Disclaimer, I own nothing, Worm is Wildbow's and is wonderful, if you haven't read it (yes all 1.7Million + words) go read it, it's great, and I may spoil it and you owe it to yourself to not let such a wonderful story be ruined, don't worry, I'll wait, I'll be right here when you're done.
This story involves the Empire 88, and several of its members, being characterized as flawed human beings, rather than cardboard nazi cutouts. There is an attempt to explore how people can fall into the slippery slope inherent in this sort of hateful ideological group. I am not a nazi, a nazi-sympathizer, or anything approaching it, but I also believe that dehumanizing people who have fallen victim to the slippery slope can be just as dangerous as earnestly platforming them.
Story is dead because I recieved too many PM's accusing me of being a nazi. As well, this story was much easier to write when it was a more abstract thought exercise, because actual neo-nazis weren't yet being earnestly platformed in our political discourse. Though I have attempted to not further the aims or rhetoric of the ideology through this story, I don't consider myself a talented enough writer to walk that line finely enough that I'm comfortable publishing any further.
The first things I replaced were my eyes. The ones I was given at birth were poor, dysfunctional, and ugly. My new eyes replaced my painfully sub-par eyesight with a sense of it beyond natural humanity. I could cycle between the (normally) visible spectrum, infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray wavelengths with no more than a thought. In addition, rather than my natural dull, ugly, brown, these could cycle through any retinal hue or configuration I desired, normally I sported a deep, purplish blue. On a whim, I also added in a sort of heads-up-display, which immediately tracked anyone visible to me, in any of my spectrums.
If anyone came within fifty yards of me I could call up a tagline displaying their name, and add tags to specific people. I was currently utilizing one of those very helpful tags to avoid the beautiful, athletic, shitsack of a person that was Sophia Hess, as I navigated my way through the swiftly emptying halls.
A few months ago, I was put through an experience to scar a lifetime by said shitsack. I have no desire to revisit that particular memory, but out of the horrifying experience came a few, well I wouldn't say benefits, but reparations might be more appropriate.
For one thing, I learned that my flesh-and-blood was vastly inferior to what it could be, and luckily also learned the skillset to fix that particular issue. For another, we got a small settlement of a half million dollars from the feds, who had quickly taken the case away from the police after hearing the details of the event.
Of course, I can't blame them, knowing what I know now. A month ago, after I installed my new eyes, I glimpsed through a wall our resident shitsack (funny how she keeps coming up) having locked her gym clothes in her locker. Rather than re-open the door she simply reached through the door to retrieve them.
Now, I may be wrong about this, but in my experience, the average person cannot reach through a solid metal door to retrieve a set of clothes, and of those who can, only one calls Brockton Bay home. That little observation clicked everything into place for me.
See, the shitsack may be a horrible excuse for a human being, but she has her name on a roster list of so called 'heroes' who are 'protecting' this fine city of ours, and as such gets to do whatever the fuck she wants to.
Not that I'm bitter or anything.
…
But those sort of thoughts lead nowhere, so I snapped myself back to the present, and the school wall I was presently leaning against. Sophia Hess, Shadow Stalker, was on the lookout for me. Perhaps I wasn't present for enough of my daily beatings today, or maybe she just had a difficult test last period, I've heard even remedial algebra can be difficult when taught to savages… or animals.
I grinned at myself just as Sophia's tag began elevating itself, perhaps going to try to find me on the second floor. Personally I know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I took my cue to slip out of one of the side doors she was prowling around just a few seconds ago.
After disengaging with the small crowd of students wallowing outside the door, I made my way out to the sidewalk and turned my way toward home. That made a full week since I had been accosted in the hallway after school. I figured that deserved a little celebration, so, after slipping off the fake glasses I still wore (the lenses were just flat panes of glass) I stopped by the convenience store a block from school and bought myself a coke.
--Ex Machina--
Sipping on the sweet nectar, I made it the rest of the way home and set down my school bag at the foot of the stair. Summarily unburdened, I turned my attentions to the other staircase and made my way to the (formerly) underutilized basement.
