A Bad Name
is a crossover fic written by Potato Nose and posted on Spacebattles Dot Com.
It starts when Peter Gardner - some homeless bum trying to make a living by helping the Merchants - triggers with the Gamer's power after being shot down by the cops. In the purest Worm style, everything starts going downhill for him afterwards.
Unfortunately for the world, our protagonist is not ready to bend.
Contains the following tropes:
- And I Must Scream: Spurt spends six hours keeping Crawler occupied in the only way he could think of: playing off the similarity between Spurt's adaptive defenses and Crawler's adaptive mutations. This involves, among other things, being eaten alive, dissolved, and at one point nearly decapitated. Not to mention, the continued attack on Spurt's privates.
- Atrocious Alias: Skidmark christened his newest subordinate Spurt because blood had squirted on his shirt. The PRT temporarly nicknames him Stoner, which isn't much better.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Peter decided to stick with the Merchants because they were ready to give him some way of subsisting while he still was on the streets.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Up til the Slaughterhouse Nine come to Brockton Bay, Spurt has done his best to not hurt anyone if he could help it. He's killed two of them, and seems dead set on killing the rest by whatever means possible.
- The Call Knows Where You Live: Peter really would like a quiet life. Chevalier dismisses this as a pipe dream - a cape always find themselves dragged within conflict.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Skidmark flat-out refuses to bow down to Contessa, telling her HE found Spurt and he's going to KEEP him. And he perfectly knows she's the Boogeyman, he just don't give a flaming fuck. A reviewer was amazed his balls hadn't collapsed into a pair of singularities.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Of course Spurt is a druggie, he's a Merchant, and a Merchant can't possibly be firing on every cylinder due to be doped up, right?
- The more Spurt displays his array of powers, the more the Protectorate thinks he's actually a grab-bag cape - someone who gained different abilities by virtue of triggering in a cluster. "Brandon Gammer" appearing only comforted them it was the right answer.
- Heroic BSoD: Following his victory over the Slaughterhouse Nine, Spurt goes completely catatonic as the sheer weight of the trauma he has experienced catches up to him.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Spurt surprises very much the people he interacts with by being actually decent for a Merchant. Being framed for Battery's murder didn't diminish his fundamental humanity.
- Holding Out for a Hero: Civilians fell very deep in this mindset. Brandon manages to shake them down enough when they are trapped in a quickly flooding Endbringer shelter for making them save themselves.
- Love Makes You Evil: Assault was so enraged by his wife's murder he was ready to murder the man he thought responsible for it in a public space.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Everyone looks down on the Merchants because they're loud and dumb. Which is perfect as a facade for subtler operations.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Piggot is this. Not only she's ready to offer Spurt a chance to join the Protectorate, she believes him when he denies having murdered Battery.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Skidmark is apparently unable to say more than three words without cussing. Peter also manages to turn the air blue on some occasions.
- There Is Another: Circus also gained the Gamer's ability. Peter finds it very weird since powers aren't supposed to be perfectly the same.
- Transparent Alias: Brandon Gammer.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Spurt went monkey-poo on Alpine - a fresh independent hero - when dude tried to sneer at Skidmark, brutally shattering his Black-and-White Morality. Alpine took Spurt's words very strongly and worked to improve himself as a person since.
- Director-Chief Costa-Brown was a mite upset with Chevalier for interviewing a potential cape recruit while he was running on caffeine and thirty hours of wakefulness, leading him to thoroughly botch the deal.
