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[shadowpuppet]

Player Information
Your Nickname: Brig
OOC Journal: hane@lj
Under 18? no
Email/IM: twopoinsettias@gmail.com
Characters Played at Singularity: O'Brien, Gabriel

Character Information
Name: Ben | X5-493
Name of Canon: Dark Angel
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: AU
Reference: http://darkangel.wikia.com/wiki/Ben
Canon Point: post-death

Setting:

So once upon a time in the 90s, America was as apple pie ordinary as could be, except for the small matter of the government and the military apparently having access to some extremely advanced technology. Specifically the kind that dealt with genetic manipulation. Unbeknownst to the public, a super secret black ops project known as Manticore was attempting to create the perfect soldier by splicing together specially selected superior human genes along with various types of animal DNA. A little cat DNA for night vision and flexibility, bat DNA for echolocation, that sort of thing. The resulting experimental children were known as transgenics, or chimeras.

Early generations like the X2 series were less than successful, having inhuman, mutated bodies and apparently very little sanity. Others retained some sentience but had appearances too bizarre to risk on real world missions, and those that weren't put down as complete failures were kept locked up in the basement for the scientists to observe. By the X5 series, however, Manticore scientists had refined their process, creating children that had all the strength and speed of their individual genetic cocktails plus completely human features, apparently designed to be ridiculously attractive. These children were born and raised completely under Manticore's roof, treated as elite soldiers from day one and subjected to rigorous physical and mental training along with medical experiments. They were conditioned to never question orders, complete their missions ruthlessly and efficiently, and generally treated as expensive pieces of military equipment. While the X5 series was a significant improvement over earlier generations, some of the children were still victim to unexpected genetic flaws like neurological disorders, seizures, or diseases that forced their aging process to speed up. Manticore made efforts to treat these conditions but many of the affected children were simply taken away by the scientists, never to be seen again by their unit-mates.

In 2009 a group of twelve X5s, all around age nine, managed to successfully escape a Manticore facility in Wyoming and scatter into the outside world. Mere months afterwards, a terrorist group detonated an EMP in the atmosphere above the US, destroying digital information like financial records, communication infrastructure, and basically society itself when all the computers and electricity went down. The event became known as the Pulse, and America went from super power to third world country "in days," apparently, as people panicked and rioted and did all the usual stupid shit that people do in serious disaster situations. Amidst all the chaos, it was easy enough for twelve children with barcodes on the back of their necks to disappear.

Cue present day 2019 in dystopian America, where cash is everything, the mean streets are downright lethal, and gangs, crime, homelessness and rampant amorality are all simple facts of life. The rich are still doing alright for themselves, the way the rich always do, but life is hard for the average person. Everything is underfunded and understaffed, the police are more interested in bribes than justice, and the government is far more concerned with holding onto power than improving anyone's quality of life. Owning a gun is far more valuable than owning a computer, and there seems to be a huge technology gap between the haves and the have nots. The military and police have access to things like cyborg technology and hover drones, but no one on the street owns a cell phone and our heroine is still rocking a pager. Travel passes are required to move between different sectors of the cities and military or police roadblocks sit on every major road, stopping anyone who can still afford to keep a vehicle running. Corruption is everywhere, and only vigilantes like Seattle-based famous cyber-journalist-hacker Eyes Only and a few activist groups seem to care about fighting for the downtrodden and the oppressed in a world where might makes right.

In other words, it's a world where living off the grid is not only possible but exceptionally easy, even when you're an escaped military experiment with superhuman abilities being hunted down by your creators. Our protagonist Max has made a life for herself in Seattle, working for a bicycle courier company (which supplies travel passes) and resorting to a little cat burglary on the side to keep herself in clothes, motorcycle parts, and medicine for her seizures. She's also spent the last ten years searching for her lost fellow escapee siblings and trying to dig up information on Manticore, no easy feat when all computer records were wiped in 2009. Eventually she joins forces with Eyes Only, secretly a rich civilian named Logan Cale, and becomes the transgenic superhero muscle for his do-gooding missions in exchange for his network of contacts scoping out information on Manticore and the lost eleven.


