-1Well, since Taku is writing the next chapter of LM,LD, I guess I’ll kill time by working on this story. Even though I said I wanted to go places with this story, I kind of lost the map, to use a crappy metaphor. I’m not sure where to go or how to get there, but I’m working on it.

TakuOsuka: Trust me, you’ll love it. It is pretty creepy, but fairly easy to tell you the truth. The Big Daddy fights are intense, but so is going on a roller coaster for the first time; scary, and you’re not sure if you’ll survive or not, but you always do.

Disclaimer: I own at Bioshock. I do not own it, though.

(Jack’s POV)

I ran through the Proving Grounds at full speed, the splicers right behind me, so close that I could smell their rotting flesh. I didn’t dare to look behind me at the approaching mob. Cassie still clung to my hair, wailing, but I couldn’t blame her for it. I was about to the ‘pissing my pants’ stage too. I pulled out my pistol and fired off a random shot at the splicers. One of them shrieked, and I assumed I had killed it.

Hurry! You are almost to the safehouse! Tennenbaum shouted over the radio. Just a little farther!

“Easy for you to say!” I shouted, desperately looking around for anything I could defend myself with. I spotted two or three propane tankers propped up against a wall and I thanked God for big miracles. With a thought, I activated my Telekinesis plasmid and mentally grabbed one of the tanks. I threw it over my shoulder. There was a tremendous explosion, and I though I heard falling concrete. I chanced a look behind me to see that I had thrown the tank way too high up, and it had hit the ceiling. It still accomplished what I wanted it to, crushing several splicers underneath the falling masonry.

Now that they were distracted, I put on a burst of speed and slid through the sliding door entering into Tennenbaum’s safehouse. Cassie tumbled off my head, but I had didn’t have any time to see if she was alright. Picking myself up off the floor, I stumbled my way to the door control and cranked the wheel, shutting the door at an agonizingly slow pace. Thankfully, the door slammed shut just as the few remaining splicers were upon me. One of them tried to stick his arm through. The door crushed it like a sledgehammer crushing a cucumber. I fell to the ground and took a quick and well-deserved breather, panting heavily. I’d never seen that many splicers in one place before. Normally Fontaine would have been controlling them, but he never sent that many after me before.

My radio crackled, and I had a feeling it wasn’t Tennenbaum. To answer you forthcoming question, I didn’t send those splicers after you. Fontaine said, with a cocky attitude. Still, if I’d have wanted to, I could have killed you easily. Those splicers you just pounded into the ground were after that freak show you were carrying on your shoulders, but soon they’ll be after you again, looking for it. I growled as he called the Little Sister ‘it.’ Enjoy the little peace and quiet you have with Mother Goose, because after this, every splicer in the city will be after you. Not only the ones I send, but the ones who want all that ADAM the little freak was carrying.

Before I could utter the complimentary ‘fuck you, Fontaine,’ the radio clicked off and the room was silent. Except for the howling of splicers outside the door, that is. Damn it! I had led the splicers right back to Tennenbaum’s hideout. That reminded me… Where was Cassie? She had flown off of my shoulders when I slid into the safehouse.

I stood up, quickly looking around for the fallen Little Sister. I saw her huddled against the wall, holding her head. I rushed over to her just as Tennenbaum came through another door. I stopped immediately. She crouched next to her and put her hand on Cassie’s head. She sighed and picked her up, carrying her into the Little Sister’s playroom. I stood there for a moment, until a scream from a splicer motivated me into following her.

I stepped inside, and I got the familiar chill up my spine when I watched the Little Sisters dancing around the few large rooms. But it was a good chill, however, though it did come bundled with some creepiness. I saw a few of them drawing on the floor and playing tic-tac-toe with markers and pieces of paper. As I walked through the rooms, some of them turned to look at me. I felt uncomfortable after a while, but then they started smiling at me. I remembered some of the faces of the ones that I had saved and I felt at ease soon.

