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But right here, in the hammering of nails and the rattle of wheels and the courage of a hundred quiet settlers trying to make a home, the real revolution was already burning.
(Ps: it's a truck and not vertibird, forgot to change it.)
The morning air was cool and clear, the kind of day where the Commonwealth sky seemed almost too blue, like it had forgotten the decades of ash and war it had carried. Sanctuary stirred with life below the rising sun — Freemasons patrols rotated on the hour, construction crews climbed scaffolds with toolboxes in hand, and the scent of baked cornmeal and boiled brahmin broth drifted from the communal kitchens. But Sico's mind was elsewhere as he crossed the campus toward Army Headquarters, his long coat swaying with each step, boots striking the cobblestone with quiet purpose.
He had barely slept. Not because of the logistics, or the map clutter that Preston had pinned to the strategy boards the night before. Not even because of the threat to Longneck. No — what gnawed at him was the look in Nora's eyes when she said she might not come back. That unspoken edge to her words — the way she clung to the path of duty, knowing it could become her grave.
He passed through the checkpoint at the HQ entrance without pause. The guards nodded, one raising a hand in salute. He returned the gesture absently. The tall structure, built into the reinforced shell of an old city hall, had been reshaped into the Freemasons Army's strategic nerve center — with high windows, steel-reinforced walls, and an inner network of rooms constantly alive with voices and purpose.
He made his way down the main corridor, past planning rooms and briefing halls, until the distant hum of conversation pulled him toward the command floor.
There they were.
Preston stood near the tactical projection table, its surface lit with the shifting orange glow of active scans. Sarah Lyons stood beside him, arms crossed, a slight frown furrowing her brow as she listened. The two were deep in conversation, but the moment Sico entered the room, both turned toward him.
"Sico," Preston said, with a quick nod. "We were just talking about you."
"Didn't mean to interrupt," Sico replied, stepping into the room. His eyes moved from Preston to Sarah. "But I'm here to follow up on yesterday. You said you'd get intel from the recon squads this morning. Tell me we've got answers."
Sarah stepped back to let Preston speak.
"We do," Preston said grimly. "Recon made contact with a forward element east of Breakheart. They tailed the attackers for most of the night. Got close enough to catch a gathering at an old train depot. It's worse than we thought."
"How many are we talking?" Sico asked, his voice low.
"Easily over a hundred," Preston said. "Maybe more scattered across the woods. They're not just a raider gang. They're a coalition — different clans, different colors, but united under one banner now. We've seen the symbol."
He motioned to a nearby board where someone had chalked a crude drawing: a broken crown, painted over a pile of burning papers. Beneath it, in blocky scrawl: "NO LORDS. NO MASTERS. NO TAXES."
Sico stared at it, brow furrowed.
"They call themselves the Free Men," Preston continued. "Started out as just talk — whispers in back alleys, wild claims over open radio bands. But now it's organized. They're pissed about the Freemasons Republic. About what we represent. Especially the tax system."
Sico's face tightened. "They think we're robbing them."
"They think government's just the start of tyranny," Sarah said, stepping forward. "That taxes are theft, laws are chains, and order is a lie. To them, we're no better than the Institute or the Brotherhood. Just another force trying to 'take control.'"
"Even though we're feeding people. Building homes. Securing the land."
"They don't see that," Preston said. "They only see the cost. Settlers who used to live by barter now have to keep logs and pay tributes — caps, crops, labor hours. We explained it as investment. Shared burden for shared protection. But the message twisted."
"They've turned it into a rallying cry," Sarah added. "Their leaders — or whatever they call them — are spreading it like wildfire. 'The Republic is just a new vault. Break the chains. Burn the tithe.'"
Sico turned and took a slow walk around the room, hands clasped behind his back. The numbers were sobering. If this "Free Men" movement continued to grow, it could pull entire regions into rebellion. And more than that — it could fracture the fragile unity he'd built from the bones of the old world.
