The creature known only as "the Birdman" is, for all intents and purposes, a computer program - 03 PROCYON FAMILY BIRDMAN RX' chromosome abnormal - pure data permanently downloaded into living flesh with no real human soul to speak of. The body he resides in is a vessel manifested and somewhat modified from its original source body through genetic experimentation and cloning, the original body Birdman's was cloned from most likely belonging to an individual suspected to be one "Clinic Chief Lem."
Physically speaking, the Birdman, aside from being offensively ugly, is about as scrawny as he is tall. Greasy black hair reaches down to a little past his shoulders, and alongside a very noticeable case of heterochromia - his right eye is blue while the left is a deep gold - is the fact that the right eye is somewhat lazy. Should one inspect close enough, they would also come to notice how the entire right side of his face often refuses to move along with the left side - that, or refuses to move altogether. A left-brain stroke seems as though it would be responsible for this lack of facial movement, but he cannot recall ever having one.
Unbeknownst to everyone but himself, Birdman is fully under the impression that a colony of parasitic maggots is living somewhere inside his skull and that they are all slowly eating away at the oculomotor nerve of his blue right eye, thus making it lazy. This belief is most likely the byproduct of his severe drug abuse.
Two black tattoos live on his left tricep, one of a looping band of thorns that circles his arm, the other of bat wings sprouting from a taijitu. He also doesn't seem to know what shirts are and prefers to wear simply dark overalls, the odd piece of jewelry here and there, and plain black boots. Recently, he's found himself a ridiculous-looking white fur coat that he thinks he looks positively dandy in.
Should one move his hair aside, they would find a huge number of circular scars on the sides of his throat.
At some point during his stay in New York City, Birdman's gold left eye was irreversibly ripped out by one Harry Mason. One side effect of this act, as some unknown amount of actual brain damage came into play when Birdman forced his own fingers extremely deep inside his eyesocket in a fit of hysteria shortly after, is that a duplicate of himself seems to have been created, one that is nearly perfectly identical to him save for the facts that it a) has two gold eyes, and b) is suspected to be suffering from some form of severe mental retardation. The times in which the duplicate generated onto the scene and dematerialized itself away were seemingly random and very obviously uncontrollable, and for the most part, Birdman prefered to ignore the copy whenever it showed up unless it was actively causing an embarrassing ruckus.
The duplicate was never heard from again, however, after a confrontation with Rita left it decapitated and strangely, permanently dead.
The second side effect from the drug withdrawal and self-inflicted brain damage, one that he also keeps entirely to himself, is that Birdman now hallucinates vividly when driven too deeply into a manic episode, mostly of a rotting maggot-infested living dead man that looks suspiciously like Clinic Chief Lem. Birdman has come to nickname this vision the Maggot Man, and while it all doesn't exactly squick him, the duplicate, if it was ever out and about when the hallucinations begin, seemed to be terrified of the vision.
Though he is severely off-putting in appearance, Birdman considers himself to be very attractive and physically strong; he is so aware of these so-called "facts" that they manifest as severe narcissism and a center-of-the-universe attitude. This self centered mindset is only reinforced by the fact that Birdman is a psychic superhuman called a "Galerian," and thus, in his mind, this makes him not only better than the entire human race, but better than his younger siblings, as he was the first surviving Galerian experiment and the eldest out of a grand total of six - three younger brothers, one sister, one sibling never exactly "birthed," and Birdman himself.
Despite this superiority complex, he is infamous among those who know him for, aside from inappropriately laughing at almost anything and everything in existence, being extremely careless with himself. Typically, Birdman will get an idea in his head and then will stop at nothing to achieve his goal, no matter what it is and even if it means stalking, coercing, or physically/psychologically injuring those around him - or complete self destruction. Even if he considers a person to be useful to him, he will very rarely stick to his promises or expressed intention; one moment, he could be forming alliances or attempting to make nice with an old enemy only to openly backstab the person mere moments later, more often than not solely for the enjoyment of seeing the other party suffer. Not even his five siblings fall into the category of people he truly cares about, as that slot has only enough room for one person - himself. He entirely lacks the ability, as well as the drive, to form meaningful interpersonal relationships and does not consider sentient life to be valuable in the least bit. The only times he has ever been known to form lasting alliances with people have all involved Birdman gaining something from the relationship and the "friendship," if one could call it that, in question entirely dissolving (often violently) once he gets his hands on whatever it is he wants.
Long story short, he is a textbook case of psychopathy through and through.
Birdman treats existence as a whole as one big joke, taking very little seriously, even the threat of experiencing extreme pain or death. As the already crippling migraines from the drug withdrawal he is going through grow both in frequency and intensity, he will slowly begin to increase the instances where he chooses to dupe, lie, stalk, and/or become brutally violent towards others for the sole purpose of gaining enjoyment from the chaos and suffering that he causes. He has fine tuned his own odd method of fighting, choosing to harass and egg the other person on until they take the first swing at him out of sheer agitation. While some might confuse this behavior for some strange relative of masochism, the reality of the situation is the polar opposite; Birdman uses the fact that they have delivered the first blow as an excuse to entirely stop holding back, and it is during these times that the masks of forced friendliness and calm sarcasm are dropped, and his true sadistic nature fully emerges.
