Chapter 4 Of Big Daddies, Splicers, and Andrew Ryan.

Before he could aim the pistol and fire a killing shot, the little girl screamed.

The splicer immediately pistolwhipped the little girl to try and silence her. That turned out to be a big fucking mistake.

A wallshaking roar of rage filled the room, and Mercer got his first look at a VERY pissed off Big Daddy.

The splicer leveled its pistol at the Big Daddy and opened up, each shot scoring direct hits on the tin titan's thick metal carapace, barely leaving scratches in the armor. A loud click signaled an empty chamber, causing the doomed splicer to start backpedaling from the approaching metal monster, even has he tried to reload his pistol.

The Big Daddy wouldn't have it, and backhanded the splicer with the Drill on its right arm into the wall hard enough to send out a spiderweb of cracks in the concrete. The drill spun up, and the Splicer's screams of pain quickly became gurgles as the instrument of destruction swiftly made mincemeat out of the poor bastard, spraying blood and offal everywhere. Not content that the splicer was dead, the Big Daddy proceeded to pick up and start smashing its prey around the room, each impact punctuated by another gurgle from the dying splicer and a crunch of shattering wood, stone and bone.

Mercer grinned ferally as he watched another two splicer's enter the room only to fall victim to the Enraged Big Daddie's wrath, the leviathan swiftly tearing them apart in bloody gouts of gore. He was looking forward to fighting these things.

The metal titan made short work of the remaining splicers, smashing one of them through the thick glass near Mercer, before it picked up the Little Sister and walked out of the room.

"That's the Big Daddy. She gathers Adam, he keeps her safe."

"No fucking shit," Mercer breathed. He was definitely looking forward to fighting one of them.

Mercer proceeded on through the halls, punishing the few splicers that were stupid enough to attack him, one getting a gut full of Musclemass, while two others fell victim to Electrobolt. After descending several flights of stairs that had been turned into an impromptu waterfall from leaking water, Mercer stood a short distance from the entrance to Neptune's Bounty. Seeing no other way out, the virus began walking towards the door. He made it halfway there when a grating slammed down in front of him, punctuated by alarms going off.

"Security Alert in progress."

"Oh hell," Mercer muttered, before he noticed several splicers speeding towards him on the upper floor. "Oh, well in that case," Claws erupted from both arms in a flurry of tendrils. "I'm game."

The first victim leapt towards him, swinging his pipe and screaming like the devil himself was torturing the splicer. Said splicer abruptly found himself falling apart in several large chunks as Mercer's claws ripped him apart. The second splicer, this one armed with a gun, held back and began taking potshots at him.

"Oh we can't have that now can we?!" Mercer roared at the Leadhead, before sending out a bolt of lightning followed up by a whipfist. The splicer's skull promptly exploded meeting the bladed end of the fist, the corpse toppling backwards into the feet of several more splicers coming towards him. Two of the splicers promptly went berserk at seeing their dead comrade, only to fall victim to more well placed electrobolt and whipfist combo attacks.

This barely slowed the tide of splicers, causing Mercer to curse as several more bullets slammed into him. That was when he got inspiration for a new ability, combining his Blacklight given powers with the Electrobolt plasmid.

Mercer focused his abilities, ignoring the bullets that slammed into his flesh as he fought to bring two opposites together. His efforts were rewarded when his Whipfist began crackling with lightning.

-Oh I like that. What are you gonna name it?-

-I think the name 'Thunder Whip' will work nicely.- With that, Alex sent the newly christened Thunder Whip racing for its first victim.

The result was exactly what Mercer was looking for. As soon as the bladed tip of the whipfist embedded itself in the leadhead's chest, a surge of electricity exploded outward, killing the target and stunning the splicers around it. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, Mercer flooded the splicer's corpse with electricity before swinging it at the now recovering leadheads with all the force and grace of a semi.