"They hit Longneck's run to send a message," he muttered, mostly to himself. "They're not starving. They're not looting. They're making a point."
"And they'll keep making it," Preston said. "Unless we stop them."
Sico turned back around, his eyes flashing with thought. "So… how do we do that? March on the depot? Wipe them out like raiders?"
Sarah crossed her arms tighter. "It's not that simple. Some of them are raiders. But some… they're settlers. Disillusioned farmers. People who lost family to taxes they couldn't pay. Or maybe got hit with conscription notices during the Sentinel drafts and decided they'd had enough."
"Even if we destroy their forward base," Preston added, "we don't kill the idea. And if we use too much force, we become exactly what they accuse us of being — tyrants in a new uniform."
A long silence followed.
Sico finally leaned against the edge of the table and exhaled slowly, the weight of leadership pressing on his shoulders like never before.
"I can't ignore this," he said. "But I won't light a fire across the Commonwealth to solve it either. We'll do both. Preston, I want a precision strike force — not to attack, but to monitor. Stay close to the depot. Track their movements. Identify their leadership."
Preston nodded. "We'll send the 2 team of the Commandos from the western detachment. Silent, minimal engagement unless provoked."
Sico turned to Sarah. "And I need you to start working with the civil corps. Set up town hall meetings in the settlements near the affected zones — Oberland, Greentop, Finch Farm. We need to reeducate. Remind people why we do what we do."
"I'll handle it," she said.
Sico ran a hand through his hair and straightened. "And I'll speak publicly. Not just here — across every outpost. I'll explain the Republic's mission again. What taxes really mean. How they fund the roads, the Sentinels, the patrols that keep the monsters back. We got comfortable too quickly — assumed everyone saw what we saw."
"We're not just fighting bullets and bombs," Preston said. "We're fighting perception."
"Exactly," Sico replied. "This isn't just a security crisis — it's ideological. And if we don't treat it like one, we'll lose this war without a single shot fired."
Sarah stepped closer, her voice lower. "There's one more thing. Recon picked up a name. They say there's someone organizing them all. Not just a warlord. A speaker. A former scribe who left the Brotherhood years ago. Calls herself 'Cassia.'"
Sico frowned. "I've never heard of her."
"She's good," Sarah said. "Knows tech, knows tactics. But more than that, she knows rhetoric. The kind of voice that could turn a scared settler into a fanatic. She's been preaching at their camps. Calling you 'the new tyrant king.' Saying you turned the Minutemen into a private army."
Sico's jaw set, but he didn't speak for a moment.
Then he said, "If she's ex-Brotherhood, she knows how this works. Which means she's dangerous. I want everything we can find on her. Past logs, Brotherhood manifests, even scribes' disciplinary records."
"I'll get on it," Sarah said, already pulling out her Pip-Boy.
Preston stepped forward. "What's our next move, President?"
Sico looked between them both. The storm outside the walls was no longer just of bullets or synths or Gunners. It was the storm of doubt. Fear. Resentment.
"We hold the line," he said. "And we listen. We find out who these people really are — and why they feel abandoned. We separate the radicals from the scared. We bring those who can be saved back into the fold."
"And the ones who won't?" Preston asked.
Sico's voice turned cold. "Then we remind them — we're not tyrants. But we're not weak either."
The room fell quiet again.
The wheels of response began to turn the moment Sico left Army Headquarters.
Preston Garvey, the consummate soldier and tactician, wasted no time. Within minutes, he'd descended into the coordination barracks, boots echoing sharply against the stone flooring as he barked orders to his adjutant officers. His voice was low, firm, and exact — no room for misunderstanding.
"Get me Commander Lita and Sergeant Hodge. Western detachment, two Commando teams, outfitted for low-visibility recon. No heavy gear. Bring the suppressed rifles, the stealth gear, and the quiet boots. This isn't a firefight — it's eyes and ears."
