CANS OF WORMS
by Louis IX

Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings. Here's a thought experiment, in which I try to bring a bit of change in everything. More or less. Also, everyone is deaf – I had to find a reason for not writing dialogs. Again.

Inverted Morals

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Assassins' Creed

For all the good Taylors in the multiverse, there must be a few ones with shortcomings, or a bad attitude… right? Fortunately, or not, they are quite rare. So much so that there are many many difference with the established canon. Here is one of those stories.

Taylor Hebert was the daughter of Daniel and Anne-Rose… who were Killers for hire. Unfortunately for the small family, Danny died in a shootout against overly overwhelming odds – at least, the soundtrack was impressive.

Anne-Rose, equally often called Annette, was left alone to care for her daughter. And, as she and her husband had promised each other, she stopped her career and took up a simple job of head of recruitment at the Dockworkers Union – she had a forceful personality despite her lithe frame, and was often underestimated in all her professional dealings.

Daniel had not been much taller than her, his average frame quite good for infiltration. But with his muscles, his training in several martial arts, and his expertise in all kinds of weapons, he had been deadly. As a point of fact, among the fifty or so mooks who had ushered his last moments of life, none had survived. Alongside two high-profile bosses.

By the time she left for the summer camp her father had paid for, earlier in the year (and that was the reason she wanted to go, despite being separated from her mother), Taylor had already been trained in the same manner. Intensive muscular training pulled at her skeleton, despite the supplements in her food, and she was of average height as well. She also wore contact lenses quite often, both for vision and to change her eye colour.

Her mother continued her training, with lessons about appearances and manners. She wasn't enforcing "good" manners like all parents try to do, but imparting how said manners impacted targets, onlookers, and potential witnesses. Including how to play people, to discover their secrets, and to make them do what you wanted without them being the wiser. And Taylor was quickly becoming an expert, now – although not enough to fool her mother, yet.

That summer camp hadn't been chosen as a purely leisurable happenstance, too: one of the last mission Danny had started on was to kill a crime boss whose appearance was that of a teenage girl (despite being twice that age) and who also used it to attract other young females. And what better ploy than send a killer right into her arms?

The papers barely mentioned the death of Madison Clements, from what was, officially, a ruptured appendicitis – the camp being far from everything, the excuse held, especially when the summoned ambulance couldn't arrive because of a few trees that had fallen on the road (courtesy of some preparation, of course).

Being in a camp with many teenage girls, Taylor adapted her behaviour and made "friends", including one "bestie" in the person of Emma Barnes. Given who was Emma's father, Taylor supposed that it would help her, in the long run: the man was chief of the Brockton Bay Police Department, after all. And totally committed to his daughter's well-being. To the point of accepting her decision to follow Taylor in that otherwise subpar highschool, Winslow.

There, Taylor played with the many factions, and Emma felt a bit adrift, her "bestie" not really acting as one. She took comfort in the presence of another girl annoyed by Taylor: Sophia Hess. She didn't know yet that the other girl was working for the Protectorate, and that the Protectorate had a keen interest in the Hebert family (whom they suspected of many crimes – interestingly, the list wasn't identical to their real deeds).

The Protectorate was that international organization that tried to poach the super-powered individuals so that they wouldn't end up in "villain gangs". Although that denomination was debatable, given how many Protectorate "heroes" had killed, and continued to do so. Of course, with the law behind them, it was always done legally… even if it sometimes required after-the-fact adjustments.

Such as Annette's subsequent murder: suspected of having taken part of Lustrum's activities, the Protectorate ended up trying to apprehend the woman with force, only to have that force reflected on them. Annette didn't often use her powers, but she had a kinetic field around her, that she could manipulate to catch every projectile heading her way and send it back with an opposite vector.

The Protectorate had enough heroes there, though, with enough powers. She was asphyxiated from afar, burned, and a boulder was thrown on her, vertically (and her power pushing it away several times ended up failing as she fell unconscious).