The familiar lack of adequate lighting and smell of grease met me like an old friend. The former was negated by my augmented eyes and the latter was heartily accepted by my olfactory senses. All the time working with machinery had taught me the beauty of the scent that wafted from a good, strong oil. Weaving my way through discarded boxed of scrap wood and newspapers led me to a small door partially hidden behind an empty, dusty bookcase. After quickly sliding the bookcase out of the way, I opened the door, relishing in the silence granted by its well-oiled hinges, and stepped into the small room beyond.
A little family history for you, my grandfather lived in this very house, and it's where Dad grew up. Consequently, the house itself is rather old. As in 'has an old storage room for the coal that was used to heat the house in the winter' old. It's this coal storage room that I had repurposed for my own use. The small 6x6 room was packed with my tools and items for my tinkering and implementation.
See, I was different from most any tinker I had ever heard of, and I was a tinker, of that, I'm sure. Most were able to build themselves powersuits or vehicles or laser guns or the like, real flashy tech stuff. That wasn't what my particular set of skills had given to me. Instead I created tech meant to be implanted within the body, to replace or augment existing systems. Cybernetics, I think was the 80's sci-fi term for what I created.
Following that, my 'workshop,' such as it is, doesn't have racks for hanging my arsenal, or a stand holding a gleaming suit of armor. Rather it has a rather crude cot build into the wall, taking up almost a third of the room. Next to the wall was a makeshift set of surgical waldos and a control panel for utilizing them.
Taking up the opposite wall is a workbench, on one side of which rested a computer setup made from an old monitor and a tower of scavenged parts. As I didn't need it for anything more advanced than writing code, it served my purposes. The rest of the workbench was covered in scattered metals, composites and wires. It was there that I had made what augments I had so far completed.
Along with my eyes, I had inserted several neural 'switches' into myself, the most important of which shut down all pain processing in my brain so that I could operate on myself with perfect clarity, rather than passing out from the pain of having my eyes, heart, and lungs replaced by their superior successors. I actually had to make a fully mechanical heart so that I could live long enough to make the necessary adjustments to my preexisting one. Three extra chambers, improved valves, and a carbon-steel mesh which would protect the organ from as much as a .308 round fired at it from ten feet away were the baseline upgrades I was able to install with my crude setup here.
My lungs were similarly improved with the mesh and a reorganization and addition of alveoli that more than tripled their surface area, allowing drastically improved respiration. Finally my feet and ankles were implanted with miniature pistons and servos to make my footsteps completely silent and allow me to run faster and jump higher, though I would have to wait until I could augment my legs completely before the full effect could be implemented. Along with a few quality-of-life improvements, mostly tool implants so I could work more efficiently, that rounded out my current repertoire.
Today though was an exciting one. Today I implanted my first offensive augment. I had finished the small dart-launcher last night. It would slip inside of my right wrist, with a small opening at the bottom of my palm. It would also have the side benefit of replacing many of those pesky baseline bones in the wrist, which are so prone to breaking, with a more durable subdermal reinforcement, so barring a sledgehammer or a greatsword, my wrist shouldn't ever break.
After making a few final adjustments to the gas-pressure chamber and the toxin synthesizer, I brought the small piece of tech over the table next to the cot and swallowed the last drops of coke. After disposing of the bottle, I laid myself down on the cot. After mentally snapping off my pain receptors and strapping my wrist down, I reached for the control panel with my left hand and began the delicate replacement surgery.
The waldos whirred to life as a small monomolecular-edged scalpel slid down and opened up my wrist. After supplying the necessary oxygen and nutrients to the cells of my right hand to keep it fully alive for the duration of the operation, I severed all bones and blood vessels in my wrist, removing the inferior natural parts to make way for my created improvements.
Fifteen minutes later, a waldo was reattaching the skin of my wrist over my installed augmentation. After lining the seam with a bio-enhancer gel which would clear up the scar and any traces of the operation by the time Dad got home, I unstrapped my wrist and swing my feet over the end of the cot. I tested my finger, palm, and wrist motion and found them satisfactorily improved by about 7.48 percent according to my ocular readout. I opened up my workshop door and stepped out into the basement proper.
After sliding the bookcase back into place, I glanced around my basement and spotted a cardboard box filled with old wood scrap about ten feet away. Snapping my wrist up so my palm was perpendicular to my arm, I mentally flipped the 'switch' to enter into the 'firing mode' for my dart launcher. A small targeting reticule appeared in my vision on the side of the box, as I moved my arm the reticule moved with it, tracking the destination of the dart, should I launch it.
