Author's Notes: Hello everyone! As you can see, I finally updated this story! YAY! :)

But seriously, I'm sorry this chapter took so long to get to you guys. My summer job and other stories kept me away from this for longer than I would have liked. However, its here now! And I have even better news…hopefully the next chapter won't be too far behind!

How do I know this? Well, uh…you see, this chapter…has been spilt into two. *Takes cover behind, uh, well, cover at the fan rage at this not being the full chapter promised. Cowardly peaks head out and sees that no has come to kill him…yet*

I know, I know! Its really cheap for me to sell you guys and girls short after so long a wait for this chapter by it only being a part of the originally envisioned whole. But trust me, I have a very good reason for this…this chapter has so much good stuff in it! That combined with the next chapter would have had too much in one chapter! You can only handle so much awesome in a single sitting! :)

Ok…now that I've likely inflated your expectations of this chapter too much, let me briefly sum up what's going on here since it been awhile since the last update. This chapter (and the next one) has Noah and Courtney on their own searching for the means to reach the Plasmid that will allow them to reach the Telekinesis Plasmid, and Steinman. Along the way, we learn a few hints of what's up with one of them, and a few more bits about the world of Rapture.

Also, before beginning, I must give a massive shout-out to a good buddy of mine on this website…Argudas! There two reasons why I'm giving this guy a shout-out. Firstly, his story, "Total Drama Island: A New Beginning" is easily one of the best Total Drama fan-fictions ever and you ALL should be reading and reviewing it! Secondly, he offered his services in reading over this chapter and fixing any spelling or grammar errors that he noticed, as well as any other little flaws of my writing. For that, I am TRULY GRATEFUL! Thanks again, buddy! :)

As always, NO SPOILERS in your reviews!

Here's the twenty-first chapter of "Total Drama Raptured": Eternal Flame

Noah hated running. He hated having to break out into anything more than a light jog. Gym class back at school had always been a major pain. He almost didn't sign up for Total Drama to begin with because of this. But he did anyway, hoping the show wouldn't require much physical prowess. He would be happy to not have to run throughout all of his life. At the moment, he really wished that he had never joined this show to begin with! After all, if he never did, he wouldn't be forced to keep running for his life. If he didn't, he wouldn't be trapped in an unimaginable hell where he already had to extort more effort physically than he had to at any point in his inactive life before this point.

Wasn't it fortunate that he signed up for Total Drama, with hopes of not having to run?

"Courtney," Noah heaved, feeling his heart hammer in his chest from the stress, "please slow down!"

With an annoyed sigh, the far more physically capable C.I.T. stopped dead in her tracks. She watched as Noah fell down on his hands and knees, heaving but nothing except sickly spit was coming out. Courtney, to her partial shock, felt a tinge of guilt for having him run so much. But it was only a tinge, finding medicine for Gwen and/or a means of reaching the Telekinesis plasmid in the dental services area were her top priorities.

While not liking having to stop, Courtney was able to regain her bearings because of it. She and Noah, to his endless acknowledgements of disapproval, were searching the Medical Pavilion for medicine for Gwen, who was out cold under the safety of Cody. True, she wasn't entirely comfortable of about leaving her with Cody, but if anything happened, Courtney figured that she could deal with Cody the Geek pretty easily. She was a C.I.T., after all. Even if he had ADAM and seemed to be skilled with it, Courtney had it too and was quickly reaching his level of expertise with it, or at least that's what she told herself. And, ADAM usage seemed to be like running, the more you did it, the better you got at it.

But someone the principle of running clearly didn't apply to was Noah, who was still on his hands and knees. "I don't know who's going to kill me first," He almost angrily muttered in-between his heavy breathes, "the deformed psychopaths or you!"

"Stop talking like that, we are not going to die! I won't allow it! Where's your backbone, Noah?"

"About ready to snap in half from how tired I am, thank you very much. I liked you better when you were losing it. Why I decided to give you any encouragement is beyond me!"

Courtney, already finding her less than relaxed nerves being tested by Noah, was about to fill the air with a her usual shrill and shouting woman's voice…when but another voicehad already didfilled the space.

"Fine! Have it your way!" A female splicer shouted angrily and nasally.

