Godslayer, Noman Z.

[Guest]

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CASE FILE: Alchemist

"Sometimes the best way to keep order is with a little chaos."
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FULL NAME:
→ Noman Z. Godslayer
→ The initial Z stands for [DATA EXPUNGED]
→ Over his time in Tianá, he came to be known as "Señor Acero", or "Mister Steel", due to his automail
→ And then again in the Samaltaan village of Panei, he was known as "White-Coat Godslayer", due to the coat he wore then and still today

AGE:
→ 41

SEX:
→ Male

BIRTH PLACE:
→ Portsmouth, Creta

RACE:
→ Cretan by blood, Esparian by sheer tenacity

DATE OF BIRTH:
→ May 4th, 1971

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HEIGHT:
→ 6' 4.

WEIGHT:
→ 235lbs regularly, but carries a large amount of gear, thus causing this value to fluctuate.

PICTURE:
→

Spoiler:

DESCRIPTION:
→ With a bulky build and standing at around 6' 4, Noman easily stands out in a crowd. If not for this, it's the excess of gear strapped around him - or, that signature white coat that billows behind him, expensive and tailor-made to cling to his body and become one of the symbols everyone knows him by.

They say the Samaltaan tribes once addressed him as White-Coat Godslayer when he came and lived with their tribe for over two years. Noman speaks in harsh, gravelly tones, and when he does speak, his voice holds meaning. It is not soft. It is not easy to listen to. It is sharp, jagged, and the sort of voice you'd expect a man who's seen what the Godslayer has seen to possess. It trails behind and leaves only echoes of devastation in its wake.

His face is calloused and bruised, nicked and scarred, and the one functional eye he has is a deep navy blue, with large pupils, wide and deep-set into his skin. His right eye, on the other side, is constructed of automail - automail from an era long past. It's bulky and mechanical, and has totally replaced his eye socket, and even moves onto his temple. Noman has been offered, many a time, simple, surgical replacements which would look much more aesthetically pleasing, but has denied them.

This prosthetic eye is made of a chromed material and has a consistent red light at the centre, which will only fade out when removed, destroyed, or when Noman's heart stops beating. All three of these things are feats to achieve in their own right. The eye itself links to a small hard drive kept in Noman's pocket containing data on numerous suspects, and containing ripped copies of personnel lists of multiple criminal gangs and other insurgent forces, allowing him to identify them from a distance in a rather creepy manner. For those of you that have played MGS4, Old Snake's eyepiece.

His hair is outlandishly styled and a deep black sheen, coiled and spiked at the back as well as covering most of his neck. Noman archetypically dons a flak jacket beneath his white coat, the sleeves of which cover the second prosthetic section of his body - both of his arms, from nelow the elbow, have been amputated, and prosthetic replacements have been provided. These are, unlike the eye, changed out every six months, and, much to the revolutionary's chagrin, he had to update the model to one where it looks and seems organic save from the bolts in the joint and a few lines and ridges in the metal. An extremely perceptive individual would be able to make out that they're a different, paler tone to the olive of his face, as the bolts and ridges are hidden within the sleeves of his jacket.

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PERSONALITY:
→ Noman is an old soldier with a story to tell, but no-one to tell it to.

Grizzled and cold, some say, from the moment he came from the womb, Noman tries his best to remain faceless and expressionless when in the public eye - during interviews, or when the camera is upon him. He hates, with a passion, opening up to anybody. Those that he would or could open up to are either dead or no longer significant. He's bitter, and hopelessly destructive at his core.

To a T, Noman is definitively utilitarian. The ends always justify the means, and a pyrrhic victory is better than no victory at all. Sending man after man into open cannon fire is justifiable so long as the line moves forwards and their deaths are not in vain. He is cold and determined.

The things Noman has seen in war have desensitised him. Some would say they have destroyed him. He is a cold tactician and a chessmaster who moves pieces around the board - that's not to say he doesn't consider the lives of his men. Just that he makes the decisions no-one else can bring themselves to, and he makes them quickly. Collateral damage is acceptable in some scenarios.

This determined nature shows itself in a ruthless and unorthodox battle frenzy on the field. Noman's ability to forge plans on the fly and take the initiative quickly is why he is such a fitting leader, reinforced by his sheer audacity and the courage to leap from tree to tree screaming like a madman whilst he

However, this is all Noman when he's thrown into the thick of it and pressured into being serious. When allowed to relax, the Commander is an oddly personable and approachable man who will share a beer with all and any who are unlucky enough to have even a millisecond of free time and happen upon his domain. Camaraderie and the moral support of his men - Private to General - is absolutely paramount.

The nature of this alcoholism, as a matter of fact. Some say Noman wages eternal war on his liver to escape the past. Others say that the beer always in his hand is never truly drunk, but only there as a proxy to instil an image of a respectable man in the eyes of his comrades. One of the myriad of mysteries surrounding the Commander.

The Commander's humour is strange and often comprised of in-jokes only he or those close to him understand, but that booming laugh of his, oft followed by the stench of alcohol wafting from his open mouth, brightens up any battlefield. His love for incredulous visual displays and other such light shows are unmatched, and when he has a free minute, he's found in the armoury beneath his "office", where he'll be tinkering with his next unorthodox toy or explosive.

The bottom line: Noman is destructive and almost sadistic in his macabre creativity, and drinks to wear away those ancient memories in the hope that one day they'll fade into nothingness and he'll simply forget. He is a kindly man and fights for the right reasons, and personable to those about him, but when backed into a corner, he's not afraid of fighting any way he knows how in order to work his way out. Killing is a method, and one he's not a stranger to. Civilian casualties are best avoided - but a means to an end is always just that.

LOVE:
→ Cigars
→ Mechanics
→ Hydraulics
→ Fast cars
→ Pretty whores
→ Revolutionaries
→ Good stories
→ Esparia
→ Reading
→ Engineering/tinkering

HATE:
→ Creta
→ The past
→ Watered-down alcohol
→ His own vivid memory
→ Moral dilemmas

DEEPEST SECRET:
→ He secretly isn't sure if he can win this battle or not.

IDOL:
→ Che Guevara.

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HISTORY:
→ They say legends are made as opposed to born. The legend of Noman Godslayer, you could say, is a mixture of the two.

Born in 1971 to a traditionally Caelist military family in Creta, Noman was the middle sibling of five. His oldest brother, Jared, was three years his senior, and his youngest sister, Sara, two his junior. And then there was Kharl, six minutes older than him, and Jennah, fourteen younger.

Noman was a member of non-identical, trizygotic triplets. Not something you see every day - his parents were tenacious enough, stuck with four kids and then trying for a fifth. Marie Godslayer, née Giarden, was a woman of many virtues, with science, family, and religion taking the top three places. Many would find a conflict in the first and the last of those, but for all those things science couldn't justify, she found God filled the space nicely enough.

