Always another case to close

Shroud was chilling in her home at Homeplate, drinking an ice-cold nuka cola. with codsworth humming along happily to the sound of the radio’s music.

when the metal man rushed in and picked her up she really had no choice but to let him do so. he was both taller and stronger than her. she wasn’t worried at all by this until he called her shroud. at which point she looked down at herself and realized that she wasn’t in costume and decided that she had to bumble some sort of terrible excuse to go and change.

“uh shroud? no shroud here but maybe they’ll appear if you wait a minute… or two.” yes, that was good. no way he could see through that.

she wriggled free and disappeared back into homeplate to change. codsworth greeted him casually. “why hello mr. Valentine. what brings you here? is it another case? don’t worry too much about mum, she is… odd. but she truly enjoys that costume.”

/Hancock on the other hands makes a funny face/ “Ya know, I did see a little calico kitten running around, I just thought she was a stray, but then, okay. This is going to sound weird, but I saw her disappear into thin air!” /Hancock makes the hand motions that to him seem like something disappearing, but to everyone else looked like Hancock being high.

“Mayor hancock!” the silver shroud starts heroically. “this is vital, a kittens life is on the line. a cute, adorable, innocent, kitten. as a hero i cannot allow any harm to befall Dame. are you certain of what you saw?” the shroud eyes him a little warily, it was VERY possible he had been high when he saw what happened. but to hallucinate a kitten teleporting… that was too much of a coincidence. 

“yeah i know my highs… and i was high. but it was a good high. i only saw good things.” he trails off as if he was seeing something good right now. 

“mayor!”

“what? oh yeah hey shroud.”

she grabbed the mayor and shook him “the kitten hancock.”

“i’m shook!” he recovered as the shroud let him go. “yeah i definitely saw a kitten vanish.” he gestures to indicate something popping out of existence.

“Nick, my man. Relax. You can stay as long as you’d like, maybe the pussy cat will return.” /He offers, Nick turns to Shroud/

“ok, let’s do that. at least until we can get another lead.” shroud looked to nick to get his opinion. no sooner had she said that, a flash of light brightened the alleyway, causing most to cover their eyes. 

“DAM-!” /He falls silent when he sees her fur all red and her little whimpering ‘mews’, the little kitten limps over to Nick and just collapses onto his feet. Nick looks shocked and gently leans down to pick up her limp body./

/Hancock looks just as shocked and is muttering about maybe being higher then he thought. But when he see’s Nick face he says/ “Get that kitten to Amari!”

but she understood his worry, amari was the closest thing to a doctor around here so it made sense to go to her. at least the sound of the mew, weak as it was, meant that poor dame was still alive. there was still a chance she would be ok.

but that didn’t explain why or how she got to the institute. see now this was why nick was the detective and she was the shroud. nick might have better ideas than she did, though right now he wouldn’t be thinking clearly. she wouldn’t in his place.

she reached the memory dens lower level several minutes after nick did, trying to figure out why the institute would want a cat. what possible reasoning could they have for it?

“My God…Ho-how?” /Nick asks./ “Shroud….You might want to see this…” 

there is a shocked pause as no one buys what the shroud is selling, even dame doesn’t believe her. “mum?” Codsworth started. “i believe its far more likely that the kitten may actually be a synthetic kitten.”

“synthetic kittens?” Shroud thinks it over, in her mind she sees an army of cute kittens all mewing and wanting pets or playing with strings. “ahh yes i see.” she smiles inwardly, threatening to lose herself to the thought of thousands of synth kitties. 

“mum?” codsworth brings Shroud back to reality as he cleans the kittens collar in record time. when he finishes cleaning the collar he presents it to Dame. 

