Fanfic / Nobody Ever Told Me

Tiki’s first drawing.

Nobody Ever Told Me (that making exponentially-reproducing monsters was against the law!) is a tale of irresponsible biotinkering, the importance of family, and the experience of being an inhuman creature with unlimited potential in a world full of parahumans.

— Author's Summary

Nobody Ever Told Me is a Worm quest by Zerrer.

This story is set in an alternate universe, where you take the role of Tiki, a newborn tinkertech creature created by Taylor Hebert. Despite being newly born, you quickly discover that your very existence is considered extremely dangerous, and puts you and your mother in a precarious situation; If you are discovered by the heroes, they will certainly imprison her and destroy you and your siblings. If you are discovered by the villains, they will certainly press gang her and turn you and your siblings into a disposable army. You get to decide what happens next.

Currently on hiatus.

Nobody Ever Told Me About These Tropes:

• Abandoned Warehouse: Several of these dot the Docks due to Brockton Bay’s economic decline, with one of them serving as the first base for Dragon.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Justified. Brockton Bay’s sewer and storm drain system were poorly designed and even combined together. The larger tikilings routinely use them to travel around Brockton Bay unseen.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: There are several self-replicating threats in this world that are treated like this, from Nilbog, to the Machine Army, and the Blasphemies. The heroes and government agencies in charge of dealing with them are capable of delaying these S-class threats, but the way that people talk about it, it seems like a forgone conclusion that they will eventually overwhelm and kill everything.
• Aloof Leader, Affable Subordinate: This dynamic shows up quite often in cape groups:
  • Taylor is Better with Non-Human Company, as well as usually too busy tinkering, to deal with people and isn’t all that good with them. She usually delegates the task of negotiating with others to Tiki/Toddle, who despite not being human, is much better at diplomacy than she is.
  • The Butcher is usually busy strategizing and running the Teeth, that and being The Dreaded puts people on edge. Reaver is the go-to in negotiations and is pretty chipper all the time.
  • Weaver is The Stoic, handling negotiations in a business-like and professional manner, with very few tells as to what she’s really thinking. By contrast, Cheshire and Grue are more relaxed and normal in their behavior, as well as friendlier and easier to read.
• Alternate Universe Fic: While the quest takes place in Brockton Bay, several major background events have had a major ripple effect on how everything turned out, from the state of the world to where certain characters ended up.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • The Court is this for Taylor. They are the reason for her family falling apart, and her trigger was caused by Amelia/Red Queen.
  • To a less personal extent, Nilbog and his creatures are set up as one for Taylor and the tikilings based on how he set the bar for how dangerous a biotinker can be and how the public reacts to such capes. Interestingly, the tikilings have an instinctive hatred towards Nilbog’s creatures, though the reason why hasn’t been revealed.
• Beneath Notice: Between hiding from vengeful enemies and heroes over biotinker fears, Dragon tries to maintain a low profile at all times. More often than not, things like patrols and errands are carried out by stealthier tikilings like Nervous or Toddle.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The tikilings. Their standard form look like arthropods with four legs and two forearms that end in pincers, but are actually microscopic colony organisms in that shape. They have to eat biomass to grow, but don’t need to eat for survival. Their individual traits cause mutations that deviate from their standard biology.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: Early on, Taylor receives a visit to her house from Amelia/Red Queen, one of her bullies that caused her trigger event, to force her to join the Court. It results in the latter’s death and forces Taylor and Tiki on the run.
  • Taylor gets to return the favor by participating in the Court Raid, an assault against Marquis’ mansion led by the Teeth.
• The Caper: In their first big act against Blastgerm, Dragon sets up surveillance for a few days and manages to sneak a tikiling into a tinker lab in the hopes of gaining something useful. The outcome? A completely cleared out lab; all the tinkertech of two tinkers, one of the mentioned tinkers, and even the furniture out of pettiness.
• Combat, Diplomacy, Stealth: In true quest fashion, most of the actions regarding other people boil down to this. For the most part, intrigue and espionage are favored heavily by Dragon before initiating any diplomacy or combat action.
• Crapsack World: Self-replicating threats like Nilbog and the Machine Army are not truly contained, causing catastrophic environmental damage. This results in food prices spiking and hoarding being an issue. According to Blasto, the government seems likely to enstate a Mutant Draft Board in the future to coerce capes into stabilizing the country.
• Doing Research: An occasional method of getting information in the quest, serving as an Exposition Dump for the questers. A tikiling browses the web for information related to relevant topics, usually other parahuman groups or background events, and the questers usually make decisions based on what they learned.
• Early Game Hell: As a Tinker quest, obtaining resources (biomass, reagent, supplies) is a challenge in the beginning. Even after obtaining traits that help reduce the resource gap, tinkering bottlenecks occur frequently due to limited time and available actions.
• Evil Power Vacuum: The aftermath of the Court Raid ends in one of these; Marquis kills the Butcher, then himself, accidentally turning his youngest daughter into the next Butcher and leaving both the Court and the Teeth leaderless. The Court loses all of their capes and is functionally destroyed, while the Teeth flee the city until the newest Butcher settles down. This leaves Dragon as the only group left to takeover and defend the newly abandoned territories from other gangs.
• The Famine: There are hints that Earth Bet, or at least the U.S., is suffering from one of these with mentions of food scarcity and grocery price hikes. The Elite are also major food producers, however they haven’t been able to make as much in recent times. It is later revealed by listening in on Blasto that canon S-Class threats like Nilbog and the Machine Army aren’t contained and causing massive environmental damage, either causing or contributing to the problem.
