While Red's rangers started the process of cleaning out and fortifying the motel - and more importantly, building a checkpoint on Speen Street to control any northbound traffic coming out of town - Red followed me into Natick. Nick and Curie followed as well, albeit at a little bit of distance. There was an uncomfortable quiet about, and I wondered if this meant the locals were hiding from me, or if it meant they were getting ready for an ambush.

 

 

Ultimately, finding someone to speak with ended up mostly being a matter of finding the mutilated corpses (as one does, in raider country). Consequently, my meeting with the raider bosses of Natick happened in a church that had been liberally decorated with skinned and dismembered bodies. It was there, after much hollering and commotion-making by Red, that several of the people I was looking for made a cautious appearance. There were five of them in all, none of them the actual bosses who were in town, but lieutenants who were trusted enough to negotiate but still expendable if things went south.

 

They circled me as the filed in. I almost said, 'circled like sharks,' but that's not exactly true. More like wolves, sizing up an intruder, not sure if they should attack or give way.

 

 

"You probably noticed that the power's off," I said. 

 

"That your doing? Asked the one woman of the bunch." 

 

"Mine, and Red's Rangers. On the way here, you might have seen the checkpoint going up on the north side of town, too. Also mine."

 

"So that's it, then?" pressed a man wearing a baseball helmet, "you planning to try and throw us out of Natick? You know the deal with this place, right? You hit one of us in here, and you're at war with every raider in the Commonwealth."

 

Red laughed at that, "maybe you didn't notice, but she already is."

 

"Is that so?" asked the one standing to Red's right. "And you're what? Her pet now? Who the fuck even is this bitch?"

 

I was about to answer that, but before I could, Red snapped back. "I'm no one's pet, fuckface, but I'm smart enough to know which way the wind's blowing. That's Charley, Concord Charley."

 

"Tits-out Charley?" he confirmed, laughing. I was not impressed to see more signs that the nickname, accurate or not, seemed to be spreading.

 

"That's the one," Red said, "which makes me wonder - why are your fuckin' pants on? You know the rule, don't you? Cocks out for Charley. That's the rule."

 

I raised one hand to slow down the escalation. "One thing at a time," I said. "I'm here today for just one thing. I don't want any more caravans going to Fort Hagen. No water, no food, no supplies. You do that, and I'll leave you along."

 

"Oh, well if that's it," the woman sneered, "why didn't you say so?"

 

"Because she knew you fuckers would be too stupid to do it if she just asked," Red opined.

 

"I need you, well, really, I need your bosses to understand that everything west of the Charles River, all the way down to the badlands south of here, belongs to me. But, I'm a reasonable woman, and I realize that I don't have the men to control it all. Not yet. And I understand the value of having neutral ground were your gangs can talk... and more to the point, where I can talk to you. So I'm here to offer you a deal: you cut off Fort Hagen, and I turn the power back on. I also keep Natick as neutral ground until you give me a reason to change my mind. Oh, and the whole neutral ground bit doesn't extend to the Rust Devils. If you see them, you tell them to pack their shit and go west, west till there's no chance of us crossing paths again."

 

 

"Good luck with that," the guy with the baseball helmet muttered.

 

"I don't know, I don't think I need a lot of luck right now," I countered. "I might not be able to occupy Natick yet, but I can certainly raid it whenever I want, make it useless to all of you as a meeting spot. I can certainly keep the lights off, and if you try to run supplies up to Hagen just to spite me, I'll spot the caravans and take them for myself. The more that I talk this through, the less I feel like I really need your cooperation."

 

The blond one in the back, who'd been quiet up until this point, spoke up then. "I'll give you credit for being brave," he said. "Most scavvers like you would be too afraid to show up here. But having balls goes two ways, and you've laid down one mighty insult to our bosses. First you broke the neutral ground by wiping out JM and his boys, now you show up here, making demands? How's this for a counter offer? You pack up and go back where you can from. All your people leave their weapons behind, and you turn on the power while you're on the way out. If you do that, we won't pick one of your settlements, slip up through your 'territory,' and burn it to the ground. Seems like a fair deal."

 

"You know, Red?" I asked, "I think you had the right idea. Treating these dumbasses like equals just went to their heads. I think I'm going to require a display of submission for them to walk out--"

 

"Charley, behind--" Red started, but I was already turning. The blond guy had a nasty looking knife out, and he was getting ready to stick my in the kidney. In retrospect, I'm fairly confident my suit would have deflected the attack, but in the moment I had no interest of putting it to the test. The motion receptors in the suit, now well-acclimated to me from countless hours of use, correctly intuited the urgency of my motion and started pumping me full of biofuel without an explicit prompt. I spun and grabbed blondie, snapping his knife arm like a twig and tossing him into the pews. 

