Ruby awoke the next morning disappointed that she wasn't home in bed back in the 2070's. But she at least had a clear head and a soft freshly washed dog snuggled up in her arms. Her refreshment was short lived however when she noticed the lingering stench of super mutant was more than just that. She found herself immobilized under a tangle of hot and heavy green limbs, her naked back pressed into Strong's rough belly and his rusty metal armor pinching and poking her bare buttocks. He snored loudly in her ear and unconsciously tightened his arm around her chest and arms at her movement. Trying to save herself from suffocation, she frantically kicked at Strong's tucked shins until he finally woke up with a start. He grumbled stubbornly and released his grip on her.

"What the hell, Strong?" Ruby yanked herself up and brushed the grit and sweat from her shoulders and sides.

"What?"

"Since when are we sleeping together?"

"Got cold when fire went out." He sat up and stretched with a yawn.

"I thought you were going to go share kindness with your brothers or something!"

"Strong want to..."

"Yeah, so why haven't you?"

He looked away. That furrowed brow letting her know that he was searching for words again.

"Strong not understand how kindness make humans stronger than super mutants. Human help Strong, but still weak. Fall asleep right after."

"*sigh* Helping you had nothing to do with that. I fell asleep because I was tired, Strong. I hadn't slept in days."

"Why?"

"WHY? I've told you that if I make one mistake out here I'm dead! Everything out here can and will kill me at the first chance! Even you!"

"This is straight words, human."

She looked away trying to hide her knee jerk emotional reaction to his agreeing with her. "Look..." she found herself searching for words this time.

"Tell Strong what to do." He was studying her face. She gave up the search for words.

"Keep an eye out for me while I get dressed."


Things moved a lot faster once Ruby finally found Valentine. He turned out to be a real old time copper and he would have preferred if his rescue didn't end in a bloodbath, but Strong botched any chance of that happening. Strong just couldn't resist ripping people to shreds if they showed even the slightest aggression, so they left a trail of mutilated bodies though the subway tunnel and into that unfinished vault. There was some intrigue about the case; that missing girl he was looking for for turned out to have made a place for herself at the top of the gang ladder, and there was a standoff when they tried to escape. Valentine wanted her to come home for the sake of her parents, but she wouldn't hear it. Ruby challenged her life choices, pointing out that if she was so good with that bat, she didn't need to be hanging off that fat fuck's arm when her family probably needed her more. To Valentine's surprise, she actually agreed and took off, sending her jilted lover into a rage that would end his life, and those that remained of his gang.

Once it was all said and done, there would be a softball lecture from Nick on the way back to Diamond City about laying down with dogs, followed by an apology to dog meat. The drift was lost on Strong, but Ruby understood. Nick dragged her back to the world of the living with his firmly rooted ethics and his seemingly bottomless capacity for sympathy. His being a battered android didn't register with Ruby at all until he himself brought it up. His mannerisms were so natural. Even familiar, like somebody's hard-nosed uncle. He was a good guy and it broke her heart to see him waste his kindness on the petty and bigoted populace of Diamond City. With his knowledge of all the goings on he was able to string together what happened and finally set her out on the trail of Nate's murderer.

At the final showdown that the manhunt led up to, Ruby didn't even give the guy the dignity of opening his mouth before she shot him in the face. Once done, she realized her error and was again left with no leads except for some augmentations that spilled out of his shattered skull.

"That was good kill, make Strong proud!" Strong stood behind her.

"He could have told me where Shaun is, but now he's dead." She still tried to keep her voice steady, though it was a vain attempt. "How could I be so stupid?" she whimpered and sank into a pit of dispair.

Strong for once didn't have a counter point. He watched her stand there and cry for a solid five minutes before something finally came to him and he shoved a giant hand into her backpack.

"Human wounded. Take." He pulled out a stimpak and tried to hand it to her.

To add insult to injury, the BOS was now showing force overhead with a massive airship and blowing up her radio with new orders. She really didn't want to meet up with them again, especially since she hadn't done anything they asked, and they had that on her. So she set off on the long trek back to Valentine's agency. Strong still followed close behind.


Ruby untied her bandana from around her neck and retied it around the rear cylinder opening. She started laying out bullet points in her head that she would run by Preston once she had returned to Sanctuary. He would know better than anyone which course of action would be the most feasible. Her dealings with the Brotherhood of Steel would undoubtedly come to bite her in the ass later, but for now she decided to stick with her current plan of milking them for resources and intel.

