♦ Headcanon

[mortemscintilla]

TW: Violence/Child Abuse

♦ In keeping with canonical obscurity, Hei will be referred to as 'Li', pre-Heaven's Gate. His real name remains a mystery.  

♦ 'Li' is born in the year of the Metal Dragon, to parents solidly in the lower-middle-class strata. His younger sister, Xing, is born two years later. Tentative around the new baby at first, he grows used to loving her, from the days when, still a toddler, his grandmother teaches him to dandle and protect her. They are always allies-in-arms.

♦ 'Li's interest in the stars starts when he's about 6 years old, after his grandfather buys him a book titled The Universe. His little mind is blown away by the glossy pictures of all the constellations. One picture which he clearly remembers is the Milky Way, dividing the twin points of Altair and Vega. Even after his adult self develops a cold disdain for love stories, that is one tale he still remembers fondly.

♦ 'Li's first 'telescope' is one of those cheap plastic vacuum cases. The first night, he tries looking at the moon and is hugely disappointed he can't see a single thing through it. He doesn't get to purchase a 'real' telescope until 4 years later -- a Satake Refractor Model. On a family camping trip, under a bed of glittering stars, he sets up the telescope with a giggly Xing's help. "We're going to see the moon!"

♦ Xing makes a wish on a shooting star. In his mind's eye, Hei can still see that moment. The quiet that naturally rules over everything at a perfect night -- broken by the stars hurtling down from the sky. The rest is commentary.

♦ Following the incident, Xing becomes cold and remote. Psychopathic, some would say. One night, their parents return home to find her drenched in someone else's blood, snoozing peacefully on the rattan armchair at the veranda. The next morning, the newspaper headlines a horrific murder spree -- a group of men found electrocuted into unrecognizable black char. Their father, terrified and disgusted at the idea of harboring a monster in their home, is contacted by the Syndicate. A deal is struck; for a satisfactory payment, they will take Xing off the family's hands. Their mother, already buckling under the strain of trying to understand her daughter's mysterious change, agrees when presented with the idea.

The only one who protests is 11 year old 'Li.'

♦ "I'm not letting them take her -- you keep saying she's not Xing anymore -- I know she is, and you're not listening to me. She's different, but that doesn't mean -- Stop it! I'm not crazy! Why are you letting those men take her away? Stop telling me to calm down! Xing -- wait for me!"

♦ 'Li' runs away from home, choosing to follow his sister. He doesn't see his parents again. Not until 7 years later, after Heaven's Gate vanishes, snatching her away with it. (That reunion is brief, emotionless, and results in two matter-of-fact deaths -- reported in the obituary. Cause of death: Severe electric shock. Motive: Unknown.)

♦ The only human among hundreds of Contractors, the neophyte 'Li' suffers his share of hazing and intimidation. His instructor, the formidable Reynard Maxley, is particularly disdainful of the timid boy, who startles at gun reports and can't aim because his hands shake so badly. The moniker Black Reaper is bestowed on 'Li' as a cruel joke.

♦ "To miss the first shot is to send death an engraved invitation. You won't last a second on the battlefield."

♦ Maxley's contempt of the boy gives the other recruits permission. Permission to snatch food off his tray at lunchtime; to go out of their way to bump into him and snap Watch where you're going; to knock him out of a boat in the middle of the lake, pretending it's for fun though no one else is tossed out, prying his fingers off the sides, again and again, until 'Li' has to swim back alone to the shore -- tired, dripping and furious. He spends most of his first year at the facility tangled in vicious fights.

♦ Some of the boys -- none of whom survive the first month of Heaven's War -- start a betting pool on how long before 'Li' cracks. They think he doesn't know. He's not sure what to do about it, so he learns to develop a thick hide, and takes to glaring in silent defiance at them and target-practicing for hours alone, fighting that sick, crawling feeling of never being good enough.

A night will come when he stops feeling it entirely.

♦ "Okay, Reaper," Maxley sneers. "Final test. Sink or swim. Show us if you got anything."

