Fanfic / Intrepid

Taylor "Ariadne" and Elle "Labyrinth"
Art by Abyranss

Part of me wanted to scream that it had been both of us, that Madison and I had both told the truth and that I never wanted to see her psychotic face again. But I didn't. Not because I actually wanted to be friends with Sophia, but because I didn't want her to know just how much I despised her, and myself. I didn't want her to know that until I found some way of getting Taylor the justice that she deserved, the justice that the PRT and the authorities had refused to deliver.

Intrepid is an Alternate Universe Worm fanfic by Cerulean.

In an Alternate Universe of Worm, the locker prank ends with Taylor in a vegetative state. This event ends up with the terrible trio splitting apart and ending up in different schools. Unbeknownst to one another, Taylor, Madison, and Emma end up triggering as well and each sets out on a different path, with Emma (Redshift) joining the Undersiders, Madison (Archive) becoming an Independent hero, and Taylor (Ariadne) joining Faultline's crew.

The story can be read on SpaceBattles.com (here), Sufficient Velocity.com (here) and FanFiction.Net (here).

There is a handy List so readers can keep track of everything.

Cerulean has also written another Worm fic with a similar theme: Atonement, and there is a spin-off for Vista planned called Odyssey.

Beware unmarked spoilers below!

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Tropes:

