Post 5: Spartacus 1

8am, Monday, January 10th, NHH

Lying in her cell, sorry “treatment room”, Taylor woke up. She sat up, stretched, cracked her neck, shook out her arms. Rotating to the side, she put her feet on the floor and stood up, a devilish grin on her face.

“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life, for me,” she sang softly underneath her breath. “And I’m feeling good.”

And she really, really was feeling good. Aron’s power had wanted her to wait, and she had. But it had been hard.

The last week had truly sucked.

Being trapped in a Nazi-run insane asylum was a literal living nightmare. It wasn’t just that the doctor and nurses kept trying to fuck with her head; she could cope with that pretty easily given Aron’s experiences. He’d managed to push through a self-amputation; sitting silent in front of psychologists trying to screw her over was nothing in comparison. Not that minor head-games were the end of it.

But whatever she faced, she overcame. When they tried to give her drugs, she refused. When she sensed her food had been tampered with, she just walked up and took food from one of the damn E88 members who were in there with her. Their food was much nicer anyways. When one of the E88 boys thought about starting something with her, she just stared him down, got up in his personal space and kept pushing forwards as he retreated until he was huddled in the corner.

Actually, that probably pissed her off more than anything about this situation. There was a clear divide between prisoners, there as hostages or victims of those shitty neo-Nazis’ manipulations, versus the “righteous nationalists” who were there as a way to avoid prison. The latter, scumbags one and all, lorded it over the prisoners. Harassment, bullying, hell even sexual assault seemed to be matter of course.

But Taylor knew, knew that if she acted then it would be worse. So she did what she could, made sure no evil occurred in her view. And she waited, passing through the harassment and the pressure and that damned piece of shit corrupt judge who signed off after day three of her stay in club psycho swastika.

So waiting, that had sucked. But it gave her a nice bit of bottled up rage. And that, well that she could use.

Especially as her new persona.

Spartacus.

The man was literally a byword in badassery. He wasn’t just one of the deadliest fighter to ever live, but was an amazing commander too. He went up against a world power with beat-down slaves, and he won. His untrained ragamuffin rebel-slave army thrashed four legions. To put that in perspective, Caesar started off with four legions when he conquered all of Gaul (modern France). After that, Spartacus seized the town of Thurii, and held it for years against the Romans.

In the end, the Romans sent eight legions against him. That’s roughly equivalent to some rebel needing to be put down by the entire US Marine Corps. Even then he might have won, if his men hadn’t lost all their discipline. But they didn’t follow his plan, and instead gave the massive Roman army the kind of fight it was built to win.

Unlike in that famous movie Spartacus didn’t get captured and die on a cross. No, he went down fighting like the badass he was, charging with a small band, basically solo against a full two hundred Romans who were guarding their general. It got so bad that both Roman centurions, each hard-ass veterans with decades of warfare, tried to double-team him. He cut them down, but isolated and with his men retreating he was eventually brought down like lion surrounded by dogs.

Taylor would just need to make sure she didn’t make those same mistakes. But there was a certain elegance to it all. After all, it seemed only right that this so-called Empire would face one of the greatest rebels to ever live.

It was almost breakfast time. So she waited, and ate, and then went along to the common spaces. Her new charisma was set loose, drawing in the recluses, bringing them out of their rooms. They gathered around her, the broken and the lost, the victims of that doomed attempt at white-supremacy.

“Tomorrow,” she spoke, her voice soft, drawing them in. “Tomorrow, you will wake up. And for a moment, a brief shining moment, you will not remember where you are, but will be free. But then it will crash down onto you. Your situation, our situation, the cross we all bear trapped here in this forsaken pit. And some Aryan doctor, perfumed, blond and blue eyed, in fine clothing, will come. And they will poison you, fill your head with the lies that this is your fault. That your suffering is somehow due to you, your family, your friends, your race.

“I’m here to tell you a secret. You’re not to blame. We’re not to blame. They are, these monsters that would make animals of men. If you are truly beasts, then stand here. Wait, for that tomorrow to become your today, again and again and again. Wait like a foolish sheep, still and helpless before the butcher’s knife.

Taylor grew louder. “But if you’re men, follow me! Strike down the guards, take their cars, and let us make our way to Brockton. Let us do the bloody work our ancestors did and burn out this plague of Nazis! Is liberty dead? Is that old revolutionary spirit frozen in your veins, that you are happy to cower and whimper like a beaten dog underneath its master’s fist?

“Comrades, survivors, Brocktonites! If we must suffer, let us suffer for ourselves,” she growled, full of venomous rage. “If we must kill, let us kill not our own hearts, but dance in our enemies’ blood. And if we must die, let it be under a blue sky, by the bright ocean, in noble, honorable battle.

“But first, let us make a ruin of this fucking Empire!”

And the other inpatients, some thirty odd young adults, went wild. They turned on the handful of Empire youth and guards, tearing them apart with their hands, smashing in faces with books and chairs, clawing and biting and choking.

