Okay, here we are! the almost conclusion to this whole damn thing. I actually had to split this chapter into two parts (this is the final boss fight with Fontaine himself, and it's all here, but I had some more things I wanted to touch upon before we wrapped up and they didn't fit in the chapter). The whole thing was 11,000+ words long and I figured you guys wouldn't want to go through that in one setting, so it'll just be an extra chapter before the epilogue.
Some notes here: #1, this chapter is looong, about 8,000+ words, and it's mostly fighting. Just a heads up, I know that's what we all signed up for but still. #2, I got the order and attacks all wrong, because I haven't played the game in a while and I decided to incorporate other people's strategies for dealing with Fontaine, because since he's so easy to beat in the actual game I wanted to make him harder. His second form is actually ice, not electricity, which is his third form, and he's actually immune to any attack involving the element of his current form. I messed up, that's my bad, but it obviously shouldn't take away from the chapter as a whole. As my beta pointed out, though: constants and variables.
Thank you, to both all of you reading this who have stuck around even through my inconsistent updates and to my beta Ronin, and all of you for your lovely reviews. I have most of the next chapter written so that should be up shortly after this, either later today or tomorrow. Thank you for reading, and enjoy!
"I remember when me and the Kraut put you in that sub..you were…no more than two. You were my Ace in the Hole…but you were also the closest thing I ever had to a son. And that's why this hurts. Betrayal, kid. Life ain't strictly business. And you!" Here Fontaine pauses in the middle of his drug-induced rant, cackling loudly. Jack is too angry to speak, determined to keep his mouth shut lest he lose his cool and by extension his concentration before the final battle. He refuses to let Fontaine get under his skin, especially now.
"You, Cohen's little Songbird," he croons, singing that last word in a cruel mockery, and Elizabeth starts when she realizes that he's addressing her now. He hasn't spoken to her this entire journey, not directly, and she finds herself oddly afraid of what he's going to say next. "I remember you. You and that little girl…what did you call her? Sarah?"
"Sally," she corrects, before she can stop herself. She winces as Fontaine cackles again, the ADAM degrading his voice to a machine-like quality.
"Sally!" he chortles, though they all can plainly tell he's grasping at straws here. They're coming for him, and they're not leaving until they get him. It's a dead end for all of them. "What's your angle here, darlin'? Who are you trying to prove yourself to here, what do you think you could possibly make up for by doing this? All this death, and all this heartache…you gave yourself up for her. Did you really think that thing was worth saving? As if it had a future, or any chance of escaping this dripping hellhole before being squeezed dry of her ADAM? That any of them had a chance? Look at what you've done, to everyone around you. Look at what they've suffered because of you. Do you really think you're any better than me?"
Elizabeth takes the radio from Jack, calm as can be—her own is switched off, as Fontaine had kept trying to contact her and goad her guilt. Seeing as Tenenbaum would just contact Jack if she needed to tell them anything, she had simply turned hers off. She pauses for a moment, just one, singular moment, as if not choosing her next words, but only confirming that that's what she wants to say. Her voice, when she speaks, is smooth and calm, the quiet before the hurricane. Jack waits with baited breath, curious what on earth she could possibly want to say to the man who murdered her. "I do, actually. I honestly, truly believe that I am better than you. Do you know something, Fontaine?" She doesn't wait for a response, plowing straight ahead. "When I die, hopefully many years from now, my descendants will remember me. True, my memory will most likely not stand the test of time—it won't last beyond a generation or two. But the ones who knew me, who cared for and loved me in life...they will remember me, and they will visit me when I'm buried. They'll think of me, and they'll remember what I brought into their lives—whatever I managed to accomplish that meant something to them. They'll remember me and their memories will be filled with love and compassion, and good things. I will have meant something to someone, to them, and even if I achieve nothing else, I'll have people to remember me."
She pauses again, letting her words sink in for dramatic effect. Jack understands—Fontinae himself has been so dramatic and annoying with all of his threats and boasting, why not let Elizabeth have a little fun as she finally returns the favor? A small smile creeps onto her face, fake sympathetic even though Fontaine can't see her. Her voice, when she speaks again after only a few seconds, holds the same quality as before, but now there is something vicious and predatory underlying her tones. "But what about you? Who will remember you when you die, when we kill you? Who up there still remembers you, still misses you after all these years? Who down here has the mental capacity for such a thing? You have no relatives, no lovers, no friends, not even accomplices or coworkers. You have no one left, no one to mourn your passing or even to notice that you don't live anymore. No one is going to remember you when you die, Frank Fontaine. You are a man who, for his entire life, strove to accomplish the impossible so that he would not be forgotten when he left. Now you will die here, alone and abandoned, left in a dying city to rot, and the rats to chew on what's left of your corpse. You know what they say...no one mourns the wicked. You gave up your entire life to kill Andrew Ryan, to take over this rotten fever dream of a city, and in the end it didn't even mean anything. Who's the rube now?"
