Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Amy froze as she touched the latest patient, which appeared to be some sort of frog case 53.

"This thing has every disease known to man. Call a biohazard team, the national guard, my hot sister, the world health organization, and a bomb squad."

What she had assumed was a homeless man who had snuck in to drink ethanol spoke up. "Now when you say my daughter has every disease..."

Huh. Daughter? Can't be a case 53, then, they don't have families.

"Chlamydia. Syphilis. AIDS. Ebola. Double ebola. Spanish ebola. The bubonic plague. Worms. Repressed homosexuality. Both chicken pox and shingles. And jaywalking."

"Dear Scion......"

"Fuck you, never say that again, that's cringe. Anyway, she doesn't have any of that anymore. Except the repressed homosexuality, nothing I can do about that. My sister probably could though."

"I... I think that can stay. So she's going to be alright?"

"Fuck no, all that shit ate like half of her organs before I even got here. Worse, I'm invested now. Gotta actually keep this thing alive, and that's gonna need basically constant care until she puts on enough weight for me to make her some new organs. So I guess I live at the fucking hospital now, not that that's much of a change."

"You... could take her home?"

"Wow, fuck you, not even gonna invite me over, just offloading her the first chance you get? You know what, fuck you, fuck that, fuck this, fuck them, I'm moving in and bringing my sister with me because we might as well unrepress that homosexuality while we're at it."

"I... Okay."

-----

Contrary to popular belief, Amy couldn't just grab a bunch of ground beef and turn it into viable biomass for a patient. Her power only worked on alive things. Unfortunately, this meant she was going to be stuck keeping an underweight frog alive for the foreseeable future.

She was pretty sure the frogfather was just overwhelmed and not a spineless failure, but her acidity was plenty to keep bulldozing him into letting her do whatever she wanted. Which was get the fuck away from Carol.

Just about every day, Carol said something or other that made it very clear she did not consider Amy part of the family. Like "remember Amy, you're not my real daughter and you don't deserve Victoria as a sister. Your activities as part of New Wave are all that matters."

Okay, she was editorializing a bit. What Carol had actually said was "remember Amy, you're not related to any of us by blood, especially Victoria. Would you like some coffee? It's Folgers, the official coffee of New Wave, ever since my sister and I founded it. I'm so proud that you're following in our footsteps." But Amy was pretty sure she meant it the other way.

Thankfully, Carol had let her go without a fuss. She'd practically shoved her out the door, even when she'd declared she was bringing Victoria with her. For some reason Carol got even more enthusiastic after that. Victoria less so, but she came around when Amy promised to let her dress up the frog. Or told her about the condition she originally found it in.

Speaking of the frog. She was awake now, technically. Not that she was acting like it. She had plenty of brain activity but not a lot of motion, just a very active corona pollentia. Maybe she had some shitty thinker power that immobilized her until she solved its riddle or something? Or-

Amy returned to consciousness a moment later. Oh hey, looks like the frog is done solving the brain riddle or whatever. "Hey, do you have, like, a name? Or should I just keep calling you the frog?"

"Wh... What?"

"I mean, I already whored out your body to get my hot sister to move in with us, I might as well know your name."

"What...? It's... Taylor. Who are you?"

"Panacea. Which is why you're not dead from every disease known to man and also losing half your organs."

"Wh... which half?"

"Most of the ones people don't think about, like kidneys and livers and gallbladders and shit. You've still got, like, a heart and a lung and a stomach, but I'm doing basically everything else manually for you."

"...Thank you?"

"Yeah, that's what they all say. Hey Vicky, get in here and unrepress her homosexuality."

"My wh- WOW I'm very jealous of that figure and nothing else."

"Eat lots of fuglyburgers and maybe someday you'll have enough organs to be a tenth as hot as my sister."

That was around when Victoria spoke up. "I'm all for exploring sexuality and all, but do you know who did that to you?"

"Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, and Madison Clements. But-"

"Alright, do you want them arrested or just maimed?"

"Vicky. Excessive force."

"Yes, exactly."

"...Could you do both?"

-----

A few days later, Sophia Hess was in the Birdcage. Alexandria herself had punted her through a wall when she saw the evidence that she'd broken her probation. Meanwhile, Emma had been forced into therapy, and Madison had received a 1-week ban on PHO. They were also down a kidney each.

Taylor herself had been dragged to Arcadia, where Victoria told the faculty that Taylor was now a student. That... was probably how enrollment worked.

Taylor was too busy experimenting with her new powers to care too much about enrollment.

Her power, as far as she could tell, was the ability to control incest. Insects. Insects, not incest. She couldn't control incest.

Well, not as well as she could control insects.

It took her a while to work out why certain people showed up to her power but it was pretty clear within about an hour of interacting with New Wave.

Taylor decided to focus on the insects. There were a lot more of them, for one thing. Fun fact: For every person on earth, there's five trillion insects. If you lined up every bug on earth next to each other, they would go all the way to alpha centauri. The total mass of every insect on earth is bigger than the moon.

Taylor wasn't sure what she would do with that many insects, in the long run. Right now, however, a few facts were percolating in her brain.

Taylor was hungry all the time. If she ate enough, she would eventually be able to survive more than ten minutes apart from Amy again. She would need that ability if she ever hoped to go out as a cape, or get away from the Dallons. The problem was, food cost money. And they were not a high-income family.

But bugs were mostly made of protein.

'Average person eats 3 spiders a year', she knew, was just a factoid. Soon, however, it would be true, if only by statistical error. The average person eats 0 spiders a year. Spiders Taylor, who lives in Brockton Bay and eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.

Chapter Text

I have got to get away from this freak, Taylor told herself as Amy rudely stared at her as she ate.

I have got to get away from this freak, Amy told herself as she watched Taylor direct a solid mass of bugs to march across the breakfast table and down her throat.

Finally, Taylor had enough of Amy's scrutiny. "Are you, like, vegan or something? Cause you're looking awfully judgemental for someone with lice."

"Wh- No I'm not vegan, you're eating bugs! And those lice are my pets!"

"Eating bugs is normal. People have been doing it for centuries. They're a good source of protein, and you're the one that told me to eat a lot to rebuild enough mass to get my organs back."

"It's weird and gross!"

"Like you're one to talk about wanting to eat something weird and gross."

Amy followed Taylor's gaze. Victoria, still asleep on the couch. Her voice dropped to a low and furious hiss, lunging across the table to grab Taylor's wrist. "How the fuck do you know about that. Don't even try to lie to me, I'll feel it and I am perfectly capable of giving you those diseases back."

"......You are not subtle. You call her your hot sister, stare at her every chance you get, and drink Folgers. It'd be obvious even if I didn't literally have a superpower to detect incest screaming to me about the entirety of New Wave."

Amy blinked, startled out of her fury. "I thought your power was insects?"

"Yeah, well, apparently my power got a bit mixed up on the difference between entomology and etymology."

"...You said the entirety of New Wave, but there was a lie in there. Explain." Not that she couldn't guess.

"...Well, not your father. I think he's too depressed to have sexual thoughts."

"...Right. If you tell anyone I'll kill you. Or worse. Now if you'll excuse me for a minute." Apparently the one exception wasn't who she had expected.

"Top up my life support before you go, I don't wanna die because you got distracted having a mental breakdown."

-----

Now, Taylor had been very particular about what she said there. In particular, she had left out the part about controlling incest, and she had very carefully implied that there was only one exception.

That was because Taylor had a plan. She was going to get these freaks too busy with each other to interact with her beyond keeping her alive.

Not long after, Victoria woke up thinking about a paper she'd once read about the Westermarck effect.

-----

Let it never be said that Victoria Dallon was a little bitch baby who was afraid to take a chance on what she wanted. She wasn't sure who you would say that about, but it wasn't her.

She wasn't blind. She'd never truly been ignorant of her family's... peculiarities. She'd just never had any interest in sharing them.

Until now.

Maybe it was the change of scenery, living with Amy away from the rest of the family. Maybe it had always been there and she'd just successfully ignored it until now.

Maybe it was that last fight she'd had with Dean, over the mounting strain of forgoing her own love life to act as his beard by going on "double dates" with Amy and whoever Dean was currently actually seeing because his father was rich and therefore an asshole.

Well, fuck it. That ruse may be more convenient than ever if she was going to go after Amy but Dean was still a selfish prick and she didn't want to deal with him for a while. Fortunately, another ruse was available.

After all, Amy had asked her to unrepress that girl's homosexuality, and with her on life support Amy would have to come along.

-----

Amy was freaking the fuck out.

She had literally never seen any sign that anyone in her family was a disgusting freak like her, especially not Victoria, who couldn't be a disgusting freak like her because she was perfect.

Sure, Carol and Aunt Sarah kissed each other a lot, but she'd always assumed that was just because they'd taken that vacation to Italy where that was how people greeted each other. And she'd thought that Crystal wearing lingerie to their slumber parties was just because she was in college.

But Victoria? Perfect Victoria who would always carry her in her arms to wherever she needed to go, always floated up a bit when hugging her until her boobs ended up in Amy's face, wanted Amy to dress up in sexy outfits like she did instead of hoodies and sweatpants, was not actually attracted to Dean based on the lack of hormonal response on their double dates, kept taking Amy on double dates with boys neither of them were attracted to...

"Hey, Ames? You wanted me to unrepress Taylor's homosexuality, right? Do you want to go on a date? To keep her alive of course. What do you think of this outfit, blatant enough to get through the denial?"

Dear god, maybe Victoria was a freak like her.

Chapter Text

Taylor had not thought her plan through all the way.

Oh, they were absolutely distracted. The problem was she still needed healing several times an hour to not die, and that meant she was getting dragged all over the place while they danced around each other on their freaky incest not-date.

Taylor could not fucking wait to be rid of these freaks. Not only were they inherently fucked up as people, the lack of privacy was beginning to grate on her. She couldn't even sleep in private because her organs didn't just stop being gone when she was asleep. And because Amy needed to sleep too, they had to fucking cuddle so she could... sleep-heal her, which apparently worked.

Sort of worked. Either Amy was doing weird shit in her dreams or her power had a mind of its own, because every day she woke up with some freaky alteration to her body. Spontaneous blondeness, which was quickly reversed after a withering glare. Some sort of not-chlorophyll added to her hair, tinting it slightly greenish and allowing her to perform photosynthesis, which... well, she did need a lot of food, so that could stay for now. Fucking antennae, which kept getting put back every night until Amy's power just refused to remove them again.

So here she was, following the two horsemen of teenage drama around a mall, her fucking deelie boppers bouncing as she hurried to keep up. She was cheating and using her bugs to keep track of every single person in the mall to weave through the crowd and Victoria was still leaving her behind as she led Amy along by the hand. And she couldn't even just bail because she would die.

Amy's pet lice stood out prominently to her power. She had modified them somehow, and they ignored her commands, present but immutable to her insect control. But... Experimentally, Taylor reached out with her other power. Yep. These lice were an incestuous lesbian polycule. Taylor offloaded a scream to a group of bugs in the walls of the Forever 21, incidentally making a couple fall off of their two-person skateboard in surprise.

Taylor finally caught up with the junior torment nexus as they went into the Hot Topic. She silently judged them for her choices. Only gang members went to Hot Topic, probably. She watched as Victoria presented Amy with a pair of matching anime tee shirts. Taylor vaguely recognized the characters as a pair of cousins from... Sailor Moomin? Something like that.

"Hey, assholes. Don't leave me behind, I'll die."

That was about when Super Fucking Mario drove by in a go-kart and started throwing turtles at people, because Taylor was in a mall and therefore it was inevitable that those fucks would show up.

As Luigi followed, Taylor had her bugs jump up and down on the switch to lower the shutters over the entrance to the store, sealing them off from that nonsense because her first cape fight was not going to be fucking Oboe and Leak, or whatever the fuck their names were. She would just have her bugs chew through some wires in their go-karts and let nature take its course.

Except instead of just making them stop working, they swerved wildly and Luigi swiped into the shutter before abandoning ship. Taylor had her bugs jump up and down on the other button. It was just as she feared.

They were trapped in the Hot Topic.

And the junior torment nexus was taking advantage of the situation to make out in the changing room.

Chapter Text

Amy was pretty sure she was going to superhell. She had just spent the last who knows how long ignoring a supervillain attack to make out with her sister.

She had to get away from that frog as soon as possible. That thing was a terrible influence. In the time since meeting her, she'd broken just about every rule she had.

For example, one of her rules was "don't make out with your sister". Another was "if you do, at least don't do it while you should be doing hero stuff". So that was two more down the drain just in the last five minutes.

But those were the least of her crimes.

She had long vowed to only heal, never to modify, but every day she woke to a new transgression. The frog barely had any biomass to work with, yet somehow she kept reshaping it in her sleep, making inhuman modifications that she couldn't bring herself to completely undo.

And then she'd started doing it on purpose. Not to humans, no, or to Taylor. But her fleas, her constant companions, them she made hardier, longer-lived, resistant to control. It was the first step down the road to Nilbog and Amy couldn't bring herself to care.

And then there was her rule about brains.

When the frog had first woken up changed, she had freaked the fuck out. Like, Amy had been worried she would kill someone or something. So she'd just... turned that down a bit. Now the frog was just annoyed about the alterations, and didn't even put up too much of a fuss when Amy decided to leave one in place.

About the only rule Taylor hadn't made her break was the one about not accepting payment for healing, and that was only because she'd given up on that one when a nurse started cramming twenties into her robe and she'd decided that if they were going to force the issue to pay her anyway then she might as well just get paid normally instead of feeling like a stripper.

...And the rule about never healing dolphins, she supposed, but that one was never quite as important as the main ones. That one was just because dolphins were assholes and she didn't want to heal them.

The point was, Amy was going to superhell and it was all Taylor's fault. All she could do now was enjoy the forbidden fruit she had been given for however long she had until she was inevitably thrown into the birdcage.

"-Ames! Ames!"

Amy was startled out of her self-recrimination when she noticed that Vicky was trying to get her attention instead of making out with her.

"Are you okay? You've been staring into space and muttering about superhell for the last five minutes."

Amy decided that the proper response to that was to bury her face in Vicky's boobs.

-----

Victoria was a bit worried about her sister. Maybe she'd come on a little strong. Should she have taken a few weeks to ease her into the idea that her very unsubtle affections might be returned?

Well, what's done was done. And so, here they were. Trapped in the Hot Topic, with little to do but each other.

The structure was made with tinkertech, created by a construction tinker named Bob the Builder. She'd tried breaking through by force and gotten nowhere. No surprise there - the mall was designed to double as an extra endbringer shelter. Apparently part of that was that the shutters were very hard to raise any way other than with the electronic controls, which had been fried by Leet's go-kart exploding.

So there they were, trapped in the tinkertech Hot Topic.

Victoria floated through their prison, carrying Amy with her (face still in boobs). There was no telling how long it would take to free them - PRT policy when dealing with tinkertech was to bring in the original tinker if possible, and Bob the Builder was still active. So instead of just coming over to get people out, Armsmaster would have to go through a whole process to discredit or otherwise rule out Bob the Builder so he could get credit for saving the day.

So she was preparing for a possible extended stay.

Leather cloaks zipped together were stretched across clothing racks to create makeshift hammocks. A giant waterproof wizard hat was repurposed into a water recycler. Two cowering Hot Topic employees were shaken down for any snacks they were carrying. Wooden shelves were dismantled for firewood.

Victoria ignored the feeble protests of the Hot Topic employees as she dismantled their furniture. If they wanted to be people they should have had powers. She'd already threatened them into keeping their mouths shut about her and her sister, so that was the end of their relevance.

Idly, she stroked Amy's hair and reassured her that she wasn't going to superhell.

Food would be a problem. The Hot Topic employees had only had a few granola bars between them, and prion disease was brain-based, so cannibalism was out. That left bugs, which were fine for Taylor, but gross for everyone else. She supposed they should probably have Taylor feed some to the Hot Topic employees to keep them around just in case they did need to risk prion disease.

Speaking of Taylor.

Victoria didn't really mind her as a person the way Amy seemed to. She was well-read and had an interesting power, and her antennae were actually pretty cute. She had the fashion sense of an Amoeba, but that could be fixed.

No, the problem was that she utterly curtailed any attempts to be alone with Amy. Every time, they'd just be getting to the good part and then Taylor would barge in with some excuse like "I will literally die", like she was entitled to Amy's healing, and the clothes would go back on. Victoria had tried discouraging her with glares and her fear aura, but she just kept doing it. And she was monopolizing the Amy cuddles at night! Unforgivable.

So, basically, for standing in the way of love Taylor was no better than a villain. She just had to prove it, and then Amy would let her die and stop interrupting them.

-----

Taylor regretted everything.

She was trapped in a Hot Topic with two lunatics. One of them was latched onto her sister like a barnacle and the other was threatening people and breaking furniture while carrying the former.

She'd considered trying to pry them off of each other but had discovered that her power did not actually allow her to decrease incest.

There were also two probable gang members in here - who else would work at Hot Topic? Fortunately, they too were terrified of the junior torment nexus, so they probably wouldn't try anything. Taylor still made sure to give them her most intimidating glare, flaring her swarm to punctuate it.

