A/N: both Taylor and Nora's POVs. In Nora's POV, this is my own take on the Automatron DLC, so thus a lot of things won't be canon to the official DLC.
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Weeks passed by, and Taylor was finally starting to get acclimated into daily life back on Earth Bet. It helped that Arcadia was a thousand times better than Winslow, and Taylor was actually enjoying school life for once.
She occasionally sat at Glory Girl's table during lunchtime, but mostly she tended to just sit whenever other people wanted her to, as she now had some people asking her to sit with them occasionally so that they could chat with her.
The weirdest part was that Beth now insisted on sitting with her at any table she went to every time and would spend that time telling Taylor everything she had heard so far. It seemed that this was Beth's attempt at making up for all the nasty rumors she helped spread at Winslow, by becoming Taylor's informant and tentative friend. Taylor had to admit that Beth was useful though because without her she would've taken much longer learning the ins and outs of the social circles at Arcadia. It felt weird having somebody from Winslow who used to be one of Emma's background goons who were now doing her best to be Taylor's new best friend, though.
Unfortunately, it seemed that a lot of gang members also went to this school but they were better at hiding their gang affiliations but once you knew how to spot them it became obvious.
In a way, Taylor was grateful to Beth for telling her about the entire school's social lifestyle and all the factions therein, otherwise, she would've blundered her way through it and accidentally earned a few nasty reputations herself that she wouldn't have wanted to have here.
Today, however, they were sitting at Victoria Dallon's table once again… mainly because Taylor wanted to ask Victoria for advice.
"Vicky, your mom's a lawyer, right?" Taylor asked Victoria as she sat down across from the blonde, while Beth went to sit down by her.
"Yeah, why?" Vicky looked slightly puzzled as she answered.
"The PRT's being a pain in my ass. They refuse to let me take my power armor home. I earned that power armor on Earth Gimel, and I'm not about to let anybody else have it. I had this long argument with the ENE director over it, but he isn't budging." Taylor complained.
Vicky raised her eyebrows at that. "Wait. You have power armor?"
Taylor paused. "Didn't I tell you before?"
Victoria could only shake her head, while the rest of the table watched the exchange blatantly, not even trying to disguise the fact that they were listening in.
"Well, I have power armor. Earned it over on Gimel as I said before, while I was working with the local Militia at the time. Right now it's sitting pretty in the workshop they gave me and Nora." Taylor shrugged.
Victoria raised her eyebrows again. "... you have your own official workshop at the PRT? Are you openly a tinker now??"
Taylor sighed. "The PRT wants to hire me considering that they're about to get a shipment of power armor from Gimel as part of the interdimensional trade they're doing with the other earth, and they want somebody with the experience of maintaining and building them on board. Hence, they gave me my own workshop. I've been considering taking the job as it seems to be one with good pay, and my family could use the money. That's it, that's the whole story right there."
Victoria could only nod her head, as she replied. "Yeah, I think I get the whole picture now. That's very interesting."
Amy shook her head. "How can you consider working for them, knowing they were partially responsible for what happened to you? I would've told everyone involved with them to go drop dead if I were you."
Taylor mulled that over as she took a bite out of her meatloaf lunch. She then answered in a slightly rambling way, "I'll admit, I did feel that way initially. But, everyone involved in that mess got a strong serving of Karma they highly deserved. Plus, Kid Win and Vista gave me a very sincere apology for what happened and seemed truthful when they told me that they hadn't liked Sophia very much and wouldn't have condoned what she did to me had they known about it beforehand. According to them, they kept on trying to report Sophia's behavior to Emily Piggot and others, but they kept on getting ignored. I'll admit that if I was a parahuman, I wouldn't want to join the Wards but now it's for a different reason. I forgave everyone on the Wards team because they didn't know much about Sophia, you see, but I'm still leery of the PRT somewhat. I'd be scared that the higher-ups wouldn't listen to my complaints at all about a troublesome new member like they did with Vista and Kid Win. Although that may turn out to be an unfounded fear because Thomas Calvert seems more straightforward than Emily Piggot was?"
Victoria smirked slightly at that. "He's been talking up a good game about keeping everyone accountable. But, I guess we'll see how sincere he is about that in the long run. It hasn't been long since he became the director after all."