 

The others were going for weapons now, but Red was faster on the draw. She shot the woman clean in the forehead with that silenced 1911 I'd seen her using back in the motel shootout, and I triggered another hit of the biofuel as I shot forward crushed baseball helmet guy's kneecap. The remaining two were quick to raise their hands in supplication, causing Red to take her pistol off of them and instead dispassionately shoot blondie in the head, followed by a similar coup de grace to baseball helmet guy, who'd managed to lose his protective gear as he fell.

 

"OK, new plan. You two get to save Natick for the raiders. You're going to strip, as a sign of submission, and walk back to your bosses. You're going to explain how, in my infinite mercy, I am going to disregard how you fucking raiders broke the truce here and tried to kill me, and off them one final chance to take my terms. If I haven't heard back from them by nightfall, then I'm coming back with a death squad to clean your gangs out of this town. Understood?"

 

The remaining men were seething, but they also knew that they'd been beat, and the old raider on Red's left tossed his mining helmet on the floor and started to strip. The other survivor followed swiftly after.

 

Red sneered as the men disrobed, "you could have avoided this if you'd just followed instructions."

 

After the two of them left, Red considered me. "Not bad for a Vault Dweller. I didn't think your kind really had it in you to take down hardened boys like those."

 

 

"It's an acquired skill," I admitted. "I would have let them walk out of here if they hadn't pulled that stunt with the knife."

 

"Yeah," she said, "we need to work on that. By the way, what's up with you belly?"

 

I looked down and realized that the multiple hits of biofuel foam had heavily swollen my abdomen. Interestingly, I didn't feel the discomfort and excessive sense of fullness I'd gotten in the past. Evidently, I was getting used to having large volumes of material pumped into my colon.

 

"It's a long story, Red. You like ass play?"

 

"Nah," she said, wrinkling her nose a little as she shook her head, "Too messy. I'm a pussy girl all the way. Cocks, fists, or spikes, they all go in the pussy."

 

If I hadn't had the breathing tube in, I think I would have snorted at that little pearl of wisdom. "What about men?"

 

Red shrugged, "if they're on my good side, it's not problem, right? On the bad side? Well, you saw back at the fort, I normally just cut off their arms and legs and then hang them. But if one really needed to go on a spike, if you cut off a guy's cock there's a little hole in there's that'll slide right onto the spike."

 

"Uh," Nick groaned, "that is way too much information."

 

"So anyway," Red continued," why'd you ask?"

 

"Never mind, the short version is that when the suit hits me with chems, it makes my tummy swell up a little."

 

"Oh," she said, "weird."

 

Seemingly content to leave it at that, Red was silent until I spoke again. "So I'm going to have to kill them all, aren't I?" I asked.

 

"I mean, eventually yes. Definitely," Red said, "but I think you might have scared those two enough to get some breathing room. My guys are going to have to keep an eye on them until... hmmmm."

 

"What is it?" I asked.

 

"Are you sure you want to know?" Nick challenged.

 

"I bet we could recruit more guys for the Rangers from Natick," she said. "They're gonna see us up there, all fuckin' tough and hardcore, armed to the teeth and eating good, and they'll be jealous. I bet I can make some of them give up the raider life and leave their pants behind, so to speak."

 

This felt like a terrible idea, but I also found myself doubting if I could stop Red from doing it, no matter what I said. "What do you know about the punishment suits?" I asked her after thinking for a moment.

 

"I've heard folks mention them once or twice, but that's it." 

 

"OK, I'm going to radio back to Concord and have them send the specs for making them down here so you can print them with the motel's Workshop. I'll also have someone come down to show your people how to use them. Any raider who crosses the line has to put on the punishment suit until you - or someone you really trust - vouches for them to go into the rangers."

 

She nodded once. "OK, I get it. Probation, right? I'll pass the word."

 

In the end, we got an answer very different from what I'd hoped for. Instead of a representative from the raiders coming to agree to my demands, they sent an assassin robot - and I was definitely the target. Fortunately, Danse's laser rifle didn't let me down and I scrapped the robot before it could get its claws on me.

 

 

Well, I'd promised them a death squad, and that's what I was fixing to deliver after that stunt. The Rangers formed up and Red and I led them into Natick, searching the place door to door. However, after sending their robot after us the raider gangs seemed to have packed up and left - indeed, even the traders and other civilians seemed to have decided to go out of town for a while. 

 

"That... wasn't exactly what I had in mind," I admitted afterwards.

 

Red took it in stride. "They just can't believe you've got them outmatched. Give it time, after they blow a few more hits like this, they won't be so quick to fuck with you in the future."

 

"And until then? Can we hold the motel if all the raider gangs are up in arms?"

 

She shrugged. "Only one way to find out. That bad part, though..." Red's face drooped a bit in disappointment. "I'm going to have to stay here and ride herd on this clusterfuck. Shit, and I really wanted to raid Hagen with you. That's going to be epic."

