Fanfic / Legacy of the Enginseers

Legacy of the Enginseers is a Worm/Warhammer 40,000 crossover written by Ankoth.

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

The "lucky fellow"? Taylor Hebert.

But life doesn't get better for her: when, while suffering a beating from Sophia Hess, her defensive taser is triggered, Sophia paints her as a villainous cape that wanted to out her. With no one to turn to, and no way to make herself safe while she remains in Brockton Bay, Taylor will have to craft herself a new life somewhere else while getting ready to save the world.

It can also be read here on SpaceBattles.com.

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This story contains examples of the following tropes:

• Actually Pretty Funny: Taylor chuckles when Jason asks if one of them has to get into the Body Double drone.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Cherish had joined the Slaughterhouse Nine for the sake of protecting herself from her father. All she got was suffering at their hands and a headshot by Mechanicus' drones after witnessing Shatterbird's own death.
• Batman Gambit: Taylor takes advantage of Leviathan's likely reaction to being hit by powerful weapons that aren't enough to kill it (let itself get hit to cause the defenders' morale to drop) and sets the Endbringer up in position for an attack that will kill it.
• Benevolent Boss: When Taylor begins to recruit people for her Skitarii, she offers incredible benefits (full health restoration, the best training and care in the world, equipment that makes anything else look like Legos and a generous pay and retirement packet), is upfront about the downsides (lots of combat, an implant that will prevent the recruits from betraying her and another that will destroy their bodies in case someone is captured or killed and she can't rescue them), and makes it clear that she wants people willing to ask intelligent questions and offer genuine advice.
• Berserk Button: Assault becomes furious when he realizes the massive injustice behind Taylor's case, the same type that prompted him to free people from Birdcage transports.
• Big Damn Heroes: Taylor saves the Undersiders from Lung's wrath by sending her drones just before Lung becomes free to kill Tattletale.
• Blackmail: How Kaiser keeps a hold of multiple people, including his ex-wife Kayden (the villain Purity). Taylor hacks into his computer, destroys every bit of blackmail and lets his targets know of said destruction.
• Body Double: When her Skitarii point out that she could be at risk of being kidnapped if she personally goes to the fight against Leviathan, Taylor crafts a life-like body double she can control from Mars using a portal. Hilariously, even after she points this out to the Triumvirate, Alexandria still tries to make her surrender to the PRT by pointing out that her portals won't always work to help her escape.
• Body Horror: Invoked by Taylor, who makes herself look like Belisarius Cawl when she shows her image.
• Bullying a Dragon: Despite knowing what her Plasma Annihilator can do, Jack Slash's first thought is that he can track Taylor down and either force her into the Nine or kill her and steal the weapon himself. Taylor, needless to say, doesn't find this funny at all.
  • Shadow Stalker attempts to browbeat Taylor by claiming that her own powers are much better than anything Taylor has done. Given that the list of things Taylor's done includes killing two S-class threats (Nilbog and the Slaughterhouse Nine), it goes from just stupid to Too Dumb to Live.
  • Even after Taylor used her creations to wipe Leviathan out, the Triumvirate members think they can force Taylor to surrender.
• Cape Busters: Taylor forms her own Skitarii, this version being an Elite Army of augmented Super Soldiers mostly recruited from the US and UK militaries. Their purpose is to eliminate threats to humanity, primarily villains and parahuman-related threats.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Pretty much every battle Taylor gets involved in ends in her overwhelming victory.
  • When Coil sends his mercenaries after her, she shoots and kills the driver, causing their vehicle to crash and leaving them unable to continue their mission.
  • The Protectorate finds where Taylor is hiding and sends five heroes (Armsmaster, Assault, Battery, Miss Militia, and Velocity) and two teams of PRT troopers to arrest her. Taylor knocks out Miss Militia and one trooper team with taser drones, breaks Velocity's legs when he tries to plant an EMP on her back, traps Assault, Battery and the other team in a bubble of slowed time, and destroys Armsmaster's halberd and motorcycle.
  • Hookwolf catches her while she's stealing a supermarket that's also an Empire 88 front. Taylor shoots him down with her plasma pistol, traps all of his goons in a bubble of slowed time and finishes him off with an Entropic Lance that quickly rusts all the metal he covers himself with.
