There wasn't much conversation once Cinder had gathered the codes and Wayne had gotten the uniform from Madder's apartment. Evidently, things had gone south a little faster than Cinder had wanted, though not to an extent that Wayne felt worried about it. The takedown was mostly quiet, and considering the dude was a pile of ash, any investigation likely wouldn't turn up much.
Cinder held up her end of the deal, though. Wayne needed a ride home, and he got one. The moon was high in the sky when Wayne stepped out of the car and turned on his V.A.N.S. to begin the walk back to his isolated home. Said moon was also, apparently broken to pieces, which was honestly kind of cool, but also kind of freaky. Seemed like something you'd see in a comic book.
The group had made a detour back to the White Fang camp in order to grab his gear and ensure none of the Faunus had gotten a sudden case of sticky fingers. Thankfully, everything was in its right place, and with a 'thank you' and some last minute instructions on how to use Madder's 'Scroll', Cinder sent him off with the truck and his gear. One of the White Fang men was kind enough to make the drive, the one with the gator scales who didn't really say much.
Now, Wayne was just tired, and hungry.
Taking the busted up, rusted key he'd taken from the Starlight Drive In, Wayne unlocked the door and stepped inside his home, noting it was in the same condition as it had been when he left it to catch the train.
The Scroll in his pocket made a loud ping, and Wayne dug it out of his pocket to find a message from Clair.
'Will come over 2morrow to help you set up your Scroll and stuff.'
Huh. Nice of her. Too bad Wayne couldn't send a reply, he didn't know how the hell this thing worked. He elected to just put it on his bedside table and deal with it in the morning. For now, he needed to eat, and to think.
Digging in the fridge, Wayne noted that the meat that he'd placed there was pretty much rotten by the assault it'd perpetrated on his nose. He took some time to deal with that, grabbing the shovel he kept in a cabinet by the door and digging a hole to bury it in so it wouldn't attract any of the local wildlife to come and pay him a late-night visit. That took probably an hour that he'd wanted to spend eating, but it was unfortunately necessary. With it taken care of, he was able to grab a lukewarm Nuka-Love from the fridge and a box of mac and cheese and take them up to the upper landing of the house. It wasn't much, but it'd do for dinner.
Wait, did he even have shit to start a fire?
"God dammit," Wayne muttered, running a hand through his now much shorter hair. He hadn't cut it this close since he joined the Brotherhood, and looking in the mirror when that snake Faunus girl had been so kind as to help him tighten up only brought back bad memories. At the very least, he didn't have an episode. When the memories of what happened—during the war, to Nora, to Danse, to Glory, to Shaun—were fresh, he could lose himself in thought, and hours would pass in what felt like minutes. He'd been diagnosed with PTSD in the field by the platoon's field medic, some kid named Tercorien, back in Anchorage, but back then, he was invincible. He had a girl waiting for him back home, and a bullet for every commie in Alaska. He didn't have time to be 'weak'. Eventually, it caught up with him. Therapy was an admission of failure, an acceptance that he needed help, and that wouldn't do it for Wayne. Chems could just about cover his weaknesses, until he started running out. Thank God people in the Commonwealth found their own ways to get high. Wayne wouldn't have made it through Round 2 of Med-X withdrawals.
Wayne tossed the mac and cheese towards the dead stove he kept near the top of the stairs for when he'd have tea with the Mariner. He wondered if her illness had claimed her yet? She hadn't been in a good place when they last spoke, and while Wayne wasn't a medical expert, it was likely she wouldn't be around much longer, which saddened him. She'd been a good friend ever since he got to the Harbor. He turned his attention back to the Nuka-Love, popping open the bottle and taking a long draught, not realizing he'd been as thirsty as he was. All the different drinks were probably the only good things Wayne got out of Nuka-World. That, and getting to personally bitch out the CEO of Nuka-Cola. That was a pretty fun experience.
Wayne, once again, found himself thinking about his time in the Brotherhood. He had a lot, lately, for some odd reason. Try as he might, it was hard to let everything that happened there go. Maybe it was time to try and confront it again.
