A part of Annette was proud of her daughter for being as kind and caring as she was.

A bigger part of Annette was mortified and was certain that she raised her daughter to be smarter than... this whatever the hell this is.

Taylor and finished feeding the horrific flesh cocoon thing that was Anne, and had let the thing schlurp the aspic from from her fingers. Something which filled Annette with a hellish amount of concern. There was so much wrong with the image, so much wrong about their situation, so much just so horribly, hellish, completely and utterly wrong. Anne was... a thing and that thing was supposedly a homunculus that had been meant to be Annette's body. It was hard not to be repulsed by such a thing, the way it writhed and groaned out, the way it split open vertically with all those teeth and tongues and slobber. There wasn't a doubt that if the thing wanted, it could have taken Taylor's fingers or more. The chance that Annette may have ended as that disturbed creation was mortifying, there was no kinship between her and that thing... but did that thing even know that she was a failure? Did Annette really fathom how warped her body was? The thought was unpleasant and the train of thought it led was asking to fall into a pit of despair.

Annette stared, wishing so desperately that she could just incinerate this mockery, this awful, horrible, terrible thing that infringed into boundaries that humans tended to naturally avoid. Annette hated to say it but looking upon the monstrosity Taylor had created provided a sort of fear that only one biotinker in the world had inspired. Nilbog. Annette knew Taylor was good and kind, she knew her daughter was an angel.

It was easy to call a biotinker power as dangerous, scary, the potential of being Nilbog-lite, but Nilbog wasn't Nilbog by virtue of what he could do, he was by virtue of what he did. Even the 'lowliest' of biotinkers could over the course of enough time and effort create a superspecies that could devastate entire landscapes. The world had actually seen that with the Ainu cape Uari, who had seen fit to create her own species of wolf and bear as a sort of rebellion against the Japanese government. The Canis Lupus Hattai Uari was the Ezo wolf, revived from extinction and empowered greatly, the Ursus Arctos lasiotus Uari was the bear equivalent. There was endless debate about the resultant ecological upheaval but you never, ever compared Uari to Nilbog, despite the fact that she did make a self-reproducing weapons-grade creature.

The fundamental difference was in the ethics and implications of each situation. The Ainu had been pushed into a corner by oppression and exploitation, they were a minority Indigenous people who had the fortune of a cape triggering that had the power to push back against the wrongs committed against their people. The timeline for the rights of the Ainu people had been greatly hastened and policies that weren't expected to be pushed through for decades happened over the course of mere years. It was factually correct to say the Uari's power and Nilbog's power were similar and by definition assigned by the Protectorate, close to the same. When Uari had joined the Protectorate formally it was a landmark event in the conversation about Indigenous peoples, one that sparked a revolution of change undeniably for the better. Nilbog through his violence and aggression, his casual disregard for human life, his simple reason for everything he did being simply because he hated the world and had the power to make recreate the world he loathed in his own image.

The reasons were fundamentally different. That made the difference. Nilbog was a violent egotist, Uari was a heroine that saved her people from a potential cultural geoncide, Taylor was a girl who just wanted her mother back. So why did that thing feel like it was so much closer to one of Nilbog's creations than it was to something Uari made?

Annette shivered. She didn't ask how Taylor had made a homunculus. She wouldn't, because she knew that while she could never condone whatever Taylor had done, she wouldn't be able to bring herself to condemn her daughter either. Ignorance was safety.

"Taylor, honey, are you sure that you should be so close to it...?" Annette trailed. Taylor nodded her head, just smiling and giving the mockery of a humanoid a loving hug.

"Mhm, I'm sure! Anne is nice, Anne is really, really nice! She's just... hurt, shaped wrong, but she's not bad. She looks different that's all. She'll stop looking wrong if I can keep working with her! Then you'll understand, she was supposed to be just like you!" Taylor paused a moment, looking at her mother warily. "Uh, that's... um... hm... mom, do you want Anne to look different...? Maybe give her a different name too? Since you're you and she's not... and it's not like Anne knows her name."

Annette froze. Oh. Yes. She hated the thought with a violent passion. The idea that this thing could take her appearance and become something meant to replace her, to fill the void in Taylor's life made her furious, absolutely and utterly incandescent. "... Yes please, Taylor. We can figure out what she should look like slowly." Annette hesitated. "Maybe she can be your little sister instead...? We need a name for her though." Annette's brow furrowed. "How does... Trisha sound?"

