Well guys, it's time to get this new chapter started.
Rose: Before why start, please tell me that me and the others are at least going to make an appearance.
I make no promises. I just go with the flow of the story and do what I think is best.
Shad: Well at least that means there's a chance of you being in it then, right?
Rose: *sulks* Easy for you to say, you're the main protagonist! You have to be in it.
OK, before Rose starts pulling booze off the walls and starts doing rather painful things to us all, I just wanna say that I don't own BioShock or anything copyrighted by major people in this story. I'm just playing in the sandbox they built.
Sapphire: Now lets commence the story telling!
Columbia 2014, 10:34 AM, Shad's POV
It was dark. That was the first thing I noticed about my dreamscape. Not just dark, it was like there was literally not one speck of light to brighten my surroundings. I say 'it was like' though because when I put my hand in front of my face, I could see it perfectly. As I walked the expanse of my dreamscape, searching for anything to brighten my surroundings, I heard a feminine giggling coming from different places around me. The moment I would turn to get a look at the person however, there was nothing, and I know there was someone lurking in the dark because I could smell the person around me, shifting from place to place at an inhuman speed. "Who's there?" I shouted boldly into the darkness, lighting up my hand and sending a fire towards the sound. I think I saw a lock of white hair running away from the fire, but I figured that was my eyes playing tricks on me.
I wandered for another few minutes, trying to sort out the information that Tyler had recently given me as I went. There were so many strategies and tactics running through my head, I wouldn't be surprised if someone said I looked I was in a trance. It may be a bit pathetic, but it was in my nature to think ahead when there was something I couldn't handle coming. I did the same thing a couple years back when the Brute splicers were a new strain. I as I was going through my plans, my thoughts drifted to my new tutor and ally. Mainly what kind of people his Sisters were and if he had a Little Sister like me. That is, until someone tapped my shoulder from behind. I whirled around to face the person a bit too fast though and ended up tripping on my feet, landing right on top of the person behind me. The moment my head landed on my unintentional victim, it became very apparent that it was a girl my age.
I sprang away from her like a scalded cat, apologizing profusely for accidentally faceplanting into her chest until I heard her laughing. "My god, you don't have to apologize so much, it was an accident you dumbass!" the girl said between breaths. I took the moment to look her over, a shocked expression taking over my features. Right in front of me, was an almost exact female opposite of me. She had long, braided white hair, olive skin that looked like it never saw sunlight, and she was a good head shorter than me, wearing a white and gold trenchcoat, brown khakis help up by a piece of gray rope, and a pair of combat boots. I couldn't help but notice she had a knockout figure too. But the main thing that drew my attention was her eyes. They were two deep pools of black with yellow irises that seemed to naturally draw a person to them.
"Who are you?" I asked after a minute of staring into her eyes. She feigned a pained expression and pressed her hands to her heart as she answered dramatically.
"Oh, Shad, how you wound me! I told you my name not a hour minutes ago and you already forgot my name?" She quickly dropped her act and rose her hand up, the immediate area around us taking the form of one of Boston's parks, with the exception of where she was sitting. "I'll give ya a hint though. I'm the voice inside your head." It suddenly clicked into place.
"So… you're Kuri?" I asked hesitantly. The platinum haired girl nodded vigorously and gave me a smile.
"Somebody give the boy a prize!" the apparent embodiment of darkness cheered.
"But wait, if you're supposed to be my dark side... why are you mostly in white?" I asked curiously.
"Well, that's more of the fact you, my most naive host, are mostly in black. Black trenchcoat, black hair and all that," Kuri answered nonchalantly. "And before you ask me why I'm a girl, let me throw it into perspective for you. If you are a boy and a purely innocent child, something that is the closest embodiment of light since Jesus himself, what does that make me, the incarnation of darkness?"
"I can understand that but..." I climbed onto a fountain and glanced at my reflection for a minute. What I saw glued my eyes to it and shut me up instantly. The person looking back at me from the water was a brunette with deep red, non glowing, eyes and ebony skin.
"All places I conjure in here have at least one area where I can access memories and BB," Kuri explained as she took a seat next to me. "This is that area. Oh, by the way, he's why I'm not black skinned. Since you were pale and he was black, as darkness I have to find a natural contradiction to both." I stared blankly into my reflection for a few more minutes before shaking off my initial shock.
"So this is the personification of my instincts then? Looks a bit demonic if you ask me."
"What did you expect? After all, those instincts of yours are to kill anything that harms you or those you care about, be it mentally or physically. No mercy, no hesitation, and they get a kick out of doing it certainly sounds like a demon to me." I couldn't help but laugh at the dirty glare the man in the pool sent at Kuri. Kuri was about to say something after my laughing fit when the rim of my vision begun to crack and the park the dark entity made faded to black again. "Well, as fun as this was, it looks like someone's trying to wake you up. I guess I'll see you next time, Shad." The moment the cracks centered on the middle of my vision, the entire world looked like it shattered.
