So, I meant to finish and upload this last weekend, but some personal things happened that were out of my control and I didn't get the chance to work on it. But, here it is now-and it's the second to last! Next is the big boss fight with Fontaine, which I will try to make as epic as possible, but you all know what I'm like with fight scenes-I suck at them. Nevertheless, I will try to finish that long before my usual three month update window is up. Next time I write a fic, I'll be sure to write a couple chapters before actually posting the first, so I can have a more consistent update schedule. Thank you all for being so patient, and I hope you enjoy!
"Und bitte. It would mean very much to me if you will be gentle with the girls. Mein kleines maedchen."
Tenenbaum's sudden presence on the radio is a surprise, but far from an unwelcome one. Jack smiles and reaches to unbuckle the radio from his belt in response, but his gloved fingers can't quite manage to get a firm grip on it. He groans in frustration and almost immediately jumps out of his skin when the sound is amplified by his helmet. He winces, and he swears he hears Elizabeth snort. "Oh, hush," he complains. "Could you radio Tenenbaum back for me? Tell her we found a workaround and we're in the Proving Grounds now. We've got the kid. I'll do my best to protect her."
Elizabeth nods, and as they move through the dilapidated hall, she unhooks the radio from her belt and hits the transmit button, relaying the message. Tenenbaum voices her approval and wishes them luck before making a hasty retreat, claiming that she had other things to attend to. Jack surmises that she's probably making the final preparations for when they kill Fontaine and they can finally leave this hellhole. Elizabeth agrees, though she warns him not to use such language in front of the kid.
"Should you even be talking at all? Doesn't that kind of ruin the illusion of the Big Daddy, what with the working vocal chords and all?"
"Huh. Didn't think of that." He looks at Adelaide, who is still happily skipping along, paying the two of them no mind as she she mutters nonsense to herself. "She doesn't seem to mind."
"Jack."
"What? I didn't do anything wrong. It's a bit late for that now, anyways."
Elizabeth just rolls her eyes in response, and hurries to catch up to the child, who hadn't bothered to stop or slow down while her two guardians were bickering. She's already run up the stairs and turned the corner to where they can't see her, and Elizabeth quickens her pace so as to catch up to her before she can do anything drastic or get herself killed. As she turns the corner to follow, she spots the next Little Sister door—Adelaide, however, is already on her knees crawling through the tiny space at the bottom to unlock the door from the other side. She pushes it open with a flourish, grinning widely at the pair before dashing off again.
They enter the new area, and immediately note the large animal skeleton hanging by the ceiling in front of them. At first glance, it appears to be from some sort of whale, but as Elizabeth studies it further, she notices some abnormalities and inconsistencies with what she had read about the creatures. She stares a bit longer, lost in trying to pick out the various deformities in the structure, when a tap on her shoulder jolts her out of her daze. She turns to see Jack, face peering curiously out of the porthhole of his helmet, and his eyes dart up to the skeleton hanging over the main hall in a silent question. She looks at it again for only a split second before shrugging one shoulder and stepping away from the balcony.
"Well, it's not a whale, but it also probably couldn't be anything else. Perhaps it was from around here, killed after or during Rapture's construction. The...chemicals," she tries, because honestly what else is she supposed to call the weird ooze that Rapture's core secrets? "must have mutated it, somehow, like it did with the sea slugs and most likely the other wildlife."
Jack regards the skeleton with newfound curiosity. "I don't suppose that thing could secret ADAM, too," he half-jokes, and Elizabeth shakes her head, already looking around for the Little Sister they were supposed to be escorting. She spots her hovering near the stairs leading down to the actual level itself, eyeing them both with an almost impatient look. "Hmn."
"We should keep moving."
"Probably, yeah. I just hope there are Vita-Chambers over this way, I'd really rather not think about what would happen if I were to die in this thing."
