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Amidst the darkened skyline of Chicago was one particularly looming building other than the Sears Tower. A singular straight-sided skyscraper so uniform in its presence, that it looming over all, despite not being the tallest building in the city. Somewhere on the higher floors, two men walked along the corridors, following a velociraptor tied down on a gurney. He was unconscious, his brown pebble-smooth scales dull underneath the lights. His most distinguishing mark was his striped purple markings, two across the top of his snout and the rest down his tail. "So you sure the experiment'll work, doc?" "Uhhh absolutely sir, there's no reason it shouldn't work with our subject. You um...read the reports after all." "Indeed, my kind of reading, dreams that can be achieved. I can see it now, the first REAL supersoldiers we'll have in centuries, able to take out entire nations without needing to reload, like walking armouries. These nanothings are gonna change the whole world, and you my friend will be standing shoulder to shoulder, with me." A hefty pat on the back was given as the two walked behind their subject towards the operating theatre. Within there laid the main table, under piercing lights, as well as two computers. One was authoritarian grey as a classic serious computer, the other of red and yellow colours in an almost childish design with various buttons and joysticks, like that of an arcade machine. They soon began their massive operation on the subject, who slept unaware of the severe reconstruction of his own blood vessels, to be aligned with similarly shaped synthetic cables. Some were the size of main arteries while others were as microscopic as capillaries.

When the cables had been laid down, next came the work on the neurological and cardiological. The brain was wired minutely with all sorts of technical matter such as rerouters and microchips that lined the inside of his skull against the brain just to deal with the massive amounts of information that the creature would have to cope with, essentially making it more closer to a computer that matched its power to a sentient brain. The heart was refitted with automatic adjusters to deal with the new flow of nanobots and allow them better passage while keeping the blood pressure the same. All in all the experiment was a success. An amazing success after years of work thought the doctor, an achievement that would change forever the battlefield with not firepower, but intelligence and adaptability. If not for one slight flaw. That flaw was called Dr Anseed. The top scientist and the only one trustworthy enough and with enough determination and intelligence to even conceive of attempting such a radical experiment. He was also a fanatic of videogames.

Videogames were electronic entertainment systems that consisted of controlling a character represented as a group of pixellated bits on a television screen and navigating them through places made also of pixels, created 1900 years ago as a staple of entertainment. They had advanced through the years into levels of realism ever closer to reality itself. Dr Anseed was quite the fanatic of the "ancient" games of the late 20th/early 21st Century, and was fascinated by their unique age and the marvel of such originality from polygons or even pixels of all things. Had it not been for his fanaticism, the world would have become a much more dangerous place, but the raptor would have lived a less thrilling life. Dr Anseed had managed to obtain his own personal computer in the military labs where he ate, rested, researched and played games upon the colourful machine in the background. His computer held every single emulator he needed, computer programs that allowed one to play console-based videogames on a computer. In turn, they held many, MANY games of many varying systems and ages. Whether he actually had every single game in existence or not was uncertain, but it was certainly a most prized possession that he made part of his working contract. Agreeing to do experiments for the military only if he were given such a computer, for his entire time in military research since he first started. The military kept their word, so long as he concentrated on the Nanosoldier project and other similar experiments. Which he did, vehemently balancing time between the project and his games.

But of course, nothing stays perfect for long. And this project was no exception. It had begun when Dr Anseed, after a gruelling session with some irrepressible nanobots centred in the left cerebellum, to which he had just finished installing the last microchip in the vicinity of, he attempted to finish a devastatingly furious level of a videogame called Ninja Gaiden. Sleeplessness did not help matters. Being only human, his concentration was severely diminished, and the general had come in at that time as soon as he heard that the last microchip was finally installed correctly, desperate to see his new nanosoldier arise. Perhaps he wanted to feel like Dr Frankenstein, despite never having robbed a grave, owned a castle or even participated by hand in the experiment. He just wanted to pull the switch, or at least do the whole "It's alive" maniacal speech renowned and continuously revived by mad scientists and others everywhere. Dr Anseed asked to take a rest due to severe exhaustion, but the general reminded his deal, and could take away his gaming computer at a single click of the fingers. With that motivation in mind, the doctor began to connect the proper cables to the data computer in the same room. And here was the point where things went wrong. Dr Anseed connected the cable properly. But it was the wrong cable. He should've connected the one from the data computer, but instead connected the one from his gaming computer, and clicked SEND before the mistake could be reversed. And so the FinalGamer was born.

