History Fanfic / PathToMunchies

* ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine: Taylor is able to turn Lisa's 'I'm Psychic' routine against her.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: A minor example - Taylor is able to turn Lisa's 'I'm Psychic' routine against her.
** Taylor gets manipulated by Mrs. Abbotson, an old friend of Annette's, in the wake of her first Path- that to getting cookies. Taylor helps make cookies, but her power makes her make them ''right,'' so when Mrs. Abbotson takes the (many) cookies and baked goods to a bake sale, she rakes in $800. All Taylor got out of it was a few cookies (although it was her idea to help make cookies for Mrs. Abbotson's bake sale in the first place).

* BrainBleach: When she first wonders who Coil is and why killing him would make things better, the answer leaves her wishing for a gallon of brain bleach.

Taylor triggers with [[SuperpowerLottery Contessa's Path to Victory]] power. However, due to being somewhat high on painkillers when she figures it out, she believes she has a strange limit- all plans she makes must in some way involve food.

* MundaneUtility: The first time that Taylor uses her power, which is Path To Victory, an unstoppable universe-computing power capable of altering the destiny of the planet, is to get cookies.

** Coil tries to use his power to play ''Minesweeper''.

* ShoutOut: When Taylor does a Path about how to register in the PRT, she asks for tea and is given something that is [[Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea]].

* SuperPowerLottery: Taylor gains ''the'' strongest Thinker power possible, with only her belief in what its limit is keeping her from fully using it.

* TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening: Exploited by [[spoiler: Contessa. Working on a Path that could let her bypass the restrictions on her power, the Path led her to get close to Taylor as her school librarian and new mentor, got her to build up a genuine, emotional rapport between them to get Path to Victory to "Bud" onto Taylor, then forced Contessa to put Taylor into a situation bad enough for her to Trigger while reminding her that her Path is forcing her to do this, the mental anguish causing Contessa to Second Trigger. Since both of them were close to each other, both shard buds pinged off each other to communicate and modify each other, and the recursive modification caused a feedback loop that eventually caused Path to Victory to reset itself without any restrictions]].

* UnderestimatingBadassery: A teenage girl who has a power related to making food? Yeah, piece of - wait a moment, how did I get trapped in a cloud of cotton candy?
* UndignifiedDeath: Taylor gives a version of Coil one as part of her plan to take him down. While he has the timeline split Coil listens to Piggot read out a love letter to her apparently from himself, he is so shocked that the version of him eating breakfast chokes to death on a piece of grapefruit. This forces him to close out the 'safe' timeline and traps him with Piggot.

* YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame: After taking down Uber and Leet, Taylor starts a cooking podcast under her cape identity. When takes down Squealer and Oni Lee, Night and Fog show up... and they're fans of the show and want her autograph (and even try to set her up with Theo Anders). Taylor is visibly uncomfortable and forced to use her powers to keep her reaction to a minimum.

* EmbarrassingNickname: In the Path-to-make-Kaiser-surrender-via-PieInTheFace, Clockblocker begins to call him "Pieser".

** Her first plan to deal with Kaiser via PieInTheFace leaves the man a completely broken individual. Following plans allow her to defeat him in a straight fight - and turn ''Alabaster'' into a wreck every time he hears the 1812 Overture.

* ObsessiveLoveLetter: Taylor's Plan to take out Coil involves forging one of these sent from Coil to Director Piggot, revealing his identity as Thomas Calvert and spelling out his plans to rid Brockton Bay of its villain gangs, all to earn her love.

* PsychicLink: [[spoiler: Due to Contessa essentially using Taylor's Trigger as a way to jailbreak her own Shard, the two start getting overlap and minor nudges from each other. On the night Taylor ran her first path, to find cookies, Contessa felt an overwhelming urge to go buy some cookies (implied to be Taylor's) herself (and even thought she was pregnant due to all the food cravings), and Taylor has gotten flashes of Cauldron's attempts to fight Scion. Contessa is mildly annoyed that she's gained a few pounds because of Taylor, but takes it in good humor.]]

* SemanticSuperpower: Mostly because the connection to food is psychosomatic. Her ''actual'' power is a non-limited Path to Victory, but Taylor phrases all her requests to involve food in some way (the first two times she used it she was hungry and unconsciously used it to get food, and after that she assumed that food must be part of the path somehow before her powers activated. Also, she was still on the drugs the hospital gave her after the Locker incident, so that may have contributed). She can use it to find anyone by 'pathing' the steps needed to share a meal with somebody, and defeating an opponent in such a way that the resulting fight creates food, such as her capturing Oni Lee and Squealer ends with the Tinker's car engine spinning cotton candy.

