Fallout: Vault 69

Chapter 11 - Maria Porter

Sexual content trigger warning

Maria Porter stepped into the space of the vault's communal showers after yet another day of long, exhausting work shoveling the vault's refuse at the very bowels of the underground facility. Voices and chatter sounded around her, but she took no part in the social activity, refusing to look at the number of equally naked women strewn about the large room.

An arm over her breasts while her hand cupped her crotch, the rest of the women were far less concerned with their nudity scrubbing away at their skin and conversing with their neighbor as though it were perfectly natural.

As if being forced to shower in the same room wasn't mortifying enough, they weren't even given the privacy of stalls to separate their nude figures as they bathed. Rather, a large and square tiled room made up the entirety of the women's washroom with shower heads sprouting from the walls every few feet. And in the center, a significant drain was set to collect the filth of so many bodies to no doubt be cleaned, filtered, and reintroduce into the drinking system.

Disgusting!

More women had been like Maria at the start. Shy, ashamed to be seen after growing up in a society where knee length skirts were considered scandalously salacious. But as the days went on and they grew more used to seeing so many breasts and bushy mounds, their own seemed much less shameful than their old world seemed to imply. And finally, a sense of necessity had swept through the group of women forcing them to adapt to the shared bathing space.

But for Maria, it continued to be nothing more than a horrifying reality, and one that only affirmed her choice in sending her daughter, Angela, to finally do her duty in salvaging what was left of their family's standing. Unfortunately, as the days went by and the mother continued to return to their excuse for a living space only to find her daughter's shamefaced failure, the older woman was beginning to doubt her child's capabilities. Proof, perhaps, that Maria had been a bit too heavy-handed in keeping Angela separate from the opposite sex.

It had been the right decision at the time to maintain as much of her child's worth as possible for when it was time to find an... appropriate marriage partner. And by appropriate, the mother obviously meant a man who was capable of increasing the Porter family fortune even more than its already sizable amount. And to that end, the mother had done her best to craft her only child into the most eligible bride among the upper echelon of American wealth.

Careful dieting and strict exercise ensured that the girl remained beautiful, an endeavor made that much easier do in part to Maria's own genes having taken a significant impact on the younger Porter's appearance.

Angela also had needed to be intelligent enough to be more valuable than simple arm candy that would be tossed aside once those looks faded. After all, it was vital that she be able to take on any of her husband's tasks should he need help running their company. A perfect partner that any man would be proud to show off.

The mother had also made sure that her daughter remained demure, however, lest that competence come off as intimidating to her husband's own successes - as well as retaining an air of sophistication and femininity.

Along that same vein of thought, Maria had thought keeping her daughter innocent would add more to that value. In her experience, at least, it seemed men actually preferred their brides blushing and nervous – if only to inflate their masculine egos when they were eventually allowed to claim the girls for themselves. Unfortunately, those ideals had just come back to bite her in the ass as now it would seem her own daughter couldn't even seduce a teenage boy.

The blond-haired woman's already narrowed eyes only tightened at the thought of spending another week in that box of a room. Before the bombs had fallen, she'd had closets bigger than what The Overseer was expecting nine women to make do. Before the bombs, she'd had ivory bathtubs with massage jets and beauty products that had to be harvested from the very heart of the rainforest. Before the bombs, she'd had power! And now...