Author's Notes: Hello everyone! Here is another of the sample one-shots of a Total Drama/Bioshock Infinite crossover that might or might not ever actually happen.
I sure am making a lot of these for not being sure if I'll ever write the story, eh?
Anyway, we return our focus to the trio of Booker DeWitt, Bridgette, and Harold. This time they come face-to-face, at least partially, with the founder of Columbia, Zachary Hale Comstock, and see even further proof of how dangerous this place is. Also, the teens learn more about the mysterious DeWitt and wonder if he's really any better than the insane racist zealot who believes that he's a prophet of God.
So, why did I agree to write this third one-shot sample for story that might never be? There are actually a lot of reasons why, allow me to list them all for you. :)
Firstly, my good friend "The Samurai Prince" specifically requested this scene. Secondly, after the first encounter with the Fireman, this is the scene that comes to mind whenever I think of "Bioshock: Infinite" and it has an element that I adore to death. Thirdly, it will address and correct the biggest flaw of my previous one-shot with this trio: no real interact between the teens and Booker. And for the final reason, I saw give it its own paragraph.
As those of you who follow my work will know, my last couple of updates have been about friendship, love, sex or some combination of the three. While I truly enjoyed writing all of those pieces and those topics are more than worth of coverage, its good to have a little chance of pace now. For those you who don't know, for my first year of writing fan-fiction I wrote for only one story, a very dark and grim tale. In all honestly, I had forgotten how much I LOVE writing dark, depressing, or deranged stuff! This one-shot was almost a palate cleaner and a return to my writing roots. While I don't feel this way, my more twisted and joking side darkly considers this one-shot my saying, "FUCK YOUR LOVE!" as return to themes of good old fashion violence, horror, and despair. Fun, fun, fun! Just kidding…only partially. :)
Also, there are some ways in which this one-shot could lead to people giving spoilers in their reviews. I must say…PLEASE DON'T SAY ANY SPOILERS! Seriously, Bioshock: Infinite (just like Bioshock) is one of those things where knowing the big twist going into is likely to take a lot of the punch out of the whole experience.
Having said all of that, here's a chapter from what might be a future crossover between Total Drama and Bioshock Infinite: Amen
The three enemies of Colombia were panting heavily. Booker, Bridgette, and Harold were giving themselves a few moments to recover after the massive battle they had just ended. With over a dozen of Columbia's armed forces and an automated turret trying to kill them, they had barely escaped, largely uninjured, by the skin of their teeth.
As they were resting, Bridgette looked back into the massive room were they had fought. It was the Monument Island Gondola Station, apparently long since not used for that purpose. Instead, it became a heavily fortified position for the Columbia Police. After the three of them had been finished with it, the station was clearly wasn't fortified enough.
There were bodies everywhere, most of them having bullet holes and beak marks in them. She knew that one of the bodies had no bullet wounds but a skull that was cracked open…by himself. And a few of the bodies weren't there because they were ashes now.
The Surfer Girl shuddered in horror; shameful of the violence she had to engage in. As if the guns she and the other two used weren't enough, the Vigors they had gathered made killing others so easy. Knowing that she could and had killed deeply horrified her. As far as she could tell, only three things kept her from succumbing to the madding despair: the resolve to find and save the others at Monument Island, Harold and Booker DeWitt.
It was that last one which was the greatest mystery to her. Aside from knowing he wanted to get to Monument Island very badly, he was the feared False Shepard of Colombia, and that he was very skilled at combat, she and Harold knew absolutely nothing about him.
She stopped thinking about that when she saw that Booker had started moving down a hallway that lead to a outdoor area. Harold and her followed him. It lead to a bright outdoor area, to a gondola station. There was a dark green sign with a brighter green arrow pointing to the right. Above the arrow was the message: SKY-LINE FREIGHT TO MONUMENT ISLAND.
But despite what the sign said, there were no freights…or transportation of any kind.
There was the ringing of a bell. This was followed by the voice of a nearby Automated Man that said, "Were sorry to say that Monument Island is off-limits. You've got to go!"
Booker grunted in frustration. He'd have to find some other way to Monument Island. Realizing the same thing Booker had, Harold began searching on the station's other side. As they began looking around, Bridgette decided that now was as good a chance as any to learn a little bit more about the man who had kept her and Harold alive in this place.
"So-so, Mr. DeWitt, I…" Bridgette started to say nervously before…
"Booker." Mr. DeWitt bluntly interrupted the Surfer Girl without stopping his search of the area. "I ain't no Mister. So, just call me Booker."
"Alright, B-Booker." Bridgette says with his name rolling off of her tongue. "I just wanted to say thanks for helping me and Harold survive in this living nightmare."
"Think nothing of it." Booker says, still not bringing his attention towards Bridgette, even though his voice did seem at least a little grateful for the blonde teenager's thanks.
Noticing the slight approval in Booker's voice, Bridgette decided to continue with, "So, why do you want to get to Monument Island?"
"Same as you, I guess. Lookin' to get someone there." The False Shepard says, continuing his pattern of saying as little as humanly possible to answer the question.
"Have you met this person before?"
"No."
"Then why are you going to get them? Why did you come to Columbia to get them?"
Not sure why he did it, Bridgette noticed that Booker stopped searching the gonadal dock. Turning to face Bridgette and towering over her, Booker stared angrily at her.
"Let's get something straight right now, girl. My life's not an open book for you to read. Trust me when I say that the less you know about me and why I'm here, the better." Booker says in a stone-cold tone that had no warmth or any space made for argument.
Bridgette froze, feeling as scared has she had when dealing with the men trying to kill her. After all, Booker had killed far more people than her or Harold and he didn't seem very fazed by it. What did that say about a person that they could be so callous?
"Guys! I think I figured out how to move on!" Harold shouts to Booker and Bridgette.
Booker went towards the Nerd while Bridgette reminded where she was for a few seconds. It wasn't until Harold called her name that she followed Booker to him.
"What's your idea?" Booker asks.
"Well, I remember seeing some cops using this skylines," Harold says while gesturing to the ends of long rails that extend far beyond the gonadal platform. "to travel when they were attacking us at the raffle. And someone had the fair said that the skyhooks were meant to be used for traveling the skylines. So, assuming that the skylines have the same magnetic properties as the separate skyhooks we used earlier, it seems highly probable to guess that we can use the skyhooks to proceed to Monument Island using the skylines."
