Venom: On Missing Limbs
a Worm x MGSV crossover 'oneshot'
by fallacies

Three months after she was found in her locker, Taylor Hebert wakes up in a hospital room.
A sequence of short scenes, meant to be largely humorous. Later snippets are a bit longer.
Not actually a fic where Taylor triggers with an alternate set of powers.

oo. Prologue: Visitor

[It isn't your fault,] she said. [You couldn't have known.]

Through his mask, Colin stared at the comatose girl in the bed.

"No," he said. "I could've found out. It's only because I made a conscious decision to let Piggot have her way that I didn't."

Dragon didn't reply, but her expression in his head-up display laid bare her discomfort. She was kind by nature, and believed the better of him - even when he didn't necessarily deserve it. His lie detector indicated as much.

"Shadow Stalker was under my command," he said. "If I'd gotten on Piggot's case for superseding my authority in the management of the Wards, I might've picked up hints of the events leading up to this. Instead, I wanted to see Piggot hanging by her own rope."

Colin was a man driven by ego. All too often, self-benefit was the rule that shaped his course of action. This was a character flaw that he was all too aware of - and once every so often, the consequences of his choices would come back to bite him.

[The PRT /will/ be running an inquiry on Piggot,] Dragon softly replied, as if making a promise.

If it didn't happen, Dragon probably intended to put pressure on the organization until they complied. This, however, wasn't a carriage of justice that inherently did anything for the victim. It was too little and too late, and Shadow Stalker was still at large for her role in the girl's crippling injuries. The handsome indemnity paid to the girl's father did nothing to alleviate her past or current suffering, or resolve the ongoing threat to her life.

"If she wakes up," said Colin, "I'll make it up to her somehow."

[If she wakes up,] Dragon replied. [But I don't think it's healthy for you to obsess over this. The doctors indicated that cerebral hypoxia went on for long enough that it's a miracle she's even alive. Sections of her frontal and parietal lobes have been reduced to mush, and she barely scores a four on the Glasgow Coma Scale. At this point, we can't even tell if she possessed a corona pollentia or not - and that's a fairly distinct structure.]

None of this was new information; Colin had exhaustively familiarized himself with the girl's condition, and had forced himself to absorb several years of graduate-level neuroscience in the process.

"Are you familiar with the concept of compensation via neuroplasticity?" he asked.

[I'm aware that it's said to be the basis of the phantom limb syndrome in amputees,] Dragon replied. [But no, I'm not specifically familiar with it. Why?]

"The cortical pathways in the human brain remap themselves in response to injury," said Colin. "There was a case in 1943 where a woman was recorded to have fully recovered from a coma induced by a bullet wound to the brain. It's not entirely out of the question that something like that could happen here."

Within her camera feed, Dragon frowned.

[It's an astronomical improbability, Colin,] she said. [Please, don't be like this. You're just setting yourself up for disappointment.]

Colin grit his teeth, lowering his gaze to the sleeve at the girl's left.

"She's already given us one miracle," he said. "Another shouldn't be so far out of reach."