Piper read the column through several times, making Nora nervous the longer she didn't offer any commentary. Finally, Piper gave her judgement. "Love it." She slammed it down on the desk. "NAT!" she hollered. "Got something for the early edition tomorrow!"

Nat stomped into the room. "I already got all the typesetting done, though!" she complained.

"What, you got a hot date with Sheng tonight?" Piper snapped, making Nat gag a little. "Just get an extra page ready to slide into the back or something."

"We used to call those inserts back in the day," Nora observed. "They usually had coupons."

Piper and Nat gave Nora an inscrutable look, then looked at each other and shook their head, doing that nonverbal sister language thing where they expressed confusion as to what a coupon was, as well as enough (not enough?) apathy to care to ask. "Look, Nat, I know you don't like extra work, but you know I never ask you to do this stuff unless it's important."

"Yeah yeah," Nat groused. "The future of the entire human race is dependent entirely on your hard-hitting journalism, and my increasingly futile efforts at keeping the printing press running." She took the copy of Nora's column and sighed. "Yeah, I'll get it done, don't worry."

"Thanks, Nat, you're worth a million caps." Piper hugged Nat, who just groaned and shrugged off Piper's affection. "Anyway, let me know what people think of the new column, Nora and I are gonna go rescue Nick Valentine." She took Nora by the elbow and ushered her out of the office at full speed.

"Oh, sure, weight of the world rests on your shoulders!" Nat called out after her. "Seems like I'm always the one carrying it around, though!"

XXX

The walk east through the shattered ruins of Boston was mostly quiet. In the distance was the occasional sound of gunfire… and the occasional scream. "I'm never going to like this," Nora muttered. "A few months ago, subjectively, I was driving down these streets. This was a city of almost a million people, you know? How many people do you think live in Diamond City? A few hundred? Maybe a thousand?"

Piper shook her head. "I don't think anyone's gone around and gotten a headcount, but a thousand sounds about right," she said. "I can't imagine a million people, though."

"Yeah, the sidewalks would be teeming with folks," Nora said. "I… I really don't have the words to describe it. The sidewalks would be crowded, and you'd go into a store and it'd be crowded, and… you would never see someone you knew. You'd pass by a hundred, a thousand folks a day, and never recognize a single one from day to day. And the stores just had so much shit, you know? Books, movies, music… food. Oh my God, so much food, from around the world. Have you ever had an orange?"

Piper shook her head. "That was a fruit, right?"

Nora nodded. "I never much cared for them, but I would kill for an orange right now." She lowered her voice, talking to herself. "Gotta remember to look into what foods are rich in vitamin C. Don't wanna get scurvy." She shook her head, filing the thought away for later. "But there was just so, so much food. I don't think I've seen a single fat person at Diamond City, you know? I'd see dozens of fat people a day back then."

Piper frowned. "I think I heard someone mention the old mayor was fat, but I've never personally seen someone who was fat."

"Hey, you said that ghouls were mostly folks who were alive when the bombs dropped," Nora said. "Wouldn't they remember a lot of this stuff?"

"Maybe," Piper said. "But I don't get very many opportunities to talk to them about the past — don't forget, they're banned from Diamond City. And they're not like you, Nora — they haven't been sleeping away the centuries. They've had many, many decades of experiences between then and now and… I dunno… maybe they've forgotten a lot of the finer details?" She shrugged. "Some of them might just feel funny talking about the past."

"Yeah," Nora said, wistful. "I can relate." She put a hand on Piper's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "But hey, feel free to ask me anything, okay? I'm glad to be a resource of prewar life information."

Piper smiled, opened her mouth to say something, then stopped short. "Oh shit, be quiet!" she murmured quietly to Nora. "This is Swan's territory!"

"Swan?" Nora asked. Piper crouched and slunk forward to an old military APC. She reached up and touched the word 'Swan' someone had helpfully graffitied onto the old vehicle. "That's not helpful!" Nora pointed out, keeping her voice low.

"Shut the hell up, Blue," Piper muttered, peeking her head around the side of the vehicle. Nora also did so, taking pains to be just as quiet. There it was, good ol' Boston Common, with the same dead grass and dead trees that covered the rest of this blighted world. There was no apparent sign of danger, but Nora trusted Piper's caution. After a long moment studying the grounds, Piper put a finger to her lips — another 'shut up', then began stalking forward, watching her step to make sure she didn't knock into something or trip.

