Post 1: Aron Ralston 1

10 am, Monday January 3rd, 2011.  Winslow High School, Brockton Bay.

Trapped in the locker, Taylor was left thinking one thing.

She was thinking it desperately, grasping at the thought with all her strength to avoid thinking of just where she was, and what she was in.

That thought was a simple one.

“I wish I was a badass.”

Badasses, after all, don’t end up shoved in lockers of rotten human waste.  And if they do, they reap a bloody vengeance afterwards.  And given how she was feeling, she could do with a nice, bloody vengeance spree.

Time passed.

Then more.

And it was getting harder and harder to ignore her situation, harder and harder to hold onto hope that someone, anyone would hear her, smell her, save her.

But why would they, when no one had cared before?

And so Taylor began to beat on the door of the locker with the one arm free enough to do so.  Bang, bang, bang, bang.  Again, and again, and again with the small movement left to her.  Her flesh ached and bruised, her bones cracked and ligaments popped but still she beat on that door.

At some point, she lost focus, and when it came back she knew she was changed.

She was now Aron Ralston.  Oh, she was still Taylor.  But she was also Aron, a man hard enough to not just last days pinned by a boulder when canyoneering, but to cut his own arm off with a multi-tool when he realized that no rescue was coming. 

Oh, and that’s not all.  No, first he had to break the arm, because the multi-tool would never be able to cut through the bone.  A man hard enough not just to survive that, but to hike back to civilization afterwards.

Razor sharp focus on the target: survival.  Steely determination to do whatever it took to get there.  That’s what Aron gave her.

Her fist beat harder, harder, harder against the door.  The bones in her hand broke, splintered.  Her hand was a bloody wreck. 

But the door gave way.

What’s the most badass thing I can now? Taylor asked of her herself with newfound freedom.  What do I need to do to survive and thrive?  After a moment of consideration, she knew what to do.

It was, Taylor thought, time to deal with this issue for once and all.  And so she walked off, covered in rotting filth, hand broken and bloody but straight backed and steely eyed.  She would never again be pushed into a locker.  If she had her way, after today there wouldn’t be anyone to do the pushing.

When she reached the door to Mr. Toby’s English classroom, the classroom she should have been in, the classroom that Emma and Sophia were in, she twisted the handle and slammed it open with her shoulder.  The class and teacher looked on at her nightmarish, stinking form aghast.

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In the silence she strode up next to Emma, grabbed her hair with her good hand and slammed her gaping face onto the floor in the aisle between desks.  Emma grunted in pain, but before she could do more Taylor dropped down heavily on Emma’s chest, straddling her fallen form, and began to rain down blows backed with a hundred percent of Taylor’s strength.

Like a woman lifting a car off her baby, Taylor’s power was far greater than she should have been capable of.  Doubtless her body would pay for it later.  Her hand, already a wreck, was rapidly becoming a ruin.  But those shards of bone were sharp, and perfect to destroy her treacherous former friend.

The meaty thump, thud, squish, thump of the blows and Emma’s pained grunts rang out in the room’s stark silence.

Then with a sharp cry of rage Sophia sprang forward, tackling Taylor and sending her half-sprawling into the table Emma had been sitting at.  With a crack, the bone on Taylor’s damaged arm broke, a compound fracture that left her radius poking through her skin.

Without wasting a moment and with a rictus of purely lethal determination on her face, Taylor twisted, flicking the blood and bone from ruined hand into Sophia’s eyes.  As Sophia recoiled backwards, her hands coming up to save her sight, Taylor lunged forwards and buried the sharp point of her broken bone in Sophia’s neck, piercing the carotid. 

Sophia’s eyes widened in horror as her hand came up, desperately trying to stop the blood that was literally jetting out to the side through the ruined hole that was, moments ago, muscle and flesh and skin.  She flickered into a shadowy, smoky state.

That bitch!  Taylor thought, worried for a second that her stab wouldn’t be sufficient.  But then Sophia flickered back into reality and fell unconscious, her blood-loss too great and the flow of oxygen to the brain too low.  She’d be dead in moments, Taylor thought with great satisfaction.

Taylor turned back to Emma’s form.  The model was uncoordinated and weak from the blows to the head.  Grasping Emma’s hair in one hand, Taylor yanked backwards, exposing the vulnerable neck.  Emma’s desperate hands came up to block, but were pathetically incapable of stopping Taylor from driving her arm’s bone through the throat in a repeat of how she had dealt with Sophia.

Two down, one to go, Taylor thought as she stood up, taking Emma’s cell phone with her.  Her hand was leaking blood onto the floor, something she’d need to take care of soon.  Her hair was slick with sweat, her blood pulsing in her veins, her heart fit to burst.

She was just fine.

She turned to leave.  One of the meatier boys in the room, a member of the football team if she remembered correctly, looked like he was thinking of involving himself.

Taylor looked him in the eye.  She glanced down at her arm, at the two corpses surrounded by blood on the floor, drawing the boys eyes along with her gaze.  Then she stared him right in the eye, and perfectly raised one single eyebrow in challenge.  To her satisfaction, he wilted backwards.

As she got close to the doorway, the room still in shocked silence, Taylor realized that something was missing from the moment.

Then it struck her, what she needed to do.

“Sic semper tyrannis,” she said, just loud enough for everyone to hear her clearly.

Nailed it, she thought as she left the room, snagging the door handle without looking and closing it behind her.  She called 911, ordering her ambulance so it would be waiting when she was finished with the matter at hand. 

Now, where was Madison this time of day? she wondered, smiling a bit at her pun.  Ah, that’s right.

Spoiler: ”Power”

Basically, being a mimetic badass. As most powers in Worm, this has a primary function, and a supporting secondary.

Primary: Taylor becomes a randomly selected “Badass” from Badass of the Week.  Lasts 1 week, then changes.  Can draw on the abilities, attributes, and some tools, equipment, powers, and physical form associated with and/or necessary for that badass, scaling to the level of conflict Taylor needs to overcome (up to a max of high tier Heroic Spirit similar to those from Fate).

Secondary: She has a constant internal drive or motivation and a power-provided talent/aura/field that helps Taylor to do badass things/ be badass.

Week 1: Aron Ralston (see link in post title for link to description of badassery)

Overcome obstacles through self-sacrifice.  Perfect determination and effort.  Ability to take whatever action is necessary to survive, no matter how painful, and knowledge (roughly, not like Contessa) of what that action is.