Aglea
Yet Another Worm/Exalted crossover
"Okay. Run that by me...again." The woman with the topaz gem in her forehead began to rub it, fighting the pains that always seemed to come with her headaches.
"I am telling you, this isn't a risk!" The man with the amethyst gem advanced a step, hands out as if holding an invisible ball. "The Champion will be perfectly loyal to us-"
"Um, that would be the problem." The woman stood up to reveal her full height, impressively enhanced by her leg operation (and a subtle sign of her less-than-spotless past). "What makes you think that a soul whose every incarnation was on the planet we are attempting to harvest for the Great Maker will be amiable to our plight...at all?" The Autocrat of Arat stared in her fellow's eyes. "Way I see it, if we go with your plan, we end up creating a Voidbringer high priestess out of the vats if your idea works in any way, worst case scenario she shatters and we have an Apostate to add to our troubles."
"That's why he called me." A cloaked woman with a sapphire gem stepped out of the shadows at the back of the office. "I've done my research on the memory logs we have with this soul, and every incarnation-even the more vicious ones-has shown a marked degree towards empathy and a sense of moral clarity that allows her to behave in a utilitarian manner. Odds she will listen to reason."
"Which still doesn't address my problem, Ragra." A man, this one also having a topaz gem but wearing a combat uniform, stepped out from behind his fellow Olgotarch. "She may be one of the children of Autocthon in spirit, and the most virtuous among us, but where did she come from? As far as I understand from Mr. Leoik's report, you just happened to receive, and I quote, 'an odd transmission associated with a distress call', where you found the corpse of the current incarnation in an (admittedly distressing) locker, with an unimprinted Alchemical soulgem growing out of her pineal gland." He looked up. "Forgive my skepticism, but that sounds an awful lot like the neural mutations we've come to associate with those influenced by the Ouranan."
"That is only a theory, Sirin!"
"A theory which your own Sodality put forward, Leoik. My problem is, this reeks of a trap, and possibly the Void."
"If I may have another word..." Ragra pulled out her own dataslate. "That question occurred to me as well, so I had the Luminors and Surgeons to examine the soulgem, and we found that, well, there was indeed signs of the Kronos Lobe, so she is one of the shard bearers. This one, though-this one was entirely specialized to Wyld-shape a soulgem out of the ambient Chaotic energy and then migrate her soul into it. We think that was her entire mutation."
"Still seems like a trap," Sirin grumbled. But he withdrew.
Leoik didn't waste the opportunity. "And this is all secondary to the main point of this discussion; not repeating the First Locust Crusade."
That got the Autocrat's attention. "Go on."
"Look. We all know what went wrong then, don't we?" Leoik was in his element, now. "We treated the Creation-born like savages, not bothering to learn their language or anything, just steamrolled everything in our path. We didn't research, we didn't moderate-we just swooped in and began to implant everyone without consent or understanding. Because of that, we were repulsed, and because of that, Creation is now so much Wyld despite our best efforts to stop the raksha. And now that we're being faced with the legitimate possibility of the Ouranans eating the universe we sacrificed almost everything to connect the Great Maker to. Even if we develop a way to get rid of our own nemesis, who's to say another mated pair won't show up to collect his shards and finish the job for Earth, leaving us adrift without any source of new souls? And frankly..."
He looked genuinely sad at this.
"They don't deserve to suffer any more than they already have."
The Autocrat knew this was probably a deliberate gambit on the Luminor's part to make it a moral issue. It still worked.
"...Fine. The Triumvirate is officially unanimous, on the condition we place her under armed guard until she fully acclimates. I'm not going to go down in history as the woman who provoked the failure of the Second Crusade."
"Thank you ma'am. And you won't."
Though whether that's because history ceases at that point is what I'm worried about, he internally added.
After about five minutes of floating in nothing but sensory deprivation, I decided that the afterlife could probably have been better.
But at least it was better than being stuck in that locker. At least I felt weightless here. Painless. Filth-less. I suppose it being heaven or hell depended on your feelings about sleep.
Would I go insane, here? Would I remain sane, but forget how to speak? Was that why ghosts were always a little on the eccentric side when you used an oujia board, they wanted to talk to you, but weren't sure how anymore, especially without eyes to visualize what those letters looked like?
Oh well, I suppose. There was nothing more to be-
wake up.
Uh.
champion, wake up, please.
Champion? Huh?
in the name of Autochthon, Father of Humanity, the Demiurges ask the Champion to wake up!
Well, how else was I supposed to respond to that? Particularly given how I suddenly realized that I still had ears?
I willed my eyes to open, and I felt them come into existence.
And the first thing I felt was fluid rush into them. I immediately shut them to avoid the pain...yet, it didn't come. In fact, the fluid seemed to travel from them into the rest of my body, reintroducing its existence to me.
I was apparently floating in the fluid. Medical Tinker with a focus in chemistry, perhaps?
I forced my eyes open.
The fluid, which was somewhat of a blue-grey color, was otherwise remarkably clear. I could instantly tell the tank I was in was standing, free-floating, in the middle of a laboratory, not chrome but polished to the point of shining like it. Around it was an eclectic mix of blinking consoles and what looked like clockwork. Medical Tinker with retro tastes, I guessed.
"Miss? Can you hear me, miss?"
The voice echoed through the fluid. I got the sense the sound was being transmitted through the fluid from the glass of the tank. My own personal stereo. I idly wondered if the owner liked to listen to music like this, literally a part of the speaker. Sounded...uncomfortable. But that was me.
I rose a thumbs up to the unseen source. There was a rather long pause, before the sound of a relieved sigh came through the tank.
"You can speak in the tank, you know. You can't suffocate in the Liquid Steam. Can I ask your name?"
Huh. Odd name, but given the color, I suppose it fitted. I opened my mouth, expecting to choke anyway, but no. Apparently the fluid was already in my lungs.
"...Hebert. Taylor Hebert."
"You owe me a glot." A different voice, female this time.
"Okay, um...what's your, uh, 'proper name', the one you inherited from your parents?"
Huh? Who didn't know that? The voice didn't sound accented to an American ear at all, so why didn't he know what a surname was?
"Hebert."
"Okay, Miss Hebert, could you spin around for me? Just think like you're turning on the ground.
Still a little perplexed, I did so. My body didn't quite move, but I did see the lab spin around as the Liquid Steam swirled.
Before me was the strangest group of individuals that I had ever seen up close. Well, it wasn't that they looked inhuman at all, it was just that they were dressed like, well, random technicians in a James Bond movie, most of them. The fact that they all had purple gems placed in the center of their forehead rather completed the bizarre ensemble.
The tanned man in front, who I took to be the leader, hit the switch on the clockwork device I could only assume to be the Tinker's microphone. "Okay, good. Miss Hebert, can you tell me the name and profession of your father?"
"Daniel, but everyone calls him Danny. He's a manager of employment at the Docks. Did something happen?" My voice hiked up a little at that.
The man looked pained, then turned to a paler woman with a blue gem on her forehead and wearing robes with gears and cogs embroidered on them. He had turned off the mic, so I could only read their lips.
How am I supposed to tell her? he mouthed.
The woman looked downcast. I don't think there's any way we can. Just...let her find out.
The fact I could now read lips, or that their lips did not move like someone speaking English should did not occur to me then. All I could think of was what they didn't want to tell me. "C-could someone explain what the hell's going on!? What happened to my dad!?"
The man turned around, and reluctantly turned on the mic. "It's not your father, Miss...Taylor. Please, brace yourself. Now, look down."
I did.
I was also apparently naked. I would have shrieked and tried to cover myself in reflex...except that wasn't my body I saw.
Or rather, it was, but it was now a gleaming, silvery-grey metal. As I stared in disbelief, a hue of multicolored light refracted off of it.
Then I shrieked.