History:

X5-493 (nicknamed Ben) was one of the transgenic children in Max's original unit and also one of the twelve escapees in 2009. Growing up inside Manticore he underwent the same harsh training and conditioning as his siblings, under the authority of a Col. Donald Lydecker, personal overseer of most of Manticore and the X5s in particular. The X5s were intended to become a class of officers and were encouraged to be independent and creative during their missions. They grew up as a close-knit family, fiercely loyal to each other, with a boy named Zack as their leader and Max as a unit favorite. Their nicknames came from each other, as Manticore personnel only used their serial numbers and treated them as valuable commodities rather than human beings. The most significant social contact they had was with each other, in a Lord of the Flies-esque context where all adults were considered Other and only children, only family, were allowed in their private rituals. Ben became their storyteller, the boy who created shadow puppets for their amusement and who came up with explanations for the forces in their lives they didn't understand. When a child had seizures and was taken away during the night, Ben was the one who tried to rationalize what happened. When the X5s encountered snarling monsters locked in cages in the basement, previous experimental anomalies, Ben created stories about how the "nomlies" would get you if you failed in a mission. Manticore surgeons were blood drinkers, out to drain you dry if you had the misfortune to get sick or injured. Essentially, whenever something happened that the children didn't understand or couldn't rationalize on their own, Ben stepped in and created a narrative for it, like a shaman trying to explain that earthquakes are clearly caused by giants. His stories were coping mechanisms for himself and the others, justifying and quantifying the terrors and stresses of their daily lives and making them more manageable by 'understanding' them.

After a janitor gives one of the seizure children a picture of the Virgin Mary (something they've never seen before) for protection, Ben invents a story for his unit about the "Blue Lady" as a protective force that fights the nomlies on their behalf. The other children embrace this story and end up creating a shrine for her and offering up tribute, presumably whatever small items they could find, and eventually their own baby teeth. Some time after, Manticore organizes a mission where the children are given an armed death row inmate to hunt down, which culminates in the man being literally ripped apart as Ben decides his prison tattoo somehow means he's a nomlie and sets the other children on him. For Ben that hunt is a life-changing experience, a physical victory over a "nomlie," the embodiment of their nightmares. It's also implied that the children take the convict's teeth in order to offer them as tribute, and the Manticore authorities apparently decide that maybe having their kids hunt the most dangerous game with their bare hands is not a good idea if they're going to be little savages about it.

Eventually Max begins to show signs of the seizure illness, and rather than let her be taken away like their other brothers and sisters, unit leader Zack orchestrates the 2009 escape. Zack gets caught by the guards (although we find out later he did escape anyway) while letting Ben and Max get away together, until Max falls through the ice of a river. Ben is forced to leave her behind and keep going, no doubt presuming her dead. He escapes alone.

Ten years pass, and we're given next to no information on Ben's life. When he next appears in Seattle it's as a deranged serial killer, choosing 'worthy opponents,' tattooing his own barcode on the back of their necks, apparently arming them himself, and then letting them run loose in the woods so he can hunt them down and kill them with his bare hands in a recreation of that original hunt at Manticore. He then pulls out his victims' teeth and brings them to the nearest Catholic church with a statue of Mary, offering them as tribute to his Blue Lady. He seems to have developed a religious fixation along with an attitude that transgenics are superior predators and entitled to hunt down lower forms of life.

Of course, murders with such easily identifiable signatures are going to attract the wrong kind of attention, and both Max and Manticore hunt Ben down in Seattle. Max doesn't understand why or how Ben has twisted their childhood fairy tale/security blanket into serial killing that he can't bring himself to stop, and Ben never quite offers a coherent explanation. He does express the belief that they should never have left Manticore, because "everything made sense there," and he's clearly undergoing some kind of meltdown between the ritualized hunting and the fact that he's scribbled Manticore propaganda ("Mission, Discipline, Duty") all over the walls of the warehouse he's squatting in.

In the end Max and Ben duke it out, possibly the endgame that Ben was going for the entire time, while Manticore closes in on them both. Max breaks one of Ben's legs during the fight and he begs her to kill him rather than let Manticore recapture him and put him down in the basement with the nomlies. She asks him for one of his stories, one last time, and breaks his neck in the proper ritual fashion as he's focused on telling it.


