Point of Documentation: Arnold Shevchenko
Arnold did not get that time off. In fact, he suddenly found himself back on shift as usual and was released from patrol duty outside the walls of the settlement. Instead they activated the more veteran guards on duty and sent them out to make sure another attack wouldn’t happen. Oh yeah, and that attack. That fucking Voidling and all the paperwork that came from it. The Captain of the Guard and Mayor himself interviewed each of them separately about what happened. While the Captain was much more concerned about why the other patrol was not saved and how things went down, the Mayor just seemed more worried about the gear being left out there and what state it was in.
After being questioned for hours, a thing Arnold just saw as a boring chore and tedious, they finally let him go. He had been at his home for four, no, THREE hours excluding the walk, before he got a knock at his front door. Arnold sighed and sat in his chair. His comfy, leather chair that sat in front of his small fireplace. It wasn’t anything amazing, just something small that ran off of a void-touched stone of the fire aspect. It provided heat, light, and a reprieve from the outside.
The knock came again, this time more forceful. A voice also floated through the door, accompanying the annoying sound like an ill-welcomed friend. “Mr. Shevchenko! I have an urgent matter for you!” That sounded like the voice of the APC Commander, Fielding, that he had served with once. Once! Only once and the man had the gull to show up at his home, uninvited, with an urgent matter no less!
Arnold rose from his seat and placed the null-cap on the rock to stop its reactions. When it ran out of ambient energy, it’d probably start actually catching on fire or something, so it’s best to put it out in case they need him to do something as well. The Fates forbid…
He placed a hand on the door’s knob and opened it, revealing the Captain… and two others. One a woman with a mess of blood on her face, and the other an elf. He could tell instantly that the Elf was one of the Void-Touched, one of the ‘Powered’ individuals. Sucks that he was also one of those ‘muties as well. Makes them a lot more dangerous than just being changed in one way. He could tell the man was ‘Powered’ from this odd feeling he got when he looked at the man. It was like his brain itched when he looked at people infected or with diseases, so much more so when also Void-Touched. But this was… different.
The woman was the one that the patrol had picked up. Why was she bloodied? It didn’t look as if she was hurt enough to warrant the amount of blood, but that was still a lot of blood for someone to just be covered in it.
Arnold stared at the group for a moment, not saying a single thing as he sized them all up. Fielding opened his mouth and started talking. It was like he was underwater as Arnold just tried to come up with something to back out of this situation he suddenly opened his door to. Without a single word or response to what they were saying: Arnold all but shut the door on them.
Fielding put his foot in the way and just leaned around the door. “Arnold, please don’t close the door on me. I’m trying to get your help here.” Fielding seemed overly upset about this, but Arnold just kinda looked dumbly at him.
“Uh… sorry about that. Kneejerk reaction to someone bloodied wanting in my house.” Arnold smiled with this as if he just explained the entire situation with that sentence.
The other two looked at each other, sharing a whispered word between each other. He could see that the woman had mouthed a ‘what the fuck’ to the Elf, but Arnold didn’t really get how that didn’t click with them. Oh well. Arnold opened the door again and gestured into his house. “May as well come in. Don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”
The three made their way into his home, Fielding being the only one that actually sat down at the table in his kitchen. Arnold closed the door after them, making sure the bolt was secured. He had a bad feeling about this. That bad feeling was multiplied when Fielding sat down his cap on the bare table. Arnold snuffed out a scream that was crawling up his throat and instead said “Sir… can you please use the cloth on the table as it's intended and place your cap on it?”
Fielding seemed to be stunned by this and looked down at his cap. The thoughts going through this frazzled lieutenant’s mind was close to three monkeys bare-knuckle fighting in an arena on fire. And this man was worried about his fucking doilies? “Uh… sure, Arnold. Whatever you say.” He moved the hat onto the cloth on the table, noting immediately that his cap actually left a sweat mark on the table. He looked up to Arnold after this and could visibly see the man laser-homing on this fact.