A-C

• Abandoned Hospital: Zoe, Danny, Julia, Faultline, and Gregor go to one of these after leaving the city for safe-keeping. There they find Cameron, who tells them about Cauldron.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Foil's power, though she's unaware of the full extent of her shard's true power.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Nikos Vasil to Cherie (Hax) and Alec/Jean-Paul (Regent).
  • According to canon, Sophia hates her stepfather but she was never abused physically or sexually, so that the author wrote Steve suffered from bipolar disorder and during his angry periods, he insulted Sophia.
• Accomplice by Inaction: Dinah points out that Othala stood by and let Kaiser kidnap her, treating her as prisoner while she remained her guard, so she can't complain that Dinah used her.
• Adaptational Heroism: The trio; to a lesser extent Iron Rain (Word of God confirms that in canon she was a true believer whereas Kasier knew the ideology was a load of crap but pretended to use it ofr power.)
• Adaptive Ability: Anne's power set basically allows her to fully understand someone's power with a touch and then use a power to counter it. Such as using a cold wave to get rid of his pyrokinesis and a teleportation power to get rid of Lung far enough to where he'll cool down.
  • Oneway can only affected by a single power once before becoming immune.
  • Hide's stealth powers gradually increase from simply obscuring her from sight to erasing her from people's memories.
• Affably Evil:
  • Alabaster is well-informed and acts like a gentleman while fighting Sophia, but he's still a nazi.
  • Kaiser as well. Even to his kidnapped charges, he speaks calmly, ensures them they will go home eventually, and let's them keep their masks on to avoid breaking the Unwritten Rules (though kidnapping them in the first place probably violated that).
  • Pride too, carrying this attitude even when he does a lot of horrendous things.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Emma's sister calls her Woody, after Woody the Woodpecker.
  • Regent calls her Squirrel.
  Alec:“Sure. You know, you're always fidgety, you never stop looking everywhere, you keep disappearing to run around, even the hair.”
• All Asians Know Martial Arts: Sophia states Foil is playing to the stereotype during their fight in 7-05.
• Alternate Self: Hide and her brother Jackal are an alternate universe Lisa and her deceased brother, picked up by Cauldron and then rescued by Hero.
• Alternate Universe: Much like Atonement there are some changes to be found:
  • Taylor, Aisha, and Cherie trigger with a different power.
  • Madison and Emma become Capes.
  • Kaiser kidnaps Dinah and Bakuda.
  • New Wave never unmasked, so Fleur was never killed in civilian identity and the Brockton Brigade is an independent group.
  • Panacea and Victoria's powers are different, with Panacea dissolving non-organic matter into ambrosia that can be used to heal, because she was tied down in the mall attack when Victoria was hurt and needed to get free, thus changing the application of her power. Victoria became an illusionist capable of making them somewhat real with Hard Light. Panacea is also a lot more stable, since she was raised by loving parents rather than a bitterly cold Carol Dallon.
  • Miss Militia was replaced by Prism as the second-in-command of the Wards, who is more than content with pushing back when Piggot tries to berate them.
  • Velocity died a few months ago and Mockshow was picked up by Faultline's crew outside Chicago.
  • The Traveler's drank different vials so the powers work differently for most of them and they works as bounty hunters
  • Foil/Flechette never joined the Wards and works for Lung instead.
  • Hero never died, but he split from the Triumvirate to become the leader of White Company. Number Man joined him.
  • Glaistig Uaine works for Cauldron as Valkyrie along with Contessa.
  • There is a cape named Eidolon in the Triumvirate, but she's not the same person as canon Eidolon because the cape name itself is a Legacy Character.
  • Costa-Brown isn't in charge of the PRT. Instead, Doctor Yamada is the director.
  • Theo joined with Coil and then the Undersiders.
  • Dragon and Hero entered into a relationship. And have a daughter taken by Coil in place of Dana.
  • Greyboy is still active and pulled a Nilbog.
  • The attack that led to Emma and Sophia meeting was much worse in canon, with Emma being stabbed by the ABB.
  • Abaddon also crash-landed on an alternate Earth and he seeks to gather the pieces of Eden using the Sins.
• Amoral Attorney: Alan Barnes, who uses his position to get Emma, Madison, and Sophia a slap on the wrist punishment, and screw Danny over in the process. His own daughter calls him out on this, saying she wanted to go to juvie so that when everything was over she could forgive herself.
• And I Must Scream: Taylor's first few months after locker event had her trapped outside her body, constantly shifting from other people's views with little to no control over her own body.
• Animal Eye Spy: Taylor's powerset allows her to do this. Aisha can do it as well with her imps.
• An Arm and a Leg: Siberian got hold of Hero like in canon and tore off three limbs instead of killing him. He used the remaining limb to make replacements.
  • Chronicler got three of his torn off by some creature before it dragged him off to be eaten,a fate narrowly avoided.
  • Sophia loses hers to Sloth saving her teammates and a baby.
• Anti-Villain: Pride has a far more sympathetic motivation than Jack to say the least. He also stopped him from torturing Riley.
• Anyone Can Die: 9-08 has Fog, Spitfire, Newter, Lightstar, and Kaiser dead by the end.
  • Armsmaster gets killed by Coil's machinations.
  • Assault is killed during the Endbringer battle.
  • Hookwolf is killed by Crystal during the 15-06.
  • Coil is killed by Aequitas in Odyessy 1-05.
• Artifact of Attraction: Bejamins' power as a Master-Stranger is his ability to dedicate an item into something everyone who hears his voice will want. They'll be willing to do anything to get it, including fighting their allies. Very similar to the "Want It, Need It" spell Twilight Sparkle cast during "Lesson Zero".
• Asian and Nerdy: Tyler (Nimue) in her civilian identity.
• The Atoner: Madison and Emma. Sophia is leaning this way, having apparently grown a conscience.
  • Julia joins in as well, realizing that she can't undo what she did, but deciding she can make better choices.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Taylor's powerset involves being able to see and take in an incredible amount of information about her surroundings, and using that information to do some outrageous things. She once ricocheted a sniper's bullet by throwing a rock at just the right angle.
• Badass Driver: Taylor, due to her powers, proves to be an effective driver capable of pulling some outrageous stunts. Note she doesn't even have her license yet.
• Badass Family: The Pelham and Dallon families of the Brockton Bay Brigade.
• The Bait: The Sins want to use Taylor as bait to lure Elsa back to them, though Riley also wants her as a minion.
• Battle Couple: Contessa and Valkyrie.
• Barrier Warrior: Shielder, who's capable of generating a forcefield and then using it like a battering ram against you.
• Barrier-Busting Blow: Taylor punches through a solid wall using her suit's enhanced strength in order to take out Crusader.
• Beneath the Mask: When Nimue is out of her mask, she pretends to be Asian and Nerdy. When it goes on, she's a flirty pansexual Stage Magician Tinker.
• Berserk Button: Valkyrie's is any mention of Scion.
  • Hurt Labyrinth and Taylor will curbstomp your entire team.
• Better Than New: Word of God is that Bryce's Tinker-specialty is this. Every time he builds something, he makes it a little bit better if he has the time and resources, making it the opposite of Leet's ability.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Grue (who just committed a Heel–Face Turn) is under constant surveillance by the PRT, including a sub-dermal bug in his skin, keylogging his computer, and possibly hidden cameras in his home. He doesn't learn about the latter two until after they tell him they know he got in touch with his old team (to tell them he's committed to the deal they made) and tell him not to do it again.
• Big Damn Heroes: Muse (Canary) saving Aisha from Bashe.
  • Iron Rain's group to Archive, Rune, and Dinah when they make their escape.
  • Annie's saving the Wards from Lung in 8-05.
  • Ellie saving Taylor after she couldn't move with a shotgun in 11-09.
  • Dragon, Valkyrie, Hero and Eidolon show up when all hope seems lost when Pride shows up against Emma's group in 17-12.
  • Rachel showing up unexpectedly (and violently) to the battle against the Pride-controlled PRT and Gesellschaft forces.
• Black-and-White Morality: Carol still sees the world this way from canon, only because Fleur didn't die yet it's less pronounced.
• Blackmail: Foil, having seen through Shadow Stalker's Hinder guise, blackmails her into having Normandy rescue her sister from Lung's group in exchange for keeping it secret.
• Boxed Crook: Sophia, whose probation is extended due to the Locker Incident. Later on Brian joins the Wards for six months, but if he violates his deal they will throw him straight into the Birdcage.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Madison decides to get a more generalized use for her Psychometry by picking stuff up at a pawn shop and so on.
• Brainwashed: In arc 17, several of people end up this courtesy of by Heartbreaker, who has joined the Sins.
• Breaking Speech: Pride tries this with Greed to get her to accept death. She tells him to go fuck himself.
• Break the Haughty:
  • Emma's breaking moment came when she saw a catatonic Taylor being dragged out of the closet, and one of her schoolmates joked about Taylor's condition and her father being unable to pay the hospital bills, looking for Emma's approval. Right then Emma realized what she had done was wrong, and her actions had turned her schoolmates into heartless jerkasses.
  • Madison also got broken for that same reason.
  • Even though Sophia keeps saying herself she has not done something wrong and she had not intended to cross the line, Taylor's condition haunts her.
• Broken Pedestal: Iron Rain and Purity to Othala. She states they were the only good members of the Empire, yet they left her behind and then told Dinah everything they could about her to pull her like a puppet on strings and use her like the rest.
  Vanessa:“Everyone uses me. My whole power is about me being used. It's not for me, it's for everyone else. I can't even use it on myself. Kaiser used me, the rest of the Empire used me, Dinah used me, you used me. Nothing's changed. You lock me in here, you tell me it's for my own good, but you're still not letting me choose!”
• Brutal Honesty:
  • Iron Rain admits that her group isn't all clean and shiny, and they aren't heroes in a normal sense. They're just cleaning up the streets for personal reasons. It's still enough to get Browbeat to join her.
  • Tattletale, as per usual, to Emma:
    Lisa: “You wanna be strong? Figure out what you really want, Emma. You want to survive in this life, in this world? Open your eyes. Stop being so focused on one goal and look at the bigger picture. Because we're not your tools for redemption. We're our own people, with our own choices. You have tunnel vision, Emma. Even joining us was because you were focused on one thing: getting Taylor Hebert's house back. You want to be our leader, a good leader? Open your eyes. You're not just missing the forest for the trees, you're trying to bore a hole into that single tree and live inside of it. There is a forest all around it that you have to notice, pay attention to, and acknowledge or you are going to crash and burn, and probably take the rest of us down with you. You want to change? Really change? Then do it. Be better than you were. But don't lie to yourself and make all these excuses about why you did what you did. You can have a billion reasons, but just listing all the reasons you suck isn't helpful. Hating yourself, loathing yourself like that isn't productive, Emma. It doesn't accomplish a damn thing. That kind of self-hatred isn't going to help anyone. Fixing what was wrong is.”
  • And Taylor to Emma:
    Taylor: “Good. I don't want you to die. Be careful, Emma. Maybe I can talk to you again sometime. But right now, I don't even want to look at you anymore. Maybe you had your reasons. But they were stupid. You hurt me to make yourself feel better. I was your friend, and you threw it away. Maybe you feel sorry now. But you should have felt sorry then. Before it was too late.”
• Calling the Old Man Out: Emma, to her father on how she let Danny lose his home in 4-04.
  • Does it again in 8-03.
• Cannibalism Superpower: The gorilla portal-monsters sought to devour capes to gain their strength.
• Canis Major: The wolf monsters in the Simurgh battle.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Jess points out that Pride had to have spared them for this reason.
  Jess: “Think about it for two seconds. Pride wants us out of the way. He wants us gone. What’s the easiest way to do that? Kill us. Sorry, but it is. He should’ve just killed all of us. He could transport us here, but he couldn’t just dump us out into the middle of space? Or evaporate the building? Yeah, right. Pride not killing us wasn’t done out of the goodness of his heart. He has some reason to want us alive, but out of the way.”
• The Cavalry: Valkyrie, Eidolon, Lung, Alexandra and Legend show up to deal with the Simurgh and Pride.
  • And when they struggle against Pride, Scion shows up.
• Cardboard Prison: The PRT holding place where they were getting ready to transport the captured Undersiders is broken into without much trouble and without being caught. They didn't hold them a day.
  • The Merchants and Gesellschaft capes are broken out by the Simurgh.
• Catapult Nightmare: Laserdream, post-captivity.
• Catch and Return:
  • Madison uses her field to do this to gunfire in 8-04, aiming low to avoid kill shots.
  • The Tinker Aequitas has made his SWAT Shield capable of doing this.
• Cattle Punk: Frontier, of White Company, is a Tinker whose gear is centered around steam-punk-like fictional 'old west' super tech akin to Wild Wild West.
• The Cavalry:
  • The Brockton Bay Protectorate in 9-06.
  • The Wards and members of the Brigade in 15-03.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Jeremy Pollin wanted this with Winnie in Odyssey, but things didn't go quite as planned. He ends up killing her and getting her shadow instead.
• Choke Holds: Sophia puts Battery into one so she doesn't chase after the Simurgh.
• Chrome Champion: Myriad (Marissa), whose body is similar to Weld's in Canon, only made of gold.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Leet accuses Taylor of this in 11-09.
• Claustrophobia: Rune's Trigger Event was being locked in solitary while surrounded by people who wanted to, in her own words, kill her because of her race.
  Cassie:"The walls kept getting smaller and I wanted out. I wanted the walls to stop shrinking. I wanted the walls to get the fuck out of my way. I wanted the walls to move. So they did. The walls moved because I wanted them to. They moved because I told them to, and then I got out."
• Clear My Name: Sophia has to do this after being framed for murder in Arc 11. Riley tells those who haven't been captured by Pride that she's innocent in Arc 16, and by Arc 19 the PRT has officially cleared her name.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Alec when he learns that an Endbringer is on the way in 11-04.
  • Sophia in 11-05 for the same reason as Alec, and the fact that Bryan and Aisha decided to go out on their own.
• Combat Clairvoyance: Simurgh, natch.
• Combo Platter Powers: Theo's powers were influenced by both his father and mother, giving him the ability to turn into whatever metal he touches and then change his size.
• Compelling Voice: Muse's (Canary's) power is that she can do this, though she's struggling to limit it to individuals.
• Control Freak: Alan Barnes feels that he failed to save her that night of the ABB attack and to protect what he sees is his daughter's future, he was more than willing to throw Danny's family under a bus and dismiss her own attempts to see justice done. In his own words, he won't let anyone ruin her future, not even her. He ends up driving her away and later turns Anne into a Case 53 cape.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: When Taylor's power stops working, Heartbreaker goes in to try and find a way around her power while she can't move to mind control her. He gets shot in the back by Access before he can do so.
• Cool Car: Dinah commissions Squealer to make an RV into one of these in Odyssey. It comes with holograms, invisibility, intangibility, and more.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower:
  • Sophia's Breaker State is too recognizable, so she can't use it while going around in her Second Super-Identity.
  • Brian's darkness is too distinct to fool anyone into thinking he wasn't Grue, so the PRT don't try to hide that he's a reformed villain but use that as a selling point to open up other villains who want to switch sides.
  • Vociferous' shapeshifter powers basically expose that they're the one responsible for Armsmaster's death.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Kaiser had his building capable of jamming phone signals and built a device to taser Rune into her suit just in case she managed to say too much. He also put one of Archive's suit, but her power let her deal with that.
  • Coil had a mug with a bottom that changed colors when something foreign was introduced, making him aware he was being poisoned.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: What Elsa put Mr. Gladly through.
  Mr. Gladly's eyelids had been stitched shut. Above his forehead the words, 'sees nothing' had been written in some kind of marker. His ears were folded down and stitched closed as well, and the words 'hears nothing' were scrawled across his left cheek with an arrow pointing to the nearest ear as if to make the point even more obvious. On the right cheek, the words 'says nothing' were written. Another arrow pointed to his lips which had also been stitched closed. From the impression that I was getting from the crime scene tech who was looking at the body, all of this had been done while he was alive. He'd survived that much. The part he hadn't survived was immediately apparent, and even more horrifying. The man had been cut open, straight down the chest cavity. Where his heart should have been, there was a plastic-covered card that read, 'heartless.' Where a bunch of his other organs should have been, there was another card. This one read, 'gutless.' There was no sign of any of those organs.
• Cry into Chest: Victoria to Dean in Fleur's Interlude.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Taylor mops the floor at least a half dozen Nazi capes after one of them seriously injures Elle.
    • She later takes on seven PRT troopers solo and without trouble in 16-06.
• Cutting the Knot: Rather than dealing with the Travelers and Faithful teaming up with the others, Pride just teleports them across dimensions back to the Travelers' dimension.
• Cyborg: Hero, in this setting.
  • Chronicler, after being given similar treatment by a portal monster in Interlude 11B.
  • Hinder, after an encounter with Sloth in 15-09.