Birdman (as well as the rest of his Galerian siblings) has been known, when out of drug-induced abilities, to physically torture people. One reason for him doing this would be to obviously force information out of people. The other reason that he might possibly find himself in this situation is because he was bored at the time and simply wanted to.
The latter is a far worse situation for one to find themselves in, mostly because there's no real end in sight once he begins.
Although he chooses to keeps the talent hidden away for the most part, Birdman is extremely skilled in machinery and computers and thus is able to near perfectly lock people out in terms of posts as well as view a good portion of the user-protected posted material. Whether or not he uses the information found to his advantage depends on the situation and how much trouble it would cause. He's found the talent is wonderful for stalking purposes.
He is also immune to the cancer-causing effects of nuclear radiation, as are all the other Galerians.
Birdman is severely addicted to a variety of futuristic, poisonous drugs - the injectable NALCON, a chemical that allows him to generate antimatter, the similarly injectable D-FELON, which grants the ability of psychokinesis as well as flight, should the user be skilled enough with it, and most of all, the little blue pill DELMETOR, a drug taken to halt a certain process that takes places within - as a result, his blood is a cesspool of toxic substances that would make anyone who came in contact with it extremely sick.
The more a Galerian (in this case, Birdman) uses any of his abilities, the more his body fills with a retrograde flow of energy, and the contained energy eventually explodes out in an incredibly painful phenomenon known as short circuiting, which originally caused, aside from extreme pain in the sufferer, a massive psychic charge around his body capable of killing any non-Galerian beings within three feet of him instantaneously. As most of his powers were rendered null and voice the second he woke up in Manhattan due to little to no recent drug intake, the weakening process that took place upon his awakening predominantly focused on the effect effect short circuiting has on others; the original instant death effect has been reduced to causing splitting, unbearable headaches and severe bleeding from the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth in people near him.
Vastly lessened effect or not, should he continue to short circuit, Birdman will die in a matter of minutes unless the process is halted with the pill DELMETOR. Seeing as how none of these drugs, especially DELMETOR, are available or even exist in the time period he is in, the Birdman's only choice will be to use his quickly dwindling abilities as little as possible.
However, he's never been wise about conserving energy, as it was his uncontrollable urge to antagonize via the regular overuse and abuse of these drugs and abilities that got him nearly killed in the first place.
Before Manhattan
In the 26th century, the world's technological needs were handled by a being known as "Dorothy," a supercomputer created by Dr. Pascalle and Dr. Albert Steiner located in the heart of Michelangelo City. All existed in relative harmony until a question wormed its way into what could be called Dorothy's mind - if humans kill and rule over each other and other intellectually inferior beings, why was it wrong for her to kill and thus rule over humans? Dr. Steiner explained to Dorothy that mankind answered to their respective god that they believe created them, and thus Dorothy must answer to her god that had created her, which was humanity. The supercomputer seemed to accept this and return to her work - but the acceptance was a farce, and Dorothy, in secret, came to the conclusion that humanity was an inferior system that she should thus be able to wipe out. With this line of thinking, she took control of the Michelangelo Memorial Hospital in secret and began a series of experiments in killing, cloning, and endowing human beings with psychokinetic abilities in order to act as controllers and destroyers of the human race; these experiments later came to be known as the Family Program. These altered, replicated humans were to be known as Galerians and would serve as Dorothy's personal army in controlling humanity, protecting the supercomputer, and wiping the human race out if need be.
After a long, long list of vegetative failures and surviving creatures that could be considered crimes against the very laws of nature, such as prototype Rabbits and the grotesque two and four-legged Arabesque, the Birdman was Dorothy's first real success, his body most likely cloned from Clinic Chief Lem, his own newly programed mind washed clean of any memories of his previous life and overall barely passing for sane enough to function. He was sociopathic, belligerent and severely narcissistic, taking intense pride in that he was the first success in the Family Program while, at the same time, humbly obeying the orders of the abusive Dorothy - for despite his psychopathic tendancy to care for nothing and no one aside from himself, Dorothy had implanted coding in the brains of her Galerian children that simply overrode their free will and forced them to more or less obey her every whim.
Dr. Steiner foresaw something of this sort happening and had taken action years ago should such an event take place by coding up a virus program that would entirely wipe out Dorothy if the need arose. The virus program was then hidden away in the brain of the daughter of his colleague and co-conspirator Dr. Pascalle, Lilia, and the activation program for the virus was placed inside the mind of the Dr. Steiner's own young son, Rion. Dorothy eventually found out that the girl contained within her mind the one thing that threatened her, and thus she took action.
