Trailblazer
is a Worm Fusion Fic crossing over with the Gundam franchise.
The story follows Taylor, disillusioned with the established heroes, deciding to become a new type of independent hero. Armed with a suit (or several) of very similar looking Power Armor and an AI known as Veda, she'll set out to fix her city - and maybe even the world - or die trying. Standing by and doing nothing is not an option.
Trailblazer provides examples of:
- Adaptational Badass:
- Neil Dylandy from Gundam OO is here a member of the ENE Protectorate named "Stratos" with a more accurate form of Scrub's (from canon Worm) Portal Cut ability.
- Lafter Frankland from Iron Blood Orpheus here is a cape called "Laughter" with the same Thinker/Shaker ability of "enhanced luck" as Shamrock in canon Worm, albeit with a stronger emphasis on unconscious microkinesis.
- Adaptational Superpower Change:
- In canon Worm, Taylor is a Pest Controller Master able to telepathically control all crustaceans, invertebrates, insects and arachnids within a radius of about three city blocks around her. Here, she's instead an exceptionally powerful Tinker with a seemingly never-ending broad specialization of "science" (though "mostly" focused around advanced physics and computer programming) along with the unprecedented Thinker ability to understand Tinkertech & describe it in ways that can be understood by "ordinary" scientists.
- Dinah Alcott from canon Worm has the ability to see the future with incredible accuracy, though with the caveat of interpreting it in the form of percentage chances for how likely a specified event would happen and suffering from crippling headaches if she has "too many visions" within a certain period. Here, she instead has the ability to see silent images upon hearing a question, with each image being a different possible future for how that question will play out in reality. While this makes her less accurate unless she's given specific-enough questions, it gives her significantly less headaches than in canon.
- Adaptational Wimp: Dean Stansfield/Gallant doesn't have any powers in this timeline thanks to Cauldron having mostly fallen into ruin after the Gold War and his parents never being able to get him a vial.
- Alternate Universe Fic: In addition to the presence of multiple Gundam characters, the story's Earth Bet is a different place from canon:
- Scion died over a decade before the story starts in "the Gold War," a hellishly bloody fight that completely leveled Manhattan.
- The Simurgh specifically caused both Sweden and Switzerland to completely dissolve as countries. The Sanc Kingdom arose from the ruins of Sweden as an independent city-state. Additionally, some parahuman heroes and the UN are both responsible for the creation of an independent Kurdistan in the Middle East.
- Hero survived in this fanfiction, and it's later revealed that Eidolon is Battery of canon, being a successor of the role when the first Eidolon stepped down.
- Heartbreaker is on the run (thanks in large part to "The Foundation," an independent group of benevolent Tinkers and Thinkers who help the Protectorate & Guild in exchange for resources, and whose members are Expies of the Gundam scientists from Gundam Wing), and many of his children were taken into custody by the Protectorate. Hero and Legend pushed for rehabilitation rather than incarceration, placing several of them with the Wards around the country - with Alec being placed on Brockton Bay's Wards team as the hero "Valiant". Cherie, meanwhile, joined the Undersiders as "Sovereign".
- Apathetic Citizens: Taylor's main motivation is to not be one of these, after being ignored by her peers for years while she was being bullied. Apathy in bystanders makes her more angry than actual criminals.
- Badass Creed: "I don't like the sides. I'm making my own."
- Badass Normal: The Wharf Rats who eventually form Tekkadan provide security for Brockton Bay after the gangs are all removed from the city. With support from Bakuda, Defiant, and Forecast, they kill or capture the entire Slaughterhouse Nine with only one casualty.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Taylor refurbishes the abandoned building she's taken over; "Dusted, installed new carpets, new coat of paint on the wall, automated sentry turret with PEP particle pulser hidden in the ceiling, you know normal office stuff."
- But Now I Must Go: In the end, Taylor leaves Earth to take control of, and repair, the Shard Network. She returns by the end of the epilogue, ten years later
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Taylor refuses to stand aside and do nothing if she can help in a situation.
- Composite Character: Elements of Setsuna's backstory were folded into Miss Militia's.
- Dented Iron: Contessa was heavily wounded by Eidolon during the battle against Scion, and relies on Tinkertech implants to live. Additionally, in the wake of Scion's death and the Shard Network beginning to collapse, Path To Victory has not taken her reduced physical capabilities into account. As a result, her Paths sometimes include steps she isn't physically capable of following.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: Aegis is still killed by Leviathan, but here the fight takes place in Boston since Leviathan decides to attack that city instead of Brockton Bay. Additionally, Clockblocker was killed by Scion in canon Worm during the events of Gold Morning, but here is killed by Leviathan in a Heroic Sacrifice during the Endbringer's attack on Boston.