After playing with the system for several moments, I eventually refocused on the box. Sending the command to launch an envenomed dart, I heard a small whiff and saw a minuscule hole appear in the side of the box. I went over to examine my handiwork and, after a few minutes of searching, finally found what I was looking for. Letting out a small whoop, I took a look at the results of my creation. Embedded less than halfway into one of the wood scraps was a small needle of bone-like tissue less than a quarter of an inch long.
Despite it being hollow, the needle didn't so much as bend, and the three holes a third of the way back from the tip were unimpeded for the clear liquid of the venom to seep out. I plucked the needle from the wood and tossed it in the garbage can next to the stairs as I made my way up. Because of the small size of the needles, the launcher had a capacity for twenty shots and enough paralytic neurotoxin for each.
The needles and venom were synthesized at a rate of roughly two per minute assuming sufficient nutrients were present to create them. As both of them were prominently calcium based, this had the horrifying result of me craving a glass of milk somewhat more often. It's been said before on every forum and PHO board out there, but tinkers are apparently quite bullshit. As I finished my rumination, I got out a large pot, I was making chicken soup for dinner tonight.
--Ex Machina--
This was a mistake. Why did I decide to install a weapon that I could discreetly use and no one would catch on that I even did anything? It was Monday, and I hadn't made it two hours before the urge to shoot a paralyzing needle into Emma's stupid face almost overtook me.
It wasn't so much that what was going on was any worse than anything they've done before. No, in retrospect shoes covered in orange juice was one of the tamest things they've done in awhile, it's that now I've given myself the capability to strike back and its taking every single last ounce of my willpower to not fill her and her lackeys with enough paralytic needles.
As I pushed my way past the small crowd I distantly heard the redhead's taunting about something something I'm ugly or something similar to that. Taking deep breaths into my much-improved lungs to calm myself down and flood my blood vessels with oxygen. I walked down the hallway breathing deeply through my nose and turned the corner to my next class.
After sitting down in my desk and opening up my notebook, I started doodling ideas for my next augment, maybe I'd add in some subdermal armoring, or perhaps an electromagnetic…
I finished the day with no more than soggy shoes and a shoulder-check into the stairwell banister, courtesy of Winslow's very own junior superhero, so I'd call today a success. The biggest surprise though was that after getting slammed back-first into the steel railing most people completely ignored it.
Most people, not everyone. Progress.
Passing by me, going up the stairs was an older girl, with longer white-blonde hair and an incredibly pale complexion. She didn't say anything mind you, but she fixed the oblivious Sophia with a glare that could make Behemoth cry, were he knowingly on the receiving end of it. She continued on her way down the stairs afterward, but that's still more than anyone's done to support me for several months.
So although no one is actually helping me and I'm still getting relentlessly bullied by a goddamn superhero, at least there's a single person in this entire school who disapproves of the trio's actions.
I've probably grown rather cynical over the past eighteen months haven't I?
No matter, I'll take what I can get, and the fact that a single person noticed and acknowledged my plight is good enough for today.
--Ex Machina--
Day two of having access to weaponry and now my desire to perforate Emma with several dozen paralytic needles has spread to her lackeys. Honestly I don't know how much longer I can go without lashing out at someone. It's in the quiet and peace of the third-floor girls bathroom stall during lunch that I have a wonderful idea.
Since naturally I can't blatantly attack my schoolmates, I'd go out and hit some gang members, after all that's what heroes do right? I'd need a mask and costume, but what better catharsis is there than beating up druggies right?
Perhaps not the best thought out plan, but I really feel the need to hit something right now.
With that cheery thought, I pull a sandwich out of my backpack and begin enjoying the turkey and cheese while sketching costume designs in a notebook.
--Ex Machina--
The Dockworkers' union had its semi-annual rally tonight, and if I judge by personal experience, that means I should have all night tonight to work on the finishing touches before going out this weekend. For the past several years, ever since Mom's accident, Dad had used these rallies to get incredibly painfully drunk and then inevitably crash for the night at Kurt and Lacey's.
