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Sico turned, his boots carrying him back toward the heart of the Republic, but the sight of the green rows stayed with him. Sarah was right. Preston was right. Jenny was right. And it was his job to make sure every piece of it held together, because rifles and water were nothing without bread on the table.
The next day dawned gray, the kind of gray that seemed baked into the bones of the Commonwealth. Clouds hung low, mottled and heavy, muting the light so the world looked as if it had been painted in ash. The chill carried with it the faint tang of rust and soil turned over too many times.
Jenny was already awake, already moving. By the time Sico came down the packed dirt path toward the southern edge of the farm, she was barking orders, her voice cutting sharp through the morning stillness. A cluster of men and women moved around her like parts of a machine—hauling planks of wood, driving stakes into the ground, unloading sacks of seed from rattling wagons.
Sico slowed as he reached the crest of a rise overlooking the work. For a moment, he just stood there, arms folded across his chest, watching the life he'd gambled on being built one shovel at a time.
Five farms. That's what Jenny had said she wanted. Not just one more patch of tilled soil. Not just a token expansion. Five.
The number sat in Sico's head like an iron weight. Enough to turn the Republic's stomach from hollow to steady. Enough to keep soldiers on their feet. Enough to keep children laughing with carrots spilling from baskets instead of crying with ribs showing through their skin. Enough to give this place the smallest measure of permanence.
Jenny spotted him and raised a hand in a rough wave, then immediately went back to pointing at a pair of workers who were struggling to lift a heavy plank into place. She moved like someone who had the whole plan in her head and couldn't spare the patience for anyone not keeping up.
Sico descended the rise, boots crunching against gravel, and by the time he reached her side, Jenny was already spitting dirt out of her mouth and snapping at a worker who had hammered a stake in crooked.
"Straight!" she barked. "You want the walls falling on your head in a week? Do it again!"
The worker muttered an apology, yanking the stake out of the soil.
Sico waited until Jenny's focus loosened enough that he could catch her eye. "You're building five?"
Jenny's face was streaked with sweat and dirt, but her grin was sharp. "Five. You told me to think bigger. So I did."
"I told you to feed an army," Sico said, voice low enough that only she could hear.
"And this is how you do it," Jenny shot back. "One farm won't cut it. Three might. Five will."
Sico looked out across the strip of land they were claiming. The southern edge was rougher than the rest of the fields—rockier, more uneven. Chunks of asphalt jutted out from the ground where the skeleton of the old overpass loomed, casting a crooked shadow across the work site.
"You're sure this soil can take it?" he asked.
Jenny wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead, smearing a streak of mud into her hairline. "No," she admitted bluntly. "But nothing out here should have grown in the first place. Doesn't mean it won't. We'll break the rocks, churn it until it gives, mix it with compost from the waste pits. Might take a season, but it'll hold. You give me five farms, I'll give you enough food to keep your soldiers fighting for years."
Her confidence wasn't reckless. It was born of long months kneeling in the dirt, coaxing sprouts from places most people had written off as dead. Sico had seen her fail before. He'd also seen her come back, harder, smarter, more stubborn than the soil itself.
"Alright," he said finally, nodding. "Five it is."
Jenny's grin widened. "Good. Then grab a shovel. You're not standing around looking important while the rest of us bleed blisters."
Sico's brow arched faintly. "Commander with a shovel?"
"You want bread on your table, Commander? Then earn it."
There was something in her tone—half challenge, half camaraderie—that made the corner of Sico's mouth twitch. Without a word, he reached for a shovel leaning against a pile of stakes.
The reaction from the workers was immediate. Heads turned. Murmurs spread. Seeing their commander dig into the dirt beside them wasn't something they'd expected.
But Sico didn't care about expectation. He drove the shovel into the stubborn soil, the metal edge striking rock, the vibration running up his arm. Again. And again. And again.
Beside him, Jenny smirked. "Not bad. Guess you're good for more than shouting orders after all."
