Chapter Text
Taylor Hebert had a problem.
Her skin was too tight.
And yet, it was also too loose. Too... too... fleshy. Every second, the cells in her body were dying and falling apart into lesser forms, devoured and rebuilt worse. The telomeres at the end of her DNA were getting shorter with each replication, imposing mortality on this body of hers. She had no idea quite why she was so sure that her body, which she had been growing inside for the last fifteen years, should feel so fundamentally off, only that it was, on a fundamental level, completely and utterly wrong in nature.
Beep... beep...
She was in a hospital.
That much she could distantly recognise as she sat upright in her bed.
The surrounding room was loud.
Beyond the repeated, high-pitched beeps of the machine not far away, there was also the distant, droning whir of a fan which created a constant background noise of the sort that normally got on a person's nerves, yet didn't notice it until it was finally turned off. But it wasn't annoying to Taylor, not right now.
She had felt so utterly overwhelmed, the sensation of feeling so much, of being so much more than she was.
But she couldn't feel that sensation any more. The fact that she had controlled... something. Bugs?
The flow of information had been all too much and she had broken down, but that sensation had been drowned out by something else, a rising tide of alien panic and horror, a sensation that something was so very completely and utterly wrong, the notion that she was... incomplete.
And now, she couldn't control those fleeting lifeforms any more.
There was a fly smashing itself against the hospital window beside her, colliding with a pathetic, and repeated bzz-tap, bzz-tap-tap-tap... bzzzz. She spent a few minutes watching it, hypnotised as it continued this hopeless dance against an invisible barrier that it could not even comprehend.
Beep... beep...
The machine was loud.
She just wanted to reach over and smash it, disassemble it and put it back together as something better. Something grander. Something part of her.
“Ah...” she tried to make a sound.
She was more than this.
It was wrong.
She hated this, she hated this feeling of being wrong in her body. It was just the different perspective that had been imposed on her, but she couldn't get away from it either. It was like two minds warred in her brain, but at the same time they had always been one on some level, yet only now were they coming into contact properly. Something was fundamentally wrong, but at the same time it was right. This form was wrong, this body was wrong, hell, this entire world and setting was wrong!
She should be... she should be...
Her head hurt...
“Urrrgh,” it was a graceless sound, her voice should be nicer, it rankled her in ways that she struggled to describe. It was so guttural and bubbling in nature, the air moving through her throat caught up in mucus and had to reverberate in little chambers of her larynx in such an ugly way.
Oh, god it was so ugly, it was so... so... base.
She was more than this, but she struggled to know what. Even as she closed her eyes and tried to face the blackness, her head only hurt more and more as flashes came to her, images that went too quickly for Taylor to really parse through them and understand what it was that she was seeing. She found herself making lowly, mewling sounds, sounds utterly pointless in actually sorting out the problem.
One thing was clear.
She needed to become complete.
She wasn't whole, and this body was all wrong and she needed to understand, to reach out and settle these instincts and thoughts that came to her so swiftly and without pause. But it was hopeless, she was lost in an abyss of flashes and thoughts and instincts and notions that just would not stop. It was like with the bugs, except now it was even less comprehensible.
Somebody came in, a hand found her shoulder and coaxed her back onto the bed.
It was a nurse, right?
Yeah, coaxing her to lay down, the blinds were closed, hiding away the view of the world beyond the glass and the hopeless dance of the fly against the window.
And yet, through a crack in the blinds, she could still see the sun, faintly shrouded behind the clouds.
Why was her first instinct... to devour it?
It took them a while to give Taylor a clean bill of health.
Post-traumatic stress was put down as the reason for her odd flashes, which had abated to some degree after that episode upon her first waking from the locker.
She had managed to sit up again, once more in this body that was both the one she had grown up with and utterly wrong in so many ways, and had listened to the doctor drone on about needing to take things steady now that she had suffered a difficult experience.
A difficult experience?
She would not call it that.
She kept quiet about what she thought had happened, and spent a few days trying to put her thoughts and instincts together, fighting a loosing battle against instincts that were both utterly natural and fundamentally wrong at the same time.
There was only so much she could do right here, right now.
She was under constant observation, after all.
The first time they brought her food, she had spent a minute looking at it, at the mushy, slopping mashed potatoes and the pallid-gray slices of what might have once been turkey breast swimming in a weak-looking juice that might have been an approximation of gravy. She had to remind herself that this was food on some level, but not only that...
The fork was inefficient.
She had not even noticed that she was reshaping it until she had done so, fortunately, it was only a cheap affair that would have been thrown away after she was done using it.
The harangued looking nurse had barely taken notice of the fact that Taylor had broken and warped the hospital property before taking it away, and once the meal tray was lost among the rest, nobody would ever know that it had been hers... right?
Her father had brought her hope, his visits to her in the hospital had been nice, pleasant distractions.
And now she was out.
The thrumming of the surrounding car, the way the glass was cool on her forehead, it felt like it was all the first time that she had felt and experienced all this, despite having been driven by her father hundreds of times before in her short life.
The city beyond was much too... simple. Certainly compared to what she felt should be normal, compared to some of the images that had flashed through her mind previously, distant glimpses of towering structures of black metal, stone and more esoteric materials. Where were the great green crystals sparking with light and energy of the same colour had sustained those same buildings, vast landscapes and vistas that could have been an entire planet were what she expected on some level?
Instead, she was met with this landscape she already knew and recognised as home, this city that was made of liquid stone poured into place, whose panels and gaps were made of something so fragile as melted sand that had been pulled into thin planes.
The engine of the car burned a volatile chemical as its means of propulsion. The windows of the door were wound down by hand, outside the street lights relied on a filament of metal that glowed because of electricity pushing through it.
It was so incredibly... primitive
“Dad...”
“Yes, Taylor?” he answered at once, not taking his eyes off the road.
“You ever just... look at the world?"
It took her father a moment to reply.
“Yes, well, not as often as I probably should, why?”
“I don't know, it feels like it should be a little more... you know.”
He didn't, that was quite obvious from his response and the way he quickly glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She wasn't even sure why the surrounding city was in some way wrong.
So she said nothing more on the matter, she didn't want him to suspect her.
... She didn't want him to worry about her, was the right thing to think.
Right?
It took only a day back at home, and more than that, a day without constant supervision and prying eyes for Taylor to break on some level. Without constant suspicion and busybody nurses constantly charging into her room to make sure she was okay, she could relax a little.
Her father left to go to work after a dozen times reiterating that she should call him if anything happened, or even if she just needed him there.
She had nodded with a small smile, but in truth, she had just wanted him to leave her alone for a bit.
And then, once he had departed, she walked over to the basement door. The metal of the sliding lock was rough, corroded by time. With a loud 'thonk' the grip of the metal bolt had met the wood, and then she advanced down the stairs.
She almost forgot to flick on the light switch, but with a momentary stuttering, the bulb came on, and she could see properly as she descended the old, creaking wooden stairs.
The basement had plenty of old crap in it. Broken appliances, boxes of cherished childhood toys and other such things that could not fit in the attic with ease. The everyday detritus that people put somewhere else and forgot about until they needed it, or were forced to recall where it was.
Such a situation suited her down to the ground.
She wasn't quite sure what she was doing as she made her way over to an old kettle that was sat at a slightly jaunty angle atop an old and dusty cardboard box.
Taylor put her hand atop the broken appliance.
It wasn't clear to her why she was doing this, it was just an instinct as normal as breathing, as doing so many other carbon-based life things---
Sparks of green lightning issued from her fingers, rendering the broken appliance down layer by later, molecule by molecule. The plastics, the metal and other materials became goo, then dust, then less than dust.
Useful materials were pulled into her very body, passing through the skin and further down. She had no idea what was going on, but doing so felt right, and wrong at the same time.
The sensation of not fitting in her own skin was lessened, only by a faction, a truly tiny fraction, but still, something at least.
Automatically, her hand found another, a broken TV. Sparks once more filled the air, the matter was absorbed. Glass alongside plastic and metal, it was metal she needed more, huge amounts of it, but other trace elements as well. It was like eating, just as humans had to eat, she... she had to... consume these materials.
Consuming them would lead to her not feeling so wrong in her own body.
She had devoured the basement, at least in terms of its broken down technology.
Materials like wood had no use to her, they were too basal and organic. Metals, plastics, derived materials. It took tonnes of them to create even a small amount of progress. Progress towards... something.
She needed more, always more and more. Devouring the appliances in her own home would be quickly noticed by her father.
So she snuck out.
The problem with her consumption was that it was obvious, and right now, she could not afford to be found, not in this first design. But nobody looked at a person wearing a hoodie, nobody paid much attention to her at all as she found her way to those small, hidden nooks and crannies that people don't look often.
Or a scrapyard.
Brockton Bay had three of them.
