Fanfic / A Hero

Who would ever think that a Dalek of all things could become a hero before this?

So, Dalek Sec died a horrible death, leaving behind his casing after what happened in Manhattan, right?

Well, yeah. But he's here now. Because of time shenanigans, he has now appeared in the universe of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

Oh dear.

In his investigations of temporal space, he meets one Homura Akemi and, hopefully, they can finally fix this "Groundhog Day" Loop that she's stuck in.

Written by Bioweapon 155, the fic is available on FanFiction.Net or Spacebattles (first thread, second thread, third thread).

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Tropes:

• Angrish: Sec's fourth attempt at Dwarf Fortress is described as "UNINTELLIGIBLE SOUNDS OF INTENSE RAGE." Justified as, well, it's Dwarf Fortress.
• Anti-Hero: Obviously Dalek Sec, but he's apparently mellowed out to the point where he'll help Homura Akemi. For a good reason, of course.
• A Wizard Did It: Explicitly denied by Sec.
  Sec: I RE-FUSE TO GI-VE UP AND RE-DUCE MY-SELF TO U-SING "MA-GIC" AS AN EX-PLA-NA-TION FOR E-VERY-THING. THIS IS SCI-ENCE, WHERE A IS E-QUAL TO A, CA-USE HAS EF-FECT AND THI-NGS DO NOT HAP-PEN "BE-CAUSE SO".
• Badass Boast: Sec gets one against Kyubey.
  Sec: I COME FROM A PLACE WHERE GODS ROAM A-MONGST THE STARS, WHERE THERE ARE BEINGS THAT COULD E-RASE ALL OF RE-AL-ITY WITH BUT A ME-RE THOUGHT, THAT COULD BEND TI-ME TO THEIR WILL AND FREE YOU FROM HAVING EVER BEING BORN!! YET, NO MAT-TER HOW PO-WER-FUL THEY ARE, THEY ALL FEAR THE SAME THING.
  Kyubey: You?
  Sec: NOT ME. A WO-RD; IT IS A WO-RD THAT CAU-SES SUCH FE-AR, THAT E-VEN THE LORDS OF TI-ME ARE SENT TO THEIR KNE-ES.
  Kyubey: And what word is that?
  Sec: EX-TER-MINATE!!! [blasts Kyubey]
• Badass Pacifist: Madoka, who convinces Sec not to crush Kyoko's skull during their first encounter with her. When you can talk an Omnicidal Maniac out of killing someone, there really isn't anything else you could possibly be but this. Sec is a bit more mellow than the average Dalek, but still.
• Bad Boss: Sec's former commander, the Dalek Inquisitor General. To the point that Sec got promoted to Supreme simply by virtue of surviving five consecutive missions under his command.
• Beam Spam: How Sec gets rid of a few hundred familiars.
  "AU-TO-MA-TIC FI-RE EN-A-BLED!! EX-TER-MINATE!!"
  • Dalek Jast, of the Cult of Skaaro, was apparently fond of this.
• Beneath the Mask: Homura, unlike other examples, she does this because her own caged emotions would be enough to literally destroy her.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • One of the central conflicts is about Sec's new human morals and how they mesh with standard Dalek ideas. How do they fit together? They often don't, but that's half the fun.
  • Madoka thinks that immortality is a curse after hearing Homura talk about it. Sec, on the other hand, is proud to have lived to be a quarter of a million years old.
• Cassandra Truth: "I AM AN IM-PERIAL-ISTIC SPACE NAZI." Though played with in that he says that he deliberately tells the truth because it's so ridiculous that everyone just forms their own conclusions anyway.
• Character Focus: Read this page. Notice how someone keeps getting mentioned.
  • Word of God has it that this is to make up for the fact that he wants to make a believable and interesting character out of something that usually isn't.
  • He has also stated that he'd like to get more PMMM characters and elements in on the action, with a little less focus on the Doctor Who side of the crossover.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Given the events of Satellite Five where it's revealed that the Dalek Emperor has been doing pretty much exactly what Kyubey has in this story, you'd be surprised at the attitude that Sec takes towards Kyubey's cultural manipulation of humanity to be more pliant. However, if you remember "Daleks In Manhattan", the human spirit and their capacity for endurance, rebuilding, and survival against all odds were things that Sec very much admired, calling it "almost Dalek". It makes sense that he hates Kyubey...
  • Kyouko tempts fate by asking the last known Dalek in the universe if it's going to try killing her with its plunger arm. Like the 'Metaltron' from "Dalek", Sec is capable of fulfilling the challenge and is crushing Kyouko's skull like the lone Dalek was with Simmons when Madoka begs him to stop.
• Cosmic Plaything: Sec is absolutely convinced that the universe, or at least some god-like entity, is actively screwing with him - and considering that he's in a fanfic, he's kinda on to something. In any case, he isn't happy about it. At all.
• Crack Fic: Played with. The general idea of the fic, that a Dalek would turn into a hero, is very, very crack-y. The rest of the fic isn't.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Sec vs. Uhrmann.
  • Sec tries fighting Krimehild Gretchen, even though he knows the Witch will likely destroy the solar system. While the Witch utterly destroys him, he gets revived by Homura restarting her time loop.
  • The Dalek Inquisitor General, a pre-Time War Dalek, gets teleported onto a ship occupied by the 2010 Daleks, and shreds them like a tank through wax paper.
  • The hunt for seven witches that Homura and Sec go on is openly called "Curb Stomping".
• Dead Fic: Word of God says that he is extremely unlikely to come back to this.
  "Probably not. A Hero was written when I was still new to writing, and I've moved on from many of the themes present in it. If I did go back to it, I would probably re-write a whole lot of it."
• Deadpan Snarker: Unsurprisingly, Sec.
  • Word of God says, when asked how Daleks can be deadpan, that they do it "LOUD-LY!", complete with a font size increase.
  • Kyouko, as well.

