Chapter CCCLVI: All for One; One or None ~Nonth

Though he went over it numerous times, again and again in his computerized brain, it still made no sense to him. Groaning, Nonth reviewed the facts as he walked on through the forest again.

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His name was Anthony Verdemere. He was later made into the war machine he was through trickery and deceit in his attempts to make enough to live another day in something that could be called a residence. In the loosest sense of the word. Very loosest.

A Biot was what they termed him – a living, biotic robot. A melding of life and mechanics so perfect, it wasn't cybernetics. It required food, drink, sleep, and the occasional surroundings of an atmosphere to exist without a hitch. But, even better...

Its skeletal structure was superior, crafted of the finest alloy money could buy. Its stomach was cast iron and fuelled not by acid, but by an internal combustion hot enough to melt granite near instantly. The Biot’s teeth naturally fortified themselves with enough calcium to enable remarkable hardness; enough to tear steel with modest ease. An internal weapons and missile engagement system, a night vision enhanced robotic eye that was fully functional in synch with normal neural patterns and on full route with natural brainwaves, remarkable regenerative systems to speed recovery from serious physical trauma, and of course...

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Nonth snickered to himself. That which started him along this path. The weapon system the agent was later outfitted with in hopes to counteract the immense might of the futuristic robotic bounty hunter that came to destroy him. It unleashed his full potential, awakening the machine within him, steel bursting through and replacing flesh. His mind purged of emotions and fears as cold, calculating, logic of a true death weapon took hold. Multehx the agent became Multehx, the steel murder machine.

But the chip that initiated this process was defective; made from too inferior technology to accommodate to the rest of his body. It broke after use, was repaired again a few times, but each time, cracked after halting its functions. Until, finally, that demented genius had sensed its presence.

He had originally removed it out of fear, knowing that the cold, soulless killing machine would definitely defeat him if it was revived again. So he claimed the chip for his own, and set it aside. But, in the wake of his first demise, the unusual energies of the whereabouts of where the object of silicon was placed....caused...an unusual reaction.

And that's how he came about. At first, he could only take on a skeleton of a body, but a trip through...that wondrous machine...blessed machine...made him whole enough to assume the form he needed the agent to awaken in the past. But then, he encountered the agent, and raided his memory; stealing back the backup copy he had made in his usual function routines; an attempt to analyze abstract data he had mindlessly made it in the past. And now, he possessed it again. He used such information in its purest coded state and attained his current body. But still.

Again he groaned irritably as onward he walked, batting aside a low hanging tree branch. The data still existed inside of his mind. Coded. Encrypted. Sitting there, locked up tighter than a safe could even try to mimic. And within that safe...the power that every force in existence would strive for. Endless enhancement ability, expansion upon what one already knew; the Rage Force.

Only four people in existence knew truly how it worked. One was its deceased originator. One was that man's brother, who sought it viciously now. And slowly, its current holder was learning the truth of it all. Nonth was the fourth person. Intricately simple, how it functioned, yet insanely more ingenious than an incomplete mortal mind could comprehend truly. The originator and his mad brother were obviously of intelligence that only seconded his own. The new holder was getting closer to that by the day. But he would unlock it before that happened. The power was his by right, and anyone to stand in the way of such...they would be dealt with.