Finding all of the her shouting dying in her throat, Courtney crouched down and slowly started to make her way forward. Noah, while hating that he had to have his knees bent, followed in tow. Squatting as they made small steps in silence, the two teens past by an opening on their right side, leading into a little separate opening with a small flight of stairs leading to the entrance of the Eternal Flame on the left. They took cover behind a section of ledge that was on the left side of the opening. Thanks to the female splicer being totally focused on the door to the Eternal Flame crematory,she didn't notice the teens as they reached the other side of the opening, or the constant stream of mechanical noises coming from the security bot hovering over them.

Once behind cover, Courtney peaked around the corner and saw that the entrance to the Eternal Flame appeared to be locked up with rusty metal chains and thick wooden planks. Noah, on the other hand, noticed a faint glinting in the dull lights above them on the ledge. Reaching up, he grabbed at two small cylinders, at two shotgun rounds. They had a color scheme of bright yellow and muted grey, with a lightning bolt symbol across them. On each of them as a label saying: Electric buck! This caused Noah to lightly chuckle as he thought back to earlier at the vending machine when he said to Courtney, 'This is just me spit balling but I'm going to assume shotgun buck that's also electric?' Seeing the obvious ways in which this could come in handy, the Bookworm pocketed the rounds.

"Oh, I'll be better next time! Please don't go!" The female splicer shouted as she banged on the blocked entranceway with no effect. "Say something goddamnit! Say you love me! Say-AAGGUH!"

BOOM!

A sudden explosion roared through the area, overpowering and replacing the female splicer's screaming. Thankful they were already behind cover, Courtney and Noah were unaffected by the blast. But, tThey felt a new wave of fear as footsteps began tocould be heard, coming from inside of the blast radius, from inside of the Enteral Flame. Unable to help themselves, the two teens looked at whoever or whatever was coming towards them.

A solitary figure began to materialize out of the billowing plumes of thick, charcoal air. Given the tension they felt, the two teens felt like everything happened in slow motion.

For the briefest of moments, Noah and Courtney allowed their built-up societal fears of certain archetypes to overpower their common sense. They feared the figure was none other than the Grim Reaper himself, finally manifesting in a city that he had been ruling over, from his throne. He had finally come to claim them himself.

But, within another step or two, the figure was revealed to be not that. Instead of a clean, black robe, this figure had a stained, drab, dead-grey overcoat. Instead of a posture rigid and uniform made up of the impossibly clean and smoothed imagining of human bones, this figure had a body besieged by endless, undulating, clashing, little jerks, no doubt because the ADAM was causing its cells to disobey their natural training to staying tight and together, resulting in a body that was at the inauguration of degenerating, the beginning of seething within the boils of rebellious cells. Instead of a skull for a face, this figure's face was as ashen as its bloodied grey overcoat, and it was just as full of creases and thick ridges, with hardened skin like smoked meat. Even so, this figure and the personification of death had the same eyes, like black, shining gems in broken sockets. But the biggest difference between this figure, Grey-Coat, and the Grim Reaper was the weapon held in their arms. Rather than a scythe, Grey-Coat had a large, wooden box. [1]

Naturally, Courtney and Noah found themselves being thankful it wasn't a scythe. Gray-Coat reached his hand into the box, and pulled something out of its half-rotted form. But there blood all but froze when they saw what Grey-Coat had pulled out of the box.

A can of sardines! A grenade!

Both teens were suddenly wishing that he were wielding a scythe instead.

Amid the fear they felt, the din of the security bot was as loud as an operatic orchestra. Grey-Coat seemed to feel the same way because his pallid-cowled head turned towards the bot, and by extension the hidden teenagers. One of the grenades' pins was pulled.

"Feel the great and terrible fury at being alive!" Grey-Coat shouted while throwing one of the grenades at the ledge. Against their wishes, both teens shouted as the explosion on the other side of the ledge shook their side. "The flames of my rage will incinerate you all!"

With the loud whining sound as the only rebuttal to Grey-Coat, the security bot engaged him. What played out next was an odd and surreal spectacle. Grey-Coat would throw grenades at the attacking robot but none of them could find their mark. And while the security bot's machine bullets were mostly finding their mark, they weren't doing as much damage as had been hoped by those still hiding behind the ledge. It was like the course skin matching smoked-meat of this splicer was a better defense against bullets.

