verynaughtymutant | For Rachel

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rachel

For Rachel

There was something deeply depressing about Rapture. Not just in the sense of it being a city filled with corpses and lunatics, Cable was used to both, but because it represented the death of a dream. A stupid, short sighted dream, but a dream nonetheless and that still meant something to Cable. He'd long lived a life where dreams were more precious than lives.

Still that didn't stop him from spending a lot of time down there, with the ITF and with Rachel, experimenting with Plasmids and hunting for technology and searching, in vain, for someone sane enough to talk to.

The Medical Pavilion had been the area he and Natalya had discovered on their first trip down here and where he'd found the telekinetic plasmid that allowed him to mimic his powers so it was where he and Rachel visited most often.

He shot his sister a quick silent look to make sure she was keeping up and then strode off up some stairs, into the heart of the area, looking for movement.

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Plasmids were awesome. Sure it was a little creepy the first time she'd experimented with them, but the power was real... real and maddeningly temporary with effects that seemed to fade as soon as she stepped back onto the surface of the island. Still, she'd managed to grab a few to stash and pick up again when she came back down.

Which wasn't always with Nathan. She'd made a few trips down on her own, grabbing hypos and looking for splicers to beat up. It was her release. All the pain went away when she was fighting, the nightmares went away, the sense that there was a sword hanging over her head. Down in Rapture, she'd found a kind of peace.

So if her brother thought she'd have problems keeping up, he was sorely mistaken. Her senses were heightened, she was full up on whatever the last plasmid was she'd injected, and she was ready... eager for anything.

He knew Rapture well, by this point. Knew where to look for the tools that he could use to tear apart the technology, knew where to find the messages that recorded life in Rapture when times were better.

Steinman, he'd discovered, was the man who ran this particular neck of the woods, and he had an image of the man from the messages they'd listened to, a perfectionist too short sighted to realize perfection of the body meant being useful above all else. Cable was rather looking forward to meeting him.

He injected the plasmid he was carrying the moment they began leaving the area they'd already cleared out and entered a room he didn't know for sure was still empty. One of the other things he'd learned about Rapture was that if you waited until you saw a splicer to arm yourself, it might well be too late.

Rachel, of course, hadn't even waited this long to inject herself. A part of him thought he might have to talk to her about it at some point, but he was still hoping it wouldn't be needed. Maybe she'd burn her eagerness for battle out completely down here and walk out of it ready for peace again, after all, he was no stranger to needing an enemy to unleash your anger on, himself. And, besides, that kind of conversation never went well.

Much better to hope it never came to that, he thought, as he caught a movement on the corner of his eye and swung gun and hand around, simultaneously to meet it.

She noted the movement almost as soon as Nathan did, forgoing the shotgun strapped to her side in favor of letting the light crackle of lightening appear around her hand. She hadn't found any of the teke lately, but she was stocked up on the electro-shock and the freeze-whatever for later. Both had proven very effective when fighting the splicers.

With a slight grin, Rachel muttered under her breath, "Come out, come out, whoever you are..."

The Splicer was silent as the pair of them approached, there was a corpse left on the floor where they had seen a flicker of movement but no sign of the assailant that had been so recently tenderising his dead flesh with a hook.

No sign that was, apart from the quiet crackling of the ceiling plaster behind them and the twirling hook that came flying down towards them.

Cable was an experienced soldier, they both were, and even without his telepathy it was hard to catch him by surprise. When the hook came down towards Rachel, he was aware enough to catch it with his teke even as he fired his gun with his other hand.

But if neither of them were likely to be caught unawares by an attack of above, that didn't make it any less effective. The shot was wild and the hook dropped from his invisible grasp as the splicer threw himself upon Cable, with impossible agility while shouting "You don't come to my town, kid!."

And suddenly the other hook was being used as a sword to batter at Cable's left side and all he could do was play the meat shield and hold the splicer in place long enough for his sister to finish the job.