Taking another long swig of his drink, as if Nuka-Cola could fortify his spirit, he headed back down the stairs, leaving the mac and cheese where it lie as he went down to the clothes cabinet he kept near his bed. He needed to get out of his current duds anyhow, he'd been wearing them with only a single wash over the past three days.
He found the articles of clothing he was looking for quickly. The Brotherhood jumpsuit he'd been issued was as stark black as he remembered it being, and still fit like a glove, and he easily slipped into the bomber jacket that was issued for the winter months. He always thought it odd that they didn't issue a pair of pants to go with it, but honestly, the jacket was pretty cool.
Steeling himself, he walked over to the mirror he kept near the storage closet, and took a look in the mirror. Even if the suit still fit, it wasn't the same. When he'd joined the Brotherhood, Wayne didn't have the bags under his eyes he had now, or the scar on his bottom lip, the missing piece of his upper right ear, or the scars left by a close call with a Yao Guai on his neck.
"You look good, soldier," Danse stated, as Wayne examined his jumpsuit in one of the mirrors of the Cambridge police station. It reminded him of the undersuits the T-45 and T-51B operators in Anchorage used, except theirs were white snowblind camo. His was black as coal, mainly because Wayne thought the orange stuck out too much.
"I can't say I disagree," Wayne said, stretching his arms and hopping in place a couple of times just to make sure the suit fit alright. It was a tight squeeze, but not too bad. "So, this Maxson guy. What kind of CO is he?"
"The kind that would go to hell and back for his men," Danse replied. "The Elder would never give an order he wouldn't execute himself."
"Huh. I'm not gonna lie, people down there weren't too excited to see this ship show up. You guys have a reputation, evidently."
Danse scowled. "They fear us because they don't understand what we do, and why we do it. You remember the day the bombs fell. You know just as well as any of us the evils of unchecked technology. If every person in the Commonwealth had our understanding, then the Brotherhood would not need to be so harsh."
"Yeah, yeah, let's just go meet him," Wayne said, turning back to look at Danse with a wan smile. "I need to get my mind off of things. Too much time to think, lately."
"I understand. From what it sounds like, you've been through a lot since we've last spoken," Danse agreed. "Come on, then, the Elder is waiting for us. Once we're done, I'll take you to see Knight-Captain in the medbay. Your mental health is every bit as important as your physical well-being, Initiate, don't forget it."
Danse was right about that. Too bad that the Commonwealth didn't really have many therapists.
"Don't have to convince me," Wayne muttered, an ironic echo of what he'd said in response to Maxson's statement of intent, his grand plan for the Commonwealth, a heroic effort to save the people of the wasteland that was once Boston from themselves.
Bullshit, all of it, in the end. Didn't mean a thing. At least, that's what he told himself. Maxson held his principles to be true above everything else, convinced of the righteousness of his cause, even to the point where he would kill one of his most loyal subordinates in cold blood just because he was a Synth. A Synth that had risked his life time and time again to save his brothers and sisters, a Synth who would have gladly died for Maxson if he was ordered to, did die when Maxson ordered him to. All of Maxson's convictions drove him to fascistic madness, and left Wayne to bury the pieces in the ashes of the old world.
Wayne still couldn't feel good about killing him, even after Danse. The Brotherhood had forced a boy to become a man, and lead them, and he'd paid the price. The angry, vengeful part of him wanted to make the trek to the Capital Wasteland just to finish the job. The sensible part reminded him that killing Kellogg didn't bring Nora and Shaun back, and killing Maxson didn't bring Danse back. Neither gave him any closure. More killing wouldn't make things better. Then again, killing things was all he was really good at. He could build a nice shack, and kill something, or someone, dead.
Wayne sighed, and averted his eyes from the mirror. He couldn't look at it anymore. The suit didn't fit right, and he wasn't talking about the size. Not anymore. Wayne struggled his way out of the jumpsuit as if it were on fire, eventually managing to finesse his way out of it and chuck it back in the closet. He didn't know what had possessed him to take a look at it again, but he was half tempted to go throw it in the hole in the dirt with the spoiled meat.
The urge to sleep outweighed his frustrations, and Wayne fell into bed with a muted groan, pressing his palms into his eyes until he saw stars.