“I mean…This makes sense. She wasn’t growing…Just stayed a kitten. Yeah, Amari, can you get he chip out? Or should we go to Curie?” /Nick asks, seemingly still in a daze/

“I can do my best She may be in pain, but it’ll be fast.” /she states./

/Nick looks down at his little Dame, Nick gives her a little behind the ear scratch, making the little thing purr. Nick sighs and hands her over to Amari./

with her joke not working to cheer him up she decided on a different idea. “anyway, i’m trying to be all cool like the real silver shroud but that’s not working so… let me put it to you this way nick.” one of the few times the Shroud actually admitted that she wasn’t the *real* shroud, she was trying to be serious for once. “i can’t count the number of times i cried over losing a dog or a cat… or a bat, not going into that one. But i cried a lot. but Dame here isn’t going to age, she’ll be a kitten, with you, for as long as you love eachother. one more thing that you can call your own, and not pre-war Nick’s.”

“I am not her sidekick, she is mine, you are mine. That is all there is to it. Now pipe down, toots.” /Nick then turns to her, if his eyes showed emotion they would show a number of them, including worry, sadness, confusion and gratitude. He then ruffles Shrouds hair through her hat, giving her a smirk/ 

“You’ll always be my favorite frozen banana.” /he winks at her/

“Yeah, maybe we should. Would you like to come back with us?”

/Dame purrs when Shroud pet’s her THEN GOES IN FOR THE ATTACK, PLAY BITING SHROUDS FINGERS!!!!/

the-perfect-scientist:

Carlos hiccupped softly and looked at Valentine. “Um, is there.. is there anything you need me to do?” he asked. He wasn’t sure about just sitting down and relaxing. He needed to do something and keep busy.

/Nick takes his hat off and rubs the back of his head in deep thought/ “You could help, Ellie maybe. She always has something to do, she’s my busy gal.”

the-perfect-scientist:

Carlos stood up and followed after the synthetic man. “I just drake it too fast,” he said. “It’s okay – I think I have it under –” He was cut off with a hiccup. Oh… oops.

/Nick chuckholes once again, he doesn’t know why but when humans get the hiccups it always amuses him./

“You sure they didn’t give you a alcoholic Nuka instead?”

/Nick shrugs/

“Dame’s gotten all the way to Acadia before. She’s tough. I got her about 3 months ago, she was plopped on my desk and the person just left.” /Nick states while following Hancock/

“I wasn’t much of a pet guy because I never saw any pet type animals…I don’t know, something about Dame, we just clicked.”

Shroud was chilling in her home at Homeplate, drinking an ice-cold nuka cola. with codsworth humming along happily to the sound of the radio’s music.

when the metal man rushed in and picked her up she really had no choice but to let him do so. he was both taller and stronger than her. she wasn’t worried at all by this until he called her shroud. at which point she looked down at herself and realized that she wasn’t in costume and decided that she had to bumble some sort of terrible excuse to go and change.

“uh shroud? no shroud here but maybe they’ll appear if you wait a minute… or two.” yes, that was good. no way he could see through that.

she wriggled free and disappeared back into homeplate to change. codsworth greeted him casually. “why hello mr. Valentine. what brings you here? is it another case? don’t worry too much about mum, she is… odd. but she truly enjoys that costume.”

/Hancock on the other hands makes a funny face/ “Ya know, I did see a little calico kitten running around, I just thought she was a stray, but then, okay. This is going to sound weird, but I saw her disappear into thin air!” /Hancock makes the hand motions that to him seem like something disappearing, but to everyone else looked like Hancock being high.

“Mayor hancock!” the silver shroud starts heroically. “this is vital, a kittens life is on the line. a cute, adorable, innocent, kitten. as a hero i cannot allow any harm to befall Dame. are you certain of what you saw?” the shroud eyes him a little warily, it was VERY possible he had been high when he saw what happened. but to hallucinate a kitten teleporting… that was too much of a coincidence. 

“yeah i know my highs… and i was high. but it was a good high. i only saw good things.” he trails off as if he was seeing something good right now. 

“mayor!”

“what? oh yeah hey shroud.”

she grabbed the mayor and shook him “the kitten hancock.”

“i’m shook!” he recovered as the shroud let him go. “yeah i definitely saw a kitten vanish.” he gestures to indicate something popping out of existence.

“Nick, my man. Relax. You can stay as long as you’d like, maybe the pussy cat will return.” /He offers, Nick turns to Shroud/

“ok, let’s do that. at least until we can get another lead.” shroud looked to nick to get his opinion. no sooner had she said that, a flash of light brightened the alleyway, causing most to cover their eyes. 

