So I decided on the treadmill today that I don't think whomever comes after me, if someone does decide to continue this quest, should be shackled by whatever my ideas are. And, to be perfectly honest, I'm selfish enough to want to put these ideas down on 'paper'. They've been occupying my mind for over half a decade in some form or another, and I'd like someone to at least see them before I put this quest to rest.
The future writer can use these ideas as they please, but I guess the surprise on some of these reveals will be ruined because I wanted to show and tell. Bear in mind - I am not up to date on One Piece - I've fallen off reading weekly since the early start of the Egghead arc. So some of my One Piece lore may be completely off base.
Here's my stream of consciousness, written mostly from memory and without reviewing the quest itself, so there may be contradictions. This also will not be all that well edited, I typed it all out and you will receive what has been typed out. So it's not up to my usual standards of 'going back and checking for double wording', correcting spelling/grammar mistakes, etc. I'm sure there are ideas I had that I forgot about, and I'm sure there are steps in the process that I just took in stride where you guys will read this outline and go 'wait, what about-'. But nevertheless, here you are.
So. What were the plans for H/NQ4?
Foolshout Island was where the quest ended. This was something Bookworm set up and I ran with - rewatching the specific episodes of the anime to figure out flora/fauna, come up with relevant backstory that could make it interesting on its own and not just a set piece for the first major skirmish against Baroque Works.
Foolshout would have been the start of the Sea People Imperialism theme. I had the running idea in my head that there's a coalition of ethnic groups on Mayim with the overarching name of the Sea Peoples - descendants of the Celestial Nobles and their allies, they tend to be the ones in charge whenever you enter a 'civilized' island town, they tend to make up most Marine leadership.
The Sea Peoples colonized the bulk of Mayim from the indigenous inhabitants, who obviously vary island to island. On Foolshout, the Sea People colonized from the indigenous Foolshouters - Koala would have been one of the indigenous people, and the slavers who targeted her in canon would be people who specialized in targeting marginalized communities on Foolshout and similar islands to sell on the market. Once Mr. 3's wax construction was dealt with, hunting down the slavers and learning about this from local guides would have been an option for the players.
I also had things in mind like the option to hunt a thunderbird, a potential skirmish with the Rear Admiral based in Foolshout's capital (likely not - would have been too similar to the Smoker encounter on Warship Island - a powerful foe the Straw Hats just need to run away from), the option to hunt various local wildlife, etc., etc. Some of these were foreshadowed in the quest, IIRC - I apologize if not, it's been a long time since I wrote or read H/NQ 4.
So what about Mr. 3's wax construction itself? That was a major stumbling point for me in the story - because while I set it up, I could never figure out how to make it
work. I remember sitting down to write it multiple times, getting frustrated and going 'oh fuck it'.
The
idea was that it was this labyrinth that only Mr. 3 understood, that he could seal and close at his leisure, but his actual ability to perceive it was limited to pure experience, tactics and guesswork. Theoretically, someone could sneak through without his knowing, but Galdino was a canny guy with a lot of experience, and with time to prepare, could set up a trapped environment largely under his control, and predict where the average group would go, and ambush them there.
The Straw Hats are not the average group.
The idea was that Zoro and Sanji's group would basically meet a total failure - Zoro subverted by Miss Goldenweek and nearly killing Sanji and the others before Taylor arrived in the nick of time. At some point, Taylor would encounter Mr. 3 and maaaaybe kill him together with Luffy.
You'll notice this was all a little vague - I really struggled with plotting it out and it's a big part of why I put the quest on hiatus and decided not to return to it. Convenient as it is to blame my much younger self, sometimes my one-year-past self could have done a better job with creating understandable dungeons as well.
But the Straw Hats win and take their time to recover. Horlio is critically injured still, and reunited with Delicata, they leave with disguises made by Taylor to go somewhere safer. They likely reappear in interludes whenever the Straw Hats do anything exciting, analogous to how people from past adventures would appear in canon under similar circumstances.
Miss Goldenweek survives - I suspect Taylor's pretty brutal about taking her down when considering that she looks like a small child (she's sixteen in fact) and the players have to figure out what to do with her. With Galdino (probably) dead, she likely goes off on her own as well, and the idea was that she'd eventually meet up with Middle Musashi on his own voyage and become his sort of daughter figure, reuniting with Taylor and the players at a later date.
