Victoria Watts

Victoria Watts is a NPC in Fallout 3. She is involved in The Replicated Man quest.

Ms. Watts is involved in an organization called The Railroad which, like it's namesake, works to protect escaped slaves, mainly androids. She has traveled to Rivet City to protect the identity of Harkness. After you are asked to hunt him down by The Institute, she will request that you feign his death using an Android Component that she gives you. If you assist her in saving Harkness, she will later ask you to not speak to her again (for their safety).

Appearances
Victoria Watts only appears in Fallout 3. When you have started The Replicated Man, she sometimes appears when you go outside. If the quest is triggered outside Rivet City, perhaps in Big Town and followed up on in Megaton, she may confront you before you leave Megaton.

Aside from her travels to seek you out, she can be found on the upper balcony of the Rivet City Marketplace, near the pool table.

Also her appearances may be random as she has been known to be encountered almost anywhere, including inside Little Lamplight and outside of the Fairfax Ruins, regarding the The Replicated Man quest.

Victoria Watts somehow appeared on the bow of Rivet City due to some abnormality on my copy of the game.

Appearance Triggers
Rather than being a random encounter, Victoria Watts seems to home in on you. Once triggered, she starts running towards you from Rivet City. Thus, the time and place of the encounter depend on where you were when you triggered her and where you happen to be by the time she's covered the distance to you. As such, you can potentially meet her anywhere, including in rather incongruous locations and situations (such as inside of Arlington Library.) She also seems to be able to go through locked doors as she has been reported to turn up in your Tenpenny Tower Suite. This can also be unfortunate, however, if she happens to catch up with you in a particularly dangerous area, such as Old Olney, since she could very easily die on the way out after delivering her message.

The actual trigger for Victoria's homing instinct appears to be using dialogue options with other NPCs to ask about the android such as when one player asked Moira about the android and was acosted by Victoria outside of Craterside Supply upon exiting. The availability of these android-related NPC dialogue options, in turn, seems to depend either on getting the quest from the main source in Rivet City, or by finding at least 2 holotapes or other notes about the android in other locations. If you have not been to Rivet City, therefore, but just innocently use the android-related dialogue options, your subsequent encounter with Victoria can be somewhat surprising, especially if it happens during a firefight (see below).

Victoria's purpose is to present the player with an ethical choice in this quest. As such, she is immortal until she delivers her message to the player. This can cause problems if the player is currently in combat. Victoria fast-travels to the player's general vicinity and then enters the 3D world at the farthest creature-appearance distance from the player. From this point, she runs toward the player. Because she is friendly to the player at this point, creatures hostile to the player will attack her. She completely ignores them (she's after you and only has a knife anyway) and they can't kill her. As a result, Victoria can easily run up to the player closely pursued by a whole train of enemies. This can lead to combat being interrupted by her speech, and to her being hit by stray bullets.

Post Dialogue
After speaking with you, Victoria Watts will remain in the general area in which she first encountered you. She may attempt to travel to Rivet City, but she is incapable of "fast-traveling", and only moves position if the player is in the same active map cell as her. As a result, she is almost certain to be killed and eaten in the Wasteland if encountered far away from Rivet City.

If Victoria Watts reaches Rivet City, she will join the population there and perform a generic Rivet City citizen daily schedule. She can be spoken to again by the player, but has no additional dialogue.

Loot
After she delivers the message to you, it is possible for Victoria to die. In the event of her death, she is holding a regular Combat Knife, a Wasteland Settler Outfit, and, strangely, Zimmer's Key. Zimmer's Key unlocks his room on the upper deck of Rivet City. In her dialogue, she mentions "not to ask" her how she obtained Zimmer's Key, suggesting that she might have used her womanly charms to procure them from his room. Killing her does not result in negative karma. Rivet City Security doesn't seem to mind if you redecorate the walls with her grey matter, and nearby citizens will remark "Good riddance."

Bugs

 * She also appears under the water when leaving from Pinkerton (if you leave from the bottom exit) and she waves a knife in her hand and just stands there underwater. When she appears in the water, her head will spin upside down while speaking (this also happens to Eclair). This is most likely a glitch but it's pretty funny. She can also be seen, without weapons, just swimming in this hallway.
 * Victoria can sometimes fail to recognize the completion of the The Replicated Man quest. If you agree to help her, then subsequently resolve the quest otherwise, she will continue to goad you to turn the component over to Dr. Zimmer and tell him Harkness is dead.
 * This occurs if you restore Harkness' memories, get his permission to kill Dr. Zimmer, reveal Harkness to Dr. Zimmer, then kill Dr. Zimmer immediately after you receive the Wired Reflexes perk from him. Harkness acknowledges you killed him (and ignores that you turned him over), but Victoria does not acknowledge any of this.
 * Sometimes she will spawn in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as underwater when you are searching for Pinkerton. She seems to have unlimited breath.
 * She has also been known to spawn in Vault 101 during the quest Trouble on the Homefront, specifically just before confronting the tyrannical Overseer, she appears behind you and begins her dialogue. (observed on Xbox 360, needs further confirmation).
 * This player had her spawn just after defeating the Super Mutants in Big Town. The key point being, the whole town shot her to death after she gave me the android component.
 * Even though she approaches the player away from Rivet City, when you speak to her, she will still say that there is man named pinkerton "here in Rivet City" even if you are no where close to the place.
 * If you kill her as she approaches you but before she speaks with you she will confront you later even though she has already been killed.
 * Sometimes the River City marketplace will randomly go hostile and kill her. (Found in 360 version, needs to be confirmed)