Introduction of the group-writing project from which my sporkers come

[sos_sporkers]

Well, I've looked back on my sporkings and realised that I really haven't been introducing my characters that well. So...I'm going to talk a bit more about them, particularly Mantra and Nagare, seeing as they come from original fiction and, therefore, you guys have no point of reference.

The co-writing idea from which Mantra and Nagare were born was conceived quite a few years ago, though I can't recall how we came upon the concept. At the beginning, two of my friends and I just envisioned teams of roaming warriors employed by the government to deal with various monsters and supernatural threats and the wacky hijinks they'd get into. It was quite a cliched concept, but we have fun playing around with it.

And because we're bitches and love to ruin everything, the ideas we threw in made the world of our story a darker and darker place, with a totalitarian government and psychologically imbalanced Agents and depleted natural resources and a huge population of poor and starving people who no one cares about. But, as the story grew darker, our interest grew deeper, because no we had genuine conflict, so we can see a story coming together.

So, having decided on an idea for a basic plot, we separate with a mission: each of us had to come up with three characters, so that we had a fairly diverse main cast. Mantra and Nagare are two of those, and were dreamt up by my friend, Waffles.

In order to explain them, I would have to explain to you the world our story is set in, so please bear with me. Also, this is my personal head canon of what happened. This is likely to be SLIGHTLY different from what my friends had in mind, because we haven't had time to consolidate our theories yet, but...it'll do for now.

Basically, the world our story is set in is was very similar to reality. In fact, we've made it canon that it basically WAS reality until everything went wrong, down to having once had the same media and pop culture as our world. Except for one small detail. There were monsters. Supernatural creatures. They were VERY small in number and generally did all could to hide from humans because we were numerous and had AWESOME WEAPONS. They didn't really bother us and were so small in number that most people didn't even know they existed. The only people aware were probably a department in the government assigned to monitoring the activies of supernatural creatures to make sure they STAYED AWAY from humanity's business.

Where did the supernatural creatures come from? Well, from another universe.

Earth was contained in a bubble of reality, and there were other bubbles pressed against it on all sides. The walls of the bubbles were enough to prevent the big mosnters from getting to us, but the small ones occasionally slipped through.

And it was fine. We could deal with those monsters. Everything was going along just great.

So, of course, the gods decided this state of affairs wasn't interesting enough...and the walls between the universes dropped.

This resulted in a huge FLOOD of demons, both greater in number and stronger in power than humanity has ever had to deal with. And we were completely unprepared.

The whole business lasted only a few weeks, but human society was crushed.

But humanity lived on.

We were no longer in our golden age, but we survived.

There were very little of us by the time the flooding stopped and the monsters began to settle in, and we lived in tight clusters so that we could defend ourselves better. Allmost all technology was destroyed or rendered useless because it didn't have an infrastructure to support it, but we made do with crude weapons and going back to our hunter-gatherer days.

But the gods are fair. They did not leave humanity with no ability to fend for themselves whilst unleashing hordes of demons on them.

Soon, some humans start to discover that they had powers, unbelievable powers that they never had before. One of them found that he could start a fire with only a thought. One of them found that he could fly as freely as a bird. One of them found that she could make all around her love her and despair. One of them found that she could summon an endless supply of cheese. The powers varied in usefulness and strength, but we WERE armed by the gods themselves to fend ourselves against these new threats.

So, that's exactly what we did.

The people with powers started off just protecting their own tribes, but they soon realised that this was a very inefficient way of doing things. So, they started travelling, often not taking many supplies apart from their weapons. The'd stop at different tribes and enjoy free food and a place to sleep in return for dispatching any local monsters.

This state of affairs continued for a few centuries, during which they discovered that magic was genetic. And so it was that different clans popped into existence, interbreeding amonst themselves to make sure magic didn't die out.

Nagare was from such a clan, and her people were known for their powerful sealing magic and astute study of magical theory.

Her clan lived deep in the mountains, but built QUITE a reputation for themselves as VERY capable warriors. But the moment they were remembered for, the true peak of their fame, did not arrive until a Kitsune attacked a neighbouring village.

Kitsune were one of the stronger monsters that had descended upon the world since the break down of the barriers. They were fickle and unpredictable. They could live peacefully next to a village for centuries and just up and decide to slaughter everyone one day for no reason. And they had a myriad of powers, too, from a strange form of clairvoyance to shape-shifting to illusions to control over fire...and although they weren't the strongest supernatural creatures around, they still somehow always managed to walk away from all conflicts having gained something.

The clan threw all they had at it, but it simply wouldn't go down. their magic wasn't enough. Or, at least, it wasn't enough as it is.

It was then that the clan leader decided to try a magic they had been experimenting with and studying for some time. They had never tried to perform it in a combat situation before, and no one really knew what was going to happen. It was all very experimental, but it was the only thing they had.

Soul magic.

This clan was the one who discovered the true power of the human soul and how even the mundane, non-gifted humans stored a mind-boggling amount of power in their souls.