* RealityEnsues: As soon as Taylor's paths start making the Empire extremely weak, the other gangs start up a gang war. Danny has to explain to Taylor that the gangs are, at the moment, in equilibrium- if one is weaker, the others will attack it. The current balance prevents gang wars, even if it's not the best for the city.
** Taylor realizes, after an imaginary argument with Tattletale, that if all her paths involve food, she should ''probably'' start working out to burn off all the calories she's gonna be intaking.

* BerserkButton: [[spoiler: After Contessa returns from successfully removing her power's restrictions on what it could plan around by getting it to bud off another parahuman, Eidolon realises that it means that there's a second person with access to the Path to Victory and they may need to silence her if necessary. Contessa makes it clear that that's ''not'' going to happen.]]

* ThatCameOutWrong: A news article discussing Jack Slash had a Master power to control other Parahumans is titled "Jack Slash: Parahuman Heartbreaker?", referring to the infamous Canadian Master.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Hookwolf laughs when a delivery girl (Taylor) claims to have been sent with a pizza for a "Mr Wolf".

* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: What happens when one of Uber and Leet's schemes leads to two dockworkers being badly injured? Taylor tracks them down, then puts them into a horror scene straight out of ''{{Franchise/Alien}}'', complete with chestbursters... made out of jello and candy.

* EngineeredPublicConfession: Well, not 'public', since it's only delivered to Piggot, but Taylor engineers Coil's downfall with a love note detailing all his plans attached to a case of muffins.

* LogicBomb: The full explanation of how [[spoiler: Contessa unlocked her Path To Victory Shard. She spent several months mentoring and bonding with Taylor, until the emotional connection caused Taylor to develop a "bud" of her PTV Shard. After that, she deliberately put Taylor into a situation where she would trigger, which simultaneously caused Contessa herself to second-trigger from deliberately forcing someone she had grown to care for into a trigger event. Since Taylor and Contessa triggered simultaneously, Taylor's bud tried to ping off Contessa and Contessa's shard tried to ping off Taylor, causing the Shard to think it was somehow pinging itself and go into a feedback loop until it disabled the restrictions in order to figure out what had happened and fix it.]]
* LoopholeAbuse: In this fic, [[spoiler: the restrictions that the Entity Eden put on Contessa's Path to Victory power made her completely unable to model or plan for the Entities, the Endbringers or their plan, but [[ForWantOfANail because they were put in in a rush]], they did not prevent Contessa from making a Path to model and bypass the restrictions themselves.]]
* MeaningfulName: The names of the PRT Agents sent with Thomas Calvert/Coil to Director Piggot's house to address a mysterious box of muffins and a love letter are named Mulligan (a reference to Coil's SaveScumming power), Hanlon (HanlonsRazor) and Murphy (MurphysLaw).

* ObsessiveLoveLetter: Taylor's Plan to take out Coil involves forging one of these sent from Coil to Director Piggot, spelling out his plans to rid Brockton Bay of its villain gangs and that it was all to earn her love.

* TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening: Exploited by [[spoiler: Contessa. Working on a Path that could let her bypass the restrictions on her power, the Path led her to get close to Taylor as her school librarian and new mentor, got her to build up a genuine, emotional rapport between them to get Path to Victory to "Bud" onto Taylor, then forced Contessa to put Taylor into a situation bad enough for her to Trigger while reminding her that her Path is forcing her to do this, the mental anguish causing Contessa to Second Trigger. Since both of them were close to each other, both shards pinged off each other to communicate and modify each other, and the recursive modification caused a feedback loop that eventually caused Path to Victory to reset itself without any restrictions]].

* [[NotSoHarmlessVillain Not So Harmless Rogue]]: Fête is initially believed to be a Thinker 2, Tinker 1, a joke who only got lucky when stopping Hookwolf and then started a cooking web show. Stopping Oni Lee and Squealer using cotton candy and a bucket of molasses in thirty seconds without incident or visible effort makes Armsmaster consider that rating total garbage (that, and the posterior Thinker 6 rating the PRT assigns to Fête after reviewing said encounter, which he responds to by laughing and tossing it in a paper shredder).

