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And it also leads to the discovery of a global conspiracy to kill off 99% of the world's population...
''The Secret Return of Alex Mack'' can be found [http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-28614/DianeCastle+The+Secret+Return+of+Alex+Mack.htm here]. It is the first story in and the original inspiration for ''[[The Teraverse]]'', a [[Shared World]] writing project, as well as one segment of Castle's larger series, ''[
Although an effort has been made to conceal anything that might be too big a spoiler for the overall story, there are still likely to be spoilerish details unhidden in the text below -- consider this fair warning that you might run into them.
Artwork for ''The Secret Return'' can be found on the home page of ''[http://www.tthfanfic.org/Series-2585 A Brane of Extraordinary Women]''.▼
{{Megacrossover List}}
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[[In-Universe]] works which affect the plot in one way or another:
* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'': Like many other works listed below, this show seems to have been created and broadcast a decade or more earlier than it appeared in our timeline.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': At one point Alex is watching the show and complaining about how [[Genre Blindness|Genre Blind]] the characters are.
* ''[[Dune]]''
* ''[[Hackers]]'': Willow deliberately lifts her handle as Terawatt's hacking expert -- "Acid Burn" -- from Angelina Jolie's character in this movie. Several characters notice and comment on it.
* ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'': Appears to have made it to the air a couple years earlier than in our timeline, as one of the SRI's original pair of hackers goes by "captainmal".
* ''[[The Herculoids]]'': Source of codenames for the India op, after a much-earlier joking threat by Jack to do so.
* ''[[The Incredible Hulk (TV series)|The Incredible Hulk]]'': The first time Alex really comprehends what Willow can do with a computer, and what she might have done to Larry Ellison and Oracle had she wanted to get revenge, she mutters the classic line "Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry" to herself.
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* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' makes multiple appearances in the story, most notably an episode featuring a sketch that stars Azure Crush and [[Pamela Anderson]] as Terawatt.
* ''[[The Shadow]]'': Danielle Atron uses characters from ''The Shadow'' as metaphors for the identities of Alex and Terawatt.
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'': Jack O'Neill is a major fan and has appropriated Mr. Burns' [[Catch Phrase]], "Eggggggscellent".
* ''[[Transformers]]'': More code names, plus Jack gets the term "[[Hate Plague]]" from it.
▲Artwork for ''The Secret Return'' can be found on the home page of ''[http://www.tthfanfic.org/Series-2585 A Brane of Extraordinary Women]''.
{{tropelist}}
== A-E ==
* [[Action Girl]]: Alex, Hanna, Jo, even Shar. Hanna's code name ''is'' "Action Girl".
* [[All Jews Are Ashkenazi]]: Averted: Willow's parents are explicitly identified more than once as ''Ashkenazi'' Jews, implicitly acknowledging the existence of other Jewish subcultures and genotypes.
* [[Alter Kocker]]: Mina tells a story to Alex and friends which ends up with her grandmother calling her grandfather this.
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* [[Beware the Nice Ones]]: What the SRI in general think of Alex -- a sweet, innocent kid who you'd think would run home crying if you were mean to her, but who is actually an unstoppable force of nature -- and who doesn't quite realize just how impressive she is.
* [[Bi the Way]]: Willow. And Azure Crush's best friend Didi.
* [[Big Creepy-Crawlies]]: The giant tarantula and its offspring.
* [[Big Eater]]: Alex, although she does her best to hide it around people who don't know she's Terawatt, and she has far better manners than the usual example of this trope. Because she burns a huge amount of calories even when she's ''not'' using her powers, she needs to eat three or more times as much as a normal human.
* [[Big Stupid Doodoo Head]]: "Jerkhead" seems to be about the worst thing Alex is capable of calling someone -- with one notable exception.
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“Yes sir,” Alex agreed unhappily.}}
* [[The Cameo]]: Several of the sources in the list above contribute characters who just make a couple small but plot-relevant appearances.
