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 4 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:
Azad “Caesar” Nagarkar, from India:
Nagarkar is talking to some engineers, taking looks at their notes and providing his own. Many on the Avenger still treat him with caution, but at least the cryptographers have begun trusting him fully.
“I’ve heard it all before, I know people don’t like me here. It may be hard, but it’s a reality I have to come to terms with. Dealing with mistrust is the day to day for a double agent, that goes especially for one that acted on his own. I, og my own volition, joined the ADVENT because I thought it was a great idea. World governments get a bad wrap, but really, they’re the best way to consolidate the sheer diversity of the human race. Modern computer systems make direct democracy possible on a global scale, and as long as you don’t centralize too much of the power and keep a lot of it in the hands of local governments, everyone can prosper. Of course I saw the monstrosity that we actually ended up becoming, but I had hope. I was optimistic that humanity was mature enough to stand on its own feet, but it soon turned out that we’re still fascists at heart. However, I was in a unique position to becoming a large cog in the machine that is the ADVENT and maybe create a hiccup or two.”
He scratches his right arm, where Dr. Tygan has implanted one of several neural disruptors throughout the man’s body. A mere safety precaution.
“I was a very powerful individual, a cunning politician and a good commander. Being the Grand Prime Colonel of the Manaus Area, my authority was far-reaching, nobody dared question me, and the higher-ups thought I was one of them. Maintaining my own little triumvirate with the local trade minister and the head administrator. A lot of people call me ‘The Emperor of the Amazon’ to this day. I had loyal men around me, or at least I thought I did, and we were all on the same page: the ADVENT is the very worst manifestation of a world government, and we have to work against it. This was especially true for my right-hand man, Hamza Hanbali, who had been a student of political science in Cairo before seeing the same opportunities I saw. I’m not sure when he changed his mind, or if we were every truly of the same mind in the first place, but I do know that authority is a very seductive mistress to those who have strong convictions.”
Shaking his head, he sighs. The sound is filled with enough sadness to turn a birthday into a funeral.
“We never really interacted with any resistance members directly, we just didn’t do our duties properly. People weren’t jailed for disagreeing, unless they grew too loud, ships weren’t searched as thoroughly, unless they were too obvious, and searches for dissidents often came back with no results. It was the most freedom you could get anywhere in the world at that time, and the resistance benefited greatly from it. The whole region was just perfect for them. Not even the aliens were able to navigate the Amazon rainforest, but the locals did so with ease. So many of their compounds will never be discovered, and that’s what they banked on. They made their own little XCOM, with scientists and engineers, researching and producing high-end gear for cells in all South America, all the while keeping quiet on my turf. The only people I occasionally glanced at with suspicion were those directly above me, but I should have watched below. Hamza and some of my allegedly loyal soldiers collected incriminating evidence against me for months. They were in communication with some really, really, powerful people. I’m talking top tier administration and intelligence, people who saw this as an opportunity to not only strike at the heart of one of the most powerful rebel factions in the world but also make an example of a traitor. And, as much as I’d like to, I can’t really blame my men for throwing me at their feet. They were idealists, like myself, who saw themselves as becoming influential figures in the world, with the ability to influence the machine to greater extent than making it stutter a little. They were never meant to become the henchmen of some local warlord, forever stuck in their positions so as to not upset the balance of power. And many actually did experience a meteoric rise in the ADVENT hierarchy, especially Hamza, even after I managed to escape by a hair’s breadth and warn the resistance. To this day I hope at least one of them is still playing the long con, maybe I was a necessary stepping stone so that greater things could be achieved, but it’s the end of the line for me. I fight for XCOM, because it’s my last chance to leave this world a better one than I found it.”
Who is Betty? 