Author's Note: My next 'chapter' will be responding to reviews and discussing where the story will go from here, should there be interest. Please review soon.

Weeks ago-

The General sat in a chair in Sentinal Sites missile silo. One of the five synths she had the Institute prepare for her touched her shoulder.

"We are ready to launch on your command.", it told her.

The General shook her head. "What have I forgotten?"

"Nothing.", the synth replied. "We even repaired the fuel injection system breach which would have totaled the rocket as we found it on the truck."

The remaining synths walked up one by one. "We are ready to la/"

"The Director claims to have forgotten something."

"But we repaired the/"

"I have informed her."

And then they frowned.

The General spoke on to herself.

"I've switched out my Pip-Boy with one from Vault 88. One of you Synths are outside of Vault 88 wearing it, being tracked by the Institute. Even if it's not real time, it will still trace my whereabouts to just behind the front lines on any internal log the Institute may have installed. And by switching it out, I have the full functionality of my own except a teleport back to the Institute.

"We didn't try to claim the XMB rocket that was in ArcJet proper. Brandis' men have been crawling all over that since the Institute's drones let it go. I've taken ours from the truck to the south of there (which we learned about from the records the Institute had taken before even the Brotherhood established their beach head in the Commonwealth at the police station), had you guys disassemble it, and we moved it here by a wagon we also built out of the dead trees of the wasteland. So even if someone could prove that it was an XMB rocket, that same someone will use it as proof that the nuclear strike didn't come from the Commonwealth.

"We're not only using the launching infrastructure present here, but we're also using a warhead from this facility. This keeps the Minutemen's stores intact. I can survive my own order to account for the weapons I've requisitioned across the Commonwealth.

"On top of that, by attacking Gunner Plaza from this location I'm using an attack vector that accuses the Brotherhood of Steel."

The General looked up to the synths that continued to await her commands. She took them as cues to explain.

"There's no way I can speed up the war with the Gunners. I've tried everything at my disposal: assassination teams, coordinated artillery, superior logistics, armor units, air units... Every day the fronts don't change, casualties mount. Every time Colonel Cypress pulls something, casualties mount. And if I don't win a decisive enough victory, Bridget might just rejoin the war effort on the side of the Gunners - it's not like Cypress will be able to turn her away when her troops are close in number to his.

"And as soon as we're both weak enough, neither the Minutemen or the Gunners will be able to repel an invasion from the Brotherhood of Steel. We'll need to face them one day - unlike the Institute and the Minutemen, they're still an enemy of the Commonwealth or at least a pillager. But with the amount of war and changes in the status quo that have happened since I've arrived in this time, the people will need a reason to enter into yet another war. Using them as a scapegoat for the nuclear strike which ends the conflict with the Gunners serves that purpose as well.

"I'll actually be able to use the nuclear strike itself as an excuse to put the final locks on the entirety of the Commonwealth. Every community will be forced to let me investigate it lest one of the others believes it capable of a nuclear strike from the sky, so I'll finally know everything. Everyone will back me in disrupting the truce that holds Far Harbor in favor of ruling the entire island. And with the Minutemen winning the war, Bridget will have to join her forces with mine because there won't be anyone else...or she can stay and rot down in Vault 75."

The General's tone changed from the 'laying out the facts' trial style she had been taught to a much more pleading tone.

"You have to understand: I'm sitting on an alien spaceship. And the little green man shot at me without so much as a thought: either he sees humans as wild animals or an active threat. Losing custody of that craft means losing everything. I need the Institute focused on figuring out a defense of mankind. And they'll need humanity in lockstep support of them to do it. Anything else means the actual end. Not just the apocalypse that I woke up to. But the total annihilation of the Earth.

"And it's not like I won't be doing anyone any good. The Institute will need skilled workers, which means setting up schools and forcing them to share their knowledge with mankind. People will be moved by the greatest threat of a common enemy to every exist. We're literally facing a galaxy that we don't know except for the fact that it's hostile. Our state of

War

Never

Ends

."

The General took one more breath. "I'm survivor of the most destructive war mankind has ever committed against itself with its most destructive weapons. And now I'm going to damn us to a future of only the same by using one of those weapons myself. Have I become the villain of my own story?"

"I don't believe that we can answer that objectively, Director.", one of the synths responded. "After all, you have warned us that you will have to destroy us so that our memories are unrecoverable in order to cover up the fact that you were the one to use a nuclear weapon.

"Which brings us back to the point: we're ready to launch."