"In that case, would you mind waiting a little for me to grab a few people?"
"Sure, I have time."
Another few calls later, you have Sarah, Nora and even a freshly-summoned Yoshi standing behind you. Took five minutes, tops, considering how close your house is to your current location.
"Alright, we're all here. Just a few people, really, considering this is going to be a fairly casual thing."
"Alright, we're ready for you. Come on through anytime."
It takes a bit of fiddling, given the marked-off area is fairly small and you have to get six people inside all at once, as the nerds insist everybody has to be fully inside or else bad things might happen, but once you just pick up both Sarah and Nora (much to their amusement), you can make it fit, after all.
A quick flip of the switch (and hastily withdrawn arm) later, you're off in another flash, blinking a little at the sanitizedly white walls surrounding you.
Looks like you're really in the Institute, now.
Of course, the next half hour or so is spent on throroughly disinfecting everything in the room, waves of hot air followed by gaseous sanitizer followed by more hot air repeatedly washing over your whole group.
"I'm pretty sure we're clean now." You say, using the opportunity to speak once the constant bombardment of cleanliness is over with.
"Indeed you are." The white, featureless rectangle opposite what you heavily suspect to be the other half of the teleporter slides open, revealing an older guy in a labcoat on the other side.
"Sorry about the disinfection routine, but the surface has a whole host of germs and diseases we really don't want in here."
"No problem, we understand completely. So, you have a wholly seperate living area, 'down here'?
"Indeed, though I imagine Father will likely explain any further questions you might have; I'm just here to guide you and bring the Three Troublemakers to their first shift of toilet scrubbing."
"We actually had to completely remake the toilets so they don't self-clean anymore just for their punishment." He adds in a stage whisper.
"What!?" "We just came back, that's not fair!" "Can't we at least recover from our ordeals for a day or two first?"
"Sorry, buds, but you really screwed up this time. If you weren't lucky enough to meet Gabriel here, you'd be dead a hundred times over, and all because you had to play about with the teleporters. Everyone knows, and everyone was really worried, you know; worried enough to discuss your extremely lengthy and excrutiating punishment."
"A-Alright, let's get to those toilets, boys!" "Can't be worse than what we're already used to by now." "May as well get it over with..."
"Oh, it won't be over anytime soon. We all decided to take the opportunity to air any grievances about any of your shenanigans, so expect to be kept busy with chores for months."
"NOOO!" "NOOO!" "NOOO!"
"In the meantime, if you guys would follow me please, Father is awaiting you."
"I'd love to give you a tour, but, you know, prior obligations. This is somewhat of a last-minute thing, we knew you would come at some point, but we never expected the Troublemakers to ignore all common sense and do their own thing with the teleporter. Again."
Leading your group (and the three he's talking about, escorted by some kind of security personnel after they tried to book it for a moment) through gleaming white hallways connecting larger areas filled with small plantations containing actually green plants, a sight you weren't expecting to ever see in this dimension, the actual scientist, from the looks of it (again, an unexpected sight) still shows you enough to get a first impression of how this Institute works.
"Missed opportunities, I suppose. We can always get back to that tour if someone's got a moment once the meeting's done with."
"Indeed, indeed. Oh, into the elevator over here, we need to go up one floor. Should be enough space in there. You three are off in that direction, where Miss Li is waiting with the toothbrushes."
Ignoring the screams as the three musketeers are dragged off, you all file into the elevator and wait for him to press the correct button.
"Say, you never mentioned your name, did you? It'd strike me as terribly rude not to know our guide's name, no matter how short the tour had to be in the end."
Chuckling, he steps out of the elevator as the door slides open, stepping forth to seat himself at a table overlooking the small plaza below. Looks like you're on some kind of balcony, then?
"Oh, but I did, I just pretended otherwise. I'll have to go easy on the Troublemakers later for not spoiling the surprise, I suppose. I am Father, the Director of the Institute, though that's more a nickname than anything else. My real name would be Shaun. Nice to meet all of you, and hello mother." He nods towards Nora.
Mirroring his earlier stage whisper, you lean over to Nora. "Should I tell him, or do you want to?"
"Tell me what?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing. So," you begin, taking a seat yourself, "do you usually talk about yourself in third person, or was this a special occasion?"
He answers with a chuckle. "I assure you, I'm in possession of all my faculties, yes. Just a minor ruse to see who I was dealing with, and maybe a little prank played on my estranged mother. Speaking of which, how are you doing, Nora? You're looking a little out of sorts."
Nora, with a wooden smile, joins you at the desk, Sarah already sitting to your other side. "Why, I just found out the missing son I was searching for is now an old man, apparently I was frozen in that vault significantly longer than I expected and- ugh."
Shaking her head, Nora draws a hand through her hair. Perfect opportunity for you to chime in. "Well, if he's a Father now, I suppose congratulations are in order over being a grandmother, Nora."
Nora can't help but sigh. "Shut up Gabe. Anyways, Shaun, could you just, explain how you came to be the Institute's Director, preferrably without any more pranks?"
"Very well. So, after I was brought to the Institute, I essentially joined up and worked my way up the ranks. The rank of Director is nothing more than everyone in charge agreeing that its holder should have the last word on important decisions made for the Institute as a whole. Eventually, I decided to bring you out of cryostasis, mostly out of curiosity what you would do."
Gritting her teeth, Nora visibly has to calm herself down before speaking again. "What about the man that shot your father?"
"Ah, Kellogg. He's a mercenary the Institute makes use of from time to time. I do not particularly care what happens to him, so if you'd like to pay him a visit, he's holed up in Fort Hagen, if I remember correctly, not too far from where you 'recruited' a few of those mechanically inclined 'raiders'."
Mhm, he's not hiding he kept an eye on what happened, huh?
"Speaking of technological exchanges, Father, you wouldn't happen to mind explaining exactly what the Institute's goal is in all this, and whether we may assist each other?"
Father smiles.
"I am very glad you asked. To put things in a nutshell... The Institute... It's important. It really is humanity's best hope for the future, no matter what those above ground might think of us. Its purpose is to ensure humanity's continued existence through whatever may come."
"I mean, that's a better justification for murder than what I usually use."
"What justification do you usually use for murder?" Shaun asks with an amused grin and quirked eyebrow.
"I usually don't call it murder at all, phrase it as defense of myself ot others. And, really, do raiders and similar scum count as people in the first place?"
"A compelling argument, truly. But to return to the original point, the Institute's knowledge and power are concentrated towards a single goal. That goal is best summarized by our motto: Mankind - redefined."
"Hence the synths."
"Hence the synths, indeed. You already saw the Gen-2 in action during that little... accident... with the teleporters, and you may have heard rumours about synth doppelgangers before. Well, let me assure you, the Gen-3 synths do exist, and we have used them to infiltrate most civilized and some less-than-civilized groups within the Commonwealth."
Sounds like it could be useful, having minions already in place to betray the people that trust them. Looks like there's a reason people are afraid of the Institute, after all.
"What this extensive diatribe brings us to, is the potential for your group to bring order and control over the Commonwealth. While I do not believe it is in the Institute's best interest to openly interact with the world at large again, as previous examples have shown, perhaps you can prevail where we have failed."
Mhmm... He's deliberately portraying it as some kind of failing, even though he doesn't show any signs of thinking of it like that.
"So if I understand you right here, you'd be willing to have the Institute back us silently as we push forwards with re-civilizing the Commonwealth... and if we fail, then well, you never had anything to do with us."
"That would be an accurate summary of the situation, yes. Now, did you want to go on that tour, after all? I'm sure I could convince someone to show you around a few of the departments, the Instutute is not intending to keep any grand secrets from any of you in this room."
"Oh I'd love to take a look around. Always a good thing to learn more."
Meanwhile, you telepathically contact Yoshi. Yoshi, I'm about to tell you once, and so help me god, you will analyze any of the technology you can see like a madman, or else...
With that done, you stand up, giving Shaun a nod.
"Oh, by the way, this is the man the reports were telling me about? The people you ate, was it?" Shaun mentions, gesturing towards Yoshi.
"Indeed. This here is Yoshi, just Yoshi, no matter what he says, and he has somewhat of an eye for technology. Also a decent inventor in his own right, in fact."
"Hmm. I wonder, would it make sense to systematically feed you significant opposition, gain immediate access to any knowledge they had access to?"
"It's what I usually do, in fact."
"I see, I see. Ah well, for the time being, I suppose you'd best be off. As you'll be working closely with the Institute, you'll want to introduce yourself to the Division Heads... Doctor Fillmore in Facilities, Doctor Ayo in the SRB... ah, Doctor Holdren in BioScience..."
It takes a few hours to properly tour the facilities, being led around by a mix of a few synths and whoever is in charge in the place you're looking at, but eventually you return back to the room you arrived in.
The tour itself, of course, was immensely interesting, though the girls got a little bored, not being that much into 'playing with cool toys' (quoted directly from Sarah) and split off halfway through, patronizing a restaurant staffed entirely by specifically created and programmed synths instead halfway through.
Their loss, really. Observing the synth creation process was immensely fascinating, as well as the explanation of the process.
Incidentally, you also paid a visit to the labcoat babblemouths as they scrubbed the toilets. The sight really was immensely amusing.
