When Nora returned, Piper was once again calm, at least externally. Her eyes, though, still retained a hint of panic, and to Nora, that just would not do. "What's going on out there, Blue? I heard some shooting."

"Happy Thanksgiving!" Nora said, out of nowhere.

Piper knitted her eyebrows together. "I don't know what that is," she admitted.

"Well, it was a prewar holiday devoted to stuffing your face as much as humanly possible… but I guess it's fallen out of memory for the same reason stuffing your face is no longer viable." She shook her head. "No matter, no worries, irrelevant. I was out shooting birds, to put on a Thanksgiving feast."

"Birds tiny," Strong pointed out. "No good for eat."

"Very true, Strong, very true," Nora said, patting him on the shoulder. She turned to Piper. "You've seen dead animals, right? Here and out in the Commonwealth?"

"Well, yeah," Piper acknowledged. "Especially anytime we leave downtown and start roaming around in the countryside." She quietly reflected on how whenever Nora saw a dead animal (or was the cause for its death, which was usually the case with the hostile animals), she'd butcher it on the spot and take away one or two servings of meat. It seemed morbid at first, but Piper quickly found that a full, satisfied belly every night had quieted her qualms. (Of course, that mental image plus the new fact of Nora's cannibalism had once again sent her down the road towards nausea, and vow to never eat anything she hadn't personally seen Nora butcher.)

"I thought so," Nora said. "Ever seen any dead birds?"

"No…" Piper said slowly. She was quick on the uptake, though, and her mind already began making the same connections Nora had.

"That's right," Nora said. "The kooks of my time were right: birds aren't fucking real. They're surveillance drones!"

"It never occurred to me the Institute would make synth animals," Piper mused. She unholstered her pistol and turned the safety off. "Let's go kill some fucking birds."

"Whoa, whoa!" Nora said, holding her hands up. "Before you go all Bye Bye Birdie on those mofos, I already have a plan in mind for them!" Piper hesitated, not wanting those birdy bastards to be watching Nat one more second than necessary, but finally relented. "See, if we just start gunning them down willy nilly, the Institute will realize the jig is up. Who knows what they'll do? Maybe they'll make microdrones, too small to see. Maybe they'll just quietly replace everyone in Diamond City Security, one by one. Maybe they'll do a full-frontal assault on Diamond City."

"Strong destroy all who fight!" Strong declared.

Piper glanced over at Strong and realized she'd forgotten about him, and wondered how her life had come to such a state that she could have a super mutant sitting calmly in her home and simply forget about him. "Hey, pal, I think we're trying for a more subtle approach," she said.

Nora nodded. "If the Institute thinks we're killing birds for innocuous reasons, then they may switch their shit up a little — faster birds or something — but they won't see it as a hostile action, and won't retaliate. Probably."

Piper crossed her arms. "Okay, what's your plan?"

Nora put a hand on Piper's shoulder. "I'm gonna take out an ad in your paper."

XXX

Advertisement:

Is anyone else in Diamond City tired of eating the same old meat? Brahmin, mirelurk, sometimes yao guai or deathclaw? I want to test out an old family recipe for chicken, but the only birds around are the crows! Please bring me a dead, intact crow so I can try out some of these 200 year old seasonings on it. I will pay top cap for one, but remember, it has to be intact! I have no use for a bird in pieces!

XXX

Piper looked down at the ad copy, impressed. "Nice, Blue, real nice." She put it back into Nora's hands. "But I'm not putting ads in my fucking paper." There was no heat or anger in the sentence; just a calm, matter-of-fact statement that Piper's ideals were iron-clad.

Nora was still a little miffed, though. "Come on, Piper! We're talking about the safety of the people of Diamond City here!" (She didn't specify Nat, because that would have been a low fucking blow). "One little ad, just one time?"

Piper again crossed her arms. "No."

"Okay," Nora said. "I guess I'll go post it on that job board thingy outside."

She turned to go, but stopped as Polly invited herself in. "Uh, hi," she greeted shyly, giving wary looks to Strong. "I, uh, have your… bird meat." She held out a cloth sack which was stained red on the bottom. The stain was gradually growing larger. "Did you want to hear about…" She looked from Strong to Piper, unsure if they were trustworthy.

