Nate and Meathead walked through the streets of Concord once again, this time with their eyes set on the ground. Picking up every gun, bullet, and item worth of value. Moving from body to body, Nate patted down pockets and Meathead whisked each item away.

From the bodies that were still intact, it was considerably easier. Down the road, two blocks away towards the Museum of Freedom, a wild pack of dogs chewed and ripped apart the remains of half of a man torn in two by Nate's minigun barrage, their barks and growls were audible from a distance, and they occasionally brought their eyes up to look at them, but for now, they kept their distance.

"Where does everything go?" Nate asked, holding out a handful of ammo for Meathead to take, in the span of time less than a blink of the eye, the rounds vanished and the weight in Nate's hands lessened.

"<A pocket dimension.>"

"Okay, I get that...but where? Where does it go?" He said gesturing with his right hand up to the air, then waving it in circles. Squatting over the next body, he turned the pockets inside out one by one, patting them down, finding dozens of bottlecaps in between the five dead bodies they've scavenged from.

"<Let me explain it to you like this, you take a piece of paper, and drop a paper clip on the center of it. Then, folding the paper over until the corners meet up. That's the best way I can describe it two-dimensionally. THREE dimensionally is a lot more paper. It's like imagining there's an entire stack of paper, or the princess and the pea...most people and things can't notice a single pea under dozens of mattresses stacked on top of each other. For air, it's like putting a paperclip into the middle of the stack. From the outside, most people wouldn't notice the tiny little bump created by the paperclip. Only now, everything is scaled up. The guns you pass to me, ammo, food, water, meds, anything you need me to hold onto, I can put into the folds, and the amount of paper stacked on top of each other is relative to how much magical practice I have in dealing with the fourth dimension and my own magical prowess, not to brag. But...try shoving an elephant underneath the mattress and someone is bound to notice the gaps.>"

Nate nodded, "Okay, but where does it go?" He asked again.

Meathead frowned, ears dropping and a half-mildly un-amused look on his face. "<Up your ass; it's magic, Nate! The fourth dimension if you're wondering. It's here, and it isn't! It's still right...here! But not in this time frame! Time has no meaning! Literally! It doesn't matter. It's literally every moment of that object's existence that I'm hiding it in.">

"Fine, Meatball. What else do I need to know?" Nate said in passing, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"<That's it. Whatever you toss my way, I can hide. It helps move things quickly, quietly, and discreetly without having the bulk and mass slow us down. Keyword on pocket. It's not a dimension entirely on its own, it's just...tucked underneath the carpet...metaphorically.>"

"Greaaaaat. Metaphors." Nate rolled his eyes, taking a few steps to his right, he dropped down to another body and dug into the pockets.

"How many bottlecaps have we found? At least every single raider has been carrying some."

"<Sixty so far>."

"And this guy..." Nate trailed off, digging his ring finger into the dead man's pockets and pulling out one key on a key ring "Has keys..." A plastic disk connected to it was the Corvega logo, red font with the top of the V flaring out over the rest of the letters. On the back of the key was the word "Storage."

"Check this out." He said tossing the key to Meathead, they froze mid-air, two feet away from his head, surrounded by a soft green glow.

"<A way in?>"

"Maybe. How's your voice impersonations for dead people?"

Meathead looked down at the dead body, "<I just need to get a feel for his voice box, if it hasn't already rotted away... You want me to go in and scout the place?>"

Nate nodded, "That's what I'm thinking."

Stepping backward, the ring of green fire rose from around his legs and spread upwards like a quick splash of gasoline on a bonfire. Instantly, the changeling took the raider's steel colored mohawk, tanned skin, green eyes, and brown and green clothes."

"<How's this? How's this....?>

How's this?" He repeated to himself, a constant low growl in his voice, constant emphasis on the 'h' consonant. Like he was trying to clear his throat or was a heavy smoker.

"How's your improv?"

"Decent enough to get me by?"

"Okay...let's test it out...Grumble...you look like a Grumble...Grumble! Where the fuck have you been!? What the fuck happened!? I thought you were dead!"