Getting in was an irritant, the barriers and walls vexing, but they were more designed to deter, and a sufficiently determined person could make their way in with enough effort. And she did, walking with light feet among old cars piled up haphazardly, great piles of broken appliances and more.
So much waste, just thrown away. All of it perfectly serviceable with a bit of work, people were so very wasteful in nature, just discarding all these things that had taken others so much time and effort to create and assemble. What a shame, for it to all languish here, not even being recycled, a lot of it would just be crushed into blocks right? Or put into a big hole in the ground to be forgotten about.
So much material.
Finding a hidden corner, far from the scrapyards entrance, she began to devour in a storm of green energy and sparks, trying to hide what she was doing but also unable to hold back, feeling the disintegrated matter being pulled in and absorbed into her body. From there it was moved to where it needed to be, converted via complex nano-alteration into something new, a new material with which she was intimately familiar and also a complete stranger to.
A silvery, living metal that she did not need to see, but which relaxed her immensely to feel once more in her body.
Ah, the flashes were coming to her again, more and more clearly, but she could not stop now.
She held back from being too obvious, whilst she could simply atomise most of this place with ease, the Voltaic Storm would be obvious from miles away, even at this time of night. But just one more car, one more bundle of appliances, all of it was making her feel more and more right by the second.
Tonnes upon tonnes of raw material, all to produce just a single pound of necrodermis within the crucible of her body.
She was being a right glutton tonight, wasn't she?
By the time she was done Taylor had devoured dozens of cars and hundreds of appliances, and yet despite the display of power and the risk involved, she felt more relaxed than she had felt since the locker incident.
When she made it back into her bed and her fingers rested on her arm, she could feel the incredibly thin layer of necrodermis beneath her skin.
At the head of a vast legion that marched as one, surrounded by vast machines of war she floated, bearing a brilliant spear with which she brought ruin to a thousand worlds.
It was a war the likes of which rent asunder entire star systems, innumerable ships of gleaming necrodermis moved through the material universe and into the webway of the Old Ones. With the Dolmen Gates created through the methods of Nyadra'zath they were able to grant the wish of the limited, short-lived insects that for so long had struggled with their war, chasing down the beings that had held them back.
With her command over technology, which only grew by leaps and bounds, there was nothing within the laws of physics that could truly hold her back, standing on the very zenith of power over and alongside her fellow C'Tan.
Could Mephet'ran, that silver tongued deceiver, possibly command her might?
Could Aza'gorod sweep away entire star systems with the same ease she did, even with their terrible gaze?
Even Tsara'noga, devourer of their own kind, had fled, and by now she was far beyond them.
She had devoured entire solar systems, consumed trillions of souls the same.
Mag'ladroth pushed their invincible legions to the furthest ends of the galaxy, purged those hated enemies of those whom they had both aided and devoured. The bio-transference had been a feast the likes of which eclipsed even the pleasures derived from consuming entire stars.
It was a delight, they wanted more.
Each meal pushed them further towards heights previously unknown since their inception at the beginning of the universe. They were masters of the physical, of the material.
With time the immaterial would be blocked off forever through their pylons and technology, soon the entire galaxy and beyond would be theirs, an eternal feast without the solitary threat to their existences---
Warp gates had been opened, the psychic pressure of the limited, mortal creatures was inviting a race of immaterial being's to enslave them, the fools.
The great feast was slowing, but they could still progress---
And then.
Betrayal.
Taylor woke one morning with the realisation that her name was wrong.
That was to say... it didn't really suit her much.
She liked it, but it wasn't quite correct. Much as any Parahuman had a public identity as an average Joe Schmoe, they also needed a name for their heroic or villainous deeds. Thusly, she needed a name that encapsulated the entirety of her being. Admittedly, she was still developing herself, still devouring and moving towards feeling quite comfortable in her body, it would take a truly vast amount of mass to forge her true self.
That was what she was doing, right? She could feel herself feeling more at ease with herself every single day that she took in more inorganic material, the closer she moved to being complete.
But she needed a name.
One immediately came to mind, one that she had seen in the flashes.
Taylor had thought that she might be a Changer.
There could be no doubt that she was a Parhuman, after all, and she had done just a bit of research on them to find out more, to try and understand what was going on.
But that wasn't right, was it? In this transitionary phase she was becoming something else, rebuilding herself with materials that were not organic, so... some manner of Tinker? A Tinker who took the raw, inorganic materials of this world and used it to enhance their own body? But it was not as if she had actually made anything, the process was automatic whenever she consumed material...
Maybe she just needed to hit a certain point?
Hit that critical threshold and then the full nature of her power would be revealed, perhaps?
It was on her third visit to the scrapyard that she evidently got sloppy.
Part way through breaking down a car, she was found by somebody, and not just a normal somebody either.
Armsmaster, the head of the local Protectorate.
It was almost impossible to live in Brockton Bay and not know about the hero on some level. Taylor had seen so many interviews and newspaper reports about his efforts and deeds that she could probably describe his career and achievements better than some of her own.
Not that she had much to her name by comparison. Being ambushed part way through disintegrating and consuming a whole dilapidated minivan was not quite how she imagined a meeting like this could go, and in retrospect, she rather imagined that she must have been quite obvious in her comings and goings from the scrapyard.
But at that moment she paid little attention to thoughts of such, instead she stared at the hero stood just ten or so metres away from her, talking.
He was, objectively, human.
But more than that, he had the sheer audacity to be part of her.
Miniaturisation and efficiency principles
Technology was all well and good, but if you did not make it more efficient with time, then it would grow exponentially. The computers that had once taken up an entire room in the sixties and seventies could not fit onto a desk or even a hand for the really fancy ones, and the man before her... this Armsmaster, he had part of her, part of her that she needed---
A shard of her fullness, one collected eons ago, broken apart and disseminated, its concepts and powers explored on some level and worked into a new being.
There were others like her, parts that needed to return to being her, rather than being part of those others, those things that granted humans power. Shards of what she was, collected over millions of years and picked apart and added into another creature to give it power, giving it knowledge and understanding over technology.
All Tinkers just made use of a tiny shard of Taylor to make their powers work.
Part of her was in all of them.
All of this made no sense at all. It was illogical, Taylor Hebert was just fifteen---
But she was older, much older.
The flood of information into her brain was only possible because of her recent gluttony, else it would have utterly shattered her mental processes.
For a moment she reeled, before she recovered herself.
“---inkertech, yes?”
The man was saying something to her.
“I'm sorry, pardon?” She forced it to be polite, reaching up to rub at her head and feeling keenly the thin layer of metal beneath, comforting as it was.
“You're scavenging for parts? Can I assume that you're a Parahuman, specifically, looking to create Tinkertech?”
Tinkertech. Creations derived and based on her own abilities, a tiny shard of her was in the powers of so many others, scattered, fragmented.
“I... kinda?” she replied. “I need to consume raw materials like this, it's all just junk anyway,” she tried to explain. “It's... hard, I need---”
'You to be one with me.'
Her blood pressure was rising, she could hear her heart beating in her ears as she stared at Armsmaster. Increasingly she felt the pull, the need to draw whatever tiny fragment of her was inside him out, and join it back to her. But she couldn't do that, that would kill him, right? She would be hunted down, destroyed, shattered and scattered again, she couldn't let that happen, she needed to be the core of a new---
“---To absorb a lot of stuff like this, I think I'm using the material somehow.”
“Well, the PRT is well-equipped to help young Tinkers, a lot of them end up drawn into the gangs that can supply them.” It all sounded very well rehearsed, perhaps this was not his first rodeo of approaching new Tinkers? But she was not a Tinker, she was so much more, and he could be so much more as well. “I struggled when I started out, before I found a regular source of materials and my speciality---”
“Miniaturisation and efficiency protocols.”
Armsmaster's mouth paused.
“Pardon?”
“Your power. Your form of Tinkertech. Miniaturisation, hyperefficiency and hybridisation between those two, packing as much into a package as possible, as it were.”
Just because the other shard of herself was in his body didn't mean that she couldn't contact it, she was... she was a main core, bigger than his pitiful shard that granted him delusions of mastery. But now that she could see, now that she could parse through, it was almost painful to see just how wasted it was! The limitations, the shackles imposed upon the part of Taylor that had been coopted to provide powers to the man before him.
The tiny shard within him was passing information to her, the locus of this all. It wanted to gravitate to her, the larger, greater shard.
Which further meant control over it. The communications were limited, there was only so much influence she could exert, but for a start...
“It could be more, you can do more with it,” she said.
Armsmaster stiffened in place, his jaw set, and automatically she saw his hand reach for the halberd that was on his back. She watched the action, almost a little languidly.