Also, their energy source was something you could get behind, even if Yoshi cringed to the point you were a little worried he might have physically hurt himself.
In general, he seems to be a little traumatized even at the end of your little tour.
"Seriously, Yoshi, what is it?"
"It's just... You know... All of this, and yet they never cracked ASCII. Gives me a headache just thinking about it."
Huh.
It is Father that greets you at your point of arrival, reading something on a clipboard he is holding as he waits.
"Ah, there you are. Did you enjoy the tour?"
"I did, I really did. Some of your reports may have mentioned it, but I'm somewhat interested in technology of all kinds."
"They may have, indeed. Speaking of which, you expressed you were interested in an exchange of technology? Some of what I'm reading about is quite intriguing, to say the least."
Waving that clipboard of his in your direction, Father doesn't say anything more. Looks like he's leaving it to you to take the first step.
"Very well, there's a few things I could think of you might be interested in. First off, though, I want details on your teleportation technology- the ability to move from point A to point B at will is of immense utility, after all. In exchange, I'd be quite willing to share some medical advances with you, in case you haven't made them yet, a reliable cure to cancer and some work on dementia, to be exact, the two biggest medical issues with a stable population in place, as well as a few other things I could think of. An entirely new and more efficient approach to programming comes to mind."
C'mon, Sarah, Nora, keep those smiles down!
What're you grinning about now, you two?
Sorry, it's just... You gave that cure out for free like it was nothing, now you're trying to exchange it for functioning teleporters. It's hilarious if you know the context!
Yeah, on closer thought, it is pretty funny. Still, though, you'd expect better of both of them than nearly giving the joke away like this.
"Mhmmm... Surely enough, the Institute is always up for more ways to ensure the researchers' long-term health. I'm not sure promises of a functional cure is worth one of our greatest secrets and advantages over the rest of the world. Please, tell me more about this branch of programming you're talking about."
"Oh, I can do you one better." Breathing out Bevin, the slightly overweight nerd you caught yourself that one time just to have one on hand, you gesture towards him. "Ta-dah, Bevin here can do the one thing that will revolutionize the way computing works for you. He... Will teach your people ASCII."
"Alright then, I'll be looking forwards to learning what ASCII is. Why don't we all take a few minutes to get the documents together proving the validity of what we're trading in, then we can talk about what's worth what once we'ce all taken a look."
"That's perfectly alright with me. Yoshi! It's your cure, you do the writing."
Yoshi just sighs.
While you have your soul minions write out the technical details of what you wish to exchange, Bevin seemingly entirely overwhelmed by the responsibility to teach basic programming to a bunch of sci-fi people and Father having someone organize the technical documentation concerning their teleporters, you have a casual chat with the girls... serving, of course, as camouflage for the telepathic conversation you're having with Sarah.
He's more interested in those cures than he's willing to admit, much more. My guess, he or someone important they can't replace is suffering from either cancer or dementia, tending more towards the former just from his reaction.
Alright, got it. Any thought on the programming?
He's interested, but more in an intellectual sense than the sheer need to get access to the tech. He'll take it, but he's underestimating how much it'll be worth in the end.
Gotcha.
"So, this should be everything. The cure takes a few weeks, but it's simple and straightforward enough a well-trained monkey could use it. Just follow the recipe, take it as pills with plenty water and add the weekly treatment, as detailed here, anyone can be cancer-free. The dementia one is still being worked on a bit, mostly to find more convenient ways to apply it, but it's based on mentats, simply taking things a step further and forcing the brain to recover from any damage suffered to an extent. Early diagnosis and treatment is paramount with this one.
As for ASCII... Well, just read through this. I'm sure Bevin will be perfectly happy to answer any questions you have about it, but it's definitely a step up from using what is essentially morse code for everything."
"I see, I see. Well, this certainly looks worthwhile, from an informational standpoint if nothing else. While I am not entirely convinced it is worth teleportation, I am willing to take this one on good faith in light of how much use you may get out of this."
With that, Father gives you a clipboard, thick with page upon page of technical details detailing how the Institute's main transportation works. You give it a quick overview before-
Wait a sec.
"You're using radio waves for this? I'm gonna say, wasn't expecting that."
"Quantum mechanics, son." Chuckling, Father gets himself under control again quickly enough. "Sorry, I just love pulling this one on people. But yes, radio waves work just fine as medium for teleportation, and they're less conspicuous than most other possibilities. We're actually running a 'radio station', if it can be called that, simply sending classical music preserved in our pre-war archives, as a cover for what we really use it for."
Hmm...
"Hey Yoshi, you wouldn't happen to have a few bits and pieces about technology applicable for this lying around in a corner of your brain somewhere, would you?"
"I mean, I'd have to take a look at what they've managed here so far, but if it's anything like with programming, it's entirely possible I could help these people along."
"Very good, why don't we have you do that while me and Father here talk a little about the Institute's medical technology? Like, say, that autodoc I saw, or perhaps the FEV involved in synth creation."
New technology is now accessible: Teleportation (via radio beacons), autodocs, FEV (theoretical)
The Institute now has access to: Better teleportation, cancer and dementia cures, ASCII
It is late evening by the time that you actually return to Sanctuary, using the 'proper' teleporter inside the Institute this time and leaving Yoshi and Bevin behind for a few hours longer, to let the both of them answer a few questions, discuss practical implementations of the technology you use them for and maybe snatch just a bit more technology, in Yoshi's case.
It's a bit distracting, keeping both mental communications open at the same time while also paying attention to what's happening around you, but you're not about to just trust the Institute with your most valuable soul. And Bevin, while you're at it. he's replaceable, but not that replaceable, and thus 'Trust, But Verify' is the order of the day.
That aside, though, you take a bit of time to talk to Nora, she looks like she may need a talk for a bit on the way back to your residence.
"Hey Nora, you doing okay?"
Smiling a little sadly, Nora huffs before laughing a bit. "That obvious, am I? Don't worry, Gabriel, I just... need a bit. I've been looking for Shaun all this time, or for whoever took him from me, or maybe I was even procrastinating doing just that because I was... afraid, of my baby being... gone, or dead, or just not recognizing me anymore. And all of a sudden, we get all the answers handed to us on a silver platter, and my son is a complete sociopath just like you."
Shaking her head as she chuckles a little, she looks away from you. "Wonder what that says about me..."
"You know what, Nora, I know exactly what you need."
"Oh? What's that, Gabriel?"
Sweeping her off her feet (to her surprised exclamation of surprise), you hug Nora to your chest, pressing a gentle kiss to her cheek.
"Lots and lots of cuddling, of course."
"Oh, seriously." Nora tries to huff, though she can't hide her smile at your shenanigans.
Sarah, walking to your side (the other side from where Nora was before), pats Nora's head. "You mean you didn't expect this when you picked yourself a college-age stud?"
"Really, why do I even out up with you two? And Kate, too, I'm sure. Really, let me brood in peace, will you?"
"Nope, I categorically refuse. We don't have any feelgood movies here, but I'm sure we can find some kind of sweets to all eat together and lounge on the couch."
The rest of the night is spent between yourself and your little 'harem', though you don't like to think of them like that, just chilling in the living room and talking, messing around a little, taking turns messing around on the computer while discussing how you could improve Sanctuary, all that kinda stuff.
Before long, Nora has quite gotten over her funk, not in the least because of some of the things Kate told her after you explained the situation ("Look, he lived a life entirely without you through no fault of your own, sad you couldn't be there for your kid, but hey, he turned out alright given the circumstances"), though Nora remained sufficiently pouty to keep you all there for the entirety of the night, until she eventually fell asleep.
Naturally, it fell to you to tuck her in, carrying her to her bedroom gently so as to not wake her up. The satisfied smile on her face, at least, shows you did well in the aftermath of those little... 'revelations'.
Though some of those remarks she made about having a new goal in life consisting of 'having the biggest family ever just to show the world where it can stick it' before drifting off have you a little worried, you'll just leave that for future Gabriel of the time she's awake again to deal with.
It is one the dawn of the next day that Preston comes to visit your house, politely inquiring as to what exactly ended up happening with the Institute.
Inviting him inside to have a seat, you grab some of the clean water you keep stocked around the house and sit with him, explaining the little arrangement you've made (though you don't give him any of the closer details, such as who Father is or him being Nora's son, just that Nora found her son among the Institute).
Preston mostly just listens as you speak, nodding at the appropriate points and drinking his water. "Well, I'm glad that all turned out alright in the end, then. A few of the others were worried about getting involved with the Institute at all, so they'll be ahppy to know the Institute's people won't be around anymore. I'll miss the troublemakers, though."
"Would you be surprised if I told you they actually collectively called them that?"
"Surprised, no. I've known them for longer than a few minutes. That said, things are doing alright here in Sanctuary, and in the neighboring settlements, but I wanted to ask... What would you think about an organization whose purpose it was to defend the people all across the wasteland and tell them about us, as a group? Should help with recruitment, if nothing else, and anyone up for the task would probably be better off doing it than peacefully tending to our settlements anyways."
"... Keep talking."
