Tales From The Commonwealth

Nora never had the chance to tell others that she had chased the Children of Atom away from the Kingsport Lighthouse, so it wasn’t very likely that settlers or scavengers would approach the place of their own volition. But that didn’t change the fact that someone had taken shelter in the place, given that she could see the light of candles coming from the kitchen windows. She decided to investigate, mostly out of curiosity, but found the house just as empty as when she last visited. After taking another look around, Nora noticed a faint green glow coming from the top of the lighthouse, not unlike the one on her Pip-Boy. She didn’t draw Deliverer from the holster on her leather belt, but kept her hand close to it as she carefully walked upstairs, trying not to make any sound.

Upon reaching the top, she saw that the green glow was indeed coming from a Pip-Boy, strapped to the wrist of somebody leaning against the railing and using the detached night vision scope of a sniper rifle as a makeshift monocular, using it to watch something up north. That person wore a full set of heavy combat armor plus a combat helmet, covering most of their body in steel plating, not unlike the one her late husband wore while serving in the army before the bombs fell. Nora could also see the blue of a vault suit poking from the gaps in the armor and long locks of pink hair that could not be contained under the helmet. Since the person had their back turned to Nora, they did not notice her approaching.

“Excuse me?” Nora called.

“EEP!” The person squealed, startled. The scare had such an effect on them that they dropped the scope they were holding. “Oh no no no no no!” The person could do nothing but watch as the scope dropped down several feet, shattering upon hitting the ground. “Oh, shoot…”

“Um, sorry about your scope. Didn’t expect you to react like that.”

“It’s ok, I still have another. It doesn’t have night vision, but I’ll make do.” The person finally turned around: she was a girl with creamy yellow skin and pink hair. For a brief moment Nora could also see that the young woman had aquamarine eyes, but she quickly hid them with the road goggles she had hanging around her neck.

“My name is Nora.” The sole survivor said, extending her hand.

“Eep!” The other vault dweller flinched at the sudden movement, but eventually shook her hand. “I’m… Fluttershy.”

“Hey, I heard about you.”

“You… did?”

“Yeah, I came across some of your friends a while back.”

“So they’re alive?” Fluttershy placed a hand on her chest, relief washing over her. “Oh, thank goodness! I’ve been looking for them for so long, I was starting to fear the worst. Can you tell me where they are, please?”

“I, uh… I’m sorry, I can’t. Applejack is constantly on the move, I have no idea where she went after we parted ways. And Sunset Shimmer, well… I don’t know either.” Nora truly wanted to tell Fluttershy the truth, but she was instructed to not tell anybody about the Railroad or reveal the location of their headquarters, regardless of who they were or how genuine they seemed.

“I… I see…” Fluttershy looked down at her feet – if most of her hair wasn’t contained under the helmet, she would be attempting to hide her face behind her bangs.

“So, uh, I see you have a working Pip-Boy.” Nora mentioned in an attempt to break the ice. “Haven’t seen one out here in the wastes that wasn’t my own. Where did you get it?”

“I got it from Vault 81. Overseer McNamara said that if I was going to be living among them, I may as well look the part.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Really? Vault 81? They don’t strike me as the type to just give away their possessions out of the goodness of their heart. Hell, they wanted three fully charged fusion cores just to let me in, and I’m a fellow vault dweller. How did you get in?”

“I’m, um… Not really sure myself. I just… woke up there.”

“Ah, I see. So that’s where the portal dropped you.” Nora smiled at Fluttershy’s expression of surprise and confusion. “Applejack told me everything.”

“Then there’s no reason to hide it, I suppose.” Fluttershy sighed, relieved that she wouldn’t have to lie her way through in order to avoid being called crazy. “The portal that brought us here separated us, and I ended up inside the vault.”

“What’s your superpower?”

“Oh! She told you about those as well, then.” Nora nodded, a smile of genuine excitement on her face – as a long time closet fan of the Unstoppables comic book series, the idea of people with actual superpowers in real life fascinated her. “I can hear and talk to all kinds of animals.”

“Wow! Even the mutated animals of the wasteland?”

