"I need to get a tuxedo," Nora said as they traveled back to Starlight, having accomplished the mission and left the secret base beneath the coffee shop. (Deacon had parted ways to return to Railroad HQ on his own, typical spy crap).

Piper knew this statement was bait, but the walk was boring, so went for it anyway. "Why is that?"

"Because I'm motherfucking James Bond!" She whipped out her new pistol, the Deliverer. (Piper refused to ask why she'd named it that, knowing full well where that line of questioning would lead). "Ba-da ba-dahhhh ba-da-da!" She proceeded to vocalize a whole host of musical notes, all while acting out some bizarre action sequence that Piper couldn't tear her eyes away from.

Once Nora had run out of steam and continued walking, Piper ventured to ask. "Who is James Bond?"

Nora shook her head in disgust. "The loss of so much culture in this desolate future really depresses me, you know?" She sighed, then pressed on. "He was a spy created by Ian Fleming, who wrote a whole bunch of books about his adventures sometime after World War II. Named after some bird guy, go figure. They made a whole bunch of movies about him too, damn near a hundred by the time the Great War put a permanent end to his career." She shook her head. "Personally, I don't know why they bothered to keep making them after Roger Moore retired, and that was almost a century before I was born."

"We still have a lot of old media laying around, pre-21st century, but for some reason very little stuff after that survived," Piper mused. "Why do you suppose that is?"

"Because it fucking sucked!" Nora explained. "I dunno, maybe that's subjective… but it seems like culture really stagnated, along with lots of other shit, for the last fifty or sixty years. The stimpak was invented, oh, 2030? From what my grandparents said it was a medical miracle the likes of which was unprecedented in the history of the human race. Someone could have every bone broken in their body, only a single drop of blood left, and just one stimpak will stabilize them, overstimulate blood production, and start gluing the bones back together. And that was it — medical research just kind of stopped, or if it continued, they didn't produce anything else noteworthy."

They stopped and ate lunch. Nora's lunch was a can of Cram. "Food is another example," she said, tapping the can. "They came out with some revolutionary new food preservative in the 30s or 40s, so that let companies figure they could just create food in such disgustingly huge batches that they didn't have to bother developing new recipes or packaging or anything — probably more efficient to streamline the process or something." She ate a few bites of the Cram. "And the preservative really does its job, too — I can tell you with authority that this Cram tastes exactly the same as the last can I had before the Great War, early October or thereabouts." She shook her head. "All for fucking Cram, and fucking Sugar Bombs, and motherfuckin' sick-ass Blamco mac and cheese."

"What about movies? Music? Were those stagnant too?" Piper asked.

Nora grinned and shook her head. "Oh God, I wish. No, they were stagnant for a while, then when the Chinese invaded Alaska, that shit went downhill quick. You wanna know what won Best Picture in '76? It was a heartwarming movie called The Only Good Red is a Dead Red. It was about an Alaskan boy who watched Chinese soldiers butcher his entire family — and I mean they went balls-to-the-wall with the special effects, I haven't seen anything else that violent, including anything after I woke up from my nap. They even showed one soldier cut off the boy's dog's head and fuck its neckhole. Like, on-screen penetration of an actual dog carcass."

Piper was horrified. "Why would they make something like that?"

"Well, because China Bad, America Good. That was one of the songs burning up the airwaves in the last weeks before the war, by the way." She shrugged. "Just the propaganda machine, I guess. The government didn't want people to lose enthusiasm for the war, so the more they depicted Chinese people as mindless, bloodthirsty savages, the more justified it was to keep up with the more unpalatable shit, like shooting Canadian protesters and invading the Chinese mainland in a 'defensive' war. That's how the movie ended, by the way — the boy grew up, enlisted in the Army, and spearheaded the invasion of Beijing where he personally got to sodomize Chairman Cheng with an American flag, with it eventually sticking out of his mouth, flapping gracefully in the wind. It was oddly unstained despite passing through a man's colon and guts and heart and all."