She poured a little vodka into a tin cup and dipped a bore brush in it before running it down the revolver's barrel. She started to miss Nate again. He was always so calm and collected. A willowy Icelandic blonde that could be described as elegant compared to Ruby. She was broad shouldered and angular from angry stints at the gym, and still sporting scars on her face from that night that would get her booted from basic training a week later. That fearsome look did the Indiana farm girl well as she clawed her way up through a slew of simultaneous odd jobs and law school before becoming one of the top prosecutors in the state of Massachusetts. But she had no friends until she met Nate. As she was leaving her car and walking past the bus station she saw him. He was fresh off his tour of duty and was struggling to hail a taxi. He looked so nervous like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car that she couldn't help but step up beside him and flag one down for him. He looked to thank her, their eyes met, and there was no turning away.

The neighbors always gave them a hard time because Nate didn't have a job. It didn't matter how immaculate Nate kept the house and yard, or how nice their car was, or how many neighborhood watch meetings she attended with his famous pasta salad. Nate was a long haired girly and they hated him more for taking a big black wife. In any case, the joke was on them because she outlived all of them and now owned the neighborhood.

"What is Shaun?" Strong broke the silence.

"Shaun?" Ruby looked up at him from across the campfire.

"Strong hear human say it many times. Human say, must find Shaun."

Ruby took a moment to calm herself. She realized that she told everyone but Strong, figuring he wouldn't care anyway.

"Shaun is the name of my son."

Strong kept staring into her face, as though he were waiting for more. Ruby took another breath.

"He's just a baby. Someone took him from me."

"Human baby dead."

"I DON'T CARE STRONG! I MUST FIND HIM!"

Strong's brow raised in apparent surprise.

"Okay."


Valentine knew of a neuroscientist in the nearby back alley shack town called Goodneighbor. Once there, they were greeted by a goon that immediately tried to extort them for protection. Strong wanted to see Ruby sock him in the mouth, but before she could, a wrinkly lunatic in a colonial costume walked up and shanked him. That wrinkly lunatic turned out to be the mayor of this town.

Goodneighbor was obviously more dangerous, but somehow easier to handle than Diamond City. The population was much more representative of the commonwealth's actual diversity. They were mostly ghouls, since there was an outright ban on ghouls in Diamond City, and their were also a few sentient bots in the mix. Takahashi was a glorified Cuisinart by comparison to the assaultron arms dealer. Strong caught sight of a rocket launcher in her display and picked it up for a better look. Knowing that he wasn't planning on putting it back, Ruby bartered for it on the spot. KLEO gave her a discount under the condition that she always bring Strong if she came to see her again.

Valentine's expert had set up shop in what appeared to be a seedy opium den. Unfortunately she didn't have a means of examining the augmentation properly. She could, however, insert the thing into Valentine's head and put him in what she called a memory viewer. After he selflessly participated in viewing the memories of Nate's murderer, Ruby again kicked herself for making him do it. The experience was jarring and intense. She came out of the pod feeling sick to her stomach and emotionally exhausted. She wanted to stay with Nick for a while to make sure he was okay; he seemed to have been affected by the experience more than he was letting on.

Shaun was a child now, with her hair and his father's eyes. But by now he was a native to this world, and she was a stranger in it. He was apparently safe and well, but he would not know her. The drive to find him was still there, but it wasn't as frantic as it was. It was just as daunting to think about, however. She would need to stockpile her arsenal and bolster the Minutemen into a real army if she wanted a chance at taking the Institute. That was, if she could even find the place. She needed more information, more people, more supplies. She would have to do some modifications to her power armor back in Sanctuary if she wanted to last more than two minutes in the glowing sea.

Goodneighbor was not the place to go for healthy solutions to one's problems. But Ruby was tired of trekking and decided to take up the mayor's recommendation of the local dive when Valentine needed some alone time.

Almost immediately another random thug flagged her down. Thankfully this guy looked ex-military and just had a work order that needed filled. She appreciated that he was willing to leave her be with his contact info.

There was a live jazz singer, which Ruby didn't expect. She was lanky and thin and her singing was just barely on point, but in a cultural vaccuum like this, she must have been a real diva the way everyone drank in her performance.

The Third Rail had a limited selection, but everything was cold, and supposedly not dilute. She ordered a couple shots of whiskey for herself and her oversized companion, who sat uncomfortably on the human sized bar stool next to hers. The bottle presented to her was a brand that she recognized. She let herself get a little giddy about sampling two centuries old rye whiskey. Pouring it into the glasses, she found it to be slightly more viscous and the perfume of the grain alcohol was especially pungent.

