"Listen, Charley, we need to talk."
 

Well, that didn't sound ominous at all. I considered the scene. Holly was facing me, and I didn't see where Winter was at, but Stef and Fred were standing a bit back and clearly watching. Fred's expression said 'concern,' but Stef was straight-up glowering at me. Clearly, something bad had happened while I was out to visit the Abernathy family. 

 

"Alright," I said after a moment, "let's sit down in the rec room and talk, then."

 

Holly seemed to start to move for just a second, but then she shook her head. "No, let's just talk here."

 

"Oh... kay. I guess this is something serious then. Tell me what's on your mind."

 

Without further preamble, Holly said, "the farm is going to fail. Without grow lamps, we're not going to get any kind of meaningful yield on the melons or the gourds."

 

As Holly said this, Stef grimaced and looked away. She'd been the one taking the lead on the farm, and I could understand that she felt embarrassed about how things had turned out.

 

"Damn, that's not good," I admited. "But not as bad as it could have been. I was able to get to the Abernathy farm, and they loaded me up with tatos. Promised to do more trade in the spring, too."

 

"That's not good enough," Stef muttered. A moment later, Fred put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed her close, but from the anger on Stef's face I could tell she wasn't all that comforted.

 

"Charley, I appreciate what you did getting these supplies, but... we're just not sure that this vault can keep five people alive through the winter."

 

"So what are you saying, Holly? Are you leaving? I'm not sure that's any safer with the weather."

 

What expression was I seeing on Holly's face now? Was it... sadness? No, I think it was shame.

 

"Charley, there's four of us and one of you. And now you've got that suit that makes it safer for you to go outside. We need this shelter. You don't. We've talked about it, and we think you should leave. We have a chance if its just the four of us, but no chance with five."

 

Holly's heart didn't really seem to be in what she was saying, and I challenged her: "Is this how all of you feel?"

 

Holly looked away, her voice quieting as she said, "yes. We discussed it while you were away."

 

 

"Alright," I said, "then I just have two questions. First, how are you going to operate the Workshop? Surely you're going to need it in order to keep the vault operational - to say nothing of meeting your own needs."

 

Stef had the answer to that. "You know as well as we do that Winter can use it. We don't need you for the Workshop."

 

"That's true, and it gets to my second question. You say you're all agreed, but I notice Winter isn't here. What's her opinion on that?"

 

Now anger flashed in Stef's eyes. "That's none of your business! You've already been enough of a bad influence on her!"

 

I crossed my arms over my chest and considered her coldly. "Stef, I've had the feeling for a while that you don't like me. That's fine. But Winter's an adult, and if you're going to go back on the deal we made before she needs to have a say."

 

Stef seemed to stew, evidently not ready to respond to me, and Fred answered in her stead.

 

"Look, Charley, you and I have worked together plenty. You know I respect you and I hope you feel the same way about me, but your lifestyle is so different from ours... and we're not comfortable with the way Winter wants to do things your way. Please don't make this difficult, it's hard enough..."

 

"Mom, dad," I head a voice speak up behind me, "what's all the racket about? And did you see all the food in the kitchen?"

 

 

"Winter Samantha Ainsleigh," Stef hissed, "I told you to get changed into decent clothes."

 

I looked on Holly with disappointed eyes. "Really, Holly, is that what this is all about? Couldn't he have talked about this earlier, before it came to this?"

 

"Before it came to what?" Winter interjected.

 

"Winter," Holly said, talking past me, "your parents and I talked and we aren't comfortable with your relationship with Charley. We think it's better if she lives in her house in the town while we stay here."

 

"Unbelievable," Winter muttered, "absolutely unbelievable. If you do that, how are we going to eat? How are we going to keep the vault working?"

 

"I know you can run the Workshop, and with one less mouth to feed we can make the food last."

 

I could hear Winter walking closer from behind, until she was almost standing side by side with me.

