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The Butchers' Chorus/Choir

In General

An infamous parahuman villain and the leader of the notorious crime gang "The Teeth". Even putting aside the numerous crimes each Butcher has performed, what makes them particularly interesting (and terrifying) is that they're effectively the only known cape to possess Complete Immortality — as soon as the current Butcher is killed, whichever cape killed them (or was closest to being responsible, or failing that whichever cape was geographically closest) takes up the mantle and gains access to all of the previous Butchers' powers... but with the caveat that they also gain access to all of the consciousnesses of all the previous Butchers. Unless the new Butcher is seen as "acceptable" (as in, a member of the Teeth), this manifests in the poor bastard being driven insane until they're either broken into a Meat Puppet or become a Fully-Embraced Fiend, continuing the Vicious Cycle onward.

The consciousnesses of the Butchers collectively form a Mind Hive referred to by the readers as "The Chorus/Choir", and their typical pattern of new Butchers coming from the Teeth has been broken when they decided to stop over in Brockton Bay and were killed through sheer accident by a random teenager in the midst of her Trigger Event. Now, the Butcher's Choir has been struggling to adapt to the demands and control instituted over them by their new host...

Ascended Extra: The Butcher was a one-shot villain in canon with very little information about them, and when they do make their debut proper, they're swiftly killed off and transferred to Cherish, who is shipped to parts unknown so as to prevent contact with any other parahumans. Here, every Butcher between the original Butcher and the fourteenth, Quarrel, is given their own fleshed-out personality, to the point that while Taylor is still the ultimate protagonist of the story, in practice it's more of an Ensemble Cast thanks to all of the Butchers constantly making their voices heard.
Badass Decay: An In-Universe variation occurs with the previous Butcher's powers when the new Butcher takes up the mantle; the previous Butcher's powers become "weaker" in some fashion, being less effective than they used to be whenever the new Butcher tries to use them. According to Word of God, this makes Taylor incredibly important in terms of keeping the Butcher stable since if someone else were to kill her and take up the Butcher's Mantle, they would lose Taylor's ability to temporarily calm the various Butchers' voices and the Butcher's Choir would go insane again.
Beware the Silly Ones: With Taylor as the current inheritor, they're more or less harmless beyond being the literal devils on Taylor's shoulders, but outside of their usual antics and attempts to get her to fully embrace the Butcher mantle, they bicker amongst each other like old friends. Well, most of them. That said, the collective identity are still remembered as one of the worst capes around who have contended with some heavy hitters in the past.
Blessed with Suck: Whoever becomes the next Butcher inherits weaker versions of the previous Butcher's power. The catch is that the next Butcher will also have the voices of previous Butchers running around in their head, which will eventually drive them insane or become an extension of the Chorus. Taylor's ability to "suppress" the Butchers gives her much more leeway and identity, and gives the Chorus a newfound level of sanity now that they aren't always screaming over one another.
Blood Knight: What, their name didn't give it away? The Butcher is easily one of the most violent capes on the East Coast, and love a good scrap. After all, the Butcher's Chorus has Complete Immortality, so why should they fear death?
Cast Full of Gay: A not-insignificant portion of the Butcher’s Choir is at least somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum; Vladimir is gay, Needler is a lesbian, and both Muramasa & Anchorage are bisexual.
Cast of Snowflakes: All of the Butchers are described as having very unique visual designs and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Looking just at them without taking into account their various outfits, both Butcher and Anchorage are African-American, Vladimir, Dirty Rotter, Tock Tick, Tactical, Stoneknapper, Bearskin and Taylor are all white, Flinch is heavily implied to be of Hispanic descent, Muramasa and Quarrel are both Japanese-American, Needler is Southeast Asian-American (specifically Indonesian), Firecracker's ethnicity is never stated, and Nemean is a Case 53.
Casual Danger Dialogue: Since they're voices inside someone's head and seemingly can't die, they engage in banter while their host battles whoever they're up against. Sometimes they can be motivated to provide actual helpful advice, though.
Character Development: Taylor becoming their latest host inflicts this upon them. While they may grumble about her desire to become a hero and use their powers for the betterment of Brockton Bay, that her powers can suppress them and allow them to converse without needing to scream over each other allows them to slowly soften up and offer genuine advice. Flinch, who was originally a hero but driven mad once he inherited, is gradually coming out of his shell, and Tactical does appreciate that Sanity Has Advantages for his combat planning power.
Combat Commentator: Same as Casual Danger Dialogue, they engage in this like they're in sports shows.
Combo Platter Powers: Whenever the Butcher's Mantle is passed on from one parahuman to another, they gain weaker versions of the parahuman's power along with identical versions of all of the previous powers used by the Butcher. As an example, Taylor gains the previously weakened version of all of the previous Butcher's powers when she kills Quarrel along with Quarrel's now-weakened Improbable Aiming Skills power. Some powers prove surprisingly compatible with others, most notably Stoneknapper's Mind over Matter power basically allowing Taylor to not need almost any of the advanced power tools she would normally require to use Tock Tick's Tinker power.
Complete Immortality: With how the Butcher's power works, the only way the Butcher will well and truly die is if they're either very far away from a viable host or if there are no other parahumans left for it to pass on to.
Deadpan Snarker: A sizeable plurality of the Butchers cope with their bizarre situation by snarkily mocking both each other and the current holder of the Butcher's mantle.
Death Is Cheap: If the Butcher dies, their power and consciousness will travel to either the parahuman who killed them or the nearest parahuman in the vicinity, ensuring their legacy will continue.
Death Seeker: A rare non-suicidal case; the Butcher's Chorus loves to get into fights with powerful capes and are even shown to usually be looking forward to dying to Worthy Opponents since they're excited on getting to enjoy the new Butcher's power by proxy. However, if there's a risk of them dying in some fashion to a cape with a "lame" power (such as Mush of the Archer's Bridge Merchants), they will either try to fight for their lives or mockingly threaten the current bearer of the Butcher's Mantle that they will never let them hear the end of this when they join the rest of the Choir proper.
Defrosting Ice Queen: They do not appreciate being stuck inside a hero, much less one who can "suppress" them, but overtime, they genuinely want to see her succeed, if not appreciate the newfound stability her power has given them.
The Dreaded: For decades, the Butcher has been the stuff of nightmares for most capes. They are armed with a plethora of dangerous abilities, each of them powerful enough to kill the previous Butcher; they lead a notorious crime gang of already dangerous parahuman villains in the form of the Teeth; they are invariably driven insane by all the voices in their head; and most frighteningly of all, even if someone somehow manages to kill the current Butcher, they still lose, because they are now the newest host, and their power just got added to the collective to make their own rampage even deadlier than any of the previous ones. As such, when Panacea realizes that Elpis is actually the current Butcher, it is completely understandable why she immediately starts panicking.
Driven to Madness: How Butcher III and other inheritors were forced to accept their new position. If their host doesn't align with them, the Choir will drive them to the breaking point until they break down. Taylor has so far managed to avoid this thanks to her power giving her the ability to temporarily silence the Butchers when they get rowdy, at the cost of numbing her emotions.
Dysfunction Junction: Given the nature of parahuman powers and how they get them, every member of the Choir has a variety of issues. Oddly, this is also what gives Taylor a small foundation of emotional support... at least provided the collective aren't being a bunch of assholes.
Eating the Eye Candy: The Chorus quite enjoy checking out anyone Taylor looks at, to the point of suggesting that she tip a waitress well "for the show", and between them they pretty much represent every sexual orientation. Taylor tries to avoid looking at anyone else in the girls' change rooms at school, but in the process she inadvertently gives some of her friends the impression that she's gay, because they assume she wouldn't be concerned about where her eyes wander if she were straight.
Equal-Opportunity Evil: The previous Butchers represented a mixture of gender, race, and sexual orientation. As such, they're equally horrible to everyone outside of the Teeth and kids.
Enemy Mine: While they spend most of their time childishly bickering with one another, there some cases where the Butchers will put aside any differences they have in favor of killing a common enemy. They also are willing to have both themselves and their gang the Teeth unite with other villains (or, far more rarely, heroes) against greater threats (like the Slaughterhouse Nine).
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As unhinged and murderous as they are, the Butchers all have someone dear to them, be it a lover, friend, sibling, or parent.
Even Evil Has Standards:
- Whatever the Butchers may do as leader of the Teeth, the "initiation" of Empire Eighty-Eight goons by murdering minority families infuriates several of them. Considering most of them would fit the criteria of "initiation targets" (the author has confirmed that the original Butcher triggered while being the victim of such an "initiation"), this certainly makes sense.
- The Butchers do not target children or go after kids. It's implied they were this even before Nemean, who killed pedophiles, became an inheritor. They actually seem to hold some fondness for them, with few if any of them giving any kind of rude or scathing remarks as Taylor tends to a child whose family was being attacked by Empire goons.
Extreme Omnisexual: Whatever their original preference, each new Butcher tends to shift towards this due to personality bleedover from the Chorus, which represents a mix of both genders, several orientations, and little regard for self-control. It's even outright lampshaded by Anchorage in the second chapter of the story, when the various Butchers are all arguing over what after-school club Taylor should sign up for:
Needler: I would suggest whatever the local LGBT association is called.
Anchorage: Hell yeah! Get white girl a cutie!
Taylor: You do realize I'm straight, right?
Anchorage: Oh, give it time, you'll be swinging every which way soon!
Fate Worse than Death: Each of the former Butchers end up as voices inside the head of the current host. Their only sensory input is from the host, and they have no ability to affect the outside world. And thanks to the Butcher seemingly having Complete Immortality, it looks like this will be happening forever and the poor bastards will never gain any respite from this torment.
Hidden Depths: The Butchers have demonstrated a wide range of talents, interests, and general knowledge which would not be expected given their reputation as bloodthirsty maniacs.
Humanoid Abomination: What the Butcher technically is when one really gets down to it, as they're an amorphous Mind Hive of different parahumans with Complete Immortality.
Horrifying the Horror: All of them are terrified of fighting the Simurgh, since even outside of her being one of the Endbringers, her Mind Rape abilities could potentially turn the effectively immortal Butcher construct into a permanent "Simurgh time bomb". One of the Butchers even outright tells Taylor that they shouldn't be on the same continent as "the feathered bitch" whenever possible.
Klingon Promotion: Generally how the Butcher power works, at least for those in the Teeth. The Butcher mantle can be claimed by anyone in the Teeth who proves themselves strong enough to kill the current Butcher and take the name and powers for themselves. If an outsider kills the Butcher, then they either become the new leader of the Teeth or the Chorus drives them to claim the position anyway.
Laughably Evil: Downplayed; while the horrible crimes they've done are still Played for Drama, the fact that they've all been reduced to (more or less) ineffectual voices in Taylor's head results in the past Butchers' attempts to goad her into evil generally being Played for Black Comedy more than anything else, particularly in how they generally act like a bunch of Psychopathic Manchildren.
Mind Hive: Each inheritor of the Butcher's Mantle, in addition to the powers of their predecessors, also gets to have all their consciousnesses living in her head. If the inheritor is a duly promoted member of the Teeth, the voices will work together. If not, as was the case with Flinch, the voices will reject their host and drive them mad until the Teeth can reclaim their property. ...Or at least that was the case until Taylor inherited the Butcher's mantle and set them down her own path.
Morality Kitchen Sink: The individual mortalities of the Butchers are surprisingly diverse despite an initial glance implying that they’re Always Chaotic Evil.
- Flinch and Taylor as Elpis are the only actual heroes to inherit the Butcher’s Mantle, and so are easily the most morally upstanding members of the Choir.
- Tock Tick, while sometimes ruthlessly pragmatic, is ultimately more of a rogue than an actual villain and so is the second-most moral member of the Choir.
- The rest of the Choir are made up of proud out-and-out villains, but even then their individual personalities lead to differing moral standards.
  - Butcher is easily the morally reprehensible member of the Choir, shortly followed by Dirty Rotter, who is a hedonistic Jerkass that is widely regarded as The Friend Nobody Likes.
  - Muramasa operates himself under a twisted form of the samurai’s bushido code, and so tries to encourage a Noble Demon mindset.
  - Tactical and Needler, both experts at playing The Long Game, are (in a similar vein to Muramasa) ruthless followers of Pragmatic Villainy.
  - Firecracker, Stoneknapper, Bearskin, Vladimir, Quarrel and Anchorage’s villainy mostly manifests through a clear hedonism, impatience with following rules, childish immaturity and near-pathological hatred of authority figures.
  - Finally, as Nemean is a Case 53, she isn’t fully human and operates under a fundamentally more “animalistic” mindset that leads to her appearing to have Blue-and-Orange Morality tempered by an extremely strong Mama Bear instinct.
Named by the Adaptation: In canon Worm, only the first, fourteenth, and fifteenth Butchers were ever given names — Butcher, Quarrel, and Cherish. Here, all of the fourteen previous Butchers are given cape names (though their actual names are still hidden).
No Animosity in the Afterlife: While it still heavily varies on the specific cases, most of the previous Butchers eventually learn how to better tolerate the current Butcher and vice versa, even if it's in regards to two Butchers who had hated one another. A specific example can be seen with Muramasa and Quarrel, who previously loathed the ground the other walked upon while they feuded over rulership of the Teeth... but after Muramasa was killed and Quarrel was added to the Choir, Quarrel was able to access Muramasa's memories and the two have since developed a comparatively lighthearted Odd Friendship/Sitcom Arch-Nemesis-style relationship.
Psychopathic Manchild: As per Word of God, the Butchers do not mentally age past their deaths, resulting in many of them still being highly emotional Jerkasses hung up with their own traumas even years after becoming part of the Choir. Furthermore, thanks to the vast majority of them being hedonistic villains, the Butchers generally act like immature, murderous brats that Taylor has to regularly lasso into helping her through acting as the collective’s Team Mom.
Sense Freak: The Butchers share sensations with their host and one way to appease them is by supplying them with foods or music they enjoy. This is helped by Nemean giving Taylor an enhanced sense of taste, making even a single piece of chocolate that much better. On the other hand, this has the downside of whatever pain the current host feels being relayed to the Butchers; at one point, Nemean gawks at how painful the aftermath of a four-way battle between the Teeth, Empire, and Merchants was.
Serial Killer: Bearskin and Nemean are infamous for having indulged in this. While the former's murder spree hasn't been touched on, Nemean's is far more understandable as she targeted pedophiles.
Spirit Advisor: The Butchers act like this on occasion for Taylor, often giving observations and advice both in and out of combat.
Sympathetic P.O.V.: While they're all crazy and insane, the Butchers are not entirely evil. Aside from most having been driven mad, they have loved ones they want to protect.
Took a Level in Kindness: Downplayed for the more violent Butchers. They're still clearly nuts, but they've at least started to treat Taylor with more kindness and patience as she has proven herself.
Toxic Friend Influence: Outside of Flinch, most of the Chorus try to have Taylor become more ruthless. Unlike with previous inheritors, however, they don't have nearly as much influence over her as they would like since she can silence the rowdier and more toxic voices.
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Outside of those who claimed the mantle willingly and joined the Teeth of their own volition, the capes who killed the Butcher (accidentally or otherwise) have all been driven insane by their predecessors. Taylor is the first ever cape to break this pattern thanks to her own shard helping her retain her sanity.
Would Not Hurt A Child: One of the exceptionally few standards all of the Butchers possess.
You Kill It, You Bought It: How the Butcher's mantle works; if one successfully kills the Butcher, they are simply added into the Mind Hive that is the Butcher's Chorus and becomes the next Butcher.

Taylor Hebert (Butcher XV)

Taylor Anne Hebert

Cape Name: Butcher XV, Elpis, "Swarm" (Unofficial)

The current bearer of the Butcher's mantle, which she gained by accidentally killing the then-current Butcher (Quarrel) in the midst of her own Trigger Event. Thanks to her Trigger Event, Taylor possesses one of the most powerful Master abilities in recorded history, being able to finely control all insects, crustaceans, arachnids and arthropods within a radius around her roughly equivalent to that of three city blocks. Unlike the previous Butchers, though, her insect control also manifests in her being able to temporarily "silence" each of the Butcher's voices within the Chorus (at the cost of temporarily deadening her emotions). Taking advantage of this opportunity, Taylor has decided to strike out on her own and make a name herself as the independent Hero Tinker "Elpis" by fixing up Brockton Bay.