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Taylor as Fête gives out an image of theatricality and harmlessness through her association with food, hiding how [[HeartIsAnAwesomePower absurdly powerful]] she truly is.

* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: Taylor's initial impression of her conflict-loving yet food-centric power: “What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to bake a lovely casserole that will help you reconnect with your father.”

* [[NotSoHarmlessVillain Not So Harmless Rogue]]: Fête is initially believed to be a Thinker 2, Tinker 1, a joke who only got lucky when stopping Hookwolf and then started a cooking web show. Stopping Oni Lee and Squealer using cotton candy and a bucket of molasses in thirty seconds without incident or visible effort makes Armsmaster consider that rating total garbage (that, and the posterior Thinker 6 rating the PRT assigns to Fête after reviewing said encounter, which he responds to by laughing and tossing it in a paper shredder).

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Taylor as Fête gives out an image of theatricality and harmlessness through her association with food, hiding how [[HeartIsAnAwesomePower absurdly powerful]] she truly is.

* WhamLine: Teresa Romano gives away her real identity in a Spanish lesson: “Estoy estudiando en la biblioteca '''con Tessa'''” ("I am studying in the library with Tessa").

*** '''Armsmaster:''' Thinker 2 my ''ass''.

* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: Taylor's initial impression of her conflict-loving yet food power: “What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to bake a lovely casserole that will help you reconnect with your father.”

* [[NotSoHarmlessVillain Not So Harmless Rogue]]: Fête is initially believed to be a Thinker 2, Tinker 1, a joke who only got lucky when stopping Hookwolf and then started a cooking web show. Stopping Oni Lee and Squealer using cotton candy and a bucket of molasses in thirty seconds without incident or visible effort makes Armsmaster consider that rating total garbage (that, and the posterior Thinker 6 rating the PRT assigns to Fête after reviewing said encounter).

* ImagineSpot: A few of Taylor's Paths are played out purely in her head to envision what might happen.

* NotSoAboveItAll: Taylor's path tells her that Eidolon would be interested in her power, and would like to use her to play a prank on a friend of his (most likely Contessa).

* SemanticSuperpower: Mostly because the connection to food is psychosomatic. Her ''actual'' power is a non-limited Path to Victory, but Taylor phrases all her requests to involve food in some way (the first two times she used it she was hungry and unconsciously used it to get food, and after that she assumed that food must be part of the path somehow before her powers activated). She can use it to find anyone by 'pathing' the steps needed to share a meal with somebody, and defeating an opponent in such a way that the resulting fight creates food, such as her capturing Oni Lee and Squealer ends with the Tinker's car engine spinning cotton candy.

* TrueCompanions: The group of friends Taylor makes in Arcadia were this before they met her, and she gets accepted into the group shortly after. Interestingly for a Worm fanfiction, ''none'' of these people are the Wards or New Wave.

* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: “What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to bake a lovely casserole that will help you reconnect with your father.”

* DroppedABridgeOnHim: While Taylor is improving her life in Brockton Bay, [[spoiler: Contessa is working behind the scenes recruiting the woman who would've been Bakuda to the Protectorate as Starburst, and using her gadgets to eliminate the Slaughterhouse Nine and Nilbog.]]

** Taylor gets manipulated by Mrs. Abbotson, an old friend of Annette's, in the wake of her first Path- that to getting cookies. Taylor helps make cookies, but her power makes her make them ''right,'' so when Mrs. Abbotson takes the (many) cookies and baked goods to a bake sale, she rakes in $800. All Taylor got out of it was a few cookies (although it was her idea to help make cookies for the Mrs. Abbotson's bake sale).

* InstantlyProvenWrong: Taylor asking about "how to have burgers with Elvis," is meant to show a path that can't be completed... only for her power to tell her that [[ElvisLives he's in Iowa]]. She shifts to President Kennedy.
* LogicBomb: The full explanation of how Contessa unlocked her Path To Victory Shard. She spent several months mentoring and bonding with Taylor, until the emotional connection caused Taylor to develop a "bud" of her PTV Shard. After that, she deliberately put Taylor into a situation where she would trigger, which simultaneously caused Contessa herself to second-trigger from deliberately forcing someone she had grown to care for into a trigger event. Since Taylor and Contessa triggered simultaneously, Taylor's bud tried to ping off Contessa and Contessa's shard tried to ping off Taylor, causing the Shard to think it was somehow pinging itself and go into a feedback loop until it disabled the restrictions in order to figure out what had happened and fix it.