Aberrant RPG - Rose - A Mega-Stamina Dynamo

[RushingMountain]

Warning!

This post contains scenes of domestic violence!

This post contains coarse language!

Please use discretion while reading.

It probably also possesses violations of the Spanish language.

Edited 2010-10-23EST09907: Added language warning, corrected name spellings, italicizations.

2047:

Regnon's Brood has decided to play ball, Rose thoughtcast to the rest of the team.

You cruelly taunt them so, you sadist dynamo Oracle's response echoed gleefully in her mind. Rose wasn't sure Oracle had labelled the right person “sadist”, but now didn't seem to be the best time to taunt him. Being pummelled by four tentacled junior Cthullu was not something Rose liked to put on her to-do list. She slashed a few of them with her arm thorns when she got a chance, but more to keep them honest. Being a glorified Jai-alai ball wasn't scads of fun, but keeping these punks busy meant they wouldn't be killing the baselines who were being evacuated.

As she was hurled through two levels of parking garage, she shook her head, then considered the situation. If they wanted to spend five minutes trying to disorient a clairvoyant, she'd give them five minutes of harmless fun.

Just make sure Hiroshima's charged up for our play.

Even now, in the throws of it, that corner of her mind that detached itself when this sort of punishment set in couldn't believe how she'd come to this life.

Late 2020s:

You could say Rosa had been born to take a good thrashing.

The beatings had been things she had dealt with for as long as she could remember. Her father would come home and assault her mother. Some days, he would finish quickly, and there would be tranquillity in the house. Other days, Rosa wouldn't get dinner. When she finished grade school, on the worst days, after her mother, it would be her turn.

Papa would not say a word once he started the punishments until he was done. He simply walked into her tiny room, crowding her onto her bed. He cracked his knuckles, flexing his muscles in the process. He was doubly menacing because of the reflection of the backs of his arms in the dresser mirror. Papa simply growled “your turn, Rosa,” then the buffeting began. At first, she tried to fend him off, but that was as effective as trying to block the rain. In the midst of the pain, she could only think one thing: Papa will not kill me. I will outlast him.

Soon Rosa learned a trick to deal with these thrashings. She had learned it from a game played at school, the wishing game. On the count of three, the kids playing would each say what they wished they could do. Once, to herself, Rosa counted out 1... 2... 3.... I wish I wasn't here. Then something snapped, and she felt herself looking at her from across the room, from behind her father.

2037:

When she became a woman, things got worse. That morning she woke up with her sheets bloody, just before her mother walked in to wake her as she always did. She hadn't even said anything, just taken the sheets to soak in the tub, then started slapping her.

“¡Puta estúpida!” Maria whispered after her first slap. 1....

“You couldn't stay a child a day longer?” A second slap. 2....

Rosa's mother puller her head up by her hair with one hand, while the other grabbed her jaw. Then she screamed into Rosa's face “Now, pinche idiota, you learn what growing up means!” 3....

The rain of slaps, gouge attempts, and hair pulling began. A beating as vicious as any given by the hands of her father, and with horrific descriptions of what adulthood had in store for her.

Late 2030s:

Through school, she excelled at athletics, especially track events. She soon became a sprinter on the school track team. She showed some promise, but gave up when the zorras in the change rooms started calling her a donkey—she must be, if she was so uncoordinated that she bruised herself everywhere. When of the track coaches tracked her down and asked her why she quit, she simply counted herself out in preparation for another assault. When it didn't come, she was more confused than ever. She didn't like being confused, so she simply stopped thinking about it.

School proved a good deal more difficult. She sometimes felt like she had trouble focusing on what her teachers told her, at least while they told it to her. It was something that she puzzled out when her parents were punishing her. It was strange, really. She could shut out the whole world, and live in her thoughts, even as she watched herself getting beaten. She could plan, and figure out what she would do, when she got out of this hell.

As week upon week passed, Rosa daydreamed about singing, like the angel Ambrosia. She thought it would feel good to be like Belladonna, and eliminate those who preyed on women. She wondered about turning into air itself to capture or disarm those who threatened her or her city, like Texan Twister. Sadly, these weren't things for her. The kids at school thought she sounded like a burro when she sang, that she moved like a burro when she walked, and that she was a burro just sitting in class. Rosa was just a plain, ordinary girl who lived in the slums. She simply dealt with their taunts the way she dealt with all pain. 1.... 2.... 3....

2040:

Despite the trials of her life, Rosa had a certain stubborn diligence that allowed her to outperform most of her class mates. It wasn't that she was brilliant—at least, she didn't see it. She just didn't have anything to do with herself besides learn. The more she learned, the more she had to distract herself when she was in enduring her thrashings. To her surprise, she found her teachers asking her more and more often if she'd considered going to university. UNAM—the National Autonomous University of Mexico—had a scholarship program for students with excellent academic standing, but poor financial prospects. With a part time job and diligent financial control, her mathematics teacher informed her that she could almost definitely make it through UNAM with a degree.

After two weeks of dazed confusion, Rosa decided she'd she had nothing to lose. She worked hard for the remainder of the year, applied for all the bursaries and scholarships she could, and otherwise lived her life exactly the same. Every night, she would come home, study hard until her father came home. Rosa would go meet her father, and take the brunt of the assaults for her mother. Maria's arthritis had set in, the beatings had become incredibly painful for her. Now Rosa was younger, tougher, better able to absorb the blows and roll with them, and with more padding from her muscles than her gaunt old mother would ever have again.