A military researcher assisting with prototype lethal tech and experimental bioweaponry in the seventies, specifically for Creta, Marie was married to the typical hard-ass military General almost fifteen years older than her, Darian Godslayer was known well throughout the army, fabled for his name, his towering, statuesque bulk, and, not least of all, his hardy mind, the loss of one thousand men not even fazing him in the slightest.

Darian and Marie had wanted many children from their wedding day. Living comfortably enough on the salaries of a high-end researcher and a field-operating General in the RTF itself, with enough money to support near full-time childcare and a large family mansion Darian, an only child, had been left from his parents, there were never any real problems financially.

Raised on a life with both parents away and a large network of rooms to explore, you'd envision Noman's life as typical fantasy - however, he spent many of his teenage years with his face in his father's many books, rifling through the library as soon as he was old enough to both read and climb.

Jared knew he'd be an officer for as long as Noman could remember, but by the time the triplets reached twelve, they each, seemingly with the brains of the mother and the sheer, grit tenacity of their father, had their own ideas - two of them, at least. Jennah wanted to desperately end up a marine biologist. Kharl a naval engineer. Even young Sara knew she wanted to be a doctor. But Noman still had no place amongst any of them. He dwelt only in the present.

It was around thirteen when his father called him to his workshop, having been on leave for a leg injury, and hobbled over to his son with a smile, presenting him with a long, hefty black case. "What is it?" The teen inquired, cocking his head and fumbling for the clips - as he finally set it down and snapped them open, his father replied.

"A rifle." It was a simple, old, battered air rifle, with a faulty, off-scope attached. Heaving it up to his shoulder with a sigh and a look of silent amazement, he aimed it around and felt the weight of it in his grip, almost nearing his father's 6' 1, even at thirteen. "And it's yours." With no further ado, the pair of them skirted around to the back garden and took potshots at plastic bottles suspended from tree branches for hours upon hours. And from that day, Noman still had no idea what he wanted from life - but he just wanted to have a rifle or a weapon in his hand as he did. Whether it was firing it, tinkering with it, checking it, loading it... he didn't care.

The clearest answer here, for Darian, was for Noman to become a soldier - whilst he held no real enthusiasm for his country, and lacked the intrinsic patriotism and vigour his father had always possessed, it was still an excuse to shoulder a rifle and pull the trigger. This time, it was just men on the other end, instead of targets. So now he had a future as well as a functional family. Things were going swimmingly.

It was the Christmas of his fifteenth year in the world that everything changed.

They were sitting around the tree in the evening as a fire crackled in an old hearth, laughing to themselves and toying with small presents, all of them, twelve to eighteen, enjoying themselves as best they could. Darian was growing old; not so much Marie, but the pair were still happy.

Something whistled faintly in the background. The living room windows shattered. Small, pink cylinders rolled along the floor amidst the grass. The united screams of his sister and mother followed by determined grunts of he and his father filled the room as did the slow hissing of the smoke grenades, the room filling up with thick smog. Unintelligible chants in the background. Razor-sharp flashes of light glancing across his vision, blinding him and sending him falling to the ground. The chants grew louder, ever indistinct, sensory assault from every angle.

A hand grasped his wrist and dragged him into the hallway. Noman's eyes opened, and his vision spiked; he watched his father go back in for his unconscious mother, Jared crouched by the radiator and peering out of the window with his father's Colt in his hand. "Traitors! Traitors to human life! Kill them! Kill them all!" Came the snarl from outside. His father's head moved an inch too far into the open, dangerous space behind the window, and, in almost slow-motion, the sharp crack of a rifle round came shearing through the glass and then his father's head, spattering everything contained within that skull of his against the far wall of the living room. Jared watched every second of it, and threw himself up with a scream, vaulting over the open window and pulling the trigger. It was only a few moments before he fell back through the gap, his body trembling with the aftershocks of the rounds' momentum.

Adrenaline kicked in and took control. He grasped Sara, rendered immobile by the shock of watching her own father and older brother die - and rushed for the hallway. That gut feeling within made him want to rush upstairs and grab the rifle his father had given him, but pushing back against that internal want was the reinforced knowledge that he was a boy against an unknown number of men. He stood no chance.

Grenades continued to rattle in, one after another, lighting up the rooms like a band stage. The kind of light show you don't want on Christmas evening. The four of them took refuge in the pantry for a few minutes, their pants deathly loud against the silence and the cold of the glorified cupboard, before Noman and Kharl left to go fetch their mother.

When they returned to peer into the living room, she was gone. The bodies of their father and brother remained - amidst flames. Burnt-out incendiary cylinders on the floor - and one at the end of the hall. The thick stench of diesel in their nostrils. They were burning the house to the ground. Noman didn't even stop to ask the two biggest questions: who? Why? He only made the only moves he could in order to survive.

It wasn’t until they returned to the kitchen that they heard the gunfire and saw the black-clad men punching round after round after round into the pantry. Jars, packs, and pots all pierced spilt their various contents onto the floor, and slowly it became filled with a gunky mixture of flour, various juices and jellies, blood, rice, and an assortment of goods piling up on top of each other until it drifted out into the main kitchen.

Noman’s eyes teared up, but adrenaline still held its icy vicegrip around the boy; he grasped Kharl and pulled him out of the way, but it was too late. A round pierced his flank just as he spun to align himself with his brother and blood spurted out. With a yowl, he haphazardly moved into the frame of the door and for a moment the rooms lit up with gunfire once more, and Kharl was beat down into the ground by the force of the bullets.

And then, Noman was alone.

The house was beginning to crackle and crunch from beneath his feet, and slowly the heat of the flames was spreading from room to cavernous, expansive room, filling what had once been each purposed space with only an inferno that would stop at nothing to feed its ravenous, licking, darting flames. So then the teen did the only thing he could: he ran. He took to his feet and sprinted for the stairs, hoping that the echoes of gunshots and the chatter of these men would cover the noise of his movement. He darted up and took solace in the safest place in the house. For him, at least.

His own bedroom. But it didn’t stay safe for long; even as the men all filed out, one by one, concluding that they’d murdered every last individual member of the Godslayer family in a single strike – Marie and Darian had no parents left alive, and no siblings – they dragged the flailing form of his mother outside as Noman reflected on what had happened. The growing ambience of rising infernos crackling with his mother’s frantic screaming her children’s names: ”KHARL! JENNAH! SARA! NOMAN! JARED!” Over and over again in a loop. They booted and slapped her, but it only served to delay her howls. ”DARIAAAAN!”