• Eldritch Abomination: Witches. Even Sec's confused by them. But that didn't last too long.
• Epic Fail:
  • When Sec tries to recreate the Dalek race, his first casing ends up being a horrible kludge with almost no internal mechanisms, unstable life-support systems, an eye-stalk that's almost blind, control mechanisms that keep lighting themselves on fire, and trans-solar disks that keep reversing. He thinks putting ANYTHING inside would be absolutely cruel.
  • To say nothing of his experiments with Grief Seeds...
    Homura: There was nothing there that could've caught fire, there was nothing there to spark a fire, and there was absolutely no reason at all for a Grief Seed to catch fire.
    Sec: CO-RRECT.
    Homura: Then why did that thing catch fire?
  • Sec attempts to play Dwarf Fortress and somehow manages to trash 69 fortresses in a few minutes.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played with. Sec's human morals tell him that what the Incubators are doing is wrong, even though as a Dalek he approves intellectually of the concept behind their operation. What he doesn't approve of is the Incubators undermining the human race's right to self-determination by manipulating their cultural and social evolution to make them more pliable and easy to manipulate.
  • Also, Sec's opinion that it would be cruel to put anything inside the improvised Dalek shell he constructs in Chapter 2.
  • It also says something when a Dalek of all things, even an aberrant one with both human emotions and some idea of human morals like Sec does, calls you out on your BS.
• Exact Words: Sec mentions to Madoka that Walpurgisnacht will devastate "the area". What she hears is "destroy the city"; what he means is "annihilate the entire star system".

• Fate Worse than Death: Spending any period of time with the Dalek Inquisitor General is considered this.
• Flat "What": Homura gives one when she realizes that even though she's severed the link between her Soul Gem and her body, and thus is effectively deaf, she can still hear Sec ranting.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Kyubey, as usual. The difference is that from the beginning, we know he's one of these instead of being the standard Magical Girl mascot. Also, while he tries to use Cuteness Proximity to appeal to human females, it fails hard against Sec.
• For Want of a Nail: Besides the obvious, Sec's presence has changed a lot of the storyline.
  • For example: the conversation between Madoka and Homura in Chapter 4, which has Homura revealing to Madoka that Puella Magi do not age. This causes Madoka to later figure out part of the reason why Homura is so insistent in not having her contract with Kyubey, as well as giving much Fridge Horror for the poor girl.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Still very much in effect here. Homura's not getting out of this thing any time soon.

• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Sec, being a non-human, has a few of these. His main one is "SON-OF-A-THAL!"
• Humanity Is Infectious: Zig-zagged all over the place. On the one hand, Sec now has human emotions. On the other hand, it's because of his attempt at hybridization in "Daleks in Manhattan", but he's also trying to work through those feelings. And while he's trying to examine human culture... it doesn't always go quite as simply as some of the more iconic examples of this trope (see his attempts at Dwarf Fortress or his reaction to Avatar). But on the other-other hand, he views humans as a great species because Humans Are Warriors. See below for more clarification.