Twelve-year-old 'Li' turns toward the target, blank-eyed. He raises the pistol in both hands, holds it forward, and focuses on the sights. Bang. Bang. Bang. He goes through an entire box of ammunition. He fires thirty-six shots, then stops. He doesn't want his wrist to ache the next day. He's done enough. When the target is brought forward, he sees that none have missed. And over two dozen are in the 'kill' zone.

Behind him, Maxley laughs.

♦ But as sharp as he is with guns, there are better weapons. They take up a lot of his time; he starts fencing, and, as it turns out, is a rather fine sabreuse. He takes up boxing and judo, because there's a reliability in your own body -- a control -- that no firearm can match.

Eventually, that becomes the watchword of Hei's life. Control.

♦ 'Li' learns to survive in a literally cutthroat in environment of trainee killers. To adapt. To overcome. Even to outrank. But no one excels like his little sister, Xing -- known now by her codename: Pai. Rumors circulate; it's whispered she might join the elite squadron and be shipped off to South America. Into the heart of the war.

'Li' pretends to be proud. But inside, he dreads the idea. Because the higher Xing -- Pai -- rises through the ranks, the further she'll sink into the wolf's maw. She is a trained killer. But she is also his little sister. 'Li' swears to himself to protect her at all costs. And to accomplish that, he doesn't just need to be good.

He needs to be unbeatable.

♦ "Recruits will be punished for misbehavior. And a conscience, in this life, is always misbehavior. Never forget that."

♦ VO2 Max Test. Circuit Training. Assault Course. Swimming. At first, he struggles. He angers more instructors than he impresses, doesn't keep notes, writes on his bunk walls, does the exercises he wants to do instead of the ones he's meant to be doing, refuses to specialize and instead chooses activities ranging from high explosives theory to shippalgi to Brazilian jiu jitsu to cryptography and insists he is specializing, fuck you, it's not his fault if no one's following the pattern. He gets passed from instructor to instructor; no one clicks with him.

Then he's put under the charge of UB001. Codename: Amber.

♦ Amber is six years older than him. Amber is beautiful, sophisticated, and a tactical prodigy. Amber always smiles meltingly at 'Li,' as if she can't see him going slightly unfocused and stuttery around her. (She'll keep pretending for three whole years -- until 'Li' is sixteen and no longer 'Li.')

♦ "What is the Syndicate, really? Why do they need these soldiers?"

Maxley laughs. "You'll find out when the time is right, Reaper. Not before. Don't ask me again if you're smart."

"That is such bullshit. Maybe you should use robots. They'll just do what you program them for and not ask questions."

He earns a bloody nose and two broken fingers for that.

♦ Every Saturday night, on a battered TV set, the facility shows recruits a different movie. But in a way they're all the same. The Devil's Rejects. Rambo. Hostel. Martyrs. Ichi the Killer. The Wild Bunch. Shogun Assassin. Cannibal Holocaust. Gore. Suffering. Cruelty. War. (His favorite, Hei decides, is Battle Royale.) For history, they learn about Alexander's conquests and Caesar's Gallic wars. In literature, they read The Red Badge Of Courage, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Thin Red Line. Sartre. Kierkegaard. Nietzsche. Leibniz. Schopenhauer. 'Li' doesn't mind the repeated themes. The works, the books, the movies, are all filled with survival and self-awareness, violence and death, all of which are pivotal themes in his new life. 

 

♦ He adjusts to the tactical maneuvers, the knives and rifle practice, the precision marching, and other training he receives from the militia. He enjoys the war games. In class as well as in sports, the recruits are encouraged to compete with each other. To see who is smarter, stronger, better. 

 

And in the background, well-dressed strangers often appear. With calculating eyes, they watch the boys and girls. Comparing. Judging. Choosing.

♦ Amber is the one who first teaches him how to dance. "For agility and finesse. Endurance and strength aren't important. Nor is the size of your opponent. A blow on the right spot will kill him. Reflex is the most vital factor. For that, you must learn to be one with your body."

♦ 'Li' makes his first kill at thirteen. He learns to fight, to numb himself, to lie, to destroy, to do it well, to even revel in it, and then to come down and see the blood and the business itself. His fellow recruits are drunk on their sense of invincibility. 'Li' prefers to use those braincells to map out exit strategies and to calculate weak-spots.

