Rapture

“The worst thing anyone can do when they get caught in a riptide is to fight it. That only tires you out and makes it so that drowning becomes almost a total certainty. The best thing you can do is to lay back and just let things happen until the current spits you out. Then you swim sideways for a bit then back to shore. That is how you survive a ripcurrent people.”
- Any and all Oceanic safety pamphlets.

The last thing I had learned before I had gone onto the boat was replaying like the recorders that some people had bought. I couldn’t buy them because the only ones I wanted to hear my voice were my beautiful wife Jennifer and my lovely daughter Alrianne Renault. Ally was the reason I had gone to Rapture, there was no other real way to save her from her disease. It had turned my little girl from a bouncing, active little hell raiser into a bedridden, weakened shell of her old self. I sure hope Ryan knew what he did to me as he died, I really wish he had gotten that damn skull of his caved in with his fancy ass nine iron and the last thing he saw was the atrocities he had committed as the de facto leader of Rapture.

Damn, I probably just pissed away a good attempt at getting off on the right… hoof… (I mentally shudder at the mental connection) with the locals. So operating per the usual way things worked on Earth, I had little over an hour or so before the guard showed up and took me into custody. I just wish I could use my plasmids again. I mean hypnotize would have been perfect just pop her with that little green orb and bam she would just have to calm down instantly. Seriously I should still have the power, flick my hoof and bam…

…

…

Holy shit its right there… Damn… This means all my plasmids and gene tonics are back. Awesome! I can actually do stuff now. First off though I just have to lay back and let things ride since killing the guards or even wounding them would get me on the collective bad side. I didn’t feel nearly as indestructible as I usually did and even with all my powers they would likely outnumber me. The battle would be epic but I would fall rather quickly. I opened up the mental gene tonic that allows me to recollect what my Genes where manipulated with. Electric Bolt 3, Insect Swarm 3, Incinerate! 3, Winters Grasp 3, Telekinesis, Hypnotize 3 and the Cyclone Trap Plasmids. My genes had been loaded up with combat and Security gene tonics Armored Shell 2, Electric Flesh 2, Human Inferno 2, Frozen Field 2, and Photographers Eye 2. My Engineering had Clever inventor, Prolific Inventor, Safecracker 2, and Vending Expert 2. Physical Tonics Include Sports Boost 2, Scrounger, Natural Camouflage, Medical Expert 3, Extra Nutrition 3, and Booze Hound. I was a designed for security with little to no budget. I was a little sad that some of the Tonics I had seemed a little useless now that I didn’t have my weapons but whatever I had what I needed.

I could probably get a job as an artist again since the idyllic setting I found myself in was really something wonderful. I wanted to bring it back in a painting or a photo back to my family… My family.

The sudden realization I had when I realized I was never going to see them again was rivaled with the reaction I had had when first seeing that Rapture was a gargantuan city that was sunken into the ocean. I had actually sent the cure Tenenbaum had made from the ADAM from a single collector slug. That was the cheaper than any of the other plasmids or gene tonics and cured a fatal disease. There was no chance of ADAM addiction with a single, small dose. I was planning on leaving when I had chosen the next to take over the business but there was not a single one that could handle it. So I had stayed a few months until Ryan shut down the systems.

I scuffed the side of my head with my hoofpad, which for something I used to walk was really soft. There would be a few guards here in a few moments and I didn’t want to start something stupid when they came around. I chose the least intrusive of plasmids, Telekinesis, and sat on my butt watching the road that led into town. Thirty minutes of sitting and scratching lines in the dirt with my physics breaking hoof, now hard, in random swirl patterns. I was beginning the fortieth of these swirls in a big pattern as I lost myself in memories. The flashes of guns, seized shipments of contraband, and the dull smell of cigarettes and alcohol played about my eyes when I see a rainbow arch over a hill towards me. Combat instincts kick in and my hoof is sending little arcs of lightning into the ground, though after a few seconds I notice the trajectory would send it into the ground a measure of feet in front of me. A moment later and the blur strikes ground in front of me, surprisingly light for something going that speed. The dust it kicks up blinds me temporarily and as I attempt to wipe it from my eyes I am struck hard in the face, splitting my lip and managing to knock me off my feet.
A short tumble sets me to lying on the grass with my eyes red and my blood boiling for a good fight. That intense desire is shattered totally when I find my assailant to be a sky blue Pegasus female with magenta eyes staring at me with anger burning fiercely behind them.

I couldn’t find the whole thing less than adorable so I started chuckling. She gets madder and I lose it, I just simply begin to cut loose and guffaw, like an idiot. To me, the fact this little pony wants to fight me right in my face makes me laugh. I was surprised that her strike managed bloody my lip but that was already healing from the Adam coursing through my veins.

Her anger is literally burning at such a level I feel that if I was any less durable than a hunk of leather I would have been afraid for my life. As such I just barely manage to contain my laughter before the butter colored Pegasus and four other horse things gallop up and gather behind the blue one with the one who owns the area in the far back.
It seems her frightful response to me has angered her friends here. The look on her face seems to waver between fear and curiosity. I get my laughter back under my control.

“Is something funny, tough guy? The blue one with the prismatic hair seethed at me.

“Yeah, it’s you, you little bugger. That was a good hit but if you had followed through a bit more you could have broken my jaw.” I say as I wipe the blood off my, now healed, lower lip. Her body tightens as if she is straining to not hit me.
“Since she seems to be done, I have to ask all of you, does any… pony, else want to get a free shot off at me. I can take…” I don’t get to finish as I hear a sickening crack followed with a view of the sky and then the grass near the base of the trees. The trip ends just as it began with me slamming hard and heavily into the earth. I pull myself up and groan as I feel the ribs shift and begin tearing up my flesh. I reach into my one and only external pouch, pulling a red and white aid tin from it. The many pills and medicines roll about as I jam the needle of EVE enhanced VIM & VIGOR tonic into my suits intake valve.

The world explodes into light as the medicine sends everything into overdrive; every little thing burns as if I had been locked inside the boilers of Hephaestus for what feels like hours. The world blurs back to reality and I stumble forward. The painkillers are supposed to be taken first to numb that to tolerable levels but I didn’t have time for that. In a few seconds the ADAM in me acted in the ultimate form of keeping me alive. The ribs had been pulled to their places in a few seconds by forced musculature action as ADAM reacted to the EVE which reacted to the body’s desire to not die.
I don’t know the specifics so I just leave it at Tonic overcharges the natural reflex of healing to the point of ascending the barrier between Humans and Iron Daddies for a few seconds. I spit blood out of my mouth and smile.
“Okay now that that’s out of the way I would like to introduce myself to you ladies.” I pause as they give me dumbfounded looks, except for the pink one who seemed to consistently smile at me in a fashion I felt bordering on elation and horror.

“My name is…” I do a little mock bow and pause for Dramatic Effect,

“Richard Smith. And you six might be…?”