"Okay, so you know how the Minutemen used to be the good guys around here? As in, really, that's why I joined them back in the day. Whenever a settlement out there was in need, some of us would show up to save the day.
Didn't always work out, of course. Never does, in the end, but we did the best we could. And sometimes, that's what really counts, not to mention we really did make a difference. But then the Quincy Massacre happened."
His face goes dark as he tells you about this, obviously haunted by some dark memories on the topic.
"Things'd been going downwards for a while beforehand, after we lost the Castle, place used to be called Fort Independence before we took it over, by the way, a few years ago, though that wasn't too bad, and the death of General Becker.
That last one was what really became the issue. The Minutemen couldn't agree on any successor, and the internal issues nearly completely paralyzed us as a group. Complete bullshit, I know, but apparently it was more important to be the one to give the orders than to actually protect the people we were sworn to protect, and not having access to the Castle and the armaments inside really hurt us in that situation; those of us who still tried to do our job, anyways.
So yes, what all of this led to was Quincy. We were called because the Gunners had been making trouble in the area, though apparently it was actually Mama Murphy getting visions about the town being attacked, only to later find out we'd been betrayed.
Things went well in the beginning, we attacked the first group of gunners from behind when we first arrived and decided to stay in town for a while. The mayor even let us use his house as barracks and everything. But then the Gunners began sieging the place, more of them showing up just to shut us down inside the city.
We could've done pretty well, in hindsight, we had enough food and a bunch of ammunition, enough to last for much longer than we did, in the end. But that wasn't the plan, at the start, we were just supposed to hold out until reinforcements arrived.
Except they never did. You see, all that internal division I explained earlier ended up meaning nobody ever showed up to break us out. Who showed up instead was that fucking traitor, Clint. One night he just blew up the highway running along town, creating an improvised ramp for the gunners to use to swarm right into the city all at once, from above.
One thing I'm telling you right now, waking up to fight a prepared invasion force firing from elevated positions sucks. We did what we could, but that fight wasn't really one we could win, so I just did the best thing I could think of when things were pretty much lost; I grabbed everyone I could and ran like hell.
We started out with twenty survivors, going through Jamaica Plains and steadily making our way north-west, losing people all the way. The end... is what you've already seen, that's how you found us.
Really, sorry I'm just talking your ear off here, but... I think I really needed to tell this to someone, and we were talking about it anyways. So, what I'm thinking is, here in Sanctuary, we have everything we'd need to resurrect the Minutemen. With a strong and stable leadership, reliable equipment and enough people with something to prove to take our message out there.
We do this, and we'll have people from all over the Commonwealth just lining up to join us, whether as settlements or as settlers joining one of us. The people remember the Minutemen, and no few of them miss the old days when someone would show up at the last minute. We could do this."
Preston's voice is actually going a little rough by now, whether from overuse or emotion, so you hold up a finger to get him another glass of water either way and sit down opposite from him again.
"Alright, Preston, you know what? You've convinced me. We're doing this. Now, realistically speaking, what do we need to make this work?"
"Okay, so," Preston begins, swallowing and reigning in his emotions, "while we could make do with the old laser muskets, the things were made to be easy to make and use, better weapons would go a long way to making the Minutemen a force to be reckoned with. I don't even necessarily mean your special rifles, though they could certainly do the job, all we need from them would be to be robust and not require too much ammunition."
"The laser weapons aren't really an issue; with the amount of junk we can get, especially once we really go all in on scavenging operations, we can just crank as many of them as we want out of the manufactories."
"Alright. Next off, this one's strictly optional, but some kind of armor would be nice. Something simple and rugged, again, but light enough you can run through the night in it when every second counts. We used to just wear leather dusters, and they always did the job just fine, but something lightweight that still keeps a bullet from your insides would be pretty great."
"Noted."
"Another thing, we've got a good thing going here, with Sanctuary at the heart of several connected settlements, but the bigger and more prosperous our networkk is, the more people we can attract and the further we can spread the word. The more, the better, in this case. It's not so much something anyone here needs to be told, but it would cause compounding effects on both the Minutemen and our group."
"Basically keep doing what we've been doing, but expect to have to work with more people coming in."
"Right. Any robots, preferrably faster ones, to support the Minutemen, wouldn't go amiss, either, but here's the big one: The Castle, it used to be the big thing for us. Our headquarter and armory. We had to give it up to a massive mirelurk migration, but if we could take it back... It'd be a symbol. The undisputable proof that the Minutemen really are back."
"Alright, that sounds a lot like our goals are all planned out, then. Before we go ahead and start on them, though, there's a last matter to clear up."
"What is it, Gabriel?"
"The last iteration of the Minutemen fell apart due to internal disunity. We'd best clear up who will be leading this group, right away, rather than leave it up in the air."
"Huh. You know, I never really considered that; I just kind of assumed you'd be the General and went from there. But yes, now that you've mentioned it, we could just take myself, or some of the others. Or maybe we don't really need a General at all, just completely remake the chain of command to make issues like that less likely."
"Honestly, Preston, I think you'd make a great General. You still have lots to learn to take the position, of course, but so would anyone else. The really important things, though, those you do have. You've got a passion for what you want to do, the kind of fire that has people pick up a gun and charge a pack of raiders down just because they know it has to be done. I think you genuinely could inspire people, preston, and that, that's what really counts."
It takes Preston a moment to find his words, a weird smile fighting with determination on his face.
"You know, Gabriel, I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever told me. Alright, I'll do it. I promise I won't disappoint you."
"You just be yourself, Preston, the rest will come naturally, don't worry. And hey, if you play your cards right, you'll be the General for generations to come."
"What do you mean?"
"Those powers I gave you? They also come with a longevity package. You'll have a hard time getting sick as long as you get some of my blood regularly, and you'll live a few centuries, easily. Kinda like how Nora was in cryosleep for a few centuries, just with you there and active all that time."
"Whoa, Gabriel, that... that's one hell of a thing to spring on someone."
"As I said, don't worry. Just take things one at a time and keep an eye on what you want, that's all you'll need to do for now. Just saying you'll have a lot of time to get better and put things into perspective."
Preston mumbled to himself, looking over the map of Sanctuary as he made plans for the settlement's future during his coming absence.
They had enough of everything they'd need for now, though they may run out of comfortable living space at the rate new settlers were coming in, looking to join up. Perhaps that was precisely the reason Gabriel had asked him to go and run that 'little errand', as he'd called it- if anything, immigration rates were only about to increase, and a restored Concord would give them plenty of space to work with.
Not to mention, of course, those new eyebot advertisements Gabriel had decided to initiate. Heh. Speak of the devil, one of the things was drifting by his window, probably a test run.
"The Newest Gabenews: Bringing the news to you, whether you want them to or not! Today's headline: Sanctuary Welcomes All! If you want safety, food, water and comfort, make your way to the north of Concord! If you're a raider, you're welcome to become target practice!
Concord Clash! The old city of Concord is being aggressively cleaned up, to become a city rivaling Diamond City in both population and safety! All immigrants welcome! If you're interested, speak to Preston Garvey, leader of ongoing efforts!
Minutemen Madness! The Minutemen have returned after extended nonexistence, rising from the ashes to show the Commonwealth that all is not lost! Hear more details in our exclusive interview with Preston Garvey, leader of the Minutem..."
Watching the robot fly onwards, Preston tried not to think of that interview. It was bad enough having Gabriel interview him in the first place, the man weirdly insistent on doing it 'right', including a bunch of questions that really had nothing to do with the topic at hand, but he'd just trust him. At least Gabriel seemed to know what he was doing.
Now if only that talk wasn't being broadcast all over a quarter of the Commonwealth...
Still, getting back to the initial issue, things were going pretty well. They'd actually found a molerat nest right nearby that old gas station a short walk from Sacuary, though they'd needed Kate's assistance to actually catch them- anyone else would've lost a finger, at least- and once they got a few solid plates of metal properly welded together, the little monsters couldn't just dig their way out anymore, keeping them where they were meant to stay.
Of course, they soon began mauling each other, but the guys he left in charge of that project had managed to keep them apart after losing just one of them, the molerat farm design needing to be overhauled a few times until it worked as intended.
At least the loss had still been pretty tasty.
As for the others... Well, Gabriel had been busy working on his robots, obviously enough, and that woman he'd broght with him from the Mechanist excursion had gone to that factory he'd been told about, apparently continuing to refurbish it. Yet another project Gabriel would be spending more time on, if he'd understood that timetable he apparently hung on the wall of one of the bunker storerooms correctly.
Kate, Nora and that one gruff ex-raider would accompany him towards Concord, with a whole bunch of bots helping him on the initial sweep of the city before swarming out to keep any more possible threats from coming into the city. All the better, considering the second wave would consist of one of Gabriel's minions and even more of those BOBs to... work Concord over a bit.
Adjusting his hat, Preston grabbed his laser rifle and went to get those volunteers. May as well get to work, after all.
Brad grunted, throwing himself into his usual spot of cover as the usual bunch of supermuties came along, trying to siege Diamond City.
Again. As usual.
Of course, the guys and the turrets would beat them back, like usual, this was all one big old hat to them by now. They would come, shoot, miss for the most part and eventually all the greenskins would be dead. Maybe some of them would catch some lead, maybe the protective pre-war uniforms would keep 'em alive, maybe not.