Catatonic and silent, here, all the teenager could do was pull his knees up to his chest, rock back and forth, and weep quietly to himself. He was almost trance-like, oblivious to everything, soaking it up, but simply unable to process it. Everything passed him by, everything just moved on. And, then, in his periphery... he saw the flames at his doorframe and just ignored them, unable to consider them as anything but bright lights.

Harsh shouts to garner silence then mutterings above it. ”...crimes against humanity...” Shell after shell slotted into the cylinder. ”...cruel, unusual, and inhumane...” A light spinning sound against the flames roaring louder and getting closer. Then a click as the cylinder snapped into the frame. ”...all to extend the tyranny of our faulty government... The hammer eased down slowly, and then finally clicked into place. ”...make your peace with God.” CRACK.

Navy blue eyes snapped open and pupils shrunk to asterisks inside oceans of the deepest colour.

He snarled. Primal, savage, animalistic nature took hold, and he stood up, facing down the flames as if they were some form of mythical monster, some combatant he believed he could take on, as if his shouts would force them to diminish. He had been broken into this state, but it would save his life. Fifteen, with no purpose, no direction, a dead family, a beating heart, and a simple want to triumph over these flames.

But it would not come without a price.

Realising soon enough that the flames would do little but advance, Noman simply stood there and waited for their heat or ferocity to dip or diminish, even in the slightest. But a wildfire is different to one controlled; fuelled by something greater than paper or wood, and compelled by an intrinsic, chemical desire to devour everything in its path. It was unrelenting, and showed no signs of ceasing.

Pushed back to his bedroom proper then, Noman tensed his legs. He readied himself, braced his body, steeled his mind. This would hurt.

Then he leapt into the flames.

They lanced at him and shot out to grasp him immediately, and he writhed and spun, but he did not fall. He moved, he kept leaping, hopping, yowling like a cat dropped in water. The howls of a man in pain is one thing; but the howls of a boy in pain is terrible. He felt the flames advance, shoot up his arm, and one in particular brush against his temple and his eyes, igniting his fringe and sizzling the tissue of his cornea. He howled in true, unbridled agony, and, somehow, by some miracle, threw himself into solace. He was burnt badly, his skin red and twisted, and his vision was blurring in his right eye. His head hurt like hell and every inch of his body throbbed in sharp pain, but he knew he couldn’t give up now; every second he tarried was another second the flames advanced.

With Jeep engines thrumming and gurgling in the backgrounds, he luckily no longer had any threat from the men who’d caused this horror to his family. He hopped from safe place to safe place, finding patches of untouched, virgin floor he could move to without scorching his body further, but his face still seethed with the stabbing daggers of heat. They say that with a burn this powerful, you don’t feel the heat at first; the shock numbs your senses, and all you feel is a creeping, deathly cold. Then you smell your own flesh burning.

His eye was still sizzling, and adrenaline was only doing so much to help. Howling in agony and with regret, he managed to stumble out of the house, clothes charred and matted with ash, vision in his right eye entirely gone, body searing with unimaginable pain. He dropped to his knees, absolutely spent, and the image of defeated, before crawling up beside the body of his mother and the discarded revolver that had taken her life, collapsing in the blood pooling around her, the same blood that ran through his veins, and just wishing he could die in peace.

****

But life’s too cruel to let it end like that. No, life prefers irony. Life prefers making the sole heir of a family, fatherless, brotherless, motherless, sisterless... lifeless... live on alone and bear the burdens of his dead relatives. It was another three months before he even showed signs of awakening, but the first glimpse of consciousness was only for a moment. A mixture of the shock, the physical pain, the emotional pain, and the third-degree burns along his temple and the surface of his cornea – which cost him sight in one eye – had all kept him out cold. It was another two before he awakened proper.

The hospital flung psychiatrists and police officers at him like crazy as soon as he uttered the first word. Shiny badges and clipboards, holstered pistols and looks of sorrow and pity. Pity will get you far enough in a life like this; but even pity, after a while, gets depressing. It grates at you. And for a soul like Noman’s, a soul that would eventually want nothing more than to recover, it does nothing but beat you down into hate.

His family were dead. The biggest and most gruesome mass murder in Portsmouth’s modern history was at stake here. What he recalled were brief flashes, slowly tied together, and snaps of dialogue that could be pieced into the picture to make it look like it was something to do with his mother’s occupation.

It was only after a few days of consciousness that the anaesthetics faded that he felt the extra weight on his head. He brought his hand to stroke his eye, and felt something; beneath a bandage. It was unnatural. It felt weighty and strange, almost like a goggle over one eye. And then, slowly, the lurching realisation came. No-one had wanted to tell him. It was the icing on the cake: his family was dead, and now he’d had his eye removed, for sake of stopping the infection. And replaced with... something.

Just as he unwound the coils, heart pounding faster than ever, the doctor turned to him. ”It’s the latest model.” She tried her best to put on an awkward smile of consideration. ”It... it isn’t turned on, yet.” She sighed. ”Your vision will have to acclimatise, but, once it does, we’ll let you flip the switch.” Automail. Of course. Running his fingers against the metal, he felt the simple mechanism of the switch, and he felt the surface running back against his temple, past it, and just stopping before his hairline. To shield the damaged tissue, presumably. ”The relay’s already been installed, though. You’re safe. We’ve taken care of the worst of the blood poisoning.” So many new problems arose with every fresh development.

Tending to the burns was a long process, as was treating the septicaemia, turning Noman paler than a ghost, and altogether, they that left him in hospital for another two months or so after his awakening, but a few days before his sixteenth birthday, Noman Godslayer was discharged into the care of an orphanage. With nothing left to do, no more avenues to pursue, for the first time in his life, he felt empty. All day, he did naught but sob, and all night, he did naught but sleep. He scraped past learning what he could and helping with the investigation, but it was no use. He wasn’t wanted. His fifteen minutes of fame had passed by; now, nobody cared. He was just another kid without a family, dead and lost to the world.

The case was closed a few months before his seventeenth birthday on the assumption that it was part of a premeditated string of attacks on his mother’s development team for the newest weapon they were cooking up. The assaults were professional, and carried out by what appeared to be riled and extremist ecoterrorists able to take their means far past simple debating and treehugging. Obviously, they knew secrets that the state wouldn’t divulge; but the case was finished. And then, the system rejected him, like a faulty part.

Still his father’s son, in spite of Darian Godslayer’s death, empty and feeling more meaningless than ever, all he wanted to do was turn to the army and fire guns at those he was told to. Thinking only hurt him, and with a moment free, he immediately dwelt on his family and the events, and then how depressed he’s got; he only sunk lower. He needed something to occupy him, to wrench him free of this vicious, self-destructive cycle.

