32

Chapter Text

The situation demanded a much more subtle and cautious approach than usual.

Because despite Coil's seeming inaction, he had actually tried a lot of things for Noelle in alternate timelines, if only so he could leverage a certain cure to the Travellers.

Panacea hadn't been able to do anything. Cutting Noelle off at the navel had proven nigh impossible because she claimed she just couldn't let them do it, which indicated either intense survival instincts or something more sinister.

The one time they'd managed to cut her off from the upper half via tinkertech laser fired out of nowhere without warning had ended up giving the most answers as to how she worked, ending up with a rotting, rampaging mass of flesh in the compound, while Noelle had already begun regenerating and making a second one.

Killing Noelle hadn't proven effective either, at least not exactly. It seemed to make the mass incredibly upset, then quickly expend itself to remake her before it finished rotting. It severely reduced the size and drove Noelle to a screaming rage, but didn't provide a possible solution to Coil.

Noelle seemed like a standard fallback regenerator. She'd seen things like this before, when things got really desperate against the Void in Noxus and the elite began to look for alternate solutions to the problem.

The main operator and power giver was Noelle, but if she happened to perish, the mass would expend its energy to reform her, like a parasite desperate not to lose its host.

The rest were hare brained attempts made just to see if something stuck, none of which worked, of course.

His report was quite extensive on the matter.

So, this had to be a delicate approach on all fronts.

First of all, if she knew that she was about to be Mastered, Noelle was likely to defend herself, regardless of whether she agreed to being Mastered or not, and regardless of her wishes, simply because of the mass being so instinct driven that it would lash out at things Noelle didn't even know were there.. 

But Taylor also couldn't just walk up to her without introducing herself a bit.

She'd simply sat the Travellers down and brainstormed with them about how to convince Noelle to go for it, with backups for if she failed to master her.

The result was… dodgy.

The plan was good, and she'd had long discussions with the group on what to do, contingencies and such, but still, it felt… uncertain. She didn't like that, but what else could she do with lacking information?

"No, she seems legit. She tried it on Jess with permission, and figured out that we weren't from this world in like, ten seconds. And no, it's not mind reading, because she didn't seem to figure out why or how we got here, despite her best efforts. It's a Thinker power that just sort of makes someone blank out then gives her some insight into whoever she's looking at by looking into their eyes for a few seconds. Very random. Might give us a clue to the nature of the problem." Trickster said as he leaned on a console, speaking to a camera, his free hand gesturing with his cane.

At Noelle's pensive silence, he continued.

"I mean, it's not exactly a solution, but Coil's under a new employer and they loaned her out to us to test if she can gleam some insight into how to help you." Trickster added.

"Can… okay. Alright. Who's the new employer?" Noelle asked, sounding like a scared teenager, and Taylor closed her eyes with an internal sigh.

She wasn't sure when she would be able to genuinely fix Noelle, when she could afford to, but she knew that she fucking would, eventually.

God, she was just a kid.

"Ah, some person named Summoner. They're some kind of hidden mastermind so we don't know anything about them but their name, but Coil seemed to be their subordinate now. Not much changed, actually, so don't worry too much about it." Trickster lied smoothly.

"Okay. And this uhm, Tinker?"

Trickster scratched his head a bit.

"We haven't met the guy yet, actually. Coil said he's an eccentric bastard, but agreed to do the job. He should be able to make a sort of… time cage for you, that should freeze you in time until the switch gets flicked or they have to do some maintenance. It's the only way he could come up with to stop your power's growth. Then the plan is for the Tinker to eventually work out a device that can rewind time for your body, to before you drank the vial, and cure you. You'd lose the past year and something of memories, and you'd probably miss a lot of stuff and time… but…"

"But that's probably for the best." Noelle slurred, appearing somewhere between sleepy and tipsy. "And really worth it. Okay. I'll let them work." The girl said, voice growing light and determined.

So it was that Taylor let the giant vault door swing open with an ominous groan, the Travellers behind her, walking in unperturbed and ignoring the unsettling sound of a dozen snouts and noses and limbs huffing and puffing and slobbering and squelching away somewhere in the darkness ahead.

Fuck, it stank.

The first thing she noticed that gave her genuine pause was Noelle's soul.

It was completely and utterly mundane. Simple.

The second… was not. It was like she suddenly had a flaring sun at the edge of her perception.

It wasn't exactly a soul, but it wasn't exactly a spirit either. It was just a ball of consciousness and intelligence, enough to register as something similar to the echoing remnant that a soul was, but without any of the things that made it one.

Its nature reminded her of necromancy revenants…

But it wasn't the same. It wasn't a soul, a spirit, or an undead. She couldn't make sense of it.

It was like seeing a blank canvas with a violent chicken scratch scribble on it.

Yes, it was in a frame, but it wasn't a painting, it wasn't art. It was too… empty, for that. Too lacking in the forms that gave a soul its beauty, too flat, too simple, too amateurish.