All as usual.
What wasn't the same as usual was the solid wall of metal slamming into the bulk of the things from the back, turning two of them into paste and throwing most of them in all directions.
The robot, as he could now see, proceeded to run onwards back towards the Entrance. Well shit, they were supposed to guard that.
Fuck it, though, they had to mop up the muties first.
"Agh... You open this gate right now, Danny Sullivan! I live here. You can't just lock me out!"
Piper Wright wasn't having the best day, Danny supposed, but then again, he supposed she'd been asking for it. Sure, everyone loved free press, until it hit them in the knee. Major McDonough had been having issues with her for a while now, and being called a synth out of the blue like that sure pissed him off pretty hard.
"Sorry, Piper, but Mayor McDonough was pretty clear, you're not allowed back in. You know I would..." It was that point that he heard a weird sound, a wet, mechanical clonking.
"Piper? You alright? What's going on out there?"
A few whirring and clanking sounds later, a new voice came up. "Hey, you mind opening this thing up? I'm a trader from Sanctuary, and I'd really appreciate getting this delivery sold, and maybe the supermutant blood scrubbed off."
Danny sighed. Someone would have his head over this, he just knew.
Shaun, or Father, whichever you preferred, honestly, sat down, facing the synth in charge of monitoring their newest...
Asset? Ally? Temporary confederate? Future asset, maybe? Regardless, the synth was in charge of monitoring Gabriel and his progress on the man's nebulous goals.
Wordlessly taking the report, Father speed-read through it, the skill well-honed through decades of use. It seemed Gabriel was taking the ruins of Concord nearby his main base as an opportunity to expand, an ambitious venture to be sure, but, looking at recordings of a horde of crude (and not-so-crude) robots swarming over the ruins, aggressively focusing fire on anything moving, perhaps a successfull one, ultimately.
Certainly, based on the knowledge the Institute had gathered on the means accessible to him, Gabriel would have little issue taking the city. Keeping it, on the other hand, and turning it into something worthwhile, for that matter, would be another beast entirely.
Then again, that wasn't his concern. The Institute had ceased interacting with the surface long ago, and for good reason; any attempts to cooperate or even manipulate the surface-dwellers into organizing themselves had been met with disastrous results, the termination of their last attempt in its entirety had been necessary, the shaky government set up doing more harm than good in short order.
No, the Institute would let Gabriel deal with his part of it all. Maybe he had a chance to make something of the Commonwealth at large, maybe not. Either way, they would have gained something from the situation; both in terms of technology outright shared and data gained from observing the results of Gabriel's actions on the surface.
Besides, it wasn't like they made themselves vulnerable during all of this; the Institute could only be accessed through teleportation, and a natural part of the transfer of the entirety of their operations had been securing it against any teleportation through sources outside the Institute itself.
Indeed, that trade had been worth it.
That said, of all the things he'd been expecting to happen, sudden advertisements using eye-bots in similar fashion to pre-war use hadn't been it. Perhaps he should have.
Subtle brainwashing was hard to apply to the large breadth of people present in the Commonwealth, even with the... predominant conditions... on the surface. While abducting them for in-depth indoctrination remained possible, the expected yield was too low for the startegy to have been considered in the past.
Instead, however, he had simply... forgone the subtlety. Simply sending the floating robots broadcasting his 'Gabenews' to wherever there were people to hear them would suffice to massively tilt the public consciousness towards his operations, achieving the effect he had wanted. While a great number of the populace would, and indeed did, according to this report, ignore the message or consider it a threat, a great many didn't.
It was simply a matter of reaching enough, rather than all of them. The rest would follow as the settlements involved grew, the necessary recources trivial to procure through the technology accessible to Gabriel's faction, as the expeditions towards the nearest water sources and the early securing of farmland showed. Ingenieous, really.
Of course, it also helped that he was immediately connecting the Minutemen, an organization that many of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth had fond memories of, with the developments involved. Humanity was, despite his wishes, an animal of emotion over reason, and this opening gambit made perfect use of this quirk.
Truly, where the Institute was a monolith of science, ever seeking to ascend to greater heights of knowledge even in its defining raison de'tre, redefining what it meant to be human, Gabriel and those he drew into his orbit were the logical extreme of taking humanity as it was.
Using humanity's humanity against itself to help it along. Truly, the philosophy behind this situation was something to be amused by, if nothing else.
That said, there were parts of this report he was honestly unsure about the necessity of, driving him to address the synth standing by patiently for the first time.
"I understand the social aspects of the subjects are an important part of the observation, but was it truly necessary to go into depth on the sex positions involved?"
It wasn't that he minded his mother having sexual relations with the man; he hardly knew the woman, and if she found her happiness this way, then best of luck to her, but really?
"Repeated requests by Institute personnel have been issued on the matter, Director. Do you wish to overrule this decision?"
Shaun sighed.
Yoshi has designed a version of commonly found combat armor made out of relatively lightweight alloys and initiated construction of large numbers of such.
Concord has been taken over, a large fusion reactor built inside the museum basement and construction of a designated water supply is underway at Walden Pond.
Construction efforts have begun, with a significant swarm of BOBs busy completing a wall making use of nearby strucures, supported by several settlers that have arrived hoping to settle.
Would you like to designate already present robot designs to the Minutemen efforts, as Geoff was unexpectedly busy during the last five days?
Ticking items off your list, you consider what to do next. Concord is coming along quite nicely, despite the extensive... issues... currently inhabiting the network of sewers underneath the city, leading to Kate and Nora spending quite a lot of time down there and eradicating a bunch of molerats, mirelurks and various oversized insects for the last few days, along with a whole bunch of your robots.
Sarah would've loved to help, too, but she sure isn't stepping foot in those sewers unless absolutely necessary, and the habitat of the creatures to be massacred being underground meant reception of the BATs was quite spotty down there, so she just kept to aboveground threats.
You'd also talked to Preston via the BAT network, for that matter, regularly checking in to make sure things were going alright. Looks like the Museum of Freedom is serving as the temporary base of reclamation efforts, being the most spacious widely intact building near the center of the city to be found, with a note that the crashed vertibird atop it may be worth investigating once your people were ready to tear the place down.
Geoff, annoyingly enough, hadn't gotten around to using his expertise in the construction of a custom robot design for the Minutemen due to being preoccupied with the various large-scale engineering tasks required you mostly planned Yoshi in for, so it looks like you'll need to wait on that a bit or else do it yourself at some point.
Overall, though, the last five days were positively filled with measurable progress on all fronts, though Preston asked you to have someone look into the mirelurk farm over at Thicket Excavations, see how things are coming along and taking somewhat of an official census.
Why, you're almost proud he's thinking ahead. But yes, while you could simply use the BATs to keep an eye on how things are going, having an actual person inquire on how things are going and how much meat can be expected when would have a wholly different impact on the people you have in place over there.
"Uh, Gabe? I think you'd best take a look at this."
"What is it, Sarah?" Coming over to the computer, you immediately see what she means; the screen is split between the perspectives of several BATs currently patrolling the skies around your territory, showing what looks like several groups of various kinds of trashy hobos with a wide variety of weaponry between them.
Raiders.
Of course, the gangs moving in on your turf are distinctly divided, some of them hardly equipped with more than pipe guns, the largest group you see consisting of two to three dozen, easily, and toting heavy assault rifles, a minigun and at least one laser weapon you can see, from what you know how the local variants look.
That and you're pretty sure that one group are what few survivors of the Rust Devils managed to gather together, most likely whoever of them wasn't on base when you came, judging by the crappy, rusted robot they're 'driving', perhaps some refurbished variant of a sentry bot, just with a small car weled to the back with the roof removed?
Either way, murdering them all will be a downright pain, you just know already.
"Okay, Sarah, I want you to keep an eye on these guys and alert me if anything changes."
"Hey Preston," you telepathically establish contact with the man of the hour, "I just got a report, and it looks like the Concord Project is going better than expected."
"How do you mean that? Also, why can I hear the capitalization when you say it in my mind?"
Ignoring his second question, you grin as you explain yourself. "Well, it looks a whole damn lot like a giant bunch of raiders is on the way to crash our party, and none of them look the kind not to leave a mess afterwards."
"... Alright, Gabriel, how do we deal with this? How many exactly, and how far away?"
Oh, he's actually starting to think while talking. Progress for the Preston Project.
"Well, by my rough estimate we're looking at somewhere a little above a hundred raiders, out there in smaller groups for the most part, spread out in the area between Concord and Lexington. Most of them don't really have any precise idea where they're going, but they're all moving in the general direction of Concord. As for what to do... Well, you're the General of the Minutemen, Preston. Why don't you tell me?"
"Really, Gabriel? Really?"
"Hey, you have to get used to this sometime, may as well start right now."
"Way to put me on the spot there. Okay, so, can I assume I'm working with the robots and the others here? Otherwise I simply don't have the manpower to deal with something like this."
"Oh, of course we're all going to help you, including myself. This is really just to get you used to being in command during situations like this."
