Ehem, I don't own Atlantis: The Lost Empire... Fuck you lawyers! (If any of my lovely readers are lawyers, please don't take offence)
Eleanor had spent a month on the surface now, she was just waiting with the marines for a bathysphere to pick them up and bring them back to Rapture.
After having observed the surviving remnants of civilization, she had determined that a hostile take over was needed, most of the settlements wouldn't accept Rapturian rule otherwise, and she didn't want to have to wait decades for it to happen either, this way was quicker.
The reason that Rapture had to rule? Because she felt greedy. She had been denied so much under her mother's unnerving gaze, this is why she had even gone back to Rapture in the first place, rebuilding it and naming herself leader. She wanted control, and if it just so happened to benefit those she ruled in the long run? So be it.
Rapture also needed resources, even Rapturian diving suits had not advanced enough for any proper underwater mining, and any significant amount of oil in the world had been tapped dry, and some of the only working examples of fusion and nuclear power generation were either too weak and small to be of much use in large scale projects, or were already on the control of others.
If they couldn't get such things, Rapture would soon not be able to accommodate any growth as Hephystus could not power much more than Rapture in it's heyday.
Eleanor smiled as she spotted the bathysphere break the surface and start approaching, at least her plans would give Rapture's industry another vital boost, which cemented her plans even more.
If settlements peacefully gave up sovereignty then she'd still need to protect them from raiders and such, so a build up of more military would still be needed.
When Eleanor had returned, she immediately started having the partially repaired but still abandoned factories completely brought back online to start making new weapons and armor for the increasing amounts of marine volunteers.
One of the few remaining bathysphere drydocks was being retrofitted to instead build a full on naval submarine. She had divers scavenging the wrecks of ruined subs around Rapture to melt down into new parts, by the pace they were going though Rapture'd only have one submarine, which she decided to have designed as a troop transport, as from what she knew, no navy really existed other than Rapture at the moment.
Eleanor herself was working with varying scientists in the plasmid labs. Work on the gene tonic that would provide some rudimentary permanent defense against radiation was almost complete, it would make someone just slightly more resistant than one of the wastelanders on the surface.
Even so, she had what amounts of lead and resistant materials they had managed to gather being integrated into the marine's diving suits, wouldn't do much but the more the merrier.
A month earlier Xana had finally started up the Vault militia, they were basically armed and clothed like a vault security guard but without the riot helmet and had an assault rifle.
The Brotherhood officially moved their operations from the citadel to a new fortress built in 101 city, it was basically the same building except new and without the remains of old offices, so it just had a thick concrete pentagon surrounding a courtyard, with large building in the back, it was still more impressive than most places though. Overall it was more defensible than the citadel and was easier to move through, better to look at, and it's walls were much stronger than what was basically an ancient office building
Over several more months the population of the city had basically doubled, many roaming traders settling down, people from smaller settlements traveling there to also settle, all brought their Brahmin with them. Though some rudimentary farms had sprung up surrounding the oasis rock craig to try and start up some food production, they weren't doing so well.
Food was the primary problem and Xana knew that svavenging wouldn't support them for long, so in secret, with all the scientists, botanists, and geneticists she could gather, she had experiments on plants done with what little amounts of FEV they had managed to gather to try and make much sturdier and more productive crops.
Over two and a half months much progress had been completed on many projects in Rapture that kept the still weak industry moving. The submarine had been finished, the recycled metal looking good as new on the large sub.
It was a very large submersible, with a very large reinforced glass sphere at the front designed to give the pilot as much vision as possible, it had large reinforcing ribbes along it's hull with X ridges adding more stability. The large whale like stabilizers at the aft gave it a lot of control for high mobility. (It looks like the Ulysses from "Atlantis:The lost empire." go google image it like this"Atlantis: the lost empire Ulysses docking, it's the picture with people loading the sub with trucks.)
When it came time to be named, Eleanor had stood there at the drydock for five minutes until she smirked.
"Ulysses" Naming it after a successful American general seemed like a good idea, it would be used to transport troops onto what used to be America.
