by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings. This chapter contains gore and drugs, and doesn't end well.
Acid TripChapter summary: Taylor wasn't the one in the locker… although if you just change the names, it doesn't change much. It's when you go further down the rabbit hole that things worsen. After all, if you get into your head the idea that predators ate preys, would that make said predator a cannibal?
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The BeginningWhen Madison Clements entered high school, it was with the knowledge that she entered a wild place, and that she had to identify quickly who was to be popular, and associate with them. That's why the "cute and little" teenage girl tried to hang with the athletic star Sophia, the modelling star Emma, as well as the latter's BFF, Taylor. But those three made for a tight group and rebuffed her equally quickly.
And then, because she had the audacity to try again, they started to push her around. And they didn't stop when Madison realized that she was being bullied.
After a few months of this, Madison realized that something strange was going on. Things from her locker went missing without it being open (she tried the tape thing, to check that). Missing… or soiled. Masses of bugs found their way into her home-made meals. And nobody came to help when she was obviously pushed down by Sophia, the most physical of the three.
Cape powers, perhaps? She was a cape geek before entering Winslow (and wasn't that sad that the mere mention of that had earned her a creepy stalker with the name of Veder) and had already determined that the three might be the new "heroes" recruited by the Protectorate Wards: Shadow, Motivation, and Wasp.
As girls, even teenagers, the PRT Image and PR department had decreed that their outfits ought to be revealing. Shadow's covered her whole body, but was skin-tight. Her power was to switch to a shadow state, and she fought physically and with hand crossbows.
The girl hero called Motivation had a costume which included a short skirt (with bicycle shorts beneath) that showed her legs, and a top that revealed her arms. Her identity was hidden under a mask that covered the upper part of her face, and something that wasn't widely known (and the incriminating photos actively suppressed, although Madison had seen one) was that she had a wig that showed long brown hair, to hide her medium-length red mane. Her powers included flight… and a voice that, when singing, invigorated and healed her allies… and pushed her enemies to despair.
The one named Wasp could fly as well, but only thanks to a Tinker-made armour with wasp-like wings. She had an all-encompassing costume made in black and yellow colours, with her potentially long hair hidden in what looked like antennas. Her powers summoned wasps to act both as a hiding screen… and as attackers.
Strangely (or not), all three girls were suspected of having been Rebranded from an earlier career. Shadow was the main suspect for the vigilante called Shadow Stalker – the costume looked the same, the weaponry was the same, even the name was mostly the same! Motivation was suspected of being Disturbance, a girl who went with a group of stealing villains (called the Undersiders) to stores (mostly jewellery and clothing) and "convinced" every client to give her their money before leaving with new trinkets and outfits. And Wasp was the leading candidate for the Merchant cape called Skitter, who was rumoured to control cockroaches.
Interacting with the girls, Madison noticed that they looked roughly the same as the three heroes (and the old pictures she had saved of the three mostly-villains). They moved in the same way, too. And their powers offered the perfect excuse for everything that had happened to her: Shadow could become incorporeal, and access her locker; Motivation was listed as Shaker, but her crowd-controlling power could also be explained as being a Master's, like Glory Girl's aura. And Wasp could control all insects, instead of only the wasps.
To subvert the bullies, Madison had tried to refer to the school's principal, Amanda Blackwell, but that had been shut down quite fast. Returning there with some proofs got the parents called, and things went ugly: Sophia got a "handler" who whispered things to the principal's ear, and Madison thought she lip-read things like "PRT" and "Wards".
Taylor brought her angry dad (seriously, the man had issues), and the ramification hit Madison later: being the head of hiring of the Dockworkers' Union meant that he had the power of firing her dad. And he did so.
And Emma got a lawyer dad who seemed interested to hear Madison's side of the story, and he even sympathetically offered to take the proofs to give them to the police. Still a bit naïve, she accepted… only to realize later that they never arrived. Given Emma's smirks afterwards, she suspected them to have destroyed the meagre proofs of their wrongdoings.