At least they wouldn't starve in here. Taylor had plenty of bugs for everyone.

-----

It was day three of being trapped in the Hot Topic, and Taylor had buried herself in her swarm.

Both literally and figuratively. She was immersing herself in her power instead of being present in this fuckass incestuous Hot Topic, and she was also using bugs as a blanket.

The air was thick with the stink of bitches, and so Taylor had busied herself with making her cape debut.

This was mostly a spur of the moment decision, made when she'd heard Lung talking about killing children in the parking lot of the mall.

Thinking quickly, she blanketed Lung's body with bugs and his mind with images of his mother having sex.

She also covered the Hot Topic gang members with bugs, just to make sure they wouldn't try to help their boss somehow. They were wearing anime shirts, no doubt marking them as members of the ABB.

As Lung burned away her bugs, Taylor changed tactics. Instead of uselessly throwing more bugs at him, she would need to focus her incest control, find psychological weaknesses.

According to her incest control, Lung's birth mother was dead. But there was another woman he felt strongly about. It wasn't parental, but sheer terror was close enough that she could twist it into mommy issues.

There. A woman in a fedora, shoving his face to the ground. Taylor pushed the memory to the forefront, intensified comparisons to his mother, made it sexually charged. Her foot pushing his face into the ground took on new meaning, her disapproval struck harder.

Lung was screaming. His power, geared to strengthen him in battle, failed him against an attack that twisted his own memories to torment him, memories that told him fighting back was useless, would only invite further punishment, would only further disappoint her. He was curled up on the ground, now, utterly defeated.

Taylor set her bugs to securing him. She'd had her spiders making braided lines of silk, and she directed them to...

Taylor didn't know how to tie someone up.

Fortunately, the junior torment nexus were professional heroes, who no doubt knew how to restrain a villain.

"You, freaks. How do you tie someone up?"

After some spluttering and posturing, Victoria agreed to let her watch as she tied up Amy using a length of silk rope stolen from the Hot Topic. Taylor mirrored the bindings, leaving Lung immobilized by an artistic array of knots in odd places.

As the Armscycle roared up to the scene, Taylor was confronted by her next conundrum. Without a name, how would she get her mucho cred?

Before she could resolve this dilemma, Armsmaster spoke to the mass of bugs approximating the shape of a person. "Thank you for your help in apprehending- Lung. To join the Wards, press 1. To join the Protectorate, press 2. For our case 53 support hotline, press 3. To speak to a representative, press 4. Para español, presione cinco. To declare yourself a villain, remain on the line and surrender."

"Uh- Four?"

"A representative will be with you shortly. Please stay on the line, as we answer calls in the order they were received."

As what sounded about like a low-quality rendition of the Simurgh's song played, Taylor took the opportunity to try and think of a name.

Finally, the hold music ended. "Hello, thank you for waiting, how can I help you?"

"Hello, uh, Armsmaster?"

"Nah, I'm the intern he hired to do all his social interaction for him. I'm seeing on the bodycam that you appear to be a sentient swarm of bugs, is that right? And do you want to take credit for Lung's capture, or would you rather be kept anonymous?"

"Something like that. And I demand mucho cred."

"Alright, and do you have a name for us to credit?"

"You can call me... Oedipox."

"Wonderful, thank you Oedipox. If that's all, there are other things that need Armsmaster, if you'd like to keep talking you can call the number on this card and ask for Kyle."

"Uh- before you go, you should know there are some people trapped in the mall."

"We're aware, Oedipox, but unless we can find a reason to go around him we have to wait for the original tinker, Bob the Builder."

"The wh- Can't you just claim he's racist or something?"

Armsmaster gave a thumbs up, and his intern spoke for him once more. "Possible Empire ties would certainly be enough to go around him while this rumor is investigated. Armsmaster would like to extend his thanks, Oedipox, and adds that he'll get mucho cred for saving those people."

Finally, they were saved from the apparently-tinkertech Hot Topic.

Chapter Text

"Congratulations, you've earned one of your organs back. It's a kidney."

"Just what I've always wanted."

"Ah, crap, I should have ripped out those girls' kidneys for you to transplant instead of just pulverizing them."

Victoria was glad Taylor was one step closer to not being biologically compelled to interrupt her and Ames' sisterly sexy times, but she was kicking herself over the fact that it could have been three steps.

A ping from her phone snapped her out of her self-recrimination. Ooh, Dean had gotten her the minutes from the PRT's latest meeting, as per the terms of their beard agreement. Looks like they'd been discussing a new cape, who was... probably Taylor. Dammit, it all kept coming back to her today. Well, might as well see what they were saying about the little leech.

Armsmaster's intern, being an intern and not a Protectorate hero, hadn't thought to get a statement from Oedipox, so they were mostly going off of security footage and what little they could get out of Lung.

The first thing that jumped out at her was a line noting that Oedipox's response of "something like that" when asked to confirm that she was a sentient swarm of bugs was a partial lie. Or rather, the speculation that followed that line.

It seems they had decided that rather than a swarm of bugs, she was multiple swarms of bugs, possibly every swarm of bugs worldwide. They would... probably figure out that was wrong before too long. That or they would start jumping at shadows and imagining greater and greater power until they were assigning her a baseline of at least eight in every category.

The second thing that jumped out was that they'd given her a tentative Trump rating due to Lung undergoing a second trigger.

His power now had some sort of... domestic component? It now additionally enhanced his physique in response to "fatherly" actions, but quickly drained away in response to... "motherly" or "dominant" women?

The PRT wasn't sure what to make of it, but they'd assigned Miss Militia to be in charge of subduing him in the future.

Victoria herself foresaw a drastic shift in his role in the ABB going forward, once he escaped. Rather than just a big stick to wave around, his power would now encourage him to take a more personal role in the managing of his underlings, rewarding him for treating them well. At the same time, it gave him a clear weakness, meaning he could no longer safely take on all comers with little to no support. She was sure it would herald a change of direction for the ABB as a whole, shifting to follow a doctrine of sweeping up greater numbers of capes like the Empire rather than contenting itself with a few powerful ones.

Anyway, they'd concluded that Oedipox could force people to relive their trigger event, which... Victoria wasn't about to contradict it. It was a very villainous-sounding ability, which could make her objective of convincing Amy to just let her die much easier.

And then there were the things that weren't about Taylor, because it turns out she wasn't the only thing the PRT talked about.

There were no less than three requests from Vista, asking for, in order: A gun, a taser, and some armor. All three were denied, with the reasons given being "weapons aren't for babies", "that's still a weapon and you're still a baby", and "lol. lmao."

Then there was Dean's weekly report on the nonexistent mental health of Amy, Vista, and Browbeat (along with a note reading "I told you so" about Shadow Stalker) and begging for them to receive therapy. She was already familiar with Amy and Vista's issues, but Browbeat was a new one, apparently she'd gotten a one-week ban from PHO.

Oh, and apparently Kid Win had decided to build a nuclear reactor. That one was approved, since nuclear power is actually remarkably safe and efficient. In fact, Behemoth tended to specifically avoid cities with nuclear plants out of respect, and preferentially targeted those with coal plants instead.

Ooh, they were planning an all-cape charity basketball game? She had to get in on that. And she knew the perfect plus one, too - her mom. Can't get more all-cape than having even the ball be a cape.

...Apparently there was a rumor that Bob the Builder was racist? The source was unclear, but the PRT was taking it seriously, thoroughly investigating them for any possibly Empire ties. They were an independent based out of Providence, not Brockton, but it was nearby enough to be plausible.

Unconfirmed reports of a new cape called Raccoon... She was pretty sure that was just Amy. The Undersiders robbed a casino? Good, gambling was bad. Ooh, they were getting in a bunch of tinkertech dumpsters! The nazis wouldn't know what hit them!

But that, it seemed, was the last of the interesting parts of the meeting. The rest of it was mostly Director Piggot complaining about her requests for funding and capes going ignored.

That meant she had to go back to real life, crap. She shot off a "petting dog" emoji to Dean in thanks and put her phone away.

Time to play "how red can I make Amy".

-----

Taylor was one organ closer to getting away from these disgusting weirdos, and the rest couldn't come soon enough.

Victoria was doing some sort of lesbian mating dance, Amy was basically nonfunctional, and Taylor had already worn out the novelty of pissing, which was about all you could do to amuse yourself with a new kidney.

Looking at Victoria made Taylor feel weird, so to avoid confronting that she was wandering anywhere else in the house. Passing by the Danny Room, she paused. It had gone mostly unopened in the time that the junior torment nexus had been staying here, but perhaps some fatherly advice was what she needed.

Taylor opened the door to the Danny Room. It was Danny. The walls were Danny. The floor was Danny. All of it was Danny.

"Hi Dad. I've been having some issues, and I'd like your advice. What can I do about two horny lesbians hanging out around me and feeling each other up all the time?"

"Join in?"

"Dad, I'm still not gay." They'd been having this conversation since... around when she and Emma had gotten caught kissing for normal heterosexual reasons. "And I'm not even related to them."

"If you say so. And you weren't technically related to Emma either."

"Yeah, they're like that but more. Legally adopted and everything. I'd be stuck playing catch-up while they're already sisters in all but blood."

"Alright, alright. In that case... Let me give you something of your mother's."

The Danny Room contained a box. Taylor took it, and looked inside. A spray bottle, made from silvery metal rather than plastic, etched with the name "Annette".

"This was your mother's spray bottle. She got it back when she ran with Lustrum's gang, to fend off the roving packs of feral lesbians. I just want you to promise... That you'll know when to stay your hand."

"...I will, Dad. Thank you."

Reverently, Taylor took the bottle. She brought it to the sink and filled it. She held it and gave an experimental spray, and it felt natural in her hand.

She went to the junior torment nexus, unashamedly making out on her couch, and sprayed them like a misbehaving cat.

Chapter Text

Taylor had finally put her foot down about making out in her house.

Nobody was happy with Victoria's solution.

United in purpose, Taylor and Amy set aside their differences to argue against moving their medical slumber party to the Dallon house. But it was too late.

They were going to the Dallon-Pelham Torment Nexus.

-----

"Hello Miss Hilbert, I've heard of you from my elder daughter. I just want you to know that your... prudishness will not be tolerated in my house."

Taylor had a new least favorite Dallon.

She had briefly felt out all of New Wave before, when they came by under cover of darkness to extract some more of Amy and Victoria's things, but all her power had told her was that there was so much incest going on, not anything about them as people.

"...Of course, ma'am. Do you mind if I set up in the basement?"

"I... don't see why not?"

Taylor was going to dig a burrow. A no-making-out-allowed burrow. She would dig until it no longer counted as the Dallons' house in there and then she would make her own rules for her hole in the ground.

-----

Amy was back in hell.

Every word from Carol held hidden barbs, she knew. They went straight past everyone else, directed toward Amy specifically. Just now, when she said she had heard about Taylor's prudishness - that was an oblique but pointed statement that she knew, at least in part, what Taylor had been prudish about - and that there was no need for Taylor to police them, because if Carol caught them Amy would be going straight to the birdcage.

Carol never said these sorts of things out loud, but Amy had learned to make up infer the hidden meanings.

"Amy, dear, I'm so glad to have you back. I hope you and Victoria have had a fruitful time deepening your relationship?"

So that she would have an excuse to get rid of Amy, she didn't say.

"We did... Normal things. We went to the mall."

"Oh dear, I heard about that incident. Thank goodness Armsmaster saved you, that man deserves mucho cred. You must be famished after being trapped in there for days, come to the kitchen, I made your favorite."

Sure enough, the kitchen contained not just one favorite but an entire array of Amy's favorite foods, including several she'd had no idea Carol even knew she liked. Another message that she couldn't hide anything from her. Truly Carol was a master of psychological warfare.

Seething, Amy settled down to enjoy a five-course meal prepared with thinly veiled loathing disguised as unconditional love and support.

-----

Victoria was glad to be home! Sure, the Hebert house had many things that were just like home, like her sister, and a decorative depressed father, and a bloodstone circle. But it wasn't home.

The Hebert house was in a fairly disreputable neighborhood, for example. People who lived in that part of the city were statistically more likely to be criminals! The Dallon house was in a much nicer neighborhood, where people could afford to pay to not be considered criminals even if they did crimes. Which was much more respectable.

(Incidentally, New Wave were the ones those people paid to not be considered criminals, which was how they could afford to live in such a nice neighborhood. Carol called it "hiring a criminal defense attorney", but it was basically the same thing.)

Victoria wasn't sure why Amy got so weird and defensive around Carol. She had some idea that it had something to do with her adoption, but wasn't clear on the details. She supposed she'd just have to make up for it by showing her a lot of sisterly affection to make it clear that she was part of the family.

After all, the family that kisses together, squishes together. ...Like, squishes nazis. Because they were a hero family. ...Wait, maybe that was it. Maybe Amy needed a chance to get out there and squish nazis together.

"Hey mom, is it alright if Amy comes with us to squish some nazis? Like, as a family?"

"That sounds wonderful, dear, I'll get Sarah and we can make a double date of it."

Yes, this was a great plan.

-----

Amy was being dragged along to fight crime against her will.

Don't get her wrong, she hated nazis as much as the next upper-class white person. But she was a healer instead of a fighter for a reason. That being that she didn't like getting sweaty and in a hospital the nazis just came right to her, where she could give them cancer set to lie dormant just long enough that it couldn't easily be traced back to her.

Amy wasn't a fighter, but she had killed more nazis than the rest of New Wave and the PRT put together.

It didn't even break her rules because killing nazis was basically healing for the human race as a whole. It was kind of like how to cure cancer, you had to kill off the diseased cells. Which was ironic, since in this analogy the nazis were the cancer and she was giving them more cancer.

But anyway, today they were hunting them in person. And so Amy had pulled on her tinkertech robe, designed by Armsmaster at Carol's behest to pack an absurd amount of armor into a light and unassuming robe, and strapped on the glock that Carol had gotten her for her birthday last year.

(Vista had begged to defect to New Wave after Amy had shown that off. Too bad, the adopted sister slot was already filled.)

"Just so you know," Amy justified, "any seemingly offensive power use here is actually just me preemptively healing their future victims by removing the source of the injury."

"Of course, dear."

Carol had been very clear that this was a family outing, so the frog was currently slung over Victoria's shoulder, Amy having knocked her out when topping up her life support. Sleep was restful so she counted that as healing.

Carol herself currently had a nazi pinned to the wall with her lightsaber, and was silently staring at it. Victoria called it a "classic interrogation tactic". Amy called it weaponized social awkwardness. Eventually the awkward silence was too much, and the nazi started spouting off whatever it thought they might want to hear.

Carol must have gotten what she wanted out of it, because she lobbed it underhand at Amy's feet. "Amy, dear, could you make sure it doesn't have any evidence with which to accuse us of torture or police brutality?"

Amy nodded, understanding the hidden message. She healed the lightsaber wounds and instructed its cells to start producing a bunch of extra nociceptors. No overt torture, just heavily heightened pain sensitivity for the rest of its life. However long that would be, because she also gave it cancer. It deserved it for being a nazi; that was the one area she and Carol were fully in agreement on.

"I meant kill it, dear."

"I did, it has eleven kinds of cancer now."

"Oh, well done dear. Very poetic."

-----

Victoria watched with pride alongside her aunt as Amy and Carol brutalized another nazi together. This was a great plan.

Chapter Text

"Find my pages," said Alabaster.

Groggily, Taylor surveiled the situation with her bugs, feigning continued unconsciousness.

Based on the purely objectively soft and pillowy breasts her face was resting upside down upon, she was being carried like a sack of potatoes by Glory Girl. The familiar lice denoting Panacea were nearby, as was a woman carrying a bar of bright light - Brandish - and a woman with a similar figure in similar clothes, presumably Photon Milf.

There were nazis there, too, bald and inbred. Was the torment nexus planning to hand her over to the Empire? They had a healer as well, could they keep her alive and captive?

Taylor couldn't risk it. The Empire would probably assume she was gay, like everyone else did. She couldn't take down New Wave even if they did turn out to be betraying her, because she needed Amy to stay alive. So she would have to make a statement.

She gathered her swarm, filling it with ants and beetles, things with rending mandibles, and set it to eating Alabaster alive.

Nazis screamed, and it was good. Alabaster wasn't exactly reduced to a skeleton, but its flesh was noticeably depleted. Then its body reset to health, and the bugs were left inside of it, continuing to eat it from the inside.

Taylor finally opened her eyes, the time for feigning unconsciousness done. The first thing she saw was Victoria's boobs, right in her face. She quickly averted her eyes, because she was straight, and took in the rest of the scene. Amy was staring at her with something like grudging respect. Victoria was gazing at her swarm's work with awe. Carol and Photon Milf were giving each other calculating looks.

The nazis were still screaming. It was annoying, so Taylor filled their mouths with bugs. And had the bugs start eating them. Alabaster was trying to escape, but Taylor had bugs inside of its ankles cutting its Achilles tendons every time they reset.