** World-class cosplayer (and voice actress) [https://web.archive.org/web/20170429134300/http://www.heavymetal.com/news/jessica-nigris-26-most-epic-cosplays/ Jessica Nigri] appears as an unnamed blonde Alex spots at Comic-Con (semi)dressed as [[Pokémon|Pikachu]].
* [[The Cape (trope)|The Cape]]: Terawatt. She's the ''archetype'' of the Cape for her world.
* [[Captain Ersatz]]: Local versions of various [[DCU]] characters begin appearing, most notably Bruce "Batman" Paine.
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* [[Child Soldiers]]: What Jack O'Neill can't help but see Alex and the other super-powered teens in his command as, and feels guilty about it. It comes to a head when Shar manages to get herself onto the battlefield against {{spoiler|Gojira}}; it doesn't matter that she's the one who actually took down the foe, Jack goes ballistic about an eight-year-old in combat and she gets banned from even getting ''near'' to any future SRI operations.
* [[Choke Holds]]: Alex's signature move in the back half of the story is to telekinetically clamp her opponent's carotid artery shut, resulting in near-instant unconsciousness for most targets. (Sadly, it didn't work on Gojira)
* [[Clark Kenting]]: Alex makes an extensive effort to visually differentiate herself from Terawatt. Terawatt's masked costume incorporates platform boots, a padded bra and a shoulder-length light-blonde wig along with subtle makeup (actually coloration on a saran-wrap-thin sheet of plastic that adheres to her face, for near-instant application) to appear older and much taller, and she deepens her voice and speaks in a manner she sometimes thinks of as pompous. Meanwhile, in her "civilian" identity, she's gradually dyed her hair several shades darker than her natural blonde and cut it [[Pixie cut|pixie-style]], and habitually wears flats to appear much shorter than Terawatt. Terawatt also tends to hover anywhere from a couple inches to a foot and a half off the ground at all times just to reinforce the illusion of height; most observers think she's in the vicinity of six feet tall or more and built like [[Pamela Anderson]].
** Played with a bit, also, in that Terawatt occupies a role in her world much like Superman's in the DCU -- and her secret identity is a journalist. (Well, journalism student.)
** Averted several times by persons (most notably {{spoiler|Sheila Rosenberg and Margaret Walsh}}) who put together a lot of little details -- her chin, her gestures, a few other things -- and figure out her identity. Hermione Granger similarly manages to connect Terawatt and Alex's "Annie Farrell" identity.
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* [[Cluster F-Bomb]]: Most of Azure Crush/Jo Baker's dialogue.
** Jo Lupo has a fair share as well.
* [[Code Name]]: Alex chooses "Terawatt" after much discussion, and is the first public superhero to use a codename (at least until the other writers of [[The Teraverse]] began filling in the world history), and inspires the use of code names by the supers who come after her.
* [[The Commandments]]: Alex's college mentor, Frank West, ticks off a list of rules for being a photojournalist at the start of her first assignment with him. Some are numbered, some aren't; they include things like "don't drive a flashy car that might get stolen or noticed, especially if you are trying to follow people", "never be a dick to people who are going to be holding your life in your hands", and "never pick a fight unless you know there's no way you can lose".
* [[The Conspiracy]]: The Collective. From the internal politics we occasionally see, they act something like a cross between a [[Mega Corp]] and a [[Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy]].
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* [[Deep-Cover Agent]]: {{spoiler|Claire Tobias, NID agent}}.
* [[Defictionalization]]: In-Universe: Shar combines her fire powers with training in Shaolin Kung Fu in order to learn how to do [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|"firebending"]]. Oddly, it seems to work. And after this point, she only ever refers to her powers as "firebending".
