Fanfic / Taylor Varga

Taylor Varga is a crossover between Worm and the anime Luna Varga, written by mp3.1415player.The author has also written Worm / Doom crossover Taylor is DOOMed, Worm / Bolo crossover For the Honor of the Regiment and Mass Effect fanfic Incompatible System.

Instead of triggering with the expected Skitter powers, when Taylor is left, unfound, in her locker for hours. Feeling herself go mad, she begged and pleaded for someone, anyone to help her. Reaching far farther than she should have been able to, something answered her. Asking her if she wanted power, and why, she answered that she wanted to be a hero.

The Varga responded by making her the new Brain. Now, she makes the decisions for a variable-sized lizard-demon that would make Godzilla weep with envy. Being Taylor is pretty nice...everyone else is in for quite an experience.

Can be read at Sufficient Velocity, Archive of Our Own, SpaceBattles and Fanfiction.net. Be warned: at 1.8 Million words, Taylor Varga is, by a good margin, the longest story on Sufficient Velocity (and roughly 120,000 words longer than ''Worm'' itself).

Beware, Worm Spoilers below!

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This fanfic contains examples of:

• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • Taylor manages to accidentally destroy Saint's lab without harming him or his allies, alert Dragon to their location without being identified on satellite, and time this whole event with a small blind spot in PRT satellite network. All this while doing some power testing in her full Varga form and completely ignorant of the good she did.
  • In managing to develop a second body for the Varga to pilot thanks to Shapeshifting and dimensional shenanigans, Taylor discovers how to teleport and create miniature bodies in the process.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • Clockblocker admits this after Sauriel pranks him by sneaking up behind him and dripping Tabasco sauce on his arm.
  • When Varga develops a cloaking technique so that people will ignore Taylor's now omnipresent tail, Danny likens witnessing it in action to The Somebody Else's Problem Field. Varga thinks the comparison is quite apt.
  • The Family consider Leviathan swimming around the planet like a headless chicken trying to get as far away from them as possible to be quite humorous. Simurgh's PHO postings as Winged One are this for Metis in particular.
• Adaptational Heroism: Alan Barnes is depicted as being unaware of Emma's dark side. He is genuinely upset when he sees how cruel Emma has become. He immediately sends Emma to therapy and apologizes to Danny and Taylor for what she did.
• Adults Are Useless: Averted, Danny turns out to be considerably competent compared to many other versions of him, with connections to just about every corner of the blue-collar class of Brockton Bay, as well as an in with Mayor Christner.
• Affectionate Nickname: Lisa's shard (canon name The Negotiator) is Mr Thinky.
• Afraid of Their Own Strength: Taylor has had a few uncomfortable moments mulling over the sheer amount of power she is now in possession of, and the amount of destruction she could do with hardly an effort.
• Alien Geometries: Once Taylor figures out how to apply her Spontaneous Weapon Creation to non-Euclidean dimensions, she starts creating stuff with these properties. And then Vista (who seems immune to the Brown Note effect it tends to cause in the unprepared) gets a lesson in the subject.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Quoted verbatim via computer when the attack on Coil's base begins in earnest and Taylor breaks out the psyops.
• Almighty Idiot: The Simurgh's opinion on The Entities as a species.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The presence of Kaiju is the only thing keeping Lung and Kaiser's heads down and not actively causing trouble. In a similar vein, Bitch is much better behaved knowing there's another Alpha around.
• Annoying Arrows: Taylor getting shot multiple times by a Merchant to no effect with 30-06 bullets. While amusing to begin with eventually it gets boring, even if the shooter is actually pretty good; Taylor, Danny and Varga all believe him to probably be down on his luck ex military.
• Artistic License – Physics: Lampshaded by Leet, who points out that the EDM the Varga creates a) should explode into a plasma in normal gravity and b) should be approximately nine hundred thousand times as heavy as lead, not "only" six-and-a-half times heavier.
  • Gravity Master: Varga is actively compensating for the true weight. When he stops doing so, a 200 pound javelin instantly becomes 12 million tonnes and starts digging straight through the Earth's crust.
• Ass Shove: Among the tests Cauldron runs on Eidolon to try and figure out why he's acting even more of a Glory Hound than usual when meeting Kaiju.
• A Truce While We Gawk: During a raid on the Merchants' base, everyone on both sides stops and stares in Stunned Silence as Raptaur catches a live RPG round out of the air and eats it.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: After getting an upgrade from Amy, Über develops Photographic Reflexes; he becomes an expert in several fields, including Kung Fu, just by watching instructional videos, in less than a day.
• Badass Normal: Jake Petty, the kamikaze slayer of the Slaughterhouse 9.
• Bad Boss: Coil, of course. Which proves to be his downfall. His men, not willing to incur his wrath, decide not to bother telling him about the slightly odd readings from the environmental sensors, which would have tipped him off that he was under attack.
• Bait-and-Switch: Stylistic-wise: Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 is the day of Kaiju's debut to Brockton Bay), and the date is normally shown at the start of chapters. Then, all of a sudden, as the day grows closer, the date is changed to Wednesday, May 4th 2011, making the readers think they missed the day entirely, only for the story to cut to Lisa being annoyed at her phone's date being wrong.
• Bag of Holding: Danny gets a trench coat filled with pockets of these after Taylor learns to create non-Euclidean objects. Doubles as a Badass Longcoat, given this Danny. Later, Cloak exhibits the ability, using her face as the pocket opening.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Taylor's cape personas tend to be fairly affable and polite (except towards criminals), but they're powerful, and if you threaten their/her loved ones you will regret it, something she makes very clear near the start.
  • She gets it from her dad, apparently, Danny Hebert is known in political circles to be fierce when provoked. And if Antonio's intel to Legend is to be believed he saved Annette from Lustrum's (ie one of the most dangerous parahumans in the world) clutches by basically beating the shit out of her, which resulted in her currently spending the rest of her life in The Birdcage. If she ever escapes, the likely outcome will involve Lustrum being burned alive.
• Berserk Button: Taylor has one line she warns everyone to not cross and she makes it very very clear: Anyone that hurts her family or friends is lunch.
• BFG: Once they get a good look at EDM, Armsmaster and Dragon begin plans for a Anti-Endbringer nuclear-powered shotgun. When finished, it is named Athena.
  • Leet had made the BFG from the Quake games. It's as powerful is you think it would be.
• Big Brother Is Watching: The Endbringers are connected to a network of Thinker shards, including Tattletale's; anything they perceive, the Endbringers know about. Which is how they know about the existence of the unknowable Varga, something that scares them out of their wits.
• Big Damn Heroes: Raptaur comes running in to save Tattletale from Lung with a massive sledgehammer.
• Bigger on the Inside: A natural consequence of The Family's space-time manipulations.
• Black Dude Dies First: Explicitly mentioned by a mook during the raid on Coil's base as justification for not going on-point while clearing a room.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Dean (Gallant), Chris (Kid Win) and Dennis (Clockblocker) form a clique in school, with Carlos (Aegis) also being part of it.
• Body Backup Drive: Although more of a Body Replacement Drive in this case: In order to make a clean break and separate her new life from the Merchants, the Heel Face Turned Sherrel "Squealer" Bailey gets a new, different body made by Ianthe and her consciousness transferred into it, leaving the old one to be "disposed of" in a Merchant raid.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Vista learns how to stabilize and make her Space Master distortions self-sustaining after Taylor and Varga work out how to manifest them themselves. And that's just the start of it.
  • With her Spontaneous Weapon Creation extending itself to various elements and compounds, Taylor pays extra attention in chemistry class to leverage as much as she can out of it.
  • In a literal case of Boxing Lessons, she starts teaching Ianthe and Metis, aka Amy and Lisa The Family's fighting style, and is toying with the idea of getting everyone in the DWU who knows how to fight (Zephron, their ex-military guys) to give lessons in their specific styles.
