Taylor Hebert going to school on January 3rd 2011 nearly always results in the same thing: being locked into a locker full of disgusting stuff by Sophia Hess and Emma Barnes. And this almost always results in her gaining a power beyond the reach of normal people.
In one world, this power is even beyond the reach of those who are already powerful: here, Sophia Hess stabbed Taylor in the side with a broken pencil, and a nail destroyed her left eye. This caused her to attract the attention of Odin One-Eye himself, for her injuries fulfill the requirements to become Odin's successor as Rúnatyr, the Runekeeper.
With the power of the runes and of invertebrate control on her side, Odin himself as her spirit advisor, and a growing number of allies, Taylor - styled as the hero Volur - will fight to stop the villains and save the world from the hidden threat.
Incense and Powdered Diamonds is a Worm fanfiction initially started as an Omake to Implacable, only to soon become a story of its own. It can be read in Space Battles here
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This story contains examples of:
- Adaptational Badass:
- Taylor still has her bug control power, but she also has the power to use runes for multiple effects. When the Simurgh attacks Canberra, she leads a small group of heroes and forces the Endbringer on the run.
- Thanks to absorbing the god at the core of the Shaper shard, Amy can now use her powers on herself, among other things. In one alternate Coil timeline, she survives several bullets to the head before killing him in retaliation.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Tohu and Bohu, who in canon didn't show up until after Behemoth's death, attack Brockton Bay shortly after Volur forces the Simurgh to run away.
- Adaptational Sexuality: Victoria is heterosexual in canon, but here she has a date with Taylor. It is implied this is tied to her becoming Freyja's successor.
- Adaptational Villainy: In canon, Gladly is a normal teacher, if an ineffectual one. Here, he's Clausewitz, an Empire 88 Cape.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's rather unclear how much of Sophia's clone Styx being sane and pleasant to Taylor and her allies is because of Noelle's power working on the already unstable Sophia, and how much was the result of Taylor's first attack on Styx before the misunderstanding was cleared up.
- Anti-Climax: It's lampshaded that the conclusion of the Echidna arc is rather anti-climactic, even In-Universe.
- Big Damn Heroes: Volur comes just in time to help Vista and Quarrel fight off the ABB and the Teeth.
- Broken Pedestal: Vista loses her respect for Piggot when the former realizes how far the latter will go to keep Parahumans under her thumb.
- Bullying a Dragon:
- Coil kidnaps Amy Dallon and Danny Hebert even though he knows he's inviting the threat of two of Brockton Bay's strongest heroes.
- Hookwolf and Cricket attempt to kill Danny and kidnap Taylor. When they reject her command to leave, Taylor turns them to ashes.
- Crazy Enough to Work: Kaiser notes that Clausewitz's plans, like working with the Butcher and Mastering Piggot, are highly risky, but actually seem to be working. He still doesn't like them very much, and is quietly preparing for any potential consequences if things blow up.
- Cruel Mercy: Taylor doesn't immediately kill Clausewitz, even after discovering that he's Gladly. Instead, she neutralizes his power and lets him futilely try to flee, perfectly knowing that everyone he's enslaved will now go after him and turn him into mincemeat.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Amy, Taylor, and Victoria quickly defeat Cricket, Stormtiger, and Hookwolf when they cross paths outside the mall.
- Taylor singlehandedly turns Cricket and Hookwolf into ashes when they attack her at home and attempt to kill her father.
- Cure Your Gays: Gesellschaft has a program where they brainwash "degenerates" into becoming "respectable" - Night and Fog are stated to have been victims of this.
- Dope Slap: Vista uses her space-bending power to give one to Quarrel.
- Dramatic Irony: Sophia thinks she'll be able to convince Volur to help her kill or torture Taylor.
- Evil Twin:
- Naturally, any time Noelle gets involved.
- Inverted with Styx, one of Shadow Stalker's clones, who wants to screw with Shadow Stalker's and Coil's plans.
- Eye Scream: The locker incident caused Taylor to lose her left eye.
- Fighting from the Inside: The Shaper shard (or, rather, the god that Shaper was built around) is trying to find a way to get revenge on Scion.
- God in Human Form: Several gods and goddesses are either still around, or helping modern heroes become their incarnations.
- Taylor becomes Odin's successor.
- Aides Truth is Hades.
- Judge Myra is Santa Claus.
- Coyote bestows its mantle to Mouse Protector.
- Quarrel becomes Jiutian Xuannü's successor.
- Victoria Dallon becomes Freyja's successor.
- Glaistig Uaine is Morrigan.
- Hammerspace: Coyote literally pulls out a hammer out of nowhere to save Mouse Protector from the Siberian.
- Hanging Judge: Judge Ratnick, the one working on Canary's case, is willing to pervert the rule of law just to get some Misplaced Retribution.
- Heel–Face Turn: Night and Fog work with Taylor after she heals them from the brainwashing Gesselschaft put them through.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Mouse Protector defeats Crawler by forcing its Adaptive Ability to completely immobilize him.
- Hot God: After becoming Rúnatyr, Taylor slowly becomes more attractive.
