Giddy and Gigi Buttercup trotted through Postal Square Park. Along the water's edge, they passed by a herd of rad-elk, two-headed mutant elk, one head watched, while the other grazed.

It was peculiar watching the animals radiated over time migrating on patches of city park grasses throughout Boston and the surrounding cities in a migratory pattern, they knew to always be aware.

One rad-elk kept a pair of eyes on the two yellow Giddyup Buttercups cantering by when Gigi stopped to wave its hoof at them and smile.

Not sensing any immediate threat, they kept on grazing and let the ponies pass.

A few blocks away, the telltale 'CRACK' of a bullet being fired off put the ponies and the herd on edge, but then the return chatter of gunfire told them it wasn't directed at them.

The herd of rad-elk perked up and started moving away from the gunfire.

"I think we're safe for now, but we should keep moving," Gigi said.

"Right."

Following a safe distance behind the rad-elk, they hopped on over towards the waterfront and followed alongside the bay.

Many of the storm walls, roads, and buildings were washed out, entire streets flooded, buildings submerged or collapsed into the sea, but the pair of Giddyup Buttercups were undeterred in their adventure along piers, and showing benign interest in the large irradiated sharks washed up on shore, already devoured by mirelurks and then scavengers like seagulls and crows.

"Look, there it is! I see it!" Donny Kowalski cried out. Standing on the edge of a worn-out pier thrashed and ravaged by time, the young nine-year-old shouldn't have even been able to clamber out that far on the dock without falling through, but the two ponies picked their way out to where young Donny was pointing out into the Chesapeake Bay. Between two tendering boats and a barge stuck in the water, half sunk up to the first level. Through hordes of trash and debris that was constantly getting washed into the sea, was the ferocious sea monster he tried to tell people existed.

Beyond buoys, and breaking through the water, droplets could be seen as the large periscope ascended above the waves and gazed out along the shore.

"Did you see something out there?" Gigi asked.

"Did you see it? The giant eye out there?"

The two ponies leaned over the rail and peer out.

"Where?"

"Beyond all those shipwrecks! It keeps poking up out of the water!"

"What are you doing out here?" Giddy asked.

"Looking for the monster! I knew it was true!"

"That looks like a..." Giddy tried to form the word in her head, but nothing immediately came to mind.

"You should probably find you-" Gigi started to say, taking another step along the dock when an entire section collapsed beneath her.

She gasped, screaming as she fell through and started sinking, but paddling up to the surface, she sputtered out the water and shook her mane out of her eyes.

Below her, she felt the water shift and surge around her, and at the very end of the dock, a large dark shadow appeared below Gigi as bubbles appeared on the surface.

Bursting out of the water, a thirty-foot tall sea monster rose out of the bay, water cascading down its shell.

"SEA MONSTER!" All three of them screamed. "Get on!" Giddy yelled to Donny. The dock groaned in protest at all the weight, but the massive sea monster swung one massive claw down and ripped a massive chunk of the dock out, splintering the old beams and breaking the pilings apart.

Gigi swam for shore as Giddy galloped for land with Donny clinging tightly to her back.

The sea monster took another swing at the dock, trying to get closer to Donny and Giddy. Another section of the dock was destroyed, but Donny and Giddy were already rounding the edge of the dock back onto dry land as Gigi finally managed to reach the beach shore.
Clamoring up the rock storm wall, she took off after Giddy, and the three of them all kept running back to the North End.

\111/

Piper, Meathead, and Nate were all in the Overseer's office of Vault 111, Nate laid out a road map of Boston and the surrounding cities, the entire Commonwealth was up for them to look over.

"So you plan on being here for a few days, while Meathead and I head back to Diamond City, and pass through Cambridge to see what the Brotherhood is up to," Piper said, tracing her finger from Concorde, through Cambridge, and across the bridge to Fenway Park.

"Yes, Meathead if you'd be so kind as to escort Piper back to Fenway, and then make your way East, I know there's a job or two in Goodneighbor, Bobbi could use a hand with whatever she needs finishing up in DC, but it wouldn't be bad if we checked out the North End for Hancock's job."

"What's Bobbi No-nose up to?" Piper asked, Nate, shrugged.

"Digging a tunnel, to somewhere, I don't know, underground it's hard to tell which way you're going, even with a compass," Nate said.

"Watch yourself with her, she was a Triggerman before Hancock allowed her to stay in Goodneighbor, but she's been known to cause trouble for others at their expense. She tried robbing a warehouse that belonged to Hancock in Goodneighbor by tearing down a brick wall, but ended up collapsing a load-bearing wall."

"<I'll keep that in mind.>"

"After I'm done here, I'm considering routes down to the Glowing Sea. Piper do you know of anywhere we should avoid?"