Amy frowned slightly. "Just a gut feeling, but he gives me the creeps for some reason. I just don't like him?"
Taylor took another bite of her lunch before asking "But we're getting off-topic. How do I get them to let me take my power armor home? Isn't it illegal for them to hold my property without my explicit permission?"
"Did they say why they wouldn't let you take it home?" one of the other people at the table finally spoke up. A boy named Benny.
Taylor scoffed. "They're worried that the gangs might break into my home and steal it. But, I've already set up security around the house. Anybody doing an unauthorized break-in gets a nasty surprise."
Vicky made a humming noise as she pondered that problem. She then made a sympathetic, sad expression. "I hate to say it but I can see where the PRT is coming from. Power armor isn't that common yet, and we do need to keep it out of the hands of the gangs for as long as we can. Having it stashed away in your basement or whatever would be far too a tempting target while keeping it at the PRT would be far more secure."
Taylor scowled at this. "I guess so. But, going by that logic wouldn't I be a target for kidnapping too? I mean… I could teach others how to make advanced technology from Earth Gimel. I did spend a lot of considerable time learning all the ins and out of their tech… or at least a few of them anyway."
Benny asked curiously, "What could you teach us how to make?"
Taylor shrugged. "Not as much as you'd think. Mostly generators, a few weapons, power armor, and jetpacks. That's it really. That was what I focused on learning more about while I was on Gimel."
Benny's eyes widened. "Jetpacks? You mean, you could build something that lets you fly?"
Taylor just gave Benny a flat stare. "I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no. You need to learn how to fly, and it needs to be paired with power armor too, lest you find yourself flying straight at a wall. Otherwise, you'd be like a fly against a windshield. Splat. I'm not going to have your gory death on my conscience."
Benny looked sheepish at this, while the other kids giggled slightly. Amy merely smirked at this, while Vicky looked thoughtful.
"It all sounds interesting though! I wonder if the PRT would allow you to teach a few classes on Gimel tech, and whenever I could sign up for that." Vicky commented.
Taylor raised her eyebrow at that. "What could you possibly get out of it?"
Vicky grinned. "I just like learning about new things… and learning about the differences between Gimel's tech and Earth Bet's tech sounds interesting as it is."
Amy smirked. "Vicky may not look it, as she looks like a stereotypical dumb blonde… but she's actually a NERD. She's even taking some extra classes at the college right now, just because. I don't know how she manages to have a life when she's constantly busying herself like that."
"HEY!" Vicky said, as she overly exaggerated how completely mock-hurt she was by Amy's snarky commentary. "I'm just not a nerd. I'm the QUEEN of nerds. Get it right already, Amy."
Everyone at the table tittered at this, while Taylor just smiled and shook her head at the silly verbal exchange.
But now she had at least done as Thomas Calvert wanted her to do… give some of the public a plausible reason for why she would be now officially working at the PRT offices, despite not being an intern and or an officer there. Honestly, she couldn't really see herself as a PRT intern if she was being honest despite Thomas suggesting that in the first place. But being hired to maintain the PRT's new power armors that were coming in made far more sense. Thankfully, Thomas Calvert had agreed with that logic.
That way nobody would question why she was now seen coming in and out of the PRT offices with Gracie. Taylor wasn't actually too upset about not being allowed to take her power armor home, as they actually had no room for it, not even in the garage where dad typically parked his car. It was mainly an excuse to put part of the plan into action. She was sure that Vicky would gossip, and let it slip to others that Taylor was now working for the PRT as a power armor mechanic. Besides, Taylor couldn't help but think that job would feel far more productive instead of running around fetching coffee for people or whatever else interns did.
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After school, she did the usual route of taking Gracie out for a walk in the dog park, although this time Rachel wasn't around to meet her again.
But with Rachel's help, she had successfully started training Gracie, and now Gracie learned commands like heel, where she would walk with Taylor side by side, or the sit command. She was also getting very used to the leash.
They did a few laps around the dog park and they headed back home.
It was then that Taylor noted that there was a message on the answering machine from the PRT offices, stating that they had finally completed coming up with designs for Taylor's cape persona.
