Fanfic / Internship

It's late 2010 in Brockton Bay. Bullying is still a problem at Winslow, the Gangs control the streets, and the valiant forces who are supposed to Protect and Serve, even from such threats as Parahumans, are slowly losing the fight for justice.

But reinforcement comes in the most unlikely of places, as Taylor Hebert begins her internship at the PRT.

The Internship stories are Worm AUs known for their character work, humanized PRT and Protectorate, slice-of-life for normal people who deal with capes, and Taylor not triggering.

Internship, by Hopeful Penguin, is a combination of slice-of-life and criminal analysis as an unpowered Taylor shows her aptitude for data analysis, quickly giving the PRT a few minor ideas that start paying off in big ways. The story is concluded, but has an in-progress sequel, Agent Hebert.

The story focuses heavily on Taylor, learning both the ins and outs of PRT bureaucracy, as well as her mentorship with Director Piggot, analyzing criminal activity reports, saving lives through data analysis, and discovering how this whole "Dating" thing works.

Hopeful Penguin started a new story in the setting, called Work Placement, made as a way to show Internship but as the workplace comedy it was supposed to originally be before things escalated.

There is an AU of this story, titled Deputy. It splits off from the main story about a week into the new semester at Arcadia, when Intern Taylor Hebert is deputized in order to help deal with a crisis at Winslow (and to close some legal loopholes). Seems that someone got locked into a locker filled with used feminine hygiene products, and no one knows what's going on there...

Deputy, by Reyemille, focuses less on analysis and more on Taylor and the characters that surround her, as well as her being trained as an actual PRT Deputy trooper. It also has Taylor tasering criminals, coming to the conclusion that Carol Dallon is a homophobe, and her becoming an internet meme thanks to Clockblocker. It is now complete.

Deputy Commander is the sequel to Deputy. It continues the story of Deputy, resolving hanging plot threads from Deputy while introducing new problems into the mix. It is now complete as well.

The third (and final, as Deputy was always announced to be a trilogy) story, Deputy Director, has just begun, where with Deputy Director Renick indisposed, Director Piggot names a very contested candidate as his replacement... it was declared a Dead Fic after some highly publicized incidents involving police brutality left the author uncomfortable with continuing a story in which a paramilitary organization is forced to establish a police state.

Another spinoff story, Emissary, by Noelemahc and Sithking Zero, is about Deputy Commander Hebert ending up in the canon Earth Bet shortly after Coil outs the Empire and the Forsberg Gallery Raid by the Undersiders. To protect her alternate's identity, she takes on the name "Rose Ellison," joins the Wards under the name of "Emissary", and sets out to fix the lives of those she knows while trying to find a way home.

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Internship series

Internship and Agent Hebert contain examples of the following tropes:

• All Your Base: The final arc of Internship involves Empire 88 forces invading PRT headquarters to rescue Victor.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Averted, both in these stories and in Deputy. Taylor is taught proper gun safety when she is taught how to shoot, and practices it even when using "non-lethal" weapons, such as tasers.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: For those stories written by Hopeful Penguin, no, but for the spinoff Deputy series and Emissary, there are plenty of things that seem unusual about this story that didn't carry over to those series. For example, Arcadia apparently has a common room, a coffee shop, and an on-site chapel, the character of Synod is replaced by her prototype (the Oxfordian), and a few major and minor characters are not present (such as Natalie, Piggot's secretary).
• Establishing Character Moment: For Vicky, the first sign she had of what Taylor was like was on her first day at Arcadia, when she completely ignored Vicky's aura and her hangers-on and told her point blank that Vicky has caused a lot of damage with her vigilante activities, and she will be attending a seminar in order to learn how to avoid collateral damage. Only after that gets sorted out does Taylor soften up and start acting like a normal teenager around Vicky.
• Dramatic Irony: The PRT officer who provides the most help to Taylor on the Waterford Motors case is one Thomas Calvert. People who know Worm canon will recognize this as the true name of the supervillain Coil.
• Hidden Depths: While Glory Girl's fan nickname might be "Collateral Damage Barbie," and she's first introduced being asked to go to a seminar on reducing collateral damage, she is extremely intelligent with a passion for history and loves making incredibly well-researched and constructed models of famous battles from Warhammer 40,000.
• Mundane Utility: Vicky, AKA Glory Girl and one of the most popular, photogenic, and recognizable heroes of the Bay area, has an account set up with The Number Man, a notorious supervillain banker who runs much of the money of the Underworld. Why? So she can buy wargaming miniatures and not have her mom trace her hobby.
• Oblivious to Love: Taylor starts out this way, not noticing that Aegis sits down next to her at lunch basically to flirt with her, and even after he unmasks for her (this being a very serious thing in Worm), she refuses to believe him, as her self-esteem keeps her from accepting it without convincing on his part. Her belief that she's "Not good enough for him" continues to haunt her throughout the story.
• Original Character: Internship makes it clear that the PRT is not the only government agency with Capes, and we're introduced to the Oxfordian, a twelve-year-old girl with the ability to communicate with the ghost or spirit of an Oxford college professor and share his wisdom and knowledge.
• Secret Test: Taylor turns out to be so good at her job that she's tested to determine if she's an undiagnosed parahuman. The final test turns out to be a fake emergency where she's put in charge of directing a PRT squad which dies. Her inability to respond to a situation designed to confound anyone other than Thinkers proves that she's a baseline human.
• The Unmasking: Carlos unmasks himself to Taylor in the Archives in order to ask her out on a date. Unfortunately, this is a Taylor who is still attending Winslow, and her self-esteem is shot, so she accuses him of trying to set her up for some sort of prank. She does accept his offer soon enough, though.
• Title Drop: Vicky drops the name of the story while posting selfies of her, Taylor, and Panacea online after Taylor stops a kidnapping.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: During Taylor's testing for hidden powers, the simulation includes a bomb killing several PRT troopers, and two different men each claiming to be the real Johnson. After feeling like she messed up both situations, Taylor eventually learns that that was intentional; she wasn't given enough information to handle either one, unless she was a parahuman.
  Piggot: It was about seeing if you could win when it was impossible to win. In other words, if you were cheating with powers. Setting you up in a situation where you desperately wanted to win, and ensuring that the only way to do so was use powers. Maybe even powers that you didn't know you had.

Work Placement

Work Placement contains examples of the following tropes:

Deputy series

Deputy contains examples of the following tropes:

