RPG The Throwaways - Backstories

[DeLarge]

 

The Throwaways

 

Backstories

 

Welcome to Backstories, a thread where you can write about your character in The Throwaways without the limitations imposed upon you by the assignments. You can let your imaginations and creativity run wild, and show us exactly what your character is made of!

 

---

 

Now

 

En route to Nevada

 

"A caged god...how fitting..."

 

The words rang in Lucas' head as he drove through the darkness, his eyes flicking briefly from the road to the unnaturally pale girl now curled up asleep in the passenger seat. It had been a few hours since he picked her up, and she was clearly drained judging by how quickly she fell asleep, particularly in the often disquieting presence of a complete stranger.

 

He, on the other hand, didn't need sleep: the chaotic well of energy that churned as the core of his being kept him conscious and energised, meaning he never felt tired. He never felt hungry or thirsty either, for that matter: one of the advantages of essentially not being human, as it really cut down on food and energy bills. It was why he didn't mind driving, even if the journey was hundreds of miles long and likely to take several hours, without breaks.

 

The new recruit made him nervous, though. She was an unknown quantity, her power couldn't be easily defined and according to Geist's preliminary files, her mental state left a lot to be desired. It seemed likely that she would be unpredictable in the field and could potentially endanger her teammates.

 

Remind you of anyone? Lucas thought with a chuckle. He remembered back to the broken man, both physically and mentally, that he was when Geist took him in six years ago: he had been close to collapse, dangerous to those around him and mentally unstable, just like Alice was now. Taking chances on dangerous people was what Geist did, and it had rebuilt Lucas into a brand new man: he was grateful to them, but that didn't stop him from being uncomfortable with some of the things they asked him to do.

 

"A caged god..."

 

His train of thought was interrupted by those words floating back to the forefront of his mind. It wasn't the first time he'd heard those words. Strangely, it wasn't even the first time he'd heard them in the past few years, but the last time was under very different circumstances.

 

---

 

2 Years Ago

 

Alaska

 

"Come on Corrigan...hold yourself together..."

 

The words were snarled through barely-formed lips, deep orange energy blazing through the rapidly-flaking flesh as Lucas forced himself up to his knees. His eyes darted over to his teammates, men and women far more experienced and competent than he was, now lying dead in the drifting snow around him. He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to focus on his swiftly-decaying physical form, only to find that his eyelids had already burnt to ash and drifted away in the cold wind.

 

"They can't hold us! You have to know that!"

 

These words were roared above the howling wind, by the rogue superhuman they had been tasked with tracking down. He was still a kid, no more than seventeen years old, cursed with an ability that caused anyone within a few feet to drop down dead without warning. They had tried to inhibit his power, but that only served to make him angrier, and with a single thought he had wiped out an entire team of trained, superpowered operatives.

 

Well, nearly an entire team. One of the advantages of not technically being human was that death wasn't always as forthcoming as it was with other people: the kid's attack had affected the biological parts of his form, though, and he was struggling to hold himself together, and the energy that made up his true form was beginning to spill out.

 

"Come on...he needs you..." Lucas growled to himself, pulling what little flesh remained back and forcing it to hold in place in a rough approximation of a human body. He forced himself to his feet, and stared the kid in the eyes, knowing that he must have looked horrific to any onlookers, a twisted impression of a human body formed of orange fire and charred black flesh.

 

"They can help you..." Lucas shouted over the wind, "I was like you before they found me. I was angry, emotional, and dangerous to the people around me, but they helped me. They can help you too!"

 

"No...all they want is to control us!" the kid screamed, fury etched on his face, "They want to hold us, and make all of us like you!"

 

"Maybe they do," replied Lucas, taking a step closer and feeling the kid's power tugging at the remains of his physical form, "But some of us are dangerous. You and I...we're both dangerous, and Geist can help us."

 

"No!" the kid howled, and Lucas felt a pulse as his ability lashed out, "You could be so much more than you are now. You and I...we are gods! But they've trapped you...caged you..."

 

Lucas sighed. He had been trained to recognise the signs of danger, not just in terms of superpowers, but based on psychological profiles and body language. This kid...he didn't want to be saved: he felt that the world owed him something, and he wanted to stand above regular humans rather than live amongst them. In short, his powers had given him a god complex, and that kind of arrogance combined with the kind of power this kid had would never lead to anything good.

 

"I tried," Lucas said, quietly this time, and yet his voice seemed to carry over the roaring wind, "I want you to remember that. I tried to help you."