Accidental Murder: How she became the Butcher in the first place; upon triggering, she had her bugs swarm the loudest, most dangerous thing nearby while her senses were being overwhelmed. Quarrel was rampaging nearby, and was swarmed by millions of bugs. Cue Taylor having fourteen different voices in her head.
Adaptational Attractiveness: Taylor's increased exercise regimen and the natural biological improvements she's received from the past Butchers (i.e., enhancements to her musculature from Nemean) have resulted in her looking like the beginnings of an Amazonian Beauty.
Adaptational Badass: Taylor wins the Superpower Lottery by virtue of her Accidental Murder of Quarrel and gaining all the powers that come with the Butcher mantle. Unfortunately, said powers also come with fourteen voices in her head, the majority of whom are all villains and tend to drive their hosts insane.
Adaptational Heroism: In a rather ironic twist when contrasted with canon, Taylor becomes a hero instead of a villain despite having over a dozen serial killers in her head giving her "advice." She's on reasonably good terms with the PRT and New Wave, and Armsmaster respects her.
Adaptational Sexuality: In canon, Taylor is (more or less) straight. Here, thanks in large part to having all of the previous Butchers in her head, Taylor is more or less pansexual. The effect is admittedly downplayed, though, given that with 14 spectators to her every action, she's uncomfortable even when on the toilet, much less being in a romantic relationship.
Berserk Button: Bullies in general. Given her history with it in Winslow, she has no tolerance for it. When Madison tries to pick up where she left off at Arcadia, Taylor rebuffs and/or ignores her while her schemes fail until Madison tries to play off what she did at their old school as a joke. The next second, Taylor pins her to the well and is scarily close to letting out her inner Butcher.
Can't Have Sex, Ever/Celibate Hero: invoked Though not for lack of desire; Taylor still gets attracted to people, but she's not willing to even contemplate how inevitably Squicky it would be to try and get intimate with someone when she has the Butchers loudly jeering and excitedly making perverted comments whenever an attractive person steps into Taylor's line of sight.
Character Development: At the start of the story, Taylor is uncertain and is very much concerned that she'll end up like her predecessors despite having the power to suppress them. As time goes on, however, she becomes more confident and assured of herself, in large part due to the Chorus' own encouragement once her attitude starts rubbing off on them.
Chronic Hero Syndrome: Taylor will try to help anyone she happens upon, no matter who they are or where they are. Not even the prospect of being Butcher XV will stop her.
Cover-Blowing Superpower: The Butcher powers in general are this, as well as her ability to control bugs. Since she killed Quarrel with a swarm of them, everyone is on the lookout for a "bug controller". As a result, Taylor relies more on her Tinker abilities while using less noticeable powers against troublesome foes. The power that ends up outing her to the Undersiders turns out being Firecracker's explosive teleportation, which she uses against Hookwolf.
Crazy-Prepared: Thanks to the memories of the prior Butchers, Taylor often finds herself trying to prepare for lots of dangerous scenarios. See, for instance, her taking the time to have the underarmor suit for her costume be stitched out of black widow silk so it'll be effectively bulletproof even when Nemean already grants her Super-Toughness.
Dark Is Not Evil: She's the current holder of the Butcher mantle and wears dark colors, but she's otherwise out to prove she can be a hero despite her baggage.
Deadpan Snarker: Can show off a remarkably dry wit at times, with her sarcasm having only been further aided via the "coaching" of the other Butchers.
Dual Wielding: Her primary weapons are two short swords, and she can wield one in each hand when in the midst of battle.
Emotion Suppression: A side effect of muting the Butchers is that doing so also dulls Taylor's emotions, leaving her nearly emotionless if suppressing the entire Choir. She exploits this when facing a Noelle clone of Glory Girl to overcome its fear aura.
Extreme Doormat: Was reduced to this by the Trio during her time at Winslow, but her time spent both at Arcadia and with the Butchers has done wonders in reversing this.
Fatal Flaw: As in canon, Taylor suffers from a severe lack of self-worth, relentless paranoia, an utter contempt for authority figures, and a serious Control Freak nature.
Freudian Excuse: The horrific psychological abuse she suffered through at the hands of the Trio (particularly when one of her abusers used to be her childhood best friend Emma) combined with virtually every authority figure she had during that time period falling into a serious case of Adults Are Useless are the main reasons for Taylor's caustic cynicism and near-pathological distrust of authority figures.
From Nobody to Nightmare: Over the course of a single day she goes from a bullied teenager to one of the most dangerous capes in North America.
Gadgeteer Genius: Thanks to having a Tinker in the Chorus, Taylor inherits Tock Tick's techniques and abilities while also having them coach and train her on how to build and create her own tech. To everyone else, she's this straight-up.
Grappling-Hook Pistol: Has two integrated into her Powered Armor, one in each gauntlet. Notably, hers are actually a fair share more realistic than most, also possessing backwards-facing claw launchers so Taylor can make one continuous chain between her surroundings and target to help protect her & provide herself with better direction when moving at high speed.
Grew a Spine: A large part of Taylor's Character Development is her learning to better stick up for herself and others while no longer acting like an Extreme Doormat.
Guile Hero: Taylor is amazingly charismatic for someone with No Social Skills, as seen in her quickly getting first Spitfire and Ironclad on her side in her fight against corruption in Brockton Bay along with successfully getting away in letting the Undersiders escape from the Protectorate after they hand over Coil.
Hair-Trigger Temper: Taylor is constantly struggling to keep her temper under control, both in and out of costume. She initially blames the Butchers, but Danny later notes she inherited his temper; the Butchers just made it worse.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: Her ability to offload her emotional reactions into her insect swarm manifests in her being able to temporarily silence the voices of the Butchers' Choir, making her easily the most competent and sane of any of the Butchers.
Hero with Bad Publicity: In her civilian life, Taylor has a somewhat negative reputation at Arcadia. When she first transferred, she blew up at one of the popular students when he pressed her for gossip about the Butcher. This is briefly up ramped when Madison also transfers to Arcadia and claims Taylor rebuked her apologies for "silly pranks". Elpis' debut also gets some negative press for her use of an improvised flamethrower against Mush. The Hostile Takeover What If? sidestory is a more blatant example since she's outed right off the get-go and has to work hard to prove that while she is Butcher XV, she can be a hero.
Heroic Willpower: Taylor eventually shows that she has a will strong enough to break lesser men, most notably in how she's able to convincingly hold her own — both in terms of combat and basic negotiations — against many people her senior.
Hidden Depths: As in canon, for all of her self-hatred, Taylor is shockingly charismatic and skilled at manipulating others whenever she really applies herself.
Holding Back the Phlebotinum: A variation; Taylor has over fifteen super-awesome and effective powers, but revealing even one of them at just the wrong time and in the wrong place would out her as the current Butcher and royally screw up her entire life through painting a target on her back.
Hormone-Addled Teenager: Taylor often finds herself blushing in any extended conversation with an attractive cape, both due to her own teenage hormones and (more often than not) the lustful comments of the Butcher's Choir.
I Just Want to Have Friends: More than anything else, Taylor Anne Hebert is someone who desperately needs and wants others to help her rebuild her mental health and regain a sense of self-worth. She gets help in this goal through her new friends at Arcadia, Spitfire, Ironclad, Glory Girl and Panacea. In fact, the Butchers' Chorus even start helping her in this goal following some hefty Character Development, to the point where Taylor has difficulties in not describing her relationship with some of the Butchers as a twisted form of Odd Friendship to Amy.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Taylor Hebert is a deeply cynical, bitter, and caustic young woman who still always strives to do the right thing and has a deeply selfless side that drives her to putting her own life on the line for the sake of those who cannot protect themselves.
Loners Are Freaks: Taylor is an incredibly insecure woman who isn't all there mentally, and thanks to the torment visited upon her by the Trio at Winslow, greatly struggles in making friends and being social with others. Thankfully, the new friends she's been making at Arcadia are greatly aiding her in reaching out of her shell.
Made of Iron: Even putting aside the advanced suit of Tinkertech armor she creates, it's incredibly difficult to keep Taylor down thanks to her Super-Toughness, Healing Factor, immunity to pain and Heroic Willpower.
Meaningful Name: Taylor's hero name is "Elpis", the Greek spirit of Hope. In Greek Mythology, Pandora opened the jar and let evil into the world. However, at the bottom of the box was Hope, aka Elpis. Taylor's intention is to let the many evils of the Butcher go, and just hold on to what's good. It helps that a Cape pulling a name straight from mythology is pretentious enough to almost be an Atrocious Alias, which hopefully throws people off from how dangerous she really is (the Chorus all dislike the name, which is a good clue that no one will be suspicious of it).
Mistaken for Gay: Taylor's attempts to avoid looking at other teenage girls in the gym showers so she won't be technically providing the Butcher's Chorus with the equivalent of underage pornography is misinterpreted by her friends (while at a sleepover) as her being a lesbian and being afraid of being caught Eating the Eye Candy & then being Forced Out of the Closet. She does become effectively pan due to the various Butchers, who represented various orientations, sharing her head though.
Mythology Gag:
- Taylor inherits the Butcher's Mantle in this fanfic via the same method she canonically killed Alexandria - Namely, suffocating them to death through a Zerg Rush of countless insects, arachnids and arthropods being forced down their airways.
- During a non-canon omake where she is on a picnic date with Amy, Taylor briefly laments how her insect control is now a Cover-Blowing Superpower, and how much of a shame it is that she couldn't use it more openly in various inventive ways (i.e., forming patterns out of insects to best direct her allies, creating tripwires out of webbing, having insects chitter to mimic certain sounds to freak out opponents and alert her allies, etc.). Virtually all of the potential ideas Taylor suggests are actual applications she had for her power during the canon events of Worm.
- Just like in canon, when she fights against Lung, she's able to get the advantage over him by basically rotting his genitals off... though here she uses Dirty Rotter's Make Them Rot power instead of the bite of a brown recluse spider.
No Social Skills: Ironically enough, she still counts as this despite being highly charismatic thanks to the Trio having worked to isolate her and destroy her self-worth for the greater part of two years at Winslow.
Only Sane Man: Aside from possibly Flinch, she's probably the only member of the Butchers' Choir who can at least give a workable façade of being a sane and rational person.
Pest Controller: As in canon, Taylor has the natural ability to mentally control all invertebrates within a radius of roughly three city blocks around herself.
Plausible Deniability: Overlapping with Power Misidentification, Taylor has her heroic cape identity "Elpis" be identified as a Tinker with an unclear specialization at least in part to so she can still use some of the Butcher's various powers in public in ways that can be either Hand Waved as just Tinkertech and won't out her as the Butcher, or just evidence of her having already been an experienced cape (further throwing people off the trail of her really being the Butcher).
- She can see people through walls thanks to Vladimir's Vein-o-Vision? She's got an X-ray/thermal vision option on her helmet's HUD!
- She has Super-Strength, Super-Toughness and a Healing Factor? Her Powered Armor is just thicker, stronger, and better enhanced than it looks!
- Both of her swords are Absurdly Sharp Blades (thanks to Muramasa and Tock Tick)? She's using swords made with Tinkertech^note!
- She has Improbable Aiming Skills (thanks to Quarrel)? Her armor's designed to automatically augment and improve her aim!
- She's a master strategist/tactician and is quickly cognizant of her enemies' weak-points (thanks to Tactical and Needler respectively)? She's just really skilled in tactics and has a great knowledge of human anatomy!
- She's got a localized form of near-omniscience thanks to her insect swarm and is also nearly psychic in being able to see an enemy's incoming attack (thanks to her own power and Flinch respectively)? Her armor has special cameras installed that make her incredibly observant along with granting her Super-Reflexes!
- She's a master of silat? She just had training in it before she became a cape!
Powered Armor: Taylor makes use of Tock Tick's Tinker abilities to make herself an advanced suit of protective armor with all sorts of hidden gadgets. Not only is it endlessly useful in its own right, and conceals her face much better than a mask, it also provides a cover story for her Super-Strength and Super-Toughness, along with some of her other powers.
Rage Breaking Point: As soon as Madison snidely refers to the horrific bullying campaign against Taylor that nearly killed her as "just some jokes [Taylor's] not getting over", Taylor immediately stops taking the high road — as in, she grabs Madison by the throat, pins her to the locker room wall, and snarls out a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Madison for the absolute Hell she, Sophia and Emma put her through for roughly two years all while being fully intent on gutting her right then and there. It's only thanks to both Amy and Flinch that Taylor is prevented from killing Madison on the spot.
Required Secondary Powers: An interesting variation where a remarkably mundane power (Taylor being able to effectively "offload" her emotional reactions into her insect swarm) is inarguably her most valuable, as it lets her effectively provide a Restraining Bolt on the sanity-eroding facets of the Butcher's Chorus, and helps her corral them into aiding her & being more effective.
Rocket-Powered Weapon: For very tough targets, Elpis can spin her air cannon around and attach her kinetic flail to it, resulting in a jet-propelled warhammer.
Sanity Has Advantages: Her ability to temporarily "silence" the Butchers and corral them into helping her has not only helped her retain her sanity, but made her immensely effective and greatly aided her in her crusade against corruption in Brockton Bay, making her the most competent of the Butchers bar none.
Second Super-Identity: With such a wide assortment of powers, and with Elpis' features entirely hidden by her Powered Armor, Taylor is sometimes able to pass herself off as a different hero entirely, such as an unnamed glass manipulator, or a generic newbie cape in black. This becomes especially relevant when she's investigating Coil covertly, not wanting him to know that Elpis is coming for him.
She Cleans Up Nicely: Thanks largely to the Trio having systematically ruined her self-esteem over nearly two years, Taylor often wears rather "frumpy" clothing designed to help her blend into the background and not be noticed. As such, when the Butchers start advising her on fashion and she grows more self-confidence, many people are openly surprised by how attractive Taylor can make herself look when she puts in genuine effort. Just as an example, when Taylor is meeting up with Faultline's Crew in Hostile Takeover, Faultline notes with quiet amusement that despite her and the rest of her crew all being nearly petrified in fear of Butcher XV meeting them in Palanquin, her employee Newter (who is a teenage boy only slightly older than Taylor herself) still can't help but meaningfully stare at Taylor's long, bare legs after Taylor takes off her disguise and reveals her partying clothes.
Statuesque Stunner: Taylor is over six feet tall, and thanks to both her growing self-confidence and the biological improvements she inherited as the new Butcher, also finds herself getting way more meaningful glances from both her male classmates and even some other capes (such as Eric Pelham/Shielder).
The Stoic: Not only has the traumatic bullying campaign against her already severely deadened Taylor's general emotional state, but Taylor can help herself concentrate and better focus through temporarily "silencing" (her own phrasing is "shoving them into the dark") the voices of the Butcher's Choir, deadening her emotions and making her think in a more logical pattern. And as with canon, she can offload her emotional reactions into her insect swarm to prevent her from showing any emotion; a specific example is shown in the first chapter, where she's able to stop herself from shouting at a teacher through pushing her rage into her swarm, resulting in a pair of cockroaches in the school basement suddenly circling around one another and her being able to pare down her anger from Unstoppable Rage to Tranquil Fury.
Subtle Superpowering: Taylor has an assortment of fifteen powers from all the past Butchers, but many of them are very distinctive and would give her away as Butcher XV. So most of the time, she relies on her Tinkering ability, since most people don't know that Tock Tick was one of the Butchers, and Powered Armor is a handy cover for having Super-Strength and Super-Toughness. However, in some cases, she's able to sneak in other powers, such as inflicting festering wounds on Lung, who will eventually regenerate and thus hide the evidence.
Sympathetic Murderer: Her murder of Quarrel was completely by accident and only done while in the midst of her panicking during her Trigger Event.
Talented, but Trained: Taylor inherits muscle memory of Needler's silat martial arts style, but to really make it effective, she needs to practice until the movements are really her own. Fortunately, she doesn't sleep anymore.
Team Mom: Despite being the youngest of the Butchers by a wide margin, Taylor essentially takes up this role through doling out specific times when each Butcher can indulge in one of their creature comforts along with helping manage them all to work together. Additionally, the memories of the past Butchers has caused her to mature significantly faster (mentally, at least) in comparison to her peers, to the point where Spitfire saw her as a Parental Substitute early on into their friendship.
Token Good Teammate: Indisputably the most heroic cape to carry the Butchers' mantle.
Unusual Eyebrows: Elpis integrated a pair of eyebrows into her helmet to help her express emotion while she's still wearing it.
With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: Taylor quickly developes a notably muscular body due to the combination of multiple weak Brute powers and Needler's regeneration. As such, she's starting to look like an Amazonian Beauty (much to her own embarrassment).
Vague Age: A mental case, with Taylor occasionally noting that thanks to the memories of the very adult Butchers having all been shoved into her head, she often feels and acts more like she's an adult than the fifteen-year-old she really is.
Vibroweapon: With inspiration from Muramasa and relying on Tock Tick's power, Taylor adds a device to her swords that lets them vibrate several thousand times a minute, easily cutting through almost any mundane object.
Walking Armory: As befitting any self-respecting Tinker, Taylor builds up quite an arsenal, including but not entirely limited to:
- A powerful suit of bulletproof Powered Armor, with her later augmenting her helmet to automatically cover and protect her mouth so she doesn’t suffocate or drown when in an unsafe environment.
- A special cape that can double as a bulletproof and flameproof shield.
- Twin short swords that contain electrical current generators (letting them act like tasers) and special vibrational engines that let them vibrate at a sufficiently fast speed to cut through nearly anything (even without taking into account Muramasa’s blade-sharpening ability); Later on, she adjusts her twin blades so they can fit together to form a massive claymore with all of the same enhancements as each individual blade.
- A mace fitted with Tinkertech pistons that let it absorb kinetic energy up to a point, which Taylor can then trigger to be released from the mace as an area-of-effect attack.
- A collapsible double-bladed axe fitted with the same vibratory blade technology seen in her short swords.
- An air cannon that can fire blasts of pressurized air, explosive grenades, small pepper spray bombs, expandable nets made of steel fiber & spider silk, and special slugs that are used as an equivalent to rubber bullets.
- Twin sets of grappling hook pistols mounted on each arm.
White Sheep: With the exception of Flinch (and debatably Tock Tick, who was ultimately more of a rogue than outright villain), Taylor is the only actual hero to wield the mantle of the Butcher.
Willfully Weak: Most of Taylor's more devastating and/or powerful abilities — Agony Beams, blood-fueled Super-Speed, explosion-related Teleport Spam, rotting touch, localized matter alteration, spreading Hate Plagues, touch-based mass manipulation, and widespread arthropod control — are also Cover Blowing Superpowers that would instantly out her as the current Butcher. As such, she has to either not use them at all or hide them as really being part of her "fake" identity as a heroic Tinker.
Younger Than They Look: Multiple people - Spitfire and Ironclad in particular - are surprised to discover the commanding, imposing young woman who's almost six feet tall is only a teenager (specifically, fifteen-years-old at the start of the story).

