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>

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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

Taylor spent the night at Emma Barnes' house before, during breakfast the next morning, Zoe Barnes came downstairs and handed her the phone. Danny Hebert told her over the phone that her mother had died in a car accident.

Taylor overheard her father berating her mother's body for texting while driving, leading to the accident. She barely ate anything for five days because her father was a wreck before she asked Emma if she could eat at her house for a few days. After Mrs. Barnes talked to her father, Danny and Taylor established a routine so that they wouldn't fall apart as a family.

Emma told Taylor that she admired her for her resilience and admitted that, if her mother had died, she wouldn't be as put together as Taylor was. Taylor told her that she wasn't before revealing that she had cried herself to sleep for a week.

Just before she entered high school, Emma suddenly and unexpectedly abandoned her to form a trio with Sophia Hess and Madison Clements. They began aggressively bullying her for more than two years.

Once Taylor recovered, she started to prepare herself for when she would become a hero. She started exercising, training her power, doing research and preparing her costume. <ref>"Worm" Web Serial, Gestation 1.2</ref>

Personality

"...Skitter is an unpredictable young woman tending towards acts of apparent kindness to those she deems her subjects and bursts of sudden and extreme violence towards those she sees as her enemies." ("Know where you are" pamphlets, Colony 15, 10)

Due to the vicious environments she finds herself in, Taylor is forced to frequently display her natural/acquired administrative capabilities and above-par intelligence and problem solving skills.

Appearance

Taylor is a relatively-tall, rail-thin 15 year old girl with long, dark curly hair.

As Skitter:

Her costume consists of a black-and-grey bodysuit made out of spider silk with armor panels made out of shells and exoskeletons augmented with more silk. Her mask has sections of armor imitating mandibles covering her jaw and dull yellow lenses (taken from a pair of goggles) that incorporate lenses from a spare pair of glasses. Her mask leaves the back of her head uncovered and her hair free to fly behind her.

As Weaver

Her costume consists of a light grey bodysuit with cleaner, slim dark gray armor panels. The mantle around her shoulders and the cloth hanging from her belt are marked with electric blue with the Undersiders' emblem in miniature at each corner, flipped upside down so that they face upward. <ref>"Worm" Web Serial, Cell 22.6</ref>

Abilities and Powers

Taylor has complete mental control over most invertebrate (e.g. insects, arachnids, crustaceans) within a three block range. 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 "see" through her insects by sensing the shapes of the surfaces the bugs were crawling on, or the areas the vermin wasn’t occupying.

In addition, Taylor has come 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.

After Panacea removed the restrictions on her power, Taylor's range and fine control were cut and her power increased to affect everything within sixteen feet of herself.

Utility Belt

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 piece of spider silk.
• Pepper spray.
• A changepurse, containing cotton swabs (to muffle the noise), needles, smelling salts, and change.
• A collapsible baton.

History

While Taylor had looked forward to when Mr. Gladly's World Issues class would focus on capes, she couldn't focus. She looked at Madison Clements and then lowered her eyes to her notebook before Mr. Gladly wrapped up his lesson and assigned them homework. Once class was over, she travelled to the girl's bathroom on the third floor where she found an empty stall to eat her lunch in. She heard the door open and then told the person who knocked on the stall's door that it was occupied. Taylor stood up after hearing the response and tried to leave the stall, but it wouldn't budge. She looked up after hearing noise from the stalls beside her where Sophia and Madison dumped juice on her. She tried to force her way out of the stall, but ended up slipping on the juice and falling to the floor.

Then, the door opened to reveal Emma, Madison, and Sophia laughing at her. Taylor didn't say anything and instead climbed to her feet before going to get her backpack. After they left, she looked over herself in the mirror before trying to clean her glasses with a paper towel. When she was unable to remove the streaks, Taylor kicked a bucket towards a nearby wall and then threw her backpack. She then demanded to know what she was supposed to do about the ongoing bullying before leaning over the sink. Focusing on her power, she then opened her eyes to find bugs on all the surfaces of the room. She thought about how easy it would be to go Carrie on the school before telling herself that she was better than that. She directed her swarm to disperse and left the school before catching the first bus home.

Trivia

• Started running in the morning in February, about a month after her trigger event. Continued doing so until being imprisoned. (Drone 23.4)
• Made about fifteen to twenty million dollars over her career as Skitter. (Drone 23.4)
• Likely triggered Monday the third of January 2011 as it was described as the first day of school in the new year.

Quotes

• (To Lung): "Don't underestimate me."
• (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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