assume anyone still wearing one of those things is fresh faced, naive, and ready to be taken advantage of, too eager to ingratiate themselves to the people scraping by on the surface while peddling high handed ideals of a world long dead. She says she's had a week, and he takes her in a moment thinking even for a week on the surface she's still entirely too clean to be mistaken for any scav.
So, yeah, she's probably right. It's probably been one hell of a bad week. God knows his own first week thrust into this new reality, coming to grips with the world he was looking at is not a happy, fun-time memory. And he'd been a seasoned superhero, once upon a time; she's barely more than a kid.
He pauses, where he's been making his way up the 95, back home to Novac, leading a cobbled together and hastily reprogrammed assaultron (an assaultron, here, in the Mojave, wonders never cease), her whirring and clicking loud next to him as she clomps to a stop, pincer hands clamping together, just the once. In the distance there's the muffled sound of gunfire, up Copper Mountain way.
He's not sure, considering the rifle slung across his back, the assaultron, what about any of that has made her decide he, of all people, looks friendly.
"If you're talking to every stranger you meet on the road, kid, yeah. I can." That's a lesson he'd learned quick, out of the gate: The majority of people just want to live their lives, and that's fine. They don't want to get tangled up in other people's business, which is...Also fine, but less than ideal. But there are a lot - more than is comforting - that'll slit your throat on the chance you're carrying a bottle cap with a star inside, or because you dared to make eye contact while passing by. Or just because they feel like it. The wasteland is not what he'll call a friendly place, and you either adapt, or you die.
A week out of the vault isn't enough to determine which way that'll go.
"There's no Vault 33 out here-" He knows. He's scavenged innumerable records as he can find them, about the vaults, about other places, for any hints at all to piece together the puzzle of how he's here - as hard as can be imagined, with the passing of the last two centuries and change - so he knows for a fact that every known vault in the area is either empty of dwellers or turned into a strip motel or uninhabitable due to radiation or rogue, killer plant life. "-So you're not from around here. Word of advice? Turn around. Go back home. New Vegas is no place for a kid."
