Now that I've spoiled you with fluff, I need to remind you all why Annette is the mother of all monsters.

Enjoy!

Empire's End

"Mom!"

Annette looked up from her paperwork at the sound of her daughter's panicked shout. She tore away from the desk without hesitation, dashing her way to where her daughter was. The young girl was staring out the living room window with an ashen look plastered over her face. The poor girl was so pale that she looked like they could have been blood relatives.

"What is it, sweetie?" Annette asked with as much compassion as she could muster. Cindy didn't look like she was physically hurt, but she looked more than terrified of whatever had caught her attention. The young parahuman said nothing as she pointed out the window. Annette turned her gaze toward where she was pointing and froze.

Spikes taller than men jutted out of the ground, cutting her house off from the main street. The silvery towers of metal gleamed in the morning sun, a terrifying promise of pain for all who tried to interfere. The only break in the nearly solid wall of metal was a space where two men stood, completely unperturbed by the unusual environment. Annette felt a growl build up in her chest as she recognized who they were. Allfather and Kaiser of the Empire.

Annette had never concerned herself much with the activities of the gangs that plagued Brockton Bay. Oh, she would lend a few Spatori here or there to assist the Protectorate and PRT, but they had never been much of an issue for her. Most people were smart enough not to antagonize the most powerful Master class cape on the planet. A few individuals had approached her during her first few weeks back in the city, but she made it very clear what would happen if they pushed too hard. Apparently, Allfather and his subordinate fell into a very specific category of stupidity.

Annette pulled Cindy away from the window and looked her in the eye. She could see the fear welling up behind those amber orbs of hers. The young girl had done a remarkable job these last few months with therapy, but she was still very much a damaged and scared little girl. "Sweetie, I need you to go call the Protectorate while I deal with this. If they give you any trouble tell them that I told you to call, understand?" Annette asked. Cindy nodded in agreement and scampered off to where the house phone was located.

"Cadmus! I wish to speak with you," a loud and sonorous voice called out from the front yard. A scowl passed over Annette's face as she made her way to the two interlopers, only barely keeping herself from crushing the door handle on the way out. Despite the anger emanating off her, that was practically visible at this point Allfather remained stone-faced. Kaiser, on the other hand, looked tense and uncertain.

At least one of them had a brain then.

"What do you want?" Annette asked cutting through any pomp that the man might try to employ. For all that he portrayed himself as a king of the people, he was very much a violent monster who killed any minority that happened to stand in his way.

"Isn't it obvious? I want you to join the Empire," the man said without a hint of hesitation. His helm covered the entirety of his face, shielding his expression from her view. A pair of wings spread out from the sides of his helmet in a vague mockery of Norse mythology. His body was powerfully built and even with her height he still managed to look her in the eyes.

"And why would I ever do that?" Annette asked with no small amount of condensation. Allfather said nothing as about a dozen blades materialized in the space around him. Annette only barely managed to keep herself from lashing out at the sudden threat. Her crimson eyes tried to track the blades, but there were just too many to watch at once with how spread out they were. They certainly looked sharp, and even with her enhanced durability, she wasn't too eager to be hit by one of them. She leveled a smoldering glare at the two neo-Nazis. Kaiser filched, but Allfather remained unperturbed by her defiant display.

"I trust that I've made my point clear?" Allfather asked, a trace amount of wiry humor entering his tone. Annette had to keep her eyes from rolling at the utterly cliché pun. Did the man think that he was the first one to think that up?

"Why do you even need me? Don't you have enough idiots at your beck and call? I can see that this one is pretty useless, but they can't all be as bad as him," Annette taunted, waving her hand in Kaiser's general direction. The man stiffened in rage, but a quick wave from Allfather put him back into his place.

"I'm afraid with some of my forces…indisposed at the moment I'm in need of reinforcements," Allfather said, a real trace of anger entering his voice. Annette couldn't keep the smirk off her face. She knew that with Hookwolf's capture by the hands of the Protectorate the man was down a tank and the Teeth were knocking at his door. This entire plan reeked of desperation.

"And If I say no?" Annette asked curiously as she eyed the floating blades. Allfather's response wasn't to attack, but rather to give her a careless shrug.

"Then I'm afraid that your dear daughter will be caught in the crossfire. A pity for one so young, but that is the life of independents is it not?" Allfather asked with an amused glint in his eyes. She could practically hear the smirk in the man's voice. His entire posture reeked of arrogance.

It only made her rage burn even hotter.

Annette wasn't one to anger easily. She had always tried to keep herself calm when dealing with even her most rebellious students and her daughter's worst tantrums. It had been during her fight with Nilbog that she had experienced for the first time what it was like to give into that anger. A cold hatred that directed every action she made, every idea she had. It was something that permeated into her very skin and was made manifest by her minions. Beings of rage and hate and pain.

And now this man, this fool, thought he could come to her home and threaten her daughter? Annette was more than familiar with death threats from her foes, it was something that she had gotten used to during her time with the Guild so far. But her daughter was off limits. Anyone who failed to learn that lesson would be killed without mercy or hesitation.

"I'd might list off all the reasons why that's a bad idea, but you'll be too dead to care," Annette said, her voice colder than ice even as her rage burned with the intensity of the sun. Allfather old had a split second to contemplate her words when the ground behind him exploded as something rose from the earth. A shadow fell over the group as a titanic scorpion shook loose mounds of dirt and cement from its form. Red eyes glared down at the two Empire capes as claws larger than they were clicked together.

