Just a Phase [Worm]

It would need to be both for a Second Trigger, and even then she would need to be trapped with the dying and rotting body of her father for it to happen. The Slaughterhouse arc showed clearly how high are the standards for a Second Trigger to occur basically destroying Grue physically and mentally in one of the most nightmarish scenes of Worm, it says a lot that even for the SH9, whose usual target for torture far worse than death are other parahumans, a Second Trigger is incredibly rare.

That said, Taylor would probably gain a Mover power, because the only way to keep her trapped are to either throw her in a pocket dimension, bury her alive so deep that she cannot phase out before running out of air or a absolutely perfect force field, tractor beam or gravity plate that keeps her in the same place. All the same her personal traits would be magnified, so we should expect rampart paranoia and her basically becoming a hermit who really hates the government.

 

Yeah that seems like what would have to happen in order to cause Taylor to second trigger it would also probably be needed to be done by someone Taylor trusts on some level just to nail in the connection to the first trigger.

As for the potential powers a second trigger might give considering her powers seem to be based around escaping and threat avoidance a mover ability seems likely perhaps an ability to phase through various dimensions. It could also enhance her trump ability making her go from a thinker blind spot to something that actively attacks thinkers if they attempt to use their abilities on her. Or she can get something unrelated to her current abilities such as a master power to control other people by phasing into their bodies like an evil spirit.

 

A second trigger is usually a cop-out by a mediocre author that wrote themselves into a corner or has run out of ideas.

It is the Evil Twin trope of worm.

 

For what I remember about Second Triggers (ST) it can't ever be unrelated to the primary power because the mechanics are that the ST allows the shard to reevaluate the experience it has gained from the host and then edit the powers with that additional knowledge, which is the reason most of the people without a Manton Limit had a ST and the shard that now has a better understanding of the human body and mind (particularly the host's) looses the restrictions of the power in question allowing things such as manifesting force fields inside others, also during that period shards are able to enter in 'conference call' mode with other shards to learn other tricks within the basic field of the shard of the host ST.

For Taylor to gain a Master power first she would need to have her second trigger close to one or more Master capes with a compatible enough power mechanism to her own. For example I think that Regent/Hijack could do the possesion trick because his shard would teach Phase's how to manipulate nerve connections when ghosting over someone, but Gallant's Emo-blasts would be too different for Taylor's shard to learn enough to Master someone.

 

I kinda just threw in the master power idea because while Taylor may have different powers in this fic her shard is still QA and is very much geared to controlling different life forms. It is also not so far fetched for Taylor to be near Regent at some point considering that Lisa is gonna have an upcoming roll in the story so the other Undersiders showing up at some point and meeting Taylor is not outside the range of possibilities. Hell Taylor might get a striker ability based around the Sting Shard if she happens to ST near Lily.

 

Just had an amusing idea about Emma being very hostile to Browbeat due to her seeing it as someone else taking Taylor's spot on the Brockton Wards team. Even more so if Browbeat is actually Madison like in Inheritance.

 

If she even thinks about it the rest of the ENE Wards as well as any supervising adult are shutting her down hard. After the local Wards lost Phase to Sophia's and Emma's psychopatic actions, the lesser reveal that at least Sophia was bothering Vista and the constant remainder that the Youth Guard nowadays is always watching there is no way Gallant or Aegis won't confront her the very second they see her acting anything less than cordial with the new Ward no matter how hard she tries to dismiss her behavior as harmless.

Also the psychologist currently in rotations would have quite a few words with Emma if she tries to be hostile to a new person just because she feels is taking Taylor place, not only due to the fact that the only persons guilty of driving Phase away were Shadow Stalker and Ampere but also because Emma's instintive reaction of finding a scapegoat and torturing it when in any form of emotional distress is the kind of coping mechanism that needs to be destroyed ASAP, for her sake and the safety of those around her. Frankly considering the extremes she carried out the bullying of Taylor and the danger of an unstable parahuman doing that basically to any random person a few too many incidents and they might start considering putting her in observation in a full time mental institution for a few months until they can be assured she won't try to do it one more time.

 

Yeah the main reason why Emma got away with her bullying in canon was that she and the others had been gaslighting the school against Taylor while maintaining a good reputation with everyone else, in this story however her reputation is basically garbage due to the knowledge that she and Sophia tortured and innocent person until they triggered and didn't feel guilty about it until being hit over the head by the consequences of her actions. Now that is revealed what Emma is actually like when no one is around to call her out on her actions is gonna put a lot of her teammates on edge around her already it seems that all of them have droped her as a friend baring Dean which might get him in trouble with Vicky considering her opinion on Emma in cannon even more so now if she knows why everyone is now treating her differently now.

Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if Emma started having problems dealing with other heroes in Brockton due to her professional reputation being destroyed due to her actions and makes heroes like those in New Wave and other Protectorate branches view her with distrust or being uncomfortable working with her going forward.

