"Had a weird dream last night," Nora said. She and Piper had already left Sanctuary Hills, and were already east of Concord.

"Oh yeah?" Piper asked, more out of politeness than anything.

"Yeah," Nora said. "I was in a Vault, but it wasn't 111. It was… a regular Vault, I guess?" She shook her head. "I get the feeling that 'fucked up science experiment' is what constitutes a regular Vault, but whatever, it was a dream. Anyway, I was in a Vault, but I was a kid again, and it was my birthday."

"Happy birthday!" Piper cheered sarcastically.

"Hush," Nora chided. "There were a bunch of kids there, and my dad, too." Nora frowned. "But not mom, for some reason." She shook her head. "Fuck it, dream logic. Hell, Codsworth was there, too. He fucked up my birthday cake with his buzzsaw arm."

Piper narrowed her eyes. It did sound like a fucked up dream. "Don't dreams usually have some inner meaning?"

Nora mulled over Piper's suggestion. "Well, my parents lived southwest of Boston. I'm pretty sure I watched them die when the bomb hit."

"Shit, Blue, I'm sorry to hear it," Piper said, reaching over and giving Nora's hand a quick squeeze.

"As for the birthday party, I dunno. Maybe symbolism of how I was born again in the Vault? Birth is painful and messy, and fighting off those giant fucking cockroaches was definitely similar." Nora thought for a moment. "Less shitting myself, though."

"Uh, what?!" Piper interrupted.

Nora smirked and gave Piper a patronizing look. "Piper, you've never given birth, have you? All the pushing you have to do… well, let's just say the stork ends up bringing you a little more than a newborn babe."

"I guess that makes sense," Piper said, making a face. "Remind me to never get knocked up, though."

"Back to my dream, though," Nora said. "I think Codsworth demolishing my cake was emblematic of how he's the last shred of my old, normal life, since everything else was destroyed." She pursed her lips. "I don't know why he was the one destroying the cake, in that case. It would have made more sense if the dream overseer had done it." A puzzled expression appeared on her face. "The overseer had a daughter in my dream… what the hell was she meant to represent? Come to think of it, there was another of those big fucking roaches in my dream, too!" Nora was growing increasingly angry. She kicked an old, dry-rotted tire that was resting in the middle of the road hard enough to propel it onto the shoulder. "What kind of bullshit dream WAS that? My dad didn't even look like my dad!" She stopped and fumed for a moment. "And where did that fucking Irish accent come from?"

"Well, maybe sometimes dreams are just dreams," Piper said quickly.

"Maybe sometimes dreams are bullshit," Nora said in a sulky tone, but she elected to let the matter drop. She looked around. "Hey, I think I recognize this area from before the war. Follow me!" She cut a path south, ignoring the road. Piper followed her, walking uphill as the ground rose up, until suddenly she found herself next to Nora, who'd stopped and was staring south at a large construction. "Good ol' Starlight," Nora said, nostalgic.

"Starlight?" Piper asked. She figured she'd probably seen the weird building from a distance, but hadn't had any reason to investigate it before.

Nora nodded. "A drive-in theater. You'd get in your car, drive into the parking lot, tune your radio to the same frequency as the transmitter in the projection booth, and watch Hollywood's latest drivel."

Piper nodded in understanding. "So, kind of like a big TV?"

Nora smiled. "Yeah, more or less." She pointed at the cars still parked in the parking lot, a few skeletons still resting scattered on the tarmac between. "I wonder who the fuck came here to watch a movie in the daytime, though." Nora sat down, opened her backpack, and pulled a chunk of roast roach from it. She began absentmindedly eating it, her gaze still fixed on the installation.

Piper took that as her cue to sit down and have some lunch herself. "Lost in your memories again?" she asked gently.

"Yeah," Nora admitted. "Nate and I had a few dates here. And, a few times, I exercised my 'arrangement' here too." She smiled lustily at the memories, and Piper hurriedly gobbled down her food, hopeful that her blush would go away by the time she finished eating. "You know, a few sharpshooters at the top of the screen…" She finished the roach meat and licked her fingers. "Might have to swing back here and scope the place out, see if it'd be worth it to set up a Minuteman outpost here."