Her eyes went down to the map, and she fingered an 'H' and a schoolhouse building. "Milton General Hospital and Shaw High school. There's a big department store down there that's not on the map, but I've heard from traders that this place is a nightmare. It's crawling with Super mutants and anyone who goes there winds up dead...and I heard ones around there are smart." She added as an afterthought.

"Smart? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Smarter than the average lunkhead. They've got enough brains between them to put up a tough fight. Traders usually go east along the coast, and deal with South Boston Raiders, and then shoot for Quincy. Otherwise, go west from Diamond City and across the Charles, then go south."

"What about this railroad here?" Nate's finger started at Bedford Station, directly east of Sanctuary Hills, and moved it south. It ran down from Boston through Neponset to Providence.

"That's your best bet right there. That's if you're planning on going way south. I hear there's a lot of junk and fallen trees blocking it, but it's the most direct path even if you're leading a brahmin train. But." Piper's finger landed on Gunner's plaza, sitting next to Cutler's Bend. "Gunner HQ, baby. They have a shoot to kill standing order and fuck with anyone who gets into their ironsights. Even traders. These guys don't mess around. Nobody who isn't a Gunner goes near it, and those who do, don't come back in one piece."

Nate wrote 'GHQ' on the map, then drew a rough mile-wide circle around it.

Nate marked an 'M' on the map with a sharpie, along with every other location he knew about, from Atomatoys HQ to Trinity Plaza, Boston Library, Massachusetts Statehouse, West Everette Estates, the blown-out construction site next to Monsignor Plaza. Drawing straight lines from location to location, Piper and Meathead were surprised to see how close each of the super mutants were to each other.

"This is all good information, now we know which directions are safe, and what to avoid. Now Piper, the last question, do you know anything about the Commonwealth Institute of Technology Building? Who's in control of it?"

"From Diamond City, you can watch mutants and raider gangs fight over that place all day. You can hear them shooting at each other at night. I've woken up a few times from my bed in Diamond City in the middle of the night and heard them lighting off explosives." Piper said.

"So we know that the mutants are either being teleported up from the Institute beneath Cambridge, or funneling their way north from Trinity Plaza, with reinforcements coming from West Everette Estates, Malden, the Fens, and the State Building."

"What's your plan, Blue?" Piper asked.

"I want to know who's fighting the good fight against these Super Mutants?" Nate said, leaning back to allow Piper to look down at the map.

"Here. Kendall Hospital. There's a whole compound of raiders holed up here. They've got Kendall locked down tight, I know because I was asking about hospitals that could still have some good meds or scrap in them a few weeks ago, and Kendall came up. They're not with Red's gang, nor Tower Tom's. If you go there, you might be starting at square one again with raider relations. That or you'd need to be packing some serious heat if you plan on dealing with them."

"Good to know, all great food for thought." Nate made more notes on the physical copy of the Boston Map, just looking at it gave him a sense of direction, and his mind went down every road along the way. "Is Harvard still around?"

"Nope. The Institute took everything down to the last brick, there's nothing left of Harvard except empty fields and the streets that used to connect them all."

"Damn. Ah, well. Meathead, let's meet back at the Constitution in..." Shaking his head, Nate tried to account for all the projects he needed to take care of. "Five days. Scout around, see what you can find, afterwards, we'll gather up and head south. I'll try to be there earlier and hang around until you show up. I want to meet this Pegasus of yours we rescued."

"Pegasus?" Piper inquired.

"<Yep, not much to look at now, cause she's out cold like Nora, but she could have information about more of her kind, and intel on what's happening right now at Nuka-World.>"

Piper's eyes widened a bit when she heard the amusement park's name, there wasn't any news coming from that direction West in ages, too long in her book.

"I'd like to meet her," Piper said, but Nate replied with a dismissive remark.

"You and me, both. we'll clue you in after we figure out what's going on first. We've got a mountain of things to do beforehand, and it starts with me taking care of the Vault and getting ready for Winter. All these things happening around the Wasteland, and all I can think about is having enough food to make it through the cold snap." Nate said, standing up and pushing himself away from the desk.

"Piper, Meathead will get you back to Diamond City, no problem. Unless you want to stay here and write your articles, I'll be busy working the whole time."

"No, it's about time I checked on the homestead, see how Nat's doing."

"<I'll be sure to find some leads on power armor and a radiation suit for you. Everything else, we'll pick up along the way.>"

"Sounds like a plan."

"Nate, it's been quite a trip seeing everything here, but I'm glad I came. I even got a sexy vault suit out of it, and it fits like a charm."

Nate was satisfied, giving out a light chuckle. "I'm glad you enjoy it, Piper. Now Meathead can show you what he can do."

"Oh yeah?" She asked, "What's that?"

A ring of green fire rose around Meathead, wrapping around his limbs then expanding outwards. In a quick flash, two Nates were standing next to each other.