- Doorstopper: At over 1.6 million words in 18 months, it certainly qualifies.
- Expy: Many prominent characters, as well as faction names, are based on characters and factions from various Gundam series.
- Flipping the Table: Murrue ponders about how Taylor plays "The Cape Game": Not playing it.
- Heel–Face Turn: Bakuda, of all people. First as A Lighter Shade of Black working with Newtype to prevent worse villains from filling the power vacuum left after Newtype's team removes all the major gangs from Brockton Bay, then eventually becoming an outright hero in the final acts of the story.
- Legacy Character: Several.
- Eidolon. The current Eidolon is Battery, having taken up the role after the first Eidolon retired after Scion was killed.
- Teacher. The first Teacher is still in the Birdcage. The second Teacher is actually David, the first Eidolon, who was given the name by Fortuna to weaken his influence.
- By the end of the fic: Contessa. After she spends the last minutes of her life eliminating the last of Teacher's thinkers, she passes the mantle to Tattletale to continue her work in her place.
- More Dakka: At least two dozen men from Tekkadan empty five magazines each into Jack Slash. It still doesn't kill him, and Bakuda needs to use a glass bomb to finish him off.
- Red Herring: "Teacher controls the Simurgh" turns out to be one; the reader may assume that Teacher succeeded in taking control of the Simurgh like he tried to in Ward. In reality, Teacher 'controls' the Simurgh because he's actually David, the first Eidolon
- Running Gag: Bakuda addressing Taylor with the names of various non-Gundam mecha series.
- The Unmasking: Happens several times over the scope of the fic.
- PRT Data Leak. An unprecedented data leak of the identities of Villains and Rogues. A central plot point of the entire story as it is a) future members of Celestial Being are people who are unmasked b) revealed the existence of broken triggers c) lead to all round chaos that killed several people (with Uber as a notable death in this story) and d) revealed more of Teacher's operation
- Taylor's own unmasking. With the knowledge that Teacher knows her Identity with Thomas Calvert knowing hers, Taylor sets off an elaborate plan where she is "forced" to unmasked by being kidnapped in her civilian form by Empire Eighty-Eight (giving her a reason to counter-attack in their civilian form as well) while also leaving "enough" clues of Calvert "orchestrating" her unmasking.
- The Last Dance: While Newtype and the heroes deal with the cascade of Broken Triggers, Fortuna uses the last minutes of her life to eliminate Teacher's thinkers, crippling his ability to take advantage of the chaos.
- The Remnant: In this fanfic, the Sanc Kingdom from Gundam Wing exists as a remnant of Sweden following an attack on Stockholm by the Simurgh causing the entire nation to dissolve.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Leet. Starting from the Leviathan attack, Leet has renounced his old name out of despair of Uber's death due to the identity data leak. At first he tried to take revenge on everyone involved in Uber's death, starting with Newtype when he sets her up to be killed by Leviathan. By the end of the story, he's built his own Power Armor, and can fight Taylor on even footing.
- Dinah. As of A Waken 16, Dinah conscripted Veda, other heroes, and members of the Tekkadan into attacking the Slaughterhouse Nine and succeeds. All without the Taylor's knowledge.
- Wham Line:
- In Waken 11: Teacher controls the Simurgh.
- In A Waken I.0: "What he really meant was Powers were what was wrong with the world.". Revealing how Leet is planning to destroy the Shard Network.
- In A Waken 11.B.1: We see the note Forecast gave Bakuda earlier, listing potential future news headlines related to her. Most of the lines allude to Bakuda going on a huge bombing spree akin to the one she went on in canon. The final headline reads: Bakuda kills Behemoth
- Will They or Won't They?: A bit of a running gag in later chapters, now that things have started to calm down, is people questioning when others will pair up with their obvious romantic interests. Even Taylor has managed to find love in Orga, the leader of Tekkadan.
- Won the War, Lost the Peace: Alexandria laments in the aftermath of the battle against Leviathan in Boston that despite the greater multiverse having been saved from Scion via the Gold War, decades later Earth Bet is only spiraling further & further into chaos and destruction thanks to continued threats like the Slaughterhouse Nine, the Endbringers and nuclear proliferation.
