So a few things before we begin. This is written as an extended backstory to my character in Fort Haste: Winter, and as a sort of origin of Katriel. I will be collaborating with Zencolor to help ensure that my portrayal of Katriel is as close to what he wants as possible.

Secondly, as he is based off of me, Grey is a very complex guy who, if you don't know me personally, would seem a bit too strange and unusual. I am quite complex, and though I don't have split personalities, one second I'll be a complete smart asshole and rude, and the next I'll be rather nice and pleasant to be around. I'm just that weird. So I'm gonna be putting some events that have happened to me before we get to the meat of the story to help give you a feel for the many facets of my odd personality. However, if you don't care for that, the story starts on chapter 3.

Every little tale you will read before the action kicks off, is true, and has happened to me. Without further delay, here we go.

—

It's been a long time since I tried to keep a diary of any kind. Though to be fair, this is gonna be more of a memoir of sorts. Katriel is gonna be attacking soon, and I can't help but know that there's a very good chance I will die. Especially because, as a Zoroark, I will gladly give my life up if someone else can live. I'm the new guy at Fort Haste, and I've already grown to care deeply about a good few people here. As long as I still have strength, they won't die. This is my promise.

I will be including a good few details of my life to give a better idea of who I am and what I'm like before we get to the meat of things so that everything is known before you judge too harshly. My name is Grey, and this is the story of how I am responsible for every horrific thing Katriel did.

—

Even before I became a Zoroark, I've always had a complex personality. Particularly when I played hockey. Being born with Aspergers Syndrome, a high functioning form of Autism, I never enjoyed large crowds. But there were some exceptions. I loved when my dad and I went to professional hockey games. The loud goal horn, the high energy of the crowd, the deafening cheers! I loved it, and I would have loved to be a hockey player. If that had happened, maybe I wouldn't be in this mess. Honestly, being dead might have been better, but I digress. In 8 grade, I started, yes I know, far too late to be hoping for going professional. My teammates and I never got along. They were annoying, stupid, and constantly played that horrid rap "music" in the locker room. I hated them. I really did.

For me, hate is an emotion that came easily. As a child, I was always on the shitty end of the stick when it came to bullies, and the shy young kid I once was changed into an indifferent cold teen. Not only that, my family and I… I loved them, I really did, but I never felt particularly attached to them until it was too late. I liked being alone. Hell, I ENJOYED it.

I never had any real friends growing up, and that was just fine by me. For someone who likes to be alone, friends were just a waste of time. As cruel as it sounds, I didn't have any friends, and I didn't want any. Life was just so much easier as a loner. At least the childhood was. I need my me time, and if you're always going out with friends and helping them with things as they call on favors, you can't get that. So I was quite happy without friends. The closest that I ever got to friendship was with my teammates in hockey. Yet we've already established that I hated them.

However, when I stepped onto the ice, things changed. I became someone else. A fiercely protective teammate. I was 5'10 and about 170 pounds with all my gear on. Now remember, this was in 8th grade. I was a big guy and was the team's enforcer. The guy who threw the hits and defended my teammates.

I remember one incident when one of the opposing players was trying to free the puck from under our goalie's glove. Which is fine until the whistle blows, which it did after a couple seconds. However, he kept whacking away at the glove, and after the 2nd or 3rd whack, I thought to myself, 'If he does that one more time I'm gonna deck that fucker!' Lo and behold, he did it again.

As a forward, I was standing by the blue line, a solid 30-40 feet from the crease. So I had plenty of runup on him, and he was MUCH shorter than me. As in a foot or more. So I started skating at this guy full tilt, and right as I wound up to hit him, one of my teammates, who were all pushing him for the same reasons I was about to crush him, pushed him in a way that turned him towards me. His eyes didn't even have time to widen as I just flattened him. I'm pretty sure I knocked him airborne, but I'm sure he felt the pain in the NEXT game he played. I was immediately sent to the penalty box for roughing, and "roughing" I believe is putting it lightly, but my teammates were high-fiving me on the way there. Telling me that it was a good hit. Any penalty you take defending a teammate is a good one.