Butcher I

The first bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Brute, Blaster and (unbeknownst prior to his own death) Trump who naturally possesses Super-Strength, the ability to cause excruciating pain in a target from a ranged distance, and the original involuntary ability to transfer consciousness upon death.
A clinical psychopath, with a genuine love of hurting people. Founded the Teeth around the time of Vikare's death, quickly became a force to be reckoned with. Due to being the first and worst of the Butchers, he became the driving force of the collective, He spends most of his time now in the dark, and really hates Taylor for it - he can't wait to rip her mind apart once she gets herself killed.

Agony Beam: His main ability is being able to cause debilitating, excruciating pain in any living target within a certain radius of himself without actually causing them physical harm (though it is implied that this ability is still lethal if it goes on for too long and causes the target to either commit suicide to end their suffering or they suffer cardiac arrest). This ability is not restricted by sight-line either, as Hostile Takeover shows Taylor inadvertently torturing Mr. Gladly with this ability while holding Emma up against a set of lockers and facing away from him.
The Corrupter: The first Butcher shaped the Chorus into the violent, screaming mob it was when Taylor took over. Now that he spends most of his time buried in the dark, the rest of the Butchers have become somewhat less awful.
Freudian Excuse: His sadism and general Jerkassery is implied to stem (at least in part) from how his Trigger Event was being on the wrong side of one of the "initiation events" performed by new members of the Empire Eighty-Eight.
Greater-Scope Villain: In a sense, as he's the first Butcher, and without him, the Butcher's Choir wouldn't have been created in the first place. He's also the main reason the Chorus was so violently insane in the first place.
It's Personal: His hatred of the Empire Eighty-Eight isn't just rooted in them being Neo-Nazis and him being a person of color; they're almost directly responsible for his Trigger Event.
Jerkass: He's easily the worst among the Butchers, with him constantly making cruel remarks at Taylor's expense while also encouraging her to embrace villainy and being the primary reason for why the Butchers as a whole are cruel, ruthless assholes.
Politically Incorrect Villain: It's mentioned that he was casually homophobic during his time leading the Teeth. Considering how decades later the Butchers now follow Equal-Opportunity Evil, it's implied that his prejudices has softened (at least somewhat) over the years.
Sadist: Butcher only seems to be happy when making someone else suffer for his own amusement.
Scary Black Man: He is coded as black, and is a violent, murderous and sadistic gang leader.
Super-Strength: One of his natural abilities.

Vladimir (Butcher II)

Vladimir

Cape Name: Butcher II

The second bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Striker, Breaker/Mover and Thinker combo cape who naturally possesses the ability to siphon blood with a touch, which he uses to fuel a "speedster state" (at the cost of making him "hungrier" for more blood). He also naturally possesses the ability to see circulatory systems through walls.
One of the early members of the Teeth, he chafed under Butcher's leadership and casual homophobia, and eventually tried to kill him. He succeeded, but a few days of Butcher's nonstop screaming had him more or less doing what Butcher wanted anyway. In life he styled himself like a vampire, including a fanged mask and a bad accent. His speedster state is rarely used these days, since it requires living blood and takes almost a minute to drain someone fully. The others have never stopped ribbing him for never trying to use animal blood - it doesn't work, but they find it funny that it never occurred to him.

Bizarre Alien Senses: One of his main powers allows him to see the circulatory systems of lifeforms, which manifests as said targets having their blood vessels outlined in glowing lines of red and gold.
Beware the Silly Ones: As campy as he likes to come across as, Vladimir is still one of the Butchers, and also has one of the most dangerous of the Choir's powers in being able to quickly drain people of their blood - even to the point of killing them given enough time.
Camp Gay: Vladimir is incredibly flamboyant and often comes across as one of the more dramatic & over-the-top members of the Butcher's Choir. He's also an out-and-out gay man who killed his boss after one-too-many homophobic jokes.
Classical Movie Vampire: Vladimir portrayed himself as a vampire due to his power's focus on blood, complete with bad accent.
Never Live It Down: invoked In-Universe, the other members of the Choir will never really let go of how boneheaded Vladimir was in never even bothering to see if he could use animal blood instead of just human blood for his Super-Speed.
Simple, yet Awesome: His Vein-o-Vision is easily one of the Butchers' most useful powers, as it lets them quickly keep track of their surroundings and aid in fighting non-humanoid opponents. As an example, Taylor using Vladimir's blood-sight coupled with Needler's ability to target an enemy's weak-points is one of the only reasons for why she was able to defeat Mush (with the help of New Wave) through figuring out where on his Combat Tentacles she should be targeting with her "DIY flamethrower".
Super-Speed: As long as he has enough blood to fuel his power, he can run at incredibly fast speeds.
Vampiric Draining: While he likes the image of physically drinking his target's blood, all Vladimir needs to do is to maintain skin-to-skin contact with someone to rapidly drain them of their blood, both severely weakening them and granting Vladimir "fuel" for his Super-Speed.
Vegetarian Vampire: Defied; His power only works on human blood, not animal blood.
Vein-o-Vision: Can see the circulatory systems of other lifeforms, which the Butchers seem to refer to as "blood-sight". It's not as detailed an image as regular sight, but it's inconspicuous enough for Taylor to use it freely, it's quite good at spotting concealed enemies, and it works even without light, or with her eyes closed.
Warm Blood Bags Are Everywhere: Using his blood-fueled Super-Speed more and more comes with a slowly increasing thirst for blood.

Flinch (Butcher III)

Flinch

Cape Name: Butcher III

The third bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Brute and Thinker who naturally possesses both Super-Strength and a "danger sense" which lets him instinctively tell when/where/how an opponent is about to attack him moments prior to the actual attack.
A hero in the early days of heroes, before the Protectorate formed. Flinch encountered Vladimir, without knowing the rumours of him inheriting Butcher's powers, and was able to evade his attacks, before accidentally killing him with an uppercut that snapped his neck. He held out for two weeks as the other two drove him mad, before attacking the Teeth in an attempt to wipe them out. He was killed, and spent the next 20 years in the collective trying to block out the various atrocities the Teeth pulled. He's mostly non-responsive now, preferring to dwell on happier memories of his wife and daughters, although Taylor's tenure has been bringing him out of his shell somewhat.

Accidental Murder: He inherited the Butchers' mantle on sheer accident when he punched Vladimir the wrong way and gave him a Neck Snap.
Atrocious Alias: Having one's cape name be the same as someone's instinctual fear response doesn't exactly imply that you are the most courageous individual.
Butt-Monkey: He's been mercilessly mocked and insulted by the rest of the Chorus for about two decades after having been basically driven insane through inheriting the Butchers' mantle. All he really wants to do is to somehow escape and reconnect with his family, but he's also painfully aware of how fruitless that dream is.
Character Development: Thanks in large part to both Taylor's encouragement and heroic actions, Flinch slowly becomes far more vocal and confident as the story goes on, being willing to stand up for her against the rest of the Butchers' jackassery.
Character Tics: Talks with a very prominent stammer. As part of his Character Development, he starts to speak less and less with his stammer as he grows more and more confident.
The Conscience: Helps serve as this for Taylor; if the more violent Butchers are effectively devils on Taylor's shoulder, he's most certainly her shoulder angel.
The Friend Nobody Likes: None of the other Butchers like him for being such a "goody-two-shoes". Taylor is basically the first friend he's had among the Choir in the history of... well, ever.
Grew a Spine: His primary character arc is becoming more confident and willing to speak out on Taylor's behalf, becoming inured to the other Butchers' abuse and no longer being willing to suffer their crap.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: His power of being able to instinctively sense right when an enemy is about to attack him may not be flashy, but is all but stated to have been one of the main reasons for why each of the Butchers have been able to last for as long as they have.
Mentor Archetype: As he grows more and more of a spine, he helps give Taylor advice on how to be a hero while also comforting her as she struggles with her insecurities and mental problems. As an example, below is how he reassures Taylor after her first night out as a cape and defeats a group of unpowered Merchant Mooks:
Flinch: Y-you didn’t kill anyone.
Taylor: I came too close. Maybe I’m not ready for this.
Flinch: I th-thought that too, m-my first night. Y-you’re doing better th-than I did.
Taylor: ...Thanks, Flinch.
Mind Rape: He's endured near-constant insults and belittlement by the other Butchers for roughly two decades, and also has been forced to bear witness to the numerous crimes they've committed over that said time period. As such, he starts out the story in only a semi-conscious state until Taylor's heroism is able to slowly coax him "out of his shell".
Nice Guy: He's a fundamentally kind and considerate person who always tries to keep Taylor's spirits up and best advise her on becoming a hero.
Only Sane Man: He and Taylor are relative islands of sanity within the ocean of madness that is the Butchers' Choir.
Parental Substitute: Thanks in large part to Danny Hebert still being semi-indisposed from Annette's death, Flinch helps provide a parental role in Taylor's life.
Precision F-Strike:
Shadow Archetype: He serves as a dark mirror to Taylor, basically showing what could happen if she were to lose control over the Chorus.
Spider-Sense: Though Taylor calls it a "danger sense", this is how his ability effectively manifests, allowing her to quickly avoid attacks that would normally kill her.
Super-Strength: One of his natural abilities.
Took a Level in Badass: He becomes significantly more vocal and confident as the story goes on, no longer being willing to accept the rest of the Choir's crap.
Token Good Teammate: Prior to Taylor, he was the only hero to ever hold the Butchers' mantle.
Token Minority: As evidenced by him briefly chatting in Spanish to the other members of the Choir during one of Taylor's classes, he's implied to be the only Hispanic/Latin American member of the Choir.

Dirty Rotter (Butcher IV)

Dirty Rotter

Cape Name: Butcher IV

The fourth bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Striker who naturally possess the ability to decay objects with a touch. While his power is not limited by the Manton Effect (meaning that it works on both organic and inorganic matter), it is overall more effective on organic materials.
A London-born Brit who came to America partially to take advantage of the greater opportunities, and partially to flee the various enemies he'd made. Rotter became the first real example of the Butcher's transference, as he lasted long enough for people to see and believe it. Started the Teeth's tradition of wearing bits of bone on their costumes, as they were usually left behind by his power when he was finished with someone. A dirty old man since his teens, Dirty Rotter will chase anything in a skirt, drink like a fish, and generally commit to any disgusting but pleasurable activity.

Dirty Old Man: He's a relentlessly hedonistic and crude man who is describing as being as lecherous and slimy as he is now as he was as a teenager.
Dude, Not Funny!:
- In-Universe, he was killed by Needler after she challenged him to a fight for making one too many insensitive jokes about how her homeland of Indonesia was horrifically devastated by Behemoth.
- Similarly, when he snidely refers to Taylor's friend Tarquin as a "twink" when she's eating lunch with him and their other friends at Arcadia, Nemean immediately bristles at him for sexualizing a minor and Dirty Rotter has to hastily explain that he was just cracking a joke and didn't actually want to sleep with a kid.
The Friend Nobody Likes: Virtually none of the other Butchers like him much thanks to him constantly making crude insults and perverted "jokes" at the rest of the Choir's expense.
The Hedonist: If there's a vice, Dirty Rotter has either indulged in it to the extreme or wants to do so as soon as possible. ...The only exception, though, is anything involving kids, since at least the Butchers all have that standard.
Jerkass: His default state of mind is constantly making ruthlessly meanspirited and cruel remarks at everyone he comes across.
London Gangster: Talks with a thick London accent, and in general seems to be heavily based after the stereotypical image of a London gangbanger.
Make Them Rot: His power, which lets him decay any object he touches.
The Quincy Punk: A clear influence on his character, what with his strong London accent and general status as having been a "gutter trash" criminal from the wrong side of the tracks.
Token Minority: He is the only British member of the Choir.

Needler (Butcher V)

Needler

Cape Name: Butcher V

The fifth bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Brute and Thinker with both a not-insignificant regeneration ability along with the natural ability to detect "weak points" (i.e., nerve clusters and faultlines) in their opponents, surroundings and targets.
An Indonesian immigrant, Needler is one of the first examples of a Grab-Bag cape, gaining a minor combat Thinker power to complement her much stronger regeneration. Despite her clean-cut style clashing with Rotter's slapdash approach to everything and his constant attempts to hit on her despite being openly lesbian, she accepted his leadership until Behemoth attacked Jakarta in November 1994. Devastated by the loss of her extended family who still lived there, and Rotter's cavalier response to the disaster, Needler challenged him for leadership, her regeneration allowing her to overcome his decay or blood-draining. Needler was a big change for the Butchers, being the first woman to claim the title. She was present when the Slaughterhouse Nine attacked Brockton Bay in 1996, and survived them, only to be defeated later by her one remaining subordinate. She remains one of the more restrained of the Butchers, relying more on persistence and skill - she is one of only two who had mastered a martial art in life.

Attack Its Weak Point: Her power in a nutshell, which allows her and the following Butchers to make especially devastating attacks in combat.
Breaking the Glass Ceiling: She was the first woman to take up the mantle of the Butcher.
Butch Lesbian: She is a lesbian, and during her time as the leader of the Teeth was a ruthless Psycho Knife Nut.
Fights Like a Normal: As her power is based around attacking enemy weak-points, she mostly fights using her silat (a Southeast Asian form of martial arts) in combat, letting her get in close and exploit her foes' weaknesses.
Healing Factor: Has a not-insignificant one, with it apparently being strong enough that Tactical was able to regrow both of his legs after they were severed. Keep in mind that this was after Needler's death and her healing power had been significantly weakened from what it used to be.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: Both her mastery of silat and Healing Factor are fairly mundane in comparison to some of the other Butchers' powers and skills, but they're invaluable to Taylor in that they help her non-lethally take out her opponents (and avoid taking damage in the first place) as a Hero while also quickly recovering from any injuries.
Incompatible Orientation: While they were both alive, Dirty Rotter constantly hit on her to no avail since she was a lesbian.
The Long Game: invoked Word of God mentions at one point that she was an expert at this and was quite content at plans that were slow-acting as long as the end reward was considered to be Worth It. Suffice to say, she is one of the few Butchers that was willing to work with Taylor from the beginning as she thought she could corrupt her slowly over time after it became clear it was impossible to simply Mind Rape her as seen with the previous Butchers.
Mundane Utility: Her Healing Factor is one of the primary reasons for why Taylor and the other Butchers have lasted for as long as they have, saving them from life-threatening wounds along with helping them stay below the radar by not needing to go to a hospital or private doctor for help in fixing injuries. However, it has many other non-obvious benefits.
- Taylor offhandedly mentions at one point that the Healing Factor she gets from Needler lets her exercise and train for far longer periods than she would normally be able to without either growing fatigued or injuring herself.
- Additionally, when coupled with Nemean's Feel No Pain power, Taylor can eat extremely hot foods without any worry of long-term damage since Needler's Healing Factor will repair any damage she does to her body and Nemean's pain immunity will prevent her from feeling the pain of burning herself.
- At one point, Taylor combines Needler's healing power with both Muramusa's Absurdly Sharp Blade power and Nemean's Feel No Pain power to painlessly give herself multiple facial piercings overnight in order to disguise herself at a meeting (since her rapid healing can remove the holes as soon as she takes the piercings out).
Psycho Knife Nut: To the point where it is mentioned her cape costume primarily consisted of knives.
Required Secondary Powers: Downplayed; It's mentioned that while her power does naturally come with the muscle memory to use her silat, the Butchers after her still need to sufficiently practice in her martial arts to let them be able to use it with the same effectiveness that she once did.
Token Minority: She is the only Southeast Asian member of the Choir.
Twofer Token Minority: She's an Indonesian lesbian.