The resulting explosion painted the walls with burning chunks of meat, and Mercer chuckled. -That was actually kinda fun.-

-Only you could think that wholesome slaughter is fun. Now kill the second wave of splicers that just walked in through the hole you made.-

Mercer grinned before leaping up onto the ledge that was now littered with corpses before switching to Claws. He was pleased to note that the still active Electrobolt plasmid had now energized his Claws, turning them into Tesla Claws. Eager to test this new tool of destruction against the mass of fleshy bodies streaming towards him, Mercer charged into the fray, with flashes of electricity, glowing claw and flying arcs of blood marking his passage.

"Oh christ its Ryan! Goddamn Andrew Ryan!" Atlas roared through the radio. "Bastard found us! Damnit! He's shut off all access to Neptune... Fuck!"

Another explosion rocked the area as more splicers began flooding in, each one howling for their pound of flesh, and Mercer all too willing to carve that pound of flesh out and force-feed it back to them. Blood and gore began flying as Mercer started streaking through the seething mass of ADAM enhanced flesh, each strike a kill, with no movement wasted, only pausing to reload on EVE before plunging back into the fray.

-Ok I don't know about you but in this situation I'd make a run for it.- Cross said.

-Alright then, lets see what happens when a devastator meets plasmid.- Mercer felt Cross pale slightly at that.

Mercer retracted his claws, pulling in all needed biomass as both electrified Adam and seething Blacklight began to build up.

The splicers leered at the virus, thinking that he was worn out and now easy prey. "Aww, the little fish is all out of juice. Lets see if he's got anything tasty on him!"

Mercer grinned, even as pressure inside his biomass built to critical levels, far higher than normal, causing the splicers to pause. "You want something to eat? How's this?" With that, the enhanced Devastator exploded outwards.

Thousands of electrified tendrils shrieked outwards, joined by massive bolts of lightning as everything within thirty meters was electrified, impaled, and ripped to pieces in a colossus of utter devastation that put everything Mercer had done up to this point to shame. Glass shattered, stone disintegrated, Electrical systems fried, and anything flammable burned as megavolts of electricity howled through them. Lightning began buzzing angrily through the mass of tendrils, before a shockwave of energy raced outward, stunning what few survivors there were before the first wave of tendrils split into yet more crackling streamers of doom, turning the survivors into so much mincemeat.

The web of energized biomass retracted, and Mercer staggered at the loss of biomass and Eve. That Thunder Barrage had taken a huge chunk out of him, but, as he looked around, the results were unquestionable. Everything that had been attacking him was gone, most reduced to steaming piles of gore, gently buzzing with residual electricity.

-Goddamn. You don't half ass anything do you?- Mercer just chuckled at this.

"We need to get you to Neptune's Bounty, and the only way to do that is to go through Medical." Atlas shouted, oblivious to the carnage just unleashed. "The bulkhead to it should be opposite of the one to Neptune's Bounty. Now go! I can only do so much to hold Ryan off from here."

Mercer didn't need asking twice, and bolted down the corridor, and before long he was in the room just before the bulkhead.

As soon as he attempted to move across the threshold and into the Medical Pavilion, three things happened:

One: The door slammed shut.

Two: Gratings blocked his path backwards, trapping him in

Three: All of the lights went out.

"Oh boy," Mercer muttered.

The room suddenly blazed with sterile light, coming from a massive CRT behind a thick pane of reinforced glass opposite of the bulkhead door.

"So tell me, friend... Which one of the bitches sent you? The KGB wolf? Or the CIA jackal?"

Mercer raised an eyebrow at the massive visage of Ryan on the TV screen. "Neither actually. Me and the United States government don't exactly get along (-Thats the understatement of the century-), and you couldn't pay me to go to Russia. Name's Mercer, by the way."

Ryan snorted in amusement. "So, we have ourselves a funny man, hmm? Well here's the news, Mister Mercer: Rapture isn't a sunken ship for you to plunder, and I am not a giddy socialite to be slapped around by government muscle. In the unlikely event you are from neither of them, a word of advice: Do not fuck with me, or else you will get more than just splicers and other hoodlums. And with that, farewell, or dasvadinya. Whichever you prefer."