She stops once more, either again for dramatic effect or simply choosing her next words for maximum impact. The smile that stretches on her features then, cool and composed but also cold and cruel, is something Jack will never forget, though in this scenario it's certainly not a bad thing. He feels himself replicating the gesture as he listens to her next words, his heart filling with the emotions she's portraying—even though he doesn't truly understand their meaning (something to ask about later, of course): "'Andrew Ryan said I was a rube. But I'm not the rube, Atlas. You are.' You made one fatal error—you underestimated who we are. This will end in blood, Fontaine—but then again, it always does with you, doesn't it? It always ends in blood. Checkmate, Baldwin."
Stunned silence emanates from the other end of the line, for the longest time, before Fontaine disconnects. Elizabeth can't suppress an almost feral smile, or her chuckles. She shakes her head, still smiling, and basking in the moment before she notices Jack's equally pleased but slightly confused expression. "What's up?"
"I mean." He is at a temporary loss for words, chuckling and looking at her in disbelief. "That was absolutely amazing, and I think I love you for it. That was the most beautifully poetic thing I have ever heard in my apparently very short life, and I wish I had recorded it for a rainy day. But...Baldwin?"
"Oh. That." She clips the radio back to her belt, pushing her hair out of the way and grinning at him."That, my dear Jack, is something I discovered a long time ago, when I first came to Rapture and heard about this douche. I did some digging, and with the help of my Tears plus my almost unlimited cosmic abilities, I was able to find out anything I wanted about this guy. He's used a number of different aliases his entire life, conman that he is, but his real name is Frank Baldwin." She grinned at him, and he grins back, though his is soft with something warm. "Kind of a letdown, to be honest. But oh well."
"Oh well. What's with the 'rube' thing?"
She's silent for a couple of seconds, contemplating her next words carefully. Finally, she shrugs. "I said those exact words to him shortly before he killed me last time. I figured repeating them now would not only be a total "screw you", but remind him exactly who he's messing with here—and that I was right."
He nods thoughtfully, still smiling. "Checkmate."
She returns the smile. "Exactly."
The rest of the elevator ride passes in relative silence, the smug victory of the conversation beforehand fading slightly as they near the summit, and what could very likely be their doom. They're no doubt close to being when Jack speaks up, turning to Elizabeth.
"You know, I don't know my own last name. Fontaine's got that one on me. On the surface, before I came down here, it was Wynand, but that's not real—just another part of the con. I don't want to have anything to do with Fontaine, or Suchong, or my past life that I thought I had. I need something new. Something me."
Elizabeth nods, understanding. She'd felt the same way when she had found out she was Comstock's daughter (but not really his). She had debated endlessly over whether to just not have a last name, or take the name of the monster who'd had her imprisoned. Of course, the choice only got more complicated once she realized she was actually Booker's daughter, but using the last name DeWitt was far too painful, and oh boy, that is a can of worms she does not want to open right now. She thinks for a moment, looking at Jack. "I understand. You have to be your own person, and you can't do that with everyone else's shadows looming over you. So, obviously, anybody having to do with your...creation...is off limits, which is Fontaine, Suchong—what about Tenenbaum?"
Jack shakes his head almost immediately. "No. It doesn't...it doesn't feel right. I don't know why. I don't hate her for her part in making me, or the Sisters, and we both already know everything she's done to try and make up for that. But to take her last name...it's weird."
Elizabeth nods. "Fair enough. What about, and I know this is a stretch, but...Ryan?"
"Absolutely not. I don't want to have anything to do with that guy, even if he's dead. He ruined this city, and by extension the lives of all the innocents his wars and policies caused. I am nothing like him, and I denounce everything he stands for. Screw that guy. Besides, on the surface world, the guy's been missing for around two decades—do we really want to turn up there and claim for me to have a connection?"
"Oh, damn. I didn't even think about that. In that case, yeah, probably not the best idea to turn up with no identification or public records of any kind and claim relations to a presumed deceased millionaire. Who knows the kind of unwanted attention we could attract."
"Exactly. So I need something inconspicuous, but also someone I can actually at least half-honestly claim relations to without feeling weird or guilty."
The mention of Ryan stirs up a memory in Elizabeth's subconscious, pulling at it until it comes surfaced, and Elizabeth starts as an idea comes to her. She mulls it over for a couple of seconds, sounding out the name in her head, before deciding that it sounds alright enough and pitching her idea: "How about Jolene?"
An odd, unreadable expression washes over Jack's face at the name. He tilts his head, frowning as he tries to recall where he's heard that name before, before it hits him and he looks away. Elizabeth's worried that she's upset him by the suggestion, until she hears him sounding out the name, "Jolene. Jolene...Jack Jolene. Kind of weird, but…" He looks up at her again, a small, soft smile on his face, and she swears there's something in that expression that could brighten the darkest of days. "It works. I like it. A bit funny, having a first name as a last name, but it's been done before. My mother's maiden name...the only thing I can remember her by. It doesn't sound too bad, actually—it's unique, and my mother wasn't anybody important—awful as that sounds— on the surface, so we should be able to get away with it."