All this while Taylor was at school. She suspected something, because Sophia was fidgeting while looking at her. A brief moment alone in the toilets, to use her secure connection to the house, was enough to give its status… as well as her mother's. Tears came, but her training overcame her grief as she heard people entering the place. There was Sophia, sure. But with her were other people. And at least one adult.

She had studied the Protectorate heroes, at her mother's insistence (know thy enemy), as well as gang capes from Brockton Bay and elsewhere. From the way Sophia walked, in real life and in the publicity shots seen on TV, she had determined that she was Shadow Stalker, a girl able to turn insubstantial to go through walls, with others in tow. Has the girl brought "friendly heroes" to fight her? An unpowered baseline human?

Apparently so. Of course, Taylor fought, and she fought well. Even against Browbeat, Velocity, and Clockblocker: she was able to run circles around the Brute, keeping it between her and the time-stopping Striker so that he would be caught in his cardiac-arrest-inducing total immobility. Using her own mundane Shaker effect (a pepper spray), she was able to disable the Mover. And then she approached the last two teens, blood still dripping from her multiple lacerations… and murder in her eyes.

It was only with the intervention of an even younger girl that she couldn't touch them. Or move further. Or breathe, even. Vista was a intermediate school girl whose power allowed her to manipulate space. And by compressing air, she could make an impassable wall. With her early trigger and her time spent training her powers, she could create a cube around a target, too.

Feeling herself trapped, and soon to die, Taylor… triggered.

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The Ward

She awoke in a cell. Because that's where people go when they oppose the law – or what passes for the law. Several people went to see her: experts, interrogators, heroes with a chip on their shoulder… she was retrained, first normally, and then completely when they noticed that she could impact the unbreakable glass shield by just moving her head, while still sitting on a chair. And they hit her, and used many of their powers to get her to talk.

She didn't. Or, rather… she simulated complete capitulation, her mental conditioning helping fool the observing Thinkers. She was "gifted" with specialized bracers for her wrists and ankles, and inducted in the Wards program. The only other option was the Birdcage, according to them, and she didn't want to end like that – that name was quite literal: true evildoers were sent to a cape whose power was to transform people into powerless birds, before stowing them in a large cage.

Those idiots put her in a team made with the very teens who had captured her! However, when her thought processes erred towards harming them, she could feel her cuffs heat up. The "heroes" smirked, especially the one who had built the obvious Tinkertech: Armsmaster.

So, instead of immediate gratification in beheading those self-important pricks, she waited. She was patient. And she trained her powers.

As it happens, in her want to stay alive in order to slay her foes, her power has expressed itself in three distincts categories: Mover 1 (can continue to move, at normal speed, even through debilitating and mortal wounds), Brute 1 (can self-heal, although it takes some time to kick in), and Blaster 1 (can have melee weapons hit at short range… including her own limbs).

The reason she wasn't rated higher was because of her previous proficiencies and peak condition… which allowed her to pull her blows. Otherwise, she'd have some more Mover points for agility and sheer running speed, Brute for strength, Blaster and Striker for combat training, Stranger for deception, and even Thinker for her ability to resist Master effects (including mental conditioning).

After a while, she was "allowed" to go on patrols. It was a very short time after Gallant had been inducted in the Wards. The young man had powers to detect emotions (and to provoke them, much like he likes to do with Vista), and she had been careful not to feel angry in his presence. Or resentful or any of the gamut of emotions still flowing through her on a daily basis, otherwise.

However, once in patrol with him, it was too easy to let the leash slip. After two years of prison, conditioning, and obedience, she finally let go. Thankfully for the boy, he had felt her rapidly mounting anger and murderous intent. However, instead of attacking, he tried to flee, and she still sliced through his back from the other side of the building's roof. With her nail – they hadn't given her leave to bear weapons.