"Oh, God!" Piper yelled, startled at the sight of the two duplicates.

<Oh please,> Meathead deadpanned, "<You ain't seen nothing yet.>"

\111/

From the elevator platform at the top of the shaft to Vault 111, Piper warily tried reaching out to accept Meathead's hand.
Cruising around in Nate's body, with every detail down to the growth on his chin coming in, to the wears in his vault suit, she needed to shake off the thoughts of this version of Nate being a synth, but a Changeling in disguise was something she didn't know if she felt comfortable accepting.

"Have you done this before?"

"<Yes. It'll save us hours of walking, now take my hand. It's much easier if I'm holding onto you.>" Meathead replied, all his focus was on a spot south of Concord, he didn't want to teleport too far, and didn't know if his magical reserves would be up to the task to jump around the Commonwealth.

In his mind's eye was the wide-open field at Starlight Drive-In. With the scattering of cars with weeds crawling up through the wheel wells, the area next to the snack booth, Piper wrapped her fingers around Meathead's and hesitated as both of them disappeared in a flash and pop, taking the air from the space they occupied with them, and reemerging into reality directly in front of the large Drive-In screen.

Meathead's head swam, and he felt dizzy for taking the two of them, but it wasn't as bad as when he first tried to teleport himself and Nate.

Piper gasped, heart, thudding in her chest as she breathed, but the sudden and instant change in her surroundings made it difficult to breathe and comprehend everything that happened in the last five seconds, narrowing down her deductive reasoning to point at the fact they teleported and could still live to tell the tale.

"That was...!" Piper tried to say, but words failed her. "That was incredible!"

She spun around, they were standing in the shadow of the tall movie screen, with the sun behind it. "I can't believe you got us all the way here in a snap! Was that how you and Nate got to the Vault so fast while we were at Fort Hagen?"

Piper's inquisitive mind was running back, making small connections, but Meathead wasn't interested in teleporting or patting himself on the back, his attention was caught on the scattering of dead bodies around the Starlight Drive-In.

"<Huh.>" He said, noticing the change, the way he said it was like someone noticing another person shaved their beard, in a 'how about that' type of way. "<There's a lot more bodies around than the last time we were here.>"

All around them were bodies, mostly stripped, but what remains were on the raider's bodies left Meathead and Piper to guess, if only for a few minutes, as to who these people were, why they were here, and who shot them. Fifteen in all, as if a battle happened all around them, but from their positions, it's like they expected a fight, and all ended up meeting their end.

The remaining possessions, or lack thereof from being stripped, it took Meathead a dozen minutes to piece together the dead raiders were from the Corvega plant, but as to why they were here and who killed them, neither of them knew yet.

\111/

The Lexington Corvega plant changed management, Jared's body was desecrated after his death. Stripped naked, his head sawed off, hooks dug through his hands and the tops of his feet. Chains were attached to the hooks, and then raiders of the crew carried Jared's body and the chains to the ramparts above the Corvega plant and then hung his body from the metal beams.

Bloatfly's feasted on his body, laying eggs which grew into maggots in his chest, then those too wormed their way out and ate through the corpse. The white maggots were coated in slime and blood and fell over thirty feet to the ground where they dried out and died in the sun, or were eaten by carrion crows and smaller insects.

It was three days after Jared died that the raiders in the Corvega plant ran out of food. There were still crates and crates of drugs and chems, but even the raiders were hungry for something more than a high.

It was the hesitation that nobody immediately stepped up to take control, instead of doing more chems, get higher, while those that were already hungry quickly hoarded the food away in their own stashed area of the Corvega plant.

Three people tried to vie for Jared's position, but of the forty people original people at the plant of the time of Jared's death, five people left that day Jared died, grabbing as many chems as they could and never looking back.

The raiding groups brought back more food, but the resources still available in Corvega were held hostage by the ones who wanted rest, and to speak to Jared, but could no longer do so.

It was the confusion, and disillusion that things were the same from when they left, to when they returned, that caused hostilities to keep rising for an entire week. Within the first seven days, nine people were murdered at night, all for clothes, food, a sleeping mat, or because they felt like it and didn't want to see that person alive anymore. It was so petty and trivial, that those with enough intelligence and wits about them saw what was happening to the rest of the gang.

Things were quickly growing into a savage hell. Gristle was nowhere to be found; Nate and Meathead killed him on their first day out of the vault. Lonnie banded together with four other raiders, three were Lieutenants Jared put in command of raiding parties, but the vast majority of the raiders didn't want to do anything more than lounge in the factory and do drugs.

Rendo was a cook for Jared, a chemist. His tolerance for drugs was high, and no matter how many Jets he took, he always was aware of everything going on around him. He had a system in place, Jet to slow things down, Buffout to speed up his heart, Day Tripper to calm down, Psycho to go insane. If he took all of them one after the other over four hours, he considered himself 'balanced' for figuring out what he needed.

