It always shocked Nate how fast deathclaws were.

The mighty horned lizards looked like the fastest pace they could manage was a brisk walk, but the way they were able to cover vast distances at incredible speed was uncanny. The deathclaw in the street up ahead had noticed his and Piper's scent and was now barrelling rapidly towards them even as they fled, bellowing loudly in clear anticipation of an easy meal.

Whatever happened, Nate swore it would be anything but easy – and if the worst came to the worst, he hoped Piper's homemade camouflage goop would at least give the monster indigestion. He hefted his rifle but didn't even attempt to turn and fire it; the deathclaw would tear him in half within seconds if he tried. Instead, he pointed towards the nearest ruined building, a storefront with a relatively intact structure. "In there!" he cried, and ducked into the doorway after pushing Piper inside ahead of him. He could almost feel the deathclaw's hot, meaty breath on the back of his neck as it charged, shoving one of its forelimbs through the open doorway and flailing it around wildly. When it didn't manage to connect with anything, it withdrew its arm and began pacing back and forth, occasionally looking through the front window to try to catch a glimpse of its intended morning snack.

Behind the store's counter, Nate crouched down, trying to keep as still as possible while Piper sat beside him looking equally as unwilling to move, her eyes wide with fear. "What are we going to do?" she whispered, her breath hitching in her throat as she did so.

Nate was about to reply when his eye was caught by what was on the shelves behind the counter: bottles of alcohol.

Lots of alcohol.

Yanking his ruined jacket from his pack, he pulled his combat knife from his belt and began slicing it into ragged strips of cloth before grabbing an armful of vodka and whiskey bottles, popping them open and soaking the strips of cloth before stuffing them back into the necks of each bottle and setting one alight with the lighter he kept in his pocket. He stood up, and to Piper's obvious horror yelled "Hey, asshole! I'm in here!", waving his arms vigorously as he did so to try to get the beast's attention.

Sure enough, the deathclaw whipped its head around, its baleful glare fixing itself on him before it roared, a searing wave of blood-scented air washing over Nate while he hurled the bottle right into the monster's face, the glass shattering as it impacted the tough scales and began spraying burning liquid in all directions. The deathclaw howled as the fire ate into its skin, pawing desperately at its face to try to make it stop. Nate threw another fiery missile at it, and then another and another until the monster visibly gave up and began slouching away almost sulkily, having clearly decided that two small morsels were not worth being burned on the nose.

When Piper was sure the giant lizard was gone, she took one look at Nate and said "Well that was… something. Thanks – pretty quick thinking for 'just a grunt'." She paused, suddenly curious. "Wait… I thought you said you didn't have a knife? Where did that one come from?" She gestured at the knife Nate had dropped on the floor in order to throw his flaming bottles.

Nate picked the fallen weapon up and slid it back into its sheath casually. "Hey, I didn't say I didn't have any knives," he replied with a shrug. "I said I didn't have enough knives. Big difference."

Piper stared at him in disbelief for a moment, before she threw her hands up in defeat. "Okay, you got me. Well played, Nate."

"I have my moments," Nate said, a lop-sided smile crossing his face for a moment. "Now let's get moving before our scaly friend out there decides he still wants breakfast after all…"

Piper approached the gates of Bunker Hill, the midday sun reflecting off the increasingly forlorn-looking granite monument at its centre. She made a mental note to ask Nate more about the war it commemorated, since she had only had a few random holotapes and tattered books to work from when doing any research for her paper. It frustrated her no end that even if the world before the bombs had taught history more effectively, it sure had been reluctant to leave its secrets for future generations. Plus, precious few of the pre-war ghouls who had not gone totally feral were actually willing to talk about their experiences before the bombs. Maybe she just knew the ones with pasts worth forgetting.

"You know, I remember the parades that used to come by here every year to celebrate Independence Day," Nate said, almost on cue. "The fourth of July really was the best holiday apart from Thanksgiving." He glanced up at the monument, a regretful look crossing his face for a moment. "It's kinda sad seeing the monument like this – my high school history teacher would have had a heart attack just looking at it." Sighing, he ran a hand across his face almost in exasperation. "Sorry. Got a little carried away there for a sec."

