Nate beats around the bush to get a favor from some raiders.
Extra chapter.

"Being an American means knowing the history of the ground you're standing on, all this happened beneath your feet. Five Hundred and eleven years ago, The year is 1776, America declares Independence from British Colonialism which leads to retaliation from England. American forces win by making the cost of war too great for the British to send ships, troops, supplies, and weaponry across the Atlantic in similar types of ships, one which you can see above your head right now."

Half the group gawked their heads up to look at the U.S.S. Constitution, but Nate's brief history of America wasn't over.

"In 1787 Congress bans Slavery, but not the importation of slaves from Africa until 1808. During that time, the cotton gin is invented, which seperates cotton fibers from seeds, increasing the demand for free slave labor more than ever. When in...the 1850's the Dred Scott Decision from the Supreme Court holds that Congress doesn't have the right to ban slavery in states, and that slaves are not citizens. The Supreme Court interprets the written laws enacted before them to uphold decisions ratified by Congress, or imposed by the President of the United States in the form of Executive Orders, which the Supreme Court and Congress can both overturn. But, this was a racist time in America where men, women, and children of color, meaning not white, held little to no rights as a human being whatsoever. Not even the freed slaves had the same freedom as a white man in this century. Anti-Slavery sentiments start to rise, especially after the Fugitive Slave Law Act, and the Compromise of 1850. Eleven years later, the country of America is divided in two. The Southern half of the United States at the time were the majority of slave owners, and seceded from the Union to create the Confederate. Civil war breaks out and hundreds of thousands of Americans on both sides die in battle. It wasn't until President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclemation stating that all held slaves are to be freed. Two more years of fighting and war, and The Confederacy is defeated, but Lincoln's assasinated. Everything that followed after that was over 250,000 slaves across all of America are freed, but they were not American. The powers that stood ensured racism, prejudice, discrimination, and segregation made it impossible for a colored person to live peacefully, equally, work at a high paying job, or able to pursue their own goals of happiness. Their plight would go ignored for the next hundred years, but the resentments only built as the world finally started to connect and learn about each other's existence in the new age of electricty. Are you still with me so far?" Nate asked, knowing that this was a good point for people's minds to catch up before launching into the World Wars, then civil rights afterwards.

"How is this supposed to connect with what it means to be an American?" A female raider asked, Nate gestured to her and replied.

"That's an excellent question, what's your name?"

"Griena"

"Griena, when you know the history of the founding of nations, the rise and fall of slavery, wars, economic collapses, you can piece together how it happened in the first place, then the people can prevent the same types of tragedies from happening over and over again. If people aren't educated, simple problems like finding food, water, and shelter turns into a daily struggle like it is for most people I've met since coming out of the Vault. I promise you, when you listen to me, you're opening yourself up to the possibility of new ideas which could propel you and..." Nate addressed the leader, "Your gang, forward to be better than all the other gangs, groups, and people you've ever come across."

"I sense that right now in America, we've detracted to a state of feudalism, and it was Vault-Tec's intention that any survivors from their experiments were to emerge and rebuild America to be better than before." The cigarette Nate was holding was finally down to the filter, placing the burning end to the tip of the next cigarette, he puffed on it a few times to get it started, then kept on holding it. He hated smoking cigarettes, but in his mind, they were only a time, a clock that people could watch, and these dried cigarettes from 200 years ago burnt fairly slow with all the congealed tar separating from the tobacco leaf.

"America went through a phase of the industrial revolution, and economic growth now that the war was over. Money that was being spent on guns, ammo, cannons, soldiers, could now be put towards building infrastructure and expanding across America to the Pacific Ocean. While America was rebuilding the East Coast after the Civil War, over across the Atlantic, Napoleon is defeated at the battle of Waterloo, leaving the French Empire to collapse, leaving European nations to sign treaties with one another in order to prevent conquesting invaders from taking over their country."

"In Europe, The country of Germany signs treaties with Austria-Hungary, and Italy as part of the Triple Alliance with each other while Russia, France, and Britian allies themselves as part of the Triple Entente."

"Mankind tries to establish a time of peace, but because of the laws that were drafted, when a man from Serbia , travels to Austria-Hungary, he assassinates the Arch-Duke of the country, Franz Ferdinand. He was heir to the Austrian throne. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, and then all the countries they've made alliances with, along with all the territories and colonies in India, Africa, and Australia are all dragged into a fight that they don't even know how it started, they're only told to fight for their government. America only joined the war three years into the conflict after 128 Americans and almost one thousand Brits were killed after a German Submarine sunk a passenger ship."

"Now, here's where it's important to realize why countries fight one another. It was a big gamble by Germany to make money by taking control of Britain, so it would have control of all of Britains colonies that it had spent the last 800 years trading gold and spices with."

"The British Navy was the largest in the world, and Germany wanted to destroy it so they could step in and control the wealth that was being floated around the world. Gold and Spices. One gram of gold or a spice cost as much as...85 to 100 bottle caps, but they weren't using bottle caps back then. They had entire economies backed the Gold, because it never diminished in value. It only went up, and up, and up."