Marin, Trevor, and Jupiter were the three leaders of the raiding gangs, they held their crews in check, but it was Marin who came back with supplies for the rest of the gang first, but they were quickly eaten up and taken by the rest of the gang before Marin realized all the details of Jared's death. He ordered his crew to go back out, and find a site to raid until things calmed down, while he would stay and wait for Trevor and Jupiter.

Each raiding crew cycled through a day after each other, with resources always coming in on a new day, it also ensured that the gangs kept to a time frame to make it back to Corvega.

Trevor was stopped by Marin's second in command, Duke, outside of Lexington who quickly gave Trevor the small details, who told them things were changing at the factory.

Trevor decided that since everything Marin's crew brought in was already depleted, and Gristle couldn't be found, they could only wait for Jupiter to decide what needed to be done.

Two men Jared killed during his rampage, Oilo, and Barreta were the following leaders who were going to replace Trevor, and Jupiter while they took some time at Corvega to recuperate before being sent out again.

Their management system, while archaic, was efficient at finding people who wanted chems, raiding, and managing no more than ten people at a time.

On the third night after Jared's death, it was the start of the random murders. There were no clear intentions behind them, but it was an issue that Jupiter walked into with her gang of nine others.

Lonnie, Rendo, Marin, Trevor, and Jupiter all came to the fast decision that whoever was killing in the night, needed to be put to death, then they needed to deal with the flood situation that day, or risk things spiraling more out of control.

There was talk of trying to band everyone together to take on Vault 81 for resources and supplies, but the issue of food kept coming up first, so they decided to send a crew of people to Grey Garden, the greenhouse run by Mr. Handy's, and loot them for food. But, the moment Trevor stepped outside, he and his crew were faces to face with a Super Mutant Behemoth.

It was a rare occurrence for a Super Mutant Behemoth to wander through the streets of Lexington, but their watch teams were stagnating, some too high and dazed to even see or care what was going on around them. They'd take some chems, sit down, or stare out at Lexington around them, but the threat of death and mutants coming at them didn't trigger their urgency to respond.

Three of Trevor's crew were killed in less than a second by one swat of the Behemoth's hand.

The Behemoth came running down the street, kicking a rusted car through the side of a building like a football through wet cardboard.

It took one of the raiders armed with a Fat Man three rounds of mini-nukes to hit and destroy the Behemoth, along with loads of gunfire from raiders all around the plant banding together for a single cause, but they couldn't even start to congratulate each other before the realization set in that they were quickly running out of ammo too.

It was the head of the snake being severed, with the rest of its body slowly dying. The raiders couldn't go out to raid because they wouldn't have enough bullets to fend off any ghouls, Super Mutants, or radiated animals that they would cross along their way before finding someone to steal their supplies off of. They didn't have enough food for everyone to eat, so many didn't have the energy to go out, and knew that they wouldn't be fed either along the way until after something was done to bring more food in.

Every raider still holding hope for the Corvega raiders to rise again held out for the first week because they knew the caravan from Bunker Hill would come. They knew that unless Mayor Kessler paid tribute, they would attack their caravans again.

This created a split between those that wanted to go out now and find resources anyway they could, even if it meant double-crossing Bunker Hill, but Lonnie, Rendo, Marin, Trevor, and Jupiter all decided that it would force the Bunker Hill caravans to take different routes and avoid Lexington all together, which meant they would need to go farther in the future.

Kevin and Hester took up arms and rallied a band of fifteen raiders behind them, making off with Chems, guns, what little ammo there was, and claiming "We're fucking raiders! Fuck that, we raid! Let's go kill some shit!" Their merry band of raiders would head North to attack another gang, at Thicket Excavations, and take on over their mirelurk meat farm.

\111/

Sully Mathis of the Thicket Raiders would lead a short and bloody campaign against the entire group, helped by Nate a few days prior in draining the quarry. In the fields right outside of Concord at the Starlight Drive-In where Kevin and Hester took their new gang to stay, Sully's only command was to point two fingers at the new raiders moving in, and ten of his raiders, killed every single one of Kevin and Hester's men. It was here Meathead and Piper teleported to, and it was this group of dead raiders that they discovered.

Sully knew that these men were from Corvega, but the fact that they were so disorganized, starving, and low on ammo lead him to conclude what was happening at the factory.

It was a regular gang war in the Commonwealth, the murders stopped at the factory only because the same person doing the killings joined in with Kevin and Hester's group, and decided it was time to move on. Not because they felt someone else was going to catch on, but because there was nothing else interesting to him. The killer was bored and not even drugs were enough to convince him to stay.