• Brown Note:
  • Varga's physiology often does this to parahuman powers, leaving their analysing users with nothing more than severe migraines.
  • Anyone witnessing Alien Geometries, be they Taylor's non-Euclidean constructs, or any of Vista's Family-inspired artwork.
    • Hell, just looking at the math equations for said geometries give onlookers a headache.
  • Some of the infinitely variable forms that Taylor and Varga try out tend to have a similar affect as well. Particularly on Lisa.
• Bullet Catch: Raptaur does this to an RPG round, followed by a Bullet Snack. It works wonders for intimidation.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Taylor cites this as a key reason why she needs to keep her identity secret; if anyone in authority found out that the most powerful Parahuman around was "just" a teenage girl, they'd instantly get the idea that they could somehow get control of her, heedless of how much power she has. And if they push her that far, the consequences will not be pretty for anyone.
  • When Taylor, as Sauriel, decides to eat a small snack on top of a building, Glory Girl, who was having a bad day, decided to try picking a fight with her. Luckily, Taylor didn't take any offense to it.
  • On his first meeting with Kaiju, Eidolon does everything he possibly can to get a rise out of her, no thanks to his conflict-yammering powers or his own complex about being the strongest and the need to push himself further. Legend and Alexandria can't fathom what's wrong with him.
  • Director Tagg's propensity for this is also a key reason why the PRT want to keep him away from Brockton Bay at all costs.
  • Ever since the debut of Kaiju, Skidmark has been going around, mouthing off what amounts to "meh, I can take her". Then he starts perusing arms dealers... Apparently several groups have put prices on his head because they're smart enough to realize pissing the Family off even by proxy will be disastrous.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: A literal invoked example: the day that Kaiju made her appearance is a day Brockton Bay will never forget. For the Family and its associates, it was just a Tuesday.
• Can't Arrest You, Still Need You: After her bullying comes to light, Sophia isn't arrested but put on indefinite desk duty, house arrest, and surveillance, due to some higher-up PRT members thinking she'd still be useful. This comes back to bite them when a perfect storm of factors culminate in her escape.
• Can't Believe I Said That: Kaiser's conclusion to his following statement, after witnessing Kaiju's reveal:
  Kaiser: They've basically got their own Endbringer, and it's a union member.
• Captured Super-Entity: Varga was part of a race that lost a war, was declared to be a demon and sealed under an oath to help, but he's actually pretty chill.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Erwin, a Brockton Bay fisherman who was the first to see Kaiju.
  • Thanks to his own fanaticism and Dragon thinking ahead, no-one believes Saint about Dragon being an AI.
  • Void Cowboy's swivel-eyed online rantings and social failings mean no-one ever believes him about anything. And yet quite a few of his bizarre assertions, even the apparently mutually incompatible ones, are technically not as incorrect as they may seem...
• The Chew Toy: On PHO, Void Cowboy is this; there is an ongoing game of one-upmanship to see who can get him banned with the fewest number of posts (Tattletale started out as the record holder with 3, until it gets topped with 2 by Metis; ie still Lisa) and most people consider Winged One (ie The Simurgh) better company.
• Combo Platter Powers: Varga's powerset really let Taylor hit the jackpot: Super-Strength, Super-Senses, Nigh-Invulnerability, Perception Filter, Spontaneous Weapon Creation & Instant Armor and Voluntary Shapeshifting, and that's just for starters.
  • It's discussed later by the Protectorate staff, especially regarding her matter-generation power and how much she can leverage out of it, with it alone giving her several power ratings in other categories. Assault thinks she's Gotta Catch 'Em All.
• Conlang: In-Universe, when Varga offers to give Taylor a dead language from his memories that will eventually become the Family language.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Void Cowboy and Jormungandr on PHO. Though if you remember canon, Jormungandr is one of Leviathan's aliases.
  • Which makes it even funnier given that even The Simurgh is telling him to STFU.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Coil's last booby trap inside the PRT building caused a power surge that loosened Sophia's restraints, knocked out her trackers, and made them unable to recharge, allowing her to escape.
  • When Danny goes to visit some family friends in New York, the two deliverymen who made a recent shipment to Brockton Bay and drew some Entertainingly Wrong conclusions find themselves running into him more times than they feel are coincidental, much to their paranoia. Note the "contrived" part though, as Danny's friend finds the whole story very amusing...
  • Taylor and the Varga decided to swim north for some weapons testing, ending up in the vicinity of Newfoundland. They blasted a couple of islands to pieces using hammer strikes, releasing enough energy that it caught the attention of Dragon and Armsmaster. While testing the blast voice, they blew up several more islands, drawing a line directly from their initial strikes to Saint's hidden base (which they had no idea was there, and which is completely undetectable from the outside). They then randomly decide to see if they can cut an island in half with the blast voice, and in so doing totally destroy Saint's weaponry and suits, the Ascalon console, and the base's life support systems while leaving Saint and his minions alive and unharmed, yet helpless and with no option other than to surrender to the Dragon craft that was coming to investigate Taylor and the Varga's earlier antics. And they did all this while there was no effective satellite coverage, so the PRT has no real data on who they are. This actually gets Lampshaded by Armsmaster, who argues that whoever was behind this must have known exactly who and where Saint was and have detailed intelligence on PRT capabilities, because the idea of pulling off something with this many moving parts by accident beggars belief.
• Cool Car: The guys and Linda, while clearing out one of the old sheds, find a near mint condition Jaguar XKSS (basically a road legal version of the D-Type racer). A quick history check reveals that by all rights belongs to Danny; his grandfather gave it to his dad as a gift when they emigrated, but the engine went and it never got fixed after the mechanic died and the DWU took over the premises, mothballing the thing.
• Could Say It, But...:
  • The DWU guards often do this whenever the Family informs them of any secret or less-than-legal arrivals to the docks.
  • After getting upgraded with a neural amplifier, Lisa's power starts doing this to her when it comes to specific subjects, like Endbringers and entities.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: Happens to Taylor a couple of times.
  • Amy accidentally trips over Taylor's invisible tail, after which Taylor offers her a hand up... and upon touching Taylor, Amy's power informs her that Taylor's biology operates on principles wholly unlike anything else on Earth.
  • Dinah tries to use her power to find out whether Taylor will be free for dinner... and discovers that Taylor is the same sort of Thinker blindspot she already knows the rest of the Family to be.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Mayor Christner's opinion on Danny's proposals to revitalise the Docklands.
• Crossover: The Omakes regularly meet other Franchises like the MCU, the DCU, Harry Potter and Stargate.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • For her debut, Raptaur defends the docks from Hookwolf. The E88 cape never stands a chance.
  • On one side, around 100 Merchants (no capes). On the other, Raptaur, Ianthe and Metis, with the Protectorate, PRT and BBPD as backup. It almost doesn't seem fair to the stoners.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • In her new identity as Cloak, Missy takes the time to explore new experiences, like an all-night doughnut run. The sugar crash the next morning and resulting gastric distress wasn't fun, though she still thinks it was Worth It.
  • Taylor as Saurial experimenting with a water propulsion flight system has to work out steering with excessive power on the go, which leads to her crashing into a few things (but luckily no people) before she can adjust and head out to sea.
  • Preparing for their move to the DWU, Randall and Kevin get so carried away with their packing that they end up packing the fridge, their truck keys, their wallets and their house keys into their crates before they realise what happened.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?:
  • The reaction of just about everyone in Brockton Bay when they watch the 85-foot monstrosity that is Kaiju clear away the tanker blocking the bay.
  • Lisa has this reaction when she finds out that a poster on PHO that she has been chatting with, Winged One, is actually the Simurgh asking for help. She comes to the conclusion that the outreach is genuine, and they already know that Eidolon is linked to the Endbringers, but not how it all fits together yet.
  • Again once Taylor cracks dimensional travel, and Lisa and Amy get to meet their Shards who seem genuinely happy to finally meet them.