Arnold, for all his credit, did end up moving past this after a few tangible seconds and looked at the woman. She was mostly fine, but seemed to be extremely anxious about something. And impatient as well as she spoke up. “Ok, enough of this.” She spoke quickly, as if the words needed to hurry up as well. “I’ve been told you can help us. The person you rescued this morning with me has been kidnapped by some bad people. They were willing to shoot me, so what they might be doing to him could be worse. We need a doctor that isn’t tied directly to the garrison. Fielding recommended you.”
The implications she flung at him were… well, this was not what he was expecting. It was worse. He had to actually leave his house for this one. Arnold looked to Fielding, who shrugged in response. “Hey, don’t look at me. You have a pretty nasty reputation for being a shut-in and lazy as all hell. The higher ups constantly bitch about you never filling out reports and just doing whatever you want and nothing at the same time.”
Skirting by the other claims, Arnold latched on to one thing in particular: “They’re talking about me? The bastards… I’m never healing the Captain’s ‘Extra Curricular Activities Disease’ he gets after a night out again. He can suffer with that and tell his husband where he got it…” The words came out in an angry murmur as Arnold started half-mindedly pulling out a sheet and placing it over a chair.
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The others sat where they were, half taking in what Arnold said by the looks on their faces. All of them except Fielding who just stared in confusion and disbelief. “Ok, yeah, not touching that one. Jokes aside, I hope, are you willing to help them?”
Arnold stopped mid setting the chair down after laying down the mat and looked at the man. “No, I’m doing this for my own health. Yes, I’ll help them. But I expect to be paid for this. This isn’t a charity.” Arnold finished setting the chair up and gestured for the woman to walk over. She did so in a quick fashion and slid onto the covering that Arnold had placed. “Wonderful. Let me take a look at this.”
The woman uncovered her wound on her upper arm, the one that he had spotted pretty early on, and let Arnold take a good look at it. This wound was caused by a bladed weapon of some kind and was actually pretty shallow. Arnold gave a look over the woman and, just as he predicted, most of the blood she had on her was not directly from a wound on her body by the looks of it. Taking his left hand, he raised it up and hovered it over the spot that the woman was wounded at. He concentrated on that feeling he had used hundreds of times now, trying to will it forth. The same feeling he got when he scraped his knees as a kid. The same feeling that he got when he tried to stop the bleeding of a terrible wound. The same feeling he got when staving off cancer or other diseases for a few more days for those that asked for it.
Small motes of purplish light began to float in the air like a shower of sparks in slow reverse. With his will, Arnold mentally demanded the motes to coalesce on the wound. They floated up at a relaxed pace, almost seemingly playful in their meandering, and landed upon the woman’s wound. Each touch of the motes caused some of the skin to grow back and over the wound seamlessly. It was as if each mote irritated the natural healing factor of the skin and caused it to heal in the way Arnold demanded.
After the wound began to close up and seemed to be mostly sealed up, Arnold released his concentration on the motes. He reached over to a bookcase as the feeling started to creep up on him. The feedback. He slid the earmuffs on his head and instantly was thankful that he invested months of cash into these archaic, sound dampening devices. Every sound in the room was suddenly amplified a hundred times over and the sounds of even fabric moving would have instantly overstimulated the man’s senses. But these headphones mostly nullified that.
The woman felt her shoulder and said something to the elf. The elf had been watching Arnold like a hawk the entire time, only breaking his staring to answer the woman’s questions. Afterwards, he looked back to Arnold and just seemed to study him. Yeah, that elf was fucking creepy. The words were barely audible, but Arnold thought he heard them discussing his ability. After a moment, the ringing in his ears slowly went away and was replaced with a soreness. Arnold removed the headphones and sat them back on the shelf.
“What’s with the headphones?” The woman asked, looking over to him as he set them down.
“What? These things?” Arnold said with a gesture. “They’re nothing special. Just noise-canceling headphones. I need them after every use of my talent. Makes everyone and everything really, really annoying for a moment. Well, more annoying that is.” He stepped forwards again and stood in the middle of the room. “Now… would you mind explaining in detail? I’d prefer to get this done and over with so I can recline in my nice chair.”