One of those hiding behind the ledge, Courtney, was spurred into action by the stalemate. Not wanting to waste any time and fearing that a Rapture-made grenade would destroy this security bot, like its companion, the C.I.T. emerged from the cover with her Tommy gun ready to go. With all of her bravado showing, she fired at least ten rounds at Grey-Coat. Most of them exploded on the surfaces either behind or around him, unfazed.

However…

"Son of a biiiiiitch!" Grey-Coat shouted on instinct, his voice hoarse and wrathful, as one lucky shot from the Overachiever's machine gun slammed itself into one of his arms. The sudden pain in his arm caused Grey-Coat to drop something…a grenade with a pulled pin.

KABOOM! BOOM!

The grenade exploded at his feet! And that grenade was only the beginning. In a chain reaction, the single blast from that one converted can of sardines caused all of the other grenades in the wooden box to go off at the same time. Flames surrounded Grey-Coat. In a matter of seconds, the thick grey of his face and overcoat was turned into flaky black. After a few lingering steps, he fell to the ground, onto a simmering section of floor tile.

The two teens looked at each other, reeling from what they had just seen, and for reasons aside from the obvious ones of this being another brutal battle to the death. Without saying a word, Noah grabbed the radio that Courtney had on her. "Atlas, you there?"

"Aye…uh, Noah. What is it?"

"Why is it that when you told us that "explosives are hard to come by down here" that we just fought a foe who had a whole boxes of the fucking things!?" Noah asked, pissed.

"Um…good question, boyo." Atlas said, unfazed by the Bookworm's nasty tone. "It looks like ya just meet a Nitro Splicer. I didn't tell ya this yet but there seem to be many types of splicers, some common types that emerge for whatever reason. Anyway, Nitro Splicers get fixated on makin' bombs, havin' the mental faculties to find the all 'em little moving parts needed and then makin' 'em. And before ya ask, no, ya can't use one of their bombs to get to Steinman, the bombs are so unstable they'd likely blow up in your face without that Telekinesis Plasmid. Ya gotta move forward to find that Incinerate, hopefully its just over yonder."

"Understood." Noah simply said before pocketing the radio.

He and Courtney did a quick search of the area that still reeked of smoke and flickered in flame. The only thing they found was twenty-two Rapture dollars, which Courtney and Noah spilt right down the middle, meaning each got eleven Rapture dollars. Noah noticed how the C.I.T. was refusing to look at the burned bodies around them but said nothing.

After that, they entered the passageway that, despite still have some gusts of gunpowder lingering in the stale air, was now opened for them. They walked under the bright orange neon letters that proudly displayed: ETERNAL FLAME.

The lobby for the Eternal Flame crematorium was not that menacing a reception area, when compared to what Courtney and Noah had already seen in Rapture. A large metal desk was at its center, with a light on the ceiling directly above it flickering on and off at random intervals. But aside from the lack of proper lighting and the obvious physical decay of from not being cleaned in quite some time, it looked more or less normal to the teens. There were several burgundy fabric benches and just as many large burgundy curtains. Only two things two stood out about this place, two nearly identical things, with one on the right side of the room and the other on the left…portraits, on wooden picture stands, which were nicely displayed thanks to (flickering) lights directly above them as well.

Traveling to the right, they saw a familiar face. Looking at the words below the picture, written in gold letters on a tiny black metal box, were the words 'In Loving Memory of Winston Hoffner'. Both teens remembered that name, it was the same name as the man who's picture they had discovered next to the lilies and teddy bear before there encounter with the splicer singing a lullaby to Cody's pistol. The picture was exactly the same.

Seeing that, they moved to the left picture. Sure enough, it too was a picture of Winston Hoffer, but they could only tell that because of the identical words below it. Otherwise, there would have been no way to know that this picture was once the same as the first. So much of the picture had been changed: all the hair was missing from his head, the right eye had been clearly switched with a woman's eye, the lips were darker and fuller, a jagged cut stretched across the right side of the face to the gaping and torn crater that was once the nose, and two other noses hovered dethatched on the head's left side in mid-air.

Unnerved by what they had seen, the two teens had their suspicions confirmed, these "artistic alterations" were the direct result of Steinman, his nearly written scarlet scrawl on the floor in front of the altered picture made this knowledge unquestionable. Hanging from this portrait was an audio diary. Courtney pressed the play button to the device.

