Story co-authored between Omicron the IceQueen and Ultra Rodimus!

Into Rapture

It was a long while before Jack seemed to come back to life, having slept quiet bone-limp the whole time before lifting her head at last and blowing at the hair in her face, "I'm too full." She said, more mumbled, Jack was also definitely paler then before going to sleep several hours ago.

The redhead looked at her, tilting his head. "Are you all right?"

"Too full." Jack said again as she pushed herself up, looking around with yellow shined eyes, not completely covered over like the Little Sisters. But similar enough, "I need to get empty... too much ADAM."

The mech shifted, standing up and fishing a bucket out of the corner, from a stack of buckets. He placed it in front of her, and then leaned back against the wall of the trailer. Jack took it, her small hands grasping the rim as she looked queasy, leaning forward enough that she could heave into the bucket. The girl's body shook for a few hard moments before Jack sat back down, not bothering at first to lick or wipe her lips or chin so the thick, green fluid remained as Jack recovered from that unexpected action.

Ultimus blinked once or twice. "So this green stuff is ADAM?" He could smell the stuff, that same smell that came off every splicer he'd yet come across.

"Raw ADAM." Jack nodded, trying to clean her mouth and swallowing several times so not to waste the ADAM. "I still got some more in but it's not as full anymore." She looked down at the bucket, wondering if she could get a new plasmid with it.

That was the nice thing about having the slug, other than healing, was that given a day or two she could make her own ADAM.

"So this is how ADAM is made." The redhead eyed the bucket. "But there couldn't have been that much in that splicer's blood," Ultimus pointed out.

"Nuh-uh," Jack shook her head, and then gave a hesitant smile as she admitted, "I made it."

"So that's what the slug does. It takes in some ADAM and makes a lot more." He pondered that.

"Why's it so clean in here?" Jack asked as she looked around again, the question slightly random as she hadn't fully woken up mentally yet.

Ultimus let out an amused rumble. "This is the inside of my trailer. We both climbed inside some hours ago so we could get some rest in a safe place. You were so exhausted you were about to pass out." He tilted his head as he retrieved his helm. "There was some movement outside a while ago... Sounded like a curious Big Sister or two. Could hear them teleporting."

Jack flinched as he said Big Sisters, looking around again as if expecting one to poof out of nowhere. With her guard down she was showing her childish side more, "...what now?"

"There's no one anywhere within my sensor range now... They left hours ago. I heard a Big Sister-ish laugh, so it wouldn't surprise me to find the Rapture version of grafitti on the outside of my trailer when we emerge."

The girl looked at the closed door, not sure if she wanted to go back out yet. Then she spotted a bottle of water and pounced on it. Ultimus set his helm down atop a box, pulling out a brush and running it through his scarlet mane a few times before quickly tying his hair back in a ponytail. Picking up his helm again, he watched Jack.

She was attempting to, and failing miserably at, opening the bottle. Used to something else, but more from trying to rush to get the water, as if expecting it to be snatched away from her. The girl really didn't seem to have been faring well before meeting (being thrown into) Ultimus.

After watching for a moment, Ultimus leaned over and unscrewed the cap, handing her the bottle. "Drink slowly. If you think having food trying to get into your lungs is unpleasant, water is worse."

Thankfully, Jack paused before trying to gulp down the water, remembering the choking before sleep at least. She still drank a little fast, but not all at once. "Tastes funny..."

"There's no salt in it. It's pure, filtered water. No plant growth in it, either. That's probably why it tastes odd to you," Ultimus replied.

Jack tilted her head, "Huh..." She paused and pointed to the brush the mech had used before, "What is that?"

"Hairbrush," he answered, holding it up. "With hair as long as mine, if I don't brush it now and then it develops very large tangles."

The girl blinked and looked down and slightly to the side to stare at her own frizzed and tangled hair. "Oh." Jack glanced back up, wanting to ask something but not sure if she should.

A scarlet eyebrow lifted.

"...can I have my hair brushed?" Jack asked in a tiny and young voice, her still shined eyes wide again.

The redhead smiled. "Certainly." He settled on the floor of the trailer, putting his helm aside, and waited for her to approach. The girl scooted over, leaving behind the ADAM for now and then hesitated a moment before crawling up into Ultimus' lap. In comparison she did look tiny.