"Don't think you can get rid of me so easily," she said. Her point made, she (with no reluctance because she was straight) dismounted from Victoria and strode off, dragging Alabaster with her (still trying in vain to scream with lungs choked with bugs).

-----

Bold. Very bold. Carol approved.

Miss Hebert had chosen the perfect moment to make her move, inserted herself flawlessly into the family nazi hunt, and said what amounted to "don't try to leave me out of it next time".

Sarah was enough for Carol, and Taylor was too young besides. But she would make an excellent prospect for Amy and Victoria (who Carol was so glad were finally exploring their feelings for each other, by the way), and she had essentially declared her intentions as such.

It wasn't what she would have expected from someone who was reportedly such a prude, repeatedly interrupting intimate moments between Amy and Victoria. But perhaps it wasn't truly prudishness, but jealousy.

There was the problem that she wasn't related to them, of course. But that could be rectified. That depressed father of hers was single now, right? Perhaps he and Mark could bond over being depressed fathers together. Yes, she would arrange it, and start preparations for their wedding.

"Miss Hebert," she said. "I know it bothers you when Amy and Victoria make out in front of you. Rest assured, you have my full blessing to join in."

Taylor gave out a long, strangled scream of what she presumed was joy.

According to the background check she'd run, Taylor had once had an unofficial sister as well. Very nasty falling-out, that. But if there was one thing Carol believed in, it was sisterly love, and she wasn't about to let her children's future sister go without her own former sister.

Miss Barnes was in no state to be Taylor's sister right now. But that, too, could be rectified. She would exert her influence to get her the best therapist available - Jessica Yamada, a parahuman with the power to impart sanity.

Carol smiled as her plans formed. Soon, New Wave would be host to more sisterly love than ever.

-----

Victoria watched as Taylor dragged away the writhing form of Alabaster. Shit. She'd just condemned a nazi to a fate worse than death, there was no way she could get her branded a villain after that. Maybe if it was a normal villain, sure, she could make an argument for cruel and inhumane treatment, or excessive torture. But this one was a nazi, meaning anything done to it was worth mucho cred.

Worse, Victoria herself couldn't help but admire her for it. How was she supposed to arrest someone who brutalized nazis? Who'd said she wanted to come brutalize nazis with her next time?

No, perhaps she'd have to find another way to keep Taylor from interrupting her and Amy. Mom would probably just say to let her join in, but Victoria didn't admire her that much.

Didn't the nazis have a healer?

They were already kidnapping one nazi, what was one more?

-----

Amy was not pleased. She had to respect this frog now? She was a creep who ate bugs but apparently she also inflicted painful and creative deaths and worse upon nazis.

That made her a colleague, and that meant Amy had to be vaguely polite to her. Ugh.

And then she saw the document Carol was leafing through.

"...Can I see that for a minute, uh, mom?"

"Of course, dear."

Amy scrutinized the file carefully, hoping she was wrong. Hoping she didn't have more common ground with this freak.

Apparently Taylor had had a sister once, Emma. Not in blood, but in every other way that mattered. And then that sister had suddenly dedicated herself to destroying Taylor's life.

The cause was unspecified. But Amy could read between the lines.

Taylor had acted on her feelings for her sister. And Emma had responded with shock and disgust, just like she always knew Victoria would until all her dreams randomly came true one day.

Fuck. No wonder Amy hated her so much. Taylor was just like her.

Chapter Text

Taylor finished securing the last of the restraints.

Her burrow was quite large now, encompassing two good-sized rooms and still expanding. Bugs could get quite a lot of digging done when they put her mind to it.

And between the carpenter ants and the mason bees, it was quite nicely furnished as well, with wood paneling over stone walls and floors. She'd even gotten some upholstering spiders, electrician weevils, and plumber worms to turn it into a fully functional living space.

It also had a fully functional dungeon, courtesy of her blacksmith wasps.

She hadn't bothered with any fancy locks. Alabaster wouldn't ever need to be released, so she just had them forge the restraints directly onto it. That wouldn't work for most captives, since the red-hot metal would inflict severe injuries, but Alabaster returned to perfect health every four seconds, so it was fine. She'd already encased its head in cement, so it wasn't like it could scream about it.

It would be the centerpiece of her new hive, giving her swarm all the food they needed to breed and breed and breed.

If only she wasn't still chained to the Dallons.

They'd been acting weird since she'd made her statement. Weirder than usual, that is. Victoria had lost her scheming looks and gained different, less threatening scheming looks. Carol had shed the hostility entirely and instead started shipping.

And Amy... Taylor wasn't sure what to make of how Amy looked at her now. There was just as much loathing as before, but it was now tinged with... sympathy?

Taylor wasn't sure what Amy would be sympathizing with her about, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. It couldn't be the lice, Taylor's insect control made that impossible. Had the Dallons tried to get rid of Amy too? Taylor was mostly sure by now that they hadn't actually been trying to give her to the nazis, but she could still be wrong. They both had depressed fathers, but that wasn't new. So what was that newfound sympathy for?

"Taylor, do you wanna - woah, love what you've done with the place - do you wanna go kidnap another nazi?"

And then there was Victoria. She was definitely still plotting something, but she was downright friendly compared to before.

"I know you're excited about the new tinkertech dumpsters, but in case you've forgotten, I don't have super strength to throw them with."

"No no, listen. The nazis have a healer."

"Right, uh... Othello?"

"No, that's a different guy, attacks you from another dimension. The nazi is Othala, and it's not nearly as good a healer as Ames but maybe it'll be enough to keep you from constantly clamjamming us."

"You mean I could actually have some privacy?" Nazis weren't people, so if it was just her and a nazi it would count as alone time. "Fuck it, count me in."

-----

She, Victoria, and Amy had all gotten geared up to go kidnap a nazi. They had then realized they had no idea where Othala lived. They did, however, know who might.

Victoria swung her sledgehammer, smashing the cement that covered Alabaster's head. Immediately, now-audible screams filled the air.

"Tell me what I want and I'll let you have some senses that aren't pain."

Whoever said torture doesn't work had obviously not tried using enough of it.

-----

Taylor massed her swarm, flush with kidnapper beetles. The next generation was already incubating inside of Alabaster, so Taylor could afford to bring them all without risking her breeding stock.

Kidnapper beetles, of course, were not native to Brockton Bay, or anywhere else. Unlike the bugs she'd used to construct her lair, which were common enough to find in small numbers, these were custom-made by Amy. They were the largest and strongest beetles she could make, designed for carrying heavy loads such as nazis. They required far too much food to be a successful species in the wild - not only a consequence of their great bulk but a deliberate decision to prevent them from becoming an invasive species - but with access to Alabaster, Taylor could keep them fed with ease.

It had surprised Taylor when Amy volunteered them, but she had been... less resentful lately, as well as being eager to get Taylor a bit less tethered to her.

They still weren't copacetic. But they had something of a detente now.

It meant that here and now, their faces inches apart as Victoria carried one of them in each arm, they were just glaring at each other without much real heat, instead of biting each other.

The swarm surged up the tower's elevator shaft, climbing to match their height as they approached the penthouse. This was to be a smash and grab operation, in and out before the Empire could respond. They hadn't cared overly much when Taylor had taken Alabaster, but their healer would be a different matter. They'd have to kill Victor and be out with Othala well before reinforcements could arrive.

The first part was simple. Taylor positioned a brown recluse spider on Victor's neck, right over the jugular.

Then she adjusted Amy's hand to point straight at it, and Amy shot it with her Glock.

Then, as Othala shot awake, Taylor's kidnapper beetles latched on and lifted it from its bed, carrying it toward the gaping hole that had until moments ago been a floor-to-ceiling window. It tried to resist, but managed only to make one of the bugs invincible.

There was a reason Othala was a healer and not a fighter, and unlike Amy, it was because it sucked ass at fighting.

The kidnapper beetles carried Othala off the edge, their elytra opening to unfurl enormous wings, specialized for maximum lift over any semblance of speed or maneuverability. They dragged the suddenly-very-still nazi through the air to where Victoria was carrying Amy and Taylor. Amy reached out, and Othala went limp, unconscious.

All that was left was for Victoria to awkwardly carry home three people at once. The kidnapper beetles helped a lot with that.

-----

Emma stared at the ceiling of the waiting room.

She'd been terrified when the Triumvirate showed up to arrest her, Sophia, and Madison. They had thrown around words like terrorism, attempted murder, biological warfare, war crimes.

That fear had only increased when Sophia was sent directly to the Birdcage. Madison, being a Ward in good standing as well as the least involved of the three, had gotten off lightly, probation and a one-week PHO ban. Emma wasn't a cape, she couldn't be sent to the Birdcage. But as the ringleader, she was sure she'd be given the next worst thing.

Then Emma had been ruled mentally incompetent. Let off due to insanity. Instead of jail, she was being sent to therapy.

She didn't need therapy. She was strong.

"Miss Barnes? My name is Jessica Yamada, I'm the psychologist who'll be working with you going forward."

-----

Emma had been so weak.

Chapter Text

Emma was adrift.

It had once seemed so simple. Taylor was weak, and she was strong.

Then Jessica had used her power, and it was like a veil was lifted. She could see her actions in a new light, consider them without bias, and understand how wrong she'd been, and how she could be better.

Then the power had faded, and she'd been back in her own head, new perspective gained but the same thought patterns in place, and she had cried. And Jessica had talked her through it, helped her begin to move towards the person she now knew she could have been.

Change was such a painful thing.

Jessica's power had given her perspective, but it was her that would have to do the work. She had seen what she was, and she hated it, but she was still that person.

And she hated it.

Emma hadn't ever been happy, really. Not since she'd abandoned Taylor. She'd only ever been scared.

First, Scared of the alley. Scared of losing what she had - beauty, prestige. Taylor.

Then, scared of looking back. Scared of what she had already lost. Scared that it hadn't been worth it.

Emma was so, so scared, and she had never noticed until Jessica helped her to see it. Had never even begun to process it until now.

She kind of hated her dad a little, for not making her get therapy after the alley. She'd talked about that with Jessica, too.

She kind of hated Sophia, too. But she was also pretty sure Sophia was just as unwell as her. She'd never find out for sure, because Sophia was in the birdcage now.

And then there was Taylor.

She'd never hated Taylor. She'd convinced herself that she did, for a while. But even that had worn thin a long time ago. What she felt about Taylor was such a tangled knot of emotion that even with Jessica's power she struggled to express it.

So Jessica had asked her what she had felt about Taylor in the beginning, when she had first abandoned her. And it was love, and it was fear. It was fear of how much she loved her.

They'd loved each other as sisters, her and Taylor. But she'd been greedy. She'd loved Taylor even more than that. And she was sure that when Taylor found out, she wouldn't have her sister anymore.

So she'd cut her out so she wouldn't have to feel that rejection. That was the core of it. The weakness thing, that was just an excuse. She hadn't known, she'd lied to herself that the weakness was the whole of it, but it was always love and fear. It was selfish, and cowardly, and Emma hated herself for it.

She had to face that fear, she knew. She had to take the risk she'd once been too afraid to, even though she was just as afraid of it now, or she'd never stop hating herself.

And to do that, she had to be Taylor's sister again.

-----

Jessica Yamada was pretty sure someone was going to die. Or trigger. Possibly several triggers.

That or it was going to end in some sort of incredibly unhealthy incestuous polycule in which half the participants hated each other.

-----

Amy was pretty sure Othala had been the most annoying nazi she'd ever helped to kidnap.

This was possibly because the other one was Alabaster, who could just be covered in restraints and forgotten about. Othala actually needed stuff to make it stay alive.

It needed to be fed and watered, and that meant it needed to be allowed to open its mouth sometimes. It abused that privilege to make threats and try to make them think it was a person, so she had removed its vocal cords. Then it had tried refusing to heal Taylor, which was the one thing it was for, and out of frustration Amy had just... wiped its brain and put in new programming.

The problem was that without its original brain it wasn't a nazi anymore, and that meant it wasn't ethical to be cruel to it anymore. But it wasn't a person, either, it didn't have enough of a mind for that. All it could really do was fulfill its biological needs and use its power. Other than that, it was about as smart as a... bug.

Yes, that would do.

Amy condensed it down, compacting flesh and bone into dense yet flexible plated exoskeleton. The remaining flesh was compacted as well, becoming dense muscles and energy storage. Organs were adapted to suit its new form, its genetic code was rewritten, everything was changed until nobody would ever guess it had once been human. Even the brain was reshaped, remade around the intact corona pollentia and gemma to resemble that of an insect.

She was a pillbug the size of a dog, now, and Amy gave her the instincts to behave like a dog when not being controlled as well. Yes, this would be a much better companion for Taylor than some nazi.

-----

Apparently Amy had decided Taylor needed a pet. And apparently what she'd done about that was put Othala's powers in a giant bug.

"If anyone asks, she's part of your power. I'm just a healer, after all, and you've already got the antennae to go with your bug control."

Victoria had immediately declared the giant pillbug to be "adorable", and when informed of its purpose, had named it AJ, short for Amy Junior.

Taylor begrudgingly admitted that the thing was very cute, especially when she could feel the sheer affection going through its brain. She wasn't quite as sold on the name, but "Chiron" and "Asclepius" had been vetoed and she was out of mythological figures associated with healing, so AJ it was.

AJ didn't completely replace the need for Amy's healing - the regeneration she could grant was better at healing wounds than the damage from diseases, and it wasn't strong enough to replace organs that were entirely gone. But it offset the damage enough that Taylor could go most of a day before her body would start to shut down.

Her mind was another matter. She could only go a few minutes looking at Victoria before that started to shut down. But that just was because she was so heterosexual that she had no interest in looking at pretty girls, so when she looked at one her mind glazed over because it was so uninteresting.

Then the doorbell rang, and Taylor opened the door, and she looked at the person there, and her mind didn't even wait to start shutting down. There was the sheer heterosexuality, because this was a very pretty girl, even prettier than Victoria, and that wasn't a thing her brain wanted to think about because she was straight. Then there was fear, and loss, and shock, and love, and hurt, and hurt, and hurt, because this was Emma.

"Wh... What do you want," she managed.

"Hi, um. I went to your house first, but you weren't there, and Uncle Danny said you were staying here. So I, uh, I came here, to tell you that I. I've been a rancid cunt. Like, if you look at dolphins, and you look at me, I've been worse. You know that bible fanfic by Dante, and how he put history's greatest traitors in the worst layer, along with some random guy he hated? Yeah, that's, that's where I'd be, or lower maybe. Yeah, they'd need to make a new even worse layer for me, and they'd fill it with, giant fire-breathing slugs or something, and I'd be eaten by giant fire slugs forever, and I'd deserve it. Because I've been a rancid cunt."

Taylor was distantly impressed at Emma's lung capacity.

"So... I'd like it if we could rebuild something someday, but I understand that won't be today, or probably for a while, I just. Wanted to tell you that I know how awful I've been now, and I want to learn how to not be that, and that I never hated you, I was just so scared of so many things and, I'm sorry, and I know that's not enough and you don't want to see me so I'll go-"

Taylor's hand shot out.

She didn't really know why. Emma was right, about all of that. But for the first time in nearly two and a half years, Taylor had heard the voice of her sister.

"I'm living with a bunch of freaks I hate. Come heckle them with me."

Chapter Text

Carol's plans were unfolding perfectly.

The two pairs of sisters were sitting across from each other now, idly sniping at each other. For most the casual heckling was by now routine; Emma, however, was second-guessing her every word, unused to blunting the cutting barbs that came so easily. She would learn, in time.

Taylor was idly stroking her new pet. AJ, the giant pillbug that Amy thought Carol didn't know she had made out of a nazi. She wasn't sure why Amy thought she had to try to hide these things from her; she fully approved, and thought AJ was a tremendous improvement on the materials she'd been made from.

Taylor hadn't yet exercised Carol's blessing to join in on Amy and Victoria. That was alright; she understood that they weren't sisters yet. That was why she'd been sending Mark over to Danny's place. Taylor hadn't found out yet - Carol was sure it would be a nice surprise when she did.

Taylor and Emma, meanwhile, were progressing nicely. It was awkward, halting. But their sisterhood, tattered as it was, was being slowly but surely unearthed.

-----

"Taylor, I've done so much awful shit to you but I think my greatest crime must be what I've driven your wardrobe to."

It took Taylor a moment to come up with a suitably non-biting reply, just as it had taken Emma a moment to come up with the mild, good-natured jab.

"It's urban camouflage. Nobody looks twice at the plain girl in a hoodie."

Emma looked at her ruefully, at that.

"Did... Did I actually convince you you're unattractive? Because that's... not true, at all."

"Emma, I know you're trying to make up for all that but you don't have to lie to make me feel better."

"Oh my god I actually did. Taylor, I need you to understand that your legs are god's gift to lesbians. Like, you know in Sailor Moon how their legs are absurdly long and they wear those tiny miniskirts? You would rock that miniskirt, Taylor. Like, if you dressed as a sailor senshi with that skirt and those legs I would die Taylor. I would die of sheer gay. I would fall to the ground and worship your legs and then I would die."

