end of the road, see where you've been

NAME: DJ
AGE: 23
CONTACT: biomagnet / aim psitaniums
CHARACTERS PLAYED: Cain (Jacob Kane) [insertdadjoke]

NAME: Connor Myers (Security Ed.)
CANON: Original ("Who is Connor Myers?")
AGE: 28
CANON POINT: Shortly after Myers uses Connor's name to meet up with his mother.

BACKGROUND: 22nd century. Humanity has progressed exponentially over the years, quickly outstripping the resources their planet has to provide. While the world has made some terrifying and amazing advances in biomechanics, allowing people to live healthier, better, longer lives, most people still living planet-side are stuck inside domed cities to preserve the unpolluted atmosphere that's left. Real robots do exist, but AI is a long way off. Most people would rather upgrade themselves than their toys nowadays.

Connor's childhood was, in a word, troubled. His parents died when he was young, very soon after his little sister, [name3], was born. The two were deposited into the system by the state — luckily, foster care was a bit nicer than what we're used to, and they were allowed to stay together. During a period of relatively stable life in foster care, something terrible happened. An explosion at an older-style church resulted in the building collapsing. Many people made it out, and many others did not. Connor and [name3] were some of the unlucky few. Both of them were severely injured from the blast, with Connor's legs and one arm being pinned down and his sister in an even worse state. In the time that they awaited rescue, Connor watched his sister die from her injuries and the smoke; another explosion triggered from the progress of the flames and knocked him out. The damage from the second blast was nearly fatal, his arm and legs a lost cause, his eyes burned out and ear drums ruptured, several organs in poor shape from the pressure of being pinned, his skin covered in terrible burns. If he hadn't been found so soon afterward, Connor would have certainly died with his sister.

That wasn't what happened. Connor was found by a miracle and rushed to extreme care where doctors managed to stabilize him for the time being. News of his miraculous survival made national broadcasts, and charities and independent sources both donated to his medical care to help him recover. With the money received, Connor was outfitted with a body-wide skin graft, several synthetic organs, and high-end model prosthetic limbs. His physical recovery was assured, but his mental state was still left in tatters. For several months while he was stuck in the hospital, Connor hardly responded to any of the staff and was entirely nonverbal. One doctor in particular, Dr. Myers, was able to get through to him by treating him as normal, as if nothing was his fault, as if he were a son to her. They got along, and he eventually started speaking again with her help. Before he was even released from the hospital, Dr. Myers adopted him and made sure he had a safe, loving home for as long as he wanted it. It was infinitely better than it could have been, but Connor's mind had been damaged in some pretty irreparable ways and he still retained troublesome habits like not-speaking or acting out or damaging his prosthetics when frustrated. Dr. Myers sat through it all, endured, never loved him any less.

After some teenage years where Connor continued to not cope well, he was recruited as a mercenary out of high school due to his psychological profile. Cyborg crimes were still heavily on the rise due to difficulty in building a case against someone who left very little DNA or fingerprints on the scene which made him a prime candidate. Although most other cyborg criminals had parts specifically enhanced to help their jobs, Connor was a bit of an odd one where most of his work was mental to supplement the fact that having all of his skin artificial would make him nearly impossible to ever find. For all of the unspeakable things he was asked to do, Connor did them well and had an easy time shutting his emotions down against the tide. He didn't enjoy doing terrible things, but he enjoyed the work and achieving feats that many other would find difficult; he enjoyed excelling.

It wasn't until he was 25 that all of that started to change. Just when he had begun to hit a breaking point, spiraling down into something he couldn't undo, he met someone. Two someones, actually. It was part of a job going down in a club and he interrupted two dancers with the intent of making a scene. They accepted him with open arms and while he was thrown off, he was eventually able to finish the job and extract himself before the body was found. They also gave him their numbers and invited him to join them again sometime. It wasn't intentional yet on a poor night he tried calling their numbers and ended up just talking about nothing for hours on speakerphone with them both. Their names were [name1] and [name2]. It just kept going from there. What started as an entertaining change of pace for the two of them turned into genuine attraction for their obviously-distraught friend and after several more meetings it became apparent they all liked each other. Like, like-like. It took some convincing and explaining and rule-making but they eventually all agreed to try something between the three of them, and Connor realized he had so much more of an opportunity with these two fantastic people than he did continuing down his old path. It wasn't an easy relationship as Connor still carried a ridiculous amount of self-image issues from his childhood accident and resultant cyborg status, so they took it painstakingly slow with no less care between them.

Not without risk, Connor pulled himself from the mercenary business. He undersold himself and got a job with a security firm that would assign him to watch other companies in some of the most dull work he'd ever experienced. He loved it. After a year with [name1] and [name2], he finally confessed to what his life had been before. They were... not okay with it, but surprisingly understanding and it only further served to confirm that Connor had done the right thing in trying to reform himself and heal.

Then, only a month after his 28th birthday, something very bad happened. Connor awoke, alone and covered in blood, next to a completely dismembered body. He didn't know how he got there or what he might have done or anything. With no option to him that he could see, ran away from the scene. Then the letter came:

Did you like what you saw?

To say that he had no idea how to handle this was an understatement, and the fact that he did feel excitement at the danger, the violence, the chase that had apparently begun... it scared Connor, and he split away from his partners soon after when he realized how messed up it was that he was taking a murder as a game, a challenge, one he didn't like but couldn't stand to lose. He wanted to protect them, and to condemn himself for it.