"What the fuck am I doing?" he asked, as if he'd get an answer. He received none. He'd have to figure that out for himself in the morning. For now, it was off to a fitful, futile attempt at a good night's sleep.
Time passed far too quickly.
The nightmares that had plagued Wayne for the past year had left him be, if only for one night. Instead, he dreamed, oddly enough, of the world he'd found himself in. Of what it would have been like to still… have something like it. Nora had been here, the cabin had been a log cabin instead of irradiated driftwood and rusted nails, and Shaun had been a bouncing young boy instead of a Synth trying his hardest to pretend to be his son.
It hurt far worse than the worst of his violent, vile nightmares. He almost wished he'd had one of those instead.
Before he could even think to attempt to sleep, a loud, blaring horn sounded right outside the cabin, once, then twice, then twice again. Wayne was pretty well and fucking incensed. Just because he wasn't sleeping anymore didn't mean he appreciated someone bringing their shit into his little corner of the woods.
Throwing himself out of bed without any clothes but his boxers, he opened his door to find the truck he'd rode to the White Fang camp on outside, with Clair leaning out of the passenger side door, her expression rapidly morphing from one of boredom to one of dire mortification.
"Put some clothes on!" she shouted, turning away and covering her face with her hands like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, and Wayne couldn't help but smile, even if there wasn't really any joy behind it. Stepping back inside, he found an old flannel shirt and some jeans that would do for a casual outfit for the day, especially since he didn't plan on going anywhere outside the cabin. Now dressed, he stepped out and shouted over the still-running engine of the truck.
"There! We're good!"
Clair lowered her hands just enough to look at him, before dropping them to her sides as she hopped out of the car, satisfied with his state of dress.
"Sorry to wake you, brother," she said, smiling as she jerked her head back towards the truck. "Brought you something."
"What's that 'something', Clair?"
"A Dust generator, a decent mattress, a television set with a satellite dish, basically everything you need to live out here and not be a hermit that only leaves to answer the crazy bitch's beck and call," Clair explained. "Roe and Grei came to help me help you get settled in."
Wayne nodded, looking back towards his home. "Yeah… that would probably help. Had to throw out all the fresh meat last night. Still have some fruit and vegetables that haven't quite rotted yet, but that could change…tell you what. Let's get that generator running and worry about the rest after I cook you something to eat. Consider it thanks for coming out and doing this for me."
"We're family, Wayne. It's what we do."
"I don't leave things like this alone," Wayne replied, leaving no room in his tone for debate. "You do me a good turn, I do one for you."
Clair wanted to protest, that much was clear, but she didn't do so, instead sufficing with a simple "Thank you."
"It's no problem. Now, let's get that generator unloaded."
The generator was a good bit bigger than the ones Wayne was used to using to power the Minutemens' settlements, but not so big that it wasn't easily man-portable with an able team. The main issue was wiring it to the house, as it was very clear early on that Remnant and Earth had two very divergent approaches to wiring stuff together. He wasn't much help on that front, for once, but at the very least, he was good at lifting the heavier bits and bobs so Clair and Roe could set everything up properly. It took a little less than an hour, and even if it took a bit of creative jury-rigging, the house actually had power. A nice change.
While the food, or what he could scrounge up of it, was cooking, Wayne decided to check and see if his computer was working again. He doubted it would be, if he was right about the distance between Remnant and the Commonwealth, but it was worth a try. While his computer was able to connect to all of the bits and bobs he had throughout the house, he couldn't connect to the servers that allowed him to send messages back and forth to the different settlements.
"Dammit…" he muttered under his breath, before turning the computer back off and returning to the meal. He didn't have anything fresh, unfortunately- everyone was just gonna have to make do with salisbury steak, instamash, and Nuka-Cola. At least one of those things didn't taste like absolute shit.
"So, if this is your home…" Clair said, as he walked back into the common room, "...damn, the Commonwealth must suck."
"It's certainly a step back from here. At least you guys have running water, trains, an actual functioning military force, walled and fully functional cities, I could go on all day," Wayne replied. "That being said, this works for me. I never was much for the big city. Hell, give me a cabin in the woods anyday."
