Thread: A Friend to the Parasite [Bioshock]

His mother had always said that when the world goes to shit, keep up a hobby. Eoin kept plants, and by God, he kept them well. His little garden down in his lab-turned-home was sort of like a barometer for the condition of the world, an inverse relation between the beauty and majesty of those little ordered plants all named and numbered, of course, in his tiny, neat writing and the hell the outside world had become. The more work Frank had him do, the better he took care of the plants. Sometimes he mixed the two, work and home people made a fantastic mulch. Tending his plants gave him a sort of peace that he could only now find in what had become personal experiments. He was a geologist, but the work Frankie had him on was completely unrelated to the untrained eye. To him, it was just his subject fast forwarded a little pressure here, the meeting of two unmovable forces, some heat, wait a bit and people, societies were just like rocks. His job was to find where to place the TNT. He was good at that. Damned good. Sometimes, when he??d done particularly well, Fra??No, Atlas was what he went by these days, but either way, he was still the same handsome, charming man ?? sometimes he sent flowers and a little hand written note with promises, sweet words and apologies for leaving him alone. At forty-three-God-damned-years-old, he couldn??t help but melt like ice dropped in a hot cup of coffee. In the beginning, his lab assistants, mostly women but all aware that he was an old fruit, would tease him fondly when he tucked away a new note into his breast pocket. They??d always go out for drinks afterwards, and the lanky Irishman, prim and proper and oh so very much the professor, would buy them all a few rounds, handsome face going as red as his hair as the night went on. They??d all stumble back to their own places or, if the need arouse, to someone else??s, stupid smiles on their faces as they bade each other good night. No one smiled at him anymore. And, instead of laughter, all he ever heard was the thump-thump-thump of a wrench as some poor sod tried to get into the lab, or perhaps the long screech of one of those hooked madmen. If he did hear laughing that was even worse the only people that managed a good guffaw these days were completely rotted out in their brains. When he went out, he heard gunshots. No one messed with him, of course he was Atlas?? man, easily recognizable since he no longer had to hide it. And if some of Ryan??s dogs came for him, well, he had access to more body guards than anyone other than Ryan himself. Atlas, after all, was too valuable to go out, so little ol?? Eoin did it. In the beginning, it had bothered him but this was the right thing to do, right? Ryan was the one that hated charity and all, and Frank had seen the widening gap between the haves and the have nots and set out to fix it. Oh, sure, some of the methods were questionable, but wasn??t these days? If you could get bread in the mouths of hungry kids, what did it matter that a few two-bit wannabe mobsters ended up shot full of lead in the streets? And Frank spoke so gently to him, never called him names nor bit him with words Eoin couldn??t believe half the things they said about what the man did. No, Frank was a good sort, and once this all settled down, Rapture would be better for it. Some days, if he spent enough time with his plants, he actually believed that lie, and that was enough to keep him jumping at the short wave radio as it crackled to life. He had to go set another charge in another crack in the unmovable wall that was Andrew Ryan. Because Eoin Griffiths knew that if you set enough and found the right spots, you could bring down any mountain. It was just a matter of time and pressure.