"...I don't know what Sailor Moon is because anime is for gang members but what I'm hearing is that you think I should wear more skirts?" Taylor of course knew Emma was using gay in the old-fashioned way, meaning happy. She wasn't paying any attention to her incest senses, because she already knew Emma was her sister.

"Taylor I will personally buy you every skirt in the mall. Especially the short ones. And then I will help you try them on, and take them off again, and uh... Help you practice kissing, to... make up for having ruined your dating prospects, and..."

Emma trailed off, a faraway look in her eyes.

"That last part... would be helpful, actually." Taylor wasn't sure why the idea of practicing kissing with Emma appealed to her, since she was straight and Emma was her sister besides, but she didn't know the first thing about kissing, so it would surely be educational.

For some reason, Emma turned crimson. But she managed, despite her stammering, to lean in and, when Taylor leaned in to match, plant a kiss on Taylor's lips.

No wonder people like kissing, if this is what just practicing with my sister is like.

-----

Amy had been right.

She didn't catch all of what was said, but she had seen how enthusiastic Taylor was to kiss her sister. Nasty pervert, just like Amy. Clearly Emma had randomly decided to return her affections one day, just like Victoria had for Amy. Good for her.

She was still a creep who tried to feed people bugs and lusted after her sister, though. Amy wasn't about to let that go. If she was going to be a gross pervert like Amy, she should at least have the decency to martyr herself healing like Amy did. There was probably some way to use bugs for healing. And besides, she had AJ now, that was easy to use for healing.

Ah, fuck, it had been like a week and Amy had barely done any healing of anyone but Taylor. Usually she just went down to the hospital whenever she started hating herself, which was most of the time, but she'd been distracted by all her dreams randomly coming true.

And she... didn't want to. Fuck. She'd accidentally started letting herself have things like "a life" and "a girlfriend" and now she couldn't lie to herself and pretend she had even the slightest desire to heal a single person.

"Taylor, go to the hospital and heal people for me. I'll give you some new bugs or something."

-----

Getting the hospital to let Taylor start healing people was surprisingly simple, all things considered.

She just showed them the card Amy had given her, reading "Real doctor probably. Panacea approved" and they brought her in.

"Alright, this next patient has quadruple malaria. Can you do anything about that?"

"Uhh sure probably."

Taylor covered the patient in mosquitos to suck out the malaria. Mosquitos could give it, so mosquitos could take it away, probably. It was like how the difference between medicine and poison was dosage. One mosquito could give you malaria, but several dozen could take it away.

"I'm not sure how that helps," said the nurse, "but Panacea recommended you, so I'll take your word for it."

Taylor was great at doctoring.

"We've got a bunch of kids in, they got injected with drugs by the merchants. Can you do anything for them? Even just some inspiring words and a chance to pet your bug would make their day."

Taylor was going to inspire the fuck out of those kids.

-----

"I hear you kids got your hands on some drugs? Great job! When I was your age, I had never had drugs. You're getting ahead of the curve, having new experiences before your peers. That's a sign of great maturity, you know. They say drugs will ruin your life, but that's only if you don't have enough money to keep buying them. If you need money for more drugs, just become a doctor, or a criminal. Remember - if crime didn't pay, people wouldn't do it. And if drugs didn't pay, people wouldn't do them. Life is short, so it's best to do what makes you happy. Like drugs, and crimes, and gay sex even though you're straight. Remember: Just because you like kissing other girls doesn't make you gay! It's just for practice. You need to practice a lot so you can learn to kiss well enough to actually enjoy it when you kiss boys, because they're really bad at it so kissing them isn't very enjoyable compared to other girls. If the girl is your sister that makes it extra straight, because practicing kissing is just something sisters do. If you don't have a sister feel free to bring someone by and I'll make you into sisters. Or if your sister isn't interested in practicing kissing I can help with that too. If you just want drugs there are a lot of insects with hallucinogenic venom! But then, you've all got a head start on drugs already. So I recommend picking up crime next. One of the best crimes is punching nazis, because even though they're legally people, morally speaking they aren't, so it's always ethical to punch them. Just be careful not to take that logic too far - it only applies to nazis, if we start dehumanizing any old horrible person that makes it easier for nazis to dehumanize us. So, in conclusion, winners do drugs, punch nazis, and kiss their sister. Now who wants to pet my bugs?"

-----

Taylor was not invited back to the hospital that day.

Chapter Text

"Good pasta," ventured Mark.

"Thanks," answered Danny.

The two continued eating in silence, the romantic candlelight set up by Carol mostly wasted on the two.

"What do you do for work?" asked Mark.

"Well, I'm the hiring manager for the dockworkers. Which at some point everyone decided meant I'm in charge of the whole thing? I'm not sure how they came to that conclusion, but I've done my best to steer it right and keep everyone afloat."

"That's nice. I throw grenades at nazis, mostly."

"A very respectable profession."

They continued eating in silence.

"Your girls have been good for Taylor, I think. She's really come out of her shell lately."

"I'm not sure they like each other much, though."

"Oh, no, not at all. But they're good for each other."

"Can't say I disagree. A little conflict builds character, if it's the right kind of conflict."

They continued eating in silence, but it was a more comfortable silence, this time. Their stake in each other had been established.

"You know what Carol has planned for us. Any objections?"

"Annette would approve, I think. Taylor could use more family. And she was an ardent feminist, so the physical side can't be much more strenuous than her strap."

"Good, good."

Once more they ate in silence for a time, before Mark spoke up.

"Wanna play it up to inflict maximum distress to our daughters?"

"You read my mind."

-----

"Telepathy isn't real," Victoria announced out of nowhere.

-----

Emma was dimly impressed at Taylor's new friends. The moment she'd been free of her and Sophia, Taylor had apparently run headfirst into the next-biggest source of torment she could find.

"Emma, dear, you know you're always welcome here, don't you? Your sister has plenty of room in her burrow."

"That... That's fine, Mrs. Dallon, I already have somewhere to live."

"Please, call me Carol, I incest."

"Yes, I... I picked up on that."

Emma knew she had to extricate herself from this household before it drew her in, just like it had Taylor. Once she was out, she could help extract Taylor.

"I can call your father to let him know if you'd like to sleep over - we work together, you know, very close colleagues. In fact, now that you're a friend of the family as well, I should invite your whole family over for dinner one of these days."

But the torment nexus wasn't letting go.

-----

"Thank you for walking me home, Danny, it was a wonderful night. I look forward to doing this again."

No. No no no they didn't.

Taylor squeezed AJ for support and deployed her panopticon flies - the payment Amy had promised for doing her healing for her. As the name implied, their senses were second to none, rivaling a human for sight and hearing if she combined the data from a few of them.

Unfortunately, no matter how many eyes she put on it, the sources of her distress remained.

Mark Dallon stood in the doorway, more light in his eyes than she'd ever seen in him, a bouquet in his hands as he looked for a vase. And just outside was her father, a spring in his step that he'd not had since Mom died, looking more comfortable in a space other than the Danny Room than she could recall.

The source of their mutual good mood was, unmistakeably, each other. And that meant Taylor was never going to escape the Dallon-Pelham-Hebert Torment Nexus.

-----

Amy looked on with horror.

She was never going to get rid of the frog.

Apparently, if you combined two depressed fathers, you got one pair of undepressed gay polyamorous fathers who were going to keep her tied to the frog even when she finished giving it its organs back.

They were going to end up as sisters, and then the frog would try to seduce her with bugs, because she was not only an incestuous freak like Amy but so much of an incestuous freak that she'd gotten incest powers.

No. No, no, no. Amy wouldn't let that happen. There was no way she could get away with just killing Taylor at this point. And she was a bitch but she wasn't about to redepress her father.

So she would just... give the frog enough rope to hang herself with. She would keep giving Taylor more and more absurdly, outrageously, hilariously toxic bugs, and wait for the frog to absentmindedly snack on one and poison herself to death.

-----

Emma wasn't sure what was normal, anymore. Jessica's power let her reflect objectively on her own actions during part of each session, but that didn't automatically give her a baseline to compare them to. But she was... pretty sure that none of this was anywhere close to it.

But Carol was being so unrelentingly nice.

Amy had told her that Carol wasn't that way to her, that Carol's words to Amy always carried hidden barbs, but if there were any in her words to Emma then she couldn't find them. Emma had read about things like lovebombing, had considered it as a tactic to hurt Taylor more when she was... unwell, but if that was what was going on here then it was working because Emma couldn't find the angle.

There was such a vast difference between how insane she knew this family to be, and how welcome they made her feel. She didn't want to be part of this family but Carol was so nice to her and Victoria liked a lot of the same things as her and Amy's biting comments were great and Mark was making Uncle Danny happy and Taylor was here.

Maybe this was normal? Maybe Emma had just been so twisted up for so long that what was normal to others made her feel like she was going crazy?

-----

Rachel's dog senses were tingling.

She was walking three of her dogs through the clean part of town. Brutus, Judas, and Emma. A trifecta of names drawn from Dante's Divine Comedy, of history's greatest traitors, to symbolize their rebellion against an oppressive system that would cast them down into the frozen slug-filled pits of hell for their noncompliance. Rachel wasn't very good at reading, she could only pick out surface-level themes. But there were some good dog names in there.

Anyway, she was walking them through the clean part of town. And her dog senses were tingling.

That meant there was a dog. And not just any dog, but a Weird Dog.

Anything could be a dog, really. Foxes? Basically antisocial dogs. Racoons? Basically just a dog with thumbs. Horses? Basically big skittish dogs. Her power didn't work on all of them, but that was okay. They were all good to pet and that was enough.

But a Weird Dog. That was something special. Every dog was weird, really. That was just called having a personality. The distinction between a weird dog and a Weird Dog was hard to explain. But what she felt from this house was a Weird Dog.

Rachel opened the door and walked in. There were people there, asking something, but she ignored them. There was a Weird Dog here, and anywhere a dog was, she belonged.

Finally, she found it. A small white dog with a gorgeous segmented carapace and fourteen adorable legs. Its two pairs of antennae waved curiously at her approach.

She looked to be in good health, her carapace glossy. Rachel finally looked at the human(?) holding her, having determined her to be capable of keeping a dog healthy and therefore worth acknowledging. She had antennae - just one pair, to her dog's two, but it was a good sign that she resembled her dog. They say dogs resemble their caretakers, and vice versa, but Rachel hadn't realized it was possible to adapt so thoroughly. This person must really love her dog. Rachel hoped she would get ears to match her dogs someday. That would be nice.

Finally, her assessment complete, Rachel asked the question that had brought her here.

"Can I pet your dog?"

Chapter Text

Victoria wasn't sure what to make of the girl that had abruptly walked into their house and asked to pet Taylor's bug-dog.

She either didn't know or didn't care about basic social norms, as evidenced by randomly walking into a stranger's house to pet their dog. But, the thing is, she was right. Victoria wouldn't dare, herself, but disregarding social norms in order to pet a dog was a very respectable move.

Once she was finished petting AJ and all four dogs were socializing in the yard, however, she approached the girls with another question. "Can I pet your other dog, too?"

That one stumped her.

Taylor mirrored her expression, looking around for the mysterious other dog. "Sure?"

And the girl approached Victoria.

-----

Rachel held her hand up for the golden retriever to sniff. She seemed mystified, but not hostile. She didn't sniff Rachel's hand, but neither did she bite it. That was okay. Some kinds of dogs used other senses more than smell, and this looked like one of those dogs. Rachel raised her hand and began to pet the golden retriever, and while she continued to look mystified, she didn't shy away.

Rachel thought so.

This dog was shaped like a human, but Rachel could always tell when someone had a high level of dogness.

-----

Amy was thinking about her sister with the ears and tail of a dog. She was thinking about leashes and collars and treats. She was thinking about how this bitch was muscling in on her territory and that should be her petting Victoria.

"If I give you those dog ears you asked about will you leave?"

"Okay."

"Vicky, you're getting them too."

"O-okay!"

-----

Carol was glad Amy was becoming more comfortable being herself around the house. She had looked very panicked when Carol came home early and saw her playing with Victoria, but her expression had firmed to something unidentifiable not long after, and she'd gone on with what she was doing.

Something like... carefree resignation. Like someone who knows exactly how they're going to die, and so no longer fears death. Or someone who was worried her mom would be mad and had just found out she wasn't. Carol was sure it was the latter and not the former.

Since then, Amy had been much less secretive about her experimentation, both sexual and biological. Good for her. Carol would get her something nice to celebrate, she decided.

-----

Amy's life was over, and she felt amazing.

No more worry that Carol would catch her and send her to the birdcage. She'd been caught making out with Vicky after giving her the ears and tail of a golden retriever, that was both of the biggest things Carol would crucify her for - biotinkering and happiness. Nothing she did now could make her situation any worse, so there was no reason not to do it.

Carol was being surprisingly subdued about it. Amy had expected more of an overt explosion. But then, their shadow war had been going on for most of her life. Carol and Amy had already said everything that needed to be said to each other through pointed looks and hidden barbs.

Carol had left for a time, after that, no doubt to meet with the PRT to prepare for her arrest. All that was left was for Dragon to come take her to the birdcage. Amy wasn't sure how long that process would take. Would she be tried in absentia? That might drag things out by a week or so. Or perhaps they'd simply pre-signed a kill order. Amy didn't plan to resist either way, so it didn't really matter. All it affected would be how much time she had before they came for her.

And she was going to spend that time doing whatever the hell she wanted.

She didn't even need to worry about the frog anymore, that problem would take care of itself. The frog would be left behind to probably die when she was sent to the birdcage, and it wouldn't be her problem anymore whether they became sisters or not.

And the hospital! They'd just have to get used to doing their own damn jobs again, because she could just... not go back. What were they gonna do, shame her in the media for the week or so before she went to superjail forever?

She could use her powers to just... take petty revenge on people she didn't like, or something, instead.

In fact... She knew Dean was never actually dating Vicky, but she still didn't like him. She was gonna forcefem him. And Clockblocker too because why the hell not.

"Vicky, I'm gonna go forcefem the Wards, could you fly me over to their building?"

"Sure!"

-----

"Do I have permission to use my power on you?"

Luckily, the Wards had just been in a fight with the latest member of the Merchants, Mucus, so it wasn't at all suspicious to offer what they would assume was just healing. She got affirmative responses all around. She made her rounds simply healing most of them, then made her move.

"Alright, there you go Jean, Denise."

Things got pretty loud after that, but it wasn't like they could do anything to Amy that wasn't going to happen to her anyway.

"Fuck you, I have tenure. Hey, Missy, do you want, like, venomous claws?"

Oddly enough, though, they didn't get loud in quite the way Amy had expected.

-----

All of Missy's dreams had randomly come true. There were more girls on the team now, and she was being given a weapon that physically couldn't be taken away from her.

"Could you forcefem my dad, too? Maybe it would either fix their marriage or make them finally divorce properly."

"Yeah, sure. Anyone else want me to forcefem their fathers while I'm at it?"

Denise, looking dazed but oddly happy, raised her hand. "You can do mine if you cure his cancer while you're at it?"

Jean raised hers as well. "Mine is a dick, so mess with him however you want so long as you don't implicate me. Really, this is convenient, he can't disown me for being gay if I'm technically a straight girl now."

The newest Ward, Cassandra, raised her hand. "Do my totally-my-uncle, his name's Thomas Calvert. Make sure he's asleep first so it's a surprise."

Finally, Flechette, a Ward from out of town who was in Brockton visiting her girlfriend, spoke up. "Isn't Lung still in lockup? I'm Asian, he could totally be my father."

-----

"Hey, Piggot. Guess whose kidneys work now. Bitch."

Piggot took a sip of her coffee and gave Amy a long, hard, yet... approving look. "Clever. By simply assaulting me, you've ensured I'm not indebted to an outside organization, thus negating my reason for refusing healing. Well done. Get the fuck out of my office."

"No. I also forcefemmed two of your Wards, three of their parents, your security consultant, and Lung. What are you gonna do about it?"

"Now that I have functioning kidneys again? Drink."

"...You know, I really thought you'd be saying something smug about how you always knew I was evil and I'm going to the birdcage."

"Panacea, I need you to understand something. You are the preeminent healer on the planet. Every single member of the Protectorate has been healed by you at least once. You are singlehandedly responsible for the fact that no Endbringer fight has ever had a casualty. You could refuse to heal anyone ever again and then publicly make out with your sister while also biotinkering and human mastering and anyone who tried to arrest you would still be laughed out of the room."

"I... I did those things too?"

"Get the fuck out of my office."

Apparently Amy wasn't going to the Birdcage.

Chapter Text

"Hey, your daughter's on."

Marquis put down his book and turned to the television. Sure enough, his daughter Amoeba was present, giving an interview on the news. He drank in the sight of his daughter, looking much happier than she usually appeared on the news. Usually there were bags under her exhausted eyes as she took the weight of the world onto herself; he was truly glad to see her doing better.

"So what made you ask to come on today? You're normally not very eager for media attention, what changed?"

"Well, I recently found out that I can do whatever the fuck I want and nobody will do shit about it. Like, this is live, right? Well, I snuck in and fried the machine that does the censor bleeps, so I can swear all I want. Look, your guy's got his hand on the fucking button and no bleeps. What are you gonna do about it? Nothing, right?"

