Crawl-or

Okay, finally getting around to this
This being my first fic attempt

I've tried writing stories in the past, and failed, and I want to stop that, so I'm going to start just writing what I feel like for various stories and give them their own space

This first one is going to be one for my Worm fanfic featuring main character Taylor getting not her canon powers but the adaptive regeneration of a villain by the name of Crawler

going to be doing some major info and note-dumping here, but I first want to get the proto-timeline set out

Timeline v1.01

Taylor triggers- not Locker, but something similar. bit more physical
intervening time-discovers powers
starts/attends fight club at Winslow
...
informs Danny; starts putting gear together for live vblog
...
finishes fight club; Emma/Sophia/Madison witness Taylor get shot. Parting shots from both sides. Taylor leaves Winslow for the last time
Sophia brings Taylor up to her superiors; Taylor releases her announcement (still anonymous, but some people figure it out). Writing this first as a warm-up and to get into the groove of how I want to write it
A few members of the Protectorate go to Winslow the next day looking for Taylor; she is not there
...
Taylor releases her full public introduction and statement of intent. This may actually be the story start
...possible PHO interlude? regardless, people go nuts. speculation, primarily from the PRT/Protectorate
...
Taylor releases her first couple of videos- mostly a timeline layout and general overview of the various cape groups in the Bay area and what she might pick up from each of them. Also, a top 3/5 list of who she wants to fight and why
Taylor gives video interaction/comment response. Topics will probably be Trigger Event and Why Not the Wards- seen from the perspective of the PRT
Taylor's first fight
...
Intervening fights
...
Taylor sets up fighting ring?
Taylor meets Glory Girl; ensuing brawl
...
...
major cape fight
...
Taylor assaulted on all fronts
Taylor goes underground
...more fights?
Taylor forced to flee BB
...
Cornell bombing; Taylor rescues Bakuda
Lung fight
PRT speculation
Taylor and Bakuda talk
Taylor announces Bakuda as a new member on the show
...
More fights; Bakuda experiments on Taylor. Bakuda puts out the first few of her videos
...
Return to BB
Danny visit? coast is clear? need for familiar ground while Bakuda builds up?
Taylor and Bakuda are out for a walk; Coil-interrupt...except reversed. Taylor interrupt? Taylor/Bakuda save Dinah
...
Taylor/Bakuda make announcement on show that they saved Dinah. leave private message for the Mayor and New Wave (not PRT)
Meeting about Dinah
...
Announcement that Dinah is going to be a temporary member of the show
experiments
...
...
That's all i've got for now

I was originally planning on hitting a couple stations of canon before I went on, but I don’t really think that fits anymore. Because Taylor is going to be going live with her powers and activities, and because she is going to be doing it much sooner than in canon (about a month, maybe less, as opposed to the three she waited in the actual story), a lot of what happens in canon is likely not going to go down, and the few that do (like the bank job, for example) will happen off-screen

Taylor is not going to fight Lung her first night out. The Undersiders will still fight him that night (will need to keep dates in mind) and will be injured in the fight; someone will probably end up dead. Probably Alec because I don’t really like him that much, but we’ll see. Armsmaster will probably fight Lung and lose, though I doubt he will die
Even if Taylor does happen to fight Lung ahead of schedule, it should serve not as a woobie moment where Lung falls flat; I plan on playing Lung straight and using him as a measuring stick. Any fight involving Lung and Taylor should not show Taylor as a badass but rather show her how much further she still needs to go.

The bank robbery will probably go down (with some members being involved/not involved/dead/added), but it will likely be mentioned only in passing. I do plan right now on having The kidnapping/transport of Dinah happen in front of Taylor, and Taylor does as Taylor will. Dinah ends up with Taylor and company. There will probably be a meeting so that her parents, the Mayor, and the PRT know what’s up, but possibly not.

Since there is no Bakuda in the ABB (see below) there will be no city-wide bombing spree, no gathering of the villains to fight the ABB specifically- life will just go on as normal. Lung is still a dragon, the Empire are still a bunch of arrogant assholes, the Merchants are still strung out (or are they just pretending?...), and life in the Bay is still kind of shit.

