"Two people working together can accomplish a lot, people. Don & Juan...That's Don and Juan...Two guy's singing together."

"To make a song."

"What's your name? I'm not actually asking...that's just the name of the song that these guys made. -Hru Hum-" He coughed, and swallowed his dry throat. "It's a pretty good one. A short one." Straining to swallow his parched throat, he winced. Summoning up spit and saliva into his mouth, he swallowed again and shuddered and licked his dried chapped lips.

"Why drink dirty irradiated water when you can have it bottled? Sheng Coaliski Watering...plant. He's got water. " He snorted,

"Diamond City Radio." He wheezed, looking around for a container of water.

Leaning back away from the microphone, "Tastes like death." He said, wiping his eyes and then plugging his nose with his left hand while the right brought a bottle of brown glass water to his lips and he swallowed.

October 26th, 2287
7:00 A.M.

Skeletons wasting away were always such a common sight, it sickened Nate and made him want to burn them to finally clear the streets of his former home city.

They crossed the bridge with the sounds of birds encouraging them to cross unscathed and unhindered. They cast their ears out, listening for any signs of life, and there was only quiet.

Meathead said, 'It's like people are trapped in boxes. They don't know how to get out.' Nate tried asking for clarification, but Meathead didn't know the words. He said people are so worried in this new world, that you don't know if the footsteps outside the window are from a super mutant, a deathclaw, a caravan, traders, mercenaries, raiders, that it's safer for the people to stay inside their box and not call out.

Nate contemplated Wattz Consumer Electronics, expecting to run in there with the devil on his heels, but with no one chasing them, he didn't give it a second thought and they kept walking to the BADTFL, less than two blocks away.

In front of the blue striped and concrete building of the Bureau of Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco, Firearms, and Lasers, there was a recent gunfight, and the bodies were still quite fresh.

Nate paused for a moment at the threshold of the door, a cold grip making him clench his fist.
"Meathead?" He asked, the changeling stuck his head up and sensed the energy coming from within the building.

"<There's people inside....and they're frustrated.>"

"Well, let's see if we can do the neighborly thing and help out."

\111/

Inside, the floor layout was of glassed in desks on the left, now shattered and blown through, while all the terminals were smashed and dented. Files littered the ground, and each floorboard was dark brown with dirt and mold.

From the next room over, they could hear "Beeeert!" It was two small motors re-configuring their target parameters. Followed by the discharge of a automatic machine gun turret firing off three rounds before correcting itself.

"How long are we gonna sit here~?!" One voice shouted, Nate swung his rifle around and crouched down, walking towards the noise, intersperced with "Beert!" and three more rounds of fire.

"Until the others figure-" BEERT BANG BANG BANG "-out how to shut the- "BEERT BANG BANG BANG "-damn turret off!"

"This better be worth it!- BEERT BANG BANG BANG -How do we know- BEERT BANG BANG BANG -that its not a - BEERT BANG BANG BANG - broom closet!"

"It's the Bureau of Alcohol, Drugs! -BEERT BANG BANG BANG- Tobacco! Firearms- BEERT BANG BANG BANG- and Lasers!- BEERT BANG BANG BANG -BEERT BANG BANG BANG- One of those has- BEERT BANG BANG BANG- got to be in there! WHY NOT PUT A TURRET OVER IT?" The raider yelled over the gunfire.

Moving into the next room, the two men speaking were sitting behind overturned desks and filing cabinets stacked on top of each other. A large shop light standing at five feet tall behind them with two white LED lights attached to it illuminated the entire hallway. There were two doors, one directly behind the two men sitting down from Nate's perspective as he walked in, and one set of double doors to his left. The room was chipped and blasted and torn apart by the machine gun turret that didn't know when to quit.

Nate took two steps back into the main entrance and tipped over a desk and stood it up on the long end and drug it back into the hallway. "OY!" He said, catching their attention. Holding aim at them with both shotguns out to them, the two men glared at him with their guns drawn.

