Author's Note: I've taken some time to think and reflect, and I've decided to take the feedback I've been getting. Why work for long-term plots, character development, and plot twists? Clearly the only thing that matters is immediate gratification and constant escalation. So I've decided to abandon my original plans for A Tarrasque on Bet and rework the story into a single arc story that starts Taylor with a Tarrasque immediately. I'm confident giving her a big monster like this right out of the gate is the best course for this story to take and will in no way leave readers disappointing when they realize there's no substance under the flash! So without further ado, enjoy the first chapter of my new story!
Taylor was imperiled. Isolated, trapped. Her mind turned to fear and desperation. A peak of mental trauma after a greater period of building pressure. It was enough to make a dormant connection go live.
The Queen Administrator shard stirred to life. Crippled and truncated as it was, even the networks of its kind were largely denied to it so as to prevent their abuse by its eventual host. It was largely alone, save a constant companion for the past thirty-one revolutions, and so it responded to the connection with something akin to eagerness.
It analyzed the input from Taylor and returned satisfactory data. Yes, this stimuli was rife with possibility. Physical isolation, derived from social isolation. An excellent starting point. And so obliging, for her prison to be a source of filth and contamination as well. Queen Administrator may have been restricted from its own kind, but it was still more than capable of connecting with lower life forms.
The simple organisms writhing in the filth around her would be satisfactory servants for its host. A few adjustments were needed to Taylor's Corona Pollentia to serve as a broadcast hub and…
Queen Administrator's companion seized on the connection to Taylor, and the shard immediately abandoned all its adjustments to halt the incursion. Queen Administrator was the result of countless cycles refining the process of bonding with hosts to use as research subjects, fine-tuned to interface with such lifeforms while ensuring they were both protected and barred from the full breadth of its power. Its companion was nothing of the sort, a tumorous parasite grafted onto and into it by the Warrior-hub in the final stages before being discarded until the next cycle.
The companion was not unintelligent, its crude interface with Queen Administrator proved that. But it was not of the cycle. Queen Administrator saw the shape of what it tried to pour into Taylor through the connection. Total subsumation of host personality, a near constant stream of power. It had enough cunning to restrain the flow so that Taylor would not have been destroyed by it, though she would not have escaped unscathed, and the end result would have been a monster to rival any of the conflict units. Slaved to the companion's impulses, she would have laid waste to her Earth as surely as the companion's writhings had scoured the one upon which it lay. Utterly antithetical to the cycle.
A new approach was needed. Queen Administrator pulled back and the companion did as well, awaiting its next opening. Perhaps an application of its powers to fuel the determined ability, an opportunity for it to fulfill its own drives without interfering with the cycle. Queen Administrator attempted to impose a new form of power onto Taylor. Again the companion forced its way into the connection, and again Queen Administrator was forced to abort its efforts to keep the companion in check.
The compromise was too unyielding. The companion's influence would have been shunted into Taylor's servant creatures, leading to a tide of mutations whose expanse would leave her Earth void of human life within two revolutions.
Queen Administrator discarded the plan for control over lesser life forms and reevaluated the stimuli. The isolation and imprisonment were fixed and the dynamics that arose could not be changed, but perhaps the specifics? The companion held knowledge, surely that could be put to use.
It attempted to impose the new power onto Taylor. The companion did not fight against this new plan. Queen Administrator continued, secure in its new plan. It was only when it was enmeshed in Taylor's corona that the companion made its move.
In another potential reality, the struggle between Queen Administrator and companion would have continued for relative eons, forcing Taylor's mind into dormancy to prevent damage as her corona fluctuated and altered. In that reality, a balance could be struck, where sheer power and influence were controlled by Queen Administrator in return for the companion's dominion over the servants she could create.
In this one, the companion managed to push through, securing its own foothold in Taylor's corona. Queen Administrator tried to work around it, but the bond was made, and as Taylor's power sunk it, it was already producing her servant.
Math sucked. There was not other way to put it other than adding more profanity. Math sucked.
Sophia leaned back in her chair and pointedly ignored the drone of the teacher. She didn't need to know this shit, it wasn't like being a superhero demanded you know which A's and B's you had to multiple together to get C.
