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Willingly walking into the lab of someone known as ‘The Machine Herald’ wasn’t something she’d ever imagined doing. Her life had been lived cautiously, keeping out of sight of Zaun’s chembarons, keeping out of the mischief other kids used to try and goad her into, keeping her real thoughts and feelings under wraps as she’d matured and assumed her place in the world.
The truth cannot be escaped though. Not truly. A person can run from it for as long as they want but sooner or later it will come for them. She’d tried playing the role assigned to her for years, all it ever did was leave a bitter taste in her mouth and an even more unpleasant disconnect that threatened to tear mind from body, impossible to ignore.
Zaun was a place of experimentation, of people striving for their own personal ideals, tinkering with anything imaginable in a never-ending quest for progress, a sense of community in a place that so often had to fend off the scorn and judgement of the rest of the world. So when she finally couldn’t hide herself any more nobody had raised a brow or batted an eye, a few conversations here and there and she was free of a name that had never suited her anyway, free to start experimentations of her own. Everyone else in Zaun was doing it in one way or another, why not her?
The Machine Herald was an elusive man, not the kind you would ever just run into, or if you did it would be within your best interest to get out of there before some sort of fight broke out. But he wasn’t impossible to find, not if you asked the right people. Most would say he was a fanatic determined to replace the organic with technology from the shadows, but she could see through that. If she looked hard enough around the streets of the undercity she could see his marks everywhere in clear sight, from the designs of certain engines and air purifiers to the mechanical body parts grafted seamlessly onto citizens who didn’t look as if they had the means to pay for such expensive-looking augmentations.
People on the bottom rungs of society in the undercity aren’t exactly in the habit of trusting freely. It had taken her some time to finally gather the information on how to contact the Machine Herald herself.
It had led her to a rather inconspicuous looking door hidden down one of the undercity’s lesser travelled alleyways, hairs standing to attention at the back of her neck, the feeling that she’d been lured into some sort of robbery ambush increasing with each steady attempt to knock on the door garnering no response from whoever was inside.
The temptation to give up there, to retreat back to her apartment and back to the drawing board increased with every second she waited outside the door, mind rapidly trying to come up with other options. There are chembarons who promise the sort of changes that she wanted, but they’re not exactly the most trustworthy people in Zaun, a deal with them is almost guaranteeing a dependency on whatever drug they’re peddling nowadays. And when she put it that way in her head, she’d really rather take her chances with this machine herald.
If he’d answer the door.
It took a few more minutes for irritation to get the better of her, fist slamming rather than knocking against the door, immediately stepping back, sheepish, when it suddenly swung open.
Any words she’d planned died in her throat when the reality of the situation finally crashed down on her. She was actually doing this, she’d actually made her way down to the machine herald’s lab, and he’d actually answered the door like this was in any way a remotely normal situation, like he wasn’t a part human, part machine man who’d been branded a herald by his followers.
One of his hands rose up momentarily to click something into place at the base of his mask – could he take that thing off? Had she just interrupted him while he had it off?
She didn’t have much time to dwell any longer on the thought before her daze was broken by the figure at the door speaking.
“Yes?” His voice was obviously altered by whatever sort of filter it had to pass through to get through the mask, coming out deeper, sterner than his actual voice probably was. Or maybe his vocal chords were entirely synthetic, and that’s just what his voice sounded like regardless of whether he wore the mask or not.
“I-” The mask was very off putting, not being able to even catch a glimpse of his expression to try and guess at his mood was disconcerting. “I need some changes made.” She said resolutely, trying to hold his gaze through the yellow eyes of the mask.
He studied her for a time, or at least she thought he was studying her, he wasn’t giving much away. After a few more beats of silence, long enough for sweat to bead at her temple, he was turning back around, muttering out a small “Alright.” as he did so.
He really expected her to just follow him into whatever house of horrors his lab probably consisted of, and the most ridiculous part of it all is she followed right behind him.
As far as lairs go it wasn’t what she’d expected. It was messy in an almost endearingly human way, spare sheets of notes strewn about seemingly at random but the man could probably tell you exactly where everything was. There was no sign of the body parts she’d been expecting, but maybe it was silly for her to have expected some sort of slaughterhouse. If the herald was as violent and bloodthirsty as the Piltover newspapers that sometimes find their way to Zaun often say, surely he wouldn’t have so many seemingly loyal clients.
Only now that they were in what must be the machine herald’s workshop could she really take him in, he was taller than herself yet somehow not as tall as she’d imagined, gait strained in a way that only seemed to confirm her theory that she’d caught him at a bad time and he’d been in a rush to put on some of his removable augments. In the end though, she wasn’t as scared of him as she thought she would be, though maybe that was a mistake on her part.
“What modifications do you want?” He asked when he eventually turned back to her.
The thought of explaining herself to this man was a little jarring, but for changes as large as the ones she wanted, there wasn’t any room to be delicate. “I’ve heard you can make people into whoever they want to be.”
That was how the process had started. It didn’t all happen over night, of course not. There were mechanics to figure out, her own input to give whenever he showed her the idea of a design, constructive criticism on her part that he took with more grace than she expected, though they were designing her body, so maybe he knew that his own creative input took a backseat to her own.
He wasn’t one for small talk, though he did eventually correct her after too many times of her calling him the machine herald. Viktor was such a stunningly average name for the man behind one of Zaun’s technological booms. After the entire design process she couldn’t exactly call herself close to him, no one could. But she had a newfound respect for him.
When she’d first seen what was to become her body she was stunned. It was perfect, but there was still a lingering fear that it wouldn’t be enough, that she’d wake up with it and still not feel herself, the process wasn’t exactly reversible.
She’d voiced these concerns and been met with the offer to wait, and the displeasure the concept filled her with was enough to tell her that this was a good idea, to just go ahead with it.
“Worked for you, right?” It was a wild guess born from a feeling. Viktor hadn’t just been enthusiastic in getting her input in her new body, he was too familiar with it. Not just in the sense that he was probably familiar with all sorts of modifications, familiar in the sense that made her feel understood in the way the support of her friends and family never could.
He’d nodded in reply, enough to lift a perceptible weight off of her shoulders, before they’d finally begun the process of transforming her.
In the end, she needn’t have worried. The final time she’d arose from his worktable, modifications complete, everything had just fit into place. Her body, one she’d finally had a say in, hers forever.