Battlerock X: Journal Entry 20071031

I am composing my thoughts as I attempt to rebuild my life and regain the memories that are still missing.

This is what I know… I know that my name is John Helix Battlerock. I know that for several decades I was a covert operative for some government agency before retiring.

I know that I was forced to return to action when the Rikti arrived in 2002. My last memory of that action was in helping to defend Hero 1 and the rest of the Omega team as they prepared their final assault on the Rikti homeworld. I know that I was declared “killed in action” and that for nearly five years I was roaming Paragon City as a brain-damaged vagabond.

I don’t know what brought some of my memories back. Maybe it was my experience with the Rikti that forced me to remember again. Maybe it was a nearby portal that put my brain back into alignment. All I know is that I’m remembering most of who I was before the war.

I do know that someone found me, and they did something to me. There is a metal plate on my face that I can’t get off, and I don’t know why it is there. I don’t think it was for just cosmetic purposes. I’ve gone to the medical center a few times but the doctors don’t want to help me. I can see it in their facial expressions. They have some idea of what this thing is, but they don’t want to get involved.

I know that I have a wife and a daughter who should be 18 now. I have not had the chance to see them yet, to let them know that I am still alive. I am not ready to make my presence known to them yet. I don’t want to put them in danger when I have no idea what this metal plate on my face is about.

Part of my resurrection forced me to start from square one. All that I knew once about fighting and my inherited abilities as a Battlerock Warrior were gone. I had a high security rating before the first Rikti invasion. That disappeared. I have to start from the bottom again.

Since my return I’ve created my own super-group called Omega 2. This gives me the chance to create my own base of operations so I can figure out what the missing parts of my life are and what happened after I was “killed”. I cannot trust the Paragon City infrastructure to help me, so I will have to conduct my own investigation as to what happened and who put this thing on my face.

Part of my “death” had something to do with the Rikti portals. Every time I fight one of those bastards when they just arrive, I have a flash of the life that I used to have. Unfortunately, my fellow heroes have made things difficult, because the number of Rikti invasions has decreased. I will probably have to go to the crash site itself, and to do that, I’ll need to get clearance from the Vanguard. That in and of itself will be difficult since my security level was reset.

I don’t know if I should get my daughter involved with this, but I may have to. I’ve seen reports of a “Battlerock Babe” in the Paragon Times, and she is wearing a modified version of my Rikti War outfit. No doubt her mother tried to talk her out of it, but Joan is a Battlerock Warrior, and my family has a strong history of doing whatever it is that we set ourselves to do. I just hope she doesn’t make the same mistakes that I made in the past.