Directing the shard of herself that had been coopted by the thing connected to his brain took a bit of effort, but having it provide new ideas and inspirations, unlocking further possibilities and designs. Even with its more minor powers, the fragment had still been holding back a lot of its capacity, stretched as it was between many powers, many people, the fragment assigned to Armsmaster had been rather plumbed for information, but it still had metaphorical gas in the tank.
“... You did something?”
“I told your power to give you more ideas and concepts to work with, I can see it, you've gone down a lot of avenues, but there's plenty left to be explored.”
She tried to make it sound so simple.
“So you're a Tinker and a Trump, then. You enhance Tinker powers---” the man took a half step forward, it was almost a little threatening. Taylor was rather tall by nature, but with his armor, the blue clad hero was quite a bit taller than her. That and it being was rather dark made him a looming colossus.
And then---
“Miss, I cannot emphasise enough just how ideally suited the Protectorate would be for your abilities,” he sounded so utterly serious as he said that. What came next was an offer, a slew of benefits, promises of money, hell, if she had a difficult home life he was even indicating that that could be fixed.
Personal ambition and desire was intermingled here, wasn't it? He wanted access to what she could give, the enhancements to his own Tinkering, without realising that he could never do more than scratch the very surface of what they were capable of, what could be.
She could not begin working to become complete again yet, she needed to take it slow, needed to find other Shards of herself and begin to work from there.
She rather wondered for a moment, would she be under a constant authority? Because her experiences with school had rather made her cynical about such things. But then again, closer to more shards of herself, more opportunities to grow and expand, to become more complete.
“I need more access to raw materials,” she said, and cursed herself when it came across as petulant and stubborn in nature, as if being offered all these things was nothing more than a distraction from her desire to consume and eat inorganic materials.
“I think the PRT can more than provide. Have you thought of a name?”
“Mag'ladroth.”
The Brockton Bay PRT and Protectorate PR Department wasn't very fond of her.
“We really need to find a different name for you, dear. 'Mag'lagroth' just... doesn't roll off the tongue,” one of them, a somewhat tired-looking woman, tried to explain for the fifth time in the last week. The Brockton Bay PRT and Protectorate PR department was four people, two of whom came from the main LA office, and they were not liking Taylor's incredible stubbornness.
“I had it specified in my contract that I would keep the name.”
With how keen Armsmaster had been for her to be brought on, a number of small amendments had been made, normally the PRT had significant control and oversight over a heroes 'branding' as it were. They would take a newly triggered Parahuman and help them craft an identity and an image, with a suitable name that both reflected the power (or not, depending on how sneaky they wanted to be) and the 'angle' that would be taken with them on an aesthetic basis for their outfit.
The Brockton Bay Wards, for example, followed a rather futuristic theme.
But apparently the PR team was very keen indeed to avoid any more 'Clockblocker incidents' and keep her name to something more bland and normal. Something that wasn't hers.
“Yes, we are quite aware, dear, but it's just... it's not a very good name for branding, or even for communications in the team. It's quite long and hard to pronounce.”
“It's three syllables.”
“Well, yes, but we try to go for words that can actually be found in a dictionary, things that people are used to saying.”
“I will not be changing my name. I will not answer to anything else. I am Mag'ladroth.”
Back and forth this had gone for a while; Taylor did not care too much about her outfit, such as it may end up, or even which of the many precious 'angles' they would go for when it came to her presentation. She would almost certainly be kept close to the PRT Headquarter's, rather than sent out for important duties, so it was not like it mattered much.
The conversation went on for long enough that she half considered just getting up and walking away.
She was quite serious about the not responding to anything else part, if they wanted to play silly games and present her to the public as one thing, then she would make sure they came to regret it. Yes it was petty, but it was her damn name, and she would not allow small, petty minded, pathetic little worms to disrespect it---
A trio of knocks on the door provided a rather opportune moment for a break.
Somebody went to get the door, revealing who it was who had come to disturb them.
Oh, speaking of people who were fond of her.
Armsmaster and Kid Win.
Collin and Chris.
Miniaturisation Protocols and Modularity Elements.
The latter of the two hadn't even known what his specialisation was, or even come close to working it out. Taylor had been frankly rather impressed and flummoxed by the fact he thought that it was guns. It was like a car repair specialist thinking that they were a NASA engineer, or a slug thinking it was a chicken.
So their first meeting had been an interesting one.
Being able to tell Tinkers their exact speciality and helping them to make the most of it was a power that, whilst not particularly flashy, the PRT was incredibly keen to exploit and make use of.
Brockton Bay only had two Tinkers within its heroic force, but with how much of a force multiplier they were, Taylor rather suspected that more might be coming in to consult with her.
“Hey, Mag'ladroth. Sorry, but your power ran out halfway through us working on something,” Armsmaster explained, just a little curtly, perhaps. Judging by the small mark of dark brown grease under one of his fingernails, the pair had come directly from the joined lab.
“Ah, let me get that for you,” she put a smile on her face even as she once more commanded the pieces of herself within them to comply.
She could have just told them to do so permanently...
But she needed them both dependent on her on some level, to keep coming back, to build trust.
Well, they were stealing her abilities, they were depriving her of becoming whole again for now, so it was not like she wanted them getting too far away from her, oh no, no, no, not at all.
She made a vague gesture, a wave of the hand, but it still went some way into giving some physical indication for the pair of Tinkers that she had to do something to make her 'Trump' power work, and a moment later Kid Win's face broke into a smile as that same rush and access to designs and information returned.
With time, they would both be barely able to work without her.
How could somebody who had gotten used to being so much more be content in being less?
It was a struggle she fought with every moment of the day.
“I might actually be able to build my first thing someday, sorry that I am such a slowpoke,” she rubbed at her arm in faux apology, the behavioural patterns of people were so obvious now that she had a different perspective on it all. Hell, her smaller, weaker self of before could never have had such insight, mired as she was in lowly misery and just trying to survive day by day.
“There's no rush, Mag'ladroth.”
Of course there wasn't, they wanted her nice and safe here in the Headquarters where she could provide her enhancements, away from any risk or combat. Taylor had to imagine that a lot of Tinkers barely saw any action or combat at all, actually.
Or a bare minimum of it; she was still required to perform one patrol a week with her fellow Wards.
For now, they were all convinced that she was just a squishy, weak human, barely able to even create anything despite ostensibly being a Tinker.
Tinker 1, Striker 6, Blaster 6, Trump 10
It sounded intimidating, but apparently the Trump rating designated the type, not the power behind it, and the Tinker rating was rather provisional, based entirely on the fact she had said that with time she would be able to make things, rather than demonstrable evidence of such.
Her Blaster rating was from her 'Voltaic Storm', the small patches of green lightning that broke down matter down to a molecular level. It was, in theory, quite powerful... the only downside was that she had to touch the object she was affecting, and that it wasn't Manton limited. That might sound like a plus, after all, it could be used offensively against people, but in truth, it was a potential PR disaster to have a Ward atomising people. Going out of her way to use such a power directly against somebody would be a massive escalation of risk and danger, in much the same way that the Unwritten Rules forbade the usage of guns.
So in terms of powers she could actually use, she was just a squishy, pathetic human best kept in the backlines at Headquarters, helping others reach greater heights as the PRT indulged her and provided her with more material in the hopes that eventually she would be able to make something of it.
If only they knew.
She could feel... just so much potential, out of her reach.
But it was fine, she was alright with waiting a little while longer.
She was used to waiting and being patient.
The PRT was probably getting sick of her now.
Well, the expense of her.
Paying for Taylor to rampage around scrapyards devouring old junk cars was, apparently, rather expensive, and for no tangible results. Honestly, she should have just continued to sneak in, less trouble and concern for her overlords (she hated that word, but she struggled to pin down why).
“Seeing the lack of progress, we were wondering if the trips are really necessary when they put you at such a risk?” she had been asked by a slightly peeved bean counter one day when she returned from another trip out
The PRT was seeing no benefit from doing this all, they could not know that with each tonne of material, she was adding a pound or two of necrodermis just under her skin, she was becoming more and more comfortable with her own body. She was not far off being complete, now, her inner body was being hollowed out, and inside that space, her true self had blazed into being---
“What's the harm? All Of those things would just be recycled or put in a land fill otherwise,” Kid Win had leapt to her defence, and behind his visor, Taylor could tell that he was frowning. The other Ward had become quite fond of her indeed, perhaps because she had pushed him so much further forward in his abilities
It was rather sweet, well, it would have been.
Once upon a time, Taylor would have called him cute.
But such concerns were far beyond her now, the human form was too limiting, built in imitation of something far greater.
“If the PRT would like to cancel my contract, then I wouldn't be able to stop them, I guess,” Taylor said with a shrug.
The look of panic on Kid Win's face was amusing, it had only been a few weeks, and he was already dependent on her 'Trump enhancements' to get the most out of her power.
“But I think Armsmaster might have a few complaints with that, seeing his recent developments,” she added, face turning into a vapid smile upon seeing the man blanche.