Clinton and Sully both agreed within the month, they could take Corvega by force, it would only be a matter of timing and ensuring that any caravans going through the area never made it to Lexington.

\111/

Mayor Kessler didn't know what to make of the Commonwealth anymore, but she did know it was raiders killing raiders all over the place. When news reached her that Tower Tom was dead and that his Lieutenant bowed down to Red's Stockpile, a gang that was even further west than Tom, the bottom line was that Red was someone who could hash out a deal. It was on her decision that a caravan of pledged items didn't go to Corvega after hearing about Jared's death, even though she knew that whoever took charge might retaliate by killing one of her own as punishment.

With two raider bosses dead, and a new one to take their place, she honestly couldn't say what was going on in the Commonwealth. Instead, she sent a caravan bound for Red's Stockpile, with a tribute to the new gang leader of the area and a deal that could benefit them. Kessler didn't care who they were, so long as they traded and weren't violent, it was in their best interest to go to Red and get them to offer protection.

In Kessler's mind and on her chart, that was a straight shot for caravans to run from Bunker Hill, West to Lincoln. There were a few farms and small communities around the way, people who stayed quiet and kept their heads down when raiders, mutants, or other creates from the Commonwealth came through. In the end, some people needed things and could trade in products that just weren't available in Bunker Hill. Likewise, meat from seafood couldn't get out into the Commonwealth, and without the salt mill run by one of the residents in Bunker Hill, that's all they did was boil saltwater away, things were quick to spoil.

\111/

"You have a knack for finding trouble," Piper said, her thoughts were still wrapped around the crow in the jar tucked inside her bag.

"<Is that a problem?>" Meathead asked, walking alongside Piper.

"Honestly, it's just nice to not be doing things alone for a change. Even though I doubt I'll ever convince anyone that you're an alien when I can't even convince people about synths. This crow is a real story, something tangible, something real. In my line of work, things tend to get pretty hairy. Even when you...Nate and I were dealing with Red, he was cool about the whole situation, nothing seemed to unnerve him."

"<I'll tell you how he can do that later,>" Meathead's face ticked, "<He didn't even bat an eye when we were standing there on the elevator, waiting for it to go down while the Bomb dropped south of Boston. But that's only because he was so fantastically 100% sure that we were all going to make it. I...didn't. I don't know how he didn't cry up there on the platform, but he's...a glass-is-full type of guy.>"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Piper asked.

"<Oh, there used to be an expression, if you put a glass that was filled halfway, you asked the other person 'Does it look half-full, or half-empty.' With Nate, it's full of water and air, so it's neither. You could say I looked at a half-empty glass and put a lot of effort into sneaking into Vault 111 with a family. The kicker was that no one knew that it was a set-up for their whole frozen experiment, and we'd all drank the Kool-aide.>"

"Alright, I'll pretend to know what that means, and ask you later, but every time I'm out here, I never know if there's going to be a tomorrow. I mean, I've been shot at, poisoned, nearly sacrificed. Heck, until recently, they called the lock-up in Diamond City the Piper Suite."

"<Just ignore me, I ramble half as much as Nate if I get the chance, and he's the only other person I know who we can talk about all the things from the past about. That and Codsworth, but he's a polite robot that just doesn't get the little nuances Nate and I understand about each other...Although, I doubt Nate knows anything about me."

"Why do you think that is?"

"It goes back to the Kool-Aide, we know the history. To tell you the truth, it never was Kool-aide, it was off-brand Fruit-mix powder, or something or other. We know history from around the world, he's been all around Boston and knows the city like the back of his hand, I know what he sees and feels when he looks around at the world. To you, Starlight Drive-in may be a graveyard now, but to him, that was a place to go and relax, watch a movie, order a pizza, it's all these little lost experiences he wouldn't be able to recreate in today's world, at least, not without some help. That's why I believe he stayed at Vault 111, to fix the reactor, to save Nora. If he doesn't, then that's one less opportunity to create new memories with the people he knows. He knows me like a dog, and...the moment we lay our eyes on Fenway Park he starts talking about Bark in the Park. Can you believe that? A day where thousands of people from all around Massachusetts would drive into Boston with their dogs, and watch a baseball game with the rest of their family and their dog.> Meathead's eyes teared up as the roar of the crowd from thousands of spectators all gathered to watch the Red Sox try and take on the Cubs on their home turf.

"Wasn't being a dog humiliating though? Being subservient to a master? Being a dog and never being able to talk back?"

"<Piper, I would rip out my voice box and beg at Nate's heels to get one more day like that in the past. Nate's a great person, but as a dog to their master, he treated me like a human. Nate and Nora. She was the one with all the love in the world. I miss her as much as Nate, I just don't feel like there's enough time in the day for me to tell him like that when we both can be trying to make the world a better place for when Nora finally wakes up. Remember how Nate said, he's only been in this world for a week, but you've been out here for twenty-eight years? At least Nate went through army training, at least Nate's seen combat and fought the war. Nora...He fears that Nora wouldn't be able to survive in the same way he's doing things right now.>"

"That's committed of you, Meathead. You staying by his side like that."

