"If you insist." Day eyed her hands as she wrapped up his arm, resisting the urge to comment on this. "Hm. I guess in order for it to all make sense, I gotta go way back. But I don't mind to do that. I've got no secrets to hide." He forced himself to relax to the best of his ability, realizing that this might be quite a long story.
"The war has been going since I was a kid, so obviously I didn't start it. My dad, though– he got drafted into the army during it all, and Mom was sick anyways. They both ended up dead– Dad killed by Reformers during the war and Mom dead from an incurable illness. I was eight by the time they were both gone, and there wasn't really anyone left to take care of me. I was sent to an orphanage, but I hated it. Nobody wanted me, anyways, and I was fine with that. By the time I was ten, I broke out, hit the streets." He paused a moment to glance at the bandages. "The streets were rough, but I didn't look back. I saw a lot of things and went through a lot of things a ten-year-old never should, but I guess that's only to be expected when you're a kid wandering the backalleys alone at night. It did make me wonder, though, where the police and army were while all of this horrible stuff was happening in the 'safety' of their cities. I made excuses for them, though, and assumed they were just so busy with the war. As bad as it was, living on the streets made me tough. You don't survive crap like that without getting stronger." He sounded so calm explaining it all, like it was some distant thing that didn't bother him anymore. "When I was thirteen, I got jumped by a bunch of dudes who shoved me into the back of a van and took off with me. I don't remember exactly what they told me at the time– something about serving for the greater good of the country and some other nonsense mumbo-jumbo that I wasn't interested in hearing. If I had realized they wouldn't be repeating it again, I might've paid more attention, because after they took me back to their base, it took me a long time to figure out exactly what they were doing with me." He sniffed absently, looking unmoved by his own story. "I was there for a couple months, and a bunch of soldier-looking guys started teaching me to fight, told me it would be important for me to know how to. I had a lot of endurance– what with surviving the living hell of the city's backstreets and all– so they were kind of impressed I guess. It wasn't until then that they said they were officially sending me off to the army. I wasn't really interested in that, but, you know, it wasn't about what I was interested in. I got sent anyway. Not to the main part of the army. Not the part you're in. It was another branch called Arcane. They were really brutal, too, because they were willing to do things more illegal than the main government. They hammered it into my head that the Reformers were essentially the spawn of Satan and that I was to kill as many of them as I possibly could. They didn't let me suggest anything otherwise, beating me senseless anytime they even thought I was doubting them." He sighed a little. "They ended up experimenting on me when I was sixteen. It was bad. I don't remember a lot of it. I feel like they overcomplicated it on purpose– and that they picked regenerative healing so that they could abuse me more without having to worry about me dying. That's where my powers came from. I healed fast. Like, immediately fast. Bullets couldn't kill me. Swords couldn't kill me. I was a weapon. I was unstoppable. But I listened to them. I was loyal. I was a friggin' moron for doing so, too." He scoffed a little. "And I didn't stop until I was thrust into the war and saw what happened to Reformer agents that got caught. That made me question things. Then I saw my own superiors– the people I trusted– doing the same thing they had done to me to others. To kids. I got mad. It was slow, but it was pure hatred, and I went rogue on them when I was twenty. I killed my main officer, a bunch of other guys, and I high-tailed it out of there. I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go, because after that little stunt, I couldn't go back. Not to mention, the world was so corrupt, and I was so sick of it. Sick of all of it. So I went to the Reformers. I assumed the they wouldn't want me, but they did. They most certainly did. They welcomed me with open arms, actually. I changed my name to Absalom Day, and I became a Reformer. I'd never been so passionate about anything before I joined them. But… it was a good cause. It was. I rose through the ranks quickly, and I was brutal, even for them– but they knew I meant what I said, and that I was willing to lay down every fiber of my being to help them. I don't know what they thought when I got taken to the prison camp, but I know we lost after that. Everything sorta crumbled. I escaped, except for my leg, and most of my men– well, they were already dead by then. The bases I went back to were all raided, basically just tombs. The Reformers' families, too. All gone. All slain. Seeing so many people get their most precious goal crushed– and their lives destroyed– kinda put my fire out. Those who were left said they were done. They weren't gonna risk losing what little they had to keep fighting, so we all just kind of agreed to… let it be over, I guess. Maybe one day someone would change the world, but apparently it wasn't meant to be us." He sounded disappointed with that last line, though he may or may not have gotten a tad off track with his monologue. He realized that and snorted lightly. "And there's the unnecessarily long story of my life."
