"Alright everyone, are we ready?"
"Yes, Gabe, you don't need to ask. Not like we can take anything with us anyways," Kate says, stretching out an arm to pat your head.
"I meant mentally and emotionally and you know it." Pushing your head into her hand to shake it off, you make sure your clothes are folded properly on your bed, the piles everyone made all near each other.
Looks like it's time, then. "Okay everyone, all together now. Make sure to touch me and we'll be off." It takes only moment for Kate, Sarah, Nora and Okita to come crowd around you, all naked as the day they were born and bearing various expressions, from boredom to excitement to Okita-ness.
With a metaphorical hop and a jump, you're gone.
Next thing you know, you're in some sort of dark room, sitting on a dilapidated couch inside an alcove off to the side, blinking neon lights confusing you for a moment before your mind adjusts.
The room is flooded, an ankle-deep layer of water washing over your naked feet, the open stairs leading upwards overgrown with pink corals of some sort.
The middle of this location is taken in by a weird little monument, what you discover to be its front after leaning over for a moment spelling out 'Adonis Luxury Resort'.
At least everyone else is also right there with you.
"Any idea where we are?" Sarah asks, trampling through the muck.
You take a moment to parse the knowledge implanted in your mind. "We seem to be in another parallel Earth of some kind, with history and stuff pretty close to our own or Earth Aleph's. The one big difference was the founding of the city of Rapture by one Andrew Ryan, looking to bring all the best and brightest of his generation together in a city on the bottom of the ocean far away from any one nation's control. 'Cept he didn't think things through all that far, apparently, because it eventually descended into civil war at some point after several major scientific breakthroughs. Also, the common language down here seems to have been English."
Okita looks down, sad. "I put so much effort into learning it..."
"Don't worry, pretty sure you only have perfect English for as long as you're on this world. Think of it as a more limited translation blessing."
Wordlessly, Okita comes up to you to press her sizable breasts into your side, much to everyone else's amusement as she pouts up at you. Nothing a few headpats don't fix, though.
That said, all joviality's down the drain when something starts moving in a dark corner of the room.
"Uhm... Hello there?" You ask, looking the ominous figure over.
"Uooooooohhh..:" It groans back, holding out its non-drill hand before puttin it on its head.
"So, I don't figure you're capable of talking in that thing?"
"Guh..."
"And you're confused? have no idea about what's going on?"
"Uooohh..."
"Well, I have no idea who you are or why you were back there, but I can tell you a little about where we are in general. Though I'm afraid we're also somewhat new to the area, mind you, so my information may be just a tad out of date."
"Uoh."
"Alright then, let's walk as we talk."
And thus, your motley little crew takes on another member, making your way past a wall full of black and white pictures of people right underneath graffiti saying 'Fallen, Fallen Is Babylon'.
Charming, this whole place.
Ascending your way up the stairs and past a lot of water running down from the ceiling as well as an outcropping of corals blocking a doorway (a quick combination of your new friend's drill and your claws clears the way quick enough), you keep on explaining where you are, what Rapture is and so on and so forth.
Soon, though, you emerge into what you think used to be a swimming pool, though your attention is taken entirely by the armored figure, similar but also entirely unlike the big guy following you, sleek and human-sized and jumping about the place like mad, clearly having seen your group and jumping through a nearby doorway, a statue of some kind crashing down into what's left of the pool and throwing up a cloud of stone dust.
"Soo..." Sarah drawls, looking at where it left, "I don't suppose you have anything about that in that magic database of yours?"
"Only thing that comes to mind are the Big Daddies, big armored guys supposed to be following and protecting Little Sisters."
"Uoh!"
"That trigger a memory or something? You think you're a Bid Daddy of some kind?"
"Uooohh..."
"So you used to be one? Huh."
"Gabe, how do you understand what he's saying?" Nora spikes in, looking around the place and obviously itching to find a weapon of some kind. Or at least clothes.
"Dunno, it just comes naturally. Don't worry, big guy, we'll get that mystery solved sooner or later, too."
"Uoh."
"Your power tell you anything, Sarah?"
"Just that whatever happened here was done by people. Best guess, however this civil war played out, it didn't spare anyone, and any survivors are likely to be insane somehow."
This place just gets cheeries by the minute, huh?
A bit of investigation as everyone spreads throughout the room reveals that this apparently used to be a pretty big part of this area's electric infrastructure, a large generator of some kind sitting in a corner. Incidentally, you also find an audio recording of some kind, in a bulky device the big guy takes when he sees it, pressing a few buttons to play it.
Some kind of introductory instructions for mechanics beginning work in here, it seems, from when there were actual people around. Interestingly, it makes mention of what to do when this machine you're looking at isn't working and cautions the instructees to get the guests out of the pool first because apparently 'the rich fucks get frightened when Johnny Workersman throws lightning around'.
So, hints abound.
In a corner you also find a small canister of fuel the big guy takes, opening a lid to the side of the drill contraption on his right arm and pouring it inside. And here you thought it was infinitely self-sustaining, but it turns out it's just a big mining drill of some kind strapped to his arm. Ah well.
Breathing Yoshi out, you give him the gist of what you want him to do. "Alright Yoshi, you are going to thoroughly analyze anything interesting we come across. Fail to do it to my satisfaction and your name shall revert to the Anal Guy, are we clear?"
"Crystal," he sighs in response, doing his best not to look at the naked women in the room. Smart guy as always.
Of course, as you approach the doorway leading towards 'Plasmid Therapies', you hear what sunds like an argument of some kind.
"I need it, okay?! You get it!" A feminine voice screeches before you see the blood signatures you've been keeping an eye on split up, one running towards you only to be shot down shortly after revealing itself to be a grotesquely mutated woman, a male in concealing clothing and his revolver openly carried following her.
Unfortunately, before you can rip into his side with your claws, a sudden rush of movement sees the armored figure from earlier come back out, impaling the man you were about to eat with a long, needle-like weapon and causing him to freeze up for a moment before he just dies.
Well, so much for that, you suppose.
You notice there's what looks like a child the armor's back compartment, just looking wide-eyed around her as the figure doesn't so much run past your group as it glidees across the walls, simply jumping through the corridor. You instinctively reach out, trying to cup the womanly figure's ass, but the suit she's wearing is so thick you have a hard time feeling it.
Still worth it, though.
"So... that just happened," you mutter. "Anyways, want to go see what's back there? I don't think whoever that is is going to talk to us anytime soon."
