As you all may have noticed, I made some changes. I changed the title because it didn't really sound too good to me anymore. Also I edited chapter 1 to make it flow better with the current story. I hope you all understand. Also the new title art is Shad's calling card inside of Sapphire's necklace. Finally with only one person voting, I decided to make it both worlds of Bioshock. Enjoy chapter 9, written with the help of my friends.
As I walked to the elementary school, I thought about what happened to me in the alley. I never got mad like that and enjoyed the pain I caused. I was starting to wonder if that was Sapphire's doing as well. It honestly wouldn't be a surprise to me really, the child was a mystery to me even as my daughter. Speaking of which, said child was waiting for me out in the school's front door. Being in a city, there was no grass to wait on except the parks. "Hi daddy," she greeted skipping over to me, her light backpack bouncing on her back.
As we walked to home, I decided to talk to Sapphire about her day. "So how was school sweetie?" I asked her trying to strike up conversation. She looked up to me and replied, "It was ok. I didn't make any friends yet, but the teacher was really nice. Most kids didn't talk to me because I have yellow eyes," she explained, summing up her day.
"That happens to me too. But I want you to remember something though," I sighed. Damn it, I will not let what happened to me happen to her if I can prevent it! "Hmm?" She she looked up to me with curiosity in her eyes. "Never let anyone bully you over it. If they try to, then tell me, or a teacher. But if it doesn't stop, then you fight back, give them a taste of their own medicine." I was basically, telling her what I learned that day, just to a much lesser extent. "Ok daddy," she chirped and kept on walking beside me.
We eventually came to the alley where I go to get to the radio tower through the rooftops if I need to visit the guys or something like that. I pondered whether or not to go home, or the base. I decided to go to the base. Mom would be home from work later, so it's not like she'll be missing me. I also wanted to tell Jake and Simon about what happened with my bullies earlier, as there were too many people that could overhear me if I called in public to tell them, and see if Jake got that vendor for Plasmids yet. I wanted Sapphire to be able protect herself if I'm preoccupied in my own fight or if she's alone. Speaking of which, I turned back to see if Sapphire was lagging behind me while I was lost in thought and saw something that set off every alarm bell in my head off. There was a shadow of a diver's suit chasing us down, and it was going for Sapphire by the looks of it. 'Like hell this is going to be taking her from me,' I thought to myself as my panic turned to anger.
I grabbed Sapphire and pulled her to the side of the alley with me, our assailant flying past us in a failed leap at Sapphire. I was feeling the same way I did not a half hour ago when my bullies attacked me and unintentionally insulted my daughter. I knew it this was a worse rage since this was a direct attack on my little girl, and if this went down anything like it did last time with my bullies, this would end in gore all around the alley. After Sapphire found somewhere to hide, the thing screeched and threw a trash can at me… with its mind. Guess telekinesis is in the power pool then," I mummered to myself while I rolled to dodge the metal can of death flying at me at speeds to rival a train and ran at my attacker, using the same knife from my last fight. It was a pretty flimsy switchblade, but that didn't register with my blood and adrenaline pounding in my head. The person lunged at me with a needle on its arm, which looked vaguely like my daughter's needle, if it was mounted to her arm and didn't have the tube of liquid attached to it. I blocked its path towards my lungs and stabbed at the person behind it, scratching at their armor with edge of the unmaintained blade. I didn't even damage the armor. I needed to get through it somehow without risking getting skewered. I made some distance between me and my attacker and focused on the armor instead of the movements for a moment. I noticed that it was made of metal and mostly leather, I also noted that it looked like someone had demented and modified the diver suit for combat. One of those things doesn't block out fire very well. I didn't notice however, that my assailant was hanging back as well, studying me as much as I was them.
With a risky plan in mind, I waited for my attacker to pounce at me again, getting my fire ready while I waited. When they finally charged at me, needle outstretched for a kill, I struck hard with a fist-full of white hot flames. However, I got stabbed in the side with the needle in the process. Definitely could've been worse. The person fell screaming in pain, clearly hurt by the fire licking at the primarily leather armor. As she, judging by the voice anyway, fell unconscious from pain, Sapphire came out from her hiding place, but that didn't concern me at the moment. I wanted this bastard dead for trying to take my little girl. As I raised my switchblade to end this person's life, a cry of panic brought me partway out of my rage.
"Daddy!" Sapphire's voice came from behind me in a terrified tone. I looked back, confused why she was so scared, only to see her run past me to the older girl that tried to take her from me. "Please don't kill Big Sister daddy! Pleeeeeeeeease!" she begged me. I thought about it for a minute. This 'Big Sister' was a freaking beast, and I could tell she was holding back. I don't know why though, I was its- her enemy, but she could have been forced to try to do so. Then the factor that Sapphire wanted her to live came into play. I had a choice to make right now, to kill this potential ally, or kill an enemy of my new found rage filled side.
sigh "OK Sapphire, I won't kill 'her' for now, but if 'she' tries to attack us again, then I won't hesitate to kill 'her'," I resigned to my daughter, hesitantly using the female pronoun since, despite the evidence, I was still a little apprehensive on whether these things were people or robots. Suddenly, I felt her needle in my arm, healing me again. "Thanks Sapphire," I thanked the little girl who thought of me as a father.