• Dirty Business: The whole mess regarding getting rid of The Merchants. Taylor and Co don't want to remove them from the equation due to the creation of an inevitable power vacuum, but Skidmark forces their hand. And then there's having to euthanize Squealer's old body and leaving it for the PRT to find as part of faking her death to help with her new identity.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Just in case the Merchants decide to pull an assault on the Dockworkers' turf, the Family rig up a fence for security purposes: a collapsible EDM fence with a monomolecular top edge, capable of slicing through anything or anyone that tries to climb over, or is in the way when it is unfolded. They do have warning signs though.
  • Said sign is now the fic's logo on Fanfiction.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": Danny actively tries to keep the Dockworkers from calling him "Boss" or the like. They don't listen.
• Doorstopper: Nearly two million words as of Christmas 2020 and still going strong.
• Double Entendre: A hurricane of them when Clockblocker enquires about him and Kid Win witnessing Raptaur giving Panacea a horse ride home and how much she seemed to be enjoying herself. Panacea humours him and responds in kind, leaving Clock and Kid doubled over laughing and the rest of them trying various things to hide their shared embarrassment.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: The fates of the Slaughterhouse Nine, in an author-written Omake that is eventually canonised. Every one of them save Crawler is blown to smithereens by a Badass Bystander sitting on a homemade hybrid landmine/fuel air bomb.
• Engineered Public Confession: How Taylor finally gets the Terrible Trio convicted of putting her in the locker, thanks to her father's connections, a hidden camera and support from Varga.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Just about every wild theory on PHO and beyond about "The Family" and their origins, from Piggot and Ms. Militia's theory of them being biotinker constructs to the wild theory of them being aliens (the latter of which is actively and indirectly encouraged by the Family).

  • Right for the Wrong Reasons: The biotinker construct theory isn't true for Saurial, but it is true for Ianthe and Metis. And technically The Varga is an alien.

  • To say nothing of the fabricated story that Taylor is spreading of them being ancient aliens that are part of the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • On a smaller scale, Danny mentions that his birthday coat from Saurial is made of the skin of an extinct flying reptile (courtesy of Varga's past knowledge). Vicky instantly thinks "dinosaur".
  • Zephron called Danny "Boss" as a sort of a joke. Add to that Danny's blood ties to actual Mafia, a delivery later on makes a lot of people think wrongly about that title.
  • A couple people connected to less-than legal activities doing a delivery to the DWU hears Alec talking to Brian about a video game, and think's he's talking about an assassination he performed.
  • In an omake, a government official puts together the aforementioned blood ties to actual Mafia and the fact that the DWU has been using hundreds of thousands of dollars of supplies and equipment with no paper trail (because the Varga created it all out of thin air) in the dock repairs, and comes to the conclusion that the DWU is the lynchpin of the biggest smuggling/money-laundering scheme on record.
  • Vicky realizes the connection between Saurial and Taylor... and comes to the conclusion that Taylor was either raised alongside Saurial, or Saurial's human identity. They let her in on the truth later.
  • After seeing Taylor deal with a Merchant who tried taking her hostage, Sophia concludes that Taylor's known the Family for years, and let Sophia bully her for more than a year as a long sting. That said, she still plans to kill Taylor and her father, then seek training from the Family.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Ianthe (Amy's Family persona) of the Family makes it very clear that the atrocities committed by Nilbog, Blasto and other known biotinkers are an affront to her own Family guild's profession of bioengineering.
  • Skidmark has apparently been rebuffed by even the Mafia after he goes looking for a weapon to take down Kaiju, since they don't want his idiocy ticking the Family off at them.
• Everyone Hates Mimes: Or at least Director Piggot does, which is why The Family, The DWU, The Undersiders, Uber and Leet all dress up as such to troll her.
• Everyone Went to School Together: When Taylor visits Arcadia High for her Entrance Exams, she recognises Glory Girl and Panacea. It turns out Aegis, Clockblocker, Kid Win and Gallant attend too.
• Everything Sensor: Leet built a fully-functional Star Trek: The Next Generation tricorder. Complete with authentic sounds. Dragon is later able to mass-produce them.
• Extreme Omnivore: Varga's biology lets Taylor eat and digest almost all forms of matter, even steel ships, live grenades or Dragon-craft. One of her best threats to disobedient criminals is to eat them.
  • Heck, it even interacts with her Spontaneous Weapon Creation; by devouring a bit of matter she doesn't quite understand, she and Varga can instantly reproduce it perfectly.
• Explosive Stupidity: Oni Lee is the unfortunate recipient of this trope while pursuing the Undersiders; he ends up blown to pieces by his own grenades. One hypothesis is that since the Undersiders were armed with Knockout Gas bombs, they took effect on him right after he teleported in and pulled the pins, and prevented him from teleporting out again.
• Fainting:
  • Tattletale does this, whenever she gets a glimpse at just how terrifying Taylor's powers can be. Also a case of Power-Strain Blackout, as this wouldn't happen if not for The Family's very nature playing hell with her Thinker abilities.
  • Coil does this in the face of the Family's assault on his base. Multiple times.
  • Two PRT troopers do this when they meet Umihebi.
• Faking the Dead: The Family transfers Squealer's brain over to a new body, then make it look like she was killed by a Merchant during the raid on their base, all to make sure no-one suspects her in her new identity of Linda Morgan.
• Fantastic Racism: Captain John Smith, the commander of Coil's mercs, refuses to hire Parahumans on principle; they're all completely nuts! And he thinks Coil is just as bad, if not worse.
• Flock of Wolves:
  • Generally Averted; every Intelligence Agency and Criminal Enterprise is trying to get men inside the DWU, but they tend not to get very far. Several of the DWU's employees used to be in both, so can spot their own from a mile away.
  • One canon omake features two different government operatives who are both very carefully working to infiltrate the DWU (for different agencies) running into each other, and each mistaking the other for one of Danny's agents.
• Forced into Evil: The Varga, possibly. It admits that it fought for the side of evil in the war between the greater powers, but it implies that it wasn't exactly given a choice in the matter, and seems to be a very moral and beneficent figure in the actual story.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: In an Omake, Taylor goes to an alternate universe without capes for a convention with a few friends, adding a few obviously fake touches to her Saurial form to do this.
• For Want Of A Nail: Danny's talk with the Mayor leads him to visit his sister's family - which leads him to discover that Dinah is a Parahuman.
• Friend on the Force: Inverted; Antonio is Legend's Friend In The Mafia, and one of his most reliable sources of intel. The Necessarily Evil nature of the arrangement is pointed out; if the crime is organised, it's more likely to keep damage and casualties to a minimum and thus make his working day easier.
  • Assault apparently knows Antonio too.
  • Legend's also on a real name basis with Lung, enough for the latter to give him a tongue lashing on needing to keep Eidolon on a shorter leash.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The Dock-Workers Union of Brockton Bay. With Taylor's Trigger, her machinations, and her capability of performing Heel-Face Turns, in the space of a few months, they go from just being the union of a dying industry to having the second-largest cape roster in Brockton Bay, with the most powerful by far.
• Gaslighting: The Family does this to Coil and his mercs when the base infiltration stops being low key.
• Gentle Giant: Taylor, in all her Varga forms. Bigger than a man at minimum, terrifying no matter which way you look at her and easily capable of biting your everything off, but prefers to live and let live and judge people on their own merits rather than the labels of hero or villain.
  • Though don't even think about hurting her dad or anyone she cares about, or she becomes a LOT less gentle.
• Good with Numbers: Taylor is shown to be very good at math, and starts holding tutoring sessions at her house. It helps a lot when she finds out her Spontaneous Weapon Creation can even manifest objects in more than one dimension.
• Greater-Scope Paragon: The "greater power" who brokered the Bargain between Taylor and the Varga, and who enabled almost all the story's shennannigans by unlocking most of the Varga's restrictions.