At the end of the hallway you indeed find something... interesting, some kind of vending machine with one of its products already out in the open. Everyone looks at each other, wondering what to do with the large vial full of red-ish liquid, at least until the Big Guy takes a step forwards, drawing a syringe from the side of the machine and using it to draw the vial's contents through the kork, then plunging the syringe into a part of his armor's inner arm, a direct line to a vein on his end installed there, as you now see.
What follows is a bit of what looks to be immense pain, a bit of groaning and roaring as his hands start to emit lightning and he falls to his knees, but he gets over it before long.
"Ooouaguh."
"We need to get to Eleanor? Who's Eleanor?"
"Uooh."
"She used to be your Little Sister?"
"Ungh."
"Alright then, guess we have a goal now. Unless anyone wants to do something else?"
"I dunno, Gabe," Sarah says, "I wouldn't object to some clothes before we go anywhere else."
"Eh, good point. The we might as well take over this city while we're at it?"
"Uooh?"
"Oh, don't worry, we do this kind of thing on a semi-regular basis. We can totally swing something, and it'd make finding your Little Sister easier, as well."
Quickly animating the two bodies you suddenly have on your hands, you pretend you aren't hearing Kate and Sarah discuss how to best get the blood out of them and stored for later, just shaking your head at Big Guy when he looks vaguely uncomfortable about it.
"Just ignore that, they just need blood as food. So do I, for that matter. Anyways, these two numbnuts," you say, pointing at the undead you just raised, "will hopefully work as guards or at least die loudly enough the rest of us are warned while I take care of something real quick. With any luck, we'll have an actual industrial base to work from."
"Uoogh?"
"Just you wait and see! I mean, I have been making it kind of obvious I've got something supernatural going on here."
With that, you're off to lean against the nearest wall, closing your eyes as you make the transition to your soul palace.
"Time to get to work. To the workshop and lab, please," you tell the Maid, the body stationed nearby bowing gracefully before teleporting you over.
It takes quite a bit of doing, as well as abusing a few of your more technologically inclined souls as free labour and searching through the resources your lab and workshop freely avail to you until you find everything you need, as well as one of your earlier manufactory designs to make the parts you need for the actual thing, but once you've got that, the rest is child's play.
Drawing yourself out of your inner palace, you open your eyes, getting up from where you were sitting. A bit of moisture seems to have gathered on your backside, but you just roughly wipe it off for a moment before giving everyone a nod.
"Anything happen while I was busy?"
"A few more of these guys came in while you were having your beauty sleep," Kate says, "so I ate one and Sarah the other. We tried to take them alive, but when Sarah mind whammied them, they basically went completely nuts, so we just went with the old standby. She's actually trying to interrogate hers right now, but... not putting my hopes up."
"Alright. Okay, come on everyone, let's get into the pool room and deploy the thing I just made. Time for some clothes."
"Uooh?"
"Oh, you'll love it, I'm sure. If nothing else, my baby will help in making some new equipment from any junk we find lying around. Speaking of which, we got any guns?" You ask, turning back to Kate.
"A few, yeah, these mutated guys had some on them. Pretty sure we're a few years backwards in the timeline in this dimension, or at least the designs are old as fuck."
"Not to worry, not to worry, we can get some good laser guns going in short order."
"Uuungh."
"Sure, we can look into making one you can carry. Shouldn't be too hard, really."
Emerging into the larger room, you huff and you puff and all of a sudden, a great mass of spectral mist flows out of your mouth and nose to coalesce into a big machine taking up a decent amount of the walkable space you have available, kind of making it impossible to walk back to the room you woke up in, looking imposing with its many robotic limbs and polished surfaces.
"Here you go, big guy, the manufactory. My personal masterpiece in terms of engineering. Put raw materials in, get it to assemble whatever you want, from plant fibres to be woven into clothes to metals and junk to become advanced equipment."
"Ooohh..."
Stepping forth to swipe the screen situated to the left of the machine's main body, you begin tapping away.
"Okay, first things first, we need some raw materials to work with. Take all the clothes from those idiots and anything similar and just throw them towards the intake," you say, pointing towards the part of the manufactory you're talking about, what boils down to a chute another robotic limb can open and close on demand, "and we can get this party started."
Drill Upgrades
Fusion Core: Using actual fuel is horrendously inefficient and needs refueling all the time. Lets just use a fusion core to drive the motor turning the drill (2 points)
Better Motor: More rotation, more ouchie for anyone it's drilling into. 'Nuff said. (2 points)
Better Drill: The drill itself is solid and would likely last for a long while, but you could totally make a better one, with a pointier tip and an easier time boring through hard targets (2 points)
With Yoshi and Nolan on the now quartet of corpses you have on hand, you busy yourself with the more involved tasks you need to get down in regards to careful engineering- Scaling up your V4M-Pyre laser rifle design and adjusting the grip so it can be used by a single oversized hand is easy enough, though getting an idea of how the drill installed along his right arm works is a little trickier.
For one, it takes a bit of talking to get him to let go of it, and even then, you have to work together to find the small latch that keeps it attached to his arm to get to take it apart while he goes off to play with his new weapon, mostly by shooting at the impromptu shooting range the girls set up while waiting for you to do your thing.
Going through the components of the drill, it's literally just a motor driving the drill itself, all of it attached to a glove that goes over Big Guy's glove.
Well, time to go through the basics on this thing. You have the manufactory spit out a fusion core, then go about designing a reasonably more powerful motor to be driven with it and a better, sharper and a little more streamlined drill, all of which to be made out of the materials you have available right now, checking over the inventory screen.
And yes, you actually have a seperate screen that shows the user what the manufactory has to work with. Way more convenient this way.
Once that's all done, reconstructing the better drill is easy enough, and soon Big Guy has two brand new weapons. And yes, he tried it out, the drill is working seamlessly.
That poor wall, though.
Just as you're finishing up everything and begin tearing the last few neon lights you can find out of their sockets for more raw materials, you hear a sound of alarm.
"Uguuuoooh?!"
"What's up, Big Guy?" You ask, hurrying back to the others.
"Ugoh, ouuhhh."
"You have a radio inside that suit? Okay, who is trying to call you?"
"Uooooooohh..."
"A woman calling herself Doctor Tenebaum asking for help at the nearest train station? Did I get that right?"
"Gooh..."
"Alright, I suppose we should get on that then, after all. Any ideas how to get there?"
"Ooohh..."
"I mean, you're not wrong. There really is only one way to go from here..."
