Fanfic / Price of Blood

I could feel every bug in my radius. Normally it was about one and a half to two blocks; right now, it was all the way out to four blocks. I had no idea why, but I wasn't arguing. I grabbed every one of those points of light that could bite or sting or even annoy someone, and gave them the same order. Come here. Help me.

When a group of five boys chase down and attempt to rape Taylor Hebert at Sophia Hess's prompting, she calls on her bugs to defend her. But when one of the five knocks her out, her bugs continue to carry out the last orders she gave them. By the time Taylor regains consciousness the death toll has reached nearly three hundred, and Brockton Bay will never again be the same.

Price of Blood is a Worm fanfic by ack1308. The story can be read here on FanFiction.Net, here on SpaceBattles.com, here on Sufficient Velocity.com, and here on Questionable Questing.

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This work contains examples of:

• Alas, Poor Villain: The Undersiders are villains to varying degrees, but ultimately were just kids whose circumstances drove them into criminal lives; Shadow Stalker viciously murdering them is tragic. Especially as Tattletale lives long enough to be found by Taylor (her friend in another life), who sees her as the frightened fellow teen she really is and promises to both inform Grue’s sister and make sure Stalker is brought to justice. Even leaving all of that out, they were about to turn in Sophia and skip town, which would have made everyone's lives easier... but that got cut short.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: An employee at Denny's gets interviewed for saving people from the Swarm, and he admits that he initially thought it was a Zombie attack because of how people were moving and acting (he couldn't see the bugs at that distance, only people staggering around). When called on the fact that zombies don't exist, he points out that Capes exist, and therefore something that brings back the dead isn't outside the realm of possibility.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Nobody who knows how the Swarmbringer incident was set off spares an iota of sympathy for the boys who tried to rape Taylor.
  • Sophia, in the later parts of the story, starts getting hit again and again with unfortunate circumstances, though a good portion of them are either her fault or an attempt by Coil to make her a disposable asset.
  • The Undersiders are, from a legal and moral point of view, still villains (despite their sympathetic portrayal) with multiple crimes under their belts. In chapter 18, Sophia kills them all.
• Author Appeal: Ack hits a few notes that he's hit in other stories of his- Amy getting out of the Dallon household and becoming friends with Taylor, Sophia getting caught, and the administration of Winslow getting hit by the PRT's hammer.
• Bittersweet Ending: Brockton Bay is in a more stable place than canon, with the looming threat of Coil neutralised, Winslow held to account for their negligence and Sophia stopped, but it cost nearly three hundred (mostly innocent) lives. Taylor is traumatised by her ordeal and will have to live with the deaths on her conscience, and also must hide her true powers so as to avoid public scrutiny, but she has a support system and friends who have her back, and can become a hero to atone for her actions.
• Career-Ending Injury: During the mall raid, Aegis takes one of Sophia’s “tranq” darts to the brain; while Panacea saves him, the damage to his Corona Pollentia has made it very likely his cape career is over.
• Catch-22 Dilemma: Carol finds herself caught within one. She suspects that the PRT is up to something secret with regard to the Swarmbringer, but the only way she can find out what is to sign an NDA that prevents her from revealing anything.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Coil gets killed well before he was in canon when he gets beaten to death by Piggot.
  • Chapter 18 sees Shadow Stalker ambush and kill all the Undersiders.
  • Chapter 19 shows Shadow Stalker dead at the hands of Taylor's armor. While it initially seems like Taylor did that unintentionally, it turns out Dragon did it and no one was told otherwise.
• Death Glare: When Lisa hints that she knows Sophia's civilian identity, "the glare of pure hatred Spectre sent Lisa should by rights have dropped the Thinker dead in her tracks."
• Didn't See That Coming: Tattletale knew that following Coil's death, Shadow Stalker would go after them. But she thought that SS would return to her vigilante habits and strike them in the streets. She didn't predict that Shadow Stalker would be persistent enough to directly go for their hideout and ambush them.
• Dramatic Irony: Velocity laughs off the idea that there could be a mole in the PRT... when a few chapters earlier, one of Coil's goons reported to him that Taylor was being held in the headquarters.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • The PRT thinks that Shadow Stalker is aware of Coil's identity as Calvert.