This clan was the one who discovered the true power of the human soul and how even the mundane, non-gifted humans stored a mind-boggling amount of power in their souls.

One of the women in the clan volunteered her life as a sacrifice and, in the next battle against the Kitsune, her soul was used to power a spell which, is all went well, was meant to kill the monster.

They unleashed the spell and discovered, when the dust had settled, that the giant, flaming fox they had been fighting was gone. The sorrow of seeing one of their kinsfolk lying on the ground in a crumpled heap was almost entirely crushed under their joy - that they were able to defeat such a powerful monster, that they saved the people of the surrounding area, that the magic they had been experimenting with worked-

And then the crumpled figure moved.

She raised herself up on her arms, stared at her family as though they were strangers, and howled in despair.

Somehow, the Kitsune's soul had been transported inside the woman and the magic of the spell did not kill her, but enslaved her to the clan.

The enslavement spell worked curiously. Although she could interpret orders however she wished, the spell twisted her mind so that she was forced to love and adore her masters no matter what they did to her, and desire what they desired. If they wanted to hurt her, then she would want to be hurt. If they wanted her to kill her own children, then she would desire the death of those she had sired. Technically, there was nothing stopping her from disobeying except herself. almost all of her powers were gone, except for ery minor shape-shifting, very slight amounts of super-speed and super-strength, and passive powers like regeneration and immortality. She was always bound to the clan leader and passed onto his children and relatives, and was compelled to do all she could to make sure they were safe and unhurt.

And she was forced to call them 'Master'.

That Kitsune was Mantra.

After they got over the initial shock and figured out how the magic worked, they almost immediately realised what an asset they had netted themselves. They had an eldritch abomination, and a pretty powerful one, too, in their power and they could make her do whatever they wished. And she had healing powers, too, which meant no matter how much their punished her for her sins, she would still be ready to fight for them the next day. I don't think I need to tell you what they did next.

Over the years, as more and more people took up arms against the monsters, even those without powers, a realisation dawned that their current method of operation still wasn't all that efficient. And so it was that a few particularly organised and confident people got together and set up a base of operations. They received a small fee from wandering hunters, use that fee to pay for agents in different parts of the world to report supernatural activity, and then direct those hunters to areas that most need their help, where the local people pay for them to get rid of the monsters.

More and more hunters start using this service, and soon, the organisation became The Organisation, with thousands of hunters under their employment, having built a monopoly over monster-killing.

But, they were good at their job, and soon, the supernatural creatures were driven back a little, and human society really started to flourish again.

This development continued over the years, and soon, they started gaining back technology that had been lost over the last millennia, either extrapolating from old records which The Organisation had unearthed or reinventing old technology from scratch. And as society grew more complex, The Organisation grew more powerful.

As they held within their hands the only force which allowed society to develop, they became dictator over the known human world, ruler of the entire continent. They took their job seriously, though, and in order to create the most efficient hunters possible, they start doing more and more morally questionable things. As just one example, they start abandoning the more remote villages, so that they could focus on the immediately area surrounding their home base (now The Capital), essentially sacrificing the few for the benefit of the many. As another example, they start charging ridiculous fees from villages and demanding their resources, in order to ensure that the small population of the larger cities and The Capital had all the luxuries they needed. Further into their development, The Organisation even started fully emulating the government from 1984, spreading false propaganda in order to ensure loyalty, because they don't need to be dealing with internal troubles when they have to face monsters.

A basic over view of their function is thus.

A department in the organisation is composed entirely of agents who are escorted around the country to look for promising orphans to bring back to the organisation. These children range anywhere from 2 to 5 years old, all in an age where they can still be indoctrinated easily. They are trained by a former agent who proved effective enough to last into his or her middle ages, and are taught all manners of combat, mind-control resistance, facts on different types of monsters - everything they needed to survive. At around 13-14, they are sent into battle, firstly against weaker monsters with their mentor with them, then individually. Particularly talented children may be sent into battle earlier.

Each town or city on The Continent has at least one communication device (which is powered by magic) that can contact The Organisation, and they call for help when troubled by monsters. The Organisation sends out teams of usually 3 agents to deal with the problem and then charge a huge fee to the town’s tax. These teenagers are those agents being sent out.

After working for 15 or 20 years or so doing fieldwork, any agents with magical gifts are then sent into Breeding, and those without become mentors. Agents that have reached menopause become mentors too.

Agents are tattooed when they are first brought into The Organisation with their identification number and can use this tattoo to gain a number of benefits, like free public transportation, but mostly, it is a tracking device. The tattoo itself is mundane, but the ritual surrounding getting it places a tracking charm on the Agent, so that they cannot run away. An entire department of The Organisation is devoted to tracking all Agents and meticulously monitoring them. Another department is devoted to psychoanalysing every Agent there is under their command, though, of course, actual therapists don’t exist in this universe.