With that, Big Guy throws a hand of lightning at the generator sitting nearby you hadn't gotten around to taking apart yet, causing the pistons visible inside it to begin pumping as the lights all around light up, revealing the ceiling had actual lamps you didn't think to look for earlier, along with letting the door to the side of the room that stayed shut all this time slide open.
"Okay everyone, it looks like there's an actual thinking human being somewhere in this underwater city. I'd like to just stay here and recycle everything, but I suppose we'll just have to keep on the move and scavenge every now and then for more material."
Typing a few commands into the manufactory, you have it spit out its stores of valuable salvage you had a harder time finding than other kinds, mostly metal of several kinds, in the form of easily transported bars.
Then you look at the zombies standing in the corner, Nolan and Yoshi already breathed back in.
Your whole group consisting of yourself, Sarah, Kate, Nora, Okita and the Big Guy is now marching through the empty corridors leading through the abandoned city of Rapture, your four zombies trailing behind you with several bars of metal embedded in their torsos.
What? Not like they're using those internal organs anyways.
That said, Rapture isn't exactly entirely empty, as you already found out. On the way, you find a few more of the inhabitants of the city doing... something, inside a pool of water.
Big Guy instinctively shoots lightning at it, killing them both. You just pat his shoulder afterwards. "Good reflexes, but let's see about keeping a few of them alive next time? I kind of need to eat every now and then. Nothing urgent yet but, y'know, something to keep in mind."
"Uooh."
Not long afterwards, you actually find something; the dead body of what looks kind of similar to Big Guy, just stockier and shit. Its weapon actually is stuck underneath the next door, at least until Big Guy pulls it out.
Upon closer inspection, it seems to be some kind of rivet gun, repurposed into a weapon. Not unlike the drill he started out with, actually.
He doesn't even need to ask you.
"Sure, I'll take a look when we have a moment later."
"Uoohn."
Tucking the weapon to the back of his suit, Big Guy leads the way onwards... soon arriving inside a dark room lit up only by the shine of his helmet, a little girl much like the one you glimpsed earlier in the hands of the other armored figure, stabbing a syringe-like device into a corpse.
She turns and smiles at Big Guy, starting to walk over only for an inhuman screech to echo through the area.
"Big Sister doesn't want you to play with me," she says, her voice strangely echoing itself before she is ripped away by your acquaintance from earlier, running off with her and reappearing shortly after, jumping at Big Guy!
The 'Big Sister', if that's what you're calling her for now, impacts Big Guy, throwing him to the ground... Only for you to impact her in turn, throwing her off of him and onto the ground, pinning her arms to her sides as you loom above her with your claws hooked into the armor pieces lining her limbs.
"Well, hello there."
"SKREEEEEEK!"
Another screech actually shakes you, the volume of her voice enough it'd probably be a sonic attack of some kind if you didn't deliberately harden your senses oh so very long ago.
"We weren't going to hurt her, no need to worry."
She gives off a few chirps and twitches her head (helmet, whatever) a little, but eventually, she coos at you, which you take to mean she's understood what you meant.
Slowly getting up, you gently pat her arms, letting her know you're friendly. You kinda feel nonverbal communication may work better with her, and are validated when she stands up after you, awkwardly looking around at the whole group having filed into the room by now, the bright shine coming out of the window of her helmet reminding you of Big Guy and the little girl with the skin condition.
Of course it's likely some kind of gene mod, based on what you've seen so far, but calling it that is funnier.
"Can you speak? or at least try?"
"Iiihh..." Her voice is entirely different from Big Guy's, much higher and, if she raises it, shriller, as you've already noticed earlier. Nevertheless, you think you're getting this.
Honestly, understanding groans and shrieks like this is kinda hard. Somewhat comparable to a very distorted accent more than anything else.
"Don't worry, we won't hurt her no matter wwhat. Right guys?"
When nobody disagrees, you turn back towards her. "So, could you tell me who you are?"
She skreeks again.
"Okay, so you're a Big Sister and you look out for Little Sisters? Like that little girl from earlier?"
She coos at you again, confirming that you understood her right.
"Any idea why you do that?"
"Skreeee!"
She just does what a Big Sister is supposed to, huh? Sounds like there may be brainwashing of some kind involved, though you can't be sure.
Anywayss it is around that time that the little girl from earlier, the Little Sister if you understood that right, comes walking back, waving a little plush doll version of what you heavily suspect to be a Big Daddy in your direction.
"Mister Bubbles! Mister Angel! Can we play?"
Aww, isn't she just the cutest. With a gentle smile, you get down on one knee, putting yourself to her level, more or less.
"Of course we can play with you, sweetie. Do you have a name?"
Now she gets all shy and bashful, conspiciously looking around as if to verify nobody's listening in on you. "My name is Lizzy, but shh! It's a secret!" She whispers.
"Oh? Why is it a secret?" You whisper back with a mischievous smile as 'Mr. Bubbles' leans over you two.
Looking over at the living people not categorized as Mr. Bubbles in your group with suspicious eyes, she gets even quieter. "The peoples don't like it when we tell each other our names, so we keep it secret outside the ventsies."
You just pat her head. "Don't worry, nobody that's with us is going to get angry at you over something like that." With that, you give her a little kiss on the forehead.
Watching with bemusement as the Little Sister holds both hands onto where your lips touched her skin, her brightly glowing eyes blinking, you get up for a moment. "Did you know, actually, that I can do magic? Special angel tricks."
Lizzy gasps. "Really?" She asks with this look only kids can get over being really amazed at something.
"Cute. Can we keep her?" Okita throws in. Because of course she does.
"Wanna see?" You ask, not bothering to wait for a response, swiftly taking off your shirt and growing white owl wings, going for a snow owl this time around, even as you slowly, but surely shrink down, becoming younger and younger until you're just a few inches taller than Lizzy.
"Ta-dah!" reaching out, you boop her on the nose.
Really, she's just too adorable.
You play catch with Lizzy for a few minutes before you're rudely interrupted, or as the case may be, torn out of the game.
By Okita grabbing you under both armpits and holding you up.
"Didn't know you can do that."
"Well, I don't really do it often, mostly to disguise myself."
"Mhm. Cute."
"Why am I not surprised you'd say that..."
With that, you're being paraded around in your winged child form, Okita making sure to show you off to each and every single person in the room, from Lizzy who is clapping happily over to Sarah and Kate who are just amused and Nora who is chuckling as she pats your head, closing with the Big Sister.
Who stares at you as you are idly flapping your wings as you're held in the air.
Then staring at Okita.
Okita stares back.
You have the feeling some kind of nonverbal communication is going on over here, but you can't possibly decipher it if that's the case.