• Adaptational Villainy: While the Undersiders, and by extension Lisa, were openly self-described villains in canon, they were portrayed as a more morally gray type of villain, with Lisa being one of Taylor's anchors for helping to rebuild her shattered life. While arguably their status has not changed, in this story she decides that the best way to proceed is to rip off the psychological bandage that was covering the trauma the bullies put Taylor through and dump salt in the wound, because otherwise Taylor wouldn't have listened to her.
• Badass Normal: Taylor has no powers (and she's had two separate tests to prove it) and yet her word has influenced major PRT operations across the Bay area, she is dating one of the Wards, and she is the youngest deputized person on record to have made an arrest. All of this with only a taser and a good head on her shoulders.
  • Taylor's defense instructor, Sergeant Michaelson, is capable of going one-on-one with goons given super-strength by Othala.
  • The finale of Deputy has her becoming the first non-powered member and leader of the Wards.
• Break Them by Talking: Rosenthal does this to Madison, culminating in an Armor-Piercing Question so effective that it cause her second trigger.
  "So, Miss Clements. Knowing all that, will you once again look me in the eye and claim to be a good person?” He snarled. “Or do you finally see that you lack even a basic conception of what a good person truly is?"
• Broken Bird: Taylor, although she's recovering. She's moved away from her old bullies, they're either in prison or on the run, and she actually has friends that won't abandon her. And then Tattletale uses her powers to yank the bandage off specifically to traumatize her. And while she's still reeling from that, Aegis dies at the hands of Hookwolf.
• Could Say It, But...: After Synod accidentally spills the beans on a secret prototype sniper rifle that the CIA is working on (and whose complex assembly is slowing down the Waterford Motors assault planning), Taylor realizes that Synod probably wasn't supposed to tell her that. So Taylor mentions that if someone did, say, know about the secret Sniper Rifle project, they could theoretically share the blueprints of the gun with Miss Militia, whose power allows her to make any weapon. Purely theoretically of course. And of course whichever person who mentioned it could take credit for the idea, if perhaps they had an excuse of having a Thinker Construct that specialized in spy things. Too bad there's none of them there and that Taylor, a person from another service who isn't cleared to hear about the special gun, heard nothing about it.
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: Clockblocker freezes Synod so that she won't witness Hookwolf repeatedly stabbing Aegis to death.
• Death by Adaptation: The reason that the Powers That Be decided to use Madison as their patsy to show that Master capes wouldn't be tolerated instead of Canary, as it was in canon, was that Canary committed suicide in prison, via Word of God.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: Taylor's plan to defeat Shadow Stalker requires her to fire Mjolnir inches from her body while overlapping with Shadow Stalker's highly conductive ghost form
• Donut Mess with a Cop: As far as most of the PRT staff are concerned, Taylor's most notable achievement at the start of the story isn't protecting PRT lives from the Empire mortars, but rather transferring their catering to her favourite local baker.
  His brown uniform and hat both had the BBDD logo of Brockton Bay’s Delicious Donuts. The name was truth in advertising, by the way.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Taylor deduces (correctly) that Amy is gay and then (incorrectly) deduces Carol is a homophobe and thinks Taylor is trying to seduce Amy. Amy finds this very amusing as Carol actually thinks Taylor's going to lure Amy into villainy.
  • Danny makes the same wrong deduction when Carol calls to complain about Amy helping with Taylor's tattoo.
• Exact Words: When Carlos replies to Taylor's message and says he can't talk right now, she apologises for interrupting him. But it turns out he actually does have time for her, he just literally can't talk until his lungs grow back.
• Foreshadowing: There are multiple clues scattered throughout the story that hint at Carlos' fate.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In-Universe, Taylor manages to find frames in Hookwolf's execution video that show that Purity is very clearly pregnant, which is the clue that shows exactly how serious Kaiser is about this that he'd bring in a pregnant woman to help kill Hookwolf .
• Foreshadowing: Purity's brief exposure in the footage that showed the execution of Hookwolf wasn't a coincidence; the further into her pregnancy she gets, the less she's able to use her powers, which comes to a head in the sequel.
• From Bad to Worse: one of the omakes by the author explored a world where Synod second-triggered. In it, Coil accidentally drops the timeline where Taylor lives through the kidnapping attempt, so she dies permanently. So now he'll have the PRT hunting him down. That's bad. Then Synod second-triggers, which gives her the power to send out The Deputy Construct as a Siberian-like being (utterly invincible and unstoppable) with the specific goal of murdering Coil and his allies. This is worse. Oh, and it eats people, because Coil's day wasn't bad enough.
• I Call It "Vera": Synod and Kid Win name Taylor's custom-built tinkertech taser Mjolnir.
• Innocently Insensitive: James manages to be this in a spectacular fashion by asking a person who had a hate crime committed against her for being Jewish... what the word "Kike" means and why it is so offensive. He combines this with brutal honesty; when he's called on it (Vicky yelling "What the hell is wrong with you,") he openly admits that he doesn't know as his parents are reluctant to submit him for psychological testing. Shortly after, Amy realizes that James has a Corona Pollentia, meaning that he is a parahuman and so is most likely Browbeat who Word of Wildbow mentioned had schizophrenia.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Synod has a habit of doing this, first and primarily to Taylor (who saved her from Agent Smith's ambitions and a kidnapping attempt by Coil) and more recently to Vista.
• Laugh Themselves Sick: By the time Taylor finishes telling Synod about how she was sent to reprimand Glory Girl for causing collateral damage, Synod is red faced and begging her to stop so that Synod can breathe.
• Let's Wait a While: Taylor, tormented by her own personal demons that she's not doing enough as a girlfriend for Carlos, calls him up and asks him if he's happy. Carlos, coming from a strongly religious family, tells Taylor what he told his mother about Taylor: "This girl is worth waiting for." Taylor then claims that it's the single sweetest thing anyone has ever said about her.
• Memetic Badass: In-Universe, Clockblocker creates a list of things that Taylor, as a Deputy, is rumored to have done (and has actually done, but he doesn't know that). This quickly goes viral.
  True DeputyH Fact: DeputyH doesn't need to go through Master/Stranger protocols. Anyone who attempts to assume her shape goes mad trying to imitate perfection.