“Mm-hm. They can hear me but they don’t always listen to me. Oh, speaking of which!” Fluttershy reached into a satchel lying on the metal floor next to her feet and pulled out a different scope; she looked through that scope in the same direction she had been watching prior to Nora’s arrival. “Shoot, it’s too dark.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’ve been tracking a squad of Gunners, they have something that belongs to a friend of mine. The trail leads to that place” Fluttershy pointed at the building in the distance “but I’m afraid of getting too close.”

“Yeah, I had my fair share of run ins with the Gunners, I understand not wanting to get too close to a placed where a bunched of them are holed in.”

“That’s… not exactly why I’m afraid to get too close.”

“Why, then?”

“I’m not the only one tracking them.” Fluttershy sat down with her back pressed against the wall of the lighthouse – Nora did the same. The young lady from Canterlot pulled her satchel closer to her and inspected the insides. “A gang of raiders stole a clutch of eggs from a friend of mine in Lynn Woods. She wasn’t particularly happy when we found out about it, so she stormed their camp and… wiped them out.” Fluttershy pulled out a piece of paper covered in dried blood and handed it to the vault dweller. “But by the time we got there the eggs were already gone and that’s all I could find.”

Parts of the paper were unreadable due to the bloodstains, but from the parts she could read she concluded that someone instructed the raiders to sneak into a deathclaw nest, steal the eggs, stuff them in a case and hand the case over to a group of Gunners without telling them what the contents were, otherwise they would ask for more money and the raiders would be paid less caps.

“Deathclaw eggs? Your friend is a deathclaw?”

Fluttershy nodded. “When I met her, she was on the verge of death – she had an encounter with a Brotherhood of Steel squad; she… defeated them, but was in terrible shape afterwards. I explained my intentions to her and she allowed me to get closer. We talked a lot while I was nursing her back to health – well, I talked a lot, she mostly grumbled one-word replies and cussed me out when she felt pain.” Fluttershy giggled. “Deathclaws have really tough hides, but their bellies are very soft.

“By the time she was fully healed she had already warmed up to me and we became friends. She even lets me ride her! We travelled back to her home in Lynn Woods where she introduced me to the rest of her lounge. They weren’t exactly fond of me, but after a lot of shouting, roaring and threats of violence, Eve – that’s what I named her, by the way; deathclaws don’t name themselves or each other – convinced them to tolerate my presence.” She sighed. “And then there’s the alpha.”

“Is he bad?”

“I wouldn’t call him bad, just overprotective. He’s always watching me, thinking I have second intentions and will spring my nonexistent trap if he’s not around. Never mind the fact that there are five other equally mistrustful deathclaws, all of which can easily overpower me in less than a second. When the eggs were stolen, he was livid; I was lucky that he didn’t take his anger out on me, but his roars were the scariest things I ever heard in my life.

“Since Eve had already cleared out the ones responsible, he chased after the Gunners once I told them what was written in there.” Fluttershy pointed at the bloody paper Nora was still holding. “I got here just in time to see him chase after them into that place, but that was hours ago and neither the Gunners nor the alpha came out yet.”

“You think they killed each other?”

“Impossible. The Brotherhood of Steel guys had Power Armor, were more heavily armed than those Gunners and, although barely, Eve still survived a direct confrontation with. The alpha is stronger than Eve, there’s no way they managed to come even close to seriously injuring him. I think he… got them all, but they hid the eggs and he’s still looking for them. But if I go in there now he’ll probably think I’m one of them and… attack me too.”

“Hm… maybe I can help you with that?”

“You can? How?”

Nora opened a small bag hanging from her leather belt, revealing a number of buttons and dials on the device contained inside it.

“Stealth Boy.” Nora said. “I can get in and out without being spotted – as long as I hurry up, the battery life of this thing is infuriatingly short.”

“I don’t know, it’s too dangerous. I can’t ask someone I barely know to risk their life on my behalf.”

“Your friend Applejack saved my life. Helping her friends at a time of need is the least I can do to repay the favor.”

“Well, if you’re sure…”

“I am! Trust me, this will only take a moment.”

But it didn’t take only a moment; standing so close to a deathclaw without a suit of Power Armor caused Nora to panic, and she lost precious seconds just standing there, staring at the alpha deathclaw that didn’t even know she was there. By the time she located the eggs, the timer ran out and she became fully visible again.

