Nora POV
It's been three days since I last saw Seras, though I had certainly seen the results of her work. The Gunners at Galaxy News were wiped out, literally, to the last man. I had never seen MacCready so happy, yet so disappointed. The latter emotion stemming from not being there to witness or participate in their deaths. The drained and desiccated corpses I had found there were proof enough that it was her handiwork.
The Minutemen scouts had heard reports of a massive black Mirelurk Queen sporadically throughout the Commonwealth, and the Brotherhood had been hot on its heels. It almost seemed like a game of tag: Seras would pop up in one spot, make some noise, then the Brotherhood would come flying in trying to find her. I had a squad of Minutemen posted in the hills to the north of the path that lead back to the Nuka Transit Center in case she went that way, but she never did. I was starting to get worried. Worried that the Institute would take an interest in her. Worried that she would hurt someone innocent. Worried that, as much as they had gotten on my nerves recently, she would finally destroy the Brotherhood.
And wasn't that a problematic thought in and of itself. Something with not only the means, but the motive to wipe out the Brotherhood of Steel. I heard from rumors that they did a lot of good in the D.C. area before coming here, which was strange considering how… angry it seemed like Maxson was at anything he deemed 'unnatural'. Danse had said that even non-feral ghouls were subject to the Brotherhood's wrath. Pretty much every ghoul I had met that wasn't trying to eat me had been at the very least amicable. Not necessarily friendly per se, but they were basically normal humans.
The Castle lacked the usual hustle and bustle of Minuteman operations, mostly because I had sent everyone who was able on patrol looking for Seras. I wanted to find her before the Brotherhood did, mainly to avoid any further bloodshed and to fix whatever caused this sudden disappearing act that she had pulled. She mentioned that the current Elder looked like someone she had been close with in the past, one of the Elder's progenitors.
Had it really affected her that much? From the short interaction I had with her aboard the Prydwen, it seemed that she was for lack of a better word 'unused' to feeling normal emotions. Maybe she overreacted and left to sort out her own feelings? Somehow I get the feeling that the current Brotherhood wasn't living up to the standards that Seras had. The situations was likely to get infinitely worse if she found out that he was, to put it bluntly, a bigot. She didn't seem the type to abide by bigotry in any form.
"Still no word on your girlfriend, General." I heard the familiar voice of Preston Garvey from behind me. He had taken to calling Seras that in pretty much every interaction we had about her. At first it had been annoying, but I had grown used to that moniker.
"From what a certain guy at Sanctuary told me, she doesn't exactly swing that way." I retorted. "Neither do I, for that matter." I flipped the switch on the display, shutting the holographic map down. It was a gem that had taken a week to excavate from Fort Hagen, but it had been well worth it. Sensors placed around the Commonwealth that fed real time data to the map. We only had a dozen sensors at the moment, and I had been working on scavenging the parts to make more from the Revere Array north of here. It had been slow going, both due to the mutants that seemed to always be infesting the place, and due to the fact that most of the proper equipment had either broken down or been salvaged long ago.
I let out an explosive sigh and stepped away from the command center. The small shack where the radio antenna had been was upgraded significantly, now able to broadcast beyond the Commonwealth even all the way up to Far Harbor. The aforementioned holomap was the central feature, with the antenna taking up one of the corners. There were several stations monitoring multiple radio frequencies that the Minutemen used: one for routine patrols, one for non-routine patrols, one for emergencies, one for artillery bombardments, and one that she had just recently set up for reports about Seras.
The last one had been the most active, with a report coming in every few hours about one of the scouts spotting her or her enormous pet. I didn't understand it. What was she hoping to accomplish by just wandering around in a seemingly aimless fashion? Was there some sort of larger scheme in play that I couldn't see?
Seras POV
It had been almost painfully easy infiltrating the Prydwen. Arthur had a skeleton crew running the ship, almost all of his soldiers were out looking for me. I had also taken the opportunity to dig up all the information I could on their organization. What I found was honestly rather confusing. They elevated Roger Maxson to near deity status, revering him as not only the founder of their organization, but the greatest High Elder to ever even exist. Once I managed to pick through the flowered words and over exaggerations, I saw that there were not many factual records from that time still around. It was sad, really. They either lacked the knowledge of their founding, or had it stricken from the record.
I didn't know which was worse. I powered down the terminal, and headed for the observation deck where I knew that Arthur liked to stay. The illusion I had wrapped around me made it so that anybody I passed wouldn't notice the slightest thing off. I was effectively invisible. With a small hop I descended the ladder down one level. Through the open doorway I saw Arthur, leaning against the railing and staring out over the wasteland.
"Nice day we're having, isn't it?" I asked cordially as I moved to lean back against the railing next to him. The look of surprise was definitely worth the last few days I had spent drawing out as many of his soldiers as I could.
"Guards!" He yelled, making me scoff.
"Do you take me for a fool? Your guards cannot hear you." I took joy in his enraged expression. "No one outside of this room can hear us, and anyone looking in will see you as you were, leaning against the railing and staring out into the wasteland." I adopted a mirthful smile. "And would you relax already? If I had wanted to kill you I could have done so at any time in the last six hours I've been aboard your ship."
