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Bug on a Wire

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Bug on a Wire is a Worm fanfiction by jacobk.

Taylor Hebert wanted to be a hero, but she never really planned out how she was going to get there. If she had been a little more proactive before putting on a costume things would have gone differently, that's for sure. Better? Well, that's a different question.

Can be found on on Fan Fiction.com here and the Space-Battles forum here.

The story is a Dead Fic as of 2013, the same year it was published.


Bug On A Wire contain examples of:

  • Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Two very important relationships Taylor has in canon are reversed here with unexpected results: She develops a working-partnership and Odd Friendship with Shadow Stalker and an antagonistic one with the Undersiders to the point she takes them down and hands them over to the PRT and Protectorate!
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Multiple examples:
    • Taylor as Skitter begins her career as a vigilante by teaming-up with Shadow Stalker to raid a stash house belonging to Empire-88 and a few nights later one belonging to the ABB, destroying the drugs while splitting the cash between the two of them.
    • The Undersiders do this to Skitter when they raid her lair and steal the money she had previously collected. She retaliates by locating their base then sneaking in while they slept, captured them, and turn the villains over to the PRT.
  • Alternate Timeline: While other Worm fanfics are this by design with the supposition of what would happen if Taylor gained a different power than from canon, Bug On A Wire was one of the few to have Taylor keep her canon bug control power and identity. Making this fic, and the timeline, the closest to canon events.
  • Ambiguous Situation: There are hints in the fifth chapter that Sophia Hess, who those familiar with Worm canon know is Shadow Stalker, has begun to figure out that Taylor Herbert (the girl she's been tormenting for two years) and her new partner Skitter are one in the same.
  • Amoral Attorney: Quinn Cale is a lawyer known for specializing in utilizie Loophole Abuse, Fantastic Legal Weirdness to represent his parahuman, and often criminal, clientele with legal defense and other services. After the Undersiders raid her first lair, Skitter uses the money from her previous exploits to hire him to find her a new base thats more under the radar.
  • Asshole Victim: Empire-88 are this due to literally being Nazis and the ABB have the likes of Lung and Oni Lee being the first targeted by Skitter and Shadow Stalker in what is to be a long-term plan to take them down.
  • Dark Is Evil: As opposed to Tattletale where in the canon story she was dressed in a bright purple leoptard, she wears one that is black with blue highlights and a veil. This matches with her more jerkish portrayal of her personality and Foreshadows her Manipulative Bitch status as the true backer of the Undersiders under the guise of a mysterious "boss".
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Along with Skitter's canon outfit there's Shadow Stalker's which is all black due to not being being a Ward and thus not needing to be forced into a more 'friendly' style of costume.
  • Fantastic Legal Weirdness: "Toymaker vs New York" was a landmark case that change things for how vigilantes worked regarding trying criminal cases: simply put, any capture done by a vigilante is considered a citizens arrest unless there is evidence proving a connection between the former and the PRT and thus requiring the usual procedures (such as procuring an arrest warrant) to make the arrest valid. This has been a long time source of frustration for the PRT since them even so much as informing a vigilante of the law can be constituted as the organization as approving and by extension sanctioning their activities.
  • Point of Divergence: The story premise is that Taylor, as Skitter, decides to take a more proactive approach as a Hero though as a Vigilante Man as opposed to joining the Protectorate for some yet unexplained reason. One of the earliest changes this causes is that her second outing (which involves raiding an ABB stash house) results in Oni Lee biting the dust.
  • What If?: There a number of differences to the canon both before and after the point where Taylor decided to go full Vigilante Man:
    • Shadow Stalker was somehow apparently was able to avoid getting caught by the PRT and so was herself an unsanctioned Vigilante Man when she meets, and teams-up, with Skitter. The interaction between the two of them leads to an Odd Friendship with a hefty does of Dramatic Irony.
    • Coil is not the Undersiders' patron and in fact they have no backer: Tattletale was able to trick them all into thinking there was a criminal mastermind backing them so that they, more specifically Grue as leader, would better follow her instructions.

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