 

Yeah, the inner workings of the Wards are probably thrown out of whack due to the toxic influence of Emma and Sophia as well as the disruption of the YG applying full punitive actions against the ENE Wards Program, one more incident and the Wards might do something the adults will regret.

At this point of time any bonds of friendship between Emma, Sophia and the rest of the ENE Wards is already broken, Emma can forget about double dates with Gallant and GG, Dennis does not crack jokes in front of either of them and any patrol is done on a uncomfortable silence. If a second case of bullying is found by the Wards and the adults decide to once more deal with it quietly, without informing them of the measures taken the team might decide to be proactive for their own protection. From there the good Wards got plenty of options to make Emma's stay in the program as uncomfortable as posible, things like the Law of Silence whenever either get in the room, hyperawareness and overreporting of breach of the regs, unvolunteering whenever they got patrols -with the reasons registered in writing- and letters of complain up to the chain of command thorugh Youth Guard.

With how fragile is the position of the ENE Wards in the eyes of the larger PRT/Protectorate community something would give eventually and either Piggot would be forced to deal with the situation openly or the National Protectorate Office would get directly involved and take control off her hands which would be easy in the administrative sense simply because a PRT office taking command of a Ward team from the local Protectorate leader was an aberration in the first place.

 

Its even mentioned in story during Armstrong's pov that the Youth Guard was digging up a lot of irregularities in Piggot's department to a point that the entire Wards team was benched due to the investigation and considering this story was inspired by Implacable I have a strong idea on what those irregularities are, it could also explain why Lisa was in Boston if the Youth Guard was getting closer to Coil's operations he could have sent her to investigate the ward that caused all of it. It wouldn't surprise me if the ramifications on what happens in Brockton will effect Taylor's situation in Boston.

 

Actually in canon the Wards Team was pretty insulated from Coil’s spy network until Chariot tried to infiltrate the operation (and was discovered by Kid Win while recruiting him), he didn’t knew their secret identities nor had a hold of their operations. If anything he is probably trading favors with Accord, who is probably concerned about having an anti-thinker Ward near his base of operations and needs additional information to adjust his plans.

 

True but I was mostly referring to any issues in the ENE PRT's files that the Youth Guard are going through during their audit that could lead back to Calvert and his operations to undermine Piggot's authority in Brockton. While on that topic it would be halirious if Taylor got called into Armstrong's office to be congratulated for helping uncover the corruption in Brockton Bay due to her sending the complaint that started the investigation.

As for the Accord situation that is probably what is happening considering the fact that the person Taylor saved on her first night out was most likely working for Accord and probably reported back to his boss about the new vigilante and Accord acted accordingly. Which brings up the chance of Taylor being targeted by Accord and his ambassadors for either recruitment or death.

 

On AO3 Lisa is one of the tagged characters for this fanfic. So she is probably going to come up a bit more prominently than just one short visit for assesment. In regards to that I'm kind of in a wait and see position. On the whole I personally think Lisa as all knowing McGuffin is extremly overdone (in particular when she gives Taylor/the MC a help me to get away from Coil quest which she wasn't even angleing for in canon until it basically just happened). Of course in a true AU Lisa is not nessearily beholden to Coil or even living in BB.

For similar reasons I hope we can just skip Coil. Coil is laser focused on BB and Taylor is in Boston. In adition Coil wants to fly under the radar, messing with a Ward kind of attracts attention. Coil should still be giddy about soon being able to aquire Dinah and focus on that. Coil could be way more interesting, if he actualy manages to become Director of PRT ENE and play both sides in BB. Maybe even never as antagonist but as a strange side character where it is obvious for the reader what he has going on but not to the characters we follow until the sittuation in BB is exposed by someone else.

Overall I would be happy for the story to stay in Boston and ignore several canon stations for quite some time.

 

Agreed, particularly because Accord is a known ally of Calvert and as an enemy he is actually far too dangerous for Coil to anger, the ability to make perfect binary choices is of little help against a plannification Thinker who can start a counterattack weeks before the effect is directly observable. Going to his territory unannounced to mess with a Ward and causing chaotic and unplanned overreactions from the local authorities would almost certainly put Thomas in the shit list of one of Cauldron's more important assets(which Coil is in debt with) who can be deliberately homicidal when the situation gets messy.

So if Lisa is working for Coil then she is in Boston with the knowledge and authorization of Accord, if not then she is there on her own and doing her best not to show in Accord's radar.

 

The most likely theory in my opinion is that she is currently on loan to Accord from Coil do to him being curious about the new thinker blind spot running around at night in Boston, or Lisa is there looking to recruit Taylor against either Accord or Coil due to said thinker immunity.

 

Alternatively, she might have been recruited by Accord to start with, or be working for Blasto with part of her pay being in Tinkertech painkillers. (I don't think either one is likely in this story, but AFAIK both are possible, and I think either scenario could be interesting.)