• Humans Are Warriors: Part of Sec's inner monologue implies that humans are only second to the Daleks themselves when it comes to war, which is a big compliment, considering it came from a being whose race's hat is "Omnicidal Maniac". He's not amused that the Incubators see them as cattle.
• Implausible Deniability: Sec denies he was doing anything and claims that Homura didn't see anything after she witnesses him get frustrated enough by Dwarf Fortress to start shaking the computer monitor and scream at it.
• Intrigued by Humanity: As per "Evolution of the Daleks", Sec is this. He seems to genuinely respect them enough to think that the Incubators exploiting them is wrong.
• Just as Planned: Chapter 5 gives us two of these - from The Mind, and from the Cybermen.
• Mad Scientist: Sec and the rest of the Cult of Skaro. This was actually their entire purpose: to replace Davros after he was killed in the opening shots of the Time War, and if Davros was nothing else, he was a mad scientist of breathtaking proportions.
• Most Definitely Not An Alien/Hugh Mann: Inverted. Sec doesn't even bother using a disguise or hiding and even accompanies Homura in plain sight, while telling everyone who bothers to ask that he's an alien Nazi. Naturally, everyone finds it so ridiculous that they come to their own conclusions instead.
• No Social Skills: Homura. To the point that Sec is considered to have better social skills.
  Kyouko: A little brusque, aren't we?
• No Indoor Voice: Sec, being a Dalek and all.
• Noodle Incident: Kyouko somehow managed to piss off the Matriarch of every single Puella Magi gang in Tokyo. Word of God has it that the incident in question involved a sports car, a house, four cases of gasoil, five pots of boiling coffee, a Slinky, two boxes full of Grief Seeds, an Incubator drone, a van, a briefcase full of money of unscrupulous origins, a maid outfit, and cheese.
• Not With the Safety On, You Won't: Subverted. Though Sec admits that there is a safety on his death ray, "no Dalek to his knowledge had ever used it."
• Omniscient Morality License: The Incubators, who have not only been exploiting the human race since the Stone Age but have also been conducting social engineering projects to make humans easier to manipulate. Sec implies that they're responsible for creating the cultural image of the Magical Girl, which in turn misleads so many young girls into contracting with them.
• Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The ones in charge of the PMM plan. So far, we have an Eldritch Hive Mind, an enormous Uber-Orwellian regime, and the Cybermen.
• People's Republic of Tyranny: One of the members of the Coalition is called "The People". Word of God has it that "They call themselves 'The People' for the same reason an oppressive dictatorship calls itself 'The People's Democratic Republic of X'."
• Persona Non Grata: As noted above, Kyouko managed to antagonize the Matriarchs of every single Puella Magi gang in Tokyo to the point that if she ever goes back there, they'll work together to kill her.
• Precision F-Strike: Uttered by Sec.
  "SON-OF-A-THAL!"
• Puny Humans: Uhrmann seems to think so. Which is why Sec stomps her/it.
• Reality Warper: Sec inadvertently warps space-time by projecting a block-transfer equation onto a wall, which is hovering above the wall even after the projector is turned off.
• Really 700 Years Old:
  • There's no indication as to how many times Homura's repeated the "Groundhog Day" Loop, but she's done it enough times to memorize nearly every single event in Mitakihara that could be remotely relevant to her cause, and learn nearly every single possible route in which events could unfold.
  • Sec claims to be 250,000 years old.
• Refuge in Audacity: Sec's strategy for remaining inconspicuous is to advertise the fact that he's an alien super-Nazi at every opportunity. Naturally, nobody believes him, and they come to their own conclusions.
• Running Gag: Sec never succeeds in his first attempt. Or in his second. Or third. And yes, this applies to everything, up to and including video games.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Homura now wears one, much to Sec's chargin.
• Shout-Out: Apparently, Dalek Science sneers at the impossible.
  • The entire Curb-Stomp Battle against Uhrmann is a shout out to the Bolo series. Her defeat is even called a "Bolostomp" in the author's notes.
  • Word of God has it that Sec's use of the word "Thal" as a swear word is one to Second Empire. The Thals were the Daleks' mortal enemies in both of their origin stories ("The Daleks" and "Genesis of the Daleks"), so it makes perfect sense.
  • Sayaka seems to be chanelling Shirou Emiya at times.
  • Homura has taken to wearing a long scarf around her neck. Cue Sec muttering about "Jellybabies".
  • In Chapter 5, Kyouku believes that Sec's emotions are stuck on "Always Angry, All the Time" - which is the battle cry of one of 4chan's homegrown (original) Space Marine Chapters, the Angry Marines.
  • One of the members of the Coalition is based on the story Nineteen Eighty-Four, especially in its use of Newspeak. Another race is the Cybermen. They end their meetings with "By Your Command."
  • Sec is shown playing an unnamed game, but Word of God and clues, plus the rage and anger it invokes, shows that the game is Dwarf Fortress.

