Nulion
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Nulion | |
| Player: Nulion | |
| Origin: | Mutation |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Blaster |
| Security Level: | 48 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Kenneth Age |
| Known Aliases: | None |
| Species: | (Formerly) Homo Opifex (Currently) Reptilian-Human Hybrid |
| Age: | 34 |
| Height: | 5'6 |
| Weight: | 127 lbs |
| Eye Color: | Orange-Green |
| Hair Color: | N/A (Formerly black) |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Citizen of the ICC, Registered Old Earth Native |
| Occupation: | Former war politician, subterfuge agent, and ranged weapons technician |
| Place of Birth: | New Allegheny, Namerican Territories, Old Earth (Date of Birth: May 20th, 29,450 AD) |
| Base of Operations: | Confidential |
| Marital Status: | Confidential |
| Known Relatives: | Mother (Norah Age), Father (Anton Age), Grandfather (Isaiah Marlin Age) (Deceased), Grandmother (Sarai Age) |
| Known Powers | |
| None | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Heightened sense of smell, inherent night vision, increased agility and strength all a result of reptilliform mutations. Reptilian regeneration response allows for regeneration of lost limbs. Endothermic (Cold-Blooded), and HIGHLY INFECTIOUS via contact with venom secreted from glands deep within the throat, transmittable through oral contact. | |
| Equipment | |
| Dust Brigade Commander Armorsuit (Plasteel plate/fiber mesh, heavy user customization), OFAB Cobra Mk VI integrated-nanosystems sniper rifle (Converted to accept contemporary ammunition), DREADLOCH-00867 Class IX "Lightbender" cloaking device. Full-body personal network of nanites, living "symbiotic" implants, and retinal feedback systems. | |
| Kenneth Age is to be considered a TYPE 3 BIOHAZARD (Non-lethal), as direct intravenous contact with the fluid contained in his laryngeal-venom glands WILL result in mutations similar to those Age himself seems to be subject to. Further study necessary. | |
Contents |
Introduction
RECORDING_START
Thisss thing worrrking..? ...Ah, therre we go. Tesssting, tessting...Aha. Good! Now...gotta make sssurrre the ssspeech alterration ssoftwarrre worrkss...*the previously-heard, throaty hiss-growl that defines Ken's voice seems to have been filtered out from this point forward, as he takes a seat in front of a desk, in a messy apartment room*
There! Okay, I sound like a normal person now. This will be pretty strange listening to afterwards, but at least it will be less of a pain for you to hear me out. Where to begin, where to begin...Well, there's my birthplace, New Allegheny. You might know it as "Pittsburgh", a city off to the west of Paragon City. Where I come from, things just aren't named the same. What you call the United States, I call the Namerican Territories. Twenty seven thousand years of history will have that effect, basically renaming the globe...
This place, I can hardly get a grip on though. Anybody who's met me will have heard me ruminating about it; about how my home is so different. It's the little things, you know? Being unable to just GO a place without putting some serious effort into it. Riding that bumpy, smelly train all over just one city, taking an eternity just to get where you need to go. I still can't get used to it. And that's not counting the incredible things I've seen, heard, and experienced by just living here.
Do you people...take it for granted? The fantastic place that you call home, troubled as much as it may be. I can't exactly blame you for it; amazing things happen here every day, and the world cannot truly be called humanity's alone. There's something about that fact that just thrills me to no end. The MAGIC, the mythological creatures, the...the...damn, it still gets me going! *a broad smile crosses his reptilian face, his forked tongue slithering out, nearly touching the camera* I got a little carried away there. People who've spent time around me know how alienated I've felt since the mutations began, about seven years ago as of this recording. It's...nice to finally have company, as I'll tell anybody who'll listen. But then, I'm getting ahead of myself, as I usually do. Don't you worry, I'll get to that, the story of how I wound up all...reptilian. I'll start from the beginning though, just for the sake of you, the viewer.
Origin
*Ken leans back in his chair, staring at the ceiling for a moment, reminiscing..* Man...I still, to this day think of myself as a fool. All I wanted was to make my family happy. They were good people, you know? My father, Anton, was a tough but fair man with the same jet-black hair I used to have, but he wasn't quite like most people living on Old Earth. He was one of those "different" breeds, just like myself; an "Opifex", essentially meaning that he had the same grey skin, pointed ears, and thin build that you can still see on me, even with my mutations this advanced. My mother Norah on the other hand looked much like any old human being you would see around here, her complexion fair and her hair a crisp shade of mahogany. They were such good parents. The best a guy could ask for, you know? I had a great life.
But then, it wasn't enough for me, was it?