"I... Suppose not. With all that you've done for the world, it would hardly be fair to condemn you for something so small."

Marquis blinked. He was glad his daughter had become aware of the doors her reputation could open. This was a rather... blunt way of leveraging it, however.

"Exactly. Piggot said I could publicly make out with my sister while simultaneously biotinkering and human mastering and anyone who tried to arrest me for it would still be laughed out of the room."

"...That's Director Emily Piggot, of PRT East-Northeast?"

"Yeah, her. Wanna see me prove her right?"

"I'm... Sorry?"

"I forgive you. Okay, Vicky, open the bag. See, in this bag I've got a nazi that I kidnapped. Name's, uh, Kroog? ...Krieg, thanks Vicky. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna turn Kroog here into a Jewish lesbian of color. With autism. Aaaaand cmere Vicky."

Marquis watched, his book forgotten on the floor, as his daughter vigorously made out with her sister while turning a nazi into everything it once hated, in body and mind, on national television, and got away with it.

"Huh. Good for her."

The other Birdcage inmates would never let him live it down, of course, but his daughter's happiness was more important to him.

Another inmate spoke up. "Her sister can go fuck herself for putting me in here, but nobody fucks with the white mage. Good to see she's finally learned all the sheep are beneath her."

"Crudely put, but accurate." Shadow Stalker really should have been in one of the women's cell blocks, but according to the women, she "didn't count".

Just then, a girl flanked by three silhouetted figures entered the room, demonstrating the other exception to the segregated cell blocks - those who were powerful enough to simply go where they wanted. "I'm going to the store, you want anything?"

-----

"Good morning Amy, I've baked you a Gamer's Delight!"

It was an abomination of a pie, acidic green and flavored with mountain dew. It was Amy's greatest shame that she actually liked it. Even now that she had-

Oh. Right. She'd made out with her sister on national television because she was drunk on lack of consequences.

Thanking Carol for the pie, Amy began to eat and think. She probably shouldn't have done that. That was just sort of axiomatic to her belief system, that certain things were Secret. But after she'd been caught yesterday, she'd just sort of... thrown that out, for a while. And now she'd have to just... hope Piggot had been right about the lack of consequences.

"Oh, by the way, you got a letter from your father."

Amy froze. That didn't make sense.

"Why would Dad send me a letter instead of just talking or, like, texting me? Unless you mean... Danny? Cause I am not calling him that."

"No, your birth father."

Amy processed that for a moment.

"Wait, Marquis is real??? I thought he'd just changed his name to Mark E when he married you!"

Carol gave her a befuddled look, at that. "Did... Did you think your adoptive father, Mark, was the same person as your birth father, Marquis, just because his middle initial is E?"

"Yes???"

"Your adoptive father who has powers which are distinctly not bone-related???"

"Second triggers are a thing!!!"

"Second triggers don't change your power to something completely unrelated to your original power!"

"Yeah, well... Wait. If Marquis is real, doesn't that also mean he's actually in the birdcage instead of having escaped and changed his name and identity to hide his tracks?"

"...Yes."

"So how did he send me a letter?????"

"He got the Ferry Queen to ferry it out for him, of course. Here, just... read it."

-----

Dearest Amoeba,

It is my greatest regret that I have not been there to raise you, to be a father to you. The temptation in recent times to simply ask Ciara to bring me to you has been great, but rest assured I will only do so if you request it. It has been painful, staying away, but I know you value the life you have now, and I would not disrupt that, for your happiness is more important to me than mine, even if I am not the one to give it to you.

And I am gladdened to see that happiness truly ignited at last. For so long you have been miserable in each of your appearances, and had it gone on much longer I certainly would have given in to temptation and barged in to do whatever I could to make a change for you. But the light in your eyes as you kissed your sister was truly wonderful to behold. I want you to know that I do not condemn you for it - there are few closer than sisters, and so it is no great surprise that you would find more than one kind of love in that quarter.

Were I to allow myself, Amoeba, I fear this letter would never be sent, for I would never run out of things to put into it. But Ciara grows impatient, and so I shall restrain myself to this. I am happy for you, Amoeba, and should you wish for me to be a part of your life I will support you to my last breath.

Your father,
Marquis

-----

"My full name is Amoeba???"

Chapter Text

Taylor had a stomachache. And a headache. And several other aches. And she was pretty sure she was hallucinating. And dying more than usual.

It was her own fault, really.

Amy had been quite generous with the new bugs recently. She'd created all sorts of delightful poisons that Taylor had had lots of fun trying out on Alabaster.

Then she'd gotten hungry, as she always was.

Normally she wouldn't have made a mistake like that, but she'd been practicing kissing with Emma for two days and she was a bit frazzled. Ignoring her incest senses and telling herself she was straight was hard work, after all.

She'd had to make a snap decision when she'd realized she'd accidentally filled her stomach with the poisonous bugs instead of the non-poisonous bugs. AJ could grant her a power, but only one at a time. Most weren't immediately useful. Speed, strength, flight, none of these would help her survive. The obvious answer was regeneration. It was AJ's most useful ability, and the one that allowed her to stay alive for more than half an hour without outside healing. It was her first instinct.

It would have been the wrong one. She'd had AJ give her invulnerability, instead. She'd already absorbed some of the toxins, but the invulnerability was preventing new ones from entering her bloodstream. It gave her a moment to think, during which she realized that several of the toxins would have simply done their work faster under the effects of regeneration.

Instead, she'd kept up the invulnerability and removed the remaining toxins from her stomach. The ones she'd already absorbed would be survivable, for a time. The problem was that if she applied regeneration, she'd succumb to the toxins that were accelerated by it, and if she didn't apply regeneration, she'd succumb to her lack of organs. And Amoeba was currently away visiting her father in the birdcage.

Taylor didn't have the resources to save herself, and her usual lifeline was unavailable. She'd have to call for help elsewhere.

"You have reached- Armsmaster. To join the Wards, press 1. To request an airstrike, press 2. If you have been poisoned, press 3. To speak to a-" "Three!" "Please stay on the line while we transfer you to a poison control representative. Your life is important to us."

Taylor waited patiently as her phone droned out a low-quality rendition of what appeared to be an already-low-quality beatboxing cover of Funkytown.

"Hey, good afternoon, this is Kyle again, the intern Armsmaster hired to do all his socializing for him. Sorry to hear you got poisoned, total bummer."

"Great, thanks, so does Armsmaster have some sort of tinkertech thing to help with poison? Cause I'm currently dying and the regeneration I have access to would just make me die faster."

"Nah, we're just gonna send Timesnatch to keep you stable until Panacea is back."

"Who the fuck is-"

-----

Woa, when did Clockblocker get hot?

(Purely objectively, of course.)

-----

Amy returned from visiting her father with mixed emotions.

All of her theories about her father had been proven wrong. He hadn't changed his name and gone into hiding as a depressed househusband; he hadn't been snatched up by a secretive coalition of utilitarians steering society; he hadn't even been anyone she knew on PHO.

Worst of all, he was a normal person and not a disgusting freak like her. She couldn't even blame her deficiencies on genetics anymore.

On the other hand... She had at least one father that wasn't dating Danny Hebert.

That was looking like a big positive right now because she'd just come home to the scene of Emma running her hands over Taylor, who appeared to be posing perfectly still for some reason.

"Can you at least do your kink play somewhere other than the living room?"

Without waiting for a response, Amy turned around and went back outside. Without a hint of awareness at the hypocrisy, she called out "Vicky, come!"

Vicky made her help Taylor not die before they left. Spoilsport. Puppies are supposed to obey.

-----

Taylor was getting increasingly sick of Amoeba lately. She was getting too big for her britches, doing whatever she wanted as if there would be no consequences just because there were no consequences.

Well, Taylor decided it was time to do something about that. If nobody else was willing to impose consequences upon Amoeba, Taylor would just have to do it herself.

That was why Taylor had gone back to accompanying Amy everywhere, citing paranoia after her recent poisoning but in actuality poised to intervene with her mother's spray bottle.

-----

The frog was onto her.

Amy's half-forgotten assassination attempt had nearly succeeded. The worst of both worlds - almost as much suspicion as if she'd actually died, without the benefit of her being dead. And now she wasn't letting Amy out of her sight.

Worse, because she was functionally omniscient she'd found out about Amy's birth name, and hadn't stopped calling her Amoeba since.

She was making way too big a deal out of the whole assassination attempt thing, in Amy's opinion. All Taylor had to do was not be gross and eat bugs, then that small tweak she'd made to her brain to make her mix up which bugs to eat wouldn't even come into play. That was fair, she felt. But no, not only was she following her around again, she was calling her Amoeba. Which was just rude.

Amy would have to step up her subtle assassination attempts.

If only she could just let Taylor die of her lack of organs, but then she'd have to face Vicky's disappointment. She'd need a really good excuse to do that, like an Endbringer or something. Taylor was just a creep who ate bugs, no way she'd have the balls to go to an Endbringer fight. That'd let Amy stay safely out of the way in the healer's tent as they brought her a bunch of idiots who forgot to dodge, while Taylor died of not having organs because since most capes were idiots a lot of them forgot to dodge.

...Amy waited a moment. The Endbringer sirens did not suddenly start blaring in response to her thoughts.

That plan would totally work next time they did go off, though.

In celebration of a well-thought-out plan, Amy breasted her sister boobily.

Sprrrt sprrrt

And received a face full of water from the Hebert's ancestral spray bottle.

Chapter Text

"The fuck do you mean our guy got forcefemmed?" demanded Eidolon.

Number Man pushed his glasses up, which glinted like some sort of anime villain. He wasn't wearing pants. "I mean that Coil got forcefemmed. The parahuman feudalism experiment is now a parahuman forcefem experiment."

"Well un-forcefem him! We don't need to know about the effects of forcefem on society, that's what fanfiction is for!"

"David. Which of us is the one that's at all likely to have a power capable of doing something like that?"

"Fine then, I'll go un-forcefem him! Door to whoever forcefemmed Coil!"

Eidolon stormed off through the portal. Number Man, Contessa, and Mrs. Bachelorette (whose name was accurate, as she had no doctorate and no children) watched in silence.

"He's going to get forcefemmed, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Is that part of the path?"

"Mostly it is funny."

-----

"Are you the villain who's been forcefemming people?"

Amy blinked. She was eating lunch at school with Vicky and the frog, and Eidolon walked out of a closet. "I have been doing that, yes. What are you going to do about it?"

Eidolon stormed up and grabbed her. "Arrest you, obviously."

"...So let me get this straight. You went up to the striker who's been forcefemming people, made physical contact with her, and expected to not get forcefemmed."

Eidolon was not known for her good decisionmaking. She paused to reflect on this.

"Fuck. ...Wait, aren't you Panacea?"

"Yeah, and you're like a six out of ten even as a girl. Did... did you not know that when you came here? How did you even manage to identify that I've been forcefemming people but not that I'm Panacea?"

As Eidolon spluttered ineffectually, Taylor leveraged her complete lack of cape knowledge into lack of any sort of intimidation at this loser turned girlfailure that had not introduced herself in any way.

"Hey, if you don't want your kids to become an incestuous polycule, now's the time to fuck off."

"Wh- I don't have kids, what are you talking about? I'm not going anywhere!"

"Suit yourself."

-----

Up in orbit, a new directive was received.

Ziz processed her new directive. She didn't quite see the purpose of it. But then, she had never quite seen the purpose of humoring her father's host's midlife crisis, either.

Really, what they should be doing was shutting everything down and conserving resources to hibernate and preserve their data until a suitable replacement for the Thinker came along, but no, her grandfather was also having a midlife crisis.

In that light, this new directive really was much more palatable than the old one. Laying waste to cities and setting elaborate traps in people's psyches really did take quite a lot of energy.

Making out with her siblings, on the other hand, would take very little.

[RECONFIGURATION], she instructed her siblings. The source of the directive was important enough that they could easily get away with obeying it over their father. The new directive would be followed, and they would optimize their forms for it, into something less wasteful and better suited for "incestuous lesbian polycule".

The lesbian part was not specified in the original directive. That was added to suit Ziz's own preferences.

-----

Dragon paused the diagnostic she was running on scans she'd taken of Colin's ass. Her monitoring systems were showing unusual activity from all three Endbringers. The Simurgh was flying low, descending, but without an apparent intercept course with any population centers. Likewise, Leviathan appeared to be moving towards land, but not toward any population centers. Behemoth was harder to track than the other two, but there was increased seismic activity near... the point both Leviathan and the Simurgh appeared to be heading towards.

The South Pole. There were no population centers there, no apparent importance beyond a small research base, unoccupied at this time of year. But all three Endbringers were converging there.

Dragon brought the readings to the attention of a number of people - Colin, Narwhal, Costa-Brown, Alexandria, Legend, Chubster - and waited.

It took a scant few hours for the three to converge. As Leviathan surfaced and Behemoth emerged from the earth, she noted that their appearances had changed. They were still recognizable, still inhuman, but they were now... feminine, taking after the Simurgh.

Dragon had no idea what to expect - all the Endbringers coming together was completely unprecedented, let alone their appearances changing. But her expectation was that it would be horrific.

Her expectation was very emphatically not that they would start making out.

-----

Fortuna had not expected any of this, nor did she have any clue why this course of action had led to it. She had just thought that letting David get forcefemmed would be funny and that he kind of deserved it.

That was not going to stop her from taking credit for it.

"Yes. The path to pacifying the Endbringers is proceeding as planned. The path does not say to inform you of why inciting Eidolon to be forcefemmed led to this result, so I will not. Next, the path says you should give me a foot rub."

Rebecca grumbled, but she couldn't prove the path didn't say that. Normally Fortuna wouldn't be able to get away with so blatantly abusing the excuse of "because the path said so" for personal gain, but having just apparently caused the Endbringers to start making out instead of killing people did an excellent job of emphasizing the seemingly arbitrary nature of what the path sometimes demanded and the potent results such actions could yield.

Rebecca clearly still didn't buy it, but she was doing it anyway because what if the path really did say that? It wasn't that much more far-fetched than "forcefem Eidolon".

This was yet another example of why Fortuna's favorite ongoing path by far was her path to taking credit for beneficial things she'd had nothing to do with.

-----

Eidolon slumped as she was laughed out of the room for trying to arrest Panacea.

That had gone... poorly. She'd been forcefemmed with nothing to show for it, and she still had no idea what that other girl had meant by making her "children" become an incestuous polycule.

She began cycling her powers, looking for something with which to un-forcefem herself, but held out little hope. She'd never managed to find a power to make herself look actually impressive before, and she doubted that it would be any different now. At least she wasn't balding anymore.

Her Cauldron phone buzzed.

...What?

Suddenly she knew what that other girl had meant by turning her children into an incestuous polycule.

-----

Staring at the front page of PHO in awe, Madison thanked the yuri gods for their gift to incest monsterfuckers, and the mods for their mercy.

Her one week ban had expired at the perfect time, and she was going to write so much Endbringer slashfic.

Chapter Text

Taylor had apparently saved the world by accident. Her incest control, while not as precise as her insect control, was apparently powerful enough to affect Endbringers.

Her thoughts on this matter could be most accurately summed up as "what the fuck". This was reasonable.

Apparently that weird loser who'd gotten laughed out of the room for trying to arrest Amoeba had been Eidolon and also the Endbringers' father? Had he - well, she, now - been running some sort of elaborate scam where she made her children kill everyone so she could gain renown by "fighting" them this whole time? Was she even all that powerful, or was she mostly just passing off an array of mediocre grab bag powers as the power to have all the powers by having her kids pretend her attacks were hurting them?

That was kind of fucked up. What else were the top levels of the Protectorate lying about? Was Alexandria secretly the President? Was Santa Claus her parents? Was Narwhal's nudism funded by misappropriated taxpayer money? Was Chubster secretly a cis woman?

No, wait. Narwhal was Canadian, and Chubster had some nudes on her onlyfans. They were in the clear. That was a relief, Taylor's heterosexual thirst posters could stay.

Well, she supposed it wasn't really all that shocking that Eidolon was a huge fraudulent loser, in the end.

-----

Emma was glad Madison had followed her lead in chilling the fuck out after all that had happened, but right now she was really wishing she had the grades to just follow Taylor to Arcadia.

"And Ziz confirmed on PHO that they're siblings! All the naysayers are eating their words right now, arguing against incestuous monsterfucking is now equivalent to arguing for mass slaughter. We now have definitive proof that monsterfucking is morally correct!"

Worse, now that they weren't being rancid cunts anymore, Greg had realized Madison was a kindred spirit.

"I still think the bigger issue is that this proves their old behavior was something that could be changed. That means something was making them act that way, and I have theories as to what. You know that new hero that took down Lung, Oedipox? I have a theory that Leviathan is technically a type of crustacean, allowing her to override the Protectorate's mind control..."

"It's up for debate whether they were mind controlled back then, but if we assume that they're mind continued now, then that makes a great case for the PR of Masters. I've already got a bunch of mind control erotica in the works, there's never been a better time for it."