Shrugging slightly, she then looked over at Gracie. "Want to go for another walk?"
Gracie just tilted her head at Taylor.
With that, she left a note for dad telling him that she'd be over at the PRT building again, and they teleported near to the PRT building in an area where she was sure nobody would see them and then jogged the rest of the way into the building through the front entrance.
The reason for bringing Gracie along, was because the PRT had been nice enough to pick up the slack on buying some of the more expensive wet dog food that Gracie liked in bulk, and this way Taylor would have Gracie get fed while she was in a meeting. And this way they wouldn't have to use up the dry dog food and the bone broth she had been making for weeks today. Win-win.
She left Gracie with a bowl of the aforementioned wet dog food and a bowl of water, in the workshop room where she sometimes "tinkered" on her power armor, and then headed up to the PR dept office.
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--Meanwhile, on Earth Gimel--
Nora had to admit, this was probably one of the weirdest weeks she had thus far ever since she returned home from Earth Bet.
She had gotten around to trying to tie up as many loose ends as much as she could, such as getting Shaun looked at by Dr. Amari. If there were traces of "Father" in Shaun then she definitely needed to do something about that.
Surprisingly enough, Dr. Amari was opening up another Memory Den in Nuka-world, although this one wasn't geared towards paying customers who wanted to relive their best and most beloved memories. Instead, those ones would be geared towards the rehabilitation of feral ghouls, etc. seeing if all their memories could be brought back into a new body. Or if they had to be humanely put of their misery when it turned out that their brains were too badly damaged to hold a single memory, much less any thoughts. Sadly, that seemed to be happening with a few of the ferals they had here. They had been feral for way too long, over 200 years so there was bound to be irreversible damage in that time span. But the ones who have been feral for less time than that seemed to have a higher chance of recovering their old memories and personalities.
It did seem to help Dr. Amari with her research on how to fix damaged brains and brain disorders, though.
But at any rate, That's where Nora and Shaun were at, in order to check whenever Father was still lurking somewhere in Shaun's head, and if he did need to be exorcised as Sally suggested.
Nora couldn't help but feel a sense of Deja Vu as Shaun sat down in one of the memory pods, while Nora went to sit down in her pod. This was just like what she did with Nick with Kellog's synth's component, only this time was somewhat different.
She stared at the "standing by" screen inside the pod, waiting for things to kick in, and finally, things whited out before she was put into that same weird alien landscape she had seen when exploring Kellog's memories….
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Two hours later, Nora got out of the pod with some new insight into the original Shaun's life as he grew up in the institute before he became "father". She wasn't sure how to feel about that. She had always felt cheated by the fact that the kidnappers had taken her chance away to see her biological son's first baby steps, his first crush, his first everything. And now, she got to see most of that secondhand, by rifling through Father's memories… which was indeed there alongside the second Shaun's own, just like he said.
But at the same time, it also made her devastated somewhat because she also got to watch those kidnappers effectively brainwash an innocent boy into an amoral leader of the institute over time. She wanted to reach back in time and stop them from doing that so badly, but she couldn't do that. So all she could do was watch the memories, and watch as an innocent boy grew up into a man who believed that some lifeforms had less value than others, and thus were to be treated like cattle.
But, the good news was that there was no hidden "program" that would overwrite the second Shaun's memories and personality, far as Dr. Amari and Nora could tell. To put it simply, it seemed that Father's memories were merely there, stored away in the "backroom" of Shaun's brain. He had set it up so that the second Shaun would get to evolve on his own but allow room for guidance from Father's memories if he was at a loss on how to feel about things. Hence why young Shaun sometimes got random memory flashbacks that weren't his own.
Apparently, Father thought that would allow him to have a more authentic childhood experience the second time around? He would get to experience the second Shaun's childhood as he was being raised by Nora while silently lurking in the back of Shaun the second's mind like a silent observer. All without making the synth boy an old man in a child's body.
That had been the plan he had, but the old man had failed to take into account that memories alone weren't enough to reform "Father" so that he could fully experience everything that Shaun the second was doing, and hadn't realized that there would only be one true intelligence in Shaun's synth body, and that was Shaun the second's.
