Evolution is a Worm/StarCraft crossover by Rater202.
After Ascending out of the Universe following Amon's defeat, newborn Xel'naga Sarah Kerrigan saw something she didn't like many universes away. Now the people of Earth Bet must evolve if they want to survive, starting with Taylor Hebert. Trigger warning: Suicidal thoughts and actions in the prologue.
It can be found on FanFiction.Net (here
) and SpaceBattles.com (here), and is complete.
Tropes:
- Absence of Evidence: The lack of any blood on her after busting out of the locker, save her bloodied knuckles from said busting out, is part of why Taylor suspects that things aren't what they seem, given what happened to the PRT agent she accidentally de-limbed due to not realizing her own strength and claw sharpness.
- Acquired Poison Immunity: Taylor starts dosing herself with various drugs so her Adaptive Ability will allow her to become immune to them, which proves to be a Properly Paranoid decision.
- Adaptive Ability: Taylor, as befitting her Zerg biology. Lisa even theorizes that it affects her based on her unconscious desires, as it made her taller and improved her figure after she adapted post Lung fight.
- Adaptational Badass: Danny triggers as a Tinker and starts building Terran Dominion technology, up to and including a Thor.
- An Arm and a Leg: Taylor loses a hand to Hookwolf, which is later reclaimed by Armsmaster.
- And the Adventure Continues: How the story ends, with Taylor pondering the future while several potential plot hooks are set up, like a letter from Bonesaw.
- Animate Body Parts: Taylor's severed hand apparently evolved into an independent organism and escaped into the vents on The Rig. It keeps smashing the drones that Armsmaster sends in after it and the maintenance staff are too scared of it to go after it, but otherwise, all it's done is get rid of a flock of seagulls that had previously gotten into the ventilation. And steal lunches from the break room. Tagg eventually returns it to Taylor as a sign of goodwill.
- Anger Born of Worry: Lisa after Taylor returns from the PRT building.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Taylor's Hybrid body lacks discernable primary sexual characteristics. This is part of her justification for taking fashion advice from Kerrigan.
- Crazy-Prepared: Taylor ramps up her quest to gain immunity to drugs after getting her severed hand taken by Armsmaster, even swapping spit with Newter. Armsmaster's tranquilizer cocktail, which had a number of Tinker-derived drugs, including an immunosuppressant to delay her adaptation to the cocktail, as well as enough concentrated carfentanil (which is about 10,000 times more potent than morphine) to kill a blue whale, fails to knock her out because it was partially derived from Newter's compounds, and just makes her high as a kite instead.
- Does Not Know Her Own Strength: Taylor accidentally ends up taking the arm off a PRT agent because she didn't realize how tough and sharp her claws were, especially since the guy was wearing body armor.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Taylor hates the "Lilith" moniker the PRT gives her and makes sure that they know she prefers "Empress" as soon as she can in the bank robbery.
- Driven to Suicide: Taylor considered suicide after her trigger mutated her, first by slitting her wrists, then stepping into the bay with rocks in her pockets when that failed. She ultimately decided not to go through with it... only for Sophia to try to kill her.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Even Coil has to shudder at the result of the timeline where Noelle apparently consumed Taylor/Empress.
- Evil Is Petty: Kaiser dislikes that Taylor is calling herself "Empress" in the same city that the Empire 88 is in, so he sends goons to try and get her to change it. Things escalate when she refuses. Taylor even lampshades it when they confront her at the graveyard, pointing out that Kaiser is a grown man throwing a petty fit over a name choice.
- Extreme Omnivore: In addition to numerous drugs and poisons, Taylor's been eating a lot of other things that are otherwise inedible—she sips Anti-Freeze while speaking to her father on a communicator, has developed a taste for drain cleaners, eats C4 at one point, and has been noted to eat bottles and cans left over after her drinking. This isn't even getting into the fact that she eats people.
- Frame-Up:
- Sophia makes Taylor out to be more violent than she really is as a result so she won't get in trouble for causing her to trigger. It's implied that she may even have deliberately injured herself as part of it.
