Hmm, let's see here… I don't own Worm, It belongs to Wildblow, and names, locations, and a heck of a lot of other stuff have been altered in this story for the sake of maintaining my privacy. Duh.

This self-insert was rolling around in my head, and I felt like writing it out. I probably wouldn't have even touched my word processor, but I had gone and written out and posted a plot bunny the other night for the first time, and I suddenly want to have that feeling of putting one of my ideas out there for public enjoyment once again.

Huh. Maybe I will actually go long enough for my writing to become decently good.

Anyway, Prologue Start

I am Jacob Grafter, and I think I am going to die very soon.

It makes no sense for a pair of capes to be duking it in the parking lot of my college, and even less for a couple of big names like this.

'Well, one of them is a pretty darn big name anyway.'

It's just a small community college out at the edge of a small Wisconsin city. We should be in the middle of nowhere as far as people like them are concerned. That, however, didn't change the fact that Alexandria was busy having a friendly little deathmatch with Skeleton Crew and his nice little zombie horde about fifteen feet from me when I walked out the door to get into my car and drive home. Skeleton Crew didn't stand much of a chance, of course (which, come to think of it, might be why the two of them are here, if he was trying to run away from her.) That does little to console me from the facts that he has seen me, and that to him, bystanders are just more potential cannon fodder to kill and Master.

You see, Skeleton Crew is a villain from the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area with an ability that lets him take control of the bodies of anyone he or his victims kill. He can even make them use any parahuman abilities they might have had while alive, which might explain how he got all the way to here from his usual haunts before Alexandria caught up to him and took out whatever zombie he had with a mover ability. That's just speculation on my part, of course.

In any case, his zombies were after me and anyone else they came across as they chased me through the halls. I knew I couldn't out run them for very long. I'm not really the type to panic of freak out. Heck, I can only remember two times in my life where I have completely thrown rationality to the winds, and both were when I was much younger. Even so, you can guess even my mental state considering that one of the more messed up capes that shouldn't even have been in my STATE was about to kill me.

'I thought I was 100% safe from this psycho, dammit! He's practically never leaves his own little territory! Ohcrapohcrapohcrapohcr…'

Two beings, incomprehensible to the normal human mind, spin endlessly through the cosmos. Shards of their existences are breaking off, trailing behind them. One such shard looms closer and closer to me, until it hits me and falls into myse…

'What the? What just happened?'

I catch myself mid-stumble from the sudden vision. 'Vision? What vision? Didn't I just stumble over my own feet as I was running?'

The zombies chasing me have collapsed, and I don't let my confusion over this stop me from getting the heck out of dodge, since they might wake back up. Still, I get to relative safety long enough for Alexandria to take down Skeleton Crew. Apparently there was a kill order out for him. That makes more sense to me than the Birdcage. I still don't understand why they bother with that for so many other Birdcage-worthy villains that are reasonably killable. The death penalty was never outlawed anywhere here like it has been in a lot of states on Earth Aleph.

'If they aren't bad enough to put a kill order on, then shouldn't we send them to prison somewhere that it's actually possible for us to get them back OUT of? Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the point of giving someone a full-on life sentence instead of the death sentence if there is neither a chance for parole nor a reason why they can't die.' Like regeneration on a scale that makes killing them even harder than locking them up and throwing the key into a blast furnace, since that's pretty much what sending them to the Birdcage is.

Alexandria herself gets my testimony, since she recognizes me out of the crowd as the student Skeleton Crew first started chasing. I had nearly forgotten that she has a minor thinker power on top of everything else. It lets her do stuff like that.

Afterwards I ask her the all-important question that is on my mind. "So, I don't suppose I could get an autograph, could I? I mean, it's not like I'm obsessed or anything, but…"

"I understand," she tells me.

"Thank you," I respond as she autographs the back of my sketchbook. Nobody would let me live it down if I had the chance to get ALEXANDRIA's autograph and I didn't take it.

After she's done, she tells me I am free to go. By the time I get home, however, my thoughts are full of something else. I have ideas. Designs float through my head for things I could do to make myself stronger, faster, BETTER, and I just know that I can make them work.

'...If I want to try that I'm gonna need a way to implant the pseudonuerological circuit into my head. Not to mention the connection to the brain or spinal cord, but I already know how that would work. If I want to provide it with enough power, though I will need to implant some kind of reactor. Bioelectric energy would barely be enough to provide low-level power for the nanomusuclature. Ah, that's an idea! I'll replace part of my intestines with a direct conversion reactor that will convert a portion of the matter from the food I eat directly into energy for the other implants!…'

"HOLY CRAP! WHAT THE HECK AM I THINKING?!"

'Implanting a reactor in place of part of my intestines?! Converting a percentage of what I eat directly into energy?! As in, perfect, complete conversion of matter to energy? Inside my BODY?! What the Heck?!'

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that not only could I do it, I would do it. And it would work. Not just that, I could make a whole host of modifications to my body, or to anyone else's for that matter. I would make changes, a least to my own body. And many of those changes might just as well be cape powers of their own.

I'm stunned by the implication. I can only think, 'Well, I guess, apparently, I'm now a cape; and not just a cape, I'm definitely a Tinker. A tinker who specializes in upgrading people with technology.'

A/N

Well, what do you think? I will try to see if I can dredge up the inspiration to continue this, at least for a couple more chapters. If people like it enough to give me a decent amount of feedback, who knows where it might go? I have ideas for a couple more scenes, and I would have my SI move to Brockton Bay within a couple of chapters, though I have very little idea of where the story would go from there. If it does continue very long, expect updates to be somewhat sporadic. The more people review, though, the more I will feel obliged to keep writing, since it means that those people actually find it interesting, enjoyable, and expect me to give them more. Of course, if I get practically no feedback, it will give me the impression that nobody cares about it, and you probably won't ever see a second chapter.

I'm still no good at conversations, but I think I have at least one planned out decently enough for the next chapter.

Skeleton Crew is a villain I made up on the spot for the purpose of having a reason for my SI to trigger. The main aspect of his power is explained pretty well in the text. Any time he kills a living creature he gains control of its corpse. This applies to things that his zombies kill as well, and if he kills a cape he can control them into using their ability. The downside is the fact that they are, well, zombies, with pretty much everything that comes with that. They can't infect you just by biting you, though. They have to kill you. The reason why it counts is that Skeleton Crew is controlling them, so if they kill you it means that he killed you. If He goes down, either by being killed or knocked unconscious, they stop functioning, although if he is still alive he gains control again when he wakes up. In the story, Skeleton Crew was close enough to Jacob when he triggered that it knocked him out. (I think that's canon… it seems to be fanon at least and I haven't actually read very much of Wildblow's original work yet. Just lots and lots of fanfiction.) Alexandria was a little farther away, so she wasn't knocked out and was able to use the opening to kill him.