Allfather didn't even have time to turn around before a yellow blur glinted in the air as a stinger burrowed into his chest, slamming through bone and muscles like a wrecking ball. With his internal organs almost completely disintegrated the man couldn't even let out a scream as he was flung in the air like a ragdoll. The blades that he mad manifested with his power clattered to the ground in a useless heap as his dying body failed in the air.

"Wha?" Kaiser half-formed question was cut off as Annette lunged at the distracted parahuman. The man let out a gargled scream as her fist struck his face with enough force to shatter steel. The man's helmet collapsed in on itself, embedding shards of metal in his soft flesh. Blood tricked out of his shattered helm as the futile clawed for release, but Annette gave him no rest. Instead, she wrapped her hand around the man's throat and lifted him up into the air without so much as a grunt. She then proceeded to slam him into the ground like a broken toy. She could hear his ribcage crack under the pressure as his amour warped and bent.

Small spikes of steel burst out of the ground in an obvious attempt to fend her off, but the man's concentration was too broken to pose any threat. Annette reached down and ripped the metal off of Kaiser's face, uncaring for the blood or flesh that came with it. She wanted to look the men who dared to threaten her daughter in the eyes. There was a brief pang of shock as Max Ander's disfigured face stared back up at her with his terror-filled eyes. Or at least he would have if one of his eyes hadn't been mushed into a fine paste and the other coated in blood.

"Y-you can't, the rul—" the man tried to gargle out through his bruised throat. Each breath he took must have felt like agony with most of his ribcage broken, and a faint trickle of blood coming out of his mouth didn't look too healthy either. But Annette didn't care about that, she had a message to send.

"You think I'm going to play by some rules when you threaten my daughter?" Annette asked, her eyes blazing in anger. Droplets of blood shook off her hands as they trembled in barely contained rage. She threw him aside, making him slam into the ground. "You think I'm going to hold anything back when her safety is at stake?"

Halfway through her speech, the man started to crawl away in a desperate attempt to escape her wrath, but she gave him no respite. Instead, she kicked him in the stomach with enough force to send him flying into the makeshift wall he had made. There was a crack as the man fell down to the ground screaming. Annette could hear the sirens of the PRT in the distance, she was going to have to finish this up.

"I don't know if you'll live through this, and I really don't care," Annette said as she dropped herself down to the man's eye level. She could practically hear his heart pounding against what was left of his ribcage. "But I want you to know this. I will do anything to keep my daughter safe from monsters like you. I'll burn the rest of your Empire to the ground if they so much as think about raising a hand against her."

Annette watched as what little light was left in the man's still intact eye faded into nothing, a dying ember in the night. As his head slumped over she checked his pulse. Finding none and satisfied that he wasn't going to try and skewer her she turned to see how Allfather was doing. The moment her eyes found his wasted body she knew that there was no reason to check for vitals. The man's torso was gone, only a few thin threads of flesh and muscle holding his upper and lower body together. Her scorpion Spatori seemed rather satisfied as its mandibles clicked together in excitement. She gave the minion's giant claw as soft pat as a pair of PRT trucks came barreling down the street. She did nothing at the came to a screeching halt, pouring out two dozen well-trained PRT troopers and a pair of Protectorate heroes.

"Annette," Armsmaster simply said at the troopers fanned out in case of any nasty surprises.

"Armsmaster," Annette replied, returning the man's rather curt greeting. While she didn't especially like Armsmaster, she did respect him, particularly when she discovered that he had been part of the Ellisburg operation.

"We got a call that Allfather and Kaiser were present," he said as his visor scanned the surroundings. From where they were standing she knew they could see either body past the bus-sized scorpion and the wall of metal spikes. She stepped aside, signaling to her minions to do the same. Armsmaster's face hardened at the sight of the two dead men while his partner, Triumph, turned an interesting shade of green.

"You can pick up what's left of them," she said with a negligent wave towards the dead bodies. She supposed she could have had a bit more decorum, but she really couldn't bring herself to care. She felt no regret for what she did, and she would do it a thousand times over to protect her daughter.

"Why?" Triumph asked, his voice faint and fleeting as he stared at the pulverized remains of the two capes. While she couldn't quite pin down the man's age, but he sounded young and probably wasn't used to such displace of savagery.

"Because they threatened Cindy," Annette said simply. There was no reason to try and explain any more than that. She knew she would probably have to face a battery of questions and a mountain of paperwork, but it would all be worth it. So long as Cindy was safe she didn't care.

"I'll have to ask you to come to the Rig," Armsmaster said, not unkindly. Triumph, on the other hand, looked like he was about to throw a fit at her apparent lack of compassion towards the two animals that had tried to coerce her with her daughter.

"I understand. Just make sure that Cindy's safe," she said, allowing herself to be led to one of the vans by the PRT troopers. They said nothing as she took her seat in the near featureless van, but she could see some faint approval in their body language. She knew that Allfather had never particularly cared about PRT casualties before. How many of their brothers and sisters in arms had died because of that man? How many children had lost their parents or how many had lost their spouse?

She didn't feel an ounce of guilt over what she had done to that man. If anything, he got off lightly compared to Kaiser. He died almost instantly, never knowing what horrors she could inflict upon them. But this would be a message to the rest of the city. Mess with Cindy and you die screaming.

It wasn't a promise of her actions or a threat of her vengeance.

It was a fact.

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