Crawler

"Run, little girl! I’ll get free! I’ll catch you! I’ll hold you down and lick your skin until it melts! I’ll pluck your eyes out with the tip of my tongue! I have your scent and you cannot ever stop me! You cannot ever escape!"

- Crawler's threats to Skitter

Ned, known publicly as , is a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Personality
Crawler is a masochist, eagerly throwing himself into extreme danger in order to expand his abilities and even joining the Slaughterhouse Nine to achieve these means. He doesn't show signs of boredom or restlessness, but when he loses his patience it tends to be sudden and violent. Crawler revels in his role as a monster and takes sadistic pleasure in taunting and torturing his victims. This gave him a fearful reputation among the public.

Nothing pleases Crawler more than being given a chance to get hurt, to the point that he secretly wishes that the Siberian would try to seriously hurt him. This tendency has been used against him numerous times, such as when he was persuaded to voluntarily stand under a bombing run of Bakuda-bombs in hopes of being hurt, resulting in his death.

Appearance
Originally, Ned was a narrow shouldered man, only five and a half feet tall. One of Ned's clones, somewhat progressed into his transformation, had grown taller and broader, his face growing inhuman with a long tongue, rows of teeth, numerous armored eyes, and an acid sack on his throat. His arms split into two limbs at the elbows, ending in claws strong enough to pierce metal. This may or may not have been how the original Ned's transformation went.

By the time the Slaughterhouse Nine visits Brockton Bay, Crawler resembles a six legged beast the size of a van, best described as a combination of the best traits from a bear and a panther. His entire body is black and iridescent, with armor plates covering the majority of the body, scales in places where flexibility is needed, and spines and bristling hair everywhere else. His mouth is filled with mismatched fangs and acidic saliva. A hundred solid-black eyes run along the entire length of his body, set into the plates of his armor. He had six legs, each forking at the knee or elbow joint. His four rear limbs had one large limb each that forked into scimitar-like claws, with multiple smaller sets of tentacles accompanying them. His two forelimbs similarly had one large limb with claws for each, but had sets of long-fingered hands instead of tentacles.

Crawler is still verbally communicative, but his voice comes out as a low, resonant grumble, barely recognizable as human.

Abilities and Powers
Crawler's power is permanent adaptive regeneration. Any injury that he suffers heals at ridiculous speeds,  usually in a way that alters the healed area to be resistant or immune to the source of damage.

Regeneration
Crawler has a "core" that contains his corona pollentia, the destruction of which is the only way to ensure his death. The core is not located in his brain, but rather closer to his center. Destroying his brain can slow him down, but not kill him.

He could regenerate hundreds of pounds of flesh in a few heartbeats, extraordinarily fast even compared to fast-regenerating brutes. His regeneration was able to reject Flechette's bolts, which were able to bond to objects at a molecular level.

Adaptation
Crawler's adaptation is the primary focus of his power, and is the reason he holds his monstrous form. His adaptations do not just provide defensive adaptions, but also offensive ones that allow him to defend himself better. Throughout the course of years, this has allowed him to develop a variety of powerful defensive and offensive adaptations.

By the time the Slaughterhouse Nine attacked Brockton Bay the second time, Crawler's armor is able to withstand the blast of a small nuke, and he can walk unscathed through burning buildings lit by burning white phosphorous. Sundancer's abilities may have damaged him, but Crawler would only have adapted to it. His internal organs have been rearranged and reinforced with numerous redundancies. He has hundreds of eyes set into his armor, and an enhanced sense of smell that can be used for tracking. His many modular limbs ensure that his dexterity hasn't suffered for his growth, and can even be rearranged to enhance his agility on different forms of terrain. This, along with enhanced reflexes, makes Crawler a surprisingly agile foe.

Crawler has an incredibly strong caustic spit that he can launch at targets. Panacea, struggling to make a counter, described it as consisting of self-replicating digestive enzymes, all floating in a kind of acid.

Earlier into his development, Crawler's could have potentially been forced to adapt into an immobile shape, allowing him to be buried. When one of Crawler's clones was exposed to Armsmaster's nano-thorns, the body parts that were disintegrated regenerated and began producing their own organic nano-thorns, rendering them immune.

Imp's power affected Crawler, implying that he cannot adapt to psychological effects.

Background
From the way he acted, Bonesaw presumed that he did not have a happy home life before triggering.

Crawler may have fought an Endbringer at some point in the past.

Some time after triggering, Crawler joined the Slaughterhouse Nine so that he would be in constant danger, and thus be able to adapt and become stronger from the many threats that would be thrown his way. He also wanted the Siberian to one day try to kill him.

Post-Leviathan
Crawler came to Brockton Bay with the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine. His choice of nomination was Noelle, who had been detected by Cherish, likely in hopes of finding a foe powerful enough to injure him. He visited Coil's base, to the vault where Noelle was being kept, but was unable to penetrate the thick metal doors due to Coil's foresight. After a period of frustration, Crawler eventually left.

Later, Crawler and the rest of the Nine participated in the massacre of the Merchants, where he met Scrub. It was here that the new testing regime was agreed upon.

Crawler and a few others from the Nine were relaxing in a abandoned apartment when Imp entered and tried to kill Bonesaw. He was unable to see or smell Imp.

He was with the Nine when they were ambushed by the combined team of Travelers and Undersiders. The attackers captured Shatterbird and Cherish, though the Nine were able to capture Grue. Trickster was able to cause him some inconvenience.

In the evening, at the Nine's base at Dolltown he guarded hostages that had been surgically modified to look like the Nine, when his group was attacked by Fenrir's Chosen he ordered the hostages out and fought thehChosen with everything he had.

The next day he was back trying to fight local parahumans.

Skitter used silk to bind up him up, temporarily immobilizing him.

Later, during some actual fighting, he attacked a Protectorate team with Mannequin. When the team retreated, Crawler was able to win against Weld without assistance.

Crawler was finally killed when his entire body was turned to silicon by salvaged tinker explosives used in a bombing run ordered by Director Piggot. Piggott convinced Crawler to subject himself to the blasts by telling him - through Weld - that the bombs would be able to hurt him. He was killed by that bombing run, along with Mannequin.

Post-Timeskip
Ten clones of Crawler were among the ranks of the Slaughterhouse Nine-Thousand; this included nine perfect duplicates and one hybrid with Breed. Several of the Crawler clones were dealt with by Dragon.

The threat of infant Crawler clones being in the Nine's dimensional headquarters forced the heroes to collapse the entire dimension.

Trivia

 * In an early draft of Worm, Guts and Glory, Crawler's names were "Skitter" and "Troll". The name Troll may stem from Dungeons & Dragons, where trolls are monsters that possess supernatural regeneration. The name Skitter ended up being used for Taylor Hebert.
 * Was "unstoppable" in the words of Wildbow and included in the Nine due to the authors admitted predisposition of torturing his characters.