My eyes snapped open and my body spasmed at the sudden awakening. My hand moved on its own and grabbed my knife, drawing the weapon out and swinging it at a person who was trying to shake me awake. Before the blade made contact, Tyler grabbed my arm and stopped my attack, though, I have a feeling it wouldn't have done much damage either way. "Figured you'd be the violent type when woken up, but you weren't budging and we've been waiting ten minutes already," Tyler said nonchalantly. I adjusted to my surroundings as my tutor talked and noticed there were two Big Sisters in the room with me and Tyler. One of them was in a plain white dress and shoes with shoulder length, dark brown hair and deep blue eyes. The other was an oddity in and of herself, and not just because she had a wheelbarrow next to her. She had black cat ears and dark red eyes, with fiery red hair styled into twin braids and adorned by black ribbons and wore a black and green decorated dress. "Shad, allow me to introduce these two lovely Big Sisters under my care, Eleanor Lamb and Rin Kaenbyou, or, as we call her, Orin."
"Nice to meet you two," I greeted the two Protectors with a wave.
"It's a pleasure," Eleanor nodded. I noticed she had a British accent when she talked.
Orin said nothing as she looked at me with narrowed eyes before breaking into a grin and saying, "No offence Tyler, but if I weren't with you already I'd be trying to jump him." That comment made me scoot my chair away in preparation to bolt if she got any ideas. I won't deny, though, both of them are drop dead gorgeous.
"Orin, please go easy on the poor kid. He didn't even know what being a Big Brother meant before now, and I still have a good bit to explain," Tyler said with sigh to Orin.
"Is that the reason Tyler, or is it that you want me to be trying to getting into your pants instead?" Orin asked. I did my best to suppress my laughter at my tutor's blush at the comment but couldn't stop a small chuckle from getting out. At least I wasn't the only one, Eleanor seemed to be reacting similar to me, the only difference being that she had a light blush on her own cheeks.
"O-Orin, please!" Tyler shouted after his recovery. "Just stick to teaching this kid for now and I'll reward you later alright?"
"OK!" Orin agreed happily. She jumped onto the teacher's desk after without a care in the world, leaving Tyler to simmer down from her little jab. In doing so though, I saw she had a pair of black cat tails as well.
"Anyway… now, these two lovely ladies are gonna teach you the basics of the Big Sister and Big Brother relationships. I'd do it myself but, as I stated earlier, it'd be easier and a lot less awkward if they taught you most of it."
A horrifying thought crossed my mind at the implications of way it would be awkward for Tyler of all people. "...This isn't gonna be a Big Sister version of the talk is it?" I asked hesitantly, making Orin burst out laughing at my question.
"You wouldn't see me complaining, I need to hear what I am as much as you do," Kuri commented.
'Quiet you!'
Orin calmed down after a few seconds and wiped a tear from her eye before she got to talking again. "Yes and no."
"We'll be telling you about the bond between a Sister and Brother with a few minor details about what the pheromones do to us," Eleanor explained when I put on a confused look.
"The long and short of which is that we can't get pregnant unless our Big Brother wants us to," Orin stated with a mild pout.
"Be glad I haven't, you wouldn't be able to sleep with me until you had the kid," Tyler sighed. "That and I really don't want to know how bad the school's undertaker gets under moodswings."
"Anyway," Eleanor cut in, "our bonds with a Big Brother are established through a mark of some kind, varying between Brothers. For example, Tyler's is a gemstone fused into our skin down to our very bones. it would relocate until there was nothing left if it was cut off." She pulled her dress collar down a bit as she said this, showing off an acidic green emerald just under her collar bone. Orin pulled her dress up a bit to reveal an onyx on her outer left thigh and Tyler took off his glove to reveal a sort of geode on the back of his hand that looked as if it held almost every gem possible on it.
"And, if I may add, these marks are extremely sensitive to the touch of those who share them," Orin smirked mischievously. Before anyone could stop her, namely Tyler, the cat girl's hand shot out and brushed Eleanor's gem, eliciting a sharp gasp and a massive blush from the girl.
"Orin, enough!" Tyler yelled at the red head, exasperated. Orin suddenly stopped her assault and sat back down, her eyes cloudy until she was seated. "As you can probably tell by now, once a Sister is marked by a Brother, he has complete control over her, almost making her completely submissive as a counter to the Brother's dominate nature. How much is determined by the nature of the bond and how strong it is."
"Which brings us to how it benefits both us Sisters and Brothers," Eleanor smiled, a faint blush lingering on her cheeks. "We draw power from Big Brothers and they draw power from us. This is only amplified by the strength of the bond between the Brother and Sister. For example, Tyler got a huge power boost when he bonded to me and Orin. Although, different bonds have different boosts."
"A more negative bond is not as powerful, but is the easiest to cultivate and makes a Sister more submissive," Orin begun explaining, a sour expression crossing her face. "Meanwhile, a positive bond takes longer to establish and a little more willful, but pays out with more power. You'd think that Big Brothers would try being nicer since that's the case, but sadly some are just too prideful or stuck up to do so."
"What happens if you bind to a Goddess?" I found myself asking the trio.