They weren't the only copies she had, but, strangely, her home got an infestation of bugs and things disappeared. Later, the trio was more cautious and destroyed all cameras everywhere they wanted to harass her. Other bugs found the recorders she had in her bag, or on her, and either destroyed them outright by chewing through the cheap plastic, or the trio let her go with ugly smirks. Or both.
During the Christmas vacation, the family felt bad enough to try to leave the city and return to the grandparents' cereal farm (and whiskey distillery) in the warmer state of Tennessee. Even with Madison nodding fervently, the parents still thought she ought to finish her school year, making plans to leave during summer.
That wasn't to be: on the first day of school, Madison noticed the smell coming from her locker and tried to move away. But she was pushed there by Sophia, Taylor helping by grabbing her head by the hair, while Emma hummed softly, a deranged smile on her beautiful face – because she was beautiful, on top of every injustice heaped on Madison. Given how the school's population (already not on Madison's side) actively looked away from the scene of blatant abuse, Madison knew there would be no witness to what was going to happen. And she had foolishly forgotten too bring in a recorder.
Her locker was quickly opened – either Emma had her code, or the lock had been switched (not that hard, with Shadow's powers). And the smell intensified, making the poor girl realize that the trio had planned that "prank" weeks in advance: they must have emptied all the school's organic trash, there, cumulating used tampons with other rotting and unidentifiable matter. "NOOO!" she exclaimed in pure fright, already starting to gag. "Why?" was tried, too – not that they had answered before.
Surprisingly, Emma stopped humming for a second. "Because we can." And she gave her a kick in the ass, while the two others shoved her forwards.
Those lockers were not made to contain human beings, and she was squeezed badly, both arms dislocating painfully. Adding to the pain in her legs from what felt like shattered bottles, and the disgust of vomiting upon herself, thus adding to the mess… it still wasn't enough for the empowered trio. And while the victim screamed herself hoarse (with nobody noticing, due to Emma's humming), things started to worsen: from the sludge came the feeling of creepy-crawlies going up her painfully folded legs… biting, and stinging, and eating her.
The horror made her trigger, the dream of space whales barely felt due to her ongoing pain. The three parahumans on the outside were down for the count, though. And with Emma's song having stopped, the potential witnesses recovered their wits… and their phones.
They caught the sight of the locker's door being pushed from inside until it folded, the sound making them wince as they still recorded what was happening.
When the opening was wide enough, it started disgorging the disgusting matter inside, and was followed by a hand and an arm. They took hold of the sides and pulled the rest of the body out of the minuscule overture, contorting it like so much rubber. Many breakfasts were voided in the corridor, that day, adding to the disgusting mess emanating from Madison and her locker. Especially when they noticed the state of her legs: still half-eaten by bugs, you could already see bone in several parts.
As directed by her trigger event, Madison got a contorting body, but not only: she was now secreting enough acid to kill the bugs with her blood, and those which tried to flee, she smacked with her hands… before licking them. Her mind in the haze of the transformation, she felt acutely hungry, and didn't mind eating living things.
Speaking of which…
The crowd of students started to scream in fright and horror before dispersing when cute little Madison unhinged her jaw, widened her neck, and displayed a cavity that went down to her abdomen. Filled with sizzling acid, the open-air stomach immediately started digesting the first thing put in it… which happened to be the nearest slab of meat (or comatose body, in fact): Sophia. Starting by the head.
The acid was strong enough to disassemble the girl's bones in seconds, and the fact that Sophia's body started to move jerkily as it was swallowed and disintegrated was only due to the random impulses travelling through the damaged nervous system, and not because (as some might imply by just watching the images) she might be waking up.
Sounds of people throwing up was still heard from further down the corridor, but they still continued to film, their phones turned in her direction – with the people holding them barely looking at what they were shooting.
Others had called the parahuman police. Thankfully for the school, some were nearby, and they quickly surrounded Madison just as the girl started to recover her wits. Standard procedure implied that they pour containment foam at a downed cape, and they did – at Madison, that is. Taylor and Emma were known entities, and swiftly recovered and awakened… and promptly put into Master / Stranger isolation due to their guilty reaction upon waking up. "Oh… shit!" they would say when watching the videos, afterwards.
