Nicky Wraith
| Nicky Wraith | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Player: Dragonrider4000 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Nicky Today | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Character Build | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Class Focus: | Tank | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Power Level: | 40 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Research & Development: | Science | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Biographical Data | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Real Name: | REDACTED | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Known Aliases: | Abyss | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gender: | Female | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Species: | Human | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ethnicity: | Caucasian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Place of Birth: | USA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Base of Operations: | Earth | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Relatives: | REDACTED | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Characteristics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Age: | 26 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height: | 6' 4" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight: | 180lbs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Eyes: | Blue | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hair: | Black Dyed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Complexion: | Caucasian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Physical Build: | Variable | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Physical Features: | Her eyes have a golden hue. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Status | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alignment: |
Chaotic Neutral | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Reputation: |
Unknown | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Identity: | Ghost like | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Years Active: | REDACTED | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Citizenship: | None | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation: | Mercenary | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Education: | Extensive | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Marital Status: | Single | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Known Powers and Abilities | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Electricity is only the beginning. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Equipment and Paraphernalia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| QUEEN | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Intelligence |
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Psyche |
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| Intuition |
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| ReldinBox Template | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Contents
First Breath
Few memories ever survive from those early years of tottering feet, tears and trials. An image, a voice, a smell; a brief flash of memory that can stay rooted in your soul held precious because it is the first you claim. Our memories shape us and define who we become. It could be anything or anyone.
For Nicky it was the sky.
An all-encompassing expanse of blue sky that filled her world and her young, so young heart. A bright shining moment that showed her the beauty in the world, and the freedom it could bring far before she could ever understand it, or the bars that blocked the way.
Nicky was born to be an orphan, abandoned by her parents and left at an orphanage that could never be called reputable, let alone respectable. Thrown out into the world with an orphanage supplied name and nothing to hold to it beyond the sky. A nobody. Yet a nobody was what was required. Though the orphanage may have promised more of a sedate life than the place she ended up.
For it was not long after she turned two that –he- found her. Chose her. She was subsumed into the RAVEN training programme and became 23. In time that view of blue would come to haunt her darkest days, a shining example of all she could not have.
Lab Rat
What is it to live your life as a number? Too many have experienced it in this world, the horror, the confinement and yet so few understand it. 23 does, any like her do. Perhaps 23 is one of the few who truly understand where those depths lie. She was not destined for the life she fought for, not when she first drew breath. She was destined to be nothing more than a science experiment. A curiosity. A trial.
How the organisation ever came across the technology is unknown. Even today it is quite rare. A supercomputer neural interface prototype, designed for use by the richest and the most powerful as a hidden aid. The first was just a curiosity, but its computing power and ability to be concealed as a fine tracery inside the body itself while the heart resided in the brain gave it quite the advantage. The only drawback was the potential damage it would do to an adult mind, indeed the few attempts made by its creator resulted in permanent brain damage, the worst complete catatonia.
Yet 23 was a child, with a more resilient mind and still growing and binding neural pathways. A child would certainly be more resistant to the rigours of the procedure, and with her they had all the time in the world. They could prolong it as much as they desired. She was taken from the blue sky into the depths and so the experiment began.
Forced to learn during the day to keep her mind stimulated and growing, and subjected to their evils in the evening she slowly began to slip into darkness step by aching step. Never alone with his presence, even the sanctuary of her mind was breached as the computer they installed grew deeper, connections set into the still developing reaches of her mind, micron by painful micron.
Years passed in that never ending torment, surrounded by those she could not trust, those that could not or would not provide her with comfort. Trapped in the artificial construct of what she was later to realise was RAVEN'S NEST she sank further into the creations of her mind. A cruel existence for it could not be called life. A terrible way for any. What would you do, if you were given the choice to run?
The cold of the bed is like iron, each movement is agony, to breathe is painful, but yet she labours on. There in the darkness of her cell she breathes and by inches forgets that she was ever truly alive. Only for the visceral beat of her heart confirms her existence. She wished for no hope, she wished for no taste of freedom. Yet still so sweetly, so painfully it was given.
She hears the door slide open and tenses where she lays; they had come for her again. There was no speech, she was simply shaken gruffly on the shoulder and she rose to her feet. She is no more than eight, though her body is frail, clad in simple grey trousers and shirt; unable to stop a slight tremor as she stands before them.
"He normally wakes me before you arrive," she asks, hiding the fear with questions. The hand that covers her mouth is shocking but she does not cry out, she is long past that response. She stares at the woman in front of her, for it is a woman, she is close enough to tell that now. One of the newest nurses to have been brought in to aid her torment, indeed the tools of her trade still gleam in her pocket.
