Fanfic / Hostage Situation

Director Piggot … I want my dad back.

Hostage Situation is a Worm fanfic by ack1308, where Panacea encounters a former employee of Marquis, and learns about her father from someone who knew and respected him, before she ever encounters Tattletale. And after weighing things up, she decides that she wants to get to know the father who cared about her more than Mark and Carol Dallon do.

It is published on FanFiction.Net (here), SpaceBattles.com (here), and Sufficient Velocity.com (here).

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Panacea will do nothing without the following tropes:

• The Alcatraz: Despite no longer running jailbreaks as Madcap, Assault is still deeply unhappy about the existence of the Birdcage, and so he is unsympathetic to Director Piggot's desire for Marquis to stay there, calling it "the world's touchiest pressure cooker" and saying that Marquis was "denied his Constitutional rights."
  Assault: The Birdcage is nothing but a slow-motion death sentence. I know it, and you know it. The difference between you and me is that you're just fine with it.
• Benevolent Boss: Fred insists that Marquis was "firm but fair" to his employees, didn't force them to work for him, he just didn't take kindly to betrayal — and even then, he would look after the family left behind.
  Fred: You worked for him, you did the job, you got recognised.
• Blackmail: Amy's terms are simple. She will simply do nothing with her power, until her dad is freed from the Birdcage. Since the PRT is highly dependent on her to deal with the serious injuries that they suffer in combat against the gangs, this is an effective threat, while being perfectly legal.
• Bullying a Dragon: Mischa is smart enough to know that it wouldn't be smart to mess with Panacea. Geoff isn't convinced. Geoff gets himself killed by Purity over it.
  Mischa: You have seen her sister, the girl of glory? She is Alexandria package who does not pull punches. Mother has lightsaber like in Star Wars, father throws bombs. Uncle is giant from fairy tale, aunt and cousins fly and have zap lasers. Our armour is good, but against them we are walnut against hammer...Please do not be inciting war we cannot win against scary cape family.
• Covert Distress Code:
  • When the hospital pages "Doctor Smith" to come to triage after a string of explosions across the city, Panacea tries to warn the nurse that they'll want more than one doctor, but is reassured that Doctor Smith doesn't exist and it's actually a code for "incoming emergency."
    Nurse: We call it that to keep the other patients from getting worried.
  • Amy herself manages to covertly signal the Chief Director, by telling her that "I think Saint's desperate; he was certainly at the end of the f- the end of the line when he kidnapped me." Alexandria, with a high Thinker rating, quickly works out that she means they're at the ferry terminal.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Amy warns that "Vicky's gonna see if your suit can do Transformer stuff, with you in it," and "Vicky's gonna hit you so hard, they're gonna have to pour you out of that suit." Vicky's own take is, "When I find you, I’m gonna feed your suit through a car crusher with you inside it. Feet first," or possibly creating "a living testament regarding how many bone fractures a person could survive at one time." As it happens, Saint doesn't survive long enough for Vicky to get the chance.
• Death Glare: When Amy makes an unimpressed comment on how the Brockton Bay Brigade captured Marquis, "The look she sent toward Brandish at that moment should have cracked the plexiglass."
• Double Standard:
  • Amy isn't impressed by Director Piggot's insistence that Marquis is an evil man who doesn't deserve to be released, because the gangs currently infesting Brockton Bay are all worse than he was and they're still walking free.
    Amy: He never threatened harm to women or children, ever. He never dealt in drugs or prostitution. He made sure that the families of his men were cared for. The ABB and Merchants both deal in women and drugs, and they don't care much about whether the girls are of legal age. The Empire Eighty-Eight deals drugs, as well as beating up and murdering minorities of all kinds. Just recently, I had to help the victim of a vicious beating; she was a black college student. Her only crime was to walk down the wrong street at the wrong time of day. The beating could have left her crippled for life, or dead. And yet, Skidmark, Lung and Kaiser all walk free today. Nobody tries to capture them and send them to the Birdcage.
  • Mags thinks it's grossly unfair that Panacea successfully blackmailed the Protectorate into releasing Marquis from the Birdcage and faced no consequences, but Geoff tried to blackmail them into releasing Teacher and he was obliterated by Purity — who likewise suffered no repercussions. Of course, Panacea didn't break any laws, she just threatened to stop using her power to heal people, whereas Geoff kidnapped a teenager and threatened to murder her...but a grieving Mags can't really see it that way.
• Enemy Mine: Threatening the world's best healer has a tendency to unite the heroes and the villains against you. As soon as Saint is distracted from threatening Amy, Vicky grabs her away and Purity leaves not enough of him to bury.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: A big part of Amy wanting Marquis back is learning that he loved her in a way that the Dallons never have.
  Amy: Did … did he want me?
  Fred: Want you? Kid, he was over the moon when he found out that he had a daughter. You had the best toys, the best of everything. And he made sure to spend as much time as possible with you. I will never forget walking in that one day and seeing him playing horsey with you. Mind you, you're the first person I've ever admitted seeing that to, either.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Marquis always held himself to a certain moral code, if not the same one as the rest of society, which is why the PRT is willing to even consider accepting his promise not to return to crime.
• Faking the Dead: Releasing Marquis from the Birdcage is covered up as a suicide. He's ejected into the vacuum around the prison, but then rescued by Dragon.
• Finger in the Mail: Mags asks Saint if he would go to the extent of sending fingers from Panacea to put pressure on the PRT to release Teacher, and he seems inclined to say yes — for which she sharply chastises him.
• Fingore: Mischa is quite annoyed by Geoff flying off to kidnap Panacea, and promises to "break fingers when I find."