Madison wasn't in the sphere of containment foam that should have enclosed her, though, and the PRT noticed that quite quickly: when they tried to move it, they found it much too light to contain anyone. And, once cleared, it showed a circle of floor that simply was… not there. The cute girl who could eat a larger human being in a minute had disappeared through the sewers.
The fact that the victim was a Hero, and especially an Underage Hero, fellow Ward of the Protectorate, meant that a city-wide hunt was launched for one "Madison Clements". Her parents were taken in custody, and the PRT kept interrogating them about their daughter's whereabouts, and not answering to the same question (as, for the already distraught parents, she had been in school).
As for the school, it was a mad scramble in the principal's office, to destroy any and all evidence that she might have known of Madison's bullying before. But she woman wasn't fast enough, or thorough enough, for the police not to find traces of the things she had destroyed – the most suspicious tell was the smell of burnt paper lingering in her office. It led to their investigation of her computer, which in turn revealed the deal between the PRT and the school: the money sent because three Wards went there, only kept in Blackwell's pocket.
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The MiddleThey didn't find Madison Clements, but there was a good enough cause: after thoroughly digesting Sophia, Madison didn't look as Madison anymore: she looked at a cross between her and the Shadow vigilante. Her hair had darkened to a dull brown, and her skin too, giving her a hale much more common in Southern America. It had also healed her numerous cuts and half-eaten lower body, too.
Erring in the streets, she found herself harassed by Empire wannabes, and pulled into a dark alley for more. She could have activated her contortionist's abilities to get out, or spit acid, or even eat them, but she took the first power that came to her mind… and transformed into a shadow state. Like Shadow. Or, in fact, a weaker version of that power: she was quite slow while moving so, and couldn't perceive much of what was going on around her. Still, it was enough to break free.
"It's a cape!" rang in the alley, the unpowered thugs knowing when to abort a mission. "It's Shadow!" others said angrily, recognizing the power… and the fact that, in her vigilante identity or as a hero, Shadow hadn't pulled her punches when hitting them – she had seriously injured many of them with her bolts, even killing a few. As a result, they wanted to exert a measure of payback. Since Madison-as-Shadow was now standing immobile in the alley, corporeal again and looking at her hands in wonder, they rushed at her with their knives drawn. And she didn't even defend herself as they struck… only for the blades to rebound on the girl's rubber skin.
One of them came forward, his knife aiming at Madison's head, and the girl's defence was to open her mouth wide, swallowing the knife, the hand, and the whole arm with them. And then she bit, her acid-spewing maw ripping through cloth, flesh, and bone without pause. The man yelled in pain and stumbled back, his blood spattering everywhere around him. In a massive display of stupidity, another man tried to slice at her jaw, only for Madison to contort around the attack to swallow a second arm. And then she spat two acid-covered knife blades towards the two last attackers, hitting one in the guts and missing the other, who fled.
With the Empire hunting after her as well as the PRT, she moved faster towards parts of the city where both had a lower grasp… and stumbled upon an Asian patrol. They quickly surrounded her but didn't move forward, apparently waiting for their leader to deign appear. And he took his time to do so – because, as a paranoid asshole, he had teleported in every back alley around the block to be sure it wasn't a trap or an ambush by the Protectorate.
It was Oni Lee. And when he appeared and noticed the Latino girl standing there, he scowled. "All this shit for a little brown shit?" he asked, turning to his lieutenant, who had been behind him. That's when Madison grinned, her mouth opening impossibly wide. In half a second, her neck elongated a meter or so, enough to be able to clomp on his head from above. And she bit hard enough, again, to sever flesh and bone in one go. The man's headless body stumbled forward on his last nervous impulses, the blood still pumping through his neck coating the men in front of him. And Madison swallowed exaggeratedly.
They fled, each screaming "Cape!" in his native language – which weren't the same, since there were from several countries: Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and several others.
They didn't see Madison consuming the rest of Oni Lee's body, or how her body diminished in height slightly while acquiring a distinctive (although partial) Asian ancestry. And a teleportation ability – which she processed quickly as to be used scarcely since it seemed to damage her if she used too many times in a row. Good for escapes, but bad for tactical movement.