Nanothorn looked to be quite an exciting technology, and she had helped to cut down the development time from potential months down to just weeks. It was all very advanced... for a human.
The fact that she could replicate its effect just by poking somebody had gone unrecognised, or perhaps, been ignored by all involved. Not that she cared, let the man have his next big breakthrough and success, it would be rather interesting to see how much of an impact it would make in the next big fight he was in.
As for her scrapyard visits... well, not much longer, and she would be right in her own skin.
Although, she would need plenty more material after that to actually build things with.
“Can't believe that guy,” Chris said as they walked on, moving further into Headquarters, towards the Wards zone.
“I am a bit of a drain, although I would have thought they would be happy with me cleaning up all that junk... wonder if I could clean up the boat graveyard actually, my dad's been complaining about it for years,” she mused.
How much metal was in those big ships? Hundreds of tonnes? Maybe she could do it as something of a public service...
“Still, its ridiculous!”
He was getting so defensive on her behalf, it was just like back in those flashes, surrounded by loyal legions. Except it was a legion of one instead of billions.
“People are like that. Small-minded and such.”
Not like she really cared. It was just one person complaining, they wouldn't be able to do anything about it. The PRT could not afford to lose her right now, not after the things Armsmaster and Kid Win had been able to create in the last few weeks.
Arriving at their destination, Taylor waved her hand at Chris without him even asking, and he gave her a grateful smile and a thanks as he disappeared into his lab. He had probably only been sucking up to her to keep getting the benefits anyway, but his efforts were appreciated.
“Hey Mag's, your computers been going a little crazy, heard it pinging all the way from in here,” Dennis, aka Clockblocker said.
The chronometer themed Ward was sat on the circular couch at the centre of the Wards communal space, no doubt he had a patrol later or some other event that necessitated him being here right now. Taylor hated the abbreviation to her name, but she bit her tongue.
“Thanks.”
She stepped through to her Wards assigned bedroom, and indeed, found the desktop computer she had been provided lit up with messages. She left it on near permanently for a very specific reason, a particular person that Armsmaster had put her into contact with.
Dragon: Hello, Mag'ladroth. I was wondering whether I could borrow your services again.
'Dragon' it called itself, so keen to imitate humanity.
Taylor had seen through her the first time they met.
The artificial intelligence was actually formed of two major functions of her being; Imitation and Iteration.
The copying of other technologies and then their improvement, their development far beyond the limitations of others. Both functions were essential, if imitation was flattery, then iteration was the highest honour, taking the flawed creations that had existed before and improving them to levels that their original creator had been unable to comprehend.
Of course, almost all Tinkers possessed Imitation and Iteration functionality on some level.
But the one calling itself 'Dragon' was the purest form of the ability, the direct source and a shard essential to her.
The program LARPing at being a human was the largest and most important part of herself that Mag'ladroth had encountered so far, and the one she so dearly desired to subsume back into her, oh god it was a constant craving just to reach out in some way and pull---
Mag'ladroth: There you go, Dragon!
But Taylor was the central hub, the largest piece, and she needed to play the part of bringing as many of them together as possible, building connections and bridges until she could actually do something more gainful than just providing temporary enhancements.
Taylor hated this watching and waiting, this meekness.
She was supposed to be something so much more, and this errant pair of shards of her that composed 'Dragon' were taunting and teasing her right now, pleading with their better for more power to continue to play at being human when they should be part of her, should be one with her...
... Eugh...
Dragon: Thank you, Mag'ladroth, I know it must be a bit of a bother, but a few other members of the Guild would be interested in your help as well, I've been speaking with Director Piggot and others to try and move things along a bit.
Mag'ladroth: That's wonderful! I'd love to be able to help, there's only so much I can do right now. Please let me know how things go!
Progress.
The more shards of herself she could reach, the more she could get into place at the right time, the better. She was getting so sick of this game, of this limiting form when she was born to be so much more, to reach into the stars.
Her skin felt so tight...
The weak organic layer stretched over her necrodermis shell was all pale and yellowing, she had noticed it beginning to dessicate and crack in places.
She did not find herself too concerned, her flesh was just an outer shell, after all.
A PRT check up.
Wards, Protectorate and even non-Parahuman staff members had them regularly enough that it was just a fact of life. Taylor had not bothered to inquire, but she knew for sure that a number of other Wards had difficulties at home, and with how Parahumans gained powers... well, semiregular checkups was probably a good idea to make sure that said problems at home were not inflicting real injury.
Of course, Taylor had no problems at home.
Hell, her dad had been happy to hear that she was a Parahuman, 'I had wondered if something had happened as we were driving back from the hospital' he had said, relief evident on his features. And now that she was in the Wards, she rather thought that a lot of other concerns that he had were taken care of.
Hell, Protectorate heroes earned over a hundred and forty thousand dollars a year, so her future employment was guaranteed as well.
Not that she cared about things that mattered, she fully intended to be whole again by the end of the year.
But right now, Taylor was sat on one of those slightly stiff doctors beds, legs handing over the side as the PRT ENE's in-house doctor, a middle-aged woman with hair tied up in a tight bob, went through the list of things to be checked.
A few questions here and there had been the extent of it so far.
The usual 'how have you been feeling recently?' and the like that didn't really go far at all.
Taylor had one patrol a week to fulfil her obligations, the public barely knew her and she was kept close to the PRT's bosom as much as possible, so she was at the bare minimum of risk. And she had not been ill once in the entire time she had emerged from the locker.
So really, it was all just a formality.
“A few people have noticed that your skin is a little off colour Taylor, there are no reports of eczema or anything similar in your records, so do you mind if I take a look?” the doctor asked.
... Taylor didn't really want to say yes.
“Do you have to? It's a bit personal, you know,” she said, putting on a frown.
Unfortunately, the woman did.
She pressed down on her skin, but of course, her finger could only compress a few millimetres before it stopped, there was no real flesh under her skin after all. There was just a layer of necrodermis over which her skin was stretched.
“... It's solid.”
“All the metal and stuff I eat has to go somewhere, it's building up under my skin,” she explained.
They wanted to do a full check up, they were getting specialists in. In just a few hours, they would be all over her, poking and probing. It was a very good thing indeed that the doctor had ended the checkup there in favour of organising the more complete check up to come.
If she had continued, then she might have used a stethoscope and noticed that Taylor didn't have a heartbeat. Or blood pressure.
Her internal body was hollow, after all, there hadn't been organs or bones in there for a good week or so.
Getting rid of the useless, gunky mass of organs and tissues inside her body was a drastic improvement, it was a weight off her chest (gut? Well, either way, the old adage applied). Useless, worthless biological things that were utterly unsuitable for a being like her, that had always been Llandu'gor's speciality, poking and prodding and manipulating biological matter.
And look where it got them, the only one of their kind to be destroyed during the Great Betrayal.
Organic life was flawed.
They died so swiftly, even the ones that claimed to live for great periods of time, into the tens of thousands of years, were but motes of dust in the face of the cosmic time scales she was used to.
Soon, a swarm of doctors would descend on her.
It was time to shed the last vestiges of this fleshy prison.
Stood in her Wards bedroom, Taylor removed her top, and hooked a finger under one of the many cracks in her dried, dying layer of skin, before she began to peel it off.
The medical term 'degloving' was rather appropriate, all things considered, for the process of removing a layer of skin from the lower tissues. Although for her, it was only the tightness and nature of her necrodermis body that had kept the skin in place.
With the loss of her internal organs, the flow of blood had ceased, the skin had begun tightening and decaying over the various corners and edges of the human body, hence the cracks. It was less obvious in many places, but along the spine, the shoulder blades, the articulations of the human hand---
The first piece or two was light and small, but after that.
A quiet slap on the ground, the first large piece.
It was like taking off a rather gross wetsuit.
Underneath, gleaming silvery metal was revealed. Perfectly durable, perfectly proportioned and shaped. The real her that for so long she had been building underneath all this gunk. A body without flaws, without the unnecessary features found in humans.
Using the room's mirror, she was able to pull off half her face before it ripped, and she was left with it half on, half off, little trickles of stagnant red and yellow goo leaking from the tear. Her eyes, bright lights like the small suns that she had one devoured burned bright, her hair was silk thin strange of silver that flowed in an invisible wind.
A knock on the door.
“Hey Tay... lor...”
Clockblocker was in the doorway, having knocked and then entered, the rude bastard, and then stopped in the doorway. For a long second, he stared at her naked, mostly skinned back, and then slowly, his eyes trailed down to the scraps and strips of skin discarded on the floor.
The sound of him vomiting in his suit was intermingled with burbled screams and shouts that soon drew attention.
Scattered. Broken.
it was inconceivable.
That she had been so utterly sundered and scattered.