"Let's kill him!" Beert! BANG BANG BANG

"OY! NO! Hands off your guns! Do you want in to the lock up!?" Nate shouted, Beert! BANG BANG BANG"

"No! HOW ABOUT WE KILL YOU!?" Beert! BANGBANGBANG

"DUMBASS! DO YOU WANT TO GET SHOT BY THAT THING?!" Nate pointed off to his right, up to the turret mounted into the ceiling. Shaking his head, he got the other raiders to mirror and shake their heads too. There was a hallway filled with bodies of people who tried attempting it before, and resulted in constant failure.

"I get in there, and your boss owes me some favors!" Nate yelled back across the hallway.

"FINE! HOW THE HELL ARE YOU GONNA GET IN THERE!?

"Government desks!" He said, slapping the metallic desk and moving it out into the line of fine. Beert! BANGBANGBANG

The bullets thunked into the top, and Nate strong armed the desk as a makeshift barricade and shoved it forward down the hall, not stopping as the turret kicked into fully automatic to chase the moving target.

The hallway was filled with decomposing skeletons and bodies that all tried to get into the evidence lock up through two hundred years. Some, as old as Nate, he surmised that after the bombs fell, survivors would be looking for weapons to defend themselves.

Then, over time, more and more search parties all found their way into this hallway, and all found similar fates. But not Nate and Meathead, they waited inbetween bursts of gunfire before lifting the desk and moving it forward. down the hall until he was almost directly underneath it, then grabbed the edge and let the desk fall over him and Meathead. The turret was shooting directly down on top of the desk, and he kept shoving it forward until finally he was clear and there was a Beert! BANG BANG BANG as the motor angled the gun back at the two raiders.

"What the fuck... how'd he know to do that?"

The evidence lockup was untouched, a small desk and monitor out in front of it, acting as inventory station. While solid steel bars and a cell door prevented anyone from getting in.

Picking the lock was easy, moving a screwdriver and a bent bobby pin into place. Lifting up each tumbler, he felt a small click as the key hole turned all the way sideways and the cell door opened.

"OY!" Nate shouted, pulling the cell door open and holding his thumbs up to the two raiders. Smiling at them, he quickly realized that only one was still there, while the double doors at the far end of the hallway were open.

"Alright Meathead, let's get in there, and strip the place before these guys get smart and try to do the same thing." Meathead nodded.

"Hello." Nate said to the loaded Fat Man launcher, sitting out with a small faded and moldy evidence tag wrapped around the trigger. There were dozens of guns lining the walls, all with illegible evidence tags, but a few out of the large collection could still be read. 'Winter.'

"Sweet baby," He said, pulling down boxes of bourbon bottles, on the outside with a scrawled label of 'MOONSHINE' on the side, all the bottles were full.

"Oh man. He said, grabbing an entire crate and ripping the lid off, inside were hundreds of cigarette cartons and to his left, an entire wall devoted to drugs. Buffout, Mentats, Psycho, a five boxes marked 'Qty. 300' and on the inside were inhalers used to make Jet. Then, Nate held up a fifty pound box of Marijuana seeds.

"Meathead, this and half of everything else, as much as you can carry. I'll hold the Fat Man, that's our way out if things don't go our way." Meathead nodded, whisking half of everything they saw into his pocket dimension.

"Jesus Christ. This is a lot." He swallowed, spotting one thing amiss out of everything here. A small orange and white holotape labeled 'We are done.' Stuffing it into his pocket.

"Finish up, I'm going to take care of the turret."

Beert! BANG BANG BANG!

It was still firing down the hallway, and Nate quickly poked his head, in and out, real quick like, to look up at the turret. Pulling out his pipe rifle, he positioned it underneath the turret with the butt on the ground, and then pulled the trigger. Firing upwards, the turret barrel was mangled and ripped apart by Nate's gunfire, and it kicked into overdrive for a moment before a loud bang, unlike the other types of noisy bangs, filled the air and the turret stopped firing.

"We're through!" Nate shouted, hoisting up the Fat Man to his shoulder. "I'm coming out! And we're going to talk!" Shadows moved infront of the shop light, "Hold up!"

