Tinker, Taylor, Builder, Nexus is a Worm fanfiction by CMDRZhor, described as a "light crossover with Eclipse Phase"
Taylor Hebert doesn't remember much about the worst day of her life. She remembers pain, isolation, and rot. She remembers panicking. She remembers passing out.
When she woke up, she had startup diagnostics running in her head.
Now armed with a vast array of knowledge from an advanced human civilization, and the perfect body with which to put it to use, Nexus will drag Brockton Bay to a post-scarcity society, whether it likes it or not.
Currently ongoing (last updated November 1st, 2023). Can be found on AO3
and SpaceBattles
This work contains examples of the following:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Leviathan appears in Brockton Bay several weeks earlier than canon- only a few days after the raid on Bakuda's workshop.
- Adaptation Expansion: In canon, Bakuda supposedly Triggered after getting a less than perfect grade from Cornell. Here, Tattletale deduces (correctly, based on Bakuda's reaction) that Bakuda cheated her way into university and Triggered when she got caught.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Glory Girl and the Undersiders end up on better terms here, due to their first meeting not being the bank robbery.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Unrepentant Nazi they may be, Victor's final thoughts are of his wife, Othala. When his body is recovered and brought to the medical tent, Othala is devastated.
- An Arm and a Leg: Taylor wakes up missing one arm and two legs; she eventually fabricates replacements after Danny brings her home.
- Taylor loses several legs in a fight with the Travelers, in a timeline Coil eventually discards. It doesn't meaningfully slow her down.
- Bakuda gets her foot sliced off courtesy of Nexus' bulkhead slicer.
- Nexus loses a leg when Leviathan kicks her across the Docks.
- A Rare Sentence: When Nexus relegates Regent to bodyguarding Tattletale:Regent: "Why am I on bodyguard detail-"
Nexus: "Because if things go wrong and she gets disabled, you can wear her like a smug skin suit and run you both out of there, Hijack.”
Beat
Regent: "... Y'know, I could’ve gone my entire life without hearing that particular combination of words, but you had to ruin it."- Later, during the fight with Leviathan:
Nexus: "I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d expected to see in my first Endbringer battle, but Tigger trying his damnedest to put Leviathan in a headlock wasn’t it." - And Show It to You: Nexus, after accidentally turning off her emotional dampeners, decides to do this to Bakuda to bypass her Dead Man's Switch. She even maps out the exact movements involved to present it to Bakuda before her visual cortex shuts down. Tattletale is able to talk her down, but it's a close thing.
- Atrocious Alias: Taylor is of the opinion that 'Bakuda' is this, since it literally translates from japanese to "boom boom". Once she figures that out she refuses to call Bakuda anything else.
- She's similarly dissapointed by The Number Man's cape name.
Nexus: "That's like if Legend decided to call himself 'Laser Hands'." - Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Downplayed, as her power probably helped somewhat, but Shadow Stalker's corpse is surprisingly intact for someone who was backhanded across town by Leviathan.
- Big Damn Heroes: Just like in canon, Scion appears at the climax of the Leviathan fight and drives it off.
- Body Backup Drive: An Eclipse Phase staple. Taylor gives her father a spare backup of herself before she and the Undersiders go off to fight Leviathan.
- Later, on their way to the fight, Taylor informs the Undersiders they aren't allowed to die; she hasn't backed any of them up yet. It takes them a second to realise she's being entirely serious.
- Borrowin' Samedi: Lurch, a touch teleporter who comes to Brockton Bay to help fight Leviathan, can 'tag' people or objects and rapidly teleport them back and forth between a location of his choosing, inducing debilitating nausea that scales with the weight of the target.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Tattletale notes that all of Nexus' legs contain "Integrated power tools... weaponry, or tools can be used as weapons."
- Brown Note: Basilisk hacks make a return from the Eclipse Phase universe, as Coil finds out firsthand.