  • She sends a couple of drones that can phase in and out of existence against Lung. The rage dragon only survives because Armsmaster manages to convince Taylor to have Lung face justice for his crimes.
  • The scarab drones she sends against the remains of the ABB, which include Bakuda, make very short work of them.
  • Taylor vs the Slaughterhouse Nine ends in an overwhelming victory for the former, as the murderhobos are completely unable to do anything that even slightly inconveniences Taylor.
  • When the Skitarii are thrown against Heartbreaker, neither he nor the worst of his children are able to react before they are steamrolled.
  • Leviathan barely gets to do any damage and causes zero casualties when it attacks Brockton Bay.
• Death by Adaptation: Rather than living to see the epilogue of Ward, Bonesaw becomes the first of the Nine to die.
  • Several of the Heartbroken die in the Skitarii raid, instead of surviving to reach Ward.
• Didn't See That Coming: Coil was planning to do his usual shtick of sending mercenaries to capture Taylor and give her an "offer" to work for him. He didn't expect Taylor to learn about his plan quick enough to counter it, much less that she would immediately go for a lethal option and shoot at them from three buildings away - before he could set up his Save Scumming power, meaning that his mercs experience their first apparent major loss, shaking their faith in him.
• Didn't Think This Through: When Piggot is confronting Sophia in her cell on her misdeeds, she asks if Sophia honestly never considered that someone might look more closely at the whole thing and realize that Taylor was innocent of what Sophia had accused her of, especially if Taylor was captured and got to tell her side of the story.
  Piggot: Did you not think for one second that someone might actually look into the case even if we caught, or worse, killed that girl? Did the thought not enter your head in the slightest?
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • Oni Lee dies fighting Taylor, rather than being captured by the Slaughterhouse Nine and used in Bonesaw's experiments.
  • Bakuda is killed by Taylor after the latter captures her, instead of dying to Lung in the Birdcage.
  • Murder Rat is burnt from the inside by an incendiary bomb instead of being given a Mercy Kill by Flashbang.
  • Instead of being killed by Grue second-Triggering, Burnscar dies when Taylor sends a Warp Spider drone to rip her innards.
  • Crawler gets annihilated by a Lokhust Heavy Destroyer drone instead of being turned into silicon by one of Bakuda's bombs.
  • Shatterbird gets turned into plasma instead of being crushed in the ruins of Coil's underground base by Vista.
  • Rather than being turned into a Head Jar and having the Butcher in her mind until the Gold Morning, Cherish gets head shot with a Ranger sniper rifle.
  • William Manton gets turned into Ludicrous Gibs by the drones she used to bring Lung down, instead of getting crushed by Dragon.
  • Mannequin gets crushed into a gravitational singularity instead of dying to one of Bakuda's bombs.
  • Jack Slash becomes vaporized by three Doomsday Blasters instead of getting trapped in a Grey Boy time loop and dying in the Gold Morning.
  • Ash Beast gets tossed into space by Taylor instead of dying in the Gold Morning.
  • Heartbreaker is gunned down by Taylor's Skitarii instead of getting stabbed by Imp.
  • Leviathan is killed during the fight at Brockton Bay, rather than in the Gold Morning.
• Disowned Parent: When Danny outs Taylor on TV, Taylor rejects him as a father and considers herself an orphan.
• The Dog Bites Back: When the Yangban lead parahumans Null, One, and Two die in the CUI strike, many of the now-freed brainwashed capes attack the CUI staff meant to control them.
• The Dreaded: After her performance against Leviathan, Brockton Bay's gangs are heavily restraining themselves in fear of attracting Taylor's attention and going the same way as the ABB. And also, people are afraid she may attack people with her absurdly advanced technology (even when she's only been shown to attack villains).
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: As the Number Man points out the discrepancies between Mechanicus and usual Tinker behavior, Alexandria realizes something - if the city-killing weaponry isn't her peak, what could be?
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • The PRT's legal team lodged a formal protest against the contract Piggot intended to force on Taylor, both on an ethical and legal basis.