 

"Maybe not as epic as you think," Nick said, "with no supplies and especially no water, those mercs are going to be in pretty sorry shape."

 

"Still," I admitted, "I understand why you wanted to be there. You're right though, I need you here. You're the only one I can trust with this job."

 

"Aw, thanks," she said. Did I detect a little blush? Maybe. 

 

In any event, I took a final walk through the growing camp north of Natick before walking with Red to the north side of camp. Before we left, and more than a little on impulse, I pulled Red into a hug.

 

 

"Hey," she protested, "what are you...?"

 

"I'll see you again when this is all over, Red. Until then, I'm counting on you to keep Natick locked down."

 

"Ah, no problem, Charley. You can count on me." Then she added, quieter, "thanks."

 

Nick, Curie, and I made our way back to Forest Grove, though it wasn't exactly an uneventful hike. Largely boxed in by now, Rust Devil territory was swarming with patrols, and we had to fight our way through on several occasions. 

 

 

When we finally got back to the Minutemen's lines, I found out that the Rust Devil activity southeast of Hagen wasn't the extent of their activities. Evidently just as contemptuous of my offer of a mutual ceasefire as the Natick raiders were, the Rust Devils had launched probing attacks against Concord and Sanctuary before committing to a full-scale attack on Thicket Excavations, which was apparently now calling itself Quarrytown after Dean's plan to move in the soldiers' families had moved forward. The Vault 111 guards had worked with the Minutemen to repel the attack, but it highlighted Q-Town's vulnerability to an attack from the north. I made a mental note to talk to Preston about moving into Olivia Base, not just to prevent more raiders from moving in but also to buy the quarry some strategic depth.

 

For now, however, I was still focused on eliminating Kellogg. With the encirclement of his base as complete as it was going to get, the next step was going to be a direct confrontation. I talked with Birdie about the state of the forces at Forest Grove, and he confirmed that they were ready to march - as long as we also attacked Hagen from the northeast, like we'd planned from the start. To accomplish that, we'd need to kick the super mutants out of Fiddler's Green, opening the way for our forces at Sunshine Tidings to move through the area.

 

 

After transmitting a radio code back to Sunshine Tidings to tell the troops there it was time to get on the move, I took my party northwest from Forest Grove. If we thought we could clear Fiddler's Green ourselves, we'd storm the settlement and then hold position until Dirk could arrive. If not, I'd wait for him on the outskirts and join the main attack. By the time we reached the trailer park, however, the weather had turned positively foul and we had no visibility. We had to either sit back and wait for Dirk or risk probing the settlement - no in-between.

 

I opted for the latter, though in retrospect that was a kind of reckless move. I tried to use the bad visibility to my advantage and sneak in close to the settlement. One advantage of the powersuit compared to power armor, certainly, is that it doesn't make nearly as much noise while in motion. 

 

 

"Hey there, Moonbeam, what's cooking?" I heard a voice that definitely didn't belong to a super mutant say.

 

"Nothing, boss. The lighting's so bright that even the carrots are smiling," said another, female this time.

 

The first voice answered, "Ha, ain't brighter than your smile, little flower."

 

I was very confused. Where were the super mutants? What were... ordinary people doing there? Well, I took the direct route to find out and stepped into the building from where I'd heard the voices.

 

"Hey man," the first voice said, belonging to a seated man with graying hair, "welcome to the commune. I'm Cosmos, and this special girl right here is Crystal Moonbeam."

 

 

The pajama-clad girl turned, waving. "Howdy!"

 

"Howdy." I said, before turning to the man. "Cosmos, I'm... surprised to see you hear. I'd heard that super mutants took over this settlement."

 

"Don't doubt they did. Then those heavy dudes up at the army base took them out. Live by the sword, you know? But us? We're a bunch of... easy living folks. We're all about keeping things mellow, like one big happy family."

 

"I see..." I said, thinking over the implications.

 

"Well," Cosmos plowed on, "now that we've told you about us, it's your turn to share. What's your story?"

 

"My name's Charley," I said. "I'm... kind of new here. I was frozen until last year. Now I'm just trying to build a better life. For me and for my friends. And I'm trying to find my son."

 

 

"Who-o-oa, far out, man," Cosmos burbled. Then he took a more serious tone, saying, "for a second there I thought you were one of those Minutemen trying to recruit people. I told those folks we don't believe in that sort of thing. We like to teach people to love."

 

"Well, I wouldn't judge the Minutemen too harshly," I said, "they just want for people to be safe. But I know what you mean about teaching love. Up at Concord, we're doing a lot of teaching about love too."

 

"Oh, man, I've heard about Concord. Uh, hang on, wait, are you that Charley?"

 

I nodded, "yep, that's me."