After staring at the skyline for a few seconds, Booker responds, "Eh, its worth a shot."
Looking at the shimmering silver rails extending long past the gondola dock, Booker looked down at his Skyhook. Feeling a particularly strong urge to leave this location, he started to reeve the device up, causing the trinity of scooped blades to spin rapidly.
For the second time since using the Skyhook, Booker proclaimed before taking another reluctant leap of faith as he ran towards the Skyline, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained!"
True to Harold's predictions, the magnetic pull of the skyhook attached Booker to the skyline before sending him rocketing along it. The suddenness of being flung thirty feet into the air made Harold think of Spiderman. In other words, it looked awesome.
Having no other course of action opened to them, Bridgette and Harold also used their skyhooks to ride the skyline. The moment they reached the skyline, they were moving.
They began to move. Suddenly Columbia became a collection of unidentifiable shapes. They were moving hard. They struggled to prevent everything from becoming blurs.
The sensation of riding the skyline was comparable to being on a rollercoaster, without any safety gear and being far more dangerous. The people using it acted accordingly.
"Whoaaa! Whoa!" Booker says, overwhelmed by the sudden burst of speed.
"Oh…my…GOOOOSSSHHH!" Harold exclaimed, with his emotion uncertain.
"What…wha-wha-crap, what!? I-I can't…can't even tell what's happening!?" Bridgette says, manically moving her head around trying to process what was even happening.
The wind was now raking at their bodies, its vector currents becoming cold, intangible nails that were attempting to scrap at them, to slow them down and make them submissive. The atmosphere sighs at its failure. They travel undaunted on the skyline.
Gravity was now a jealous giant, trying to take control of the teenager's motions. But it couldn't it. The force that kept them on the Earth was weakened by a piece of metal that was only the size of a human's arm. Gravity now partially bent to the teenagers' wills. Though its weight still kept them down, it didn't stop them from flying without wings.
The thin cotton-copying curtains of the clouds would briefly surround them ever so gently. The slight dampness left on their persons by the pared puffy puddles of sky-water was effortlessly removed by the speed of their travel. They now traveled through clouds. Booker, Bridgette, and Harold were experiencing an ecstasy previously for birds alone.
As they experienced this ecstasy that didn't feel like much of an ecstasy to them, the three traveling on the skyline heard a voice, coming from an unknown PA system.
"Give heed believers! This is menace! There is threat! The False Shepard-here in Columbia! Full of hate and avarice and guile, like all of his kind in the Sodom Below! He seeks The Lamb…and hastens to her Tower; even now his intent is ruin…"
Passing by the floating buildings of Columbia that bobbed up and down ever so slightly, only Bridgette heard this message, mainly because she was trying to focus on anything else from the feeling in her stomach. The motion of the buildings and her speedy travel were making her legendary weak stomach feel like it was going to barf at any moment.
The Surfer was thanking whatever God was in Heaven when she stopped moving. Looking ahead of her, she saw that both Booker and Harold had stopped moving too. It seemed that some massive freight cargo crates that also traveled along the skylines was blocking their path. Thankfully, they seemed to be at a Skyline control center.
They all remained silent; unable to recover from the experience they just endured.
"That…was…AWESOME!" Harold says, breaking the silence. Booker and Bridgette look at the Nerd who was sandwiched between them with looks of horror or confusion.
Unfortunately, Harold's joyful shout attracted some unwanted attention. A female police officer appeared from the skyline control room. The trio had seen a few a female cops before this point…and killed them, but there were two things different about this encounter. Firstly, she was wearing a copper mask that was modeled off of Lady Liberty. Her face was unknowable beneath the twisted gilded artifice of Columbia's ideology. But secondly and more importantly, she was aiming a gun at them and the trio was unsure of how to dismount from the skyline. This was the first time they had ever used it, after all.
Even so, they were worried. They were defenseless. Lady Liberty was aiming her pistol.
It was the final straw; it was all Bridgette could take. The sickness in her stomach became unbearable. If she was going to die now, she wasn't going to die feeling like she was.
Bridgette loudly belched loudly. Booker and the police officer looked at her in surprise. Harold looked at her in horror and desperately tried to force his way through Booker's body. The Nerd's fear of death had been replaced by what he knew was about to come. He remembered what happened after Bridgette belched like that at the Talent Show.
And true to what happened during the fourth challenge of Total Drama Island, Bridgette barfed. Even though she wasn't standing on her head this time, a similar disgusting spray of lime green chucks of predigested food partially fused together by the Surfer's stomach fluid came spewing out of Bridgette's mouth with the velocity of a high power fire hose!
Not intending it, the Surfer's stomach spray ended up blasting onto the female cop's masked face!
She was reacting in believable disgust as she desperately tried to remove her porcelain mask before the puke passed through the mask's eye or nose holes.
Seeing this but not entirety believing it, Booker hung their for a second or two. Then his disbelief faded and he developed any idea. Moving himself back and forth, he started building up momentum. After doing this a few times, he released the Skyhook's trigger.
He was sent flying and slammed right into the female cop. She had been struck by the spinning Skyhook in the face. Her mask broke and her face was rendered a bloody mess!
She fell down dead, her facial features unknowable due to a mixture of blood and puke.
Bridgette and Harold remained at they were, not believing what they had just seen.
"Are you two just going to hang there all day?" Booker asks with a raised eyebrow. "All you have to do is release the trigger. And doing so with a little momentum seems to make you into a living missile, likely going to be useful to us getting to Monument Island. Oh, and thanks for the assistance, girl. It's not what I would have done but it did the job."
Bridgette was the first of the two to dismount the skyline. She didn't want to remain around that corpse, which she unintentional had a part in killing, any more than she had to. The Surfer Girl knew that it had to be done otherwise they would have been killed but she hated that she helped kill someone.
She also knew that he was helping them stay alive but she still didn't trust Booker. She wondered how much truth there was to the PA's claim that "even now his intent is ruin"?
After the teens dismounted, they and Booker traveled into the small control station and found a lever that seemed to operate the skyline. But before pulling it, they searched the limited area of the station, all they found was one more little room. There were three noteworthy items in this room, and the first was only a large writing desk.
