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[Flare]

[What? Flare stole the idea of Cowboy Bebop // Serenity // thousands of science fiction films...and didn't even make an attempt to cover it up?! THE SCANDAL.

Alright, kids, here's the deal. Flare misses RPing in first person, because every site she's on is third person and she is in first person withdrawl. She also misses her old RR.net RP crew - you guys know who you are - and wants to reunite with them once more in a tale of glory and magnificence. Only not.]

T H E P L O T

The human race, once confined to only the planet earth for a habitat and home, has long since expanded its reign. Now it stretches across the galaxy, its populations topping the several trillion point. With hundreds of worlds settled and colonized throughout the galaxy and the technology to better the human race for all time, it was unavoidable that people would begin to believe that not only could they make the lives of human beings better; they could make human beings themselves better.

So began the experiments.

In a remote pocket of the galaxy called the Xenar System, lit mostly by an especially bright star, a special research team composed of the most brilliant minds of the time - scientists, physicians, inventors, philosophers, and mathematicians alike - began what was dubbed as Operation: Zion. Selecting various groups of undesireables from several intergalactic prisons they began to experiment upon the beings, trying to find a way to make humans live longer, live stronger, and be better in general. Some of their experiments were successful, but the majority of them ended in blood, grief and death. Thousands lost their lives as these people sought to make humanity better, not realizing that it was already good enough.

When Undesireables began to run out, the Intergalactic Government began to search for others to continue the government. Soon enough innocents were being picked up from the streets and transported in cargo ships to the Xenar System. Those who were left behind, wondering where their loved ones had gone, were told by the government that they had been killed and would pin the blame on someone - occasionally an innocent - whose life was ended soonafter.

This continued for quite some time, and the IG and Operation: Zion went according to plan. However, problems began to arise when, due to all the supposed murders that were going on, the real crime rate throughout the entire galaxy began to rise. Things grew to an almost catastrophic state in a matter of a few years, and for quite some time the IG were at a loss.

This is where bounty hunters came in.

Most were assasains in the beginning, trained by the government to take out anyone who opposed them. Government arrests would be put out for them, and whichever one killed said individual person would recieve rewards of varying sizes, but with enough kills a person could live a life of safety (for the most part) and grandure. Soon enough, though, with the changing times, the policies of the government changed, and the arrests would be put on display for the general public, opening up all sorts of new opportunities for those of little conscience and morality. Fortunately, there are plenty of people in the galaxy who are of little conscience and morality, though there are a select few bounty hunters who stand out against the rest, who always get the job done with ease and who have made this not just their profession, but their lifestyle.

Recently, though, rumors have begun to spring up concerning the Zion Operation and what it consists of. The Governent was clueless as to how these rumors have come into effect, thankfully. What they didn't know is that one scientist, wrought with grief, brought one of the few successful projects of Operation: Zion on a cargo ship with him and took her to the other parts of the Galaxy in hopes of maybe rallying up some with nobility in their veins to fight back and to show the galaxy the truth about what happened. Unfortunately for the scientist, while stopping at Mars he was found out by a Government official and killed on site. The project, known only by the number eight, dissappeared and has yet to be found.

Desperate to keep Operation: Zion under wraps, the government has released a warrant for the project Eight, saying that she is armed and highly dangerous, and that she is to be killed upon sight. The reward is greater than any bounty in the written history of the galaxy. Bounty hunters from far and wide have sprung up at the opportunity and have begun to track Eight, equipped with incredible strength and assassaination techniques, with expert skill. But in the end, will any of them find out the truth, or is it to die when they choose their bounty over saving humanity?

---

I, of course, will be Eight. The rest of you can be whoever you want: a bounty hunter [it would be easy if all the bounty hunters were part of one crew, but we can work with them not being in the same crew] a government official, a citizen...anything. Go hog wild. The only thing you can't be is another escaped experiment. Eight is the only one. This is why she's special.

Just make sure you follow the plot relatively closely.

[Flare]

The most distinguishing feature of Mars is the smell of it.

There's something so unique about Martian soil, different from any othe planet I've ever been to - or at least can remember going to - though I don't recall enough smells from before I was taken to properly identify exactly what it is the scent reminds me of. It's something from my past, but since I have no recollection of what happened before I was taken - The Professor said that they took me from my mother while she was browsing through the Sale Rack in a department store - I can't connect certain images and tastes and smells even when my body wants to. The mind has been wiped clean from my previous life, when I had a name, before I was Eight, and so there's no real way I can have memories.

The only memories I have are of Xenar, and the Zion Operation, and of my life as Eight. I don't remember what they did to me when I first arrived - though I don't know my age now, I can guess that I was around eight years old when I was taken, hence my name - and perhaps in the end that's for the best. I came in a shipment of two hundred, and of those two hundred, by the end of the year, there were only six of us left alive. The experiments with our blood changed some of us and killed others, depending upon the balances or imbalances in our chemical makeup and the way out DNA was twisted and hundreds upon hundreds of variables that none of them ever properly deciphered.

Perhaps that was why The Professor and I were able to escape three months ago - they were too busy figuring out numbers and letters and formulas to support their thesis to notice we had gone. There were people who were challenging them, challenging the monsters they'd made of men, and they were scrambling with an almost frantic desperation to prove that they were right and the others were wrong and there was no way that would ever change. Obviously they noticed it sooner rather than later, though, because the Professor is now a month dead and I am alone on Mars, even though I'm surrounded by hundreds.