• Fiery Cover Up: Taylor’s go-to method for covering her track in certain events is to use a tinkertech chemical that combusts into a blue fire.
  • Later on, a cape called “Blueflame”, actually Blasto, via one of his creatures commits arson using the same exact method.
• Great Escape: As a part of a deal with the Teeth, Toddle assists Reaver with breaking out Knightwolf from PRT custody. This is to help weaken the gangs in a roundabout way.
• Insectoid Aliens: The general appearance of Tiki and the tikilings. They tend to resemble various types of arthropods like prawns and crabs, while some of their traits allow them to develop insectile wings, create hive-like nests with their saliva, and have queen-like females that lay eggs.
  • Tiki’s visions reveal that the tikilings are based upon actual aliens from a previous cycle.
• It Can Think: Tiki, and by extension the tikilings, is more than capable of intelligent thought. The general reaction from others is varying degrees of Oh, Crap!. Part of this is fear of another potential replicating threat the likes of Nilbog, though most don’t suspect the full extent of Tiki’s capabilities.
• Jack the Ripoff: Taylor as Tiamat uses a chemical substance that creates blue fire to cover up her involvement in certain events and destroy evidence. To her and Tiki’s surprise, someone else called “Blueflame” begins to commits arson with a similar power afterwards.
• Let's You and Him Fight: The initial strategy that Tiki pushes for dealing with the gangs. Rather than dealing with them directly, Dragon should sit back and let the Court and the Teeth tear each other apart… they don’t stay neutral for long.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Several examples pop up throughout the quest:
  • Taylor’s Tinker ability revolves around creating the alien-like tikilings. The reagent that she creates for her tinkering grows eyes and tentacles that occasionally lash out at her. She doesn’t even notice.
  • Red Queen fights by creating a dress of red tentacles tipped with bone and her head covered in eyes after Taylor blinds her with acid.
  • After Tiki’s Growth trait kicks in, he loses all semblance of his prior arthropod shape and becomes a building sized mass of flesh, tentacles and eyes.
  • Toddle’s optimized shapeshifting trait can create some interesting forms, such as a body made of layered flesh and steel, covered in small eyes and venomous spines or turning into a giant half organic and glass eyeball, with hundreds of nested eyes.
• The Madness Place: Tinker fugues. Anytime a tinker is sufficiently inspired or focused on their work, they get a faraway look in their eyes and go on autopilot to finish it.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The end result of the Court Raid: Marquis killed the Butcher, only to commit suicide to prevent himself from being forced to kill Wildling. This ends up being a worse decision since his daughter ends up possessing the Butcher’s power by proximity. Due to unforeseen power synergies, Wildling receives the ability to kill everything with a skeleton in a three block radius. Cue everyone running for their lives.
• Plot-Triggering Death: The first week of the quest begins slowly with getting to know Taylor & the setting, gathering resources, and waiting for new tikilings to hatch. Then it really kicks off after Amelia Lavere/Red Queen invades Taylor’s home and is killed in self-defense. This forces a huge change in the status quo for both Taylor and Brockton Bay, forcing her to start her hero career way earlier than expected and setting off a gang war.
• Refuge in Audacity: After being forced to leave her home with nothing but her costume to wear, Taylor decides that she needs to go shopping for some new clothes…while wearing her Bio-Armor out in broad daylight. Tiki, who at that point is the size of a large dog and has multiple arms, also decides to tag along on her shopping trip to make sure that she doesn’t get into trouble…and to help carry her bags.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The route that most of the Teeth, except Bitch take in the aftermath of the Court Raid.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Averted. Taylor and Tiki have occasional run-ins with the top brass of villain gangs before ever meeting their underlings or mooks. In fact the very first cape that Taylor (as Tiamat) and the tikilings fight against is Red Queen, the supposed leader of the Court.
• The Stakeout: What the tikilings usually do as an espionage action against other groups.
• Variant Power Copying: Taylor has the ability to extract and crystallize the essence of a power from samples of a parahuman’s power or genetic material. These trait crystals can then be used to give the tikilings new traits. Examples include Regeneration from a bone sliver created by Wildling and Photosynthesis from one of Blasto’s creatures.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: As a Tinker quest, resource management is a major factor for getting things done:
  • Biomass is required to feed the tikilings so they can grow and evolve. Later, it is used by Egglayers as a requirement for making eggs. This is usually provided by hunting animals or produced by certain traits.
  • Reagent is a strange tinker brew that only Taylor can create that serves as the catalyst for most of her advanced projects, like improving her biosuit or the tikilings and even creating new eggs from scratch.
  • Chemicals are what is needed to help create more reagent and may be needed for other projects.
  • Supplies are raw materials for creating and improving other devices like Taylor’s computer, her armor, or the workshop in general.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: A general theme of the quest in regards to living Tinker creations:
  • One of Taylor’s biggest fears is that the Protectorate will kill Tiki and the other tikilings for being a biotinkered beings, despite him being incredibly moral and intelligent. Considering what happened to Dragon, this is a legitimate concern.
  Tiamat: Just because they’re not human doesn’t mean they’re not people.
  
  • In the backstory, this was a debate about Dragon, the Tinker heroine after it was discovered that she was a Benevolent A.I.. Despite being a genuine hero and doing great deeds, even killing all of Slaughterhouse 9, people were still frightened by the possibility of her going rogue and shut her down permanently.

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