Piper shook her head. "I'm glad that was lost to the bombs," she said.

Nora nodded. "Me too, but part of me was really looking forward to The Only Good Red is a Dead Red 2, just to see how much more fucking crazy it got." She shook her head. "Nate loved cowboy movies, and there was this one he watched where the hero cowboy shot a guy to death because he was a Communist." Nora grimaced, her head still aching from how godawfully dumb it was. "Piper, my pet, do you suppose there were many Communists running around in the American west in the latter half of the 19th century? We didn't even have a friggin' Communist Party until 1919! I actually looked it up!" She shook her head, exasperated. "Utterly ridiculous."

Mischief flashed across Piper's face. "I dunno, Blue, that actually sounds like a fun movie. I'd watch it."

"Watch my ass when I shit in your mouth!" Nora snapped. "I can imagine the two experiences are identical!" Piper simply laughed at the scornful look on Nora's face.

XXX

They arrived at Starlight, and Piper groaned when she saw another one of the damn VR pods had been built smack dab in the middle of the old parking lot, under the roof of a shed that had yet to have its walls erected. "Another one, Blue? Really?"

Nora grinned. "Oh, now I get to show off something really cool to you!" she said, excited. She dragged a reluctant Piper along to the pod, checked the computer it was connected to, then hopped into it. Within moments, they again found themselves on the desert island… and, a little ways away, stood Nora's suit of power armor, exactly where Piper had left it. Nora gave the power armor a dramatic flourish with both hands. "Ta-da! The worlds are persistent from pod to pod!"

"What? How? What?" Piper had a rudimentary understanding that computers could talk to one another from a distance in the old world — either via a wired connection, or wirelessly, like the radio. "Is… is this with radio or something?" she asked.

"Maybe!" Nora said, shrugging. "Dunno!"

"I still don't know how you know to build this kind of thing, and not understand how it works," Piper complained, as she gave the power armor a little shove.

"Or how I know it in the first place, don't forget that!" Nora said, grinning. "Oh, check this out." She went over to the red workbench, seemingly ubiquitous in these virtual worlds, and within moments a second workbench materialized next to the first, this one outfitted with all the tools and such to enable weapon customization. "I can build weapon parts in here!" Nora said. "Still actually need the component materials from meatspace, so it's not, like, a super-miracle, but it's still neat!" She proceeded to break down several of the items she'd been carrying around with her and do some fine-tuning on her Deliverer. Once she'd finished customizing it to her satisfaction, she went to the computer and summoned a horde of feral ghouls, which she was able to dispatch with no problem. She gave Piper a sly grin. "I have a license to kill, and also to eat my enemies," she said, using the hokiest British accent imaginable.

"I seriously doubt your James Bond ever ate anyone," Piper theorized. "I'm willing to guess that at least one of those godawful propaganda movies you told me about had that, though."

Nora thought about it. "There was 'Terror in Anchorage', which was one of Vera Keyes' earlier roles, before she adopted the Vera Keyes name. Myra Locke, or something, not that centuries old celebrity trivia matters anymore. Her subplot in that movie was that she lived with her older, spinster sister, and when the Chinese invaded she watched her sister get butchered and put into a stew in front of her eyes. She was rescued from being forced to partake in that same stew by the hero GI, and after giving her a passionate kiss he turned to the camera and urged everyone to buy war bonds." She laughed at the absurdity. "I'm sure there were others, but I tended to avoid them." She got a dreamy look on her face. "You know, watching Love Sets Sail — another one of Vera Keyes' movies — is when Nate and I first fucked, right here at Starlight." She laughed. "We'd gone on a few drive-in dates before, but the movies were just too good and we watched them the whole way through. All I can say is thank God for Shane Velloric!"

XXX

When they finally left the VR pod, Preston was waiting for Nora. "General, we can finally start to think about more than just survival," he began.

