Chapter Text
Jayce had assured Mel that the room was fireproof, blastproof, and secure enough to test her abilities. As she thought about it, a forge would probably be the best place for her to use—or at least attempt to use—her powers.
Mel’s mind got stuck on that thought for a few moments. Maybe whatever was afflicting her was more than a curse. Just like any power that could be used, there were certain drawbacks and responsibilities that must be assumed, but if she could find a way to use her abilities to help people, then it wasn’t a curse.
It could be a gift if she used it right.
Jayce slipped on a face shield, gloves, and a heavy apron to protect himself. Then, he turned to the side and reached into a broken basket. She watched him grab a twisted, gnarled hunk of metal from the container and then set it on an anvil.
“You said that you could heat water through touch, right?” Jayce said to her, as he took a few steps away to grant her ample space. “Do you think that you can do the same for other objects?”
Mel took a few moments to consider it. In all honesty, she didn’t know. In most of her experiences, she could most easily transfer her energy into liquids, but maybe she could do the same to solid objects too. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to believe, Mel thought to herself.
“I can try.” She said to him. Jayce nodded, and she made her way forward. The metal was cool to the touch. Mel made sure to handle the object delicately so she wouldn’t cut herself on any sharp edges or jagged corners.
“There’s a pot of cold water to your left if you need it.” Jayce pointed out, as she glanced to her side and saw a large, rectangular chamber filled with water. If everything went right, she wouldn’t need it, but it was always good to be prepared. Safety was important, Mel thought to herself. Wasn’t that the reason why she was doing this in the first place? Wasn’t that why she reached out to Jayce for help, anyway? She knew that he would do things by the books—at least, he would in situations when it truly mattered—and she needed that at this moment. A bit of stability in a very, very unstable existence.
“Thank you.”
Mel rested both of her palms on the surface of the metal and then began to focus. At first, she wasn’t exactly sure what she needed to focus on specifically. When the water boiled around her, the only thing on her mind was nervous curiosity and not much else. Even after holding the metal for just a few moments, she knew that there had to be something else on her mind other than that. This would be a lot trickier.
At first, Mel tried to think about heat. She imagined that the heat of her body was surging into the metal, filling it with warmth and fire. When that didn’t seem to do anything, Mel reconsidered her approach. Maybe she needed to think about a specific emotion?
On the nights where she needed to cool off, she was mostly filled with the stress of the day and occasionally—if it had been a particularly trying day—the frustrations that had built up inside of her as well. If she had to harness her frustrations or anxieties in order to make the metal heat up, then Mel knew that she had a lot of fuel to burn in that department. While she loved being a councilor and everything that came with it, it was often quite tiring. The job was demanding, and sometimes she felt like she barely existed outside of her position.
She could feel the heat flaring up inside her chest. It was sporadic, and she could feel her fingertips dig into the metal a tiny bit more. Mel pressed down harder and continued to focus on those feelings inside of her.
There were the old troubles, as well. If she had to burn those too, then she had enough fuel to start a bonfire. From her childhood, her family, and her distant relationship with them now, Mel had plenty of frustrations. Her mother—who could never understand her, and in return, Mel could never comprehend why she acted in the way she did—added to many of those deep, flickering emotions that settled deep in her chest.
The random bursts of energy continued to emanate from her hands. The intervals between each spike felt completely random, though, with time, they grew more and more powerful. Mel kept her fingers secured on the metal, but she had begun to notice something. The short bursts were enough to begin to melt the metal around her fingertips, but that was it. She couldn’t sustain enough energy to heat up the entire hunk of metal.
Maybe she needed to find something else. What sort of replacement could be viable enough to transfer a sustained amount of heat?
Like a sudden shock traveling through her mind, Mel knew exactly what she could replace those feelings with.
Her entire life, she had lived outside of herself. She sacrificed her time, energy, and life to causes and platforms that would help the most people, completely indifferent to whether or not they would help her. Maybe those sorts of things would help people adjacent to her, or help a group she belonged to as a whole, but never directly. She was a negotiator, a compromiser, and a diplomat at heart.
There were few things in life that Mel could truly call her own, and solely hers.
Mel had her dreams.
And in those dreams, she found herself sitting on top of an impossibly tall mountain, completely alone. It was just her at the peak. She had no one to answer to, nobody to perform for, and not a single eye watching her every move.
It was just her and the sun.
Mel grabbed onto that image from her dreams, then gripped the metal as tightly as she could. The waves of energy pulsing inside of her gently slowed until she couldn’t feel spikes anymore. Instead, all she could feel was a calm, sustained warmth that seeped through her fingers and into the metal.
This was it, Mel thought to herself as she looked down in amazement at the metal which had begun to soften in her hands. This had to be it.
As her hands began to gently glow in the dim light of the forge, Mel glanced over to Jayce and saw nothing but awe behind his eyes.
“End entry.”
With that, the Hextech core flickered in Blitzcrank’s chest, and Viktor let out a tired sigh. Oftentimes, going through his notes aloud offered him a chance to double-check his work, and even afforded him new insights into the things he had been struggling with. Viktor often narrated his own actions while working, much to the amusement of Jayce, who often caught him doing it when he wasn’t working too.