 

"Faaaaaaaar out!"

 

 

"So what are you folks doing out here? This isn't really the most peaceful spot in the Commonwealth right now."

 

"That sure is true," he admitted, "but we've got, like, positive energy, and this is just the place that needs it right now. You should come to one of my sermons, help spread the word."

 

With no super mutants to fight, I didn't have a lot to do in the trailer park so, after the storm cleared and he emerged to talk to his followers - maybe half a dozen in total - me, Nick, and Curie stopped by to listen as well.

 

"Some say synths and humans can't live together," he started, "but man, that's all wrong. They said that about the potato and the tomato, but when times got tough, those two came together and we've been eating tatoes ever since."

 

Nick nodded a little at that one. "Send this guy to Diamond City," he mumbled, "I think Mayor McDonough needs to listen to this message."

 

 

"The great shaman in the sky told us again and again: I ain't about negativity, man. I'm about love. But people are stubborn and they don't like to listen, and that's why this world is so messed up. We need to be like the tato - we can't say, oh, something dry and brown can't get groovy with something soft and moist and red."

 

"I hear that, brother," one of the followers piped in.

 

"So when my synth brothers and sisters ask me, 'am I a person, am I real?' I tell 'em, it doesn't matter who made you - nature loves you. We share the same are, the same atoms, we share the same love. You and me, we're just like a potato and a tomato. All we gotta do is love, and from that comes a beautiful, strong tato."

 

"I think he is oversimplifying slightly," Curie noted.

 

"It's metaphor," Nick drawled, "don't be picky."

 

Afterwards, I talked to Cosmos a little more. I told him about the Minutemen marching this way, assured him they wouldn't interfere with his settlement. I also asked about his plans for the future.

 

"After this trouble at Fort Hagen is settled," I explained, "I want this area to go back to being a thriving community, like it was before the super mutant attack. It seems like you've already made a lot of progress on that score. Would you be interested in working with Concord in the future to keep improving things?"

 

 

"That's a tough one," he said. "I've heard that you're doing great things up there, but the way people talk about you... it's like you're a queen or a goddess. And the only 'higher power' in my life is," as he said it, he put his hand on his heart, "the great shaman in the sky. If we work with you, will we really be free to keep living the way we want to?"

 

"I guess that depends on why you mean. We've got very few rules - mostly just live and let live."

 

"But I hear you hang people who rub you the wrong way. We don't believe in punishing people that way, we think that absolute love is the better way."

 

"It's true that some raiders we captured who had done truly horrible crimes, like cannibalism, we put to death. But we've haven't used the death penalty in a long time now - when we capture raiders, we give them the choice to live, and every one has taken it so far. They don't have their freedom right away - they have to earn it - but we give them honest jobs on our farms or in the city, and we aren't cruel to them. Because of that, a whole raider gang decided to give up that life and join us instead recently."

 

"Sounds like you're trying to do the right thing," he said. "But what about the whole birthday suit thing? What if someone doesn't want to strip down for you?"

 

"Well, they don't have to live in our community. We have a lot of reasons for not using clothing; some about safety, but a lot of it is about breaking down divisions between people, making them more equal. But I don't have to tell you about that," I pointed to a magazine on the coffee table in his house, "it looks like you've already been doing your research."

 

 

"I have, I have," he admitted. "It's a complex question, right? I mean, nature made us naked, but everyone wears clothes. I mean, like, I get that a lot of the problems in this world are because people rebel against nature, but... I don't know?"

 

"Sounds like you're almost there already. Think on it some more, we can talk after I square away Fort Hagen."

 

Cosmos looked troubled about that. "Do you really have to fight them? There's dozens, maybe hundreds of souls up there... and yeah, they ain't no angels, but they've got a right to live and love too, don't think?"

 

"Their leader," I said, "kidnapped my son. Getting to him is the only I hope I have of finding him... and his men aren't going to let me just walk into his base."

 

Nick added, "Kellogg's done a lot of harm in his days and hasn't spread much love. The world'll be a better place if he's gone, or in a cage."

 

 

"It's not like that, man," Cosmos countered. "You can't, like, counteract negative energy with more negativity."

 

"What do you suggest I do instead?" I asked.

 

"Why don't you ask to talk to him?"

 

"How would I even do that without getting shot the instant they see me?"

 

Cosmos shrugged, "sometimes you just have to have faith. But I'll tell you what. I know those cats up at Hagen. They're a heavy, sad bunch, but we do a little trade with them. I'll ask if they'll talk to you. Will you let me do that before you try fighting?"

 

"This sounds like a terrible idea," Nick opined.

 

"But a noble gesture, nevertheless," Curie countered.

 

"I'd hate to see you put yourself in danger for us, Cosmos, but if you really think it could help... I'm willing to give it a chance."