My grandparents, both Opifex, and on my father's side, had immigrated from a distant mining colony world called Rubi-Ka, about five or so thousand light years away from here. Don't ask the exact direction; I don't know. That place represented the limit of human colonization; it was the furthest we'd ever gone, and a huge boon to the rest of the human systems. That would be because of a mineral discovered there called "notum", which gifted nanomachines the ability to communicate with one another, and operate autonomously, even outside of a person's body. It was huge; one of the biggest technological explosions in recorded human history. That place represented an awful lot to those of us stuck on Old Earth. It was...what would I compare it to here? Kinda like men taking the first step on the moon, here. Suddenly, every schoolkid wanted to go to the moon, right? Well, it was the same with Rubi-Ka. I wanted to go there, just as much as any other kid in my neighborhood did.
Thing is, my grandparents, like I'd mentioned were actually FROM Rubi-Ka. Along with my father. Dad didn't have many memories of the place, having been brought to Earth when he was just a baby, but it still counted for a lot in my heart. I felt pretty special just being related to such a place. It wasn't a subtle thing either; more varied breeds of humankind existed offworld from Earth, than lived there on Earth itself. I was the only Opifex kid I knew; the only one with grey skin in school. Hell, I was the only Opifex kid in college too. I've had my fair share of teasing about it, but that's all in the past.
None of the teasing stopped me from wanting to actually go back there, to the "land of my ancestors", hah...I know, it sounds ridiculous saying it, even to me. But it's true; I do descend from that place, even if a part of me truly belongs on Earth too. *Ken leans back again, laughing a little, his tongue slithering out again, wrapping over itself before slipping back between his scaled lips*
I wanted to go back. No amount of teasing about my ash-colored skin could stop me from having dreams of visiting that place, and making something of myself there. My grandparents in particular forbid it though; the ENTIRE reason they left was to escape the war that had been going on there most of their lives.
This war that had been going on though? It was fought between a megacorporation called Omni-Tek, and a band of desert rebels calling themselves the Clans; descendants of mining workers who had become fed up with Omni-Tek's corrupt business practices and oppressive corporate structure. I didn't know much about the details of the war when I'd decided to go to Rubi-Ka though. My mistake. It's not like you can really find any solid evidence against Omni-Tek all the way from Earth though; they paint themselves as the saviors of humanity, from way back during the Emancipation Wars against the Omega, but that is a WHOLE other story. Long story short; bad shit happened, Omni-Tek picked humanity up, dusted us off, got us into space, and brought about great things for the species as a whole.
ANYWAY...
Against my family's wishes, I saved up enough money to buy myself a ticket to the Terra-Luna transit line, basically a shuttle to the moon. I did leave them a long letter so you know, letting them know where I was going; I would like to think at least I gave as much love as could fit onto a few sheets of paper, but...it still doesn't feel like it was enough. Anyway...from Luna Station, I took a six-month trip from the Sol System, all the way to the Rubi-Ka'n system, a binary star system about five thousand light years away. The whole time while in stasis, I stared at a tube across from my pod that read "NULL ION CHAMBER", which is where my callsign of Nulion comes from. No, I have no idea what it means.
I still have some...very serious regrets about taking that trip though. If only I'd stayed home and been a good boy, you know? *Ken sighs heavily, his head slumping a bit against the desk, the spines atop his head flattening against his scale-peppered scalp*
Despite it all, Rubi-Ka is a pretty amazing place. It's a smaller planet than Earth even though it has roughly the same rotational period and year length. The planet came complete with a ring system, two decent-sized moons, and a beautiful view from the surface of its dual suns, one much smaller than the other. Most of the planet, especially the uncharted far side of Rubi-Ka, is a harsh, arid desert. Huge swaths of the planet had been terraformed into something habitable and even comfortable to humans, with plenty of lush forests spread over the surface, in addition to the areas still covered in desert. Weather was heavily regulated and controlled by Omni-Tek, so the places that needed rainfall got it. Geologically and environmentally, Rubi-Ka was a fairly sound place, despite frequent sandstorms.
Problem was, Omni-Tek was not at all a kind employer. You start working at a place like that, where employment doubles as citizenship, you start at the very bottom. They stuck me in a dirty underground transit line full of garbage, feral mutants, and malfunctioning 'bots, and told me to make sure nothing got in the way of the transports and machinery that was supposed to be there. That would be where I learned how to use a sniper rifle. See, most of what existed down underground was hostile in one way or another, and being the fairly frail guy I was at the time, I decided it was best not to get too close to all of that.
People on Rubi-Ka NEED to learn how to use a weapon of some sort though, considering that violence or more natural threats can come from just about anywhere, at any time. Death was a pretty common hazard too, but that was what made Rubi-Ka the most special place in the entire universe, as far as humanity was concerned; Rubi-Ka was billed as the place where death was not permanent. *Ken smiles, as if waiting for that fact to settle in for the viewer*
Remember that "notum" mineral I mentioned awhile ago? On Rubi-Ka, notum saturates the atmosphere; you inhale it with every breath, and a part of the process of acclimating to life on Rubi-Ka is getting used to the feeling of inhaling the stuff. Makes a guy feel dizzy, but..warm and fuzzy, at first. After a week or two, you don't even notice it. Anyway, that notum saturation in the atmosphere provides a "conduit framework" for what Rubi-Ka'ns call the Insurance and Reclaim System. A few hundred years before I was born, scientists on Rubi-Ka figured out that the human soul was a real, tangible thing. Even more fascinating, they found that they could use the element of notum to actually "steer" a soul, and to re-infuse it with a reconstructed body, even after death. That would effectively bring a person back to life, as if nothing had ever happened. It's a good thing too, because life on Rubi-Ka is hazardous. I can't even count how many times I've died.
