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Nuka-Girl: The Lone Teleporter (Or: "That time Taylor found herself in the Fallout Universe").

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After playing Subnautica for a while and then reading this chapter, i though Nora might get to build some underwater buildings. Perhaps in the next chapters?
 
Just want to point out that you been calling the Silver Shroud the Sliver Shroud every so often.
 
Hopefully they won't send out expeditions to abduct ghouls and other denizens of the waste. I wouldn't put it past their overseer.
 
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screenshots of a renovated underwater vault.
  • Media
    • I decided to turn the broadcasting center of the mod (50 leagues under the sea, vault 120), into a player home. and that was when I noticed that I could use the mod that allows me to use content creator neon flats and noir apartments pieces as building materials in vault 120. to be more specific, I noticed that those CC had curved walls and suchlike very similar to the walls in vault 120. and now the rusty BioShock-like vault looks like a whole different place.
    I just wanted to show off the work I did. XD

    Plus it gives you an idea of how revamped vault 121 might look when Nora's done fixing up all the problem spots.


    View: https://imgur.com/gallery/q3H7XkR
     
  • Media
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    Nukagirl Chapter 117-- POVs of two different types of tours.
  • Threadmarks
    • A/N: kinda realized that some of the stuff needed to advance the plot, so to speak was kind of boring to read about on paper, much less write about. So I decided to merge them into one chapter so that I could get it over with. But I also put in some extra details that were hopefully making this whole chapter more interesting to read. Heh.

    This also alternates between Taylor's and Nora's POVs.

    But, feel free to skim over this as this is mostly just the boring detail of how Taylor gets to travel across the east coast, Nora gets to rebuild the underwater city, etc.

    =====================================================================

    While Nora and her son were exploring an underwater vault, Taylor herself was on a tour as well.

    To be more specific, she was taking a planned tour up and down the entire eastern American coast with help from Strider.

    When the PRT and others found out that she couldn't travel anywhere she hadn't been before, and that if she tried to it strained her power too much. It was easier for her to travel somewhere she had been, as her memorization of the location helped her drop an anchor mark here…. So to speak.

    So it made sense that for Taylor to be useful, she needed to be able to travel all along the entire coast in case of emergencies and whatnot. They'd work on her being able to visit the rest of the United States later.

    So it had simply been logical to rent Strider's time and have him transport her down the east coast to Florida, making random stops along the way. And then she would see how far she could teleport back home, or if she'd have to make various stops along the way to catch her breath, as it were. And if she ran out of energy, then she'd call up Strider to take her back home.

    It was an experiment intended to help her out, and with this, she'd be able to gauge how much of a valuable service she could provide to others.

    Her father was initially against this, for a mostly understandable yet irrational reason. It seemed that on some level, he was afraid that something would happen to her again. That maybe she'd die somewhere far away and there'd be nothing he could do about it. She had only managed to win him over barely by having each other install a tracking app on their new phones… after promising each other they wouldn't use that in a moving vehicle. This way, they'd always know where the other one was, even if they were out of state.

    Having Taylor disappear for months with everyone else thinking that Sophia, aka Shadow Stalker, had flat-out murdered her? That had been far more traumatic for her father than she initially assumed, which made her feel guilty. Even though Taylor hadn't chosen to go to another Earth, that had been a complete accident.

    So yeah, Danny had been somewhat clingy towards Taylor for a while there, even though he was doing his best not to smother her despite the strong temptation to do so. Taylor supposed it was lucky that he even let her work as a "power armor consultant" at the PRT despite his strong distrust of them. He always stopped by after his workday was over to check up on her if her work there would run long those days.

    Speaking of which, The shipment of some old power armor the Railroad managed to get on Earth Gimel had been sent over to Earth Bet for the researchers plus Armsmaster and Dragon to study, courtesy of Nuka-world. It seemed that J-C Bradberton was rather pleased with all of the rare and pure samples Nora had "found" for his scientists in the safari zone, and in return had all been too willing to help fund a considerable public reward for every power armor found and handed over to the railroad agents so that they could send it over via the Trinity Tower Teleporter, once he heard that whoever Nora had taken the seeds and animal samples from were willing to give more in return for defensive armors and weapons.

    Taylor couldn't help but wonder if JCB knew the full story, that there were other Earths, or if he merely assumed that Nora had found some distant place that was untouched by the bombs and was now trading with the people there.

    After studying the power armor, Dragon was already looking to set up a factory for a modernized verison of the gimel power armor that would be sellable to both the military and the PRT. This in addition to Earth Gimel sending over power armors that they found, would eventually keep both the US Military and PRT sufficiently protected against most disasters.

    Which was rather fast in Taylor's eyes as they had just gotten around to drafting up workable modern power armor that was a little bit streamlined-looking than her armor was. Taylor had been one of the first ones to see the rough drafts which had been 3D-modelled so that she could give her feedback on them.

    They were doing two versions: one that didn't need a fusion-powered battery pack they were also developing alongside the power armor. And it was streamlined and sleek looking to the point of looking like normal armor, but it still looked like it came straight from some sci-fi show.
    That one was very obviously Armmaster's design, as he seemed to be making a verison of it for himself in his trademark colors just in case he ever needed it. The second one, redesigned by Dragon, was a bulkier one that did in fact need fusion battery packs because they were essentially wearable robot exo-suits that could be worn by troops or piloted remotely in the case of a dangerous parahuman they couldn't get close to.

    And unlike the ones from Nora's Earth, those opened up in the front instead of from the back. The logic behind that design was, that in times of emergency, it might be more dangerous to flip over an injured person to get them out of power armor when most people were more likely to fall on their backs instead of face down. Especially if their spines got broken… moving them like that might ensure that they'd never walk again if they didn't have any stimpacks on hand. Dragon seemed to agree, so she had gone along with that suggestion.

    It didn't seem to get in the way of the power armor's functions, or its ability to be modular enough to switch out armor parts in case any part of it got damaged. so Taylor couldn't think of any reason to object against that, and so she didn't.

    But it seemed like she'd get around to teaching the PRT troops to maintain and maybe even build parts of their power armors much sooner than she thought she would be doing. Especially once they cleared the Earth Gimel power armors to be ready to be used by the local PRT once the researchers were done with it.

    Her rambling thoughts were interrupted when Strider popped out of nowhere in the PRT building's courtyard.

    Taylor took in a deep breath. Right, it was time to think of herself as Wayfarer, not Taylor.

    She raised one gloved hand in a friendly greeting, fully suited in her Wayfarer get-up. "Hello, Strider. I'm Wayfarer."

    Strider seemed to be tired for some reason though and stifled a yawn. "Hello…. Yeah, let's get this on the road."

    Her friendly smile, not that strider could see it behind her full-face visor, became strained. And here she had been hoping for a good working relationship with him, yet he seemed so dismissive of her?

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    "Ehhh…. I don't know. My reasons for not allowing them to go still stand." The overseer seemed very reluctant to let the twin scientists go up topside to search for new inspiration-slash-experiments that could help out the vault in the long run.

    Nora sat down across from Overseer Morrow at his U-shaped desk as she commented, "The real problem is that you've been forced to downsize despite trying everything else. That's because parts of the vault's been slowly crumbling around you and your people. I suppose if I was in your situation, I'd be afraid of letting anybody go out there to explore the world if it meant that more people would desert the vault despite being allowed to come back. Most people would want a wide-open sky over their heads instead of rusty brown metal holding up more than 9,000 pounds per square inch of water at the bottom of the ocean. Especially if they're worried it could come down on their heads at any time. If people leave because of that, then that means vault 121's attempts to make the ocean a livable place to be failed, and that also means you failed as an overseer. Am I right?"

    Judging by how much Overseer Morrow's hands clenched in a fist at this, it seemed that Nora had hit his sore spot perfectly.

    Nora used all of her natural charisma to smile sympathetically at Mr. Morrow, as she said in her best convincing voice, "I'm here to help you with that. With my ability, I can help ensure that your vault runs for another 200 years. I can even help restore all of the old buildings out there that was lost to you. But, if you don't believe me, then you can come and check out the areas I renovated on my way down to you, to give you an idea of what I can do for you."

    Overseer Morrow eyed Nora suspiciously. "And why would you do this for us? Why the generosity?"

    Nora shrugged. She then laid it on a little thick. "Just being neighborly. As a fellow vault dweller, I've always believed that all the vaults should support each other, especially in our quest to preserve humanity in the face of possible extinction. Besides, this way Vault 121 becomes one of those safe harbors that people can come back to after seeing how much dangerous the outside world is. Seriously, it's a real dog-eat-dog world out there. Experiencing that sort of danger might just make people appreciate what they've got here all the more."

