A/N: I wasn't even going to do the scene with Danny originally, but I got to thinking about how a non-powered human could punish a parahuman child without going too far or being abusive, and that idea of Danny struggling to find a suitable punishment ended up amusing me so I wrote it.
This chapter alternates between Taylor's and Nora's POVs.
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It was midnight, and Taylor stood on the dimly lit street corner leading up to her house, and her heart raced with anxiety. She knew she was in for an interesting conversation when she returned home. And on top of that, parts of her body were starting to ache badly even though she hadn't suffered any serious injury from her fight. She did get knocked around in that fight, though, so that wasn't too surprising.
Things had been getting better between the two of them, as they felt like they were finally connecting again as they more or less agreed on a lot of things that should or shouldn't be done. And now Taylor wondered if she had broken the trust Dad had in her just because she had done things on the spur of the moment, without thinking things through.
"Ugh." She took a deep breath and entered the house. When Taylor finally entered her home, well past the curfew, she could feel the weight of her dad's disappointment as soon as she walked through the door.
Danny was waiting in the kitchen, as the entry hall led directly to it, and by the looks of things he had been pacing back and fro anxiously waiting for her return with an utterly furious yet scared expression on his face. Once she entered though, the angry look on his face made her stomach churn with guilt. But, his stern expression shifted from concern to relief once he saw that she was okay and that she wasn't injured in any way at all.
Danny said in a relieved yet stern voice, "We need to talk."
Taylor nodded as the two moved to sit at the kitchen table. She took a seat across from him, nervously fidgeting with her fingers. "I know. First off, I just want to say I'm sorry."
Danny kept his face impassive as he asked, "Sorry for what, exactly?"
He wanted to know if she was truly sorry about all the right things, or merely sorry that she got caught.
"We practically had an unwritten agreement there that I wouldn't do anything stupid and unnecessary that would put me in danger. That I'd only do jobs like my teleportation service. And I'd be home by 9 pm at the most." Taylor said and then sighed. "I didn't follow through on that."
"Yeah, no shit," Danny said bluntly and a tad angrily. He looked like he wanted to cuss some more, but he took a deep breath and reined himself back in. He was doing his hardest to be reasonable so that he did not unnecessarily blow his lid.
"What happened, anyway? The PRT was pretty spare on details other than that you were okay despite fighting Hookwolf. Those assholes…" He sounded thoroughly annoyed at that and more than just ticked off.
Taylor proceeded to explain why she had done what she did. the encounter with the supercriminal and the chaos that had ensued. She detailed her actions and how she had eventually managed to subdue the threat.
She however let slip one important detail that she hadn't told the PRT at all.
"Uh. So those people you befriended at the dog shelter turned out to be parahumans?" Danny didn't sound very happy about that.
"They're not part of any gangs," Taylor said doing her best to defend her friends, "All I've seen them do is rescue dogs!"
"I don't want you around them anymore. They took your dog without your knowledge and consent, and on top of that they dragged you into that dangerous situation!" Danny said.
Taylor made a sour face at that. "Ugh, Dad! Can't you hold off the judgment until I hear their side of the story??"
Her dad could only shake his head at that. "I'm not a fan of giving people second chances when it comes to the safety of my daughter. They endangered you, and they took your dog without even asking you if it was alright."
Taylor sighed. "But I have to get Gracie back. So it's unavoidable that I'm gonna go talk to them."
"I'll go over there and do that for you, then," Danny said stubbornly, not even budging a little bit from his position on the subject.
"Ugh, Dad!" Taylor groaned loudly. She then asked, "So you're not too mad at me? I thought you'd be more… upset about this whole thing."
Danny ran a hand over his face and sighed loudly. "Oh, I'm still upset. More so because I've realized that it's almost impossible to give you an appropriate punishment that fits the crime without going overboard."
She then sat up straight. "What do you mean by that? Mr. Calvert said he and you were working together to decide my punishment."
Dad's expression thoroughly soured at the mention of Mr. Calvert. His voice was deadly calm and rather frosty as he replied, "Did he now? Funny, I remember telling him over the phone to stay out of my business. As your father, I'd decide what your punishment was, not him."
Oh. Yeah, Danny still hadn't overcome his dislike of the PRT and the Protectorate, had he?