Regardless of what happens with the Undersiders or with Dinah, Coil will still be around. Coil planned on running the underworld and the law enforcement both in Brockton Bay, and was in it for the long haul. Both the Undersiders and the Travelers gave him proxies to work through, but he hardly needed them specifically- they were just convenient. He can find others. Same with Dinah- she was an incredibly powerful precognitive and allowed him to accelerate his plans and make some serious plays, but even if he can’t get his hands on her it won’t stop him from proceeding; he’ll just find someone else.
Hell, Coil might actually succeed in my story, and be one of the overall big bads at the end, rather than, I don’t know, Teacher? We’ll have to see

Finally, I want to talk about Bakuda. I think that, on the whole, she is a vastly underutilized character who has some great potential, especially after reading Thearia’s possible backstory over on QQ. I think that Taylor will, at that time, will have run from BB for awhile to let things cool down, and hear about what’s going on over at Cornell. Upon arriving, she takes a few bombs, but catches on a few of the word choices Bakuda uses, stops fighting, and starts talking to her. Through their conversation, Taylor realizes that she sees a lot of herself, of the situation she just escaped, in this older girl, and wants to help.
Now she can’t take Bakuda to the PRT, and she won’t bother. Since she’s already considered a villain, she takes Bakuda and runs, fighting through both the PRT and Lung to get her to safety. Bakuda ends up changing her name and the two of them start working together, with Bakuda featuring as part of C!T’s ongoing show, using the relative safe and sane working environment to refine her craft, and work out new and inventive ways to challenge C!T’s regenerative and adaptive powers. Bakuda ends up getting a personal section on the show as well that has her not only showing off some (not all) of her latest inventions, but talking about the sciences in a kind of tutor fashion (something encouraged by Taylor so that she can show how smart she is without putting anyone at risk and also generating some good PR for herself). The two of them are super- snarky with each other, but it ends up being kind of like my own friendgroup- curse and insult, but they both know the other is joking.

It ends up being good for both of them, as having someone to talk to who knows what you’ve been through is good for the psyche, especially seeing as at least one of them is trying to move past that point of her life, and the other is likely to follow suit.
They might end up experimenting with each other. I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet, and I’m pretty sure it would just be a maybe-canon/maybe not omake over on QQ even if I did write something like that, but it’s something I haven’t seen yet, it could be funny, and well, two people who honestly care for each other, are already serving as the other person’s rock, and are already experimenting in other ways… who knows?
This is still going to be a fairly serious story, but I feel I can fix this section of canon at the very least.

Okay, on that last note, Taylor triggers in canon in early January. Even saying January 3rd, that puts us at around early February for the start of the show and Taylor leaving school…roughly. Lung recruited Bakuda on March 23rd, apparently breaking her out of lock-up. Assuming this had to happen after Cornell and after she was captured, that would put Bakuda’s trigger and attack on Cornell University sometime around…March 16ish? Even allowing for discrepancy, that leaves a little over a month in-story for shit to go down before Taylor recruits Bakuda.
Assuming I do decide to go for the Save-Dinah route, that happens on the 14th of April, giving us another month to play with until those events.

Now, even assuming that I start the story with the start of C!T’s show, that puts us two months ahead of any canon events, meaning we have a lot of time to play with. Even assuming she has to cut and run after a while, this gives her plenty of time to interact with the people and capes of the Bay, brush up on the local lore, maybe start up some rivalries, swear some oaths, earn some respect/enmity, and still have plenty of time to interact with new characters.

Another note, thought off-topic, comes from El-Ahrairah: “The shards don’t change us, we change the shards”- while it is only self-reflection that could be wrong, this is kind of the thing I want to enforce throughout C!T’s story: Evolution matters, adaptation matters, but there has to come a point of satisfaction at the end, Taylor enjoying what she does not because of the shard itself but because she survived the fight and enjoyed it and loves simply living for today, a sentiment that gets fed back through the shard to Scion/the Warrior, who takes this and begins to reflect, and alter its Path.

An issue for C!T: I was under the impression that Crawler had been around for a few years, so I was planning on the story, with some timeskips, to take place over the course of a similar timespan. Problem being is that Crawler was already a member of the Slaughterhouse 9 in 2005. No indications of when he actually got his start, but that would mean that by the time the S9 hit BB in 2011 he had been operating for 6 years, give or take, at a bare minimum.
Not only that, but he spent most of his time with the Slaughterhouse Fucking Nine. I could make the argument that yes, the S9 did tend to stick to towns that were weak, and pick their fights, and lay low, which is more or less the opposite of what C!T has in mind, but Crawler was also the type to seek out enemies constantly, and with such a span of time in which to do so I have to assume that he was far further ahead of development than I originally thought.

This is going to require adjusting my timeline. Having access to a bomb Tinker who is using you as a test dummy and exposing yourself to the entirety of the cape community’s collective firepower will help, but I don’t really see a way out of this taking at least a year or two longer than I originally anticipated.


On a similar note, I can’t really take stories like Adaptation or Punctuated Equilibrium seriously anymore, because their development happened way too goddamned fast.

I just realized why Taylor dancing could be really important, and why it should be introduced early on.

