"You hit the jackpot, Charley!"

 

Winter was practically bouncing up and down when she showed up in my living room the next morning. She'd apparently more or less failed at sleeping the night before, and around midnight she wriggled out from between the Donahue sisters to work on the DRM controller through the night. Just before dawn she plugged it into the Rosas' Workshop and... well, here she was in my living room looking like she was about to jump out of her skin.

 

 

"That controller card had the developer's entire architectural library - not just the plans for the houses at West Everett but all of the plans for every development they were working in the whole Commonwealth. We can do better than just rebuilding Sanctuary Hills, we can build it up better than it was before."

 

Hearing her say that, I could understand why she was so excited. 

 

"Okay," I said, "I think you need to show me. Tracey," I called back towards the bathroom, "can you heat up something for me and Winter? I have to go look at something on the Workshop."

 

I heard a muffled call of assent from the direction of the shower, and with that taken care of I rose and let Winter lead me to the Workshop. We spent the next couple of hours - with a brief pause to munch on jerky and mushrooms - poring over the new catalogue entries. I was really impressed. This was much, much better than my wildest expectations for the West Everett raid, and now I felt that the risks I'd taken had really paid off.

 

"So what do you think?" Winter asked, "want to tear down that house and see what we can build up on the foundation?"

 

 

"Yeah," I agreed, "that's exactly what I want to do. But this is going to be an all day job. Are you sure you don't have anything better to do?"

 

"Me? I've got plenty better to do, but not Scout and Lonnie. You use the power suit to break down the rubble till a normal person can haul it, then I'll have those two feed them into the Workshop."

 

I liked that plan, and got right to work. This house had been a smaller design with a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchenette-living room. I decided to adjust it just a little; I added a paved carport on one side, got rid of the separation between the bed and bath and, as a result, the connecting hall. My plan was to have a larger master suite on one side and the living room on the other... and when I was done, I couldn't help but be impressed. Yes, building the house had completely exhausted my supplies of steel, wood, glass, and even precious and rare plastic. However, the look on London and Scout's faces when I showed them the house was priceless.

 

 

"Charley," Scout gasped, still glistening from the rain outside as she gawked at the interior, "this is unbelievable. How did you do this? It seems impossible!" 

 

"Thank Winter," I said honestly, "she figured out how to make all the parts using the circuit board I brought back from West Everett. As long as we can keep finding the materials we need, we can keep building houses like this. And if you like this, imagine how it'll look once its furnished. By the way, do you have and preferences?"

 

"Preferences? What do you mean... wait, are you saying we're going to live here?"

 

"I am."

 

London gasped. "No, you're joking."

 

"I'm not. I was going to build this house for the people who are still living in the vault, but they won't be coming out for months. You two are here right now, and you took a real leap of faith agreeing to stay, in spite of your misgivings. I mean, I know you struck a deal with Winter, but I could have thrown that out as soon as I came back. Consider this my thanks for your trust."

 

The sisters gawked at me for a second, then I heard a rustle as London puller her top up over her head. Then she stepped out of her miniskirt and looked me square in the eye.

 

"Charley, if this is the way you want us to live in a place like this... then you've got it. This place is right to be called Sanctuary - if you succeed, then it'll be like we're back in the old world. Like the war never happened. This is better than Sanctuary. This is paradise."

 

 

I hugged both sisters before I left them to take in their new home, promising to return the next day to finish up with the furniture and appliances. Afterwards, I met up with Winter and talked about the resource challenges these homes were going to pose. Now we didn't just need to get a reliable source of concrete, we needed a reliable source of almost everything. I figured we were good for maybe one more house if we collected all the remaining scrap in the Sanctuary area, and after that we needed to get trade going. Part of that, in turn, meant getting the Donahue sisters' trading business back up and running. 

 

The following morning was unseasonably warm - not quite to first thaw, but warm enough that I took it as an excuse to get out of my power suit. Under the bright morning sunlight, I barely noticed the chill, and I took a chance to see what everyone was up to. The Donahue sisters had set out into the wooded northern part of Sanctuary Hills looking for signs of tubers and other buried vegetables they could dig up, while Winter was snooping around for any hard to get materials we might have missed. 

 

Last but not least, I found Tracey - shivering a bit and seemingly looking for me.

 

"What's up?" I asked, "have you thought about which house you want us to turn into your living quarters?"

 

 

"Oh my God," she said, "I hadn't even started to think about that. But you asked me if I needed supplies and... I think I've got most of what I need. Winter got the Workshop to make most of it. This, um, this probably sounds dumb but..."

 

"What couldn't we make?" 

 

She sighed, then admitted, "a flat head screwdriver. Seriously, the Workshop can only make Phillips and some weird keyed types. And an adjustable wrench, a good one, not like the crap ones in the catalogue. Otherwise, I'm about set actually."

 

I thought on that. It was just the sort of ridiculous thing that would be missing from the Workshop. But I knew the Red Rocket was just down the road, and if I was going to find that stuff anywhere, Red Rocket was the place.

 

"Get started on setting up your shop," I told her, "you can use the carport at Winter's place for now if you want. I've got an idea where I might find what you need. I'll check in on you later today."

 

I decided to make a bit of a day trip down to Red Rocket, going through the ruins specifically looking for tools like what Tracey needed. I found plenty of adjustable wrenches, and I kept the ones that didn't set off my Geiger counter. The screwdriver was actually the real sticking point. I'd completely struck out at the service station, and I was about to acquiesce to going down into the Molerat tunnels when I found one just outside the cave entrance.

 

 

When I got back to town, I found that Tracey hadn't wasted time. Not only was she starting to set up a workspace in the carport but, well...