 

"You're right, mom," she said, "I can run the Workshop. But that doesn't mean I will. I know you're having problems with the farm, but if that's what you're upset about you need to take responsibility and find a real solution. A solution that, by the way, I have and I explained to you two different times."

 

"Those fucking dog collars?" Stef blurted out in disbelief. "Those freak clothes? That's no solution at all. We're a respectable family - even you - and we won't lower ourselves to be dirty animals just to eat."

 

"Hang on," Holly said. "Winter, what are you talking about?"

 

After an exasperated sigh and a withering look at her mother, Winter explained how the Neural Sentry worked - mostly the broad strokes, but she focused on how it helped regular hunger, sleep, and metabolism, and how it would let them work and live on smaller rations without losing productivity or getting malnourished. 

 

"In other words," she finished, "between this tech and the food that Charley brought in, we can make it. She'll need to make a few more runs for specific things - meat and some other things - but with that suit she can do it."

 

Holly turned to Stef then. Her sister wouldn't meet her gaze, so she turned to Fred. "Fred, I'm starting to think that my sister wasn't completely honest with me. Mind giving it to me straight?"

 

Fred let out a long sigh, then shook his head. Instead of directly answering Holly, he looked to me and asked, "Charley, can we have a moment alone?"

 

"No, Fred, you can't" Holly interrupted, "you already had one conversation behind Charley's back. Tell me what this is all about!"

 

While Stef seethed, Fred explained the situation. From the start, Stef had been uncomfortable with me. Notwithstanding the fact that I couldn't wear normal clothes without being uncomfortable, she just couldn't get over the way the vault suit left me exposed. In the community where she'd grown up, only prostitutes dressed that way, and while they were tolerated they were at the bottom of the social ladder. Still, she was willing to put aside her discomfort if it meant having a safe place to spend the winter. But my friendship with Winter, and Winter's openness to experimenting with the vault technology - including adopting the vault suit as her daily wear - wasn't something she could get over so easily. It was Stef who'd demanded that Winter wear a bathing suit over her vault gear, and she'd taken it as a personal affront when Winter ended up choosing an ensemble that barely added to her modesty.

 

I listened, but I knew that this was for Holly and I didn't interrupt. Winter now also seemed to be simmering, perhaps having inherited some of her mother's temper, but she also kept quiet.

 

Around this time, Stef found her voice again and rolled over her husband. She pressed on, highlighting a litany of complaints: how I'd taught her to groom her pubic hair. How I'd let her read the 'obscene' power suit manual. How I'd (allegedly) given her free reign to make whatever she wanted with the Workshop (a disclosure that I made a mental note to follow up on, as I was pretty sure I had in fact done the opposite). How I'd recruited her to touch me sexually on the pretext of putting on the power suit. And then the final straw - how she'd insisted that the key to our survival was to adopt the vault suits and to use the Neural Sentries.

 

Holly interjected a few questions, mostly clarifying some small details, but she mostly listened and nodded. "Stef," she said at length, "thank you for telling me this. I wish you'd told me before, but that's fine. Now we're all on even ground. Charley, you have anything you want to say?"

 

I have to admit, I was tempted to just let the four of them decide. They were right: I could survive away from the vault. The real question was, could they survive in it? But after a moment's consideration I decided not to stay silent.

 

"Stephanie," I said, "I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable, and I wish you'd spoken to me about this sooner. And I'm sorry I glossed over the reason why I dress the way I do. The short version is that when I was in the vault, I was exposed to chemicals that make my body very sensitive. It's hard for me to wear normal clothes. If you decide you want me to stay, I can tell you the whole story later. But that doesn't really matter for now, either you can live with me or you can't. For what it's worth, I enjoyed working with you and I hope we can find a better solution than what you had in mind."