- Taylor suggests that Canary's ex-boyfriend framed her for his self-mutilation so he could sue her for everything she had when she got Birdcaged and couldn't fight it. As she points out, there's a lot of things that would probably come to mind from "go fuck yourself" before actually doing what he did, there are parahumans that can heal him, and there is historical precedent for such a thing. Not to mention that the prosecution never really proved that she did Master him.
- Coil later makes it look like the PRT put out a Kill Order on Taylor (among other things) to use her as a distraction and kidnap Dinah. It helped that he laced the information with a narcotic she wasn't immune to yet to compromise her judgment. It fails though, in part due to Contessa.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Taylor eventually develops into a borderline nudist from a combination of zerg instincts desiring maximum freedom of movement, a subconscious desire to flaunt her new body, and the fact that Barbie Doll Anatomy is in play for her. Now she only wears clothes when in public but not committing a crime as shorthand for "you don't start shit, I won't start shit."
- Humanoid Abomination: Taylor is this to Panacea, the latter freaks out when she grabs the former during the bank robbery.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Taylor sometimes feels compelled to take a bite out of regenerating brutes or changers due to zerg influences on her psychology. She also tends to lick the blood from her claws.
- Immune to Drugs: Taylor keeps stealing drugs from the Merchants to build up an immunity, to the point that most recreational drugs just don't affect her at all anymore, even beer. Her swapping spit with Newter means that the ungodly cocktail of drugs Armsmaster created to affect her, based in part on Newter's biology, enough of a mundane drug to kill a blue whale, and including an immune-suppressant to keep her from immediately adapting to it, fails to knock her out, making her as high as a kite instead.
- Kangaroo Court: Taylor notes the various ways that Canary's trial blatantly rolled over her rights in her interview, with the judge basically admitting that the sentence was illegal.
- Loophole Abuse: Dragon is ordered by the Chief Director to make sure that the transport containing Canary and Kaiser makes it to the Birdcage. When Empress attacks with the desire of freeing Canary from unjust imprisonment, she uses the wording to allow her to take Paige in order to make sure that Kaiser makes it to the Birdcage and that the guards are unharmed.
- Miscarriage of Justice:
- Thanks to the testimony of Sophia and her goons, as well as some PRT agents jumping the gun, Taylor is made out to be a school shooter type.
- During her interview with Channel 6 News, Taylor notes the many ways that Canary's rights were trampled over during her trial, like not allowing her to hire her own lawyer, keeping her from speaking or communicating at all, etc.
- Never Gets Drunk: Taylor is (or at least swiftly becomes) immune to alcohol, though she wishes she wasn't sometimes. Her drug tolerance is similarly: She's mentioned on two separate occasions to have consumed LSD by the gallon
- Papa Wolf: Danny, as always.
- Properly Paranoid: After Armsmaster takes her severed hand, Taylor accelerates her search for new compounds that she isn't yet immune to, going as far as to swap spit with Newter. Considering that the concoction Armsmaster used on her only failed to knock her out due to it being partially derived from Newter's secretions...
- Self-Harm:
- It's implied that Sophia injured herself on purpose to make Taylor out to be violent and cover her tracks.
- Taylor suggests that Canary's boyfriend mutilated himself to frame her.
- Super-Empowering: Taylor can affect parahumans over time, giving them new powers drawing from the Starcraft Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg.
- Shout-Out:
- Occasional references to Dragon Ball Z Abridged pop up from time to time—Taylor paraphrases Super Kami Guru when telling some E88 mooks to piss off and she's noted to have consumed "A literal gallon of LSD, from a Milk Jug" to on two separate occasions.
- Taylor's severed hand is referred to as "Thing" several times in the Spacebattles thread, referencing The Addams Family
- Taking You with Me: A spiteful Coil, seriously ticked off at being directly told by Contessa herself that in his zeal to get Dinah he's manoeuvred himself into a position where his one hope at survival is to abandon Brockton Bay, leaks the identities of the Undersiders to the PRT, along with false documents implicating them in far worse crimes than they have ever committed.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Greg unknowingly invited the Slaughterhouse Nine to visit Brockton Bay after having a conversation with Bonesaw, under the name Tinker_Girl_2000, on Parahumans Online.
- Worthy Opponent: Lung seems to consider Taylor this after their fight where she took a piece out of him and ate it, even trying to recruit her at one point.