"You don't have to apologise," Piper said, draping her hand on his shoulder as reassuringly as she could. "Take all the time you want, honey."

"Thanks, Piper," Nate replied, reaching up with his own hand and laying his fingers on hers. He mustered a small smile, the slight scar at the edge of his upper lip creasing a little. She hadn't noticed that scar before, but now she couldn't help but notice it. "You keep being kind to me and I keep on not deserving it."

Piper raised her eyebrows. "Hey, I'd do the same for anyone I could see was in pain," she said simply. "You might be an asshole, but you still don't deserve to feel that bad. It's not your fault you ended up here –" Before she could finish, she saw exactly the man whom she had travelled here to find sitting over in the corner near Stockton's makeshift bar. The only name she had ever heard him use was Mulligan, and he was a regular go-between for both Bobbi No-Nose and Marowski's two-bit operations. In addition to petty theft, Bobbi had a sideline in gun-running (which mostly consisted of crude, cobbled-together pipe weapons and makeshift explosive devices – in other words, basic sidearms which more organised groups like the Gunners or the Brotherhood of Steel would turn their noses up at, but which would suit both ordinary farmhands and raiders down to the ground) while Marowski's cheap bathtub-brewed chems were a staple of both the bored gentry in Diamond City and also the downtrodden commoners in Goodneighbor. Even the settlement she had grown up in had not escaped unscathed – her first boyfriend Charlie had been very fond of over-indulging on cheap Jet far too often. He had tried to get her to take a hit of it as well at a party one time, but she had backed off as soon as he offered her the inhaler, and that had been the end of that. It had been a shame, since she had thought she could at least overlook his vices or wean him off them eventually, but she didn't doubt that her dad had breathed a sigh of relief when she had cut the kid loose. Her mom… well, she couldn't really guess what her mom would have thought, considering she had never met her. She didn't know where she was or even if she was still alive, but she supposed that she was probably better off without her, considering her dad had never really answered Piper's questions about her unless it had been to tell Piper to stop asking questions about her. The pain on his face whenever the subject of his former wife came up suggested their separation had not been an amicable or pleasant one.

Piper shook her head as if to try to make the unwanted memory fall out of her ear, focusing her attention on Mulligan once again as he swapped idle chatter with some of the merchants, passing them packages wrapped in what looked like old newspapers. She guessed those packages weren't exactly full of candy bars and fruit, but she couldn't be certain until after she had got her hands on one in order to examine it, which would require a little… creative thinking.

Turning to Nate she said "Better get into character, 'Dan'." She gestured to Mulligan as subtly as she could. "That guy's our mark – he's our ticket into Bobbi No-Nose's good books. When we get back to Goodneighbor we can take the package back to Bobbi and say we caught him trying to steal it."

"Okay," Nate said, scratching his chin with one hand thoughtfully, "so how are we going to get one of those packages? I don't think he'll just hand one over."

"I do have a plan, you know," Piper retorted. "We go over there, then I start acting like I want to buy something from him. Then you pick a fight with him, he gets distracted enough to give me enough time to swipe some of his merchandise, and then we high-tail it out of here before he notices anything's missing."

"You really think that'll work?" Nate asked, a sceptical tone thick in his voice. "And why do I have to fight him, exactly?"

"You look like you'd make good muscle," Piper said with a chuckle. "And besides that, I don't think I'm nearly as intimidating as you."

"I'd feel better about that statement if I hadn't gotten my ass beat by that girl back in Goodneighbor," Nate said, rubbing at his jaw again. It was obviously still bothering him, but not enough that he was willing to complain about it. Piper decided not to press the issue.

"You'll do fine, big guy," she said. "This man probably doesn't sample his own product every day like Cait does."

"What's stopping her from just killing us?"

