Jeremy McCollough aka Callidus is one of the most remarkable Metas in the world, with a physiology that is naturally accelerated far beyond normal human limits. The child of a well-to-do exec family, with close relatives in several mega-corps, he got his start as a track and field runner in creche sports as a teen, and entered competition as an adult as well. He was identified as a Meta early and raced in the PacFed League's Augmented class where he soon broke all human land speed records, and just kept getting faster with training and effort. He so easily dominated the field that the commission had to pass a bylaw to ban him from further competition just to avoid making the entire category of foot races pointless.
Thanks to his family's wealth Jeremy wasn't too bad off in theory, but his extreme impatience with routine and boredom combined with his lack of a positive outlet led him to an ever increasing life of danger, cruising the streets and clubs of the Holly-bu night scene, slumming, and getting into general trouble. His family, particularly his never very close father, were not amused and after Jeremy ignored repeated warnings to get his sails straight and start acting right he was summarily disowned.
To say Jeremy was shocked at this course of events would be an understatement -- he never truly believed his father would really do it. At loose ends, Jeremy sponged off his "friends" for a little while but he learned real quick that while they were all happy to sponge off of him indefinitely when he was in the green, they were a lot less chummy once the shoe was on the other foot. Soon left with few options, Jeremy started using his natural abilities for more than just athletics and parlor tricks and started seeking out work where someone with blazing fast reflexes could be really successful -- Running. And not the track and field sort he was so used to.
Stealing a gun and getting bottom-of-the-barrel shoot-em-up jobs, and narrowly avoiding death a few times he managed to survive and do well enough to graduate past the scraps and start getting some really solid contracts. Investing and re-investing in a good suit of body armor to shore up his un-augmented and very squishy skin and mastering the use of burst fire weapons to maximize his already insane rate of fire, he soon became well known as the equivalent of a one man firing squad, able to lay down more lead by himself than three to six normal people working together. As his street rep grew, the stature of his employers did as well.
Eventually Jeremy became involved with a Fixer named Ugushi who did a lot of business with Yukio. The money was copious, and Jeremy found himself doing job after job for them, approached directly by Ugushi on Yukio's behalf. Then he was sent on a reprisal mission for Yukio that would prove to change everything. The mark was a group called Delta-V comprised of five Runners, all Metas, who had crossed paths with some Yaks and earned themselves a deathmark by threatening or harming the daughter of a powerful leader within the Yakuza. Jeremy wasn't given the full details, but one thing was made clear -- the marks were to be taken alive if possible for a per-head bonus, and killed if capture were not possible. Jeremy wasn't fond of this type of work, but the paycheck was just too big to pass up. The attack group was comprised of a full twelve man razorboy hit team, Callidus, and a couple of other freelancers.
Blacking out the building Delta-V was holed up in and attacking from darkness, the hitters initially got the drop on the unsuspecting marks and one Delta-V member, the electricity emitter known as Farad, was slain. Another, the mind controller known as Ghost, was also injured but managed to slink off and administer first aid to himself. The remaining three, the super strong telekinetic known as Fortress, the laser projector known as Wyatt, and the bio-manipulator called Triage rallied and soon proved to be too big of a chunk to bite off and soon turned the tide of battle in their favor.
Once Ghost was able to rejoin the struggle the momentum was clearly and incredibly in Delta-V's favor and one by one the razorboys and freelancers were cut down, crushed, or mind-blasted. Jeremy fought the good fight but soon realized he was the last man standing and belatedly tried to run away. Delta-V pursued and Jeremy led them a merry chase but in the end was clipped by a well placed bullet from Triage and then locked down in a telekinetic bubble by Fortress. Jeremy squeezed off his last rounds in a futile effort to shatter the invisible bubble that contained him but was unable to escape.
His number was surely up, but for lack of a better option he entered into a dialog with his captors and imminent executors. Appealing towards their shared existence as Metas, he apologized for taking the job against them and swore he never would have if he had known they were Meta's like him (a lie), and further promising to tell them everything he knew about Yukio, the Yaks, and Ugushi. The surviving Delta-V's extracted the info they needed from him to conduct a counter raid, and then chose to keep him alive for future use.
