AN: This is the seventeenth installment of my personal challenge to to write a tag for every episode. This is a tag to 1x17, Ruler. It fits in my evil!Nikki universe which was kind of started in my tag for Screwdriver, Goddess of Victory, but it isn't necessary to have read that to understand this. This is more of a drabble than anything else, but my next tag is longer and has more actually happening in it. Still, I hope you enjoy this and please leave a review!

Nikki groaned in frustration. Mac and the team were proving to be harder to take down than she thought. Pinning the bombing on Thornton had been ridiculously easy, as had been convincing Prior to go along with it all. But the whole situation should've taken care of Mac for good, whether because he blew up, got thrown in a Dutch prison, or spent the rest of his life a fugitive. Really, it was Bozer who had thrown everything for a loop. Nikki hadn't expected him to be as brave or daring as he proved himself to be on that mission. It was Bozer for goodness sake, he wasn't exactly the hero type. That was all Mac and Jack. Still, she shouldn't have underestimated him. That was a mistake she wouldn't make again.

But it wasn't supposed to happen. When she had first contacted Prior and told her that she was Chrysalis, Nikki thought Prior was her ticket to destroying them all. After making sure all of her "CIA intel" made its way to Matty, she was even more sure that the plan would work. But once again, Mac and the team had outsmarted her, and Nikki wasn't one to take kindly to that. She heavily considered just finding them in their homes and killing them, but she knew it wouldn't work the way it should. Riley would be easy. Initially, Nikki hadn't cared about killing her replacement, but the young woman had turned out to be dangerous, so she had to die too. To kill her, Nikki could simply walk into the girl's apartment with a gun and that would be that. But the rest couldn't be taken down so easily. Jack had security measures in place for that surely, and since Bozer and Mac lived together, that would make them both safer.

Nikki would just try to break into all of their homes at night and do the job, but if even one small thing went wrong, it would be over. The rest would disappear into the wind, never for her to have a change again. No, they had to be killed at the same time. But how to do it? That was the question of the century. Knowing they would all die for each other helped, and the extra mile of Mac and Jack's codependency was just icing on the cake. Maybe she could use that to her advantage somehow. Yes, they would all die for each other, but Nikki knew that both Mac and Jack would kill for each other. If she got Mac in her hands and threatened to torture or kill him, Jack would do literally anything she asked, and Mac would do the same if their positions were reversed. Would they do that for the others? Would the others do that for them? Nikki doubted it, but they were certainly questions to ponder.

Once again, Nikki was left questioning why it had been so easy to make them believe it had been Thornton. Had they really known the woman so terribly? They must have never truly known her, because that woman would have never intentionally harmed any of them, much less have a contingency plan in place to have them all killed. The simple fact that they believed that she did was mind boggling to Nikki. But once again, she supposed it didn't really matter, since they did believe it, and that was that.

Still, it made Nikki think that maybe she could use that against them. If it was so easy to turn them against Thornton, then maybe it would be easy to turn them against each other. Riley had hacked the NSA and the Pentagon before, so maybe she could convince them that she had done it again. Bozer may have been braver than she thought, but Nikki could still rely on the fact that the others would likely still think of him as more of a chicken for a while longer. She could make them think that Bozer had betrayed them for his own safety or for a shot at that movie career he'd always wanted. Now Jack would be a bit more difficult, but perhaps she could make them believe that he was some closet anarchist who believed Texas should be its own country again. That one was a bit more of a long shot, but hey, she'd made people believe even more far fetched things. As for Mac, he would be the most difficult. He was just so...incorruptible. Nikki could never make him out to be a true traitor, but maybe she could make it seem like he'd donated all of Phoenix's funds to cancer research? That was the thing about Mac that made him so annoying. He was so kind and good at heart. Nikki resigned herself to the fact that she could never make them believe he had turned.

Well, it would all be simpler to just have them all murdered anyway. That had been the original plan, and so it would be the plan once again.