But even the RTF turned him away. His eyesight stopped him from becoming a land troop; even with an automail replacement. Slowly and slowly, he became more and more bitter, scanning the corps for a position – any – he could take, before he finally found one that would fit the bill. Naval Engineer. Perhaps it wasn’t quite the glory he’d had in mind, but, even with his eye, they’d accept him. When he made that decision, when he saw that he could be accepted there, that some part of the system still wanted him... in spite of everything the boy had been through, it rekindled a flame inside, just offering a spark – but a spark was all he needed. The boy’s natural fighting spirit took care of the rest. Lying on his back, grinning to himself, he was truly proud – desperate, but, still proud. The pride was temporary, he knew, but if he could at least make progress, he could try to forget about it. So, numbing the pain, blocking out the memories, his hand went to his temple, and for the first time, he flicked the switch; and then the light came on. And whilst strange, and distorted at first, his vision returned. It had taken him months to finally flick the switch – but with that grit determination, he took the lever, and a lighter, and burnt away the plastic, remolding the metal, meticulously – so he could never flick it off again, as a symbol: from here – no turning back.

And so, he signed up, went in for training, and fifteen months later, he shipped off on the HMS Invictus.

The Invictus was a huge ship, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, one unlike anything he’d seen. And here, he was constantly interfacing with all kinds of technology. Everything from pistols to pistons, torpedo tubes to cooker ovens. He was a handy-man for thousands of men aboard the ship, and soon garnered himself a reputation. By 20, with two years of deployment – even in the darkest hours, when conflict had struck them once more – he had been promoted to Fireman, and his past was as far behind him as he could place it. The deployment was everything he’d hoped for, and more. It occupied him. It entertained him. It allowed him to forget. And once he could forget, he became human again. The events of what had happened in the Godslayer manor only haunted him at night, asleep upon the Azurian ocean, swaying from side to side comfortably, the sea itself singing him its own kind of lullaby.

But some divine being out there had taken a liking to Noman Godslayer. And with its cruel sense of irony, all it want to did was torment him further.

The year was 1993. Noman had just turned 22 – late May of 1993. Deep into an engagement with numerous rogue Gelemortian-designated submarines surrounding the Invictus, the night sky above the ocean was alight with gunfire. The seawater thrummed and hissed with torpedoes; and as dozens of people filed to their positions and sirens wailed, one torpedo struck the hull of the ship. To be precise, the hull of the ship – just where Noman Godslayer was. Whilst the torpedo didn’t damage him, it struck close to the door of the armoury nearby, the entire ship rattling with the force of the blow. The door had come away from its hinges and jammed in place, and the floor had been split wide open. But below was a storage room for gas tanks – gas tanks the ship’s chef used to power their cookers. A large ship like the Invictus goes through a lot of gas, and, slowly, the room was filling up with it.

Sprinting past to get towards the torpedo room to assist in the repair of one of the damaged tubes, he heard the screams coming from the room, the splutters, and the coughs, as numerous officers couldn’t hear it in the ruckus and simply passed by. But pressing an ear up against the door, trying the handle, and finding out that it was jammed, he began to communicate with someone on the other side. Air was running out – every door on the Invictus was designed to be airtight, so if a chemical weapon came in using the air as a vector, then people could wait out in rooms until the pathogen dissolved into the atmosphere.

Grasping a blowtorch and understanding the finesse the situation required, Noman slowly burnt circles around the hinges – if he was too liberal with his application of the flame, he’d cut through and blow a huge hole in the side of the ship, as well as killing dozens of people, but if he was too meticulous, and it took him too much time, they would pass out and asphyxiate. It was a double-edged blade, and timing was everything.

Thuds began to reach his ears and people slumped to the floor, coughing violently inside. They fell like dominos – but time was, fortunately enough, on his side. He’d burnt circles deep into the metal of the door around the hinges, and molten away most of it – so when he took a step back and kicked the door with all his might, the first few times, it did nothing but creak, but on the sixth or seventh, it came clean off, and fell down with a slam – luckily, everyone had collapsed away from it.

Six men were trapped inside. All of them had fallen unconscious due to oxygen starvation. So Noman knew what he had to do. Eye red as blood, he took the first and threw him over his shoulder, taking him from the room, and moving him to a safe distance from the gas. Then he did it again. And again. And again. Before, finally, he was panting, and dragging the sixth man over his shoulder, in the space of moments. His body was strained and almost broken – but they had survived. He set him down amongst his comrades, unconscious – and then the ship rattled again. Another torpedo had slammed into the side – but this time, it was stronger. The hiss of pipes as they split and broke. The creak of metal from above. The deathly whine as it bent and contorted. And then, he looked up – and it was too late as a weighty metal bar fell, slamming him in the face, knocking him unconscious, and trapping him by his wrists.

This was the second time Noman Godslayer would awake to yet another unpleasant set of injuries.

*****

But this time, there was no coma. He just awoke, and his arms were still trapped, pain lancing up his arms, unbearable just to look at the mangled, bloody tissue. The screams coming out of his mouth felt remote, immobile, as if he weren't controlling them. His body was just howling, writhing, everything it could to just expel noise. The threat was a world away, and suddenly doctors appeared him. White coats and gurneys - then they wheeled in a white metal tank. Black print letters: "ANAESTHETIC."

Everything just faded out after that. The screams died down and it was eighteen hours before he awoke again.

Then, the screams begun once more. Losing an eye is one thing. Awakening to two stumps where your wrists had used to be? Perhaps another. He flailed and thrashed himself back into unconsciousness and was forced back onto the anaesthetic, tearing up the infirmary room every time, repeating it as he forgot in dreamless sleep of anaesthesia and seeing the sight fresh every new moment.

It was three days before he could fathom a word and retain consciousness for beyond a few minutes. And every time he awoke with that same glum, defeated look. The same look he'd had as a child. The same look he'd had seven years ago when his entire family had been killed and his eye slashed with the flames that burnt away the flesh of his siblings' bodies. Replacements had been ordered. He'd only be without limbs for maybe two weeks. But it was two weeks too long.

Pale as a baby and with eyes dead inside, once the arms were refitted, he simply disappeared off the ship at the next port, having resigned almost immediately. Now he was a civilian again, back in Creta, the wide open world, that same depressed child, twenty-three and unable to even comprehend anything. Whilst his bout at sea had numbed the pain from being rejected by the world, he was a cripple, a cyborg; more man than machine. He was incomplete and yet he was totally finished. So many times he raised the gun to his head and couldn't force himself to pull the trigger.

It carried on like this for years. He grew thin, malnourished, and emaciated. Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, living a slovenly life from what his parents had left him, an ample fortune he sapped away from on a day-to-day basis. He pissed the days away on a cocktail of shadily-obtained antidepressants and whiskey. Days blended into each other. And Noman figured that the great lexicon of the Godslayer family was finished. With him the legacy would die. He was simply too far down on his luck. The military would still accept him, even with his arms as they were - he had the potential to be twice the engineer now his body was machine, too. But he didn't accept the military.

