"A leggy dame breezed into my office. But from the frown on her face and the weathered, leather coat that cried out too many close calls and hard scrapes, it was a cold wind. The broad sized me up, takin' in this old dog...or just biding her time until his smokes changed hands. Probably into hers - you gotta keep your eyes on the hands of a leggy dame."
Ellie Perkins turned away from her files back to Valentine. "Kill the noir, Nick.
"Hey, Piper."
"Hello, Ellie.", the reporter greeted. "You know, now that the Institute has surfaced, you can probably get repaired properly."
Nick continued working on his hand with a simple screwdriver. "Says you and your lady friend and my own assistant. But I'm still not trusting those Institute bastards further than I can throw them. Putting a rabid dog on a leash might show how tough you are but it doesn't do a thing to tame the dog.
"Is this just a social call, Ms. Wright?"
She shook her head. "Not this time. I actually came to bring you in on an investigation. Probably the most important one since Blue's baby."
"That cracked the Institute.", Valentine replied. "What could be big like that?"
"Blue has flipped ever since someone nuked Gunner Plaza. She's probably having flash backs or nightmares about the day she got her family to Vault 111. I don't know. But she did order that nothing nuclear every occur again on punishment of...probably her boot to someone's ass. Now she's on the war path to find out who did it.
"She's charged me with overseeing the various governments' self-monitoring. I've been to the Castle, the Yangtze, Irish Pride, Saugus, and Fort Hagen. Now, she has been grabbing up every scrap of nuclear explosive that she can find. But it's all accounted for. She literally has been just stockpiling MINI-NUKES just to make sure no one else has been using them. I just got through writing it up and Nat's publishing as we speak.
"But the local governments' investigations are...I suppose the polite phrase is ongoing.", Piper finished.
The synth nodded. "And they could use a kick in the pants. But since they're all government, the only people to keep them honest have to not be in government. So you come to me, an investigator with no ties to anyone."
The reporter bit her tongue. "Right. It makes sense, doesn't it. It's not the Minutemen, so it has to be someone else by definition. The most likely suspects are the people ruling the Commonwealth staring down the Gunners but with security forces that have been completely internalized to their plot of land. Sounds like one of the local governments got spooked."
"Well, you're a pushy broad.", Nick accounted. "You don't need me to help you poke your nose where people don't like it. And with our favorite vault dweller telling everyone that you're doing to looky-loo, there's no way to stop you.
"So you didn't come here for that."
Piper folded her arms. "It just doesn't smell right, Nick. Blue doesn't play around. She told everyone that nuclear weapons were flat out illegal - despite allowing the Triggermen chems and prostitution and gambling and a bunch of stuff that probably didn't fly before the Great War. Hell, it's still legal to keep a MISSILE in your house her in Diamond City itself and we have kids running around behind the wall. She's even let the post war religions like the Children of Atom and the Hubologists run rampant and they get into a lot more trouble than the Triggermen nowadays.
"Then there's how part of how she got the Admiral on her team was his holding her to a promise not to use his nuclear arsenal - which she hasn't. A nuclear blast threatened that, I'm sure.
"Plus, she was nearly comfortable with the amount of death she was accruing in the war. She put her men on permanent battle lines. She sent her friends, actual companion friends like MacCready and Curie, to the front. Hell, she tried to take out Cypress her own self. And never once even mentioned a nuclear option.
"If anyone in the Commonwealth did it, they'd have to know that Blue would come down on them like a ton of bricks. Who would sign up for that type of ass kicking? Vault 114 was making caps hand over fist with the chems from the war and their nigh monopoly. Hancock is one of her biggest allies. Geneva wouldn't even dream of cooking this up. Vault 88 hid behind their door before we were a nation so I don't think that they would do something different, and on top of that - wouldn't they have the same hangups as Blue about nuclear weapons?"
Nick's jaw motor visibly locked. "So what you're really saying is that your investigation is going to find nothing where Blue has you looking. So what needs to be done is some dirtier work that you are not authorized for. Some hard questions are going to have to be asked of whoever the real villain is. And they're going to be big and bad enough to nuke the main hub and headquarters of the Gunners like checking off a box on their to do list."
Piper looked down. "Look, I know how heavy this can get. The paper's been doing great with exclusive access to the Castle and distribution on the caravans and provisioner lines, so I can really really afford you now. But still, I know it's a lot to ask."
Nick frowned. "What about the Railroad? You said you have gone to APC and naval headquarters. Has the intelligence branch proven their innocence?"
"Blue's investigating them personally. Preston tells me that there are provisions for declassifying an agent's identity. And if that agent has been declassified for wrongdoing, what can happen to them.", Piper answered. "Same thing with the Institute. Blue's doing them herself. Something to do with their surrender agreement to the Minutemen allowing for more privacy. But she didn't let them off the hook either."
"So there's no other options left.", Nick said. The synth got up from his desk and put on his hat.
"Ellie, I'm headed out on a case.
"So, Ms. Wright. Where do you suggest we pick up the trail?"
Piper remained seated. She mumbled to herself so that Ellie couldn't hear.
"Whaddayamean, the Brotherhood of Steel?", Nick exclaimed.
"The Railroad caught one of their knights or something, okay?", Piper said aloud. "They only lost their expeditionary force when they were blown out of the Commonwealth's skies. And they certainly have the technology to pull this off. So I say we start tracking down caravans that have come from that way and see how plausible it is."
"Ms. Perkins, you didn't hear any of that.", Nick commanded immediately. "As far as you know, I'm on another missing child case. Probably super mutants or raiders. I'll be back when I can be."
Piper softly smiled. "Thanks, Nick."