Or maybe due to Father's illness, he simply hadn't the time to implant a second intelligence based on his own that would lurk and watch everything that Shaun the Second did. So he did the equivalent of uploading memory components and hoping that those memory components would eventually link themselves together and form an intelligence based on the memories over time?
It seemed as if Father had been desperately trying to cheat death AND trying to reclaim his childhood at the same time. Nora knew he was an amoral monster, but… she couldn't help but feel a degree of pity for the old man. She was probably biased in that he was her biological son, but… the man hadn't asked to be kidnapped as a baby, and then effectively have his entire childhood taken away from him as the institute trained him up to be a mature adult from the get-go. They had micro-managed every aspect of his life and hadn't allowed room for things like romance or any other personal relationships that could've had a positive impact on his emotional development. It was no wonder why he desperately wanted to recapture his childhood, and want to experience all the things that a normal child had. To have a relationship with parents who loved him. He was still a monster…. But… he had been a victim of the institute just like everyone else in the commonwealth.
And now she was going to destroy that because there was no way she'd allow Shaun to have memories of Father's, as half the memories she had seen were disturbing on so many levels. It was shocking how much the institute had normalized mental and emotional abuse, and how controlling they were of everyone, even the higher-ups. It was effectively a science cult, where the only positive reinforcement everyone got was whenever they were busy working or studying scientific discoveries, etc.
It certainly explained what Nora had seen in person because while the higher-ups were allowed some leeway in what they wanted to do, that hadn't been the case for the rest of them. From what she saw, everyone else seemed to live for work… And nothing else. Normally, people worked so that they could have things in trade and so that they could enjoy life on their time off. But in the institute, there was no time off unless it was to sleep and take biological breaks. Your work was your entire life.
Well, there was no way she wanted young Shaun exposed to that kind of life, even if it was second-hand memories.
She turned to face Dr. Amari and asked, "So, you've got all of Father's memories isolated from Young Shaun's?"
Dr. Amari nodded. "Yes. I was worried that they'd be interwoven with Shaun's memories, but thankfully this person kept them separate… so it'd be all too easy for me to destroy them."
She paused. "Normally, the idea of destroying memories outright would be morally repugnant to me… I normally back them up into storage in case they want to reclaim their memories back. But, this is the leader of the institute. I've always hated them for the longest time ever since learning what they did with people. The way they messed around with people's heads…"
Nora smiled softly. "That does seem to be a sore spot for you. Is that the reason why you tend to sympathize with the ghouls and the railroad agents?"
Dr. Amari nodded. "My family. We had this strong genetic marker for familial Alzheimer's. In my family, the adults would get it young instead of at an old age like everyone else. Growing up, I got to see how losing memories and the like affected my family. How they'd forget how to do things… or worse, even start to forget who their family was." She paused as she blinked, before continuing, "My own mother once thought I was a dangerous intruder and nearly killed me when she eventually forgot that she had a daughter. I was always so scared of that happening to me, that I'd end up like my own mother, who would unintentionally hurt her own family. I always prayed that I'd be one of the lucky ones where it skipped a generation, that it'd never happen to me. When I overheard the ghouls talk about how they were scared of something similar happening to them… well, that just struck a chord with me."
Nora nodded at that in understanding. No wonder why the doctor felt so strongly about preserving memories instead of destroying them. She then said, "Don't think of it as destroying memories. Think of this as killing a criminal. This man was a monster who harmed so many countless people… so he deserves this kind of fate. He doesn't deserve to be remembered, much less have his memories preserved like this."
Dr. Amari's face took on a slightly determined expression at this. "You're right."
With that, she turned around back to her computer and started working on carefully deleting the memories that didn't belong, while leaving behind the ones that did.
Nora then sat back on one of the stools nearby, and then thought to herself, 'Now if we could take care of the EMP bomb vulnerability then I'd be set. I wouldn't need to worry about Shaun that much anymore.'
She still wasn't sure if Panacea had actually toggled the "settings" in Shaun's body to allow him to age until he was in his twenties as she had claimed to, but at the same time, Nora wasn't exactly in a rush for Shaun to grow up. So with that specific issue, it was a waiting game.
