is a Worm/RWBY crossover fanfic by RavensDagger.Short Summary: In which Taylor’s only memories are about how to escalate until everyone respects you, Salem tries to deal with being a single mom, and all of Remnant develops an acute case of acarophobia.
Honest Summary: Taylor, but she controls Grimm bugs and acts like Salem’s BFF. Expect Escalation-mode Skitter and lots of shipping.
Can also be found on Sufficient Velocity.com (here), Questionable Questing, Archive of Our Own (here), and Royal Road (here).
This fic provides examples of:
- Amnesiacs are Innocent: At least at the start, Akelarre acts just like she did as a child, if one who likes insects a little too much and creates "new friends" (read: Grimms) to show off to others. Later on, while she is more mature and has recovered some of her memories, she still acts innocently and doesn't seem to notice all the female attention she is getting.
- Amnesiac Dissonance: As she slowly start to regain her memories as Taylor, Akelarre starts to feel more and more uncomfortable about the person she used to be, being much happier now as Akelarre than she was as Taylor.
- But I Can't Be Pregnant!: Velvet is rather disbelieving that Akelarre got her pregnant through her morph arm, and ends up filling up a whole sink with discarded, positive pregnancy tests.
- Cuddle Bug: Apart from herself being one, Akelarre creates a Grimm species whose specialty is giving perfect hugs. Velvet was not impressed.
- She actually created three, one of them being literally called cuddlebugs. The other two were called hugbugs and hugglebugs (cuddlebugs being in the middle sizewise).
- After being given her first hug by Akelarre, Penny becomes this.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Apparently Crescent Rose's AI solution to every insult or problem is to shoot at it with whatever ammo will cause the most damage at the time. Sometimes she suggest this when there isn't even a problem in the first place.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: Invoked by Salem, who knowing that after Akelarre matured a little more or recovered her memories would feel extremely embarassed about how she danced, singed, and goofed around.
- Embarrassing Tattoo: Not on himself, but Akelarre explains to Adam that the Grimm marking on his mask means "young and poisonous".
- Empathic Weapon: Due to Akelarre buying it for Ruby, Crescent Rose is equipped with an "C41 Timberbeowolf Night and Day Optics System", which, among its many features is an in-built voice-controlled AI that learns and adapts to its user. In the short time that Ruby's used it, Crescent Rose became so sapient that it was also interrogated while Ruby was being questioned by Glynda and Ozpin. However, this being Ruby, Crescent Rose has developed into a overly-enthusiastic Blood Knight that's first response to any form of situation is demanding Ruby do something that causes the most destruction, chaos, or pain. Whether it be cutting off a criminal's legs, shooting them with an explosive round to splatter their blood on Ruby, blowing up the street or setting fire to a building. Which raises quite a few concerns about Ruby's mental state if Crescent Rose ended up like that, especially when she considers herself it's parent and is extremely offended when anyone tries to claim it isn't alive.
- Happily Adopted: Akelarre considers Salem to be her mother.
- Homosexual Reproduction: Velvet becomes pregnant with Akelarre's child, revealed in an NSFW omake to have happened when Akelarre turned her Grimm arm into something more... phallic.note . Of course, neither of them knew that Velvet would, or even could get pregnant that way.
- Innocently Insensitive: With a little Ambiguous Innocence. It is not really clear if Akelarre was just informing Cinder about how the Vale underworld was under her control to show off to someone she sees as family or to tease her about how her plans have not even started yet.
- Irrational Hatred: Downplayed, Akelarre seems to unintentionally insult redheads in her head and thinks fedoras are hideous. Probably because they remind her of Emma and Contessa.
- Join or Die: Akelarre's plan to unite Vale's criminal organizations under her is simple, obey or talk to the Grimms. She comments about how it worked last time.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Akelarre doesn’t remember much about her life as Taylor Hebert, only having access to bits and pieces of it.
- Meaningful Name: Akelarre is a Basque word (literally "meadow of the male goat") used to refer to a group, reunion, or family of witches, the witch in this case being Salem and Akelarre being her family.
- Mistaken Identity: Salem assumes that the golden man (Scion) that Akelarre fought was the God of light.
- No-Sell: Evidently Akelarre’s power doesn’t work on Faunus with arthropod traits.
- Not What It Looks Like: After Cinder and Roman find Akelarre and Neo on a bed together, Akelarre is very quick to Name Drop the trope and tell them they are just looking at blackmail material.
- Pest Controller: Akelarre as per canon, this also allows her to control grimm modeled after arthropods.
- Polyamory: Akelarre eventually winds up in a relationship with Ruby, Velvet, and Neo.
- Popcultural Osmosis Failure: At one point Akelarre tells Salem that she’s acting like a Disney villain, Salem doesn’t understand the reference.Akelarre: Mom, you’re beginning to sound like a Disney villain again.Salem: And I still do not know what that means.
- Porn Stash: Blake burned hers at the White Fang camp in preparation to escape to Vale in secret. Then Adam told her that he was sending her there since it would be safer with someone like Akelarre running around.Blake: Did I burn my smut for nothing?
- Talking Weapon: Not Crescent Rose itself, but the new scope that Akelarre gifted Ruby has an AI integrated to it for some reason.
- That Came Out Wrong: Penny, being as innocent and sheltered as she is, often makes comments that can be taken out of context, like asking Ren if he wants to be her first boyfriend (meaning a friend that is male) or calling Akelarre her girlfriend (meaning a friend that is female). Then referring to her first meeting with Akelarre as "[their] initial intercourse", the two meeting with Neo as a "threesome", and calling a "friend, one that bought me many benefits, and one I could benefit in turn".Yang: "I’m sure that all sounded better in your head,"
- Ship Tease: As stated in the “Honest Summary” there is quite a bit of this trope between Akelarre and several characters including Ruby, Velvet, Cinder, Neo, and Penny.
- Penny ends up taking Weiss to the Beacon Dance, and later referred to her as "potential-marriage-material Weiss", something Weiss had mixed reactions to and before Yang calmed her down so she and Penny could get back to "planning their extravagant Atlesian wedding". And at the dance, she had a itinerary for the event which had as the final step "declare undying love to Weiss and-slash-or ask for her hand in marriage". There is also an omake by RavensDagger of dubious canonicity which has Penny call her "Wife Weiss" while attempting roleplay in her bedroom. She also says this line after she got Weiss to agree to go the dance with her:
- The Epilogue confirms Akelarre develops a close polyamorous relationship with at least Ruby, Velvet and Neo, with Velvet getting pregnant.
- Shout-Out: To Rorschach with Penny's monologue while she does detective work:Penny's Journal. September 9th, 0712. Hot dog carcass in alley this morning. Tire tread on burst corndog. This city is afraid of me. I've seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters, and the gutters are full of yucky stuff, and when the drains finally scab over all the vermin will run away. The accumulated filth of all their naughtiness will foam up about their waists and all the bad guys and politicians will look up and shout ‘Save us!’ and I'll whisper ‘Nope.’
- You and What Army?: Akelarre asks this to general Ironwood when he tries to put her and Neo under arrest and, unimpressed by the thirty soldiers accompanying him, decides to show him what a real army looks like.