    Overseer Morrow mulled over this. Finally, he said, very grudgingly, "I'll want your work fully inspected for any suspicious faults. If your work is up to acceptable standards…. Then I suppose I'll allow it. After that's over, I'll see if I can reconsider the twins' request to have a two-way trip to the surface world and back here."

    Nora smiled victoriously. She didn't care much whether Rosie and Bert were able to visit the surface world or not in search of scientific inspiration, but at least she got to fix up a whole underwater city! She felt completely eager at this challenge.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    After briefly starting in Maine, they were now working their way down through all the east coast states' major cities. Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and so on forth.

    Taylor couldn't help but find that being in Rhode Island was kind of surreal, after having spent some time in a verison of it where the whole state became a light verison of Ellisburg post-Nilbog. Seeing the buildings so clean and intact without all the plants climbing all over them, without mutated bugs and elephants rampaging around? Surreal.

    She did notice that the providence building that was called the Inspector Building back on Gimel was mostly the same, but it was now a PRT headquarters while the Protectorate one was situated down the street across it, which was far more advanced and technologically advanced-looking… making the PRT one look plainer by comparison.

    They hadn't met with any capes there and instead summited her contact information to the PRT so that they could pass it on to the local Protectorate there.

    Wayfarer and Strider were now in Ocean City, Maryland after having visited both New York and Philadelphia and doing the same thing she had done in Rhode Island.

    As part of her east coast tour up and down the coastline, part of this exercise was to rub elbows with all of her potential clients so that they'd get familiarized with her and know to call on her when Strider was too busy with other jobs.

    Strider didn't seem to mind, as this gave him a chance to catch his breath and drink a shitload of coffee.

    Turns out, Strider hadn't been rudely dismissive of her like she initially thought, he was just really tired. He was the only mass teleportation cape who could teleport 20 people at once, and as a result, he was in constant demand and found himself often overworked, and like with Taylor the teleportation process could easily sap his energy for the day. He was having a rather busy week working around the clock and as a result, he was dead tired.

    A part of herself was studying the way Strider's powers worked and found it to be utterly fascinating. And seeing how different each Protectorate branch is in every city was pretty interesting as well.

    Ocean City's Protectorate members' lineup was so different compared to Brockton Bay's that she couldn't easily compare any one of them from back home. There was Chubster, Albatross, Pinpoint, Leister, Scroll, and Tomcat.

    Tomcat kinda reminded her of a male feline verison of Mouse protector with the way he was costumed, but his gruff and solemn mannerism was completely different compared to Mouse Protector's legendary need to make everything punny and corny.

    Chubster was the opposite of Tomcat and seemed to take everything in good humor. She could see why he was so popular with the locals due to his friendly nature, despite some mean-spirited memes online making fun of his weight. He seemed to be a big hit with the everyday man as well, for that exact reason. His weight, not the mean memes.

    And thankfully there were enough positive memes to outweigh all the mean ones… pun intended. And, he was also the leader of this protectorate branch so he was the one interacting with her the most. The rest of the members just seemed to be there in the background, hardly interacting with her much.

    She was done giving out her business card to the locals here, and so she walked back to Strider.

    Strider was half-nodding off in his seat as he held his coffee cup, which was dangerously close to splashing all over his blue and black costume if he fell asleep for real. Speaking of which, Taylor couldn't help but find his costume to be so cool. It was like a steampunk-looking postman costume with a lightning bolt design that fastened to the side like a peacoat's. His jacket was like a cross between a casual peacoat and a tuxedo jacket with long tails in the back. He of course had the postman-like cap and large biker goggles over his eyes.

    She was sorta half-regretting not modeling her costume after his after seeing how tasteful his costume seemed, but then again she wouldn't want to step on any toes. Besides, she kinda liked the SciFi-like rugged space explorer look she had going on anyhow. plus, it wouldn't feel right traveling anywhere without some proper armor. Taylor knew her world wasn't anything like Nora's world, but that paranoid feeling in the back of her head that anything or anyone could kill you anytime was now fully entrenched in her psyche and was hard to shake.

    She gently lifted the coffee cup out of his hand and put it on the table before she sat next to him.

    The movement seemed to startle him back to the land of the awake, and Wayfarer chuckled. "Relax. Sit and drink your coffee, you look like you need it."

    Strider relaxed at that and started sipping at his coffee again after taking it back.

    Wayfarer then asked, "Why push yourself so hard? You're practically falling over dead on your own feet."

    Strider smiled weakly. "Simply put, I have a hard time saying no sometimes. It doesn't help that some people in the fuckin' PRT kept on saying it's urgent and I assume that they mean the true emergency variety, like getting a seriously injured cape who's dying out there in the middle of nowhere to a hospital on time. Then I find out it's just some asshole who wanted to get to his meeting in some other city on time without having to resort to an airplane. Of course in such cases I jack up my prices, just to spite them. I call it the asshole fee."

    "How often does the true emergency variety happen in comparison to the assholes?" Wayfarer asked.

    Strider answered, "Happens far more often than the asshole variety, thankfully. Makes it easier to forgive them for waking me up at 2 am, which's happened a few times. That's the reason why I can't say anything because the one time I say no and finally have a good night's sleep? A cape might've died on my time off. That sort of thing can be tough on my conscience, ya know?"

    Wayfarer nodded at that. Strider then added with a strong wry expression on his face, "Of course, the other reason why I can't say no, though, isn't exactly so altruistic. All this money I'm making transporting so many people? Whew! it's building up a pretty good retirement nest for myself and my family. By the way, Is it true that your teleportation skills get stronger over time? That was something I heard about you before I agreed to help transport you around."

    Wayfarer nodded. "Yeah. at first, I could only teleport one other person with me, but over time I've managed to get it up to five now. I'm trying to see if I can't do more than that, and if I can, I might even be able to compete with you one day!"

    Strider chuckled. "Fine with me. I might rest easier, knowing that somebody else has it covered and I'm not needed there. Covering the entire united states by my lonesome can be tough sometimes."

    He then yawned, mumbling, "I might even get a full day's sleep on that day."

    A part of Wayfarer relaxed at that. She had honestly been worried that she might be stepping on toes here and that Strider might see her as competition in the teleporting business. but Strider was far more relaxed about the whole thing than she thought he'd be.

    Strider then knocked back the rest of his coffee before getting to his feet. "Right, let's hit the road again."

    Wayfarer merely nodded and got up to follow him out the door.

    "Next stop: Baltimore!" Strider called out, as he held on to Wayfarer's shoulder. With that, the space distorted and they were gone, just like that.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Nora was now outside underwater with Mr. Kenton Edwards, a vault citizen who specialized as a structural engineer alongside his science project that had to do with…improving plankton and making fish skin thicker.

    It was clear that this one's passion lay in building things instead of being an actual scientist, but because the vault originally housed scientists mainly he must've felt pressured to keep up a scientific study on the side just to keep to the vault's theming.

    Probably didn't help that the Kenton Edwards that came before him had been a marine scientist with zero interest in structural engineering, and this one had been literally made with the purpose of replacing that one… so this verison of Kenton Edwards must've felt a lot of pressure to follow in his "past self"s footsteps despite clearly having a zero interest in science.

    The more Nora thought about it, the way the vault set up things here was kind of fucked up. All the clones didn't even have memories or personality imprints of the past people that came before them, yet they were expected to behave exactly like their genetic… "parent" in having the same exact interests and jobs. and take their full names as if they weren't even their own people with unique thoughts and feelings. They weren't even seen as real children, despite having the cloned children raised from babyhood instead of being cloned as full adults. Instead, they were seen as mere replacements that would eventually take over from the previous generation of clones when those ones died of old age.

    The system made sense and worked down here, but it was still screwy as hell.

    The two of them were in power armor. She was in her usual blue and yellow power armor, while Mr.Edwards was in one that resembled a diving suit than actual power armor, complete with a large drill attached.

    Meanwhile, her son Shaun was now with Beth and the two of them were in vault 121's classroom with other kids, and this way Shaun would get to learn how vault kids got taught.

    She had no idea what the Sliver Shroud intended to do on his lonesome and didn't really care as she was more focused on the task at hand.

    Namely the goal of scrapping all buildings that were deemed too risky to restore and reclaim due to major structural failings, and rebuilding the buildings. The overseer had even gone as far as to show Nora the blueprints for this specific vault, so Nora even had more vault pieces to build with. More specifically, her vault pieces now had separate themes in terms of wallpapers, and other things she could now apply to them. whee.

