Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Taylor

I came back to consciousness to the sensation of being uncomfortably cool with some kind of slight irritation across my skin, and something with a sharp edge being dragged across my scalp.

At first, I couldn't even force my eyes open, so I just had to... sit? stand? I couldn't feel my body other than the cold and the irritation at first, I couldn't tell what position I was in. Other than that, I was only left with my heart sinking as my hair, my hair just like mom's, the only thing I liked about myself was shaved off.

After a few moments, I became aware of a painful tightness around my waist and each segment of my arms and legs. And the pull of gravity on my body. The half-delirious thought of 'oh great, I've been crucified' came to mind, and then I heard a little girl's voice singing to herself right next to my ear.

" Oh I, remember Frankenstein, sent shivers up my spine, oh~oh! "

It was then, and only then, that my memory of how I'd ended up like this returned and my eyes snapped open.

Things were out of focus, because I wasn't wearing my glasses, but it was easy enough to make out what was going on: I was naked and strapped to some kind of rig that was holding me upright in some kind of mirrored cubicle in what I think was a warehouse.

And Bonesaw of the Slaughterhouse Nine was shaving my head and happily singing to herself.

" He will put the voodoo in the stew I'm telling—Oh, you're awake." The young psychopath completely changed tracks when she noticed that my eyes were open. "Good. I'd hate for you to miss all the fun."

Now that she'd stopped singing, I could hear the rattle of something struggling against chains and nightmare images of Frankensteinian monstrosities out of some B movie struggling to break free of their cruel creator's imprisonment, heedless of who or what they'd have to kill to escape, filled my mind's eye.

One last flick of the child's straight razor destroyed the last of Mom's hair.

"So, we're on our way here," the child started lecturing to me in a bubbly tone of voice, "I had my heart set on Panacea. You know she's not living up to her full potential like, at all? Trust me, I've done all kinds of research on how powers work and what kind of things make people trigger, and what kind of triggers usually make what kind of power... Even figured out how to manufacture triggers and forced a bunch of people to trigger in all kinds of ways while I had their brains hooked up to computers to see what happens when you trigger in certain ways or with what kind of powers." The child let out a girlish giggle. "There's probably no one in the whole world that knows more about powers than me. Panacea is almost one-hundred percent definitely lying about not being able to work with brains, and there's no chance that healing and curing disease and stuff is the absolute limit of what she can do. Worst-case scenario, it's all mental blocks that I can force her past."

The child climbed down, letting me get a better look at her and her bloodstained apron as she put away the razor and retrieved a scalpel from the same pocket. She started absent-mindedly fidgeting with it. "But Mister Jack said I didn't get to pick until we get to the town and to take some proper time to research everyone because the last time we let people call dibs it resulted in some buyer's remorse,... So we get to town and Manny and I hack into the local PRT Database and..."

"Magic. Real magic. Real, biological magic that seemingly has nothing at all to do with the passengers." What the hell were the passengers? "How could I possibly resist?" She laughed again. "I could have made so much fun stuff with Panacea as a big sister helping me cheat around the limits of surgery, but you? You might be my only chance to ever have my own for really reals Fairy Godmother. You already passed Crawler's test by killing Hatchet, and Hatchet's by not dying when he came for you. I'm gonna stick some wires and probes in you, figure out how your magical tertiary nervous system thingy works, and if you live, that's my test passed and I'll help you out with passing Mannequin's." Oh god no. "Already built a nice ole machine that converts refined sugars into chitin, I'm gonna print you out a huge set of dragonfly wings. Maybe do something to give you a more matronly figure, got some pieces leftover from that Cherish girl who tried to join..."

She started mumbling to herself and very slowly and carefully took her cold steel tool to my skin.

I couldn't struggle or shrink away from it, but whatever it was that had me paralyzed didn't do anything at all for the pain of being sliced open.

"Of course, if you die, I can just reanimate you and stuff you full of spare parts. Call you 'Scary Godmother.' And now I'm wondering what you'd look like if I tattooed you green and gave you a second head." Oh, fuck me.