Anyway...I worked hard. I died. I continued working, getting better at shooting things. I died some more. A few implants here and there, when I could afford them, helped me do my job better. That...was a very lonesome job. I had no friends. I didn't even earn enough money to send correspondence to my family, as it was extremely expensive to send anything over that kind of a distance. Every single day, I regretted my decision to come to that planet more and more. I hadn't forgotten my original goal though, of making my family proud of me. Doing something that would be truly special, you know?
That's why, one dark and stormy night, as it usually goes, I defected from Omni-Tek. I figured that I would have more room to grow and develop with the rebel Clans, and so I picked up an application form, got myself a tiny hovel in the middle of a dirty Clan city, and set off to make something of myself.
After Defection
*Ken leans forward, both elbows on the desk, smiling a little* I will make a long, long story much shorter by saying that over the next few years, I made quite a splash in the pond as a member of the Clans. I decided that maybe the best way to make something of myself, was to try bringing peace to a war-torn world. The "Council of Truth", the main governing body of the Clans, was a means to that end. They were picking themselves up and putting themselves back together again, allowing the public to join in, and to make a difference in the effort at dealing with Omni-Tek. Neither side was winning OR losing, so the idea of keeping a balance was at least feasible. That became my new job, and that is where I'd make my mark. I oughtta note, this right here is where I keep getting confused over people mentioning "The Council". Here on 'Primal Earth', they're not exactly the best of people...but back home, they were important to me. Two entirely different Councils, you know?
Anyway...This was where I'd gotten into the realm of espionage. Sure, it's not the best way to ensure peace the way I'd hoped to, but we needed information, and to make sure we weren't stuck in the dark. I wasn't that bad at it though! Granted, I kept a lot of technology with me to ensure I could do my job well, chief among those devices a "lightbender". Piece of junk barely even works here in this reality, heh. The thing has failed me before at the very worst of times too.
See, not too long after I'd defected from Omni-Tek to work for the "enemy" faction, the CEO of Omni-Tek's Rubi-Ka division, Phillip Ross, was incapacitated by a sniper. Most powerful man on the planet, an advocate for peace, and someone puts him out of commission. Problem was, during a press conference where details of the shooting were given to the public, I was spotted eavesdropping. I also happened to be carrying a sniper rifle on my back. Because of this, they pinned the whole assassination attempt on me, making me pretty much the most wanted man on the planet. Now, I...won't bore you with the whole story of that, but it led to arrests, it led to a guy getting permakilled for releasing me from prison, and then came the whole investigation and all...It was a huge mess.
The reason I bring that up, is because I have fairly good reason to believe it ties right in with the reason I've become a reptilian freak of nature, and I use that as a term of endearment, mind you. *Ken smiles into the camera as he says that*
Infection
*Ken holds his hands together...gently clicking his inch-long, black claws against one another, and against the desk, closing his eyes a moment* Several months after the Ross shooting incident, my good name still in question by corporate authority, an announcement was made that Ross, still incapacitated at the time, had fallen victim to a virus of some sort. The virus was contained within the head of the bullet he was shot with, a cartridge type that my rifle couldn't even safely fire at the time. While it was evidence that I hadn't actually shot him, the implication of it led right back toward Omni-Tek itself. More specifically, the evidence led toward the Medical division of Omni-Tek, creatively enough named Omni-Med. *Ken smirks at first as he says that...but he looks darker...angrier, as if he could barely stand to speak the rest, especially at the mention of Omni-Med*
Omni-Med...has had a shady enough reputation, judging by a facility they'd owned out in the middle of nowhere, that had been nicknamed the ominous-sounding "Biomare" by those who had been unfortunate enough to spend time there. That was such an accurate description of the place though; a bio-engineering nightmare factory, where scientists with no regard whatsoever for human life operated with impunity, with unlimited funds. It...sickens me, even thinking about some of the things I'd seen in that hellish place...
One day, a rather uneventful day otherwise, a panicked distress call signaled from the city of Bliss, a few miles down the road from the Biomare facility. Something about a huge, escaped mutant. Myself and about 20 others from all over the place heeded the distress call, and arrived within minutes to put this thing down. *Ken looks saddened, holding his hands over his face, careful not to scratch himself with his own claws, even as he shakes his head side to side* ...that thing used to be human. It begged us to kill it. Told us that it "didn't mean to do it", that "it didn't want to". Fifty feet tall, trying to pound us and slice us to death even as it screamed and begged for us to kill it.