Since Lung would be upset at the loss of his second in command, she opted to flee further away from civilization – she didn't know if she could swallow Lung whole, especially when he was already large and fiery, and she didn't want to try.
She was found by the Merchants and brought in front of Skidmark and Squealer. "I want to work for you." she said. "I'm a cape."
She was a cape geek, as well as a cape, and knew (by reputation, but still) that Skidmark immediately offered (relatively) good opportunities to any cape offering that – no self-respecting cape would put themselves under him, after all. He laughed, uttered a string of profanities, dubbing her Dribshit in the process.
Living with the Merchants, she met them and discovered some sort of order beyond the mayhem. She realized that it was necessary to stay as a recognized gang in Brockton Bay, even if the other capes regularly came to attack. Fully included, she did drugs too, and they worked… somewhat. Due to her enhanced vigour, she didn't felt the high the others attained, but she also didn't have aftereffects either, thankfully. Unfortunately for her self-destructive wishes, it meant no acid trip.
The only time she felt vaguely down was when Glory Girl came to interrupt one of the Merchants' irregularly-scheduled exhibition fights.
Collateral Damage Barbie punched her into a wall and into the coke stash beyond, where she ended up head first, breathing the thing directly into her lungs. And then Glory Girl did roughly the same to Skidmark and Squealer, only their body wasn't as resilient as Madison's, and they broke their neck upon hitting the wall – not that they didn't have collapsed ribs already, due to the damage.
When the blonde (and violent) hero noticed the unnatural angle between the Merchant leaders' heads and bodies, she froze and slowly landed, her hands picking her phone to get her sister to help. She had barely started unlocking the device when Madison jumped at her from behind and bit her head. The first attempt didn't work, her teeth being blocked by the blonde's defence forcefield. However, mastication was the instinct that made someone striking the same thing over and over until it yielded. And gnawing at Glory Girl's neck several times caused her forcefield to collapse.
To the tripping girl, she was delicious. More so than her erstwhile leaders: still high from the inhaled coke dust, Madison didn't think twice when she noticed the collapsed forms of Skidmark and Squealer, and consumed them too. Eating through the rank-and-file of the Merchant gang, there was soon not enough people to actually make a gang. And that's roughly when her trip ended. By that time, she was looking more masculine (for obvious reasons) despite still being a girl, and her parentage was too muddled to be determined with any accuracy. All in all, she didn't look like cute little Madison Clements anymore.
Not that anyone cared. Especially when she was attacked not for being who she was, but for simply being in the Merchant territory – in the eyes of most, that fact seemed to give the capes permission to attack you. After all, Merchants were harmless villains, right? They did things among themselves, but seldom attacked out of their territory, right?
Well, this Merchant was dangerous. And the one doing the attack, a new trigger in self-made power armour, noticed that his metal cover didn't prevent him from stumbling towards the unknown Merchant, courtesy of a few acceleration fields layered under his feet. Nor did it protect against the acidic spit poured over the various holes in said armour. He was digested inside his metallic box, only to be poured back into Madison's hungry gullet through the same holes. Chariot died, and Madison got urges to make her own power armour. With wheels and panes granting her invisibility, too, thanks to Squealer's power – she wanted to be left in peace, after all, and both mobility and invisibility were ways to achieve that.
Alas, it was not to be: she was in the process of doing that, in what was Squealer's workshop, in the old Merchants' headquarters, but was interrupted by a sudden blanket of darkness which coated everything.
Well, she was one to attack by instinct, by now, and she, too, blanketed the area with something that coated everything: her acidic spit. With acceleration fields set around her, she made sure to send her deadly digestive accelerant in all directions.
Cries (of surprise, dismay, and then pain) sounded in separate points as the shadow started to lift, and she jumped to the closest one, guided by the sound. She missed by quite a margin, because the darkness seemed to dampen the sound waves too. But continuing in a straight line brought her to the shape of a tall and muscled teenage boy, who was in the process of removing his sizzling biker's outfit. Only his helmet had protected his head from being coated in Madison's digestive fluids. Not that it helped him: a wide open maw and a crunch later, Madison was spitting pieces of said helmet in order to properly digest the assailant's head – and power.
