Chapter Text
Excerpt from “The Rise and Fall of the Institute”, by Piper Wright:
What can I really say about Nora? Word of mouth has spread her adventures far and wide across the Commonwealth, and most folks assume that half of them are exaggerated and the other half entirely made up. I was there with her almost from the beginning, so I decided to write this book to set the record straight. The book is called “The Rise and Fall of the Institute”, but it’s just as much about her, and her and the Institute go almost hand in hand.
When I first met Nora Jones, it was one of my less than proud moments. I was dickering — begging, really — with one of the security officers of Diamond City, trying to gain admittance back into town. (I go more indepth about that rat bastard Mayor McDonough, the cause of my exile, in a later chapter). I saw her walk up to me, a curious expression on my face, and my first instinct was that I could use her to get back into the city. I noticed she had a vault suit on under a patchwork of mismatched armor, and at first I took her to be one of the rare travelers that ventured forth from Vault 81. I took her by the arm and corralled her with me, insisting to the guard on the intercom that she was a trader before she had a chance to say otherwise. She played along (little surprise there — she did have some goods to trade, as it would turn out) and within a few moments the gates of Diamond City opened up for us, and I got the first taste of her, ah, larger than life personality.
***
Nora watched with interest as her new friend argued with Mayor McDipshit, or whatever his name was. She immediately decided he was a turd when he talked about scrapping some newspaper thingie, and then her new friend asked her about newspapers. “Oh yeah, I fuckin’ love newspapers,” Nora said. “Anyone who hates newspapers is a Communist and should be shot on sight.” Not that Nora held any ill will against Communists, but the pre-war propaganda and the instinct to stay safe by badmouthing Commies had stuck with her, for better or worse. ‘Better dead then Red’, and all that, even if it was horseshit.
Mayor McDipshit looked alarmed at Nora’s proclamation, while the woman he’d banned (Nora made a mental note to ask her for her name) had an appreciative smile on her face. “Can’t say I’m in favor of summary executions, but I love the enthusiasm,” she said.
“Well, what brings a… person… like you to Diamond City?” the mayor asked, obviously struggling not to call Nora an asshole.
Nora’s good humor fled her as she recalled what had brought her here in the first place. “It’s… it’s my son. He’s been kidnapped.”
The woman was sympathetic, her cheerful countenance shifting to one of concern. “Someone kidnapped your son? That’s awful!” She turned to the mayor. “What does Diamond City Security intend to do to help this woman?” She waved an accusing finger at him. “And you and I both know this isn’t the first missing person’s report to come through here!”
Mayor McDipshit was much less sympathetic. “Unfortunately, Diamond City Security cannot pursue every criminal case that falls into its lap, but I’m sure there’s someone in our fair city who would be willing to render private help to you.” Nora opened her mouth to ask if the mayor had anyone particular in mind, but the mayor rose his hand to cut her off before word one. “Now, I must be going, as I have official mayoral duties I must attend to.” He fled into the bowels of the one-time stadium, having decided he no longer wanted to deal with the two quarrelsome women.
“Asshole!” the nameless woman called after him, shooting him the middle finger. That brought back Nora’s smile — a lot may have changed since her big sleep, but it was comforting to know that some things were timeless. She turned back to Nora. “Hey, why don’t you come by my office? I can point you to a few people who might help, and maybe you can tell me a little about yourself.” She smirked. “Maybe there’s even a story in there somewhere!”
“Yeah, maybe,” Nora agreed, suppressing the urge to smile like a loon. Yeah, a 200 year old popsicle who became the general of a one-time big-name militia outfit on her first day in the nuclear wasteland probably did have some small potential for a news story. “I’d love the help, for sure.” She extended her hand. “Nora Jones, by the way.”
The woman laughed. “Where are my manners?” She grabbed the hand and pumped it vigorously. “Piper Wright.”