And, he had immediately disliked Thomas Calvert on sight because his gut feeling told him that there was something shady about the man. Danny regularly had to hire men for the Dockworkers' union, so he had developed a sixth sense about that sort of thing… and often his gut feeling was correct on whether somebody was trustworthy or not.
"Oh." Taylor didn't know what to say to that. So Mr. Calvert had been just yanking her chain then? Making her sweat some so that she'd be more anxious when she went home to face the music? For somebody who was the PRT director, that seemed needlessly sadistic on some level. And kind of petty, like something a 13-year-old would do instead of a grown-up man but maybe that was just Taylor's opinion?
Her pondering was interrupted when Danny let out a gusty sigh. "Anyways, like I said, now that you're a parahuman I can't exactly give you the same punishments I would've given you had you been a normal teenage girl. So I'm stumped right now on what to do with you."
At Taylor's puzzled expression, he started ticking things off his fingers, "Number one, grounding. Normally I'd just ground you. But you can just teleport in and out of here without anybody knowing, hmm? Number two, your social life is largely tied up in school and your jobs. Which I can't stop for obvious reasons. Number three, you don't have a car so I can't take it away. There's the power armor, but I suppose it doesn't have a key. Does it?"
As her dad lamented how hard it was to ground a parahuman child, Taylor's mouth twitched upwards into an amused smile which she hid behind her mouth. At the last part, she answered with a shake of her head.
Danny then said, "There's also the fact that taking the power armor was also Mr. Calvert's suggestion. It was one of the things we talked about over the phone."
Taylor stopped smiling at that part. Danny continued, "I've tried, but something about Mr. Calvert just rubs me the wrong way. I can't bring myself to trust him at all, my gut feelings tell me that he's not to be trusted. And you know how I am when it comes to my gut feelings."
Taylor nodded.
"I can't help but think it might be an underhanded way of stealing everything you have under the umbrella of legal bullcrap. So yeah, I'll never accept Mr. Calvert's suggestion. I'm telling you about this upfront so that you don't think I'm the sort who would go along with that. I also refused to sign any legal papers they gave me without going it over with a trusted lawyer." Danny said solemnly.
Taylor finally spoke up, though she did smile slightly at the part where he bluntly said he'd never sign over everything to the PRT. A part of her honestly appreciated that very much.
"Oh come on, Dad. Sure, they had problems with corruption and they probably still do in other cities, but they've been clean so far after they fixed that here. They've been cleaning up their act so what happened to me wouldn't happen again, to me or others. I'm keeping an eye on them to make sure they followed through on their promises, and they delivered on that."
Danny could only scoff loudly at that.
"Plus, they've been pretty good about paying me up front for everything I did, which makes me doubt that they'd just straight up steal everything of mine. It's a lot of money they're paying me after all." Taylor commented, and that's when Dad got a glint in his eyes as if he got an idea all of a sudden.
"Aha. Taylor, you did a lot of damage in that battle, didn't you?"
Taylor nodded, wondering where her dad was going with this.
Her dad cleared his throat, and he replied in a very stern voice, almost as if he had practiced this beforehand, "Part of growing up is to learn how to take responsibility and be accountable for your actions. Taylor Rose Hebert, your punishment is to give up portions of your paycheck to pay for the damages that your fight caused."
He then crossed his arms with a mildly satisfied expression on his face as he had finally found something that could punish a parahuman child without going too far.
Taylor blinked. Hadn't she been thinking of doing that anyway? It was part of her justification for why she could use the fusion cells against Hookwolf as bombs. Going back to not having that much spending money in the following week was going to suck, but she could accept it.
She nodded. "Alright, Dad. I'll pay for everything. Asphalt repair services, and everything else."
Taylor grimaced when something occurred to her. "Add radiation cleanup on top of that. I wonder how much that costs. I, uh, may or may not have used some radioactive explosives…? Maybe we should have the PRT handle that part."
Danny blinked at that and stared at his daughter silently as he processed that until he finally said, "Taylor. What the hell?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"What the hell?" on another earth, Nora was unwittingly echoing Danny's words as she interacted with Sheldon Weintraub, who was a resident of the upper levels of Vault 21.
"You don't hate Mr.House? Not even a little bit?" Nora asked in disbelief. She felt like she was experiencing culture shock here, with how differently the residents of New Vegas seemed to see the world compared to the rest of the world.