I am not afraid of being caught; I have come to terms with the likelihood of not being captured, and they are slight. I do not fear it, because the probability of my survival when there has been a warrant issued for my life is next to zero - the real number is several hundreds of decimals long, I have concluded, and although I certainly have the mental capacity to decipher it I have not the time nor the patientence for it. The Professor always insisted that was why I was different, why I was successful above all the other experiments: because there is still some human in me, unlike all of the other projects. They never made me a lifeless drone as they did with so many others, and for that I am thankful. They tried, of course, but couldn't succeed. That's why I'm different; that's why I've escaped.

Most of us are like the undead in Xenar, walking lifelessly as we are poked and prodded, stuck with needles, put into combat situations. Our reflexes are tested, our IQs measured, and if the experiments themselves don't kill you and you are proven faulty they'll kill you themselves. Usually they use a lethal injection, but sometimes they're far more brutal, depending upon how much trouble the subject has caused them.

I'm sure that if I'm found out - and it's said that they want me dead or alive - I'm not going to be fortunate enough to get a lethal injection.

I sit on a park bench, the air which has long since become breathable fresh and cool in my lungs, the warmth of the sun heating my pale skin, made ivory from years on a planet that wasn't lit by the sun, but rather by a star that shone with no more than half the light of a sun. My legs, slender and bare from the knee down, swing back and forth idly, and I sip at a bottle of water, loving the cool taste as it streams down my throat. We don't have much water on Xenar - it's all imported from other systems, and that's a far too expensive business. Instead they pump us with substitutes and special enhancers that shoot through our blood streams and make us stronger, faster, better.

I don't know what I look like, really - I have only seen myself in a mirror once before, two years ago by my reckoning, though I don't have much of a concept of time. I know I have green eyes and that my hair is pale blonde - almost white, perhaps. It's retained that color - I can tell because it's grown long enough so that I can see it falling over the pale, slender peaks of my shoulders. The warrant described me as follows:

W A N T E D - dead or alive
alias eight
age 16
gender female
eyes pale green
hair pale blonde
height 5'5"
weight 109 lbs
crime murder of government scientists and hijacking of a cargo vessel
please note that the subject is highly dangerous and possibly armed

I wear the dress that The Professor gave to me before his death and sip at a bottle of water and watch people walk by me. They don't know who I am; they don't know what I am, and for that they are fortunate. I am sure that the government has sent its dogs after me. All I can do now is wait.

[hoorah shitty establishing posts. NOW YOU MAY BEGIN.]

[Yaz]

There is a hole in my day.

I rest my pen for a moment, hesitant. Most people would think me old-fashioned for one so young, using an ink pen of all things to write a journal. I press my pen to the yellowing pages of the leather-bound journal once again. My name, Cal Tarot, is labelled on the front.

John and I used to have lunch together. Being relatively the youngest officer in this establishment, I suppose John decided to take pity on me. I wouldn't call him a friend. I had no idea what he did exactly with the projects and he had no idea what I did at the establishment. We never discussed business. I don't think he would've spoken to me (I could tell from the beginning that John was a good samaritan) if I had told him that I was in charge of disposing of the bodies, the evidence - the skeletons in our closets.

One hand comes up to my forehead, as if to knead out the sudden rush of images that come to the surface of my mind.

At times I truely wish they legalized the bleaching of one's mind. No one had prepared me for what I would see here. What they turned some of those projects into -- The first time one of them looked at me, I could see the terror in their eyes. It was though they thought I'd come to kill them. I wanted to be sick. They were like nothing I'd ever seen before.

All in the name of science, I remember John said once. All in the name of science, of course. I remember the look in his eyes when he said that, perhaps even worse than the miserable eyes of the projects.

I take a deep breath, the smell of Mars drifting through my window, and feel the room fall away from me as I recall the look in John's eyes when I found him, tracked him down like an animal. I caught a brief glimpse of Eight's blonde hair, but that was it. She was gone before I could stop her.

There is a hole in my day and I believe I made it with my own gun in the head of a man who's heart was too big for this life.

My pen scratches across the page, refusing to write anymore. There is a knock at my office door. I close my journal carefully, not wishing to rush myself.

"Who is it?" I call, wishing that I could have had a few more hours alone. I can see my reflection in my watch as I bring it up, another ancient relic that people laugh at me for ("Why not embed the time in your head like we all do?"). I can see my boring brown hair and blue eyes, my face young but old at the same time. I'm a young dog with old tricks, they say.

"Mr. Tarot, sir, it's Vince Locke. I have the file you wanted ...?"

I press a panel on my desk and the door slides open with a soft hss. The man - no, barely a man, a boy rather - walks in with a file. He's come from the other department - the one where you don't deal with dead bodies.

"I didn't really understand why you wanted everything on paper - paper's pretty scarce, you know - when we could've just put it all up on your screen for you."

"It's of no concern of yours whether I want it on paper or not. If I wanted the bloody information tattooed on me, you ask me where I want it and in what colour, Locke."

You've got to be an complete and utter asshole if you want to maintain discipline in the government. I regret this as the Locke boy's face closes up. I only met him the other day when I was assigned to this outpost while I led the government's own hunt for Eight on Mars. He slaps the file emblazoned with confidential stamps all over it on my desk, salutes me and leaves the room.

My hands find the file's corners, lifting the edges. I open it and am greeted by the intense green gaze of Eight. I have never met Eight and am suddenly - again - stunned by the fact that Eight is a girl of only 16 years.