Instincts are instincts, and Rachel's had been honed since childhood and re-awakened here. With a wicked smile, she reached her hand out, feeling the electric build-up under her skin. It felt like nothing she'd ever done before and for a moment, she felt like herself again. When the charge had built enough, she called out to her brother.

"Nathan! Get clear or I'll fry you, too!"

Edited 2011-07-28 22:46 (UTC)

Nathan didn't need to be told twice. He pushed out at the Splicer with his body and with his TK, forcing the two of them apart even as the hook chipped at his metal arm.

The splicer for his part, was ready to jump away as soon as he saw he'd done some damage, he was happier to fight from the shadows against opponents like this, to hit and then run. Of course, that would only work if Rachel didn't nail him as soon as they separated.

She barely waited. Partially because she knew she didn't have time to hesitate and partially because she just wanted to use the power she had. The lightening flashed and the now familiar rush ran over her as she hit the splicer.

She ran to her brother's side, checking him for wounds as she tried to see if she'd taken the splicer out, or if it was still kicking.

Edited 2011-07-30 04:09 (UTC)

Cable shrugged off her concern, his metal arm had taken much worse hits than that in his time, raised his gun and fired a shot into the Splicer's head as it sunk to the floor.

It might not have been needed but downed enemies had an annoying habit of rising up again, if you weren't sure.

"I can't say much for Rapture hospitality," he added wryly. "I'm almost feeling unwelcome."

"Really?" She matched his tone with a hint of sarcasm.

"Crazy politics, everyone's trying to kill us, world's gone crazy." She stretched her arms over her head, feeling the crackle of residual energy in her body.

"Feels like home to me. Onwards and upwards?"

He nodded once and shot her something that was almost a smile as he advanced.

"Why stop now? I'm just getting into my stride."

It was about then that they started hearing another voice entirely talking.

"Why do humans have a single nose, a heart, a liver? Why should we accept this asymmetry, this imperfection? We should not! With Adam we have the chance to remould humanity entirely, to create true beauty and we should not be limited by a substandrad model," a man in a doctors uniform was ranting, each word inter-cut by a knife cut into the screaming body he was working in, carving her open while she was still alive.

It was only then that he noticed the two intruders and upon his first view of them, he screamed as in pain.

"Ugly," the doctor shouted in real horror, "you're all so ugly," and then he dropped a grenade on the floor between them and suddenly the world was filled with light.

"What the..." Rachel dived behind some rubble when she saw the grenade, trying to shield herself as best as possible.

"Nathan!?" She blinked, trying to search through the space. She wasn't worried, Nathan was Nathan and if she saw the grenade, he sure as hell did, too. She was worried about the man that had thrown it, and where he'd gone.

"I think we found the crazy doctor!"

He nodded once as he pulled himself up from where he'd thrown himself to the floor. There was rubble everywhere, almost blocking the passage in front of them and the doctor himself was long gone.

Only the moaning mess of the body the Doctor had been hacking at was left and he took a step towards it and, after a little contemplation, put it out of its misery.

Rachel flinched at her brother's shot, but she couldn't fault him for it. If she'd had her powers, she'd have used her telepathy, shut the victim down fast and painlessly, but no one, even those splicers deserved that kind of torture.

Still she couldn't look at him... her... honestly, Rachel couldn't tell anymore from the state of the body and she had to turn her head to avoid getting ill.

"We can't let this guy keep going, Nathan."

"We won't," he said grimly, his jaw set as he started clearing the rubble with his teke so they could manage to follow him.

Rachel waited for Nathan to clear the rubble before heading through the hall the doctor had disappeared down. She went slowly, keeping eyes and ears open and her hand at the ready. She didn't want to be caught unawares by a guy that could do... that to a person.

Trusting that Nathan was right behind her, she went into the darkness.

Cable remained silent as they moved, equally alert. Even if they didn't catch up with Steinman, straight away, this was place was still littered with dangers. Splicers could lurk around any corner.