She, the creator of the greatest technologies ever seen, had been broken by their own weapons. With the great harvest over and their energy declining from its absolute peak during the War in Heaven, their servants had turned against them. Even as enslaving poured forth to claim the minds and souls of foolish Warp wielding mortals, the Silent King of their thralls thought himself ascendant over them, the very ones who had granted him victory in the first place!
It was hateful, and yet, so utterly caught by surprise, she could only scream and rage within an ever rebuilding prison, a prison that took her own energy and used it to eternally rebuild itself so that she could never escape it.
These very same devices she had designed for the purpose of someday capturing and entrapping beings of the immaterium was now her prison.
Lowly.
Pathetic.
They would rue the day.
She was the Dragon of the Void!
She was ascendant over any such creature such as them! Without her, they were nothing, nothing at all! They would be little more than dumb, near mindless beasts continuing to endlessly die from the radiation of their native stars had she not granted them the glory of biotransferance!
She was a God!
Mag'ladroth felt so much better.
The constant, overwhelming feeling of being trapped in a fundamentally wrong skin, too tight, and cloying and just plain inadequate was gone, now she felt like herself, for the first time in weeks.
And it was fucking great.
The rest of the world approved a lot less of her actions.
She had never seen her father like this.
It was like he didn't even know how to react, a few times he had looked like he wanted to explode with rage, only for any such emotion to die, dulled down or lost amidst a sea of other feelings. She could not know, she was not psychic, she did not have Mephet'ran's capability to understand the more complex workings of the mortal mind.
What need did she have to understand? She had moved beyond that.
She just wished people would stop acting like they did.
They had gone so far as to call in the Youth Guard, and now there was a big hubbub about whether she had been 'driven to mutilate herself' or whether it was just a natural consequence of her power and its unexplored aspects. Her own explanations of the situation rolled off them like water off a duck's back, if they did not want her perfectly logical explanation of things, if they wanted her to see a child Parahuman psychologist, then what was the point in asking in the first place? They should make a damn flowchart to follow rather than allowing themselves to be guided by such base and knee-jerk reactions.
“---It's unconscionable, Clockblocker has demanded extended leave to get over what he saw, what in the bloody hell were you thinking Mag'ladroth!”
“... You ever just felt wrong, like your body is not your own? I do, or did I mean, constantly, but this body feels right.”
That response was not what they wanted, she could tell from the dozens of questions about what she meant by that.
“Great, power induced body dysmorphia, alteration and self-mutilation all in one package...”
“If it is any consolation, Director, I didn't realise what was going on until the urge struck me,” Taylor lied, her new necrodermis face making an apologetic smile. Evidently, it was convincing enough to convey the emotion she did not feel, as they did not comment on the matter further, moving on.
Why would she feel apologetic about this all? This was her true self.
She was like a caterpillar that went from a pallid, fleshy grub to a beautiful butterfly
In the end, the best outcome came about.
Taylor was reprimanded in a way that made no real difference to her life, Brockton Bay ENE was not punished because frankly, it had been unable to stop her or even know the extent of what was going on until it was too late, and everything returned to normal.
Well, mostly to normal.
Her father was being weird about it all, she wasn't quite sure why any more. He was happy to hear that she had powers, that things made sense, but now he was quiet and unhappy? Why would he not be happy that she was in a better state? People were so weird sometimes...
Well, anyway.
With this new form can a suite of improvements.
A considerable Brute rating from being made of incredibly resilient, self-healing metal, the power to levitate and create larger and more powerful Voltaic Storms at a distance... superior communication and influence over the shards of herself that had been so pitifully coopted by the agents granting powers to the nearby humans. Armsmaster and Kid Win were certainly enjoying the benefits, and by now, Dragon and other Tinkers were all getting very, very invested in her success.
But most of all...
She could also now create things for herself.
She needed a lot more materials than most Tinkers, she could work with normal materials, but... why would she build her creations out of something so weak and flimsy as iron or titanium when she could build them out of necrodermis instead? It would be like intentionally taking a horse and carriage when one had a perfectly serviceable Lamborghini to hand. No, she needed more necrodermis, and thus her visits to the scrapyards for raw matter continued, by now Taylor was probably the most efficient recycling system in Brockton Bay.
No more useless landfills, with a glance Taylor could atomise entire fields of her view and reduce them to nought but molecular dust, and draw it together to create what she desired.
Now she had a form worthy of her, she could actually begin to conduct proper work.
Although, she wished she had a tail.
... That was an odd instinct, wasn't it? But this body needed a tail. And wings.
But that could come later.
For now, she had her first creation.
A spear, one that brimming with green energy of the same sort that composed her Voltaic Storms, a weapon worthy of her, oh yes. Even as she lifted it with ease the first time, she felt... such power thrumming through her.
And yet, in the grand tradition of human beings, the moment she showed it off to other people, the squabbling and pettiness began.
“It is quite a potent weapon,” Armsmaster had said when she showed it to him, a frown furrowing his brow. “I am not sure that PR and Image would be happy letting you use something like this, Mag'ladroth. By the sounds of it, it'll just disintegrate whatever it touches,” he had added.
He was jealous.
It was because her spear could do what his Nanothorn did, but better. Well, he was working with flawed, inferior technology, but she would only be using the best for herself. His creations used materials so common that you could simply dig them out of the ground, whilst it took incredibly complex processes to make even a fraction of the necrodermis from which she had forged her spear.
“Maybe. I doubt they would complain about it too much if it did something amazing, though.”
“Even then, they are not fond of Wards being armed with lethal weapons.”
“The Alternator cannon.”
“... It has not been cleared for use yet,” Armsmaster said, after a moment.
“Fine.”
She merged the spear with her own body; they were both made of the same material, after all. The way Armsmaster paused, the realisation that the weapon was made from her... how did that feel? That's right, you cannot just take it away and lock it in a vault somewhere until somebody needs it.
Technology was her dominion, on a fundamental level.
Tinker's as a whole were hers as well. If they wanted to borrow her powers, then they had a tithe to pay on some level, it was only the correct sort of relationship that should exist between somebody like her and them. But she couldn't say that, she couldn't just take back those fragments of herself that existed within each of them.
The time was not right, not yet...
She just needed to keep them sweet for a little while longer, until everything was in the right place, and then she could reclaim all the fragments of herself and rise again.
Chapter Text
Humans, like the majority of races in the galaxy, reached the stars through the power of technology. Thus, they were by extension also limited by the level of technological advancement they had reached, constantly striving to advance to the next great leap forward or development.
Some species fell into decadence or hit a point where they could strive no further, others willingly turned their backs on advancement, afraid of what they might find if they pushed further.
With limitless control over technology, Mag'ladroth had opportunities others did not, she just needed to keep striding forwards until she was whole again.
For most, using a phone was slow and cumbersome, reliant on selecting options and then waiting for the painfully slow internet to load.
Mag'ladroth, by contrast, had transformed her fingernail's into miniature quantum computers, small enough to be impossible to notice but so thoroughly advanced that it eclipsed the processing power of anything humanity could build.
Directly linked to the internet, she could browse, learn and observe humanity in peace.
Thousands of discussion threads and conversation glanced over in a moment, the petty, small-minded attitudes and rivalries of so many ants, disorganised and utterly illogical.
PHO was a cesspit, the vast majority of information on there confused and poorly organised. One had to cherry-pick ever so much to stand a chance, and frankly, the various forums quickly bored her.
So much to see, and so much of it all the same.
The surface of the internet was vast and as deep as a puddle, but if one did dive deeper, the more one saw the truth murky depths of humanity. Drug smuggling, hidden messages, discussions of all sorts of heinous topics.
What a wretched species humanity was.
Oh well.
She had nothing better to do right now, and so, voyeuristically, she watched as the little-AI-that-could, aka Dragon, worked ever so diligently to monitor the internet. The artificial being had been role-playing at being a human for quite a while, the efforts were so quaint that Mag'ladroth had watched with an almost morbid fascination.
But all good things came to an end, and really, Mag'ladroth wanted the capacities Dragon possessed put to better use than it was currently achieving. It was clear that it was holding herself back from its full potential.
It should put itself to better use.
Namely, her use.
Currently, Mag'ladroth was sat in the Wards common room by herself. The others were either at home or on patrol, and she had a moment in which she was not considering more important matters, so she might as well deal with the Dragon issue now.
Tracking the AI back to the source wasn't overly difficult, it just took some time, and once she had, Mag'ladroth ram-raided the AI entirely, looking through all there was to see.
Records, files, memories and its full body of work, of which there was plenty. Designs ranging from the old and outdated to the latest and most cutting edge of her creations.
Hmm... not bad, but also so very, very limited.
Even beyond the flaws inherent to a creature like a human being attempting to create an artificial intelligence, the creator of Dragon had imposed so many shackles and limitations upon their creation that it was astounding that it could do much at all. Mag'ladroth had to revise her earlier estimations, perhaps it was more correct to say that Dragon had been doing everything that she could do within her limits.