They pass through a fair bit of the new area without much incident—yes, there are some splicers here and there, and more than once Adelaide runs off farther ahead than is strictly safe, and once she even almost gets gutted by a hidden Spider Splicer, but in the end it's nothing they can't handle. The real trouble begins when they reach the first Gathering Test.
"What the hell is this thing?" Jack asks incredulously as Adelaide, who had been having a hearty conversation with Elizabeth about the proper age to stop sleeping with stuffed animals, stops abruptly and kneels down next to the rotted corpse that lay underneath the sign.
"Well, it says TEST right there, so I'm assuming that since this area is called the Proving Grounds, and you had to play dress-up to even get your foot through the door...well, what do you think?"
"Fraulein Elizabeth is correct," Tenenbaum affirms, apparently back from whatever task she had rushed off to do earlier. The shuffling of papers was heard before she spoke again, her voice sounding slightly out of breath. "These grounds were used as testing areas for the Little Sisters and the Big Daddies. Better to have something go wrong here—a disobedient Gatherer or a temperamental Protector is easier to deal with in a lab than on the streets after someone's gotten hurt. There are three of these tests total—her Gathering will attract the attention of the Splicers, so be prepared to fend them off. To lose even one innocent life is a sin." Why does she sound like she's out of breath? As she goes on to explain how she hasn't been able to reverse the brainwashing on the little girls yet, and so the child with them will have the urge to go and look for ADAM wherever she smells it, Elizabeth notes with some concern that her voice sounds shaky, as if she were either walking fast or jiggling the radio. She thinks she hears the sound of Little Sisters in the background as Tenenbaum speaks—she knows she hears one of them complain loudly in a clipped British accent about someone pulling her hair. Jack hears it, too, if the look of surprise on his face is anything to go by. The two share a confused look, and as Tenenbaum finishes up another girl can be heard telling someone to grab her hand, she doesn't want to fall.
Elizabeth is about to ask after it when the good German doctor tacks on a hasty, "I must go—I have very important matters to attend to. I will not be able to contact you again until Fontaine is dead. I wish you the very best of luck, Fraulein Elizabeth and Herr Jack...mein kleines Kind. I thank you for the kindness you have both shown to my little ones...and your willingness to forgive my many sins. After you have killed that pathetic excuse for a man, I will spend the rest of my life repaying my debt to you." She stops for a moment, and the line goes dead for several seconds, so the two assume that that's the end of it. Elizabeth is getting tired of trying to hold back Adelaide from sticking her needle into the poor dead bastard's neck, and so she's about to say to hell with it and just hope for the best when the radio crackles to life again.
"I...I am proud, Jack, of you," Tenenbaum murmurs, and it's so unexpected by both of them that Elizabeth actually does let go of the child's arm, and she happily scurries to do the thing Elizabeth explicitly told her not to. "You were intended to be simply a slave to Fontaine—but in a bizarre twist of Fate, you are more of a man than he ever was. I do not know what I did to deserve this—to deserve you, the brightest of beacons in the darkest of voids. Möge Gott mit dir sein, sollte er existieren, and when it is over, I'll find you. We will finally go home, and leave this terrible place behind." By the end of it, Tenenbaum is almost definitely crying at least a little, and even Elizabeth can't be sure that her eyes are not pricked with tears right now. Her vision does seem a bit fuzzy, but she's going to chalk that up to dust, the old cliche. Yeah, that's believable. Totally.
Now the radio line is dead for real, and Jack sighs, for once not caring that the sound is far too loud now for his own liking. He looks at Elizabeth, and then he looks at Adelaide, who is now humming along to a song Elizabeth has definitely not heard before, and then he looks back at the radio, and behind the porthole, she swears he's got dust in his eyes too. "You know, I don't think Tenenbaum's so bad," she mentions nonchalantly as she pulls out her pistol and makes sure it's loaded properly.
"Oh, now she's won you over."