The armored sub's 382 Feet and 18,750 tons could hold hundreds of marines ready to spill out onto the shore. Although it would be forced to take many stops to refill with air, it would work wonderfully. It used a electric motor to spin it's propellers, which was powered by a giant battery which could either be recharged with either the transfer of a lot of energy from it's charging port, or simply a focused and coordinated concentration of Electrobolt from plasmid users.
A spot was available for some form of either nuclear or fusion generation to be retrofitted, but they would have to settle with what they had available for now.
Other projects, like the newly dubbed "Rad Resist" gene tonic, was completed and one was required for each and every person in Rapture to take, the risk otherwise was just too much. This was also being spread out in drinkable form, wasting much of the resurves of ADAM, to the stationary fish farms so that the few fish that had been caught in the time bubble could survive. In fact, a new project had sprouted up to generally make fish a more viable method for food. People were expirementing to try to generally make fish larger, but not so dangerous. Kind of like cows are to surface farms.
Divers also started planting giant fields of kelp and other underwater plants for the plant eating fish to consume. Both kelp and fish would be harvested to provide a staple source of food.
On a more personal note, Eleanor had fitted her father in even more protective armor, it had metal plates covering most of the water resistant cloth to better protect him.
After having, on a whim, asked her father to remove his helmet. She had been surprised from his change. When her mother had made him shoot himself, his face and head was generally bald and somewhat decayed looking, with glowing sickly yellow eyes and a slacked jaw.
But nowadays, he looked much more handsome and almost like one of those art deco statues, dark bronzed skin and slightly healthier looking glowing eyes gave off a feeling of power, but he preferred his helmet on. (Under his armor he looks like Fontaine at the end of Bioshock 1)
On the topic of ADAM, she had her most trusted divers bringing her as many ADAM slugs as they could find, she had a underwater ranch entirely devoted to raising and harvesting the ADAM from them made in the ruins of Ryan's rudimentary one. It provided just enough ADAM without needing little sisters to make the tonics she was distributing, but the supply was strained so she was only giving them to her marines at the moment. She was thinking of starting a project that would use selective breeding so that only the larger and better ADAM producing slugs would be allowed to reproduce. A more focused project would have slugs bred exclusively for use in Little Sisters, but that was a very low priority at the moment as Little Sisters were not being used as ADAM factories any more, she had other plans for them.
After all the progress, Eleanor felt she was ready.
Grinning, Eleanor picked up the microphone inside her office.
"Citizens of Rapture, today our marines will follow me to the surface to bring the primitive settlements above under our control, but you all know that is not my end goal. Imagine, a world under the control, the whole world, under the control of Rapture. While right now we may be one city, so technically we are a city state, imagine a sprawling... empire, all across all of Earth.
"With me as your leader, the Rapturian Empire will spread across the ruins of the US, and eventually the whole world! We will be glorious once again, our city will grow into a great capital, a shining jewel under the sea, the best and brightest, with the best science, industry, and ecomomy, we march today!" Eleanor looked down from the balcony she had walked to, looking over the crowd below her, waiting for their response, to her immense relief cheers erupted, many of the reformed citizen ecstatic to finally have a purpose other than survive, What relieved her even more is that there was no protests to her exclamation of officially calling herself empress.
Empress Eleanor has such a nice ring to it.
Codex-
2278-The capital Brotherhood of Steel settles in the "New Citadel"-
-Vault militia is formed-
-Overseer Xana has secret FEV experiments started on crop plants in attempt to fix predicted food shortage-
-Production begins on Rapture's flagship "Ulysses" which serves for many years-
-Genetically engineered fish ranches sprout across the ocean around Rapture with the introduction of massive plant fields and "Rad Resist" Gene tonics inoculated into fish-
-Rapture officially takes up the name of the Rapturian Empire, with of course Rapture as the capital. Eleanor crowns herself empress-
-Rapturian Marines pile into Ulysses, with Eleanor at the helm, and set course for the capitol wasteland, sights set on Rivet City-
"Relaxes back into chair" Finally what I'VE been wating for, the Rapturian Empire is officially formed, or about to be formed. I can't wait to write the next chapter!
Muwahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhaha!