1. Just a few mods really increased the stability and playability!

2. More mods for more content and variability!

3. I'll just patch these mods myself to make them play nice.

4. Modding is easy as long as you follow a few rules and put the list together methodically!

5. After weeks of searching out mods and carefully patching them together, my mod list is complete and stable! Days worth of new content, retooled damage formulas, item scarcity improvements, new enemies, the aluminum trays yield aluminum instead of steel!

6. Maybe I can just trim out the incompatible mods - but then I'll need to rebalance and patch what's left.

7. Fuck it let's go back to basics.

Before affording themself the chance to overthink it, Sol pulled the sleeve of their denim jacket over their hand and quickly turned the knob. Their raw skin howled even through the fabric, but in a blink they were inside with the door cracked behind them.

Sharp green eyes stared back from the dark. There was nothing inside the cell apart from cold concrete and the towering mass of fur and teeth growling at them from the furthest corner.

“Cade.” Sol huffed a sigh somewhere between relief and concern. “Y-y-you’re alright, it’s j-just me.”

If Arcade recognized them, he didn’t show it. His ears were pinned back flat against his head, his teeth bared.

They reached a hand out and continued towards him without heed for the threat. Arcade snapped in warning before his nose twitched intently and he went still. He didn’t relax, but warily allowed Sol to approach, subtly tilting his head to the side to reveal the large metal collar around it.

Thick dread lodged in Sol’s throat as they reached for it.

“May I?”

Arcade’s silence was as close as they would get to affirmation in that state.

Studying it with gentle fingers, it became clear that the device was too thin to be an explosive collar despite appearances. Deep claw marks scarred the surface without seeming to have made any real progress. Sol had half a mind to simply pry it apart with their hands, but trying to jam their fingers between the metal and Arcade’s flesh was a nonstarter.

The outer plating gave way to the thin edge of their lockpick easily enough as it slid beneath to reveal tangled wires and circuitry. None of it was overly complex, a simple loop connected to a tiny speaker.

With it fully revealed, Sol’s head throbbed and they realized the ringing in their ears wasn’t pure tinnitus, but rather an unbelievably high pitched tone coming from the collar.

They tore the speaker out wordlessly.

Several beats passed and suddenly Arcade was sagging against them, once again more skin than fur. Sol wrapped an arm around his chest and effortlessly shifted his weight to sit back against the wall, though they didn’t let go.

“I’ve got ya,” they murmured.

Arcade groaned in the back of his throat, carrying a decidedly human quality to it.

After a moment he breathed, “Sorry, I couldn’t think through all that noise,” then added, “Thank you.”

If Sol had been able to hear that tone through the solid walls, they could only imagine the assault that it had waged against Arcade’s keenly tuned ears from inches away. Guilt settled heavy in their gut. It had taken them nearly three whole days to track his location— three days imprisoned in a dark, dank tomb with that thing around his neck.

But groveling would be worthless until he was home safe.

Sol reluctantly peeled away from him and shucked off their pack, dropping between them.

“Brought some f-fr-fresh clothes for you, if you need them.” As if they hadn’t already found his last pair of cargo pants in shreds near Sloan. “And uh, here,” they held out their canteen to him expectantly.

It was drained before they got the words out. As Arcade redressed, they peaked through the crack in the door at the undisturbed shadows.

Turning back to him, they fought the urge to gnaw on the inside of their lip. “Are y-you okay?”

He paused a beat too long before sighing, “Okay isn’t the first word that comes to mind, but I’ll survive given that my brain stops trying to burrow its way through my skull.”

They couldn’t make out his expression and it was hard to say if they were frustrated or grateful for it.

Sol coaxed the door ajar with the toe of the boot and Arcade’s voice dropped into a whisper.

“I don’t suppose you found my glasses anywhere?”

They matched his tone. “Not yet.”

They could feel him making a face behind them, the thin line of his lips and barely furrowed brow. It was the look he wore when his dissatisfaction had nowhere to go and no responsible party to narrow his eyes at.

For as bad as his sight was, Sol wasn’t concerned about it leaving him clueless to his surroundings. They were convinced some days that Arcade could have easily led them through the desert blindfolded by ears and nose alone. Though neither sense would do him much good trying to aim his plasma defender— not that Sol had managed to locate that either.

They crept silently as they retraced their path through the surprisingly empty pre-war factory, Arcade a ghost behind them. Everything not nailed down had either been looted or tossed to the point that it was hard to say what had even been originally manufactured there. It became a hollowed corpse in its own right.

They stepped into the fluorescent grey of the front office only moments before the door swung open.

Sol recognized the worn face that greeted them from watching it through their binoculars. He was an older man with a bitter air that hung from him so thickly one could see it from a mile off.