"We got fucking sacked in Concord, the settlers we were going after pulled out a set of power armor and a fucking minigun! It was tearing our people to fucking shreds! And that's not even half of it! Two deathclaws showed up outta nowhere and started-" He wiped his face of sweat, "Fucking laying waste and killing everything in sight!"

"Oh yeah!? And what about you!? How the hell did you make it?! I got three guys who said you were dead! Saw you gunned down!"

"Where are those motherfuckers?! I was fucking bleeding out in the damn street and couldn't feel my legs! I had to crawl a damn block and a half into the hotel on main and found some meds for my legs. Shit was real fucking slow until I could move!"

"What happened to the guy in the power armor?"

"Fuck if I know, I was out cold and didn't wake up until it was dark, really dark."

"And what happened to the deathclaws? What happened to them?"

"One's dead, laying in the middle of the street, the other was gone when I woke up."

"Are you lying to me? Are you fucking lying to me!?"

"No! The hell would I? I had to walk all the fuck way back here, by myself! Fucking ghouls are still being fucking ghouls over by the super duper mart."

"You take care of them?"

"No, I didn't take care of them! There's a hundred ghouls from here to Concord, and I wasn't fighting shit! I just wanted to get back..." Rubbing his forehead, "Get this over with, get some rest. FUCK! I haven't slept since I woke up...what happened to the rest of the crew?"

Nate brought his head up and nodded, "Not the best performance, but you look the part."

"Well, I always try to have A for Effort," Meathead replied.

Nate turned his head down the main street towards the Museum of Freedom, tilting his head once in that direction while looking Meathead in the eye. Meathead closed his mouth and nodded, swinging a pipe rifle around to rest on his shoulder.

\111/

"Vault-Tec. Calling!" Nate shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth after walking through the front door to the Museum of Freedom. Only silence was their answer.

Meathead shed his disguise in favor for another, smaller, furrier mask as Nate's German Shepard.

Following the roundabout way upstairs to the third floor, Nate saw the office door was kicked in, the lock and screws ripped through the wooden beams as the door hung open.

"Vault-Tec. Calling?" He asked, walking into the office. He took a magazine labeled 'Robco Fun' from the desk, with a little orange and white holotape cartridge attached to it by cardboard and serine wrap, and rolled it up and stuffed it into his pocket.

Taking the nearly empty bottle of whiskey still present from before, Nate finished it off and set the bottle back down on the desk. "Well..." He said, moving past the second desk, he stopped dead when he noticed the Vault-Boy bobblehead.

Reaching out to grab it, he picked it up and read the inscription in white cursive letters on the bottom. "Only through observation will you perceive weakness." Nate swallowed, showing the bobblehead to Meathead.

"...They forced their way up, through the door..." Nate looked at the ground, scanning his head side to side. Turning towards the exit door sign, they followed it back up onto the roof.

"<What are you looking for?>," Meathead asked.

"Bloodstains."

Meathead's eyes widened a bit, nostrils flaring, sniffing for fresh blood.

Back onto the roof, Nate walked up into the crashed Vertibird in the roof and then crouched and duck walked to the edge.

"Knew it." He said, looking across the alley to the church roof eight feet away and ten feet down.

"<What?>" Meathead clambered up to Nate's side, he pointed at the roof shingles, specifically the ones directly across from them, there was a patch in the roof missing. Nate's arm stayed straight as he pointed downwards, and Meathead craned his neck out and down to the ground, thirty-five feet below them laying there was the body of a man, Jun Long.

\111/

The neon open sign was rained down in the dust. The red and white checkerboard design on the side of the Drumlin diner extended down onto the sidewalk, to round seats in front of the grill station. Now reinforced with wooden planks with bullet holes in them. A rusted metal rail guard wrapped around the edge of the parking lot, with two paths to drive in and out. Wrapped in metal sheets and giant spikes with gun barrels pointing out through the breaks, a loud woman's voice yelled at two men pointing pipe rifles back at the diner.

"Now you get the fuck out of here right now. I don't owe you shit!"

"You're son owes us a lot of caps." The man standing outside the diner yelled in.