Elizabeth nods. "I took my mother's maiden name once," she says, trying to make him feel less weird about it. "It didn't really work out, because I never knew my mother or even anything about her, so I wasn't particularly attached." It probably didn't help that she had also had a hand in her imprisonment in the tower, but he didn't need to know that. "I had to stick with it though, because of the whole revenge thing and I couldn't share a name with him and all, but now I'm thinking I should change mine too."
Jack seems to understand, nodding sympathetically. "To your old one again, or a new one? Because if you want a new one, we could share a last name." Then he realizes what he's just implied, and his face colors quicker than she ever thought possible. "Oh, crap, no, not like that! I mean—if you wanted to? But we literally just met, like yesterday, so, it would be weird to—you know—"
Elizabeth laughs.
Ding.
The elevator doors open to a horrific sight, and Jack almost immediately wants to vomit at what awaits them on the other side. It's Fontaine, all right, but definitely not the same Fontaine that they had both met beforehand. His physique has been severely magnified, his muscles bulging from underneath his skin, as if only moving them would make them pop right out. Such strainage cannot be healthy, Jack thinks distantly. His clothes had been discarded at some point, and his skin was a sickly green, but sometimes it looks a cool bronze—but that isn't the most concerning bit. No, the most concerning bit is the fact that is skin is also glowing orange, as in his very veins were made of lava. Considering what they both know ADAM can do, that could actually very likely be the case. Last but not least, Fontaine is suspended in a harness of some kind, and to both of their horrors is quickly becomes very apparent that he's actually hooked up to a machine that is pumping as much ADAM in his veins as it can, as fast as it can. Jack doesn't have time to even think beyond that, though, because Elizabeth is yelling at him, pushing the Little Sister needle into his hands—"Go! Go now! Hit him with the needle!"
Jack takes a fraction of a second to nod, and then he's off, rushing to the harness and plunging the needle into Fontaine's chest. The bastard actually has the audacity to scream in pain, and Jack takes vicious satisfaction in that, until he breaks free from the harness and throws Jack to the ground. He makes sure to hold on tight to the needle, though, as he quickly regains his footing. He distantly hears Fontaine taunting him, but the words are lost to his ears—his blood is pounding, and he's pissed. He takes a few seconds to search for Elizabeth, but he doesn't see her—oh well, she'll turn up. Right now he needs to worry about his own hide.
He dodges another incoming blow from Fontaine, rolling out of the way of a firey glob of lava aimed where his head was just moments before. He whips out his pistol and fires a couple of shots, and while that seems to do something, something is not nearly enough for this guy. He doesn't even react, unless you can call trying to punt somebody across the floor reacting. He fires up a Plasmid of his own, not bother to take the milliseconds to switch to a preferred Plasmid, relying on pure dumb luck that the last one he used was something powerful. He points at Fontaine and is delighted when a swarm of bees fly out of his hand, surrounding Fontaine's head and mildly annoying him.
Whoops. Oh well.
Now he takes the time to switch Plasmids, equipping Electro Bolt instead, hoping that that has a better effect. Incinerate! is probably next to useless here, seeing as a being who can literally throw freaking lava at people probably won't mind being set on fire. As expected, while Electro Bolt certainly has a better effect than Insect Swarm, ultimately it's fairly useless as well. It would seem that the only way to take him out is by good old fashioned brute force. He fires another couple of shots into his chest before he's forced to roll out of the way again.
Elizabeth is having a significantly easier time, compared to what her companion is going through, at least—she'd activated her Peeping Tom the moment she'd shoved the needle in Jack's hands, and made a break for it. She'd at first tried to disable the machine, but quickly realized that doing so would take time and tools that she didn't have, so she abandoned the effort. Now she's busy picking off Fontaine's reinforcements while Jack deals with the man himself—or more accurately, what's left of him. She takes a quick peek over at where the former crime lord is, hoping to see a glimpse of Jack, but his massive frame hides any signs of him, if he's over there. She turns back to her own task and barely avoids being beheaded before freezing and shattering the offending enemy into a dozen frosty pieces.
Maybe I should go over and help him, she thinks, frowning as she switches to a different Plasmid and uses it on another incoming Splicer. She backpedals quickly in surprise as the effects of Shock Jockey, which until now she had completely forgotten she had, course through his body in a matter of seconds, thoroughly electrocuting him. She takes a second to rifle through her brain for any other cool tricks she might have forgotten, but her musings are cut short again by another splicer rushing to his doom. Eh, she'll figure it out as she goes. She just hopes Jack can survive long enough for her to help him.