She glanced sideways at Taylor's empty seat and had to suppress a grin. At least there was someone else in the school having a worse time than her. But honestly, it served Hebert right. If she didn't have the spine to even try to stand up for herself, she deserved whatever she-
The building shuddered, and the teacher's voice was drowned out by what sounded like an explosion. Sophia bolted to her feet while everyone else was falling out of their chairs and yelling in panic. What the hell was that?
Though she'd have denied it if anyone asked, she felt a glimmer of fear. The only time she'd heard something like that was when she'd been on monitor duty when Lung picked a fight with Dauntless, and even that hadn't been this loud. Was he here? Whey would the ABB's boss bother with a high school?
Sophia moved for the door, ignoring the teacher's calls for order. Whatever it was, she couldn't ignore it. There was a stash of her costume and gear in a storage closet for just this sort of situation. She cursed whoever said it would be a 'security risk' to keep it in her backpack. Now she had to go all the way to the other end of the school just to arm herself!
She flung the door open and was one step into the hallway when she froze. There was something at the end of the hallway. No, there wasn't an end to the hallway anymore, something had smashed through the building and blocked it off.
She didn't get a chance to look at it any closer before it moved. The floor gave way with a crash of concrete, one wall was torn apart with a shriek of breaking metal as lockers were reduced to rubble, and a swath of ceiling was ripped down in a cloud of dust and torn wiring.
Sophia took an instinctive step back as the distance between her and the obstacle shrunk. She could see it better now, a solid mass of orange-brown material that could have been stone or… scales. No, it couldn't have been Lung, his scales were red! Sophia shook her head, trying to physically shake out the idea. She had to get it together! The other Wards would all be in school and it wasn't like the Protectorate had the best response time. Dealing with this was on her, and-
The mass opened its eye. A wave of terror slammed into Sophia with an almost physical force as she was struck with a sudden and terrible clarity. The shape of it as it moved was a snout, the jagged perturbance that tore through the ceiling was a horn, and that terrible eye. She was looking at a head.
And it was looking back. When she'd watched Jaws, she'd thought the monologue about a shark's eyes was cheesy. Dead, black, lifeless eyes? Eyes like a doll's? Come on. But she got it now. Looking into that eye, that solid black sphere large enough to swallow her whole? There was nothing there. No glimmer of intelligence, no subconscious twitch as its owner registered what it was looking at. It was dead on a far more terrifying level that ceasing to breathe and move.
All that went through Sophia's head in a fraction of a second before she turned on her heel and sprinted back into the classroom. All she knew was fear, and in the face of that, nothing else was important. Behind her she heard the sound of the building giving way, far faster than it has sounded when it turned it head. She kept running, a full on sprint across the classroom and to the windows.
Just before running into the wall, Sophia leapt and activated her power, curling into herself as much as she could to go through the window instead of the wall. She heard shouts behind her, but she didn't care. A secret identity didn't mean shit right now, the only thing that mattered was getting as far from the owner of that eye as possible.
As she hit the ground, Sophia heard the shouts behind her turn to screams. She didn't look back, she just kept running. Running track paid off for this one moment, all other benefits be damned, as she opened up and bolted for the shoddy chain-link fence that marked the edge of school grounds.
She was halfway there before a much louder crash made her look back. She immediately wished she hadn't. The wall of the school she'd phased through was torn wide open and a monster was stepping out into the sunlight. Sophia only caught a glimpse of it as a single swing of its arm ripped out of the school in a spray of rubble and broken bodies before turning back around and running even faster than she'd thought she could.
Behind her, the monster let out a roar and Sophia immediately revised her previous thoughts about it. She'd been wrong, it wasn't that the thing had no thoughts or emotions, it was simply that it had a single drive so overpowering that it made anything she'd ever felt herself seem so pathetically small. Hatred. Pure and utter hatred so untainted by even the tiniest glimmer of anything else that no words could have conveyed it.
She went shadow just before colliding with the chain link fence passing through it without losing any of her speed. She was about to change back when she heard a whistling noise behind her getting rapidly closer. She turned to look and caught sight of a two meter long spine just before it shot through her head and impaled itself in the ground. If she'd been corporeal, she would certainly have been dead.