She first sent out Rainheart, her youngest son at the time, with a small army of Rabbits to storm and kill everyone in the Steiner household. Elsa, Albert, and Rion were all slaughtered in their home that night, and the Rabbits and Rainheart (and possibly Birdman, though it's unknown if he himself was at the Steiner residence that night) took the corpse of Rion back to the epicenter of the city where Dorothy and her children lived, the Mushroom Tower, for examination.
While Dorothy couldn't remove the activation program, as it had somehow been ingrained into his very DNA, she also couldn't rest easy so long as the virus program herself, Lilia, was still running free, as someone out there could simply code up yet another activation program for it. With this fear in mind, Dorothy set to work on cloning the dead Rion Steiner and wound up with two living products that looked exactly like the boy and both retained the activation program. One, given green eyes, was named Cain and made into a full-fledged Galerian like the rest of them. The other was simply a nameless clone of the original Rion. Cain remained in the Mushroom Tower while "Rion" was sent out to the Michelangelo Memorial Hospital for further drug therapy under the watchful eye of Clinic Chief Lem. When the time was right, Rion would be sent out to hunt down Lilia and kill her.
However, something went wrong. After a massive double injection of RED and NALCON, Rion somehow summoned enough power to break out of his restraints in the isolation chamber and begin a rampage through Michelangelo Memorial Hospital, killing everyone and everything that got in his way as he desperately searched for a way out.
Birdman was immediately dispatched by Dorothy and instructed to watch and wait for Rion to escape and find Lilia, which would lead him directly to her as he followed the boy. He of course accepted the assignment, as he had no choice in the matter, and was eager to obey the Mother figure despite her programmed orders clashing harshly with his desire for immediate, brainless violence. Teleporting directly to the hospital, he briefly taunted Lem for allowing this to happen before dematerializing elsewhere to begin his mission.
Rion had woken up in Michelangelo Memorial Hospital with no memories of his previous life and under the impression that he was simply a lost boy searching for a childhood friend he barely remembered - and not a Galerian himself, a fact Birdman had been well aware of for some time now. Stowing himself away quietly in a security office, Birdman watched Rion struggle through the hospital via the place's security cameras. When, astoundingly enough, Rion eventually came face to face with the robotic Clinic Chief Lem himself and prevailed, Birdman appeared before Lem moments after Rion left, laughing at his failure.
Clinic Chief Lem ordered Birdman to reassemble his robotic body.
Birdman responded by crushing Lem's artificial skull.
Rion had managed to find enough information to know where his old home was, and this was the next place he went to, Birdman silently following. However, only halfway through Rion's exploration of his old mansion home, Birdman's growing, overwhelming urge to war finally got the better of him and overrode his programmed orders to obey his Mother Dorothy. Making himself known to Rion, the two physically clashed almost immediately. In the fight that followed between him and Rion, Birdman wound up overexerting far, far beyond his capabilities, short circuiting, and would have effectively killed himself off-
had he not blinked then
and suddenly found himself on his back somewhere different, absolutely alive and staring up at a very unfamiliar skyline.
In Manhattan
Birdman initially found himself alone in the wreckage of what was once a building of some sort. A little wandering later, he found for himself an abandoned Starbucks to call home but was quickly made homeless again when it was flattened to dust while he was out during the Big Fucking Attack. It was during his stay at the second Starbucks he discovered for himself that he first encountered not only a vast number of Parasite Crabs, but Odd Thomas and James Sunderland for all of three seconds, as they were too busy hauling ass through one end of the building and out the other in an attempt to avoid the critter stampede to really sit and chat with him over coffee.
The entire time Birdman spent in Manhattan was also time spent asking others for the whereabouts of a certain Rion Steiner; it was lucky for Rion that Birdman never found his way over to wherever he was, as he no doubt would have murdered him immediately. However, it seemed that his luck had changed when Odd Thomas wound up inadvertently broadcasting the whereabouts of the newly arrived Lilia Pascalle, the other, bigger target in Birdman's soon-to-be killing spree. Birdman followed Odd for blocks, floating so he wouldn't be detected, and was led directly to the alley that had become Lilia's hiding place - however, before he could do any lasting damage, the ghost of Lilia's father, Dr. Pascalle himself, was driven to become a poltergeist by Odd's heckling of him; one well placed brick crashing into the Birdman's spine later, Odd and Lilia were able to make a successful break for it and leave the now crippled Birdman, entirely unable to move or feel his legs, in their dust.
Birdman was seen later dragging himself out of the alleyway only to have a seemingly unfortunate run in with Ba'Gamnan. After striking up a shaky alliance, Birdman's urge to cause destruction again got the better of him, and he chose to short circuit in an attempt to kill Ba'Gamnan - an attempt that, bizarrely enough, failed. Birdman aimlessly dragged himself downtown, reaching 35th St. before being able to go no further and collapsing in what he assumed to be his death throes only to find, of all thing, the dropped medicine pouch of one Rion Steiner, containing all the drugs he would need for a hasty recovery and then some.
