Owen Sweete

He wondered whether he'd be back home before his family missed him. Or... at all. He'd like it to be 'soon'. But then, all these distractions kept coming up. People had helped him get untangled from the weird ruined mess of rebar and twisted metal that was 'their' Rapture, and then had to explain that he was no longer at 'his'. But this boy was stunningly smart straight out of the basinet, and no one doubted him when he recounted stories about being picked up and burped as a baby. The looks on some extended relatives faces when he'd started in on what they said at some party or event? Precious, and enough to prove those stories weren't just made up by a three year old. His memory was only enhanced, strongly at that, when those Plasmids started coming around. 'Retain your memories' indeed. Though it was entirely possible that Fontaine had taken Owen's DNA for them in the first place, or at least, his parents'.

He was always so good with people, too. So it was no surprise that his discovery while playing with a chemistry set at home one night, led to his creation of a 'friendly' pheromone. This one could be injected, ingested, or even just topically applied! And when his parents applied for a patent on that stuff, they became rich literally overnight.

Owen's trips to the surface were fewer than he liked, but he relished his time above the sea. He liked feeling an actual wind on his face, he enjoyed being... well, dry at times? Always somewhat moist in Rapture, everything was slightly damp even in the best maintained locations (which included his late childhood home in one of the big high-rises). There too it had... puppies? And cats, and birds? While there were specimens and the occasional pet here and there, Rapture wasn't much for keeping small animals alive. They took up food, space, air... So they were a luxury that even his parents didn't buy into. Owen however, really loves animals. So much so that if he does return to Rapture it will be with the intent to bring actual animals safely into the undersea city.

His life from around the age of 8 until puberty was pretty typical of a 'rich kid', he spent time listening to chatter and keeping track of gossip with ease, not really participating in it unless there was something really juicy. And though everyone knew him as the 'smartest kid in Rapture', some felt he was too big for his humble family history. Those... he aimed his Plasmid-aided smile toward, and they melted into adoring fans. But Owen did not abuse this feature. He has always maintained that if it had to be used repeatedly, there's always a chance it might backfire - badly - some day. He doesn't want to find out just how badly.

But he got to buy toys that hardly any of his school chums could afford: self-propelling undersea sleds, aquatic gear that meant he could spend time outside the glass and steel halls ('steel? see, they made theirs out of steel' someone at this weird ruined Rapture said once, he understood later that the Rookery's had been built out of aluminum, and that was pathetic...) looking in from the outside. Surrounded by weird fish, sharks, even a whale or two... And he took care to not allow any of those to be sucked into the little fans on the sea sled. After all, he didn't want to get attacked by the bigger fish, who could smell blood for miles...

He was trying out a new Plasmid mixture on those fish, a tweaked 'BFF' design that would allow him to modify animal moods in the same way as he already could humans', when something... happened. There was always a current, always a flow and pull to the tides around Rapture that he knew was quite dangerous. Him even going out there frightened his folks, but thrilled many others. The Big Daddies down there keeping the place safe and maintained with their gigantic heavy diving gear were like rocks compared to the speedy motion of his sled. But they were able to keep their footing when the movement happened.

Owen's worry wasn't for himself, when he saw a weird almost bioluminescent sheet coming at him. It was for Rapture: if it hit that place full on... what would break? Who would be swept away into the ocean without hope of rescue? What animals might be caught in this nasty tide? He'd never seen anything like this, though. There were luminescent creatures that often washed up into the airlocks, or were growing in the carefully manicured caverns that were safe to explore in 'parks' around Rapture's perimeter. He had even heard of tidal forces making clouds of tiny organisms light up beaches with wave after wave stirring their chemistry. This... was not like any of those things.

This was terrifying. His last conscious thought before it hit him was of relief. If the visual edge of that illuminated water was to be trusted as 'actively' moving, it would miss Rapture by several hundred meters overhead. Good. Then - then he passed out, turbulent waters taking his sled and him sideways into something entirely unknown to him.

Another dimension.

It was still the deep sea, still down at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, but it felt different. It felt... he searched for words he didn't really know. It felt broken. He was also feeling a bit broken. That was because in the process of tumbling out of that thing he later learned was called a Portal Storm, the sea sled had yanked his arms both out of their sockets, he had broken shoulder blades and collar bones, and every movement was sheer agony.