Very gently, the mech began working out the tangles, easing the brush through her hair, taking care not to pull. Every now and then he'd remove a twig or a bit of metal or some less identifiable debris, placing it aside while he continued to work the tangles out. In some places the tangles were almost glued together by dirt. He used a few palmfuls of water to soften the 'glue' so he could brush it out.

Of course, having a child, no matter how she had to grow up in some terms living in Rapture, Jack was still a child. That meant random bouts of restless wiggling here and there and as Ultimus worked. Of course having a very active and too curious Lacat as a pet, the mech was able to deal with this.

During this time Jack seemed to build up more courage to ask about some of the new things she could see in the trailer. Including, "Why is there a bunch of fabric over there?"

"Most of us with truck forms tend to keep some bits of fabric in our trailers. They're quite useful for cleaning ourselves off when we find ourselves fender-deep in mud... Some of my comrades are obsessively vain and are always polishing themselves. I'd sent my last load to be disposed of, since they were stained and worn out, and this is the new load. There are a lot of stores that make a fair profit selling their leftover cloths to my people for various purposes," Ultimus answered.

"The blue's pretty," Jack offered, looking down at her once yellow dress, then remembering tilted her head back. "Ultimus?" She asked, using the mech's name for the first time.

"Yes?" He looked up from his careful picking at another tangle.

"Why do you have food-food if you eat blood too?" Jack asked, tilting her head back to look upside-down at the mech. She wasn't bothered completely since what she was, or had in her stomach.

"My people work with humans quite a bit. Those of us who aren't off on missions all the time occasionally are asked to run cargo, mostly cross-country. I've made a few of those runs, often with a passenger. Since we don't often stop, most of us have learned to carry a small supply of food with us. That box was from a shipment I was carrying. The shipper had sent too much, so a couple of the boxes were left in my trailer," he replied.

"Oh." Pause, "Can I still have that apple?"

Ultimus made that amused rumble again. "Of course."

Jack closed her eyes after a moment, not minding the slight tugs now and then. Though she could use about five baths (at least) with her hair being combed out, Jack was really looking more like a girl again.

Ultimus was silent for a long moment. "What happened to this city? From the look of the place, it was a thriving community for a while. What happened to leave it like this?"

"Bad things." Jack said, and blinked as the question sank in. She blinked again, "Ryan...and splicers... there was a war." She put a hand over her stomach and then tapped her head, "I don't get all of the memories from ADAM. But I know there was fighting for the city."

Ultimus made a thoughtful sound. "Maybe someone tried to control the supply? I can see that touching off a war."

"Maybe there's something in the papers?" Jack offered.

The large mech hummed thoughtfully. "I'll have to see if I can find a newspaper or get into the database."

"The archives are in Minerva's Den!" Jack perked up, knowing that much.

"I'm curious to know what happened to this city... I haven't seen death and neglect like this since the ruins of the arenas after my people threw off our enslavers." Ultimus picked apart another tangle.

"Not all of Rapture is like this." Jack looked back, "But some places are worse... like Siren Alley"

"Siren Alley?" Ultimus echoed.

"One of the pumping stations," Jack explained, "There's stations all over, but I heard Siren Alley is getting to be really bad."

"Pumping station?" Ultimus thought for a moment. "To keep the water out, I assume."

"And power going." The girl piped up, "There's the ge... ge-o vents?"

"Geothermal? Hot springs or heat vents?"

Jack scrunched up her face as she thought, trying to remember her lessons from before being taken, and Ryan Amusements, "Rapture takes heat and power from the lava in the trenches...?"

The redhead nodded. "Geothermal. Much more efficient than burning oil or coal. And much less messy."

"Oil's for machines not burning." Jack pointed out.

"Oil is made into gasoline, which is burned in cars and factories... Smells bad and makes a lot of mess."

"We use power from the vents or," She held out her arms, hands palm up and willed her Electrobolt plasmid to come to life, "Plasmids for some things."

"Still a far cleaner source of fuel than some in use on the surface." Ultimus looked at the electrical arcs with interest.

Jack played with the sparks for a moment before letting the blue veins fade away. She looked back at Ultimus again smiling.

"Very interesting things, plasmids... But I doubt they would work for me at all, and I'm not especially eager to try." Ultimus pulled a long twig from the center of a tangle and picked up the brush again, running it smoothly through her hair.

"I like them." The girl said, looking around and wriggling in place again.