“DAM-!” /He falls silent when he sees her fur all red and her little whimpering ‘mews’, the little kitten limps over to Nick and just collapses onto his feet. Nick looks shocked and gently leans down to pick up her limp body./

/Hancock looks just as shocked and is muttering about maybe being higher then he thought. But when he see’s Nick face he says/ “Get that kitten to Amari!”

but she understood his worry, amari was the closest thing to a doctor around here so it made sense to go to her. at least the sound of the mew, weak as it was, meant that poor dame was still alive. there was still a chance she would be ok.

but that didn’t explain why or how she got to the institute. see now this was why nick was the detective and she was the shroud. nick might have better ideas than she did, though right now he wouldn’t be thinking clearly. she wouldn’t in his place.

she reached the memory dens lower level several minutes after nick did, trying to figure out why the institute would want a cat. what possible reasoning could they have for it?

“My God…Ho-how?” /Nick asks./ “Shroud….You might want to see this…” 

there is a shocked pause as no one buys what the shroud is selling, even dame doesn’t believe her. “mum?” Codsworth started. “i believe its far more likely that the kitten may actually be a synthetic kitten.”

“synthetic kittens?” Shroud thinks it over, in her mind she sees an army of cute kittens all mewing and wanting pets or playing with strings. “ahh yes i see.” she smiles inwardly, threatening to lose herself to the thought of thousands of synth kitties. 

“mum?” codsworth brings Shroud back to reality as he cleans the kittens collar in record time. when he finishes cleaning the collar he presents it to Dame. 

“I mean…This makes sense. She wasn’t growing…Just stayed a kitten. Yeah, Amari, can you get he chip out? Or should we go to Curie?” /Nick asks, seemingly still in a daze/

“I can do my best She may be in pain, but it’ll be fast.” /she states./

/Nick looks down at his little Dame, Nick gives her a little behind the ear scratch, making the little thing purr. Nick sighs and hands her over to Amari./

with her joke not working to cheer him up she decided on a different idea. “anyway, i’m trying to be all cool like the real silver shroud but that’s not working so… let me put it to you this way nick.” one of the few times the Shroud actually admitted that she wasn’t the *real* shroud, she was trying to be serious for once. “i can’t count the number of times i cried over losing a dog or a cat… or a bat, not going into that one. But i cried a lot. but Dame here isn’t going to age, she’ll be a kitten, with you, for as long as you love eachother. one more thing that you can call your own, and not pre-war Nick’s.”

“I am not her sidekick, she is mine, you are mine. That is all there is to it. Now pipe down, toots.” /Nick then turns to her, if his eyes showed emotion they would show a number of them, including worry, sadness, confusion and gratitude. He then ruffles Shrouds hair through her hat, giving her a smirk/ 

“You’ll always be my favorite frozen banana.” /he winks at her/

“Yeah, maybe we should. Would you like to come back with us?”

/Dame purrs when Shroud pet’s her THEN GOES IN FOR THE ATTACK, PLAY BITING SHROUDS FINGERS!!!!/

/Nick looks up from his now empty bottle of scotch, he knows he can’t get drunk bu that didn’t stop him from draining the whole bottle. He quickly hides the empty bottle behind the desk and clears his throat, fully aware that he must smell of scotch./

To be fair, a bright neon light that directed any sort of passerby to a detective agency wasn’t what June had been expecting when she had passed through the gates of Diamond City.  It did have what she was expecting, little shops, security guards, dirty little children running around.  She was pretty sure one of them had stuck a sticky little hand into one of her pockets looking for caps.  What a disappointment that had been.  June had spent the last of her caps on equipment for her most recent and exhilarating trip into the wasteland.  What she lacked in caps she made up for by having more than enough raw ingredients to turn into salves and elixirs.  She would sell them then fund her next trip out into the wasteland.