"Maybe now you're starting to get an idea of why these countries fought one another in the first place. There were people at the top, overwhelmed with greed. The Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente fought and fought, France, the UK, were winning the battles, but losing the war. It was because Germany ran out of money to pay its seamen, that the second largest Navy at the time all refused to fight. Now that is a glorious way for a war to end, considering money is the root of all evil. With no more money being given to them, they were expected to fight without pay, for honor, for duty, for patriotism in one's own country. Same with the United Kingdom in the Revolutionary war, it had become too expensive for them to continue to fight. The war started in 1914, but the American's didn't join until 1917, three years into the war. By then, the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers that volunteered to fight against Germany. With the Navy on strike, and the UK and French forces rallying, the war ended on November the 11th, 11:11 A.M. 1918."

All the raiders, who had been standing contently blinked at that.

"Tell me, what's your name?" Nate asked the leader.

"Rathen."

"Rathen, when Germany was defeated, the world leaders put punitive conditions on them. Do you know what that means?"

The leader shook his head. "Imagine fighting another gang, or even the super mutants, but instead of a quick intense fight to take control of a soda-bottling plant, they push back, and force you to surrender. Instead of killing anyone, they instead take all your guns, ammo, and bottlecaps. They demand that you repay for all the damages you caused to their building, and for the lives lost. They take everything from all of you, to the point where you're humiliated in front of every single gang in the entire Commonwealth. But, at the same time, there's hundreds of thousands of bottle caps being punched out every second, that's the only thing you can trade, but now those bottlecaps are worthless! These punitive conditions made all the people living in Germany at the time furious, because now they couldn't afford anything. Bread cost 100,000 bottlecaps, 12 eggs cost as much as 75,000 Francs, Potatoes, vegetables, fruits, protein, everything people needed to survive, now cost so much, it was called hyper inflation. Imagine going into a market, where instead of paying a cap for a bullet one minute, then you turn around, and the market is charging 1000 caps for the same bullet."

That declaration made all the raider's reach for their guns.

"While northern countries on the continent of Africa tried to take over the cities Egypt, and Jerusalem in what was still Palestine at the time, the fighting turned away from a global scale, back to old rivalries that had been around for centuries. People thought there was no way a war of such a scale could ever happen again, at least, not in their lifetime. While countries around the world were enjoying prosperity, and a time of infrastructure building, roads, sewers, schools, hospitals, electric lines, and hydro electric dams to provide power for hundreds of millions, but Germany went beyond bankrupt. Their solution was to print more money, but that only made the entire economy even worse! They were using bricks of money, wheelbarrows full of a useless piece of paper that no one in the world wanted to use, and turned to a black market state. The only way people were able to survive then was to trade liquor and other goods that wouldn't lose its value, gold, guns, you name it. About that time, my great, great, great grandmother was a six year old girl in the year 1929, when there was a drought that leads to the formation of the dust bowls. It wiped out millions of dollars in agriculture, but many of these farmers owed money to banks. The U.S. government racked up a large debt going into World War One, borrowing from the treasury, backed by the gold standard which in part was protected by privately owned banks. When the banks tried to collect, and the farmers couldn't pay because of their land drying up, they foreclosed on everyone, drove people out of their homes. Now, since the farming industry wasn't producing, all the people out of work flooded the job market. This created an excess of labor who were willing to work at a lower wage. Slave wages, essentially. Thousands of people starved, simply because there was no more food for the poorest people in America. The Germans, however spent their time after the First World War, clawing their way out of debt and were making a complete turnaround with the rise of a new political party called the Nationalist Socialist party. The Nazis. In 1933, the leader of the Nazi's is appointed Supreme Chancellor of Germany. That man was Adolf Hitler, but he was the most evil man in the entire world, and it took the invention of the nuclear bomb, as well as the deaths of 80 million people on both sides of the war-"

"Bullshit! There's no way there could've been 80 million people! You're making that up! There wouldn't of been anyone left!"

Nate was cut off by a male raider who had remained mostly silent up until that point, "What's not to understand? The number, or the amount of people? In the year 1945 there were around two billion, three hundred million people in the world. "

"There's no way there could've been that many, you probably can't even count that high." Nate sighed through his nose.

"Hold up both hands, we're going to do a little exercise to help you count. Hold up your thumb." Nate repeated the same action. "That is one. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Ten digits. Ten is a one with one zero behind it, so it has two figures. Multiply ten by ten, and you get one hundred." Nate said, holding up his thumb and ring finger. "Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred. Ones, tens, the next is hundreds." Holding up his thumb, ring, and middle. "Then comes thousands, now it just repeats. Ten thousands, hundred thousands, one million, ten million, one hundred million, and then, one billion, ten times one hundred million equals one billion. Half of one billion is five hundred million. One tenth of that is 50 million... That was close to the number of purely civilian deaths, non-combatants, innocent people who were persecuted and nearly genocided, while the number of soldiers dead from the war was 30 million. It took a long time to find all the dead bodies and count them all, but the world banded together after the war, and they did.