"<I help people balance their emotions, it's a changing thing. Anything for a story?>" Meathead asked.

"Anything and everything. Even if it means getting beaten down a little bit." Piper ran her tongue along with the teeth, feeling where a tooth might've been knocked loose during the beating received from Red's gang.

"<How long did you have the paper before someone tried to poison you?>"

"Are you kidding me?" Piper chuckled, "I barely had the paper going before that happened. The first time I printed an article, it was about this cartel of caravans driving up food prices in the city." Piper grabbed at her arm, feeling it tense for a moment. "The article went over well, we even got a boycott of their goods, so I thought I'd pop over to the Dugout Inn for a victory drink..." Piper shook her head, "I have no idea what possessed me to go there and think I deserved a drink, but I did. One sip and I knew something was off. Vadim wasn't at the bar...and the beer tasted off, more so than usual. I mean, Vadim waters down the beer plenty, and it tastes like piss half the time, but this beer...it was foul. I felt woozy, and I don't know what whoever the bartender working at the time slipped me, but I needed to get it out."

"<Did you puke?>"

"Not till after I looked around and saw the still they got set up in the backroom. The moonshine. I don't know what stage it was in, but I start chugging it down, no water or ice, or mixer to kill the burn. Just straight moonshine. I'm not convinced it was better than dying from the poison, but it worked. The hangover lasted days...I think it was still in the sour mash stage, so after I drank it, it kept on fermenting in my system." Piper rolled her head back and exhaled, her stomach churned at the memory, feeling upset and acidic for a brief moment.

"But it worked." She said again.

"<Did they nab the guy who slipped you the poison?>"

"Yep. While I was passed out on the floor, security came and nabbed the bartender. He eventually ratted out his bosses, and they all got to share some time in the pen."

"<I take it you don't go out drinking all that much anymore?>" She gave a partial nod,

"I'm more of a house-partier now than in public."

"<How about the sacrifice? What happened there?>"

"I was working on a story about irradiated water over in Bunker Hill. Everyone was on board, and a few people helped me trace the water back to the source, but left me to fend for myself in the sewers and storm drains. I trace it to the source, and what do I find?"

"<A barrel of toxic waste?>"

"That and The Children of Atom. Setting up like they owned the place."

"<Who are they?>" Meathead asked, never hearing the name before.

"A cult from the Capitol Wasteland that worships nuclear bombs, the atom, and all things glowing. They're a really fun bunch once they stop drinking their hot water." Piper played on the sarcasm, rolling her eyes and forgoing anything positive to say about them. "Unfortunately, they found me just as quick as I'd found them. Turns out, they don't like reporters. Or maybe it was my personality, but either way, about five minutes later I'm on my knees about to take a bloody baptism in a barrel of nuclear waste and am on the verge of freiking out. They decide to sacrifice me to Atom, as punishment for trespassing... I blurt out, "Atom, she reveals herself!"

Meathead felt Piper's emotions switch around from loathing to happiness. "They buy it. They pull me back from the barrel they're about to drown me in and gave me an induction ceremony. Instead of holding me under till I stop moving, I just get a little splash on the forehead." Piper drew in a sharp breath and smiled. "You are looking at an official acolyte of Atom. It took me a few more days to sneak away, but I got Bunker Hill security to come and clean the place up."

"<From before Diamond City, to everything else, it sounds like you've led an exciting life.>" Meathead said, Piper, smiled again, picking up on the comment.

"Sure has, but honestly, out here with you...either of you, I feel like I'm just getting started. Getting in trouble is something people like us do. You and Nate, I feel like you're cooking up a storm of trouble."

"<Storm yes, but the trouble comes naturally.>" Meathead said, Piper felt the urge to write that down for a quote but decided to file it away in her memory for later.

"I mean, you, Nate, and I are out here putting ourselves at risk so people in the Commonwealth can have a chance at a better life."

"<The chance will only come along if people are willing to work for it. There's a quote from our time, and it goes, 'Hard Times Create Strong Men. Strong Men create Good Times. Good Times create Weak Men. Weak Men create Hard Times. It's a cycle, but it can be broken. Even if only for a generation, it's still worth it in the end.>"

"I hope you and Nate's plan involves me, because what I feel you're doing isn't for praise, or reward, or glory, but because it's right." Conveying emotions into words is difficult for anybody, but Piper found the words, "I wanted to let you know I'm really happy to be along for the ride."

"<I wouldn't want it any other way, I like having you close.>" Meathead said, and a third smile came to Piper's face.

