I'm back everyone. I finally got around to getting the DLCs for Fallout 4 and I had a few new ideas for stories after playing them. And on top of that I had an idea for a follow up chapter to my work 'The Last Bullet'. But I won't write that unless I have enough return readers (or if anyone interested) seeing as how I haven't written for Fallout in some time.

The game (in terms of time) passed very quickly, you could do the entire main quest in what seems like a couple days. I feel like it would have been a lot longer than that in reality, chasing leads and finding repeated dead ends, not to mention really long travel times. So for this story I assume most of the games events took longer than a year and then some.

Also spoilers for Automatron, but seriously, if you're reading fan-fiction and get spoiled it's your own fault people.

Enjoy.

The first hinting that something was out of place was that Nat wasn't at her usual place.

Piper and Nathaniel had just returned to Diamond City after another excursion in the Commonwealth, the Duo parting ways going in opposite directions. Piper had to stop at her office to check up on the paper while Nathaniel went straight to their house. He had another project to work on but hadn't elaborated on what that was.

Piper never would have dreamed she'd have an actual house to call her own. Even if she and her sister kinda... snuck in and started living there while Nathaniel wasn't looking.

There was a reason she and Nat lived in their office for so long, running a newspaper didn't really leave you swimming in caps after all. They were often lucky to pay the bills and still be able to eat. More than a few nights passed without dinner over the years.

Being around noon, Nat should have been at the front of Publick Occurrences selling the latest paper. Piper had written in only a day or so before, with the news still fresh there should have been some papers still to sell. Surely they weren't sold out already?

Then again, this had been a good article. Instead of the usual doom and gloom Piper often had to write, this had been quite an uplifting article. Less than a month before the Minutemen, with Nathaniel at the helm, had retaken their headquarters on the coast. She had wrote about that, but this one was an update on the progress the Minutemen were making on restoring the fortress. The phrase 'coming along amazingly' didn't begin to do their work justice. For once, like the piece Piper wrote the day she met Nathaniel, her paper told a happy story.

The reception of both Castle articles had been incredible!

"Nat? You in here?" Piper called out into her office.

It was possible the papers had sold out, people were loving this issue after all. But when Nat suddenly appeared before Piper with too big a grin on her face, Piper knew something was horribly, horribly wrong.

"Piper! You're back." Nat was cheerful, way too cheerful. "How was your date?"

Oh no, Piper wasn't going to let her sister deflect this time. "Okay squirt, fess up. What's wrong?"

Nat kept up the forced grin for a few moments before it collapsed into a wince. The younger Wright took a couple steps back and pointed off to the side. Following the finger, Piper's heart and shoulders both sank.

Piper's printing press, the very thing that was the heart of Publick Occurrences, was nothing but a pile of charred steel and broken gears. Piper may have been the brain that created the words, but the press actually made the papers. Without it, their business was completely ruined. Machines like these were not exactly commonplace.

So dismayed Piper was, that she almost fell to her knees. The only thing that stopped her was a hand on the wall. "Wh... what happened?"

"I don't know." Nat answered, all attempts of avoidance gone. "I was out front selling papers and heard it explode."

Nat had warned Piper many times the motor was going out, but Piper didn't think it was going to take out the whole thing when it went! She was expecting it to just crap out and they would have to find another.

Piper wasn't even sure an intact printing press even existed in the Commonwealth anymore! They had been beyond lucky to find this one.

There was nothing more Piper could do, the press was scrap. Maybe some parts could be salvaged, but there wouldn't be many. Piper could tell that much, and she wasn't even that skilled with machinery.

Piper had only one option left. It had been a recurring joke Piper would make when watching him tinker with something, but the reporter was out of options. There was one person she could go to, if anyone could help her it was him.

Nathaniel.

"Just... I think I know how to fix this." Piper clapped her hands together, taking a deep breath to center herself. "Take the day off, go do whatever it is kids do."

Before Nat could say a word in response, Piper was flying out the door. Not quite sprinting, but the young woman was in a hurry.

It did occur to Piper this was technically her house too, there was no reason to hesitate at the front door. But for some reason she felt nervous. She really shouldn't be, Nathaniel did projects for people they knew all the time. Just last week he made improvements on Nick's new 44. Revolver. Now if the detective could stop treating it like a pipe revolver.

A printing press though? Could Nathaniel even work on something like that let alone build one? This wasn't exactly a gun or piece of armor. Hell, Piper used the thing almost daily and barely knew how it worked. She wasn't kidding when she'd told Nathaniel she was jealous of people who could craft more than a paragraph.

No, it wasn't the press that was making Piper have second thoughts. She was a woman whom always had to do everything for herself. She could never count on anyone for assistance. That was the way, not just the Commonwealth but the whole world, worked.