Invincibility is an illusion. It's just a matter of who strikes first.

♦ When the curriculum ends, 'Li' is at the top of his class. And Amber helps him get there.

♦ 'Li' loses his virginity at 14. Not with a fellow recruit. Not for puppy-love or the joys of adolescent exploration. His instructors are the ones who arrange it. Chose a civilian target. Manipulate. Seduce. Eliminate. The lesson they drill into him is a simple one. Sex is not love. It is a tool, to be polished like any tool in his repertoire. The earlier he learns it, the better.

♦ "Here's how life works, Black Reaper. A man or a woman gets the face he or she deserves as life goes on. Beautiful. Ugly. Comic. Whatever. You grow into your kisser. It's the same with a name. We don't choose it, it chooses us. So suck it up. Live up to what you are."

The last bit of advice Maxley ever gives him. Hei doesn't forget it.

♦ At 15, Hei is grouped with the top recruits of his class, and provided 'layering.' Killer-instinct training. Secrets of elicitation. Psychological conditioning. Each ingredient necessary for the perfect recipe -- efficient, ruthless soldiers. Ideal killing machines. Ten months later, Hei is handpicked personally into Amber's squadron -- along with Pai, Carmine and a select few others.

They are deployed to South America, where the global war rages.

♦ "You're heading into the battle unarmed? Where's your gun?"

"I don't use guns. I prefer knives."

"Yeaaaaah. And the enemy prefers a fucking corpse."

He takes a special pleasure in shutting those soldiers up.

♦ He feels wired all the time. It frightens him. And while it's okay when the sun's out, sometimes night comes and he'll be holding a silent, blood-smeared Pai as she pays her Remuneration, afraid that his reflexes might fail him one day, and that he won't be able to protect his sister, and that everything will spiral away from him. His thoughts are always gnawing at him like chiggers; his mind won't work like he wants it to. It's too fast, too expansive, too hyper-alert.

Amber tells him that's good. It'll keep him alive.

♦ He's sixteen when he fucks Amber. (Or when Amber fucks him? The distinction is a tough one.) He remembers only a screaming row with her, and Pai and Carmine's lackadaisical heads turning to stare at them both. Remembers a furious tussle finally won and lost under rumpled bedsheets in Amber's tent. Amber walks out the next morning with a smile on her face and blood under her nails. Hei follows slower, wearing yesterday's uniform. Boots. Scratches. Teeth marks. A strand of long green hair is caught in his fingers. Alone, he unwinds it slowly, and then, feeling absurd and unaccountably dizzy, drops it, because it's just a strand of hair. What's gotten into you?

Amber smiles like she knows. Whatever it is, it's gotten into her too.

♦ He's hospitalized for a shelling injury that nearly costs him an arm and half his torso; he survives instead on haphazard stitches, alcohol and fever-dreams. Exits scarred and cold, but sharper, with an implacable resolve never to set foot in a hospital again.

♦ "It's the Black Reaper!"

It's no longer an offhand sneer. It's a name that lies parallel with Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

♦ Hei wonders sometimes what there is between Amber and Pai. He knows they talk to each other, because they always stop when he comes nearby. Which should make him feel paranoid, except that nothing about Amber and Pai's body-language evokes that feeling. They seem completely benign. Like friends. And he knows that Pai has developed a semblance of humor because she's spending more time with Amber, unconsciously emulating her mannerisms.

Once, he asks Pai what she and Amber talk about. His sister smiles sweetly, and says, "Nothing that matters right now."

(Hei wonders how he was so stupid he didn't catch the double-meaning.)

♦ Amber offers Pai a lens-shaped object. (Later, Hei will learn it's known as the Meteor Shard.) Its surface glints as a slow-motion swivel drops it from Amber's palm to Pai's, catching the blood-red shades of the evening sky. A heartbeat later, chaos erupts. The place goes dark, and a spire of light blazes, or not a spire exactly, Hei thinks, more a shimmering plane, ephemeral and dimensionless and dangerous, pretending to be a spire. It swallows Amber and Pai, while in the background, Hei hears sudden screaming, explosions and the liquid sounds of mass carnage. His teammates, losing control of their abilities. Slaughtering each other. He tries to look away. But the image of Pai is burned into his retinas.