"Bobbi's a lot of things, but a random killer ain't one of them," Piper said with a shrug. "Now play along and this will go smoother than a baby's ass." She took him by the hand and led him over to where Mulligan was sitting, sidling up to the seated man and prodding him in the shoulder persistently until he swivelled around to look at her. "Hey," she said, deliberately putting a drunken slur in her voice. "Hey, you. I need to talk to you."

Mulligan sighed wearily, as if he was far too used to inebriated people bothering him. "Do I know you, lady?" he said, before turning back to the bar, grabbing his beer bottle and swigging from it, looking distinctly annoyed.

"Don't think so," Piper purred, "but I know you, man. I know you got the goods if you wanna party, ya dig?"

That got his attention. He turned in his seat, his face a mask of barely-contained fury. "Look, lady," he hissed, "I don't know who you've been talking to, but you got the wrong guy, you hear me? I ain't who you think I am. Now beat it."

"Whatcha gonna do, hit a girl?" Piper said, feeling that it was past time for Nate to get involved. "My boyfriend can hit you harder, I bet." She nudged Nate's ribs with her elbow. "Ain't that right, honey?"

Taking the hint, Nate put himself between her and Mulligan, jabbing his finger into the other man's face angrily. "Nobody talks to my girl that way, man," he said, before balling his fists and raising them in front of his face. "You wanna go with someone, let's go." Piper was gratified to hear that he had tried to put the same kind of sloppy, booze-tainted tone into his voice as she had. She thought he needed a little more practice, but it was a decent first attempt at least. "Right now, you and me."

Mulligan scowled. This was definitely not the first time he had had to deal with uppity customers. "Stay out of this, buddy," he snarled, getting up out of his seat and going nose-to-nose with Nate, his eyes ablaze. "I ain't gonna ask again."

Nate held his hands up and took a step backwards, making Mulligan visibly relax a little – and then cracked him across the jaw with a hard right hook, sending him sprawling backwards, a flailing hand knocking a number of his packages onto the floor as he hit the side of Stockton's bar.

Mulligan bounced off the hard wooden surface, aiming a punch at Nate's gut, which Nate easily slapped away and countered with another strike to his face. Blood from his abruptly torn-open lip sprayed onto the ground as he staggered, his eyes glazing over and going glassy as the lost their focus. He swayed on his feet for a few moments before Nate saw fit to plant a knee into his gut and drive both elbows into his spine, sending him crashing definitively to the ground.

Piper saw her window of opportunity open while Nate was busy dismantling the other man, and as he hit the final salvo of blows which felled his adversary for good, she scooped up one of the scattered packages and stuffed it into her pack while everyone around her was distracted by the outcome of the fight. When she had stowed the package safely she stood at Nate's side again as he towered over his fallen foe. "Shoulda just told us where the party was, man," Nate said, still attempting an inebriated tone even after his exertion. Piper had to hand it to him – he was certainly better at role-play than she had previously been inclined to believe. After he had kicked Mulligan one last time, he turned to her and said "Come on, honey, let's go." Then – to Piper's surprise and shock – he planted a kiss directly onto her lips before he took her by the hand and led her out of Bunker Hill as quickly as possible, hurrying her along so as to not give Mulligan the chance to realise he had been robbed.

When they were a safe distance away from the trading post, Nate let go of her hand and said "I think that went well, don't you? Did you get what we needed?"

"Yeah," Piper said, before she slapped him across the face as hard as she could. "Don't you ever do that again."

"Do what?" Nate asked, rubbing his cheek in surprise.

"You know what!" Piper retorted angrily. "You kissed me!"

"Weren't we still in character?" Nate said quizzically. "I thought –"

"I don't care what you thought!" Piper snapped, before she ran her hands down her face in exasperation. "God, I should have known better than to bring you along. I can do without being felt up by people I hardly know."

Nate looked contrite then. "I'm sorry, Piper – I should have asked you if it was okay first."

"You're damn right you should have!" Piper exclaimed. "Look, Nate… I appreciate your dedication to getting into character, but some lines you just don't cross, you know?" She sighed. "We should get going. Bobbi won't wait forever…"