Chapter 4: Chapter 4

So I wasn’t exactly in Boston, but I was close enough for it to count. Not my fault for being a foreigner who never had a chance. It usually takes about a week of travelling east by brahmin caravan to reach Diamond City, according to a raider whose group I happened to literally run into.

With a tank.

I had already given Piper a lesson in driving the impractical behemoth, and watched as she and Nat enjoyed some much-needed vengeance. Sure these weren’t the same group, but like how politicians are politicians, raiders are raiders. I made sure to remind them to keep one alive, preferably the leader.

Piper whittled (more like flattened) them down one by one until the last survivor took the offer to surrender eagerly. With the girls safe in the tank, I kept the former gang leader on his knees as I questioned him, never lowering my rifle at all.

The Minutemen were still around in good strength, the railroad was active enough, Diamond City had ghouls in it, and there was no news about the Brotherhood of Steel. So no major changes from what I know just yet. I was about 10 years behind the start of the game, so plenty of time to figure things out.

Any further questions I had planned were aborted after I asked about the next nearest settlement. Briarburn was just a few miles off and this raider and his gang had recently sacked it of anything useful about a week ago, after slaughtering most of the population and selling off, and I quote, ‘those that were fun enough’. Fucker sounded pretty proud of it too.

I just stepped back and signalled for Piper to rev up. His screams were short and easy enough to ignore. Gathering the loot, I was disappointed at the new inventory. Solid projectile pistols and combat rifles were nice and all, but it would be nice to find a .50 cal to play with, or even a flamer to put on the tank eventually.

Speaking of, there were no available ammunition to feed the dual cannons on this thing. Ideally though I could I’d refit the main gun. As nice as big boom shells were, hypersonic mass drivers were my thing.

Were there engineers around to refit railguns? Please let me find engineers to put on railguns.
I climbed back into the tank with my haul, dumping it into a corner for the girls to pick through. We decided to keep the weapons around for now, and anything else that didn’t get their fancy would be chucked out later when we stopped to either shit, piss or sleep.

We drove on for a bit more, chewing up ancient tarmac and crushing the blown out vehicles in the way. Nat gleefully cheered whenever we did the latter. Piper tried not to, but I’ll clone a new beam gun out of my ass if she wasn’t trying to hide her enjoyment.

On the topic of guns, I helped Piper with shooting lessons whenever we stopped for a break. With her current size, she ended up favoring a laser pistol which was portable enough and no recoil to worry about. To make things interesting for both of us, I made her shoot at birds as practice. In the four days of travelling the girl’s made considerable progress with her aim and target discipline. When I asked for it, she bagged 30 crows in a minute, and not a single sparrow or other bird as collateral.

Not my fault I don’t like my avians black and synthetically compromised.

Once shooting practice was over, I picked up the laser pistol from Piper and gave it a look through the console. After that stunt with the tank, I found a simple function to reset an item basically back to factory settings. Still don’t know how to read the durability, but who cares what’s the HP on the thing when I can just bring it back to 100% with a touch?

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Does it work on living beings? We found a dying radstag on our first day on the road and I gave it a go, and thankfully Nat wasn’t around to see what a radstag fetus looks like outside of the womb. Piper was still having nightmares though, or so she said. I still think it’s an excuse for her to sleep next to me.

*****

With dusk turning to night, Piper used her nightmare excuse again to have Sev’s arms around her. She felt secure having his warm body against hers, though she made sure not to wriggle too much to discomfort him. Maybe if he didn’t sleep in his armor he would enjoy his sleep better.

The journey so far had been fun and knocked her feelings of guilt off its perch. Nat was happy, Sev was happy, she was happy. Piper didn’t think being stuck sleeping in a pre-war tank could feel so carefree, even with the unsavory encounters so far.

She frowned as she remembered the first group of wanderers they met. She joined Sev outside the tank after he talked a bit with them and the group seemed harmless enough. It was just casual banter until Sev clarified that they weren’t with the Gunners or any other group, and that she wasn’t a slave, more like an adopted sister. Their looks became darker after that, and both of them noticed it. Goodbyes were promptly said and they were about to return to the safety of the tank when a couple of the men rushed in to grab Piper by her arms.

Whether they wanted to ransom her or just run off with her, Piper didn’t know. Sev gave his habitual blank stare for a second before his rifle quickly went up and blasted them to ash. The other wanderers panicked, but he quickly gunned them down too. Sev cursed when he found slave collars and Jet found amongst the mounds of ash, and took on a dark mood for the rest of the day.

They left the Jet but kept the collars at Piper’s insistence. Sev gave her an inquiring look but eventually shrugged and accepted.

The encounters they had the second and third day were thankfully without violence, meeting a travelling doctor, a small group of professional mercs and settlers migrating from Concord. Listening from the safety of the tank cupola, Piper noticed that most of them, even the doctor, would eventually ask the same question and gave Sev the same weird looks when he told them he was just using the tank as a safe way to get him and the girls around.

After some thinking, Piper found it kind of made sense. People respected strength that was applied properly. A walled settlement was useless without folk to keep trouble out or man the defences against outside attacks. Having a big scary gun wouldn’t really scare people off if they knew you wouldn't use it.

Some soft-hearted guy driving around in a big metal war machine with guns on it, and wasn’t looking for trouble? She could see how it might make him look out of place and even a potential naive target. Worse, it could make him look weak. It was as if it was better if he was actually a bigshot warlord-to-be.

As the night drew on, she pondered on that for a solution, though when one came she was sure Sev wouldn’t like it. By the time sleep came to her Piper found herself dreaming of being happily collared and laying by his feet, watching Mayburn and the raiders and some of the townsfolk who had given her the stink eye lying in the path of the tank being driven by Nat and pops.

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