The second was a machine gun, which Booker grabbed without a second thought. As he did, Harold was confused by what he saw. This machine gun shouldn't exist yet. Even though machine guns were around at this time, they weren't something one person could use. Rather than being something that needed crew of men to use from a fixed position, what Booker was holding was something that was light enough for him to easily carry. Furthermore, this weapon seemed similar to the ZK 383 sub-machine gun, a design that wouldn't be invented until the 1930s, at least eighteen years later, in Czechoslovakia. And even then it still had a folding bipod and was a rather large, chunky weapon. To the Nerd it was just as jarring an anachronism as the city that seemed to float on balloons.
Bridgette noticed the third noteworthy item on the writing desk. It was strange device. It appeared to be as if a record player were reshaped into a portable unit that attached to a person's arm. The speakers (more similar to a modern radio than a actual phonograph) and knobs were built into the wooden arm covering that had a series of metal loops meant for the arm. The knobs were labeled as PLAY and REWIND, respectively. The silver tone arm was the same as an actual phonograph, holding and moving the pickup cartridge and stylus over the grooves of the black disk that would play the message once it started. The disk itself went partially into the arm piece that contained the machine's speakers.
The Surfer was puzzled but then she remembered what one of the men at the fair had said. This was a Voxophone, a "personal record of voice", basically an audio diary.
Realizing that, she turned the PLAY knob. A soft crackling was heard at the record started spinning. That same crackling would be faintly omnipresent throughout the message that the Voxophone was about to play for Bridgette, Booker, and Harold.
Voxophone: Another Ark for Another Time- September the 9th, 1893- Zachary Hale Comstock
"'And the Lord saw the wickedness of Man was great. And He repented He had made Man on the Earth.'" The Voice of Comstock says, appearing to be quoting something.
Bridgette wasn't so much focused on that but the voice saying and message of the apparent quotation. She knew that it wasn't what Comstock intended when he said it but she saw within Columbia (and possibly Booker) that "the wickedness of Man was great".
Of the three, only Harold knew exactly what Comstock was quoting, the Bible, specifically Genesis 6:5-6:6. But what he paid more attention to was the same thing as the other two. The Nerd was more concerned with the voice of Zachary Hale Comstock.
His voice was aged and slightly hoarse, and yet it was oddly compelling as well. It was the sort of voice one could have imagined belonging to a prophet of the Old Testament. Even so, his voice was by many definitions normal. It wasn't the sort of voice one would have imagined as belonging to xenophobic zealot whose rule was a racial tyranny.
"Rain! Forty days and forty nights of the stuff. And He left not a thing that walked alive. You see, my friends, even God is entitled to a do-over. And what is Columbia if not another Ark, for another time?"
The Voxophone shut off, ending the crackling. For Bridgette and Harold, the message revealed what they already knew…that Comstock was out of his goddamn mind! He thought of this horrible, racist place was another Noah's ark and a act of God!? They didn't want to think about what was suppose to cause the "flood" for another "do-over".
Booker, meanwhile, seemed unfazed as he went towards the Skyline's control panel. Pulling the lever, Booker sent the freight crates blocking their way down the Skyline.
Even though Booker wasn't nearly as disturbed as the teens, hearing Comstock's words did increase his resolve to reach Monument Island and get out of Columbia right fast.
Without saying anything, he and teens jumped back onto the Skyline and sped forward.
Again, the three beings trying to reach Monument Island were rocketing along the Skylines. They moved up and down at incredible velocity, often passing through massive arches with six giant blue balloons and a titanic spinning fan on each bottom of the arch keeping them afloat and serving as support systems for the long reaching Skylines. [1]
Eventually, they saw a new shape shrouded by the clouds to their left hand side. It was a gigantic silver statue of an angel that was the same size as the other buildings that had been floating here. Gigantic orange letters (that liked like neon but not might have been) displayed the name of the location of that giant statue: MONUMENT ISLAND.
All three of those traveling on the Skyline felt some joy…before they moved past it. The Skyline didn't lead them directly to Monument Island.
Instead it forced on a downward descent, making their already great speed of travel even greater. As they were rocketing downward on the Skyline, Bridgette, Harold, a Booker saw six flashes coming from the bottom of the building they were heading towards.
When the distance between them and the flashes lessened a little, they heard a metal tapping, a metallic gentle rapping that it took them a few seconds to recognize.
It was from machine guns! Six machine guns!
At the speed they were traveling they weren't able to stop, slow down, or shoot back. Booker saw that at the top of the building was another Skyline but they'd have to reach it.
It seemed like this would be the end for the three of them, until…
Suddenly a thunderous roar bellowed! It was loud, drawn-out…and brimming with wrath! Surely it had to be the booming battle cry of some unnatural monstrosity of the city, some unseen horror. It had to come from no less than the general rage and hatred felt by all men from Adam down, an eldritch embodiment of evil electronically enunciated!
However, what came next would this to not be the case…at least not in the sense one would initially imagine. In some ways, it would prove to be worse than anything eldritch.
"Stand down-DOWN." A Voice says with the microphone was causing it to fluctuate wildly while also adding a loud overlapping echo. The mundane words were transformed into the rhetoric of what sounds like a roaring, merciless, angry god! "STAND DOWN!"
With that seeming command from above, the flashes of machine gun fire instantly stopped. If not for the speed of their traveling, the three would have questioned this.
Reaching the end of the Skyline, they dismounted. They had all imagined being surrounded by one hundred heavily armed guards with machine guns. They weren't.
What they saw instead was a sight that while not as fearful was far more surreal. They saw six men, all no older than twenty-five and all having bright blonde hair, on their knees. Their heads were bowed and they all seemed to be muttering to themselves. Their machine guns were beside their knees, the men didn't seem to notice that they existed.
Bridgette, Harold, and Booker exchanged many confused glances. Was this for real? Why would these men suddenly get on their knees in the middle of what could have easily become a lethal firefight? Why were they ordered to stand down at all? Though their disbelief at the scene before them was strong, they decided to take advantage of it.
They weaved their way through the circle of kneeling soldiers. Even when they were within millimeters of them, the soldiers refused to acknowledge their existence. As they were within breathing distance of them, the three outlaws heard what they were saying.
"He who crossed the Delaware with flaming sword and the wings of angels…watch over me and lend me strength."