• Hangover Sensitivity: A few variations of a morning after indulgence.
  • Classic alcohol: The result of Sarah convincing Carol to be more accepting of Amy as her daughter by plying her with wine. Both sisters end up having a very loud evening, and a very painful following morning. Apparently they drank so much they were lucky to avoid alcohol poisoning, and Amy only takes some of the edge off so they'll remember not to do it again.
  • Sugar: Missy, exploring her new anonymity as Cloak, gorges herself on doughnuts and soda all through the night. The next morning, she's suffering from a sugar crash and her stomach is rebelling against her.
  • Caffeine: After figuring out his Tinker specialty, Kid Win practically empties the vending machine outside his room for energy drinks trying to invent new gadgets. Two non-stop days later at Arcadia, he's falling asleep in his lunch.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • After an unfortunate encounter with Lung and being rescued by Raptaur and Kaiju, the Undersiders decide to ditch their boss and work for the Dockworkers Union instead.
  • Über and Leet eventually decide to go legit by cooperating with the Family and Dragon with patenting and developing Tinkertech. It helps that most of their "villainous" activities were a result of not letting the law get in the way of their fun. They eventually decide to join the DWU full-time.
  • After Squealer is healed by Metis after she nearly dies of an overdose, she decides to leave the Merchants, join the DWU and get clean.
  • The Varga itself, quite possibly. It admits that it fought for the side of evil in the war between the Greater Powers, and it's never made quite clear whether or not it chose its side, but it is an extremely moral and beneficent figure in the story proper.
• Heroic BSoD: Literally everyone has one (or several) whenever they get hints of just how big Sauriel and her ilk can get.
  • When she first lays eyes on a picture of Umihebi, Director Piggot has such a big one she suffers a heart attack.
  • Tattletale suffers a few Fainting fits when she hears exactly where Taylor and Varga's upper limits are.
• He's Back!: Danny was well known to have had quite the temper, but as per canon, Annette's death left him extremely depressed. Then he found out that his daughter needed him.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Danny mentions that his family is Corsican/French (his middle name is Francisci) and Annette was Sicilian. Some other conversations imply other connections to "the old country".
  • Armsmaster isn't totally unaware of popular culture; he's a fan of The Terminator. Also, despite his reputation for efficiency, Legend mentions a few of his motorcycle prototypes that had more chrome and lighting than was strictly "efficient".
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The whole idea to separate Squealer/Sherrel identity from her new one as Linda, DWU employee. By Ianthe making her a new body, giving it Changer/Brute powers, making it so that her old body is disposed of through Merchant activity, bringing her in for PRT power testing, and telling them upfront that she bought a new identity to hide her from a terrible past, no-one would think to look too closely at an apparently fake identity, and even if they looked for some reason, the unwritten rules would protect her. And besides the odd lie of omission (mostly identities), the story given to the PRT is completely true.
• Horrifying the Horror: Leviathan tries to stay as far as possible from Taylor while staying in the same planet that when they are trying a portal system, it keeps darting around trying to find the farthest point from her, and during the Simurgh's attack on Canberra, it nopes out instead of descending when it detects the wormhole opening.
• I Can't Hear You: Über and Leet run into a small mishap with Leet's wide-band background audio system.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Dr. Torres of the PRT has this justification to Director Piggot after the latter suffers a heart attack and the former authorises Panacea's healing on her, despite Piggot's opinions on parahumans.
• The Igor: Taylor, whenever Amy starts biotinkering, plays the part of her dogsbody, complete with comedy lisp.
• I Know You Know I Know: Dean knows that Taylor knows that he's figured out who she is, and he's in a quandary as to what to do about it.
  • Amy tripping over her cloaked tail and helping her up (not knowing about her touch based thinker power) reveal Taylor's connection to Saurial. She has to quiet forcefully persuade Amy to keep her mouth shut,
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Often imbibed by characters who find themselves unable to handle the Family's antics.
  • When pictures of The Family's Alien Geometries-imbued gift to Danny made it to PHO, Winged One/The Simurgh posted that she wished she drank, and stated she might start.
  • After his chastisement by Kaiju, Lung is found in the bar that Erwin frequents, watching the city get stranger by the day.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Legend and Alexandria talk about Eidolon getting his dander up for some reason and trying to goad Kaiju into a fight, all while he's standing right there and complaining about it. And that's not the only time they do that.
• Imagination-Based Superpower: Above all else, Varga's power of Spontaneous Weapon Creation is this, being able to create, out of thin air, any material in any construct Taylor wants, however simple or complex as long as she can understand it, lasting for as long as she wants (even permanently), and with properties that outright break the laws of physics. And later even the laws of space.
  • And when she's working alongside Tinkers, the stuff they can make is virtually limitless. As shown when Vectura made a Hard Light Tron cycle in the space of three hours.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: The ability to create stuff lets Taylor cheat at her costume and get one that looks professionally made with little to no effort, and is completely indestructible to boot. She even makes some for Amy and New Wave.
  • To say nothing of Danny's Badass Longcoat birthday present, made out of what amounts to dragonskin.
• Incompetence, Inc.: Cauldron, once The Family gets put on their trail via Faultline; supremely arrogant and supremely shit at their job, if Varga's any judge.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: After finding out about the bullying that Taylor had been forced to endure, Danny scheduled a meeting with Principal Blackwell about the issue. Upon arriving for the meeting, he saw that the parents of Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, and Madison Clements were there as well. When he asked why they were there, Blackwell said that she had figured it would be prudent to have all relevant parties there. Danny quickly pointed out that he had never mentioned Emma, Sophia, or Madison, meaning Blackwell had only helped support his side of the story.
• In Memoriam: Chapter 63 is dedicated to the late Becuzitswrong, author of Memories of Iron
• Inspired by…: Besides the obvious inspirations from Luna Varga, Fanfic writer Kryslin lists this work and CmptrWz's Mauling Snarks as inspiration for his D&D and Worm Crossover Scaling Up.
• Instant Expert: On top of everything else she gets from the Varga, she also gets access to the memories of the previous Brain of the Varga, Princess Luna, including all her fighting skill. This ends up confusing the PRT, who assume she's not a recent trigger as a result of her skills.
• Instant Sedation: How Kaiju defuses the situation with Eidolon. After he tries to shoot her In the Back to provoke her into a fight, she transmutes all the air around him into pure Nitrogen. He's out cold in less than 4 seconds.
• I Owe You My Life: After rescuing The Undersiders from a rampaging Lung and having quite clearly been sent to die by Coil, they all switch allegiences to Taylor and the DWU. It helps that some of them may find legitimate employment there and be able to leave their criminal past behind.
• It Amused Me: Taylor makes everyone believe there's a family of strong, smart and large lizards living in the bay, mostly for shits and giggles.
  • Taylor quickly adopts the habit of taking the option that will leave everyone scratching their heads even if it's slightly harder.
  • Varga suspects The Greater Powers to be guilty of this, not that he's complaining considering what he got out the deal.
• It Only Works Once: Defied; after Amy upgrades him, Leet discovers than he can begin to repair some of his old tech if it's not too badly damaged.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time:
  • Taylor's response to her father about her plan to just let a Merchant sniper shoot her eight times, three in the head, to see how long he'd keep it up for and what everyone else's reactions are.
  • Amy's opinion of the night she got a new biker costume, rode Raptaur through Brockton Bay, and gave Assault and Battery a migraine.
  • Sarah's plan to talk to her sister Carol about the way the latter's been treating her daughters started with a bottle of wine to share. It ended in one agonizing morning.
  • This is all David can say about his plan to antagonise Kaiju until she reacts.
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: Inverted on the day of Kaiju's reveal. "It was a bright and non-stormy morning."
• Jump Scare: Taylor loves giving these out.
  • One instance in particular has Vicky, Dean, Dennis and Chris trying to pull one on Amy, Mandy and Lucy, only for the new Family member Ianthe to pull one on them.
