Chapters "I am Andrew Ryan, and I am here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
'No,' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.' 'No,' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.' 'No,' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.'
I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...
Rapture.
A city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small.
And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city, as well."
My dreams, or more along the lines of my memories, were always the same. I wake up in my house, cook something and get ready to go to work at my own security company. We had the guns and our combat splicers had to make sure to not overdo the ADAM intake. I myself had plenty of gene tonics and Plasmids at my disposal. With them coursing through my body I had the security of several of the more lucrative businesses in my pocket.
Rapture was my city. Then Ryan had to shut down surface contact, cutting me off from my family. My business folded and I joined up with the smugglers hoping to get out of this city before it went to shit… I failed, miserably. This morning was different in my dreams. The day I woke up and couldn’t eat because of the adrenaline pumping through my body. I grabbed my weapons and prepared as Andrew Ryan’s speech came on over the television. I walked down the halls and prepared for the final assault. The battle to secure a chance at freedom for all of those who wanted to leave the city, the last little bit before the Fontaine gunrunners had put in enough to get out. The thing was Ryan was jumpy and for good reason. He had ADAM pumping splicers to deal with as they try to push out of the poor districts and move on up and away from the hell that Ryan confined us in.
The battle was laughable. We struck and Ryan struck back even harder. The Iron Daddies stormed the field and slaughtered many of the lesser armed masses. I stood my own and put a few of them down before one of the dirtiest things had happened. Ryan let loose a deranged Alpha Daddy to put down the revolution. That thing just didn’t stop, and it pumped out plasmids faster and harder than I could. I remember that thing slamming me with lightning and smacking me down with his gun. I was lying in fresh blood and guts with a doctor standing over my broken body.
“This one is still alive, and seems to be a perfect specimen for the Guardian Procedure.” The Chinese man said as another shadow steps up and looks down at me. The shadowy figure leans into the light and I see Ryan’s face leering down at me.
“You parasites think that I will just step back and let you lead the rest of your huddled masses, infested with ticks and lice, down into to my city, this Eden, to spread your filth?” he says as he takes a drag of the cigarette “NO, You have failed and instead of an easy death I’m going to make you into the thing you hate the most, a symbol of my might and a valued addition to the industry. Have a good rest, it’s the last little bit you are going to have for a long while.” The doctor, Suchong, I remember that name, leans in and injects me with enough tranquilizer to put down ten men.
“Come on daddy get up. Its late.” I groan and wave my arm at the sound. This dream is torture. I cant even sleep without hearing my little girl.
“Come on I want breakfast Mr. Bubbles.” Wait, there was only one thing in Rapture named Mr. Bubbles and I never dreamed of being called that. I open my eyes inside the slightly boxy helmet on my head and blink away sleep. The green light now bouncing around my head will wake up anyone in the same position. The wall I had been seated on let me push up of from my seated position, grab the rivet gun and finally offer my hand to the Little Sister that danced around me so I could walk her around the area and find her an ADAM filled corpse and some food maybe something more than just the canned foods around in the old boxes. The little monster that used to be a family’s little girl deserved to be at least treated like a person… I was the monster here, unable to voice what I wanted to say as the mental conditioning and splicing was restructuring everything I was. The pain was immeasurable but that was just how things were. The day was new here in Rapture and there was ADAM to collect. I find the cans of food sitting in a storage room of a desolate restaurant and after a quick pull the Little Sister is scarfing down some food. She smiles at me and I feel like a human once again.
“Come on Mr. Bubbles, I can smell Angels nearby. I need to fill my tummy with ADAM.” She says as she skips away. I follow to the next room which is rather bright compared to other places in rapture due to the massive wall of glass that separates the water from Rapture. There are corpses all over the room some seated as if placed with one sprawled over a pile of gas tanks and near a sparking turret. The view of the sea canyon is wonderful and the view is actually a pale blue thanks to the sun sitting high in the sky. The lights flicker again while I guide the Little Sister to the corpse leaning against the wall. I stand nearby next to the pile of canisters and spy a pile of dead Splicers piled in a burning pile of wreckage. The gas line nearby jets intense flames onto the charred corpses burning them beyond recognition. I turn to the girl to see her progress when I hear the footsteps echo from behind me. I whirl around to see a man standing there with one of the make-do grenade launchers made of pipes and tin cans.