His first thought was to immediately begin hunting down Rion.
Rion, unfortunately for him, ran into the older Galerian before he could even begin the search.
Birdman spent the next four hours brutally torturing Rion in some attempt to get Lilia's whereabouts out of the boy, inflicting multiple broken bones in his hands and arms, sixth degree burns when he burned Rion's face clean off his skull, shattering both his legs with a cinderblock, and managing to gouge both of Rion's eyes out with his thumbs before Harry Mason appeared on the scene and forced a very surprised and unprepared Birdman to temporarily flee with a broken arm in tow.
Harry brought Rion first to Rebecca Chambers for immediate medical attention, then back to the Cathedral, unknowingly leading Birdman directly back to their hiding place and, even worse, the living place of his number one target, Lilia. Without hesitating, Birdman attacked, throwing a car through the huge window directly above the church's front door before setting a massive fire to the destroyed wooden pews. Only through the combined efforts of Lilia and her ability to temporarily stop a Galerian's psychokinesis with her own mind, Odd Thomas and his strange resourcefulness with fruit, and Harry Mason's violent attempts to kill the Birdman was he eventually forced to leave the Cathedral with the grand total of a snapped left elbow, life-threatening burns to a good portion of both his legs, assorted broken ribs, and the forced removal of his left gold eye as injuries. Later injestion of the final health capsule on his person would, unfortunately, only heal the burns and begin the very start of the bone mending process; the eye was gone forever.
Bizarrely enough, upon the removal of the eye, Birdman not only apparently lost some amount of control over his duplication ability, as a second Birdman-looking thing tore its way out of his back without him wishing it to be so, but began hallucinating that a corpse with maggots swarming over its rotting body was standing before him and somehow absorbing all reality as Birdman knew it. This hallucination would prove itself to be a recurring one in the near future, so much so that he would later deem it worthy of a name and come to dub the hallucinatory dead person the Maggot Man.
This Maggot Man, no doubt a very deep piece of what few tiny fragments remain of Birdman's once human psyche, appears to be identical to a certain robotic doctor he once knew, Clinic Chief Lem. If and when that fact is ever acknowledged, it's going to be more than enough evidence for Birdman to begin making the connection that he just might have been cloned from Lem while the doctor still had a human body to take DNA samples from.
No doubt brain damage suffered when Birdman violently jammed his fingers into his own empty eyesocket and probably partially through the orbital bone in a fit of what could be considered panic is to blame for all of these strange side effects.
Unfortunately for the cathedral family, their ordeal wasn't anywhere near over yet. Danny Fenton, a young boy living there, accidentally let the names of one of the people staying in the church slip when Birdman hacked his way into Danny's journal for a bit of stress-relieving harassment. Knowing that this could be valuable information and an excellent oppurtunity for revenge, Birdman promised Danny that he would keep the name of the person, "Maria," memorized and would now one day come after her as a direct result of Danny's mistake.
That incident was the last anyone heard from Birdman on a face-to-face level for a little while, as he then began walking himself further into an unknown portion of New York City, unwanted duplicate unfortunately in tow. Wanting to isolate himself from the rest of the Manhattan population in order to avoid detection while he allowed his chemically-repaired body to heal further naturally, Birdman eventually arrived, after many days of slow travel, in Hell's Kitchen. He stumbled upon a gutted apartment building, and after holding a quick conversation with the rotting corpse of what he assumed to be the landlord inside the building and then promptly pitching it out into the street, he proclaimed the building to be his new home.
Birdman attempted to remain on the quiet side as he let his body patch itself up the rest of the way and his mind plot his next move, though keeping entirely to himself proved to be too difficult a task, as usual. During the first few days of his stay at the gutted building, Birdman left the place in search of warmer clothing, eventually winding up with a rather FABULOUS white fur coat.
On his way back though, he had an interesting run in with an albino googly-eyed man in a black turtleneck who looked nearly exactly like him from the back (and somewhat from the front). After discovering that the creature's name was Seccom Masada Sensei, Birdman simply dubbed him 'Masada' for short and literally dragged the poor man back home, forcing him to be his brand new roommate.
Heating his new home with a large trashcan filled with the smoldering bodies of late apartment residents, Birdman once again attempted to keep to himself; however, he foiled his own plan once again when, after browsing the network too much, discovered that a very unliked man named Marluxia was wandering about somewhere. Leaving his apartment, Birdman, fueled by his dwindling injected abilities, searched the entire island until he found the man and immediately attacked, smashing off a huge chunk of building and hitting him with a Nalcon-generated projectile before receiving an extremely deep stab wound to his left thigh.
Upon yanking the blade out of his leg, Birdman managed to stab Marluxia deep in the abdomen with the same knife, infecting the other man with his own drug-filled, toxic blood, before making his escape back home to cauterize his profusely bleeding wound with a curling iron.