Tennenbaum kept Cassie in her arms until we turned into a room filled with small beds. I assumed this was the Little Sister’s sleeping quarters. She set Cassie down on one of the beds and pulled the covers over her. Then she leaned down and gave her a kiss on the forehead. I take back what I said earlier. She wasn’t a crazy old cat lady; she was a semi-crazy mother of twenty. I laughed at that, and Tennenbaum turned to stare at me. I shut my mouth, and then promptly decided to open it again. “Uh, Tennenbaum, I-”

“Please, let us not talk out here,” she said with a heavy German accent. “Come into my office.” She gave a flat smile and laugh. “Also known as my bedroom and kitchen.”

I tried laughing at the joke, but found I couldn’t. I probably shouldn’t either. She turned and walked briskly out the door to her office. I followed, speed-walking to keep up with her. Her office wasn’t far down the hall. While we walked, several of the Little Sisters looked at me and gave me waves, accompanied by smiles. I made eye contact and kept walking, not sure how to respond.

We reached her office, and she unlocked the door, twisting a combination lock so fast I couldn’t read the numbers she put in it. We stepped in, and I saw for the first time what her office looked like. Firstly, it was extremely small. With the desk in the middle taking up most of the space, there was barely enough space to fit the chair to it inside. There was a filing cabinet in one corner, though it had no labels in it, and I doubt it had very many files. There was also another thing that caught my eye; an entryway to a Little Sister maze, the one that most of the Little Sisters climbed in when I helped them. While I pondered its purpose, Tennenbaum lit a cigarette. For a while, neither of us spoke. Then she snuffed out her cigarette and looked at me. “Thank you for bringing the little one back to me. That was a very brave thing of you to do.”

“Well, it was nothing; I wasn’t going to let her die…” I replied embarrassedly.

“You have done many services for the little ones and me,” she said admirably. “Your virtue knows no bounds, Jack.”

“It was nothing, really,” I said, stuffing my hands in my pockets. “Is Cassie going to be okay?”

She nodded. “She was knocked unconscious when she fell from your shoulders, but she will be fine. She will wake up soon. In the meantime, please tell me about this Big Daddy you fought.”

“I don’t know; I think I should be going,” I said, looking through the glass at the Little Sisters playing. “Fontaine’s not going to wait for me to come to him.”

“It would be futile, anyway,” she said, lighting another cigarette. “Those splicers have infinite patience when it comes to ADAM. They will wait outside the blast door until you come out, and then no amount of plasmids or bullets will save you. Now please, tell me more about this Big Daddy you fought.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “There isn’t much to tell. It looked like most Big Daddies I’ve fought, but this one was tougher, somehow. I can’t describe it.”

She held out a carton with a single cigarette extended. “Would you like a smoke?”

I took it gladly, denying her lighter. I rubbed my two fingers together and produced a small flame, lighting the cigarette. I took a long inhale and let out the smoke in a steady stream. We stood there in silence for a moment before I spoke up again. “So what did you mean earlier about Cassie ‘imprinting’ on this Big Daddy?”

“It’s all theoretical, you understand…” she trailed off, gazing abstractly out the window.

“Then educate me,” I said in a joking manner. “I’m a bit smarter than you might imagine.”

“Perhaps,” she said simply, with a bare grin on the corners of her mouth. “Well, Suchong was experimenting with different ways to get the little ones to follow the big Daddies around. They were still so innocent then.” She paused for a moment, and then continued. “Well, some Little Sisters reacted differently to the serum than others. The younger ones had a tendency to only follow around one Big Daddy, for reasons we couldn’t explain. Then we found out that some of the little ones would follow the first person around that they saw in their lives, or they would at least recognize the person in a crowd. We started to conduct more experiments, and found that the little ones tended to become very angry if the person or thing they had imprinted on was taken away. I suppose that is what has happened to Cassie. I was not expecting her to still be fixated on this brute after she had been freed, though.”

I rolled the cigarette between my fingers, contemplating what she had just told me. If that was right, then Cassie was going to be very mad when she woke up. As much as I didn’t want to be here for that, I felt a little remorse at her loss. Sighing, I snuffed out my cigarette. “I guess I can stay here for a little while.”

Tennenbaum smiled. “That is good. I think the little ones will like you. I have been telling them all about your bravery.”

“There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity. I’ve been treading that line ever since I came here,” I said sarcastically.

