Both doors to the General's quarters flew open and slammed against the walls. The loud ruckus was stalled for just the moment enough for the General's gentle "Quiet." to be obeyed. She strode into the room with four Minutemen guards, armored and armed, surrounding her.
The woman walked to her seat, scanning the crowd that was the combined civilian...council, senate - well, it's not like a name for it is important now. And all of her colonels were present as well. It was the people who...wait, she was present.
"Roxxy?", the General asked.
The ghoul in the Atom Cats' representative's chair, covered in something more akin to the Children of the Atom than the rock'n'roll skirt Roxxy was known for replied. "Yes."
Anticipating the followup question, a raspy voice explained. "Our garage...it isn't a shelter. So Zeke made the call to race for Posiedon Energy. We...we had power armor after all. Except me. We put it on hold because of the Gunner War, then we were repairing units for the Capital Wastes. They pumped me full of RAD-X and threw every blanket we had around me and humped the trail. But...no. No buts."
Whiteless, pure black eyes and charred skin turned to the General. "Atom Cats Garage. No fatalities. General."
The General's hand ticked to reach out to her. But she was General. And they needed her to be a hardened General at that. "Trixie?"
"I understand.", the ghoul representing Vault 114 assured.
"Hancock?", she scanned the room. "Farenhiet. Where's Hancock?"
The violent woman now sat in the representative of Good Neighbor's chair started slowly before speeding up. "When we heard the storm was coming, I tried to get him to stay put in the Third Rail. But he, as usual, was all 'government for the people' and that he was the government around here. There's a lot of buildings in Goodneighbor that have too many holes to be shelter. We have drifters sleeping the streets most nights. He raced to get people in. And he kept on going. No matter how I yelled at him. No matter that I, me - fucking Farenheit, started crying.
"I even tried seducing him. Damn his actually respecting us under all the horn-dog bravado. Said there were 'other babes that needed the Hancock magic'.
"But he kept popping RAD-X like that was gonna work. So we kept scooping up the half dead that made it, stabbing them with RADAWAY to make sure it wasn't in vain. He got a lot of people to safety. A lot of good people that no one else was looking out for. They say he was just chanting 'for the people' to himself.
"But that stream trickled off. First it got too long. Then we were thinking it was too quiet. But we told ourselves that he knew Goodneighbor like the back of his hand. He found somewhere to hunker down, right? At the time we didn't know how full the Memory Den was - maybe he was over there, ya know? Hell, there was the tunnel the bitch who tried to rob us dug, he could have some people over there: turns out he did have some stashed over there.
"And after way too long, we heard the knocking again. And we pulled him in. We held him down. RAD-X. RADAWAY. Even his goddamn MENTATS in every fucking flavor. I tried to slap some sense into him. He wouldn't listen. He couldn't listen. It was too late. Way to late. It was too late the last couple of times to be honest.
"I wouldn't let anyone else do it. I knew the unspoken tradition: that not only if you were tough enough to put down the last mayor then you get to be mayor, but you owe it to Goodneighbor to step up if you rob her of a mayor. I never had any interest in the job. I just knew what I would do to someone else if they were the one. So I did."
Farenhiet looked the General right in the eyes, through her goggles. "I didn't come here to tell you that. I didn't come here to do any representing either. I came here for three things. One, to let you know that you don't have to worry about Goodneighbor. Without Hancock to stop me, I took every single trouble maker in town into the middle of the street and beat their asses until everyone knew that there isn't going to be any troublemaking in Goodneighbor. Two, that frees you up to kill every last bastard that did this to us. And three, I want in."
"You don't get in.", the General told her.
Before the woman's knife was half way out of her boot, the four Minutemen guards had Institute make Minutemen mark II laser muskets leveled at her. But not before the General's Pistol had already popped out of seemingly no where and directly against her skull.
"I'm going to start doing some things that I am some day going to regret.", the General stated. "Maybe not even regretting that they were done considering who I am going to do them to. But becoming the person who was capable of doing those things. Going down in history as the one who ordered them. If I ever live that long after doing them. Yeah, that's coming.
"But you. Goodneighbor still needs leadership. There's recovery efforts. There's all the things that come with governing. And I need people like you, who know your communities, who lived among your communities to be there for your communities. So you'll go back there and keep order. You'll build a future. Whether you like it or lump it is your freedom.
"But I won't have you messing up the changes to the war effort. And if it consoles you, that is what our efforts in the Capital Wastes have become. Not a police action to bring justice to criminals. Not exploratory. Not diplomatic. Not bringing in communities. War. We are killing off every last remnant of the Brotherhood of Steel in the Capital Wastes, purging it from the land.
"You think you and your single community suffered? I'm responsible for all of you. I've walked among all of you. And I am responsible for twice as many more settlements that may no longer be twice as many more." The General threw her intelligence brief on the table that the council members sat around. "So instead of you telling me how much we need the Brotherhood of Steel dead and in the ground, I'm telling you how we're going to put them there."
