Since the first chapter was a bit short, I decided to make this one a bit longer for you guys.
Shad: Finally, I'm free!
Got out of Rose's room then?
Shad: Had to do it while she was asleep, but I still escaped! Oh yeah, Draco doesn't own BioShock in anyway except for the copies he has for the XBox.
Sweet. Now then, on with the story!
I sighed and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes before taking in my surroundings. Everyone in class except for Rose was laughing at me since I fell asleep, but it's not my fault I can't sleep at night! I get nightmares when I sleep because of that day! "So then, how about since you were soooo attentive this lesson," my teacher began, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "you do the problem on the board before the class ends, or else you will receive a detention." I sighed and walked up to the front of the room, my vain bitch of a teacher's mirror showing me my reflection.
I hadn't changed much since then. My messy, coal black hair got a little longer, and I was able to control my emotions with proper training to keep my eyes a set color, so they were a dark blue at the moment. I had bags under my eyes from the lack of sleep lately, but it was my cloths that caught my attention. I was wearing a white t-shirt under a black hoodie, my old thieving trench coat with a silver trim that had the bottom half unzipped and gloves since it was confirmed "Ghost" now had his armor to wear, a pair of torn jeans with a brown leather belt, and a pair of sneakers covered in a custom fire pattern.
I arrived at the board and stared at the problem, my brain running the proper formulas and equations necessary to answer it. Without showing my work to piss off the teacher, I wrote down the answer and smirked, knowing I was right. Everyone suddenly stopped laughing and stared at the board slackjawed, Rose concealing a smile from the other students. "It's right isn't it?" I asked the teacher, who was red in the face with rage, nodded slowly. Once again, I managed to sleep through the entire class, and yet I STILL got the most complicated of problems correct. She even tried to use problems ahead of the curriculum, but I still beat her at this game time and time again.
The bell rang and I grabbed my stuff before heading out into the hall after Rose got her stuff together. She scribbled on her notepad and handed me a piece of paper. 'Another nightmare?' I chuckled and nodded in reply, stopping at our locker to put my stuff away. Me and Rose shared a locker since we had all our classes together.
After I put my stuff in our locker, I was waiting for Rose to keep the heat off of her. After that event with those bullies back in middle school, nobody screwed around with me, whether they believed that I did that or not. Rose on the other hand, was a different story. Unless I was around her, she would be bullied. I know she can handle verbal abuse, it was the physical abuse I was worried about. She maybe a tank, but she is still vulnerable. That and the fact that if she was anything like me due to the pheromones in her body, she wouldn't hesitate to fight back.
Speaking of Rose, her entire style, like mine, had changed over the years. She kept her eyes a relaxed yellow since she didn't wear glasses (I did when I was little, but I guess the chemicals that that little bastard hit me with fixed that) and couldn't use a contacts excuse like I could, she grew her hair out so it reached to below her shoulders, left a couple strands to frame her face, and died a streak of it black. Her new style was a simple red zip-up jacket on top of a white plain t-shirt, a pair of jeans, and green sneakers. But what really changed about her was her figure.
From what she told me, Big Sisters never really... developed, for lack of a better term, due to the lack of food and proper nutrition back in Rapture. But since she lived up here and got fed something other than chips and snack cakes, she was a bit different. Not too different, but she at least looked like an average teenage girl coming up to being nearly as tall as me at a height of 5'11.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and I was brought out of my spacing out at how much the both of us had changed over the years by Rose. She passed me a note reading, 'What are you thinking about?'
"Just how much has changed over the past two years," I sighed picking up my backpack. Me and my bestfriend started to walk out of the school when I was tackled to the ground by a shouting figure. "Jesus Rinku, what the hell?!" I heard my little brother laugh and he held out a hand to help me up. I looked to Rose for a split second and found even she was giggling a bit. I finally gave in and started to laugh along with my brother, taking his hand so he could pull me up.