"Father Washington…hear my prayer…"
They were praying…to George Washington no less!?
This struck the three of them…until they remembered earlier, before the full horrors of the floating city had been exposed, when they saw people praying to not just Washington but also Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. In Columbia, this oddity made sense.
After Bridgette and Harold replaced the machine guns they had with the fully loaded ones of some of the prayer soldiers, they opened the double doors and stepped into the tower.
The tower they entered continued the almost bleakly otherworldly tone of Columbia itself. More men, twelve this time, were all either standing or on their knees in deep prayer. There backs were to the teens and Booker, instead facing the direction of a circular screen. Just like the men outside, they were deeply lost in their own reverence.
The massive circular screen bathed the entire tower's interior in a milky sapphire light. It was the height of a dozen full-grown men, and seemed attached to something else larger. Beneath the screen was a silver statue of an angel with her extended wings creating the screen's bottom. To both the left and right of the screen were large gears turning and large weights rising and falling, endlessly severing this city's whims without question.
Given the actions of these men just now and the existence of foes like the Firemen, Bridgette wondered if the servants of this city and these metal gears were so different? Was their any great distinction to them doing their assigned duties with such mad zeal?
Not liking where that line of thinking took her, she returned to attention the screen. On this screen cascading the eerie blue light was the still image, the slide, of a man. This man appeared to be at least in his late fifties though his slightly wrinkled and aged face made him seem older than that. His most defining trait was his full white beard, that more than vaguely resembled the beard belonging to Santa Claus. But he didn't seem jolly.
The inscriptions surrounding the image encapsulated why. Above it read, "Father Comstock". Underneath it read, "Our Prophet". All three of those entering this tower knew who this was.
This was the man who's voice they had heard just a little while ago on the Voxophone. This was the man whose image had been seen among some of the city's racist statues. This was the man who had built this nightmare city that was masquerading as Heaven. This was the man who had ordered them all to be killed, forced them to kill scores of people since getting here, and why some of the teens' friends might be dead right now.
Right now, there was no person anywhere who any of them hated more than him. Even so, Harold and shockingly Bridgette found themselves hating him more than Booker.
Maybe that's why The False Shepard noticed a massive platform at the room's center directly in front of the screen. At the center of this platform was a lever that was all but begging to be pulled by the three of them.
"Need to head to the roof…and take that Skyline to Monument Island." Booker says.
The teens, adverting their attentions away from the massive still image above them, noticed the platform and nodded. Once all three of them were on it, the lever was pulled.
As the platform began to rise, that previously heard thunderous roar bellowed again!
Without the shock of speeding along the skylines, it was obvious that this was not a roaring god but a loud horn. Even so, it unnerved Bridgette and Harold deeply.
As the lift they were on ascended higher and higher, they saw something unique. The still image of the bearded man changed…into the image of the bearded man that wasn't still.
The still image of Comstock had been transformed into a live image of Comstock!
Continuing the notion of this place being light-years ahead of its time technologically, it seems that Columbia had the ability to create live recordings complete with sound. Developments like this wouldn't come around until the invention of television roughly four decades later, but here it was. Though the image of Comstock himself was grainy, looking as if it were fashioned from shifting sapphire sands, and the primitive audio gave it the same faint omnipresent crackling as the Voxophones, it stunned the two teenagers.
"I know why you've come, False Shepard-FLASE SHEPARD." The Prophet's voice says. The False Shepard and the two teens now realized the source of its god-like tone. It wasn't because of any intention, at least no obvious intention, on the part of Comstock. Instead, the microphone he was using was causing some parts of his words to be either increased in volume or repeated in an equally echoing matter. Comstock was no god. [2]
Even so, somehow the massive screen was keeping up with the rising lift, inescapably. Every few seconds or so the image of Comstock would change to pure bright white, like a slide being replaced with another at a speed far faster than any human hand could do.
Not knowing it, both Bridgette and Harold was thinking of the same thing at this moment. In his manner and means, Comstock reminded them of the Wizard of Oz. They knew that this display was likely just more green smoke and mirrors and jets of flame, that these were all parlor tricks. Even so, they found themselves feeling like Dorothy. They were afraid. For they were fairly certain that behind these tricks was no kind man. Comstock was no old and noble "wizard" who would give them anything they'd want. Even if he was hiding behind a curtain, this "wizard" and his forces were real threats. But even so, Bridgette and Harold at least found a little comfort in him not being a prophet.
Columbia's "Wizard" then turned his gaze away from the acknowledged False Shepard. "But you two, the seduced-DUCEDINNOCENCE. You are a mystery-MYSTERY, even to me-ME. But still, I do SEE names-NAMES. BRIDGETTE. HAROLD."
The two teens' eyes widened more than they would have thought possible. How did he know their names!? Could this racist bigot actually be a prophet? Could he be right!? Could the voice hidden within that booming microphone be speaking for the actual God!?
Comstock nodded slowly, almost sadly. "It is such a pity, you are so young and yet you have chosen this wicket lot. But it is not too late for you misguided adolescents. Salvation is not lost-LOST for you two…unless you reject it by continuing your support of this harbinger of death-OF DEATH. Beware, children. Beware-BEWARE the company you keep. The False Shepard will reduce everything around him to ashes-TO ASHES. What else could you expect from a lair-LAIR and a KILLER of women-OMEN?"
Turning towards DeWitt, Bridgette and Harold saw that his own eyes were as wide at theirs. This was insane! Could Comstock actually be right about Booker DeWitt too!?
"Yes. That's right, False Shepard. I see every sin-SIN that blackens your soul-YOUR SOUL. WoUNDED KNEE. The Pinkertons-ERTONS. The drinking-THE DRINKING and the gaMBLEING. And of course-OF COURSE…Anna-ANNA."
Now it appeared that Booker had seen a ghost…or something even more horrifying.
Seeing the truth of Comstock's claims upon Booker's face increased the teens' horror.
Though Bridgette didn't know what the Pinkertons were, Harold did. He knew that they were the largest private law enforcement organization in the world at its zenith, having had more active agents than the U.S. Army. He knew that they were often hired out by the captains of industry to infiltrate unions, break up strikes by violence when needed, and intimidate workers with similar threats of violence if they got out of line.
