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For a hero to exist, there must be a villain.
Heroes didn't just emerge fully formed like a comic book. They had to go through the back story first. Something had to make them rise above the masses, someone needed to oppose them...
It figured that is what she'd become.
Taylor looked around at her crushed dreams. She'd tried. She'd tried so hard to do it. She'd made her costume, never used her powers for evil, not even when the terrible trio had all but ruined her life. She'd tried everything she could to be that one in a million, that story book ending...
Only she'd become the last thing she wanted.
All at the hands of a hero.
Fine.
This was fine.
If they wanted a villain they'd get one.
But first.
She pulled her insects in tight. To a place no one could see. While bugs were frightening enough to be a superpower all on their own she couldn't let them see all her cards. If she was going to bunker down and play the long game then it was best to keep it close to her chest.
That day a new kind of power was born of shadows and disappointment.
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—x-
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At first no one realized there was anyone there.
An exotic insect collector had been happy to trade for anything unusual she found in the wilds around Brockton Bay. As a result of shipping there were a few alien species that had arrived and adapted to the climate and her abilities found it all to easy to track down interesting specimens. She traded them for money and live exports all so very legitimately that no one even found it out of place that she did so.
She stopped attending Winslow. Kurt and Lacey had been named her guardians but couldn't make her go in the aftermath of her fathers death. They let her study online and she tested out of high school within a year. She started to study entomology for something to do and quietly became known for her observations on insect physiology and behavior. That wasn't really a problem for her when she could all but become the insects as she looked through their eyes and senses.
While she made her way into scholastic journals she slowly bread an army beneath the streets of the bay.
Her insects thrived in hives beneath the town that, due to gang activity had gone mostly unnoticed.
Then, when she had everything she needed she went hunting.
Someone did eventually notice. A girl named Lisa approached her and offered to help and together they quietly took down the quietest of the bays villain roster.
Coil's men didn't care their boss was dead so long as the money kept flowing.
He'd been a magnificent bastard, orchestrating the whole incident that killed her father to kidnap a child.
She'd done her best to treat Dinah kindly when she found her, slowly weening her off the drugs but the damage was long done. It made her sigh in regret that she hadn't got there sooner. Dinah had a knowing look as she called her a hero for her rescue. Taylor had offered her the chance to go home, but the grade school girl had declined, saying that if she went, her parents would be dead within the year and she would only end up under another villain's thumb.
Reluctantly Taylor made her as comfortable as she could and left her be unless she offered her services first.
At first it was slow going as she gutted the organization from the inside and rebuilt it. Many seemingly frivolous expenses being hammered out and new rooms and bases built. Many single use hideaways were established and finally, the day came when the Wards walked into her base.
They'd been so arrogant and it had infuriated her. The two man patrol of Shadow stalker and Aegis had stumbled through the doors into her warehouse in Pursuit of a common criminal that she'd paid off to cause trouble and run. She'd revealed herself then. In a quiet way, speaking over the speakers she'd set up to interact with them.
/"Oh? Two wards paying a visit to little old me?"/
She'd executed the criminal in front of them remotely.
/"It would be a shame if something were to happen to them."/
It was a sheer miracle they'd escaped. Well, it seemed like one. She'd very carefully tailored her death trap scenario to drive them to their absolute limits, make them believe they would die, only to let them go. Let them go with the knowledge that they were beaten and she had anti-climatically opened the door to set them free.
It was the kind of scenario that told them she'd played their fate like puppets the entire time. They'd had no say in their role. The death traps resetting visibly behind them. Trials they'd struggled to overcome going back into their places with nary even a sound.
It was a soul crushing defeat.
They'd been found by a senior protectorate member less than an hour later, but by the time they investigated the warehouse, as if by magic, it was already empty.
The only evidence left was their superficial wounds, torn uniforms and the trauma.
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—-#—-
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Her second appearance, in a manner of speaking, was clear on the other side of the city. She'd been researching her targets. Heroes that didn't have the conviction to be heroes. She didn't wait for the next pair to stumble across her base. She set out to have them captured.
