1
"I won't allow it!", Piper yelled.
The General held up her hands with a half smile. "I get that as a first reaction."
The reporter assured her, "That's a last reaction. You are not sending Natalie any where beyond Diamond City's walls."
"I'm not trying to send her, like I can control her.", the redhead replied. "I've asked you if I can ask her to save the lives of multiple other children. I don't even know how many children."
Piper gaped at her. "So you don't want her to go down to the Capitol Wastes."
"That's not what I/" The General took a breath and sat down in one of the chairs of Publick Occurrences.
"Look alive. The town of Little Lamplight only has citizens under the age of 16. It's like a civilian, non-mythical version of Vault 75 but worse. These children are all alone and will shoot any adult on site. The residents of Big Town are mostly from Little Lamplight and even MacCready has assured me that he would have shot me during his reign as mayor, just for being too old. We can't have a community of little kids where no one's taking care of them. You may not be a mother but the fact that you feel this way about Natalie shows you know exactly why we can't leave them alone in the wasteland."
Piper crossed her arms. "If you know how I feel, then you know I have to keep her safe."
"She will be!", the General assured. "I've already gotten one of Sturges' designs down to Rowdy. A child size power armor hasn't been built before because pre-war (and now really) children should be removed from combat and no one's rich enough to afford a power armor that they'll grow out of. But if the government finances the frame, we can justify VIP usage for special circumstances just like this."
"You're not having the Institute build it?", Piper inquired.
The General shook her head. "I know you wouldn't trust your sister's safety to the Institute. So while I am having Mark II synths as her security detail, I'm having the Atom Cats build Minutemen designed power armor for her. Rowdy's really excited about the new design and is putting her all into it - even leaving our battlefield repairs languishing because of it. All the parts are fresh from Saugus Iron Works, pre-empting Vault 81 despite their food supply."
Piper dropped into a chair. "How would she get there?"
"Direct air transport.", the General told her. "Brandis would send a run of jets to ensure a clear path all the way down. Once the path is clear, three vertibirds: one to stay patrolling while the other two are parked outside Little Lamplight and another to delay any adverse response should the third have to evacuate Natalie from Little Lamplight. We'll take better care of her than Roxy when she went to Tenpenny Towers."
The woman huffed. "I still don't like it."
"You think I do?", the General snapped. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it like... It's just that these kids are just out there with no one. In the old world, institutions would be able to send adults in to take them away from the adults doing this to them and then deliver them to other adults that would take care of them. But now? Red...er, the doctor of Big Town, tells me that Little Lamplight is in the race for oldest surviving community outside a Vault-tec installation with Underworld. They've just been down there since some school field trip got trapped there. The teachers leaving to find help and never coming back has become their only sacred tradition and they've been taking in whomever could find them since. The intel we've gathered from Big Town suggests they've kept stable for the past two hundred years - their positions are mayor, doctor, and school teacher."
Piper shifted in her seat. "We can ask Nat. Let's hear what she has to say."
2
"I'll do it on one condition.", Natalie told them.
The General smiled. "Of course you can publish about your trip."
"Of course of fucking of course.", the girl told her. "We report the news at Publick Occurences."
"Language!", Piper scolded.
Natalie rolled her eyes. "Sorry.
"But that's not my condition. My condition is that I get to slap Sheng Kawolski into next week. Like, full on, running start 'kapow'!"
The General turned to Piper. "The water baron?"
Piper held a hand over her face. "Kawolski once tried to kiss Nat when she was coming home from school and he was going to night classes."
The red head turned back to the child. "And Diamond City Security did nothing?"
Natalie frowned. "They kept me from kicking him after I knocked him on his ass."
"Language.", Piper signed.
The girl rolled her eyes even harder. "Sorry!"
The General now acted like she was talking to a child. "I can't just let you assault another citizen. What if I had let him/"
"Yes, you can.", Natalie asserted. "You're the government and the military. You command people to hurt people all the time."
The woman sat back and folded her arms at that.
Piper spoke up. "What is the The Right to Autonomy?"
Natalie nodded. "While each undersigned community's residents are citizens of the Commonwealth, each undersigned are independent communities within. Every community of the Commonwealth has the right to decide its residents, it's local laws and enforcement, and economy without undue interference.
"So? Lean on Geneva. Make her let me slap him."
"Why is this so important to you if he didn't actually do anything and you've already beat him up? I'm not saying nothing should happen to serve justice. It's just that there's a lot of immediate trial by witness here...er, I mean now.", the General wondered.
Natalie explained. "People say that when a boy likes a girl, they bother her. But since I'm stronger than ole baldy/"
"Ole baldy?", the General gasped.
"Yeah!", Natalie agreed. "How does a kid with that much access to purified water lose all his hair? Wait - did you have those synths that were looking for radiation got test him? He's gotta be up to something fishy. Even Diamond City Security thinks so.
"Anyway. Since I'm obviously stronger than him, people have been saying that I only slapped him because I like him. But I figure that they're only saying that because the cops didn't let me kick him when I was going to."
The General raised an eyebrow. "And if you publicly hurt the child you think the rumors of you caring about him will stop."
"Great diplomat you've chosen." Piper piped up.
"Name another child in the entire Commonwealth that's gone to school, operated a business, and is worldly about current events!", the General snapped.
Piper raised a finger and took a breath to speak. Only then she realized that she didn't have a name. She put her finger down.