D-F

• Dark and Troubled Past: Alma and Tanz were forced into prostitution for the Korean Mob and then turned into assassins before Lung killed the man who owned them.
• Deadly Dodging: Taylor does this a lot. Shooting at her is far more likely to hit her enemies than her.
• Defector from Decadence: Purity, Iron Rain, and a few other capes from the E88 started their own group called Faithful.
• Deflector Shields: A lot of forcefield capes use these.
• Determinator: Taylor refuses to give up and let what happened to her hinder her.
  Taylor (Thinking): No, I wouldn't give up. I wouldn't let them win. Not this time. Even if it killed me, I was going to force my body to move. No matter how hard or exhausting it was, I was going to learn to control this power. I was going to get back to myself, and once I did, none of those bitches was going to hurt me again.
• Death by Adaptation: Sierra is noted to have been killed in the crossfire of the E88 vs ABB in 3.1, a civilian casualty. Her brother triggers as a Tinker not a day afterwards and teams up with Sophia to get revenge.
• Death Faked for You: Archive and Laserdream appear to have been vaporized by a bomb when instead they were teleported, leaving them hostages in the Empire's grasp without anyone the wiser.
• Decapitated Gang: When Brian pulled a Heel–Face Turn, everyone presumed the Undersiders were done as a group. Emma took over.
• Die or Fly: How Sophia gained her powers. See Driven to Suicide.
• Dimensional Traveler: Pride and the Travelers are among these. Aster triggers with the ability to do so later on.
• Dirty Cop: Taylor's first tip off that the Las Vegas Police force was corrupt was the fact that they responded so fast to her chase. The second is when they have someone flinging lightning around at them while the cops box them in.
• Dirty Mind-Reading: Taylor's powers when she gets into someone's head unfortunately allows for this, as she discovered in 13-03 while Leet was ogling his teammate.
  And I felt what he felt, which... eeeeccch. He may not have gotten along with his female teammate (an understatement), but he sure as hell appreciated her appearance. A little too much, if anyone asked me.
  • Lust's situation has, ironically, left her doing this.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Emma wears an outfit expressly made for this to distract a Merchant goon long enough for Regent to taser him. Nimue liked it as well.
• Drives Like Crazy: To everyone else, Taylor's driving comes off like this. In truth, everything is perfectly calculated.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Sophia is abandoned by her friends, socially ostracized by her peers, and authority figures look down on her. Just like Taylor was.
  • Taylor begins striving to be become stronger so she doesn't end up weak and helpless again, but more than a few readers point out that by casting aside bits of her past that she felt made her weak (like her Mother's death) and clinging to her anger, she would likely end up in the same position as Emma and Sophia.
  • Emma's sister Anne Barnes, in an effort to stop their father from causing more harm than he already has, drinks a Cauldron vial he bought for Emma and is turned into a Gargoyle like creature for her trouble. But what neither of them knew is that because Emma already has powers, nothing would have happened if she drank it.
  • After Veil worries aloud about the possibility of his sister ending up in juvie due to her issue, Sophia sarcastically wonders who her role model is. None of the characters know, as the audience does, that Aisha's best role model is Sophia herself.
• Driven to Suicide: Sophia's step-father, who suffered from what looked to be bi-polar issues, jumped off a building to his death and tried to take her with him. She triggered before they hit the ground, which saved her life.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Alan in Arc 8. Between Emma running away and Anne turning into a Case 53, he hit the bottle pretty hard.
• Dungeon Bypass: How Madison gets through Kaiser's building to escape in 8-01. She uses her power to cut Madison-shaped holes in the floor and walls.
• Elaborate Underground Base: The Undersiders get one of these for completing the armored car robbery, with five floors, an indoor park for Rachel's dogs, furnished apartments, a game room, the works. Can't say Coil doesn't splurge on his employees.
• Electric Torture: Kasier puts Laserdream through this to charge his device.
• Elemental Armor: Trinket is covered in crystals that she can use to make vehicles as a Tinker.
• Elemental Baggage: Theo needs metal to change into. Not that he'd run out in a city.
• Emotion Control: Heartbreaker's power.
• The Empath: Gallant, as usual. Taylor can feel the emotions of others she jumps into.
• Energy Shield: Bryce makes one that Hinder can deploy like a shield.
• Energy Weapon: Legend has a laser for everything. Even reversing momentum.
• Equippable Ally: Tanzanite and Almandite are a pair of ABB capes that can both transform into a Living Weapon like they come from Soul Eater.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Riley won't deactivate Taylor's suit and leave her completely helpless, despite the fact that she knocked her out. Lust herself still has ten percent of her moral code left and Pride sees himself as a father figure for his team and is implied to see Jack as a worm.
• Everyone Can See It: Cassie makes it very clear that they all know Madison's a lesbian.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Victoria overhears a couple of Empire thugs talking about Archive and Laserdream, cluing her in that they are alive.
• Exact Words: Sophia promised not to go out as Shadow Stalker the night the BBB were out on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. She's not Shadow Stalker when she's Hinder.
• Expecting Someone Taller: None of the Wards were expecting Brian to look like a model. Even Sophia had a moment of stunned silence.
• Explosive Leash: Lung attached one to Jade, designed to go off if she went outside a certain range.
• Extra-ore-dinary: Theo covers himself in metal when he uses his powers.
• Eye Scream:
  • Ariadne put out both of Dellingr's eyes when he hurt Labyrinth.
  • Elsa stabs through one of her own eyes to kill the power-suppressing centipede stopping her from escaping. The power-suppressing centipedes that live in your eye also count.
• The Face: Emma is seen as this for the Undersiders, due to her announcement on the radio.
• The Fake Cutie: Vista does this in the first chapter of Odyssey to get on a bus filled with Coil's mercenaries. She hates having to do it though.
• Faking the Dead: Kaiser, after pretending to kill Archive and Laserdream.
• Feed It a Bomb: Riley's solution to dealing with Gluttony is to have him eat what he believes is foam and then detonate it.
• Feel No Pain: Trinket, being a person made of gemstones, doesn't feel pain.
• Fighting Your Friend: Taylor has to fight and knock out Elle after Heartbreaker uses his power on her since she was too dangerous. She was suitably pissed about it.
• Fights Like a Normal: Sophia doesn't use her Breaker State or crossbows when in the guise of Hinder. She just wails on bad guys with built-in tasers.
• Flesh Golem: Riley's specialties.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Riley calls one of her minions Sir Rufus Piddlebody the Fifteenth.
• Flying Car: Trinket of the Pacific Gladiators has a floating gem-truck.
• Food as Bribe: Vista and Dinah bribe Squealer into helping them in Odyssey with a truck full of Twinkies. A bit justified since supplies have run low enough that they're willing to deal.
• Forced into Evil: Foil is revealed to be forced into working for Lung in 7-02.
  • The Faithful and Travelers are blackmailed into helping the Sins on the threat of Aster's life.
• Forced to Watch: Pride intends to make Emma watch as he kills Tattletale, showing her just how powerless she is. Hero, Dragon, Valkyrie, and Eidolon show up to stop him.
• Frameup:
  • Interlude 10-B has Vociferous use Shadow Stalker's powers and appearance to break into the Rig, poison Piggot, and kill Armsmaster. Coil not only had him do it, but edited footage to make it seem like they fought beforehand to further cement her doing so.
    • And Interlude 13-A has Vista learn that he intends to use Vista as a second patsy and has doctored footage showing that she helped Sophia hide.
• Friendly Sniper: Shamrock in 8-06.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Sophia with the Wards. Only Gallant and maybe Chronicler and Aegis try to reach out with her.
• Freudian Excuse: Rune (Cassie) gives one about why she's a racist, but Dinah points out the actions of a few do not make the rest guilty.
  • Sophia has one. Basically, she loved her stepdad Steven. Unfortunately the guy had bipolar disorder, culminating in him attempting to take Sophia with him in a murder suicide. It was only because her powers kicked in that she survived. Because she was 10 years old she didn't understand things like "bipolar disorder" and just decided to avoid being like him.
  • Emma explains the attack that happened that led to her meeting Sophia led to her nearly being kidnapped to be sold on an auction and ended up with her being stabbed. However, she does admit that tearing Taylor down to build herself back up made no excuse for it and Taylor bluntly points out that she didn't trust her.
• From Bad to Worse: The easiest way to sum up Arc 11. Armsmaster gets murdered, Sophia gets framed, Ziz shows up, and then she opens up portals that can summon monsters (some of which appeared inside of the Endbringer shelters), and people die left and right.
  • Arc 12 continues the trend. A force-field quarantine is put around the city when Ziz flees, some of the monsters are making nests, and the effects of their poison have spread to make it so that wounds can't be healed by powers, meaning they won't likely lift it.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Pride's backstory in a nutshell.