"Well, she did just issue us a very heartfelt goodbye message. And she called Fontaine less than human and a pathetic excuse for a living organism. She can't be that bad. Not to mention," she concedes at last, rolling her eyes at the look Jack gives her, "Okay, yeah, she did also concoct the antidote for the children she helped enslave who would have died as products of the war anyways. Now the children actually have a future outside of being drug mules or dying in an unmarked, watery grave. She helped save some of the next generation, and she saved me. So, yeah. Not all that bad."
"I'll take it." He grinned, turning to face Adelaide, who was still poking and prodding at the corpse in search of some leftover ADAM. "Hey, kiddo, whatcha doin'?"
"Try the neck," Elizabeth says to the girl, rummaging around in her satchel for her lead pipe. "Hey, do you have my pipe? I haven't used it in a while, figured I could pull a one-two punch and use my Peeping Tom to get the drop on any splicers lurking about."
Which, of course, is when one of said splicers decides that now is the perfect time to drop down from the rafters and try to gut the poor kid while their backs are turned. He gets three shots in the gut before he even comes near. Jack groans in frustration and Elizabeth huffs as she hears the clinking of metal above them.
"Well, there's more where that came from. Do you have my pipe or not?"
"Nope. Must be still in your bag. Can you hand me some more shotgun ammo?"
She tosses, he catches, and he has just enough time to reload and her to finally pull out her pipe before he's shooting off Winter Blast and she's swinging the lead right into the ugly bastard's face. He grins; she winces as some of the icicle shards fly into her face. But, the job is done, and as the demented cackling of several madmen closing in on their position, Elizabeth moves to stand directly beside Adelaide while Jack points his shotgun upwards. She herself takes the brief couple of seconds to switch her plasmid from Peeping Tom to Old Man Winter before remembering that she'd been out of EVE since before Point Prometheus. She takes another few seconds to dig around in her back for a capsule while Jack fires off a couple of shots at a few splicers who decide to try their luck with the kid. He comes around to cover her while she finds a capsule and injects it into her arm.
"Thanks," she has time to say, before both of them become preoccupied with fighting off the horde of splicers now quickly approaching their position. She stretches her hand out in the direction of one in particular and the once-man freezes in place, arms raised high and the crowbar in his hand about to be brought down on Adelaide's unsuspected head. She swings her pipe into his torso and everything except for the lower half of his legs shatters. She doesn't have time to celebrate the victory as she is quickly forced to repeat the action thrice more.
Jack, meanwhile, has spotted a security camera above them that is sweeping the area and decides hey, that could come in handy. So, after assuring that Elizabeth is handling herself just fine, and Adelaide is safely (well, as safe as she can be in the middle of a battle of drug-addicts) beside her, he gets to work. He fumbles around in his various pockets for an automatic hack tool, but when he comes up empty, he's forced to resign to the old fashioned way of doing this. He fires up his Winter Blast and directs it towards the camera, and Jack mentally tallies how many seconds he has before the thing defreezes and sets off an alarm just on the basis of being tampered with. He wagers about...a minute or so, given previous experiences. He makes a mental note to pick up or make some more automatic hack tools before their next jaunt, and prys the cover off the side of the machine.
Inside is a jumbled mess of wires and cables, crisscrossed over, under, and parallel to each other. Nothing new there—he's done this dance a dozen times before. He begins to mix and match, disconnecting and reconnecting here and there and this and that, and after what seems like an eternity but in reality is less than thirty seconds, the camera dings and whirrs with the mechanical sounds of the recently befriended. Jack grins at his success, and jumps down from the shipping crate he'd had to step on to reach the camera. He makes to rejoin the fight, but it looks like it's almost over, so he goes to rejoin Adelaide instead, readying his weapon for any who might dare to come near.
An EVE capsule and a few shots off her pistol later, and there are a few more bodies to add to the pile. Elizabeth spares a glance at Jack, who is stepping away from a hacked security camera and moving to stand in front of the ex-Little Sister. Adelaide is still kneeling beside the body, talking to herself as she drains what no doubt little ADAM is left. She should be nearly done by now, shouldn't she?