  • Sophia thinks she has a good judge of people's character. She says this while thinking about how Calvert really cares about the city, and the mission of cleaning it up.
• Extreme Omnivore: Taylor successfully has her cockroaches eat the duct tape she was bound with, which probably saved her life, since the tape would have obstructed her breathing and she had a broken nose.
  Armsmaster: Cockroaches can and will eat essentially anything organic.
• False Flag Operation: Reed, when caught, tries to implicate that he's working for Kaiser, despite him being paid by Coil. Thanks to Gallant, they're able to tell he has connections to Coil.
• Felony Murder: The Swarm incident that killed almost 300 people was the result of five jocks attempting to rough up Taylor (and worse). Sophia is found liable for all deaths related to the Swarm incident. Felony Murder is even name-dropped and explained in the fic itself.
• Foreshadowing: Dragon shows she's able to take command of Taylor's suit when she goes on her first test walk and flight. She does it again to make the suit snap Sophia's neck.
• Frame-Up: Coil, in his identity as Commander Calvert, calls up Sophia before her involvement in Triggering Taylor comes into light, already well aware of what she did. He offers her the "chance" to slip the PRT's leash and indulge her Cowboy Cop tendencies to the fullest for a while. To give her an in into Brockton's criminal element, she'd be presented as a fugitive, with the expectation she'd later be revealed as an undercover Hero and allowing Calvert to present her success as a stepping stone in his career. When the very real charges against Stalker come up, Calvert gives her the signal to escape the PRT, completing the illusion that she fled because she knew she was in trouble. She swallows the entire thing hook, lure and sinker. Later, Coil supplies Sophia with darts for her crossbow, telling her they're filled with anaesthetic. It's actually a potent neurotoxin, as he's gambling on her killing enough people before she realizes how lethal the darts really are that she'll be branded a Villain with either a Kill Order or a Birdcage sentence, ensuring that she'll never be able to leave Coil's "protection".
• Godzilla Threshold: Taylor would have just endured being robbed, rather than outing herself to drive off her attackers with bees and wasps. But when she realizes that they're going to rape her, she throws that aside and summons her swarms.
• Good is Not Nice: While the PRT ultimately does help Taylor, discussions between Armsmaster and Director Piggot make it clear that killing Taylor while she's unconscious or putting her into the Birdcage are options they're considering, based on how destructive what happened was.
• Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Mark Dallon doesn't say anything in response to Carol spilling everything about how It's All My Fault; he just goes to the kitchen and brings back a tub of ice-cream. And puts a spoon in her hand.
  This isn't me. I don't do ice-cream therapy. Digging into the tub, she came out with a spoonful of ice-cream and ate it. It was really, really good.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: To cover the fact that Taylor is the Swarmbringer, a parahuman who controls insects, the PRT introduce her as... Scarab, a parahuman who controls insects. Or rather, they pull the same trick as they do with Gallant- by disguising a person with one potentially questionable power as a Parahuman with a similar, but Tinker-based power, they are able to say that Taylor is a Tinker whose power is related to controlling insects. The reason for this is that she (theoretically) Triggered in the middle of the Swarm.
• Hypocrite: Carol kicks Amy out of New Wave because she can't be trusted, as she attacked her mother in the back. Therefore she's a danger to everyone in New Wave. What Carol leaves out of that explanation is that to get to that point, she broke a promise she made to Vicky and Amy (not going in with an open mind) and tries to carve her way out of a moving vehicle (that both her daughters were in) with her powers. Even assuming that Vicky would be all right because of her invulnerability, that could have killed a lot of people.
• Laugh Themselves Sick: When Tattletale's super-intuition lets her figure out the snare that Sophia has landed in, she laughs so hard that she first has trouble speaking, and then falls off the couch.
• Manipulative Bastard: Coil, as per canon. All it takes to turn Sophia into his puppet was the chance to indulge herself in the vigilante lifestyle she still craves.
• The Mole: Sophia goes undercover as a mole in Coil's organisation. Or so she thinks. In reality, Coil recruited her himself, in his Thomas Calvert identity, with the intention of her gradually Becoming the Mask. Tattletale recognises what's going on and finds the situation hilarious.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Taylor's reaction when she realizes all her rapists are dead. The PRT wisely doesn't immediately let her know her bugs ended up killing nearly three hundred, giving her time to mentally recover a bit first.