Over the years, as The Organisation became more and more efficient at killing monsters, those hunters that did not ally to it start diminishing in number. It is unclear whether it’s just because they need to go up against more powerful monsters now that the weaker ones are being dealt with efficient or because The Organisation has been removing competition. Regardless, the fact is that Nagare’s clan has NOT joined the Organisation and therefore suffered a steady decline in both numbers and wealth.

By the time the peak of the Organisation’s glory rolled around, Nagare’s clan has been reduced to just one person, the last of her line - Nagare herself.

Both her mother and her father had died early in her childhood and, as a four year old, Nagare had lived in the decaying remains of her ancestral home deep in the woods, being raised by Mantra, who now finds herself a slave of a child too young to even comprehend the concept of freedom. Regardless of her feelings, she is still devoted to Nagare, because of the bond, of course. So, she raises Nagare with care and makes sure the surrounding woods and villages are safe from monsters, because that had been the last order of her last master and it has stuck with her, the curse twisting her mind so that she wanted it too.

Noticing that the particularly region they were in sent suspiciously little call for help, The Organisation sent teams to investigate what was going on, and lo and behold! They find a tamed eldritch abomination!

Immediately realising how great this opportunity was, the team brings Nagare back with them (after conning her into agreeing, because otherwise, Mantra would have stopped them from taking her with her life). And she was put through much the same process as the other recruits, except she also had many experiments done on the nature of her bond with Mantra, many of which were deeply unpleasant.

She has a rather awkward relationship with Mantra.

On the one hand, she really does love Mantra. Not only was Mantra the one to raised her and her only companion during the dark days of her training, but she had tag-teamed with Mantra for years and thus knows her and has learnt to trust her and rely on her in difficult situations. And Mantra has saved her life so many times, that she can’t help but be moved. That, and Mantra’s light-hearted humour and teasing, though annoying, is often what gets her through the day now. She is almost certain that she never would have survived The Organisation if Mantra hadn’t been there for her. But, on the other hand…there was the curse. How does she know that Mantra isn’t doing this just because the curse had been twisting her mind? How does she know that while Mantra was joking with her and watching out for her and tending her wounds with surprising gentleness, her true self isn’t snarling with pain and fury inside of her? How does she know that, if she freed Mantra, she wouldn’t immediately revert back to the murdering eldritch abomination she had been? And most of all, no matter what, she can’t ignore the fact that her ancestors, her parents, her FAMILY, had been cruel to Mantra. They had rained vengeance upon her…and then went even further than that. They had used her and abused her and TREATED her like a slave. They really had no right to claim moral superiority over her. The people she loved, Mantra hated with good reason, and she can’t blame her for that.

So, mostly, she acts annoyed and frustrated by Mantra, but really does love her. She’s just not sure how to deal with Mantra because she has a guilt complex involving what her family did AND because…she has self-worth issues, too. She really does believe that after so many years working with each other, Mantra only sticks around her because of the curse.

Mantra has, over the years, developed a coping mechanism against the torture she had been put under. Mostly, she was determined to show that the centuries she had spent in slavery did NOT break her, and so she over-compensated, pushing her boundaries and doing everything she can to annoy Nagare to prove that she did NOT fear her. And since Nagare had issues with personal contact, Mantra almost made it a point to endlessly flirt with her. And when Nagare truly got angry at her, just a few guilt trips, a few hints at Mantra’s past or an emphasis of her slavery, and Nagare would cave immediately.

But despite that, she does like Nagare, too. Almost love her. After all, she had raised Nagare and saw her grow from an ignorant child to the harden warrior she was today. And since Nagare had not been indoctrinated by her family, she honestly treated Mantra as much like an equal as she could, purposely avoiding giving her direct orders and even feeling uncomfortable being addressed as ‘Master’. And it was undeniable that Nagare and saved Mantra just as many times as Mantra had saved her. Even though she knew that Mantra had a very impressive healing ability, she still did all she can to make sure Mantra wasn’t hurt. Nagare was the only Master Mantra had ever known as a person. But, again, how can she be sure that it wasn’t the curse twisting her mind? How can she be sure that this love wasn’t a sign of her breaking? And, after centuries of hating her Masters, how is she supposed to stop? And then, there’s that lurking fear that she doesn’t quite believe in and yet can’t get rid of. What if, one day, Nagare became like all her old Masters? If she showed vulnerability now, then where would she be?

And so it was that this barrier of distrust and self-doubt and pride and uncertainty prevented them from ever moving past their relationship of comrades and foil.

So, that’s the back story of the most basic Nagare and Mantra.

There are also two other versions of Nagare and Mantra from different points in the time line, and I’ll give you a basic run down of their particular psyches.

One is the Mantra that sporks with me without Nagare present.

That one is from a later point in the time line.