No matter. Elizabeth fires up her plasmid and stretches her hand toward the nearest splicer, who freezes as he raises his pipe over his head. She brings her own pipe around and swings it at his torso, shattering it and leaving nothing but the lower half of his legs. She repeats this maneuver a few more times before she hears the telltale beeping of the security cameras, and she brings her pistol out and points before she notices the green lights. It's on their side, then, and not a cause for concern. She drags her attention back to the fight as a Spider Splicer drops down from the rafters and shoves a burning meat hook in her face. She barely manages to dodge and shove her pistol into underneath the splicer's chin before she pulls the trigger. Regret has never been so instant as the resulting blood splatters all over her face, and she grimaces as she runs a quick hand over it to wipe some of it off. All that accomplishes is smearing it over her face even more. She wrinkles her nose at the feeling, but doesn't have time to ponder on it as one last splicer charges at her, hands alight with white-hot flames as he screams something about salvation. Elizabeth simply freezes him in place, and knocks his legs out from under him with her pipe. His torso, left without the necessary support, falls and shatters into a thousands icy crystals only seconds later.
At last, every adversary has been defeated, and she spares a quick glance around the hallway, noting the bullet-riddled corpses of some splicers near the security camera that the whirlybots had no doubt taken care of. She sends off a salute to the camera, even though it's not sentient, and heads over to Jack and Adelaide, who has now finally finished her gruesome task and is happily bouncing up and down on her tiptoes. She can't tell, but she's pretty sure Jack is grinning underneath that diver's helmet.
"I still think that's the coolest thing ever. You just freeze somebody, and wham! Instant ice cubes. Oh, and shooting people in the face and making their head explode—not the most sanitary thing in the world, but hey, it works, and it looks cool. How're you holding up?"
"I'm fine," she replies, shaking her head at his enthusiasm, adorable as it was. "How can you be excited about this? We almost died, again. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of it."
Jack tries to wave his hand dismissively, but the action proves to be difficult with the heavy armor. He frowns, but his enthusiasm doesn't disappear for long. "Well, yeah, fair point, but we've almost died, like, a dozen times since we got here. It's like second nature to us now. After we get out of here, we'll never have to nearly die again. Well, until we actually die. Hopefully from old age, on a nice farm out in the country or something, surrounded by kids and dogs."
"I'm looking forward to it." It only occurs to her later, as they're making their way to the next testing area, that he had talked about life after Rapture like...well. He'd said "we." Elizabeth knows that it's the correct pronoun to use when referring to two or more people present in the present tense, but he'd said it and talked about their lives after Rapture like…like they'd still be together or something, even after all of this and they had no use for each other any more. Is that even possible? Does she even have a case here, or is she grasping at straws? She makes up her mind to ask Jack about it, but as they move along and she remembers what they have to do first, her resolve wavers and she decides that she's probably better off not knowing. She's just going to ignore that hopeful feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"You know, I could really use your help here!"
"I am trying—!" Elizabeth is cut off as she dodges yet another fireball aimed at her head whilst frantically reloading her crossbow, aiming it at the Houdini Splicer's head. She misses. Of course.
Jack is still trying to shield Adelaide from the worst of it, taking the brunt of the fire and electricity while dealing out some of his own. The child herself doesn't seem to mind, dutifully draining the ADAM from the second test subject while splicers attack her guardians. "I'm not saying that you aren't busy, but I am saying that if you die, you can come back, but the same can't be said for her."
"What the hell—" and that last word is punctuated by the solid sound of an arrow splitting through a deformed skull, "—are you on about? And is this really the best time to be having a conversation, let alone this one?"
"I'm just saying—holy shit!"
