#the rest of the Commonwealth is so much less protected than Goodneighbour

[voiidorwhatever]

Fo4 companion dialogue is. silly, to say the least. We've all gotten slightly annoyed at companions for making fun of us for picking up junk when one of the main things to do in this game requires Picking Up Junk (settlements aren't gonna build themselves baybee) and I just saw a post about how weird it is that everyone makes a comment about how much Goodneighbour sucks when they've mostly live(d) in worse conditions. That reminded me - Bethesda. Please. If you set up narratively that a location Sucks, then make that location suck. Every NPC and their mom tells you about how Goodneighbour is this awful place and, sure, you nearly get stabbed on your way in, but. Considering no one in this fuckass game even knows how to build a bed, Goodneighbour should be, like, the pinnacle of living. Goodneighbour is a little rough around the edges, but. pretty much all places on the Commonwealth are. You're treated with caution every time you show up somewhere new, settlers that tell you how awful Goodneighbour is should be used to that. Daisy and Kent are super nice and even the Guards constantly make small talk with you and aren't really all that threatening?? They've got a fucking hotel that's Still In Business, so they have to have some kind of 'tourism' industry. You have an open cooking station there, technically anyone could just put down their bedroll somewhere and chill. I feel like Goodneighbour should've been made much more dangerous if it's truly supposed to be perceived that way.

The only reasons I could see for all this negative press is that perhaps people still remember Goodneighbour from before Hancock took over (it has been a while though) or that they just don't like ghouls. That's also silly though, because most people that make negative comments about Goodneighbour can be stuck in settlements with ghouls and even make positive remarks about The Slog.

Idk! Could've been more thought-through :')

[pumpkinov]

Where the Dust Settles

You can read Chap. 1 here and Chap. 2 here

Portia Collins, the sole survivor of Vault 111 has lost more than most. With the Institute defeated, she sets her sights to the next big jobs - unification of the Commonwealth wastelands and the large warship docked at the Boston Airport. More work for the General of the Minutemen, who is finding herself increasingly alone as her companions move on with their lives. John Hancock, the Ghoul Mayor of Goodneighbour is struggling to find his footing in the new political climate of the Commonwealth, and is finding a surprisingly vocal supporter in his local Minuteman General.

Chapter 3. Do you wanna come over, and kill some time?

Portia meets with an adoring audience, Hancock gets high. They walk home together.

Portia’s headache was back, and this one was a ripper.

She briefly considered decapitation, and settled for a stimpak. Two and a half years in the wasteland, and this was still the grossest part.

Well, maybe not the grossest, but she still hated it. She poked the needle through the delicate skin of her elbow and decompressed the vial, feeling the weird cold sensation of something entering her bloodstream. She’d left Preston, Nick and Piper at the Dugout Inn and headed straight home. Not that she spent much time here anymore, but Home Plate was hers and she could relax here, at least a little.

She sat in her arm chair, waiting for the Stimpak to work. It didn’t take long, the headache was already less crushing than it had been before. There was a stack of paperwork upstairs on the desk that she needed to look over before the final meeting tomorrow. And oh Jesus Christ what was she going to do about fucking Hancock.

He was right, of course he was right. She just hated being put on the spot like that.

And there was no way she could skip on the socialization of the night - the General of the Minutemen summons you to walk the dangerous roads between your settlement and Diamond City, and doesn’t even bother to speak to you?

She sunk a little lower into her battered chair, allowing herself a moment to scrunch her face up. She could have a cry later, maybe, as a treat. But right now, there was work to be done. Portia put her shoes on, grabbed her coat and her scarf, flicked off the lights and stepped into the market of Diamond City. It was snowing again, lightly for now. It lay across the ground, shimmering under the string lights running off the roofs in the square. She breathed in the noodle smell wafting in the air, and for a moment she felt a little lighter.

She was greeted at the door of the Dugout Inn by Nick, who was smoking out the front.

“Hey there kid,” his yellow eyes burned bright against the darkness creeping in from the corners of the old park. “How’d it go today?”

Portia sighed, and dug around in her pockets for a cigarette, “It went pretty good.”

“Is that so?” the old synth looked over at her, she could hear the faintest of whirr’s as his eyes focused on her. “Heard John had something to say at the end. He dropped past my office earlier.”

“Oh. Yeah, he did.” Portia lit her cigarette and inhaled, staring up at the sky. The snow was starting to land in her hair. “He’s right.”