  • If it wasn't for Amy and her father being there for her, she might have fallen over the Despair Event Horizon when she finds out the true cost.
    “Taylor.” Panacea let go my hand; a moment later, I felt her wrap her arms around me. “I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. It was two hundred and seventy-three people.”
    … two …
    “What?” I nearly screamed the word. “No! Not that many! How? How?”
    … hundred …
    “Shh, shh ...” Dad's voice was soothing in my ear as he stroked my hair. “It just happened. Your powers were really widespread. It's not your fault.”
    … seventy …
    I bucked against Panacea's hug, not sure why I was fighting. “No! I don't believe it! It's not true! How could I do that?”
    … three …
    I felt Panacea's cheek against mine. It was wet with tears; hers or mine, I wasn't sure. “You didn't do it, Taylor. You didn't do it. You stopped the Swarm as soon as you woke up. You saved lives. It's Shadow Stalker who killed them. Not you.”
    … people …
    I pushed away from Panacea, tears running down my cheeks, and screamed.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Carol's impulsive disowning of Amy and firing her from New Wave in the middle of Piggot's office is viewed, In-Universe, as a massively stupid move. It allows Director Piggot to sell Amy, AKA the single greatest healer in the world and one of the main reasons that New Wave is still relevant, a Wards membership, and then, out of solidarity, Vicky, AKA the Golden Girl of the Second Generation of New Wave and their unofficial mascot, quits the team and joins the Wards as well.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: When Coil attempts to kidnap Piggot, not only does she turn his plan on him, she tases him twice, puts on a pair of brass knuckles and goes to town on his face.
• No Ontological Inertia: Spectacularly Averted in the story's basic premise. When Taylor is knocked out, every bug within four blocks of her continues to carry out her last orders, which were "Help … attack …". Awareness of this trope has changed Taylor's methods of operation — by chapter 19, she openly says that she won't use bugs to attack people again, having learned what can happen if she's knocked out and her bugs are doing something.
• Oh, Crap!: Carol gets a fairly substantial one when she hears that Vicky isn't calling Amy after Carol kicked Amy out of New Wave — Vicky's calling Sarah, leader of New Wave and Carol's older sister.
• Perpetual Frowner: Director Piggot doesn't smile at Taylor when she comes in, but that's okay, because Taylor is fairly sure that she only smiles for really important events, "such as the defeat of an Endbringer."^note The Endbringers have never really been defeated, only pushed back.
• Plot Allergy: Most of the deaths from the Swarm were a result of allergies to bee and wasp stings. Justified since the Swarm hit everyone within several blocks; with enough people affected, some will be allergic.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Undersiders prefer to do smash and grab jobs, keeping damage to people to a minimum, because this makes them low priority targets. When Shadow Stalker attacks and seriously injures the Wards and law enforcement officials trying to stop them in their latest job, they kick her out. When it turns out that her tranq gun was loaded with a potentially deadly neurotoxin and that several of the people who she shot are dead as a result, the rest of the Undersiders decide to catch her and turn her in themselves to keep Sophia's recklessness from getting them charged with Felony Murder. Unfortunately for them, Sophia finds them first and murders them all from ambush.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Lady Photon gives in to Vicky's request to stay at her house, but "she still thought puppy-dog eyes of that level should be given their own Master rating."
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The PRT gets much more sympathetic of what happened to Taylor when they realized that she was about to be raped when her power went out of control. Even Carol, who was gung-ho about letting the media know that the PRT had the Swarmbringer in custody, says that the ones who tried to rape her "got what they deserved."
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The PRT are very accommodating of Taylor once they realize she never meant for those deaths to happen, especially when she initially despairs over killing her would-be-rapists, not knowing yet of the other deaths she caused. They also do everything to show Taylor that they are on her side, including investigating the bullying. Even when Taylor shows panic attacks at the thought of being forced into the Wards, they decide to support her in her efforts to become a hero (even if she is an Independent Hero and not directly under their umbrella).
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
  • Carol is a deconstruction of this. The day she goes to the PRT, she tries to do what she thinks is the right thing- kicking out a member of the team who attacked another and trying to spread the word that the government is holding a dangerous fugitive in their base. The problem is that she's not well mentally, so what's "Right" is based on a black-and-white view of the world that ignores details such as "the person who attacked her was trying to stop her from carving her way out of a moving car," and "Revealing details about the Swarmbringer could have caused riots and lynch mobs."