Firecracker (Butcher VI)

Firecracker

Cape Name: Butcher VI

The sixth bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Brute and Mover with both Super-Strength and the natural ability to teleport while causing an explosion at her site of arrival.
The youngest to inherit the Butcher mantle before Taylor at 19, Firecracker was originally a teenage runaway and pickpocket who sank lower and lower after her trigger before joining the Teeth. After they were wiped out almost entirely by the Slaughterhouse Nine, she challenged Needler for the title, using her teleportation to jump in and out while dealing damage. After taking the title, she made the call to leave Brockton and set up in Boston, rebuilding the Teeth there. She is impulsive and brash, the kid sister of the bunch, though no less dangerous.

The Baby of the Bunch: Prior to Taylor, she was the youngest of the Choir.
Death of a Thousand Cuts: She used this method to kill Needler and take the Butcher's Mantle, using her explosive Teleport Spam ability to repeatedly appear and disappear after inflicting debilitating burns and bone-breaking blasts of force that eventually overwhelmed her Healing Factor.
Lack of Empathy: Downplayed; while it's mentioned that she's not completely devoid of caring for others, due to her having grown up as a homeless, runaway teenager, she's not that sympathetic towards the plight of people who aren't impoverished or homeless. For instance, while Nemean is gently sympathetic towards Shielder's embarrassment over having gotten his ass kicked during his training duel with Elpis, Firecracker just bluntly notes the kid should "grow some balls and get over it" as soon as possible.
Playing with Fire: When she teleports to a location, her exit point is briefly surrounded by a fiery explosion.
Super-Strength: One of her natural abilities.
Teleport Spam: Her main power, which has the added benefit of creating an explosion whenever it's activated.
The Runaway: Prior to becoming the Butcher, she was a homeless teenager who had been running away from an abusive home.

Tock Tick (Butcher VII)

Tock Tick

Cape Name: Butcher VII

The seventh bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Tinker who specializes in clockwork and mechanical mechanisms.
A low-level Tinker rogue who mostly sold to villains, Tock Tick struggled to gain recognition due to the limited nature of his specialisation. After the Teeth harassed him one time too many times, he hit on the idea of using traps and weaponised automata to kill Firecracker without inheriting the mantle. Sadly, he was mistaken, and was hindered from using his power to defend himself due to the constant distractions of the Butcher collective, allowing the Teeth to smash through the defenses around his lair and bring the Butcher back to the Teeth. His power is now only barely above peak human engineering, and has only seen rudimentary use in traps or minor devices- the Butchers have little need for Tinkertech, and do not want to equip the subordinates who will one day try to kill them. Tock Tick himself is meticulous - although he strives to be spontaneous and outgoing, he reflects his power in working best with routine and predictability.

A Lighter Shade of Black: He still isn't a hero on par with Flinch or Taylor, but since he was more of a rogue than an outright villain, he's also pretty far from being as monstrous as the more overtly villainous Butchers are. As such, he and Flinch are often the members of the Butchers' Choir to be the most likely to offer Taylor sensible and empathetic advice to help her in her heroic career.
Berserk Button: Aesthetics are a very important part of the design process for him; as such, he loathes Squealer of the Merchants with the passion of a worthy cause due to how ugly all of her Tinkertech is.
Boring Yet Practical: His Tinker specialization is fairly simplistic, but very practical and can be easily applied to virtually any situation.
Character Focus: He gets probably one of the biggest "limelights" out of any of the other Butchers in the whole story, as his power is the primary one which Taylor uses under her cover identity of "Elpis".
Clock Punk: The standard aesthetic of his Tinkertech, which Taylor has slightly downplayed in favor of a more Grecian style (as befitting her being named after the Anthropomorphic Personification of hope from Classical Mythology).
Heart Is an Awesome Power: His Tinker specialization is in clockwork and mechanical systems, which Taylor is able to expand into as many uses as possible.
Personality Powers: It is incredibly fitting that someone as incredibly pattern-driven and meticulous as he is would trigger with a Tinker specialty based around clockwork.
Semantic Superpower: His Tinker specialization is in clockwork and mechanical mechanisms. While this automatically rules out some of the "fancier" and extremely effective forms of potential Tinkertech (i.e., virtually anything to do with programming), both Taylor and Tock Tick soon realize that the potential usage of "clockwork mechanisms" can actually be insanely varied with enough forethought and planning. See, for instance, "The Chariot", the Cool Car Taylor and Tock Tick were able to quickly scramble up virtually on the fly to help her travel around Brockton Bay.

Stoneknapper (Butcher VIII)

Stoneknapper

Cape Name: Butcher VIII

The eighth bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Striker with the natural ability to mold non-living matter at will (i.e., metal, stone, and old wood). His power is still effective but much slower in action upon manufactured items.
The Teeth lieutenant who defeated Tock Tick, Stoneknapper expanded the Teeth greatly, reaching their highest number of capes in their history. He also led some of their most lucrative jobs, being able to get past most material defences with his power. Outside of combat, he was relatively affable, preferring to knock back beers with the others. He started the Butcher's fascination with the study of powers themselves, looking up articles and research on trigger events, power classifications, Sechen ranges, and other forms of technical data.

Fanboy: It's mentioned that he was a fanboy of parahumans... but not actual parahumans, more parahuman abilities. He's the main reason for why the Butchers have invested so much effort in researching powers, how they come to be, how they are classified, how "in tune" a parahuman is with their powers at a given time, and many more factoids.
Hidden Depths: For all of his eccentricities, he's surprisingly genuine with his artistic ambitions, to the point where one of his hobbies while he was "driving the Choir" (serving as the current Butcher) was creating statues through selectively melding stone and metal together.
Improvised Weapon: An interesting variant; he himself is easily one of the biggest reasons for why the Butcher is so dangerous, as with his power, virtually anything he touches can be weaponized with ease. See, for instance, in Hostile Takeover, where Taylor as Butcher XV first tears a stop sign out of the ground with her Super-Strength, and then uses Stoneknapper's power to transform the stop sign into a battle-axe and use it against Hookwolf.
Mad Artist: He's clearly not all there in the head, and sees himself as an artist to some twisted degree, even eagerly telling Taylor at one point to "make something pretty" with his power when she's venting her frustration on several practice dummies made up to look like the Butcher's greatest enemies.
Mind over Matter: Can manipulate inorganic and non-living organic matter with a single touch into any shape he wishes, though his power is far slower to act on manufactured items.
Mundane Utility:
- Taylor usually pairs Stoneknapper's ability in conjunction with Tock Tick's Tinkertech, allowing her to Tinker without requiring as much expensive equipment as she would normally need.
- Both Taylor and the rest of the Butchers are also mentioned/shown using his ability for glorified cleaning/maintenance in certain situations (like Taylor fixing up cracks in a wall leading into her secret lair).
- Additionally, Taylor notes at one point that one of Stoneknapper's hobbies was using his power to easily create elegant statues through molding stone and metal together.
Weapon Specialization: Axes are mentioned as being the primary weapon he used during his tenure as the Butcher; this trait seems to have been inherited by his successors, such as with Taylor using axes both as Elpis in Here Comes the New Boss and as Butcher XV in Hostile Takeover.

Bearskin (Butcher IX)

Bearskin

Cape Name: Butcher IV

The ninth bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Brute and Master possessing both Super-Strength and the natural ability to induce mindless rage in a target.
A former E88 cape who was kicked out due to disagreements with Kaiser, Bearskin left the Bay for Boston, deciding to damage the Teeth in order to carve out his own niche. His theory that driving the Teeth into a rage would circumvent the Butcher's inheritance was incorrect, and he was subsumed. A solid week of ranting broke his will and convinced him to lead the Teeth, once he'd been forcibly stripped of his racist and homophobic views. Used his rage power to great effect, sometimes tossing weapons into a crowd with Stoneknapper's power, then making them slaughter each other. Despite having thoroughly renounced his former views, the others have never let him forget his past.

Enemy Civil War: Invoked by him, with one of his standard tactics being to throw weapons into the midst of his enemies and then using his Hate Plague powers to inspire them to tear each other apart.
Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: The other Butchers make sure to let Bearskin know they have not, nor will they ever forget he used to be a white supremacist.
Former Bigot: Used to be an Empire cape who believed in their ideology before the Chorus thoroughly broke him of such views.
Hate Plague: Can create one centered around certain opponents.
Hazy-Feel Turn: After taking the Butchers' mantle, he goes from a ruthless, xenophobic gangbanger and Serial Killer... to a ruthless gangbanger and Serial Killer who at least believes in Equal-Opportunity Evil.
It's Personal: While he's initially a bit hesitant, he then becomes quite vocal in encouraging Taylor to take the fight to the Empire (only requesting her to try and not hurt Purity, who he seems to be aware of being an Anti-Villain to at least some degree).
My God, What Have I Done?: He became wracked with guilt and shame over the previous atrocities he committed as a member of the Empire, and openly looks back on his time in the Empire as the worst period of his life.
Noodle Incident: It's been mentioned that he's responsible for "the Cheesegrater Incident", but the exact details of said incident have never been conveyed to the reader in-story (with the exception that it apparently involved the Cruel and Unusual Death of a police officer in some fashion).^note
Old Shame: In-Universe and downplayed. He used to be a former Empire cape, and while he's more or less gotten over his bigoted views, the Chorus makes it a point to keep his "old habits" from resurfacing.
Politically Incorrect Villain: Started out as a ruthless white supremacist. However, his time in the Butchers' Choir has thankfully removed virtually all of his previous xenophobia.
Sanity Has Advantages: Downplayed; while he was still pretty crazy, one of his most effective tactics was to use his Hate Plague power to overwhelm his foes with Unstoppable Rage, allowing him and the Teeth to use their unity and (comparative) cool-headedness to easily take them out.
Start My Own: He became the next Butcher when he split from the Empire due to chafing under Kaiser's leadership and wanted to start his own gang.
Serial Killer: Was apparently one during his time as the Butcher, though his actual victims and M.O. is never clarified.
Super-Strength: One of his natural abilities.

Tactical (Butcher X)

Tactical

Cape Name: Butcher X

The tenth bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Thinker who naturally possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of strategy, tactics and weaponry.
A rival villain in Boston, Tactical attempted to use range in killing the Butcher, using IEDs and a truly overpowered sniper rifle. When he inherited the mantle, he capitulated out of sheer pragmatism, choosing to lead the Teeth with little prompting. His proficiency in strategy led him to expand the Teeth into New York, compensating for their relatively small numbers through a policy of constant movement and sheer aggression.

Cold Sniper: He likes to have a pseudo-professional demeanor about him, and his primary weapon prior to becoming the Butcher was a sniper rifle.
Fights Like a Normal: Prior to becoming the Butcher, him being solely a Thinker required him to use weapons to hold his own against other capes.
Genius Bruiser: He is a brilliant strategic genius and tactician while also being an incredibly tough opponent to fight straight-up.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: His power of being a master strategist is almost as mundane as they come... and yet it's probably the one power that's saved Taylor's bacon more than any other along making all of the Butchers to come after him exponentially more dangerous.
Hidden Depths: Can play the guitar. He's also of Irish descent, and Taylor helps him indulge in his family's roots through taking him & the rest of the Butchers out to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day at an old Irish pub.
I Call It "Vera": He christened the Butcher's signature minigun "Caroline".
Insufferable Genius: Out of all the Butchers, he probably comes across as the most intelligent while also being the most arrogant and pretentious. The other Butchers are shown to often get frustrated by his annoying pompousness and have to regularly deflate his ego.
Know When to Fold 'Em: It's mentioned that when he inherited the Butcher's Mantle, instead of continuing to stick by himself and likely get driven insane, he almost immediately folded and joined up with the Teeth.
Master of All: His power naturally makes him an expert in using virtually any weapon in combat.
Not So Above It All: There are multiple comedic moments throughout the fanfic where even Tactical cannot keep up his pseudo-professional demeanor and act just as immature as the rest of the Butchers.
Smug Snake: Probably the most arrogant of all the Butchers.
The Spock: He tries to keep a ruthlessly logical, cold and emotionless mindset about him at all times, regularly criticizing Taylor for making immediate emotional choices that will almost certainly bite her in the ass later on.
The Strategist: His natural power gives him an encyclopedic knowledge of battle strategy and tactics.
Southies: He plays with the general archetype, as while he is a ruthless Irish-American criminal hailing from Boston, it's never directly stated where in Boston he comes from, and he's also far more of a pseudo-intellectual Genius Bruiser (compared to how South Boston criminals are typically portrayed as Dumb Muscle thugs in popular culture). Amusingly enough, he briefly gets insulted when Taylor exaggerates his own Boston accent as one of her additional secret identities.

Anchorage (Butcher XI)

Anchorage

Cape Name: Butcher XI

The eleventh bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Brute and Breaker who possesses both low-level Super-Strength and the natural ability to manipulate the mass of inanimate objects she is touching (which comes with the Required Secondary Power of reinforcing/increasing said objects' surface tension).
A New York native with a whole stack of chips on her shoulder, Anchorage was already a criminal when she triggered, and fell in with the Teeth shortly after pulping a cop's head with the first object that came to mind, the anchor that gave her her name. Quickly grew to enjoy the lifestyle, and eventually challenged the Butcher out of a desire for greater power. She picked the environment - an abandoned harbour - and outmaneuvered Tactical by using her secondary power to run on water. Her time as the Butcher was characterised by heavy targeting of police and racist villains, and is also a proud-and-out bisexual.

Anchors Away: Anchorage apparently took her pre-Butcher cape name from her use of an actual stolen anchor as her signature weapon.
"Angry Black Man" Stereotype: She's a gender-flipped example, having had a history of being mistreated by cops even before she became the Butcher. Suffice to say, just by herself she provides a supermajority of the Choir's antipathy and grievances against Taylor cooperating with local law enforcement.
Cop Killer: She killed tons of police officers — both dirty ones and those "not dirty" — while she led the Teeth.
Deadpan Snarker: Even among the other Butchers (who cope with their bizarre situation by ruthlessly snarking at everything they can "see"), she's probably the most regularly sarcastic and sardonic member.
Hidden Depths: Can play the drums.
Pay Evil unto Evil: During her time as the leader of the Teeth, most of the people she led attacks on were Dirty Cops and openly racist villains.
Police Brutality: A major victim of this even prior to becoming a villain.
Required Secondary Powers: Her power also naturally increases the surface tension of any object she touches, allowing her to easily hold onto and carry objects no matter how much she otherwise alters their mass.
Space Master: Her main power is in altering the mass of any inanimate object she touches.
Super-Strength: One of her natural abilities.
Twofer Token Minority: She's a bisexual Afroamerican woman.
Walk on Water: Can do this through manipulating the surface tension of the water she's touching so she doesn't sink through.

Nemean (Butcher XII)

Nemean

Cape Name: Butcher XII

The twelfth bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Brute and Changer Case 53 Noctis cape who possesses an insanely enhanced durability (including bulletproof skin), a total immunity to pain, the ability to extend both her fingernails and teeth into sharp claws and fangs respectively, significantly enhanced senses and the ability to survive without any need of sleep with no loss in mental faculties or physical health.
Named for the Nemean Lion that Hercules fought, Nemean woke up in New York with no memories. After being attacked by muggers and disemboweling them with her claws, she wound up making her way to the Teeth to escape the law. She eventually challenged the Butcher, powering through every attack to bite Anchorage's throat out. She was the first to wear the skull of her predecessor as a trophy. Nemean sees the world in a more animalistic sense, and has little interest in things that don't immediately benefit or inconvenience her. Despite her brutality netting her the longest tenure of any Butcher, Nemean was relatively stable in the role, remaining loyal to her gang. She has little interest in whoever she used to be, although she cannot shake an odd feeling of loss and a protective instinct towards children.