G-I

• Gambit Pileup:
  • Arc 4, in a nutshell. So, Kaiser has some goods that need transport but knows someone is after it. So he hires Faultline to protect. She tells the PRT, who sends the Wards to protect it with them. The Undersiders, however, also hire Uber, Leet, and Hax as back-up. While this is going on, Coil has Trainwreck and Chariot go after the Medhall building to get Dinah, but the Brockton Bay Brigade gets involved and end up stopping them. This ends with most of the Undersiders and Uber captured, though they completed their assignment, and Faultline deciding they should skip town to Las Vegas. It's also hinted that Dinah adjusted the odds so that it would play out to screw over Kaiser.
  • Arc 9, made worse. Faultline's crew, the Brockton Brigade, and the Faithful go after Kaiser, who has backup this time and turns the tide on them. Then the PRT shows up. Several people die. Meanwhile, someone is breaking into a prison so the Wards go to see that, and Coil managed to subvert Madison's brother into taking Kaiser's weapon... Then the Simurgh took it.
• Gang Initiation Fight: The E88 had one. Hinder and Aisha crashed it.
• Generic Ethnic Crime Gang: The ABB, the Empire, and the Korean Mob that Tyler's mother is on the run from.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: 7-04 has Madison playing a fighting game with Rune. Turns out she gets along fabulously with her and Othala. Crusader... not so much.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The only way to describe the first night out for Emma... and really everyone for the story really. Emma ends up being seen as a villain, Madison nearly gets crushed, Sophia gets stabbed and electrocuted, Lung loses his tinker, Taylor's hospital ends up being attacked, Piggot has to deal with being yelled at by the mayor for his missing niece, for the hospital being overrun, for the Protectorate being, in his words, completely fucking useless at stopping Lung, and most of the Protectorate had been injured to some point. The only person who came out on top was Kasier.
• Good Parents: Danny. He sold his house to finance Taylor's hospital fees, and gave her permission to go with Faultline's group because they were the only ones who were willing to help.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Averted. Not only did the PRT troopers, when confronted by around 20 capes in 17-05, did they not pick a fight they couldn't win, but they held a reasonable discussion and revealed they didn't believe the PRT Chief about all of the other capes being arrested for being Ziz bombs.
• Hammerspace: Part of Madison's power is that she's surrounded by a field that drops items into one of these, that she can remove them from at will. A character even calls it a "hammerspace".
• Harpoon Gun: The Tinker Aequitas uses one.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: The PRT and Winslow administration both. The PRT ignored Shadow Stalker was clearly in need of better management, and refused to pay for Taylor's care because that would be publicly admitting to it. The Winslow staff let this sort of behavior go on unhindered and only financed a month of care for her. For this reason Madison, Emma, and Taylor don't trust them and take different routes than joining the Wards (Vigilante, Villain, and Mercenary respectively).
• Healing Factor: Elsa has this ability to an extent.
• Healing Hands: Wyvern triggered with this ability in 15-04.
• Hearing Voices:
  • Being the Butcher Elsa has to deal with this constantly.
  • Madison later has to deal with Lust doing this to her.
• Heel–Face Turn: Grue joined the Wards in 5-06 in order to protect his sister. The downside is that they've bugged him and anytime they fight he has to make an effort to catch his teammates, otherwise the deal falls through. He's renamed Veil afterwards, retiring the Grue identity forever.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: When it looks like Rune was about to switch sides and revealed Dinah was there, Kaiser had her electrocuted unconscious. The moment she can move again, she finishes it.
• Heel Realization:
  • Emma got hers when Taylor got pulled out of the locker AND a schoolmate joked about it, hoping to earn Emma's praise.
    It was then, in that moment as I saw the face of the girl who would say such a vile, horrible thing that it truly struck me for the first time: this was the environment that I had helped to create. Regardless of who Taylor was to me, regardless of what our relationship had been, this was what the students around me thought I would like. I was brought face to face with the sick, evil environment that I had helped create over the past couple of years. A girl was taken to the hospital and might never recover, and their reaction was to not only make a joke about her father being too poor to take care of her, but also that he was so poor that he might be forced to put her back in the thing that had traumatized her. And she said it specifically to impress me. Because that was the environment that I had created.
    
    It was that realization, after seeing Taylor taken away and then seeing how people reacted to her being taken away, that finally, finally shattered the wall of delusion I had built around myself. Because once I allowed myself to think that it was wrong for one person to make a joke about Taylor's condition, once that tiny nugget of conscience appeared, it caused a domino effect that systematically broke down everything else. If it wasn't okay for that person to make a joke about Taylor's condition, then Taylor's condition wasn't right. And if Taylor's condition wasn't right, then she didn't deserve it. And if she didn't deserve it, then what we had been doing was wrong. One by one, the carefully constructed lies that I had used to hide myself from acknowledging what we were doing were brought down.
    
    Everything we had done to Taylor over the past two school years came rushing back to me, seen through a different lens, through different eyes. I saw them, for the first time, through her eyes. I saw what we had done, what we had turned the school into and how sick it all was. Betrayal after betrayal, I saw how it had affected both Taylor and the other people, the people who were now so desensitized to bad things happening to her that even this couldn't shock them out of it.
  • Sophia finally had one in 11-05, when she realizes that the only reason the entire Protectorate would believe her guilty and try to hunt her is because she drove them away. In doing so she accepts that she's responsible for her own misery.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • The Brigade as a whole when they think Laserdream and Archive have been killed. Some shut down completely, while others take it out on everything else.
  • Sophia finally has one after she gets framed. She realizes that the only reason they would have all turned on her like that is if she really had issues.
• Heroism Won't Pay the Bills:
  • Faultline makes it clear that she doesn't put her crew on the line unless the heroes are willing to pay out, and villains tend to pay better so she works for them within reason. However, they're willing to do favors for friends, like Spitfire's nurse who pointed her towards Taylor.
  • Emma goes to villainy because its the easiest way to get Taylor's home back and the system screwed her over. She also knows the Undersiders won't help her save Madison (who she thinks was taken by the Merchants) without getting something out of it. She also knows the Merchants have a ton of cash just ripe for the taking.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Aisha acts like an impulsive goofball, but she's smart enough to notice several facts about Muse that the others don't and correctly guess she's on the run.
    Aisha: “You won't tell us your real name, your hair is obviously dyed, you keep putting your hand up to brush it off your shoulders even though it's barely long enough to run your hands through so it was obviously cut recently after being longer most of the time, you've been watching that door like the Simurgh is gonna jump through it any second, and you've got powers. Mind control powers, even. If you're not on the run, I'll lick this garage floor clean.”
  • When Bryce, as crude as he is, does give things some thought, he makes very valid suggestions. His suggestion on Muse using his tech to masquerade as another cape to throw her pursuers and save her real power for a surprise is not only smart, but it's exactly what Sophia is doing.
    Bryce: “See, Sophia may only be pretending to be a cape, but what if she really was one? What if she had powers and just hid them. She could still use my stuff, and still make people think she was a tinker. Then if she ever got in trouble, she could use her real powers to get out of it. The powers that no one knew she had because they think she's a tinker. So why don't you do something like that? You use my stuff to look like a different cape. That way, if anyone does come looking for the real you, the pretend you can find out ahead of time. I mean, I'm sure they know what your real powers are. If you start going out and acting like you have completely different powers, isn't that a better way of hiding than just running?"
  • Rachel's surprisingly good at playing a Risk equivalent board game, nearly keeping up to Lisa.
  • Elle is very good at mixing drinks.
• Hit Me, Dammit!: Emma's response to Taylor already hitting her once when they meet again out of costume in 13-03. She feels like she deserves it.
• Hollywood Restraining Order: There's a restraining order against Sophia, Madison, and Emma being near Taylor. Each one of them has a power that allows them to subvert this, so there's no way they can actually enforce it. In fact, its Played for Drama when Emma breaks into her hospital room only to find her own father there and learn Taylor had been withdrawn by Danny and lost their home.
• Hope Spot: Madison persuades Elsa to got to the PRT for help tracking Lust and Wrath. Director Pills, who previously was an Obstructive Bureaucrat seems willing to listen....then it turns out he's really Pride and knocks them both out.
• Hostage Situation: A few times:
  • Kaiser is holding Archive and Laserdream hostage against each other, in separate places. If one escapes, the other is left to deal with the fallout. Both get free eventually.
  • The Merchants take 100 people hostage (including Madison's parents) in order to get the PRT to release Squealer. They get freed, but some are hospitalized because they use experimental drugs.
  • Lung is holding Foil's adoptive sister hostage to keep her working for him. Sophia's group helps her escape.
  • Pride has members of the different groups in Brockton Bay in PRT cells as hostages, calling them Smiurgh Bombs to get away with it.
    • And he has actual bombs set into every shelter in Brockton Bay, just in case he needed leverage after that.
• Hulk Speak: The gorilla portal-monsters are capable of speaking like this.
• I Choose to Stay: Sophia and Canary choose to stay in Brockton Bay when they are readying the Quarantine because of Bryce and Aisha.
• I Gave My Word: Riley when she wouldn't tell the others where Taylor was because it would expose her identity.
• I Hate Past Me: Sophia sees in Aisha her past mannerisms and hates it. Madison and Emma to an extent as well.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How Fog and Kaiser are killed in 9-08.
• Impersonating an Officer: Payton has not only a spare police uniform, but also a radio to go with it. She explains that she basically bought them off a cop some time ago.
  Payton: You'd be surprised what a couple hundred bucks will convince a cop in this city to misplace. Your public servants are seriously underpaid in this world. It's kind of criminal.
• Important Haircut: Emma gave herself one the night of the Locker Incident, during which she triggered.
• Incompatible Orientation:
  • Browbeat has a crush on Iron Rain. Iron Rain prefers woman, which Purity notes had been one reason for her split from the Empire.
  • Elsa Levi has a crush on Taylor, who is decidedly straight.
• Instant Expert: Madison becomes an expert with whatever item falls into her Hammerspace field, except tinkertech.
• Instant Sedation:
  • Sophia's tranquilizers.
  • Newter's fluids do this. Taylor also gets a dart gun that has a layer of it on them for sniping.
• Intangible Man:
  • Sophia and Emma, due to the latter's powers being a bud of the former's shard.
  • Madison can, through some creative manipulation of her power, also do this to a lesser extent.
  • Laserdream, after a Second Trigger. Only she can't turn it off unless she concentrates.
• In the Back: How Assault was killed.
• Invisibility Cloak: Nimue can make one, a very good one.
• I Owe You My Life: This is why Tanz and Alma follow Lung.
• Item Crafting: Madison's power has this potential to a limited extent of melding the physical properties of other objects, such as taking wood from one object and layering it into another. Or creating a Mix-and-Match Weapon.
• It Only Works Once:
  • Leet can build anything but it only works once. If he tries again, it fails.
  • The cape Oneway becomes immune to any power used on her before.
• It's All My Fault: Here we go.
  • Emma blames the fact that Blackwell's murder even happened because she was an evil bitch, but resolves to deal with the actual murderer rather than lay down and die.
  • Taylor blames herself for Newter and Spitfire's death, but Faultline makes it clear that she was the one who made the call to get involved, not Taylor.
• It's Personal:
  • Sophia wants Alabaster's head on a pike after he took her down, Piggot's orders be damned. After Armsmaster is killed, she wants whoever is responsible (Coil) instead.
  • Oni Lee feels this way about Redshift after she distracted him long enough to avoid helping Lung.
  • Taylor hates the trio so much that hearing one of their voices, without knowing it was them, put her in Combat Mode in 9-03.
  • Anne blames the ABB for her family breaking. So now she has powers, she wants to break them.
    "The ABB broke my family. I wanted to break them. I will break them. I want the ABB dismantled and gone."
• It Was a Gift: The Mickey Mouse watch Cherie got from a birthday party was the most prized possession she had until she and Jean-Paul's attempt to escape from her father. She feels guilty because him going back to get it ended up with her leaving him behind.