 

Lisa working for Blasto is an interesting scenario because that brings up the question on why Blasto is interested in a the new unruly ward in Boston, did he figure out that she is immune to thinker abilities and now wants to clone her in preparation for some offensive against Accord or for some other unknown reason. It is also possible that Lisa was never forced to work with Coil in this timeline and is an independent villian in Boston who is looking to move up in the world and needs a right hand woman and who better than someone who can no sell enemy thinker abilities.

 

Lisa working for Blasto could actually be a fresh take.

But overall I hope most of the scenarios others pointed at will not be used. For one those are overused. Why not go with the sane notion that they leave the kid hero program generally alone just to never get heat for very tiny chances of payoff (and going after minor would be entierly the wrong kind of heat for both as well). I'm also not so sure about her anti thinker power being instantly on Coil's or Accord's radar. Even the PRT only noticed after her teammates used their powers directly on her. So her power is not some global or large scale effect. In my opinion if the largest thinker organisation in the country needed to be told to look into it then Coil and Accord did not notice indipendently either.

My personal best case scenario is that Lisa was there for something unrelated and kind of got lucky to meet Taylor and get something extra from that. As said I hope the story will just skip Coil. And should Taylor get attention from major villians in Boston she should do something to warrant it and not just by exsisting. I don't say that some parahumans wouldn't warrant attention by just exsisting, but it is the more boring setup. It is also kind of problematic to implement without changes how the world in general is set up. Such actions mean more direct conflict with the PRT. It automatically begs the question why those villians don't go after other strong heroes and Wards all the time. One could write a world where they do but security measures by the PRT for the Wards would look quite different in such an AU. The worst case in my eyes that still can go along with the presented status quo is that villians do gather certain intel but never really act on it. But then the risk for gathering is kind of wasted, isn't it?

So why not a scenario where Lisa took the tour since that gave her accsess to the building and meeting the Wards was just part of what she had to do to get that accsess. Maybe she always planed to get some small intel (tidbits about powers, social interactions) but she wasn't explicitly there for Taylor in this scenario. In my opinion more interesting than a Coil/Accord already know about Taylor, have accsess to the PRT assessment and then send Lisa on the tour specifically to meet Taylor. A tour one has to assume was sheduled with tickets sold and vetted well in advandce while Taylor was as the story described a late ad hock addition.

 

Most of the theories regarding Lisa being there for Taylor specifically comes from the fact that Lisa was smug after seeing Taylor meaning she got some usefull information out of her but the idea of her being there for something unrelated and Taylor being a bonus also works. In all honestly she was probably there to get info on the more active wards or to give herself a rundown on the Protectorate security measures regarding the wards for sone future event in later chapters. All in all, there are plenty of reasons for Lisa to be snooping around and we will just have to wait and see.

 

Considering the debates about Taylor's power and its uses so far what would her PRT threat level be if she ever goes through power testing or what will they have her down as based on just their observations of her so far. Curently I would say she would have a decent rating in breaker, thinker, and trump categories but not sure the exact ratings for each. It could also be argued that she has ratings in mover (avoiding obstacles on her path via phasing), striker (can turn objects she is touching intangible with her), and potentially shaker depending on far she can spread her intangibility to the environment through touch which can give her some level of environmental control.

 

Did the Bastion incident happen in this stroy because I recall that their was a Protectorate member in Boston who got caught saying a racial slur on camera and got sent to a containment zone as a punishment or am I miss remembering something.

 

I thought Bastion was out west and not in Boston at the time, but I may be remembering wrong (or mixing up fanon and canon).

 

IIRC Bastion was retconed into always having been head of the Boston Protectorate instead of Seattle’s while Worm was still being written.

 

Guessing due to the fact that the head of the Boston Protectorate in this fic is not Bastion he has either been retconned or has already had his incident and has been moved away.

Honestly Bastion having his slip up before Taylor got transferred to Boston is probably a good thing for the PRT/Protectorate in this fic because if Bastion was in charge when she got in and then had his incident it would have become significantly harder to get her to cooperate due to it cementing her opinion on Protectorate heroes.

 

Question, how would a yandere Emma scenario play out in this story?

 

Is two steps removed from the canon of Just a Phase and its canon for Worm, so yeah it would work just fine.

The only serious issue is that there’s an hour in a highway between Taylor and Emma and everyone is aware enough of the disaster that is allowing Emma anywhere close to Taylor so the moment she tries to slip her probation they will issue a bolo, put the PRT/Protectorate of both cities in alert and move Taylor to anywhere else, even to a lawyer’s office until they catch her.

 

A proper yandere Emma would have had this AU not happen at all as she'd attempt to oust Sophia the moment she tried to get Emma to push Taylor away any if she didn't try to get the breaker to change her mind by whatever means if she was in control enough to want to try to retain a friend whilst in love with her bestie/sister.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of Emma making the jump to yandere after the failed introduction of Taylor to the Brockton Bay wards, such as instead of realizing her mistake of what she did she starts blaming the Protectorate/PRT for taking Taylor away from her essentially having the opposite kind of realization than she did in the story.

 

I get that. I just think that it really changes too much for the story and is a waste of the use of the archetype.