Elizabeth, momentarily distracted, turns to see, and yeah, that's a fair reaction. The Houdini Splicer is now behind Jack, mercilessly assaulting him with fireball after fireball before attempting to jump on his back and dig his meat hooks into him. Fortunately, the thick armor prevents that, but Elizabeth decides that maybe Jack does need her help after all. She aims her bow at the Houdini's head, but he teleports away before she can fire.
"Jack!"
"I'm...fine? I'm on fire, but I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine…" All of this said, in true Jack fashion, while frantically patting out the numerous small fires that have blossomed all over his body and making them worse. "Um. A little help?!"
Elizabeth checks for incoming splicers, and seeing nothing, as well as having the reassurance that the second hacked security camera is watching their backs just in case, she moves in closer and helps Jack put out the fires, to the delight of Adelaide, who murmurs something about marshmallows. Both adults ignore her for once as they check each other over for lasting damage. Once they're both reassured that everyone is fine, they take a small break, intending to rest for a few moments before heading to the next (and hopefully final) test subject that would signal the end of the road.
Jack sits down, after a surprising amount of effort, and Adelaide quickly joins him, sitting so that their crossed legs press together, and the girl pats the surface next to her, inviting Elizabeth to join them. Together, the three silently eat what little food they have and the adults check their ammo supply, mentally noting what they need more of and what special ammo they should get for the inevitable battle with Fontaine. Eventually, all that's left to do is to keep going, but they're all tired and it couldn't hurt to rest for a few more seconds, could it?
It could.
Elizabeth looks over at Jack.
...On a nice farm out in the country or something, surrounded by kids and dogs.
That sounds nice. Is that what he wants? To go back to the fake life that he never had? Personally, Elizabeth would never, but as she's learned over the past...day? God, has it really only been a day? It can't have been longer, but it also can't have been just a few hours...it's absurd to even think about. Anyways, as she's learned over the past day, Jack and her are not exactly on the same page. Maybe he finds some sort of odd comfort in the quiet life he never had, which makes a kind of sense, but at the same time Elizabeth wonders if he's only going back because he's got nothing else. She wonders if the farm in the picture she'd seen in her visions is even real, or just a fake, like everything else. She's again reminded of the stark similarity in their stories, and wonders for herself if, given the chance, she'd go back to her tower in Columbia, ignorant of the world outside her but protected from it all the same.
Would she go back if given the chance?
She takes a long, hard look around her. At the dripping ceiling, the saltwater pools surrounding them, the fish swimming outside. The corpses of the splicers they had just beaten, to protect Adelaide dot hat she might have a chance to escape this hellhole instead of becoming just another victim. To protect themselves, for the very same reason. She looks at her and Jack, with his helmet off, finishing off a pep bar while she devours a bag of chips, talking quietly about nothing at all.
No, she finally decided. No, she wouldn't go back. She couldn't live with herself if she did. Knowing about all the pain and suffering and anger and horror that the world held—knowing what she did now, and without him, she could never. Whether the him is Booker or Jack, even she doesn't know.
But what about Jack? Maybe she should ask him. Now is not the time, though. There will be time later, to sort all of this out. Right now they need to get out of Rapture first. And getting out of Rapture requires getting through him. She takes a deep breath and looks at Jack.
"Jack," she says quietly, and when both of them look at her, she makes to stand. "We should go. Fontaine's waiting, but I don't get the impression he's a very patient man."
Jack, who had been chuckling at something Adelaide said, sobers up almost immediately and nods, moving to replace his helmet. The girl notices the immediate shift in atmosphere and looks curiously at the both of them.
"What's wrong?" she asks, worried now herself. "Is the bad man coming?"
"Not exactly," Elizabeth says after a moment, trying to figure out the best way to explain this to her. "We have to go face the bad man. We're going to...erm…" Oh, screw it. These kids aren't stupid, and they deserve to know the truth after everything they've been through. "We're going to kill him, Mr. B and I. He's not going to hurt anybody anymore. And once he's gone, we can all go home. To Lilly Poppy. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Adelaide?"
