by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.
ButcheryChapter's summary: Taylor kills the Butcher. A true Slaughterhouse. Also, just a synopsis (no dialog).
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Taylor is much too used to shunt her negative emotions into her swarm. But you'll admit that it's really useful. And if they are too "dark" for her to keep, she can "kill" them by forcing the other bugs to eat those carrying the taint.
She kills the Butcher, but isn't controlled like the others: as soon as she feels the evil persona trying to take over her mind, she shunts it into the swarm, where she actively destroys every Butcher-infected insect. It leads to some aerial dance rarely seen in nature, where parts of a swarm gang against the "infected" part… or parts, plural, as the Butcher has several alter-egos, most of whom of the Chaotic Evil persuasion.
Thankfully for her, her control over the insects in her radius is complete, and despite the almost overwhelming weight of all those antagonistic minds, made real as they took over more than half of her local swarm, she succeeds in rallying more and more in order to get rid of them.
The mind-voice of the remaining Butchers is more subdued after this, and she takes advice from them at some critical points, later. Besides, they can take over part of her swarm as well, and take control when she's Mastered (or intercept the Master effect, leaving Taylor free to act).
She then destroys the Teeth, who had set up shop in her town to wait for the inescapable (for them) conclusion that their leader would emerge victorious once again. And, doing so, she discovers that her experience with the Butcher allows her to do the opposite of what it was doing: "downloading" their minds and powers – and she quickly shunts the uncooperative minds away to be destroyed in an insectile doom.
She doesn't do so with any target, thankfully. In fact, it happened as she was killing Animos, and only because she liked his power of animal transformation so much that she wanted it for herself. And the Butcher's power, already mutated by having been subsumed, complied and grasped at the fallen Tooth's mind and power. Of which Taylor only kept the power.
Thinking about it makes her wary, because she was acting much like the Glaistig Unaine, the Faerie Queen, in her harvesting of the powers of the capes dying around her. She also finds that, much like said Queen, and Eidolon, and most other heroes with various powers, she has a hard limit in the number of powers she can use at once: three.
But, first, she wasn't so removed from the world as those two, and kept a firm grip on her Neutral Good alignment (which didn't prevent her from killing in self-defence). And, second, when she activated Tinker powers, she could build items that still worked when those powers were stowed away (although she needed them for repairs).
Still, she didn't find out about that restriction immediately… mostly because, like in the original series, Taylor doesn't seem to get a break: right after removing the Teeth, she finds herself the target of the Slaughterhouse Nine, who wanted to recruit her. She objected, strenuously, and ended up slaughtering most of the Slaughterhouse with her insects, the Butcher's strength, and an animal shape with wicked claws, courtesy of Animos' power.
The last two members of the killer group were Crawler and the Siberian, and they succeeded in blocking her with a pincer manoeuver, both monsters rushing at her through mere brick walls on opposite sides. She wanted to use the explosive teleportation the Butcher VI was known for, but it… didn't work.
Her momentary shock is enough to make her pause, which is a bad idea when being assaulted by the two of the worse beings on the planet. She's caught between two of Crawler's massive paws… right as the Siberian reaches her. And the invulnerable physics-defying striped creature, who has thrown herself in the air in order to be faster, can't turn on a dime and ploughs right through her body… and most of Crawler's, ending up killing him.
However, despite the suddenness, Taylor has long since worked a way to transmit mind and powers between her and her swarm, and she does so with her own with her dying breath.
As a swarm, Taylor spreads to regroup somewhere else, easily fleeing the Siberian's targeted attacks. And the Triumvirate-killer finds her own demise when the swarm finds William Manton, the one directing her as his projection… and kills him. And incorporates his power.
Thanks to that, Taylor can manifest a body with some of the Siberian's properties (such as its invulnerability), while searching for a way to return to "life" as a proper human. Or something like that.
Thankfully, she hasn't shredded Bonesaw's mind – the girl was actually gleeful to be able to help her with her many biological concerns. Using some of the bio-tinker's advices, she coalesces her swarm in a deserted warehouse, assembling them in her shape… and then working the outer layer as a skin-covered exoskeleton. One made of cells that could easily be replaced by the insects inside her. That way, any damage from firearms or conventional weapons could be healed in seconds, the weapons passing through her with no real damage.