    She now had the basic vault look, (which you could see in vault 81 and most of vault 111), the bright-colored gaudy look of golds accompanying bright red and blue wallpapers and flooring, (thanks to vault 118 housing the rich elite), and now vault 121's look. Vault 121's look apparently had once been a mixture of sleek, shiny mirror-like metals, and deco-art wooden walls and floorings. A lot of deco-themed carpeting and fake marble as well.

    The current vault as it were, was mostly rusty brown, the water leaks and whatnot having damaged the wood flooring and other things a long time and thus they had been torn down to reveal the metal underneath over the years. And now, most of it was rusted.

    But a lot of that old deco elegance was clearly an attempt to make everything look less claustrophobic given that they were pretty much enclosed on all sides by heavy water that could easily crush you from the pressure if you didn't have the right protection down here.

    And for some reason, it also reminded her of some styles she had unlocked back on Earth Bet, the ones she was now mentally calling the Neon Flats style, but mostly the Noir penthouse style as well. And her gut was telling her that she could easily mix and match those into the insides of the vault with no problem. And maybe a little bit of the outside as well, provided she reinforced everything properly.

    Nora grinned as she fully scrapped everything of the empty abandoned building area down to the bedrock, and started flattening out the area with metal supports that she also interwove with hard Portland cement just so that the water couldn't get to the metal supports so easily and making them rust over time. She wanted her buildings to last longer than 200 years this time. After she was done building, she'd put some rocks around the cement and metals to make it look more natural, like the building had just grown out of the rocks here somehow.

    The first thing she did was to connect a long thick pressure-proof glass hallway to the existing one, which was now sealed off to protect the current buildings with all of the vault residents inside. This way she'd be able to snap the existing building vault parts to that one and have everything line up perfectly.

    With that, she started to go into a building fugue…

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Hours later, Wayfarer was finally at her end goalpost, The city of Miami in Florida.

    Strider was now resting and having yet another cup of coffee while Wayfarer called her dad up like she promised she'd do at a fair distance away.

    Her cell phone rang, and she waited patiently for him to pick the phone up. Truthfully it still felt weird for the two of them to have cellphones at all, but the two of them couldn't help but agree that it was most likely more practical to keep track of each other using cellphones than anything else. They did make a promise to each other to never use the phone while driving or traveling.

    "Taylor?" Dad asked right away soon as he picked up the phone.

    "Hey, dad. Yeah, it's me. Guess where I am. I'll give you a hint, it's really hot and the beaches here are significantly nicer than the ones at home."

    "You're in Florida now?" Dad seemed a tad disbelieving, considering it was only four to five hours since she was gone and it'd take a considerably long time to get all the way down there with any other methods. If it had been a school day, then she wouldn't even be done with the school day yet.

    "The magic of teleportation powers. Strider's been showing me the ropes on how to run a teleport-based business, as well. Hopefully, over time, I can take over the entire East Coast while he does the rest of the united states. I'll be able to earn a lot that way." Taylor chuckled.

    "He's not that worried about competition?"

    "Nah. if anything he seems to welcome it. He looks and acts like a zombie most of the time, that's how tired he is due to the large demand for him."

    "Huh, I see. That makes sense I suppose. Anyhow, did you get any postcards for me? I'd like to see the places you've been." Dad sounded as if he was smiling when he said that.

    "Already thought of that too. Brought some extras to send back to Nora too. I went to Washington once before in Nora's world you know… so seeing Washington in this one too was so surreal. Gimel's Washington was really dead-looking overall… just nothing but grays and browns everywhere, tons of ruined and collapsed buildings everywhere with the occasional black trees there and here. Here it seems so vibrant, so full of life and color! The contrast is really startling when you compare the two. That's why I want to send postcards back to her too." Taylor responded.

    "I see…?" Dad didn't seem to know what to say to that.

    "Anyways, I'm gonna teleport back on my own now. I need to test how far I can go without straining myself. If I tire myself out, then Strider'll take me back. So I'll see you in a few, alright?" Taylor said.

    "Alright. Stay safe, little owl."

    At that, Taylor disconnected the call and pocketed the cell phone.

    She turned to face Strider and called out, "I'll be going back on my own, need to test how far I can go before I become tired. When that happens, will you come to pick me up and send me home?"

    Strider mulled this over and then nodded. "Will do. I need to pick up my paycheck for this trip anyhow."

    He opted to stay where he was at the moment, however, instead of getting up to follow her. It seemed like he still needed to regain his energy.

    Wayfarer smiled. "Great. Well. Here I go, then."

    She tentatively tested things out by teleporting from Miami to Jacksonville, which was pretty much the entire length of the Florida State and didn't feel that winded. Now she'd test out whenever she could skip over entire states to get another state the same way you'd climb the stairs faster by skipping over certain steps.

    ….. Heh, she just skipped over Georgia and South Carolina entirely by going directly to North Carolina's main city which was called Charlotte, and felt like she was only slightly out of breath like she had gone on a light jog. But she was also starting to feel tired.

    That was promising. This meant that she could still do some of what Strider did, and also be very useful in Endbringer emergency services too.

    She repeated the same exercise and found herself in Dover, Delaware. She was too tired to do the same exact thing a third time even though doing so would've landed her back in Brockton Bay. she got the feeling that attempting to do that at all would make her pass out.

    Instead, she found herself in New York and was also strongly craving a Nuka-cola Quantum to give her the energy she needed so badly.

    Still, far as fast travel went this wasn't too bad. She grinned to herself, thinking about how much money she'd be able to make this way. Espeically if she found a way to increase her stamina for this kind of work. Then maybe she wouldn't get so tired in the future.

    She pulled out her cell phone to ask Strider to pick her up and return her home.

    ================================================================

    A/N: sorry for a boring chapter, I guess? I suppose I could've easily skipped over all those details and just did a tiny time skip or something.

    But I'm the sort of person who likes thinking about all the boring details like how Taylor was able to get to the cities she hadn't been to before, etc.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Time skip
    Taylor plop down on a bench at the natiional park chugging down her 5th caffeine cup
    Wayfarer: I regret everything
    Strider: preach to the choir... but the money.
    Wayfarer: the money great but i just need and want a few minutes of res!!!
    Suddenly both phones rang
     
    So, once JCB gets the Nuka-Cola plant running, I guess that Taylor and Strider will be his first transdimensional regular customers for monthly pallet-sized shipments of Nuka-Cola Quantum. (Come to think of it, if they play their cards right, they could wrangle a discount for advertising the products on Bet.)

    Drink Nuka-Cola Quantum, the soda relied on by Strider and Wayfarer to power through those long days! Taste the Power!

    A change in urine color is an expected side effect of consumption, and is harmless. If this persists for 48 hours after ingestion, contact Customer Support at (888) 733-2583.
     
    Last edited:
    That brings up a good point - how accessible to the public is comminucation with Gimel? Can Nora help set up TV, Internet and Phone connections from Bet (and perhaps even from Aleph for the media stuff in accordance with Bet's interdimensional treaty with them) for major factors or civilians?
     
    Psiidmon said:
    That brings up a good point - how accessible to the public is comminucation with Gimel? Can Nora help set up TV, Internet, and Phone connections from Bet (and perhaps even from Aleph for the media stuff in accordance with Bet's interdimensional treaty with them) for major factors or civilians?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    I've actually thought about this one a lot.

    I think it's probably going to end up a rather niche thing on Fallout Earth aka Gimel for a long while until cellphones become more popular or something. They'd need cellphones or tablets that didn't break so easily due to how violent Gimel can be at times. and I can see that being outrageously expensive for a very long while. not to mention, the average person is probably more concerned with having food every day over having a fancy gadget that can tell them about things out there.

    I'm thinking that instead of actual working TV channels being a thing, They're just going to have sets of TV shows loaded up into holodisks and holotapes and have a holo player that's attached to TVs, and that's the closest they'll get to watching Earth Bet shows and movies as well as Earth Aleph's own stuff. they'd also want to produce better TVs after studying Bet's TV tech, maybe one that has a holo player and an internet access provider built-in.

    They'd probably set up entertainment centers across the wasteland that are more akin to a movie theater that you pay to get in. Only those movie theaters also show TV shows, and possibly something akin to youtube videos. I can see separate booth-like rooms set up where the average Wastelander pays to watch a show or a movie for an amount of time, as well as paying for snacks and drinks.

    Likewise with computer labs that would connect to Gimel's newly formed internet, which would be mostly e-mails, chatrooms, and forums at the moment.