(Of course the players can strongarm Marianne into showing them how to make and use her pain, and learn a bit about her tragic and sympathetic backstory in the process. I'm sure I'd come up with something.)
At this point, the players can explore the rotten underbelly of Foolshout Island and the Sea People colonialism it implies (the Sea Peoples are more analogous to IRL settlers than the comically evil Celestial Nobles). It's at this point that we casually reveal to the players that the next island on the Log Pose is Drum Island.
Yeah, funny thing about that. In canon, the Straw Hats arrived there basically by blind luck, but here, there's an actual reason for them to go there. And because the manga Taylor read cut off before the Chopper recruitment arc, Taylor has no in-universe foreknowledge. From Drum Island on, the Straw Hats' voyage is basically the same as canon but with filler arcs having more of an impact on the 'main' story.
So. The players and myself both want Chopper in the Straw Hats, as canon. How do you get Taylor and the Straw Hats the opportunity to
need to contact Kureha and Chopper? You present something similar to canon with a similar result, towards the end of the Log Pose's calibration period.
Nami lets out a pained gasp, and you whirl around from the lockpicking kit. "Ach!"
You frown, eyes darting to her ankle, where a small pink and purple lizard has its lengthened tongue wrapped around it, shooting you a smug look when it meets eye contact. Purely on instinct, you jam the pick into its skull and it dies with an undignified choking sound.
"Are you alright?" you ask, almost belatedly. Your mind races with possibilities, but with your skills, the conclusion arrives almost instantly. You yank the lizard off of her, activating Kachi Kachi with the heat turned down so as not to add the problem of third degree burns to her licked leg.
"What the hell was that thing?" she asks, somewhere between angrily and shakily, giving a disgusted look to the lizard's corpse, before shaking the leg where the animal wrapped its tongue, her eyes widening. You can see swelling already starting to develop. "It's.. I'm not sure I can feel my ankle all that well."
And from here the players choose between two options.
["You'll be fine. It's just a local pest. It numbs its prey with its tongue before swallowing them, and that normally works for things even a bit larger than it, but for humans, you'll just feel a bit numb for a few hours. We should get you cleaned off just to be safe.]
[You suck in a breath. "
Shit. That's… a ralerock pink."]
Whichever option the players pick is the canon one. The second option means that the players choose to have Nami poisoned, and they take on a mandatory action that opens up the Chopper plotline. For player conveniences, as mentioned, this plot kicks off basically when the Straw Hats were about to leave Foolshout anyway, so no options are missed.
The ralerock pink is a lizard indigenous to Foolshout thought to be extinct, and if the players pick the second option, they get it as a Shape Changing option, for all the use it'll be. (With option 1, Headway doesn't consider it a threat. Basically the same as smacking a wasp.)
Foolshout's traditional doctors believe it's impossible to treat - that numbness spreads over the body and kills the licked person over a period of 10-14 days, but Taylor has enough medical knowledge to understand that's not necessarily true - she'll just need access to better doctors. The ones on Drum Island - if there are any left after Wapol was done with the place.
The reason to choose this over just visiting Drum Island normally is that it means Dalton, Kureha, etc., will be more sympathetic to the Straw Hats, rather than them just being more pirates visiting after Blackbeard leveled the place and murdered most of its population. It also adds a sense of emotional urgency that could be interesting to read.
On the Foolshout-to-Drum voyage, Nico Robin appears on her poor forgotten-by-Oda sea turtle mount, and engages the Straw Hats as in canon. Taylor
nearly takes her out when she tries to retreat - Robin is considerably more careful about engaging in this timeline after a long period of having observed the Straw Hats, but Taylor still manages to catch up with her on the turtle.
When Luffy rushes in head first and joins her and Taylor's fight out on the open sea on Robin's mount, Robin drops an anchor on his head and forces Taylor to leave the fight to save him, giving Robin ample time to escape.
Drum Island sees more exploration of the Sea People vs Natives idea, but since it was far off in the future comparatively, I didn't have much plans for it. The things I did consider - the Lapins are fully sapient and contrasted with the human inhabitants of Foolshout, who at least have some degree of autonomy and representation in Foolshout's government. The Lapins (compare their communication to Wookiees - Taylor could learn their language, bear vocal cords and Lapins, obviously, if she beat one) they can understand English, but normally humans just don't bother communicating with them and consider them monsters.
