The night grows long in Las Vegas; shadows beaten to submission under the dazzling casino lights. Inside, crowds flow between and around the machinations staged upon the elite poker tables. At one, a swan’s confident laugh challenges her opponents to call her bluff. At another, a bitten lip lures a sweating brunette into a trap. An intricate dance of masks; made all the more dangerous by the added context of many players being acquaintances on the social battlefields outside.

Businessmen, CEOs, socialites; big names stand toe-to-toe with the rest who rose up to challenge them at the tables. It is sometimes hard to tell one from another. Particularly with all of the masks. Unless one knows another personally, of course.

A table on the edge of the room groans in simultaneity; all in reaction to the shit-eating grin plastered on the face of one of the players, as he is revealed as the winner of the round, while his hand is revealed to have been worse than several players who had folded.  The table empties itself considerably as the man collects his winnings, leaving several chairs open as the dealer clears the table of stray cards.

examples of what he used to have but no longer has:

touch sensitivity

touch-color synesthesia

frequent nosebleeds

near-constant joint pain

a cane to walk with

a thing for pecs on dudes

an ugly hat that i designed and actually felt bad about when ppl called it ugly :(

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.” The breathy mantra carried Atom sliding around another street corner, nearly careening into a broken down pickup truck. ED-E followed close behind, sweeping low close to the ground. The eye bot turned to fire a few quick pot-shots at their robotic pursuers, then reversed to follow the courier again. One of the synths fell on broken legs, but the rest clambered over rooftops and broken walls and trucks like an angry infestation.

There had been less synths a minute ago. Atom could’ve sworn. But the architecture of the Boston Wasteland had too many buildings; too much concealed space. You never knew what was hiding within crumbling walls. They had spilled over like a boiling pot, leaving the courier little choice but to flee. (It had been couriers, plural, a minute ago. Ulysses and him had split up to halve their forces. Shit load of good that had done. Now he would have to find his bastard travelling partner again after this was over.)

Atom recognized this stretch of land, he realized. Their journey had taken them in a loop, and now he could just make out where the edge of southern Boston let way to open water; the low swoop of land that led out to the stone fortress of the Castle. He remembered speaking to some members of the Minutemen some weeks ago; been made aware of their base of operations, and it seemed strange that he hadn’t come across any patrols on his wild dash between the buildings here. Maybe they had spotted him and fled to the safety of the Castle.