History Fanfic / LegacyOfTheEnginseers

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Taylor decides to build herself a base in Mars, both to evoke her Mechanicus "mentors"' work and to get away from Earth, where both gangs and government agencies are trying to hunt her down.

* IResembleThatRemark: Jack Slash hates it when people call the Nine murder-hobos... mostly because he knows it's the truth, but he can't acknowledge it because of his ItsAllAboutMe attitude.

*** When Danny sells off their family home, Taylor buys it anonymously so she can keep and preserve her good memories of the place.

In an universe that only knows war, Eldrad Ulthran, the most powerful of Eldar Farseers, learns of certain Entities and their plans, which will annihilate countless versions of Earth - including the one where the Emperor of Mankind resides, creating a new god of Chaos that will tip the balance of power. In order to prevent this, Eldrad brings together the lords of the Eldar (himself and Yvraine), Necrons (Szarekh the Silent King and Trazyn the Infinite) and Mechanicus (Belisarius Cawl and Oud Oudia Raskian) and sends their full knowledge of sciences and engineering so one potential parahuman can stop the Entities.

* GodzillaThreshold: Since Taylor has pinpointed [[spoiler:Noelle]] as the likely target for [[spoiler:Leviathan's attack]], she orders the man manning the portal control system to dump said target into the Sun should the latter get too close.

* HumongousMecha: For the fight against [[spoiler:Leviathan]], Taylor brings out three 90-meter tall ''Castigator''-class Titan known as ''Paragon of Terra'', ''Mettalum Olympus'', and ''Casus Belli''.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Alexandria was all too ready to ignore the Truce in order to force Taylor into her custody, but seconds later warns her not to break the Truce herself.

* HumongousMecha: For the fight against [[spoiler:Leviathan]], Taylor brings out the 90-meter tall ''Castigator''-class Titan ''Paragon of Terra'', as well as the ''Mettalum Olympus'' and ''Casus Belli''.

* AlasPoorVillain: Cherish had joined the Slaughterhouse Nine for the sake of protecting herself from her father, only to suffer a lot at the hands of the other members [[spoiler:and end up getting headshot by Mechanicus' drones after witnessing Shatterbird's own death]].

* Sophia let out a loud scream of rage after Piggot thrown the book at her.

** The dockworkers massively called out Danny for outing Taylor without even bothering to wait for her side of the story.

** After getting the data from her first foray in a [[MiniMecha Knight]], she cackles and twirls around on her chair.

* BullyingADragon: Despite ''knowing'' what her weapon can do, Jack Slash's first thought is that he can track Taylor down and either force her into the Nine or kill her and steal the weapon himself. Taylor, needless to say, doesn't find this funny at all.

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: The PRT is ''deliberately'' inefficient thanks to Cauldron, in order to ensure that as many Parahumans trigger as possible, in the hopes that they'll get lucky and one of said triggers will be useful against Scion.

* SuicidalPacifism: Several of the PRT people Taylor recruits became disgusted with the organization because they were prevented from using potentially lethal measures even when faced with Parahumans that were trying to kill them - one of them lost his legs and left arm to a Cape that murdered thousands of people in a few hours while the Protectorate Capes let said Cape do whatever and the PRT troopers were killed while armed only with con foam sprayers.

* ParentalNeglect: When Danny is told about Taylor's supposed crimes, he signs over his guardianship of her without much discussion and outs her on public TV. After the deal breaks through when Taylor clears her name, he rejects a chance to recover the guardianship. It is later revealed that Danny was pressured and manipulated by the PRT into signing out the guardianship under the belief that the heroes would "save" his daughter. Furthermore, he was declared by the state to be mentally ineligible to take custody over Taylor. As a result, Danny [[ItsAllMyFault blames himself for Taylor's situation]].

** Much of the drama of the story derives from how the PRT went on the warpath against Taylor and marked her as a villain before making sure that she was actually one.

** [[spoiler:William Manton gets killed by the drones she used to bring Lung down, instead of getting crushed by Dragon.]]

* HeroicBSOD: Piggot goes almost catatonic when she learns Taylor razed [[TraumaButton Ellisburg]] to the bedrock.