And she is made of light.

It casts a glow on everything surrounding her. Light pouring from her hair and skin in a rain of phosphorescence. He tries to reach for her, catch her shoulders, but they are insubstantial in his hands, and then he looks again at the luminous glow, how it streams off her, changing and enfolding everything that it touches. Enveloping him. The last thing he remembers is the fierce glow seeping into the pores of his skin, the singing roots of his hair, his astonished blinded eyes and open mouth. Pai's small hand reaches up to caress his cheek.

Then everything -- including half the continent of South America -- vanishes in a wave of brightness.

♦ The Syndicate finds him in San Pedro Sula -- or what's left of it -- eight months later. In a crummy "convenience" flat above the crummiest sort of bar. A sharp turn of the knob demolishes the lock; the flimsy door swings open into an unlit room that reeks of manfug, tobacco, liquor, and other stale stinks. The general proportions of the room are dismal -- an untidy bed draped in mosquito netting, the bedside table crowded with bottles, the slowly whirling ceiling fan, a rattan armchair with a shirtless Black Reaper slumped in it.

He stares at the intruders through a tangle of black hair, a bottle arrested halfway to his lips, nearly shrouded in untended beard. In the gloom, he gives off a sickly glow, like a mushroom in a dank cellar. There is no sign of emotion -- or life -- in his flat eyes.

Until one operative says, Pull yourself together, Black Reaper. UB001 is still alive.

♦ Sometimes he thinks of that day. Of Pai's disappearance and Amber's betrayal, of the waste of millions of lives. And the rage is so hot in him that he only wants to kill, to kill and kill. Most operatives are dead quiet and uncomfortable around him. He gives off the vibe of a disaster, mid-manifestation. The day Hei discovers he's somehow absorbed Pai's ability, his handler flinches before he explains Your star corresponds with your sister's. You're the new BK201.

♦ He can never let go of his hatred of Contractors, which burns in him like an ignition of black solar-flares; instead he gives himself to it, and to the steely lifeline of revenge, in ways he's never given himself to anything. He spends more than he has, over and over.

It's only natural. With Pai gone, the better parts of himself are dispersed too far to be called back.

♦ "You're being reassigned, Black Reaper. Take your pick. Sapporo or Tokyo?"

♦ Hei's IQ is recorded as hovering in the Exceptionally Gifted. He misses the Genius slot by one digit. It doesn't disappoint him. It amuses him. Like life-expectancy and adaptation are so static they can be judged by fucking numbers.

♦ Molded by the rules of his unforgiving environment, Hei is in a constant state of preemptive self-defence; a majority of it involves being cold and keeping people, even those closest to him, at an arm's length.

♦ His attitude toward sex is informed by his background -- one of transactions, control, deception and psychological coercion. It's difficult -- if not impossible -- for him to view sex and intimacy synonymously. Additionally, having been exposed to a world where physical abuse, cruelty, corporal punishment and sexual control are mainstream, indulging in power play is a normative practice for him. S&M is a dismally familiar structural orientation. But the images on the media, and the ideas prevalent in society -- surface fetish crap, a visual, simplistic prettification of kink -- bore him more than interest him.

These people have the privilege of choice and consent. He seldom did.

♦ Multilingual; he's extremely fluent at Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, English, Japanese, and Mandarin. He also retains a surprising fluency in Shanghainese and Cantonese. His Russian is conversant. His French is middling. His German is wretched.

♦ Hei possesses a remarkable knowledge of operating most weaponry, including and not limited to grenade-and-missile launchers, submachine guns, mortars, hand grenades and pistols. However he dislikes the noise and mess associated with these types. Anyone can pull a trigger; it takes real skill to wield a blade.

♦ Of all the fighting styles he's absorbed, he's most comfortable with applying a mix of bacom and krav maga. He prefers to defend himself so that a single blow serves its purpose.

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