The Slender Leech (Character)

## BACKSTORY

In the year 5370 on the Mobius zone called “Mercia”, in the remaining Mercia kingdoms, a war was ending between the Mobian Mercians and the Human Mercians.  The humans had defeated the mobians and began spreading their numbers through the kingdom, but twenty-three years later, the heir to the Mobian throne, Selen, returned, and took down the Human Leader: Mevrik the Mighty, or, Mevrik the Witch King.

Mevrik faked his death to escape.  He knew that with the Mobian Mercian bloodline still living, there would be resistance in high numbers.  So, he returned some two years later while they were still rebuilding and repopulating.

He created a monster that fed on the souls of others—cores of others—and the first victim was Queen Selen.  Mevrik hoped to use this creature to take over the entire planet, to rid the world of mobians, but the cores devoured by the creature gave it a sense of resistance to its master.  It rebelled and left.

It was in the next year that the monster emerged again.  It held only one desire: to find the original core.  It would search for its own forever if needed, but it needed to feed.  So, subtly, it took out an entire forest of wildlife, and began the hunter.

### First Sighting

The year was 5411.  The core of a victim led it to a village in the far areas of the Mercian village woodlands.  There, it fed on the entire village: its liquid mass causing the location to submerge almost completely before it settled.

With so many cores, so many personalities absorbed, the creature was receiving mixed commands, going back and forth between its desire to feed, to the desires of the cores it had devoured.  It took the form of its most recent victim: a young grey bat in school uniform.  The bat had lived in the slaughtered village, and so the Leech, the Slender Leech, began walking to that location.

A couple, at Lake Mercia, had noticed the creature and followed.  The girl was unnerved by the circumstance, but the boyfriend wanted to investigate what had happened.  The girl stayed in their car as the boy followed the bat to the submerged village.

He found the corpses, stained to the wall like a spider’s web, only the web was like a glue acid: burning at the bodies while holding them in place as they decayed.  The consciousness of the bat victim was fading as the Leech recognized a very strong amount of core energy nearby… the boy… he was an Identity: a shapeshifting nanite-composed being with millions of small pockets of core energy throughout his body, and this creature wanted him.

The Identity boy rushed back to the car and escaped with his girlfriend before the Leech could supposedly catch them: arriving with some wounds at one of the lone villages of the continent.  They were hospitalized, but when the girl went to check on her boyfriend, she found that the Leech had still followed them, ate him, and left only his nanite sand behind.  When she investigated further, the girl discovered that her mother had gone searching for the two, and was also eaten by the creature.

### Grimstone

It was two years after the creature attacked the couple.  The girl—a mobian chameleon named “Leah Grimstone” had begun a personal campaign to find and destroy the creature.  Leah eventually found the creature as it had become more active: appearing randomly throughout the planet, but Leah was not experienced enough with this creature.

The monster ignored Leah entirely, and despite the chameleon trying to capture it, the creature simply walked on after feeding.  Eventually Leah lost track of the creature.  The personalities the creature had been absorbing were beginning to surface again, and some were lasting for days on end.

Leah met with some, victims of the creature that were somehow now alive.  Over the span of this year and the next, Leah eventually found out the truth, and ways to extract the personalities from the creature: thinking that doing so would return the monster to its original persona.  She even convinced the Leech that this was possible at some point.  Unfortunately a few of the personalities didn’t want to be taken: they wanted to live still, and some of them weren’t the most wholesome people in life.

Leah had to track down the remaining personalities, but once the monster was freed of the cores devoured… nothing happened.  The Slender Leech did not return to the form of a normal mobian, but was simply hungry.

For the first time, the monster seemed to actually experience anger, and attacked Leah, attempting to devour her core.  However, now experienced, Leah was able to use some forms of written magic to make her core repulsive to the creature: permanently making her taste unwanted, though in the process, her core was drained almost entirely, and left in a permanent damaged state.