Then she met Nathaniel.

Shaking her head, Piper shoved down the last vestiges of her nerves and strode into her house. Nathaniel would be happy to help, Piper was sure of it. Even if he couldn't do it, he'd help her find a way. He understood how much the paper meant to her.

Just as Piper expected, Nathaniel wasn't in the house proper. Shortly after getting the place, Nathaniel had used some of his hoarded caps to purchase the empty wreck of a house crammed next to his. With all the extra space he set up a big workshop with plenty of room for whatever he was working on at the time.

"INTRUDER DETECTED!" Piper just about jumped clear out of her skin upon hearing the gruff mechanical voice of a sentry bot.

Piper hated the damn things with a bloody passion. She and Nathaniel had nearly been killed by such robots more times than either would have liked. On pure reflex, Piper was already reaching for her handgun. Even if the thing would be like throwing rocks at a super mutant.

"Again? SARGE initiate shutdown sequence." Nathaniel's voice yelled over the sound of the sentry bot from elsewhere in the room.

Having been startled, it took Piper a minute to find where the sentry bot actually was. Come to find out, it wasn't even a full robot. Suspended from chains hanging from the ceiling was about half of said machine. The head, torso, and a single arm was it. And those three parts were in horrible condition. Like they had been blown up and scrapped back togeth... wait a minute...

"Blue?"

"Hey Piper!" Nathaniel spoke from the main workbench. "What brings you to my evil lair?"

Rolling her eyes, Piper made her way to her boyfriend's side. "I thought we trashed that bot?"

Following Piper's motion, Nathaniel's gaze turned to the now deactivated sentry bot. "Oh yeah we totally did. I sent some of the boys down to scavenge whatever they could. That was all I could put together of the out of the original pieces, rest was useless junk. Don't worry, he can occasionally talk, but most of his systems are deactivated. And his weapon is shredded even if he could fire it."

On their little excursion with Ronnie Shaw to open The Castle's armory, the trio had encountered SARGE. The former guardian of the minutemen HQ, now gone haywire. They were given no choice but to smash the thing until it stopped twitching. After the self-destruct sequence, Piper would have thought she'd seen the last of it.

"So why bring him back here?" Piper wondered aloud.

Nathaniel shrugged. "All my tools are here, and Ada's robot workbench might help me put him back together."

"Didn't he try to kill us?" Piper arched an eyebrow.

"Yeah... I'll probably need Isabel to take look at his programming issues. But SARGE will live again, eventually."

Shaw said he'd been guarding The Castle longer than she could remember. If Nathaniel could get it working again, having SARGE back on duty might be good for morale. The Minutemen already had GATEKEEPER, but having a second sentry bot on hand could only help.

Piper would never forget being greeted at the gates of The Castle by a hulking sentry bot not trying to kill her. Much like its predecessor SARGE, GATEKEEPER was the guardian of The Castle. Piper almost felt sorry for anyone who thought they could take that fortress now.

Piper was about to bring up her poor printing press when she saw what Nathaniel was currently working on. It was partway disassembled, but there was no mistaking an Institute laser rifle.

"I can hear you thinking..." Nathaniel chuckled as his nimble fingers tinkered with the internal workings of the weapon.

"Where did you even get that thing anyway?" Piper hadn't seen him pick it up at any point.

"Actually got it on one of my trips inside the Institute." Nathaniel admitted. "It's brand new and barely been fired."

One would think Nathaniel would be hush hush about his forays into the belly of the beast. But on the contrary, Nathaniel always told Piper everything when he returned. As long as she promised to keep it out of the paper. She would love to tell the world of the Institute's inner workings, but she promised her boyfriend.

"I thought you didn't do energy weapons?" Piper took a seat in the chair beside Nathaniel. For some reason, her boyfriend always had an empty chair beside him whenever he worked. Piper had yet to figure out why. Not like much people other than her and, rarely Nat, ever came in here.

"I don't." Nathaniel turned his screwdriver. "But... if we're going to war with the Institute soon, it can't hurt to understand whatever weaponry they've..."

Nathaniel was cut off when the rifle on his bench buzzed and fired, blasting a hole clean through the nearby metal paneling. Piper had been surprised, again, but managed to avoid falling out of her seat. It was more the flash of light that got her, energy weapons tended to be quieter than guns when firing so no blown eardrums was a plus.

"ALERT! WEAPON DISCHARGE DETECTED!" SARGE was back online yet again, but his sirens must have been busted too because other than the voice, the sentry bot didn't make much other noise.

"SARGE initiate shutdown sequence!" Nathaniel repeated like before.

"Wow..." Piper had to lean to the side to see the beam had punched all the way through the wall to the outside. At least it hadn't had enough energy left to do much but scar the next house over. But Piper wasn't surprised, Institute weapons were shoddy despite their supposed 'advanced technology'.

