Fanart by TentacleRat
The Digicrest of Escalation is a Worm and Digimon crossover Fanfic by Stewart92.Taylor triggers with the strange powers of being connected to the Digital world which happens to provide her with a digivice and we all know what that leads to. This new power will change the real and digital world forever. The original can be read on Spacebattles here.
What happens when the Grimdark world of Worm is fused with a series known for forcing positive emotional development in its protagonists while still having plenty of action? You get this Hopepunk story note
This story contains examples of:
- Another Dimension: Taylor is capable of moving herself and her digimon into the digital world and back, also the two dimensions affect each other with digimon reflecting real people and if Taylor can take control of an area in the digital world she can make positive changes that reflect in that area in the real world.
- Back from the Dead: Digimon have their standard cycle of dying and being reborn and digimon that Taylor's team have destroyed have been shown to reform into digieggs to have a second chance at life. Played with as the digimon partners from Digimon Adventure that are guarding the Crest Servers are not the real things but data ghosts of them and somehow Tentomon was able to create a data ghost of Hero to aid Taylor.
- Better with Non-Human Company: Taylor has her standard trust issues that makes it difficult to get along with humans but she finds it much easier to deal with Digimon even happily accepting hugs despite just meeting them something that she feels would be impossible to do with another person.
- Clingy Macguffin: Daniel tries to hide Taylor's digivice from her while she's asleep only for it to appear on her bedside table.
- Crazy-Prepared: Drasil, Taylor's digivice OS, as evidenced by its security for Taylor's laptop. The security is a randomly generated 15 digit number sequence on a 0.2 shuffling cipher along with a requirement of being within 10 feet of Digivice or the laptop will not operate, the sequence is synced to brain waves to the nearest human decibel. Taylor's touch enters the code if she is under no stress. Drasil believes it still needs upgrading, citing the chance of someone mastering Taylor.
- Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Like in Digimon Adventure curiosity is shown as virtue of humanity. Asking questions and not making assumptions is the lesson Taylor learns while getting the crest of knowledge.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Digital World's equivalent of Danny, nicknamed "Daniel", eventually digivolves into a Devimon, but while a bit ruthless, he's still loyal to Taylor, and has a soft spot that he tries to hide. Not that Sorcerermon gets the memo...
- Defeat Means Friendship: There are Digimon in the severs of everyday electronics, Taylor can battle these Digimon and if she defeats them they can now enter her territory in the digital world and become part of her community. Like a Gigimon who bakes bread.
- Determinator: Taylor of course.While fighting a mega level digimon Taylor is brutally beaten and the spirit of darkness tries to leave her to save itself, taylor stands up and says “You don’t... get to... quit until, I say so.”And wills it to stay .
- Eldritch Location: The Dark Ocean the Digital World's Hell, it's utterly hostile to any Digimon not meant to be there, and the locals are all evil Digimon, usually incredibly powerful and vicious ones at that. The digital world version of Brockton Bay is surrounded by it. When Hero is told that it's the place where broken/deleted data goes he equates it to a ocean of blood and bones.
- Fire/Ice Duo: Witchmon and Sorcerermon, respectively, representing the parts of Amy Dallon that secretly wishes to experiment with her powers cut loose, vs the part that robotically heals and wants her mother's approval.
- Fusion Dance: Taylor used the Spirit of darkness on herself to fight a powerful enemy and was further empowered by her allies to digivole into Omegamon Alter-S Hercules Mode an Omegamon fusing Blitz Greymon and Hurcules Kabuterimon.
- Heroic RRoD: Taylor pushed herself way too far when using the Spirit of Darkness, and while she's physically fine, she's rendered unable to use it again for an indefinite period.
- Humans Are Flawed: Drasil's opinion of humanity. As it tells Dragon after it reveals that her father installed a killswitch to leash her, their "brilliant brains" are still piloted by their primal monkey ancestors, which makes it admire humanity even more for doing everything that they do while still dealing with all their fears and worries.
- I Have Many Names: Taylor hasn't settled on a cape name yet but due to being able to use digimon spirits and digimentals she has access to many different forms. So far she has gone by 'Lady Courage The Fire of Humanity', 'Madame Knowledge' and Valkyrie.
- Innocently Insensitive: The Otamamon in the Hebert household alarm system mentions Annette, even humming a song she used to hum when she put in the passcode, not knowing that she's dead.
- Large Ham: Plenty of the digimon Taylor faces falls into this category. When using the digimental of courage on herself Taylor becomes an extra large ham due to the side affect of the digimental affecting her emotions. She has the courage to say whatever come to mind, naming herself 'Lady Courage The Fire of Humanity' and screaming CHOO-CHOO as she leaves the scene as the digiarmor beings to break apart.
- Literal Split Personality: Sorcermon represents the part of Amy Dallon that's Panacea, robotically healing day-in and day-out, while Witchmon represents her "Red Queen" aspect, the part of her (possibly with some shard influence as well) that wants to experiment with her powers and break out of her rut.