Upon being offered one of the tiny glasses, Strong expressed that he hated humans drinking all the time, and he hated robots even more. She didn't blame him on the drinking; the last time she had a few too many he almost lost an arm. The hard boiled, cockneyed Mr. Handy behind the bar responded to Strong's animosity in kind. Ruby threw her shot back and slammed the empty glass back down onto the counter in traditional fashion. She found herself involuntarily ticking her head to one side for the burn of that old scotch was incredibly powerful. As for the flavor, it was like cigar smoke and leather with spices. She poured herself another one and asked for a beer chaser. She had officially given up.

Strong, having watched Ruby's reaction to the drink, took up his shot glass between his thumb and forefinger. He downed it as she had done, and sneered at the taste of it. He looked back at the empty vessel, appearing to be resentful of it looking like a thimble in his huge fingers. Ruby wasn't entirely sure if he liked it or not until he put the glass down, pushed it toward her and nodded for a refill. It started to dawn on her that she was now feeding concentrated distilled alcohol to a guy that could accidentally kill someone just by falling on them. Fuck it.

Ruby downed her second shot, refilled and offered the rest of the bottle to Strong. He took it and it was emptied in a single draft. He sneered again but this time shook his head as though some of it might have gotten in his nose. Ruby's slapping the bar with her open palm was met with some reservation from the barkeep, but he complied and placed another bottle in it's place. He warned her that if Strong started wrecking up the place it was going on her tab, plus interest. Ruby, scout's honor, assumed full responsibility and asked that some clean water in a bowl be added for the dog perched on the bar stool on her opposing side. Charlie asked what the tin man and the scarecrow would be having, to which Ruby just started laughing and saying that he was alright. If he needed anyone killed he only had to ask.

Strong, having already had his mind made up about human drink, had of course never actually sampled it until now. His getting all greased up so quickly was probably a testament to his elevated super mutant metabolism. But he had also put away about two gallons of hard liquor in just under ten minutes. He hung his head limply, propping himself on the bar with his elbows when Ruby asked him if he was feeling any better.

"Strong feel strange. Like falling... but... up." He pointed upward sloppily, his wrist using it's full articulation for once. It gave her the impression that his immense weight and repetitious pattern of injuries left him with stiff and aching joints, of which he was no longer consciously aware.

"Sounds like you're feeling pretty good then." Ruby grinned, now on her third boilermaker. "Anything you wanna talk about?"

"Humans talk too much." Strong started to sway a little bit. He rose and straightened his back in his seat and started rolling his head from one side to the other, issuing forth a couple of loud pops from the vertebrae in his thick neck. After each one he let out a groan of relief.

"Yeah, so what else is new?" Ruby downed the last of her beer, slammed the bottle down and wiped the foam from her lips with her sleeve.

Strong, his back still straight and his hands planted firmly on the bar, took a deep breath in and out. Then he started to get up.

"Need piss." he turned away and whipped it out right there at the bar.

"No wait! Strong! Not in here!"

"ghhuUUGH! WHY?!" Strong dropped his arms to his side and groaned at the ceiling with contempt.

"Because I have a hell of a time keepin' this place clean without shloshin' aroun' in a lake o' mutant piss, ya gassed josser!" Charlie didn't hesitate to use his flamethrower before Ruby could even get up. Strong, in his inebriation, reacted in the fashion of the late Boris Karloff; growling loudly and swatting at the flames in his retreat. He clumsily hit his head on the doorway, but once regaining his bearings, he looked back at Ruby like she could have done anything. "Go and drain yer tank outside like ye got some manners!" Charlie chased him out, then snuffed his pilot light and went back to the bar.

"Dogmeat, keep an eye on him for me, would ya?" She sent the dog trotting after him with a finger point. Then she set about finding the ladies room. Once relieved, she started making her way back outside. On the way she overheard some goons hassling a guy that couldn't have been older than twenty, or an ounce over ninety pounds. Something about doing jobs in their territory. Once he had told them off, the little guy noticed her standing there and asked if she needed an extra gun. He clearly had some baggage, but she really needed a guy that could pick locks, understood the concept of stealth, and most of all wouldn't ever try to take the moral high ground with her. Maccready said he was up for whatever, and Ruby took him on, handing him his starting pay without hesitation. She started to lead him out back toward the front entrance when she clumsily walked right into Strong's midsection as he stood waiting in the entryway.