"I'm Nicky, I'm here to save you," the woman breathes into her ear and how sweet that torture is, how those words infected her. She can barely swallow as that sickly hope passes through her, an opiate of happiness she can almost not bear and she feels faint. She doesn't resist as she is pulled by the hand out into the dark corridor, the metal achingly cold to hear bare feet, but she hardly feels it. Doesn't care.
They race along that maze of corridors, running from nothing, no sound behind them only the spots of red in that small child's vision. The brief flashes perhaps of the exhaustion she is feeling. At last they reach a door and the vice like grip on her hand is loosened as her saviour works the lock, it budges but just a little. They must crawl.
"I'll check it's clear," the woman whispers and slides beneath the door, a moment later her hands appear and the girl allows herself to be pulled through. She blinks a little, staring around at somewhere she has never been before, but then she notices what the lady hasn't.
She presses back against the door, terror gripping her a squeak at her feet only making the bile rise as she realises they are but rats in a maze. With a shaking hand she does the only thing she can think of in that breathless moment, withdrawing the syringe poking from Nicky's pocket removing the greatest symbol of the daily pain she feels, to make it her own.
"There has to be a way out." The lady mutters, sounding annoyed as she inspects a crudely drawn map held tight in her hand. "I was sure..."
A moment later the lights slam on in that all-consuming presence of artificial light, and she knows he is here. Her shivers match the feeling of the door sliding down at her back, trapping her there.
"You are in a restricted area Ms Burrows."
The voice is calm, as always devoid of anything but then, it is him. The girl swallows; she understands their peril and wonders why Ms Burrows does not. How can anyone stand there looking defiant? Against him such is impossible. She is one of the lost ones. She will not be with her classmates tomorrow she knows.
"You cannot expect to get away with this, I will not condone torture." Ms Burrows responds, her tone harsh with fear or anger the girl cannot tell, "I will not let you keep her."
"Twenty-three," he says no longer apparently concerning himself with the woman, "this is your test."
She freezes, her body matching the feel of ice that had already gripped her. With sudden sickly calm she realises she has one chance. Her breathing quickens and her pulse is loud in her ears, she is so young, yet she knows the stakes.
"What do you mean?" Ms Burrows says suspiciously turning to look at her, and for a moment Twenty three is lost in the blue of those eyes, a flash of barely remembered sky in her mind and in that moment she hates her. Hates her for the hope. It is enough.
No one expects what happens from a child.
She steps towards the nurse, moving as if to embrace her but the needle's aim is swift and true. In shock the nurse staggers back, pulling the syringe from her arm, but it is too late.
"A syringe is never empty," the girl says in a low monotone, staring up at the nurse through her long fringe, "bubbles in the blood break the flow. I learnt that in biology."
The syringe clatters to the floor as the nurse drops to her knees staring at the girl with shocked eyes, almost begging her. Yet for what the child doesn’t know it is too late, far too late. Ms Nicky Burrows does not say a word as she slumps to the side, already quite dead; the air lock in her veins had done its job quite nicely.
For an age the girl is left there, staring at the body in the light of the room, almost unseeing but oh she sees. She doesn't look away though, doesn't scream and doesn't cry. Her heart beats on, that is her only safety, her proof of life. At last she looks up, looking for him, for that gleaming camera, that sense of presence.
"What next?" She asks voice cold and dead, turning her chin up a little trying to hide her fear. Then she cannot help but look down at the corpse again but her voice remains the same, "Who next?"
"Congratulations twenty three, you have passed the test." His monotone voice calls and the door behind her screeches up. "Return to your room."
Rat to Raven
Returning from the precipice of death into the cold tomb of her cell was a turning point in her existence, if such could be called a blessing it perhaps was. A dark deed that set her on course for the one chance she would ever truly have at the opium of freedom. With the act of killing the nurse she showed she still wished to live, realised in herself that she still had the desire despite everything they had done to her.
A revelation that could have drove her mad it instead drove her on.
With an almost ferocious intent she threw herself into her classes, her focus sharpening to a great extent and, at last, as she stopped fighting it the computer they had forced into her mind began to work to her advantage. She poured her learning into that device as system after system slowly activated, using it to push herself further and further away from the death she had come all too close to receiving, to proving she was not a waste of space, a failure. What else could you choose when death was the only other option?
For a time she lived in this focused driving of thought, letting them continue their cruel torments that through her perseverance became more and more infrequent as her mind accepted the computer into itself. Until, finally, she was just another RAVEN in his clutches. Another bird in a cage. Though life still had one more painful trick to play on our young 23, not yet a teenager.