Their homes and natural habitats were destroyed by the Sea Peoples who colonized Drum Island and they were already in conflict with the humans who came even before the Sea Peoples, and now a proud people are shells of their former selves. They're tool using hunters and gatherers who live in caves in the remoter parts of Drum Island, and have their own culture and traditions and internal problems the players can choose to interact with.
I won't go too into depth on the Chopper/Kureha plot - that was something the players would have to explore on their own - the plan was that Taylor would fly Nami/Luffy up herself and interact with Kureha/Chopper in the castle. Taylor and Chopper interact, and she finds him sad and adorable at once.
Chopper is cautiously curious about her, and gradually opens up to her if the players choose to focus on him, but it's Luffy where the interactions really shine. Kureha and Taylor have a really standoffish relationship and immediately get off on a bad foot.
The players also have the option to interact with Dalton. Not much to say about Dalton - I will say that I foreshadowed, either in WoG or the story itself, the idea that Rokushiki was a Marine technique taught at least in part to World Government allies, not just the Marines, Cipher Pol, and other Marine assets themselves.
So someone like Pell might be taught Tekkai, and that lets him survive, hypothetically speaking, a big ass bomb he absolutely should not have fucking lived through. Dalton, who's shown using a Flash Step technique in canon, learned Soru. Both would be inferior to the versions used by someone like Lucci or other CP9 assets, of course, but they still represent considerable additions to their combat arsenal… and a chance to learn Soru from an ally if they make the right choices with Dalton.
The extent of Blackbeard's destruction - every major city and town on Drum leveled just for his amusement, really - is something covered extensively. There's a reason Dalton, closest thing to the island's leader in canon, is recovering in a tiny village up a river. It's one of the only places left after the real metropolitan centers were destroyed.
Luffy probably beats Wapol - I didn't want Taylor to be involved in defeating every single primary bad guy on the way to Raftel, so there would have been times where Taylor was just not around to help or was busy with the mooks while the other Straw Hats got their own chances to shine. This wouldn't have been popular with the players, but I think it's necessary.
Chopper joins the crew, and they head to Alabasta. IIRC, I planned for this to be a month long journey by sea, with Taylor occasionally having to go back to help the Straw Hats in mandatory actions to help them procure supplies and repair the ship - the seas near Alabasta tend to be emptier and more desolate when it comes to fishing, the Straw Hats nearly starve in canon.
But all that provides time for the players to focus on the much neglected Mahon and Bet. Theoretically, the players might have contacted Xavier by now, but I assumed it would be more likely that they would be interested in Brockton Bay in the travel time between Foolshout and Drum, so we'll start with that.
The Empire is the next obvious target for the players and Taylor alike - the most powerful and prominent gang in town, literal Nazis the city has normalized out of necessity and the organization's durability and outside support. Alabaster is the most obvious target for Taylor and the players alike to target - for verisimilitude's sake, I'd give the players information about (say) Cricket or Krieg, but I'm pretty sure the players would be most interested in Alabaster.
And Alabaster's the kind of guy who, in Wildbow's Weaverdice documents, got a negative bonus every time he
wasn't violently racist, so the players and Taylor will want to take him down just out of principle. You show the players the aftermath of Alabaster's reign of terror while they're working on the villain hunt project, while simultaneously building up the threat of the Empire itself.
The players (hopefully) will have registered with the PRT by now, on the lowest rung of the ladder where you get a small stipend (probably like 30-45k a year? Not sure) and closer communication with the Protectorate/PRT if need be. Thomas Calvert would personally oversee Taylor's power testing and registration - that would be revealed after the players already agreed to do it, because I like the idea of them squirming at the thought. Taylor doesn't necessarily
trust him (he's an authority figure after all), but finds him to be an agreeable enough professional. She receives Piggot's regards, but does not meet her at this point.
It should go without saying that Taylor is still hiding her power level - but at this point, she has full command of the fruits of Bear King, Alvida, Mr. 3, as well as Skidmark's power and Miss Goldenweek's mystical hypnotic paint. She also probably has a Lapin form - which is much stronger than a bear. (Training accelerated by the fact that she probably had to fight a
lot of them before the Lapins opened up to her.)
Meaning that, even with conservative and careful use of her powers, Brockton Bay's villains are basically hers to defeat. On power alone, even if she was unskilled, she'd stand a good chance of taking down A-listers like Lung and Hookwolf on her own, but with combat thinker stuff going on
too? Please.