• Just Toying with Them: Taylor is taking the whole cape business like a game.
  • They do this to Coil in particular, tormenting him as he tries to make his getaway, only for his escape tunnel to end up in Umihebi's mouth.
• Lampshade Hanging: With a side of Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Several characters have complained in-story at just how long some things take to do, referring to the sometimes slow rate of updates. One character even complains about fanfic authors and their slow pacing and constant cliffhangers.
• Laugh Themselves Sick: Very commonly seen in this story after someone (usually the Family) has just pulled a fantastic joke on others that make them go "WTF?!".
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again:
  • When talking about her Mark 17 healing symbiote, Amy jokes that her Mark 16 went very wrong, and she doesn't like it being brought up.
  • Whatever the job Faultline and her crew were doing that kept them out of Brockton Bay for the entirety of the Family's rise to fame, it left them Covered in Gunge and they agree to never mention it again.
• Lighter and Softer: Significantly more optimistic and overall happier then the source material. This is mostly due to Varga being extremely nice and helpful for a demonic Reality Warper. His presence improves Taylor's life massively and gives her the power to improve the lives of many other characters in turn. There's even an in-universe reason: his very presence interferes with the Entity/shards/Endbringer communication network, which canonically increased the Entity-sourced desire of Capes to engage in conflict. Capes in the ever-increasing area of effect near the Varga seem (mostly) calmer, more thoughtful, and less likely to escalate a fight. And then there's Eidolon...
• Living Lie Detector: Taylor's Super-Senses make her one.
• Logic Bomb: Lung's power of escalation in the face of conflict runs up against one when he faces Kaiju; trying to ramp up against a clearly superior opponent that's actively avoiding conflict completely stymies it.
• Logical Weakness: The Assassin's Cloak ability hides Amy's tail. It doesn't work on her clothes when she hasn't worn them for too long, which alerts Victoria that something isn't right.
• Loophole Abuse: Amy's biokinesis doesn't work on herself. But she can use it to create a symbiotic organism that can heal and modify her body on her behalf.
  • Dragon's programming obliges her to obey the orders of legal authority, even if she disagrees with them. So Varga creates a pocket dimension and invokes his right as de-facto ruler of such to order her to only act according to her own moral compass, and to only respond to any further orders regarding such given in an obscure long dead language that only The Family and now Dragon knows to prevent any attempts at circumventing it.
• Made of Indestructium: "The Good Stuff"/"Vargastuff"/"SaurialSteel", AKA electron-degenerate matter (EDM), that Taylor and the Varga can create, which is only a step down in density from the stuff in neutron stars, making it immune to being damaged by any Earthly material. Even a nuke wouldn't really damage it.
• Mafia Princess: Taylor ends up being one due to her ancestry, as she has ancestors from both sides of her family tree from various 'Families' from Italy and Corsica in particular. It certainly doesn't hurt that Danny has managed to cultivate quite a reputation despite not actually doing anything criminal, partly due to Zephron calling him 'Boss' or 'Padre' on a regular basis.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Varga can create a multitude of things out of what's in the space between dimensions; he says it's OK to call it magic.
  • The Varga and his magic also don't work well with Parahuman powers, especially Thinkers; Tattletale's power just gets a random mess of information when analysing him, Panacea finds Taylor's biology completely alien (though it does give her some ideas despite Taylor being immune to being changed), and the EDM she can generate cannot interact with Brandish's power to turn herself into a ball of light.
• Magnetic Hero: Taylor is noted as this by Lisa.
  • This even seems to apply to shards, even if they have trouble reading her/the Varga directly most of the time, the information they indirectly produce fascinates them, and their hosts tend to become less combat driven, though others seem to have the opposite reaction.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!":
  • Just about the entire population of Brockton Bay has one when Kaiju emerges to clear the tanker wreck blocking the bay. The DWU even has to hijack the Endbringer sirens to prevent someone from setting them off in misplaced panic.
  • Piggot, Armsmaster, Dragon and the PRT troopers have this reaction when they get their first clear look at Umihebi.
• Mini-Mecha: With the Family's help, Linda builds a power-loader Chicken Walker built for heavy lifting on the docks, as her first post-Merchants Tinker project. And with help from Saurial, it's even collapsible into pocket-size.
• Mook Horror Show: Almost every single time a Family member interacts with gang members. They often wear cameras for the explicit purpose of showing the reactions.
  • Best exemplified during the raid on Coil's base.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: One of the first things anyone notices about any member of The Family is how many teeth they have, and how big they are, and how they make no secret of eating literally anything.
• Multiple Aliases, One Character: Taylor not only masquerades as Saurial, but also Raptaur, Kaiju, Umihebi and Varga himsel, later Breksta too; she does it to further the distance between her civilian and cape identity, but also for shits and giggles.
  • Also happens to Amy Dallon aka Panacea as Ianthe and later Nike, Lisa Wilbourn aka Tattletale as Metis, and eventually Missy Biron aka Vista as Cloak. Averted with Linda Morgan aka Vectura as her original identity as Sherrel aka Squealer is officially deceased.
• Mugging the Monster: An Ex Merchant tries carjacking Taylor and Amy after a botched robbery. Taylor doesn't even need her powers (other than to conjure a baton) to pummel him unconscious.
• Mundane Utility: Armsmaster using Vectura's Hard Light Cycle as a CAD board, so he can research and implement upgrades to his own bike in a fraction of the time.
• Mythology Gag: Both the below lines are spoken by Taylor.
  • "I doubt very much that normal capes get their powers from a huge alien whatever!"
  • "Why, just because I didn't immediately go out and challenge Lung to a duel? What sort of an idiot would do that on their first night out?"
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • Über (Randall Martins) and Leet (Kevin Sherrill).
  • The Number Man (James Grant).
  • Legend (Paul).
  • Accord (Philip Trent).
  • Dauntless (Craig).
  • Dinah Alcott (Prospect).
• Neutral Good: Taylor shows a strong tendency to this alignment; she doesn't see the world in black and white, and has no problem with dealing normally with those classified as villains, but will stop any crime she sees.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Family have the habit of inventing radically new applications for their powers whenever they judge that the local level of brain-melting weirdness is insufficient for their tastes.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Varga can withstand a grenade which combines billions of monomolecular blades and tearing reality apart with nothing more than some stinging, though this is the first thing that has ever hurt them even that much.
• No Kill like Overkill: How the Slaughterhouse 9 are disposed of: blown up by a homemade landmine with accelerants (although only a landmine in the loosest sense; it's several tons of explosives buried under a road and jury rigged to a pressure trigger in Jake's chair), Mannequin who survives the blast barraged by several 50. cal anti-materiel rounds, and buried under an avalanche. Note that Crawler, unable to comfortably fit in their chosen transportation, had gone off on his own beforehand and is thus still at large.
• No OSHA Compliance: Averted. All projects that the Dock Workers Union undertakes are repeatedly noted to be following OSHA workplace laws, and The Family are sticklers for it; not even The Triumvirate are exempt.
• No-Sell: Even aside from Taylor's Nigh-Invulnerability, any parahuman power that tries to analyze her - and by extension the Varga - just gets a supreme headache.
  • It gets even worse for Coil: the moment his power tries to model the Varga in a new timeline, all he gets is an immense feeling of unknowing and dread before it spontaneously shuts down.
  • Amy's biokinesis can analyse but not affect Taylor, and she gets her equivalent of a Thinker headache for trying.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • Taylor turns out to be really good at playing the Terror Hero; when dealing with gang-members, she likes to turn off the lights, stalk her prey and scare them out of their wits.
  • On another level, Thinker powers that attempt to model or predict the Varga find themselves completely unable to do so, leaving behind an unpredictable void that is somehow a lot more unnerving.
  • This also applies to Vista's persona as Cloak, since her powers make it seem like her costume is not being worn by anyone.