But it didn't help today. Viktor had laid everything that he knew out in the open, with no redactions or omissions, to no avail. He failed to catch a single inconsistency in his own reasoning or account of what he’d seen, and it frustrated him to no end. There had to be some sort of flaw in the Machine Herald’s sudden appearance, Viktor thought to himself. No person could be perfect, and Viktor wasn’t content to rule out the apparition’s humanity just yet. If only he could have been able to catch a glimpse of what lay behind the figure’s metal mask, then Viktor could at least have that factor confirmed or denied.
If he was some sort of time traveler, he could have built that suit to protect himself against the ravages of the timestream, Viktor thought to himself as he pulled out another piece of scrap paper, then began to write down notes on it.
“Based on my previous observations of Ekko’s Zero-Drive, I can reasonably come to the conclusion that while the physical disruptions were quite minor in the immediate vicinity, I would run the risk of extrapolating if I was to assume the same results would occur under a longer distance, or if the device was operating for a longer period of time.” Viktor said as he wrote into his notes. Then, he paused as he considered that the nature of time in regard to time travel was quite flexible.
Viktor erased the last few words in the previous sentence.
“If the device was operating for a longer period of time, relative to the user’s perceptions,” Viktor added. “Which is quite hard to measure through any sort of quantitative means, as every person’s internal clock runs quite differently.”
“Oh, how clever.”
Viktor twisted around at the sudden voice behind him, only to meet those glowing orange eyes once again.
“While a user inexperienced with the device may perceive the elapsed time as quite long,” The Machine Herald said as he placed his arms behind his back, and glared right into Viktor’s eyes. “An experienced—for lack of better words, time traveler—wouldn’t feel the same adrenal response that a novice might.”
Viktor glanced toward Blitzcrank, as the golem began to move towards the intruder, which confirmed something that Viktor had feared, which was that this man was more than an apparition, and had some sort of physical form that Blitzcrank could sense.
For some reason, knowing that he wasn’t hallucinating didn’t come as much of a comfort.
That was the first realization that made Viktor deeply uncomfortable.
The second realization came a few seconds later after Viktor processed the figure’s words and a chill traveled up his spine.
Those words were his words, only Viktor hadn’t spoken them, like the man in front of him did. Instead, those words were his next thoughts, which he would have written down if he hadn’t been interrupted.
As Blitzcrank raised a heavy fist into the air in preparation to strike the figure, the Hexcore inside flickered faster and brighter than ever before. It reminded Viktor of an unstable hex crystal, and it terrified him.
The Machine Herald watched the automaton suddenly stop in place, as every gear and piece of machinery inside slammed to a halt. Viktor winced at the grinding noise that came from deep within Blitzcrank’s chassis.
“Ah…” The Machine Herald said, as he gently patted the metal torso of the golem, which was still stuck in place, completely still. “I had forgotten exactly when the failsafe was implemented.”
Viktor couldn’t speak. He had a feeling that the noise he heard was the emergency failsafe kicking in, but he wasn’t completely sure. Now, he knew that he was right, and was faced with the horrifying understanding that the failsafe—implemented in the off chance that through a glitch or purposeful sabotage, Blitzcrank ever viewed Viktor himself as a threat—had been triggered in response to The Machine Herald’s presence.
And as Viktor reeled from those connotations, The Machine Herald turned to him, and then let his arms rest by his sides.
Viktor was certain that the man in front of him knew the feeling that was coursing through his mind at this point, and while he couldn’t see his expression, Viktor knew in his gut that the man was smiling behind the mask.
“I’m glad that you’ve got that realization over with,” The Machine Herald said to Viktor as he walked over to a nearby chair, then sat down in it. “Because it served as an incredibly troubling obstacle to my mission here.”
This was absurd. There was no way that this was happening. At least Viktor knew why he had felt that deeply uncanny feeling every time he had met the Machine Herald.
It brought him no comfort.
“Why are you here?” Viktor asked the figure in front of him, as he tried to match the intensity of the man’s gaze with his own. The Machine Herald didn’t react to his glare.
“You know why I’m here. In fact, you said it yourself. In shattering the temporal barrier, Ekko has allowed himself to travel through time and in doing so, has opened the gates for other beings to do so as well. Other beings, such as I, that you and everyone else in this world are very unprepared to deal with.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Viktor muttered though The Machine Herald brushed his words aside like they were nothing.
“Viktor, at first, I assumed that it would be enough to kill you and then take your place to deal with the coming crisis. However, the laws of causality prohibited me from doing so.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Viktor said sarcastically.
“In lieu of that information,” The Machine Herald said, before sitting up straight and resting his hands on his knees. “I’ve come to offer my assistance, for if I don’t, my very existence will be erased in…”
The Machine Herald looked down at his watch, then tapped his foot a few times.
“Three hours, due to our untimely demise at the hands of one of those creatures we feared would come from beyond the temporal barrier.” The Machine Herald said, with a surprising amount of monotony for a man talking about his own death.
No, not his own death, Viktor thought, their death.
For if this man could activate Blitzcrank’s failsafe, recite information that lay deep within Viktor’s memory, and recite his own thoughts with perfect clarity, then there was only one conclusion that could be made from that, as illogical as it may seem.
Those two men shared the same fate, just as they shared the same blood, for they were the same man.
Viktor—though repulsed by the very thought of it—was The Machine Herald.
And in three hours he would be dead.