"Oh, go ahead and tell me what you found," Nora said, waving dismissively at her friends. "Piper's as trustworthy as they come, and Strong doesn't know the meaning of the word 'betrayal'."

"Strong not know many words," Strong pointed out. "Strong only good at killing, and cooking puny humans."

"I'm a vegetarian," Polly muttered, not really sure how else she was supposed to respond to that. She tore her gaze away from the super mutant and faced Nora and Piper. "I closely examined each of the birds you brought me, and all three had burn residue consistent with an explosive, which I would normally assume to be explosive ammunition. But I saw you shoot all three birds, and you didn't use that stuff. You didn't even hit the third bird anywhere near the head, and it still exploded. If I had to guess, the, uh, animals, or whatever the hell they are, had an explosive device implanted within them, which triggered when the animal died."

Nora nodded. "I figured that would be the case, but it's good to have confirmation."

"Are these things…synths?" She leaned in and whispered the last word in Nora's ear, shooting distrustful glances at Piper even though she'd been vouched for.

"Probably," Nora confirmed. "If they can create lifelike humans, there's no reason they couldn't create lifelike animals."

"So, there could be, uh, other synth animals?" Polly asked. "Synth brahmin?" She looked troubled.

"It's possible," Nora admitted.

"I don't know if synth meat would be safe to eat," Polly said, arms crossed, eyes riveted to the floor. "I don't know if I can keep selling meat if it's synth meat."

"Hey, I'm sure it's fine," Nora said, giving Polly a gentle, reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Even if there are synth brahmin running around out there, it's not like the meat would be bad for you. Think about it: if the Institute is spying on people through brahmin, and if the meat was bad for you, their plan would be spoiled the first time someone ate one and got sick or died. Right?"

"Right…" Polly said, still not fully convinced.

Nora scrutinized Polly for a moment, then changed the subject. "Look, if you ever feel like leaving the butcher gig, we could use someone like you up in Sanctuary Hills. Last time I was there, we just got our first brahmin, so you could help us look after it."

Polly met Nora's gaze. "D-do you really mean it?" she asked, not daring to hope.

"Really really," Nora said.

Polly actually gave a small smile at that, then her walls went up again and the smile went away. (But Nora had still seen it). "Well, it's good to have options, I guess," she said stoically, before leaving.

Nora realized she was still holding the bloody sack of synth crow meat, and handed it off to Strong. "Here you go, lover," she said, giving him an appreciative smooch on the side of his head as he reached a hand in and took out a large fistful of meat.

Piper cleared her throat to get Nora's attention and gestured her over to where she was standing. "Hey, Blue, I don't want to really get into your, uh, personal business —"

"You don't?" Nora asked, in that low tone of voice that did something indescribable to Piper. She gently ran her fingers up Piper's arm, and Piper had to resist shuddering at the touch.

"N-not like… I mean… damnit!" She stepped back from Nora to compose herself. "What I'm trying to say is: did you and Strong use… protection?"

For once, it was Nora blushing. She let out a slow giggle. "Ah, heh heh, that would be a definite no." She raised her eyebrows. "I know a lot of old prewar shit still works, or hasn't gone bad yet, but I wouldn't have figured on 200 year old condoms still being effective."

"Oh, every so often we get a batch when a trader from the west coast makes it all the way out here. Expensive as hell, but I guess they've managed to synthesize latex or something…" She forced herself to stop talking — Nora always could succeed in making people go off on tangents. "Damnit, Nora, this is serious! Super mutants aren't sterile!"

Nora paused for a moment, looking over at Strong. "So, you mean…"

"Yeah," Piper said. "You could be…" She patted her own belly, unable to actually say the word.

Nora turned back to Piper, looked her in the eye for a long moment, then shook her head. "No, I couldn't be," she finally said.

"How do you figure?" Piper asked.

Nora licked her lips, then went upstairs (to talk in something resembling privacy) and sat on Piper's bed, Piper following suit. "I haven't had my period since I woke up," she said. "It's fairly regular, and I got used to tracking it when Nate and I were trying for Shaun, but ever since I awoke — nothing. Zilch. No cramps, cravings, or clots." She looked down at her belly and a shaky smile appeared on her face. "At first I thought that maybe, just maybe… maybe it was Nate's? Maybe if I couldn't find Shaun, there'd still be a piece that was a little him and a little me? Not to replace Shaun, of course, but…" She blew out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "I saw Doc Sun, real discreetly, a few weeks ago. He was able to do the test, and… I'm not pregnant. I'm not pregnant and I'm not menstruating. He doesn't have the knowledge or the equipment to do a full gyno exam, God knows if anyone on or under this cursed Earth does, but Shaun is my one and only child, something which will never change."