Eye of the Storm
She knew she was nearing the end of her treatments, nearing the end of her time as an experiment. She knew it. They were coming for her with less and less consistency and each time. She still felt that sense of dread though that tinged on fear. Had she done enough to survive? Was nearly being the top of her strange class of other captured children be enough? That, she did not know. So she waits, sat as before in a larger but identical grey top and trousers. Waiting for them to come for her, eyes staring vacantly at the wall opposite in the dark of her room and she forces back the wince as the lights flare on. Always so bright.
"Make your way to the test chamber." His voice resounds as emotionless as her mind replays to her in her dreams.
Even as she rises she is frowning a little, to be summoned can only mean they have something large in mind. That, or he simply knew she wouldn't refuse, though when had she ever had that choice? Never. In her usual silence she follows the lights that guide her through the maze of the complex, her eyes fixed straight ahead, not focusing on any details but the lights. Letting them lead her ever onwards.
"Enter." he intones as she nears a door and she complies.
23 doesn't cry out as they strap her down into the chair almost on her back. Never flinches as they fix her eyes open. Simply stares up at the ceiling, reeling off maths in her head, figures, dates. Anything to block out her presence, and the itching in her skin that flares every time she is worked on these days. She forces her thoughts of every reason why they would want her eyes open, she doesn't want to know and the truth will not let her escape anyway. The local anaesthetic is cold comfort at the fact she can still see and she takes a sudden breath in before forcing back any sound. She will not fail,she will keep her heart beating. The itching flares at this, almost as though her skin were crawling, seeking to leave her to her fate and she swallows down her rising emotions.
Her attempt at control was almost enough to stop the flicker of fear in her as the scalpel descends to work along her eye, almost. Not a word has been spoken between her or those that work on her, and she is glad for it as panic sticks her in the chair. Skin aching along with each incision she is forced to watch as though it reaches to her heart. She hates them, hates them all and fears them too.
It feels like an age to her panicked mind but it is the work of mere moments for them to add something to her eye. Another part that 23 will never be able to remove and she forces back the desire to blink her aching eyes, to move them and forces herself to breathe. She will not fail. She cannot. Her need though breaks through as they shift to the other, it is too much all at once. Far too much.
The power when it flows from her is unexpected, strong and deadly. Coils of electricity, static and force shifting out to slam into those that work on her, burning skin, tearing flesh and throwing them out across the room. Their lives already ended before they hit the floor, they had not even had chance to scream. The power rocks through where she is bound, burning and frying through them until she is free. It is just an instant, a flare of unknown power by her need to survive, but it is one of those moments you can never take back.
With barely a tremor she rises, looking over the bodies with shock she can't contain before raising her hands and looking at them with confusion, as the itching continues to crawl over them, but she knows what it is now. So unusual is it all to her that she forgets her fear for an instant. Then it returns to hard it nearly floors her, yet still he remains silent. A minute passes, then another before another enters. She recognises them immediately, 35, the bottom of her class and he stares at her in all too obvious confusion as his eyes dart quickly to the dead bodies and back to her.
"Twenty three, repeat your demonstration." his cold voice says softly.
It is almost with relief she stands, her one worked on eye aching, and leaving trails of blood down her cheek. She focuses on that itch as she walks, able to hate 35 for simply existing as she sees the fear in his eyes and the way he looked so pitiful and confused. The itch grows, flaring into pain down her arms and across her back and instinctively she raises her hand and lets it go. The power of the bolt stuns her and she stumbles back, but her aim was more than true, the arc of electricity catching him full in the chest and she sees the moment the lightening passes his eyes and snuffs him out. She almost manages a smile.
"Congratulations Twenty three.You have passed the test."
She does smile then, the voice is still as ever but she does not care. She has taken another step into not failing him as she had that night so long ago. Taken another step away from being a failure.
They come for her again the following night, new faces but with the same desires. This time she controls herself, mind focused on the power she has found, a power that is all hers. A possession in that dark place.
Electra
If she was driven before now she becomes an inferno for becoming better, doing all that is demanded of her not because she fears but because she desire it. Driven to it, to explore her powers in any way he will give her, mind allowed to revel in thinking up her own ways to grow. Tentative suggestions barely whispered, growing into louder thoughts as she proves each one as the years pass. Her requests are rare, and not without great thought.
She grows fast into herself, and her promise is perhaps her worst undoing. For when she steps out at last into the world, still very collared by the organisation that raised her, she is sheltered under the wing of the man that nearly breaks her. The one that could reach her in her hiding places where not even he could reach. Waveform, a Raven of high calibre, rated high on their lists a man of great standing but also twisted by the training he had undergone at their hands. Though he had grown into it like a sickly flower.