J-L

• Jerkass: Envy and Lust of the Seven Sins are unrepentantly wicked and enjoy every moment. The Greed Collective (minus Elsa) are also assholes, to the point that they feel dirty when Elsa makes them save Chronicler.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Leet's advice to Taylor in 13-03.
  Leet: “Look, whatever. All I'm saying is, if it's shit outside the walls, let it go. If it's shit inside the walls, fucking deal with it, cuz you're a god damn badass. But whatever. Do what you wanna do."
• Justified Criminal:
  • Brian until his Heel–Face Turn as in canon worked as a criminal to get custody of Aisha.
  • Emma to earn enough money to buy back Taylor's home.
• "Just Joking" Justification: Sophia's justification to herself about Taylor ending up as a vegetable, stating she didn't mean to hurt her.
• Just Like Robin Hood: How the Undersiders are perceived by the public after rescuing the hostages from the Merchants.
• Karma Houdini: Played with. Sophia, Emma, and Madison officially only serve community service and a school transfer for what happened to Taylor, and that's only because the latter two confessed to it. This act serves to leave them both jaded with how the PRT and Protectorate operate and refuse to consider joining the Wards. Sophia herself is on as short a leash as ever, with no one wanting to give her the time of day willingly and growing a conscience.
• Knee-capping: Madison does this to a Gesellschaft Cape in 9-06.
• Knowledge Broker: The Undersiders and Offenders set themselves up as this in 16-02 to make themselves more valuable. To quote Emma:
  Emma: “The point is, we make ourselves indispensable. You wanted to know what we were going to do without Coil to help run interference? This is it. We provide a service, Alec. We make everyone in the city want us around so that they get the information they need. Lisa, you like collecting secrets. Now we can use them. Make sure the right stuff gets out to the right people.”
• Kid with the Leash: Cameron, who gained powers that allows her to control monsters. The same monsters that came from the portals that Ziz opened up.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Jeremy Pollin killed Winne's boyfriend when he tried drowning him. Every other death... not so much.
• Laser Blade: Brandish does this with her powers, except she doesn't limit herself to just swords. She'd do staffs and maces and mix them all together.
  • Seraph too.
• The Leader:
  • Sophia is the leader of Normandy, being the one with the most experience.
  • Emma becomes the leader of the Undersiders after Brian switches sides.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Aisha in 6-09, rushing in while Sophia was trying to get them protection from Benjamin's power led to her falling for them since she didn't listen. This leads to the hostages, including Madison's parents, being taken.
• Legacy Character: In this setting, Eidolon is a Legacy Cape name given to an individual while the previous one takes on a different one or retire. Word of God is that they all have the same power because David developed a way of transferring the shard to a new parahuman and thus rewriting their powers with its own and fully recharging. He can take them back if it wants, however.
• Likes Older Women: Myriad in regards to Iron Rain.
• Literal Split Personality: Alma and Tanz were originally a single person until they took a Cauldron Vial.
• Living Battery: Laserdream is kidnapped by Kaiser to power a weapon built by Bakuda.
• Living Shadow: Jeremy Pollin's power is that the shadow of anyone he kills serves him becomes this to him, violently defending him.
• Losing Your Head: Wyvern does this to demonstrate she's a Robot Girl.