About an hour of panic and thrashing about later (and that was after the Liquid Steam was filled with some kind of sedative), I was now clothed and staring at a wall. I was shivering, but I wasn't actually cold (could I even get cold anymore?).
What had happened in that locker? What was so much of a medical catastrophe that I had to be transferred into some weird robot body? A dark thought struck me and I wondered if this wasn't always my body, and I had simply dreamed of being Taylor as part of some Tinker's mad scheme to create robotic life. For the sake of what sanity I had left, I pushed it out of my head.
"Miss Taylor?"
The female voice from before. I still didn't feel like talking, so I simply nodded.
The robed woman from before let herself in, clutching a strange device that looked like what would happen if you made a tablet PC steam-powered. Upon seeing me, she flashed a broad smile. A therapist, I guessed.
"Hi. I'm Ragra."
Silence. Her smile fell.
"Um, if you need me, I'll be right outside the-"
"No. You stay here."
Even as I said it, I realized just how much my voice sounded like my old one. If I hadn't accidentally cut myself on the broken vat, and seen the complex devices that now passed for my arm muscles, I would have guessed my old body was still contained inside the metal. Too much to hope for.
Ragra either did not hear the angry edge in my voice or did not care. Her smile returned as she sat on a bench next to me.
"Taylor, I'm sorry. I know this is a lot to take in-"
I shot up. "A lot to take in!? You turned me into a goddamned cyborg!"
She seemed uncomprehending for a second, then a look of realization, followed by sympathy. "We didn't have a choice. Your old body was biologically dead."
The building fury in me suddenly evaporated. I realized she was probably right-otherwise I wouldn't be the Amazing Golden Girl. It wasn't her fault.
"I...I get it." I looked down. "It's just...it's just that when I woke up, I expected to be in some hospital bed, connected to an IV drip, not some charity case by a robot-themed Tinker."
She looked confused.
"Um, yeah, that's a PRT classification for capes with craftsmanship."
Comprehension. "I can imagine. I mean, my people admire Alchemicals, and I'd be pretty traumatized if I woke up one day as one."
Her people? Alchemicals? I put that out of my mind for now. For now, I had another question that was bugging me. "What's with the jewel?"
"My soulgem? Ah, it's a, oh how do you put it in language you understand...a computer that logs my memories and personality for the computer core of the place we're in right now, so that they can be transferred to my successor. Mine shows I'm a Theomach, a priest of our god. You have one too."
My hands instinctively went up to my forehead. Sure enough, I felt the cold surface of a jewel, this one shaped like a swallowtail. Huh. I suppose whoever rebuilt me was feeling a bit poetic that day-a butterfly for the transformed girl.
But there was another, more pressing thing. "God? Don't tell me I've been remade by someone who fancies himself a living deity. That's never a good sign."
"Well, you never know with Sodalities, but..." Ragra trailed off. And sighed.
"You're actually standing in him."
...
What.
The.
Fuck.
Before she could do anything, I rushed for the door, and out the lab.
I don't think anyone could have prepared for what I saw.
Distantly, I became aware of Ragra jogging up to me. Most of me was too focused on the sight before me.
I could see I was standing at the top of a tall building, the color of obsidian. The building stood at the center of a great city that was likewise obsidian-colored metal, covered in colorful graffiti and neon. Buzzing about were thousands of clockwork-and-robotic drones, each with a single red lens, one of which flew up to me and focused, apparently curious about the gawking cyborg, before flying off. Even from here, I could see hundreds of people milling about, all in the same uniform I had seen the operators of my vat wearing. On what little of the streets I could see, there were at least a dozen tents. On my building, there was a mass hieroglyphic language on its own neon signs, which I quickly realized I could read: An Honest Citizen Is a Happy Citizen, for one. A Glot Earned Is A Glot Valued, for another. A bunch of motivational posters I doubted the people in the streets paid much attention to, in other words.
That wasn't what drew my eye. It was what was beyond the city.