  • Readers of the fic have been contributing to the list of facts, most of which are derived from events that happened in the story. The collection can be found here.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: junior members of the Empire mock James, telling him that if he's so concerned about their activities, he should hang out with Taylor and Victoria (though using highly unflattering terms for them). James thinks this is a great idea and begins doing so. Through a long chain of events, this leads to him dating Mandy, which leads to them becoming Capes who carve out a chunk of territory in Deputy Director they use to defend the Jewish population of Brockton from the Empire.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Taylor divines that the Empire was serious about executing Hookwolf, as they wouldn't have called in Purity to help kill him when she's so obviously pregnant.
• Original Character: Somewhat. Deputy is an AU of the original Internship and splits off before the meeting with the CIA and other government agencies, and the original Oxfordian is replaced with Synod. While still a little girl, and still with the ability to contact a professor-type character, her powers are rather different. See the Split Personality article for more details.
• Reckless Gun Usage: On her first real assignment as a deputy, Taylor accidentally sets off her containment foam sprayer by putting it in the wrong holster. Fortunately, this was compounded by another screwup by the one who handed it out to her (the sprayer was nearly empty, thus, instead of her getting stuck to the ground for hours, there's simply a football-sized lump of the stuff on the sidewalk), and Michaelson is able to turn it into a learning experience.
• Recursive Fanfiction: Of Internship.
• Running Gag: Taylor's status as an internet meme.
• Split Personality: Synod's power is that she can make up to four "Construct" personalities that retain vast amounts of information on one subject each. Each one manifests as a different personality.
  • The Oxfordian: an elderly man who has memorized the entirety of the Oxford University Academy of Parahuman Studies. Basically the Oxfordian character from Internship.
  • Agent Diamond: a personality based around spies and espionage. Speaks in a very hushed and subdued tone of voice. In Deputy Commander he gets replaced with a combat-focused personality named Mr D.
  • Clay: a Camp Gay personality based on ten years' worth of teenage gossip columns, advice rags, fashion magazines, and more.
  • Mr. Noir: a personality that was supposed to her personality based around criminology. Unfortunately, Synod got some noir detective stories mixed in with her research when constructing this personality, so it came across as quite sexist. It was replaced eventually by...
  • The Deputy. A personality created with the most intensive fugue state of all the other personalities, this one lasting over thirty hours. It is the one based on studies of criminology found and collected in the basement of the PRT headquarters of Brockton Bay. However, because Synod idolized her, she based the sound and personality of this construct on one of her heroes: Deputy Taylor Hebert. Her ability to recreate Taylor's voice is good enough to fool voice recognition software.
• Stalker with a Crush: The PRT troopers have to deal with these enough that they compare them to determine how bad the situation is. Taylor ends up tasering the newly-dubbed Vistalker who's on the very bad end of the spectrum. Others encountered over the years have the charming nicknames of "Mouse Molester," and "Clockstalker."
• Stations of the Canon: While Taylor becoming an intern and getting transferred has shot the canon of Worm to hell and back, the story does start off with someone being shoved into Taylor Hebert's locker, which was filled up with used tampons before Winter Break started, and said person triggers with the ability to control bugs. It's Madison, this time. She was shoved in by Emma and Sophia when Taylor transferred out of their reach, and fearing that Taylor had spilled the beans on them to the PRT, decided to do one last spiteful, hateful thing before the two fled.
  • Madison takes up the role that Canary took up in canon- a person with Master powers who is being railroaded to the Birdcage.
• Straight Gay: Amy. What makes it different is that she takes time to confirm that yes, it's not just Vicky's aura messing with her head, she actually does like girls. She briefly gets a crush on Taylor... who is dating Carlos.
• Take That!:
  • Taylor attends a conference dedicated to people learning how to de-escalate situations, which the author confirmed was a shot at the "Taylor Hebert can Escalate to Defeat Anyone!" meme.
    But of the half of the seminar I understood, nearly all amounted to basic common sense. Armsmaster would have benefited from the class far more than I did.
  • One of the cut scenes from chapter 25 points out that the strategy of swapping costumes used in canon Worm (during the Bank Heist) would backfire spectacularly eventually. Since criminals don't know which Cape is which, they would immediately go for tactics which would definitely work... specifically, going straight for lethal techniques.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Sophia thinks that this is what happened to her, unaware that she has been a villain all along.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: After he arrives at Parian's shop too late to save Aegis, Armsmaster uses his prototype nanothorn-enhanced halberd to carve a chunk out of Hookwolf. While it doesn't kill Hookwolf, it is noted that nanothorn technology was designed by him to deal with Endbringers, so this still qualifies.
• Toxic Family Influence: Tattletale diagnoses this with the Dallon family toward Amy. Carol is passively abusive which puts pressure on her; Mark's passiveness sets a precedent Amy unconsciously follows; and Vicky unknowingly manipulates Amy who always gives in even when she really doesn't want to. In the finale, Taylor, in her new role as the head of the Wards ENE, offers Amy a way out by joining the Wards, and Amy readily accepts.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Taylor decides to take a mental health day, but claims to Vicky that she's calling in sick. Vicky points out that they can just have Amy fix her up with next to no effort, which makes Taylor mildly rebuke her about volunteering other people's skills without their consent. Unfortunately for all involved, Amy was in this texting conversation, and it sparks an internal argument in the Dallon Household and leads Carol to thinking that Taylor is trying to seduce Amy to villainy.
• Wham Episode: Interlude A, where Hookwolf kills Aegis.
  • End of the Beginning, the final chapter, has Taylor being let off of the charges she incurred taking down Sophia, her being promoted to the first non-powered member of the Wards, simultaneously becoming the leader of the Wards (filling the role Aegis once had), and recruiting Amy into the Wards, getting her out of her toxic family situation.
• You Do Not Want To Know: Aegis, going through an archive of documents with Taylor, tries to persuade her that she'll be happier if she skips one, and doesn't need to know what's in it. It's Emma's psychiatric evaluation.

