The Kill List (A Worm/One Piece Fic)—❈—01:: Enter Black Leg!

Synopsis

A new player is in town.

He’s got a list of names, and he intends to check them all by Christmas.

Oh, don’t worry, it’s for a good cause.

A/N: the One Piece tag in the title is really just for the insert's power set.

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It was Saturday, the 9th of April, 2011, and Taylor Hebert, depressed, grieving, lonely, and traumatized fifteen year old, had made up her mind to begin her superhero career come midnight.

Now, anyone with even a lick of sense would agree that this was a terrible idea; people (teenagers most of all) rarely handle power and responsibility well, and when you throw in the potent cocktail of emotional issues that Taylor laboured under on the daily into the mix, it becomes obvious that what the girl needed was not to run around town in a creepy bug suit looking for acceptable targets to work out her frustrations on, but, in fact, therapy.

Lots and lots of therapy.

Unfortunately, there was no one in Taylor’s life to tell her this, so, again, it was Saturday, the 9th of April, 2011, and Taylor Hebert, depressed, grieving, lonely, and traumatized fifteen year old, had made up her mind to begin her superhero career come midnight.

It wasn’t midnight yet, thank heavens. In fact, it was quite a while from midnight; seven in the morning, and Taylor was out in her neighborhood on her morning jog.

She’d been jogging daily for a couple of months, sometime after when she discovered that she had superpowers and made up her mind to fulfill her dream of becoming a hero.

In working towards that dream, she’d made a costume, the aforementioned ‘creepy bug suit’, and after months of work, it was finally done.

To be honest, the creepy bug suit had been done for some time, a week or so, but Taylor, hesitant (and sensibly so) about jumping out into the streets to play hero in the dead of night without backup, support, or headgear that covered the back of her head, had dallied.

That had changed yesterday, on Friday, when the three girls who touched themselves at night to thoughts of making Taylor’s life hell, had, in pursuit of giving themselves more fap material, gone and made her life hell.

To be fair, it hadn’t been a particularly bad attack, just some juice and the usual recycled insults, certainly nowhere near The Trio’s worst, but it had been enough.

So here Taylor was one day later, jogging through her neighborhood and planning to begin a hero career in one of the most dangerous cities in the fucking multiverse. And, worst of all, she was planning to go it alone.

A paragon of sensible decision-making, this one.

Taylor took the final bend back onto her street.

She had no idea how far she’d run, or how fast she’d gone, but she always tried to push herself a little farther, faster, everyday.

The first time she’d gone out for a run, she’d barely made it down her street before she was wheezing for breath, but now, she could circle her neighbourhood without too much trouble.

She was improving, and it was nice to… Taylor slowed to a stop in front of her house.

There was someone laying on her porch, and as she watched him, he leaned up and eyed her curiously.

“Taylor Hebert?” he asked.

Taylor hesitated. Who was this?

[Image]

He looked young. Maybe not quite a teenager, but definitely not older than twenty either. He was wearing a suit and tie, and just from the sheen of it, Taylor suspected that it was an expensive outfit.

Again, the girl wondered; who was this?

“Taylor Hebert?” the suited stranger asked again.

“Um, yeah, that’s me,” Taylor said, deciding to be honest.

After all, whoever this was had already found her house. What was she going to do? Move?

The suited stranger sat up, looking so comfortable on the porch he might as well be the one who lived here, and Taylor the stranger.

Wait, could he be a banker or something? We’re they going to lose their house?

Taylor observed the stranger some more.

He had the suit, true, but wasn’t he a little young? Besides, with that fade haircut and his general… aura, he wasn’t really giving off banker vibes.

Wait, what kind of vibes did bankers usually give off?

Taylor shook away the thought.

“Who are you?” she asked finally.

Mr. Probably-not-a-banker blinked. Like he’d never considered that anyone would ask him for his identity, showing up at people’s homes.

He considered it for a moment, then he smiled as though he just thought of something brilliant.

He looked at Taylor.

“The name’s Vinsmoke. Prince Vinsmoke. You can call me Black Leg.”