 

"Shut up! SHUT UP!" the kid screamed, and Lucas once again felt his power surge up.

 

So the only thing Lucas could do was respond in kind.

 

He took a deep breath, and directed as much of his energy as he dared towards the kid. A great gout of blazing orange energy blasted outwards from his hands and slammed into the kid's body, tearing through his flesh and bone, a cloud of ash and smoke rising from him as an unearthly scream erupted from his mouth.

 

Lucas winced and looked away, hurling his energy towards the kid until the cries of pain abated, then dropped his hands and looked back towards the kid. What was left of his body lay still on the snow, smoking and charred and entirely lifeless.

 

"Damn it..." Lucas groaned, limping over to the body of his team leader and grabbing the communicator from his lifeless wrist.

 

"This is Neutron," he croaked into the communicator, "All other operatives deceased. Requesting exfiltration..."

 

"Affirmative, Neutron," a crackly voice replied from the communicator, "Exfiltration imminent."

 

Lucas dropped the communicator and fell to his knees, trying to compose himself before he was picked up.

 

"A caged god..."

 

---

 

Now

 

Nevada

 

A shudder ran through Lucas' body as he tried to purge the memory from his head. Alaska was a long time ago, and he had done a lot of similar work since, but he still didn't like thinking about it. It was his first real taste of the kind of work Geist needed him to do, and the first time he had lost teammates, and he had come a long way since then.

 

But every so often, like when Alice had said those words to him, he drifted back to that time. The words were a reminder of what he could be if he lost control, and the destruction he could cause if Geist's precautions failed.

 

Because while it may sound dramatic, those words are the essence of Lucas Corrigan.

 

"A caged god..."

[Nyxian]

Kato looked over the top of his book as he watched the kitten he had rescued from a volcano eruption a couple of hours ago play with the cord to the light in the corner. "So much has changed since I was last awake." he sighed and put the book down after marking his place. He leaned back as he thought about the last time he roamed around.

 

1,ooo years ago

 

"Are you serious?! I have to pay taxes again? I just paid them to the baron, what does he want now?" A woman said, planting her hands on her hips as she glared at the men that had come to do the Baron's bidding.

 

"You watch your mouth, wench. The Baron wants to throw a party tonight, and you're going to cook for him." one of them said, grabbing her arm, the other moving to her other side.

 

"Like 'ell I will! Let go of me!" she said as she struggled to get free.

 

"Shut u-" the man didn't finish his statement as a blade protruded from his neck.

 

"What the -" the other man said as he watched the body of his partner fall to the ground.

 

"Alexander Grooms, your time has come." Kato said as he read a book, it's black leather catching the light. He called the weapon back to him as he turned his cloaked head to the other man. "Death has come to claim his due." he intoned as he extended his hand at the man, pointing at his heart.

 

"Inform your Lord that the Reaper has come." Kato said, trying to his his amusement from the two people in front of him before he teleported to the nearby hill and out of sight. He burst out laughing, throwing back his hood and falling to his knees. "They should have seen their faces! Hahhahahahaha!" he slowly caught his breathe as he wiped the tears from his eyes as he thought about his next step in taking out the local lord that had grown fat and tyrannical over the years. "Now, what should I wear to the party?" he mused as he sat down against a tree and waited for the panic to calm down and the rumors to spread.

 

Present

 

Kato was snapped out of his as the lamp came crashing down and the kitten running to his lap. "There, there, It's ok now." he calmed the little cat as he moved to inspect the damage. He turned to the door as the doorbell rang. "Coming!" he called at the door, holding the kitten in his arm. He walked over and opened the door, letting one of his handlers in. "Everything ok here?" he asked as he took in the broken lamp.

 

"Yes, thank you. Just a little accident while playing." Kato explained as he showed him the kitten. "Little One here just hasn't learned that somethings aren't as stable as they appear. Found him near the volcano on, how was it pronounced.... Hawaii, I believe it was." He smiled as the kitten mewed at him.

 

"Already taking vacations?" the man teased as he set down the case that he had brought with him.

 

"Just trying to see what has changed while I slept. What's that?"

 

"You'll be glad to know that we've found and cleaned your scythe for you. Yes, you could've called it to you, as you've said before, but we wanted to run some tests on it before we handed it over." he sighed and unlocked the case, opening it only to find it empty. He blinked and turned to look at Kato, who was in the other room with the weapon and spinning it around like it was nothing. He dropped his head in annoyance, silently berating Kato for making him carry the heavy metal item up the numerous flights of stairs that were the only option as the elevator to the penthouse was broken. Not that it mattered tot the man in the other room who was playing with the kitten as the weapon was popping up in random places around the room.

