Danny: They started it. I'm finishing it.
Collateral Damage is a Worm fanfiction by ack1308, and inspired by another of his stories, Are You Afraid of the Dark? (Worm) — but taken to the extreme. Instead of merely being a highly trained Professional Killer, Danny is a Tinker specialising in Disproportionate Retribution and calling himself Ragnarok. Now his daughter has been hurt, and the world will regret it.
It is available on SpaceBattles.com (here
), Sufficient Velocity.com (here
), FanFiction.Net (here
), and Questionable Questing (here
).
These tropes are in the blast zone:
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Shadow Stalker, cornered by Taylor on the roof of Winslow, chooses to shoot herself in the head with her own weapon instead of letting Taylor kill her.
- Bullying a Dragon: Brandish is warned three times that she's standing before the daughter of Ragnarok, who's wearing a Ragnarok-made amulet that's just given Glory Girl a massive stroke. Brandish refuses to acknowledge this (believing her powers are able to protect her) and attacks Taylor in an attempt to arrest her. Brandish turns into a fine mist on the spot.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- This is practically Danny's motto. His standard approach is to return any attack tenfold, and that's the effect of the amulet that he gives Taylor. The story opens with him in the process of annihilating the entirety of China (with its billion-plus population) because the CUI (whom he's already reduced to ash) got his wife killed — and that was technically unintentional, they meant to kidnap her instead.
- Taylor follows in her father's footsteps after she Triggers, as she takes her new explosive bug powers and hunts down and murders Madison and Emma. She also completely levels Winslow High School in the process, afterwards joining her father in his rampage against every villain in Brockton Bay.
- The Dreaded: Ragnarok is everyone's undisputed "scariest cape in the world". Even someone as sarcastic and emotionally dead as Regent knows there's no question about it.
- Driven to Suicide: After getting demoted from Director to Deputy Director and being forced by Director Renick to hand over her "black file" (her accumulated blackmail/circumstantial evidence of local capes) to Ragnarok in order to comply with his demands, Emily Piggot tenders her formal resignation over the phone to Renick and chooses to shoot herself in her own office shortly afterward.
- Flashy Teleportation: Danny's teleporter leaves mushroom clouds. He can adjust it to shift the effect toward either the source or destination, but even when he chooses to leave most of the explosion at the source, he still wrecks three cars at his destination and damages several more.
- Ghost City: The surviving Endbringers only attack Perth, Australia, due to it being the farthest point from Danny's current home of Brockton Bay. As a result, Perth and its surrounding communities are essentially abandoned; Taylor can't recall if any capes bother to defend the city anymore, aside from Eidolon.
- Godzilla Threshold: Prior to the story, Danny killed Behemoth — and the Triumvirate still isn't sure whether it was worthwhile, since he turned the whole city of Houston into a radioactive crater, with more casualties than Behemoth's previous three attacks combined. He has been politely asked to never show up to another Endbringer battle again.
- Horrifying the Horror: After Danny kills Behemoth, even the Simurgh stays over the horizon from him at all times. She and Leviathan only attack Perth, Australia.
- I Have Your Wife: The CUI tried to kidnap Annette to get leverage over Danny. Unfortunately for everyone, they messed up and killed her instead during their attempt, upon which Danny set out to wipe China off the map.
- Immune to Mind Control:
- Ragnarok's tech retaliates against mental influences just like physical ones. Glory Girl suffers a stroke when her aura touches Taylor. Heartbreaker tries to enslave Danny, and is found later with his brain half-melted and eyeballs exploded. Victor tries to siphon some of Taylor's skills, only to also have his brain melted.
- A more elaborate example happens with Coil. Coil attempts to run a simulation where his mercenaries attack Ragnarok. Danny's shard notices that Coil's shard is observing Danny, registers the psychic flash (that sets up the simulation) as an attack, and overloads the simulation when Ragnarok in the other timeline blows up Coil in his base. This hits Coil in the "safe" timeline, damaging his office enough to automatically set off his base's self destruct and knock him out long enough to get caught in the blast.