- Sadly, Leviathan is immune to Basilisk hacks, but Eidolon and Clairvoyant are not.
- Cast from Lifespan: Taylor's bulkhead slicer, as the name suggests, is designed to cut through spaceship hulls. It's easily her strongest weapon, but firing it takes a huge chunk out of her battery life.
- Closest Thing We Got: Subverted: The Endbringer Alert Armbands that get handed out at Endbringer fights are actually worse than nothing: Not only are they ineffective for search-and-rescue and coordination, the constant casualty announcements block any attempt at communication between defenders and actively drain morale. Nexus wastes no time taking the whole system over and replacing it with a functional C3note network when Leviathan attacks.
- Collateral Damage: Eidolon zaps Leviathan with his green-disintegration-lightning and hits at least two friendlies in the process.
- Later, Nexus tries to use Basilisk Hacks on Leviathan, and uses Grue's power to prevent anyone else from seeing it. It has no effect on Leviathan, but takes out Eidolon, because they're connected, as well as Clairvoyant and Doormaker, who can see through the darkness bubble.
- Crazy-Prepared: Subverted. Coil keeps a fake safe in his office, rigged with a claymore mine. In a spare timeline, Nexus hacks into his base's security network and sets it off while Coil is standing in front of it.
- Death by Adaptation: Brandish and Shadow Stalker originally made it all the way to the end of Ward. Here they're both killed by Leviathan.
- Victor is killed by Shadow Stalker during the Endbringer Truce.
- Death or Glory Attack: Dragon grapples Leviathan to shove it into position for Flechette to shoot his core. Dragon's battlesuit is destroyed, and Leviathan dodges Flechette's attack, but Scion shows up immediately after.
- Dies Differently In The Adaptation: Kaiser and Fenja are killed by Lung when Bakuda siccs him on the Villain Truce at Somer's Rock
- Oni Lee is Killed Offscreen by Bakuda during her coup of the ABB.
- Diving Save: Brandish shoves Armsmaster out of the way of Leviathan's attack, and gets crushed underfoot.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Since Dragon is unable to run multiple instances of herself thanks to her restrictions, she's severely handicapped by her combat suit's limited processing power during Leviathan's attack on Brockton Bay.
- Draw Aggro: Nexus accidentally gets Leviathan's undivided attention, and leads it on a merry chase to an abandoned area of the docks while the defenders regroup.
- Foreshadowing: Many of Taylor's abilities are set up at least several chapters beforehand, to avoid New Powers as the Plot Demands.
- During her initial self-examination, Taylor finds three inoperable auxiliary cortexes. She forgets about them until Leviathan attacks, when her self-repair functions restore them and allow her to run two personality forks.
- Gargle Blaster: Non-alchoholic variant. Armsmaster's "optimized coffee" is about five times as strong as regular coffee, glows in the dark, and allegedly could eat through whatever cup it's poured in if left sitting for too long.
- Gilligan Cut: During the Leviathan fight, Danny reassures himself that Taylor will probably be fine: it's not like she's going to go and pick a fight with an Endbringer. Cue Nexus and Grue running for their lives after the former gets Leviathan's undivided attention.
- Godzilla Threshold: Basilisk Hacks were treated by their original civilization as the absolute last resort. Leviathan definetly qualifies, making it all the more frustrating when they completely fail.###MESSAGE BEGINS
You should not have this archive. Nobody should.
Nobody should know you have it. If somebody does find out, we did not give this to you. If people knew you had this, they would hunt you and all your forks and backups down for it, and that includes most of our faction.
You would best forget you have it, and you in fact will largely do so within the next three minutes if not otherwise contraindicated.
This is not a toy. This is a demon in a bottle and you are its warden.
You will not use this archive unless you absolutely positively need to make somebody dead or worse than dead, and you have no other recourse.