With the mixed powers of swarm control and bio-tinkering, Taylor becomes able to turn back into a normal human, to gain mass by absorbing insects coming into contact with her, and to transform back into a swarm. Of any kind of creature, in fact, real or imaginary – an ability that doesn't build upon Animos', but the actual transformation is helped by the Tooth's power. She tried a gigantic praying mantis, and a giant hornet, before choosing other shapes with less insectile shape – such as a dragon. And, with her powers, none of her shapes would care about being sprayed by bullets or sliced by anything.
As a being made from a swarm, she would be vulnerable to area effect, especially those using fire. However, since she can morph insects into other insects, and assume their properties, she can now make use of her knowledge of those rare insects resistant to fire.
Besides, fire itself isn't a threat anymore: once she has aggregated Burnscar's power, fires are more like a teleportation portal to other fires. For her… and her swarm. In fact, with training, she succeed in having the insects she controls use her powers. Any three of them at a given time. For each insect.
Needless to say, a swarm of insects able to move unimpeded by any obstacle, making holes in them on their way with the same ease as the Siberian, that would make people flip. That's why Taylor never showed anyone the true extent of her powers. A Thinker like Tattletale could have found about it, but the Undersiders were caught by Lung the same night Taylor was attacked by the Butcher – on her very first night out, in fact. And none survived.
Still, Taylor increases in reputation, because she takes exception of the gangs in her hometown. As she patrols alone at night, she gets attacked quite often, and the enemies escalate further each time, leading to attacks from capes.
Between her swarm and her own teleportation, she takes Oni Lee out, refining her own teleportation abilities.
And then she takes down Lung through the use of massive doses of insect poison and acid, before taking the draconic man's powers, too.
The remaining cape in the ABB being a freshly-recruited Bomb Tinker, she doesn't have a hidden workshop yet, nor is she fully stocked in her dread-inducing ammunition. Still, she tries to take over, only to out herself and attract the fury of the swarm.
More power for Taylor, who discovers something interesting while experimenting with powers: despite being limited to three powers being manifested at the same time, she could choose three times the same power, increasing its potency. And when she chose her own, the range increased exponentially, allowing her to cover most of the ABB territory.
It helps, too, because she feels responsible for the people living there: now devoid of capes to protect them, they would be preyed upon by the other gangs and their villains.
Having advanced warning as to when and where shit happened was very useful, and Taylor succeeded in more pest extermination against the Merchants and the Empire. And more wins against their capes, sufficiently spaced for her to gain more and more powers: Tinker from Squealer and Trainwreck; and the ability to form metallic blades, from Hookwolf.
These powers help Taylor disguise herself under different identities each time she meets the heroes – her ability to change shape helping as well. Still, being heroes, they try to get her to "come to the PRT, to get tested" (so that they could issue a threat rating).
She ends up going, but not before the Endbringer attack – that she pushes back easily, each of her insects morphing into a whirring circular saw blade, and projecting a duplicate able to pass through anything thanks to the Siberian ability. Without arms and legs and most of its tail, and many deep wounds on its body, Leviathan retreats after only minimal damage to the city's defences.
One of the damaged place is a subterranean base which looks like an Endbringer shelter, and she flows there with other heroes… only to be skewered by tinkertech lasers held by mercenaries under the orders of a supervillain named Coil. Seeing red, she sends a swarm through the whole base, killing almost everything inside. Still directed by her will, the insects stop right before killing a young girl held hostage, as well as what looks a small group of frightened people. But she makes short work of the cape trying to teleport her into harm's way… and said harm, which is his inflated girlfriend.
Taking the little girl in her arms, and leaving the others to be dealt with by the remaining heroes, she flies to the Endbringer triage centre in order to find Panacea – Coil being thorough in his plans, the girl has received a massive dose of tinkertech drugs, and she's dying. In fact, she does die right before the parahuman healer gets her hands on her. And the nead-death experience shakes her power loose enough for Taylor to grab it. Not that she wants to, really. But the short time during which her mind has touched the girl's, she has understood that it has only brought her pain and suffering, and she wanted it out.
So she complied, gaining Dinah's predictive ability on top of Coil's power of "always making the best choice out of two" – he wasn't really splitting and discarding realities, but rather using precognition to what exactly would two choices lead to, and then committing himself to one of the two courses of action.
