Information

Empyria
Legacy Name: Ulgrana

The Common Experiment #911
Owner: Paula

Age: 4 years, 8 months, 3 weeks

Born: August 4th, 2019

Adopted: 1 year, 11 months, 3 weeks ago

Adopted: May 3rd, 2022

This pet has been nominated for the Pet Spotlight!

Statistics

• Level: 134
   
• Strength: 336
   
• Defense: 333
   
• Speed: 334
   
• Health: 334
   
• HP: 334/334
   
• Intelligence: 153
   
• Books Read: 145
• Food Eaten: 192
• Job: Dragon BBQ-er

I pour whiskey into the glass, neat. I lift it to my muzzle, taking small sips as I kick back in a chair–its wrought metal legs squealing against the concrete rooftop–with the cushion soft against my back.

It’s quiet up here–I welcome it, really. It’s a respite from the racket in the belly of the bar down below, where it’s pounding music and frenetic dance moves all around. As much as I love it–the greasy bar foods, ample liquor, pulseinv bass, showy lights–there’s a time and place for that kind of joyful, mindless partying… it’s just not right now.

The fiery sunset sets the sky ablaze before giving way to dusky night; it’s a real sight to behold–a peaceful kind of dazzling fire.

Fire is unbridled, wild energy–one with no intent to destroy yet does so with its very being. While destruction is within its essence, its harnessed being can fuel and sustain society’s greatest needs and ambitions.

Perhaps that was what was on the lab scientists’ minds as they conceived of a perfect subject to put an end to the unforeseen consequences of their previous trials. A calibrated fire engineered to burn out the plague they themselves had created. A controlled burn.

I sigh into the cup, my breath condensing briefly on the glass before dissipating into the cool air.

I didn’t question a thing for so long.

Could things have gone differently if I’d done so sooner?

🔥

Emerging from the artificial womb, I wail into a bare, stripped-down room–a sterile environment, quiet and isolated.

Gloved hands emerge from the periphery, the nitrile slick on my skin; that bitter, acrid smell is branded into my brain, that powder-thick rubber stench. I wail ever louder as they clean me up, swaddle me in a cozy blanket.

A figure, covered head to toe in their hazmat suit, looks up from his corner; their face is obscured by the tinted visor. This whole time, they were tap-tapping away on a tablet, its screen softly aglow. “Subject name?”

“Oh, if she’s what we hope she is, we are looking at the beginning of the end when it comes to this mess.” Another figure lifts me up to their face height, their face unreadable behind that hazmat window, addresses me directly in a soft cooing voice. “Why hello, little one… you look perfect, you know that right? Let’s call you… Ulgrana.”

“Noted and documented.” The person with the tablet quickly turns back to the screen, bored and uninterested.

“I’ll authorize her transfer for the neonate stim wing.” The individual still holding me seems to hold my gaze for a few moments longer, before placing me softly into a medical bassinet.

🔥

I mature into a full-grown specimen quickly, yet age slowly afterward–science is such a curious thing.

My adolescence and early adulthood is a blur of testing, every possible battery of exams to measure and gauge my capabilities. They wanted to cross their t’s and dot their i’s, confirm ever minute detail engineered into my genome.

I am strong, swift–more than capable. I clear their bars, surpass their expectations. I weather the blows they throw at me, heal quicker than they estimated. I strike harder, run faster, leap farther than their calculations, the simulations they so keenly tip-tap their inputs into.

Amd from my hands, I spark streamers of fire, which whip and bend to my will. I can command the blaze to roar and rise, raging with ever greater ferocity. With a gesture as simple as sweeping of my arm, I snuff out the flames, a trail of ash and coal before me.

The fire is mine to control.

To them, I am perfect: a finely tuned killing machine, well-suited to their purposes.

They called me their masterpiece.

🔥

Though my upbringing was cold and sterile–a passing off between uncaring hands, who cared only for their observations–one scientist is kinder toward me than the rest; he is warmer, if anything. He had borne witness to my birth, played god in engineering the experiments of my kind.

The mastermind. One who’d been unduly betrayed by his creations, the escapees who slaughtered innocents in their mindless rampage.

His innocent family: a beautiful wife, two young daughters. He proffers me a family photograph, sadness crackling at the corners of the smile he tries to bravely put on. They all smile so brightly at the camera, unaware of the future tragedy awaiting them.

… The girls were two weeks away from their tenth birthday.

Their father, the sole survivor, had been absent from the scene, hard at work at the lab; I suspect that, deep down, he despises himself for not being there with them.

He was as much a father to me as he could. With his little kindnesses, he instilled morals and lessons aplenty, taught me what my future held.

This greater purpose of my creation–

To avenge the innocent.

To bring the rogue experiments to justice.

To curb further grief and catastrophe.

… A hefty burden to bear.

🔥

I was steadfast in this mission, driven and efficient.

I ended the lives of many experiments without a second thought, brought their end swiftly and painlessly.

There was no joy, no victory in this–merely purpose.

Yet there was something in their eyes, a kind of knowing in their terror–one that understood what they did, one that knew why they did it.

I was taught that most experiments were little short of monstrosities, given the bare minimum faculties to think and speak—humanoid monsters with the visages and features of freakish beasts. Yet in my meetings with them, they do not converse in the human tongue, but do comprehend it; they choose instead to communicate in gestures, in grunts, in nuances of body language.

I was taught that many of my kind went awry–but were we ever given the chance at normalcy?

Were they ever given a chance to strike out on their own, without fear of capture and reprisal? Did they scheme to attack human abodes in hopes to end their time on the run, to finally find safety? Have they avoided the use of human language because of what it represents to them: the eternal hunt for their heads?

There was too much to ponder to leave this mission unquestioned.

So, as many experiments had done before me: I ran.

I ran fast and far, quicker than they could catch me–

And with the upending of everything I’d known, I took on a new name: Empyria. A name that acknowledged the ideal perfection they strove for in my creation, yet a rejection of the one they bestowed upon me at my emergence.

🔥

Are those what I think they are? Finishing the last of my whiskey, I see men in… what seem to be fireproofed hazmat suits? In tidy formation, they approach from a few blocks down.

Shoot–

I think they saw me.

I put my now-empty glass off the side, run for the opposite side of rooftop. I jaunt off the edge and plummet through the air, hitting the ground running.

The science team? They can try to stay in hot pursuit, but they won’t get ahold of me that easily.

Catching perfection is a bit harder than you thought, huh?

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