[DeLarge]

Bullets screamed past Felicia Cole's head, spraying chunks of concrete and plaster from the walls around her as she quickly ducked below a stack of metal boxes, tossing her own empty rifle away as he hit the ground.

 

"Now would be a really good time to give me some," she growled into her communicator, "A really, really good time, in fact."

 

"Negative, Danger," the businesslike voice from the other end of the line responded, "You have reached your exposure limit for this week."

 

"Goddammit," she snarled, "I really think there should be some kind of exception for weeks where you send me out on six different assignments...give me some bloody wiggle room here!"

 

"That's a negative, Danger. No wiggle room."

 

Felicia swore under her breath, pulled a small concussion grenade from her belt and lobbed it over the stack of boxes towards the people shooting at her. She heard a whomp and a scream, and rolled her eyes as she continued her conversation.

 

"Can I at least speak to Reins?"

 

The operative on the other end of the line audibly sighed.

 

"I'll pass you on now."

 

The line suddenly became flooded with a tinny recording of some smooth jazz track or other, and Felicia scowled.

 

"Well, that's incontrovertible proof that at some point I died and went to hell," she said to herself, wincing as more bullets hit the metal boxes she was resting on, "Come on, Reins, you flash bastard..."

 

A few more moments of smooth jazz punctuated by bone-shaking bullet hits later, a male voice crackled onto the communicator.

 

"Danger, this is Reins," the smug voice said, "You are authorised on this occasion to exceed your maximum exposure limit. You have 3 minutes."

 

"Finally, something I can get on board with," replied Felicia with a smile as a warm, tingling feeling began to spread through her body. The pain from the cuts and bruises that had been caused by her current group of enemies faded, along with the ongoing, insistent muscular pain from years of pushing herself to her physical limits. She felt refreshed, her strength renewed and even increased, and she looked down as the familiar form of Danger crawled across her body, covering it in a lightweight red-and-black suit of body armour.

 

"Hello, old friend," she murmured as the suit reached her neck and stopped, a low hissing noise emanating from the being she was now indelibly linked to, and her senses were suddenly on fire. She could hear the heavy breathing of her enemies over the other side of the complex, she could smell the sticky, wet blood that she had caused them to shed, and she could feel the subtle changes in the air pressure caused by their weapons firing.

 

With a deep breath, she leapt out of cover with greater speed than anyone else in the room could have expected, exploding out from behind the boxes and hurtling through the air towards her enemies. They took aim and squeezed off a few shots, most missing entirely but the one or two bullets that found their mark were crushed into harmless metal studs as they collided with her armour.

 

She landed with both feet square in the centre of a man's chest, feeling bones snap and pop under the sudden and unexpected impact; she flung her arm out towards the closest group of men, feeling Danger extend from the tips of her fingers like living tendrils of fabric, slicing through flesh and cartilage like a knife through butter; she felt her whole body working in tandem with the being known as Danger to punch, kick, slice and strangle her way through a rank of armed and highly-trained soldiers. She delighted in the death and the bloodlust, and for three minutes she and her symbiotic partner were a perfect combination of anger, grace and death.

 

And then it was over.

 

After three minutes that felt like a lifetime, she was all too aware of Danger retracting, the armour melting off her limbs and taking with it the calming anaesthetic that took her pain away. Agony flooded back into her muscles and bones, seemingly ten times worse than before, and she collapsed into a heap as her power, her drug, was taken away from her.

 

The stench of blood and death filled her nostrils, a combination that still turned her stomach no matter how many times she was faced with it, and she became acutely aware of the crushed, broken and dismembered bodies laying on the floor around her.

 

Thick, freezing sweat formed on her forehead, and she felt a rush of nausea overcome the physical pain coursing through her body for just a moment.

 

"Congratulations, Danger," Reins said through the communicator, "Another successful assignment. Maybe we'll increase your exposure limit next week as a reward."

 

Thanks a lot, she thought as she hauled herself shakily to her feet, resigned to the constant, crushing cycle of addiction and withdrawal her life had become since she had first heard the name 'Geist Industries'.

 

There was just one thing that kept her going through the pain, the nausea, the ecstasy and the crippling depression: the thought, and the hope, that one day Tyler Reins would die by her hand, and she could regain control over her life.

