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.

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. 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.

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.

As Taylor

Appearance

Taylor is a tall, rail-thin, young woman with long, dark curly brown hair and glasses.

Taylor had a thin lipped, wide, expressive mouth she inherited from her mother, and her large eyes and gawky figure made her look a lot more like her dad<ref name="1.01">Gestation 1.01</ref>.

At various times, she wore a brown hooded sweatshirt over a green t-shirt<ref name="1.01"/>.

Personality

Taylor starts out 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=":0">https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-1-10/arc-1-gestation/1-01/</ref>

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=":0" />

Students

• Taylor believed that she didn't have friends and boys didn't like her<ref name="1.01"/>.
• She was bullied 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"/>.

As Skitter

Appearance

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 covers 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 smart and ruthless, arguably due to the influence of her Queen Administrator shard and her career as a supervillain.

Relationships

Civilians

• Taylor resisted attacking the trio with her power, no matter how much she wanted to<ref name = "1.01/>.

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.

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">[ttps://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/cell-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]}.

History

[Coming Soon]

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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