''Starlight has managed to make her own place in the world, over the past two years. The press loves her work as a heroine, she's got plans to really shake things up with Missy at her side when she takes over the Wards, and her best friend Emma is there to help her keep a grasp on her normal life. Yes, life is good for Taylor Hebert.
Wait, what?"
— Intro blurb
Impurity
is a Worm fanfic written by both Aleph and EarthScorpion, in which Taylor Hebert is a shining Ward of Brockton Bay with a grudge against a certain 'ex'-Empire Eighty-Eight member. With her friends by her side, including both familiar and new faces, she combats hostile villains, her own insecurities, and her relationships with nearly all of her friends.
Impurity is a canon divergence/AU fic that diverges years before canon, resulting in major changes to Brockton Bay as of when the fic takes place, tackling one of the heaviest themes in human history: racism.
In addition to being found on SpaceBattles.com, the story can also be read here on Sufficient Velocity.com and here on Archive of Our Own.
Impurity has examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptational Heroism: Grue, formerly a low-level thief in Worm, is instead the Wards captain in Impurity, with a different power to boot.
- Adaptational Superpower Change: Several.
- Brian, instead of darkness-generating powers, instead becomes a precognitive focusing on worst-case scenarios.
- Victoria has the ability to create limited numbers of superpowered devices on the fly instead of her canon Flying Brick powerset.
- Amy has had her power changed to Hour of Power from Biomanipulation.
- Finally, Taylor has had her power changed from her canon bug control to being able to shoot lasers and absorb energy.
- Theo triggers with the ability to make miniature soldiers instead of his canonical 'giant-hand' making power.
- Blessed with Suck: A series of posts by the author outline how several of the alternate powers were designed to exacerbate their user's psychological issues.
- Taylor (who triggered watching her father burn to death) gets a power that is fueled by absorbing energy, especially fire, meaning she has to recreate her Trigger Event to fuel up. And she can protect people from fire... but only if she can get close enough, because her energy siphon has a pretty limited range. Additionally, she has a strong personal grudge against Purity for causing the fire that killed her father, and her energy siphon makes her personally immune to Purity's attacks... but Purity's flight and blaster powers are better than hers, so she cannot stop Purity from hurting other people.
- Vicky (who in this continuity triggered from being run ragged trying to hold her family together), gets a set of five orbs that she can shape into almost any item she wants or use to power psuedo-Tinkertech devices... but she only has five orbs and each has a maximum size, so she never has enough orbs to do everything she wants with them.
- Brian (naturally cautious and risk-averse) gets a precog power that lets him see worst-case scenarios, which causes him to be incredibly reluctant to act and ignore the opportunity costs of doing nothing.
- Amy (who here triggered from desperately trying to earn Carol's love) gets a power that makes her a super-strong inhumanly beautiful Flying Brick, the perfect New Wave member... but she can only be that perfect daughter for a few minutes a day. Unless she uses the second half of her power... which she is terrified of anyone finding out about.
- Theo triggered because of his resentment of the way his father tried to control every around him like mindless robots... so he gets a Tinker power that specializes in making squadrons of mindless combat robots.
- Energy Absorption: Taylor's primary power is the ability to absorb various forms of energy (including fire, electricity, and many energy-based parahuman powers). The energy absorbed heals her and can be used to fuel her flight and energy blast powers.
- Vampiric Draining: Amy turns out to have the ability to drain blood from living creatures to gain additional uses of her Radiant Super Mode.