"Oh...uh...Thanks, Blue. That's awful sweet...and unexpected of you. So ah...what's our next stop?"

"<Cambridge. That's where the Commonwealth Institute of Technology is, and I will bet anything they're there. There's a lot of people all over Cambridge, but when I focus on what's beneath the ground, it's easier to pinpoint a location. I want you to meet Paladin Danse, and get a quote from him about the super mutants."

"The Institute's tangled with a lot of people over the years, the group that's sticking it to them the hardest right now is the Railroad."

"Oh yeah? How're they holding up?"

"Not spectacular, but they're more committed to stopping the Institute than any other group of people you'll meet around here. Supposedly, they help runaway synths escape the Institute, but they're ultra-secretive and ultra-paranoid. The only thing I have on them is a rumor, 'Follow the Freedom Trail'.

"<Been there, done that. The Freedom Trail starts in the Boston Common, to the Statehouse, Goodneighbor, an old book store, Faneuil Hall, Paul Revere's House, Old North Church, and then jumps the river to Bunker Hill. If that's true, then they've got some sort of allies tucked away in Goodneighbor, maybe Paul Revere's house, the Old North Church, and they have a presence in Bunker Hill. Those are just a few places I remember off the top of my head. I can do you one better than a rumor, Nate and I met with the Railroad, and he thought they were joking when they asked him a coded phrase, but he guessed the callback.>"

Piper's eyes lit up. "You met with them? You guessed their code?! What happened?"

"Piper, I think you're an amazing person, but that needs to stay a secret for now. I helped them do exactly what you just said the Railroad supposedly does."

"All right, but when you start declassifying all the old files in your brains, come let me know, I want to know everything."

"<What do you have on the Brotherhood?>"

"Yeah, about the Brotherhood, How much of what I tell you is going to make it back to Nate, Blue?" She asked the disguised Meathead. She looked back towards the town of Concord and felt aware.

"<Depending on how much is said, I might paraphrase a few things, but other than that, I'll make sure Nate hears everything.>" Meathead replied. Their route angled them towards Cambridge, to the Westside where the police station was located. Ahead of them was Lexington, and off in the distance was the Corvega plant.

"From what I've heard, and what you told us at the Vault, the Brotherhood doesn't do subtle, especially if it's high-tech. They take whatever they want, and don't like asking twice. They might be the only group well-armed enough to give the Institute a run for their money if they ever came up this way, but even then, that'd mean a whole lot of shooting going on and they would be on their agenda."

"<Meaning they're only in it for the power play on all of the Institute's tech?>"

Piper gave a half-nod, more inclined to agree, but she didn't know much more about the Brotherhood of Steel.

"Care to explain why you and the real Nate operate like this?" Piper made small circles with her hand, still trying to dig deeper into the man and the changeling's relationship.

Meathead stopped walking, "<Piper, unfortunately when I'm as a changeling, I don't carry Nate's sense of charm and charisma, strength, endurance, but what I can do is see through anyone. I know if they're so angry they might pull a gun, I've been woken up from a dead sleep because someone approached Nate and Nora's house with the intent to rob them at night, and could fulfill my role of watchdog as Meathead and bark my head off. If someone lies to me, they'll want to shield their emotions, their embarrassment, and pretend what they're doing is for Nate's best personal interest when a lie is only self-serving.>"

"So you're a human lie-detector?"

"<If that's what you call being emotionally receptive to all organic forms of life, and realizing what they're truly trying to communicate with you on a non-verbal, and non-physical level, while questioning the internal monologues in my head of do I call myself Nate while in this body, or do I keep calling myself Meathead? Then...>"

"Alright, I get it, Blue. You're a lot more than meets the eye." Piper responded.

Always visible from a distance, the Corvega sign letters lit up in sequence, blinked twice, then stayed on for a few seconds, before blacking out again. It was a landmark Meathead and Piper were using as a reference, cautious to avoid heading directly there, but Meathead kept angling them towards the car factory.

"Didn't you..." Piper shook her head. "Didn't Nate say that you passed through Lexington?"

"<We didn't stay long, only long enough to stir them up, but I'm sensing ugly emotions coming from there.>"

"Ugly?"

"<I don't think things went well after I left in a hurry.>"

"What exactly did you do while you were here last time?"

"<It's complicated, but we were looking for Preston, and found a member of his party traveling with him, a man named Sturges, only he was a synth. Another person these raiders took was an elderly woman by the name of Mama Murphey, but I don't know if she's alive or not. I quietly poked around, but their leader Jared was torturing Mama Murphey by injecting her with a cocktail of drugs and letting her ride the lightning.>"

"Ride the lightning?"