  • When Taylor realizes a voyeur reported where she was, she warns the guy's usual target and erases every video he still has of the woman.
  • Taylor destroys all of Kaiser's blackmail files so he can't force people to do his bidding against his will.
  • She's also horrified when she realizes how crazy Bakuda is, and quickly moves to neutralize the threat she represents before it's too late.
  • When Contessa tries to stop the attempts by the Senate Committee in charge of PRT oversight by killing its members, she never goes against their families and keeps collateral damage to a minimum.
• Evil Is Petty: Bakuda uses one of the ABB men as her guinea pig for the head bombs because he attempted to claim he was in charge, and after killing him she tries to do the same with the man's family.
• Failed a Spot Check: Taylor becomes amused when the PRT officer greeting her to the pre-Endbringer battle briefing doesn't seem to recognize her.
• Felony Misdemeanor: At the beginning of Chapter 8, Taylor complains about being in the middle of a tragedy... because she's run out of decent tea.
• Frame-Up: Sophia accuses Taylor of attacking her unprovoked, something that her classmates and the school officers corroborate, triggering a manhunt. Then Taylor publishes proof of the actual events and of Sophia's extended bullying campaign, the case collapses over itself, and the PRT now looks incredibly incompetent over the entire issue.
• Godzilla Threshold: Since Taylor has pinpointed Noelle as the likely target for Leviathan's attack, she arranges to dump said target into the Sun should the latter get too close.
• Handicapped Badass: Downplayed - Taylor's first recruits for her organization are people coming from either the armed forces or the PRT that were drummed out after becoming handicapped, but before they start to work, she heals them so they'll be at peak human health.
• Heel Realization: Piggot seems to undergo one after Taylor destroys Ellisburg and kills Nilbog, no longer obsessing over capturing Taylor and even deciding that if Taylor is eventually captured, she will do her best to ensure Taylor is inducted as a full member of the Wards far from Brockton Bay where Taylor can start over with a new life as a proper hero.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • When she finds herself in a relatively safe place at the Docks, Taylor has a breakdown as she tries to deal with everything that has gone wrong. She has a worse breakdown, one that lasts days, after finally making her way to Mars.
  • Piggot goes almost catatonic when she learns Taylor razed Ellisburg to the bedrock.
• Hollywood Hacking: Taylor's computers and skills are so advanced that the best firewalls the PRT uses are little more than speedbumps for her.
• Humongous Mecha: For the fight against Leviathan, Taylor brings out three 90-meter tall Castigator-class Titans known as Paragon of Terra, Mettalum Olympus, and Casus Belli.
• Hurl It into the Sun: Taylor's go-to method to destroy anything that really needs to be destroyed.
• Hypocrite:
  • Taylor notes this of Tattletale, who keeps complaining about being forced to work for Coil, yet has no problem in helping Coil force Taylor to work for him. To be fair to Tattletale, it's implied that she was delaying him from finding her as much as she could, but Taylor doesn't know this.
  • She calls out Kaiser as this during her talk with him, because he claims she's breaking the Unwritten Rules by contacting him in his civilian identity - the same rules he repeatedly breaks on his own by killing or selling out other capes.
  • Alexandria was all too ready to ignore the Truce in order to force Taylor into her custody, but seconds later warns her not to break the Truce herself.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Taylor didn't like having to kill Bakuda, but she didn't have the means to keep her imprisoned and knew that sending her to the Protectorate would only mean Bakuda would just wait until she could slip out of her chains and restart her plans to kill everyone.
• I Resemble That Remark!: Jack Slash hates it when people call the Nine murder-hobos, and will murder whoever said that along with anyone else nearby.
• Improperly Paranoid: No matter how many times Taylor states otherwise, the PRT still fears she'll be using her technology on people and demand her to surrender her weapons into their custody.
• Inspector Javert: Piggot fully devolves into one by Chapter 7, obsessing over capturing Taylor to the point where even mentioning Taylor's name is enough to raise her stress levels. When Armsmaster delivers the news that he was able to arrest Lung with Taylor's help, Piggot cares more about the fact that Taylor got away again and barely seems to acknowledge that one of Brockton Bay's major gang leaders is now behind bars. Not even Taylor proving her innocence and destroying Ellisburg is enough to make her give up on conscripting Taylor.
