Taylor Hebert

<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Taylor Hebert</default></title>

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>

<label>Status</label><format>

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<label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox> Taylor Hebert is the main character of Worm.

Background

The first major event involving Taylor was the death of her mother, Annette Rose Hebert, in a car crash later attributed to texting while driving. It is widely speculated throughout the story that this was the cause of her first trigger event. As a result of the incident, Taylor becomes closed off and rigid. Her previously strong friendship with Emma Barnes became strained due to this change.

A year and a half before the story began, just before she entered high school<ref name="1.01">Gestation 1.01</ref>, Emma suddenly and unexpectedly abandoned her to form a trio with Sophia Hess and Madison Clements. They began aggressively bullying her, including one event that caused her to trigger. They sent her vicious e-mails, upended trash over her desk, and stole her mother's flute from her looker<ref name="1.01"/>. Others joined in, ‘accidentally’ skipping over her when passing out assignment handouts, and adding their own voices to the taunts and emails.

Taylor began hiding in the bathrooms during lunch in order to stay off their radar, and came to view it as "refuge ... a place I could retreat to, a place where I was off their radar."<ref name="1.01"/>

Once Taylor recovered from her trigger event, she started to prepare herself for when she would become a hero. She started exercising, training her power, doing research and preparing her costume. She resisted using her power in school for three months, restricting it to a faint buzzing sound at the edge of her consciousness<ref name="1.01"/>. She conducted practice sessions, "far from prying eyes", to determine the extent of her power<ref name="1.01"/>.

As Taylor

Appearance

Taylor was a tall, rail-thin, young woman with long, dark curly brown hair and glasses. She had a thin lipped, wide, expressive mouth she inherited from her mother, and her large eyes and gawky figure made her look a lot like her dad<ref name="1.01"/>.

She had long, dark curly hair<ref name="1.01"/>, which she described as her "only feminine feature."<ref name="1.01"/>

Taylor didn't wear clothes that showed skin, or bright colours<ref name="1.01"/>. At various times, she wore a brown hooded sweatshirt over a green t-shirt<ref name="1.01"/>.

Personality

Taylor starts out the series being shy and awkward.

Taylor was always interested in capes. She looked forward to the part of her World Issues class where they discussed capes "since the start of the semester".<ref name="1.01"/>

She was "'surviving', for lack of a better word," from the point her mother died, and then surviving from the point she started getting bullied - she just wanted to get by. She responded to stress with silence and withdrawal. <ref>https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-quotes-and-wog-repository.294448/page-8#post-17202689</ref>

Relationships

Teachers

• Taylor disliked Mr. Gladly, viewing him as one of the ‘popular kids' who had become a teacher.<ref name="1.01" />

Students

• Taylor believed that she didn't have friends and boys didn't like her<ref name="1.01"/>.
• She was bullied extensively by the "trio" - Madison Clements, Sophia Hess, and Emma Barnes<ref name="1.01"/>.
  • Emma used to be her best friend<ref name="1.01"/>.
  • Taylor was also bullied by "other girls and a small handful of boys" seeking approval from three of the prettier and more popular girls<ref name="1.01"/>.

Civilians

Taylor considered the thought of her father's disappointment on seeing that she had attacked the Trio "daunting" but less than her anger and frustration with them.

History

Taylor is discovered by the trio in a bathroom stall and they pour fruit juice and soda over the sides, covering her clothes and bag. When she throws her bag against the wall in frustration, her midterm art project - due that day - is destroyed, and she later discovers the juice also ruined many of the contents of her bag, including a notepad filled with notes for her eventual superhero career. Ironically, this event is what ultimately pushes Taylor to stop putting off the start of said career.

As Skitter

Appearance

File:Skitter.jpg

Illustration by cactusfantastico on deviantart

As Skitter, Taylor wears a black-and-grey spider silk bodysuit with armor panels made out of insect shells and exoskeletons augmented with more spider silk. Her mask has sections of armor imitating mandibles that cover her jaw and dull yellow lenses that incorporate lenses from a spare pair of her glasses. Her mask leaves the back of her head uncovered and her hair free to fly behind her.

Personality

In time, she becomes quite ruthless, arguably due to the influence of her Queen Administrator shard and her career as a supervillain, but she always maintains a strong sense of morality, trying to do what is right and treat people well if the circumstances allow it.