Mantra’s curse works in such a way that if Nagare’s line dies out, then she will die too, because there is no one else she can be passed on to. And Nagare has long decided that she will NOT give birth. She loves Mantra and never wants Mantra to die, but that lingering doubt of whether Mantra was just as much of a monster inside now as several centuries ago is what drove her to decide that enough was enough and she might as well give Mantra a mercy-kill and potentially save all of humanity. At the same time, she knows that the organisation WILL be doing all they can to get Nagare into breeding as soon as possible so that they can maintain their possession of Mantra. In fact, the only reason she was able to avoid breeding for so long is because she was a VERY effective field agent and had a late puberty, so even at 17, she was still quite flat-chest-ed with rather narrow hips. And The Organisation wouldn’t want to risk her dying in childbirth.

At the end of the story, there is a massive outbreak in The Organisation where first one Agent, and then a whole group of Agents, managed to escape…and remain uncaptured. The Organisation was in chaos, with every department scrambling to find those escapees and bring them back, and so occupied were they by their internal problems that a huge demonic army took them by surprise as they laid siege upon the capital.

Seeing this as the perfect opportunity, Nagare goes to confront the leader of The Organisation. She knows that she and Mantra had an extra curse put upon them when they were brought in, in addition to the tracking charm, because Mantra and Nagare are two people The Organisation absolutely cannot afford to lose.

She strode in the Leader’s office and demanded that she and Mantra be released NOW from their curse, or she WILL kill the Leader. She knows that the curse was bound to the Leader, because she was the only one she would trust, and killing the Leader would break the curse as well.

And the Leader smile and clapped her hands, and out sprang a legion of people clad in white armour. They weren’t Agents - Nagare had never seen them before in her life - but they were frighteningly powerful, each with almost unthinkable powers and the martial arts to match.

Against perhaps two or three of them, she probably would have won, but against almost a dozen, Nagare stood no chance. She knew that, but she kept fighting, because…because she simply HAD to fight on. Not only for herself, but for the entirety of humanity.

And she kept fighting for an impressively long time, but eventually, inevitably, she was overpowered and was pinned to the ground with a gun to her head…

When the doors shattered and Mantra flew in.

She had realised that Nagare was nowhere to be found in the chaos and arrived at the logical conclusion.

Though her powers were reduce, she was more still more than capable of overpowering the guards, particularly when she was so emotionally agitated and thus even more aggressive than usual. Once they were gone, Mantra fell to her knees beside Nagare and just gaped in horror at the number of wounds she had on her and how she had never seen her so fragile before, pale and broken, lying in a pool of her own blood.

But quickly, anger overpowered fear, and she pulled Nagare up by her shoulders and shook her quite roughly and screamed at her that, ‘No! Don’t you DARE fucking die on me. I will NOT fucking stand for that. You- If you fucking died, then I’d fucking die! No, dammit! You get yourself together RIGHT FUCKING NOW!’ and she barely even noticed the tears brimming in her eyes.

And Nagare weakly opened her eyes and pressed one bloody palm against Mantra’s cheek, and said the last two words Mantra wanted to hear. ‘You’re free.’

At the same time, a gunshot rang out behind her. The Leader had a gun on her, apparently, and the tiny, broken girl in Mantra’s arms shuddered once, gave out a pitiful gurgle, and then fell still.

There was a horrible moment of utter stillness where time itself seemed to have stopped.

But then so many things were happening at once that, for the first time since the beginning of her life, Mantra truly believed that she was going mad. There was a horrible, horrible shattering sound deep within her chest and an overwhelming ocean of fiery power bubbled up inside her, burning through her bones, her muscles, her skin, rendering her weak visage of humanity to ash. And it continued bubbling forth, roaring through her in an unstoppable stream of destruction, building up and straining against the petty restraints of her worldly flesh until it all came to a head and she exploded. And, for a moment, there was only blazing fire and maddening power and the heady, exhilarating rush of freedom.

She was Mantra. She was a Kitsune. And the city, the humans that had held her prisoner, now looked like a mere toy, destroyed with an easy flick of her wrist. And she looked down, at the rabble of a demonic army and the weak little flesh-coloured ants running before it and the charred remains of the building that had once been the icon of power, but now laid at her feet in a broken heap-

The building which had housed Nagare’s body.

Nagare’s body.

She was dead.

And Mantra wasn’t happy.

She…she never really thought about how she’d feel once she was free. For centuries, she simply believed that, of course she would seek bloody vengeance once she was no longer in the power of such crude creatures. Of course, she despised all her masters and any little feeling of compassion for them was because of the curse. Of course, she would show these limited beings the true magnificence of her powers and just how worthless they were before it.

But…she felt none of that.

Nagare was dead.

And she wasn’t happy.

It was then that the sinking realisation dawned.

She still felt contempt and hatred for her past Masters, oh yes, and there were quite a few that she wished she had her hands on…but not Nagare. Never Nagare. Ever feeling of affection for her, every moment of camaraderie…they were real. She had loved Nagare, and not just because of the curse.

And now Nagare’s dead.

Dead, because she had voluntarily set Mantra free.