The darkness blinked for a second, before reasserting itself, but she brief delay was enough that someone could see inside and notice the headless Grue. Madison heard a shout of fear and dismay, followed by something like "Run! Rachel, we need to leave, now!" which she heard perfectly even if she didn't see who uttered it. In fact, she might be in control of the darkness, but she didn't get Grue's see-through-darkness special ability, and it didn't block sound as much as before. Once again, ripping power off people got her a rip-off version… but she didn't complain.
Besides, having several powers can make things synchronize better: with barely a thought (and some spit / sweat / vomit), she could bathe the darkened area with acid… permanently – her darkness cloud was suffused with acid, not just the current area it was covering.
There was some action out of the darkness, at the same time: apparently, that Rachel bitch didn't want to leave yet, not having perceived in the half-second of visibility the danger facing them. Tattletale was frantic, though, especially as the darkness boiled towards them and she could hear the association of powers making everything sizzle underneath: with both the digestive ability and the darkness generation, everything organic caught inside (apart from Madison and her clothes) was being reduced in its individual components, ready to be eaten or just left to rot. And she wished neither for herself… or her friends, even if Alec was an egoistic bastard and Rachel wasn't cooperative even on her best days.
The proof of that was that Alec had already dismounted and fled, while Rachel hadn't made a move to leave, instead sending the rider-less dog into the shadows – they had done things like that, before. But not when the shadow was appropriated by a cape who filled it with acid. The big doggy tried to eat something inside, but quickly started to yip in pain before being silenced, definitively.
Knowing from Rachel's body language that reason had flown through the metaphorical window, Lisa dismounted as well, right before the dog was whistled forward into the cloud as well, a growling Rachel and her mount on its heels. Only to die, of course. Sure, the dogs took a long time to be eaten through, and took their pound of flesh. But acid sent down their gullets ate at them from inside, and Madison was adept at regrowing lost limbs.
Tattletale chose to run, her mind churning doomsday scenarios. She knew what the cape was capable of, and had already explored all the ramifications. She couldn't let her have access to a Thinker power like hers, or she'd destroy the world. Still, she had very few chances of escaping her, especially now that she could take hold of what remained of the dogs with Rachel's power – they could track her by scent, after all. Still, if she was going to die, she wanted it to be with a big "fuck you" to her boss, so she didn't lead Madison towards the Undersiders' base, choosing to head towards Coil's.
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The EndMadison dropped the shadow after taking Rachel and her power. Of the three dogs, the first was dead, the second was dying, acid eating it inside and outside. The third was badly burned on the outside, but the animalistic power told her that, inside, it was quite alive. She couldn't maintain three animals, but one was in the realm of possibilities. She also spat out Rachel's mask and put it on before sitting on the beast. Her invisibility was a bust, but she had a new way to conceal her identity, now.
Linked to her dog, she felt it start to recognize scent. There were two of them leaving: one was boy-who-plays-at-making-people-stumble and the other was girl-who-feels-cleverer-than-everyone. If she wanted answers, perhaps the girl was the best bet. After all, it had been a quite girlish voice who had screamed for Rachel to flee. So she gave chase.
Coil's base was guarded by heavily-armed mercenaries, who shot Madison with high-calibre weapons as soon as they noticed that, despite the dog and mask, she wasn't Bitch. Glory Girl's forcefield was automatic, and stopped the first bullet cold, but the second slammed into her arm, ripping it and making her fly off her dog and fall behind the corner she had just turned. At the same time, her mount took a few bullets too and she whistled for it to come back the same way.
Unseen by the mercs, she frowned and ate her discarded arm. She wasn't feeling pain, as such, but she needed arms to attack her enemies. And it still took her several minutes to grow another. Still, the forcefield had reminded her of Glory Girl's powers, and she tried the most iconic one: flight. It worked, even if she wasn't as fast as Glory Girl had been. Lifting off, she headed towards the Merchants' base (her own, now), instructing her dog to wait on a nearby roof. She had an invisibility armour to finish.