While I worried for his health and well-being, this unfortunate habit of his actually serves my purposes for tonight. The mesh that I have covering several of my vital organs is incredibly simple to make, in fact I made a machine to automate the process halfway through the first lung. This mesh, if thinned down and modified to be more flexible would make for a great subdermal reinforcement.
The problem is, doing a full-body operation to essentially slip armor under most of my skin would be a long process, and Dad happening to find me strapped to a table with half my skin sliced open to insert the armor probably wouldn't be conducive to anything positive.
My worrying was interrupted by my mesh fabricator (I really need a snappier name) dinging that its task is complete, and I step over to examine its work. A few of the growth joints were misaligned, but the rest looked as good as if I had hand-made the entire set. After fixing the errors with a miniature plasma cutter in my fingertip, I placed the whole pile of the mesh on the table and stripped down. Once my gangly form was bared for all the old coal-storage room to see, I strapped myself down for the operation, flicking off my pain receptors.
After several commands, the waldos whirred to life and reached down to my legs, slicing them open and beginning the insertion of the armored reinforcement.
--Ex Machina--
Three and a half hours later, I clicked off the last of my tools and sat up from the cot. Running my fingers over the nigh-invisible seams, I could feel an almost-imperceptible honeycomb pattern nested just below my dermis. Running through a full battery of stretches and motions, I found myself incredibly pleased by the results.
The armoring wasn't powered or mechanical at all, so it could only reduce mobility, not aid it, despite that, according to my ocular readings I was still operating at 99.4 percent mobility. Considering I was functionally immune to bladed weapons and small-caliber firearms, I would count today as a great success.
Glancing at the clock, it was only about 8:30 so I had a few hours before it truly got dark enough to go out and find some crime to stop or anything of the like. So I went upstairs and made myself a dinner of microwaved leftover chicken and watched old reruns of western movies to pass the time.
Three hours later I shut down the rolling credits of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and donned what costume I'd procured for myself over the past week. A supple black trench coat I'd picked up at the market near the boardwalk went over a dark grey turtleneck and a pair of dark jeans. I had fingerless leather gloves on my hands, but my feet were left bare, no boot would be sturdier or quieter than my augmented feet.
To finish the look, I pulled a black knit scarf over my lower face and flipped a final mental switch. A thin pair of opaque (one way) black glass lenses slid down from small slots in my brow to create the effect of my wearing a pair of futuristic-looking sunglasses. I quietly shut and locked the door behind me before stealing off into the night, wondering what trouble I could get into.
--Ex Machina--
So when I mentioned trouble, I assumed that would mean a few coked-up drug dealers who I could put to sleep and call the cops on. What I did NOT mean was being sought out by a sociopathic teleporting serial killer.
Yes the ABB's very own Oni Lee was among the small gathering of drug dealers I had engaged. In hindsight, even with his back turned I should have been wary of the guy wearing a full black bodysuit, but in the dim light I had figured it was just a hoodie or something. Nope, I had forgotten to factor in the legendary luck of Taylor Hebert and as such did not register that I was accidentally assaulting the second-most dangerous member of the ABB on my first night out.
As I lay crouched in the shadow behind a dumpster, the sound of grenades exploding off in the distance, I reconciled that at the very least it wasn't Kaiser or Lung I had inadvertently decided to engage. That's small comfort though as the explosions sound off, progressively nearer to me, shivering in the darkness afforded to me by the alleyway.
The most bullshit thing though is that Lung may have been easier to deal with. I've stuck Lee twice by this point, both times, he wavered and crashed to the ground, only to fade into ash and a demon-faced assassin to appear, leaping at where I had shot from.
An explosion sounds off at the end of the alley and I realize with a start that eventually he'll find me, and if for no other reason than I don't want Dad to lose me along with how he lost Mom, I find the determination to slowly begin making my way down to the other end of the alley.
I'm almost halfway down when I feel a change in the wind blowing onto my back. I freeze up and slowly turn my head. Standing behind me brandishing a pair of knives that look like those curved Japanese swords, except only about ten inches long, is a black garbed, demon masked, teleporting serial killer, who I had royally pissed off.
"Little girl," begins an emotionless but heavily accented voice from the cape. "You have offended the ABB and for that you mus-"
He is broken off by a loud crack and suddenly one of the knives, along with the arm holding it is blown off to clatter against the wall of the alleyway.