Men and women scattered on his command, and within the hour, the two selected Commando teams — hardened veterans of firefights at Quincy, fortified Gunners raids, and last year's synth purge in Revere — were gathered and fully briefed. Lita, a scarred woman with piercing eyes and a demeanor that had once made a Deathclaw back down, led the first team. Hodge, wiry and fox-quick, commanded the second.
Preston stood before them at dusk, just before deployment.
"No contact unless ordered or necessary. We're not here to provoke. We're here to understand — patterns, leadership, supply chains. Use the valleys and the rail paths, stay clear of patrol markers. And if you see this Cassia — I want her movements logged by the minute."
Lita gave a silent nod. Hodge snapped a salute.
Then the teams vanished into the northern hills like ghosts, slipping into the treeline east of Breakheart Banks, eyes sharp, radios silent, their outlines indistinguishable from the brush and rocks they passed through. They were phantoms now — Sico's eyes in the dark.
Meanwhile, Sarah Lyons was equally swift in mobilizing her side of the operation. She gathered the civil corps — the civilian liaison branch of the Freemasons Republic, composed of community leaders, educators, and volunteer organizers — in the large municipal hall that once hosted pre-war city council meetings.
The air buzzed with unease as she stood on the elevated dais, tapping her notes against her palm.
"We're not just putting out fires," she told them. "We're rebuilding trust."
She laid out a simple but urgent plan: the civil corps would travel to Oberland, Greentop, and Finch Farm — all within the influence radius of the so-called Free Men — and begin holding town hall-style gatherings. Open forums. No armed guards at the podiums. No scripted lectures. Just the people, speaking with the people.
"But we're not going unprotected," she added, her tone hardening. "There's no heroism in getting yourselves shot."
She turned to a tall man leaning against the back wall — a familiar presence whose smooth voice had once drawn packed crowds to the Third Rail. Magnolia.
The former lounge singer who now the head of Freemasons Central Bureau gave a sly smirk and stepped forward, wearing a surprisingly pragmatic blend of a leather duster and body armor beneath.
"We'll take care of the mood," Magnolia said, her voice as smooth as ever. "You worry about the message."
She'd volunteered to help lead the morale teams — part entertainers, part mediators, part shields against chaos. She and Sarah had been working together ever since the restructuring of the Commonwealth had begun. Now, they were preparing to walk into the heart of discontent with nothing but words and a little charm.
To keep them safe, Sarah worked with the Army logistics teams to organize a protective escort — a hundred soldiers, broken into four platoons, each one embedded with a civil corps unit. These weren't green recruits either. These were steady, seasoned fighters pulled from the Minutemen and Brotherhood defectors, clad in full combat armor, each one briefed on rules of engagement.
"You're not an occupation force," Sarah told them during final prep. "You're guardians. That means shields up, but weapons down — unless fired upon."
By the end of the second day, the teams were rolling out in staggered convoys, armored trucks rattling over rough roads, each bearing Republic flags and painted markings of neutral relief efforts — a conscious signal to every settler, farmer, and wandering scavenger who saw them.
While Preston and Sarah's wheels turned on the ground, Sico took his own step into the war for hearts and minds.
He walked alone to the Radio of Freedom station — the converted transmitter tower that had once been a Minutemen relay post and was now the Republic's primary broadcast point, reaching nearly the entire settled Commonwealth. The station sat atop a rise, flanked by old solar panels and backed by wind turbines that turned like weary guardians against the wind.
Inside, the air was thick with the ozone tang of copper wiring and the low hum of machinery. The technician on duty, a wiry girl in her twenties named Fallon, looked up in surprise as Sico stepped into the booth.
"President Sico," she said, half-rising. "Wasn't expecting—"
"I'll be using the mic," Sico said quietly. "Can you patch me through the full relay? All towers, all frequencies?"
She nodded, already typing. "You're live in sixty seconds, sir."