Sheldon shrugged. "Why would I? It's just how life is, you know? Everything's one constant gamble. You win some, you lose some in the game of life. You can think somebody's an asshole but not hate them. My sister on the other hand… I'm pretty sure she hates his guts. I've heard her badmouth his name loudly now and then when she's in one of her moods."
"Well, she seems like the reasonable one in your family…" Nora quietly muttered under her breath.
Sheldon and Sarah Weintraub were siblings who had only one thing in common-- their agoraphobia. Otherwise, you couldn't tell the two were related, last names aside. Sarah was blond and blue-eyed, while Sheldon had black hair and dark brown eyes.
Sheldon also went by Micheal Angelo, which was his artistic name handle and he had a workshop building that was right by the newly refurbished police station that sat across the street from the new coffee and doughnut shop. It was also attached to the aboveground Vault 21 gift shop, linking the two.
Which explained why Mr. House hadn't said anything about touching that building too, even though it looked pretty run down.
Anyways, that caused Nora to realize that she had a problem here to solve.
At first, Nora had foolishly thought that she could just grab the ENTIRE vault with her power and move it away from the tunnels. But. the vault was also connected to the vault 21 giftshop aboveground, and Sheldon's workshop.
If she moved something underground, how would that impact the stuff above ground? Because gravity and physics were a thing, it meant that sudden space underground where the vault used to be would cause the ground above to collapse down into it. And that would be very, very bad for the buildings above ground.
Not to mention the safety of the residents living here, as both Sarah and Sheldon weren't very inclined to go stand outside and wait for Nora to be done with her work or even be temporarily relocated to a hotel room. The very thought of going outside and walking across the streets to the Ultra-Luxe or any other hotel was enough to give the two siblings panic attacks. Even if the hotels were only a very short distance away.
This meant that even if she freed up most of the vault she would still have to scrap and seal up parts of the vault that were in danger of being breached by the underground sewer tunnels or any other secret tunnels that ran underneath all of New Vegas. All to prevent the ground from collapsing down and taking all nearby buildings with it.
Sarah rushed over with the blueprints of vault 21 that Nora had asked for, and then asked again in that wide-eyed way of hers, "I still can't believe it. Mr. House is letting us have the vault back?"
Nora nodded. "Yes. The reason why he sealed up the vault was due to security concerns and a lack of ability to resolve those concerns. Now that I'm able to resolve those problems for him, he's allowing the rest of the vault to be accessible again."
Sarah beamed. "Oh, that's just wonderful! Gosh, I take every bad thing I ever said about him. Well…. Almost all of them."
"You'll have to stay up here, however, while the rest of the vault undergoes construction. It won't be safe for you." Nora called out over her shoulder as she headed downstairs to the sealed-off area.
---
Turns out that removing all the concrete was the easy part. Mr. House hadn't filled up the entire place with it, he only blocked off all the doorways down here and the entrance that led to the lower levels.
Presumably, this was so that any person would be slowed down by having to destroy every barricade to each room they wanted to access…. This would give Mr.House time to mount an offense once he got the alert that the intruder was trespassing.
Also, the concrete was from the rubble from the ruins outside instead of the kind that you poured into a mold and waited for it to harden.
Which made far more sense in hindsight now that Nora thought about it.
Vault 21 was a pretty large underground vault, relatively speaking, in that it was designed to hold exactly 101 family units as that was considered a symmetrical number. For some reason, whoever designed this vault was obsessed with having everything perfectly symmetrical, down to the number of residents on paper. Weird.
And this was a vault where everything had to be resolved with gambling, and where everyone was conditioned to see life itself as a game of random chance. Which explained so much about how culturally different the people here were.
That kind of experiment was so mild compared to the rest of the vaults Nora had seen thus far, to the point that this vault might as well be one of those rare control vaults that were designed to save lives instead of experimenting on them.
.... Why couldn't all the vault experiments be more like this one? Where the majority of humans had a high chance of surviving it, that is. It was almost like the vault designers on the West Coast were the sane ones while the ones on the East Coast were psychopaths.
Anyhow back to the main topic, Mr. House would've needed to clean out the entire city of all its' rubble entirely just to be able to fill up all of this vault. And he didn't have the resources for fresh pourable concrete, much less an excess of it that could fill the whole vault. So he had gone for this instead, where all the doorways were to be blocked.