Her bracers were still active, though, and flash-fried her extremities, causing her quite a debilitating pain… for a few seconds. And then her training (increased by the added torture, in prison) kicked in, allowing her to ignore it. She knew that she would regenerate, because she had already done so: as a test, she had pulled her own pinky off, and it was back an hour later.

Meanwhile, Gallant would bleed to death, the first of many "heroes" in her quest for revenge.

Not wanting the bracers to stay on her person once healed, Taylor let them drop in the back alley they had just come from – with only blackened bones remaining at her extremities, it was quite easy, too.

But then, the fact that she was on a roof with a dying hero proved to be an inconvenience, as a rush of air came from above. And down landed a person who rushed towards the young man. A person of the feminine persuasion, and clearly agitated. It was Glory Girl.

Taylor knew her to be Gallant's girlfriend, as well as the kind of girl who had a one-track mind. It was confirmed when she didn't take the least interest in her surroundings before she lifted him and flew towards the nearest hospital. She hadn't seen her.

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Underbelly

But others had, as became evident when she noticed another disturbance against the gravel-covered roof. Big cats. Looking at the paws in front of her, and then way up towards the creatures' feline head, she noticed that there were people on the back of the furry creatures. In fact, the four tiger-sized housecats (because of their proportions) were "clad" with an elaborate saddle each, and had riders.

She recognized the Undersiders, and winced, both at the pain in her limbs and at the pain that would follow soon. But… no. In fact, they seemed almost amicable. The leader, Grue, even stepped down to address her. She knew he was a powerful Thinker whose powers only worked during the night, and she couldn't lie to him. So she conveyed the truth.

He wasn't shocked about her line of work, and she knew very well why: in their group was another assassin: Rachel Lindt. Despite an almost autistic lack of social aptitudes, the girl was working up quite a fearsome reputation, coming on par with what her father's had been.

Besides Rachel were Regent and Tattletale. The first was Master of cats, making them grow and directing them easily. The second was gagged, with an elaborate system that only Grue could undo. It was to avoid her scream unless necessary: her shouts debilitated all targets, and not necessarily because of physics. No, it was the power of lies, of the strangely compelling falsehoods and conspiracy theories she could spout at a speed that would be quite impressive… if you weren't stunned by them. She was also one of the few able to actually scream, in that strangely muted world.

Taylor had few choices but to accept their help, as she knew that once Gallant was in the hospital, Glory Girl's sister would be able to awaken him, and he'd spout everything that he had done during the day – Panacea had that habit of getting people to talk while she healed them. Taylor knew that, soon, Gallant would come back to that roof, with reinforcements.

The Undersiders brought Taylor to their boss, a villain who hid in a base with mercenaries protecting him 24/7. Why? Because he was a "squishy": he had no defensive power, and could only think long-term plans. By a stroke of luck, he had acquired the services of a runaway teen named Dinah, who had triggered while playing a role-playing game in which her character died a messy death. Afterwards, she could throw her lucky icosahedron to divine the future, and preferred working with him for a while instead of staying in her abusive family.

Taylor stayed three days, healing and also learning how to interact with capes that were actually on the "villain" side of the law. And then Dinah ran out of her bedroom, quite agitated, and tried to get everyone's attention… but she wasn't fast enough and the ceiling collapsed. On her.

Above stood a massive, flaming dragon. It was known in the whole town as Lung, a man who went mad when Leviathan demolished his home, transforming into a dragon as he tried to attempt a suicide-by-Endbringer. Since then, he was insane, barely chained and controlled by the local yakuza boss, Johnny Lee. And he was still semi-controlled, apparently, because you could see the Tinker-tech chain around the dragon neck, linked with a remote in the Asian crime lord's hand. In his other hand, Lee had his favourite weapon, a grenade launcher, with which he used parabolic arcs to throw its munitions into the hole opened by his pet dragon.

