powermaxwax

Context

Trigger: Danny and Taylor get caught in the middle of a fight between Hookwold and the PRT and are torn to sherds; the PRT initially fails to capture the nazi, but when they eventually do he escapes a few times; 'concerned' citizens complain about Annette assigning queer books for her classes, she loses her job; alone and with no pay she loses the house with nobody willing to help her. She triggers her first night sleeping on the streets.

Joining the Undersiders: She starts looking for a building to squat. Finds the Undies' loft and is surprised by them. Lisa mediates and manages to convince Annette to help them out with a job. She sees them as kids in over their heads and, with Taylor's loss still pretty close, accompanies them for their safety.

Personality: Pretty similar to Taylor, just more pathetic, as she's a 40 year old woman that hangs out with teens all day. Let's say that her daughter got her intensity and violent tendencies from her too, not just Danny. Has her daughter's cult leader charisma.

The story progresses pretty much like canon, but without ever planning to betray the undersiders to Armsmaster. Coil's not dumb, so he doesn't reveal the 12 year old in his basement high on opiates. Annete saves Armsmaster, but because she's never contacted him, his endbringer plan is not revealed, so he stays in Brockton Bay. Sophia's not targeted by the Undersiders to carry out their arc 10 job so she reamins in BB too. Lisa still reveals her situation with Coil because she thinks she can take out the boss with Annette. S9 happens(not thought about it, sorry). They take down Coil, Echidna happens. Annette has no life outside of caping, so the identity reveal is pointless and does not happen. Behemoth kills Alec and she freaks out hard, so she immediately goes to kill Heartbreaker with Aisha and ends up with a gaggle of taylor-shaped kids. Time skip, Gold morning, she makes it through (also loses her right arm).

The important part: shipping

She's bisexual and we all know it.

She needs to hate fuck someone. Armsmaster would be a fun choice, but they don't interact at all outside of fights. The other (and better) choice is Miss Militia. Taylor thinks she's super neat and is somewhat parasocial, so let's invert those feelings for Annette who sees her as a government stooge, a chimera made up of the worst parts of the military and law enforcement. Hates her and her 'just following orders' attitude with a passion. Still thinks she's hot. Hates it.

Another fun choice is Sarah Pelham, aka Photon Lady. Both of them dive into capedom as much as they can. Sarah's built all her life around powers for the last two decades, and, after she loses most of her family, dives into it even more. Annette's just lost it and doing the same, just on the other side of the law. Appreciates the ideals of New Wave of transparency and accountability. Closest in age to Annette. Two recently widowed women finding comfort in each other. Could be cute. 'Net will punch your teeth out if you call her Photon Mom instead of Photon Lady (even before meeting her). Also, Crystal's reaction would be fun.

Faultline, Lisa walks in on them fucking, takes 30d6 of psychic damage.

Annette does not turn herself in, so she doesn't meet Alexandria like Taylor did. IF she did, though, Lexie's hot and 'Net looks close enough to Contessa, so they fuck and never speak about it.

Armsmaster still gets visited by Mannequin and becomes Defiant. He and Dragon do some unicorn hunting, maybe.

Number Man reminds her of young, blond Danny. Finds him hot, that's it.

Jack Slash, thinks he's hot, hates it. Instantly clocks him as gay .

Marquis, thinks he's hot, hates it. Instantly clocks him as bisexual .

Other relationships

Chastity's about the age Taylor was when she died, and looks somewhat similar, so she gets really attached to the 13 year old Vasil. Tries teaching her some feminism when she catches her talking about her worth as a girl for the first time. Finds her relationship with Cassie cute.

Aisha hangs out with Annette a lot because of the heartbroken. Encourages her to read and learn at her own pace. Accommodates her learning, even if she's not sure if Aisha has ADHD or something else.

Lisa's her number one hype woman, Annette's her sopping wet adult, who is scary when she needs to be and praises her intelligence

Talks taxes and budgeting with Brian, who thinks she's the coolest woman ever (not that he's talked to many older women, or girls his age).

Rockier start with Rachel than Taylor. As she does not ever plan to betray them and Armsmaster cannot reveal that, she still manages to help her out like Taylor did. Rachel still starts her settlement in Gimmel with her people and ends up in a similar place to her canon counterpart.

0 - START HERE. Japan. I don't think Aku cared very much for Japan, he didn't have a good time there.

1, 2 - from a global conquest starting point in Japan there's really only three options: invade Korea, invade China, or invade the Philippines. China is scary as hell; Japan's experiences with war with Korea were, let's leave it at "bad"; so: the Philippines, and then on to Indonesia.

3 - Australia's the biggest chunk of land Aku's faced up to this point and he's still a newb at conquest, he glances off the north coast and moves on to some more islands.

4 - loops back to finish off Australia.

5 - you'd think that if Japan is Aku's base of operations, he'd then go back to home base and from there head west into Korea & China. But I don't think Japan was Aku's base of operations. I'll have more on that in a sequel post. because this post is long.

The great advantage of starting off by conquering islands is that it makes it much easier to control how much information leaks out of your new little empire, because no one's escaping your empire without boats. Which is even harder for them to do if you can control the weather. At this point in canon we know that Aku's been making periodic trips to mainland, and that at least as far as east Africa people have heard about—and done business with—a "great evil spirit"; never mind how many people the little prince told about Aku during his travels. It's probably safe to say that, at minimum, China & Korea are VERY, VERY aware that the island empire worryingly close to their coasts has been conquered by some kind of gigantic malevolent shadow. But they probably know very little more than that, because not many people are escaping Japan and anybody who sails over for recon ain't returning.