This meant Mr. House's actions weren't as bad as Nora had initially thought. He still robbed people of their homes and thus this still made him an asshole, but at least the vault itself wasn't completely wrecked. This was easily fixable.
Nora also noted how this vault seemed to be entirely built out of steel and other dark gray metals, and then had grayish-white concrete walls slapped over that. It made for a nearly monochrome color scheme, but the yellow stripes on the upper part of the concrete walls and the occasional exposed blue pipe broke up the monotony.
Weirdly, it reminded Nora of the Brotherhood of Steel for some reason. They seemed the sort who was into this steel-gray aesthetic, was all.
The east coast vaults from what she'd seen looked far more colorful in comparison. Of course, this was the only West Coast vault she had seen thus far, so maybe it was too early to judge them all by this one.
She could now build this style of vault, thanks to the vault 21 blueprints she got.
She wasn't working on the vault quite yet, instead, she was mostly idly scrapping all the doorway barricades while she explored the place to get a feel for everything.
And she finally got to the bottom level of vault 21, the one that Mr. House had deemed so problematic that he'd seal off most of the vault. Namely, the service areas of the vault where the power generator and the water purifiers were. There's also a PA (Public Address) room, where the overseer or any person in charge of that room would make public announcements so that all could hear it across the speaker system that was installed inside the vault.
Overall the power generation and the water room both were so large that it took up a good chunk of the space down here.
In the hallway area of this level, Nora discovered that somebody had gone to the trouble of breaking into the Vault itself, via a very crude man-made hole that looked as if it had been made with explosives and pickaxes that led back to The Tops' basement. The hotel's basement area was practically right next to the vault itself, separated by only a few feet of dirt and metal walls.
Frowning slightly, Nora opened up all the maps she had, and compared how close the vault was to the basements and sewer tunnels again.
….. She hated to admit it, but she could understand some of Mr.House's actions now.
The barriers between the vault itself and the rest of the city were so thin that it served as a security weak point. People in the hotel basements on the sewers could easily break through the walls with the right tools and invade the vault itself, and any criminally inclined vault dweller could easily do the same thing to the hotels and the sewer system if they wanted to conquer the entire city.
…. Whoever had designed this vault hadn't thought about this at all, they were so obsessed with keeping things symmetrical that they missed the bigger picture. Like ensuring that the vault walls were so thick that nothing could break in or break out!
If one put themselves in the shoes of a ruthless businessman-slash-guardian who only cared about the city due to the revenues it brought in but not about the people themselves, that sort of weakness would be unforgivable after all the lengths he had gone to erect protective walls around what he deemed the most important parts of his city.
Aha! Lucky 38 also was one of the many vulnerable hotels that would've been affected by somebody exploiting this weakness on top of that, according to the maps Nora had on hand. Courier Six had hinted to her that Mr.House's real body was located in the deepest parts of Lucky 38's basement too.
If that was true… then Nora could easily imagine herself in his shoes. Once he realized that people could break through the walls and then get to his real body, killing him or worse, he would panic and then proceed to do the worst thing possible.
In any other situation, the rational thing would've been to relocate the generators and the water chip room to another room on a different level, and then destroy or fill up the service areas below so that nobody would be able to access it anymore, not even the basement or sewer people. This is what Nora would've done.
This way people would still be able to live inside the vault without being evicted, and everyone would be somewhat happy with how things would be handled. Especially once they were explained why the service level had to be destroyed without going into too much detail.
But because Mr.House saw a personal threat to himself, he wasn't in the mood to explain why he was doing things like evicting almost everyone out of the vault. Especially if it meant openly admitting that he was vulnerable.
Not to mention, he probably didn't have the resources at the time to help the people move the service areas elsewhere in the vault before reducing the lowest level to rubble. Also, could he even do something like that without damaging the rest of the vault? So this was probably the best he could do to secure the vault and prevent any potential dangers to himself and his city.
… damn it, everything made so much sense now.
Ugh, Nora hated understanding why somebody was acting like an asshole, espeically when they had done things she didn't approve of or hated.
Truthfully she had come down here hoping to find evidence against Mr. House's claims, anything she could use to show how much of a dumbass he was being. And instead, she found out that he was mostly right in his reasoning even if his methods in solving those issues were questionable and could've been handled better. Fuck it all to hell.
