Scrap & Build Ourselves

"Look, I… appreciate the chat and not killing me right away, but I’d rather know how to… you know, keep on wandering.” 

Ralis smiled. Sly, not malicious, but not kind either. "There are more dangerous things out there, little lab rat, than me." but then this kid had not crossed him. If he wanted to be the most dangerous man around, he most certainly could be. By his standards that is. "I think you'd benefit from that knowledge instead of running from it, but by all means.. you are free to go. Be careful, won't you? Would be a shame if you found yourself in an even darker place."

Jai still sunk down in the chair as if it could possible save him from this uncomfortable situation, before reaching out to type something on the terminal; merely to open a menu. He wanted to ask what this… one would to do him, but it felt like a threatening question on its own, that he didn’t really want a bad answer to. 

Ralis watched as the man's fingers ran across the terminal's keyboard. He was a much faster typer than Ralis himself. Actually, he was quite slow about it, using one or two fingers to hit keys one at a time. 

"Open sesame?" He did take pride in his skill, but now that he had stopped working on it, he retorted back to sitting like a bag in the chair, with the occasional frantic gaze to the side. 

He didn't look like much of a fighter. To be honest, Ralis wasn't sure this kid could fight his way out of a paper bag, and not everyone was the fighting type. He could name a few people that had .. other skills that didn't involve well timed punches, but there weren't many places to learn tech, unless you were a vault kid, or knew someone who already knew. The kid still looked fairly young (he imagined probably younger than him, but he wasn't entirely sure).

"Spider webs that I got out from by having a bright mind. I hack computers and so far I’ve yet to find one that I haven’t been able to unlock." It’s how he had escaped in the first place. It wasn’t idle bragging or lying; he was good at it, damn good. He kinda wished his confident words matched his body language though; the twitching didn’t exactly boost people’s belief in him. Which could be good in situations like these. 

"Is that so? Show me." He hadn't answered Ralis other question, but he was much more interested in his proclaimed talents. He waved his hand over towards the nearest terminal. There were a lot of them in the abandoned building. So if one blew up, or malfunctioned... well, it was no lose on his end.

"I’ve been in a pretty fucked up spider’s web already," he said, moving his scratching to right below his throat. “Buut, I’d rather you didn’t prove otherwise. I got some useful skills, if it means I won’t get shot in the head.”

"Is that so? Tell me then. What kind of spider webs have you gotten into?" Everyone claimed to be useful when in a possibly dire situation. That was part of survival. You either lied through your teeth, and hoped that whatever you had agreed to worked.. or you were actually good at your claim. He got a lot of the first. "What kind of skills?"

"Depends. Will the advice cost me anything?"

"That depends, what are you willing to give to survive?" He smirked, but leaned forward closer to the stranger's face. "When you wander, you should make sure not to fall into the spider's web." Or smack dab in the middle of a raider encampment.

As she turned lightly on her heel; she frowned at the thought of the reaction from her friends. As her imagination drove her to think the worse, she immediately strode over to the stranger and prodded a stud on his jacket, “…’isard?”

"That depends. Do lizards and snakes scare you?"