Some engineer pics
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Engineer finally made it home sometime after midnight, although "finally" was doing a lot of work considering she had spent nearly forty minutes making sure nobody followed her there.
She changed buses twice, doubled back through a shopping center that was technically closed but apparently forgot to lock one of its side doors, took the Underground for exactly one stop, walked three blocks in the wrong direction, stopped inside a twenty-four-hour shop for a packet of crisps she did not actually want, and then spent another ten minutes sitting at a bus stop while pretending to read a newspaper upside down.
By the time she reached her building, she was roughly ninety-five percent sure nobody had followed her.
Ninety-five percent was good.
Anyone claiming one hundred percent certainty about surveillance was either lying or about to discover somebody sitting inside their kitchen.
She unlocked the flat, slipped inside, checked the hallway behind her one final time, then shut and locked the door with her back pressed against it.
Nothing happened.
No UNIT soldiers came through the windows.
No mysterious Time Lord materialized in her bathroom.
No angry Cyberman kicked down the door demanding its processor back. Though she was pretty sure she could take them cause it wasn't the upgrading Cyberman but the old alien ones from the 19s with really big heads
"Excellent." She shrugged off the heavy gothic trench coat and threw it toward the sofa.
The coat landed, but Everything inside the coat did not. Hmm, that might be a safety problem; going to have to fix that
Alien metal fragments, damaged processors, broken circuitry, several glowing power cells, two pieces of something she still had not identified, and one suspiciously intact Cyberman component spilled across the sofa and onto the floor. (Remember the coat is bigger inside than out)
The Engineer stared at the mess, then slowly smiled. "...you little beauties."
She crouched beside the pile and started sorting through everything before she'd even taken her boots off.
"Mama's home."
Whatever seriousness she'd maintained during the evening disappeared within seconds. Her shoulders loosened, her hands started moving faster, and several different ideas arrived in her head at approximately the same time.
She picked up one processor.
Put it down.
Grabbed a blue fragment instead.
Put that down too.
Then grabbed both because apparently choosing was for people with weaker ambition.
"Okay, okay, where do we start?" The System remained quiet.
She looked upward despite knowing there was nothing physically floating above her. "System?"
[Yes.]
"Don't just float around inside my head looking smug. Open the crafting menu."
[I do not possess a physical expression.]
"You have smug punctuation." There was a small pause.
[Crafting Interface opened.]
A glowing window unfolded across her vision. Engineer immediately leaned forward despite the display being attached directly to her perception.
[Omni-Tool Mk. I Blueprint Unlocked]
[Required Components:]
Processor Core
Alloy Frame
Power Conduit
Neural Synchronization Interface
[Minimum Skill Requirements:]
Engineering Lv.10
Code Programming Lv.10
Design Theory Lv.10
[Warning: Your Current skills are insufficient for stable construction.]
The Engineer rubbed both hands together. "Engineering, programming, and design." Her grin widened. "Time to grind."
Her workshop was technically the living room.
Calling it a workshop made her feel better about what she had done to it.
One table had already disappeared underneath loose wires, tools, half-open electronics, and several notebooks filled with diagrams that became increasingly difficult to understand the later at night she had drawn them. Three half-dismantled toasters sat near the window because she had initially wanted heating elements and somehow gotten distracted investigating how cheap Earth electronics were assembled.
There was also a kettle missing most of its outer casing.
She picked up the damaged Cyberman processor. Part of the original casing remained attached, including a broken optical unit that seemed to stare directly at her.
The Engineer stared back.
"Don't look at me like that."
The broken eye continued to stare up at her like it resented her very existence. It would be funny if it was still active and pulled an Ultron. "Yeep, you guys are really creepy looking up close ."
She grabbed the screwdriver she'd stolen from a garage two nights earlier, then paused. "godamnit, that thought just scared me. I should work on firewalls and failsafes first before I add any cyberman software," she expressed before thinking of the weapons-grade version of a Cyberman and how they can remote control even dead cyber tech though it programming
AN: That's the only name I've found for the upgraded Cyberman
"Yea am going to have to rebuild that from scratch, replace everything ughhhh. Wish I had a sonic screwdriver that would make this so much faster." She opened the casing.
The Cyberman component was considerably more complex than anything humans were supposed to be building in 2006, but that was exactly why she wanted it. She needed to understand how alien systems interacted with primitive hardware, especially if her Omni-Tool was eventually going to function as a universal interface rather than an expensive wristwatch capable of exploding.
Forty minutes later, she'd connected the Cyberman processor to an old laptop. The laptop immediately made a concerning noise.
Engineer started to back up. Please don't tell me the Ultron thing was true and I just gave it internet access. Why don't I think, though! I'm pulling a Reed Richards, which is probably why my Wisdom stats are low 30s
The screen flickered.