...gives me nightmares, even today.
We did exactly that, though. We pumped that thing full of so much energy, radiation, lead, and any other kind of available projectile...and it finally went down. Of course, it flailed as it died. I think it managed to even thank us, but...I don't quite know. The moment it hit the ground, so did I; one of its huge claws had fallen my way, and had become embedded firmly in my leg. That thing tore my leg open as if it was a filet of steak. Fragments of its claw were embedded as far in as the bone, and...I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the moment that I had become a carrier of the virus. None of us knew; there was no outward signs of infection, and the wound was repaired via nanoprogram. I can only assume some of the claw fragments are still embedded in my thigh bone.
The next day, I fell pretty seriously ill; it was like having the worst, most violent flu you could imagine. The doctors couldn't detect anything wrong with me though, they told me simply to get plenty of rest, and...and...*Ken laughs as he says this*...to keep eating chicken noodle soup. Yes, chicken noodle soup was going to be the cure for my mutations, apparently. Not that we knew that's what was going on at the time, though. It took time to figure that one out...too much time.
During the week or so that I had become incapacitated, another incident stemmed from the Biomare facility, this time in a small wooded settlement called Drumdar. Drumdar was just downstream from Biomare, and that played right into what happened. From what I'd heard, a few people had drank some of the water that contained a strain of the same virus that was now running rampant through my own body. These people had gotten a far more concentrated dose of it, sadly. They suffered uncontrollable, fatal mutations. One of them, in a fit of feral rage, had killed another few of the villagers...and ultimately, the whole town was quarantined. The incident never made the news, and was swept quietly beneath the rug by Omni-Tek. Thinking back on it now, it pisses me off to no end, what happened to those people.
My concern by that point wasn't toward them, though. I needed help...badly. The samples of water from Drumdar and the claw fragments extracted from my leg confirmed it; whatever had done that to the huge mutant and to the people of Drumdar, was in me now, and we had no idea what it was doing exactly. Those were terrifying times, you know? The doctors couldn't stop it, and I just kept getting worse every day. This...I believe...is when Kate first took notice of me. She had been watching over me, even then.
Nice to know you have a guardian angel, isn't it?
Funny thing is, I seemed to have not one, but two guardian angels. My salvation from the virus, and the very thing that ensured I could even be here talking to you, came in the form of a bitch of an Omni-Armed Forces General named Honer. She caught wind of what was happening to me, tracked me down, and when I'd finally felt well enough simply to get to my own home, she cornered me. And then bribed me. What she wanted, was evidence that Omni-Med was involved in the shooting of Phillip Ross, and she was convinced that the Lab Director of the facility, whose name escapes me at the moment, would have that evidence in his office. As payment, she would give me a stimpak loaded with a Biomare-developed cure for the virus. What choice did I have? I could hardly hold my rifle...but I went.
I think it was fear that got me through, you know what I mean? I was terrified. I felt nauseous, exhausted, and disgusted the entire time. I looked at every creature locked up in that facility, scared that if I didn't push harder, I would wind up just like them. And then there were the vivisected corpses. I could see myself lying on a slab, metallic instruments jutting from the torn-open cavity in my chest, only my warped organs displayed as evidence that I was ever a human being. You want to know why I'm so damned traumatized over this mutation? This is exactly why! Mutation in my world did not mean gaining fantastic powers like flight or mastery over fire. It meant devolving into a stump of teeth and flesh, and losing your mind, memory, and soul.
Fear got me the whole way through though. I put a bullet through the forehead of that bastard Lab Director, and I took his data. All of it. Incriminating evidence that Omni-Med was behind the development of the virus that had stricken both Ross and myself, and that Omni-Med had, through its influence, directed someone to put that bullet right into his chest. Maybe it was because Ross had become too soft against the Clans? Maybe he had found something they didn't want him to know? I still have no idea why they shot him.
Honer wasn't too forthcoming with the details though, but I knew she was very close to Ross; she had attended by his bedside, even as they fruitlessly tried to bring him out of the coma he had fallen into. The drug Honer had given me, intended for use on Ross himself, just didn't work on Ross at that stage of his infection...but it would work for me, since I had so recently been infected. Too late for Ross, but just in time for me. As I injected the stimpak, Honer told me to use the stock of my rifle to knock her out, to make it look like I had broken into her apartment and assaulted her. It would keep her from being suspected as a Clan sympathizer, and to ensure that the information I found would be accepted by the Board of Directors. It was the least I could do, I suppose...
Aftermath
*Ken smiles, looking directly at the camera, forked tongue slithering out again* I walked out of that apartment a wanted man...and even more importantly I had thought, a healthy man. Honer on the other hand was promoted, and allowed to return to Old Earth, her home, with a cushy desk job. Biomare itself was severed from the main branch of Omni-Med, disowned and disavowed; the bastards just washed their hands clean, really. As for the virus that I thought I had killed off...well. It turned out that things were less stable than I had hoped, as you can clearly see. It took a long time to really progress that far though, since the trigger for the rest of the mutations hadn't yet taken center stage.
