Since nobody can be expected to just sit and wait for XCOM 2 to come out, we’ll be having ourselves a little countdown for the 19 sundays left between us and salvation. Each week I’ll be showcasing another soldier living aboard the Avenger, who they are, and why exactly it is they fight for XCOM. When the game comes out, I’ll be creating all of these and release them as a content mod for your character pool. But for now, this’ll have to do.
Keep in my that this is all completely fanfiction-based and I am in no way affiliated with Firaxis. I just do this as a fun writing exercise, because I can.
An encounter with:
Hiro “Warlock” Yoshida, from Japan:
Yoshida is sitting in a lounge chair on the balcony of his Barcelona apartment, sipping on a glass of bitter lemon. The city’s summer nightlife can be heard raging in the distance like a typhoon of sweat and laughter.
“XCOM was a natural reaction to a foreign object entering the collective human body. We are not a very accepting species, and to be fair, the aliens did barge in weapons at the ready. I remember my time with XCOM very fondly. We were idealists, the best of the best, united in what appeared to be the first righteous fight in generations. It feels good, being the hero, not having to doubt yourself when you kill a man for your country. They were evil, a canvas for us to project upon whatever we hated. I thank the universe every day that they aren’t, because we would have lost regardless. An organization so well-funded, equipped with the best weapons on the market, staffed with the smartest engineers and scientists in the world, clandestine and protected by every secret service even after official support was dropped. The location of our base was so secret, even most people working in it did not know where it was, and those who did were explicitly forbidden from telling anyone. Most of us soldiers pieced it together, of course.”
An old, petrol-fueled motorcycle rides down the street, the staccato from its exhaust resounding like an angry machine gun. Yoshida shakes his head in disappointment.
“Why so many shun their gifts remains a mystery to me. When the aliens came for the base, I was in a pod in what the scientists called the ‘Psionic Labs’, having been fed through a tube for eight days straight. Testing wasn’t complete when they found me, but they could feel it: the Gift, I had it. The Irish girl next to me also did, but she attacked them instantly. Their leader, the Ethereal, touched my mind. I was not trained in telepathy yet, but this magnificent being, it aided me. To this day, I could not have a conversation of such clarity with any other Gifted. It was honest with me, told me more than my superiors ever had. The destruction of XCOM was unfortunate, but it had to happen so humanity could ascend, so we could join their community of species and take our special place in it. The only other species capable of psionics are the sectoids, and look how far they have made it. The technology, the knowledge, the protection from other species, species who would mean us real harm, all of those things were given to us, and they expected nothing in return. Yes, they may be a little firm at times, not understanding of our ways, but I have seen their true faces, and they are benevolent creatures imbued with a vision no human mind could ever hope to comprehend. We scorn their gifts, kill their soldiers and condemn those who would side with them, yet they still love us. They have made concessions to our primitive ways so that we might feel safe. When they understood that we are fiercely independent, they allowed us to self-govern under their guidance with the ADVENT Coalition. And they continue to give and give and give. I fight for the ADVENT, because I will do whatever it takes to see humanity flourish in this new world the aliens have opened up to us.
Who is Betty? 