Amnesiac Resonance: Nemean is a Case 53, which means all of her pre-Earth Bet memories were wiped. Despite this, she occasionally has flashes of insight and understanding, like knowing what kangaroo meat would taste like.
Animal Motifs: Lions, naturally.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Her mindset is fundamentally more "animalistic" than that of "normal" humans.
Cat Girl: She possessed a set of cat ears, feline eyes, long hair, and sharpened claws & fangs along with some fur on her limbs.
Combat Sadomasochist: Thanks to her immunity to pain, Nemean takes to combat with a near-sexual lust and joy.
Feel No Pain: One of her abilities.
Friend to All Children: Her main redeeming facet is an intense protectiveness for children.
Heart Is an Awesome Power: Her being The Sleepless and this ability being passed down into the following Butchers is one of the main reasons for why Taylor is able to be so effective as a cape so quickly, letting her stay up all night working on her costume and preparing for combat without getting tired.
Mama Bear: Incredibly defensive and protective of children. This bleeds into her giving Taylor more of a chance than the other Butchers along with her chastising them when they make fun of Taylor's other underage friends (I.e. Tarquin and Emily).
Meaningful Name: Her name comes from the Nemean Lion, the first monster to be fought by Hercules during his Twelve Labors.
Mundane Utility:
- Taylor occasionally mentions that she and the other Butchers have used her Super-Senses to take a lot more joy out of the food they eat since they're able to better taste and smell each ingredient that goes into a meal. Similarly, this also allows Taylor to experiment a lot more in what food she likes along with broadening her culinary palate.
- Nemean's Feel No Pain power, when coupled with Needler's Healing Factor, allows Taylor to now eat extremely hot foods without any worry of long-term damage since Needler's power will repair anything she does to her body and Nemean's Feel No Pain power lets her enjoy the food without feeling pain from whatever burns she gives herself due to how absurdly hot she makes her meals. At one point, Taylor is mentioned as using a blowtorch to melt cheese onto some toast, and is completely unaffected when she bites into it seconds later.
- Finally, her being The Sleepless gives Taylor more time to patrol and prepare/fix/repair her Tinker equipment as part of her career as a hero... and also grants Taylor extra time to study for tests, finish her homework and catch up on her reading.
Mythical Motifs: She's heavily based after the Nemean Lion from Classical Mythology.
Natural Weapon: She can extend her fingernails and teeth into viciously sharp claws and fangs, making it so that even when she's disarmed, she's not helpless.
Not So Invincible After All: Nemean was so used to being nigh-invincible that she completely underestimated Muramasa, who managed to behead her with a single blow of his power-sharpened blade.
Noodle Incident: A more dramatic case than most, but her entire life prior to her waking up as a Case 53 serves as this. She might have the occasional flashes of memory or moments of intuition, but otherwise she has absolutely no idea what her previous life was like.
Simple, yet Awesome: Her immunity to sleep deprivation and enhanced senses are remarkably mundane compared to both her other powers and the powers of the other Butchers, but they've been immensely helpful to Taylor in both becoming a hero (through helping her keep up with other capes via working through the night) and placating the Butchers via occasionally indulging their creature comforts (with the effect being magnified through her aforementioned enhanced senses).
Super-Senses: All of her senses are enhanced to superhuman levels, greatly aiding Taylor's observation skills in combat.
The Sleepless: Has no need of or desire for sleep.
Super-Toughness: She naturally possesses bulletproof skin and it is shown to be incredibly tough to genuinely injure her (and by extension, the following Butchers).

Muramasa (Butcher XIII)

Muramasa

Cape Name: Butcher XIII

The thirteenth bearer of the Butcher's mantle. A Brute and Striker with both Super-Strength and the natural ability to enhance the sharpness of any blades he wields/touches/carries.
Styling himself after the samurai of old and naming himself after a famous swordsmith, Muramasa is incredibly outspoken about all things Japanese, and spends much of his free time absorbing its culture. In reality he is compensating for his status as a second-generation immigrant who grew up in the Bronx. Formally challenged Nemean with several days warning, and managed to remove her head in one blow. He followed her example in wearing the skull of his predecessor, and created a suit of armour covered in blades to reflect his new status. He also sourced himself a genuine daisho, a pair of matched swords.

Absurdly Sharp Blade: His power in a nutshell, with him being able to increase the sharpness of any pointed object he touches to the point where the maximum limit is said to be monoatomic.
Abusive Parents: It's mentioned that he befouls his father's grave every year as revenge for having been treated abysmally by him as a child.
Born in the Wrong Century: As part of his entire samurai aesthetic and mindset, he even tried to uphold his own version of the bushido code. Overall, Muramasa acted less like a supervillain and more like a wandering ronin lifted virtually wholesale out of the Sengoku Jidai.
The Comically Serious: His unflappably stoic demeanor is occasionally Played for Laughs, particularly when the other Butchers get audibly exasperated at his whole attitude.
Eating the Eye Candy: Played for Laughs when he royally embarrasses Taylor by encouraging her to glance downward so he can take a guess at how well-endowed Velocity is when she's meeting with him under the guise of Elpis.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He honors his mother every year by praying at her grave.
Evil Is Petty: He befouls his father's grave each year by pissing on it as revenge for him having been an abusive dick.
Fights Like a Normal: Prior to becoming the next Butcher, Muramasa's power required him to fight more like a samurai (appropriately enough) thanks to his power being limited to melee weapons.
Foreign Culture Fetish: In a sense, at least. While he's technically an American citizen, he's of Japanese descent, and is almost fanatically obsessed with the culture of his parents' homeland.
Hidden Depths: His Foreign Culture Fetish for his parents' homeland is in large part him trying to cover up his own insecurities and fears of not having had any real "home" to call for his own.
Implausible Fencing Powers: Downplayed, with him having an incredible level of skill with fencing and swordplay that is still kept (more or less) in the area of "insanely high-level and impressive expert" and not in "literal demigod with any sharpened utensil".
Mundane Utility: At one point, Taylor uses his Absurdly Sharp Blade powers in conjunction with Needler's Healing Factor and Nemean's Feel No Pain power to painlessly give herself multiple facial piercings overnight in order to disguise herself at a meeting (as Needler's healing power can remove the holes as soon as she takes the piercings out).
Named After Somebody Famous: He took his cape name from the famous Japanese swordsmith Sento Muramasa.
Noble Demon: Even now he tries to stick to his own warped version of the bushido code, and his time as ruler of the Teeth had him basically acting more like a pseudo-honorable warlord and mob boss and less like a ruthless mass-murderer.
Not So Above It All: There isn't much that can make Muramasa drop his Warrior Monk schtick... but whenever he does, he almost immediately shows himself to be just as immature and petty as the rest of the Butchers.
Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: With Quarrel following them both becoming part of the Butcher's Choir, whereas in life they regarded each other as bitter rivals.
The Stoic: Aside from Tactical, Muramasa is probably the most serious and calm of all of the Butchers.
Twofer Token Minority: He's a bisexual Japanese-American man.
Warrior Monk: Generally gives off this vibe (albeit with more of a bloodthirsty edge), with most of his advice to Taylor being phrased to sound like he's almost directly quoting from some ancient Japanese myth or folktale.

Quarrel (Butcher XIV)

Quarrel

Cape Name: Butcher XIV

The fourteenth bearer of the Butcher's mantle, and the last one to bear the mantle immediately prior to Taylor. A Blaster and Striker with the natural ability to warp space to always hit any target within range, effectively making her a "perfect shot"; her power also works on both melee and ranged weapons.
Quarrel joined the Teeth as a sniper of sorts, and worked alongside Muramasa before he became Butcher XIII. Despite both being Japanese, the two hated each other because of their differing attitude- Quarrel found him pretentious, while Muramasa thought she wasn't being respectful enough to their 'honoured heritage' (and yes, he actually said that). After some time under XIII's leadership, Quarrel challenged him for control, using her range advantage and her knowledge that bulletproof is not the same as arrowproof to fill him with arrows until he finally collapsed. Ironically, she got along much better with Muramasa after accessing his memories, She took parts of his armour for her new costume, and wore his skull along with the two others. After a fight in Brockton left the other gangs licking their wounds, she made the decision to attempt to expand back into the Bay, with unfortunate results. Hates Taylor almost as much as Butcher himself.

Always Accurate Attack: How her power functionally works, letting her subtly warp space around her so that any melee or ranged attack she performs will always hit her target. After Taylor inherits the Butcher's Mantle, Quarrel's power is "weakened" through still allowing for accurate attacks with both melee and ranged weapons, but sharply reducing the available range of said attacks.
Cherry Tapping: Some of the Butchers consider Quarrel's death this. For context: Taylor had just undergone her Trigger Event, and had her powers for maybe a minute. Then she killed Quarrel by accident by swarming her with every bug nearby. Taylor didn't kill the Butcher in an ambush, a duel, or in combat; she killed her by accident.
Cruel and Unusual Death: She suffered quite possibly the single most hideous death out of all of the Butchers — being suffocated to death by a massive swarm of invertebrates forcing themselves down her airways.
Defrosting Ice Queen: Heavily downplayed; while it's implied that she will never truly forgive Taylor for killing her, she noticeably softens and is slightly less jerkish to her as time goes on, most notably after Taylor tries to avenge Alice's death.
Dropped a Bridge on Him: How, to everyone outside of Taylor and the other Butchers, Quarrel's death came across, with her having been in the middle of an intense firefight with the Teeth against the PRT before a Biblical swarm of insects emerged out of essentially nowhere and brutally suffocated her to death.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: For all of her raging Jerkassery to Taylor, Quarrel did have sincere friends among the Teeth, most notably Hemorhaggia (a.k.a. Alice). When Alabaster mocks Alice's death by taking her keychain as a trophy, Taylor finds herself so overwhelmed with Quarrel's grief and rage that she administers a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to him.
Fights Like a Normal: Subverted; Her power is only effective when used in conjunction with a melee or ranged weapon, so prior to her becoming the Butcher, she was often forced to fight in a manner more befitting an Elite Mook than anything else. However, her power manifesting as Improbable Aiming Skills allows her to use said weapons in incredibly unorthodox ways that firmly showcase that she's a parahuman, such as her firing a shotgun behind her and still managing to hit the enemy right in front of her.
Improbable Aiming Skills: What her power functionally is. As an example, when Taylor is helping save a family from an Empire Eighty-Eight "initiation," Taylor is able to use Quarrel's power so as to casually throw a crowbar over her shoulder and still nail an Empire Eighty-Eight goon right in the upper spine while she's a few yards away and focused on another combatant right in front of her.
It's Personal: She despises Taylor for killing her, and loathes the Empire Eighty-Eight for both being Neo-Nazis and killing her friend Alice.
Jerkass: Thanks to Taylor having recently killed her, Quarrel takes virtually every opportunity to be needlessly cruel and mean-spirited towards her, to the point where both she and Butcher himself are probably the most regularly "silenced" of the Butchers whenever Taylor is getting fed up with their dickish behavior.
Jerkass Has a Point:
- While Quarrel arguably takes it to unfair levels of spite since Taylor was right in the midst of her Trigger Event when it happened, the point still stands that Taylor is responsible for Quarrel's death and it's more than understandable why she'd be so angry with her.
- Relatedly, she curtly undercuts Taylor's internal Thou Shall Not Kill speech to herself by noting that on the literal first day Taylor got her powers, the first action she did was kill Quarrel. Taylor finds herself unable to come up with any response that doesn't sound at least somewhat self-serving.
Like Brother and Sister: Hemorhaggia clearly had a major crush on Quarrel. While Quarrel deeply cared for Alice as a close friend, she was never able to truly return her affections and only saw her as basically a surrogate sister.
The Lost Lenore: A platonic case with Hemorhaggia/Alice, with her and Anchorage easily being the hardest hit by Alabaster killing her.
Pet the Dog: She quietly thanks Taylor for setting up a small memorial shrine dedicated to Alice after she's able to recover Alice's keychain.
Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: With Muramasa following them both becoming part of the Butcher's Choir, whereas in life they regarded each other as hated rivals.
Space Master: Her power works through subtly warping space to make sure that her attacks always hit on target.
Unstoppable Rage: She starts screaming and practically frothing at the mouth when she spots Alice's keychain in Alabaster's hands.

Heroes

The Protectorate

Armsmaster

He Cleans Up Nicely: An amusing variant; During a meeting with the rest of the Protectorate and Elpis, some of the Butchers immediately get bored and start fantasizing about how handsome Armsmaster would look out of his Powered Armor, causing Elpis to silence them both out of irritation for distracting her and embarassment/revulsion due to Armsmaster having been one of her favorite heroes when she was younger.
Not So Above It All: During Hostile Takeover, Emily Piggot notes with quiet amusement that she can see Armsmaster’s lips twitch in an Unsmile when the higher-ups at the ENE Protectorate are looking at footage of Butcher XV and see some pictures of her having scrawled juvenile drawings on the faces of five of Coil’s mercenaries.
Powered Armor: He is one of the most powerful known Tinkers among the Protectorate, and this primarily manifests in his suit of hyper-advanced technological armor that makes him Nigh-Invulnerable while enhancing his physical abilities beyond normal human limits. Taylor even mentions that she and Tock Tick took explicit inspiration from Armsmaster’s suit when designing her own costume because of how impressed they were by it.

Miss Militia

Fights Like a Normal: As a necessity, since her power manifests in the form of whatever "mundane" weapon she wills it to be.
Good-Looking Privates: As Anchorage eagerly notes to Taylor when she first meets her, Miss Militia apparently fills out her fatigues very well.
Immigrant Patriotism: Given that she was previously enslaved by Turkish soldiers and forced to be used as a human mine sweeper, it’s more than understandable why she has far more affection for her new homeland of the United States than her previous homeland of a small Kurdish village in the Middle East.

Assault

Pungeon Master: Both Elpis and the rest of the Butchers' Choir groan when Battery repeats Assault's "ursine fractals" (a.k.a. "bears repeating") pun to her.

Battery

Everyone Can See It: Battery tries to deny her and Assault being in a relationship to Elpis… but given by her smiling and blushing while mentioning one of Assault’s terrible puns to the young heroine, Taylor and the rest of the Butchers don’t buy her claims for a second.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Anchorage is quite gleeful over noting how attractive she is despite her short height, and Elpis is impressed over her sheer formidability on the battlefield.

New Wave

Eric Pelham a.k.a. Shielder

Precocious Crush: Much to his parents' amusement, he develops a crush on Elpis.

Amy Dallon a.k.a. Panacea

A member of the independent Hero team New Wave. Panacea is a Striker and Thinker who is one of the only known capes to have a "healing" power in the world (with her power being dependent on her maintaining skin-to-skin contact with her "patient"), making her immensely valuable and important. In reality, she's an immensely powerful biokinetic, having complete control over any lifeform's biology as soon as she touches their skin.

Adaptational Heroism: While she's still a real jerk in this fanfic, she's not nearly as casually rude and harsh as she was in canon Worm thanks in large part to her status as Taylor's Secret-Keeper helping her open up and gain another friend outside of her sister.
Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed; Much like in canon, Panacea is at first still an utter Jerkass, but thanks to Taylor being a hero in this story, she eventually warms up to her and even starts up an Odd Friendship with her.
Biomanipulation: While being a "healer" is her basic application, this is the full extent of Amy's power since she's in fact a bio-kinetic. In addition to regrowing lost limbs and organs, she can alter or change the makeup of any flesh she touches.
Black-and-White Insanity: She's initially convinced of Taylor being a monster in human skin by virtue of being the Butcher in spite of her hero status. To her credit, though, she's been slowly beginning to understand Taylor isn't necessarily evil.
Character Development: It's subtle, but she slowly starts to trust Taylor more along with gaining more of a sense of internal responsibility.
Deadly Doctor: She was given an honorary medical license to help her with healing people, and while she does not exercise her power in that way, she is one of the most potentially dangerous capes on the planet.
Defrosting Ice Queen: She slowly begins to warm up to Taylor as time goes on.
Everyone Has Standards: Even if she's (at least initially) a real Jerkass to Taylor, she still shows contempt and distaste for Madison's attempts to get Taylor into trouble at Arcadia, both out of fear for Madison making Taylor finally snap & go on a rampage and also out of disgust for Madison's bullying.
Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Amy heals up Elpis, she sees the changes the latter underwent due to her Trigger Event, and notes that had Elpis appeared earlier people would have mistaken her for the Butcher, what with the Healing Factor, and the tough skin, and the extra photoreceptors, and extra row of teeth, in combination with being a Tinker... and she then realizes all of a sudden that she's enclosed in a room with the latest incarnation of one of the country's biggest Serial Killers.
Amy: I mean, one of the Butchers was a regenerator, and another was a Case 53, so you'd... (eyes widen) really... be...
Failure-to-Save Murder: She's painfully aware of the time she doesn't spend at the hospital being all the more time that people who desperately need her help can die of their conditions/injuries, and she blames herself for their deaths.
The Fettered:
Freudian Excuse: Her adoptive mother regularly subjects her to a disgusting amount of Parental Neglect, and while her adoptive father does sincerely love her, he's still normally pretty distant thanks to suffering from a severe form of clinical depression. Coupling that with her own anxiety over being a lesbian and understandable self-loathing regarding her crush on her adopted sister Victoria, Amy is an antisocial Jerkass more often than not.
Green-Eyed Monster: Due to her lusting after Victoria, Amy hates Dean (Victoria's current boyfriend) with a passion and is deeply jealous of him. Dean is implied to be aware of this to some degree, but is understandably wary on how exactly to approach this and get Amy the therapy she needs.
Healing Hands: How she chooses to have her biokinetic abilities manifest.
Incest-ant Admirer: She's crushing hard on her older, adoptive sister Victoria. While this version of Amy Dallon thankfully hasn't descended to the horrible depths of her canonical counterpart, she's still full of a lot of self-loathing over how (rightfully) gross her own desire is.
Mind over Manners: She frequently claims that her powers don't work on brains; in reality, they do, but she utterly refuses to alter someone's mind since she both doesn't want to tempt herself into performing something horrible like Mind Rape, and also doesn't want to out herself as a biotinker (most of whom are greatly feared/hated thanks to Nilbog).
Not Blood Siblings: She has a crush on her adopted sister, Glory Girl.
Odd Friendship: Eventually forms something resembling a friendship with Taylor.
Oh, Crap!: Understandably freaks out when she realizes that she had just healed the Butcher back from unconsciousness.
Power Incontinence: Self-inflicted variant. Amy purposefully "sandbags" the full extent of her powers because she is genuinely terrified of her own capabilities.
Raised by Rival: She's the daughter of the infamous supervillain Marquis, and was raised by Marquis' arch-rivals in New Wave following him being sent away into the Birdcage.
Required Secondary Powers: The main factor behind her being such a great healer is that her power gives her an instinctual, in-depth knowledge of the biology of whoever she's physically touching. This allows her to specifically target the wounds on someone's body and make sure she has them healed properly.
Samaritan Syndrome:
Secret-Keeper: She, the Undersiders and Hookwolf are the only known capes to be aware of Taylor being the Butcher.
Snark-to-Snark Combat: Her interactions with Taylor when they meet in the diner in Chapter 4.1 consists more of them trading sarcastic barbs with one another than actually discussing her being the new Butcher.