Tom had changed his name to Rinku after dad died, keeping his usual style throughout the years. He wore a black jacket, jeans and sneakers, and he had my parent's short brown hair and hazel eyes. He shot up over the years from being up to my shoulders in height, to a staggering 5' 9". I even told him my secret about being a thief, and he accepted it gladly, having been a fan of Ghost from the start.
He lived with my mom and other little brothers in the richer part of town, taking archery and kendo to keep himself occupied. Since dad didn't leave a will and didn't have any other family, mom got all of his money and assets, her newfound fortune only skyrocketing with the insurance from the attack. She offered me to stay with her, but I declined since I share a room at the base with Sapphire.
"So then, going to pick up Sapphire I assume?" Rinku asked me after he stopped laughing.
"Yeah," I answered distracted. My thoughts were still on that one day, when I lost one of my family.
"You know that isn't your fault right?" I heard my brother say. I looked at him and saw worry in his eyes.
I sighed depressed and felt a hand on my shoulder. I followed the arm it belonged to and saw it was Rose. She handed me another note since she couldn't talk in front of my brother unless she wanted to have his ears start bleeding.
'It really wasn't. I should have offered to go to Kur's house and give him back up until the rest of the police arrived.' That struck a nerve in me. We branched off from my brother and went into the alley we used as a shortcut to get to Sapphire's school and talk.
"Don't you dare take blame for this," I sobbed, feeling tears well up in my eyes. "I had to choice to either save dad or take revenge, and I chose to let my anger get the best of me. It's my fault my dad is-" I was cut off by Rose's hand slapping me. I was stunned by the sudden blow for a seconds before collecting myself. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it," she replied smiling. "Just stop beating yourself up over it."
I smiled and pulled her into a friendly hug, then pushed her away as an Electro Bolt flew past us were we standing not a second before. "You missed Simon!" The boy in question stepped out from behind the dumpster he was hiding behind and smirked.
"How'd you know it was me?" he asked me, his voice a little deeper from when he was twelve. He was exactly the same as he was two years ago, the only things that changed about him were he grew a couple of inches and his voice was a little deeper now. He lived in an apartment building not too far away from the base now since he quit the team, and became a mercenary for hire. His only conditions on jobs he wouldn't do were ones that interfered with the lives of anyone in the Shadow Stars.
"Well, you're the only one in this city with the Electro Bolt plasmid," I chuckled. "It was kind of obvious."
"So why are you here?" Rose asked coldly, her arms crossed. I smirked as Simon covered his ears in pain at her voice.
"Can you translate what that harpie just said?" my younger friend spat in retaliation.
"If you two so much as lift a finger against each other, you're both getting bound to the wall," I threatened to stop any future fighting. "And she wants to know why you came here."
"Just wanted to see how my two favorite people were doing," he answered nonchalantly sparking his fingertips. "Well, I'd love to stay and chat, but I have a job to do. See you guys later!" He climbed up a fire escape after shouting his goodbye to us.
We smiled at our friend's laid back attitude and continued to the elementary school. We were there in a matter of a minutes with a bit of jogging, and there my little girl was, sitting on the staircase. She kept her black hair down after losing her ribbon one day so it reached to the middle of her back, but she looked better that way in my opinion. She wore a leather jacket, leather pants, brown boots, all with bits of metal on them, and her usual gold sapphire necklace she got her name from. She wasn't the only one, a few people wore the same thing throughout the city to show they supported Ghost and his team, the rare hardcore fans wore the trenchcoat and gloves I did though.
Sapphire smiled and waved to us before picking up her backpack and running towards us. "Hi Big Brother, hi Big Sister!" she called out to me and Rose. She called us that to avoid the suspicion from the teachers at the school while keeping the Little Sister nickname intact, but in private or with people that knew about our true relationship, she called me something like 'dad' or 'daddy'.