Locking Jeremy away in a secured room in a secondary base they relocated to, the four pissed off Meta's quickly hatched a raid on Ugushi's highly secure home in the Holly-bu hills, using Ghost's puppeteering to get through several deterrents stealthily, and then Fortress ripped through the last layer of physical defenses with his vast telekinetic strength. Storming the safehouse unmercifully, the four soon killed all opposition and had Ugushi under their control. Ghost probed him for the necessary information, and mind controlled him into pulling up as much data has he had access to about his contacts at Yukio. Ghost wiped Ugushi's memory of being controlled, and they left Ugushi alive, but the Yakuza later had Ugushi killed out of hand.
Using the information they gained from Ugushi and occasionally enriched by further input from Jeremy, Delta-V proceeded to launch one tactical reprisal after another. In captivity Jeremy desperately struck up a fragile friendship with Wyatt and Triage, who interceded on several occasions to prevent the hardnosed Fortress from terminating Jeremy once his real usefulness was passed. In time the issue came up less often, and finally after a couple of hits on the Yaks where the four Metas felt under-gunned Wyatt and Triage convinced Ghost to consider extending Jeremy an offer of membership. The three worked on Fortress who agreed on the condition that if Jeremy either turned the offer down or even seemed to be selling the group out, Fortress could finally kill him with no more nagging to be merciful. An accord was reached and the group made the offer to Jeremy (minus the hint that if he turned it down he was a dead man), and he agreed.
He was kept under a close watch, but allowed (i.e. required) to help the team on further Runs. Initially doing it for survival, Jeremy did find the close-knit group's bond to be alluring and the freely offered friendship of Wyatt and Triage to be welcome. He'd never really known any other Metas and he did in time come to feel true friendship and common ground with his new erstwhile allies. In time Jeremy's apparently honest enthusiasm won over even Fortress, and Jeremy's real skill impressed the taciturn heavy on many occasions. In the end, after a few months he was an equal member of the group and soon they worked together as efficiently as they had before Farad's loss...perhaps even more so.
The five fought a number of infamous battles against the Yaks and Yukio, causing a good deal of street buzz, and soon a full scale shadow war was on. The back and forth assaults escalated but the small and fast moving Delta-V team stayed mobile and avoided further ambushes while pressing a deadly focused offensive, destroying Yukio facilities, storefronts, backed gangs, and going after specific Yak family members and looting everything of value in the process. They soon wreaked enough havoc and death on the Yaks to earn a plea for truce. With that front quiet for the nonce, the team went back to normal Runs though with their street cred elevated through the roof they were able to pull big contracts with big price tags. However they had also drawn the attention of an old enemy...BioCorps.
The Big C hatched a rather diabolical plan to capture the Delta-V boys via a bogus Fixer and trojan horse job, and were more than happy to scoop up Jeremy in the process. But luck was with the intrepid Metas again and Ghost accidentally discovered the nature of the setup after becoming suspicious of unusual interference with his mind reading by the fixer. The group hatched a plan and decided to go through with the trojan horse scenario but forewarned they turned the tables on their would be ambushers. Even still it was a close run engagement as BioCorps engaged its PREDATOR assets en masse, but thanks to Jeremy's intervention the group was able to make a close run getaway.
BioCorps turned up the pressure though, and Delta-V found itself hard pressed over the next few months to avoid capture and had to rabbit and run. However once again they proved a match for their opposition and were able to slowly extricate themselves from jeopardy and launch a counter offensive. Jeremy stuck by his new friends through it all. Finally, after months of struggle and guerrilla warfare, Delta-V managed to penetrate deep into a BioCorps facility and access highly classified data files and discover the original Meta's true identities and the circumstances by which they came under BioCorps's power. However their victory was short lived, as the group soon fractured apart thereafter to seek their own ways in the world. The laser-projecting Wyatt and Triage decided to retire, at least for awhile, and attempt to return to their lives before BioCorps meddling and perhaps even fully recover their memories. Ghost decided to go his own way and has spent the last couple years slacking off and laying low. Fortress continued to pursue his march to the top tiers of Runner society.
Jeremy was saddened by the fracturing of his new family, but his itch for action ensured that he would continue to keep his hand in the trade. Partnering with the similar minded Fortress, he has continued to develop his considerable rep and street cred as top quality talent. Though he is not as cocky and brazen as Fortress, Jeremy's overconfidence ensures he doesn't worry too much about keeping an extremely low profile, though he isn't stupid either. |
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