"Sounds like a good idea," Piper nodded. "Maybe a full settlement — it looks like there's some water in that little indentation with the barrels, and there's plenty of flat land you could use to plant some food."

Nora nodded in agreement. "Project for another day, anyway!" She stood up, wiped her fingers off on the hip of her vault suit and stood up. "The good folks at Tenpines aren't too far away, and Preston said they're just a little farming place. I'm sure whatever they need help with, it's something innocuous like 'Our water pump needs fixed, after I hit the big red OFF button!' or 'Someone keeps fucking the farm animals, no matter how late my husband stays up late to guard them!'."

Piper grimaced, holding in the laughter at the shockingly over-the-top joke. She agreed with Nora, it was likely to be something simple and easy.

XXX

Excerpt from "The Rise and Fall of the Institute"

It wasn't.

XXX

The still nighttime atmosphere of Sanctuary was broken with a yell. "PRESTON!" Nora bellowed, not even all the way across the Old North Bridge. "PREEEEESTOOOOOON!" Several settlers came running, followed shortly by Preston himself, who'd been dozing in bed. He had his laser musket, a pair of old, worn boxers, and nothing else. He stopped short when he saw the state Nora and Piper were in. Piper was clearly shell-shocked and walking with a limp; there was a narrow line across one cheek that Preston had a sinking feeling was a furrow left by a bullet passing too close for comfort. Nora was clearly worse off, though — part of her vault suit looked blacked by flames, and half her face bore… oh God, Preston hoped it was a sunburn. She wore an improvised eyepatch over the eye on that side of the face, though, so it was a slim hope.

"General?" Preston greeted, standing as much at ease as he could.

"Preston!" Nora greeted, her voice a mix of 20% friendliness and 80% shrill anger. "How are you, buddy? Doing good?"

Preston nodded. "As well as can be expected," he said. "No problems around Sanctuary Hills' perimeter."

"Good, good, good!" Nora said. She saw Mama Murphy loitering in the crowd and led Piper to her. The old woman put her arm around Piper and led her back further into Sanctuary for some TLC. Nora, meanwhile, walked up to Preston and put her arm around his neck, drawing him close. "Hey, Preston, now ask me how MY day went," she said.

"I'm guessing that —" he began.

"No, no, NO!" she said, poking his chest hard with a finger with each 'no'. "You ASK!" Another poke for emphasis. "Don't be fucking rude and guess! Don't people still have that saying about what happens when you assume?"

Preston sighed, feeling highly uncomfortable surrounded by the dozen or so residents of Sanctuary Hills, being grilled by the general, whilst only in his sleepwear. "Uh… general, how did your day go?"

Nora grinned, a smile full of malice. "Oh, it went wonderfully! Piper and I went south and then east, past Concord. We had lunch at Starlight Drive In. Went up north, to Tenpines Bluff. They tell us they have a little raider problem." She batted her eyelashes at Preston. "Now, Preston, did you know they had a raider problem?"

Preston slowly shook his head. "No, general, I —"

"Hey!" Nora interrupted. "Maybe, from now on, you can find out what these dinky little settlements actually want before you send me off on a noble quest to aid them! Like, if they're having equipment problems, maybe, or, oh, let's say — I'll pick something completely at random — a raider encampment was located nearby. Because that seems like important information to know, right?" She waited a heartbeat and a half. "RIGHT, Preston?" She gave him another chest prod, one that was sure to leave a bruise.

"Y-yes, general," Preston stammered out, doing his best to keep his composure in the face of this public onslaught.

"Good!" Nora said, her face softening a little. She gave him a little kiss on the cheek, a pat on the shoulder, and then proceeded to take his hand and lead him to the private room they shared in one of the derelict old houses. Once the door was closed behind them, she let her backpack fall to the ground, and began running her hands over his smooth, muscled chest. "I've been waiting to do this all day," she purred, one hand making its way south of the border.