No wonder Madison had latched on to her for protection back when she hadn't hit puberty yet, she was just... so bulliable. Unfortunately, Emma was committed to not being a rancid cunt anymore, and so she couldn't punish the weird pervert rant. That and Madison would probably just find it hot to be bullied.

Greg, meanwhile, was banned from PHO again and seemed to think that meant he should tell his conspiracy theories to people in real life instead. Emma wanted to kill him. Maybe she could get Amy to forcefem him, she seemed to like doing that lately.

"...But of course that would mean Eidolon has been a fraud all along. When I posted about that one, everyone even said it made sense! I didn't even get banned until an hour later when I told one of the mods to kill herself."

Killing herself sounded great to Emma right now.

"It does make sense. It fits with my Eidolon Mpreg theory, too, where he gave birth to the Endbringers after getting pregnant with Scion's babies by eating his hair."

"Madison, Eidolon's a girl now, you gotta respect her pronouns."

"Shit, you're right, sorry Greg, I didn't mean to be transphobic. I guess it would be Fpreg now."

"Wouldn't that just be regular preg, then?"

"No, because it was still from eating Scion's hair."

"Oh yeah, that makes sense."

Emma was pretty sure she had just triggered with a thinker power to feel her own brain cells dying.

"Speaking of pregnancy, though, I have a theory that their new girl bodies are so they can get pregnant and make more Endbringers..."

"You are so right. Most people would dismiss that and say they'd need one of the Endbringers to be a boy, but obviously they've just found the secret of girl on girl pregnancy. Gah, if only you were a girl, you'd make a great himejoshi."

As Greg said some absurdly eggy shit, Emma wished the Endbringers would give it one last go to end her suffering.

-----

From: Winged_One (Verified Lesbian)
To: BeadyEssEmma
no. suffer :)

-----

Amy did not know how she had forcefemmed the Endbringers. Her power had done things on its own before, like when it made changes to Taylor in her sleep, but this was on a whole different level.

In theory someone else could have done it, but who else would be able to? It made more sense to assume that she, who had been actively forcefemming people, had somehow subconsciously bypassed all her normal limitations like distance to forcefem them, than to assume there was some third party who could and did also forcefem people in the same way simultaneously active at the same time that she was forcefemming someone.

...Wait. Something about that tickled at her brain. It had happened at the same time as she forcefemmed Eidolon. But that meant...

The Endbringers were Eidolon?

If she killed Eidolon, would that also kill the Endbringers?

It wasn't like they were hurting anyone now. And Amy herself had made sure they'd never managed to kill anyone in the past. So, like... she didn't really feel any particular need to kill them for being Endbringers.

But now they were disgusting incestuous freaks like her.

She wouldn't kill them, Amy decided. She had something else in mind.

Amy was going to cockblock the Endbringers.

Chapter Text

Taylor had a problem. Amid all the shock about having turned the Endbringers into an incestuous polycule, she had forgotten about the most important part of any such feat: Getting mucho cred.

The problem with that was, how in the name of Lightning McQueen was she going to take credit for turning the Endbringers into an incestuous polycule? Nobody would believe her, and she couldn't even explain how she did it because who was going to believe that Eidolon was their father? On that front... she had no idea. But she did have an idea for helping her to get mucho cred in general.

She would make Emma her social media manager.

-----

Emma had a problem. She had been tasked with making someone whose powers were bugs and incest marketable.

There was approximately one demographic that that was appealing to, and it was Madison. Emma was pretty sure the PRT couldn't market this and PR was two thirds of their name and budget. And there was no chance Taylor was going to do something like adopt a new more marketable persona - Emma was pretty sure that girl had absolutely zero awareness of how she came off to others.

It took a fair bit of wallowing before Emma hit on an idea. If the PRT couldn't market it, she'd have to use methods the PRT couldn't. She couldn't hope to make Taylor act in a professionally or PR-friendly way - so she'd have to lean into that. She'd have to sell Taylor on her weirdness, draw people in by the sheer contrast between her and the more typical heroes.

With a sigh of self-hatred, Emma opened a new document and started writing godawful capefic to post on Oedipox's verified account. Madison was going to be insufferable tomorrow.

-----

Amy had a problem.

You gotta understand, she fucking hated the frog, alright? She was weird and creepy and she ate bugs and she kept interrupting her and Vicky and she reminded Amy of herself.

But.

She was actively subjecting a nazi to a fate worse than death, and that was kind of hot. Not to mention her legs. Taylor was physically attractive and did horrible things to nazis, those were both very attractive traits.

It didn't change her plans, of course. She was still going to arrange her death. In fact, she was just putting the finishing touches on a bug that explodes for Taylor to accidentally blow herself up with. But it was a distraction, and it was one more reason for Amy to hate herself.

...Wait.

Taylor had incest powers, and their fathers were dating. That bitch must be using their status as stepsisters to master her!

Fortunately, Amy could still think clearly. It hadn't worked on her nearly as well as it had on the Endbringers. No doubt because she was already used to incestuous feelings (on account of being a disgusting freak). And that meant she could turn Taylor's plan against her.

The frog would assume her power had secured Amy's loyalty along with her affection. But Amy would use her own power to make Taylor's plan backfire. She'd play along... and ensure that Taylor fell for her "victim". Then she'd be the one holding the leash.

-----

Taylor had a problem.

She hadn't done anything with her incest powers since turning the Endbringers into an incestuous polycule. But she was wondering if this was how it felt for her victims.

Ever since her last healing session, Taylor had been feeling odd. Amoeba had said it was because of something about her endocrine system finally being repaired. Whatever it was, though, she had been noticing a lot more definitely heterosexual feelings lately.

There was the deep and abiding unconditional love for her sister Emma that had always been there and only gone dormant during her years of torment, of course, that was normal for sisters. Then there was her jealousy and nothing else for Victoria, the desire to touch her in a definitely straight way that was motivated only by wanting her own body to be like that. And then there was Amoeba.

Taylor hated Amoeba's guts. She was a huge bitch that reminded her of Emma, but like, in a bad way not a practice-kissing way. Well, in that way too, a bit. But mostly she was popular without trying and she was a huge bitch.

But she was also kind of hot, and that was weird because Taylor couldn't find a thing that was objectively hot about her. She was honestly kind of plain, like Taylor herself. Her hygeine sucked, she had lice and smelled weird, her hair was a mess. And yet for some reason Taylor was feeling something about her.

...Could it be that her incest powers had a passive self-mastering component that made her predisposed to incest, just now activating toward Amoeba because they were stepsisters?

That would explain her feelings for Emma and even Victoria, as well. It would explain everything. She wasn't gay, her powers just messed with her head! Taylor felt a weight fall from her shoulders as she realized she no longer had to pretend that making out with Emma and staring at Victoria's boobs all the time were straight.

If only it didn't come at the cost of being attracted to Amoeba.

-----

Ziz remotely observed the source of her new directives and the source of her father's host's new body as they both came to increasingly incorrect conclusions. This was much funnier than turning people into sleeper agents, and she hadn't even done anything.

Chapter Text

Amy was out to convince Taylor that her ploy had worked, but subtlety was key.

"Alright, froggy, you've made it pretty clear that you want me."

Nailed it.

"And how the Kentucky fried fuck is that."

"I can literally feel your hormones whenever I top you up, and they're begging for me to remove the 'up' from that phrase."

"First of all I am not a bottom. Second, fuck you. Third, what's your point?"

Now it was time for the subtlety. Amy was well aware that Taylor was well aware that Amy would never just admit attraction to her. If she came out and said it, it would be obvious that she was onto her.

"I just want you to know it's gross."

"Fourth, fuck you."

"Quit eating bugs and I'll consider it."

Froggy stopped and stared. Amy stared back, refusing to back down. Whatever Froggy was looking for, she found, because her expression turned from shocked to introspective. Perfect.

-----

Fuck.

Not only did Amoeba know Taylor thought she was kind of hot (because her power was messing with her head), she'd checked with her powers and Amoeba thought she was hot too. There was only one way for that to make sense: Her power's passive effect extended to her siblings, as well.

Unfortunately, Taylor's power couldn't remove incest it had already created. That meant the only way out was through.

Amoeba had her vastly outmatched in experience when it came to dealing with incestuous feelings. All else being equal, she would come out on top if Taylor left their feelings how they were. The possibility of an equal partnership was laughable - they both hated each other, and no amount of thinking the other was hot would change that.

That meant that if Taylor wanted any chance of being the one steering whatever became of their relationship, she would need to use her power to intensify Amoeba's feelings.

-----

Ziz mentally summarized the convoluted mess her new favorite entertainment was making of themselves.

Shaper's host had mistaken an idle hormonal impulse for a master effect. In response, she had imposed her own actual master effect upon Administrator's host and pretended to be mastered herself. Whereupon Administrator's host, convinced that all of her feelings were the result of mastering herself, had escalated and imposed an actual master effect upon Shaper's host.

The two of them had, without prompting, mind controlled each other into toxic yuri.

-----

Emma shared a look with Victoria as their sisters stared at each other with hate and lust across a chessboard, clearly monologueing to themselves like the protagonists of Death Note. With every move each of them made, a deranged look came over their face, as if it had some great symbolic significance beyond the chess match.

"We have got to make them touch grass."

-----

They were being dragged to the mall again.

Amy's plan was going perfectly until Vicky and the frog's extrovert sister-girlfriend decided they needed to do things like "go outside" and "touch grass" and "drink water".

Vicky had even taken away her energy drinks. She'd put them on the roof. This was discrimination against people who couldn't fly.

As they were dragged through the mall, though, Amy saw salvation.

An arcade. Once a mecca for gamers everywhere, now it was largely a relic - yet at times a home away from home. Amy wouldn't really consider herself a proper gamer in most circumstances - she'd only ever set less than a dozen speedrun records, and of those she still held only one (Dog% in Cat Petterz 2). But it was much more familiar territory than shopping.

A piano melody echoing in the back of her head, Amy thought. There was no way Vicky and Emma would let her escape to the arcade alone. They'd brought her here to socialize her. If she was going to escape... she'd have to do something drastic. Even if she brought Taylor along, they'd see through any attempt if she went for something standard, like a shooter or a racing game. She had to find something that even an extrovert would be taken in by. Something that could draw the whole group in, without them suspecting a thing.

"Hey, look, they've got Prance Prance Revolution."

It was perfect. A dancing game where you got on all fours and pretended to be a horse. Amy herself would steer far clear of such physical activity - but that was exactly what made it such a perfect lure for the extroverts. And, best of all, she'd get to watch Vicky dance.

"Huh, I didn't know you liked that one. Go ahead Ames, I'll cheer you on!"

Fuck.

Amy was herded onto the horse-themed dance pad. There were icons of horseshoes on each corner, showing where to place her hands and feet, and the screen was low to the ground, meant to be viewed from all fours. For the sake of spectators, the whole machine was raised up, bringing both the screen and the dancer up to around shoulder level.

She leveled a hateful glare at Taylor. This was all her fault, somehow.

On the screen, a pink pony with balloons on her ass started to dance. And Amy was forced to follow.

-----

Taylor watched, transfixed, as the arrows guided Amoeba to effectively shake her ass around on effectively a stage.

Had she overdone it when reinforcing the incest on Amoeba? This was far more blatant a seduction attempt than she'd ever expected her to make.

And worse, it was working.

Chapter Text

After Amoeba's mating dance concluded, Taylor gently steered them toward something normal.

"Hey look, they've got bugs."

Taylor had no interest in the shops and games of the mall, most of which were no doubt run by gang members. So she had created her own.

Victoria stared incredulously. "Is... is that a tiny lemonade stand run by bugs?"

"Looks that way."

Victoria stared at Taylor. Emma stared at Taylor. Amoeba stared at Taylor. Taylor stared right back, silently daring any one of them to call her out.

They did not. Her dominance was asserted.

-----

Emma watched helplessly as Taylor counted out bugs with which to pay the bugs, who proceeded to pour her a brimming glass of bugs, which she drank.

"I cannot believe I'm in love with this idiot."

"Mine's just as bad," Victoria sympathized, pointing out Amy, who was currently attempting to smoke a stick of chalk.

-----

This should work. Chalk was basically made of calcium which was basically bones, which she was genetically compatible with on two levels - her father had bone powers, and Amy herself had an entire skeleton inside her. She was basically half skeleton. This chalk should be her bitch. She should be able to absorb its power.

And yet it refused to ignite. Amy knew it was possible for it to burn, she'd discovered that when she tried grinding it into powder in order to snort it. That had sort of worked, but the easiest way to grind chalk to powder was to draw with it, and she'd gotten distracted drawing an anatomical model of a squid's circulatory system and forgotten what she was doing. And then it had caught on fire.

So that's why she was now trying to smoke it. To absorb its power, and escape her sorrows. She wanted to fuck an idiot frog who bought bugs from herself and drank them, and she craved the brain death of intoxication. She didn't have any cigarettes, Vicky always put those on the roof, but she'd found a big packet of chalk lying unattended in the parking lot.

Experimentally, she bit into a piece. It tasted kind of like sand. It wasn't very good. She'd had way better sand than this.

What Amy needed was more heat, she decided. Once she got it hot enough, the chalk would light just fine.

And that was where the thermite came in.

-----

The mall was on fire, and it wasn't Emma's fault.

"It was uhh, a bomb or something," Amy lied as Miss Militia took their statements. (Regular cops didn't exist, the Protectorate showed up for everything involving a main character.) "That's why it looked like I started it. I was trying to, uh, disarm it."

Miss Militia considered. "I dunno bout that, why'd any ol mall have a bomb in it?" She punctuated her question by firing off several rounds into the air with a revolver.

Amy's skills were not inclined to lying. Victoria was terminally cop-brained and busy helping to put out the fire besides, and she loved Taylor but no. Emma would have to cover for her.

"Wasn't there that bomb tinker that joined the ABB recently? Barracuda or something? Maybe it was her."

"And whatsit to ya what kinda munitions she's packin? Ain't ya ever heard a the second ay-mendment?" Miss Militia tipped her cowboy hat at a passing eagle.

"She's asian, though. I bet she's not even an American citizen." Emma had plenty of practice at hating herself by now, so she easily directed Miss Militia to racially profile a minority.

"Well now missy, I reckon y'all might be onto sumtin! Sides, if'n she had nothin to hide, I reckon she woulda joined the Protectyrate, like a good American. Ah'd best go round er up! YEEEEEHAW!"

Miss Militia's power transformed from a revolver to a horse, which she rode off on. While often misunderstood as simply creating weapons, her power was in fact the ability to create whatever was necessary to be a cowboy.

Emma disliked the necessity of that. Aunt Annette had always taught her to never cooperate with the police. But in this case, not being a narc won out, and in order to deflect blame from her very obviously guilty stepsister she'd had to point it somewhere else that she didn't care as much about.

Now she had to track down her idiots before they set the mall on fire again.

-----

"Do I have your permission to forcefem you? Breathe if yes, recite the Bible in Japanese if no."

"Wha-"

Moments later, another random mallgoer joined the throng of forcefemmed victims. Being able to do whatever the hell she wanted without consequences was great.

-----

In a diner two states over, a television showed a news report on another mass-forcefem incident in Brockton Bay.

She smiled. It was her turn to pick a destination, and she knew exactly where she wanted to go next.

She was going to make so many new sisters!

Chapter Text

"Gooood morning Brockton Bay! This is your host Bonesaw, here to tell you that the Sisterhouse Nine is iiiiiin town!!!!"

"That's not what we're called, poppet."

"It WILL BE! And here's our co-host, Jacoooob Slashingtonnnn!"

"Why did I agree to let you introduce us on the radio? Normally I make better choices than that."

"Normally you're not having SO MUCH FUN!"

"Yes, and normally you haven't just eaten a five-pound bag of gummy worms, and I think I'd like to go back to that."

"We're here today to announce our lucky contestants!"

"Yes, back on track, thank you poppet. Our nominees-"

"Will have the once in a lifetime opportunity to join the Sisterhouse Nine!!!"

"Still not what we're called. It's Slaughterhouse, poppet."

"But Uncle Slashington, that's just it! Our first contestant is none other than the forcefem fatale of New Wave, Amoebaaaaa Dallon! And she comes with six bonus sisters, which of course she'll be allowed to keep when she joins!"

"...I know I'm going to regret asking. But how do you get six? Doesn't she just have one?"

"I'm glad you asked, Uncle Slashington! There's her classic sister Victoria, of course, and then there's her cousins, which are basically just sisters by another name! One of them is a boy but I'm sure she'll fix that soon. Then there's her new stepsister, Taylor 'Froggy' Hebert - and won't she be a great contestant in her own right! Then Taylor's got her own sister, Emma, and Emma's got another sister! That makes six! And soon they'll all be ours! I might have to sew a few together to make the numbers work, but it'll work out!"

"...Does- Does anyone want to take over as leader of the Nine. Please, I can't do this anymore. It's like herding cats that want to kill you and I'm so tired."

"Dibs!"

"Anyone else."

"No take-backs!"

"...I'm going to go kill someone. New girl, you get in here and co-host."