Victoria Dallon a.k.a. Glory Girl

Flight: Her ability to fly is one of the main reasons why the Butchers' Choir see her as a great potential heir to the Butchers' mantle.
Unskilled, but Strong: Victoria isn't trained much in martial arts or other specific forms of combat, but considering how she has sufficient Super-Strength to accurately fling a dumpster full of trash one-handed at a villain, she doesn't necessarily need that much skill.
What the Hell, Hero?: She calls out Elpis for using a flamethrower against the highly flammable Mush since it could've potentially killed him.

The Wards

Gargoyle

A Changer with the ability to transform himself into a gargoyle-like creature of living stone.

Made of Iron: Being that he's effectively made out of living stone, it's near-impossible to permanently hurt him.
Not Quite Flight: It's mentioned that the impressive-looking wings he can create don't actually let him fly, but do help him glide over short distances.
Original Character: Does not have a counterpart in canon Worm.
Our Gargoyles Rock: The form he transforms into is a hunched-over winged "monster" with deadly claws and fangs that strongly resembles the stereotypical vision of a gargoyle. It's not for nothing that he was named "Gargoyle," after all.
Those Two Guys: He's often seen working alongside Armsmaster.
Vocal Dissonance: Taylor is startled when she talks to the huge walking statue and he responds to her in a smooth tenor.
Younger Than They Look: He looks like an intimidating, adult-sized monster in his changer form. As such, Taylor is appropriately surprised when she learns that he's actually quite young, only just being above the maximum age of becoming a Ward.

Emily a.k.a. Spitfire

A young homeless teenaged runaway who Elpis takes under her wing as part of her fight to clean up Brockton Bay. She's a remarkably powerful Blaster, having the ability to almost-literally spit fire.

Adaptational Heroism: She never joins Faultline's Crew (an admittedly "neutral" band of parahuman mercenaries), instead first joining Elpis and Ironclad in "cleaning up" Brockton Bay before eventually joining the Wards.
Ascended Extra: Spitfire is a minor character in the source material. She gets an interlude and appears a few times, but her past remains a mystery. Here, she is a homeless girl whom Taylor finds being accosted by a bunch of Empire thugs and later joins Elpis' own group.
Broken Pedestal: Downplayed. She was at first a fan of Elpis and looked up to her when she offered her a place in her team and decent training. The Empire raid saw her opinion of Elpis plummet, partly because Elpis seemingly left her to fend for herself and because she had to deal with Victor by herself. Another reason is that while Elpis treated her as one of her own, she didn't go "far enough" and give her a place to stay. Spitfire decides to leave Elpis' team on the spot in favor of joining the Wards. That said...
- Rebuilt Pedestal: Having had time to cool down (no pun intended), Spitfire realizes she was genuinely being unfair to Elpis and apologizes and is surprised when the latter does the same, even going so far as to unmask herself to Spitfire.
Everyone Has Standards: As desperate for food and shelter as she was while a homeless runaway, even she wasn't willing to join the Empire Eighty-Eight for the sake of a warm meal. In fact, her Trigger Event is the result of her trying to escape from what seemed to be a soup kitchen after she realized that its owners were running an E88 recruitment drive.
Fire-Breathing Weapon: Her main power is being able to spit a biological napalm that immediately ignites upon contact with oxygen, meaning she can effectively spit fire.
Making a Splash: Elpis equips her with a set of fire hoses mounted on her arms so she can shoot out powerful torrents of water, both to use as a weapon in combat and to douse any of the fires she creates if they spread out of control.
Mind Rape: She gets traumatized when Victor "drains" some of her natural skills during her, Elpis, Ironclad and the Protectorate's fight against the Empire Eighty-Eight when they try and break out Stormtiger from his prison convoy.
Playing with Fire: Her power in a nutshell. Not only can she spew fire, but she's immune to her own flames.
Point of Divergence: Spitfire gets picked up and cared for by Elpis prior to her meeting and joining up with Faultline's Crew as she did in canon. This eventually snowballs into Spitfire joining the Wards.
Required Secondary Powers: She's immune to the flames and heat of her own incendiary spit.
The Runaway: She ran away from home when she was young and has lived on the street ever since.
Super Spit: As evidenced by her name, she can spit fire.
Took a Level in Badass: She becomes a significantly more formidable opponent as time goes on and she learns how to better handle herself as a cape.
Walking Spoiler: It's incredibly hard to talk about Spitfire in this story without spoiling how she later quits working with Taylor and joins the Wards.
What the Hell, Hero?: She rails on Taylor for seemingly abandoning her to fend for herself during the Empire raid, even going so far as to join the Wards.

Dean Stansfield a.k.a. Gallant

Bizarre Alien Senses: He's able to "see" the emotions of others around him, which he interprets as certain flashes of colored light levitating above their heads. It's through this power that he can see Butcher XV using her Hate Plague power to overwhelm Hookwolf with Unstoppable Rage so he'll stay focused on her and not go after civilians while also getting more & more likely to make a dumb mistake that will help him get defeated.
Dark Secret: He's actually a Cauldron cape (his parents bought him the vial largely to help save him from a potentially life-threatening illness when he was younger) and has been lying about having gone through a Trigger Event.
The Empath: A variation, with him being able to "see" the emotions of all sentient life around him.
Emotion Bomb: He can fire beams of Hard Light from his hands that inflict people with certain emotions, such as fear, rage, apprehension, courage, etc..
Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted in Hostile Takeover, where he prepared to get into a fistfight with Hookwolf to buy enough time for Vista to get rescued even though he almost certainly would not have survived. Thankfully, it is subverted when Taylor as Butcher XV pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment and saves both their asses.
Nice Guy: It's occasionally mentioned that his cape name of "Gallant" is completely legitimate, with him being a kind and considerate young man who basically acts like a Knight in Shining Armor for everyone he comes across (age-appropriate angst and foolishness aside, of course).
Official Couple: With Victoria Dallon a.k.a. Glory Girl, though both Victoria's Mood-Swinger status and their conflicting schedules often results in their relationship having multiple "on-off" phases.
Shooting Superman: When Butcher XV explosively teleports right in front of him and Vista after distracting Hookwolf, Gallant briefly panics and fires off a few of his "emotion lasers" at her. However, it's pretty ineffective since Taylor just deflects said lasers away by twirling the massive warhammer she brought in front of her.

Missy Byron a.k.a. Vista

Alien Geometries: Basically her power, with her being able to warp space around her to accomplish bizarre events that would normally go against conventional physics. As an example, during Hostile Takeover it's mentioned that after Butcher XV throws Hookwolf off of the roof Vista & Gallant are hiding on top of, Vista warps the space in front of the building so that any shrapnel released by explosives on the street will instead only hit the surrounding buildings and not her & Gallant.
Bizarre Alien Senses: She mentions that she detects the presence of living things as "static" through her power.
Drama-Preserving Handicap: She's incapacitated by a nasty gut wound Hookwolf gives her in Hostile Takeover, which makes it very difficult for her to use her power.
Mundane Utility: During Butcher XV and Hookwolf's insanely awesome street fight, she and Gallant are able to get a closer look by Vista effectively "zooming in" on the fight from a surrounding rooftop (or, to further clarify, she drastically shortens the distance between the rooftop and the street).
Precocious Crush: Has one on Gallant.
Sir Swears-a-Lot: Missy has quite the potty mouth, much to the amusement/mild annoyance of the other Wards.
Space Master: She's quite possibly one of the most powerful Shakers in history, being able to easily warp space around her to her will. The only real weakness she has is that she finds it incredibly difficult to manipulate locations with living things present, and with it becoming increasingly hard the more living things are in the surrounding area.

Villains

The Teeth

The Undersiders

The Undersiders In General

Adaptational Heroism: After helping the heroes take down Coil, the Undersiders (sans Regent) decide to join Elpis and become heroes, partly for protection from Coil, and partly to clean up their image (and any criminal record).
Demoted to Extra: The Undersiders are among the main rotating cast of characters in canon Worm. Here, thanks to Taylor starting out as a hero and staying that way, they have far less narrative significance within the greater story.
- This changes when they join Taylor, after they assist her and the heroes take down Coil.
Secret-Keeper: They quickly decide to keep Taylor's true identity secret, largely in part since Taylor has saved the Undersiders' lives twice at this point — first from Lung, and then from Hookwolf.

Lisa Wilbourn a.k.a. Tattletale

Bat Deduction/Sherlock Scan: Her power is essentially "super-intuition", with her being able to easily make incredible deductions based off of fairly little information.
Logical Weakness: While her Thinker power is incredibly formidable (to the point where she can semi-credibly claim to be a psychic who can read people's minds), its accuracy is heavily dependent on what available information she has. If Lisa doesn't have enough info to make a sufficiently workable analysis, she can get answers that are completely off (basically akin to the "garbage in, garbage out" situations seen with computer algorithms).
Oh, Crap!: She's appropriately terrified when she learns that Taylor is really the Butcher.
The Starscream: She works to undermine Coil, and is one of the primary reasons for why he's eventually captured by the Protectorate.

Brian Laborn a.k.a. Grue

Armor Is Useless: Completely averted. He gets shot twice by Perdition and suffers relatively minor injuries only because he was protected by armor.
Casting a Shadow: He can create clouds of darkness that completely block out light and dampen sound.

Rachel Lindt a.k.a Bitch a.k.a. Cerberus

Meaningful Rename: As part of her performing a Heel–Face Turn, she takes on the more PR-friendly moniker of "Cerberus".

Alec a.k.a. Regent

Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Coil manages to escape from his prison transport and sends someone to burn down the Undersiders’ hideout, Alec (understandably) chooses to skip town entirely rather than risk being targeted by his old boss again.

Isabella a.k.a. Whirlygig

Blow You Away: One of the ways she can manifest her power is through basically creating a cyclone of telekinetic force centered around herself.
Meaningful Name: Whirligigs are objects that spin and whirl, such as pinwheels. Whirlygig's power works in having objects telekinetically spin around her.
Mind over Matter: She can make objects rotate around her in a counter-clockwise pattern.
Point of Divergence: As Taylor didn't join the Undersiders in this story but did break the Merchants apart far earlier on, here Whirlygig joins the Undersiders instead of the Merchants.

Coil's Organization

Thomas Calvert a.k.a. Coil

A mysterious supervillain who is behind the Undersiders and is slowly orchestrating a takeover of Brockton Bay. Tattletale eventually reveals that he's one of the most powerful Thinkers in history, having the ability to perceive himself in two parallel realities simultaneously where he can make different decisions in each, and choose which of the two realities to carry out for whichever one works out better for him.

Animal Motifs: Snakes.
Arch-Enemy: To Tattletale.
Bad Boss:
Big Bad Wannabe: He wants to be a mighty crime boss ruling over all of Brockton Bay from the shadows, but his plans get smashed to pieces by Elpis and the Undersiders.
Demoted to Dragon: He's eventually broken out of PRT capture by the Travelers... so that Accord can force him to help his criminal organization.
Dirty Cop: His true identity is as PRT Consultant Thomas Calvert of the ENE Protectorate.
Faux Affably Evil:
How the Mighty Have Fallen: He goes from a powerful and mysterious crime boss to the glorified lackey of Accord.
Lack of Empathy:
Laser-Guided Karma: Coil initially forces Tattletale into being his servant at gunpoint. Accord then forces Coil into becoming his servant at gunpoint after breaking him out of PRT custody.
Lean and Mean: He's often describing as looking rail-thin, and is also a ruthless sociopath.
Logical Weakness: As insanely accurate as they are, his simulations are ultimately just that: simulations. As such, if he doesn’t have sufficient information to make sure he is making accurate-enough predictions, he can potentially trap himself in a nigh-unwinnable situation.
Power Perversion Potential: A very creepy, non-sexual example; it's mentioned that one of the ways in which he blew off steam was by violently murdering either his own employees or those who mildly annoyed him in Alternate Timelines, and then collapsing those timelines so he would still keep the memories of said event without having actually killed them in "reality".
Save Scumming: How his power basically works, allowing him to create near-perfect simulations of an Alternate Timeline and then letting him choose "which" timeline for his consciousness to inhabit after deciding on which .
"Shaggy Dog" Story: He's broken out of a prison transport after getting unceremoniously curb-stomped by the Protectorate and betrayed by the Undersiders... but only so he can be forced to help Accord's own plans.
The Sociopath: Coil has no affection or empathy for anyone around him - All he cares about is bettering his own life and standing through whatever means he deems necessary.
Sole Survivor: He and Emily Piggot are the only PRT agents to have survived the initial — and disastrous — attack by the Protectorate against Nilbog.
Villainous Breakdown:
Would Hurt a Child: He kidnapped Dinah Alcott and forced her onto highly addictive drugs so he could use her incredible precognitive powers to his benefit.

The Empire Eighty-Eight

The Empire Eighty-Eight In General

The largest and most powerful crime gang in Brockton Bay, with the largest number of both capes and non-parahuman members. They're unabashed Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and are fully intent on both taking over the city and spreading their ideals regarding "the defense of the white race" as far as possible.

Always a Bigger Fish: They prove to be a significantly more intimidating and difficult opponent for Elpis to fight against than the Merchants were.
Arch-Enemy: To Elpis and the rest of the Butcher's Choir. The ABB are their primary foe on a city-wide level, though.
Eviler than Thou: Thanks to them all being Neo-Nazis, even the Equal-Opportunity Evil-following Butchers feel nothing but scorn and contempt for them.
Fantastic Racism: Towards the Butcher. Regardless of the current Butcher’s ethnicity, they are seen as tainted by having the past Butchers of color or sexual orientation in their head.
Faux Affably Evil: The pseudo-considerate and seemingly "generous" façade they occasionally create is clearly just there to try and give their actions the faintest shade of legitimacy in the eyes of the public.
Hate Sink: They're all a bunch of loathsome white supremacists who not only attack innocent minority groups with utter abandon, but also are putting on a Faux Affably Evil façade to try and give their actions "legitimacy" to help spread their poisonous ideals far and wide. Suffice to say, virtually no one likes them, and the only reason that the Protectorate hasn't stomped them into mulch is because the Empire outnumbers them in terms of both capes and "basic" manpower, and some of their capes are also willing to assist in Endbringer attacks (making them effectively too invaluable to just kill/send off to the Birdcage).
If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: The induction process for new members involves having them wipe out the families of minority groups to fully indoctrinate them into their racist ideals.
Politically Incorrect Villain: They're all unabashed white supremacists.
Pragmatic Villainy: For all of their evil, under Kaiser's leadership they are willing to volunteer and help on Endbringer fights, operating on Enemy Mine/Evil Vs Oblivion logic.
Wake-Up Call Boss: Following her trouncing of the Merchants, their deadlier capes prove to be significantly more dangerous foes for Elpis to face.

Max Anders a.k.a. Kaiser

It's Personal: The Teeth were responsible for the death of his first wife, so he makes it his mission to destroy the entire gang.

Hookwolf

The Dreaded: Easily one of the most dangerous and feared capes in Brockton Bay.
Extra-ore-dinary: His power creates metal blades from his body, which are then shaped into whatever form he wishes.
Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: A non-lethal case; the Undersiders and Elpis work together to have him sent off to the Birdcage post-haste to make sure he doesn't reveal that Elpis is really the current Butcher.
Savage Wolves: His preferred shape when using his powers.
Secret-Keeper: He, the Undersiders, and Panacea are the only known capes to be aware that Elpis is Butcher XV.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: He can shape the metal that comes from his body in any way he chooses, but typically sticks to a wolf form.