"Careful," Sico said evenly, hefting another mound of dirt, "or I might make a habit of it."
Jenny snorted. "Please. You'd die of boredom before I let you plant a single row straight."
The hours that followed were a blur of sweat, dirt, and grit. Workers broke apart stubborn slabs of asphalt with sledgehammers while others carted away rubble in wheelbarrows patched with salvaged sheet metal. Teams drove posts into the ground, stringing lines of wire and rope to mark out the plots. Youngsters ran back and forth carrying sacks of seed, laughing as they nearly toppled under the weight.
Sico moved among them—not barking orders, not hovering, but there. His presence anchored them, a quiet weight that reminded them why they were breaking their backs in the first place. Every so often, someone would glance his way and straighten their spine, gripping their shovel tighter, driving it into the soil with renewed purpose.
At midday, Jenny called a halt. Workers collapsed onto crates and overturned barrels, tearing open the packs of dried meat and bread that had been hauled down from the stores. The air smelled of sweat and earth, but also of something sweeter—possibility.
Sico stood a little apart, watching the workers laugh through their exhaustion, watching Jenny crouch in the dirt with her own meal balanced on her knees, never stopping to rest unless forced.
He thought of Sarah's words: Food isn't just fuel. It's hope.
She'd been right. This wasn't just about feeding soldiers. It was about giving every tired soul here a reason to believe that tomorrow might not be worse than today.
After the break, the work resumed. The five plots began to take shape—rectangles of churned earth lined with stakes, irrigation pipes dragged from the older farms and laid carefully into trenches. Jenny moved among her people like a general, correcting, encouraging, demanding.
By late afternoon, the first seeds were in the ground. Rows upon rows of them, buried beneath soil that still smelled faintly of rust and ash.
Jenny straightened, her back stiff, her hands caked in dirt up to the wrists. She exhaled hard, then looked at Sico.
"There," she said simply. "Five farms. Not much to look at yet. But give it time."
Sico studied the dark soil, the way it stretched out like a promise waiting to be kept. He felt the ache in his shoulders from hours of digging, the grit under his nails. And for the first time in a long time, he felt something like pride—not for himself, but for them. For what they'd built with their bare hands.
He nodded once, slow but firm. "Time's something I'll make sure you have."
Jenny's grin returned, tired but fierce. "Good. Then we'll give you bread enough to keep this Republic standing."
The soil still clung to their boots, damp and stubborn, when Jenny pushed herself upright and looked over the rough patch of earth that was now the first of the five. It wasn't beautiful—not yet. To anyone else it might have looked like nothing but churned mud and tired hands. But to her, and to Sico watching from a short distance away, it was the beginning of something bigger. The kind of beginning you could plant a future in.
She brushed her palms against her trousers, streaking them darker with dirt. Her chest still rose and fell fast, her body caught between exhaustion and stubborn momentum. She turned to Sico, eyes glinting.
"Alright," she said, rolling her shoulders like a prizefighter readying for another round. "One down."
Sico raised a brow. "And four to go."
Jenny smirked, teeth flashing through a face smeared with sweat and soil. "Don't look so grim, Commander. You'll scare the seeds out of the ground before they've even had a chance to sprout."
He let out a soft snort through his nose. "Seeds don't scare. People do."
"Then it's a good thing we're both here," she said. "Because scared people don't eat. And people who don't eat don't fight."
Her gaze shifted past him, down to the stretch of uneven ground that would become the second farm. The land was rougher still than the first—broken concrete and tattered weeds where the bones of old foundations had once sat. The ruins of a pre-war shed leaned to one side like a drunk, its metal panels buckled and rusted through.
Jenny gave a low whistle, as if calling to a stubborn mule. "That one's going to fight us."
Sico followed her eyes, measuring it with a soldier's gaze. "Then we fight back."
She grinned. "Now you're talking."
They didn't waste time.