Tropes for Deputy Commander. Warning: Unmarked spoilers for Deputy ahead.

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Taylor's defeat of Shadow Stalker and rescuing Madison from a Kangaroo Court got her charged with Obstruction of justice; blackmail; dissemination of classified documents; falsification of an official government report; possession of, and transportation across state lines of, an unlicensed tinkertech weapon; and trespassing on a nature reserve (While fleeing for her life from the psychotic ex-Ward, she crossed into a protected mating ground for moose).
• Bilingual Bonus: Sandra's last name, Mustermann, is the German equivalent of John or Jane Doe.
• Broken Bird: Madison, as a result of her incarceration and having her belief that she was a good person destroyed.
• Broken Pedestal: Not quite broken, but the pedestal Taylor put Piggot on was damaged when Calvert "accidentally" slipped that she was prejudiced against parahumans. Of course, her regard of him was damaged even more, since she quickly realized the slip wasn't really accidental.
• The Chains of Commanding: Taylor might have been a great intern, but she doesn't know much about being a commander. Thankfully, her father knows how to lead groups of people and is willing to teach her. That doesn't mean there aren't problems.
  • Balancing out her friendship with Vicky (as well as a desire for friendship in general) versus her respect for Director Piggot when Vicky's attempted apprehension of Stagehand leads to a bunch of collateral damage.
  • Trying to maintain good working relations with the various Wards, despite that they have some pretty serious problems.
  • Navigating the waters of politics in the office, including dealing with the apparent cold war between Calvert and Piggot.
• Chandler's Law: The ending to Chapter 17.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Taylor is determined and resourceful, but she has a problem where she tries to fix every problem she sees. Good for trying to get the Wards up to snuff, but her interference in New Wave (by poaching Amy for the Wards) continues to cause problems and has major repercussions. It's subtle, but Taylor at times gets close to burning out because she insists on taking too much on her shoulders.
• Could Say It, But...:
  • When Doctor Yamada offers to have a brief chat after Taylor's therapy appointment with Doctor Maher, Taylor asks whether she's implying that Taylor will need therapy to recover from her therapy. Rather than denying it, Doctor Yamada responds that saying so would be a serious violation of professional ethics.
  • When Michaelson announces that he's going to kill Oni Lee in revenge, Vista notes that as a hero, she isn't allowed to wish him good luck in that, so she won't say it.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Amy threatens to permanently disable the part of Taylor's tongue that tastes chocolate if Taylor tries to set her up with Parian.
• Death by Adaptation: Rune gets killed by Cricket as revenge for her being part of the group that killed Hookwolf.
• Frameup: Rune claims that she is the victim of one of these. She's telling the truth; the graffiti was done by a cape who makes invisible projections, mimicking her telekinesis.
• Heel Realization: The defining characteristic of Weaver, and the cause of her second trigger.
• Hidden Depths: While constructing a new Combat Persona for Synod, they show her footage of soldiers on a combat operation from multiple perspectives. It's Clockblocker of all people who suggests showing the soldiers being court-martialed for their actions later on so she gets the whole story.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: Cricket goes after a heavily pregnant Purity while virtually every other Cape in town is occupied with other matters during an Endbringer attack. The Wards take Cricket down, but Purity ends up mortally injured in the process, forcing Taylor to have to walk Madison through performing a C-Section delivery over the radio.
• Me's a Crowd: Stagehand, a cape framing Rune, is capable of making multiple invisible copies of himself.
• Messianic Archetype: In chapter 13, Dennis openly compares Taylor to the Archetype, pointing out that she's faced trials, come back from the dead stronger (her heart stopped on the operating table after the Shadow Stalker thing and Amy's healing 'turbocharged' her), and saved a person (Madison) from hell (railroading her to the birdcage). Amy throws a paper plate at him for this.
• Mundane Utility: Amy uses her incredible bio-shaping powers to determine which type of protein Taylor should buy at a vitamin shop.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: When Clockblocker calls for Taylor to give a speech to the Wards, she retaliates by addressing, "Ladies, gentlemen, and Clockblocker..."
• Never My Fault: Glory Girl refuses to take responsibility for her actions, believing that even if she does hurt someone, Amy can just fix them up. Piggot, upon hearing that Glory Girl thinks this, orders that the book be thrown at her.
• No Periods, Period: In a Call-Back to the first story, Amy is capable of taking care of menstrual pain... which is brought up when it's revealed that Synod is having her first one in her interlude. Amy being Amy decides to let Taylor handle the explanation of this particular revelation.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Gallant doesn't like that Parian taunted Hookwolf instead of trying to de-escalate, which drove him into a murderous frenzy which killed Aegis. However, he realizes that his emotion blasts could have much the same effect.
• Oblivious to Love: Mandy gets very frustrated that James isn't taking any of her hints that she's interested in him, until Taylor points out that this is the same James who asked a person of Hebrew Descent directly why "Kike" was offensive and is known to have a chemical imbalance in his brain that makes it hard for him to understand social situations.
• Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: After Aegis's death, Vista's scar takes on new, unpleasant meaning.
• Power Incontinence: When Amy healed Taylor at the end of the previous story, the circumstances behind it made her a wee bit more stressed and tired than she's used to, and her control slipped- as can happen when trying to literally put your best friend back together after said friend has literally died on the operating table, your foster mother forbids you from going to see her, so you steal the family car at one in the morning, and drive across state lines on all adrenaline and no sleep. As a result, Taylor is basically perfected- she's as healthy as a newborn baby, with no scars or blemishes anywhere on her body. Amy views this as an unacceptable loss of control and retreats into herself when she finds out, Taylor merely remarks that since she's now Amy's boss she won't allow Amy to heal people when she's that tired and stressed.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The last chapters were written and published within the span of a few weeks due to the author's wife giving birth shortly after the finale was posted, so as to not make people wait for said finale while he dealt with new father issues.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Despite Madison's truly hellish time in lockup (bad enough to be a major contributing factor to her second trigger), Taylor still remembers the year and a half of bullying and not only can't but refuses to let herself forgive Madison for this. She does, however, order that the Wards not isolate her or torment her, as she knows what that feels like and won't be a party to it. Taylor eventually decides that since Madison participated in tormenting her for 483 days, she will decide if Madison has genuinely reformed enough to be worthy of forgiveness after spending 483 days as a Ward.
• Safe, Sane, and Consensual: Gotharina is a firm believer in this philosophy. Amy doesn't take it so well
• Shout-Out: During Interlude: Hebert, Vista quotes Maxim 43 word for word. Specifically, "If it's stupid and it works, it's still stupid and you're lucky."
• The Shrink: Jessica Yamada is a highly effective type 3 shrink. Dr. Maher is a highly ineffective, offensive type 1
• Sibling Rivalry: Stagehand turns out to be Rune's younger brother, who Triggered when he realized that his parents would never care about him as much as they did their problem child older sister. Said problem child sister had strong Nazi tendencies and was kind of evil, so he set out to put her in prison where she belonged.
  • Michaelson's rogue attitude finally comes back to bite him, since taking two minors across state lines to get Taylor a tattoo is illegal. When Brandish showed up at PRT HQ screaming about Michaelson (Panacea was the other minor), he resigns to avoid the inquiry.
  • Danny doesn't know anything about capes, or the PRT. But he does know about teams and being a manager, and the skills for that overlap very nicely with that of a Leader of the Wards, allowing him to bond with his daughter by sharing tips and tricks he's picked up on the job.
  • Amy, freaked out that she might have lost control of her powers (which are touch-based), won't allow Taylor to hug her to make her feel better. Taylor just tosses a bedsheet over her and then hugs her.
• Tempting Fate: Tattletale, in her phone conversation with Taylor, gets mock-excited that Taylor is going to try to pull one over her, and dares her to do it. She's stunned speechless when Taylor reveals that she's gotten the PRT to drop all the charges against Bitch/Hellhound/Rachel because they were due to her Trigger Event. After that, Tattletale can only say "You win," and hangs up.
• Time Skip: A minor one, but at the end of Deputy, Amy was just invited to join the Wards. By the first chapter of Deputy Commander, she's been a member for a week.
• Too Dumb to Live: In the Undersiders Interlude, Bitch says that she'll have her dogs attack Chariot if he emerges from a van. Chariot exits the van. Guess what happens.
• Unfolding Plan Montage: Danny teaching Taylor how to be an effective leader.
• Waxing Lyrical: Dennis paraphrases the Depeche Mode song "Personal Jesus" when comparing Taylor to a Messianic Archetype. Then Amy throws a paper plate at him.