"General… Nora…" Preston panted, feeling his heart beating faster. Preston grunted as an abrupt spike of pain shot through his consciousness, as Nora's hand had wrapped around an extremely sensitive part of his anatomy hidden by his shorts and was giving it a less-than-gentle squeeze. He thrust his hands forward and grabbed onto her shoulders for dear life, afraid that he was about to collapse from the sensations shooting through him.

Nora relinquished her hold on him just a fraction, then leaned in and whispered into his ear. "Did that hurt?" she asked, a note of sympathy in her voice. Preston didn't trust his voice enough to speak right away, so he simply nodded 'yes'. "Aw, poor baby," she cooed, rubbing his back with her other hand. "Imagine how much it would have hurt if a tactical nuke had gone off within a few yards of you. Imagine your clothes catching fire and getting an instant sunburn over half your face and having to wear an eyepatch for, what, a day or two?" She leaned in even closer and tightened her grip just a shade more: "Now imagine what I'll do to you if you can't get me better intel on a mission like this. Intel like, 'Oh yeah, there's a group of raiders, and one of them has a fucking hobo-engineered-looking suit of power armor and a fucking tactical nuke cannon.' Knowing that kind of shit ahead of time would have been reeeeeal fuckin' useful. Like, I could have worn my power armor and just shrugged off the blast, and maybe Piper wouldn't have almost gotten her head blown off useful. Do you think you can do that for me, Preston? Just an itty bitty little favor?"

"Yeah," he managed to croak out.

"Good, good," Nora nodded. "Tomorrow, I'll give you the coordinates to the raiders' camp — I think it'd make a good little settlement. They already had a generator and some turrets set up. We can also talk about the Starlight Drive-In. Tonight, though…" Nora licked her lips. Her hand shifted, and despite the pain he had just endured, he found he was more than willing to overlook it. "Tonight, Preston, you're going to help take care of my injuries, and then… well, I'll help take care of yours."

Oh yes, very willing, indeed. "Yes, ma'am," Preston replied, voice husky as he helped Nora shed her damaged Vault suit.

XXXXXXXXXX

If that dream sequence doesn't sound familiar to you, you probably never played Fallout 3. Look forward to me sprinkling more silly Easter eggs like that one throughout this story; I blame it on the fact that Fallout 2 was my first Fallout game, and they wedged as many Easter eggs into that game as they possibly could (including, yes, a literal Easter egg).

Fun anecdote: I preordered Fallout 3, but the day I was supposed to go out and pick it up my neighborhood underwent a police lockdown, so I was stuck at home for the day. I ended up seeing a gameplay video from IGN or someplace that night that showed the main character mowing people down with a minigun and their corpses just ragdolled to the ground. I was unimpressed at the seeming lack of ultraviolence and ended up canceling my preorder. (Some years after, I bought Fallout 3 GOTY for $5 on Steam, discovered the Bloody Mess perk, and laughed at my own foolishness, hahaha).

I think the quest Tenpines Bluff sends you on is one of those random radiant ones, but they can point you to the raiders at Outpost Zimonja, just a hop, skip, and a jump to the northeast. It's no easy feat for an unprepared low-level character, since the raiders are led by a man named Boomer, armed with a Fat Man and wearing a suit of raider power armor. Nora and Piper may have plot armor, but that doesn't mean they get to walk away from someone like that unscathed.

I'm hoping Nora's confrontation with Preston is a little cathartic for everyone who can relate to all the Preston hate, hahaha. In the original draft of this story I actually had Nora straight-up kick him in the nuts, but I think that crossed the line from "Nora is rightly upset that she walked unprepared into a situation that could have killed her" to "Nora is an unhinged asshole who thinks nothing of publicly humiliating and injuring her friends." I think changing it to a private setting and having Nora utilize both pain and pleasure to drive her point across is a lot more consistent with her character.