Next thing you know, you're handed over, your back now pressed against the Big Sister's front.
It's actually kind of painful because of the armoring, but she does seem to be doing her best to make it comfortable as she's seeking out the body warmth you may or may not be giving off, so...
Oh, and Lizzy is currently clambering onto Big Guy's back, and she doesn't look like she's getting down anytime soon.
"So, uh, I guess you two wanna stick with us for the time being? We're on the way to some train station, a woman called Doctor Tenenbaum was asking for help via radio."
"Yay!" Lizzy exclaims. "The others told me about Auntie Tenny!"
Bis Sister isn't letting go of you, so you suppose that's settled, then.
On the way through the next rooms, you try to grow back to your usual size, but both the Big Sister, Okita and even Big Guy object, the betrayal of which has you pout as you clamber around to ride in the cage-like protruberance of your ride's armor situated abover her left shoulder, your weight seemingly reassuring her as the group passes through what looks like some kind of restaurant area.
"Uooh?"
"I have no idea where we're going, either, 'Mister Bubbles'."
"Uoh..."
"Skriieee."
"Ah, so the next train station should be right around the corner. It's honestly kind of a pain so much of the city is in ruins, you'd think it should be much easier to get to a station, but it just can't be helped, I suppose."
"Gabe," Sarah says, massaging her brow, "how do you make sense of what they're trying to say? I'm using my power, but somehow you're getting way more accurate results."
"Dunno, I just get them, you know?" You just hug Big Sister's helmet.
"Also, I just want you to know you're bullshit."
"Love you too, sis!" As you say it, though, you feel a shift going through your Big Sister's body language as she plucks you from your perch and holds you to her (still armored) chest again. "Whyyy?"
Before long, you arrive at the train station, taking an elevator to arrive in a lobby of some kind, a splicer running from your group when he sees it... and promptly dying when he triggers a series of traps embedded in the wall of the stairs he was taking.
Once the glass door opens up, Big Guy immediately gets over there, grapping and tearing the trapped rivets, as you now see them as, and stuffs them into a small compartment of his suit.
"Guooh..."
"Wait, they actually produced special trap rivets to be used with the rivet gunsß The hell, why didn't they just make it a general device by that point?"
"Ouh."
"True enough, true enough. Anyways, let's keep going."
Before long, you arrive before a closed ticket booth, another gruesomely mutated moron banging away at it... until Big Guy shoots him in the head with the laser rifle, instantly vaporizing it.
"Ouuh..."
"Don't worry, I totally get you wanted to test it. Kate was worse when she first got hers."
"Hey, I wasn't that bad!"
"Sure, you keep telling yourself that." Smiling at her attempt at a serious pout, you point for the booth. "Anyways, where's Tenebaum?"
"Uoohh..."
You don't really bother translating this time, seeing as how Big Guy goes ahead and presses a button next to where the idiot was standing, causing the booth's shutters to open and revealing...
An older woman in a room with a bunch of little girls.
"Ah, you are here. I already told Delta about everything I could, but he is not the wordiest of people, so please, let me explain. The children, the little ones- they are Little Sisters. They gather ADAM from the splicers around Rapture, originally designed with... with my help. I left the city, years ago, taking as many of them with me as I could, but lately young girls have been disappearing from the surface all around the ocean's coasts, so I knew someone was using my work again.
Sofia Lamb is using the little ones for... something, and she shot down my submarine when I arrived, so we are stranded in the city. We have been avoiding the splicers so far, but there are only so many of them I can heal-"
It is at this moment the flood of words coming from the woman behind the glass cuts off, as the screen behind her flickers to life, a woman with the most ridiculously cliche fiftes' haircut you have ever seen appearing inside it.
"Citizens of Rapture:" the speakers you only now realize are installed everywhere as the sound is blaring forth, "This is subject Delta. Behind that mask lies an enemy of the people without soul or sympathy."
The screen switches to a picture of Big Guy, or Delta, you suppose, before going on towards a shot of his hands, the greek symbol for Delta scratched onto the back of his left hand.
A look confirms it- yep, all matches up.
"It is a beast apart," the voice of a woman obviously thinking herself above evryone else continues, "and as Family, we must tear out its jaw and drive it back into the sea!"
And with that, the sirens begin to blare.
"Lamb will take this entire place apart to find you!"
"No shit, 'Auntie Tenny'."
Somehow, she looks more upset about kid you cursing like that than anything else in this situation. Heh.
"Alright, let's get this place prepared for murdering anything coming in. Raise a wall of ice and frost, that none may pass beyond this place!" You chant as you change positions again, reasoning that the safest place you could be would be in the Big Sister's shoulder cage.
Why does Lizzy seem to smug about riding on Delta's shoulder?
Anyways, with the way you just came from secured by your ice wall, you push against the cage. "Get us a little closer, I need some of that ice for something."
Softly crooning, Big Sister does as you tell her, letting you reach out and scrape a rough shape out of it, hefting the honestly oversized piece of ice you took for yourself as you keep on woring your magic on it while simultaneously releasing Yoshi, his purpose already clear and easily followed as he begins with taking a small canister probably filled with something flammable and swiftly takes a few of the materials you stuck in your zombies, applying his power to construct what looks to amount to a bomb.
Good enough for your purposes, anyways.
"Doctor Tenenbaum, I'd recommend coming with us if you want to live. If nothing else, my technology is your best bet for getting out of this city, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to pick your brain on the whole genetics angle this city seems to have taken."
"It is true then? You are not from Rapture at all?"
"Nope, technically we're extradimensional intruders that 'just so happened' to enter where Delta here revived. I don't really believe in fate, but coincidences like that happen more often than you'd think. Anyways, we'll have time to compare notes later. Let the grasp of winter coat all before me!"
Having heard them coming, you coat the area below the shaft you suddenly hear banging from, the misshapen 'splicers' bursting out of it pretty much all slipping and sliding before Yoshi's bomb impacts their group...
Well, bright side, now you kind of want to have a barbecue with the survivors, their smell just making you hungrier even when you know it's kind of disgusting.
It's a weird feeling.
"Make them dance, Mister Bubbles!" Lizzy exclaims, apparently happy about the living splicers in the group trying to beat the fire out. Delta, in response, just starts shooting at their legs.
Good guy, really.
"Okay guys," you begin when you hear loud crashing noises from the ice wall you raised, "they look to be breaking through slowly. Let's prepare to give them a-"
Once more you are rudely interrupted, this time by a fireball of all things being launched by one of the still living cocksocks ignoring the way his skin is burning off of him, your ride responding with a volley of fireballs of her own.