"I've been doing that this whole time, but go on," Nora responded.

"We've gotten big enough that we're having trouble communicating with all our settlements. It's a good problem to have. And I have a solution: I think it's time to retake the Castle. It used to be the Minutemen HQ, way before my time."

"Sounds good," Nora said. "Go on."

"It's well fortified, it's centrally located, and most importantly, it has a powerful radio transmitter we can use to broadcast to the whole Commonwealth."

"Okay, I love that," Nora admitted. "That Travis guy may be a weenie, but he wouldn't let me near the radio stuff, not even when I offered to let him touch my boobs."

"General, I say this with all due respect: I've given the Minutemen orders to shoot you on sight if you get anywhere near that radio transmitter," Preston said levelly.

"NO FUN!" Nora screamed at him. She sulked for a second, then a question occurred to her. "Hey, if this place is such hot shit, how'd we lose it in the first place?"

"Well, the story I heard is that some kind of monster came out of the sea and destroyed the fort. A lot of our leadership was killed in the battle, and I guess nobody ever felt like it was worth the risk to try to retake it." He paused, contemplating. "I've always wondered if losing the radio station was the beginning of all our later problems," he wondered.

"Yeah, that and being demoralized after your untouchable superbase is abruptly destroyed and all your bosses get murdered all at once," Nora said, deadpan.

"So, should I have an assault force assemble near the Castle?" he asked.

"Hell yes," Nora said. She unholstered her shotgun and pretended to cock it (since it was a double barreled dealie and not a pump action). "Kssh kssh! Let's lock and load!"

Preston nodded soberly. "We'll do some recon and meet you outside the Castle. See you there." He turned and walked off.

Nora turned to Piper. "What do you say? You ready for the adventure of a lifetime? Retake the Castle from, what, mirelurks? Should be the most difficult task imaginable."

Piper shook her head. "Mirelurks aren't that bad, actually, you just —"

"Piper, shut up, you utter buffoon!" Nora hissed, looking around. "Do you want to jinx it?"

Piper recoiled a little, not expecting Nora to chide her so harshly. "What do you mean, jinx it?"

"If you say something's going to be easy, it inevitably fucks you in the ass! Hopefully not literally!" She rubbed her forehead. "Didn't you get why I kept telling Theater McDipshit to stop saying the name of the Scottish play?"

"You mean Macbeth?" Piper asked. "What's that even mean?"

"No!" Nora shouted. She tilted her head skyward and let out a howl of agony. "You may as well say you have three days left until retirement, Piper, because we're already jinxed to hell, we may as well get there in a handbasket."

"I don't really buy that you can be jinxed," Piper said, crossing her arms.

"Oh sure, coming from someone with a high luck, that's rich," Nora countered. "I only have 5 luck! That means just a little bad luck can fuck me over considerably!"

Piper sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I really have to remember to stop getting into these insane conversations with you. Either you're just bullshitting me, again, or you're telling the truth somehow and a person's luck is measurable and quantifiable."

"Can't it be both?" Nora asked, shrugging, an impish grin on her face.

Piper stared at Nora for a long, long moment before finally saying, "Blue, let's just go to the damned Castle."

XXXXXXXXXX

It was really fun coming up with over-the-top fake propaganda films, though. The western Nora mentions, though, is a nod to The Man From Deadhorse, as seen in the Fallout TV series.

I'll say it again: VR pods are hilariously overpowered.

Vera Keyes is of course seen/mentioned in several New Vegas DLCs, though her 'civilian' name is an invention of mine. (Myra sounds like Vera, Locke takes Keyes, oh so clever).

Jinxed is a trait from the first few Fallout games (can't recall at the moment if it shows up in Tactics or not… I wanna say it does). Piper has 8 Luck, for those of you keeping track out there. And she and Nora are gonna need all the luck they can get, because they ain't dealing with a garden-variety mirelurk infestation, hahaha…