As soon as the doctor clicked SEND, the data poured into the subject's head like water from a burst dam. Until then, the raptor had been in a deep sleep, a controlled coma under heavy careful sedation. But now he would awaken off the street of his apartment and into something strange. Something...half real. He felt his senses had been shut for so long that he wondered if cobwebs were on his body. The deep green eyes opened first, while the other senses took 40 winks more. His eyes were blind yet open as he saw only darkness, like a computer turned off. Something was pushing into his brain hard, something large yet invisible. First there was that feeling one gets when they suddenly learn something new and astonishing, or realise the punchline of a joke. That sudden clarity when something just clicks in your mind. What he felt were several thousand clicks of that sort happening in rapid succession, like machine gun fire in his head. Data shooting back and forth, his mind suddenly becoming a war zone where information was the weapon. It tried to cram the raptor's head full of data that at first looked like ones and zeros, and he feared briefly that his brain had been scooped out and linked to a computer. His brain was intact, but his delusional guess was half-right. It hurt like a blinding migraine, the kind where you can't even see from the pain, too much for him to see so much information blasting into his brain. He just wanted to tear away from what he was seeing, hoping to awake from whatever nightmare he imagined. But then the numbers shifted...slowly changing their shape and becoming something else entirely different. The numbers began lining up into new shapes and into stick men. Then the stick men slowly gained weight and had different alterations changing to them. They were soon becoming people or strange beasts that he'd never seen before, all running past him with such speed.

A blue hedgehog, a short man in red dungarees, a thing with...something on its head shaped like a pyramid, strange blocks, a boy in green clothes armed with sword and shield, a large yellow bird, small red and white balls, armoured space-faring mercenaries. It was all so...eye-opening. Too opening, blinding even. He felt his eyes would burn from this much, or even burst from the pressure. He wanted to escape, trying to scream. Slowly, as if in slow motion, his own voice roared back at him in agony, his ears yet to catch up with everything. His senses returned to him soon enough, eyes still blinded by information but his ears heard voices all around him. Delayed, trapped, wading slowly through a blindingly intense force of random static rushing in his head. "-ut it d-ow!" "Tryi-won-ess!" "-iot, your gam-uble! You rui-eriment!" The voices filtered in and out as he kept hearing distorted repetitive melodies churning away, like a barrel organ desperately cranked by its player. He felt he was tied down as he tried to push his arms off from whatever surface he was on, only to find they were immobile. He needed to think, something that would get him out, and yet he couldn't think at all with the insane information forcing its way, carving through the landscape of his mind. Just when he thought his head would explode, his brain starting to vibrate like a disturbed bomb, the information stopped. And then he saw that one word. _ "LOADING..." _

At first he thought he really had had his brain extracted from his mind and linked to a computer, but his body seemed to disagree. He felt his arms and his hands at the end of them. The feet seemed to support the arms' argument as well, so he accepted that. The eyes soon returned to partial reality, the light above his head seeming to pierce into the skull. It felt like it was trying to wedge a headache in him with all the other information, just one more extra ball into the almost bursting closet of junk. At first there was an odd tingling throughout his body, like a surge of electricity. Feeling very odd, he gazed at the faces above him, the podgy general with blonde moustache and stubborn green eyes, hair tufted like the crested head of a small bird. He stood next to a doctor, with squinted brown eyes and unkempt hair to match and stare back at him through fidgety hands. They began speaking but their mouths only moved before his vision. No sound came, making the raptor believe he had become deaf, but then the voices came at last, delayed somehow. "He appears to be handling himself." "Yes...but...how??? All my games...they-" "Enough about your goddamn ancient toys, Anseed! Our project is alive at least from your foolish blunder." "I DID ask for sleep, sir, to focus better on the experiment." "Your games take too much priority and endangered this experiment..." "Well, at least his first test should be quite a show! I mean, first time nanos always exceed their limits before finding them..." Caring little of what they were saying, the subject knew he had to find a way out of here, looking down at himself, visually seeing his brown-scaled body or purple horizontal lines intact but shackled. For some reason, he could see a few slight arcs of blue crackly rainbows loom crazily over the scales, briefly before disappearing. The shackles looked too strong to break, he tried to think how to escape. And then he saw a word. It appeared in his mind powerfully, like the LOADING did. And now it showed: Escape That was on his mind already but the word was now there itself. Now...a way to escape. He had to get out of these cuffs that binded him. Binded = Ties that Bind Ties that bind? Why am I thinking of weird phrases, he pondered, feeling like someone else was doing the thinking. Perhaps some sort of mind control via remote. His mind began this automatic checking through words. Ties that Bind = Suffering = Torque = Monster Transformation The last two words were the ones that made him very nervous. Two words he did not want to see while tied down in a strange lab were "Monster" and "Transformation", though there were worse words he could think of. But his mind at the moment did not let him. An image flashed in his head, clear yet gritty. A man...a man with black hair and large sideburns, white vested, muscled body, dark piercing eyes of distrust and orange jeans. The image flicked to him holding a gun, a handgun, a revolver. Then it showed him with a full meter of something white and glowing. He was looking at his back. He was in some odd basement, probably the bottom level of a boiler room or some place were power was going to be circulated through. Pipes glowed green around him and steam escaped from them and the floor below him, which was a large series of gratings. There were...things all around him, strange beasts that looked human, wrapped in dirty bandages with blades for arms and legs. They started attacking the human. And then...it happened. The image showed the man transforming into a monster. And at that same time, the raptor's arms twitched.