* [[Deliberate Injury Gambit]]: {{spoiler|During the raid on the Collective tepui, Riley allows Jo to stab him -- apparently killing him -- so she can establish her bonafides as a [[Double Agent]]; both are relying on his [[Healing Factor]] to make the normally deadly wound survivable. It works, twice over -- Jo gets inside the Collective, and Riley's "corpse" is ignored during the attack until he starts attacking from the inside.}}
* [[Despair Event Horizon]]: Alex hurtles headlong toward this after {{spoiler|Shar's [[Heroic Sacrifice]]}}. It takes {{spoiler|the Collective kidnapping Jack and Willow from their honeymoon}} to pull her back.
* [[Determinator]]/[[Plucky Girl]]: Alex. No matter how tired, scared, hungry or hurt she is, she just does not stop doing what is right and necessary.
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* [[Disney Princess]]: On a trip to Disneyland, Alex finds (authorized) Terawatt merchandise being sold alongside the various Princesses, and objects (privately) that she's not a Disney princess.
* [[The Ditz]]: Azure Crush's [[Muggle]] best friend Didi isn't exactly the sharpest spoon in the drawer, but she can be surprisingly [[Genre Savvy]].
* [[Does Not Know His Own Strength]]: Revealed to have happened at least a couple times to Willow as a child -- most notably an incident where she injured her father by greeting him too enthusiastically -- but carefully hidden from her by her parents.
* [[
* [[The Duke of Wellington]]: The ancestor of [[Harry Potter|Ron Wellesley]], whose father is the current Duke.
* [[Dying Moment of Awesome]]: {{spoiler|Shar's [[Heroic Sacrifice]] after she's infected by the nanobots. She essentially turns herself into a thermonuclear bomb to halt the impending [[Grey Goo]] Disaster.}}
* [[Dynamic Entry]]: Hanna parachutes through a skylight to enter the battle against Bane and Poison Ivy.
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== F-J ==
* [[Fan Convention]]: Early in the story, Willow and Alex attend San Diego Comic-Con, where they both cosplay most of weekend, and Alex makes an appearance as Terawatt to judge a Terawatt costume contest -- and stop an armored car robbery.
* [[Fangirl]]: Many examples, particularly aimed at Terawatt: most notably Ayananta, the Indian super, who is wearing a Terawatt T-shirt when first seen; and Annie's major professor.
** Azure Crush turns out to be a bit of a [[Pamela Anderson]] fangirl.
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* [[A Father to His Men]]: Jack O'Neill respects and protects the people under his command from anyone outside the SRI.
* [[Feed the Mole]]: One of Jack O'Neill's plans for dealing with known Collective agents in the SRI. Played with at the climax of the story, when things become so confused the reader can't be sure who's trustworthy and who's not.
* [[Festering Fungus]]: The green slime which threatened the International Space Station.
* [[Filk Song]]: Several are provided as part of Castle's end-of-chapter author's notes.
* [[Forced Meme]]: Alex enlists Willow's (and Buffy Summers', and an entire team of people's) help to replace a growing meme she doesn't like ("tera-" as a general intensifier prefix, for good or bad things equally) with one she does like ("tera", meaning "really really good"). Unlike most examples of this trope, the effort succeeds to the extent that most people seem to have entirely forgotten the earlier usage.
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* [[It's Raining Men]]: The SRI frequently deploys its personnel -- Hanna in particular -- into combat by parachute.
** Terawatt takes this [[Up to Eleven]] by dropping from jets at 600MPH and 30,000 feet -- ''without'' a parachute.
* [[It's the Only Way to Be Sure]]: Happens off-screen when the Chinese nuke several of their cities to prevent the spread of a Collective bioweapon.
== K-O ==
* [[Sir Swearsalot|Lady Swears-A-Lot]]: Azure Crush.
* [[Large Ham]]:
* [[Latex Perfection]]:
* [[Leet Lingo]]:
* [[Literally Fearless]]: Hanna "Action Girl" Heller is a genetically-engineered [[Super Soldier]] who is incapable of experiencing (or understanding) fear by deliberate design. She eventually learns caution and how to rationally evaluate enemies vis-à-vis her own abilities, and her inability to feel fear comes in handy as a defense against at least one psychic attack.
