Hikaru Matthews
Background
[ Spoiler ]
Mom told me stories about when she was younger. She ran in the shadows you know. A great shaman, though she says she was only good and lucky to stay alive to retirement. She says she retired for my sake and has loved every minute of it, something about being relaxing. Dad agrees with her, but he still keeps up his job so I don’t know.
Er... I guess I better introduce myself before I get too far into this. My name is Hikaru Matthews, or so the fake SIN Dad got me says, even so, I like it. I guess I should start from the beginning to clear things up.
Mom was a great shaman shadowrunner before she became pregnant with me. Like I said, she says she was just lucky, but I know she was great at what she did. She ran the shadows of Tokyo and was pretty famous as the ‘Lightning Priestess’. She and Dad met up because of her job and well... I was the outcome.
Dad was... well IS a fixer in the shadows. He never really quit his job after marrying Mom, says it’s because it isn’t too dangerous if done right. Well, because of that, he spends a lot of time at home and helps out Mom in the shop and played with me while I was growing up. Oh yeah, Mom opened up her own Talismongering shop after I was born. She doesn’t make that much money, but it gives her something to do and reason to gossip with her friends.
When Mom was about to give birth to me, they decided to do it in house and hired an awakened midwife to handle it. With her powers, Mom says it was pretty pain free and safe. The only downside is that I don’t have a legit SIN, but Dad fixed that pretty easily.
What they got was an average, though beautiful, elven baby girl, me. Mom and Dad love me like nothing else, and I love them too. They raised me all the way up until grade school, where I started like all the other kids my age. I wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t the worst either. There were some things I was picked on about, like being an elf and only half Japanese, but everyone got picked on, so I guess it was all pretty good for the most part. That is, up until I was ten...
The year 2061, I will never forget it. It left me with many things, and took away a few in turn. My god, it hurt like hell... I’m just thankful that the only luck I did have that day was that it happened while I was at home. Mom and Dad were freaking out almost as much as I was. You would too if your head felt like someone was trying to drag your ears from the side of your head to the top and at the same time trying to rip your nails out with a pair of pliers. At least I can say that this those were the most painful changes and the others were either less painful or painless.
When it was all said and done... I wasn’t me anymore. It was sort of pitiful really, thinking back on how I cried and cried. Think about it, you are watching your Saturday afternoon anime about the ‘Moon Sailor Cats’ when after a painful evening, you are one. I wouldn’t leave the house for the next two weeks while my mother and father tried to figure out what was going on.
Of course later on they found out that I wasn’t the only one this happened to, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Cat ears, tail and claws... I lost my identity, and so did so many others to some degree. We found out later on in those two weeks that those weren’t the only changes. My eyes started changing from the green I got from Dad to the purple they are now and the roots of my hair started showing the pink it was going to be from then on forth.
I cant say that it was all bad, I guess. With the change in my ears, I could hear better than before. My eyes change wasn’t only with the color but with what I could see too. I started seeing heat along with the normal light spectrum. Things often come in three they say, and this was no exception either, because along with the big change, I also awoke to the world my mother always spoke about. At the time, they used this excuse to try and calm me down. Well, it did work a little, them showing me that I was still Mom’s little girl, even with the changes.
The only reason that I only stayed two weeks at home was that my mom found a way for me to look normal again, even though I wasn’t the same. It was some sort of spell that I couldn’t understand at the time. I saw myself in the mirror, the before me, but still felt the changes. I know now what it was and am thankful Mom knew that spell.
She would cast it on me each day before I went out, making me look normal again, and sustained it with one of her foci until I came back right after school. This went on for a few years until she taught me how to do it myself and also taught me how to bind a focus to my magic. It made my day to finally be in control of how I looked instead of having to rely on Mom. I was growing up, I thought and truthfully, I was. I was growing more into the body I now have, and I don’t just mean like a normal girl would. I was becoming more comfortable with the changes.
Anyways, I kept up the ‘Mask’ to keep things easier until I fully graduated... Well, almost. Hahaha, you should had seen the look in my classmates’ eyes when I walked in with purple eyes and bright pink hair. God, they almost fell out of their heads. You see, one day, I think I just turned seventeen, I walked out of the house with my normal mask up, but stopped at one of the corner stores to use the bathroom. While in the stall, I dropped my mask and redid it with out covering my eyes or hair colors. I was the ‘rebel’ of the class after that, not really because I did anything bad, but because I wasn’t the same anymore. Heh, if they only knew.
It was about the same time that I started feeling something, or I guess hearing it would be more appropriate. It was faint but something was trying to talk to me and when I asked my mom about it, she helped me with some focus techniques.
It was pretty uneventful, other than that, up to graduation. I spent the next few months helping Mom out in her store, learning spells, techniques and listening to stories of her when she was running in the shadows. I was captivated by her escapades and the sounds of action she talked about. It was too late when she read into my plans to follow in her footsteps and tried to stop me. I was dead set on finding adventure.
I knew somewhat what Dad did for a living, and I basically had to bug the ever living shit out of him before he finally caved and started giving me small runs... and I mean small runs. Delivering packages mainly, until I gained more skill with my spell craft and he moved me up to escorting some salaryman or other small timer.
I wanted to have adventure, and after a year of small shitty jobs, I bugged my father again. This time, since he saw how well I was doing with the small stuff, he introduced me to a friend of his who worked down in Hong Kong and needed someone with my skills. Johnny Wang was his name. I was ecstatic upon hearing the news, but made sure to listen to everything my parents were warning me about because they told me that I could die doing this. I didn’t want to die, just have an adventure.
So I did what they said and loaded up on some special gear that my father gave to me along with some hand me down gear that my mother used during her time and was still good. Finally, she gave me my most precious and amusing going away gift. A power focus that she said would increase my magic ability greatly but she had it made into collar... A collar. Good to know she still has a sense of humor as she laughed when I pulled it out of the box. Oh well, I know she loves me and so does Dad. I always wear it and think of them.
Well, I spent the night flight from Tokyo International to Hong Kong thinking of what I was going to do. Dad already gave me an address to a place that Mr Wang helped hook me up with and some basic Chinese Dad had picked up during normal work with his job. He also gave me a data file that I read on the flight to help me with ordering food or asking where the bathroom was... real basic stuff, but it came to me pretty fast.
When the wheels hit the tarmac, I was tired and ready to crash in the place Wang set me up with. Once I was through customs, I took a taxi straight there and crashed for the day. The meet wasn’t for a few days, so I was able to wander around some and get used to the changes in atmosphere. Once of the most interesting things I saw was the occasional person walking around that looked just like me. I did a quick search about it on the Matrix and found out that Hong Kong has the biggest body modification fetish in the world. When I opened my eyes, I saw more and more people who had modded their body to look like anime characters or actors. It gave me an idea, and on the day of the meet, I walked in under a full mask. I looked like a normal person: black hair, brown eyes, the works. When I introduced myself to the group of people though, I dropped my mask fully and saw the looks from the others. It was interesting to say the least.
I decided not to keep my mask down more often after that to see how people would react, though I didn’t push my luck. I didn’t want to jeopardize the run that I came here for, luckily I didn’t... I think. The run was pretty smooth compared to the stories my mom told me. Everything was going great, up until I saw Wang’s corpse on the floor of the hotel room we were supposed to meet up at to get our pay.