Glasshouse
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| "It was just the wind[1]" | |
| Glasshouse | |
| Player: | |
| Origin: | Mutant |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Dominator |
| Security Level: | Rising |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Valentina Dushkova |
| Known Aliases: | Kaizen, Glass |
| Species: | Homo Sapiens Superior |
| Age: | Presumed 20's |
| Height: | 6 ' 0 " |
| Weight: | 200lbs. |
| Eye Color: | Clear |
| Hair Color: | Clear |
| Biographical Data | |
| Citizenship: | Confidential |
| Occupation: | Confidential |
| Place of Birth: | St.Petersburg, Russia |
| Current Residence: | Confidential |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | All deceased |
| Known Powers | |
| Kinetic manipulation | |
| Known Abilities | |
| ' | |
| Equipment | |
| ' | |
| Footnotes | |
| ' | |
Os iusti meditabitur sapientiam,
Et lingua eius loquetur indicium.
Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem,
Quoniqm cum probates fuerit accipient coronam vitae.
Kyrie, ignis divine, eleison
O quam sancta, quam serena,
quam benigma, quam amoena
O castitatis lilium!
- - Lilium
Contents |
Kaizen
What
Os iusti meditabitur sapientiam,
Et lingua eius loquetur indicium.
- The Mouth of Justice meditates wisdom
- And His language, the tongue, is made clear.
While most Evolutions manifest as single, large bursts during a time of cellular renewal, like puberty, Kaizen has been Evolving since her very birth. From a warm, pink baby that squalled and squealed and felt the warmth of contact, Kaizen has walked a lifetime's path towards perfection, losing the warmth, the flaws and the soft resistance that is human flesh and skin along the way. At her advanced age, all her external tissue has been crystallized into an organic silicate, similar to her namesake in appearance. It is, however, harder and possesses more unique qualities then any similar substance[2].
It is true that Kaizen has a wonderful defense, but her offense nearly trumps it. Both her feet and hands are slightly flattened and elongated, giving them a tapered shape. The sides of all of her fingers and feet are sharpened on a mono-molecular level. Simply, they tear through armor and almost anything else out there.
Another unique quality is that the compound allows light to pass through instead of absorbing or deflecting. The only visual cue that could alert an observer to her presence is a gentle distortion, like looking through a glass vase or a subtle lens. Other factors contribute to her "invisibility"; Kaizen does not need to breathe, does not sweat, does not produce body oils, and does not shed skin cells the way normal people do - meaning she does not have a scent that can be tracked. Furthermore, she is exothermic[3], meaning she does not give off any sign of a higher temperature than normal - rendering thermal imaging useless.
Some attempts have been made to monitor Kaizen's presence with GPS devices, scent markers and tracking paints, but the nonporous nature of her body has meant that any of these smaller markers are unlikely to have any effect - paints visibly slide off her body, whether they be oil-based or water-based. Kaizen's mind is also similarly ineffable, making psychic tracking functionally impossible for most psychics.
It is possible, theoretically, to track Kaizen, though it would be through nonstandard means. One would have to be incredibly sensitive to pressures, able to tell the shift in air pressure as Kaizen's light body moved through it, to feel the vibration through the ground as her not-inconsiderable weight shifts. Another note is that many psychics who have dealt with - or been duly warned about - Kaizen once can often recognize the subtle absence of mind, capable of tuning into her mental bandwidth.
On the other hand, finding Kaizen's mind in a crowd is just too difficult; her mindset is very lacking in a true image of humanity, meaning the only psychic clamor that rises up is undefined and could belong to so many possible unpleasant, obnoxious individuals with a desire to murder.
Recent events have lead to a change in her Evolution, a change in strength's and weaknesses. As one goes up and another goes down. As the silicate continues to solidfy, it has become a tad cloudy around the edges. This means that if one looks hard enough, the definite outline of a woman can be made out. Once, her mind was hidden and locked from the world. Now, she unleashes it at will, subjecting people to a whorl of images and sounds that more often that not cannot be comphrehended. Instead of tearing them apart herself, she has them tear -themselves- apart, most not able to understand or deal with the kind of cruelty she inflicts on a day to day basis.
The first case of this is Dr. Nihilus's NXes, many of which were found dead one night, with their arteries ripped out by their own teeth.
Why
Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem,
Quoniqm cum probates fuerit accipient coronam vitae.
- Blessed is the man who suffers temptation.
- Since, he, with striving, will have received life's crown.
