This Sounds Amazing! I Wasn't Sure If You Had Me For A While There, But As It Kept Ramping Up I Was Absolutely

This sounds amazing! I wasn't sure if you had me for a while there, but as it kept ramping up I was absolutely drawn in by the imagery. Unfortunately my current fic is consuming my soul but I'd absolutely read this if it was realized. Super cool concept.

Apparently cluster focused fic ideas just what my brain is on right now, so fuck it, here's a half formed premise. Let's start with two changes to canon. First, New Wave doesn't get Marquis. Second, when Anette dies, Danny triggers with some kind of power that interferes with his emotional regulation - let's say a Breaker state where he becomes a swarm of insects but his conscious decisionmaking basically turns off while he's in it - he acts on whatever his conscience or unconscious intentions were at the time he went Breaker. And let's say there's a lingering impairment after he changes back proportionate to the time spent transformed.

With a power like that, it's very easy for him to get on the bad side of the heroes, and with that plus his anger, easy for him to start taking it out on them. So let's say he throws in with Marquis. Taylor doesn't know what Danny's been up to, but he's getting more and more angry and id driven, both for mundane grief reasons and because he's not taking enough time to rest relative to how often he's using his power.

After maybe a year of this, it comes to a head. One day, while Danny and Taylor are out for a fun day together on the Boardwalk, they bump into New Wave doing some PR demo, introducing Shielder or something, with a still-unpowered Victoria cheering the loudest to cover up how much the shame of getting passed by her little cousin is eating her alive. And the sight of this happy family that he's come to blame for the destruction of his own happy family life makes Danny snap. Second trigger, seeing red. He wants to annihilate them. He goes Breaker, and now his swarm is massive, composed of giant, monstrous, and lethal bugs, but his control is even worse. Massive collateral damage. He has just presence of mind to have some of his bugs shove Taylor somewhere she'll be safe from the crossfire - which just so happens to be into a dumpster.

And he goes scorched earth on the boardwalk, especially on the New Wave capes who have been knocked flat by the trigger vision and cannot defend themselves.

By extreme misfortune, Marquis is also in the crowd, in civvies. He wanted to do some quiet recon on his longtime enemies' newest addition, and thought he'd take Amy with him both as a teaching moment and for a fun outing. He goes out like a light when Danny's second trigger goes off, and he gets trampled by the crowd trying to flee and gets caught in the bug apocalypse crossfire.

So we have:

Taylor, alone and trapped in filth, who has spent a year watching her dad pull away and become angrier and angrier, who's still had Emma turn on her as in canon, and has just seen her dad turn into a biblical plague and, as far as she can tell, literally thrown her away.

Victoria, seeing her family at the mercy of a murderous supervillain, utterly powerless to defend them and with years of feeling impotent and like a disappointment to her family having just been brought to an indignant fever pitch by being the literal only person in her family not to have powers.

Amy, whose father has almost certainly kept her fairly isolated for her own (and his) protection, watching the only person she feels she has in the world, who always seemed invincible, bleeding out in front of her.

Boom, cluster trigger.

The trigger event knocks Danny out of his Breaker state, and they're able to contain him before he does much more damage. Most of New Wave survives (maybe he gets Carol? Maybe Eric?) and he goes to the Birdcage. Amy saves Marquis. Through cluster bleed through, she finds Taylor in the aftermath - and thank God for that, because who knows how long it would've taken for someone to find her otherwise. Once Marquis understands who her father is and what's happened to her, her connection to Amy, he takes her in.

And that sets the stage for the story. Amy and Victoria, villain and hero, the embodiments of an old and deep rivalry, and Taylor, the daughter of the man who nearly killed them all, caught between her desire to do good and her family connections to villainy. Tie them all together with cluster bleed through, kiss/kill dynamics, some power mediation, add in social dynamics and pressures, interactions in their civilian lives - it's a stew of rich possibilities.

And that's not even touching their powers!