Most nights, Rosa's father didn't bother her mother anymore.

Most nights, when her father finished with her, Rosa's mother would start on her. “So you think you're good enough to take my place, Rosalita?” she'd sneer. “You think you are better than your parents? You think something will come from your studying?” Rosa's mother just spit on her.

1.... 2.... 3....

Summer 2042:

When the enrolment approval came, Rosa didn't even tell her parents. She stuffed the letter into her backpack and put the rest of the letters on the dining room table as she walked through. She collected all of the bursary awards and scholarship awards, responding as appropriate, and disposing of them before her parents ever found them.

The last day before she could move to the UNAM freshman dorms in University City, Rosa wondered briefly whether they would be happy for her if she told them. Then she packed everything that she actually cared about into her backpack. Rosa went studied until her father came home, then she put her books away and said hi to papa.

The next morning, as she put her shoes on, her mother came to watch her. Rosa watched the emotions playing across her mother's face and wondered if she'd get beaten before she even started the day, but after a minute, her mother came up to her, gently grabbed her head with both hands, and pulled Rosa down to kiss her on the forehead, then she walked away.

Rosa felt dizzy for the rest of the day.

September 2042:

University was like a whole new world for Rosa. It was a little scary.

Rosa's dual degree courses for psychology and physics kept her busy.

It wasn't that she was interested in either one, she just didn't know what she wanted to do with herself, so she had decided to play things with as many options open as possible, until she could figure out what she wanted to do.

University girls came in two types: the stubborn burros like her, and the prancing ponies that made sure they got noticed. A small number went back and forth between the two herds. Rosa herself fell in naturally into the former group, pushing herself, getting only five or six hours of sleep a night. Rosa aced all her classes.

July 2043:

It had been a long day, and it would still be a long ride home. Rosa was skimming through the next three chapters of Human Institutional and Behavioural Economics, 7th Edition. She turned pushed herself of the door separator, because the swaying of the train kept bumping it against her bicep. The car was mostly empty anyways, just a few other estudiantes commutor.

Just outside of Coyoacan station, the lights flickered for a few seconds, then went out, and the train rolled to a stop. Rosa heard a gasp from the woman sitting across from her, and a cry of “¡Chinco dios!” from the scrawny guy down the car. Rosa looked up to the girl across from her, eeriely illuminated from the the faint glow of their two data pads, then realized that the the shaking of the subway car was just as strong as it had been a few seconds ago, although the train had slowed almost to a snail's pace. In fact, the swaying was getting worse.

Within a few seconds, the swaying was so bad that both Rosa and the other girl let go of their data pads to hold on to the vertical rails by the doors next to them. The swaying became violent, and both their data pads fell to the floor. The girl across from her started screaming like a child. The idiota obviously couldn't control herself.

Rosa found herself counting to three, then detached her emotions. She looked down the car to where the car's third passenger was. Rosa wasn't sure, because his data pad was also sliding and tumbling back and forth on the floor near him, but it looked like he was okay. Then she felt herself bucked up out of her seat. The other girl was screaming herself hoarse.

I've survived much worse than this, no earthquake is going to kill me.

The car lurched, and landed half tilted on it's side, still bucking wildly. In the dying light of the last data pad, she could see that enormous I-beams had crashed through the roof of the subway car like a sharp knife through vegetables. The boy at the other end of the car had been flattened by one, and another one was doing it's best to flatten Rosa, but for some reason failing. That probably explained why her head hurt more than it had ever hurt in her life before.

In the last light of that data pad, she could just make out the silhouette of a ball bouncing around. Then she suspected it was no ball, at least not if that fluid splattering out of it was what she thought it was. Fuck this! Rosa thought to herself. I have not survived everything I've gone through to die in some giant pitch black bender while the Distrito Federal has a siezure!

The pummelling convulsions combined with the spike of adrenaline she felt, and her strength surged. Rosa pumped the giant I-beam twice, then pushed it off her body, crumpling the sidewalls of the subway car even more before it landed on the last of the data pads.

Rosa wasn't sure how long it took, but the siezures had stopped by the time she had reached the surface. Between the pain in her skull, the additional spills she had taken, and the devestation she saw around her, she wasn't sure she was still sane. Then she saw something she'd seen several times on vid feeds, but that she'd never thought she'd see in person: a warp portal opening.

A grizzled head poked through. Nicorb? I'm crazy! That can't be him! That's crazy!

“That may be,” the Aberrant replied to her thoughts in a horrible travesty of Spanish, even by gringo standards, “but this is a limited time offer. If you stay here, you can choose between the Terragen and Utopia.”

2047:

Any chance on a status update, Oracle? I think the visiting team is getting restless. Rose tumbled between a pair of the repulsive horrors, cutting a few of the dozens of clawed tentacles off the left one as she did so. There were enough monsters in the world without this kind in it.

The zeroes are all tucked away, and the heroes are on their way, Oracle thought back at her. One of these days she's catch him without a rhyme.

The woman who now went by the name Rose grabbed the next tentacled freak to get too close—Kraken, she thought—and used him to swing into another one, whom she grappled with her legs. The problem she had with these punks is that they knew she couldn't do much more than pin them or scratch them, but little Hiroshima had pointed out he had the opposite problem.

Sure enough, the punks all started to pile on. Rose found her face mashed into Kraken's slimy neck. She had enough time to yell “¡vete al diablo, culero!” before Hiroshima dropped in and went BOOM!