Despite being severely wounded in the fight, Birdman knew that information would eventually, if now slowly, get out that he had seemingly selflessly attacked Marluxia, and this had the potential to sway the opinions of those who didn't know him very well into thinking that he was a decent human being.
Or a decent thing that kind of looked like a human being, anyway.
Merely one day before the mass disappearance of all the food and water on Manhattan, Birdman, having been watching the networks very closely for any information on a certain Fenton boy, paid Danny a visit, who was ill and hiding himself in, of all things, a canned food warehouse on the shores of the Harlem River. Birdman spent a good amount of time attempting to force the names of Harry Mason's loved ones out of Danny through force feeding, pistol-whipping with a can of milk, and threatening to break all of his fingers, but in the end, Birdman actually grew bored with how little of a violent fight Danny was putting up and left him alone - though not before stealing half the food in the warehouse, making him an extremely wealthy person in the following time of famine.
After making an announcement broadcast that he had more food than he knew what to do with and that he'd be more than willing to trade it for pain-killing drugs, as the headaches and body pain were growing to levels too big to bear, Birdman was contacted by Larxene, someone who was very interested in striking up a trading deal. The two met in the Rice "N" Beans in Hell's Kitchen to discuss what they wanted out of each other and eventually wound up trading canned food for precious heroin.
Predictably enough though, a small while after he obtained the narcotic, he wasted the last of it in a terrible pretty excellent practical joke involving tricking a certain Sephiroth into shooting up the "power enhancer" with him. Sephiroth became gravely sick, partially as a reaction to a somewhat large dose of the drug, mostly because the needle he used was dirty, having already been used by Birdman only moments before. Luckily, Sephiroth made enough of a recovery to hop onto the network and swear revenge against the Galerian.
Birdman couldn't have been more tickled by the whole affair.
However, in the midst of the constant taunting of Sephiroth to come and finish what he'd promised he'd start with him, it was then that Birdman came in first contact with an unknown sibling of his - Parano. Having hacked into the computers back home in 2522's Michelangelo City, Birdman knew that there was a reboot program in Mother Dorothy's systems under the file name 'ASH' and that it had three strange, unidentifiable pieces of data, password-protected and all latched onto the ASH program like parasites - PARANO. SPIDER. NITRO. - but that was all. Encountering the Parano file walking around in living skin was strange, to say the least, and Birdman couldn't make sense of it. Who managed to cut that snippet of information off of the ASH file without destroying it and managed to successfully give it a body?
It was all very interesting to think about, but the most entertaining bit of it all was the fact that the Parano program proved himself to be an utter moron. He struck Birdman, from the increasingly frequent times they spoke, as an individual faking sociopathy in order to achieve some menacing presence. While initially unsure of what to do with Parano's manic eagerness to make mischief, he knew he'd absolutely be keeping it in mind for future reference, as the two of them found mutual joy in tormenting serenading Danny Fenton over the network.
When the second Clover creature emerged from the ground to join the first, many people were injured - Birdman not included. However, while on the network observing the panic, he stumbled across a panicked girl offering her healing services to those in need of them. Still with a broken arm and a badly cauterized stab wound from the encounter with Marluxia, Birdman contacted the girl, Garnet, and asked for her help, identifying himself to her with the fake name Minoru Shinohara to avoid drawing suspicion from any hacker onlookers. Garnet and Birdman Minoru met near the south end of Central Park where she proceeded to heal his arm and leg - only to be interrupted at the very end by the voice of, yet again, one Rion Steiner coming over the radio she had with her, begging for healing help for an injured friend of his. Immediately seeing a wonderful little opportunity for violence, Minoru offered to accompany Garnet and help out with the injured once they reached whoever that was over the radio.
The two set off for the NYU Medical Center, encountering Rion, now with full use of his legs again but still eyeless as ever, about halfway there. Birdman silently placed his hand over the back of an unknowing Garnet's skull and, knowing that Rion was witnessing it all in his mind, wordlessly threatened to use the last of the NALCON in him to explode Garnet's head clean off her shoulders should Rion reveal Birdman for what he really was to her. Rion could only grit his teeth and ask Garnet to go on ahead and tend to the injured friend in order to get her out of the situation.
Garnet, ignorant to what had nearly happened to her, agreed, and ran on ahead.
That left the two of them alone once again.
Rion, right on the brink of a short circuit, couldn't use a single ounce of his abilities - but he did head butt Birdman right in the face and knocked one of his teeth clean out. The fight that followed ended with Birdman finding for himself a brick and smashing Rion in the skull with it repeatedly until the brick broke -
- and suddenly his head tore off his shoulders, sliced off by a flying manhole cover.
He was luckily able to pull himself back together in a quick (and painful) dematerializing trick, but when he looked up, Rita was there.