"There's something to be said for a short spell isolation," Roe agreed. "It does wonders for the soul. I could stand to spend some time away from camp, myself, especially with what's been going on here, recently."
"Oh?"
"The big plan Adam's dragged us into," Grei, a young Faunus woman with what appeared to be antennae of some kind, explained. "The High Leader hasn't even been informed, and if Adam has his way, she'll never know. His heart is in the right place, and his goals are righteous, but there's whispers in the camp that he may be going too far, especially by allying with that wench you've been acquainting yourself with."
Wayne shrugged. "Everyone involved in this seems like an idiot. They had me kill a guy in his own apartment just to steal his clothes."
Clair sighed, exasperated. "So that's where you went."
"Yep. Here, drinks."
Wayne dug into the fridge and pulled out a trio of Nuka-Colas, tossing them to the assembled White Fang members one by one, before pulling a Vim out of the back for himself. He always preferred the latter. Less radioactive sting on the way down.
"Is this supposed to burn?" Roe asked, drawing Wayne's attention to the deer Faunus, whose Aura seemed to be flickering in and out of color, particularly around his head. "It's a bit unpleasant."
"Huh… yeah, that's not good," Grei agreed, going through much the same process. "Tastes fine, but man, that's weird."
"I like it," Clair said, in a way that made it clear she was lying to make Wayne feel better about his 'native' drinks, before taking another sip.
"Yeah, the radiation would do that for you, I guess," Wayne explained, and was immediately answered with a loud spluttering as Clair spit her drink halfway across the room.
"Radiation!?" she exclaimed, "Wayne, you drink radioactive soda!?"
"... yeah?" Wayne understood the shock, but really, a bit of radiation poisoning never hurt anybody too badly, and if it did, there was always Radaway.
"What. The fuck?" Grei asked.
"That is rather concerning. I can't imagine that would be good for you, especially as it seems you don't have an Aura of your own," Roe said, gently placing his drink on the table in front of him. At least he was being polite about it. "It's not strong, mind- it's just having a noticeable effect on my Aura. We should be fine, but you shouldn't be exposing yourself to so much radiation on a regular basis."
"I live in the world created by the fallout of nuclear bombs," Wayne explained. "Everything I see, touch, and taste is in some way irradiated. This is probably the least irradiated stuff I've ever been able to get a hold of that isn't water or beer."
"What about your food?" Roe asked. "Surely-"
"Also irradiated."
"Your clothes-"
"Irradiated."
"Is there anything you own that isn't irradiated?"
Wayne slowly leaned forward, motioning with his half-empty bottle of Vim to the gun locker. "Roe. I have multiple firearms that shoot irradiated bullets. I have a man-portable nuclear mortar."
"A what!?" Clair protested. "Wayne, are you serious?"
"I'm shooting crabs the size of small buildings, chameleons that can bifurcate a man one-handed, radiation zombies that heal whenever exposed to more radiation, skinless, mangy irradiated dogs, mosquitos with proboscises as large as swords, super wasps, nine to ten foot tall mutants that can lift cars one-handed, massive irradiated crocodiles, salamanders, anglerfish, bears, horseflies, scorpionflies, lobsters, crayfish, mole rats, scorpions, dogs, wolves, hermit crabs, gorillas, two-headed rabid elk with razor-sharp antlers, ALL of which are also irradiated and huge, trained soldiers in heavy suits of power armor that are only slightly smaller than mine, crazy bastards hopped up on every conceivable known drug in existence and carrying various small and heavy armaments, gangsters, homicidal maniacs that worship radiation and nuclear weapons, crazy people living in the woods and setting traps for anyone who passes by, cannibals, paranoid locals, and robots that look like people and carry state of the art laser weapons…"
With every word that Wayne spoke in rapid succession, his White Fang compatriots grew more and more visibly uncomfortable, until he'd finally finished rattling off the list. Frankly, he left a few things out, mainly because he wasn't exactly sure what the fuck the Cabots or Mirelurk Kings counted as, but he was already getting winded as it was.