"Well, you get the Sister's primary element to control regardless, but you automatically cap it if it's a Goddess's," Tyler explained. "Eleanor just so happens to be the Goddess of Acid, her plasmid being the Acid Whip. The bonus to having the plasmid capped from a Goddess however is that you get to fuse it with your own power, like so." He demonstrated by summoning an emerald tipped whip of acid in his hand and cracking it at a desk. The whip wrapped around the wood and metal construct and, with a light tug, was shredded to bits. "Eleanor's plasmid allows dual wielding with another plasmid, basically a registered melee weapon for anyone to use alongside a different plasmid." That powerful whip combined with his apparent power so far… this guy scares me.
"You and me both."
"Well, considering it's almost lunch, I think we'll leave the lesson off here for the day," Tyler sighed heavily. Wait... what?! I checked my watch and sure enough, it was a quarter of twelve. "I'd hurry to lunch if I were you. Big Sisters get pissed when kept waiting… well that's girls in general when it comes to guys they like." Oh crap. Rebecca is gonna kill me when she sees me since I didn't even tell her where I was gonna be.
"Thanks for the lesson guys, see ya later!" I shouted at my tutors as I ran out of the room. I'm pretty sure I heard Tyler chuckle as I sprinted to the lunch hall.
3rd person
As Tyler watched his new student run to his destination from the window, a sharp beeping emanated from Eleanor's pocket. "So the scan finally went through?" Tyler asked his alpha Sister.
"Yep," she answered, removing a small device from her pocket. It was a small grey box with a syringe hooked onto the side. "I'm just glad it didn't go off when he was still around. The fact it took so long though troubles me though."
"Aw relax Elly, he probably would've understood if we explained why we scanned his blood in the first place," Orin said. Her watch beeped and a sigh escaped from her lips. "Looks like I'm needed again. Tell me what the verdict is when I see you guys again!" The cat girl grabbed her wheelbarrow and strolled out of the room, cursing the more violent Big Brothers under her breath.
"So what's the verdict?" Tyler asked Eleanor with interest evident in his voice.
"He has a high concentration of ADAM, probably from the unused excess in healing from his Little Sister, and he seems to have extremely aged pheromones for a Brother, even for most Rapturian Daddies actually," the brunette reported. "From what the scan's telling me, they seem to be 9 years old, but I can't seem to find their two base pheromones."
"While it seems we know what happened to that unstable and baseless dose from a few years ago that Elizabeth told us about now, the scan doesn't take that long to process pheromones and ADAM on their own," Tyler pushed. "I know there's more to this than that." Eleanor let out a soft giggle and smiled at her lover.
"I figured it would be useless to try and get it by you, love," Eleanor sighed. "I figured it would still be worth a try though." Her eyes danced over the device's display, her brow scrunching in frustration. "To be honest, though, I don't even know what this is. It seems there's a foreign substance in his blood that seems to make it much thicker and darker but I can't identify it. It obviously isn't negative, but it certainly was trying to avoid the scan."
"Avoid? You make it sound like it's alive," Tyler commented incredulously. He looked at the screen himself and looked the substance Eleanor was confused about. It was formless and nearly invisible against the black display, but upping the screen brightness fixed that.
"It seems sentient, but the scan shows no sign of it being a bacteria, virus or parasite of any kind we've seen. It's like a completely different organism that operates on a hive mind, since I'm not picking up brain activity, but it only seems to be endemic to Shad." Eleanor closed her eyes and massaged her temples. "None of the memories I have from spliced scientists are giving me any help either! It's starting to give me a headache." Tyler wrapped his arms around his primary girlfriend and kissed her cheek.
"Don't worry, Eleanor, you'll figure it out. You always do. Lets go get something to eat now, K?" Eleanor looked like she was about to persist but surrendered with a small sigh.
"Alright then 'Alpha'," the third year beauty tease, earning an indignant groan from Tyler, "I'll give up for now, but I want to keep an eye on him. I get a feeling that there's more to this than a simple trait or organism living in Shad's body."
"I'm pretty sure we could take up residence at his new place if we wanted to," the Big Brother smirked, proud of his unusually easy victory against the smartest in his trio. "I think the kid could use a hand considering his current situation anyway."
"In that case, I'll have Orin sound proof our room," Eleanor smiled evilly at her love. "You didn't think you'd get a win off me so easy did you? Your doing exactly what I say tonight if you don't want me pulling another all nighter, you hear me?" A small grin broke out on Tyler's face at what she was implying.
"I expected nothing less," he retorted, stealing a kiss from her before he began dragging her off to a restaurant near Shad's home.
Well that should be enough for now.
Shad: You're seriously doing this to me?
Could you be specific?
Shad: Strongest Big Brother as a tutor? Seriously?
I fully intend on letting you figure a majority out yourself. I did that since Tyler (aka godly) wouldn't in good conscience let you go into this not knowing how the relationships work.
Tyler: He speaks the truth. And since I'm new to the story, I'll do the outro. Be sure to read and review on the story with your thoughts and that stuff and we'll see you the next time. See ya!