Yes, he risked Lung's life. But that was it: he didn't care. He didn't care either about any collateral damage when he was on one of his killing sprees, even if the damage had increased since he had recruited a new Tinker to improve his weaponry. Thankfully, that Tinker had a sense of self-preservation and had included a mechanism so that their explosives wouldn't affect them. The others, though…

Even the other capes that the gang recruited were subject to Lee's particular brand of insanity. And they couldn't leave, because of bombs in their head. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

In that case, the "do" was to enter Coil's base through the hole the dragon had made… while it was in the process of widening.

Shocked by Dinah's sudden disappearance, the people there were still well-trained and jumped to scatter and attack the invading force. Grue started to organize the forces but found himself suddenly devoid of power, courtesy of the sun rising inside the base. And, despite the fact that a dozen mercenaries were massed in front of Coil, one of Lee's grenade exploded in front of the group and transformed everything it touched into glass… which promptly melted because of the sun moving around, setting fire to everything.

From behind a corner, Rachel took aim and shot Sundancer with two bullets in the chest and one in the head. The specialized pyrokinetic dead, the light winked out suddenly, leaving dark spots in everyone's vision… but restoring the Undersiders' Thinker and leader. Given that the dragon had now landed in their living room, there wasn't much to think and lead, though, and they all tried to flee before they were fried.

Only Rachel made it out of the base's tunnel, after Taylor. They had barely started to take a breather when the assassin was snatched from besides our hero… er… protagonist, replaced by someone else: a young man with a top hat.

Taylor didn't wait for him to introduce himself, however: her knowledge of capes extends further than Brockton Bay, and she knew him as Trickster, a teleporter who can exchange his place with someone else's, with or without cargo… but his cargo had to be unliving… or they died. Given that his rumoured friend died while attacking the base she was in, she suspected his presence to be far from benign. So, before he could act, she sank a blade in his guts, aiming for the heart.

And then she ran. Several blocks, straight, before she could even feel reasonably sure that Lee wouldn't pursue – apparently, his madness didn't extend much past his established territory.

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Night

Needing some time to heal her various wounds, Taylor sought a reasonably clean abandoned tenement, after that, and crashed there for a while. Thankfully, her self-healing power worked without needing food or anything of the sort, nor did it allow her to suffer from cramps from not eating.

But, as seems to be the case more often than not, she was discovered again. By accident, but it happened nonetheless. Why? How?

It started with two villains destroying the whole building to make themselves… a road. Because they love roads. One, Lit, was a Tinker specializing in road wrecks (he only thought it was Vehicles), and the other, Ober, was a thinker specialized in road rage – quite the alliance, there.

And, following them, were Ballistic and Echidna, the former mounting the latter's Changer shape: a horse-like creature that spits cannonballs. She (because her normal shape is a woman) doesn't spit them forcefully enough, but his power allows him to accelerate them, wrecking anything on their path.

Concentrating on the chase, Ballistic succeeded in hitting Ober with one of his missiles, making Lit wail… and crash, his concentration lost. However, the remaining missiles continued on their trajectory… and one of them struck someone who was "merely" watching from a rooftop. And aiming their sniper rifle at the duo.

The involuntary attack had surprised everyone, and the Empire healer, Othala, didn't have enough time to activate her powers before the man, who happened to be her husband, died. Only the fact that she was paraplegic prevented her from rushing towards the travelling duo in her mad grief. Instead, she used her ranged healing power (her sole superpower) to fill her allies to the brim – she had remarked, once, that over-healed people went berserk.

Rune was the Empire's artillery machine: from behind the lines, she used Norse writings to shape concrete into large siege weapons, such as catapults… which seldom worked more than once. Often, once was enough. Sometimes, instead of sending blocks of concrete or masonry, she sent people. Such as Alabaster: not only was the man immortal (apparently), he also exploded into a sphere of acid, once dead. She was one of the three capes from the empire with a ranged effect, the third being Cricket, who controlled bugs – she could form swarms of locusts which replied to her using a lighter's clicks as commands.