And all of a sudden, all the righteous fury, all the glory, all the power-rush, all the desire for vengeance…they simply evaporated into smoke. And Mantra looked around, at the chaos and the battle and the pitiful humans that put up such a fight for the brief existences and the monsters clambering over each other for as simple a satisfaction as food…And she felt nothing.

Because there was nothing to feel for anymore.

So, she turned and walked away.

After Nagare’s death, Mantra’s characterisation took quite a turn. Before, distrust was a huge part of her character, because she could never be sure whether the emotions she was feeling was her own or merely something implanted there by the curse. But now, she had concrete confirmation of all her feelings…and she doesn’t know how to deal with them.

She alternates between a state of mere numbness and extreme flashes of anger, directed either at Nagare (HOW DARE SHE DIE ON HER?) or herself (HOW COULD YOU WASTE SO MANY YEARS DOUBTING YOURSELF?).

But time passes and wounds heal, and eventually, she comes out of her angst coma. And from there on, another emotion begins to dominate her life: loneliness.

She couldn’t go back to human society. It contained to many memories, and the shock of Nagare’s death had destroyed any emotional barriers or psychological defences she had, so she was far too vulnerable to put herself amongst humans. Not to mention, she find that she is no longer interested in interacting with them anyways. Now that she had her full powers back, it was impossible for her to find someone who could be her foil, who could match her in every way, who she wouldn’t be able to dominate with a flick of her fingers. They’d never compare to what she had.

She couldn’t go back to the society of monsters. When it was discovered that soul magic worked on eldritch abominations like her, more and more humans started using it, binding powerful monsters to virgins, who are then immediately killed. Since they had no offspring, the monsters die also. Thus, most eldritch abominations simply chose to go and terrorise another dimension. Her kind wasn’t around anymore, and there was no way she could fit in to the current monster society, because she was too powerful and incomprehensible…and also because, as much as she is unsatisfied with humanity, she loves them too much. After so many years around Nagare and…well, a profession of hunting down monsters who hurt humans, she wouldn’t know if she could tolerate letting monsters take advantage of helpless people, and that would definitely alienate her.

She couldn’t dimension travel herself and seek out her kind because the multi-verse is too large and because…well, as much as she’d liked to think she had emerged from slavery unchanged and unbroken, the truth was that she WAS changed and she WAS broken. Firstly, she was far too attached to this world. Whilst all the reminders of her days with Nagare were painful, she was CERTAIN that she wouldn’t survive in a world where no evidence of her days with Nagare existed, because as painful as they were, those were the only genuinely happy memories she had. And she’d truly go mad if even the last faint reminders of the only person she had ever truly loved was taken away from her. And even supposing she found her kin, she wouldn’t fit in with them either, because she had grown attached to humanity, grown sympathetic to them, and her culture wouldn’t understand that. Kitsune were chaotic and fickle creatures and were eldritch in every sense of the word. But Mantra had become humanised, had learned things from us that she could never forget - like love and friendship and empathy and pain.

And so she wanders the earth, lonely but far too broken to seek out company…

And she knows EXACTLY who to blame for her current state of affairs.

The authors.

My friends and I.

And that is why she is decidedly VERY bitter in all of her sporkings with me and is much more prone to violence.

I love sporking with this version of Mantra, because I like it when she makes me her bitch. (Yes, I AM a freak. Why do you ask?)

And then there’s the third version.

I haven’t written anything with these two in action, but they are my favourite versions of Mantra and Nagare.

See, I often discussed this pairing with my friend, because I thought they were very interesting and complex (but then, I could just be an arrogant asshole), and this version of Mantra and Nagare were born out of one of our discussions, and the biggest point to them?

THEY ARE NOT CANON.

This is basically a horrible fanfic-version of Mantra and Nagare where my friends and I self-insert ourselves into our own universe as ‘gods’ and make a deal with Mantra and Nagare.

We would screw the laws of time and space over and create an afterlife where Mantra and Nagare can meet and talk and discuss their feelings and have a sappy romance…in return for their service in helping us spork fanfiction. Of course, this contract is retroactively valid through time, so we can rope earlier versions of their characters into sporking, too.

After decades of loneliness, of course, Mantra says ‘yes’ almost immediately…though the process was a lot more difficult with Nagare.

When we first revived her, she had been horrified to find herself conscious again, especially after remembering what she had done.

She was convinced that, because of a purely sentimental decision, Mantra was right now wrecking havoc on the earth below. And when we reassured her that Mantra has actually been keeping away from killing humans, she then promptly assumes that it was because they disgusted her…more specifically, Nagare disgusted her.

It took a long time and several extensive conversations for those two to sort their relationship out.

They are, basically, the most psychologically healthy versions of Mantra and Nagare we have got…and actually probably the healthiest relationship I’ve ever written.

Let that sink in for a moment. The love affair between an eldritch abomination and a ghost who simultaneous have a slave/master relationship and DID have a mentor/student relationship. No really, let that sink in.

My brain is weird.