Once more he became bitter at his country, the land which had fathered him and yet rejected him with such ease.

But beneath the ashes a single flickering ember still burned. That creed his father had instilled in him from such a young age. That creed which still flickered even in the heart of a drunken alcoholic, crushed and destroyed, barely a shadow of what he'd had the potential to be. That creed. The motto of Darian Godslayer: "Son... no matter how bad the bastards beat you down into the dirt... you always just gotta get back up again." A calloused hand tousled his hair. "Keep on fightin', trooper."

"Dad..." He whispered. "Mum..." He hissed. "Kharl... Jennah... Jared... Sara..." He barely breathed. But they were all gone.

And when this last moment of sorrow burnt out, and the whiskey brought it all to a head, he turned, moved over his bed, felt the rising of vomit in his stomach, and threw up all over his floor. And then he did again. And again. And again. He expelled the remnants of all sorrow from his body; and then he threw his head up, chin specked with bile, and he felt empty. Hollow. Incomplete. But not in a depressing way. He was ready for something more.

He cast the antidepressants aside and smashed every bottle in his cupboard. He polished the Medal of Honor and set it back in its drawer - he was proud of what he had done, but not his country. He flicked on the TV and slumped back down into his seat. And then, what did he see?

Murder. War. Poverty. Genocide. Torture. Hatred. Everywhere, on the television. But there was some sick self-satisfaction in the voice of every reporter. Every reporter who'd never stood in a battlefield, or by his friends waiting for the line of duty. This was the media. But the media reflected something in itself: this was Creta.

"No longer... NO LONGER!" He bellowed, flipping over a table and seething with rage. He needed a new beginning. A change of scenery, to wash the bitter taste from his mouth. This country had supported him like a parasite, let him simply lie there and feed so long as he kept funnelling money into the system. He didn't even care about the wasted years and that he'd spent so much time wallowing in self-pity: just that Creta was there to blame.

Thirty years old, Noman Godslayer took three suitcases of clothes, his Medal of Honor, a toolkit, a hunting rifle, and a revolver. He signed away his lease. He took his wallet. All his money in the world. And he took the next flight to Malos Ciudad he could. Esparia. The reaches of the flower country. The year was 2001. The turn of the new millennium, something he'd missed, drinking away his sorrows. And Esparia was in a state.

Noman didn't care. He moved to a small village two hundred miles west of Malos and took to the folks there nicely. He hunted whatever animals were stupid enough to roam too far past the fringe of the forest, and whatever he didn't eat, he gave away. He lived a self-sufficient life, and for his hand in helping the village, slowly, the xenophobic people of Tianá accepted him as their own. They taught him Esparian, they taught him their culture, their recipes; a year on and he was tanned enough that he was almost one of the village in blood.

Noman had been so busy talking or ignoring for all these years that he'd blocked out the ability to simply sit down and listen. And finally opening up himself to everything else, a world away from him... it was eye-opening. Not to mention therapeutic. Aside from the creaks of his metal bones and the glimmer of his eye, 'Señor Acero', as the children called him, Mr. Steel, was just another enigmatic member of their village who lived on the edge of town. Day blurred into day and finally he felt himself whisked away by the Esparian sunset. He'd even found himself a few young ladies interested in a grizzled, old one-eyed bear like himself - but his life had changed for the better.

Still, he drank to hide those painful memories at night, but the drugs were gone, and so was that past life. Now he was just a man of war, a man whose conquest wasn't clear, so he spent the day hunting and the night socialising. When a festival wasn't on or he wasn't invited to dinner at another's house, he simply sat at the bar-shack out on the beach and watched the waves lap in and out over the sand.

Every other Thursday, as it had been for four years now, even fresh into 2005, in spite of the change in leadership, two black Jeeps rolled into the village and ground to a halt, filled with armed men. When he'd first come, Noman simply presumed it a routine check, considering the nearest outpost was fifty miles away, and he was in no mood to question or possibly impede the men in the berets and the black jackets, with the camoflauge facepaint and the hardy faces. He knew their struggle just as they knew his. But four years had passed, and curiosity grasped Noman. One night, he sat, and watched them roll in under the sunset, he spoke to the bartender, tapped the counter for another whiskey on the rocks, and he spoke.

"Carmelo... who are these men? Why do they come every other Thursday without fail?"

And the grim expression on the bartender's face as he shook his head and sighed said it all. It was something they didn't talk about. But Noman prodded further and slowly the man raised his head, poured him his whiskey, and spoke. "They are the men of the Generalisimo." He explained, pointing up there. "Vasco Allende." The old engineer nodded, knowing the name well. "They come every other Thursday to take their tribute - otherwise, they will leave us prey to the 'vicious dogs' of the jungle."

But Noman knew these lands well. His brow furrowed; there was nothing vicious in the quaint forests nearby. And then he understood. "Extortion..." He growled. "And everyone stands for this, Carmelo? You just sit by idly and let them take your money?" Carmelo smiled and shrugged.

"What are we to do, Señor Acero?" To him, it was simply tradition. It happened every week. Without fail. "They have guns. We are unarmed. To resist would be to invite the deaths of our entire village." Noman finished his drink, shrugged, and slammed the glass down on the counter. It happened. But it was unacceptable.

And this, some say, is where the revolutionary inside Noman Godslayer was truly born.

*****

The next Thursday they came Noman sat by and just watched from the window of his house with a pair of binoculars, noting down everything. All the men, four in each Jeep, two Jeeps. The make, the model of the Jeeps, the capacity of the fuel tanks, their every pistol and rifle... and the man at the head of the team who came and took the money from the village elder every other week. 10,000 Esparian pesos, every fortnight, without fail. And every other week it was the same man, with the thick handlebar moustache, and receding hairline, at the head of the troop.

The next Thursday they came by, he slung his revolver at his waist and approached the man. With a gleam in that navy eye of his, he looked him up and down before he could take the money, and he spoke. "I don't know who you are nor your name, soldier, but know that I am more alike you than you think." He froze to the ground, his gaze unfaltering, as always, ice in that stare. "I am giving you one chance to put this right. You don't take money from here any more. You turn around. You leave now. You need never bother with coming back unless to fight off your enemies or to apologise."

Then the Colonel with the receding hairline, Colonel Esparez, grey hairs visible still, with a tortured, twisted look in his eyes, and a grin slapped onto his face, vicious as the Devil himself, stepped forwards and uttered two very simple words. "Or... what?" Then he burst into laughter, cackling and chuckling deeply for all it was worth. "Will you... take us all out, with that little revolver at your hip?" The flow of chuckles only continued. Noman blinked, staring straight at the man's head, six inches below his.

Then Esparez drew spittle into his mouth and expelled it with a violent pft, spattering his saliva all over Noman's shoe. "Go fuck yourself."