Shuddering with the strangest feeling, his arms began to convulse and bulge as if tapeworms inside suddenly fattened up in his veins, making the muscles stretch. He started to groan in pain, his scaled body starting to discolour from its rich earthen brown into something darker. He felt his head whine with a strange noise, wanting to hold it to try and squash the pain inside it. The sound rose to a screaming pitch as he screeched furiously, his brain seeming to pulse insanely, confusing itself with his heart which also started to beat rapidly. His scaled chest heaved and rised as it enlargened somewhat, the ribcage in turn swelling up extraordinarily fast. His wrists and ankles pushed painfully against the braces, the raptor screaming as his voice deepened into something more darker and vicious. When he felt the braces break, he shot up and felt much larger. Not just in height but also in power and girth. Looking down at himself, he saw an unfamiliarly frightening muscled monolith of a chest. A huge ribcage pushed out against it, his face feeling bony against huge arms. His entire body also hurt like fuck. His left arm ended in massive claws that looked like wicked scythes, whereas the right one was replaced with a blood-festooned spear attached to the elbow. In fear, he roared and swiped at the space in front of his eyes, slashing the table in three pieces. The General backed out of the room, with the experiment following him in fury. He fucking caused this, thought the raptor. Whatever the fuck he did to me, he's gonna PAY.

With anger and intense pain coursing through his muscles, he charged at him.

The general dodged out of the way but the raptor's mind was too seized by fury to care anymore, clawing the walls to leave massive scars scraping sparks against steel. Running as fast as he could in a lumbering gait, heavy monstrous breaths deeper and more beast-like, he felt like nothing but a monster. He headed down a corridor and found one of the military guards aiming a pistol at him. He suddenly flickered in his eyes like a bad TV reception, flickering into the same beasts with blades for arms and legs that were attacking that man he saw in his mind. With a fury borne from somewhere not of his thoughts, he tore at him or it with one swipe of his huge claws. A human corpse sliced into three pieces very messily laid before him. Blood flew across the hallway and onto the walls, splashes of viscous paint thrown from the claws like from a paintbrush. He felt no sorrow or shock. Only anger...anger, and perhaps a hidden fear. But he charged onwards nevertheless, eventually reaching a window. It seemed big enough for him to jump through but he looked out of it first, taking a moment to calm down and see an elevated motorway. It was not too far from the window but quite a long ways down, too far down to go without breaking his legs. As he tried to think of some way to escape, he felt his body change again.

His mouth opened beyond what he thought was possible, screaming a bass roar that shattered the window before him, along with several other glass items in nearby labs within the roar's radius. His arms shrinked agonisingly fast back to their normal selves, the giant claws shooting back to their smaller dagger-size lengths. The huge bladed arm morphed back to its small thin scaled self, rather painfully so. Tt felt like his arm was being crushed by a vice, quickly at first before slowing down as the bones rubbed the flesh with an intimate distance. His body became shorter in turn, legs thinning out to turn ungainly from the sudden transformation, as his mouth pulled back viciously from its temporarily monstrous muscles. He was back to his very disoriented normal self. The window blew a cold wind out before him. He had no other way out as guards from all possible directions were coming, the multiple crunching of boots rushing closer and louder. The raptor could only get out by this window, unless he could fight the guards. And no one wants to fight the military. The motorway was smooth tarmac, smooth enough to play curling on. Different vehicles sped past in both directions, their motor sounds brief shouts of power before they faded into the distance. A high-set pair of grind rails acted as crash barriers. Grind

It happened again. A foreign thought flashing in his mind without me even wanting to further consider it. Grind = Skate Skate? His own thoughts interjected. What the hell am I doing thinking of skating, trying to escape from a fucking military lab?! Jump onto the rail to grind And now the image came to him. A vision...a kid, in bright orange clothes, green-lensed goggles and black shorts. Skating, jumping onto a rail in a sunny area, some sort of bus station due to several parked buses. He was skating along a rail and spraying graffiti upon them. Jump? What the fuck am I thinking, am I insane now or something?