An entire landscape of clockwork, metal, and steam engines stretched before me. I was aware of the sound of distant pistons as steam escaped from a large vent in the roof that served as a sky.
With slowness born from reluctance, I realized how far I was from home.
I collapsed, sobbing.
"So...you're not from Earth."
"No. But we've checked the genomes-we're genetically identical to Earth humans, so we're not aliens. We are interdimensional travelers, though."
After I had calmed down a bit, my questioning of Ragra had resumed in earnest. The cup of...tea-like beverage she had given me helped a lot.
Apparently, I was inside some kind of Dyson Sphere, an intelligent (but currently sleeping) being named Autocthon. He had fled from the world he had helped create (which wasn't all that farfetched, to me-a civilization capable of building something like Autocthon was probably capable of giving him terraforming modules, too) out of fear of something called "the Breakers" and the living weapons he had helped design to stop them. He took several thousand humans from that world, and many, many more souls awaiting reincarnation (I rolled with it) to keep him company, and in recognition of his own flaws. An entire civilization of repairmen, essentially (they didn't seem to mind, though I quietly wondered if their ancestors did).
Unfortunately, while he had intended to sleep to conserve energy, a bit of that damage became a kind of cancerous computer virus, known to the Autocthonians as the Void, began to spread throughout the Great Maker's body. Fighting off the Void, combined with a bunch of idiots who apparently didn't realize war on a leaky spaceship was the mother of all bad ideas, put an extreme drain on what resources Autocthon had.
Which led to the thing I was the most skeptical about.
"You're going to do what with Earth!?"
I jumped up, legitimately angry. "I'm sorry, I don't think I heard that properly. You're going to mine the Earth for resources, make people wear soul gems to supplant your population, and then ESTABLISH A COLONY!?"
Ragra grinned sheepishly. "...Yes?"
"I'm sorry, no." I was legitimately pissed now. "I thank you for rebuilding me, and saving me from that locker, but no. I am not helping a fucking alien invader."
"Er, we actually chose you so you could help us make peaceful contact-"
"Then why. Haven't. You done so?"
"We...can't speak the language."
Okay, that was new. "Then what are we speaking? Sounds like English to me."
"Sounds like Autocthonian to me. We actually programmed our tongue into you so your brain would associate our own words with your native tongue. You're actually speaking our native language like a native."
...Oh. "W-well, you could try to learn Earthling. Your writing looks like Asian languages, you could learn enough Japanese or Mandarin to say 'We come in peace, please give us some of your stuff before our spaceship-god explodes.'"
"Unfortunately, no. We don't even have the concept of separate lettering here-each pictograph is a separate word. Really, we needed you to begin to translate."
The implication of that statement took a moment to settle in.
Then the bottom of my stomach dropped out. "You...want me to...be your...ambassador?"
Ragra looked sympathetic.
Oh God.
Oh God.
Oh God.
I couldn't do this! I couldn't just switch from schoolgirl to Diplomacy-Tron 3000. I barely knew about social dynamics in my school apart from "avoid the bullies."
I began to sniffle again. "...I want to see my dad," I admitted.
"Actually, I was getting around to that..."
She pulled out what I now knew was called a dataslate, and input something. "My apologies, but we had to make sure your memories were all intact, and knew you had to switch languages when you spoke to him."
Before I could react, the door to a foyer opened.
And sitting there (between two relieved-looking guards) was the one person I needed the most right now.
"...Taylor?"
"Dad," I whispered in what I hoped was English.
A millisecond later, we were in a tight embrace.
"Taylor? ...your hands are cold."
Oh yeah. Robot. "Sorry dad."
"Don't worry. It's okay. Everything's going to be okay.
A/N: Not overviewed:
Ragra: Oh and by the way the person you think is a hero is a godlike alien we're scared shitless of and want drowned in the Lethe as soon as possible, we remade you as part of our plan to get rid of him without tipping him off to Autocthon being in orbit.
But that's another story.