M-O

• Magic from Technology: Nimue's entire schitck as a tinker is that she uses her tech to perform magic-like tricks, such as making someone disappear with an Invisibility Cloak.
• Manchild: The experimental drugs used by the Merchants left some people, including Madison's parents, with the mental state of children.
• Master of Illusion: Seraph, Victoria's cape identity, creates illusions that she can make real through Hard Light.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Ariadne, Taylor's cape name, was the daughter of Minos, who had been made lady of the labyrinth. She had been the one who knew the labyrinth, who cared for it and who had helped Theseus defeat the Minotaur. Considering her friendship and synergy with Elle, whose cape name is "Labyrinth," it tied them together.
  • Normandy, for a group that seeks to take down the E88.
  • Bashe, for a cape who turns into a giant snake and is Asian.
  • Riposte, for Anne's ability to counter any cape's power as long as she touches them.
  • Aset, for the presumed first name of an Egyptian Goddess and how Vanessa sees herself as an asset joining the Faithful.
  • Chimera, for the alas chosen by the current Butcher in an attempt to establish a new identity for herself.
  • Dinah renames herself Omen when leaving Brockton Bay.
• Mêlée à Trois: In Arc 2, we have a fight between the ABB, the PRT, the E88, the Brockton Bay Brigade, Faultline's Crew, and the Undersiders. It was a flat-out mess with civilian causalities left and right.
  • In Arc 8 we have a war between the Empire, the Brigade, the Wards, the Protectorate, and Coil's mercenaries over Dinah and the kidnapped capes.
  • In 9-06 we have the Empire with Gesellschaft reinforcements vs Faultline's Crew, the Brigade, Iron Rain's group, and the Protectorate.
• Memento MacGuffin: Cherie keeps Jean-Paul's Gameboy as one.
• Mercy Kill: How Coil came to see killing his superior officer in the Nilbog Incident. It was either die with him, leave him to be taken by Nilbog and used as bio-mass, or put him down to spare him the pain. He chose the latter.
  • Chronicler wants to die after he suffers a severe injury and asks Elsa to put him out of his misery. She defies it and drags him to Panacea.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Leet upgrades Taylor's suit in the 13th arc. It gives her minor Super-Strength, text-to-speech, instant hijacking for vehicles, and a stealth mode.
• The Minion Master: Aisha's ability is to create Imps out of whatever she touches. They imprint on her personality and listen to her personal and subconscious orders rather than direct control them, but she can process what they see and hear. This is because she gained the Queen Administrator Shard.
• Mind over Matter: Rune (Cassie) gained telekinesis and can move non-living things she touches with her mind.
• Missing Mom: Anne and Emma's mother disappeared after what her father had done.
• Mission Control: Churchill (Bryce) acts as this for Normandy while the others are out in the field.
• Mistaken Confession: A message from Alan about his regrets on what happened to Anne's body ends up sounding like he hired someone to kill Blackwell, bringing him to police attention.
• Mistaken Identity: Both Archive and Redshift on their first night out, because the former was wearing a rune on her outfit in a town where the E88 are around, and the latter because the Undersiders were sent to rescue a tinker and end up mistaking Madison for her since she fought Oni Lee. Archive is cleared by Shielder, but Redshift decides to remain a villain for other reasons.
  • Canary is accused of being a member of the Seven Sin and ends up on the run to Brockton Bay, avoiding arrest under the name Muse.
  • The Travelers and Undersiders assumed the other party was working with the Merchants until it was cleared up in 7-08.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The reason Rune finishes her Heel–Face Turn in 8-01 is because Kaiser electrocuted her for the sake of torture.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The... things that the Simurgh summoned in Arc 11. Cameron summons the same ones because her power draws them from the same source and allows her to control them.
• The Mole: Dinah is a mole for Purity's group inside of the Empire.
• Mole in Charge: Director Pills is really Pride, the leader of the Seven Sins
• Morton's Fork: Interestingly enough, this is how things go down for the Butcher voices when Simurgh appears. If Elsa retreats from Brockton Bay, she doesn't kill anyone and they lose. If Elsa stays, she's disobeying the Sins and she still wins. As puts it, they lose no matter what in this situation.
• Mr. Fanservice: In universe, Brian is considered utterly stunning by the Wards after he unmasks. Even by Shadow Stalker. And Clockblocker.
• Mugging the Monster: Uber and Leet attempted to pull one of their stunts on Cherie when they first met. She nearly killed them before taking control of their group, renaming them, and having them target corruption in the government, specifically the PRT.
• Must Make Amends: Emma and Madison striving to be heroes sorts out to this.
  • Though Emma later joins the Undersiders to get enough money to pay for Taylor's house after she learned Danny sold it to pay for her care, knowing her father kept the case from going to court and leaving Danny with fewer options. In her case, it's less that she wants to do right for everyone, but more she wants to do right by Taylor.
  • Cherie (Hax) to Jean-Paul (Regent) for abandoning him.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Emma suffers this when she realizes that one of the girls mocking Taylor was doing so because she wanted her approval and it was the sort of environment she had conditioned others into. This caused a domino effect that shattered her world view and led to her triggering.
  • Has a second one when she learns Danny had sold his house to pay for Taylor's care.
  • Madison when she realizes that she triggered over what happened to Taylor, meaning her powers that she love came from her suffering.
• Never Be Hurt Again: Taylor's motivation for becoming stronger.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Madison talks Elsa into going to the PRT for help....except that it turns out that the new PRT director is really Pride aka the leader of the seven sins. Elsa and Madison both get captured for their trouble
• No Body Left Behind:
  • Kaiser after Lady Photon believes he killed her charges with a grenade. See Faking the Dead.
  • Hookwolf after Crystal loses her temper with his attempt to kill Madison.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: What Taylor does to anyone who hurts Labyrinth.
• No-Sell:
  • Alabaster's power makes it so that tranquilizers won't work on him, allowing him to get the drop on Sophia.
  • Hax can do this to whatever she wants as long as she can see it coming.
  • Foil's power allows her to hurt anything she pierces, even if they have a power to prevent it, like becoming an Intangible Man.
  • Taylor's power leaves her too disconnected from her body to be affected by Simurgh's song or Heartbreaker's power.
  • Madison's power against anything she can absorb, including Hookwolf's blades.
  • Pride pretty does this as a rule.
  • Sophia's power allows her partial immunity to Emma's Time Stands Still powers due to being a bud off hers.
  • Scrapper is immune to fire. Meaning she can go toe-to-toe with Lung considering her Super-Strength.
• Not Quite Flight: Emma can float around when Time Stands Still.
• Not-So-Abandoned Building: What looks to be an abandoned gas station and garage is actually the workshop of a Tinker named Verduyn, with perfectly scrubbed floors and walls, while every tool chest was neatly labeled.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Director Pills. Turns out he's doing it intentionally.
• Off with His Head!: How Elsa kills Envy.
• One Degree of Separation: Virtually everyone is connected to one another somehow. For example: Sophia is a Ward who works alongside Grue after his Heel–Face Turn, who was a former member of the Undersiders and worked with her former best friend Emma (Redshift) as well as her current tutor (Nimue), and is related to Imp (Aisha), who is part of her Second Super-Identity team, Normandy.
  • Now with a List, heavy spoilers.
• One-Woman Army: The moment Labrynith got hurt in 9-06, Ariadne proceeded to solo the Empire and Gesellschaft capes until she caught up with Dellingr and beat the hell out of him.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Labrynith gives Madison a death threat in 16-04.
  Labrynith: “Hurt Taylor, and you won’t try anything again.”
• Opt Out: Alec and Rachel choose not to risk their lives against an Endbringer in 11-04, reasoning their powers weren't any good against them. Emma understands and instead asks that they get to safety, but the Simurgh shows up, ending the discussion early. The Brigade leaves Flashbang out specifically because his depression makes him more vulnerable.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: Anne post-transformation looks like Demona, but with two sets of wings, black scales, and glowing lines between them.

P-R

• Paranoia Fuel: The Simurgh causes this by sheer presence.
  Taylor (Thinking): Could I? Should I? I still wasn't sure. Every action felt wrong, yet every inaction felt wrong too. I was paralyzed by the thought that anything and everything I did might be what the Simurgh wanted. And worst of all, it might be absolutely nothing. There was just as much chance that Ziz hadn't thought about me at all, hadn't actually paid the least bit of attention to me, as there was that she'd made me one of her puppets.
• Parental Betrayal: Access's mother (one of Heartbreaker's wives) wastes no time in trying to kill her once she catches her with Normandy.
• Parting-Words Regret: Madison regrets the last thing she said to Mr. Gladly was that no one respected him, only for him to end up dead because of Elsa's rampage for what she did to Taylor.
• People Puppets: Taylor gets a skin-tight suit that interprets her brain's signals and moves the suit in accordance to it. In other words, it allows her normally-paralyzed body to move like a marionette while dressed in the suit.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Imp's creations are fairly strong. Despite being less than a foot tall, they can take down a fully-grown man with a weapon.
  • Jade's trigger event left her with enough of a Brute ranking that a car wrapped itself around her when it slammed into her, leaving her unharmed.
• Playing with Fire: Logi, Spitfire, and Burnscar.
• Plunder: Faultline and Hax's group ends up raiding grocery stores right after Ziz's attack to stock up on supplies for what would become their territory, in order to divide resources among the people who need it. It turns out to be a good call.
• Pocket Dimension: Paracosm has one. Very handy for hiding people from the Simurgh.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Unlike his canon version (who personally doesn't believe a word of what he says) this Kaiser fully believes the other races are lesser.
• Poor Communication Kills: Apparently, Alan did try to pay for Taylor's hospital treatments after he learned Danny was selling his house. But that's not what he told Emma, instead telling her to forget and move on, which ended up driving her away from him.
• Portal Cut: Bakuda's bomb was meant to surround an Endbringer into a forcefield and then do this, shunting them into a thousand different pieces to send them to a thousand different dimensions. Unfortunately for her, Ziz modified it to bring in monsters from a thousand different dimensions.
• Power Fist: Bryce made a pair of electric gloves.
• Power Parasite: Envy, formerly known as Ingenue, of the Seven Sins can steal other Capes powers. It drives them insane, as she demonstrates to Burnscar and Purity, and the victims' minds are drawn to her one way or another.
• Powers in the First Episode: When the locker prank ends with Taylor in a comatose state, Emma and Madison feel guilty enough to trigger and develop powers. In the first episode Emma freezes time, and Madison absorbs objects and knowledge.
• Powers via Possession: Eidolon possesses Lung, giving her his Brute, Flight, and Pyrokineses abilities while leaving her other power slots open. Sophia names the combination Eidolung.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Kaiser doesn't remove Laserdream or Archive's masks and treats them as cordial as someone taking hostages can, upholding the unwritten rules, so that when they're revealed to be alive he doesn't have all the other heroes gunning for him for breaking them in addition to the BBB. The fact that the Brigade will have taken out all his enemies by then doesn't hurt.
  • Subverted later as it becomes clear that adhering to the unwritten rules is more to keep his prisoners in line than anything else. Archive would likely be imprisoned indefinitely until it became beneficial to reveal that she was still alive, and Laserdream was being actively tortured and abused to force her to charge the device.
• Promotion to Parent: Anne's working with the PRT to get custody of Emma.
• Properly Paranoid: Coil, who keeps cameras up to and under his bed. Considering the number of enemies he has, it's understandable.
• Psychic Link: Tanzanite and Almandite have a constant sense of what the other is doing, similar to a Hive Mind.
• Psychometry: Part of Archive's abilities is that she can learn how an object stored within her field was used. Like a pen that was used to write Max Anders, revealing Kaiser's Secret Identity to her.
• Pure Energy: Laserdream ends up having a Second Trigger that does this to her, but she can't turn it off.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The Undersiders accomplished their goal with the Armored Truck robbery, but only three of them managed to get away. The rest manage to escape later, but they lose Grue afterwards, which hurts their reputation.
• Real-Person Cameo: The names of the posters in the PHO interlude are variations and inversions of the screennames of people who regularly read and post on Intrepid's story threads.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Vista gives Sophia one the moment she insults her because she hated being ignored in 8-02.
  Vista: “Let's get one thing straight, I don't care what you say. I don't care what you think. You don't deserve to be here. You don't deserve to wear that costume. You don't deserve to be on this team. You're a bully, Sophia. You're a bitch. You're a coward that picks on people that can't fight back. You think you're some awesome, terrible badass? You're a joke. Real heroes stick up for the helpless. You prey on them. But you're not even a villain. You're not brave enough to be a villain. They at least fight other capes. You... you just pick on some innocent girl, ruin her life. And then you have the nerve to pretend it doesn't matter? Fuck you. And fuck the people that won't put you where you belong.”
• Red Is Heroic: After the locker episode and her trigger moment, Emma becomes the super-hero Redshift... or at least she intended to be one.
• Reformed, but Rejected:
  • Purity may be trying to go the way of angels now, but people haven't forgotten that she was affiliated with the E88, and are just as likely to attack her for helping them because of it.
  • Emma finally explains her actions to Taylor and apologizes to her ex-friend for everything she did in 13-04. Taylor believes Emma may actually be sorry, but she can't forgive her.
    Taylor: “Good. I don't want you to die. Be careful, Emma. Maybe I can talk to you again sometime. But right now, I don't even want to look at you anymore. Maybe you had your reasons. But they were stupid. You hurt me to make yourself feel better. I was your friend, and you threw it away. Maybe you feel sorry now. But you should have felt sorry then. Before it was too late.”
    • Mr Quinlan is also rather cold to Emma, telling her he doesn't want her to influence his stepdaughter
• Reluctant Warrior: Foil doesn't want to fight (but does because she has family being held hostage), but her power means when she does someone will get hurt.
• Revenge: Riley makes it very clear she's going to do this to Jack Slash. She's just making sure she can do it without screwing up since if he talks, he wins.
• Revenge by Proxy: According to the author, Riley wants to do this to earn a minion in Taylor.
• Ridiculously Human Robot Girl: Wyvern, an android with the appearance of a young girl. She was created by Hero and Dragon, but works for Coil after he stole her mid-transit and reprogrammed her for his purposes.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • The Brigade goes absolutely insane, when they think Laserdream and Archive are dead. To the point they pretty much try and take out every other gang, Just as Planned by Kaiser.
  • After Dellingr seriously injures Labyrinth Taylor wipes the floor with about half the assembled Nazis.
  • Elsa, once she finds out what happened to Taylor, kills Blackwell and then leaves a message:
    Everyone responsible dies.
• Robosexual: Hero, who is in a relationship with Dragon and have a daughter.