"Where I come from there's nothing like them. Though there are some natural powers that resemble plasmids. Like my commander's abilities." Ultimus picked apart the last tangle, brushing out Jack's hair until it lay smooth. "There."

Jack reached up to feel the new (relatively speaking) feeling of having combed out hair, she couldn't help a giggle, "Feels pretty... is there any ribbon?" She asked hopefully.

Ultimus grinned, fangs glinting for a moment. He contemplated the boxes lining his trailer for a moment and then reached out to open one. He fished inside for a moment. "I think I remember seeing some ribbon in here... Ah. Here we go." He withdrew a length of sky-blue satin ribbon.

Jack's eyes turned glassy for a moment as she stared at the ribbon, and then acting purely her age she gave a delighted sound and reached for it. The redhead let her have it, still smiling as he watched. Despite everything she'd been through, she was still a little girl at heart.

She felt the ribbon, marveling at it since those she had ever had were not the best and most times used or scrap. Jack attempted to tie her hair back with it then, but though she couldn't quite get it into a bow she was very pleased with it... lop sided and all. The Cybertronian's grin softened into a real smile as he watched the girl, leaning back against the side of the trailer.

"There!" Jack all but preened on Ultimus' lap, doing her best to pose like she'd seen ladies do on posters.

The Cybertronian rumbled in amusement. "It looks great," he murmured, eyes glowing softly.

Jack beamed, paused as she looked a little queasy again before the girl scrambled to get off Ultimus' lap and over to that bucket again. Ultimus watched sympathetically; he'd been sick several times after consuming the energon of a mech who'd been ill or poisoned. It was never a pleasant feeling.

"So," Jack sat back up, licking her lips and swallowing a few times before looking back at the mech, "Where do you want to go now?"

"I'm curious about this city and what happened to it." He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "We can avoid the worse areas for the time being, though."

The girl blinked, thinking a moment as she concentrated on her mental map, "So you want to see the archives in Minerva's den?" She scrunched up her face, "We'd have to go up though and through Providence."

"I won't let anyone - or anything - hurt you," he rumbled softly.

Jack tilted her head first to one side and then the other as she stared at the Cybertronian. "...I think I can trust you." She said quietly of course the facts that the mech has protected her before as more importantly in her young that he had food and water went a long way.

"The leader of my people trusts me to guard his life, and I have never betrayed that trust," Ultimus told her quietly. "It's common knowledge that I would risk my own life for anyone in my care."

She didn't fully understand that completely, but Jack blinked as she asked, "...like a Daddy?"

"Something like. He trusts me to watch his back, to guard him from any danger. I've earned more than a few of these scars while doing that." Ultimus ran light fingers over the old scars on his armor.

Jack stood and came back over to peer at one before looking back up at the mech. She paused a moment before hugging his closer arm. The mech made a purring sound deep in his chest, raising his other hand to rub her back gently before lowering his hand again. She looked over at her shoulder at the bucket, "...can I leave that here and get it later?" Jack asked, not liking the idea of carrying visible ADAM in the open.

Ultimus nodded. "Yes, you can leave it in here, and it'll still be here later. It'll be fine in subspace with the rest of my trailer and cargo."

"How would you get if we find a Gatherer's Garden?" Jack frowned a bit, remembering how big the trailer looked on the outside- taking up a lot of the station.

"I can call the bucket out of subspace without bringing the rest of the trailer with it," he replied. "I can't explain how it works... But it's a skill completely normal to my people. And it prompts a lot of questions as to where various parts go when we transform."

"...huh." Jack didn't get it, and with no ADAM given memories to draw on to explain subspace she shrugged, trusting Ultimus. "Okay. So we can go out now?"

"If you're ready, yes, we can go out." Ultimus looked toward the trailer's rear doors, sending the signal to open them. With the faint hum of hydraulics, the ramp lowered into place, the doors swinging open.

Jack started for the opening doors, pausing to pick up the gatherer's needle she had dropped earlier, and also seemed to have forgotten about the shotgun she had before as well. It was somewhat too big for her anyways, besides the needle itself was an effective weapon if used right. She poked her head out, and then yelped as a piece of kelp landed on her head.

Ultimus picked up the shotgun as he followed her out. It looked more like a child's toy in his hand, but it was safer than most of his own weapons. With the possible exception of his flechette rifle. He blinked at the kelp, then stepped out and turned to look at his trailer. "That's different..."