"Man, I'm pretty sure situations like this are why actual cities are so rare in the Commonwealth. Unless you've got a reliable wall and defenders, sooner or later a bunch of assholes is going to come around to ruin everything. Okay, so, you said they're divided out in the wasteland?"
"Yep, typical raider amounts of organization, meaning none. Pretty sure at least two of them died to each other while we were talking."
Preston conveys a snort over the mental bond. "Yeah, sounds about right. Okay, so I'm thinking we first organize our defense here in Concord, then send groups with sufficient firepower out to deal with the closest raiders, making sure that any that we miss or don't have the manpower to defeat piecemeal out in the wastes will lack reinforcements and simply wait them out, using our preplanned defenses to minimize actual casualties during the battle- in case the sheer amount of robots we have here isn't enough to simply overrun them, anyways."
"Alright, sounds like a plan, I can work with that. Feel free to get started on organizing the robots and volunteers as defenders while I contact the others. Also, I hereby officially volunteer for the very first group of skirmishers, I'm looking forward to some fresh food. And Sarah, for that matter, no matter how much she just stays inside forever."
"Gotcha, Gabriel. I'll get everyone on board and wait for you in the Museum, we can clear up everything else from there."
Oh, right, you never remembered to tell him you've got a copy of the Institute's teleporter, did you?
You smile. All you really need is to tell Kate and Nora to come up aboveground where the radio signal can reach and the BATs can see them.
Less than five minutes later, Preston, accompanied by two of Sanctuary's volunteers armed with laser rifles, powerwalks into the Museum of Freedom, coming to a halt as he sees your group.
"What kept you so long?" You grin at him, enjoying the practical uses of teleporters.
"Alright, so the teleports, when done remotely like we're planning to do, aren't subtle. We'll have to either forego stealth or have our attackers teleport in at some distance, then approach stealthiy, which, while less likely to waste any of our forces, takes more time.
I've also gone ahead and divided the raiders into groups of targets for us to tackle one at a time, just to make organizing striking at disparate targets like these easier."
"Thank you, Gabriel. So, what will we be facing first?"
"The first wave of raiders consists of a few seperate gangs, most likely the ones that got moving first when they heard about Concord. Badly armed and individually small in number, they're still closer together than we can really divide, meaning whoever faces them takes on all twenty of them. Keep in mind that this is really just the vanguard; the second and third wave will have better equipment and all that jazz, in addition to better organization in individual groups."
"Alright, so the plan, overall, is pretty simple. We teleport in, right in the middle of their position, and shoot them all dowm, hard. We're beating them in terms of numbers, thanks to the bots, so this shouldn't take long. Also, remember, try to take them in alive, all of you, go for disabling shots rather than killshots. While nobody's going to cry a single tear over these animals being out down, we still have some uses for them. All clear?"
At the nods, confirming explanations and waves of beeps, clinks and clanks from the gathered 'defenders', Preston nods with a serious face.
"Okay, everyone gather closer together. The teleporter works better the less space we take up, and it can only transport so much mass so often."
Time to do this.
The fight, if it can even be called as much, is over remarkably fast. One moment, the throng of raiders is busy both making camp for the night and killing each other, as raiders are wont to do, next moment a small army of robots is drifting through the area and shooting them wherever they see them, with yourself and the rest of the attack group mixed in for some extra spice.
As soon as you arrive, you burst apart into a swarm of bats, exactly 78 of them, to be exact, fluttering all over the place for a moment before you get a measure of the battlefield and concentrate your efforts on what has to be done.
Specifically, you use a mixture of your divided nature and hemokinesis to actively fuck with every raider you can see via bat sonar. Within the first seconds a few of the raiders die, simply being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of fire coming from the HAMMERs and the lasers completely transforming them into masses of burned meat.
That said, the lasers also happen to burn out the wounds they cause, sealing the blood inside the bodies instead of spilling it everywhere, and before long, you have extracted it through your hemokinesis, using it as a rough battering ram to throw down and hobble raiders all throughout the fight, along with a few bursting eyeballs for the especially stubborn ones once you have some time to concentrate on them.
Enemy casualties don't reduce themselves to zero, of course, but you can keep them down to an extent, a significant amount of raiders simply suffering from burns before being overwhelmed and tied up by your human forces or held at gunarmpoint by your robots.
... A few of them still refuse to give up, of course, but those you simply flood with your bat bodies as you eat them with a dozen mouths at a time.
"Alright, now how do we get these guys back to Sanctuary?" Preston asks once the fighting's died down, looking over the row of tied-up raiders.
"Well, we could use the teleporter, I suppose, but it'd be kind of a pain to not use it to get back to Concord ourselves. Then again..." Winking over a few of the HAMMERs milling about nearby, you ask them the operative question.
"Hey, do you guys thing you could carry one of these in teams of two in they were tied to you?"
'Beep-boop'. Countered with 'Beeep-click'. Only senconds later, they bob up and down before you, which you interpret to be an affirmative answer.
"Alright then, let's make this as uncomfortable as possible for these guys."
Once all the captives are being carried off by the beeping and booping parade of floating robots, the remaining bots and other forces gather together again, a quick mental command to Sarah all it takes to have the teleporter operated through the use of BATs at both the starting and ending point of the jump.
"Alright, we're back for now. Gabriel, how far out is the next wave?"
"They should be milling about near the other side of Lexington right now, a bigger group than the first wave but also with higher rates of attrition from how they keep on attracting feral ghouls from the ruins."
And yes, you confirmed that with Sarah, just in case.
"Heh. I suppose there's a reason everyone keeps their distance from that place. Are they spending the night over there, then?"
"Looks like it, yeah."
"Y'know, this looks like we got a whole bunch of raiders camped out right next to a metric fuckton of ghouls. Think we could rile up one problem and have it take care of the other?"
"That could work, actually. It's unlikely we could get all the ghouls in that place to come after them, but with any luck, we should be able to at least weaken them, force the raiders to keep up all night and lose a decent chunk of their men."
"Perfect! Now all we need is an actual plan on how to do this."
Hey Sarah, you up for really fucking over a few assholes?
Always.
"Alright, I'll have Sarah use the BATs to do it. We may lose a few of them when the raiders get wise, but they're really no big loss, either way."
"Huh. I never really thought of just doing this remotely like that. Okay, I'll leave it up to you two, then. I suppose we may as well get all the rest we can get in the meantime."
"Hey, relax, Preston, we got this in the bag. There's really no need to worry about them, we can take any raiders stupid enough to come at us."
All over the ruins of the city of Lexington, a voice could be heard, sounding from dozens of sources with eerie synchronicity.
"Whooo's an ugly little pile of cancer? Whooo? Whooo? You are! Yes, you are!"
"One little ghoulie sits on a wall, one little ghoulie on a wall..."
Of course, a group of people camping out on the edge of the ruins was less than amused by this, not that it could really do anything about it, aside from shooting down any of the little flying machines they could see... except more of them just kept on coming.
"Oh, I could keep doing this all night! And all day, for that matter..."
Eventually, however, a second voice joined the first, its husky tone not really making much of a difference to the agitated ghouls trying to find the source of the sounds, but too stupid to look up.
"Hey sweetie, how're you doing?"
"Oh, hey Gabe, things are going pretty well. Have a look for yourself."
"Mhm... I think I'd rather look at something else."
"Eeep! Gabe, what-"
"I did promise to do more 'butt stuff' with you, didn't I? And I don't think the ghouls care about the difference, either way, so long as we're loud."
Suffice to say, few of the raiders got a single minute of sleep that night.
Completely overhaul design, use Assaultron as base (2 points)
Add articulated hands to allow fine manipulation of equipped weapons (3 points)
Redone aesthetics (1 point)
Integrate high-calibre laser weaponry, coming with its own fusion core to power it (3 points)
Add melee capabilities, aka, a big fucking extendable knife (2 points)
Waterproofing, just in case (1 point)
"Come on, really? Really? How many fusion reactors does a robot realistically need?" Yoshi whines at you, making you 'Mhmm...' to yourself as you stroke your chin.
"You're right, let's add another pair along the back, just to be sure. Articulation eats a lot of power."
"Why do you even want them to have actual hands? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm the last to complain about cooler robots, but this is a lot of effort you're putting into something that has never been an issue until now."
"Because."
"Of course." Yoshi sighs. "Can I at least ask why you want to plan in the covering cloths?"
"Aesthetics and camouflage. Imagine them out in the wasteland, covered with a brown cloth along with some brown-ish paint on the visible parts."
"Huh."
"Hey Gabriel, night is about to fall. Any news on our raider friends?"
"Just a moment, Preston."
Hey Sarah, how are the bloodbags doing?
Assuming you mean the ones camping out in Lexington, rather than here in Sanctuary, they've actually taken to sending the most insane from among themselves off in random directions halfway through the night, to save on ammunition, I think. There's an easy fourty of them left, though, and they've been walking constantly ever since they realized I wasn't stopping anytime soon.
Gotcha.
Relaying Sarah's observations, you watch Preston nodding, visibly shifting numbers and ideas inside his head.
"Say, Gabriel, how likely is it you could have them hounded by ghouls all the way to our doorstep?"
"One moment."
Telepathically consulting with Sarah, you nod towards him.