His left hand neatly surrounded by a halo of dust as he twitches the hand towards the pile of burning bodies and flings them about the room. His Telekinesis spends him and he pulls out a syringe of EVE to repower, this time his hand begins to crack open and reveal a red light that seems to be his flesh made molten. I pull out a proximity mine and fling it at him. He shoots a grenade that is obviously going to miss me so I just push the Little Sister out of the blast radius. It lands behind me and I look back as I hear canisters rolling around. I have just enough time to look at the fuse burn into the makeshift explosive. I tuck myself around the Little Sister and brace as the massive explosion sets the room on fire. I am still able to shakily stand so I level my rivet gun at the splicer, depressing the lever that primes the gun and firing. The man deftly dodges the deadly darts as the rip through the air towards him. He drops the launcher and pulls out a shot gun and rushes in past my guard to unload several lightning coated shots into me that send my muscles to spasm uselessly. He pulls the trigger to find it's empty and throws it away to pull out a Tommy gun. These bullets bounce off of my mostly armored body and he looks me in the porthole as he snaps his fingers and my world becomes a blur of pain and endless rage.
He is close enough for me to smash his face with the side of my gun. He drops the gun and smiles as bees begin to crawl from his hand and he sets them upon me. I can no longer hear or see much and the pain is immense. I begin to smash at everything in reach to remove the insects from my body and rush through a puddle to do so. I feel the world spin as the man calmly loads a revolver with a green painted revolver chamber. The shotgun is loaded as well with orange buckshot shells. I roar and press forward until the first shot leaps from the shotgun and the air around me is torn with fire and small bits of molten metal. The puddle ignites and I realize I am currently falling into gasoline and oil mix, basically napalm. I try to stand and receive another blast from the shotgun. The world is edged in darkness now as I struggle to drag my nearly dead carcass from the flames. The pain nearly drives me into unconsciousness but I cant physically give up trying to stop the man from harming the little sister. I drag my battered broken body through the flames to see the man lift up the girl and I, either in a fit of sheer tenacity or stupidity, fling myself forward and pull at his ankle. He drops the girl in surprise and I strain to call out some form of command for her to flee.
The man skitters away with the gun trained on me as he runs around the corner he first appeared around. I groan at the now overwhelming pain. Nearly blacking out as blood almost pours from my tattered suit and onto the ground.
I try to tell her that she will be fine and everything is going to be ok but all I do is moan in a way I hope sounds reassuring. She gasps and hides behind me as I pull myself onto my knees as I turn around to see the man calmly striding towards us. His left hand arcing lightning to the ground, and the right holding the pistol loosely with a sad expression on his face, which, even though I had cracked his face with the heavy tank of my gun, bore no mention of any of the trauma. I fall over into a seated position as he approaches us. I hold the Little Sister back as he approaches but she wriggles in front of me and yells nearly incoherently at the now imposing figure of the man.
"You leave Mr. B alone you big meanie!" she screams at him. His only response is to lean down and move her gently out of the way and looking at me. I close my eyes, most likely for the last time.
"Im sorry that this had to happen to you and I wish that there was another way for me to advance past this place, but there isn’t so I have to put you down and help out Dr. Tenenbaum pay for her sins." My eyes snap open at the voice since I have heard nothing but the tortured screams of splicers and the few non-mutated folks that get caught by the Splicers. He looks as if he just wants to help the people of Rapture. I don’t know. He levels the pistol at me and cocks the hammer back. I look down the barrel as the yellow of my eyes illuminates the steel slug of a bullet as the hammer slowly swings forward.
I close my eyes and exhale. So this is what peace feels like.
BLAM
"MR. BUBBLES!" She screams but it sounds as if it's coming from down a hallway. I just let it go with one last moan. Then there is nothing but a silence and darkness.
Author's Note
I do not own Bioshock MLP:FIM or anything else I may reference in this story. This is not for profit and I really thank the creators for letting me come up with this Idea. Thank you and Goodnight.
"Good evening, my friends. I hope you are enjoying your New Year's Eve celebration; it has been a year of trials for us all. Tonight I wish to remind each of you that Rapture is your city. It was your strength of will that brought you here, and with that strength you shall rebuild. And so, Andrew Ryan offers you a toast. To Rapture, 1959. May it be our finest year." -Andrew Ryan
I spend a lot of time with my eyes closed until I feel as though I am moving. I open up my eyes and realize it’s a huge mistake. There is a literal Rainbow Explosion surrounding me and there is a vague feeling that I am moving faster than the mind can comprehend. The Rainbow around me parts and I vaguely see a giant flying Mechanism charging two regular people, then the view changes and shows the same three figures but the Flying thing resting on its feet and allowing the two others stroke at what one would call its face. The tear closes with the same static noise followed by a shockwave that spins me about. There is another static noise and I am surrounded in rather warm waters and some slight light as I sink into the water towards the bottom. My porthole glows green and illuminates a mess of algae and fish on the bottom just before I hit it with a squish followed by a plume of murk from the bottom. I lay there feeling renewed and oddly light. I crawl across the bottom on my hands and knees leaving a path of debris and slightly panicked fish. There was nothing I could do about that as I trudged up the slope and onto my feet. The lightening water is wonderful as I feel the crush of water dissipate from my back. Then in a flash I clear the water and all of my body weight falls on me once again.