The remains of Leah’s personality the monster did absorb led it back to the Mercian lands.  Two Leah Grimstones stood at the graves of dead family.  The two parted ways, supposedly forever.

### Slender Crossing

It was the year 5415 now.  The creature mostly fed on plants and animals throughout the area, but sometimes it would attack people.  The sightings were becoming more and more common.  Villagers were getting more and more terrified.  Then, the monster caught the scent of something.  It sensed its core, and followed this scent to the ruins of Mevrik’s castle.  Oblivious to what would happen next, the creature was set upon by Mevrik, who had finally prepared a manipulated core by which he controlled the monster.

For some months, the attacks on mobians throughout the planet became more active, but Mevrik decided that he should go after not just the mobians anymore, but also all who would oppose him, and then convert them into loyal subjects.  The Slender Leech could do little to stop this: its false core constantly being powered and the creature unable to remove it.

Eventually three individuals arrived to stop Mevrik: a hedgehog named Kyle Waktini, a fox named Turon, and Leah Grimstone.  Leah managed to use her own core to get through to the creature’s developing psyche, freeing it from Mevrik’s control, but at this point, the Witch King had countless cores at his disposal.  A battle ensued and Mevrik was eventually defeated.  The Leech left once again, and the others thought it was on good terms… they thought…

### Vlasek

The Leech was more experienced now, and decided to try and blend in with the public.  It took on various disguises, and lived among the public.  Seeing Turon and remembering him, the Leech decided that she would be its partner, and went about attempting to become his ally.  The creature managed to talk with Turon occasionally, but what it did not know—and what Turon had no idea off—was that the Leech was disguised as Leah almost every time, and its more obsessive attitude with Turon was being noticed by Turon’s family.

Seeing that conflict had risen from the interaction, the Leech decided it was best to not bring more attention to itself, lest things escalate.  It left back to the woods, but felt quite bitter about how Turon’s family was angry with him.

Some time passed.  The year at 5419 now.  Turon’s family was travelling through the woods, but the Leech was attacking people again as they went through.  Recognizing them when it stopped their travel, the Slender Leech initially began to pull them back to the Owls Town villag for Turon, but soon read their cores and found out that they were leaving Turon.

Angered, thinking they had betrayed the fox, the Leech killed them.  Shortly after, Turon came to avenge them.  The Leech was confused why he would want to, and then angry that he was not grateful.  Angered further, it tried to assimilate Turon, but he resisted.  The more the Leech fed off him, the more his core dwindled, but he would not give in.  Frustrated, the Leech combined his body and core with that of the remains of an owl, but seeing this as a failure, the Leech left the corpse: not knowing that it had created a brand new monster.

### Leah’s Offer

The Chameleon once again searched for the Leech, but the Leech had left to a different zone: actually telling Leah once in secret before doing so as its own form of goodbye.  Fearing what could happen if the Leech were to travel throughout the Multiverse assimilating people, Leah used her previous encounters to figure out how and where.  She came to the conclusion that Kyle Waktini was the only other-zoner that the Leech had encountered, so the Leech must have used his trace to travel to Kyle’s world.

Using whatever she could that was left behind by Kyle, Leah managed to get herself to Kyle’s zone, and began her search.  Once again, she found the creature haunting areas, but when they met, Leah had something to offer.

The chameleon explained that she could help the Leech be like other people: giving her a core of her own.  She explained that the Leech would have to get fed regularly from the artificial core to remain as the new identity, and that there would be limitations, but that it could work.

The Leech agreed, and soon took on a new form: one both remembered.  She was now a grey bat in a school uniform.  At first,  the Slender Leech simply attended a normal school, but hearing of a place called “Mobius Academy”, it decided that Leah should not know what it would do next.  It overdosed in a sense in the core treatment, then travelled to Mobius Academy: following Kyle Waktini’s trace once again.  The creature found that its new persona had taken over, and that it had completely—or nearly completely—forgotten about what it was before.

It was now simply a mute bat, and her name was Christa Page.