 

"Tracey," I asked, "is that a motorcycle?"

 

"Sure is!" she beamed back at me. "London and Scout found it sticking out of a hedge by one of the houses. Apparently someone thought they could drive through and... didn't."

 

"Do you think you can fix it? That would be amazing to have!"

 

"I can't promise you anything," she said, "but I'm going to try. Imagine how much more we could do if we had an honest to goodness working bike."

 

 

 

"Yeah," I agreed, "that's just what I was thinking. If nothing else, it would make getting supplies back here a lot simpler. Listen, if you run into any complications and you need something, you just tell me. I've already got a lot of things I'm looking for, but this seems like a pretty promising project."

 

We parted in agreement on that point, and I flagged down Winter and Codsworth to talk about some things I'd seen down at the Red Rocket. There were a bunch of wrecked cars there that looks like their engine compartments hadn't been fully stripped, and I wanted to see if we could bring them back here to feed into the workshop. At the same time, we needed to figure out a plan of what trees and other resources we wanted to harvest for making the houses and which ones we wanted to save. I think it went without saying that totally strip-mining Sanctuary of all its natural resources would take away a lot of what made the place special.

 

We talked well into the night, and I observed that Codsworth seemed a lot more cogent than he'd been when I first met him. I guessed that having more people to talk to - to say nothing of more goals to complete than just watering dead shrubs - had done his memory core a lot of good. In the end, we settled on a plan... but it was going to involve some travel. Again. 

 

According to the Donahue sisters, there were two good options for getting the cement and other materials I needed. Not counting leaning on Connie to broker another shipment, that is, but I felt like I'd used up the favor she owed me and I didn't want to impose. One was the Drumlin Diner, a little trading post east of Concord. It was tiny, and so I shouldn't expect much, but Trashcan Carla stopped there regularly, so even if they didn't have what I needed right away, Trudy - the owner - could probably get it.

 

The other option was Bunker Hill. That was the real caravan hub of the whole region, and if I could make it there I could get almost anything I needed - even extremely rare finds like bulk plastic, something I'd need for the houses. The problem is that between Sanctuary and Bunker Hill were literal miles of raider and Super Mutant territory. I'd need to either take a roundabout route through Cambridge (not much better) or follow Route 93 right into the lion's mouth. It didn't take long to decide that I'd put off visiting Bunker Hill for the time being. The next day, however, I'd be suiting back up and visiting the Drumlin Diner. My first goal was to get concrete, but if I could get other critical materials I wouldn't refuse that either.

 

As I slept that night, my mind took me back to the slaughter at West Everett. The butchered corpses of those settlers weighed on me, and I worried that if I didn't get proper defenses in place at Sanctuary, we could easily be next. In time, though, the dreams took on a different aspect. The following morning I wondered if it was the influence of the Neural Sentry, which seemed to lean many negative emotions towards a sexual direction to neutralize them. I went from dreaming about the headless, eviscerated corpses to the sneering faces of the Super Mutants themselves. I dreamed they'd caught me, taken my weapons and cast me to the floor, laughing and taunting in their deep, distorted voices.

 

 

First they set their hounds on me, pinning me down and roughly penetrating me. I imagined an enormous, veiny member penetrating me - again, how did they get the plugs out of my power suit? - while the Super Mutants laughed and taunted me. When the hound had contented itself, next came the Supers themselves, forcing themselves on me from both ends. I imagined a rank, funky taste like soft cheese filling my mouth and nostrils as the leader warmed up on me. His subordinate mercilessly rammed my ass, pushing deep into me, and letting out jets of almost burning hot mutant cum into my innards.

 

 

When he'd had his fill, the leader lifted me up and entered me from the front. If I hadn't trained myself with the power suit's thick plugs, surely it would have torn me open, but instead he filled me up and pounded hard against my cervix over and over again. It was like a little electric shock of pain each time, and when he finally let loose I felt like his semen was pouring straight into my uterus, other than the thick, slimy trail he left behind when he finally pulled himself loose. I collapsed then, falling into the snow, totally exhausted, barely able to move as the Supers howled in laughter.

 

 

At last, I awakened, drenched in sweat and panting. I felt a distinct need for a shower, but I also felt incredibly horny. So I delayed that until after I'd taken the time to stroke and caress myself into orgasm and only then did I go attend to washing. While it didn't completely dispel the disturbing dream from my mind, the physical release took much of the tension out of me, and combined with a warm shower to relax my muscles and wash the sweaty musk from my skin, I finally felt ready to set out for the Drumlin Diner. Hopefully, compared to my last road trip, this one would be a bit more sedate.

 

 

Behind The Scenes

All in all, this project has met and exceeded my expectations in many ways. I've had very few problems (though I did have to remove one DLL based mod when it started causing problems with some custom animations) and those that I have encountered are all cosmetic and easy to work around. However, with today's session I've finally started to encounter a significant (if well-documented) bug. Scrapping the ruined house and, I suspect, in particular its foundation has broken pathfinding throughout all of Sanctuary. As a result, most actors are now standing around aimlessly and not following their expected routines. 

 

In the next session, I'll need to grab a tool such as City Planner Toolkit and lay down replacement navmesh to restore actor movement throughout the settlement. I'm expecting this to be a mildly annoying activity, but Fallout 4 is a mildly annoying game at times so it goes with the territory. I wish Bethesda had possessed better foresight when it came to how people would mod the game, because I'd much rather be focusing on building my settlement than on placing invisible floor sections in order to get NPCs to walk around.

 

Also, a quick programming note: I will be out of town for part of next week, so please don't be surprised if chapters slow down or stop in that timeframe. If I have the time, I'll prepare some chapters on delayed release, but I can't make any guarantees right now.