Solace & Taproots

2.10

So far, Rufus was well on this way to ingratiating himself to the man he'd clearly identified as the main source of table scraps around the place. His new mom and auntie had both put away one bowl of food — Bex having voluntarily selected the same seat from last time. While she worked on a second serving of Trent's chili (stretching some pre-made stuff with rehydrated bulk stock and their local produce), she contentedly leaned back against Sam's knees behind her.

When Rhonda joined them, she noticed Bex occasionally reaching up during conversation and putting her hand on Sam's where it rested on her shoulder, or how Sam would occasionally squeeze a neck muscle rhythmically and make Bex's eyelids droop. She figured something was clearly up, and wondered exactly what had transpired in the last less-than-an-hour. She made pointed eye contact with Bex, glanced at Sam meaningfully while she was occupied brushing out Bex's tangled hair, and back to eye contact with Bex again. Bex replied with the tiniest of head shakes, which got a skeptical mouth quirk from Ronnie. To punctuate matters, when Sam put the hairbrush down and leaned forward to wrap her arms around Bex's neck, resting her cheek against the damp hair, Ronnie kicked Bex's foot under the table, rather hard.

Bex limited the flinch to just her face, and Sam piped up from her perch. "So... Sarge, what'd you bring me? Where's my omiyage?"

Ronnie smiled and lifted the soft-sided case from the Black Tusk armory, unzipped it with a sly twinkle at Bex that meant "yes, I did do that specifically so Sam wouldn't need both hands", and slid it over. Sam shifted her weight and reached to open it with her right hand, but stopped to finger a frayed hole gouged through one corner.

Bex felt Sam move her left hand down to the wounded shoulder and touch it lightly, questioningly, just above the bandage, and replied verbally, "Yeah. Around then. But not because we had it, I swear. Just the same fight."

Sam sighed, and kissed Bex on the back of her head. Oh great, real subtle in front of Ron... ow! Yeah, there's the kick under the table again. On top of that, when Sam moved her hand back from the wound location, instead of returning it to being casually draped with her forearm across the top of Bex's shoulder, she wrapped it protectively across Bex with an open palm, and her thumb hooked just a half inch inside Bex's shirt collar and gliding a light, small caress along the top of her clavicle.

Well, shit. The cat was out of the bag with Ronnie, so Bex sheepishly lifted her hand and rested it on Sam's. That earned her an eyebrow arch and a "that's-what-I-thought" smirk from Ronnie. Thank god, she was going to need some of those Black Tusk shin guards if the kicking continued.

She didn't know what was in the case any more than Sam did — they'd had to wrap up their snatch and grab and leg it before she'd had the chance to investigate. As Sam flipped the lid back, they saw a sci-fi-looking but otherwise pretty straightforward SMG, and what Bex could only think of as a tactical hamster ball, if such a thing were to exist. It had that dull satin not-quite-metallic-but-not-quite-plastic look of fancy composite materials, with faceted sides reminiscent of D&D dice, a central smooth ring bifurcating it into two halves, with at least one camera lens and several LED's in the ring, bordered by two black strips that looked to be tires. Each of the facets had a little silvery metal circle in the center of it.

Sam set it back in the case and picked up the wrist PDA next to it. After it booted in a setup mode and she added a pin and fingerprints — including those of the other two women — she noticed a "Seeker" app that wasn't on the other pads they'd captured. When she launched it, the hamster ball twitched and a feed from one of its cameras appeared on the tablet screen. Overlays around the sides indicated things like BATT 92, CAP 0, RANGE 0.1, WEAP LINK OFFL, and a touch screen toggle labeled SAFE/ARM. Sam gave it all a pensive look-over. "Huh."