The workers, though weary, rose again when Jenny barked out the next set of orders. She had a gift for it—knowing just when to push, just when to joke, just when to remind them why the blisters mattered. "We're not just planting food," she told them, voice carrying over the clatter of shovels and the groan of wheelbarrows. "We're planting tomorrow. So unless you want to wake up hungry a year from now, you keep digging."
Sico stayed close, lending his weight to the hardest parts of the work. He drove the tip of a sledgehammer into the concrete until it cracked into jagged chunks, then hauled the pieces away with another man at his side. Each swing echoed like a gunshot, each fracture a reminder that even the old world's bones could be broken if you hit hard enough.
And slowly, the second farm began to take shape.
The ground was cleared first, the rubble dragged into heaps to be carted off later. Then came the churning, the long backbreaking labor of turning over soil that hadn't seen daylight in two centuries. Dust rose in gray clouds, clinging to skin, hair, and lungs until every breath tasted of grit.
Jenny didn't spare herself. She was in the thick of it—on her knees with a hand rake, pulling out stubborn roots, breaking apart clods of soil, showing the younger workers how to mix in the compost they'd hauled in from the pits. Her hands bled in thin lines where blisters had torn open, but she didn't slow.
When one of the teenagers flagged and nearly dropped his shovel, Jenny caught him by the wrist before he fell. She shoved a flask of water into his hand, waited until he gulped it down, then pointed him back toward the rows. "You don't quit," she told him firmly but not unkindly. "You rest, then you keep going. That's how you win against dirt. It's stubborn. You've got to be more stubborn."
The boy nodded, cheeks flushed, and picked his shovel back up.
Sico watched the exchange from a short distance, and though he said nothing, he filed it away in his head. Jenny wasn't just building farms. She was building people who believed they could do the impossible. And in this world, that was worth more than steel or bullets.
As the second farm stretched wider, the question of fences came up.
It was Sico who raised it, pausing to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "Open soil's a gift to more than just us. Raiders, wild dogs, even hungry settlers passing through. We don't fence it, we'll lose it."
Jenny straightened from where she'd been tamping soil with her boots, squinting at the land around them. The horizon was flat here, broken only by the rusted ribcage of the overpass and the jagged treeline beyond. Vulnerable ground, she realized. Too open.
"You're right," she said. Her tone wasn't grudging—just practical. "We'll need fences. Strong ones. Tall enough to keep out more than rabbits."
"Wood won't last," Sico said. "Too many mouths for firewood already."
Jenny nodded. "Then we use what we've got. Scrap. Wire. Hell, those concrete chunks you just broke up? We can set them as posts."
It wasn't elegant, but it was survival.
So the work shifted. Teams dragged in rusted sheets of corrugated metal, warped iron rods, anything they could salvage from the ruins. Old chain-link fencing was hauled in from the northern side of Sanctuary, patched together with lengths of barbed wire scavenged from God-knows-where. It was ugly, jagged, and dangerous to handle—but it would keep things out.
Sico lent his strength again, driving broken rebar into the ground like stakes, then anchoring the fencing against it. Each clang of hammer on metal sent sparks flying, each knot of wire tightened with bare hands until palms split and bled.
Jenny supervised with her usual sharp eye, making sure no gap was left wide enough for a man—or even a dog—to slip through. "This isn't about pretty," she reminded anyone who grumbled at the rough look of it. "This is about keeping what's ours, ours."
By the time the sun sagged low and orange across the horizon, the second farm stood fenced on three sides, the fourth still waiting for dawn. The workers were bone-weary, their bodies sagging like cloth hung too long in the rain, but when they looked at the rows of turned soil behind those fences, a spark lit in their eyes.
That night, they ate together by lantern light. The meal was simple—stew thinned with water, bread tough enough to chip a tooth—but no one complained. They ate with dirty hands and tired laughter, sharing what they had.