What greeted Nate now was nine raiders, all pointing their rifles at him, but holding their trigger fingers at bay with the sight of the Fat Man Mini Nuke launcher aimed at the whole group.

It was hard to make out their faces with the shop light directly behind them casting shadows on their fronts.

"You wanted into the evidence lockup, and in exchange, three favors."

"Shut up, before we kill you." The female leader stepped forward, rifle raised up towards the ceiling.

She wore a swath of red paint running from the top of her forehead and red haired mohawk, down her nose and across both eyelids, her nose and cheeks, chin, down her neck and disappearing into her bust line and white tank top stained yellow and brown.

"Give up your weapons, and we wont kill you."

Meathead was hiding behind the desk, shaking his head slowly.

"You and everyone in your gang is about to have one of their largest scores in their entire lives. All you need to do is accept three things."

"Put down the Fat Man."

"It's loaded and you've made your point that I'm outnumbered, but not outgunned, so not yet. Your men over there, those two, agreed to three favors from you, nothing too demanding, nothing that will undermine your power, nothing you wont miss." Nate said, holding up two boxes of .44 ammo. clapsed in his left hand while the Fat Man rested on his shoulder.

"It belongs to me."

"And I understand that, and that's true, it's yours. I couldn't even make it very far with this heavy thing. Everything in this room is yours and all those raiders behind you would follow any order you give, including the one to shoot me down, but there's also a very inherent risk of me pulling the trigger on this Fat Man and the potential that this entire building comes down. The first favor I ask is to take this ammo, and a bottle of booze. Behind me are enough Buffout, Mentats, Psycho, Med-X, tobacco, guns, ammo, and alcohol to get high, drunk, mind flipped for weeks straight, but there's something else too."

"What else?"

Meathead nodded slowly and Nate saw the conversation progessing more smoothly.

"Empty Jet inhalers. Let me give you a total. Fifteen hundred. One thousand, five hundred empty Jet containers. You could have chefs filling those for months and turning profits for years. A single inhaler of Jet goes for ten to fifteen bottle caps, that's fifteen thousand caps at the lowest value. But, if you want to make real money, you subtract all the expenses after you and your men are paid and use whatever is left over to keep buying more product to continue making drugs. It wouldn't have to end there, in a year, I could show you how to take the fifteen thousand caps, after everyone's been paid, after ammo's bought, chems are cooked, and everyone's nice and high, and turn it into one hundred thousand bottle caps. You wouldn't even be dealing in caps anymore, you'd be so wealthy, you wouldn't even know what to do with that type of money. You could fill this entire room with bottlecaps, if you keep listening to me." Raising her rifle higher to rest on her shoulder, her eyes flicked to the Fat Man, then back to Nate.

"So what's it going to be? Get out of the raiding business, into the drugs for a long life and two more favors, or an inherent risk right now?"

Nate watched as her tracheae retracted and she swallowed. She was considering it. Her right pectoral twitched as her gun arm wavered.

"I get that Fat Man in the end." She commanded.

"Of course! Of course. It's yours, everything in that room behind me is yours. I don't want a Fat Man, it's too heavy for me. You and your people are about to be one of the most well armed groups in the Commonwealth and be a force to be reckoned with. I'll leave the Fat Man outside on the patio you can pick it up after I leave."

"What are the other two favors?"

"Don't gun me down after I leave. And third, when I come back through this neighborhood, I'd rather come back knowing there's allies here in Cambridge and Bunker Hill, rather than enemies. Limitless potential is sitting in crates directly behind me, you know you can get drunk and high right now for a few days, and then the supply runs out, or be drunk and high every day for the next fifty years."

"You show us how to turn profits."

"I will, but I can't right now, I'm on a mission to Diamond City. Once I take care of business, I'll return here. Depending on the outcome of my business, and there's no foreseeable hazards preventing me from coming back. Like Mutants, ghouls, Gunners, mirelurks, deathclaws, roving bands of murderous robots, or any other thing that will delay me."

