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

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.

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, including one event that caused her to trigger. 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.

Appearance and Personality

Taylor

Taylor is a relatively-tall, rail-thin, fair skinned 15 year old girl with long, dark curly hair. She describes herself in 1.1 as "the gloomy girl that never spoke up in class." She steadily gains confidence throughout the story as her civilian life is subsumed by her cape life. Her hair is auburn<ref name=SV1>http://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/2277872/</ref>. Taylor is about 5’8″ (178 cm) and 125 lbs (56 kg)<ref>https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/drone-23-1/#comment-24568</ref>.

Skitter

"...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)

Skitter's 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. Throughout the story her costume adapts to include a full-head mask, clawed fingertips, a tattered half-cape and a tattered, knee-length skirt.

Weaver

Weaver's 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>https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/cell-22-6/</ref>

Khepri

The Khepri costume consists of a black body suit with white armor panels and lenses. It includes none of the stylistic elements of the previous costumes.

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 insects senses e.g. enabling her 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, although sight and sound are harder to interpret due to their dissimilarity to human senses. However through practice she can train herself to comprehend sounds and sights that her bugs see and hear.

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.

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 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)

Conclusion

As of the epilogue Taylor is in N.Y.A with her father and the Earth Aleph version of her mother. Her powers have been shut off by Contessa. It is left unclear as to whether this was actually Earth Aleph or an afterlife metaphor^{[citation needed]}.

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.
• Taylor's schedule at school was four 1.5 hour a day classes, rotating each semester - during the story, computer, world issues, lunch, art and math<ref name="SV1" />.

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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