"Yeah, you show 'em! Anyways, let's give them a warm welcome. Okita, here, take this," you say, throwing the by now somewhat completed sword made of ice over to her, the edges sharp, but not so sharp as to shatter on the first impact.
Okita smiles, and it's the cutest thing ever.
The fight, such as it is, is short and brutal- these 'people' are strong, fast and have some kind of powers, most likely in the same vein that Delta's electricity works by, but there's only so much all of that can do.
As it happens, it can't save them from a row of highly motivated and well-armed killers, which just so happens what your group is. The first volley of laser fire, deliberately aimed low to maim over kill as best you can, takes out most of the first wave, your Big Sister throwing more of her fireballs instead as she seems to lack ranged weaponry entirely, instead relying on her powers to fight.
The second wave jostles through the hole the first one made with what you heavily suspect to be some form of fire power just as the last survivors of the first are being mowed down, Okita slamming her ice sword onto more than just a few limbs to keep them shut down as concentrated firepower is poured onto the splicers too stupid to run, one woman with a bulging foot having become a tumourus mirror of the unmutated one on her other side making it about halfway and spraying spittle and curses as she swings her wrench over her head, but alas, Delta steps forth and impales her on his turning drill before she can do anything to Lizzy's vocal enjoyment, her torso sporting an unhealthily sized hole in short order.
Those upgrades earlier paid off, you'd say.
Standing over a field of corpses and those about to become such, you smile from your perch above your Big Sister's shoulder.
On a side note, you didn't exactly expect Lizzy to jump off Delta's shoulder and start to to extract blood from the dead bodies, but hey, she isn't draining the living ones, so you don't particularly mind.
"Let's get the living ones eaten before we do anything else, everyone."
Admittedly, you didn't expect your self-appointed guardian to go and personally grab your share of splicers and drag the towards your position so you can feed without moving out of there, but hey, again, no complaints.
Delta, as you're now calling him, is somewhat hesitant to actually take his helmet off, but a bit of persuasion soon has him reveal his actual face.
Honestly, you kinda expected worse from what you've been seeing of Rapture so far.
"There we are, that wasn't so bad, was it?"
Still not 'allowed' to get yourself back to your usual size, you nevertheless go on ahead and cut your wrist with your claws, immediately causing your Big Sister standing nearby to go into a mild panic until you assure her it's all alright when she sees your blood and how the wound isn't immediately closing, but soon enough go ahead and feed your blood to Delta.
It's unfortunate how this whole process still does take at least some concentration, leaving you unable to do anything more than have light conversations, but hey, you're in good company while the girls are off taking anything useable apart and throwing it into the manufactory you put in the corner the shaft the splicers came out of is inside, coincidentally blocking it even beyond the ice wall you planted inside when you all made camp.
Incidentally, the little girls Tenenbaum seems to be taking care of are a little off to the side, playing with Lizzy now that she's done drinking the blood she gathered as Tenenbaum is preparing some food for the human ones.
"Mmhm."
"Yeah, you really sound different without the helmet."
Upgrade Delta
Streamlined Armor: Okay, so this thing has a bunch of metal panels slapped onto a diver's suit, but you could totally replace them with more comprehensive specially made armor panels that don't weigh much more (4 points)
Overhaul Metal: You could probably use the manufactory to create a better alloy to make all the metal parts of her armor out of. While it may not look all that different afterwards, it should improve its defensive properties (3 points)
Overhaul Suit: The diving suit used as a base does work decent enough, it's tough and keeps her safe in most environments, but you could totally improve upon it; maybe not by replacing it entirely, as you just don't have the materials to make an entirely new suit out of some super cloth that could still have her operational in the ocean, but lining the inside with rubber to insulate it and offer a second layer of protection probably wouldn't go amiss (3 points)
Comfification: The suit is meant to be worn for extended periods of time, why hasn't this been done already? Add an interior lining of decently comfy fibers, at least (1 point)
"Okay, so you don't remember your name, but you remember you have to protect the Little Sisters?"
"Giiih."
Honestly, you like the way she's softening her voice for you now that she's getting used to the whole talking thing.
"I see. In that case, would you mind if I just gave you a name? It's getting a little tiring just referring to you as Big Sister all the time."
She croons at you again.
"Oh, and would you like me to take a closer look at your suit? I'm sure I could improve on it somehow."
"Giih?"
"Yes, I'd need you to take it off. Just for a bit, and I'm sure we won't be attacked anytime soon with how hard Delta has been going at it."
Just as you say that, the sound of laser shots rings through the room, the Big Daddy on guard duty eagerly decimating any splicers daring to even come near where you're resting.
Even so, it does take some more talking to her in a reassuring tone until she agrees, and well...
You suppose you see why she was so hesitant earlier.
"You look very pretty, big sis!"
A single shining smile has her calm down. Really, why aren't you using your child form more often? It's kind of fun.
"Could you give me the helmet, too?"
"Skiii!"
"I'm sure you're very pretty under it, too. You don't need to be so self-conscious about it."
"Giiiiih!"
"Alright, I won't look. Just leave it here and hide behind the corner?" Good thing you're semi-hidden behind the manufactory; you have no idea how some of the others (mostly Tenenbaum, whom you've been leaving as is for the time being so you can make a point of your technological and combatorial superiority in the meantime) would react to seeing a Big Sister in that kind of getup.
"So, first off, I can do everything this armor already does, just better..."
The 'group huddle' you were planning on ends up with you sitting on Okita's lap inside the train sitting in the station, the seats a bit battered from time and disuse, but otherwise fine enough for her, Kate, Nora and Sarah to be comfortable.
"Okay, let's talk about this whole thing. What do you think about Rapture, the situation we've found ourselves in and where we're going right now?"
"This Lamb woman is a pretty obvious cult leader type," Sarah is the first to say, crossing her arms behind her back. "She's getting the whole rabble under her thumb despite their obvious insanity and all, even if I doubt she's really as in control as she likes to pretend... or think herself. You could probably do a better job if you had access to the broadcast system."
Kate stretches unnecessarily, making a show of her cleavage as she does. "I kinda like it here. Lots of shit to shoot at and the local crazy cat lady even sent us more. I don't particularly care where we go from here, though Delta seems like a solid guy. Wouldn't mind helping him out."