### Literate Academy

Christa Page ended up having some small adventures here and there with those in Mobius Academy for about a year.  Leah attempted to follow her, but the Leech had wiped her trail this time before fully converting.  One day, however, Christa was the victim of a villain named “Literate”.  She was placed in a labyrinth of sorts, going through trials along others.

Despite the dangers, when it was all over, Christa found interest in the strange villain, and sought him out after he had left.  Unconsciously using her Leech abilities, Christa found Literate and pursued him for some time.  The villain was mostly confused and a bit unnerved at first by this schoolgirl that seemed to be hitting on him, but over time, the two actually developed a relationship.

Christa seemed to have no issue with any of Literate’s villainous acts, making things go smoothly for quite a while.  The most complicated moment came when she tried to introduce him to those at the Academy—many of which remembered what he had done before—leading to Literate barely escaping before Zone Police got to him, and Christa feeling hurt in the process.

Christa still continued pursuing Literate, however, though she also found interest in another grey bat who worked at the Academy named Jenna: the Administrator who apparently had magical powers.  Christa experienced a… glitch of sorts, like a previous memory, and spoke just once to the Administrator “I remember you.  Tragedy.”

### Satisfaction

Eventually the Christa personality was beginning to fade, and the Leech was aware of this.  Now able to be tracked by Leah, the two met, and the Leech begged to remain as Christa.  Leah agreed, giving her more treatment that restored her for the time, but some short days later, the Leech realized that this wasn’t enough anymore.  She wanted to have a real core, to be real now.

She was approached by an Identity named “Device” and told that if the Leech would help her, Device would give her what she needed to make herself an actual whole person.  The Leech agreed, and soon attacked the Academy as the Leech—without any knowing that she was Christa Page still—where she stole the core of a staff member named “Lisa Stream”.

Device made good on her promise, telling the Leech of what she could do, but the Leech felt… regret.  Device used the core to take control of a magic student at Mobius Academy and create a Dark Phantis for her own means.  Still having the same core energy within her, the Leech put the massive magic core power into the most experienced mage she remembered: Jenna.

A battle of Phantises went on, but the Leech did not care.  It had other plans.

**To be continued in Animus Rising**

## BIOLOGY/ABILITIES

The Slender Leech is composed of what is referred to as “Slender Venom”.  This matter is the excess base matter improperly designed by the remnants of core energy the Leech controls.  It originates from All-Matter (or Source of All) which all form of matter comes from in the Multiverse, programmed by the core energy within all living and conscious things.  Because the Leech is not fully conscious, this matter is blank.  It is highly acidic: giving the sensation of a burning sting as it drains the life of whatever it touches.  This matter can develop incredibly rapidly, and does not have a known limit.

The Leech is adaptive.  After something happens to it, it will adapt permanently to whatever is done to it, and can even replicate the action or power if needed.

The Leech feeds mainly off of core energy.  At base level—without feeding—the monster has a limited sense range of where it can find core energy, and moves slowly.  When it has a scent, however, it can track it regardless of the distance.  When it feeds on core energy, it can absorb and recreate the person or thing, from memories to powers, and the stronger it becomes, the more Slender Venom it can produce and more durable it can become.

At base level, the Leech is not particularly durable, a thin shell of a body lined with Slender Venom, but the venom itself is highly elastic and durable.

The Leech can also control the cores of others, and turn them into subordinates, be it as they are, or even converting them into less powerful Slender Leeches.

## WEAKNESSES

The Leech can be manipulated.  If someone with a strong enough core is fed upon by the Leech, you can influence it, though over years the Leech has become more resistant to outside influence.  Additionally, the Leech’s Slender Venom is harmed by Negative Core Energy.  It can feed on Negative Core Energy, but only in small amounts, and large amounts will cause the creature to reject it.  The Negative Core Energy cannot harm the consciousness of the entity as its core is incomplete, but it can harm the body.  The Slender Leech will eventually reform if destroyed.