"Reach out and touch, faith. Your own, Deputy, Jesus."

• What the Hell, Hero?: After Rune's death, Taylor reams out Dragon for not hacking into cell records until Taylor asked her to. Since Dragon delayed an emergency response in a life-or-death scenario where seconds mattered, Taylor states that she will make sure not to rely on Dragon in the future. In reality, Dragon is physically incapable of breaking the law unless asked to by an authority figure, but Taylor has no way to know that.

Tropes for Deputy Director. Warning: Unmarked spoilers for Deputy and Deputy Commander ahead.

• The Alcoholic: Played very seriously. Min has had problems with drinking in the past, but since she's stuck under a Tinkertech dome of light and the one woman she loved just died in a heroic sacrifice, she fell into the bottle again hard. Taylor is actively encouraging her to give up the bottle, but also has to clamp down hard on her when she shows up to work drunk.
• Badass Israeli: Of the "supremely badass, obviously Jewish," type. After they triggered, Mandy and James become Pressure and Browbeat (respectively), and form the team Palmach, in order to protect the Jewish people of Brockton in the Quarantine Zone from those who would target them, like the Empire.
• Cloudcuckoolander: In the wake of his triggering, James went from someone who lost interest in things quickly to full-on loopiness. The only one who can pull him out of this state is Mandy.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: In one of James' ramblings, he starts listing things from the US Constitution, which gives Taylor the idea for, instead of "The PRT tries to control everything," a series of states that work with the PRT under the control of various groups, similar to states as part of a union.
• Deus ex Machina: Literal one. Scion shows up in Armsmaster's interlude, fixing a whole bunch of problems in Brockton, captures Kugelblitz (dropping him at Piggot's feet) and leaves.
• Driven by Envy: Armsmaster's canonical feelings of Jealousy towards Dauntless rear their ugly head time and time again, with him trying to gain recognition over the poor guy. It's not helped that in the reorganization after the Quarantine, Dauntless is made leader of the Protectorate, despite Armsmaster previously holding the position.
• Exact Words: When Director Piggot declared herself independent from the government, the rule she used could only technically be used to do that. It was meant to be used in case someone tried to use powers to hijack official messages between the government and the PRT, not to sever oneself from the government in the event of a quarantine. As such, it's cost her some political willpower, as Director Costa-Brown can't officially support her doing that without risking other directors doing the same.
• Hero of Another Story: Danny and Synod are off doing talk show interviews and visiting Washington to drum up support for getting rid of the Quarantine around Brockton.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: Armsmaster doesn't like a minor cape named "Mink" who surpassed him in popularity polls. He initially calls her a, quote, "C-list skank with no heroic accomplishments to her name, abusing the Protectorate's reputation, manipulating the public with sex appeal, and coasting on nothing but good looks and feminine wiles." After seeing a documentary she put out about how hard she has to work to keep looking good in a job as dangerous as being a Cape is, how she's ultimately pro-body positivity, and how girls should accept themselves... Armsmaster takes back that he said she was "coasting".
• Innocently Insensitive: One of the new capes of the Dockworker's Union calls herself "Vector," which, unbeknownst to her, was a hero who lost his life against a horde of machines. Armsmaster really doesn't like that his name was taken by someone who doesn't deserve it. Later on, she renames herself to Vectress, which is slightly better.
  • When Mandy invites Glory Girl, Panacea, and Taylor to brunch at a Jewish cafe, Madison asks them to hold the bacon on her order.
• It Runs in the Family: Greg Veder's older brother, Bradley, is a new recurring cast member. He's less weird than his brother... but not by much.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Taylor has to point out that Tagg nearly ordered an airstrike on PRT Troopers, and Renick set in motion a chain of dominoes that led to the quarantine, all because Piggot didn't take Tagg's advice and have Panacea fix her kidneys and legs. Piggot is indignant, but eventually agrees.
  • Taylor is reluctantly forced to admit that keeping Sophia in the basement with no human contact whatsoever is cruel after Caryn points it out to her.
  • Panacea, while talking to Viridian, says that she'll visit the shelter that Viridian's friend is hurt at, but then goes on to say she won't necessarily heal her. When Viridian explodes at her, Amy explains that it's up to the doctors involved if the individual needs healing or not; she doesn't make that decision.
• Love-Interest Traitor: Min, in the wake of the death of her love interest Trooper Martinez, decides to seek out other forms of comfort – specifically, a one-night stand with Trooper Rance, whom Taylor and Piggot suspect is a mole.
• Must Have Caffeine: One omake has all the gangs destroyed by having the PRT wait until the city runs out of caffeine, and then putting a bounty of 300 pounds of coffee beans on Kaiser's head, after which all the villainous capes destroy each other in a free-for-all trying to capture him.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Rod, for a very loose definition of hero. He's an unabashed racist who clashed horns with Danny before Danny left town to try to drum up support for getting the Quarantine repealed. Now, he's an unabashed racist who tried to make Kurt the token black guy in his group and frequently insults the Jewish population of Brockton, but the heroes have to put up with him because he leads a group of capes and is (in theory) one of their allies.
• Race Against the Clock: The Framing Device is counting days "to freedom", giving the readers an exact countdown to when the lockdown will be lifted, for whatever reason.
• Right in Front of Me: Ty's visit to Taylor's house right after she's been promoted.
  Ty: "What the Directors don't know can't hurt 'em."
• Salt the Earth: Taylor knows that there's a firearms store in a hotly contested area. She knows the PRT can't hold onto it with their resources spread out as much as they are, so she orders Dauntless to level the place.
• Shout-Out: Sophia's In-Universe quote from Hannibal Lecter fizzles because Taylor doesn't get the reference.
  • Aisha triggers, not with her canon powers, but with those of the Silence – you only remember them when you look right at them. And the reason Taylor remembers is because she wrote down "Don't blink" which is the Doctor's advice on how to deal with Weeping Angels.
• Token Evil Teammate: Rod, leader of the Dockworker's Union since Danny left, was an unrepentant racist asshole even before he wound up in charge of the Union. After, he's just as bad, just as racist, and somewhat stupid, but the PRT and its allies have to listen to him and have him as part of their council because he leads one of the city's "heroic" teams.
  • The Undersiders, despite being villains, are also part of the PRT's group. Their real problem is not so much that they're not doing their job – they are, and doing it well – it's that the whole thing is a blatant setup so that Coil has a foot in the door.
• Took a Level in Badass: Kid Win is convinced that he won't be of much help in the coming quarantine. Taylor then points out that one could interpret a Cell Phone Network as being a system of Modules, leading to him setting up a communications network for the whole city.
• Unfit for Greatness: The Wards reminisce on Triumph's demise by remembering how bad he was at leading them.
• We ARE Struggling Together: In the wake of the Quarantine, the city has been essentially divided up between various Parahuman gangs and teams. The ones with a heroic bent are banding together to make what Taylor calls "Parahuman Federalism," similar to states, but the teams don't get along. This makes sense when the teams involved are the PRT/Protectorate/Wards, New Wave, the New Dockworker's Union, the Undersiders, and Palmach.
  • New Wave seems to be fighting among themselves to a small degree. Carol objects strongly to the PRT's attempts to take control, believing that they are all that is needed for their territory. Laserdream and Parian disagree.

Emissary

Tropes for Emissary include:

• Adaptational Badass: In between chapter 10 of Deputy Commander and the start of Emissary, Deputy Commander Hebert has made psychology checkups mandatory for all the Wards, as well as pushed through referendums meaning that the capes in the Protectorate also have mandatory therapy meetings, and that the Wards have to be much more physically fit. In addition, she's started having Weaver make the costumes for the Wards out of Spider Silk, increasing durability, and has gotten more of Kid Win's Tinkertech in the field. As a result, Emissary notes that her Wards and Protectorate are much more psychologically stable and stronger.
• Adaptational Heroism: It's mentioned that Kayden Anders, AKA Purity, has not only split from the Empire, but is trying to build up a good rep so she can join the Protectorate in the Deputy's world.
• Adults Are Useless: Played straight and inverted. Played straight in that no one caught Sophia breaking the terms of her probation for months, leading to Skitter Triggering and the events of Worm up to the Leviathan battle. Then inverted, because as soon as they get info from Rose that Sophia's a bad egg, they leap into action. By the time that Rose tries to get onto the investigation into Sophia, the investigation has been over for two days. The only reason why Sophia wasn't arrested as soon as the investigation was done was Director Piggot not being in, and then Leviathan attacking.
• Alternate Universe: The Deputy-verse is AU to canon. Deputaylor ends up traveling to the canon world thanks to a Quake-inspired dimensional portal built by Leet.
  • What's particularly interesting, to Alexandria at least, is that while the multiverse is a concept well-established in Worm (references are made often as to how the planet Worm takes place in is actually "Earth Bet," and they can communicate with "Earth Aleph," a parallel world without capes), the type of world-hopping that Deputaylor did is really not supposed to be possible. While the various Earths that can be accessed with Worm Dimensional Travel do exist, there are enough differences between them that you wouldn't be able to mix them up. Deputy Commander somehow jumped from one Earth Bet to another Earth Bet, which is forbidden by how the Entities blocked off travel between worlds that were too similar, and didn't spread Shards to worlds that were nearly identical. Thus, there really shouldn't be Two Earth Bets to travel between.
  • Interlude 1-D shows that the Deputy universe is itself an AU of Deputy Commander, splitting off when Rose arrested both Stagehand and Rune, inadvertently saving Rune's life from Cricket's revenge killings.
  • Though the point of divergence between the worlds was supposedly at the career fair where Rose joined the PRT (and Taylor had pudding dumped in her backpack), there are more differences that have no connection to either Taylor- Canary committing suicide in the Deputy-verse, Parian having a store on the Boardwalk (where the canon/Skit version is just a college student),
• Amazon Chaser: Canon Clockblocker starts flirting with Rose when he first meets her, due in part to how extremely physically fit she is. Independently of each other, Sophia, Carlos and Sabah seem to agree that Rose has a nice butt.
  • Tattletale suspects that Rose has/had a thing for Rachel. She actually doesn't; Tattletale's power was on the fritz after a very long night with no sleep followed by an Endbringer battle and misread what her power told her. Rose just looks at Rachel fondly as a person she cares for platonically.
• An Arm and a Leg: In the Leviathan Battle, Fenja gets her arm sliced off. Said arm is later seen floating around the city at various points in the fight.
  • Panacea-Dep loses an arm (and part of her ear) as a result of the Boston fight against Leviathan.
  • In the Leviathan fight, Armsmaster-Skit loses one arm and most of the fingers on the other. He gets the fingers back promptly, courtesy of Panacea. His Deputy Counterpart just loses a leg.
• Arrested for Heroism: Deputaylor's first act on canon Earth Bet is to take down Uber and Leet and call in the PRT to lock them up. Then she notices that one of the members of the pickup team is someone who had left the PRT in her universe, which gets her foamed and locked up under Master/Stranger confinement until they can figure out what's going on. To be fair, she was also claiming to be the leader of the Wards while using information she should have had no way of knowing, and knowing that Masters and Strangers are things, they did have reason to take precautions.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: When Battery tried to pull rank on Emissary post-Leviathan, claiming that Emissary was "Too young" to speak the way she was to Protectorate members, Emissary fires back that despite her age, only three people there actually managed to hurt Leviathan. Of those three, two of them are fifteen years old, one is a member of the Triumvirate, and neither is Battery.
  Rose: Raise your hand if you mutilated an Endbringer today.
• Attack Drone: Rose's armor allows her to control PRT drones, and has three of her own: Sirin and Alkonost were built by her Kid Win (and were left behind when she was sent to Bet-Skit), while the local built her a drone which she names Finist.
• Author Appeal: Ursa Aurora was added to the Leviathan Fight in a small cameo because one of the authors likes her.
  Sithking Zero: Her power is to summon Ghost Bears to attack people. Why is Worm not about her.
  • Similarly, originally Browbeat was going to be an Asian boy. However, the Deputy-verse hinted very strongly that James would become Browbeat (which later actually happened), and the authors liked writing him so much that he played a bigger role than normal.
• Badass Normal: Even though she gets tested for powers (for the third time), Alexandria assigns Rose a rating of "Thinker 0, Master 0, and Brute 0." "0" ratings for powers are given out only to people who are strong enough to be considered threats without having Parahuman Abilities.
  • PRT Trooper Phil Carlsson during the Leviathian attack, working search and rescue and surviving the carnage, after a long shift uncovering evidence of crimes committed by Shadow Stalker.
  • Danny-Dep once was getting threatened in his office by Mush, who claimed that "Just because his kids are open capes doesn't mean anything." Danny agreed and reached for his crowbar. According to Rose, it was the first time his cape-based shenanigans got a lower page number than his daughter's in the newspaper.
• Bears Are Bad News: Tattletale's overtaxed power is convinced that Rose could wrestle a bear, but is unsure whether she already has. Word of God is divided over if she has or not (Noelemahc says no, Sithkign Zero says yes).
  • Ursa Aurora showed up in a brief cameo in the Leviathan fight. Her power is to summon ghost bears.
• Bio-Augmentation: Taking the overhealing incident at the end of Deputy and running with it, Rose is implied to have been granted low-level Brute capabilities by her Panacea. She has a slow but relentless regeneration and denser-than-normal bones, both of which she leverages in combat.
• Body Double: When Rose talks about meeting Bet-Skit's Alexandria, she complains that she's meaner and less personable than Bet-Dep's Alexandria. One of the interludes reveals that Rose has never met her own version of Alexandria, that Rebecca Costa-Brown sent a body double to meet Rose.
• Brick Joke: Early on, since her costume/armor is being examined by the PRT, Rose gets assigned a hideous red jumpsuit that she resolves to burn at the first opportunity. She finally does so in 2.07.
  • Before the Leviathan fight, Rose notices Parian checking her out. She reminds Parian of this when she meets her after the battle.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Because Deputaylor is who she is, she immediately starts working to try to improve the lives of the most at-risk people she knows, particularly since she's saved those lives already back home. This includes Amy and Synod, but also includes her counterpart (better known as Skitter) and Tattletale.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Browbeat, hands down. He's slightly more in focus than in canon, and receives the opportunity to deliver a few moving speeches. That doesn't change the fact that he's slightly blunter than a boulder, honest to a fault, and has odd priorities at times.
• Continuity Nod: In the first Deputyverse Interlude, Danny mentions that Kid Win has collapsed on his couch before, referencing what happened when Kid Win first gave Taylor Mjolnir.
  • One of the t-shirts that Rose picks up when she's shopping with Vista is nearly identical to a hideous pink shirt with a glitter unicorn on it that she got when shopping with Amy and Synod in her universe.
  • In Deputy Commander Amy has seemingly adopted one of Rachel's dogs, Judas. In Emissary, Skitter adopts another, Angelica.
  • When Danny first meets Emissary, she's retelling the events of the Wards vs Undersiders fight from Deputy Commander.
  • In 3.04, Rose gets ticked that the PRT are using her as a symbol, after the fiasco that resulted from the "True Deputy H Facts" memes that spawned back in Deputy.
• Crazy-Prepared: The PRT has protocols in place in the event of accidental interdimensional travel, which Deputaylor takes advantage of the moment she figures out what's going on. To be fair, though, interdimensional travel is a well-known concept in Worm, the best example (even noted by Dragon) being Professor Haywire's Earth Aleph portal.
  • Miss Militia remarks that she considers Rose as this.
  "I swear, the skillset of that girl makes me suspect she may have been a Marine in a previous life."
  • Synod-Dep, realizing that Taylor wouldn't believe her when she said that Taylor snores, decided to record her sleeping. Every night. For three weeks.
  Rose: "Synod is very thorough."
• Creator Cameo: Both co-authors appear as PHO forum posters in the first Coda.
• Crossover: Between Deputy Commander and Canon Worm.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Before revealing her identity in the aftermath of Leviathan's attack, Emissary warns that if it leaves the room without approval, "Alexandria will personally twist your head off, then will go bowling with it."
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: Because her version of Aegis was her boyfriend and someone she loved very much, the inversion of this trope makes her terrified at the thought of meeting Aegis once again.