Krieg

Victor

Battle Couple: With Othala.
Fights Like a Normal: While his power isn’t as flashy as others, his stolen skills and experience still make him a formidable opponent able to beat other capes. This is highlighted in his brief fight against the inexperienced Spitfire.
Liquid Assets: Of the mental variety. Victor’s power lets him drain the skills of anyone he focuses on, potentially permanently robbing them of their hard earned knowledge.
Renaissance Man: Years of stealing the skills and talents of others has made Victor knowledgeable in multiple fields.

Othala

Battle Couple: With Victor.
Super-Empowering: Othala’s power lets her temporarily grant a variety of powers to anyone she touches.
Support Party Member: She can’t use her powers on herself, so she typically stays out of the fray and empowers her teammates.

Rune

Mind over Matter: Rune can telekinetically move any object after she touches it. She uses this ability to use platforms for transportation as much as she uses it for combat.

Stormtiger

Blow You Away: Stormtiger can create blasts or blades of air that can cause serious damage.

Cricket

Dual Wielding: She skillfully uses two kamas as her weapons. She is also skilled with short swords.
Logical Weakness: Her power lets her affect the inner ear of her enemies to disorient them; however, as shown in her rematch against Elpis, anyone can get around her sound waves by plugging their ears or sound proofing their helmet.
Sonic Stunner: One of Cricket’s powers. It allows her to create infrasonic waves that disorient her opponents and knock them off balance.
Super-Reflexes: Another of Cricket’s powers. She can move faster than a baseline human to dodge most attacks that come her way. Combined with the effects of her Sonic Stunner power, she can dance around opponents while they lose their sense of balance and punch above her weight class.

Alabaster

Battle Trophy: After executing Hemorrhagia, he takes her shamrock keychain. Elpis and the Butchers were not pleased.
Immortal Life Is Cheap: Since he can regenerate from any injury, Elpis has no qualms about taking off the kid gloves with him. After discovering that he killed Hemorrhagia, Elpis bifurcated him.

Crusader

Jotun

Ascended Extra: He's only a minor character in canon Worm, but serves as a recurring enemy here.
Combo Platter Powers: He's a grab-bag cape with two distinct powers.
An Ice Person: One of his powers. He can create ice weapons that grow layers of frost on whatever they hit.
Invisibility: One of his powers. He can become invisible to the naked eye, but only when in motion.
Spontaneous Weapon Creation: How his ice powers usually manifest. Counts as Elemental Weapon as well.

The Archer's Bridge Merchants

The Merchants In General

A crime gang in Brockton Bay primarily focused around the drug trade. Thanks to them frequently "sampling" their own product, they're mostly made up of strung-out junkies and low-class impoverished goons, but their use of parahumans still makes them a force to be reckoned with. They're the first foe Taylor (as Elpis) goes after following her becoming the Butcher.

Adaptational Badass: The Merchants, who previously only had three capes to their name in canon, are much larger here and also formed much earlier on, providing them with (comparatively) more of a stable power base.
Butt-Monkey: As dangerous as they are, they're definitely the "bottom rung" in terms of the crime gangs in Brockton Bay and thanks to their frequent drug abuse, often set themselves up for failure in their criminal enterprises.
Drugs Are Bad: They not only focus on the drug trade, but some of them are addicts as well.
Lower-Class Lout: A common thread with them is that, thanks to being made up of impoverished criminals, they're all downright drug-addicted and crude-minded losers who have to resort to Combat Pragmatism to hold their own against their rivals. They're also frequently mocked by the Butchers for having terrible hygiene and being Too Dumb to Live.
Nonindicative Name: Archer's Bridge collapsed long before Taylor was even born, but they still call themselves the "Archer's Bridge Merchants".
Running Gag: As the Butchers so love to note, all of their capes feature Atrocious Aliases.
Starter Villain: They are the initial antagonist Elpis faces throughout the first few story arcs, and her defeat of them has caused her to become enough of a badass that she now poses a legitimate threat to the rest of Brockton Bay's criminal underworld.
Too Dumb to Live: The Butchers like to insult them for acting very stupid in fights, most obviously in addicting themselves to mind-altering substances that impair them in combat.

Adam Mustain a.k.a. Skidmark

The leader of the Merchants. A Shaker with the ability to create invisible energy fields over an area that generate a "pushing effect", either decelerating or accelerating any object within.

Space Master: How his power works, allowing him to create special fields in an area that rapidly accelerate or decelerate any object within. He's surprisingly skilled and clever in this power's usage, letting him do things like in his escape from Elpis and Stormtiger's attack on his "pitfight" against Snowblind & Sinister, where he gives himself functional Super-Speed via layering multiple layers of acceleration fields in front of him to effectively "skate" out of the area as fast as possible.

Sherrel Bailey a.k.a. Squealer

Skidmark's girlfriend, and the second-in-command of the Merchants. A powerful Tinker with a specialization in vehicles.

Know When to Fold Them: After being kidnapped by the Teeth and realizing that the Merchants have been broken & won't be able to rescue her for a damn long while, she "jumps ship" and throws her lot in with the Teeth, working under I Fight for the Strongest Side! logic.

Mush

A Shifter with the ability to "disassemble" his body into a series of tendrils that attach themselves to surrounding loose debris and form them into a new physical body for himself that he can manipulate with a thought. Thanks to the Merchants being made up of Lower Class Louts, he typically makes up his body from surrounding refuse and trash, and serves as the Merchants' primary muscle on the battlefield.

Beware the Silly Ones: As ridiculous — and disgusting — as his power is, he also gets multiple good hits in and gets dangerously close to actually killing Elpis during their fight.
Body Horror:
Combat Tentacles:
Improvised Weapon:
Lovecraftian Superpower: His body splits up into a tangle of vein-like tendrils that then merge with whatever trash is lying around.
Starter Villain: He is the first major opponent Taylor fights as a cape.

Spitoon

A parahuman hired by Skidmark to help defend the Merchants from Elpis and Spitfire. He's a Mover and Blaster with the ability to create portals to a Pocket Dimension of human saliva through spitting onto nearby surfaces.

Lethal Joke Character: He and Mudslide get surprisingly close to actually killing Elpis and Spitfire during their decapitation strike on the Merchants.
Original Character: Does not exist in canon Worm.
Scary Black Man: Downplayed; He's coded as black, and while not nearly as dangerous as Elpis, is still noted to be quite intimidating.
Super Spit: Has the ability to create circular pools from where he spits that act as portals to a Pocket Dimension made up entirely of human saliva.
The Stoner: Faultline notes in passing during Hostile Takeover that he perpetually smells like marijuana as a result of his clearly-not-habitual usage. To his credit, though, he at least is intelligent enough to restrain himself in his drug usage that it doesn't interfere with his job at Palanquin.
Throw the Dog a Bone: In the Hostile Takeover AU, he gets a significantly nicer ending than he did in Here Comes the New Boss by never signing up with the Merchants and instead serving as security for Palanquin.

Mudslide

A parahuman hired by Skidmark to help defend the Merchants from Elpis and Spitfire. He's a Brute and Breaker with the ability to exude mud from his skin that quickly hardens into powerful armor and blades.

Dishing Out Dirt: He generates mud from his body that hardens into armor. It can also harden on opponents to hamper their mobility.
Lethal Joke Character: He and Spitoon get surprisingly close to actually killing Elpis and Spitfire during their decapitation strike on the Merchants.
Logical Weakness: As his armor is made out of hardened earth and stone, it can be softened and made weaker with enough water. Spitfire quickly realizes this when she's able to soften Mudslide by spraying his chest with her fire-hoses.
Original Character: Does not exist in canon Worm.

The Azn Bad Boys

The Azn Bad Boys In General

The second-largest and second-most powerful crime gang in Brockton Bay, featuring only two known capes and countless non-parahuman members. They're made up almost entirely of impoverished Asian-American immigrants and illegal Asian immigrants fleeing from supervillains and/or the Endbringers abroad, and are fully intent on both taking over the city and fleecing everyone else dry as much as they can manage.

A Lighter Shade of Black: On the one hand, they're a despicable gang of criminals who engage in sex trafficking, gambling, and countless other criminal pursuits. On the other hand, since they have only two capes to their gang (granted, two incredibly powerful and versatile capes, but still) and are (for the most part) smart enough to keep their heads "under the radar" most of the time, the PRT doesn't regard them as much of a serious threat as the Empire Eighty-Eight and so they're generally left "on the backburner" to be dealt with at a later time. Helping matters is how the ABB and E88 despise one another, and so the ENE Protectorate more often than not will try and willingly support the ABB against the E88 if necessary.
Arch-Enemy: To the Empire Eighty-Eight, who they oppose in the name of both competition and survival (what with the E88 wanting to wipe them all out for being non-white, after all).
Equal-Opportunity Evil: Downplayed; They're made up of virtually anyone of any possible Asian background (i.e., Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Indian, etc.). However, they're made up of only people of Asian descent, meaning whites, Latinos, Hispanics, Native Americans, and black folks need not apply.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: As in canon Worm, the Azn Bad Boys take their name almost directly from the Asian Boyz (ABZ), a real-life ethnic crime gang based in southern California and almost entirely made up of Asian-Americans.
Sex Slave: One of their main sources of income is through sex slavery and human trafficking. They're disgustingly good at it to, to the point where it's claimed that they will literally kidnap young women right off the street so as to force them into prostitution on the ABB's behalf.

Kenta a.k.a. Lung

The infamous current leader of the Azn Bad Boys. Also known as the "Dragon of Kyushu", he's one of the most feared and powerful capes in the world, being an immensely skilled Brute and Blaster who has pyrokinesis, an accelerated Healing Factor, and the ability to naturally transform into a larger, stronger and better armored form - complete with wings - the longer a current fight goes on.

Absurdly Sharp Claws: As he transforms, he grows a set of viciously sharp talons from his fingers that can shred through steel like wet paper.
Attention Whore: Has an ego the size of the Medhall Building and can hardly be bothered to fight someone if there isn't anyone around to watch him win. Justified since his power is at least in part "fueled" by the attention he receives from others.
Cynicism Catalyst: His Pyrrhic Victory against Leviathan — in which he barely survived their duel and had his home of Kyushu sunk to the bottom of the Pacific — caused Lung to become a bitter cynic who essentially gives up on any greater ambition for himself and has written off humanity itself in the long run.
The Dreaded: There are two types of people in Brockton Bay — those who have a healthy fear of Lung, and those who are dead. The Choir considers him an ideal inheritor because of his powers, so Taylor decides to avoid confronting him to the best of her abilities at present. Chapter 6.6 reminds the readers why he's one of the most dangerous capes in Brockton Bay as Taylor fights for dear life against him, despite having back-up from Gargoyle and Battery.
Flight: If he continues Hulking Out long enough, he grows wings that let him fly. This ability is mentioned in particular as being one of the main reasons that the Butchers' Choir wants to have him be the next Butcher; after all, who hasn't ever dreamed about being able to fly?
Fatal Flaw: Sloth and Wrath. Lung is dangerous enough to become one of the most feared capes in the world and could potentially do a lot of good with his power... but his general misanthropy and lack of ambition have made him devolve into being a still-feared but ultimately pitiable crime boss. Ultimately, when given the opportunity Lung is just a pathetic little human trafficker and drug dealer who is downright happy to live in his mediocrity.
Freudian Excuse: His general cruelty has its roots in the horrific "conditioning" (read: psychological and physical torture) he went through while a prisoner of the Yangban, and his failed "duel" with Leviathan has also made become an unambitious, misanthropic hedonist content with ruling the scraps of a dying city instead of actually trying to better himself or the world around him.
Gathering Steam: Lung is a parahuman who on top of his pyrokinesis and Healing Factor, transforms as a battle goes forward, growing larger and stronger, gaining scales, and even growing wings as long as a battle's going forward and there are people watching, as well as an increased proficiency with his pyrokinesis and healing.
Grievous Harm with a Body: During his fight with Elpis, Lung uses Gargoyle as a club to knock Elpis down the street (which clues Tattletale in that Elpis is unusually resilient).
Groin Attack: Faced with a rapidly growing Lung, Taylor buys herself some time with a Dirty Rotter-empowered punch to the groin. She figures it won't last, since he's a regenerator, which should conceal the evidence of her distinctive power usage.
Healing Factor: Possesses an incredibly powerful one, to the point where Lung initially doesn't seem to notice Taylor having used Vladimir's Vampiric Draining to temporarily slow him down by draining him of a significant portion of his blood.
Hulking Out: As long as he fights, he gradually transforms, growing in size, gaining scales, enhanced strength, healing and enhanced proficiency with his pyrokinesis.
Irony: Despite being a half-Japanese half-Chinese immigrant, the dragon he transforms to in battle is actually based more after Western dragon myths than those of the Far East.
Involuntary Shapeshifting: Lung does not have much control over his transformations, with him growing and changing only based on how long a given fight is going on along with how much attention and focus he is receiving in said fight.
Large and in Charge: Lung is an extremely muscular man who is well over six feet tall even before he transforms, and he's the leader of the ABB.
Logical Weakness: His power is at least in part based around the attention he receives from a particular opponent - As such, being swarmed by multiple smaller opponents can potentially take him out of a fight fast enough that he cannot begin to transform and become too dangerous to stop.
Made of Iron: Even putting aside his Healing Factor and the literal semi-metallic scales that form over his skin as he transforms, the man is built like a battle tank and is incredibly hard to permanently injure/impair.
Meaningful Name: His cape name is almost literally the Chinese word for "dragon".
Mythology Gag: Just like in canon, when Elpis fights against him, she's able to get the advantage over him by basically rotting his genitals off... though here she uses Dirty Rotter's Make Them Rot power instead of the bite of a brown recluse spider.
Our Dragons Are Different: His power slowly turns him into a draconic creature. Ironically, he turns into a western dragon rather than an eastern dragon like his namesake.
Pay Evil unto Evil: Rotting off someone's genitals would normally be considered a horrifying and cruel fate... were it not happening to Lung, someone who not only can easily heal from this type of injury and come out no worse for wear, but who is also both someone who is willing to kill teenagers for crossing him and has his gang regularly kidnap women off the street to force them into Sex Slavery.
Playing with Fire: Has powerful pyrokinetic abilities, letting him hurl fireballs at his enemies or roast them to cinders by breathing fire out of his transformed maw.
Power Gives You Wings: If he’s in combat for long enough, Lung will start to grow draconic wings capable of flight.
Scaled Up: Lung’s power slowly gives him more and more draconic features as he ramps up on strength until he stops resembling a human.
Super-Senses: Taylor quickly realizes during her fight with him that his natural senses — particularly his hearing — are far more acute than the human standard.
Underestimating Badassery: While he is still seen as The Dreaded, Lung's lack of ambition has also resulted in most people (most notably Kaiser) underestimating his strength and power.
Worthy Opponent: The Butchers' Choir really like him, enthusiastically declaring him to be an ideal inheritor to their mantle. Understandably, Taylor tries to keep as wide of a berth of him as she can.
Would Hurt a Child: Was fully intent on killing the teenage Undersiders for robbing from him.
Wreathed in Flames: Given enough time and attention, Lung's form will literally be wreathed in fire and immense heat, barbecuing anyone stupid/unlucky enough to get too close to him.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Lung's general mindset is that as soon as someone isn't of any more potential use to him, it's perfectly fine for him to turn them into a glorified charcoal kit.

The Travelers

Trickster

Swap Teleportation: His power allows him to swap the locations of any two objects or persons that he can see, including himself, so long as they are of similar mass. Trickster uses this power effectively to control the battlefield in the Travelers’ fight against Elpis, Ironclad, and the Undersiders.

Perdition

Batman Grabs a Gun: When Elpis, Ironclad and the Undersiders are on the verge of beating the Travelers, Uber & Leet during their heist, Perdition escalates the situation by pulling out a gun and threatening hostages to secure the Travelers’ and Uber & Leet’s escape. Even after being allowed to leave, Perdition still shoots Grue twice. These actions bring more heat on the group for breaking the unwritten rules of capes; not escalating by threatening civilians, no guns, and attacking an opponent with lethal force.
The Friend Nobody Likes: The Travelers aren’t really fond of him and barely tolerate him. This intensifies in the aftermath of their mall heist when Perdition pulls out a gun and threatens hostages, then shoots Grue after being allowing them to escape.
Sore Loser: Even after being allowed to escape, he still shoots at Grue before teleporting away.
Time Master: His power allows him to rewind anyone he sees to their state and location as they were a few seconds earlier. This allows him to function as a healer of sorts to his allies and an annoying disruptor for his enemies.

Ballistic

Abnormal Ammo: His power allows him to launch anything he touches at incredible speeds, turning anything into a dangerous projectile.

