Galerians: Highborn

Rion.

My name is Rion.

I am Rion.

But who--what--is Rion?

Despite what you all think, I'm not the such a lion. They call me a terror. An animal. A war machine. An experiment in human psychic ability gone horribly wrong. They call me...

A junkie.

As I put the syringe up to my arm, I see the green Nalcon swish jauntily to the side against the glass like an old friend waving 'hello' from the window of a train, and feel my heart rate increase ten fold. Here's God ready to grant me a slice of peace. Under my tongue, my salivary glands kick into action and flood my mouth with water. My palms sweat as I lean back against this dumpster behind the clinic. Hah. I've lived another day despite Dorothy and her minions.

Congratulations, Mr. Steiner on one more day.

I feel like I've won the lottery.

I'm beginning to see the light in that old statement; 'survival is its own reward.'

But I pause for a moment before I inject, mind racing backwards. That man I met. He took one look at me and had me pegged. He didn't need or care about all the other details of my life. No, that old man dissected me down to what I was, at heart.

Not a lion.

Not a killer.

A junkie.

I imagine the sense of Heaven swimming in my veins. That's Nalcon, and it feels...like something other than this dirty, filthy city we all live in. My psychic abilities feel so good. It's like having a pair of eyes that you never knew existed. How can the rest of the human race walk around like that? They're blind. All of them, blind.

Scum.

I could kill them all as easily as I do some stupid Rabbit, you know? And I think they know it, too. They're afraid of me, of what I can do. I see it with that extra pair of eyes of mine. I'm psychic.

I'm better than them.

Am I?

Are these eyes worth it? Are they really worth hiding in a dirty alley, grime imbedded in your skin, life at risk with every breath you take, eyes furtively seeking out the sun from the turbulent, dark depths of Michelangelo City, and being surrounded by blood and death at every turn?

Are the eyes of knowledge, of wisdom, of truth worth it?

I remember reading once that people like me--psychics--were once actually worshipped on occasion in human history. They worshipped us.

Yet look at me. Am I worshippable? I'm the saviour of humankind, I guess. Me and Lilia.

Ask yourself: am I fit to worship a soggy little junkie?

I laugh out loud, and depress the plunger. All those silly, silly thoughts are washed away.