Jack Parsons and the Underground Escapade
Though the three musketeers were now down to two musketeers, they did not have much time to mourn the loss of their stalwart robotic companion. Codsworth's journey down the escalator had alerted at least one enemy who seemed to be coming to investigate. Or at least, Jack assumed he was an enemy. Realizing they were caught somewhat off guard, Jack decided to improvise. He made eye contact with Preston Garvey, pointed at the door, made a motion at him to take cover on the wall just inside of it, and to jump the unknown combatant as soon as he crossed the threshold. Preston simply looked confused.
He realized, with some chagrin, that Preston was not up-to-date on the hand motions of the various special operations units of the United States military.
"Hide behind the door and jump him!" he whispered, with a growing sense of urgency. This time, Preston got the message.
"What's that? Who's out there?" came a grouchy voice from within, as footsteps grew louder. Out of options, Jack hid behind the remains of Codsworth, laying supine. His training kicked in and he slowed his breathing. He had been in life-or-death situations before, even ones where stealth was critical. And that was against trained enemies. If what he had seen of the wasteland so far was true everywhere, he could give almost anyone out there a covert ass-kicking.
Into the room walked a man who Preston would know as a ghoul, but Jack would have almost no frame of reference for. He looked like a walking zombie, with permanent radiation scarring all over his face and an unnaturally scratchy voice. Jack Parsons decided to ask about it later, when their lives did not hang in the balance. It was time.
"Now!" he shouted, from behind the departed Mister Handy.
Preston drove the butt of his rifle as hard as he could into the intruder's neck. The ghoul crumpled, gasping for air. He would never get back up. Then, Jack wanted to know what the hell that things was. Preston explained the basics of ghoul anatomy, which Jack accepted, somewhat incredulously. This post-war world was turning out even weirder than expected.
The benefit was that they had subdued an enemy without immediately alerting his friends, and said enemy was carrying a .45 caliber submachine gun. Jack grabbed it, and inspected it. The gun seemed to be just the sort that some of the infantry carried during the war. It had also been favored by Pre-War gangsters. Jack took a moment to examine the ghoul. He was dressed in a dirty pinstriped suit, and before he had been killed, a brown fedora. That had flown off during his fall, of course.
"Who are these people?" Jack asked.
"They call themselves the Triggermen. They model themselves after some goons from before the war, I think. All I know is that they mostly stuck to Goodneighbor. Looks like they're branching out," Preston explained.
"Well, the good news is that they don't seem to be fond of body armor. That'll make my job easier," Jack stated as he locked and loaded, "You ready to do this?"
Preston grinned and nodded, and began cranking up his laser musket.
With their combined military expertise, they would go on to make short work of the rest of the Triggermen. The fight lead them deep into a subway tunnel, which turned into a Vault. Jack Parsons felt a pang of fear, standing in front of the Vault door. He knew that it was irrational to fear an unrelated Vault, but even the sight of the massive cog-shaped blast cover reminded him of that worst day of his life. He had to take a few breaths before plugging his Pip-Boy into the interface. He was going to press forward, for Shaun.
It was not long before they encountered the object of their search. In a cavernous vault atrium, being pestered by a thug named apparently named Dino, the Synth Detective was locked away. Preston Garvey cranked up his laser musket as quietly as he could, breathed in deeply, aimed down the sights, and pulled the trigger. The laser burst struck the unfortunate gangster in the back of the head. His entire body lit up and converted to ash, on the spot. That happened sometimes with laser-based weaponry, Jack recalled. It had happened from time to time, during the war. Made an awful mess for the families of the soldier who was hit.
Upon reaching Dino, Jack poked through his smoking hot remains with the butt of his submachine gun, until he found a holotape buried in the pile. It contained a password to a computer which would unlock the room which housed the detective.
What stuck out about the detective the most was his yellow eyes. More than the half-decayed robotic face, more than the old trenchcoat and fedora, more than the voice that sounded weary of the world and cynical about people, the detective had yellow eyes. They seemed to make him look more inquisitive, like his eyes picked up on more than a normal human's did. And hey, perhaps they did, thought Jack. There was a lot that he didn't know about this new world.
The one common thread he had found was that everything seemed like a caricature of something from the previous, Pre-War era. Of course, they only seemed like caricatures to him, the one who actually knew what the original things were like. For example there was Preston, a caricature of the revolutionary minuteman, ready to defend his home in a moment. Then, there were the gangsters that they had so easily dispatched, caricatures of Pre-War mobsters. Finally, in front of them stood a caricature of a Pre-War detective. It was as though all of these people found one or two characteristics of the old world and clung on to them for dear life, not really knowing what those things were truly like. It was as if the entire world just wanted to go back to "the way things were," or at least find a way to press forward while holding on to antebellum ideals. For Jack Parsons, it simply meant that everything he encountered so far served as a gut-wrenching reminder of the past.
"Nice to meet you two, though perhaps the circumstances could be better. Name's Nick Valentine."
"We know who you are," came Jack's curt reply.