It wasn't really covered, but decorated with different strings and leaves of kelp. From red to green, brown, white and a few that were glowing in the dim lights. Jack backed down the ramp tilting her head to one side and then the other until she ran into the mech's legs and stopped.

"I think Big Sister likes you."

"It's certainly an interesting look," Ultimus replied. "So this is what those two Big Sisters were up to. I could hear them teleporting in and out and laughing, but I never looked out to see what they were doing."

"I've seen them annoy splicers doing this," Jack said holding the long red kelp leaf that had fallen on her, "Or put this on some of the Big Daddy's tanks."

"I guess even Big Sisters get bored sometimes." Ultimus touched one large leaf. "I don't recognize most of these plants."

"My parents said that some showed up around Rapture after it was made." Jack said helpfully, padding away enough to look at the side of the trailer and giggled as she saw the big fish made from the glowing strands stuck on the side.

"So they're unique to the Rapture ecosystem." Ultimus followed her, smiling as he saw the patterns made from the kelp, "Very artistic."

"I like it." Jack said and with an impish grin, put the piece of kelp on the trailer and darted off to the edge of the station platform, looking around.

Ultimus chuckled, making sure the images were permanently stored in his memory banks. Then he placed a hand on the side of the trailer, sending it and the kelp into subspace.

The girl was wandering a little farther down, to the open control booth where she started to poke around. She pulled a lever with a huff, peeking out to see the metal shutters start to pull upwards, letting in filtered, but soft light. Once the shutters were up, part of the underwater cityscape was clearly visible. Looking like an older New York almost, but under water.

The redhead walked over to join her, looking out into the water. He hummed slightly as he looked over the cityscape. "Quite impressive." Movement caught his attention, and he watched a slug of some kind crawl up the window.

"ADAM," Jack said after spotting the slug, the thing had to be a good five inches long as it worked its way to some kind of plant at the top of the window. The girl wrapped her arms around her middle and made faces at the careless slug.

"That's an ADAM slug?" Ultimus peered at it. "And you have one of these things inside you?"

The girl nodded, "Uh-huh. All gatherers do."

Ultimus eyed the slug, running some intense scans on it. Data scrolled past his optics, being stored in a folder to be pondered later. Then he turned his attention back to the cityscape. "Rapture is quite an impressive feat of engineering, despite its current state of decay."

"This is only part of Rapture," Jack said, some words muffled as she was pressed against the glass, looking for a building that wasn't in sight, "We can see more in the higher levels. Squid!"

Ultimus followed her line of sight, optics brightening as he watched the squid. "If there were a city like this where I come from, there would be a large sea serpent swimming around it, just watching all those who would flock to the windows to watch him."

Jack looked up at the mech, having heard the word serpent before but the meaning, or just not that name. Shrugging she looked at the giant squid again before, "I like squid, but there's no more cans around here anymore." The girl paused and then held her arms up to Ultimus hopefully.

The redhead grinned, lifting her up onto his shoulders. Then he decided to answer the unspoken question. "Serpents are animals with scaled skins, and they have no arms or legs. One of my comrades turns into a serpent that is specialized for life underwater. He's not much use on land."

"Soo... it's like those bones in the fossils." Jack brightened as she remembered something.

Ultimus tilted his head, creating a holo-image of the serpent mech in question. Poseidon had been cruising through the shallow waters when the redhead had spotted him last, a cloud of fish in escort, hiding in his thick creamy white mane. "This is his serpent form. The fish think his mane is seaweed, so he always has a cloud of hangers-on."

Remembering some of her at home lessons, some of the few things about the surface level (and most of that had been only about sea life), Jack couldn't help it, "What does he do if flying fish lay their eggs on him?"

The redhead laughed. "I've seen him with fish eggs on him... When that happens he either gets someone to carefully scrape them off, or he visits a cleaning station, and other fish eat the eggs off him. Usually he tries his best to get them scraped off safely, so they can be hatched."

Jack smile and ducked the door and pointed to the copper one they had come through before, "Go back to that one big room."

Ultimus nodded, turning and walking back out. He poked his head through the door first, quickly scanning the area, then stepped out into the main hall. There was no one alive, though a hulking lump that had been the Brute Splicer Ultimus had seen before if briefly with Ice Queen. Jack wrinkled her nose at the gaping hole where its chest had been before unwisely ticking off the Bouncer.