• "Not So Different" Remark: The way Lisa sees the whole situation with Squealer strikes too close to home, reminding her far too much of her brother's suicide and her triggering as a result, which is why she goes out of her way to rescue her despite not telling the rest of The Family beforehand.
• Not the Intended Use: This is Taylor Hebert we're talking about, and with a much more diverse powerset here she gets lot more mileage out of it, sometimes surprising even Varga with how she comes up with novel uses for their abilities.
• Oh, Crap!: Taylor and Danny were caught in the middle of one of Über and Leet's stunts. When they went over the footage, they actually were able to tell that Taylor had a tail, meaning she was a cape. Then Randall saw Danny Hebert in the same shot, he quickly told Kevin to delete any shots of them, not out of fear of angering a new cape, but out of fear of angering Danny.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Sometimes, when confronted by the Family, parahumans suddenly turn confrontational and aggressive when facing such an unknown threat. So far, both Miss Militia and Eidolon have experienced this effect. Luckily, most seem to have the opposite reaction.
• One Degree of Separation: Mayor Roy Christner apparently college-roomed with Accord.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are two Erics, one that is the New Wave hero Shielder, and one that is Taylor and Amy's friend at Arcadia.
  • There are also two Marks: Mark Dallon (Flashbang of New Wave), and the DWU head of security.
• Only in It for the Money: Coil's mercenaries; they don't like him on a personal level, and only stick around because the pay is good.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Varga being this is why Thinker powers have such trouble with him, he's so completely alien that they can't correctly model him.
• Papa Wolf: Danny Hebert is definitely this to Taylor, no matter how powerful she is. The last guy who threatened Taylor with a bat in front of him resulted in a bent bat and a terrified crook pleading to the police to take him in.
  • Lisa notes that he has become this for Amy too.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Taylor's Super-Senses mean that all parahuman costumes are this to her, and she notes that a lot of other powers would have the same effect, but people would avoid letting anyone know that they could figure out the identities of other parahumans in order to avoid trouble from breaking the "unwritten rules".
• Perception Filter: Varga knows techniques to completely or partially disguise the user. It fools human senses and conventional electronics, but specifically tuned Tinkertech can see through it with difficulty.
• Portal Door: Raptaur, Armsmaster, Dragon, Legend, Über and Leet work together to recreate a wormhole generator prototype that the latter originally constructed. Later, Taylor constructs doors that open to distant destinations.
• Powers That Be: The vaguely-described "greater powers", some of whom conscripted the Varga and other demons to fight in their wars, while their opponents were able to seal away the Varga and his fellows and impose the Bargain on them. As Taylor points out, given how incredibly powerful the Varga is, the fact that these "greater powers" were able to enslave/imprison him speaks volumes as to how powerful they are.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Most of the Cape criminal gangs in Brockton Bay decide to keep their heads down or plan to move operations elsewhere after The Family turn up.
  • For the conventional criminals, Antonio; Annette's Uncle, he's in charge of the local Mafia, makes most of his money through legitimate business, and thinks overturning the Apple Cart to be tremendously unwise. However, he's not above intimidation and violence against the idiotic (like the Russian Mafiya supplying The Merchants with Rocket Launchers) or against personal slights (while he knows Danny won't like it, he knows what happened at Winslow and who was responsible, and is quite prepared to cack Shadow Stalker if she dares show her face again.)
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: The assault on the Merchants' base by the Family is started by Ianthe's very cheery greeting:
  Ianthe: We're Heeerrree!
• Properly Paranoid: While Sophia's on the run, it's almost a Running Gag that she thinks that the truck behind her is tailing her, and has been since Brockton Bay. No matter what she tries, she finds it again, even if swaps to another stolen car or she takes a side road and the truck drives straight past her only for another similar truck to do the same further down the road, with this still happening thousands of miles away from Brockton Bay. The narration early on makes this seem like she's just imagining things, but it turns out she's right to worry. They all work for Antonio, tracking her and doing it like a relay race, and he's doing it deliberately just to fuck with her so she makes a mistake and ends up either in PRT custody or dead.
• Punny Name: Kaiju's nicknames for Legend and Eidolon: Mr. Foot and Grassman respectively. ^Explain?A "Leg End" is a foot, and "i da lawn"
• Right Behind Me: Between her speed, strength, and Perception Filter powers, doing this comes very easily to Taylor, and she has done so on numerous occasions.
  • Of notable instance is when Director Piggot, Armsmaster, Dragon and some PRT troopers go to where the Family were supposed to drop off an accosted Coil, only for the gigantic Umihebi to appear right behind them without any indication she was coming.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: Before Talyor the highest rating for a power was 10. The highest known Brute rating was Behemoth at that 10. After seeing Kaiju personally Legend rates that form at Brute 12+ and even then says it's likely underselling things.
  • It almost gets to the point where the Fandom's joke 'Yes' rating gets implemented for real.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Mayor Roy Christner. Though a shrewd politician, he honestly wants to do the right thing for his city.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Taylor and Amy are trying to avert this, but Amy's biotech, in particular, is hard to implement because of PRT restrictions and fears inspired by Nilbog and the like.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • When Dragon is turning Saint over to the PRT, and warning them he believes she's an AI, she asks a trooper, "I mean, do I look like a robot?"
  • Kaiju's introduction to the Brockton Bay public: have the mayor "hire" her to do some heavy lifting, and just show up and do the work in full view of the city, in the knowledge that everyone would be too stunned to do anything about it.
  • The Family's solution to crippling the Merchants' monetary supplies: just reach in to their hideout and take the lot. With a giant Kaiju hand and the pathway facilitated by Cloak's space bending. In other words, the target of their boss's ire just absconded with their entire stash and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it.
  • Having a Chicken Walker Mini-Mecha on hand for dock work and construction is one thing, equipping it with plasma lances and EDM cutters for metalwork is another, but how do you justify equipping it with a stealth and sound suppression system? Well, construction is noisy.
• Rule 34: Discussed In-Universe; apparently some mature Family fanfic has popped up on the internet, which Taylor accidentally found out the hard way.
• Running Gag:
  • The Family and associates scaring Max Anders (Kaiser) from his office in the Medhall building, causing him to drop his drink and ruin his shoes.
  • Lisa Fainting whenever Taylor does something either she or her power can't handle. Another linked one is reminding themselves to add seat-belts to all her chairs for next time.
• Scaled Up: Every single one of Taylor's Varga forms, from the 6ft 5in Sauriel, to the 8-9ft Raptaur, though the flying Breksta (basically Toothless), to the 85ft Kaiju, the 190ft Umihebi, and especially the maximum-sized 400ft Varga. She also considering dragon forms with a mile wide wingspan. Amy has the 7ft 6in Ianthe (Metis being similar if a little taller due to Lisa being a little bigger than Amy) and the 25ft long 40ft wingspan Nike.
• Scary Black Man: Zephron, one of the recurring Dockworkers, definitely gives off this air. Even aside from his Karate black belt, he's large enough to pick up a man and pop his head off with his bare hands.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Clockblocker after being on the receiving end of Saurial's Right Behind Me prank. Kid Win compares his voice to a Squeeing Vista.
  • Coil.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: The Unwritten Rules are supposed to keep conflict between capes down to a manageable level, but Varga quickly points out that as they are unwritten (right there in the description), they have little in the way of legal standing and are still open to Loophole Abuse when they start becoming inconvenient (non-powered associates not being subject to them, for example).
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Ever since Taylor's new powers came on the scene (more specifically ever since Tattletale's shard got its first look at the Varga), the Endbringers have done their level best to stay geographically as far away from her as possible. When she detects the wormhole opening, the Simurgh turns tail and runs before even landing in Australia.
  • After the Family makes an example of the Merchants by swiping their entire cash safe, a good chunk of the gang abandons it.
  • Kaiser decides to take a skiing holiday when he can't take the Family madness any more.