  Miss Militia: She's still being difficult.
  Armsmaster: Indeed. Any mention of Miss Hebert is enough to increase her stress and anger levels to an extent that may be untenable for long term function. Even more unfortunate, given our current situation, that avoiding the subject may not be possible.
• Ironic Death: Mannequin chose to isolate himself from the world by putting his organs into a robotic body. His death comes from being crushed like a can.
• It's All About Me: The narration makes it clear that what drives Jack Slash the most is his ego, and his belief that everything should revolve around him.
• Jaw Drop: Jack Slash's reaction when Taylor's drones completely ignore all of the Siberian's attacks.
• Karma Houdini: Downplayed with Piggot. While she managed to avoid being fired over her heavy-handed approach to Taylor, there's a new oversight committee that can review her actions, and even Armsmaster can tell that she's burned a lot of bridges over the debacle, and with numerous PRT employees working against her she's likely to lose her command before too long.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: In order to get the supplies she needs to establish a base in Mars, Taylor steals the entire contents of three supermarkets, as well as an entire junkyard (the latter is under control of the Empire 88, so she has no problem with that).
• Know When to Fold Them: In the aftermath of Leviathan's attack, both Kaiser and Coil have backed off from pushing their plans through, legitimately apprehensive of what Mechanicus might do if they try (well, Coil's been trying to kidnap Dinah Alcott, but every time he tried, he was waylaid by Mechanicus, so he was forced to stay put).
• Let's You and Him Fight: Tattletale's plan to deal with Lung was to call the heroes and attempt to have them fight Lung while she and the Undersiders escaped in the confusion. Mechanicus' intervention just made it easier for them to run.
• Make an Example of Them:
  • The reason the PRT was so heavy-handed in going after Taylor, to the point of having her father out her on TV (after telling him that unless he went along with what they were saying that they'd give her a kill order) and Piggot trying to force a draconian contract on her (described by everyone that read it as "contractual slavery"), is because the testimony of Sophia and her cronies made her out to be a villain deliberately targeting Sophia for being a Ward while she was in her secret identity (not helped by Sophia's bullying campaign and Winslow's covering for her giving them a completely inaccurate picture of Taylor's personality), and the measures were supposed to make sure that no one save the Nine would try something else like that again. When Taylor publishes the evidence showing that it was Sophia who attacked her, and as a civilian, the PRT loses a lot of face as a result. Piggot then informs Sophia that she'll be hung out to dry, itself an example of this to make sure that no one else tries to manipulate the PRT's measures to their benefit like she did.
  • Taylor destroys the Slaughterhouse Nine in a drawn-out manner and then publishes the full video as a warning of what she can do to anyone who thinks they can capture her and force her to work for them.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Contessa has a penchant for doing this when it comes to getting rid of people that could pose an obstacle to Cauldron. When Taylor gives protective charms to everyone in the Senate Committee in charge of handling PRT oversight, many of them note that the number of potentially deadly "accidents" has increased, and they have become more ludicrous with time: one of the Committee's members mentions that he nearly got hit by a roof tile while he was showering blown from a building a mile away, another had an entire truck dropped on them while he was on a bike, and a third nearly got hit by a prospective Ward Tinker's weapon misfiring and going through fourteen floors.
• Mercy Kill: Taylor kills Bakuda swiftly and painlessly with a combination of drugs, since she knows that there's no way that Bakuda will stay with the PRT if they capture her. Given that her initial idea was to blow up her head with a laser rifle, it was a better option.
• More Dakka: When it comes to putting down the Machine Army, Taylor brings forward a lot of heavy weaponry.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sophia's framing of Taylor (and, most importantly, the PRT's decision to immediately claim Taylor to be a villain, without an investigation) causes multiple problems for the heroes' side.
  • Whatever respect Taylor had for the organization vanishes as they try to arrest her without even considering her innocence. As some people in PHO point out later on, this lost them one of the most powerful Tinkers to ever show up.