When she looked at the files for Galant and Glory girl she couldn't help but feel that something was rotten in their world. A beautiful girl with an aura that inspired worship or fear and a blaster with emotional sensitivity. Their on again off again behavior was so regular that it could have been scripted and to Taylor's eyes, it was holding the both of them back.
So, if they truly wished to be heroes, they'd need to let go of their illusions of a relationship, or drag each other into the dirt.
Well. Since she was a villain after all...
It was the work of an hour to arrange their kidnapping and a distraction. They wouldn't be gone for long enough to be missed. When they woke from the knockout gas she lead them through a trick maze, but this time, instead of death traps, every room picked away at their minds. She attacked their dependency's. She forced them to face their flaws and the damage they did to themselves. She broke them down and built them up and when they left, ejected into the street, they may as well have been strangers.
Glory Girl's radiance turned Dim. She had been forced to learn to restrain her aura for fear of her life and sanity.
Gallant was tired. Forced to detox and confront the origin of his addiction. He was exhausted and numb and almost completely unable to tell what he felt in himself.
Neither could look the other in the eye.
Their work ethic improved in the following weeks.
They were spoken to by Councillors and doctors, by their families and friends. Recounting their ordeal happened in only the vaguest terms. Soon they grew apart and there was no longer a glory girl and gallant, nor a Victoria and dean.
Strangers threw themselves into their work with grim determination.
Because as much as they both appeared to hate the villain that had orchestrated their demise, they hated themselves more for being so relieved that they no longer had to deal with each other.
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—-#—-
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When the wards next came into her domain it was with a very agitated Amy Dallon in their midst. The remaining wards and the healer had actually come across the base by chance and planned their raid in advance. They'd tried to get the others on board, but only Aegis seemed willing to return to her nightmare den. Shadowstalker gruffly told them to get fucked, her hands shaking where they couldn't see. Gallant just told them that if they had the time to plot they could always be training.
Glory Girl hadn't wanted to join either, she buried herself in schoolwork and training.
But in her restrained state, Amy Dallon, Panacea had gone on a long hard detox from a drug she'd been on most of her life. Victoria's aura had been shaping her psyche for years and to have it suddenly gone left her enraged, hurt and confused in profound ways as she lashed out at the only acceptable target. The Villain that had broken her illusions and thrown away her fantasies.
Still. It was insanely difficult for anyone to catch Taylor on her home ground. Especially when she didn't even need to be physically present to torment them. As the death traps controlled by insects wound to life it wasn't Aegis that took command like everyone expected, but vista who rose to the challenge. She lead them successfully to an encounter room where they finally learned there was a face to put to their misery.
Well, not a face of course, but a mask was a target none the less.
But Taylor knew how to be infuriating. She didn't really hate the wards. She wanted them to be strong heroes, to be their very best they could be when they finally stepped up to the protectorate. When she finally felled them. But now, now she felt all the pride of a mother watching her children grow.
Her tone was deliberately indulgent, like talking to a child. And Panacea was having none of it. There were no organic living materials around for her to use as a weapon, nothing, that was, except the wards.
Taylor wondered if she realized what she'd done or if she was just that blinded by hurt and grief that she didn't think twice about transforming Aegis into a beast. His body was a warped, hideous mess of mouths, teeth and tentacles that attacked on her command. The other wards were shocked, but were more so when the beast came to a screeching halt.
Instead of attacking the villain it hesitated. Because even if it's mind was still to complicated to control, her powers could feel it. Because when her father had died she'd gone through her worst ever day all over again and earned a new one. It wasn't just the insects that drove her arsenal anymore. It was everything just short of full sapience.
The beast that was Aegis was more than close enough for her to grasp at it, to command.
It twined about her legs affectionately as the already horrified Wards watched, their eyes going between the Enraged Dallon and the calm villain.
"Oh my poor Aegis." She cooed. "What have they done to you?" Tentacles twined about her fingers but didn't grab. "You never deserved such treatment, you were so brave coming back, too." She praised and raised an eye brow behind her mask at the affectionate feedback she received.