"Now," he continued, pointing his bottle at the assembled, "do you understand why I think I might need to throw a nuke at something?" With that, he finished the bottle of Vim in one, long swig, and tossed it into the box he used as an impromptu trashcan.
"You know what? Yeah. I think I get it," Clair agreed.
"Brothers, you sound like you've been through hell," Grei mused. "What the hell kind of place are you from? Vacuo?"
Wayne wasn't in a particularly good mood today, but he didn't really have much to do. It was mostly just waiting for the dance so that he and Cinder could get to work. With that in mind, maybe getting his troubles off his chest to a captive audience might do him some good.
"Gimme just a second, and I'll tell you all about it," he said, pulling one of the chairs from by the fridge over and placing it across from the couch. "This is gonna be a long one."
Meanwhile
Somewhere on the Atlantic Coast
Piper Wright hated the water. Not water in general, mind, purified water was fantastic, but the open water in the Wasteland tended to contain all kinds of nasties. Mirelurks. Gatorclaws. Swan—she still wasn't sure what Wayne was trying to prove, dragging Preston out to kill that Behemoth, but kill it he did.
She'd heard from him that there were shrimp-like creatures in Far Harbor called 'Fog Crawlers' as big as a Behemoth, but she'd yet to see one herself. She hoped she wouldn't have to, the last thing she needed was for this dingy boat to capsize in the middle of the irradiated Atlantic.
Wayne had told MacCready that he'd be in touch within a week, and that was four days ago, now. Nobody had heard from him, and that was before his apparent neighbor, 'Old Longfellow' came down yesterday and told them that his entire house had gone missing in the middle of the night. That wasn't the sort of thing that just happened in the Commonwealth, even if there was plenty of weird shit that went down in the witching hour in the Wasteland.
MacCready had been the first to hear from Longfellow, and he'd rallied the troops almost immediately. Piper was at Jamaica Plain when she heard, and she'd come running. Wayne was her friend; sure, he wasn't the greatest person in the world, but at the same time, Piper couldn't bring herself to judge him too harshly. Poor guy had lost his wife, his friend, and his son within rapid succession of each other. Piper definitely didn't like Danse, but he'd deserved far better than what he got, and something about that whole experience had deeply wounded Wayne in a way that not even Kellogg had managed. While Piper wasn't upset that he went to the Railroad to try and turn things around, his heart wasn't in it. He wasn't doing it because he cared about Synths. He did it out of spite. For his 'son', for the Brotherhood, for the Institute, and for the Commonwealth itself, and he did it by saving people who needed saving and bringing back the Minutemen to boot.
Wayne wasn't a good man, Piper knew he'd get pissy if you even insinuated such, but damn if he didn't act like one.
A posse like the one they'd formed wasn't one that would roll out for just any ordinary Vault Dweller, that was for damn sure. Every one of Wayne's travelling companions had dropped everything to go looking for him, no exceptions. Nick, probably on his eight cigarette in the past hour, drove the boat, while Preston and his laser musket kept watch over the waterline, his hat inside the cabin to avoid getting blown out with the wind. Cait sat against the entrance to the cabin, worry evident on her face, while Curie sat next to her, doing her best to play therapist for the former addict—another oxymoron, Wayne the boozehound helping a chem addict to get clean, then catching a chem addiction in the aftermath— while Deacon kept a close eye on them both, wearing a long yellow raincoat and an absurd-looking floppy hat. Strong, the big mutant son of a bitch, had been right on Piper's heels when she passed Covenant, ready to go on the warpath and, direct quote, 'smash everything on puny island until give Wayne back.' Admirable sentiment, even though Piper highly doubted anyone on the island had him and his whole damn house captive. Hell, even Hancock was acting unusually somber. Partly out of respect for Cait, and partly out of acknowledgement of the gravity of the situation, he'd left the chems at home. Codsworth, audibly fretting and worrying for the entire trip, had been strapped to the floor of the boat for his own safety by Nick and Deacon, and MacCready…
MacCready just sat there, staring at the water. He looked angry, and Piper didn't understand why. She'd always gotten the sense that his smooth operator persona was just that, a persona, an act, a facade that he put up to try and hide who he was from the world at large, but she'd never seen him without the mask. She'd heard about Lucy, even if Vadim and MacCready hadn't intended to make that information public; she'd spent enough time at the Dugout Inn to do some eavesdropping. Wayne hadn't talked much about it, but it was obvious he knew, because while they hit it off quickly, there was a point where both men started to soften up in each other's company. Just as well, because Wayne was a mean son of a bitch beforehand. The interview had given her a very real taste of that when she'd asked him what kept him going, his advice for the people of the Commonwealth who had suffered so much under the Institute's invisible fist.