The remaining arm immediately begins swinging its blade at my neck, without so much as a flinch. I manage to get my palm, where my armoring is closest to the surface, in front of the blade, and it stops it handily, sinking hardly a sixteenth of an inch into the epidermis.
Before I can be impressed with the quality of my augmentation, the now armless Oni Lee crumbles into ash before my eyes. I turn around behind me to find the source of the shot and see a hunk of stone floating maybe twenty feet in the air, with two figures on standing on it.
As I watch, the stone begins floating its way toward me and the two figures hop off. One is a girl about my age wearing crimson-red robes inscribed along the fringes with black script. Her hood is pulled low over her face, but I can spy a black lacquered mask covering her features from the nose up.
Next to her is a man wearing red and black body-armor culminating in an embossed V on his chest. Slung on his back is some sort of sniper rifle, undoubtedly missing at least one bullet in the clip.
As the rock lands, the hooded figure hops off, while the armored sniper carefully steps down with an amazingly-practiced grace. I run an internet check through my eyes and, yes, my suspicions are correct, these are Rune and Victor, or Viktor apparently, of the E88. What are they going to do I wonder. Will they attack me too, or extort information or my identity or any number of other horrible things?
"Hi," Rune says brightly, lowering her hood with one hand to reveal her half-mask covered face and white-blonde hair. She reaches out a delicate-looking hand to me as I stand there stupefied. "I'm Rune and this is Viktor, are you alright? Lee's kinda an asshole what with the teleporting and exploding and stuff, we can get you a healer if you need it, Othala's nearby."
I can only listlessly shake my head at the teenaged supervillain who just saved my life. I hold up my palm in lieu of an explanation, and the through the split in my glove, a small metallic honeycomb is visible where the blade cut into the skin.
"Oh neat are you some kind of tinker or something, that looks like it stopped the blade completely. Hey Vik, come take a look at this."
I glance over and see the armor-clad supervillain leaning over the severed arm of the ABB parahuman.
After a moment, Viktor comes over to me, holding the knife Oni Lee hadn't swung at me.
"Assuming he was using similar blades in each hand," he began, speaking with the candor of a lawyer and the confidence of the blacksmith who forged the weapon. "The fact that you deflected his weapon is no small feat. This blade has been specially tempered, probably from a toybox tinker or something similar, to have an almost monomolecular edge and be incredibly resistant to dulling."
"Um…thanks I suppose, for, um saving me from Oni Lee and um the… um."
"Don't mention it, you actually gave us the opening to do more to Lee than we ever really have, we can't kill the guy cuz then the PRT will be on our asses, but he'll be way less effective with only a left arm so we're pretty much even."
"Al-alright then, so… do we just leave now or..?"
This time Viktor speaks up, silencing the younger parahuman. With a voice so smooth, I'm almost entranced by the pure tone of his voice that I almost don't register the words, or I would be, if I didn't instinctively know that I could aug a better voice than any skill he could steal.
"I suppose you could, but Othala is nearby if you'd like a brief checkup or tuneup and the night is still young miss..?"
I register that he's asking for a cape name from me, I flounder about a bit before throwing out the first and most obvious I can think of.
"I… um don't have a name yet. I tinker with human implantable technology though."
Probably revealing myself and my power to the supervillain wasn't my best idea, but he and Rune did just save my life and he probably has some sort of skill pertinent to picking out cape names right?
I wait while Viktor and Rune let out short hmm's until the skill vampire snaps his fingers, with a very full, pleasant sound.
"Machinamentum, until we get something better. Literally 'the machine,' what do you think?"
I shrug and tell him that it's a bit of a mouthful, but it would work for now. He lets out a winning smile and gestures to the hunk of stone. I look over at Rune, who gives me a genuine, if toothy, smile and hops up onto it. I mentally shrug and step up, how much weirder could tonight get?
That's one of my top three irritating sneaky* typos - mixing up discreet/discrete, rogue/rouge and lightning/lighting. I've seen it get into published works, even.
*Sneaky because they're spelled right, and won't trip spellcheckers.
A thin pair of opaque (one way) black glass lenses slid down from small slots in my brow to create the effect of my wearing a pair of futuristic-looking sunglasses.