Luckily she was out of the deathclaw’s sight, so she managed to sneak her way to safety without being spotted. She located the missing eggs in one of the bathrooms next to the corpse of a Gunner – one of the many she stumbled across inside the building – with large claw-sized holes in his stomach lying next to the eggs, most of which had been smashed to pieces, except for one. She sat on the floor, hugging the last football-sized egg and spying on the deathclaw through the gaps on the broken walls, hoping for a chance to sprint toward the stairs leading to the basement where she came from.

After taking a moment to catch the breath that she was holding since the second she activated her Stealth Boy, Nora could think more clearly and noticed something she overlooked at first: the front entrance, which she was unable to open when attempting to enter, was just a few feet away from the bathroom she was hiding in, she could tiptoe her way out of the building and hopefully find a way to unlock the front door from the inside.

She managed to sneak out of the building through the front door, which fortunately was only chained shut, so all she had to do was remove said chains and not go back inside to hunt down a key as she feared.

“Oh thank goodness you’re back, I was so worried!” Fluttershy was about to give Nora a hug when she noticed the large egg she was holding. “Oh you found them! It. Where… Where are the others?”

“Bad news, Fluttershy; they were all broken by the time I got there. This is the only one that’s left.”

“Oh… Oh no…”

“I’m sorry.”

“N-No, don’t apologize, it’s no your fault. We managed to save at least one of them, and that’s a good thing.” Fluttershy took the egg from Nora’s hands and hugged it affectionately. “Let’s just hope Eve thinks so as well…”

“Do you want me to accompany you?”

Fluttershy nodded. “I could use the help. I can’t dive for cover like I usually do while carrying the last surviving egg of Eve’s clutch.”

“So, did the people of Vault 81 freaked out when suddenly a new resident popped up in their home out of thin air?” Nora asked as their walked side by side back to Lynn Woods, holding Delivery on her hands and keeping an eye on their surroundings to make sure they wouldn’t be ambushed.

“Not exactly. I didn’t end up in the section of Vault 81 where everybody lived; the vault had another section, one that had been abandoned and sealed off ages ago that was populated by giant naked mole-rats. They were going to… attack me, but once I managed to convince them that I meant no harm, they left me alone. While exploring that place I met a robot named Curie. She was trapped in there, just like me, but for much longer. We became good friends.

“She had been working on a universal cure for all known diseases. The mole-rats themselves were parts of the experiment, carrying diseases that the serum was meant to cure. I honestly thought I was going to die in there, but thankfully we were found by one of the residents from the vault named Bobby De Luca; he called a security officer and we were taken straight to the Overseer’s office immediately. After I explained myself, we made a deal: Curie would give her the universal cure so that they could study it and hopefully replicate it, and in return she would allow us to stay. Curie and I agreed.

“I spent the next few months living in Vault 81, working as the assistant of the school teacher, but as I heard tales of how scary and dangerous the Commonwealth is, a day didn’t go by without me worrying about the safety of my friends. One day Curie approached me, saying she had already learned everything she could possibly learn in an enclosed environment like the vault, and she wanted to leave and explore the wasteland so she could learn what the outside world had to offer. It took a lot of courage, but I decided to pack my bags and leave with her in order to look for my friends. As I explored the Commonwealth, I came across all kinds of creatures I had never seen before in my life, and most of them were willing to sit down and talk.”

“Most of them?” Nora questioned.

“Like I said, they can hear me but they don’t always listen to me. Mutant hounds only obey their super mutant masters, they don’t care what I have to say, and I have yet to come across a radscorpion that doesn’t want to… attack me.”

“I noticed that you avoid saying the word ‘kill’ a lot.” Nora pointed out. “Any specific reason for that or…?”

“It’s just… not a concept I am comfortable with. Don’t know if I ever will. I mean, I am familiar with the circle of life and know that every living being must die eventually, but… it’s just so commonplace out here in the wasteland. Survival and nourishment are things I understand, but there are those who…” Fluttershy took a deep breath “kill just for fun or sport. Radscorpions are especially vicious, most of the things they hunt they simply leave where it died. It’s like they do it just for the thrill of doing it. I’ll never know the reason why until I can find one willing to talk, but no such luck yet.