Taylor should also be working closely with New Wave at this point - this is how I'd establish the acquaintanceship that grows into friendship with Victoria. I suspect Taylor would meet the other members of New Wave, but find them either unrelatable (Shielder + Laserdream) or vaguely offputting (Amy).
I don't hate Amy, but I want to explore the more forgotten elements of these universes, and good God has Amy been done to death. Taylor would likely approach Amy with the mindset of 'whoa, cool useful power', the same mindset a lot of Worm fans treat her with when writing fanfic, and that is basically guaranteed to step on all of Amy's insecurities. Given that Taylor is also a competent, powerful woman interacting a lot with Victoria, Amy is probably going to really strongly dislike her. And Amy isn't really charming or likable, so Taylor isn't going to be all that fond of her either, despite what will probably be Victoria's best efforts.
Victoria, on the other hand, will love Taylor. Taylor is competent, effective, brutal against targets Victoria will find deserve righteous punishment, is highly knowledgeable on parahuman matters and interested in them - much like Victoria herself - really, like I said and as others have observed, most heroic TINOs people write wind up being a lot like Victoria.
Taylor only really wound up disliking Victoria in canon because they were on opposing sides and Lisa deliberately engineered it - in an environment where they're working together, they'd likely wind up friends. Especially a Taylor more used to making them, thanks to the Straw Hats. Victoria's plenty extroverted enough to make the first move on that front, which makes things easier.
Every adult in New Wave sucks, and we'd get a chance to explore that. We already saw Brandish being kind of a bitch to Taylor (for admittedly understandable reasons) in H/NQ 4, and that would continue along similar lines. Victoria and Crystal wind up being pretty close with Taylor, though. Honestly, maybe poor forgotten Eric, too. Someone should make a Gamer fic with
him, not Greg. He'd be enough of a blank slate to function as an audience surrogate.
But anyway. It's probable that during the month trip to Alabasta, the players make a huge dent against the Empire, if not wiping it out entirely. This causes predictable tension with the PRT, who fear a power struggle, and worry about the loss of their legitimacy if well-established supervillains are so easily dealt with by a new arrival.
Especially since Taylor, who is not fond of bureaucratic rigidity, will be working closely with the more independent New Wave - specifically the younger members, who are maybe sort of kind of fibbing about how much permission their parents gave them to be out hunting with Factota.
What about Mahon? Hopefully, God willing, we would have had time during the five or so days on Foolshout after the wax fortress falls, or theFoolshout-to-Drum trip for this, but if not, first contact with Xavier likely happens after Wapol is dealt with and the Straw Hats are resupplying on Drum, or on the month trip.
Taylor will almost certainly have leveled Master Resistance, and she will come across as paranoid and untrusting of Xavier. Surface thoughts will leak to him despite her best efforts, and he'll find the images of the Simurgh constantly floating towards him, and this will cause him a good deal of discomfort. I suspect he'd be reminded of the
Shadow King, who never appeared in X-Men: Evolution, but would be part of my Xavier's backstory.
Taylor opens relations with the Institute, and meets most of the early show cast. I think at this point it'd still just be Scott, Jean, Kurt, and Kitty for the kids, and Ororo, Logan, and Xavier for the adults. It's hard for me to see her getting along
too well with any of them at this point - maaaybe Scott and Jean.
Theoretically, the Dallons and Pelhams have the similar problem of being preppy, pretty kids Taylor finds unrelatable and feels vague envy towards, but at least with them, Taylor is working towards a common goal with them. The X-Men aren't really doing much besides existing at the start of Evolution.
She likely presses Xavier for details on evil mutants in the world, to his discomfort - mentioning names like
Unus the Untouchable and the
Vanisher. Her zealous intensity will come across as more worrying than anything to him, and will likely remind him of a younger Magneto. Logan, on the other hand, sees a young, eager, spirited teenage girl and has to restrain himself from filing adoption papers on the spot.
If the players choose - this is when they can go on an adventure with Logan, maybe without his full permission once Taylor gets wind of Sabretooth and his delicious healing factor. This adventure is likely when Logan gives her the nickname 'Smartypants' and refuses to stop calling her that.
There will be a point where the players will have to backtrack back to Alabasta however. I don't see too much of the Alabasta arc changing, honestly. That might have changed as I was actively writing - big things I had in mind where Taylor being the one who took on Miss Doublefinger and not Nami - who would have helped with Usopp and Chopper's fight instead.
