101 (Percico/Pernico)

---Chapter Five---

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Nico asked him, his voice heavy from his crying earlier.

"I don't know which direction I came from," Percy admitted. "I've never been outside before this."

"You've never been outside?" Nico asked incredulously.

Percy merely shook his head. "No."

"Well, do you see anything familiar at all?" Nico asked.

Percy paused for a moment before he saw a withered shrub on the grassy ground that he remembered avoiding so it wouldn't ruin the legs of his jumpsuit.

"Yeah, I remember that bush."

He approached it, bent down, and felt at the branches. He then looked up and saw a hill that looked like one he had to climb.

"I think it's this way," Percy told the others before walking off in the direction of the hill.

Nico felt a strong sense of foreboding in the pit of his stomach before waving it off. Percy knew where he was going. Probably. He followed the nineteen-year old reluctantly as they walked over the hill—going in the wrong direction.

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The sun was nearing the horizon and Percy was utterly lost. He did not have directions on his Pip-Boy for his own vault. He regretted it, but he did not want to admit to the others that he had no idea where he was going. They would yell at him and he didn't know how to deal with strangers yelling at him.

Eventually, he voiced his ignorance of direction when they reached an old baseball stadium. "Yeah, this is definitely not it. I—I have no idea where it is."

The three other males groaned out of exhaustion and exasperation.

"Do you know where we are?"

"This is Diamond City. It was a pre-war stadium for some sport before people began to inhabit it. Baseball, I think," informed the commander.

"Baseball?" Nico tilted his head at the green building before realizing what exactly it was. "I-I know this place! This is Fenway Park! My dad took me here when I was six and we watched them play. Some guy caught a foul ball and gave it to me."

Percy and the others looked at him with a confused look.

"...Right," Burke raised his eyebrows. "So we should go in and ask if we can stay there for the night. We can head back to Headquarters to download the directions to Vault 101 tomorrow."

There seemed to be a unanimous agreement on that, since they all filed into the former baseball stadium.

As they went inside, Nico saw that there were many scattered buildings in the middle of the large, reinforced structure. Nico remembered the bleachers, now old, rusted, and empty, full of cheering people. He could still hear the echoes of the people and the loud cracks the balls made against the wooden bats when they collided. He remembered the smell of hot cheese and corn dogs, but it was all gone now. Everything was gone now.

"Where can we stay?" asked Percy.

The commander merely shrugged before walking toward a man holding a baseball bat.

"Do you know where we can find lodgings?" It was formulated as a question, but it sounded more like a demand.

The man shrugged. "I can't say, but would you be interested in a swatter?"

Nico looked at him, confused. "What's a swatter?"

"It's a tradition. You see this place here?"