Jack tumbles out of the way just in time to avoid being melted by a ball of lava, and ducks as Fontaine swipes at him with his other hand. He backpedals quickly, firing off as many bullets from his machine gun as possible before needing to reload. As he fires off bullet after bullet, he continues backtracking and dodging Fontaine's attempts to barbecue him. He throws a Plasmid in the mix every now and then for added shock value, but they never really hit—Fontaine is, surprisingly, faster than he looks. The actual weapons, at least, seem to be doing some damage, but a little at a time—obviously all the drugs in Fontaine's system are enhancing his life expectancy, making his hide almost bulletproof, but they're getting there. He's tried a few times to get him with the ADAM syringe, but to no avail—he's not able to get close enough without being scorched. As another lava ball flies just past his arm, he gets a sudden and possibly brilliant idea and switches to Telekinesis.
The next time Fontaine hurls a lava ball at him, Jack doesn't move out of the way. Instead, he holds up his hand, hoping with all of his being that he's not wrong about this. He makes to catch the ball with the Plasmid, and to his neverending relief and surprise, he does. He doesn't have more than a split second to act, so he quickly tosses the ball back at Fontaine, honestly not expecting much—so he's surprised when Fontaine yelps in pain and backpedals furiously.
Jack doesn't waste time celebrating, even though this is the first major development that's happened thus far. He knows it's only a short matter of time before he gets back on his feet, so he spares a quick glance around for Elizabeth once again. He finally finds her fending off the last couple of splicer reinforcements, and, satisfied, he turns back to his own battle.
When Fontaine hurls another ball at him, he catches it again, and repeats the process—it lands again, and seems to be quite effective, surprisingly. After seeing his truly dumbass idea not only work, but well, he instantly adopts the new strategy, and dodges and weaves until he can strike again. This goes on for several minutes, Jack catching most of the projectiles thrown at him (which eventually include nearby rubbish and occasionally the body of a splicer or two). Sometimes Fontaine will avoid throwing anything in his direction, simply trying to charge him and take him down with his bare hands, but Jack is quick to anticipate his moves. He avoids and hits back with as hard as he gets, and using his newfound tactic along with the occasional Exploding Buck, he makes significant progress in wearing him down. Fontaine is just about to...well, do something, when Jack raises his hand, intending to summon a nearby trashcan to throw at his enemy's head—but nothing happens. He looks to his hand in a quick panic, trying it again. No luck. His heart sinks as he realizes that he must be out of EVE—not completely, thank God, because they'd had the common sense to stock up before coming here. But he'll need to retreat somewhere for a few seconds to replenish it, and seeing as that's not really an option right now…
He switches to the next best thing. Admittedly, he has not used the chemical thrower nearly as often as he should have, but come on, ammunition for that thing is expensive. Besides, it is a bit excessive to burn your enemies to ashes when just lightly roasting them will do just fine. But, he reasons as he loads the weapon with a fresh canister of napalm, desperate times call for extreme measures. That's how the saying goes, right?
He turns the full force of it on his opponent, wincing when the heat of the flames reaches him, but otherwise focuses his efforts on keeping the weapon steady. He makes sure to move it a bit so that it won't only get Fontaine's face, and never lets off the trigger until the click of the thrower signals he needs to refill. Only then does he lower it a smidge, looking over the massive contraption to look down at the charred mass that is, somewhat surprisingly, Fontaine's weakened, but still very much alive, body. The man glares up at Jack and takes another swipe, but it's lame and weak—Jack has no trouble dodging.
He's weakened, for certain, but this is not over yet. Far from over, as it turns out not ten seconds later. In those ten seconds beforehand, Elizabeth starts to make her way over to them, Jack eyes Fontaine suspiciously, wondering why he's not getting up and fighting—surely this can't be that easy, yes?—and Fontaine just sits there, breathing heavily. Jack finds his attention being stolen by Elizabeth, and the second he stops paying attention to the conman is the second he decides to strike. He goes for the legs this time, easily sweeping his victim off his feet, and jumps up—literally, jumps into the air, and pounds the ground, disappearing in a cloud of smoke. He reappears seconds later, secured in the odd machine he had been first been harnessed in before this whole thing started.
It takes Jack a few seconds to recover from his shock, but as soon as he does he's grabbing the Little Sister needle off of his belt and rushing up the stairs to Fontaine's pedestal, plunging the needle into his heart without a second thought. Of course, he knows it's not enough to kill him, not yet, but one can only try. As the needle drains Fontaine of more ADAM, Jack notices that his veins are starting to shift color, changing from a fiery orange to a deep, electric blue. Oh, hell.
Fontaine, much like last time, breaks out of his harness and punts Jack across the room. It takes several precious seconds for him to recover, by which time he realizes that something is definitely broken, security bots have been summoned (working for Fontaine, no doubt), and Elizabeth is in imminent danger. Jack starts with a panic as he realizes he forgot about his partner, and rushes off the ground to fix that. He grabs his chemical thrower, switching out the empty napalm canister for Electric Gel, hoping that his utterly insane theory is correct. Napalm and fire attacks worked pretty damn well against his fire form, so if he's electric now...maybe electric attacks will have the same effect. He knows it's crazy, considering everything everyone knows about power types and weaknesses, but Fontaine was never one to play by the rules, was he?
