Piper had made it back to Diamond City first, naturally, and no matter what reaction Nora was hoping to elicit from the guards, Piper went ahead and gave them the heads up that she'd be accompanied by a (hopefully still) non-hostile super mutant. She didn't want Nora to escape the conflict between the Gunners and the Brotherhood only to be shot down on the doorstep of safety.
She checked in on Nick, told him a little of what had happened (he was shocked but unsurprised that Nora had managed to befriend a super mutant, of all things), then went back to her own place, barely saying hi to Nat, so distracted and worried was she. She paced back and forth repeatedly; she wrote multiple first drafts of articles, then trashed them; she finally went down to the Dugout Inn to get blazing drunk, but couldn't even finish her first drink before she left to check and see if Nora had gotten back yet.
Finally, as night fell, the stadium's old announcements system shrieked into life, which they only did in an emergency. "Um, hey, this is… Travis… with an important announcement for, uh, Diamond City… and, well, everyone around us. There's… one of those radiation storm things heading our way… uh, from the east, according to the lookout… so everyone should, uh, head to one of the p-preapproved shelters, either the security office or the, uh, Dugout Inn. Mrs. Fallon… or is that Miss? Ms.? Uh, she says she still doesn't want anyone using her store for a… gee dee shelter, and anyone who tries will have to consult with Doctor Sun for, uh, something a lot more serious than radiation poisoning." He let out a relieved sigh. "Uh, until the storm has passed, Diamond City Radio will, uh, be put on a loop — but don't worry! I'll, uh, be broadcasting live within… 24 hours. Unless the shelter collapses and kills me. Oh God." The first few seconds of muffled crying could be heard before the live feed from Diamond City Radio was cut off and replaced with the looped music.
Piper sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Hearing Travis hem and haw his way through an announcement always took a lot out of her emotionally. The dude was just such an incredible sad sack. She took another deep breath, at least relieved that the panic she'd had for Nora's well-being had been subsumed by the announcement. She marched quickly back to her house. "Nat! Get your homework, we're heading to Dugout!"
Nat sighed. "Can't we go to the security office? That little prick Sheng is gonna be at Dugout hawking water, and I know if he sees me he's gonna try to talk to me or something!"
Piper knelt down until she was at eye level with her sister. "Nat, I love you, and I respect your wishes, but I've seen enough of the Diamond City security offices to last me a lifetime. Besides, if Sheng bothers you, just slug him again. It's not like Mr. Zwicky can give you detention outside of school hours, right?"
"I guess not," Nat agreed. They each grabbed a few things to keep themselves busy in the Dugout Inn while they waited for the storm to blow over. When they got there, Nat was right — Sheng had already set up an impromptu booth to sell his water, charging twice the normal price and promoting its usage as a hangover cure. (The little bastard managed to sell out by night's end). At one point Travis came up and tried to make small talk, but quickly lurched away from the table as he got too wrapped up in himself — he'd been stammering through a sentence, apologized for stammering, apologized for apologizing, apologized for apologizing for apologizing, and then made a dash for the bathroom to vomit from being too nervous.
The next morning, Nat and Piper awoke (they'd been cuddled up together on the couch) and discovered that the radiation storm had passed by a few hours before sunrise. They left the Dugout Inn and Piper was on her way to the main gate when she stopped just in front of her house.
Nora was walking into Diamond City, Strong behind her. (The guards were giving very wary looks to Strong, but at least they didn't have their guns drawn).
"BLUE!" Piper cheered, leaving Nat behind as she rushed to the older woman, grabbing her in a bone-crushing hug. "Damnit, I was so worried about you! Were you caught up in the radiation storm too?"
"Yeah," Nora said. "Come on, let's go rest up a bit." They all went into Piper's house and sat down, the old couch groaning under Strong's weight. Once she was settled, Nora began telling Piper what had transpired after they'd separated. "So, Strong and I waited until the fighting was done."
"Strong no wanted wait!" Strong interjected. "Strong wanted kill!"
"Strong, honey, if you went and poked your nose into that fight, you would have been slaughtered," Nora calmly explained, with the tone of someone who's had to explain the exact same thing before. "Once the Brotherhood finished up slaughtering the Gunners that ambushed them, they left, headed east. I guess they're holed up somewhere east? The old airport would be my guess." Nora shook her head. "Anyway! Strong and I went and investigated the site of the battle. The Brotherhood's power armor was slagged — I guess they didn't want it to fall into enemy hands — and I wasn't able to find one of those fancy schmancy energy weapons they were using, but the dead Gunners were a veritable treasure trove of cool shit. Check this out!" Nora thumped her chest, across which was strapped a new plate of armor. "Genuine pre-war vintage combat armor! And I got me an actual sniper rifle, scope and everything!"
"Strong get a salt rifle!" Strong declared, holding up the weapon proudly. He went to fire off a celebratory burst, but Nora stopped him.