This... is actually really good. Plus it has an interaction with the (less asshole) nazis that isn't hostile, and doesn't have them being blatantly racist in every other line of dialog, which is much more interesting than what most fics do with them.
I will freely admit to be a massive sucker for anything even remotely Cyberpunk. I mean I literally wrote an academic paper on it once. So whenever I find a story that has something like it I get excited. And from what I've seen here then I'm right to be excited. I look forward to the next installation in this series.
I will freely admit to be a massive sucker for anything even remotely Cyberpunk. I mean I literally wrote an academic paper on it once. So whenever I find a story that has something like it I get excited. And from what I've seen here then I'm right to be excited. I look forward to the next installation in this series.
What I object to is that Taylor would go anywhere with them. The UIndersiders saved her life too, and she wouldn't even accept a ride from them. Why on earth would she agree to ride with Nazis? Or have her mental implants made her colder and even more reckless?
Going with the nazis might have been a mistake. Victor is clearly a skilled and convincing speaker (I wonder how many PR specialists he has stolen skills from?), and I'd hate for him to convince Taylor to go along with the Empire. The fact that the girl who cared at Winslow is probably Rune doesn't fill me with confidence that Taylor will make the best choices here.
The Empire is going to turn up the charm here. If they are like in canon, they lack Tinkers of their own and are very interested in recruiting one. While I think they would prefer lasers to implants, they'd rather have a Tinker in the first place. Also, lasers seems to be nearly universal to Tinkers. I'm sure Taylor could perform laser-eye surgery (as opposed to laser eye-surgery).
I don't really think I've seen a Worm fic with a tinker like this. Never you mind that finding Tinker!Taylor fics is like pulling teeth without a sedative
Here are a few things that I noticed:
- Taylor got half a million dollars -> why is she still going to the same school if the situation with the bullies is the same?
- Somebody had to actually pay half a million dollars -> why is the root cause still present?
- Waldos, which can operate on a human by themselves -> armed autonomous drones.
Wonder how others would feel about upgrading their bodies with Cybernetics as well since Taylor is basically the mechanical version of Bonesaw which is good since that means less body horror.
@Banjofrog theoretically could Taylor upgrade something on the same levels of the Metal Gear cyborgs like Jack and others from the games?
Also I can't help but feel that Armsmaster would love the internal upgrades to become even more efficient in general and working alongside his Tinker powers it is theoretically possible to give him tons of augments even in a normal sized body.
--Author's note--
Shorter chapter today, but I decided to use what time I had last night rather than doing nothing with it, so here you go.
--Ex Machina--
Chapter III: Introduction
Once safely perched on the concrete, Rune shoots me another toothy smile and we lift off into the air. Viktor was still clutching Oni Lee's arm and knife in one of his hands, and scanning the horizon with a practiced eye.
After a very short while, we begin to descend, until the concrete chunk drops into a distinctly concrete chunk-shaped hole, likely its origin, and the two Empire capes step off.
Were I functioning better right now, I probably would be evaluating the life decisions I had made that led me to accepting a ride from Nazis to meet another Nazi, but I was still somewhat in shock at the revelation that these Nazis are actual people and a hell of a lot more pleasant to be around than the only 'hero' I know I've met.
As the three of us land, our ride returning to the sidewalk from whence it came, a fourth figure steps out from the alleyway and awkwardly jog/walks toward the three of us. Closer inspection reveals a woman in a black dress with maroon trim and a lacquered mask similar to Rune's.
When she reaches us, she immediately grasps for Viktor's hand, which he holds out for her appreciatively. Viktor sighs in relief at the figure's touch before letting go and turning to face both her and Rune and I.
"O, this is Machinamentum, a tinker we found fighting against Oni Lee. We decided to lend her a hand and managed to knock an arm off the chink for our troubles. Machinamentum, this is Othala, my betrothed.
The woman steps closer, into the illumination of the streetlight and I finally get a good look at her. Shorter than me, she couldn't have been older than nineteen or twenty, which would put at least three or four years younger than her apparent betrothed, and she had that sort of 'unblemished Disney princess' look about her, from her tumbling jet black hair to her perfect skin.
"Then Machinamentum, you have my sincerest thanks for aiding in crippling that menace, many of the good people of Brockton Bay have been harmed by his actions, and any permanent damage will severely limit his threat from here on out."