** Sophia ruins Taylor's life by invoking the Protectorate's protocols to [[MakeAnExampleOutOfThem make an example out of anyone threatening a Ward's life]]. When the truth is revealed, the Protectorate proceeds to make an example out of Sophia for manipulating them.

* BullyingADragon: Despite ''knowing'' what her weapon can do, Jack Slash's first thought is that he can track Taylor down and either force her into the Nine or kill her and steal the weapon himself.

** When Taylor realizes [[ThePeepingTom a voyeur]] reported where she was, she warns the guy's target and erases every video he still has of the woman.

* FrameUp: Sophia accuses Taylor of attacking her unprovoked, something that her classmates and the school officers corroborate, triggering a manhunt. Then Taylor publishes the videos of what actually happened, the case collapses over itself, and the PRT now looks incredibly incompetent over the entire issue.

* HollywoodHacking: Taylor's computer and skills are so advanced that the best firewalls the PRT uses are little more than speedbumps for her.

** She calls out Kaiser as this during her talk with him, because he claims she's breaking the Unwritten Rules by contacting him in his civilian identity - the same he repeatedly breaks on his own by killing or selling out other capes.
* IDidWhatIHadToDo: Taylor didn't like having to [[spoiler:kill Bakuda]], but she didn't have the means to keep her imprisoned and knew that sending her to the Protectorate would only mean [[spoiler:Bakuda would just wait until she could slip out to continue her plans]].

** The reason the PRT was so heavy-handed in going after Taylor, to the point of having ''her father out her on TV'' (after telling him that unless he went along with what they were saying that they'd give her a ''kill order'') and Piggot trying to force a draconian contract on her (described by many as "contractual slavery"), is because the testimony of Sophia and her cronies made her out to be a villain deliberately targeting Sophia for being a Ward while she was in her secret identity (not helped by Sophia's bullying campaign and Winslow's covering for her giving them a completely inaccurate picture of Taylor's personality), and the measures were supposed to make sure that ''no one'' save the Nine would try something else like that again. When Taylor publishes the evidence showing that it was ''Sophia'' who attacked ''her'', and as a civilian, the PRT loses a lot of face as a result. Piggot then informs Sophia that she'll be hung out to dry, itself an example of this to make sure that no one ''else'' tries to manipulate the PRT's measures to their benefit like she did.
** Taylor destroys the Slaughterhouse Nine in a drawn-out manner and then publishes the full video as a warning of what she can do to anyone planning to capture her and force her to work for them.
* MercyKill: [[spoiler:Taylor kills Bakuda swiftly and painlessly with a combination of drugs, since she knows that there's no way that Bakuda will stay with the PRT if they capture her. Given that the alternative was to shoot her down, it was a better option.]]

** Whatever respect Taylor had for the organization vanishes as they try to arrest her without even considering her innocence.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Taylor decides to build herself a base in Mars, both to evoke her Mechanicus "mentors"' work and to get out of Brockton Bay, where every gang is hunting for her.

** Taylor loses two of her temporary refuges because of minor things. The first because she used the house's [=WiFi=] to post a message in PHO and gets tracked by Dragon, and the second because [[ThePeepingTom a voyeur]] accidentally saw one of her drones and reported it to Oni Lee.

* ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine: Taylor, learning of the Nine wanting to draw her out and either kill or make her a member of their group, decides to not only kill them, but make it so their last days on Earth are about them suffering the same kind of horror-movie-worthy events they have inflicted on hundreds of people.
** She kidnaps [[spoiler:Bonesaw and all her spiderbots]] in the dead of the night, and kills [[spoiler:her along with all her dead-man-trigger diseases she had prepared]], with none of the Nine being the wiser until the next morning.
** She sets up an incendiary bomb to destroy [[spoiler:Murder Rat]], exploding when the Nine are settling up the next night.
** Right after that, she kills [[spoiler:Burnscar]] in front of the entire group with a Warp Spider drone.
** The next morning, she sends the Warp Spider again to distract [[spoiler:Crawler]] so she can set him up for a Necron Lokhust Heavy Destroyer to kill.
** [[spoiler:William Manton is killed by a drone that is unstoppable and cannot be hit if it doesn't want - much like the Siberian.]]
** Jack Slash [[spoiler:gets killed after being hunted for days, put through the wringer as he realizes his own mortality, and finally put down after having his philosophy ripped apart]].
* TooDumbToLive: Taylor's opinion of the Undersiders for robbing a casino without checking its owner's identity or ensuring they wouldn't be identified.