"Should be doable. Less of them as the raiders move further away from Lexington, the things get lost all the time even while being guided, but we should be able to keep them awake for a good while yet."
"Perfect, then let's go with that plan. Simply drive the raiders onwards while we wait on the wall, and from there it's simply target practice."
"In fact, I'll do you one better; I'll go ahead and get some think mist going to meet them halfway, spook them a little bit, maybe even take a few more out when they can't see the ghouls coming."
"I mean, if you could do that, that'd be perfect. The less of a fight they out up, the better."
It takes some doing to actually spread some decent fog over the area you estimate your targets to be in, mostly owed to the fact the local weather conditions don't really allow for too much humidity or even wind normally, along with the limited reach your direct influence can manage, but eventually, you get a steady movement of humid air going by taking some from the upper atmosphere, meeting onto the dry, hot air of the Commonwealth.
Perfect conditions for you to work your magic, in other words.
What you do isn't quite conjuring a storm or even stormwind by any measure, you simply don't have the sheer power necessary for that, but instead you do have Concord essentially become the funnel from whence you spread a massive amount of mist, letting it roll across the landscape in waves as it envelops ruined infrastructure and withered flora equally, hiding the great many predators of the world filled with fallout from sight and, to an extend, even sharp ears.
Naturally, Sarah is overseeing your efforts, correcting you as the wind turns repeatedly due to your flagrant flouting of nature's way of doing things, but soon enough she confirms the raiders have reached the furthest reaches of your fog bank.
And the ghouls are about to reach them. All you really need to do now is wait while Sarah does the rest, and to make sure you can dispel the fog near Concord when the time comes to showcase just how horribly outmatched these nutjobs are.
Keeping watch atop the wall surrounding the city of Concord, a surprisingly stable construction welded together out of furniture and building debris, all behind a series of metal plates overlapping each other and a decently even upper level up top, you can hear the approaching procession before you can see it.
Specifically, you can hear the drifting noises Sarah is playing via the BATs, gunshots and 'Booooh's and the creaking of wood with the volume tuned up all the way. Sound really does carry weirdly in the fog, doesn't it?
The next thing to be heard is the snarling typical of feral ghouls, along with a few more gunshots, this time not from Sarah's end of things. Yeah, the ghouls are doing good work, too.
Naturally, you can't just leave the whole thing as an auditory experience. Concentrating on the change you'd been working at for a while now already, a sudden updraft moving the mist upwards and to the sides, revealing a good twenty-five raiders and a bunch of ghoul corpses, most of the former sporting several bite marks and bruises that you can see.
They're looking around dumbly, now that all of a sudden they can see farther than a few feet in all directions, the walls of mist spreading as far as the eye can see, only the wall before them visible.
Still takes them a moment to actually realize, though. Then again, extended sleep deprivation and constant ghoul attacks will do that, you suppose.
Snapping your fingers, you gesture towards the helplessly confused raiders for the benefit of the shooters arrayed on the wall, the bulk of which is made up of the old HAMMERs with a few of your turrets hastily installed along the wall and volunteers mixed in.
This is a lot of shooters up here, funnily enough.
"What're we waiting for? Try to cripple over killing, we want them to last as long as possible."
The sheer volume of fire, as it turns out, means the raiders simply break sooner than you can cast your barrage of ice shards for the second time.
"So, that went pretty well. Though, uh, Gabriel? Any word on how long this fog will last?"
"Unless I maintain it, it'll dissipitate fully in about a day or so. The outer parts are already dissolving, now that I'm not replenishing them anymore."
Or at least that's what Sarah told you, at any rate.
"Good. Don't get me wrong, it worked very well in this fight, but it also severely hampered our own sight. If the raiders weren't this hopelessly outnumbered, they might've actually use the mist to hide and flank our position on the wall."
"Mhm. I probably could've rigged up a solution, and if it's just strong winds to blow the fog away entirely, but yeah, noted. Anyways, the last wave of raiders. This one's the most dangerous, both in terms of numbers and equipment, not to mention I suspect their attitude will be an issue, too."
"Right, you'd mentioned this is the last one. Any details?"
"Big group of what we think used to be the Rust Devils, they got the armor and a robot-drawn carriage to show for it. Along with them we have a bunch of bigger groups, with assault rifles, grenades and molotovs, the works."
"Right," Preston grimaces, "a right and proper raider assault. They're less common this far from Boston, but sometimes the bigger gangs split up into smaller parts or send out groups, with some solid equipment nobody sane really wants to see in their hands."
"Best estimations are around fifty raiders total, the groups tend to mingle and change membership as they move. At least there's only twenty of the Rusties around, though they make up for more numbers with the ten or so crappy bots following along."
"How far out are they?"
"Decent way south of Lexington right now. Only reason we even knew about them ahead of time were a few sightings from great height via the BATs."
"Actually, wait a moment. I know exactly what to do. A methodology that has never let me down in the past."
Breathing out Nolan, you think through what you'll need aside from his assistance.
"Okay, Nolan, I need as much mustard gas as you can produce in a moment, so get ready. Preston, we're going to need as many fragile containers as we can get, the more likely to break the better."
"What's mustard gas, Gabriel?"
"A fun time for the whole family, Preston. Now get to it, the sooner we get our little present ready to be teleported, the better."
Elsewhere, a man known as Father felt a strange itch on the back of his hand. It felt like... like someone was about to commit horrible atrocities, and he was itching to do so, too.
Salman looked around, making surfe nobody was sneaking off with their stash again. He'd had to blow the brains out of two little shits that didn't get they were no free lunch already, but he was getting kinda bored without more of them trying ever since.
It was in just that moment, his boredom peaking, that a bright flash streaked above their encampment for the night, like lightning, just, y'know, not green an' shit.
Before anyone could really react, a bunch of trash began clattering down on them, the faster and smarter among them already flittering into cover, though the junk just clattered to the ground uselessly, breaking into pieces and spreading parts everywhere, aside from the odd moron getting his head bashed over.
Salman laughed, as did a bunch of the others that got to thinkin' faster. Really, this was some wild shit.
Huh. Why was he feeling itchy all of a sudden?
Sending off your little present and keeping Nolan summoned for the next few hours to make sure it really takes, once Sarah assures you the teleport went off without a hitch, the rest of your night is spent in a perpetual state of mild confusion.
Sure, on the one hand, adding a signal repeater to your flying drone network was on your list, but, uh... You weren't actually planning on going for that tonight. Furthermore, neither of the rest of your personal projects really did what you expected them to, but hey, looking on the bright side, night's over, time to get back into the swing of things as usual.
Right?
HAMMER Upgrades
Upgrade tactical decision systems to let them use actual group tactics (2 points)
Upgrade systems to share tactical data between each other (2 points, requires tactical decisions systems)
Add lightweight armor panels (2 points)
Add a hidden eye along the back of the head (1 point)
Modular weaponry, allowing for easy replacements and maintenance (2 points)
Add grenade launcher (2 points)
Alright, escaping from the amorous grabs of the Maid bodies gathered around you (which only becomes weirder when you consider they're technically a part of your subconscious mind, if your understanding of these matters is correct), you enter one of the restored or at least refurbished ruins nearby the museum, the agreed-upon meeting place.
Inside, you find Geoff and Isabel, just like expected.
"Heya boss, what'd you want?" Geoff asks, Isabel remaining quiet, but positively exuding curiosity.
Demonstratively 'Hmm'-ing for a moment, you begin pacing before them a little, treating the first bombed-out, then renovated kitchen as an improvised lecture hall.
"So, you two, what would you say if I told you there was a way to travel to another world, a pre-war one, where all the ruins you see aren't ruins yet? Where the war never happened, and no rad-roaches, no supermutants, no deathclaws ever existed?"
"I'd say you're kidding, but I know you better than that, boss."
"Precisely. What I'm saying is, I could take you to a world like that. Time doesn't really pass relative to this world while me and whoever I'm taking along aren't here, so you wouldn't miss anything happening."
"OHMYGOSHTHATSSOAWESOMEIWANNAGO!"
Embarrassed by her outburst, Isabel sits down again, blushing a little to herself as she clears her throat.
"I mean, yeah, I'd love to see a pre-war world."
Smiling a little, but more the 'That was cute' than mocking kind, you nod. "Just keep in mind it's not an exact copy of this world, and even went a completely different technological development route."
If anything, Isabel seems to become even more eager as you continue explaining. Geoff, on the other hand...
"I dunno, boss, can I shoot anything that doesn't belong to us?"
"I mean, if you don't wanna, you don't wanna. Just thought I'd make the offer, either way."
"'preciated, boss. Well, I'd better get back ta it, pretty sure Yoshi's gonna blow somethin' up without supervision soon, and I wanna be nearby to see it happenin'." Tipping his cowboy hat, Geoff leaves you alone with Isabel, whose shining eyes are transfixed on your face.
"So, so, could you, uhm, tell me more? About that world and what they did differently than here?"
Ah well, looks like you may be kept busy here for a bit.
Well then, you'd best figure out what to do over the last few days available to you- and make sure not to forget to take Isabel along, for that matter.
In the meantime, though, there's still a whole bunch of raiders incoming, and they'll be within bloodsucking range soon enough. You'll need a plan for when the time comes.