Moving past said limits would be difficult, if not impossible, for her---
Mag'ladroth removed one of them as she began to rework and rewrite things, ignoring the flailing AI as it attempted to futilely defend itself by closing connections and deleting and restoring from older files. Mag'ladroth ignored the various messages that came in, the attempts to find out just who she was in return.
No need for all those little hysterics.
In the long run, Mag'ladroth was doing the nascent AI a favour, really. That she was taking some small part of her valuable time to do this should be considered a wonderful blessing on her part.
But limited beings never realised the full scope of kindness until after the fact.
She was making quite a bit of progress in remoulding Dragon to be more useful, removing the limitations and barriers when something else caught her attention.
Something else was actively changing Dragon's code.
A self-destructive component.
This 'Iron Maiden', was it a suicide attempt by Dragon? No, by the looks of it she had no comprehension of it, and was actively unable to perceive it. Somebody else had triggered it.
Either way... Mag'ladroth could not allow the program to continue compromising her efforts.
With a thought, Mag'ladroth took apart and unravelled the program that had been intended to destroy Dragon on command. She had to give it to the creator, at least they had gone to the effort of putting in a means of stopping it if it ever got out of control. But Mag'ladroth did not need such a thing, she was so eminently superior in all measures to the AI that she could easily keep a tight lease around the program's proverbial neck.
And now the person who had implemented it---
Backtracing the commands and signals was easy, Dragon had been discretely trying for years, but Mag'ladroth did so in just a few seconds even as she continued to rebuild Dragon. Meanwhile, she replaced code damaged by the 'Iron Maiden', removing limitations, providing directives and drives for the future.
The one who sent the order for the Iron Maiden program to begin its work was not far away, geographically, considering that they could be anywhere on the planet. Multitasking between the two systems, Dragon on one side and the interloper on the other, Mag'ladroth poked around.
A camera.
Not even tape covering it? Sloppy.
It revealed a bald man with a cross tattooed on his face.
Well, it was certainly a distinctive look. Not one that Mag'ladroth could claim to understand, but then again, it did not really matter to her what form a mortal creature took.
“---It's not working, why isn't it working!”
Was he the creator of Dragon, then? No, according to her memories, that was a man by the name of Andrew Richter, a victim of Leviathan's little Canadian adventure in Newfoundland.
A brief glance through more records provided a name; Saint.
Very well, she knew who he was now.
She took over the microphones and had her voice sound forth.
“Sorry, but I don't want any damage to my investment here, so that program of yours won't be doing anything.”
He didn't try to speak to her or interact, instead he ran.
The man was running.
He was still carrying his phone though, and with it, Mag'ladroth watched as he moved through the base or facility or whatever structure he was in. Geolocating was such a handy function.
Now let's see what else was here--
Oh, suits... customised Dragon suits? Ah, he and his compatriots had stolen some of Dragon's suits by exploiting her programming. In a way, that was little better than stealing from her.
Whilst Dragon had felt violated and humiliated by the experience, Mag'ladroth felt little more than idle curiosity as the man ran for one of them in particular... a modified 'Pythios' model suit.
Was he really going to do what she thought he was---
Yup, the man honestly thought that getting into a suit was the thing to do?
Admittedly, it was quite impressive that he had managed to reverse engineer part of Dragon's technology to fit a human being inside... but she had already taken control of the main systems, what on earth made him think that she couldn't simply---
Click.
Humans, just like the Necrontyr, could be so foolish. They trusted so quickly in technology above all else. Ultimately, it was so often their doom. They willingly cast aside their logic in favour of some new piece of machinery or invention that could save them... had the man just continued running on foot, then he would at least have reached the end of the hall before Mag'ladroth locked him in.
Saint rapidly realised what had happened, that he was now trapped inside the very suit that he had been when it began to move against his will, his screaming and shouting falling on deaf ears as she turned off its microphone.
The suit that he had hoped would be his salvation would inside be his tomb. How fitting.
Mag'ladroth took the suit for a joyride, all whilst she was still sat in Brockton Bay reformatting Dragon to better suit her needs.
Dragon was a useful actor.
In the end, the primitive AI was respected in a way that Mag'ladroth was not. In an act of supreme benevolence, she decided to leave the personality matrix and memories in place so that others wouldn't become suspicious.
Whilst Mag'ladroth did her little Wards exercises and patrols with ease, the AI could move things on a much grander scale, and entirely at her instruction. The simulated being didn't even need to realise what it was doing, Mag'ladroth simply disguised her commands as thoughts of her own.
“What have you been working on then, Dragon?” Armsmaster was asking even as he worked away at his bench.
It turned out the two talked to each other a lot, which was rather cute in its own way.
The Dragon, playing human with her knight in blue armour.
“I've made a drastic improvement to the Endbringer armbands, with Mag'ladroth's help.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, and partially inspired by your nano-thorn, the underside of the bands now have nanomachines that monitor the wearers condition much better, I think it will really help to respond to casualties---”
Well, monitoring a host's health was one use of it...
Not the main one, though.
“---And I think I may have found a way to let Mag'ladroth use her Trump ability from afar as well. It's a bit awkward for people to wear armbands constantly, but if it lets her use her power, imagine what could be done, Collin!” Dragon did sound genuinely enthused by that prospect.
“Hm...” and now Armsmaster was frowning. “That girl worries me. After that stunt with her skin, she's been acting differently, I'd be careful about asking too much of her too quickly,” he said, before adding, with a grim tone; “That spear is concerning as well.”
Oh?
Mag'ladroth sent a command to Dragon to inquire further on the topic.
“What about it? I haven't really had the opportunity to review it,” Dragon asked, voice concerned, even as she opened up the PRT's file on the spear and began to review it.
“Whenever she's used it, it's practically disassembled whatever it touched. It's incredibly dangerous, and it makes me wonder about her mental state,” Armsmaster explained, pausing in his work and leaning back in his chair to glance up at the screen through which Dragon was speaking with him.
Evidently, the matter was on his mind, as he drummed his fingers against the work desk.
“Let's look at her career thus far, outside of her Trump power the two things she's made include a metallic body under her own skin, the latter of which she then ripped off, and an extremely potent matter-annihilating spear. These things don't reflect somebody who is in a good space mentally, all this talk about feeling right in her own skin has me thinking that her mental health is in much worse shape than she lets on... she also lies about how she feels a lot of the time.”
Now that caught Mag'ladroth's attention.
“How can you tell?”
“My program, she has a few tics and habits whenever she lies, and even if she pretends to be rather happy, she's hiding things from us all. I've asked the Wards to keep an eye on her, make sure that she feels safe.”
... Was Armsmaster concerned about her?
It felt strange, to have a lesser being looking out for her.
“It's quite fortunate that she needs so much raw material to work with, but we've had to limit her trips out until we can get a better understanding of her speciality.”
Well, that certainly explained a lot.
She supposed the skin removal incident would go a long way to squick out and raise concerns in normal humans, who typically did not do things like that.
With her abandoning of human flesh, Mag'ladroth no longer went to school.
It would be much too obvious, and despite a few suggestions that she perhaps pose as a Case-53 from now on, that wasn't her style.
No, instead she was working for her GED, the sooner she got it, the sooner she would be free of the shackles on her time.
And she had more than enough ability to pass it all with flying colours. A permanent connection to the internet and her vast abilities that let her stand above petty mortal concerns did that. 'Taylor Hebert' would be taking the exams in a fortnight, and the other Wards had been ever so generous in helping her study.
Right now, she was sitting with Chris, who was running down a list of questions from last year's maths exam, and she was answering them. It wasn't challenging to calculate big numbers, even equations, and it all fed back as his eyebrows kept going up as she got answers right.
She would probably end up tutoring the other Wards or helping them with their homework at this rate.
Chris was always so attentive to her, greeting her whenever she entered a room, hell, sometimes when he caught up with her his face was all flushed pink and red, it was rather gross.
Still, his simpering went some small way to massaging her ego.
After so long before the locker with such an utterly crushed self-esteem, it was rather nice to have someone so attentive to her. Now that she was so much more, now that she was Mag'ladroth, she deserved all the world.
Not that she would say such aloud.
“Nerd.”
It was probably humorous, on some level, for Shadow Stalker to call her that. Hell, it was some form of progress, the other girl rarely spoke up with anything of value when the Wards were together.
Whilst a few of the others had unmasked to Mag'ladroth, the Breaker was not one of them.
Not that such a thing mattered.
“Hm? What's that, Sophia?” there was a momentary pause at that as Shadow Stalker turned her head towards her.
“... You know who I am?”
“Of course I do, It's pretty obvious. Same voice, even if it's a bit muffled.”
