"Watch your digits, Blue," Piper hissed. "Ferals."

Kate dropped down into a crouch and shouldered her laser rifle. She felt Piper tap her arm and then point at a clump of refuse near the side of the ruined green cabin the pair had been approaching. A creature had crawled out of the pile on to its feet and was staggering around like a drunk leaving a bar an hour after last call. The tattered rags and the horrible disfigurement of the body made it impossible to determine if this had once been a man or a woman.

"So this is a ghoul." The vault dweller thought. No, a feral ghoul she corrected herself, remembering that there were two types of ghouls in the wastelands: ones that were otherwise normal except for their irradiated appearance and the ferals that would mindlessly attack you. Kate had encountered neither kind of ghoul in her brief time in the Commonwealth.

"There's a first time for everything," she muttered while sighting down the lurching form. She knew exactly what needed to be done. She squeezed the trigger of her rifle and sent a blast of energy that shot just over the ghoul's head.

The creature made a rasping growl and began to shamble in her direction.

"Shit." Still calm, the one-time soldier let off another shot, this time passing just over the ghoul's left shoulder.

"Blue! Are you trying to impress me with a trick shot or something?!" Piper exclaimed, clearly exasperated. The reporter took a couple steps forward to close the distance with the advancing ghoul and snapped off three shots from her pistol into the thing's chest. The ghoul made a gurgling sound as it stumbled over backwards and fell on its back. It didn't get back up.

Piper looked back at her companion. "Nothing fancy, Blue. Just put the damn thing down."

Kate's brow was furrowed in confusion. "I thought…" She began, but the sound of another ghoul approaching caught her attention.

"Ok," she said, "nothing fancy." This time her aim was true, leaving a blackened scorch mark on the creature's torso and briefly igniting its rags. As that one dropped, a third ghoul was reveled and Kate placed a shot dead center in its chest. It went white-hot for a split second before turning to ash.

Kate stood up and turned to Piper, chuckling to herself. "You're not going to believe what I thought I had to do."

"Behind you, Blue!" Piper's eyes went wide and she raised her pistol, but had no shot with her friend in the way.

The vault dweller turned just in time to see that a fourth ghoul had emerged from the cabin, but instead of slowly shambling toward them, it had launched itself into a full sprint.

Kate did the only thing she could think of: She ducked under the creature's swing and allowed it to trip over her body. The ghoul landed in a heap as Piper sidestepped to avoid getting knocked over herself. Before it could stand, the reporter put two shots into the ghoul's torso and then another two in it's head after it sagged back to the ground.

"Fuck." Kate growled to herself. She quickly got up on her feet and put her back to her companion's. The pair slowly turned in a 360 degree circle, but nothing else threatening appeared. The danger had passed.

Piper grinned. "Still want to look inside the cabin?"

"I think we've paid for it, don't you?" Kate shook her head in frustration. That could have gone a lot better or, a lot worse. She gave Piper's shoulder a squeeze and nodded to her in appreciation. Thank God her friend had been there. Piper accepted the silent thanks with a gracious smile.

The pair cautiously resumed their approach to the cabin, carefully checking the small pile of debris for any remaining feral ghouls. Satisfied they were clear, Kate made her way into the cabin with Piper covering her. This may be overkill, she thought to herself, but the former solider didn't want another surprise like the last one.

The cabin was deserted save for some odds-and-ends and a small chemistry lab.

"So, just what were you doing?" Piper asked as they poked around the cabin. "I watched you shoot up a bunch of raiders at that Hardware Town without any problems. Is it the new rifle?" She gestured at the laser rifle that Kate had obtained the prior day from a fallen Super Mutant.

"What? Oh, no… That's not it." Kate's cheeks colored faintly as she turned to face the reporter. "I, ah, thought you had to shoot them in the head, like a zombie."

"Where on earth did you get that idea?" Piper asked.

"Well, Preston had told me about ferals," Kate began, "but I assumed that you had to…"

Piper interrupted, "Unstoppables issue #16: Island of the Witch Doctor." She grinned at her friend. "Is that right? That's the one with the zombies and the Mistress of Mystery figures out that they have to shoot 'em in the head to kill them, right?"

"Something like that." Kate couldn't recall reading "The Unstoppables" when she was a kid, but "shoot 'em in the head" was a fairly common zombie troupe. "I can remember it from horror movies and TV shows." She shrugged. "I guess my aim's not good enough to pull that shot off yet."

"Well, do me a favor, Blue and practice on something that isn't in the process of trying to kill us." Piper joked as she resumed searching the cabin. "Annnnd here's a hatch leading… Somewhere." The reporter finished with exaggerated drama.