He searches for Fontaine on the battlefield, and finds him lurking near his ADAM machine. He doesn't scream out his name or draw attention to himself, simply sneaking closer and, when he's in range, pulls the trigger on the thrower. Fontaine yelps in pain and turns furiously towards Jack, making to charge him with his meaty hands, but his opponent is quick to dodge. Next, Fontaine tries to throw a ball of electricity at him, but Jack barely catches it with Telekinesis and throws it back in his face. The chemical thrower continues to spew out Electric Gel, wearing Fontaine down faster than Jack would have thought someone so pumped up on performance-enhancing and literal super-power granting drugs that he can literally hurl balls of the elements at a person, he sure doesn't seem like much. Jack is no fool, though—he knows this is far from over, and if he knows Fontaine, he will have a few tricks up his sleeve. He's about halfway through the Gel canister when it happens.
Fontaine, having long given up on hurling balls of lightning at his enemy, given his rather annoying knack for throwing them back in his face, decides to try Elizabeth instead. Jack loses focus and his attention immediately and quickly shifts from Fontaine to Elizabeth, wincing when the ball actually lands in the middle of the security bot party. He expects there to be some sort of pained sound, and then a thud as her unconscious body hits the ground, but no. She's...nowhere to be seen. Fontaine is equally confused, roaring in frustration as he storms over there, intending to find her and rip her to pieces. Jack stays put on the left side of the machine, trusting Elizabeth with whatever she's planning, and hoping it's brilliant.
Oh, how brilliant it is.
Well, maybe not brillant. Just very clever. But he's come to expect of her.
Just as Fontaine gets to the center of the cluster of security bots, all whirring in confusion as their prime target has suddenly up and disappeared, they all fall to the ground, deactivated, and Fontaine screams in frustration again. Not more than five seconds later does he feel a gentle tap on his shoulder, and he had to suppress a grin. "Hey, stranger," whispers a voice in his ear. He turns to face her, but there's nothing there. She must still have the Plasmid activated.
"What do you need me to do?"
Elizabeth, pleased that for once she doesn't have to deal with his insistence of knowing everything that's going on, tells her his part of the plan, and while he does have some reservations, hey, he trusts her. He interrupts once to impart his own knowledge of Fonatine's weaknesses, and gives her an extra EVE hypo, just in case. Soon enough they're both caught up on what they need to know—it doesn't take more than a minute, but that minute is fraught with tension and impatience. Jack nods slightly to show he understands, not wanting to say much in case Fontaine figures it out, and they part ways again, Jack heading in the direction of the bots. Elizabeth heads to the other side, away from the deactivated bot cluster, and shouts.
"Hey, Atlas! You got a second?"
"You little nothin'!" is the eloquent response.
As Elizabeth strikes him with her Electro Bolt, dodges his fists and lighting attacks, and all around just plain kicks his ass, Jack gets to work on his own little task. He crouches down next to the first bot he sees and plunges an automatic hack tool into a little port on the side. A few seconds later, and the bot is reactivated and working for them. The little guy whirrs upwards, selecting Fontaine as the target, and gets to work. He repeats this maneuver four more times until he's out of automatic hacks, and then he's on his own. But, fortunately enough for all of them, he's hacked enough vending machines and bots alike for this to not take long at all. He begins to mix and match, disconnecting and reconnecting here and there, and after only about fifteen seconds, the bot dings with the chime of the recently allied, and that one gets to work as well. He does it again, and again, until the whole lot of them is on their side and pumping Fontaine full of lead. Of course, they don't last too long under Fontaine's electric touch, but it's the distraction that counts. He's more focused on them than he is on Elizabeth, giving her time to slip away and grab something out of one of the Little Sister vents that dot the area. Jack squints, confused when a tiny hand offers it, but after watching Elizabeth plunge a red hypo into her arm he realizes that it must be a First Aid kit. He also distantly realizes that Tenenbaum must have sent some of the Sisters to help out in the battle, and while part of him wants to be furious that she's putting them in harm's way, he really can't be, because they could use all the help they can get.
Fontaine is still batting away the annoying bots, giving Elizabeth more time to recharge on EVE as well. She's reloading her crossbow when Fontaine realizes he's being duped, and begins to search for her. He, unfortunately, finds her, and with a furious growl, charges right at the base of the Little Sister vent, leaving a noticeable dent when the two collide. Elizabeth just barely manages to move herself out of harm's way, firing a crossbow bolt at the base of the back of his neck when she's clear.
Jack, checking to make sure that there are no leftover bots for him to hack, decides to go ahead and initiate the next step of their plan—join her. He checks to see how much Electric Gel he has left—still half a can, and another full one to reload with. He takes another few precious seconds to refill on EVE before blasting Fontaine with Insect Swarm to get his attention. Once he has that, the Gel onslaught begins. He attacks Fontaine from the front with Gel while Elizabeth attacks him from the back with Incendiary Bolts and occasional blasts of her Electro Bolt, which seems to be more powerful than his somehow. The few security bots that are left also come to the rescue, firing furiously into Fontaine's chest. Between all of them, he doesn't really stand a chance, and soon enough, he disappears in a cloud of smoke just like last time, and just like last time he reappears in his harness. Jack turns to Elizabeth, handing her the needle and shrugging when she looks at him in confusion.