"Come on, Strong, it's not nice to shoot up Piper's house. We're Piper's friends, remember?" She gave him a big smile and a nod, a real You Better Go Along With This You Asshole look.
"Strong no have friends," he grumbled.
"Oh hush," Nora chided. "Anyway, while we were doing all that fun looting, the radiation storm blew in, so we were stuck indoors for the duration. We slept, and when we awoke the storm was gone, so we came here. End of story!" The last few sentences she spoke rather quickly, and her smile upon finishing the story looked rather forced.
Piper had a pretty good brahmin shit detector, and while it was normally going off most every time Nora spoke, for some reason it was really redlining itself just then. "Are you sure, Nora?" Piper asked, using her real name deliberately. "Nothing else happened?"
"Uh… well…" Nora began sweating and glancing around, as if she'd been subjected to hours of hardened interrogation, instead of a three-word question. Finally, she slumped. "Okay, I have to admit to something that I don't think you'll approve of very much —"
"Oh my God, you and Strong fucked," Piper deduced.
Nora grinned brightly. "Yeah! That too!"
Piper narrowed her eyes. "The hell do you mean, 'That too'?"
"Oh shit," Nora muttered. "Okay, let me rewind a bit. Radiation storm hits. I'm starving. Hadn't eaten for days."
"We ate lunch together right before leaving Diamond City yesterday, Blue," Piper pointed out, already not liking the way this conversation was headed.
"Okay, it felt like I hadn't eaten for days. All, uh, all the caloric expenditure of vigorous physical activity…" She paused a moment and went over what she said mentally, to make sure it didn't sound like complete shit. "So, Strong, he started eating. And, well, to put it delicately, he's not exactly a vegetarian."
"Strong eat meat! Tear dead humans limb from limb! Rip flesh from bones!" Strong pounded his chest to show his enthusiasm for fine cuisine.
"Oh God, I think I'm gonna be sick," Piper grunted, feeling nauseous. "Remind me never to die in your presence."
"You wouldn't want me to, ah, eat you, Piper?" Nora purred, and Piper, to her dismay, still felt a hot blush rise almost instantly to her cheeks. "But, well, yeah, Strong made it sound tasty, so I tried a bit… and then I tried a lot." She looked at Strong and giggled. "And then we made love," she uttered, blushing a little herself. She turned back to Piper, who was now cringing. "He's a surprisingly gentle lover," she admitted.
"Strong like Nora," Strong admitted. "Other super mutants no want fuck. Other humans only want kill."
"Okay! Cool! Great!" Piper said. "I wish I was deaf! I wanna scramble my brains to forget this conversation!"
Nat came into the house just then. "Just sold out a stack of papers, gotta get some new ones," she explained, grabbing an armful of newspapers and walking back out again.
"Little girl pretty," Strong said. "Just like on glass box."
Nora and Piper exchanged 'what the fuck was that about' looks. "Strong, honey, what do you mean?" Nora asked. "Have you seen Nat before, or just children like her?"
Strong frowned as he concentrated really hard. "Urrrh… seen Nat before. Not other girl."
Now that alarmed the hell out of Piper. "How?" she demanded. "How could you possibly have seen her before?"
Nora asked her own question. "Strong, when you say glass box, are you talking about moving pictures inside of a glass box?"
"Yeah," Strong agreed. "Many boxes. Many pictures. Long time ago. No like to think about."
"Blue, are you talking about prewar surveillance cameras?" Piper asked, growing more frantic. "How did those bastards put cameras in Diamond City? They're watching me! They're fucking watching Nat!" She ran her fingers through her hair, overwhelmed. "I've gotta get Nat out of here, I've gotta —"
Nora grabbed Piper by the shoulders. "Piper, stop!" she commanded. "This is just what the Institute wants — for people to get panicked, lose their minds, and act rashly. They would love nothing more than for you and Nat to uproot yourselves and flee to parts unknown. Didn't you already tell me you and her were likely high up on their shit list?"
Piper made a visible effort to calm down. "Yeah… yeah, you're right. This… this doesn't change anything. We'll stay in Diamond City." She took a deep breath. "But, shit! How the fuck do they have surveillance here?" She began grumbling under her breath about the mayor again.
The wheels started turning in Nora's head again. "Wait here for a few, Piper," she said. "Strong, stay here and behave," she instructed the super mutant, who grunted in acknowledgment. She went outside and looked all around, under the guise of stretching. She could look most anywhere while stretching, especially as she did all the pre-workout stretches she remembered doing along with the exercise show she'd watch in the evenings, after getting home from work. Nothing was terribly obvious as being a hidden camera (though Nora supposed that that was the point). She let her gaze unfocus and just try to let it show her something, instead of trying to see it for herself.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Lazily sweeping her gaze around, she saw it was a bird. A crow or something, some kind of blackbird. She'd seen them all over the place.