* ATragedyOfImpulsiveness: {{Discussed}} and {{Averted}}. Knowing how devastating a decision made on an impulsive reaction could be, Taylor keeps up several protocols that will prevent her drones from acting if she's mentally compromised.

* HurlItIntoTheSun: Taylor's go-to method to destroy anything that ''really'' needs to be destroyed is to do this.

** After getting the data f4om her first foray in a [[MiniMecha Knight]], she cackles and twirls around on her chair.

* AlasPoorVillain: Cherish had joined the Slaughterhouse Nine for the sake of protecting herself from her father, only to suffer a lot at the hands of the other members and end up getting headshot by Mechanicus' drones after witnessing Shatterbird's own death.

** [[spoiler:Jack Slash becomes vaporized by three Doomsday Blasters instead of getting trapped in a Gray Boy time loop and dying in the Gold Morning.]]

* {{Hypocrite}}: Taylor notes this of Tattletale, who keeps complaining about being forced to work for Coil, yet has no problem in helping Coil force Taylor to work for him. To be fair to Tattletale, it's implied that she was delaying him from finding her as much as she could, but Taylor doesn't know this.

** When she realizes that the PRT is sending sensors to allied countries in an attempt to track her, Taylor briefly considers sending a selfie to "lead" them to the North Pole or one where a penguin of a particular species "accidentally" photobombs the entire thing. She only refrains from it because it would distract hero teams from fighting villains ([[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial not because getting a penguin to photobomb a picture is too hard]]).

** Taylor sets up things so Purity won't be forced to deal with Kaiser anymore and keep custody of Theo and Aster, both because it helps the woman and because it would ensure she stops doing Kaiser's bidding.

** The reason the PRT was so heavy-handed in going after Taylor, to the point of having ''her father out her on TV'' and Piggot trying to force a draconian contract on her (described by many as "contractual slavery"), is because the testimony of Sophia and her cronies made her out to be a villain deliberately targeting Sophia for being a Ward while she was in her secret identity (not helped by Sophia's bullying campaign and Winslow's covering for her giving them a completely inaccurate picture of Taylor's personality), and the measures were supposed to make sure that ''no one'' save the Nine would try something else like that again. When Taylor publishes the evidence showing that it was ''Sophia'' who attacked ''her'', and as a civilian, the PRT loses a lot of face as a result. Piggot then informs Sophia that she'll be hung out to dry, itself an example of this to make sure that no one ''else'' tries to manipulate the PRT's measures to their benefit like she did.

* ParentalNeglect: When Danny is told about Taylor's supposed crimes, he signs over his guardianship of her without much discussion and outs her on public TV. After the deal breaks through when Taylor clears her name, he rejects a chance to recover the guardianship.

** So far, Taylor vs the Slaughterhouse Nine has gone 2-0, with the latter being unable to do anything as her drones kill them one by one.

* MakeAnExampleOfThem: The reason the PRT was so heavy-handed in going after Taylor, to the point of having ''her father out her on TV'' and Piggot trying to force a draconian contract on her (described by many as "contractual slavery"), is because the testimony of Sophia and her cronies made her out to be a villain deliberately targeting Sophia for being a Ward while she was in her secret identity (not helped by Sophia's bullying campaign and Winslow's covering for her giving them a completely inaccurate picture of Taylor's personality), and the measures were supposed to make sure that ''no one'' save the Nine would try something else like that again. When Taylor publishes the evidence showing that it was ''Sophia'' who attacked ''her'', and as a civilian, the PRT loses a lot of face as a result. Piggot then informs Sophia that she'll be hung out to dry, itself an example of this to make sure that no one ''else'' tries to manipulate the PRT's measures to their benefit like she did.

** It's implied that the dockworkers called out Danny for outing Taylor without even bothering to wait for her side of the story.

** She once complains that she's living in a tragedy because she's run out of decent tea.