It happened a second time. Blood, body, no memory of what had happened. He was steadier now, not quite ready but not too spooked to run away. There was another note, taunting as before, and he found no more clues. He later heard that the police had found the first body and things got even more exciting as the killer ran from him and he ran from the police. Things got... weird during the third event. He woke up too soon and saw the killer mere feet away cutting up the body right before his eyes: it was himself. Down to the last detail.

The killer claimed to be Connor Myers himself. Whatever had happened, whatever glitch in reality hated Connor, this was an alternate version of himself that had become obsessed with the beauty of death. Connor wouldn't get the story until later, but Myers had gone on from mercenary work to straight assassinations and reveled in it. Death was beautiful, an ultimate peace and the final reward. After he had found himself in a timeline where Connor Myers never longer existed as an assassin, Myers sought Connor out and tried to understand what had gone differently. Connor appreciated life; Myers didn't get the appeal. Deep down, Connor understood the reasoning more than he cared to admit but was far too stubborn to let go of the happiness he had found. In that confrontation with Myers, they both decided: they were going to convince each other of their viewpoints through whatever means necessary. Neither of them could stand the idea of not being in-tune with another version of themselves, alternate timelines or not.

Their game of cat and mouse continued. Myers stalked Connor under the alias Luka Ward and learned what he did without comprehending the appeal, and Connor would make sure he did what he could to keep reaching out and act as an example. The murders continued, although they dwindled in frequency, and after another body-side talk or two, Connor returned to [name1] and [name2] on metaphorical hands and knees; they brought him back in happily, although kept a sharper eye on him after seeing his instability had risen with whatever had shaken him so badly. Myers wouldn't touch them because it was a delicate balance to change someone's mind so intensely without snapping them to pieces first. Myers did, however, take advantage of the Connor's usual lunchdates with Dr. Myers and took his place once. Just to see her.

Connor freaked out. Childhood fears of being replaced by an entirely prosthetic son, trauma and nightmares, made him less than accepting of the fact that he and Myers had an obvious point of similarity between them: their love for their mother. That didn't make things any easier between them, but an understanding started to form. Neither of them wanted to make the other into a different person and lose what they had in common, they just wanted to share their world in the most extreme way possible. So, of course, their game continued on.

PERSONALITY: FUCKED UP BUT HEALING

INCENTIVE/FIT: "Give me a way to convince this guy that he's wrong."

For all of the stakes and the terrible things the assassin version of himself has done, Connor really does just want to prove that his way is the right way by convincing Myers that there's more to live for. There's reason in it all. This will become a personal challenge when the other him has the exact same wish, and just another piece of their puzzle. Connor, however, is intentional in accepting Eudio's offer in order to curb Myers' murderous ways as another aspect to their who-is-right game by placing them in a city where they would be held accountable more easily than their own.

That said, Connor has an odd relationship with intimacy. Consent has never been the issue for him, his own problems making him the one reluctant to get close to anyone thanks to his invisible disfigurements. That said, in a city where intimacy is encouraged but only at the pace of those involved on threat of consequences, he could very well open up and learn how to accept others that aren't just his partners.

SAMPLES: with Myers / with Bolin.

ANYTHING ELSE? Physically speaking, Connor is a goddamn mess. Everything looks pretty much normal on the outside but nearly 50% of him is made of synthetic materials and prosthetic limbs after the explosion in his childhood. Both of his legs above his knees and his right hand halfway up the forearm are fake, and removable under pain of disconnecting nerve-endings or proper medical procedure. All of his skin is synthetic; it can regrow smaller parts of itself, but requires a special chemical treatment to not scar up too badly and larger injuries need a much more severe patch-job. (This is something he would need to maintain access to and would ask the Eudio representatives if they could provide it for him.) All of these synthetic materials do send signals to the brain. On the possibility that a piece is badly damaged or destroyed, the signal is cut off as a failsafe to protect him from overload.

His eyes and ear drums are also artificial; although nothing fancy in make with very few special features (aside from the standard like triggering glowing spots on his skin, a subcutaneous watch, phone built into his ears and hand, etc.), they do have the added benefit of no potential decline of acuity unless damaged. Several of his internal organs are also integrated into his body, and require small little external maintenance on rare occasions. Thanks to his skin being semi-mechanical in nature, he can conduct electrical signals through physical contact which basically means he's a fancy USB cable sometimes and can hold digital information on a databank in his eyes; he has to do this by hand because he's not technopathic, just technoconducive.

Thanks to growing up and through puberty with half of his body being automated and using different processes than usual body parts, Connor has something of an interesting brain chemistry. It is not inhuman, but requires less stress in order to operate the mechanical pieces; as he aged, his brain adapted and took the unused pieces to allocate to other functions allowing him sharper recall, quick-thinking and high reflexes. If organic replacement limbs were created in his lifetime, he would be ineligible to receive them due to the fact that his brain can no longer handle it. The prosthetic limbs themselves are of a tougher make than human bone and thus give him a bit more oomph but they can still be damaged rather easily and he is only as good as his own mercenary training has left him.

Legally, Connor is considered a cyborg. He will come in carrying an automatic handgun and will dutifully get it registered upon arrival.