But that paled in comparison to the horror both he and Bridgette felt at the reveal of Wounded Knee, at the reveal of the Wounded Knee massacre. Part of a deliberate attempt by the U.S. government to remove or eradicate the Native peoples of the continent, it was the result of an accident. When disarming members of the Lakota Sioux tribe, one deaf warrior refused to part with his gun. In the struggle, it was accidentally fired into the air. The gunshots that came after it, both by the few still armed Lakota and the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment weren't. After the few-armed Lakota warriors had been killed, the Cavalry kept firing. Without bothering to take aim, they kept firing and firing and firing. If it didn't have white skin and a blue cavalry uniform, they fired upon it…and killed it. When the smoke cleared, nearly three hundred Lakota, two hundred of them women and children, laid dead. Most of them were unarmed and were fleeing…but they kept firing.
Booker DeWitt, the man who was the only reason they were still alive, had kept firing.
Staring at Booker, that notion chilled Bridgette and Harold to the bone. Only Comstock's enhanced voice and the still endless crackling brought their attentions back to the present.
"And now-AND NOW, to repay a debt-A DEBT you've come for my lamb-LAMB. But not all dEBTS can be re-REPAID, Booker-BROOKER."
Booker's looks of fear and shock were now replaced with rage as he snarled at Comstock, "You don't know me, pal!"
Comstock looked unfazed, as if he really knew that Booker was going to say that. "Prophecy is my business, Mr. DeWitt, as blood is yours-IS YOURS. Do you know why these men will die-DIE for me? Because I have seen their fuTURE IN THE GLORY, and hence they are content-TENT."
Yet again, Bridgette and Harold were horrified, again because the horrible proclamations seemed to have weight. Just below them, there were men praying to Comstock. But even so, they found another angle to shield themselves from that terrible idea. Maybe intertwined with that was the belief of them protecting their homes and their families? The notion of there being motives to the men trying to kill them, aside from Comstock's "divinity", gave them some small sense of safety amid a world as unsafe as they come.
Amid there horrors, it was only now that the teens noticed something about the screen. It seemed further away. Somehow, the hovering screen had moved itself back in thin air. They were starting to notice a massive grey expense on either side of the massive screen.
Bridgette and Harold also noticed that the lift ascending upward had finally stopped.
"What brought you-YOU to CoLUMBIA, Booker-OKER? 'Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt-BT'? This will end in blood, DeWitt. But then again-THEN AGAIN, it always does with you, doesn't it? It always ends in blood-IN BLOOD."
The live image of Comstock disappeared and once again replaced with the still one. But it was the sudden gasps of Booker that altered the teens more so. They saw him bring his fingers to his nose before looking at them. Even amid the blue light, they saw the red. Bridgette and Harold, even in the overpowering blue light, saw Booker's fresh blood.
"…Jesus." Was all the shocked False Shepard could say.
Suddenly, the massive screen began to move to the left of the raised lift. As it did so, it revealed the means by which it had kept pace with the slowly rising lift they were on. It was finally revealed that the big circular screen had been attached to a massive zeppelin!
As the gigantic airship slowly moved away from sight to the left, Comstock spoke again.
"You've come to lead my lamb astray, but thy crook is bent and thy path is twisted-TWISTED. Go back to the Sodom from which you came-YOU CAME!"
Looking to his left, Booker saw a yellow sign. Written on the sign in dark green letters were the words: ROOFTOP ACCESS TO SKY-LINE. Beneath those words was a yellow arrow within a circle of dark green pointing to the right, pointing in the way to go.
"Right, eh? Ok. Let's get to this skyline." Booker says, hoping to move on quickly as he stepped off of the lift.
He wouldn't get his wish, as proven when Bridgette stood still and said, "N-no!"
Turning back around with a raised eyebrow, Booker curiously asks, "No?"
"N-na-no…" Bridgette says, her voice suddenly becoming more cracked now that Booker was looking at her. "I-I'm not going anywhere with you…murderer!" The Surfer's eyes were started to surround the emerald orbs within them with a clear liquid; she was forming tears. Thanks to Harold's comforting hand rubbing her back, she did not cry. Even so, her voice was still cracking as she asks Booker, "W-why? Why did you do it? Why did you kill them at Wounded Knee? Why did you kill women and children!?"
For the first time since being with the teens, Booker's eyes showed a new emotion. It wasn't indifference, coldness, anger, fear, or relief…instead it was sadness, open sadness. He looked at the floor, unable to have his guilty green eyes meet the girl's innocent ones.
"I-I…I don't know…" Booker says in a voice the lowest and most arduous said by him. Somehow the questions and horror of these adolescents, in particular this blonde girl, had wounded him more than the bullets and blades and lava bombs of Comstock's followers.
Ever since that December Twenty-Ninth, the False Shepard had asked himself the same questions. The answers that he pondered were all radically different with only one commonality uniting them…Booker didn't like them. But he had never said this out loud. No one, not even his wife, had known how much guilt he felt marching away from Wounded Knee Creek. Ever since then, he had tried to repress this and forget it all.
But he couldn't. No matter how much liquor he had consumed or how many games of cards he played, the red faces and high-pitched screams of fear always haunted his mind.
"You two kids seem like a decent enough sort. You really do. If it weren't for the folks trying to snuff us all out, I'd say that we should part ways…." Booker says before sighing heavily. "Look, I don't blame you for not trusting me. I've done things that are horrible. I've been looking for some way to make things right but I have not found one yet."
The False Shepard paused. He brought his green eyes back up to look into Bridgette's. The Surfer noticed that while mostly unchanged, there was a faint softening to them.
"Maybe it don't make no sense but I don't want two more innocent deaths on my conscious. I've heard enough children screamin' before being silenced by gunfire. Could you two please come with me so I don't have to hear that again?" His voice was soft.
Booker then extended a hand towards the two teens, which looked at each other unsurely. Their minds were still reeling from the massive amount of information just revealed to them. For the moment, their thoughts about Comstock and Columbia were pushed aside. Instead, they both thoughts only of Booker, of how his past deeds and his present self created a jarring contrast. Their sympathy and graduate to Booker was acutely balanced out by the horror of the deeds of which he was a part, a minor yet literal act of genocide.
Even in this heavenly hell, could Bridgette and Harold trust a man like Booker DeWitt?
With some hesitation, Bridgette grabbed Booker's extended hand. Faintly smiling, he pulled her over the lift's edge onto the floor he was standing on. Harold followed.