    I also can see this being very popular in vaults that still have people living in them, espeically if they're willing to serve as centers for the computer towers, etc that would be needed to set up a type of internet or media streaming across the wasteland. I'm sure the robot brains in Vault 118 would also love the shit out of this.

    I also can see the Washington DC Lyons brotherhood wanting to study the hell out of this technology and repurposing it for their own means. they're relatively good guys, but they still can be a little bit asshole-ish at times. So I'm unsure if it would be a good or a bad thing if they ever found out about the existence of other alternate Earths.
     
    Aurora Moon said:
    think it's probably going to end up a rather niche thing on Fallout Earth aka Gimel for a long while until cellphones become more popular or something.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Something like a milspec ruggedized tablet using some of the Pipboy tech will probably be what becomes the standard there. If Dragon manages to reverse-engineer some of the specialized adaptations in Taylor's Pipboy, giving everyone a shared set of radio channels between units would be a decent start on things, since that function seemed to extend well past what a normal small radio unit should allow rangewise.

    I agree that a constant network connection is probably years away, but a packet transfer system like the old Fidonet BBS system would fit things nicely for most needs of communities there. And if nothing else, as soon as Big MT gets wind of things, you know they will want in on the action. (Though I shudder to think of what sort of outré designs those Brains will cook up.)
     
    Psiidmon said:
    That brings up a good point - how accessible to the public is comminucation with Gimel? Can Nora help set up TV, Internet and Phone connections from Bet (and perhaps even from Aleph for the media stuff in accordance with Bet's interdimensional treaty with them) for major factors or civilians?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    How would that work with this being a teleporter, so no permanent opening, and not portal like the one to Aleph. Communication would be limited to what is loaded on a device and shot across dimensions, kind of like regular mail.
     
    Adria_Frosthold said:
    How would that work with this being a teleporter, so no permanent opening, and not portal like the one to Aleph. Communication would be limited to what is loaded on a device and shot across dimensions, kind of like regular mail.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    from what I understand in canon, they still had some of the haywire's tech maintained somehow otherwise they wouldn't be able to keep a tiny portal open infinitely for all the internet needs and whatnot.

    so I could see them use that same tech to open another tiny portal to Gimel. *shrugs*
     
    Aurora Moon said:
    from what I understand in canon, they still had some of the haywire's tech maintained somehow otherwise they wouldn't be able to keep a tiny portal open infinitely for all the internet needs and whatnot.

    so I could see them use that same tech to open another tiny portal to Gimel. *shrugs*
    Click to expand...
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    The issue there, IIRC, is that Bet put laws in against further portals being opened using Haywire's device. Granted, in this situation I expect that Congress would express a bill either for an exception or repealing that law altogether if the initial contact comes from the other world.
     
    Or it could be data packets/internet subsection snapshots sent along with every official transportation, perhaps, if the Bet government wouldn't back down on the 'no cross-dimensional tech' laws even for capes on their own payroll?
     
    Cloak&Dagger said:
    So Taylor just straight up disintegrated a couple of dudes chilling on a couch next to weed plants?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Yup, and it's something she feels very badly about.

    Got to remember to differentiate between Fallout raiders and regular criminals. Fallout Raiders will nearly always kill you on sight, and often won't be easy to reason with. plus no jail or trials for raiders over there, so why bother arresting any of them all?

    Earth Bet Criminals, got to keep them alive and arrest them, and plus not as dangerous as fallout raiders are. there's also the pesky law to contend with.
     
    Nukagirl Chapter 118--fixing up Vault 121 and leaving afterwards.
  • Threadmarks
    • A/N: we have some bit of Shaun's POV here before Nora's. Because why not?

    =====================================

    While Nora was working on getting the whole city up to speed, Shaun was spending time with Beth and some of the other kids living here, and even followed them to their vault-themed classroom to learn more about how they did things here.

    Shaun was currently sitting by Beth at a table to the side of the classroom by a window, which showed fish swimming about outside. It was the dimmest part of the room, but there was still enough light that Shaun had no difficulty reading the books and homework they were given.

    In a way, it was somewhat interesting to see how the kids here got educated, because it was way different than how they did it in the institute or the schools over in Taylor Hebert's world.

    The institute didn't actually have much in the way of a classroom or anything for kids, they uploaded things to a kids' brain over time that they thought that a child should know growing up, and then enforced that education by having the guardians reconfirm that knowledge in a homeschooling-like program. There was also the fact that there weren't that many kids around, as they liked to have fully grown adults from the get-go, so there hadn't been a need for a classroom anyhow.

    They also uploaded only select knowledge for the kids who they were basically grooming to take over jobs in one of the four divisions: Bioscience, Facilities, Robotics, and finally the Synth Retention Bureau. The kids who grew up into adults didn't get much choice in which jobs they were to take.

    Taylor's world was way different in that the kids got educated in a wide variety of subjects from the arts to the gym, just not only things like science. At first, Shaun had been annoyed by this, not quite understanding the point of art class, as he had never experienced something like that before.

    But the more time he spent time around others in Taylor's world, the more he realized that the reason why the classes were so diverse was that people actually got a choice in who they wanted to be, and what kind of job they wanted to have as an adult. There was also the fact that people also changed jobs over time because they evolved over time, becoming different people than they were in the past. So it made sense for everyone to have such a large, broad education so that they could easily take up any hobby or job they desired.

    This vault's education program was a bizarre mix of the two. All the kids already had jobs preselected for them, so they were educated accordingly… but they were also allowed to take up extra classes that interested them. After all, even though all the scientists were supposed to focus on the experiments handed over to them from "past selves", they were also allowed to take up hobbies on the side in order to keep their morale up.

    Take the adult twins Rosie and Bert for example. From what Beth told Shaun, their main experiment on themselves over the generations was dabbling in ways to become naturally telepathic so that they wouldn't need the telepathy headbands to talk to and or control the fish, and they had been partially successful but only in that they could apparently telepathically communicate with each other but not other human beings or aquatic lifeforms. Something to do with the genetic connection between the two. And that telepathic connection only got stronger with every generation of cloned twins.

    But to the twins, it was considered a failed experiment because what good was a telepathic connection with only your sibling, if you couldn't even communicate with the larger community or the fish in this way? The experiment initially made sense because there was no way to talk underwater if you were thoroughly submerged in water without a rebreather mask, and human ears weren't really designed for hearing things underwater either. But if it only worked for those who were closely related to each other…? That would only breed people who were more likely to trust only family members and be more distrustful of anyone who wasn't family. That wasn't conducive to creating the close-knit underwater community that Vault 121 wanted so badly. Pfft, so useless.

    And worse, the stronger the telepathic connection was made over time, meant that future Rosies and Berts might eventually end up being unable to tell themselves apart, seeing themselves as a hivemind sharing two bodies as any distinct identity between the two would be outright obliterated.

    As close as the twins were to each other, that thought horrified them so thoroughly that they didn't want to continue that experiment anymore. They liked being Rosie and Bert individually, and they didn't want to lose that in any future selves that would be cloned. Hence why they wanted to find some other project to work on instead.

    But meanwhile, they liked to occupy themselves being the local DJs and report the daily news over the radio.

    No wonder why the twin adults seemed so weird to Shaun, they were telepathically connected to each other in a way that they sometimes moved and acted like they were the same person, even picking up the conversation where the other one left off. Honestly, it gave him the creeps but he was too polite to say so. Plus, they were friendly and harmless, so…

    But this did make him wonder what Beth was supposed to work on when she got older.

    "So if the Twins' project is to make themselves telepathic, what kinda project are you working on when you get older, Beth?" Shaun wondered.

    Beth tapped the side of her face, gesturing towards her large eyes.

    "Old Beth's working on the ability to see far distances in the dark water when swimming outside, in the event that lights no longer work down here. I've got pretty good night vision as a result, and it works just fine even when I'm not underwater. I can see distances far away for miles too!" Beth couldn't help but brag.

    "Cool!" Shaun grinned.

    Beth's smile faded. She then said, "It does come with downsides though. For example, bright lights tend to give me headaches. My eyes are way too sensitive to light, so a lot of times I prefer being in a dimly lit room and I prefer sleeping in complete darkness."

    "Oh…" Shaun deflated a little bit at that bit of information, but he supposed it did make sense. If you were evolved to have good night vision, then of course light would hurt your eyes at times.