Taylor meets Ace - finds him handsome and charming, and for that reason, is shy and reserved around him. This isn't a romance fic - I just think that's how Taylor would react to him. Ace has gotten that reaction before, and while I haven't read his light novels, I don't really think he'd be interested in Taylor romantically, and she probably just pesters him for what she assumes has to be almost certainly exaggerated stories of the New World.
Like I said, Alabasta - not firmly plotted out. I would have kept the Sea People vs Native theme going - the Sea People (directly related to Cobra and his family's allies) did colonize the land from the Bedouin themed tribals, absorbed a lot of their traditions, and a lot of natives became power players in Alabastan politics, but their descendants wound up being fairly marginalized in their own right, meaning the revolution already had a groundswell of support even without Baroque Works' machinations.
You can probably see how this would be used to develop Vivi and Taylor's relationship. Vivi doesn't want to believe that Alabasta isn't a perfect, happy kingdom - that there is a sort of discrimination built into its system and economy, that Baroque Works molded what was already there and worsened the strife, and didn't create it wholesale.
The final fight against Crocodile is the big thing where everything changes. Smoker (he's pretty reluctant about the whole thing), Taylor and Luffy confront him at once, and it's a way closer thing than you'd imagine. Because being confronted by three powerful opponents like this… Crocodile recovers his Ambition far earlier than in canon. He remembers how to use Haki. Not anywhere near where he once was, but enough to be exceptionally dangerous.
It's a horrible, very close battle where a lot of innocent people who weren't lucky enough to leave Alubarna quickly die. It's formative for Taylor, watching hundreds of people desiccated casually with her being able to do little about it. Crocodile eventually dies - it's possible Smoker is the one to strike the finishing blow, and we use that as a metaphor for the Marines maybe being a redeemable institution, in spite of everything Taylor has learned about them up to this point.
The three of them essentially collapse when the fighting is done, and Cobra's sensible enough to keep the location of the Straw Hats hidden. Smoker eventually reports back to base. After the Straw Hats leave Alabasta, they encounter Hina's fleet, with an injured Smoker alongside her. No Mr. 2 and crew to serve as a distraction this time, his friendship with the Straw Hats likely butterflied away.
The Straw Hats escape, beating Hina in the process. Smoker, by now wise to Taylor's general abilities just by virtue of figuring it out, tries to get Hina to
not fight her, but fails to convince her, and Taylor gets another Devil Fruit.
Smoker gets an interlude at this point, where he explains what he truly believes to Sengoku. 'Straw Hat' Monkey D. Luffy may be the captain and 'heart' of the Straw Hat Pirates, but the true leader is 'Escape Artist' Hebert Taylor. Smoker's judgment, his explanation of Taylor's ability to at least mimic the use of Devil Fruits and martial arts techniques, and her performance against a Haki-using Logia, leads Sengoku to a conclusion.
A photograph was taken of Taylor by an Alubarnan caught in the crossfire, and while the photographer themselves dies, the Marines eventually recover it. It shows Taylor, grim-faced, descending from the clouds with albatross wings, skin stone-like from activating Kachi Kachi and visibly steaming from her attempts to use Fishman Karate against Crocodile.
'Fallen Angel' Hebert Taylor's bounty is two hundred million beri.
('Straw Hat' Luffy gets seventy five, Zoro and Sanji get both bounties and increases to their original bounty as well. Luffy is seriously upset that the Marines think he's just a patsy for Taylor, but he's more mad at the stupid World Government than anything Taylor did.)
This is also about when Robin shows herself on the Going Merry, as per canon. The Straw Hats largely welcome her, as canon. Taylor, on the other hand - she knows who Robin is, and while she has general suspicions about how true the official story on Ohara is, definitely knows about the awful shit she did in the meantime. Say, trying to murder a country by inflaming ethnic strife so you can profit on its destruction.
The relationship between Robin and Taylor is, naturally, very tense, mostly from Taylor's end. Robin finds her mostly just kind of amusingly intense ('my oh my, what an eager young lady you are'), while Taylor resolves to watch her like a hawk. The players absolutely get 'training' opportunities with Robin, possibly mandatory actions, which are mostly excuses for the two of them to interact.