For reference, I have already envisioned the end of her show being a lot like Steph’s from Nutz Gaming on YouTube, to the point of using his outro music. While the credits role, there is recording of Taylor dancing to the music. She records a new one more or less every episode- sometimes with guests or visitors, usually alone- both to show off and have fun with the new styles she is learning and to display how much she has changed. It gets, shall we say, interesting at late stages, but she still does it
NOTE: find out what that outro is fucking called. Seriously.

I don’t want this to be a conversation shown between Taylor and Danny, but that conversation will be mentioned when Bakuda (really need to work on names…) lampshades Taylor’s dancing

Taylor explains that it is a matter of flexibility, going on to say that a lot of bodybuilders and similar strongmen suffer from not being able to actually move very much because they focused more on sculpting and strength, which literally leaves them musclebound- as the Japanese put it, being entrapped in one’s muscles. By dancing- which Danny introduced her to and she took upon herself to learn more- Taylor keeps from actually being musclebound, and staying flexible.

This becomes an important plotpoint later on when her body is trying to adapt defenses for her, but starts cutting of her flexibility and mobility to do so, and they realize that if Taylor hadn’t started the habit early on and continued to keep it up, she could possibly ‘evolve’ into a cocoon of blast-proof chitin- strong enough to survive a nuke, but you couldn’t really call it living.

If taylor gets hit by an electricity user, like Surge from Nemesis, the immediate thing you would think of would be a grounding agent, but that presents a problem. Since these developments are slow, she wouldn’t get anything resembling grounding wires for some time, and all that while she still buring with electricity. Now sure she would develop to the burning, she would still have to adapt to the electricity itself. How do I figure that would happen? She starts storing it. At first, it just functions as static electricity, then to supercharging her muscles, and then into straight up developing biological capacitors of sorts. Probably also gives her a secondary circulatory system of sorts, with…oh what’s the word? Conductive fluid, I suppose?

Trawlings from the Grimoire:

crawler: taylor develops as she meant to, but going further than she thought she would. early stages do have her on the street level, and i plan on kind of a slow burn for a long while, but punctuated by specific enemies that are hard for her to adapt to, so she has to be patient, smart, or both to get through them. eventually she does build up to the s-class threats, and constantly puts herself in the way of them, including the endbringers. eventually the fight comes to scion, and by that point to taylor there is virtually no difference. sure, it takes her longer to heal at that point than she can remember in a long time, but she slowly grows more resilient the longer the fight goes on, and she hold the line while cauldron evacuates humanity. i think i still want that glimmer of humanity in scion, to where even as he finally burns through the last of her shard's energy?? and she is dying, she doesn't care and is still happy as can be, and her shard communicates that with him, not the battle lust but the pure joy of finding a decent opponent, and it makes him stop and think about what he is doing. in the end, bet might be gone, and cauldron's unihabited world as well, but the bulk of humanity is safe, and the warrior leaves to find seek the feeling it just felt. but as it goes, it feeds just a little more energy into the shard it leaves on that world, in the hope (imagine that) of fighting it once more
cauldron comes back expecting nothing, and are amazed to find taylor regenerating, bigger and stronger than ever before, having successfully tanked a god to the face.
part of this might have come from constantly fighting the endbringers. there might have even been a point where taylor kept pursuing the endbringers even after the fight ended, trying to keep attacking them, and they obliged. might be a simurgh plot, who knows


Crawler!taylor would be hilarious, and would almost definitely NOT be a ward!taylor fic, because being a ward means at least a token attempt at staying safe, which would make her useless as a parahuman
Getting in a public brawl with GG just for fun
Having an E88 kid at winslow shoot her in the head, only for her to sit up, smile, and say, ‘do it again’
Adapting to grue’s darkness
Her nerves harden/shield in response to regent
Hugging bakuda after a long session of getting bombed by unusual effects
Getting turned inside out by a bomb, growing reversible skin; ‘that’s weird’
Getting crunched by a singularity bomb, only to grow back incredibly dense in response

Need to roll up some OCs for Taylor to fight. If I can't think of any off the top of my head, there IS a superpower list on this very site

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et7H0Uha5Es
defenses- adaptive immunity. slower but more precise than innate immunity, and carries the capacity for memory
develops from two genes- RAG1 and RAG2- that enable somatic recomination
Polymorphic
Taylor essentially has a very advanced variation of a specific immune response

really need to look up more stuff on how evolution works overall

Cape power list

people with powers are what make a superpower story, but I tend to suck at coming up with powers for people on the fly. With this in mind, I started just compiling a list of randomly drawn power sets to hand out to people in-story. I will probably be adding more as time goes on.

