Part 12: In time, you may come back some day, to live once more, or die once more...
Previous: Part 11: Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you...

There's nothing very special about Fort Hagen, except for the fact that for a prewar military installation that's had two hundred years of time to be looted, there's still quite a bit of military equipment around. That is, weapons and ammunition and stuff like that, in the lower levels. The upper levels of the base doesn't strike one as particularly militaristic. I don't know what goes through your head, reader, when you think of a military fort - but what goes through mine (discounting the fact that I don't actually have a head) are bunches of guys in green fatigues marching up and down and firing at targets or parachuting out of planes. Obviously they can't keep that up twenty-four hours a day, so there will be bunks or tents or something. I don't picture a bland office building. Where are the tanks? Instruction booklets on proper saluting techniques? The inspirational posters about how everyone should join the army which one instinctively feels should litter the halls of military bases despite the fact that the only people who would be around to look at them would have already joined? Where, in short, is the army stuff?

Whether Clara shares my attitude towards this apparent dearth of war material I don't know. She keeps her lips buttoned when raiding the fort until the very end, which is something of a switch for her normally vocal personality. Then again, there's nothing much to talk about in the entire place until we all tromp down to the basements. A bunch of robots shooting laser guns, but they all go down pretty easy. Too easy - one might think that the power of the Institute is highly overestimated based on the quality of the majority of their servants. Clara gets more ammunition off their remains than she expends in gunning them down. The only thing that ends up slowing her down is a literal slowdown in the form of over-encumbrance. She outwardly stoically accepts these weight limitations, but I can tell that she's crying inside whenever she has to dump a piece of worthless junk just to move above a slow walking pace. And that's after her companion Nick has been overloaded at her command.

At any rate, she does eventually make it downstairs far enough that Kellogg comes over the AP and starts taunting her. After a fashion. "Ah, if it isn't my old friend the frozen TV dinner." Apparently he is so very depressed about his name being related to a breakfast cereal that he has to add food-based appellations to everyone else. "Sorry your house has been a wreck for two hundred years. But I don't need a roommate. Leave." I don't know what went through his head - she's fought raiders, deathclaws, robots, beasts of all sorts... slogged and slaughtered her way across the commonwealth doing quite frankly suicidal things to get here, and his telling her to leave will make it so? Does he think that she's so stupid she didn't realize she could just give up and go home? I mean, I have no great respect for her intellectual capacity either, but this is some serious self-delusion on his part. "Oh God, she's coming for me, but if I tell her she doesn't have to then she'll leave." Yeah, buddy. Keep living the dream. "Figured the Commonwealth would chew you up like jerky." This one actually makes some sense - it's hard to imagine a prewar lawyer doing quite so well, but here we are. "Whatever you hope to accomplish in here? It is not going to go your way." Now how the hell do you know? If Clara wants to kill you, how do you think you'll be able to stop this juggernaut? He keeps saying basically the same thing over and over again for a while - you will never succeed, go away - but you get the idea. "Okay, you made it. I'm just up ahead. My synths are standing down. Let's talk." You mean the dozens of synths Clara has recently dismantled? You've only got two left, dude. I see you have bested some of my warriors while you're standing on a twelve foot high pile of corpses. Urgh.

When she finally meets him in person, he makes a bit of an about-face. "There she is. The most resilient woman in the Commonwealth." Oh, so now she's tough enough? What was it, that last lock she picked? 947 synths down wasn't enough, but as soon as she hit 948 you suddenly respect her? Who falls for this crap? Kellogg is obviously frightened and has been from the beginning, trying to paper it over with brash taunts and the facade of composure. But I know better. She tells him that he's a dead man for murdering her husband, and he says it was a "regrettable accident." Because pulling out your gun, pointing it a guy for a second or two, threatening him, and then pulling the trigger is an accident. Happens all the time, I'm sure.

Anyway, with a bit more posturing on his part and some response strutting on hers, they finally get down to business. Despite Kellogg's attempt at invisibility, she quickly blows him away, and then proceeds to harvest some components, his armor, weapon, a bit of brain, and for all I know several other internal organs. I honestly stopped looking when she ripped open his skull and pulled out the piece of brain. You may think it impossible for someone without a stomach to get queasy, but you've never been forced into association with an amateur butcher like Clara.

Valentine remarks that, since Shaun isn't here, that Kellogg must have been telling the truth, and Shaun must be in the Institute. Wherever that is. Nobody thinks to question the possibility that Shaun is hiding in a cupboard around here, or in a shack just up the road, or dead... nope, he's alive, well, and has been sent into a realm where evil cannot touch him. Yep. He suggests that Piper back in Diamond City is probably the only person in the entire world willing to look into the matter, which to my mind makes her either the bravest or the stupidest idiot around. I'm opting for the "brave" category, mostly because the "stupid" category is overflowing.

When they exit the fort, there's a huge airship floating around overhead, apparently made of metal, which means it's heavy as fuck and probably will come crashing down at any moment, and the opening lyrics to Brotherhood of Man by Motorhead pop into my consciousness. Nick starts quoting E.A. Poe for some weird reason, but I guess seeing a big metal dildo coasting through the upper atmosphere takes everyone differently. My only real problem is that this is yet more convenient timing. But whatever. Clara and Nick head off to Diamond City to talk to Piper about what Kellogg said about where Shaun is in the hopes that she knows a way into the Institute and has just been keeping it secret for all these years. Which, knowing how this world works, is probably the truth.

Goddamn it, I give up. Let the madness take me.

Next: Part 13: So let us not talk falsely now, the hour's getting late...
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Author's note: No, seriously. I'm embracing the insanity from here on out. Let it rain stupidity and snow chaos, for all I care. Let's go, world - I can take it. You can't beat me.

Image: Nice jacket. You should probably have worn something more protective. Like a carbyne tank.

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