Another incident that I remember is when the puck had been cleared out of our defensive end, so I skate to go on the offense, but then I hear the whistle blow, ending the play, and a scrum. One of my teammates was being wrestled to the ground by an opponent. Before I could even think about it, I started going towards it as fast as I could go. One of the opposing players tried to get in my way, but I skated around him, and tackled both the player attacking my teammate, and the ref trying to break the scrum up, to the ice. I held the player, and by extension the ref, down until another official came and stopped the sequence. As I got up, me and the opposing player were sent to the box, and as we were skating there, my teammate came up and thanked me. It felt kinda nice, but I didn't dwell on it. I turned to the guy I tackled and looked him square in the eyes.

"Nobody messes with my team pal."

However, this fiercely protective behavior didn't stop me from getting into… incidents we'll call them, with my teammates. The one that sticks out in my mind the most is from someone who definitely deserved my ire, and then some. Basically, this kid had been a pain in my ass throughout middle school, a constant bully. I would've loved to beat the shit out of him, but we were a private school. Ya know, one of those schools were rules were actually enforced sometimes. Anyways, fortunately when we graduated middle school, we went to different high schools. We were part of the same team however, as since my school didn't have a team, and I lived very near the one with the team I played on, which was also his school, we ended up seeing each other there. Fortunately he was a Varsity player whereas I was Junior Varsity. As I said I started late so my staking wasn't so great. We still had some practices with both teams though. On one practice, let's just say I had finally had it with his Tauros shit.

I had just finished my latest run through a drill, and knelt down in the line to go again, and he was standing about a foot behind me.

"Hey Greg, (My birth name) do you have a pumpkin ass?"

Now let me be clear. I am not, nor have I ever been, overweight or bottom heavy. I have no idea where he pulled that from, but it was probably the stupidest thing he'd ever said to me, and believe me, that list was vast.

"Dude just knock it off."

"What? I'm just asking if you have a pumpkin ass?"

This time I stood up, and I was a good 4 or 5 inches taller than him, then I stepped closer, about 4 inches from him.

"You say that again and I'm gonna clock you."

"I dunno what you're getting so angry about. I just wanna know if you have a pumpkin ass."

That was it. I have a hard jab to his face. Well, not exactly. In high school hockey, you are required to wear a cage on your helmet. So as much as I would've loved to punch his face in, I couldn't. It did have the desired effect though. This little prick always had this shit eating grin on his face, but the moment I punched him, it dropped, and I could see fear take its place. I went to throw a second shot, but the team pulled me away. It took 3 of them to do it. This caught the attention of the coaches, one of whom promptly spoke up.

"Hey, if you're gonna do that do it after practice!"

I pointed at the guy I punched.

"After practice you meet me at center ice! We're gonna finish this!"

We continued practice, and when it ended, I stood at center ice, faced him, and threw my arms out.

"Alright let's go!"

"I-I don't wanna hurt you dude."

Yep. He stuttered. He was soooooo convincing when he said that wasn't he? Long story short, his parents tried to have me thrown off the team, my teammates around me when this happened told them what had actually happened, they basically told his parents to go cry a river, and he never bothered me again.

I got into a few other scrums with my other teammates who were on my actual team. It's so bizarre isn't it. I get along with them so poorly, yet I was so ready to defend them during the games. I really don't know how to explain it. If I didn't know any better, I'd probably say that I had Zoroark DNA in my body all along. Of course, that didn't come until much much later.

Speaking of hockey, it did lead to me noticing something else about me. I had a very tough body and quite a high pain threshold. There are three examples in particular that show this.

It was my first year of hockey, so I was maybe… 13 I think? It's been a long time so I don't really remember how old I was. Anyways, back then, my equipment wasn't the best. My shin/knee pads did cover my knee, but they didn't quite reach my ankle, and the tough parts of the skate stoped below the ankle.

The luck comes back to the blue line, we were in our defensive zone, and one of their defensemen grabs the puck and winds up to take a slap shot. He did, and it hit my right between the pads. The only thing I had covering my ankles was the socks you put over the shin guards. It basically hit flesh and bone, and I dropped to the ice in a heartbeat.