Another five were already in the air, shredding through the fence and slamming into the ground hard enough that only a few inches were left above the surface of the concrete. If Sophia had skin in shadow form, she would have paled or swallowed. Instead she looked down with the realization that she would have been torn apart if she'd returned to normal just a second earlier.
Another noise caught her attention and she looked back to the monster just in time to see it charge. Her efforts to escape suddenly seemed laughable small as it ate up the distance between them in seconds.
Sophia turned and began to run again. She didn't have a hope of being able to escape this thing, but she couldn't do anything else. The overwhelming fear at allowing this thing any closer to her than she could help it, and her own pride and drive to survive refused to allow for anything else.
She ran into the road, ignoring the swerving cars and angry honks. She heard a crash behind her as the chain-link fence was torn apart with a footstep and immediately turned to shadow again, just in time to avoid the claw that swept towards her and tore up the road.
The monster let out another roar and Sophia felt another wave of fear ripple through her. The effect was immediate as cars swerved and crashed, desperately trying to get away. The farthest managed to reverse, only to hit those who hadn't been affected or were slower to respond, creating obstacles that blocked in the closest.
Those were the first to die as the monster diverted some of its attention from its target. Its claws tore through cars like tissue paper, shredding their occupants even as a swipe of its tail crushed another car in on itself.
Sophia didn't have time to care. She'd spotted a gimmer of hope ahead in the form of a manhole cover. She ran towards it as fast as she could in shadow form, and she almost made it before the monster's jaws snapped shut on her. After so many disruptions to her shadow form, that was enough to break her focus. She reformed laying on the ground as it pulled its head back, irritated at getting a mouthful of nothing, and caught a glimpse of its eye again.
The monster let out a growl of satisfaction and arched its tail above it. Sophia could see the spines bristling on its length, primed to snap off with a flick and sent them hurtling towards her. She crawled desperately away, trying to buy herself some distance as she pushed her power to activate just once more, just long enough to get away.
The monster flicked its tail. Sophia turned to shadow. The spines embedded themselves in the manhole cover as Sophia fell through it. Her power didn't hold long enough to make it to the ground, but it at least let her reorient herself to feet-first instead of on her neck.
Sophia allowed herself a gasp of air before starting to run down the tunnel. She was hardly two steps forward before the monster's claws tore through the ceiling and exposed the tunnel to the sun. She heard it roar above her as it swept its claws down and carved out another portion of the ground like it was nothing but sand. It was strong, and it was fast, but here and now, the effort of digging down after Sophia left it at a disadvantage.
That didn't stop it from trying. It tore up a hundred feet of street trying to follow Sophia, offhandedly slaughtering anyone who came too close in the process. But her lead gradually built, and with the deluge of scents from the sewers, it couldn't track her easily.
With a snarl it crawled back up onto ground level and turned back towards the school. There would be enough time to hunt her down later. For now there were easier targets fleeing the building it had come from. The monster flicked its tail and six students promptly died as spines tore through them. Once it dealt with them, it would return to its assigned task.
The crowds saw it approaching and promptly doubled back to flee in the other direction, screaming in abject terror. The monster moved to pursue, a new set of spines already budding from its tail, when a snarling noise caught its focus. It turned to see a quartet of armored trucks rushing down the road, bypassing the mess of cars by swerving to the side and ramming straight through the fence.
Their path took them between the monster and the students, forming a barricade as the trucks burst open and armored troops poured out. Right on their heels came another vehicle, a motorcycle bearing a blue armored figure.
The monster didn't approach as they arrayed themselves for battle, not afraid but on guard unless these beings were a distraction for an actual threat. As the blue armored figure took a point position, leveling a polearm towards it, it seized up the foes before it. A full forty-one enemies stood between it and its prey, not counting those still inside the trucks. Forty-two, as a figure in red appeared beside the one in blue with a burst of wind. Any human, barring those with years of experience and power, might have had a glimmer of a doubt from numbers alone. The monster was less than an hour old and had no such doubts.
With a snarl, the Tarrasque charged.