Part 6: One act of kindness, one act of cruelty...
Previous: Part 5: You take your time, you do your work well...

Dear reader, at this juncture I would encourage you to drop whatever it is you are doing (unless it has a biohazard symbol stamped on it) and heed my words now - when someone gives you a quest to go kill a whole factory full of raiders, don't take it. Not unless you have your own factory-sized group of well-armed, well-armored, well-motivated people backing you up, and you can somehow even the playing field by getting the raiders out of their fortified bunker, and maybe get a little advantage somehow, possibly by training a gang of deathclaws to do the job for you. Whatever you do, don't try to go it solo.

Which is what Clara did. First step past the hugely dangerous wild deer, she finds a satellite "array" consisting of a single dish and populated by a couple of raiders, a couple of mole rats, and one particularly nasty mole rat covered in land mines. I'm not kidding here, people. I hear this beeping, and I'm guessing Clara heard it too, even though she ignored it until it was too late. Beeping, snarling, and then a boom as Dogmeat becomes the world's first Airborn Puppy with Rodent-Assisted Launching Technology. I've said it before and I'll undoubtedly say it again, but she really should head back to her nice freezer cubicle in the vault, because the outside world is just too damn bizarre and dangerous.

At any rate, she eventually reached Tenpines Bluff, and got a quest to go kill a bunch of raiders at the local vehicle factory. The settler in question gave a vaguely sinister hint that maybe the Minutemen aren't all they seem to be, but Clara blows right past it and asks the settler to join the minutemen, to which the lady replies "yes." You may make the assumption that the sinister allusion is false and that "we're the good guys" is a truthful statement, or maybe you might think that the settler was diplomatically trying to distance herself from Clara's group but got pressured into it in a sort of "join us or die" way:

"Raider troubles, eh, little lady? Shame about that. The Minutemen would be happy to take care of that little problem for you, as long as you're willing to do something for us in return."
"You're with the Minutemen? Oh, after what happened in Quincy I'd thought you were finally done for..."
"No, we're rebuilding the group from the ground up. We're the good guys now. And this looks like a very expensive shack you're living in here. Inflammable looking walls, though. Shame if anything were to... happen to it."
"I don't want any trouble..."
"So I'll go ahead and take care of your little problem, and then you'll join us, right?"
"I... I don't know..."
"Don't worry, we take care of our own people. You wouldn't want to be one of the people we don't take care of, would you? Because if you aren't, then maybe we'll have to... take care of you anyway. If you catch my drift."
"Okay! I'll join! Please don't hurt me!"
"Don't worry little lady. You keep your nose clean and do what you're told, you've got nothing to worry about."
Honestly, though, I'm not really worried. I can't see Preston Garvey being involved in anything like that. He's too much Captain America and not enough Vito Corleone.

So Clara takes the job to go wipe out a band of raiders. After some eventful travel full of more mole rats and raiders, plus one lone madman starting up a bar of his very own out in the middle of nowhere, she finally ends up in Lexington, which is the home of the Corvega factory, which is full of raiders. I'm a little concerned about the ecology of this whole region, considering that mole rats and raiders seem to be the only animate life forms in the northeastern United States any more, aside from a few mutant deer and awe-inspiringly moronic pub owners.

Clara disrupts my expectations somewhat by going about the infiltration of the facility intelligently. She sneaks, she sticks to dark corners, she does her best to drop raiders one at a time from a distance with a scoped rifle rather than rushing up and tickling them with a bat. Still, it's pretty heavy weather, touch-and-go for a while there when she gets ambushed by raiders and feral ghouls she didn't see and didn't think to consider might have been alerted by the gunfire and screams. Eventually though she does manage to kill off the last raider, though she did have to dump most of her stimpack and other healing item inventory into her bloodstream to get the job done. Oh, and quite a few samples of illicit drugs, which thankfully did not lead to addiction just yet.

Anyway, the denizens of Tenpines Bluff seem happy enough that their raider troubles are over, even if that means subscribing to Minuteman "insurance and protection plans." Upon returning to Sanctuary, Garvey likewise seems pleased that more lost sheep have been brought into the fold. Enough so that he offers his services to Clara as a personal bodyguard, and grants her the title of General and leadership of the Minutemen.

Let me get this straight. She randomly stumbled on your group under attack by a bunch of raiders and a deathclaw. By virtue of the fact that she didn't immediately shoot you in the face, you decided that she was bang on your side. Having known her for about two minutes, you then gave her your most valuable asset (the power armor and minigun) and appointed her to be your front-line defender. Then you insisted that she both head off on her own and simultaneously escort you to your destination as if you had some split personality disorder. After setting up a beacon to draw in innocent victims for raiders to kill settlers, you asked her to help out some settlers by killing more raiders. Fine, but when she returned you decided that not only was she completely dedicated to your cause, but that she was worthy of being made your leader. Having met her just yesterday, you've decided to devote your life to her.

I think I understand why the Minutemen have failed so far. It's because they're all morons. I can't believe she's continuing to be associated with these idiots. What if the stupid is contagious? Then again, she's no great intellect herself. Hell, for all I know, Garvey caught the dumb disease from Clara instead of the other way around.

At any rate, both parties seem pleased at their arrangement, and I do have to say that Garvey can't possibly be worse than Dogmeat at the whole bodyguard/walking strongroom job. Garvey honestly gets the long end of the stick, though, since Clara continues ignoring her own personal quest and doing his dirty work for quite a while.

Next: Part 7: Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns...
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Author's note: I have previously vouchsafed my feelings regarding mole rats. Those feelings have not changed, and in fact have been reinforced, by knowing that occasionally they are found with land mines strapped to their hides. How they manage to burrow through the dirt, much less hang around any other mole rats without blowing themselves to Kingdom Come, is a mystery to me.

Image: This is Clara in her motley. Now I'm not normally one to poke fun at someone's wardrobe, being a part of that wardrobe myself, but this is ridiculous.

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