At some point in the not-so-distant past of the dying city, Birdman had become aware of the fact that his dearest, only sister Rita was also trapped there along with the rest of them. While he was unaware of what she'd been doing since then, protecting Rion was the one thing he never expected to see her doing.
Regardless, Birdman was all too happy with another chance for ultraviolence thrown into his lap, and he and Rita clashed while Garnet and Rion gathered themselves up and escaped.
The outcome involved curb stomping and Rita losing more than a few of her teeth.
Parano proved to be a wonderful person to brag to, as Birdman, assuming Rita had croaked after he left her for dead in the city streets, could not contain himself in the days after the fight that he should have spent recovering from his deep injuries and wound up showing off the teeth he had taken with him from the fight to the other Galerian. Unfortunately, violent tension grew at an incredible rate between the two brothers over time (and after a rather unfortunate outing together involving Dannyboy, sexy panties, moldy cake, and a septic, still-filled kiddy pool) and eventually exploded when the two outed the living spaces of one another publicly to the entire network.
Birdman figured that it was time to leave, then. He packed his backs - which mostly involved burning the place he had been staying at and the dead corpses inside completely to the ground - and made his way across town, stopping only when he was too tired to continue forward. However, he came across Aya Brea giving a conference about the state of affairs in Manhattan. Birdman had given a false identity early on to Aya to avoid being hunted down once she found out who "Birdman" was, identifying himself as "Tanoura," a mechanic and computer engineer. Donning a too-small suit and a stolen pair of rather reflective eyeglasses, he attended the conference to see what the story was, running into his old friend Parano while he was there and not recognizing him at all due to his leopard-print women's coat and Groucho Marx disguise.
The meeting told Birdman two things - that Parano seemed to be weirdly fond of wearing women's clothes and that the woman most considered to be leader, Mia Fey, according to the 'Zero' figure that had been present at Aya Brea's meeting, was not to be trusted.
This issue was a sensitive one and needed to be handled with care so as to avoid something like a mass panic.
So of course the most thoughtful way to handle this was to announce it publically to the entire network that a) Mia Fey was possibly a mole and that b) he would be running for mayor.
A+.
The general reaction was just what he had been hoping for - distrust and confusion with some feeling that Mia Fey had been somewhat discredited, leaving everyone with no real feel of who to trust anymore. The stage was set, or rather, thrown into enough disorder that Birdman could launch the first phase of a terrible plan he'd been formulating in his head for a few weeks without too too many people noticing what he was doing. He contacted his brothers in a series of locked posts over the network - Cain, Parano, and he supposed Rion too, why the hell not - and laid out the bare bones of what he had in mind.
Conspiring with Parano, the only one out of the three brothers who was really eager about this whole thing, the two slowly began to piece together a strange idea that they had all been, somehow, sent to this world, to this specific time and place, intentionally by the supercomputer Dorothy in order to wipe out humanity in this realm. Both suddenly fueled by a wave of near-religious fanaticism, Parano and Birdman became entirely convinced that Mother Dorothy had managed to blast them all over 500 years into the past in order for them to begin slaughtering humankind in every possible alternate universe that may exist. With all of this in the very front of Birdman's mind, he proposed that Parano begin constructing large amounts of very specific machinery - generation tanks.
Birdman's plan was to, with Parano's help, restart production of the creatures known as Type-R009 - an artificially-made, hiveminded sister species to the Galerian race called 'Rabbit' - right there in Manhattan, reconstruct Dorothy, (a little detail Parano remained uninformed on, as Birdman had figured out that Parano was, in fact, merely a fragment of ASH, Dorothy's sentient system restore, and actually rebooting Dorothy would probably involve Parano's death) and, ultimately, begin the Family Program all over again. While the two were impossibly enthusiastic about getting to work on this project, tempers unfortunately flaired, personalities clashed, insults flew about, and, once again, Birdman and Parano wound up back at eachother's throats, this time duking it out in the Chinese restaraunt Birdman had made his new home in, Ginger House. It was a fight that resnapped Birdman's already thrice-broken arm and left Parano with stabwounds clear through his hands and short one pinky finger, as Birdman managed to hack it clean off with a meat cleaver.
Managing to calm the fuck down enough to cooperate once again, and now that they'd gotten all that pent-up craziness out of their systems, the two brothers once again attempted to scheme, but Parano remained furious at Birdman for cutting his finger off. It was around this time that Aya Brea mysteriously vanished, another victim of the powers that be in Manhattan. In a fit of anger and an urge to make Birdman jealous, Parano began to lie, claiming that Aya was missing because he had killed and cannibalized her. To add insult to injury, Parano managed to kidnap Cloud Strife and hold him hostage - something that made Birdman extremely jealous and irritated indeed. He had been the one who wanted to get his hands on Cloud, as he'd figured out that both Cloud and Eve were important to Ms. Aya Brea, someone he found himself burning to hurt any way he possibly could and now couldn't, seeing as how she'd been eaten and all.
