Cindy Meltzer

Cindy Meltzer is a Big Sister. She comes from a land under the sea, but life isn't better, down where it's wetter. (Take it from me.)

age: 16

origins: Bioshock 2, (There's Something In The Sea.)

app link: Application.

hmd: HMD

played by: Hiku

AIM: Hikuswing

Setting
(See bottom of section for TL;DR)*

In 1946, deep beneath the northern Atlantic Ocean, Andrew Ryan established the beginnings of his most ambitious and, ultimately, terminal dream. The City of Rapture, an underwater utopia, was erected and completed in the late months of 1951. Within a short time, it was populated by the very best, the most driven, and the most morally ambiguous individuals the world had to offer. Rapture was a city free of government, free of religion, where capitalism was unbound and allowed to thrive without societal restriction.

Naturally, this extreme lack of moderation encouraged constant and excessive abuses to the population on whole, and inspired considerable dissent among the less fortunate residents, made even poorer and more uncomfortable by the progression of Ryan's capitalistic dreams. Criminal enterprise thrived as quickly as scientific and artistic advancement.

That in mind, one cannot mention the advancement of Rapture without mentioning the slugs that inhabited the sea-floor upon which the city was established. These strange creatures are, unfortunately, the only real point of note in the short, beautiful, and depressing history of Rapture.

These slugs, as discovered first by the dockworkers of Neptune's Bounty, within the city, secreted a biological compound that healed wounds with startling expedience. Knowledge of these slugs was given to Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum and from them she developed a compound called ADAM. ADAM is a miracle drug which allows vast and extreme modification of the genetic and physical structure of the human body. Instantly, it became the most valuable substance in Rapture. The slugs, unfortunately, were capable of producing ADAM only in very small quantities, quite insufficient for research or general use. Fortunately or unfortunately, Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum found a solution.

The slugs, because of their healing capabilities, could be surgically inserted into a human host and would integrate into the host's systems. Implanting them would greatly increase their ability to produce ADAM, but very few humans were capable of surviving and maintaining the symbiosis. Those who integrated best were, almost always, very young girls.

The integration of the slug changed those little girls, as did the large amounts of ADAM they were capable of producing. The genetic drug, coursing in large amounts through their bodies, made them nearly indestructible and gave them the ability to drain and re-purpose ADAM found in corpses and other objects. The re-purposed ADAM brought with it additional material, both genetic and otherwise, and carried an imprint of the memories and synapses of those it had been removed from, affecting a sort of immortality among ADAM users. These little girls, Little Sisters, were the greatest advancement in the history of Rapture and their symbiosis allowed the meteoric rise of the genetic modification industry, and the eventual fall of Rapture.

Because of Rapture's fall into chaos and anarchy, and the collapse of the infrastructure of the city, it was unsurprising that the original scientists (Tenenbaum and the others who created the sisters) were unable to properly consider or implement a plan to deal with the girls as they grew. As such, several problems naturally arose.

As the little sisters grew older, the protectors assigned to guard them as children, the Big Daddy creatures who were trained to defend the small girls, would no longer recognize them. Every little sister was, inevitably, abandoned by the figures they adored and loved above all others; those creatures they had been programmed to trust would forsake them and leave them utterly alone. In the face of this rejection, most of the girls went quite insane. The addition of puberty, fueled and twisted into some ungodly transformation by the building amount of ADAM in their systems, as well as the wide array of genetic memories, made them into psychologically and physically unstable entities.

It is not uncommon to see the Big Sisters, the teen-aged inevitability of the little sisters, clad in make-shift costumes, pieced together of medical bracers and dive equipment, designed to resemble their lost big daddies. They are, in general, lanky, twisted creatures of around seven to nine feet high. They have unstable and violent plasmid abilities, matching tempers, and have maintained their ability to heal damage nearly as quickly as they take it. They are obsessive watchdogs and they guard the littler sisters, an emulation of their lost daddies, with extreme violence and destruction.

They are the "gatekeepers of Rapture."

TL;DR
It's 1959, Steampunk/Art-Deco Atlantis falls because someone decided it was a good idea to give drug addicts the ability to throw fire, lightning, and bees. Many years later, the resulting super-powered-crack-babies are all grown up and can throw fire all on their own. Also, all that pretty Art-Deco stuff is trashed and covered in corpses. Charred corpses.

See image. See image. See image. See image. See image.

Personality
Cindy Meltzer, before her kidnapping, was a cheerful child.

After her transformation into a little sister, Cindy was one of few who retained memory of her previous life, despite the heavy mental conditioning she was subjected to. The daddy image was particularly well ingrained in Cindy, mostly due to her real father, Mark, who sought out and traveled to Rapture in a failed rescue attempt. Mark was, upon his arrival, transformed into a Big Daddy and assigned to Cindy, as per his request.

Eventually, when her real father failed to recognize her, Cindy collapsed mentally.

She experiences frequent mood-swings, is rarely coherent, and is ruled by emotional and visceral reactions in a way that is both dangerous and unpredictable. While she retains fragments of her very early, cheerful childhood, she is a dangerous creature who is frequently mindless, lost in genetic and programmed memories. Because of her later childhood, though, and her extensive conditioning, Cindy is incapable of even wounding young children and is, in fact, very likely to kidnap them for, what she believes is, their best interests.

Abilities and Weaknesses
As a Big Sister, Cindy can regenerate even major damage very, very quickly. Most Big Sisters can take several hundred rounds of machine gun fire and remain standing, Cindy is no exception to this. She is fast, she is freakishly strong, can jump several meters, swim at a disconcerting speed, and is capable of flinging fire, lifting objects telepathically, surviving very serious amounts of pressure, and throwing insects out of her arm.

Unfortunately, all of these abilities are derived from the symbiotic relationship with the slug in her gut. Her veins are filled with as much ADAM as blood, and her genetic code is only human in the loosest possible sense. Because it is always changing, to heal or regrow a lost limb, to eject or dissolve bullets lodged in her torso, to grow bees in her arm that are capable of existing outside of herself, Cindy is a monstrous freak and her body degenerates constantly. An arm may not grow back in the exact human fashion, her bones may warp, etc., making her progressively less human. The speed with which these changes occur can make it difficult for her to function or fight back, and her reserves of ADAM are steadily drained as they occur.

Despite her near invulnerability, Cindy only has a finite amount of ADAM to spend before she runs dry and is left wanting. At that point, she's essentially run out of batteries, though it's more akin to having hemorrhaged out, and she'll collapse. Unconscious, she's essentially a corpse until the slug refills her. If it and its ADAM is removed, then Cindy will expire.

Appearance
Cindy is a seven and a half foot tall freak, with the general width of a rail, clad in a heavy, deep-pressure dive suit and a myriad of medical braces. She has an internally lit helmet, a three foot long needle that feeds into a complex, intravenous syringe system, used mostly for reclaiming ADAM as well as sampling genetic material and generally skewering things, a dive tank, a cage within which to store little sisters (or other children), and a small, handcrafted big daddy doll.

Character Relationships
For the CR Chart please visit: Here.