#tenenbaum

have some Jack and Tenenbaum and little sisters, i love them

Just for a change of pace, wrote a Bioshock fic! For BioFluff Week 2023!

I present - "The Long Con!"

--

| Likes & Reblogs very much appreciated! |

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51300115

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/1394664883

Onboard the apparent escape craft, Jack and Liz find five little girls and one teenage girl decked out in a diving suit like the one who had he had fought in Oakmont. The resulting tense standoff between Jack and Eleanor is thankfully resolved when Tenenbaum’s sphere surfaced and she gets the two of them to stand down. 

After getting Eleanor, Tenenbaum, Subject Sigma (aka Charles Milton Porter), and all the girls that they and Delta rescued onboard the Mary Catherine, Jack proceeds to chew out Tenenbaum for taking their submersible and going off on her own to Rapture of all places.

Tenenbaum points out that while it was foolhardy, it worked out: All the kidnapped girls have been rescued risking only the life of a single person (herself), and they have acquired the resources and people for a new mission. When asked what this mission is, she replies: “Saving the survivors of Rapture.”

For a while now, she has been theorizing about a cure for ADAM sickness. It would work by using ADAM’s own recall of past genetic changes to reverse the splicing and turn a splicer back to normal. The issue is the sheer number of potential bonding sites for such a cure. Tenenbaum needed a powerful computer to calculate these sites, and she found it in the “Rapture Operational Data Interpreter Network”, or the “Thinker”.

With the Thinker’s blueprints and the resources of Ryan Industries in hand, they’ll be able to make a second Thinker, create the cure for ADAM, and then return to Rapture to cure the remaining splicers and also save the surviving non-splicers.

This changes everything for Jack. For years now, Rapture was shoved into the back of his mind. When it became clear that someone in Rapture was responsible for the coastal kidnappings, the legacy of Andrew Ryan, his father, was brought right back up. 

Feeling responsible for the horrors that have continued on in Rapture during his absence, and while reluctant to go back, Jack is all for this cure and saving whoever is left. He pledges to return to Rapture after developing this cure and using the resources of the original rescue mission as the groundwork for another, larger expedition. With that, he orders the Mary Catherine to set a course to Iceland to get the rescued girls to the authorities.

After handing off the girls to the Icelandic authorities and making up a story for having found them, the Mary Catherine sets sail for its home port of Oakmont. They arrive just in time for Thanksgiving, with the Jolene girls and the Reed family waiting on their pier for them as they dock. 

After a joyous reunion, Jack, Liz, and Tenenbaum introduce Eleanor and Porter to their friends and family. Still a Big Daddy, Porter is stuck with having to wave and make a whale-like noise. Thankfully, the Jolenes and the Reeds are used to interacting with far stranger things than him.

As for Eleanor, thanks to the isolation imposed by her mother, she is very unused to interacting with new people, especially with her own age group. Due to her experiences, she finds it easier to talk and relate with adults. After managing to say hi to Masha, Leta, Sally, Annabelle, and Daisy, she moves on to the Reeds who, she realizes with a shock, she recognizes them as a rush of memories race through her mind.

She remembers growing up in Oakmont, looking up to her father and wanting to be a Navy diver just like him, achieving that dream, then going independent and working as a freelance diver, which led her to finding an undercity run by the missing tycoon, Andrew Ryan. Subject Delta, Johnny Topside, is none other than Jonathan Reed, the son of Charles and Joy Reed.

When she took Delta’s ADAM to preserve his consciousness in her mind, not only did she gain his plasmids and gene tonics, but she also gained access to the memories that he had lost in the process of becoming a Big Daddy. Faced with the family that Delta was denied for over ten years, Eleanor swallows hard and puts up a brave face as she greets her “grandfather”, “grandmother”, and the siblings of her “father”, somehow managing not to cry.

The Jolenes and Reeds have their traditional Thanksgiving dinner, which is held this year at Jolene Manor (formerly Blackwood Manor), with two unexpected guests. Having never seen so much food and of such variety, Eleanor stuffs her face, after which she takes a long and satisfied nap. Porter doesn’t contribute a lot to the dinner conversation, but the Jolenes and Reeds make sure that he knows he’s welcome.

After dinner, Jack and Liz take Charles and Joy aside and explain everything: Rapture, ADAM, plasmids, Big Daddies, Little Sisters, Big Sisters, and now, their new mission to save the survivors of Rapture. Charles and Joy aren’t really surprised; they figured that the backstories of Jack, Liz, and their adopted daughters were likely strange. After all, nobody that comes to live in or was born in Oakmont has a normal life.

Tenenbaum is for immediately beginning work on the new Thinker; she sees no point in stalling and Jack agrees with her. The sooner they get back to Rapture, the more people they can save. That just leaves one question: Who’s coming with?

Jack is a given; his status as Andrew Ryan’s heir means that Rapture’s security systems will be open to him. He doesn’t like the idea of Liz coming with, but she’s made it clear that where he goes, she goes as well. Besides, her skills with stealth make her a valuable asset in Rapture’s environment. Tenenbaum knows the ins and outs of both the city and ADAM, so she’s also coming with.

Charles would love to come with and help his friends, but he’s gotten on in years. He’s glad that his children’s lack of powers exclude them from going to Rapture; Jack is glad the same is true for his girls.

That leaves Eleanor and Porter. While both are powerful combatants and veterans of the insanity and horror of Rapture, Jack and Co. wouldn’t blame either of them if they didn’t want to come with. They’ve been through a lot, and asking them to go back to Rapture would be cruel.

It’s going to take a while for the new Thinker to be built and calculate the cure’s bonding sites, so that means that Eleanor and Porter will have time to recover from their ordeals. Sadly, Porter’s activities will be limited, as he’s still stuck in his Big Daddy suit and that’ll have people asking questions, even in a town like Oakmont.

@union-of-mad-scientists

Oh?

[Tenenbaum looks up from the damned machine she had been inspecting. She looks a little surprised for a moment.]