"No, thank you daddy for sparing Big Sister. Come on big sis, now it's your turn," Sapphire chided turning to the Sister. I would've stopped her, but it didn't matter anyway, my former enemy had powers already anyway. She was still unconscious, so I guess I had to carry her now. Fan-fucking-tastic.
I finally made it back to base, and the Big Sister was still out like a light. I dropped her off on a couch in the rec room and headed towards Jake's room. The way this place works is that there was a medical center, the job room, Jake's room, Simon's room, a couple bathrooms and a rec room for when we hung out together. The rec room was the first room you walked into, the former lobby if you wanna get technical. "Hey guys I'm here!" I yelled out. I heard running and then a thump.
"OW!" Simon yelled in pain. Jake walked in and took one look at the new Sister and said, "Really man? Another one?"
"She attacked me and Sapphire wanted me to spare her life," I explained to my teammates. "When she wakes up, I'll explain the situation. By the way I wanted to tell you guys something that happened earlier." While Sapphire watched TV, I told them what happened with my tormentors earlier, down to the last gore filled minute.
"Damn. That sounds like me when I went insane," Simon chuckled.
"Please don't put that thought in my head, one of you is bad enough," I joked. This earned a hearty laugh and a 'Hey!' from Simon.
Then I heard something on the from the TV. A commercial in between her shows if I had to guess. "… I, Andrew Ryan, give you Rapture! My city under the sea is finally done after months of hard labor and construction. All common men, scientists and artists of the world are welcome to bask in the fruits of their unrestricted labors here in this Atlantean paradise, free of the parasites that roam on the surface." Then it showed a bottle of adam in the commercial and a logo for Andrew Ryan Industries.
"Well we know where this stuff came from," I commented. Jake and Sapphire sounded their agreement to my statement while Simon said something else.
"Hey Shad, the… thing's waking up," Simon warned me, pointing at the Big Sister as she stirred.
"This 'thing' has a name," the Big Sister growled in a feminine voice. "One I won't be telling you, asshole." Wow, feisty one huh?
After explaining what happened to the Big Sister (Jake and Simon left because their ears were bleeding from her talking, me and Sapphire were apparently the only ones who could understand her) she just looked blank for a second. I was about to ask if she was alright when she yelled, "Thank you!" and hugged Sapphire and I. "Sorry it's just… I've been trying to get out of Rapture since I got there, and I arrived there only three days ago," she explained as she released us.
"Wait three days?" I asked looking confused. "The news just said it was finished today though."
"No, it was opened to the public today. It's been around for much, MUCH longer than that." Before I could ask her to clarify what that meant, Jake came in and told us that he had a surprise for us… or at least me and Sapphire. As we followed him, I saw Simon taking some unfamiliar pills. I knew he took pills to keep himself in check, hell I'm the one who gets them for him, but these looked much different. I considered turning around to talk about it, see if he had a problem I was unaware of. But then I walked into a machine that wasn't there before today. It read, 'The Gatherer's Garden' at the top and had a syringe attached to it instead of a money slot. Other than that, it looked like a vending machine.
"This," Jake explained, "will let us buy plasmids and tonics. I also have these watches for you guys." He handed us all a watch with a blue gauge with a number 0 on it, a digital number with ADAM written above it (mine was at 250), and a red bar going around the length of the watch glass. "The blue bar is your EVE storage, the number next to it is the amount of EVE hypos you have left, and the red meter is the amount of damage you can take without dying on us," he explained, looking quite proud of himself.
"Sweet, thanks Jake," I praised him. He never ceases to amaze me. Then I saw a plasmid called 'Oil Slick' on the Gatherer's Garden. I bought it with my own ADAM and had Sapphire use it on herself, because if she was going to be with me on jobs, we needed to have her defend herself, even if it's more of an annoyance than an attack. That and it's oil, and I shoot motherfucking fire out of my hands. It was common sense. Jake then gave me the report on the base's progress. It maybe a nice setup so far, but I wanted to be able to train outside of jobs. Also I had Jake working on a secret project, I couldn't tell anyone, even Sapphire about it. Anyway, the new training room was being built and was almost done, but when our powers came along Jake said was going to be longer than expected now. Mainly to get stuff that'd be easily repaired or resistant to some of our powers. Then a high priority news report came on our watches, something Jake forgot to mention apparently.
"Not long ago, police found signs of a horribly disturbed man prowling the streets of our city. The victims, three in total, were apparently muggers who chose the wrong target. All three of the deceased were teenagers, and were brutally butchered by their assailant. If you have any knowledge of the felon who killed these minors, then call 911 immediately. Due to the severe injuries these children harbor, we cannot show you the bodies." The broadcast ended there.
"Well, looks like I'm famous," I joked taking another Plasmid from the garden. "'Spider Shot' looks cool. Let's try it out then," I said to myself out loud. I injected it and felt my arms being covered by something that felt… wrong for better lack of a term. Looking closer, it was a criss crossing pattern of flexible, soft, titanium cables. Wow, no wonder it felt wrong, titanium shouldn't be light or flexible. I aimed at the wall, and flicked my wrist at it like Spiderman would in the movies. To my surprise, I shot a line that could be climbed on, swung on, or be used to wrap someone up in. It could also be electrified, set on fire or be made into a net, something I later found out. Things were actually looking up for me for once.
