PERSONAL

Gender: Male

Kit: Techno

Location: Nevada Desert

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Hero

Team: Solo Hero

VITAL STATS

Strength: standard (rank 1)

Agility: standard (rank 1)

Mind: standard (rank 1)

Body: standard (rank 1)

Spirit: (rank )

Charisma: (rank )

RECORD

Fame Points: 0

Personal Wins: 27

Personal Losses: 36

Team Wins: 0

Team Losses: 0

Tourney Wins: 0

Tourney Losses: 0

STATUS

Status: Active

force_echo

I walked through the Greenway meadow, it was the fastest route to school. I passed that sign, "Welcome to Fort Mill, Home of Heritage Towers". The towers were what put this town on the map, I thought as I made my way through the long grasses that made up my high school's backyard. The owner of the towers had been jailed for embezzelment. Or was it tax evasion? Anyway, the point is, the towers were world renowned, one of the best amusement parks in the world. Looking back over my shoulders, I could still see the crumbling remains of that giant castle, next to twin towers as tall as the Eiffel building in Paris, sillhoutted agianst the otherwise bland background of Fort Mill. The park had been a symbol of hope during the 1st alien invasion, it put Disney world to shame. It was funny though, the park wasn't destroyed by the constant space bombardments held by alien ships, it was destroyed by the owner's own stupidity. There was supposed to be a lesson in that, my mom always used to say. Whatever it was, witht he shutting down of the park, Fort Mill became little more than a ghost town. And I felt like the ghost. I used to read those crappy little teenage problem stories in the library, they were so stupid, but they gave me a hint at what I was missing in my life, excitement. My life was perfectly bland, not sucky, not great. It was horrible. I sometimes found myself wishing I was that nerd who got picked on, at least everyone knew him, if only to make fun of him. There is, after all, fame in infamy. I wasn't good at anything, but rather ok in everything. Straight Cs in class, average physical fitness level, 2 or 3 hollow friends, never had a girlfriend, life was a circle of endless boredom. My parents were divorced, but not even that was special. My dad was alright, but he was always at work. Even when he was at home, he never did talk to me, but it was alright because I could always play video games at his house. My mom never let me play video games, too violent. Watching news casts of soldiers beat back waves of invaders, that was my method of getting excitement. Well, I finally emerged from the greenway, jumped over the fence, and walked into school, getting ready for another dose of brain-numbing mediocrity.

E-Day. The day that changed everything. We all saw it on the news. In the papers. On the streets. The aliens had left behind a sleeper cell, miles underground, they had been waiting there, waiting to continue the genocide they had become world renowned for. It happened in South Africa, the Mponeng Gold Mine. The mine had broken 20,000 feet when the entire goddamn hole burst. We saw footage of it in school, it was like the walls of the mine were writhing, as if Mother Earth had a secret she had to let out. All of a sudden, the entire mine crumbled, burying thousands of innocent people. The monsters burst out into the main shaft, it was horrible. You couldn't see the footage on the news, but you could see it on Youtube. The monsters ripped the miners to pieces, and started their rampage. The South African military was helpless before them, and after 30 minutes, the world exploded. Monsters emerged from holes everywhere, ravagingthe human race. Fort Mill, however, was impervious to change. We weren;t even worth the time of homicidal monsters. Life went on as usual, it was like fort Mill was impervious to the second invasion. Until the draft. 10,000 high school kids were taken in by the government- I remember the day well. I was eating lunch in the cafeteria, eating my usual ham and cheese sandwich among the meaningless drivel of my classmates. Then, a thumping noise was heard as huge gusts attacked the north side of the building. A military Bloodwynd, a new class of attack helicopter armed to the teeth to kill aliens. It was huge, magnificent, and awe-inspiring. Of course, everyone rushed out into the courtyard to see what military forces could possibly be doing here. We didn;t know that there was a mass hunt for teens happenning all across the globe, we thought that there was a possibility for aliens to attack in Fort Mill. Never had I been afraid and excited at the same time. A soldier stepped out of the helicopter, he wasn;t old, but he looked aged. He was tall and muscular, with handsome features. He scanned the crowd, and pointed. At me. "You, son, come here." He spole with a gruff accent. I almost fainted, what? What the hell would they want me for? What if I didn;t want to go? What was happening? Was I in trouble? But the allure, the allure of adventure, it followed this man like a loyal dog. And it drew me in with its intoxicated scent. Slowly I fumbled my way to the man, he had a look of... pity? He nodded his head toward the copter, and I, like the foolish jackass I was trusted him. The soldier got in after me, he closed the hatch. I looked down at the surprised students as the copter lifted, even my "friends" were standing there with mouths agape. Most of the people there probably didn't even know who I was. "You need to say goodbye to your parents son?" The soldier said. That should have tipped me off that something was wrong. Maybe I did realize this, but didn't care: the mediocrity, the boredom, it all passed under me, like the sad life of a pathetic friend. It was gone, this was my chance. I turned toward the soldier and looked him solidly in the eye, "No sir."

