Our Names Are:
Lee Cotner is the original one, but Jack Schrader, and Ronny Leet are also there. They aren't the only ones, though the others are far more rare to see. Though we distinctly remember one time when we thought ourselves to be a young German woman who sadly died shortly after the Allied bombings of Berlin began in the 1940s.
We Are This Old:
Well, we suppose that would depend, now wouldn't it? Well, for the Big Three it would be 19, 17, and 18 respectively.
Sexuality:
We . . . are as we are. We think it's a silly idea to confine "love" and all of the chemical connections that go with it to one specific setting or pair in life.
This Is Our Power:
Cloning. It's truly simple, to be honest. You see, by electrical and neurochemical stimulation of certain . . . well we'll spare you the dry bits. Suffice to say, we can make us, many times. Right now, we know our powers are not quite as strong as they could be. With the presence of multiple entities, a neural band develops, and interlaces within each entity. That neural network only has so much capability. It doesn't fluctuate or change, it just is. To put it in layman's terms: there is a well of water. There is only so much water in the well and you must put an equal amount of it in to each bucket that you have. With the more buckets, the less water, and thus lesser value for each bucket. At the moment we can sustain ourselves in as small a legion as two for hours should we choose on our better days, or in small gatherings of six or seven for the course of anywhere from ten minutes to an hour and a half depending on the kind of day it's been for me. We would like to develop this further, making for larger numbers, but we fear for the others of this world. Can you imagine it? MORE of us?! The idea is hysterically maddening, isn't it? However, one thing we have noticed, and this may come as a shock, is a rather drastic side-effect. It seems whoever penned the Bible so many years ago was right in saying that humans have souls. You may not be able to see it, test on it, or in any way physically sense it -- but it's there. We can't make a clone out of nothing, at least not entirely. We take one of those souls and we change it a little as needed, enough to suit our purposes. The problem? As we change them, they change us, and they instill us with potentially scarring memories. We have been there as our newborn was brought in to the world for the first time, just as we have flown above Japan and watched as the cataclysmic hellfire raped the beautiful city of Hiroshima. We just hope you aren't too put off by this.
Likes:
- Chocolate, especially buttermilk.
- Lasagna. Well-made lasagna.
- Our work. It's amazingly fun, isn't it?
- Good music. Of any kind, really.
- Rain. It's so relaxing.
- Artwork, mostly of the older sort.
- Computers.
- Science. Any sort, from biology to astrology.
- Sour gummy worms.
- Gummy bears.
- A good book.
- Studying.
Dislikes:
- Strawberry-flavored Jell-O.
- Pudding. Of any flavor.
- The ignorantly blissful.
- The blissfully ignorant.
- Bubblegum.
- Candy canes.
- Humorless people.
- Profanity.
- Pears. We hate pears!
- When we have our -- episodes -- with the other "we's" out there.
- Cloning can be a more painful process than it appears, you know.
- Cocoa butter. Something about the smell.
- Lazy people.
Fears:
- A loss of one's sense of self (losing who Lee Cotner once was).
- Not of death, but the transition.
- Of not being accepted "that one".
- That, "the one" for us may not even exist.
We're Told We're...
Oh, you wish to know this about me? Well, I've done plenty of self-analysis since I've discovered my powers. So here you are.
Lee is quite positively to the right side of the brain. His motto in life is to have fun, and let the rest burn. If you can't appreciate his humor or something else about him then he won't go out of his way to be your friend. Come to him or stay away, because he rarely reaches out to anybody. Yet at the same time, he can be quite a social butterfly. When going to a party, it is almost impossible to find Jack in any one place for long. He'll be moving about the area, drink in hand (alcoholic or otherwise), and having as much fun as possible. At one moment, he may be singing karaoke, at the next he'll be on the couch flirting with some pretty young lady, then at the snack table, and then he may just end up on the roof somehow. Yet Jack wasn't always such a socially open sort of person. Before this all developed, while not socially closed off, Jack was not exactly socially adept or open. Speculations, mostly derived from his own research, say that the multiple personalities are drastic enhancements of each side of him, or that this infliction has subconsciously driven him away from others. Other theories exist, of course, but everything is purely speculative. Of course, he's also fun to have around in a lab when you can get him to throw on his lab coat (not that he often actually wears one while in the lab -- or much else in terms of safety equipment).
While Lee leans to the left, Jack isn't so care-free and emotionally driven. Jack is possibly the most "practical" of the three main personas we have. He would best be described as the left brain. A savant of science, mathematics, and the practical arts. Where some look to emotion and "the heart" to guide them, he prefers analytical observation, and statistical analysis of the scenarios before him. When dealing with others, he can be a bit socially awkward, and prefers not to interact with others much. This can come off strong enough to the point that some might consider it very rude or offensive. It isn't that he doesn't like that person, it is just that he simply does not handle associating with others very well. He more often prefers to bury himself in a book, whether that is one to study or for personal enjoyment, and listen to music rather than go to parties are hanging out with other people. It's social reclusion that can get to the point where it is almost crippling in nature. Primary triggers are when he finds himself facing a frustratingly challenging dilemma in the form of something such as a science problem, or mathematics, or something akin to that in nature. He is the second most common "face" we have, next to Lee, of course.