The others were melee fighters, mostly. Stormtiger was a Changer whose second form was a tiger with a woollen fur. Why? To generate electricity that he could add to his claw attacks or send as weak short-range bolts.

Fenja could grow into a larger woman, and her sister Menja into a large winged horse. Together, they were the Valkyrie. Fenja had a bow, but she preferred close contact and hadn't trained with it much.

Krieg had no ranged attack by himself. He did have a kinetic field around him that made projectiles thrown at him orbit him and return towards the sender's position. Otherwise, he was more partial to warhammers and mauls.

Hookwolf was a specialized blender. Which means that he was a cook, even a master chef, who liked his preparations to be pureed – whether they included human parts or not. Big, bald, with a scraggly beard and an apron, he often fought with a big-ass cleaver… and a helmet crudely assembled from three triangular metal sheets.

And finally, Kaiser, the Empire leader, could generate heavy metal. Music, that is… of a sort. With an electric guitar, he could generate sound attacks that rattled everyone in a short radius around him. Enough to break bones. On a larger radius, he was also able to inflict permanent deafness, and he was the main reason why everyone was deaf, in town – and then mute.

Brockton Bay… or Silent Hill?

Whatever the case, with a large part of that set of capes arrayed before them, the two Travellers didn't have much of a choice, and died.

And Taylor escaped again. With her thoroughly mixed race, she didn't want to be targeted by the obviously racist gang. Yes, the Empire 88 was a racist group, everyone knew that: they only accepted as members people of their own skin tone, and specifically targeted for elimination those on the opposite spectrum… and those who were half-and-half, considered as traitors.

For some reason, they felt vindicated in their choices when they learned about some mythological country where their ancestors could have lived in peace and wealth and technology… a country called Wakanda.

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The Capital

Pushed further and further towards the slums, Taylor ended up finding another place to crash… but it was quite cramped. Because she wasn't alone. The "slums" had a large population but few buildings still up. Most of their population lived in the abandoned metro stations and tunnels.

The reason was evident, and one had only to look at two things: the damage done to the buildings, which were clearly of cape origin; and the location of the Protectorate base.

The "rig" was a repurposed oil rig that had been set up in the Bay, after the wave of crime (spear-headed by the Empire) that had destroyed their building downtown. Sadly, that had also destroyed most of the Docks and created the infamous Boat Graveyard. And with the Rig where it was, one couldn't get rid of that eyesore anytime soon.

With the Rig where it was, and given the gang's territories, the slums that had been the Docks were more-or-less a permanent combat zone between capes.

So why would anyone want to live there? Many reasons, in fact.

The first was because, for most people there, it had been their home and they hadn't had the means to relocate once it had been destroyed.

The second was that, given the horrific battles that had happened here, several people had triggered.

The first was a man who called himself Trainwreck – as a self-depreciating joke. Having had his lodging blown to pieces with him inside, he had lost his lower part, including the pelvis, as well as his right half, including his arm, shoulder, lung, ear, and eye. At that time, Panacea wasn't making the rounds in the hospitals, and he found himself on life support with a rapidly degrading digestive system. But he had the ability to Tinker prosthetics. For him, of course, and then for the other ones impacted by the on-going conflict.

Such as Squealer, a bio-Tinker specialized in sound. She had triggered after Kaiser had silenced the city, but was too fearful of her parents' religious views about parahumans to say or do anything. But powers wanted to be used, so she did so for herself, in the privacy of her bedroom. She cured her own deafness, and then started to improve her ear further. She could perceive ultrasounds, now, and could emit them too. She had a better balance, too, thanks to an improved internal ear. And when, at one point, her parents wanted to confiscate her phone, she tried, and succeeded, in re-creating some of its circuitry in her own ear. She could use radio waves to connect to wireless receptors, such as phones, phone towers, and computers. Trainwreck restored her legs when she lost her parents and home to another gang fight (given their brutal methods, she equated the Protectorate to "just another gang"). And she restored his ear.