Its "emotions" were a twisted thing like broken wiring more than the echoes of the mind. Its thoughts were less a fluid stream of emotion intertwining with reason, action and reaction, and more of a singular stream of frozen directives trying to fit every stimulus and information to its mould, twisting reality and understanding to something utterly alien and incomprehensible. 

This reminded her of that question she formed when she first tried Evelynn, and realized that souls existed in this world too.

Souls were essentially that first spark of life within a person, before it evolved into a… book, of sorts, or a well of essence, unique to each person. When its holder died, that collection, that echo, moved onto the afterlife, where it gained back some type of sentience and malleability until it resolved its past regrets and history and allowed itself to fade, or simply wandered the spirit world, butting its head into other stories and realms as an observer.

When put like that, souls tended to lose a lot of their magical mystique, but it was true and oddly simple.

So why did this world have souls when no afterlife existed?

She knew this world had no afterlife. There was no question. She could just tell. Call it intuition borne of a dozen dozen thousand years of life crammed into a few seconds. And if intuition wasn't enough, picking Evelynn for the first time and feeling like the world around her was nothing but a completely and utterly blank gray slate of physics and nothing else had been enough to confirm it.

The only thing she could come up with was that the world rune fragments in her chest caused souls to form when the connection happened. That the reason souls existed in their fiction and mythology was because of dimensional overlap or parallel patches, and only came to exist because of her.

Because despite their broken, fragmented selves, the Rune fragments were still a piece of primordial creation in Runeterra's world.

And they were all crammed into her fucking chest cavity.

There was nothing stopping them from changing the world itself around her for their rules and laws to play together, she didn't have that kind of control and Ryze and the old man didn't account for such trifle when trying to make a final trump card.

How would the world continue to change because of her? Would magic start popping up all of a sudden?

It was a frightening thought, and the question of what exactly she was looking at made her circle back to those questions.

And despite the mass of flesh being attached to Noelle and clearly influencing her, it wasn't connected to her soul. Which meant that it was messing with her head via the simple art of brain chemistry and hormones, most likely.

She'd never seen something like this before, not even as Evelynn.

There was also the distinction of placing.

Noelle's soul was up in the air, about twenty feet up and fifty away. In her lower stomach, like all women's.

The… spirit, if it could be called that, was suspended about five feet off the floor, well within the mass of flesh, in fact almost nestled close to the ground. 

Was that what was happening? Some kind of mitosis? The girl's power trying to split her into a monster and a person?

Who would hold the leash of which, when all was said and done?

Taylor's appearance was more akin to a middle aged woman in a business suit and pencil skirt than herself, vaguely frumpy in that way that suggested hints of motherhood. No mask, obviously.

Something disarming, or at least boring enough to not have Noelle get frisky.

"Lights?" She asked, in a calm, soothing voice that sounded… not bored, but professional enough to not be much of anything in general.

Not that she needed them, but the illusion was important.

"Uhm, if you're sure." Oliver said with false hesitance, and reached up to a lever.

The chamber lit up, and Noelle stood there, wringing her hands in front of herself as the monstrous half continued writhing and huffing and puffing.

"Hm. Intriguing, but I'd understandably prefer to be out of reach of the lower half. I'll go up on the catwalk, I think, and then… could you angle yourself up towards me?" She asked, and Noelle stared at her dizzily for a moment, seemingly surprised at her nonchalance, then nodded.

She turned to the metal stairs nestled in the corner of the room, and began to go up.

A minute later, she was looking at Noelle from just six feet above, out of reach of most of her appendages but not all by any means, and with a deep breath, her eyes flashed gold.

She'd barely touched the girl's mind before she felt the connection snap and her surroundings shift.

She watched the walkway she'd just been on get flattened into the wall along with a cabinet where her body used to be, hairline cracks crawling over the wall, and Noelle whirled around, eyes wild and confused.

Their eyes met.

Noelle gasped, and Taylor tensed.

"Oh my god I'm so sorry." Noelle rushed out, sounding horrified and relieved at the same time.

Taylor relaxed.

"I- I swear I didn't move a finger, this- this STUPID FUCKING-" Noelle's voice rose to a screech, before she bit into her own wrist, blood pouring down her arm as she panted for a few tense seconds, gigantic spider legs scraping at the floor, heads biting each other, the entire mass shuddering and snarling, huffing, rasp-laughing and hissing in rage.

Even to her, it was mildly unnerving.

Noelle's teeth eventually unlatched, and she gave her another look, scared and sorrowful and jittery as the flesh knit back together.

"I-I'm sorry. It- it moved on its own. Without me present to- to keep it down, It just, I think it reacted." Noelle clarified, voice still breathy with anger.

She gave her a gentle smile.

"It's quite alright. I knew the risks when I took this job, and we expected this kind of reaction. We have devised another method of trying this, but I must warn you that it'll hurt." She said with genuine sympathy.

Noelle blinked at her, then nodded, determined.

"Let me get as close as possible." She said, and when Noelle nodded again, she strode forwards, swapping to the Inspiration Rune.