"Get the fuck out of here fucking pushers! You know what the hell that poison has done to my boy?!" She narrowed her eyes and tensed her arms. Her itchy trigger fingers were wrapped very tightly around the trigger, so much so, the hammer was starting to move

"I'll make it easy for you." The first man rose his rifle.

"I'll skin your ass, hole to hip!" She screeched, in her hands were two very short double barrel shotguns. Stained black fingers wrapped around the triggers, arms shaking, waiting for someone in front of her sight to make the wrong move.

"Jeezus lady! Just give us the caps!"

"All right, let's go," Nate said, walking up with a smile. "Oy! Is this something I need to concern myself with?"

The two men turned with scowls and pipe rifles pointed in their direction. Nate shrugged and kept his shotgun pointed down at the ground. The pipe rifles looked to be the same condition of his own pipe pistols, cobbled together with wood, metal pieces, screws and the grip of a screwdriver for the first dealer's bolt, and the second man used a twelve-millimeter screw head.

"From personal experience, when a woman's voice reaches that low of a baritone and is screeching about eviscerating your butthole, it's time you take a step back and think, is it worth it?"

"Easy Vaultboy. This ain't got nothing to do with you."

"Who the fuck is he?" The female raider asked, she had short, tight curly hair, and wore similar brown and green clothes as the other male. Both of them looked greasy, days of not bathing and coated in dried sweat.

"Who the fuck is that?" The woman yelled out from behind the diner's waist-high walls, through a window.

"I'm Nate, that's Meathead. What's the problem?"

"Her son owes us caps. He said he was good and is late on the payments."

Nate disregarded the comment with a "Chee-ah. That's like asking to borrow a french fry. How the heck does a guy borrow a damn french fry?"

The first man shared a glance with the second, and she shook her head with her eyes locked on Nate. "You think you can talk her down?

"I'll give you a hun'nerd caps to blow Wolfgang's head off!" The woman yelled.

"Do that, Trudy, and I'll blow your head off!" The female raider yelled back.

"Bring it on, Simone! I've got four shells! One fo' each of you and two to spare! Your choice!"

"I hate to be the new guy in town, but what the heck are caps?" Nate stood off to the side, perpendicular to the two groups, out of the line of fire.

All three of them paused for a moment, then lowered their rifles and shotguns.

"Let's take it easy. This is a prime opportunity here." Wolfgang spoke first.

Nate as unamused by the comment, and looked past Simone and Wolfgang to Trudy.

"You get her to pay for the Jet her son used up, we leave."

"Jet? How much?" Nate asked, looking down to Meathead. He reached behind his back and motioned 'Give it here' by bringing his fingertips to his palm quickly.

"Ten Doses."

Nate pretended to mess around in his pockets, feeling the plastic container appear in his hand after Meathead pulled the drugs from his pocket dimension.

"I've got five. You take this, get out of here, stop pushing drugs on her son, and thank the almighty that you actually managed to accomplish a little something today, rather than getting pumped full of buckshot by Trudy over yonder."

Simone and Wolfgang shared a few head nods and tilts between each other, curling their lips in confusion and bobbing their heads.

"We'll take it," Wolfgang said, reaching for the bag.

Nate held up his left-hand pointer finger. "Abt! Don't be raiding shit or demanding payment for protection or none of that bullshit either. Cause...point in case, keep your eyes on me and slowly look over to Trudy and see that she still has both sawed offs pointed right at your dick. Trust me. A woman knows how to hurt a man where it matters."

"I better not see you selling to my son again!" Trudy yelled, sensing a shift in body language.

"Your son is BROKE as SHIT, lady! He ain't worth it!" Simone shouted at her.

Wolfgang nodded and swallowed, accepting the bag of Jet. Letting his rifle hang low, Simone did the same. "See you around, Vault Boy."

\111/

"Well, Crisis averted. You're a smooth-talking man to get those two out of my hair. Do you need anything? I barter." Trudy went on to make the off-handed compliment as Nate and Meathead walked through the door into the diner.

"Food and anything safe to drink. For me and the dog." Nate said, Meathead wagged his tail and entered the diner behind them.