Sundancer

Convection, Schmonvection: Sundancer and her clothes are immune to the immense heat that her mini-suns give off. Everything else? Not so much.
Glass Cannon: Sundancer is incredibly dangerous offensively, but is otherwise only as durable as the average person.
The Power of the Sun: She can create miniature suns that she can toss around like fireballs.

Genesis

Faultline's Crew

Faultline's Crew/Palanquin In General

A formidable band of parahuman mercenaries based in the Brockton Bay night club "Palanquin". Made up mostly of Case 53s, Faultline's Crew prides themselves on their professionalism and try to keep a neutral presence in local cape politics.

A Lighter Shade of Grey: While they're still technically regarded as parahuman villains, their status as professional mercenaries who are most concerned with a stable paycheck results in the Protectorate regarding them as not worth their time, and so are more or less left alone.
Badass Crew: All of them are skilled warriors and mercenaries who have rightfully made a name for themselves in the parahuman community as efficient & Consummate Professionals.
True Companions: They regard each other as close friends and family thanks to the majority of them being Case 53s and thus having no memory of their previous lives.

Other Characters

Rogue Parahumans

Tarquin a.k.a. Konnigit a.k.a. Ironclad

A wandering vigilante in Brockton Bay that Taylor runs across under her "Elpis" cape identity, and who she quickly takes under her wing. He's a very powerful Brute/Changer/Striker, having the ability to create a powerful suit of armor around himself constructed out of the metal surrounding him and which he can easily manipulate to his will. In reality, he's Tarquin, one of Taylor's new friends she made after switching over from Winslow to Arcadia.

Atrocious Alias: Konnigit named himself after a bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but was confused for an Empire cape as his name sounded like German, a racial slur, or a German racial slur. Upon hearing his name for the first time, Miss Militia (who knew the reference thanks to Mouse Protector) groans in disbelief. He eventually changes it to Ironclad.
Beware the Silly Ones: As snarky and light-hearted as he likes to come across, he's still a dangerous parahuman.
Blood Knight: It's Played for Laughs more than anything else, but it's occasionally noted by the Butchers (and Taylor herself) that Tarquin is clearly more invested in acting as a cape because he finds it to be "fun".
…But He Sounds Handsome: At one point while talking to his friends at lunch, Tarquin brings up his cape alter ego, mentions his activities with approval and tells people how to properly pronounce his name "Konnigit".
Contrived Coincidence: He, Taylor and the Butchers are all understandably baffled by how he and Taylor previously knew each other at Arcadia prior to meeting one another as capes. Tarquin and Taylor both seem to think it's just a random quirk of fate, but some of the Butchers are more suspicious and think something more dire is afoot.
Deadpan Snarker: He showcases a fairly snide and sarcastic streak, mostly when hanging out with Taylor and their other friends at Arcadia.
Extra-ore-dinary: His power in a nutshell, being able to create a powerful suit of armor around himself formed from metallic items in the surrounding environment.
For the Lulz: He all but admits to Elpis at one point that unlike her Comes Great Responsibility motivation and the personal loyalty/financial concerns of Spitfire, he's a cape just because he finds it fun to beat the crap out of Neo-Nazis.
Grievous Harm with a Body: Before meeting Elpis and getting some proper training, Konnigit reportedly beat up several E88 members using another member. Assault even quotes this trope as part of a Lampshade Hanging.
Humanshifting: One of the limits to his power is that he can only control metal so long as it is (indirectly) connected to him and following the general form of a human silhouette. When Taylor asks him if he's considered making multiple arms to attack enemies with, he sheepishly notes that while he has tried that before, the new metallic limbs he creates just fall back into scrap metal and are useless.
Immune to Bullets: Effectively, at least, though armor-piercing rounds are still mentioned to be a potential threat to him.
The Juggernaut: As Tarquin can create a super-strong suit of metal armor around himself, he can easily plow through most attacks from both other capes and "normal" Mooks.
Logical Weakness: He has multiple ones to help balance out him otherwise being a One-Man Army Juggernaut.
- As his power only works on metal, this understandably makes heat-based and electrical attacks a major threat to him. Relatedly, he can't carry a cell phone on hand since his power being partly based around magnetism results in him frying any electronics he's left in prolonged proximity with.
- Additionally, his power only allows him to continue to control metal so long as it's (indirectly) connected to him. As part of this, if he gets separated from his metal over the course of a fight, he'll only be able to continue the fight with whatever metal he personally has left. During his "friendly spar" with Brandish in the Boat Graveyard, when Brandish is able to cut off one of the huge fists he creates to punch her with, it quickly falls apart into inert scrap metal.
- His power can only allow metal to stay in a humanoid form around himself, resulting in him being unable to create additional limbs for combat use.
- The strength of his armor is dependent on the strength of the metal he absorbs into it, meaning that when he only has access to weaker metals like aluminum his armor can get scrapped comparatively easily.
- It's eventually shown that he can extend his armored limbs to let him do things like literally overstep an enemy or reach someone far away from him, but it requires him having to move the metal normally protecting said limb so that it can further extend. As a logical extension of that, said limb then becomes far more fragile and easier to sever/destroy.
Made of Iron: Literally. Thanks to his armor, he can take tons of otherwise instantly-lethal attacks and power through them without a care.
Muscles Are Meaningless: Taylor describes Tarquin as a fairly short and wiry young man without much in the way of athleticism. However, he still has Super-Strength thanks to his armor being the method in which he can support and manipulate huge loads.
Original Character: He's an original creation of the fanfic author and doesn't originate in Worm canon.
Properly Paranoid: His shy and awkward nature is noted as being entirely sensible since he's a transgender boy who lives in Brockton Bay, "the Neo-Nazi Capital of the East Coast".
Rummage Sale Reject: Early on, before Elpis helps him "modernize" his arsenal, Ironclad's armor mostly consists of whatever junk metal he could find, resulting in him basically looking like a sentient scrap heap.
Secret-Keeper: He, the Undersiders and Hookwolf eventually become the only people in Brockton Bay who know that Taylor is the current Butcher.
Selective Magnetism: His power seems to be based around the manipulation of metal via magnetic fields, but he's able to also control non-ferrous metals (such as copper).
Shapeshifter Weapon: He gradually learns how to alter his metal armor to create tools in combat, such as forming viciously sharp claws at the end of his "hands" to slice through obstacles, extending spikes and blades out of his "arms" to cut capes trying to directly tackle him, thickening his "feet" so he can stomp something into mulch, etc.
Shrinking Violet: How he portrays himself in his civilian identity; a stark contrast from his hammy and bombastic cape persona.
Sizeshifter: The more and more metal he adds to his armor, the bulkier and greater in size he becomes.
Super-Strength: The more metal he implements into his armor, the stronger and tougher his armor becomes.
Temporary Bulk Change: Well, not his actual physical body, but the more metal he adds to his armor, the bulkier and stronger he can become. He specifically shows that if he "layers" the metal and prioritizes its placement in certain places of his body, said places become ridiculously tough and almost impossible to "injure".
Voluntary Shapeshifting: An interesting variation, where Tarquin can create a powerful suit of armor around himself made up of the metal in the surrounding area. While his power is almost solely limited to creating a human silhouette around himself, it does have some fairly minor ways he can sufficiently alter it (i.e., cupping his hand over an explosive and then "merging" his fingers together to create a heavy dome that can easily contain the blast).
Walking Spoiler: It's virtually impossible to discuss Konnigit without bringing up how later on in the story it's revealed that he's actually Taylor's friend Tarquin from Arcadia.

Other Non-Parahuman Characters

Danny Hebert

Taylor's father. The current head of hiring at the Dockworkers' Union, and his struggle to both keep the union members in business despite Brockton Bay's harbor having been largely ruined via the Boat Graveyard and his own lingering grief over his wife Annette's death has resulted in him not being there for Taylor as much as he probably should be, but he has started trying to be there for her more recently... which might actually not be the best idea in terms of helping Taylor hide her new identity as the Butcher from him.

Beware the Quiet Ones: He is frequently described as being a fairly quiet and meek man. In Hostile Takeover, though, as soon as he hears his former best friend Alan Barnes trying to victim-blame Taylor through Insane Troll Logic in order to get his own daughter off the hook, Danny breaks the man's nose and has to have three armored PRT agents hold him back to stop him from doing more.
Defiant to the End: An Empire Eighty-Eight thug mocks Danny when, even after he's been tortured to the point where he's almost passed out, he's still trying to spit in the white supremacist's face.
Despair Event Horizon: Nearly losing Taylor almost put him over it. He's managed to recover somewhat.
Extreme Doormat: Downplayed; the man clearly does have a spine and is not exactly a pushover, but the Perpetual Poverty of both his family and his hometown makes it difficult for him to be as active as he wants to be in defending those he loves. As an example, while he did want to take Winslow to court for the school administration's abetting in regards to how horribly Taylor was bullied, he didn't have the money to afford a sufficiently good lawyer for a long-enough legal battle to truly take them to task and had to settle out of court for just a small monetary settlement & Taylor getting to transfer to Arcadia for a fresh start.
Hair-Trigger Temper: Has one that he is pretty damn good at hiding, and as he later confesses to Taylor, she definitely inherited it from him.
Locked Out of the Loop: Taylor makes it a point to keep him unaware of her cape activities. It would be one thing to learn she's a cape and she actively puts herself in danger, but it's another thing entirely when she's Butcher XV.
The Lost Lenore: The death of his wife Annette hangs over virtually all of his present-day interactions with Taylor, and it is clearly something neither of them have gotten over.
Papa Wolf:
- When Taylor talks to Danny over the phone during her sleepover with her Arcadia friends in Chapter 4.7 and she hesitantly notes that maybe she should have accepted Madison's half-assed and definitely not genuine apology for bullying her, Danny immediately interjects and angrily tells her that she should never feel obligated to accept apologies from people who have treated her horribly and he is perfectly willing to raise a bigger stink with Arcadia's staff if it is necessary to get Madison off his daughter's back
- Additionally, Taylor mentions that he wanted to take Winslow's administration to task for how horribly they neglected Taylor, but she intentionally encouraged him to just accept their monetary offer and transfer opportunity since she was worried about the possibility of the Locker Incident being further investigated and being tied into the recent death of Butcher XIV (which would unveil her as the current Butcher).
Parents as People: He deeply loves his daughter, but finds it difficult to express this thanks to the rift that grew between the two following both Annette's death and the lingering traumas of the Trio's bullying campaign.
Parental Neglect: A non-malicious case, but the point still stands that as he himself admits, his own demons have prevented him from being there for his daughter as much as he should have been.

Madison Clements

One of the three bullies who made up "the Trio", the three female students who made Taylor's life at Winslow utterly hellish prior to her Trigger Event getting her transferred to Arcadia. Now, she's also been transferred to Arcadia, and is trying to re-start the Trio's bullying campaign against Taylor... but is finding far less success this time around.

Adaptational Villainy: In canon Worm, Madison eventually went through a Heroic BSoD & Heel–Face Turn following a My God, What Have I Done? reaction in regards to how horribly the Trio bullied Taylor, to the point where she even became a therapist helping troubled teens like Taylor. Here, she seems to have only doubled-down on being a despicable human being and even tries to continue her bullying campaign against Taylor after the both of them have transferred to Arcadia. Justified since Madison's canonical Heel–Face Turn only happened at least two years after Taylor's Trigger Event, meaning that the Madison of New Boss — who starts appearing in the story only a few months after Taylor's Trigger Event — hasn't had enough time to properly mature, go through a Heel Realization and change her ways for the better.
Evil Is Petty: She tries to make Taylor's life hell in Arcadia as she, Emma, and Sophia did in Winslow for little reason.
Hate Sink: Repeatedly shows herself to be an utterly loathsome excuse for a human being, as seen with her trying pick up where she left off back at Winslow.
Mugging the Monster: She had the bright idea of resuming her bullying campaign in Arcadia, totally unaware that Taylor is Butcher XV. Her efforts are lukewarm and stymied by the fact that the staff faculty is less tolerant and apathetic than Winslow's and Taylor ignores her for the most part...until she tries to pass off her bullying as a "joke". If not for Amy, Madison would be a bloody smear on the wall.
Oh, Crap!: The moment Madison tries to pass off what she did to Taylor at Winslow as a "joke", Taylor pins her to the wall and is moments away from killing her on the spot. This not only takes Madison off guard as Taylor rarely tried to defend herself, it freaks her out because she knows Taylor is going to beat the shit out of her until Amy intervenes.
Too Dumb to Live:
Wrong Genre Savvy:

Emily Piggot

The current Director of the ENE Division of the Parahuman Response Team and one of the main heads behind the Protectorate in Brockton Bay. Overworked, understaffed and surrounded by enemies on all sides, her team regularly struggles to keep Brockton Bay standing even on the best of days, but the recent arrival of the mysterious independent hero “Elpis” might change matters for the better…

Deadpan Snarker: A lot of her internal dialogue is heavily sarcastic and filtered through her jaded worldview.
Embarrassing Nickname: She’s been mockingly called "Miss Piggy" behind her back by some of the Wards.
Fantastic Racism: Downplayed, but her traumatic ordeal at Ellisburg thanks to Nilbog has permanently soured her in regards to parahumans, and as such she is very much one who believes that parahumans need to be kept closely monitored by the PRT to prevent them from causing horrific disasters.
Jerkass Has a Point: While her bitterness regarding parahumans borders on Fantastic Racism, Earth Bet is as much of a Crapsack World as it is largely thanks to parahumans and their associated phenomena, and thus her belief that all parahumans are to be closely monitored & not fully trusted is perfectly understandable.
Old Soldier: She was a PRT Agent for a long time before becoming a Director, and still has the general air of a soldier about her.
Realpolitik: Forced to engage in this far more than anyone should in their lifetime. Just as an example, while she loathes all of the crime gangs in Brockton Bay and would love to sweep them all into the sea, her assigned heroes are so small in number that even with the Wards helping, any potential escalation would just cause a bloody gang war in the streets that she would have no chance of winning. As such, she tries to maintain a policy of containing the gangs as much as possible and prevent them from escalating by playing the gangs against one another so they keep each other in check.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Piggot tries her damndest to keep Brockton Bay standing through careful management and cooperation between her various agents and assigned heroes. As an example, in Hostile Takeover she ultimately agrees with the assessments of Miss Militia, Armsmaster and Deputy Director Renick that Taylor’s heroic actions as Butcher XV have thus far shown that she shouldn't be officially treated as a villain and should instead be re-classified as "only" a vigilante while making sure to put zero pressure on her so they don't arouse her anger… but she also agrees with PRT Consultant Calvert to covertly arrange meetings with Faultline's Crew to assist in the possible capture of Taylor if she ever goes off the deep end, and also has Armsmaster continue to work on a special tranquilizer to take her down non-lethally if it's ever necessary.
Sole Survivor: She and Thomas Calvert are the only PRT agents to have survived the initial — and disastrous — attack by the Protectorate against Nilbog.

Characters / Here Comes The New Boss

Edit Locked

The Butchers' Chorus/Choir

Taylor Anne Hebert

Cape Name: Butcher XV, Elpis, "Swarm" (Unofficial)

Butcher I

Vladimir

Cape Name: Butcher II

Flinch

Cape Name: Butcher III

Dirty Rotter

Cape Name: Butcher IV

Needler

Cape Name: Butcher V

Firecracker

Cape Name: Butcher VI

Tock Tick

Cape Name: Butcher VII

Stoneknapper

Cape Name: Butcher VIII

Bearskin

Cape Name: Butcher IV

Tactical

Cape Name: Butcher X

Anchorage

Cape Name: Butcher XI

Nemean

Cape Name: Butcher XII

Muramasa

Cape Name: Butcher XIII

Quarrel

Cape Name: Butcher XIV

Heroes

Armsmaster

Miss Militia

Assault

Battery

Eric Pelham a.k.a. Shielder

Amy Dallon a.k.a. Panacea

Victoria Dallon a.k.a. Glory Girl

Gargoyle

Emily a.k.a. Spitfire

Dean Stansfield a.k.a. Gallant

Missy Byron a.k.a. Vista

Villains

The Undersiders In General

Lisa Wilbourn a.k.a. Tattletale

Brian Laborn a.k.a. Grue

Rachel Lindt a.k.a Bitch a.k.a. Cerberus

Alec a.k.a. Regent

Isabella a.k.a. Whirlygig

Thomas Calvert a.k.a. Coil

The Empire Eighty-Eight In General

Max Anders a.k.a. Kaiser

Hookwolf

Krieg

Victor

Othala

Rune

Stormtiger

Cricket

Alabaster

Crusader

Jotun

The Merchants In General

Adam Mustain a.k.a. Skidmark

Sherrel Bailey a.k.a. Squealer

Mush

Spitoon

Mudslide

The Azn Bad Boys In General

Kenta a.k.a. Lung

Trickster

Perdition

Ballistic

Sundancer

Genesis

Faultline's Crew/Palanquin In General

Other Characters

Tarquin a.k.a. Konnigit a.k.a. Ironclad