Why does anyone murder? Most individuals do not live their lives thinking about the bad things they do, and thinking ill of themselves. The internal psychology of the individual is geared towards justification and explanation. People attach to causes because they offer both - and Kaizen is a cause of one.
She does not have a handle on the concept of "good" or "evil", both warped and undefined throughout her life. While she may often try to understand what is going on around her, it is for an impure purpose. To properly torture people you need to know their weaknesses, you need to know taboo's of the world at hand. And anyone is target for victim.
With that crystalline mindset, however, comes a simple danger of comparison. Any and all life forms are less. Evolution speaks of the strong achieving, the weak failing. Kaizen is at the crest of Evolution, in her mind, achieving the ultimate end. Being perfect is a burden, for all the imperfect people one must endure.
After the subjugation Kaizen suffered at the hands of the Nazi's several times, she has never bent her will for anyone else, never softened her resolve or "candied" her emotions. Therefore, every flicker of irritation, every mere annoyance, is met with as exhaustive and vile a punishment as Kaizen can inflict. She fears no repercussions and feels no remorse, and so, acts entirely as fits her will. While many within Nation do not take her threats and words seriously, they are making a larger mistake then they realize.
The virgin has blessed
Still broken, still bleeding
The crack of the neck
The gut shriek of thunder
Her face to the storm
She said destroy
- - Death in June, " She Said Destroy "
The simple fact is, Kaizen is so far beyond mere concepts of sanity and insanity that she defies analysis. A unique and terrible creature, Kaizen is the first of the new breed of predators. Rare indeed in Evolution does a parent father genes that are designed to hunt down and remove all its kin - such flies in the face of evolution itself, of incremental changes that improve the whole and propagate the species.
Kaizen is the coin in the mineshaft, the hiccup in evolution in action; a wrong turn down a dead-end street. She cannot propagate, and perhaps feels no desire to do so - but just as likely, she cannot die by natural means, living contentedly on her own perfection for as many years. Perhaps in ten thousand years, if she is not ended by some wily force, she will be a bogeyman, a new ghost in humanity's coming dark age.
I took you home
Set you on the glass
I pulled off your wings
And then I laughed
- - Deftones, " Change "
Regardless of what she truly is, Kaizen is a psychotic; even her fellow Evolved are regarded as things rather than people, as objects that are barely worthy of her attentions, and she would kill for sport even amongst their number as boredom strikes her.
When
Kyrie, ignis divine, eleison
- Oh Lord, Fire Divine, have mercy!
1907-1923: Kaizen was born to Ekaterin Dushkova, a lowly beggar-prostitute in the cold month of January. As if to signify exactly how life was intended to go for Kaizen, her mother actually had attempted to abort her. After the abortion attempt failed, Ekaterin attempted to choke it to death - but found both the baby more resistant and herself far weaker than she would have imagined. Unable to even give a clean death to her child, she dumped it in a trash heap.
Six months later, Ekaterin Dushkova would die, of causes then unknown. Medical students dissecting the body as a Medical Jane Doe concluded that she had been a glass mill worker, as fine, microscopic particles of silicate were found in her bloodstream, and indeed, seemed responsible for her death[4].
Kaizen was saved from death by the residents of The Church of St. Valentine, and named Valentina, for the saint. She grew up isolated from the conflict of Russia and the Bolsheviks at the time, and helped with simple chores. As a baby she always fussed at unknown, internal pains, and as a child, she grew mute. Her mutations started to show as soon as age 8, and though the priests were in fear of her changes, they had grown to love her.
This one place was perhaps the only time in Kaizen's life she might have felt happy as a neutral, have had some sympathy and affection for baseline humanity. This was of course, not to last. It was burned down in by The Great Purges, after it was believed residents were plotting the death of Joseph Stalin.
1923-1931: Kaizen was captured during the Purge, and sent to a Gulag labor camp. This harsh environment quickly ground out the girl's sense of mercy, and quickly disillusioned little Valentina as to the existence of a supposedly just and beautiful god who just wanted to make humanity happy. The childish faith she had had was stripped away through the grinding abuse, and the teenager finally made her opinions on both god and the gulag known when she massacred the entire camp. At first, her fellow prisoners flocked to her, as she cut her way through guards that could not see her, could not fight her - and then fled and shrieked in horror as, to an individual, Kaizen continued her rampage. She murdered everyone in the camp - guards, administration staff, drivers, prisoners, children.
