Bubbles kicked open the locked door in front of him, steeping into the hollowed grounds where many a Big Daddy had trained to protect the little ones to the best of their ability, which was absolute protection. He wondered for a moment about how long it had been since he had fought in this ground before he shook his head clear of those thoughts and turned to the mare next to him.
'This is the way you want to go,' she said to him as a silver arrow appeared at his feet for a few seconds, pointing him in the direction he needed to go. 'This is where you find the center of Rapture, where everything is.' He let out a moan the reverberated off of the walls and through the pipes as he walked through the ground, not paying any heed to the dead bodies or the fallen Big Daddies...though he avoided the bodies of the few little sisters as best he could.
What surprised him the most was the lack of splicers in the immediate area, since back when he was alive he could barely go ten feet without at least seeing a splicer. But the halls of the sunken city were as empty as they were dead and the only sound that could be heard for miles was the sound of his heavy boot steps upon the metal floor. On the annoying side, the silver mare walked along beside him as he progressed, even when he though he lost her by slamming doors behind her.
'I understand that you do not like me, but I will be necessary if you wish to achieve your goal,' she said to him, sighing when he tried to hit her with his drill. He did his best to ignore her after that as he walked the way the arrow pointed him, but then there was a laughing sound that put him on guard instantly. The silver mare also looked up at the ceiling as the sound of metal on pipes could be heard echoing around them.
"What do we have here? A...tin daddy? Well well, we haven't seen one of you in so long," the evil voices cackled from the shadows. Bubbles drill started up as he placed in the center of the room, spinning around as more and more voices added themselves to the laughter that surrounded him.
"Where is the little one?"
"Where is the girl?"
"WHERE IS MY ADAM!?"
Bubbles let out his most dangerous roar to let them know that they shouldn't mess with him, but that warning was lost on them as one jumped down from the ceiling and landed on his back, out of the range of his drill or his other arm. But to his surprise, a bolt of silver slammed into the splicer and sent him skidding across the floor, where Bubbles set him ablaze before turning to the silver mare with confusion.
'Humans like this have taken much from me as well,' she said as she ripped the pipe that a spider splicer was on off of the wall and slammed it against the ground. 'This is as much my fight as it is yours.' Bubbles drilled a lead head that thought it was safe from him off in a corner before sending a lancing column of electricity into three splicers, freezing them in place long enough for the silver mare to impale them on any sharp objects that she saw lying around. 'Despite you not liking me Bubbles, we both want the same thing here. We want them stopped.' Bubbles moaned in agreement as another spider splicer jumped onto his helmet, but this time he was ready. He grabbed her leg the moment she landed on him and whipped her head first into the floor, where he introduced her head to the bottom of his boot. The rest of the splicer fled for their lives and while Bubbles began to give chase, the silver mare erected a wall of silver to stop him.
'They are beaten. Let them leave,' she said to him with no emotion. 'They are dead anyway.' Bubbles moaned at her with annoyance but broke the chase as he followed the silver arrow as it pointed him back to his task. 'If you are wondering how I know so much about you and Rapture, in another reality similar to this one I am friends with a woman named Tenebaum. She helped me to find out about the Big Daddies and how one of them might be...what I need. I was not certain about you and I still not am. But if you are the champion I need you to be, then the time has come to show me.'
Bubbles ignored her rambling as he kicked down another locked door, finding himself heading towards the exit to the proving grounds. But then once again he heard laughing coming from behind him, but as he turned around to see what it was a small moan escape his suit. The little sister was once again standing behind him a good fifty feet away, at another doorway. He let out a moan as he turned and began to follow her, gaining the silver mare's attention.
'Where are you going? There is nothing there,' she said to him, but her words were lost on the Daddy as he continued his march towards the girl, who motioned for him to follow her as she ran through the door. Bubbles sprinted to the door only to see that she was already on the other end of the next room, still motioning for him to following her. 'Bubbles, that is enough,' the silver mare said as she materialized in front of him. 'I do not know what you are chasing, but it-' She never finished her sentence as a blast of his ice froze her in place. With his plasmids being powered by a bit of her magic, she found that it would take her much longer to get free of this ice.
Bubbles would have laughed at her if he could, but the little girl was once again his biggest concern. He chased her down once again, but this time he found himself out on a balcony, with a huge number of splicers in the center of the room, apparently having surrounded the little girl. He let out his roar of rage before he leapt off the balcony and landed on two splicers head, causing them to explode under his boots as the other cursed at him.
"It's a tin daddy! Kill him!" One of them with a tree mask yelled as he teleported out of Mr. Bubble’s sight, so the splicer that was standing behind him took the drill instead. Bubbles ripped the corpse off of his drill and set it ablaze before throwing it into the face of another splicer, who howled in agony as he too was set ablaze. Bubbles first thought was to protect the sister, but as he looked around he found that she was gone. He couldn't think about it long as a bolt of fire struck him in the back and he spun to drive his drill into the splicer, only to find that he was gone again. The other two splicers with guns weren't as lucky as Bubbles got both of them on his drill with one powerful impact, tearing them in two as he spun them off his drill.