"That's probably normal."
The cooling fan screamed.
"Less normal."
The processor began glowing.
"Okay, no boom-boo today She reached for a cable. The laptop sparked hard enough to make her jerk backward. "Anddd there goes one of my laptops."
Two hours later, the flat had somehow become worse. She was working on three projects simultaneously because focusing on one thing had become boring.
The first involved writing the beginning of an interface for the Omni-Tool using salvaged alien processor fragments. The second was a set of holographic interface designs spread across several pieces of scrap paper.
The third project was a small drone built from a dismantled desk fan, parts from a remote-controlled car, half a mobile phone, and something she had removed from a Cyberman component without remembering what it originally did.
The drone lifted approximately thirty centimeters. Engineer's eyes widened.
"Oh."
It tilted.
"No."
It accelerated directly toward her face.
"WAIT."
The drone clipped her ear, bounced off the wall, flew through the open window, and disappeared. Engineer remained frozen with one hand against the side of her head. Several seconds passed she looked elsewhere" That's not my problem."
[Skill Progression: Design Theory Lv.3 → Lv.4]
She slowly lowered her hand.
The small object sitting inside a teacup on her shelf pulsed faintly.
Engineer looked toward it. Omega, her future tardis if she can ever build her
The seed was about the least impressive-looking object in the apartment and potentially one of the most important things she owned. It sat inside an ordinary white teacup because she'd discovered that leaving a mysterious temporal seed directly on the table resulted in it rolling around whenever she bumped something.
She had given it the teacup afterward and somehow that had turned into its home. Omega pulsed again. The sensation reached her mind as something halfway between emotion and simple intent.
Disapproval. Engineer narrowed her eyes.
"Don't."
Another pulse. Amusement.
"You are literally sitting in a teacup."
Omega pulsed brighter.
Hunger.
"Oh, here we go."
Artron energy. Temporal resonance. Feed.
Engineer leaned back in her chair.
"You're basically a Tamagotchi that eats time."
Omega did not care.
"Do you know how unhelpful your dietary requirements are?"
Feed FeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeedFeed
"OK! STOP SPAMMING. So needy." She held one hand over the seed and concentrated.
Artron energy responded reluctantly at first, then formed into a faint trickle running through her palm. Omega immediately drank it, its surface lighting purple and gold before gradually settling again.
Engineer felt the cost almost immediately. Her chest tightened slightly around the area between her two hearts. She pulled her hand away.
"That's enough." Omega pulsed with unmistakable dissatisfaction.
"Don't start. I need that energy too."
More.
"Get a job or find another TARDIS."
Omega went quiet.
She smiled.
"That's what I thought."
By the third day, her apartment had stopped looking like it belonged to a functioning adult.
Takeout containers had gathered near the kitchen because she kept forgetting to throw them away. Wires crossed sections of the floor in patterns even she had started stepping carefully around. Alien alloys sat beside ordinary human screws and bolts, while multiple pages had been taped directly to the wall because she'd run out of table space.
One note simply read:
MAKE PLASMA COUPLER???
Another said:
ASK SYSTEM IF TIME KNIVES EXIST
Underneath it she had written:
THEY BETTER.
Her hands were covered in small burns, oil stains and ink. Two fingers had bandages around them because she had learned that touching an experimental power conduit immediately after disconnecting it was apparently still a bad idea even when you possessed Time Lord biology.
Her eyes looked fantastic.
Not physically.
She probably looked horrible physically.
She hadn't slept enough, her hair was barely cooperating, and there was something black smeared across one cheek that had been there for several hours because she kept forgetting to wipe it away.
She was having an amazing time.
[Skill Progression: Engineering Lv.3 → Lv.6]
[Skill Progression: Code Programming Lv.2 → Lv.5]
[Skill Progression: Design Theory Lv.4 → Lv.7]
Every increase gave her another little burst of satisfaction. Every failure gave her something new to fix.
She never felt so alive! Ironically by blowing herself up
She burned a clean hole through the desk while testing a compact plasma channel. Engineer stared through the hole at the floor. Then leaned closer.
"...floor portal."
By the end of the first week, she had built something that could technically be called an Omni-Tool if everyone involved agreed not to inspect it too closely.
It was ugly.
Really, very ugly.
The prototype consisted of a heavy alloy bracer wrapped around her forearm, several exposed wires, two glowing nodes, one external processor block, and a holographic emitter that worked approximately sixty percent of the time.
She loved it. And she strapped it onto her arm. "Moment of truth."
[Prototype stability remains below recommended levels.]
"Recommendations are suggestions."
[That is literally what the word means.]
"Exactly."
She tapped the activation control. Nothing happened.
She tapped again.
A jagged orange holographic display appeared above her wrist. Her mouth fell open.
