It didn't take me long to get settled into the city. Dr. Sein had givin me an old debit card and PIN number of dad's. I'm not sure why he had it, maybe dad told him to do this before he passed away. Since I wasn't legally his daughter, I suppose I should be happy to have received anything.
In any case, I almost fainted when I saw how much was in the savings account. I was easily able to obtain a small apartment. Frankly, I could have lived in the lap of luxury for a year.
The green hedgehog stuck around, as I had guessed he would. I hope I didn't give him the wrong first impression. When I left the lab, I had on a relatively skintight (or furtight...) leotard that reached halfway down my thighs. The only other garments were a silver belt with a small pouch and simple (but extremely sturdy) black sneakers. To me, it looked skimpy and felt kind of awkward. But they were the only clothes I had then, and the leotard was made with fabric that was designed to be protective. I still haven't found anything sharp enough to rip it.
But again, it looked like I was trying to send the wrong message. I like the color black, but I don't wear it to make a statement. And while I'm proud of my body, I don't dress skimpily. I'm not a good girl but I'm not a bad girl. In his defense, he picked up on this rather quickly.
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I didn't make it particularly easy for him. I kept up the semi-aloof personality for the first few weeks. Like I said, boys aren't ranked very highly on my list of Things to Do. Pun only half intended.
I was busy anyway. During my father's last weeks he was feverishly trying to do research. The last few days he was just feverish. I think he was lucid just long enough to squeeze my fingers and blink at Dr. Sein before passing away.
That sounds a little heartless, but I've always been weird with emotions. It takes alot to effect me, at least visibly. When I was fifteen one of the scientists who helped raise me died of lung cancer. He was like an uncle to me. I cried for about ten minutes and felt sad all day. That was it. I still remember him. I miss him. But I don't mourn for very long.
As for my father, I barely knew him at all. I was created at his private lab. He made me, watched over me for two years, then went to a government lab while the scientists who worked for him took over.
In my first year of life not much happened to me. I was a relatively normal Mobian infant. Too fragile to mess with. When I was one and a half my father and a scientist named Carl produced a formula to lower the density of my bones. They figured that less weight in my bones would help me use energy more efficiently and put less strain on my muscles. What they didn't plan on was how weak my bones became. They were full of holes, like a lattice. I broke two ribs as a toddler because of the water pressure inside of the life-support tube I was developing in.
That's where Ralph comes in. Ralph is the one who invented the bone strengthening serum. It directed extra iron to my bones, along with man-made polymers to replace the bone that was left. I don't really have bones anymore. I have a strange mixture of stuff in the shape of a skeleton. But it worked.
My father, though he had left a year before the bone strengthening process was complete, was overjoyed with this development. You see, he was being paid very well to produce physical enhancements for military purposes. I was created as a guinea pig for this, but the bone serum was the only development I "helped" with.
I was created when my father was in his sixties. Shortly after my bones were fixed his health slowly started to fail. Carl believed it was because of mental strain. Dad began to get forgetful and confused. He was allowed to putter around the government lab for five years before they grew tired of him not achieving anything and fired him. I was eight years old then.
I woke up when I was three and a half. Cynthia Good, the woman who engineered the material for my leotard, was the one who did most of my rearing, with Ralph and Carl acting as helpful uncles. I learned quickly and was reading at the fifth grade level when I was as old as a third grader. There wasn't much to do except read, growing up in a lab. I did relatively well in math and science too.
My dad didn't visit his lab very much, and Dr. Sein, a young guy who was hired when I was seven, didn't see me very often either. I don't think he liked the idea of experimenting on a sentient being. Dr. Sein designed my wings.
The military really only wanted the bone strengthening serum. But my dad had greater plans. He dreamed of giving people wings. That was what he didn't tell Carl when they put those tiny holes in my bones. Dad wanted lighter bones to make flight possible.
Sein finished the wing "blueprints" when I was twelve. When he found out, Carl tried to convince my dad to forget the wings. In order for flight to happen, bones need to be made lighter, then strengthened again. But in an adult body, the weight of the organs and tissues would crush the weak bones, resulting in death. The military flat out refused my father's proposal. So now, highly trained soldiers, the more valuable ones, have very strong bones and a normal density.
