1
"I can't let you out.", Amata told her.
The Lone Wanderer shook her head. "We do this dance every time, Almodovar."
"I mean, there's something wrong with the engine for the door.", the overseer continued.
The CHINESE STEALTH SUIT turned around. "Every single time."
Amata hugged her own left elbow with her right hand. "But this time's different, okay. With this General out there and us safe in here. And you telling me that I might not be able to ever let you back in because of her. How can you ask me to let you leave? How can you want to?"
The Lone Wanderer took her friend into a hug. "The wasteland is dangerous. And there's always someone like the General. But there's also so many people out there that don't have your vault."
"Our vault.", the overseer objected.
The Lone Wanderer smiled. "Our vault."
"But if there's always someone like the General, then why do it? It's not going to matter.", Amata continued to object.
"Of course it matters.", the Lone Wanderer told her. "The fact that there's always someone new shows that there are new someones. Humanity can come back, if it's allowed. If it's defended. And that takes everyone who can. Even if I can't make history with my sword, maybe I can defend someone who will. And if there's a chance of that, I have to take it."
"Like with Project Purity?", Almodovar reminded.
"Like Project Purity.", the Lone Wander lamented, remembering that it had been cut off from the Capitol Wastes by the General's marines.
"Now give me some space.", she commanded. "I don't want your pretty little lungs breathing the outside air."
2
Barely into her walk, her Pip-Boy's radio had started to make her feel as if she should have taken her friend up on the offer. Three Dog's lamentations over the ultimate fall of the Jefferson Memorial into Minutemen hands...hurt. Sure, the Republic of Rose and Canterbury Commons and Underworld were bad. The hiypocrisy of Lincoln Memorial's lack of resistance to a warlord was ludicrous. But her father's...
She just had to come up with another way. She always had before.
But the General managed to survive telling the world that she was responsible for a pre-war weapon. From the great before! Even if she decided to just start charging into Minutemen and clearing them out by violence, the same would just happen to whatever place the Minutemen guessed she was in once they took her as a serious enough threat.
The woman shrugged and set out into the Wastelands as she always had done.