"Hey, Strong!" she wobbled and looked up. Strong only grumbled in her direction.

"Woah! Wait a minute! Is he what I think he is?" Maccready raised an eyebrow and pointed.

"Cool it, kid-o, he's a friend. You said you were up for whatever, right?" Ruby turned to him with one saucy hand on her hip.

"Yeah, I guess I did..." he smirked.

"Strong make decision." Strong stated loudly and abruptly.

"Strong, you're drunk..." Ruby spun back around and palmed his shoulder as firmly as she could muster. "don't make decisions when your dru-"

"Ruby would make good super mutant. Together we teach kindness to brothers!" he poked her in the chest and she stumbled a little, then took hold of his wrist with both hands to steady herself.

"Ho-wow! You really are drunk!" Maccready grinned nervously, still keeping a safe distance.

"Strong..." Ruby looked up at him in disbelief. This was the first time he actually called her by name. "Seriously, what-"

"Strong think long time. Think till head hurt!" he pulled from her grasp and palmed both of Ruby's shoulders with a grip that would have made her cry if she were sober. He locked eyes with her. "You good leader. Brothers will give mutha fukkin respect. Strong will conquer all super mutants for you."

"Hoe - lee fuck..." Maccready, murmuring under his breath, was now fighting laughter and looking around the room for anything else to look at besides that display of whatever the fuck that was.


Ruby would rather pass out in an open field than lie down in one of those flea ridden mattresses in town, so she and her team headed out into the night. After Ruby agreed to 'clean out' the Goodneighbor warehouses in exchange for coming up short on her tab, of course.

She had never really traveled at night, and so came to appreciate a few sights and sounds that would only become available after dark. With the lack of gunfire, she could hear strange and unfamiliar animal calls. In the full moonlight she caught what appeared to be a deathclaw mating dance out in the open some couple hundred yards away. She was amazed at how graceful and affectionate it was. Maccready had to grab her by the arm before they would be noticed. There were also even greater gargantuans stalking the ruins in the darkness, their slow footfalls reverberating through the ground and into her feet from some distance away. At the sound of a terrible rumble echoing through the old buildings, Strong snatched Ruby up and ran, barely keeping up with Dogmeat and Maccready as they tried to put more distance between themselves and certain death.

They made camp in her usual secluded spot under the overpass which marked the halfway point between Sanctuary and old downtown Boston. Strong was pretty beat by the time they got there, so he leaned against the cement pylon, slid down and drifted off almost instantly. Without thinking, Ruby offered up her sleeping bag to Maccready and made herself comfortable between Strong's tucked up knees. She kept him up for a few more hours asking him about himself and his need for cash. He was shy at first, but started to open up. Poor kid had a rough life; grew up orphaned with weapons and shady characters as his only constant companions. And yet, he didn't strike her as the usual dirt bag mercenary that she had always come across up to this point. Something in his face that indicated both seasoned focus and youthful bonhomie. The fact that he didn't bother to ask how or why she and Strong had become friends, was also refreshing. There must have been more, but she felt it best not to pry.


Strong grew to approve of the relatively short but scrappy Macready in the days following. He helped them get that cryo-gun out of the old vault and then much fun was had at the expense of some raiders that were hogging a radio tower nearby. Over the next few weeks he helped her perform numerous B&E's and they would come home with their arms full of all kinds of fun things like lead, and industrial adhesive. Anything that wasn't nailed down.

With Sanctuary now fully established, Ruby was inexplicably founder, commander in chief and superintendent. Codsworth was an invaluable asset in tending to basic human needs, but she still found herself ultimately responsible for the health and well being of these grown-ass adults. They were all natives to this climate and yet somehow none of them knew how to farm, or cook, put a hammer to a nail, or use a goddamned toilet from the way they just glazed over her plans to rebuild the dilapidated homes, build a couple generators to run power to lights and alarm sirens, set up a water treatment system...

She thankfully had Sturges to help her with the technical work, and Preston Garvey to handle guard duty for the time being, and good old Codsworth to keep her going with cold water and hot towels. She didn't mind setting up a chair for Mama Murphy, who could barely stand for more than a few minutes at a time. But she had to practically force the gardening spade into Marcy Long's hands. Her sad sack husband, Jun, she had to sit down and basically beg him to find the strength to salvage junk for it's base parts. She might as well have packed him a bag lunch and some mittens.