The inside of the diner was wasted, skeletons still sitting in booths, and two bed-rolls on the ground with a young man curled up in the fetal position, shaking and shuddering. "So...cold..." He whispered.

"Don't mind him, he's just got the shakes from withdrawals. Dumbass." She said spitefully towards her son.

Hanging invasive plants were growing from the light fixtures, molding and completely rotten ceiling tiles showed where water leaked through the roof and eroded away the ceiling. Skeletons were still sitting in the booths, and piles of uprooted tiles were shoved into corners. Thick dust covered cobwebs ringed the interior of the diner, even now, Nate could see a few dozen daddy long legs keeping still on the ceiling. To him, one was unsettling, two were a nuisance, ten was worth getting a broom and sweeping them off the ceiling, but to see more spiders than he could count in a single glance was enough to put him on edge, even if they were daddy long legs.

"Well, I can get you food, and we've got a few boxes of dirty water, not the best but it'll keep you hydrated if you can stand the taste of mud...and you don't know what caps are...Damnit. Do you have any bottlecaps on you?"

Nate looked down at Meathead, then to Trudy. "Nooo...but, how's this? I work for you for a few hours, pick up the place, clear the skeletons out, get some wood shutters for this place and make it shine with the type of cleaning that only a person from a Vault can provide?"

Trudy set both shotguns down on the counter, then moved one underneath. "You don't need to do that." She said, looking around her hole.

"Nonsense. If it's not done now, it'll never get done. How about this. I do what I say I'd do, and if you're making food, I'd be more than grateful to partake in it with some water to wash it down."

Trudy nodded. "Son of a gun, you are from a Vault, aren’t you? I've never heard a person offer their services like that."

"Yep...Vault 111," Nate twitched, "There was a raid, I'm the only one who walked out without a scratch."

"When'd that happen? I haven't seen many groups move through here except to go up to Concord."

"Not sure, knocked out and tossed into a freezer; just broke out. They were wearing white and orange hazmat suits and were scientists, have you heard of a man wearing a green trenchcoat? Scar over his eye? Carrying a .44 magnum?"

"Was that their leader? Nah. Doesn't sound familiar. Hazmat groups are definitely rolling in the dough, and I have heard of a few high-end outfits like that, but it's not any group I know that would come around here. Check around Goodneighbor. They've got all sorts of people. If someone has heard of that group or him, it'll be the old timers hanging around there. Until then, I'll start up some grub."

"Where's Goodneighbor?" Nate asked, glancing down at his Pip-Boy. There was a GPS map that had a few locations marked, and he could set up markers to important landmarks.

"Scolly Square. Drifters degenerates, and good drinks, decent people with nothing left. They're set up out of the Old State House."

Nate nodded, "Okay. What groups were you talking about?"

"Huh?"

"The groups, the names of the groups that are high rollers. Who are they? What are their names?"

"The first one I can think of is the Gunners, usually wearing grey and green, or green bandannas, biggest raider gang in the Commonwealth. Second, and hope to God it isn't, is the Institute."

"Anything you know about them?"

"Nothing that someone else hasn't already told me, robotic Synth boogiemen. Drop down out of nowhere and drags you off into the middle of the night and replaces you or your loved ones with a robot lookalike with all their memories. They rip your brain out and stuff it into a cold, emotionless machine, while they pretend to get to know you, they just sit back and observe...then one night, they'll flip the switch and make whomever they took to go on a killing spree while wearing your face!"

Nate sighed and looked down at Meathead. "That's them."

"Well shit, son. Hope I didn't put a damper in your revenge murder spree you were looking to go on." Trudy shrugged and offered a weak smile."

"EHhh. A little." Nate rubbed his forehead, "Thank you, Trudy. Come on Meathead, we've got some work to do."

\111/

Broom in hand, Nate swept dust covered, baby spider infested cobwebs from the ceilings and ventilation ducts. Hauling the two skeletons which haven't moved in two centuries except for wind moving through their bones into a burn pile out in the parking lot. He pulled down the roots of a plant growing upside down from a light fixture on the ceiling and cleared it away. Sweeping the sides of the walls, dislodging more spiders and dirt from the walls, he swept up piles, moving the bedrolls as Trudy's son, Patrick moved large shelve racks holding a good portion of her inventory outside. The grinding of metal legs on linoleum made the few people inside the diner grit their teeth at the grating noise, but they bared through the sound.