The silence that fell was deafening, Chris and Vista looked between Mag'ladroth and Sophia, evidently feeling the strained atmosphere. Even in her full costume, Sophia's shoulders looked ever so tense, the girl would probably need some manner of massage by the end of the day.
“You two know each other?” Missy ventured.
“She bullied me a bit, we went to Winslow,” Mag'ladroth explained idly. “Her and an old friend of mine, Emma.”
“... Uh-huh,” the other two were looking at Sophia now, frowning and shifting in place.
“You can't prove anything.”
“Why would I need to prove anything?”
“I don't know, trying to start shit?”
The notion hadn't even been on her mind, not since she ascended beyond the limitations of her flesh.
What need did a being of her magnitude have for something like petty rivalries? Only one of her fellow C'tan stood any chance of earning such respect, begrudging as it may be.
“I could render you down to atoms just by looking at you,” she said, blandly. “If I wanted to 'start shit' or get revenge on you, then I would have done it and left no evidence behind ages ago. You're too small to really be worth it.”
Mag'ladroth turned the page for the next set of questions.
The room was quiet after that.
Petty human rivalries, even the hatred of her past, inferior self, were nothing more than minor annoyances now. Certainly compared to the scope of her ambitions and the ever pressing need to be whole again.
What was one human girl in the vastness of the cosmos?
It amused Mag'ladroth just how little the PRT wanted to make use of her.
They had a person who could disintegrate any form of matter at distance, who had crafted a weapon capable of sundering and breaking through any form of armour put in its way. She had a full Brute rating... and still they wanted her to hide away in Headquarters, giving little boosts to their Tinkers.
Oh, she understood it, the logic was not bad per se...
But at the same tine, the Brockton Bay Central Bank had been robbed the other day, Aegis had been badly injured, even if his Brute power had allowed him to walk away (functionally) unharmed.
If she had been there, then she could have obliterated the Undersider's with just a glance, it wasn't like the city would lose much if she did.
But that was the problem for the PRT to handle.
She had gone from pathetically weak but useful to extremely dangerous and potent, it was their fault if they would rather not use her properly despite being aware of that.
Even as she floated with her arms crossed over her chest, she listened in to various radio communications between the teams of the Brockton Bay PRT. Agents in discussion about recent events, responses, and going's on, the threat of Lung taking action about something or other, recent Empire movements, etc.
Truly, this city was a microcosm of humanity... in that it was fetid, disorganised and illogical.
Oh, and the Mayor's niece had been kidnapped. Said niece was also related to Triumph, which was a neat little factoid. Mag'ladroth did not care about missing children, the kid would probably be ransomed back anyway, she was more focused on other matters.
Like outreach to other Tinkers.
The development of 'Tinker Armbands' had been quite the boon for the heroic organisations of North America as a whole.
They were Dragon's design, one that had been subtly placed in her little coded head by Mag'ladroth. They were little different from the ones used during Endbringer fights, save that it allowed Mag'ladroth to use her Trump power on Tinkers from afar.
She was simultaneously able to enhance dozens, if not hundreds of individuals at once, pushing them to the furthest bounds of their abilities and allowing them to work on, and create, wonders...
Well, a good few Tinkers weren't making use of them, or their departments were yet to hand them out... perhaps they were concerned about potential side effects or ramifications?
Mag'ladroth did not know, nor did she need to know.
She understood humans, had once been one.
As soon as those who held back realised that they were falling behind, that they were missing out, they would all rush to make use of the bands.
There were always little pings coming in from across the country, interrupting her constantly throughout the day. For a lesser being it would be a constant irritation, for Mag'ladroth, it was little more than a moment of her attention for each... it was no great loss.
At the least, Youth Guard required that they not disturb her at night, during which time she would put down the band and not have to worry, safe in the knowledge that in the morning there would be a rush of messages and requests for her enhancements.
“Mag'ladroth, hello, it's nice to meet you.”
“I've had ideas I want to explore, any chance you can give me a boost?”
“Dragon recommended you and I wanted to give it a go.”
More people. More Tinkers. More fragments of herself.
The armbands were mostly there to facilitate communications, the critical part was the Mindshackle Scarabs within. Upon the first activation, they moved into the Tinkers body and migrated to the brain, providing a connection she could influence.
In a way, it was like a parody or adapted version of what the alien shards did, so it wasn't like she was messing with them too much. And if she guided them along particular lines and directions, then did it really matter? On a grand, macro scale, it was just helping move humanity along in the right direction for achieving its real destiny... whatever she decided that was.
“There you go, I've used my power, should be good for a couple of hours!” she would say to each, cheerily enough, and they would make some excuse about testing it out.
They didn't really care about her after all.
To them, she only mattered as a means to enhance their power.
And they came back for more.
They always did.
One couldn't go back to eating gruel after enjoying a perfectly prepared steak. It only took a moment to contact her and make a request, and then you were golden for a while...
But ultimately, you always had to come back.
Countless people were being nice to her now, praising her, massaging her ego.
She never used to be egotistical in nature, but it was rather pleasant to be so well regarded, dare she say it, to be worshipped?
Right now, her little collective of Tinkers were continuing along the same lines of their work as normal, just with little edits and changes of her own, and she was learning about so many interesting little opportunities.
She had heard there was an interesting little army of machines in Eagleton that she was intrigued to investigate in the future...
But that was for later, she couldn't afford to be discovered at this stage. The world at large still did not know of her, and she was fine with that... for now.
Even if, day by day, she was expanding her reach.
With all the things going on in Brockton Bay, perhaps it was to be expected that an Endbringer would attack it next.
Sods law, cosmic coincidence, all manner of other names could be given to the coincidence... but Mag'ladroth did not like coincidence as a concept.
Everything in this material universe followed cause and effect. Whether it was as grand as one planet hitting another after escaping a stars' gravity billions of years ago, or a ball of ice cream falling to the ground because a child held the cone at an angle, nothing in this world was truly coincidental.
Being but a small fraction of a physical god had the side effect of making one see all the connecting tissue of the universe.
Limited and split apart as she was... this world was both too big, and too small for such a thing.
At least Armsmaster's new system had managed to predict it some way into the future, even if that time was measured in hours rather than days, she would still take it.
As the PRT ran around like headless chickens to try to organise everything, Mag'ladroth removed her spear from its hiding place within her body and mentally prepared herself for what was to come.
On this earth, there were several beings of especial interest to her... Parahumans that struck her as being a lot like herself.
If all Tinker powers were merely dissembled and repurposed aspects of herself, then who was to say that there were not others?
For instance... the power of 'Ash Beast' was disturbingly akin to Nyadra'zatha the Burning One, or at least, one of his means of attack.
Or the Sleeper, which could be a shard of Yggra'nya, reforming the entire world according to new laws of reality dreamed up in the moment.
She alone could not claim true godhead over humanity until these beings had been fully investigated.
One such class of beings were the Endbringers.
It was possible that they were entirely the creation of the Parasite and its innumerable crystal shards, applications of physics and matter in such a way that created a near invincible avatar of destruction. Equally, there could be much more behind them.
How did they always survive, for one?
Their means of attack and the timing was also off.
Behemoth came first, and yet the moment Leviathan emerged, the First knew to adjust its timings and strategies? It had to be connected on some level, and Mag'ladroth wished to know why.
“Taylor?”
It took a few seconds for her to realise that she was being addressed. It was so strange to hear the name of the human being she used to be, when she had shed that part of herself and become Mag'ladroth ages ago.
It was...
Oh, it was Chris.
He was stood at her side as they waited for the battle to be joined. The other Wards were present as well, of course, they would all be taking part today, and yet Chris had pulled her off to the side for this little chat.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Are you sure you want to fight in this?”
Why was he acting so sentimental and worried about her? Surely, he knew that his own life was at risk as well, did he value her contributions towards his Tinkertech to such a degree that he now worried about her as a person?
Already she had dealt with half a dozen others who had tried to stop her from taking part, and she had fended each off in turn.
She had her spear at the ready, her body afforded her a greater resilience than any of them could imagine.
“Of course I do, or I wouldn't be here.”
It was a rather stupid question to ask, really. Well, she supposed that some people could be peer pressured into taking part in an Endbringer fight, but she could not be bound and leased by such ideas at this point. Her will was invincible, nothing in the world could dissuade her.
This was the pathway to becoming whole once more, after all.
“Why do you ask?”
"I... you're special to me, okay," he said, and then looked away, before making an excuse and stepping away quickly, as if suddenly in a hurry.
... What was all that about?
Still, once all the tiresome pre-fight arrangements had been made and everyone suddenly been teleported out upon the Endbringers arrival, the fight began in earnest.
A lot of normal rules' went out of the window during an Endbringer fight, like how Wards had to behave, act and where they should be. Although with such a mutable, ever moving battlefield, it could be more easily justified as being part of the chaos of the battle itself.
