Chapter One

Awakening

[usr@neonrunners]/home/kage$ cat Chapter 01 - Awakening.txt

I awoke. Confused. The rushing agony of electricity burning through my veins. The bright lights piercing my brain after what was an eternity of darkness. Birth? No, this was something different. Something no one should feel. The voice then spoke, disembodied, cold, synthesized... Foreboding,
"Program loading... Welcome back Runner"
I knew I was dead.

The memories came sporadically. A flashback of life. Was it my life? Flashes of drugs, sex and violence. Flashes of me? No, this was real, but was it really me?

The wires which fed the white hot scorching through my blood disconnect with a mind of their own. A deliberate, mechanical movement like that of a factory drone. My agony receded as I fall to the floor. As I stumble to my feet, I look back to my prison. A pod of steel only big enough for one man. Circuitry and a mess of wires and small blinking lights was all that was inside. How long was I there? Why was I there? Beside the pod was a terminal, a simple screen and keyboard set up. I examine the screen.

RUN program_runner812484
Entering boot sequence...
BIOs version 8.29.51
INIT: kernel version 2.96.11 booting...
Processor 0 is VoidTech Z 1993 THz 1TB Cache
-- WARNING: CPU ERROR! Possible malfunction! Proceed with caution! --
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
System initialization...
Starting udev: OK
Scanning hardware...
ACPI Bios found, activating modules... Done
Activating energy cells... Done
Autoconfiguring hardware... Done
Checking filesystems...
/: ext2, clean 7849845224/546489225K blocks
/home: ext2, clean 5646821898/5646812489K blocks
/var: ext2, clean 5646821898/5646812489K blocks
/dev: ext2, clean 15265236/23423566K blocks
/usr: ext2, clean 23445675733/563542325213K blocks
/boot: ext2, clean 23137857384/123415389798K blocks
Remounting / ... Done
Mounting local filesystem... Done

Loading Runner... Done
Initiating personality sequence - 'Kage': SUCCESS
Downloading to memory... Done
Initiating morality chip: ERROR! Proceed with caution...
Initiating combat sequence: SUCCESS!
Downloading to memory... Done
Initiating 'run' sequence: SUCCESS!

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NEON RUNNER - KAGE
Version: 8.12.484
Welcome back Runner! Your time has come... Prepare to run!

Kage! The name bashed my skull like a sledgehammer. Kage. More memories came flooding back. Regality, elegance... Royalty? No, that was the life I rejected. Memories of women. The warmth of erotic sensuality came rushing through my brain. Powders, pills, they had kept this going. The abuse of my power. Then came the flashes of combat. Missiles, lasers, the armed melee combat of mechanical humanoid battle tanks in the vacuum of darkness between worlds. Loss. Death. Failure. A war? The people were angry. My people. That was me. That is me. But who did this? Who imprisoned me in this steel pod?

Void...

Dr. Void. That was the man who took me in. He's given me a second chance. A second chance at life. A life squandered. Born to the principality of Eru, a planet far from where I am now. With the death of my father, I ruled. Young, reckless and headstrong, I made many mistakes. Including a war. A war over the planet I now call Cocoa due to the natural abundance of such. I wanted this. My love for the wonderful 'White Snow of Cocoa' spurred my greed and decadence. Like a child throwing a tantrum, I ignored the pleas of my advisors and marched straight to war. A war of devastating proportions. Space battles. Aboard a huge humanoid robot battle tank of my own design, I struck down many enemy fighters and battleships daring to come between me and my conquest. This, however, would prove futile. My loss caused an uproar. My people abandoned me. Exiled me. I was sent to a primitive planet, Earth, as they felt that suited my punishment. Earth was known for its self destructive tendencies as well as its extensive history of demonology and occultism, of which I tended to dabble. My people decided this environment suited me better.

These memories came flooding through my mind like a bolt of lightning cracking in the sky. My vision grew blurry as I staggered towards the sink at the end of the room with my pod. This was too much. The memories were coming back too fast. Were they mine? Were they placed there? I splashed my face with water and looked in the mirror. I looked the same to how I remember, still young. My people don't age as humans do, but then I have changed somewhat since I landed on Earth. Then another blast of pain came through my head as a torrent of more memories began to viciously emerge.

I landed on Earth in the spring of '82. My ship was destroyed after landing so as not to cause any suspicion. I couldn't let these humans know what I was or where I came from. After a short time on Earth I missed my home. I missed my power. It was then I realized who on Earth held power over people, the famous. I had immediately fallen in love with Earth's rock n roll so I decided to become the next best thing to being a prince, being a rockstar. I joined a hard rock band, Sex Kitten, featuring Jonny Roadknight, Izzy Monroe, Micky Lasso and myself. We gained success. Very quickly. After the disappearance of Roadknight in '85, which we all suspected to be death by misadventure, I used my money to construct a ship in secret in order to leave Earth.

The memories did not stop flooding through my mind. A raging vortex of my travels through space came pounding through my mind. The races I met, fought or loved. The drugs. I had continued my decadence into deep space. During my travels, I heard in hushed tones of an elite group of fighters known as the Heralds back on Earth. The challenge excited me and I vowed to destroy them. Upon my return to Earth to immediately track them down, I did, only to find a familiar face among their ranks: Jonny Roadknight - the man I considered a friend and ally. Having suffered losses to their unit, Roadknight was eager to have me instated as a member. I was happy to oblige.

It was then I came to realize who I was. Or rather, what I was. When I joined, their scientist Dr. Void took a copy of my DNA to set up a back up program. A backup program to fight in case of a disaster. I am that backup. I decided that I must find Void, something awful has or is about to happen. I must not let this happen. I must not waste this second chance to life.

Suddenly the door to this experimental chamber flew open and in the doorway I viewed a familiar silhouette...

"KAGE!"