[Skill Progression: Design Theory Lv.7 → Lv.8]
[Skill Progression: Engineering Lv.6 → Lv.7]
Engineer's grin became ridiculous. "OH, IT'S ALIVE, AND IT DIDN'T BLOW UP."
The bracer screamed in binary. "What?"
Electricity shot through her elbow. Her entire arm locked. Engineer toppled backward onto the floor. Her legs twitched once Then again. Smoke started to rise from the bracer.
Engineer just lay there on the floor for a few "OOW so blessed for the Gallifreyans Extreme Resistance
Her learning speed became increasingly obvious.
The new body helped enormously. Her mind was not simply faster than a human brain. It organized information differently. Alien programming languages that initially looked completely unfamiliar began developing recognizable structures after enough exposure. Mechanical systems stopped appearing as collections of parts and started turning into relationships.
[Skill Progression: Engineering Lv.7 → Lv.8 → Lv.9]
[Skill Progression: Code Programming Lv.5 → Lv.6 → Lv.8]
[Skill Progression: Design Theory Lv.8 → Lv.9]
The System notifications became common enough that she stopped screaming every time.
Finally, while adjusting the synchronization code for the seventh time, the System chimed.
[Skill Progression: Engineering Lv.9 → Lv.10]
She stopped breathing for half a second. Another notification arrived.
[Skill Progression: Code Programming Lv.8 → Lv.9 → Lv.10]
Then the final one.
[Skill Progression: Design Theory Lv.9 → Lv.10]
The marker slipped from her fingers.
[Skill Threshold Reached.]
[Omni-Tool Mk.I construction requirements satisfied.]
Omega immediately pulsed.
Build.
"Yes."
Now.
"YES, MOTHER."
She paused.
"Actually, that felt weird. Never mind."
Omega pulsed impatiently.
"Jeez, you're deprived."
She worked for nearly twenty hours. Her back started hurting after hour six. She forgot to eat until hour nine. At some point she drank cold tea that had probably been sitting beside the soldering station since the previous day.
She regretted it but continued working.
The apartment became a mess of component trays, active screens, open technical diagrams, and holographic projections. She integrated systems one at a time, testing every connection before moving forward.
Mostly. Sometimes she skipped testing. Those moments usually created smoke.
[Component Integrated: Plasma Core Stabilizer.]
"Good."
[Component Integrated: Cyber Processor Fragment.]
"Very good."
[Component Integrated: Dalek Alloy Shard.]
"Extremely good."
Beautiful."
The finished bracer looked considerably cleaner than her earlier prototype. Black alloy covered most of her forearm, fitted close enough that it felt more like armor than equipment. Thin orange-gold lines ran through channels beneath the surface, while the interface emitter rested near the wrist.
The Engineer stared at it for several seconds before putting it on.
The bracer tightened automatically Engineer's mouth slowly opened. "...holy Time Vortex." She moved one finger. The interface followed.
Another gesture opened diagnostics. Thought alone closed it.
"I did it." The System chimed.
[Major Achievement: Omni-Tool Mk. I Constructed.]
[XP Awarded: +12,000.]
[Multiple Level Increases Registered.]
[Crafting Skills have established advanced synergy.]
[Engineering + Design Theory + Code Programming synchronization detected.]
[Composite Skill Unlocked: Omni-Forge.]
Omega began pulsing violently from across the room. Feed.
Engineer glanced toward the teacup."Seriously?"
Energy.
"You watched me work for twenty hours and your first reaction is food?"
Feed.
"Fine."
She approached the shelf. "You helped emotionally."
Feed.
"Mostly by judging me."
She routed a small pulse of temporal energy through the Omni-Tool. The device stabilized and shaped it before releasing the energy toward Omega. The seed brightened dramatically. Purple-gold light filled the teacup.
Then came something stronger than simple hunger. Approval. Engineer blinked omega wasnt the most emotional living thing around. Then came another pulse. Pride.
Then something softer. Affection. Her smile became considerably smaller.
"Yeah, yeah."
She sat against the wall because standing suddenly felt unnecessary. "Don't get sentimental dont want you to act like my wife."
Engineer looked down at the Omni-Tool, feeling a little emotional. This was her first proper piece of original technology. Not something stolen. Not something she had inherited with this body. Not something Gallifrey had handed her.
Hers and hers only. She rested her head against the wall. "Pretty cool."
Omega pulsed. Is this coming around to a thank you, Omega
She smiled.
"Pretty cool."
Three days later, she was crouched above the Thames with the Omni-Tool strapped against her forearm and an expression that should have worried responsible adults.
London had received more rain.
Of course it had.
Engineer had decided the city only possessed three weather settings: raining, recently raining, and preparing to rain. Her trench coat hung around her while the Omni-Tool displayed several holographic glyphs over her wrist.