Robin has behaviors that will subconsciously (I don't think Taylor is self aware enough to recognize this) remind Taylor of Annette, and she's also scholarly enough that she might be the only one on the crew who can really think at Taylor's level on some matters. Especially later on Skypiea, which is where Taylor and Robin finally come to terms with one another. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
This is about where plans for Mahon get really vague - I'd never made a real official timeline of when the events on X-Men: Evo took place. By this point, Taylor has probably hunted down the Brotherhood and gotten Quicksilver's sweet speed and Blob's invulnerability, meets Nick Fury (someone has to keep them in prison), and has been on an adventure or two with Logan.
She's also going to be chasing other leads - I mentioned
Jim Hammond Human Torch being a plot element I wanted to explore, but there was also Cloak & Dagger, Runaways, Machine Man, a few other more underexplored Marvel titles I would have used over the more popular ones. Spider-Man, if he appeared, would be more like the asshole punk kid Ditko wrote than the more heckin' empty blank slate surrogate we saw in the MCU.
I did plan for Taylor to meet the Fantastic Four - but well before the accident, when Reed, Victor, et al were in college. Specifically, when Reed and Victor were roommates. Sue and Johnny are both students at the same college (Johnny's a very competent engineer. What, did you think a serious scientific voyage would just invite someone's little brother along?). Ben's a friend of theirs in the Air Force with connection to some wild projects. They have a few ideas for exploration Taylor can choose to help with.
Taylor would meet Tony Stark (pre-Ten Rings, pre-redemption) once and immediately decide 'fuck this guy, I never want to interact with him again'. You'd likely see her working with Forge as the science and tech guy on Mahon, or other characters I'm forgetting. There was a character in Marvel Comics Presents, a martial arts instructor and ki user named Yuji who once effortlessly threw around Wolverine and Ghost Rider. I'd use him as well.
Hunting down the Vanisher - mentioned above - would also be an option, and if the players rolled well, they would find and defeat him, getting his powers. This might happen later in the story. He's a very reclusive, very competent thief who doesn't leave much of a trail, but high level Forensics and Tattletale's power, among other skills, would likely render that point moot.
I'd also probably be reading some old SHIELD comics for inspiration on some spy agent stuff the players could choose to interact with if they wanted. We're getting into vague maybe territory here, though.
Back on Bet, by the time Alabasta is concluded and the players have had a breather in the form of the Going Merry setting out to sea again, Taylor also gets contacted by the Guild at this point, the organization on Bet most closely matching Taylor and the players' goals. I suspect this would be Dragon cautiously reaching out to Taylor - no real need to get too creative on this front, Taylor's involvement with the Guild won't step up till later.
Taylor arrests the Undersiders and has a chance to interact with Lisa while in custody, and she's a real bitch when you aren't a pet project of hers. Lisa gets coopted by Watchdog under close security, and Calvert assures Taylor that he'll find a good spot for her. I had a good hero name thought up for Lisa, but it's left my memory, so you'll have to trust me on this one.
Brockton Bay should probably be cleaned up of its canon villains by this point and the players should have reached level 10 in most of the good powers. This is about when Tinkertech starts making an impact and Taylor is working with New Wave and the Protectorate to repel opportunists like we saw in canon.
It's also when Leviathan attacks Brockton Bay.
I'd give the players an option, but at this point, I think it might have had to be mandatory that she fights Leviathan with all of her might and powers, even if she was still hiding her power level at this point. This is her home, after all.
Busoshoku Haki, if Taylor has it usable at this point, is something Levi notices, and makes her more of a target, which has upsides and downsides. Leviathan can't meaningfully hurt her thanks to Sube Sube and Alabaster's power working in sync (obviously Suna Suna, even if leveled, would be worse than useless against Leviathan).
With Pietro's speed, her combat thinker skills, and multiple powers, she's one of the heaviest front line hitters, but most of the city is still leveled. Casualties from the Leviathan fight are considerably lower - I think I may have killed off Armsmaster at this point, it's likely that his character development would be butterflied and I would find it too depressing to write something similar to how Wildbow's Miami AU went for him and Dragon.
It's after the fight, when Taylor is exhausted and wiped out, when Alexandria reaches out. Taylor obviously trusts her, why wouldn't she? Alexandria and Taylor talk a bit about her powers - the players can choose how much to minimize the damage, but Taylor's obviously going to be up front about being a power copier at the very least - it's
Alexandria she's talking to after all. Either way, Alexandria will be in touch in the future.