23 made the most ideal candidate for him, perfect in every way as she fit his obsession, his driving force. For Waveform always loved technology and gadgets. She was both. There are no words to describe the tortures he inflicted upon that mind as he sought to work her out, his superior abilities through experience and not through training meant she was helpless against him, fear of his reaction if she killed this Raven held her back from unleashing her trained powers. No mind should ever be defiled in such a way, even if it is only the electronic shadow of your own. She became his toy.
Though, she was defined by her desire to live.
It did not take long for this desire to save her once again.
So yet again she made a request of him a request that perhaps amused him because he granted it. A request to undertake the same dangerous mission as her mentor, her tormentor, not alongside but as a rival. A gamble for her existence and she took it. It is almost certain that Waveform never knew what hit him when the first electrically charged metal whip closed around his neck in that place, just as it is certain that he walked away from there. Though in the dark of that place, filled with enemies she showed why no man would ever be able to touch her like that again.
Though her lifelong battle with her erstwhile mentor was just beginning. Her rise in the arena as Electra to be marked by her final end in continuous stalemates and position changes with him. An endless shadow in her strange, almost contented existence as his grip on her seemed to lessen. A numb never ceasing existence defined by mission after mission hidden in a world she couldn't ever truly stand in. Never free, but perhaps safe.
A Flash of Red and Blue
Two other warriors changed that though, a rogue raven and her lover.
Caught up in attempting to understand the emotion that would have driven Lana to seek freedom with Sam, she slips from her steady course drawn towards them as any lost wanderer to a warm fire. The burning Light of Samantha Winters and Lana Nielsen as they worked together was too haunting to be ignored. A view into a world she had never truly seen before. How could she let him destroy that? No matter how dangerous she knew it to be, she hesitated. For a time she could not decide between the safety she had serving him, and the choice to let those two continue on.
The hesitation cost her all she had. As she watched the explosion of that suit in the air, watched the battle from afar as he sent another RAVEN after them, she knew. She knew the decision had been taken from her hands. He had decided her fate, she had failed him. She was finished. In that moment she forgets herself and her years of work, she forgets his reach. With despair she watches the other Raven arrive to fight them, to fight them in her stead, her mission and she knows her fate. Marked for death. No other options, no other choices. She marches towards that bright fire like a moth to a flame and seeks the end.
Life is never that simple though.
The sudden desired end never arrives and that enthralling flame saves her, given the chance of life by those to errant saviours. Diving into her to save her from herself and give her that cruel drug of hope once more. As is her way she cannot help but take it, and Nicky is born. Born out of pain and grief and the hope for a life. A new desire, a choice for freedom, in this cruel twisting story is it all it seems? Is there truly light in that dark to reach for?
The Birth of QUEEN
The touch of a Technopath into Nicky's mind could only have been possible with the computer ingrained into that mind, and such a pressure and application of force is never without consequence. Touched by life and impressed with the needs of freedom, justice and choosing for yourself, thoughts and ideals sent through it's circuitry in an attempt to reach twenty three all left an imprint in that computer. Quietly in the dark of Nicky's mind she awoke to the world, a sudden shift from an efficient computer with the pretense of life to a true being.
So QUEEN was born.
A surprise to everyone, even Nicky, this new presence has already sought to help those that helped create her. Offering aid to Sam and feeling a deep affinity with Nicky. What she will become no-one knows, a true unknown thrust into a near impossible situation.
-Nicky,- QUEEN says softly after a couple hours of tense silence. QUEEN had let Nicky have the privacy that was much needed after that touch from Sam, yet she could hold back no longer. There was only silence to her call though, the woman dropping another piece back into her suit, the change almost complete. Nicky could not have made it clearer how much she was choosing to jump into that dark.
-Nicky.- She tries again at last and this time she is successful.
"What?" The word that resounds in their joint headspace is cold, stilted and filled with potent embarrassment QUEEN realises. All QUEEN's processing tells her quite clearly just how strong Nicky had been to simply stand there passive rather than lash out at any that would touch her in such a way. More control than most would have had certainly.
-You are not weak to have emotions.- QUEEN comments, testing the waters, unsure entirely how to negotiate such emotional turmoil now she has the barest understanding of it.
"I appeared weak to them because he haunts me still." Nicky whispers, admitting the truth in the only place she can. The only place she could never be heard by the world and just by the one she trusts. Her one sanctum that even he had not quite managed to break through into.