    Beth fidgeted a little bit, before confessing in a very sad tone of voice. "Truth be told, I don't really want to work on that project in the future as it already seems to be both a success and at a standstill anyway. But nobody besides the twins really understands how I feel about it. This whole thing where I have to take over for old beth when she dies is so stupid! Just because I'm a clone I have to become a replacement for somebody else? I don't want to turn into Old Beth, I hate her! I don't want to be a clone, I want to have real parents and be able to pick who I want to be in the future. You're so lucky, Shaun, to have an actual parent."

    Shaun had no idea how to react to this confession at all, so he just awkwardly said "oh.." again with a somewhat upset expression on his face.

    Beth sniffled a little bit and then she was back to her old cheerful self, seemingly masking the sadness she had been feeling all along. "Sorry for dumping all of that on you. I just had to get that off my chest, ya know? But enough about me, I want to know what it's like up there!"

    Shaun blinked. That, he could do. "Alright, so what do you want to know more about first? There's a ton of on the surface after all."

    Some of the other kids had been walking by and overheard this part of this conversation and stopped to listen with strong interest.

    Beth pondered this. She then asked, "what sort of lifeforms are up there? Down here we have fish, Pip, and a bunch of seaweed."

    Shaun perked up at this. He then replied, "Oh man, there's so many out there that I've seen on my trips. There are a ton of giant insects, two-headed cattle, large rats, molerats, and birds. I like the birds the best, especially the ones at Nukaworld. They're so brightly colored and pretty, and can sing really well."

    He noticed that all the other kids were listening in, and he grinned. Time to bring out the extra-juicy stories. "But, there are also monsters you have to watch out for, or else you're dead! For there are Supermutants and Deathclaws…."

    The kids slowly surrounded his table as he started regaling Beth and the others with tales of the adventures he had while traveling with his mom.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    "That was so fun!" Beth cheered as she and Shaun walked alongside the pathway towards the local residential area. "Even with all the dangerous things you told us about, the surface world sounds so amazing. I'd like to see it all for myself."

    "Well, I don't see why you can't?" Shaun replied.

    Beth went back to being glum again, as she mumbled, "Old Beth wouldn't let me go. She'd throw a huge fit if I did. She's always criticizing me for not even acting anything like her, always talking about how she never did this or that. And she's never wanted to go to the surface world, not even once. And she goes out of her way to destroy anything I like if it isn't something she also likes…"

    Shaun frowned slightly at this. That sounded seriously bad. Clone kids sometimes had it rough more than synths did, huh?

    He then decided he'd talk to his mom about this, and see if she couldn't do anything to help Beth with that.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~

    --two days later--

    Vault 121, or The Underwater City of Delphtria as it was called by the local residents, now looked completely brand new on the outside and the inside. It was even more grand-looking than it used to be pre-war, thanks to all the extra touches Nora gave it.

    It now looked like a city of riches, one where the rich and snobby lived, instead of a rusted place that was mainly filled with scientists tending to their mad science experiments.

    The residents' awed reaction to every new thing, reminded Nora of that "House and Garden" Channel she had come across in Taylor's world once, where they remodeled houses and then had the homeowners come in in order to have their reactions recorded.

    Nora had initially thought that such reactions were a little too over the top and had to be scripted, but now seeing that sort of thing in person for herself she was now revisiting that opinion.

    She had to admit it made her feel amazingly good, to have her work fully appreciated like this.

    Even if some of them seemed more appreciative of the new machines she made than they were of the actual new buildings themselves.

    She had installed plenty of new devices and machines down here alongside all the brand-new underwater buildings, such as the following:

    Several larger cloning machines for various animals like the ones she had copied from Nuka-world and vault 118. The current old ones they had, were too small to hold an adult human being, originally having only been for things like fish.

    Hence why they originally made the clones in baby form and elected to raise them from babyhood into adulthood instead. But that might change soon, now that Nora also had put in those new brain interfaces that would allow people to upload their memories into new adult clone bodies. So now not only could they clone animals from the surface, but they could also upload their memories into new bodies.

    Normally Nora wouldn't even think to give them something like that as she had seen how crazy and strange that could get inside that prison she and Taylor had visited, But… well.

    She had seen how fucked up it was for the cloned children here, with the immense pressure they had to become exactly like their adult counterparts so that they could grow up to take over once their adult counterparts died. And that opinion became even worse when Shaun told her about how Beth got treated by her "mother" if Old Beth could even be called that.

    Nora had been willing to let go of the treatment of the clones without any single comment because she didn't know for sure if the kids were actually okay with it or not. After all, a lot of kids often wanted to grow up to be just like their parents. This was just a more literal take of that.

    But that was until Shaun became a character witness to how the kids got treated and how young Beth felt about it. Then it felt personal somehow. The last thing Nora needed was for this place to become another institute in that they thought that people could be replaced so easily. Only with clones instead of synths. That was just begging for a second verison of the railroad to get formed, this time focused on clone rights. The institute treated their synths like they were disposable too and look where that got them.

    And as shown before, most children here grew up to be nothing like their parents, who had developed different interests due to having different memories. A lot of them were genetically predisposed to like certain things or act a certain way, but that could only go so far.

    To place that kind of unreasonable expectation on the kids or to not even bother asking the kids which job they'd like to do down here, having that already pre-selected for them?

    She couldn't imagine treating Shaun that way at all… she wouldn't want him to act exactly like her late husband, or an idealized verison of "Father." She considered that mentality to be child abuse to a certain degree, even if it might be on the mild end of the scale there.

    So to cut down on that kind of mental and emotional abuse, she decided that giving them the tech from the prison in Virginia would be a better alternative. The cloned adult bodies would have blank brains to start with, so it wouldn't be too immoral to upload the memories into them and then expect them to act exactly like the original. Because they'd technically be an exact copy of the original to start with. So any actual kids they would have from now then wouldn't be expected to be perfect copies and could have an actual childhood.

    She would make sure of that too with the Overseer, emphasizing the more humane aspects of this new method… or even just appealing to his practicality by pointing out that uploading their memories into a blank adult body would be faster and more effective than rearing a clone from babyhood into adulthood would be.

    But moving on from that issue, there was also other cool stuff that the vault now had. There was the new water filtration plant she made, which would produce both fresh water and sea salt, due to the process of separating the salt from the water to make the water fresh. As well as allow for water to be piped throughout the entire city so that everyone would be able to shower in fresh water instead of bathing in seawater, and do other things that required fresh water.

    And all the dirty or ruined water that resulted from showers and toilets, would be funneled into the water treatment and energy stations in the next buildings over, as Nora now had the tech to turn that kind of filth into methane. So in addition to the regular electrical generators, the methane generator would also be powering a good portion of the city, mostly taking up the job of keeping the underwater city warm.

    So yeah, that was a whole lot of large underwater stations there, one that would probably be needed to be run by more than just the resident scientists. Maybe Overseer Morrow would be open to the idea of recruiting a few new people from the surface? Or at least allow the existing clone children to pick a profession besides being a scientist now that they had the ability to upload their memories into blank adult bodies.

    And then there were all the new retail jobs they'd need to fill up too since Nora had made a few stores and suchlike down here too. Because what would a city be without a supermarket, a clothing store, a shoe store, and so on forth?

    There was the new fish farm room, as well as the other various farm rooms which would now grow things like carrots and other plants from the surface. Even though Nora had set up plenty of food dispensing machines like the rice pudding machine, she was sure they'd appreciate having fresh food that wasn't fish, algae or seaweed.

    Yup, this city was going to be very self-sufficient without her help for a very long time.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    "This is great!" Overseer Morrow exclaimed happily as he walked through the newly redone Vault 121. "You say there's not any other place like this?"

    Nora shook her head. "Not at the moment, no. most of the Wasteland settlements out there tend to be….messy. Or so simplistically designed as to only have the bare necessities. They're not so grandly decorated like this city is now. In fact…"

    She leaned in towards Morrow as if to share a secret with him, "I suspect you might get a lot of applicants wanting to live here as it's now probably one of the most secure places to live away from raiders and whatnot. That's if you open up your city to the outside world now and then, which I think would be a good idea. You're in urgent need of farmers and sanitation workers and so on forth. And it might help your vault in the long run if you were to have some people who did really know what it was like on the surface world. They'd share some horror stories about the surface world to help your residents appreciate what they have down all the more. hmm?"

    The overseer seemed to be strongly considering that. But then he asked, "But how do I screen out all the undesirables?"

    Nora then pointed out, "You've got that rig up above, and the only way down or up is by using that elevator. We could have guards and other staff up there screening to see whenever they were trustworthy enough to come down here."