Piper led Nora into the stadium, and paused along with Nora, who had involuntarily stopped and gasped. “Ain’t it a thing of beauty?” Piper asked. “The ‘Great Green Jewel’ of the Commonwealth, though if you factored in the personalities of some of the folks who live here, they’d have to change it from ‘green’ to ‘black’.” Nora didn’t respond, and after a moment Piper nudged her. “Hey, Blue, you okay?”
Nora had been overwhelmed by the drastically different stadium than she was used to. She’d gone on several dates with Nate to Fenway before they’d been married; they’d each get a foot-long hot dog and a beer, and cheer on the doomed Sox. Reconciling her memories of Fenway with this mishmash of a shanty town built over an uneven packed dirt landscape complete with a large smokestack plopped right about where the pitcher’s mound should have been was impossible… so she just swallowed down those feelings (like so many others lately…) and gave Piper a big smile. “Yeah, couldn’t be better!” She wrinkled her nose and added, “Judging by the smell, ‘The Great Brown Jewel’ would also be appropriate.” Piper pursed her lips and unhappily nodded. “Now, show me this office of yours!”
The building was right by the entrance, which surprised Nora. (The phrase “prime real estate”, used repeatedly by the realtor that had sold her and Nate their house, echoed through her mind). “Hey, Nat,” Piper said, waving at a girl standing atop a small crate and hawking newspapers.
“Hi, Piper. ‘Bout time you got back in,” the girl, Nat, replied. “We gotta do something about the presses, they’re getting overloaded.”
“Eh, you always say that,” Piper waved dismissively. “It still cranks good. You worry too much!” She patted her — daughter? Younger sister? Probably younger sister — on the head, then moved on past her towards the door.
Nat shot the older woman a dirty look, then took notice of Nora. “Free paper to newcomers!” she announced, shoving a leaflet into Nora’s hands. ‘Publick Occurrences’ printed across the top. Nora nodded in appreciation at the knowledge of local history, then scanned the article. The mention of an anti-ghoul decree sounded interesting, but then the tale of the clandestine killer robot who’d gone nuts riveted her, compelling her to read the whole thing.
“Boy, this Institute sounds delightfully menacing,” Nora finally remarked.
Nat nodded. “Yeah, and that ain’t the worst of it. They kidnap folks, see? Snatch them right up in the middle of the night, never to be seen again.”
“Yeah, and ‘delightfully’ isn’t the word I’d use, myself,” Piper added. She’d loitered by the door, smoking a cigarette, watching as Nora read the paper. “Glad you liked the story, though!”
Piper waved towards a couch inside the office. Nora did a double take upon seeing an old washing machine placed next to it. “Have a seat, Blue,” Piper said, moving over to a freshly printed stack of papers and doing a spot inspection of them.
Nora ignored the washer and asked the more pressing question. “I don’t mind the nickname, but why Blue?” she asked.
Piper gave her an incredulous glance. “Really? You get dressed in the dark or something?”
Nora looked down at the parts of her vault suit that weren’t covered by the armor she’d picked off of various dead folk. “Oh yeah,” she said, chuckling. “If it was a snake, it would have bit me.” She held the paper up. “What’s this business about an anti-ghoul decree?” she asked.
Piper cocked an eyebrow. “That’s what you took from the article?”
“Well, it was the first thing that struck me,” Nora said. “A lot of it was striking, I was just working my way from the start.”
“Fair,” Piper nodded. “When our oh-so-illustrious mayor was running for the job, he ran on a strong anti-ghoul platform. I campaigned hard for the other guy, but we underestimated the number of dickheads living here, and the dickhead vote was enough to tip the scales in his favor. One of his first actions was to evict every ghoul from the city.” The extremely sour look on her face was enough to reveal her opinion.
“Shitty,” Nora agreed. “What’s a ghoul?”
That surprised Piper. “Wow, you really are fresh out of the vault. Well, sometimes when people soak enough rads to kill a person, they don’t die. Instead, their skin kinda… melts… and they become incredibly long-lived. Most ghouls are prewar folks who were too close to the bombs during the Great War.”