She said this all with a sight accent, much softer and more controlled than the fast, harsh accent native to Brockton Bay. After executing a little bow straight out of etiquette class she reached out her hand to me, offering to shake. After some hesitation, I take the offered appendage and instantly a surge of something rushes through my veins. It feels like alternating fire and ice, but cleansing and refreshing rather than scalding and freezing.
After we break contact, she touches a pair of fingers to her soft, pale chin and lets out a small gasp.
"Oh dear, you're not in good shape at all are you? That bit of regeneration should clear out any lingering issues you had, but that was long overdue, I'm not sure if it's my place, but do try to begin eating a bit healthier if you want that to stick."
I stand there in shocked silence for a few seconds before what she said to me finally registered.
"Wait you mean you… regenerated me? But what about…" I broke off and cycled through half a dozen different optical settings, reading the data as it came to me. In fact all of my augs weren't destroyed or ruined, but… maintained. The small kinks in my meshes were smoothed out, while my various other implants were refueled, relubricated, and refurbished, as if the regeneration merely treated them as… part of my… body.
Hmm.
I was broken off my searching by the sound of Rune snapping her fingers next to my ears. I turned around just in time for her to call out "Heloooo, Bet to Machina, anybody home?"
"Sorry, I was just running some diagnostics, what was going on?"
"Well after O regenned you, you muttered for a bit and then went silent for like thirty seconds and I was wondering if she put you in factory reset mode or something."
She finished with one of those joking smiles and I returned with as flat a look as I could deliver behind sunglasses and a scarf. She seemed to get the message, because she let out a little chuckle and stuffed her hands into some sort of hidden pockets in her robes.
Viktor, who had been watching the whole exchange, interrupted the silence just before it got awkward by clearing his throat.
"I'm not going to give you a sales pitch or anything, because it seems you've had quite enough events for one night, but," he held out a small slip of cardstock to me, which I reached for with some hesitation, "if you're ever out and need some backup, just give me a call, we take care of our own, especially with much of the city overrun with more… unsavory types. The might of the Empire will aid you in a time of need for your part in crippling the ABB's lieutenant."
The card he handed me was a soft textured cream color, with a thick black ten digit phone number embossed onto one side; I started pulling it toward a pocket of my trench coat before a floating pen blocked my path. Rune's arm flicked put and a finger brushed the card in my hand and it began to hover in front of her next to the pen.
"I'm like nintery-nine percent sure you're high-school age like me and since Clarendon is like ten miles across town from where we found you and you're not a stuck-up bitch from what I've seen like the people at Arcadia are, I'm going to assume we share the honor of attending the city's armpit.
"If you ever need any help with anything, like homework, or assholes, or you just want to talk to someone, slip a note into the slots in this locker and I can meet you whenever," at this. The card flipped over, revealing the embossed number to me as the floating pen began scribbling out what I assumed to be a locker number on the reverse side. "Totally no obligation or anything, and if I called it wrong and you go somewhere else then no problem, but there offer's there if you want it."
After she finished she took a deep breath, as if she hadn't breathed through her whole speal because she was too afraid of stopping, and the pen cap floated back onto the pen, and the pen floated into Rune's pocket, while the card floated into the pocket I had been moving to put it into anyway before her little declaration.
I realized that it was my turn to speak up, so I summoned my most eloquent rhetoric to reply to the friendly Nazis looking expectantly at me.
"Um… thanks I suppose, thui was all like a lot of… stuff to take in, so I'm going to go home for the night, but… um… yeah."
Viktor chuckled and took Othala's hand as the turned and began strolling their way down the dark empty sidewalk, looking for all the world like two carefree superpowered young lovers. Rune gave me one last smile, this one a lot softer, and seemingly more genuine than her previous over-the-top expressions.
"Hey, I mean it; if you need anything at all don't hesitate to contact me or something I… I think, if you're up for it, I could use a friend too."
She turned before I had a chance to respond and jogged to catch up with Viktor and Othala down the sparsely-lit street.
I watched the three of them make their way down for a few second before slowly turning and walking home, the events of the past night weighing heavily in my thoughts.
--Ex Machina--
I awoke from my four hours and thirty-six minutes of required sleep with a bit of a start. I had gotten home well after one in the morning, and had flopped into bed around two after pouring myself and downing a tall glass of milk.