 

A girl can dream...

[CaNz]

"You have been working too hard Roy, even God took a day to rest.  You make mistakes when you are tired."   

 

I despised it when Joseph was right, so I constantly attempted to push myself.  He was an insufferable pessimist. He declared that  I would never graduate top of my class, never attain employment at MacOne, and I most certainly would never achieve anything as prodigious as Adam Clarke's achievements. His assessments were perpetually accurate, however my contumacy was equally unremitting. Besides, I am far too close to hesitate now. "If you aren't here to assist me, go home. I will retire as swiftly as possible given the circumstances." He ultimately complied after pestering me for an eternity. 

 

I am not averse to working alone, but a specialized team like MacOne's research division would have simplified this process exponentially. I long for the day when my work awarded me a position with a team of my equals, but when that vision will reach fruition is presently uncharted. The elemental research and development project had consumed six years of my life, and four of Joseph's.  Now all that remains is deriving the perfect formula of subatomic particles in order to obtain a functioning element. We decreased the possible blueprints to a few hundred, and this will be attempt number 79.

 

'I am close now. I can feel it.' 

The laboratory's sterile desks shimmer as the particles dance inside the high-tech apparatus. The PA-20's monitor casts its eerie green light upon the cream painted walls, flickering steadily. The gentile hum of the fan venting the system fading warned that something might be amiss however the monitor was too captivating. The element assimilated before my eyes in spectacular grace. I didn't even attempt to suppress the tears gushing like blood from a fresh wound.  

 

The testing would have to begin tomorrow. My superiors will want to know the formula, and if the element is able to control the mind like my research suggests. I took the current lab results and enclosed them safely in the steel briefcase I constantly carted around.  It was company policy to store confidential documents locked inside cases with an acid dispenser trap to prevent tampering. For once the scrupulous regulations are justified since mind control in the wrong hands could be catastrophic.  

 

While placing the briefcase on the desk, I caught a glimpse of the walls shifting from somber green to a radiant orange.  Rushing to the PA-20, I could see my metal melting into the crevasse of the appliance. A blinding flash superseded by a thunderous explosion shook the confines of the laboratory.  Had it not been three am an emergency crew would have rushed in and quarantined the area, however I simply laid there understated among the rubble, with each breath more of the putrid fumes filled my lungs.  As I lost consciousness only one thought plagued my mind. 'Joseph was right... I am tired.'

 

PRESENT

 

"Currently we cannot permit you to join the other members of the team. Infiltration missions require stealth, and we are unsure of your ability to remain hidden when you're under the elements control." Geist's concerns were legitimate. Adoctrinar most likely would attempt to abide by the team's strategy, however a temper like his could easily cause problems when caution is desired over action.

 

"I presume there is no point in objecting? If so allow me to return to my studies. If you expect me to be useful in a close quarter scenario I shall require more weaponry than a sniper rifle."

 

"You may leave. Just make sure to be ready when the time comes."

Edited February 20, 2015 by CaNz

[CaNz]

Start the machine, remove the metal, replace the material, repeat. If touching the warm metallic material didn't feel so good this would be really boring. There was that one guy who came in on... what was it... Monday? Whatever... he's dead now.  Soon I will have enough of this stuff to make something useful. 

I know how to shoot a few different guns, but I like seeing peoples faces explode, so I think I will go for a sniper rifle. I haven't seen a head explode before, but that doesn't mean I don't wanna see one explode, Exploding heads probably look really cool. Oh, the metal is done. 

Weaponization of technology is the main focus of my boss, so it isn't hard to find a gunsmith right in the same building, and with a little bit of persuasion, I will have my big gun. 

 

its so bright today. The blue, cloudless sky makes it easy see everyone on the city streets, but the humidity is brutal. I don't know how much more of this I can take. From the rooftop its quite easy to see the panic my new sniper rifle is causing... but the head exploding is far less fun than watching people kill each other after nonlethal blows. My favorite was shooting that mother in the leg. I can't believe she chucked her own baby at someone! Hilarious! 

 

So far the stand off with the police is going nowhere. All I need to do is shoot one and they all panic, but nothing lasts forever... Maybe I should just shoot myself. I mean... if I have to go, I may as well have my head explode... I really like head explosions. 

 

Just as I was fumbling the rifle around trying to figure out how point it at myself as well as pull the trigger, a man approached. I couldn't tell why he was here, but he was no police officer.  Geist representatives don't exactly have a dress code.

Edited February 28, 2015 by CaNz