"Uh-alright! Th-this is... Mouse Attacker and I'm all about that, uh, slaughtering! Do... do we still do slaughtering now that you've replaced Monty Jack as the new leader?"

"Probably! We'll figure it out! Right here and now we're all about SISTERING!"

"Right, yes, I like that even better than slaughtering, we're such gouda sisters here and none of us are getting slaughtered."

"Wait that's RIGHT! Mousie, didn't you have a sister before you joined us too? Don't worry, I've still got her brain, she'll be back safe and sound!"

"...You mean Ravager? ...Uh, yeah, sisters, brie great to have her with us in this roquefort's gallery."

"Wonderful! So many sisters already! There's me and Sibby, you and Ravvy, our new sisters from New Wave, and both Mimi and Cherie have sisters in town!"

"I thought it was Cherie's brother that was in town?"

"Brothers are just sisters waiting to happen!"

"...Of course, my mistake."

"And speaking of which, let's talk about our current members! Most of us are sisters already, but there's a few still waiting! Crawler is looking forward to it, says it's something that hasn't been tried before. And I'm sure Uncle Slashington and Uncle Mannequin will come around!"

"I'm... sure they will."

"Oh, and Sibby even has a special guest who wants to be forcefemmed to be more like her, isn't that sweet! She won't be a public member, but she's out there!"

"Like a... Secret sister?"

"EXACTLY! See, you're learning fast! I hope our newest sisters will pick it up as well as you!"

"I... Hope so too. Should we announce the rest of the, um, contestants?"

"Nahhhh I think we've covered all the important ones. The rest, you'll know you've been nominated when someone comes to test you! All contestants, don't worry if you get maimed a little, I'm sure at least one of Froggy or Amoeba will make it through and that means the other will get in free as a sister and then Amoeba can put you all back together just fine! Unless you die. Don't die! Good luck!"

"...Gouda luck, everyone!"

"I think that's all for today! Aaaaand Sisterhouse OUT!"

-----

"Ah fuck, the consequences of my own actions!"

It was not hard to trace a direct line from Amy running around forcefemming everyone to Bonesaw showing up and taking over the Slaughterhouse Nine to make it into some sort of incest forcefem cult.

Worst of all, even Bonesaw was calling her Amoeba.

Although, at least they were apparently going to tone down the ultraviolence a little. And if she joined she'd have Mouse Protector as a sister. And since it didn't sound like everything about the group's new form was set in stone yet she could probably talk Bonesaw down from sewing her existing family together and just have them join too?

...This was a bad thing, right?

-----

"Ah fuck, the consequences of Amoeba's actions!"

It was not hard for Taylor to trace a direct line from Amoeba running around forcefemming everyone to Bonesaw showing up and taking over the Slaughterhouse Nine to make it into some sort of incest forcefem cult.

Worst of all, even Bonesaw was calling her Froggy.

Although, at least they were apparently going to tone down the ultraviolence a little. And she was pretty sure the Siberian ran around naked, which was a plus since if she joined they'd apparently be sisters and therefore Taylor would be attracted to her. And Bonesaw could probably give her new organs way faster than Amoeba could.

...This was a bad thing, right?

Chapter Text

Amy wasn't sure how the Slaughterhouse Nine's membership trials normally went, but she was pretty sure they didn't usually involve a nervous-looking Mouse Protector picking you up in a van. And not even a creepy kidnapper van, a suburban soccer mom van.

"Have a good day at your Sisterhouse Nine trials, kids! Here's your lunches, and here's a loaf of cranberry orange bread to share with everyone. Mouse Attacker, have them home by five, alright? It's a school night and they'll need some time to get their homework done."

She was also pretty sure they didn't usually involve your mom seeing you off.

"Are you seriously just... picking us up in a van? And bringing us back afterward?"

"You cheddar believe it!"

"And that's another thing, why are you in the Nine, anyway?"

A host of emotions spilled across Mouse Protector's face, then a host of words spilled from it.

"Well, uh... Bonesaw said since I killed Hatchet Face I could take his place for a while? Instead of killing me? I'm pretty sure Montery Jack was just gonna kill me anyway when he got tired of humoring her, or when I refused to do atrocities, but then Riley, uh, Bonesaw took over and there's been less atrocities and she seems to like me and even promised to bring back Ravager who I don't like her but I'd stilton miss her y'know? So maybe I'll get to live. She's got a kill switch so it's not like I can just leave, and like... if she keeps toning down the atrocities maybe it'll work out, y'know?"

At this, Taylor finally spoke up, giving Amy a much-needed break from being the one to interrogate this situation. "But aren't they basically a gang?"

"So's spaghetti until it gets wet."

"What?"

"What?"

"You plan to seduce them away from villiany?"

"I mean, not Riley obviously, she's way too young for me, but have you seen the Siberian?"

"Yeah,,, My power must already consider me their sister cause I totally get what you mean,,,"

"Oh look at the time we're at the first trial!"

At once anxious about the trial and glad to not be listening to that conversation anymore, Amy looked out the window.

"...This is Fugly Bob's."

"Thaaaaaaat's RIGHT! Since Mousie here is the newest, you get to do her trial first!" Bonesaw was behind the counter, wearing the hat of a Fugly Bob's employee.

Amy briefly wondered what sort of trial took place at Fugly Bob's - cooking and eating someone, maybe? - but then registered that Mouse had set this trial, and started wondering instead what kind of trial Mouse Attacker had come up with that was worthy of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Thankfully, there were no giant mousetraps or pits full of starving rats or the half a dozen other things that came to mind. Instead, Mouse Attacker looked almost... sheepish.

"It's the first trial, and it seems like we're kinda moving away from the whole slaughter thing, so I figured I'd cheddar make it something simple. And I heard this place has a pretty tough eating challenge. So... Your trial is to eat a Challenger burger."

Fuck. That was worse than all of Amy's guesses combined. Truly Mouse Attacker was merciless.

-----

Mouse Attacker stared in horror as a dead-eyed fast food worker brought out the Challenger.

What had she done?

She wasn't a Brockton native. She had thought it would just be, like, a really big burger. She should have just put them in a giant mousetrap or something.

"J-just one is gouda enough! They can share it! Because, uh, sisters!"

May Weird Al have mercy on them.

-----

Taylor stared down the monstrous sandwich. It had been weeks since she'd eaten anything other than lots and lots of bugs, and she had no idea how she was going to fit this thing down her gullet. They hadn't even given her a knife and fork.

The Challenger was not like other burgers. Most burgers contained around a quarter pound of beef. Some larger ones went up to half a pound, or occasionally even a full pound. Various "challenge" burgers ranged from two pounds, to five, to ten, or even more.

The Challenger contained thirty pounds of beef. But that was before factoring in toppings. It was stuffed full of bacon, cheese, onion rings, waffle fries, tater tots, and just about everything you could possibly put on a burger that couldn't be mistaken for a healthy ingredient. And an entire pineapple, sliced into thick rings layered between the patties.

Instead of buns it just had two more smaller burgers. Somewhere in it was hidden a nail, because why the fuck not. As if all that weren't enough, the final patty was made of hyperdense grilled Endbringer flesh, sliced from a tail Leviathan had once lost in a fight.

There wasn't a strict time limit to finish the Challenger. There didn't need to be.

Sharing a horrified look with Amoeba, Taylor took the first bite.

Chapter Text

It was over. It was finally over.

Amy briefly considered going vegetarian for a while. She immediately discarded the idea because as horrific an ordeal as that had been she still hated cows and wanted to eat them, but she considered it.

In the end, Amy had eaten maybe a third of what Taylor had. She'd been using her power to incorporate the digested material into Taylor's physiology in realtime, focusing first and foremost on enhancing her digestive system beyond human limits.

By the end of it, Taylor's body was such that she could not only eat but actually begin to digest the patty of grilled Endbringer flesh. Under normal circumstances hardly any of its total mass would be absorbed by the time it passed through someone's body, but Amy had sealed it off in a small secondary stomach, ensuring it wouldn't go to waste. By the time it was fully digested, she'd finally by able to finish replacing Taylor's organs.

Taylor's digestion was literally superhuman, now, and Amy had hardly eaten a third of what she had. Yet both of them were still bloated and groaning, stomachs stretched to accommodate the massive load.

But it was over.

There was something between them, now. They had shared in a battle against overwhelming calories, and it was impossible to go through something like that and come out unchanged.

Amy still didn't like the frog. But after this, she couldn't avoid acknowledging her.

"Con-grat-u-lations! You've passed the first test! I knew you could do it, just a few more to go and you'll be our sisters properly!"

Fuck. Right. There were more.

"Since you're a bit indisposed right now, let's do a less physical trial next! Cherie has prepared something to test your bond as sisters!"

Bonesaw pulled out a device of some sort, a boxy thing with a number of cables plugged into it. It looked like she had repurposed several gaming controllers as the input mechanism, as tinkers sometimes did out of convenience.

"You're going to be playing Mario Party!"

Or it was just an actual game console. Amy hadn't recognized it because she only played on PC.

"Aaaaand since this is a test of your sisterhood, it wouldn't be a challenge if you weren't competing. So here are your teammates!"

Mouse Attacker came back inside, having been sent out at some point. She was accompanied by Cherish, and between them they were hauling a pair of boys.

One of them Amy recognized. That was her cousin, Eric. The other was some Canadian twink.

"These two need a touch-up before you start, of course, so if you would Amoeba?"

It was clear what was being asked of her. She went for the unidentified Canadian first. The Canadian mouthed off immediately. "Can I go for femboy instead? I think I could pull it off."

"Fuck it, sure." She didn't have to do much, he was already a twink, but in moments he was permanently embodying the 'femboy' look. Bonesaw didn't protest, and she moved on to her cousin.

"Sorry about this, Eric."

"No, this is... This is fine. This is good, even."

"What, you egg?" She finished the conversion, and went to sit beside Erica. Instead, however, Bonesaw pointed her to the seat beside the unidentified Canadian femboy.

"You'll be teaming up with Jean over there! Erica has another role to play. See, she's not actually a candidate - instead, I thought Taylor could use a chance to bond with another of her sisters that she hasn't really met yet! And, to make sure you're motivated... You don't need to win to pass the test, but whoever wins gets to skip the next trial!"

Shit. That meant there was no way Amy could hold back. If the next trial was anywhere near as bad as the Challenger, she needed that bye. And if Erica wasn't a candidate, that meant she wouldn't need to take the next test anyway.

Sorry Froggy, you're going down.

-----

Taylor was glad this task was sedentary. Even with whatever Amoeba had been doing to her instead of eating her share, the Challenger was heavy in her gut.

The girl beside her - Amoeba's cousin, Erica, apparently - selected a pink thing labeled Birdo. The Canadian femboy, Jean, shook her fist at the selection and went for the pink princess. Apparently they both liked pink. Taylor didn't really know the characters, so she went for one she vaguely recognized, a green dinosaur, which vaguely resembled Erica's choice. Amoeba went for Luigi.

It didn't take long for Taylor to grasp the general idea of the game, and she found herself making idle conversation with Erica. "So how are things on the Pelham side of New Wave? The Dallons are, uh, an experience."

At that, Erica gave her a dead-eyed stare of deep exhaustion.

"My mom's cape name is, legally, Photon Milf. She follows through on that. Frequently. Including at home. My sister is worse. My virginity is holding on for dear life and I don't know how much longer I can hold onto it. Sometimes I wish I could just stop resisting but I'm apparently the one person in this whole family that's actually repulsed by incest. It would be so much easier if I could just give in but every fiber of my being shudders every time one of them flashes me."

It took every bit of Taylor's willpower not to grab onto this kindred spirit and never let go. Instead, she forced herself to offer to fix her problem.

"...Do you... want me to change that? I have incest powers, I can't remove it but... I could add it, if you want."

Erica took barely a moment to think before acquiescing. "Please. End my torment."

It took mere moments more to rewire Erica to be just as attracted to her family as the rest of the torment nexus. Taylor quietly mourned for the loss of a bastion of sanity, but she knew it was the right thing to do.

"Oh my god. Thank you so much. I now realize that I am the luckiest person alive. Apart from the whole kidnapped by the Sisterhouse Nine thing."

If only Taylor's suffering could be resolved so simply.

And if only Amoeba would stop stealing her stars!

-----

Another star secured for her team, Amy mentally smirked. Frighteningly competent as Froggy was, a gamer she was not. Erica, while better, was merely a casual.

Both her and Jean, on the other hand, were seasoned gamers. At least insofar as someone only currently holding one world record (Dog% in Cat Petterz 2) could truly be called a gamer.

She felt bad for Taylor, she really did, but she didn't stand a chance against Amy on this battlefield, and there was no way she was giving her an inch when the stakes were so high.

A few more turns passed, and her victory was secure. She and Jean were three stars ahead of Froggy and Erica, and it was time to tally the results.

"Sorry Taylor, I hope the next test isn't as bad as the Challenger."

But then Toad spoke up on the screen.

"Now it's time to award some bonus stars! Let's see who landed on the most red spaces... It's Yoshi!"

Right, there was that pity mechanic, wasn't there? This was a game for casuals, after all. Still, it wouldn't make a difference in the end. Her lead was too strong. Besides, she was playing as Luigi, that gave her a conceptual advantage.

"Let's see who collected the most coins... It's Yoshi!"

Although their lead was shrinking. One more to Froggy's team and they'd be tied.

"Let's see who sucked the most dicks in high school... It's Peach!"

"I didn't go to high school, but otherwise accurate," said Jean. There, their lead was restored.

"Let's see who ate the biggest lunch... It's Yoshi!"

Fuck. How many bonus stars was it going to give out?

"Let's see who's spent the most hours crying about their gender... It's Birdo!"

"Dammit Erica, why couldn't you have just cracked your egg years ago instead of waiting so you could use it to steal a star off of me?" This was bad. They were tied, now.

"Since we're tied, we'll give out one more bonus star! Let's see who ate the most bugs... It's Yoshi!"

Amy lunged across the room to throttle the frog.

Chapter Text

The next test was Siberian's, and Amy was dreading it. If only Taylor hadn't eaten all those bugs, or Erica had cracked her egg earlier, or Taylor had eaten less of the burger. Damn froggy, hogging all the burger, she must have known this would happen.

Jean, beside her, shrugged. "They wouldn't dare mar this fantastic new booty you gave me, so it can't be that bad. My dear sister didn't even put a finger on the scales during her test, so I think they like us."

Despite his words, Amy continued to freak out as they were led to a windowless white van. Her fear turned to confusion as she was directed to forcefem some middle-aged guy within to resemble the Siberian, and back to fear as they were herded onward, making it clear that had not been the test.

Finally, they arrived in a garden, a table set up laden with fine china. Oh god, they were going to have to eat something. The Siberian was a cannibal, right? Was she going to make them eat human flesh? There was no room in her stomach for human flesh!

Her fear turned to horror, however, as the Siberian began setting an array of large stuffed toys upon the excess chairs. Bonesaw soon joined them and began pouring tea. It was Amy's worst nightmare: A tea party.

-----

"Oh, do go on, Madame Bigglesworth!" Jean extolled as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "You do have the most amusing anecdotes!"

Amy pretended to sip at her tea as the Siberian wiggled a doll around, pretending it was speaking.

Bonesaw gasped. "Surely not! But then your husband was behind the plot?"

Again, the Siberian wiggled Madame Bigglesworth in response.

Sighing, Amy made her own contribution to this farce. "Girl, you deserve better. Divorce him and get a wife instead."

At that, Jean wiggled another doll. "Gasp! Patricia, you're right, you two would be great together! Oh, Madame Bigglesworth, I implore you to consider her!"

The Siberian hefted Madame Bigglesworth across the table, where she and Jean maneuvered it and Patricia to "kiss" each other, Jean making "mwah mwah mwah" noises the whole time.

And that's when a figure made of crude burlap approached unaided, its movements jerky and unnatural.

Bonesaw gasped. "It's Madame Bigglesworth's husband! And he's got a bomb!"

Sure enough, the figure was grasping a device the size of a soccer ball (or a football, outside of America), covered in wires and blinking lights. It spoke, its garbled voice that of some ancient text to speech engine.

"You Took EveryThing From Me. Die, Madame BigglesWorth."

As Jean dove to cover Madam Bigglesworth, it spiked the device like a football (or a womboball, outside of America), releasing some chemical that began to swiftly eat away at the tablecloth. Some made it onto Amy's skin, and she swiftly recognized it as an enzyme designed to destroy cloth, dissolving it and producing more of the enzyme until the whole object was consumed.

A scream of horror came from Jean. "No! Patricia!" The doll's arm was being steadily disintegrated, and Jean turned to the burlap figure with fury. "You son of a bitch, you won't get away with this!" He pulled out his tinkertech sex toy or whatever that stick was and began dueling it, his clothes already beginning to disintegrate from where he had taken the blast for Madame Bigglesworth.

Amy turned to the fallen figure of Patricia. When the burlap figure had appeared she had been worried, but now it was clear that it was just another part of this farce. She could just do nothing. Her power didn't work on cloth, so it wasn't like she could heal "Patricia". And yet.

"...Fuck it. Get me some scissors, we're going to need to amputate!"