When she was back, she flew straight through the two guards, leaving them to the dog's mercies. And then she proceeded inside. Tattletale was there, with someone Madison wanted very much dead: Taylor. Apparently, the Thinker had recruited Wasp right out of the Wards, thanks in parts to the intercession of her boss, Coil – since the man worked with the PRT, it was easy for him to give the girl some bogus top-secret mission and have her defect. Madison didn't even bother to speak, choosing to spit at her enemy. And Taylor… dodged. She did it again, aiming low, and her prey dodged again by jumping over it – as if some power guided her choices. At the same time, insects of all shapes came from the lower part of the base, which had been converted into a terrarium. They came en masse, to bite her, sting her, and also cover her in spider silk in order to immobilize her. Soon, she was entirely covered.
Tattletale was of no help: one look at her had the Thinker sitting in a corner, facing the wall and gibbering only gibberish. Coil only showed himself once Taylor had her nemesis fully covered, and he immediately went to check upon his fallen Thinker. He didn't see what was happening behind him, at that moment, but he heard the sudden stop in chittering noises, as well as Taylor's surprised gasp. And then he saw nothing, and felt only pain as his clothing and skin was quickly dissolved by the digestive acid in suspension in what looked suspiciously like Grue's darkness – a darkness that had already consumed Taylor, insects, but kept her alive… for the moment.
And then Coil was eaten, too. That helped Madison get closure on what Taylor did to her. Not only once, but many times, by killing her in many differing ways, all quite painful. Not that she had meant that, nor did she know about Coil's power. The man was just an obstacle, rumoured to have some unknown power, and she didn't want any distraction during her "play time". And Tattletale kept shivering, her eyes blank. When her own death came, it was only with a feeling of sudden peace.
Having many capes disappear, one after the other, meant something for the higher-ups, especially as they wanted to keep the villains alive as cannon fodder against the Endbringers… and Scion, too, eventually. That's why they kept all of them in the "Birdcage" – the parahuman prison. Given their powers, both political and power-wise, they tracked Madison down and sent their strongest capes to catch her. Not kill, though, which was difficult when the enemy didn't respect the same rules of engagement. As such, and with her Thinker power, Madison successfully got easy preys like Dinah and Clockblocker. She even got Emma, too, robbing the "enemies" of one of their star healers.
However, the rage she had flown in when seeing her last nemesis was costly, for her, because she had prioritized her demise and not her own freedom. She ended up unable to gloat, and pushed into a box of metal that was then sealed hermetically – courtesy of Kaiser, because against some threats, heroes and villains cooperated. Since they had discovered that she had Sophia's power, they also had electricity going through the cage, keeping Madison unable to phase out. And she was too shocked by the circumstances to think of using Oni Lee's power.
She had already been tried in absentia, and a Dragon suit was already there to fly her to the Birdcage – the outside of which had been layered by numerous live electrical wires to keep her inside. Or so they thought.
She could live with less oxygen than other humans, but her sojourn in the sealed cell still had her quite unresponsive for a while, which made her arrival quite special: having seen a piece on her on the telly, the villain Adicbath had called dibs and gotten her for his cell block. In his "room", even, where he proceeded to do to her what he did to many others: he raped her, and tortured her with acid. Not that it did harm her, her body resistant to both acid and physical harm. Same went with her own acid: it barely did anything to him.
However, brute force was a thing, and she could still bite his head off, especially as her acid generation had been changed by her forced stay in Kaiser's box – it had been too much like her locker to not induce a secondary trigger that enhanced her control over her acid: she could now change the acidity of her secretions. It was a slow process… at first. But as soon as she digested Acidbath's power, she found herself able to change in seconds, going from "dissolves a human being in seconds" to "so acid that even steel melted" and then back to "neutral"… before heading full-tilt towards the other side, "so caustic that even steel melted". It would help her, later: people meeting her would want to be protected against acid, and some of the methods to do that could make them more susceptible to the opposite. Sometimes explosively so.
Lifting herself from the prone position she had ended up with, after her fight with Acidbath, Madison noticed that the corner of the room, next to the ceiling, held a convex shape as if a mirrored bubble was stuck there. Or, as was the case, it was to hold a camera behind a one-way glass. She didn't have paint to cover them, but she could vomit anything at will, and it wasn't difficult to create an organic sludge that would be opaque and sticky, and able to dry quickly enough to cover the thing. She had learned from her bullies, and didn't want the world to see what would now happen.