    Overseer Morrow then replied, "Ah, right. I forgot about that for a moment there. I suppose I could brush off the old S.P.E.C.I.A.L machine and other things and put 'em up there. Maybe turn it into a trading post. That way we can trade with the outside world without ever letting them in all the way down here."

    Nora blinked. "Special machine?"

    Overseer Morrow gave her an odd look. "Ya know, the thing that tells you what your special stats are and helps determine your role in the vault?"

    "Ah." Nora nodded in understanding. "The vault we came from had everyone already preselected and enlisted, so we didn't need something like that. Plus, we didn't need to do much in the vault as most of us were frozen, so…."

    "Oh, right! I almost forgot about that too." Overseer Morrow shook his head. "I can't imagine, being in suspended animation for so long. The mission behind it makes a lot of sense, however. So your vault didn't have much then besides the bare necessities needed to restart civilization? Not even an Auto-tailor or anything like that?"

    "Nope. you know… I recently discovered a patient office, but Vault-Tec jealously guarded most of their secrets I couldn't even find hints of half the stuff that was so vital to a vault. So I never really found the blueprints for a special machine or anything else like that." Nora casually commented, and then looked over at Overseer Morrow meaningfully.

    The overseer got the hint and chuckled softly.

    "Uh, well. I suppose you do deserve some payment for all of this…." He said as he gestured at the newly rebuilt vault all around them.

    Nora nodded with a smile on her face.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    And just like that, their trip to the City of Delphtria was over. The three of them had successfully helped Manta Man snap out of it and remember being Rick McMurray.

    There were indications that he was still going to act the part of Manta Man, but this time he wouldn't be in such a delusional and suicidal state anymore.

    Speaking of which, Manta Man aka Rick was now escorting Sliver Shroud and Nora back to the surface inside the elevator, along with Shaun.

    Rick was pretty enthusiastic about the new state of the city. "I've got to thank you again, Nora! I don't think this city has ever been this grand and large before. And now we've got the room and the ability to support large populations again…. This means everyone who ever left can come back again. I'm going to have to find the other volunteers who left and tell them the good news."

    Nora smiled. "It was nothing, I was happy to help out. It looked like the entire city was about to break down eventually in a few more years, and I couldn't have that. A unique place like that one deserves to live for another 200 years at the very least, if not more."

    Rick chuckled. "You'll have no arguments from me."

    He then frowned. "Samuel wasn't kidding when he said everything was falling apart under his watch. I thought maybe it was just his inexperience speaking, but after seeing your new machines and buildings I've realized that I wasn't that good at keeping things in tip-top shape like I thought I was. Even if I hadn't left this place, this city would've still eventually started crumbling, springing leaks everywhere…"

    He sighed. "Going up to the surface was really bittersweet in hindsight. I hate having lost my son, but if I hadn't gone up there I would've never met you and my beloved city wouldn't have gotten repaired like this…"

    Sliver shroud/Tony then laid a hand on Rick's shoulder. "You really shouldn't have lost your son like that regardless. For what it's worth, if you ever want to fuck up more raiders in the future, just call me up and we'll team up. Silver Shroud and Manta Man, busting up crime whenever they go!"

    Rick grinned, though his eyes got slightly misty at that. "I'd love that, yeah. I know it didn't seem like it, but killing off those raiders was really therapeutic."

    He then paused at that, and added, "Until we came across them threatening a family, anyways. That hit way too many of my buttons…"

    Tony shook his head. "Heh, yeah. I've never seen anybody go berserk so fast as you did. I'm not going to get the mental picture of the carnage you caused out of my mind any time soon. And my costume needed to be laundered twice before I could finally get all the blood out."

    Rick had the decency to look sheepish at this, rubbing the back of his neck as he did so.

    Shaun then spoke up, asking: "I've noticed that you didn't seem to think of your deceased son as a replacement. You even call him your son despite the fact that he has your exact name and everything else. You're different than the other citizens down there?"

    Rick blinked. He then sighed. "You're right, not many people see their own clones as their own flesh and blood, even though they should. I've always thought it was a pity."

    He paused again, before talking again. He became more misty-eyed and choked up the more he explained, "But, not many of them ever got to watch the process as I did. Over the months before Rick Junior was properly born into the world, I had the privilege to watch the entire process while maintaining the lab as the janitor. Growing from a tiny fetus the size of a pinky finger's tip, into a full-blown baby inside a tiny vat that was originally meant for cloning fish. When Ricky was finally ready to come into the world, I was the one holding him, and not the robots who usually put them into cots with warming pads in them. I… you just have no idea how much awe I felt in that moment, having this knowledge that this tiny being was created from a tiny drop of blood… that this was truly a scientific miracle."

    He then chuckled sadly. "And, he wouldn't stop crying if I put him into one of those cots until I picked him up again and held him close to my chest. The little thing was just so attached to me! After that, it became harder to only see him as my replacement. Weird thing was, I wanted him to be more than just that."

    Nora smiled softly at that. She then replied, "No, that makes perfect sense to me. I felt exactly the same way after I gave birth to my son Shaun. Giving birth the natural way was such a literal pain and I was doped up on drugs during that entire process, so I didn't have that magical moment right away when they put that baby into my arms for the first time. But once I was no longer in pain and off the chems? When I held that baby for the second time, that's when I felt that same awe and love that you had for your son. I couldn't believe that I had managed to create such a perfect little thing. It made the pain and suffering I went through totally worth it. And I…. I was looking so forward to seeing him grow up into a young man. To see him look and sound more like his father Nate by the passing moment."

    Nora's eyes teared up a little bit at the last part, but her smile was firmly fixed on her face even though it no longer reached her eyes.

    Shaun fidgeted at that, as he looked down at the ground of the elevator glumly.

    Nora seemed to notice that, and she bent down on one knee to hold Shaun close to her. She then said for everyone to hear, "And if Shaun, should he die, the next son I have would never become a replacement for that one. Instead, I'd see him as a new blessing, and watch him grow into his own person, somebody completely new. I'd love that new son differently, yes. Even if I'm still grieving the last one. But there's nothing wrong with that. Because love is still love, even if it takes different forms."

    Nora then turned Shaun's head with one of her hands to make their eyes meet, to make sure that Shaun truly understood what she was trying to say here. That Nora didn't really blame Shaun for what happened with 'Father' at all. That Nora still loved Shaun despite all the traumatic things that had happened before she met Shaun.

    Nora loved him and wanted him, even if she had acted like such a shitty mother at the beginning after she got awarded custody of Shaun the second.

    Looking back at things, she cringed at the realization of how long and how much she had left Shaun all alone with Codsworth in Sanctuary. All because she was too busy working through her own grief over losing "the real one". Did a part of her seriously use to resent Shaun the second because Father meant him to be a replacement?? Even though Shaun the second had no control over that, and hadn't even asked to be created in the first place??

    Nora hadn't realized how immature and much of an irrational jerk she could be at the time, or how much it had been affecting Shaun. At least she had finally come around to treating Shaun like an actual son, instead of resenting Shaun for the rest of her natural life.

    No wonder why Shaun acted so clingy at times when she was constantly running off on her own like that all the time. Sheesh. She was definitely going to do her best to become a better mother from now on.

    Shaun wasn't telepathic, but he seemed to understand Nora's real meaning in what she was trying to say before. He smiled and hugged her back tightly.

    He mumbled, "Beth was right. I'm really lucky to have you, mom."

    A lump formed in Nora's throat as she mumbled, "No, I'm lucky to have YOU."

    Silver Shroud and Manta Man stood to the side awkwardly while this exchange was going on.

    Rick/Manta Man thought that things kinda took a weird turn there, as he didn't know the whole story behind whatever was happening here. Or why Shaun seemed so happy when Nora said that she wouldn't replace him with some other child, that she'd treat that child differently but still treat that child like a wonderful blessing.

    But it did give him something to think about. It felt too soon for him to have another son just yet, but he wouldn't treat that one like he was a replacement for his former son. It wouldn't be fair to that one. Just like Nora said, love took on different forms and people loved each individual differently. And that was okay.

    ============================================================

    A/N: I'm going to have a canon omake covering Young Beth and Old Beth next because I kinda felt like they needed their own side story to wrap up things.

    Warning--3 am ramblings on Shaun's development here.
    This chapter seems like it's going to be a formative memory for Shaun, as there are a lot of strong comparisons between how the institute saw their synths and how Vault 121 saw their young clones. And the theme of replacing somebody, and how awful that actually was in the long run for most of the population.

    Shaun's heard horror stories from the human families about the pain they went through when one of their loved ones was replaced by a synth, how that synth acted too differently to be the person they knew and loved, and the reasons why they had to put that synth down.

