"The day nukes started getting tossed around, anyway."

"You're - missing a lot, then."

"Yeah."

"Maybe we can repay you, then - help you get oriented, once we're out of this mess."

"I'd appreciate that."

Smile, and he shifts his weapon a bit to the side. "I'm Preston Garvey. Leader of the Minutemen - or what's left of us."

"Ellie Sullivan. What's a Minuteman do?"

"We were an alliance of settlements throughout the Commonwealth - mutual defense, mostly, and then disaster handling. A network ready at a minute's notice to respond to emergencies. Raids, feral packs, floods, fires... Anything that'd leave a whole settlement in need of rescue."

"Nice idea. What happened?"

Sigh. "It fell apart - it's been crumbling, but - a storm messed up a lot of this year's harvests, and we've had enough bad years that no one had stores to spare. We're supposed to share food, too, but - some of the worst-hit didn't feel like that was happening, not enough. One of those had been one of the stronger, more populated members - and they'd lost just about everything. So, they quit. Raided another member, Quincy - my settlement came to help, but... No one else did, and even with us coming to try and break the siege - it wasn't enough."

"Quincy was slaughtered, and so were we, and we fell back from Quincy with everyone and everything we could save - but the traitors followed us. We made them pay in the end, but... I'm the last full soldier left between the two settlements - and this group are the only survivors we know about."

"Oh."

"Sorry."

Tight nod.

"There's still some things we need to settle here - there's raiders outside, still, and some things we were trying to get ahold of here..."

"Anything we can help with? My friend has got some of the raiders that were in here tied up. Do they do, like, hostages?"

"Your friend might be able to intimidate the rest, and we can do security on prisoners - but, you any good at getting past electronic security?"

"Yeah. I am- I was- an AI programmer." Hacked her own Jade to be better, too. Those mods seem like they held up over the time.

"There's power armor on the roof we were trying to get, but it's out of juice - and the spare fusion core's in a locked room."

"I can get that. Where is it?"

"In the basement." He gives directions. 

Then to the basement. She'll stop to let the Cat and Jade know on the way.

"Do you want help, Mistress?"

"Are you good up here?" she asks the Cat.

"Yes, especially if our new friends can guard these guys while I round up everyone else."

"Should be within their capabilities, yeah. Okay. You up here slash outside, me downstairs, Jade with me in case there's any bugs that need killing in the basement."

"Works for me."

"Good luck."

"You too."

And down.