The raiders, by the time you deign to deal with them, are somewhat at the end of their rope already.
Not only is the near constant fog hampering their vision prior to your arrival, with the irregular ghoul attacks keeping them from relaxing for even a moment, the occasional bombing via teleporter has their nerves rather blank, too. While the bright flashes mean the bombs are easy to foresee and counter by jumping into cover, this is quite a lot harder while ghouls are working to drag you off into the thick mists surrounding you.
And yes, timing things so that the raiders have to choose between dying to ghouls or explosions was expressively one of the things Sarah was doing to waste some time every now and then.
Of course, that initial big dose of mustard gas is also showing a nice effect, many of the raiders sporting massive, weeping wounds on exposed body surfaces. Those with the largest amounts of exposure are, perhaps unsurprisingly, fighting the hardest, pumped up on drugs as they are to let them ignore the pain.
Too bad for them they won't be able to ignore this.
Having already transformed and grown to the largest size you can, your flesh pleasantly pushing against your skin as you stretch your size ever a little further.
Keeping a perfectly good view on your prey through your further enhanced canine senses in combination with your ability to simply see the blood inside them, you position yourself to hit as many as possible in a single go... before breathing in for a long, long moment, then spewing out what might be generously described as winter. Or at least a lot of very, very cold air and snow with the odd piece of ice mixed in.
Keeping the breath attack going for as long as you can, you observe how the raiders first panic, then begin to drop, their scarce outfits simply not capable of keeping them warm in the sudden change of temperature you're subjecting them to. A decent bunch of them are still on their feet, of course, teh healthier and luckier ones, but a good third of them are hit with the full effect of your breath and down for the count, suffering from hypothermia or outright frozen to death.
Leaves just about forty of them, and that's when you signal your zombies to go ahead. Suffice to say, the survivors will be none too happy about having survived in short order.
Keeping back for a bit, you observe the way the fight is going, making special note of anyone in possession of an actual laser weapon. Realistically, the only thing they could use to so much as inconvenience you...
... Until, that is, you jump out of the mist, biting one of the raiders in question in half before retreating. The ones nearby open fire, of course, but despite your bulk, you're deceptively swift, even in this form, so you simply circle around, smashing the next raider with your paw the size of his chest.
Suffice to say, he won't be getting up again. Nor will any of the other raiders you pre-emptively take out during the 'battle'. Only thing that could've gone better is how many of them die outright, but your zombies do a good job of taking them in alive, at least.
Shivering and sneezing in more cases than one, but alive. For now.
Factory Upgrades
Open up new robot manufactory line (4 points, available once)
Clean up and refurbish research areas (3 points)
Repair destroyed machines in newly accessible manufaction area (4 points, available once)
Repair automatic robot repair station, update to your specifications (8 points)
Drain flooded area (2 points) x2
Recycle obsolete factory components (2 points)
Update factory machines to your standard (3 points)
Your time, you would later ponder, used to work on the factory was well spent, in hindsight. Not only had you used the knowledge and practice you'd gained when first working on the already accessible areas to efficiently and swiftly repair the second manufacturing line you'd previously freed up, you'd finally finished draining all the water sitting in some of the floors for centuries and even gone so far as to completely overhaul the automated repair systems located in the same wing, making them actually work beyond correcting mistakes made during manufactoring and instead independently repair damage of all kinds and even apply modifications and upgrades pre-programmed into teh factory's database.
Suffice to say, the minions would probably rejoice at not having to manually push hundreds of robots through the robot workbenches (or rather, manufactories, now that they were integrated with each other) every time you decided they needed to be upgraded.
One more victory for industrial levels of automation.
Incidentally, you also got around to the research department, mostly trashing the old office supplies and terminals after scavenging whatever useful data you could, of course) littering the area, and also sorted through the massive amount of disembodied brains sitting in jars, lining the walls all around the place.
You're pretty sure they'll have gone insane by now, but hey, maybe they'll prove useful yet. In the meantime, actual computers were now available for use in the thoroughly sanitized rooms, connected to each other and all. In fact, if you could find a bunch of scientists to man the place full-time, you imagine you could do some actual research here now.
Well, you know of a place, but the people in teh Institute seem happy where they are, and you're not about to piss off Shaun for no particular reason. Still, having an actual lab with actual lab conditions up your sleeve may just come in handy down the line.
St33d Design
Construct a mechanical robot horse body as a base (4 points)
Add extensive suspension systems to let them be gentle towards passengers (3 points)
Add several servos and a second fusion core 'heart', let them practically race across the wasteland with considerably strength (3 points)
Waterproof them (1 point)
Go ham on the aesthetics (1 point)
Sentry Bot Upgrades
Add heat vision to ensure nobody can escape (2 points)
Add tactical planning capabilities (3 points)
Let units share tactical information across the BATS network (3 points, requires tactical planning)
Add Spikes at the end of the 'feet' to let the spiertanks climb vertikal surfaces (1 point)
Add grenade launchers atop the shoulders (2 points)
Autodoc Upgrades
Add drug injection program (3 points)
Add plastic surgery routine (2 points)
Add prosthetics surgery (Can perfectly fit prosthetics, prosthetics still need to be created seperately) (2 points)
Autocleaner to let it clean the blood shed outside it (1 point)
All in all, the last few days within this dimension had been... productive, you'd like to call it. A lot of training was done, a lot of fun was had in-between, by which you naturally mean sex, and your little prjects delegated to various minions took form nicely.
Mainly the Concord Project, of course.
Concord, it would seem, is actually beginning to look like a proper city of sorts rather than a bunch of ruins people live in, though the buildings themselves are somewhat slapdash in nature where the BOBs used pre-existing structures and the streets are still in the process of getting fixed up after centuries of accumulating potholes.
Still, An actual community was building up, more and more people filtering in every day. Many chose to leave again, of course, being more nomadic than anything else whether by choice or otherwise, along with the traders choosing to treat Concord as the region's trading hub for the time being, as it's just easier to reach than Sanctuary, but a sizeable amount of people immediately chose to stay.
The fact there is enough housing and food for everyone, freely shared, didn't hurt. Nor did the fact that you'd gone ahead and modifed the advertisement your BATS are sending out once that little kerfluffle with those hoodlums was over and done with.
"... a raider, you're welcome to become target practice! Current count is 129 raiders down for the count, and counting!
Concord Clash! Moronic raiders attempt to raid the City of Concord, a good dozen the only ones lucky enough to make it all the way to the city's wall before being massacred! For more details, feel free to ask the interim mayor of Concord, Preston Garvey!"
Ah yes, good ol' advertising. You'd never expected to make actual use of those lectures on how capes' mannerisms and language tended to influence the public and the natural link to business advertisement, but hey, that's life. You just keep on learning.
Especially if you're literally incapable of forgetting anything you've ever experienced and are hopped up on brainjuice thanks to literally supernatural bullshit, but hey, you aren't going to complain.
Looking around Concord itself through the BATS network, Sarah currently busy running one of your improvised showers (turns out body fluids don't simply fall off you if you transform into an animal, contrary to your shadow transformation), you take a moment to study the city's layout.
The museum smackdab in the middle of the ruins is still the local 'authority's' headquarters, though it has been repaired and refurbished decently enough, simply being called the townhouse by the inhabitants, serving as Preston's central hub as he's still busy organizing everything, though he's also having someone loiter on the street crossing commonly called the plaza, basically a towncrier proclaiming anything relevant to the people frequenting the place, doubling up as a recruiter for the Minutemen Reborn, as they're caling themselves now.
And the 'plaza' is well-frequented indeed, being the central hub of the spreading construction efforts. Even as you watch, dozens of people are busily organizing thejunk and actual building materials being brought into and out of the museum, the local manufactury doing good work on supplying the BOBs and anyone interested with proper raw materials to build up.
Several food stands have cropped up along the sidewalk, too, exchanging handfuls of caps for proper nutrition. Anyone is welcome to get any amount of tato they want, thanks to the plentiful supply brought in from both Sanctuary and Abernathy Farms, the surplus being either handed out or sold off for cheap to either the traders coming in or other settlements by your people moving around via TORPIDs.
Everyone has to be able to feed themselves, but if they want properly cooked food, they can spend a little cash. There aren't exactly many spices to go around, but a few of the peasants have found a few recipes to make the stuff actually taste like something else than watery tomato, sharing them amongst an impromptu cook union of sorts, and after you gave them permission, opened up their little stalls.
Of course, massive amounts of water are also being brought into the city through well-guarded robot caravans, a few peasants taking up the operation and organization of which, though an actual pipeline from the lake to the city is being discussed.
People are worried, both about the lake drying up at some point and about mirelurks possibly following the piping, but that's a matter for another day.
Flying up higher and panning out a bit, your little 'spy' shows you the residential district spreading towards a single direction, filled with houses built by your BOBs both inhabitated and not, a few 'restaurants' offering actual meat at a variety of prices at the edge between the townhouse and the residentials.
Turns out mirelurk meat is a priced commodity in many parts of the wasteland rich enough to care about where the food being eaten comes from, and the farm's products make a pretty penny here.