Nate grabbed a rag and wiped down all the windows, stepping outside, Meathead laid out planks of wood in rough square patterns, while Nate kept Trudy and Patrick's attention away from the changeling as he cheated in their assembly to quickly assemble them with magic.

Four feet tall, supported by three five-foot long stretches of wood bolted through the pieces in a rectangular grid. Securing a rope around the first one, he took an O-ring screw and twisted it up into the Diner's chipped and fading beams, then looped the rope down and back inside so that it could swing upwards, or drop down.

Then he wiped off the neon 'Open' sign, it glowed three times as bright, a completely different blue and red color now that sit wasn't coated with dust.

In the two hours Nate spent building more shutters for the Diner, Pete followed Nate's example of sweeping, and cleaned the outdoor dining area with four round tables and umbrellas sticking out from the center.

Nate half finished the fourth one when Trudy called him over, setting down a plate and a bowl on the outdoor table.

"I'd join you, but I need to speak with my son." She said, leaving them with their plate of boiled potatoes and smashed tomatoes. The small bites of protein were jerky, from which animal, Nate didn't know.

Meathead took one whiff and blanched, "<It's cat.>"

Bearing his teeth, he smelled it again and eyed the bowl. "Looks like a rabbit."

His mouth watered, filled with the type of saliva that is soon followed by vomit. Spooning a bite of food, he closed his eyes..."There was a Swiss chef who told me... cat and rabbit without their skin on look exactly the same..." The color left his face, but his cheeks still felt warm and ate a bite. Then another. He exhaled and tried to not think about the taste, quickly pushing off the meat to the side. Washing it down with water, the grittiness and alkali taste reminded him of water taken straight off the cement ground.

Meathead put his head down and chomped down on his bowl of food, lapping up water and licking his lips.

"<You're right, I would kill for a basket of fries right about now.> He said, taking another bite.

Nate ate some of the potatoes and tomatoes, "Yeah." Nodding his head. "So...the Institute sounds like the other side of the coin for changelings."

Meathead clenched his teeth together and bared his fangs. "<Motherfucking copycats! I bet they kill the hosts too! Dumbass mother fuckers!>"

Nate was quiet, nodding to himself. "What...what do you do when you replace someone?" Meatheads paws scratched against the pavement, toes curling up and then relaxing.

"<I really don't want to get into that. It's...difficult...>"

Nate remained quiet, hoping for Meathead to break the silence first, he did with. "<It's hard not to say we abducted people without being the bad guy, no matter the what I think of to say...it's like being the overage guy at the end of a statutory rape trial.>"

Nate hmmed, growling low in his throat. "That's bad...but..." He held his spoon up, "You didn't kill them...? I assume?"

Meathead rolled his head. "<Yeah. We wouldn't...couldn't...it would be...as you said, bad for business.>"

"So what happened to them when they were captured?"

"<Look, I really don't want to get into this...now. Not with-" Meathead waved a paw towards the diner, "Them so close."

"All right. But, I would still like to know the finer points of what happens."

"<Why?>"

"Because. When someone compares you to the Institute, what do you expect will happen?"

Meathead squinted his eyes, breathing hard through his nose, and sucking his stomach in, he prepared a comeback.

"Are you going to get angry, proving them right, or are you going to take the higher ground and explain that you're the better...changeling...bug...pony."

"<Where to next?>"

"Just think about it, prepare for when that day comes, Meathead. Someone else might ask that question, and it might not be me." Nate's head rose up to meet the horizon, dominating the southern skyline was the Corvega car plant.

"I want you to do what you do best and impersonate the grifter. Can you get me a head count of the number of raiders from around the factory?"

"I infiltrate, it's what I do." He said in the dead raider's voice.

"Good," Nate said, plucking out the Corvega plant keyring from his pocket. "What's your exit strategy?"

<Find anything worth of value and take it while no one is looking and teleport out." Meathead exclaimed, trying to think about what was coming.