He stepped to the console, adjusted the worn leather seat, and leaned into the microphone. His heart beat like a war drum in his chest, but his face was calm — composed.
Fallon gave a thumb up from behind the glass.
The "ON AIR" light blinked red.
Sico leaned closer to the mic.
"This is President Sico of the Freemasons Republic," he began. "And if you're hearing my voice, that means you're a part of it. Whether you voted in our Congress, or just trade at one of our outposts. Whether you send crops to our markets or just listen when a Sentinel patrol walks by."
His voice was low, gravel-edged but steady. The voice of a man who had fought, bled, and bled others for this land.
"I want to talk to you. Not as your leader. Not from a podium. From here. Just me. You. This signal, bouncing across the land we all share."
He paused.
"There are people out there who say we're tyrants. That we tax the land to bleed it dry. That the Freemasons Republic is just a new cage, with nicer walls. And I understand that fear. I really do. We've all lived under someone else's boot — the Brotherhood's iron grip, the Institute's lies, the Gunners' hunger. So when someone says the word 'tax' to you, I know what you hear. You hear robbery. You hear chains."
His voice grew firmer.
"But here's the truth. Those taxes? They built the roads you use. They keep the clinics stocked. They keep our patrols walking the trails at night, so you don't have to look over your shoulder every time the wind shifts. Taxes build the Sentinels who battled into a deathclaw nests so that your children can plant corn without fearing for their lives. They power the radio tower you're listening to right now."
A breath.
"We're not asking for tribute. We're asking for unity. Shared burden for shared safety. For too long, the Commonwealth survived in pieces — strongholds and solo farms and settlements cut off from one another. That's how the old world fell. Not in one blast. But in a thousand little silences."
He leaned in.
"So if you've been told we're coming to take from you, listen again. We're coming to stand with you. We're building something bigger than any one person. A republic. A home."
His voice dropped, softer now.
"And if you don't believe me… talk to a soldier who lost a brother defending Graygarden. Talk to the settlers at Starlight who now have running water. Ask the caravan guards who aren't dying in ambushes every month."
A final breath.
"I'll be on this station every week from now on. Answering questions. Reading letters. No filters. No barriers. Because this is our land. Our future. Let's not burn it down just because we finally started building something better."
The light went off.
Sico leaned back in the chair.
Fallon, wide-eyed, exhaled behind the glass. "Sir… that was one hell of a speech."
Sico gave a faint smile. But his eyes were already elsewhere — far beyond the metal walls of the station. Out there, in the woods where Lita and Hodge now moved silently through enemy lines. In the farmhouses where Sarah and Magnolia would stand before skeptical eyes. In every corner where someone with a pitchfork or an old pistol now weighed the future in their hands.
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• Name: Sico
• Stats :
S: 8,44
P: 7,44
E: 8,44
C: 8,44
I: 9,44
A: 7,45
L: 7
• Skills: advance Mechanic, Science, and Shooting skills, intermediate Medical, Hand to Hand Combat, Lockpicking, Hacking, Persuasion, and Drawing Skills
• Inventory: 53.280 caps, 10mm Pistol, 1500 10mm rounds, 22 mole rats meat, 17 mole rats teeth, 1 fragmentation grenade, 6 stimpak, 1 rad x, 6 fusion core, computer blueprint, modern TV blueprint, camera recorder blueprint, 1 set of combat armor, Automatic Assault Rifle, 1.500 5.56mm rounds, power armor T51 blueprint, Electric Motorcycle blueprint, T-45 power armor, Minigun, 1.000 5mm rounds, Cryolator, 200 cryo cell, Machine Gun Turret Mk1 blueprint, electric car blueprint, Kellogg gun, Righteous Authority, Ashmaker, Furious Power Fist, Full set combat armor blueprint, M240 7.62mm machine guns blueprint, Automatic Assault Rifle blueprint, and Humvee blueprint.
• Active Quest:-