Unnatural Disaster
by Potato Nose is a Worm Alternate Universe Fic with Taylor gaining a different power.
Warning: The very premise of this fic involves major spoilers for Worm! Proceed at your own risk!
When Zion and Eden encounter Abaddon, something seemingly minor changes - a Repair shard gets dislodged. Lost without the rest of its kin, it seeks to emulate the other shards' methodology, and takes Taylor Hebert on as a host instead of the Queen Administrator doing so.
Brockton Bay, USA, Earth Bet, 2009. Two years before canon's start. A trio of Merchants assail her and Emma Barnes while on an otherwise routine visit to the mall, and Taylor's best friend bleeds out. At the funeral, Taylor reaches her breaking point and she suddenly sees what she could have done to make things right again.
When she enters high school, she makes friends with a boy named Travis Schechter and a girl named Sophia Hess, and things get interesting.
This fanfic contains examples of the following:
- Acquired Poison Immunity: In 5.7 Lung awakens from the sedative used on him prematurely, having built up an immunity to it.
- Adaptational Heroism: Sophia is a genuine hero here, apparently because Emma isn't around to form a feedback loop of negativity with.
- And Show It to You: In 2.8, Sophia pulls Egbert's heart out of his body and lets him see it, finishing him off.
- Chekhov's Gunman: In 1.6 we encounter a skinhead schoolmate of Taylor's called Egbert Rhine. He eventually turns out to be the one who kills Travis.
- In-Series Nickname: Abbadon calls Eden and Zion "kennelmaster" and "hound" respectively.
- Me's a Crowd: Taylor eventually learns how to duplicate herself.
- The Mole: Debonair is a Cauldron plant within Protectorate ENE, and high-ranking enough that unlike Battery he gets Door privileges.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In 5.7 Taylor vomits from the realisation of how badly things could have gone without Scion's intervention.
- No-Sell:
- Something about the Repair shard prevents Contessa from using Path to Victory on Taylor.
- Most Breaker, Brute and Changer shards, being specialised for their purpose, can make changes to their host parahumans faster than Repair can affect them, thus preventing Taylor from directly affecting the hosts.
- Oh, Crap!: Debonair starts trembling in 5.4 when he realizes that Taylor has been doing stuff. For very good reason as it turns out.
- Person of Mass Destruction: As of 5.3 Taylor can create kinetic kill vehicles with antimatter payloads. In 5.6 she manipulates nuclei to directly use neutron bombardment.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Travis.
- Serial Escalation: Taylor does increasingly creative and scary things with her power as the story progresses.
- Wham Episode:
- In 2.8, Travis and family get kidnapped by Empire 88. It ends with his death.
- In 6 Interlude 1, Danny thinks he's gotten Taylor killed and triggers with the Queen Administrator.
- Wham Line:
- 3.b.
Satisfied the room was secure, he said, "Door me."- 4.e.
"Holy shit Dragon's been hacked by the Simurgh!" - Your Head Asplode: Taylor converts all the water in Kaiser's head to steam, causing this to happen.