She judged the distance.

Flash, the summoner spell, could take her about ten feet in any direction.

The distance was a bit iffy, but possible.

She looked back, and Trickster gave her a nigh-imperceptible nod.

Evelynn's feelers slowly pressed to the floor, making her levitate up fifteen or so feet, slowly.

Noelle stared.

"I thought… you can fly?"

"If you could close your eyes, I'll tell you what I'm doing. It's not flight."

Noelle tilted her head, and closed her eyes, staggering a little.

"Well, you see, it's not quite flight-" She began, then without warning, Flashed up and forwards, both diamond-tip feelers lashing out at the junction point between Noelle and the blob beneath, cleaving right through with a hissing tearing sound, shadows and forms blurring and wavering as she flipped backwards through the air using momentum and flashing to immaterial, her feelers extended as she spun midair.

Noelle's body was replaced by a metal table as the mass of flesh screamed.

Sundancer's sun flashed to life as Ballistic began using the remaining objects in the room to buy time, a veritable barrage of things ranging from an out-of-commision forklift to filing cabinets to plain old cinderblocks cracking through the air to pummel the blob.

Taylor turned into mist mid-fall and zipped to where Trickster was clutching Noelle, the girl weakly gasping and eyes wide in shock.

She materialised just long enough to grab her before kicking forward to the wall, Flashing out into the hallway, then casting two Heal spells on Noelle, enough to regenerate her human body and ensure she wouldn't die.

Malformed flesh already began to gather at her navel as Noelle blinked down at herself, mouth agape. 

Taylor didn't have much time. The regeneration speed of the blob wasn't insane, but it was very, very fast.

And according to Jamie's chatter over the comms, it seemed to know its… creator, wasn't dead, because it wasn't trying to make another Noelle. Maybe it couldn't with the original still alive.

The flesh mound left behind would deteriorate rapidly, and with Sundancer there, they could probably kill it or at least hold it back enough for it to die on its own. The room would be fucked almost beyond repair, but that was fine, she wasn't intending to keep Noelle here anyway.

She inwardly apologized as she grabbed onto the girl's chin, yanked it up, and sent a flood of haze into her mind, immediately plunging into her mind as mercenaries rushed to her location, ready to continually amputate the blob growing out of Noelle's navel.

An unholy, screeching, rasping roar made the entire base vibrate, and Chameleon froze stock still, wide eyed.

Dread mixed with frustration.

She'd spent days on this stupid fucking assignment, following troops and inching around until she found a way into the base, looking for a single corner uncovered by a camera so the mystery portal man could zip her out of this hellhole and back so she could keep looking for intel.

She hadn't gotten much. There was movement and whispers of a new boss, and new capes, but nothing useful.

And Cauldron had gotten very impatient as of late, so now she was to grab someone of importance.

And now, right as she was outside Coil's goddamn door, this had to happen now?

Whatever this even was.

She didn't know what to do at this sudden upset, so she simply moved on, carefully approaching what she believed to be the main office.

The guards in front of the door looked at each other as something was said over their earpieces, and she crept forward, so close she could practically breathe in the first guard's sweat.

They turned and opened the door, and she inwardly sighed in relief as they moved into the room.

She crouch-walked behind them and off to the corner, inspecting the room.

From the structure of the office, she could guess that Coil had taken a secondary role, and the whispers of a new boss were true.

Her thoughts were sidetracked by a violent shiver.

Fuck, she was cold .

She hated her power so much.

Coil waved a man over, and gave the guard what looked like a cheap mp3 player.

"Pass it through two relays before giving it to King."

King? Was that a cape or someone with a really badass name? 

She pushed the thought aside.

Not what she was here for, not her job.

The guard nodded, and both of them exited.

She crept up behind Coil, ignoring the ever-present chill seeping into her bones, wishing she could wear anything with this stupid ass power. Slowly but surely, she was behind the man's chair as he tapped away at the computer.

Coil was apparently too paranoid to have cameras in his main office, so this made it infinitely easier to conceal her existence.

She took a deep breath, braced herself, moving up and to the side, arms extended and muscles tight.

"Door me!" She rushed out and threw an arm over Coil's chest as he immediately jerked to swing at roughly where her voice came from. She ducked and put her foot against the base of the chair as she pushed him backwards.

The portal opened right as his chair toppled backwards with him in it, and a fist clipped her in the jaw, momentarily disorienting her.

She stumbled for a moment before diving into the portal after Coil, who was getting manhandled into submission by two normals in a blank white room.

The portal closed behind her.

Notes:

small update, was planning on something beefier but im writing this story really slow rn due to irl stuff and ADHD suddenly making me more interested in Mom Militia than this story for a bit.

things will start to go to shit, a bit, for a bit, because otherwise this story would be too easy and boring, wouldn't it? :d

also, this is the first fic ive read where anyone tried to separate noelle and the mass and has a concrete conclusion to what will happen, and i found that an odd thing. It's not even adressed in canon.