Some time after the infection, a group of lunatics began appearing on the news. Child murderering racial supremacists calling themselves Legionnaires, donning the values, clothes, and titles of ancient Roman soldiers. They were led by a power-mad Nanomage calling himself Volcatius. Now let me explain; Nanomages, what my girl Katie happens to be, are human beings that have been infused with notum from the time they are fetuses. They have incredible, powerful control over nanobots...but cannot live in an atmosphere that is not enriched with notum. That includes Earth. Yeah, it's a miracle Kate can survive on this Earth at all. Still, being what nanomages innately are has caused groups of them to consider themselves superior to other breeds of humanity. This was the case with the Legionnaires; they believe Nanomages were the superior breed, and would permakill or subjugate anybody they considered beneath them.
Why does this matter exactly? I still worked as a spy for the Council of Truth, if you'll remember. We wanted to put an end to this insane cult, and rescue the children that had gone missing. I took it upon myself to enact a sting operation against them; maybe gain their leader's trust, if I professed the superiority of the Nanomage breed. Made me sick having to do it...pretending to be one of them, and having to live with being a social outcast for months at a time. I...had to make it convincing, you know? *Ken sighs heavily, looking regretful*
The problem wasn't specifically with me pretending to be with them; it was me being too close to Volcatius. Just being NEAR that man had reawakened the dormant virus in my bloodstream, because of his incredibly strong, innate power over nanomachines. I had essentially been re-infected, and I didn't even realize it. See, the "cure" I had taken earlier, the one Honer had given me, was a very simple "On/Off switch" meant to apply to a wide range of Biomare-designed nanoviruses, including mine. The virus never went away; it was just "sleeping" inside of me.
By the time I figured out what was wrong, it was months and months after the fact. It was too late for me.
Mutation
*Ken leans back in the chair, looking behind him, a pale-skinned woman in a tank top working on some sort of project in the background* Hah...that's Kate back there. The woman who had, this entire time, been watching me from a distance. What happened next must have alarmed her, the same way it had alarmed me. For the sake of your sanity, I'll keep it short. Well, short...ish.
The next five years after the Legionnaires had inadvertently re-activated the virus and were subsequently done away with, my life had become a living hell. I've lost count of all the medical procedures, experimental drugs, trips to psychiatrists, near-death experiences from those experimental drugs...the list goes on and on, of things that I've been through in that time. All the while, I was terrified. Scared beyond belief, and the nightmares just wouldn't stop. What would I become? What were the implications of what was happening to me? Would I die like those poor souls in Drumdar? There were just too many huge questions that nobody could answer...and the further it went, the more alienated I began to feel. People started to look at me like I was dangerous...a threat. Untouchable.
My friends back there, they understood; they offered as much of their support as they possibly could, even through the worst of times. All the while, Omni-Tek plotted to tie up their loose ends. Loose ends like me.
They employed a friend of mine who had worked in the law enforcement division of Omni-Tek, known as Omni-Pol. He managed to get a task force to pin me down, corner me...and then tranquilize me. I'm lucky they didn't "dispose of me in a furnace" as the Omni-Med director had later confessed to wishing for. I'm fairly sure my standing as a prominent Clan leader had saved my life; they didn't want the whole thing to turn into a diplomatic incident. So instead of outright killing me, they surgically "cured" me. I have....no memory of that week. I know that when I woke up from it all, drugged with docile-submissive stims provided by Omni-Reform, I looked like I did before. Completely human in appearance, just like my good ol' Opifex self. Omni-Reform by the way, is the "loyalty" branch of Omni-Tek. They claim to be a kind of psych ward, but the reality of it is that they keep people good and compliant. Brainwashing, more or less.
Anyway...Omni-Tek hadn't planned on their surgical cure backfiring. I don't think anybody did, really; not even me.
You know how reptiles are famous for being able to regrow limbs? That is called the "reptilian regeneration response" by herpetologists. By that point in time, I had apparently developed that response, as a mutation. Omni-Tek performing such radical surgery on me had essentially "damaged" my entire body; every cell in my body screamed for repair. Because of that, over the course of a single week, I went from looking like a generally healthy-looking, normal Opifex man...to more or less how I look today.
To call it traumatic would be a huge understatement. I completely lost it, freaked out, and....to be perfectly honest, I don't know what happened, at least not personally. I have a three-month gap of memory from that point. I'm told, by Kate and by others who cared for me at the time, that for a week I had gone missing, somewhere out in the desert wilds. I showed up only because I could smell viable mates in a nearby city. Following the scent, I found a group of people, people who fortunately enough knew me, and who knew enough to tranquilize me and lock me into a prison cell rather than simply kill me. Considering that insurance and reclaim technology works by recognition of DNA, there was no guarantee that the system would have even worked on me anymore. Still, I couldn't speak, or reason, or even understand any kind of human concept for a solid month. From there it was a slow crawl, having to more or less re-learn everything, over the next two months. Then, someone accidentally hit me on the head with a wooden training staff, and...that's the first thing I can remember after that three month gap; it brought me back.