Her mood thoroughly soured, and she headed off back to the PA room and turned the PA system on so that she could make a public announcement to the rest of the residents still living here in Vault 21.
"Citizens of Vault 21, this is Nora Smith here on behalf of Mr. House. A lot of things down here are badly damaged, with a lot of water leaks and dangerous active electrical wires. So I'll be shutting off the water and power for a while but they will come back on after I've fixed everything. I'll give you a few minutes to go grab some candles or turn on your pip-boy's lights before I turn off everything. Thank you for your time and patience." her voice rang out throughout the intercom system, echoing loudly in the mostly empty hallways down here but she was sure her voice reached up to the vault 21 lobby room.
Some of it even had the benefit of being true, as a lot of things down here had broken down…though not to the point of being overly dangerous like Nora had suggested. But she just wanted to make sure that everyone would stay up there and not wander down here out of curiosity.
With that, she started storing all of the room pieces and everything else in her dimensional storage space and instantly swapped them with massive concrete blocks that were interwoven with metal supports for added durability, as it would now support the above levels of the vault.
With all the steel fused into the concrete, it would also make it harder for people to use basic dynamite and pickaxes to attempt breaking through into a now non-existent room. And now that all of this bottom level was nothing but the foundation itself, the majority of people would give up once they realized there was no room on the other side.
The irony wasn't lost on her, the fact that she was now literally replacing all of this bottom level with a foundation of concrete and steel after she had lambasted Mr.House for doing something similar.
And of course, she would have to put in plenty of support for the upper levels too just in case the foundation on the bottom level started crumbling over time or got damaged by idiots trying to get into the vault so that Vault 21 wouldn't collapse into itself.
She turned on her pip-boy light when she got to the power generator room and started pulling everything into her storage space, which had the predictable effect of plunging everything into darkness. Nearby, she could hear the water chip and purifier room's machines slow to a halt.
~~~~~~~~~~
An hour later, Vault 21's power and water were restored, and it now had a slightly different layout that extended outwards away from New Vegas. It broke up the perfect symmetry of the vault, but Nora doubted that many people would complain about it if it meant getting back all of this space.
Whereas there used to be six levels (if one counted the aboveground gift shop), there were now only five.
The protective outer walls that contained the entirety of the vault itself were now considerably thicker and far more durable. Thus it would be now near-impossible for anybody to break into New Vegas' most secure areas, or alternately break into the vault itself.
Sarah was somewhat surprised to discover that she wouldn't get all levels of the vault back, as the one level that was so much trouble was now nothing but steel and concrete. But she understood when Nora sat her down and explained why it had to be done.
"Hmph. So that's why Mr.House did what he did all those years ago… It all makes sense now." Sarah murmured, and then her expression grew more annoyed. "Ugh! If he had simply explained things better instead of running roughshod over us then maybe we could've come to a better compromise."
"Well, he's a man." Nora joked, "You know how men are, they don't like to admit weakness. If they see a threat to themselves and their home they barge right in to fix that without talking it out to find a better solution."
Sarah laughed loudly at that. "Ain't that the truth."
She then sighed contentedly. "And getting most of the vault back is still better than how it used to be. So thank you, Nora."
Nora smiled and nodded. She then jumped right to the issue she wanted to address, like the things she felt that Vault 21 was lacking. "No problem. Now that the hard part's over let's talk about the small ways this place could be improved. For example, the gift shop looks like it needs a makeover. I also noticed your vault didn't have some of the other things that other vaults back on the East Coast had. Like a clothing fabber machine to make vault suits for you. How would you feel about having something like that?"
Sarah blinked. "Something like that exists?"
Nora's smile widened.
~~~~
Moments later, Nora left behind a dazed-looking Sarah who was now standing in a newly refurbished gift shop, which now had bright cheery yellow walls with a blue stripe running through them, and two statues of a Vault-boy and a Vault-Girl flanking the new countertop bar.
Oh, and Vault 21 now had a brand-new room added to the Services section of the vault where a prefabber produced vault-tec-related things. Everything from vault suits to beddings with the Vault logo on them. Even pillows and T-shirts, as long as it was cloth-related.
Sarah had a feeling that she wasn't going to have a problem restocking her gift shop anymore.
Well…. At least she got to know how Nora managed to alter the vault without using loud construction machines. Though she was still a little bit lost on the "how" of it.