Jenny sat cross-legged on an overturned crate, chewing slow, her eyes already drifting toward the dark outline of the half-finished fences. Sico joined her in silence, his own bowl in hand. For a while, they just ate, listening to the crackle of the fire and the murmur of voices.
Finally, Jenny set her empty bowl aside. "You know," she said, her voice low enough that only he could hear, "we're doing something bigger than farms here."
Sico turned his head toward her, one brow raised. "Go on."
She gestured with a dirt-caked hand toward the workers, the laughter, the faint songs someone had started humming. "Look at them. Half of them came here strangers. Most of them didn't believe they'd see next winter. Now they're building something that might outlast them. That's not just food, Sico. That's… roots. That's belonging."
Her words settled deep. Sico thought about it as he chewed the last bite of his bread. She was right. This wasn't just survival. It was the start of a people binding themselves to a land, to each other, to an idea. The kind of thing nations were born from.
He swallowed hard, then gave a slow nod. "Then we make sure it holds."
Jenny's mouth tugged into a smile, weary but fierce. "Damn right we do."
Three days had passed, though to the men and women who worked those fields, it felt like weeks folded tight into aching bodies. The days bled together in a rhythm of shovels striking soil, hammers clanging against scrap, voices raised in orders and in laughter. Muscles grew sore, hands grew raw, but something else grew with them too—resolve, the kind that only comes when a group of people suffer toward a shared purpose.
By now, four farms stood. Four rectangles of stubborn earth turned fertile, fenced off with the best patchwork defenses they could muster. And now, on this gray morning, they were working the last one. The fifth. The final piece of Jenny's impossible promise.
The land chosen for the last farm was unforgiving. At some point before the war, a parking lot had stretched across this patch, and the ground was still littered with broken asphalt and weeds that had grown feral in the centuries since. The workers had already broken their backs tearing it apart, carting away slabs of black stone with wheelbarrows that squealed like dying animals. The fences were already rising around it—rusted chain-link laced with twisted wire, jagged enough that anyone trying to climb over would leave their skin behind.
Now only the soil remained, dark and damp where they had churned it with compost and sweat. It was ready. Almost.
Jenny knelt in the dirt, her knees caked, her face streaked with grime. She pushed her fingers into the earth, testing the softness, the depth. Her hand lingered there a long moment, as if she were listening to something. Finally, she sat back on her heels and exhaled.
"It'll take," she said, her voice carrying just enough for those nearest to hear. "It'll hold seed."
Around her, weary faces lifted. It was a small thing, just words, but after three days of blistering labor, it was all the permission they needed. A ripple of relief passed through the gathered workers, shoulders loosening, mouths tugging into tired smiles.
Sico stepped closer, boots crunching against gravel. His body ached as much as anyone's, though he'd never say it out loud. The shovel in his hand was as much a weapon now as his rifle ever had been, the steel edge dulled from days of hacking at stubborn earth. He looked down at the churned rows stretching out beneath the half-finished fence, then at Jenny.
"Almost finished," he said.
Jenny wiped her brow with the back of her wrist, smearing another streak of dirt into her hairline. She grinned, though it was a weary thing. "Almost. Just need to plant the seed."
She said it like it was the easiest part, but everyone knew it wasn't. Planting meant more than just dropping kernels into the soil. It meant committing. It meant believing those tiny things would survive where so much else in this world had died. It meant staking their future on hope fragile enough to fit in a cupped palm.
Sico looked out over the workers. Their clothes hung damp with sweat, their faces lined with exhaustion. But their eyes—those eyes still burned. He could see it in the way they held themselves, in the way they leaned on their shovels but didn't collapse. They were bone-tired, yes, but they were also alive with something greater.
Pride.
"This is it," Jenny said, pushing herself to her feet. She gestured toward the sacks of seed waiting at the edge of the field—corn, mutfruit, razorgrain, melons, a little bit of everything they could spare. "Fifth farm. Last one. After today, we'll have more food in the ground than this Republic has ever seen."