    • Piggot's plan to force what is described as "contractual slavery" on her doesn't help, given that it would consist of Taylor being forcibly put into the Wards, making her hand over all of her technology to Armsmaster, and tying what few rights she might keep to her good behavior.
  • They also have Danny go on the media to out Taylor - both destroying Taylor's last bond with anyone and making her a prime target for the gangs.
  • When Taylor publishes every bit of proof she can find about her side of the story, the PRT is left with a lot of egg in their collective face.
• No Kill like Overkill:
  • When attacking the plane carrying Gessellschaft capes to America, she has the warplane dedicated to it fire into it until little more than a few pieces of scrap remain.
  • Taylor tests her first Titan weapon against the tanker blocking the access to Brockton Bay's port and Ellisburg. The latter is razed down to the bedrock.
  • She nearly turns the same weapon on the Nine, before deciding to carry out a more drawn out, fitting punishment.
  • She sends a Lokhust Heavy Destroyer (a tank-killing murder-bot) to kill Crawler.
  • Mannequin gets crushed into the size of a can by a gravitational singularity.
  • The plan to deal with Leviathan is actually called Operation Overkill. It features weapons that are much more powerful than what she used on Ellisburg.
  • Taylor's plan to kill the Sleeper involves bombardment of his position by Paragon of Terra. If that's not enough, she'll just portal him out of the way.
• No-Sell: While it is not shown, Taylor states in her narration that the EMP bomb Velocity planned to put on her back wouldn't have even tickled her technology.
• Noodle Incident: When asked what happened to the Body Double Done version 1, Taylor just mimics an explosion with her hands.
• Not So Above It All:
  • When she builds her first Knight, she decides to take it out on a joy ride, and begins to cackle and twirl on her chair when she reviews the data.
  • Taylor once complains that she's living in a tragedy because she's run out of decent tea.
  • When Taylor gets several millions of dollars from selling precious metals through a Swiss bank, one of the first things she does is to hunt down some expensive Swiss chocolate.
  • When she realizes that the PRT is sending sensors to allied countries in an attempt to track her, Taylor briefly considers sending a selfie to "lead" them to the North Pole or somewhere where a penguin of a particular species "accidentally" photobombs the entire thing. She only refrains from it because it would distract hero teams from fighting villains (not because getting a penguin to photobomb a picture is too hard).
• Nothing Is Scarier: Coil finds the throwaway timelines where he's eaten alive by Mechanicus' scarabs less scary than the ones where he just doesn't even know what happens.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The PRT is deliberately inefficient thanks to Cauldron, in order to ensure that as many Parahumans trigger as possible, in the hopes that they'll get lucky and one of said triggers will be useful against Scion (as well as making it look like only Parahumans can stop other Parahumans). Taylor gives the Senator in charge of PRT oversight all the information he needs to make the PRT an actual force that can protect people, along with protections against "accidents" that might kill him or the other committee workers.
• Offscreen Karma: It's mentioned that after Taylor published a mountain of evidence proving her innocence on PHO, just about every single Winslow High School staff member and PRT employee involved in covering up for Sophia's bullying and framing Taylor was either fired or arrested including Principal Blackwell and Sophia's handler.
• Oh, Crap!: The general reaction in PHO when Taylor fires the Plasma Annihilator for the first time - which gets worse when she uses it to destroy Ellisburg.
• Outside-Context Problem: Taylor's technology makes her a powerhouse even when she only has the basics to defend herself, due to how incredibly advanced even those basics are in comparison to current technology.
  • Plus, her skills and development run counter to the usual Tinker behavior, which makes it harder for the Protectorate to understand (or predict) how she works.
  • Due to how she's managed to set up a base in Mars, Contessa finds herself unable to Path a way to stop or kill her.
  • As she acquires all her resources from Mars and different asteroids, any attempt to track her through money is completely useless.
• Parental Neglect: When Danny is told about Taylor's supposed crimes, he signs over his guardianship of her without much discussion and outs her on public TV. After the deal breaks through when Taylor clears her name, he is denied guardianship but is granted a chance to regain it - but he chooses to reject it.
  • It is later revealed that Danny was pressured and manipulated by the PRT into signing out the guardianship under the belief that the heroes would "save" his daughter (and because they were threatening to sign a Kill Order). Furthermore, he was declared by the state to be mentally ineligible to take custody over Taylor. As a result, Danny blames himself for Taylor's situation.