"Find the people responsible" he'd said, calmly, coldly, like he was reading it from a script, "and make them pay. Simple as that."
She'd pretended to understand. Frankly, she got the sentiment. But it was the way he said it, and the way he said pretty much everything, that scared her shitless. The man talked like the living dead. He was a walking radstorm powered by hatred, vengeance, and pain, and yet he never raised his voice if he wasn't hitting the Psycho. Shit, the confrontation with Sinjin ended well enough, but it still gave Piper nightmares, the way he calmly told the crime boss that every single person in that room was going to die. Some of the goons had tried to surrender. Wayne followed them and killed them anyway. Said they'd just go back to their old ways, but Piper had chewed him out afterwards, not that it did any good. He'd just given Kent a pat on the back and sent him on his way, and went back to Sanctuary to stew for a few days before heading back to Railroad HQ. He left Piper behind, took Deacon with him. Never said a word to Piper about the lecture, acted like it never happened.
What a freaky guy her Blue was.
"We almost there?" Hancock asked, looking over the top of the boat. "Can't see shit in this fog, don't know how the hell he got out here."
"I can see through it just fine," Nick assured him. "We're getting close."
"Taking your word for it, Nick," Preston said, leaning against the cupola he'd been manning for the entire ride up to now. "I just hope we find something."
"Monsieur Wayne is perfectly capable of protecting himself," Curie said, in her outrageously thick French accent. How she retained that in her Synth body, Piper didn't know, but it made understanding the woman a nightmare. "He would have called us if he needed help, no?"
Before anyone could tell her that no, Wayne wouldn't have bothered any of them, especially not in his state the last time they saw him, Codsworth had stepped up to do what he did best. "Of course, Miss Curie," the Mr. Handy said, chipper as ever. "No doubt he's just having a little case of the doldrums. No doubt a visit from his compatriots will set him right as rain."
"Right fuckin' optimistic you are, Codsworth," Cait muttered, seeming almost to shrink further into herself. She and Wayne had hit the rocks hard when he started taking chems, and the two had been frosty long after the argument right in the middle of Sanctuary's main street. Wayne, for the first time in a very long time, had been monumentally pissed off, going so far as to actually yell at Codsworth. Usually, the little bot was the only thing around that ever got the sweet talk from him, but the poor guy had gotten both barrels when he tried to step in on Cait's behalf. Nobody was very happy with Wayne after that one. At least, for once, he'd manned up and apologized about the whole thing, to all of them. Even Cait. He kept his chem use mostly private after that, as if they wouldn't notice, but Cait did, and they hardly ever were in each other's company after that. As such, it was all the more surprising to find her at the cottage by the sea that held the only seaworthy vessel they had access to. The Nakanos were kind enough to lend the boat out again; they said it was the least they could do for the man who saved their daughter.
Piper turned her attention to Deacon, who had been unusually quiet. The man almost always had something to say, but he'd not spoken at all for the entirety of the trip.
"Cap for your thoughts?" she asked.
Deacon shrugged. "Just an odd coincidence, is all. You remember the teleporter at the Lighthouse?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Drummer Boy was out there the other day. Just got word for him before we headed out. It'd exploded. The console was still up, but all messed up. It had transmitted… something, but it had no grid square, no geopositioning, no nothing. It just said something had gone somewhere. That was it. The log said four days ago."
"Do you think-" Piper started, only to be cut off.
"No way. The thing's been out of commission since we blew up the Institute. It was programmed for one way travel, no returns. We had to hijack the Institute's own teleporter relays to get us in the second time."
Piper sighed. "I don't think this is a coincidence."