Also, this does not mean I will be outright eliminating anyone from canon, or that I will be randomizing everyone- if someone is really going to be important, I probably made their power deliberately

anyways, enough backstory. Let's go!

1- animal morphing
23- wallcrawling
13- morph
i'm thinking...person has the ability to turn into animals, but only animals they're familiar with. maybe a vet or something. might have minor power like chevalier's to let them use multiple animal parts at once. then again, maybe not. maybe a limit to the animals she can 'store' at a time

12- luck manipulation
straight. up. luck manipulation. would have to be a minor adjustment of probability, something similar to what shamrock has, but essentially a precog of sorts who gets 'hints' to take certain actions depending if they want someone to have good or bad luck

7- glass skin
17- quotidian aura

7- gas creation
20- teleportation
1- animus weapon
8- hostile delusions
challenger-type. has the ability to teleport self and one other creature, take them to a field of choice. can produce pheromones to incite violence. finally, can summon a weapon of varying forms with which to combat an enemy.

10- jinx
3- changing armor
little shit can conjure defenses to specifically counter anyone he comes across...but he has to be aware of them, and can only adapt to one at a time. also, manton limited, kinda- only works against living creatures. wouldn't help against someone like bakuda, because none of her stuff is in-built, and he would thus have no idea what she brought to the table

14- nondetection
20- toxikinesis
5- elemental transmorgification
going to have to play with this one, but i'm thinking something kinda like acid bath. can turn into water and meld seamlessly with any liquid environment, and can also work very minor biokinetic effects, related specifically to toxins. can produce a variety of liquid toxins, or filter them out.


20- thermokinesis
20- teleportation

4- danger sense
7- gas creation
9- intuition

8- heat resistance
12- liquification
4- diamond skin


geokinesis
heat resistance
gliding
grand canyon cape?

19- silver tongue
23- wallcrawling
not completely sure how to play off the wallcrawling, but the silver tongue could definitely be a minor trump/thinker ability

impel resolve
kinetic absorption
mimic

bullet time
disabling aura
enhanced touch

energy absorption

edict
compulsive self-destructivity

dream eater
corruption

bullet time
darkness

dream manipulator
biokinesis
energy armor

Separation
Friction manipulation

Self detonation and reformation
Intuition

Shit on triggers and power types:

I am seeing Taylor as a collection of Muscle Brute, kind of a Repression Brute, and obviously Regen Brute (see: http://worm.wikia.com/wiki/Brute)
this is seriously going to change Taylor's Trigger event, simply by necessity.
and considering how much this goes by physical trauma, I am going to have to be careful in how I do this in order to explain how Taylor bounces back so quickly
although, a big part of the explanation will be pretty easy to explain- Taylor can take physical harm, that was never the problem. It was the social and emotional trauma that caused the most damage
on that note, I think it would take an unexpected, prolonged, physical event to do this. I hated punctuated equilibrium for having Sophia and company literally torture Taylor, but it's not completely off the mark here. No, that's not what I'll do, but it's in the vein.

On that note, I'm seeing Bakuda as mostly a hyperspecialist or Focal Tinker, but I'm also seeing elements of Architect and Mad Scientist

NAMING CONVENTION!!!!


C!T name- Darwin, Rise, Frame, Evoke, Coalesce, Reify,
Cadenza - Initially an improvised cadence by a soloist; later becoming an elaborate and written out passage in an aria or concerto, featuring the skills of an instrumentalist or vocalist.
Encore
Forte

Bakuda- Nobel


le sigh
on the one hand, I really want to come up with something creative, but doesn't necessarily have a team/group theme
on the other, I really fucking do
I even have a theme for them- scientists or scientific relations, hence Darwin and Nobel for Taylor and Bakuda (and doesn't her name need to be sorted out immediately)
Problem with that though is the fact that this is supposed to be a bit more of a Zen/self-discovery/acceptance kind of ending for everything, and while I could combine the two I am not confident enough in my writing chops to pull it off

Still, there are some possibilities with the ways the story can go, so we'll wait and see

Crawl-or could have part of her body developed along the line dragonfly wings have- molecule-sized 'beds of nails' that physically rip bacteria apart

Crawl-or Bakuda might actually get pretty renowned, if she manages to produce articles for tinker review. even if they don't like her and how she started, they can't really deny her results. oh, for the first few articles maybe, but between the show and the articles that slowly start to stack up over the months and years, yeahhh...

hmm, maybe i should make Crawl-or get on the in's with the Las Vegas Protectorate, considering that they are the ones who deal with really dangerous S-class threats. otherwise it is kind of restricted to the Guild, an independent team of her own formation, or working with Cauldron
Thing is, no matter what, it'll be something different