    And he's heard a little bit from the railroad about how synths shouldn't be exploited, that they're their own person just like everyone else.

    He knew how harmful it was for a loved one to be replaced, heck he kinda saw that with Nora's behavior there, but he never really contextualized how terrible it could be for the Synth themselves too until now. Despite the boy himself feeling emotionally abandoned a little bit at the start there.

    Before it was, "Kidnapping people and replacing them is wrong, because it makes the families sad. It made Nora/Mom so sad she didn't want to be around me." no consideration of the synths there, despite him being a synth too. But now it's also "Expecting the synths to replace somebody else is wrong, because it not only harms the original family but also harms the synth/clone too. Physiological damage for both parties is a thing. Synths should be their own person, and everyone will accept and love that synth if they're not out to replace anyone."

    When Shaun matures mentally and emotionally into a young man, he's definitely going to be nothing like Father at all. :)
     
  • Threadmarks
    • For some reason I thought Shaun was in denial about being a Synth up until this chapter, so it felt a bit out of nowhere.

    Guess that's just exhaustion brain on my own end confusing me though.
     
    Psiidmon said:
    For some reason I thought Shaun was in denial about being a Synth up until this chapter, so it felt a bit out of nowhere.

    Guess that's just exhaustion brain on my own end confusing me though.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Shaun realized it in past chapters, mainly the time when they were visiting the Washington DC area. he didn't know for sure at the start, but as time passed, he suspected the truth about himself.

    After all, kinda hard not to think that you might be a synth when you've got the intrusive memories of some old dude named Father randomly surfacing from some hidden corner in your head occasionally. and Nora helped "exorcise" those memories with help from Dr. Amari after that.
     
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    Nukagirl: Guy's side story part one
  • Sidestory
    • A/N: I know I said I was gonna do Beth's side story of what it was like growing up in Delepthria and how her guardian Old Beth treated her, but it ended up being too depressing despite the fact that she gets a happy ending in that she gets to go explore the world with the Twins at her side.

    It was hard to portray Old Beth as being a slightly sympathetic asshole when she was so emotionally abusive to the Beth we knew in the story. Because I had planned to have the fact that she was abusive every time Beth didn't act or think like Old Beth, was because she was scared of dying and being replaced by some beth that didn't even have all of her memories and personality. Didn't excuse her being abusive at all the more I thought about it. Sometimes an asshole is just an asshole regardless of their reasons.

    So instead, I scrapped that in favor of doing a side story featuring Guy's trip to Japan! Everyone would be more interested in that, right??

    ================================================

    Turned out that letting Guy drive hadn't exactly been the brightest idea. For some reason, they wound up in Ireland and it was during scans of the massive island from above did Guy and the others realize his mistake.

    It was well known that Guy had a chronic bad sense of direction to start with, and hence why he tended to wander all over the place.

    "I didn't know what we expected, knowing what we know about his ability to get lost pretty easily." Elliot chuckled.

    "At least it'd be a good idea to get scans and information on all the countries anyways. I've been pretty curious to learn about the rest of the world." Sally pointed out, and for some reason, she was now wearing a modded kids' costume of Captain Cosmos that Taylor had given her, now with a skirt made to look more like Stella Skyfire's costume from the TV show. She seemed to think it should be her work uniform when she was helping man the bridge here.

    According to the scans, it seemed that Ireland hadn't gotten hit much and was pretty well off relatively wise. There were plenty of humans living there, But, they still suffered from the nuclear fallout just as much as anybody else as it seemed that most of their fauna died off, leaving only a few animals and plants that actually survived.

    Likewise, it seemed to have its share of mutated animals, although none so dangerous as back home as those seemed to have mutated "naturally" as much as one could do from both radiation and airborne pathogens. That is, they weren't intentionally experimented on and then escaped to reproduce, that sort of thing. At least far as they could tell.

    There were no deathclaws here, which Guy already considered to be a bonus, but they did have those giant lizards the size of wolves that walked on all fours that seemed to regularly prey on two-headed sheep.

    "So, everyone in the world suffered from nuclear famine?" Guy pondered out loud, as some of those scans seemed the same as it was in America.

    Toshiro Kago nodded solemnly. "Seems that wars, you can never win if it is without an end."

    He seemed more troubled at the thought that it'd be what he would find in Japan, or worse.

    Elliot patted the Japanese samurai on the back sympathetically. "Come on, I'll drive this time. And we'll take the time to scan all the countries on the way, so you can brace yourself for what you'll find when you're back home, alright?"

    Toshiro nodded. "Yes."

    His English was really getting better by the week, thanks to Professor the robot. It helped that Toshiro was a really quick learner.

    And it also helped that the ship wobbled less in the air now that everyone got the hang of flying this thing, as well as helping slowly fix things inside the ship with help from the Brooklyn-accented Robot, now renamed "Mike Rockenfeller" or "Rocky" in honor of Elliot's Brooklyn friend who had that last name.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    And with that, they glided towards England, France, and so on forth while taking scans of the lands all the way.

    England was worse off than Ireland, with far more bombed-out areas but like with Ireland there were still strong signs of humanity and other lifeforms that managed to survive either by mutating to adapt to radiation or thanks to being sheltered by humans.

    Paris in France on the other hand… never truly stood a chance. Now that was a city that was fully bombed to hell and was no longer the capital of France by the looks of it. The famous Eiffel tower was barely standing, with half the tower bent over from the blast radius 200 years ago. There were still french humans and animals around, but they huddled in small settlements and there were scavvers running around the old ruins of Paris.

    They didn't bother to scan the rest of France, as they felt that Paris was enough of a grim picture to see what happened to the country.

    "My mom always talked about how great and romantic Paris was, and always hoped that the wars would be over so that she'd get to go there with my dad," Sally commented, as that was all she ever knew about Paris.

    Germany no longer existed anymore, as it seemed that every town, and city, was blasted to hell, and was an irradiated hellscape not too dissimilar to the glowing sea.

    But the descendants of Germans still existed, as they were now picking up radio chatter about how there were german nomadic tribes who were attempting to conquer the countries of others now that they no longer had their own country to go back to.

    Some tribes were even unfortunately wearing Nazi uniforms by the looks of the visual scans, and Elliot couldn't help but wonder if those people truly understood the history behind those Nazi uniforms, or if they thought this was merely just a German uniform.

    "It'd be pretty unfortunate if they did in fact understand and were looking to reenact world war II with those uniforms."

    Guy was confused at first, wondering what was so bad about those "Nasi" uniforms, and so Elliot was forced to give everyone in the room an abridged history lesson on why Nazis were so bad historically.

    Toshiro then commented in his steadily improving but still broken English, "I respect the need for military might and expansion of territory. In this, Germany and Japan seem very similar. But… Holocaust going too far."

    Elliot made an awkward face at this. He then said, "Uh. well, that was mainly why Japan and Germany were allies in the second world war, far as I know. Japan was seen as the bad guy too by the rest of the world at the time, I'm sorry to say. They conquered parts of Thailand and China's mainland. And from what I heard they did a lot of things to the Chinese that was just as bad as the Germans with the Holocaust. There was a lot of bad blood between the Chinese and Japan until the later 1990s because of this. China ended up annexing Japan and some of Korea in the late 2000s, causing a lot of Japanese and Korean refugees to flee to America. According to my memories and the history files I've found, America was still in the middle of retaking Japan for their Japanese allies in return for putting an American military base there, and they were finally successful in retaking the country back last I heard. Of course, the Great War and the bombings had to happen not too shortly afterward."

    Toshiro Kage looked shocked at this revelation that his own people would've acted so dishonorably and acted so savagely, only for their enemies to end up annexing them and then bombing them like that as a twisted form of Karmic payment.

    Guy nodded. "Sounds about right. In War, everyone gets a turn at being the bad guy when they would've been formerly good guys before. Even the Canadians were total evil assholes at one point despite their good reputation if I remember right. It was part of the justifications for why America had to annex them. That was in my history books from vault 101."

    The conversation stalled off into awkward silence at that, so they moved on southward towards the Middle East countries, scanning Austria, Italy, and Greece on the way there.

    Like Germany, poor Austria and a good chunk of Italy no longer existed as everyone knew them but they were now overrun with glowing feral ghouls and other glowing green creatures. Greece on the other hand was on the same level as England and Ireland… bombed buildings but there were signs of human civilization there.

    They then discovered that Turkey and India was the only well-off middle eastern country because the rest of them had been bombed to varying severe levels or already so thoroughly ruined by the wars before the great war.