- Hypocrite: When Carol learns that Vicky broke up with Dean and is now dating Taylor, she claims that she's damaging the image of New Wave and putting the family under the threat of the Empire 88. Says the woman who decided she had to go public with the identities of everyone in the group (something that led to the death of Carol's brother's girlfriend at the hands of a wannabe Empire member), barely ever works as a hero now and attempts to browbeat anyone she can into doing what she wants.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Downplayed, but Sophia stabbed Taylor with a pencil on the side before shoving her into the locker.
- Implausible Deniability: Sophia and Emma get caught in Taylor's bedroom, in the middle of the night, with a bottle of chloroform and several weapons. Emma attempts to claim they were there just for a joke.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Bella reveals to Taylor that beneath her attitude, Sophia hates a lot about herself.
- It's Personal: Taylor was already prepared to fight the Empire 88 and end them, but when Hookwolf and Cricket crash into her house, state they intend to kidnap her and threaten to kill her father, Taylor fulminates both of them and goes out to put down the Empire like the rabid dogs they are.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The story makes early references to the real origin of Parahuman powers, which in canon wasn't shown until mid-story.
- The Modern Gods: A new age of gods is dawning on Earth Bet. For instance, Taylor is the Goddess of Parahumans, though she is still far from her full potential.
- Mundane Utility: Taylor trains her precision with runes by doing chores, and uses runes to make things work better.
- Mugging the Monster: Alabaster threatens Mr. Truth (AKA Hades) with a gun. Mr. Truth is barely fazed by the threat before he rips Alabaster's soul out and renders its body a constantly regenerating vegetable.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Scion and Eden have undergone the cycle about a dozen times, and even defeated the gods of other worlds... but Earth is practically drowning in mystical energy, so its gods are more dangerous than what they've encountered before.
- No-Sell:
- When Gladly attempts to recruit Taylor, his attempts to make a speech keep stalling and tripping.
- When the Butcher tries to use his Hate Plague power on Glory Girl, she easily shrugs it off.
- Hookwolf attempts to use his blades against Taylor. All of them blunt and break before they touch her.
- Odd Friendship: At one point, Vista decided to make Panacea her friend. Amy wasn't keen on it, but eventually got worn down.
- Odd Job Gods: Taylor is the burgeoning Goddess of Parahumans.
- Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: Mouse Protector manages to kill most of the Slaughterhouse Nine off-screen.
- One-Man Army: Mouse Protector kills the Slaughterhouse Nine with some support from Coyote.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Victor attempts to use his power (which lets him copy and steal non-Parahuman skills from other people) on Taylor right after the fight with the Simurgh, Lady Photon and Brandish react as if Vicky's reaction to this (heavily protesting the blatant violation of the Endbringer Truce) was out of place. Vicky and Taylor can easily tell something is wrong. The implication is that Clausewitz is using his Master power, but nothing is confirmed.
- Outside Context Magic: Quarrel kills Butcher XIII, but, as she is an incipient Goddess instead of a Parahuman, she doesn't become the next Butcher.
- Percussive Maintenance: Name-dropped by Taylor when she's dragged into Noelle's realm of shardspace and has to keep the shard occupied while QA fixes it.
- Pet the Dog: Lung plays with a baby in the mall to give his mother time to arrange her bags in the stroller, commiserates with her when she complains about her racist mother-in-law, and when Kaiser shows up to attempt to kill Lung, the latter tells someone to get the mother and child out of the mall while he deals with Kaiser.
- Politically Incorrect Villain:
- The Empire 88, being all Nazis, are this.
- The judge behind Canary's railroading is rather sexist towards women, and hates trans people to the point of insisting that their child must have been Mastered into choosing to undergo their operation.
- Psychic Static: The gods' resurgence in Brockton Bay is messing up with Thinker powers like Contessa's Path to Victory.
- Related in the Adaptation:
- Gladly is Victor's brother.
- Vista and Quarrel are cousins.
- Resignations Not Accepted: When Quarrel returns to Brockton Bay to answer her cousin's request for help, she attempts to leave the Teeth peacefully, but the latter don't accept resignations. Hemorrhagia lying to the Butcher about what happened doesn't help.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- Vista runs away from the Wards when she realizes Piggot only uses Parahumans as weapons.
- Quarrel abandons the Teeth when her cousin Vista calls her for help.
- Semantic Superpower: Taylor’s rune abilities are highly conceptual, in part because she’s the current favorite of the runes.
- Shout-Out:
- One of Odin's many names is Vadderung.
- Odin compares the power of the Runes to the Force.
- When explaining to Taylor the nature of the Runes, Odin also makes a reference to a universe where, instead of the Runes, there are stones of infinite potential.
- Spirit Advisor: After passing the mantle of Rúnatyr to Taylor, Odin sticks around to teach her how to use runes and help her with her normal life.
- Stupidity-Inducing Attack: Victor hits Gallant with this by draining their self-restraint, allowing Rune to pump them for information with them none the wiser, since both are in civilian mode.
- Take That!: This fic is not kind to certain characters like Piggot or Gallant.
- Torture Is Ineffective: Even if Taylor was willing to torture Hookwolf after he attacks her home, she knows that it would be useless, to the point that not even using her runes to boost things could help. She just threatens to do so in order to intimidate her villainous prisoner to spill his guts on his own by being too scared to realize the logical issues of it all.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Styx can change their shape in shadow form, which Sophia can't do.
