Rise, Rapture, Rise

[wasafreak]

The red glow that had overtaken the room was starting to hurt Teddy's eyes. It was bright, and pervasive, and it made his temples throb but there was no way in hell he was going to look away: That was Billy in the middle of it. Seeing him beside the Scarlet Witch, their eyes closed and their lips moving in concentration, they really looked like

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[blondrussianspy]

Natalya blinked, looking up from where she'd been cleaning her pistol during her turn of the world's most boring duty, aka, guarding the door to Rapture. She lifted the radio and thumbed the talk button.

"Da, am hear you. State your name and position, if you are in danger or not. I am not aware of any excursions into city at this times, are you-" She frowned, feeling exasperated by a sudden twist of concern.

"Are you just arrive?"

[wasafreak]

She sounded kind of Russian. He couldn't remember any Russian characters from the game, and the way she asked him if he had just shown up didn't sit entirely right, but then, he was having the conversation crouched behind a table in the broken down room of a fictional underwater city. Nothing was really sitting right with him.

"Uh, yes. I'm- I'm in Fort Frolic. I haven't seen anyone yet but I can hear-" There was the skittering sound of someone crawling on, Teddy would have bet, a ceiling, and the sort of deranged half-audible mumblings he remembered so well from the game and its sequel.

"...people. My name is Teddy Altman and I don't know how I got here." But he had a pretty good idea.

"Uh, over," he added.

[blondrussianspy]

"Acknowledged," Natalya said, snapping her side arm into its holster and standing, pulling her rifle onto her shoulder.

"Hold your position, I am coming for to retrieve you, over."

[widowskiss]

Even for a woman well used to darkness, the dimness of the island caves is a shock after all that sunshine, and Natalia blinks, adjusting to it before moving towards the mouth of Rapture.

She's close when the last echoes of a transmission reach her, and Natalia rounds the last corner with her head cocked, her eyes on Natalya curious. "No? Real trouble?" Natalia's smile cuts white through the darkness. "I believe it's my shift now."

[blondrussianspy]

Natalya looked up at the other Russian's arrival and smiled like a knife.

"New arrival, in Fort Frolic. Last report said that mad man Cohen was still active in the area. And you're right," she replied, opening the large metal hatch that led the way down.

"Watch the door behind me?" She paused, one booted foot kicked up onto the hatch's lip.

"Unless you would care to join."

[widowskiss]

Natalia replies with a quip that bears no proper translation in English, though were any phrase to come close, it would be, Bitch, please.

"Try and stop me," she adds, then pauses, thoughtful. "No, save that for the next time. We cannot afford so much excitement in one day."

[blondrussianspy]

Natalya smirked a little- she liked the other woman, which had been rare for her before the plague and an absolute necessity afterward, enjoying the company of, well, of women like herself- and started down the hatch to the Bathysphere.

"The arrival's name is Teddy Altman. He did not sound nearly as disturbed as I would have anticipated, given the situation."

[widowskiss]

"No," says Natalia, the interest that's plain on her face shifting focus now, becoming something equal parts surprised and concerned. "He wouldn't. That child has seen much strangeness already."

Following with enough speed to almost overtake the other woman, Natalia makes an unnecessary inventory of weapons. "He is too near that madman's lair for my liking."

[blondrussianspy]

Natalya looked the other spy over sidelong, curious.

"You know the boy?" she asked, pulling open the hatch to the bathysphere and standing to one side so Natasha could duck in first.

[widowskiss]

"I have read his file," Natalia replies, setting the bathysphere into motion the moment Natalya is inside. "He and a group of other children decided they were no longer content to sit sidelined while the adults had all the fun. They gave Steve no small amount of trouble."

She pauses, selecting a direction in the dim light. "I quite liked them."

[blondrussianspy]

"Ah," Natalya said, "a young hero. I do feel better, then. Still, I agree with you." Her eyes narrowed, memories of the end of the conflict in Rapture turning over in her mind. Bodies cast in plaster paraded as statues, breaking apart in a hail of gunfire.

"Of all the buildings he could have arrived in, Frolic... I truly hate that place." The sound of the water rushing around them and then the quiet muffling of all noise as they hit the depths irked her. She did not like being so far from the sky.

"At least its station is still operational," she murmured as the bathysphere slid along the track toward the dimly glowing neon and the still highly improbable sight of art deco sky scrapers rising from the deep.

[widowskiss]

Natalia hums her agreement. Of the many horrors of Rapture, Frolic must be the most macabre with its still lit invitations to fortune and fun, too many vestiges of commercial cheer left behind when all else came crumbling down.

"It would be dangerous for any of us," she says, a worried line forming between her eyes. However skilled in combat Teddy might be, he's arrived without the benefit of the powers he surely relied on at home.

[blondrussianspy]

"Then let us bring your young comrade home," Natalya replied as the bathysphere doors open and the ever dilapidated, still rotting, cold dank landscape of Rapture opened up before them.

She stepped down, not drawing her sidearm or taking her rifle from her shoulder, but taking in the room with the cool blue gaze that had made her the premier sniper of her unit. The city was populated with nothing more than ghosts and one lone mad man, but she didn't trust it to remain so. She nodded, fractionally, and started forward at a quiet, sure-footed run toward the doors to Fort Frolic.

[wasafreak]

The further into Frolic Teddy travels, the more he realizes that what he heard earlier were either ghosts or the echoes of old recordings, because Rapture is deserted. The only people in sight have been plaster statues of rabbit-masked dancers in grotesque poses, and it twists Teddy's stomach to know that most of them were alive when those white shells were hardening, cutting off their breath and freezing them in that pose forever

[widowskiss]

Hearing the hurried fall of footsteps in the near distance, Natalia moves with renewed urgency, running towards whoever's coming be they Teddy or the wicked man who hunts him.

Rounding the corner with Natalya, she breathes no easier for the sight of the boy hurtling towards them. Terror is plain on his face, and there's no way yet to tell if he's alone. "It's all right, Mr. Altman," she says regardless, halting with one gauntleted arm raised and pointing into the empty space behind him. "You're quite safe now."

[wasafreak]

Teddy comes to a graceless, stumbling halt, breath hitching sharp in his side, but his immediate concerns re: for his life sort of fall to the wayside.

"Oh my God," he blurts out, "the Black Widow?"