Despite her sticky situation, she felt that the heroes had just put her into the lions' cage… only to forget that she was a tyrannosaurus, and not a meek human. And she proceeded in "cleaning the house", as it were. The prison was populated only with parahumans, so it was quite the banquet, for her. Some were difficult, but she was nothing if not adaptable, especially as, with more and more powers under her belt (again, as it were), she was more and more capable to both kill powered people, absorb their powers, and survive.
Sometimes, she killed a cape and didn't get anything, but it wasn't because they held powers she already had, or anything else like that. It was because she had a concurrent, in the harvesting of powers she was undergoing: the Faerie Queen. Glaistig Unaine was a parahuman whose power was to do exactly like her: take powers from capes who died, except that she could take them even if she didn't kill them herself, she merely had to be in the vicinity.
After enough time, there was only the two of them in the prison, and she sought her out. The self-appointed queen knew that, of course, but she had a way out. So she met her opponent, smiled and waved, before teleporting away.
Madison could have followed, of course – or, at least, she could have teleported out too. Or fly as a shadow. With all her powers, she could even force her way out. But she didn't care about the outside world. In fact, now that she was alone for a while, she decided to enjoy her time with no bully around, for once. She read. She ate (in a normal fashion, for a change). She tested her powers, and refined their use.
She ended up freed by Cauldron when Scion showed himself too dangerous. They were quite surprised to find her alone there.
"What?" she asked in defiance, as they entered the prison through one of their transdimensional portals. "You put together the worst criminals, and didn't expect them to fight? You people already disgusted me before. Now I abhor you. Begone!" And she vomited her strongly anti-acid formula upon the whole Triumvirate. She had gotten a power nullifier from a random cape, and made sure that it laced her secretions so that it ate through Eidolon and Alexandria's defences – both their natural ones and the anti-acid created by their Tinkers for this particular fight (she had adapted enough to kill Acidbath, after all). Legend didn't have powers against being digested alive, and he died first, just as Madison extended her hand, bony protrusions extending from her knuckles and spearing through the three most powerful parahumans in the world – that they knew of. The bones being tubes, they were then assimilated from the inside out.
Doctor Mother looked at Contessa, who shook her head before asking for a portal to get herself out of that mess. Mother asked for one under Madison's feet, then, but the teen cape didn't fall – flight was a power shared by many capes, including the last three she had gotten. And she flew to Cauldron's unpowered leader, her hand burying into the woman's belly, ripping the intestines to shreds in what was quite a lethal manner (smelly, too). "Was it worth it?" she asked as her hand approached more vital organs to rip them apart too – kidneys, liver, lungs.
The Doctor could perhaps rationalize the death of millions of other humans, but, like most of them, she didn't fare well when facing her own death. "Please… don't…"
"You reap what you sow." growled Madison. Having consumed the powers from her first bullies, she had noticed how Emma and Taylor's felt unnatural. Others did, too, and she had gotten, somehow, the realization that these came from Cauldron (perhaps as an intuition from the many Thinkers she had gotten). As a point of fact, Emma had asked for powers for her and her friend Taylor, after they had been caught in an ABB ambush, so long ago. And her father had complied, spending the girl's college funds in that one foolhardy expense.
"Scion… the world…" was Mother's last attempt at altruism.
"The world didn't help me, so it can go hang." Madison replied. She had learnt, during the trial, that her parents had been caught and lynched by crowds agitated and led by people like Alan Barnes and Daniel Hebert. Her grandparents, too. "Besides, with my powers, I can live perfectly alone in space. And recreate everything if the fancy strikes me."
The last was uttered in vain, as there was no one else living in the room with her, anymore. And she flew away, leaving Scion to his rampage.
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To be continued… eurgh, noAuthor's Notes: Bits of inspiration from the fanfic "Corrosion" (on SpaceBattles dot com, I believe). In addition, I may have found a workaround around the formatting that was missing for, what, 25 chapters now? Nice…