But, she was nothing more than a mere fly, attracted to a painfully bright neon sign that declared, “Valentine’s Detective Agency.”  It was almost like something from an old detective novel she had once dragged out of a musty old library.  When she opened the door to the agency, half trying to think of some excuse on why she would even check out such a service, she stopped dead in her tracks.

In the desk was not the middle aged, pot bellied, seedy looking man she had expected the good detective to be.  He wasn’t even human, a synth of some sort.  An…alcoholic synth, was that possible?  His thin, claw like hand had drawn a bottle of cheap looking scotch to his gray lips.  It was almost endearing as he noticed her and quickly tried to hide the hooch from his potential customer.  June’s own gentle eyes locked with the clear yellow ones of the synth.

“What..” she began her face scrunching up with thought, she then took a step forward, then another.  Any sort of intelligent questions was squashed as she managed to choke out.  “Oh my god are you ok?”  something that was completely, confusingly, inappropriate, but that was the norm for first interactions and June, no matter what the person was.

She swiftly closed the gap between her and the synth, who must have been Detective Valentine.  She took his chin in her hands and she began to inspect every circuit and wire she could.

“Erm…Yes, I am alright…” /He gently pulls her hands away from his face with both of his, though he is notably more careful with his clawed hand. He then stands to his full height, of about 6ft on the dot, and gives her a kind smile./

A bashful expression, or at least that was what June thought it was.  It was a little hard to read his expressions, the gray coloring of his, ‘skin’ just seemed to be stretched over his face in one uniformed color.  This layer moved so much like skin and yet it wasn’t, it gave June mixed feelings on whether or not she liked it.  She was a little bothered, detectives were suppose to be gritty.  She didn’t know what sort of thoughts were being processed in Nick Valentine’s head, but it didn’t seem like he was thinking of narrative like the detectives in novels did.  Lets see, something like: 

“She rolled in with the fog, leaving slick, humid air wherever she walked.  She was a fine looking dame, a bit on the thick side, with wide hips that would be easy to grab.  Just as easy as she slid over to my desk and grabbed my chin.  I was frozen in place as her red lips huskily murmured compliments on my visage, a rare but warranted action.  After all, not many women could appreciate the look of an old detective.  Obviously, she had a thing for wires, gears, and the smell of oil, something that I could easily offer her to her heart’s content.”   

Yeah, something like that.  The dreamy look on June’s face was suddenly contorted as she pulled her chin back into her neck, spread her lips into a wide grimace, and her eyes squinted up as Nick’s weirdly spindly clawed hand wrapped around her own and removed her hand from his chin.  Gross, gross, gross, it was like being manhandled by a blender.  

Her brown eyes widened as the synth stood up, looming over her.  Radiation, the lack of nutrition, and stress were hard on the bodies of humans.  Not many of them grew to be over six feet, the majority falling far below that.  June’s own height of 5′9 was an abnormality that many people commented and associated her with.  

“Uh, help?” June asked before her cheeks blushed dark red.  “No, no I don’t need any help.  I mean, to be truthful, in my line of work, I’m more the type of person to go missing than to be looking for someone,” she admitted with a crooked grin.  “Yep, that’s me,voted most likely to be found dead in a pit clinging to some flowers or something.”  The real question was if she did go up missing would anyone look for her or hire Valentine to try and find her?  It wasn’t likely, not with her family dead.  Maybe she could pay upfront for Valentine to find her corpse in the event she did disappear?

“No I’m here in Diamond City to give a letter to the mayor from the mayor of Goodneighbor,” June told Valentine.  Well if she could consider it a letter, after Handcock had thoroughly questioned her hand writing ability he had her compose a letter in her most flourishing handwriting to Major McDonough that read simply; Hey McDickough, fuck you.  Love John Hancock.  Hancock had also drawn little penises around the boarder of the letter to give it pizzazz, his words not June’s.         

“What’s Hancock got to say to him now?” /Nick asks, a smile forming on his face. When she asks about stories he scrunches up his face the way he does when he is thinking./  

Shroud was chilling in her home at Homeplate, drinking an ice-cold nuka cola. with codsworth humming along happily to the sound of the radio’s music.

when the metal man rushed in and picked her up she really had no choice but to let him do so. he was both taller and stronger than her. she wasn’t worried at all by this until he called her shroud. at which point she looked down at herself and realized that she wasn’t in costume and decided that she had to bumble some sort of terrible excuse to go and change.

