Inspired by Just A Phase, Butcher of the Wards shares the same basic premise; Taylor Hebert triggers with phasing powers in a universe where Emma and Sophia are both Wards, gets Got Volunteered into the Wards herself and sent to Boston, and heads out as a vigilante while avoiding power testing. And then she accidentally kills The Butcher, and has to keep her new Butcher status and retained sanity secret from the PRT. It is published on FanFiction.Net (here
) and SpaceBattles.com (here).
- Ability Mixing: Given her sanity compared to most Butchers, Taylor is able to come up with interesting ways to combine her new powers, like teleporting while phased to negate the explosions that normally come with the Butcher's teleports.
- Accidental Murder:
- How Taylor becomes the new Butcher. When fighting Quarrel she accidentally phases her hand into the Butcher's heart and ends up ripping it out due to one of the Teeth distracting her at exactly the wrong moment and causing her to solidify while still phased through the other cape.
- More than one previous Butcher was felled by their successor by accident as well, most notably Dodger, who was a devout Buddhist and was simply trying to defend himself from the Teeth's assault when he killed Butcher II by accidentally redirecting a knife into their chest.
- And Show It to You: The Butcher appears in Taylor's head as soon as she (accidentally) rips Quarrel's heart out, and is impressed by the ruthlessness.
- Exact Words: After getting distracted in conversation by the Collective, Taylor apologises and passes it off by saying that, "I haven't been sleeping." Which, since she's now a Noctis cape, is of course true.
- Faking the Dead: Taylor, in a plan to get the PRT off her trail, makes it seem like Purity killed her so thoroughly as to not leave any body behind.
- From Bad to Worse: Not only has Taylor been forced to join the Wards in Boston after Sophia and Emma bullied her for over a year, but then she goes out as a vigilante and accidentally kills the Butcher, and although she manages to retain her sanity due to a quirk of her powers, now she has to keep the PRT from figuring it out while avoiding power testing not just to avoid being forced to be a Ward, but to keep them from recognizing the Butcher's powers when they're doing it.
- Gone Horribly Right: The Butchers give Taylor the idea to convince the PRT therapist that she's not ready to be a Cape in order to use the therapy sessions to avoid power testing. In a non-canon omake included with the chapter, this worked so well that she ended up in a mental facility, though she's perfectly fine with it for now, since she can use her powers to get out with no one the wiser, and it gives her the perfect alibi for her vigilante persona.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: When out in her new vigilante identity, Taylor intervenes in what seems to be a mugging by the Crowned to a businessman. Later, it turns out that said suited man was a member of Accord's Ambassadors, so now the PRT thinks that said vigilante is aligned with him.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Forge's Tinker specialty is "improvements". While not as obviously powerful as energy weapons, it works with everything, and Taylor realizes that it has more potential than she initially thought after Forge explains more about what he can do with it.
- Hired to Hunt Yourself: It's partly a way to gauge her reactions and see if she's the Butcher (which thankfully just throws the PRT off instead), and partly as a way to get "use" out of a Ward that refuses to get power testing, but at one point Taylor is told to go through missing person's reports and, with almost no information to go on, narrow down likely candidates for "Aztec"/the new Butcher.
- How Do I Shot Web?: For some reason, presumably due to whatever aspect of her power allows her to repress the minds of the previous Butchers, Taylor doesn't get any of their memories or knowledge of their powers, forcing her to learn from scratch and whatever advice her predecessors deign to give her.
- More than Mind Control: The Master effect on Emma didn't actually control what she did, it just swapped Taylor from a "friend" to an "enemy" and vice versa for Sophia. Everything that she did to Taylor, she would have done to Sophia or some other enemy if the situation had been different, something Emma is rather disturbed to realize after breaking free upon her Second Trigger.
- Now You Tell Me: When the issue of Taylor's vigilante costume comes up, Shaper (Butcher VIII) suggests that Taylor could use his power to craft it. Butchers IX to XIV are angry that he never mentioned that to them, to which Shaper tells them it's in revenge for Berserker (Butcher IX) destroying his wargame models.
- Poor Communication Kills: Everyone involved in Taylor's transfer to Boston assumes that someone else is taking care of, or has already handled, the minor detail of asking Taylor whether she wants to go. Even her dad doesn't actually talk to her about it; they've been distant from each other for too long for that to be automatic. He just assumes that if Director Piggot is giving him the forms to sign as her guardian, it must be something Taylor wanted.
- Power Misidentification: It's been suggested by the Butchers a couple of times that Taylor's phasing power might actually be doing something more complex, with the phasing being merely a secondary power or side effect of her true power, citing its unusual restrictions for a Breaker power and ability to interfere with and suppress them as evidence.
- Sarcastic Confession: When Taylor is interrogated under suspicions that she may be a mole from the gangs, she states she's got a connection to the Teeth because she killed the Butcher. The interrogator marks her as an excellent actress and warns her they'll find the truth.
- Troll: The Butchers like to amuse themselves by giving Taylor fake answers to her schoolwork on purpose.
- Undignified Death: Quarrel wants Taylor to pretend that she formed a cunning plan to kill the Butcher, because it's embarrassing to have one's heart torn out by accident.
