Title: Raffles
Summary: Daisy Fitzroy reflects upon the incidents leading up to meeting with the "False Shepherd" of Columbia.
Disclaimer: "Bioshock" and all things related are property of Irrational Games.
Raffles weren't anything new in Columbia. They came and went like the seasons and everyone who was wanted was invited to join in on the festivities. The nature of this particular lottery, however, was something new. Apparently, Fink and co. didn't take too kindly to one of the girls, a young woman named Mona, accepting the advances of a pearly toothed white man and sought to punish her for it.
And it certainly wasn't a coincidence that Fink and Comstock's militia had become particularly aggressive with the Vox in those few hours. No, the timing was almost a little too perfect. They never moved without purpose and Daisy could only assume their sudden shift in tactics had a lot to do with rumors of the arrival of the "false shepherd" Comstock had been preaching about for years. They "interrupted" the little game of raffle and killed a lot of folk in the process. Even the most minor of depletion of Columbia militia put a smile on her face; every one of them had it coming.
The destruction of their precious lamb's statue probably didn't help matters either, and it gave them more a reason to come flush them out. (Not that they ever needed one.) Daisy had an almost perfect view of the songbird's apparent insanity as it dipped in and out of the clouds, wrecking their pristine "Eden" in the sky until it finally ripped apart the symbol of their beliefs. The girl was loose and Comstock was looking for someone to pin it on and who else better than the Vox Populi and the so-called false shepherd Comstock had been preaching about for years?
This shepherd probably didn't even exist, but one was tasked to keep up appearances. The damned jackals sniffed them out some time during height of the raffle chaos. Members that were injured and unable to moved had to be left behind, a decision that put Daisy on edge. You never got used to hearing your people beg for their lives before the trigger was pulled while you ran.
Wandering through the city, they were forced to split up into smaller groups in an attempt to reach the other center of operations under their control. Living beneath the heel of the city for years got you real acquainted with its finer routes and passages that most never thought to use; it was for that exact reason why most of who escape Columbian police and Finkton were never caught.
It was serendipity that led Daisy and her group to the idle airship of the First Lady. Daisy left the piloting of the airship to Henson and helped the others tend to the wounded.
Prayer and song inside the airship did little to lift her spirits, yet she enjoyed - appreciated even - that so many could still sing the praises of the Lord in the face of all they've been through.
"Daisy, found us a cracka laid out in the cockpit," Henson emerged from the cockpit a mere few moments after their airship. Daisy followed him into the cockpit to investigate. She looked upon the man with indifference for a moment before she noticed his hand.
It bore the letters A and D on the back, those same letters that were branded as the mark of the False Shepherd. He could've been some fool white man looking to get some attention; she couldn't put anything past the folk of Columbia at this point. But something told her, as this man moved to gaze upon them, this wasn't some foolhardy stunt. This was the genuine article. "Well, I'll be damned. So he is real," Daisy stepped back and nodded to Henson.
Henson kneeled down to regard the false shepherd for a moment before rising to stand. One foot to his face knocked him out again, he went limp like a fish boned.
"You want him gone?" Henson asked.
"Nah, let him lie for a while," Daisy remarked as she turned back to the door. "We gotta tend to our people first."
FIN.