“uh shroud? no shroud here but maybe they’ll appear if you wait a minute… or two.” yes, that was good. no way he could see through that.

she wriggled free and disappeared back into homeplate to change. codsworth greeted him casually. “why hello mr. Valentine. what brings you here? is it another case? don’t worry too much about mum, she is… odd. but she truly enjoys that costume.”

/Hancock on the other hands makes a funny face/ “Ya know, I did see a little calico kitten running around, I just thought she was a stray, but then, okay. This is going to sound weird, but I saw her disappear into thin air!” /Hancock makes the hand motions that to him seem like something disappearing, but to everyone else looked like Hancock being high.

“Mayor hancock!” the silver shroud starts heroically. “this is vital, a kittens life is on the line. a cute, adorable, innocent, kitten. as a hero i cannot allow any harm to befall Dame. are you certain of what you saw?” the shroud eyes him a little warily, it was VERY possible he had been high when he saw what happened. but to hallucinate a kitten teleporting… that was too much of a coincidence. 

“yeah i know my highs… and i was high. but it was a good high. i only saw good things.” he trails off as if he was seeing something good right now. 

“mayor!”

“what? oh yeah hey shroud.”

she grabbed the mayor and shook him “the kitten hancock.”

“i’m shook!” he recovered as the shroud let him go. “yeah i definitely saw a kitten vanish.” he gestures to indicate something popping out of existence.

“Nick, my man. Relax. You can stay as long as you’d like, maybe the pussy cat will return.” /He offers, Nick turns to Shroud/

“ok, let’s do that. at least until we can get another lead.” shroud looked to nick to get his opinion. no sooner had she said that, a flash of light brightened the alleyway, causing most to cover their eyes. 

“DAM-!” /He falls silent when he sees her fur all red and her little whimpering ‘mews’, the little kitten limps over to Nick and just collapses onto his feet. Nick looks shocked and gently leans down to pick up her limp body./

/Hancock looks just as shocked and is muttering about maybe being higher then he thought. But when he see’s Nick face he says/ “Get that kitten to Amari!”

but she understood his worry, amari was the closest thing to a doctor around here so it made sense to go to her. at least the sound of the mew, weak as it was, meant that poor dame was still alive. there was still a chance she would be ok.

but that didn’t explain why or how she got to the institute. see now this was why nick was the detective and she was the shroud. nick might have better ideas than she did, though right now he wouldn’t be thinking clearly. she wouldn’t in his place.

she reached the memory dens lower level several minutes after nick did, trying to figure out why the institute would want a cat. what possible reasoning could they have for it?

“My God…Ho-how?” /Nick asks./ “Shroud….You might want to see this…” 

there is a shocked pause as no one buys what the shroud is selling, even dame doesn’t believe her. “mum?” Codsworth started. “i believe its far more likely that the kitten may actually be a synthetic kitten.”

“synthetic kittens?” Shroud thinks it over, in her mind she sees an army of cute kittens all mewing and wanting pets or playing with strings. “ahh yes i see.” she smiles inwardly, threatening to lose herself to the thought of thousands of synth kitties. 

“mum?” codsworth brings Shroud back to reality as he cleans the kittens collar in record time. when he finishes cleaning the collar he presents it to Dame. 

“I mean…This makes sense. She wasn’t growing…Just stayed a kitten. Yeah, Amari, can you get he chip out? Or should we go to Curie?” /Nick asks, seemingly still in a daze/

“I can do my best She may be in pain, but it’ll be fast.” /she states./

/Nick looks down at his little Dame, Nick gives her a little behind the ear scratch, making the little thing purr. Nick sighs and hands her over to Amari./

with her joke not working to cheer him up she decided on a different idea. “anyway, i’m trying to be all cool like the real silver shroud but that’s not working so… let me put it to you this way nick.” one of the few times the Shroud actually admitted that she wasn’t the *real* shroud, she was trying to be serious for once. “i can’t count the number of times i cried over losing a dog or a cat… or a bat, not going into that one. But i cried a lot. but Dame here isn’t going to age, she’ll be a kitten, with you, for as long as you love eachother. one more thing that you can call your own, and not pre-war Nick’s.”