Noman's eye narrowed and a sly grin slipped onto his face. "You shouldn't have done that." The sucker punch of a man with a metal arm is truly painful. Knuckles collided with Esparez's jaw and Noman heard it snap; he stepped back and crumpled onto the ground, gasping. The click of seven rifles then an eighth sidearm availed him barely moments later as the trembling Colonel rose to his feet.

"YOU... YOU SON OF A FUCKING WHORE!" Esparez called two men up from the Jeeps. One grasped one arm, and one the other, meaty fingers wreathing around cold metal. "YOU FUCKING... YOU STUPID LITTLE INSIGNIFICANT FUCK!" Thud. The heel of Esparez's boot slammed into the surface of his stomach and knocked the wind out of him. "I'LL FUCKING SHOOT YOUR FAMILY! I'LL KILL YOUR CHILDREN! YOUR BROTHERS! YOUR SISTERS!" Thud. Thud. "DISGRACING ME LIKE THAT IN FRONT OF MY MEN! STUPID LITTLE PENDEJO FOREIGNER." Thud. PFT. A globule of saliva splattered all over Noman's cheek, now, and, trembling, the two men dropped him into the sand at Esparez's command. "I'LL BE BACK! AND THEN I'LL FUCKING BURN THIS VILLAGE TO THE GROUND!" Esparez howled into the wind, and before long, the low thrum of the Jeeps was all they had left to avail them.

They had bought themselves their pesos for the pain of this stranger. And the deaths of everyone else left standing. And they all looked down to him, scrabbling in the dirt, getting onto his knees, and sighing as the blood trickled down his face beneath the morning sun. And at the front was Carmelo, his best friend in all Tianá, the man who served him his drink and listened to his stories. "Señor Acero..." There was a look of true horror upon the olive-skinned bartender's face. "What have you done?"

*****

The next day, there was no return. Noman set himself up a perimeter, because, surely, the men would retaliate. Perhaps Esparez would come with them. Perhaps not. But it would be a sign, a statement - no-one would ever fuck with Tianá again. With makeshift traps and everything he could construct in a wide circle around the village, he told the residents to get inside and stay there as night began to fell. He set his rifle upon a tripod, aiming from the roof of his home. He lugged a hefty sack of all the ammunition he had in the world up to the top - five stripper clips of five rounds for the Springfield and another forty or so .357 rounds for the revolver.

Detonators sat around him in a neat, organised grid of rows and columns, each pertaining to a graph he'd scribbled on the roof. The sun set, and hours passed away, Noman eagerly gazing through the scope and a pair of binoculars, waiting. This was the way of Allende, how he would retaliate.

He could be sure it wasn't an official mission, though. Not enough paperwork, and all for the purpose of extortion? If he drove the forces back, they would stay out and stay quiet at the risk of losing their jobs.

At the north of the village was a chokepoint, the only road in from Malos. Noman had hacked down a pair of trees and set them into the small wooden bridge, barely fifteen metres along, which lead from the road into the opening of the village. And sure enough, as the faint orange glint of the sun appeared on the horizon, the chugging of the Jeep's diesel engines came as a distant echo in the background. And then, they appeared. Those same two Jeeps, each now kitted out with six men. Two in the front. Two in the back. Two hanging onto the side and clutching their AR-14 surplus rifles playing soldier.

This country wasn't his to defend. This village wasn't his to fight for. But it was a mess he'd gotten himself into. Without Creta, he was a man with no country, a man with no place or rank; but this was his home, and it had been so for the past four years. And he was fighting for it.

Sure enough, the Jeeps ground to a halt, and the driver angrily commanded the men hanging on the sides to dismount and investigate the wreckage of the trees. They drew closer, printing the soles of their shoes into the dust as Noman silently surveyed the cast of their little show. Esparez was mysteriously absent, clearly not risking his salt in this little spat of theirs. Too much absence would raise eyebrows and people would start asking questions. And his occupation was far more important than his honour.

He bolted the rifle as the men went to heave the tree trunks to no avail. He let a grin slip onto his face as the drivers called for the rest to exit, and the twelve men, the two at the back carrying jerrycans of kerosene, slowly made a move to advance, clambering over the fallen trees haphazardly. Noman eyed the detonators. "Not yet.." He murmured. They made their way over the first, the men bringing up the front, eyeing their surroundings and looking over the bridge into the ditch. They went to climb over the second, the two men at the front, leading their comrades with looks of determination on their faces. Looks he'd soon wipe off. "Not yet..." His voice carried more emphasis with every syllable spoken further. His finger moved over to the first of the detonators and gently brushed the top of the lever.

Then the first boot touched down over the trunk of the second tree. "Boom." Click.

There was barely a second's lapse between that noise and the detonator receiving the signal to go off. But once it did?

BOOOOOOOOOOM.

A pillar of dust, ditch-water, wood, and body parts rose up from below the bridge in a great plumage. Barely a split-second of flame before the water engulfed it and it became naught but an explosion, the sheer force of it blowing the five men on the bridge into nothing but finely-ground human mincemeat and sending the other seven flying back, some into the Jeeps, and others simply careening into the forest or trees. The sun glinted on the horizon, and now it was simply showtime. That was his grand entrance.

Eye pressed to the scope he took shot after shot, only stopping to cycle the bolt. It took him eight seconds to get through a full clip, a hailstorm of rounds raining down upon the unwitting men, some killed before they even knew what was going on. He started with the men closest to the bridge, taking down the ones already fallen out of mercy. The portly man with a bloody stump where his arm had been. One of the drivers, splayed-out unconscious onto the bonnet of the Jeep. Two shots for the centre of mass, and they were finished, seven down, five remaining.

Cleaning up the stragglers nearby before they could regain their bearings was a simple enough task. Simply aiming at those struggling to regain their balance and taking two shots at the first, fallen over by a tree. One in the chest and then one in the face, and he was finished. That made eighth. The ninth was someone lucky enough to crawl back up to his feet and fall back into Noman's scope, launching the round with aplomb and watching as the back of the ninth soldier's head became an exit wound.

After the hassle of reloading, two had sought solace in one of the Jeeps, whilst the third was still crawling around, coughing and sputtering in a small puddle of mucus and blood, some of it not his own. The engine of the Jeep stuttered as Noman finally cycled the bolt and took the first shot of the fresh magazine straight into the crawling soldier's back, before he laid entirely still. That made an even ten.

But that little fiasco had been just the distraction the last two had needed to spin the Jeep around, the tyres squealing, and turn to head back down the forest path to Malos, just the way they'd came. It was only a couple of hundred miles, and then they'd come marching back here with a battalion. Noman cycled the bolt once more and took another shot at the moving Jeep, trying to blow out its tyres, but it pinged off of the back of the sturdy vehicle, and then it vanished behind the cover of the trees.