"Messy," was all Ultimus said about it, looking at the crumpled heap on the floor. "So that's the work of the drill, hm?"

Jack nodded, but she was now looking around, taking a moment to remember where things were and using his unexpected new height to get another general look at thing from this angle. "The big stairs over to the left." She directed.

Ultimus approached the stairs, climbing them in a soundless trot. They didn't even creak under his feet as he made his way up to the next level.

"I think, the lower levels here were for offices." Jack said looking around, "mid level was where I lived, and food and the tunnels higher up..."

"Something like the cities I'm familiar with," the Cybertronian mused, glancing around curiously.

The girl tilted her head, hearing voices but they were distant. "I think... the elevators are down this hall and to the left."

The redhead turned in the indicated direction. One pointed ear twitched under his helm as he kept track of the voices. Inhaling, he pondered the scents. "Smells like splicers. But they haven't noticed us, and they're pretty far away. Can hardly smell them."

"Maybe they won't bother us if they think you're a new Big Daddy?" Jack offered.

"Everyone seems to think I'm a Big Daddy already," Ultimus replied, amused. "No one has ever heard of or seen a Cybertronian here, so they fit me into a category they're familiar with. I'm taller than a typical human and I'm covered in armor; therefore, I must be a Big Daddy."

Jack nodded at his words before tilting her head back and sniffing, "...eeewww..."

Ultimus' nostrils flared as he inhaled, curling his lip slightly. "Rust and rot and death..."

"There's a dead Big Daddy ahead." Jack shook her head and pointing, "I can smell the ADAM and that other smell, but not the good one from them."

"That explains the smells of death and rust... and that faint whiff of what smells like hydraulic fluid." Ultimus' eyes glowed brightly as he stared ahead, trying to locate the dead Big Daddy. Perhaps it would have a weapon he could use; the drill looked interesting, but he didn't have the systems to integrate one.

The girl shifted and peered down at the ground over the back of Ultimus' shoulder before looking around again and sniffing once more she pointed to an open door to the right, "It's over there."

The mech eyed the door, then stepped over to investigate. Pulling a small hand light out of subspace, he shone it on the lifeless hulk, inspecting it from any angle he could. And trying to figure out what its weapon was.

"It's an older Rosie model." Jack guessed from her spot at the same time the light glinted off of the metal of a rivet gun. Looking the same as that live Rosie had, just with some blood splashed onto it. A few orange ammo packs were laying near it.

"Quite formidable beings." Ultimus stepped around the corpse to pick up the rivet gun. The hydraulics in his arm whirred faintly as he hefted the weapon, looking it over, then collected the ammo. "With that armored dive suit protecting them, they must be quite hard to take down." He looked at the Rosie again, then pushed it over with one foot so he could peer inside the armor, making a surprised sound.

"What?" Jack asked, trying to see what the mech was doing even as she latched onto his head so not to fall over.

"I had thought they were humans wearing the suits... But apparently I was mistaken." Ultimus' optics were bright and slightly paler as he ran some deep scans. "The human appears to have been grafted onto the suit... or the suit grafted onto him."

"Grafted...?" Jack asked, confused at the new word.

"Attached to or bonded to." Ultimus peeled back a piece of the dive suit. "The suit actually is the skin now... The organs were attached to the inside."

The girl made a face at the mix of scents that just became stronger, wavering for a moment and her grip loosening.

Ultimus shifted his grip on the rivet gun, lifting his hand to keep her from falling off his shoulder and into that decaying mess. Finishing his scans and filing away the results, he left the dead Big Daddy alone. "These Gatherer's Garden things are where you get plasmids?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Uh-huh," Jack nodded as she slowly came out of it, pushing back memories of the start of the training/mental conditioning of a Little Sister. "They're all over Rapture."

"And ADAM is payment for plasmids?" Ultimus moved down the corridor.

"Yeah," Jack nodded, "It's also a second kind of money." She pulled out a five dollar bill from a pocket in her dress, holding it for Ultimus to see.

Ultimus looked at the bill, tilting his head slightly to one side. "Considering the state of Rapture right now, I can't see how paper money or coins would be of much use."

"Vending and the band-aid machines don't take ADAM." Jack shrugged putting the bill away. "And some places stores are still open."

"Ahh." The redhead nodded his understanding.

Tbc...

Please, I know people are reading this. Please, please, please send us a review?