Nobody knew she was Butcher, good.
She was surrounded by her fellow Wards and was now hearing the voice of one of her predecessors, bad.
"Hey, they're not about to send you against Butcher," the Ward next to her said reassuringly, clearly misinterpreting Taylors stiffening.
"Of course they're not, Spree's the only Cape I know who fights himself," one of the Butchers stated.
"This is hardly the first time we've had to deal with a new Butcher," Bastion continued. "As usual all events involving Wards outside the safety of the PRT building are postponed for the next three days or so, until Butcher is back with the Teeth."
"Safety of the PRT building?" The, slightly feminine this time, voice asked disbelievingly. "The $&!#ing Butchers in here with you!"
There was a pause.
"What happened to my &?#$ing swearing?"
"I think XV's trying to shut us out. Not that I can blame her, no crusading hero, slayer of all injustice before them, wishes to listen to the ravings of a deranged villain!"
"This is the worst thing about being killed by you," a quiet voice stated. "Being stuck with your righteous !?#& all the t-"
Taylor finally managed to restore the peace and quiet inside her head, remembering and restoring the pressure she'd felt building up in her head.
As she did so she realised the other Wards were leaving the meeting, presumably for whatever they had planned for the weekend.
All except Roulette, who was crouched next to her.
"You okay?"
It was clear Roulette was still trying to be her friend.
"I just… didn't expect the Butcher to die so soon after coming here."
"Which you also weren't expecting were you. I mean, from how lost you were looking…"
Taylor sighed. It probably wouldn't hurt to tell her something.
"I volunteered to join the Wards in Brockton Bay-"
"Are you suicidal?"
Moments later Roulette had slapped her hand over her mouth.
"It might be overrun by gangs, but it's still home. I saw being a hero as a chance to change that."
"I didn't mean to say that it just slipped out."
"I can sort of see where you're coming from. The bay… has it's problems. But yes, I volunteered for the local Wards, but then I met them. And…" she trailed off.
Even knowing she'd killed someone (accidentally!) didn't make it easier to talk about.
"Bastion mentioned something about the person responsible for your Trigger being there."
"Two of them," Taylor said being she could help it.
"Shit, that's worse than I thought. From there, I'd guess you questioned if you wanted to be a Ward at all and the next thing you knew you were being transferred."
"That's… pretty much right."
"Let me tell you a secret. I only joined the Wards after my visions showed me that it was the only way I'd survive. Of course now I know they are hardly certain futures, but…" she sighed. "Bastion told us you asked for the transfer. He might have misheard, but he could be trying to draw you into the Wards fully."
Taylor didn't know what to say to that. There had been moments were the other Wards had said things as if they were expecting her to be joining them as full Wards at any moment. Before she thought it was just that there was little other obvious for her to be there, but now…
"But look on the bright side! With the whole Butcher situation you have a few more days before they could announce you anyway."
Taylor hadn't considered that.
Of course, technically there wasn't anything stopping them from putting pressure on her to go through power testing so they could announce her as soon as the Butcher situation cleared up.
Except as she was the Butcher the situation wouldn't clear up.
And as soon as she went into power testing it would become clear that she had powers that didn't fit what they knew she could do.
Powers that belonged to previous Butchers.
Shit.
"Oh come on," a Butcher called faintly into her head. "She gets to &?!#ing swear but we don't! How is that any -ing fair?"
"I guess there isn't much hope of finding a way out of the contract."
"Nah, the PRT and Youth Guard definitely prefer us to be somewhere they can 'keep us safe'," Roulette told her. "The only way I can think of for getting a Ward out is proving that their life, or at least good health, is in danger."
Which was technically the case for Taylor, seeing as merely being Butcher made her a target for the other heroes.
Of course if she proved that, she was more likely to be arrested than released from the contract.
"This is better than XIII's soap dramas," one of the Butchers spoke up. "If any of you do anything to get us kicked out I swear I'll make it my deaths work to block every proposal you make."
"Oh screw you Dodger," a different voice, presumably XIII, answered. "They were works of art!"
"I'm not saying they weren't fun in their own way, just that XV's life is better entertainment."
There was a pause.
"Fair enough."
"Are you alright?"
It took Taylor a moment to realise the question was asked out loud.
"I just… hadn't expected the Wards to be like this."