• Pet the Dog:
  • When she finds a sleeping night guard in one of the supermarkets she's stealing, she makes it look like she caught the guy by surprise.
  • When using a PRT agent's home as a temporary safe house, she leaves an apology letter and enough money to cover the rental for a night and the food she ate.
  • Taylor sets up things so Purity won't be forced to deal with Kaiser anymore and keep custody of Theo and Aster, both because it helps the woman and because it would ensure she stops doing Kaiser's bidding. She also destroys a plane full of Gessellschaft capes coming to Brockton Bay at Kaiser's request to force Purity back into the Empire.
  • When Leviathan attacks Brockton Bay, Taylor doesn't hesitate in jumping to protect her hometown, even after everything she went through.
  • When Danny sells off their family home, Taylor buys it anonymously so she can keep and preserve her good memories of the place.
• Plausible Deniability: Part of why Piggot is able to keep her job is that she manages to claim that her draconian "contract" for Taylor was merely meant to scare her into good behavior instead of being a permanent thing if she was cooperative.
• Poke in the Third Eye: Tattletale gets a headache when she tries to use her power on Taylor's Body Double.
• Pragmatic Hero: Taylor has no problems with stealing entire supermarkets' worth of products and an entire junkyard for her Mars base. Save for those that are under Empire 88 control, she does intend to pay them back.
• Properly Paranoid: Due to the security measures she's learned through her Trigger event, Taylor knows quite well the importance of ensuring everything is protected. The few times she's almost cornered (either by the Protectorate or by villains) it's because she wasn't paranoid enough.
  • When asked why she won't work with the PRT, Taylor states that, given how much the organization leaks information, it would be less than a year before her weapons were copied and used all across the planet.
  • When recruiting the first members of the Skitarii, she gives them two implants, one that will prevent them from betraying her and another that will destroy their bodies and implants so no one can try to copy her inventions.
    • She also keeps surveillance of the people she's offered a job to make sure they won't sell her out to the PRT.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Piggot makes it obvious to Sophia how much her screw up has cost the Protectorate and PRT, and promises to bring down the hammer on her.
  Piggot: What did you expect, you little idiot? The provisions for retaliating to an identity reveal and lethal attack on a Ward are in place to ensure that nobody beyond the Slaughterhouse 9 will ever try. And you just triggered them on an innocent party. If the PRT doesn't want a riot by nearly every non-Protectorate cape in the country we need to prove that such measures cannot be used for our gain. Congratulations, you are about to get hung out to dry. I would start thinking about what you are going to say to your lawyer, I'd suggest starting with the truth, but I'm not sure you'd know what that was if it hit you in the ass.
  • Taylor states how little she thinks of the PRT and their Improperly Paranoid behavior several times.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: In spite of his early confrontative actions, Armsmaster becomes this, advocating for Taylor in several instances.
• Revealing Cover-Up: Cauldron is either a lot less subtle than they think they are, or are deliberately trying to cow the people in charge of PRT oversight into not doing anything, because the only reason that none of them have done anything to fix the PRT or Protectorate's issues is that Contessa arranges "accidents" for anyone that does try, which are notable to the survivors, if just for how their frequent and odd they are, making it an unspoken rule to not even discuss it even though everyone knows about it until Taylor gives them all devices to shield themselves and their families.
• Scare 'Em Straight: Piggot is able to avoid any direct punishment over Taylor's draconian "contract" by claiming via Plausible Deniability that it was merely meant to do this, and that she would have been given a more standard one if she'd behaved.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Taylor decides to build herself a base in Mars, both to evoke her Mechanicus "mentors"' work and to get away from Earth, where both gangs and government agencies are trying to hunt her down.