“I am not her sidekick, she is mine, you are mine. That is all there is to it. Now pipe down, toots.” /Nick then turns to her, if his eyes showed emotion they would show a number of them, including worry, sadness, confusion and gratitude. He then ruffles Shrouds hair through her hat, giving her a smirk/ 

“You’ll always be my favorite frozen banana.” /he winks at her/

“Yeah, maybe we should. Would you like to come back with us?”

/Dame purrs when Shroud pet’s her THEN GOES IN FOR THE ATTACK, PLAY BITING SHROUDS FINGERS!!!!/

The flick starts and they’re greeted to a good ol’ fashioned monster movie. The cheesiest thing around too no less.

“Hey that kind of looks like a deathclaw-” Only they didn’t have THOSE back then. The leads are two stereotypical good looking folk, and the movie plays out as predictable as can be. A blast from the past.

Cat puts her feet up on the dashboard and slouches the whole time, mostly into the movie while picking at Nick’s robot hand every now and then.

The movie ends soon enough on some dramatic note before the second part of this double feature starts. A murder mystery romance.

“Gosh all the people in the film look so…” Cat waves her hands around looking for a word. “…Hm… well…I was going to say artificial but they ain’t got nothing on synths, hah. Maybe they look kind of like….too perfect.”

If she were an ACTUAL cat she’d be purring away. Some of those pieces of hair are wavey, some are straight, few are curly. It’s a mess. Like a mop.

“Just need some popcorn.” Maybe next time. If they happen to find any corn that is. Or that old stale pre-war stuff.

“Well you’re plenty strange I’ll give ya that… heck you might even be stranger than me. I gotta give you props there.”

The flick starts and they’re greeted to a good ol’ fashioned monster movie. The cheesiest thing around too no less.

“Hey that kind of looks like a deathclaw-” Only they didn’t have THOSE back then. The leads are two stereotypical good looking folk, and the movie plays out as predictable as can be. A blast from the past.

Cat puts her feet up on the dashboard and slouches the whole time, mostly into the movie while picking at Nick’s robot hand every now and then.

The movie ends soon enough on some dramatic note before the second part of this double feature starts. A murder mystery romance.

“Gosh all the people in the film look so…” Cat waves her hands around looking for a word. “…Hm… well…I was going to say artificial but they ain’t got nothing on synths, hah. Maybe they look kind of like….too perfect.”

If she were an ACTUAL cat she’d be purring away. Some of those pieces of hair are wavey, some are straight, few are curly. It’s a mess. Like a mop.

“Just need some popcorn.” Maybe next time. If they happen to find any corn that is. Or that old stale pre-war stuff.

The flick starts and they’re greeted to a good ol’ fashioned monster movie. The cheesiest thing around too no less.

“Hey that kind of looks like a deathclaw-” Only they didn’t have THOSE back then. The leads are two stereotypical good looking folk, and the movie plays out as predictable as can be. A blast from the past.

Cat puts her feet up on the dashboard and slouches the whole time, mostly into the movie while picking at Nick’s robot hand every now and then.

The movie ends soon enough on some dramatic note before the second part of this double feature starts. A murder mystery romance.

“Gosh all the people in the film look so…” Cat waves her hands around looking for a word. “…Hm… well…I was going to say artificial but they ain’t got nothing on synths, hah. Maybe they look kind of like….too perfect.”

If she were an ACTUAL cat she’d be purring away. Some of those pieces of hair are wavey, some are straight, few are curly. It’s a mess. Like a mop.

The flick starts and they’re greeted to a good ol’ fashioned monster movie. The cheesiest thing around too no less.

“Hey that kind of looks like a deathclaw-” Only they didn’t have THOSE back then. The leads are two stereotypical good looking folk, and the movie plays out as predictable as can be. A blast from the past.