No more words were spoken as Bridgette and Harold followed Booker down the hallway.
The trio had traveled through a few twists within the hallway before the blast roared! As the flaring orange embers amid the thick black smoke and wooden splinters rocketed in all directions, the teens and Booker scrambled to find cover within the most recent bend. Thankfully between both sides of the archway that separated the rooms was enough space for all three of them. But even with all of this, the greatest factor was Comstock's voice.
"Go back-BACK!" The Prophet says, again having a deep ominous echo effect.
"Holy shit…" Booker says frightened, having been caught off-guard by the attack. Bridgette and Harold were incapable of even saying that much.
Even so, the Former Pinkerton Agent couldn't help but slightly smile. Thanks to the blast from Comstock's zeppelin, there was now a gapping hole that leads right to that zeppelin. And to sweeten the deal, there was a skyhook through which easy means of entrance could be provided. Not believing the good luck but wishing to utilize it, Booker ran over the still ember covered and no longer connected wooden floor planks and jumped.
Thanks once again to the magnetized effect of his Skyhook, he was brought to the zeppelin's skyhook with ease, from each it was an easy leap to the zeppelin's exterior.
Seeing that Booker was successful, despite their remaining fears of the Skyhook, Bridgette and Harold both made the same jump and were soon along side him.
After moving through the whipping silver streams of the low-lying clouds, the trio entered a doorway into the zeppelin that was already open. They didn't consider why.
Inside they found a large space with many control panels on many of side spaces. Near the center of the large space were two very tall steel columns; the opening between them was wide enough for several people to slip through without causing any delay. On the other side of this opening between the columns was a large closed door on the floor. It was obvious to the trio that this was an area used for storing and unloading cargo crates. But what wasn't explained was a faint but noticeably bad smell coming from this area.
The three of them took advantage of the lack of people trying to kill them and search the zeppelin interior. The cargo area yielded little in the way of useable resources for them. All they found was thirty silver eagles and roughly fifteen rounds of machine gun ammo.
"We might not need that Skyline after all. If I can find the controls, maybe I can get this thing to Monument Island?" Booker says to himself, the teenagers nodded in agreement.
After stocking their pockets with either silver or lead, the three of them approached the door to the zeppelin's controls. Its warning that the door must remain closed at all times went ignored. After seeing what they would see, they would wish they had obeyed it.
The control room of the massive zeppelin was largely sparse, with the exception of three spots. One of those was directly in front of those entering it, the air ship's control panel.
But it was the other two, the left hand and right hand corners of the doorway, which interested those entering the control room more, not including a covered wooden table on each side of the door.
To the left was a padded place for kneeling in prayer complete with a prayer book. Above that were a few rows of unevenly places little lit candles. And above those candles was a beautifully painted portrait, of a woman with the upper part of her blue clothing visible as she turns her head to face those facing her. None of them had any idea who this lady was.
Looking to the right, they saw a similar setup, with padded place for praying and little lit candles, but this one had a painted portrait of someone they became recently and reluctantly acquainted with. The portrait on the right was that of Comstock himself.
But that wasn't the greatest difference the right corner had with the left corner. No. That belonged to the fact that there was someone standing at and praying at this corner.
This person in question was a woman, likely just starting to enter her mid to late thirties. She was dressed in all white, complete with a white habit that made her hair color unknowable. With her sides of her face covered, its appearance was also unknowable. Similar to the soldiers outside, she was too deep in prayer to notice them entering.
"It's ok. I'm not going to hurt you." Booker says softly. She didn't react at all.
While somewhat put-off by the reaction of the woman, the three of them moved on. They all approached the zeppelin's controls. What they saw confused all of them deeply. Instead of a steering wheel, as they all were expecting, there seven levers within grooves that allowed the levers to be pulled and placed at a variety of angles and directions. On the spaces in-between the levers and their grooves were different kinds of symbols. The left hand side of the first lever had an S near the top and an N near the bottom. The space in-between the first and second levers had numbers ranging from one to nine. In the next spacing in between the levers, this time the third and fourth, had an E near the top and a W near the bottom. The remaining spaces all had numbers one through nine. Above the levers were numbered tiles with matching numbers. Of the three, only Booker caught on to the mechanisms of this oversized balloon. The levers were meant to be often adjusted and tell the zeppelin on which lines of longitude and latitude it was to slowly travel on.
'Well, it might not be fast, but at least it's safer than flying around on those open rails.' Booker thought to himself as he started to reach for some of the zeppelin's levers. After doing so he says out loud to the teens, "Okay, I'm sure I can get this thing going."
The second after Booker says this, however, the bellowing horn of Comstock roared!
It's volume covered up every other sound within the control room, including a splashing.
Only Bridgette heard what sounded like the pitter-patter of water drops despite knowing that there was no water anywhere near here. She quickly ignored this faint, odd sound.
Like Booker and Harold, she brought her attention towards the massive front window. The visible space was now largely dominated by another one of those hovering gunships. This one had no men with guns. Instead it had something far worse…it had Comstock. Four more soldiers were surrounding and praying to him, even on the moving hovercraft.
Though it was only for a second and not a moment more, time seemed to freeze for Bridgette and Harold. They intently studied the old man who came before them. In many ways he wasn't what they thought he would be. They thought he would be short. He wasn't, he was at least six feet tall. They thought he wouldn't be physically imposing. He was, despite his age and his Santa Claus-type beard there something about him not right. The strongest focal point for this was likely his eyes, which were a penetrating icy blue.
But there was one way in which he did conform to the expectations of the teenagers; he was just a man. Despite the microphone being used, he wasn't a master of life and death.
"The Lord forgives everything-EVERYTHING. But I'm just a prophet-JUST A PROPHET…so I don't have to-N'T HAVE TO. Amen-AMEN." Comstock says to them, shockingly calm despite the microphone causing his voice to be randomly menacing.
As the Prophet who wasn't the Lord was starting to leave on his gunship, Booker was about to shoot him through zeppelin's window with his machine gun. But he didn't.
What stopped him from doing so was a voice not belonging to either Bridgette or Harold saying something. The voice of an older woman said with Comstock's calm, "Amen."
As the word spoke by the older woman rung in their ears, the three of them turned around. Even amid what they'd seen in Columbia, what they saw made them freeze.