Kate walked over to where Piper was standing and looked down at the hatch in the corner of the room. "Looks like there's a bit more of this cabin to explore." She reached down and grabbed the handle, then paused and looked up at the Piper. "You know, if this was a movie, as soon as I opened this hatch, a shitload of ghouls would come pouring out."

"Geez, Blue. You're just full of cheerful thoughts." The reporter rolled her eyes. "Why couldn't you have said, "a shitload of teddybears would come pouring out?" Or even better, "look Piper… It's a brand new printing press!"" Piper sighed. "It's probably just an old flooded cellar anyway."

None the less, Piper took a couple steps back, had her pistol ready and made sure she had a clear path to the door, while Kate indicated that she would go out the window if she had to.

Opening the hatch proved to be anti-climatic, as it produced neither ghouls, teddybears or a printing press (and it wasn't flooded!). A single ghoul was the lone inhabitant in the cellar and they quickly dispatched it with a hail of gunfire. Further exploration was halted as Piper spotted the toxic yellow barrels at the same time that the rad-counter on Kate's Pip-Boy began clicking, forcing the pair back to a safe distance. Scoring what treasures they could, the two made their way back to Concord and dropped off the items at a pre-arranged pickup-up spot.

"So, you said we're looking for a stolen locket?" Piper spoke as they walked through the ruins of the small town.

Kate nodded as she took a swallow from a can of water, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Yeah. When I spoke with Blake Abernathy back on the farm he said they've had raider troubles every once in a while. I guess some time back, his oldest daughter stood up to raiders and they killed the poor thing." A look of genuine sorrow crossed her face as she handed the water can to Piper.

"Oh Blue," thought the reporter. Her friend hadn't come to terms yet that life in the Commonwealth sometimes isn't fair, no matter who the victim is. Piper had learned that lesson herself when her mother had abandoned their family and then a second time for her younger sister Natalie, when their father was killed.

"When I brought up trading with Sanctuary and mentioned the Minutemen, Blake said he'd be open to both if we could retrieve that locket from the raiders." Kate gestured to the low hills to the northeast where a pre-war satellite dish could be seen off in the distance. "I guess they're holed up in an old Air Force station."

"And you've done this sort of thing before, right?" Piper asked. "Taken on a group of raiders for a settlement in the name of the Minutemen?"

"Yes," came the reply. "Tenpines Bluff was being harassed by raiders and I, uh, went and dealt with them. That was just before I headed for Diamond City." Kate hoped that Piper wouldn't ask her to elaborate on the story. The vault dweller had yet to learn at that point to shoot raiders on sight and she had called out to those in the small house to surrender and leave the area. Fortunately they had responded with gunfire and she and Dogmeat were eventually able to take down the small gang. Fortunate because if they had employed any subtly, they might have been able to lure her into the small house with an offer to negotiate and then overpower her.

"And that would have been the end to my story." She thought to herself. "And I would have never been able to meet the amazing Piper Wright." Kate looked over at her friend and smiled when she saw the reporter was busy scribbling in her notepad.

"Ten. Pines. Bluff"

"Working on another story, Piper?" Kate gestured at the notepad the reporter was slipping back in her pocket.

"Always, Blue." her friend grinned back at her. "Always." Piper then stopped dead in her tracks. "Holy shit."

Kate followed the reporter's gaze to the ruined remains of the deathclaw she had fought over a month earlier. The carcass was in bad shape; first having been stripped by the Sanctuary settlers, then set ablaze, then likely picked over by smaller scavengers. But the body of the decaying animal was still an impressive sight and Piper couldn't help but gape at the size of the thing.

"And Blue had fought the damn thing on foot." Piper thought to herself. Granted, with a minigun and in a suit of power armor, but still. Deathclaw stories had always frightened her as a kid, even though Piper had never actually seen one before today. She looked over at her friend and couldn't hide the awe in her face.

The vault dweller blushed slightly and shrugged. "Yeah. Helluva welcome to the Commonwealth, huh?"

Piper shuddered and then shook her head. She didn't want to think about what might have happened if Blue hadn't been able to take care of herself that day. She needed a distraction. Something else to talk about. "Hey, uh, can I ask you something?" She asked cautiously. "It's about the past, like before the war."

Kate was slightly surprised, thinking that her friend was going to ask more about the fight with the deathclaw. Initially, the "woman out of time" had been reluctant to speak too much to the reporter of the past, her own or in general. Her brain had still been trying to process everything that had happened to her, so she had stymied many of Piper's questions. As the pair's friendship grew and they warmed to each other, a funny thing happened; the normally nosey reporter respected her new friend's privacy, even as the vault dweller became comfortable enough to talk about herself.

"Ask away, Piper." Kate spread her arms apart. "You're letting me crash on your couch, the least I can do is answer your questions."