One of the older men chuckled, voice rough as gravel. "You make it sound like we're about to win a war."
Jenny shot him a look that was half amusement, half deadly serious. "We are."
The man blinked, then nodded, the laughter fading from his face. He understood. They all did.
The planting began slow. Jenny insisted on rows—straight, clean, deliberate. "Sloppy rows give sloppy harvests," she snapped at anyone who rushed, though her tone softened after. "And besides, if you're going to sweat your blood into the ground, you might as well make it look like something."
Children ran with baskets, carrying handfuls of seed down the rows. Older hands stooped to press them into the dirt, covering them carefully as though tucking them in for sleep. The sound of it was almost gentle compared to the clatter and crash of the days before. No hammers. No sledge striking stone. Just the soft shuffle of boots, the pat of soil, the quiet murmur of voices carrying old farming songs Jenny had taught them.
Sico worked among them, his presence silent but steady. Every so often, someone would glance his way—startled still, maybe, at the sight of their commander's broad hands pressing seed into the earth like any other man. But soon enough they stopped staring. He wasn't above them here. He was one of them.
It mattered. He could feel it in the way their energy shifted, in the way spines straightened, in the way the songs grew louder. A commander with dirt under his nails was worth following. Worth trusting.
The fence-building hadn't stopped, either. On the far side of the field, a crew was lashing the last lengths of wire into place, their hammers ringing in time with the workers' songs. The fence wasn't pretty—jagged, rust-bitten, dangerous to touch—but when the final post was sunk into the soil, a cheer rose up from the men and women working it.
Jenny looked over at Sico and smirked. "That's it. Last wall's up. Farm number five is fenced and ready."
He nodded once, the corner of his mouth tugging up. "Then all that's left is to finish the planting."
She tilted her head at him, eyes glinting. "You sound almost eager."
"Maybe I am," he said, surprising himself with how true it sounded.
By late afternoon, the fifth farm was almost done. Rows stretched neat and even across the churned soil, seeds nestled into their beds. Only a few more baskets remained, their contents dwindling with each careful hand that pressed them into the ground.
Jenny stood in the center of the field, her back to the sinking sun. She looked around at what they had built—not just this farm, not just the fence, but all of it. Five farms. Five living promises in a world that had forgotten how to keep them.
Her throat tightened, though she didn't let it show. She raised her voice instead, strong enough to carry across the field.
"Three days ago, this was nothing but broken stone and wasted ground. And look at it now. Look at what you've done." She swept her arm to take in the five fenced plots around them, their dark soil lined like soldiers standing at attention. "This is more than food. This is survival. This is strength. This is the Republic proving it can stand on its own two legs."
The workers stilled, listening. Their faces, streaked with sweat and dirt, turned toward her.
Jenny's voice softened, but it didn't lose its weight. "In time, these farms will feed every mouth among us. They'll keep soldiers on their feet. They'll keep children alive. They'll keep hope alive. And when the Brotherhood comes knocking—and they will—we'll face them knowing our people are fed, our backs are strong, and our roots are deep."
A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd, low and steady.
Jenny bent, scooped up a handful of seed from the last basket, and held it high so all could see. "This is the last handful. The last farm. When these go in, the work is done. So let's finish it together."
She crouched and pressed the seeds into the soil. Then she stepped back, leaving room for Sico.
He hesitated only a moment, then knelt beside her. His hand—broad, scarred, more used to gripping steel than cradling life—took the seeds from the basket. He lowered them into the earth, covering them with a care that surprised even him.
When he straightened, the field was silent. Dozens of eyes on him.
"Done," he said simply.
And with that word, something broke loose in the crowd. Cheers rose, ragged but fierce, echoing across the farm. Hands clapped shoulders. Voices shouted names. A few even sang. As the fifth farm has finish build, and the fence stood.
________________________________________________
• 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:-