She looked down and to the right, Nate started nodding and she semi-consciously repeated his actions. Nate smiled, and kept nodding, her cheeks twitched the more she considered it. Then the air in the room finally was less heated as she lowered her rifle in one motion and spun around.

"Drunk, high, and rolling in the caps for the next fifty years sounds pretty damn good to me, boys!" She yelled, raising her rifle in one hand over her head by the stock. The eight other raiders behind her cheered, and Nate stepped to the right hand side of the room with his back pressed against the wall.

"What's your name?" He asked, pointing the Fat Man down at the ground.

"Sparta. When do I get my Fat Man?"

"Very soon. Tell me, what's the biggest threat in the Bunker Hill Neighborhood right now?"

She frowned and looked to the door. "Mutants. Block away, holed up in a half-built skyscraper. Synths and ghouls by the university, but they're easier to avoid than mutants."

Nate raised his eyebrows and smiled. "How about I show you how to take out a dozen super mutants in one shot?" Nate slapped the side of the Fat Man twice. "There's plenty more mini-nukes in there, and consider it a sign of cooperation on both ends towards a better goal. You see me work, an enemy is eliminated, you get the Fat Man, and everyone gets to travel through here knowing it's safer with you in charge of the whole district."

She turned her head and nodded once. Almost trying to shake her head, no, but agreeing hesitantly.

"They'll crawl out of the rubble if they survive." She responded back.

"Then go into the cage, and arm yourselves. I will scout and come back to you with positions that you and your men can take up to fire down on any surviving super mutants. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel."

"What's that suppose to mean?" She asked, Nate shook his head.

"It's a metaphore for how easy it'll be...to kill any surviving Super Mutants. Once I scout, I'll return here, and show you the exact spot where you can launch a mini-nuke to destroy their entire base, with one shot. After the building crumbles and any survivors are disoriented, your men from the rooftops can gun them down as they crawl out from the rubble. I'll even let you launch the Mini-Nuke, and from then on, the Fat Man is yours."

"<Smooth talking there, Sailor.>" Meathead said, well away from the blue striped and cement building.

"It got us out of there, and laid some foundation for future endeavors." Behind a section of collapsed overpass to the south, was the plainly visible half built skyscraper and the construction site around it. From a distance, he could see seven trails of smoke coming from oil barrel fires, illuminating the ten visible super mutants.

Three were directly facing Meathead and Nate, squinting back at them.

Walking around the bent rebar and steel jutting out of the concrete and pavement, Nate cast his eyes up to the closest large building.

"<In drug cooking, and teaching raiders military tactics.>"

"Better than raiding."

"<Holy Shit, you actually believe that...I thought you were keeping your fear in check by overconfidence and digging your fingernail into your palm, but...you actually believe that drug cooking raiders are better than straight raiding raiders.>"

"Meathead...the basis of civilization was based around the fact that humankind was able to make alcohol...it was a drink that didn't make them sick, and the water wouldn't go bad in a two month period. Beer stays good for ninety days before going flat. That's without the preservatives we had before the 2030's...then beer stayed good for...a long time after that and didn't go straight to skunky. Wine...if stored correctly can stay good for decades. When the water is terrible, you drink water with alcohol in it."

"<But we're enabling raiders to make drugs, not alcohol.>"

"Alcohol is a drug, and it's a commodity that can be traded. Raiding and looting isn't something that can be traded, that's extortion and pillaging. Hopefully they'll be better at keeping things in line better than Preston's pissass country club."

"<No faith for the local militia?>"

"Not when the only one left was hopelessly idealistic...Still wonder what happened to that guy. I tried looking for him for a while while you were off scouting Corvega, but...couldn't find anything. Either way, him reaching out to us was like being made the captain of a sinking ship on fire. It's a nice gesture, but ain't worth the effort to dive below deck and yank open the ballast pumps. Which also...takes about five minutes of swimming through blackness and a shot of adrenalin. Only with Preston's Minutemen, it'd take months. Better to start from scratch on this one."