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Shaun and Nora were heading for the Nuka world exit so that they could board the Nuka world Train when a bunch of strange robots attacked. She or Shaun didn't have to do much, because the Nukaworld defense system took care of them right away.
She didn't think of it that much until the day when She and her son arrived at Sanctuary Hills to find the same kind of robots attacking the settlement itself. After she helped take down all the robots, she found a strange recording on one of the floating eye-bots.
The recorded voice on them stated thusly, "Attention, people of the Commonwealth! I, the Mechanist, have come to bring about an age of peace. Do not be alarmed. These robots are your allies, your protectors, and they will not rest until the Commonwealth is saved. Together we will restore justice and bring about the dawn of a new age."
Nora could only blink at this because those robots had been anything BUT friendly. And it was then that Preston Garvey grimly informed her that those robots had been everywhere, attacking all settlements they saw.
Nora just sighed at this, because she had been looking forward to a whole week of relaxation at home. But as usual, it seemed that life had other plans for her.
Naturally, this led to one thing that led to yet another thing, which now culminated in Nora, Shaun, and Preston teaming up with the latest Silver Shroud and another male parahuman who had decided to take up the mantle of 'Manta man', to solve this latest case.
Preston had decided to tag along this time, as it seemed like he was finally getting over his own neuroses and trauma to become a more active minuteman. Although, part of that could've been social pressure from his own men now that Nora's infamous interview from the capital wasteland had made its way all the way up here, and now they had starry-eyed newbies joining up with the minutemen just so that they could get a chance to meet the famous Preston Garvey who had taken down the brotherhood AND the institute.
Preston Garvey hadn't quite completely forgiven Nora for fabricating that bit of falsehood, because now he had to friggin' live up to an image that wasn't even his own.
But anyways, meeting the local costumed heroes had been… interesting. Hancock had already told Nora about the new Silver Shroud before, but looking at the man you wouldn't have known that there was a ghoul under that disguise. Didn't Hancock say the para-ghoul could control some kind of silver-colored liquid and could send it out around him like a fog?
In that case, it was all over his face and smoothed out his features almost as a rubber mask did, and gave him his nose back. But shaped more to look like the silver shroud's face on the posters. But, he could only control the silver liquid substance so far because he couldn't change the color of it… thus the result of covering all of his skin with it made him look like he walked out of a black and white movie and gave his skin a slightly shiny look. But, coupled with the Silver shroud costume he made for a very convincing look-alike. Coupled with his raspy ghoul voice, he was able to pull off the manly Silver Shroud voice easier than Nora could do.
Very big on the theatrics too, as he was prone to spreading his sliver fog outwards into a local area and sneaking around under the fog's cover and then using it to mysteriously pop up in places while loudly declaring that the Silver Shroud was here to deal out justice.
It was for a good reason though, as he was apparently outfitted with a built-in radio device that would record everything going on which would then be transmitted back to "Headquarters", just in case he got in trouble and Kent Connolly had to send back up after him. And apparently, Kent Conolly was doing a little bit of creative editing on those recordings too in order to create new episodes of the Silver Shroud radio series.
It was turning into a lucrative business, for some reason. Then again, Nora could kinda understand that? After all, with books and other forms of media mostly gone people were starved for any new form of entertainment. It was the reason why Magnolia was so popular, too.
And then there was
Manta Man. In many ways, he was the opposite of Silver Shroud. He didn't have a costume at first, choosing to wear tattered flannel, sunglasses, and a blue baseball helmet not too dissimilar to the one Shaun wore before it got replaced with a better alternative.
It was difficult to tell if he was white, Hispanic, or even mixed-race due to how heavily tanned and dirty he was, as his face had tell-tale traces of sun damage. He had a noticeable large nose, and that was about it for his features as he would've seemed unremarkable otherwise.
He was a legit Parahuman, however, as he seemed to have water-bending powers and abilities, and thus carried a tank full of water on his back that he used as his main weapon.
But, there seemed to be something wrong with him mentally as he was twitchy at times and seemed to want to retreat into a dream world where he was the comic character instead of being an actual person. And at night, when they went to bed, and it was Nora's turn to take watch, she had noticed that the man seemed to have frequent nightmares and would sometimes yell out the name of a boy. From his sleep-mutterings, it seemed to the name of his son? But something awful had to happen to his son, otherwise, he wouldn't be having so many nightmares about his son.