---------------------------------

The soldier didn't say anything for the rest of the trip, I was looking out the window, watching the forested hills fade away into desert. The helicopter touched down in the middle of the desert. The place looked more nowhereish than Fort Mill, and thats saying something. It was perfectly flat desert. I got out of the helicopter into the baking sun. I walked a few feet and rammed into... a wall? "What the hell?!" I exclaimed in disbelief. "This way son," the soldier directed me through toward a seemingly empty space, was I going insane? As I rounded the corner, I almost fainted. It was a huge common area, what seemed to be a cafeteria. There were young kids, my age, eating brown sludge from bowls. They looked like shit, they all had their heads shaved and were wearing colored uniforms. The uniforms had the same design but some were blue, some were red, some were green, some were gray, and some were yellow. The uniforms stood in contrast to the cafeteria, which was plain steel, it had three levels of catwalks, and was filled with modest benches. "Welcome to the Omega base, your home for the next two years. Shielded and heavily gaurded from the outside, the only person outside its walls who knows about its existence is the President of the United States. Here, you'll be made into the next a-bomb, America's ace in the hole." The soldier's talking faded away as I took in the various recruits. They seemed to be picked at random, people of all ages, shapes, sizes, and color were here. Most surprising of all, both girls and boys were taken in by these people. The genders were seperated by what seemed like a huge plexiglass wall though, it was obvious that there wasn;t any sexual interactions. The whole experience was kinda surreal to me, I was gonna be a super soldier? Me?! It all seemed so cliche, so unreal, a building where the government commissioned supersoldiers? Was I being punked? Did someone slip me acid while I was sleeping? "Might as well enjoy the experience while you're dreaming it", I told myself. I walked through the base, the training grounds, the gym, (the plexiglass barrier ran throughout the entire base by the way) all made of the same gray steel. Kinda like my life, I mused. I expected the kids to turn to me, the newbie, and some snarky comments, something about how they were gonna kick my ass or something. It always happened on the Scy-Fy channel. But once again, I felt the crushing dissapointment of not being noticed, noone even glanced at me. But this time, instead of letting the dissapointment molder and inside and eventually sadly extinguish, I felt this white-hot rage. Here I was, this was the ONLY chance I had to be different, I had long hair opposed to shaved, regular clothes opposed to unifrom, I WAS DIFFERENT IN EVERY IMAGINABLE WAY! And yet still! Still noone would even look at me?! I clenched my fist, desperately trying to control my outburst. By the end of the tour, the rage was replaced by aching sadness. Even in this dream I was still confined to being an amorphous blob. even my subconscious imagination couldn't rid me of what I thought to be my billet in life. I almost cried, this dream sucked balls. I looked up to the soldier, and for the first time in the tour, actually listened to what he said, he had a tear glistening in his eye, "Son. You seem like such a- such a nice kid. Be a survivor, please. Survive." What? What the hell was he crying for? I could read true sadness in his cracking voice, but why? I peered into the old man's face, but I couldn't get a good look before a sliding door cut me off, I heard the locking mechanism whirr into place. I turned around, a plain bunker was waiting for me. The 9 by 9 cell had a toilet, a sink, and creaky old uncomfortable springbed. And it was painted in the same bland steel color as the rest of the base. I layed down on the mattress, the soldier's face in my memory as I drifted slowly to sleep.