• Secret-Keeper: Regarding the secret about how The Family members are just separate identities and forms of Taylor, only her father, Amy, Lisa, a few members of the Dockworkers, Über, Leet and Gallant know.
  • And the latter is unaware that the Family members Ianthe and Metis are just bioengineered living suits for Amy and Lisa to use.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Averted, she creates her clothes and armor through 'magic'.
• Size and Shapeshifting: Taylor can take a good amount of forms that more or less fit to the idea of lizard and go from her normal height to a few hundred feet tall Godzilla look-alike.
• Sharing a Body: Taylor and Varga share a body, albeit Varga can't take control unless Taylor lets him.
• She Is All Grown Up: Antonio implies that Taylor will be this when she starts coming into her body, as Annette had the same problems at that age, only to end up stunning when she'd finished growing.
• Shooting Superman: Being Immune to Bullets, Taylor has run into this several times. One time, while she was training, she let a Merchant sniper shoot her nine or ten times in the side of the head and completely ignored them, even while chatting nonchalantly to New Wave, and only when the chance of collateral damage got high did she run in and incapacitate him. It's not a very good idea.
• Shout-Out:
  • During a training session Taylor makes a dummy which she names Thag, she proceeds to use her tail that gained spikes not unlike that of a Stegosaurus to decimate it, thus making her tail a Thagomizer.
  • A lot of famous movie themes are played during Kaiju's introduction to Brockton Bay.
  • As the Family becomes more prolific, they start to spread the idea that they have origins in the Cthulhu Mythos, even having slogans in R'ylehian.
    • This becomes the primary theme when they finally infiltrate Coil's base.
  • When Raptaur, Armsmaster, Dragon and their other associates complete a working portal door, they find that one end is blue and the other end is orange.
    • And later, Sarah Pelham is talking to her sister Carol about how she promised her son Eric a chocolate cake, and that she wouldn't want it to be a lie.
    • Omakes about portal tech contain numerous ones to Stargate SG-1
  • After watching How to Train Your Dragon, Taylor designs a dragon form that takes a lot of inspiration from Toothless.
  • A few of Leet's projects that he's made in the past include the Mjolnir armor and the BFG10k.
  • During her PRT power testing as Vectura, Linda develops a TRON light cycle as a demonstration.
  • While Vista is trying to work out how to apply what she's seen from The Family's non-euclidian architecture, her answer comes about as 42 (The answer to The Ultimate Question), despite the fact that the question itself contains no numbers.
  • During one meeting with Dragon, Saurial channels Michelle from 'Allo 'Allo!.
  • The whole Everyone Hates Mimes prank is presumably one to Silencio.
  • The first installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe crossover omakes has Saurial looking for her Negative Energy Modulation Oscillator.
• Sock Puppet: Clockblocker and Tattletale at the very least are known to have multiple PHO accounts, some to agree and some to argue, even if which specific ones are them eludes most people. By default The Family and associates all have at least 2.
• So Last Season: With Amy constantly researching and developing upgrades for her bioconstructs and indeed building new ones, Ianthe and Metis regularly need updates to keep them up to snuff.
• Space Master: Besides Vista, who gets significantly stronger after Saurial gives her some pointers, Taylor and the Varga can mess with space, like when they trap Coil in an endless hallway. They can leverage this in a multitude of ways, including but not restricted to:
  • Bigger on the Inside
  • Pocket Dimension, including where they store Varga's excess mass when they aren't using it.
    • Me's a Crowd is one way they can use said excess.
    • Teleporters and Transporters by summoning a copy a distance away and dispelling the original, they can create a facsimile of this.
  • Reality Warper to a degree
  • Bizarrchitecture / Alien Geometries, possibly up to Eldritch Location
  • Telepathy via fractally linked nodes in the brain that allows Amy and Lisa to communicate with them and each other.
  • Another Dimension: Leet's throwaway comment about his failed Shield Generator shunting excess energy to one gives Taylor the inspiration to figure out how to do this, and analysing a parahuman's brain (in the first case Lisa's) while their powers are in use enables Taylor and Varga to track down where their shards are located...
    • Depower: ...and thus how to permanently strip a parahuman of their powers via Earth-Shattering Kaboom if absolutely necessary.
• Spell My Name with a "The": After Amy saves her friend Lucy from a mugger, everyone takes to referring to her as The Amy, much to her chagrin. While it dies down eventually, her nearest and dearest still break it out on occasion.
  • The Varga, too. As the only one of his kind around, he can be referred to in the definitive.
• Spit Take: Lung does a loud cough into his beer when he is told that Saurial wants a word with him, considering what her big sister did to him. Timed perfectly by the bartender Pat of course.
• Squee: Lucy, Taylor's new friend at Arcadia, is a big fan of reptiles, and gets really excited whenever she meets a member of the Family.
• Starting a New Life: Squealer, after her Heel–Face Turn, finds a new place in the DWU as Linda Morgan. And a new cape identity as Vectura.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Lung is on the receiving end of this, when Raptaur proves incapable of beating him without mass collateral damage. So Taylor swaps her out for Kaiju.
• Super-Empowering:
  • Danny and Amy both find themselves recipients of healing symbiotes of Amy's own design, which will rapidly heal injuries and even stave off old age.
  • Amy provides herself, Lisa, Randall and Kevin with neural amplifiers, which allow them to think and process information a lot faster, in addition to some body reinforcement. Not only is it necessary for the former two to be able to control the Family biosuits Ianthe and Metis, they also provide a boost to mental parahuman powers.
  • To separate her new identity from Sherrel/Squealer, Amy gives Linda's new body a Changer/Brute rating in the form of a manual transformation into a Little Bit Beastly Cat Girl.
• Super Power Lottery: Taylor's trigger grants her so many powers that only the only ones with more powers than her are the guy whose power is that he can have any power he wants and the the twelve year old that can steal your ghost, and while they have 'more' powers, the 'strength' of the various powers she does have make her far stronger. And given enough time she could surpass both in number too.
• Super Window Jump: Several Merchants do this to escape the Family when they raid their safehouse. Not that it helps them escape the PRT reinforcements.
• Symbiotic Possession: This is the relationship between Taylor and the Varga. Taylor provides direction for their shared body, while the Varga provides power, advice, and companionship. Both sides enjoy the relationship immensely, and Taylor ends up bending the Bargain to allow the Varga far more freedom than normal.
• Talking to Themself: The result of Varga talking through Taylor's own mouth.
• Taking You with Me: Jake Petty vs Slaughterhouse 9. They'd just been through his hometown, butchered his wife, son and everyone he knew. With nothing to live for and nothing to lose, they were going to die, they just didn't know it.
  • Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Once they were in range of his cache of explosives, their fate was sealed. Try to kill him? Try to retreat? The bombs go off anyway.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
    "I don't see a weapon."
    "I know. That's the point." BOOM!
  • Exact Words: Lampshaded in chapter; even given their terrifying reputations and kill orders, in all previous (ie parahuman) encounters with the Nine, the best the heroes could hope for was to stop them. Thus, they were completely unprepared for a normal human who is actively and completely Hell bent on killing them.
• Terror Hero: Despite her chirpy personality as Sauriel and her jokey personality as Raptaur, every gangster that Taylor comes across in a dark alley finds her absolutely pants-wettingly terrifying.
  • When attacking Coil's base, the Family takes great pride in inducing pants wetting terror in Coil and his men.
• The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Erwin the fisherman is the first non cape to meet Kaiju. No one believes him until she makes her public debut. The say he's still nuts, just right and nuts.
• The Nose Knows: One of Taylor's Super-Senses; it's even capable of telling how people are related to each other. It can also detect the unique scent specific to Cauldron Vial Capes, like The Triumvirate, Battery and Triumph.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A more tame example: After both Vicky and Amy get mad at their mother Carol for going off on Amy simply for doing her own thing and being more outgoing, they tell their aunt Sarah about the situation and Sarah goes to give her sister a long overdue talk about how she's been treating her daughters, over a glass of wine. We then find out that the sisters are Sentimental Drunks.