The two soldiers in the Jeep's cab sighed with relief. They'd made it. The lunatic had stopped taking shots at them. So, slowly, he set the rifle down, and watched from above as the top of the Jeep, just prodding over the canopy from where he was standing, slowly made its way along the path, right towards the second point he'd placed his little array of home-made explosives.

And then, one by one, he tripped the last six of the seven detonators he'd prepared. Click. Click-click. Click-click-click. And in a grand symphony of explosions, a cloud of thick, grey dust flew upwards, and then rising out of it, a pillar of flame from the Jeep - and the contents of its fuel tank - going up with it. The last whine of the great, roaring explosion faded from his ears, and Noman stood on the edge of the roof with a grin, nodding to himself as he murmured introspectively.

"Honestly, I would have thought they'd bring at least a couple of dozen more."

The revolutionary's journey had begun.

*****

Clearly, Noman couldn't stay in Tianá any longer. He'd step out of his home in the mornings and the looks of stigma and concern he'd get from the villagers made him feel distinctly unwelcome. He was not a bad man; and he had fought for their sake, but he had brought unnecessary trouble down on their heads. For this, he knew he had to leave, before he was forced to.

Moving all his worldly belongings into a storage unit in Malos and hiring out an ATV, Noman had come to a conclusion. His display with the soldiers and the Jeeps was only a beginning. Esparia was a beautiful, golden apple of a country, but the black worm of corruption had its tendrils dug deep into almost every inch of it.

He'd finally found himself a place, a home in the world that he loved and adored, one where he felt more welcome than the home of his own bloodline. The first time, the ecoterrorists had murdered his family and changed his life forever. The second time, fate had simply struck him down and he had been forced into a spiral of depression. This was the third instance of major conflict in Noman's life. Him against the Republic of Esparia, all of Vasco Allende's men.

And this time, he wasn't falling back down.

Even now, in 2005, before the ORE was ever even the faintest spark of an idea in the revolutionary's mind, Noman knew he wanted to change something. But, in Esparia, to change something, he had to change everything. He couldn't fight for independence or freedom without overthrowing Vasco. And overthrowing the most powerful man in the country, the self-appointed dictator of Esparia itself, was going to take a touch more than what he knew.

He needed training. And what better place to train than the grounds of the Esparian Bloodhound special forces operatives themselves? The jungle island of Panei. Home of the indigenous peoples of Esparia. The Samaltaan.

Renting a speedboat to Panei was a simple affair, and once there he took his rented motorbike and his single bag of things he needed to live, and dove into the jungle with a machete in one hand and his revolver in the other, a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. It took him three days to find the Samaltaan village he'd been directed to from a small settlement - three days more than he had hoped. He'd burnt through his supplies and was malnourished and collapsing due to fever when hunters from the tribe who had been watching his progress rescued him and took him back to the carefully-constructed group of huts in a small, navigationally invisible village far off the radar.

The illness took hold once more, the relay in his gut doing little to fight back, but still, Noman's eye remained a solid red. Another two days and he was walking once more, and his first conscious moment gazing over the village in the jungle valley, and he smiled to himself. It was a beautiful, awe-inspiring sight. It was the reason he would fight for Esparia, and fight for it to remain pure, and as it was, with a leader who treated it as it should be, a land of love and camaraderie, not simply five islands rich with oil and an investment for the future.

The elder of the Samaltaan tribe approached him, sidling up beside the man of metal and flesh, and spoke as the pair gazed over the valley. "I am Elder Tucano. You have come seeking us, have you not, child?" Noman nodded.

"I wish for you to train me, Elder. I wish to learn the ways of the Samaltaan, how to survive, how to stay on your feet, even in climates like this, even when you are alone. To become one with nature." Harmony. It's what he wished for. To become one with Esparia's nature - the jungles, the forests, the valleys, the mountains. To protect them from the vicegrip of Allende and his regime. "I don't have much to offer you, I simply wish to learn. But I will do all and any that you ask."

"And tell me, child, why do you wish for this?" The man was short, tanned, and wizened, but above that long, unkempt black beard and that calloused nose and that crumpled olive skin, in those eyes was a fire unlike any other. "Why you wish to be a warrior and learn the ways of the Samaltaan?"

"To stand up for what's right," He blurted back. "Forgive me, Elder, but Esparia is in a bad way, and I wish to save it." The elder chuckled, and settled himself down upon the ridge of the valley, his legs dangling off the edge, still grasping onto that ancient wizened yew tree branch he called a cane.

"All by yourself? That is truly a feat, child, you must know that."

Then that flash appeared in Noman's eyes once more. "Good." He growled. "That means I'll have more of a challenge."

The elder chuckled once more as that navy eye flashed against the sun burning hot in the sky above the clearing over the jungle valley. "You have tenacity, and you have ambition, child." He pulled himself back up with a strange grace and fluidity. "Very well. We will teach you our ways. But know that it will tax your body and your mind beyond anything else you have ever encountered before."

Noman grinned. That was just what he wanted.

*****

[Guest]

It took him a month over two years to learn the ways of the Samaltaan, but every moment spent in that jungle was as eye-opening as the last. When he was not being taught, he was either resting, studying, or hunting. After three months, he knew their language and their craft. After six months, how to creep through the jungle without being spotted or noticed, absolutely silently, and how to survive so symbiotically off of the jungle and its ways. But it took him twenty-five months alone to learn true balance and harmony with nature. It came slowly to him, but one morning, he just woke up; and everything was different. His eye had been fitted with a rose-coloured lens, and suddenly all was perfect. The Paneian jungle was the image of perfection.

His time there had been spent dwelling amidst the natives and so he adapted to fight and look like them - even in the year 2007, their ways were so astounding. Their homeopathy. Their medicine. In two years, he had absorbed so much culture, and yet he knew he'd only scraped the surface. He'd mimicked them, taken their loinclothes, their berry-based body paint - but he was still different. He walked through town clad in Samaltaan gear with the face of a Samaltaan warrior and the vigour of a Samaltaan hunter, but one thing was different. The coat he wore. He had bought it barely a week before he had shipped off, and taken a liking to it. It was sturdy and warm when the cold nights racked Panei in the winter. That was how he garnered his second nickname: "White-Coat Godslayer", as they called him.

Instead of taking him three days to messily tangle through the jungle halfway as he had last time, when it came his time to leave and he made his goodbyes with Tucano and the other members of the tribe, he made it to the abandoned port in four hours. With his body toned to perfection now, he left behind Tucano promising he would return - but the man said that all he had to do was fulfil the promise he'd made. To save Esparia. For his training? That would be more than enough. The speedboat was still there. He probably owed the guy nothing short of a small fortune now - he'd told him he'd be back within the week.