Cat puts her feet up on the dashboard and slouches the whole time, mostly into the movie while picking at Nick’s robot hand every now and then.

The movie ends soon enough on some dramatic note before the second part of this double feature starts. A murder mystery romance.

“Gosh all the people in the film look so…” Cat waves her hands around looking for a word. “…Hm… well…I was going to say artificial but they ain’t got nothing on synths, hah. Maybe they look kind of like….too perfect.”

The flick starts and they’re greeted to a good ol’ fashioned monster movie. The cheesiest thing around too no less.

“Hey that kind of looks like a deathclaw-” Only they didn’t have THOSE back then. The leads are two stereotypical good looking folk, and the movie plays out as predictable as can be. A blast from the past.

Cat puts her feet up on the dashboard and slouches the whole time, mostly into the movie while picking at Nick’s robot hand every now and then.

Shroud was chilling in her home at Homeplate, drinking an ice-cold nuka cola. with codsworth humming along happily to the sound of the radio’s music.

when the metal man rushed in and picked her up she really had no choice but to let him do so. he was both taller and stronger than her. she wasn’t worried at all by this until he called her shroud. at which point she looked down at herself and realized that she wasn’t in costume and decided that she had to bumble some sort of terrible excuse to go and change.

“uh shroud? no shroud here but maybe they’ll appear if you wait a minute… or two.” yes, that was good. no way he could see through that.

she wriggled free and disappeared back into homeplate to change. codsworth greeted him casually. “why hello mr. Valentine. what brings you here? is it another case? don’t worry too much about mum, she is… odd. but she truly enjoys that costume.”

/Hancock on the other hands makes a funny face/ “Ya know, I did see a little calico kitten running around, I just thought she was a stray, but then, okay. This is going to sound weird, but I saw her disappear into thin air!” /Hancock makes the hand motions that to him seem like something disappearing, but to everyone else looked like Hancock being high.

“Mayor hancock!” the silver shroud starts heroically. “this is vital, a kittens life is on the line. a cute, adorable, innocent, kitten. as a hero i cannot allow any harm to befall Dame. are you certain of what you saw?” the shroud eyes him a little warily, it was VERY possible he had been high when he saw what happened. but to hallucinate a kitten teleporting… that was too much of a coincidence. 

“yeah i know my highs… and i was high. but it was a good high. i only saw good things.” he trails off as if he was seeing something good right now. 

“mayor!”

“what? oh yeah hey shroud.”

she grabbed the mayor and shook him “the kitten hancock.”

“i’m shook!” he recovered as the shroud let him go. “yeah i definitely saw a kitten vanish.” he gestures to indicate something popping out of existence.

“Nick, my man. Relax. You can stay as long as you’d like, maybe the pussy cat will return.” /He offers, Nick turns to Shroud/

“ok, let’s do that. at least until we can get another lead.” shroud looked to nick to get his opinion. no sooner had she said that, a flash of light brightened the alleyway, causing most to cover their eyes. 

“DAM-!” /He falls silent when he sees her fur all red and her little whimpering ‘mews’, the little kitten limps over to Nick and just collapses onto his feet. Nick looks shocked and gently leans down to pick up her limp body./

/Hancock looks just as shocked and is muttering about maybe being higher then he thought. But when he see’s Nick face he says/ “Get that kitten to Amari!”

but she understood his worry, amari was the closest thing to a doctor around here so it made sense to go to her. at least the sound of the mew, weak as it was, meant that poor dame was still alive. there was still a chance she would be ok.

but that didn’t explain why or how she got to the institute. see now this was why nick was the detective and she was the shroud. nick might have better ideas than she did, though right now he wouldn’t be thinking clearly. she wouldn’t in his place.

she reached the memory dens lower level several minutes after nick did, trying to figure out why the institute would want a cat. what possible reasoning could they have for it?

“My God…Ho-how?” /Nick asks./ “Shroud….You might want to see this…” 

there is a shocked pause as no one buys what the shroud is selling, even dame doesn’t believe her. “mum?” Codsworth started. “i believe its far more likely that the kitten may actually be a synthetic kitten.”