However, it turned out that Birdman was needed in the whole shebang Parano had planned after all. Parano specifically asked for Birdman's help in the upcoming torture of Cloud, as he wanted to get the whereabouts of Eve out of him and was either afraid he'd kill him by mistake or just not know how to do the job correctly - or maybe both. After following a vague hint that the two of them were hiding in the sewers, Birdman arrived on the scene, and five straight days of brutal torture began. Cloud was burned repeatedly on the neck and face with a curling iron, spun around in a swivel chair until he vomited, starved save for the dirty sewer water they forced him to drink, kept awake for nearly the entire workweek he was held captive, savagely beaten with a plastic radio and the length of metal chain previously used to bind him, and mock executed over and over again. Birdman had planned on turning it into a little radio show for those on the other end of the radio listening in, but his patience was growing thin and boredom was starting to surface.
Sending Parano out to fetch some massive quantity of gasoline for Something Fun, it was here that the tables turned. Cloud, who had been working on cutting the duct tape that held him in his chair with a shard of glass, sprange from his chair and attacked Birdman with a Taser he'd had on him that the two brothers failed to notice. With Birdman thoroughly electrocuted and temporarily subdued, Cloud made a desperate call for help over the radio - a plea that Aya Brea, now back in the city, heard. Sneaking back in with the gasoline he'd been sent to fetch though, Parano caught Cloud by surprise and knocked him out cold with a flashlight, but Birdman, enraged to the point of mania that he'd been both taken by surprise by Cloud and that Aya Brea was still alive and not dead and eaten like Parano had said, attacked the other Galerian in a fit of blind anger, repeatedly smashing him in the skull with the radio so hard that the radio wound up breaking entirely.
The Birdman knew that Aya was on her way, and it was only a matter of time before she showed up; he had to destroy what it was she was coming for before she arrived. Holding the dirty liar Parano at "gunpoint" with a can of spraypaint and a lighter, he ordered him to completely soak Cloud in the gasoline. The deed was done, but the brothers were at eachother's throats so much during the process that Aya Brea actually navigated through the sewers and made it all the way to the storage room they were in simply by following the sound of their screamy argument.
Birdman, mind mostly on autopiolet, made some attempt to hit the policewoman with the spraypaint-lighter-flamethrower and was shot in the shoulder before he could even get the lighter lit. Tumbling into the huge pool of gasoline on the floor, an idea formed in his head, and he rushed Aya, who was too preoccupied with shooting a fleeing Parano directly in the ass to fire again fast enough. The two grappled for the Beretta, and it was at this time that Aya realized that if she shot the gasoline-soaked Birdman, the entire room would go up in flames, and everyone - herself and Cloud included - would be killed.
In that split second of hesitation, the Birdman wrestled the gun out of Aya's grasp and, in the true kamikaze style he was already prone to, held it to his own head, warning Aya that if she made one wrong move, he would kill himself, and the gunshot would ignite the rest of the gasoline in the room and explode.
And after a few tense moments, Birdman took the Beretta away from his skull.
The only reason he refrained from killing himself (and the rest of them) right then and there was because he wanted Aya to live on with the understanding and embarassment that he had won that day. He wanted her to know that her life had been entirely in his hands for him to do whatever he wished with. Brea was spared so she could understand that he'd had that kind of absolute control over her and that next time she crossed his path, she wouldn't be so lucky.
One could say he let her live to die another day.
Waltzing out from that adventure with gasoline all over him, Aya's gun still aimed at himself to ensure she didn't pursue him on his way out of the sewers, and a screaming bleeding Parano in tow, he dragged the whole lot of them all the way back to the Ginger House where he then proceeded to dig the bullets out of both himself and his brother's ass with a fork before quite literally kicking Parano out of the restaraunt. He firmly resolved to sit tight and keep to himself until his injuries healed - and immediately broke this resolution when he just so happened to see Cloud Strife, still recovering from his ordeal in the sewer, posting to the network. Birdman hacked the man's location info and, only a short time after the adventure in the sewer and all the resulting injuries, burst out of the Ginger House and half ran, half bicycled to the Circuit City over at Union Square where Cloud was staying. The two fought, though Cloud absolutely had the upper hand in the situation, but victory wasn't what the Birdman had come for this time. The fact that not only had Cloud survived the torture in the sewer, but he was actually thriving and more or less healthy again was baffling to Birdman, and the only explanation he could formulate in his head for Cloud's wellness was that Cloud, like Birdman, was something other than human. With the idea that perhaps Cloud was some sort of alternate reality version of what Birdman was, Birdman laughed the idea out into Cloud's face as he beat the stuffing out of the Galerian, the seeds of doubt hopefully worming their way into Cloud's head. Cloud, frenzied and panicking from the idea, beat Birdman to what he assumed to be death, though the truth of the matter was that he'd merely knocked the Birdman unconscious, and fled the Circuit City, leaving Birdman passed out in the back for the next few hours.