Nick nodded slowly. “He is. But folks around here, they like their town the way it is. It seems pretty unlikely anything will change.”

She chewed on her lip a little, rolling her cigarette between her fingers. “Yeah, I tend to agree with you.”

“Most smart folks do.” Nick agreed.

“You knew him when he was a kid, right?” Portia asked suddenly, “What’s the Mayor’s deal?”

“John?” the detective seemed to deliberate for a moment.

“Yeah, is he all bark and no bite?”

More whirring, as mechanisms hidden under the plastic pulled Nick’s mouth into a smile. “Oh no, he bites. But under all that bark and all that bite, he’s a bleeding heart.”

Portia rolled her eyes, and Nick laughed.

Inside was even busier than the Third Rail had been last night. It was hazy inside, steam rising off everyone’s clothes dampened by the falling snow. The coat rack near the door was overburdened, but Portia had no choice but to dump her coat and scarf on top of the pile, it was a million degrees with all these bodies and the fire going. People reached out to her as she passed, she fixed a smile on her face as she desperately looked for a familiar face. But no Preston, no Piper. She almost reached the bar before being cornered by a woman, a trader from The Murkwater Construction Site to the south. There was a Minuteman checkpoint nearby, and they had helped defend the settlement from a supermutant raid a few weeks earlier. She grabbed Portia’s arm, desperate to tell her how her men had defended the farms, how they had saved this woman’s home.

“That’s the Commonwealth Minuteman ideal, to be ready at a minute’s notice,” Portia gritted her teeth, subtly trying to pull her arm out of the woman’s grip but it was a vice. Then came the wash of shame and guilt - this woman just wanted to tell her how much she appreciated the work Portia and her group had accomplished. And all she, Portia, the fucking General wanted to do was get away. It took her fifteen minutes before she was finally released - after which another family wanted to pass on their thanks for the Minutemen’s work protecting Oberland Station. A man touched her shoulder; he wanted to tell her that his son had died defending the Minuteman checkpoint near the entrance to the Glowing Sea, and how proud he was that his son had died doing something so honorable.

By the time Portia’s hands collided with Vadim’s bar, she was emotionally wrent. Vadim placed a glass of whiskey down on the bar for her, stopped and considered for a moment, then left the bottle. Portia stared at it for a moment - tempting, really. But she made the responsible decision, and knocked back the glass instead. She turned to face the room, leaning her back against the bar. There was a flash of red in the corner, and her eyes chased it without really thinking. There was something so distinctive about the mayor. He wasn’t particularly tall, or muscular, but his presence filled a room. He moved with his shoulders - they were broad for his frame, emphasized by the ridiculous frock coat he wore everywhere. He swiveled around, almost if her gaze had summoned him. He looked over, and winked. A wicked smile spread across his face, and he turned back to say his goodbyes to his captive audience, two women with drinks in their hands and fire in their eyes; before making his way towards Portia.

She watched him approach, feeling the heat creep through her stomach as he made his way through the crowded bar. Interesting response, best ignored. There was no time for nonsense like this. She wrapped her hands around the whiskey bottle Vadim had left on the bar and moved away, spotting Piper near the door. Was she avoiding him? Maybe.

Another few hours of greeting people, of being seen, and Portia was finally free. Preston had appeared, and eventually shooed her out the door, bundled in her coat and scarf, hands still wrapped around her untouched whiskey bottle.

“You look like you need a sleep, it’s fine, I can handle this!”

“I need a fucking coma.” Portia replied to him after he’d closed the door to the inn. She leant her forehead against the wooden door for a moment, before turning around and almost screaming.

“Mayor, do I need to make you wear a bell?”

He grinned, “Are you trying to collar me now?”

He was sitting on the stone wall, a cigarette between his lips and a jet canister in his hands. The snow had stopped, but the air was bitingly cold. Portia briefly considered her options, before heaving herself up to sit next to him. She nestled the whiskey bottle between her thighs as he handed her the jet. She turned it over in her hands, glancing around. There was no one else around, and she raised it to her lips and took a quick breath in.

There was the sound of rushing blood in her ears, and everything fell away for a moment. All she could feel was the freezing cold of the stone under her ass, which was steadily going numb.

It only lasted a moment, bit by bit the rest of the world returned. She opened her eyes to the sound of Hancock laughing, almost a growl in his throat. “What?” She asked blearily, pushing the little plastic container back into his hands.