"Heya princess," I laughed as I picked her up and spun her in my arms. Nobody passed us a wayward glance except for the Shadow haters, to everyone it looked like a big brother who was happy to see his little sister. Rose smiled tussled her hair a bit for her greeting, which made Sapphire giggle. "You ready to go home now?" Sapphire nodded vigorously, her hair following what her head did.
We went into the alley and climbed the fire escape to the roof tops for a short cut to the base, mainly because the front doors were barricaded to keep other people out. While it was a mystery to people why the old radio station was still standing, Jake bought the property a long time ago and kept the place standing with internal supports. He was even considering getting the broadcasting network up to get a good word out for my thieving persona other than the words of people I've saved as him.
We entered through the rooftop entrance to the base, our home. I put Sapphire down and plopped down on the couch, checking my silver watch that I kept concealed under my sleeve. Jake had developed this little trinket himself, it told a person their EVE and ADAM levels, their current plasmid in use, and what time it was. Jake made a killing selling these off to the rare few secret plasmid users throughout the city. I looked at the EVE gauge that surrounded the inner frame of the watch and saw it was full, not to my surprise.
"Hey Jake, how many EVE hypos do we have left?!" I called to my friend in the other room. He came out a few seconds later carrying a bag we used for hypos. He was just an inch under me, his small black pompadour putting us on par. His was wearing a white t-shirt and some jeans currently, making his part-native american skin stand out slightly. I looked into his blue eyes and saw nothing but worry.
"Three left," he answered tossing me the bag. I looked in and sure enough, we were very close to being out. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair before putting on in my pocket and tossing one to Rose.
"How's the arm?" I asked him looking at the artificial appendage. Using the mechanics of my tail from my armor, Jake was able to make a new arm in his free time in a few weeks. He tricked it out so the fingers could divide so he could type faster when necessary, made the index finger into a pistol barrel, and made it so the inner part of the forearm could switch out into a short cutlass for close combat if necessary.
"Doing alright," he answered flexing his creation. "Finally got it upgraded to lift up four inch blocks of concrete today."
"Good, good. So when's the next delivery of hypos?"
"Tomorrow, so try to go easy on the plasmids tonight."
"Actually, I was thinking me and Rose could do our side job tonight, give Ghost and Thorn a break and let the members of the Burning Psychopaths rock out for the night." Me and Rose agreed that we shouldn't rely on stealing for money all of the time and started a band with a couple other guys from school, I sang and Rose played electric guitar or piano depending on the song. We made sure the others get half the pay from the concert in exchange for their silence in school and their instrumental help. They said that we didn't acknowledge them in school as well, we had a deal, which neither of us had a problem with.
"Alright then, I'll send out the signal," Jake said going to his room. He sent out a radio signal from what he could salvage so far of the transmission rig to play every hour on a day when me and Rose wanted to play a gig to bringing fans and to alert the other members. "Oh wait, that thing is almost ready by the way."
"Great, thanks for the update," I smiled giving the brains behind the Shadow Stars a thumbs up. "Hey Rose, get ready for a gig tonight!"
"OK!" she shouted back from the other room with Sapphire. Thank god Jake sound proofed the entire house to the outside, otherwise that would have shattered all the windows outside.
I got in my band gear, an orange hoodie, a mask Jake made that was identical to my thief helmet with the only difference being it was painted to look like a black skull, black pants, my burnt bone patterned gloves, and a custom pair of sneakers that looked like burnt bones, before I fell asleep on the couch until Rose woke me up later for the concert.
Well that's it for now. I hope you all enjoyed it for now.
Rose: *yawn* Heya guys, what's up?
Shad: You and me are doing a songfic next chapter. And dude, did Kur seriously have to die?
There had to be some punishment for going after Will, and I know you couldn't handle losing your brothers.
Shad: Fair point. Well, I hope you all-
Sapphire: Review, favorite and follow if you enjoyed!
Shad: *eye twitches* Did you really need to do that Sapphire?
Saph: *smiles impishly* Yes.