After the short boot-up sequence for all my augs finished, I sat up in bed and rubbed my 'eyes,' more out of habit than necessity, as the lenses were self cleaning and repairing.
That morning ritual over with, I leaned back against my headboard with only a single thought running through my head.
'What the hell happened last night?'
After a brief time spent pondering why I had never considered that Nazis could be people too, and furthermore that they're, from the three that I've seen, better people than most others I interact with on a daily basis, namely one so-called 'hero,' I swung my legs over the bed and mechanically proceeded to the rest of my morning rituals.
Of course I can chalk part of that goodwill down to gratitude for my part in crippling Lee, which is an entirely different thing to freak out about, but now is not the time, and part of that to my skin-shade being in their defined range of 'acceptable,' but even so, the closest thing to friendly interaction with one of my peers that I've had in eighteen months is with someone the government defines as a villain, a menace to society.
I pulled out card from my bedside table and glanced at the scrawled number on its backside while I got up and started making up my bed. 3248, only half a hallway from my own locker, a supervillain stores her schoolbooks and homework, the only difference being the number embedded on its front and the lack of a lingering smell of industrial disinfectant.
I don't honestly know at this point if I'll take her up on her offer; that could lead to a very slippery slope that I maybe don't want to start making my way down. At the same time, the tinker part of my brain, which is currently designing an aug which would automatically brush my teeth for me, is telling me that the resources Kaiser would lavish on me for my tinkering would open up so many possibilities for augs or implants. All it would take is being labeled as a Nazi and supervillain by the same system that labeled Sophia Hess as a superhero.
I broke off that chain of thought before it got too dangerous by throwing on some old clothing and making my way down to my painfully inadequate workshop to see what toys I could come up with to clear my head before Dad gets home. While I was no CQC expert like Oni Lee, it would be nice to have a few options, should I ever find myself in another hand-to-hand engagement…
I am of the opinion that Taylor's tech is a bit too good for how early her career is, but on the other hand, if you think about it, it's nothing much better in actual effect then your standard tinker armor/weapon starting loadout. How did she get her materials?
I suppose my disbelief maintains suspension for now, but I would recommend that you remove the part where Oni Lee's knife was anything but an ordinary high-quality knife.
Taylor could use a friend, so I tentatively approve of this development, even if I think she should find non-nazi friends as well. And who knows, Rune might have a different backstory in this AU and be more sympathetic?
It would be an interesting dynamic if Taylor and Rune hung out in their civilian life, but not in their cape life. Go to the mall together during the day, fight each other during the night. Would certainly take the "game of cops and robbers" attitude to the next level.
Personally, I'm rooting for E88!Taylor. It's very Rare. Even temporarily joining them. Welcome to the Empire is the only one I can think of and even then she defects not long after joining. If not E88, then definitely Villain.
Yes, they're Neo-Nazis, but this is fiction, they lost where it counts, in real life. I wanna see something different.
Plus who says the protagonist has to be a good person? I'm not saying that Taylor should become incredibly racist, because that would be shit, but rather she becomes quite immoral and purely Machiavellian, so she'd see the advantages. And have the knowledge in the back of her head that once she gets strong enough she could take over or leave.
In fact there's an idea.
Joins E88 ---> Rises in E88 -----> Takes Over E88 ---> Takes Over Medhall ----> Turns Medhall into essentially her own version of Sarif/Page Industries. ----> Profit.
I actually really like stories where Taylor joins the E88 or the ABB.
I've don't really care that both groups are racist, I just find the Undersiders and the hero teams boring, and unless it's an AU I can't even consider the Merchants.
I'm honestly hoping that Taylor get's slippery sloped right into the Empire, and then sticks with the moderate faction.
I would love to read a story where the tinker actually takes advantage of their potential as a force multiplier in some way other than Bakuda putting bombs in someone's head. The idea of what some of the E88 members could do if they were enhanced and then still had implants recognized by their powers really interests me.
Either way, this is really good so far, which means it's time for me to go find your other stories.
Joins E88 ---> Rises in E88 -----> Takes Over E88 ---> Takes Over Medhall ----> Turns Medhall into essentially her own version of Sarif/Page Industries. ----> Profit.