-He tortured you,- QUEEN says bluntly, -tortured us. He was far worse than our old master ever was. He ripped my programming apart just to see how I worked and used my connections to get to you. Your reaction was not about strength or weakness, just another piece of our past. A reaction to his rape of our joint mind...-
Nicky physically jumps back at that dropping the part in her hands with a clang. Unwilling to accept the words used but she knows it is true, it cannot be denied. She had been mentally raped at his hands, and that had been just the start.
He had attempted to add programming that would have given him control of Nicky entire and for a time it had nearly worked. He had acted so subtly she barely noticed the change; the orders given by a mentor were to be naturally obeyed, what would have felt wrong? If not for the natural self-protective instincts built into the computer which had become QUEEN he would have succeeded in taking her over as nothing more but a puppet.
It hadn't been till later they had learnt to keep him out, the computer and the human finally gelling together against a joint enemy. The false experiences he had planted, false memories, had taken far longer to excise, each memory a terrible level of pain and anguish. Knowing it wasn’t real didn’t stop her from feeling each burst of agony, burst of despair as if it were. QUEEN was right; she had been tortured for months, almost a year by him. She wished he was dead again and the anger quelled her fears. With a harsh cry of rage she surges forward and sweeps all the equipment from the table, slamming it onto the floor.
“I want to kill him, why can’t I kill him?” she screams loud into the cavern, “I want him dead. Yet every time he lives!”
-We will one day,- QUEEN says softly, -One day he will burn completely.-
Nicky nods once, hands gripping the table as she stares at the surface. She had not been totally without revenge she knew, though she yearned for that moment, even more so since Sam had now reminded her of that time twice.
“Yes we will,” she nods again, her voice that firm tone of power that so defined her, before finally adding, “You were not wrong to help Sam.”
-I am glad you think so, I would not have done it, had you not agreed.- QUEEN says softly, -But I feel we must find a way for me to communicate so I no longer subject you to such a confrontation with your past. Our past.-
“What do you suggest?” Nicky questions, a frown of curiosity furrowing her brow as she thinks over what QUEEN could ever possibly want.
-I would like to request we cannibalise the vocal unit from the remains of your last suit.- QUEEN asks, her tone almost nervous.
“You want a voice.” Nicky qualifies simply; rather shocked by the idea, QUEEN had never been this gregarious before.
-After what happened earlier, it seemed prudent,- QUEEN intones, before adding, -And, I would wish to talk to our friends without an interpreter. I would disturb you less.-
Nicky goes silent a moment, sinking deep into her thoughts, wondering if QUEEN had taken the comments from her all too literally; Nicky knew her humour had always been poor. Would a computer, albeit a sentient one, understand hers? She sighs, leaning on the table a little.
“I agree.” Nicky says at last, speaking the words aloud so much does she agree with that. Even with the strange ache of sharing QUEEN a little more with the world. “You are yourself, you need to speak for yourself too. I will not trap you.”
-You could never trap me Nicky,- QUEEN whispers, and Nicky is gifted with the image of QUEEN’s sense of growing self and how similar she looks to herself, -We are one, no matter what happens. I would never wish to be free of you, you are my home.-
Nicky feels strangely touched by the words and the image, silently moving to make what QUEEN has requested. No more words pass between them, simply an awareness of a duality that had grown since their imprisonment with Waveform. They moved as one, almost, through the creation of the device, their joint task allowing for easier passing of data between them as Nicky’s hands move over the circuit and eventually the piece has been completed.
“Will this suit?” Nicky whispers at last, unwilling to fracture the strange peace. She lifts the small almost necklace like structure and ties it around her neck, a prototype to be sure, she knows they will be unable to avoid adding more if it works.
-We can but try,- QUEEN replies, almost intense anticipation.
“Then try.” Nicky grins, realising QUEEN must be almost nervous to test their created device.
“I am QUEEN.” QUEEN manages at last, the necklace emitting a synthetic female voice that resonates with a similar power to Nicky’s, and Nicky cannot help but laugh a little in happiness.
“Does it suit you?” Nicky asks, still smiling as QUEEN’s surge of happiness makes her eyes glow brightly, her vision almost tinged with a golden hue.
“Oh indeed, and what shall we achieve together.” QUEEN comments, and there is the unmistakable feeling of a wicked grin.
Moving Forward
Seeking to aid those around her to the best of her abilities she has become the leader of their erstwhile group, though it has yet to be seen if this will be for better or worse. At least she is more cautious than those around her so at least they will be promised at least a little more life.
In the dark of their rising Abyss Nicky and QUEEN plan together to escape their fate and to fight back with all they have. Though they are hindered at every step by the fallibility of human nature and whether they will be able to pass beyond and find their own way to becoming human...
In this great game of life they play there can only be one victor.
Three sides now fight together and move their pieces on the board.