Ronny Leet is to the right, but in a much more negative way than Lee. Where Lee's emotional charge is care-free, unconcerned for others' opinions of him, and always seeing the best in himself: Ronny is not so fortunate, it seems. He is emotionally charged to the lower end of the spectrum. Where Lee genuinely couldn't care less about what you think of him, Ronny would take it to heart whether you were saying it jokingly, or even if you didn't have that large a role in his life. An innocent joking insult about something of his body, or something else will likely make him much quieter than he currently is. He doesn't enjoy associating with others very often, nor is he as active as the other two personas. Where Lee avoids situations that bring him discomfort with a laugh, and Jack with a book: Ronny prefers to simply shut out the world. He'll put on his earphones, turn on his music, lock himself in his room, and simply refuse to associate with anybody. When in the lab, he'll get so intently focused on whatever is in front of him at that moment that he tends to shut out the rest of the world. However, he's also quite easily flustered, as Jack is, but it is much more difficult to hide it. Where a handsome young woman or man flirting with Jack
This Is What We've Been Through:
Well, while we could break down all the memories we've had: that would take far too long. Besides, those wouldn't be what happened to Lee. Those are different stories.
Lee's being a scientific prodigy was not a shock for many people. His father worked for the government as a scientist, working on a variety of fields of work from medicine, to weapons, and agriculture. His mother was a former Navy pilot who became a stay-at-home mother who worked hard to raise Lee and his sister five years his elder. It was a happy, healthy home life, and they were very well-off for most things. With his father serving as a well-paid and highly valued government employee and his mother's benefits from the Navy meant that the four of them had quite a good life. Their house was a nice penthouse arrangement, both Lee and his older sister Maggie were both sent to private school, and looked like they were going to be quite the successful youths -- until Maggie started to show signs. She had begun to develop powers, pyromancy, and so the government had been forced to take her away to be observed. Sadly, she would never get the chance to truly master her powers. When he was fourteen, on a path to early graduation from high school, they had gotten a new update on his sister. She had sadly passed away. In a total loss of control -- she had turned herself in to a human pyre. Yet even with that tragedy, Lee had to keep pushing himself, and trying as hard as he could to succeed.
His family was devastated with the loss, and even more so when after early graduation from MIT as an honor graduate at the age of 16 -- he had begun to develop definite signs of powers. Early on, the way he acted was determined to be stress from his sister's death. At first he seemed bi-polar and socially awkward, but eventually it had begun to worsen. He would start not answering to his own name, or responding to different names entirely. What really revealed it, though? He had gotten work with the government as a mortician for the government, specializing in the odder and seemingly unnatural means of death that they encountered. Thinking that he was the only one still in the building, he had come walking in to the autopsy room discussing the possibilities of a recent arrival -- with himself. Now the young assistant sitting in the room probably wouldn't have found that too weird if not for one thing. As Lee had gone to set down his laptop on a nearby table, he had simultaneously been going across the room to look at the body in question. She had freaked out, screamed, and easily caught the attention of both Lees. They didn't fight or resist the authorities that came for them that night -- or rather him, as his clone disintegrated in to nothing but faint dust after about an hour's time. They had taken him away, with his mother in tears, and his father seeming to be -- disappointed in a way.
Lee wasn't entirely lost in the sector, though. Admittedly, it was hard for him to get along with others, but he wasn't left on his own. He was fortunate enough to grab the government's interest. He was pressed in to service, given his own lab, some staff to aid him, and a simple objective. They wanted him to do what they couldn't seem to be bothered to do. Research the powers and why they were coming. They wanted him to research the reason and see if he could find anything about them in general. His work primarily focused on himself as the subject of focus initially, especially as a degrading control of his split personalities became noticeable. Later on, as these strange deaths started to show up, he was suddenly repurposed. He was put in with the local police force, given a gun, trained how to use it, given a bit of basic self-defense training, and sent out on investigative cases. In the course of the investigations he was mostly brains, though he did come along to serve warrants. He used his pistol all of . . . three times. He isn't necessarily a fighter in the refined sense of a martial artist or a soldier. His ability to scrap it with the best of them meant that his scientific and mathematical expertise (not to mention that he could multiply that multiple times over should he need to do so) got him an invitation to go in to help solve this problem.
He accepted.
He's always loved a challenge.
Anything Else You Might Need To Know: Well, we have a bad habit that we don't know if you've noticed yet. We often refer to ourselves in a group manner. Also, if you need anything solved using brain power: feel free to ask. If you want me to fight? I've only fired a handgun a few times. I can scrap if you need me too, though.