Arthur was far from content with the revelation, but he sighed in resignation. "Very well, do what you must and get off my ship." He purposefully faced away from me, as if it would prevent me from reading his expression.
I decided cutting to the chase was the best course of action. "Your organization. What is its ultimate goal? I don't want to hear the regurgitated drivel that you tell your soldiers. I want to hear what you believe the Brotherhood exists for." I spoke concisely so as to not give him any wiggle room to try to deflect the question.
He licked his lips nervously, and remained silent for a solid ten seconds. "The Brotherhood was created to protect humanity from the dangers of technology. Energy weapons, nuclear armaments, power armor. Anything and everything that could be dangerous for the average untrained civilian to use. We appropriate it and either secure it away or use it for ourselves to make our job more efficient." An exasperated sigh left his lips. "But I believe that we are protectors of the common man. Even if that mean that we must protect them from themselves sometimes."
I hummed noncommittally. About as adequate an answer as I expected from him. "And the whole spiel that about 'abominations' and the like? I perused your archive for a while and never came across anything like that until entries starting about five years ago." I could tell that I had struck a nerve with that question, given the way that he tensed up.
"Byproducts of the Great War. Mutated creatures that are a stain upon humanity's history. They exist solely to remind humanity of their faults and mistakes of the past." Were his carefully crafted words.
That was about what I expected. "I've met ghouls and super mutants with more humanity in them than some humans. Just because they are mutants doesn't make them any less human. What Roger told me about the F.E.V. was disturbing, but just because they are byproducts of the virus does not mean they do not have the same human thoughts, emotions, and feelings that you do." He seemed to perk up when I mentioned his ancestor.
"Roger? As in Roger Maxson?" He turned and locked eyes with me for the first time since I had come here. "You knew him?" There was an almost, dare I say, wonder in his eyes that had been absent every other time I had seen them.
My smile brightened. "I ran into him about a month after his wife died. They were losing numbers due to raider attacks and I assisted in protecting them on their trip to someplace safe. I was with his group for around four months, and in that time I had grown to care for him, and him for me." I felt my voice adopt a solemn tone. "He didn't even care that I wasn't human." Unbidden, a smile formed on my face at the memory.
"What was his wife's name?" Arthur asked suddenly, prompting me to fix him with a confused look. "Everything you just said can be read about in the Codex, so I'm asking you for a bit of information that isn't on there." I conceded that he had a point, given that I had indeed read about the stuff I told him on his beloved 'Codex'.
"Isabel." I replied. "Isabel Leigh Foster-Maxson" I added her maiden name for emphasis. During our time together, we had talked about a lot. Given that he was still grieving over his wife, that was his go to topic of conversation pretty often. "She was an orthodontist, and had a miscarriage before getting together with Roger." Arthur was stood there with a surprised look on his face. No doubt he expected me to be bluffing. "Shall I continue?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
His emotions were a miasma of surprise, fear, and… happiness? "No, that won't be necessary. I believe you." He paused for a moment, as if unsure of what to say. "What was he like?"
"He was…" I hummed in thought. "He was a good man. He cared about the soldiers under his command, their families, his son, his late wife. He was also fierce in battle. I remember the time we had to detour around Fresno and we ended up in Sequoia National Park. It had been practically untouched by the bombs, only now just suffering the effects of the nuclear winter that had started. It still looked magnificent. Unfortunately it seemed that a group of raiders had the same idea and ambushed us as we were setting up camp." I let out a short laugh at the memory. "I remember that he didn't have his rifle on him, so he ripped the bumper off of a nearby car and used it as a club. He turned the tide of battle practically on his own while I defended the civilians. That was…" 'The first time we made love' went unsaid. "Despite that, he also cared about every human life he took. He saw killing as a burden, and yet nowadays people do it so wantonly they could practically make it a sporting event."
Exhaling a breathy sigh, I added. "I didn't really want to kill any of your soldiers. In fact, you'll notice that I haven't harmed a single one, aside from the one that killed himself via detonating his fusion core." Granted, in the heat of the moment I probably would have, but he didn't need to know that. Most of my banter had been just that after all. Banter. I love the chase more than the kill.
"Given the reports our scouts have sent in, and against my better judgment, I feel inclined to believe you." Arthur spoke softly.
I felt that he still didn't like me very much, so I offered an ice breaker. "If you still feel any animosity towards me, I'll let you shoot me in the head. Deal?" The way his eyes practically bulged out of their sockets nearly sent me into a giggling fit.
"That- I- um-" It seemed that I had rendered him speechless, so I opted to take my leave.
"Oh, I just remembered. You wouldn't happen to know where Nora is, would you?" I asked, shooting him a cheeky grin.
Maxson, it seemed, did indeed know where my estranged companion was. "She's at Fort Independence. That's the Minutemen headquarters." He pointed at a structure in the distance that appeared to be roughly shaped like a pentagon.
I bowed my head respectfully. "Thank you, Elder Maxson." The word 'Elder' was spoken with a small bit of mirth. I faded into the shadows, finally departing the Prydwen.