“The fact remains that you have done much good for the little ones and I, and you have never asked for anything in return. We do not have many things here, but you are welcome to use them as you wish.”

Oh great. Warm, fuzzy feeling coming on. “Um, thanks,” I said, not sure how to reply. “But right now I think I could use some sleep. I haven’t gotten much around Rapture, you understand.”

She nodded and gestured out the window to the numerous rooms. “There aren’t many rooms in here, but you could pull two beds together.”

For some reason, the simple act of kindness seemed to touch my heart more than anything I could think of. Maybe it was the lightheadedness that I was getting knowing that I actually had a bed waiting for me, and I didn’t have to worry about being strapped down onto a female splicer’s bed when I woke up. I jiggled the doorknob, feeling embarrassment as it refused to come undone. Tennenbaum gave a laugh under her breath and handed me a key. I clicked the door open and stepped out. My eyelids sagged, and I suddenly realized that I wasn’t going to make it to the Little Sister’s bedroom. I turned to the nearest corner I could find and pressed my back up against the wall, sliding down to the floor. I rested my head against the wall and stretched my legs out, feeling a blanket thrown over me as I fell into a deep sleep.

--

I walked past Point Prometheus, not really paying attention to where I was going. Everything in my mind seemed blurry, and I couldn’t seem to remember where I was supposed to be or where I was supposed to be going. So I wandered around for about an hour or so until it came to me; I was supposed to find a Little Sister! Now I just needed to remember where to get one…

Letting out a low growl of frustration, I rubbed my head where the bump was. I wonder if anyone down here would help me. Suddenly a voice came over the intercom system that was set up all over Rapture. I recognized it as the voice of Frank Fontaine. “Hey, you lazy bum of a Big Daddy wandering around in Point Prometheus; there’s a leak in Fort Frolic; go fix it.”

I growled, trying to tell him that I wanted to find a Little Sister, but he didn’t seem to care. Neither did I, to tell you the truth. Aw, Jesus. Man, I hated this feeling. I looked at the pathway to Fort Frolic and shrugged my gigantic shoulders, thudding forward to make my way towards it.

No sooner had I gone fifty feet than a splicer stepped out in front of me. It looked scared for a moment, then it laughed when it saw that I didn’t have a Little Sister. “Aw, whatcha done now, yah big freako?” It (The voice was rough and scratchy, and it wore a bunny mask, so I couldn’t make out any details of the face) laughed again and ran up to me, giving me a shove and pushing me back. I was confused. Why was it attacking me if it saw that I didn’t have a Little Sister? Whatever made him so demented, I raised my drill and changed my lights from green to yellow. It only laughed and fumbled around for something in its back pocket. As it pulled out a pistol, I realized that it was really going to attack me.

With a roar that shook some plaster from the ceiling, I set my shoulder down and sprinted forward, catching it completely off guard. I slammed it into a wall fifty feet away, feeling the gratifying squish of the impact. I stepped back, watching as the splicer fell to the ground in agony. “You son of a bitch!”

There wasn’t anything else to say. I hoisted my drill up into the air and stabbed downward with it, piercing his back and drilling into the floor below. He let out a long, high pitched scream as blood and bone splattered everywhere. Three seconds later his limbs stopped flailing and I removed the drill, leaving a two-foot hole where his back used to be. Growling, I turned to the left and walked away, flinging blood from my drill. I was still trying to walk off the anger when I remembered that I was supposed to be doing something. Was I supposed to fix a leak…? Yeah, I think that was it. Now where was the place that was leaking?

I let out a roar of anger as I slammed my fist into the wall.

--

Fontaine looked at the multiple screens sitting in front of him with increasing disinterest. The only thing that caught his eye was the very recent Big Daddy fight on the screen. “Huh,” he said, making an astute observation. He picked up a cigarette with his gray hands and lighting it up with a thought. “That was interesting.” Leaving it at that, he stood up. He felt the ADAM sickness upon him. It was time for another recharge.

AN: Alright, that’s it. I meant to update earlier, but I got delayed. If you have any questions about Bioshock, or anything about the story, please do not hesitate to ask me. I will be happy to answer anything that does not deal with flaming, or anything of the sort. Well, read, and please leave a review if you think that this is actually any good.