Relationships

Teammates

• Taylor initially views Grue as a mentor after joining the Undersiders, turning to him for leadership and advice, and their working relationship quickly becomes a friendship. She later makes a romantic advance towards him, which he responds to by telling her he views her as more of a little sister for him to protect, but an unsteady romantic relationship does eventually develop between them.
• Taylor and Bitch start off unfriendly towards each other due in large part to Bitch's trust issues, which are later compounded by the reveal of Taylor's indended betrayal of the Undersiders, after which she goes as far as to try to abandon Taylor when a mission goes wrong and Dragon arrives to fight them. Taylor's persistence later manages to make Bitch trust her again, eventually leading her to trust Taylor entirely and completely and having her become possibly Bitch's only actual friend.
• Regent treats Taylor much the same way he treats almost everyone - with disinterest and occasional mockery, often calling her "dork". He does, however, care about her to some extent, if only because she is his teammate, going out of his way to punish Shadow Stalker for her treatment of Taylor and to make sure she never bothers her again.

Other Parahumans

Over time her shard matures and splits in two, with a sub-shard capable of forming new powers, which will retain similar functionality to the progenitor shard. An example of this is between Taylor and Aiden, who gains the ability to control birds.

Civilians

• Taylor resisted attacking the trio with her power, no matter how much she wanted to<ref name = "1.01"/>.
• When Skitter becomes the ruler of her own territory within Brockton Bay, she does her best to protect the civilians within it from harm and otherwise take care of them.

Abilities and Powers

Taylor's Queen Administrator shard grants her complete mental control over most invertebrate (e.g. insects, arachnids, crustaceans) within a three block range. The range of her ability extends when placed in situations that resemble the conditions of her trigger event; a fact designed by the Entity to foster conflict. She has a secondary ability which gives her increased mental multitasking - allowing her to give specific orders to individual bugs in her swarm simultaneously.

She is able to interpret all of an insect's senses and form composite mental images from the input, which enables her to "see" her surroundings through her insects by sensing the shape and texture of objects that her bugs are crawling on, although sight and sound are harder to interpret due to their dissimilarity to human senses. She later improves her ability to hear through her bugs with training to the point where she can listen in on conversations.

In addition, Taylor comes up with a multitude of creative uses of her power. For example, she can produce large quantities of spider silk, coat her insects in petroleum jelly and capscaicin to use them like pepper spray, create humanoid figures, mask her movements, and clear out rat infestations.

Equipment

Utility Backpack

Taylor's utility compartment, where she stashes necessary items and weapons in the armor panel that covers her back. In 18.3, Miss Militia  takes a look at the contents and sees:

• A handgun (Trickster's spare).
• A length of spider silk fashioned into a long cord.
• Pepper spray.
• A changepurse, containing cotton swabs (to muffle the noise), needles, smelling salts, and change.
• A collapsible baton.
• A combat knife (sturdy enough to be used as a crowbar if needed)

As Weaver

Appearance

As Weaver, Taylor wore a light grey bodysuit with cleaner, slim dark grey armor panels. The mantle around her shoulders and the cloth hanging from her belt are marked with electric blue with the Undersiders' emblem (a beetle facing downwards) in miniature at each corner, flipped upside down so that they face upward. <ref name="22.6">Cell 22.6</ref>

Equipment

As Weaver, Skitter used a "flight pack" developed and maintained by Defiant. She wore a generic version of her costume created by Dragon, which lacked the armour of her earlier costume, and sometimes wore her old silk costume for added protection.

As Khepri

Appearance

As Khepri, Taylor wears a black bodysuit with white armor panels and lenses^{[citation needed]}.

Abilities and Powers

After Panacea removes the restrictions on her power during Scion's rampage, Taylor's range and fine control are cut and her power increases to affect every animal (including humans) within sixteen feet of herself. She gains control of the Doormaker and uses his portals to extend her range, eventually controlling hundreds of capes at once and using their power in concert. This effectively turns her into the most powerful parahuman in existence. The impact she has on the events of the fight while in this state is large enough to warrant her being referred to simply as she in the aftermath.

Trivia

• Taylor likely triggered Monday the third of January 2011 as it was described as the first day of school in the new year.
• If she hadn't triggered, Taylor would likely have simply stopped going to school<ref>https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/2szsy2/what_wouldve_happened_to_taylor_if_shed_never/</ref>.
• "Khepri" is a god in ancient Egyptian religion connected with the scarab beetle, because the scarab rolls balls of dung across the ground, an act that the Egyptians saw as a symbol of the forces that move the sun across the sky.

Quotes

• (To Lung): "Don't underestimate me."
• (To Triumph): "Sorry. I didn't want to go this far."
• (To Doctor Mother): "I know what that's like, I've walked down that road. Maybe not so ugly a road, but I've gone that route. All the way along, I told myself it sucked, but I wouldn't do it differently. I did everything I did for a reason. Except now, having reached the point I was working towards, I finally do regret it all. The last two years, the way I treated my teammates, leaving the Undersiders... I'd change it all in a heartbeat."

References

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