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"It's the terror of knowing what this world is about.
Watching some good friends screaming, "Let me out,"
Pray tomorrow, gets me higher and higher.
Pressure on people, people on streets.
Turned away from it all like a blind man,
Sat on a fence but it don't work,
Keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn.
Insanity laughs, under pressure we crack.
Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Love's such an old fashioned word,
And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night,
And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves.
This is ourselves under pressure."
- Under Pressure; Queen.
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He was an emissary for his people. The problem was, no one knew it yet.
The Okpano are a long-lived, but.. secluded race, skilled in avoiding detection. Many cryptozoological creatures derived from sightings of them, though the bipeds don't know it. Even within the race, each individual is isolated, solitary. Mates may see eachother a few times a year, even though they will be together forever. The relationships are hardly lovey-dovey. Within the mating pairs, the female can have a single child, or very rarely, twins. But after the birth, she loses all ability to conceive another. Thus, the population remains low. The individuals are long-lived, thousands of years, and once they hit maturity, nearly invulnerable to other animals.
However, disease kills off many of the young. And they began to worry about the race dying off. So, they needed technology. Biped technology. And they couldn't well march in and take it, looking like monsters. So.. the strongest of the race in magic got together, and transformed one individual into a biped as best they could, with a cloth around his neck to control the magic. He would be the one they sent to learn how to keep the race going.
Iden's first goal in the cities of the humans and humanoid animals was to gain power and status. He'd get nowhere if he was just another face in the crowd. So he took up a lucrative and fitting profession. A bounty hunter. Criminals, or, in under-the-table deals, just people who were being searched for. And he was very good at what he did. After all, he was an intimidating fellow, and strong enough to follow through on threats. And within a few years, he began to be noticed. Many organizations approached him, but none with the necessary offers.
Then a man came forth, a man in charge of a powerful military laboratory. A man who knew what Iden had been asking for, and was in a position to give it. The job was pathetic, humiliating, really. He would become practically a delivery boy, capturing whoever the man wanted, and bringing them to the facility. But to get what he wanted, he was willing.
And somewhere, he knew that if he refused, the man would just as soon take him instead. After all, he was obviously unusual, an unspecified species.
But through this man, known only as the General, he met all sorts of pathetic creatures, miserable and trapped. He saw the worst side of man, and the best. And most important of all, he met a boy called 4t57. This boy, so tormented, never once gave up hope, never once turned on another in anger. Iden couldn't help but admire him.