So, having told you about the story of these two, I see no reason in giving you a brief overview of the rest of the cast, since I’m sure many of them will make an appearance here in the future, and even now, some references to them are being made.

Cynder

Cynder is…special.

He’s actually the hero and protagonist in our universe, which makes it amusing that I basically just told you the whole plot of the novel without mentioning him at all.

He grew up in the capital and was VERY sheltered, because The Capital had such a monotonous culture. His life was much the same as the average teenagers - he went to school, had some friends, didn’t really know what to do with his life, is more or less just letting fate carry him where it will…Sure, he knew that there were supernatural creatures out there, but The Capital is so well-protected the he only OCCASIONALLY seen them on TV or in Organisation propaganda. There’s a distinct detachment from the situation, much like the kind of detachment we have to reports of teenagers who had killed themselves after deciding to drive when drunk. ‘Sure, it’s horrifying, but it happens to Other People. It wouldn’t happen to me!’ We really don’t BELIEVE in the possibility of such things until it starts affecting us directly. Sure, he knew poor people existed, but he didn’t really comprehend poverty. To him, poor was not being able to afford to dine out regularly or have luxuries. He doesn’t really understand the concept of being so poor that you literally didn’t have anything to eat.

As sheltered as he is, he didn’t exactly have a perfect family life, though his problems are trivial compared to all of the other characters. His father worked for the Organisation, and though he knew it was an important job and that the Organisation’s purpose was defending the people against monsters, the only knowledge he had of the Organisation was from the propaganda, and thus…he really has no idea what’s going on at all. None.

His father is the kind of employee that doesn’t work for the Organisation out of fear. He truly IS loyal to it. He obsesses about it and worships it and love it with every bit the fever of an honestly brainwashed citizen of Oceania in 1984. And he threw himself more and more into his work until…he just stopped coming home. That was when Cynder was 7 years old.

Cynder never knew his father. The only thing he DID know was that he was the man responsible for making his mother into an emotional mess, a dull, empty shell of her former self who lives on auto-pilot because she loved her husband so much that she began to lose her own integrity. The only thing he knows is that his father was the reason his mother had retreated into her own inner world and left him to deal with reality alone.

His life had been so consumed with trying to make sure his mother was okay that he never really had the chance to think about what HE wanted to do. And so, after their equivalent of the High School Certificate Exam, he sat in the musky apartment he and his mother lived in, dumbly staring at his rather nice scores, completely lost as to what his next step should be.

It was then that he received a letter.

From his father.

It was curt, short to the point that it was almost a note, simply telling him to come to the headquarters of The Organisation tomorrow at noon.

After 11 years of silence, his father sent him a letter.

A letter full of curt orders that he clearly expected Cynder to follow.

A letter without even a single sentence asking about the welfare of Cynder and his mother.

The next day, Cynder showed up to The Organisation filled with righteous fury, determined to get a few answers out of the man. If he had know his father’s true intention, he probably would have never went.

His father was brainwashed in every sense of the word. He honestly believed that The Organisation was a good place full of good people who were doing good deeds. And since he worked for such a clearly moral force, surely, no one could blame him for being caught up in it, right? He honestly didn’t understand why Cynder would be angry at him for leaving for 11 years. And since The Organisation was so good, surely, it would do his son well to have him join in with their work, right?

So, after Cynder showed up and proved his identity, he was promptly drugged, tattooed, charmed, and thrust in a team with Nagare and Mantra and sent off to his first mission the very next day.

Needless to say, he did NOT handle it well.

Nagare was able to foil all of his escape attempts (because being caught by her is more pleasant than being caught by the guards), but he…he was an average teenager who was made into a soldier in one day - without any training, any mental preparation, he was just thrust into a situation where everything he was, was at risk, and told to DEAL with it.

He is the most moral and stable character we have and serve the purpose of the straight man. He is the person to which every other character is contrasted to show how profoundly these people have become broken by The Organisation. He is the outsider, the newcomer, the morality pet…

He’s simply a decent person.

As it is, Nagare and Mantra got quite protective of him because innocence like that was more precious to them than gold after spending all their life in The Organisation.

He’s a rather meek person and a thoroughly NICE guy even to the bitter end, so, as such, he’s not that great a sporker. I may bring him in, in the latter Rebecca Sherwood fics, though, because he’s the ONLY character in that universe we have who has had a formal education, so he might be able to point out how ridiculously the Sue portrays school life.

David

David is a scientist in every sense of the word.

He was one of the rare characters born in The Organisation, a product of the breeding program.

He had powers too, the ability to make mundane objects function at a higher efficiency by imbuing them with magic.

He was brought up by Agents in The Organisation who, needless to say, had no idea how to handle children. He was isolated as a child, given almost no human contact, and forced to practice the use of his powers endlessly.

So, as a grown up, he is a very emotionally detached person. He doesn’t love anything, but he doesn’t hate anything either. He regards all around him, from a grain of dust to a human being, with the same air of mild curiosity. The only thing he really displays passion for is experimenting on those things and basically finding out how everything around him works.