(Audio Dairy: Surgery's Picasso- Dr. Steinman)

"When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms. The world called him a genius!" Steinman said, gushing.

"I've spent my entire surgical career creating the same tired shapes, over and over again: the upturned nose, the cleft chin, the ample bosom!" The disgust in Steinman's voice was unhidden as his tone became more and more vindictive. But them just as quickly, he returned to the voice of awe that Courtney had heard in his previous audio dairies.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could do with a knife what that old Spaniard did with a brush?"

Both teens were in silence, frightened by the implications of this audio diary. As what they had seen had clearly shown, Steinman had reached the point where he was attempting to do that, do with a knife to people what Picasso did to paintings. He had gone so crazy that the two things were identical in his damaged, ADAM-fueled mind.

With the hardened of his cynicism at risk of shattering after that realization, Noah decided that now was the time to ask the C.I.T. something that he had been wondering.

"So, what's your axe to grind against Cody?" Noah asked bluntly, with no lead-in.

Courtney bitterly harrumphed as she crossed her arms over her chest while glaring at him, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Really? Then why is it whenever he's around you or talked about you get nasty…er, and about three seconds away from wrenching his head off?"

"I do not!"

"Oh, yes, please keep shouting. Aside from attracting more splicers, I'm sure that will make it so." Noah said with his voice as neutral and sarcastic as it almost always was. "Let me guess, it has something to do with Gwen, doesn't it?"

"Yes, yes it does, ok. In case you haven't noticed, Gwen is in critical condition right now. She's one of the few people who I've found to be someone worthy of being my friend. I will get her and me out of this place alive. I will not let Cody's libido get in the way!"

"I get that, and I get that Cody is more than a bit of a horn-dog when it comes to the Goth but that doesn't explain why you are suddenly so gung-ho against him out of nowhere." Noah said, silently taking note of how the C.I.T. didn't say anything about getting him and Cody out of Rapture.

"Its not out of nowhere! I've just never been around him long enough to form a solid opinion of him before this season!" Courtney said loudly, before truly ranting angrily. "He's nothing but a pathetic and worthless little runt who's only stayed in the game this long because of his towering psychotic uber-fan! I will not let Gwen risk falling for someone as pathetic as that because of some reserve Florence Nightingale effect! I might not be some lesbian slut who humps anything with curves but I now know that you men are all alike! You trick us into thinking that there is something deeper beneath the surface, that there's nothing you could want out of us women instead of mindless rutting! You pull us along just to boost your massive egos for two whole seasons so you can kiss and grope us to your filthy heart's content! He keeps you thinking that he's an Ogre who will become Prince Charming but he never does! And then, he has the gall to brea-!" Without any indicator of it in her speaking, Courtney suddenly stopped yelling.

There was a heavy silence.

"Are we still talking about Cody?" Noah asked as he took note of the blatantly obvious; there was some trauma with Duncan in her past, within the time since this season started. And she was now projecting onto Cody out a displaced desire to protect her new friend. 'Well-intentioned, but overzealous. Great. This is going to make keeping her focused on keeping us, me, alive so much easier.'

Courtney didn't answer. Instead, she bitterly harrumphed once again before proceeding to a red sliding door that was behind the desk at the center of the lobby. Noah followed.

Once through the doorway, the teens found an area much more obvious in its threatening nature than the lobby. Unlike the fairly clean wood of the lobby, this area's floor was made up of countless dirty, smudged grey hexagon tiles. A lime green light bathed the area they were currently standing in, right next to the doorway. Looking out, they saw a small lowering of the floor, with a small flight of stairs leading to it. In the distance, they saw a red light that appeared to be moving, swiveling from side to side in a limited pattern. It didn't look inviting. So, they decided to try the nearby stairway to the right. However, once they reached it, they saw that it was full of large bits of rubble, rendered useless years ago by some unknowable occurrence of obvious destructive consequence.

Reluctantly, they headed down the small flight of stairs. Once in the hallway at the slightly lower elevation, they crept slowly through the hallway only lighted by the brief flashes of red light. As the crept further and further down it, they felt more and more heat. Looking to their sides, they saw many large, square, grey doors built into the walls. They were the doors to freezers meant to store the corpses before the funerals and cremation. But along the wall they were moving against, it was heat and not cold that they faintly felt. They realized that they must have walking around the side of a single large furnace. It was a frightening idea, knowing that hungry flashes of red and yellow were right next to you and only separated from you by metal work in a place that had been decaying for over half-a-century.