" There was nothing left but blood on the floor, and the vultures, and the war. "
1931-1971: Kaizen, now utterly unhinged, terrorized both Russia and Germany as "Ghost Flesh", an urban myth. The name was given to her by the fearful gossips and townsfolk, due to her evolution's continual shifting of her body. Much of human skin is slightly translucent and Kaizen's evolution had progressed to the point where she was a ghastly web of skin, hanging off what honestly looked like nothing.
During this time, Kaizen was more or less a mindless machine, raging her way across the two countries and killing anyone that caught her fancy. Recruited to the Nazi cause, working as an "executioner", killing any and all she was directed to without a second thought. Kaizen was easily manipulated into this position, and worked quite efficiently, due to the fact she mentally matured slower than what was considered "normal"[5].
Once the war was over, however, Kaizen simply drifted back into darkness. Unlike many other creatures of war, she felt no need to continue in a soldier's life, and found her fledgling personality resented the manipulation she'd been subjected to. Continuing through Europe, she went and saw the sights of the world, quietly wondering if perhaps Neutral culture had some aspect she had forgotten, or not seen, something that truly redeemed them. Was this world worth having, worth working with, if even the Nazis who had given her a cause and pride, been wrong?
It was in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, that Kaizen heard a priest giving the speech that would truly catalyze her transition into utter soullessness. It was not even his own words; he merely quoted from the Bible, speaking of the need for salvation, and how to an eternal, infinite, and perfect deity such as the Catholic God, anything short of utter perfection was infinitely fouled.
"For all have sinned", he said, "And come short of the glory of God."
It was in this moment that Kaizen realized he was right. He merely did not understand.[6].
1971-1995: Burned out after her rampage, Kaizen returned to the remains of The Church of St. Valentine and "hibernated" there. She spent the time half-conscious, and the place came to be known as haunted due to her painful cries at night. It took some time indeed - twenty-five years - before her Evolution was complete, and it was when she finally awoke, fully matured and fully transformed on the outside, that she emerged. Once more, death walked the world, stepping out amongst others, seeking to learn unnoticed and unseen... and to enjoy herself.
Was she not, after all, a God? One of power, strength, and immortality? One of rage, vengeance, and beauty?
1995-Present: Kaizen snuck aboard a transport bound with criminals to the Ziggurat, an export from the Russian supergroup Motherland. Hiding from these powered individuals was a defining moment for Kaizen, realizing that even these supposed super-heroes could not even see her, let alone stop her.
Once the flier was over the mid-west of America, however, it was almost casually hijacked by a small squad of individuals working for Arachnos on commission, diverting the vehicle to the Etoile Isles, freeing its subjects and daring the Motherland operatives to come and re-imprison them.
Kaizen observed the entire affair with a sick amusement. A new playground to examine, a new catalyst. And it was here, in the Etoile, that she had her understanding of god finally transformed.
For here, in the Isles is where Kaizen learned of Evolution.
Wherewithal
- While four of five of Kaizen's senses are heightened, light passes entirely through her eyes, meaning her retina can no longer absorb light to interpret to her brain, rendering her completely blind.
- Kaizen can be heard singing nursery rhymes in both Russian and English.
- Kaizen despises being touched by others. Not because of a psychological component, but that she can feel the body oils rolling off the surface of her skin.
- Kaizen's voice is rich and flows with a Cyrillic poise and even with a Russian accent, still mesmerizing.[7].
Themes
Confessions of What I've done by Here Comes the Kraken
Footnotes
- ↑ "The wind" is the nickname Battlebriar has bestowed her
- ↑ One of the major unique qualities is the ability to conduct and harvest "electricity" from her environment. It is suspected she lives off of it, as she is never seen eating or drinking.
- ↑ 'Cold blooded'.
- ↑ These particles were, of course, the first from Kaizen's mutation - the leavings of her fetal form that continued to crystallize and finished their mutation long after they had been absorbed into the mother's body; a fitting mother's day present.
- ↑ It might be worth noting that Kaizen worked for the Nazis during the same period that the Nazis were working on crafting the genetically imperious super soldier Irmine - who herself has noted and vast skill in manipulation.
- ↑ And thus was the Flensing of Notre Dame incident spawned. Kaizen only killed the priest, to serve as a message to the congregation, a lesson that has driven many of them mad, and started Kaizen on her path of casually manipulating people into utter madness.
- ↑ Battlebriar has at least once noted that it is a shame such a sexless woman has such an erotic voice.