The screen went blank, punctuated by the screams of hundreds of splicers, but Ryan wasn't done yet. "Oh, and one more thing, traveler: I will find out how your rather interesting abilities work, one way or another."

The mass of splicers by now were pounding away at the glass, which, while sufficient against one or two normal people, was rapidly withering under the strain of five splicers smashing their weapons against the glass.

"Well, Mister Ryan, how's a demonstration?" Mercer snarled.

"A demonstration? Please, do go on," Ryan called through the radio. "This should provide some better entertainment over the usual rabble."

"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU DOING?" Atlas roared, but Mercer ignored him, checking his remaining critical biomass and Eve reserves.

The splicers smashed their way through the glass and began flooding into the room, only to find an armored, electrified ebony titan of death, blade in one arm, shield in the other, and growling deeper than a pissed off Big Daddy. The mob hung back, glancing at each other as to who would tango first with the virus, which eventually ended up being a thuggish splicer wielding a pipe. Said splicer charged forward and brought his pipe down on Blacklight's armored skull, only to be swiftly punished with a surge of lightning, the energy blowing its arm off.

Before the splicer could even begin to contemplate his sudden lack of a limb, Mercer divested him of his remaining limbs in an eyeblink before bisecting his head and torso, spraying the other splicers with blood.

It was as if a dam broke, and the mob surged forward, eager to get sucked up and chewed apart by the whirling vortex of death.

Mercer showed no mercy, dispatching splicers by the bladeful while pasting any who were dumb enough to get to close to the shield. The room was swiftly painted red in splicer gore, but the damn things still kept coming, and the constant attacks were taking a toll on him. With a roar, he began charging up for another Devastator, this time the Groundspike Graveyard.

-What are you doing?-

-I'm going to take this building down that's what.-

Mercer slammed his fists down into the deck, and with a groundshaking roar several tons of biomass screamed their way through the structure of the building before erupting in lightning covered spikes, shredding splicers as well as several critical support structures within the building.

The biomass retracted, and for a moment everything was deathly still. Then it happened. A terrifying groan of the tower's superstructure. The weight of the water above had found a weakness, and it was going to exploit it.

Cracks began racing through the windows and walls outside, admitting high pressure jets of water that further eroded and weakened the structure. Far down near the base of the building, where thick steel pylons connected it to the bedrock of the sea floor, the concrete core of the building, weakened from years of neglect, exposure to seawater, and holding up the massive amount of weight, finally gave way, and the tower began imploding on itself.

With a scraping sound the bulkhead slid open, and Mercer dashed through just as the water reached the room he so thoroughly ravaged.

-Protoshock-

Ryan watched impassively on the display as the Welcoming Tower, a building that had stood since Rapture's foundation, came crashing down, sending clouds of dust and debris floating in between the other structures that made up Rapture.

This newcomer, this 'Mercer', was an infinitely dangerous individual. He had the eyes of a predator and the gait of a monster. He smirked slightly to himself before pouring three fingers of whiskey. The days ahead would be very interesting.

Alrighty, and there we have Mercer being his usual dickish self apon entering rapture. Now, here's how this is going to work out: I am going to write each section of the story (like the previous 4 chapters), and then once that section has been completed I will post them one at a time roughly every weekend after finishing that segment. That being said, chapter 5 is already almost done, and depending on how things work out i'll start posting the next segment within the next month or two.

Now, i want to point out something one of the reviewers said: "This feels like its going to become an 'Anything the player can do mercer can do it better.'" Or something to that nature. For now, this is what its going to be, with some diverging here and there. After the Smuggler's Hideout segment, things will begin to diverge, with the real goodies coming after Mercer and Ryan meet face to face. Im sorry if the story feels a little bland, but i'm still a bit of a rookie writer and thus you'll just have to bear with me.

If it makes anything better, the Alex vs Fontaine fight will be spectacular.