Well that was interesting.
"Now, my young dearest, why not let them know how mean they've been. If you don't stand up for yourself they'll never learn after all..." Monster Aegis gave a spluttering purr before reluctantly disengaging and turning on the others as a growl built up in his chest.
The other teenagers didn't have a whole lot of time to think about the consequences of that conversation as the beast turned on them.
It chased them back, back through rooms of traps and corridors of death as they worked together and Vista slapped Panacea around until she fixed Aegis, to turn him back so he'd finally stop chasing them.
She did. But the damage was done.
They escaped and it was only conscription into the wards that prevented her one way trip to the birdcage.
Aegis wasn't quite right either. It had been the second time he'd confronted Taylor and it was only on a technicality he had a body to come back to. He stepped down from the wards the day Panacea Joined and no one stopped him.
It was a pleasant surprise for Taylor however when one morning she returned from her run and discovered a Hispanic boy waiting on her porch. She didn't need to ask who he was. She already knew. If not from the dossier with his name on it but from the faint link she'd retained to the beast.
He'd approached her, heedless of the fact their civilian personas had never met and pulled her into a hug.
"I could feel it." He admitted to the fabric on her shoulder. Words muffled but intent clear. "You were in my head and you cared. You knew they'd have to turn me back if I went after them. Thank you."
The link had been both ways, it seemed, and now she was smug. Pleased and smug as she went through the motions of returning the hug. He could feel that there was no attraction in the embrace. She was utterly ambivalent to the fact she was being hugged by a boy. But he didn't mind. She still felt of that motherly warmth she'd carried as she'd seen him become a monster.
And so Aegis was quietly retired as a hero and Dinah got a brother to share Taylor's attention with.
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—-#—-
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Her shiny new minion still worked for the PRT.
He had stood down from the active roster but had accepted other duties with the organization in exchange. They weren't about to give him up just because he had differences with Panacea and a minor drop in his overall intelligence and coordination. Taylor didn't mind the arrangement. When he left work for the day he'd go through a number of alternative routes to arrive in her base where his real day started.
If anything about the situation were to convince him more that she was on their side, it was her insights into his power use. She had ways of testing and optimizing what people had to use, so much so that it could have very well been a secondary thinker power. He found himself exploring new possibilities that he nor the protectorate had considered before. Especially given his new... modability.
He also learned how she tested the others in the city. She researched, and learned the capabilities of all the capes in the bay with terrifying efficiency and made traps and mazes based on those lessons she wanted to explore. Of course, none of the people she victimized understood that. But they did learn, they had to. Vista learned to fly with her power when she was forced to avoid a nasty spike trap on one occasion. Clockblocker had a second trigger that found him rewinding his personal time a few extra seconds. Galant had begun to seriously study the ways he could affect those around him and how it could be used for or against people, Kid win had finally learned his specialty when she'd locked him in the end of a series of rooms and forced him to constantly mod his load out to escape rising water.
Panacea had been forced to remove a key from a man's brain. She'd been a thundercloud since, having broke her own secret rule. How Taylor had even known she could affect it was beyond the understanding of those who'd witnessed the scene. But one thing was clear to those with the ability to see all the parts of her scheme's.
She was training them.
All accept Shadowstalker.
The other female ward got seemingly the worst of it. Where the others had benefited, one way or another the, the girl had been tormented. She escaped with her life, but only when Taylor tired of playing with her. She was stripped of her gear on numerous occasions, stripped of her dignity and stripped of her pride, all without actually harming her physically.
The villain was stripping away her identity piece by piece until nothing remained.
Nothing to remind anyone that she had once thought of the world as predators and prey.
The others in her civilian life weren't spared either. Winslow was undergoing a major investigation. When a lot of secrets started coming to light about the staff and students. Nothing could hide from her bugs in that school and she learned more than enough to damn people with in that place. Blackwell alone was facing jail time not to mention the audit she was being subjected too.