Everyone looks at Nora, who cracks a smile. "The one thing I'm most invested in, personally, is stopping whoever has been abducting girls to turn them into Little Sisters, which seems to be Lamb, from what Tenenbaum told me while you were busy. I don't care how she ends up, just so long as she does. Also, the kids Tenenbaum has with her are pretty cute, though I think it'll be really hard to take care of them properly as we go on. Having some kind of base to work from would be nice, if Lamb wasn't almost guaranteed to do everything in her power to destroy it."
You tilt your head, but Okita just shrugs behind you as she keeps a tight grasp on your upper body. "I like it here. Not as much bullshit."
Ah yes, Okita and her... issues... with the way most people communicate.
"Alright then, so to sum up my own opinion... I want to take over this city, see to it all the girls taken to it are taken care of properly and plunder as much superscience bullshit as I can. Luckily enough, all our goals seem to be compatible; it all seems to hinge on Lamb. She is the one controlling the splicers, she organizes the abductions and keeps the city isolated and she seems to have an issue with Delta. Our best bet is to get to her, take her out and work with what's left of the city after we're done with that."
And that's that, you suppose.
"Now excuse me, but I think Jasmine is looking for me, and I'd really rather not wait until she starts looking."
"SKREECH!"
"Speak of the devil. Come on, let's go interrogate Tenenbaum while we're at it, she seems like our best bet for more details on just about everything."
Doctor Tenenbaum is already prepared and ready for what you all know was coming. In fact, she made sure to put the kids to sleep and all so you wouldn't be interrupted as you all sit together in the train station.
"So, Doctor Tenenbaum. You know what is going on in this city the best out of all of us, so it would be quite nice if you were to share with the class."
"What do you wish to know?" The woman asks, her accent a welcome change from what you've been having to interpret lately.
"Well, we already got the rough idea; Sofia Lamb is pulling some kind of cult leader shtick on the splicers dwelling in the city, using them for her own ends. Similarly, she's been organizing the abductions and transformations of little girls into Little Sisters and for some reason, she has a hateboner for delta here," you explain as you reach out from your cage perch, patting the big armored guy on the shoulder.
"What I personally would like some more explanation on is who exactly you are, why you're here and what you're doing, along with anything more you can tell us about Lamb."
"Very well. To begin with, allow me to introduce myself; I am Doctor Brigid Tenenbaum, geneticist and originator of a large part of the nightmare that Rapture has become."
"Well, if that doesn't sound promising."
"To elaborate, I was the one to first discover ADAM and the uses it had to change the human genome, overwriting it and granting its host almost supernatural powers. You have already seen it in action, when Delta took a dose of electrobolt, haven't you? I admit I could not see everything, but the camera in his brain did allow me a few glimpses into your journey so far."
You just give her a look.
"I have all the necessary codes to see through it because I was part of the first research into ADAM, I designed most plasmids on the market today. It was me that first created the Little Sisters and while I was not as directly involved in the design process of the Big Daddies, I still have all my old employee benefits from working with Fontaine Futuristics. I have since come to regret many things I did, but first and foremost do I regret allowing the Little Sisters to be created; exploited."
"That's nice and all, but what do the Little Sisters do, exactly? I've gotten the message they're this hugely important thing for everyone in Rapture, but I don't suppose they're just a special version of splicer."
Tenenbaum chuckles. "No... No, they are not. When the wonders of ADAM were first revealed, the demand for more was enormous. So much so that we needed to find a way to mass-produce it, which eventually succeeded in the Little Sisters. The Little Ones were the only hosts capable of sufficient production once the sea slugs were implanted in them, requiring ADAM-dense body fluids to kickstart production. It is why they are so important for Rapture, why the Big Daddies were employed to protect them and why Lamb is using them."
"So, ADAM is the big thing everything needs to work, the cool power-granting mcguffin, and everyone wants it. Cool."
"Except it is not that easy, of course. ADAM, when overused, causes uncontrollable mutations, requiring more and more ADAM to sustain itself as the host body keeps on mutating. You have seen this in the splicers you have dispatched so far. ADAM sickness is what ultimately led to the downfall of Rapture. And the Little Sisters themselves are like slaves, toiling away and producing ADAM for whatever ends Lamb is working towards. I have been working towards undoing the mutations induced in the Little Ones, and I have a way to do so, but... There are simply too many. It is what always brought me back from apathy; they are monsters, yes, but they are still human, still little girls underneath. They play and sing and smile at me."
"So your whole stake in this are the Little Sisters, and Lamb keeps on churning them out. I suppose the Big Sisters are some variation of Little Sisters, then, grown up and reconfigured for other tasks?"
You give Jasmine a hug around the base of her helmet.
"So it would seem, yes. To be honest, I have little idea how the process functions; ADAM can work in entirely unexpected ways once a human being is more ADAM than human. It is why the Big Daddies can still function inside their suits, for example."
"I'll definitely want to pick your brain about ADAM and the science behind it later, but for now, any idea why Lamb is so laser-focused on Delta?"
"He is an old Big Daddy. Very old, bound to a single Little Sister. Eleanor Lamb, Sofia's daughter. It is, I believe, the reason she hates him."
"I don't suppose she volunteered her daughter to become a Little Sister, then?"
"Quite unlikely, that. Without finding Eleanor, Subject Delta is bound to die, his body simply shutting down in response to her absence. It is how the first generation of Big Daddies was bound to their charges."
"Uooooohhnnn..."
"You're saying you felt that, and it stopped being an issue when I gave you blood?" You think for a moment.
"The process of thralling has a wide variety of curative and strengthening effects. It heals damage to the body, removes addictions and even 'fixes' imperfections the subject perceives in themselves, from what I've been able to find out. it could very well be that Delta's 'bond' to Eleanor was one such faulty aspect of his existence and was thus removed... or maybe just neutered. Made ineffective."
"Ouh..."
"Of course we're still coming for her. Even if Eleanor isn't required for your survival, if she is still sane and in a state to be, there is nothing saying we can't. Her mother needs to be taken out either way."
"Skiiii?"
"Yes, in fact, it's quite likely she is the one that's been using the grown Little Sisters as Big Sisters. It kind of shows that she doesn't have an industrial base to work with anymore, either; if all she has her people equip you with is a diving suit with a few pieces of metal sewn onto it, she obviously doesn't have the capability to produce custom-made armor, considering you are essentially her enforcers."
"About that," Tenenbaum interrupts you, looking towards where the manufactory churns away recycling any and all resources you could get, Okita patting it like a good pet as she keeps guard, entirely uninterested in the whole talky thing, "would you mind if I asked a few questions of my own?"