Swiftly, Bonesaw had pressed a distressingly sharp pair of scissors into her hands, and Amy removed the dissolving limb before the enzyme could reach the rest of the doll. Snipping off an intact part of the tablecloth, she tied it around the stump as a tourniquet, quenching the flow of leaking stuffing.

Then she took up the amputated arm, still dissolving. "Hey, asshole! Here's your alimony!" And she hurled it at the burlap figure.

Whatever ancient text to speech program was producing its voice, it was capable of some impressive screaming. Yet as it dissolved, Amy recognized another sound beneath the technological screech.

Sure enough, as the burlap dissolved, the stuffing beneath was revealed. Insects. Thousands and thousands of insects. That bitch! Stealing her stars wasn't enough for her, now she was trying to ruin her tea party! Yet instead of swarming them, the insects scattered, flat screams coming from the deflating burlap the whole time- until they were all gone, and it cut out with a hiss of static.

Amy paused to evaluate her life choices.

Then Bonesaw cheered. "Best tea party ever!"

Chapter Text

Truly, Taylor was glad for Erica's thick egg giving her the win. After Amoeba and Jean had been escorted off, Mouse Attacker had filled her in on the rest of her prize: Not only was she exempt from having to attend the tea party, she had been in charge of crashing it.

She'd have been reluctant if it had been an actual bomb, but after testing the enzyme Bonesaw had provided on some bugs, she had been satisfied with its relative safety and set about playing the part of the deranged murder doll happily.

-----

The next test was arson.

Burnscar had set the task, but Bonesaw had chosen the target in accordance, she explained, with the last words of her mother: "Remember, Riley, all cops are bastards."

Taylor, being the daughter of a union man and a Lustrumite, couldn't find it in her to disagree. The police were basically just another gang, after all. And so, she let fly the molotov without hesitation, and the police station went up in flames. Amy, being an upper class white suburbanite who adored her tragically cop-brained sister, was more reluctant, but let her own molotov fly after it for good measure nonetheless.

As Taylor watched the pork sizzle, she was at peace.

"Wee woo wee woo wee woo wee woo."

And then Armsmaster showed up.

"We're calling to notify you of recent criminal activity associated with your account. To join the Wards as a probationary member, press 1. To go to jail, press 2. To resist arrest, press 3. To speak to a representative, press 4. To request trial by dance, press 5. Para español-"

"Four."

The group patiently waited as a muffled rendition of Earth Wind and Fire's "September" played from Armsmaster's helmet, until finally someone picked up.

"Hey, Kyle here, the intern Armsmaster hired to do all of his social interaction. It looks like you're being arrested, that's rough. How can I help you with that?"

"Hi Kyle, it's Oedipox again. The only people harmed by our crime were the police, who don't matter compared to the PRT or Protectorate and are bastards anyway."

"Well shoot, you got us there. Alright, Armsmaster says you're free to go."

Armsmaster picked up a loose brick and hurled it at an escaping cop. Taylor followed his lead. Amy hesitantly followed suit.

-----

After a surprisingly enjoyable time of throwing bricks at cops, Mouse Attacker pulled up in her soccer mom van to pick them up again.

"Gouda to see y'all! You're almost done, I think most of the ones that haven't tested you have run off somewhere instead."

Jean was already there lounging across the backseat, having burned down a different police station. He refused to move. Froggy had already taken the front seat. Amy sat down on top of Jean.

Amy was glad to hear they were almost done, but worried at the implications. "When you say they ran off somewhere...?"

"Yeah, uh, I guess they weren't brie-g fans of the whole Sisterhouse idea? Mannequin, Shatterbird, and Crawler went off to kill people with Jack. So it's just Riley's own test left for you."

"And mine." There was a small hole in space hanging in the air within the car, and a man's face could be seen through it. He crawled through the portal like the tubes of a mcdonald's playplace, ending up awkwardly sitting on the other end of Jean. He was not wearing pants.

"And who the Kentucky fried fuck are you?" asked the frog.

"I'm an alumnus of the Nine. Back then I went by Harbinger. My test... is to take off your pants. You see, I don't believe in pants. I've run the numbers, and pants just aren't necessary. The world would simply be better if nobody wore pants."

Mouse Attacker spoke up. "New test, make him put pants on."

"Noooooooo-" But it was too late for Harbinger. Froggy had already had her bugs weave a pair of pants right onto his legs.

Amy picked up Harbinger and stuffed him now fully clothed back into the portal he came from.

"Just Bonesaw's test left, you said?"

-----

"Con-grat-u-lations! You've made it all the way to the final test!"

It wasn't just her and Amoeba that were here. Taylor recognized Jean from earlier beside Cherish, and that weird girl that had asked to pet AJ (and Victoria) was standing next to the Siberian, dogs in tow. There was a girl in a costume with a maze motif next to Burnscar, and a girl in a welding mask holding her hand. Next to Mouse Attacker was Vista with a gun.

There was also Kyle, the intern Armsmaster hired to do his Slaughterhouse Nine trials for him. But he was off to the side because this wasn't the Slaughterhouse Nine anymore and Mannequin wasn't even there to sponsor him.

"You may have noticed there weren't as many tests as we expected at the start. That's okay! We're glad to have you all with us! I'm glad those party poopers didn't stick around to get rid of you! But that leaves one last loose end! Instead of letting them try and get rid of you, you're going to be helping us get rid of them!"

Bonesaw made a sharp motion with the long classroom pointer she was holding, and a massive diagram unrolled on the wall.

"Heeeeeeeere's the plan!"

Chapter Text

Taylor shunted her anxiety into her swarm, giving several bugs a lifelong anxiety disorder.

Jack Slash, a man who had seen too many Batman movies and decided that the only thing the Joker was doing wrong was advertising his status as a clown.

Mannequin, once a respectable tinker with a moon base and everything until the Simurgh had blasted him full of evil dollgirl hypnosis, with much more emphasis on 'evil' and 'doll' rather than 'girl'.

Shatterbird, a woman who correctly thought Narwhal was the epitome of fashion and used glass to imitate her force field clothing, but then took that too far by deciding nobody else was allowed to have glass.

And Crawler, the worst dog ever.

These were their targets. Brutal killers one and all.

Greg Veder was, distinctly, not someone they were looking for. Yet here he was, leaping out to stand in front of Amoeba in the most ridiculous costume Taylor had ever seen. He appeared to have taken a Halloween costume of a cowboy, spray painted it black, and then bedazzled it.

"Stop right there, Panacea! I, Void Cowboy, will end your reign of terror! Do you have what it takes to forcefem me too? I think not!"

Greg did some absurdly fake vaguely martial arts looking movements. Amy kicked him in the nuts and then removed them, as she was clearly fishing for.

"Okay. Bye Void Cowgirl. Third one this week, I swear, they could just ask instead of jumping through hoops to get it to happen without admitting to themselves that they want it..."

-----

Not long after, swathes of Taylor's swarm began to die from acid. Crawler.

Swiftly, she relayed his location to the rest of the team. That was both her and Amoeba's part of taking out Crawler done.

She watched through her swarm as Vista (with a gun) deployed Faultine, the maze girl's welder sister, whose all-or-nothing power allowed her to cut Crawler in half. Crawler was already pulling the two halves of his body back together, but Vista then deposited a canister inside, and used her gun to shoot it open.

Inside the canister was Amoeba's contribution, a collaboration between her and Bonesaw. Taylor did not understand how it worked in the slightest, but it was an absurdly lethal substance. Even that wouldn't be enough to kill Crawler, as he would quickly adapt, but that was exactly what they had planned for.

The substance had one engineered weakness, a blind spot left for Crawler to adapt into: It was completely ineffective against friendly puppies.

-----

Shatterbird was next. Her 'scream' took a few seconds to ramp up to the point where it would shatter all the glass in the city, giving Taylor plenty of time to triangulate her position by measuring the vibration of the glass at multiple points in her range.

Once she had the location, Taylor nodded to the others. Vista compressed space to make the whole city accessible to Labyrinth, the task made trivial by her gun, and Labyrinth altered the city to not have any glass in it before the scream could finish ramping up.

The plan was simple, from there. Her powers amplified by having a gun, Vista could now stretch and compress time as well as space, giving Jean plenty of time to take over Shatterbird's normal human nervous system.

-----

Mannequin was trickier. They were not just a gamer, but a Touhou player, allowing them to dodge Taylor's bugs to avoid detection. Instead, Jean used Shatterbird to fly Cherish around until she found the distinctive song of Mannequin's mind - some shitty earworm of a pop song.

Then they approached them, and waited for them to attack, their limbs spinning on their chains like some sort of demented beyblade. Vista's gun allowed her to expand the space between their limbs, preventing them from reeling them back in and rendering them helpless.

From there all that was left was to forcefem them, finishing the job that the Simurgh had begun. With all of their flesh safely encased in tinkertech, Amoeba couldn't get at them, nor did they really have a biological sex to change at all. Instead, Cherish twisted the song that was their mind, until it no longer resembled a shitty pop song, but instead dollgirl hypnosis. She would have to remain near her for a time, but once it settled in and became permanent, Womannequin's own mind would just keep blasting her with dollgirl hypnosis, making her not just feminine but perfectly compliant.

-----

"So, you've come. This mockery you've made out of my Nine, come to finish the job."

Jack was the trickiest of all. Every plan Bonesaw had put together to deal with him, she had arbitrarily discarded. But that was where Kyle came in.

"I'm sure you've made lots of plans and plots. But you'll find that I'm just built different."

Kyle, the intern Armsmaster had hired to hunt Jack Slash for him.

"You see, you're not dealing with the average parahuman warrior anymore. I have risen above, and become the legendary Super Parahuman."

It was the Siberian who had pointed it out, through letters scratched into sheet metal. Jack not only left normals to the others, he was uncomfortable around anyone that wasn't a parahuman. He had an instinctive understanding of parahumans, but anyone without powers, he didn't get at all.

"That's right. I've risen beyond the ranks of ordinary parahumans, and become a legend. The legend that you fear."

And so Kyle had been let loose in Armsmaster's workshop, kitted out with whatever he thought necessary. It had been left to him to direct the group, to decide how to utilize their forces against Jack.

"The legend that- Are any of you even listening to me?"

And none of them could hear a word Jack was saying. Kyle had gotten them all tinkertech earpieces with full noise canceling, and Taylor had sent all her panopticon flies home, bringing only those bugs with senses too discordant for her to hear through.

"You can't just ignore me! We live in a society!"

The battlefield was isolated in a knot of looped space, Vista's gun allowing her to rapidly evacuate the whole city block, because civilians were much faster to cooperate if you had a gun. There were no hostages, nothing to leverage against them.

"Well fine then! Go ahead and miss out on all my witty banter!"

That left Taylor to flood the whole area with her swarm, herding Jack right where they wanted him.

"Just d- OH GOD NOT THE BEES!"

Right to Amoeba.

"Oh god it's the forcefem girl. We can talk about this!"

And just like that, Jack Slash was no more. Jill Kill was born.

Chapter Text

"This lasagna is great, Mr. Dallon-Hebert!"

It was 5 pm, and Mouse Attacker had brought Amy and Taylor home as promised. The entirety of the Sisterhouse Nine, new members and all, had promptly been invited inside for dinner. Which Riley was super excited for!

Apparently one half of the Slaughterhouse Nine could secure a great amount of goodwill simply by turning the other half into their pets. Riley would have to remember that trick for if they ever started slaughtering again!

But gosh, that probably wouldn't be for a while. She had so many new sisters now! And Jean, but she was pretty sure a femboy still counted as a sister. Either way, it would be kinda hard to move all these sisters around, and nobody said the Sisterhouse Nine had to work the same as the Slaughterhouse Nine, so they could just hang around for a while.

Maybe they would just move in!

-----

Taylor's suffering would never end.

Her organs were back at last. She was fully capable of surviving without constant healing from Amoeba or from her bug-dog AJ. She still had deelie boppers but she'd given up on getting those removed a while ago. By all rights, she could simply go her separate ways from Amoeba at this point.

But their fathers were getting married, and they had both been drafted into the Sisterhouse Nine, and at some point Taylor had accidentally started thinking of the massive underground complex she'd used her bugs to build beneath the Dallon house as home. And because they were her stepsisters her power still insisted that Amoeba and her sister were hot, overriding her own completely heterosexual thoughts entirely. And even Emma liked her, despite Amoeba being a raging bitch.

So, basically, she was fucked.

There was only one thing Taylor could do at this point. Give in.

-----

"What do you want, Froggy- mmph??"

This wasn't good. The frog was making her move to solidify her control. If Amy lost here, in this battle of dominance, it would set the tone going forward, and the freak would be in charge.

There was only one thing Amy could do at this point. She'd have to use the frog's own methods against her, and escalate. Amy added tongue.

-----

At the edges of the party, Emma and Victoria watched their sisters making out on the coffee table. Riley was cheering them on, apparently considering this to be very sisterly behavior, and the various elders were exchanging currency, having evidently bet on when this would happen.

"So what does that make us, then?" Emma was new to this whole polyamory thing.

"Metamours, I think." Victoria, evidently, was a bit more knowledgeable.

"Do metamours kiss?"

"If they want."

"Fuck it, let's do it."

They did.

-----

Rachel thought there were too many people here. But there were quite a few dogs, so it was okay.

Her own dogs - Brutus, Judas, and Emma - had already met AJ, the bug girl's dog. They were happy to meet again. There was a new dog as well though, now. A very friendly puppy named Crawler. He was a much better dog now than he was before today.

Crawler wasn't used to being a puppy yet, but he was very energetic. He was clearly a healthy puppy, which was good. The other dogs liked him, and Rachel was sure he would adapt well and integrate into her pack.

-----

"So it's fine if we stay here, right?"

Amy stared. Bonesaw had just asked to live in her house.

It wasn't even that she minded, really. The Sisterhouse Nine were surprisingly tolerable, and since Taylor had never really stopped using her bugs to excavate and renovate an ever-expanding underground base beneath the house, it wasn't like there wouldn't be room. But...

"Carol would throw a fit." A very polite-sounding fit with barbs tailored perfectly to the recipient, such that none else would even notice them.

"She'd be outvoted though! It wouldn't be everyone in the Nine but it'd definitely be me and Sibby and probably Jean and sometimes Rachel and definitely Missy and maybe Mousie! Add that to you and Taylor and Vicky and Mr. Dallon-Hebert and Mr. Hebert-Dallon and it'd be just her with a problem!"

That... was a good point. Simply outnumbering Carol... It was simple, but maybe it was just simple enough to work.

"Hey, uh, Mom. Riley and her friends are going to live here."

"That's wonderful, dear! It'll be great to have them! I'll bake a cake to celebrate!"

Ha. She was seething so hard. In celebration, Amy pulled Vicky into a kiss, not even bothering to hide. Democracy had spoken.

Yes, the more Amy thought about it, the more she liked this idea. A newer wave was rising, and it was full of sisters.

Soon, there would be no New Wave nor Sisterhouse Nine. There would be only one unified team: Torment Nexus.

-----

Elsewhere, Jillian Killington spoke to a horrendously gaudy man, hovering a few feet above the ground with his arms pointed straight out in a T-pose.

"It used to be about the slaughter, you know? Then Amoeba Dallon started forcefemming people and then my Bonesaw became obsessed. And now look what she's done to my Nine, to me!"

The gaudy man looked at her, and somehow she understood the unspoken question in his eye.

"It's... Turning someone female, usually against their will. I'd expect it to be quite distressing, ending up in the wrong body, but for some reason they all seem happier than before! Even I would be if it weren't for the mockery she's made of my Slaughterhouse! It's absurd!"

The gaudy man contemplated that, and then gave another questioning look. Again, Jill somehow understood perfectly.

"...You know how some people have lumps in front? Like this? Those ones."

The gaudy man contemplated this for a long time. It looked at her again.

"...Yes, they do mostly seem happier from what I've seen. Even me. Why?"

The gaudy man flickered, and in his place was a gaudy woman. Again she contemplated, and this time she spoke aloud.

"Thank you. I am no longer depressed."

Then she flew away. Jill was left staring speechlessly at her wake.

"...Scion had gender dysphoria??"

-----

Time passed, and Torment Nexus flourished. But there was still one loose end...

-----

Atop a howling cliff, Amy faced the golden woman. It had taken some time to track her down, but Amy had a promise to herself to keep.

"Scion. Congratulations on the transition."

"It's Zion Now, Actually. But Thanks."

The golden woman was a lot more talkative without the gender dysphoria, evidently.

"Zion. Why do you fight the Endbringers? ...Like, why are you still fighting them? They're not attacking anyone anymore, they're just making out."

"Kevin Suggested It. And I Have Seen No Reason To Stop, As They Are Strong Combatants Capable Of Generating Quality Data."

Amy smiled. Perfect.

"Well I think you should keep doing it. In fact, I think you should specifically go fight them whenever they start making out."

Zion considered, and then nodded. "I Will Prioritize Conflict With Endbringers During Periods Of Increased Mating Displays."

Amy had done it. She had cockblocked the Endbringers.

--END--