"I figure it's your turn," he says, wincing when Fontaine roars from his harness. "Eh, given everything he's done to you. You'd better get up there."
Elizabeth doesn't even grace him with a response, dashing up the stairs and fiercely stabbing the needle an inch above his heart. Sadly, and of course, it doesn't kill him, but it does severely piss him off. Good. She has the prior knowledge to dodge out of the way before he actually breaks out of his harness, avoiding the very unpleasant sensation of breaking bones. She spares a moment to take in his change of form—now, instead of blue electricity running wild underneath his skin, tiny white spiderweb across, leaving Elizabeth no doubts as to what his final form is. She quickly equips Old Man Winter, blasting him with it before he can come running at her. She grabs her shotgun and fires.
Normally, that would freeze a splicer and then shatter him into a thousand pieces. But Fontaine is no ordinary splicer, and while it does very briefly freeze him, and the Explosive Buck she had previously loaded into her gun had certainly had an expected advantage, it still doesn't do much overall. She dodges as he sends a crystalized ice ball her way. She doesn't have Telekinesis, so she can't grab it mid-air and throw it back—not that it would do much anyways. Unlike electricity and fire, which are both corrosive, ice only freezes a target, and Fontaine is too strong to simply shatter. They'll both have to find another way to defeat him.
She catches a quick glimpse of Jack as she dodges his attack. He's busy fending off the wave of splicers that had appeared from nowhere, but he seems to be holding up alright. He fires a swarm of what looks like bees in the direction of one, and fires off an Incinerate! in the face of another. He ducks underneath the arm of incoming blow from a pipe-wielding Thuggish, and jabs his elbow into the guy's back, causing him to trip right into the on fire oil spill. That's all she has time to see, though, because she's suddenly and rather violently pulled back into her own scenario. Fontaine succeeds in decking her in the face, sending her tumbling backwards and almost falling flat on her bottom. She recovers well enough and in retaliation, she blasts him with a volt of Shock Jockey, granting her a few precious seconds to slip away from under his meaty fingers. She fires another volt as she scrambles away, to buy herself extra time.
She ducks beside a Little Sister vent, making sure to obscure herself from view. She plunges an EVE hypo into her arm, willing the hypo to empty faster so that she can get back into the action again. She checks her ammo reserves—she's halfway out of crossbolts, but she's good on Incendiary and Explosive Buck for the shotgun, so she should be good. Not for the first time, she wishes there were at least one vending machine around here so she could stock up. She's almost out of health kits, and she's running low on EVE hypos. A sharp metallic tapping above her head pulls her out of her musings—for a split second, she's terrified that Fontaine has found her hiding spot. She looks up, fearing the worst, and comes face to face with a former Little Sister. One that she knows better than she's strictly comfortable with.
"Sally?" she whispers urgently, panic quickly overtaking every other emotion she's feeling right now. "What are you doing here?"
"Mama Tenenbaum sent us to help. She said you'd like to see me," she explains quickly, waving an object in the woman's face. Elizabeth has to grab her wrist to see what it is. "It's health. Here, take it! And get the bad man!" With that, the little girl disappears down the vent, smiling brightly and giving Elizabeth a thumbs up. She's not actually gone, if the girl's giggles and the occasional metallic banging are any indication. Most likely, she's just hiding from Fontaine until she can help again. More little girls must be scattered in all of the vents around here, just waiting to help out. She finds she appreciates the thought, but she's going to have strong words with Tenenbaum about sending defenseless kids into battle. But later. Right now she has to focus on staying alive.
Elizabeth wastes no time in adding the health pack to her inventory, placing it alongside the few others she has left inside her satchel. She debates on switching her Plasmid back to Old Man Winter, but decides against it—even against normal splicers, ice attacks don't do much except for freeze your target. They aren't much good unless you can shatter them with something solid, and Fontaine has already proven resistant to that kind of attack. She resigns herself to using the tools already at her disposal, which are her shotgun and crossbow. She can work with that.
She readies the latter, loading up the Incendiary bolts, and once she has Fontaine in her sights, fires. Elizabeth estimates he has about five seconds to move before Fontaine discerns her position and charges, so she fires up Peeping Tom and disappears to nowhere in particular, just not there. She moves closer to her target, dodging and weaving all of his attacks while making some of her own, mostly with the crossbow in strategic areas. It's long, arduous, and boring as hell, but it seems to be affecting him far more than blasting ice at his face ever did. Soon comes the time for her to reload, though—not surprising since the magazine size is only five bolts—and she stops for a minute to reload.
