Scott Tyler

"I killed my foster father when I was eleven years old"

- Scott Tyler

Scott Tyler is one of the antagonists in The Power of Five series by Anthony Horowitz. He is not everybody's classic antagonist, because he is one of the Five, the heroes, but because of everybody's rejections of him and his lack of trust in the Five, he betrays them and becomes one of the main antagonists.

Scott is the counterpart to Judas Iscariot, the treacherous Disciple.

Origins
Scott and his brother Jamie were found abandoned on a lonely road in California. They were found by authorities and called the Seed Box Babies because they were left in a seed box. They quickly grew to minor fame and everybody was fascinated by their tattoos, because who would tattoo a baby? They had a tattoo on their left shoulder, a circle with a line through it. Nobody knew what it meant, but everyone thought it meant something because of its significance. Scott Tyler was described as the elder of the two although they were twins. Him and his brother Jamie were sent for adoption and everybody knew they were Native American, but nobody knew their parents, although they asked all the Natives at all the reservations.

Scott and Jamie were eventually sent to a couple in Carson City, and were fostered there. Ed and Leanne were the couple and for a while things seemed to be alright.

But then Jamie, his brother, decided to get revenge on a teacher who was always putting them in detention for knowing too much about him, and Jamie slashed the man's tyres on his Beetle, and he got caught, and arrested. Scott snapped at this point. He first showed his dark side, and said that Jamie was an idiot, a fool and stupid to get caught. Scott said that Jamie was an embarrasment to him and that there was no way he was forgiving Jamie for slashing the tyres, and that he deserved arrest and everything else. And the irony was, this was true.

Jamie was released but put on probation and community service, and Ed and Leanne fell apart.

Killing his stepfather
One day, Ed was planning on seperating Scott and Jamie and putting them in completely different states. Ed was drinking, and hitting Jamie, and the odd thing was, Scott got the bruises. Scott and Ed then began yelling at each other and Ed was drinking from the bottle and getting violent. Finally, Scott said "Nobody's going to seperate us. You can go hang yourself."

Ed got up and he had a confused look on his face and he got to a ladder in the garage and did kill himself. Scott knew he was to blame, and he was secretly proud of it, he used the same power on a bully at school, when he was beating up Jamie, and told the bully to "get lost" and he did, he walked out into the desert and almost died of heatstroke.

Uncle Don
Don, a friend of Ed's, contacted Leanne and she arranged for Scott and Jamie to go and live with Don instead. By now, their case worker had told the boys they had a supernatural power called "telepathy" meaning they could control and read each others' minds and other people's. This scared Jamie but Scott was pleased he had some power to control people.

Don  abused the children, putting them onstage against their wishes and exploiting their powers, which he didn't believe in. He also made them call him uncle, although he wasn't family at all. Don was cruel to them, like Ed, hitting Jamie, but Scott got hurt. Scott always stood in front of Jamie whenever Don was around.

Scott hated everyone, apart from Jamie, and wanted to make millions of dollars, then retire, and he told Jamie he would need to start caring for himself.

Nightrise Corporation and torture
One day, at the telepathic exhibition, one woman named Alicia stood up and asked for news of her missing son, Daniel, and Scott was able to see the boy in her mind although he had been blindfolded as part of the exhibition and he couldn't see. Scott had previously identified the two men who were in the audience as Nightrise Corporation agents, which the last man, Banes, didn't seem bothered about. Scott identified that Daniel was still alive, and made Alicia confused and angry, but Scott added that Alicia was blaming herself for losing him.

In the evening, the Nightrise men came for Scott and Jamie, and Scott did all he could to protect Jamie and lock all the doors. They ran out of the theatre but the men followed with stun guns. Scott was shot with a dart and fell to his knees, telling Jamie to run. He was captured by the two men and taken to the Silent Creek prison in Nevada.

All the staff in the prison were cruel to Scott, and Max Koring, the boss, was an agent of Nightrise, and he and a woman, Susan Mortlake, tortured Scott with Colton Banes watching. Scott was put under brutal forms of torture, mind manipulation and sleep deprivation, and Susan moved on to using knives on Scott and analysing his fear. Scott was driven insane by the constant tortures, and became a being of hate, fear and callousness, very different from the boy he once was.

Totally brainwashed, abused and in the control of Nightrise, Scott was made to be the assassin of Senator John Trelawney, and given the role by Susan who had suggested that they use one of the Five to kill the man. Scott was instructed by Susan to kill John at his birthday parade in Auburn but at the last minute, Jamie came in and tried to contact Scott, but Scott had erected a stone wall in his mind to block out others, and Jamie had to get Warren Cornfield, the agent who Scott had ordered to kill John, to kill Susan rather than the senator. This worked, and Scott was broken out of the trance he had been in, but was still mentally damaged.

A very gloomy, depressed and traumatized Scott went with Jamie escaping from police to South America, where they got an interdimensional church door through to Peru, and went down by bus to the farmhouse where professor Chambers lived with Matt and Pedro and Richard Cole. Four of the Five were together, but Matt wasn't very welcoming to Scott. He in fact almost ignored him, and greeted Jamie first.