Regardless, they reached the end of the hallway, noticing new bright orange glow, from an opened furnace door to their right. But they didn't focus on that detail at the moment.

"Careful now. Don't be peakin' 'round that corner yet. Wait till the red light's off ya." Atlas warned over the radio.

"What is it, Atlas?" Noah asked.

"Security Cameras. I can hear the infernal things all 'round you. Ryan's eyes and ears. If it spots ya for long enough, it'll bring down a whole army of 'em mini helicopter bots. Believe me, ya don't want that to happen."

"Duly noted." Noah said. "But what do we do then?"

"The way I see it, you and Courtney have four options, boyo. One, sneak by it without gettin' seen. Two, somehow hack the damn thing. Three, destroy it before it can sound off the alarm. You'll only have a few seconds to do so, so be quick 'bout it. And finally, four, pray to the All-Mighty Father in Heaven that there's a Bot Shutdown station near ya. It'll cost ya 'about twenty Rapture dollars to use but that's better than dyin', aye?"

"Understood. Wish us luck." Noah said before pocketing the radio. He then stared at the area beyond the wall's covering that the red light was coming from. "Um? I wonder. Should we try and hack it?"

"Oh, sure!" Courtney quickly shot off nastily with a trademarked condescending eye roll. "I'll bet we can just float in mid-air as we try hack the explosive ADAM pipes and any splicers who come by will politely wait before they resume trying to hack us into bits!"

"Hey!" Noah shot back just as fast. "Sarcasm is my thing! Lay off it!"

Courtney's expression changed to one of smug enjoyment as she said with finality, "Is that so? I don't remember seeing your name on the patent for sarcasm when I filed it."

For once in his life, Noah was rendered silent. Then something even more rare happened, he started fumbling for a witty rebuttal.

Seeing both of these things, Courtney smirked in victory before proceeding on her way, leaving a shock-shelled Noah behind.

'It…it's been years since someone outwitted me!' Noah thought to himself in awe. For the briefest of moments, he saw the C.I.T. in a new, and shockingly, positive light. He felt something vaguely akin to the feelings he felt when seeing her handling the machine gun in the Medical Pavilion lobby, when he saw her "hot, angry" face. It felt good.

"Ok," Courtney said once she stopped at the edge of the hallway out of the light's reach, "so hacking it is obviously out unless we can sprout wings in the next thirty seconds."

"I'll bet ya there's a Plasmid for that." Noah said, smirking a little.

"Regardless, if there is, we don't have it now." Courtney said tightly, controlling herself. "So we can move past it, destroy it, or hope for a Bot Shutdown station. And since we don't even know what a Bot Shutdown station looks like, I say we cross off that option. And I'd rather just be done with this camera; so moving past it is out. So let's destroy it."

"You'll get no argument from me." Noah said. "But how are we going to do that? Sure, we can use Electro bolt to shut it off and then shoot at it but if we don't destroy before the Electro bolt wears off, then we'll be in its sights and at square one, negative one."

Courtney had a look of epiphany. "I've got just the thing for this!" She pulled out a single pistol round.

Noah looked at her like she was insane. "A single pistol round? That's your big answer!"

"Oh, Noah, Noah," Courtney said while shaking her head in mock-disappointment, smirking. "This isn't just a pistol round, but an armor piercing pistol round! As in, a pistol round meant to used against metal, or armor."

"Ok, you've got my attention. But can you hit the target? You haven't used a pistol yet." Noah asked as Courtney replaced one of her pistol's regular bullets with the special one.

"Oh please," Courtney said as she closed the pistol's bullet chamber, "I've been using a machine gun. I'm sure a pistol can be any harder."

"You'd have me more convinced if you haven't been largely ineffective the last two times to used your Tommy gun." Noah drawled. "Have you ever fired a pistol before?"

Courtney's brow tightened and she remained silent for a few moments. Finally she softly admitted, "No, no I haven't." But then the C.I.T.'s fiery resolve burned in her onyx eyes. "That doesn't matter!" She aimed her pistol towards the camera. "After all, I'm a C.I.T.!"

With that, Courtney fired her only armor-piercing pistol round!