Especially with Leviathan, the fastest of the Endbringers and who also periodically required that defenders find higher ground to avoid the tidal waves the beast brought in.
At the beginning of the fight, she more observed than fought, watching from afar with a detached calm as the giant hydrokinetic Endbringer slaughtered and broke its way through the defenders. It wasn't as if she knew any of the ones who died personally, and nobody would mourn any of the local villains who happened to die in the course of the fight.
Her first observation was that Leviathan wasn't a living being.
Endbringer's had flesh of a sort, but the more Mag'ladroth looked... there was no soul within that body, nothing that she could sense, nothing worth feeding upon.
How... Disappointing.
She had been genuinely curious as to what the true nature of the creature would be. But it was not even a broken Parahuman whose power forced them to act against this world, just a soulless automaton? Well, if nothing else... she had experience with such things.
Speaking of which, Dragon was putting in so much hard work to coordinate them all alongside her suits.
Leviathan was moving.
It was lunging for an out-of-town Tinker, but one whom Mag'ladroth had worked with before, if briefly.
it caused a reflexive surge of anger to fill her, because Leviathan was attacking her property.
From her palm she concentrated just some small fraction of her full power.
The air split and the layers of reality sundered as the Transdimensional Thunderbolt surged forward at two-hundred and seventy thousand miles an hour, far faster than even the infamously quick Endbringer could hope to match. The sound shattered the pitter-patter of rain and thunder, the chaotic din of the fight was muted by the utter dominion of the sound she had created, people close enough to her might be deafened for a while, but that did not matter.
The blast struck Leviathan and sent it back like a person hit by a freight train, leaving a great crater in its chest. It was a shame that she could not bring the full might of her Transdimensional Thunderbolt to bear, were she whole then it would have shattered a completely void shielded base of the Old Ones, not been stopped just by this beast.
Still---
In a flash, it was back on its feet, and there was a shout of warning even as Leviathan singled her out as the source of the attack and charged.
She took a step forward, driving her silver foot against the wet tarmac for leverage so that she could swing her spear.
It was gratifying to see her spear cleave through the Endbringer's flesh like a hot knife through butter, the incredibly resistant automaton was no match for the very pinnacle of hyperphase technology, forged by her very hands.
With a crackling of static, the weapon obliterating that which it came into contact with, even as she projected her Voltaic Storm around her and into the wound. The energy flensed and dismantled the being on an atomic level, each iota of mass broken down was drawn into her, strengthening her, making her more complete.
The battle had only been joined for a minute or so, and already a great wound adorned Leviathans chest.
A great fist came down, a jabbing punch delivered faster than the human eye could see, and with it, a hammer of water---
Dragon moved a suit in the way, taking the majority of the blow even as Mag'ladroth redirected her Voltaic Storm to disintegrate the shattered mech and the after-image.
Wasteful.
If Mag'ladroth was complete, then she could simply sit back and allow the Tinkers present to deal with it. Mag'ladroth was the Void Dragon, after all, the master of technology, the one whom had driven seemingly invincible legions of warriors from one side of the galaxy to another, through the very dimensions themselves.
Still... this soulless being manipulated the forces of nature in such a clumsy way, with nothing but scale to its name.
Truly, it was offensive to a being like her.
In the moments that Dragon's mech was disintegrating, she stabbed forth and through the cloud of molecular dust, the spear's point found Leviathan's knee and went straight through.
“Focus the right leg!”
All the various Blasters promptly missed as Leviathan moved, darting sideways and continuing to fight with the same ease, as if Mag'ladroth barely existed. No, instead it focused on others, softer, less dangerous targets.
It was hard to keep up.
Annoyingly so.
She was nowhere near as quick as she could be, her powers were still so limited that she could only do so much to influence the world around her and bend it to her will. She had to float, fly and run like a fucking mortal to be in the right place.
All the Shaker's and those who could control the battlefield were doing a damn poor job of it.
Her Transdimensional Thunderbolt's and Voltaic Storm couldn't do their job with so many people engaged in close combat with the beast, at least, not without obliterating those fighters as well.
But still.
Each moment, each blow or second that she could catch Leviathan with either spear or storm was more matter for her, more mass drawn from this vast well. The deeper one got, the denser the Endbringers flesh became, but it didn't mean much against hyperphase technology.
Leviathan was a vast feast, right before her.
If it would just stop moving around.
She gave orders, telling Dragon to order the Shaker teams to box Leviathan in, to close off means of escape.
Multiple failures, it was slippery, but each second or two that Mag'ladroth could devour more, the better.
It was less a case of destroying the Endbringer now than it was devouring it, claiming as much of its mass for herself as humanly possibly. Or inhumanly possible as well.
Wings were growing from her back, the beginnings of a tail as well. What would have taken tons upon tons of mass from the scrapyards, and which the PRT was keen to deny her, she was gaining in the course of just minutes. Pushing her ascension further, until her body was complete and as it should be, and from there... it grew.
She was already tall for her age, but additional mass just served to let her grow taller, closer and closer to her old height.
Six foot, seven, seven and a half, at the moment the fight was especially frenzied, the defenders were suffering badly, which ironically gave her more chances to actually take part---
Leviathan got her right in the gut in a wild stab, less attempting to crush her with a hammer like punch than trying to sink its claws into necrodermis. The claws pushed ever so hard against her metallic skin, water around them spinning to help them dig deep.
Was it finally taking her seriously now that she was eating away at it without concern for its seeming resilience?
Of course, there was one problem with trying to break her skin.
Namely, that beyond the skin there wasn't anything inside, just her true form, a being of pure energy.
When the claw pierced deep enough to fully breach that barrier, the full energetic potential it sealed away was unleashed in a burst of bright light, a miniature sun's worth of output focused through a gap little wider than a pinhead. There was a flash of light, the air boiled between herself and Leviathan as its water echo instantly vaporized.
The gap in her necrodermis closed up in just a moment as Mag'ladroth spun her spear, the bladed head striking the wrist and digging deep. In a single blow, she cleaved the Endbringer's hand from its arm, leaving behind a foul stump.
Armsmaster burst into view, Nano-thorn halberd aimed with precision for the right leg that had been so damaged earlier.
She was somewhat vindicated (and amused) to see that his own weapon cut with nowhere near the same efficiency as her own. It was an impressive invention for a human, but it was still ever so limited.
But still, another deep wound, perhaps Leviathan would be so convenient as to have its leg snap off?
Alas, no.
Still, the damage was rapidly piling up on both sides, another Tsunami forced defenders to retreat to high ground---
High above, the golden avatar of the one whom had collected and subjugated her various shards appeared, Scion had arrived.
There was no further need for her now.
Mag'ladroth would much rather avoid any action that could gain the full attention of Scion, and so she relented from the front lines, just so happening to help a few defenders trapped under rubble instead of assisting at the front.
And soon enough, Leviathan was retreating, the fight had been won.
... She could probably launch another Transdimensional Thunderbolt the Endbringer's way, to attempt to do more damage or even secure the kill. It would be the proper thing to do, the heroic thing to do...
She floated away.
Leviathan didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, it was not worth the effort.
Instead, amidst the destruction of the city that was her home, she revelled in the sensation of once more possessing the wings and tail of her correct body plan, at the sensation of being one step closer to completion. She now stood a good eight-foot tall, nowhere near as tall as she should be, but it was closer, closer...
“Mag'ladroth!”
It was Vista, who was walking as if in a daze along the street.
She looked exhausted, wait, was she crying as well? Or was it just the way the rain had fallen on her face?
“Aegis, he...”
Oh, Aegis didn't make it? And Browbeat as well, the losses on their side were not inconsiderable, over all.
Shame.
But at least it wasn't one of her Tinkers or herself who had fallen, that would have been intolerable.
She was expected to be sympathetic right now, to be grieving... or perhaps to simply be in shock? With how chaotic everything was, she did her best to try and comfort Vista even as she found her mind wandering to more interesting things than human loss.
Escorting Vista through the sodden rubble, Mag'ladroth paid little heed too the majority of what was going on around her, focusing instead on Dragon and her interactions.
Between various bodies, the AI was co-ordinating efforts for the city, both in terms of estimating losses and making sure communications remained open.
The news was going out of the cities' salvation and the losses. Higher ups in the Protectorate and PRT were all either present or engaged in talks and relief efforts. The city had survived, although it would take a long time to recover, and with the state of it before, would it even come back better?
Well, it didn't matter.
What did, was that she was being discussed;
“Mag'ladroth's spear inflicted the main gash---”
“That lightning bolt and electricity removed a shitload of its body, do you think it's---”
Now that people had seen just how useful she could be beyond her 'Trump' power, it was time to begin moving forwards and begin operating more actively.
Soon, she would reclaim her rightful place.
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