"There's no way of knowing. I got Tom looking at it, but he said the systems are fucked. He'll do what he can."
Piper nodded, pulling her cap down over her face as an irradiated sea breeze swept over the boat, drenching her front with water.
"Strong hate boat," Strong grunted, "Strong ready to walk again."
"Aren't we all, big guy, aren't we all…" Hancock replied. "I'm not looking forward to meeting the locals. The wildlife, or the people."
"I think we'll be fine, so long as we stick together," Preston said, ever the quintessential Minuteman. "Between all of us, we can search that island top to bottom in no time."
"And we've got all the gear to set up the connection to the Minuteman frequency," Deacon said. "Once MacCready and I get it set up, we'll be able to get in touch with Tom and see how the teleporter's looking. Till then, Preston's got the right idea. Scour Far Harbor and look for any sign of what happened to our guy. Talk to everyone, Acadia, the Harbormen, even the Children of Atom."
"All due respect, Deacon," Preston interjected, "I'd rather take my chances with these 'fog crawlers' than deal with the Children of Atom."
"I know their type," Piper spoke up, a bit apprehensive, but if it meant finding Wayne, it was worth a shot. "I dunno if you all heard the story, but I was able to sneak my way into their good graces back in the day. I could probably pull off another 'vision from Atom' again, oooooh, spooky."
"No," MacCready said, the first words he'd said since the boat had left the Nakano residence. "Not worth the risk. Besides, it's not likely they know anything. Wayne would have never talked to the Children about anything important, so he'd have had no reason to be there unless they took him to their little hole in the ground in the middle of the night. We'll search the rest of the island first. Then, we all go talk to them as a group, make sure they understand we're not to be lied to. If he's in there… well, we all know what we gotta do, yeah?"
"Sure..." Hancock said cautiously. "But, ah, maybe we don't disturb the already fragile peace on this little slice of paradise, yeah? The Children seem to love ghouls. Let me talk to 'em first, see if this lowly 'prophet of Atom' can't get a lead on where our intrepid pre-war relic might have disappeared to."
"You really think you're gonna be able to win over the Children of Atom. You. Really?" MacCready asked, incredulous.
"I know I can, kid. This old man's picked up a few tricks in his walk around the block," Hancock assured him. "Gonna need a quick… pick me up when we get into town. Soothes the nerves, you know."
"Cait is literally sitting right there," Piper mumbled, just loud enough for Hancock to hear and feel a little bit bad about the whole thing, judging by his expression.
"Look," Preston started, leaning over the cupola to look at the back of the boat. "I know we have our differences, especially considering… recent events. Fact of the matter is, Wayne's a friend to all of us. Even if we're not exactly on the best of terms, he stuck his neck out for all of us in his own way, no matter what, and if it were one of us that disappeared, you know he'd have come running. It's the least we can do to return the favor."
"Strong agree with human," Strong stated, glowering at the assembled in a way that made Piper's blood run cold. Even if he was mostly a friendly mutie, he certainly was scary. "Strong need Wayne to find milk. Strong kill puny humans on island if they hide Wayne from Strong!"
"Monsieur Strong, I don't believe this mi-" Curie started, only to be cut off by Deacon.
"Don't even try. Seriously," he warned her. "Don't." Turning back to Strong, the Railroad agent offered the mutant a thumbs up and a smile. "Sure thing, buddy. We'll all get a nice, big bottle of the milk one of these days."
"Strong share with you humans. You humans would make good super mutants. Even metal man."
"I'll take that as a compliment," Nick said. "I can see the lights of the Harbor now. Be on your best behavior, and for the love of God, Strong, don't kill anybody unless we tell you to."
"Strong kill humans if humans annoy Strong."
"This is gonna be a long fucking night," Cait stated, far more cantankerous than her usual self as she stood to her feet and pulled her jacket tighter around her frame. The air out here was far colder than that of the Commonwealth- they were all pretty bundled up in preparation. "Let's just get this over with so we can go find him and go home."
"Let's hope it's that simple," MacCready replied, pulling his rifle off his back and cycling the bolt. Piper was starting to think that he wasn't at all hoping for a peaceful night out.