When the Entities arrived, Gaia called out for aid. Nothing inside the solar system respond. Neither did anything from distant stars. Something from in-between, from the Oort Cloud did. It just took time to arrive.
S-Class Threats. The Sleeper Subsumes. The Endbringers are unnatural disasters. The thing in the Crystal Forest though, it just waits.
Taylor was there the day it fell to earth.
S-Class Threats. The Sleeper Subsumes. The Endbringers are unnatural disasters. The thing in the Crystal Forest though, it just waits.
Taylor was there the day it fell to earth.
ULTIMATE ONE: TYPE-Taylor
is a fanfic by Stargazing Seraph. It is a crossover between the Nasuverse and Worm. It can also be found on Archive of Our Own here.
Around 2 years before the events of the original web-serial, ORT- having heard the call of Gaia- lands on Earth. In doing so, it irrevocably alters the fate of one Taylor Hebert. Having gone with her best friend, Emma, to a summer camp for stargazing, she is caught directly within ORT's Crystal Valley. Although she's able to escape with her life, the crystal is slowly consuming her flesh, with there being no known way to cure the affliction. And little does she know, the infection has created a far more personal link with the being known as the Oort-Spider.
ULTIMATE ONE: TYPE-Taylor contains examples of:
- Adaptive Ability:
- ORT's infection of Taylor has granted her a version of this, specific to Parahuman powers, as any ability she's subjected is shown to have no effect the second time around.
- Arc 3 reveals this is the case with ORT itself. When a trio of Entities implied to be Eden, the Warrior, and Abaddon passed by the Oort Clouds, ORT attacked and attempted to dissect Abaddon, in turn leading to a confrontation between the Entities and the TYPE. Neither side is able to kill the other because of their adaptive capabilities, though by the end of the fight ORT would have managed to overcome and completely devour Abaddon had the Entity not unleashed one final desperate move to break free and escape as fast as possible.
- Adaptational Heroism: Due to having been caught in the same incident as Taylor, Emma is still her best friend, and in contrast to canon, when offered by Sophia to become one of the "predators", flatly rejects her offer and tells her to go to the Crystal Valley.
- Always a Bigger Fish: In canon, the Entities were by far the most powerful beings in the setting, with absolutely nothing capable of remotely challenging them otherwise, but here certain other beings are capable of matching or exceeding them. Specifically in Arc 3, as Abaddon is passing by the Oort cloud shortly after exchanging shards with Eden, they're attacked by ORT, and while they're able to match ORT for the initial stages, once ORT starts to get serious and use the full power of the Oort Cloud, it's able to quickly turn the tides and would have overcome and completely devoured Abaddon if the Entity hadn't been able to break free at the last minute and pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
- Amputation Stops Spread: Played With For those infected by ORT's Crystal Valley, while amputation does indeed prevent the rest of the limb from being consumed, when the PRT tried to restore the limbs using Panacea's powers, the limbs grew back crystalized. And when Taylor gets hers removed, they grow back right there and spread up further, as ORT has specific plans for her.
- And I Must Scream: The final fate of those who are infected by ORT's Crystal Valley, their bodies are reduced to living hunks of crystal, incapable of moving in any way, but still fully conscious.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Taylor has a habit of subconsciously aiming right for people's brains when she's fighting, whether just practicing or actual combat, as ORT is having her target (in the case of Parahumans) their corona pollentia.
- Behemoth Battle: One occurs in a flashback sequence in Arc 3, between Abaddon and ORT, as shortly after Abaddon exchanges shards with Eden, ORT attacks it, both because it's an intruder and also to devour in order to analyze its makeup. The two proceed to engange in combat, and while they're relatively evenly matched at first, once ORT decides to exert the full scope of it's powers, it's able to quickly overpower Abaddon, who only just barely manages to escape before fleeing as fast as possible.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: How ORT operates given its Inscrutable Aliens mindset. What powers it allows Taylor to manifest are based on two overriding needs: Ensuring her survival as its drone and anything that would allow her and therefore it better access to new parahuman powers to study. When Taylor subconsciously convinces it to allow her request to use Starry Invade to save a victim of Grey Boy's time loops, it does so under the assumption that this will impress her superiors and thus gain them access to larger and more extensive data configurations. It uses this same rationale later on to have Taylor access its Ether Drinker ability to kill a newly-triggered parahuman she frees from another time loop, and ultimately cares nothing for the mental trauma Taylor suffers from straight-up punching into her target's neck, draining the life out of him, and squishing part of his brain in her fist in full view of witnesses and crystallizing most of her arm in the process.
- Cannibalism Superpower: ORT is shown to have this in the same vein as in canon. Specifically in Arc 3, after it's fight with Abaddon, it's shown that ORT has gained the ability to hear Gaia's distress call over Eden and Scion's jamming of it, hence the reason why it arrives on Earth Bet instead of the other, more nearby Ultimate Ones, as they lack the ability to bypass the Entities interference.
- Claimed by the Supernatural: What differentiates Taylor from the other victims of ORT is that, for currently unknown reasons, ORT has marked Taylor as its drone and specifically grants her access to certain abilities to keep her alive and ensure better access to information. It's also very possessive of her, as when Taylor gets her crystalized arm amputated in order to get it replaced with a prosthetic, it "grows right back", spreads even further, and when the surgeons try to remove it again by cutting higher, it rapidly spreads up and ends up infecting one of them.