“But as I was saying, finding all those creatures that probably haven’t been properly studied and that I can talk to seemed like my chance to do something important. Curie and I parted ways eventually, but I was inspired by her and so I decided to do my own research.” Fluttershy gathered up a small pile of dead leaves with her feet and placed the deathclaw egg on the makeshift nest as she reached into her satchel and pulled out a worn book. She flipped through the pages, a lot of them filled with detailed sketches of creatures from around the wasteland and numerous notes on them. “Currently I’m working on my entry on deathclaws, and living among them is an unique opportunity. My hope is to one day turn these notes into a book that can help not only the people of the wasteland but all the creatures as well.”

“That’s impressive! You are amazing, Fluttershy.”

The young woman smiled and blushed as she hugged the notebook close to her chest. “Th-Thank you. As a side project, I’m trying to convince the deathclaws of Eve’s lounge to not actively hunt down humans unless they’re acting in self-defense, to limit themselves to brahmin, radstags and the occasional yao guai.”

“How is that going?”

“Results… could be better.”

“Did you manage to convince any?”

“Just Eve.”

“Well, that’s one more than everyone else I know of; if anyone can do it, it’s you. Heck, you’ll probably have a full-blown Deathclaw Preservation Society before the year is out.”

Fluttershy giggled as she put the notebook back in her satchel and picked the egg up once again. “That plan is just a little too ambitious for me.”

Miraculously, they arrived in Lynn Woods without running into trouble along the way. Nora escorted Fluttershy to a large nest made out of wood, dirt, leaves, garbage and bones at the bottom of a ravine – she couldn’t see the deathclaws that lived there, but she could hear growling and heavy footsteps. Fluttershy assured her that they wouldn’t attack her as long as they were together, but she still kept Deliverer in hand, just in case – it wouldn’t deal much damage against half a dozen deathclaws, but it gave her a small sense of security.

Fluttershy took a step forward, getting closer to the nest. A deathclaw emerged from above them – it was about as large as the one Nora had put down in Concord, but without Power Armor to protect her, Nora felt much smaller than she did back then. She tightened her grip on her gun.

The massive reptilian with large claws and teeth, devil-like horns and eyes with the same color, brightness and intensity of fire slid down the ravine and approached Fluttershy. At first it sniffed the young woman’s face before moving its head down and sniffing the egg she was holding.

“I’m… I’m so sorry, Eve…” Fluttershy’s voice sounded shaky, as if she were on the verge of tears. “This… This is the only one that’s left. I promised you I would get them all back, and I failed you.”

Fluttershy could no longer hold back the tears and started crying. The deathclaw started down at the human for a moment, before nudging her head with its muzzle and licking her face. That caught Fluttershy by surprise.

“You’re… not mad at me? But I let your babies die, I—” Fluttershy stopped talking. Nora couldn’t hear it, but it sounded like Eve had interrupted her. “I… I suppose you’re right. But you and the alpha already took care of all those responsible, so you already made all the true culprits pay.” Eve nudged her once more, causing Fluttershy to giggle. “I know, but I can’t help it. Even if it’s someone else’s fault, I still feel responsible because I couldn’t do something to prevent it.”

The human girl finally placed the egg on the nest and took a step back as Eve started using its terrifyingly large and sharp claws to dig on the ground and throw dirt on the nest. After it was done, the deathclaw finally acknowledged Nora’s presence with a sideways glare.

“Uh, hi.” She attempted to communicate.

“It’s ok, she’s with me.” Fluttershy quickly rushed to her defense. “She helped me take the egg back from where they had stashed it.” Nora and Eve kept eye contact for another moment before Eve finally gave up and laid down on top of her nest. “Eve says you should leave before the others think you’re overstaying your welcome.”

“And I see no reason to argue with a deathclaw. Goodbye, Fluttershy. I’ll see you around.”

“Goodbye Nora, thank you for everything. And if you happen to find any of my friends please tell them I’m fine, but please also tell them I begged them not to visit. The alpha will be back eventually, and bad things happen to strangers who wander into his territory.”