Taylor stared. Yeah, that can’t be his real name, she decided.

What the hell is Black Leg? Why would anybody call themselves that?

And, seriously? Prince?

… Wait, was this some sort of prank by The Trio? Had they finally decided that tormenting Taylor at school wasn’t enough? Had they brought their bullshit to her home now?

Just as Taylor opened her mouth to say… she didn’t really know what, but she was sure it was going to be some sort of rebuke, the guy, Prince, or Vinsmoke, or whatever, said; “The costume’s done right? You’re going out tonight?”

Taylor stilled.

She looked at him, and the manner he’d introduced himself just a few seconds ago played out in her mind’s eye again.

‘You can call me Black Leg,’ he’d said.

Black Leg. That’s a cape name. This guy’s a cape. A cape was at her house.

Taylor hadn’t even started her hero career yet and she’d already been tracked down by a villain.

A villain who was letting her see his face!

Taylor swallowed.

“You’re afraid,” the guy, Black Leg, observed curiously, then shrugged it off after a moment. “That makes sense, I suppose,” he said. “And I suppose it’s better this way; you’re more likely to listen to me.”

“Listen to you?” Taylor asked.

“Yes, Taylor, listen to me; whatever plans you had of going out tonight, shelve them. Whatever plans you had of going out in the near future, shelve those too. I’ve got a job to do in town, and I don’t need a protagonist who’s too stubborn for anybody’s good stumbling in and messing shit up.”

Taylor blinked. “What?”

“What is that you will stay home, and you will leave that costume of yours right where it is. The Queen of Escalation is not a problem I want to risk having to deal with, and killing you now will just make me feel scummy.

“So seriously, stay home. Read a book, watch a movie, I don’t care what you do, just shelve whatever hero plans you’ve got until I’m done here. Besides, let’s be honest, you make a shit hero anyway.”

Taylor stilled.

She felt a stirring of something in her chest, something hot and familiar, and it took her a moment to realize that it was rage, and a moment more to understand why she was feeling it.

“Who the hell do you think are?” Taylor bit out, so angry she felt herself shaking.

All across the neighbourhood, the insects felt her anger, and they hummed with it; ants, flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, wasps, bees, dozens of species of bugs each numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands.

“You show up at my home. Threatening me. Belittling me. Just who the fuck do you think you are?”

It was one thing to take that kind of treatment from The Trio at school, but to have a villain show up at her house, before she’s even done anything, to tell her that what? She wouldn’t even make a good hero, so she should just shut up and sit down while he goes around and does whatever the hell he wants…

Who the fuck did this asshole think he was!?

The insects around Black Leg were multiplying now, bugs crawling out from under the porch to surround him.

He thought he could intimidate her? He thought he could scare her? Well, let’s see how scary he felt when she had him buried in bugs.

Black Leg observed the insects surrounding him, then he looked at Taylor and said with deadly calm; “Taylor, call off the bugs.”

The rage in Taylor’s chest spiked.

Really? Even now he looked down on her. Even now he thought he was in control.

Well, she was going to disabuse him of that notion.

The bugs around Black Leg went right for him, but the villainous vape paid them no mind, instead he looked right at Taylor.

The world broke.

For an instant and an eternity, Taylor became an ant, and she was crushed under the thumb of a king. Nay, a CONQUEROR.

Her life was his to play with; her fate his to decide; and the only reason her mind didn’t break, rendering her a drooling, unconscious mess on the ground, was because he deemed it so.

The world mended, back to how it always was, except now with a single difference; Taylor knew.

Shaking, she collapsed to her knees, barely noting that all the bugs she’d had under her control were dead, their weak minds utterly crushed by the faint echoes of The Conqueror’s Will that reached them through her influence.

Black Leg rose to his feet.

“Stay home, Taylor,” he said. “I really would rather you don’t become a problem.”

Then he walked away.

Taylor watched Black Leg walk away, shaking, confused… scared. But, in her chest, that hot familiar thing still burned.

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A/N: and that's chapter one.