Piper grinned. "Careful, Blue. Once I get going with the questions, sometimes it's hard to stop." The reporter gestured to the ruins surrounding them. "So, this was Concord. I know you didn't grow up here, but you did live here a while, right?"

"Yes, about two years." She sighed. "Two New England winters... And I thought Alaska was cold and snowy."

Piper smiled, trying to picture the town covered in snow. She had never seen the stuff beyond the pages of a book, but some caravaners claimed it could be found in the mountains to the northwest. "I don't think you'll need to worry about snow anytime soon. But, can you tell me what Concord was like? I mean, what was it like when people lived here?"

"Hmmmm..." Kate thought for a moment. "It was a little odd living here to be honest. It was a small town, steeped in history. One of the first battles of the Revolutionary War was fought here three hun... no, five hundred years ago, so besides the museum," she pointed back to the building behind Piper, "there was all sorts of "Colonial this" or "Colonial that" with all the businesses in town."

"So what was odd about that?"

"Well maybe it was a little odd just to me." Kate allowed. "I grew up in a pretty large and modern metropolitan area, so small town New England life was a bit of a culture shock. It was all history book stuff, right? And here I was living in it, with the Minutemen statue, the wooden bridges and every other building with a bronze historical marker."

"What was a typical day like?"

"I don't think I had a typical day the entire time I lived here." Kate laughed. "The first year I was finishing my law degree, which meant going into the city every day and long hours studying. After that I was pregnant and then had Shaun to take care of." The duo had resumed walking east and were slowly approaching the end of the buildings that were still standing in Concord.

The vault dweller was quiet for a bit before speaking again. "Still, it was a nice place to live. There was a Slocum's Joe back on Thoreau… I'd grab a coffee there before catching the train into the city when I was still in law school. And we were close enough that we could walk into town when the weather was nice. That saved some money from having to buy coolant for the car." A small smile crept across her face. "Nate had an army buddy that lived nearby and before I was pregnant, we'd meet up with him at the Forge for drinks every once in a while. Larry and Claire. Nice couple. They were going to start a family of their own just as soon as Larry could find a job."

"Concord had this odd way of keeping the troubles of the world at bay." Kate continued, her expression turning sad. "The world was hurtling toward the edge of a cliff and yet here, everything felt normal. It was... comforting, even if deep down inside you knew it was a lie."

Kate grew silent, her thoughts drifting back to the past. "If this is Lexington Road, then Nate's parent's house would be just over there," she thought to herself. The Ryan's had been good people. They had accepted Katherine Park into their home and treated her like a daughter, without reservation. They had been thrilled when the young couple had decided to live in Concord and then over the moon when Shaun was born. As far as she knew, they had died never knowing the truth about her and Nate's marriage.

"A lot of good people lived here." She said softly. "Better people than me, but they're all gone now." Kate turned and looked back at the ruins of Concord and thought about the previous hustle and bustle of the small town and how empty and still it now felt. "I guess I'm the sole survivor."

"Hey now, Blue." Piper stepped close and put her hand on Kate's arm and squeezed. "You're not alone. You've got a boy out there and we're going to find him, I promise." When her friend looked over at her, Piper flashed her best smile. "And, I hate to break it to you, Blue. But you're stuck with me."

"Stuck with you, huh?" The phrase made the vault dweller grin.

"Afraid so." Piper looked over her friend, pleased to see that the melancholy was fading. "Seriously, Kate. I… I just wanted to let you know, I'm real happy to be along for the ride."

Maybe it was because Piper had called her "Kate" and not "Blue", but the lighthearted mood vanished and the vault dweller suddenly felt very serious. Finding her baby, finding Shaun in the vast expanse of the wastes was going to be nearly impossible. But Piper made her believe that it could be done, Hell, that it would be done. Mama Murphy was right; Kate was stronger, better because of Piper. Just happy to be along for the ride? She couldn't imagine doing this without the reporter by her side.

"I wouldn't want it any other way." Kate said softly. She reached over and brushed a hand across Piper cheek and smiled. "I like having you close."

"Oh. Uh, thanks Blue. That's, that's awful sweet… and unexpected of you." Piper touched her face where the other woman's fingers had brushed her skin. It felt warm. And the way she had been looking at her just now… Wow! To her chagrin, her whole face began to heat up as the reporter realized she was blushing. A blush had crept across the face of her friend as well and the pair awkwardly looked away from each other.

"So, uh, you want to get out of here?" Piper managed to stammer out. "Go find a missing locket and make the Commonwealth a little brighter for someone?"

Kate nodded. "Absolutely." The pair made their way into the low hills and the vanishing shadows of the late morning sun.

Author's note: New chapter! One chapter every two years is my current writing speed, so at least one more Fallout game will be announced before the next one. :-D