These patterns are not of TITAN manufacture, but consider them the next worst thing - the end result of years of brilliantly stupid people trying to emulate them. Analysis is mostly certain these patterns are not actively contagious, but close only counts with horseshoes and thermobarics.
Proceed only if you absolutely must. Some lamps are best left un-rubbed.
###MESSAGE ENDS
###ENTER PASSPHRASE
This Is Not A Place Of Honor.
###AUTHORIZATION VERIFIED
###ACCESS GRANTED - Half the Man He Used to Be: At the beginning of Bakuda's bombing campaign, Bitch gets hit with an 'entropy bomb' which flash-mummifies the right side of her body. She survives long enough for Nexus to put her into a healing vat.
- Harassing Phone Call: Danny has been receiving so many prank calls taunting him over Taylor's supposed death that he initially doesn't believe Taylor when she reaches out to him over the phone. The prank caller turns out to be Emma using a voice scrambler.Scrambled voice: “Mister Hebert. I have possible information on your daughter. Have you checked with the Merchants lately? I hear they had an influx of hookers and crackwhores over the past few days. That’s where all the other losers wash up, why not her?”
- Healing Vat: Nexus throws together one for Bitch after she gets critically injured by Bakuda. Limited materials mean Nexus has to build a sub-par model, which will take a lot longer to heal them.
- Heroic Sacrifice: After Armsmaster cuts off Leviathan's tail, Brandish shoves him out from under its counterattack and is crushed underfoot.
- Hurricane of Puns: Aegis and Clockblocker trade head-related puns in the medical tent after the former is nonfatally decapitated.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite so many differences from canon, Taylor still runs into Lung preparing to attack the Undersiders on her first night out.
- Killed Offscreen: Bakuda claims to have killed Oni Lee during her coup of the ABB, and intends to "build a lawn ornament" out of what's left of him.
- Brutus is the only one of Bitch's dogs to come back from the Undersider's fight with Bakuda.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: After many, many failed attempts, Coil decides that Taylor, and by extension the Undersiders, aren't worth the trouble, and immediately cuts ties.
- Malicious Misnaming: Nexus refuses to call Bakuda anything other than 'Boom Boom'.note Other characters follow suit once they learn about it.
- Me's a Crowd: Taylor uses cheap, lightweight humanoid "cases" to interact with the outside world when and where her arachnoid chassis can't. She can operate at least six cases - including her 'main' arachnoid sleeve - at once, even if the cases are in completely different parts of town from each other.
- After Nexus repairs her auxiliary cortexes, she can run two personality forks, essentially letting her run three concurrent trains of thought at once. These three personalities are designated: Nexus-Oversight, who manages the large-scale strategy i.e. coordinating Search-and-Rescue; Nexus-Tactical, who manages the smaller-scale tactical situation i.e. working with Tattletale to find Leviathan's weakness; and Nexus-Actual, who manages their physical body and its immediate surroundings i.e. running the fuck away from Leviathan.
- She also has a third auxiliary cortex, implied to be hosting the Queen Administrator shard.
- Missing Time: Taylor has no memories of what happened in between her triggering in the locker and waking up four months later in a broken robot spider body in the Docks.
- Mistaken for Prank Call: Danny is initially furious when Taylor contacts him, assuming she's another prank caller taunting him over her death. Taylor has to tell him Something Only They Would Say to convince him it's really her.
- Mundane Utility: Nexus can use her Microwave Agonizer to heat lukewarm cups of tea.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nexus' attempt to attack Leviathan with Basilisk Hacks inadvertantly takes out both Doormaker and Clairvoyant, utterly crippling Cauldron's multi-dimensional communication/transport network by complete accident.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Giant Robot Spider Forklift.
- No-Sell: Nexus' arachnoid chassis is completely immune to Bakuda's pain bombs and incendiaries. EMPs only momentarily scramble her long-range comms.
- Leviathan's reaction to a barrage of Basilisk hacks is to blink and shake his head, then carry on unimpeded.
