Victim |
|
|---|---|
 | Basic Information: |
| ALIAS(ES): | Vic (Agent, Second, Mitsi) Sir (Agent) Boss (The Mercenaries) |
| PRONOUNS: | He/They |
| SPECIES: | Cordyceps Locust (formerly) Grasshopper (formerly) |
| AGE: | Adult |
| RESIDENCE: | Termite Capitol The Blindspot (formerly) | Other Information: |
| OCCUPATION: | Rocket Corp. CEO Rocket Corp. Founder |
| RELATIONSHIPS: | Mitsi, Agent (close partners) Second (respects) Alan (enemy) |
| AFILLIATIONS: | Rocket Corp. |
| STATUS: | Alive |
Victim is one of the four "hollows" created by Alan. After being killed and is lucky enough to get brought back via cordyceps, he dedicates his second chance to killing Alan.
While alive, his colors and patterns would've been more similar to that of an eastern lubber grasshopper, specifically the black coloration.
After death, Victim's body lost most its coloration and pigmentation. The cordyceps making its home inside his body also worsened that, almost entirely changing the the patterns and colors before. Now he is primarily an earthy gray, with a almost black color for his wings and as an accent. He has white eyes with no pupil and iris, and a tear-like pattern coming from his eye. His body is also littered with minor holes, the largest being on his forehead. There is also a large crack in his thorax that he covers with bandaging, and he only has his two upper arms. His wings are also torn and littered with holes.
Victim is a apathetic bug. He tries not to let any expression show at all times and prefers to bury any emotions he feels away. Despite this, he has some pretty intense anger issues that show mostly when he feels his control is threatened. He isn't above manipulating or harming bugs to get what he wants.
At his core, he is a control freak who wants total control over the bugs around him and his enviroment. While he thinks he's healed from his trauma, he still acts out entirely because of it and hasn't healed at all. He refuses to let go of his death.
Victim was a stunted egg, and in fear of him turning into a monster, he was abandoned in the Giant's Lair. Alan found him, and watched as he hatched. Victim didn't last long under his care though, as shortly after failing again and again to fighting against Deadlanders, Alan got impaitent and tried healing him. He did so by pushing Victim against the crystal-- and while this worked for a while-- one bad fight had him impaling Victim with it and killing him in the process. After tossing his body away, a cordyceps found and began to grow in Victim's body. Due to the lingering bits of Roach Crystals in his body, it matched just well enough to bring him back to life through the cordyceps. Unfortunately, its not a stable revival and the link between Victim's consciousness and the cordyceps is extremely fragile.
While patroling the Giant's Lair, some Wasp scouts found Victim stiffly moving around, one of which being Mitsi. They brought him back to the Wasp Kingdom. He was kept in the castle for a while to recover, with only the wasps helping care for him knowing about the cordyceps. After he recovered and was showing no signs of aggression, they allowed him to live in the Wasp Kingdom.
While living in the Wasp Kingdom, Victim had to go through military training like all the other inhabitants, and being surrounded by a lot of wasps still adjusting to the Queen's new pacifism, his wish for revenge was only enabled. Despite this, he became close with Mitsi, a thistledown velvet ant scout, who was a rarity among wasps: she held no enjoyment of fighting. She was able to ground him, as he never wanted to upset her. Eventually Mitsi got stationed on a wasp outpost along the outskirts of Bugaria, a land that belonged to no kingdom since it was outside the continent's borders, but still within the safety of deadlanders. Victim went with her.
The outpost became less of an outpost and more of a rest-stop for travelers, Mitsi often being the one to welcome them, while Victim preferred to help get a small shelter for them set up for the night. The outpost had very loose surveilance from the Queen, and deciding to embrace her old decleration of pacifism, they turned the Blindspot into a small bustling town. Travelers, Explorers, and passing soldiers alike would stop by the town, some staying and others going, but word got around of the place, and especially the duo's talents with fixing up equipment. With the attention, the two decided to embrace their skills, as Mitsi found a passion for technology and Victim loved seeing her thrive, and they created Rocket Corp.
Rocket Corp started small, but as more people wanted to help, it grew. The rumors of a living locust and this brand new little haven brought in Agent, who quickly found himself enticed by the two, and the three became incredibly close. The three loved being there and what they had built and protected, but after a few years, it wouldn't last. The Blindspot became the newest target for two wasp sorcerers, The Dark Lord, and the Chosen One. They set the once-haven ablaze, fire quickly consuming everything they had built. Victim managed to get out alongside Agent, but Mitsi was unseen among the escapees. Agent went back in, and didn't come out until he was on the verge of passing out from the smoke. When he was finally able to talk, all he told Victim was that Mitsi didn't make it out. She was dead.
Her absence was not forgotten. It couldn't be. That slight mask of professionalism Agent occasionally indulged in for jokes became his entire personality, and Victim became incredibly apathetic and dull to everything. Even if he loved Agent, he saw the way the dragonfly refused to let go of him, and he used it. He knew what he wanted, and it was revenge. He relocated Rocket Corp. to the Termite Kingdom to get ideas. While there, a living locust was extremely new to most bugs, and so he decided to use the attention to his advantage. Saying he'd work to making the Deadlands habitable, he re-established Rocket Corp within the Termite Capitol and threw his entire life into expanding the company enough so he could make killing Alan a reality.