 

I proceeded to lay out my thoughts. Holly hadn't hidden the fact that the farm was going to fail, and that was just rotten luck. I didn't blame Stef for it, but I also didn't accept any blame myself - the only people at fault were the long-dead business executives who chose to lock away the schematics we needed to fix the power supply problems. In my opinion, we needed three things to survive the winter. We needed the power suit, to be able to venture out of the vault in the cold. We needed meat and nutrients beyond what we already had stockpiled. And we needed a good rationing plan. Realistically, I didn't think the four of them could make that work. Fred might be able to do some very limited hunting on warmer days, and a rationing plan might work if they stuck to it very strictly, but without using the Neural Sentry system it would hard.

 

At that last part, Stef muttered that if she had to, she could use the Sentry... if they didn't have strangers around looking at them.

 

I tried really hard not to throw my arms up in the air in frustration. At some effort, I held my physical composure but I couldn't keep the heat out of my voice.

 

"Stef, I understand that people aren't as open about their bodies as they were before the war. I get it. But when I went into this vault two hundred years ago, I didn't get a choice avoid how to dress. I had to wear the vault suit, because that's all we had to wear. I had to go to doctor's appointments, participate in research, and live my day to day life, wearing less than your daughter is right now. I didn't have a choice, because that's what I had to do to survive. Then, later, I had to keep wearing those clothes because I am literally in pain if I cover up the way you probably want me to. This power suit is literally the first time I've been able to cover up my whole body without hurting all over since I went down into this vault. So I'm sorry that I made you uncomfortable, but you need to decide if your modesty is more important than surviving the winter. Because if you throw me out, my bet is you won't survive. Hell, you won't even be able to close the vault door without a Pip-Boy. Do you have a Pip-Boy? Or were you planning to ask me to seal you in and then trust me to open it up in the spring? Do you understand how crazy that sounds?"

 

Stef wouldn't meet my eyes, but Winter put a hand on my shoulder. "Charley, calm down," she said, "let's figure out a solution."

 

I tried not to let my eyes flash too much when I answered her, "I think you already figured out a solution. We need to fabricate three more vault suits and three more Neural Sentries. I need to, probably working with Fred, figure out what food we need so we don't starve, and then go out hunting and scavenging. And we need to try and figure out an alternative to farming the melons, some kind of backup in case we get snowed in by a blizzard or something. And we need to do it as a team."

 

I looked to Holly for a moment, then caught Stef staring daggers at me. "Jesus, do you really hate the idea of undressing that much? We have plenty of cloth in the Workshop's stores. Make yourself a bathing suit like Winter did if you absolutely must cover up."

 

Winter laughed at that, "you can have mine. Its probably a close enough fit. You know I'm only wearing it to make you happy."

 

Fred frowned at her. "You're not helping, Winter."

 

We went back and forth a few more times, with Stef continuing to dig in her heels, Winter becoming progressively more irritated, Fred trying to be the voice of reason, and Holly mostly listening, asking an occasional on-topic question here and there.

 

Somewhere along the way, my previous thoughts about appropriating Vault 111 as my own came back to me. I decided then that in the future, I was going to own Vault-Tec. I'd given them so much of myself with no choice in the matter, and in the end they hadn't even kept my husband and my son safe. They owed me, and I was going to take everything they had. In this world, people were going to associate Vault-Tec with Charlotte Ellison, not with those old perverts who owned this place once upon a time.

 

I was about to launch a tirade to this effect, and especially to the effect that I wouldn't accept people either stealing my property or trying to shame me for the body that I lived in or the clothes that I wore, when Holly spoke first.

 

"Stef, I know its hard to hear, but Charley's right. We're not going to make it if we don't work together. Fred, you know she's right too. Winter just figured it out before we did."

 

Stef didn't want to hear that answer, crouching down and putting her hands over head as a low wail rose out of her throat. After a moment of this, Fred turned to look at me. "OK, Charley, now I think we do need to ask you to let us talk in private. But Winter, please stay. I'm sorry we didn't include you before."