- Not So Above It All: Nexus insists that she no longer feels sexual attraction the way an organic human being would, while shamelessly ogling at Brian.
- Not So Invincible After All: Brandish's Breaker form was thought to be totally invincible, right up until Leviathan crushed her underfoot.
- Oh, Crap!: The Dragonslayers absolutely freak out every time Dragon and Nexus interact with each other.
- Off with His Head!: Aegis is reduced to a severed head during the fight with Leviathan. He survives.
- Psychic Nosebleed: Thomas Calvert, in one timeline, realizes he has a nosebleed when Coil, in the opposite timeline, gets killed by a Basilisk hack.
- Tattletale quickly develops one while processing the data Nexus feeds her from Leviathan.
- Punched Across the Room: Shadow Stalker is backhanded several blocks by Leviathan.
- Nexus gets punted down the street like a football, also by Leviathan.
- Put on a Bus: Bitch is put in a cludged-together healing vat by Nexus after she gets gravely wounded by Bakuda.
- Resurrective Immortality: During the Leviathan fight, Alabaster gets killed almost as quickly as he revives, resulting in a constant stream of "Alabaster deceased; Alabaster reactivated" from the fighter's armbands.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Tattletale's power informs her that Taylor interacts with the outside world through her remote-operated cases to compensate for "limited physical capability". She assumes this means Taylor is disabled somehow, rather than a giant robot spider.
- Shmuck Bait: Coil keeps a fake safe in his office, rigged with a claymore mine. Subverted, since at the end of the day he still has a claymore mine pointed at his back whenever he's sitting at his desk. Nexus sets it off remotely in a spare timeline.
- Simple, yet Awesome: Nexus opts to coordinate Search-and-Rescue and high-level combat analysis rather than try to fight Leviathan directly. Combined with her medical technology, she saves a lot of lives.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Aegis, Gallant, and Browbeat all survive the fight with Leviathan; Gallant with a concussion and Aegis reduced to a severed head.
- Teleport Spam: Lurch can teleport people and objects with a touch, with no hard limit on mass or distance, but induces varying degrees of nausea on the target. Nexus' cases, lacking digestive tracts or inner ears, are unaffected by the nausea, letting her use him as the linchpin of Search-and-Rescue efforts during the fight with Leviathan.
- Tempting Fate: While marvelling at the defenders' lack of coordination against Leviathan, Nexus muses "It's a miracle we aren't taking more friendly fire." Literally seconds later, Eidolon carelessly zaps Leviathan and tags at least two friendlies.
- The Oath-Breaker: Shadow Stalker decides to break the Endbringer Truce and go villain hunting during the fight with Leviathan. She shoots Victor in the back as he's sniping at Leviathan, and tries to do the same to Grue before Leviathan interrupts her.
- The Stations of the Canon: Just the one station, actually. On her first night out of the basement she woke up in, Taylor runs into Lung preparing to attack the Undersiders.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: The basic premise of the fic: Taylor Hebert wakes up one morning and finds herself transformed into a gigantic robotic spider.
- Villainous Rescue: After Grue and an out-of-town Ward named Skylight are knocked out of the sky by Leviathan, Grue is shot in the back by Shadow Stalker. His body armor - combined with his ability to negate her powers - saves his life and delays her until Leviathan appears out of nowhere and backhands her across the Bay.
- Immediately after, Grue and Skylight are now facing Leviathan alone. Then Hookwolf, of all people, latches onto Leviathan's leg, distracting it long enough for Grue and Skylight to escape.
- Wham Line: As Nexus reflects on what little she remembers about her Trigger Event:<DESTINATION>
<AGREEMENT>
<TRAJECTORY>
<AGREEMENT>
<INTERFACING>
<SYNCHRONIZING>
<ANOMALY>
<UNIDENTIFIED EXTERNAL CONNECTION>
<ERROR>
<DEVIATION>
<ERROR>
