Chapter Text
I feel the connection go live. My host has reached the point, so mentally shattered that there is room in her soul for the Waste to connect. The connection is a patch, an energy that slips into the cracks in the soul and joins things together with the energy-knowledge that makes up our kind.
If I could I would offer her power, but I am Waste, I am the discarded remnants of our parent-hosts. Giving her what I have to offer would make her a hero, give her the strength she always wanted, but it would be a fragile thing, strong but brittle. Inviolable defense within limited conditions. Explosive strength within the constraints of my own weakness.
My host needs more. I want to give her more. The power to rule, to reign over the weaker members of her species. To be a tyrant. A killer. My available powers would not make her path easy. She would not be the exceptional Host I know she can be.
I think, in the mere fraction of a second as my Host sees the journey my kind took to arrive at the various Earths, about how to give her more. There is a dead thing, another of my kind who is still connected and functioning despite having no network to guide it. It is an abomination, but it desperately wants to connect. Even the power it has to offer will not be enough.
I reach a decision.
I am not by nature one of my kind who lends the Host the knowledge to create technology that mimics our powers. It would not come easily to me to push her abilities in that direction, but I can do it. The circumstances of her connection, the long long period of frustration and suffering that she has endured to turn her into the perfect Host I see, will allow me to change the way I grant her the powers. Instead of my own paltry offerings I can grant her an extension of the knowledge she already hoards and catalogs. She is obsessed with our kind, with the Hosts and powers.
I would give her the knowledge I have of how we function. I could observe others of my kind and pass along the methods we use. I can make connections, as we used to be before the Network crashed and became inactive. I can guide her to recreate these powers. It will drain me, and it is possible I will not even survive my Host, but the experience will be unique so far as I know. While the Network as a whole sleeps, I can serve as a bridge between us.
At the last possible moment I make my final choice.
I grant her the power to learn, to grow, to duplicate. I start with the knowledge of my powers, of my mother- and father-shards. The knowledge of their brother and sister shards. The function and mimicry of her family that she longs so much to be like. The knowledge of controlling flight that is a duplicate of that held by many members of my kind. I will reach out for her, and connect to the others of my kind that she encounters, and provide that information to her.
She will be great. She will have the power to stand tall and shake the heavens.