[Omni-Tool Prototype Development Branch: Mk.III Configuration.]
The designation amused her.
Apparently the System considered the heavily modified field version she had created after two more rounds of improvements enough of a departure from the original to skip directly past Mk. II.
She wasn't arguing.
[Functions:]
Holographic Interface
Nanoforge
Diagnostics Suite
Minor Chrono-Loop Overclock
Microdrone Control
[Available Resource: Chronon Fragments x7.]
[Recommended Action: Field testing within controlled conditions.]
Engineer looked at the final line.
One of three tiny devices detached from the Omni-Tool and moved over the ledge before scan signals of anything important. The useful confirmation arrived less than an hour later.
She had been scanning emergency channels when UNIT traffic appeared.
A terse dispatch mentioned anomalous electromagnetic activity beneath a disused Northbank maintenance tunnel, corrupted local CCTV, and suspected salvage theft
By the time Engineer reached the Northbank maintenance entrance, UNIT had already taken control of most of the street around it. Two dark vans were parked near the pavement with their rear doors open, cables running from one of them toward a portable command station that had been assembled beneath a temporary canopy. Nobody had bothered putting UNIT logos everywhere, which made sense considering their entire job involved convincing the public that whatever was happening nearby was definitely boring and absolutely did not involve aliens.
A pair of uniformed police officers stood farther up the road redirecting pedestrians, while UNIT personnel handled everything closer to the tunnel. Some wore tactical jackets over body armor, others had plain clothes with weapons hidden badly enough that the Engineer noticed them immediately, and several technicians were moving equipment between cases while arguing over readings on their portable scanners.
She slowed down as she approached and took a moment to watch them.
They were organized.
That was the first thing she noticed.
Nobody was running around yelling because a machine had produced a strange number. Nobody was standing dramatically in the middle of the road explaining the situation to everyone else. The soldiers watched entrances and civilians while the technical team worked, and the woman who seemed to be in charge moved between both groups while occasionally speaking into a radio.
Engineer approved. Though it was almost disappointing. She had been half expecting Torchwood levels of questionable workplace behavior.
Her Omni-Tool remained dim against her forearm as she walked directly toward the perimeter after there were too many people to slip by
Still, she didn't approach the main checkpoint. Instead, she circled around looking for a weak point
She slipped behind a parked van when a pair of UNIT personnel turned away, then used the blind spot between a temporary barrier and a stack of equipment crates to move closer to the tunnel mouth.
Her Omni-Tool flickered once, faintly, as it picked up something underground. She paused, tilted her head at what she was reading
Then smiled slightly.
"Oh, that's interesting."
She kept moving.
A soldier at the perimeter finally noticed her—but by then she was already too close to the restricted line to be "just a civilian wandering off."
He stepped forward.
"Sorry, miss. This area's closed."
The Engineer didn't stop.
She just leaned slightly to the side, as if she was considering the tunnel entrance from a better angle.
"Yeah," she said lightly, "I got that impression from the armed occupation."
The soldier moved to block her properly.
"Please move along."
She nodded, like she was agreeing.
Then she stepped flash step him, or is it time step? put her exactly where she needed to be on the inside of the perimeter before he fully registered she had moved.
The soldier turned. She was already gone from his line of sight.
"…what?"
Engineer crouched behind a stack of equipment cases, listening to footsteps shift nearby. Her expression was calm, almost amused.
"Sorry," she whispered to herself, "you blinked first."
Her Omni-Tool stayed dim, but active now, quietly mapping UNIT positions, scanning where that signal leakage from the tunnel below.
A technician passed within a meter of her hiding place, still arguing with someone on a call. "—no, that spike is not atmospheric, it's repeating—"
She waited for a shift in their formation—two soldiers moving to cover a different angle, technicians clustering around a scanner feed, the commander briefly turning her attention away toward the tunnel.
That was her moment. Engineer slipped forward.
Low and Quiet. Using the underside of a maintenance cart as cover, she crossed the final open stretch and reached the tunnel mouth itself.
A warning light flickered above the entrance. She glanced at it.
"Yeah, yeah," she muttered, and stepped inside anyway.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the sound of the street dulled behind her. Her Omni-Tool brightened slightly in response, projecting a faint orange interface against her wrist as it adjusted to the underground interference.
She exhaled. "Right," she whispered. "Let's see what you're hiding."
Behind her, somewhere above ground, a UNIT soldier finally looked back toward the tunnel entrance. Saw nothing.
Frowned.
"Did anyone just—" But the Engineer was already gone from the surface world.
And already listening to the impossible thing waiting below.
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Wordcount-3384 a little low
Sorry this rewrite took awhile ive been playing Rainbow Six