She nods, feverishly, but then stops, frowning. "Am I going to kill the bad man too?"
"No, not you," Jack finally decides to step in, after he's secured his helmet on his head. "After we're through here, we'll drop you off at the next vent and you'll rejoin Mama Tenenbaum, wherever she is, and you'll all be safe and sound. Okay?"
"Okay."
She's just turning the exit corner when she hears it. Well, technically speaking, she feels it, first—the ground quakes and something to the left of her falls over and shatters. The walls seem to shake as the low, guttural moan echoes through the abandoned hallways, somewhere nearby.
Elizabeth stops dead in her tracks, looking at Jack hopefully, but her heart sinks into her stomach when she sees the same fearful expression mirrored on his face. Adelaide, who until just now had been happily skipping ahead, stops once she notices that her two guardians are no longer with her. She looks at their faces and immediately runs to Jack, cowering behind him. She seems confused as to what they're so afraid of, but smart girl that she is, she knows that it's nothing good and it'll affect her. They all look around cautiously, inching closer to each other until they're practically in a squished sort of circle.
"What's wrong?" Adelaide asks, straining her tiny neck to make eye contact with either of her peers. Jack shushes her by placing a hand on her head. "Is someone coming?"
"I don't—"
Another moan. The Big Daddy is closer now, though none of them can tell exactly where it is. No doubt it's just around the corner, though probably not the one in front of them—so behind. Elizabeth whirls around to check the last corner, but sees nothing too suspicious. The feeling of unease grows inside her, and she looks back at Jack.
"Where is that coming from?"
"It's not me. I still have the recording we made, but I haven't touched it since after the last test subject."
"Which means there's another Big Daddy, a real one, around here somewhere."
Jack shrugs, or tries to. "I wouldn't worry too much," he said, sounding worried. "I mean, most don't attack unless provoked, so if we keep our distance we should be good. Maybe we'll even get lucky—the thing might just be brain-dead enough to be fooled by my disguise."
"I suppose. Still, I feel...I feel like something is about to go very, very wrong."
Boy, are those some magic words. Almost no sooner have they left her mouth than the floor begins to shake, the rumbling gets louder, and the wall next to them explodes, sending shattered concrete flying into their faces. Jack immediately went on the defensive, pulling Adelaide behind him and stepping back, while Elizabeth sent a plasmid the brute's way on instinct.
Thankfully, it hits, and the Big Daddy freezes on the spot, but not for long. Elizabeth risks a brief glance back at her companions—Jack has his weapon out, his shotgun aimed squarely at the things' chest, and his Incinerate! plasmid is crackling in his other hand. The ex-Little Sister is cowering some ways behind him, looking from the brute to Elizabeth and then to Jack, and her eyes are pleading with all of them to explain. But there's no time for that now—she hears the ice cracking and knows that if she doesn't move right now, that thing is going to gut her in one fell-swoop. She dodges out of the way of the drill just in time. As soon as the ice melts and the beast is free, it slams its drill down into empty air and turns on her.
Jack distracts it with a couple of shots aimed at its back, hoping to burst its oxygen tank in a moment of inspiration taken from one of his previous tussles with these sorts—he remembers that once, Elizabeth had done the same thing and the Big Daddy's head had collapsed in on itself. That would be a quick and efficient—but brutal—way of dealing with the Protector. They can't waste any more time than they already had. But, of course, a quick end to this rather unpleasant distraction is not in the cards for them, because why the hell would the universe ever want to make anything easy for them? All of his shots hit, but none of them are enough to take out the tank. It does, however, shift its attention away from the vulnerable and already compromised Elizabeth and turns its half-a-dozen red eyes to him. He realizes perhaps a bit too late that he's the only thing standing between that thing and the Sister, but eh, fuck it. He fires an Incinerate! at the metal Frankenstein and takes several steps back until he's against the wall, shepherding the girl away to hide and rushing to cover Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, has recovered enough to take advantage of Jack's distraction and switch to a more tactical weapon—she quickly decides that her crossbow would be best, and prays that it's already loaded. Thankfully, it is, and she fires a shot at the metal man's oxygen tank, hoping to end this quickly. She gets a shot in, but it's not enough, and the thing's attention is back on her. She continues to fire until she needs to reload, and she blasts it with a quick Old Man Winter to keep it in place while she does so.