I stayed steady on the experimental medications after that, scared of what I'd become. I've spent hours upon hours just staring in disgust in the mirror in my apartment, thinking for the longest time that nobody would want some kind of creature like me. I dealt with it by telling myself that maybe it'd be better off if I stayed away from most people. I was still a biohazard after all, still able to infect a person with my "curse" by any sort of fluid transfer. My voice began to warp, my ability to get along with people on a normal, everyday level began to deteriorate...I was a complete wreck.
Hoping to find some kind of peace between the two "halves" of myself created during that schism where I'd lost three months of memory, I would give in and start to hunt. My memory during the hunts was never quite there of course, I would always wake up after a black-out, coated in something else's blood, my stomach full. Of course it terrified me, you know? It was like something out of a werewolf holovid, although up until I'd come HERE, I'd never thought such things were real. It felt like I was losing control of my life, and that it was only a matter of time before I was some feral mutant wandering the wilds, silently begging to be put down by an errant bullet.
*Ken trembles a little, closing his eyes, a tear rolling down his scaled cheek*
...people tell me that I shouldn't be afraid. They did back then even. Told me I'd be okay, but...how the hell could I believe them? As time wore on, I felt like I wasn't even a part of the rest of the human race. There was them, and there was me, and not ONE SOUL in the entire known universe could know how I felt. That kind of loneliness is soul-crushing, and the urge to just let go was so powerful...and yet somehow I never did. Even as I distanced myself from everyone I knew, pushed people away, and locked myself inside my apartment, staring into the mirror. That's how it was "supposed" to be, for the rest of my questionably-timed life. I had no idea if my lifespan was lengthened or shortened by what happened, and every day I contemplated just...ending it. *Ken sounds like he's having a very difficult time saying this, wiping the tears from his eyes*
But life...has an interesting way of offering incentive to continue. *Ken smiles faintly, looking into the background at Kate, as she works feverishly on some kind of mechanical contraption, perhaps a part to an armor suit of some sort* Kate saved my life. I don't even know if she knows how thoroughly she saved me. She gave me reason to live, just by stepping into my life.
She saw the beauty in what was happening to me, even when at the time, the only part of me convinced of my own "beauty" was the side that wanted to bite, infect, corrupt, SPREAD what I was. Maybe Kate, combined with my feral side's twisted logic, is what started to convince me that maybe being like this wasn't so bad after all. The encouragement from others like Hans helped a lot too, pulling me back from the edge of insanity.
I owe everything to them. *Ken smiles directly at the camera, misty-eyed, his tongue slithering out again*
Things Get Better...They Always Do
I continued battling with mutations, even as the drugs I used to keep them under control became increasingly sophisticated. That didn't stop the mutations really...only slowed them in some instances. It was about a year ago as of this recording that the tail began to grow in, forcing me to spend a very painful week stuck in bed, as it felt like my spine tried tearing itself out of my body. To this day, I'm still not used to that thing hanging off my backside, bumping into everything, giving me that pins and needles sensation for at least a few hours every day. I don't think the nerve endings have all connected in there, really. Just one more thing that makes life every day a little more interesting for me. At least Katie likes it! *Ken smiles, seeming to reach down for his tail, holding just the tip of it above the table, where the tip seems to "wave" at the camera, the thing really just wriggling to free itself from his hand*
The whole time though, I still worked for the Council of Truth. I attended the monthly meetings, I did the paperwork, I kept things in order as best as I could. As a side project I even attempted a restoration of the upper floors of the Council's Tower of Truth, although it wound up being way too much for a single person. I didn't exactly care though, it took my mind off of things. Helped me relax, and unwind.
By this time, I was one hell of a marksman by the way; I've managed to hit a target dead center from two miles away. With one arm. Admittedly, I couldn't ever do that a second time; it was an amazingly lucky shot, and I was target practicing at the time. Omni-Tek, not to mention a rogue's gallery of other sub-factions across the planet, were still a threat. The invasion of the Kyr'Ozch aliens that took place shortly before Phillip Ross's assassination attempt had kept us all on our toes too, as they loved to launch blitz attacks on cities across the world with little to no warning; we had no choice but to simply be ready for them.
At the very least, I was able to hold steady for a time, keeping my mind busied, and Kate helped the whole way. That woman...I know that at first she had taken it upon herself just to watch me like the biohazardous threat I was and still am, but over the years, she...must have found something about me to love. I can't thank her enough for that, y'know?
Anyway...around this point is when things...got interesting.
Departing the Universe
*Ken takes a sip of a bottle of water that had been sitting on the desk the whole time, his tongue slithering *into* the bottle as he drinks, water dripping down his scaled lips and chin* Yeah. Very interesting. That was when I got the call about some kind of project Omni-Tek was working on, a new way to use purified notum. Something that sounded pretty damned dangerous, if you asked me at the time.