The two covered wooden tables were no longer covered. With their veils now lifted what was under them was exposed. It was four large metal containers with nozzles. Pouring from those nozzles was a colorless pungent liquid that had curving rainbow bands within its slowly spreading form. Booker, Bridgette, and Harold knew what this liquid was.
It was gasoline.
It was then that Bridgette realized that the previously heard pitter-patter wasn't water, after all. If only it was water!
But what was greater note was the woman who had been previously praying. She was no longer prayer. Instead, she was holding something above her head.
It was a flaming torch.
Booker, Bridgette, and Harold simply stared at the woman in total disbelief.
'Oh, God, no! She's kidding. She has to be kidding!' Bridgette thought to herself.
The woman calmly let the lit torch slip through her fingers. She wasn't kidding.
"Jesus!" Booker exclaimed in horror at the torch hit the gasoline-covered floor!
Within a second, burning, bright flowers of ruby, gold, and ginger blossomed all over!
The flowers of flame then began to spread, with the gasoline as their highway. But it was with even greater hunger that they began to surround and engulf the woman. Standing exactly where she had been, the flames she had unleashed began to run along her body. Very, very soon the flowers of flame were burning her like a dried out and rotten root. As they did, the flames began to travel both ways, both into and out of the burning woman.
Flames were coming from a human being!
And soon there would be only flames, and not just in terms of the woman. With their pathway of petrol providing them a means of greater reach, the flames were beginning to spread to the rest of the control room. The flowers of flame were blossoming everywhere.
Even so, for who knows how long, the three enemies of Colombia stared at the woman.
Her body was slowly withering and shriveling up, her head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; it overpowered the horrified trios' nostrils.
The white skin that had covered her body was disappearing, transforming into black flakes of ash that were being whisked up into the increasingly smoky ceiling space. Pieces of this woman were entering the air…and the lungs of those watching her burn.
Whatever skin remained on her body became like lava, a bright crimson texture that endlessly shifted and congealed somewhere between a solid and a liquid with undulating streaks of more ravenous red and yearning yellow briefly outshining the rest of it.
As flames fed upon her like starved super predators, the woman simply looked at them. Even as they were eating her away, the flames seemed to fail to get her attention.
She wasn't looking off into the distance or off to the side…she was looking at them!
Even as her eyeballs melted and started to slide down her blackening cheeks like creamy white streams of melting candle wax, the woman's focus, now eyeless, never changed.
The darkened sockets continued to stare at them, chilling them even among the fires.
As her body started to slump and fall over, they all discovered one piece of knowledge that they wished they didn't have to learn…human beings burn surprisingly quickly.
Harold, more so than Bridgette and Booker, was horrified by what he was seeing. He knew that self-immolation, despite the great pain initially felt, quickly became a painless death. Shock, asphyxiation, and third degree burns that destroyed nerve endings fairly quickly ended the searing pain that came from every bodily vantage point. But it wasn't instant; it still took time for someone being burned to reach that state. And yet this woman had never given any indication of that early and painful state of self-immolation.
From the moment the fire burned her, she never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound. Her face, when it was more of a face than a skull with sinews stitching and surrounding it, had never shown an expressions of pain or fear or regret, being fine with her fiery fate.
Even with his association with atrocities, Booker was paralyzed by this course of events. It wasn't until a seismic shudder from the zeppelin shook the entire aircraft that he regained control of himself. Without thinking, he ran towards the doorway out.
But then, not sure why it occurred to him; Booker looked back at Bridgette and Harold. They were exactly as they were, trapped in their horror at seeing the burning woman.
They were too shocked to cry, too confused to move a muscle, too bewildered to even think…they knew that they should do at least one of those things but they couldn't.
After a frantic and split-second debate, Booker ran back to the teens and shook them. With his voice frightened, the False Shepard says, "Gotta get the hell out of here!"
Seeming to have their bodies back under their control, the teens followed Booker out of the control room, making sure to avoid the rivers of red that now snaked the floor.
These rivers were also the results of the woman setting herself on fire. As they had been staring at the burning woman, the flames had rolled out of the open doorway with shockingly speed into the main body of the zeppelin. Just as quickly as the control room had set ablaze, so was everything else aboard the hovering aircraft. The blood red embers began to flare up. The flames began to leap upward, to slide along every surface with their volcanic velocity. They whirled through the air like tumbleweeds fashioned out of veins of molten lava. The crackling, the mad and mindless cackles, of the flames assaulted the three sets of ears. The smell of burning gasoline dominated the air.
There must have been gasoline already lined up before they got here. This had been planned. Everyone in Columbia, even the burned woman, knew this would happen.
She knew she would be burnt to death…but she did so without hesitation or delay!
Not able to focus on that now, Booker was searching the cargo area for something. But his search was ended when he noticed that the large door on the cargo area's floor was opening up.
Not questioning why that was, Booker, Bridgette, and Harold leapt out of the zeppelin!
Just as before, the magnetic pull of their skyhooks to a nearby skyline saved them. Even Bridgette wasn't complaining about once again traveling on the speeding railways.
This was reinforced when the zeppelin exploded behind them!
"Holy shit! That was close!" Booker says has he sped by, being in front of the two teens.
The shock of what they had barely escaped and the speed of their travel on the skyline meant that the three of them remained hanging to the skyline when they finally stopped. For over thirty seconds, their bodies and minds couldn't dismount them, or anything else.
They had no words for what they just saw. Even Booker looked truly horrified. What they saw in that zeppelin disturbed them more than anything else they had seen so far; and they had seen men who can shoot fire out of their hands, men kill themselves because a green ghost lady said so, and a even more frightening version of the Ku Klux Klan.
Though logically it was only an extension of those other things, it still chilled them more. Someone burning themselves to death because of their belief in a madman without hesitation really highlighted what exactly they were up against in terms of a threat. It wasn't just the super-powered and/or armed enemies that threatened them in Columbia. The very ideology itself on this place was just as dangerous, maybe even more so. Every single person they encountered in Columbia could be that devoted and that dangerous. They would likely be willing to kill and be killed in order to protect their mad ideology.