* [[MacGyvering]]:
* [[Male Gaze]]:
* [[Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex]]: Charlie O'Neill encounters this trope when his girlfriend Hanna "Action Girl" Heller involuntarily injures his hand with her thighs when he manually stimulates her to orgasm.
** Hearing about this, Alex wonders how other superstrong people, specifically Azure Crush, manage to have sex with their partners without hurting them.
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* [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover]]
* [[Master of Illusion]]: The supervillain who tried to rob Comic-Con could project full-sensory illusions, although with a limited range.
* [[May-December Romance]]:
* [[Me's a Crowd]]:
* [[The Merch]]:
* [[Meta Origin]]:
** On a different level, a large number of superhumans and monsters directly owe their existence to [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Dr. Margaret Walsh]] and/or her research.
* [[Metaphorgotten]]: From chapter 127:
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* [[Mood Whiplash]]: The aftermath of the Carrie White incident is the first instance of this we see in the story, but is nothing compared to what happens after {{spoiler|Shar makes a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to stop a [[Grey Goo]] disaster.}}
* [[Most Common Superpower]]: Deliberately invoked in the design of the Terawatt costume, which dramatically exaggerates Alex's naturally slender and modestly-endowed figure in order to make a visible difference in their appearances.
* [[Muggle Foster Parents]]: Possessed by most if not all Breslynn Orphans, as well as their predecessors from earlier generations of Collective efforts.
* [[Mundane Utility]]: Alex figures out how to charge rechargeable batteries with her lightning, and uses this to keep her cameras, cell phones and other gadgets going at all times. She also uses her TK to clean the house, do dishes, and to pick locks, as well as stabilize her camera when taking photographs.
** Tsurara, who sucks the heat out of everything around her, gets a job as the cooling system for a nuclear power plant.
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** Hanna uses her [[Super Senses]] to make sure her boyfriend is keeping up on his personal hygiene.
* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: {{spoiler|"Dani" Atron, after splitting from -- and defeating -- the original Danielle Atron.}}
* [[Nanomachines]]: The focus of, and last gasp project of, the American bloc of the Collective. See ''Grey Goo'' above.
* [[Narrative Profanity Filter]]: Alex does this to her own recollections of other people's speech, usually in the form of "X said bleepity-bleep, and they didn't actually say 'bleep'."
* [[Nebulous Evil Organisation]]: The Collective.
* [[The Nicknamer]]: Jack O'Neill.
* [[Nigh Invulnerability]]:
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* [[Older Than They Look]]: {{spoiler|Terawatt in the final epilogue, when we learn that Alex's powers apparently include arrested aging, and that 71 years later she still appears to be in her mid-twenties.}}
* [[Omnicidal Maniac]]s: The Collective is an entire organization of these, planning to kill off 99% of the world's population. However, at least some of them are doing so [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|to prevent what they see as an inevitable Malthusian catastrophe]]. After which they will rule what is left.
* [[Online Alias]]: Has a self-aware mix. Willow Rosenberg consciously lifts "Acid Burn" from ''[[Hackers]]'' to use when she becomes Terawatt's online support, but when she was younger she used "S4l1x480" (which cleverly points back to her, as ''salix'' is the genus of all willows, and 480 references a wavelength of light in the red portion of the visible spectrum). There was also P$ychon4ut, a [[The Cracker|villainous, misogynistic hacker]] she helped get sent to jail.
* [[One Steve Limit]]: When the Macks take in [[Firestarter|Charlene "Charlie" McGee]], they start calling her "Shar"; within the story this is part of hiding her identity from Shop agents who might still be hunting her, but on the meta level it's probably as much because there was already a character named "Charlie" in play.
** Averted with the probably-inevitable collision between Dr. Samantha Carter and Dr. Samantha Finn.
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* [[One-Man Army|One-Woman Army]]: Terawatt, more because of her [[Determinator]] qualities than because of sheer power.