  • The Yangban members that did not turn on the CUI after Null, One, and Two's fiery deaths choose instead to run away and attempt to escape the country.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The PRT goes after Taylor because they believe she's trying to out Sophia as a Parahuman. Taylor wasn't aware of this, but the consequences of the ensuing manhunt ensure everyone learns that Sophia is Shadow Stalker.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: After Taylor tests her Plasma Annihilator (showing at the same time she can fire it through her portals) someone at PHO asks if the PRT couldn't send something through the portal to neutralize the weapon before it fires. Someone else points out that it would require (a) knowing where and when a portal would open, (b) sending people in the very short window of time between the portal opening and the Annihilator firing, and (c) said people being able to tank the explosion of the gun after it is destroyed. And that's if the portal isn't just one-way.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Sophia, who never would have gotten away with what she was doing for as long as she did if Blackwell, her handler, and Coil weren't covering for her. When Piggot calls her out for not considering that someone might look more closely into what happened with Taylor and find out that Taylor was the victim and not the aggressor like the psychotic Ward claimed, even if the girl was caught or killed, due to Sophia's false testimony triggering one of the biggest and most damaging man-hunts the PRT is capable of, Sophia genuinely doesn't seem to think that she was in the wrong to bully Taylor like that, and tries to claim that she's the Bay's most effective Ward, Piggot countering by pointing out that her unprofessional conduct means that most of her collars get off, and even disregarding that Vista catches more than she does. The former Ward is then informed that she's going to have the book thrown at her for triggering countermeasures designed to make sure that no one short of the Nine will do what she claimed Taylor did, and that she's going to be hung out to dry to make sure that no one else tries to manipulate them like she did.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Taylor loses two of her temporary refuges because of minor things. The first because she used the house's WiFi to post a message in PHO and got tracked by Dragon, and the second because a voyeur accidentally saw one of her drones and reported it to Oni Lee.
  • Armsmaster realizes there's a mole when he notices that the system he set up to detect Taylor's technology keeps sending messages to a third party.
• Straight for the Commander: Someone massacres the Chinese Union-Imperial leadership during a full cabinet meeting.
• Suicidal Pacifism: Several of the PRT people Taylor recruits became disgusted with the organization because they were prevented from using potentially lethal measures even when faced with Parahumans that were trying to kill them - one of them lost his legs and left arm to a Cape that murdered thousands of people in a few hours while the Protectorate Capes let said Cape do whatever and the PRT troopers were killed while armed only with con foam sprayers (with the capture of said Cape possibly being more the result of them tiring themselves out from the slaughter than Protectorate action).
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Taylor decides against having a penguin "accidentally" photobomb her and send the heroes on a wild goose chase because it would distract the heroes from actual criminals... not because getting a penguin to do something like that is surprisingly hard.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine:
  • Sophia ruins Taylor's life by invoking the Protectorate's protocols to make an example out of anyone threatening a Ward's life. When the truth is revealed, the Protectorate proceeds to make an example out of Sophia for manipulating them.
  • Taylor, learning of the Nine wanting to draw her out and either kill or make her a member of their group, decides to not only kill them, but make it so their last days on Earth are about them suffering the same kind of horror-movie-worthy events they have inflicted on hundreds of people.
    • She kidnaps Bonesaw and all her spiderbots in the dead of the night, and kills her along with all her dead-man-trigger diseases she had prepared, with none of the Nine being the wiser until the next morning.
    • She sets up an incendiary bomb to destroy Murder Rat, exploding when the Nine are settling up the next night.
    • Right after that, she kills Burnscar in front of the entire group with a Warp Spider drone.
    • The next morning, she sends the Warp Spider again to distract Crawler so she can set him up for a Necron Lokhust Heavy Destroyer to kill.
    • She kills Shatterbird without any kind of warning, much like she's destroyed entire cities with her singing without any warning.
    • William Manton is killed by a drone that is unstoppable and cannot be hit if it doesn't want - much like the Siberian.
    • Jack Slash gets killed after being hunted for days, put through the wringer as he realizes his own mortality, and finally put down after having his philosophy ripped apart.
• That Man Is Dead: In a variation, Taylor decides her father died the same day as her mother after she learns that he gave up his guardianship of her without a fight and rejected an offer to regain it.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • Despite her heavy dislike of the Protectorate, Taylor sends Armsmaster and Dragon plans for a better Endbringer notification system and armbands and later on, she sends Armsmaster all the info she's hacked out of Coil's servers.