    India seemed mostly untouched, although they too suffered from the nuclear fallouts and the resulting famines by the looks of things. Some mutated animals too, although it seemed that those weren't as common as in other countries, the surviving animals managed to look mostly like their prewar versions but with some mild mutations.

    But, judging by the visual scans, the giant cats were all mostly hairless now not unlike the bears in America, and the only way to tell a hairless tiger apart from other cats was the fact that the stripes actually went all the way down to their skins. And judging by the radio chatter that the Professor robot was able to translate, it seemed that those hairless tigers had the same reputation that the Yoai-Guai had back in America… that is, they were seen as utterly terrifying predators still, although not on the same level as a Deathclaw.

    And apparently, according to the local radio chatter they picked up here they had their own equivalent of a Deathclaw… A giant snake monster bigger and longer than a semi-truck that had chameleon-like abilities and thus could sneak up on you undetected as it glided across the ground. And you wouldn't know it until it was too late as you found yourself swallowed up by this species of giant snakes. They called those snake monsters the Fallen Nagas, with varying beliefs about how those monsters came to be. Some believed that those were once divine snakes that had then become corrupted and evil, while others believed them to be monsters sent by the divine realm to punish humanity for evil. Others also simply believed them to be straight-up monsters who needed to be killed.

    While interesting, it just made Guy glad that he'd never have to land in India.

    They moved on after that little discovery and headed toward China.

    China… that country looked as if China had been thoroughly bombed to hell and only the coastlines were truly spared. The majority of china looked as if they had been thoroughly glassed by the nuclear bomb to the point that it was even bigger than Massachusetts's glowing sea.

    And judging by the visual scans, it seemed that Hong Kong had been bombed too, due to being the one of biggest Chinese cities around but in true Hong Kong fashion, the surviving residents had rebuilt it right back up. But, now the city looked like a cross between a slum city and something straight out of a cyberpunk dystopia.

    There were similar Chinese cities along the rest of the coastline, all of which actually seemed to be connected with a tram line between all cities! But, Hong Kong still continued to be the biggest one, all the other cities seemed tiny in comparison. Likewise, both the North and South Korean countries seemed to be overrun, completely covered in a mega city that covered almost the land. Judging by things it seemed like they had been annexed by China a very long time ago, and continued to be.

    They then flew in the direction of where Japan was supposed to be.

    Everyone grew quiet when they discovered the state that Japan was in through all the visual scans they were taking from overhead.

    Normally, Japan was a seahorse-shaped nation, a large main island that made up the bulk of the "seahorse" body along with a series of other islands that were so closely clustered with the large main island that they might as well as be counted as a single large island together.

    But now? Between the bombings and natural disasters such as Japan's volcanoes erupting, and earthquakes, it seemed like the main body of Japan had been broken up into four parts. Now a series of islands into themselves that was barely connected by small strips of land, which were technically also small islands that were stuck in between the bigger islands.

    There were also a new series of islands that didn't exist but that could be easily contributed to the lava from the volcanoes and underground volcanoes surfacing. Over 200 years it wasn't hard to imagine the volcanoes AND the ever-shifting tectonic plates getting to work permanently shaping how Japan looked over time.

    But, it looked as if those new islands were mostly large black volcanic rocks with a few mutated plant life due to the fact that the nuclear waters and rain made it difficult for it to grow new life there properly. And, they seemed to be mostly the new breeding ground of seagulls, various breeds of sickly-looking Albatrosses who were half bald due to molting more feathers than they grew. and a breed of Japanese Aquatic birds known as Snakebirds who liked to jump into the sea to go fishing and then resurface to eat the fishes they caught.

    But, it looked like the Snake-birds got the two-headed treatment just like America's cattle did. It was weird to see a swan-like black bird with two heads attached on top of its long snake-like neck. Think of it, that snake-like neck must've been how the birds got the nickname Snakebirds. And unlike the poor Albatrosses who were half bald, they managed to keep most of their feathers somehow, although their heads were now completely bald.

    The sight of the now-segmented islands seemed to make Toshiro Kago feel like he was aging decades, as this was a Japan he no longer recognized, especially not from the maps he had been so familiar with in the past.

    Guy moved to put a hand on his shoulder in a comforting gesture, as he said, "If you find that you no longer have a home in Japan, then please keep in mind that you still have a home with us, if you want."

    It took Toshiro a few seconds to rephrase and translate that mentally into Japanese as he didn't understand English fully, but once he understood he smiled. "Thank you."

    Elliot then said, "Since we're here, we might as well take a break while Professor scans and sorts through all radio transmissions. We need to know about any possible hostile factions and any creatures we might have to watch out for before we go down there."

    Everyone nodded, and Toshiro Kago didn't seem to be complaining as he looked like he needed time to come to grips with the idea that Japan, or rather the "Nippon" he knew and loved was now gone, to be thoroughly replaced with a completely new and unrecognizable Japan.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    The next morning after breakfast, everyone got together to go over the summaries of what the Professor robot learned so far from listening to the local japan broadcasts.

    Turned out, the news was a little bit mixed in terms of good and bad news.

    The bad news first--

    It seemed that the Japanese islands were evenly split between the Chinese and the Japanese/American camps. Seems after the bombs fell, China made a mad scramble to try to annex Japan again, especially after a good chunk of their entire land mass was rendered inhabitable and all the Chinese refugees needed somewhere to go. Both Korea and Japan were in bad shape too but were considered far more habitable as only the major cities had been hit but the rest of the land was left alone. They were far more successful in taking Korea over than they were in Japan, due to the fact that Japan still had surviving American allies fighting alongside the Japanese armies who hadn't defected to the Chinese after the bombs dropped. But that was only enough to keep half the island safe from the Chinese…. And so the Chinese had gleefully taken over the half that they couldn't defend very well.

    Judging from all of that information it seemed as if it had taken the Chinese a while for it to finally sink in that the end of the world as they knew it had finally come, and so they were in denial thinking that if they just won a few more battles with their closest neighbors then everything would be fine for China would remain victorious above everything else, bombs be damned.

    Second bad news, it seemed like there were rumors over the radio channels of a virus going around that was mutating people. Something that reminded Guy too much of the Trogs from the Pitt.

    It made him wonder if Ashur ever kept his promise to free all the slaves once the Trog disease was cured using Baby Marie's purebred human blood. That had been the only reason why he hadn't taken the baby for the slaves to use and take hostage, after all. That and it didn't seem right to take a baby away from loving parents, even if those parents were technically slavers. It didn't seem like the slaves would've treated that baby right, knowing whose offspring Marie was.

    Well. Guy would have to check the Pitt out again when he returned one of those days, huh?

    But moving on to the good news-- It seemed as if there were large swathes of the islands that would be friendly to Americans like Guy and Elliot, should they decide to go down with Toshiro Kago.

    Which meant that they wouldn't get shot at for being foreigners.

    And they knew which island they should land on first-- Hokkaidō. According to the radio chatter, there were still strong Japanese and American loyalties there. And this way they'd be able to get more intel on foot this way.

    All they had to do was launch an alien probe down to the surface of the island somewhere isolated, and this way they'd have a waypoint for everyone to beam down or up whenever they desired.

    Mission: exploring Japan was a go!

    ==============================================

    A/N: I can't help but feel like part one was crap, as I really wanted to simply just jump to them being in Hokkaidō right away. But I felt like we should explore what the other countries they saw so far were like, hence this exposition chapter.

    Also, the Fallout games seem to treat Japan really oddly… there are times when they seem to think Japan is an enemy, but then we get Japanese refugees like the Yakuza guy in New Vegas and then we get Japanese-speaking robots who sell noodles in Fallout 4, etc. Plus that school in Fallout 76 who thought it'd be a great idea to take a school trip to Japan in the middle of wartime?

    So the only reasonable explanation is-- I think Japan was in the middle of being annexed by China and to stop this they looked to America for aid, and to be able to send their refugees somewhere safely. America agrees because having American military bases in Japan would make for a good strategic spot against China.

    And then of course we had some Japanese citizens who were sympathetic to China or the Chinese being able to pass themselves off as Japanese easily, which would explain why some people were still suspicious of Japanese refugees despite being supposed allies if they weren't simply racists. War-time paranoia, gonna love it, woot.

    Anyway, this is just my take on it. If this offends somebody out there, then I'm sorry. I'm just trying to stay faithful to what would've really happened in the story setting.
     
    Last edited:
  • Sidestory
    • Ancestors are those that comes before us like our great grand parents. Those that comes after us are descendants. So it's the descendants of the Germans that still existed.
     
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