* [[Open-Minded Parent]]s: The Macks, who learned of Alex's powers in the finale of ''The Secret World of Alex Mack'', and have been nothing but supportive of her decision to be a public superhero upon her return from the events in ''The League of Extraordinary Women''.
** The parents of Danny, one of Shar's friends, who come to understand that their son is actually [[Transgender|"a little girl who'll need medical assistance"]].
== P-T ==
* [[People Jars]]: Alex finds a room full of them under the Spencer Mansion during the ''Resident Evil'' arc -- only they don't precisely have ''people'' in them.
* [[Person of Mass Destruction]]: Shar is described as being a living WMD. In a note at the end of that chapter, the author explicitly references this trope as a "correction".
* [[Pixie cut]]: One of the first changes Alex makes to her "everyday" appearance to differentiate her from Terawatt is to cut her shoulder-length locks back to a simple pixie cut.
* [[Playing with Fire]]: Shar's primary powerset, along a smattering of classic psychic powers.
* [[Pop Culture Isolation]]: Hanna, initially. Jack and his son among others work assiduously to change this.
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* [[Reasonable Authority Figure]]: Jack, the elder Macks, a few others. Outside of the villains and politicians, it's actually hard to find an authority figure who ''isn't'' reasonable.
* [[Reckless Gun Usage]]: Studiously averted with everyone in the story who is supposed to know how to use firearms; everyone realistically adheres to [[Gun Safety]] protocols.
* [[Rob Liefeld]]: Alex explicitly namechecks him when rejecting the idea of adding a leg-mounted pouch to the Terawatt costume.
* [[The Rule of First Adopters]]: Some of the first "fan" websites about Terawatt are basically porn sites.
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** After returning from her extradimensional adventure in ''[[The League of Extraordinary Women]]'', Alex designs a superhero identity for herself. The story is basically about what happens once she begins using it in public. The story also [[Deconstructed Trope|''deconstructs'' the trope]] by showing how difficult it is to maintain a comic-book-style secret identity even with a government agency and a genius hacker helping cover for her -- and even then at least two people ''still'' put together all the details available to the public and work out who she is.
*** In addition to Terawatt, Alex has several other identities, including Lt. Annie Farrell, Jack's quietly competent hacker/adjutant, and a teenaged version of Annie Farrell. Hermione Granger deduces that "Annie" is actually Terawatt.
** [[Firestarter|Shar]] chooses a hero identity -- "Pyre" -- and makes her own costume in imitation of Alex's.
** [[Hanna]] ends up wearing a mask and her hair differently when on operations to protect her privacy.
** [[The Wild Thornberrys|Eliza Thornberry]] takes "Shaman" as a codename; her sister Debbie designs a costume for her.
** [[My Secret Identity|Andrew Clements]] decides on "Ultraman".
* [[Self-Destruct Mechanism]]/[[Load-Bearing Boss]]: Wesker in the Spencer Mansion during the ''Resident Evil'' arc.
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* [[Shout-Out]]: Almost every second line uttered by Jack O'Neill is a pop culture reference, ranging from ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' to ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]]''.
* [[Show Within a Show]]: In addition to the "real" works that also exist in the Teraverse listed above, a children's program called ''The Fuzzy Family'' gets several mentions.
* [[Shrouded in Myth]]: Outside of the SRI, her team and her family, almost no one really knows the limits of Terawatt's powers. For instance, few people know that the SRI uses the last two operational SR-71 "Blackbird" planes to get her where she's needed ''fast'' and assume she can fly at supersonic speeds.
* [[Snark Knight]]: Jack.
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* [[Superhero]]
* [[Superhero Paradox]]: Inverted. Almost all the villainous individuals and organizations already existed before the start of the story, and most of the superheroes become such to oppose them. In particular, Alex chooses to become a superheroine mainly because there was already a supervillain out there -- Danielle Atron -- who had attacked her and her family, and who was ''manufacturing'' other supervillains to do her dirty work.