He also replaced Skidmark's right arm, Whirlygig's spine, and Scrub's hands – several times, in fact: the younger man had the power of disintegrating things he put his hands on… but the power flowed from his wrists. That made Trainwreck invent a prosthetic hand that latched on the man's forearms instead. That way, Scrub could fold his mechanical hands backwards to use his power safely.

That's when Taylor arrived. After an uneasy night in the cramped metro station, she noticed that there were other capes present, and went to them.

Since they were genuinely wanting to help those around them, compared to the other "gangs", she stayed and helped. Starting by organizing them so that they could use their powers for everyone's benefit. Skidmark created semi-permanent (permanent until dispelled) fields that pushed things in a given direction, pushing debris out of their refuges. Scrub dug whole rooms underneath the stations. And Whirlygig created semi-permanent whirlwinds of air, to clean and air the place. Daughter of a Cauldron employee, she had also taken with her the man's vials when their house was destroyed – listening to doors, she had known what was inside.

One such vial had been given to a man who hadn't triggered yet despite having been buried in the sewer. While they reflected on ways to get his legs out from the wreckage, his power awakened. He was now able to digest any dead organic matter close to him, and his limbs could elongate to slide under the rocks that had been immobilizing him… and then pull those rocks to him so as to make himself a new body. Larger and more resistant. He was called Mush.

Around the same time, another cape came to them. It was a man named Barrow, who had heard about Squealer's abilities through the grapevine. His power was to transform, unwillingly, a spherical area into natural woodlands, suppressing anything that wasn't natural. Such as phones. Having triggered in New York, as a tourist, he had never been able to go home to his parents, nor call them.

The young woman agreed to Tinker a biological phone for him, in exchange for him staying in their underground base, and he accepted – for him, his surroundings were always the same wherever he went. And getting good neighbours was something of a rarity. And they were good, since he was repaying them with fruits from the trees. In fact, once settled in a subterranean room made for him (deep enough underground so that his spherical area of effect wouldn't be seen from above and could be protected as well), he worked hard on refining his power, and was able to change the wild woodland into an orchard. With enough fruit to feed the starving population. And fresh water too, when he ended up with a river flowing through his domain.

All this for free… or almost so: their underground city being quite disconnected from the outside world, they didn't need money. Instead, they bartered items, services, and time. And Barrow bartered continual free fruits for his continual well-being and the phone service.

As a group, they ended up being called the Barterers.

And the Barterers kept an eye on their "territory", too. Disguised as homeless drunks most of the time, leaving or entering through basements or hidden manholes, they could make the rounds to check whether another fight would erupt sooner or later. It was often "sooner".

After one of those, they found another cape. The young man wore a strange armour, made of wooden planks, and shaped in such a way that made it look like a barrel. He was also heavily wounded, his right leg having been crushed to a pulp. He was promptly brought inside the sewers, one of the "drunks" phoning the base silently (with Squealer's organic device). Trainwreck and Taylor came immediately, the first to stabilize him, and the second to check whether it was a plant – it wouldn't have been the first, and her Thinker and Stranger ratings, as well as her training, allowed her to detect them unerringly. And dispose of them in a quick and efficient way if they were.

He wasn't. Still, they removed his armour and phone (which they crushed completely) before bringing him home. And then he was gifted with a new leg, and told his story. Named Cask, he had been a Protectorate Ward, initially, on loan from the Alaska branch to help in the on-going fight against the Empire. His specialty was to create temporary power-granting potions.

However, his near-death experience had caused him to get a second trigger, which lifted the restrictions on his Tinkering ability. He could now whip up any chemicals he needed, and it helped for the base: adding chemicals to whatever Mush didn't consume, he could create rapid-drying cement, which Skidmark would propel against walls and ceilings with his fields, so as to secure their underground "city". With layers of rubber in between them, they were even shock-resistant.