This world was bright and the air above me was totally unrestrained by a glass ceiling and the sun burns high in the sky. That is the most perfect thing in the world, and the mere sight of that orb drives my mind to the night things changed for me.
I was clutching the little crayon drawing to my chest as close as I could to my heart as I listened to Ryan announce the shutdown of all the Bathyspheres to the surface. The world was ending tonight for me and there wasn’t a damn thing I can do about it and then I heard Atlas speak once more over the radios. Tonight it was the day that Atlas called out Andrew Ryan on his damned hypocritical takeover of Fontaine Futuristics. The Fontaine fella had been found dead with some of the smugglers and after Ryan muscled in and took over the Plasmid industry Atlas took his chance. His swift action stole the combat plasmids and with his ingenuity the revolutionaries had the upper hand. Except for the Big Daddies, Ryan ran this place just like he ran businesses, ruthlessly. Rapture was a hell and I saw the men who worked in Hephaestus, coming home scorched and totally exhausted, some never came back at all.
I digress I was nervous and prepared to do whatever it took to tear this hellish city to the bolts that held it together and let the cruel deep blue decide who lives and dies. Atlas is in the middle of his rant at this point.
"Some people have taken to calling me a liberator but I am no liberator. The people of this city will liberate themselves." He calls over the station. "Shake off this 'Great Chain' Ryan praises harder than some of the 'Parasites' above praise God. Ryan has become what he hates most. And in doing this He invites revolution in the halls of Rapture. Now my people we will rise up and take back what is rightfully ours, we strike as his world crumbles. Good luck my friends and our ascension is within our grasp." The line cuts out with the crackle of static.
That was three weeks before the assault on the bathysphere. I had never died before, I mean becoming a Big Daddy was close but I knew I wasn’t dying I mean the pain was unimaginable and I thought that I would rather die than survive such a monstrous transformation. But apparently fate is a unfair and forced me to be a pawn In the world Ryan had made. After a few years I stopped praying and instead began cursing every deity that existed.
…
…
…
The glass portholes fog up and a cool jet of air whips my hair up and runs across my face before I reach up and pull it off of me… I have no words anymore I just silently set the brass helmet on the ground and lay on my stomach to look at it. My eyes still poured out green light and I poked the gods damned thing I called my face at last. I start laughing in a rich guttural way that I can feel is bordering psychopathic. That is until I realize I am actually laughing. I open my suddenly dry mouth and whisper into the warm, delicious air that flows about me
“My name is Richard Smith.” The voice is much more resonant and deeper than the mid-range baritone I once called my voice; it’s much more like a low-range baritone that still sounds like the whales song I guess isn’t going anywhere. I grab the helmet and plop it back onto my head and hear the light hiss as the seals reconnect. I note a short little walkway not too far away and following it I see there are homes not that far away. I weigh the options of staying here or going into town until my stomach rumbles, telling me I am going to town before I starve. Smiling at the plan in mind I start trotting off on all fours which in all honesty is not nearly as hard as people believe when your legs and arms are the same general length.
I am making good time to the town and I pass by a decently sized cottage on my way there. I hear birds chirping along with a light voice singing beautifully. I smile inside the mask until I see the lemonade coated Pegasus trot out from the side of the house. Unfortunately the noise of surprise is a half-choked roaring ‘what’ that comes out incomprehensible. That startles the Pegasus and she just sorta passes out from the shock. I just sit there dumbfounded that the wonderful singing was coming from a creature that shouldn’t exist and even if it did lacked the ability to sing. I just pop the seal on the helmet so as to not frighten the creature even more upon her awakening.
I sit there for around an hour or so before I succumb to the need to drink something and perhaps find a bite to eat. I patrol the area and find a bucket of rainwater near the gutter spout and some apples on a small table. I grab two apples and munch them down as I head back to the rain barrel. I polish of the second apple whole just like the first one and lean in to drink some water.
Scream like a total pansy.
“AAAAAAAAAGGHHHH!!!!” I bellow in a mildly high pitched attempt at a screech. I will be honest that ‘screech’ was more like an elk having intestinal problems. In an instant the yellow Pegasus was up and screaming too… Well crap that didn’t work out well did it. I am still deep within panic mode when I feel the need to ask questions.
“What am I? What are you? Where is this place? Why did this happen to meeeee?” I moan as I drop down onto my stomach and cover my face. These emotions that I haven’t felt in a long time are so confusing and mentally draining to maintain the level of panic I had a few minutes ago. I see the yellow thing look at me and then just up and take off sprinting away from me towards the town.
"God damn it. Why do they always run off screaming?" I bemoan and flop myself onto the ground.
Now all I gotta do is wait for the angry villagers to come kill me.
Author's Note
I know its short but this is what I have been working on in my spare time.... Not alot of that right now
“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.
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.
“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.
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.
“My name is…” I do a little mock bow and pause for Dramatic Effect,
“Richard Smith. And you six might be…?”