"<What do you mean, this one?>"

"Society had it's chance to rebuild, and I'm not really impressed by what I've seen so far. Whatever's going on in Boston, it's because someone is deliberately fucking and double crossing other people. And if there's one thing I can't stand, is getting stabbed in the back. Literally. Getting stabbed in the back hurts and unless your triceps are really flexible, pulling the knife out is gonna take a few minutes of agony. Which is why I can now do this." Nate finished by taking off his back pack and stretching both arms behind his back. The left arm went above his head and bent at the elbow reaching down, while the right arm twisted around and bent at the elbow reaching upwards until he could clasp both hands together near the center of his back.

Stretching his arms and puffing his chest out, he stood up straighter and pulled his head upwards.

"Great for posture."

"<Neat, Anyway.>"

"Right, so if the Minutemen collapsed, then like a sunken ship, the only thing you could do is rip out the flooded engine, and rebuild it from the hull up. But, the Minutemen are a collective, an idea, not a physical boat. So, if it's destroyed in people's minds, then it's much easier for something new to come along and replace it, than something old that's tried to come back into being popular."

Nate looked up at the tall grey colorless cement walls to Mass. Chemical. The Massachusettes Chemical Disposal Facility located less than one hundred meters away from the BADTFL.

Nate heard the ticking on his wrist and glanced down at it, "One...two...three, four, five, sixseveneightnineten" He said quickly at the end. "That's about...meh...It's irradiated, let's go in."

"<Just like that?>"

"Yeah. I've got Rad away in my back pocket. Enough for both of us."

"<Oh...um...I thought I told you before, but we shed radiation like water off a duck's back.>"

Nate twisted and tilted his head down to look at Meathead meeting his gaze. Letting his eyelids drift close, "You're not effected by radiation?" He asked, yawning. "Hungh...neat."

"<I didn't say that...it's just a digging species often comes in contact with a lot of underground minerals... and we developed an immunity to most gasses and radiation long before we even knew gasses and radiation were a thing to be aware of. It's why a lot of people couldn't escape from captivity after a changeling got them. We didn't always vent our hives.>"

"So what changed?"

"<Our design. A Queen designed the hives to naturally vent, air shafts straight to the surface and more curvature as we dug deeper. Less chance of tunnels collapsing, and more durable against underground tremors.>"

"And another little call sign." Nate pointed forward. Past a semi-truck carrying barrels of toxic waste, medical biohazard materials, and a few rusted barrels drained out and melting the back end carriage, was a brick wall.

The six pointed star, with lines going out from the center surrounded a white chalk X.

"<So...> Meathead leaned his head to the right, looking behind the truck to the construction site behind it. "<Any ideas on what they mean yet?>"

"Not really, but I'm gonna say an X is either not worth it, or already been done. I'm thinking the Super mutants make things in Bunker Hill not worth a lot of things."

Passing three black empty barrels and pressing the latch to the blue double doors, it opened to a massive three story piece of yellow industrial machinery, now decorated with bags of barbed wire and bags of meat.

\111/

"<Nobody home.>" Meathead sniffed the air, wincing and whining. "<What is that?>"

"An industry chemical washing machine. This place probably sucked up water treating chemicals, rinsing them, sending it through dozens of filters in this giant beast here before the waste was safe enough to handle or be consolidated to a dump site. Super useful if it can be restored. But that's not what were here for." Nate said, observing the giant mammoth tanks and the dust accumulated over everything. The interior was also a storage area for a few super mutant's meat bags however, adding a unpleasant stench of rotting death to the irradiated chemical building.

Wind blew through blown out windows and he could see the shadow of the construction site looming over them through the broken glass.

Nate looked to his right, seeing a shopping cart full of bloody skeletons and human remains, and to his right, a computer connected to a protectron pod. walking to the computer, he quickly tapped the enter button three times and the monitor booted up. His Pip-Boy was still talking to him, telling him that he was standing in irradiated space, but he calmly ignored it for now.