The forwards seemed to rouse the woman from her questions and focus her. “Right. I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Cadence, and this is my business partner: Valentine. He runs an oddities and parts shop across town. I’m a to-hire mechanic serving on a Mule-mech. I know we haven’t gotten a chance to introduce ourselves with how quickly we moved on after the rescue, so I wanted to correct that. The man we were hoping to rescue was a man named Marshall. He’s been taken by one of the gangs in this area.”
Arnold focused on the elf as she mentioned his name. So this was one of the leaders of the back alleys? Of the Valentine Gang? This skinny elf who looks like they never held a gun in their life? Yet… those piercing eyes made Arnold uncomfortable. As if they were evaluating his entire being by just looking at him and laying his soul bare.
Arnold knew this feeling, and instantly reacted. With a smug look, the man flared his talent again and caused some of the motes to become visible around him. It was his own little jammer for things such as this. It disrupted the path a power like that needed to see into the souls of the ones that it was observing. Since it didn’t take nearly as much effort as actually healing someone, Arnold had no fear of it–
The field he made shattered, causing a visible shower of dust-like matter in the air around him. Arnold’s eyes went wide as the man was able to easily punch through the barrier he had put up and even went so far as to put pressure on his soul. Arnold drew his sidearm in an instant, pointing it at the elf. To Valentine’s credit: the elf immediately stopped and put his hands up. “Sorry about that, soon-to-be-friend. You issued me a challenge, and I’m simply taking you up on that.”
The elf looked anything but apologetic, but Arnold could tell the man simply wanted to prove something here. Something that grinded Arnold’s gears heavily. “Yeah, you’re trying to prove you have something over me.” He said to Valentine. “That you can see if I’m lying regardless. Right?” Valentine looked surprised by this, and just nodded. Arnold sighed in response and continued. “I have no reason to lie to people like you two. I will help. But I will not do it if you keep actively using your powers on me. In fact, you’ll find casting ‘gun’ to be a lot more effective than looking at me really, really hard.”
Fielding cleared his throat across the room and attracted the attention of those present. “As much as I would love to watch a powered-dick-measuring contest, understand that we’re on limited time here. Probably. Let the woman continue.” He gestured to Cadence.
Arnold holstered his firearm and nodded. “Right. I’d hate to have to clean up anyways. Blood is a nasty thing to clean. Please, Cadence, continue. Tell me what I’m getting into.”
Cadence nodded to this and continued, seeming undisturbed from the scene that just happened. “He was kidnapped outside the shop Valentine owns. I spotted one of the men that were part of Pertov’s gang and attempted to stalk them to see if they kidnapped Marshall. Turns out I was right, and even stalked them back to their place of operation. Some kind of defunct hospital that absolutely is not in use anymore. I looked around for a few hours until one of them got the jump on me.” She gestured towards her now-healed wound. “He stabbed deep, but bullets went deeper. I fled and found an old acquaintance, the vehicle commander of the people who saved us.”
They looked to Fielding, who nodded in kind. “I knew her brother, so… small world, I guess?” He gave a shrug. “I’m all for rescuing the friend as well, but I need a plan. Same as I’m sure Arnold will ask. Blindly going in will get us killed.”
Cadence seemed to get some steam from this and stood straighter. “I have a plan, and have reached out to the crew of mine waiting outside the forest.” She motioned towards the table, of which they all gathered around. Arnold wiping off that mark he saw as best he could. We’ll call that focusing.
“Alright, so we have a couple ways in, and need to figure out…”
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Outside of the home of Arnold was a woman, sitting down and smoking something from her lips. She breathed out a smoke plume and smiled. The words drifted out from inside the house, barely audible to the human ear. But that was never a problem for her. Without a word she rose from her sitting position and moved towards the end of the alley. A tune on her lips that floated out in a haunting melody.