In 1944, World War Two ends, The Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan are defeated. The United Nations is formed from all participating countries at the time to prevent wars of conquest to the ends which the German National Socialist party just attempted to do so. At the same time delegates from the United States, along with all Allied Nations come together in New Hampshire, about a...week's worth of walking north to get there from here, to attend a meeting that would later be known as the Bretton Woods Conference. Their goal was to keep the Great Depression from ever happening again, while the United Nations was formed to keep a government from ever conquesting like that again." Nate looked down, he'd been talking for over half an hour with barely any interruption from people who would've killed him two hours ago, now enraptured in the world history, and what it means to be an American.

"We went straight from a hot war, to a cold war with Russia, once our ally, who we distrusted because of the spread of Communism. It was a ideology for governing, but ultimately ineffective because the people in control of the government were rampant with power, the people of a Communist country couldn't challenge a government, it cost too much. Communism waged war against the people, taking many liberties and freedoms that cost too much to maintain. It was a long, slow descent, but it took almost forty years for Communism to fail."

"Things change, politics change, world leaders change, ideas and philosophies change, and then the Civil Rights movement occurs. Before this time in history, races were not treated equal, people of color were segregated all across the country, North and South. It was by far the most mankind had progressed on treating all people, men, women, black men, white men, Catholics and Protestants, Hindu's and Muslims, Jews and Christians, Gays and Transgenders, there was treating all people equally for over two thousand years. But, it was the people at the top of governments that said we needed to fight, that we shouldn't treat each other equally, that we should be underhanded, treat them with disrepect, and destroy all honors and traditions that were upheld for generations."

Nate swept his right arm over the small crowd, "The people were making money, but the governments were losing money rapidly because for fifty years, no one bothered to account for the budget. What happened was we were $35 trillion, trillion with a 'tea', that's one hundred billion, times ten, which equals one trillion. Times that amount by 35, and that's how much money we were in debt."

"The Breton Woods agreement was largely forgotten, Banks sold the right to collect debts from Americans to the Chinese, to pay off debts to the American Treasury which collected from the people. So instead of Americans paying taxes to the United States Government, the Chinese were collecting the money. We get enbroiled with a resource war with China, declaring war through territories, on other territories belonging to Communist China, while supporting neighboring countries around them, which funneled in weapons and supplies, in a roundabout way to keep from breaking our own laws. When the oil ran out, the hunt for uranium, plutonium, and anything unstable on the periodic table of elements were sought after. Then America to broke away from the United Nations, so they could annex Canada for resources, which after rampant overpopulation, consumerism, and consumption of hard to obtain drugs and pharmaceuticals, rare earth elements, and minerals. Once my grandfather and father's generation was finished stripping Canada, the world turned its eyes to the one reserve of untapped natural resources left in the world." Nate's eye twitched, "Alaska."

"This war was unlike ones before, because both sides knew what it meant if either lost. For China, they were already telling their people Americans started the war, that we attacked them first, flat out lies. The Japanese government did the exact same thing after World War 2, they told their people we attacked them first, and don't mention their attack on the American base in Pearl Harbor in their version of world history. They didn't even tell their people they lost the fucking war after we nuked them twice! They say that the conflict ended and that Japan won! They leave it out and lie to their people to cover up a disgraceful decision made by their ancestors to participate in genocide. To tell your kids, to tell the person who will come after you the truth, is what it means to be an American. You can build up their knowledge of the world and make them smarter, you can plan now for the next ten, twenty, fifty years of your life, but what you do know determines the course of history, either to destroy, or to create, they are both equally powerful decisions that need to be made. That's it, there's only one thing left for you to understand what it means to be American."

Nate took his feet off the second chair, standing up, the raiders backed away, Nate threw the cigarette into the fire and exhaled.

"If you want in to Faneuil Hall, shake my hand." Nate extended his right arm, thumb up, with fingers pointing straight.

"Show some respect, the guy just wasted a dozen mutants." One raider spoke up, everyone turned to look except for Nate, keeping his head and eyes locked with Rathen.

Rathen hesitated, leaned forward, smirking awkwardly as if he wasn't expecting to actually go through with it, but Rathen's eyes went from the palm of Nate's hand, up his arm, to his chin, and past Nate's beaming smile, and into his eyes.

"Good," Nate said, wrapping one arm around his shoulders and walked him to the front door of Faneuil Hall. Rathen jerked, not expecting the embrace, but it was well-intended. Nate shook hands with the rest of the raiders, one by one.

All the other raiders were looking at each other, waiting for some sort of signal or sign. "One day, I may call on all of you to help me, as I've helped you. I may die before then, and that day may never come but, until then, accept justice for the death of your companions who've fought against these Super Mutants and died in battle as a gift on the day we defended the Cradle of America's birthplace." Nate opened the door to Faneuil Hall with his right hand and showed the raiders inside.

"Mind the smell."

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