It was a terrible, awful sight, like something out of a zombie movie.

Taylor smiled at the beauty she wrought, and raced off, the nucleus of her army baying around her like hounds on the scent of their prey. They were a living tide, tearing through the paltry resistance that their Nazi oppressors put up. Soon, Taylor came onto the “good” Doctor Pritchett, scrambling for his phone. She leapt over the table, bringing him to ground.

“Hey Doc,” she said cheerily, smiling innocently, as if her face were not speckled with blood. “Let’s have a little chat, hmm?” She pulled him up. He struggled a bit, but she rabbit-punched him in the stomach, hard. It was the sort of blow that could put the fight out of a hardened gladiator. He fell to his hands and knees, retching. Taylor sat down on Pritchett’s office chair, two of her rebels flanking the door in an imposing manner, and put her feet onto Pritchett’s back.

She reached over to the desk, picked up a recorder, and turned it on.

“Now, Pritchett, we’re going to talk. Or, you are. You’re going to tell us everything. Every person involved in your little Nazi asylum here. The names of those responsible. How it worked. When you were paid. How you were paid. Names, dates, everything.”

He was gasping, so she shoved him a bit with her foot to get his attention. “Pritchett, are you paying attention? Because if you aren’t, we can help with that.”

We can help with that. One of his favorite phrases, the twisted little fuck, that he used when his victims weren’t being sufficiently amenable. He’d say it all false-kindly, and then, then something nasty would happen. A day of sensory deprivation, or being held face down in a full bath, or force-fed drugs, or denied drugs that the victim had been addicted to, or perhaps being locked in a room for a few hours as a visit to “help improve the morale” of some of the nastiest, most brutal Hitler-youth.

Pritchett shuddered. There is little a torturer fears more than to be at the mercy of his victims.

“Taylor, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he began to complain. “You need help Taylor, if you’ll just –“

She reached down, grabbed his hair and yanked him up, cutting off his lies. She slammed the side of his face onto his table. His arms were flailing, trying to reach her. She didn’t like that, so she reached out, with all the grace and precision of a master swordsman. She grabbed his index finger, and broke it.

“Aaahhh!” he screamed. She punched him in the kidney, shutting him up again.

“Quietly, doctor, quietly. We’re inside, I expect you to use inside volume, or you won’t speak at all.” Yet another of his little phrases, one that preceded being gagged for hours. Not that Taylor had let them gag her, but she heard about it from others.

He was whimpering, crying. “Taylor, please, Taylor, I can’t, I can’t, you know what they’ll do to me!”

“Oh, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor. You shouldn’t be worried about that. After all, they’re far away. They have no idea what’s happening here, in your little slice of hell, behind its insulated walls. No, you shouldn’t be worried about what they’ll do to you. You should be worried about what I’ll do to you.”

“You, you can’t!” he argued desperately. “The police, the PRT, they’ll-“

She cut him off by bouncing his face off the table. “They’ll do nothing. Just like they did nothing when one of their Wards tortured me, when you and your Nazi friends sentenced me to this nightmare. And don’t you know, Pritchett, I’m crazy. You said so yourself. I’m not responsible for my actions right now. Legally, in fact, I think you are. So let me tell you what I’ll do, you’ll do to yourself, Pritchett,” she crooned into his ear. She picked up a pen, brought it next to his face which was still pressed into his table, making sure he could see it.

“I’ll start with this, Pritchett. I’ll take your eyes. Then, then I’ll take your hands from you. Tie a tourniquet on them, nice and tight, and smash and smash and smash until there’s nothing left. I’ll take your block and tackle, Pritchett, make sure you never misuse it again. I’ll break your spine, you’ll never walk. I’ll take your hearing. I’ll rip apart your nose, to never scent or taste again. Pritchett, I will leave you in the darkness. And unlike your little experiments with sensory deprivation, with isolation, there will be no coming back.”

He was sobbing now. The interesting thing about torturers, especially amateurs, is that they often use things they themselves are afraid of. This was his favorite punishment. This, she sensed, was his deepest fear. Being left, forever, in the dark.

“Or. Or you can cooperate. And when we’re done here, you’ll have a head start on Kaiser and his men. You could make it out from this, Pritchett. It doesn’t have to be the end. You can run, hide. You can turn yourself in to the PRT, make a deal in exchange for testimony. Be smart.” Then she smiled, cruelly. “Or let me get a head start on my technique for when I work my way through the Empire.”

He talked.

When they were done, Taylor gave him his head start. She broke his neck, and let him go down to prepare hell for its new arrivals. There would be quite the number coming, if she had anything to say about it.

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 2: Spartacus (see link in post title for link to description of badassery)

Unmatched combatant. Genius tactician. When ramped up a bit, can “convert” the oppressed to his banner, making them each a match for a regular soldier. Will not lose so long as his plan is followed by his subordinates.

*Speech modified from Spartacus monologue by E. Kellog