  • Even when Calvert is running around PRT HQ and the three in the Wards Base are forbidden from leaving (Vista, Taylor, Panacea), Vista declares that she doesn't care and gets the three to the Mall. While Vista and Panacea get punished for violating orders (Taylor gets out because she isn't under the command of the PRT), the action saved several lives by getting Panacea to several people suffering from neurotoxins. That said, the punishment was very light, and was basically there to say that they can't have people running around and disobeying orders, but they do appreciate the results of the broken orders.
  • The epilogue reveals that contrary to what everyone else thinks, Taylor didn't give the subconscious order to have her armor snap Shadow Stalker's neck — Dragon took control for a second to do that in order to save Taylor's life and to prevent Sophia from escaping.
  • Shadow Stalker is this to the end, in her almost childishly naive belief in Commander Calvert's "orders" to infiltrate Brockton's criminal circles. She thinks that the arrest warrants she's being slapped with are fakes supplied by Calvert, presenting her as a criminal, and follows Coil's commands as close as she can, imagining that one day she'll be "revealed" as a hero, never realizing Coil is merely playing her for a fool. Even after Coil gets killed, she keeps desperately trying to reach Calvert for more orders.
• Selective Obliviousness: Sophia briefly hesitates when robbing the jewelry store, thinking doing so will turn her into a real criminal. This is despite the fact she regularly shoplifts, mugged a lady for fun mere minutes before, besides her canon bullying campaign. Later she nearly kills Glory Girl by phasing a knife into her chest, yet stubbornly sticks to her naive belief that she's an undercover Hero who will be eventually regarded again as an upstanding citizen.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Carol in regards to New Wave. She certainly thinks their team is a big deal, but Sarah spells out that the team as a whole is completely irrelevant in most people's eyes. The adults are all semi-retired and only do PR events while Crystal and Eric focus on their schooling to the exclusion of heroing, leaving Vicky the only member who actually does patrols and fights criminals while Amy is the most famous healer in the world. So far as everyone is concerned, New Wave is "Panacea, Glory Girl, and etc." in that order.
• Take a Third Option: The Protectorate decides to do this with Taylor- she wants to be a hero, and the Swarm was due to events outside of her control. That said, she doesn't want to join the Protectorate or the Wards, and they figure that stressing out the woman who can create a Swarm would be a bad idea. Therefore, they have Taylor act as an independent heroine, with Tinker gear supplied by the Protectorate. This keeps her within their orbit, allowing them to keep an eye on her, while at the same time encouraging her goals, keeping Taylor thinking kindly of them, and getting another hero in a city that desperately needs it.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: When she flees from the Protectorate, Coil sends Sophia to join the Undersiders. Neither party is at all happy with that, but neither side dares disobey Coil.
• These Hands Have Killed: Upon waking up and starting to recall the attack, Taylor's first reaction is to break down, remembering that she killed two boys. Then she learns that all five attackers died, and bursts into tears. Armsmaster decides to hold off on telling her the full death toll, seeing that it would shatter her.
  I'm a murderer. No, I'm a mass murderer. God help me.
• Villainous Lineage: Carol apparently believes that since Amelia's father was a supervillain, Amelia must be evil as well. Vicky calls her out on how stupid that is, because evil is not genetic.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 18 has Shadow Stalker kill off the Undersiders.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • After the disastrous meeting with Director Piggot and kicking Panacea out of New Wave, Vicky decides to quit New Wave in solidarity with Panacea, and Sarah (leader of New Wave) tells Carol to, basically, 'Go home, you've screwed up enough for one day.'
  • Vicky gives one to Amy when she hears that Amy healed Swarmbringer. She retracts it when she hears the circumstances.
• Woken Up at an Ungodly Hour: Director Piggot is not at all happy to be woken by a work related call when she's at home. But she can tell from the ringtone being used, and the fact that someone had the audacity to use it, that it really is important.
  Still, she had a whole store of acerbic phrases ready to be used on the first of her subordinates who used the emergency line for a non-urgent situation. It hadn't happened yet, but she lived in hope.

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