3
Kawolski regarded them. "I can shut down water to the whole town."
Geneva glared at the General.
"I didn't say that we were going have her do it.", the General restated. "I said that's what Natalie wants.
"You do realize what's happening, right?"
Sheng considered it. "I'm living in Nat's head rent free."
"You're behaving in a presumptive possessiveness that is driving her to want a grand ceremony of disrespect and pain to dissuade you!", the General snapped. "Given how the world works now, if you keep this up everyone loses. Natalie becomes someone willing to stab people for privacy, you end up stabby-stab-stabbed, and Diamond City ends up with about three days to figure out how to do what you've done here and get it going again."
"And she sent her sister's friend to lean on me.", the boy accused.
"I wish.", the General replied. "If this was personal, I'd toss you in this drink and call it a day. But I actually am here in capacity of being General in the interest of cutting a deal. That's why I brought Geneva. As a private citizen in Diamond City, I deal with your government and your government deals with you. But Diamond City is an democratically elected directorate.
"So because I need Natalie, that means I need you, which means I need Geneva. And let's keep it that way."
Sniffing out the opportunity, "Keep it that way?", the boy asked. "What's the alternative?"
"I invoke the Right of Minutemen Protection and consider Natalie Wright under threat.", the General told him. "Now, by this trail by witness system, the matter has legally been resolved. So I don't want to escalate anything. Which means you can get something out of this."
"Well, what I want is/"
"No!", both women told him.
"/fifty caps."
"Oh.", both women realized.
"And any medical care I might need afterwards. By Mega Surgery!"
The General thought a moment. "Only what Doctor Sun believes is directly related to what Natalie does to you."
The boy snapped his fingers and cursed. "Then I want 100 caps."
Geneva turned to the red head. "The Mayor's office can't just give away caps to citizens."
The General turned to her. "I'll cover it." Then she turned to Sheng. "Let's get this over with."
4
"This is the supidest thing I've seen in my life.", Doctor Sun told the General. "And I've seen children jump off the top of the stands after watching what happened to other children when they jumped."
"You think I don't know that?", the General replied. "The whole world is stupid now. Robots shooting people for not having train tokens centuries after train tokens are even coined, the FEV virus/"
"FEV?"
"Supermutants.", the General explained. "I just want this over with so I can go save the other children's lives."
"At the expense of this one's?", Doctor Sun asked.
"It's just a slap?"
"And if she breaks the boy's neck? Concusses him?"
The General emmitted a sound between a sigh and a growl. "Give me a moment, doctor." She then proceeded to walk across the town square to where Piper and Nat were.
"So Doc's ready to put him back together?", Piper asked.
The General looked down to Natalie. "Don't...don't kill the boy, alright?"
Natalie frowned. "I get to slap him. Sheng dying seems like a problem for him and the hundred caps you gave him."
"He runs the water you drink.", the General reminded her. "The water the entire town drinks. And hopefully start bathing with."
"So because he has money, he gets to do whatever he wants to me? And I ought to be grateful?", Natalie challenged.
The General clenched her eyes shut. "That is not what I said."
"Then go line him up. Then I can slap him and start training for this top secret mission you want me to do.", the girl told her.
"It's not top secret. You're still a civilian so it's barely a mission.", the General said. Nat folded her arms. "Fine."
The General led Natalie Wright and Sheng Kowalski into the middle of the square. "If I could have everyone's attention please. First, I would like to state that this is not precedent setting. No one should expect Geneva or any subsequent mayor or the Diamond City Security to allow this idiocy.
"Second. This is to settle the fact that Natalie Wright has no romantic interest in Sheng Kowalski besides possibly disgust and annoyance. So afterwards, Sheng will leave her alone."
"I didn't agree to that!", Sheng objected.
"You better before I beat the crap out of you.", Natalie told him.
"Look/"
"You're gonna be looking at my five fingers/"
"Quiet!", the General snapped. "This is it. She slaps you. Doctor Sun treats you. You take your hundred caps. You go back to making sure the town has water. And you leave her alone.
"Just like you will leave him alone.
"Do you understand me?"
The two sulked. "Yes, ma'am."
"Then you go over there and wait for her to try to kill you in one blow. And you go over there and think real good and hard about the consequences.", the General instructed.
"Kill me?"
Nat smiled with all of her teeth.
The General pointed. The two children stalked off in different directions. Natalie took off her outer coat, handed it to her sister, and started stretching.
"Nice diplomat you recruited here, Blue. She really knows how to get along with children that have some form of authority.", Piper commented.
The General folded her arms. "What's worse is that I have to get the council to agree to this stunt." Piper pointed at Sheng and the General shook her head. "I mean naming Natalie an ambassador. Technically, that should be a civilian position and not a military one. I've been arranging surrender of cities so I've been comfortable with doing all of it myself. And considering the world we live in, any others in the future will still be military matters. But I'm not giving a child a military rank."
Natalie finished stretching, reached down for some dirt, and rubbed her hands together. "You see it coming, Kowalski?", she called out. "I'm gonna slap you. It's gonna hurt. You shouldn't have messed with me, Kowalski."
The General face palmed.
5
"I'm sorry. I haven't come here to reveal any potentially classified intel or the absence of it. What I've come here to do today is ask you about the last time you've seen Nick, Ellie."
Ellie Perkins swiveled in her chair, in the detective's office. She nodded. It had been far too long since hearing from Nick Valentine.