"Before we get into my particular secrets, Doctor, a one quick question. That camera in Delta's head, does it get audio or is it visuals only? I don't imagine it'd have good reception inside a skull."
"It sends only a visual signal, yes. It is why I have been obscuring my lip movement from Delta this whole time."
Blinking, you rapidly recall the placement she's been keeping to up to now, her hand movements and the way she's been talking. She's right, she's been ensuring nobody spying through Delta can read her lips.
Not that you did any different as soon as she mentioned a camera, though, just in case.
"I supoose we'll be alright then so long as Delta doesn't look directly at anyone talking, then."
"Uooohn." With that, Delta summarily turns around, simply looking away from the group entirely.
"Guess that works, too," you mutter,Delta just raising a hand, thumb stretched upwards. Good, so he can hear you.
"Alright then, what would you like to know, Doctor?"
"To begin with, you have shown several unexplainable abilities so far from what I have been able to see, both through Delta and myself. What is this machine you have brought from nothing twice now, and how do these corpses move?" Tenenbaum asks, poiting at first the manufactory, then at the undead you have trailing your path, currently stationed around the train station and standing guard silently, having gotten to your full capacity of ten zombies easily enough by using the dead splicers.
What? they had to go somewhere.
"Magic." At her look, you fold your hands and give your best impression of smug superiority.
As a ten year old. From inside the shoulder cage. You have no idea if that makes it come across better or just makes you look ridiculous, but you do it all the same.
Kate, Nora and Sarah are all holding back laughter, or actually going out of their way to show it in the case of the two vampires among them, so you'll just take it as a win.
"No, really, I do magic. More specifically, many of my abilities work by warping reality in specific ways. It's just a natural thing for me. If vampires are a thing in this dimension, you may draw a few comparisons there, in fact. Beyond that, I have a wide variety of outright supernatural powers ranging from conjuring ice and animating dead bodies, as you have already seen, over to manifesting the captured souls of those I have eaten and everything in between."
"What is your purpose here in Rapture?" She continues, trying to shake you by rapidly changing topics without a bat of the eye. A typical interrogation tactic.
Funnily enough, one you've used yourself every now and then in the past, though not often.
"Several things. For reference, I randomly jumped into this dimension; I had no idea where we would end up. My goal, now that we have a reasonably complete picture of what is going on down here, is to remove Sofia Lamb from wherever she is, take charge of the city at large one way or the other and, preferrably, do so while helping Delta rescue Eleanor and keep the Sisters in general as safe as possible, either undoing their transformations or ensuring they can live good lifes despite their transformations, depending on which is more realistic. I believe, Doctor Tenenbaum, that we can help each other, after all."
"How does that machine work and what does it do?"
Internally, you sigh. This is bound to take a while...
"Alright everyone," you say, clapping your hands after far too long of being interrogated by Tenenbaum, "let's take a little time to prepare for the journey ahead before we do anything else. I'd like to take this whole place apart for a bit and make full use of the manufactory, if nothing else, and I think everyone in our group could benefit from me imbuing some of my own power in them save for the children. Because I really, really don't want them to stay awake for twenty hours a day, they're enough of a handful as they are."
"In that case, I will take inventory of our supplies- we still need food and water," Tenenbaum says.
"Sure, just keep in mind the process takes a few hours. I'll want you to explain as much about ADAM and its uses as you can while we do it, too."
"I'll take Delta and the others to take everything apart then, and take care of any splicers we can find in the area," Kate volunteers, Sarah nodding along. Looks like everyone has something to busy themselves with, then.
It takes a bit of coaxing again, as Jasmine is still hesitant to take off her helmet, but before long you're held to her chest as she does so, turned away so you cannot see her as you hold a hand out behind you for her to drink from, doing the best you can to keep a conversation going between you and herself.
From what you can tell, Jasmine actually does want to talk with you, to converse no matter what about, the human contact like a drug to her mind after months or years of just following her brainwashing's directives, but she's also cripplingly incapable of really doing so, meaning it falls to you to keep blabbering away until she finds the words or 'words' to answer you.
At least you don't need her to talk to understand the embarrassed happiness whenever you throw in a few compliments or pat the arms hugging you to towards her, and before long, you have a new thrall.
"So you can choose up to two 'powers' to convey as you do this?"
"Ones that are compatible with human biology and mental capacity, but yes. Are there any you would be particularly interested in, then? I'm fairly open on that end, and you should have a fairly complete list from your little interrogation earlier."
"Yes, I have it here," Tenenbaum answers, pulling out the notepad she actually scribbled everything you could tell her down on. "I would like to compare the electricity power you described with the plasmid electrobolt, and being entirely bulletproof regardless of the physicalities involved seems like the most practical and simultaneously fascinating choice, though perhaps a sense enhancement of some kind would open new perspectives, too- whether the general enhancements you mentioned or the heat-based sense modifications. Several of the powers to influence others' minds bear similarity to plasmids like hypnotize or its siblings, so I would not be averse to testing them out, either... The complete transformations into animals would be interesting, but likely impractical given our situation..."
Right, she seems like she'll be at this all day unless you go ahead and stop her. Guess you'll just have to decide yourself after all...
Train Upgrades
Manufactory Compartment: It won't be easy, but you could basically add a compartment to the train consisting of a single large manufactory, with a little extra work to let it rotate in place so you can always access any parts of it (5 points)
Storage Compartment: Sticking your supplies into zombies works fine and all, but it's both kinda unsanitary and a bit of a pain. Uninstall all the seats and miscellaneous crap inside one of the train's compartments, then add a few racks and similar to turn it into a proper storage compartment (2 points)
Comfy Compartment: What's on the tin. Replace the seating with a few wide comfy beds and a bunch of pillows, proceed to bounce the little girls on them for fun. (2 points)
Armor: This thing was meant to be used in a civilian capacity, and it shows. With the city in the state it is, however, you'd best add some serious layered armor to every part of it. (3 points)
"Uoooh?"
"Over here, just staple it on."
"Ooohh..."
Delta is quick to obey your commands, bumping the long, concave-shaped piece of armor into the train's outside and using the rivet gun to ensure it stays on there, the armor-piercing ammunition you made for him just enough to make it through the steel alloy you made them out of.
"When you're done, I should have the rest ready to armor up the other side. Top and bottom will be a little more involved, so we're leaving them for last when everyone else can help."
"Uooh."
"No, seriously, just wait. Pretty sure you couldn't even get on the roof, I'm planning on having Jasmine do that part."
"Ooohh..."