S-U

• Save the Villain: To her own surprise, Sophia stops Seraph from killing some random Merchant thug in 6-09. Even she doesn't know why.
• Saying Too Much: Regent realizes he gave too much of his backstory away when trying to make a joke with Emma in 7-01.
• Scaled Up: One of the Capes Lung recruits, Bashe, turns into a fifty-foot long snake.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: Ziz went out of her way to personally hunt down and kill Coil in every timeline he split barring the one where she steals his bomb.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Logi decides that, rather than dealing with Aisha's recently triggered powers and Hinder, he would simply use a distraction to grab Hookwolf and flee.
  • Clockblocker decided to leave with half the Brigade than remain with the Wards after how they treated Sophia and Vista.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: Lust ends up this way after being pulled into Archive's field. She can't move but she can speak, and she can read Archive's mind to annoy her.
• Secret Identity: Emma is Redshift, Madison is Archive and Taylor is Ariadne.
  • Second Super-Identity:
    • Sophia works alongside Aisha and Bryce as Hinder, using the latter's tinkertech and her own fighting skills. She finds it more or less fulfilling than being Shadow Stalker because she's not hindered by the rules Piggot imposes on her. Though it does get confusing sometimes.
    "It was as close to the truth as I'd been able to come without revealing my third identity. No, first—wait, second. Second identity. They went Sophia, Shadow Stalker, and then Hinder. God, keeping them in order was annoying as shit sometimes."
    • Bryce suggests this for Muse to throw her pursuers off her trail while helping the team.
• Secret Secret-Keeper:
  • Muse knew all along that Sophia was Shadow Stalker.
  • Taylor knows that Emma is Redshift and Sophia is Shadow Stalker, with them both being unaware. Madison basically outs herself.
• Secret Underground Passage: Bryce and Aisha found one leading from a Disgusting Public Toilet to underneath an ABB Abandoned Warehouse and make it their Home Base.
• Security Cling: Dinah to Cassie, after her Catapult Nightmare in Interlude: 6B
  • Julia to Taylor (while in her Cape guise), in 11-02.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes: One aspect of Taylor's new power.
• Self-Duplication:
  • Myriad's power.
  • Greaser's power, though she can also merge with them similar to Prism and gain either Super-Strength, Mind over Matter, Super-Speed, or all three at once.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Anne Barnes is mutated into a gargoyle-like cape after taking a vial meant for her sister, who it wouldn't have affected at all due to Emma already secretly having powers of her own.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The Travelers are finally back on Earth Aleph, but they can't go back to their homes or families because they'd be put at risk if Pride shows back up. And then the cops show up and try to kill them, leading to Aster triggering and taking them to a different world entirely.
• Shoot the Bullet: Taylor does this with a rock due to her Awesomeness by Analysis powers. The bullet actually bounces back to hit the sniper.
• Shooting Superman: Given Madison's power, this happens a lot. One guy even throws the gun at her.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Shamrock carries one in Arc 11. It comes in handy.
• Shout-Out: The giant wolf that appears when the Simurgh opens up dimensional portals in Brockton Bay is a reference to the amarok, a similar Canis Major from the author's original Web Serial Novel, Heretical Edge.
• Shower of Angst: Neil in Fleur's interlude. She mentions it his third time in one day and she heard him crying.
• Sizeshifter: Theo's power allows him to do this when he turns Extra-ore-dinary.
• Skipping School: Emma during the events of the Merchant's kidnapping spree. She has more important things to worry about.
• Slave to PR: Emma believes the PRT to care about nothing but their image and won't do anything to help the people kidnapped by the Merchants. It doesn't help that they devoted a significant portion of their Capes to guarding Krieg on his way to the Birdcage, when he's honestly not even a major threat at the moment.
• The Sleepless: Myriad doesn't sleep.
• Spoiled Brat: Madison admits this. She was spoiled since childhood and it only served to reinforce her bad behavior until the Locker Incident.
• Sociopathic Hero: Sophia. She's slowly growing out of this.
• Space Master: Vista's power allows her to do this, stretching and compressing space. She can even use it to, say, expand the space between grenades and pins, allowing them to detonate from a distance.
• Spirited Competitor: Mockshow.
• Stage Magician: Nimue, a new tinker for the Undersiders, dresses like one.
• Superpower Lottery: All three of the protagonists have this to an extent, but Taylor's power basically gives her wide-range Combat Clairvoyance, seeing everything around her within a certain range and then giving her the mental power to act on it. The downside is that it only works when she's in combat, otherwise her body remains largely immobile. It also comes with a side of Omniglot, meaning she's one of the most powerful Thinkers in the setting.
  • Victoria's powers can basically make illusions real and on a wide scale.
  • Hax can choose how physics affect her entirely as long as she's aware of it. She can stand on air, be immune to heat, go intangible, etc. Riley summarizes it as:
    Riley: “She has third grader on the playground powers. You know, ‘I’m immune to bullets’, ‘Fire is cold’, ‘I can breathe poison’. Anything that directly affects her, she can change how it affects her. Like making air solid, or walls not-solid.”
  • Anne can comprehend the powers of anyone she touches and then gain a power to counter it.
  • Greaser's power with Self-Duplication. She's wasting it by being a Merchant.
  • Contessa won it even harder than in canon - she's physically superhuman, unaging, and has who knows what else thanks to Valkyrie.
• Super Serum:
  • Panacea's ambrosia can be used to give a minor Brute power, along with other effects.
  • Caulron's vials, as per usual.
• Super Smoke: Muse (under the codename Cloudkicker) can do this with the Tinkertech that Byrce made for her, including allowing her to turn them into solidified weapons or riding it like the flying nimbus.
• Super-Speed: Aevum (Noelle) has this power.
• Super Spit: A Gesellschaft Cape in 9-06 was capable of this.
• Super-Strength: Jade triggered when she thought the bomb around her ankle was about to go off and gained this, though Word of God explains that its a mixture of tactile-telekinesis and kinetic energy absorption.
• Switching P.O.V.: The story switches between Taylor, Emma, Madison and Sophia with other characters getting interludes. No character has two chapters told from the PoV twice in a row.
• Talking to the Dead: Danny does this at his wife's grave in his interlude.
• Team Dad: Uber plays this role in his team.
  • Pride is a REALLY twisted example of this trope. He tries to act like a paternal father figure for the team.....but he's strangely emotionless and always comes across as somewhat insincere.
• Team Mom: Faultline for her crew. Sophia for her team with Aisha and Bryce.
• Teens Are Monsters: When Taylor got out of the locker, other students were laughing at her and making jokes about her condition. Even Emma finds this to be fucked up, and leads to her My God, What Have I Done? moment.
• Teeth Flying: Madison knocks a Gesellschaft Cape's teeth out in 9-06.
• Teleport Spam: What it looks like when Emma gets serious.
• Tempting Fate: Sophia catches herself in the middle of doing this in 15-09, only for Sloth to show up.
• That Man Is Dead: Taylor's opinion of Emma as a friend. The person she is now is someone different entirely.
• The One Guy: After Grue's Heel–Face Turn Regent is the sole male of the Undersiders.
• Time Stands Still:
  • Emma's power is that she can freeze time and then move through solid objects, making it seem to others like teleportation. However, she can only maintain this state as long as she can hold her breath.
  • One of Valkyrie's ghosts can encase people in a time bubble that makes everything outside of it appear to do so.
• Too Dumb to Live: Aisha going to an E88 fight club with only a knife was impulsively stupid on her part and would have likely have ended in the death of her and Sophia if she hadn't triggered. It was hinted she was this way because her brother ended up getting arrested and she wanted someone to take it out on.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Cauldron, apparently. Sophia also becomes nicer over the course of the story as she undergoes character development. Julia also comes to sincerely regret what she did to Taylor.
• Tracking Chip: Aster has one implanted in her, courtesy of her father.
• Tracking Device: Emma's father uses her phone to track her down in 7-06. She immediately destroys the phone so it doesn't happen again when she's doing something important.
  • Sophia had Bryce tamper with hers to gain more freedom, but when she's framed for Armsmaster's death it is used as evidence against her.
• Tragic Monster: Greed. She was a normal girl who was lonely, lost the guy who raised her in the place of her indifferent parents (and it's implied they didn't care), becomes a hero, is forcibly press-ganged into the sins by killing greed, and finds out the girl she had a crush on was rendered catatonic by alpha bitches.
• Training from Hell: Iron Rain puts Archive and Rune through this for five days after rescuing them.
• Transparent Closet: Madison, who's so deep in the closet that she's visiting Narnia. Though Word of God is that she's lying to herself because she doesn't want to admit she treated Taylor like crap simply because she wanted Emma and Sophia to like her as it would taint her love life.
  • Taylor pretty much confirmed it while she was in Archive's head in 9-03.
    • Cassie told her to her face in 10-03.
• Trick Bomb: Bakuda's schtick. Including a teleporting one used to send Crystal and Madison to the Empire.
• Triple Shifter: Sophia is a student by day, a Ward by night, and goes out in a Second Super-Identity behind her bosses back. Her shard must be thrilled.
• Troubled Fetal Position: Sophia in 11-01, after being forced to run because she'd been framed for Armsmaster's murder.
• The Unmasking: Taylor reveals herself to Madison in 16-01.
• Unwanted Assistance: Emma's response to Alec's attempt to back her when confronting her father.
  Alec:“Community college probably wouldn't care too much. And you could still get plenty of jobs. College is pretty overrated. Hot girl like you, there's plenty of stuff out there. You'd probably be fine.”
  Emma: “Alec, stop helping.”
• Unwitting Pawn: Turns out Faultline's crew stealing the Tinker Forcefield generator played into Kaiser and Bakuda's hands. They were the ones who hired Accord to arrange for it to be stolen. And then, it turns out Kaiser was being set up by Coil at the very least ever since Trevor 'joined' the Empire.
• Uriah Gambit: Pride sent various incarnation of the Butcher against people that could kill them to stockpile powers and break them quicker. Elsa wasn't planned.