“Who the hell—” he swung his shotgun off his back and into his hands in one fluid motion, but stopped when he met Sol’s eye. He blinked, expression just short of surprise.

“You freed a monster with another breed of monster?” The low chuckle he let out had a hint of unease weaved into it. “That’s new.”

Sol said nothing. The hunter angled his shotgun towards them and in an instant Arcade was upon him.

Mostly human then, but the scene was all claws and teeth and blood. The fight was a blur, even to Sol. They darted behind their hunter and grabbed him by the neck as his skin tore open.

Arcade sent his shotgun skittering across the linoleum floor. The hunter slammed his silver bracer into his chest in retaliation and Arcade cried out, stumbling backwards. A familiar scent of burning wafted over them. Then, in less than a second, Sol was across the room and back, cocking the shotgun and emptying both rounds into the hunter.

He didn’t even have time to look up before he was splattered over grey tile.

Sol let out a breath as they loosened their grip on the weapon and slowly turned their eyes toward Arcade’s hunched form some feet away.

His chest heaved and crimson stained his fresh dress shirt, but he returned Sol’s gaze and offered them a tiny reassuring nod. “Well. That could have gone better.”

Sol grinned despite themself and looked away. They’d resolved not to track the hunter down when it was all said and done; Arcade never appreciated vengeance in his name. But here they both were, corpse at their feet.

Sol would have been lying if they said there was no satisfaction in it.

Up close, they could see the worn dog tags hanging around the hunter’s neck. Another NCR veteran stomping on a fire that had gone out forty years ago. They wondered if he’d known just how many of the wolves roaming the west were not Enclave, but rather the Enclave’s victims and their descendants. How many innocents he’d captured and carried to the slaughter.

They wondered if he would have cared.

They bent down to rummage through his pockets, coming back up with a handful of loose bottle caps and… Arcade’s glasses, to their surprise. He must have been attempting to pawn them.

“Found ‘em.” Arcade turned as they held them out, though he didn’t seem to recognize what Sol was offering him until they were in his hand.

With his glasses perched back atop his nose, he let out a breath. “Ah, that’s better.”

Sol had to agree. He looked far more himself then despite the grime and blood littering his face. Thin patches of dirty blonde fur still ran down either cheek, eyes glowing a muddled green through his smudged glasses as if he was struggling to hold his form.

“Where—” Arcade began before glancing down at Sol’s empty palm lingering between them. “What happened to your hand?”

They quickly retracted it. A fraction of the pain had faded, though it was too blistered and raw for them to fully block out. In stark contrast, the burn across Arcade’s chest from moments earlier had already healed to a light pink blotch.

“Nothing— d-don’t— just a bit of silver. It-it’ll be fine in the morning.”

Arcade pursed his lips briefly then sighed. “I know it will, that isn’t what I’m concerned about. Let me see.”

When Sol didn’t budge he raised an eyebrow. They both knew this was a battle they’d lose to their own devotion.

They waved the white flag and lifted their arm, allowing Arcade to inspect the wound thoroughly. The back of their hand was warm cradled in his, a beacon calling them to bury the rest of their ever chilled bones against him.

He pulled them out of their thoughts before they could embarrass themself. “Does it hurt at all?”

They shrugged. “Barely.”

It wasn’t a lie per se, just an understatement— one Arcade surely saw through. He lifted his free hand above Sol’s and drove the sharp claw of his thumb into his pointer without hesitation, blood welling in thick droplets. It stung as he smeared it over their palm in practiced strokes, but in seconds it was gone. All that was left behind was smooth skin and a faint pink tinge.

“Good as new.”

Sol swallowed the urge to respond with forced indignation. “You didn’t have to— th-thank you.”

Arcade squeezed their hand and let go. Of course his own self-inflicted wound had already knitted itself back together. “Well I don’t have to treat any of my patients, so by your logic I suppose I should leave the medical profession altogether. But, yes, you’re welcome.”

His smile was genuine but weak, the dark crescents beneath his eyes dampening what could have been a softer moment. He had no business insisting on tending to Sol while he was so poorly, but that was the cycle they found themselves in. When they made camp for the night he would push away Sol’s help and they would trade scripts.

God willing, they had an abundance of lifetimes left to learn how to accept that tenderness; how to look it in the eye without flinching.

Sol cocked their head towards the door. “We- we should get out of here.”

“You don’t want to, uh… eat first?” Arcade’s gaze moved to the body at their feet and he failed to fully hide his grimace.

They could smell the pooling blood well enough to know that if they lingered much longer the answer would become yes and they didn’t relish the idea of kneeling on the cold, filthy linoleum to feast on the damned. Nor were they eager to wait for someone else to stumble upon them here.