"Well, at least they transferred you away from them. Can you imagine what it would be like if they forced you to work with the people behind your Trigger? You'd be almost certain to Second Trigger!"
It was clear Roulette was trying for a joking tone, but somehow it fell flat.
"I think I'll just… go back to my room and relax," Taylor told her, setting action to word.
It was time to confront the consequences of her actions.
{}
Taylor had, while preparing to go out as the independent hero 'Ghost' or maybe 'Phantom', tried to check her room for any hidden cameras or microphones.
She hadn't found any, but then again as she had no real idea what one looked like that… wasn't as reassuring as it could have been.
In any case, she was as certain of her privacy as she could be.
"Ah, hello? How does this work?"
She tried to avoid anything too obviously Butchery, trying to ignore how it would look otherwise.
"So you can hear us. I had started to wonder."
It was the Butcher previously referred to as 'Dodger'.
"You don't need to speak aloud, you can just 'think' at us."
"And how do I do that?"
"What do you #!? mean, how do I do that," a new Butcher asked. "How the hell did someone so stupid manage to kill me!"
Ah, this was Quarrel, aka XIV.
"It was an accident," Taylor defended herself.
"What do you #?%&ing mean it was an accident? How the hell does someone kill the !%#?ing Butcher by accident!"
"To be fair, only an idiot would set out to kill the Butcher nowadays," Dodger pointed out.
"I set out to clear the stain the Butcher poses on society," the crusader spoke up again. "To be a hero means taking any risk to end the reign of such a monster!"
"And my point is proven," Dodger commented. "I guess we should really introduce ourselves properly, seeing as we can have a civili- a conversation for once," he corrected himself. "I am Dodger, or III if you go by reginal numbers."
"VI, Detonator," the quiet voice stated. "I… think I should remind you that a lot of the other Butchers were men. Have you ever learnt to change with your eyes closed?"
There was a frozen moment when Taylor worked out what Detonator was saying.
"Did you have to tell her? I was enjoying the free show," XIII asked, sounding rather put out.
"Annette and I didn't join Lustrum just to let a bunch of perverts, even if some are girls, oggle a teen Butcher when she changes," Detonator responded heatedly.
"Nay, you joined to terrorise even right-thinking men tarred with the same brush as the monster-"
"Oh put a sock in it you self-righteous nutjob."
This… really wasn't what Taylor was expecting from the Butchers.
"How dare you! I could expect such a slur on my good name from one of these other fiends, but from a former hero like you Changer?"
"What good name? We all know what happened when you tried to join the Protectorate."
"Um, I don't…"
The Butchers went silent.
"You didn't get our memories? You mean we need to teach you how to use your powers? To be a Cape?" It was a new, raspy voice that betrayed excitement at the thought.
"To lead the Teeth?"
There was a pause.
"Butcher, why are you so obsessed with the Teeth anyway? I can't think of anything you've ever said to us that didn't relate to leading the Teeth."
Butcher was silent.
"Fine be that way. In any case, first we finish introductions then cover the rules of engagement."
"There are rules for being a Cape?"
"They mostly cribbed them from the rules of war. You know what, I think we should have started in reginal order. Where's Spotter?"
"Here, same as always," a voice snarked. "Butcher II, in case you didn't realise. Now let me be."
"Yeah, he's an #!?$&," a new voice supplied. "V, so I'll let IV take over."
"That's me, Fester," the voice that seemed excited about teaching her supplied.
"Back to me," V interrupted. "They called me Forge. Dropped the Tinkering after taking over, they kept disrupting it at the worst possible times."
"You never were much of a Tinker in any case, V. I mean, what did you even make besides those knives?"
"They were decoys! What sort of Tinker would just be fighting with knives? And what else did I make? How about your beloved minigun you #?&!"
Forge's voice faded, whatever was interfering with Butchers power suppressing him again.
"I already introduced myself and nobody likes VII, so how about we skip to VIII?"
"Why you-"
"Sounds good."
Taylor was starting to learn to block out VII even if he did get to speak.
"Shaper," a deep voice rumbled.
There was a pause.
"Yeah, Shaper never did speak much," a Butcher commented. "Berserker. Or IX if you prefer."
This… wasn't the attitude Taylor expected from someone called Berserker.