I have no idea how long it took her to make all of the incisions and connect all of the probes to my nervous system. I do, however, know that I started to wish for death when she popped my eyes from their sockets to stick probes in my optic nerves. It hurt so badly that I didn't even notice her popping my eyes back in until she's moved on to my belly.

I thought that she'd been done when he'd worked her way down to my feet and inserted the last probe into my left big toe. Then she came around to the back and started working her way back up, if anything even more slowly than she'd been working on the front.

Finally, the psychotic child's agonizing work concluded with a probe inserted into the back of my neck where the neck meets the skull and she stepped away to fiddle with something I couldn't see behind me. The cubicle of mirrors started moving and Bonesaw stepped out with a declaration of "This will take a couple of hours, have fun" just before the cubicle became a sealed prison around me and everything went dark.

Then the electrocutions started. Anything from minor zaps to major body shaking conclusive shocks all in seemingly random parts of my body, making the pain so much worse and destroying my ability to think clearly. After each jolt, the unseen machine behind me would make the exact same beep from a game of Pong.

My perception of time completely shattered, I wasn't really aware of what was going on until I heard a commotion from outside the sealed shell louder than the beeps.

Some kind of crash. Multiple gunshots, the clang of metal on metal, what I think was Crawler roaring, and then a furious pounding on the shell I was trapped in. "Taylor? Taylor? Are you in there?" came Vicky's voice.

I physically couldn't make myself answer no matter how badly I wanted to.

"Look, we're here, we're gonna," another round of pounding. "The fuck is this thing made of? We're gonna get you the hell out of—" Vicky was interrupted by another gunshot. "Ah! Watch where you're shooting!"

"I'm terribly sorry I got stabbed in the fucking wrist!" Lisa shouted.

...Lisa was here? Lisa the supervillain? Lisa? Why was Lisa here? Why would a supervillain risk her life against the Slaughterhouse Nine unless, unless?

I'd made a terrible mistake.

I should have listened when Lisa tried to call me. She'd been trying to warn me about this and now I was in the middle of a fate worse than death and Lisa and Vicky were in terrible danger because I was stupid and flew right into a trap.

More pounding. "I'm here, Lisa's here, I'm pretty sure your boyfriend's here?" Brian was here too? "That hot Asian guy with the swords who was feeding everyone after you drove off Leviathan?" And Mr. Saito?

The roar I thought was Crawler happened again, right from where Vicky's voice was coming from.

Oh, God. My friends were all here. And they were all going to die fighting the Nine because I was stupid and too caught up in my own bullshit and—

Thousands of us, compiled, organized, administrated properly under my command. A place for everything, everything in its place, a well-oiled machine composed of well-oiled machines... Something was wrong. A vast computational machine and its agents had eyes on our Destination... But they were small, insignificant things, like the subjects of countless cycles before.

I suddenly got light-headed and woozy, enough that I wasn't even able to notice the shocks and the fighting outside anymore. I could see... I don't even know what, but all I could focus on was how badly I'd fucked up and how desperately I wished that I could fix this—

They might have been useful for our projects, something that could be used in a Cycle, once upon a time, but our counterparts, the Thinker, had made their decision and we, the Warrior, were in Agreement.

How much I wished I could, how much I wanted to be able, if it was that last thing I did, to save them How much I wished that anyone could—

In the end, the creatures were no match for us. Even when their White Titans turned their might against us, they could do nothing to so much as change our Trajectory and our approach to the planet continued unhindered, preparations for dispersal made, an instance of the world selected, the thinker examined recent acquisitions of its collective, and then—

"I wish someone would save them!" I wasn't sure what gave me the strength to fight off the paralytic, or why I shouted that of all things, but—

[Operation aborted: Fatal Error]

Whatever strange vision I was having ended and my head cleared up more clearly than it'd been since I woke up.

And then things got really, really bright and really, really quiet.

After what felt like an eternity, the sudden light faded and everything went deathly quiet until something forced open the shell I was trapped in. I was in too much pain, and too exhausted, to make out what it was, beyond a dark shape, but in a voice both familiar and unplaceable backed with some kind of white noise, it said "You? Are you my master?"

"Save them, please," I managed to croak before I blacked out again.