- Mad Scientist: By Using the digimental of knowledge on herself Taylor can become Madame Knowledge who believes in using Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness because she enjoys sounding smarter, has a Power Armor suit a Tinker would kill for and has her IQ elevated into the atmosphere. The downside is when the digimental runs out of power Taylor is left unable to move, speak or even think due to her brain being overclocked and has to slowly reset.
- Mama Bear: Taylor cares for her digimon and is willing to do practically anything to make sure they are safe and by her side, even if she is 100% certain they will give her grey hair and wrinkles.
- The Multiverse: This story draws from all Digimon canon and makes it clear that all the Digimon series and games happened somewhere just not on earth Bet.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Earth Bet didn't have a digital world until Taylor's shard activated it and now Taylor's main reason to gain control of the digital world is to stop it from merging with the real world and wreaking havoc.
- Opposed Mentors: The QA shard became the D-shard and is pushing for conflict and leaving and letting Taylor die if she isn't up to the task but the digivice operating system named Drasil is more interested in making its Tamer grow and giving her the best chance to have a good impact on the world.
- Power Armor: Taylor is able to use the digimentals she finds to armor-digivolve her partners and use them on herself to grant her temporary armor and powers but with harsh side effects.
- Power Copying: If Taylor has enough data on a digimon and the required amount of of typed data she can form a card to digimodify an ally digimon of her choice, giving them the attack or armor or tool of that digimon.
- Power Limiter: One of the limits of Taylor's powers is the need for typed data for her digivice to preform certain functions. She can farm data by battling digimon of that type and controlling areas that generate typed data.
- Resources Management Gameplay: Taylor's digivice functions are governed by typed data and using these functions drains her collection of data. This means Taylor has to put thought into how much data she uses in case she needs that type later. The data types are Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Ice, Thunder, Machine, Beast, Light and Dark.
- Restraining Bolt: When Taylor and company encounter Dragon in the Digital World, hers are represented by Dragon being chained up in a straightjacket, with a few other things attached to monitor her thought processes, like a doll that resembles her avatar in a business suit. Drasil manages to free her of them.
- Sharing a Body: When Sorcerermon puts his unconscious body on ice, Daniel manages to shift his consciousness to Danny's body.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: The Queen Administrator shard is perfectly willing to let Taylor die and just find another host if it means it'll get more data.
- Spanner in the Works: Daniel buys Taylor a cheap laptop for school, the laptop is connected to the wifi when she is trapped in the locker and a single byte of data from the digital world that managed to find its way to the rift between Aleph and Bet connects. The Queen Administrator shard detects a new focus in the digital world and switches to that rather than insects which shifts everything.
- Spirit Advisor: Certain digimon that have links to crests show up to help and guide Taylor During the trials of knowledge Hero shows up to help Taylor as she starts to falter.
- Split-Personality Merge: Sorcerermon and Witchmon eventually merge together to stop a runaway creation of the latter.
- Super-Empowering: The D-shard is granting Taylor her power and Taylor is in turn empowering her digimon so they can digivolve.
- Take a Third Option: When Lunamon is attacked due to her being a water based digimon, Taylor thinks about it and rather than fighting or chasing after them, simply uses the digimental of courage to armor digivolve her to a fire based digimon instead.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Taylor's digimon have decided that bacon is the best thing in the world and Taylor is a little worried she is raising a group of bacon addicted WMDs. They even use it as a battle cry.
- Twitchy Eye: Taylor starts to develop a twitch in her left eye but can't figure out why, it may have something to do with all the digimon she comes into contact with that insult her, sass her and drive her up the wall with their antics but who can say.
- Upgrade Artifact: Taylor has found servers holding crests and digimentals that grant her more power but to get them she has to complete a Vision Quest that forces her through trials based on the crest she is trying to earn.
- Violence Is Not an Option: In the Library zone there is no fighting allowed and any attempts to try will see you ejected. The only way to make progress is to talk and answer question that are posed.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Taylor's three main digimon all share the same weakness in their standard rookie form STAIRS; they all lack standard bipedal legs meaning they can't navigate stairs in a hurry.
- When Dimensions Collide: Over time several areas of Brockton Bay have the barrier between them and their Digital World equivalents increasingly eroded, accelerating Taylor's plans to gain control of said Digital World areas so she can stabilize things and strengthen the barriers to safe levels.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: A small time junkie punk kid happens upon the corrupted statue of the Spirit of Darkness and after he uses it to become Duskmon he becomes less and less stable and when its taken from him he becomes fully insane.
- World Gone Mad: The tradition of having things make no sense in the digital world continues Bushes that grow meat, vending machines that offer putting your feet up after a long day of work flavored sandwiches.
- You Are Not Alone: The trial Taylor goes through in the vision quest to obtain the crest of courage is about teaching Taylor that it can be courageous to put yourself out there and ask for help when you truly need it, instead of trying to do the impossible by yourself.