She nearly drops the crossbow on her foot when she hears the unexpected whirring of security bots coming out of seemingly nowhere. She glances around frantically, trying to pin down the source, but the whirring stops only a few seconds after it started. She makes sure her Peeping Tom is still activated and heads over there to see what's going on. Jack is standing by the bot shutdown panel, kneeling down beside it as he works on hacking one of the fallen bots. She looks from him to the security camera plastered on the wall not too far from him, looking straight at the back of Fontaine's machine. The only way he could have possibly triggered it was on purpose, and suddenly she realizes what he's done. Trigger the security camera, which summons a bunch of bots, use the panel to deactivate them, and hack them, so they can deal with Fontaine's muscle and he can, presumably, help her out. Simple, but genius.
She retreats to her own corner, giving Jack space and finishing reloading so that she can continue her silent brigade against Fontaine. Hopefully he finishes soon so he can give her something better than this thing. While it's a powerful weapon, it's slow and they need all the firepower they can get. Several slow, agonizing reloads, ducking behind corners to fill up on EVE, and very near misses later, Jack finally does join the fray, his new army of security bots pounding away at enemy splicers while he himself whips out his chemical thrower and douses Fontaine in liquid nitrogen. Elizabeth switches to her shotgun and fires an Explosive Buck straight into his chest. Obviously, it doesn't shatter him, but she's just glad to not have to sneak around anymore. She runs towards Jack, grinning when she's at his side.
"Nice work with those security bots," she says quickly, firing another shell into his almost unfrozen chest.
"You saw that?" he asks, surprised—then he remembers who he's talking to. "Oh. Of course you did. Thanks, then."
"You're welcome. Now, can we focus—?" She fires another shot at him, and now, he unfreezes, crying out in rage as he locks eyes with both of his targets. "We're kind of in the middle of something here," she grunts as she blasts him with another shot of the fiery ammo.
"Oh, of course," Jack spits graciously as he ducks one of Fontaine's icy fists. It barely grazes his back, covering the disgusting sweater with frost. "Oh, yuck! Do you have any idea how nasty that feels, you ass!"
"Focus!"
"You didn't specify what to focus on!"
The next several minutes pass by in a blur of expletives and explosions, each one giving as good as they get. Elizabeth fires from every angle she can with her limited shotgun ammo, nearly emptying out her reservoir, and Jack is throwing nearly every Plasmid combination he has at the man, but it's taking everything out of them to just try. It's more than once where one of them has to cover the other so that they can reload or replenish health/EVE. Jack is having slightly more luck with that area—he's very good at dashing to the Little Sister vents, grabbing whatever their tiny hands are offering, and coming back before anyone notices he's gone. Elizabeth is forced to contend with that she has and whatever Jack is willing to toss her. After nearly spending all of her Incendiary, she switches to shotgun for about a minute before something very heavy is being pushed into her hands and her shotgun is taken away. Sparing a second to look, she sees it's Jack's chemical thrower, and the current ammo stocked is the rest of the Electric Gel.
"I'm out of Explosive myself, but it seems to be doing something, so I'll take yours and keep at it while you use the rest of the Electric Gel. I just got it reloaded so there should be about half the ammo left." All of this is said in about two breaths, very fast and fading already as he moves into position and begins to rain literal fire on the enemy. Elizabeth, after comprehending what he'd just said, follows suite, yanking back the lever on the device and wincing when the full force of the Gel is unleashed.
Fontaine is trapped in his own violent convulsions for the next fifteen seconds, but those fifteen seconds prove to be quite fatal. The Gel nearly finishes him off, as powerful as it is—Elizabeth seriously thinks that if she'd had the luxury of a reload, she could have done him in for good, but as it is, those fifteen seconds only greatly aid in their victory. He is unable to move or even speak while the Gel has a hold on him, and to add to it she throws in a couple of bursts of Shock Jockey to make it worse. Jack is behind him, firing Explosive Buck into his back and side while she attacks from the front. Eventually, though, their luck runs out, and the thrower clicks, signaling that it's time to reload. But she can't because there's nothing to reload. She tosses the thing back to Jack, catching her shotgun when he does the same, and takes a few precious seconds to switch from the now empty Explosive Buck to Electric Buck. Jack fires up Incinerate! and points at Fontaine, buying his partner precious seconds.
He's so close to just collapsing where he stands, they all know it. They can see it in the way he sways when he charges forward, how his attacks are not quite as sure or powerful as they used to be. His eyes are unfocused, his pallor now a sickly green instead of an ugly bronze. Blood oozes from several places on his body, leaving a slick red trail wherever he stands for more than a few seconds. His taunts are now slurred and near incompherensible. They're winning, and everyone in the room knows it. His only hope now is to get back to his ADAM machine, but even that won't be enough to save him. Good.
Elizabeth aims her shotgun at his head, and Jack points his finger at the same spot. They fire together, and Fontaine's agonized, bloodcurdling scream is the only scream either of them will ever not mind remembering.
Frank Fontaine disappears in another red cloud of smoke, the same as thrice before, and he reappears in his harness. He does not look quite so cocky now. Elizabeth hands Jack the Little Sister needle. "I think you should do the honors," she says, pushing him forward a little urgently.
