Ramon DeWitt

Species: Katastropha Virus
Age: 27
Occupation: Co-Owner of Smiley's Cigs and Shit, Smiley's Ring
Hobbies: Drinking, Killing Demons, Martial Arts
Affiliations: None
In a Relationship with: Gillian Corbana
Theme Song: Troublemaker - Weezer
"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ramon DeWitt was born to Trevor and Alice DeWitt in 1988 on the 2nd of April in the small town of Stem Beach, Colorado. Ramon had a healthy first two years, but in the winter of 1990, he inexplicably fell ill, displaying the signs of some kind of unknown virus, with symptoms of fluctuating fevers, tremors, and exhaustion. Concerned for the health of their son, Trevor and Alice took him to the hospital immediately, only to find that the doctors were just as baffled as they were. After visiting several other hospitals in the county, the DeWitts began losing hope, as none of the doctors or specialists had any idea of what was ailing their son.
Fortunately, hope came late one night when they heard a knock on the door. Trevor opened the door to find a man who introduced himself as Max Powell. Powell claimed to have heard of the DeWitts' plight, explaining that he'd had a brother with the same symptoms as Ramon. Though his brother was unable to be saved, Powell explained, he spent his life searching for a cure for the rare, odd virus that most doctors had never even heard of. As luck would have it, Powell had found the cure, or so he claimed. Overwhelmed by the prospect that their son might be saved, the Dewitts didn't ponder for long the logic surrounding Powell's supposed discovery, and urged the mysterious good Samaritan to share the cure with them.
Inviting Max in, Trevor showed the man to his son, who was in one of his long, violent coughing fits. Powell took several moments to appraise Ramon carefully, and once satisfied, he gave a profound nod of his head, then requested that the DeWitts bring Ramon to his lab of likeminded specialists. Eagerly agreeing, the DeWitts took their son to the specified location the very next day.
Max Powell met them outside a pretty shady-looking building that would have been thought abandoned, had Powell and a team of professionally-attired men not exited it. Powell explained to the DeWitts that he would require Ramon to stay in his custody for the next couple of weeks, but he would call daily to keep them updated on the situation. He also reminded them that this was a purely voluntary process, and that they were welcome to take him elsewhere. Knowing their chances of finding someone else with any idea of what was wrong with their son was extremely low, the DeWitts agreed to Powell's conditions, and left Ramon with him and his team.
Though Powell did indeed call Trevor and Alice every day at precisely three PM to update them, the updates were always vague and, to any other couple, highly suspicious. But the DeWitts were beyond desperate at this point, and would believe anything if it meant they could have their son healthy and normal again. Unfortunately for them, Powell had no intentions of making Ramon "normal".
In fact, Max Powell and his team of highly-trained geneticists knew, all too well, that Ramon would have been perfectly fine; he had an extremely rare, never before documented genetic trait that allowed him to be impervious to disease, though it wouldn't manifest fully until after his body had suffered from an immunization process of its own making. That said, Powell endeavored to introduce strains of common diseases to Ramon, as well as those no one at the time had ever heard of, in order to find a surefire cure for these very diseases.
There was success, at first, but despite his team's warnings, Powell insisted Ramon's rare gene be pushed to its absolute limit - in the process, he pushed past it. He ordered the virus Katastropha - a new strain that had been found to severely mutate and eventually kill its host - be introduced to Ramon's system. It is worth noting that Katastropha was developed by Powell himself, and was originally intended to be a cure-all, though after testing it on lab rats, he knew all too well the failure in that. The intention now was to develop a cure for his cure-all, so that he could quickly counteract any mishaps with it in the future.
While Ramon's system easily knocked out all the other bugs, bacteria, viruses, diseases, etc. , Like they were nothing, it had a lot more trouble with Katastropha. In fact, it could only kill half of the virus - the half that normally would have killed him. The other half, however, despite his immune system's best efforts, began merging with his system, with nearly every fiber of his being. And then, his body began randomly shifting and warping its different parts into twisted, bony weapons.
The virus, no longer acting on its own, but with Ramon's system, almost seamlessly, realized that the doctors were a threat to its new host, and ordered Ramon's hands to shift into large, bone-like blades. The scientists, not realizing the danger, "ooh"ed and "ahh"ed at this display of adaptation. And then there was blood. And horrified screams. And much, much more blood. By the time Ramon's body lost control of its power and collapsed, the deed was long done, and not a single soul save for Ramon himself remained.
Weeks later, Ramon awoke in his own room in his own house with his two loving parents, with absolutely no memory of what had happened or what had been done to him. His parents, who found Ramon at their door, clean and perfectly healthy, tried to call Max Powell at the number he'd given them, but never did manage to contact him again. They assumed that he was simply an angel who wished to remain unpaid and unthanked, and so Ramon's parents were as blissfully unaware as he himself was of what exactly occurred at that warehouse, and what Ramon had become.
Ramon went on to experience a rather normal childhood, making plenty of friends and doing adequately at school. He also practiced a few different martial arts from the time he was seven up until he was nineteen after school and in his free time during the summer, perhaps influenced by his subconscious awareness that he had been threatened before and needed to know how to defend himself, should he be threatened again.
When he was nineteen and walking to his apartment from the community college he'd been attending, he was indeed threatened yet again, but this time by something incapable of being anything but vicious: a vampire. As the undead menace flung herself at Ramon, his body generated its own natural defense, in the form of a hook-like appendage formed from his right hand. Startled at first by this development, Ramon had little time to ponder upon it, as a bloodthirsty, undead woman had her sights on his blood. Thinking fast and using both his natural weapon and his self-defense training to his advantage, Ramon made quick, brutal work of the clearly surprised bloodsucker.
After that encounter, Ramon began training himself even more intensely in combat, and taking every possible opportunity to study his body's capabilities at forming weaponry and defense. Years later, Ramon has wound up in Sunnydale, having heard rumors of its dense population of the supernatural, which he'd been hunting occasionally to test his own limits.
Category:Characters