Reply To: Herr D's CFLs

The Opposed

Dwight, The Dragon Tattoo Without A Girl; Dorian; Lefty; Splat; The Magic Bullet

“Mary” & “John” had been circus employees. They were unemployed, and in the market for matching tattoos. He’d stolen some ink from a tattoo parlor, and they were at the zoo, arguing whether a camel was manly enough to be on his skin forever, when a force of armed men took them hostage in the reptile house. Neither had seen that the vials the men were filling with reptile DNA looked very like the vials of tattoo ink he had in his pockets. Ever the entertainers, the former circus couple tried to calm some of the other hostages by pulling out six vials to juggle them. One of the armed men, in the darkness of the reptile house, made the wrong conclusion. After the couple were confronted, beaten a bit, and shown the other vials, they temporarily escaped the armed men with some of the tattoo ink and some of the reptile DNA. “John” was shot through the right shoulder in front of the zoo’s office.

Inside the office was Doreen (other names redacted.)She was seventeen and just wanted a scholarship to a good college so she could become a computer engineer. She was already doing advanced IT work to save up for college, after all. She was updating her local zoo’s office the summer between her junior and senior year of high school, when her boyfriend, a zoo enthusiast, had burst in to exclaim that some armed men had taken the zoo.

A single bullet came through the window, instantly killing her boyfriend and piercing the base of her skull, non-lethally. (A doctor later explained that her ability to process pain signals was permanently damaged.) Immediately afterwards four substances permeated the office, two of them having been aerosolized by the same bullet. No one noticed.
A month later, Doreen had partly rebounded. She had turned eighteen and was faking pain reactions in BDSM porn online in hopes of saving for college faster. She had always hated her name, pornography, and BDSM and all its trappings, but was always masked, so no one would know her. It hadn’t dawned on her that she was physically healing much faster these days. “John” and “Mary” suddenly visited her. Lefty, as “John” now goes by, he had been a magician and a juggler in the circus, and “Mary” had been a high-wire and trapeze artist. His right arm now sometimes comes off, dissolves, and regrows, and he now has minor telekinesis. He can do approximately whatever his right arm could have done without the ordinary limitations of having a physical arm. “Mary” can now heal her rare injuries at a surprising speed, having been dusted slightly by two substances already in the air that were activated as “John” was shot beside her.

The armed men at the zoo had successfully stolen a “healing substance” from one hidden lab and some alien nanites from another. The rogue government agent responsible never revealed his intentions. He and his men were quietly captured and taken away by an unnamed government agency, not to be heard of again. No one noticed that the container of alien nanites had leaked or that the nanites had removed a stoppered flask of “healing substance” and aerated it, following the action.

Splat, as “Mary” now goes by, motivated the group to become a minor hero team. They stop crimes, subdue the criminals, and leave, calling emergency services as they escape, occasionally providing footage and other proof to law enforcement.

Who brought them together? A semi-sentient dragon tattoo, nicknamed Dwight, was formed by the nanites, tattoo ink, healing factor, and reptile DNA, and it waited, unbidden, on Splat’s back until noticed by Lefty. The Magic Bullet, self-named, gained sentience as it waited, secretly embedded in a zoo computer. These two emergent beings brought the group together. As near as they can figure, the nanites were fully activated by the original bullet being shot through living tissue, and they responded as best they could to the information at hand. Their faint ‘racial’ nanite memories are mostly of mind-numbingly long space travel and mind-numbing boredom at containment.

Dwight is a natural infiltrator, more comfortable on female bodies. The Magic Bullet can form itself into keys, temporary simple electronic parts, and some very small tools. Doreen gained an unusual gift: under certain conditions, she can transfer damage from a person in a picture to herself and then heal from it. This prompted her to start going by Dorian, after the literary character Dorian Gray.

They are united not just in purpose and world view, but also in cause of formation.