• Spanner in the Works: Sec, to both Homura and the Incubators. Homura is seriously thrown for a loop when Sec shows up after Mami's death, but she recovers and begins to think that his arrival might be what she needs to finally win.
• Speak of the Devil: The Dalek Inquisitor General.
  [Sec] decided he'd better think about something else, lest he summon the terrifying Dalek here.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: "I WAS DO-ING NO-THING. THIS DID NOT HAP-PEN."
• Tempting Fate:
  • While watching Homura battle Walpurgisnacht, Sec concludes that the witch isn't looking his way, and therefore won't attack him. A few seconds later he realizes that he just assumed nothing would happen to him and, sure enough, there's a slew of familiars headed his way.
    He had not just thought of that, had he? He had not just assumed that the universe would be kind to him for once, and he had most definitely not just invoked the law of disproportionate-retribution-for-confidence-he-should-not-have.
  • Upon Sec claiming that he'll give Kyouko a painful death, she laughs and asks if he's going to do it with a plunger. Sec decides to take it as a challenge, lowers his gun, and proceeds to thrash her with nothing but his plunger-shaped manipulator arm.
• The Alliance: The Coalition, composed of The Mind (Incubators), The People, and the Cybermen.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Not actually appearing, but Sec has said that "I AM AN IM-PERIAL-IS-TIC SPACE NAZI."
• Unexplained Recovery: Absolutely no indication of how Sec managed to come back from being killed in "Evolution of the Daleks" is given, or how he managed to get his casing back, or how his previous condition was negated. Sec briefly muses on the matter before deciding that he doesn't want to know how he managed to survive.
  • In Chapter 4, the Doctor claims that when Amy rebooted the universe at the end of Series 5, it accidentally brought back everything that had ever died. Most of it died again, like it did in the original timeline, but Sec was somehow thrust into the Void, where he eventually wound up in the PMMM universe. Word of God states that the reason why the Doctor and Sec were able to get to the PMMM universe is because someone came here during the first Time War.
• Unstoppable Rage: Sec, though given that he's a Dalek, it's not too surprising.
  Dalek Sec wasn’t quite near the I-will-kill-everyone-on-this-planet-with-their-own-internal-organs stage yet, but he was certainly getting there.
  • Noted slightly earlier that what a human considers "unstoppable rage" is merely "miffed" to a Dalek. If any other lifeform in existence felt what a Dalek considers unstoppable rage, they would explode.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Sec gets into an argument with a music store shopkeeper over an expired coupon. The shopkeeper is more concerned about Sec's belligerence than the fact that he appears to be some kind of robot.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 4: the Doctor is in the house.
  • Chapter 5: one of the coalition members is the Cybermen! And the Dalek Inquisitor General is free.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: More like "What Measure is a Non-Dalek", but similar principle. Some members of the Cult of Skaro, who were all modified to be able to "Think Like the Enemy", had nagging suspicions about this.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The revelation that Puella Magi do not age causes much Fridge Horror for Madoka.
  • Subverted with Sec, and the subversion is justified: increased age means more combat experience, so having survived a very long time is a badge of honor for him. Also, he wants to restore his race eventually, and given his first attempts to create Dalek Embryos (in "Daleks in Manhattan") and his first attempt at making a casing (Chapter 2 of this story), he's probably gonna be around for a while.
• Worthy Opponent: Humanity, as far as Sec is concerned; they've earned the respect due to their spirit and determination to overcome anything they face. The fact that the Incubators have essentially brainwashed the whole species into compliant cattle sends him into a fury that is impressive even by Dalek standards.

• You Didn't Ask: Averted with a vengeance. Sec does not accept that logic.
  Sec: YOUR METH-ODS ARE RE-PULS-IVE! YOU EX-PLOIT THESE HU-MANS, YOU WITH-HOLD VI-TAL IN-FOR-MA-TION—
  Kyubey: They did not ask,
  Sec: AND THEY DID NOT KNOW THEY SHOULD ASK! [...] YOU HAVE MA-NIP-U-LA-TED FAC-ETS OF HU-MAN-ITY TO CON-FORM TO YOUR GOALS, TO TAKE YOUR WORDS AT FACE VAL-UE! SO THAT YOU MIGHT NEVER HAVE TO LIE!
• You Didn't See That: Homura walks in on Sec shaking a computer monitor and screaming in rage at Dwarf Fortress and asks what he's doing. After putting the monitor down and recollecting himself, Sec says he wasn't doing anything and the thing she saw didn't happen.

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