“synthetic kittens?” Shroud thinks it over, in her mind she sees an army of cute kittens all mewing and wanting pets or playing with strings. “ahh yes i see.” she smiles inwardly, threatening to lose herself to the thought of thousands of synth kitties. 

“mum?” codsworth brings Shroud back to reality as he cleans the kittens collar in record time. when he finishes cleaning the collar he presents it to Dame. 

“I mean…This makes sense. She wasn’t growing…Just stayed a kitten. Yeah, Amari, can you get he chip out? Or should we go to Curie?” /Nick asks, seemingly still in a daze/

“I can do my best She may be in pain, but it’ll be fast.” /she states./

/Nick looks down at his little Dame, Nick gives her a little behind the ear scratch, making the little thing purr. Nick sighs and hands her over to Amari./

with her joke not working to cheer him up she decided on a different idea. “anyway, i’m trying to be all cool like the real silver shroud but that’s not working so… let me put it to you this way nick.” one of the few times the Shroud actually admitted that she wasn’t the *real* shroud, she was trying to be serious for once. “i can’t count the number of times i cried over losing a dog or a cat… or a bat, not going into that one. But i cried a lot. but Dame here isn’t going to age, she’ll be a kitten, with you, for as long as you love eachother. one more thing that you can call your own, and not pre-war Nick’s.”

“I am not her sidekick, she is mine, you are mine. That is all there is to it. Now pipe down, toots.” /Nick then turns to her, if his eyes showed emotion they would show a number of them, including worry, sadness, confusion and gratitude. He then ruffles Shrouds hair through her hat, giving her a smirk/ 

“You’ll always be my favorite frozen banana.” /he winks at her/

“Yeah, maybe we should. Would you like to come back with us?”

/Dame purrs when Shroud pet’s her THEN GOES IN FOR THE ATTACK, PLAY BITING SHROUDS FINGERS!!!!/

She peered into this distance, watching something that obviously wasn’t really there. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the memories that came flooding back.

/Nick looks up from his now empty bottle of scotch, he knows he can’t get drunk bu that didn’t stop him from draining the whole bottle. He quickly hides the empty bottle behind the desk and clears his throat, fully aware that he must smell of scotch./

To be fair, a bright neon light that directed any sort of passerby to a detective agency wasn’t what June had been expecting when she had passed through the gates of Diamond City.  It did have what she was expecting, little shops, security guards, dirty little children running around.  She was pretty sure one of them had stuck a sticky little hand into one of her pockets looking for caps.  What a disappointment that had been.  June had spent the last of her caps on equipment for her most recent and exhilarating trip into the wasteland.  What she lacked in caps she made up for by having more than enough raw ingredients to turn into salves and elixirs.  She would sell them then fund her next trip out into the wasteland.

But, she was nothing more than a mere fly, attracted to a painfully bright neon sign that declared, “Valentine’s Detective Agency.”  It was almost like something from an old detective novel she had once dragged out of a musty old library.  When she opened the door to the agency, half trying to think of some excuse on why she would even check out such a service, she stopped dead in her tracks.

In the desk was not the middle aged, pot bellied, seedy looking man she had expected the good detective to be.  He wasn’t even human, a synth of some sort.  An…alcoholic synth, was that possible?  His thin, claw like hand had drawn a bottle of cheap looking scotch to his gray lips.  It was almost endearing as he noticed her and quickly tried to hide the hooch from his potential customer.  June’s own gentle eyes locked with the clear yellow ones of the synth.

“What..” she began her face scrunching up with thought, she then took a step forward, then another.  Any sort of intelligent questions was squashed as she managed to choke out.  “Oh my god are you ok?”  something that was completely, confusingly, inappropriate, but that was the norm for first interactions and June, no matter what the person was.

She swiftly closed the gap between her and the synth, who must have been Detective Valentine.  She took his chin in her hands and she began to inspect every circuit and wire she could.

“Erm...Yes, I am alright...” /He gently pulls her hands away from his face with both of his, though he is notably more careful with his clawed hand. He then stands to his full height, of about 6ft on the dot, and gives her a kind smile./