"<Chase the dragon? He was damaging her on a whole other level, just to be cruel. Either way, I may or may not have been the reason as to why Jared was shot to death by his gang.>"

"Whoa now, this is a whole other story I gotta write down, Blue. How'd you get from Preston to their leader, Jared?"

"In a short word, I disguised myself as one of the Corvega raiders. From the museum of Freedom, we were attacked by the Corvega Raiders, they were after an old woman in the Minuteman's party. A deathclaw appeared and ripped Nate out of a suit of power armor, I intervened and saved Nate, but I ah...took the form of a deathclaw and wasn't well-received by the raiders or Preston. Namely, because I never revealed myself to anyone before."

"So what changed?"

"<You know? Nate asked me the same thing, and I told him time changed, Piper. When you feel like you're the last one of your species, and have nothing left to lose, and all the secrets and all the weight you've been carrying around for decades can suddenly be lifted off your back and lose all meaning and worth, it is....it's a moment in life where you realize that as much as you want to be God, and control every aspect of your life, you become so aware of the fact that we have so little control in what we do, it's enough to make you cry out.>"

"That's some heavy thinking, Blue. Was that the last time you saw Preston? That's the Minuteman Preston, right? Garvey?"

Meathead nodded, "<He vanished, the last I saw of him, a pack of raiders was charging into the Museum of Freedom in Concord after Nate took a thrashing from a deathclaw. He got away though, we're sure of it. We never found the body.>"

Piper was disheartened by the news, "What happened at Quincy sounds exactly like my hometown, same shit, different day, huh, Blue?"

"<Yep, Nate was furious when he heard the news from Preston, that the Minutemen turned and allowed the Gunners to split the last of the Minutemen and take over. But when I say Nate was furious, he didn't show it, I felt it. He wanted to strangle every last deserter as he did with Kellogg and the Gunner Captain we came across in Mass Fusion.>"

"Do you have any plans for them?"

"<Of course, but that doesn't mean we'll ever get to enact them, taking on another man's revenge is one thing, but for Nate, it was the principal of the matter that the Minutemen turned Gunners were soldiers sworn to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. He's a trooper, he'll power through anything. After he fixes the reactor, and we find a few items before heading south, I have little doubt one of the things I'll be carrying for him is a high caliber sniper rifle...speaking of which, where can I find a .50 caliber rifle?>" Meathead asked, but the question didn't even phase Piper. She knew where Nate and Meathead's minds were at; facing down whatever unknown horrors were crawling around the Glowing Sea.

"Arturo sells the ammo, but I don't know about the rifle. Check the National Guard I guess, that place is pretty lousy with old turrets and a robotic security system that is still running. Trust me, avoid the main path, because they will shoot at anything, believe me."

"<Funny story, the Mayor of Bunker Hill told us something similar when we were about to head off to check the U.S.S. Constitution, and I don't remember seeing any turrets shoot at Nate while we were at Fort Hagen.>"

The short intake of breath when Piper realized Nate's ace in the hole, it was a small win for the former soldier, but after looking back at it, it never occurred to her until now.

"<The robots recognized Nate's face from their database registry, they didn't shoot at either of us and welcomed him on board with open arms.>"

"Wait! Are you kidding me?! That's how you got on the ship? I didn't know that little tidbit! That's...insane! How many people's lives do you think would be saved...safer if we could find the terminal where they input all that information!"

"It wouldn't be that hard to imagine at all, I don't know the locations, but I'm sure Nate could rattle off at least five different recruiting stations because they'll snap your picture, and upload it onto the computer...Oh my gosh."

"What? What is it? Do you feel something?" Piper asked, hand going to her machine gun, she readied it in a second before Meathead could reply. Sometimes, that's all it took between life and death.

"<No, not that, but I just remembered there was a recruiting station at the Super-Duper Mart in Lexington. If we check, you could be Private Piper by the end of the day.>"

The offer was too tantalizing for Piper to pass up, despite the risks, she wanted that same peace of mind Nate and Meathead had. "Yes. Let's go."

\111/

Sully Mathis armed his gang; they were going to wipe out Jared and the Corvega raiders. There was no point in holding the factory after everyone else was dead, but with a few concentrated efforts, laying siege to the factory would take a few days, but the key would be to draw their gunfire, and get them to waste bullets.

Even though the Thicket raiders were only twenty-three in number, Sully knew what starvation looked like. He knew that after two days of not eating, veins along the arms and legs stood out, dehydration made the lips swell, trying to retain moisture. The men and women at Corvega weren't surviving by any means; they were slowly dying.

He knew that by the end of the week, Corvega would be another hollowed outbuilding, waiting to crumble. In a few months when their numbers built up, maybe they'd move in and secure the Corvega factory, but until then, the only thing on his mind was the number of people who needed to die before that time would come.

Next Chapter: Ch. 48 Super-Duper Mart Estimated time remaining: 20 Hours, 54 Minutes