V-Z

• Villain Takes an Interest: Riley/Wrath/Seven quickly takes an interest in Taylor soon after learning about her and reading her journal. She thinks she's found someone who needs revenge almost as much as her.
  • Lust/Six is intrigued by Elle. Or more specifically, Elle's apparent innocence.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The Undersiders.
• Visit by Divorced Dad: Vista's father was supposed to do this, but he forgot. Then Ziz happened and both ended up outside the quarantine.
• Wall Crawl: Sophia gains this ability with tinkertech provided by Bryce.
• We Can Rebuild Him:
  • Hero's run-in with Siberian cost him three limbs. He rebuilt them and packed them with all sorts of goodies.
  • Chronicler gets tinker-tech to replace his missing limbs, but he's still learning how to use them.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Kaiser. His plans for kidnapping Laserdream and Archive is because he wants to build an Anti-Endbringer weapon.
• We Need a Distraction: In 17-05, Sophia has Aisha send her Imps to hijack PRT Trucks for this reason while Victoria has a copy of Lung stomping around.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Emma and Taylor. Emma saw Taylor grieving over her mother as basically someone weak and frail taking her best friend's place and started bullying her over it. By the time she realizes how fucked up this line of thought is, she's gone way too far to go back and Taylor was hospitalized.
  • After the locker "prank" neither Emma nor Madison want anything to do with Sophia.
• Wham Chapter: Laserdreams Interlude has Piggot poisoned and Armsmaster killed by a cape posing as Shadow Stalker, framing her for it.
  • 11-09 Tattletale is severely injured and Taylor finds out Emma's Secret Identity due to Ziz's scheming.
  • Myriad Interlude 13-B has the Sins kidnapping Aster and Kayden through Envy's power to get the Faithful and Travelers to help find Chimera.
  • Iris Interlude 13-C has the reveal that the Sins' leader is actually the herald of Abaddon and he sends them to kill people who have inter-dimensional doppelgangers to find her.
  • 14-01 has Elsa's identity as Greed revealed and Madison's identity as one of the people who bullied Taylor exposed to her.
  • Cameron's Interlude reveals that her Father was the first Eidolon, David.
    • Her second interlude reveals that Cauldron believes that Ziz unleashed the monsters in Brockton Bay so that Cameron could take control of them and use them to drive off Pride.
  • 17-07 has Rachel show up to help Redshift's group after the remnants of the E88 joined with Pride.
  • Interlude 18A: Iris reveals Scion has shown up due to the convergence of Pride, the Portal Monsters, and all the capes. He and Abbadon immediately start fighting, one trying to devour the others shard, and ends up getting thrown through a portal that forces both to leave the planet, getting rid of them both for an unknown period of time.
• Wham Line: “Grue's one of the Wards now.”
  • From Kaiser, during Rune's Interlude: We are going to save this city.
  • From Gabriele, during Purity's Interlude “Dinah was already a good liar, even before we met.”
  • From a phone message during Hax's Interlude: "Not boss. Teacher."
  • From Fleur, during Madison 11-03: "It's the Simurgh."
  • From Cameron, during Julia's Interlude: "I'll tell you about the lady in the suit, and the lady with wings."
  • From Access, during Tayor 17-06: "...D-Dad...?"
• What the Hell, Hero?: An Earth Aleph cop opens fire on the Travelers with a two-year old child, Gabriele not only sends them right back but yells at them... granted, it leads to a mess.
• What You Are in the Dark: Emma has one during her confrontation with Pride. Her time freeze keeps Pride from touching her friends, but it's limited. Pride gives her the chance to run, but it will mean abandoning her friends. Emma refuses to even consider it and manages to hold out.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: According to Word of God, Riley won't attack anyone younger than her and has killed a previous Sin who has done so.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: How Elsa trapped Gladly. She rang the doorbell, asked to use his phone saying her car broke down and than when Gladly let her in Elsa proceeded to torture him.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Some of the monsters' poison make it so that you cannot be healed by parahuman powers. Worse, it's spreading throughout Brockton Bay, meaning they'll never lift the quarantine.
• Wretched Hive: Brockton Bay post Endbringer visit. Every cape group in the city is holding territory, with it being stuck in a cold-war of sorts depending on who is in an alliance with others.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: 9-03 reveals Kaiser took the loss of information on Gesellschaft by the Undersiders and framed it on the Faithful, not only turning them on his former wife and sister's team, but getting a dozen capes from them as backup.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Both Sophia and Vista have been framed by Coil so they'd be arrested if they went home.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Alec's reaction when he learns an Endbringer is on the way.
  Alec: “Are you fucking serious? Why? What the shit did Brockton Bay do to piss off the karma gods this fucking badly?”
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Hax's group and Faultline believe that Piggot was nearly assassinated for this reason by Teacher, and he would be coming back to finish the job. So they plan to set a trap... then Simurgh appears.
  • Pride intended to replace Elsa with Burnscar, who was already robbed of her mind by Envy. She escapes with Burnscar in tow before he can do so, at the cost of an eye.
    • He later replaces Riley with Hemorrhagia for the Wrath title and offers Madison the Lust title in Arc 17. Riley isn't all that surprised. Lust takes it personally.
• You Kill It, You Bought It:
  • Aequitas kills Coil and then takes his place as the boss.
  • The Sins offer Madison a place in their group to replace their missing member because she took out Lust.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: When a catatonic Taylor comes out of the locker, Emma is aghast. Then a schoolmate laughs about it, finding the joke very funny. Emma gets horrified and for first time she fully realizes what she has done.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The Merchants split the hostages in two different places, with one being out of the city.

---

My parents had been horrified, of course, though neither of them really said much about it. My father gave me the money to get my hair fixed into the pixie cut that it was now, and my mother said that my emotion was 'understandable'. Still, I heard them talking to each other when they thought I couldn't hear them, and I knew that they thought there was something terribly wrong with me.
If only they knew what kind of girl I was, what kind of evil I'd done. If only I could tell make them understand.

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