Nate looked at Meathead with a soured expression, "Meathead, when I asked if there was anything else I should know...I was referring to this. You can teleport?" Pressing both hands into his eyes and rubbing them, he blinked twice and saw his dog still sitting there.

"<Ima huh...>" He failed to start, <It's kinda self-explanatory...Imheh...hehe.>" Swallowing, he cleared his throat to try a third time.

"I'm not angry, just...still in shock that my dog is an alien," Nate responded.

"<He said, putting it mildly.>" Meathead said, the muscles in Nate's neck tensed. "<You humans are a race who can't express themselves physically and emotionally at the same time without knowing whether or not a decision is rational based, or emotional based. I'll tell you what you're emotions are...you're scared. Terrified. You're constantly in a state of flux going from focused to confusion, and it's only when your mind is set on a goal, does your irrational state start going by the wayside...>" Nate put his face into his hands and propped his elbows on the table.

"Thank you..." He said dryly.

"<When you were fighting the raiders in Concord, you were feeling a whole range of emotions all at once, there wasn't even a word for it on my planet, and before the bombs fell, I found the word; it's in Japanese. Kuebiko, fatigue from senseless violence. It is an emotion...and it's entirely human.>"

Nate's entire body felt cold, down to his toes which he curled up to keep the chills away. Shivering, Meathead moved over and plopped down beside him.

"I..." His arms shook, hair standing up on his arms and the back of his legs. "I," he wiped his nose. "I never wanted to see fighting on my own home...territory...I saw plenty of videos of Iran, Syria, Iraq, being bombed to hell, entire...places and people tore down. I never wanted that to come here."

"Alaska." He inhaled and sighed. Inwards, he shivered and teeth started chattering. Meathead leaned into Nate and waited for it to pass.

"You know how people were saying Texas is pretty much its own country? Heh...Alaska may be part of the U.S. but it was a whole different world up there. Nothing like you've ever seen. It was beautiful." he sniffed, "...and we tore it apart. Every single EPA act given the finger, every single treaty ripped up, everything was just constant raids and constant feeding to the higher-ups...we weren't fighting to keep the Chinese out, we were fighting for the right to raid Alaska for every single tree, fleck of gold, bite of fish, and drop of oil until it was sucked dry. And then we did it. We took everything out from under them...THAT'S when there was nothing left. THAT'S when there weren't any more options. THAT'S when China launched the nukes first after the rest of us drove them out of Anchorage while we were trying to cut them off at The Pass. We knew they would retreat. You~tactically~can not hold any location in Alaska without local resources, or having them shipped in. Too many people and the resources get drained...we weren't going to let them retreat like the Russians did with Napoleon or Hitler, and fall back into Moscow. We were going to take the Pass first. False Pass was our Moscow..."

Nate sighed heavily... "And there were hundreds of thousands of Chinese on the retreat from Anchorage, driven out by the machines, moving across the peninsula...all heading for the pass." he shook his head... "And when that happened... it wasn't a fighting war. It was the war of attrition," he said to Meathead, pulling up his shoulders and letting them go. He raised his hands with his palms facing his dog and waggled all ten fingers.

"It was a long...cold winter for them...The resources went quickly for a million strong fighting force. Can't feed that many people for long when they're all carrying only two weeks worth of MRE's."

"It was a lot of hate...I didn't have to be one of you Changeling's to feel it."

"Hey, everybody. This is Travis Lonely Miles...on this show, we don't really make any caps...it's all donations...and sponsors."

"~Huh hm..Cough~ 'Scuse me. Anyway, One of our sponsors, the Colonial Taphouse! If you got the caps, don't think you're getting in that easy. We don't want you coming in. Seriously. Shove off."

"That's not me, that just what's written down. It's not my fault someone thought it would make a good pitch. Not the most uplifting advertisement, in fact...why doesn't some one bring me a little happiness? Rosie and Ron coming up next..."

Travis said, sliding one holotape off the table and holding it up to the light.

"Yeah," he said with a smile. "Some good ole' R&R is exactly what people need around here." Travis opened the six port holotape player and pushed the tape in, then closed the plastic cover, and pressed play.