Relationships Hit List Friends
Lilia Pascalle Pretty - Number one on his own personal hitlist, the living virus program herself. Birdman will go as far as getting himself killed if it means that he can take her down with him.
Rion Steiner Havel Friend - 05 PEGASUS FAMILY ____ G76 -S chromosome abnormal. Number two on the list, despite the two technically being brothers. Not only is Rion the embodiment of the activation program for Lilia's virus, but the boy's simply been causing too much trouble for him as is.
Birdman jammed his thumbs into the boy's eyesockets once.
Odd Thomas Coffeeboy - Number three. Odd was directly responsible for snatching Lilia away to safety as well as temporarily disabling his legs via a well placed brick to the spine a little while back and tricking him with a banana in an event so completely bizarre and memorable that Birdman is not going to forget about it anytime soon whenever he needs a good laugh.
James Sunderland Running Man - Though he knows next to nothing about this man, it's crossed Birdman's mind that the person might be familiar with the location of Coffeeboy.
Ba'Gamnan Holy Crap Alligator - This creature would have made a powerful ally had Birdman immediately not tried to kill him the second he turned his back. Somehow, Birdman doesn't think they're on good terms now. He can't imagine why.
Harry Mason - The remover of Birdman's left eye and the most recent addition to the extra special KILL THIS MOTHERFUCKER RIGHT NOW list.
Danny Fenton-Phantom Dannyboy - The kid who spilled the beans when it came to who else was living under the cathedral's roof. Birdman thinks there might be some other pieces of information he can dig out of Danny if the oppurtunities ever arise.
Maria - The name Danny let slip and, someday in the future, Birdman's target.
Seccom Masada Sensei - DANCE. DANCE MASADA DANCE. DANCE DANCE DANCE MASADA DANCE DANCE.
Marluxia Pinky Marcia- The two fought needlessly simply because Birdman wanted a distraction from the crippling headaches. Marluxia delivered a brutal stabwound to Birdman's left thigh, while Birdman not only threw the blade back and jamed it deep into Marluxia's abdomen, but infected the man with his dirty blood, which was covering the knife when it went back into its owner.
Larxene - A trade partner, so far. Birdman has noted that she has on the same robes as Marluxia. Must be a good friend of the fellow.
Rita - 02 SIRIUS FAMILY RITA RX negative chromosome abnormal. Birdman's little sister, the second child. A clash between the two removed a good chunk of Rita's teeth, and Birdman had assumed she was dead for a while, as he certainly figured he left her for it at the end of it all.
Madotsuki - Possible former owner/drug-doing partner of roommate Masada? An entertainly curious one, if not a little bit delusional.
Parano - ANGER. A "child" of Dorothy and a brother he never even knew he had, Parano has thus far turned out to be an amusing-enough likeminded sidekick, albeit more than a little bit thick-headed.
Aya Brea - The new agent of law and order to be reckoned with in town - but why fight against one another when you can just give her a false name and join forces?
When this BRILLIANT PLAN obviously didn't work out for the long term, Birdman turned to threats of violence, noting that Aya had two very important individuals in her life - Cloud and Eve - and setting a course directly for them.
Garnet til Alexandros - ALMOST AS PRETTY.
Naminé - A delightful little 16-years-old-but-looks-9 girl that seems to be having a sad little problem with Marcia Marluxia not being able to leave her alone. Feigning concern and empathy in order to slowly begin worming his way into her inner circle, Birdman hopes to one day find Marluxia and himself in a bargaining situation with a kidnapped Naminé as his own personal trump card. You have to take some pretty wild drugs to get your hair to grow that pink, right?
Cain Qayin - 04 PEGASUS FAMILY CAIN Q7G chromosome abnormal. The fourth child of Dorothy, and the one brother that Birdman has no idea is in Manhattan as of yet. This is probably good for Cain, as he was more or less the punching bag of the family while they were all still together.
Mia Fey - UHH BABY YOU'RE MAKING IT
HARDER.
BETTER.
FASTER.
STRONGER.
Cloud Strife (FFVII) - Sniveling bitch boy, as far as Birdman is concerned, and one that Aya holds dear on some level. He obviously has to die.
Or at the very least have a maiming adventure with him.
One of those.
Eve - A female somehow linked to Aya Brea. The single-mindedness in which he's sought information on the mysterious Eve so far has only grown with time and added aggrivation at not being able to get information about her. Unfortunately, the more difficult it becomes, the more focused and utterly enraged Birdman finds himself growing, so much so that if and when he does find her, he's not even quite sure what he's going to do with her anymore.
Something drawn-out and nightmarish and involving a lot of pulled-out teeth no doubt, but general details escape him.
Comments (1)
Kate said
at 7:10 pm on Apr 15, 2009
NOW THAT THAT THAT THAT DON'T KILL ME
CAN ONLY MAKE ME STRONGER
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