  • Her destruction of the ship blocking the bay is seen as this by several people, as a sort of parting gift to her hometown.
• Too Dumb to Live: Taylor's opinion of the Undersiders for robbing a casino without checking its owner's identity or ensuring they wouldn't be identified.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness:
  • Much of the drama of the story derives from how the PRT went on the warpath against Taylor and publicly marked her as a villain before doing enough investigation to make sure she was actually one.
  • Discussed and Averted in Taylor's case. Knowing how devastating a decision made on an impulsive reaction could be, Taylor keeps up several protocols that will prevent her drones from acting if she's mentally compromised.
• Start My Own:
  • Taylor starts her own organization, aimed at fighting any threats to humanity, including villains.
  • After Leviathan's death, Hookwolf privately decides to split off from Kaiser and start his own gang.
• Villainous Breakdown: After Taylor cuts off Bakuda's connection to her shard, Bakuda throws a huge tantrum.
  • Sophia lets out a loud scream of rage after Piggot throws the book at her.
• Weather of War: Taylor notes that the weather condition Leviathan causes when it attacks is just as good a weapon as anything else it wields.
  Moving towards the PRT building was like trying to hike up a ridiculously steep hill. Heavy and hard rain slammed into unprotected skin worse than hailstones. The skies themselves were dark and close, reducing daylight and temperatures. Visibility itself was down to a couple of dozen feet at most and cut nearly everyone off from anyone around them.
  It was an atmosphere designed to carefully enhance the despair the creatures carried with them, combined with their reputations and most capes were unnerved before so much as catching sight of the incoming disaster.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • Alexandria reflects on her (and Cauldron's) actions in the aftermath of the Slaughterhouse Nine's destruction, pondering if they really are this or it's just what they are telling themselves to feel better about everything they do.
  • Taylor doesn't care much about rule of law. As long as (a) it helps save humanity and (b) it isn't against her morality, such things can take a hike.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Taylor calls out the Protectorate heroes that try to arrest her for not even bothering to listen to her side of the story before labeling her a villain and destroying any chance she might have had of a normal life.
  • The dockworkers massively called out Danny for outing Taylor without even bothering to wait for her side of the story. Several of them even quit their jobs at the union out of disgust.
  • Legend reads the riot act to Alexandria and Eidolon for their ham-fisted attempt to "recruit" Mechanicus.
• What You Are in the Dark: When Taylor learns that Lung is going to target the Undersiders, nobody else knows that she does. She could have perfectly stayed in Mars, and no one would have known. Hell, she also heavily dislikes Tattletale because she was helping Coil in his attempts to capture her. And yet, she sends her drones to stop Lung, because she doesn't want people to die if she had a chance to stop it.
• With Great Power Comes Great Opposition: Seems to be a Central Theme for this fic as the more powerful Taylor's technology turns out to be, the more people are willing to discard all rationality to try and capture her so they can get it themselves. Initially, the PRT/Protectorate were after Taylor because she had been framed by Sophia and made out to be a dangerous villain by her (lying) classmates and teachers at school. Once Taylor proves her innocence, however, the PRT ENE continue to hunt her. While this is partially due to them wanting to keep Taylor safe and prevent her from being recruited by the gangs now that her secret identity is public knowledge, their main reason for trying to capture her is because she demonstrated she was a powerful Tinker (and also out of pride because the way Taylor proved her innocence publicly humiliated Piggot). However, the majority of PRT is willing to let Taylor be and it's mostly just Piggot's ENE branch that's hunting her out of a personal vendetta. However, when Taylor later destroys Ellisburg and kills the entire Slaughterhouse Nine, she becomes the focus of the entire PRT and even some foreign governments because they refuse to allow anyone to have the kind of firepower that Taylor does. When Taylor kills Leviathan, she becomes the number one target of every major government in the world and Cauldron, who are happily willing to discard all traditions and regulations just for a chance to catch her.
• Wrecked Weapon:
  • Taylor destroys Armsmaster's halberd in two moves, leaving him with just a piece of the haft.
  • She uses a drone to destroy Victor's assault rifle, knocking him out of his invincibility status and allowing Velocity to arrest him.

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