So everybody's nervously watching toward the east for Aku to invade.

They don't expect him from the southwest.

6 - canon fact: Aku does not seem to enjoy the cold! I think he made the classic "invade Russia in the winter" blunder. Conquered central Russia, un-conquered central Russia, angrily retreated to China. It doesn't help that, depending on what century you think this is, most of the turf north of the Silk Road is still dominated by nomadic peoples, and—listen, Aku's basically a kaiju with a more refined vocabulary. It's a lot easier for Godzilla to knock down Tokyo than it is for him to step on 500 individual galloping horses. Aku has a much easier time conquering settled cities than nomadic tribes. So he goes "fuck the Turks and the horses they rode in on" and moves south.

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 - this is where i think Aku starts buckling under the strain of trying to conquer the entire planet as one guy, a handful of shadows, and a revolving door of mercenaries who hate him. even the fucking turks have an empire now?? He's grumpy, this is too hard, invading & pillaging a new place is fun but buckling down and establishing rule over a region isn't. It's a lot easier to smash a kingdom than it is to grip a kingdom & keep that grip. He's always been pretty liberal with the eye lasers but increasingly he finds himself going "fuck it, this city can't rebel against my rule after i move on if none of them are left alive."

it's just a miserable, centuries-long, never-ending slog across india, the middle east, east europe, east africa, central africa... the only thing keeping him going is his inborn conviction that he's to be the master of this world. that, and the fact that he's the biggest asshole that's ever existed.

14 - hits the westernmost point of Africa. he now "rules" an empire stretching from japan to senegal.

please picture aku standing at the very tip of point almadies staring out at the atlantic ocean with a sense of weary triumph—tired, yet determined, and wiser and stronger from his many long years of unending battle.

now imagine somebody reminding him there's another couple untouched continents and making him cry.

15, 16 - finishes up the southern half of Africa before tackling the rest of Europe.

Intermission (6 part TWO) - he finally takes the northern half of eurasia, as well as russia. probably in like, june. he's learned his lesson.

he's now conquered all of afro-eurasia and australia—but we're using "conquered" very loosely here. at this point in history he doesn't really have a government or a country of any kind. what "conquered" really means right now is that he's ensured no one else has a government or country. he's crushed all major kingdoms, broken up all major empires, killed every dynasty of note, slaughtered every army of any size...

and a single really determined kaiju might not be able to maintain rule over four continents, but a single really determined kaiju CAN maintain chaos. any time a population center starts trying to mount a revolt or reestablish local rule, he just, swings by and smashes them again!

but that's A LOT of territory with A LOT of population centers that are all constantly trying to get their feet back under themselves. it's next to impossible for aku to make any forward progress while aku's trapped in a neverending cycle of suppressing everyone else's forward progress.

but eventually he makes the jump across the atlantic.

17, 18, 19, 20, 21 - hit the east coast of brazil, swooped south around the andes, headed up the west coast and into central america. depending on when aku reaches the americas (as well as how much he disrupted europe's colonization plans), he may or may not still have to contend with the inca & aztec empires. if he does, that's what he uses as his justification for going from the south up rather than from the north down: take out the big empires first, and then all he'll have to worry about is some nomadic tribes and then some people who live up in the tundras, no big deal.

(translation: he does NOT want to deal with more nomads and tundras, he is SICK AND FUCKING TIRED of nomads and tundras, it's russia ALL OVER AGAIN he can't do it he just can't do it he's gonna crawl back in the pit of hate for a thousand years don't touch him don't talk to him don't even LOOK at him.)

22 - if hitting the bermuda triangle will let him put off heading north then by god bring on the triangle

23, 24 - now, we don't know how much colonization happened in this setting, but we do know colonization happened, because there's a bunch of white people in the american southwest and one character references the US civil war. apparently while aku was chewing his way through the ottoman empire they were still busy shipping pilgrims to new england. sure. whatever.

but i have to imagine plunging the entire eastern hemisphere into interminable crisis held back the european colonization of the americas to some degree; meaning the industrialization of the US is even more concentrated on the east coast than it otherwise would've been. so while they're building in the east and moving west, aku slides up california to conquer the west and move east.

THE CONCLUSION - and eventually he gets around to the FUCKING tundras. and now he's conquered the world yahoo yippee.

but a caveat: he's conquered the world... once. at one point or another he has held every major population center on the planet, but he hasn't yet held them at the same time. taking over the americas means he's utterly lost his grip on east asia by now—if he even held it at all by the time he reached brazil. how much of europe and africa is still under his sway? how many of the people he bribed/bullied into maintaining his rule are still ruling—how many have been overthrown or killed or just decided to declare themselves the rulers in his absence? when's the last time he visited australia??

somewhere in the americas he realized that if something didn't change he'd end up spending all eternity circling the globe like a dog chasing its tail trying to re-conquer his lost lands while the lands he just left behind slipped out of his grip again. and humans are getting more dangerous. their gunpowder weapons are shooting bigger bullets and/or a whole bunch of bullets simultaneously. they're making bombs and trains and steel ships. possibly nukes?? and listen—aside from the sword, nothing of this world can harm Aku, but the show establishes multiple times over that there's plenty in this world that can hurt Aku, and the humans are getting pretty good at hurting.

this is the point at which we're told in canon that aku grew impatient with the pace of his conquest—and got himself a fucking robot army.