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In between running outdoors, practice at the shooting range, and studying like hell for when he goes back, Adrian's been keeping himself busy by making himself a reasonably basic longbow. It's just a plain ol' wooden selfbow- backing it with anything comes later. After he's dealt with a far more basic question, namely, arrows. Can't do much without those. He's managed to braid himself a string, and he reckons it'll be respectable enough for the weight of the bow, but until he's actually got something to shoot he's kinda screwed.

Now, he could get fiberglass shafts or dowels from the Bar, but what fun would that be? He's got a whole forest outside to work with, and if he can't find a couple of willow wands or something along those lines that he can split and whittle down to usable shafts then he's not the country boy he thought he was.

He'll be coming indoors once he's done, so feel free to catch the Marine either inside or out.

[tinytag: Adrian Shephard (Half-Life: Opposing Force)]

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"He asked for help," X says.

Her study of Adrian is a little more narrow-eyed.

"I went."

Beat.

"I do not think we went to the Scab."

X falls silent for a moment.

"You do not like him."

"No ma'am I do not," says Adrian. "He ever tell you what went down at Black Mesa?"

"I am X-23."

Beat.

"You can call me X."

And then, after a moment--

"He worked there. Before."

That is--pretty much all she knows directly.

"Corporal Adrian Shephard. Might as well call me Shephard, most folks do." He shakes his head. "Okay, see- he left out the part where those Black Mesa fuckers let the goddamn aliens in in the first fuckin' place. Some kinda weird-ass experiment the eggheads were doin' up and tore time and space a new asshole. Me'n my unit, we got dispatched down to Black Mesa to put down the aliens before it could get outta hand- least that's what I thought we were gonna be doin'. One of those Xen fuckers shot my squad's plane down before we got there."

"Oh," X says.

Then--

"Scientists are problematic. I am sorry."

She knows this firsthand, but in different ways.

"Your squad is not dead?"

"It's been twenty fuckin' years. The entire United States Marine Corps is dead, except me." Shephard shakes his head. "Woke up in Black Mesa's infirmary 'n got told we were pullin' out, only when I tried to leave there were Xen oogieboogies fuckin' everywhere. And some kind of other alien I don't know shit about, a whole 'nother alien empire or some shit like that, they showed up too. I held out long enough to get my ass shoved in fuckin' suspended animation an' when I woke up it was twenty fuckin' years later and the goddamn Combine'd showed up while I was on ice 'n fuckin' won."

"Oh. I do not like suspended animation."

She has not experienced herself, but she has seen files.

It does not seem to end well.

"But you are fighting back?"

"You bet your shit I am," says Adrian. "Soon as me and Chell and the humans we found in the woods out there're all back together, we're goin' to blow the Scab wide open 'n take whatever we can get our hands on. Work our way up from there."

"The Scab is a stockpile?"

X tilts her head, considering this.

"Or a base? For them. The Combine."

"More a stockpile. They build shit there, then ship it out to wherever it's gotta go."

"You will not have problems with transport?"

How heavy is Combine equipmenet? X has no idea.

"Naw. One of the factories makes APCs," says Shephard. "You can stuff a lot in one of those fuckers. Might be aircraft, too, but that ain't my kind of thing."

X is still watching him carefully.

"You have an exit strategy?"

"Ain't gone over that with the base commander yet. We're gonna get briefed on that when me and Chell go back," says Adrian. "Got a fair number of folks in the base, but I don't have a whole lot of specifics just yet."

He sounds kind of embarrassed about that, even if he was only at the base for half an hour and spent most of that time with Tim Hutchence's elbow in his throat.

"Briefings are useful."

X can give them that, at least.

"Your base commander is good?"

"He's an asshole, but he's an asshole who knows what he's doin'," says Shephard. "I can think of shitloads worse."

X is silent for a moment, then nods.

"Yes."

Beat.

"It is not necessary to like them. Commanders."

Shephard nods. "Long as they've got their shit together, they can be the biggest assholes for miles for all I care," he says. "That's how it works, ain't it?"

"It is better to be prepared."

Miss Frost, for instance, does not like X much.

It is not relevant.

"I do not like when people get hurt."

"Yeah, that makes two of us, but it's gonna happen one way or another when you're at war," says Shephard. "A good commander keeps the numbers down far as he can while he's still fillin' out the objectives, I figure."

"Yes."

Beat.

"And is not stupid."

"No shit." Adrian laughs coarsely. "Dumbass commanders get more Marines killed than the enemy any day."

"I have not met many Marines."

Well, not in circumstances that were not adversarial, anyway.

"They are all like you?"

"Naw, just some of 'em," says Adrian. "Same as any other bunch of men with big fuckin' guns, you're gonna get some that ain't like the rest."

X considers this.

"But none that do not like guns."

It's a little bit of a question.

"Or other weapons."