"Then Zerrer cracked his knuckles and made his one off Cape into a very interesting full fledged character."
— Doccer, spacebattles.com
Child Of Monsters is a Worm fanfic by Zerrer. The story is a quest, much like a Role-Playing Game.
You play as Anathema, a disconnected series of minds- both human and those taken from the dead 'shards' that died within Echidna near the end. They are, essentially, a hivemind made up of hundreds to thousands of different distinct personalities, most sub-sentient. Due to their nature, tends to prefer a plural 'they/them/we' pronouns, insofar as much as they can 'prefer' anything. They're still searching for who they really are, or if that's a concept that even applies, being just as much alien shard as human mind. They're naturally honest, finding that deceit doesn't come easily.
Tropes:
- Always a Bigger Fish: The Predators, an evolutionary offshoot of the Entities that prey on shard-based lifeforms instead of running the usual parasitic cycles. They possess multiple abilities to hunt shards and their hosts. Their eventual invasion is enough to make Scion and the Endbringers fight alongside humanity for the sake of survival.
- Asshole Victim: Many of the people that Ana kills are dangerous and vile villains. They run the gamut from insane clones to murderers and slavers. Heroes and minor villains just get a nonfatal asskicking.
- Bio-Armor: Blasto made some organic Powered Armor for Anathema to use.
- Body Horror: There is lots of it in the story.
- Anathema’s “egg” that allows them to resurrect herself. Anathema vomits it up, and the egg is a small pulsating form.
- Many of The Children suffer from this.
- Grasp had arms and legs that were too long.
- ”Lock” had mottled gray flesh.
- Unnamed Genesis Clone 1 was bloated, with a bulbous, twisted bottom half, and no legs. She continually oozed a muck that spawned small monsters.
- Chameleon Camouflage: Greenwhip, one of Blasto’s creations, can do this.
- Close-Range Combatant: Anathema’s multiple stacking Brute powers and strong Striker abilities, combined with Pillage’s close proximity requirements for power harvesting means that she typically engages enemies in melee.
- Combat Clairvoyance: Ana’s Danger Sense and Chronocognition serve as this for her. They alert her to potential dangers and give her a glimpse into the future to evade serious harm. However certain powers can blur her perception and render those powers useless.
- Cool vs. Awesome: A reincarnating immortal serial killer rallies some mad max wannabes to fight a monster that spawns evil clones.
- Cult: The Children are a cult of evil clones who worship their progenitor as a goddess.
- Enemy Mine: Everyone, heroes and villains, band together to fight The Children.
- After the Children are defeated, the Slaughterhouse Nine attack the city, heroes and villains, especially bitter rivals Blasto and Accord, work together to defeat them.
- Leviathan’s attack on Boston brings many heroes and villains together in the hopes of defeating the Endbringer. Anathema ends up landing the killing blow.
- The arrival of the Predators makes everyone join together to fight the apocalyptic threat they pose. Everyone including Behemoth, the Simurgh, and Scion himself join forces with humanity to fight the Predators.
- Heel–Face Turn: Following the defeat of the Slaughterhouse Nine, Blastgerm decides to go straight and become rogues selling healing plants rather than villains.
- Meaningful Name:
- The protagonist is a child of monsters.
- Anathema means “One that is cursed, disliked, or loathed.”
- Mind Hive: Anathema is, essentially, a hivemind made up of hundreds to thousands of different distinct personalities, most sub-sentient.
- Motherly Scientist: Blasto’s approach to his creations. Many of his creatures act in childlike ways and are given names like Toddle and Meep. Rey treats them like his own children, with Lauren and Ana as their mother and aunt figures. Special mention goes to Morrigan, the newborn fourth Blasphemy created from a piece of the Simurgh.
- One-Man Army: On several occasions, Anathema is capable of winning against many enemies all by herself.
- The final fight against the Children ends after Ana kills dozens of Children and their leader Goddess, a warped Glory Girl clone.
- Anathema annihilates Morning Glory after she escapes from their prison.
- After Anathema kills Leviathan, a group of the Fallen go on a rampage. They don’t last long against Ana.
- Planimal: Blasto makes some of these as minions.
- Power Perversion Potential: Subverted. Bad Apple is Blasto’s girlfriend. When she walks into the room, she sees a vat with a young woman suspended in it, and she assumed he tinkered up a biological sex doll.
- Royal "We": Anathema talks like this, as she is composed of many minds.
- Second Super-Identity: Ana has two cape identities that she uses depending on the circumstances:
- Anathema, her primary identity. A grab-bag cape (she later reveals to the Protectorate that she’s a Trump) and member of Blastgerm. She wears a leafy knight-like costume with a crown of antlers.
- Unity, her rogue bounty hunter identity. She uses her Thinker powers and weapons, both “tinker” and mundane. She wears a paramilitary outfit with a long coat.
- Some Call Me "Tim": Anathema’s name is shortened to “Ana” for casual conversation.
- Soul Jar: Anathema’s egg gives her Resurrective Immortality.
- Together in Death: Krouse lets Anathema eat him, so that he can be with Noelle.
- Variant Power Copying: Every time Anathema kills a parahuman, she gets a “mote”. This mote can be used to improve a current power, or to create a new power similar to the original.
- ”Grasp” had access to a pocket dimension/Hammerspace. The resulting power was called “Inventory”.
- Animos had Power Nullification. When Anathema killed him, they got “Interference,” an ability that destabilizes parahuman abilities with a touch.
- Wham Line: Then, with unusual strength, Rey slams the knife into his own skull.