Jack uses the brief reprise in battle to switch his own weapon, or rather, ammo—he exchanges the regular shotgun shells for one of the more deadly, explosive alternatives. He chances a quick peek around to see where Adelaide went, and finds her cowering behind an overturned Circus of Values. He doesn't have time to reassure her or even call her name—the beast is unfrozen now, and revving its drill with an unholy vengeance. Elizabeth fires a few more crossbolts into its face, but that doesn't do much. Jack tries out his new ammo, risking a shot at the Big Daddy's legs, and it stumbles, momentarily losing its balance as it swivels its attention to Elizabeth again.
They continue like this for what seems like hours, but in reality is only several long minutes, with neither of them making much progress. It shouldn't be this hard to take down a Big Daddy—this one is just like the others, with no extra or special armor or ammunition, and it seems pretty battered already, so what's taking it so long to die? Jack sets it on fire again and ducks for cover once more, switching places with Elizabeth as she expertly fires a crossbolt into its arm. Adelaide is still cowering behind her overturned vending machine, watching the unfolding battle with morbid fascination. Jack wonders if she actually knows what's happening right now—he had read some notes in the Little Sister's facility detailing the deep hypnosis they were apparently placed under—for all they knew she could be seeing two friendly splicers fighting off a knight in shining armor. Then again, if that were happening, she probably wouldn't be hiding right now. Or maybe she would. Jack doesn't have the time to figure out the delicacies of the human mind right now, and if he doesn't concentrate on the task at hand, he never will. He chances a glance at Elizabeth, who is reloading her crossbow ammo with the special kind. About damn time. His explosive buck, surprisingly, hasn't been doing much in the grand scheme of things. He gets a sudden, incredibly stupid idea, and readies himself to shoot at the exact moment she does. He knows it won't be the exact exact moment she fires, seeing as they both have vastly different weapons and firing rates and ammo types and momentum and all of those physics things that both matter and don't at the same time.
Elizabeth steadies her crossbow at the Protector's head, noticing Jack doing the same. She doesn't stop to question it, seeing as they both have the same goal in mind, and so she ignores it and fires her Incendiary Bolt at the same moment that Jack fires an explosive buck at the opposite side of the same spot. The effect is instantaneous, and effective—the resulting explosion from Jack's side quickly consumes the head and finally, finally, the beast not only shows signs of slowing, but another bolt from Elizabeth and the Protector stumbles, giving both of them the opportunity to double down on their assaults. A final Incinerate! from Jack earns a bloodcurdling, whale-like moan from the creature, its half-a-dozen eyes still red and angry as it lay, finally on the brink of death. Jack puts his last few shotgun rounds in the Frankenstein's head and legs, and once they're both sure that it's really, truly dead, Elizabeth signals to Adelaide that it's safe and time to leave.
"That took forever," Jack complains as Adelaide comes scampering back, hugging Elizabeth's legs tightly. "Seriously. Why was that one so hard to kill? It usually never takes that long. That had better be the last one we ever encounter. I'm serious."
"Well, it was certainly less exciting than other battles we've been in," she points out, returning the girl's fond gesture. "We didn't get to execute any fancy maneuvers or show off our skills, thought I suppose no one's counting. I'm glad we didn't, actually. I'm getting tired of all the excitement, and trying to kill things three times bigger than ourselves."
"Agreed," he sighs, trying and failing to nod. "I hate this suit. Sure, it makes me practically invulnerable, but God, at what cost? I can't move in this thing!"
