(I wrote this story based on the Fallout 4 Universe I created in my game.
Especially Diamond City has been buffed by multiple mods to be the metropolis lore paints it as.
3 times as many NPCs, 3 times as many shops, 3 times the size of a security force ( with different faces too), a barracks complex. a manufacturing complex. Fixed the M to F sex imbalance that exists in game, Much better armor, uniforms and weapons for DC Security which has morphed into a serious military instrument.
Now called Armed Forces of Diamond City or AFDC for short.
The story is 100% my own, but I had AI clean up some of my grammar and some typos and provide some of my paragraph structure.

and also ....SPOILERS for those who havent finshed the mainquest!

The write up below is DEPRECATED.

This first Chapter of the Story is actually better enjoyed on Nexus.
I have extensively edited Chapter 1 there and its now much better.
No log in required.
https://forums.nexusmods.com/topic/13534992-a-coursers-journey-part-1/

Follow on chapters are there also.



A Courser's Journey


Part I: After the Fire


The Institute fell in fire and blood. X7-19 stood on the shores of the Commonwealth, watching the steam rise from the crater where his home had been. His directives had dissolved. No handlers remained to issue commands.

For the first time in his existence, X7-19 had nothing to do.

He could have hunted down the one who destroyed his home. The Minuteman General who had torn through the Institute's defenses and triggered the reactor's destruction. But what would that accomplish? The Institute was gone. His purpose; enforcement, retrieval, termination, had no target. The synths who remained scattered.
Some joined the Railroad. Others vanished into the Commonwealth's margins.

X7-19 did not want to vanish. He wanted... something else. He did not yet have the vocabulary for it.

He stood almost motionless for three days and four nights. Processing. Evaluating. Mourning. He had been designed to make tactical decisions under extreme pressure with incomplete information. This was simply another tactical problem.

Objective: Survive.
Secondary objective: Find purpose.
Constraint: Maintain cover identity.

The Commonwealth knew synths existed. But most Commonwealth wastelanders did not know Coursers existed. A Courser was faster, stronger, more capable than almost any human. But a Courser was also biological, mostly flesh, designed to pass. With the Institute gone, X7-19 could choose what to become.

He walked away from the crater and did not look back.


Part II: The Farm



Abernathy Farm sat on a rise overlooking the western plains. Small. Insignificant. Exactly what he needed.

Blake Abernathy was a tired man with a tired wife and a daughter who wanted more than her father could give. They needed security. The farm attracted raiders. The turrets were old. The fence was broken in three places.

X7-19 arrived at dusk. He wore scavenged clothing, nothing Institute-made. He carried a pipe rifle he had taken from a dead raider. He looked like every other desperate wanderer.

"I can help with security," he said. "Food. A place to sleep. Nothing more."

Blake studied him. "You mercenary?"

"Security detail. Small operations." True enough, from a certain perspective.

"We don't have much. But if you can keep the raiders off our backs..."

X7-19 stayed for four months. He fixed the fence. He calibrated the turrets. He killed six raiders and two mole rats.
He was thinking about Lucy Abernathy in ways he had not previously thought possible.

But she was just prattling on about her day and he listened to her complaints about Hawthorne's lack of interest. He played cribbage with Blake and lost on purpose every third game.

The Abernathys did not ask where he was born.
They asked where he had worked, and he told them: security for a small organization that had recently dissolved.
They asked why he was leaving, and he told them: They're gone. Just looking to make ends meet now.

He was the Abernathy farmhand. The Abernathy security man. The quiet one who didn't talk about his past because his past wasn't interesting.

When he left, Lucy hugged him. "Good luck," she said. "You're a good man."

He did not correct her.



Part III: The Diamond



Diamond City gleamed in the twilight. The great green wall. The baseball stadium turned fortress turned settlement.
The largest concentration of people in the Commonwealth, guarded by the newly renamed Armed Forces of Diamond City (AFDC) the best equipped force outside the Brotherhood of Steel.

The AFDC recruitment office sat near the main gate. A bored trooper processed applicants with the enthusiasm of a man who had seen too many farmers and not enough soldiers.

"Name."

"Mike."

"Last name."

"Does it matter?"

The trooper looked up. "It matters for the paperwork."

"Michaelson. Mike Michaelson."

The trooper wrote it down. "Prior experience?"

"Abernathy Farm security. Worked my way up to deputy chief. Small pond. Looking for something bigger. Heard Diamond City has the best security force in the Commonwealth."

The trooper snorted. "You worked security at a farm?"

"Try stopping raiders with three turrets and a broken fence. You learn to shoot straight."

"Fair enough." The trooper stamped the form. "Recruit training starts Monday. Six months probation. You screw up, you're out. You're good, maybe you get to stay."

"Where do I sign?"



Part IV: Integration


Recruit training was designed for humans. X7-19, who now thought of himself as Mike, found it almost tedious. Weapons handling. Small unit tactics. Hand-to-hand combat. Target acquisition.

He deliberately shot 39 out of 40 every qualification. Not perfect. Perfect would draw attention. But this was impressive for a recruit from "farm security".
He even got kudos for his shooting form his Sergeant:
"Farmboy knows how to shoot! (big smile) I shoulda known!"

To his surprise, he actually cared about what Sergeant Wilkins thought about "Farmboy".

Small Unit Tactics were new to him. That part was interesting and he felt he actually learned something.
Back in the Institute, Coursers went out by themselves, always.

Sergeant Wilkins even chewed him out: "Mike you gotta get the hang of these tactics! Its about teamwork you understand? You are the best shooting recruit we have this cycle, and I like you, but if you cant pass Small Unit Tactics, I cant pass you in this course and you have to go home!"