This is a mental process that has been taught to him from birth - to be analytical and alert and logical - but also a coping mechanism of his, too. That which he understands cannot hurt him.

I have never tried my hands at using him as a sporker, since I imagine mild intrigue isn’t that interesting to read about, though I guess you could use his vast store of scientific knowledge to spork something that really failed at research. Despite this, I find him quite a great character, as he unsettles me.

He’s the antithesis of a good character. He doesn’t have depth, flaws, a personality…because it’s entirely unintentional. He is a human character who simply isn’t human. And I don’t know about you, but I think that’s creepy.

Alex

Alex was an orphan brought into the Organisation at the age of 3. He had an especially tough time during training, as he was rather wiry and girlish as a child, and so his mentor thought that he couldn’t possibly get strong enough to handle monsters. And so his presence in the training course is just robbing other children of chances to improve themselves and therefore have a chance of survival. So…he was treated VERY badly, even compared to the experiences of other children.

Because of this, he developed a rather peculiar personality.

He’s…well, he’s not narcissistic. He doesn’t love himself, because he knows what a horrible, broken mess he is as a person. He’s just very self-centred. He always thinks about himself first and how a certain thing may affect HIM. He has to look out for himself, because there’s no one looking out for him. He’s determined to be utterly self-sufficient, because he’s never been able to do teamwork with anyone, and believes that he CAN’T rely on anyone else.

He’s probably the most brilliant marksman in The Organisation and never goes anywhere without his gun, and he chose this particular area to focus on because sniping removes himself from the target. To be up close and engaged in physical combat would involve far too direct interaction and have an emotional impact, and he knows he has to distance himself from things because…he’s never experienced connection before in his life, and he fears the unknown like all humans do.

He is also UTTERLY determined to escape The Organisation. Sure, other Agents hate the place as much as he does, but none are so devoted to plans of escape as him. Maybe it was because his mentor never devoted much time to him so he isn’t as indoctrinated, but his life goal is escaping and he will do ANYTHING to facilitate it. He literally throws his life into planning out every move. On every mission, he’s finding allies outside, setting up stocks of food and supplies everywhere so that he can rely on those when he’s escaped and in hiding, spending all of his free time researching tracking charms to see how to remove his own…

His PURPOSE in life is seeking freedom. That is the reason for which he lives. That is the source of his hope and motivation.

At this point, he can’t STOP planning for escape because it was the only thing he had, the only straw he could cling to.

He is backed into a corner and he is NOT afraid to bite.

Again, I doubt he would ever be a sporker, simply because he wouldn’t care. The Sues aren’t affecting him, so he doesn’t give a shit. He’d just spend the entire time brooding and daydreaming about escape plans.

Tressela

Tressela is…special, too, in a COMPLETELY different way from Cynder.

She...well, to put it simply, she’s a paedophilic drug dealer.

No, seriously.

In the Organisation, there is a team that NO ONE wants to get on and NO ONE wants to work with. That’s the team they stuff everyone who’s too unstable to keep around but too much of a waste of resources to kill.

She’s the tactical leader of that team.

That should tell you something.

The drug dealer aspect of her can be explained by the fact that she has magic too, such that she can briefly acquire the powers of a monster by…consuming its flesh. And she has studied her magic so that she can extract a monster’s power and imbue it in other people by making them consume its flesh.

The paedophile aspect of her can be explained by the fact that nobody in The Organisation has really experienced connection and love, so when she realised how great the unconditional trust and love a small child has for their guardian, she got addict to it. And she’ll do anything to win the favour of children. She doesn’t have a sexual relationship with any of them, but it’s undeniable that she has a closer relationship with them than most of us are comfortable with.

But saying that would be rationalising feeding the organs of exotic animals to children to get them addicted so that they can rely on you for the highs. Which I’m not going to do.

So, simply, Tressela is probably the most unambiguously distasteful character we have, probably the only one that doesn’t have any redeemable traits.

She wants love and she’ll do anything to get it.

Because she is such a creepy bastard, I sincerely doubt we shall ever be seeing her in any sporking.

Karei-lei

See Tressela up there? Karei-lei is her main victim.

Thankfully, The Organisation is decent enough to make sure she mostly works with David and Alex, but that does not change the fact that she has a VERY close relationship with Tressela and is a main target of her ‘drug peddling’. Because she honestly loves Tressela as a mother.

In all her years in The Organisation, Tressela has been the only person to treat her with love, and she was…well, quite frankly, seduced by that. And she is so young, only 7 or 8 years old in the main story, that she likely doesn’t even know anything is wrong with her and Tressela’s relationship.

Mercifully, she begins interacting with Cynder more and more and become a sort of anchor for his sanity. He takes care of her and sort of babysits her when he starts doubting himself, to reassure himself that he is needed and wanted by SOMEONE. And she, in return, learn from him that…well, familial love is kind of different from what Tressela had with her.