I couldn't get up, and believe me, before the ref blew the whistle, I tried. I could not put any weight on that ankle, and both the coach and one of my teammates had to help me to the bench. This all happened in the middle of the second period, and in these lower level hockey games, that's 12 minutes a period. I started the third period despite that injury. Yes, adrenaline played a big factor, but believe me, I was in pain when I got back on the ice, but I played through it.

The second, and arguably most painful injury, came about… 3 years later I think? I didn't really keep track, but here's the story. We're in our defensive zone, and I'm the center of this line, so I'm standing slightly before the faceoff circles and looking towards the blue line where one of their defensemen has the puck. He winds up and blasts it with a slap shot, and it clocked me right in the dick. I mean square on. Not only that, the cup didn't do a whole lot. I fell to the ice in an instant like a sack of bricks. The coach said it was the fastest he'd ever seen me go down. I was laying on the ice for probably a good 60 seconds before I was able to get up. Now here's the shitty part, yes, getting hit in the balls wasn't the worst part. The ref didn't blow the whistle because the opposing team had the puck, and while my team are all staring at me, they scored. So I took a hit to the genitals, for nothing. Didn't keep me out of the game for long. I sat on the bench with the rest of the line until our shift came around, and then got back out in the ice.

There was only one injury that ever actually took me out, and for damn good reason too. It ended up being my last year of playing, so about 16 years old at this time. I had the puck and was skating to go in front of the net, when someone on the opposing team went down on their stomach. I tried to stop, but when you stop in hockey, you dig your skates into the ice at an angle. Which is the worst thing I could've done. My left skate went under his body, and the rest of me went over him, and that skate did not come free easily. I'm pretty sure I was screaming before I hit the ice. Play immediately stopped, but I have no clue how many people came over to check on me, because my eyes were glued shut in pain. I could not put any weight in that ankle. After about… 2 minutes of me just laying on the ice, unable to really move, the coach helped me to my… foot, and helped me to the bench where for about 5 minutes I sat, until I eventually got up and tried to walk. Even with all the adrenaline of hockey pumping through my body, walking was still incredibly painful. After a couple more minutes, I told the coach I was leaving. He called the paramedics, and dad ended up taking me to the hospital. I ended up with a sprain that was so bad, it would've been better if I broke it because it would've healed faster. Even now my left ankle has some swelling, and it took something like that to finally get me off the ice for an injury. I was one tough son of a bitch.

Hockey was always serious for me, and I was certainly very competitive when I played, but a large part of my competitiveness spawned from one thing. The one thing that I spent more time doing than any other activity. … Ok besides sleeping. I do love a good long nap. Anyways, said thing is, video games! I was an avid gamer who would sometime spend as much as 14 hours playing them during summer vacation from school. Hell, even DURING school.

The high school I went to was computer based, and I spent much of the day playing browser games and beta testing some other games. You could argue that I should've been studying and or paying attention in class, and you'd be right, but I was too bored to give a shit. School was the most boring thing in the world for me. It was either shit that I already knew, or shit that would never ever be useful in the real world. Seriously, when am I ever going to need to find the tangent of an angle?

I would stay up until the early hours of the morning, unknown to my parents, playing video games in my room. Usually handhelds. At one point when I was 8, I literally stayed up for 72 hours straight. And this was during school time. I was so deeply engrossed in my games.

Now, as a kid, and even into my mid teen years, I wasn't good at video games. I thought I was, but it wasn't so. It took me a long time to realize it, and to be truthful, I'm not sure what made me realize it, but once I did, I came to know just how bad I was at my favorite hobby.

However, once I realized, "oh shit it's not the teams, it's me," I began to improve. I kept getting better. Always learning new tricks and strategies, while never again believing myself infallible, or the best there ever was, because if you don't believe you can get any better, you never will. Yet if you realize that you can improve, there's a good chance you will.

In one particular game I loved, World of Tanks, your winrate, the percentage of battles you've won, is automatically tracked. At one point my winrate was at 44%, with the average being slightly less than 50. I was so oblivious that I always thought that I was the greatest and that it was the fault of my team. Now the teams on World of Tanks are particularly clueless, even for online gamers, but I wasn't helping. In fact I was far worse than most people.