* [[Suspicious Videogame Generosity]]: [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Alex when, while carrying a bazooka and working her way through the Spencer Mansion during the ''[[Resident Evil]]'' arc, she keeps finding caches of bazooka ammunition in unexpected but advantageous places. She can't figure out ''why'', unless the villain she's pursuing is doing it to mess with her head or lead her into a trap.
* [[Take Our Word for It]]: We never do find out exactly what is in the "Kids of the Breslynn Orphanage" email which made Riley, Lupo and Willow react so strongly.
* [[Take Over the World]]: One of the goals of the Collective -- once they clear out a pesky few billion people here and there.
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* [[Took a Level in Badass]]: Alex, continuously, without ever really noticing, even when others point it out.
* [[Totally Radical]]: Alex's father, possibly deliberately invoking this trope, comments on Alex's (successful) attempt to influence developing slang by asking her about her efforts to "pimp rad lingo". Alex complains he's out of date.
▲* [[Trademark Favorite Drink]]: Alex prefers Diet Coke to almost anything. Given the absolutely ''huge'' amount of food she has to eat to fuel her powers, almost everyone in the know about her finds this both amusing and ironic.
* [[Training from Hell]]: Alex puts herself through this, slowly ramping up the difficulty as her physical and psychic limits grow. For example, by the middle of the story she's doing 100 upside-down sit-ups every morning by holding herself to a wall with her TK. Plus martial arts training from another super. And her academic schedule could be seen as just another form of this.
* [[Transformation Sequence]]: Played with. Alex basically dives in her liquid form into a gym bag holding her costume, and pretty much just flows into it, then comes back out and returns to human shape.
** However, people watching find the change to be startling and the difference in personality and presence between bubbly, slightly insecure Alex and the stolidly confident Terawatt to be profound and even a little unsettling, to the point that some suggest it's actually a case of [[Multiple Personalities]]. Then again, those whom Alex trusts enough to relax around while Terawatt often see that bubbly personality emerge from behind the hero persona. Which can be just as and maybe a bit more disconcerting.
* [[
* [[Troubling Unchildlike Behavior]]: Occasionally demonstrated by Shar, either because of her traumatic experiences with the Shop, or because as a poorly-controlled telepath she can't help but pick up adult things from adult minds.
* [[Twin Tails]]: Hanna wears a clip-on pair as part of her disguise during the Korean op.
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** Willow herself occasionally drops the odd word of Yiddish into her speech, like "plotz".
** Alex is shocked speechless by [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|what Mel Brooks got away with]] when Willow translates all the Yiddish in ''[[Blazing Saddles]]'' for her.
* [[Younger Than She Looks]]: Alex as Terawatt; she's deliberately designed both the uniform and the persona to give the impression that Terawatt's in her middle twenties. When people first learn her secret identity, one of the most common reactions is to comment on how young Alex seems in comparison to Terawatt. For instance, when Julie "Batgirl" Madison first meets Alex out of the
** {{spoiler|Inverted into [[Older Than They Look]] in the final epilogue, when we learn that Alex's powers apparently include arrested aging, and that 71 years later she still looks to be in her mid-twenties.}}
** Played with for laughs when a disguised Shar (all of eight and three-quarters years old at the time) is identified as a "54-year-old midget" to someone who doesn't have clearance to know her real identity.
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{{reflist}}
{{Harry Potter Franchise}}
{{Stargate Franchise}}
[[Category:{{BASEPAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Pages Original to All The Tropes]]
[[Category:The Teraverse]]
[[Category:Fanfic]]
[[Category:Fan Works]]
[[Category:Fan Works of the 2010s]]
[[Category:Completed Fan Works]]
[[Category:The Secret World of Alex Mack/Fan Works]]
[[Category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Fan Works]]
[[Category:Stargate SG-1/Fan Works]]
[[Category:Harry Potter/Fan Works]]
[[Category:DC Universe/Fan Works]]
[[Category:Firestarter/Fan Works]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Secret Return of Alex Mack, The}}
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