Adapt or Die

     Force of Will: standard (rank 1)

The first phase of the training was just like high school. I was assigned to the silver boy team, we were given regular exercises, it was a lot like high school. 3 meals a day, mundane teamwork exercises and regular classes. I fit into the same "Straight C" niche I had in high school, except this time it was amplified by the lonliness I felt among the dull gray corridors of the facility. I would have probably ran away if I had anywhere to run to and if the sentry guns outside the base were deactivated. In any instance, I felt deppressed, is this the life of a glorious super soldier? I was perfectly in the middle of any exercise we did, not a stellar exemplar of a soldier or a pathetic simpleton. As time slugged along, I began to notice the older kids were dissapearing (its not like I had anything better to think about), persumably to the restricted area of the facility which was heavily gaurded by more automated sentry guns, but they came back about a week later, acting slightly strange. I also began to notice the reluctance of the military instructors to form even a margin of personal relationship with the kids in the facility, they were very gaurded. If my mind hadn't been plagued by ennui, I would have realized what phase 2 of the training consisted of. After a year of continued boredom in the prison that came to be my home, it was my turn. The boys slept in the silver team cell block according to age, and in the middle of the night, military personnel stole into the block and kidnapped the 16 year old boys. I was with them. My memory consisted of a series of confusing sights and sounds, and finally blackness, I would later find out that they replaced most of us with automated drones a week later, they were studying my personality during the introductory year of training, maybe a similar drone had been sent to my parents. I remember smiling upon that thought as I went to my first "training session" (or so they told me). What personality would the drone copy? I chuckled at the thought, perhaps to counter my fear. They had me strapped down to some kind of steel bed, it was uncomfortable. The secured me to a lab table, and it began. The pain I would endure for the next year was mind numbing. It was so excrutiating, that it left mental scars, or so my military therapist tells me. The power of the fear, of the pain, it would began to destroy me mentally. But the breif respites in between the mechanations of that hell, I spent in sleep. And in my fluttering dreams, a recurring symbol came back to me, that amusement park, back home. Impervious to the war, such a place of happiness. I never got used to the pain, it was what I imagined Hell to be like, but the park gave me strength somehow. I never told anyone about my time there, even my therapist dosen't know but what I choose to tell him. When the white hot coals of agony were finally lifted from my eyes, in what seemed to be those long years, I was strong. The thing that had killed me, scarred my psyche, destroyed my perception of the world, that pain. That excrutiating pain, had showed me the one thing that would free my soul from the throes of deprevation. The willingness to live, that was my niche in life, my talent, as people call it. The survivor's instinct, perfectly personified by that lonely park on the hillside.

Hot Iron

     Armor: superior (rank 2)

The source of my pain was what enabled me to fight. They had infused the armor inside of me, they had drained my bone marrow and had replaced the organic mush with cold titanium alloy. They had grafted nueral implants in my brain so I could summon and disperse the armor at will. To offselt the bone marrow, they had inflicted me with a type of blood cancer, excrutiatingly painful, but able to replace division of blood cells so that the bone marrow was not needed. As it seems, these processes were not pleasant. This is what enabled me to find my "power", my will to survive.

BLADE System

     Piercing Weapon: standard (rank 1)

• Ranged Attack
• Long Ranged Attack

The military had outfitted me with the tools I needed to become a killing machine, and part of my arsenal included the BLADE modular system. A highly efficient .50 caliber rifle, it was outfitted with an electronic scope that could "see" in thermal, infrared, and ultraviolet with up to 50x zoom, camera systems so I could shoot while in cover, and an enhanced modular system to increase its adaptability to any situation, including the ability to split the rifle into two SMGs. I instantly took a linking to my weapon. An instrument of killing, made of steel, forged from flame, a description applied to both the weapon and its master.

One Shot

     Marksman: superior (rank 2)

There were no flash fire exercises in my training. Every time I missed, every time I got hit, neural transmitters would transmit pure pain into my physique. I learned there were no margins for error. I resented them, at least, I told myself I did. But there was always this little piece of me that reminded me that they saved me from a life of slow decay. And so I allowed myself to be taken into their hands. It wasn't like the comic books I had read in my youth, I couldn't shoot bullets out of the air, I wasn't a God, I wasn't "the best I was at what I do" but I was good enough. Or so they thought.