Rick Gryphon

**Rick Gryphon,** born **Weston Burr,** was a human who, due to a traumatic childhood, grew to hate his species, and sought to destroy it. Pioneering advanced cyber-genetic engineering, he was able to help enhance his pet dog Rex into a sentient, anthropomorphic being, and turn himself into a Furret/Human/Doberman hybrid. Strange dreams soon began to plague Rick, and he learned from them how to invent time travel, using it to carry out his plans. With an army of Robotic Corgis, Rick tried to manipulate the timestream and transform all humans into Housepets, comic characters he created. While stopped by a group of high school students, he would soon return, and would ally himself with the Demon King, Erebus, waging a war against the MVSF.

## History

### Early Life

Rick was born as Weston Burr in 1972 from an one night stand between two high school students. Unable to raise her child, and with the father nowhere to be found, Weston's mother Sarah Connor left him on his own at a young age. In actuality, Weston's father was a time traveler from the year 2015, and his conception was in truth a paradox for reasons he would come to know as an adult. Regardless, Weston felt abandoned and neglected, his only companions being several animals he would befriend. Convinced that humanity itself was cruel and unworthy of existing, Weston made plans to break it, and replace it with something new.

A brilliant engineer, talented artist, and skilled athlete, Weston worked in secret to create a new form of life to supplant humanity. By 1992, experiments on his pet dog Rex had allowed Weston to transform himself into an animal-human hybrid. Renaming himself Rick Gryphon, he sought to pass this change on to the rest of the world.

In his spare time, Rick created a webcomic, Housepets!, which depicted what he thought an ideal world should be. Rick and the now sentient and cyborg Rex would succeed in turning several other humans into furries, though this was largely small-scale, and it seemed that Rick's goal of a utopia would not come to pass.

This changed around 2012, when Rick began having strangely vivid dreams that seemed to show his own creation, as well as how to construct a time machine. In his visions, Rick saw his father emerging from the future to convive him, only to leave as reality and timelines shifted around, making it seem as if Rick emerged from nowhere. Confused but driven, Rick began to construct and test this time machine, theorizing with Rex that the time machine could be developed into a "Time Crucible" that would shape the timeline to their needs, and could create a world of Housepets. He also created an army of "Kinginators", robotic corgi drones that would help in coming battles. Unknown to Rick, much of what he had been shown in his visions was false, and he was actually being manipulated into breaking his universe's timestream by the Demon King Erebus, who hoped that doing so would help free him from his shattered state.

### The Housepets Paradox and Rio Sapo

In 2015, Rick put his plan into motion, sending plans and parts of a time machine to Jude, a human high schooler would was destined to travel back to 1972 and become Rick's father. At first, this plan seemed to work, as reality and timelines altered so that, after a brief Nuclear War in the 1990s, Rick's serum was spread to the entire world, turning everyone into furries. However, as Jude's friends recovered the time machine in the alternate year 2015, Rick stepped in to ensure they would not undo the changes. He could not stop them in time, and after a brief battle with "Grantpe", one of the transformed humans, Rick was knocked off the Time Crucible and into a portal that flung him into an alternate timeline.

Rick awoke in the Rio Sapo Universe, a world similar to his own that was under siege by frog alien invaders. Rick capitalized on this conflict by offering to help the Sapoans assemble a new army, and by the time Rex was able to find him using part of the Time Crucible (rebuilt into a ship named the *Magog*), Rick had already forged a new "organization" to carry out his plans. Rick and the Rio Sapoans connected with other multiversal factions and began an offensive against the Backyardigans, though one of the groups, the Lumknights, instead furthered their agenda of summoning the Great One. Their leader, Lumsden, wooed Sapoan leader Empress Mendoza over to his side, and soon, Rick was on the outs of his own faction. Not to be out plotted, the bitter Rick used Sapoan technology to finalize a new and improved Housepetsifier that he would unleash on the world in his moment of triumph. At this time, he also sought information on "The Great One", discovering information on Erebus in the process. When Lumsden and Mendoza left to complete the last step in their plan, Rick seized control of the Organization again.

The final battle of New Eden seemed at first to be a triumph for Rick. While loyal Rex was injured, Rick and the Kinginator BAIL-E managed to hold back a human counterattack with new "Kingmaker" robots, and began to transform the city's inhabitants into Housepets. Victory, however, was not to be; the arrival of the MVSF quickly collapsed the line, and a superweapon activated by the resistance destroyed much of the Sapoan fleet. After a brief duel with the pesky high school students who had somehow made it to this universe, Rick was seemingly killed when a mysterious shuttle appeared in the city and crashed into him, detonating it's shiver drive and destroying New Eden.

In truth, the shuttle carried a shard of Erebus, who had chosen rick as a suitable host body. Regenerated as an Abyssal Demon and on a mission to reunite the shards, Rick returned to the Lumknight planet of Kolthis, resurrecting Rex in a more powerful form and killing Lumsden in a duel. Now the supreme commander of the Organization, Rick made plans to rebuild his army and fulfil his new master's wishes.

### Servant of Erebus

By 2027, Rick had amassed a large enough force that he began attacking MVSF transports, acquiring experimental transmatt grenades and information on their logistics. As neither Rick nor Erebus knew where the shards were located, a mission to acquire the Versal Codex from the Nexus was put into action. While Rex was able to successfully acquire the Codex (as well as several mercenaries), the MVSF responded by deploying Delta and Caeles squads to take Rick down, attacking his base on Kolthis. Rick seemingly repelled the attack, and went on to acquire two of the shards from Terminus and Parthia. The final shard was located in a universe that seemed strangely familiar to Rick, though he deployed Rex and the mercenary Reynard to acquire it. At this time, Rick began to chafe under Erebus's control, plotting to free himself and use the shards for his own desires. MVSF survivors, however, had infiltraited his base, with agent Ben Foerr nearly killing Rick after attacking his quarters, though Rick managed to survive.

Making his way back to the base, Rick felt the destruction of one of the shards, and arrived just in time to see Ben, Pete, and those accursed children escape using a stolen transmatt grenade. Knowing Erebus would punish him for his failures, and eager to seize control of the remaining shards, Rick traveled to Erebus's realm with a plan to kill the demon while he was weakened. The MVSF, aware of his plan, managed to defend Erebus long enough for the rest of Delta Squad and their Housepet allies to crash the *Magog* into Erebus's temple, destroying the shards. Erebus, livid, stripped Rick of his powers and returned him to a human form.

Rick participated in an assault on the Nexus led by Erebus, though his spirt was broken. He had lost his powers, his army, and his furry form, and even his own creations, the Housepets, despised him. When Rex tried to comfort him, he was brushed off, caring little for any of the dreams he had once held. Hoping now to release his rage onto any human he could find, Rick once again did battle with Agent Foerr, though he was defeated, and gravely injured by Pete and Celia. Rex was able to rescue his wounded master, and the two limped away into the forests of Babylon as Erebus enacted his own revenge on the multiverse. Erebus, too, was defeated, though Rick could not even muster the energy to care.

Bleeding out, Rick ignored Rex's pleas to surrender, refusing to admit he had been defeated by the hated humans. By sheer chance, the duo stumbled upon the crashed ship of Delta Squad, who had narrowly escaped the destruction of Forge Station brought on by Erebus's end. Blind with rage, Rick rushed to the group and shot Ben in the face, swearing that he would end humanity as long as he was alive, and that he would never, ever, surrender. But a final gunshot rang out; loyal Rex, his oldest friend, had put an end to his hatred once and for all. Confused and betrayed, Rick fell, seeing only in his final moments how much evil he had done in the name of his dream.