Back with the heroes, she ends up in their headquarters, and is directed to the test area. Very politely, as everyone has seen her dispatch of the Endbringer. With the ability to switch powers between tests, Taylor maximizes each test, and ends up with a rating of "Do Not Annoy", with details as follows:
Brute 10+ for her numerous sources of super-strength, invulnerability, and regeneration (it would be higher, but the local facilities didn't have proper equipment for anything higher than ten);
Breaker 10+ for her ability to change into a cloud of insects of any size;
Changer 10+ for her ability to change into any creature, no matter how massive;
Stranger 10+ because she can also change into specific people, as well as minuscule creatures able to infiltrate anything;
Mover 10+ because of her flight and teleportation;
Trump 10+ because of her ability to gain powers;
Master 10+ because of her swarm and her ability to have Siberian-like projections;
Tinker 10+ because of her various specialties;
Striker 10+ because she has worked hard on her Siberian projection and could project weapons, instead of people, able to tear through anything;
Blaster 10+ because those weapons could be ranged as well;
Shaker 10+ because of her swarm's abilities equating it to an area of effect;
and finally Thinker 10+ because of various powers, including precognition and her ability to micro-manage her whole swarm in real time.
With such ratings, she almost gets a nuclear device exploded on her head (because American policies are always to "deal with" a potential threat before it can threaten them). Three things help in that regard, though. The first is that Scion dismantles every nuclear weapon as soon as it came into its planet-wide awareness. The second is that it will probably not be enough to kill her. And the third is that Taylor's genuinely doing good for the city as a whole: the gangs have disappeared or left, and the neighbourhood are slowly filling themselves with people willing to work for the community as a whole. Taylor herself (or her swarm) deal with any problem, be they a blocked sewer, the boat graveyard, or bullies.
In fact, the heroes quickly find themselves without a job, and are relocated to areas where their talents will find a better use, and the PRT only maintains a core presence so as to serve as contact point between Taylor and the other heroes.
Learning this, there are villains who still come to try to fill what they think is a "power vacuum". Instead, they find the power "vacuum cleaner" in the person of Taylor, and lose spectacularly.
Others offer their help, like Accord. In fact, the man was a villain only because the PRT said so, a long time ago, and his plans for a better world were among the best Taylor could find. And help with.
With the mind of Alan Gramme, also known as Sphere, and the Tinkering abilities coming with him (from the entity known as Mannequin), Taylor could also implement large-scale changes. Starting with the removal of Endbringers.
Of course, the Warrior that was Scion would object. But with enough precognition about her own fate, and the help of those following another precognition-driven path into Scion's demise, Taylor ends up facing the Goldman above the ocean. As a massive swarm, each insect having a physics-defying duplicate surrounding it as an armour, she crowds the man and tears through his physical body… only to discover that it's made of power, and refills itself quickly from a tear in reality in the middle of its being.
Acting quickly, she sends her whole swarm and the programmed insects (and their projection) towards the man's centre, escaping the wormhole in another dimension, in which the creature's massive body is resting, covering a whole planet. Following the energy pathway to its source, the armoured insects tear into the massive thing… starting with the central power that was granting the entity its cohesiveness.
And then, like Eden before him, Scion dies.
But it's not all: the insects continuing their program, they continue tearing into the massive mountains of flesh, damaging powers around the entity's central mind and then further away. But they automatically recognize any power already linked to Taylor, swerving around them in their path of destruction. Observing this, and recovering their self-preservation after eons being directed blindly, the other powers gather and link themselves as "vassals" to those our hero controls. It allows them to survive… and grants the already powerful girl even more powers than before.
With awareness come knowledge, and Taylor learns about the Entities, Scion and Eden, and their numerous cycles of destruction. Horrified at the idea that there exists a "race" of worm-like creature destroying everything on their path, she opts to extend her protection to the whole world, using her powers to hide it, as well as its numerous duplicates, from the Worms roaming across the cosmos.
On Earth, the remaining capes find themselves under her purview, and she always knows where they are and what they do. And she can shut them down in regular combat, or from afar if doing so was better for everyone, such as to avoid collateral damage. Such as when she took out Nilbog, Sleeper, the Fallen, the Blasphemies, Moord Nag, and Ash Beast.
Even those from Cauldron ended up under her thumb: with her powers being what they were, and her intentions being inherently good, she quickly finds out about Eden, and takes a personal interest in "her". Repeating the process she has already done with Scion, she hacks at the corpse with her overpowered minions, succeeding in both gaining the same power over Cauldron capes, as well as a better understanding of their powers.
And she quickly shuts down Eidolon before the trigger-happy man pulls the other seventeen Endbringers to the fore.
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To be continued… maybe notAuthor's Notes: As usual, an idea that goes nowhere by passing through overpowerness.