Running a security protocol program, and attempting to unlock the computer on the second try, he was successful as the terminal made two tones. "Be-doop." and he smiled as the protectron pod containing a construction unit was deployed.

The Utility protectron surged forward, stepping outwards as the rest of its components surged to life.

"[Warning: Union Violation protected. Last break was nine thousand, nine hundred, ninety nine hours ago.]" The unit walked forward to the door opposite of them and pushed out.

"<Why did you activate him?>"

"A little distraction, the U.P.s are meant to take damage, and it'll give me a better chance to see the mutant's response if and when they decide to attack it."

Hanging a left around the massive chemical washer, they followed a catwalk ramp leading to the second floor, past a disabused chemistry station,

"<Hold up, one mutant directly above us. He's not moving.>"

Nate lookd up and unhooked a grenade. "Can you float this up?"

Meathead nodded, the grenade was wrapped in a green glow and hovered out of Nate's hands and twenty feet up to the ceiling.

Meathead maneuvered the lever and pulled the pin, holding it an inch away from the roof and directly under the unsuspecting super mutant.

Taking steps back, the explosion blew open a hole in the roof and the super mutant fell through. Nate fired seven times into the chest and back area before it could even hope to recollect its surroundings, and left it to die.

Right beside the exit door to the roof was a scoped hunting rifle resting upright against the wall. Nate picked it up, checked the magazine, and pulled back the bolt. A round was loaded into the barrel with a satisfying click.

Lowering himself down onto one knee, Nate peered through the scope towards the large seven story building, on the west facing side was a set of stairs leading up from a basement, and surrounding this building were deep trenches. Next to the building Nate and Meathead were standing on was a gate facing west towards Monsignor Plaza, a shopping center that they went to occasionally before the war for holiday gifts, or something special.

Semi trucks and cargo containers, heavy industrial equipment, and a road piled high with sharpened steel girders and trash on the far eastern side made the super mutant base very inaccessible except for a few choke points around the building.

One of the ways in was through Mass. Chemical, up the main road through the front door which is exactly what the Utility Protectron was doing just now. The orange spinning hazard light on top flashed brightly and attracted all sorts of attention from the super mutants. The ones on the higher floors pointed and shouted, they were more protected and wore metal armor made from scraped car parts, and Nate even saw one wearing a sewer plate over its chest, held in place by chains.

There was a loud trumpet blare, and then two mutant hounds ran full sprint towards the Utility protectron. All protectrons were built with combat capabilities, under strict program lock to prevent it from attacking non-combatants, but as the first of the two mutant hounds howled it's mangled trumpet like howl and charged, the protectron fought back.

The Utility protectron was painted yellow, white, and black, its arms were two massive clamps, capable of lifting up to one thousand pounds and also applying six hundred pounds of pressure per square inch when fully closed.

The super mutant hounds bit into and scratched their teeth on the metallic frame, trying to find a hold to dig in and rip off the metal plating. The Utility protectron reached one arm up, and clamped around the dog's head. With hydraulic pressure, the clamps crushed the first dog's jaw and cheek bones as it scratched its legs against the machine, when then second tackled it to the ground. Both dogs and the robot fell to the ground, the first dog was still locked in position by the metal claw. With a echoing crunch, the first dog's head exploded into a gush of blood and bone as the clamp came to a fully closed position. The Utility protectron swung its other arm and thwacked the second dog in the neck.

A super mutant carrying a plank of wood stormed out of the front door to the building, heading straight for the protectron and hound. The mutant hound jumped and locked its jaws around one arm, thrashing its head back and forth. The super mutant bashed the protectron on the head with the board of wood, denting and banging the metal.

The Protectron swung the dog into the super mutant, making it whine in pain, but its jaws were still locked in tightly to the arm, so it held on.

A second super mutant charged out of the building, armed with a sledgehammer and heaved all its weight into one powerful swing crushing the spinning light on top and forcing the protectron to emit a siren. The head piece was smashed in, crushed, and broken. The one arm the hound had bitten into was finally torn free, and hydraulic fluid gushed over the dog and onto the ground.