His body and mind were perfect, a warrior lying in wait. Noman Godslayer had entered that jungle two years ago and emerged a different man. And when he walked back along the port and waited for the next boat, he felt thrumming with a worldly energy, as if the sands beneath his feet beat with the energy of the Earth's core. He was truly open. And ready. With a mind like this, he was halfway already to achieving his goal.

His skills with a rifle had only been honed in his free time, but his skills as an engineer and a gunsmith had deteriorated. What would a warrior be with no equipment? A battered Springfield rifle, a Colt revolver with a rough cylinder, a rusted machete, and his mind. Four weapons. Perhaps they wouldn't quite be enough.

He didn't return to Tianá, not daring to show his face with what he owed the men and women of the village, even though he had changed. Suddenly, bar brawls were inconsequential to him; throwing punches, the same loud youths and angry bouncers that had floored him with a single hit half a decade ago couldn't dent him. They moved too slow, too sluggish. Noman was a blur compared to their snail-like movement. They were seeing stars and he was leaving the bar and they hadn't even landed a hit. With a smirk on his face, he knew that now? He was ready.

He hired a warehouse out in the middle of Malos and shipped in as many gun parts as he could. This was his armoury. And for months, he simply experimented; a range, a workbench, and a tray full of ammunition was all he needed. He constructed himself the finest arsenal in this haven for firearms enthusiasts. He fashioned himself custom holsters. And then he brought it upon himself to truly found the organisation.

2008 had barely just come onto them. Noman's 37th birthday was approaching fast. And he went to check his bank account for the first time since it had happened. Needless to say, he was pleasantly surprised.

The insurance settlement for that manor, worth well over a dozen million dollars in itself, wasn't even the icing on the cake. His parents had been hiding a lot from him. Putting the pieces together, the attack on his mother for her work made a lot more sense now - only the most controversial of occupations could, in the end, yield anything close to six hundred million dollars. Not to mention his father's income, which was slovenly compared to that.

Noman grinned to himself. It was time to have a little spending spree.

A helicopter, a car, and a few bikes just about did it, not to mention an apartment in the middle of town. He'd spent six years living the life of a reject or a tribesman. And now, with a newfound inferno burning strong within, he was making the greatest comeback he could. 'With a vengeance' was truly an understatement. His gut burned liquid flame, he cocked his pistols and holstered them, raising graffiti cans instead. And with a huge, twenty-foot stencil, he sprayed three garish, yellow letters into the inside wall of his looming, cavernous warehouse, his own personal base of operations.

"O.R.E."

La Orden de Restauración Espariana.

The Order of Esparian Restoration.

Otherwise known as the rebel movement within Esparia.

Beneath the grasp of Vasco Allende, anything was difficult to even pass by, which is why Noman begun the ORE with one man and a sizeable fortune in secret. But this sizeable fortune was peanuts in the grand game of war. He'd need support. Financial support. Not to mention support by way of troops. Men to fight alongside him. A militia.

But his goal was ahead of him. His will was steeled. He knew what he had to do. And slowly he moved around. Finding ex-soldiers, ex-Bloodhounds, ex-Inquisitors, all irritated with Vasco Allende's regime. Perhaps they preferred Alfonso, or perhaps they had simply tired themselves with the old fool. By 2010, in secret, around Malos Ciudad alone, the ORE's personnel numbered above one hundred. It was not easy convincing men to fight against the grip of the city they lived in, and many faltered.

But under the radar, the ORE operated, and Noman prepared. Legends and myths surrounded him, of his metal arms, his red eye, his aversion to the streets of Malos, his waking hours spent either in his apartment or his warehouse. Few saw him face-to-face. Was he to be a leader, for now, he had to remain an enigma. Until this plan could truly begin.

But the most personal blow had not yet been struck against Vasco. In secret, Noman studied for months, flicking through textbooks and uncovering, amongst his potential for rebellion, his innate ability to perform alchemy. And with such a goal in mind, any asset was helpful - and to ignore one as crucial as this would be a crime. Noman had to be as ready as ever, and whilst his mind and his body were complete, perhaps science held another answer, and further ground to improve himself upon.

So over 2010 and 2011, Noman Godslayer became an alchemist.

As he rose his shotgun and readied his transmutation circle, he grinned to himself. It had been a long journey, but the ORE was steadily getting ready. In the beginning of this year, he took to the helicopter to try and spread word in secret to those he could - the RIOTE takeover went nothing with a dummy still in power, it was a false move. They weren't liberating Esparia. It was just the same old regime with a larger collective at the head.

And that meant a larger target.

The ORE grows in secret, biding its time. Noman doesn't care of the leader of the regime. Simply that it exists. And if it exists, it will be a target. And by God, the ORE will pull it down.

There's nothing else to say about it.

...........................................................................

TRIVIA:
→ Smokes cigars. Preferably Camacho.
→ Automail eye was placed in after extreme trauma.
→ The eye wound was actually contaminated with dirt and Noman suffered severe septicaemia and came rather close to dying. For this reason, due to his would-be susceptibility to it returning, he had the doctors place a relay which would break down any substances that enter his body and would alter the balance of his body's chemicals. Whilst this does not make him immune to poison as such, it simply makes it so he'd have to ingest a far larger amount for it to take a toll on his physiology. Not only this, but the same rings true for painkillers and alcohol (hence why the man can seemingly down a bottle of vodka and stay standing - he has to drink an unholy amount before he's at all feeling it).
→ One of the most quotable individuals I've ever constructed.
→ One-time recipient of the Cretan naval Medal of Honor.
→ History is 9992 words for those interested. By far my longest.
→ Noman only speaks Cretan (crimson), Samaltaan (gold) and Esparian (hotpink).

...........................................................................

ALIAS:
→ Ross

OTHER CHARACTERS:
→ Ayden Derocha

CREATOR'S COMMENTS:
→ "Even though it hurts like hell, you have to bleed." - Noman
→ This character has founded the ORE - La Orden de Restauracion Espariana, or the Order of Esparian Restoration. This will serve to mop up militia-type characters and recruit them in the hope of striking back at RIOTE. For once.

CUSTOM RANK:
→ THE REVOLUTIONARY

OFFICIAL TITLE:
→ Gunsmoke - The Gunsmoke Alchemist

...........................................................................

[Iris]

DENIED

Why. The. Hell. Would you make me read 10k history D< and no one wanna read that at 7 am

REVISE

Bitch. This ain't your first character! D< <3

[Guest]

Minor oversight, I actually wrote this before I reposted Ayden... nice catch. All fixed.

[Iris]

REVISE

MY BAD missed one thing ORE is not an option. So change that in your title, please.

[Guest]

Done. Again, oversight.

[Iris]

APPROVED

Looks good to me.

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