"Son of a..." Nathaniel hissed. "That was my second favorite wall!"

At least the space had been empty. Piper almost wondered if Nathaniel had expected something like that to happen and cleared the place of anything breakable.

Tossing down his tools and groaning, Nathaniel pinched the bridge of his nose. "Great, looks like I'll be fixing that tomorrow. Anyway, did you need something darling?"

Piper always loved it how Nathaniel could be doing something then in the blink of an eye drop it all and look at her like she was all that existed in the world. But it also reminded her of the reason she was here.

"Blue... I need your help." Piper swallowed hard.

"Oh?" Nathaniel's focus was indeed completely on her now.

"My printing press finally roached out." Piper confessed. "I need your help finding a new one."

"Can't we just fix the other one?" Nathaniel stood up to put the tools he was using back all nice and neat. "Kinda a rare object in the Commonwealth."

"I know... but it's kinda not fixable. It blew up." Piper lamented letting her forehead drop to the workbench with a heavy thud.

"How did you manage to blow up a printing press? That's like the when you made the oven explode trying to bake a cake." Nathaniel just had to bring that embarrassing memory up.

"Hey I was trying to do something nice for my boyfriend!" Piper tried to sound angry in a foolish attempt to hide her embarrassment, not that it helped much. Nathaniel could see both it and her blush a mile off.

Nathaniel smiled and trekked over to plant a kiss to the top of her head. "I know, and that's why I got this for you."

As he spoke, Nathaniel moved to a corner of the room to what Piper assumed was a large box covered by a sheet. Gripping the cloth, Nathaniel yanked the covering away to reveal another printing press. But not just any printing press, a fully intact and more modern one than the wreck back at Piper's office.

Much like when she found hers destroyed, Piper all but fell over. Thankfully she was still sitting. But her brain was still fully short-circuiting at the sight before her.

"Hello? Earth to Piper?" Nathaniel waved a hand in Piper's face.

"How did you..." Piper couldn't finish her sentence.

"Had to build it, couldn't find one that wasn't in pieces." Nathaniel shrugged folding the sheet up and setting it on a nearby shelf. "You wouldn't believe where I got the blueprints for the thing."

"Where?"

"Proctor Quinlan."

"The guy that runs the Brotherhood of Steel's archives?" Piper was flabbergasted. The brotherhood had plans for a printing press? That sounded almost ludicrous.

"The very same, he collects technical documents for a reason. I combed his archives for something of use when I stumbled across them. Evidently they keep anything technology related, not just weapon designs. Then it was a simple matter to scavenge the right junker parts. It's taken a few months of work, mostly because I had to work on it when you weren't looking."

"But... why? It had to be a nightmare doing all this." By now Piper had managed to stand up and was looking over the device. She was almost afraid that if she touched it, it would vanish into thin air like some kind of mirage.

"It was going to be your one year anniversary present next month." Nathaniel explained retaking his seat from before. "But from the sounds of it, you need it right now. So it's yours. I'll get Danny and a couple other guys to help move it over to your office tomorrow."

No one before Nathaniel had ever managed to render Piper speechless. But Nathaniel could always do it so easily just by being him. God she had to be dreaming him, Nathaniel had to be a figment of her imagination. There was no other way to explain how she could not only have met him, but be the woman he loved.

Nathaniel not only saved her business, but had gotten her a gift many would have said to be impossible. There was no words in any language Piper could have used to convey her thanks. Instead, Piper walked over to him and sat in his lap so she was straddling him.

"Happy anniversary Piper." Nathaniel planted a feather-light kiss to her nose.

"Happy anniversary Blue." Piper returned the gesture but her lips found his temple.

Cupping his cheeks in her hands, Piper brought Nathaniel's forehead to rest against her own. Neither said not a word more, there was nothing more that needed to be said. Both were just happy to bask in each others presence.

Such was the true gift they could get for each other.

It's probably obvious, but I had a blast with the Automatron DLC. Come on who doesn't love making your own robots? And yes I totally made a pair of sentry bots named SARGE and GATEKEEPER. Both are now guarding my Castle.

And having recently discovered the world of Fallout 4 mods, I found one that lets me have multiple companions. So hello favorite follower plus robot bodyguard.

I have several more Fallout ideas. Including a follow up to 'The Last Bullet', writing out Piper's visit to the repaired Castle, meeting an old war buddy from Nathaniel's past, seeing SARGE or GATEKEEPER in action, and (I think this was suggested a while back) another sad story about something happening to Nat and the fallout of that particular event.

If anyone has a suggestion I would love to hear them, or if one of the above you'd like to see or add to that would be awesome too.