Life in Peru
Scott got on with Pedro, the professor and Richard, but hated Matt, probably because of his distrust of him from the start. Scott bore a severe grudge against Matt, for being a leader, (Scott believed no one should be in charge and that Matt had usurped his position) and thought Matt was an incompetent, rude coward. Scott thought he should be in charge, and that the Five were making stupid decisions.

Scott tested a visitor to the house, Ramon, who had been sent by Diego Salamanda to manipulate the Five into having the diary of Saint Joseph. Matt asked Jamie to read Ramon's mind, thus showing his distrust of Scott, but Scott hated Matt and demanded he do it. Scott read Ramon's mind and said he was honest. But then shortly afterwards, Ramon was killed by Undead corpses sent by Chaos, to destroy Matt's passport and prevent them meeting with Scarlett, the fifth Gatekeeper.

In the chaos, Scott refused to save Pedro, and Matt was left to save him. Scott just shut down due to the injuries Susan had put on him, and Scott was unable to use his powers. The carnage ended with professor Chambers killed and Matt and Jamie turning against Scott.

In the morning, all of the Five were reduced to arguing, and all of them blamed Matt and Scott. Scott couldn't take this any more and when Matt suggested that he go to London with Pedro or Jamie and leave Scott behind, this was the final insult. Scott essentially told Matt to piss off and said he hated them all, and stormed off into the ruins of his bedroom to sulk.

Jamie asked Scott telepathically why he'd been left behind and Scott said it was because Matt hated him and didn't trust him. But although Jamie confronted Matt about this, Matt had the cheek to lie.

Although Scott hated all the Five, this didn't stop him rushing out to the portal door in Hong Kong to save Jamie from an assassin. The temple collapsed due to Scarlett being shot, and the typhoon rushed in, and Matt failed in Scott's trust completely, as he threw caution to the winds and ran into the door, and Scott and Pedro ran in together, all the Five got out, but Chaos laughed as he saw that the trick he had played was going to make him win.

Oblivion
In the last book, Scott and Pedro ended up in Italy. They came out of a church door, and Scott wondered why it was suddenly so dark and smoky, as if there had been a huge battle, and why the world looked so desolate. Scott asked if they should go back in the door, but police came running up and beat the pair up. Scott and Pedro were flung into jail, and Scott got bitter, hateful, evil and angry, and blamed everyone but himself for the events now.

Scott was so angry he refused to eat or exercise and by the time the guards came to take him to Jonas Mortlake, he was so weak he could barely think and he believed an execution would be a relief. Scott was dragged up to the hall and he hallucinated, believing he saw Susan Mortlake, but then it turned out to be Jonas, who welcomed him and tempted him into the evil side, saying that humans were evil and that the world deserved to die. Scott agreed with the man, and he joined forces with Jonas, even though he had been the son of his torturer, and Scott believed he would get wealth and food and luxury if he sided with the Old Ones.

Proving his evil, Scott sadistically asked for Pedro's finger to be broken, and then went to bed.

Scott then betrayed Pedro and his servant friend Giovanni to the police, he said that Giovanni had helped Pedro escape, and that his family should be shot. Scott had dinner with Charles Baker, president of the United States of America, and he toasted Scott and Scott relished in his luxury. Despite Pedro saying Scott was only toying with the Old Ones by pretending to join them, from his cold and callous comments about how he wanted to betray Pedro in exchange for a coke, Scott really did seem to have fallen.

Scott and Jonas then prepared to fly to Antarctica, but Scott noticed Pedro's finger and he forgot that he had ordered it broken. So he sadistically tortured Jonas and then broke his own finger telepathically. Scott became colder and colder as he went to Antarctica. He gleefully celebrated the deaths of millions in Naples when Vesuvius blew up, and Scott delighted in seeing humans enslaved and tortured in the palace of Oblivion. Scott said he would do anything to stop himself being enslaved, and so when Jonas asked him to do a favour for the Old Ones, he accepted, knowing that he would die if he didn't.

Scott gave a message to Omar, and he sent the man to contact the World Army freedom fighters, and to get him and Matt to meet in Skoua Bay in Antarctica. Scott promised he had useful information and he regretted his treachery, but Matt met him although he tried to be dissuaded and he knew it was bad. Scott coldly smiled at him and welcomed him, but then betrayed him to the Old Ones at a click of his fingers. Scott watched as the Old Ones dragged off Matt and Richard, and went back to the fortress.

Back at the fortress, Scott felt that things were changing, the meat he ate changed to maggot strewn rotten flesh, his bedsheets were changing to straw full of insects, and his fire would go out then come back later. Scott became angry at the betrayal by the Old Ones, and he went down to the interdimensional door in Oblivion, and was suddenly accosted by Jonas. Scott was viciously beaten up by Jonas, who said he was evil and the Old Ones didn't want his treachery any more. Although Scarlett and Jamie saved him too late, and Lohan killed Jonas, Scott snapped the electric chain in half, zapping his whole body, and mortally wounding him, adding to the wounds he had gathered from the beating. The dying Scott saw the sky turn red because Matt had been killed, and then he smiled before he died, and told Jamie to tell Matt something, and then he died.