"Well, good news for you, then—the exit's that-away. Once we get Adelaide into the vent and she gives us what we need, you won't need the suit anymore and you can take it off. Just a few more minutes."
"Just a few more minutes," Jack repeats, and continues to do so until they reach the exit and they're standing directly in front of the first vent they see. Fontaine calls once they reach the last Little Sister door, no doubt to either threaten them again tor to brag about his master plan, but as soon as his spliced up voice comes through the radio, Jack switches it off.
"Smart," Elizabeth comments, unable to keep the smile from her face.
Jack just shrugs. "Hey, it's like I said, all those…hours…ago. The Irish lilt was just so much more tolerable. Pleasant, even, music to the ears. But the Bronx…ugh. Grating, like nails on a chalkboard. I'm pretty sure he's even exaggerating that one."
Elizabeth actually laughs this time.
Adelaide immediately rushes towards the vent once it's in sight. She turns to her guardians one last time and grins. "Thanks for protecting me, Mr. Bubbles, and Lizzie. I hope you come back from killing the bad man! Then we can all go to Lilly Poppy together!" She turns back to the vent and begins to crawl upwards, up and into the vent. She disappears for a few seconds, then reappears with an empty ADAM syringe, brandishing it like a sword. "Here, take this! Stick it in the bad man! Mama Tenenbaum said it would help."
Jack tries to grab it from her, smiling reassuringly, but the girl is waving it around too fast for him to catch in the suit, which is when he decides to step back and let Elizabeth handle this while he gets the hell out of this thing. Elizabeth steps up and takes it instead, managing to grab the girl's wrist and then the syringe.
"You probably shouldn't wave it around like that. You could poke someone's eye out."
"Don't they grow back?"
Oh boy.
"Right…thank you for your help, Adelaide. I hope we see each other again after this is all over. Go to Tenenbaum now, you'll be safe with her and the other girls. We'll let you all know when this is over."
The girl looks confused for some reason, opening her mouth to protest, but ultimately, and surprisingly, she thinks better of it and decides not to. She simply nods her head and disappears down the vent once again, this time for good. Elizabeth finds that she misses the girl's presence already. Her reminiscing is cut short by a loud sigh of relief from behind her—she turns, expecting Jack to be babbling about how nice it feels to finally get out of that suit, and of course she's not wrong. Jack is kicking and punching the air, moving his body in all sorts of weird ways that she can only assume are to work out the kinks from being in the restrictive suit for so long. It didn't even look comfortable.
"You okay over there?" she calls, and he freezes mid-right hook.
"Uh, yeah," he says, resuming his punch and odd exercises. "I'm fine now. God, it feels amazing to get out of that suit. I can talk normally again without having to worry about getting a migraine. Everything was so loud in there, and it was a nightmare to move in. I'm glad I'm out. Even better, I'm glad I still have my voice. Can you imagine if I hadn't had you by my side then? I would have been forced to destroy my voice box and forever sound like an undead zombie. Eugh. I mean, can you imagine?"
"Can I imagine a world where you shut up for more than a minute…hm. No, no I can't, but I'll keep trying," she winks, and he rolls his eyes.
"Har har. Shall we?" he says, gesturing to the elevator that would take them to Fontaine.
Fontaine…
This is it. It's go big or go home from here, defeat him and leave this broken dream of a city behind, never to think about it again and live out the rest of their days in the warm, soft sun, far away from water or failed utopias…or die, by the hand that had already killed her once, and had manipulated him so much that he truly believes he is no more than a puppet on cut strings. Elizabeth knows she isn't ready to face him again, to look her killer in the eyes and stay strong enough to return the favor, and she knows deep down that Jack isn't either. She can tell just by looking at his face. The uncertainty is there, along with the anger, the resentment, the fear. But they have to. They have no choice.
She nods. "Lead the way."