 

I didn't argue, retiring back to the rec room to let them talk. While they worked at it, I unloaded the tatos onto the storage shelves in the kitchen. Regardless of what the family decided, I'd already made up my mind that I wasn't leaving. No matter what they thought they were making a choice about, they were really deciding if they were going to stay or if they were going to leave. This was, after all, my vault, and I wasn't going to give it up just because Stef was uncomfortable wearing clothes that didn't fully cover her.

 

After a while, I heard some quiet conversation and the pad of feet - not towards where I was but towards the workshop. I listened with interest as it hummed and growled, but resisted the urge to check in on it. At length, Winter shooed Stef and Holly into the living quarters. Stef still didn't look thrilled, but Holly seemed untroubled. 

 

 

I took a second to examine them both. It seemed that Winter had helped them go through the Vault-Tec clothing catalogue and fabricate some additional items to reach their comfort zone. I noted in passing that Stef had a much more petite figure than I'd first expected. I wondered, idly, if that had something to do with her compulsive modesty. Either way, it seemed that the two sisters had found a way to balance their desire to eat against their concerns about the wardrobe.

 

Stef looked at me with more than a little resentment in her eyes, but she offered conciliatory words. "I'm sorry I tried to send you away, Charley. I... still don't like this, but I can live with it. I hope you can forgive me." Holly reached over and with a little smile gave her a reassuring pat on the back.

 

"There's nothing to forgive, Stef. Like I said, I get where you're coming from. I'm glad you decided to stay. I still haven't given up on the farm, and we'll need your skills to make it work. But... where's Fred? I hope he's not leaving us."

 

Holly smirked and shook her head. "Oh, he's not leaving. It's just... well, he didn't have as much luck as we did with the catalogue."

 

"Winter, I don't think this is..." Fred's voice murmured from around the corner.

 

Sighing, Winter rolled her eyes. "Dad, it's nothing any of us haven't seen before. Here, do you want me to undress so you're not alone?" She started working at the tie to her top.

 

"No, no, that's not necessary."

 

Winter gave a little laugh then and made a becoming gesture. "Then come and tell Charley you're staying."

 

After a little more prompting, Fred unsteadily made his way into the living area, evidently not fully accustomed to the heel-boots of his suit. Unlike his female relatives, who had managed to find clothing to their taste that fit over the vault suits, it seemed he hadn't had any luck, as his front was exposed for all to see. Not meeting my eyes, he nevertheless agreed, "I'm staying too, Charley. Sorry for all the, um, fuss."

 

 

I smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder. "Like I said to Stef, nothing to apologize for. I'm glad we could talk things through. Like they say in the Vault-Tec brocure: 'welcome home.'"

 

While I didn't want to say anything that would make Fred feel more uncomfortable than he already surely was, I observed his appearance with approval. I considered the idea that asking the men who lived on my land and on my property to accept the same kind of exposure I'd had to during my involuntary stay here might be a little bit of philosophical scale-balancing that I'd find satisfying. Though a part of me wondered if I should set the same rule for everyone, in the future. This whole mess started over gatekeeping about what kind of outfits were appropriate, and while I'd had no choice but to compromise with Holly and the Ainsleighs, in the future insisting on a uniform dress code from the start might be the best way to not only enforce some equality but also to filter out the people who really were serious about building a new life here, versus the opportunists.

 

Plenty of time to work that out over the winter, though. For now, with the crisis averted for the moment, it was time to get back to ensuring our survival.

 

 

Behind The Scenes

As you can see, my first attempt at a bodyslide conversion for The Kite's slave suit worked out reasonably well. I'll need to revisit it eventually as this one is based off the vanilla version rather than the more technically sophisticated Fusion Girl conversion, but it's getting the job done for now. The bigger problem is getting the Body Talk 3 body to play nice with add-on clothing pieces. Unlike SOS, the penis is an integral part of the body, so I can't readily hide it with keywords and therefore it pokes out of the different clothing options I currently have for the body. Not a game breaking problem though, just a source of minor embarrassment for poor Fred.