Chapter Text
I have never been much for writing about my feelings before, I guess confronting my feelings about my reality and the people surrounding me has never been something I've wanted to face. I'll preface this by saying that I'll do my best to start from the beginning, just in case I disappear and my publicist thinks shoving my dirty laundry to the public is a good idea. It's not like they're going to take it seriously. Sometimes, I find it hard to believe myself. My life is like some sick twisted version of 'Little Orphan Annie' except instead of living happily ever after, she finds herself as one of Japan's most powerful racketeers and everyone around her dropping like flies. It's better they're dead, though, at least then they can't see my cowardness in the eyes of death. Especially Akemi, but I digress. My story isn't sad, I wouldn't even call it tragic. I would just call it life, and life is a horrible mess of ups and downs that should end somewhere. That somewhere, for me now though, is to be left to an if, not when.
So I'll make this easy, I'll start with my earliest memories, what I know about my parents, and why I exist in the first place.
I was born in Shizuoka, this humid, coastal place near Mount Fuji. My mom, Heidi Krause, was a German immigrant, and she'd been living in Japan for about 18 years before she died. She came to Japan to go to school at NIG, the National Institute of Genetics. She was a geneticist, and I was her daughter. I'll use the term daughter loosely because, in her eyes, I wasn't any different from a rat or monkey. For the sake of clarity, I'll call her my mom, even though I didn't know she was my mom until she passed.
My dad, Yuji Takahashi, was also a geneticist; he died in an accident before I was born. All I know is he was from Nagoya and that he was incredibly tall.
I don't think my parents loved one another. I think of everyone in the facility. My mom picked him because he was tall, and his genes must have been suitable for what she was aiming for. At least that's my guess. The pictures I've seen of him make him look like he'd be a good father, DNA-wise. Also, the guy who adopted me told me my mom was obsessed with her work and, if it wasn't for ethical reasons, wouldn't have even given birth or gotten married.
Which brings me to my next point, my birth. I was born like any other baby, except for where the part where my geneticist parents intervened and tried to play God. The fact I didn't come out with as many genetic disorders as I have is strictly down to luck, and the fact she didn't just kill me after I was born is another bout of luck. I think she got enough out of all the right to deal with the bad. It also gave her something to work with and learn from.
According to the data retained in the records about me, her project was that she was trying to bring science closer towards super soldiers. It was what her grandfather and mother had worked on for most of their own lives, and she was no different. Heidi took the science and research of her family and brought it with her to NIG, then to a private investor who wanted that research all for himself. I'll talk more about that private investor later, but they will come up quite frequently throughout my entire diary.
On paper, Heidi wasn't far off from a start. I'm tall, I'm strong, I'm fast, I see incredibly well in the dark for a human. I'm actually jacked, around 95kg of solid muscle but that's kind of where the buck stops. My size isn't due to my personal choices; I rarely step foot in a gym. My muscle mass is due to a mutation where my body doesn't regulate muscle growth; the thing that usually takes care of that just isn't there. It might sound like a dream to some gym rat, but as a tall, biracial Japanese woman with very blond hair, I don't think I needed more reasons to stand out.
Let's talk about my eyes next. I do see well in the dark but I'm also completely colour blind. I've heard it explained in that for normal people, it's like looking at a black and white TV. I don't know what I'm missing but from what people have described, I'm missing a lot. My eyes are very sensitive to light to a fault. On one hand, she accomplished exactly what she set out for: a human vision that works well in extremely low light. On the other hand, it only works well in extremely low light. I live in sunglasses, even at night, because unless it's pitch dark out, and it never is, the stark contrast between a bright light and a dark alley is just as blinding as the sun.
Lastly, we can talk about my immune system, and that is where so much more starts to come into play. She wanted my immune system to be top-notch. It worked; I don't catch colds or the flu or any of that stuff. However, my immune system is too good and every time she tried to test infecting me with something new, I would just break out in agonising pain, blistering rashes, and literal gut-wrenching agony. Heidi knew autoimmune diseases were a high-risk factor for what she tried to do, but hoped that with the help of the science of cytology, too, she'd be able to stop those reactions while still giving me that superior immunity.
Now, it's worth noting that my mom was a geneticist. She studied genes and how genes interacted with each other. She had an understanding of cytology, but it wasn't her speciality at all. Fortunately, the private investor who was paying her to keep working on me and her project was interested in hiring some of the best cytologists in the world, too. I don't understand the gist of any of it, just that many different scientists came and went, poking and proding me, making me better or worse. This was my life, and sadly, I didn't know any better. It's funny but when I was old enough to start to understand things, they did stick some tutors in my 'room' with me. They taught me reading and writing, math and numbers, and science. They didn't teach me about what could exist outside of the cage I was living in. If I was lucky enough to see movies or videos, they'd be about animals or plants. Sometimes things about old samurai and emperors, but nothing about the real world.
This went on until two of the best cytologists in the world were actually brought into the research facility. A married couple by the name of Atsushi and Elena Miyano. These people were artists of cytology, if that is something they could be called. They had such a vast understanding of the way cells worked that they could effortlessly pinpoint so many things that my body was doing and rectify them with an infusion or shot. They could never fix everything, but they knew what they were doing. They were also able to show me what real love and kindness is.
See, until they came around, I was just a project with funding that was starting to run dry. Then my mom passed away, and questions were flung around about what to do with me. Here I was, a failed prototype of a super human, a waste of funding, an idea who's creator had perished. I was no good and useless now, so they wanted to throw me out. Not the Miyanos, but the private investor that wanted to make me in the first place. It's weird to think about it now, given I have grown to be one of the investor's top contributors and an invaluable asset to them, but that's just how things go sometimes.
The reason I am alive today is that the Miyanos saw and knew of me before my mom died. When they got the gist of what was going to happen to me, they immediately had more doubts about what they had signed into (they had doubts before but the space and money they were getting was mind-blowing to read) and began to stir a bit of commotion. They'd signed a contract, one written in blood, figuratively speaking, but the investor, Renya Karasuma, did not want to lose them just yet. They were invaluable, and he had plans for their talents. So I was spared. Which ultimately did work out, because their end goal and my problems went hand in hand.
I'm not a scientist, I don't know much about the immune system and cytology, but everything in the immune system is tied to cytokines. Cytokines are proteins that tell cells to do certain things. There are something like 200 cytokines in a human body. Each one is responsible for managing different things within cell function. Some of them may tell the skin to make new skin cells, this is the act of mitosis, and some of them will tell the skin to kill old skin cells, the act of apoptosis. It's when these things malfunction that you can break out in agonising rashes, develop horrible arthritis, and stomach issues for days. If the malfunction is telling too many cells to die too quickly, you may start to develop wounds. If the malfunction is telling too many cells to grow too quickly, you get thick patches of itchy, flaking skin. They knew how to control that and bring it back down to normal.
Things started to get a little crazy after some time, though. The treatments they were giving me came quicker and quicker, it was like they'd cracked a code on something, and then suddenly, things got ugly. Really ugly.
I remember having an infusion, sitting and playing with their daughter Akemi, when their first fight broke out. For a while, there was a growing tension, but neither of us understood what it was. Akemi pried for more information from her mother, but she didn't understand a lot about it. By this time, I had seen Akemi a lot, and we had become close friends, so we both witnessed this spiral into madness together. It was terrifying to see these two very kind and loving people start to warp into these cold, work-obsessed, mad scientists. We didn't know it then, but they stumbled on something unbelievable. Immortality.
TO BE CONTINUED