But he was alive, and that was something. And he was still intact, his sled was somewhere near by, his diving gear had spared him from being simply ripped into pieces. So here he was, a fifteen year old prodigy drifting half-dead in the deepest, darkest ocean over what he thought was a nightmare; the brokenness applied to Rapture. What he'd left was a shining domed city, a bubble of human brilliance miles down below the surface. What he arrived to was dark, illuminated here and there only with the weakest of lighting, with paths that he almost recognized as being 'skyway' halls connecting tall buildings - broken into angular ramps, or just not there at all.

The more pressing thing he saw, however, was... it could only be called a sea monster, and he tried to scream, nothing happened, but his helmet did begin filling with blood.

***

He would be safe, sound, healthy. Owen woke with a start, and was immediately calmed by several people - and... something else. The medical professionals made it absolutely clear to him that the massive creature looming just outside the glass walls of the recovery room was a dragon and that it was safe.

It was absurd, but there it was. In fact now that he had time to look around in that room there were smaller dragons, some pacing around helping their human companions in the lab, and others swimming with incredible grace outside. They... didn't look like they were angry, they didn't seem like they were waiting for the moment to smash into the place.

So eventually Owen did get told what happened. He was moved by a freak multidimensional stormfront, which was becoming more common these days. They instantly spotted how smart Owen was, going so far as to suggest he might be the smartest kid they had ever met. And coming from one young man... that seemed like very high praise indeed.

They could all compare notes. Owen was unafraid to discuss his condition - that he'd been experimenting with Plasmids as a youth, that he expanded his own horizons. Impressed, but still worried that he would need to be given the last of a proper education, the bunch of adults conferred and came up with something they thought was quite novel.

Rather than giving him 'skill downloads' - he realized they basically meant distilled memories and genetic alteration there too - he would go to a location they called Carramba. It was a high school for people that came from downright everywhere. Owen was thrilled! He could learn how all these places interacted? He could finally be on the surface safely!?

The flip side of this, however, was that they needed to do more research about which Rapture he'd come from. Apparently there were ... well, an infinity of them? He donated blood and cell samples to Rhea and Whitney and Thomas and Melissa, each of them greedily looking at their own experiments. But more than that, those samples were paired with an interview with a very strange man. He stood quite close to Rhea, Melissa absolutely followed him around like a besotted puppy, others were less enthused by the tall scary man's presence. But Lane announced that he'd be either doing it himself, or "having someone else look into the Vortal echoes" to track down the origin of that Portal Storm.

Finding its echoes in the deepest ocean, tracing those echoes back to their origin? Well at least an origin? What was wonderful, what he loved, was that Owen fully understood all of this in theory once he'd been explained how this 'Vortal echo' thing worked. He'd never be able to do it, he was not "Vortally endowed", but he knew that by tracking the path of whatever it was that hit him over his home Rapture, they might some day be able to return him there.

And in the meantime, Lane kept track of this kid by virtue of having a school class about it at Carramba High?!

Owen had a bit of culture shock to deal with even in this Rookery Rapture: there were alien creatures, the Vortigaunts, who likely were going to do the legwork of tracking that echo. But then when he was brought - under much more controlled and far less painful conscious effort - to Carramba by Lane... There were so many more species than he'd ever thought possible. Even the comic books didn't do it justice!

And he had time, to look at them all under the sun, for the first time really in his life. Owen did miss his home. But he had so much else to do here in this modern city, learning about names and places, about the stars - stars were such a distant thing to normal people on the surface, imagine how far they were to people who lived below, in the endless starless depth of a billion tons of water? He did spend a lot of time staring into space, at the moon; he knew that the moon dictated the tides even of his own world, but here he had proof that the moon was beautiful, a shining reflective surface spinning around the Earth. All these facts had been abstractions before.

He was set up at first as a Sophomore, but quickly established he'd exceed that expectation and was transferred into the Junior year in Carramba. A little on the young side for that, chronologically they told him, but they'd had eleven year old graduates, and all he was really there to do was to experience it. After all he was incredibly smart and picked up knowledge that wouldn't leave his mind, ever? He'd ace every sit-down test for parroting back facts with ease. Now, he just needed to find a niche and pick up on social cues, learn all about animals and plants, histories that couldn't possibly be from his own world.

Owen was also introduced to a number of dragons. More than a few, in fact. The Rookery was filled with them, by its very existence it was a home for them and their riders. Carramba also had its own dragonry program, so there was maybe... maybe hope that he too might befriend a dragon?! Not just an animal pal, but a real honest companion? Who knew. Maybe? Would he be able to take that dragon home?

Who knew? But the ones he was being shown off to had yet to decide whether any of them would be going anywhere with him. He could only charm so many creatures or people using his Plasmids. But Owen wanted to see what could come of just being himself around these...