“I’ve never seen someone look like they needed a jet hit as badly as you did when you walked out.” He chuckled, inhaling his cigarette deeply.

Portia hummed a little, the afterglow of the jet slowly working it’s way out of her system. “I fucking miss weed, man.”

“Weed?”

“Cannabis, it was a plant, you dried and smoked it.”

“Oh right, yeah I’ve heard of that.”

Portia sighed. “I smoked a lot of weed back in the day. I can’t believe that fucking scorpions survived the end of the world, but no more pot.”

Hancock slid the jet canister back into his coat, blowing a stream of cigarette smoke into the night sky. “If you’re looking for other things, I have enough daytripper to help you avoid reality until next week.”

Portia chuckled, and shook her head, “Mayor, not all of us can function on jet fumes and mentat dust.”

He grinned at her, “Heh, yeah it’s a skill I’ve spent years honing. I didn’t pick our General as a habitual drug user.”

Portia smiled a little thinly, “You all seem to forget before I went into the deep freeze I had a whole life, you know?” Hancock slid his hand back into his coat, this time producing a cigarette, which Portia took. “Is your coat the nuclear wasteland version of Mary Poppin’s bag?”

“None of that made any sense.”

“It’s an old story, she flew around on an umbrella and put kids up the chimney. It’s, uh, unimportant.” She saw his expression and laughed a little. “I’ve seen you pull a fucking shotgun out of the coat, how do you keep so much stuff in it?”

His eyes flashed again, “You’ll have to get me out of it, General.” He leant over and lit her cigarette, before returning the lighter to the bottomless coat, and sliding off the wall. He held his hand out, steadying Portia as she dropped down to the ground with him. They moved down the street, their breath and cigarette smoke rising in front of them.

“I hadn’t planned on my punch at the entirety of Diamond City,” Hancock said casually. “I was just thinkin’ and I just … said it.”

“Makes sense.” Portia was focused on her boots shuffling through the snow, “I should have realised dragging you back here was gunna stir some feelings up.”

He laughed, low and deep. “Sure stirred something up.”

Portia felt her stomach spike again, and frowned at herself. She lifted her chin and aimed for a professional tone, trying to shake the intimacy out of the moment. “What are you hoping to achieve, Mayor?” She noticed they were walking close enough for their arms to brush against each other; she took a slight step away from him. If Hancock noticed her abrupt shift in energy, he didn’t react.

“Honestly, General? I don’t know. I don’t expect them to go back on what they voted for all those years ago. But I also can’t resist reminding them of who they’re fucking with.” He stared straight ahead, and Portia found herself staring at his face in profile.

High cheekbones, the faint outline of lips still left in the scars of exposed muscle on his face, his dark eyes shone in an otherworldly way. There was a twitch in his set jaw.

When he had greeted her in Goodneighbour two years ago, she’d found his face confronting, upsetting; a constant reminder that she was in a completely different world. Now his face was almost comforting.

They’d reached the front door of Home Plate now, Portia turning the whiskey bottle over in her hands. Hancock glanced at her, the wheels in his head turning.

“Is this … is this your house?”

“Yeah.” Portia was distracted, digging her keys out of her coat pocket and unlocking her front door. Then the penny dropped, as she pushed her front door open and she felt the warmth behind her shift forward slightly. She spun around barring the door with her arm. “No, no absolutely not!”

He was grinning across at her now, leaning an elbow against her door frame. “One drink?”

“In my house? No way.”

He pulled an expression of mock hurt, “Don’t you trust me?”

His body was inches from her, the warmth radiating through the layers of her clothes. “In general? Sure - in my home? Nope. You’ll never leave.” Shit

“Is that a threat or a promise, General?” He grinned slowly, before shifting his weight off the wall and standing up straight again. “Fine, one drink, in the freezing night air?”

Portia stared at him for a moment, he stared back. He was always fucking smiling. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if he was flirting with her, or mocking her. He was still close to her, she could smell him. Smoke, and something heavier. Patchouli, maybe? Or something close to it. She rolled her eyes, and let her arm drop.

“I am going to regret this, aren’t I?”

He followed her through her doorway, reaching his arm out to close her front door behind them. “General, I am nothing but a gentleman.”

She stared over her shoulder at him, “If I catch you in my underwear drawer, I’ll break your arm.”

His laugh drifted out the door, before it snapped closed.