"I think something was wrong with my powers, kept me enraged," Berserker commented casually. "The other Butchers remained a lot more stable than I was even with them getting my power."
"You've already said your piece, it's my turn. Butcher ten, Hunter."
That… wasn't exactly any indication of what their powers were, unlike the others.
"Not going to mention your powers..?"
"No. At least until I know how you plan to use them."
"Ignore them, we all do. XI, Bull."
"A name that just goes to show why you had such a short run. Tank, number XII. I hope you'll actually thank me, unlike these others, for eliminating pain. I mean given what VI went through on a regular basis…"
"Like hell I'll thank you when you say things like that, you ?#$! There's a reason I'm your successor."
"Come on XIII, give your name."
"Fine. Amazon." There was a defensive note in her voice.
"And you already heard XIV earlier. Quarrel, of course. You… probably aren't going to hear much from her given whatever is blocking our swearing."
"Yeah, wish I knew what was going on there."
"That makes fifteen of us. So, the rules of engagement. Basically, escalate too hard or go after civilians and everyone else will start banding together against you. Given some weird loopholes in the rules, a Capes civilian identity counts as civilian."
"How do the gangs get away with it then?"
"It's usually the unpowered members. They are more under the purview of the police, who all too often have a poor enough relationship with the PRT that they can't organise well enough to take them into custody. At least, not with the gang Capes active. And the PRT aren't able to take them all out because of escalation and risk of creating a power vacuum. I mean nobody wants a repeat of the Boston Games."
"Heh, those were fun times."
"Okay, nobody in their right mind wants a repeat of the Boston Games, so the PRT can't take out the Capes, so the police can't take out the gangs."
"It sounds like law and order will inevitably collapse under those conditions…"
"Why did you think I joined the Teeth?"
"It really comes down to whether each gang can wait until after the PRT collapses to act in a way that nobody will protest their removal. I mean, take the Slaughterhouse 9. They're fair game, with everything they've done."
"Outlaws, in the original sense of the word," Detonator commented quietly. There was a pause. "What? My college roommate was studying english. Well, I say roommate, but after we joined Lustrum…"
A chilling thought ran through Taylor.
An Annette who studied english…
"That… sounds like mum…"
"I guess Annette did leave the movement before it all fell apart. Mentioned something about a man she wanted me to meet. I… couldn't handle it and left. Made me the woman I am today!"
"You mean a disembodied voice in a Wards head?"
"... I was heading to her house in the Bay when I got caught up in V's destruction and panicked, so yeah… but you know what this means? Taylor,we were already family!"
Taylor felt her mind freeze.
Her mother had more than known one of the Butchers before she became Butcher.
She had her mums ex-girlfriend stuck in her head.
Things were so much worse than she'd thought.
Omake
"I'm sure you know why you're here."
Phase looked up from the interrogation rooms table to meet the unfamiliar Capes eyes. "No idea."
"The PRT tend to be suspicious of Wards seemingly talking to themselves."
Her eyes widened.
"Who are you here to spy on the Wards or PRT for?"
"Nobody."
This was the problem with his power. While he forced them to answer truthfully, poor wording could see a useless answer given.
"What criminal parahuman groups do you have connections to?"
"The Teeth," she answered, clearly surprising herself.
"You joined the Wards while you had a connection to the Teeth?"
"No."
"How did you end up connected to the Teeth while a Ward?"
"I went out to be an independent hero and acvidentally killed the Butcher."
He paused for a moment, before making notes on Phases file.
Excellent actress.
Able to interfere with master powers.
"Please wait for your next interviewer. And bear in mind, we will find out the truth one way or another," he told her as he stood and left.
AN: mostly getting this chapter out to make things from the first authors note clearer, as I don't like going back and editing. I am going to work on this story, just don't expect it to update as often as my others.
Plus something I forgot to mention in the first note; I actually did research for the age rating! Temple of Doom has the same rating and an innocent gets his heart torn out so...
As for the censoring in this chapter. I'm not entirely sure how much a T story can be expected to get away with, but cutting it out entirely seems out of character for the Butchers, so Queen Administrator is going mama bear over Taylor! It's all the Shards secret child protection functions.
And on top of her Shard Taylors getting 'adopted' by one of the Butchers. How can this go wrong?