It was difficult for the General to feel that she was back in the life she left at all. She couldn't really remembering it happening ever since she woke up in this hellscape. But this did remind her of some times in college. She had dragged a chair out to sit in the shade next to Radio Freedom. She appreciated his professionalism: the man hadn't done anything to acknowledge her presence besides his initial salute and she couldn't detect a change from his regular broadcast and coordination of APCs and boats, unless she listened for the names 'Sommerville' or 'Murkwater' and never heard them. With the amount of papers in her hand she needed to study, it was nearly like sitting out in the quad in pre-law.

First were the after action reports she had every sergeant and temporary field leader named by a sheriff after Hub City Autowreckers. There were more than she expected, but that was fine. She had demanded everyone write an account of their part of the fight, so she could map out in her mind as close to what really happened without actually being there. And it's not like anyone had a working video recorder without her taking even more Institute tech let alone asking a man into battle with camera instead of a rifle. (She couldn't bet on the Gunners respecting any of the old rules of war, like understanding war correspondents were civilians. Hell, if Piper ever...let's not think about that now.)

The reports did tell her that the more frightening of the two scenarios she had in her head were correct. Hub City was just about empty when her forces got there. Sure, it allowed them to take their time avoiding casualties with traps. The primary resistance were leftover auto turrets and a single Assaultron guarding the main terminal. And it did allow her forces to confirm that the highway leading north from there was clear of gunner activity as well.

But other reports had the contents of that terminal written down. It's not like anyone could find an unused holotape to just record the entire thing on. Even she had more than she bothered to count...yet couldn't bare to erase a one. Each cartridge had someone's last warning to their family, or note of corruption in her world...just some little piece of time that could be preserved. And in this wasteland, there was very little left to preserve.

So one of her people that was literate had transcribed everything he could find on the device. The Gunner's Captain's notes stated that they had been ordered to abandon the position and head south. Nearly every report warned that this was a deceit, and that the enemy was wandering around the country side looking for targets of opportunity. She let the suspicion flourish among the communities and units patrolling nearby, better safe than sorry. But she thought the record was true. Colonel Cypress had planned every inch of this campaign against her, er...she meant the Commonwealth, and was drawing his troops back to turn a next engagement into a blood bath at best and a slaughter at worst.

Second in her studies were issues of Publick Occurences. It was one thing to anticipate what Piper would write and a wholly different thing to actually see what hit the eyes of the populace. She learned that lesson after her first 'interview' with the journalist when they met. Nuance could hit public opinion like a stack of bricks from twelve stories up.

The account of her battle overtaking the Forged seemed hesitant in its prose, reluctantly descriptive of heroics. Piper had never approached her what happened. But apparently the Minutemen that were there had never actually lied about the event, yet she began to see why everyone thought of her as savior. She felt she had never taken an undue risk in her actions, and in honest self assessment probably had not. But it was important for her troops to feel inspired so they had started over hyping her actions unto themselves. It had become a point of pride, a status symbol to witness the General doing the impossible. So every action she performed became the impossible.

It made her wonder what simply reading in the sun while listening to the radio(s) would be told as a day or a month from now.

What made up the constitution of the Commonwealth had been reprinted faithfully. And the commentary was an initial call for hope and unity and hippy-dippy flower power that the General had hoped for. Absent were all the catches in the language that Preston had found and lamented. She wondered if she could get Piper's poetry to stick as a an official preamble.

What struck her as strange was that she did not have an issue discussing the Gunners. No harrowing tail of flying from Nuka-World. No collection of what had happened at Sommerville, or Murkwater, or Hub City. And she knew Piper was in Goodneighbor again, silently present for the negotiations that would begin any second now on Silver Shroud Radio. She still could not imagine how that issue would read.

She had sent Preston and Shaw to make the negotiations look official. But the General was so confident that there would be no common ground that she had no intention of attending herself. Leaving herself a mystery to Cypress was worth leaving Cypress a mystery to her, as she was confident it would annoy him much more than it did her. So she had given her suboordinates instructions to agree to nothing and inspired them to realize that a mercenary organization with no interest in civilian activity could only want an environment that favored war and advantages in the upcoming war. Preston told her that he would indeed accept an unconditional, unilateral surrender of the Gunners, babe.

She had told him not to call her babe. And hugged him good-bye.