By that point, I was well-versed in getting in and getting out of places without making a mess. The Council wanted evidence against Omni-Tek that we could submit to the ICC, to bring some kind of sanctions against them. The ICC by the way, is the "Interstellar Commission of Corporations", a huge regulatory body that represented the one thing Omni-Tek actually feared. They were the dominant force in Old Earth politics back home, where they kept their headquarters, and through them, they acted as a sort of "United Nations" for all the different megacorporations operating within human territory. We used them as a tool, to get Omni-Tek to behave. Oftentimes, it was nothing more than the ICC that kept Omni-Tek from simply turning the mostly desert rebel areas into glass and rubble.
I was the only one sent on the mission, since it was recon and information-gathering only. I let Kate and a few others know where I was going, just in case, so that I would have a network of backup and support. It's a hell of a good thing I let them know, too. The installation was some kind of Omni-R&D and Omni-Engineering collaboration project hidden out in the middle of the woods, its remote location meant to hide it. Minimal security detail, easy to bypass. The security systems weren't a problem either, but the real issues took place inside the building.
There was some kind of chamber at the core of the facility, a large room that had been fitted with some kind of gigantic machine, a chunk of the purest notum I had ever seen suspended in the center of a series of glassy rings. The notum practically sparkled, the clearest, most crystalline blue I had ever seen from the normally cloudy-blue mineral. Embedded in the glass-like rings were small chunks, or "nodes" of greenish, crystalline material that looked an awful lot like pieces of salvaged Kyr'Ozch technology. Those aliens had a thing for green, shiny stuff; I never had a clue why.
Researchers and technicians buzzed around the device, performing what I could only assume were startup checks; they were just about to turn the thing on, and I still had no idea what it actually DID. It looked like some kind of fusion between notum tech and alien viral tech, maybe some kind of dynamo or something? *Ken sighs, shaking his head* I have no clue.
Kate, Hans, and several others were on the comm the entire time, and I continued to feed them video and audio of the entire thing as it happened. I was sent there to observe, not to interfere, but every last muscle in me was telling me to do something to STOP the project. I didn't move though, even as they powered the machine on. The rings swirled around the notum chunk, the air pulsed with electricity, and everything around me seemed to take on an aquamarine glow. I expected all hell to break loose, for things to explode catastrophically, for some kind of engineering mistake to rear its ugly head, a processor failure, sabotage, ANYTHING.
But no, there was none of that. Nothing bad seemed to happen at all...and as the researchers reported their various readings, it seemed like this device of theirs would actually work, and stay stable. Frankly, I was stunned.
The people around me, still oblivious that I was even there, cloaked, broke into celebration. As they gave one another congratulatory handshakes and popped the cork on a bottle of champagne no doubt saved since the project's inception, I couldn't help but smile a little. Sure, maybe what they were up to was questionably legal, but they'd worked hard. It's kinda nice to see people celebrating, and the good feelings are infectious. *Ken smirks a little at that last word, shaking his head with a faint smile*
I'd seen enough; I needed to check the systems for detailed information, and get some readings and the like to bring back home with me. All the celebration over the device actually working had given me comfortable access to a terminal, but the moment I looked at the thing, I wished that someone other than me had been watching. A proximity alert flashed over the display, warning of an imminent threat outside the building. Within seconds, every terminal in the building had to have been flashing the same warning. Something huge was out there.
Katie...had to have been close. Can't keep that woman away, y'know? She's stubborn in the best of ways, but this was one of many times I was glad she was there. It was the Kyr'Ozch, in one of their ships, outside of the building. Whatever that machine was, it had attracted them to that facility, and they wasted no time in showing up, presumably to either shut it down or take control of it. Considering what they wound up doing, it was obvious; they wanted that thing destroyed.
Normally, Kyr'Ozch drop in a collection of mechanical-biological shock troops to neutralize an area. From there, they seem to operate in a hive-minded unit, coordinating attacks far more efficiently than any human squad ever could. In this case though, they used some kind of beam from their ship, to CUT through the building itself, directly into the heart of the facility.
I saw the beam slicing through the ceiling, puncturing and fizzling apart everything it touched...I ran, just as I saw the beam approaching that machine. I heard screaming over the comm, and flooding the project's chamber, but it was all cut short by a deafening, all-encompassing explosion, as the beam sliced through the glass rings on that machine.
That was the last thing I remembered seeing, and Kate's panicked voice was the last thing I remembered hearing.
Awakening
I don't know how long I had been knocked out, felt like an instant had been dragged out into a month. My body was on fire. Literally, most of the armor I had been wearing was on fire, huge portions of it heavily damaged. My ocular implants were outputting nothing but ERROR messages, my map and location data had been corrupted, and all of my symbiotic implants had been knocked out of commission. I couldn't even find my rifle; it was gone.