With his restrictions lifted on his vial production, Cask could also make more of them, and longer-lasting too, using anything as base materials. While before, he only had a few vials, each lasting minutes, he could now provide powers for a full day, for several teams.

And, after studying Cauldron's vials, he ended up with the ability to make others like them. Each time, it would expend his power for the day, not allowing him to make those temporary ones. But once he had enough of those stockpiled, he could do so. He wanted to do so, to help his new community. He also wanted to do so, because it satisfied his power. And he did it for free (or, once again, in a barter exchange for more luxuries than the others, which included the place he used to live, and work).

To determine who could get a permanent power vial, the Barterers had a complicated system, with a random chance of course, but also taking into account the person's will to actually work towards the community's welfare, even in its defence should the need arise (and if the powers obtained could be used in battle).

On one run, they got three teenagers – with their life at risk, the idea that people magically became adult at the age of eighteen was illusory at best, and dangerous at worst. Anyone contributed to the community's welfare, in the measure of one's abilities.

Aisha was one of the volunteers. She got a power that allowed her to create invisible floating "eyes" that reported to her, and she helped secure the perimeter – she also got the Noctis power of not requiring sleep anymore.

Charlotte was another volunteer, and she became the community's flying brick, their own Alexandria package… although she became taller. And green.

Theo was another. He was able to shield himself with the materials in his surroundings (loose or not: if he was in an undamaged street, he could cover himself in concrete) and create duplicates of himself at the same time. He could transfer his consciousness to a duplicate if he died, leaving behind a body of concrete and other materials. Same when a duplicate died. He was called Golem. And, yes, he was Kaiser's son, here because he had ended up in a relationship with Aisha, when his father's gang had flattened the area indiscriminately.

When the Barterers had been in the early stages of their establishment as a community, they had raised very few flags from the Protectorate's Think Tanks. But these people were powerful enough to divine incipient threats before they could emerge. And the Protectorate's usual reaction was to slap them down, ignoring that those "threats" were sometimes peaceful people or community, only driven to become a threat because the Protectorate attacked.

Every heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

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The Beginning of the End

When Cask joined the Barterers, the Protectorate interpreted the temporary power vials as drugs. And they ignored the problem. Because dealing drugs (and everything that came around it) wasn't their problem: it belonged to the regular police. And they conveniently forgot that the police couldn't even go there, much less patrol, because their own battles with the gangs had destroyed most of the streets.

When the Barterers started getting real capes out of the permanent power-granting vials, that threat indicator ratcheted up a few levels. Enough to become a target.

As a side note, the Protectorate had several ways to deal with their target: frontal assault by heroic capes was one, and good for PR if that worked well; infiltration was another. But there were other ways, not talked about by anyone except the complot theorists: attracting a rival power.

They merely had to use a few moles to suggest that, since they did drugs, the Barterers must be flush in cash. The answer was relatively quick, and drew gangs to attack not each other in that territory, but the territory holders themselves.

Using Cask's power-granting vials to get more capes (even temporary ones counted) than the opposition, the Barterers always pushed them back easily, sometimes even killing one, or capturing one (and then converting them to their way of life, erasing their memories if needed, or killing them if they were clearly unable to adapt).

Halving the Empire forces each time they attacked left quite the power vacuum in the city, and it attracted all kinds of people. The Elite, for one, who established itself in a building they had abandoned in their rush towards the Barterers. Opening lines of communication between the two let them see common goals which they worked towards. Same with Accord, the political Thinker, and his Ambassadors.

But not all exteriors were that convenient. The Teeth succeeded in killing a few defenders, mostly thanks to Animos' power-nullifying roar. Still, with enough vials, the community could add new temporary capes to defend themselves. Besides, Animos' power happened to include the Butcher, who had charged forward mindlessly. Without the Butcher's power, anyone could kill their current host without suffering the backlash of becoming the next one.