The Barnes Family had suffered in different ways.
Anne and her mother hadn't been seen in weeks by that point. The two having left town. Mr Barnes had hung himself rather than live with the chaos around them and Emma... Taylor had taken care of her. Carefully ensured that she got all the help she needed once she'd finished dissecting her psyche.
The poor dear had to learn how to be human again.
And no amount of superhuman power could put her shattered pieces back together again.
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—x—
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It was a dreary grey day that saw Leviathan come to the bay.
Three of Taylor's facilities had been flooded and she had retreated to the Endbringer shelter that had been Coil's main base before her hostile takeover. Aegis and Dinnah sat with her as she watched the bay going to hell in a hand basket via her many cameras and monitors, even as large chunks of signal ended above. It was only a few minutes into the fight that she got out of her seat and found her way to the surface.
The command center of the defenders was so stressed and busy that none noticed her until she'd picked up a headset and manually override select coms.
And slowly the defense started working.
She'd studied the Endbringers and she knew, knew that her children could defeat him with the right motivation.
Although it wasn't hard to miss when all the Brockton Bay capes started to go aggressive in ways people had never seen them go before.
When Leviathan was repelled they all turned like a tide to invade the command center and regardless of the orders otherwise immediately restrained her. Not that Taylor was concerned. She went along with it even as the villains cried foul over the Endbringer truce.
But they needn't have bothered.
A few hours of being seated quietly in an interrogation room was all she had to endure before there was a knock on the door and a familiar face walked in.
"They say you're responsible for making Leviathan retreat." Alexandria is oddly respectful as Taylor keeps her in sight. "In the last few months it's said you're also responsible for capturing and traumatizing most of the Wards stationed here in Brockton bay." Taylor is silent, but not in the least bit phased. Not even when a minute stretches to ten and then twenty. Then finally the silence is broken, not by the villain, but by Aegis. In costume for the first time in months. He's holding a cup of tea and places it on the table in front of Taylor once he's done closing the door.
Alexandria is expressionless as Taylor drinks it.
"They say you should never meet your heroes." Taylor says finally, once she's finished her tea and stood to leave, the cuffs that had been binding her when she walked in proving they'd been ineffective from the start. "But it looks like I share more in common with mine than I thought."
Alexandria may have been a stone for all that she moves, but Taylor just nods and heads to the door, Aegis is a step ahead, he opens the door for her and together they walk.
The heroes watch her, sulky and silent, from the side passages and corridors.
Unable to do anything as their most hated and beloved villain walks out in the city ruins once more.
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—x-
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As it is, even with the successful defense of the city, Brockton Bay is to be abandoned. There is nothing to go back to with great swathes of the city destroyed and it would cost more to fix than to relocate the people.
Carlos' family is dead. Dinah's parents are gone. Taylor has no one.
So they leave.
Taylor packs up every resource she has left in the bay, liquidates what assets she can and together they leave the state behind. It's a difficult decision on where to go. Carlos is a retired Ward and the only reason he hasn't been outed as a villain is because of his age and the fact that his state was blamed on the PRT in the first place. Taylor is technically registered as dead. With no one to account for her after the battle she'd been listed as missing and eventually signed away as gone. Dinah had still been listed as a missing person but few held hope for her to be found.
Still, there were small mercies.
Her fake persona, built to handle Coil's money, still existed as a tax paying citizen. It marked her as being older than her seventeen years with two children, both home schooled. It wasn't remotely accurate, but it was a godsend in getting them settled in a new place. They'd been in Chicago maybe two weeks when they got an unexpected visitor.
A woman in a fedora and a suit popped up in their temporary new headquarters and dropped a pile of dossiers on Taylor's desk.
It was the entire wards and protectorate roster for the area and surrounding cities, including various hopeful vigilantes.
It's a peace offering.
It's permission.
The woman in the fedora is enabling her to do what she can't.
Make better Heroes.
Because only when they're tried and tested by an enemy, a villain, do they really learn how to shine.
And Taylor can polish them better than anyone.