Taylor rolled the world over, repeating it a few times quietly before she nodded, grinning and patting the writhing thing. "Yeah... yeah, I like that, Trisha! ... My little sister Trisha..." Taylor spoke with a sense of awe and satisfaction. "Oh gosh, then I have so much to do! I have to make sure she looks right, I have to make she's smart, I have to make she's tough and... and... I can give her anything she wants, mom!" Taylor squeaked in delight, nodding her head rapidly, a sparkle in her eyes as she turned and jumped into Annette's arms. "This is such a good idea, Trisha is going to be great! She's going to be the best little sister ever! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Finally, Annette managed a smile, holding Taylor close and giving her a little squeeze. "It's my pleasure, Taylor. I'm sure Trisha will be happy that she has such a nice big sister." Though she managed a smile, it didn't mean that she meant it. Annette made a horrible mistake and now there was no way to fix it, not without breaking Taylor's heart. There was no way she could accept that creature as a daughter of hers, no way she could accept it even being a sister to Taylor, she hated it, despised it, loathed it. There was something deeply spiritually incompatible between the two. Trisha had been meant as the flesh in place of the finely crafted piece of metal artwork she was now. Metal and flesh, not meant to mix, not meant to cooperate. It made a sense, unfortunately. "Now, let's get back to your room and continue our chat, okay?" Before Taylor could bring up some other nightmare fuel antic she had gotten up to, Annette picked Taylor close, carrying her like a princess back to her room. No, if she let Taylor go on about all the little details she would never get to the actual meat of the matter. The phrase felt disgusting in her mouth after seeing Trisha.

Taking a seat on Taylor's bed, Annette steeled herself. "Now, honey, you were saying things about your powers? You know things and just need to know how to apply what you know...?" Annette started, leading Taylor's motormouth. Oh her poor girl... it took a truly sick, messed up failure of a parent to want their children to get powers. They always led to pain, to fighting, to so much hurt and hurting. Taylor had killed nine people who had been deemed bad and Taylor just... accepted it. Her Taylor had killed nine people and just rationalized it all away. Was it scarier that Taylor had done such a thing or scarier that Annette wouldn't have hesitated in killing a hundred if it meant seeing her daughter again?

Taylor just nodded her head excitedly, the moral and ethical ramifications of everything a complete non-issue. "Y... yeah! Yeah, so, I know a lot of things, when I need to know something related to what I'm trying to do my power gives me hints and ideas on what to do and I sort of have to... go like, up a rope, making little connections to figure out answers that I can use to solve other hints and then eventually I can do something. I haven't really experimented a ton because... because I wanted you back, but now I have you back, and I could actually be a real hero! I could make cute friendly creatures to help people! I could use magic! I could even have an army if I'm willing to make some sacrifices!"

Taylor was so very happy, but Annette felt only fear. Where does she even start with all of this? Taylor's power sounded like some of the earlier, arguably stronger but arguably weaker tinkers. The ones who were given ideas and connections made in their head, but they only thought about the real world. They had brought tremendous revolutions to their field but they didn't build fantastic mechs and lasers that tinkers nowadays were more likely to build. The notion of accelerating change was a known thing, the faster and better technology was innovated, the faster and better more technology would be innovated. Those tinkers hadn't been flashy but they had changed the face of the world and were a turning point in history. Was Taylor one of those? It didn't seem to fit, Taylor's abilities had so far been shown to create new lifeforms and craft what Annette could only describe as incredibly dangerous dolls. She hadn't had cause to test what her body could truly do, but hopefully there wouldn't ever be a need for that. Hopefully.

"Oh, I... see, that's quite a lot, isn't it... From the start, I'm not sure if making more creatures is smart, sweetheart. People get scared of animals they don't really get, animals that they aren't used to seeing. People would be scared and might think you're a villain because they're too scared. When you say magic though, what do you mean? Can you make a fireball? Some lights?" Taylor didn't seem fazed by the notion of being seen as a villain which was either very worrying or good because Taylor either didn't care or she already knew what Annette was talking about and had come to the same conclusions. Hopefully the latter and not the former. How was a mother supposed to react to their daughter becoming a villain?