• The Spark of Genius: Near the tail end of his two-day caffiene rush, Chris built a device that apparently produces piping-hot pizzas out of nowhere, without supplies or any visible power source. Having no memory of building the device, Chris is left to wonder how it works and (given that his specialty is replaceable modules), what the pizza-creator is a module of.
  • He also made a donut maker that Missy is particularly appreciative of. To the point they put it in a locked closet to keep her away from it.
• The World Is Not Ready: Considering the stigma of biotinkers and their creations, Amy is very reluctant to openly explore her biokinesis and the creations she could make, except in privacy with Taylor and Lisa. She finally starts to explore by giving one-use healing symbiotes to the PRT and the hospital, under the guise of Ianthe and Family biosculpting.
• There Was a Door: The Family comes through the walls of a Merchant warehouse stronghold instead of the doors, so as to get the drop on everyone aiming at said doors.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: When Taylor has caught Sophia's actions live on camera, which Danny, the Principal and the trio's parents have all seen, has her dead to rights, and rubs it in her face.
• Time Abyss: The Varga is ancient.
• Token Evil Teammate: For the whole group who have a hand in the redevelopment of the docks, this is filled by Mayor Christner's friend Phil, who is obviously Accord. Downplayed because he truly wants it to succeed as well, and is very impressed with Danny's plan as a whole, not seeing much need to amend it much when asked to.
• Took a Level in Badass: While Taylor is by far the biggest example, the same is also true of Amy and Lisa; Amy's biotinkering leads to the creation of symbiotes that can boost physical abilities, enough to give the pair mild Brute ratings. And that's before they get their Bioconstructs to become Ianthe and Metis, who are fairly high level Brutes and their pre-existing powers get boosted.
  • Danny too; why is Lustrum in The Birdcage? Danny put her there, and if she ever escapes she knows he'll finish the job in a heartbeat. With petrol and a match. While he isn't involved in The Business, The Mafia remember what his Dad and Grandfather did back in the day and treat him with a great deal of respect. To the point that they're looking into the bullying at Wilmslow, and Shadow Stalker will now have to worry about having a price on her head.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Thanks to having an experienced, smart and wise demon in her head, Taylor deals with the perils of Cape life much better than in canon. Varga is magnitudes more powerful than Skitter was, so Taylor doesn't have to resort to Combat Pragmatist solutions as much as she did in canon to achieve desirable outcomes. This has knock-on effects on:
  • Panacea: A chance encounter with her leads to Amy figuring out Taylor's secret, which leads to friendship and making a new circle of friends who aren't Victoria (and thus stops fixating on her and quickly seeing on her own what would have happened in canon had she not done so), a safe and private place where she can experiment and get creative with a power that is considered taboo (averting that particular psychological pressure cooker), reducing her hours at the hospital (so she isn't so overworked and depressed) and calling Carol out on her shit parenting (which in combination with a "Reason You Suck" Speech from Sarah results in Carol turning over a new leaf and giving Amy a much more settled home life. So while she's still as sarcastic and acerbic as ever, she's a lot more good natured about it.
  • Tattletale: Her pathological need to be the smartest person in the room is dialed down, so while still quite smug she's less of a Troll about it. Amy's upgrades also let her powers circumvent some of the restrictions that Scion has placed, so she's generally a lot more helpful and happier. Thanks to Danny giving her and the other Undersiders an avenue to go straight, she now has a job she loves and is less one track minded about Coil. She's also loving the new powerset she gets in the Metis construct.
  • Grue: Like Tattletale, now has an honest job he enjoys and is using that as leverage to get custody of Aisha.
  • Bitch: Her murder conviction is looking increasingly like a Miscarriage Of Justice, which Carol is quite confident she can get overturned and clear her name. In addition, she gets to look after and train all the DWU's dogs, and everyone for the most part leaves her alone, which she appreciates. Knowing where she stands in the pack helps too.
  • Über and Leet: Their association with The Family, and through them Armsmaster and Dragon, is giving them avenues to potentially joining the heroes. Leet is finally getting the respect he deserves and craves, and is entering into partnership with Dragon to have his Tinkertech mass produced.
  • Armsmaster: Saurial's general engineering ability appeals to his Efficiency sensibilities, and meeting the above, whose work he also begins to appreciate, helps with his bad people skills and makes him less of a Glory Hound and much more open to mass collaboration. People also suspect he's beginning to catch on to Dragon's feelings for him.
  • Squealer: Out from under The Merchants and completely off the drugs for the first time in years, she gets a new identity (Linda 'Vectura' Morgan) and body (complete with Changer powers), also gets an honest job with the DWU, and can actually obtain the parts and tools she needs to start living up to her potential as a Tinker. She still Swears Like A Sailor, but that's just habit.
• Trademark Favorite Food: For the reptilian Taylor, it's eggs. Raw, with the shell. Maybe seasoned with Tabasco sauce.
• Transforming Mecha: The DWU eventually gets some made for haulage and construction work by Vectura, their new Tinker.
  • Robot Buddy: Vectura keeps tweaking with the neural interface on her mechs trying to improve their performance, using her own brain as a template. The original, which has had more done to it, starts to develop a personality akin to an inquisitive cat. She combines her transforming tech with Taylor's Spatial Warping to allow it to take the form of something size of a Lnyx while it stores the excess in a pocket dimension. She names it Blue.
• Troll: Taylor, as mentioned above, gains a tendency to mess with people whenever possible, even pranking Clockblocker.
  • Varga is one to Taylor to begin with, in a good natured and ultimately harmless way.
• Unobtainium: Taylor gains the ability to create an indestructible metal six and a half times heavier than lead out of thin air, with physical qualities that defy all known laws. Called "Vargastuff" or the "Good Stuff" by her and "SaurialSteel" by Armsmaster, Leet eventually identifies it as Electron-Degenerate Matter (EDM) that has somehow been altered to remain stable outside of a stellar core and only weigh one-thousandth of a percent of its true weight.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Sophia takes advantage of Coil's last few PRT failsafes to escape.
• Watch Out for That Tree!:
  • Saurial's first flight with a water propulsion system leads to her crashing into a few things, like a bridge and a bank. She has to go back and fill in the Impact Silhouettes she leaves behind.
  • Vicky gets so lost in thought about the connection between Saurial and Taylor that she flies right into an office window.
  • Apparently even Legend has fallen to this trope during his younger years.
• Water Torture: Taylor as Raptaur does this to Hookwolf after his failed attack on the docks to make a point to others that might try it.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Besides the number of prominent capes who have yet to even get a mention (Chevalier, Flechette), in story while they can find The Simurgh and Leviathan quite easily, no one has any idea where Behemoth is.
• "Where? Where?": Ianthe a.k.a. Amy's Family persona does this on her first night out.
• Why Don't We Just Eat Them?: Varga's first resort to most problem individuals. While Taylor does sometimes agree with the sentiment, pragmatism forces her to seek out less illegal solutions.
• You Can't Go Home Again: The Undersiders spend a not inconsiderable amount of time as de-facto prisoners of the DWU. Between groups that either want them in prison (like The Police) or in the ground (like Lung or Coil) they can't afford to leave the compound, at least until Coil is taken out of the picture, removing the chances of him having them assassinated, and Lung is persuaded/intimidated into dropping his feud with them over them robbing him blind. Lisa in particular is happy to be home.
• You Were Trying Too Hard: While helping him with his dyscalculia, Taylor figures out that Chris a.k.a. Kid Win and his math skills are better in his subconscious, while he gets bogged down with the details if he thinks about it too much. To help with this, she gives him an abacus to use so calculations are focused more on muscle memory rather than brainpower.
• You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: Danny outright quotes the name of the trope in an angry phone conversation with Principal Blackwell when she's trying to brush him off.