It didn't hit the camera. Instead it hit a section of the metal wall below the camera.

Noah stared at Courtney with a smirk of victory. Courtney felt horribly embarrassed. Neither teen said anything.

However, the bullet wasn't finished yet. Thanks to the wall that it hit being metal, the armor-piercing round ricocheted along it, moving like a stone skidding over a pond. Through the dumbest luck imaginable, the armor-piercing round bounced upward and managed to drive right through softer metal (when compared to the metal of the wall) of the part of the security camera that connected it to the ceiling. In seconds the security camera came crashing down in a howling of screeching metal.

Noah and Courtney stared at the slightly rising puff of smoke and accumulated dust, their eyes and mouths being as opened as they could be. They then stared at each other, with neither of them closing their eyes or mouth. They remained that way for ten seconds.

'Ho. Lee. She. It!' Noah thought to himself, now realizing the ricochet factor at work.

Finally, Courtney's mouth closed, and became a smirk of victory. Her onyx eyes narrowed. There were so many things she could have said to Noah but none were as effective as the dying moans of the security camera she killed with her first pistol shot, so she said nothing. Leaving Noah standing there, the C.I.T. walked out to where the camera had previously been guarding, feeling unafraid and confident. Eventually, Noah followed.

Under the glow of the nearby furnace, Courtney and Noah made it further into the Eternal Flame by moving towards the right. They found a small area with a table, which had two armor piercing rounds on it. Still high off of her glory, Courtney took them both.

But of greater interest was an opened slab, with a female corpse lying on it. Less then a foot from her feet, were the flames, licking non-existent lips to consume the corpse.

As Courtney and Noah stared at the corpse, with her face deformed by ADAM long ago, they heard shouting. Quickly turning, they saw a male splicer, in a doctor's white robes. With her pistol being out (and her Tommy gun being on the table), Courtney fired three pistol rounds at the charging male splicer. None of them got even close to hitting him. The splicer was about to reach Courtney with a scalpel that glinted in the red-light afterglow, when Noah fired a single shot hit at the charging splicer right in the head. Knocked back by the recoil of the shot, the splicer's body pressed into a large button that had been on the right side of the female corpse. In seconds, she was fed to the flames.

While the ravenous mouths with teeth of heat consumed the female's corpse and shat out ash, Courtney, still frightened by what had just happened, stared at Noah, who was smirking. There were so many things she could have said to Noah but none were as effective as the silence where there had moments ago being mad, raving shouts, so he said nothing. Despite not wanting to admit it, Courtney was impressed with Noah.

'He might be a pain in the ass, and a know-it-all…but he certainty does have his moments. And it might just be the glow of the flames…but he's not bad looking either.'

Courtney's thoughts were interrupted when the slab to the furnace came back out. As would be expected, where there had once been a female body there was only a pile of ashes. But there was something else in the flaky bits of blackened human powder, something that was very out of place. Amid the ashes was a glowing cyan bottle. It seemed similar to the bottle that had housed the Electro Bolt Plasmid, for the most part. The only real difference was that the bottle was smaller, about half the size of the previously seen bottle. Naturally, both teens assumed that it was another Plasmid!

'Is it wrong that I barely question why there was a Plasmid bottle in a corpse?' Noah thought to himself, half being sarcastic and half being serious. 'This is probably another one of Steinman's mad little medical Picasso projects. I may never be able to look at that Spaniard's abstract cubist paintings again, assuming I escape Rapture.' The Bookworm then noticed something written on the bottle and read it out loud for him and Courtney, "With Hacker's Delight, your body converts the altered current from a hacked machine into a powerful healing agent. Hack and heal! Each bottle contains enough for only two."

The radio in Noah's pocket came to live with a loud song of crackling static. He took it out, knowing that Atlas was reaching out to him and Courtney. "Ya found a Hacker's Delight?" The Irishman asked.

"Yeah?" Noah said, unsure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

The near cheering on the other end of the radio told him it was a good thing. "That's mighty good, boyo! Congratulations, you've just found yourselves your first Tonic!"

"Tonic? But it's in one of those bottles…and it's glowing? Don't only Plasmids do that?" Noah asked.

"No, Noah." Atlas answered. "Tonics do that too. After all, they're by-products of those disgusting 'lil sea slugs that ADAM came from too. They'll change your DNA too."