Nora nodded in understanding. “Weird, but neat. I remember the tabloids used to run this story every few years that the government had a big warehouse of screaming Japanese zombies left over from the last big war… hilarious that they turned out to be right. It’s depressing as hell that bigotry still exists, though.”
Piper wondered what a tabloid was, but filed that question away for later and continued on the topic of ghoul rights. “Well… I hate to play devil’s advocate, but some folks are nervous that regular ghouls will go feral. And there are plenty of feral ghouls out there — people who either went nuts from ghoulification, or the radiation thoroughly fried their brain, not that it really matters which.” She raised a finger up before Nora could respond. “Not that I agree with discriminating against non-feral ghouls off of some mere possibility that they’ll turn on us!”
Nora smiled. “Yeah, I was about to say,” she said, nodding. “Say, do they still have racism up here?” At Piper’s confused look, Nora went on. “You know, discriminating against people of a different skin color.”
Piper was at a loss. “You know, I don’t… think so? Wait, people actually did that?” She shook her head in disgust.
“Yeah, people have always been fucked up,” Nora confirmed. “How about sexism? Homophobia? Transphobia? Any other flavors of bigotry I’m forgetting?”
“I think religious discrimination used to be a thing,” Piper said. “That’s why America was founded, or something — freedom of religion. And no, I think all that crap must have died out with the bombs.”
“Hmph, or it got ghoulified too,” Nora muttered. “So now instead of hating gays or Muslims or whatever, bigots only hate ghouls.”
“Very philosophical of you,” Piper said. She grabbed a pencil and an old notebook from a desk before facing Nora and leaning against it. “So, you ready for an interview?” Nora nodded. “So, I saw you’re from Vault 111 — that big yellow number on your back, in case you didn’t see that when you got dressed either.” Nora blew Piper a raspberry. “What was it like in that vault? I don’t think anybody’s heard of that one before.”
“Hmm, that’s a toughie. Well, it was nice for the first ten minutes, then they froze us for two centuries, then I woke up to a tomb. Somebody had killed my husband in his freeze chamber and kidnapped our infant son. Everyone else was dead. I had to fight my way past a bunch of giant fucking cockroaches and steal from the dead for basic necessities — a practice I’m coming to understand is all too common in this brave new world of ours.” She paused for a moment, Piper too horrified to offer commentary. “Oh yeah, I remember watching my husband murdered. They thawed us out — maybe our whole wing? — to kidnap Shaun — that’s the name of our son — and they shot Nate. My husband.” She licked her lips, anxious. “There were two of them — a mercenary dipshit, bald, big scar, and a radiation suit dipshit, no identifying features.” She looked up at Piper, who was still stunned and horrified into silence. “Do you have an extremely hard liquor, perchance?”
**********
I started this silly little tale for last year’s NaNoWriMo, made it to 50,000ish words, and stopped (because marathon writing does wipe me out after a while, haha). Now, in 2023, I’ve started writing ‘part two’ (of God knows how many parts this thing will mutate into) so I figured I should finally start uploading it for folks to experience.
When I was doing a quick scan of this chapter before uploading, I found a few instances of “Nick” where I meant to write “Nate”. (I know it’s boring as shit to base the two protags off of defaults, my sincerest apologies), so if you see any similar typos, please give me a heads up.
The little excerpts from Piper’s book are fun, but don’t get used to them. I couldn’t think of any good/interesting sample passages after the first few days of writing so I just kind of abandoned doing them. Oops!
I do hope people like my interpretation of Nora. I decided to write her as if she took one look at the script for the game, wiped her ass with it, and has made it her life mission to derail the script and make life difficult for everyone. (Plus, doing it that way makes me more comfortable than just rote copying of Bethesda’s dialogue would).
(I'm new to posting my stuff to AO3, so if I screw something up, please be patient with me. :) )