He hadn't even begun arguing against it when he heard footsteps stop behind him, accompanied by the clicks of a dozen weapons. Turning round, he saw a small army of soldiers aiming their rifles. A dozen hollow tunnels pointed at his face, ready to let bullets pass through them like trains. Whether he was going to catch one or not was their stationmaster's choice. "Now now son...there's no need to try running." The general practised his diplomacy on him. Not a good start so far considering all that he had done just now. "We can help you get used to this." "What...have you done...with ME?!?!?" He had to ask them, demand them even. What else could he even ask them other than "Please let me go", which was not an available option. "You should be proud to be enlisted in this experiment, young dinosaur. You'll be representing a future for saving others from enemies." "Wait...so I'm some military experiment?" "Indeed you are. How does that make you feel?" "Pissed off to fucking hell, THAT'S what I'm feeling!" Unawares to the military, his feet began to tingle slightly, the thin scaled soles starting to shift, feeling more firm. "Well, we made a mistake...we can help you with that. Now if you'll just cooperate please, because we used up a lot of precious time and money on you. It would be a shame to waste that." "Your money, your fault. Or is that the money of all us people who pay it for you?" "Don't make assumptions...they're the mother of all mistakes." "Well some mistakes turn out to be good ones, right?" He felt his feet rise, not knowing what he was feeling but he kept thinking about the skates the kid wore. He didn't look down but he felt something a little slippery underneath his feet, and more tighter binding on the rest of his feet, as if he was wearing shoes. One type of shoe he was quite familiar with. A few gazes of surprise from the soldiers told their suspicions from what they saw. "Now son, why don't you just give yourself up and we can cure you?" Nobody ever trusted this particular military group in this city, least of all the fugitive, who looked out of the window and saw the rail He even had a phrase in his head that he knew would make a kick-ass exit line. But he only had once chance of using it, an almost involuntary phrase that slid from his brain to his mouth with all the speed of a striking cobra. "You'll have to tag me first." And with that, he swerved around swiftly before leaping out of the window, pushing his body through, arms thrust at the window sides and forcing himself outwards.

He thought at first that he was actually going for suicide rather than being taken in by the military group, which actually would've been the lesser of two evils. But he actually got something better and even though he knew he had this sudden sense to trust himself, he had to question it. As the raptor fell out of the building, the cold air of the dark purplish-black night sky rushed past him with a screeching sound, like a conference of banshees. He looked down at his feet. No more were the familiar three clawed toes on each foot. Now they had a tight-laced boot on each, but with two thin neon green wheels on the bottom. Skating boots. He knew precisely what he had to do, seeing the kid's example in his mind's eye as well as his own skating skills, perhaps luckily the only thing he could do well other than motorcycle racing. His mind was still hazy, feeling as if it was on semi-automatic. He aimed his feet at a rail, and prayed he would hit it. It was a hell of a long way down, but somehow the escapee knew that if he hit the rail, this would work. And after a long drop of what he felt was going to end with a giant crackling of bones accompanied by excruciating pain of shattered muscles before a slow death of bleeding and strangled gasps, he felt his boots defy gravity.

They clamped onto the rail, one foot out front, the other behind it. And with an almost automatic force, he was sliding along it sideways. He was skating. He couldn't believe he was skating, after an impossible drop. He didn't even think to do any of this. All he could do was laugh from fear and madness, and soon laugh again from the blissful release of fear and the sheer disbelief of the moment. His cackle soon rang pure thankfulness into the air, throwing his arms out as cars flew or rolled by him back and forth. His speed picked up as the wheels on the bottom of the boots grinded against the rail with a screeching sound further down the rail. He knew the road would dip eventually to ground level, knowing this road well. Soon it began to curve downwards, causing him to pick up speed, making him feel a real pulse of adrenaline. The raptor hoped his balance would keep, and amazingly it did after a long while of the screeching and grinding effortlessly on the metal rail, before he found a part close enough to the ground to jump off of.

He leapt from the rails and landed with a near-clumsy roll onto the littered pavement, his head still somewhat cloudy from all that had happened to him. He was near staggering from disbelief that he had even managed such an escape. Soon he felt his feet metamorphose from their booted form back into his original scaled toes. It was as if some odd leathery slime was reshaping itself around them, with a disconcertingly warm smooth pace. He looked around. No one was around, so he ran. But he had to ask himself now, where COULD he run? He felt exhausted all of a sudden, needing to rest from the energy suddenly drained from him. His body became stiff, strongly developing an urge to sleep. He walked eastwards, back to the only place he knew would keep him safe. All he had to wonder now, was what had happened to him. Why he became a monster and why his feet became skating boots. It was like a disturbing acid trip, something he had never experienced having kept himself clean. His head was also buzzing full of so many thoughts, of so many characters he never knew of. He needed somewhere to rest. That was all he needed right now.