But damn it, my dad was determined to put wings on somebody. That somebody was me.
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When I was thirteen I was put into extended sedation and operated on. My back was carved open and a titanium framework was attached near my shoulder blades. They were as dense as my other bones, and hollow, so that bone marrow could be added. This way the flesh that was artificially stimulated to grow would survive on the wings. The blueprints made it possible for the new muscles to flap my wings. Sein was quite the anatomy wizard.
As a finishing touch, genetically modified skin (I believe they used raven genes) was grown over the wings. The added genetics made it possible for feathers to grow. And grow they did. The whole plan worked perfectly. I had fully functioning wings.
Now let me tell you, recuperating was Hell. My back felt awful for a month after I regained consciousness. I was only allowed to take over-the-counter pain pills. No morphine for me. Dad didn't want me to get addicted. It hurt so much that I could barely breathe on my own. I celebrated my fourteenth birthday with breathing tubes up my nose.
When my wings healed, I learned to move them, and eventually dad let Cynthia take me out to learn how to fly. We were on a private beach in the middle of nowhere for two months. You want to see tears of joy? Look at the woman watching the child she raised soar through the air. That was the happiest day of my life.
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My life took a turn for the extra-weird when I was almost fifteen. My dad told me to retract my wings. I was completely confused. His mental state had gotten better ever since my wings were grafted on, but now I wondered if he had finally cracked. He insisted that I'd be able to make my wings disappear and reappear into my back at will.
After we argued for a while he finally seemed to remember something. We went to his private office and the foundations of my world underwent a thorough shaking.
It turns out he didn't just call me his daughter because I was his creation. No, his genes were fully attached to mine, and not just grafted into me like the raven genes (or, as I discovered later, like the octopus genes Ralph injected into my pupils when I was five. My eyes can change color now, but it ruined my ability to see in the dark). For all intents and purposes, the old coot was my father.
And not only that, he wasn't even human. His kind, my kind, are a people who travel through many dimensions. They also practiced magic, mostly involving runes. My father had fiddled with my wings during the surgery so a spell was permanently on those appendages. I actually could retract my wings.
After all that, I didn't speak for two weeks. It was alot to get used to. My dad gave me one of their history books and a book of runes so I could learn magic. The energy running through my body wasn't Chaos energy like I'd assumed. It was the magic. So I taught myself how to channel it to my fingertips and sketch runes into the air or a surface for various purposes.
And on my sixteenth birthday I had a dream about magic lessons with a blue haired woman. When I woke up I had the ability to turn invisible and go through solid objects. My dad couldn't explain it. But I'm not about to complain. Whoever she was, I'm pretty thankful for those cool little powers.
By sixteen, I was a healthy Mobian hedgehog. I had grayish-blue fur, the softer female head spikes tipped with black, black wings, and some nice abilities. I was born with gray eyes, but with the added genes I could turn them purple as a sort of default color. The right eye would turn red and the left blue if I was upset or uncomfortable, and they turned black when I was angry. This makes sense, I think octopi do something similar. There weren't any experiments planned for me, so I was relatively happy.
Then Cynthia was killed.
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I sure use the word relatively alot. Least it feels like I do. And I need to fix my summary. Wah! I freaking hate summaries :P
I really like writing backstories. Hope you guys don't mind too much. The backstory will hopefully be finished tomorrow, and then we can get back to the adventure/romance stuff. Don't expect anything spectacular, my last boyfriend was back in first grade O.o
I'm going to keep Scourge' s personality to a sort of in-between state. I've seen a few of the comics and his attitude is sort of a douchebag/cocky mofo/funny lines, and then you have his prison persona, where he's kinda paranoid and quiet and junk. I'm gonna kinda mix that up a bit, because
1. He's adorable in the prison comics because I think it's amusing when bad boys get knocked down a few notches, and I'm also just sadistic and kinky like that
2. It is relevant to my plot
3. If he was his original douchebag self my OC would probably resort to throwing him against walls at every opportunity. And we can't have that, now can we?
And now, let's have a round of applause for krikanalo, my amazing and loyal reviewer!
Yay!