OC/AU Justification
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across?

Ten years is a big chunk of time to be missing from someone's life, and the tail end of a serial killer's downward spiral is also not a good indication of their normal personality. Ben is an impossible creature psychologically, given the behavioral categories that real life serial killers normally fall into. A typical serial killer fits into only one of these categories, which can include mutually exclusive behaviors (one category contains those in the midst of a psychotic break, another category typically includes killers that function normally in society, another category includes killers that are not psychotic but can only function on the fringe of society, etc). Ben fits into five different behavioral categories (Visionary, Mission-oriented, Hedonistic, Power/control, and Professional), which is pretty much a thing that doesn't happen.

In that case, the only thing to do is extrapolate from the available information. What happened to Ben during those ten years, and how do the five behavior categories that apply to him relate in a coherent fashion?

1.) First of all, there's the question of what happened to nine year old escapee Ben. Manticore churned out weapons, not properly socialized children, and in Season 2 we find out that Alec was actually given special training courses to help him talk like a regular person and blend in with normal society. Other transgenics fresh from the institution without that training tend to stick out like sore thumbs. We know Max was adopted at some point and went on to become a more or less well-adjusted person, properly socialized and able to blend in with normal society. There is no mention of whether Zack or any of the other escapees were adopted as children, but they all seem to have acquired the ability to blend in, even Zack, who is far and away the most soldierly 'rules exist for a reason' archetype of the group.






Personality:

Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:

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Samples
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Notes:

Childhood - the story teller. Justification of their treatment, rationalization of the Good Place and Bad Place, the surgeries (blood drinking), disappearances (seizure victims) and the monsters in the basement. Seizures/genetic flaws as a sign of weakness, rather than mission failure. Creation of an altar in the High Place, pictures displayed, small shiny objects, offerings of baby teeth and then the convict's teeth to strengthen her heart. Ben as the priest/shaman, holding the photograph for the rest of the group, making the offerings, personal intermediary for the Lady on behalf of the group.


Ritual - wooded, isolated area, necklace, teeth pulled, left arm broken at the elbow and twisted behind the body, displayed on a rock outcropping. Necklace replaced each time. Victim armed with a projectile weapon and a knife. Worthy opponent victimology. Bar code tattooed on the back of the neck just before allowing the victim to run for the hunt. 2 murders in Chicago, 4 in Miami, 3 in New York.

With Max - not surprised to find Max in the church, no confrontation. "You know why."

With Destry - never been to confession, not Catholic identified. First sin: "I've killed. I've taken human life what more is there to say." Self-identified as a soldier, a predator.


Destry: How long has it been since your last confession?
Ben: I've never been to confession
Destry: You're not a Catholic then
Ben: No. But I do have faith in the Lady.
Destry: Our blessed lady.
Ben: Yes.
Destry: Well why don't you tell me your sins then.
Ben: I've killed.
Destry: Go on.
Ben: I've taken human life what more is there to say.
Destry: Murder is a grave sin yes. But killing in self-defense or to prevent an injustice, like when a policeman or a soldier--
Ben: I'm a soldier.
Destry: I see.
Ben: Killing is what I was trained to do.
Destry: You're troubled by it. That's why you're here now.
Ben: Sometimes I feel the Lady's given up on me.
Destry: No, she never gives up on any of us. We have to have faith in her.
Ben: I try.
Destry: We have to put our lives in her hands.
Ben: *looks up* Is your life in her hands?
Destry: She's always at my side.
Ben: She protects you?
Destry: She's always there to help me.
Ben: Then you've got nothing to be afraid of.

Ben: Don't worry Father. I'll do everything I can to help you be ready. Your strength is your faith, your belief in the Lady. Tell me you don't believe in Her, and I'll set you free. I'm not a liar. *waiting* I didn't think so. Well if anyone's worthy of her, it's you.
Destry: I won't fight you.
Ben: If you don't stop me when the time comes then I'll just keep killing. I'm guessing you've never handled a gun before. Go ahead, slide the clip in. Good.