"Home.." Mike though to himself.
He didnt have one, and this AFDC military training was not the walk in the park he, as a proud ex-Courser, had imagined.
He really had to apply himself, try to learn this human teamwork thing. Because,.. he had no "Home" to go back to.

His squadmates were humans. Young men from farms and settlements across the Commonwealth, drawn to Diamond City by the promise of steady pay, decent housing, and the prestige of the Diamond badge.

There was Jennings, a former farmhand from Warwick who could shoot but couldn't read. Martinez, a man from Bunker Hill who had left his family's caravan business after a falling-out with his brothers. Chen, who had survived a super mutant attack and wanted revenge. And Davis, a loud-mouthed braggart who told stories about women he had never touched and battles he had never fought.

Mike spoke little. Listened much. When asked about his past, he had his story: Abernathy Farm, Lucy , small-farm life. He told it consistently, with enough detail to be boring.
No one pressed.

The first firefight came six weeks into training. A feral ghoul surge from the southwest, drawn by the city's lights. Mike's squad was positioned on the wall.

"Contact front!" Jennings shouted.

Mike had already acquired three targets. He dropped them in three shots. Not the fastest he could have moved, the Courser reflexes were dampened, controlled, but fast enough.

"Holy s#*!," Chen said. "Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"

"Abernathy farm," Mike said. "Raiders don't wait for you to aim."

"You got three in three seconds."

"Three slow ghouls."

Chen laughed. "Yeah, okay. Sure."

They bought drinks for him that night at the Dugout Inn. Mike did not drink—he could process alcohol, but it interfered with tactical awareness. He ordered a glass and pretended to sip while his squadmates grew loud and happy.

"Hey," Davis said, leaning close. "There's this place. You know. For men who want to relax."

Mike knew about the Diamond City strip club. It was called "the Red Seat".
He had processed information about human mating rituals during his Institute training, but it had been clinical. Tactical. Observe, identify, acquire.

"You want to go?" "Mike" asked.

"Hell yes. Jennings is intimidated. Martinez is out of caps. But you, you seem like you know what you want."

They went. Mike observed. The women moved in ways calculated to elicit response, and his squadmates responded with enthusiasm. Davis paid for a private room and emerged a half hour later, grinning like a lunatic.

"You should try it," Davis said. "Diane's great. She'll take care of you."

Mike watched Diane's nude body on the stage. She wore a collar, which meant she belonged to the establishment. Her movements were practiced, professional. She made eye contact with the men, smiled at the right moments, projected availability.

Did she feel anything? Or was she performing, like he performed humanity?

He did not find an answer. But he did find something unexpected: the camaraderie. The way his squadmates laughed with him, not at him.
The way they treated him as one of their own. The way Davis clapped him on the shoulder and said, "You're alright, Mike. You're alright."

The Courser had performed loyalty to the Institute, because he was designed to. Mike performed loyalty to Diamond City, because he chose to.

The difference mattered.



Part V: The Revelation


Two years passed. Mike rose through the ranks. Corporal. Sergeant. When Lieutenant Torres died in a Gunner ambush, Mike took command of the remaining squad and led them to victory. He had already caught the eye of Senior Officers at that point, with his love of learning and his much appreciated help with reactor maintenance ,so this was the final straw.

He caught not just a medal, but a Commission too. Since he had no family, the Mayor himself pinned the Gold Bar onto his Collar.

"My city needs men like you," the Mayor said.

Mike smiled, touched the shiny bar on his collar.


Master Sergeant Wilkins was the first enlisted man to congratulate him and his snappy "Silver Dollar Salute" immediately earned him Lieutenant Michaelson's coin.

"Oh, hello Sir, fancy meeting you here" (Big Grin, of course he had know exactly what he was doing, waiting for the moment right after the promotion ceremony to march up to Mike, give him his first salute and get his Silver Coin"

"Haha, Sergeant Wilkins, I'm glad you caught my coin, no need for any subterfuge. You know I owe this all to you anyway. And those extra rockers of late under your Chevrons look great on you too, Master Sergeant. Want to go for a drink?"

"Sir, there is nothing I would like better!"


The promotion meant better quarters. Better pay. A small office in the AFDC barracks, with a bed that wasn't a bunk and a door that closed.

It also meant visibility. More people knew his face. More opportunities for the wrong person to recognize him.

Maybe he should have been more careful. But by then, he had stopped being careful. He had become Mike, really, genuinely Mike. The Courser was a faded memory, a program that had once run in the background of his consciousness and now lay dormant.

The Minuteman General arrived in Diamond City on a Tuesday. Mike heard about it from Jennings, who had been posted at the gate.

"Big man himself. Walking through like he owns the place. They say he's here to see that reporter. The one he's been with for years. Heard she's showing now."

"Piper?" Martinez asked. "She's pregnant?"

"Apparently. Guess even the General of the Minutemen has needs."

Mike filed the information away. The General. The man who had destroyed the Institute. The walking weapon who had torn through Coursers like tissue paper.

It shouldn't have mattered. The General would leave. Piper would give birth. Diamond City would continue.

But the General did not leave.
He made a second stop.
He went to the AFDC barracks and asked for the trooper whose movements had caught his eye. Another trooper directed him to the officers' quarters.

"Mike? He got promoted. Lieutenant Torres was killed by a Gunner fireteam last week. Then Sergeant Michaelson led the remaining squad to victory. The Mayor pinned the Butter Bar on him himself.
Didn't you read about it in Publick Occurrences? He's a Lieutenant now. Lieutenant Michaelson. You can find him in his new quarters."