Worst of all, everywhere around me, all hell was breaking loose. I'd woken up in the middle of a city under siege, fire and bodies and rubble everywhere. I clearly remember a sign nearly buried beneath smoldering rubble that read "Galaxy City" on it, but at the time, all I wanted was to get somewhere safe. I saw some kind of old-fashioned rifle on a body nearby, I grabbed it, and I ran as fast as my battered body would let me.
I can't even remember how far I'd run, but I remember the panic of it all. The panic of seeing a single sun in the sky, of the skies being nearly as blue as the notum in that machine was. I could see the pale shape of Luna in the sky, not a single light on its surface. I don't know if it was the overload of what had happened or simple exhaustion, but by the time I'd reached City Hall in Atlas Park, I couldn't move another inch, and collapsed on a bench.
That was...one hell of a day.
Acclimation
The first thing I saw when I woke up was a girl who smelled like sugar, and oddly enough called herself Sugar, and a fae girl calling herself Teela. Suffice to say, the fact that something like a fae or a woman who literally had no scent other than sugar EXISTED, freaked me the hell out. Just two things in a long, long list of things that threw me for a loop as I came to learn more about this strange, alternate Earth I'd wound up stuck in.
That part alone, being back on Earth, was enough of a trip. But to find that it was the year 2011? If I do the math right, that means I have fallen back in time over 27,000 years, in addition to that Earth being in some crazy alternate dimension where magic, where mythological creatures and gods and Marlin knows what else, actually EXIST. That just amazes me, even as I sit here in this chair.
I've met...some incredible people, who can do amazing, inexplicable things that I won't even bother trying to explain.
I spent about a week and a half, maybe two weeks living in this place, having shacked up with Teela while I became acclimated, before the most amazing thing happened.
Katie found me.
She had to have gone through hell, rushing headlong into that building as it exploded and burned, right into the heart of the fire that had torn me out of my own reality, just to be with me. Is it any wonder I love that woman so much? *Ken smiles, looking back toward Kate...and she looks up, smiling at him, and at the camera*
I'm amazed she can even live here, on Earth. It has to be even more of a shock for her, considering that she's never left Rubi-Ka before, and because of what she is, she never thought she'd be able to go anywhere else at all. I had mentioned before that Nanomages cannot survive in a notum-free environment, right? Earth is a notum-free environment, along with every other planet that ISN'T Rubi-Ka. If it weren't for...some kind of miracle, Kate would have died here, and on this world there is no Insurance and Reclaim system. It would have been permanent. She's a resourceful woman though, and she's been able to engineer and design her way out of just about every situation she's been stuck into. Amazing woman...and I couldn't be happier that she's here with me.
That's one of the things about this new Earth that makes me the very happiest, you see. Back home, I hadn't a single person like myself that I could relate to. Not one. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for all the help that Katie and the others have given me over the years...but it isn't their fault. It's that special feeling that can't be replicated any other way, than for me to simply have another man or woman, undergoing a transformation into something other than human, to talk with.
I finally got it here, and...it makes me so happy. If you're one of those people that I've talked to about that kind of thing, I hope you haven't been put off by my curiosity; I can hardly help myself. But still, that, combined with the fact that Katie is here...have made me so much happier than I ever was back home, even if...*Ken sucks in a sharp breath, looking almost ready to cry*...even if I might never see my family again. Or speak to them again.
I hope they know I loved them. That I only wanted to make them proud. That I wanted to do great things...and it's my dearest wish that they know that...I feel like I have done some great things in my life. Maybe someday I'll get to tell them that, somehow.
Until then...we have been getting along well here. Kate and I have been hard at work rebuilding "Shattered Dreams", the Newland City-based organization she had been in charge of while we were on Rubi-Ka. We've got some great members, including Bold, our security expert. He's been such a great friend since we wound up here, helping Kate and I to learn the ropes of all the different factions at play here. The guy might be a little sensitive and have a troubled past, far more troubled than my own, but I'd trust my life with the guy.
There's so many others too, but I'd be here the rest of the month if I tried to recount all of them, hah. Still, if you know me, if you've helped me out, if you've touched my life in some way and helped me find my feet in this crazy world, I want to give you the sincerest of thanks...*Ken smiles, givng the camera a thumbs' up, his thumb-claw getting a bit in the way as he tries to move his hand in the right way*
I've still got my issues. I still face the problem of mutations springing up, of blanking out and losing my memory when my "human side" is at its weakest. Losing myself to the virus, or giving in and biting someone so that I can spread it, is still very much a huge concern of mine. Katie is another huge concern of mine, and I worry every day about her. Despite all of that, we're going to make it. We won't just survive here, we'll thrive. We'll figure out what we need to as it comes along, and make the very best of it.
Thank you for watching this video...I know it's been long, but I've had so much to say. Just...so much.
I need to rest now.
Catch you later.
*Ken smiles, tiredly, as he reaches for the camera to turn it off, the feed jiggling around a little before it ends*
RECORDING_END