"You're different than the other tin daddies, aren't you?" the splicer asked him from the shadows, causing Bubbles to look around for him. "But we've killed plenty of you and we'll do so again. Oh Dredger." Bubbles turned as he saw two massive hands grab the door behind him and rip it off its hinges, a massive wall of muscle entering the room with a bowler hat on its head. The brute splicer let out a guttural roar and slammed into Bubbles, picking the heavy Daddy off his feet and driving him into the glass window, causing cracks to break all along its sides. "That right Dredger, rip that tin daddy apart. Maybe there's a prize inside."
Bubbles roared as he slammed his helmet into the splicers nose, causing it to bleed but not breaking its grip as the splicer lifted Bubbles over its head and threw him across the room, sparks flying as he skidded across the ground. The splicer roared and began to charge towards Bubbles, but stopped when Bubbles shot lightning into its face.
"Hey! You Daddies aren't supposed to be able to do that!" the Houdini splicer yelled as Bubbles charged towards the brute, driving his drill into its gut and spinning. Blood sprayed the front of his suit as the splicer roared with pain, but with its dying act it reached onto the Daddies head and ripped some of his machinery off his back, causing Bubbles to stagger back as mist began to emit from the ripped pipes. Another drill shot to the face was all it took to put the splicer down and then Bubbles turned his attention to the last splicer, who was standing across the room from him. "You ain't a regular Daddy. You something else." Bubbles punctuated his point by hardening his ice plasmid into an icicle and sent it flying right in between the splicers eyes, putting him down for good.
'Good job Mr. B. Now come join me in the garden,' a voice behind him said, a voice that turned out to be his little sister. He took a step forward before his vision blurred for a moment, telling him that he had sustained damage. But it meant nothing to him as he continued to lurch forward, driven on by the image of the little girl running along in front of him. He was halfway down a hallway when he realized that there were plants growing on the walls around him, with little flowers growing out of them. Then there was another sound that reached his ears, a sound that he hadn't heard since the early days of Rapture. The sound of laughter.
'We're almost there Mr. Bubbles!' the little sister said to him as he reached the end of the hallway, two massive doors swinging open to reveal...dozens of little sisters and Big Daddies all playing together, with flowers and picnic sets all around them. He wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't been seeing it with his own eyes, but he couldn't the truth in front of him. 'Come on Mr. B., come play with us.'
'No Bubbles!' the silver mare said as she appeared beside Bubbles, her eyes glowing green like his. 'You have to remember why you are down here! You have to stop Rapture once and for-!' She was silenced once again by a blast of ice, leaving Bubbles to look upon the scene with awe. It was...paradise to him, a place where all the little sisters and Big Daddies could finally be together without worry.
'Come and join us Mr. B.,' she said to him with a smile as she offered him her hand. He moaned slightly as he took a step forward, only to have his leg give out and he fell to one knee, the small doll on his head shaking loose from its place and fell to the ground in front of him. He looked at it for a moment before her reached out to pick it up, another sound replacing the sound of the laughter all around him. It was the sound of Dinky laughing and when her laugh reached his ears, so did the images of her smile and her bright yellow eyes. He let out a soft moan as he closed his fist around the doll and he slowly got back up to his feet as he remembered what he was down her for....who he was down here for. The one he had sworn his loyalty to. And when he looked back up the little sister opened her arms to him, but he could no longer see her.
'Mr. Bubbles?' the little sister asked as Bubbles looked through her, his green eyes now a crimson red. He let out a moan of rage before he turned away from the little sister, marching down the hallway away from her even as her pleas followed him. 'Please don't go Mr. Bubbles! Don't leave me again! Come back! Come...!' While he was walking away, the silver mare had once again freed herself from the confines of the ice, allowing her to look at the sister that Bubbles was leaving behind with confusion, the sister looking like a ghost. Then to her shock the image before her began to melt away, the flowers and bright colors turning to grey, dead vines and brown petals on the ground. Then the big Daddies with eyes full of life turned into empty, dead shells that lay with no light on the ground. And finally, the little sisters went from laughing and smiling to skeletons, that were as quiet as the room now was. And the little sister that Bubbles had been following was the last to go, vanishing as if she had never existed at all. The silver mare could also see the bodies of splicers lying in the room as well and she was able to figure out what had happened.
'This could have been their last stand,' she said to herself with a shake of her head as she looked away. 'But like all last stands, it only ends in death.' She glided along the ground until she had caught up with Bubbles, who was trying to break down a massive door in front of him, the arrow pointing to it.
"Well well well, so you managed to make it all the way down here to me, didn't you Mr. Bubbles?" a voice said from over the radio, causing Bubbles to growl as he heard the voice. "You remember me? Odd, I killed all Big Daddies I came across. Now I don't believe that I've met you before, but you and those pony friends of yours found my recording that I placed on the surface. No need to answer, I have eyes everywhere. But I dislike talking across these infernal radios, so come on in to my office." The door in front of the Big Daddy opened at this point to show a single room with a single vending machine, as well as one elevator on the far side of the room.
"Don't be afraid, just come on up," the voice said as Bubbles began to march towards the elevator, wondering if he had heard this voice before. "Come on up to the office of Jack Ryan."