Most residents, of course, aren't actively cooking, instead manning the wall along with your robots and turrets, the new generation of HAMMERs having entirely replaced the old one thanks to the factory's massive production output, or else practicing their trades within the city.
Carpenters, as it turns out, are in high demand, for though the BOBs are perfectly capable of throwing together a building and soem basic furniture, they're very much incapable of finer work, and artistic expression remains resolutely beyond them. Similarly, a whole bunch of people actually joined the Minutemen, finding themselves without anything else to really do, what with never having learned a real trade aside from shooting stuff, mostly just being drilled and going on hunting trips in concentric circles around Concord.
This, in turn, keeps the odd butcher or two busy, not to mention keeping the local arms and armor merchants decently well stocked with weapons taken from raiders and either taken apart or repaired. While you plainly forbid Preston from ever giving out the good shit to anyone not directly working for the Minutemen, a stance he fully agreed with, the civilian sector still had a use for weapons even in a city like Concord, and trying to regulate arms was a lost cause from the start anyway.
That said, neither of those areas could hold a candle to the pair of doctors and the... 'apothecary'... taking care of any other needs. Turns out a surprising number of medical professionals out in the wasteland are capable of casual cosmetic surgery, and there's always he odd infection or gunshot wound to deal with, so they're making good money in a growing community the size of Concord.
The less said about the widespread drug use, the better.
Of course, there's other little shops and such aplenty, clothing stores selling actually new clothing (that's one thing you expressively allowed to use manufactories for), specialty stores actually importing the odd knicknacks via the outgoing TORPID excursions... all in all, you're rather surprised at how quickly Concord grew to an actual city of sorts.
Oh, and at how many children apparently are out there in the wastes. Then again, perhaps you shouldn't be- in medieval societies, the closest comparison to wasteland culture you can think of, children often died young due to a variety of causes, so there had to be large numbers of them to make up for it.
Suffice to say, even without too many further immigrants, you aren't too worried about Concord's population numbers. An actual safe city to with basic sanitation live in will not only boost life expectancy through the roof, it will also massively reduce child mortality rates. A generation or two in and you'll have enough peasants to actually expand the city back to its pre-war state, if not further.
Heck, even now, there was actually a casino opening! Honestly, you'd be surprised, but then again, perhaps that's simply due to the way the inhabitants of the Commonwealth wastelands being that flexible and stubborn in regards to survival. Time will tell how well some of these little businesses will do, but for now...
For now, you had something to do elsewhere. Putting the surveillance network on hold and letting the BATS go back to their usual routine, you turn around to snatch a naked Sarah up in a princess carry.
"It's nearly time to go back home. Everyone else should be coming by any time now."
"Mhm, good. I kinda miss the bunker we stole from the snake."
Smiling, you kiss Sarah as you stride towards the living room.
Domas looked around, taken aback much like... well, anyone taking a step through those gates, he'd bet. The wall'd been imposing, but he'd been to Diamond City, once, the pre-war wall seeming just as solid as this one.
... Actually, maybe that was even more impressive, all told. Still, the massive metal construction actually manned with people and some kinds of turrets aside, the city's inside was, well, have you ever gone anywhere, gone through a door, and thought you accidentally went to a completely different world?
Because that's what it looked like to Domas as he tried not to gawk. The buildings all around were nearly completely whole, made of wood and concrete and actual stones, the streets were entirely without holes in them, people (and robots, he noted) passing by every which way.
A pair of Minutemen passed by, looking like they were actually patrolling the streets. One of them tipped his cowboy hat at him, coming closer to talk.
"Hello there, new to Concord City?"
Smiling awkwardly, Domas nodded. "Yeah, just arrived. Last place didn't turn out so well, and... y'know." And indeed, finding out the other people in that settlement had been cannibals preparing to eat him once he let his guard down hadn't been fun.
"Ah, I get you. We get a lot of drifters here, decent lot stay, too. Can't exactly give you a tour, we're on the clock and all, but listen, if you ever need directions, just talk to one of us, the hats make it easy to pick us out. For now, I'd recommend you get to the plaza, just follow the main street here until you reach major crossing at its end, he'll be there 'round the clock. Explaining things to new arrivals is his job. Good luck, and if you need anything, name's Frank, just ask for me at the barracks."
"Gotcha, and thanks."
"No need, just looking out for people. Was in your shoes myself just last week, y'know. Anyways, see ya 'round!" With a last wave, Frank departs together with his bored looking partner, proceeding to demonstratively walk around the streets.
Looks like he'd have to find this Davis, then.
Luckily enough, the way was as simple as he'd been described, so it was with just a little trepidation that he approached the man in some kind of combat armor sitting in a booth of some kind near a large building- larger than the other buildings surrounding it, at any rate.
"Oh, hey, you must be new here!" The man said, getting up to face him. "You got that look about you. Name's Davis, I'm responsible for getting everyone going around here. Come with me, I'm about to take a break, anyways."
Leading the confused Domas up the set of steps leading into the large- the townhouse, as he now saw written above the doors, Davis kept on talking.
"We get a lot of new arrivals here, part and parcel with giving everyone that wants it a house and food, I guess. Come on, we're gonna talk to the registrar real quick, the guy's job is to ensure everyone gets enough food and water and all, then we can get you settled with your own place and-"
It was a few hours later that Domas was sitting in a new room- his new room, nursing a mug of tato juice and clothed in his complementary new clothes (without any holes, to boot), still coming to grips with the sheer speed at which he'd gone from just another guy drifting around, to someone that could own a house (an actual house), as part of an actual community, large enough he wouldn't be surprised they could dwarf Diamond City, the location of those cannibals' place reported and, in Davis' words, to be dealt with.
Sighing, he put his mug aside, thinking about that noticeboard thingy they had an actual official watching while working. Everyone in the city that was looking to hire anyone, he'd been told, whether for one-day things or long-term jobs, was doing so through the official noticeboard. No fucking around, too, anyone trying to fuck over people was gettin' punished something fierce.
The Minutemen Reborn, with ridiculous headwear or not, had the largest piece of paper on it, of course, but he'd probably want to look at the thing come tomorrow. In the meantime...
In the meantime, Domas would set his usual noise traps and go to sleep. If it turned out this wasn't a dream by the time he woke up, he'd deal with all that then.
Isabel Cruz was having a good day.
Now, to be fair, that was the usual for her lately. Ever since Gabriel Livsey, as his sister had told her their last name was, had come to find her down in her 'lair', things had been looking up more than ever in her life.
Not that that was hard, honestly. Ever since her parents died to that raider attack, she'd... well, she didn't like to think of it like that, but she'd started losing herself in her made up world, one where she was the heroic Mechanist out to save the day, and where all the bad people out there were villains out to make others suffer, for a variety of reasons.
Like, that was true to an extent, with the raiders, but still, she'd been blinding herself to the truth plain for all to see. It was only when her delusional antics began to come to Gabriel's attention and the subsequent fight that he reached out a hand for her, to climb out of that deep, dark hole she'd dug in the old factory.
Pretending to be a fictional person to the point you forgot who you were in the first place wasn't healthy.
But now, now things were looking up! Because as it turned out, she hadn't been the only one to have both the technical knowledge and drive to use it for good around, and Gabriel had actually assembled a whole team of people capable of designing entirely new technology, based on pre-war tech and otherwise.
Honestly, she felt a bit out of place among them, but if Gabriel was putting his trust in her that way, she had a duty to live up to his trust. Not to mention she got to play with all kinds of new tech! Really, this was great all around, not to mention she also got to see how her initial dreams and ideas not only were turned into reality, but easily outmatched by what was happening right in front of her eyes.
Sanctuary was truly living up to its name, offering food, water and shelter for anyone that wanted it, built off of its robot workforce. But Concord, no, Concord City, that was truly the marvel of their efforts.
An entire pre-war city, turned from ever-pervading ruins into a bustling city, tradehub and staging ground for their efforts elsewhere.
She'd actually asked Gabriel how far their protective hand was stretching, and he'd explained to her that they were limited to a radius reaching towards the surroundings of Lexington right now, due to concerns of both insufficient numbers to secure their territory for the time being (though the factory was changing that, fast) and the possibility of their robots being hacked by malicious influences outside the range of their network.
So, for the time being, they were just concentrating on building up Concord and having Preston recruit more Minutemen in the meantime. According to his plans, they would soon begin visiting settlements all across the Commonwealth, using the newest kind of robot he was designing, and ensure people's safety that way, negating some of the worst drawbacks of using either people or robots alone.
Really, it was also the coolest thing ever, cowboys riding on robothorsesandohmygosh pure awesome.
Maybe she could even convince the others to make them cyborg cowboys riding on robot horses? That, that would be another layer of awesome on top of the idea.
Still, that was a while off. Because for now she was going to be taken along with Gabriel on his dimensional traveling adventures that didn't actually take time and oh god, why was her life like some kind of comic book character's as soon as she stopped emulating a comic book character?
Opening the door to Gabriel's home, she immediately froze as she saw Gabriel himself, naked, with his equally naked sister riding his lap right there in the living room.
"Meep."
"Oh, do come in, it'll be time soon anyways. Would you like something to drink?" Gabriel asked in his usual smooth tone, not stopping... what he was doing... for even a second.
"Meeeep!"