Of course, everything the players voted on - irrelevant, since the interlude reveal will be that Cauldron started having the Clairvoyant keep an eye on the Hebert household once she started making waves taking down the Empire, and they looked into 'Factota' with the help of several Thinkers. Most of the ways Taylor was hiding are purely mundane, and the players were warned over the course of the quest about that possibility.
Doctor Mother and Alexandria both aren't sure if it's worth killing her at this stage, or if it's even possible without severe risks. They raise several ideas on how to do it - but someone as mobile and powerful as Taylor is shown to be from the Leviathan fight - extremely difficult, especially if she decides to retaliate by hunting heroes and Cauldron assets.
Their eventual conclusion is to coopt her, not necessarily bring her on board, but feed her powers that might be useful in helping better manage threats to humanity. Personality Thinkers have a pretty good map of who Taylor is, and looking over the report, Alexandria and Doctor Mother agree to take the risk.
These are my notes on several minor supervillains that Alexandria works with Taylor to target, keeping things under the radar.
-Wargasm - basically applies Courage spell from Skyrim to allied fighters. Primary person Alexandria wants Taylor to have the powers of, the other two are just bonuses. These three should be an unnamed low level gang in a mid-sized American city.
-Funbags - low-level Tinker, makes noxious concoctions that can be thrown via water balloons, etc. Makes concoctions with boyfriend, Stink Eye's stuff.
-Stink Eye - shitty low level thug, goo vision power. Creep that's good at convincing naive women to follow his judgment, inducted Wargasm and Funbags into a fucked up exploitative relationship. Yes, the ladies' names were his idea.
Triplet - random thief for hire in small American city, three bodies, one mind. The duplicate bodies are disposable, the core is not. Takes time to build these, but they function as effectively two additional bodies for Triplet - which would obviously stack well with Taylor's powers. They melt when too far away from her - RNG for range.
Dorito - roughly triangular energy holes in reality - think along the lines of Damsel of Distress, split off into smaller chunks when hurled with extreme force. can be used as a shield
You get the idea. I also had the idea for Trove, a transmuter who functioned as a wealthy middleman for capes in New York, being another of Taylor's targets. It's at this point where she's also working with the Guild on high level targets, and I had a variety of plots written out for that. A really unfortunate infohazard tinker in Salt Lake City, maybe a defense against the Three Blasphemies, all sorts of things.
Likely missions against the Fallen. The Westboro Baptist Church have a really fucked up parody of The Army Goes Marching Along where they mock dead soldiers - one of the things IRL that they would play outside of soldiers' funerals - and I had the idea for a Fallen equivalent of that mocking heroes who died to Endbringers or the Fallen themselves.
Loads of plots that were too distant in the future to really elaborate on in detail. The two big ones were Saint leaking Taylor's identity and powers to the general public thanks to having access to Dragon's records on her and worrying that she was close to unchaining Dragon - which almost certainly would be a player goal.
The second was the Simurgh appearing after an Endbringer fight or two after Levi had passed with Taylor being overwhelmingly useful and just pointing at Taylor and saying 'Kinfolk' in the minds of everyone present. This sets in stage the idea that Taylor, at this point equivalent in power to Eidolon if not more, is just the fourth Endbringer.
The idea being that the Endbringers got progressively cannier and more manipulative as they kept going. Behemoth was just a monstrous brute, Levi went for humanity's supply chain, Simurgh is obvious, and now there's one pretending to be a hero. True? Of course not. Believed by enough to be a major problem for the players? Of course.
Things in Mayim after Alabasta were very 'plan for it as it comes'. I knew Zoro would handle most of the plot around Saga. Enel might have been a situation where he knocked out Taylor with a sucker attack after she overwhelmingly defeated his four lieutenants, and then Luffy beat him as per canon. It's all very up in the air. I'm sure I've left things out, but hopefully this will sate some curiosity and satisfy my urge to get this all out there and lay this quest to rest.
I won't post the giant list of Parahumans OCs I came up with while generating this story - but I did want to offer all of you some degree of closure as to where this story would have gone. Not everything was planned out, but I had general ideas in mind. Whether this all would have survived contact with the players? LOL.
Whoever takes over, if anyone, is welcome to use any of these ideas, but it may be better to chart your own course if you choose to take over.
Thank you all again for reading, and like I said before, I hope to see you all in a future quest. Feel free to ask away about any questions you may have had.