"Oh! Yes! Magic is... well, it's just saying what you want to happen, kind of. There's a sort of... language to it? Yeah, you have to say it in the language and it takes a lot of practicing and thinking right to do it properly, but whatever you say happens or occurs and it's really neat! I didn't really want to do anything too big, since it also hurts to practice, but there's also ways I think might work if I just had ingredients and such? But there are trade-offs between casting using reagents and just altering reality a little. ... That sounds bad, but reality is huge and has so many layers and things that it's actually not that bad! Lots of capes already alter reality, they just... don't word it like that, because it's easier for them to ignore that and their little friends don't really want them to consider altering reality too much, it's really complicated and honestly super confusing and I don't get it completely but if you try to think about why and stuff, you're just going to hurt yourself and get really bummed out so it's better to just ignore how things are and why they are the way that they are. It's not like either of us could change things, not without a lot of problems." Taylor inhaled deeply, refilling her lungs. "But, yeah, magic! Magic is saying things to do things in a special language! It hurts to use and it's weird where the more specific you are the easier it is to do something, the vaguer you are the harder it is and more explodey the results tend to be? There's something about things that make different people and things resistant to different things based on perception? It's not just like eyesight, it's a really weird web of like the classical five senses but also way more than that! Every sort of data that your body takes in and outputs is a sense and so are some things that you wouldn't actually really consider senses that are senses! Like, sight is a sense but there's also sense in the way light is perceived, how colours are split up, the physical shape that we see something as that is or is not in correlation to the size of it actually properly, like if a whale looked as big as a rubber ducky you know? Anyways, there's things like history, conceptualization, collective consciousness, natural laws, the rejection of natural laws, inherent micro-adjustments constantly being made because there's always something happening on an atomic level because your atoms are always wiggling about and it's honestly kind of cool but I think I'm getting off track way too much and not really explaining anything anymore, sorry mom, but like, magic is just so cool, I can do so much with it if I practice enough! The extraplanar worms are super flexible and super cool but they also only give people a tiny itty bitty sample of what they could do with concepts if they actually properly really understood concepts and I can understand why they do that because it wouldn't be very fun if reality was the shatter and holes in spacetime were actually formed because of just how much damage they would do not just physically to the things affected in what I like to call realspace, but I mean in the mental trauma that happens when you look into a gaping hole in reality, it's super scary and I took a peek once and I kind of peed myself, but I was in the bathtub so it was fine in the end but it was super spooky in this weird indescribable way? What's that word that one author guy with the racist cat uses? Eldritch! Yeah! It was a really eldritch feeling like you just aren't supposed to see these things and the universe wants to hurt you for knowing them. Which is different by the way than the way you get punished for knowing, thinking about, talking about, or doing things with the powers. Which ties back into the collective consciousness of humanity and how that's created things that just are certain ways because they were believed in and manifested into being and then continued to exist because of self-actualization! In a way that means that god is real, kind of, but because the idea of god is this imperceptible, un-understandable cosmic being that never interferes or does anything it's sort of just a thing of influence that exists and doesn't really plot or plan anything, it doesn't do anything but exist because that's what a monotheistic god is supposed to do. That doesn't mean the angels and agents underneath it are the same, they tend to have purposes and goals that they want to try to achieve, even if there's weird stuff that makes their interaction with humans way harder than it's supposed to be. It's a whole bunch of stuff and honestly it goes back to the crux of what magic is. Anyways I'm gonna stop talking now so I can actually talk the word that does the magic. Well it's not a word it's a set of data, the concept of something said in all the right ways and fueled by sacrificing that conceptual thing up to make it real." Taylor wheeeeeeeezed and took another breath in.

Then she opened her mouth.

[A SPHERE OF FIRE BURNING ITSELF FOR FUEL HARMLESS TO ME ]

There wasn't a sound.

Or was there?

Maybe there was.

Maybe there wasn't.

It was hard to say.

Hard to focus on what Taylor may or may not have said.

Not with the roiling ball of fire that flickered into existence in front of Taylor, pulsing with heat and life.

For a moment it seemed like it was going to cook Taylor alive and set everything ablaze, but just as fast Taylor clenched her hand and the flames just... winked out of existence.

Annette groaned quietly, her ears were ringing but she didn't know what Taylor had just done. "That's... that's nice sweetie."

Taylor beamed and opened her mouth again, starting on a tangent that did not end anytime soon. Despite being her mother, Annette couldn't fathom what inhuman forces allowed Taylor to speak so much on such little air.

Actions

Top Previous Chapter Next Chapter Comments (9)

Kudos

CyberNaga, SaintOfReach, Vgreed, rjofhbr22, Geekversando, Tomthecat05, NapoleonBonerfart, AndromedaRiese, Hi2248, Kakamile, bstarrb, DND_guy, Scylla6, saragh_livsowie, TheLordShaper, Fuckitimbored, Infinite_Irregularities, Pinpoint22, Dreams_of_Arcadia, Greenkazoo, DigDoom, Onxio, McReaperking, covillian, Legion0047, Cajkrehdy, MakazeAce, EdmondDantes, Pacto, AugustVermillion, Setanta989, Readerererer, Megaflash, Dysole, Frenchy1008, Vicost1, Wodeler, MalevolentLibrarian, WritingForPractice, ATheGiant, LegallyAnom, Hiyoudothis, TwoSpeeds, Gnaeus_Primus, dragonsblood32, Gesticulate, brightnessdavar, sicksock, Aname5, RoseSeth, and 698 more users as well as 1677 guests left kudos on this work!

Comments

Post Comment

Note:

All fields are required. Your email address will not be published.

Guest name:

Guest email:

(Plain text with limited HTML ?)

Comment

10000 characters left

Footer

About the Archive

Site Map

Diversity Statement

Terms of Service

DMCA Policy

Contact Us

Policy Questions & Abuse Reports

Technical Support & Feedback

Development

otwarchive v0.9.345.11

Known Issues

GPL by the OTW