• Hostage Situation: Saint gets the idea that if it's possible for Panacea to blackmail the PRT into releasing Marquis, then he can kidnap Panacea to blackmail them into releasing Teacher. However, when he transmits his demands, Marquis takes Teacher hostage in turn to demand Panacea's safety, and Panacea frees herself by engineering a bacterium to eat the material of Saint's suit.
• I Gave My Word: Fred managed to get in contact with Marquis while the latter was in a regular prison, just before transfer to the Birdcage, and Marquis had him promise to check in on Amelia. It was several years later when Fred was in a position to do it, but he had promised, so he did.
• And I Must Scream: The villain formerly known as Marquis takes out almost the entire ABB at once, including Bakuda, by spraying bone shards at them, hitting their bones and bringing their skeletons under his control, then fusing their skeletons into single pieces so they can't move at all. Followed by filling in their eye sockets so they can't use HUD interfaces to pull any tricks. The result is that Bakuda is fully conscious but blind and immobile.
• It's Not You, It's Me: Amy tries to reassure Mark Dallon that her desire to have her dad back isn't his fault, it's her own choice. Carol isn't impressed.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Ten years ago, Marquis put himself in harm's way to protect Amelia, and the Brockton Bay Brigade caught him and sent him to the Birdcage as a result. He considers it an interesting twist of fate that Amelia is now putting herself on the line to free him.
• Last Request: Fred doesn't want Panacea to rejuvenate him; he's lived his life. He just wants to watch a sunrise with her. However, he does accept her offer of fixing his eyes, so he can appreciate it better.
• Make an Example of Them: Marquis agrees to Teacher's insistence that he needs to make an unmistakable gesture to resolve their conflict and restore equilibrium. Marquis' choice of gesture is to execute Teacher on the spot.
• Moral Myopia: Saint pats himself on the back while blithely using his stolen technology to hack private information in an effort to kidnap a teenage girl and hold her to ransom to break a mind-controlling supervillain out of jail, while Dragon, whom he stole it from, is entirely law-abiding and a wonderful person, whom he mistrusts simply because she's an artificial intelligence.
  It was fortunate for the world, Geoff decided, that he was around to keep Dragon in check.
• Mugging the Monster: Three mundane ABB gang members accosting both Panacea and Marquis together were never going to get very far.
• Not Enough to Bury: All that's left of Saint and his Powered Armor, after he's killed by a very angry Purity, is a few scraps of metal and just enough DNA to positively identify.
  By the subsequent PRT chatter, there literally hadn't been enough left to scrape into a shoebox.
• One-Man Army: Marquis never recruited any other capes, but he was able to hold his own against entire teams of them. His powers have high damage potential, they're extremely versatile, and he's very experienced in using them. Within the span of minutes, he captures and binds Oni Lee, disables Bakuda and most of her unpowered minions in a single ambush, and kills Lung.
• Percussive Therapy: Contessa can't directly Path Eidolon, so she can't be certain that he won't act out in a serious way after disagreeing with the rest of Cauldron about how to handle Marquis — but she does observe that local crime is about to take a dip, which she interprets as him blowing off steam.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The PRT gets an inkling of Panacea's true power after realising that she engineered a bacterium to eat plastic and metal, and Director Costa-Brown wonders whether it's necessary to preemptively imprison or even kill her, since she's capable of returning North America to the stone age.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Marquis' famous rule against harming women or children actually started simply because he recognised that villains who show that restraint tend to draw less backlash from law enforcement.
• Short-Lived Organism: Amy engineers a bacterium that eats metal, to break Saint's Powered Armor and get free, but ensures it will only survive for an hour, lest it become a civilization-ending Grey Goo threat.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: The first time Glory Girl fought Skidmark, he was swearing so much and so badly that she felt the need to take multiple showers afterward.
  Glory Girl: I felt icky for days.
• Something Only They Would Say: Each of the Dallon family questions Amy to ensure that she's really herself, not an impostor trying to have Marquis released for nefarious reasons. Ultimately they have to conclude that it really is her, although they have differing feelings about what she wants.
• Trojan Horse: Saint sees Amy coming back from the bathroom with a phone, and immediately confiscates it, crushing it in his armoured fist. Minutes later, his suit falls apart under the influence of the metal-eating bacteria that she engineered from colonies she found on the toilet and planted on the phone.
• Wedgie: Glory Girl promises that if she finds out who interrupted Amy's call with her dad, she'll give them a "Behemoth style" wedgie.
  Glory Girl: It's where I take off straight up, holding on to their underwear. Only their underwear.
• With All Due Respect is how Marquis tells Director Costa-Brown that unlike Amelia, she hasn't earned the right to ask him to forswear crime.
  "All the respect that you believe I am due, you mean?"
  He bared his teeth in what might have been a smile. "Precisely."
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!:
  • When Marquis hears about Amelia's strike, his first reaction is to worry about the income she's losing — until he learns that her work is all voluntary.
    "You have to be joking." There was no answer. "You're not joking." Still no answer. "She's been doing this for free? When she could have been charging?"
  • And then he learns that as part of New Wave, she and her adoptive family don't have secret identities.
    Marquis: Oh, you have to be kidding. They went public? And they unmasked Amelia as well?
  • Saint has a similar reaction, with extra profanity, upon learning that discussions are underway to potentially release Marquis from the Birdcage.
  • Amy makes a similar declaration in response to Saint claiming that he wasn't responsible for the bombs, he just took advantage of the opportunity.
    Amy: That's gotta be the weakest alibi of all time, and that includes the time Vicky denied eating all the cookies because she was too skinny, so she couldn't have done it. Meanwhile, she had cookie crumbs all the way down her front.

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