However, once I realized that I was the one who sucked, I began to improve. My winrate went from 44%, to over 60% before the, well to put it simply, apocalypse, happened. I improved so much, that I was rated in the top 5% of all players on the server. Which is quite an accomplishment for a popular game. I was hoping to one day go into a career as a professional gamer, but this shit got in the way of that.

And let me tell you, I got into the games. When I played World of Tanks, I concentrated so much that in ended up feeling like I was an actual tank commander. I was so deep into it that I would actually talk to myself. Sort of discussing my own strategy with myself, second guessing and refining it constantly. I was able to think of a strategy on dime. Which is very unusual for people with Autism. I'm so weird that I'm not even normal by Autism standards!

Now I'm sure you're asking why I'm telling you this. Well it's quite simple.

I look for flaws in myself, and I work on them. I was, and still am, a very proud person, but it's not about holding up your pride, it's about being better. Improving and developing as a person/Pokémon. That's something that I think was largely lost even before most of humanity died. The culture right before this, was a very self righteous one. People constantly bragging about their salary, what kinda car they drove, how many "bitches they banged," and how big their dicks were. The latter two of course being more common talk online, but I guarantee you a lot of people talked about it in public. This kind of culture drove me nuts. Everyone walking around with an overinflated ego. The world doesn't revolve around you dickshits!

Now I wanna make one thing quite clear. I do not claim to have been a good person. I was very proud and aggressive, but not overly so. I liked to look for faults and fix them. The point of pride is to build confidence. Not to be a complete asshole! As humans, the anus is the first part of the boy that develops before we are born. So at one point in everyone's life, they are literally just an asshole. Unfortunately, a lot of people never evolved past that.

I find it odd how I couldn't stand people being timid or polite to a t, and I couldn't stand people being overly confident either. I was a very picky person. I suppose that's one thing that hasn't changed over time. I'm still very selective about who gets to be in my company. I of course am more protective of people I enjoy being around now more than ever. Almost to the point of obsession, but that's what Zoroarks are like.

… You know, in some ways, I wish I had become a Zoroark earlier. Then perhaps I would've valued my family more. Before it was too late. Before I lost everything, and everyone.

My mom did her job as a mom very well. She drove me completely bonkers. The biggest issue we had was, well, everything. She was nothing like me. She was clean, I was messy, she was warm and welcoming, I was cold and callous, she was short (compared to me), I was tall. The only thing I got from her, at least in the past, was my poor eyesight. That changed once I turned into a fox though.

My dad was more like me. He was a big inspiration to me. A military man of some 20+ years. I remember that when I was younger I wanted to go into the military in his footsteps. It's hard to describe him, but he was kinda like me. If not a little bipolar. One day he'd be a total goofball, and the next, a serious man who didn't know how to take a joke, and it was this kind of unpredictability that I enjoyed, because I hated monotony. We certainly had our rough spots, but we got on pretty well.

My sister… we never got along, at any point in our lives, and perhaps that's why it's her death above everyone else's that weighs on me most. With mom and dad, I can say that they knew that, even if I didn't show it often, they could tell I loved them, even if I sometimes didn't know it myself. With my sister… she died thinking I despised her. Our sibling rivalry got worse than most, and she probably never saw me as more than just a stuck up prick who hated everyone around him. …And she died before I could prove that wrong.

However, I have done a lot of good and helped a lot of people since this bullshit began, even if I had to kill a few others to do it, so suppose that's what I am doing, and what I must continue to do now. Prove it fucking wrong! I will protect those I care about until my last breath to prove that!

Heh, life was so simple back them. Wake up, go to school, come home, do homework, play video games, go to bed. That was it. Now… everything is just so fucked. I spend a number of my days at the top of a tower with a high powered sniper rifle. Boy would that have caused some panic back in the old days. I remember watching a video online about a guy promoting his channel. He said was talking about subscribing to him, and if you didn't, "you'll never know, and that will eat away at you, until one day you find yourself at the top of a clock tower with a high powered sniper rifle wondering what might have been." How I find myself in almost the exact position he described would make me laugh if life wasn't so shit.

Sorry. I do tend to ramble sometimes. Sometimes I just need to vent. To get all these pent up emotions out of my system. I need to focus on getting this written out, because time is not my friend right now. I still have a lot of writing to do, and these fucking claws don't make it easier.