  • She also gets upset when she learns that her Hookwolf and her Aegis are this trope to Canon, which means that Deputy Dean's accusation of Parian driving Hookwolf to a murderous frenzy are true.
  • The same applies to Cricket, in a divergence from the Deputy fic branch.
  • After the Leviathan Fight, there are multiple instances of this, including Little Miss Priss, most of the healing capes that attended the Deputy Version, Gallant, and the Adult Pelham branch of New Wave.
  • Taylor's attraction to Aegis-Skit is actually deconstructed- while he's a living version of her boyfriend who heroically died, he's not the person who unmasked to her in the hall of records or took her on dates. He's a completely different person and is more than a little disturbed by her attitude towards him, until he finally lets her down gently.
• Death by Adaptation: Because Rose took down Rune and put her in the Wards, Cricket's furious rampage against the E88 members who killed Hookwolf goes quite differently. Instead of Rune, she attacks another cape who helped kill Hookwolf... and that turns out to be Purity, one of the most powerful Blasters in the world. Cricket gets vaporized in self defense.
  • Bitch dies when Leviathan throws one of her powered-up dogs at her. One of the bone spurs of the dogs tears her throat.
  • Lady Photon and her husband do not survive the Leviathan battle either.
• Demoted to Extra: Ty Michaelson, despite being Rose's first combat instructor, the one who gave her her Aegis tattoo, and still works at the PRT in Earth-Bet-Skit, has had only one real scene in the story, and it's just him standing behind Director Piggot while she calls out the Youth Guard. He doesn't even have any lines.
• Despair Event Horizon: Weaver has her emotions invested heavily into Rose, viewing her as her moral compass, leader, and to a lesser degree, her salvation. When Rose appears to die on a mission with Weaver as backup, her first response is "a scream of anguish," and she basically shuts down for nearly a week, with Gallant having to force her to eat or leave her room.
• Didn't See That Coming: Rose was prepared, mentally, at least, to face Sophia Hess, AKA Shadow Stalker, again when meeting the Canon Wards. She was not prepared for James, her friend back home, to have Triggered and become Browbeat, which throws her off her game.
• Didn't Think This Through: Use secret information to gain the trust of someone with trust issues? Somehow, this leads to things not going well for Rose. Taylor comes to the conclusion that, since there was no way for "Rose" to get access to data on "Forest Guardian," and there's only three people alive who could know that, and only one of them is Wards age... she comes to the conclusion that "Emissary" is Emma Barnes. Oops.
• Does Not Like Men: Rose is aware that Parian has trust issues with the male gender (due to a very bad boyfriend), so she offers to have the PRT only send female capes to help patrol Parian's territory.
• Elseworld: The occasional official omake, showing the possible consequences of dropping Deputy Hebert into a different fic instead of canon.
  • Women of Iron - with Mixed Feelings.
  • Ambassador of Blood - with Queen of Blood (SirWill), co-authored with the fic's creator.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Rose gets the nickname "Red" (in addition to her vast repository of other names) because of an absolutely hideous red jumpsuit she had to wear as a costume while the PRT examined her armor.
  • Neither Tattletale enjoys being called "Tata", which Rose greatly enjoys doing. To rub knowing her identity in her face, Rose also calls Skitter's Tattletale Sally.
• Establishing Character Moment: The various OCs that survive the Leviathan fight or are introduced after it ends:
  • Little Miss Priss swears and complains a lot.
  • Carlsson rushes into the action heedless of his own safety.
  • Ramayan barely manages to remain civil in the face of an uncooperative doctor.
• Even Girls Want Her: Sophia, at one point, checks out Rose's butt. Rose is suitably squicked out by this.
  • Parian, before the Endbringer fight, visibly checks out Rose. Rose is more okay with this than getting checked out by Sophia... but that's not exactly a high bar.
• Expy: Browbeat is one for Rogal Dorn.
  • Phil Carlsson didn't start out as one, and the similar name was an accident. Then the parallels became apparent and the authors ran with it.
  • The description of the Portal device of Kid Win's Deputy Interlude describes an Earth-Bet version of Stargate SG-1, which goes by a different name.
• Eye Scream: Rose does this twice to Leviathan. The first time is with Mjolnir in Brute 6 mode, AKA the Lightning Gun, and the second is with Miss Militia's power allowing her to snipe out one of his eyes. Chubster of all people manages to take out an eye before Rose does, meaning that at the end of the fight, Leviathan only has one.
  • Trooper Carlsson gets his eye stabbed out by a windshield wiper blade during the Leviathan Fight. Panacea grows it back for him, but he keeps the scar.
• First-Name Basis: Rose thinks of many of her peers by their first names rather than their cape names. For better or worse, this means Tattletale is "Sarah" to her.
• Fix Fic: While the authors have stated that their goal is not to make it a pure example of one of these, merely having any changes be the result of Rose coming to canon, Noelemahc has stated that he did tweak the dialogue between Skitter and Panacea in Amy's Interlude as he felt that it wasn't believable that Skitter would get so easily curbstomped in an argument, given her past.
• For Want Of A Nail: The divergence point between the Internship chain of fics and canon was that in canon, Emma and company poured tapioca pudding into Taylor's backpack on Career Day, forcing her to skip the career fair so she could spend the day reproducing her ruined homework. Rose, on the other hand, somehow managed to avoid her tormentors that morning and attended the fair, where she signed up for an internship with the PRT. One of the authors stated that the real change was that Emma had an extra bottle of water that morning, and because she had to use the restroom, was out of position for the prank and it had to be called off.
  • The Leviathan battle goes off-track at the very start as Rose calls out a warning about the first wave earlier than Bastion did in canon. As a result, more capes survive the initial skirmish.
  • "Emissary" splits off from "Deputy Commander" around chapter ten, when Rose takes down both Stagehand and Rune, whereas in Deputy Commander she just took down Stagehand.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Once again, Deputaylor shows off her skills at image analysis, picking apart Armsmaster's story of meeting Skitter.
• Heroic BSoD: Taylor gets one when hearing Tattletale's name on the casualty list of Leviathan's first big wave.
• Hypocritical Humor: Rose claims that the reason she's not kissing Aegis (when she had kissed all the other male Wards) was that "It would be inappropriate for her to do that to a commanding officer." When Aegis calls her out on this (she kissed him earlier in the story) she replied that "I said it was inappropriate, not that I wouldn't do it."
• I Call It "Vera": In addition to her previously established Tinkertech Stun Gun Mjolnir, Emissary has the "Eye of Wadjet", a pair of Tinkertech goggles that allow her to control two spy drones (Sirin and Alkonost) as well as provide different vision options.
  • The Skitterverse analogue to Alkonost ends up being named "Finist".
• I Have Many Names: The Taylor Hebert from the Deputy universe now has, as her total list of names: "Taylor Anne Hebert", "DeputyH", "Deputy Commander", "The Deputy", "Emissary", and "Rose Ellison". According to the author, the proper way to refer to the Deputy iteration of Taylor is either "Emissary", "Deputaylor" or "Rose," reserving "Taylor" for the canon iteration of the character.
  • Martinez gives Rose the nickname of "Red" based on a hideous red jumpsuit that Rose was forced to wear out of lack of other clothing. Not only is Rose not happy about that, she's less happy that the nickname is apparently spreading.
  • Both Sophia and Taylor end up calling her "Ems" as a shorter version of "Emissary" (and an unintentional reference to Emma) at one point.
• I Know Your True Name: The threat Rose makes to the Undersiders and Protectorate members during the hospital standoff to keep them in line is that she doesn't know only Grue's and Legend's identities. For obvious reasons, this doesn't work against Glory Girl.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Averted. 2.07 shows that even when Rose wasn't working on it, the rest of the PRT were doing everything to find evidence that Sophia was guilty of her various crimes. By the time Rose gets in on it, the only thing that's left to do is to actually arrest Sophia.
• Meaningful Rename: Rune to Maquis.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Armsmaster claimed that he was the one to capture Lung solo, and includes a picture of Skitter in said report to show that he met her after the fight. Unfortunately, one of the things that Deputaylor has had consistently across all of her iterations is that she's really good at image analysis, and locates several flaws in the picture that prove that Armsmaster faked the whole thing, thus starting a spiral that drove a major wedge between Skitter and a desire to be a hero. Amusingly, she wasn't trying to call him out or prove he was a liar- she was pointing out inconsistencies in the official story, but only because she thought that the real reports were classified. Thus, by pointing out that "These aren't the real ones," the PRT (who have understandable trust issues towards Deputaylor) would be willing to show her the real reports and she could help take down Skitter. The problem was, there were no "Real" reports.
• Mistaken Identity: Taylor looks at Emmissary's costume and the fact that she appeared to know personal information about her and concludes that the true identity of Emma-sary is her school tormentor Emma Barnes. Then Rose unmasks herself and she wonders if Rose is really her mother, the late Annette Rose Hebert.