"So, Tonics and Plasmids aren't the same thing?" Courtney asked.

"Aye, lass." Atlas answered. "Tonics, with the full name of Gene Tonics, are like Plasmids but they are not same thing. Like how wolves aren't the same thing as foxes, though they both are wild mutts. There are different types of Tonics but let's worry 'bout that later, shall we? Think of Tonics as passive Plasmids, they change your DNA, give you superhuman powers, but they are more low-key. They might not be as flashy but they can save your skin all the same with some neat tricks. For example, that Hacker's Delight ya got there will take a wee bit of the special kind of ADAM in the machines, and turn it into a wee bit of the kind that heals your body and gives you some EVE every time ya hack a machine correctly. Quite useful for hackers. Oh, and unlike Plasmids, Tonics don't require any EVE to use. All ya need to do is have it in your system for it to work. But beware, ya'll can get just as hoppin' mad off of Tonics as you can off of Plasmids."

"I see. Well, even with that in mind, it sounds like this will be useful. Thanks for the info, Atlas." Noah said.

"No need to thank me, boyo, but its good to know all the same."

With that, Noah pocketed the radio and reached for the Hacker's Delight Gene Tonic. He expected it to be burning to the touch but it was only a little warm, despite being in a fire hot enough to reduce a human corpse into nothing but ashes. He was puzzled but didn't worry about it. Naturally, Noah quickly injected himself with half of the bottle. To his infinite delight, he wasn't in crippling pain like he was after taking the Electro Bolt. It honestly felt only slightly different than getting a shot from the doctor, the only difference was that he felt a tiny tingling spread out from the area he injected himself.

Courtney reached for the bottle, but before her mocha fingers could ensnare it, Noah's own mocha fingers moved it out of reach. "I think Cody should have this, not you." He said.

Instantly, Courtney's onyx eyes flamed up in anger. "What the fuck, Noah!? Give me damn Tonic or I'll electrocute your ass!" Her hand started to flash the blue voltage of primed Electro Bolt as the bolts snaked there way between the spaces in the fingers.

Noah, felt afraid, very afraid. Courtney angry was bad enough but Courtney angry with electricity coming out of her hand was infinitely more terrifying. Even so, he remained calm, or at least calm enough given the circumstances. "Cody has proven good at hacking. You haven't. If this Tonic heals you a little every time you successfully hack something, then he won't require as many first aid kits, which you could save for yourself and Gwen." Noah said, his deadpan voice mostly keeping together amid his fear.

Courtney was in silence for a few moments before her fingers stopped arcing blue bolts. She released a bitter, angry huff as she crossed her arms. "You know, I'm starting to think that the horny fan are right about you and Cody!"

Noah, whose brown eyes showed brief flares of anger, shot back, "And I'm starting to think that the horny fans are right about you and Gwen!"

Not knowing how to respond to that, Courtney harrumphed and turned away. As she did, she saw some stairs on the other side of the room that had had the security camera leading upward. "Come on, Noah!" She ordered, ignoring Noah's comment since she couldn't come up with a good rebuttal. "If that fire Plasmid is here, which I don't think it is, it has to be on the upper level!" After grabbing her Tommy gun, Courtney left.

Once again, Noah followed, but this time he had a smirk on his face.

And there you have it! As always, I really hope you all enjoyed this newest chapter! :)

Ok, I've got some stuff to talk about so let's get started, shall we?

First, let's talk about Courtney. Quite rightly, several people were complaining that she seemed unnecessarily harsh to Cody in several of the earlier chapters. Well, here's the first solid hint of the reason behind it. Something happened between her and Duncan early in the season. Honestly, it's likely too obvious what it is but I'll still not flat out say it regardless. That reveal will come later on in the story; don't worry about that. Either way, finding this experience fusing with her overzealousness and the usually foreign desire to help someone other than herself, Courtney is protective of Gwen, with this being added to by knowing how much of a horn-dog Cody has been, and is. Plus, remember that she is literally fighting for her life in a world harsher and more alien than any she's endured. This is the rationale that I had been planning on using for quite some time but I'm still unsure if it seems too petty or too OOC for Courtney. Please tell me your thoughts on this matter, ok?

