Jack Parsons and the Unexpected Guests
Jack found himself hammering planks over a window in Sanctuary Hills. The handy Sturges was holding the other end of the plank, keeping it steady. He had decided to go back to Sanctuary at the request of the refugees he met. At the time, he couldn't say why he hadn't simply plunged onward to Diamond City in his rusty new suit of Power Armor. They just looked so helpless, like elementary schoolers who had just missed a bus. He knew that Nora would have wanted him to help out where he could. So he started rebuilding his old neighborhood with the help of his new companions: Sturges, who seemed to be able to build anything, the Longs, a heartbroken family that was willing to learn how to farm, and Preston Garvey, formerly of the Commonwealth Minutemen. He patrolled the town, on guard for any threat. And he complained loudly whenever it began raining.
There was another member of the party, Mama Murphy, but she mostly just sat in her chair and asked people for drugs. Jack Parsons and her would get along, if he didn't want to keep any drugs he found to himself.
Jack had worked out with the settlers that once the defenses of Sanctuary could be built up, Preston would accompany him to Diamond City, to guard him and to tell the town that the Minutemen were back in business. Jack didn't know how he felt about these Minutemen, especially since there was only one of them, but he would appreciate an extra gun on the roads. A fancily clad musketeer, a covert operative in a bright blue vault suit, and a flame throwing robot? Sounded like a recipe for success.
They finished nailing the board in. The window was now sealed off from any potential threat coming from the southeast. Things were starting to shape up. They had a well, some crops, guard posts, and minor fortifications. Everybody had a bed to sleep on, or at least a sleeping bag.
"Things are starting to feel like home!" cheered Sturges. "What do you think, Jack?"
"I'm happy for you five, but I don't know if this place can be home again," came the reply.
"What do you mean?" Sturges inquired.
"This place, Sanctuary. It was my home a long time ago," said Jack, kinda cryptically. At this point, Sturges was beginning to connect the dots.
"Wait, so… you came to us in a Vault suit, and you said that Sanctuary used to be your home… How is that possible?" he asked. The mechanic's eyes were wide with curiosity. He was obsessed with how things worked, and in the man standing across from him, he saw a true piece of work.
"I don't want to talk about it…" Jack began, but after a few seconds of silence he decided to give a little more information. He didn't know why he was being so vulnerable, but he thought it had to do with how helpless these people were just a week ago. Despite his better instincts, he was beginning to feel the urge to protect this band of broken misfits.
"You could probably gather that I had a military background. I was a retired sergeant living in the Commonwealth before the bombs fell. Seems weird right?" he asked, but Sturges just looked at him, eyes wide with curiosity.
"I… had a life here, I guess. I had a wife, and a son, and a robotic butler. I was 34 when the bombs dropped. I guess I'm still 34 in some ways, but in other ways I'm over 200. I'm still trying to figure it out."
Sturges ignored the emotional weight of what Jack had just said, and inquired how exactly he had survived in his current condition. Jack explained the basics of cryogenics, and made an inward vow not to open up to any commonwealth settlers again.
From the corner of his eye he saw a flash of green. Then a flash of red. However, it was not due to premature Christmas decorations. Some kind of green giants, two of them, were on the edge of Sanctuary Hills, attempting to raid it. The red flash that Jack saw came from Preston opening fire on them.
"We've got company!" Garvey shouted as he started to crank his musket for another shot.
What the hell, Jack thought, as he looked at the approaching threat. Within a second he had his 10mm sidearm out and trained on the nearest enemy. It was roughly humanoid. However, it was bigger, greener, meaner, and less likely to attend tea parties than any human counterpart. He would later learn that they were called Super Mutants, and were the result of an evil science project, more or less. All he knew now was that they were a threat. He hollered at Sturges and the Longs to head for cover inside while he and Preston fought.
He took aim and fired, the 10mm bullets barely piercing the thick skin of the mutant. It did, however, slow him down, giving Preston enough time to crank up his next shot and blow the thing's head clean off. Before Jack had time to compliment the minuteman, the other mutant was in melee distance, with a broken board in hand. The giant swung with all its might and a feral battle cry. Jack ducked beneath a horizontal blow in the nick of time, but it caused him to lose his footing and fall straight onto his rear end. How embarrassing, he thought, I'm going to get killed after getting knocked to my ass.
The Super mutant brought the board back for another blow. He swung forward, but just before he could smash our hero's head in, the board met buzzsaw. Buzzsaw won. Codsworth had come and placed his sharpest mechanical arm in between the board and Jack's head. The mutant, now armed with a board's handle instead of a full board, turned tail to run away. The covert ops specialist regained his senses and fired a couple shots with his pistol into the back of the giant's knee. This brought him down. Preston Garvey then finished him off with a third blast from the laser musket.
"Looks like we make a pretty good team!" Preston mused. Jack scowled.
"My robot should have gotten here sooner."
Whether Codsworth took offense or not, he merely hovered in place, humming some old-timey tune.
The incident motivated the team to procure materials for and construct a couple of automatic machine-gun turrets in vicinity of the neighborhood. Thus, Preston Garvey of the Commonwealth Minutemen felt it was safe enough for him to venture to diamond city. Thus the three musketeers, of whom one was literally a musketeer, set out for that Great Green Jewel of the Commonwealth. Their most recent battle, however, had convinced Jack Parsons to stay firmly in his Power Armor.