With their previous positive reputation, Rocket Corp slowly grew into one of the biggest companies in Bugaria. He hired Explorers, at the reccomendation of Agent. As time went on, more and more of the people who followed him began to leave seeing Rocket's sudden interest in weaponry and the Dead Lands. It wasn't what Mitsi would've wanted, and they all missed the original CEO and criticized Victim for it. He let them leave, after all, Termites were more than willing to fill their spots for decent pay and none the criticsm. Eventually rumors of two wasps that wielded flame became the gossip of the break room. Of course, these rumors only spread so far because the two took out a chunk of the Outskirts in a single fight, with one vanishing and the other landing in Rubber Prison.
Victim sent the mercenaries to the sorcerer in Rubber Prison. If they truly were wasps he could do a lot with them, but more importantly they held information that had long since slipped from his rotting mind. They ended up retrieving the Dark Lord with the promise of rehabilitating the wasp to the public, but in reality he was just another guard dog. Unfortunately he was just a paper wasp, but he could be easily manipulated all the same. Dark was more than helpful to aid in retrieving his brother, who was a hornet.
After apprehending Chosen and getting the information out of him-- only at the cost of a torn hornet's wing-- Dark was getting restless. But so was Victim. Throwing Dark back in the cell, he promised the wasp he'd return him to Rubber Prison as a lost cause after. Using a gem from the Ancient Crown, he was able to successfuly brainwash Chosen. With the mercenaries and new tool at his side, he took off to kill an Omega.
Upon getting to the Deadlands, he found his impaitence had cost him a lost wasp in the form of Dark escaping and somehow working with the bugs that had decided to live with the Omega. Not letting that deter him, he set the mercenaries to hold off the young bugs and Dark, so he could get Chosen to chip away at Alan. But as the fight went on, there were no deaths. Most of the damage was coming from him, and that enraged Victim, because it just meant that Alan was holding back.
The fight was lost, with Dark amputating Chosen's antenna to free him from Victim, and the mercenaries being thoroughly outnumbered. But Victim wouldn't give up. This was his chance, he had everything, and he swore he was going to kill Alan, and so he started losing it. Unfortunately for Victim, locusts are noisy creatures, and juvies like to wander.
All the noise attracted the juvenile Omega, who of course got curious by the noisy thing. Picking it up, Victim began panicking and desperately tried getting out, but he was still nothing compared to an Omega. But this triggered something in Alan, who immediately lunged at the Juvie and attacked it, forcing it to drop Victim. While the mercenaries and younger bugs hid, Victim stood shaking and still as he listened to the birds scream at eachother. He knew what it meant, it was a scream to challenge the other, but before he could get crushed, Agent pulled him away.
They were all leaving. And while the giants fought, Agent tried getting Victim to go with him. Victim refused, and told Agent to meet back at the Termite Dome. Agent reluctantly agreed, and left with the others. Victim had no intention of going back. After seeing everything today he was certain he knew what he was missing. So he went to Snakemouth Den.
Victim wasn't stupid. He knew everything there was to know about cordyceps. He knew about the experiments under Snakemouth, the very ones that had to be swept under the rug, but more importantly he knew what laid inside it. Unregistered, entirely free roach crystals. Ones with all kinds of magic nestled inside. So he went, and while the various zom-bugs gave him trouble, he found a dead beetle's charge to be the perfect thing to break the crystals into easily transportable pieces. The moment they were out of use, he'd redirect them into the flooded water.
He knew what seperated from the others, from the ones that survived. They had magic. They had a fighting chance. He was born without sorcery, but he knew what connected every sorcerer. Those crystals. Maybe it was the unstability of the cordyceps inside of him, or maybe it was desperation, but he knew what separated him from the ones that could live.
A thin layer of chitin.
Agent had found him in those labs, and he wasn't alone. He brought the brats that ruined everything with him. Words wouldn't be able to reach Victim, just seeing his right hand standing alongside those five enraged him enough to cement his decision. Victim drove a crystal through his chest. His theory proved correct, as it provided him with blight magic, enough to toss Agent away when he wouldn't listen.
But for some reason, it wasn't enough. He still couldn't stand his own against the brats, and so with every time he got knocked back down he got back up. He dragged himself back up to his feet, driving another crystal through that useless layer of chitin, and continued fighting. Again and again and again. Completely oblivous to how the cordyceps grew and clung to the crystals, completely oblivious to his own slipping mind.
On the last crystal, he lost whatever weak grip he had on his consciousness. That link was never a strong one, and he finally found a way to snap it. No better than the undead bugs he redirected into the river, he started attacking blindly. He fought without any memory of training. He fought with the strategy of a cornered animal, and the longer the fight went on the more the cordyceps forgot about its host. The tendrils had completely outgrown the exoskeleton, slipping from the cracks in his body or making their own. One had completely torn through his eye, another had severed the hand and loosely connected it in favor of range.
In the end, Agent and the five bugs only won by starving it. It burnt through the energy of the crystals fast enough that it ended up withering and going limp entirely. Agent didn't want to leave so began cleaning up by tearing the crystals from their body. Reluctantly, Second sat next to Agent, and decided to use his abilities to revive the cordyceps and heal the body. Without the crystals driving it insane, the link was reformed, but so, so fragile.
Victim awoke a week later in an inn. He felt a lot of things about the experience, but decided on ignoring it like he always does. But he couldn't deny that he failed. And he had no idea what to do next.