"God, I can't imagine," Piper finally said. She put an arm around Nora and pulled her close, using her other hand to squeeze Nora's thigh.

Once Nora was feeling better (and not like she was about to burst into tears again), she looked Piper in the face. "So, super mutants aren't sterile? People know this?"

Piper grimaced. "Every five or ten years, some really adventurous woman will venture to a place with super mutants, find one by his lonesome, and, well, you know."

"Yes, I do," Nora pointed out, grinning. "Firsthand."

"Right…" Piper made a face, then continued. "Anwyay, the woman returns to civilization, and rapidly becomes very obviously pregnant." She sighed. "Without intense medical treatment, or an abortion, a super mutant pregnancy almost inevitably ends in the death of the mother and the baby both." She shook her head.

"Aren't there any gal super mutants?" Nora asked. "Surely they'd be able to carry a hybrid baby to term."

"Beats me," Piper said. "I suppose whatever turns you into a super mutant erases most of the secondary sex characteristics that let you tell the difference, and good luck watching a super mutant encampment long enough for a fetus to gestate. As for what's between their legs?" She patted Nora on the shoulder. "I'll leave that question to the philosophers and you."

They were silent for a few moments, until Nora spoke up again. "I think the Institute makes super mutants," she said.

Piper thought about this. "If Strong saw Nat on surveillance, through a synth bird… yeah, when he was human he would have been in the Institute. How did he become a mutant, though?"

Nora pounded her chin with her knuckles. "I'm guessing it wasn't a simple lab accident, unless they have piss-poor layouts and do all their hideously unethical science experiments in the same room where they spy on the outside world." She shook her head. "And I don't think he had two jobs at this place, checking the cameras in the morning and the mutation shit in the afternoon. No, these dickheads feel very professional, very compartmentalized. No, he was solely a surveillance worker… a prisoner, maybe?" She thought about this, then shook her head. "Unlikely. I doubt they'd trust an outsider with spying on his fellow outsiders. No, he's a careerist, born in the Institute, I suppose. Maybe he broke a rule? Stole rations, didn't find enough people to kidnap, that sort of thing? Maybe he volunteered, didn't really grasp the impact of the experiment he was putting himself down for." She bit her lip. "Maybe he tried to help out someone, someone captured from outside. He or she appealed to his kindness, and he complied, and it cost him everything." She nodded. "And that's why he's so fixated on finding the milk of human kindness now." She nodded, approving of her own theory. "I like it."

"There's no way of knowing that for sure," Piper pointed out. "And it's really depressing that the best-case scenario you can come up with is 'kind man is robbed of his personhood and forced to become a bloodthirsty maniac'."

"I know, and I know," Nora acknowledged. "But I want it to be true."

"Yeah," Piper said. "I suppose I do too." She shrugged. "Who knows, maybe whoever he helped was a synth, and he managed to get them to the Railroad and out of the Institute's grasp."

Nora looked at Piper, confused. "What's the Railroad?"

XXXXXXXXXX

Did you ever sneak into Polly's house and read her terminal? The woman seriously hates being a butcher. It's a little sad you can't offer her a better life.

Blah blah blah "Devs said that super mutants actually are sterile!" blah blah blah don't care. Devs can say what they wan't, don't make shit canon. I mean, if you want to live and die by the Word of God, then Nate really IS a war criminal. (Of course I don't personally buy into that and it's not part of the backstory of this Nate, but it was hilarious as shit when Emil Pagliarulo tweeted that out the other week).

I've been playing 3 and NV again (they're still fun as hell!), and I noticed that both games have birds. Hmm. Hmmmmmm.

Oh, and I may be a crazy person, but replaying 3 got me in the mood to write a new Fallout 3 fanfic! It's not quite ready for prime time, but hopefully I'll be able to start posting it soon! (Just as a heads-up, it's not intended to be a prequel to YOLT, if that matters to anyone out there).