  • When Rose is talking about freeing Synod from the CIA, she accidentally freaks out Taylor and Lisa when the description of what she wants- "To free a preteen thinker from a megalomaniac"- closely matches Dinah's situation.
• The Multiverse: There are multiple worlds in this story. The two primary worlds that the story is concerned with is Earth Bet-Dep, or the world of "Deputy Commander" (or rather, an AU version of that universe), and Earth Bet-Skit, the world of "Canon" Worm. Each Bet has its own multiverse associated with it, including their respective Earth Aleph and many, many more.
• Mundane Utility: Panacea, because she controls the bacteria in her mouth, never needs to brush her teeth to make her breath minty fresh.
• Oh, Crap!: Armsmaster after Deputaylor presents a detailed proof that his official report regarding the capture of Lung and his first meeting with Skitter had very little correlation with what really happened to Director Piggot.
  • As Deputy is being debriefed by the Canon PRT, she realizes that Synod is still in the clutches of the CIA, and possibly being treated as bad as she was before she intervened back on her earth. It almost throws her off her stride, but she recovers.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Rose's off-hand joke regarding Synod makes Skitter and Tattletale think she knows Coil is holding Dinah Alcott.
  If you feel like helping me get a tween Thinker out of the clutches of a megalomaniacal asshole, let me know!
• One-Steve Limit: Averted, the fact that Taylor Hebert the PRT Agent and Taylor Hebert the rookie supervillain are in the same universe is the whole point of the story. Initially, the authors decreed that they would use the terms "Deputaylor" and "Skittaylor" to specify which Taylor they're talking about when it wasn't obvious from context, until chapter three came out and revealed that the Taylor from Deputy will be known as "Rose."
  • Averted in that every single person that Deputaylor knows is doubled over in this new universe, meaning that there's at least two of most of the cast. She frequently mentions that "Her" version of a character is slightly different from the one she shares a world with. Exceptions of course being made for people like Aegis or Canary, for obvious reasons.
  • Not every OC who survived the Endbringer in Brockton Bay (Bet-Skit) did so in Boston (Bet-Dep) and vice versa.
• Online Alias: Rose's initial ploy to contact Taylor falls apart because Tattletale has a different username on PHO in this reality.
• Original Character: In addition to OC characters introduced in the previous stories, such as Martinez and Michaelson, we meet more PRT Troopers like Phil Carlsson, Ingrid, and Lakshmi Ramayan to help flesh out the PRT and make it more than the incompetent, failure-prone organization that canon characterized it as.
• Other Me Annoys Me: Taylor spends a long while warming up to Rose.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Mostly spread between the two versions of Taylor.
  Rose: "Define 'some'?"
  Taylor: ''"Enough."''
• Put on a Bus: Skitterverse Purity, along with Aster and Theo, as her part in the E88 unmasking is resolved with a timely phonecall.
  • Deputy-verse Rachel, AKA Hellhound AKA Bitch, now lives in Yellowstone National Park, working to reintroduce wolves to the wild alongside the national park service.
  • After the Leviathan fight, James/Browbeat is taken out of the Wards by his parents and they move. He finally leaves in 3.04.
• Recursive Fanfiction: Of Deputy Commander, which is a sequel to Deputy, itself a Recursive Fanfiction of Internship.
• Running Gag: Mainly at the expense of the two Taylors.
  • More prominent in the official omakes than the fic proper, but Rose tries new kinds of tea whenever she can. Taylor... doesn't.
  • Each chapter related to the Leviathan fight has Taylor referred to as a sack of potatoes at some point.
  • The severed arm of Fenja keeps popping up at various points during the Leviathan Fight.
  • Continued from Internship, Rose is really sick of Power Testing.
  • Rose answering questions about some of her Deputyverse feats with "I asked politely".
  • Rose starts out with it and Taylor ends up catching it after she joins the Wards, cutting off mental tangents with an almost audible "NOT NOW!" then never following up on it.
• Scary Black Man: Ty Michaelson plays one for Piggot when she faces down the Youth Guard over Sophia's actions.
• Screw Yourself: Since there's two instances of almost every character running around, it was only a matter of time before the two Taylors would kiss.
• Spared By Adaptation: Rune gets spared her fate in Deputy Commander by virtue of getting arrested at the same time as Stagehand. Since she's in a PRT holding cell, Cricket can't get to her. She joins the New York Wards as Maquis.
  • Thanks to Rose and Taylor working together, Chubster lives through the Leviathan assault. Other survivors include Shielder, Aegis, and Kaiser.
  • Purity-Dep gets spared her fate in Deputy Commander and is instead trying to gain enough good will to join the Protectorate.
  • Triumph gets spared his canon fate in the Deputy universe because he was on vacation with his family at the time.
  • As of the end of Deputy Commander, the list also includes Martinez, Venter and Triumph.
  • Dauntless survives the Leviathan fight as well, taking up Militia's old role as second in command of the Protectorate.
• Shout-Out: The Fallen mention that one of their Master capes has the limitation that people have to see him... which was a problem when they ran into a vigilante in New York that triggered when he was blinded.
• Spotting the Thread: Amy sees through Martinez's attempt to sneak Skitter out of the Hospital and away from the Protectorate almost immediately, but doesn't say anything. How? Martinez said she was just taking Skitter to go use the bathroom. Panacea notes that she had to reclaim all the components of Skitter's urine in order to provide some extra nutrients for healing, so Amy knows that Skitter doesn't have to go, meaning something's up.
• The Stinger: The Coda chapters closing each arc, as they set up the subject of the upcoming arc.
• Switching P.O.V.:
  • Most parahumans and PRT Directors are presented in First-Person Perspective.
    • Both versions of Taylor are also subject to First-Person Smartass.
  • Kid Win's perspective (both Bet-Dep and Bet-Skit) is in Second-Person Narration due to his insecurities. Later, Armsmaster gets in on it.
  • Unpowered people and one-off points of view are told in third person.
  • The Rashomon: The events of the hospital standoff after the battle with Leviathan are retreaded from several partially overlapping points of view (Panacea, Rose, and Tattletale).
• There Are No Therapists: Averted. Not only does Rose recognize that mental health is important for parahumans, she's helped push through reforms that get the Wards the mental help they need in her own world. Even Vicky isn't immune- she's getting anger management therapy in prison, as revealed in the first Deputy Universe Interlude.
  • The meeting between Deputy Rune, Stagehand, and their families was thought up and supervised by their therapists, including Doctor Yamada.
  • Doctor Karpenko, another therapist specifically added "so that Doctor Yamada isn't the only one in the PRT," is mentioned multiple times in the crossover-omake stories before she finally shows up in person to take care of Laserdream, who's having a breakdown in the PRT lobby.
• Theme Naming: All of Rose's Tinker gear has mythological names (though aside from Mjolnir, none have Norse names as the co-opting of Norse Mythology is a common Nazi practice, and with the Empire around... well, it's not a good idea).
  • All her drones are named after mythological birds.
• Troll: To get back at Rose for getting her squad thrown in the Master/Stranger Tank, Martinez deliberately gets Aegis to talk to Rose... who was avoiding him for fairly good reasons.
• True Companions: Averted for the Undersiders. Between the loss of Rachel, the revelations of what Coil is doing to Dinah, Rose's actions towards Taylor, and Tattletale both keeping secrets and undermining the team image, the Undersiders are splintering after the Leviathan fight.
• Uncanny Valley:
  • Rose has a habit of learning and reproducing other people's smiles. Unfortunately, her mastery of expressions suited for faces different than hers is imperfect, leading to the occasional remark that she looks like a CG character... Except nobody remarks that to her face, so she doesn't stop.
  • Panacea's overheal on her basically erased all signs of imperfection from her face (various accrued injuries, blemishes, discolorations, etc) so it comes across as this to Taylor, who feels like she's looking in an airbrushed mirror.
• Wham Episode: Interlude 3.F which reveal that the Fallen have come to Brockton in order to kill off a number of Protectorate Capes for wounding Leviathan, at the same time that the Slaughterhouse Nine came to town.
• War Is Hell: The battle against Leviathan shows the battle from the perspective of Rose and PRT Trooper Carlsson, who have no powers and no ability to affect the battle. They're reduced to hearing the ever-growing casualty list, trying desperately to recover people before they drown, and wondering if their friends are okay while trying to stay alive.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Taylor tries to deliver one of these to Rose... because thanks to an incorrect set of facts, she thinks Emissary is Emma. She still gives one to Rose because Rose... accidentally cuts off all other paths for Taylor other than "Join the Wards."
• What You Are in the Dark: Taylor has a moment of doubt when Emissary, who she is still confused about trusting, goes down in the Leviathan fight, then invokes the trope outright.
• Workaholic: Rose is in fine form in this fic, working nearly constantly until Ms. Militia basically forces her to stop, eat, and then sleep for twelve hours straight. In Rose's defense, it's also partially a coping mechanism to deal with, essentially, losing every single thing she's ever known via being thrust into a new world. Rose comments that Piggot and herself have similar work ethics, specifically, "I'll sleep when I'm dead."
• You Shall Not Pass!: Rachel takes on Leviathan solo to buy Rose time to get Skitter out of a pile of rubble. She dies, but it bought enough time.

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