CANS OF WORMS
by Louis IX

Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.

Frog Style

Annette's mother was French. Like many in the nineteen-sixties, she had been raised with the idea that America was the purveyor of everything good in the world. Including the people. She fully agreed, to the point of spending her whole summer holidays there. She met all kinds of people, but, still, her perception was coloured with benevolence. She even got into a relationship with one of them. A year later, rejecting everything her parents told her, she returned there, in the "land of the brave", to try to find the father of her little girl.

She found him, yes. Married to another – and not recently, either. Messy years went by, during which she raised her daughter with radical ideas against men in general, and everything they had ever produced.

It led Annette right into Women Studies, in the progressive public university she had enrolled in, but not only: she also got a minor degree in Environmental Awareness. As such, she had many ideas about what a properly balanced "circle of life" should entail. Rejecting animal meat by choice, she had included other sources of protein in her diet: insects.

And she wasn't alone following that trope, since she pushed her husband to adopt it, and then their daughter.

Yes, despite everything her mother told her, she fell in love with a young man, and got a stable relationship out of it. As long as her husband cooperated, that is.

Having been raised with "traditional" American views, Danny preferred burgers and steaks, and Annette wasn't enough of a control freak to force him to adhere to her menus when he was eating out. Still, at home, she was his goddess, and he did what she told him to do. Including sitting down to piss.

When she died, he was left in a limbo in which he didn't bring home his wife's choice of protein sources (which he disliked, still), nor did he bring others. He also stopped eating outside, which can explain his lankiness. It can also explain Taylor's.

Initially, Taylor was friend with Emma Barnes, and as young girls can do sometimes, they tried out-grossing each other. She succeeded by eating live insects, something not that difficult when you're used to have them in your daily dietary intake.

When Emma found herself shunned by other students who found Taylor's habits disgusting, she made her choice.

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Two Years Later

As human mobs tend to do, bullying crowds can have quite a bit of momentum, and not stop even after reaching the breakpoint. Case in point: Taylor's Locker, and the campaign that would continue afterwards, continuing to harass her and punch her to the ground, all the while mocking her – especially her appearance, something teen girls are so vulnerable about that they don't hesitate to criticize others just to feel good about themselves. True, Taylor had always been thin, and, much like people not eating correctly the world over, the only place food would stay was a slight paunch that she was very self-conscious about. Before, she could cry when people compared her to a frog.

But Taylor had triggered, so comparing her to a frog resonated much differently.

Her knowledge of insects had allowed her not to freak out when she was stuck in her locker. She was still disgusted by the mess, and wary that said insects would probably eat her alive, given enough leeway.

Given that she was left to rot, literally, for the whole night, she broke at one point.

Eat or be eaten? Like every creature, everywhere, she chose Life for herself, and her distress call pierced through the ether and brought back an alien power.

Suddenly, her skin and flesh became poisonous, as did her saliva, and an extensible tongue speared through the darkness to bring the various insects in her mouth. Her aim was helped by her eyes, suddenly much larger, black, and bulbous, while she tried (and succeeded) in climbing away from the rotting mess by using suddenly adhesive hands and feet. Her body was suddenly much more flexible, too, allowing her to cram herself in the upper part of the locker.

She even got a few hours of rest, like this, before the sun rose again. And then, she heard voices and struck the locker door again. When her Changed hands ended up too soft to make much noise, she reverted into her normal shape and elbowed and kicked the tin door repeatedly.

Nobody opened immediately, but someone had to have called the police because she was let out less than an hour later, in the arms of two hazmat-wearing officers. According to the grapevine she got later, the janitor was the one who called them when he refused Blackwell's order to "clean the mess" by himself.

Despite having been fired as an act of spite, he was quite proud of his gesture, as said Principal had quite a mess of her own to clean, now.

Up to and including the aiding and abetting of Sophia's little bullying crusades – yes, plural: you didn't think that Taylor was Sophia's sole target, did you? In a target-rich environment such as Winslow, Sophia often went out of her way to smash gang members left, right, and centre. That had cemented her role in Blackwell's eyes, as well as Taylor's status as "unredeemable".

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Two Years Later

Taylor just entered the Wards, after a brief stint as a Vigilante Hero and then a member of the Undersiders. Given that Armsmaster had wanted to skewer her, on her first night out, while Tattletale had sought to recruit her, the choice had been easy.

And with Lisa helping her (and, strangely enough, Alec providing helpful comments and sources, such as the movie named "Kung-fu Hustle"), she trained her power and her abilities.

It meant that, upon entering the Wards, she was recruited as a high-level Striker, already trained, and able to generate toxic agents at will. Much like the poison dart frog species she now looked like (when Changed), whose members could adapt their colouring and poison to their diet, Taylor could change her aspect and it changed her poison. She seldom went all the way up to the golden poison frog, the deadliest, because she didn't want to kill people. Still, slumber-inducing toxins were often enough for her needs.

Those toxic agents were delivered through contact, either from her or to her: those striking her in close-contact will be affected – much like Newter. She could spit it, too, and, because of her training to emulate "the Beast" from Regent's movie, she could also generate winds around herself, allowing her poison to coat everything in the area. She got a minor Blaster/Shaker category out of that.

Due to the same training, she was able to move quite fast, and jump quite high. That brought her in close-quarter combat range before her opponents could react – even fliers who weren't far enough. After that first strike, she was able to grab her foes. That allowed her to strangle them using arms and legs: she was still flexible enough to strangulate one person per limb… and not break said limbs even when hit directly.

In addition to all that, her training included lessons in hardening her body, much like Kung-fu. It allowed her to strike with her head when jumping, hit with her fingers extended to spear through obstacles, or deal massive damage through rapid blows.

The last interesting point came when Lisa remarked that she, Taylor, seldom needed healing. In fact, each time she used her Changer ability, it was as if her whole body was replaced with a healthy one – she wouldn't use that in combat, as that meant that she would be "plain" (and squishy) Taylor Hebert mid-fight, but that was interesting for post-combat readiness. And if she needed it anyways, she could always find a place to hide for a minute.

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Two Years Later

Taylor was not a host to Queen Administrator. As a result, when Gold Morning started, she wasn't the one tasked with arraying the capes against Scion.

She was, however, one of those sent by Cauldron directly on the planet where Scion's real body rested – originally under restriction, that location became available when Scion moved his power to bear in his conflict with the various capes on Earth.

It wasn't a completely new biology, for Taylor, because she had studied Eden with Cauldron, and had come up with a specialized agent to poison the Entities with – a self-replicating toxin that would disintegrate the alien body into its original chemical constituents.

Her uncommon tactic, against that uncommon enemy, was to deliver the toxin as fast as possible, and then jump to another area before starting again. Again and again, she repeated the process, while other capes dealt other type of damage to other parts of the massive body. Since her product was self-replicating, her progress was exponential, and even though Scion ended up noticing, it was too late to do anything.

And then she was back to Earth Bet, and ready to live her life productively.

She still didn't like her normal shape, though: despite her training, she still looked like a frog.

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To be continued… croakedly

Author's Notes: After reading another story where Taylor complains about her stick limbs and paunch giving her a frog-like appearance (I don't remember which, but Headpats does it, and is quite good… and cute), I had the idea of pushing that envelope further. That came around with the previous chapter, and this one also uses the indicated movie (and the Beast, inside) as inspiration.