Had she ever seen a dead crow?
She checked her Pip Boy for the exact date, something she hadn't done since before waking up (because there was no point). It just happened to be November 24th, 2287.
Perfect.
She wandered over to Choice Chops, where Polly, the proprietor, was slicing into a thick cut of meat. "What do you want?" the serious looking woman asked.
Nora resisted the urge to ask if she could see some beef curtains (she was on a mission, romance could come later) and instead said "Happy Thanksgiving, Polly!"
"I don't know what that is," Polly said, no trace of humor in her tone. "You gonna buy something?"
"Do you have any bird meat?" Nora asked.
Polly stopped cutting and looked at Nora. "What?"
"Turkeys, chickens, ducks, anything of that nature?"
Polly scowled. "I've heard they have radchickens up in Maine somewhere. A trader from out west brought a live chicken all the way out here once, when I was a little girl. Don't have anything like that here, now though. Got some brahmin, some mirelurk, and a bit of deathclaw today, that's it."
"Okay, thanks anyway!" she said. "I sure do wish I had a bird to cook for Thanksgiving, though," she said, her voice raised.
"I already told you I don't have anything like that here," Polly repeated, sounding annoyed, thinking Nora was addressing her.
Nora didn't respond. She looked around for the nearest bird and unslung her new sniper rifle. "Gonna have me a bird for dinner," she announced, sighting the bird in the aiming reticle, then pulling the trigger. The gun gave a loud crack, and the crow… exploded. "…Huh."
She walked over to the remains of the crow and picked it up. Indeed, the bird had been well and truly pulverized by the single gunshot, which was… odd. It was almost like something out of an old cartoon. The head itself was a bloody, useless pulp; God only knew what had happened to the neck; and the wings had detached from the body too.
Okay. Maybe that bird was weak, somehow. A fragile bird. Shit happens. She looked around, saw another bird (now staring directly at her), and raised her rifle. It took wing, but that didn't save it. Nora pulled the trigger and again got a birdsplosion. She whipped her head around, saw another crow a little ways off, quickly lined up a shot at its leg, and fired. And, yet again, the bird erupted like she'd fired a cannon at it.
She gathered up all the scattered bits of bird carcass, then walked back over to Polly. "Hey, could you butcher these birds properly for me?" she asked, placing them on the table in front of her.
"Ain't hardly any meat on them," she pointed out, a little brusque. (Nora figured she'd been wigged out by her going on a bird murder spree). (Burder spree).
"I'll make it worth your while," Nora said, reaching into her pocket and dropping a few hundred caps on the table next to the birds. (Sure, it was a sizable chunk of her savings at this point, but peace of mind was worth it).
Polly reluctantly took the money and started plucking the feathers from the meat. "Be ready in a few hours. If you want it delivered, that'll be a bit extra."
"Cool, cool. So, uh, are you single?" Nora asked, her tone flirtatious. Polly looked utterly outraged at this line of questioning, but Nora put a finger to her lips, leaned in, and whispered, "While you're butchering these birds, look out for anything out of the ordinary, okay? Anything… weird. Unbirdlike. And if you do find anything, don't tell anyone but me or Piper, okay?" Nora leaned back. "So, you in? You, me, and Piper? Are you poly, Polly?"
Polly looked at her uncertainly, until finally, she slowly nodded. "Yeah, sure thing," she said awkwardly. "I'd love to… do that kind of stuff." Her mouth twitched a little, and Nora wondered if the woman was actually trying to fake a smile.
"Great, it's a date!" Nora said, walking back to Piper's.
XXXXXXXXXX
Ah, cozy postapocalyptic slice-of-life is a nice little change of pace, if only for a bit.
So yeah, Nora is now bumping extremely uglies with Strong, and seduced him via willingness to commit cannibalism. (Recall, dear reader, this isn't Nora's first foray into The Other Other White Meat!) Piper would probably be more horrified if Nora didn't have the mod installed that removed companion friendship loss, haha.
That line of Strong's — "Little girl pretty, just like on glass box" is allegedly an actual line of his you can hear if you bring him around Nat. Everything else is just extrapolation — where would he have seen Nat on a 'glass box' before? The Institute, of course, using their bird spies. (I think it gets mentioned once by Desdemona offhandedly, but the Fallout 4 artbook does go into more detail about birds being synth spies). And much like good ol' Swan, that'd make Strong an ex-Institute resident too.
(Note: I tried numerous times to trigger Strong saying this line on my vanilla game, but was unable to hear it myself. His Fallout wiki page claims he says it, but maybe it's glitched or something? Maybe someone made it up for shits and giggles? If someone out there can verify this, I'd be glad to know that I didn't write several thousand words based off of imaginary bullshit, hahaha). (And even if it does turn out to be made up, I'm not actually going to redact this chapter and any others that follow, that shit's too much effort, haha).