- Knight Templar Parent: After losing his wife Annette to China's incompetent kidnapping attempt, Danny was only convinced to stand down because the Triumvirate assured that they'd make sure that his daughter would be safe for the rest of her life. Once the locker incident happens and Taylor Triggers, Danny decides to obliterate every possible threat in Brockton Bay to keep her from getting harmed again, doesn't give a damn who else dies for this to happen, and will never rein himself in again.
- Literal Disarming: Ragnarok once blew off Eidolon's arm when Eidolon hassled him about the fate of Houston. Eidolon was able to grow it back, but they both know it was just a warning shot.It said something about Ragnarok that the loss of a limb counted as 'restraint'.
- Loophole Abuse: Crusader thinks he's found one by picking up Ragnarok's hammer and having his ghosts copy it, since he thinks that his version of the Tinkertech weapon will bypass Taylor's protection from it. Not only it doesn't work, since it's not the actual weapon anymore, it triggers Taylor's amulet and turns Crusader into chunks.
- Ludicrous Gibs:
- Brandish of New Wave attempts to blast Taylor, and ends up coating everything and everyone nearby in their liquidized viscera.There were no large pieces, no intact bones, no recognisable organs. It was almost as though she'd been spread like butter, or perhaps run through a woodchipper and sprayed evenly over the area.
- A swing of Taylor's hammer sends Kaiser, begging for his life, through a wall — or rather, all the walls.I wasn't sure all of him had made it out of the building, but I didn't much care either.
- Another swing treats Alabaster similarly to if he had multiple grenades go off inside him, leaving people wiping him out of their eyes.
- Brandish of New Wave attempts to blast Taylor, and ends up coating everything and everyone nearby in their liquidized viscera.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: The Triumvirate barely manages to convince Danny to hang up his cape, doing everything in their power to assure him that he and his daughter will never be bothered again. Two and a half years later, this effort is singlehandedly ruined by the Brockton Bay PRT, who are unaware that Danny Hebert is Ragnarok (to prevent further leaks of his civilian identity). Legend personally made sure that a Ward would be in Winslow in order to keep Taylor safe, but the Brockton Bay PRT doesn't perform due diligence and sends Shadow Stalker to prevent bullying in the school.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Faced with the prospect of Ragnarok on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, even though the Undersiders aren't the target, even the normally unflappable and apathetic Regent is legitimately terrified.Regent: Is it too late to find another universe to live in?
- Poor Communication Kills: In order to avoid leaks like the one that led to Annette's death, the Triumvirate made damn sure no one in the PRT ENE knew that Ragnarok was Danny Hebert, and Legend had them send a Ward to Winslow to make sure there was no bullying around, but without mentioning Taylor was there. Unfortunately (for them), they send Shadow Stalker, who screws everything up and triggers a new Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Pummeling the Corpse: Legend points out to Ragnarok that since he's already destroyed China's leadership and its parahumans, everyone who could be at fault for his loss, and their neighbours will soon tear what's left to shreds, all he's doing now is kicking the corpse of a country. Danny isn't impressed, but he ultimately lets himself be talked down.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Ragnarok broke China as a country after his wife was killed, destroying its entire government and cape population, and the Triumvirate barely managed to talk him down from continuing to bombard what was left of the country and retire. Then his retirement is interrupted by a vicious attack on his daughter, and he gets back in the saddle...
- Scarpia Ultimatum: Heartbreaker demands a night with Alexandria as part of his price for pacifying Ragnarok. Eidolon and Legend want to refuse, but Alexandria is willing to do what it takes to end Ragnarok's threat. It becomes moot when Heartbreaker tries to control Danny and gets his brain melted for his troubles.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Danny's defensive technology causes massive destruction, returning attacks to their sender with tenfold interest. His teleporter explodes with enough force to produce mushroom clouds at his destination or from where he departs. His actual offensive weaponry simply obliterates the target, and everything nearby, and everything behind it, as far as the eye can see.He was constitutionally incapable of building anything that could perform a pinpoint strike.