- Crippling Overspecialization: How Taylor's abilities are seen at first, as while they negate other powers, in most cape work, non-powered attacks such as bullets, knives, and even fists are far more commonly encountered threats.
- The Dreaded: ORT quickly established itself as this, to the point that many first assume it to be a fourth Endbringer, having inflicted enormous casualties on the PRT, with only the Triumvirate surviving unscathed, and the entire area surrounding having been quarantined and closed off completely. Even more worryingly, Contessa's Path to Victory is described as seeming to actively avoid any sort of intersection with ORT.
- Eldritch Abomination: ORT, as anyone familiar with the Nasuverse knows. Even by the standards of Worm, it's shown to be this, as it's crystallization of its victims along with its other abilities are completely incomprehensible to even Thinkers. Furthermore, it's shown to be a blind-spot to Contessa's power, in a similar vein to Scion and the Endbringers, with those infected by Crystal Valley also displaying varying degrees of interference to Path to Victory depending on how advanced their condition is.
- Healing Factor: Taylor has a minor one in her crystallized body parts, as they will repair themselves if something hits hard enough to damage them, and in her body in general that lets her recover from minor injuries much faster than a normal person. When she fights Bakuda, ORT uses the data gained from observing Aegis's own Parahuman powers to boost Taylor's healing to the point she can heal fast enough to restore damaged parts despite being repeatedly bombed by Bakuda's power, all to Implacable Woman levels. Not even getting her face blown off stops her for very long, though it's implied from Bakuda's horrified screaming at the sight that Taylor's regular flesh isn't what's regenerating in its place.
- Hero Killer: We find out during Bakuda's interlude that ORT has already firmly cemented itself as this, as in her inner monologue, she states that it killed around 50 capes within the span of a minute. To put that into perspective, during the entirety of his assault on Brockton Bay, Leviathan killed around 40 capes.
- Hope Spot: After much consideration, Taylor decides to have her arm and legs amputated in Arc 3. The operation is a success...until Taylor wakes up afterward and learns her crystalized limbs grew back. After spending most of the story until now in bitter resignation, Taylor can only scream in hopelessness and despair.
- Implacable Woman: Taylor turns into this when she fights Bakuda, as her determination to stop the villain fueled by seeing several of her victims firsthand, some of her fellow Wards nearly being blown up, and herself getting hit with said bombs prompts ORT to enhance her Healing Factor to be able to tank and heal damage no matter what the bomber throws at her. It gets to the point she barely slows down after getting most of her face blown off, doesn't even pay attention when a bunch of goons get ripped to pieces trying to rush her, punches down a locked metal door even as her crystallized fist breaks into a stump from her incorrectly striking it, and finally walks right through Bakuda's final desperate bombing attempt until she gets close enough to start strangling her. Only snapping out of her rage right at the end is the only reason Taylor didn't just stab Bakuda right through the brain but instead capture her.
- Jumped at the Call: Taylor, upon receiving a recruitment offer from the PRT for the Wards, immediately leaps at the opportunity. Played With in that it's shown that ORT seems to have had at least some role in directing her to that decision, in its desire to come into contact with more parahuman powers.
- Life-or-Limb Decision: This tends to be the choice facing those infected by ORT's crystallization but haven't progressed to non-extremity infection yet. When one of the surgeons trying to amputate Taylor's crystallized arm gets infected on the hand by the rapidly-regrowing structure, he tells the newly-arrived Armsmaster to chop it off right then and there.
- Outside-Context Problem: ORT is this to the world of Worm, as it's an immensely powerful, otherworldly Eldritch Abomination that is completely disconnected from the Entities.
- Power-Upgrading Deformation: What Taylor's crystallization process essentially is. As ORT has made her its "drone" to observe and gather data about parahumans, the more she taps into the powers it gives her the faster the crystallization accelerates through her body to better change her to wield them. It goes into overdrive if she's put into a situation where she's taking heavy damage on top of it.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Downplayed, in that while ORT isn't really evil per say, it cares little to nothing for humans, and at first rejects Taylor's subconscious request to use Starring Invade to nullify Gray Boy's time loop under the assumption that the data gained isn't significant enough to bother with. It eventually accedes to her demands under the assumption that doing so will impress her superiors and thus gain her, and by extension it, access to larger and more extensive data configurations.
- Taken for Granite: The ultimate fate of anyone infected by Crystal Valley, unless they're able to remove the infected issue, is to be reduced to a hunk of crystal.
- Vampiric Draining: ORT grants Taylor its Ether Drinker ability in order to deal with a recently-Triggered parahuman who she just freed from one of Grey Boy's timeloops. The manner in which she uses it involves stabbing her arm right into the liquid metal mass his body had become and grabbing his corona pollentia before draining his life away.
- The Worf Effect: In canon Worm, the Entities are by far the strongest beings in the setting, with even the Endbringers being hopelessly outclassed by them. So the fact that ORT is able to not only match, but outright overpower one of them (Abaddon) to the point of forcing it to run for its life, serves as an indication as to just how unfathomably powerful ORT is.
- Your Days Are Numbered: The assured situation of everyone not Taylor infected by ORT. With no means of curing or reversing it, anyone who either doesn't choose to get their limbs amputated or is infected through a non-extremity is doomed to be completely assimilated. Taylor's in more of a grey area in that everyone including her believes this to be the case, but none of them yet realize ORT has specifically chosen her as its "drone" and thus has a different fate in mind.