Eventually, they did dismount. Still finding words lacking on their tongues, they moved forward. As they did, they noticed the lay out of this place. They were on one of two areas that lead directly to a two-sided staircase leading to the entrance of Monument Island. Quickly traveling up the steps, they saw two of those automated men vending machines and two red wooden partial barriers that had written on them: POLICE DO NOT CROSS. But what drew their attention the most was another propaganda poster that was above the doorway to Monument Island. It showed the giant statue of the angle Columbia (that is gold instead of silver) that has the shape of a lamb where its heart would be that was releasing golden rays of energy. It reads: THE TOWER PROTECTS THE LAMB FOR THE FALSE SHEPHERD.
Approaching the doorway to Monument Island, Bridgette questioned that poster's claim. Was it really the False Shepherd who this "Lamb" had to be protected from?
Though horror rushed through the Surfer Chick like a tidal wave, it also brought perspective. Booker DeWitt might have done terrible things and continued to do them, but at least he was attempting to set things right and he was protecting her and Harold.
She still didn't necessarily like or even trust the False Shepherd but at least she didn't hate and mostly fear him. The same could not be said of Zachary Hale Comstock.
Despite being such a foreign emotion to her, Bridgette felt strong hatred for the Prophet. He was the cause of all of this, all of this madness, all of this murder, all of this malice. Comstock might not have been a god but he was a master of life and death in Columbia. Even if he could somehow see into the future, he wasn't a prophet of God. He was worse. He was a man who believed himself to be one and who convinced Columbia that he was.
He wasn't Santa Claus, or the Wizard of Oz, or a second Noah…he was Comstock; and as far as Bridgette was concerned that made him the Devil, the lord of this heavenly hell.
After all, Booker DeWitt wasn't the only lair and killer of women in Columbia.
For all of her days, assuming she somehow survived and escaped Columbia, Bridgette would never be able to remove the image of the burning woman's calm and silent face looking at her, even as her skin became blackened ash and her eyes became melting wax.
That one, little four-letter word would be forever inseparable from that unholy image.
Even now, the woman's calm voice repeated it in the Surfer Girl's frightened mind.
Amen.
And there you have it; you've gotten a taste of Booker, Comstock, and the teens' feelings towards both. Make sure to tell me your thoughts on these things, ok?
When I first had the idea for this possible future crossover, I didn't think too much about how the teens would view Booker. But after this chapter I have a clearer idea. To summarize (at least partially) the views that the teens would likely have to Booker, here is a quote from Internet reviewer Noah Antwiler's review of "Bioshock Infinite": "So, he's gonna redeem himself from all of the horrible things he's done; from all of the people he's killed and tortured and brutalized; all those Indians, you know, all of that racism. He used to be a racist, and used to kill people. He did horrible things. He's basically hell bound. And he's going to redeem himself by going to Columbia and KILLING EVERY LIVING THING HE SEES!"
The way he says this is really funny and its also kind of true. After all, Booker kills countless people throughout the game and rarely shows any obvious regret for doing so. He does feel bad for what he did in his past and he's trying to fix his mistakes but he's still killing a good chuck of a pretty populated city. So, how would Harold and Bridgette respond to this kind of man while in Columbia? The answer I came up with was that it would change. While they would stick with Booker because he's there best bet of survival and as they get to know him more they do like him more, there would still always be this (at best faint) fear about if this guy might try to kill them and the understanding that he was before kind of similar to Comstock. This constant balancing of emotions on the part of Bridgette and Harold in regards to Booker would both be a difficult but rewarding aspect of this story to write from chapter to chapter. Please give your thoughts on these matters, ok?
This going to sound so wrong but it was very enjoyable writing the scene where the woman sets herself on fire. That scene in particular is what I was referring when I was returning to the really dark stuff of some of my stories that I haven't done in a while. Some of the bits in there, like the eyes melting like wax thing, were all me. But I also got some of those bits from the accounts of Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức, who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on June 11, 1963. But unlike the woman in this one-shot who does this action because she's a blind follower of a madman whose willing to help him try to murder some people, Thích Quảng Đức did this to protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the corrupt South Vietnamese government (which was sponsored by the USA in order to keep South Vietnam from falling to the Communists like North Vietnam did). Also, here's a fun fact for you. Đức died by setting himself on fire and his body was cremated, and yet his heart remained intact and wasn't horribly burnt! Despite being set on fire twice, the man's heart was only partially charred.
As many people have pointed out, Comstock's depiction more than slightly mirrors that of the Wizard of Oz. But in an odd way, there is a greater connection between The Wizard of Oz and the Wounded Knee massacre than it being referenced. A young newspaper editor L. Frank Baum, later the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the inspiration for the legendary 1939 film version, wrote these words about the event for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer on January 3, 1891: "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past." Again, I really hope this shows how in some ways Columbia's ideology is not that far off from the actual beliefs of America during this time period of the early 1900s.
[1] Those of you who have played the game might notice that I skipped something. In the game, before you get the point where Comstock tells his men to stand down Booker is forced to kill a few more police men who are searching for him at a hotel. I was originally going to include this but it didn't add anything to this chapter and I just wanted to finally get this thing posted. If I ever do this story, I'll add this part.
[2] The greatest reason why I wanted to write this one-shot was because of how Comstock sounds when he talks to Booker. It is so awesome and yet hard to write! I hope I did a reasonable enough job of conveying what exactly is happening when it comes to what the microphone is doing to Comstock's voice as he talks to Booker. Whether you think I did a good enough job or not, I'd recommend going to Youtube and watching the scene for yourselves. While writing this chapter, there were two videos that I went to pretty regularly to make sure I wasn't missing any details. Youtube user "baseball4evPC" posted the first video that is called "Bioshock Infinite Meeting Comstock". In fact, this video contains all of the gameplay footage that makes up this one-shot (including the part with the hotel that I didn't include). However, if you solely want to see the scenes in which Comstock talks to Booker, then I'd recommend the video "Bioshock Infinite: Meeting the Prophet "Zackary Hale Comstock"" posted by Youtube user "VideoGameSophistry". If you don't want to know the spoilers for Bisohock Infinite, I'd recommend not reading the comments on this video. Also, you can find both easily by searching for the following on Youtube "bioshock infinite meeting Comstock". Trust me, the scene is awesome!
Just one last final thing, in your reviews…NO SPOILERS!
Anyway, please: read, review, and let your thoughts be known to me! :)