Jack nods once, grimly. The battle is almost over, they both know it, but how close it is to being over they don't know. Jack is certain neither he nor Elizabeth could survive for another full round if it came to it. They might barely survive, but they could never do five rounds. The only thing that gives him any hope is Fontaine definitely looks the same way, and he's certainly worse for wear than they. He walks up to the podium, his stride weary but full of purpose, and it's only now that he notices the small but determined cries of the Little Sisters, all chanting variations of "stick it to the bad man!". He doesn't have the energy to smile, but inside, he beams.
The final steps somehow feel light, knowing that this is all almost over. He's going to win, he knows it. He's going to win, and then he and Elizabeth and Tenenbaum and all the girls are going to take a bathysphere up to the surface and never talk about this place ever again. He can do this. He has no choice. He treats what was once Frank Fontaine—Frank Baldwin—to his most scornful gaze, pouring every drop of negative emotion he's ever felt into it, before jabbing the needle straight into his heart, allowing himself to enjoy the vicious satisfaction that came with it.
That satisfaction, sadly, but of course, is to be short-lived, because as Jack apparently never learns, Fontaine is able to repeat his nasty trick from the last time and shoves him extremely forcefully off the platform, breaking free of his harness as he does so. Thankfully, Jack notes before he's thrown onto the ground and rolls several feet away from the machine, the ADAM did not seem to rejuvenate him this time. He's too far gone, too damaged. He's been drained too many times. It's over, it's finally over.
Fontaine lands with a mighty thud about five feet away from Jack. He pulls the ADAM needle, still attached to his heart, out, barely wincing at the pain. He looks down at Jack, and he realizes that not only is he still conscious, he's not dead. Jack is forced to imagine his facial expressions for this next bit, because anything resembling a face was lost long ago due to the sudden and rapid intake of ADAM. "I had you built. I sent you topside! I called you back, showed you what you was, what you was capable of! Even that life you thought you had? That was something I dreamed up, and had tattooed inside your head. Now, if you don't call that family, I don't know what is! And now..."
What do I do, what do I do, WHAT DO I DO—
Elizabeth, meanwhile, is panicking. She had seen Jack get smacked to the far side of the room, which was bad enough, but then Fontaine had burst out of his bindings, not exactly the picture of health, but for sure enough to kill them both before he collapsed. She doesn't bother creating a contingency plan, tightening her loose ponytail and rushing in, intending to intervene, somehow. That particular mantra is pounding inside her skull, begging her to stop and think for a moment before facing her doom, but all she can think about right now is that if she doesn't get to Jack, Fontaine is for sure going to kill him. She knows that in the past, when she had looked and seen his future, he'd come out victorious, but that was then, when she was fated to die down here. She wasn't supposed to get resurrected, or join him on his quest, much less become friends with the guy and actually care about saving his life. She's about to take aim and fire, hoping for the best, when someone taps her shoulder. She looks up again, startled to find that she's standing beside a Little Sister vent, and even more so when she sees who stopped by to say hi.
"Hi again," Sally says, grinning as she holds a finger up to her lips. "Be quiet. We're gonna help, but you need to shush. Okay? Don't shoot the bad man."
"But, Sally, Jack is—"
But the girl is already gone, the metallic pitter-patter of her feet inside the vent already fading. She wants so badly to return to her previous task and fire, whatever the girls say be damned, but she'll put her faith in them, just this once. If he dies, she'll just drag him to the nearest Vita-Chamber herself. After she puts a few good rounds in this bastard, that is.
"And now…"
And now, one of the most ridiculous things Elizabeth has ever seen—in all of her countless days, tromping around the universes, battling her way through floating and sunken cities alike, this has got to take one of the top five stops. Because oh my God, there is no way that is going to work.
"And now…"
"Get him!" a tiny voice cries out, and any and all of Jack's own problems melt away instantly as he takes on a whole new set. He turns his head ever so slightly and, blinking a few times to make sure he's seeing this right, witnesses five ex-Little Sister crawl out of the multi-faceted vent to his left, needles in hand, and murder in their tiny pre-pubescent voices.
"Get him!" cries one, in an Irish lilt he recognizes, but he can't place it right now. The girl in question actually raises her needle like a pitchfork, jumps on Fontaine's back, and sticks it into his neck, beginning to drain his ADAM. The other girls quickly join in, all jumping onto the thing that once was Frank Fontaine, sticking their harvesting needles into various parts of his body and shouting variations of "get him", while the man himself tries to get rid of them. At first he attempts to shake them off, then when that doesn't work he tries batting at them and forcefully removing them, but the darling things are like leeches—they refuse to budge. Finally, after what seems like a lifetime but in reality is only about ten seconds total that this is all happening, Fontaine gives one final, pathetic cough, and falls to the ground, back up, dead.
Jack doesn't have time to celebrate. He doesn't even have time to release the breath he'd been holding, or congratulate the girls, or even to start feeling relieved, because not three seconds after Fontaine hits the floor, Jack allows himself to fall unconscious, not caring, for once, if he ever woke up again.