In looking to scavenge or trade with another settlement, Ruby came across another vault of people who were not frozen and doing just fine underground. They refused to barter for anything less than the precious medicine that she needed to fucking stay alive topside. During the intense negotiations, she got roped into solving an intrigue that was really not her business. One of their dumb ass kids got bitten by a diseased mole rat and almost died because they were all too chicken shit to climb through a hole in the wall and kill those little fuckers. Down that hole, Ruby uncovered an entire section of the vault that had gone completely unused for some time. And Curie - goddamn Curie she was so sweet and innocent and she had a vial of the cure in her pincers like a floating spherical angel. But she tried to tell her that all the other medicine she had in there was expired, and Ruby couldn't just let that go. There were two hundred year old miracle drugs lying around outside that weren't expired, and once more, there was a perfectly good laboratory set up right there so what was stopping her from making more? Taking advantage of their gratitude for saving that poor kid's life, Ruby convinced the vault dwellers to keep in radio contact with the minutemen in case any of them grew a spine and wanted to help someone else out for once. God knows she could use the extra hands. Curie volunteered first, and Ruby of course couldn't deny her, she was trapped down there for who knows how long all by herself and she was so eager to marvel at the world and lend herself to anyone she could. Of the only people Ruby could count on any more, almost half weren't even people. In order to complete her mission thus far, she had assembled a crack team of five humans, three robots, a dog, and a super mutant. She wondered if she would then adopt a giant scorpion and name it tickles.

"Tinker, tinker, tinker! Strong bored!" Strong barked from his seat on the cracked concrete under the shadow of the carport.

"You shut the fuck up, Strong!" Ruby twisted around from her work on some pipe welding, lifted her face shield, and pointed angrily at him with the business end of her still lit torch. "If you're so goddamned bored, make yourself useful and help Sturges over there!"

"Okay." and off he went.

Ruby fell silent and watched with a slack jaw as the big green elephant walked right up to Sturges, who was struggling to pull some steel out of a collapsed house.

"Strong bored! Tell Strong what to do!" he demanded sharply and scared the living shit out of Sturges. Once he saw that Strong was just standing there waiting, he finally shook off the terror and started showing Strong what metal was still good in that mess.

"Son of a bitch!" Ruby honestly did not know what she was looking at.

"Son of a bitch indeed, mum!" Codsworth joined in the gawking at Ruby's side while he took the torch from her stiff hand and replaced it with a glass of water. She absently lifted it and started chugging it down while he dabbed that dry towel around her neck. "I must ask where you found that gentleman! Strong, you said was his name? I say, he looks like one of those super mutants everyone's so up in a tizzy about these days!"

"Yes, Codsworth. Strong is a super mutant. I met him at the Trinity Tower in downtown Boston. I would have died out there if it weren't for him." Ruby watched Strong bend down and gather up all that metal, some peices at long as he was tall, and bundle them under his arms like firewood.

"Certainly is a rare one, isn't he?"

"Yeah, he's one of a kind all right!" Ruby chuckled. "This ... insanely stupid guy, Rex Goodman, was trying to teach super mutants human culture by reading to them from Shakespeare."

"Ha! Ha! Ho-wow." Maccready laughed and shook his head. Then went back to reloading spent shells with a hand press.

"A noble quest indeed! Was he successful?"

"What? God no! They locked him up in a cage! They were using his distress calls to lure in more people to eat!"

"That's aweful! Such dispicable savagery! But lucky for him that you came along to save the day!" he chortled in his usual way. "Tell me, mum, how on earth did you manage to talk them into letting him go?"

"I uh ... I thought Rex was in there all alone and was about to be eaten, so I just snuck in and started killing them one by one until I could find the key to get him out." Ruby spoke the truth, but carefully, knowing that Codsworth didn't condone violence. She watched Strong follow Sturges down to the Red Rocket, carrying half of a house's weight in scrap metal on his shoulders.

"That sounds like a rather unfortunate turn, mum. How did mr. Strong come into this?"

"Out of all those super mutants, Strong was the only one that took Rex seriously, so they locked them up together."

"Oh dear me! This story of yours just keeps getting worse! I do hope Mr. Goodman was unharmed!"

"Yeah, they were going to throw Strong off the building, so he helped us escape. Rex pretty much hid behind us the whole time. Then he gave me that dress and he went home." She pointed back to Maccready.

"And what a lovely gesture to part with, mum! It's very smart! Pity it was too small for you though!"

"Lookin' good, Bobby!" Ruby actually did enjoy seeing the shape of Macready's svelte body in sequin.

"Yeah yeah..." She could see his face redden from there.