Skitter's Surrender

 marks the occasion when Skitter surrendered to the PRT.

Prelude
Dinah Alcott gave Skitter a note telling her to "cut ties". Prompted by this, Taylor formulated a plan while talking to her mother's grave.

Taylor didn't tell any of the Undersiders what she was planning except for Tattletale, who she asked to keep it a secret. She told Tattletale to act against the PRT at sunset unless she recieved a signal.

She visited each of the Undersiders to make sure that they could manage their territories and privately say goodbye. She visited Tattletale, and briefly discussed the plan.

Events
Taylor travelled to the PRT ENE Headquarters and surrendered. They gave her a bunch of contradictory orders, then brought in Clockblocker to freeze her.

Cauldron were immediately concerned.

When Skitter awoke from Clockblocker's effect, she was cuffed with heavy duty restraints intended for low-level brutes. Director Tagg, the Protectorate and the Wards were all present. She was taken to a secure cell by Clockblocker and Triumph. A female PRT officer had her strip and searched her. She listened in on the heroes' discussions regarding her goals and how to contain her using her power. Her capture was widely reported on both TV and radio across the country, with the PRT press release designed to emphasize how dangerous her allies were.

Flechette contacted Parian to tell her and ask what was going on, but Parian had no idea. The Undersiders met up to discuss what had happened. Bitch refused to consider the possibility that she had left, dismissing it as another of Taylor's plans. The Undersiders and Parian met with Accord, who was offended by Skitter's seeming departure.

Flechette was asked to leave Skitter's range to make a phone call, which she used as an excuse to meet up with Parian. She waited for half an hour for her to get back to her house, getting herself into trouble with Miss Militia. She asked to defect and become Parian's lieutenant.

Kid Win began working with Sere to complete anti-Skitter defences. The heroes brought in Dinah Alcott, but she refused to cooperate and got in an argument with Tagg, telling him there was a 22.813% chance he was going to die slowly and painfully. They noticed the bugs in the air reacting to Skitter's anger and realised that she could hear them arguing.

After some time, Kid Win completed his drones and began sending them throughout the building to try and destroy Skitter's bugs. Flechette emailed Miss Militia to reveal she had defected.

Tagg and Miss Militia interrogated Skitter, and she revealed the deadline she had set up with the Undersiders. They allowed her to call her lawyer Quinn Calle. While Skitter waited silently for him to arrive, Tagg described his time fighting Simurgh victims in Lausanne, argued that the Birdcage was worse than execution, and pointed out that other villains had been inspired to attempt to take over other cities by her actions. Calle arrived, and he and Taylor talked privately, discussing her crimes and outlining the demands she hoped to make the PRT meet in exchange for her surrender.

After almost two hours of work, Taylor and Calle presented her demands: in exchange for her surrender, the Undersiders would be quietly allowed to operate unhindered, and Tagg would retire and be replaced by Miss Militia. She would become a PRT operative hunting the Slaughterhouse Nine. But Miss Militia revealed that the Nine had destroyed Toybox and vanished into a pocket dimension. While Skitter revised her terms, Tagg decided to bring in Taylor's dad, and sent out teams of heroes across the city. Taylor had Tattletale make a bid for the land around the portal in downtown Brockton Bay.

Taylor, her father, and Tagg argued. Tattletale arranged for all the land in a wide area around the portal, which she had been secretly buying up, to be given over to Sierra Kiley as a proxy for the Undersiders.

Alexandria arrived, dressed in a suit. She declared that she would capture or kill the Undersiders, one by one, until Taylor surrendered.

While Alexandria was out, Taylor attempted to call Tattletale and warn her using the phone in Tagg's office and her bugs. She would type out messages on the keyboard using her bugs, since she didn't have enough to hear or speak. Tattletale realized that Taylor was being fed bad info, but was unable to communicate this to her.

During this time, Taylor was sneaking more bugs into the room with each person who entered.

When Alexandria returned, she realised Skitter had warned the Undersiders. She also deduced that the villains had likely hired mercenaries to help them. Skitter realised that Alexandria was cold reading her. A person arrived on a stretcher wearing Regent's costume. After a brief conversation, she went out again and returned with a girl in Imp's costume. She was dripping wet, claiming that the Undersiders had used a hose and Ligeia's power to try and drown her. She offered to release the captured villains if Skitter agreed to confess and abandon her terms. Then she went out again, and this time a body bag returned with her. The "Undersiders" taken in were in fact body doubles, in a ruse shaped to make her either surrender or attack Alexandria and justify taking her out. Alexandria planned to evacuate the area before she snapped, avoiding the bugs and avoid the bugs herself using Cauldron's resources. Taylor would be sentenced to the Birdcage and then recruited by Cauldron on the way there.

When Alexandria returned, Skitter attacked her using her bugs, aiming for her mouth and sealing her airway with bugs and spider silk. Alexandria underestimated Taylor's emotions because she was offloading her cues to her bugs, prevening her from anticipating the attack was coming. Tagg drew a gun, but Taylor deflected it with a line of silk. She attacked Tagg with her bugs, but had them ignore Miss Militia and her father. Alexandria flew from the basement straight up through the roof and out of Taylor's range. Tagg ran toward Taylor, choking on his own tongue; Taylor's father tried to shield her but Tagg kicked him out of the way and slammed her against the table until PRT agents came in and tranquillised her.

Tagg and Alexandria both died while Taylor was unconscious.

Aftermath
Taylor woke in her cell, to find that her bugs had been weaving silk cord and searching the building while she was unconscious. Most of them had been destroyed by Kid Win's drones without her to tell them to avoid them; there were only a few hundred bugs in the entire building. The entire area had been evacuated out to the limits of her range (five blocks.) Tagg's body was in the morgue.

Skitter began trying to escape using Tagg's phone and keys, but before they reached her, Dragon and Defiant arrived on the roof. She watched and copied the code Defiant used to enter the building in order to escape her cell. Dragon and Defiant caught up with her as she tried to steal some special grenade loadouts to use against them and took her to the roof. She attacked them with spider silk, but it was largely ineffective. Miss Militia spoke to them through Dragon's suit, reminding them of the deadline, and Skitter realised that Alexandria had only pretended to hunt the Undersiders.

Taylor and the heroes agreed that she would call off the Undersiders, and they would agree to leave the Undersiders alone and appoint Miss Militia the interim leader of the PRT. Tattletale told her that rumours of Alexandria's death were already leaking out. Taylor called in her lawyer and made a more permanent deal with the heroes.

Taylor participated in a press conference that announced Alexandria had been twisted by the Simurgh and Taylor had helped the heroes defeat her. Taylor was voluntarily being taken into custody, and once she had served her sentence she would join the heroes as Weaver.