Sometimes you're the villain.
Dark Destiny is a Science Fiction Cyberpunk Dystopia series by C.T. Phipps and Frank Martin.
Robbie "Rob" Stone is a young activist attending a private school run by the corrupt Butterfly Corporation in the 2060s. Much of the country is now under the direct control of megacorporations with his hometown of New Detroit being one of these places. Belonging to a nonviolent protest group, he attends a massive march against Butterfly and its corrupt practices. Unfortunately, someone attempts to kill him during it and it devolves into a violent riot.
Barely surviving, Rob is saved from other assassins by a mysterious white haired girl named Jane who informs him of an utterly insane truth: that he is being hunted by killers from the future. Worse, it's because Rob will eventually grow up to be history's worst tyrant that kills most of the Earth's population in his war against the megacorporations. Jane offers to be his bodyguard and keep him on the straight and narrow.
But is a future where corporations like Butterfly rules really better?
The series contains the following books:
- Dark Destiny
- Destiny's Paradox
Dark Destiny has the following tropes:
- Action Girl:
- Jane is a badass supersoldier despite being no older than Robbie. This is because cybernetics are available in the future and she was equipped with them as a Child Soldier.
- Sabrina or her future self at least is another future soldier of the Scorpion and capable of throwing around grown men like rag dolls.
- Esther is one half of the double team of her and Cody, who are able to kill dozens of trained soldiers themselves.
- Bad Future:
- The future where the Scorpion comes from is one where much of humanity has died out due to the use of WMDs as well as the attempt to reverse environmental damage by forcing humanity back to an agrarian cultural lifestyle.
- From a reader's perspective, the 20 Minutes into the Future setting of 2060s is this as well. The corporations have instituted a Crapsaccharine World in the areas they control but have forced the poor to live in hideous slums that they're deliberately pumping full of drugs as well as violent crime.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Rob is torn between the fact that the Scorpion rises from the ashes of the Megacorporations but if they aren't opposed, they institute a brutal dystopia of their own.
- Butterfly of Doom: The Butterfly Corporation is named both in and out of universe for the Butterfly Effect. How the future is actually changed is actually unclear because there's no way to travel to the future. You can only go one way.
- Child Soldier: Jane was one of many of these adopted by the Scorpion and raised to both worship as well as kill for him. She was also his actual biological child.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Colin Reilly is the CEO and Chairman of the Butterfly Corporation. He's also an arrogant, malicious, and bullying man who believes that replacing the government with One Nation Under Copyright will lead to a better society where the poor are forced to "actually work."
- Cyberpunk: The world of 2069 is divided between a dying US government and a bunch of megacoporations that control most of the country. Cybernetics for medical reasons have become common place and have only now begun being used by the military. They're opposed by ruthless revolutionaries and terrorists that start from student activists.
- Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Essentially the plot of the book. Robbie is someone who will grow up into being history's worst dictator and a group of people have come back in time to kill him in order to prevent that from happening. However, Robbie isn't evil yet and the larger economic as well as social forces that cause events to occur are still going to happen whether he's involved or not. The assassins were also ordered by ROB to kill him, rather than his enemies.
- Kid from the Future: Jane turns out to be Rob/The Scorpion's daughter. This is why she hesitates to kill him.
- Megacorp: The Butterfly Corporation is one of a hundred corporations that control almost all of the world's commerce. It originally started as a computer company but moved into shipping and eventually bought out energy as well as military contractorships.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Rob is a kind, empathic, and pacifistic young man while Jane is a crude Deadpan Snarker as well as a badass enhanced soldier from the future. Gradually, Rob becomes more badass and jaded while Jane starts to open up.
- Morton's Fork: The Scorpion coming to power results in billions of people being killed as well as the collapse of global infrastructure that kills billions more, leaving a ruined Earth as well as a dying populace. However, if the megacorps aren't opposed they will institute a ruthless corporate dictatorship that will end freedom.
- One Nation Under Copyright: Colin Reilly wants to reduce the US government to a shadow of its former self and institute direct corporate rule. He's already effectively gutted most of the United States' social safety net and is using that as an excuse to attack the government further.
- Our Time Travel Is Different: Time travel only works one way and changes happen immediately. If you make a paradox happen, though, it doesn't effect the people who have come back, though. So a Grandfather Paradox is impossible.
- Private Military Contractors: Monarch is the name of Butterfly's private army that officially serves as "security" for their properites. Since Butterfly actually runs entire cities like Chicago and New Detroit, this means they have replaced police in many places.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The Hope Army is an organization that starts off as HOPE, a pacifistic protest group, before it gradually becomes more radicalized under the Scorpion. The organization eventually overthrows the megacorps but destroys the world in the process.
- San Dimas Time: Because time travelers can only go one way, they only have as much time as anyone else to change the past. If they miss their window, then they're forced to watch events play out as before.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Zig-zagged with Make Wrong What Once Went Right because while the Hope Army assassins want to kill the Scorpion before he goes on to become a planetary warlord, they would also let the megacorporations run wild. They're also doing it out of Undying Loyalty to the Scorpion who ordered his own assassination as a teenager.
- Screw Destiny: Rob wants to avoid becoming the Scorpion and destroying the world. He also wants to avoid Butterfly taking over the planet, which he believes only he can help do since he knows what's coming.
- Temporal Paradox: Destiny's Paradox has the first of these happened. Jane finds out that events have changed so that her mother was killed before she even met Rob. However, she's still alive and remains unaffected.
- 20 Minutes in the Future: The main story takes place in the 2060s.