After the attack of the Teeth, Cask returned to his workshop: both the Butcher and Animos had given him ideas (the first because it was too dangerous, and the second because it nullified other powers). He ended up with an anti-power recipe: a vial that removed one's powers. They ended up giving it to problematic capes, when they captured them.

They also invented an aerosolized version, whether for local spray, or as a distant bomb. Just before the Slaughterhouse Nine came in town. It ended up being the shortest stay of the Nine, ever, ending up with all of them dead or altogether missing indefinitely. The Siberian lasted longer, but she popped out when the invisible power-nullifying cloud reached a certain van parked nearby. Mannequin lasted the longest, because his insides were protected, but he was alone and easier to disable with the more conventional means of heavy weaponry.

That product, created because of circumstances and tested on the field, ended up spelling the end of the Protectorate. First because the waves of heroes they sent against the Barterers lost their powers one after the other, and second because, on some of them, the first thing the alchemical concoction removed was a Master effect that had them obedient and docile.

Assault was the worst, in that regard: he had no less than three Master effects on him. The first was standard-issue when a "villain" is incorporated in the system. The second was because both Emily Piggot and Armsmaster didn't like his jokes. The third being from his wife, bought so that he'd stay with her as "the ideal husband". Needless to say, once free, the man ended with quite the grudge against his previous employers… and his soon-to-be ex-wife. From then on, his practical jokes towards the Protectorate became more cruel, such as them falling in a hole filled with spikes. Or Armsmaster, limbs removed, acting as a ping-pong ball between two gigantic paddles. Or Piggot, having powers – for the power-hating bureaucrat, that was the ultimate punishment (of course it was quite a useless one: she was able to eat the sewers' content… and only that).

Given the failure of the various attacks, from both villains and heroes, the Barterers had ended up occupying most of the city's poorer quarters, leaving the affluent ones to Elite and Accord to fight over.

And they also lost most of it when the Protectorate leadership decided to end them with the most damaging weapon they had at their disposal: an Endbringer. Yes, because Eidolon knew what he was doing all along. And in his mind, there was a hierarchy of people, with him on top, the Triumvirate right below, then regular capes, then regular people. And he didn't care about people lower than he was. He wanted "worthy opponents" and got the Endbringers? Good! And fuck the collateral casualties.

For a more massive effect, thus showing his true colours at last, he directed Behemoth to hit the subterranean city from beneath. It killed most of them, of course. It also killed Accord, putting his plans for the betterment of humanity down the drain. The Elite management, there to discuss affairs, went down as well. New Wave collapsed. Of Brockton Bay, nothing was left standing, and the only capes to escape mostly unscathed were Taylor and Cask. They also had a 3D recording of what Aisha had "seen" with her invisible eyes, before she died: Eidolon gloating to Alexandria with Behemoth in the background.

Once put online, the backlash was immense against the Protectorate in general. The baseline humans and their governments were furious that high-powered capes had voluntarily run roughshod over them and their population, and went to the throat. As a result, the squishiest capes died en masse due to angry crowds led by leaks on the ParahumansOnline website.

And then, an international union of capes, led by Legend (who had defected) ended up, in the end, facing Alexandria and Eidolon. With Cask having refined his recipes so that he could grant people more powers, the capes ended up successfully beating them. In fact, it was a group of Master capes, led by Regent, who directed the weaker-willed Eidolon so that he'd use the Simurgh against Alexandria, before sending the Endbringers in a northwards course into space and then submitting to a power-removing vial and then a trial. A public one.

Contessa tried to intervene, but more powerful precogs with power-removing sprays prevented her from doing anything past a mere appearance. She died immediately, because her power had subsumed all her bodily function and she couldn't even breathe by herself.

Doctor Mother ordered a doorway to Earth Aleph, reputedly safer since they don't have capes. She died in a back alley, victim of the kind of crimes you can usually find there.

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To be continued… perhaps

Author's notes: Bits of inspiration, at the beginning, from "Are You Afraid if the Dark", by ack1308 (his other stories are quite good too).