The other clue was that Manta Man seemed weirdly protective of Shaun every time Raiders came around. The third clue was that he seemed to truly loathe raiders with a burning passion, to the point where he'd promptly attack any of them on sight without waiting for the others, much less planning out a strategy to take them out without much damage. It was almost like the man was suicidal, but wanted to take down as many raiders as he could before finally kicking the bucket.
Nora wanted to take Manta Man aside and talk to him about it, but Preston Garvey and the Silver Shroud had stopped her from doing so.
"He's still working through whatever happened to him. Getting him to open up about his feelings may be too soon when he's still in the middle of processing it." Preston Garvey said. He sounded as if he spoke from experience.
"The hero's path is often fraught with hardships. Part of the journey is to learn how to overcome such hardships," The Silver Shroud agreed, "and we are in the middle of a critical mission, so it would not do for him to have a breakdown right now. Later, when we're not in the middle of a dangerous mission should we confront him about his issues."
Nora didn't agree at all, she wasn't one to just stand back and let some idiot work his own issues out… espeically if said idiot decided the best way to work out those issues was to jump headfirst at some random raiders without proper armor and weapons like a suicidal moron.
But she could compromise… by reworking some modded version of Captain Cosmos' costumes she had gotten at Nuka-world to have ballistic wave into it, and dying the pants section green. It was mostly a good thing that both Captain Cosmos and the comic character Manta Man's costumes were already bright orange to start with, so she didn't need to do much there.
Manta Man (as they hadn't figured out his real name yet), seemed oddly touched when Nora presented him with the costume and was willing to let Nora mod his baseball helmet too so that it had padded ballistic weave on the inside to protect his head, and recolored to match his new costume.
He had changed into the costume and then hadn't taken it off ever since then.
Thankfully, they didn't have to spend too many awkward nights around the campfire while they were traveling together trying to solve this Mechanist case, seeing that they finally got a break in the form of a robot named Ada.
The blue-colored robot was fending off the attacks of a few orange-colored junk-bots and trying to protect the human champions it had, all of who seemed badly injured.
Thankfully, Nora and the others were able to arrive in time before most of them succumbed to death… but unfortunately, the humans' injuries were so severe that they needed to be relocated to a safe place even with the stimpacks they had on hand. Stimpacks were miraculous things, but still not enough to fix things like severed limbs. For that part, they needed a professional doctor.
Anyhow, Ada was so grateful to the group for saving her humans in time before they died that she was willing to tell them anything… especially the very critical clue on how to find the Machinist. And gave Nora a blueprint that was a robot-building machine for free.
"This is the third time those robots have attacked my family. I know this might sound odd coming from a robot, but yes, I consider Mister Jackson and the other humans in the group my family. And I cannot tolerate the fact that they're being constantly attacked. This time, they very nearly died had you not come in time. The next time, they may very well succeed in killing them." Ada said, "Ergo, it behooves me to assist you in every way I can in stopping the Machinist."
She then paused to dig through the pouches on herself, and then pulled out a small device on one of her robotic claws. "I found this radar beacon on one of the robot brains that was with the rest of the enemy robots. If my suspicions are correct, this is how the Machinist has been keeping track of all his robots."
Preston Garvey took the beacon and looked it over, before saying, "I see… if we could find a way to hijack the signal and trace it back…."
"We'll finally find the Machinist." Nora finished his sentence with a smile on her face.
"Finally, we shall dole out justice for all the people those robots have killed." The silver shroud responded.
Ada nodded. "Indeed. But you need to install that beacon into a robot or else it won't work. I'd offer myself up, but I wish to stay by Jackson's side to ensure that he recovers, as do his other human companions. I suggest that you find a robot who's loyal to you, and install that into them instead."
Nora nodded. She had the robot in mind for that, actually.
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A/N: Taylor gets the plan squared away with Thomas Calvert, etc.
And we resolve Shaun's issues... at least most of them anyhow. and now I'm doing a slightly AU-ish take on the Machinist DLC.