"You know exactly what you did, mister. I mean, I'm not complaining, but you went and brought all of the girls here, now you listen to my instructions precisely, lest you somehow manifest more of them out of thin air."
"Uooh."
"I'm keeping my eyes on you, Delta, make no mistake."
Gesturing towards your eyes with two fingers and over to his helmet with the same, you promptly turn around, typing a few instructions into the manufactory and picking up a piece of machinery, a part of a manufactory furnace, to be precise, and lift it over your head, the chunk of metal bigger than yourself, ferrying it over to the place you're assembling the whole thing.
Jasmine is already waiting, snatching it from you.
"Sgiiih."
"Come on, I'm way stronger than I look, even like this. Anyways, just put it over to the rest, the machine will take care of the rest."
Leaving Jasmine to her part of 'making sure you don't hurt yourself' with a snort, you poke your head into one of the compartments, just in time to see Kate and Sarah rip a row of seats out of the ground.
"Everything going alright in here?"
"Just fine."
"Doing alright."
"We're a bit short on fabric in the manufactory, but the seats will hopefully be enough," Nora adds, manually nailing a bedframe made of metal to everything nearby.
"What are you doing, I can just make another rivet gun."
"Oh, didn't think of that. Yeah, if you would, that'd be nice. I'm strong enough to drive the nails through, but it's taking an awfully long time. Anyways, yes, we should have enough fibers when you factor in this and the next compartment. Worst come to worst, we'll just have to reduce the teddy bear numbers we're putting in here."
"Good, good." You could go and check in on where Okita and Tenenbaum are taking turns watching over the gaggle of children you suddenly found yourself taking care of, but...
The last time you approached the, what, fifteen, sixteen little girls, they kind of... swarmed you. Apparently, everyone wanted to play with 'Big Brother Angel'. You're happy they like you, but it's just a little overwhelming while in your current size.
Actually, you're pretty sure it'd be overwhelming no matter your current size, come to think of it. Little Sisters can get scarily motivated around you for some reason.
Experiments into creating ADAM are... interesting, to say the least.
On the one hand, getting some examples was easy enough- you have a whole load of Little Sisters on hand, as well as a seemingly infinite amount of splicers, and though not all of them seem to 'smell tasty', as they put it, it's really just a matter of time and effort before someone manages to shoot something that fits the bill.
Once Lizzy and one of the other girls are presented with the ADAM-rich corpses, they happily stab their syringes inside them, seemingly without caring for where it enters so long as it can get at some body fluids. After about a minute of that, they drink the now distilled ADAM with somehow vaguely sexual gulping noises resounding just like their usual Little Sister voices.
Moments later, as they're happily running up to you, they vomit up a viscuous, green liquid, something quickly caught by Tenenbaum using a pair of bowls.
"This is ADAM. When refined, it is capable of becoming any kind of cell, including unnatural ones, as I told you. Why did you want these samples, anyways?"
"Oh, you're about to see. Though I fear this will be a lot of trial and error to get just right."
With that, you take the ADAM off her hands and march back over to the train station, now empty of Rapture's omnipresent debris after being thoroughly harvested and resembling a completely blank room more than anything else as well as the location of most of your more passive forces... including the zombies you've made to help keep watch.
Zombies that you're about to put to better use.
Ordering them to Change and twist, morph and mutate, let my will be done! twice, you watch as the two groups of five each you've divided them into merge into one big pile of undead biomass.
"Alright, step one done. The next part will be the bigger issue; growing an internal sack of some sort we will be filling with ADAM, then telling them to refill the thing whenever it isn't full."
"Is it really that easy?" Tenenbaum asks, subconsciously reaching out and patting Lizzy's head.
"I wouldn't call it easy. It'll take me a lot of repetition before it works properly, not to mention the speed at which it refills is kind of slow, but yes, at least technically, we're about to have an unlimited amount of ADAM. Honestly, if I could get a sore throat, I'd probably get one at some point of doing this.
Anyways, once we're all done with that, how do we actually go from ADAM to plasmids and tonics and whatever other 'fun' we can get up to?"
"Normally, I would say you bring it to a Gatherer's Garden; they automatically refine it into present patterns compatible with all human genomes. And quite a few others, for that matter."
After a snobbish sniff, as if to say that's the least to be epected of her work, Tenenbaum shakes her head. "But if we want to continue research, we would need a lab, or some equipment at least. Minor changes can be made using the insides of a Gatherer's Garden, if we must, but I cannot promise proper results that way, not to mention the general lack of proper scientific method as I would work."
"Understandable, of course. Would you please keep on talking about research? I think it might be the only thing keeping me sane while I keep on working at this. Change and twist, morph and mutate, let my will be done!"
"The tragedy of ADAM," she says sadly, shaking her head, "forever doomed to drive everyone touching it mad."
The process is long and arduous, but eventually, after long, long last, the Little Sisters you have sitting around playing with a few of the teddies Nora and the others printed in the manufactory, already sniffing around confusedly for a while every now and then, get up and grab their syringes, all heading towards one of the two fleshy masses of dead meat and stabbing into it happily.
"Good. We're finally done."
"Why aren't you modifying the other one?" Tenenbaum questions, watching the whole process with a mix of bittersweet happiness and trepidation.
"Oh, that one's been producing pure ADAM from almost the start. I just kept on modifying the other one so the Little Ones have enough to eat."
Tenenbaum seems to almost flinch when you use her own nickname for the Little Sisters as a whole. Interesting.
"Anyways, I suppose we don't really need the pure ADAM one, considering the girls produce more than the abomination can anyways and we have to keep them fed somehow, so I'll just shift this one, too. Would you mind gathering up the stuff they're about to throw up?"
"Of course. Before I forget it, though, a man called over radio while you were busy earlier. A certain Sinclair. He said he is stuck at Ryan Amusements and is asking for help in fleeing from this city; as the location itself lies in the direction I suspect Lamb's headquarters to be located in, I thought we might want to pay him a visit."
"Oh, sure. Just wait a bit until we get everything loaded up and the Atlantic Express will be ready to go."
And true to your word, all you need is for delta to come and help you by carrying the now two abominations of faintly bubbling flesh swarmed by Little Sisters filling their little stomachs with ADAM fluids into one of the compartments not used for anything else (only one of them loses a few bits you slap onto it again in short order), along with a few commands to your manufactory so it shits out all the useable material you intend to take with you still inside it in the form of easily transported brick, where applicable, before you breathe it back in and you're about ready to go, your robots already populating one of the other unused compartments and everyone else filing into wherever they're supposed to go.
Next stop, Ryan Amusements!