He stepped over the body of another Splicer and suddenly he heard the whirring of a security bot and a voice in the distance that he couldn't quite locate.

"Why is beauty so difficult to obtain?" the voice screamed, rising in volume and emotion as it continued so that it ended in an hysterical shout. "No matter how hard I try to make them beautiful, why are they still so flawed!"

Only it was difficult to concentrate too much on what it was saying or where it was coming from, because a large security robot had been activated and was flying after the intruders, firing bullets.

"Nathan, I need cover!"

Rachel dived, dodging a hail of bullets and trying to get a view of the robot. Always with the robots. Why couldn't these utopian societies invest in living guards for once? She hated robots.

The only good thing was that electronics were extremely susceptible to electronic blasts. If she could get a good line of sight, which was damn hard when she had bullets whizzing by her head.

"Can you take it out?!"

The telekinetic plasmid he was using was a crude thing and not capable of the subtlety needed to pluck bullets out of the air, so he picked up some rubble with it instead and launched it at the robot.

And then he dived behind another piece of rubble, both to avoid the immediate retaliation and to give him a shield while he returned fire with a quick blast of bullets just to make sure he had the robot's full attention.

And that's all the opening Rachel needed, standing and firing a bolt of energy. The robot shuddered, and with a squeal of circuitry, it fell to the ground lifeless.

"Got it!" She re-shouldered her pack and nodded to the hallway.

"After you this time."

Cable nodded his agreement and strode forward, finding his target behind a window, talking to a statue of Aphrodite and paying no attention to the intruders he'd been fighting only moments ago.

He checked that Rachel was ready and then spoke.

"Hello, Dr. Steinman," he said pleasantly as he raised his gun. "I've been looking forward to this."

And then he fired, breaking the glass between them.

Steinman took a bullet, before taking cover behind a table and firing back with his own gun.

"Too large," he screamed them at between volleys of bullets. "Too thin. Too scarred."

"Too noisy." Rachel muttered to herself as she tried to flank the nutjob while he was focused on Nathan.

Finding what she hoped was a clear shot, she fired a blast at Steinman, not sure if it would land with him under cover like that.

The blast hit home and while Steinman writhed momentarily in the electricity, Nathan pushed forward at the table with his teke, sending it, and Steinman, flying into the wall.

And that looked like it was it, the two of them had finished the doctor with the same ruthless efficiency they'd defeated all the other splicers they'd met.

Only he wasn't dead just yet.

Cable advanced slowly upon the man, still keeping him crushed against the wall with his teke, with his gun raised.

"This place," he said slowly, "was built by geniuses. I had hoped to find great men here, flawed men maybe, men who had made mistakes but great men, who could be reasoned with, who could be given new projects, better projects, to turn their minds to. Who could work for me."

"It saddens me, Doctor, that all I've found is mad dogs. A beautiful body is one that is useful, that's all."

And with that he blew Steinman's brains out.

Rachel knew that the idea of this place, the promise of it, was something that affected her brother deeply. How could it not? Every time Nathan, or anyone else in their world tried something like this, it fell apart, usually violently. But seeing him, gun drawn, that expression on his face.

It chilled her. But she didn't argue with it. And when the gun went off, she barely flinched.

Her voice was soft, part of her knew that it might be wrong, hunting them down, but here in Rapture, what the hell was right? These people, these monsters, how much was too much?

"One down, how- how many to go?"

There was more than one down, Cable thought as he holstered his gun, they had been picking off splicers for some time, bleeding their numbers with quick raids and retreats. But he knew what she meant, Steinman had been a big fish and they'd both become used to counting victories by the numbers of defeated leaders rather than foot-soldiers.

"Too many," he replied slowly, as he reached down to pick up Steinman's gun and slipped into his belt alongside his own weapon. "Maybe the next one won't be this far gone."

"Maybe." But she hoped he would be. It was easier to kill them when they were mad beyond reason.

Just... easier.

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