Second, let's talk about bullets! Or, more accurately, how bullets would work in Rapture. Now, before you say something like, 'you fire them out of the gun, genius', what I'm referring to is how would bullets react in a physical location like Rapture. You see, Rapture is a city made almost entirely out of metal, and when bullets hit flat surfaces made of metal, there is the possibility of an effect called ricocheting. Ricocheting is, to quote Wikipedia, "a rebound, bounce or skip off a surface, particularly in the case of a projectile." Basically, it goes like this. If a bullet hits a wall, there is the possibility of it not being driven into the wall. Instead, it could skip along the wall like a stone in a pond and keep traveling at a speed that would be lethal. So, if you're standing too close to a metal wall, there is a very real possibility that even if a bullet misses you it could still skip in your direction at the same level, and kill you, or it could skip and descend, and kill you. So, there are situations where it's actually more dangerous to cling to wall-cover. Now, I'm not going to pretend that I know for sure the factors that require a bullet to bounce like that (since they range from "bullet shape, bullet material, spin, velocity (and distance), target material and the angle of incidence", to once again quote Wikipedia), but I WILL be having that factor into the story, to make the story a little more layered. And its just one more way to make Rapture as dangerous a place as possible, as if the Big Daddies and insanity causing superpowers weren't that enough already! ;)

Now, while editing this chapter for me, Argudas brought up a very good point. He was unsure if an armor piercing pistol bullet would skip like that, since its, you known, made to go through metal. That was an excellent question and it allow me to answer something that I've been wanting to for a little while now, actually. In the book "Bioshock: Rapture", it says that a lot of Rapture's metal skeleton is made up of a super-strong metal called "Ryanium" (named for the CLEARLY egoless man in charge of the company that made it) lol. Naturally, it doesn't say that much about it, however I'm going to be using the logic that it's harder than any known metal by far, so hard in fact that it actually gets stronger as more water pressure is added on top of it. This would also explain how Ryan was able to build skyscrapers that could keep all of their aesthetically pleasing angles and such that would realistically be crushed under the massive amount of water pressure. Because unlike features like the bathyspheres and rounded tubes/pipes that even distribute the water pressure, the harsh angles of the city's Art Deco design wouldn't fair nearly as well. Now, only the walls of the city would be made of this stuff, all of the other metal objects in Rapture would be made of more common (and real) metals, mainly because of expensive it is to make "Ryanium". lol This is part of the reason why Rapture has stayed together underwater and is relatively intact after sixty years of decay with only a bunch of Big Daddies being used to repair the most obvious damages.

Finally, as far as these numbered things go, let's quickly talk about Gene Tonics. I actually debated a little bit about if I should include this but in the end I decided to. They are as much a part of the gameplay of Bioshock as the Plasmids and guns are. I'm not sure if I'll require more Gene Tonic slots to be included but I'll see as I get further into this story.

[1] Grey-Coat is the name of a character in the last story in the short story collection Clive Barker's "Books of Blood: Volume One", "In the Hills, the Cities". For those of you who have read the third chapter of "Unbreakable Red Silken Thread", you'll likely recognize this short story collection. Yes, it is the same one. And it's still great! Anyway, without spoiling anything, Grey-Coat is a character in that short story that vaguely reminded me of the Nitro splicers, at least in terms of basic appearance. Because of that, and I wanted to make the first encounter with a Nitro splicer memorable, I borrowed the name and basic description for this particular one. I don't know if I mentioned this in my other story's endnotes but the first volume of Clive Barker's Books of Blood is available for free on-line. Just search for "books of blood pdf" and you should be able to find it easily enough. Trust me, it's worth it. And no, don't look it up on Wikipedia! I was tempted to do so but thank God I didn't! Trust me when I say from personal experience, this short story in particular, though it does also applies to every one of the six short stories I'm referring to, is SO MUCH BETTER when you don't know what your getting into before it comes!

We have reached the end of this chapter at last! Shoo, I'm glad this one is done. As I said earlier, there is more to this intended chapter and hopefully I'll be able to get the second half out to you quickly. Part of it is already written, however a part of this chapter was also already written out and look how long it took to get uploaded. Plus, my grad classes are getting ready to start up. Despite all of that, I will sincerely attempt to get the next chapter out to you good guys as soon as humanely possible! :)

Once again, as always, please don't leave any spoilers in your reviews, ok?

Until the next chapter, please read, review, favor, follow, and spread the word!