The two super mutants kept bashing and smashing the protectron until it was knocked over and couldn't fight back any more.

Nate was watching from the front as Meathead buzzed around the building, going unnoticed by the watch guards as their attention was directed to the Utility Protectron being destroyed below.

Landing next to Nate, Meathead licked his lips and transformed back into a dog.

"<South side, there's a staircase and elevator shaft running up the heart of the building, the outer supports are all but rusted away and barely able to hold any substantial weight. Best place to put a Mini-Nuke would be...my best guess, right through those doors leading to the basement and aiming up.>"

"Tricky shot. Can you sneak or warp in to make sure those doors are unlocked?"

"<Already done. They were chained from the inside, all they need is a good shove and you'll have your raider gal pal get to know the joy of destroying a building.>"

"Then the best way to get her in with the Fat Man is to move through the gate here, around the backside of the piles of piping and construction equipment, and that leaves only a ten foot window of exposure to the staircase leading down." Nate pointed with two fingers, waving them over the site and forming a plan of attack.

"Men there, on the rooftops, to the east, here, and atop that shed there. Meathead, can you get a reading on how many mutants are in that shed?"

"<One. He didn't even flinch from the noise coming from outside.>"

"That's good...That's good. Alright. Let's go get Sparta and her men."

\111/

October 27th, 2287
5:24 P.M.

The sun was already low in the sky, and the city was cooling down rapidly.

Three men and four women all led by Sparta and Nate were sent to gunning positions around the block, waiting for two signals, the first, a grenade explosion on the west side of the building, while Nate and Sparta stealthily moved towards the building from the east. Poking their heads out of cover, Nate told Sparta to signal her men.

She leaned out of cover and waved twice with her pointer and middle fingers, the raiders on the rooftops on the far west side started shooting at the building, drawing attention away from the east as the Super Mutants fought back against the skirmish.

Moving across the dirt lot and down the concrete base stairs, Nate eased open the door and pointed to the main support columns for the building.

The raiders on watch raised one arm and waved it towards the building, seeing both of them make it to the building undetected. The closest raider on the west side of the building lot pulled out a grenade and heaved it into the building.

The metal grenade pinged against the ground, bounding twice and exploding after three seconds.

No damage was done, but the noise brought every super mutant on guard to the lower levels, they all probed and searched for the perpetrator. The mutant hounds howled and sniffed the ground, the super mutants roamed back and forth, staying inside the building and looking outwards for the sign of an attacker.

She hefted the Fat Man launcher up to her shoulder, peering through the sights to align her shot, and went to one knee in the water up to her shin. Pulling the trigger, she was pushed backwards from the force of the launch and immediately got to her feet and ran up the stairs alongside Nate as the explosion shattered the main foundation of the building and the entire center began to collapse from within.

The building shook and swayed, every mutant and creature on the first floor was killed instantly as the second floors cascaded down, then the third and the fourth, all the way to the top where everything flattened like an accordion without air. Concrete, mortar, and steel were thrown from the building and the raiders opened fire on anything that looked distinctly green.

Chatter of gunfire echoed through the neighbor hood, across the buildings and through the streets as the building tumbled down and turned to rubble.

Nate was then alone with Sparta, and there was a wild look in her eyes, a wicked grin on her face, and the heavy rising and falling of her chest from adrenaline coursing through her.

She threw her head back and howled, cheering and yelling. "Goddamned Vault Boy! You've got yourself a deal! Come to Beantown after you're done. My boys will be running back and forth between there and BAD-fuck office building. Come by after you're done in Diamond City."

"Oh, so there ARE people in the Brewery...good thing we didn't go that way."

"I'll mention that you're coming."

"Thank you. As a suggestion, never get high off your own supply, it's wasteful and leads to overindulgence."

"I'll consider it Vault-Boy. Now. Go finish your business. I want that room full of caps by the end of the year." She said, throwing the Fat Man back up onto her shoulder, she turned away and marched through the street triumphantly.