Nora followed her lead. Every few minutes she heard some weird sound coming from the Common itself, but a quick glance over revealed nothing obvious. After a few minutes they'd skirted the south side of the Common and began moving north, the Park Street Station growing close. As they were about to enter it, a low growl echoed throughout the Common, triggering some deep instinct of fear deep in Nora's gut and making all her little hairs stand on end. Again, a quick glance showed nothing out of the ordinary… well, from here she could see a few bodies, but for postapocalyptic Boston, that WAS normal.

They finally made it into the station and Piper let out a little sigh of relief. "Okay, Piper, you wanna tell me what the hell that was all about?" Nora asked.

"Swan is a super mutant," Piper said, still keeping her voice low. "A big fucker. Like… a behemoth, out of one of those old stories or something."

"Hang on, hang on," Nora said. "What is a super mutant?"

"Ah, shit!" Piper pinched the bridge of her nose. "Sorry, Blue, I keep forgetting that you're new in town, and so you don't have a lot of common knowledge that the rest of us have had for decades. Super mutants are humans that have somehow been… corrupted — mutated — physically and mentally. They have greatly increased muscle mass and greatly diminished mental capacity. And green skin. And no hair. They really don't care for humans, except for as a source of food. And I don't mean trading with farmers."

"Okay…" Nora processed this. "Why didn't you suggest I bring my power armor?"

"Blue, super mutants are no fucking joke. You may be able to go toe-to-toe against a deathclaw in one of those things, but not against super mutants. They may be stupid, but they're cunning enough when it comes to murder and mayhem, and they've got more than enough brute force to fall back on when that fails them. They can use rifles and energy weapons and worse. I've heard some people claim that they've seen them arm the warhead of a Fat Man and just charge into a group of people who were fighting the mutants, blowing them all to hell."

"Sucks," Nora said, serious. She took Piper by the shoulders. "Okay, so, I want you to think really, really hard about this, Piper: Are there any other crazy fucking monsters I need to keep an eye out for? Like, are there fucking dragons flying through the skies?"

"I don't know about dragons, but I remember hearing stories from down south about these big mutant moth things…" Piper trailed off. "Nothing like that here, though! Let's see… there's mirelurks — big-ass crab things that dwell by the water… you said you already ran into some radroaches —"

"That's what you call them?" Nora snorted. "I don't think they were very rad, myself."

"— so can I guess you've already run into bloatflies?" Piper asked.

Nora gagged. "Oh yeah, those things are fucking nasty."

Piper nodded. "There're brahmin and radstags, but they're generally docile… I think you would have known them prewar as, uh, cows and deers? Is that right?" Nora nodded, not wishing to open the semantical can of worms about the plural 'deer'. "There are packs of wild dogs, and sometimes the super mutants have mutant dogs… there are mole rats, which can get to be the size of big dogs… we sometimes get yao guai, which are pre-war bears — they're still vicious animals, but they don't have hair… oh! We don't really see them much outside the Glowing Sea, but there are radscorpions — or, in your parlance, 'giant fucking scorpions'." She smirked at Nora. "I think that pretty much covers it!"

"Okay, great, cool," Nora said, nodding. "So after a nuclear war, we just get a shitload of giant bugs, plus a bunch of fucked up Incredible Hulks. Why did I bother going into that vault in the first place? Fuck all of this!" She shot Piper a fearful look. "…Uh… spiders?"

Piper blanched. "God in Heaven, Blue, if there were rad-spiders, I would have killed myself years ago."

Nora sighed in relief. "So all is not lost, at least." She turned to the darkened passage that lay beyond them. "Well, ready to go rescue Mr. Valentine?" she said.

"I was born ready," Piper confirmed. Nora ventured into the darkness, followed by Piper.

XXXXXXXXXX

The 'big mutant moth things' are the mothmen from Fallout 76. I really want to get around to playing it one of these days, though I'm in no great rush. (It's ancient history in comparison to the events of Fallout 4, or else I'd be more antsy to play it so as to incorporate more things from it into this story. Fallout Shelter Online, now THERE'S a game I need to play sooner or later, hahaha. I've heard some really wild things about that one!)

Fallout 2 has a stand-up comic who works radscorpions into his act. "What's so RAD about them?" A member of the audience rebutts with "It's short for RADIATION, asshole!" Nora's line is a nod to that. (The stand-up comic is himself a reference to Seinfeld, which sucked, hahaha).

Nora being caught off-guard by the wasteland fauna is going to be especially hilarious when she reaches Far Harbor and Nuka World, haha. Especially Far Harbor, and one enemy in particular.