She’s a small child who has deep insecurity issues and a VERY twisted view of the world, a brilliant showcase of just how much indoctrination can damage one’s mind. As such, I don’t think she’ll show up in sporkings often.

Craig

Craig is a Blood Knight gone wrong.

He was from the outskirts of a small village and led a poor, but mostly happy life. He went to town one day and returned to find his home burning to the ground and a monster walking away from it, with the half-masticated leg of his mother still in its hands. Needless to say, he went batshit.

He charged after the monster in a haze of blood-thirst, but was easily defeated. Fortunately (Unfortunately?), the monster was already full, so it did nothing more than knock him out.

He was nursed back to health by the townspeople, but he never really snapped out of that haze of blood-thirst.

He is one of the few, FEW people who approached The Organisation and BEGGED to be allowed to join. He was already quite old by then, around 8 years old, but The Organisation is not one to turn down free, volunteered resources. So, he was given basic training and sent out to the field…where people quickly realised that HE. IS. BATSHIT.

Outside of battle, he is a very quiet and reserved man and devotes himself obsessively to training. Nothing is on his mind except getting stronger, strong enough to claim revenge. But as soon as a monster enters his field of vision? HE. GOES. CRAZY.

He goes lethal force EVERYTIME and completely abandons any attempt at defence in favour of attack, attack, attack. He will go after a whole DEN filled with eldritch abominations if he sees it, even if he knows he’ll end up doing nothing except killing himself. And he goes after ALL monsters, even the ones they haven’t been asked to kill. If he was travelling along and found a nest of newborn werewolves? He will strangle every last one of those pups. And he will go to ANY lengths to kill monsters. If he needs to blow up an entire building full of innocent people to kill one DOCILE supernatural creature? He will do it. Because all supernatural creatures are evil and will murder thousands of people and the innocents he kill is a fair price.

HE. IS. BATSHIT.

And deep down, he subconsciously knows that this is batshit, too. He isn’t seeking revenge any longer. He is just raining senseless violence upon supernatural creatures because that’s all his life is about. That’s what he’s spent the last decade and a half doing. That’s his reason for living. So, if he gave that up…what would remain of him?

Killing was what defined him.

Again, needless to say, I doubt you’ll be seeing much of him because…BATSHIT!

Shizuku

Shizuku is a portrait of what The Organisation can do to you at its worst.

She is the most…broken of the main cast.

She was acquired by The Organisation at a late age, too (8 years old), because she had a very potent power that they were not going to pass up - the ability to read minds.

They put her through a very quick basic training that focused more on exploiting her powers than anything else, and then put her into a team and sent her out to do some field work and see what she can do in action at the tender age of 10. As you can guess, that did NOT turn out well.

Simply, she had never been in an actual life and death situation before, and she was NOT prepared for it. So, when a huge, hulking monster charged for her? She panicked. She panicked and her powers lashed out and she ploughed through both the minds of her teammates AND the monster and ripped it to shreds.

And the combined impact of the horror and fear and pain of everyone that was around who got mind-raped by her drove her mad.

When The Organisation found her again, they found that she had subconsciously sealed her own powers so that she can no longer read minds anymore and only has a VERY faint trace of Empathy as a power in her. Basically, she’s not very useful for anything other than a human lie detector. They’ve already trained her and she DOES have the most basic combat skills, so it’d be a waste to execute her, so they stuffed her in the team that nobody wants to be on and left her to rot.

As a result of her experiences, she is a VERY subservient person. She, after all, IS responsible for the death of several of her comrades, and she subconsciously seeks punishment for that by making herself everyone’s bitch. She meticulously cleans the house and does all the jobs that no one else wants to do and obeys all orders and honestly believes herself to be the scum of the earth.

Thanks to what had happened the first time she got involved in physical combat, she is almost useless in battle situations, so, really, the only thing nice you get out of being around her is an obedient servant and punching bag.

BUT.

When people die around her, that triggers a flashback to her first battle and she almost ALWAYS go completely BERSERK. Her powers, which had been suppressed and were building up and bubbling forth under her mental barrier now pour forth and she just lets it all out. There is no finesse, no skill. She just explodes and grabs hold of every single mind in the vicinity and RIPS. IT. APART. And then she collapses into a coma followed by a period of intense, suicidal depression.

I have no idea who thought it’d be a good idea to put her on the same team as a DEATH SEEKER (Craig), but hey. It’s The Organisation. That’s really all the explanation I need.

So, needless to say, won’t be appearing in sporkings.

Looks up* GAH, I did not intend to ramble on like this when I started off. Well, regardless, I hope you found the information interesting and, hopefully, this will help you understand more of my sporkings. I’ll probably be writing SOME short stories centred around these guys, so…I thought it’d be a good idea to do that HUGE info-dump on you guys.

If you stayed with me until the very end, then I commend you, good sir/madam, and leave you this awesome piece of music as my thanks.

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